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#episode 10-14
liltaireissocute · 4 months
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HE IS HOLDING A CAT.
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gunsatthaphan · 1 month
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"are you sure?"
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ghostlyarchaeologist · 4 months
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Christian Kane twirling props: a series. Part 9/?
The Librarians Season 1
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jeongjinman · 3 months
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Lee Dong Wook as Ryu Soo Yeol
Bad and Crazy (2021) Episode 12
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icy-watch · 1 month
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Mood
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miningroseakira · 1 month
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guys i know we're all focused on the quite literal things that are in the water this season. but what - and I mean, the fuck - is in the metaphorical AND literal water for Iskall and Beef in particular???? what is wrong with either of them (affectionate). both as individuals and when in contact with one another. cannot get enough of their episodes currently
losing it at both their POVs. their interactions have been some of my favorite things ever actually. big salmon is watching btw
/lh /pos
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beesbeesbees42 · 16 days
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Every instance of One I could find in the new episode!!!
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Wels: Is Etho Pearl's minion? I suppose so.
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goldenpinof · 4 months
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criminalize Dan and Phil
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twilight-zoned-out · 4 months
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No space monster will ever be as liminally terrifying as Fourteen crabwalking in anger
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bihastuff · 1 month
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I can't believe I will be able to watch a new kuroshitsuji episode every Saturday, like this is not a dream
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dennisboobs · 4 months
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just found out my local library does indeed have sunny seasons 8-10 on dvd so i guess i'm ripping that shit tomorrow
i mean what. legally watching. legally playing them in my legal dvd drive. you will not see the efforts of this endeavor online in any way shape or form and definitely not find the bonus features uploaded to my internet archive at any point.
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raspberry-gloaming · 8 days
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So - what with 14, and the curator, and stuff, we have more than established that the doctor can regenerate into an earlier face. And so far, they've been visually older than the original incarnation, because... that's how aging works, the actor gets older.
But what if we had a future doctor who was a visually younger doctor - one particular incarnation in particular. Someone who is referred to both with a number and a name (its one. if you haven't got that. like young adult one it would be awesome.)
Please I would love it if the doctor regenerates, and the actor is on the younger side, and sure! That's happened several times before, like put them at a similar age as Matt Smith and Peter Davidson. They're blond. So? They've been blond before, no reason to suspect anything.
I'm imagining that not long after the regeneration, they encounter the Master. Well... all "not long" matters as to be "they haven't looked in a mirror yet." So you get the Master, all ready to do Master-things, when they look and they're suddenly staring into a pair of eyes that look just like they did when they were in those fields of red grass together, graduates, official time lords. Those same blond, loose curls (i love the fanon designs they're great.) He's looking into a face that is identical to a ~140 year old Theta Sigma and the Doctor doesn't even know.
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dancinbutterfly · 2 years
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Kinnporsche: “Because I’m hungry...” transition from violence to BDSM in Vegas/Pete
Okay this is the updated version that’s close to 5K cuz I left out some details the first time. But I *think* it’s all here now.
So.
*pulls hair*
We need to talk about Pete and Vegas and how this show highlights power and hunger and love as the key elements in their relationship. In particular we need to talk about a moment by the pool, that happens in the context of the entire rest of the fucking show, to crystallize how they shift from something completely toxic to a true BDSM relationship.
This whole show has been about power and hunger and love over all.
Now, I am not going spend this post running down how Kinn and Porsche’s relationship has been about power and hunger and love - go watch the show again - pay attention to them “my life is yours” conversation, the playing sides crap, the arguments over who feeds who, and the negotiation of who is in charge. You’ll see how the the three are connected. But it’s not explicit. It is, as the they say in 11th grade lit class, subtext.
With Pete and Vegas? The interplay and negotiation of power and hunger and love is not subtext. It’s right there, on the page, in black and white. Their first interaction with each other is a power play from Vegas to destabilize Pete with what? Snacks while he spies on him. Pete has no choice but to accept. Pete has no choice but to listen to and follow Pete when he and the other bodyguards are loaned out to Vegas and the minor family temporarily. Pete has no choice but to accept his guidance through the minor family estate when he gets busted sneaking around. He has no choice but to accept his touch at the temple. Pete is in a power-down position to Vegas for the whole fucking show while he’s working because those in a power-up position to him give him orders and without any will of his own, he enters into Vegas’s sphere of influence. He’s not choosing that though. He hasn’t given Vegas that power himself. Someone else has given Pete to him by proxy. Right up to his capture.  
Which is when things get incredibly interesting because that is the point in the narrative when Pete takes his agency in relationship to Vegas specifically. That mission is one that he with full knowledge of the potential consequences with relationship to Vegas asks for and pursues. The power, through his decision to ask Kinn for the assignment of engaging with the minor family estate where he knows he may be caught captured tortured and killed by Vegas, now belongs to Pete where Vegas’s sphere of influence is concerned for the first time. So compared to where we’ve been the whole rest of the show?
We start on a, comparatively, equal playing field. Everyone in that torture chamber knows the stakes. Vegas knows he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Pete can take it. He’s decided. He has a choice.
Element 1 of 3 in this undertaking identified: Power. Check.
The dynamic in that room is important because once Pete is there? It’s chess. He moves, Vegas moves. Pete laughs in his face, Vegas threatens his family. But the power element still belongs to to Pete in that he could, if he wanted to, decide “fuck grandma.” It’s a horrible consequence. But. But. It’s his choice. That’s the thing about choice - just because you don’t like the outcome of a choice, does not mean the choice doesn’t exist. And Pete is not dealing with Vegas indirectly here, through Kinn’s or Takuhn will that he be there. The choices, as bad as they are, are his. He maintains agency as ugly as it is. He isn’t acting on anyone else’s behalf any more. He isn’t a representative. He’s only Pete. All the power he keeps or loses is just Pete’s.
So. He loses more and more power until he has nothing. That comes up a lot. Pete hits rock bottom. He has the need of physical hunger, which having nothing - no power - Vegas has to provide for. So we’ve engaged physical hunger again, which is how we started when they first met.
Element 2 of 3 of this undertaking identified: Hunger. Check.
But the thing is that there’s more than one kind of hunger. And Pete has a lot of fucking time to just...sit. Be sick. And do fuck all. Read. Watch Vegas. Be alone with Vegas. IDK who’s reading this, but if you follow me, you know I’m a therapist and a social worker, and professionally? The bodyguard lifestyle bothers the SHIT out of me. Every single aspect of how they make those men live is BITE Model of Authoritarian Control 101. It’s cult shit. It’s domestic abuse stuff. It is isolation and paranoia inducing on purpose. It keeps people insulated and alone and I know we see Takuhn’s bodyguards bonding physically and emotionally but but if you can’t use anything but a communal landline phone and you don’t have access to computers and you aren’t really allowed to leave the property to see your family? How are you supposed to get emotional and social support? This fandom focuses a lot on how Vegas is a poor little meow meow meow but it’s not a coincidence that Pete’s father beat the hell out of him and the only person we ever see or hear him talk about is a grandmother in a village we don’t ever see. He melts under Vegas’s soft touch insanely fast.
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He goes warm when Vegas listens to him incredibly easily. Remember how fast he bonded to Porsche? Loneliness is a hunger too. Vegas is not the only person in that safe house who wants someone to listen to him when he talks, who craves it, is hungry for it. Because what was the thing he did, mostly? He talked to Vegas, he sat with him.  Vegas fed him by taking in what he had to say. When Vegas was hurt, he let Pete help him. It feeds something, something primal and fundamentally human, to care for someone else. And only Vegas could give it too him. If you recall, he tried to help Porsche and Kinn and Takuhn and other members of the idiot trio. He gave advice and tried to comfort. But they didn’t take it the way Vegas did. And they never gave back the way Vegas did, never as carefully or as attentively. They were too busy or distracted or turned inward. It’s okay. Not everyone is meant for everyone else. But what it means is that when it comes to that interpersonal hunger that all people have, the kind that drove Vegas to try to please his father and Gun to his death? Only Vegas really fed Pete the way he needed. It requires a lot of surrender and submission and every time he does it, he gets less and less hungry. And when we get what we want, and are reinforced? We tend to keep doing that thing. It’s behaviorism 101.
And Pete did the same for Vegas. And really what is that if not love?
So element 3 of 3 in this undertaking identified: Love. Check.
When someone wants to be better for you? When someone won’t just hurt with you but will try and heal with you? When someone sees what a freak you are and is like “Yes. That. That’s good for me.” That’s love. That’s what Pete does with Vegas. And Vegas does it back.
The thing is. The issue is. *sighs* From the opposite direction? You have Vegas who has been using his power actively to try and fulfill tasks with a goal that if he just does enough tasks? He has been acting on the assumption that if he just does enough he will earn the love of someone who is, in fact, incapable of loving him the way he needs. So he remains hungry, interpersonally. This finale was SO important because it showed WHY he kept doing everything he does the entire series - every sneaky treacherous supervillain thing he did the whole damn show. All of it was for that moment in the siege, when Gun handed Vegas the semi-automatic and said “It’s your time”. The thing is that kind of moment has probably happened more than a few times throughout Vegas’s life and what it does is create hope that if he can just do enough, he will be enough. It is scientific fact that intermittent reinforcement is more effective that consistent reinforcement. That means that you’re more likely to keep doing a thing you get occasional reinforcement on than the thing you get reinforced on ALL the time. Sorry, therapist hat on. But its important because that tactic on Gun’s part is Abuser 101 and everything Vegas does is a response to it, including the way he spends so much of his effort to keep Macau the fuck away from Gun.
Because Vegas, when we see him with Pete, is fighting the pattern of intermittent reinforcement - chasing love he can’t get to feed a hunger he can’t fill using what power he has under someone who has power over him and trying with only so much success to create no places to get reinforcement from because he knows, consciously, that he can’t get it from Gun. And he’s repeating behaviors he sees and hating himself. Tawan is actually kind of important here. Because he did repeat Gun’s behavior. He had someone in a power-down position from him, just like Gun did, and he ruined him. And now he has Pete in a power-down position and he’s ready to do it again. That’s the “we’re don’t suck” conversation, the book reading, the hedgehog dying, all of those conversations, and the physical care-taking are all key to pulling Vegas into awareness of what he’s doing. Being in the safehouse, Pete’s presents Vegas with an opportunity to stop the cycle of being in a power-up position as abusive and go one more step further and turn it into the radical opposite - make being in a power-up position into something that makes him feel fulfilled by literally and metaphorically feeding someone else - the act of caring for the needs of someone else - and loving them instead of using that power to hurt. That’s basically the summary of the safehouse romance as it happens and then they fuck which satisfies sexual and emotional intimacy hunger for them both, check.
The problem is there’s all the plotty mafia bullshit that makes it complicated for Pete because the person he his power vis-a-vis agency to and emotionally and physically compromised himself for is the literally the enemy who is still figuring out how to not be abusive and for Vegas because he has realized he needs to do a 180 on the way he interacts with the world in the way that made you strongest because it is actually the most detrimental to your wellbeing over a boy but can’t because, uh, mafia shit? Still an issue. So is codependent daddy shit re:intermittent reinforcement from his abuser. That response is literally what drives him to lose his shit at Pete after his interaction with Gun when it all falls apart, he doubts his change because hey, Dad is back and showing him that this is how it is, and he falls back in the pattern of behavior but Pete is not having it because Pete remember, Pete came into this with a specific kind of power and that is? He knows how this could end - which is in death and he’s willing to go there if he’s not happy with this. He decided that when he left the Main family. And so, he does.
Pete decides where his line is. And so does Vegas. Pete’s line is Vegas hurting him emotionally more than he can bear and Vegas being with him and using him but refusing to accept Pete’s support. Vegas realizes his line is being the source of unbearable pain for Pete(the kind that makes Pete beg for death as opposed to the wanted kind from ropes and chains) and any physical harm that could literally kill Pete or otherwise keep him away from Pete forever. Hey. Boundaries. We finally fucking hit these idiots setting them for themselves. THANK FUCK. These assholes really needed them because growing up how they did, with invalidating environments and persistent abusers who no doubt violated their boundaries constantly before moving into work environments where they had no social boundaries besides locked rooms and utter secrecy, they never fucking learned what their most basic boundaries are let alone healthy ones. Now they know, at least with regards to each other. The standards are at the rock-est of bottoms but this is a mafia b-plot romance so hey. But now we have established literally where everything starts when Pete fucks off out of the safehouse and what everything builds on from him leaving to to the end of episode 13.
Fundamentally? That’s what the foundation of the relationship where we land at the finale is. So that’s 1.5k of shit to get to what I actually what to talk about.
The scene by the pool. *exhales* Ok.
This scene is about the part of the pool scene that kicks off with “I’m hungry.” and this meta is about why it’s so important in how we got to the genuinely happy ending in a way that made sense and… argh  *claws face* Y’all context is fucking important here. God. This meta is such a Take Your Fandom To Work mess. *deep breath* Okay.
First, Vegas is, and has been, as least passively suicidal for awhile. Not for nothing, but starting from the conversation with Porsche by the pool? He has been giving little at-least-pink flags for suicidal ideation in the “I’d like to live but if I die that’d sure solve a lot.” Passive SI is…*exhales* look, when you deal with the level of physical and psychological abusive that Vegas has been dealing with for the length of time he’s been dealing with it? It’d been more surprising if he wasn’t. I don’t like to throw diagnostics on fictional characters or anything(this is a lie I love fictional characters but I am not legally allowed to diagnose anyone who I dont see as a patient)? But like, it is highly likely that clinically some situational depression has developed for him as, at the very least, a response to all the abuse.   Just based on some of the way he reacts in earlier episodes.
Next, before running to the pool, Vegas goes through a vicious gun battle - which all on its own is enough to pump the body through some of the wildest nature can produce and leave a person changed neurochemically for life - and proceeds to walk in on his father having been shot in the head. Um. Yeah. That is, as we say in the biz, a Big T trauma, the kind that leads to PTSD. Which isn’t to say that moment would cause PTSD or that every fucking character in this show doesn’t already have PTSD. What I mean is that when people experience a Big T trauma, which is clinically what they’re called - I really do wish we had a different term for them but we do not that I know of  - after a Big T Trauma is the acute aftermath. And I found a digital link to the book I was trained on like….7ish years ago in Trauma Informed Care and cuz I am a big fucking nerd I linked to the chapter about immediate and delayed responses to trauma - its genuinely like....an entire chapter in a text book for clinicians that I had to read when I was working in community mental health and it stuck with me for years. Anyway,  immediately following a Big T Trauma - in particular an acute trauma like the one Vegas has from ya know, being in active combat like the literal soldier every single person but Porchay is and finding his dad brutally murdered by his uncle and his entire professional world collapsing under him in literally one instant and realizing that he has no sense of identity beside being Korn’s handout but more importantly - there are a series of possible *immediate* trauma responses he could be going through that are just a misery. But the ones that are relevant to this scene that are C&P quotes from the TIC book from the US gov I linked you to that I saw in the scene were “Argumentative behavior, immediate disruption of life assumptions (e.g., fairness, safety, goodness, predictability of life), Sadness, Feeling out of control, Denial. Elevated cortisol levels.” They pulled from a bunch of the delayed reactions too, which, let’s be honest, fit prolonged trauma - which ngl? I could write a “Vegas has acute trauma response to Pete’s self-harm incident” meta but lets not - like hopelessness, depression, suicidal thinking, shame, instability, and lowered feelings of self-worth which are all BIG delayed reactions to trauma that aren’t super likely in the moments immediately following an acute trauma but rather weeks months and years after but hey this is a tv show, it’s artistic license here, so I’ll allow it. I mention all this because this information is relevant for where we start with Vegas for that poolside moment, which is immediately after a thwarted suicide attempt.
Knowing all that? We are now aware that Vegas enters the moment in question with his self-worth on the floor, his belief in himself at an all time low, and his sense of agency and his power at rock bottom and that he is in a chemically altered state from what he’s just gone through. He doesn’t have control over his future, he doesn’t have the power to take car.  of what’s left of his family because they’re either dead or Korn is going to handle it. They don’t love him and they don’t give him any support. He doesn’t know it but even his brain isn’t really working with him right now. To his knowledge, Pete is loyal to the major family which is fine because Vegas can’t be trusted not to ruin that anyway because(AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT SO PAY ATTENTION) after all - he tells Pete at the safehouse - his personal narrative is that everyone he loves leaves him and that he kills the living things that trust him to feed them.
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That is where Vegas STARTS the pool scene. To quote my favorite Whitest Kids U Know skit:
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Pete, on other hand, has a full deck. He knows now that if it came down to the wire, Vegas would hand over life or death power to him. He has proven multiple times since he let Pete leave that he is physically safe with Vegas. In the parking deck? Vegas gives Pete emotional safety too.
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This is important because he took away Pete’s safety first. Giving Pete  this along with the conversation about killing him says “Here. You’re in charge now. You get to decide what you want to do with this. You have my literal and figurative heart. Decide what you want to do.” He hands the power back. The exchange has been made.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of conversations on this site about how the submissive are in charge in a formal Dominant/submissive BDSM scene and yeah, in a scene they are. But y’all, I need you to listen to me VERY carefully: prior to this, Vegas and Pete were not in a formal scene. No. Not even in the sex scene where Pete asked him to tie him up.
Pete and Vegas were never scening.  I really need everyone to get that. At their softest they were fucking with ropes and chains (*sings* handcuffs smack a little booty up with my belt). But seriously they were not scening. They were never scening because scening is a part of BDSM play. They were in a battle for their lives via violence and dominance. They were at war. They were engaged in 4D chess. A scene is called a scene because the people who do it are performing pain(sadomasochism) and bondage and dominance and submission as play. That is what the letters in BDSM stand for. And it is called BDSM play because the people engaged in it, while they are aware that what they are doing something that can be dangerous and maybe even life-threatening depending on the act? Are doing this activity because they like it, for fun and enjoyment and fulfillment and some kind of out, not to hurt each other more than the other person specifically asks for. If you do BDSM CORRECTLY - ethically, respectfully, consensually - then are no fucking stakes. I really want everyone reading this to understand that. We all on the same page? Like, there are safety concerns and there are emotional concerns, of course, but BDSM is supposed to be something you add to sex and/or relationships and/or platonic interactions, not a way you navigate whether or not you are or are not truly hurt.
But that moment on the floor of the parking deck is the moment when the last of the power transfers back to Pete from Vegas - physical and emotional. Only after that can Pete start heading towards a place where he can make a decision on whether he wants to explore what loving Vegas can be like when huge chunks of their energy is not spent on a fight for survival.
So he has his power over Vegas. And in the study? He takes his power from the Theerapanyakun family back into himself. The power dynamics of this show coming into play for Pete specifically. His journey at the safehouse with Vegas was different, he realized that he can make choices to give things up not be punished for doing so, and to do so with the Theerapanyakun tells him that he has more safety to move and that he can go after what he wants. He’s also not emotionally invested in this family bullshit. 
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So when he goes out after Vegas, he’s unencumbered, secure in being wanted, feeling physically safe, professional safe(in that he won’t be murdered for going after Vegas and Vegas won’t be either), and he’s got clarity of purpose which, going back to hunger, is a need. He wants Vegas and he needs Vegas. He has decided what he wants and now he wants to have it fulfilled. Like I said, full deck.
And then Pete gets out there and finds that the thing he wants, the person he is invested in, the love he is ready to hand himself into wants to destroy itself instead. Everything that Vegas says, everything that Vegas does - from putting the gun under his chin to pushing him away, to refusing to look at him, saying he has nothing? It devalues what Pete has given up and who Vegas says Pete is to him and what Vegas has said to him so far. Also? Vegas won’t listen to him when he tries to be there for him. Vegas physically won’t let him touch him. Vegas actively won’t let Pete hold him. Vegas is refusing peer-level contact and he is refusing to be controlled.
But Pete has, to quote all those biblethumpers, come into the fullness of his power now, and he will not be fucking denied because he is in love with this man. And finally, after a million goddamn years, we get to the moment I wanted to talk about. Sorry it took so long, but we’re here.
And as they’re kneeling on the ground, Pete has what alcoholics call a moment of clarity. He’s off screen for a second before it happens - the moment of clarity - when he demands furiously that Vegas stop saying that he has nothing - and the dialogue juxtaposed over Vegas’s abject fucking despair. Like, truly, this man really believes he is worthless and has possession of nothing on this planet of earth and Pete is furious, and it transitions to his face and he says, broken, crying, “I’m right here.” because goddamnit Vegas you asshole, do you not remember that you have me? And then, right there, on screen, you can see it happen. You can see the moment he realizes. It’s beautiful. It’s one of the best moments of acting in the whole show. You can see it happen on his face. It’s fucking AMAZING.
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It’s the fucking My Fair Lady Moment. By jove I think he’s fucking got it. In that gif it’s fast? But if you recall in the show? It’s slow. It’s almost hesitant. “(Pause)Because(pause) (slowly)I’m hungry.” 
This moment I let out a bonafide gay gasp y’all. So, in terms of the staging of this shot? Pete is on his literal knees and Vegas is standing.  Pete has his hands on his knees in a classic position of performative submission.  His head is bowed when he finally gets it out and Vegas’s is looking straight ahead. It is so damn artistically stunning
But more than this is narrative import of this moment. Because Pete has realized, he can’t get through to Vegas as an equal and he can’t take him from a power-up position, taking control. But from experience he knows he’s been successful when he’s handed himself over to Vegas before. He knows what it feels like and in that moment by the pool, you watch his face as Pete wrestles with himself for his inner truth for an incredibly long second because, after all, like Pete’s tattoo says, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.” And when he is honest with himself in that moment about Vegas and how he loves him, remembering the moment where he sat, missing hands around his neck, and the truth is that he likes how it feels to be owned by him, he wants more of it. He gave up everything for it. He’s hungry for it. And he says it because it’s true but also because he is an incredibly smart man who knows that Vegas things he’s a degenerate who believes there’s something fundamentally wrong with him, that he breaks everything he touches, and that he has irreparably damaged Pete. By reaching out in this way specifically, he says “No, I like it and I want more. This doesn’t hurt me. Come back and play with me.” It’s a desperate gambit but it’s real.
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That’s why it fucking works.
I said Vegas and Pete were not scening earlier in this meta because prior to this moment? They absolutely were not. They had not be scening but the moment that Vegas starts using the same language Pete, the submissive, has set forth? They enter a scene. Because Pete has set the parameters. He’s in charge now. He’s saying what is and is not okay and now? Now it’s play. Now it’s safe.
Vegas doesn’t know that. Vegas doesn’t know that the rules have changed.He has been both abused and an active abuser for a VERY long time. He is in an acute stress state.  He doesn’t believe that he can be trusted.  So he asks if someone else can take Pete which is an expression of that lack of trust. But. But. He’s still in the scene. Because Vegas, as much as he doesn’t trust himself, and he really doesn’t, is hungry too.
And then, in possibly my favorite moment of depictions of fury being unleashed by a person at something they want since Molly Grue let loose at the last unicorn, Pete hauls off on Vegas.
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I love this moment so much. I just….this whole moment of Pete turns me into a goddamn into a honey badger gnawing on the walls of my enclosure. It’s a submissive perspective of a total power exchange through the language of their brand new scene about the thing that ties them together. It is a coded demand for commitment without any clunky formal BDSM language and yet at no point does it do anything but keep their roles in a dominant and submissive perspective.  It’s Pete saying you made me need you so now you don’t get to stop taking care of me. It’s Pete saying you are the one who chose to tame me so how fucking dare you make me chase you. It is Pete saying you put this leash on me so you don’t get to walk without me now. It’s Pete saying you how dare you take my whole life and not fucking live with me. You own me, you son of a bitch. Did no one teach you how to care for your things?
He comes at that from strength, from force but he is submissive while he does it.
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And then? Pete fucking BEGS.
I love that he begs.
Because the thing is? Vegas really does fucking wants to dominate the shit out of people. He fucking told Pete that after they fuck. He wants to be in power. He likes it. It feels good. It’s a fundamental part of his personality. It is, genuinely, who he is.
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What he doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to do is hurt anyone he cares about anymore. That, I believe, is a result of Gun’s abuse. Because the outcomes we se are very different between Pete and Tawan and and different between what happened from what Vegas was doing to Pete before he starts to consciously and intentionally change his behavior patterns and what he did to Pete after to Pete started to bring his attention to what the abuse had done to him and what choices he was making because of it. After Vegas started changing himself and Pete engaged consensually, when Pete wasn’t hurt, but Vegas was still in power, able to care for him, control him, be gentle with him, suddenly everything shifted for Vegas. But back then they were still at war and everything about his life was violent, so they couldn’t truly make things work and Vegas couldnt make the changes he wanted, not really.  He kept falling back into that destructive behavior because of the intermittent reinforcement pattern with he was receiving from everyone but Macau.
Now everything has changed. However, during the first real torture session, Vegas learned that there is only one thing that Pete begs for. Just one. Pete begs for people he loves to be safe. That’s it. There’s nothing else. He would rather die. Even when he was at his lowest in that safehouse Pete wasn’t the one begging, nah that was Vegas. The only time we have ever seen Pete beg was when grandma was on the line.
If they were fighting each other? Pete would never beg for himself. Because there was no himself to beg for. Begging for himself to have Vegas is begging for Vegas’s well-being. And the moment when Vegas realizes that Pete is begging? Vegas realizes that he matters. That he’s hurting Pete again here by trying to protect him and that is the one thing he doesn’t want to do(he does it with Macau too if you pay attention - by distancing himself and keeping Macau out of most of the family business) that when the penny drops, he realizes that the thing he’s trying to do to protect Pete is the very thing hurting him. And that’s why when Pete begs? Vegas turns.
And the relief. The relief on his face, in his whole body. Because it’s not just Pete who is safe. He is too. They’re creating new behaviors together. They’re changing patterns together. The power is imbalanced but they’ve chosen this, there is communication being attempted and full consent. And it’s working. He’s been doing kept trying to be something else, and it worked.
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After this moment? What they’re doing is becoming able to be play. In the sex scene you see that he has the right instincts, When a submissive is good and asks for something, you give it to him and you don’t hurt them for no reason if that’s not what they want. He doesn’t know it yet, but Vegas does know to do that. You see it in the rope scene. When Pete begs, something clicks in Vegas, that he’s taking responsibility here and so he has to take care of Pete, emotionally and physically. Before that moment, he was trying to pass the buck. After that? He can’t any more.  No one else is going to feed him, and so Vegas has to step up. But he does want that power. Taking care of someone like that feeds his soul. It’s how he loves. It’s why he smiles in the few seconds before he gets fucking shot, which was bullshit.
And you could argue that the after credits scene undoes all that?
But it doesn’t.
Because what they’re doing is untangling all the baggage of the period of them when what they were doing was using power play to hurt each other. Vegas is still assigning roles to Pete(from pet to most important person - a role is a role). Vegas is still deciding where the bodies should go and the physical positioning that Pete lands in is still incredibly submissive. Vegas is still doling out caretaking behaviors(and they include Macau now).
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The difference is that now? Anything they do is likely to be actual BDSM and that moment beside the pool, in a very deliberate and complicated combination of power, hunger, and love that only lived between them, is where their new reality started. They came out of the life or death of are now just…a pair of queers who like to tell each other/get told what to do and it happened in that moment.This is the culmination of one of the most well executed dismounts of “Love Redeems” I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.
And I just really want to give a standing ovation the writers and actors - and Build in particular - for pulling off one of the most impressive moments in a show full of incredibly impressive moments. Just…wow.
(thank you so much to @liyazaki​ for the gifs!)
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isekaiscreencaps · 4 months
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normal behavior during a serious discussion
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icy-watch · 1 month
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The... the first Elemental Master of Water was named Nya?
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