#it’s so very important to me. they’re like a rhetorical device

[whitmore]

bolas rojas arc is so narratively compelling in terms of the greater qsmp— this was portrayed to be a pvp-based event, an immense contrast from the plot and server we’re used to, and the people winning so far are the most pvp disadvantaged team who are soaring on the power of friendship alone. they are not built for this. they have been spawn-killed repeatedly and they have utterly and entirely lost themselves in gas masks and cannibalism but they have not lost each other. the story prevails the community prevails always has always will

#eleanor.txt #qsmp #team bolas #it’s so very important to me. they’re like a rhetorical device #this is what it’s all about. this is precisely what it’s about #do you hear me. do you get how important it is #(not to say i think they’ll win the purgatory event in general. i think that’s really doubtful actually #but narratively. understand their impact) #qmeta

[servicetopkaradanvers]

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right place to say this, but I don't know if there is. And you're a smart person and critical thinker who has talked about this before. If this is totally weird, you can just delete it ofc. I've never properly watched Supergirl but I started reading fanfic around the time my mental health got real bad so it was a comfort thing I didn't bring too much thought to. I really identify with Lena and in the past, part of me has understood her actions-

and I know that they're wrong. The anti-alien rhetoric is obviously an allegory for racism or homophobia. She's violated people's basic human rights. And I'm scared that I'm a bad person because sometimes, I kind of get it. Which is insane because i'm a lesbian enby of color, i mean i get targeted by most of the -ist/ism actions. And I'm also too tired to think about things critically all the time. Supercorp was my comfort fic, content thing-

I knew it was problematic (the whole James thing makes me sick to my stomach, scared and sad) but I didn't know that Lena as a character was written that way. The metaphors never really clicked in my head because I never thought about it, but now I feel absolutely horrible about myself because I like and identify with Lena. I'm not really sure how to move on from here- I'm just tired. I wish there could be just one thing, one piece of media that wasn't prejudiced (granted sg is not the place to go if you want decent rep and the like) and all of those things I said earlier. Its just me somehow trying to justify how I felt and empathized with something I shouldn't have. So yeah, sorry that was really long. I hope you have a lovely day- sorry for the spam

FIRST of all, you’re fine, babe! Both in sending me this and in enjoying The Bad Media. That’s my thesis here: You’re fine. With this in mind, let’s unpack this big ol suitcase:

We’re living in a fandom moment where more than ever before, we’re thinking about the ideas we consume in fiction and how they may or may not affect us. This is a net positive! Fiction is not reality, but it undeniably impacts it, so for this and many other reasons, we should always think critically about what resonates with us and why. Does this mean dissecting every facet of something to find all the ways it might fall in line with oppressive power structures? Absolutely not.

You, as an individual, do not owe anyone an explanation for why you enjoy anything. Period. How you relate to a given character or why you like them is nobody's business but your own.

Supergirl, as a piece of media, is singularly awful in its lackluster lipservice to progressivism while simultaneously refusing to deliver any progressive themes. Socially and politically, it is a useless liberal wet dream. Kara is an immigrant from a dead culture working as the muscle for a secret FBI offshoot with zero accountability for all of the other aliens in diaspora she has rounded up and dumped into a cell without trial. Alex is allegedly a lesbian, but the key points of her endgame relationship are constantly deemed not important enough to get screen time, which is made even more absurd when examined from the angle that this series is marketed directly toward LGBT people. An embarrassing percentage of villains on this show are women of color, which is particularly loud when there are only 2 women in the main cast who aren't white. And "main" is extremely generous, given that Kelly is just there to Give Advice Good and everything M'gann says and does is as dry as toast.

My point here is that the whole show is rotted to its roots, and whatever quietly libertarian or even fascism-enabling bullshit they push onto Lena in a given week is par for the crusty, shitty course. Kara deciding that she's ok with the alien detection device because "there are bad aliens" is a lovely (read: awful) microcosm of why this show sucks so fucking hard. "People are entitled to their opinions" is for debates on whether pineapple goes on pizza, not for whether we should casually out, endanger, and disenfranchise our [insert minority metaphor here] because some of them are mean.

But what I would love for this fandom to wrap its head around, and what I hope you understand, anon, is that just because it happens on the show, doesn't mean we have to give a rat's ass about it. What the hell is The Canon, anyway? Especially in the case for Supergirl, which can't even get its own continuity right. Especially for an IP that has been rebooted dozens of times before and will be rebooted again in the future. We can just decide that Lena realized the horrible injustices she enabled through her position of power. We can even decide that they just didn't happen at all! This is all fake. It's not set in stone. Who came up with it, anyway? A network with a list of buzzwords they want included and a couple of D-tier showrunners cranking down caffeine to meet an absurdly tight deadline. It's not special. I can guarantee that you care about it infinitely more than they do, and you haven't even watched the damn show.

On a more personal level, people who are hurt, depressed, or traumatized have always and will always look for themselves in fiction. Myself included! And despite what lofty platitudes there may be on the matter, suffering does not make us kind. It does not make us better. Sometimes it's just suffering. Often it pulls us further from who we are meant to be. Often it just makes us "worse."

Trauma has made Lena emotionally brittle. A lifetime of manipulation and abuse has taught her to compartmentalize herself and lock her feelings behind a maze of doors. When she does let love in, she accepts it so wild and vulnerable that she can't see the red flags behind the rosy lenses. She latches so hard onto people she deems virtuous that she holds them to a standard none could fulfill. Her pain has to go somewhere, so it oozes out of her, into Non Nocere, into the post-reveal rift. She's a powder keg, and Kara spent 4 years shoveling more gunpowder onto the pile while holding the match between her teeth.

And despite these fatal flaws that make perfect sense through the eyes of Lena's trauma, she is so full of love. Like Kara, her suffering did not make her kind. She is kind in spite of her suffering. These are the characters we are drawn to when we're hurting. Lena’s trauma is an inextricable part of her, but it is not all of her, and neither are her mistakes.

There truly is not and never will be a piece of media that is absolutely innocent of the harmful structures thrust upon us by society, because we ourselves also participate in that society whether we are critical of it or not, whether we strive to change it or not. I'm flawed. You're flawed. Bettering ourselves is not a journey toward an ultimate destination of perfection. It is a garden we nurture in an endless labor of love because the joy that comes from seeing it flourish and change vastly outweighs the work we put into it and the weeds popping up around its unkempt edges. This is a lesson Lena herself could probably stand to internalize. Probably with lots and lots of therapy. Lots. And lots.

So, to circle back to the start of this? You're fine. You recognized the logic in a traumatized character's mistakes because our own gravest errors more often than not stem from the ways we have been harmed in the past. It's what makes Lena (or, at the very least, the many adaptations of Lena that exist in this fandom) a good character. She is, to her core, characterized proof that a crumbling foundation and poisonous soil do not define us. Which is why watching her heal and grow and learn a healthier kind of love is so, so wonderful.

In closing, I think it's worth mentioning that being critical of media does not mean that we stop enjoying the parts of it we like. There is a lot of gold to be pulled from the steaming pile of shit that is CW Supergirl, and that's why we're all here in the first place. So I really hope you can continue to enjoy it in whatever way makes you smile <3

#Anonymous #lena

[sleepymarmot]

There are several references to the effects of the Swallow and to the upcoming apocalypse being like fire:

TIAGO - He laughs. "I don't mean *literal* singing, homes. This is the Mother of Silence we're talking about. It's the singing of a burning heart..." TIAGO - "...you may be thinking, 'But fire crackles!' No, homes, that's the material that's burning. The flames themselves are without sound."

YOU - "What will happen once you drink from this 'perforation'?" TIAGO - "I will be incinerated, but not destroyed -- finally at one with the state of the world before reality began." RHETORIC - That sounds a *bit* like substitution behaviour, no? You know a thing or two about that...

TIAGO - "Hey, man. I see it in you -- you are prepared to surrender yourself to the fire of revelation. But you're still a bit shaky spiritually." He looks you over. "You're also just, physically, shaking." TIAGO - "Keep the flame in your soul alive, though. One day you'll make it up here, if you put in the work."

INSULINDIAN PHASMID - Tell me what it's like for you. YOU - Fire, burning. INSULINDIAN PHASMID - Fire? Where? YOU - On the horizon. Pale fire. This thing we're both sensing is coming to an end. INSULINDIAN PHASMID - That is your problem. Nothing ever ends for me. There is only room for two, maybe three pictures in my mind.

Back when I was playing the game, one of my theories was that these meant the apocalypse will be the burning of the tape — or the tape computer — that this world was recorded in. So imagine my surprise when I reread Trant’s introduction of the FELD tape computer and found this:

TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "But perhaps I should return to the tape computers. As I was saying, the device itself was very elegant, fragile even. One could write directly on the tape using a special chemical solution. The machine would then analyse the handwriting, perform operations and project output onto a white screen. It was a beautiful, delicate thing." CONCEPTUALIZATION - Made of black film and folding tape structures... YOU - "The RCM should get some of those." TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Even *one* would be very useful," he agrees. "Though I understand the socio-economic causes of the Revolution, it pains me to imagine the revolutionaries setting fire to this precious device. But so they did. The Feld Playback Experiment vanished into the fires of '07."

By now I have learned that the game prefers to limit the plot importance of its sci-fi elements. And still... this sounds a lot like the world’s impending incineration by nothingness and the tape computers’ fiery destruction are the same event somehow — or at least connected. Especially since the computers were burned by the revolutionaries, the revolution might be making a return, and, according to the city herself, one of the tape computers might still exist:

YOU - "Why did the revolutionaries destroy it?" TRANT HEIDELSTAM - "Who knows? Maybe it was an accident, or maybe they didn't want the technology to end up in the wrong hands. Either way -- they're all gone now, all three versions of the prototype. Nothing but debris and ashes remains inside that building." He takes a step back; the boardwalk creaks mournfully in the wind. SHIVERS - Two seagulls circle in the sky. You look up and think: really? Or was there a fourth prototype that remains hidden in the mausoleums below Coal City?...

#disco elysium #blah blah blah

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Hey, did you saw the film theory on Invader Zim on Membrane that Low-key makes sense

NO. IT. DOESN’T!

Okay, maybe this is my personal bias shining through, because I really don’t like Mattpatt sometimes... No. Okay, I have nothing against the guy personally. More frankly, I don’t like his fanbase or the way he structures his videos.

The way Mattpatt words and structures his videos acts like he’s the first person who thought of this idea, it’s the main contributor to why I stopped watching his videos a long time ago.

He speaks in a lot of rhetorics and strawman arguments rather than just saying what he wants to say. Like “If you don’t believe me... look no further then...” and that’s the one thing I ABSOLUTELY HATE on theory videos.

And some of Mattpatts own theories he doesn’t take seriously, but this is what you get when you base your INCOME off of youtube ad revenue and browse the reddit forums for new ideas. A completely monopolized way of theorizing. (and this is why there are several paragraphs in my current chapter of Tech Support of Zim’s Computer complaining about the concept of youtube entertainment in general.)

Sure, I don’t think Mattpatt will run out of theories... but I really hate the structure of his videos follows along strawman arguments, acting like he’s always arguing with an imaginary audience for entertainment value rather than just say what he wants to say.

That, and people will often cling to theories of someone with good editing software and a youtube channel then Their own opinions.

Something that I learned was incredibly dangerous to do. I learned my lesson with “That Guy with the Glasses dot com” and I don’t plan to act like I know something or am better than someone else cause I agree with someone who said something on youtube once.

I do watch Internet reviews and theory videos for entertainment, but that’s all they are to me. I don’t like to watch youtube videos to give me opinions on how I feel about things. And I seriously think a wide margin of his subscribers lack critical thinking skills at times, as well as a majority of the youtube audience, or from what I’ve seen in the comment section.

However, remember... These are just my thoughts on the matter... My thoughts are not law and I never claim them to be.

Like when I first joined the fandom and posed my GIR analysis questions... I even said:

“I don’t know if the fandom has talked about this in depth or not... I just got here... or if someone put it into this many words before but...”  

Also... the thing that bothers me about his Invader Zim theory...

A lot of Mattpatt’s sources are just..... Wrong...

(for the next few minutes I will be talking about this video, feel free to watch or don’t)

Okay.. “Membrane is an Irken” this has been a popular fan theory since before I even entered the fandom and there are old fics about this. I have read Irken Membrane stories before.

It’s not personally my cup of tea, but it’s fun to think about.

But the straws Mattpatt grasps in his video.... Really upset me because there is some thought to the theory back in the day.. ... Like back in 2002??? but like.... NOW?!

Okay, I’ll pick apart this a little... bit by bit...

He says that Membrane takes a hard stance against anything paranormal.

Kinda... but no.. Membrane never outright denies the existence of aliens. (except in ETF... which he mainly says out of frustration...) This is what Membrane says about “there are no aliens” in the show:

Membrane just says that there are no “intelligent” aliens...None that are able to travel the massive distance to Earth, anyways... If aliens existed at all, (like the cryptoids Dib talks of) they would have traveled the distance to the planet and communicated with them by now.

However, this is a nitpick of a minor issue. One that a majority of the fandom tends to overlook when viewing Professor Membrane and Dib’s relationship in general. 

And I do find it weird that he used this for evidence when he cut out the most important snippet from the full lecture he gives Dib here.... JUST to support his claim... as if he’s intentionally leaving that part out.... hmmmm

However, I can let this slide, because it’s a nitpick and really doesn’t change anything that Membrane is very dissuasive of Dib’s alien-hunting hobbies. (I have a theory as to why and I explain it here in my own way)

The point is, Membrane is dismissive of anything alien... maybe because he’s an Irken...okay, good, yes. fair. 

A lot of Mattpatts claims from then on are pretty solid, and I won’t bunk them with “But in my headcanon/Fanfic verse...”  Because what he is saying is all true.

Membrane denying the existence of aliens even after being taken to space jail doesn’t have much of an explanation and is played for comedy and there are many ways you can go with this, and I am not going to bring up my fanfics or my own headcanons to argue with him here.

Because there is no explanation, and he is going with the “Membrane is Irken” theory... So that’s very solid when he’s talking about Membrane denying the Hallucinations. 

Mattpatt claimed that Membrane wore his face covering at all times and had been dressed this way since he was a child.

I will not deny this. This is true.

However, isn’t bringing up Membrane’s childhood kinda put a hole in your own argument?

MEMBRANE WAS A CHILD.

He had been shown to have childhood memories in the comics and the show.

Irkens don’t really have a “Childhood” per say, at least not in the way that humans do. They are a smeet, then elite, then Invader..

If he’s claiming that Membrane came to earth as an Irken SMEET....How, why, and when? 

That kinda raises more questions than it answers.... What are you proving by bringing up Membrane’s baby pictures on Earth exactly? It kind of works against your own argument? 

Saying that they’re Irken because they all have the same hair.... that’s just stupid... and he’s citing the Invader Zim wiki on this .... oh boy.

Yeah, Like before I watched the show I thought Dib and Disguised Zim were the same character or brothers...

But I don’t think character design here is a solid enough reason in this case... At least not when it comes to the hairstyles... That’s a stretch.

“Hmmm Membrane’s hair forms an M shape... What could the M stand for? Mirken?! SUSPICIOUS!” (this is just a joke)

Also... the lack of ears thing... He did say it would be hard for Membrane to hear if his headpiece was covering his ears, but not necessarily... The entire thing is a headset and he is the man of science, he can really do whatever the fuck he wants cause Science is like magic in a show like this. So if Membrane wears a headset that doesn’t obstruct his hearing at all, I can buy it... Also.. it’s equally possible his ears got blown off in a chem lab accident or he’s legally deaf and that headset acts as a hearing aide and HELPS him hear... 

Actually, I always noticed how in Membrane’s original design from the show, the headset looked a lot like a hearing aid. Specifically one with a head clip, It’s one of the things I first noticed about his design in the show.

And it’s just something I always assumed because he’s a scientist who deals with explosions in his face on a daily basis... (in fact he experiences one in episode 2B) So on first viewing, I thought that his headset served as a hearing aid as well as prescription glasses and a communication device. 

I’m just throwing out possibilities because the “lack of ears” is also kinda a stretch.

Mattpatt complaining about “lack of nose” however... Okay, yeah I’ll give him that one. It’s a character design choice that is a little odd for Professor Membrane, but it does fit with the Irken theory, since a majority of human characters, in fact, all have noses. So, Yes the “lack of nose” does fit more into the Irken theory. 

However.... Florpus anime Membrane DOES have a nose...

Meant to be drawn in a more semi-realistic artsyle, you can clearly see the bridge of his nose here.

And he looks very similar to anime Dib... Sooooo... Shrug-city... 

It’s likely that Membrane not having a nose in the show is simply a stylistic choice than anything else. Basically, the bridge of the nose is there... we just don’t see it.

Especially since Nightmare Membrane has a nose as well..

Membrane is like Home Improvement’s Wilson. We will never see his face, and that’s part of the gag. The man probably sleeps in his labcoat honestly...

I also find the voice pattern thing a bit of a stretch. Membrane and Zim are just eccentric characters who yell to emote or emphasize a point or emote stronger. And Membrane’s inflections are never the same as Zim’s.

Remember, no other Irken TALKS like Zim. Professor Membrane doesn’t really go around screaming: “I AM PROFESSOR MEMBRANE” either..... 

If anything... it just kinda proves both characters have auditory processing issues or hearing problems more then anything.

And there is a lot of screaming on this show.... Screaming from Dib, screaming from Membrane, Screaming from GIR, screaming from Zim... Screaming is funny... and characters scream so much that the characters with their mouths wide open is somewhat a staple of the show.

This is more because of Johnen Vasquez’s voice direction...

Especially since no other Irken really talks like Zim..

Zim’s manor of Speach is strictly a Zim thing and not an Irken thing.

Professor Membrane’s manner of speech is simply a Membrane thing and not a human thing.

I will give Mattpatt that. That a lot of tech in the show looks similar to Membrane’s. I feel this is mostly a stylistic choice, but it really does fit in with the Irken theory. 

Like that Zim just so happens to use the same operating system as Dib is played off as a joke. But it does add some small credence to the theory here... I need to point out when he does get it right... some pats on the back.

These are very good points and does follow through with what he’s trying to prove by the end of the day.

(even if Membrane was lying about the destruction of all mankind with the beans thing, but that’s a minor nitpick here) 

But his entire paragraph comparing Membrane’s tech to Irken tech is a really good one. Props there.

This whole paragraph about there being only Tall or short irkens cause their society is height based and there are no “medium-sized” irkens....cause they were “dealt with”

Okay.

....

Sure Mattpatt. Let’s just entirely ignore the existence of the Frylord and this entire character even though you mentioned it in the synopsis at the start of your video... Showing that Taller irkens are in positions of power against the shorter, also... Zim is a tiny irken... there are many Irkens that stand taller then Zim.

Being tall in Irken society is a rarity, and Almighty Tallest Purple said that he and Red “became” the Tallest. How? We don’t know, but we do know at one point the current Tallest looked like this:

How do Irkens get that Tall? Body modifications? Maybe... it’s never explained, but considering the Frylord is super big and probably eats a lot of snacks might have something to do with it. We don’t know.

It’s safe to say that being Tall in their society is a rarity and Tallests are either born or made special from the cloning chamber from the get go.

Not to mention, Membrane is Taller than the current Tallest are already...

 and you said earlier in the video that Membrane would have gone to Earth as a child...

When he was no taller than a wrapped Christmas box of socks...

So why would Membrane take refuge on Earth at this point? Mattpatt says that Membrane was sent on a mission to Earth because the Tallest felt threatened by his rule...

BY MEMBRANE’S RULE?!?

HE’S THE SIZE OF A CHRISTMAS BOX OF SOCKS!

What do they have to be threatened by? 

Because... Mattpatt DID bring up Membrane as a child earlier in the video... meaning Membrane came to earth when he was about the same size as Zim.

SO THEY HAD NOTHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT AND HAD NO EVIDENCE TO BELIEVE MEMBRANE WOULD GROW TO BE TALL ORE EVEN VIEW HIM AS A THREAT

You bunked your own argument. Congradulations.

Membrane conquered the world through his inventions. In a way, sure. Membrane Labs does own a lot of stuff. But he doesn’t own everything. A majority of the Corporations that keep the population stupid usually don’t have anything to do with Membrane Labs and aren’t affiliated at all. 

But this does fit into the “Membrane is an Irken” theory so I will give him that one.

However, Membrane being an evil corporate dictator is a hot take I never really appreciate at all and I can never get behind it.

It hits too close to home in the real world, and I always like to view Membrane as a self-made man and a World loving hippie at his core who just wants to make the world a better place, much like his son, but he actively does something about it. (which can also be why he encourages Dib with real science so much cause he knows Dib wants to save the Earth as much as he does)

Just calling Membrane a capitalist billionaire that doesn’t care about the little guy kinda seems disingenuous towards his character for me. 

Especially when Membrane in “Ten Minutes to Doom” created a machine (foodio) that completely end world hunger... which was in BETA in the unreleased episode...

 but by the time the movie rolls around... Foodio exists... past his BETA, meaning that he’s probably no expensive than a common household microwave and can materialize food from nothing:

Yeah. Membrane completely ended world hunger off-screen. thanks. (something no capitalist would ever do...)

Membrane also does appearances for charity (in the comics), and often takes funding for sponsorships when he is low on funds and he had to find a cure for pig mouth. 

Sure “Membrane conquered the world” fits the Irken theory...

But I never appreciate that take on his character and that is admittedly, very personal bais. 

I just wanted to say my peace a little bit here about how I 100% don’t vibe with the “Membrane capitalist/billionaire scum” especially since he ended world hunger...and invented a cure for the un-common cold.

Works for the theory, so good on Mattpatt for that one, but I personally don’t vibe with it.

Mattpatt compared Zim and Dib’s head shape as something to argue... Like because Dib has a similar head shape to Zim... that Dib has to be an alien... Okay... But If you look at the Invader Zim artbook (which I own)

The show has a very distinct look on how they draw characters’ heads. It’s a very distinct stylistic choice and there are pages upon pages in the artbook describing the style and how it looks in motion, and many revision notes to the Korean animators.

There are lots of pages on the artbook describing in detail the differences between the main characters’ heads, what to do, and what not to do.

It’s a difficult style to replicate, and Dib having a big head was mostly a joke from the showrunners to the showrunners, cause they kept drawing Dib’s head slightly bigger to make him look more appealing.

A majority of the audience doesn’t really notice because all the children in the show have big heads. All the kids are like 3-4 feet tall and have huge heads. 

Also... Dib’s head is far more rounder then Zim’s in the comics and the Movie... comparing their head shape as an arguing point, when Dib’s head shape changed midway season 1 when the designs got slightly more streamlined is just... bad form..

Dib and Zim’s heads never really look the same from the early episodes as they do later on.

Comparing this character design similarity just because of the artstyle is really stupid.

This is the most infuriating thing about the video... because Mattpatt disproves his own argument with his own footage not a few seconds earlier. 

He claims that Gaz sarcastically mentioning she has a squeedly spooch is a canon fact...... but ... hmm.. Mattpatt... can I rewind the footage of your video, please?

Where’s her squeedly spooch?

IS IT BEHIND HER CLEARLY HUMAN ORGANS?! I DON’T SEE IT?

And this isn’t just a stylistic choice... here’s a picture of another human’s organs for comparison.

Mattpatt literally disproved his own argument and ignored the fact that we saw an X-ray of Gaz’s organs in the very same episode...

Gaz doesn’t have a squeedly spooch and she literally was being sarcastic.

and the whole thing is disproved very easily.

Everything Mattpatt says in between those two points, about Dib being taken aboard an alien ship as a baby, and that there is no mother, and the Clone theory... That is all good stuff and this is what the theory video should have speculated and focused on, because there is some digging to be had here... I feel he focused a lot on the wrong points in his video...

And this is the most outrageous point he makes in his video. It’s the thing that pissed me off the most... and lead me to write this essay in the first place.

He claimed Eric Trueheart himself confirmed the clone theory and had story plans where Dib would discover his clone origins.

HE DID NOT!

IN FACT, Eric Trueheart himself published Volume One of the Invader Zim script book AND THIS IS WHAT HE SAID:

Eric neither confirmed nor denied the rumor.

But for Mattpatt to blatantly say that Eric said that Clone Dib was a planned thing by the screenwriters?!

He is BLATANTLY putting words into a Screenwriter’s mouth! Something that you should NEVER do.

Because it is 100% a lie.

He had no source for this claim. He probably just read the same rumor on the wiki and has no source.

This is the reason why I don’t trust videos like Mattpatt. The truth is often stretched for entertainment value, or information is just made up to prove “they were right” about whatever the topic of the day was. He doesn’t even bother to cite the source he got “Eric Trueheart’s word of mouth” from... because it was wrong.

Sorry if this whole thing is more hostile than it intended to be... But Mattpatt was looking at the ENTIRELY wrong evidence for this show....

Irken Membrane is a fun theory... but Mattpatt picked the entirely wrong topics and points of discussion, even to the point of hiding the truth and straight-up lying to his audience about his sources.

It’s kinda like saying “Birds eat ghost peppers because they’re part dragon and dragons can handle spicy food”

While, yeah, Birds are descended from dinos, it’s kinda missing the full story there and it’s not the reason why birds can eat spicy food.

Irken Membrane is a fun fan theory... do what you want with it. I am not here to dissuade Irken Membrane headcanons...

I’m just here to encourage critical thinking, and perhaps NOT put words into content creators' mouths when there is no credible source for it just because it benefits your argument.

#Invader Zim #Film Theory #Mattpatt #danachan's rants #lol sorry i went off but he really needed to cite his sources more on this one

[watermelonsugar2612]

THE TRIP 'ALONE'

i got this random idea for a drabble and thought it was so hinny. so there we go:

“Ginny Potter. Be safe! Call me as soon as you get there! Face-time me twice a day, I love you,” Harry said standing at the airport, his hands on my shoulders, shaking me after every sentence. Fuck. He looked so hot. He stepped closer, and murmured in my ear, “If I see a single scratch anywhere on your body when you are back, I swear the person who gave it to you should be ready to die,” he growled and pulled away. Shit, I was shivering. Oh, by the way, I was going to my cousin’s house for her wedding. I was going for 4 days and this goodbye speech was getting me (extremely) riled up. He wasn’t coming because he had some important Auror stuff to do. This place was only a few hours away on the road and 45 minutes away by flight. This was my first trip alone after marriage. It has been 4 months of our marriage. All 4 of these months we had driven everyone around us crazy with our PDA. According to mum the newlywedly love was supposed to reduce after two months, but everyday, we were going at it like it was our honeymoon. “Boarding starts in 5 minutes…” he said looking at the board, “You’re staying at your cousin's place right?” He was just saying normal sentences, how could a man have this impact on me. “Y-Yeah, I’m staying at my c-cousin’s,” I cleared my throat and replied. He looked back and smirked. He said with genuinity in his eyes, “I’ll miss you, unimaginably, for everything,” his smirk softened and an announcement was made that my flight was ready to be boarded. “I’ll miss you too Harry. I love you!” I said with a cracking voice (not because I was crying; because I was extremely ‘wet’ somewhere else). I kissed him full on the lips. Pulled away (after idk how long; probably too long; the people were giving us the eyes when we stopped), took my suitcase from his hand and started walking. “CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU LAND! I LOVE YOU GINNY POTTER!” he almost screamed when I walked a few steps away.

My flight landed right on time. I met Bill (who was there to pick me up) at the airport and I ran to hug him. On our way out, we got ice-cream and burgers and we took the long way to her house. It was pretty large and had a lot of rooms. We went inside and I congratulated my cousin. Met everyone around and settled into my room. Tonight we were going out for dinner. I took a bath and freshened up. It had been about 2 hours since I had been here. I opened my phone to check my messages and realised it was dead. I didn’t pay much mind and plugged it in. I went out all ready to party and remembered I had to call Harry. I thought it wasn’t a big deal and just went on with my ministrations. We were all caught up at home and it was time to leave for dinner. By this time I had forgotten all about calling Harry, assuming I had already done so. Almost everyone was already out and in the cars. I went upstairs and grabbed my phone. I opened the main door, “WHAT?!” I screamed. There he was, standing there looking angry and tired. I had butterflies in my stomach but it was erupting with anger too. I stopped a little blush from coming to my cheeks. “You’re okay,” he sighed and hugged me. I literally threw him away. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU HARRY JAMES POTTER!?” I said, extremely loudly. They heard me shout and Bill, George, Angelina and Aunt Muriel ran downstairs. “You didn’t call me, or take any of my calls. You didn’t call for an entire hour, I was scared and I drove here,” he said with equal anger. “ARE YOU CRAZY? You drove here because I didn’t call you! That is so rhetorical Harry Potter!” I shouted back. “Gin, I was worried! It was impulsive, sorry, I know it's not okay, I was worried okay?!” he said, and tried to grab my hand but I stepped away. “You could’ve called one of my brothers, but you didn’t have the decency to do that, did you? You could’ve waited another hour!” I said back as he tried to hold my arm again, I didn’t let him and took another step back. “Gin, don’t make a scene let’s talk about it, somewhere else, hmm?” he said, somehow sounding angry and calm at the same time. “Yeah let's ‘talk about it,” I said, making air quotes and walking away to my room. He followed behind. I was so irritated by this man right now. This was honestly so embarrassing and the fact that Bill, Angelina, Aunt Muriel and all, saw it happen! I opened the door to my room and walked inside. He took a step inside being a few steps away from me. He closed the door and cast a silencing charm. “That was so fucking embarrassing Harry! Didn’t a single rational thought cross your mind before you drove all the way here, to check if I was okay nonetheless?! I’m not a bloody child, I can take care of myself. Didn’t it occur to you that I was caught up so I couldn’t call? You have got to stop being so overprotective!” I screamed. “You know what, forgive me that I’m so in love with you I don’t have a single rational thought when it comes to you. Forgive me that I can’t stand the thought of being without you for 4 days. Forgive me for showing up today. Forgive me for being so fucking impulsive. Forgive me that I care about you so much and would never forgive myself if anything happened to you!” he growled and pinned me to the wall. Not gonna lie, I was extremely turned on by this. His speech, and the fact that he left work and drove all the way here to only check if I was okay. He looked so genuine, so hot, while he had me pinned. One of his hands above my head, our bodies stuck together and our mouth inches apart. God, was this sexy. Fights were like foreplay to us, we got mad, we screamed, something (much like the thing going on right now; the whole pinned to the wall thing) happened and we ended up naked. Don’t get me wrong, we’d just shagged once today, in the morning. It was pretty miraculous that we were able to stop after round 1, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to shag for another 4 days. I lightly brushed my lips against his and said into his mouth, “I’m sorry to scream at you, I understand Potter. It was a big step that you took, driving all

the way here, so macho of you. Even though I fail to admit it, it was extremely hot when you came back. Looked so genuine and sexy, just perfect,” I said and bit his bottom lip. His phone rang, suddenly. Way to spoil the moment, stupid muggle device. He picked up and stayed on the line listening for a moment. “DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND! MY WIFE WAS NOT ALRIGHT-” he shouted, waited a minute, “Thanks for understanding, I’ll see you Monday,” he put the phone down. “What happened to your wife?” I said leaning against the wall with a smirk. “Oh! She’s very sick! Very far away from me too!” he replied, taking a step forward and pinning my back again. “Is she now?” I grinned and he bit my lip hard. “Not anymore,” he grinned. “Well, sorry for showing up unannounced. I just can’t deny myself a chance to see your beautiful face and do this,” he said, kissing me passionately on the lips. I thought I would melt. Even though it hadn't been too long we’d gone without kissing and we could go longer, I was craving this feeling so much. God. This man would be the end of me, he had so much impact on me for the tiniest things, I don’t know how we would go without this for 4 days. We would probably be at it for an entire day afterward. I switched positions wanting to take control but he had other plans. He threw me onto the bed and climbed on top of me.

We were going at it, hard and fast when we heard the door open with a creak. Fuck. Not one of my brothers please. “I did not just see my sister’s arse.” Bill whined and shut his eyes. Oh my god. Harry quickly pulled out and I ran into the bathroom. He covered his lower body with the bedsheet which was still folded and on the foot of the bed. “Bill, uh- I- you- a-are you okay?” I heard Harry stutter. “Are you decent yet?” Bill said with his back faced toward Harry. “Y-Yeah,” Harry hesitated and Bill turned forward. “I thought you were fighting?” he asked with widened eyes. “Uh, y-yeah we solved that,” Harry said, shoving his glasses up, “We’ll be down i-in a few minutes.” He finished and Bill made a disgusted face and left. “Gin! He’s gone,” Harry said and I walked out in a towel, “This is so not good. I’m going back to London, your brothers are going to kill me.” I looked down at him. “No, you’re staying, I’ll handle them,” I replied. “Gin, they’re going to-” I cut him off with a kiss and pulled away after a few seconds, “Is it such a surprise that we shag? We’re married, Harry. For god’s sake. We’ve been caught shagging by almost everyone, even when we were not married. It’s not our fault we can’t keep our hands off each other.” I said and kissed him again. He grinned into the kiss and bit my lip.

We finished our shenanigans in a matter of minutes, got dressed and went downstairs, hand in hand with Harry. “Dinner?” I asked my brothers cheerfully. “Sure sis,” George said and grinned. After a very awkward dinner, me and Harry departed to our room. This trip ‘alone’ sure was worth it.

#hinny drabble #hinny au #post war hinny #married hinny #hinny fic #harry x ginny #ginny potter #harry james potter #domestic hinny

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #30 - The Cybertronian Judicial System is a Friggin’ Joke

Have I mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of court case stories? I think they’re pretty boring, on average, so the last couple of issues have been slightly dragging for me.

Anyway, back to Megatron’s trial. 

Our issue opens up with a full back shot of Ultra Magnus.

Artists take note, he really is built like a capital T.

As Magnus reads out Megatron’s statement retracting his “guilty” plea, we get some decent points as to why. See, telling a guy that you’ll stab him in the brain, so his trial can be over as quickly as possible, maybe isn’t such a hot idea. Megatron wasn’t a huge fan of that, or of how those memories they would’ve yanked outta him would have been used to fuel the Autobot propaganda machine. Why, you may ask?

Well, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but Megatron… doesn’t particularly care for the Autobots, nor the rhetoric they uphold.

I know, I was surprised too!

There’s also the fact that Optimus Prime is the judge on this whole thing. You know. Optimus Prime. Off and on leader of the Autobots, whenever it suits him. The guy who fucked off into space for a year after the war. The guy who threw a hissy fit when someone pointed out that he was compromised the last time they did something like this with Megatron. This guy:

Yeah, there might be a slight conflict of interests here. Remind me again why this had to be a military trial?

Anyway, enough of that, it’s time for a fight scene.

A swarm of Decepticons storm the arena, going after Megatron so they can help him escape. Magnus, though acting as Megatron’s defense, cannot abide by this disorder in the court.

Wild to think there’s a tiny little Pringles man with anxiety in there, isn’t it?

Optimus joins the fray, because there really are, just, so many guys to deal with here. A dude goes to collect Megatron, stating that they brought teleport packs for this little shindig. Megatron isn’t super jazzed about that though, not bothering to grab on before the dude gets shot to death. There’s a brief recess, I guess so the janitorial staff can deal with the mess of corpses littering the courtroom.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Rung’s building a model spaceship in Swerve’s, which is a very brave thing to be doing, seeing how sticky and gross bars can be. Brainstorm’s brought a flask to the bar, and proceeds to pour the contents into a funnel sticking out of his arm.

Our bartender for the evening- I’m assuming it’s evening, but I doubt the concept of time has any real weight in space- is Bluestreak. Bluestreak was stationed on Earth for a while, which is some Phase One stuff, and took a liking to human media while he was there. He’s the guy who handles movie night these days, seeing as Rewind’s too busy being dead to do it, and I doubt Chromedome has the emotional bandwidth to take over for his late spouse.

Bluestreak’s favorite movie is Zulu, a film glorifying the colonialism of the English over the native populace of an African kingdom. Make of that what you will.

Whirl wants to watch À Bout de Soufflé, or Breathless, as it was translated for the English-speaking world, which is a French New Wave film about a criminal who shoots a cop, hides from the police in a journalist’s home, who he seduces and likely impregnates. She eventually finds out what he did, reports him to the police, but then has a change of heart and lets him know what she’s done. He runs, but is shot, and dies in the street. The film is notable for its final scene, in which the following dialogue happens, between the dying criminal Michael, his lover Patricia, and an officer.

Of course, any poignancy would almost certainly be lost on the average comic book reader, and is also somewhat nullified by Whirl praising the film with internet lingo.

Then again, I suppose Whirl would be the type to dismantle any deeper reading of his interest in such a film, lest he be subjected to the horrifying ordeal of being known.

Over with Skids and Riptide, it’s revealed that Megatron’s been teaching classes on the Lost Light, specifically on the Knights of Cybertron. Riptide’s getting an education, because he’s been feeling pretty lost since the war ended- we’ll get to the potential whys of that later on. Swerve isn’t a fan of this community college thing that’s going on, stating that Megatron’s using it as a distraction, so he can devise plots most foul.

Back in the past, Autobot high command is having a talk about what Megatron’s demanding, and man is it a doozy— turns out, since the trial’s happening on Luna 2, the trial proceedings are subject to the laws of the moon. One of these moon laws is the right to request being judged by the Knights of Cybertron. Now, this is a problem, seeing as the Knights of Cybertron have been AWOL for the last several million years, but the law is the law, and you can’t just go ignoring it when someone’s pointed it out.

Bro, your SIC just suggested y’all pull the trial so you could slap it on Cybertron, thus negating any need to pay attention to the Knight law. That’s such a gross miscarrying of justice, it’s genuinely baffling. You’ve got bigger issues going on than flouting. My god, Optimus, you were a cop—

Oh wait, that’s right. Carry on, then.

Back on the Lost Light, First Aid’s checking to make sure that the coffin Rodimus they revealed last issue is true and proper dead. Now, this may seem like a given, but you’ve got to remember that Brainstorm was mostly dead for over a year and a half, and nobody fucking noticed, so it’s probably for the best that they’re checking.

First Aid’s been pretty withdrawn since Ambulon died, so this autopsy is really good for him, since it got him out of his room. Pretty fucked up that it would take a dead body to get him out and about. Has Rung checked in on his poor son of a gun, or has he been spending the last six months getting his professional rocks off psychoanalyzing a genocidal warlord?

Our coffin Rodimus died from having parts of his brain removed, and potentially died screaming.

Yes, that is a Furmanism, thank you peanut gallery, moving on—

Ratchet hands the phone over to Ultra Magnus, saying that a call has to be made, and it can’t be by him, because the callee is mighty upset with Ratchet at the moment.

Oh, I guess he’s fine after all. This must be where the sci-fi bullshit really starts kicking in for the series.

Because seeing your own dead body is likely very traumatic and awful, Rodimus is taking a while to string together his thoughts on the matter. Megatron doesn’t particularly care, because he’s not terribly sympathetic to this sort of thing, and the two get into a spat, where it’s revealed that they’re co-captaining the Lost Light.

Because things weren’t chaotic enough on this fucking ship. Need to mix in some peacocking between the McDonalds twunk and the man who killed half of Beijing.

Back in the past, Optimus Prime visited Megatron in prison to have a little chat. It’s not about that little rescue attempt, though the fact that those Decepticons may have been released from the Lost Light’s brig is certainly interesting. No, Optimus is here to sit way too close to his mortal nemesis on the floor of his room and talk about how Megatron is a sneaky bastard.

You remember the Hellraiser puzzle box from a couple issues back? Yeah, that was a communicube, one that was passed to Optimus to suggest that the trial be held on the moon, so the arena there would be able to hold all the people wronged by Megatron. This seems pretty damn convenient in hindsight, but Megatron swears that the legal loophole wasn’t his only intent when he sent the cube.

Because it’s all about you, isn’t it, Megatron? It’s all about how you’re perceived by future generations. Fuck the guys who had to actually deal with what your personal choices caused to happen.

Megatron wants to make amends with all those who were wronged by him. This doesn’t include being acquitted of his crimes, which, y’know, good- at least he’s being slightly realistic about how this is going to turn out for him.

What he wants to do is find Cyberutopia, so the Cybertronians have a replacement planet, since Cybertron kind of sucks now.

Oh, sorry, did I say realistic? I take it back.

In the present, Rodimus is still bummed out about being dead. Still, the day doesn’t stop just because it’s a bad one, and he calls in the experts.

CHROMEDOME YOU PROMISED TO STOP THIS SHIT

Yeah, no, Chromedome’s fallen off the wagon again, and does his thing on the coffin Rodimus. As he does, Megatron suddenly gets squeamish, Brainstorm pulls out his early early-warning device to lean on the fourth wall, and it’s revealed that the coffin that coffin Rodimus was in was built in the fashion of the Spectralist faith.

All Chromedome can suss out of coffin Rodimus’ memories is the really big important stuff, which includes the speech at Rivet’s Field inviting folks to come join the Knight Quest. Aww, that’s sweet.

With the analysis of the innermost energon complete, the results are in— the coffin Rodimus is a Rodimus. A real one, from the near future. Bummer.

I suppose denial is one of the seven stages of grief, isn’t it?

As everyone argues over whether or not Rodimus is going to die, Nightbeat brings up a good point— there aren’t any numbers carved into the coffin Rodimus’ hand. Rodimus is about to reveal some Ratchet-original wisdom, when things start getting really weird; whole sections of the Lost Light are disappearing.

Over at Swerve’s, Tailgate is regaling his peers with the story of his derring-do against Chief Justice Tyrest. Everyone is very impressed, and this includes our good buddy Getaway.

Jeez, think you’ve got enough antagonist shadows on this guy? It’s almost as if the art’s trying to tell us something about him.

Getaway lays it on real thick, saying that Tailgate could totally be the next Prime, with how courageous and awesome he is, all while completely ignoring Tailgate’s personal space and having a weirdly tiny hand. This seems to seriously bother Cyclonus, who is watching this shit go down from the doorway. Our purple space jet leaves once the drinks start being poured and conversation starts happening. God knows he hates talking about his insecurities.

Then the Pipes is Friggin’ Dead alarm goes off. But Pipes has been dead for a while now, so that must mean something else awful is happening.

Back during the trial, I guess because Optimus has a soft spot for Megatron, he allows him to join the Lost Light’s Knight Quest… even as he says that he could keep the guy locked up until Rodimus and pals find the Knights. However, there are rules to this, and one of the rules is that Megatron must publicly denounce the Decepticon cause.

It is a slow and painful experience for everyone involved, as he reads the statement he was given. It’s an immediate call to action- or rather, inaction.

Geez, think they could’ve made it any more obvious that this was being ghostwritten? I can’t wait to see how long it takes for “Megatron was blackmailed into saying this by the Autobots” to be a plotpoint.

Outside the prison, Ratchet and Rodimus are taking in the brand new Rod Pod, which is genuinely ridiculous in how large it is. Rodimus admits to having taken Atomizer’s list, though he knows that trying to use it to keep those who voted him off would be a pretty shitty thing to do.

Also, no one’s told him about Megatron coming along on the trip. As captain.

Or you could, I dunno, lock him up from the start. Or, if you want to give him a chance to prove himself, slap him into a bottom-rung role, like bilge cleaner, or sewage mucker, or whatever the equivalent would be on a spaceship full of giant gay robots. We don’t have to give the guy any power to hold him to scrutiny— any minimum wage worker will tell you that scrutiny comes far harsher for those who actually carry out orders than those who give them.

But what do I know? I’ve never fought in a several million year war, and I don’t plan to.

Getting back to the list, it seems as if Ratchet and Rodimus are on the same wavelength, in that both agree it’s only going to cause trouble and hurt feelings to keep the thing around. Rodimus destroys it with his usual flare, only to be blindsided by the fact that it was fake this entire time. How does Ratchet know this?

Because his name wasn’t on it.

...Man, that’s gotta sting. No wonder Rodimus was upset enough to not take his calls.

In the present, everyone’s in a panic, as they all bolt for the shuttle bay and start pouring into shuttles. The Lost Light is disintegrating around them, which is sort of a problem. Despite this nightmare scenario happening, Rodimus and Megatron still find the time to be assholes to each other. That’s dedication right there.

As the two bicker, multiple shuttles zip away from the rapidly disappearing ship, including the Rod Pod.

Man, now it really is the Lost Light.

#transformers #jro #MTMTE #world shut your mouth #issue 30 #Hannzreads #text post #long post #overthinking about robots #incoming analysis #comic script writing

[a-womans-rhetoric]

Because I spent my last "J.K. Rowling" post on how ContraPoints uses rhetorical tropes exclusively,

I figured I'd dedicate this space to her exhaustive use of rhetorical devices. I'll be block quoting her bellow, and then trying to work through each device as it appears — attempting to bring attention to how each enhances her overall rhetoric. Also, I may try out some of these devices for myself. Wish me luck!

"So is the author of Harry Potter really a bigot? Well she certainly seems invested in the belief that she is not a bigot. '[Interviewer] What vice do you most despise? [Rowling] Bigotry.' And looking over Joanne's tweets, I don't think the average person would see any problem with what she's said. However, I mean not to be condescending, but, I feel like the average person's understanding of *transgender* is still a little bit... "I don't really get the whole trans thing." "Like why can't you just be a feminine man?" I don't know Amber. Why don't you be a feminine man? Who knows, you could be missing out! So we're gonna go through the things that Joanne said about trans people, but I don't want this to be just a drama video, ... Like, I wanna try to do something a little bit more meaningful than that. So I'm gonna use J.K. Row as a case study in bigotry, and see if we can maybe learn something about what bigotry is. How does it work, and how do otherwise good people get drawn into it? And if we can make any progress on any of those questions, well for once, I think, I'll actually have earned my Patreon budget. (magical sound) So keeping in mind our very serious and educational purpose, let's spill some shade, throw some tea." (01:36-03:25)

Anaphora - Basically, utilizing anaphora, Natalie Wynn consistently employs "so" to give direction to her arguments (as they're usually paired with subject changes). Basically, the repeated use of "so," as a conjunction to begin her sentence, becomes familiar to the ear. Basically, Since her medium of choice is the video essay, an argument that flows well and is pleasing to hear is of the utmost importance.

Hypophora - What is hypophora? ContraPoints utilizes this rhetorical device frequently, when she asks and answers her own questions. Why does she use it? She utilizes this strategy to peak curiosity in the listener — questions naturally demand a certain amount of attentiveness. Why else? Along with modifying audience response, Wynn also (likely) uses hypophora to structure her piece. Questions, even those which are self-posed, allow a speaker to provide answers in an organized manner.

Epistrophe - Used exclusively at the beginning of this excerpt, epistrophe, gives weight to the word "bigot" in three successive sentences. As the answering the question of bigotry is the ultimate goal of Wynn's essay, employing a rhetorical device that brings attention to the word (especially while associating it with J.K. Rowling) is a rather clever way to structure her sentences.

Exemplum - ContraPoints uses two forms of exempla (plural for exemplum, which is Latin for example). In the beginning, she uses a short video clip of Rowling claiming a hatred for bigotry; it succinctly supports her previous claim (which the clip directly follows) that Rowling seems — perhaps unusually — invested in the belief that she isn't bigoted. Her second example is more playful: she mockingly takes up the tone of an "uninformed transphobe." This exemplum, although fictional unlike her first, also succeeds in its own purpose — to bring attention to casual transphobia.

(Discursive footnote: Is me citing her exempla a form of exemplum? If not, this device may've proved beyond my reach!)

Rhetorical Question - In a succinct dismal of the previous transphobic "exemplum," or the questions posed by the fictional Amber, ContraPoints states rhetorically: Why don't you be a feminine man? The answer is implicit, but obvious: because she doesn't want to be. The way this question is posed also adds to her irreverent tone — Wynn's sassy wit feels well-warranted in response to prejudice. What's not to like?

Expletive - [Tumblr ran me out of colors, so the expletives in question are italicized.] Expletives, you see, are single word or short phrase interruptions which serve to emphasize the speech that they interrupt on both sides. Natalie Wynn, clearly, employs this device in her use of the word "but" and her clause "I think."

Malapropism - Natalie Wynn provides an intentional and humorous malapropism with her declaration of "let's spill some shade, throw some tea." The correct phraseology of the common internet slang is generally "spill some tea" and "throw some shade." Her intentional mis-use adds a layer of humor to her intro — as malapropisms are intended to do, if you use them once in a blue spoon.

#contrapoints #tw transphobia

[direnightshade]

The Habits of My Heart

“Please tell me again why you’ve decided to drag me all the way out here?”

“Because,” begins my companion for the evening, for the umpteenth time, “it’s important that I network.”

My head swivels, the view of the bypassing buildings now gone from my vision as I turn my attention to the man beside me. “You need to network. I won’t know any of these people and this is not even close to being in my line of work. So I do not need to network, therefore, why have you dragged me out here?”

In spite of the windows of the taxi that we currently ride in being cracked to allow a cross breeze to pass through, it is still unbearably muggy in the small space. We have barely been out of the apartment for the better half of twenty minutes, and already, a light sheen of perspiration has covered my shoulders and décolletage.

It is late August and summer is nearly drawing to a close, though the heat has yet to break and give way to more desirable temperatures. In consideration of the weather, I have chosen to wear an appropriate dress to this supposed black tie event; it is a black velvet halter gown, complete with open back and a slit that runs mid-thigh to expose the majority of my left leg. I will blend right in, or so I have been told.

A pitied sigh sounds next to me, and a gentle hand is placed atop my own. “Sweetheart, it’s been, what, two weeks since the split with Matt?”

“One and a half,” I mutter, my words falling on deaf ears.

“You need to get out. Mingle a little! Hell, hook up with someone, if only for a night. And this is the perfect place to do it. You won’t know anyone here, I know none of these guys are your type; they’re all stuck up, pretentious assholes who think they’re God’s gift to humanity.” Mark gives my hand a gentle squeeze just as my eyes roll of their own accord. “There’s a few lookers there, though. So even if you’ve got to fake it, at least you can stare up at something pretty.”

Laughter erupts into the small space of the cab just as it comes rolling to a stop alongside the curb. Mark hastily digs into his wallet to pay the fare whilst I vacate the vehicle, and soon enough, we find ourselves in the midst of an awards ceremony afterparty.

This is...dull. Incredibly so. So much so, in fact, that I think I may have nearly fallen headfirst a time or two into my glass of Prosecco as I listened to yet another playwright go on and on about their accomplishments. Much to my vexation, he is in the midst of yet another one of his stories, something about how he’s just written the best play that he’s certain will have ever graced Broadway. I smile politely, pretend that I am listening, but I simply do not care.

I have never considered myself a theater snob, in fact I am quite the opposite, I would argue. I have never even seen a play in person, the closest thing I have ever witnessed live is that of the classical ballet The Nutcracker, though I’m sure if I were to even lump those categories together the man beside me may very well faint. The thought brings a smile to my face, which the man undoubtedly takes as a sign that I am pleased with whatever it is he has just said. Oh god, please don’t let it be that he’s asked me for my—

“Wow. I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d agree so quickly, let alone at all.” He is equally swift to retrieve his phone, unlocking the screen before offering it to me so that I may input my details. I give him a fake name and then a number that most certainly isn’t mine and hand the device back to him just as he delves into yet another story.

A chorus of laughter erupts to my right, effectively pulling away the miniscule attention I’d been paying to the man in front of me as I now turn my head to look at where the sound has emanated from. A small group has gathered near the bar, their attention captivated by you, standing at the center of it all. You’re at least a head taller than most of the others surrounding you, I note, and your hands are gesticulating wildly as you animatedly tell your story. When another bout of laughter sounds it becomes clear to me by the grin on your face alone that you are loving this attention.

Just like everyone else in this room, I think to myself.

In a serendipitous moment, your eyes flicker up and away from the group only to land on me as I stand—still openly staring at you—from across the room. Even from this distance, your gaze is dark, intense, so piercing in fact that it manages to steal the breath straight from my lungs. My breath hitches and I find myself clutching the glass in my hand just a little tighter until I am forced to look away first. If I hadn’t been paying attention to the man in front of me before, I certainly am not now; his voice has long since faded into the background chatter that fills the space, and I find myself time and time again, seeking you out in the crowd.

Each time that I look up I find that you are already looking at me with that fierce stare, and my pulse quickens in response. We continue like this for an indeterminate amount of time, allowing the evening to slip through our fingers without so much as an interaction, until...

“This is horribly bland,” I deadpan, my gaze fixated on the other partygoers as I come to stand beside you. Like myself, who’s hand is wrapped firmly around the stem of the wine glass I hold, so, too, is yours holding the champagne flute in your own.

There is a rumble of laughter that emanates from the depths of your chest as you look over to where I stand beside you. “The party or the wine?”

My head turns to look up at you, lips twitching with the beginnings of an amused smile. “Who’s to say it isn’t both?”

“Fair enough,” you counter, your own smile starting to form. When it broadens, I note how the corners of your eyes crease and how, for the first time this evening, the smile seems to reach even your eyes.

In return, my own smile widens, and I decide right here and now that though I do not like anyone else in this room, I do like you.

You turn to face me, extending a hand in greeting. “Charlie,” you say, introducing yourself. I shift the glass from one hand to the other before reaching for you, giving you my name in return. It is effortless, how your hand engulfs my own entirely when my palm glides against yours, fingers curling to grasp onto one another’s hand as we both give an all too brief shake.

“So, Charlie, what is it exactly do you do?” Despite my earlier complaint about the wine, I lift the glass up to my mouth to take another long sip.

“What is it you think I do?”

A guessing game. How irritating. Perhaps I do not like you as much as I had initially thought, Charlie…

My lips purse and my eyes narrow in concentration as I take in the sight of you before me. A soft hum is emitted whilst I take my time to carefully consider the options. “You’re much too full of yourself to be a playwright—”

“Excuse me,” you balk.

“—though that surely didn’t stop what’s-his-face back there from prattling on for an eternity. Think my ears bled.” You scoff and I am unsure if it’s in amusement at my final statement or if you are still offended at the former, though it does not go unnoticed how your narrowed eyes lift to survey the crowd. “You’re far too attractive to be someone behind the scenes,” I muse aloud, your gaze snapping back to me just as I lift my glass to empty the remaining contents into my mouth. “I suppose I’ll go with the obvious. You’re an actor.”

The corners of your lips curl into a satisfied smile, and this time it is you who empties the contents of a glass, now finishing off your champagne. “Cold.”

“Are you a playwright,” I ask almost immediately following the singular word. Surprise laces the tone of my words as I am fully prepared for you to admit that you are as such.

Slowly, your head shakes, and that smile of yours quickly turns into a smirk. When a waiter passes by with an empty tray, we jointly reach out to set our now empty glasses atop the polished surface, and I turn to face you with arms folded across my chest when you inform me that I am colder still.

“Do you make everyone you meet go through this rigorous process?”

“You said this party was bland. I’m merely attempting to liven it up a little,” you reply with a nonchalant shrug.

“With a game of ‘Hot or Cold’?”

“With a game of ‘Hot or Cold’.”

We exchange smiles of amusement and our gazes linger on one another for a little too long until I shatter this lovely little moment to inquire about the ending of this soiree. You make a show of checking your watch, and when you look back at me, you shrug once more. “We can leave now if you prefer?”

A single brow lifts in question. “We?”

“We,” you respond confidently.

“Together?”

“Together.”

“Do you always make it a habit to repeat people like this?” The question is posed good-naturedly which pulls another chuckle from you, and in turn, another smile from myself.

“Do you always make it a habit to avoid the question when someone asks to take you home,” you counter.

“Bold of you to assume anyone asks that of me,” I shoot back teasingly.

“Don’t they?”

There is a moment of silence that lingers between us following your inquiry, and I find myself unsure as to whether the question is rhetorical or not. When you continue to stare at me expectantly, I concede with a shrug of my shoulders and an audible, put-upon sigh.

“Yes...to all of the above.”

You hum in automatic response and offer your arm to signal that you are just as ready to leave as I am. My hand slips into the crook of your elbow and together, without so much as a goodbye to any of the other attendees, we make our exit.

Laughter rings out into the subterranean platform as you deliver yet another line that strikes me as particularly hilarious. In return, you are grinning down at me, your hands now stuffed into the pockets of your suit pants. You look years younger like this, I think to myself as the laughter begins to fade and all that remains are our smiles. Happiness suits you.

It isn’t long until the train pulls into the station, the doors parting before us once it has come to a full stop. You motion with a hand for me to enter first, to which I dutifully follow the silent instruction. It isn’t terribly late, in fact I cannot imagine that it is later than ten or eleven, but even still, the train is lacking in its typical crowd. There is a couple further down, sitting quite closely together in their own little world, a little nearer to us is a young man who I can’t imagine is too far off in age from myself, and closer still are a few others who look rather nondescript.

My steps halt as I reach the nearest metal pole, and I reach a hand out to grasp it in preparation of steadying myself when the train makes its departure from the platform. When I turn, you are already close by—much closer than I had anticipated—grasping the same pole. The train lurches forward, and in my moment of briefly being caught off guard by your close proximity, I find myself unprepared for the movement of the train.

Though I manage to keep my hold on the pole, still I stumble a few steps forward towards you. Instinctively, I lift a hand to press it against your chest just as you reach for me with your own, placing it against the curve of my lower back to both catch and help steady me. Soft laughter is emitted, shy smiles exchanged, and apologies whispered between us when my head tips back to look up at you, though neither of us makes any attempt to separate from one another. The familiar rumble of the train over the tracks fills the void when words now seem to fail us and leave us peering at one another, but it is when you begin to dip your head down that the steady beating of my heart falters and then quickens.

Are you…?

Is this happening?

My fingers curl slightly into the pressed, white fabric of your dress shirt just as my lips part. I am quite certain of what you are about to do, but then—seemingly at the last moment—your trajectory veers slightly until your lips nearly press to the shell of my ear. The hand at my back presses me closer to you until I can feel the heat of your body against my own, and it is then that you whisper a rather crude remark about one of the nearby passengers. A soft gasp escapes me at the comment, and I can feel the way that your body tenses beneath my touch; I wonder if you are concerned that you’ve overstepped.

It isn’t until I erupt into a fit of unruly giggles that I feel you relax once more. Your chest vibrates with the chuckles that join in with the sound of my laughter, and when I lean in to hide my face and muffle the ceaseless titter, you pull me closer still. We carry on like this stop after stop until, finally, we find ourselves the last remaining passengers on a now otherwise empty train car. 

Eventually, the laughter subsides and I pull back just enough to look up at you once again, though neither of us lets go of the other. This time when you begin to lean down, it is not to whisper some horribly ridiculous commentary about another passenger; this time, I know without a shadow of a doubt, you mean to kiss me. It feels as if time itself is slowing when your lips come closer and closer to my own. Or, perhaps, it is…

Oh.

Oh, no.

It is not time at all that is slowing, but the train itself as it pulls into its next and final stop. You puff out a disappointed breath, the warmth of it cascading across my face whilst I exhale a sigh of my own. Reluctantly, we part from one another as the doors open and the announcement for the stop is made. Our hands slip free from the bar that we have been holding for the entirety of the ride, but as we make our exit, you reach for me, taking my hand in your own. As we step out of the station and back up onto the street, our fingers lace together to tighten our hold one one another. It is a short walk from the station to your apartment building. Much to my surprise (and pleasure) you are not one for small talk. Instead, we fall into a comfortable silence on this last leg to your residence, taking in the sights and sounds of a city that’s slipping into a late evening.

Even with the addition of the much welcomed air conditioning that swirls throughout the apartment, I still find it to be too hot, though I am unsure if this is due to the humid temperatures making their way from outside or the fact that I am acutely aware of just how closely you are sitting beside me.

Your jacket has yet to be shed and, if I am being rather honest, you look quite miserable. There is a light sheen of perspiration that runs across your forehead, undoubtedly the result of the same heat I feel myself. It’s as if you can read my mind, or perhaps it has simply become far too unbearable for you to continue like this any longer; you offer to get me a glass of water as you rise from your spot on the couch, to which I happily accept. When you disappear into the kitchen, I turn my head and cast a glance around the room, my attention now landing upon the photos that sit on a bookcase across the room.

Leaving the comfort of the couch, I cross the space and peer up at the nearest photo. It is of you and a young boy who, I assume judging by looks alone, is your son. The two of you are sporting broad smiles, both waving at whomever is taking the photo of you whilst you ride the large carousel that sits within the confines of Central Park. The photo beside it is one that appears to be taken by your son; it is off kilter and completely too close to both of your faces, but even still, it is clear by the captured moment that you two were in a fit of laughter when the photo was taken.

The steady clink of ice cubes in a couple of glasses along with heavy footsteps on old, creaking floorboards alerts me to your arrival, though I do not dare look back at you. I am far too fixated on the photos in front of me. I am far too lost in these small snippets of your happiness.

“That’s my son.” The explanation is a quiet one, and it is clear by the subdued tone of your voice that you are doing your best not to startle me. “He is seven. He lives with his mother in Los Angeles.”

I nod in acknowledgement of your statement, my attention shifting back to the first photo, the one of you and your son in Central Park. I can practically hear my mother screaming at me not to get myself any more involved with you than I already have. No one with that much baggage is worth the work, I know she would say. But…

We all have our own baggage. Though mine may look different, that does not mean that it does not exist. I wonder now, as I stand here, still willing myself to keep my eyes on the photos in front of me, are you the kind of man who would help to lighten the load if I were to help carry your own?

“Here.” The familiar rattling of ice in one glass sounds again when you reach around me to hand off the ice water. I reach to take it, the outside of the glass already slick with condensation when I lift it to take a long, appreciative sip. Just as I am pulling the rip of the cup from my lips, the faintest sensation of your fingertips grazing the bare skin of my arm can be felt. The touch sends a shiver along my spine and suddenly the heat of the apartment only seems to grow tenfold.

“His name is Henry,” you continue. “I miss him. I don’t miss his mother.” It is not lost on me how the tone of your voice shifts so easily with your words. It is clear by the hint of longing that you do miss your son, very much so. But whatever has transpired between you and Henry’s mother, it is crystal clear that there is some sort of animosity here. “It was a strange relationship, and I suppose I am still not really sure what even happened.”

Run, my mother’s voice whispers from the back of my mind. You are not equipped to handle such a dynamic. You couldn’t even handle the simplest of relationships.

In truth, she is partially correct. I am not at all equipped for this, to be with someone who comes with so much, and yet…

I understand.

Once again, I lift the glass and take another sip, wetting my suddenly dry throat before I reach forward to set the glass down on the shelf without so much as a care as to whether there is a coaster to place it upon.

Slowly, I turn only to find that you have moved much closer than I had anticipated. Your jacket and tie have long since been discarded, and the sleeves of your dress shirt are now rolled up to your elbows. “I understand,” I tell you, casting my gaze to the glass the remains held firmly in your hand. Reaching forward, I take the glass from you and turn briefly to set it atop the shelf next to my own before facing you once more. “My last breakup was less than ideal. It turned out my partner was rather heartless. Or...perhaps I was.”

This is what I have been told, at least. I suppose, now that hindsight is in play, they were not wrong. I had swung from one end of the pendulum to the other; whereas Ben had claimed I was too much, Matt had claimed that I simply had not given enough.

There is a stretch of silence that follows, and for a fleeting moment I think that perhaps I have put my foot in my mouth. Perhaps this is not the path of conversation you’d wanted to walk down tonight. Perhaps you were looking for something less heavy, with someone who wasn’t looking to air out any of their sad, dirty laundry. But when I look up, however, I am surprised to find that you are not appearing to be bored or disinterested at all. You are looking at me rather intently, almost as if you, yourself understand.

Were you heartless, I wonder.

The words never have a chance to leave my mouth. Instead, I am acutely aware of the rapid thrum of my heart against my ribcage when you reach for one of my hands and lift it to press my palm flat against the center of your chest. Even still, the silence stretches on, but when the realization of what you are trying to tell me hits me full force, I cannot help but allow the beginnings of a smile to form.

I understand, I want to tell you again, though I never have been quite so good with my words. Instead, I opt to tell you in the best way possible: with my actions. Just as you have done, I now reach for the hand that hangs near your side and bring it up to place it against my chest in a mirrored position of where you continue to hold my hand against yours.

I have never been a firm believer in love at first sight, fate, God, or otherwise. But it is undeniable here and now, as I feel our hearts beating in perfect unison, that this moment means something.

My breath hitches, the inhale now caught in my throat when you lean in closer and closer until your lips are so close that if I angle my head just so I am certain they would brush against my own. There is a moment of hesitation, and my eyes flutter closed as if to expect you to finally deliver that long awaited kiss. But then, you speak…

“It seems you are not heartless.”

When I open my eyes to peer up at you, I find myself mirroring the smile that has just formed on your face. The hand that continues to hold yours to my chest squeezes it in reassurance as I whisper my reply. “Neither are you.”

We have only just met this evening, and yet I know this to be true without a shadow of a doubt.

You lean in further still, and this time we both close our eyes just as our lips touch for the first time tonight. The kiss is slow, tender, and at some point our hands have migrated away to other parts of our bodies. The welcomed warmth of your own can be felt across my back as fingers splay across the skin exposed by the dress’ design whilst my own lift to weave my fingers into the hair at the nape of your neck.

It is here, now, that you could do anything that you wish, inflict any amount of pain, pleasure, or otherwise that you see fit. I am powerless, bound by the ropes that pin my arms into place and keep me completely at your mercy. I am yours to do with what you wish and never once do I plead for less, because I have asked for this, to be used until we are both far too exhausted to continue.

Your face has found a home between my thighs and your tongue works against me in such a way that leaves me wailing, back arching and the restraints tightening as I writhe atop the bed. Fat tears have long since spilled over to track their way down along the sides of my face whilst you continually bring me to the precipice and allow me to fall over and over again.

“Please,” I beg, voice hoarse from how often I have called your name time and time again. “Oh, god, Charlie, please…”

Your head lifts and it is impossible not to notice the way in which your pupils have swallowed up the hazel of your irises until they are nothing more than a honeyed halo. Both your lips and chin are shiny with my arousal, and for a fleeting moment I wonder if you will merely go back to burying your face where it has been for an indeterminate amount of time.

My curiosity is quickly sated, however, when you instead begin to climb your way up along my body. Instinctively, my fingers flex, and I long to reach out and touch you. It suddenly feels completely unjust how you have free reign to my own body and yet I cannot have the honor of touching yours. Perhaps, in time, you will indulge me should I voice my desire.

Any and all coherent thoughts empty themselves from my head the moment that we finally find ourselves joined as one, and I am once again left trembling in the wake of your handling. If this is to be just for one night, as I assume it to be, then I want nothing more than to be consumed and engulfed by you; allow me to forget the recent hurt that I have endured and all of the emotional pain that came before it and replace them with a new memory, one that will present itself each and every time I bear witness to the bruises and the bitemarks you have begun to litter across my skin.

Hours later I am seated atop the counter of the ensuite bathroom sink, feet dangling and an arm held gently in your grasp. Even still, there is not a stitch of clothing on either of us, and yet neither of us is made uncomfortable by this fact—though I suspect our earlier activities void any potential for bashfulness now.

In a stark contrast to how you had handled my body in the adjacent room, you are now gingerly turning my arm over to reveal the soft skin of my wrist that has since turned red and raw from the tight restraint that had bound it to the headboard. Your free hand now dips two fingers into a jar of aloe before tenderly dotting the cool gel onto my heated skin. I sigh, the contrasting feeling a welcome one on my already sore wrist.

When I shift my attention up to your face, I can’t help but smile at the look of concentration etched onto your features as you continue to work the aloe across one wrist before doing the same to the other. Eventually, your gaze sweeps upward from my arm to my face, and it is then that you smile. It is a tender, almost shy expression, and once again I find that you appear years younger than you actually are. Judging by the sudden timidness, completely out of character for how you have been throughout the entirety of this evening, I cannot help but wonder if this is the first time that you have treated someone in this manner.

It is certainly a first for me.

Once you have finished and the lid of the jar has since been put back in its place, you reach for me again and help to pull me down off of the counter. I turn, and for a brief moment, I am completely caught off guard by my reflection. Already, the skin around my neck has begun to purple from the grip you’d held on it earlier, and dotted across my chest are bite marks from where your teeth have broken the skin. I should be fearful of the damage inflicted by your hand, by your mouth, and yet…

I wanted this, asked for it, and then begged for more in the midst of it all.

But...it is still a jarring sight.

When I catch your gaze in the reflection, it almost appears as if there is some regret in your expression, but almost immediately, you school your features and mutter that you have a shirt that I can wear to sleep in. You disappear from the bathroom, and I can hear the floorboards creaking beneath your weight when you cross the bedroom to reach your dresser. By the time I emerge from the bathroom, you have pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants and are now holding a large, white shirt out to me as I step closer.

I slip it on only to find that I am swimming in it. The hemline comes down nearly to my knees, and the neckline continually slips off my left shoulder no matter how much I attempt to correct it.

“Thank you,” I murmur, offering you a smile whilst I step away to join you as you pull back the covers to climb into bed.

In return you smile hesitantly and nod your head in acknowledgement just as you slip beneath the duvet. I follow suit, and just as I settle into the warmth of the sheets, you reach for me, wrapping me in the heat of your arms and tugging me closer to where you lie. It isn’t until now that the exhaustion of the hours spent in this very bed together has finally caught up to me. I cozy up to you quite willingly and nestle my face in the crook of your neck, breathing in the comforting scent of you.

I barely register the soft ‘goodnight’ you deliver as my eyelids grow far too heavy, but I remain cognizant long enough to have one final thought:

Though I am certain you will make this a one night event, I cannot help but feel as if something special has occurred between us tonight. I would love nothing more than to stay, to allow this—whatever this is—to blossom into something more.

Please, let me stay.

#iamakiller #B+C #personal au

[fishoutofcamelot]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I love your blog and all the analysis that you've done on various characters, scenes and ships. You are one of my online heroes. I'm not sure if you're still doing the ship asks, but if you are, what are your thoughts on frelin?

Dude tysm! I’m not sure ‘online hero’ is a great way to describe someone who once made a post comparing dragonlords to furries, but I’ll take the compliment nonetheless!! Your kind words have given me enough dopamine to last until my next paycheck <3

Freylin is a decent ship - conceptually. They're two kindred spirits who found solace and intimacy with each other, drawn together by their mutual sense of otherness (possessing magic). However, I think Freylin does fall into some obvious trappings of Insta-Love, Heteronormativity, and Not Giving Female Love Interests Any Discernible Personality Traits.

For some people, that's not a problem. They like watching Merlin and Freya be cute and sappy with each other, and I'll agree that it was a treat to see such a fun side of Merlin. If that's the kinda ship you like, then great! Ship away. But personally, Freylin makes me feel bad for Freya. 

Not because of the death thing - lord knows I've done far worse to beloved characters without even a hint of remorse. But I feel bad for her because of her role in the ship. As mentioned above, her main purpose in the narrative and in Merlin's life is to give him some angst, then come back later in season 3 to give him some helpful advice as a sort of Freya Ex Machina. Her personality has no depth beyond what was necessary for the story. And even in fanon interpretations of her, she's essentially just a more shy/introverted carbon-copy of Gwen. 

And, okay, as a writer I can admit that there are some characters who don't need a lot of depth. Some characters are plot devices, and that's okay. Freya only appears in like two episodes, so under normal circumstances I'd begrudge that level of shallow characterization. But the rules are different for characters who have a close emotional connection with the MC, especially love interests - even episodic dalliances like Freya! 

Take Balinor, Will, and Daegal, for example. They were all important to Merlin, and all had distinct personalities. Balinor is cantankerous and reclusive. Will is pragmatic and confrontational. Daegal is earnest and youthfully naive. And we as the audience liked them too, because they felt like actual people, even though their main purpose in the story is mainly to serve Merlin's arc. They are, fundamentally, plot devices, but they don’t feel like plot devices because of how organically they’ve been written. 

Freya is a harder sell, because she doesn't have as much of a personality with which to endear us. I'm not saying we need to know Freya's favourite colour and her fondest childhood memory, nor do we need to witness her go through a seasons-long character arc. Not every background character needs their personality painstakingly detailed, least of all background characters. If well-written main characters are chicago deep-dish pizzas, then well-written background characters are hot pockets - easy to make, easy to love, easy to remember. Characters like Gilli and Elena and the love of my life Sophia are good hot pockets. But Freya as she currently is, she's not even that. She's like if we were told there was a hot pocket in the microwave, only to open it up and find it's just a lump of half-melted cheese. 

And it's sad, because Freya had the potential to be interesting. She could've had a distinct personality that made us fall in love with her right alongside Merlin - which would have made her death even more painful for both the characters and the audience alike. But even if you don't give her a personality, at the very least let her fulfill her purpose of furthering Merlin's character arc instead of just making him sad for a few minutes. 

While I'm by no means an expert writer, here's how I would've taken a crack at having Freya’s impact on Merlin's arc. 

So Merlin sees Freya again, but she's not some helpful water spirit. She's emotional and volatile and vengeful and deeply, profoundly traumatized by the nature of her death. And maybe it's his job to finally lay her soul to rest once and for all.

She gets upset at Merlin. She cries and shouts and weeps about her death, about the pain and injustice of it. How could he continue protecting her killer? How could he befriend the man who literally murdered her? Freya didn't want to die, she didn't want to be a monster, she didn't want to be alone (cue implications that she has been trapped inside the lake all this time, maddened by isolation). She just wanted to be left in peace. To be loved. Merlin naturally defends Arthur, saying that he is destined to be a good king, destined to free magic and bring about the golden age of Albion. But she insists that destiny must be wrong, because what has Arthur done for the magic community besides perpetuate his father's company line? He killed her, killed several others like her, and even to this day he condones the oppression of their people - what makes him think a man like that could ever change, could ever set them free? And even if he does, why should any of them be expected to forgive him for his war crimes? 

She tells him that deep down, Merlin knows this. Deep down, Merlin fears Arthur just as much as the rest of them. If he truly believed in Arthur's inherent goodness, in his destiny, then Merlin would not have kept his magic hidden for so long. 

Thus sparks a seed of doubt in Merlin's mind, and scenes like Morgana's speech in Tears Of Uther Pendragon Part 2, Arthur's drive to destroy the dragon egg in Aithusa, Kara's execution in Drawing in the Dark, and the confession in Herald of a New Age would only cause that seed to grow. 

Not only is this a natural and logical progression of his character, but it would also be compelling to see Merlin's unwavering loyalty to Arthur do exactly that - waver. It grants depth to his character, empathizes us to his cause and the cause of his people, and lets us see Merlin in a unique perspective. It also puts a new light on Arthur's actions, foreshadowing an eventual moment of reckoning where Arthur will have to face the consequences of his harmful rhetoric - thereby creating a subtle layer of tension as we wait for that moment to finally arrive. And there's yet another layer of tension that arises from Merlin's repressed yet growing doubts: will he finally admit that Arthur isn't the shining saviour Kilgharrah had promised he'd be? Will he snap like Freya did? Will he and Arthur drift apart? And if they do, what will bring them back together, if such a thing is even possible? How will they make amends? How will Arthur learn from his mistakes and earn back Merlin’s trust?

I could go on and on about how this would impact the story as a whole, but I'm not here to talk about my rewrite ideas. I'm here to talk about Freylin.

At the end of the day, while it's a good ship, Freya doesn't have much personality, which affects their overall chemistry, and I don't think they have enough going on between them to be an endgame pairing. My personal opinion is that Freya has less narrative potential as a romantic partner, and more narrative potential as a supplementary background character whose closeness to Merlin combined with her own trauma forces him to develop and grow in certain ways. She's less of a Gwen (long-standing love interest), and more of a Balinor (one-off character with emotional importance), and that's perfectly fine. But because of her lack of personality and overall narrative relevance, I have a hard time believing or shipping Freylin beyond the scope of her debut episode.

Thanks for the ask! <3

#bbc merlin #merlin bbc #merlin #bbcm #ask #fish post

[luckystarchild]

I was discussing this with my writing group earlier and decided that I wanted to collect some more opinions on this, so what're your thoughts on reviews that start out with "I don't really like oc-driven/centric stories, but―" or reviews worded to a similar effect/to the same tune? Personally I just don't find them to be as much of a compliment as the reviewer thinks it is, and wish people wouldn't preface a review with such info.

Soooooo there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll do it in stages. Sorry if this is more than you wanted... I take asks too seriously sometimes. XD

Why do these types of reviews feel insulting?

The reason these kinds of reviews might not feel so great to the recipient is because they pair a compliment with a qualifier. And combining a compliment with a qualifier is how you structure a backhanded compliment.

Example of pairing a compliment with a qualifier, AKA a backhanded compliment: “Your old haircut was terrible, but your new one is much better.”

The “but” is key here. The compliment-giver said something nice about your appearance, yes, but now you’re walking around feeling badly about the last ten years of your old hairstyle, wondering if everyone who looked at you while you had that old haircut was calling you ugly behind your back.

When someone says, “Normally I hate stories like yours, BUT...” they’re using the structure of a backhanded compliment to pay you a (hopefully legit) compliment. They’re calling you an exception. You’re writing something that’s normally terrible, but you managed to squeak by with something acceptable (against all odds).

Even though you’re an exception, you’re left wondering if other people hate your story because of its sheer concept just like the reviewer initially did. And because they used the structure of a backhanded compliment to express their feelings, you’re left feeling like you did indeed receive a backhanded compliment, even if that wasn’t the reviewer’s intention.

After all, the recipient of a review can’t read a reviewer’s tone. All they can see is how the review was structured, and when the reviewer used the structure of a backhanded compliment, that’s what the recipient feels like they were given.

By pairing the positive with a negative, the reviewer has potentially cancelled out the good, leaving the recipient to focus on the bad. And since humans are hardwired for negative bias, it’s no wonder many people come away from a compliment + qualifier feeling like they’ve been insulted instead of complimented. They can’t help but focus on the bad more than the good, the insult more than the compliment.

What are reviewers REALLY trying to say?

Next we should discuss what reviewers are actually trying to say when they leave reviews of this kind. There are two possible scenarios to consider.

Possibility #1: They’re legitimately trying to pay you a compliment, but they aren’t thinking about how you’ll receive it or what they might be inadvertently implying by using the structure of a backhanded compliment. They actually, truly believe that you would want to know that you are an exception to their reading rules, and that this fact is a high honor. You’ve done something so well, they don’t even care what genre your story is! Your work is great, and the fact that they’d normally hate it due to its genre is AMAZING. You’ve changed their minds about a genre! You defied expectations! They were determined to not like your story, but it’s too good! You broke through their preconceived notions of what they like and MADE THEM LIKE SOMETHING with your writing skill. It’s not a feat all stories can achieve, so the reviewer thinks you should wear that as a badge of honor.

Possibility #2: They’re actually paying you a backhanded compliment and are hoping you’ll get upset. They want you to know they liked your work... but they secretly still think it’s silly, or stupid, or cringe. I won’t elaborate on this opinion because I think we’ll all fill in the blanks with our own worst fears, so there’s no need for me to do the heavy lifting when it comes to this kind of horror.

Which of these things do reviewers actually intend? I can’t say. This is obviously up to the receiver of a particular review to decide. I personally remind myself of Hanlon’s Razor whenever possible: “In misunderstandings, never assume malice where thoughtlessness will do.” It doesn’t necessarily amend the hurt I might feel, depending on how the review is worded and how severe the backhanded compliment structure is... but it does help me make peace with it.

What’s my personal opinion on the matter?

I’m of two minds.

Mind the First: It’s awesome to convert someone to a genre of story they previously hated. OC fics get a (frankly undeserved) bad rap, so I understand that an inevitable portion of readers will come into OC stories predisposed to disliking them. Knowing someone clicked on my story thinking they’d hate it, only to come to love it, is pretty great. It’s like you’ve given other OC fics a chance by being a good representative of that fanfic genre.

Mind the Second: In general, using the structure of a backhanded compliment to pay someone a genuine compliment is confusing and can be an example of poor communication if it’s not worded with enough clarity. Additionally, “I thought I’d hate your story” might be true for a reader, but it probably isn’t a necessary thing to tell an author. Just because you CAN say something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

Personal Anecdote: A reviewer once told me of my main work, Lucky Child: “I clicked on this story to laugh at it and mock the concept, because it’s sooooo cringey, buuuut... it’s actually pretty great and I grudgingly respect the work you’ve done on it.”

The rest of the review was lovely and very complimentary, but knowing they came to my story intending to make fun of it, being told I wrote for a cringe concept, that they only “grudgingly” respected me... wasn’t the best. Largely because I am secretly afraid that people feel that way, so their review was confirming something I secretly dread. “How many other people are think my concept is cringey?” I found myself worrying. And the word “grudging” made me feel like they resented me for converting them to OC stories, which made me feel... not the best.

I genuinely believe they were trying to be nice and pay me a compliment NOW, but I will admit that I was somewhat unsettled by the comment when it first came in. There were better ways they could have communicated with me, for sure. Again, Hanlon’s Razor came in handy in this instance, and now I look at that review (and reviews like it) positively. But it did take me a while to put aside the negative implications. It helps that Lucky Child gets a comment like this every few weeks, LOL. At some point I’ve gotten used to them. Now I wear them as badges of honor and love receiving them. AGAIN, THOUGH: I’ve had practice. Authors less used to that kind of comment would likely respond the way I did at the beginning.

In conclusion?

In the end, I think using the structure of a backhanded compliment is confusing as heck when what a reviewer INTENDS to do is pay a genuine compliment.

So to reviewers who want to leave remarks like these? I’d say try to structure your comment in a clear way, avoid structuring a compliment like an insult, and be sure you’re not leaving room for miscommunication. Writers are notoriously sensitive creatures (myself included), and their command of language means they’ll read VERY DEEPLY into things if you’re at all ambiguous. Clarity, in all things, is key.

Honestly? Times like these are why I wish we taught more rhetoric in schools. The MANNER in which you communicate a thought can completely negate the CONTENT of your thought if you don’t use the right rhetorical device to communicate it, and using the rhetoric of insults to convey compliments is bad use of language. Mind your rhetorical devices, people! They’re important, especially if you consider yourself a writer.

To writers who receive these comments? I’d say to write down a version of Hanlon’s Razor and to repeat it to yourself often: “In misunderstandings, never assume malice where thoughtlessness will do.” I’m not saying all reviewers who leave this kind of comment are thoughtless, of course. But I AM saying that most of the time during misunderstandings (especially ones that take place on the internet, where you can’t read tone, body language and facial expression), people just don’t realize that their words can be misconstrued for anything other than what they intended. Most of the time, they have the best intentions. But since outcome is more important than intention, that can be cold comfort for those on the receiving end of a badly communicated review.

TL;DR for Reviewers: Don’t leave comments like these if you don’t want to be misunderstood.

TL;DR for Writers: Don’t take comments like these personally, because most reviewers don’t mean them maliciously.

I hope this helps, OP. Sorry if it’s too much!!

#fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 #ffnet #fanfiction.net #archive of our own #fic #writers #writing #reviews #reviewers #fiction #writing review #fanfic review #fanfiction review #fanfiction reader #fanfiction writer #fic writing #fic writers #fic readers #luckychildfanfic #rhetoric #backhanded compliment

[bettsfic]

do you know anything about like, the development of the purity rhetoric that now seems to be ubiquitous in fandom and how it got there? i used to be on tumblr in like, 2014 and only recently came back to fandom and i remember everyone being generally kind of cool with things like incest ships and morally grey characters (speaking specifically re the frozen fandom and elsa/anna here lmao) whereas now it seems like the conversation about those things has drastically shifted and i am..puzzled by it

this is what i imagine that experience was like for you:

according to fanlore, purity culture started in the homestuck fandom which. based on what i know of homestuck, that tracks. however i’ve never been in homestuck so i’m not sure what that transformation was like. all i know is my personal experience with the disk horse. afaik there’s no cohesive timeline of events across fandom, and i lack the time and resources to be able to make one myself. if anyone knows of one, or wants to make one, please let me know.

i do know that purity culture is a movement started by very young teenagers, who were maybe 13-15 in 2014 and are now 18-20. they were 8-10 when ao3 was founded, and therefore seem to have a limited knowledge of fan history, censorship, and critical thinking. i’m hoping that since they’re now entering college, they’ll get some insight and broader social awareness, and this movement will finally die out in the next few years. 

on any other platform, at any other time, their toxic rhetoric would not have gained traction. but here and now, on tunglr dot com where anyone can gain a platform, where mob mentality thrives and inciting an anonymous dogpile is as easy as hitting Post, where the brokenness of this place makes it difficult to control the content you’re exposed to -- it’s the perfect storm. we live in an age of hopelessness. young people grow up with social media as an extension of their identities, tethered to devices that hold all the information in the world. i think it’s fair for them to be afraid of their futures, and i can understand the desire to control the online spaces where they have the most agency, where their voices are the loudest. 

that may explain why, but not how. as in, where did they pick up this mentality at all? @freedom-of-fanfic (whose work is a necessity in understanding the disk horse) connected anti-shipping to TERF rhetoric. i’ve linked the fanlore page because it has all of the links and some of the responses. i honestly do believe that the language surrounding purity culture has its ugly roots in TERFdom. at its core, purity culture -- the policing of female and queer sexuality -- is misogyny. 

when i started writing destiel circa 2014, fandom was as you described. wincest was a juggernaut on par with destiel. teen wolf was full of underage and noncon. a/b/o was on the rise. it seemed like fandom was a genre without restraint -- anything you wrote, if it found the right audience, would be celebrated unabashedly. people who have been following me for a long time know that i was addicted to adderall at the time and pounding out all sorts of manic nonsense. i remember living on the validation of comments (and at the time, there were lots of comments. not so much anymore, but that’s another story). i got critical comments only rarely, and they were the type that i admired -- readers without judgment thinking through the story, reacting to it earnestly. i made some of my best friends because they left long, critical comments on my work. sometimes they didn’t like it, sometimes they did, but ultimately, they were engaged, and that’s what counted.

i remember my first policing-type comment, i think at the start of all the purity nonsense. it was a destiel fic, and someone very angrily told me i should tag my bottom!cas because it was triggering. i’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years. top/bottom discourse is nothing new, but to say that bottom castiel is triggering? that was ridiculous. but then i realized -- there was a writer in fandom at the time i won’t name, who was known for being extremely sensitive (for bottom!cas especially, which they found triggering), and their very dedicated following offered fic that was safe for their fave to read. i have nothing against this person at all. they were not part of the purity discourse, they were up front about their sensitive nature, and as far as i knew (i believe i met them at a con once?) they were very kind. 

but that commenter had been clearly influenced by this person and believed that a specific fictional character receiving anal sex from another specific fictional character was actual, real triggering content, and it was my obligation as a writer to tag for it. which i did, because i felt bad, and i was baffled by that request. at the time, i wanted more than anything to be liked, and conformed wherever i could. if i got such a request now, i would ignore it because it was rudely written and honestly kind of bonkers. i’d happily add a tag for something i may have missed, or even something i’d never considered before, but there’s no reason a person can’t make that request politely. 

this situation isn’t about purity discourse proper (the commenter didn’t tell me not to write the fic, and it had nothing to do with morality), but it’s the earliest example i can think of where the process of policing had occurred: a person of influence on tumblr affected their follower’s thinking, and that follower felt entitled to command another writer to conform to that ideology.

i could be completely wrong about making these connections. maybe that commenter truly believed bottom!cas was a legitimate widespread trauma. they did not say the fic was triggering to them, but that it might be to some other people, in the same way purity police say “think of the CHILDREN” when in fact they don’t give a fuck about children at all. 

after destiel i moved to stucky, which was, at the time, a juggernaut ship where anyone could write anything. this was also the time when the term “cinnamon roll” became incredibly popular, circa 2015. it was a fun and seemingly innocuous meme, but it positioned the ideas of “purity” and “wholesomeness” in sharp relief, and cemented these ideas by beginning to give it a distinct vocabulary. “trash” was pitched as its opposite. stucky is where i first came into contact with “antis.” in destiel, there had been ship wars, sure, but it was of a different flavor than antis. destiel vs wincest wasn’t about morality in 2014. it was about everything but.

in stucky in 2015, however, the disk horse was running rampant. the MCU had a sub-section of fandom called HTP (hydra trash party) in which steve and/or bucky have dubious or nonconsensual relations with various or many members of hydra. this is the first time i remember being aware of morality becoming a cornerstone of shipping. HTP was loathed by purity police. by the time i wrote a stucky bdsm au, i’d accumulated multiple nasty anons, rude comments from entitled readers, and other nonsense that all said the same thing: your filth is not welcome here in our space of purity. go away.

but the release of the force awakens is what really turned the tide. TFA offered three major ships: stormpilot (as it was called at the time, now finnpoe), reylo, and kylux. the fandom that developed around the sequels was firmly divided. franzeska wrote an amazing meta about this phenomenon which gives some insight into the seeds of purity policing. in short, stormpilot should have been the primary pairing of the sequels, but instead many of the badwrong writers from other fandoms (and HTP specifically, which was how i entered the fandom) flocked to the blank slate of kylux. 

it took a long time for the ship to gain traction. a friend told me that kylux had started with angry star wars racists who hated that there was diversity in the sequel trilogy. and i told them no, i was there, there were twelve of us and a cornchip, and all we cared about was the dirty/darkly comedic potential of these two ridiculous villain characters in one of the biggest franchises of all time. it wasn’t that complicated. i don’t mean to dismiss the discussion of race in fandom; i think it’s important to acknowledge that racism, as franzeska describes far better than i can, plays a huge part in fandom, particularly in star wars, and it’s an important and ongoing discussion to be having, especially given what kelly marie tran has gone through, and how it affected (presumably) rose tico’s extremely limited presence in TROS.

the early fics of kylux weren’t particularly taboo. they were post-TFA hurt/comfort mostly, then slowly the bdsm and power dynamics crept in. those of us who wanted to get away from purity discourse had finally found a new home. for a while. 2016 was the golden era of kylux. we were all very happy.

i remember talking to a friend about how there were certain things i couldn’t write in certain ships. being from ye olden days of fandom, she was appalled by this idea, and told me i could write anything for any ship i wanted, wasn’t that was the whole point of transformative works? and i agreed! but i tried to explain, if you post badwrong for a fandom of purity police, you’re going to, at best, get dogpiled in your comments/inbox. at worse they will find you, call your employer, and try to ruin your life. people will tell you to kill yourself. they’ll report your tumblr and try to get your blog shut down. there are real-life, harrowing consequences to writing taboo fic, and many who write fic as a hobby don’t have the emotional energy to field these risks.

around this time, discord became popular, which offered a private space for badwrong writers to congregate. i had started grad school and didn’t have much time to write fic. metoo was happening. tromp got elected. kylux was slowly turning mainstream so a lot of us turned our attention to gradence in fantastic beasts. some went on to hannibal and other fandoms that hadn’t yet caught the attention of purity police (but it was, as it is now, just a matter of time). kylux, i feel, was specifically decimated by a single fan creator, who was like a police chief. they would get wind of someone writing underage or noncon and write a call-out post about them, and that writer/artist would get pitchforked. a few times, my comments or posts got screencapped, and posts were written urging people to stop reading my works because of how heinously immoral i was. this happened to several of my friends too. 

the great tumblr tittyban of 2017 happened, which only added fuel to the fire and further legitimized the purity movement. i shifted hesitantly to the 100 fandom, which seemed small in comparison to supernatural, marvel, and star wars. i thought it was a chill place. i was wrong; it was just as toxic as other fandoms. but i also didn’t care anymore, and i appreciated that i was mostly left alone. more importantly, i found a lot of support from other people who were as tired of the purity as i was, and @the100kinkmeme was reborn. 

the state of things is pretty abysmal. there are some really amazing writers out there writing under multiple sock accounts, keeping their fandom identities shattered so as not to call attention to themselves. as much as i understand why writers do that, and i respect that decision, i also think it’s sad. it deprives readers the chance to read that author’s other works. it limits the sense of community and our ability to make friends. it fractures the future of the genre.

what’s most important to acknowledge is that none of this is happening solely in fandom. i went to a writers’ conference where 2 of 3 panels were about the history of moral policing and censorship in art. it is worth noting that of the 40-ish visiting writers on faculty, only one (1) was a woman of color (jaimaica kincaid). naturally, older rich white people who have spent their life in the arts are all about death of the author, separation of art and artist. they’re on the total opposite side of purity police, and they won’t acknowledge at all that racism and sexism are a problem in the creative world. they don’t have any nuance on the discussion, or modern perspectives in light of metoo or popular culture. 

this went on longer than i anticipated. i neglected to mention YFIP (your fave is problematic) an old blog that started the idea of call-out culture by pulling receipts on celebrities, and how call-out culture led to cancel culture, which also aided in the purity disk horse. i think a lot can be said about how some of this stuff is genuinely good (metoo and holding men accountable for their bullshit) while also being profoundly toxic (punishing criminals via mob mentality, ruining their careers and livelihoods through social media, rather than giving them their due process in court. i understand it -- the judicial system is built by the hands of the very predators we seek to condemn, but still. the jury of the internet is never a fair trial). 

if you want to read more, my tag is tsatp (the sacred and the profane). i’m sure i’ve left out a lot, but i can only speak to my experience. i think it would be good if people would share their experience dealing with purity policing, too, so we might get a cohesive timeline in place. feel free to reblog and add your story.

#tsatp #my fic #Anonymous

[idesofrevolution]

Do you prefer tfs that are: . Willing or unwilling? Aware or unaware? Flattering or embarrassing? Pleasurable or painful? Anticipated or unexpected? Fast or slow? Reversible/temporary or permanent? Only physical, or physical and mental? As a reward or punishment? . I'm tryna see if there's a pattern. There seems to be a spectrum of tf writers between focusing on the end result or on the process of tfing. Maybe this can be a buzzfeed quiz for tfers someday lol

Lmfao! Interesting. This tops the cake of Anon questions! I’m stoned af rn so imma give you the answers to your Enthography quiz. Let’s see:

Willing vs Unwilling: difficult. Because usually my stories will be about taking down someone’s walls and letting other people in. There’s reluctance there, so sometimes it’s manifested as unwilling I suppose. Unless it’s punishment for bad deeds, I obtain consent.

Aware vs Unaware: again, difficult. I usually do a progressional effect, things are unaware until they’re aware of the situation. Sometimes with reality shift it’s something you really have to think through! Are you conscious to the changes or have things always been this way? No preference, it’s just a very important part of the fraction.

Flattering vs Embarrassing: I tend to lean toward flattering. I’m not really about bringing other people down, more celebrating a different version of themselves that they’re striving to be. So with embarrassment, unless it’s possession I usually steer clear.

Pleasurable or Painful: Pleasurable is easier for me to write. I’ve done one or two painful ones and I didn’t like the way I felt after writing them tbh. So not really my cuppa

Anticipated or Unexpexted: this is another tossup. Depends on the story you’re trying to tell. One isn’t better than the other and I really do use them interchangeably. Anticipation for more of a journey storyline; unexpected for a reward, punishment or even coincidental storyline.

Fast vs Slow: honestly, this depends on my mood. Longer stories happen when I’m in a better headspace, shorter in a not so stellar one. I will say however that if they’re too short I don’t get much from them. If they’re too long I just don’t read them. Odd balancing act.

Temporary vs Permenant: I prefer Permanent. Temporary is easier as a plot device than an outcome for me. Temporary changes leading to an overall permanent character shift/growth.

Physicality vs Mentality: Balancing act. Can’t have one without the other. There’s going to be a mental shift no matter what; adjusting to a new existence is going to shift that psyche. Physicality is almost secondary tbh. It’ll depend a lot on the permanence of the situation as well. Another part of the web.

Reward vs Punishment: I’ve touched on this a little already, so I’ll just say that it’s a tossup. It depends on the story!

So I hope this helps you with any rhetorical analyses y’all have been dying to write lol

[nikkoliferous]

Now, About That Sceptre

Based on hair growth, if nothing else, it seems that a fair amount of time must have passed between Loki's appearance in the post-credits of Thor (2011) and his dramatic entrance via the Tesseract in Avengers Assemble. Despite the apparent time jump, Loki's physical well-being is still clearly... not great. His appearance has improved in some ways from the horror show above (the burns have healed, his mouth isn't full of blood), but he shows a number of signs of heat exhaustion, at a minimum (something especially relevant because, remember, Loki's a Frost Giant). He's visibly exhausted and disoriented, he nearly collapses on multiple occasions, he's sweaty and pale with dark and sunken eyes. This is not a healthy man. And while there was maybe an argument to be made for his prior physical distress being contributable to the effects of the wormhole, whatever's happening here is all Thanos.

Beyond his immediate physical state, he comes across as paranoid, afraid—desperately fighting to get through just this one moment, and then the next, and then the next. If he just holds it together a little bit longer, he'll be safe. He'll be able to rest. Watch how he stumbles. Observe his deathgrip on the sceptre and on the truck rail. Look at his desperate facial expression and body language. He's trembling.

Now we're getting into psychology, and well... Loki says some odd things throughout this film. The Loki of Thor (2011) was clearly dealing with a mental health crisis, but the Loki of Avengers Assemble seems—not to put too fine a point on it—crazy. And he's not just crazy. His words and his body seem to, at times, be in direct conflict with one another. He may talk down to the humans, but he appears to take little pleasure in actually hurting them. And yet he summons an army of aliens with the expressed purpose of doing just that. He's sassy and grandstanding while facing the Avengers, but on the occasions where he's violent with civilians, as well as whenever he's alone, he appears to dissociate from himself. Look at his face. This is not remotely fun for him. He looks dead inside.

Overall, Loki's body language and facial expressions often betray a Loki who is struggling to justify his actions. He seems, at times, almost as though he is speaking to himself as much as he is taunting the Avengers or humanity. Here are some quotes/scenes that grab my attention.

For a start, there are these exchanges with Fury shortly after he first arrives via the power of the Tesseract:

Fury: "This doesn't have to get any messier." Loki: "Of course it does. I've come too far for anything else."

"I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."

Loki: "I come with glad tidings of a world made free." Fury: "Free from what?" Loki: "Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart, you will know peace."

He goes on to reiterate his bizarre speech about "freedom" again in Stuttgart.

"The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

This all sounds a lot like indoctrination to me, and it's worth noting that the Black Order—for whom Loki is ‘working’ in this movie—is literally a cult. In fact, they use very similar rhetoric at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War. Compare this to Loki's rhetoric on the nature of freedom:

"Hear me... and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being saved by the Great Titan. You may think this is suffering. No. It is salvation. Universal scales tipped toward balance because of your sacrifice. Smile, for even in death you have become Children of Thanos."

And then there's Loki's outburst directed at Natasha after the Avengers have taken him prisoner for the first time and she's trying to get information out of him:

"You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you and they will never go away!"

Before this moment, he seems relatively calm and in control. Something changes here; he becomes disgusted and aggressive. His words could easily be applied to himself as well. Here Loki is on Midgard, pretending to have his own agenda. "Something that makes up for the horrors". Yet as much as Loki claims to be free of sentimentality, we as the audience know better. We can see it in his microexpressions and his body language. We know of his being psychically linked to The Other. We see the nature of Loki's interactions with them: the tears in his eyes, the threats and his attempts to suppress and hide his fear, the pain they're able to inflict on him with just a touch.

"If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain."

There are also subtle indicators that Loki's memories might have been tampered with, such as his initial conversation with Thor.

"Our father—" "YOUR father. He did tell you of my true parentage, did he not?" "We were raised together! We played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?" "I remember a shadow. Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss."

Yes, of course, it's possible that this is hyperbole on Loki's part. Regardless, it's worth noting as part of a pattern of bizarre, cult-like behaviours that Loki displays throughout the movie. It becomes even more noteworthy in light of the revelation that Loki was being influenced by the mind stone all the while. The specific phrasing Marvel uses is, "fueling his hatred over his brother." Does that include distorting his perception of what's happened between them? It's not conclusive, but it's certainly possible.

Now, Loki does at times appear to be genuinely enjoying himself. I'm not denying that or sweeping it under the rug. But look at the context. Notice when he seems to be the most amused. It's when he's grandstanding. It's when he's the center of attention. When people run screaming from him. When he's being interrogated. It's not the violence that pleases him; it's the recognition. For the first time in his life, he's center stage. He feels powerful. And Loki will always take negative attention over no attention at all.

Simmer down there, you lovable maniac.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, we have moments like just before he stabs Thor, in which he looks at the destruction around him with legitimate panic and horror written on his face. As though he's awoken from a haze and is only just realising the extent of what he's done. (Side note: for the life of me, I'll never understand people who call Loki a psychopath. Every single time we've seen Loki hurt Thor, he does it literally with tears in his eyes. And yet Ragnarok would have us believe he's done so all throughout their childhood just for funsies).

Surely this isn't the expression of a man who wants all this death and destruction—who's carrying out his own will. And why should he? Even if he truly meant to/cared about ruling Midgard, there's little reward in ruling a world of corpses.

Which brings us to our ultimate conclusion. As mentioned above, there have long been theories—now confirmed canon—that Loki was under the influence of the sceptre AKA the mind stone throughout Avengers Assemble. An observation I had missed initially is that some fans desperate to cling to Loki's identity as a Villain™ have differentiated between the total mind control of Barton and Selvig and the 'influencing' of Loki's behaviour via the sceptre. But note that the same language is used for both instances:

"Gifted with a sceptre that acted as a mind control device, Loki would be able to influence others. Unbeknownst to him, the sceptre was also influencing him."

I do believe that the mind control over Loki was less effective; he clearly maintained some measure of autonomy, despite the sceptre's influence. But I still think it's important to note the consistency of language used. And in fact, it’s worth noting that his control over Barton and Selvig wasn’t absolute either. Barton admits he may have failed to kill Fury because of his connection to him; Selvig installs a failsafe for shutting down the portal.

We also know—thanks to yet another stupidly discarded deleted scene—that The Other can hear and communicate with Loki at all times. Look at the longing on Loki's face when Thor tries to reason with him. He wishes so badly that he could accept Thor's offer. But this is still a hostage situation. He's on permanent speakerphone, and he knows there's no safe escape route for him.

↩️ back to the compendium

#the big damn ragnarok sucks compendium #avengers assemble #loki meta #loki #topic: the chitauri sceptre/mind stone #thanos #the black order #mcu #topic: loki was tortured

[largethingslargerthings]

Short reflection on Chang, Amico and Humienik

Questions can be profound moments in a poem, but there is also the risk that they go nowhere, that you issue a query to nothingness.  The opening lines to Spencer Chang’s “Ghost Stories (III) are stained with the interrogative, “it’s June / I wake up / you’re not / in bed I call you / we’re sorry you have reached / I call again / call me when you get home / turn lights off / I leave for the gas station / I buy you coffee / stay out until it’s very dark / every face blurry / I grab a stranger / he looks like you / he pushes me to the ground”.  The lines live in the body of a question.  In one part of the poem, the narrator queries a voice mail, literally speaking to the absence of the person.  Everything thereafter is the  attempt to find stable ground in a world where symbols have become disassociated from their referents, where voices are separated from mouths. Memories separate from their historical moments and spill across time.  There is a fear to allow the question to do its work, to bifurcate reality into what is hoped-for and what is actual.  Consider further in the poem where Chang’s narrator says, “I feel guilty / I wash my hands / I wash them until they’re red / blue / red / red / red/”.  There has been no resolution, no physical goodbye, concrete initiation into the next state of existence.  There is a hesitancy to finish the question, receive the response.  (Is the person really gone, dead?  Or, can I sit on the question and avoid the terrifying possibilities that await?)  Things happened so suddenly and, as a result, the memories fly across time like papers on a desk scattered by a strong wind.  Still, history does not react. The moment is indifferent.  The feeling might be that if action is not taken, then the importance of this moment would disintegrate.  Disintegration inevitably carries existential undertones.  What does it mean if what I consider important is revealed to be meaningless?  How do we deal with the fear of moving forward when one option might be too terrible to even consider?

Brandon Amico’s “The Gravity Between Two Objects is Proportional to Their Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them” answers this question indirectly by calling out the way in which “meaning” is constructed (after all, this is one of the main concerns with asking the question...what does it “mean” for me?):

“The dog in any 90s film was only ever being itself; to a dog, acting

and taking orders from the trainer off-camera with a bag of treats

is identical. It’s not lying in the same way acting

is not lying, which is to say it’s giving permission

for us to be happily wrong and to glean something

from that wrongness.”  

For the dog, meaning is not a ground from which to act but an historical moment. Being given the treat is an instant abundant with meaning relevant only to that moment and never again.  It is never carried across.  Later, Amico elaborates:

“If a tree falls in the woods and you’re no around to hear it

an unlabeled bird that was close enough to the crash

will bring that news     will fly off and carry

soaring out                  the sound far,

above your head.        far away from you.”

Meaning is not around if we’re not there.  To obsess over meaning is to take the chance that you will see it trivialized in front of you, reduced to empty noise and spread so thin that the essential nature that was once so important is revealed to be an empty assortment of sounds.  To question something is to provide opportunities for the matter in question to be affirmed definitely or negated absolutely.  Questions, when posed strategically, have that power.

Questions sometimes lose their meaning in poems in the way they are posed. Who are they posed to?  Is it a rhetorical device and nothing more?  It is a pause in the action that is turning back to gaze at...what? I think those who do it best have a style of verse that I would call meditative.  This is poetry that arrives in the moment.  It is physically in the world and widens itself to include the infinite, the impersonal.  Within that inclusion are other phenomena happening simultaneously. People taking the action of witness on. Their small acts are world-altering precisely because of their uniqueness, which interrupts a constant flux of instants... of whom they are a witness.  That which they face (fate, random chance, etc.) lowers its hand and they

(1)   lift their heads against it 

and/or

(2)   allow the full strength of the hand to come down on them (but record their process of subdual).  

The first seems the most noble, but that isn’t to say that the second response is negative.  There are moments in Chang’s poem where the narrator’s helplessness pierces through the poem: the constant calling of the missing person’s number, the attempt to project the person’s memory onto strangers.  Sometimes we are not in control of our lives and the best agency is the manner in which we respond.  Both 1 & 2 seem like prime scenarios to pose a question that would unsteady the momentum of the poem and cause the reader to reflect. (The fact that Amico doesn’t do this seems to be all the more powerful because it highlights a self-restraint (either purposely or inadvertently) that elaborates on the power the concept has over the narrator.  The narrator identifies with the dog and so question the assumptions his ego places over reality.  (I.e. that  the “meaning” that the narrator judges to be the ground of existence might be no more than an echo dissipating within the largeness of the world and so revealing its triviality)

There is a third manner, which is to describe the moment just before the hand comes.  The moment when you are unsure of what will happen.  Something stands before you and you feel paralyzed, energized. You feel life pulsing in you and it is this expectation that you sometimes want to live in again and again. This is the reflective witness. Something that people look back at and attempt to study.  What were conditions like before we ended up where we are?  What can we learn from those conditions?  Others don’t attempt to learn. They simply stare into the void of the moment. There are no lessons to learn, just meditations on the curve of the moment.  They remember the details of every moment and sometimes enter into one of those details as if it were a world unto itself.  There is a discovery in those moments that this detail is the imprint of time.  There might also be a question about the use of such an imprint.  Should this be my ground?  Or, is this a mystery that I will carry on my back without turning back to look at it?  Patrycja Humienik’s “Cargo” has this manner.  The poem opens,

“night arrives at the door with a lidded platter of chocolate chip

cookies vegan since you can’t have dairy unlaces their boots and sits

across from me responds to my raised how-did-you-find-me-in-the-woods eyebrows”

Night is the impersonal, the void; yet, it arrives with such a strangely personal gift (“chocolate schoolmates who are shocked to find each in the world again.  The night makes demands on her (“telling me to come press my back against the ground”), but she refuses to totally supplicate to an acceptance of unloaded cargo (“the ships having taken their cargo elsewhere i say i don’t want any more stuff”), “cargo” being the insurmountable weight of the ineffable.  I also wonder if the “you” of the poem is addressing herself.  The infinite matter of possible “responsibilities” that one could convince oneself are essential to take on are what she is faced with.  Yet, she knows that in taking on the totality of responsibility, of “cargo” that she has carried from the vanished day, could destroy the very vessel she wishes to protect.  She prefers to be in the presence of responsibility, but not be compelled to blindly take it on.  At the end, she awakens alone, neither bowing to or resisting that which she encountered. In refusing to do either, she records an event but does not internalize it enough to ask a question.  She keeps it in front of it.  She lives in the question, refusing to actuate it.  Pressing that obligation onto the reader, or perhaps pressing the reader to decide if a question is needed at all.  The question seems very therapeutic in this sense.  Chang illustrates the danger of asking questions to recklessly, Amico notes the repressive tendency of refusing out of a nihilistic tendency and Humienik notes the possibilities inherent in taking control of the question and passing it off to the community when it has become too burdensome for one individual.

#Spencer Chang #mwp #Brandon Amico #Patrycja Humienik #meditative week of poetry

[belleandkurtbastian]

Okay, more awake now. Time for thoughts on Skam France Season 5.

(Note: I will be translating “personnes en situation de handicap” as “disabled people”, the term preferred within my social spheres over “people with disabilities”. I will also be translating “sourd” and “surdité”, as they relate to Arthur, as “deaf” and “deafness” respectively. I understand that these terms have social and community meanings that some may or may not consider as applying to Arthur, but the translation is already fuzzy due to different community boundaries cross-linguistically.)

Background: I’ve watched Skam S3-4, and Skam France S3-4 before this.

Of the those 5 seasons, I think Skam France S5 is the best-constructed. The tone, pacing, and content is the best-realised. I think Skam S3 will always be the favourite in my mind, for personal reasons, but I find it hard to say that Skam S3 is “better” than Skam FR S5.

So, getting into it:

First: the Skam France writers clearly do well unshackled from the expectation of imitation. They don’t have source material to adapt here, so it’s a wholly new series, and they take that to their advantage. My problems with S3 and S4, where they were changing and moving things from the original in ways that I considered a pure downgrade? Not a factor here.

Okay, the actual content: it’s pretty rare to see later-in-life disabilities represented. Like, you’ll get people who are terminally ill, and you’ll get people who were disabled from birth or since early childhood, but it’s so rare that media actually follows the story of someone BECOMING disabled, and I really appreciate that.

And my God, they packed a lot into those 10 episodes. They have the entire “between two worlds” thing, brief discussions of language around disability, treatment of the differing needs of different disabled people and communities, medical interventions, pressure around medical intervention from parents and medical staff, the use of a variety of assistive devices (two different types of hearing aids, cochlear implants, live transcription apps), Arthur learning LSF, Arthur getting his sign name...

And that’s all just kind of peripheral stuff to the overall story of Arthur accepting and owning his deafness.

I want to talk in particular about the point where Arthur tells Noée “je ne suis pas entendant” (”I am not a hearing person”), because that scene has me a little conflicted. I get that rhetorically, it’s a powerful scene, and he then spends the next several clips without his hearing aids in. But it bugs me a LITTLE, purely because Arthur had already been owning the label “sourd” for a couple of episodes before this, at school, and socially in general. The way that the declaration is played as this Big Thing™ doesn’t really fit with the way that Arthur had been describing himself before.

But I guess it’s a community thing. I’m not sure if Arthur had owned his deafness to any other D/deaf people before that. And that “pas entendant” and “sourd” are different nuances.

I don’t know. I like the arc overall, even here, it just felt a little... muddied. Maybe the intent came through better to others, and to D/deaf/HoH people.

Briefly, the D/deaf characters within the show. We only really get introduced to two. There are several background characters, but we focus on Noée and Camille.

First of all, Noée. I like her. I think she’s a very realistic character, and she’s clearly there to guide both Arthur AND the audience into the community, but without a full hand-holding lead. The romantic subplot... Eh, the whole “cheating on Alexia” part makes me uncomfortable, but the actual development felt very organic and earned, and it really sold the “entre deux mondes” concept well. I think that the lack of a firm resolution at the end of the season is fine. It works narratively and rhetorically, with Arthur still feeling somewhat “entre deux mondes”.

And then Camille. Honestly, I’m surprised that Skam France introduced an LGBTQ+ deaf character. Arthur already had Alexia, his bi girlfriend, and it would have been SUPER easy for the writers to justify not adding any more queer characters around Arthur. I am *not* objecting to this turn, though. While most of the disabled characters I know on TV are queer, that’s more to do with the media I watch, rather than some grand representation win.

Anyway, Camille is a fine character. I think he’s the most... “we need a character who fills this role” character (a go-between for Arthur/Noée and the designated “you’re an idiot” guy for the season) that the show has had so far, but I think he’s a fine character. His relationship with Mika? We don’t see much of it, at all, but I think that works considering who those characters are in relation to the rest of the main cast. Camille’s sexuality and relationships aren’t important to Arthur’s story, but they’re still *there* in the show.

And then all the social stuff with Arthur’s friends. I think this was handled... well, by the show. Less well by the characters...

But the tension between them, and the overall discontent... It felt less dramatic than Lucas’ and Imane’s seasons’ tension. And I know some people wouldn’t like that, but I do. I think that they played into the “well-meaning friends don’t know what to do” thing well, without excusing Arthur’s friends’ actions, and also without the absolute feeling of despair and emptiness that Lucas and Imane got into at a certain point in their seasons (ditto, Isak and Sana).

They draw that weird parallel to Lucas’ secrets, too. And like... first of all, the whole “We don’t keep secrets” thing is laughable considering that Lucas’ season was only a year ago. But secondly, is this just going to be a thing now? Anything after an Isak’s season will be compared to the Isak’s problems? Like with the Sana/Isak (Imane/Lucas) conversation in S4?

Anyway, that’s kind of a nitpick.

I really liked Skam France S5.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to watch it: French subs, English transcript. Only took me three seasons :P

#.n #.text #skam france #skam fr

[margoshansons]

Desperate Measures: 11/?

Masterlist

Summary: Worried about the people she loves, Y/N retreats inside of herself. Meanwhile, Raven and Bellamy do something unforgivable.

Warnings: swearing, ANGST, violence, intrusive thoughts

Notes: based on episode 1x11 “the Calm”

The Ark had gone silent. Ever since Unity Day. Not even a whisper or crackle of the radio was heard over the next few days.

Everyone she loved was dead.

Marcus, Vera, Abby, Kyle, Sinclair….

They were all gone and the few people she trusted on the ground were already at each other's throats. Footsteps trailed behind her as she continued work on the walkies, knowing exactly who they belonged to.

"You okay?" Bellamy asked gently placing his hand on her shoulder.

Y/N sniffed, wiping her nose as she shoved everything she was feeling behind her brick wall. It had taken some time to rebuild, but she was ready. "Yeah," She spoke, feigning the happy tone in her voice, "I'm fine."

"Y/N--"

"I can’t focus on that right now Bellamy," She cut off, refusing to turn to face him, "Not when we have grounders on their way."

Bellamy eyed her up and down, knowing there was more behind her wall than she let on, but thankfully he let her be.

She exhaled, relieved as his footsteps dissipated, the clanging becoming quieter as she turned to face Monty.

"You know he cares about you right?" The other engineer asked rhetorically. She nodded before gesturing back to the task at hand, "get back to work."

Raven came barreling in at breakneck speed, tension still rife from their previous conversation. "These are great, but without the proper wiring and transmitters we won't be able to talk long distance."

She knew Raven Reyes better than anyone, and that meant knowing her coping mechanisms as well. She was upset about Finn, but unlike some other people, Y/N let her be, knowing how she felt. She needed time to cope.

"What does that mean?" Monty asked.

Raven shot a resigned look at Y/N, "It means we have to dismantle the radio."

"No!" Monty stopped the mechanic from moving any further, "We need this to talk to the Ark"

"Monty get out of the way--"

Sparks flew behind them as Y/N snatched the radio free, stomach lurching as she did. It was over. Everyone was gone. She needed to accept that.

"Thanks" Raven's eyes narrowed in surprise as she began to break apart the very device they had rebuilt from the beginning.

"What the hell Y/N?" Monty asked, crossing his arms, "Do you not want them to find us?"

"They're dead Monty" Her breath hitched as she spoke, trying to prevent the tears from spilling out, "We need to use every part we can to survive."

The silence that fell over them didn’t last long. Soon the air was peppered with cries of a fire, causing Y/N to abandon the walkies to deal with the commotion outside. She watched in shock as the meat tent went up in flames, and she showed up just in time to see Murphy lunge at Del.

"hey!" Y/N called, storming between the two, "That's enough" She pulled Del off of Murphy, "I said Enough!"

Bellamy joined the commotion, "What the hell happened?"

Murphy wiped his nose, "Del built up the fire because your sister told him not to."

Y/N rolled her eyes in annoyance. "None of this is salvageable" She announced turning toward Bellamy, "We need to go hunting."

"I want one gunner in each group!" Bellamy called from the front of the dropship, "Use the spears and blades for hunting, bullets are for grounders only, we can’t spare the ammo."

Y/N tried to hide the involuntary smirk on her face as she continued to wire the speaker into the walkie talkie. "You're good at that" She responded, picking through the parts.

"Good at what?" Bellamy asked, joining her at the workbench.

"Ordering people around," She commented, "Leading."

He shuffled his feet, gaze scanning her body as her brow furrowed, creasing her beautiful features into a concentrated expression as she began to work with the walkie. "So are you" He decided on saying.

She scoffed, a small chuckle escaping her, "No I'm not, but thanks for the ego boost, god knows I needed it."

"Y/N--"

She turned to her side, facing him as his arm threatened to keep her trapped against the table. She wasn’t ready to talk right now. "Go, your people need you."

He swung his hand as he left, pulling at each finger before exiting the dropship. Relief flooded her body once again, upset with herself for pushing him away again. He was only trying to help.

But not today.

No one could help her today.

Night had fallen by the time she had finished the second walkie, Raven taking her leave long after Finn and Clarke had disappeared with Myles on the hunt. She wanted to reach out, to say something, but she also knew Raven had a very specific coping mechanism and she didn't want to intrude on that.

Y/N would hate if it happened to her, so why should she do it to Raven? They'd been burying their feelings since they were kids. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"Y/N!" Octavia ran in breathless, "Have you seen Finn and Clarke?" She asked, green eyes growing wide.

"Not since they left for the hunt, why?" She asked, creasing her brow in worry.

Octavia hestitated, her mouth opening and closing until she spat out the news, "All the other groups have returned. All except them and Myles."

Y/N inhaled sharply, leaving her work abandoned on the table before her. "I'll tell Bellamy, we'll wait until he gives the okay, then we go to find them."

Octavia nodded, picking at her fingernails, "I'll see if anyone else has seen them."

Anxiety tickled her stomach as the two women parted ways. Clarke and Finn were fine, she told herself, they had to be. Clarke had faced worse than grounders. She brushed her hands together as she approached Bellamy's tent, pulling open the flap.

"Bellamy! Clarke, Finn, and Myles haven’t come back yet so we--"

The sound died in her throat as realization struck her. He wasn't alone.

Raven sat on the edge of his bed dressed in only her shirt and underwear, the mechanic froze as she was pulling on one of her socks. Her gaze wandered toward Bellamy, who was hiding the lower half of his body underneath the blankets they had found in the depot, his torso bare.

Y/N Franco had words and ideas for every situation, but as she found herself staring at the frozen pair, her mouth refused to work as she stuttered out a series of filler words.

Everything came crashing down at once.

Pain shot through her heart, spreading across her chest and lighting her body on fire. Every emotion she had ever felt toward the two of them culminating in the mantra that she had abandoned.

Love is weakness.

Except this wasn't love. This was betrayal. This was confusion. This was humiliation. This was anything but love.

She spun on her heel, walking away from the tent. Away from the scene that permeated her mind. Away from the numbness that took hold.

"Y/N," Miller asked, concern lacing his features. "Are you okay?"

She could only shake her head as she sat down slowly, staring deep into the fire as the other campers stared at their leader, having never seen her like this before. Bellamy called after her, the muffled sound crashing against her brick wall.

Disgust filled her body at the sound, her anger joining the emotions to create a sick concoction in her stomach as Miller watched his best friend tear herself apart.

She had trusted him. Let down her walls for him. She had cared for him, told him things she had kept from others her whole life. She had loved him and he had thrown it back in her face.

She grit her teeth, anger cutting through the numbness to fuel her. There were people waiting for her, people who needed her help. Clarke and Finn were out there.

"Y/N--" Miller cut through her thoughts, silencing himself as he saw Bellamy approach the firepit. He stood up, putting the pieces together as he caught the regretful look on the soldier's face. Miller felt rage stir in his stomach at the thought of him hurting his best friend and he clearly wasn't the only one. Octavia had joined him as they faced the older leader.

"Don't even think about it" Miller shot at the older guard, placing his hand on Bellamy’s chest.

A pleading look crossed Bellamy's face. "Please, just let me talk to her."

Miller refused to budge.

"There's nothing to talk about" Y/N's cold voice rang from the firepit as she stood up, her icy gaze landing on Bellamy's pleading one before turning toward Octavia. "Grab your things, we're headed after Finn and Clarke."

The younger girl nodded, grasping Bellamy by the arm before he could run after her, "You've done enough." She spoke, leaving him alone in the middle of the camp, watching in baited breath as Y/N disappeared inside the dropship, the familiar numbness taking hold.

"Is everything okay?" Monty asked, watching as the engineer finished the last walkie talkie with more force than she'd usually use.

"Yeah" She spoke, lying through her teeth, "Grab your stuff we're headed after Clarke, Finn, and Myles."

The smaller kid nodded, pausing as footsteps made their way up the dropship, Y/N growing tense at the sound of Raven's voice.

"Hey did you guys get those walkies fixed--" She stopped when her eyes met Y/N's.

Tension filled the room as the two girls stared at each other, Monty wishing he would disappear.

"Y/N listen I didn't know--"

"Shut it Raven and stop lying," She cut the mechanic off, drawing a surprised look from Monty. "Besides, There are more important things at stake here than hurt feelings."

Y/N whipped around, facing the mechanic with a cynical smile on her face. "You know other people exist outside your bubble Raven, but I suppose that would get in the way of using sex as a coping mechanism, wouldn't it?" She moved forward pressing a radio into her chest, "Don't worry, I fixed your damn walkie."

She stormed out of the dropship, gun in hand as they began to search the woods.

"Anyone see anything?" Monty's voice rang through the walkie as the ground crunched underneath their feet, rifles at the ready.

"Not yet" Raven whispered into the walkie, an unsure look drifting toward Y/N as the two women drifted through the forest. Octavia had insisted on talking with Bellamy and going with him, which only left Raven and Y/N together.

"I just want to say I'm sorry." Raven brought up, causing her to tense up. "It was a stupid mistake and you were right. I was using him as a way to cope instead of dealing with my feelings."

She remained silent as they stalked through the forest.

"Y/N please," The other woman grasped her wrist, pulling her back. "You have to believe that it didn't mean anything,"

"That doesn’t make it okay Raven." Y/N ripped her wrist away, "You can't just sleep with someone to make yourself feel better," She snapped, turning around before pausing. She faced the mechanic again, "You could've talked to me. I would've understood."

Raven was speechless until Monty's voice came over the radio once again.

"Is anyone else hearing the exodus black box signal right now?"

Y/N grasped the radio from Raven's hand before responding to Monty again, "If you hear it again, you get out of there okay Monty?" Her voice was desperate, pleading for him to survive. 

"Keep the moon on your left," Bellamy's voice ordered, her stomach stirring in anger as the sound came through the speaker, "You should be able to find us then."

A low moan was heard from the bushes and the two women clicked their guns in place, the barrel staring down the moving bush. They crept forward, ignoring the tension that existed between them, ignoring the silence that now draped itself across the forest.

The groan filled their ears once again and Raven nodded before Y/N pulled the bush apart, pointing her rifle at a shaking kid.

"Myles?" She asked in disbelief, lowering the gun as she stared at the pale bloodstained face of the younger delinquent.

"Bellamy, Monty" Raven's voice spoke through the radio, "We found Myles, he needs to get back to camp immediately."

"F-Finn and Clarke" Myles squeaked out, his trembling fingers wrapping themselves around Y/N's shoulders.

"Where are they?" She asked, eyes growing wide in urgency at the thought of Clarke not making it.

Myles gulped, one word falling off of his lips. "Grounders."

Bellamy and Octavia joined them a little while later, the siblings staring in shock at the shaking kid. "Where are Finn and Clarke?" Octavia asked, unable to tear her eyes away from Myles.

"Grounders took them," Raven explained.

"We won't be able to find them in the dark." Y/N clenched her jaw at the sound of Bellamy's voice, "Besides we need to get him back to camp."

The other two nodded as they leaned down to carry Myles back, Y/N fingering the walkie before calling Monty.

"Monty, we're headed back, do you copy?"

Silence.

She creased her eyebrows in fear.

"Monty, I repeat, do you copy?"

The only response was the crackling of the radio in her hands. The walk to the camp was silent, Bellamy and Y/N refused to even look at each other, while Raven and Octavia placed Myles down in the dropship.

Without saying another word, she marched to her tent, throwing the rifle to the ground before she zipped it up behind her.

Monty was gone. Finn was gone. Clarke was gone.

She held her head in her hands as her thoughts drifted upward. She wished her mother was here, wished Wells was here, she even wished Marcus was here to tell her what to do. All of her anger faded until she was left with nothing but pain.

Pain at Raven's betrayal. At Bellamy's betrayal.

Was it even a betrayal if there was nothing there in the first place?

But there was something there. There had to be. He had become her reason for living, her reason for surviving. Who was she if she didn't have that down here?

Like she said, he was all she had left, and now she didn't even have him.

She had trusted him and he betrayed that trust by ripping her heart out like it was nothing. Like it was second nature to him. And now only pain remained in that hollow cavity.

The unzipping of her tent made her freeze, wiping what little tears had spilled out from under her eyes before facing the intruder, pulse racing as she saw who it was.

"Leave me alone" She uttered coldly.

"Y/N please let me explain--"

She whipped around, heart melting at his pleading gaze. But her wall was up and this time nobody would get past it.

"No" She snapped, moving toward him, "You don't get to explain, not after what you did." She directed everything she was feeling at him until he crumbled.

Bellamy began to beg, hoping to reach the part of her that had fallen for him. "Please, I know I fucked up if you just gave me a chance--"

"I gave you a chance Blake" She snarled back, "I gave you a hundred chances! And I would've given more until you decided to sleep with one of my closest friends."

Silence sat between them, the tension pushing them further and further apart.

"Why did you do it?" Her voice quivered as she asked the question, "How could you do it?"

Bellamy moved closer, his jaw clenched, "She came to me, she was the one who wanted it."

Y/N shook her head incredulously, "Don't you dare try and pin the blame on her, she owned up to her mistake, you haven't. You had a choice and you chose wrong."

"You wanna know why I did it?" Bellamy asked, his tone growing darker as he moved closer, Y/N pushing herself backward. "You shut me out" He blamed, "You left me alone in the camp while you went to go blow up a bomb, you refused to talk to me about anything regarding the Ark. You pushed me away. You pushed me toward Raven because I was trying to forget about you."

She stepped backward, caught off guard at the admission, sucking in her breath sharply as guilt wracked her chest, the back of her thighs against the worktable, stuck against the working area as Bellamy moved closer, eyes scanning her for a reaction.

"Your safety is all I think about. You are all I think about. Before I go to bed, when I wake up. Before I even consider the others I always have to ask whether it's safe enough for you. I can't get you out of my head!" His gaze flickered down to her lips, pondering the movement for a second before speaking softly, "And I don't want to."

She flicked her gaze upward, tilting her chin to meet his, silver bracelet digging into her skin, three words dripping venomously from her lips. All too reminiscent of the last time she stood in this position. 

"Love. Is. Weakness."

Bellamy's face crumbled, his mouth trying to form words but being unable to. Pain swirled in his eyes as he stared down at her.

"Now get. out." She commanded.

He clenched his jaw, nodding weakly as he turned on his heel, ignoring the lump forming in his chest. Bellamy disappeared and Y/N collapsed, leaning against the leg of the table as saltwater hit her cheeks. She couldn't stop the sobs from coming any more than she could stop the grounders from marching.

Her tent flew open and she scrambled atop her bed, not wanting anyone else to see her like this. "God, can you not take a hint?" She snapped at the intruder.

"Not down here apparently," Miller's soothing voice called to her and she dropped her walls. "Don't worry, no one else knows."

She collapsed into Miller's arms, his heartbeat keeping her grounded as her hysterical sobs rang through the tent. "Why couldn't I let him stay? What did I do wrong? Why did he leave?" She whispered her doubts into Miller's chest as he ran his hands through her hair and up and down her spine, the calming effect not nearly as powerful.

Because as much as she loved Miller, there was one thing he wasn't.

He wasn't Bellamy.

Ugh this one hurt. Don’t worry, like I said it will all get resolved by the end of the season.

Please like and reblog and feel free to shoot me an ask anytime! I love talking about my stories!

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#bellamy blake x reader #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake imagines #reader x bellamy blake #bellamy blake #bellamy blake x kane!reader #bellamy blake x franco!reader #the 100 imagine #the 100 imagines #the 100 fic #the 100 fanfic #the 100 fanfiction #bellamy blake fic #bellamy blake fanfic #bellamy blake fanfiction #nightblood!reader #kane!reader #franco!reader #fic: desperate measures #series:desperate measures #desperate measures #brotp: the dream team #otp: you have me