Tumgik
#but that doesn't fit the narrative so who cares right?
class1akids · 1 day
Note
Your posts made me appreciate Shoto again because it seems like he's the only kid who went in with a solid plan about how he wanted to deal with his brother without killing him and made an entire special move to help with that plan and even talked about wanting to know his favorite food. Ochako and Deku really did seem to be just winging it, and Deku was even worse because he only cared about the crying child inside Shigaraki. It's like if Shoto only ever cared about his brothers 12 year old self and not the adult burn victim in front of him.
Thanks! I'm really glad if I can manage to spread some Shouto-appreciation. I think he's way underrated both in-verse and in-fandom for how committed he was to saving Touya.
Maybe because they didn't "talk" so much in the sense like Ochako and Toga did, but their fight was framed in the context of ultimate moves and specifically flashfire being the horrible, violent language they were both were trained in.
Shouto took that "language" that Endeavor imposed on them and quite literally reinvented his quirk based on his heart to be able to stop Touya's fire in the right way. And he did work on that move before the battle, going into the fight with the conviction that "he is me" and clearly worried about Dabi wrecking his own body.
And the way Shouto reinterpreted flashfire was the exact opposite as what Endeavor wanted them to do / to be, the way he was there when Endeavor wasn't, the way he prioritized Touya when Endeavor once again didn't - I think it's the type of "actions speak louder" way of communication that fits Shouto so well.
And since Touya copied Phosphor, I think at least on some level he must have understood what Shouto chose to do there and why and it connects to how he was capable of perceiving Shouto in the end not as some kind of masterpiece monster born to dethrone him but as a part of the family, a brother.
And I also appreciate that Shouto never made his saving conditional on whether he was facing Dabi or Touya. His priority was to try to stop him from burning himself and others up - because in Shouto's mind everyone can change, even the worst monsters.
I find it incredibly sad that because Endeavor was kept alive, Shouto wasn't enough for Touya - they needed a second resolution with Endeavor. I wish we could have seen the original ending - the one planned when Endeavor was set to die in the PLF War Arc.
I won't be happy if the Todoroki family plot ends with Touya dying offscreen or if he doesn't have at least a moment of more direct connection with Shouto. But I also don't trust Horikoshi that he won't make this into all a trophy / reward for Endeavor. In my mind, he really overplays the redemption arcs and overcompensates the characters for their change.
Anyways, while Shouto's endgame is far from perfect, I do appreciate that Phosphor was a really solid move for him, narratively bringing things together and he never strayed into that preachy, hypocrite territory Deku did.
But with Horikoshi ruining or ignoring so much of his own set-up, I'm really worried if he'll just assassinate Shouto's character too now in the last few chapters.
99 notes · View notes
Text
So you think Debling is a "good choice" for Penelope? The same man who was actively looking for a wife to take care of his estate as he planned to be gone for 3 years on a journey that he most likely won't return from? The same man who insinuated that Penelope would not be faithful to him as she had "feelings" towards Colin, that at the time she did not know he returned? The same man who looked her in the face and admitted that he was so dedicated to his hobby that he did not know if he could return her affection, should it grow? Penelope, who wanted someone to love her, who was a romantic and needed an out from her Mother and siblings, who are indeed a comic relief but are actually really awful to her all because she is still unwed and likes to read. Listen, Lord Debling is not a bad guy. He would, objectively, be a great husband to a member of the Ton, like Cressida, who just wanted to be married and have an household to run. But for Penelope, he most certainly is not the right fit. Be honest, most of this narrative comes from the fact that Penelope is a midsize character who falls in love with an handsome man, one who "shouldn't" be in a relationship with someone like her. Colin is a simp, who wanted to fit in with the Ton so bad, he tried to act like a rake, only to look relatively silly. Then comes Penelope, who calls him out but also accepts that he likes to write and is in fact, a soft man. Yes, it might have been cringe to witness but ffs, that was the point! A man like Colin can and does love women like Penelope. (Imagine thinking Nicola Coughlan isn't gorgeous or that Luke Newton isn't handsome, some of y'all are far too comfortable being nasty on the internet.)
Listen, you can obviously have your own opinions about this season, the actors, the writing etc but the discourse on tumblr, twitter and reddit is wild to witness. Can we please just enjoy a fun, frilly, silly littel story where true love prevails? The world sucks as it is; I don't know why I see so many people, especially women, go out of their way to shit on something. It doesn't make you cool or edgy to not enjoy something like Bridgerton. Go and watch the movies and shows you actually like instead of seeking out entertainment that offends you.
37 notes · View notes
madamtrashbat · 1 year
Note
Y'all might need this back after y'all's hissy fit yesterday:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-sense-of-entitlement-5120616
Tumblr media
I have got to hand it to suddenlyalright, she did a really fucking good job running with the campaign that I'm salty over not getting picked for the zine and literally nothing else could have caused me to be upset at all, no sir, including a person who harassed me and a bunch of my friends and openly sends anon hate had nothing to do with it.
Efficiency is definitely something you want from a mod, I guess. Impartiality out the window, this bitch gets shit done.
Go bother someone else.
11 notes · View notes
earlgreybocchan · 12 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Animating this season like you can't have the slightest bit of jest and god forbid jesting about yaoi
#can't even jokingly say slurs like saying fag instead of drudge wasn't The joke#like ciel took his earrings out at school right he was trying to be normal at normal boy school and they are all using slurs in their...#...everyday social setup their whole social world within the school at least relies on every important guy having a guy who will do...#...anything for him which is literally ciel's entire bit but normie#anyway whatever i am not going to explicate every joke at play here but what really annoys me about the shojo sparkles joke getting cut...#...is that it's being used in different places like vincent got shojo sparkles yesterday and ciel's at the beginning but like that is...#...supposed to be the joke-y indicator this is NOT normie shojo school so why did these have to get animated so FLAT#like you mean you can't imply any subtext about ciel bc it would be problematic. this is a story that is literally ABOUT people playing...#...at who they are not. the whole series and every character is set on that premise. and you're going to cultivate an environment where...#...viewers accept that any kind of subtext at all is inherently problematic and needs cut from the story#like they could have cut more and i am interested to see how they're going to handle things like ciel getting carried off of the field. but#it's more uncomfortable to me to be like no being a gay teenager is inherently problematic actually he can't be gay but he can be...#...straight engaged to his cousin in earnest even though the narrative has established how that is fake too.#and not dipping into the whole sebastian thing fully but then you have a setup where you have made it unacceptable to tell any gay story...#...that might be slightly problematic even though here it genuinely is a lot of subtext you have to understand that there is subtext to get#and there is the element here with them too where they are liars and they are playacting. that's part of what makes the story so complex...#...and interesting!! is trying to decipher who is lying and why the world they live in makes them have to lie to survive#it's doing a massive disservice to this story to approach it from the angle of someone might think on that too hard and think it's...#...inappropriate :( let's be the yen press and tweet something about sebastian being a mom so no one has to question what they're looking a#in a STORY THAT'S ABOUT QUESTIONING THE TRUTH OF WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT#i don't even care about shipping this is just cultivating a massive media literacy problem where you are being encouraged to take a story..#..at face value and you can't make dark jokes and you can't make stories about problematic gay people#it also bothers me bc this story has been really popular in japan for like 20 years without the mass public being in a constant state of...#...is this demon his boyfriend or dad :( like they're just fucking watching it ahdjrf#that also bothers me bc it's like you guys can't engage with any grey area relationship in a story where it doesn't fit into a box#but anyways why can japan engage with it to make it as popular and long lasting as it is and not everyone else don't say bc japan is...#...full of freaks who only like freak stories. this is also symptomatic of things i have complained about elsewhere on this blog that us...#...dub culture has cultivated an environment where us normal cool americans are going to tell freakish japanese people how to engage...#...with their counterculture cartoons in the Right way without ever having to engage with another country's culture or a story in general.#my kuro posts
1 note · View note
yumeka-sxf · 2 months
Text
I try to stay away from negative topics, but after hearing talk on social media yesterday and seeing this post from @such-a-downer, I just had to give my two cents about the complaints regarding yesterday's chapter being "another short mission" and that Endo is somehow being "lazy" or whatever.
I honestly don't understand this mentality of criticizing manga-ka, or any artists really, because they aren't delivering by whatever standards you personally think are appropriate. To me, it just seems like entitlement because Endo has no obligation to cater to any specific fan's wants. This is his story to tell the way he wants, and his characters to develop at the pace he deems fit. This isn't a business contract where we're paying him to deliver content we want every two weeks without fail. If I'm consuming the fruits of someone's creative labor for free, I certainly feel no right to complain if sometimes their content isn't what I wanted or expected. I'm fine with that because 1) I know it's what they (the creator) wanted/needed at the time, and 2) even if a particular chapter wasn't my cup of tea, I know other fellow fans out there somewhere are enjoying the heck out of it, and that's cool!
We also have to remember that SxF is basically a one-man show. If Endo is busy or sick or whatever, it's not like he can have someone fill in for him to write and draw the series. That's what a hiatus is for, that's what making a short chapter instead of a longer one is for...that's how artists should be treated so they don't get burned out and stressed. Plus, art shouldn't be rushed. Any artist knows that there are times when you have trouble coming up with ideas and maybe need a little extra time to develop a more complex section of the story. To immediately jump to conclusions that he's lazy or doesn't know what he's doing is ridiculous. Maybe he didn't feel good for a few days, maybe he's been busy with other SxF events, maybe he just needed more time to get a particular future arc developed, or maybe he just has basic IRL obligations to take care of like we all do...you don't know what's going on in his life, so don't make assumptions.
Another thing to keep in mind is that it's literally impossible to please every fan. One of the comments I read for example, someone was ready to drop the series because we haven't seen much of Yor in "a while." All I could think of was "didn't she just have a pretty big role only four chapters ago when they went to the ski resort?" Plus she was the star of chapter 91, which was less than ten chapters ago. So according to this person's standards, four chapters without seeing a particular character is "too long"? What if it was only three chapters, would that be acceptable? It's not right to push our own personal standards of a series' pacing as the "correct" way: some people want to see more of character X while someone else wants to see more of subplot Y, so should both complain that the manga-ka isn't doing right whenever they focus on something else? I'm not saying you shouldn't make criticisms of a manga-ka's work, but the criticisms should come from within the narrative itself, not superficial things like chapters focusing on subplots/characters you don't want to see or not having enough "plot-advancing" content when it's not a plot-focused series.
People who have read SxF up to this point should know the general flow of the chapters: mostly slice-of-life episodic, with more plot-heavy, intense arcs once in a while, like the cruise arc and bus arc. It's an ensemble series that spends most of its chapters focused on at least one of the Forgers, but occasionally other characters here and there. That's how the series has been for years and will likely continue to be. So if you keep complaining because you only like the dramatic story arcs and not the "nothing happens" episodic chapters, then maybe the series just isn't for you. It's totally fine if that's the case, but don't act like Endo is doing something wrong because he's not providing the particular thing you want in his story.
To summarize, Endo has no obligation to cater to particular fans' standards, just as we have no obligation to keep reading his work if we don't like it. But being a fan to me means respecting the creator's pace and vision even if it's not always what I personally want. I can find something to enjoy in every chapter because I'm a fan of SxF, not a fan of one particular aspect of it. But I also will not complain every time my tastes aren't being catered to and will simply occupy myself with other things while I wait. What's the big hurry, after all? I'm in no rush for SxF to wrap up its plot and I'm glad Endo isn't rushing either.
And that's all I'm gonna say about this topic, lol. On a happier note, I'm going to finally see Code White on Thursday! 😁 More to come later~
206 notes · View notes
farfromstrange · 3 months
Text
Weed Cookies | Matt Murdock x F!Reader
PART 3 of The Vault
Tumblr media
See this post for more information on my Valentine's Day Special & Follower Celebration, but these fics can be read separately!
Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader
Summary: Karen receives a box of cookies from one of their clients. Foggy and Matt take a bite. Even with his heightened senses though, Matt doesn't realize what's wrong with the cookies before he's absolutely wasted, and you have to babysit him. Yes, they were edibles.
Warnings: Fluff, faint hints at S3 depressed!Matt and suicidal ideations, attempt at humor, crack fic, accidental drug use, for the sake of this fic we are going to pretend that the edibles were made well enough for Mister I-Know-Everything to miss it
Word Count: 3.4k
A/n: I wrote this after watching the episode of Grey's Anatomy with the Weed Cookies. I took some behaviorisms from my own experiences and exaggerated them a little to fit the vibe of this fic. I scraped parts of this and once again adjusted them because this was even more poorly written before than it is now, and I added the Nelson, Murdock & Page Season 3 narrative again because that's now the running theme of this event. Anyway, if you choose to consume edibles, stay safe! (Also, I'm just copying and pasting my usual tag lists. if anyone wants to be added for this event, do let me know)
Tumblr media
“We just got cookies from Ms. Lebowsky next door,” Karen announces happily when she enters the office, balancing the transparent Tupperware in one hand and her handbag in the other. 
“She told me to thank you for helping her get out of that hellhole,” she says. Her eyes crinkle in the corners as a mischievous grin takes over her face. “There’s plenty for all four of us. Although she did mention Matt a few more times.”
“Ms. Lebowsky?” Foggy asks. He stands in the doorway of his office, holding a freshly brewed coffee. “Isn’t she the elderly lady we helped last week?”
“Yeah, that’s her. I think she has a crush on Matt.” 
He rolls his eyes. “Of course, she does. Who doesn’t? Not that I do, but—well, you get the gist.” The blood rushes to his cheeks, and Karen giggles in response.
From the office on the left, Matt’s voice rings out, “We just did our jobs,” he says. “She made us cookies, dude!” Foggy inspects the box on Karen’s desk. “They’re chocolate chip cookies. Our favorite. See what good looks can buy you?”
Matt chuckles, his fingers tracing the Braille indentations in the documents that are starting to form a mountain before him. “I think we got them because we’re good lawyers, Foggy.”
“Yeah, right. No way! That woman was smitten the second she came in. I really gotta get that blind thing going. I mean, she’s way too old for you, but come on! You’re in a serious committed relationship, and women still come piling at your door. It’s not fair.”
The way he whines like a little kid who has just been denied his favorite candy makes Karen laugh at his antics, and even Matt can’t help but join in. No matter how stressed he is, and how badly he wants to focus, Foggy never fails to lighten the mood.
Ever since moving offices, things have been going well for the trio. 
When Matt met you, he was at his lowest. You helped him climb out of a dark hole that was threatening to swallow him whole after losing Elektra and almost losing everything he worked so hard for to Wilson Fisk. Thanks to you, he found the will to fight again. You brought him back to life.
He wanted to die. He hated himself for the longest time after the building collapsed and forever took the first woman he ever loved down with its ruins, but then you came into his life, and you didn’t care about his baggage. You were far too good for him, but that didn’t matter to you. 
He fell for you hard and fast, and maybe the timing was a little off because what he needed was therapy and not someone new to get attached to. Still, if you hadn’t pulled him back to his feet and encouraged him to fight back against Fisk, saving his friendship with the people he cares most about in the process, he would have never made it far enough to get therapy.
Matt trusts you with his life because he feels like he owes it to you, but he also loves you more than anything. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to him. You’re his soulmate, and he couldn’t be happier.
Nelson & Murdock added Karen to their permanent repertoire. With her, things are flowing much more smoothly, and they’re actually making money now. They’re expensive, as Foggy likes to say it. Matt’s friends are just as happy as he is, giving him hope for the future.
“Hey,” Foggy snaps him out of his trance, “Earth to Murdock.”
Matt blinks behind his glasses, his fingers halting their frantic movements along the paper. “While I don’t disagree with what you’re saying,” he says, “please don’t let my girlfriend hear you say that women are piling at my door.”
Karen snorts. “Trust me, Matt. She knows,” she says.
“Yeah, but you shouldn’t remind her of that.”
“My lips are sealed. Foggy?”
He sighs, once again dramatically. “As long as you don’t sleep with them, you have nothing to fear, my friend.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” says Matt. “The one I’m sleeping with is incomparable.”
Foggy grimaces. “Oh, dude. Gross! You know, God made conscious thought as a mechanism for humans to know when to shut up.”
“To be fair, ninety percent of the population don’t know how to use that mechanism,” Karen jumps to Matt’s defense.
As he laughs, he takes a whiff of the air surrounding their new baked goods. Matt can smell the sweet chocolate of the cookies, and somewhat of a herbal essence, but he can’t quite pinpoint why the scent seems so familiar. 
Karen walks around her desk to drop her bag and her coat. “So, do guys want a cookie?” she asks, swiftly changing the subject.
“I’ll take one,” Foggy is quick to answer.
Matt nods from his desk. “I’ll try one, too.”
The innocent decision to indulge in a sweet treat soon comes back to bite them in the ass though. Heavily.
When Matt first bit into the cookie, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. It tasted like chocolate mixed with basil, sugar, honey, and the kind of flour Ms. Lebowsky used, but he didn’t find much else wrong with it. Perhaps if he hadn’t allowed himself to get distracted by his phone calling out your name and the sweetest text he could have possibly received this early in the morning from the love of his life, he would have noticed that something tasted off about these cookies. And that what he believed to have been basil as a secret ingredient was something else entirely.
When lunchtime finally rolls around, you drop everything you were doing before and make your way to Matt’s office. You always spend lunch together. It’s your favorite time of the day. For an hour, you can forget the stress of your workplace and focus on him. He’s your safe haven. Your home. You crave to memorize his features anew every day so that you will have something to carry around with you when he has to work a bit longer, or when he goes out at night and his Daredevil duties drag on beyond what he planned. 
You need to be with him as much as possible because you’re scared that your happiness will shatter on a white cloth, and you will be forced to move on—you can’t imagine losing him. You dedicated your life to loving him, and the thought of ever losing that privilege kills you. 
On your way out, your phone vibrates in your pocket. You smile, thinking that it’s Matt, but when Karen’s number pops up on your screen, you frown. 
‘We have a problem,’ she texted you. Without context. 
All the alarms in your head start blaring, and you start to walk a little faster. You start imagining all possible scenarios. When you ask Karen what’s going on, she doesn’t even reply. What if someone got hurt? What if something happened to Matt? You almost lost him once; you can’t go through that again. 
You burst into the new office space that your friends share a few minutes later, your chest heaving and sweat dripping down your pulsating temples. You’re ready to fight whoever dared to hurt the man you love, or possibly threaten your friends, or both, but when you look up and see your darling boyfriend with his cheek pressed against one of the leaves on their gigantic office plant as if the overgrown Calathea were the coziest pillow he has ever touched, you understand why Karen texted you that you—both you and her—have a problem. A big one, too, judging by the looks of it.
“What is going on here?” you ask the dreaded question, shutting the door behind you.
Only then do you notice Karen to your right in Foggy’s office, trying to get him off of his office chair. He’s belting the chorus of Defying Gravity at the top of his lungs, and he’s got a broom clutched tightly in his right hand.
Oh boy. Your wide eyes drift to Karen’s desk in the middle of the room. As soon as you see the chocolate cookies inside the Tupperware, it slowly begins to dawn on you.
You’re not sure which is worse: Matt cradling a houseplant with his glasses discarded and the first three buttons of his dress shirt undone as he’s coated in sweat, or Foggy singing one of Broadway’s greatest ballads so off-key that the Calathea is starting to wither.
It takes Matt much longer than usual to sense your presence in the room. He calls your name, and his lips curl into a bright grin. Even completely out of it, he looks like an angel on earth. 
“Matthew,” you say. You approach him like you would approach a little kid. He’s on his knees, so the analogy isn’t far off. 
“Hi, honey. What’s going on?”
“Sweetheart,” he greets you, and you have never heard this man sound so relaxed. His hazel eyes are red-rimmed and glazed over, but the most obvious change lies in his behavior. 
“Feel that.” He reaches for your hand when you’re close enough for him to smell you, but he misses. “Where are you?” Matt pouts. “I can’t see.”
You want to laugh, but this is not the time. “You are blind, baby,” you remind him. 
“Since when?”
“Over twenty years.”
“Oh.” He finally gets a hold of your hand. The conversation seems to go right over his head. “Feel the power of nature,” he tells you. “It’s so soft.”
You want to drag him away from the potentially dangerous plant if he decides to eat it, but the sight of him is one to behold. He looks downright adorable. 
You have to focus though. You gently pat his hand. “Maybe later,” you say, and then you make your way to Karen’s desk to inspect the cookies.
Behind you, she calls your name. You twirl around. From the looks of it, she managed to get Foggy down from his chair, but he remains singing at the top of his lungs. All the signs point to one thing, and one thing only.
“Did you give my boyfriend weed cookies?” you sound a lot more condescending than you planned to. 
Karen shakes her head. Her face is pale, and she looks just as panicked as you do. “Those are not mine,” she says. 
“But you knew they were edibles?!”
“Of course, I didn’t! I started questioning it when Matt started cuddling the plant because his Braille felt like boobs and he didn't want to cheat on you, so he decided that he needed to touch some grass.” She points to him, exasperated. As if on cue, Matt lets out a happy little sigh.
Your brain struggles to process all of the information at once. “I’m sorry, what?”
“He said that his Braille feels like boobs. I don’t know! I thought he was messing with me until Foggy turned into Elphaba, and that’s when I took a bite and realized there was weed in them,” she says.
You groan, your worried eyes momentarily flicking back to your high boyfriend. High. That’s not a word you thought you would ever associate with him. “How did this happen?” you ask.
“Ms. Lebowsky, the lady next door, we helped her out the other day, and this morning, she gave me these cookies. I called her when these two started acting like idiots—more than usual, anyway. Turns out, she confused them with the ones her niece made for her birthday party tomorrow.”
“Her niece made edibles for her birthday party?”
“Please, don’t ask. I don’t have all the details. I just–”
“It’s fine,” you cut her off. “Just tell me that you’ve got Foggy under control.”
Karen peeks in through the window to his office. “More or less, yeah. You’ve got Matt?”
“Yeah, I’ve got him.”
You have to take care of him. He’s your responsibility. But as calm as he is right now, his heightened senses make the situation a lot more complex than the mere accidental consumption of edibles.
Walking over to him, you try to haul him up. He protests, at first, but then he feels the fabric of your shirt, and he slacks.
Matt wraps his arms around you, burying his face in your neck. “You’re so soft,” he coos. “You smell like honey.”
With his entire weight on you, you have to widen your stance so you won’t fall over. His usually quick reflexes are nonexistent right now; he won’t be able to catch you if you trip, and then you’re both going to get hurt.
“You know what’s even softer?” you ask.
“The plant,” he answers confidently. He sounds like a more careless version of himself. You can’t deny that it does something to you.
“No, silly,” you chuckle softly, “I meant your bed.”
“Oh. But I’m not tired.”
“You’re high.”
He pouts. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” You stroke his back. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”
He stiffens and relaxes at the same time. You swear you can feel the electricity in his veins as his nerves respond to the feeling of your skin on his. It’s like he’s on fire. Like your touch feels a million times more intense, and he’s being crushed under the weight of it in a way that makes him crave more. 
He squeezes you tighter, trying to get swallowed by you, consumed to the point that you are the same person. The drugs are doing a number on him, and his already heightened sense of feeling has increased tenfold to the point you’re not sure if it’s pleasurable or painful or both. It must be agonizing, yet at the same time there is a high chance that the weed is calming his nerves and dampening his perception to the point he’s taking everything in without the added weight—he’s enjoying the newfound sensations in limbo, and he’s unaffected by it. You wonder how long that is going to last. 
After bidding farewell to Karen, wishing her good luck with Foggy who has now reached a point of his high where he’s lying on the floor, demanding to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody and cry over Freddie Mercury. She assures you that she has got it under control, apologizes again, and then sends you on your way.
“Bye, Karen,” Matt says. “You have very nice hair.” His hand tangles in yours, and his face lights up like a Christmas Tree. You managed to convince him to put his glasses on, at least, or he might get irritated. “Never mind,” his voice turns into a pur. 
Usually, you would shiver at his fingers in your hair, tracing the strands and sensually massaging your scalp only he knows how to, but today is not one of those days. You’re still concerned about the effects that the weed might have on him, so you want to be careful, although you’re not sure how much longer you can keep yourself from laughing. 
As you maneuver Matt through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, his cane hovers above the ground and his arm is hooked around yours. Without you, he would have run off into traffic by now. He has absolutely no spatial awareness anymore. 
Every sound, scent, and texture seems to capture his attention, but there's one sensation in particular that he can't seem to shake: thirst. You’re not even home yet, and you had to stop by a convenience store to get him a bottle of water. He shed his coat, which you are now carrying for him while also guiding him while simultaneously trying not to attract any unwanted attention. 
You can’t help but look at him as though he is your whole world. He is. He is everything to you, even high on edibles he never meant to consume, and acting like a feral toddler. If anything, you are even prouder now that he is yours. 
“Hey,” he whispers, leaning close to you, “do you think fire hydrants taste like licorice?”
You shake your head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Matt, don’t lick the fire hydrant.” 
He pouts. For a moment, you think that you have steered off any possible disaster, but that was only wishful thinking.
Matt’s curiosity knows no bounds, and he’s soon reaching out to touch anything that catches his eye. He runs his fingers along the rough brick foundation of a building, marveling at the texture, and he stops to sniff a flower, declaring, “This is the most beautiful flower I have ever smelled.”
You pluck it for him, and he carries it in the pocket of his coat with a happy smile. 
You’re both exhausted when you finally make it to his apartment. Getting his large frame through the door is one thing, stopping him from tearing the tap off the sink as he desperately searches for liquid with the words, “Water!” is another.
“Okay, okay,” you try to calm him. You grab a bottle from the fridge, open it for him, and force him to take it. “Drink.”
One touch is enough for him to drop it. “It’s cold,” he recoils in agony.
You sigh. “Tap water it is, then.”
You have never seen him down so many glasses of water. He is severely dehydrated and sensitive to changes in temperature. It’s either too hot or too cold, and you’re so glad that Karen texted you when she did.
You manage to get him to the couch with some snacks that he devours within seconds. If he moves one more inch today, you may not be able to catch him again.
His lip twitches. “Chickens don’t have any arms.”
You pause in the process of wrapping him in a blanket, staring blankly ahead at him. “Excuse me?” you ask.
“Chickens don’t have any arms,” Matt states. “Every American citizen has the right to bear arms under the second amendment in the constitution. If an egg was fertilized on US soil, and the chicken hatched there as well, technically, that makes them a citizen of the United States of America, therefore allowing tiny creatures without arms the right to bear arms, but who gives the bears their arms?” 
You’re so flabbergasted that the absurdity of the situation eludes you. The words process only slowly in your mind, and when they do, they cause a wave of confusion to wash over you before it turns into genuine amusement, and it takes every ounce of self-control to keep yourself from laughing at him.
You can pinpoint the exact second the thought escapes his mind and something else replaces it. His hand brushes over the leather couch. “Smooth,” he observes. You haven’t even fully processed his very philosophical question about the animal kingdom before he drops his cheek down on the couch.
The man who has been carrying the weight of the world in bricks on his back for years is finally relaxed; it shouldn’t leave such a bitter aftertaste in your mouth.
You kneel in front of him, reaching out to touch his cheek. “Do you need anything?” you ask.
Matt’s gaze is filled with an odd sort of clarity. “Nah. Just you,” he mumbles.
A soft smile tugs at your lips as you brush a sweaty strand of hair away from his forehead. "I'm right here," you reassure him. 
He nods, his eyelids drooping as the effects of the edibles start to take their toll. “Good.” He searches for your hand, and you help him intertwine your fingers. A giddy smile finds its way onto his face. “You’re warm.”
You lean in to press a gentle kiss to his forehead. “And you’re high,” you tease.
Matt huffs out a breathy laugh. “Mmh, yeah,” he says. “But it’s okay. ‘Cause you’re here.”
Despite the chaos and the unexpected turn of events, there’s a sense of contentment settling over you as you watch him drift off into a state of bliss. He deserves it more than anyone. 
You stay by his side, watching over him as he succumbs to the pull of sleep that you’re all too familiar with after a sudden high. 
“Note to self,” you say to yourself, “never eat a stranger’s cookies without drug testing them first.”
And love has funny ways of making even the most absurd moments feel strangely beautiful.
Tumblr media
Matt Murdock Tag List: @littlenerdyravenclaw @yarrystyleeza @etanordoesbullsh1t @thychuvaluswife @harleycao @schneeflocky @imjustcal @pipsqueakkitten @merlinbtch @sya-skies @amberritonicole @thatonegamefish @norestfortheshelbywicked @mattkinsella @itwasthereaminuteago @linamarr @gpenguin666 @acharliecoxedfan
162 notes · View notes
sunshine-jesse · 7 months
Text
Ashley Graves Did Something Wrong
TCOAL plays a lot of fun games with the ways it makes you perceive events. From the title screen itself, to various pieces of official art, it primes you to accept certain narratives surrounding the game. Namely, the one that Ashley is very not good. She is, in fact, very bad! And it's pretty easy to see why- many of her actions fit neatly into the mold of an abuser. She's controlling, she tries to deflect blame, gaslights Andrew into making him take the blame for things she pushed him to do to begin with, and harasses other women to ruin his relationships with them.
It's all so easy, and makes so much sense. Case closed.
Right? Well, no. But actually yes! But actually, it's not that simple.
Y'see, as I said, the game establishes this framing from the get-go. It introduces us to our, uh, heroes and tells us in no uncertain terms that Ashley is bad and Andrew is a non-entity. It sets this framing intentionally so that many players will engage in a little quirk of human psychology called…
Confirmation bias!
I'm sure we all know what that is, right? Well, for those who don't, it's when we start with a bias towards something- or an idea of how things SHOULD be- and view every piece of evidence as confirmation that said bias is correct. The game, very blatantly, does this with Ashley's actions by priming us to see them as part of an abuse dynamic, with her as the primary abuser. And, indeed, it's not too hard to dig into Andrew's behavior and figure out that he, too, is fucked up and awful and come to the conclusion that their relationship was mutually fucked up and abusive. I did that in my last two essays, so I won't cover that ground again here. With this, it's easy to think that they bring out the worst in each other and that any relationship they have would be toxic, fucked up, dark, and every other word or phrase that describes the same idea, whether it makes them happy or not.
… But what if I told you that this, too, was an intentional misdirection?
So. Let us, for a moment, completely remove the framing that their relationship is toxic. Let us remove the framing that their relationship is abnormal or aberrant. Let's even remove the framing that either one of them is responsible for the harm of the other. I'm not arguing that any of this is not the case. Please, for the love of god, do not think that I am, if only so you can take the rest of what I have to say seriously. What I'm doing is trying to examine the two of them free of as many preconceptions as I can, using nothing but textual evidence and inference to figure out why Andrew and Ashley treat each other the way they do.
I will later examine why they MIStreat each other too, but first comes the reasons they treat each other well.
I'm going to start with Andrew, because, despite being the more complex of the two, it's actually pretty easy to figure out why he treats Ashley the way he does based on what he says. Let's go all the way back to the earliest known incident between the two in the story, where the two of them were at their most, uh, "pure," for lack of a better word: The cupcake scene.
Leyley was supposedly a problem child. She was neglected by her parents, disliked by her friends, and had nobody else but Andrew to rely on. She got nothing- absolutely nothing- from anyone else. And so, Andrew decided to celebrate her birthday, by buying her the cupcakes she wanted, by giving her what she lacked from others. By providing for her, and taking care of her. All he wanted was to make her happy, more than anything else. And, as Nina learned the hard way, at the expense of everyone else.
He doesn't lack empathy, per se. Andy just loves Leyley more than he loves anyone else by such a wide margin that his desire to provide for her overrides his fear of consequences… until those consequences threaten to separate the two of them.
That is a very Gender Roles thing to do. More on that later.
So. Ashley. Everyone's favorite disaster. Why does she treat Andrew the way she does? What does she provide for him? Well, isn't it obvious? She, too, wants to provide for him. Remember, she wanted the lemon cupcake because she thought it's what HE wanted. She also does most of the chores around the house. She prepares food, cleans the house, and does their laundry. She also provides for his non-sexual physical needs by offering him comfort whenever he needs it. It makes her feel useful. Wanted. Needed.
Ah, another very Gender Roles thing to do. See where I'm going with this?
The two neatly fit into a standard husband/wife relationship in a lot of ways. It's THE platonic ideal of such a relationship, actually! They make each other happy and provide WHAT THEY THINK the other really wants. It's really cute and perfect! As long as you ignore all the bad.
ignore all the bad …ignore all the bad… But we obviously shouldn't ignore all the bad. That would be ridiculous.
What I want to do is, instead, examine where the bad comes from, and why it's there. With the abuser/abused dynamic in mind, it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that a mutual desire for control and power over the other is the sole determining factor. It's arguably the Central Theme of the game, and maybe a big part of what Nemlei is trying to convey. But, like, why should it end there? Why should that be where the analysis ends? There's a reason for everything.
They don't want to control each other for its own sake. They don't want to control each other solely to cover their own insecurities.
So why?
Ashley, first. She's obviously an insecure little monster, having never received the validation that she needs to really come into her own as a person. She keeps seeking it. Keeps trying to provide for Andrew. Keeps trying to make herself useful. Now, let's look at her calls towards Julia:
"DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't?"
Ah, wait, hold on a minute.
"You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that."
Where does that wording come from?
"He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything."
She doesn't need validation just for the sake of her insecurities. She needs it because she needs Andrew to be happy, and in her mind, she's the only one who can provide it. She knows him better than anyone else. She can see how happy she seems to make him, and that nobody else can do what she does. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she makes Andrew more comfortable than anyone. She knows how important physical affection is to him. She can feel it. She doesn't lack empathy towards his plight or feelings; she has more of it than anyone, actually!
But Andrew, crucially, never seems to provide her any validation for this, even though she knows better. That's why she's so insecure.
"But wait," you might say, "didn't he, literally, fucking kill for her?"
Yes. But he always tries to place the blame on Ashley or use her as a scapegoat, when he was the one who pulled the trigger. He never accepts even the smallest amount of responsibility. And if a man can't even take responsibility for the violence he inflicts on others, what does that say about him? What does it say about how much he actually cares? oh. more gender roles. huh.
In Ashley's mind, that validation isn't validation because he didn't do it to prove he cared about her. He did it to shut her up. And… he never says anything to the contrary. He refuses to. All his validation is depressingly, overbearingly conditional.
Tumblr media
Tumblr media
His words always come with a caveat. They're always said in spite of something. They lack warmth. They lack kindness. They lack affection. She is never, ever given a key to lock the door to her insecurities…
Tumblr media
…even though Andrew obviously has that key. He just refuses to give it to her.
But why?
Society! :D
There is something so fundamentally, obviously wrong with the way Andrew feels towards Ashley. She is a tar soul. A pariah. So horrid that her parents don't want her, so obviously bad that even demons don't want her. And yet Andrew, in spite of everything, still wants her. He wants to take care of her, when society tells him not to bother. He wants to protect her from other men, and even from herself. It manifests as jealousy because…
He, too, thinks the only one qualified to provide for Ashley is himself, because he was the only one who ever had. Violence comes so naturally to him that he takes it for granted. He kills for her, threatens to physically assault her when he thinks she's putting herself in danger.
It's so second nature to him that he thinks it should obviously be enough. But it isn't. His violence is so second nature as to be passive. It's non-committal. And what Ashley wants is committment.
But because of how society views Ashley, and how the world would view a romantic relationship between them, he can't truly commit to her. He can't give her the validation she really needs, because everything and everyone has told him that it's wrong. That she's wrong. And all his parents ever taught him is to be afraid of how others will react to that wrongness.
hey look, a man fearing the commitment a woman wants from him! more gender stereotypes!! I wonder what this game is trying to say!!!
Maybe I'm crazy or something. Maybe I'm just looking into it too deep. But I don't really care. I don't care if this is the intended reading, and neither should you. The fact of the matter is that most of the things that define them as toxic are not their fault. Most of the reasons they mistreat each other come from without, rather than within. The only reason they can't love each other is because the world tells them not to. Because it expects them to fill certain roles, to be certain people.
But Ashley can only ever be herself.
Maybe someone who's an actual expert on this subject matter could weigh in and give a true feminist reading. But me? I'm just here to point out patterns. I'm just here to point out facts. And one of those facts is that, to the world around her, Ashley did something wrong: She was born.
The Steam reviews of this game are fucking funny, but a lot of them say one thing that couldn't be further from the truth:
"I can fix her!"
No, you can't. She's only 'broken' in the context of her environment.
But in the words of another analyst:
It's madness to expect tar to behave like water.
So cut them some slack! They might finally succeed in a world that wanted nothing more than for them to fail. It's not our right to take that away from them.
344 notes · View notes
lurkingshan · 2 months
Note
Every time I see a Wedding Impossible GIFs on my dash I keep thinking that when it's over I'd love to read your take on what went wrong with this show. In a form of a very spiteful rant preferably.
(the show probably doesn't deserve too much of your time but I am just very VERY curious and had to share)
WELL! I was considering just letting this show go quietly into the night, but I will take this excuse to do a good rant instead.
*cracks knuckles*
You asked what went wrong with this show, but truly, nothing went right with it. From top to bottom, it's an utter waste of a good premise and a total destruction of the rare opportunity to get some positive queer rep into a het kdrama for a broader audience than will ever be reached by a ql. Let me list the most glaring problems:
They made Do Han a supporting character in his own narrative. Do Han, his sexuality, his desire and need to hide who he is to protect himself, and his desperate plan to avoid a life he doesn't want is the core of the story. Despite that, the story treats him like a minor supporting character with limited screen time and virtually no interiority or character development that made any sense.
The relationships were poorly written and the bonds were not believable. Ah Jeong was meant to be Do Han's ride or die bestie, but nothing in their scenes together or her behavior towards him suggested this was actually true. They seemed more like acquaintances who were friendly enough but had no real loyalty to each other, or even like she was a random actress he hired to play his wife. And Ji Han and Do Han had no brotherly bond or affection to speak of; their relationship consisted entirely of Ji Han throwing tantrums and demanding things for no reason other than he wants them, and Do Han trying to avoid being forced into them.
The leads were terrible people and the show did not realize that. Do Han's brother and best friend entered into a romance while she was engaged to Do Han. Ji Han thought it was a real relationship and did not seem to feel any guilt about pursuing his brother's lover. Ah Jeong was under a contract she agreed to as both his best friend and as a job to protect him and did not seem to care that she was breaking her commitment and threatening his safety. They gallivanted around flaunting their relationship in public with no regard for Do Han or his reputation whatsoever. And the show tried to convince me that Do Han was the selfish one in this scenario for the great sin of being gay and not just fucking off and getting out of the way of their relationship. Ji Han and Ah Jeong were never held accountable for what they did to him; instead we got to watch many scenes of Do Han being shamed and berated. Anyone who contributed to the writing and depiction of this can get fucked.
Every element of the story was poorly written and the resolutions were either unearned or so badly set up that they fell flat anyway. Do Han was being harassed and stalked and the story only barely cared about this. The family drama was boring and the grandpa character was a mess of contradictions who changed on a dime depending on the demands of the plot. There was no chemistry to speak of between the leads. The romance was utterly unbelievable and developed so poorly that it was impossible to care about whether these two assholes got together. The show used romcom tropes randomly to fill time even if they didn't fit. The final episode was stuffed with cameos by actors with personal connections to the cast and crew in the hopes it would distract us from what an unsatisfying conclusion it was, and the whole thing ended on a bizarre wedding gag that didn't work at all. The only good part was Do Han coming out on his own terms and leaving to go live his own life in New York, but the way they framed that was so gross I couldn't even enjoy it.
Most importantly, the messages of this show were deeply, unforgivably homophobic. This story went out of its way to tell us over and over again that Do Han is a selfish coward for being closeted, that his sexuality is a burden for his loved ones, that his family and friends are the real victims for having to deal with him, and that he was the one in the wrong for trying to protect himself. At no point was he allowed to get truly angry at the way his family and friends were treating him; he remained benevolent and shouldered the guilt and blame for everything, despite doing absolutely nothing except try to live an authentic life. At every turn the show depicted his siblings and grandfather and friend being hateful and/or careless with him, but then told us it was Do Han's fault for being who he is. They wanted us to blame the gay character and sympathize with a brother who resented him for not being the straight business leader he wanted him to be, and a friend who betrayed him without a second thought. The show argued passionately that the lies Do Han told to protect himself were the real problem, not the homophobia and hatred and rejection he faced every day of his life. It was an abysmal and offensive message and exactly the opposite of what a responsible piece of media would be trying to communicate.
I don't know if the people who made this show are actively malicious or just deeply incompetent, but they had no business telling a story involving a queer character if they were going to do it like this.
115 notes · View notes
himehomu · 6 months
Text
“Homura callously destroys everything and everyone else because she's selfish and she only loves madoka” right that's why, when she rewrote the entire universe, she not only made it to where Madoka would be surrounded by her friends and her family, but she also gave Sayaka a second chance with not only Kyoko, but with Hitomi and Kyoske as well. That's why she gave Nagisa and Mami a life together. Because she's callous and selfish and she doesn't care about anyone but Madoka. That's why she took on the brunt of immortality for Madoka to be human again, even if it's temporary, choosing to suffer alone whilst everyone else has a second chance at a life. Go fuck yourself. I'm so tired of seeing ppl minimize Homura's love for Madoka and her friends by writing off her actions as “oh she's just a selfish evil edgelord who destroys everything and everyone who isn't madoka bc she doesn't care about anything else bc selfishness vs selflessness themes!!” like you do know that you can point out Homura's selfishness and Madoka's selflessness without blatantly lying and trying to rewrite canon to fit your narrative, right?
189 notes · View notes
bird-inacage · 20 days
Text
Love Sea the Series: Trailer (Tongrak's Love Story with the Island and it's 'Ocean')
You know me, I'm back with another analysis. This time in response to the Love Sea trailer. As I was writing this, it led me to frame our two central characters' differing outlooks as follows. Let me explain.
Tongrak 'We're not a work of fiction, fairytales don't exist' Mahasamut 'We're not a work of fiction, life doesn't follow a script'
Tumblr media
STRONGER THAN FICTION
"Didn't I tell you, I don't believe in love. I don't believe. It's not even real to me. Between us, there's nothing more than sex." What seems to fundamentally scare Tongrak is the very idea of love itself. A belief that prevents him from accepting that anyone could love him, or that he has the capacity to love anyone in return. Because love is a construct. A fantasy. A work of fiction. Love to Tongrak is just a fairytale, it's not rooted in reality. The passages of love in his novels could never truly imitate life.
Tumblr media
So understandably he begins to feel shaken when his relationship with Mahasamut challenges everything he thought to be true. That what he's experiencing is in fact inspiring his writing. Because it surpasses fiction.
"Everything is up to you to decide. You can pay me as much as you want. But what you can't decide on paper, is that you can't make me stop loving you. You have no right to do that." Mut seems to insinuate that as an author, Tongrak is used to controlling the narrative. This is where he feels most safe, until Mut came along and threw that into jeopardy. Here, Mut seems to declare that he isn't just some character in Tongrak's story. Nor are his feelings. He has agency. Their feelings for one another aren't just lines on paper. Real life does not operate in this way, it veers off script. That's the beauty of living. Mut's life is one dictated by the elements. One that teaches you to be resilient, to take what life throws at you by embracing the curveballs. And love is no different.
Tumblr media
A TRANSACTIONAL AGREEMENT
Tongrak offers to pay Mut initially as a means to get him off his back. "How much do I have to pay you, to stop you bugging me?" This is then used increasingly as 'a convenient excuse' that escalates as the plot ensues. I predict that Tongrak continues the guise of paying Mut as a pretence to spend time with him.
Tumblr media
By doing so, Tongrak is creating a false of security that is twofold. One, that he's able to keep Mut by his side as long as he pays him. Two, convincing himself that Mut's motivations are driven by financial benefit. Framing this as a transactional relationship means Tongrak doesn't have to face what is developing beneath the surface. This also instils an illusion that he can procure the outcome he wants, which is to keep Mut by his side.
As Tongrak's feelings grow, this becomes an even flimsier front. "How much do I have to pay, if I want to take you to Bangkok with me?" You can hear how desperate he sounds. Whether it's a matter of pride or otherwise, Tongrak seems inclined to attach his request to an incentive. He may be too afraid to confront the possibility that Mut could willingly leave his life behind for him - because that would be out of love and not monetary gain. So Tongrak gives Mut a reason to do so. A reason he deems fit. One he can live with. I think Mut can see through this too, and plays into the whole charade, but ultimately all Tongrak would have to do is ask. "I'm willing to be your dog." (Just say the word).
Tumblr media Tumblr media
"If someone who is not highly educated like me understands, between the two of us, there is nothing more than an agreement, right?" Even if Mut is very emotionally mature, and plays along to make things easier for Tongrak to swallow - Tongrak is still trying to deny feelings they share which have long gone past just an 'agreement'. (You do feel something for me though, right? This is just smoke and mirrors but you do care about me, right?)
THE FEAR OF DEPENDENCE
In the latter segments, Tongrak displays evident dependence on Mut. It's as if Mut's aid in his survival on the island has now imprinted on his life as a whole. Tongrak gradually embraces the guide that Mut is, to lead him on an adventure with no particular destination. There's every possibility that this is what Tongrak was afraid of. Of relinquishing control. Perhaps hesitant to do so in the hands of someone younger, more boisterous and seemingly carefree. Someone he wrote off as a "dumb kid" with little substance.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
The diving scene could very well be a metaphor for this. Tongrak agrees to do something that requires trust in Mut's expertise, by putting his own safety in Mut's hands. And when he does run into trouble, Mut is there to literally bring him back to life. He begins to recognise that Mut is a man of responsibility, someone he can rely on.
There have been hints that Mahasamut is also going through his own battle with loneliness or isolation. Fort says "and now Tongrak is by your side, you are not alone." MAME also comments that "Mut is the guy who is as strong as a castle. The wind and waves can't hurt him. But Fort proved that a strong man can cry." I think that as Tongrak starts to realise how much comfort and reassurance Mut provides him, he'll want to return the favour. How can he be that same emotional support for Mut to lean on?
Tumblr media
What we're about to see is not just Tongrak's love story with Mahasamut, or 'an island', but a whole other life he may have never lived, had they never met. Mut's interception into his life is rewriting the narrative he had consciously or unconsciously dictated for himself.
Note: As with any of my metas, I am basing my interpretations on what I have seen alone. I haven't heard any spoilers from the novel.
77 notes · View notes
bylertruther · 2 years
Text
listen. i love el and i think she's a fascinating character. we all know this. i am very clear about this. but like. it really is SO crazy how she really came in and, like... fucked will's life up so fucking bad lmao. i know that it wasn't her fault, and i'm not saying it is, but that's just... such an excruciating writing choice.
it was a choice to have her be the one that opened the gate & essentially sliced will's life into an ugly before and after. it was a choice to have her replace him as mike's number one as soon as she came back into their lives. it was a choice to make her the party's mage and then "change" will from being their wizard to their cleric. it was a choice to make her his sister. it was a choice to purposely have her wear his clothes and have the same bangs. it was a choice to have her ignore him on mike's first day in lenora, despite the fact that he was mike's friend, too, and first. it was a choice to make her oblivious to his feelings.
it was a choice to make them love and genuinely care about each other. it was a choice to make her feel like a monster for everything that'd happened and kept happening. it was a choice to make will not resent her. it was a choice to make him support her enough that he's willing to uphold her lies to mike (!!!) of all people with his inaction.
it was a choice to have him spill his heart out to mike and gift him his painting all in her name. to have him be the one to unknowingly make mike finally say "i love you" to her in response to his confession. to have him realize too late that he's been needlessly pushing mike towards her this whole time.
it was a choice to place will right beside mike, his first ever friend and keeper of his heart, when he told el that his life started just as will's ended.
it was... a bold fucking choice to replace will with el in mike's eyes due to outside influence. it throws them into chaos and disarray because el and will are not interchangeable, and it shows in how...
mike seeks from el everything that will already gives him.
mike readily gives will everything that el begs him for.
el cannot read or understand mike in the innate, wordless, and familiar way that will does.
mike cannot be vulnerable with el, but he opens up to will without even needing to be asked.
mike always heeds, trusts, and listens to will, even when they're arguing or going through a rough patch.
mike always knows just how to mend things with will, because he knows exactly what he needs and he doesn't ever hesitate to do and give it. nor does he need anyone to help him with their conflicts either. he just knows.
el is always left waiting for him to do things for her that he's currently doing for will.
will visibly hates and feels uncomfortable lying to mike, but el can do it consistently with ease.
will is the one that loves mike how he truly wants (and needs) to be loved.
will hasn't been able to move on in full, because he was cast out of his own story and demoted to a supporting role behind the new lead.
el hasn't been able to find out who she really is, because she's been thrust into roles that were never meant for her to begin with. she has always been contorted into the shape of whatever others need or want her to be, but they don't fit because they aren't her.
and, like... there are so many things in this story, which is to say the show as a whole, that would not have happened had the men in el's life not done that. had they allowed her to just be, it's highly likely that the dominoes would've never fallen the way they have.
thankfully, the narrative is set up in such a way that it appears this disorder will rectify itself, but it's still so... upsetting to think about lol.
it all boils down to choices: who gets to make them, what choices they have, why they made those choices, and what happens after. that's all the show is: a series of choices, or a lack thereof, and their consequences with some monster mumbo-jumbo sprinkled on top.
1K notes · View notes
artist-issues · 3 months
Note
A little late, but reading your take on Enchanted made me remember how much I love that movie. What are your thoughts on the rest of it? Like say, what do the Prince and Nancy represent? What about the villains? I’m curious how they fit into the allegory
Prince Edward is just like Giselle in the sense that he does what people accuse Disney Princes of doing, and it's funny--but it's rewarded by the narrative, because it's actually a good thing.
Tumblr media
People think a Disney Prince is just some dumb hunk with no personality, because he's "just there to be the obligatory love interest so the girl can't save herself." But that's a twisted, hollow way to look at it.
Prince Edward is
Active -- he actually does something, not just in his spare time but when faced with a problem or a dilemma. Doesn't matter if it's troll-hunting or braving a strange world to rescue his bride or turning on a dime to fight his own step-mother when she turns out to be evil. He actually acts.
Keeps His Commitments -- When Prince Eric commits to Ariel he commits; jumps in the water to fight a sea-goddess single-handedly. When Prince Charming says he'll give his heart to Snow White but then she disappears, he won't rest till he's found her. When Prince Edward's fiancée disappears, he won't stop searching for her, either.
Genuinely Cares About the Princess -- People act like Princes in Disney movies are just obligatory--they don't actually care about the girl, there's no real tension or getting to know each other or whatever. That's such bull, obviously. In fairy tales, you cram a lot of nuance into a little scene. The Prince meets Snow White singing at a well and promises his heart to her; but it's after he hears her singing about her heart's fondest desires, after he observes that she's surrounded by doves that aren't afraid of her, after he notices she's just a scullery maid; and he still chooses her. Disney appeased everybody by adding in more rom-com moments with later Princes, like Aladdin and the Beast, but truthfully, Princes do what Princesses do; they know what virtues they're looking for in a good soulmate, so they don't need much to recognize it when it crosses their paths. Then they commit. Edward is willing to go on a date with Giselle. When she grows, he's confused, but he'll go with her. She doesn't sing with him anymore but that doesn't mean he ditches her. When she's cursed and be can't wake her he's 100% onboard with Robert doing it--because it doesn't have to be him, he just cares about her.
Tumblr media
Has Just As Much Faith As the Princess -- One of the things Princes and Princesses use as the litmus test of whether or not they're soulmates in Disney movies is if they're both believers in the same Idea. Ariel and Eric are the perfect example. They both believe in something that everyone around them thinks is totally crazy. Eric believes in the fated, Right Girl. Ariel believes the Surface World can be worth loving. Those two things get united when they meet each other. Prince Edward longs to find the woman who's his other half, a companion who fits into his heart and makes his life more than just one quest after the other. (And he's so sweet about it.) He's very romantic. Giselle's been dreaming of her true companion, too. They have that in common, that faith that somebody right for them is out there. It just...so happens that that person isn't each other. But they're not wrong that someone is out there, which is why he is rewarded by winding up with Nancy.
Anyway. If Giselle is the Disney movie, so is Prince Edward.
Tumblr media
And yeah, he's not quick on the uptake, he's super confident that everything he's doing is right, and he's definitely convinced that Nathaniel actually likes him. But that is okay. Because Edward is uncomplicated. He knows that what he's setting out to do is Right, so what bothers him is never "people here are mean" or "I'm not the hero in this world." Did you notice that? He's never bothered when he finds out he's not the hero. He's only bothered when the idea that Good won't win is threatened.
He's the first one to turn and look at Robert and go "unless...!" excitedly when he realizes his own kiss isn't working. No trace of bitterness. No suspicion. Just eager to solve the problem.
Tumblr media
That's why he's great. His confidence came from being the champion of Goodness. Doing the right thing. He doesn't care if he's not the one who wins. He just cares that it's someone Good who's winning.
Then you have Nancy, who is the first of the "normal" people from our world to really give in to the idea of "True Love's Kiss" being a viable solution, right on the spot. Meaning there was space in her brain to believe in it.
I guess if I had to try to distill it, I'd say Nancy is just the reverse-Giselle. In the allegory (it's not all one-to-one) I would say...if Giselle (and to a lesser extent, Edward) is the Disney movie, and Robert is the skeptic, Nancy is us. She's not quite Giselle, not quite Robert...she's someone who wants to believe that the Disney Philosophy is true, but the problem is, nobody in our world believes it or acts like it.
Tumblr media
She's looking for a fairy tale but she's stuck in our world. The moments where she's happy with Robert are moments when he's doing something an open-hearted, genuine, selfless and chivalrous Disney Prince would do. The kind of guy who knows who he is and knows what's Good and values Love, so he isn't ashamed or insecure to come right out and declare it.
Gentleness is power, under control. A man in love should have no fear of vulnerability, which again, takes faith—because love isn't about you. It's selfless. Why worry about how telling a girl you love her will make you look, will make you feel? So what if she rejects you; you thought she was worth loving, you gave her that enormous compliment--so what if she doesn't return it? You know who you are. You didn't need her validation--that was never the point of the love-declaration--it was for her. You kindly gave her the world's best compliment, good job, now on to other worthy things. It would've been great if she wanted the same outcome of that love as you did, but she didn't, and that's great too, because it was never that much about you. So you don't have to be hurt, angry, embarrassed, jealous, or any of the anti-love things we associate with bogus unrequited "love."
Tumblr media
But in our world, men don't act like that anymore. Because it's all about you. Can't tell the girl how you feel because she might hurt you. How would you be hurt? By finding out she doesn't feel the way you would prefer her to feel about you, by mocking what you've deemed precious, etc. It's all about you, you, you, fear fear fear, etc.
Still, you can tell Nancy thinks she got as close as she could to the fairy-tale guy with Robert because in her first scene, when she finds Robert and Giselle together, she goes on that rant about how she thought he was "sensitive" and "protecting Morgan." Those are the traits she's attracted to; the idea that he wasn't protecting himself, he was protecting his daughter--the idea that he was careful with emotions for other people's sake, not his own--that he cared about emotions at all.
But that's not what it was, it was self-protection, over-planning. Still, the second he's willing to send her flowers or make any kind of heart-on-his sleeve, straightforward gesture of affection, she is SO ready to believe in him again.
She's the grown up who wants to find the Disney fairy tale in "real life" and she's doing the best she can with what she can find. Kinda like a lot of us who grew up on Disney and didn't want to accept the derisive cynical mocking of Disney as we got older, but what could we do?
Tumblr media
But good news! It's real! The Good, the Beautiful, the True, exists, and it comes for her.
Then you've got Narissa, the villainess.
Tumblr media
She's interesting because she's totally the opposite of everything the movie says is Good. Giselle and Edward wear their hearts on their sleeves—Narissa manipulates people's fondest desires for her own gain. Robert needs to learn to have faith—Narissa believes everybody is out to take what's hers.
Tumblr media
Edward gives the gift of love freely, first to Giselle, then, unshaken when she doesn't give him the same, to Nancy—Narissa takes the adoration of people like Nathaniel and treats them like garbage in return.
I also think Pip is important, and it's important that Narissa is defeated by him.
She's brought down by the tiny chipmunk who's been treated with true kindness and friendship by the Princess. The chipmunk who can talk and understand what's going on and be useful, even in a world where people like Robert think there's no such thing. Pip is the unlikely "something wonderful will happen" in our world that Robert didn't believe in. He's the little, fairy tale element that nobody could plan for or calculate or control, coming in to save the day.
How very Disney of him. Ya'll get off of Wish. Disney's tribute to 100 years of fairy tale animation? It has nothing on Enchanted.
94 notes · View notes
zenkindoflove · 2 months
Text
So I wrote this post about Lucien deserving Elain in a fit of anger. And now I'm back with more anger because guess what guys.
Elain ALSO deserves Lucien.
I see it all the time. "Lucien deserves someone who actually likes him." Followed by bashing Elain as if she is the worst person ever and doesn't deserve love.
Please stop pretending like you're making this argument because you care about Lucien. Lucien deserves his soulmate. He deserves to have that HEA with the one person who he has a soul to soul connection with. Don't throw side characters and randos at him that do not make sense at all to his narrative or how SJM had canonized how mating bonds work. Do you honestly think Lucien is going to care that some other female wants him???? Do you even get that Lucien can easily get any female in Prythian and has gotten many of them but none of them really mattered to him the way Elain matters to him.
Listen to his words. He tells everyone he's a mated male now for a reason. He is loyal to Elain regardless of whether she is showing him desire.
Elain is a GOOD person. Just like Lucien. She is kind and thoughtful. Careful and empathetic. Strong and resilient. Elain loves with her whole heart. She loved her father when no one else could see as worthy. Not even her sisters. She loved Graysen faithfully even if he was a scumbag who didn't deserve her devotion. So, I think Elain knows what it means to love, and she is not ready to give away her heart so fast again. Especially not to someone who can see all of her.
Yes, it's hard that she isn't ready to love Lucien yet. But girl has been THROUGH it. She has been struggling with a loss of her autonomy, her future, and her identity. And all of that with the pressure of a soulmate who is a stranger. None of you can say you'd handle it perfectly either.
And guess what. Lucien, my brave and soulful man, understands that. He is the only one who acknowledged when Elain was severely depressed in ACOWAR that she suffered a trauma. He is the only one that gives her space rather than pushing his opinions or desires of what he wants her to be onto her. He knows she isn't ready. And he's waiting. Giving her space but also being present enough so she knows he is there when she is ready to get to know him. That is all he has wanted.
Jumping to the assumption that Elain "doesn't even like him" is bold. You don't know Elain's thoughts. You don't know how she really feels about Lucien as a person. We have some inklings about what she thought about the bond right after her terrible breakup that she was still mourning. We know that before Lucien left on a dangerous mission, she took a half step as if to stop him. We know that she has shown genuine care over whether he's hurt. And we know that she feels the connection to him (I can hear your heart beating through the stone) and that is never going away. We know that Elain is affected by Lucien and it's not a leap to think that she feels as drawn to him as he is to her, she just has to be ready. And maybe Elain can tell Lucien is a good male who she doesn't want to inflict her messiness on just yet. Maybe she knows to jump in too fast wouldn't be fair to him either.
So many denigrate Elain and say she is boring, selfish, or mean all because she is struggling through a tough time in her life. And even in that struggle, she still maintains her kindness. She still searches for hope. She still wants to better herself. Which sounds a lot like that mate of hers. And when she is ready to fall in love again, she will get exactly the man that she deserves. Lucien Vanserra. Because Elain deserves the unconditional love that he has to offer. Finally someone will return it back to her.
94 notes · View notes
akingdomscrypt · 8 months
Text
Make a Mercy Out of Me
Part Three
Pairing; König x m!reader
Word Count; ~7.66k
Warnings; kinda sorta graphic depiction of stitching up wounds near the end. So if you don't like needles.. be careful.
A/n; König is a sergeant bc I said so and it fits my narrative. There's also plans in work for why he's a part of 141 & background knowledge on him. Lore. Eventually.
Tumblr media
(we need more clips of this man istg-)
--- "babysitting duty" ---
You were a frustrating man to work with. You had hardly said much of anything during that sad excuse of an interrogation, at least nothing of much use. All they knew now was that there was someone out there who held your leash. Or, well, used to. You were a wildcard now, without someone to keep you on lock and key, and there was no way in the deepest pits of hell they could set you loose on the world with what they knew–which wasn't much. Not unless you were hanging off their every word or buried six feet under an unmarked grave.
"You talk about him like he's some sort of lab experiment."
"Mm." Well… "maybe he is. Who knows."
"He isn't some feral dog, König."
He didn't like it. As much as your words had ignited a–often ignored–spark in him, there was something itching at the back of his mind telling him you weren't trustworthy. That you'd stab him and the rest of the task force in the back the moment you were left to your own devices.
"We should keep him."
"He's a person."
"Not a good one."
"Neither are we."
They had to keep you, if at least for society's sake, on that straining lead. As any slack would surely be the catalyst of his very own demise.
I could make the world bleed.
The words were stuck on replay in König's mind, as well as the man who had spoken them. It was a horrible thought to have–but he couldn't help but find it.. intriguing. The idea made his heart skip a beat and the corner of his scarred mouth curl.
"He said he'd make the world bleed, König. That's fuckin' creepy as shite!" Ghost spat, arms crossed over his chest, as the two made the journey back to the rest of the team.
"You have said much stranger things, Ghost."
"You can't really be considerin' this." A few beats of silence from the larger man was all the confirmation Ghost needed. "Price would never agree to it."
"He said he could help."
"Help." Ghost huffed. "Right. Help with what exactly? He has no idea what we've been working on."
"Ja, he doesn't know. But what about that bomber? Could it be relevant?" Besides Mouse, the team had been tracking a much more persistent threat. Something that left behind more than just breadcrumbs in the form of mutilated bodies.
"...are you sayin' he could be involved in this?"
"He has been showing up right after every hit."
"Right." Ghost pauses in his tracks, turning his head slightly to look up at the other man. "So you think he's with them? Or.. maybe one of their targets?"
König comes to a stop too and takes a moment to mull it over. Could you have been a part of the group they'd been hunting these past few months? It was a little.. suspicious that you'd show up and take out another high-profile figure right after every strike made. Were you cleaning up their mess? Or your own?
"That's all the more reason to keep him, no? To find out? We know he has someone he reports to." There was also the fact that the explosion had gone off practically right under your own two feet. That had to mean something.
Just following orders?
"It's a little concerning when I of all people have to remind you that he is a very real, living, breathing, capable-of complex-thought person." König brushes off Ghost's concerns with a noncommittal shrug.
If they took the route of you having been just another victim of the explosion, that left many unexplained variables. Such as why you were a target–wouldn't one terrorist organization blend well with another? Why would they be at odds? It also leaves the question that, if you had really been abandoned by your crew, why had "she"–the woman who you'd mentioned–left you for dead? Was it legitimate? Or a ploy of some kind?
Then there was the more believable scenario that would tell it as; you hadn't really been betrayed by your group, or whoever held your metaphorical leash. And the explosion was some kind of distraction, a way to get their attention. Maybe–if one applies the theory that you were in cahoots with the people they'd been hunting–you had wanted to get caught. Or, maybe not you specifically, but whoever "she" was. Maybe you were sent as bait and they'd fallen right into that mouse trap–heh.
Maybe you didn't even know this was all a farce. That would make it all the more believable, no?
Either way, they need you here. For information. And if they played their cards right, if they burrowed their way under your skin and into your heart–like a damn parasite–you would give them exactly what they wanted. Lead them right to both the core of your organization and the group behind the bombing. And if the people or persons behind the bombing were by some miracle connected to who they had been tracking…
"He can help." His words help a certain air of finality to them, a small grin making an appearance under his hood.
Another sigh, but not a no.
Price wasn't as thrilled by König's proposal as Ghost begrudgingly was.
"You want to what." König wasn't a fearful man–unless he was ordering from a drive-thru, that shit was terrifying–but when the Captain looked at him like that. Let's just say he was forever grateful for the cloth that obscured almost the entirety of his face.
"Keep him." And if his voice comes out a little smaller than normal… no one mentions it.
To his right, König hears Ghost let out another heavy sigh. For a man who used to take a blowtorch to a hostage's skin and quite literally wears a skull stitched onto his face every day- if you'd asked König, he'd tell you the Lieutenant had grown soft. Or, well, soft-ish. He would still slit a man's throat without question.
"Why'd you wanna do that?" Gaz pipes up, giving König a blank, indecipherable expression. Coupled with his tone, König couldn't tell which side of the fence he was leaning towards. He knew Gaz, out of all of them, was the one with a more strict moral compass–something König both admired and thought of as foolish–but he also already didn't like their current hostage. So, discerning whether the other man would be for or against his proposition was a complex feat. König would have to walk that fine line, choose his words carefully, to sway Gaz's opinion in his favor.
"We could use his help." Is what König finally lands on. Not leaning too far into what Ghost had described as treating you like a tool, but not dipping into friendly territory either. An even middle ground.
"From what Ghost and I managed to gather," well, König had gathered. Ghost more or less just stood in the background as a silent spectator. "He claims he's been abandoned by someone he'd only refer to as "she". That this woman brought him here from wherever he came from to follow some lead- but that lead seems to have been a dead end."
"A dead end?" If Gaz's thing was compassion and strict morals, Soap's was intrigue. Puzzles and demolitions, that's all it took to draw in their resident impulse-driven pyromaniac.
"A dead end," König repeats, now switching his attention to the Scotsman. "Turns out there was no target, not really. Or, at least, that is what it appears like at first glance."
Soap's eyes light up when König moves to reach into his pocket, fishing for the blank note. Bingo.
"At first, when we pulled this off him, we had assumed it to be blank," he unfolds the crinkled-up paper, mud, water stains and all. König reaches his hand out to pass the note to Price, keeping the others on the edge of their seats. "But if you take another look.."
Price inspects it with a deep frown, then passes it to Gaz, who looks at it with a skeptical raise of his brow, next is Soap then Ghost, and finally back around to König. Upon closer inspection, past all the grime and stains, there was a faint red scribble.
"It is like there was something here," he mutters, smoothing a gloved thumb over the worn parchment as if that will somehow make the faded words clearer.
"But someone must've purposefully scrubbed it away." Ghost adds, seeming much more interested than he had earlier.
Any other person would probably have brushed the now-pinkish, washed-out markings as blood. And König almost had; after all, you were practically swimming in your own blood right now. Clothes stained with it far past recognition.
Even so, he knew that wasn't it.
The paper had a slew of things it was coated in–some recognizable, some not–, but blood was, surprisingly, not one of them.
"Dae ya think 'e knows?" Two.
"Maybe he was the one who erased it?" Three.
"We won't know unless we ask him. But,"
They all look over to Price, waiting for the man's next words with bated breaths.
"We can't jus' do it outright." Price's steely gaze lands on König and he subconsciously stands a little taller.
"König's got the right idea. We can't jus' kill 'im. Not yet." Four. "Not until we know everything he does."
"Aye, Captain." Soap grins, pushing up from where he'd been resting against a wall. He tilts his head in the direction Ghost and König had come from. "Let's go wear 'im down then, yeah?"
"Preferably before he bleeds out." Ghost reluctantly grumbles. "Bastard already looks to be halfway through death's door."
Price looks to König, cocking his head slightly to the right.
"You said he believes he was abandoned, right?"
"That is correct, sir." The corner of Price's mouth ticks up.
"So no one's coming for 'im then?"
A sick twist of anticipation began to swell in König's chest, and suddenly he was a lot more confident than he was a few seconds ago.
"Precisely."
__
The last thing you were expecting after those two giants left was for them to return with the whole damn crew. You'd be lying if you said the leader didn't make every inch of your being tense up. There was just something in his eyes; that cool blue, warmer than König's but still so cold, gave off a deceiving "I'm not a threat" while simultaneously saying "flinch and I'll kill you".
The dark-skinned man and the baby-faced one stood a little ways behind you, and closer to the door. The leader took a seat in the chair König had been sitting in–assuming the same position the Austrian had. Skull-face stood in the same place and König took his place on your right-hand side. Standing just far enough behind you to barely graze your peripheral but close enough where you could feel his presence looming near you. Invading your personal little space bubble with his, so close if he leaned any closer he'd be brushing up right against you.
The leader tried his hand at interrogating you again. It went a little something like this;
"Do you know why she left you?'
"Probably had something to do with my bad attitude."
He gives you an unimpressed look. You simply raise your eyebrows in question. You had broken your vow of silence, but that didn't mean you were going to make it easy on them.
"König said you could help us. Mind tellin' me what exactly you could do to help?"
"I have connections. People who owe me a favor or two." Or five. Hey, in your defense, you had been in the game for a while.
"Are these connections… legal?"
"I highly doubt you care about legalities if you are conversing with me still," Then, just to be a little shit, you add a snide, "sir."
You swear you hear a small huff behind you and you brush it off as a figment of your imagination. After all, you had lost a ton of blood.. It was a miracle you hadn't passed out again from blood loss. At this rate, you should probably be dead. Or, at the very least, comatose or something. Not back-talking the man who was very literally your golden ticket to freedom.
You blamed it on the blood loss. Made you say stupid shit.
"What else can you offer us?" In other words; why should we keep you?
"One less Brit in your ranks?"
"..what?"
"You all could really use some diversity."
There's a pregnant pause before,
"Is making jokes all you're good for?" Skull-face speaks up from behind the leader.
"What can I say? It is part of my charm."
The bearded man in front of you lets out a heavy sigh. Something about that sigh told you this type of thing wasn't new to him. A small part of you perked up with curiosity. You then proceed to beat that part of you back down into a bloody pulp.
"Are you goin' to take this seriously or not, Mouse?" The leader captures your attention again and you shrug. You really should take this more seriously… but the lack of vital, life-supporting fluid in your system was making you loopy.
And stupid.
"König?"
Very stupid.
A small grunt from behind you.
"Hast du darüber nachgedacht, was ich gesagt habe?" (Have you thought about what I said?)
The man in front of you frowns, looking from you to König, to you again. But he doesn't stop you. Someone probably should.
There's a terse silence before König replies.
"Deshalb sind sie hier." (That's why they're here.)
Despite your slightly dazed state, you smile a little to yourself.
"Did you tell him?" Now the leader looks even more confused, if not a little more frustrated. Good.
"Tell me what?" His glare is now trained on König, and you know you've gotten the giant into deep shit now. Even better.
"Nein."
And just like that you, very foolishly, let out a small puff of what was obviously an attempt at laughter. Though a poor one.
At this is rate, you'd sooner get yourself killed than cut loose, but your mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. It also seemed to be keen on digging you into deeper shit.
"It is a good deal.." you trail off, narrowing your eyes a little at the leader. It would be great if you knew their names. But no one seemed interested in filling you in on that, so you continue, "you all could really use the help. After all, the only reason you lot even caught me was 'cause I was having a bit of a bad day."
"A bit of a bad day?" Leader asks.
"Aye," you drawl. Your heart thudded a few times in your chest, slowed, then picked back up again. Really, you should be dead, slumped over in your chair, by now. "Got blown up. Stabbed a few times.. broke a few bones.."
You give a sloppy grin beneath your mask. Yeah, definitely shouldn't be awake right now. "Bit of a bad day."
"He's useless like this, Cap'." One of the men from somewhere by the roll-up door pipes up.
"Agreed." Skull-face huffs. "Poor guy's all hopped up on adrenaline. He's not much use to us now."
The leader–Captain?–scrutinizes you for a few more moments before exhaling heavily.
"Alright." He grumbles, standing up from the chair.
"König," the Brit calls on the man beside you but keeps his stare trained on you, as if daring you to utter another smart-assed quip. "You were so damn adamant about keeping 'im, yeah?"
It's obviously a rhetorical question and the atmosphere shifts, the tension in the air palpable.
The leader, or, you guess, Captain–these men and their pretentious titles..–adjusts the beige-colored, boonie hat on top of his head and signals something to the two men by the door. You hear the telltale clanking of the metal being rolled up.
"You're on babysitting duty, Sergeant," he says in that displeased rumble–one you had become very familiar with during the first attempt at interrogation–as he makes his way for the door. "So get his arse back in the van, we're moving to someplace more permanent."
The other three men proceed to file out after their Captain, leaving you alone with the, now fuming, Austrian.
Annnnnnd…
"Maus." He grits out from behind you. You proceed to, very smartly, not respond.
Shit.
Instead, you stay stock still even as König leans over you and unsheathes a knife from someplace on his person. One heavy hand gripping your, thankfully, non-injured shoulder and the other reaching around to rest the blade beneath your chin. He urges your head up with the tip of it until your eyes–oh, yeah, he was definitely pissed–lock with his. In the short time you'd known him you had almost forgotten how downright intimidating only being able to see those pale, glowing blues staring through your very soul was.
"Sie werden es bereuen." (literal; you will regret it. Contextual; you're going to regret this.)
He, while maintaining eye contact, removes the knife and brings it down to hover just above your waist. Your own gaze can't help but flick between his and his weapon-welding hand. Self-preservation, you call it. König, after all, has that sharp metal alarmingly close to your dick.
You choose to ignore the thrill that causes your breath to hitch, an unfamiliar feeling stirring somewhere in the deepest pits of your hindbrain.
You watch as he–in a strange show of caution–places the gloved hand that had been on your shoulder beneath the coarse rope, thumb and fourth finger keeping the binding in place, and swiftly slices through the thickly twined fibers. He then makes quick work of doing the same to the rope wrapped around your thighs and ankles. The barest hints of warmth emitting from him easily seep through the thin, ruined cloth of your pants. But before you can think too much about how long it's been since you last felt the touch of another not-currently-dying human being, König pulls back.
When you look back up to search out his gaze you find he is no longer staring you down, his own focus entirely on freeing you from the bindings. The lack of pressure on your worn body is a relief and the next breath that leaves you is shakier than the last–you choose to believe it's just your body coming down from its adrenaline high.
The last of the rope that had been keeping your lower half bound to the chair falls away to the floor with a soft thump and König retreats completely to move onto your hands. Thank fuck for your own fabric-clad hands, you aren't sure how much more of this non-threatening touch you could take before you fucking imploded or something. All you can feel is the slight graze of his deft fingers against your concealed wrists, and even that is muted. Courtesy of the current lack of decent blood circulation to your bound extremities.
After that final piece of rope is removed, you're being yanked to your feet. Off-balanced and stumbling as blood rushes back to every limb, you nearly come crashing straight back down. König's firm hold on your forearm is the only thing that keeps you from taking an embarrassing nosedive into hard concrete.
Panting heavily behind the fabric of your mask, you groan as the world swims around you. König only spares you a few seconds to steady yourself and then he's making a sudden appearance in front of you and trading out his grip on your forearm to engulf your wrist–and subsequently almost your entire hand–in one large hand. He wastes no time in tugging you forward to follow in his footsteps.
You realize quickly that the time between the rest of the group leaving and König's undoing of your bindings hadn't really been more than a few moments–half a minute at most–, as the other members of König's team were just now turning a corner and leaving your field of vision.
How embarrassing, you think, it felt like a fucking eternity.
König easily uses his tight grasp on your wrist to lift you up just enough so you don't have to make the small hop off of the elevated ledge and out of the storage unit–thank fuck it wasn't your injured arm. You aren't sure whether to be annoyed at his blatant show of strength–seriously, the movement seemed entirely effortless on his part–or grateful you didn't have to make the jump. Your depth perception wasn't exactly the best right now and you probably would've just fallen right over. You doubted you would have even had the energy to catch yourself.
The walk out of this seemingly abandoned facility and back out into the scalding heat–huh, they must not have taken you very far–was surprisingly quick. Your barely lucid brain blocked out the majority of the dizzying twists and turns it took to find the exit. And soon enough you find yourself back in the loading space of that damn van.
This time you are mostly conscious, so you're granted the wonderful opportunity of bearing witness to the burning glares of the three other men seated on the opposite bench. König takes his place beside you and actively decides to not even glance in your direction. Instead silently communicates something to the other passive-aggressive passengers. Well, skull-face was definitely more on the aggressive side of the spectrum, but you were mostly certain he couldn't do anything. Or so you hoped.
The baby-faced one was looking at you with more curiosity than anything, a minor hint of defense hidden somewhere in those–why the hell does everyone here have the same eyes??–vivid blues. That barely concealed interest was more terrifying than skull-face's obvious death stare.
The Captain turned his attention to the Austrian beside you, nonverbally communicating his displeasure with a hard glare and deep frown. Ah, the dark-skinned man must've been the one driving the damn thing.
After a few more painstaking minutes of having a half-assed staring contest with the two men across from you, you give up and let your eyelids fall half-shut. Still nauseous with blood loss and possible infection, you pant lightly within the confines of your mask. Heat continues to build in the suffocating cloth and you let out another soft groan, unable to help yourself when you slump backward against the metal wall of the vehicle.
The ground moving beneath you does nothing to aid your current lightheadedness and you find yourself focusing most of your limited attention span on not vomiting in your mask. That would be a hellscape on its own to clean, and the humiliation would probably kill you off before the budding infection had the chance.
It doesn't take much time before you can no longer fight off the exhaustion weighing down the big ball of throbbing pain that is your entire body and your eyelids finally slip shut. Before you have the chance to force your eyes open again–this is definitely not an ideal place to fall asleep–a sudden heavy thwack against your mutilated shoulder does the job for you.
Your eyes snap back open, fully alert as you search out the culprit. You find König giving you a blank, deadpan stare and the venomous words sprouting on the tip of your tongue quickly fizzle out when you notice the van has stopped moving. In fact, you two are the only ones remaining inside. The other four are piling up just out of earshot, the backdoors wide open and showing off- well, nothing. It's dark and all you can make out are vague shapes in the background.
You huff and go to stand but König beats you to it. Still holding onto your wrist, he gives a sharp tug and you stagger out of your seat. You send him a seething glare but find that his attention is no longer on you.
König pulls you out the same way he had the storage unit; efficiently lifting you by your arm and out of the vehicle. You barely manage to keep your balance when your boots touch solid ground again and just that little bit of exertion has you sucking in ragged gulps of air.
When the Captain glances over to you two, König makes a show of lifting your arm into the air as if to say got it and the Captain gives a small nod in acknowledgment. You don't have the wherewithal to give a shit about being treated more like an object than a person, brushing it off and trading it out to take in your surroundings instead. Besides, it wasn't something you were exactly.. unfamiliar with.
Surrounding you is another compound. More well-kept than the storage facility you had previously been in, but still obviously worn. The stark white walls were practically glowing in contrast to the pitch-black, starless night sky. Besides some crumbling and scuff marks here and there–most likely from environmental weathering over time–the cinder block walls were almost pristine.
Your fuzzy, mush of a brain briefly considers asking König where the hell they had brought you, but your tongue is like lead in your mouth. Not that it really mattered, you highly doubt he would've told you anyway. You were a prisoner, after all. A prisoner who they were only keeping alive on the off-chance you could help.
Help with what exactly? You had not a clue. Hopefully, they'd soon get their shit together and tell you sooner rather than later. Then again.. what would they do with you once your use to them came to an end? Would they just end up killing you anyway?
Floodlights abruptly make an unwelcome appearance, bathing the courtyard in a blindingly white light and knocking that train of thought right out of your head. You cringe away from the sudden brightness, squeezing your eyes shut momentarily before blinking a few times in rapid succession to adjust.
You only have the time to register the sheer size of the compound before you are being tugged forward again and into the said building. As usual, you silently curse König's unfairly long legs and subsequent far longer strides as you try your damnedest to keep up. The nausea, burning full body ache, and pounding against your skull have yet to lessen. If anything it's become more of an issue now that you're not running on pure adrenaline.
You find yourself fumbling over your own miscalculated steps more often than you make a successful one, König having to more or less drag the majority of your dead weight along with him. The behemoth of a man doesn't even have the decency to make it look like doing so is any struggle. Bastard.
The interior lighting of the compound is somehow far much worse than the blaring exterior. You squint against the harsh brightness and it takes a few seconds for your pulpy mess of a brain to make out the shapes and colors in front of you. Or, well, the astonishing lack of colors. Dull shades of grey coupled with a blinding light. Perfect.
Someone's talking. Multiple someone's, really. But your ears are too stuffed full of cotton to make any sense of what's being said. The most you can do is try to read their lips–which proves to be futile–and try to gauge the emotional state of the men in the room.
The plainly, uniform-dressed men standing guard seem to not at all have a problem with the crew that had brought you in. Though obviously holding a subordinate position in comparison to the team, they shared easy smiles and small laughs with the group. The Captain appears to be keeping up a polite kind of façade–was this not his base?–as he converses with the two newbies. Skull-face, mohawk guy, and the Captain's obvious favorite all stand behind the Captain in an organized order. With skull-face standing the closest–was he some kind of right-hand man?–babyface and the third man stood at a respectful distance. Not too close, but just near enough to assist if needed.
König kept you a little more ways away from the others, a firmer grip on your wrist than before. It would probably hurt if the remainder of your body wasn't currently one giant sore spot. You realize why when one of the guards spares a glance at you and, spotting your eyes on him, immediately shrinks back and averts his gaze.
Ah, this definitely wasn't their base. Made sense. They all were clearly European and unfamiliar with the normalities of wherever the fuck you all were right now. Faintly, you remember the dark-skinned man complaining about how weird it was driving on the right-hand side of the road.
You're snapped out of your own musings by a harsh pull on your arm. A small noise of surprise escapes you and, before you know it, the guards are moving out of the way and you are being escorted further into the building.
Going off the darkness you had awakened to, it is obviously late at night, maybe even well into the morning by now, and the only people you all pass are all exhausted-looking security personnel.
König follows behind the other four down corridor after corridor, dragging you along behind him. Eventually, you all make it out into what appears like a sort of gathering place or common room. For a split second you think they're going to stop there, but, no, they keep going. Down more confusing hallways and through nonsense doors.
Then finally, finally, it all comes to a stop at an unremarkable metal door. Nothing on it, not even a little window, with the exception of the room number plastered next to it.
You squint at the numbers, trying to make sense of the blurry shapes. There's a small tugging in the back of your mind and, if you were any more aware, you'd almost say it was familiar. Huh.
The Captain unlocks and pushes open the door, then, before you even have the opportunity to protest, König yanks you close and shoves you forward. You stumble–again, seriously, did they think you were made of fucking steel??–through the doorway and only barely manage to break your fall on the closet wall. You stand there for a moment, panting and bracing against hard concrete, while the others file in.
If it wasn't for the unnecessarily heavy thunk you probably wouldn't have realized that the door had been shut. Your vision blurs then blacks out for a split second while you catch your breath, and the only thing on your mind is; how the hell am I not dead yet?
You're only given a few more moments of rest then you're being pulled by the wrist again. Unable to even really feel your legs anymore, the sudden brushing of something solid against the backs of your knees is all you have to tell you you've even moved. You don't have to be told twice to sit, hell, you probably wouldn't have been able to hear them if they had given the order.
You drop your weight instantly, unable to hold yourself up any longer. You can't feel much through the fabric separating your fingertips from what's below, but from the slight give when you press down, if you had to guess, you'd say you were seated on a cot of some kind. It's not the most comfortable, but it's the best thing you've had in a long, long while.
Lifting your gaze at the sound of someone's voice, you blink rapidly in a vain attempt at refocusing your vision.
"Hm?"
All four men standing in the room give you vaguely concerned grimaces. Well, you assume König and skull-face do, judging by the crinkling of their limited expression.
"I said-" the Captain begins. Not that you hear any of what comes after that. Head full of cotton and feeling simultaneously like you're both floating and being weighed down by a ship's anchor, you're left futilely trying to read his lips. But that only makes the pounding in your head worsen and you screw your eyes shut again.
Cradling your head in your hands you lean down, elbows propped up on your knees. You suck in shallow, shaky breaths, fruitlessly trying to get the proper amount of oxygen to the lump of mass that is your brain.
When your eyes flutter open again the lights have been dimmed just enough to take the edge off, reducing the strain on your eyes, and you immediately slump in relief. You think you mutter your gratitude under your breath, but, really, you're far too out of it to be certain.
A few more muffled words and the soft thumping of footsteps later and the door opens then shuts one last time. You look up expecting to see nothing but an empty room, a little caught off guard when that behemoth of a man is still looming near the door.
"We should really get you checked out," König says, giving a brief once-over at your disheveled appearance. Giving a noncommittal hum, you take a look down at yourself.
You had not bothered to take full stock of your person since the initial confrontation–and even that was a laughable inspection at best.
Every inch of your exposed skin–which, truthfully, wasn't much–was coated in a layer of mud and your own blood. Your thin civilian outfit was in a similar state of disrepair; caked in blood, more mud, and bits of stuck-on foliage as well. Accompanied with the occasional tear and hole here and there, of course.
"I'll get a medi-" Before he even gets the word out you're launching yourself up and off the bed. Charging at him despite how unsafe that currently is and reaching up to slam your grimy, gloved hand over where you assume his mouth is.
König quickly and easily peels your hand away by the wrist, staring down at you with less anger and more of a really, what are you doing? kind of look.
"Nie." (No.) You breathe as your only explanation. You had had enough of fucking medical staff in your time before your years-long solo operation began. Unknown injections, emotionless stares, and needles. Needles, needles, needles. So many fucking needles. You didn't visit those sterile, frigid laboratories often these days–though you were still required to come in every now and again for a routine 'checkup'.
"No?" König finally breaks through your suddenly hazy headspace–this time said fuzziness wasn't the result of excessive blood loss. You'd rather it were.
"Nie." You repeat again, and there must be something in your voice–something unlike yourself, something a bit too human–because König relents without further question and drops your arm.
"I can't really let you die on us, Maus." He points out with a deadpan stare. Then, probably realizing that phrasing sounded a bit too worried, he adds, "What use would you be to us then?"
"Let me do it."
"You can barely stand up straight and you expect me to hand you a needle?"
"I would rather me than you or some pea-brained white-coat." You huff, narrowing your still very unfocused gaze up at him. You hope it lands, you can't really see clearly right now.
König holds your stare for a few seconds longer before letting out a resigned sigh and looking away. "Fine."
He gives your uninjured shoulder a nudge with a gloved finger and rumbles a low, "Sit down."
You're about to bite back with some witty retort but the words get stuck in your throat when you realize just how close you two are. In your rush to cut off the words spewing from his mouth, you had somehow ended up crowding into his space in a very.. unprofessional way. Chest puffed up in a show of defiance and, subsequently, pressed right up against the other man.
That same, unfamiliar twinge in the furthest recesses of your mind from back in that god-awful storage unit begins to stir and you jolt away sharply. Jumping back and scurrying over to the cot at a faster rate than really necessary, as if that simple touch had burnt you. And, to be frank, it had. Indirectly.
König cocks his head, analyzing you for a brief moment, then shakes it off. Thank fuck. Having quickly averted your gaze, all you hear is some faint rustling and then his legs appear in your line of sight. A small first-aid box materializes from his hand and you lift your own trembling one to take it.
"Thanks." You mumble. You were a monster, not impolite.
König makes a light huff and retreats. Grateful for the, mostly likely unintended, room to breathe, you fumble with the kit before finally managing to wrench the damn thing open. Placing the box beside you on the bed you ungracefully free your first victim from its confines; your thigh.
Stab wound number one, thankfully, has stopped bleeding. On the other, far less favorable, hand, the injury is already a burning, angry red. A light poke at the inflamed skin with your finger has you hissing against the sharp sting.
Deciding keeping up appearances was much less important than your health, you make efficient work of removing both gloves. Also soaked with mud and blood, they would do no more than worsen what was already the beginnings of a very, very serious infection.
There's a bottle of saline solution in the kit and you uncap that first. Folding the bled-through, makeshift bandage in half, you use it to catch the liquid rather than letting the filthy solution drip onto the floor. After flushing out the wound as much as you can–without running the bottle dry, you've still got another to clean–the next step is the worst of them all. Stitches.
If you had it your way, you wouldn't use them at all. You had a tendency to forgo using a needle and thread whenever you could–only stooping to that level when it was absolutely vital. Like right now.
Even then, you only knew one form of sewing; intermittent sutures.
Tearing open a sterile needle packet you, surprisingly enough, make easy work of threading the surgical cotton through the eye of it. Pinching the slice shut with your non-dominant hand, you position the end of the curved metal about a centimeter from where the damn thing starts.
The first pierce of the needle into your tender flesh forces a strained whine from your throat, eyes beginning to water. You blink away the budding tears, exhale a shaky breath, and tie the thread off.
One suture down, an ungodly amount remaining.
Your hand only gets more unsteady as time goes on. Making each stitch more lopsided than the last.
Your vision swims for a brief moment and you swallow back the growing lump in your throat. Come on now, you can do this. You've done this so, so many times before. What was so different this time around?
Just a few more to go. That's all. Then you will be done.. well, then onto the puncture in your shoulder. The shoulder that also happened to be connected to your dominant hand. Great.
"Maus."
You can do this- just stab, push through- wait no, not like that. Pull it out again. Now, do it properly this time-
"Maus." Black gloves invade your sight and you grunt, trying to look around them.
The next time the needle pierces your skin it goes in just short of perfectly–success!–but it's good enough. Will keep your blood in, at least. Then comes tying it off and- come on, don't be difficult now.
Just toss over- like tha- wait, no. Just lift and- fuck.
A low rumble is all you hear and then those gloved fingers are wrapping around your wrist once more and effectively halting your progress. You huff, looking up to glare at him only to find his own hardened gaze staring down at you.
"-keep trying, you are only going to hurt yourself." Wait, had he been talking this whole time? "Then what use would you be then, hm? You would be of no help if you died because of your own damn stubbornness."
You feebly try to tug your hand back, but he doesn't budge, simply using his other hand to pluck the needle from your hand. Narrowing your eyes, you do the only thing you can do; throwing hundreds of imaginary knives at that stupid smug look in his eyes and internally cursing him out.
After your two's little staring contest goes on long enough for your captured hand to start going numb, you relent. Letting out a heavy sigh and dropping your gaze.
König makes a small noise of approval and releases your wrist. You don't watch as he finishes up the mess of stitches sewn into your thigh, nausea returning with a vengeance and forcing you to shut your eyes again.
He finishes up relatively quickly, faster than you probably could have in this state, and rinses the wound again before pasting a bandage over it.
"I need you to look up."
"Hm?" Light pressure under your chin causes your eyelids to flutter back open and you frown.
"Wha-?"
"Up." He reasserts, using his guiding touch to urge your head up and out of the way. Forcing you to straighten out your shrimp-like posture and provide König with access to your injured shoulder.
Said shoulder that was more bruises and blood than it was untouched flesh; able to get a decent look at it now that König had removed the sloppy work that was your mess of torn fabric and duct tape.
He repeats the same steps you had to clean the wound and this time you watch. Less so keeping an eye on the weeping wound and more so on the hand sticking the–new, he had discarded the one used on your thigh–thin metal through your skin. He's surprisingly delicate with it, despite his size he is far more precise with his sutures than you had been. Carefully inserting the needle and tying off every knot with practiced ease. Unlike you, he hadn't foregone his gloves, and that's why you notice it when you do. Having been so attuned to his busy hands.
His gloves are still stained with your blood.
Coated in a thick, dried layer of it. Dark against the already black fabric, flakes of crimson chipping off and drawing your eye.
It was the only part of him that showed any hint of wear from the morning's efforts. Every other inch of his uniform was speck-free, not a single item out of place, scuff mark, or splatter of blood.
It didn't make much sense for you to be fixated on such a minor facet after the laborious events of today. There were so many other things to draw your attention. Like the repeated motions of the curved metal puncturing your skin over and over again, for example. Or maybe his close proximity–accompanied by that weird feeling again.
But, no. Every last bit of your remaining attention span was focused solely on your own blood marking his hands. You sounded insane, even to yourself and that was an entire feat of its own.
You release a small breath of relief when he pulls away, slapping on another thick bandage over your second, freshly stitched injury. Then comes a sudden sting right above your eyebrow and you jolt away with a hiss.
Refocusing back into reality, König is still standing above you. Only this time he's welding an antiseptic-soaked cotton ball, also tarnished with your blood.
"Cut is deep." Is the vague explanation you get, coupled with a small gesture to your face. "No stitches will be needed. But,"
He reaches down to rifle through the first aid kit and makes a soft sound of victory when he finds whatever he's looking for. Holding your face still in one hand, he dabs at the cut a few more times before switching sides and drying it off. König throws the dirtied cotton along with wherever he'd discarded the scraps of your clothes and other miscellaneous trash.
Next comes another burning sting as he presses something over the wound. A few 'something's.
"A few pieces of tape should do the trick." He muses as he smoothes the sterile strips against your skin, the faint metallic scent of your own blood flooding your senses. Gross.
You really needed some sleep, or maybe it was finally time to check yourself into some kind of mental reform. Seriously, this was getting out of hand.
"Now," König pulls away for the final time, doing a brief scan of your exhausted form and nodding to himself. "Sleep."
You half expected König to leave it at that, to exit the room like the other four had. And probably lock the door behind him. Your hopes are crushed when he takes a seat a few feet away from your cot, settling into an uncomfortable-looking chair you hadn't noticed beforehand.
Oh, right. The Captain had assigned him as your personal babysitter. How fucking lovely.
Scooting back to slump against the wall furthest away from the other man, you send him a weak glare. Wanting nothing more than to argue that you can't sleep like this–not with him watching over you like some damn stalker–you find that when you try, you can't.
For what feels like the millionth time today, your eyelids droop until you cannot resist any longer. Falling completely shut and likely not going to open for a while, you give in. Unable to find it in yourself to give a damn right now.
Besides, you could.. moderately trust König wouldn't murder you in your slumber. He hasn't yet. And that seems to be enough for your sleep-deprived brain, as sweet unconsciousness soon drags you under.
___
One | Two | Masterpost | Next
___
(finally figured out how to tag y'all properly! Sorry bout that. Thought I was doing it right this whole time 😞)
@cptg00s3 @ruthgrimxiao @20nerd04-blog @gloma08 @mikahrh @in-down @hauntedapplefarm @mello-life69 @unkn0wnd3ad @tayaisback @starre-eyes @ravage-reposts @suhmie
If you want to be added to the tag list, let me know in the comments!
160 notes · View notes
deadlysoupy · 2 months
Text
Bumblebee and Freedom
there's probably a really cool quote about freedom out there. i'm just gonna say how i define freedom, and maybe someone out there knows if it correlates with anything that already exists
"freedom is the ability to choose"
to me, that's the perfect and down-to-earth definition of freedom. it's not a will to express yourself, because that's not enough, it's not having rights, it's not not-having a government, etc
earthspark!Bumblebee strikes me as a person who was denied his freedom. he has moments where he actively chooses what to do next, how to act in this situation, how to approach it. but in the narrative, he's constantly belittled, put in a corner, and just talked down by and ordered to simply do this thing
even before the events of Earthspark this seems to be a reoccurring theme with him: Breakdown, on their first meeting in who knows how long, says a very neat line after Bee's "Just like old times": "Before you let Optimus get between us". this makes me think that Optimus probably convinced Bee to join the war in the first place, whether because they knew each other prior (doubtful), or after the war started Bumblebee showed promise and Prime decided to teach him, instead of letting him die on very hostile streets of Iacon
he was forced to go into hiding. i doubt he chose it, because there are so many capable bots for spying - Jazz, Mirage, etc (ironically i can't remember more than these two lmao). he was just as affected by the Allspark incident as everyone else, but because Optimus trusted him (probably) the most, he decided that Bee was the perfect bot for staying away for a time to deliver him info he needed, as a backup in all this GHOST business
to be fair, i'm sure Optimus didn't think this whole deal would take this much time - and Bee was forced to be in hiding for 15 whole years. it must have been a lonely existence. we assume he still had contacts with some bots - OP, Megs, and Elita-1 more prominently, and Wheeljack doesn't seem all too surprised to see him, but it's still not enough for a happy-go-lucky bot like Bumblebee. especially considering his age - but i digress
and still - he had no choice when Optimus pulled him out of hiding to look after a bunch of newly-builds. it's the whole point of the third episode. and he has no choice but to accept his mentor position, and he learns to care about the Terrans, too, but the point still stands
he had no choice but to trust Breakdown as they raced towards GHOST agents, he had no choice but let Breakdown sacrifice himself for him. if he could, he would change it, he probably would take his place, too, because that's his brother and it's his fault, but he can't, because he has other people to take care of - he has no choice
in fact, most bots in the show don't have much choice too. the Terrans, especially, who have no choice but be a representation of Hope for Cybertronian race. which is why i think Bumblebee fits into their little cosy family like a glove
tldr; when you look for the theme of freedom in Earthspark, it seems to be always in the air, and honestly, i love it. this may be all a little exaggerated, but whatever. if you found any points wrong in my lil speech, you can totally tell me, sometimes i just forget stuff lmao
96 notes · View notes
runawaymun · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media
Ask me about my not-yet-written-fics from this list
thanks, @eowyn7023 also tagging: @polutrope because you sent me an ask about this a while ago and I just haven't had the spoons to respond until now, sorry! <3
Elrond in Valinor + Second Flight of the Noldor
so this stems from three possibly spicy Opinions I have about LOTR: 1) The Valar kind of suck, actually, and it was wrong of them to bring Elves to Valinor in the first place and it went directly against Eru's plan. 2) Valinor is kind of liminal and bad for you if you were born in Middle Earth 3) Elrond sailing (and staying) in Valinor is makes very little sense for him as a character, and is more about Jirt's wish fulfillment than it is good writing.
Obviously, unfortunately, due to the narrative, Elrond must sail at the end of LOTR. He needs to recuperate from the absolute havoc Vilya wreaked on his system, and he also needs to reunite with Cel and get some closure about a few things, like Celebrimbor's death, Gil-Galad's death, and his relationship with Elwing.
So Elrond sails, as he does. He reunites with Celebrian. He spends some time meeting his various family members and spends quite a lot of time with Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor. He has exactly one (1) talk with Elwing to ask her some questions and explain what became of Elros, but in my head he is not really interested in pursuing much of a relationship with her. Elwing respects that.
He and Celebrian work on healing their relationship and re-establishing intimacy.
Elrond slowly recovers from the damage Vilya did to him.
He might need to spend some time in Lorien actually. He is very good friends with Este and Nienna.
After a while though, things just don't feel right. Valinor feels very static and strange to him, and he doesn't really feel like he Fits. And that hurts because everyone is so glad to have him there and they expect that he's just as glad to be here as they are.
Also he really misses his kids, and wonders about his grandkids, and the Dunedain.
Eventually he starts connecting with more and more people who feel like they don't Fit. Mostly Noldor and the few Sindar that sailed. Many of them are still dealing with PTSD from Middle Earth and Beleriand, or with scars that refuse to heal. Many of them are just Restless. Most Vanyar do not understand this, and it's hard to talk about.
He and Cel begin work on a second Rivendell, and this keeps them both busy for a short time. He still doesn't feel Right though.
Eventually he starts experiencing like a reverse sea-longing and it gets more, and more, and more painful.
Finally, he talks it over with Celebrian. And they petition the Valar, who are not very happy to be petitioned. And then Elrond starts preparing to sail East.
Listen listen listen. Everything that Elrond has ever built, worked for, or loved is back in Middle Earth. It makes zero sense for him to be happy in Valinor. He aligns overwhelmingly with the Sindar and with the Dunedain in the books, and the Dunedain also consider him as one of them. Rivendell is there (he left it in the care of the Dunedain). Arwen and Aragorn are there. Gondor, and what is left of Elros are there. His grandchildren are there. Elladan and Elrohir are still there. The people left for him in Valinor are all people he has already mourned and found closure with.
He's not really made for Valinor anyway. He's made to watch over Middle Earth, to keep its lore and secrets, and to caretake Elros' line. He made a vow, once, and sure Aragorn and his descendants are doing just fine but he still feels half-whole without them.
And he's not the only person who doesn't feel Right in Valinor, who miss the mold and the rot and the fungi and the sheer diversity of life, and the Men!!! The humans!!! The normalcy of pain and suffering and scars and disabilities!
And so Elrond sails with Celebrian, and many of the Noldor say 'fuck it' and they go with him. They're tired and restless and have misgivings about the Valar anyway. A remnant returns to Middle Earth, and this time they go for love.
Elrond retakes his seat in Rivendell and the Dunedain rejoice that the eldest of their race, their most beloved uncle has come home. Celebrian reunites with Arwen, and meets a long line of adopted children that she never got to see, and meets Aragorn and her grandchildren.
They live through the ages, quietly doing what they have always done: living as watchers and caretakers, carefully preserving memories and lore and history.
Rivendell becomes a place that is both mythologized and startlingly real, where it is rumored that anyone who needs it will find help and sanctuary.
Many of the Noldor live in Rivendell, but some set up their own small kingdoms or simply live alongside the men and dwarves. They're finally there to guide and watch over the Secondborn, just as was intended in the Theme.
Eventually, of course, Elrond must grieve Arwen and Aragorn, but he's there for his grandchildren, and his great grandchildren, and his great grandchildren, and all of his family thereafter -- and in Arwen and Aragorn and their line, it almost feels like he is reunited with Elros again.
Elrond is there to help.
55 notes · View notes