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sou-ver-2-0 · 4 years

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Why calling it "logic versus emotion" makes sense

At the end of chapter 2 in Your Turn To Die, the player is forced to choose between killing Sou or Kanna. Kanna frames this as a choice between "logic" and "emotion," where saving Sou is the "logical" choice and saving Kanna is the "emotional" choice.

Personally, I love the writing in this part. I think it's the strongest writing in the whole game. However, since joining the YTTD fandom, I've read various posts from fans who don't like calling this a simple choice between "logic" and "emotion." For them, it felt like an emotional choice to save Sou, while it was a logical choice to save Kanna. After seeing this argument so many times, I decided to unpack my feelings on it. I also wanted to write my own defense of why calling this a choice between "logic" and "emotion" makes sense, at least to me. For me, it all comes down to how it’s written as a choice between two opposing worldviews, and I don’t focus on the little technicalities. I’ll also argue that the game is using descriptive language, rather than prescriptive language.

But first, we have to deal with a strange irony about this choice:

For the genre-savvy player, yes, it IS "logical" to save Kanna and "emotional" to save Sou.

Before writing anything about this choice, I need to acknowledge that Sara and the Player are two different people. They're obviously connected, and they inform each other's feelings and choices, but they still exist in different worlds. Sara is actually trapped in a Death Game. The Player is vicariously experiencing what it would be like to be trapped in a Death Game through a fictional story.

I'm not going to argue that Sara necessarily likes Kanna more than she likes Sou, and thus it is more "emotional" for her to save Kanna. It's possible to play Sara as someone who isn't that affectionate of Kanna, and she can act generously towards Sou. That's not the main issue here.

The issue is that the Player expects the fictional story to go in certain directions based on the morality of their choices, while Sara has no such meta expectations. The Player can reasonably expect to be rewarded with a happy ending at the end of YTTD if they make the "correct" moral choices. Saving Kanna feels like the "morally correct" choice on a gut level because she's a child, while Sou is an adult. So the Player may choose to save Kanna purely for logical reasons. They're not trying to be selfless or wise; they just want a reward from a videogame. And...they're not wrong! Immediately after saving Kanna, the player is rewarded with a cathartic scene with Joe, cluing us in to the idea that choosing Kanna is the "good path."

Meanwhile, if the Player saves Sou, they're saving him in spite of knowing that this could logically lead to a "dark path." You might save Sou because he's a fascinating character, or because you're curious what will happen, or simply because you think he's cute. These are all emotional reasons. Maybe you don't expect any "happy" rewards if you save Sou, but you still expect the story to be exciting with him around.

Speaking for myself, I want to see both the Kanna and Sou routes for reasons that are both emotional and logical. I sympathize with both characters, and I want to analyze them as they continue their arcs. I just think they're great characters connected to fascinating themes about humanity.

In other words, the Player is going to have all sorts of feelings about this choice based on the safety of their separation from the Death Game. It's only a videogame to us. We're not actually killing a child or a young man. We still feel sad about the story, but it's a safe sadness, one we can control. You can make your choice based on which type of tragedy is more interesting to you in the moment.

So that's how the Player experiences the choice, but what about Sara? Does it still make sense to call it a decision between "logic" and "emotion" for her? I would argue, "yes." First of all...

"Logic" and "emotion" are descriptive terms for the argument styles of Kanna and Sou, respectively.

Using "descriptive" terminology means that we attempt to classify language as it is actually being used. Using "prescriptive" terminology means that we dictate how we should be using language.

When Kanna calls this a choice between logic and emotion, you might have thought she was being prescriptive. You might have thought something like, "You can't tell me how I should feel about this." But I think Kanna was simply being descriptive of the language she and Sou were using. It's a fair assessment of their opposing argument styles.

Kanna argues that you should vote for her by appealing to your sense of logic. She eloquently makes the case that Sou has proven himself invaluable to the team with his computer hacking skills. He came extremely close to finding an escape route just before the second Main Game began. With more time, he could find another one. If he dies, there is no one else in their party with his valuable skill set. She also effectively weaponizes her own helplessness by arguing that she is a "useless" child. She states that dying for the greater good "is the only thing she can do." What I love about Kanna's argument is how she twists Sou's own words against him, since Sou has been using coldhearted logical arguments since the beginning. She shows how much she's learned from him, and she's even able to outsmart him.

Sou argues that you should vote for him by appealing to your emotions. He furiously makes the case that he is the most hated member of the team and that you should give into your hatred of him. He says that the choice ought to be obvious based on your feelings. He calls Kanna stupid. He keeps shouting "Stop!" and "No!" He waves his arms in despair. He resorts to threats and exclaims that he will never forgive anyone who votes for Kanna. Sou's argument is compelling because we have never seen him so vulnerable before. Even with his strong will to live, he has an even more desperate will to save the little girl he's grown to care for. It's devastating to watch such a man break down. After losing his previous eloquence, he is forced to bare his soul and pray that that is enough.

However, even with all that in mind, you could still argue on a technicality that some of Kanna's statements are emotional while some of Sou's statements are logical. For example, when Kanna says that she is useless, this reflects her emotional state since she has low self-esteem. And when Sou starts threatening people, it's logical to take his threats seriously.

But there's something deeper at work here than technicalities. There's still something at the core of their arguments that makes the choice to save Sou "logical" and Kanna "emotional."

At its core, this debate is about how to measure a human life's worth. Do you measure a human life based on how "useful" they are? Or do you recognize a person's worth based on their humanity alone?

This is a choice between two worldviews, which the story calls "logical" and "emotional."

In the logical worldview, you prioritize a person's usefulness over their humanity for the greater good. Also, you must be willing to use people like tools for the greater good.

In the emotional worldview, you refuse to reject anyone's humanity, even if it threatens the greater good. Also, you must accept that some moral causes are more important than survival.

If you vote to save Sou, then Sara prioritizes the greater good; theoretically, the group can use Sou to escape. But being willing to use Sou this way rejects Sou's humanity, because we would be using his talents against his will. For Sou, escape is not worth the cost of Kanna's life. Sara also rejects her own humanity by treating both Sou and Kanna as objects instead of people. Kanna is discarded as a useless object, while Sou is kept as a potentially useful one. This is why Sara guiltily calls this "the worst possible choice" when she makes it. And it's why Sou seems to care more about revenge than survival in this route; there is no meaning in a world where we must sacrifice children.

If you vote to save Kanna, Sara does so knowing it may be harder for the group to escape without Sou's skills. But she embraces Sou's humanity by allowing him to follow his heart. She also strengthens her own humanity by refusing to cross a moral line. This is why Sou actually keeps his will to live in this route and mounts a desperate escape before his death. Because there's still meaning in a world where Kanna is allowed to live. He still dies, but with peace and purpose, and having repaid Sara for freeing his true heart.

In any case, you may still disagree with the semantics of "logic" and "emotion" to describe these worldviews, though they work for me personally. I have one more point to address.

Is it really logical to save someone who threatens you?

At this point, I'd like to talk about the most logical member of the group, the character who immediately votes to kill Kanna: Keiji Shinogi.

You, the Player, may believe that Sou will get his revenge if he lives, because it would make a compelling story. And Sara, a high-school student, may be reasonably afraid of Sou's threats, because Sou has tried to hurt her before. Even though the text doesn't portray Sara as being afraid of Sou in this moment, I understand why the Player would fear for Sara's life. In other words, a logical reason to kill Sou is because you don't believe you can control him. How do you force an adult man to behave?

Enter Keiji Shinogi, who doesn't hesitate. Keiji is stronger than Sou, and he's wicked smart. He's confident in his own abilities. And he understands vengeance better than anyone. He doesn't underestimate Sou, who has outwitted him before, but he decides to accept the risk. Like Sou, Keiji has a ruthless will. I believe that one reason Keiji voted first was because he wanted to assure everyone that "your friendly policeman" would keep Sou in line. So even though Sara doesn't act afraid of Sou in this moment, Keiji is there to calm any hypothetical fears the Player has.

And Keiji commits to this role! In the beginning of Chapter 3, in the route where Kanna dies, the first thing Sou does is disturb the group peace. He puts on his "tough" mask and pretends that he never really cared about Kanna. In response, as everyone else is fidgeting nervously, Keiji laughs and calls out Sou on his bullshit. He eviscerates Sou emotionally, effectively putting Sou in his place and forcing him to be submissive, for now. It's Keiji's way of reminding Sou that they already know how weak he is, and Sou isn't going to get away with any tricks under Keiji's watch. Even if Sou's only "trick" in this case is to pretend he has any pride left.

From a storytelling perspective, I'm sure that these two will keep playing their power games, and Sou is likely to regain the upper-hand eventually. But from an in-universe perspective, Keiji looks like he knows exactly what he's doing in this scene, and Sou looks like a fool who better do what he's told. That is, if he doesn't want Keiji to skewer his heart in front of everyone again.

So where am I going with this?

My most generous interpretation of Keiji's vote is that he decided that Sou's life had value inasmuch as he could use Sou. After all, it's not like Keiji spared Sou out of compassion. Keiji just said that he hated Sou more than anyone he's ever known--and Keiji already killed someone else he hated. The harsher interpretation of Keiji's vote is that he fully expects Sou to die later due to his zero percent survival rate, which would make Kanna's presence technically more of a "threat" to Keiji's own survival. However, I prefer to think that Keiji was swayed by Kanna's brilliant defense of Sou's usefulness. That's because Keiji isn't a simple monster; he's a complex man who still wants to "serve and protect" the group...in his own way.

To follow in Keiji's footsteps and vote with "logic" means that Sara decides to trust Keiji's judgment. We know that Keiji is one of the smartest and strongest characters, in addition to being Sara's reliable ally. This is why I think it's still "logical" for Sara to save Sou in spite of his threats. Because Keiji is still there.

Conclusion

That's why framing the choice as one between "logic" and "emotion" works for me. I see it as a choice between two worldviews, one in which people are valued for their usefulness, and the other in which people are valued for their humanity.

I understand that the Player is going to have their own thoughts and feelings about this choice. Believe me, I was heartbroken too! I really wanted Sou to redeem himself and live. And I think Sara even feels the same way, since she pleads "Don't kill our ally!" when Safalin threatens Sou. It's still possible that Sou could redeem himself in the route where he lives, but I imagine it will be more important that the Player faces consequences for killing Kanna. But no matter what happens in Chapter 3, it doesn't change the fact that it looked possible in Chapter 2 for Sou's skillset to save everyone, and everyone was operating under that mindset.

I think that the writing in this game is stellar so I wanted to defend the story's framing. It surprised me to see folks who had reacted to it differently, but that's all part of the fun. It got me thinking about how interesting it is that the Player and Sara view things differently. It also got me thinking that what seems like a logical choice in the moment could feel like the wrong decision in hindsight.

Thanks for reading!

#yttd #your turn to die #sou hiyori #kanna kizuchi #sara chidouin #keiji shinogi #shin tsukimi #kimi ga shine #your turn to die spoilers #meta #mine #this is absurdly long haha sorry #sou and kanna #my meta

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captaincravatthecapricious · 3 years

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No Way To Get Help

@malevon

Well... this was supposed to be about Jon, but it's about Tim instead. Under the wreckage of the wax museum, Tim isn't dead.

cw nausea, depression, mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation (canon typical levels for Tim end of season 3), ambiguous mentions of injury, hospitals

Four more fics to go, and only one more prompt to send in, so if you have something in mind, get it in quick! I hope you know the drill by now! Thanks @celosiaa for the wonderful card!

The silence is deafening. Or would be if Tim wasn’t partially deaf already. He hadn’t been wearing his hearing aids. What would have been the point? He knows the plan. Daisy and Basira are ….were? Hardly chatty. He didn’t? Doesn’t? Didn’t? Want to hear a single word that Jon had to say.

God. Tenses.

Is anyone still alive? Is it just him?

He should clarify. The silence is deafening after the explosion. After the circus music that was somehow louder, possibly because it was at least partly inside his head. There is probably the sound of rubble settling, and the groaning of burning building, and rushing emergency vehicles. But… he can’t hear a goddamn thing. Just that eternal ringing in his ears. He has never been sure if that was tinnitus or just what silence sounds like. Never thought it worth asking after he learned that people with tinnitus have higher rates of suicide. And… well… if this stupid plan was nothing else, wasn’t it just some grand suicide scheme?

One that looks to have spectacularly failed.

Just him… probably alone. In the dark.

Then again, if he’s alive, maybe the others are too? Does he want that?

If he’s honest, he would rather just be dead.

Not that that is a revelation.

Then again, he could be dead in a minute.

He can’t feel his legs. Well… he can. He wishes he couldn’t. He wishes he couldn’t feel anything. There is so much pain that it just… it’s too much for him to even register as pain anymore. He just feels… cold and crushed. Probably shock because there are actual fires burning around him. He can smell it. The burning plaster and plastic and wood and smoldering concrete… if that is even a thing? Thick air. He’s coughing. And that hurts more.

He can’t hear it, however.

He can’t hear anything but that goddamn ringing in his ears.

He thinks he might be crying.

He can’t hear his own heaving sobs.

Just that high-pitched whine of utter silence.

Do you know what that sound is, highness? Those are the shrieking eels…

That’s it.

The only words his brain can find, as he grows ever more numb. He has no doubt that darkness is eating at his vision, or would be if there was anything but darkness around him.

Not even the words from the book. Lines from the movie. Which isn’t a bad thing… He doesn’t even know his own feelings about his favorite book and his favorite movie.

(That’s not true. He was always a fan of the movie, but… he and Danny read the book to each other so often… He has the work paperback in the pocket of his bomber jacket. Wanted to die with it. Ideally buried with it, but it’s not like he left a note. Aside from that damn tape).

The whine continues. He doesn’t know how long it’s been.

Do you know what that sound is, highness? Those are the shrieking eels…

That had been the first thing he had thought of when he first heard the worms.

He curses the worms to the darkness. If it hadn’t been for them… he could have lived in blissful ignorance about the darker nature of his job… well to some degree. Sasha would still be here. Jon wouldn’t have…. FUCK. He doesn’t want to think about Jon while he’s willing himself out of existence. But….

But Jon. That little fucking moron. Who he HATES. Who he wants to hate.

Does he hate Jon?

Is Jon even still alive?

If he’s dead, does he want to keep hating a dead man? One who …wasn’t any worse than him.

Which isn’t to say blameless, or not a twat at times…. But. But not a monster. And Tim can’t really blame him for not trusting anyone.

Jon… was in the wrong, but so was Tim. They have both been utter dicks. Which has always been Tim’s least favorite plot. God back in publishing… a Lifetime ago… he always hated books that hinged on characters fighting, not talking things out, not Understanding and that rift causing endless misery. Has he really become something that he hated… still hates with every fiber of his being. The number of books that set his teeth on edge from the first misunderstanding. He actually hates most Rom Coms for that reason. Which… surprised just about everyone he’s dated.

He possibly groans. He isn’t thinking clearly.

He can’t hear himself groan.

He really should give it up, and let himself pass out. He hurts. He’s tired. If he wakes up… that’s a problem for later. If he quietly slips away… well… maybe he’ll see Danny there. Maybe he’ll see Sasha. Hell, maybe if he sees Jon there, they can work something out. If there is an afterlife… they’ll have all the time in the world. (Or rather all the time in the next world). And if not… well. Eternal rest sounds pretty damn good.

…But. But Jon. If Jon is alive down here… He should be close.

And… Tim can’t let him die alone under this building. He can’t lose someone else to the Circus while he sits idly by. And Damn it, maybe he doesn’t want to meet Jon in the afterlife just yet, maybe he wants a break? (And maybe he just loves him too much to completely give up on him… even though he knows he is far too late. Too many bridges burned. “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” A line from Jon’s favorite play.)

Tim tries to move his fingertips. And almost screams. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

He thinks he might scream. But he can’t hear a sound.

He braces himself and tries again. Stretching his arms out as wide as he can. Moving dust and ash and rubble. He almost passes out. Or maybe he does pass out. Time has no meaning in this place.

He finds a hand. Cold. And limp. And his heart stops, first for fear that this is another mannequin. Then for fear that this is all that is left of someone who was… could have been… is? Something to Tim. Everything to Tim.

Tim thinks he might vomit.

He feels out a little further as his head swims. He feels the stretched and puckered skin of undoubtedly Jon’s right hand. Unresponsive. Possibly dead.

Tim coughs. Choking on the soot and heat and fumes in the air. A massive weight both metaphorical and painfully tangible on all of him. Aching pain breaking him into little shards, which turn right around and skewer him.

Tim loses consciousness. Old and cracked and dry paperback of The Princess Bride in his pocket. Limp hand of his… friend? In his hand.

Tim wakes up in hospital.

His lungs hurt. And everything feels distant and fuzzy. Probably being pumped through with a lot of painkillers. Probably for the best, or he might be more upset for waking up. He wants to ask after Jon… but he can’t get his mouth to open.

And suddenly he’s thinking about Westley. Mostly dead. Revived. Head flopping around on his neck. Danny had lost his shit laughing at that… it always made Tim feel sick after… everything. The imitation of life… couldn’t quite shake the image of… that night. Christ if he was on less drugs, he would probably puke.

He would shake his head if he could move.

“You just shook your head, that doesn’t make you happy?”

He is also struck by the thought that this is Kill Bill in reverse. Nearly died getting his revenge, and then ending up in a coma. (He watched those movies on Bad days. When he downs enough whiskey to drown a horse. He can’t say he really remembers much of them, but they were always cathartic.)

He tries to look at his feet. But he can’t even lift his head.

He closes his eyes again.

When he opens them, he sees Martin. Worn and tired. Looking older than ever, more haggard than Jon.

Shit! Jon. Is Jon here? Is he dead?

He still can’t move.

He looks at Martin again. Martin is… talking? Tim can’t make out anything. Just the dull murmur of meaningless sound.

…But.

Martin is holding a book.

A sooty, singed book.

Martin sitting between two hospital beds, holding Tim’s old copy of The Princess Bride, facing Tim presumably so if Tim were to come around, Tim could read his lips.

“I said, ‘What do you mean, “Westley dies”? You mean dies?

My father nodded. ‘Prince Humperdink kills him.’

‘He’s only faking though, right?’

My father shook his head, closed the book all the way.

‘Aw shit,’ I said and I started to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ my father said. ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ and he left me.”

Martin is also crying. Just like Billy in the book.

“’Who gets Humperdinck?’” Tim whispers. Painfully aware of how dry his throat is. It’s no more than a cracked whisper.

And then he’s coughing.

He can barely hear himself, but he swears he is coughing out a lung.

Martin has dropped the book. Staring in wide-eyed shock for a moment, before yelling something. Scrambling up. Probably getting a doctor. Tim wishes he hadn’t gone.

He looks are where Martin had been, but ends up getting a good look at the bed next to him. And sees one, very still and very pale Jonathan Sims. Very bandaged, and frighteningly still. Tim can’t see breathing.

And then he’s being poked and prodded and tested and Martin is talking to him. And everything hurts. Until it doesn’t and he’s lying still and Martin is smoothing his hair down and holding his hand and telling him that he’s been unconscious for a month. That Jon is all but brain dead. That Elias is in police custody.

By the time Jon wakes up, five months later, Tim has decided to give him another chance, he and Martin are sharing a flat, there is another room ever hopeful that Jon will want to join then if- no, when he wakes up.

Also. Jon’s hair may or may not be dyed green.

Maybe.

No, Tim has no idea what everyone is looking at him like that for.

#the magnus archives #tma #magnuspod #tim stoker #timothy stoker #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #cw suicidal ideation #cw nausea #cw injury #cw hospitals #fic #my fic #my writing #my art #my words

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mc-critical · 3 years

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Who do you think, out of the entire MC franchise, would you say was the best mother? I would honestly have to say Mahidevran since she was so nurturing and compassionate towards Mustafa (I loved their scenes together) and you could tell Mustafa’s safety always came first to her. What are your thoughts?

No mother of the franchise is perfect and as I’ve said before, there is no way mothers in the harem can develop a completely healthy (as we know it) relationship with their children. Still, I appreciate the various types of mothers we saw in MC/K and I usually love the scenes they have with their sons and/or daughters, since they enrich the characters and give them more humanity and depth.

I think I’ll also put Mahidevran as the best mother of the franchise. To be fair, one important writing advantage she possesses over the rest is that her relationship with Mustafa is probably the most fleshed out mother-son relationship of the entire franchise - we saw it develop in the span of four seasons and we saw every possible side of it. Mahidevran’s motherhood is a very vital aspect of her character: her love for Mustafa has always been there ever since her introduction and after she lost SS, Mustafa was all she had left. Everyone around her encouraged her to focus only on him and his upbringing. That didn’t seem so easy for a person who had yet to adapt to the immediate changes of her life and to accept the loss of a person that has undoubtedly been very important to her, but Mustafa has been there with her in every step of the way and the support they gave each other as early as S01 was very profound and human and I couldn’t help but tear up many times. And most remarkably, when she put her past in Manisa behind, when she truly focused the most on Mustafa, Mahidevran’s motherhood became a powerful indicator of her character development and I truly can’t think of another mother who evolved this beautifully.

Mahidevran has very strong motherly instincts outside of Mustafa and I loved how she saved Mehmet, the care she took of Mihrimah during the Janissary rebellion and the understanding she provided when Mehmet was struck with the arrow in E75. Hürrem also had equally strong motherly instincts during the same rebellion as well and I admire her for it, but one could argue it’s a little more surprising for Mahidevran to show them in such a way - back in S01, pre-E16, she didn’t seem to show signs that she could take care of the children of her enemy like that. Not many people would expect a person who has wished Hürrem’s death in her childbirths to do that at all. And yet she did. Once she saved Mehmet, we found out that she didn’t want the children’s deaths at all, even though she did make an attempt on Hürrem’s life when she was pregnant out of hurt and desperation. In fact, Mahidevran’s hate for Hürrem seems to be unbreakable, to know no bounds, except when it concerns the children. Once that happens, this is the only time she’s ready to let go. These are the only times she could ever understand Hürrem. The one scene where she herself went to her in good terms, to the point of her trying to return her ring, happened after she found out Hürrem protected Mustafa. It is clear that children and motherhood are important to Mahidevran, so important they can become the most important things in her life, so important she can leave her enmity with Hürrem for that and that alone. And conversely, her hatred for Hürrem reached the strongest peaks when it concerned Mustafa, as well: once he was exiled to Amasya and once he died, respectively, giving her a whole new motive to live and seek justice from the hands of God.

The advices (E55 and E56 aside) she gave to Mustafa are Mahidevran at her most perceptive - she speaks both from heart and experience and does her best at nurturing and caring for her son, understanding his struggles the way no one else could. Mustafa seeking vast support from everyone comes as much from her as it does from Ibrahim (I’m referring to this scene in particular) and while that sure is a double-edged sword when it comes to Süleiman’s opinion, it did motivate Mustafa to give his all to be the best heir he can be and gave him a certain upper hand over his brothers. Her advices are also her at her most decisive - showing that at this point, she knows what she’s talking about and can easily sense danger and warn accordingly. She has gained a fair sense of paranoia when it comes to his safety (understandably enough) and that is a factor of her advices as well, but it proves that she can be careful, that she isn’t as naive as she may look and that it’s not that easy to deceive her as it may have seemed.

Interestingly enough, before Mahidevran fell out of love with SS, she was fighting with her own loss and winning SS back and her hurt over it may seem to have taken primacy over the advantages she has as a mother. In E10, her first thought was Mustafa when SS appeared dead. Even in E55, she begins to look at her own possible advantageous position that comes with Mustafa only after Valide reminded her that she has her son. The falling out of love has started to the point she can openly think of her own future, but her feelings for SS were still conflicted and she could freely remember all the good times with him and lament them before she considered standing up. Her arc was moving back and forth between Mustafa, Süleiman and her own independence before she completed the full transition and had the chance to embrace the comparatively calmer environment and take full hand on Mustafa. Which is why Mustafa not being a priority at all is exactly Mahidevran at her worst. Due to her will for revenge, it was him she detached from to the point of her not wanting to go to Manisa with him in order to finish her battle with Hürrem in the form of ruling the harem. That was the only moment where she considerably detached herself from one of her best virtues and arguably did the most mistakes, culminating in a definite loss, for that moment. But we can say this was a learning experience for her, the cathartic process that granted her an entirely new push in strength and made her both a better character and a better mother than ever.

Yes, Mahidevran isn’t the perfect mother and she could inadvertently put Mustafa in danger due to her own personal pride being wounded (E48), her tears that could sometimes turn into breakdowns (E23) definitely affected him a lot to the point he was constantly willing to defend her, which, admittedly, could cause trouble (once again E48), but I could understand all this, because when everyone else doesn’t seem to alleviate your pain in the best way in your eyes, you become helpless when you have nobody else to confide in. For Mahidevran Mustafa was the only one she could truly confide in and he was her only tangible source of comfort when she’s pained to the point she can’t think rationally, in a way. There were definetly moments where she was ready to assert her own power through him, involving him in her fights. But once again, these things were stuff she developed out of, now indeed considering his safety first and foremost, telling him to stay away from any and all danger and to not provoke his enemies in any way. She became ready to eliminate all threats to him by herself and that’s also why she commited her biggest sin in the series: it was in a desperate, urgent attempt to protect Mustafa that she killed Mehmet. She thought only about him then, never about herself. (in E101 we see that Mustafa isn’t in the best condition after being exiled in Amasya to the point he was willing to not let anyone close to him and commit suicide and Mahidevran knew this, giving orders to Taşlicalı through Fidan to not leave him alone while she’s gone. With that I wanna thank Joanna for noticing this a while back! <33) She was ready to do anything and everything for him. Her path as a mother is heartfelt and fascinating to me.

I find Ayşe Hafsa to also be a very good mother, though. She was also the most notable in her advices and perceptiveness she delivered to SS. It was for a reason he thought of her as his conscience and seeing how he spiraled down massively after her absence, she may have been a huge part of his justice system, even though there were times where he disregarded her. She grounded him and told him which lines he shouldn’t cross just as she provided emotional support when he left for campaigns or went in the divan.

Her and Hatice are probably the best mother and daughter relationship on the franchise (Gevherhan and Kosem come as a close second), for there we saw genuine love and genuine support, as well. She fell ill precisely for the thought of her daughter’s pain after she learns about Ibrahim and Nigar. Hafsa is more tradition-bound and that may cause her to disregard her children’s wishes or cross paths with them quite a few times, but her motherhood is certainly one of her good qualities, especially when it shined through her flanderization in S02.

Despite of her cold pragmatism, Şah seemed to be a very good mother, all things considered. She was able to put Esmahan's wishes above her own by agreeing to try marrying her to Bali Bey and most importantly, sparing Lütfi Pasha for her sake alone.

I don’t consider Hürrem to be a totally bad mother by any means, especially how, as I mentioned, her motherly instincts can be as strong as Mahidevran’s, but there are factors where she falls a little short for me. One of them is screentime, to be brutally honest: we simply didn’t get much of her relationship with Mehmet for this reason, except for the schematic praise, hope for him to be the padisah and her not allowing him to go to the sanjack. We didn’t get much of her with Mihrimah in S03, either, even though their S03A relationship is the best part of it for me. I love her relationships with Selim, Bayezid and Cihangir much, much more writing-wise and my favourite point of Hürrem as a mother, as I mentioned once, is the S02B Cihangir arc. There we see her genuine concern over him that puts her motherhood to the forefront, we see how terrified she is of his incoming operation and that’s Hürrem at her most emotionally honest overall (and I wish we had more of that!). I love her protective mama bear attitude. I love how she managed to keep her children away from conflict in the earlier seasons (with the exception of little Mihrimah in S02A) and that certainly gave her some advantage.

Her problems as a mother, however, appeared later down the line and managed to prevail, with her mishandling of the Selim and Bayezid conflict being her biggest failing in the whole show for me. Her fixation on her enemies, or Mustafa in particular, dominated in how she dealt with her children in S04, to the point she moulded them for the political game, made pragmatic decisions she explained far too late (like why she sent Selim in Manisa), condemned them for their mistakes more than necessary (Mihrimah) and attempted to make them fully fixated on one goal, to no avail. I get her motives - Mehmet’s death empowered her will for revenge in an enormous way and she is now even more desperate to win the fight of her life that would help her make them respect her, ,,kneel to her feet’’ and defeat them all, but that way she had to make her children fully commit to that same fight, putting their personal feelings and desires behind and sometimes overlooking their own problems. She loves her children a lot and the realization that she had to choose between Selim and Bayezid broke her to pieces, but some problems manage to outweigh that. She’s an interesting, relatable in this time period, mother, but I certainly wouldn’t call her the best one of the franchise.

We didn’t see much of Nurbanu as a mother, but she certainly seemed to love Murad, but show strictness as well. We also saw how ruthless she can get when it comes to the survival of her and her son when she was about to kill Defne's kids.

Defne is a very nurturing mother, from what we saw. She's probably shown as a nurturer the most when it comes to all the mothers and her love and protection of her children is warm, yet heartbreaking, especially because she's ready to take risks she never had when Nurbanu comes for them. That scene was the peak of her removing her loyalties to her in general.

I wouldn’t compare the dynastic sultanas like Hatice or Gevherhan as mothers, simply because they’re not very often shown as such. Hatice wanted to have children so badly, but we didn’t see her much with her living children, which is solely a writing issue. Gevherhan isn’t seen as a mother that much to comment on it, either, even though yes, she clearly loves her children.

Safiye is another deal: she loves her children, but keeping her power has always taken primacy over them. Though it’s not to be denied that their deaths are moments of big vulnerability for her and indicators for the last ounces of her humanity - once Fahriye died, she seemed to have lost some of that humanity. Once Iskender died, she was finally willing to let go. But this humanity in her motherly relationships couples with her moments of disregarding them: as seen with Fahriye and especially, Humasah. There was a hinted resentment of Humasah’s of Safiye, and I’m sure there was a reason for it, despite of Humasah listening to her still in some cases.

Handan is a comparatively good mother. She also tries her best to protect Ahmet from stronger enemies and he is the reason she had fought this war against Safiye and Halime and ended up outranking them. One part she commited suicide was perhaps because she didn’t see any sign of acceptance in Ahmet of her love with Dervish, one of the few things that made her happy in the cage that is the castle. Getting such strong disapproval from her own son… it hurt.

I see Kösem as a mother that cares about her children, but is often forced to couple them with the needs of the country or caves in to the necessity to represent the traditions, as well as the country. That’s why she ended both Ibrahim and Murat, no matter how much she didn’t want to. Her whole arc was about the dilemma of representing the state and her own motherly persona and she fought the fratricide law so hardly, for no one to endure their children being killed no more. She knows best what is like to lose children and that also motivated her in doing what she considered right in ruling the empire, trying her best to stop any failings.

I elaborated in the past on why I think Halime and Gülbahar are very toxic mothers and I stand by these opinions.

I know the ask was about who is the best mother in the franchise, but I want to mention, for the second time, the worst mother in the franchise, is Turhan. Oh god, Turhan. She is the worst mother both character-wise and writing-wise - nor have we seen her show any affection for Mehmed at all, nor have we had that much time to see it, either. She is a one-dimensional thematic symbol, nearly devoid of vulnerability or humanity, and (even though that fits thematically, except for her relationship with her son) that also includes her son.

#magnificent century #muhteşem yüzyıl #muhtesem yuzyil #ask #stuffandthangs

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wingletblackbird · 3 years

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My Complicated Thoughts on Merlin

I started watching Merlin because I’d seen a lot of posts about it on Tumblr and heard good things. I struggled to watch it once we got to Season 4 though. I don’t think I have ever experienced such a love/hate relationship with a series in my life. I’ve tried to figure out why I have so many mixed feelings. Writing this post is cathartic, and has led me to the ultimate conclusion that I am in love with the potential of this show, but I don’t actually like what we were given.

The Portrayal of Oppression/Morgana’s Arc:

Morgana’s arc could have been way more interesting, but they skip over too much important character development that we needed to see. In the beginning we see that Morgana opposes Uther’s cruelty. She is portrayed as being compassionate. We sympathize with her plight, especially once she discovered she has magic.

This leads to an interesting moral dilemma. Should Morgana simply assassinate the king? Is Merlin’s long-game with Arthur more effective or moral? Uther is killing innocents. A revolution might be considered just.

Instead, extremely rapidly, Morgana is played as the bad guy simply because she has decided to betray Camelot. We see her slaughtering innocent people herself when she becomes Queen. Why this transition to becoming like Uther but with magic so quickly? It made sense for her to want to assassinate Uther. That does not immediately make her evil. That needed to be more gradual. I saw the motivation for her hatred of Uther. But how she became evil, that is not portrayed well at all.

We see hints of Morgana’s self-centeredness when she refuses to leave the Druids even knowing they’ll be slaughtered. Examine that streak. Show how a good cause can be corrupted by someone who becomes drunk on hate and power. The show tries, but it doesn’t quite get there. Show me that even a righteous cause can be led by a corrupted individual.

Worse, the show does not show the nuance in any satisfying way. Show me that Morgana’s crusade against Uther and Arthur can actually be justified given that the law indicates that they would kill her and her kind. Morgana could legitimately consider Merlin a traitor. Her initial opposition to Uther is justified. He has committed and is committing genocide. Killing him could be seen as defense herself and other innocents. This could be opposed to Merlin’s bloodless coup, if you will. Which is the better option? What are the pros and cons?

And speaking of such oppressions, Merlin frees Freya and helps with Mordred. We really could have afforded to see more about how Merlin helps sorcerers escape, or about an underground network in general. How do they see Merlin? Do they hope he will influence the future king? Do they see him as a traitor? We see hints of this throughout the show such as with Gilli, but the writers never truly take it there. The story with Gilli ended up being about the corruption of power etc., and I liked it, but there was more to that story that needed to be addressed. Is it right or wrong for Merlin to defend Uther? Does it depend on the context? There are many times Merlin does that.

How Merlin Views Arthur:

Speaking of oppression, let’s talk about the effect it has on the psyche of Merlin. When we first meet Merlin, he has a strong moral compass, and confidence in his abilities. What he does not have is good self-esteem. He wonders if he’s a monster. He struggles because he is so powerful with something that is hated and can get him and his loved ones killed. Imagine the kind of fear that can creep into your soul when you have been watching people like you get executed since you were a child. Worse, you struggle to control your own abilities. You love your magic, maybe, but you also loathe yourself for the danger.

Merlin, then, is a prime target for believing in Destiny. It’s nice to think he has a purpose in this after all. It is pretty clear that the Dragon is being manipulative. I don’t blame him after being trapped for decades. But Merlin is vulnerable and initially starts to protect Arthur because he needs to think he has a reason to be the way he is and is not a monster.

Having said that, I think we can say that Merlin does quickly come to love and respect Arthur. He believes that Arthur is a good man and will lead a good kingdom. All of these are good reasons to stay in his service. It is a good way to eventually show Arthur that magic can be good, to get a kingdom without oppression and the bloodshed of a revolution, and to protect a man he considers a friend.

The problem with this is that by the end of the third season, Merlin’s double or triple motivation seems to narrow down in focus to simply protecting Arthur. Okay...but when are you going to have him see magic is good? I understand Merlin not being able to outright say anything because that might make him seem like a sympathizer, or just because of a lifetime of fear. But after all that subterfuge with Dragoon the Great and you can’t come up with a way to show magic doing something good without implicating yourself? Trust in Arthur’s character that you extol?

The fact is that by not revealing his magic to Arthur at the multiple different opportunities offered implies that Merlin does not in fact believe that Arthur is the man Merlin claims he is. I equally understand that growing up under that kind of oppression Merlin is not thinking straight. (Gaius does not help.) Furthermore, once you’ve risked your life to protect a man, it can become very hard to back out because you’ve already lost too much. It can also be hard to admit to secrecy after years of a relationship. But Merlin’s actions show that in the end, he does not trust Arthur, which is why he was supposed to have been protecting him. This suggests that Merlin is really just being emotionally manipulated. He has grown up in this oppression, and wants to believe his magic is good, and he has sacrificed too much, lost too much, at his point so he protects Arthur...even at the cost of other’s of his kind.

If anything, Merlin goes from a kind-hearted boy who rescued people like Freya...to being willing to turn a blind eye to their suffering....!? Merlin goes from confident in the first season, with a clear moral compass...to being less so later on? When in theory, especially with Uther dead, he should be safer? More willing to take risks?

There is another military aspect to consider as well. Morgana is a legitimate threat and without magic, Camelot cannot defend itself well. By not telling Arthur about his magic, or by not finding a way to make Arthur think about magic, Merlin is endangering everyone in Camelot. Arthur cannot defend his kingdom without the tools he needs. Merlin is now disrespecting his king, and making the decisions that are Arthur’s to make. How can Arthur command his armies without vital information? Merlin is powerful enough to be able to flee Camelot on the off chance Arthur tries to execute him. (In which case, maybe Merlin should join the other side.) He chooses to risk every life in Camelot rather than reveal his secret and help Arthur plan. That was acceptable for a minor coup when Morgana first took over. It’s not so great as the stakes progress. Merlin was always willing to risk his life to do the right thing. And yet, when it counts the most, when Arthur is the one on the throne, he doesn’t?

This is never addressed in any satisfactory manner.

Arthur’s Arc and Unfulfilled Expectations:

This leads us to Arthur’s character arc. If Arthur’s character had shown Merlin the same respect in later seasons as in the first couple, I don’t think Merlin would have been placed in the position of having to truly betray his kind or indicate his trust in Arthur was wrong. Arthur even early in their relationship, like with Valiant, listens to Merlin. However, in later seasons, after so many years of faithful service, (and being right), Arthur is quick to dismiss him. (And then even that might get reversed in a dime...what are the writers thinking?) Of everyone from the knights to Gwen, Merlin is afforded the least recognition or respect it feels like at times.

Arthur also in the beginning showed concern for his friend. Additionally, he showed great concern in his own constipated way for Merlin’s feelings when he was down. Not so much in the later years... Why?

Moreover, has Arthur really learned to treat everyone as equals? Or only the one’s who have done something for him?

I don’t blame Arthur for his stance on magic much, because he has little reason to believe otherwise. However, in the earlier seasons we see him defying his father over things like killing Mordred, a child. Yet, in later seasons, he never seems able to step out of his father’s shadow. Never seems to truly realize how abysmal his father’s rule was. The Arthur of the early seasons ought to have grown enough to be able to do that, and therefore safely allow magic again. This does not happen. He is shown as being devastated by what he did to the druids...is this ever followed up on?

This leads into unfulfilled expectations. Arthur was supposed to usher in a period of peace. Did he? No. And no matter what Kilgharrah says, I’m not buying it. If they had framed Kilgharrah as lying about that and manipulating poor Merlin for revenge, it would have made for a dreadful tragedy. As it is, it’s just a huge let down. If they had shown Merlin to be a tragic victim of oppression and manipulation who ended up not serving the man he thought he was...it would have been horrifying but interesting. As it is, I just hate it.

Why would I want to watch someone who has been oppressed and threatened with death, lose everything to protect what he hoped would be his friend and his freedom, only to have to live with just being used? And be told that eventually, if you wait long enough, then you will have succeeded? That this was a good thing?! Is framed as a good thing? NO! I was sold a story about a man in a position of power being befriended by a man who has been oppressed. The man in power learns from his friend and becomes a man who helps liberate the oppressed. Together they create a better world. Eventually, the man in power dies tragically and we all cry. Instead I got this absolute garbage.

I can see why Merlin’s fandom is so prolific. It is perfect for fanfic, because we have an interesting premise and interesting characters, but god-awful canon-writing. BBC Merlin is garbage with potential.

#notstarwars #bbc merlin

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godofsexdrugsandrocknroll · 3 years

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5 Reasons Why It’s Good To Be Merc

Professor Oobleck: [To the class] --anybody? Perhaps you, miss Fall?

Cinder: [On scroll, panics] I uh--

Mercury: Sorry teach--

Professor Oobleck: [Loudly] Doctor!

Mercury: [Ignoring him] --but Cindy’s too busy sexting her boyfriend.

Cinder proceeded to furiously kick her asshole of a subordinate in the shin.

Professor Oobleck: *Grimaces* Perhaps, miss Fall, you can engage in...that sometime more appropriate.

Cinder: [Clutching throbbing toes] Of course Doctor Oobleck, I have no idea what I was thinking. [Glares at Mercury]

Mercury smiled. He’d get it later, but the hissing voice of Cinder as well as the slight tears in the corner of her eyes was worth it.

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

Emerald ran from the room in the warehouse, cackling the entire way with his legs in her hands. Sitting at a chair, stumps hanging off, Mercury felt his blood boil - before he took a breath and calmed down. He knew this was in revenge for Cinder nearly breaking her toes, her foot against his cybernetic prosthetic.

He also didn’t care. Focusing, he felt a faint glimmer of his aura getting further away from him and he sent a series of pulses that had one purpose. To remotely flip one of his legs.

Emerald: [Distantly] Ogg fugg, my fuggah teef! [Moaning in pain]

Having effectively kicked the thief’s teeth out, Mercury smiled. Best anti theft measures, ever.

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Mercury: Kiiiii-fucking-yah!

And like that, the third year Huntsman went down like a sack of bricks. It was expected - the moron had activated his semblance, Yo-Yo, and used a powerful telekinetic pull to yank Mercury towards him. But he wasn’t anything in comparison to his shitbird of an old man.

So delivering a flying sidekick right out of an action movie was all too sweet and all too easy. Also cathartic because the moron had been going on about how lame his boots were and (the real reason he kicked the moron in the skull while going at least 30MPH) ridiculing him for not using his semblance.

Vytal Festival Crowd: *Raucous cheering*

The adulation of the masses was pretty nice too. As he walked back to the waiting room, he grinned. All he had to do now was wait for blondie to make it to the finals, put up a good act and then he can test himself against some real opponents.

They might just be Atlas grunts, but they weren’t the premiere military organization on Remnant for no reason.

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

Mercury grunted, the new additions to his legs making walking awkward. Sure it was just a few pistons as well as a miniature dust engine, but after years of getting used to his leg shaped prosthetics it was a bit awkward with these new clunkier ones.

He stumbled into Emerald, who immediately sneered at him before her brow furrowed.

Mercury: ‘Sup, Em?

Emerald: [Eyes flick towards him] Nothing. Cinder said her scar feels “hot” again, so I’m bringing her a cool towel. *Eyes narrow* What the hell are you doing here? You said the dungeons were creepy.

Mercury just shrugged, watching her carefully. He opened his mouth to speak and saw her staring at the bulky lower half of his legs.

Emerald: And what the hell is that!? [Eyes flick from Mercury, to the dungeon, to the entrance of the hallway that led out of Evernight Castle] Wait a minu--

Mercury didn’t hesitate. Pistons pumped, his dust engine whirred to life with a sound like miniature tornado and with a shift of the leg, a single dust round shot from his ankle and his leg kicked upwards blindingly fast.

Right between Emerald’s legs. The girl was lifted off her feet for a brief few seconds and her formerly narrowed eyes were bulging out of her skull. Then Mercury was putting his modded legs to good use and charging from Salem’s castle, leaving Emerald behind making sounds somewhere between a dying animal and a deflated balloon.

Sure he had to worry about Salem coming to kill him for effectively quitting the game, but if there was one thing his father literally beat into his skull it was that there wasn’t much point in following someone for the sake of an ideal.

Because there was nothing better than cold, hard cash.

And if the freaky Grimm bitch was out to destroy the world, how the hell was he gonna spend all that cash? It ate at him to even remotely agree with his old man, but he had a point.

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Mercury: You know, if someone ever told me I’d be retiring to a beach with a hot midget I probably would’ve laughed. [Pauses] Then I probably would’ve caved their skull in with a good snap kick, but that’s beside the point! Cheers, tiny! *Slurps obnoxiously on a cocktail*

Neo lay next to him in a beach chair, a pink and brown bikini done in her colors but with a pink cup beneath her brown hair on the left side with a brown cup beneath her pink hair on the right side, with the bikini bottoms alternating the colors again.

Her hands also clenched the armrests mutinously. When she screwed Cinder over and shoved Hush through her belly, she figured her best bet was to go to sea. Find an island. Except she found the Maiden’s old assassin that Salem and her people occasionally tried finding (but to little success, Black keeping on the move) and he’d been the one to charter the boat. He’d been the one to find the tropical paradise they’d been living on the last few years.

It had mostly been a pragmatic choice - neither of them really enjoyed tanning, anything to do with the water and they only truly enjoyed the weather itself. There was a small town a couple miles through the palm trees with a little over a thousand in population who didn’t care who they were as long as they were willing to kill the occasional Grimm.

And so life had gone on. Then those assholes who’d killed Roman did the same to Salem. Word had gotten out. The witch was obliterated by some “heeeyuuuw-mongus purple and gold laser beam!”, that probably meant they didn’t need to worry about the Gods anymore either and the only way Salem would die is if the fire bitch was a corpse first.

So they’d celebrated. Once. Then never again because for the diminutive ice cream themed girl, once was more than enough with a dick weasel like Mercury Black. Seriously, 2 years on this island and he still was calling her a midget! He slurped his drinks! Even though he knew sex was permanently off the menu, he had no problem checking her out or any sense of privacy!

“Nothing I haven’t seen before, shortie.”

He even had eaten her damn ice cream and shrugged, like she wasn’t about to push her fucking spoon through his throat and scoop out his jugular! He was insufferable and he often smelt of motor oil and Hatchet Body Spray!

Mercury: *Sighs happily* Yup. Life is good. *Burps loudly*

Screaming silently, Neo shoved off towards their shared house while kicking up sand the entire way and wondering if those best-friend-murdering-cunt-nuggets would actually believe she would reform herself because she had an obnoxious roommate.

Maybe the cute, doofy looking blond boy would. Huh. Now she had an in - the doofus hadn’t really done anything to earn her ire. Yeah. She’d go to him, make friendly and their friendship would be what would convince his other friends, the titty monster and friend killer especially, that she really did want to be a good guy.

Meanwhile Mercury lowered his shades, checked out the perky booty and shrugged.

Mercury: [Steals her drink] And now she’s wasting good liquor. Eh. More for me! *Slurps*

He grinned as a local girl on a surf board bent to keep her balance, her significantly larger, tanner ass not being contained by her white bikini.

Mercury: *Enjoys life*

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

I’ve never quite understood why the assassin of all people didn’t just up and leave Salem at some point. I have to assume Cinder was paying him to begin with and then the fear of death might have kept him there but are you really gonna tell me this man didn’t think it’d be possible to just run from Salem at some point? Disappear into the background? Come on.

Sure he wouldn’t have disappeared to an island or anything, but crack is what I do apparently.

So yeah, that’s it for RWBY for today and probably until I have an idea again. I actually had these after answering Fish’s ask yesterday and decided to get them down since they’re basically the only ideas I’ve had for my Tumblr.

Hopefully people like these. :D

#rwby #mercury black #cinder fall #professor oobleck #emerald sustrai #neopolitian (rwby)#au #this is what happens when you let a drunk type #what's crack-a-lackin'#shitpost

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skullsandwineglasses · 4 years

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Ashes of Love Ep 40 Impressions

It’s a very standard mythology/fantasy romance drama where the male lead is a brooding, high ranking war god who falls hard for a bubbly, vulnerable, and naive spirit/fairy who barely ranks as an angel (but who is really of noble birth).

Deng Lun and Yang Zi have easy chemistry, though you don’t really feel the full effects of their acting until the episodes when they’re in the mortal realm. They’re great actors, but they don’t really bring anything new to the table until their characters are given more depth when they’re out of the heavenly realm.

DL plays Xufeng, a near-perfect love interest in both the immortal and mortal realms. It’s easy to see the appeal of the drama because his character is essentially a wish fulfillment fantasy. He’s romantic, protective, reasonable, willing to love Jin Mi unconditionally, and just all around a flawless character (this is problematic though, as I’ll explain below).

On the other hand, while Xufeng is the ultimate hero, Jin Mi is the repressed victim who isn’t even allowed to have romantic feelings for anyone (literally) since her heart is sealed off by her mother’s spell (read: pill).

This is where is gets frustrating. The angst in this drama comes from the fact that Jin Mi isn’t able to fully reciprocate Xufeng’s feelings, even though deep down she wants to. She’s emotionally stunted because apparently people are able to enter her heart and re-seal it, as if her feelings are a switch that can be turned on and off.

She has no agency in the immortal/heavenly realm. Everyone makes decisions for her, trying to decide what’s best for her, and keeps her in the dark. In the mortal realm, where she’s uninhibited, she’s able to love and make her own decisions, and live on her own terms. She breaks the rules and follows her heart. Despite being veiled by a mask, mortal Jin Mi is more of a free spirit than the immortal Jin Mi who feels that she needs to consult her elders and afraid of offending them. The scene where mortal Jin Mi confesses that she loves the king was hella cathartic because she finally expresses what she feels freely and loudly. We’re 40 episodes into the drama, and Jin Mi still can’t freely think, or even feel, for herself. When she returned to the heavenly realm, it was like having taken 10 steps forward then 20 steps back.

Jin Mi doesn’t make things happen, but instead things happen to her. Everyone’s fighting over her and she doesn’t even know it.

This drama is also filled with cliche tropes:

-The false sibling trope (like in the Mortal Instruments) -The unwanted arranged marriage trope -Instead of a “memory loss” trope, you have a “feeling loss” trope where she loses her ability to love -There’s a revenge plot passed down from a previous generation (the whole your-mother-killed-my-mother) -The father/son mirror trope where the sons falls for the daughter of their father’s past lover -The reincarnation trope (which tbh was probably the highlight of the drama)

I feel like all that’s missing is some sort of love potion trope and a stolen identity trope.

With less than half way to go, there are still 3 things that need to happen based on the promos, so I’m guessing that the “angst” has only just gotten started.

-we see that Jin Mi goes ahead with the wedding to Runyu, but Xufeng crashes the wedding. -Xufeng becomes the demon king somehow -There’s more crying from Jin Mi, and a scene where we see Xufeng walk away from her, which is out of character for him since he’s never turned his back on her. He’s always the one chasing after her, so it’ll be interesting to see what prompts this scene.

The problem with this drama is that the angst comes from external sources. Everyone is trying to get between XF and JM to keep them apart. The time in the mortal realm showed us that XF and JM have no problem being together. The plot is just trying to create problems by cramming people between them.

There’s a Zeus-like emperor. An evil Hera-like empress. An evil, jealous princess. An evil, jealous prince (with a tragic backstory).

As the comments say, the heavenly realm seems to have the most evil people. The only non-stereotypical, non-caricature character is probably the demon princess who’s main goal isn’t to try and sabotage the relationship between the main leads.

The problem with all these external obstacles and with Xufeng’s near perfect characterization is that the drama isn’t so much as angsty as it is frustrating and intellectually condescending. When I think of angsty stories, I think of stories in which characters cause their own downfall. Stories in which characters make decisions that come back to haunt them later down the line.

For instance:

Love and Destiny Probably the closest comparison to Ashes of Love yet also the least angsty and frustrating. The obstacles that Ling Xi and Jiu Chen face only bring them closer together instead of tearing them apart. They have a few misunderstandings that are quickly resolved. The biggest angsty plot point was when (spoiler) JC has to kill moral LingXi pre-maturately to ensure that she keeps her immortality. We sympathize with Jiu Chen because we know it’s the only way to save Ling Xi, and we can’t say he didn’t try to be honest with her. He literally told her that she’s not a mortal and who she really is, but of course as a mortal, she can’t bring herself to believe that. Still, the angst here is that the characters are trying their best to reach out to each other, and yet they are also the very ones blocking each other out. Ah Mo feels like she’s just Ling Xi’s replacement, because she can’t understand that she’s both Ling Xi and Ah Mo.

Journey of Flower The angst that started the fantasy angst trend in the mid-2010s. BZH’s flaw is that he puts his responsibility and his morals above everything else, even himself. He’d rather repress his feelings than betray the world he’s tasked with protecting. This means that he’d sacrifice everything in order to uphold his morals, including HQG. He thinks that he can betray her because he’d make it up to her by killing himself (until she prevents him from doing so in order to punish him, much to his dismay). His flaw is that he’s too righteous. HQG’s flaw is that she trusts in him too much.

Goodbye My Princess LCY isn’t just flawed, but he’s a straight up villain who’s willing to kill innocent people (even his own family) if he feels desperate, jealous, or betrayed. He’s selfish and malicious, and ultimately his punishment is to live out the rest of his days in regret and loneliness. Even during the episodes where he thought he was protecting XF, he pushed it way overboard. There was really no reason to go as far as he did in the name of trying to “protect” her. GMP is a good example of a plot where there are characters who make choices with unexpected consequences, and other characters who make choices in spite of the consequences. But overall, the hate that the characters felt for others (and themselves) were driven by their own choices and actions. They were the cause of their own downfall.

Eternal Love Again, the angst stemmed from Ye Hua’s flawed thinking that he can keep everything under control. His mistaken assumption that he can protect Su Su by hurting her. His flawed logic that he can destroy her livelihood (by taking away her eyes) but justifies it by thinking that he’d be able to keep her alive with him, which is all that matters to him.

Comparisons In all these dramas, the male character thinks that the best way of protecting the female character is to pretend to be indifferent about her. They think that pretending not to love her is the best way to protect her, despite the consequence of hurting her in the process. They’re always making decisions for her, thinking for her.

The female character wants to hate the male character but can’t bring herself to do so because she still loves him, so she ends up hating herself for not being strong enough to hate him. She then kills herself and is “reborn” as someone with more agency and courage to not only hate him, but to also protect herself so that she no longer needs him.

Ashes of Love is the opposite. Jin Mi wants to love Xufeng, but is prevented from doing so because everyone else seems to have access and control to her heart except herself. Xufeng is different from these other male characters because he doesn’t hide his love. In fact, he’s desperate to try to show Jin Mi how much he loves her. It’s a completely different dynamic. It makes Xufeng an easy character to like, but it prevents any kind of character growth in either Xufeng or Jin Mi. It doesn’t look like Jin Mi is going to “grow” insomuch as be liberated. It’s just annoying how she isn’t allowed to grow and how everyone keeps running circles around her.

It’s also exhausting. It feels like the drama can drag on and on because the plot can just keep throwing obstacles at them, which it looks like it’s going to do. In other dramas, you usually know what to look forward to: it’s usually when the moment of truth is revealed and when the main characters redeem themselves. There’s no redemption plot to look forward in this (maybe for the 2nd male lead). Instead, you’re waiting for all the secondary characters who are obstacles to be eliminated so that the leads finally have an unobstructed path to each other. It would say this is much more of a plot-driven drama than a character-driven drama.

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leafenclaw · 3 years

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For the “Ask questions about my WIPs!” game

@inkstainedfingers97 asked:

“Perchance would you be willing to send me a brief summary of the premises of "Gem" and "Fearful Symmetry" ?”

First of all, thank you for asking! ^^

Gem is actually one of my earliest Mentalist works, one of several character studies I wrote in preparation for another story called Visions (which I was supposed to go back to right after Chasing Storms, but then Kindred happened x3). The concept was quite simple, a long drabble in which Lisbon was pondering all the ways Jane reminds her of a diamond (the dazzling smiles, flashy tricks, cutting edges of his personality, the fatal flaw at heart, etc.). That said, 400-ish words in I realised I was pushing that metaphor just a little bit too far? XD So unless I recycle parts of it for Kindred at some point (perhaps for 2x09, with that subplot about a diamond Jane lost in the bullpen? ^^), it’ll probably never see the light of day and to be honest I’m pretty okay with that. x)

Fearful Symmetry is a different animal entirely. I don’t know if you remember 2x10 well, it’s the episode where Jane gets hit by a baseball and gets a concussion, so he spends the whole episode fainting and having intrusive memories of his father? And in one of those memories, you see him and his father conning an old lady and her dying granddaughter. For some reason as I was watching I started thinking on that kid, wondering what would happen to her if she survived after this. Would she think the crystal really saved her, or would she know it’s a con and resent the Janes for it? I followed those thoughts for a while, got mislaid by a few Shakespeare references, and ended up with a story in which Celia (the dying girl) is Red John, because the application of the crystal nearly killed her and she wants revenge on the boy who lied to her. x)

It’s not a happy story. Written in 2nd person from the POV of an extremely unreliable narrator, it’s meant to be an illustration of how a healthy mind can sink into really unhealthy thought patterns because of a single event, how holding onto hate and a desire for revenge usually ends up poisoning your own life, and (as the title implies) it was also meant to be a commentary on thematic parallels between Jane and Red John, how similar they are, how you just need to fill in a few blanks to realise they have the same nature.

Anyway. x) It was SUPER cathartic to write and I was all set to publish as soon as it was done... until a computer mishap ate half my progress (more than 5k gone, I had almost 12k by then), including a scene I struggled a lot on, so it never recovered. I’m still keeping that one on the back-burner though, it’s one of ten stories across all my fandoms that I definitely intend to come back to and complete.

Excerpt under cut. Trigger warnings for obsessive thoughts of hatred and revenge, graphic descriptions of pain, some internalised ableism, and violent rejection of morals and religion. (There may be other things, as I said it’s not a happy story.)

(Feel free to comment but please don’t reblog.)

*****

Fearful Symmetry

*****

"Breathe," says your grandmother softly.

And you do, one laborious inhalation after the other, even as the wet, squelching sound makes you shiver, and the pain tears you apart. You do, and you clutch the crystal against your chest – because it will help, won't it? It must. Your grandmother says so, and the Carney man at the fair said so, and the boy. The boy said so. The beautiful boy who cried for you, with the golden curls that makes you want to giggle and sigh and feel their softness under your fingers. He said so.

"Breathe," repeats your grandmother, and you do – again and again and again and why isn't it working?

"I'm sorry to tell you, ma'am. You were robbed," says the doctor, shaking his head. "Crystals aren't magic. They can't heal anything."

But neither you nor your grandmother will listen to those lies, because you saw it. You saw the blister on the boy's finger heal with your own two eyes. How is that not magic? So you breathe, and breathe again, and cough up phlegm until even your grandmother pales and shakes her head.

*****

"What if – " you ask, then cough some more. "What if it needs to be inside?"

"Direct application," whispers your grandmother, eyes feverish. "Yes! We could put it in your oxygen tank – that should work. It will work, Celia. I promise."

Of course, no doctor will allow her to put a foreign object in your oxygen tank, not even a magic healing crystal that could save you. You should have known. They never took you seriously, even in the beginning. That's why the cancer was allowed to spread so far.

But you and your grandmother know what you're doing. You've seen it work. And when it does, when you're healed, you will walk back to the county fair on your own feet and kiss that boy right on his generous mouth to thank him for everything he did.

One day. If you dare. You need to heal first, for that to happen.

So you and your grandmother talk about it, and come to a decision.

Forget about the doctors.

Trust in the crystal.

Trust in the boy.

"Keep your eyes closed," whispers your grandmother, a handful of carefully grounded crystal in her palm. "I will blow it toward you. And when I say so, take a deep breath, as deep as you can. Are you ready?"

You nod.

"Now!"

You open your mouth wide and breathe, and cough, and open your eyes because it hurts so much, and dust flies in your eyes and your mouth is burning, your eyes are burning, your lungs, NO, burning scratching burning bleeding leaking painpainpain –

You scream.

*****

"What were you thinking!" bellows the doctor, somewhere on the other side of the door.

Your grandmother is crying, all hysterical sobs and blubbering mess, incoherent words of desolation falling out of her mouth like a waterfall. You want to tell her it's not her fault – it's not her fault, it's the boy's. The lying boy with his lying tears and those lying curls of shining gold you still want to feel under your fingers, except now you want to feel his lying throat bobbing up and down as you squeeze it just as much.

You want to tell her, but they hooked you up to your oxygen tank and you can't say a word, and you can't reach out to her either because you can't see with all those bandages covering your eyes.

Can’t, can’t, can’t do anything, anything at all.

"It's a miracle it didn't kill her on the spot!" yells the doctor again.

You can hear the angry breath he takes and releases, almost covering your grandmother's cries.

"Your crystal dust buried itself in the tissues, scarred her lungs and cornea," the doctor adds, so quietly you have to strain your ears to hear him speak. "If she was to live, it would be a miracle for her to escape pneumonia and infections. But as it is..."

You shouldn't be listening to this. But you do, you do even if you're not supposed to, even if you're supposed to be sleeping, and resting, and recovering. That's what they told you to do, anyway. Rest, and don't bother your pretty little head with grown-up talk.

Rest.

Rest in peace.

"Her last days will be painful," concludes the doctor. "Dying will be a kindness."

Your grandmother's wail covers every other sound.

The pang of shock in your mind covers every other thought.

Until shock turns to helplessness.

Then anger.

Then hate.

*****

You lie on your back, eyes closed as the priest anoints your forehead with oil, muttering blessings for your soul. Your grandmother cries softly by your bedside as you take one painful inhalation after the other. They've all given you for dead already, talking about you in past tense, hushed murmurs and sniffles in every corner of the room.

You don't care.

You're such a raw mass of unending pain. Nothing else matters but the burning in your lungs and the fever in your eyes and the pounding in your head that erases all ideas, all thoughts, all emotions.

Except one.

And the growing thirst for revenge sustains you in a way nothing else – no medicine, no prayer, no crystal – ever could.

*****

You never knew there was an emotion so powerful as to conjure up miracles – but if you had, you would have bet on love.

And you would have been wrong.

Love, in the end, wasn't enough to save you. Be it the love of God with its many prayers all through the night, or the love of Science on the altar of which you sacrificed your hair – both utterly failed you. Even the love of your grandmother only brought you worse suffering instead of the promised peace and relief.

Love wasn't enough.

But hate is.

Hate allows you to survive night after night until a full month passes. Hate allows you to hang on by a thread until breathing comes easier, until pain ceases. So slowly at first nobody notices you healing. So slowly at first you don't even notice it yourself.

Until you do.

Until they do.

"It's a miracle. Praises be to God," says the priest, and you want to tell him to shut up shut up shut up, because there is no miracle, there is no God, there is only hate burning bright and hot inside you, turning the cancer to cinders and coal dust.

"It was the crystal. It gave her back her life," says your grandmother, and you want to tell her to shut up shut up shut up, because the crystal nearly killed you, the crystal scratched your eyes away and even hate couldn't give you back your sight.

"It was the treatment. In a few months, we may be able to graft her a new cornea," says the doctor, and you want to tell him to shut up shut up shut up, because the medicine was never helpful to begin with, they didn't even bother treating your eye infection properly when they thought you were dying, and when you finally get out of here you will never trust a doctor again.

But you don't say a word – because you may be healed but you're still weak, and arguing over what exactly saved you would be a waste of time, a waste of energy. Instead you let hate eat away at any warm emotion you once felt, shield your mind with its cold, hard shell of frozen magma.

Who cares what they all think anyway? You know the truth, and at night you dream of a thousand humiliations and pains for the boy who grievously betrayed you.

#inkstainedfingers97 #thank you for the ask! ^^#fandom: the mentalist #ship: teacup & handmade socks #ship: smiling tygers #writing #[my stuff]#watch me as I attempt not to panic about excerpts from my WIPs being released into the wild lmao

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giantchasm · 5 years

Text

Antimatter Aguri AU Masterpost

Sack has entirely too many AUS about Aguri? Sack has entirely too many AUs about Aguri!

Anyway. I decided to finally make a post explaining this AU to the general fandom, since I’m proud of it and not sure I’ll ever get around to entirely writing a fic based on it. So I may as well share the concepts.

Have you ever wanted an AU where Aguri lives? But do you feel a simple ‘she lives with no complications AU’ is too easy of a way out, and ignores a massive part of Korosensei’s arc? Have you ever wanted an AU that would make you hate the villains of Assclass even more than you already do? Have you ever wanted an AU with cool monsters smooching cool monsters? Have you ever wanted an AU where Aguri S U F F E R S? And have you ever wanted an AU about long term recovery after massive trauma?

Then BOY do I have an AU for you!

The rest is under the cut because this is going to be a LONG post.

In this AU Aguri manages to survive her close brush with death.

How she survives, however, is significantly less uplifting.

Basically Yanagisawa pumps her full of Antimatter shit after finding her body in a desperate attempt to save her life. And it works. Hooray!

He hurries her into another part of the lab before Akari can see a thing, and continues pumping her full of Antimatter to try and stabalize her. But being a Known Cunt, things don’t exactly go too well after she comes to. Especially considering she's ALIVE. Without his weird fucked up revenge quest to serve as motivation he still has nothing to strive for, so he goes right back to his experiments.

This time on her.

Like the moment she wakes up one of her first questions is "wait. Where did the reaper go? Is he okay" and he FLIPS his SHIT on her. Yells at her for being obsessed with the Reaper and accuses her of not giving a shit about him. (CAN YOU BLAME HER?)

She tries to deescalate the situation and turn it into an amicable breakup, but considering he fucking sucks hes not gonna take that for an answer. He decides that Korosensei escaping in the first place was her fault anyway, scapegoats her for the entire thing, then locks her in that room and continues his experiments. Namely this time he’s curious about finding out if an Antimatter being that won’t explode can be created.

And it. Is. Bad.

Like these experiments continue over the course of months and she degenerates more and more until she realizes everyone thinks shes dead. That she’s never going to get to see The Reaper or her students or her family again. She resigns herself to a life of suffering. Like. Pretty much wishes she'd just DIED back there. Which is. Really sad.

Sometime during this time she sees Itona and begs for help, but considering Itona’s pretty much out of his mind in his own right during this time he's not of much help.

When the tentacles ask her what she wants, she answers “safety.” That’s all she wants. To stop being hurt. She dwells more and more on the last time she saw the Reaper. And that’s what her form begins to reflect. So she starts lookin a lot like Korosensei did during his escape w/ the writhing tentacles and such.

And with that wish that’s when something starts to shift w/ the experiments. Like. They go completely off the rails.

She can no longer receive injections. It just doesn’t break the skin. Antisensei weapons simply don’t work on her to the same extent. With force, they can cut her, but nothing like how they make Korosensei’s limbs outright explode.

Suddenly this is terrifying. CONSIDERING KOROSENSEI WISHED TO BE WEAK. AND ENDED UP THAT FUCKING INVINCIBLE, SHE'S ON ANOTHER LEVEL ENTIRELY.

Her restraints are like tripled and the room is reinforced with Antisensei material. They find a way to keep pumping her full of antimatter. Despite ppl working under Yanagisawa starting to voice their opinions that this seems dangerous, he doesn’t relent because this isn’t about scientific development at this point, much less safety for him. It’s about his fucking power complex.

And around this time back in the main class, the Itona redemption arc is going on. And as soon as Itona’s back in his right mind hes like

"OH. MY. GOD."

LIKE HE'D SEEN THIS LADY IN THE LAB BEGGING FOR HELP BUT JUST BEEN TOLD "OH, DON’T WORRY ABOUT HER SHES NOT A THREAT TO YOUR QUEST FOR STRENGTH. SHES PATHETIC"

When she was begging for help she namedropped Akari. Itona does some digging and finds out Kayano's true identity, before confronting her with what he saw.

As you can imagine, Kayano kind of flips her shit?? Can’t exactly blame her considering her dead sister is A) Alive B) BEING TORTURED

Kayano comes forward to Korosensei. Asks him if he'd be willing to do anything for his students. For her. He of course says yes. But to that she replies "Even save the life of someone you tried to kill?"

He's understandably confused. But she explains everything. What she saw. About her tentacles. And about what Itona told her. And in turn he tells her about everything, too. The truth. He begs her to remove her tentacles, but she refuses until she knows Aguri is safe.

Korosensei anxiously tries to explain that there’s no doubt the lab is reinforced, and he doubts they can even DO this. Kayano says she knows they can do it with her classmates on their side, but Korosensei argues he promised he’d protect them, and he REFUSES to put those kids in a situation like that.

But Kayano argues right back that they’ve dealt with worse (i.e Takaoka) and that if he doesn’t ask them, she'll ask them her damn self. She doesn't need him. Does he want to help or not?

Korosensei reluctantly (VERY RELUCTANTLY, both out of his caring for Aguri and his desperation to keep Kayano and the rest of the kids safe) agrees to help rescue her.

They give the class VERY vague details (No dump about Korosensei’s backstory, nor about Aguri being Kayano’s sister. There's literally no time for that. Just that there's something like Korosensei out there that needs their help. They do… however tell them that this new Antimatter creature is their former teacher, as they feel it will help inspire the kids to do this.)

Irina and Karasuma are not let in on what’s going on. Korosensei and Kayano actually gather the class after school to specifically avoid those two.

Cue them breaking fucking in. Knocking out lab workers and shit. I don’t know how to describe action sequences. Eventually they find her. And it's so much worse than they could have imagined. Not even really her physical form. (Though that’s pretty grotesque too.) Just how MISERABLE she looks. She has this dead look in her eyes. She's completely pinned down. She doesn't even see them approaching the class because she's so restrained she can't turn her neck. It's like she's a shadow of herself. Miserable and scared and alone.

They break in and free her. She's completely taken aback. This can’t be real. But Kayano and Korosensei are already helping her to her feet as she asks 100 questions. Is... Is that the REAPER? And... What on earth is Kayano implanted with? She's clearly super dazed and acting like she isn't really processing any of this, but she's still worried. She doesn't even really get her answers, namely because they're interrupted.

Surrounded by people working in the lab and approached by Yanagisawa. He starts to monologue about this happening due to Korosensei’s escape, because that was her fault. And now this is Korosensei fault! It’s beautiful, really! Perfect cause and effect.

If he hadn’t escaped she never would have been reduced to this. It’s all. Korosensei's. Fault. He hadn’t even cared to try to save her life! Now THAT proves he doesn’t really care. Not like YANAGISAWA cares. He- he doesn’t get to finish his villain monologue because in an EXTREMELY CATHARTIC CHAIN OF EVENTS Kayano goes ape shit on his ass and RIPS OUT HIS OTHER EYE.

YEAH. She’s fucking PISSED.

It’s about now Korosensei’s having an internal debate, because on one hand he’s REALLY trying to be better and be a No More Mr Murder Man, namely BECAUSE of Aguri. On the other hand this guy SERIOUSLY hurt Aguri and might hurt his students, too.

They’re being surrounded by guards and scientists with Anti-sensei equipment by now. Korosensei's seriously in danger. But that’s where Aguri’s INVINCIBILITY really gets to shine. She protects Korosensei, while ALSO BEGGING KAYANO TO STOP (By now she’s practically lighting that bitch up. LMAOOO)

Something something she’s been hurt by Yanagisawa but “HE DOESN’T DESERVE TO DIE!” (Oh get a fucking grip, Aguri I love you but he really does deserve to die at this point)

Finally, Kayano’s classmates manage to rip her off him and they all make their escape. Every student comes out of this unharmed. Thank fuck.

The moment they're out there there's. A lot of things to process and a lot of explaining to do. Like Korosensei hurriedly rushes literally all of them miles away from that hell place, and the ENTIRE TIME THEY'RE ALL ASKING QUESTIONS.

"WHAT WAS THAT??"

"DID YOU KNOW YUKIMURA SENSEI??"

"IS SHE OKAY?" (NO LMAO)

"WERE YOU A PERSON TOO?"

"HOW DOES SHE KNOW KAYANO? WHO'S AKARI?"

Korosensei and Kayano are getting flooded with all these questions while Aguri’s pretty much on the brink of sobbing because its the first time shes been outside in six months and the breeze feels so nice on her face and she can see the sky and oh my god its so overwhelming. She never thought she'd see or feel any of this again.

Like shes completely emotionally compromised. Lots of happy tears and sad tears and fuck-i-don't-even-know-what-emotion-this-is tears.

Korosensei eventually manages to shoo all the students. Tells them to go home and get rest. He'll answer it all in the morning. But for now him, Aguri, and Kayano have a LOT to deal with.

He removes Kayano's tentacles. It's about now he notices someone hanging back in the trees watching them and gets nervous for a second, but quickly realizes who it is.

"OKAY, YOU CAN GO HOME NOW, NAGISA." and hes like "OKAY OKAY OKAY. I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE KAYANO WAS REALLY OKAY" BEFORE SCRAMMING.

(BLESS HIS SOUL. HE’S A GOOD FRIEND.)

And kayano's like "Yay! No tentacles! Okay, so now you can do that to Aguri too, right?" and Korosensei and Aguri are like "hhahhahahahahhahhhhha." Because lets face it, tentacle implants and routinely having antimatter directly injected right into your bloodstream for months on end are pretty different situations.

"I'm afraid not, Kayano." Korosensei says.

And Kayano's like "...Okay." and they head back to Kayano's place. Kayano just wants to go home with her sister, but she gets Aguri and Korosensei also have a lot to talk about, so she lets him stay the night.

Its clear the tentacles took a lot out of her because she's conked out before they know it. Aguri has to tuck her in. Cue more crying because she never thought she'd see her baby sister again and oh my god she's so tall and oh my god she dyed her hair and oh my god look at her sleeping so sweetly and oh my god she fought so hard for her and oh my god oh my god

Then Korosensei and Aguri go to Aguri's room. Which hasn’t been touched in months. Its depressing, really. But its also like coming home.

She says she thinks she just wants to sleep, too. But like. Does that thing where you "want" to sleep but keep talking? Yeah. She just keeps saying "one more thing" and rambling to Korosensei about how traumatizing that entire experience was and how much she missed him and everyone else and how weird it is seeing everything again and none of this even feels real. Like she's going to wake up and she's going to be back there and she's never going to get to see them again.

There's a LOTTTT of crying. But he's there to try his best to help.

She also 100% confesses to him and they PROBABLY make out, but its not like an "officially together" sort of thing because he realizes shes. Super emotionally compromised right now. But he promises that he gets it. He gets. Pretty much exactly what she's going through. And that he'll be there for her. No matter what, this time.

Eventually she manages to sleep. It's sweet.

And the next morning is weird. ‘Cause all the kids and Korosensei and Aguri are waiting anxioussslyyy at the school. They're there super early.

But Karasuma's equally as prepared. He SLAPS a newspaper on the desk. "HEY WHAT"S THIS ABOUT A LAB BEING BROKEN INTO LAST NIGHT??"

And Korosensei's like "AHAHHAHAH...AHAHAH.... YOU THINK THAT'S BAD? WE ACTUALLY HAVE LIKE 800 MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO TALK ABOUT." AND MOTIONS TO AGURI.

Karasuma loses his FUCKING MIND

"WHAT DID YOU DO!??!?!?!?"

Around now Irina's arriving and. You can imagine she's equally as baffled.

But Korosensei begs them to hear them out. And he finally sits down and explains his Tragic Backstory to his students (and more details of it to Karasuma) far earlier than he’d liked to have.

That’s great and all, but only raises the question of what to do now. Kids are already arguing about whether or not they don’t want to kill Korosensei anymore, and that’s not getting STARTED on Aguri. Do… does she need to die, too? There’s instantly EVEN MORE arguing over that, especially on Kayano and Korosensei’s part. Like that's a BIG FAT NO, CHIEF.

Aguri sheepishly admits she thinks that would be difficult anyways, and showcases her near invincibility. Karasuma loses his FUCKING MIND YET AGAIN and makes a lot of calls.

He tries to dismiss class for the day, but Korosensei refuses. They actually have a bit of a fight over it. People NEED to come and collect Aguri and do tests. But Korosensei refuses to let her go through that alone after what she’s been through, and also refuses to shirk his job and let his kids miss class over this. Karasuma reluctantly allows a delay until class is over. Namely because its not like he (even with government help on his side) could forcibly take either of them in.

It becomes pretty clear pretty quickly why Korosensei fought so staunchly for this, aside from just his responsibilities as a teacher. It was for Aguri. He felt she needed this. To be in that normal environment and be a teacher again, even just for a day.

Her demeanor's. different. And the students notice pretty quickly. She's nothing like the goofy happy go lucky Yukimura-sensei they had a few months ago. but she's trying her best, even if they're super worried for her.

Anyway, that night things go DOWN. the government figures Aguri is NEAR INVINCIBLE and shits themselves. It looks like the world’s going to fucking end. They work harder on developing more and more deadly things, but it looks.... bleak.

Meanwhile obviously the E Class, Karasuma, Irina, and Dos Horny Octopi are already putting their heads together to try and find a way to prevent that. While they try to deduce how to save the world AND their teachers, arrangements are made to let Aguri teach as well (With EVEN MORE money slid Gakuho’s way…) They get the scoop on Yanagisawa, and learn he’s in no condition to be a threat right now. (But I’m sure that won’t last.) And finally things return to… Some sort of normal, but it’s hard considering everything that’s gone down has shifted their views on everything so radically.

Anyways enter the COMFORT half of the this hurt/comfort AU.

From thereon out its about Aguri trying to find her place in the world and trying to find a way to be happy again while chipping away at her trauma. Trying to find a way to want to live again after feeling like she lost everything. About, like, ll the little things she missed and her emotional reactions to them and trying not to blame herself for feeling unhappy. About wondering if she'll never feel like the same person she was back then, and if that makes her broken (HEAVENS NO. OF COURSE NOT!)

And of course, about Aguri reconnecting with her class, reuniting with her sister, getting to know Karasuma and Irina, and [reads smudged handwriting on hand] dating Korosensei.

Stuff like them going on dumb dates in their shitty normal people disguises and feeling awkward about how everyone's staring at them but then laughing because "They're totally staring at you more, dork!"

Needless to say, Korosensei lives in this AU.

The shield is still put up and its. Super sad. Like Aguri's stuck outside of it and it's 100% a callback to how they couldn’t touch each other before. Like going from being separated by that wall to being separated by that fucking shield. "I want to touch you Mister Reaper..." again indeed.

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with 2.0. I feel like Aguri would try and force Korosensei to reveal his identity during the 2.0 arc, all things considered. But I don’t know if that would make things better or worse. Would it just make 2.0 more vengeful, or is it not too late for him to find some peace and acknowledgement from his mentor? I... Don’t have an answer.

But either way, yes, with or without 2.0, things get NASTY in the shield like in canon when Yanagisawa shows his head (You thought Kayano maiming him was going to hold him down? NEVER.) And when it looks like Korosensei and the students are in danger, Aguri forces herself in through the shield despite the fact that it SERIOUSLY INJURES HER. (Like, God, even w her near invincible tentacle boost she's practically maiming hersel.) Because she NEEDS to protect Korosensei, and she NEEDS to protect those kids.

She lost everything once. She never thought she'd be happy again. But she is. She’s managed to find that. And she won’t let anyone fucking take that from her. She gets to be the one to defeat Yanagisawa, essentially thematically taking back her agency completely.

And something-something the kids use the power of media against the govt in the same way the govt used it against them, and livestream Koroagu’s beautiful reunion to the point that something something people don’t want them killed or something. Or maybe she shields Korosensei from the laser herself (Again at massive risk to herself) or both or I DONT KNOW. But either way they LIVE because they’ve been through much and they’ve earned it and I WANT them to.

Like in manga canon Yanagisawa survives but paralyzed. Aguri stops by once, talks a little (He can’t respond LMAOOO), essentially reaffirms she’s refound her happiness, she knows who she is, and that she doesn’t hate him. She’s scared of him. And she hates what he did to her. But she doesn’t hate him. Because that’s not the sort of person she is. It’s never been. And letting what he did to her take that from her would be letting him win. She says she hopes he finds a way to be happy someday, then walks out, reclaims her life, and never has to see him again. (Which obviously I don’t think is the best way/the only way/even a good way to react. You should NEVER feel obligated to forgive your abuser. EVER. Even superficially. But I do think it’s a very Aguri way.)

Her and the kids and Korosensei live happily ever after. Well. “Happily ever after.” There is no happily ever after after trauma. After depression. After wanting to die. But it does get better. And she’s finally, finally surrounded by people who love her. So maybe even if she’ll never quite be the same, that’s okay. She’s not broken. She’s pretty happy. And even if she’s not completely happy yet...

Who knows? Maybe one day she will be.

And that’s a pretty beautiful thought.

#assassination classroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #aguri yukimura #antimatter aguri

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demigodofhoolemere · 5 years

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A year later I still have some feelings about Loki’s IW scene, and now in a post-Endgame world there’s even more to think about and I kinda just need to write it down.

~~~

I have plenty of problems with it, but I’ve never had the same problem I’ve seen many other fans have with it, which is believing him to be out of character there. I definitely get why one can feel that way about it, but his dialogue and his actions always seemed fair enough to me. Goodness knows it was more like himself than 90% of anything he said or did in Ragnarok. I’ve reblogged stuff from that scene because it makes me emotional. His speech, his last words, his love for his brother, his sacrifice, they all moved me, and I can believe them. I appreciate that they acknowledge that Loki would die for Thor. I can even believe that if it came down to it, if all the chips were down and he had absolutely no moves left, if the attempt he made with the dagger was 1000% for sure the last thing he could try, then yeah, he’d go down swinging.

The issue stems from the fact that we’re not given enough reason to believe that there really was nothing else he could do. They conveniently forget about all of his skills, all of his powers and magic, and we’re not given any in-universe excuse for this. They could have in the very least had Thanos say something about not falling for tricks, if they were determined to not give Loki the chance to use any. But instead of that, all we get is Loki immediately resorting to the dagger, which is why people have been calling him an idiot for the last year because either the Russos or M&M or both couldn’t have been bothered to narratively justify him taking this action. If they were so set on having him do what he did, they needed to do a better job at establishing that it was the only thing he had left to do, instead of making him look stupid for not doing more.

And really, it’s stupidity on the part of the people making it (sorry guys) for not letting him use his abilities as the last resort rather than the dagger, because at least there’s the chance of him making a dent if he uses magic and even if it fails then he still tried something better than stabbing, and not to mention it would display how terrifying Thanos is if even Loki’s powers weren’t enough. But it’s the stabbing because they say so. Again, you’ve got to narratively justify this stuff. Even if I believe he’d do it if there was literally just nothing left, you have to go to the effort of proving that to be the case.

But in the end it’s not even about him being backed into a corner with no options, it’s about the filmmakers refusing to give him any. It didn’t have to happen the way it did, no one held them at gunpoint and forced them to do it. Even if you’re determined to kill him, he didn’t have to go out that way. And even so, why kill him? There are SO many things you can do with a character like that. Show he and Thor side by side, working together, battling through trauma together. Show him with the other Avengers and the Guardians. There’s a wealth of fantastic interactions we could have had. Loki could have actually had friends for the first time in his life (heaven forbid). He could have made connections that would have helped him. His abilities could have been incredibly useful. He could have played a part in getting revenge on the man who abused him. So many things that could have been awesome and cathartic. The possibilities are endless. They just... chose not to.

After IW I was willing to give things a chance. His mysterious prolonged absence, his seemingly specific choices of words, the fact that he was the only optimistic character in the movie despite his circumstances, and above all the highly suspect line, “The sun will shine on us again,” as if he knew something, all seemed to indicate that there was something more. I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, because Marvel, but things were looking good. I was willing to overlook the things I took issue with, because for the most part I didn’t think it was a terribly written scene and I thought there’d be some sort of payoff for making me watch what was horrible about it. And now I’m just bewildered and frustrated that it was all for nothing. Purely shock value. What in the world was the point?

And what’s all the more aggravating is that he was only killed to further Thor’s pain (as if he hasn’t already lost enough anyway?). He’s treated as a pawn rather than a character in his own right, just to (somehow) further someone else’s story, and then what happens? Throughout the entirety of Endgame, Thor doesn’t mention his brother once. Never says his name. Doesn’t even look at him when he’s right there. Even in IW he only refers to “my brother” a couple of times and when he goes after Thanos his, “I told you you’d die for that,” is in reference to Heimdall (which I appreciate, don’t get me wrong, Heimdall so easily could have gotten lost in the fray of things and I’m glad he got recognition), but nothing about Loki, not for two whole movies. So how exactly did killing him do anything for Thor when he seems to be more or less unaffected by it? Their entire history and bond was erased. But I guess you lose the space for stuff like that when you’re so busy trying to cram endless fat jokes into the runtime. Priorities.

Then they act like giving us 2012!Loki is a gift. At least we have a Loki, so we should be satisfied, as if they didn’t mercilessly fridge the prime timeline Loki. While 2012!Loki is very much the same entity, and he has gone through 99% of the same life... without these crucial last several years, it’s simultaneously a very different Loki, especially given the time he’s from — he’s the most damaged Loki, the most hardened one, the one who is going to have an even harder time of doing any sort of healing. It’s difficult to be happy about having him in any form when it’s like this. I love 2012!Loki just as much as I love him at any point in his life, but I haven’t seen him in years. I want back the version of him that they took (ditto that with Gamora, by the way). This is practically starting over. Not to mention I just don’t trust them with the character anymore. Tom’s my only hope.

Loki deserved better. He deserved to be treated as his own person and not a dispensable extension of his brother (like that’s not what he was already made to think his whole life). He deserved to be done justice by the story. He deserved to not be humiliatingly strangled to death by his torturer. He deserved more dignity than this. He deserved to not have the last words his brother says to him be an insult. He deserved to be redeemed (which he already was, ugh) without having to die for it. He deserved to live. He deserved to rebuild his life and finally get the time to heal properly. The fans deserved to not have their dedication be punished. And if nothing else, Tom deserved better than this, dang it.

I’m just... aaaahhhhgggshdjdhsjs. So tired. So tired of shock value. So tired of disappointments in stories. So tired of Loki’s constant mistreatment in canon and reality. Marvel’s got it out for him which means they can’t have him anymore. I’m adopting him and taking him far away where he will be loved.

#siiiigh #marvel #loki #endgame critical #infinity war critical #avengers: infinity war #infinity war p1 #avengers 4 #endgame #spoilers #marvel spoilers #avengers 4 spoilers #endgame spoilers #marvel critical

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into-the-demimonde · 7 years

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Game of Thrones season 7, episode 7, The Dragon and the Wolf review

In the final episode of the series’ 7th season, team Dany/Jon/Tyrion presents the captured wight to team cunt. Meanwhile Arya and Sansa’s rivalry comes to an end. Jaime and Theon make their respective choices and the Night King displays his real terror. Virginia: just like the rest of the season, my friend Alex will be discussing the finale with me. Alex: Glad to be here, unfortunately for the last time till at least a year from now. There’s so much awesome in this episode, should we get the one thing I think we both don’t like out of the way? V: that revolting love scene? I actually cringed the entire time. They're both gorgeous individuals, but they're RELATED! Does nobody shipping them realize this/care? A: Evidently not. I never thought my least favorite part of an episode would involve naked Daenerys, but then she went all Lannister on her nephew. I was really hoping they would forgo this, and there seemed to be hints throughout the episode that they would: Littlefinger using a romance between them as tool to manipulate Sansa, Sam and Bran piecing together the familial link between them, etc. And then they did it. V: what are the show runners thinking? What's their aim here? I also think Jon would be disgusted to know their relationship, seeing as how the Starks were so honorable and moral. A: That’s all we can hope for now. That and a scene where they find out and do the “I slept with WHO!?” comedy routine. V: after all, I remember back in the early seasons when the Lannister incest was used to make us hate them. Are we really going there with the main heroes now? That's not very thematically sound. Anyway, that scene with the wight was pretty tense. Lots of words were said on both sides. A: That was handled so well. The buildup had some great dialogue, and the final meeting went about as well as it was likely to. There’s a charge just seeing all these characters sitting together, but even beyond that it worked. Cersei wanting to control a meeting where her opponent showed up on the back of a dragon, Tyrion trying to be the sensible intermediary, Jon’s Starkish morality ruining everything. It all felt right. V: he did the right thing. And either way, Cersei wouldn't have really helped them. So it hardly mattered in the grand scheme. What about the big scene with Petyr Baelish? Fan theories pay off yet again. A: This time for the better. That has to be one of the biggest crowd-pleasing moments the show’s ever had. I would’ve liked a quick line about how Sansa and Arya had to be so intense because they knew Baelish has eyes and ears everywhere, but either way it’s an incredible payoff that contextualizes a lot of seemingly odd behavior that came before. V: I heard that theory a couple of episodes ago, but I didn't expect anything so convenient and cathartic. I'm thrilled with their reconciliation and Baelish’s demise. Honestly, he deserved it as much as Ramsey and Joffrey easily. He was worse than Cersei. Speaking of Cersei, I know she's a bitch, but her plan to betray team #1 isn't even to her benefit. How detached is she from reality? A: I think she’s desperate. She knows she’ll never beat either Daenerys or the White Walkers, so her only play is to hope they destroy each other, or at least that survivor is weakened enough that she can finish them off. (Like in From Russia With Love: “Then, like SPECTRE.... He strikes!”) I really loved her in this episode. Without her children, she has no links to humanity left and she’s free to be as vicious she can be. Her double-cross is perfectly in character, and once again she’s taking a seeming victory away from Tyrion. V: she even turned on Jaime, her only remaining family and lover. Cersei is the ultimate narcissist. She really, in her heart, only ever loved herself. Hence her sexual relationship with her twin brother, essentially a relationship with the male version of herself. A: That’s very true. Cersei and the Night King serve as great counterpoints to each other. They’re both dangerous in different ways. The Night King is just a force of nature, demolishing everything in his path, but Cersei is more cunning, deadlier because of her treachery rather than anything straightforward. You can trust the Night King to be what he is, but you never know what Cersei will do next. I was convinced Jamie was a goner in that scene. V: it seems that the character development Jaime had a couple of years ago is finally paying off. He's finally realized what Cersei is, that regardless of his feelings for her, she's just a psychopath. There's no use reasoning with her. Tommen’s death and many events before that should have clued him in, but hey, better late than never. A: He better hope so, for his own sake. And I now think I agree with the theory that Cersei isn’t really pregnant. Once it was revealed that she was playing Tyrion too, it seemed to me like she was using it as a way of manipulating all the men in her life, even the ones she’d rather not have in it. V: it's definitely a possibility. I still can't make up my mind about it. Why would she be pregnant at this point in the story? Do we need another inbred incest baby? We've already had a ton between her previous children, Craster and possibly Jon and Dany…*shudders*. Anyway, I had wondered if she would try to reason with the Night King and forge a doomed alliance, but I guess that's off the table. A: Luckily for her she’s smart enough to know how bad an idea that would be. So I guess she’ll be the final threat once the White Walkers are dealt with. I’m willing to be she’s got something else up her sleeve, beyond the Iron Bank’s mercenaries. V: she really shouldn't have done Jaime like that. He has been her dearest ally, and this season virtually her only ally. She's so frustrating and I really don't understand anything she does. It was really satisfying for him to abandon her, though, and call her on her bullshit. It was also good to see Theon act like a man for once in his life. There's some irony there. A: And he finally found a benefit to being castrated. That was a really good scene between him and Jon, and I liked Jon spurring him on to get off his ass and make it right instead of just going around begging for forgiveness. Between this, Jon’s refusal to pretend to meet Cersei’s demand, and Sansa and Arya’s keeping the Stark “pack” going, Ned Stark’s presence was all over this episode. V: it's true. The Starks ruled this episode. I'm curious, by the way, as to how exactly the Unsullied escaped Casterly Rock to swarm King’s Landing. A: Yeah, that was a fairly big plot hole. I guess the ships were just kind of holding them at Casterly Rock and once the meeting was set up they all just pulled back. V: I remember wondering a couple of weeks ago what was going on with them. They should have shown a scene or two about it since then. A: The show seemed to just forget about them once they showed the rope-a-dope Jamie pulled on them. I guess it’s a small issue, but I would’ve rathered catch up with them than, say, have Bran be a creepy weirdo or watch Sam clean his umpteenth bedpan. V: the whole god Bran thing isn't doing much for me. Anyway, how are they going to resolve everything in 6 episodes? A: I have no idea. I assume the first one will be getting the good guys together, bringing Daenerys to Winterfell and whatnot. Then it’ll be all out war with the White Walkers -- who, by the way, now have an ice-breathing dragon that is terrifying and awesome. V: what I want to know is if Tormund is OK. He was on the wall and they just melted it down...So is he dead? Does this mean we're being deprived of Tormund-Brienne babies? Help, I'm being repressed! A: I think he’s still alive. If they were killing him off they’d have shown it. They might try to keep us in suspense for a little while next season, but I think he’ll come back early and kill him some Wights. Or maybe they’ll find him out there and he can tell them what happened. V: I demand that his wish to make babies with Brienne come to fruition. A: We can only hope. Although she and the Hound shared a nice moment this week. I like how proud they both are of Arya. They were both her mentors at different points of her journey. And, like true warriors, they don’t hold any grudges about their fight to the almost-death. Also, one of my favorite moments in the episode was a small one that made me laugh harder than anything I can remember on the show; when Tyrion begins his negotiation with Cersei, knowing full well how much she wants him dead, and she finally decides not to have the Mountain cleave him in half, he immediately walks over to the wine and starts drinking. That had me in hysterics, even more so than all of Bronn’s cock talk in the beginning. V: it reminded me that they're both alcoholic. They have that in common, if nothing else. Also, both of Cersei’s brothers dared her to kill them. Almost identical circumstances too. A: And, shockingly, she didn’t kill either of them. I figured Tyrion was safe because there’s one more season to go and he’s Tyrion, but she showed restraint even with Jamie. Not that I think either of these confrontations are done by a long shot. V: after feeling betrayed by Tommen's suicide, I'm sure she'll want revenge on Jaime for this. A: She warned him a few episodes ago that he’d better not cross her. Now he has, and flagrantly. Is her love for him diminished if she can’t control him? Or, if he’s a reflection of herself as you pointed out, will her own narcissism keep her from killing him? V: good question. I don't really know, but ultimately I think he may kill her. That would be great, and he's already a kingslayer so why not? A: I’m still holding out for Arya to finish her off. I love that Stark Girl vengeance.

#game of thrones #jaime lannister #arya stark #sansa stark #jon snow #tyrion lannister #cersei lannister #danereys targaryen #sandor clegane #euron greyjoy #theon greyjoy #yara greyjoy

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mandysimo13 · 7 years

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It’s Complicated

Here it is! The last of the three promised gift fics. This one is for @notesoflore, who asked for some badass Johnlockary. Ask and ye shall receive! It’s a little longer than anticipated but, hopefully, it does it for you guys. You can also read it here on AO3. Enjoy!

John really should have been used to being abducted. To waking up missing small chunks of time, feeling nauseous, cold and hungry and angry and sore. He had been friends with Sherlock long enough, and married to an ex-assassin, and had been abducted several times before. If you count anytime he had been shanghaied by Mycroft. Which he did. He really should have been more prepared.

But he wasn’t.

Though his eyes were closed, he winced hard as he slowly came to consciousness.

First things, first. Take stock, he thought to himself. He knew he was lying facedown on damp, cool concrete that smelled vaguely of mildew. Basement or a warehouse. He dragged his leaden arms up so he could push himself up and at least roll over onto his back. With a bitten-off groan, he succeeded and opened his eyes cautiously. It was dim, he blinked to clear his watery vision a little. Turning his head, he saw a single ceiling lamp, switched on, and nothing else. No furniture, no windows, not even piping. At least that meant they couldn’t tie him down to anything.

Next, he wiggled his fingers and toes and found them all in tact. His joints were sore but that probably had more to do with waking up on cement than anything else. His neck began to complain, throbbing at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. His hand came up to rub at it and he hissed in pain, the dull throb not unlike an amorous hickey.

Injection site, more force than necessary.

He wondered what they’d actually drugged him with, if they planned on keeping him drugged up or if whoever kidnapped him wanted him awake to interrogate him. As to what they would interrogate him about, John had no idea. Either way, he made an effort to be silent as he dragged himself up off the ground to prop his back against the nearest wall.

His mouth was dry, possibly a side effect of the drug and definitely a result of being dehydrated. He was unsure of how much time had passed but it was safe to say a couple hours at least. Squashing down his impending nausea and shoving aside his discomfort, he dug in his pockets to see what he still had on him. He had left the house this morning with his phone, keys, wallet, set of nail clippers, pocket flashlight, and handkerchief.

He frowned to realize whoever had taken him had been very thorough. It was too much to hope that he’d have his phone still on him, but stranger things had happened. In any case, they had cleaned him out.

Well, nothing for it now but to sit and wait. Just like in the army. Sit and wait.

///-\\\

Mary’s blood ran cold when she walked up on their car with their daughter in her arms. The bags John had been holding were scattered on the ground, keys left near the passenger rear wheel, no sign of John. Kidnapping, he’s been kidnapped. Again.

He had been out of her sight for no less than two minutes. While she got their daughter changed into a new nappy in the loo, John said he’d take the groceries out to the car. They were going to have a nice night in, movie and homemade pizza with the shit £10 wine like the normal couple they had convinced themselves they were.

Of course that was too much to ask for.

Not allowing panic to take control, she shifted Rosie on her hip and dug into her purse to pull out her phone and hit speed dial two. “You better pick up your goddamn phone, Sherlock Holmes,” Mary warned the empty air in front of her.

He answered on the first ring.

“Mary, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“John’s gone,” she said, unable to keep the small tremor out of her voice. “Someone’s taken him.”

The answer was immediate. “Where are you?”

She told him her location and Sherlock assured her he’d be right there.

“Did you call the police?”

“Course not, they’re morons,” Mary said, trying for levity. They shared a strained laugh before she continued. “But they are the next call. We’ll need access to the lot feeds and they’ll be useful in that capacity.”

“Excellent, Mary. Don’t let them touch anything. I’m already on my way.”

“We’ll find him, won’t we? Just like before, right?”

“Of course we will. Hopefully this time he’s not being used for kindling, though. I think it’s a little early for bonfires.”

“Quite right,” she said, heart picking up speed. She rang off and stood there, leaning against the car as she dialed for Lestrade. If there was anyone who would be willing to let Sherlock get involved, it would be him.

With the calls made, all she could do was sit and wait.

///-\\\

It took fifteen minutes at the crime scene for Sherlock to determine who had taken John. By the time he got there, Mary had found someone to take Rosie off her hands for the time being and had set up her own perimeter around the car.

John chose well, in her, he thought silently.

He had taken a look at the spot and saw John’s keys lying on the ground and had to swallow back a lump of panic. Just like any other case, find and analyse the evidence. Solve the case, he told himself firmly.

He examined the area, scanned their receipt to see if they had taken anything from their grocery bags, searched the area around the car. Nothing else had been taken, nothing other than John’s keys left behind. A quick look at the lot surveillance yielded a lucky shot of John walking out into the car lot and being tailed by a black van. The footage showed a man opening the side door, hitting John in the neck with something and dragging him into the van before it sped into motion and leaving for parts unknown.

The van had been partially blocked on the bottom of the frame so it was impossible to read the plate but what they did find made Sherlock’s heart soar with hope. The hand that had delivered the blow to the neck had a tattoo on the back of his hand.

“I know who took him,” Sherlock declared with delight. Without another thought, he was running out the door and all set to retrieve John himself.

A grip to the back of his coat stopped him short.

“Sherlock Fucking Holmes, if you think you’re rescuing my husband without me then you are sorely mistaken.”

A turn of his head brought an angry, determined Mary Watson into view. Instantly chastised Sherlock stilled. He cleared his throat, “of course. Apologies.”

Lestrade spoke up and said, “who took him, Sherlock? Tell us and we can all go and get him back safely.”

Sherlock straightened his coat like a disgruntled bird would smooth its feathers. “A man named Panczenko. Rather, an associate of Panczenko, I recognize the tattoo. I ran into them during my time away. He’s an arms dealer, dabbles in the drug trade and was looking into expanding his enterprise in Russia. I discovered him when I was dismantling Moriarty’s network. I might have caused,” he hesitated, trying to phrase his words correctly, “a slight upset in his supply line.”

“How,” Mary asked.

“He had a shipment of guns in a warehouse that I accidentally liquidated.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying you destroyed the warehouse,” Lestrade asked.

Sherlock nodded. “More accurately, I had to blow it up. The warehouse they were using was partly owned by a member of the network I had been hunting. I couldn’t get close to him, not without some measure of personal risk. So, I had to go with a more...covert approach.”

“A bomb is covert,” Lestrade asked incredulously.

Sherlock shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Could detonate from afar, ensure maximum likelihood of death, cathartic in a sense.”

“Hang on, how did they find out about you, though,” Mary asked.

“Criminals talk. I was taking out people left and right, in those days. I didn’t think I was coming home. I wasn’t exactly careful, after a certain point. It’s how I eventually got caught.”

“And now they want revenge,” Mary said plainly. “Exactly how much did you blow up?”

“Several hundred thousand pounds worth of merchandise. Some members of their organization, too. Not exactly a write off.”

Mary, in a second, had turned from “scared wife and mother” to “ready for battle assassin”. For not the first time in his life, and certainly not the last, Sherlock was impressed by Mary’s ability to prioritize and seamlessly blend into any situation she found herself in. Staring up at him she said, “well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go get our John back.”

Sherlock nodded and said, “yes. Let’s go get our John back.”

///-\\\

When Sherlock and Mary burst into his cell, both brandishing guns and murderous scowls, John had to fight the urge to laugh and kiss them both. They were both stunning, sweeping into the room, almost in slow motion to John’s tired brain, looking like some kind of old school spy movie.

I watch too much fucking James Bond, he thought distantly.

Not long after, a policeman came barreling in, guarding the door. Commotion rang outside but John couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when the two loves of his life were crouched in front of him, touching his face with concern.

Mary swept his sweaty fringe back to inspect a cut on his forehead while Sherlock cupped and held his cheeks up to the light to examine his black eye.

“What have they done to you, John,” Mary asked, barely containing her anger.

“Just roughed me up a bit,” John answered, wincing at their prodding.

“Black eye, split lip, two superficial cuts to the forehead,” Sherlock rattled off automatically. He pushed John’s head to the side to look at his neck and he surprised all present by literally growling at what he found. “Whoever kidnapped you was a bloody butcher. I’ve seen better injection sites from first year med students and shaky junkies.”

John smiled fondly and shoved them both off. “If you two are quite done.” He held out his hands for them to help him rise, which they did, and he staggered a little on his feet. Immediately two arms came around his waist to support him. Between the aftereffects of the drugs, having no food or water in the twelve hours he’d been captive, and the knocking around he’d been given, he was not at his best. “Take me home, if you would be so kind.”

“Yes, John,” his wife and best friend answered in tandem.

On the way home, sandwiched between Mary and Sherlock while Lestrade drove, the two grilled him about his time as a captive. On autopilot, he told them that he was asked details about Sherlock’s life. People he loved were threatened if he didn’t answer and he was beaten repeatedly when he didn’t comply.

When Lestrade pulled up in front of Mary and John’s flat, he offered Sherlock a ride but the detective waived it off. “John needs looking after.”

John anticipated Mary telling him that she was capable of taking care of him herself but, to his surprise, she seconded Sherlock’s statement. His heart felt full. Normally, he found himself tugged in two directions: the family he had always wanted with Mary and Rosie on one side, Sherlock and the adventure he had always needed on the other. He loved them both tremendously and felt guilt gnaw at him whenever he was with one without the other. He was better, happier, when he could have them both in the same room.

He had stopped hiding his feelings after Sherlock came back. At least from himself he did. It was Mary who ended up saying the words out loud first. Long after the bullet wound had healed, not long after they brought Rosie home. He had spent so much time away from Sherlock that it made him ache. But parting from his wife, his new child, the thought made him feel like scum.

He couldn’t decide which was worse.

She cornered him after putting their daughter to bed. “You love him. He loves you.”

“I do. I think he does.”

“It’s obvious.”

John had laughed humorlessly. “You two sound so alike. What’s that say about me, then? Hmm?”

“That you’re in love. And you’re feeling guilty as shit, not wanting to choose.” She had stared him down, not pulling away from him or their situation. “I’ll not lose you, John,” she had told him plainly. “But I do think there could be...accommodations made.”

John shook his head. “I would never risk us.” It was unclear if he was talking about his friendship with Sherlock or his marriage with Mary. It didn’t really matter. There was too much at stake.

Mary had kissed him then and told him, “you might be surprised. My offer stands. If you ever gather the courage to ask him.”

That conversation haunted him for months. The offer sat on the tip of his tongue for weeks and each day he grew closer to saying it. But in the end, he always chickened out.

Dragging his thoughts to the present, John walked into his house with Mary in front of him and Sherlock behind. He wash ushered into the shower by Mary and Sherlock announced he would make John dinner.

He cleaned himself thoroughly, sighing at the warm water working magic on his stiff, sore limbs. When he emerged, it was to the smell of a proper fry up and fresh pajamas. On the nightstand was two paracetamol tablets and a glass of water, which he downed greedily. Empty glass in hand, he went in search of his rescuers.

In the kitchen he was handed another glass of water and then a cup of tea. Both went down easily and soon a plate of food was put in front of him. After his plate was clean, he looked at both Sherlock and Mary and asked, “what now?”

His wife and friend looked at each other then back to John. Sherlock remained silent and Mary sighed, exhausted. “This ends right now.”

John’s heart lurched in his chest. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m tired of pretending like you two aren’t completely gone over each other.”

“Mary,” John started, not wanting to get into it just yet but Mary was having none of it.

“Neither of us can live without you, John.” She let the statement fall. Silence followed it, heavy and thick. Her eyes watered and she averted her gaze to try and hide it. “While you were gone, while we were looking for you, we talked.”

John licked his lips nervously. “Go on.”

Mary, landed her gaze on Sherlock and it seemed to him that she was begging Sherlock to say something. He cleared his throat and toyed with his own hot mug of tea.

“It was mutually agreed that neither of us can let you go. Nor are we willing to let you continue feeling guilty for having to choose between us.”

John’s palms began to sweat and his eyes darted between the two people who he loved most in the world. “So...what does that mean?” A million thoughts zipped through his mind.

Is one of them leaving? I think, I know I can’t handle that. Losing Sherlock almost killed me, Mary’s the mother of my child, how do I keep them, I can’t-

“Stop thinking, John,” Sherlock told him firmly.

John swallowed thickly. “I...I can’t.”

“You don’t have to. We’re not going anywhere,” Mary promised.

“What does that mean,” John asked, tired and growing increasingly unsure.

“It means,” Sherlock said, turning to look at Mary.

“That we’re making room,” she concluded for him.

John sat, brain unwilling to process the information he had received. Without a word, Sherlock and Mary rose and helped him stand and lead him to the bedroom. Mary left the two men alone while she checked on their daughter and John finally seemed to find his words without so many people in the room.

“So you just decided all this without me, then?”

“Are you saying you don’t want this?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” John replied instantly.

“Then don’t overthink it.”

John sat on the edge of the bed, covering his eyes with his hand. “This is so complicated. So fucked, I don’t know where to even begin.” He looked up at Sherlock and asked, “how did we get here?”

Sherlock stared right back and said, “Who cares, John?”

“Who cares, indeed,” Mary said, walking back into the room. She began changing, readying herself for bed and John was about to protest, uncomfortable with the sudden ease of nudity in the room but she beat him to it. “We’re going to be getting very familiar in short order, might as well get a jump on things.”

She dug into John’s drawers and pulled out an oversized shirt and a pair of John’s pajama pants. “Might be a little short, but they’ll do.” She tossed them to Sherlock and said, “extra toothbrush on the sink.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, leaving to go ready himself for bed.

John sighed. “Better go make up the couch, then.” He tried to rise and Mary gently pushed him back down on the bed. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. He sleeps here. There’s room enough.”

“But-”

“But nothing, John.” She smiled at him and said, “I agree that this is...odd. But since when have we three been normal, eh?”

Accepting defeat, John nodded once and slipped between the sheets. Soon Mary joined him and then, standing awkwardly in the doorway, Sherlock appeared. He fidgeted with his fingers and John took one look and, finally realizing all he could have if he just stopped thinking, took pity on him. He held up a corner of the duvet and said, “get over here, git.”

Sherlock relaxed and did as told. John soon found himself in the middle of his bed with a head resting on each shoulder. For the first time since Sherlock’s return, he felt completely and totally whole. His arms squeezed the two of them close and he let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding. He had never been so at peace.

There was just one thing that would make the situation perfect.

Reading his thoughts, Mary tilted her head up and kissed him slowly, sweet, familiar lips welcoming him home. “We’ll figure it out in the morning. Good night, John.” She looked over at Sherlock with a look that said your turn, dummy.

Sherlock moved slowly and said, “John, may I-”

“Yes,” John finished for him.

Almost shyly, Sherlock cupped his chin with one hand and John angled his lips down to meet Sherlock’s. Soft as Mary’s but more timid. Over far too quick for a first kiss, but perfect nonetheless, Sherlock pulled back and said, “good night, John.”

He pressed one more quick kiss to Sherlock’s lips and then turned to kiss the top of Mary’s head. He said aloud, to them both, “good night.” Then, softly, he added, “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” the two voices against his chest answered.

Their situation was bizarre. Complicated beyond belief. But they were right, it didn’t matter how they got there. All that mattered is that they loved each other and they were moving forward together. They’d figure it all out in the morning. Without the weight of guilt on him for the first time in over three years, John Watson slept peacefully.

#johnlockary #worstan #warstan #fic #my fic #writing #my writing #give away fic #friends

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thatgothlibrarian · 5 years

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but Jay, should Hamlet's death by poison be an elaborate metaphor for orgasm aka la petit mort? Horatio helping him make peace with his death etc. ANALYZE IT

This is borderline an essay, so please read my flailing after the cut.

Actually, Horatio isn’t helping him make peace. Hamlet is weirdly calm about his death as it is happening. It is Horatio who is in fact distraught.

Through the play, Horatio has been our voice of reason. He is steady, stable, calm. He is the perfect balance to Hamlet’s keyed-up emotions. We don’t know what Hamlet was like at Wittenberg, but right now he is emotional. His father is dead. His mom has married his uncle a little too soon. He finds out his uncle killed his father and he is tasked with seeking revenge. And he knows how that will end.

I like to think that Hamlet has always been very intense. Horatio doesn’t seem to be disturbed by how like, Extra Hamlet is. And Hamlet does the whole “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee” while speaking to Horatio. Horatio being a touchstone, a stabilizing factor, for Hamlet seems pre-established. Another reference to this is the “O Damon dear” line, alluding to the story of Damon and Pythias; Damon being a man who was willing to die for his friend, not even thinking twice about it; and it is obvious this is not the first time the two of them have called each other such.

Before the duel, Horatio is like “idk man maybe you shouldn’t do this,” which prompts Hamlet to give the “we defy augury” speech. Hamlet has accepted his death, and has known it will happen, since that ghost spurred him to his revenge. “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” Hamlet knows there is really nothing he can do to stop his own death; it’s gonna happen eventually, right? And he’s so tired. And his revenge is so consuming.

So we get to Act V scene ii. The queen is dead. Claudius is dead. Laertes is dead. And Hamlet, after Laertes admits he poisoned the blades, simply says:

Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.— / I am dead, Horatio.—Wretched queen, adieu!— / You that look pale and tremble at this chance, / That are but mutes or audience to this act, / Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, / Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you— / But let it be.— Horatio, I am dead. / Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied.

To which Horatio immediately is like OH FUCK THAT and, since he is “more antique Roman than a Dane” (the name Horatio can be the adjective referring to things that are like the poet Horace, after all, and also this is often read as a “I’m too gay to live without you and I love you”), he picks up the poisoned cup to drink, to kill himself, to follow Hamlet into death. Indeed it is Hamlet who takes the cup from Horatio, who keeps Horatio from killing himself. It is Hamlet who helps Horatio make peace with his death, not Horatio who helps Hamlet. “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,” Hamlet says to Horatio when asking him to stay alive, to tell the story of what happened.

As Hamlet takes his final breaths, he uses them in fact for mundane things: let people know that Fortinbras has my vote for taking over, because I will be dead before I hear news from England, and I hear Fortinbras coming now. The rest is silence. Death is silence. Death is peace. Death is freedom. The rest, indeed, is rest. And this breaks Horatio’s heart:

Now cracks a noble heart.–Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

SO. If we want to try to make this an orgasm metaphor, how would we go about this? We must first link death and love within this play, and Shakespeare has quite the track record for just that.

1. This almost suicide recalls the end of Romeo and Juliet: Romeo sees his lover dead and drinks poison to kill himself, and then Juliet sees her dead lover and kills herself with his dagger (indeed, what could the dagger be in our extended metaphor). So the death of Hamlet mirrors both deaths: poison, and the second lover killing themselves with something of the first’s.

2. Shakespeare was such a big fan of Christopher Marlowe that the only thing in all of Shakespeare’s plays that he directly quotes is the Hero and Leander poem of Marlowe’s, another tale of tragic love. This poem is also uh gay, and the Chapman addition directly following Marlowe’s death even more so. For an excellent analysis of this poem and particularly the addition, see Queer Philologies: Sex, Language, and Affect in Shakespeare’s Time by Jeffrey Masten, which I am reading right now.

3. Hamlet is full of references to classical lovers and friends separated or almost separated by death. And I use “friends” here in the context of the time: same-sex friendship held different connotations than it does now, and the lines between romantic, sexual, and platonic relationships were not as clean-cut as they are today. Hamlet calls Horatio Damon, thus making himself Pythias. In the Yorick speech, Hamlet calls up Alexander the Great, and particularly his death. The speech Hamlet asks the Player King to perform is the slaughter of Priam, and the thing that strikes him after is the ability for the Player King to show such emotion “for Hecuba! What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?” Again, two lovers separated not just by death but by tragic death.

4. There’s this essay called “Hamlet: Letters and Spirits” in the book Shakespeare and the Question of Theory that discusses a small throwaway line given by Laertes, where he says the name of the Norman man is “Lamord.” This essay points out how that sounds like “la mort” and indeed also like “l’amour.” Love and death, and the audience would hear both since they sound so alike.

We have our death/love precedent set, then, in a play defined by death, and especially the death of those people love, and then the death they deal out because of it. We have Horatio almost killing himself as Hamlet dies. Indeed, joining him in death. In our orgasm metaphor, I feel I don’t even need to explain that symbolism.

So let’s lay out our metaphor further, so that it culminates in Hamlet dying, and thus some form of cathartic release from life, and what else is orgasm but a release?

Our play opens with a ghost, yes, but Hamlet is introduced to us in a wedding/funeral. He’s upset. He’s grumpy. He’s pissy and sassy. “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” indeed. He’s defensive. And as soon as he is alone, he releases. “Oh that this too too sullied/solid flesh would melt.” Tension, release. We see a similar tension/release with the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy. He’s been fucking around with Polonius. He’s been fucking around with Ros and Guil (having some “foreplay” of our release with “what a piece of work is man”). He’s been Extra and requested a highly emotionally charged speech of death and love from the players. When Hamlet is then left alone on stage: “Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.” Tension, release. And each of these releases, they are not pleasurable. They might be cathartic, but they are not releases of ecstasy but rather releases such as lancing a wound, a morbid release. They show how much performing Hamlet is having to do, and then he finally can stop that performance and rest. But those rests are never restful.

Until the final rest. Two men duel with their swords (indeed, Hamlet says the rapier and dagger or whatever the hell he names are only two of Laertes’ weapons wink wink nudge nudge), and through this act of homoerotic violence, everyone on stage dies except Horatio. And only because Hamlet begs him not to die. The psychosexual fiasco that is Hamlet culminates in the final release of death, of la mort and l’amour. Hamlet is dead long before that release and he knows it. And in his death, his la mort, he begs of Horatio out of love, out of l’amour, to “absent thee from felicity awhile” so that this story can be told. The rest, and the rest, is silence. The rest is rest. Death is the ultimate release. Death is the ultimate reprieve, the ultimate sweetness, the ultimate pleasure. Man delights not Hamlet, no nor woman either, but Death comes as a welcome friend, the skull of a jester spoken to with fond remembrance.

For Horatio, we see heightened emotion and almost complete loss of control in this moment. He attempts to join Hamlet in death, in release. Without l’amour of Hamlet, the rest is la mort. Horatio does not get his release, at least not in the same way that Hamlet does. Although Hamlet’s death is a tragedy, it finally allows Hamlet to rest. Note how he says the rest is silence. Horatio is denied sharing the release with Hamlet, and now cracks a noble heart. Horatio has been calm this whole play, and so Hamlet in fact has to help him make peace with what is happening. When Horatio calls Hamlet “sweet Prince,” it echoes back to “Here, sweet lord, at your service,” the only other time Horatio uses that epithet for Hamlet. And yes, sweet had homoerotic connotations when used between two men. Horatio is a service top confirmed. But in this moment, Hamlet is at Horatio’s service. Hamlet has the release of death, the post-orgasmic state of release where the mind is empty. How else is Horatio supposed to address him then if not as a lover? Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Again, we see this theme of rest. The languid, empty-minded rest that comes from orgasm, and indeed this is the final form of that, and it is heavenly. There is this perfect, clear moment of Hamlet’s death. The rest is silence. A beat. Nothingness (and remember what nothing was a euphemism for, kiddos). The entire play has prepared us for this moment. This entire play is foreplay for this moment of release. The rest is silence. Sure, in a Shakespearean tragedy, the climax is in Act III, which is in our case the confirmation of Claudius’ guilt, the ultimate moment of Hamlet’s indecision, and the murder of Polonius (which triggers Ophelia’s madness, which triggers Laertes’ own need for revenge, the duel, and death). But the climax of our metaphor is here at the end, in Act V scene ii. The rest is silence.

But we don’t get an afterglow. With Horatio, we too are left unsatisfied. Now cracks a noble heart. But we see that Hamlet ascends through his release, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I like to argue that this play is in fact not Hamlet’s but Horatio’s. After all, he is the one telling the story. And I like to think that he, not Hamlet, is our audience analog. We end the play the only people left on stage alive, holding Hamlet in our arms, coming down from the release. And then Fortinbras shows up and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and it’s a whole bunch of shit nobody can quote and sometimes gets cut out completely. What people remember is an almost pieta like image of Hamlet dead in Horatio’s arms. The rest is silence. Good night, sweet prince. La mort and l’amour.

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kira-ning · 7 years

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JackEv 1x08: How else would you know it’s yours?

From the moment they kissed in episode 5, there has been growing intimacy between Jack and Langwidere, yet their relationship has remained undefined. That was bound to come to a head at some point, and in a way, this episode was the one where it did.

Jack wakes up to find himself now a pseudo-king, his every need hilariously attended to by Ev’s servants. But while Jack does find some pleasure in his new outfits, let’s face it, he’s never been enamoured by wealth or status. He finds himself in an odd position. It’s obvious that Lady Ev no longer sees him as part-time servant and wants to make sure he receives special treatment. But on the other hand he’s no real king of Ev. He’s in limbo throughout the whole episode, not quite sure of who he is to her. Though I’m not sure if the writers intended it, it was frustrating to watch. That in turn made their argument in the bed chambers especially cathartic.

A lot of people see Langwidere ignoring Jack as a case of her being ‘mean’, but that’s not how I saw it at all. She barely has time to mourn her father before she has to make a plan to protect her kingdom from the wizard and put it into motion. I’m surprised she even had the time to spend the night with Jack. Also note that as he leaves she’s asking the guard about how the guns work. This is all new for her.

When Jack replies with a salty comment when she tells him there are some plans she cannot reveal to him, she doesn’t have the time to argue so her best choice is to ignore him. But more importantly, I think she genuinely wants to keep him away from all that’s going on to protect him. She’s already lost two of her loved ones to the actions of the wizard (well, one to Sylvie but she doesn’t see it that way), and I doubt she wants to see Jack at risk. There’s this second of shock when he barges into the hall, and her tone is very firm. Then there’s that moment when she just looks at him – Though hardly covered by the mask, her face was deliberately unreadable.

Having no chance to spend time with her, and not very interested in captilizing on his new benefits, people-person Jack goes to find Jane. It’s a sweet moment. Despite the fact that she had to release him to Langwidere, there’s no bad blood there. Jane’s predicament will eventually frame Lady Ev and Jack’s conversation. A matter which they use to talk about their relationship, without talking about their relationship.

Jane is also really astute when she asks him, “You’re with Langwidere now? What about Tip?” Thank you. For any observer the rate at which Jack and Langwidere hooked up is truly astounding and Jane had every right to question it. Also, remember that Jane saw Jack at a point where his primary concern was Tip. I think there’s definitely a part of him that does love Tip, just like Tip loves him. But as to what kind of love that is, it’s something that they both have to figure out. In any case he can’t just pretend Tip doesn’t exist at that he doesn’t still occupy a position in his heart.

I doubt he’d be able to have a proper relationship with Lady Ev as long as he hasn’t resolved things. He says that “With Langwidere it’s simple, she owns me.” You could say in his position, comparatively, it is certainly simpler. And yet, if you see his face, there’s something about her owning him that makes him bitter and uncomfortable (as it well should).

On either side I don’t think Jack has fully committed himself.

Langwidere on the other hand, despite her callous ways and curt way of speaking, is definitely falling hard for Jack. When she enters the room she’s relieved to see Jack awake, and to her mind, after a whole day of preparing Ev’s defences, she can’t wait to find some rest with him. When she says that she’d been waiting to be with him all day I don’t doubt that because she’s many things but liar is not one of them. Interestingly she wants what Jack wants in the morning. Just time together. Their goals are somewhat aligned, but the timing is off.

Also note how she starts speaking carelessly about her servants/subjects being crippled and then feels guilty for using the term. Can you imagine Ep 4 Langwidere stuttering as she tells Jack “I-I didn’t mean…” Yep I think not!

People so commonly think that she’s messing with Jack but out of the two of them she’s the only one that has vocalised her feelings. It’s convoluted, yes. She still understands human relationships by utility. But just like she was genuine about wanting a friend but not knowing where to get one, in the same way she very much wants Jack to be hers out of her feelings for him. She doesn’t want to lose Jack, because Jack is all she has. But she doesn’t understand that keeping him as property is not the right way to go about it.

When I wrote my first Jackev meta, I said that the only way I could ship them if that they continued to be themselves but slowly make progress. And surprisingly, despite how incredulous the writing on the show can be, it’s turning out to be the case with them.

Jack is the only person who can call her out on her nonsense. Who wouldn’t back down and tells her that people don’t just exist for her benefit and to be used and tossed aside by her. He is the voice of all reasonable audiences when we watch her ask, “How else do you know it’s yours?” and replies, “How can you think that way?” Honestly, it’s pretty messed up. I wonder if the show will ever explain how she got that mentality, but needless to say she’s been through quite a bit in her life.

Her throwing a curveball back at him by freeing him was a bigger twist for me than say, Tip coming back to life (Boy, didn’t see that coming, uh huh…). You can see it caught him off-guard too. I think at that point he probably was thinking about how incredulous that she’d challenge him like that, but it also made him realise that she was right. While he thinks that Langwidere is using him and he’s not entirely wrong in thinking that, the fact is he would kiss her, would sleep with her, but doesn’t love her enough to stay.

That being said, Jack made the right decision by leaving. He has to be a free man if they were ever to pursue a relationship. And if he comes back for her eventually (I’m thinking he will do that at some point, now that he’s witnessed the stand-off), that will definitely bore holes in her warped philosophy.

It was still sad to watch him go though. Even though I doubt he’s in love with her, at this point he does care for her. Walking away is hard, but something will never sit right if he stays. And props to Stefanie Martini for her acting, because when Langwidere turns her head away, my heart still broke for her. In that moment she is so regal, so outwardly composed, but she can’t bear to look at him. It hurts more thinking back to last episode when she was sitting in the same room, baring her heart to him, willing to show him her face and herself. And he told her, “I do see you.” So now she has to face the immensity of taking care of her kingdom on her own, as the one person she thought would understand her walks away.

This reviewer wondered if Lady Ev’s masks were a reflection of how she was opening up to Jack:

I found it quite strange how transparent the mask of Lady Ev was this episode. It made me wonder, as Jack began to peel away the layers of her defense, were the mask supposed to be representative of this? That she was becoming more open, more willing to be seen since he was opening her heart?

I am inclined to agree. In the place where she was most at risk, and the time when it was the hardest for her, her mask practically covered her whole face.

When she was resolved to take revenge on the wizard she was wearing a military mask. And after Jack tells her that he does see her, she feels at peace enough to wear a mask that would let people see the emotion on her face.

They are both stubborn people, both flawed – and I suppose that what makes them so intriguing to watch week after week.

#emerald city #jack the tinman #lady ev #langwidere #ec meta #kira ramblings

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