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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 25, part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Holy crap, Episode 25! We’re halfway through! *Cue Bon Jovi*

Hunt Invitation

After taking a nice long break to watch Word of Honor pick lotus pods, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli return to stressing over the shitshow that is the post-Sunshot cultivation world. Jin Zixuan has come to invite them to the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, with a special invitation from his mother to Jiang Yanli. Jiang Cheng reacts to this in a mature and reasonable manner, while Wei Wuxian...doesn't.

On the surface, Jiang Cheng has matured in recent months; much more than Wei Wuxian, with his secret burdens, has. But it's only on the surface, as we'll see later in the episode, when Jiang Cheng's insecurity will take the reins.

Jin Zixuan is adorably pleased by Jiang Yanli's acceptance of the invitation. Wei Wuxian is less pleased, but sort of tries to suck it up.

Jin Zixuan kind of undercuts the romance of his errand by asking Wei Wuxian for the Yin tiger amulet as soon as Jiang Yanli is out of earshot.

As always, Jin Zixuan makes an impression by being the best Jin currently in existence, but the Jins are terrible. JZX is working to advance his dad's ambitions, and as such he is currently Wei Wuxian's enemy.

(more after the cut)

Opening Ceremonies

There's a bunch of cultivators arranged for the opening ceremony. Later someone will say that this is more than 5 thousand people. Ok, sure.

As I've said before, it's best to think of it like a theatre production and assume the other 4,900 people are offstage or, you know, painted on the backdrop.

The young lead cultivators from the four main clans are standing together. Nie Huaisang is trying out some new body armor.

The clan leaders are seated up on the stage, along with Jin Furen and Jiang Yanli. Unfortunately Jin Furen doesn't seem to have a personal name that I can discover. Her title Fūrén ( 夫人) means she's the primary wife of the head of the family, according to this excellent meta.

So “Madame Jin” is a decent translation...if you're French? I feel like instead of English subtitles including borrowed words from French (”Marquis” in NIH), Greek (”Water of Lethe” in WOH), and other European languages, we could try borrowing Chinese words instead. Jin Zixuan's mom is titled, not named, Jin Furen. Since we don’t know her actual name, I'll call her that and abbreviate it JFR.

Wei Wuxian's childishness continues at the opening of the hunt, as does Jiang Yanli's encouragement of his childishness. I know she's had a rough couple of years, and it's understandable to want to baby her little brother out of a sense of nostalgia. But it's not good for him, and she shouldn't do it; she should encourage him to be more mature, just as she does with Jiang Cheng.

War Crimes Contest

Jin Guangyao says they're going to have an archery competition, and they're going to liven it up by endangering some prisoners. These prisoners are Wens in Wen cultivator uniforms, meaning they're not the noncombatants that were being hunted down earlier. But they’re still helpless people in chains.

There are three different reactions when the Wen prisoners are brought out. All the Jins are pleased, or neutral. All of the Jiangs, including Wei Wuxian, are upset.

The Nies and the Lans, what we see of them, are a little shocked, but not obviously upset. Based on those reactions, it seems like this is a maneuver that in-world is considered shocking and cruel, but not necessarily unethical or immoral. Shocking, cruel displays of power are pretty normal in this world; remember when Wen Chao lit a Lan cultivator on fire just to say hello, and nobody complained?

This whole scenario, of course, has been designed to provoke Wei Wuxian. One major goal of this event, and the whole reason for wanting Wei Wuxian to come, is to get the Yin Tiger amulet. Making him lose his shit in front of 100 5000 cultivators is a good step toward compelling him to hand the amulet over.

We see Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli both signaling Wei Wuxian to keep it together, and he takes a step back and tries to chill.

Meanwhile, Jin Zixuan seems annoyed by all this, and goes to take a shot at it, making it clear from his demeanor that this is easy and JGY is making a show of nothing.

He hovers in the air and makes a perfect shot, pleasing most of the crowd and impressing Jiang Yanli.

Then his cousin Jin Zixun taunts the crowd, challenging anyone to do better. This presents a bit of a problem for Wei Wuxian. For the sake of the Wen prisoners, Wei Wuxian should just take this taunting and let the contest end, if no-one else is willing to take a shot. But for the sake of the Jiang Clan’s status, and his continued control of the Yin Tiger amulet, he needs to put the Jins in their place.

Every Day is Blindfold Day

This moral dilemma is resolved with an abrupt tonal shift, where the humanitarian concerns of all parties seem to vanish. Wei Wuxian flirts embarrassingly with Lan Wangji and then goes as far over the top in besting Jin Zixuan as it's possible to go.

The flirting hits differently, incidentally, when you edit Jiang Cheng's annoyed reaction out of it:

Lan Wangji doesn't seem embarrassed by Wei Wuxian's request, despite it happening in front of 100 5000 of their fellow cultivators. He looks Wei Wuxian straight in the eye for longer than necessary before turning away; it’s not exactly stern disapproval. We’ll get very used to this look, in Wei Wuxian’s second life.

Fortunately, Wei Wuxian carries a blindfold with him wherever he goes, (gifset here), and he is such a good cultivator he can hit 5 parallel targets simultaneously without even holding his bow straight or tightening the string.

(OP fixed the angle of the bow for this gif, which is why everyone is standing on a hill in the background).

Everyone is pleased by this shot except Jins Guangyao and Zixun; even the Jin cultivators are clapping, and Madame Jin is presumably this happy any time Jin Guangyao’s plans go wrong.

With that they start the hunt. Jin Zixun challenges Wei Wuxian to do the whole hunt blindfolded. Wei Wuxian agrees, but the censorship committee said no, apparently, so we don’t get to see that.

Flute Hunting

We do get to see Wei Wuxian luring monsters into his nets by being too sexy for his robe, too sexy for his robe, and playing the flute.

We also get to see Jiang cultivators looking puzzled while random monster roars happen in the woods around them. We do not get to see any monsters, which is probably just as well.

Jiang Cheng is annoyed and concerned, muttering "I told you not to overdo it" which means he didn't, you know, tell Wei Wuxian NOT to do this, just not to do it quite so well. Jiang Cheng knows what Wei Wuxian’s abilities are and he is making use of him, as he should, but he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.

Tree Confession

Wei Wuxian sees Lan Wangji and starts to say hi, but then he has a desaturated flashback to Lan Xichen telling him to back off, so he stops himself. But then Lan Wangji comes over to talk to him.

Lan Wangji starts off talking to him about his latest anti-resentment musical discoveries, and Wei Wuxian pushes back, even calling him Lan Wangji, but gently. Wei Wuxian asks "who am I to you?" and Lan Wangji turns the question right back at him, then waits a looooooong time, eyes downcast, while Wei Wuxian thinks of a serious answer.

Wei Wuxian says "I used to treat you as my zhījǐ" --which, as we’ve discussed before, is variously translated soulmate, confidant, intimate friend--with a strong meaning of "the person who truly knows me." Lan Wangji says "I still am." Coming from Lan Wangji, who NEVER says how he feels about Wei Wuxian or about anything, really, this sounds a lot like a confession of love.

It definitely takes the form, visually, of a love confession, as Lan Wangji speaks, then gazes at Wei Wuxian while he waits for a reply. Wei Wuxian's reply is this:

I don't think Wei Wuxian is oblivious (I'm speaking strictly of CQL, not MZDS, as always with these posts; they are different works). I think he loves Lan Wangji back, and knows it. But Chenqing and everything it represents are between them.

Lan Wangji is quite literally NOT his zhījǐ any more, because he doesn't truly know Wei Wuxian right now. He loves him desperately, but he doesn't know about his core, and hasn't accepted his cultivation method. So Wei Wuxian answers his confession by showing him Chenqing, effectively declining to accept his still-conditional love.

Snake Measuring

Next we get terrible hetero courtship in the form of Jin Zixuan finding snake discharge on the ground and talking to Jiang Yanli about comparative snake measuring. Seriously: that is the actual conversation that they are having.

Jin Zixuan boasts for a bit, and then awkwardly tries to ask Jiang Yanli on a date. When she turns him down he gets mad, because he's a typical heterosexual dude even though he's secretly a delightful person...very, very secretly. Jiang Yanli, for her part, can't string a fucking sentence together to save her life whenever he's around, so she's not helping their mutual understanding.

Lan Wangji attempts to hold Wei Wuxian back from beating Jin Zixuan’s ass yet again, but eventually JYL wants to leave, JZX tells her to wait, and WWX intervenes. Why doesn't Jiang Yanli have a maid or Jiang cultivator with her while she's on a date, incidentally? These kids are confused about whether they're doing feudal patriarchy or whether they're doing modern social life.

Jin vs. Jiang

Wei Wuxian jumps in between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, which JZX objects to. Jin Zixuan has no fucking business objecting and Wei Wuxian is 100% right, at this point. As soon as WWX shows up JZX should hand her off to her Shidi, bow, and leave her the fuck alone. Instead, he draws his sword on Wei Wuxian, and kind of on Jiang Yanli since she's right behind Wei Wuxian. Fortunately, Lan Wangji blocks him.

This instantly blows up into a Jiang-Jin Clan conflict, with Jiang Cheng unfortunately absent since he let his unmarried sister go off in the woods alone with the son of the Cultivaton world's most famous lecher. It looks like it’s a personal conflict, but since Jin Zixuan already told Wei Wuxian directly that Jin Guangshan wants his amulet, any arguments between them are part of a larger power struggle.

Cousin Jin Zixun comes running up to start shit. Wei Wuxian pretends--I am SURE he's pretending--not to know who he is. The dude hassles Wei Wuxian every time he sees him; Wei Wuxian is a troll, and right now CJXZ is butting in to something that doesn't concern him. Rather than argue, Wei Wuxian insults him by telling him he’s not memorable.

Jin Furen shows up with several maids and cultivator dudes in tow, which is the proper way for a highborn woman to wander around in the woods. She also brings Clan Leader Yao, because if it's Wei Wuxian Blaming Hours, Yao is going to be there.

I initially found the deep friendship between superhot Yi Zuyuan and dumpy Jin Furen implausible, but then I remembered that my lifelong bestie is a smokin' hot redhead with impeccable fashion sense, while I am a roly-poly nerd. Friends don’t always match. Also, Jin Furen's actress, Hu Xiaoting, looks like this:

...so she is actually hot in real life. Not as hot as Zhang Jingtong (who plays Yu Ziyuan) but literally nobody is as hot as Zhang Jingtong. Don't @ me, you know I'm right.

This is a heck of a long scene, so we’ll pick it up in part two!

Soundtrack: Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi

Writing prompt: Newly-divorced, cold-hearted CEO Yu Ziyuan buys an apartment next door to newly-divorced, warm-hearted pastry chef ...uhh let's call her Jin Dàngāo (蛋糕), sure. She can name her business after herself.

They discover their daughter & son are in the same college class, and so they meet up over coffee....several times...trying to matchmake their hopeless, hapless kids, while bonding over their own terrible (former) taste in husbands. Who will Cupid strike first, the kids or the moms?

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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dreamylyfe-x · 3 years

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you know i'm rewatching the gallavich wedding planning and i can't help but feel like i don't know who this is, but it ain't mickey! them writing him to be all specific about colors and sh*t, like where's the real mickey from s4 who was annoyed with that guy listing beer types? i get they wanted to do that dumb gag but they should've used someone else for it. i mean ian's the one who was always meticulous about details, they showed that from the beginning. i don't know i just found it so weird

Aw, yeah. I get that reaction -- I think it’s pretty widely shared. And I suspect that storyline did come from someone pitching “it’d be funny if Mickey was a groomzilla.” Which is an idea I find annoying. Because I find the whole bridezilla thing annoying.

But... I kinda love it, to be honest.

I really like the idea that Mickey has an aesthetic and some artistic tendencies. We know he draws. I think there’s some indication in canon that Mickey is creative -- both in problem solving and in, let’s say, his sartorial choices. Mickey seems to act on things a lot. He’s not buying those hoodies without sleeves. He is creating hoodies without sleeves.

Ian IS meticulous... or at least, he’s organized. He’s also given to executing a plan that isn’t necessarily of his own devising. He is drawn to uniforms and he seeks out knowledge he can apply to systems and processes. He seems to have an appreciation for creativity and art, but he isn’t particularly creative himself.

So of the two of them, I think Mickey is actually much more likely to observe the details and to have opinions about them. That’s still a long way away from having a meltdown about gold chiavari chairs with white cushions. I do realize this. And I remember how that scene came out as a sneak peek the week before and I was... concerned. But when I saw it in context, I honestly liked it. Not so much the scene itself, but the story of that episode. It’s pretty much the only ep that season where Mickey’s concerns are foregrounded over Ian’s and, though (as always) I would have liked MORE of it, I like that we got this one episode about what the wedding mean to Mickey.

So here are the top reasons why I like and buy this story.

1. Right off the top, I don’t think Mickey objecting to being given a list of beers indicates he’s not going to care about what chairs are at his wedding. Putting aside that he’s lived an additional five or so years since then, Mickey doesn’t get annoyed in that scene because he thinks it’s dumb to know a lot about beer -- He’s annoyed that Ryan has asked him a question he can’t answer. I’ve always thought of that as a class issue -- He has never been in much of a position to CARE about what he drinks, and he drinks mass-produced pilsners because that’s what everyone in Southside drinks, because it’s cheap. He might love a winter wheat. He has no goddamn idea, because he isn’t living a life where you get to concern yourself with whether or not you’re into IPAs or lagers. Mickey DOES like beer. I was surprised and delighted when he recently ordered a stout at The Alibi, because it does indicate that his life has changed enough that he gets to know a bit more about beer. That at some point, he had the time and inclination to alter his tastes. He might have a different answer for Ryan now.

2. That Mickey wants things. Just... I don’t know. Mickey wanting anything other than food, shelter and Ian gets me so much. Mickey attending to his hierarchy of needs legitimately makes me teary. For people who grow up like Mickey -- asking for things can be a very big deal. So the fact that he just decides he’s going to make a wedding happen -- and a wedding with nice flowers and chairs that will reflect the light (because, we find out, that’s why he wants the gold) and a singer who will perform Livin’ on a Prayer -- is a big deal. And as many have cited before me, it makes sense that Mickey wants a better wedding with Ian than the one he had with Svetlana. But what we also find out, when we get the moment with the vows, is that Mickey takes the whole thing very seriously. He delivers those vows with complete commitment and deep sincerity. So I understand why he wants that space to carry the weight of what is happening.

3. Mickey doesn’t break the chair because it’s not gold. He breaks the chair because every single person he’s encountered that day is a fucking dick. And they’re being a dick about his wedding. Something he’s happy about, and something he wants to celebrate. And, honestly, he’s not asking for much. He’d be annoyed, but most likely not violent, if his father hadn’t aimed a gun his face and some random old lady hadn’t refused him as a client because he’s gay. Brooks -- who tries to gaslight and act like the chairs are the chairs that were asked for when he knows damn well they are not -- is taking the wrath for a number of other people. But to me, the most important line in that scene is “why does everything always have to suck?”

4. Another thing about this is... back when Mickey responds to Ryan’s multiple choice beer question with “how ‘bout beer?” Ryan covers the awkward moment by making a joke about his own sexuality. The implication being that relating to beer with the kind of detail traditionally reserved for wine, is not masculine. And the thing is, Ryan is making a joke at his own expense, but he’s also acknowledging something that has always been true for Mickey. That Mickey has to make sure he never, ever displays any of these qualities Ryan so casually exhibits. Whether it’s natural for him or not, Mickey has to avoid anything that can be read to be a stereotype. He has to be hyper masculine, both because he’s from House that Toxic Masculinity built, but also because HE knows, even when he won’t acknowledge it, that he’s gay. So when we see Mickey openly talking about what flowers and chairs he wants at the wedding, he’s letting out something that could very well have always been there, but that he never, ever would have expressed back in seasons 1 through 4. Mickey doesn’t kiss Ian for two whole seasons because he’s so messed up about his sexuality. I 100% buy that, at that same time, he isn’t acknowledging having opinions about home decor.

5. I like it when Mickey defies our expectations. I’m find with him discovering or revealing new facets or abilities or interests -- what I don’t like is when they have him do something that seems more like a regression. The show lampshades that this is something of a surprise, for Mickey to want a wedding, by having Ian be absolutely baffled by it for most of the episode. But they also participate in the end. There’s an indication that Mickey and Ian plan the eventual wedding together, though I imagine Mickey’s stronger opinions took the day in most cases. And the gesture at the end of that episode -- a romantic gesture just as surprising from Ian as anything Mickey does in that episode, really -- validates Mickey in a way I think is pretty beautiful. Like... he gets to be a guy who wants someone to sing Livin’ on a Prayer to him while he holds his boyfriend’s fiancé’s hand. He wasn't allowed to be that guy for years. I like that he gets there.

So. We might not agree on this, but I really like that you drew a parallel between that scene and the party scene at Ryan’s because I hadn’t though of that before and I think it’s a very interesting one. I also enjoyed thinking so much about this on the day that we mark their one year anniversary! Because holy fuck. Gallavich is married!

#asks #once again I'm contrary #but I am always so grateful to be asked #and I am grateful for the opportunity to think deeply about how much of a triumph it is for Mickey to want something solely because #he likes the way the light hits it #mickey milkovich #Gallavich meta #shameless season 10

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kaetastic · 4 years

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How Do You Do This?

pairing: Papa!Luca Changretta x Mama!Reader

summary: Luca remains at home while his wife rests in bed, exhausted and visibly sick. However, he didn’t know it would be this difficult to take care of the house and a child. [requested: @imaginesbymk]

warning: fluff (wow why am i like this) & bitsy angst if you squintttt

word count: 2.8k

note: i feel like i haven’t done well in encapturing luca as a father and as a whole character (such an excuse to rewatch season 4) thank you so much for this request!! all of these fluff requests makin me turn to a fluffy lady oops- also, hope ya’ll don’t mind me naming the daughter :D just wanted something italian.

Eyelashes fluttering open before intermittently blinking shut due to the single blaring sunlight that slipped through the cracks of the blinds, Luca let out a noise that was in the middle of a groan and a hum. In any other words, it was a sound of him agreeing to the usual morning. Something he found pleasant. Usual mornings may be disliked by some because of how monotonous and irritatingly dull it was. Luca believed otherwise.

Usual- common and repetitive mornings was a sign of a normal day without anything peculiar out of the ordinary. People who weren’t used to having guns pointed at them wouldn’t mind something out of the ordinary once in a while. Not Luca. The mafioso would be called mental if he had hoped for something random to be yanked out of a box for an approaching day. In his line of work, it was better to pray for the same day on repeat, rather than countless pop-ups of issues from another group. Or worse, to wave off to men who had been ardent to their job and loyal to their work in coffins.

His shoulders were pulled taut as he stretched out the muscles that had been slumbering well through the night. All thanks to his well-payed and efficient timetable of the work he needed to be done with. Running down his fingers down his face, he couldn’t help but cheer a slight joy at the remembrance that it was finally Friday. Last day of work for the week.

If there weren’t any emergencies calls that would take up the whole day. The Italian couldn’t help but notice that the recent short emergency calls had taken up nearly both of his weekdays. Barely had time to spend with Maria. The corners of his lips curled up even more.

It had been roughly three years since his little girl had stumbled upon the world. And ever since then, the Italian believed that his world beamed brighter. Well, he was already riding clouds when he had met the woman who managed to enrapture his heart with her impressive magical abilities. But after the cheeky little girl had been born into the world, Luca was sure he was flying through the clouds. There were no other feelings that matched that of having a child. A girl- to add on that. Once again- usual, repetitive mornings of replaying past memories.

Even though he thought without a doubt that he would die and rot to end his own branch, he was wrong. The times he had repeated the words to himself and to his mother that there would be no women who would be there for him when he would appear to their house drowned in rivers of blood; that there would be no one who would understand the world he had been born into was countless. He knew it was not a choice to birth into the criminalizing life. It was never a choice. Even if he had chosen to leave, he would trudge through sludge as a permanent trail for him to end up as a corpse. Luca was wrong, once again.

His mother who grasped onto the rope of hope which had smeared lines of red in her ageing palm had also whipped it onto the back of his head as a reminder that there was someone out there. Someone who would see him as him. Audrey Changretta was right. The woman strayed at the edge when her son was nearing the age of thirty without a woman by his side. Well, a woman that would stay permanently and was there to be with him. A miracle had hit them.

“Luca?” A raspy voice called out his name, almost as if their throat had been scrapped dry. More like rubbing two grainy sandpapers against one another. The Italian pushed himself from the bed, the mattress dipping down as he sat.

“Yeah?” His fingers weaved through the locks of his hair that lingered a smear of the excessive gel he would slick through his hair nearly every single day. It coated the cracks of his fingers in a greasy plaster. A disgusted wince seeped through his teeth. Mussing his hair that had strands of hair poke at different angles while he watched the head of his wife peered into their bedroom, his whole body froze. A usual day would promote the activity of him peppering kisses all over his wife’s face (sometimes, if they were lucky to not be interrupted; if they were fast to finish- they could get the deed done). It doesn’t seem today would be a usual day… at all. Y/N’s face was tinted green, no different than that of a freshly plucked out cabbage.

“I think I’m sick.” As soon as the words brushed against her lips, the man sprung out of bed, not minding the chilly shivers of the air bite into his bare chest. Within four steps, he was already at the door where his wife looked like the living evidence of her theory.

“You look sick,” Luca mumbled as his hands cupped her cheeks. Her skin sizzled onto the palm of his hands. Just like that time he had accidentally slammed his hands onto a heated pan, thinking the gas was not on. “You’re burning, amore.”

The woman sported a pout at the fact that she won’t be able to carry out the chores of the house, “I’ll just call Dona. We talked during a party, and she told me she takes care of kids.”

Her shoulders were curled down, slouched in disappointment and irritation from the inconvenient time for her to feel sluggish. There were so many things on the list she would have to do, but now- she would have to spend a day or how long the feeling manifested her muscles in bed. The phone sat on the counter of the kitchen. It stared its wide-opened eyes onto the figure that took a step towards itself.

Even though it would take at least a couple of steps to reach the phone, it suddenly felt as if it had been placed further. Lights curtained the sides of her peripherals in blankets of haziness. Her toes slammed into the back of feet, the strings in her knees begun to slack. Wobbling in intermittent quivers, she barely had time to wrap her head around the idea of meeting the floor.

“Hey, hey,” Luca was quick to jump onto his feet. Arms wrapping around her shoulders, he nudged her heated body to face him. “Come on, let’s get you tucked in bed. Maybe then you can finally understand the meaning of relaxation.”

An exhausted chuckle fell off her lips, although, it sounded more like a grated wheeze. The Italian was referring to her dedication to staying sane in the house. Her husband had, of course, allowed her to step outside the warm walls; however, the only reason she would do so was if her thoughts had been off the rails or it was a family dinner. And lingering inside the house with a three-year-old left a scribbled list that seemed quite hefty. Just looking at it led to an overwhelmingly heavy emotion of exhaustion. There was always something to brush over, there was always something to sweep into the trash can.

The man helped her into her side of the bed. Luca, the man who played the strings in the mafia; who had been rumoured to doing abominable in his youth, was gazing into the exasperated eyes of his wife with nothing but concern, “I already took out the flour, sugar, and butter. Make sure you tell Dona-”

“I’m not calling Dona,” Luca cut her off, his fingers brushed over the bumps of her scorching knuckles. “I’ll just stay home. I’ll take care of Maria. It’ll be okay.”

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the slight quirk of his wife’s eyebrows. Even when she looked like she had seen death, she had the ability to amuse him. There were doubts in her head, bouncing off the walls as she beamed at him, almost sceptical at the sound of his list. However, hers’ had been mild and more tamed compared to the Italian.

Inside his chest, he was roaring in frustration at the task he had assigned to himself. In his head, he was slamming every possible angle of his brain into his skull. The man had never taken care of Maria- alone. There was a major, very prominent difference when his wife or someone with experience of handling a child, was present by his side to take care of the infant.

The longest he had been with his own daughter- alone, was when she was an infant age of one when his cousins had come over to drop something off. To which his wife had what felt like a stretched out conversation. It was for half an hour. He just had to make sure the baby was sound asleep (she didn’t move a muscle).

Luca’s only memory and experience of taking care of Maria alone were for half an hour. The promise he had just made bounced out of his lips as if it was a mere reassurance to throwing out a dog’s shit. It was not. Even though her chest prickled worries and concern for the very new idea, there was nothing stored in her muscles for her to oppose.

Wavering through an overwhelmingly large amount of feelings sitting on her chest was a patent emotion of guilt. Y/N falling sick had been the reason Luca won’t be going to work. Luca glanced at the eyes he had stumbled upon countless times, “Don’t worry. You stay here and rest.”

His warm lips pressed onto her sizzling forehead before he yanked a random dress shirt from his closet. The corners of his lips curled up at the sight of the clearly exhausted woman tucked in the warmth of their bed, her back facing him. Creaking the door close to leave a minuscule gap between it and its frame, Luca was more than determined. With a tug on his buttoned shirt, his eyes brushed over the house. There was roaring ambition for him to seize the day, and succeed in the promise he had made. If he was going to do this, he will do this right. Oh, the call first.

The man stifled a cough as white powder sprung into the air to tickle his nose. He squinted his eyes to gaze through the misty haze concocted by the flour as if a blocking waterfall. Was it enough? Fingers running over his shirt, he barely spent time to bat an eye at the painting he had smeared all over his white dress shirt. A faint scraping noise echoed while his index fingers traced over the printed words on the book. Luca lost count of how many cups he had thrown into the bowl.

While he had a midlife crisis in hopes of figuring out how many cups of flour he had just hurled, a sob trickled into the quiet house. Nudging the underlying sound of cars zooming past their house, and the irritating hum of the lightbulb aside, no noise had interrupted the Italian’s extreme focus on the noted recipe.

He was trying to be as precise as he could be. Well, that was until the little person had woken up from their deep slumber. With a huff, he brushed the excess flour from his palm onto his pants.

“Good morning,” The man announced, startling the baby even though she had narrowed her eyes at the wide-open door for the expected lady. The string of tears balanced on her eyelid quivered to drain down her cheeks at the sight of the Italian man. Slightly panicked, his hands that were clamouring dry from the flour smeared all over his palm were quick to pull the awakened baby out of the low crib. “Shh shh, come on, è solo papà.” (it’s just daddy)

There was no doubt that the Italian had every muscle in his body spike up from the sudden obstacle he would have to face. A hefty one at that. Bouncing on his feet, his mussed morning hair that he had tried to tame (to which he failed) smacked onto her forehead. Maria, the three-year-old who had her father’s dark eyes that shimmered gold under warm light, and his sombre locks, stared at the man who held her. Luca, on a usual day, would be out before she would awaken from her slumber. No wonder the baby had been startled to see the man who spent his whole day in the walls of his office.

Strings of cries from the infant called for her mother, hands wiggling towards the open door; her feet prodding into the Italian’s stomach, in hopes of getting away, “Mamma is sick, so, it’s just you and me,” Maria halted to stare deep into his eyes as if she had understood his words.

The corners of his lips curled up at the sweet sound of silence before it swirled back down at the familiar noise of crying. Not wanting the sick woman to wake up, he rapidly dashed to the window. Nudging the curtains to rest on the back of his head, he pointed at the puffy sky, “Look. A bird.”

Maria’s eyes beamed at the pigeons that flew to rest on a branch before it trailed back to her father’s face, “It’s papà. I’m sorry if I scared you,” With a heartbeat set at a normal pace, the baby finally digested the figure who practically stomped into her room. “Come on, I’m making breakfast.”

After settling down Maria who now blabbered on and on about her toys, the Italian mafioso didn’t waste time to get on with the pancakes. Cracking the egg (just as the book said), he peered onto the next line of instruction. While he proceeded to make sure that everything was in the bowl, and he had whisked, Luca couldn’t help but throw a glance towards the giggling child. In Maria’s hands were the stuffed dolls she had grown up with. She wiggled a teddy in front of a quite butchered female doll.

From the distance, he could only hear indistinct mumbling as she created a conversation between the toys. Luca couldn’t help but crack a smile. The years of him believing that having a family in such an organization was impeccably dangerous had been thrown out of the window. It might’ve been dangerous, but he would always be there.

The man had already cranked up the gas and prepared the first pancake. It did not look appetizing at all. The sides were frayed, plastered with blotches of black colouring. Not poisoning my child today. With a flip, the crunching sound of the failure meeting with the trash bag crinkled into the air. Pouring the batter, the pan sizzled at the cooling sensation, “Papa. Full.”

Maria pointed. Luca’s face fell. The one thing he had dreaded, he would have to face. It was sooner or later. Even though he had discarded the pancake, and he had paced towards the infant with a very fake smile in hopes of comforting her, there was nothing but sobbing in his head. He had seen his wife do it multiple times. Luca could do it.

It’s true, Luca could do it (even he impressed himself). Anyone could. But, could everyone successfully insert the pin to secure the cotton diapers? No. Luca did it, but he had no courage in him to attempt once more. He could still feel the shivering of his finger as the skin of his thumb wrapped around the cooling metal of the pin. Maria had been somewhat cooperable.

The three-year-old had only little patience while she watched her father pierce the pin through the first layer of her diapers. However, the energetic child had sprinted off, bare for anyone to see, to scurry around the house. Luca had spent some time in chasing and coaxing the baby in wearing the diapers first.

Munching on the pale pancakes, Maria’s eyes twinkled before tearing off a bigger portion. An exasperated sigh left his lips. The familiar kiss of coldness bit into his skin. Luca glanced down in exhaustion. His neck might’ve felt like it would collapse in his work hours while he jotted away on papers, he couldn’t help but feel his muscles plead for a merciful, brief death. The sight of his shirt glued onto his skin where the water splashed out of the bath, added a block of the feeling ‘drained’.

While the infant gingerly bit into the slices to get the full taste, Luca slithered into his bedroom. The man practically melted into the floor at the sight of his gazing wife, “How do you do this?”

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jayjaysocks · 4 years

Text

Listing my favorite animes (because I’m jumping on the bandwagon)

❗️⚠️ *spoilers!! (Duh)* ❗️⚠️

5. Deadman Wonderland

I was really really sad when I found out this anime got cancelled. The music was fantastic, the animation was really good, and the voice acting was incredible. Even the fucking dubbed version (I loved the voice they chose for Senji. God he was hilarious). I binged this show so fucking fast it wasn’t even funny. I loved watching the characters go through their own struggles and grow as people in the very small amount of episodes provided. There was a lot of development within the snippet that we actually saw, and I was thoroughly impressed with how well it was done. I wanted to scream or something when I found out there wouldn’t be a second season.

Sigh. Oh well. At least we got some of the manga’s masterpiece translated into a show, even if we were missing some fucking awesome characters.

4. Guilty Crown

Ugh, don’t even get me started. This anime was beautiful and I got so invested so freaking quickly. I literally go back every few years to rewatch it because I get ship starved.

Shu and Inori’s story was so beautifully done; between Shu uncovering his courage and Inori’s journey of self-discovery, I was continuously awe-struck and filled with feelings—I mean, I had never felt such raw emotion while watching something and I was completely blown away by the affect it had on me. Anger, hatred, sadness, it was all there (even for the main character lmao) and it was one of the first times I had ever felt a ship so heavily that I literally cried at the end. It was one of the very first Animes I’d ever seen and was one of the reasons I got such a taste for them. Thanks for throwing me down that rabbit hole, GC.

3. Soul Eater

This was literally the first Anime I’d ever seen, and my god I couldn’t have asked for a better starter. What I like about this one is that it’s style is so unique and different. It’s very punk and grunge, something I admired and appreciated in a genre that is normally the opposite (like Guilty Crown, for example). Also the fight scenes were badass, like holy shit just look at that gif ??? Freaking amazing.

I loved the way the show transitioned from light hearted to intense and adrenaline pumping so effortlessly. That can be said about a lot of shows, but this one went from *haha cute show* to *holy shit, like they’re actually gonna die ohmygod howaretheygoingtosurvivethis* so smoothly I was genuinely surprised. They made one of the main villains actually cool and each character had their own beautifully done arc. I loved and adored how the show solidified and expanded on the different friendships/relationships that were involved—specifically Soul and Maka’s (also, holy shit, Stein’s arc? Fucking prime, dude). There was a lot of growth in each and every friendship (CRONA!!!), and that really pushed the viewer to invest in the individual characters.

I am fucking delighted that this was my first anime, and (though the ending was a little anticlimactic) it remains one of my top favorites to this day. It set the bar pretty fucking high, and for that I am extremely greatful.

No one asked for Soul Eater: Not! It is the unspoken sin of the Soul Eater world (then again, it is called Soul Eater: Not!)

2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

If you have been following me for a while, then you are no stranger to my love of FMAB. Some of my most popular posts are about this anime, and for good reason.

Unfortunately, I was late to the party. I actually didn’t watch this until last year, but got invested really damn quick. I have a tendency to be extremely picky about the animes that I watch/like (which is why NONE of these shows are that recent), to the point that I will literally research them before I start watching (a bad habit, do not copy me). I have an incomparably hard time finishing a show when I start, because I get bored really quickly, but this was an exception. I started watching and I just... didn’t stop. I spent a straight week watching FMAB, gobbling it up during any small amount free time I could manage, and finished it before I even knew what happened. I wasn’t picky about it, I didn’t research it, I just dove right in and gosh, I was not disappointed.

The subtle romance that was alluded throughout the entire show was super cute, the devotion the brothers had for each other was to die for, and the struggles that each person went through was more than moving. I never once found myself bored while watching, and that’s saying a lot for my adhd ass. I was invested in each and every second of that damn anime and I was never, ever left underwhelmed. That probably had to do with the fact that every. Single. Character. Had a purpose. I’m not even kidding. Every single person contributed to the big fight at the end and that alone is fucking fantastic.

Not to mention ALL the women, every female character, was a badass bitch. None of them were reduced to sex appeal or romantic subplot, they all had real feelings, real arcs and real, unadulterated badassery that I thoroughly admired and appreciated. I could watch this anime over and over again every single month and I wouldn’t get bored. Between the emotional struggle, self discovery, and personal development of each character, I promise you will not see a lack of plot or meaning here. The more you watch, the more you discover and that is not a lie. There are so many layers to its story, which only makes me wish I had watched this sooner.

There is nothing I have to offer in the ways of criticism, and for that I couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Hiromu Arakawa, for such an incredible piece of art. You deserve every bit of love that this manga/anime gets. You go girl.

1. Cowboy Bepop

Holy shit holy shit holy shit this anime is so fucking good and it has been my favorite for so damn long. I have been watching anime for years, and while some of the shows in my list have moved around, this one has yet to be bumped down from the top (and I doubt it ever will). There’s a reason it became such a cult classic.

For starters, the animation. I mean, just look at Spike and the way they animate his fighting (yes I am aware that this gif is from the movie, but that still doesn’t change my point). The sequences in the show/film have been reused in many other shows and for good reason. It’s good, incredible, actually and they make him look so badass with just a few hand movements. I was consistently impressed with the way the fight scenes were portrayed and wasn’t ever left underwhelmed or disappointed (or, for that matter, feeling like they completely over exaggerated/overcompensated the scene with huge close-ups and tons of debris and lights). I loved watching this and my heart was always pounding with every intense interaction. I didn’t feel bored during any of the episodes and always found myself laughing when they cracked a joke—pretty much all of their funny lines hit and that’s saying something, dude.

The show, while having a lighthearted surface, has a heavy meaning that you don’t see at first glance. It’s about dealing with grief and loss, and how the characters themselves accomplished that in different ways. The most prominent quote is the biggest indication of its moral “you’re gonna carry that weight”. Basically: ‘You’ve gotta pick up your baggage, because the world moves on, with or without you’. Or ‘You’re going to carry that weight whether you like it or not, because life keeps going’. When I figured out the show’s actual message, while staring at my ceiling in the long hours of the night, I almost cried. This realization brought something entirely different to the table, a new understanding of the show’s characters and overall essence.

The main characters, all of them, had depth. They had real, palpable depth, and even if you didn’t want to care you found yourself seriously interested in their lives. Each of them had relatively shitty pasts. Faye with her lost memories, Spike with Julia and the people who fucked him over, Jet with his old flame and the ISSP, Ed and her/his father... throughout the entire show we got to see how all of them dealt with these things, whether they wanted to continue on with life or not. The way they portrayed it was engaging, because the characters individual, contrasting journeys weren’t repetitive or one note. The beauty that the show holds so achinging close to its core, the layers of grief that the characters are wrapped in so delicately is almost suffocatingly real—because they’re all different. It’s something you discover when you think on the subject in a deeper light, which is another reason why I enjoy it so much. It has both a surface story and a deeper one. You can either take the show at face value or choose to understand the underlying moral.

This show inspired my very first, thoroughly fleshed out OC, and continues to inspire me to this day. It has contributed to my own personal growth, and has helped push me to continue my art and writing. It is beautifully written, beautifully executed and even though some of the episodes seem like filler, it has never disappointed me. I rewatch it all the time because there’s something so infinitely refreshing about the beauty of this anime, whether it be the way we watch the characters develop or the overall moral it portrays. This show has given us a message that is essentially timeless, it can be ‘carried’ through generation after generation, and still have the same impact—something I absolutely fucking adore.

I owe so much to this anime, including my very own artistic development. I discovered it during a really shitty time in my life and I couldn’t have asked for better timing. I will never tire of the bittersweet message or the thoroughly fucking fantastic animation. Everyone who contributed to this masterpiece deserves love, because it’s seriously fucking gold.

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selfcareparker · 3 years

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yesss the letter format 💝💓💘💖💞💕💖💞💓 (lovely anon)

my dearest aria (a hamilton reference lmao),

i’m home alone (bc i wanted the house alone to get my head together after my brothers were mean to me 🙃) and i’m so hype LMAO but i’m watching chloe x halle’s tiny desk concert and honestly just vibing. (this is so random) besides zendaya like they are my badass black women role models. my one accomplishment would be to learn to body roll like them LMAO

oh nevermind i can’t have anything nice, my dad just came home 🙃 WHAT A WAY TO START OFF THIS ASK WTFFF

i’m liking tfatws, the second episode was veryyy intense imo but WANDAVISION IS SO GOOD😭 i knew it was going to be my favorite from the really old trailer but it’s really good and i promise it’s not just sitcoms, girl especially cuz you’ll have all the episodes already out- we were having to wait every week😭 BUT ITS SO GOOD I PROMISE HDJSHDJSH lmao reading this i was like “i- the episodes aren’t an hour long” but i feel that, it’s hard for me to watch tfatws bc they are an hour long and i’m like 😐 but wandavision episodes are less than 30mins bc I KID YOU NOT they have the damn 10 MINUTE CREDITS DHDJSJ no i don’t think we’ve talked about this b4 lol but it all depends on the series for me. i binged love island uk in less than a week bc i was so invested and LITERALLY LOVE IT but uh those episodes are like an hour and a half, but say i was binging tfatws (it’s so hard to type that ohmigosh) i honestly would not be able to do it bc of the intensity (you may be like what intensity but if you’ve seen episode 2 by the time you’re reading this.......... isaiah and the scene afterwards is all i have to say, esp me being black it was so tough :/)

girl you’re fine, as long as you’ve experienced it once hahaha i think the reason why it’s so important to my family (this letter feels so personal and extreme HSJSJA IM SORRY) is bc my grandmother loved it and in my family i guess it’s just important to us lol like my mom and dad love it too and we have the literal VHS tapes LMAO, but it only came up recently cuz my youngest brother was watching lion guard HAHA and he wanted to see the originals :) and fun fact (unless you already know) but there’s a lion king part 2 and 1 1/2 and i have all three ON VHS HAHAHA but i love lion king 1 duh (the og) but part two’s music and love story..... is so good. anyway. 🦁

I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING DURING THE WHOLE MOVIE THEATER ENCOUNTER THING HAHAHA AND WHEN SHE WAS SAYING AWKWARD I WAS LIKE WTF THE NOISE LMAOOOO i don’t think there’s a better way to describe that whole situation than ZKDHDJSHAJAJSHDJSNAHA. yeah. yeaaaa at the cinemas (i like the word cinema more than movies 🥰) here they have chips (fries), some have ice cream, nachos, drinks, hot dogs, the cinema we were at had pretzels and like BURGERS I WAS LIKE HUH OKAY and ya know obviously popcorn but i don’t know why the theaters (or cinemas) here do that, it started a long time ago though like yearsssss

PLEASE i have the longest movie watchlist and uhh haven’t seen any of them JDJSKA (istg i use HSJSSKSH as a period - like . ) i’m still hype for cherry but very hesitant (idk if i can handle it) but i’m thinking about watching it in the next couple of weeks? i know it’ll take me forever bc i’m gonna have to keep pausing and shit but idk. i’ve asked around for very specific trigger warnings and time stamps so i REALLY know what’s coming (even if it spoiled the film a bit for me) but i do really wanna see it (i think? writing this now i’m not so sure lol) so whooooooo really knows lol, but chaos walking YES i was really excited about it :))) and about my friend uhh dude you don’t sound mean at all i was literally thinking the same thing but worse HAAKL idk what she was there for???? she bought my ticket tho so 💁🏾‍♀️ whatever

“SIMS ahh, BUNK BEDS ahh” had me cracking up lmao and you know my sims status JAJAHHAJ but i’m gonna become like you, saving every 5 minutes 😭 but that’s exactly what happened to me, i really didn’t know whether to shut it off or not but after 2 hours i was heartbroken lol i’m literally making a list of things i need to redo that wasn’t saved lmao

CAN I JUST SAY UR A MASTERMIND THOUGH??? UR SIMS GAME SOUNDS SO *chefs kiss* IM CRINE university is PAINFULLY long and LITERALLY I FEEEL THAT like you can’t do anything else without failing, i had my sim go to a party once for like a few hours and i felt so dumb afterwards like urgh he should’ve been studying LMAOO just cracking down on work honestly. UR NEIGHBOR!AU IN THE SIMS PLEASEEE i am very much in love with it, yes. (pouring rain has just suddenly begun where i am rn wow ok) i love that you put them on the same lot, that was really really smart and i love that ur living out your sexuality in the sims😭 i was abt to say “now you can say you’ve got experience bc of the sims” but ANYWAY IGNORE ME fhdhs THE ALIEN BABY DHSJSK i hope it’s not a dealbreaker for enisa. that’d be tragic. IM BACK IN UPPERCASE THO BC YES MAKING OUT IN THE SIMS IS SO HOT TO ME??? I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE STFU OH MY GOSH- all the stuff, whispering sweet nothings, and the making out, and JUST ALL OF IT!!! AM I TOUCH STARVED????? there was this time i made my sim just continue to woohoo bc it was turning me on big time. ANYWAY

half way through that i had to go to my grandmothers house (not the one that likes lion king, but uh hmm idk if you remember but i was talking abt my shit family so yeah that grandmother lol) so now i’m finishing this 🥴 and instead of chloe x halle i’m watching a tom interview lmao & if this takes me longer than 30 minutes.... imma cry

I REALLY WANNA ASK- IS IT BC UR GERMAN LIKE YOU CAN JUST WRITE OUT THAT LONG ASS WORD???? i mean i can’t write out supercalafrag- anyway, but that word is a bit nonsense, UR WORD IS A REAL WORD DUDE HDJSHS i love how ur like “maybe i mixed up these words” YEA OK.

lol i had to google what are waveformers lol (lol makes a comeback) and they look like curlers that you would sleep in (here we would call them curlers or uhm i forgot uhhhhhhh rollers i think) but ur fine when am i ever making sense?? i think the best part about these is the chaos yet we understand what the other means 😌

H20 H20 H20 OH MY GOODNESS SHE BROUGHT UP H20 OK MY LIFE WAS H20🥲 I HAVE THEIR LOCKET NECKLACE AND (short storytime) when i was younger i thought they were american despite their accents (idk i was dumb) but then i figured they weren’t when lewis went to go study in america HAHAH ALSO FAVORITE COUPLE CLEO AND LEWIS UGH WATCH ME REWATCH THE SHOW NOW THANKS (also i hated elizabeth so much) but anyway back on topic, when lewis went to go study in the US i looked up where the show took place and all that good stuff and i found out they were australian HAHAH and that started my obsession with accents LMAO the uk :’)) (i’m proofreading AND AUSTRALIA IS NOT A PART OF THE UK LMAOO IM SOO DHSJSSHS) also it is now one of my many goals (besides the body roll HAHAH) to go to mako island (that’s what it’s called right??)

about music, i googled stormzy and i might listen to a song of his.. LOL I WANNA GIVE IT A TRY IMMA DO IT FOR YOU NFDVSFSG lmaoo the german rapper had me cackling (autocorrect once again being helpful and said raper and i’m like nOO) i mean we all have that one person. can’t lie, won’t lie. my one (IM SORRY BUT AUTOCORRECT HAD “MY ONE TRUE ACCOMPLISHMENT” SITTING AND READY HDJSJA I DONT EVEN TYPE THAT wHAT) person out of my white soft boy with brown hair and brown eyes type would beeeee pete davidson. love me some petey. i was gonna say rex orange county as well lmao but i don’t really loveeee him i’m just in love with his music... and wanna be friends with him..... so 👉🏾👈🏾 (i never do that fdshsh)

oh my goodness, i love tattoos too- GASP what are you thinking of getting 🥺 i want tattoos too but i’m too indecisive to figure out what to have & where. especially in my family... idk they aren’t frowned upon but my mom’s not applauding the thought lol, if i got one it would have to be meaningful but i am absolutely in love with (for example) ariana grande’s finger tattoos !! they’re so cute and simple :’) i don’t even know if i can get tattoos? my skin is... interesting. not in a bad way!! just like.... idk how to explain it??? keyloids run in the family & i got a piercing once and it got infected soo :/ the doctor also confirmed that if i wanted tattoos they couldn’t be in color so LMAO

ONCE AGAIN THIS WHOLE THING FEELS SO TMI DHSHSSJ IM LIKE OHMIGOSH SHUT UP SHE DOESNT CARE JESJSKS

in regards to you not sleeping, i wanted to mention that dumb bird, what was the reason it was up so early aT 4AM???? SIR WHO YOU CALLING TO??? also it’s 11:30pm and idk why i’m tired???

yeah i was never SUPER into justin so i don’t know exactly what albums you’re talking about lol, i do know yummy though.. but everyone did hahaha also i listen to so much pop 🙈 i mean maybe... idk what would count as pop and what wouldn’t. that new person feeling though.. i get that. it’s like who is this new person..? i kinda feel like that with taylor swift (i was never THAT into her either though so it’s like oh wait i didn’t know you from the beginning instead of hello old friend but you’re different lol)

about the concerts, thanks 🥰🥰 that’s so sweet what you did for your mom too, it’s nice seeing them so happy like 🥲 awh AND GLEE IS AND WAS MY LIFE FOR A V V LONG TIME, i’ve been meaning to rewatch it for the longest time lmaooo but i’m just so lazy and it’s such a commitment... i’ll have to get emotionally involved again and idk if i want that rn. but i have a friend on instagram and she runs a glee fan account and it’s such a big part of her life i really don’t think i could ever be THAT obsessed with something. like another one of my friends loves tom holland so much that she changed her mom’s name in her phone to what tom’s mom’s name is in his phone (that was confusing lol) and obviously i’m not judging them AT ALL, it just couldn’t be me lol

CONCERTS LOOK LIKE SO MUCH FUN 😩😩 LIKE THE EXPERIENCE AND THE FEELINGGG URGHSJS i wanna see a few people live like ari and chloe x halle and- hmm.... idk who else FJDSJ rex orange county i guess huh anyway, the experience just sounds so amazing and the atmosphere is just ✨✨✨ yeah

aria do it do it do it do it do it- watch hamilton!! but with subtitles bc you won’t catch half of the things they’re saying without them LMAO (me and my family watched it and they all didn’t like it bc they didn’t know what was happening lol) BUT DONT WATCH IT AT 4AM LMAO ITS LITERALLY 3 HOURS LONG

yes!! superior peter fics 🥺🥺🥺🥺 and it just shows how much of an incredible writer AND PERSON you are through your fics that you can turn a blurb into 2k....... like what.

LMAO the annoying thing, sometimes i feel like i’m bothering people (like right now HAHAH) but i think it’s my antisocial side being like yeaa no one wants to talk to you like you wanna talk to them :’) idk it’s strange!! sometimes i get really ✨insecure✨ and overthink everything LOL like is this too long, im talking too much, i’m swearing too much, oh lord i’m a pain, all that good shit lmao so that’s fun:))

ALSO YOUR BLOG IS SO FUN TO ME HAHAK LIKE ITS JUST YOUR OWN AND I LOVE THAT!!! like you talk about everything and anything on here lol,, and i say that bc what you said lmao how if i was someone else i would want to fuck me so bad😭 i honestly don’t understand how i don’t have people lining up though..... but if no one’s gonna tell you... then you tell yourself, period (and sometimes telling yourself is fucking yourself HSHAJKS OK NEXT)

ohmigosh the realization you had that you graduated last year and are going to uni this year🤧 but the fact that you had a teacher who LEFT THE GROUP CHAT bc she was mad at y’all i- 😭 but yeah about your maths (i always wondered why you guys call it maths and the US calls it math. like i know so many people out of the states, not just in the uk that say maths) teacher- i saw this post that said online school is looking a lot like dora the explorer😭😭 “you have any questions?” 🦗 “okay bye then” lmao and please i love when tests have nothing to do with what you studied like ??? thanks? sometimes i get scared that my teacher will somehow find out that i googled everything? or like my answer is too close to the answer sheet or something. i get sooo nervous lol but i’m already past that point of not being able to do anything myself DHJS i mean i’m still learning like i said!! read the question, read the answer. boom. now i know the answer to the question and i learned!

THANKS 🙈🥰🤧 idk how else to explain my feelings LMAO i feel it’s cool that you find my dance lessons and voice lessons cool so thanks :’)

oh god not headache season 😭😭 allergies are the worst like it’s not even funny. is headache season just when the seasons are changing or is it like... all throughout the summer? cuz i love the summer lmaoo i love the winter too but i just love wearing as little clothes as possible LMAO

GIRL IF THAT BIRD DONT STOP CHIRPING- i am 100% convinced that it is the same bird trying to give you headaches and no sleep and it needs to stfu 😤 and pLEASE ur theme is adorable and pretty and cute but also it just feels like you? idk if i’m explaining this right or if it’s bc i’ve been talking to you for a bit but it’s cute but not innocent in a way that i’m surprised that you write smut and- yeah, that didn’t make sense!! but ur new theme is gonna look pretty too and as long as you like it, it’ll be amazing🥰

yessssss the fact that megan is gonna be ur pfp YES JUST YES

edit: ok i just need to 🥺😭 sometimes u make me wanna cry cuz i feel like you’re just a kind person. i truly mean this, the fact that you celebrate yours & others stretch marks makes me so 🥺🥺🥺 i honestly don’t know anyone who has said they want need more stretch marks and it’s just all very lovely to me :’)) OKAY IMMA STOP BEING SAPPY

#yes my fake tags are back #by popular demand #aka me #and look i have actual tags this time! #i’m seriously craving water ice rn....... huh #but it’s past midnight and i fr fr want a snack #aw man #i wrote that last paragraph while doing my tags yes #and i hope you become responsible for that anon’s orgasm #assuming they had one #and i saw your response to the tom thing and yeaa when they only look like that for something and it’s like aw bae be yourself #i’m gonna shut up now and find a snack but goodnight!! morning?? IDK #IF THESE TAGS END UP AS ACTUAL TAGS I AM SO SORRY HAHAHA #alright proofreading done and i’m gonna go eat cereal

okay i‘m on my way to a driving lesson rn and afterwards i have a zoom uni thing, and then another uni thing lmao. but hopefully i can reply to this in between because i‘ve been dying to talk to you since i got this ask dldjds💘💘💘 (i really like this heart. i had a 💖 phase for a while and now it‘s 💘 (seems like a very romantic heart but.... it is what it is idk dkddj)

^okay that was literally all i wrote before my lesson lmfao. just had the worst driving lesson ever dbdvsnylkxsksj i think i‘ve gotten too used to being good at driving and now i‘ve gotten too cocky with it 🥴 anyway i‘ve had such a stressful day and overall week but tbh i‘m already feeling better bc i can (indirectly) talk to you <333

omg i went to chloe or halle (i don‘t remember who out of the two)‘s instagram the other day and found out that they are not twins alejeleksjsksj but yes oh my god their voices are literally angelic and i can‘t wait to see Halle as Ariel (Arielle??)🥰 and omg it‘s literally 2021 and we‘ve only had......... one(?) black Disney Princess like it‘s about fucking time (I might be forgetting someone, I‘m not too familiar with the new Disney films, but as far as I remember there‘s only Tiana right? (who is literally a frog for 3/4 of the film 😭😭) so yes i‘m here for it too😌😌😌 (obviously she‘s not a cartoon like tiana ekdlek but she‘s a disney princess you know what i mean ddkjdh)

pfkejdj i‘m already overwhelmed with my parents i can‘t imagine having siblings too 😭😭 (sometimes i wish i had siblings but then other times (like after reading what you wrote dksjj) i‘m glad that i‘m an only child lmao like your brothers being mean to you and i remember when you cried and he was just like 👁👄👁 ok. like i’m totally okay being an only child sksjsj———and he doesn‘t listen to music 🤧🤧🤧 (although i guess that‘s good for you because at least he can‘t annoy you by listening to loud music that you hate dmdn)

okay okay i might watch wandavision then??? I‘ll definitely let you know!!! and yes omg i‘m loving tfatws (that really is so fucking hard to type omg) but same i totally get what you mean, i‘m not used to watching action series at all and every episode so far has been like a little movie so i‘m glad that i didn‘t wait until it was all out cause there’s no way i could binge watch that lol) and yes last episode was really intense. i‘m glad that marvel are talking about racism because (from what i‘ve seen) they haven‘t been the best in that department, and i‘m really curious to see what they‘ll do in the next episodes (curious isn‘t the right word but excited isn‘t the right wort either, like i‘m excited but in a neutral way ? i‘ll shut up dslsksj i hate that german has so many words that you cant translate because theres a really good german word that describes how i’m feeling but i cant think of a good translation ugh)

okay i absolutely need to watch lion king (and part 2 and 1/ 1/2 dksksj) AND hamilton, i might even do it soon 👀

BURGERS AT THE CINEMA? EBEEISNDBEKSK i‘ll come to the US just to go and watch a movie lmaooo, i think all the popcorn sizes and drinks are bigger as well, i‘ll come and watch chaos walking with you 😌😌 does next week work?

and yeah i‘ve seen posts with specific time stamps and trigger warning for cherry too so if you haven’t looked on tumblr yet i’ve def seen some! (but ive also seen some on twitter and yeah- i mean idk youve probably looked on tumblr but yeah- then there’s also imdb which doesn’t have time stamps i believe but quite specific warnings, mostly without spoilers!)

Tbh i don‘t think i would have even considered watching cherry if tom wasn‘t in it... (i’m personally fine with most of the triggering topics/things like for some reason i’m just stoic when i’m watching the most tragic films ever dldldldlbut the plot just... idk if it‘s for me you know? just entertainment wise?).... and even with tom in it i‘m unsure skeldls, i‘d totally get if you decide not to watch it but let me know if you do i‘d want to hear your thoughts! <3

SKSLSJJ my sims both finally graduated!! i think i played sometime last week, and i literally got the achievement/notification that i‘d been playing with this household for 24hours.... and that was BEFORE they graduated dldjdldkdksjjs

oh no my tumblr broke and three paragraphs of me talking about sims were deleted 😭😭😭

WAIT NO I TOOK SCREENSHOTSSKSK because i couldn’t press save so i knew they might be gone okay okay okay i‘m a genius

*move out

oh no idk if the quality is too bad to read... idk how good your eyes are dkdkdjjd (also sometimes it will be really bad quality for some but not for others so i hope that the you can see the pics in a normal/good quality)

Okay let me continue

OMG THE ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL STUFF IS THE BEST PART ABOUT THE SIMS DIDLDKJIkdkj i kind of miss how in the sims 3 they would be making out basically lying on top of each other if they were on a bed— but in sims 4 when they‘re sitting next to each other and everything that‘s definitely hot too 😌😭 or with hot tubs dkdkdk how one sim climbs on the other sim‘s lap before they woohoo (i used to make them skinny dip in the hot tub and then make out and woohoo so they’re like naked on top of each other even if you can‘t see anything- en e waysss)

Dkdkdkdj so @ Rindfleischet.. blah bla. so it‘s basically just loads of individual words put together/connected and that‘s a really big part of german. so yesterday i had an online Einführungsveranstaltung for uni (like it was a zoom meeting where they just talked about general stuff about the uni and i was really anxious before, idk why, but it turned out absolutely fine so) and that words consists of the two words Einführung (introduction) and Veranstaltung (event) which are also two individual words but you can make a new word (Einführungsveranstaltung, so in english that‘s basically “introduction event“ lmao) by combining those two words. there are obviously some rules like you can‘t just combine random words in a random order but you can basically make infinite words (technically). for example (i feel like i‘m teaching a class just skip this if you don’t care 🙃🙃🙃djdjdkdlns)

for example i could say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer (which is not underlined with red by tumblr because it is a grammatically correct compound word (i think that‘s what they‘re called?)) which is the words introduction + event + participant, so that word just means “participant of an introductory event“ but instead it‘s one word? i hope that makes sense? dkdkkdksks i mean it makes sense in german but idk if it makes sense to you cause idk if i‘m explaining it very well lmao,

(I just deleted a really really long paragraph that i wrote about gender in the german language and grammar, you‘re welcome slsksksj)

my capacity to think has now been used up for the week 🥴🥴🥴 i absolutely do not blame you if you just skipped over that part or can‘t be bothered to (re)read my awful explanation edkflsksjdjdj (again, i had double the amount of words but i just deleted it dkdkdlslsl but what‘s left lf my german lesson is probably confusing enough already😭i‘m sorry🥴)

so to answer your question LEJDKSKJ: it‘s really common to have long words in german, words that are just word+ word+ word + word made into one long word. obv rindfleischetikettierung..... is a very extreme example and it‘s normally just 2-4 words made into one! So yup i think that comes mostly from german and talking german and growing up here and going to school here and everything dmdfnsksx

i think the best part about these is the chaos yet we understand what the other means 😌— YES. YES. Yes. I love that about us 😌😌🥰🥰/ I love us. Yes.

okay but your friend changing her mom‘s name into tom‘s mum‘s name (was that right? Dkdkdjh)—— so Justin Bieber once posted something where you could see that his Dad‘s number was saved as „Daddy Cakes“ (which, thinking back, sounds very weird ekejjej) and till this day I have my Dad’s contact name as Tata (which is serbian for Dad lmao), “Tata🍰“ in my phone because of it 😭😭😭😭🙃🙃🙃 it‘s not because of justin anymore like i‘ve just gotten used to it by now but at first i did it because of justin lol........ but nowadays i don‘t think i‘m THAT type of fan of anyone- like you know how people have fandom names (Justin‘s fans are the Beliebers, One Direction fans are Directioners (writing that hurt my soul💔💔💔)) and I wouldn‘t consider myself a fan of anyone like that. like even with tom i wouldn‘t call myself........ does tom even have a name for his fans??? Well if he does, I wouldn‘t call myself that. Like i used to be such a hardcore stan for any celebrity that i liked and now it‘s just... okay, i like em. (She says on her blog where she writes fan fiction about Tom Holland — WJDJEJDKELSKSKKSNSNDXB🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃)

Omg rex orange county!!!!!! I don‘t know that many songs like I‘ve only listened to the album pony, but i love it 💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘

thanks again for what you said about my fics/writing I‘m🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Pete Davidson Pete Davidson Pete Davidson I‘m-🥰🥰🥰🥰 and I can‘t explain why. But as blissfulparker said the other day (i don‘t want to tag her and make her read through all of this lolll) “I like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death 😍“ (or something along the lines of that) eskkejs okay pete isn‘t that bad, he looks quite good on some days but other days you‘re like... is this man alive? Like i don‘t want to be mean I love Pete so much The King of Staten Island is literally my favourite film ever (although it‘s not my #1 because of how he looks, but i mean he does look good) VUT ALSO

(Okay i was gonna look for a terrible picture of him but he really doesn‘t look as bad as people say??? like. i think he‘s hot. can‘t necessarily explain why. so that‘s that on that.)

i‘m not going chronologically right now (i just keep scrolling up to your ask and replying to whatever i see first sksksksh) so i might miss a thing or two that you said

Okay Stormzy, you really really don‘t have to dkdkdjd like i think you said you don‘t really listen to rap, and uk rap is a whole nother thing from us rap because of the accent i feel like??? (That sentence did not make sense) BUT if you‘re looking for a few songs that aren‘t like RAP rap, then I‘d recommend One Second (feat HER), Superheroes, Own it (which you might know?), ummm maybe the song Lessons?, he has a ton of Lion King references by the way dkdjdj for example in Rachael‘s Little Brother but that‘s like more RAP again if you know what I mean?😭 and it‘s also like 5 Minutes long and tbh i only started liking that song a year after that album came out lmao but Rachael‘s Little Brother is possibly my fav Stormzy song, then there is Shut Up which you absolutely need to listen to just for fun dldjdjd like it‘s just pure fun and also a little funny lmao, especially if you‘re not British (i imagine so at least) cause he‘s like shuTTTT up idk dldkdjdldkjdhdhfjfbfldlsksksks

Vossi Bop is one of his classics, and then maybeee - ok so there‘s Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2 lmaoobdjsj it‘s very (Christian/) religious but i like it a lot even though i‘m not really Christian (at least not practicing or anything) so idk about your views on religion but i do like the song a lot just by like the sound lmao

Okay so again you absolutely DO NOT have to listen to any, especially not for me dlskdj but I really do recommend the songs Superheroes, One Second and Rachael‘s Little Brother (and all the other ones i mentioned but if you don‘t listen to a lot of his songs you should at least give these three a try <3333) also let me know some of your songs? 🥺 like i dont care who they‘re by but i‘d love to listen to some that you like and Recommend 🥰🥰🥰

Okay so skdjdjdjddhhddhdhjsk... I used to watch all of my series in German (like H2O) bc obviously they were on german tv so they were german- and i knew that most of these actors i saw on tv were american and i was always SO fascinated that they all learned german for this show??? Like I actually thought they were the people‘s real voices and that these English and American actors were learning german so they could re-record the whole ass show and do everything in german dkdkdldjdjjd... i swear I thought that until I was like 14 omg. And then the first time that I watched H2O in the original version i was sooo confused about their accents because to me all actors who spoke english were American?? I mean MOST of those shows are American so I wasn‘t completely off but yeah i was definitely caught off guard when I heard all of their Australian accents for the first time 💀💀😭😭😭

@ math vs maths, math actually makes more sense in my opinion. like you have the word mathematics, then the abbreviation would obviously be math... why would English people randomly add the s from the end??? Or maybe it makes more sense after all because it‘s like plural??? Now I‘m unsure dkdkdkdj but i do say maths because that‘s how i was taught to say it and i hear the word maths more than math but yeah dldkdjs i think math might even make more sense (okay i just tried saying math and maths is easier to pronounce but again tjat might just be me, oh god i‘ll stop talking about that disgusting thing (mathematics).)

not the crickets and dora LMAOOOSNSNSMDNBS yeah that teacher was... a lot. a lot a lot a lot didjjd but she kinda liked me so she always gave me good grades/marks but the people she didn‘t like..... ooft. OOF.

Fksksjsj idek about headache season like i just know that i get headaches from the sun and i‘m allergic to only one.. type of...pollen??? (I don’t understand the science of that whole pollen thing and idek if it’s called pollen in english i just know sex pollen from fan fics😔)and yeah we have this weird wind that makes a lot of people get headaches yeahd dkdkdj. i loved the i just love wearing as little clothes as possible LMAO lllioool i love that i really do. i always struggle so much in the summer cause i never have anything to wear. i feel like i buy so many new summer clothes every year but when i end up looking for an outfit i don‘t ever find anything 😭 (so i just go naked— lmao jk jk) but i‘m generally not the biggest fan of summer so-

OMG THIS FUCKING BIRD ISTG, okay the first time i heard it i went to sleep at like 5 am, so the next day i was like let me go to bed earlier so the bird doesn‘t keep me up, so i went to bed at 4 am (🥲) and THE BIRD JUST STARTED FUCKING CHIRPING SO LOUDLY, so the next day i went to bed at 3 am AND IT FUCKING STARTED AT 3 AM and it‘s still there 😁 every. night.

and since you said you‘ve gotten used to my theme and everything (idk where this transition came from😭) so tomorrow (2nd april) we have our... wait what‘s an anniversary but for a month.? I think month is like mensus in latin OK NO THATS DEF WRONG DKDKDJ wait

So Tomorrow is our... mensiversary💘💘💘💘💘💘 or at least from the first time you sent an ask. i couldn‘t find it on my tumblr anymore because tumblr is a bit of a bitch but i remember the first thing you ever sent (in an ask) was something lovely about my writing and i always take screenshots of stuff like that, and i found it in my gallery. and i took that screenshot of your ask on the 2nd of march so i‘m assuming that‘s when you sent it 🥰🥰 i feel like i‘ve known you for a week not a month like how is it a month already????? (i mean this in a good way lmao but i really can’t believe that its been a month wtf)

omg no you make me want to cry because i just love you so much 😭😭🥺 but about the stretch mark thing it‘s just.. it‘s not even me trying to empower other women (or anyone else who has stretch marks) to shake off these dumb insecurities that the patriarchy and capitalism have instilled in us— ok no it‘s definitely that too lmao. But i mean I‘ve always loved stretch marks, i‘ve just always loved loved loved them so much so it makes me genuinely sad that people don‘t like them. so yeah. i dont really know how to explain it lol, like i‘m not (only) hoping that people realise that hating your stretch marks is giving the men and the patriarchy what they want per se- (that made no sense) it‘s just because i love stretch marks and think they‘re beautiful and also sexy. idk dldkdjls and omg the fact that you called me kind 🥺🥺🥺 like i don‘t really have a goal in life or anything, but if i had to choose a ‘goal‘ in life it would just be to be kind. (i‘ll end this here otherwise i‘m gonna talk about being kind for 30 more lines—)

And please. Do not ever feel like you‘re annoying me or sending too much. never ever ever. I get so happy when i see that you‘ve sent me an ask. No matter if it‘s a long one like this or just a short one where you‘re saying something about a post that i reblogged or something. I love hearing from/about you and talking to you 💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘

P.S: i‘m so sorry for the tags you‘re about to read they make even less sense than this post, also i reached the tag limit dkdkdj but i said some butterfly tattoos look tacky... and the next thing i said was since we‘re already speaking about Ariana- I DID NOT MEAN THAT SHE WAS TACKY dldkdjsj, i meant since you already mentioned some of her tattoos lmao

#lovely anon #<3 #ALSO I LOVE YOUR TAGS SM DKDJDKDL #i definitely (accidentally) didn‘t say something about every single thing you said #but this is so long already and i don‘t want to force you to read even more of my shite dldkdjsj #(i dont day shite i say shit but sometimes shite sound funnier)#*say #omg its too mate to speak english what i meant was i‘m sire i forgot to adress some of the things you said but i tried my best iwjwskb #omg adress (address? lmao) sounds so negative i mean i‘m sure i forgot to reply to some things- also *late not mate loool #omg ignore my whole german lesson i cant believe i actually wrote all of that wtf #but it took me like 20 minutes so i don‘t want to delete it 😭#and omg i hope you got to re do everything that your sims game didnt save and that it all worked out the same #😭#I NEARLY DELETED THIS ASK WITJ MY ANSWER OH MYFUCKING GOD MY FUCKING HEART #also i realised i didnt say anything at all about uni but i dont have any news like that Einführungsveranstaltung (😭) I went to was literall #just about schedules and credits and boring stuff mostly lmao #oh and tattoos!!!! it sucks that you might not be able to get the ones that you want/get any :((((( but hopefully you can at least get some #that arent in colour? 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼#so my parents aren‘t that supportive either like they most definitely wouldnt pay for it (even though they pay for a lot of my stuff lmao)#but i think in the end they know that i‘m old enough and they can‘t stop me and they‘d accept it one day so they‘re definitely not THAT bad #maybe your parents will change their mind over time? :(#or maybe youll just get one one day and ig theyll have to get used to it lol #so i want a butterfly (thats the only thing that i‘m sure about) and there are a lot of butterfly tattoos that look really tacky #but speaking of her i actually really like ariana‘s butterfly! but idk if i want that much shading- i have a whole album with like 35 photos #of just butterfly tattoos lol- i‘ll stop here tho. ldkdkd #omg im rereading this all and it‘s so messy good luck dkdkkddl #my tags got messed up and idk how to fix it #wait did i reach the tag limit and you cant even see half of these? 😭😭😭#i‘m so confused about these tags why are they not in the correct order? 😭😭😭 ily snd i‘m so sorry for dropping this post on you none of it #none of it makes sense.

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introvertguide · 4 years

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Gone with the Wind; AFI #6

Our next film for review is the classic epic drama, Gone with the Wind (1939). This movie was the big award winner from a year that is often considered the best year for movies in American cinema history. The film won 8 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. Notably, the film also had the first win for a black actor with Best Supporting Actress going to Hattie McDaniel (although she had to get special permission to sit in the back of the room since the awards took place at a segregated hotel). All these wins came against competition like The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Although this film is considered to be one of the best American films of all time, there has been a lot of complaints about the depiction of house slaves and slavery in general in this film. I want to discuss why it is still great and the takeaway from the film, but first a quick synopsis of the plot will help. This movie is almost 4 hours long, so it will be much more condensed then usual, and I relied heavily on Wikipedia and IMDB entries to summarize this particular film. I do want to do the standard...

SPOILER ALERT!!!! IF YOU ARE AMERICAN, THEN YOU SHOULD PROBABLY WATCH THIS FILM AS ALMOST A CIVIC DUTY!!! IT IS A MAJOR PART OF AMERICAN CINEMA HISTORY AND SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE EXPERIENCED!!! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT, I IMPLORE YOU TO GO AND WATCH IT BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER!!!

In 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) lives at Tara, her family's cotton plantation in Georgia, with her parents and two sisters and their many slaves. Scarlett learns that Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), whom she secretly loves, is to be married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), and the engagement is to be announced the next day at a barbecue at Ashley's home, the nearby plantation Twelve Oaks. At the Twelve Oaks party, Scarlett makes an advance on Ashley, but instead catches the attention of another guest, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The barbecue is disrupted by news of the declaration of war, and the men rush to enlist. In a bid to arouse jealousy in Ashley, Scarlett marries Melanie's younger brother Charles before he leaves to fight. Following Charles's death while serving in the Confederate States Army, Scarlett's mother sends her to the Hamilton home in Atlanta, where she creates a scene by attending a charity bazaar in her mourning attire and waltzing with Rhett, now a blockade runner for the Confederacy.

The tide of war turns against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which many of the men of Scarlett's town are killed. Eight months later, as the city is besieged by the Union Army in the Atlanta Campaign, Melanie gives birth with Scarlett's aid, and Rhett helps them flee the city. Once out of the city, Rhett chooses to go off to fight, leaving Scarlett to make her own way back to Tara. Upon her return home, Scarlett finds Tara deserted, except for her father, her sisters, and two former slaves: Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) and Pork (Oscar Polk). Scarlett learns that her mother has just died of typhoid fever and her father has become senile. With Tara pillaged by Union troops and the fields untended, Scarlett vows she will do anything for the survival of her family and herself.

(Little bit of a side note, this seems to be where several of the commenters on IMDB thought the movie ended as the phrase “ends with Scarlett vowing never to go hungry again” showed up more than once. This is the point of the intermission and the two halves are very different from each other, but this is by no means the end of the film. It is a very good time to take a break if you are watching it so I suggest taking more than the intermission time to stretch your legs. This is a really long movie.)

As the O'Haras work in the cotton fields, Scarlett's father attempts to chase away a scalawag from his land, but is thrown from his horse and killed. With the defeat of the Confederacy, Ashley also returns, but finds he is of little help at Tara. When Scarlett begs him to run away with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately, but says he cannot leave Melanie. Unable to pay the Reconstructionist taxes imposed on Tara, Scarlett dupes her younger sister Suellen's fiancé, the middle-aged and wealthy general store owner Frank Kennedy, into marrying her, by saying Suellen got tired of waiting and married another suitor. Frank, Ashley, Rhett and several other accomplices make a night raid on a shanty town after Scarlett is attacked while driving through it alone, resulting in Frank's death. With Frank's funeral barely over, Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she accepts.

Rhett and Scarlett have a daughter whom Rhett names Bonnie Blue, but Scarlett, still pining for Ashley and chagrined at the perceived ruin of her figure, lets Rhett know that she wants no more children and that they will no longer share a bed. One day at Frank's mill, Scarlett and Ashley are seen embracing by Ashley's sister, India, and harboring an intense dislike of Scarlett she eagerly spreads rumors. Later that evening, Rhett, having heard the rumors, forces Scarlett to attend a birthday party for Ashley. Incapable of believing anything bad of her, Melanie stands by Scarlett's side so that all know that she believes the gossip to be false. After returning home from the party, Scarlett finds Rhett downstairs drunk, and they argue about Ashley. Rhett kisses Scarlett against her will, stating his intent to have sex with her that night, and carries the struggling Scarlett to the bedroom.

The next day, Rhett apologizes for his behavior and offers Scarlett a divorce, which she rejects, saying that it would be a disgrace. When Rhett returns from an extended trip to London, Scarlett informs him that she is pregnant, but an argument ensues which results in her falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a miscarriage. As she is recovering, tragedy strikes when Bonnie dies while attempting to jump a fence with her pony. Scarlett and Rhett visit Melanie, who has suffered complications arising from a new pregnancy, on her deathbed. As Scarlett consoles Ashley, Rhett prepares to leave Atlanta. Having realized that it was him she truly loved all along, and not Ashley, Scarlett pleads with Rhett to stay, but Rhett rebuffs her and walks away into the morning fog, leaving her in tears on the staircase. A distraught Scarlett resolves to return home to Tara, believing that one day she will get Rhett back.

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While discussing this film with my mom, she mentioned that the film has had a different effect on her each time and she felt like it was because she was a different person each time she saw it. I have had the same experience and I find that rewatching the film is a good way to see how your own perspective has changed over time. I first saw this as a teen and thought Rhett Butler was a cold man who could could not forgive a suffering Scarlett who was trying to figure out her priorities during a trying time. In my twenties, I could only focus on the depiction of slavery and thought that people should not watch the film at all. In my thirties, I hated Scarlett and wished that she had died instead of her friend or the daughter because she was dramatic and made bad situations worse. I recently turned forty and watched it again...

I still find Scarlett to be dramatic and the cause of many of her own problems, but at the same time I would expect this from somebody her age (I think I finally separated the age of the actress from the age of the character) with her “Princess of the South” upbringing. I can’t really empathize since her life was much easier than mine, but I can sympathize after working with many rich teens who are spoiled and don’t know how to act in an emergency. I think I understand better about how the author of the book was trying to portray this plantation lifestyle as almost royalty and the slaves were like the 1850s Southern United States version of royal attendants. I find the language very cringy, but all of the house slaves at the O’Hara plantation have their place in the story. This is probably an accurate depiction of what somebody from the old South would want to glamorize plantation life as being to people living in the 1940s, and thus historically valuable. I find Rhett Butler to be somewhat similar to Han Solo: somebody who looks out for his own best interest but softens for good people and good causes. He seems to do good things except when he gets drunk and forces himself on Scarlett (marriage and sexual assault are not mutually exclusive). He is otherwise pretty faultless, but that scene drops him quite a few pegs in my eyes.

One thing that sticks with me each and every time is when Scarlett is working at the army hospital and the doctor wants her to help with an amputation. They have nothing to numb the pain and there is a young man screaming not to cut into his leg...I can’t even imagine yet I know that this was not even uncommon during the height of the war. I remember watching a documentary on the Civil War and a real photo showing a pile of amputated limbs at a makeshift tent hospital. The pile looked to have more than 100 limbs and I am sure they did not have enough morphine for all of these men. The best field doctors were said to be more strong and stoic than accurate since being able to saw through a man’s leg quickly was a major commodity. This horrifically honest portrayal of war in the midst of the Nazi threat and a couple of years before the entry of the U.S. into WW2 took courage. I was able to sublimate a little more during this viewing since there was no on-screen cutting. I also tried to imagine the man doing the voice over and screaming “Don't cut my leg!” in a sound studio. It helped. Another thing that I didn’t know during previous viewings was that when she exits the building and sees the hundreds of soldiers in the streets, half of the bodies on the ground are manikins. Look very closely at the middle picture above...half over those bodies are fakes.

I learned a lot from the extras that were with this movie since I borrowed my friend’s DVD box set. It was unexpected to me that the three slaves were my friend’s favorite characters (Pork, Mammy, and Prissy), since my friend is a black woman in her 70s and grew up during the Civil Rights movement when films that depicted slavery in this way were generally looked down upon. My friend said she was glad to see black actors at all from the era and the movement had to start somewhere. The actors seemed to be of the same opinion with Hattie McDaniel saying she would rather portray a maid and get paid like an actor than have to actually be a maid. Speaking roles for black actors were very few, especially in big budget movies, so there was not a lot of concern about the character being portrayed. This makes since, especially after the Great Depression. Having a role playing a stereotyped house slave still meant a great paycheck at the end of the week. I also liked that one of the things that Rhett Butler wanted and had difficulty getting was approval from Mammy concerning the courtship of Scarlett. Mammy was a slave, but she knew a lot of secrets and was not powerless.

My favorite character this time around was Melanie Hamilton because she is just a good person. She is not helpless and she doesn’t complain about her problems, she just handles her business and keeps supporting her family with a strength that I am not likely to truly know. I was saddened to hear that the actress recently passed away as, similar to her character, she seemed like a real survivor that would live forever. Apparently the actress, Olivia de Havilland, was not nearly as demure and liked to play jokes on her fellow actors. She also made a lot of fun about the age gap between Vivien Leigh and the actress playing Scarlett’s mother (there was a real life age difference of 4 years). Havilland also had the crew tie her to a chair that Clark Gable was supposed to lift her from and he nearly threw out his back.

It is a little surprising how much adversity occurred on set since there were a lot of injuries, actors who didn’t really like their character (Vivien Leigh described her character as a “raging bitch”), giant sets that were lit on fire so only one take was possible, and the portrayal of the South and slavery in a favorable light. However, like so many other films on the AFI list, it seems like the difficulties are what bonded the groups together to make classic cinema. It seems like a little adversity and strife can bring out the best in film makers.

So does this movie belong on the AFI list? Maybe more than any other movie ever made. It is the top film from the pinnacle year of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is a historical drama about a singularly American topic based on an American best seller. I think a list about great American movies should probably start with films like this and go from there. Absolute classic. Would I recommend it? Yes, and I would actually recommend multiple viewings because your interpretation will change throughout your life. This is a superiorly good movie that should be viewed, no matter how it is interpreted. Just make sure to plan a break because this movie is epic in scale and in run time. Still totally worth it.

#gone with the wind #vivien leigh #olivia de havilland #clark gable #golden age of hollywood #classic film #american film institute #depictions of slavery #academy award winner #best picture #introvert #introverts

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sleeplessandstubborn · 3 years

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Emily in Paris episode 3 or it’s still more accurate than American media recent coverture on France.

Ah, I had to write that title. And I am not even talking about American Twitter. But yeah. Feel better. Somewhat I have the impression that this is going to substitute the still a better love story than Twilight in my mind. But, I’m sorry, Stephenie Meyer, I am not here for that but to make a belated, totally improvised, not at all completely planned recap of Episode 3 of Emily in Paris, your favourite Instagram version of the French capital.

So episode 3 starts with our heroine running, as she usually does every morning. Why this Paris is more empty than the town where I live which has like 25,000 inhabitants? So many questions about where did people go. The case is her boss in Chicago calls. Yes, the one who speaks French and should be now best friends with Sylvie but it’s stuck in Chicago with her pregnancy.

I know, Madeline, I know. It would be frustrating for me too that the main trait of my personality was I’m pregnant and on my bed. They both exchange about how now that Doug dumped her Emily’s life is full of croissants and sex, when actually is about sex. Also Emily meets street furniture. As does Madeline, too. I guess that’s not the kind of idea she had of meeting French men. Thanks Anne! Hidalgo of course.

Madeline is sending Emily the corporate commandments for Savoir. Yikes, I thought again, a cultural clash is coming and what are corporate commandments anyway (I don’t know, sounds tacky, I’m just a puzzled European), but for now there are another problems to solve. Emily’s shower breaks, the building manager only speaks French and of course our leading lady is still struggling with understanding it. Also, sidenote: manager building is right with Miss Cooper. Only problems.

Fortunately Gabriel exists and he helps her to break the language barrier. But this isn’t going to magically repair her shower and so Emily has to wash her hair in one of humanity’s wonders, one apex of civilization, the bidet. It’s supposed to be a bad hair day for her afterwards but... Does she look that different? Well, not for me! Discuss:

This shows... A character development! At last! Emily is trying to learn French, and even if her beret isn’t going to help in the task, is good to see she’s trying to adapt. Still, she’s overdoing a bit with that Gioconda bag.

I mean, girl. Relax. In order to improve her knowledge, she tries to trick her teacher - who considers a working place full of French people must be an interesting environment where to study the behaviour of the Emily Cooperius Chicagoensis but refuses the pleasure of her company if there’s not a 50 euros banknote in between. Business is business after all. Cut to Emily reuniting with my adored godess Sylvie, whose elegance and beauty only can be matched with the flag of the twelve stars in the background. Ah, Freude, schöner Götterfunken/ Tochter aus Elysium,/ Wir betreten feuertrunken/ Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

Well, the case is they are going to film the advertisement for De l’Heure today and it’s an important thing Emily keeps her mouth closed and unsmiling because she looks stupid, at least in Sylvie’s opinion. I’d say more scary but well.

Luc and Julien receive them with the enraged face of every European citizen who just met an aggresive attempt of being forced into the American Way of Doing Things. Which they refuse naturally. Madeline just sent the corporate commandments and everyone is pissed at nonsense like giving praise in public and critizising in private. But off to filming the spot for the perfume. The location is the Pont d’Alexandre III that has featured in like 20,000 advertisement for fragrances. Here they met Antoine and Emily has the twentieth humiliating experience with languages telling she’s horny out of a sudden when she wanted to mean excited.

Emily meets the model, a Serbian blonde beauty that doesn’t speak French, that’s her personality trait. Our heroine seems rejoiced to find at least a kindred soul but we won’t have more time with the model, whose task is to walk across the bridge naked - or wearing the perfume, Antoine says - , while surrounded by men in costumes. The campaign Dream of Beauty, in short. Emily’s reaction is this:

Antoine argues this is meant to represent the woman’s fantasy, to be desired by all these men. Emily doesn’t think this is going to be appreciated by women at the other side of the Atlantic ocean and says the idea is sexists rather than sexy. Filming stop for they to debate, which seems expensive. Stopping, not debating. Without entering on what fantasies are valid or not and who actually pays attention to advertisements for fragrances - I am not one of these people - we don’t get to learn if Emily knows who Cocteau was.

The following morning the plumber can’t fix Emily’s shower. His gestures are pretty easy to understand, as it’s an universal fact that often the pieces needed to repair are not immediately available. Anyway, Emily asks Gabriel to help her with translation again. She must pay him or something. The thing doesn’t get to be fixed and Emily gets to shower in Gabriel’s appartment.

Maybe he has a fantasy of some sort here? Who knows. At the office and after her class, Emily’s first conversation of the day with Sylvie goes, as usual, for a rocky start. She has made lost money and time to the company, her boss argues, and on top of that she’s the prude police. The final straw for Emily immediately after that is that someone (called Luc) drew a dick on the Sacred Corporate Commandments. Having forgotten the fact that drawing penises is part of the human nature since the dawn of times, Emily doesn’t take well the profanation. It’s too much so she goes to lunch with Mindy.

Mindy - who is celebrating a party later and invites her - rolls her eyes at the corporate commandments and more or less say she deserves the hate because she could not expect French people were going to receive that gladly because they are against all. Well, it’s one of their multiple charms. “People like me! That’s my thing!” , Emily argues. Oh my sweet Summer child... Once back at the office, the commercial is as nonsensical as your average perfume commercial. Emily suggests a poll on Twitter to decide if it’s sexy or sexists. Bad or good, they’ll have publicity. Sounds about right?

One day I want to be Sylvie when she answers, after Emily invited her to Mandy’s party: Sorry, I’m busy. Also when she goes on with a mini the reason you suck moment: “You come to Paris. You walk into my office. You don’t even bother to learn the language. You treat the city like it’s your amusement park”. Apparently Emily can’t wrap her head around the idea of not everyone liking her and that you don’t have why to be friends with your bosses or workmates. Girl, just a civilized relationship with them is enough. Anyway... Emily does invite her, incapable of taking a no for an answer.

As predictable - don’t say you didn’t predict it - the party is a bit crowded and, leaving aside Mindy, Emily doesn’t know anyone there. Because, Sylvie knowing better, she didn’t show up. Well done Madame. Out of water again, Emily finds an apparently cute boy who engages in a conversation with her. With hand kissing at the balcony at all.

All it’s very romantic until, when they are strolling the streets and after flirting a bit, Fabien I think was his name - sorry, not checking again - tells her he likes American pussies. This is too much information all of a sudden for Emily - even if it could lead her to learn another the meaning of a new French word, equally related with felines - and storms off to Gabriel’s restaurant. Why is a thing the chef is there, available to serve her a glass of wine, I don’t know, I didn’t write this thing. But finally, finally, FINALLY our heroine says she’s going to stop trying being liked by everyone. Thank you Paris, you inspired some adult realities on Emily’s brain. It’s also a productive night after all because Gabriel says he likes her. So... yay? Since many of you have already seen the complete season, you know that things are... more complicated than that.

Of course the last three minutes of the episode are reserved for Emily Was Right After All moments. The poll is a success even if the commercial is not universally liked - but as Emily has learn this is not that important anymore -, she takes revenge on Luc bringing a dick shaped bread, or cake - I don’t know exactly what it is - which is a funny and irreverent way to respond him aaaand... finds a present from Antoine on her desk, lingerie from La Perla. Which is, ew, a bit creepy.

Aaaand that was all. I had to rewatch it because it had been eras since I last wrote about this series. I promise to be more disciplined with the next ones. Until then.

P.S. Down with Corporation Commandments.

#emily in paris

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panharmonium · 4 years

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a face like a wounded bear (i’ve just got a few things on my mind, that’s all)

back on my merlin rewatch rambles this week. i’m finishing up S1 now and just putting down some notes here for myself about 1.11 - specifically, how it ties back to/is informed by 1.10, because this is something that’s been on my mind for a long time.

these got a bit long so feel free to scroll past if this isn’t your cup of tea!

standard disclaimer for people who don’t know me and might stumble across this: i got into this show late and i have not finished season 5. i am GOING to finish season 5, hence this rewatch. so far i have remained unspoiled for the end of this show; i super appreciate everybody helping me stay that way. you have my permission to laugh at me for being ten years late to this show in the first place and also for taking a geological age to finish the last four episodes. i understand and fully support you in this; in my defense, i have been using the break to write fic, so i hope all can be forgiven in the end X)

with that out of the way, some thoughts!

i. a wounded bear

i really appreciate how much angrier merlin suddenly is at everything once we hit ‘the labyrinth of gedref.’

he’s still trying to help solve arthur’s problems, and he’s still rooting for arthur to succeed, but he’s also snappy and irritable and getting lost staring out windows, and his patience level with arthur in particular is set to absolute zero. it’s not a catastrophic change - it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like arthur anymore or that he doesn’t still respect arthur for what arthur...could be, and for what he is, at moments; merlin obviously still deeply admires him for caring so much about the people of camelot and he obviously still believes that arthur is noble at heart and worth supporting. but he’s simultaneously sick and tired of arthur’s particular brand of princely BS, and in this episode it’s starting to show.

before this episode, merlin used to tolerate arthur’s dumbassery with a kind of...willingness to be amused as opposed to annoyed. arthur would go into his “insult merlin” routine or say something only a rich idiot would say and merlin would just laugh it off, or quip it away, or roll his eyes and get on with his day. he was kind of…gently entertained by the people he had to serve. he was having a little adventure right then, you know? and the nobles, arthur included, were colorful characters in this story he’d walked into. if they were occasionally insufferable, well, at least they were good for a laugh.

for example, that episode where arthur keeps asking merlin to cover for him so he can go have his little dates with sophia? merlin winds up in the stocks for it three times in a row, but the first time, he just shrugs it off with his typical cheery equanimity and wryly says, “i forgot how much fun this was!” and then when arthur asks him to cover for him a second time, merlin is just psyched that arthur is having such a good time with sophia, and he immediately agrees to do it, saying, “don’t worry, i’ll find a way to get you out of it!” and then he’s back in the stocks, but when he comes out of them, gaius is more annoyed at arthur than merlin is. and then after arthur runs off to “elope” with sophia, and merlin ends up in the stocks a THIRD time, it’s just the funny zinger at the end of the episode. he’s not upset about it. it’s just like, “meh! here i am again! classic merlin misadventure, what can you do? :)”

there is no chance that would fly in the back quarter of S1. none. zero.

merlin is completely fed up in 1.11. starting with the hunting party’s slaughter of the unicorn, and then branching out to other, smaller things - every dismissive thing arthur says to him, every time arthur ignores or denies the reality of their situation and tries to pin responsibility for camelot’s misfortune on sorcery rather than his own actions, every time arthur makes stupid comments like ‘merlin you’re less intelligent than a rat’ - in this episode, merlin doesn’t roll with those things. he snaps back, or raises his voice; he refuses to be talked over, he bites back “i’m THIRSTY” when arthur tells him to stop smacking his lips in the granary.

in another episode, that stuff might have been delivered in a jokey way - and it will be again, some day in the future, when they’re both back to having fun with it - but merlin’s not having fun with it in 1.11. he’s giving arthur challenging stares and resentful glares instead of friendly, this-is-just-how-we-tease-each-other looks. his tone isn’t amused or fondly exasperated, it’s frustrated or irritated or, sometimes, straight-up angry.

there’s a point in one of their arguments where merlin says he believes what anhora is saying, and arthur’s cold response is, “then you’re a fool. you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says. you’d do well to remember that.”

and merlin gives him the most baleful glare. like he wants to just...strangle him with his eyes. like he has so many cutting things just sitting on the tip of his tongue and can’t decide which one he wishes he could say first.

ii. a few things on my mind

this, i think, is where it’s worth remembering that this episode takes place in a larger context than ‘arthur did a dumbass thing at the beginning of the episode and merlin’s upset about it.’

because merlin definitely is upset about the unicorn, but merlin’s also just upset, full stop, about things that have nothing to do with the unicorn or camelot’s curse or camelot to begin with, and it’s bleeding over into other areas of his life.

to clarify: i don’t think we can really understand merlin’s subtle attitude shift in 1.11 without understanding that 1.11 takes place immediately after 1.10.

1.11 is one of two S1 episodes whose positions in the timeline we can actually pinpoint relative to their neighbors (the first being 1.02, which is directly stated to take place on merlin’s “first day as arthur’s servant,” aka the day after 1.01). 1.11 likewise can be mapped accurately onto the timeline, because kanen comes thundering into ealdor bellowing “it’s harvest time!” in 1.10, and then in 1.11 camelot is bringing in their harvest, too (literally, gaius yells at the end, “they’re bringing in the harvest!”).

there’s really not any wiggle room there. the harvest season is only so many weeks long to begin with, and we know ealdor was pretty far along with their work in 1.10 - we see the evidence of their labor, and if the grain hadn’t already been harvested, kanen’s group wouldn’t have had anything to steal. ealdor is smaller, so it makes sense for them to finish faster than camelot, but it looks like camelot is just getting started in 1.11, given the state of their grain reserves and the fact that so much grain appears to be unharvested when the blight hits. and, that being the case, honestly, camelot had to have started like, immediately after 1.10 finished, or even while that arc was still going on. it’s already pushing the boundaries of disbelief that they wouldn’t have started by the time ealdor has gotten so much done. there’s no plausible way they could have waited any longer. harvest season is the same for everyone; it’s not some kind of rotating schedule. people only have about a month to get it done in the first place.

so these two episodes occur, at the absolute most, a couple weeks apart from one another, and that’s only by the most generous of estimates; it’s more likely that they’re closer together than that, given the information above. but honestly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s two weeks or two days - either way, merlin in 1.11 has something going on in his head that’s extremely recent and taking up kind of a lot of his energy.

i don’t know that this angle gets looked at often, because the understandable tendency is to mostly focus on merlin in relation to arthur, and this becomes especially true in episodes that contain arthur+merlin umm...idk, focus scenes like the one near the end of 1.11. but this is the angle that’s always on my mind when i watch the end of S1, because if there is one hill i’ve staked out for the digging of my future grave, it’s the following:

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon.

this probably qualifies as an unpopular fandom opinion, but it’s something i absolutely refuse to budge on.

and of course it’s just my own read, obviously; you may have more fun coming at this episode from a different direction, and that’s totally cool! but for me, my understanding when i’m watching this season - merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. especially not yet, especially not now, when merlin has only known arthur for a few months and he’s just coming back from being with people who have known him (and i mean known him, known everything, known him for real) for something like twenty years.

merlin’s life does NOT revolve around arthur pendragon. his relationship with arthur, at this point, is not the most important relationship in his life. arthur is not the best friend he’s ever had. arthur is barely merlin’s friend at all, right now. arthur likes him all right, yes, and merlin likes him back, most of the time, but arthur doesn’t even know him, really.

arthur doesn’t know.

and i love arthur and merlin, like - i’m as down for the mythic, destiny-laden, we-find-each-other-in-every-universe dimension of their dynamic as anybody, and when those two finally have an equal, healthy friendship going on, i’m going to be cheering for them. but it doesn’t change the fact that merlin had a life before he came to camelot, or the fact that by 1.11 he’s only been in camelot for a few months and doesn’t really know arthur all that well yet.

you can pick whatever example you want to illustrate this point; there are enough of them to choose from, but one of the clearest is in 1.11, when arthur passes his final test and drinks anhora’s fake poison. merlin thinks arthur is dead, at that point - he’s pretty well convinced that the poison was real and that arthur has just keeled over dead on the beach - but his reaction to arthur’s ‘death’ is....i don’t want to minimize it, exactly, because merlin's obviously upset about it, but at the same time the level of distress he displays is visibly, objectively different from what we see from him in other contexts. it looks nothing like his naked grief when will is slipping away from him in 1.10, or his desperation when his mother shows up deathly ill on his doorstep in 1.13. he doesn’t look at potentiallydead!arthur the same way, or talk to him the same way, or touch him the same way - of course he hustles right over and shakes him to see if he can wake him up, but it is just...you can watch these scenes next to each other and they are just not the same. it is not the same gentle way he leans over his mother, the way he takes her hand, strokes her forehead, folds gaius’ rabbit’s foot into her fingers. it is not the same way he cradles will in 1.10, when his fingers are in will’s hair and his hand is just - reflexively rubbing will’s head in a way that is just so...intimate and automatic and brokenly tender like -

of course it’s different with them! he loves them! watching them suffer is torture for him, and the idea of losing either of them is devastating to him on a scale i can’t possibly understand. he’s only ever had two people in his life. one parent. one friend. they were his whole world.

so, yeah, merlin is stressed about arthur’s apparent death. he’s upset. he likes arthur, he believes in arthur, he’s appalled that this is happening. but it’s not a personal grief. there aren’t any deathbed confessions. there aren’t any gentle touches. there aren’t any tears. his protest to anhora isn’t ‘i love this person and i don’t want them to leave me;’ it’s ‘i was meant to protect him!’ it’s about him failing at his “destiny;” it’s about the fact that someone told him he was born like this for a reason and now he’s failed at the job that gave him a sense of purpose, at the thing that made him feel like having magic was worth all this terrible trouble.

contrast this to when his mother shows up dying in 1.13, and gaius tries to prevent merlin from saving her by bringing up the importance of merlin’s “destiny.” on that occasion, merlin’s immediate incredulous retort is, “my destiny? this is my mother.”

arthur’s death and merlin’s distress over it all come back to merlin’s unfulfilled destiny, in 1.11. but merlin couldn’t care less about his destiny when it’s his mother’s life on the line. my destiny means nothing if i cannot save her.

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. not here, not now.

[that said - it’s different, of course, later in the series. merlin’s reaction to arthur’s supposed death in 5.07 isn’t just “oh no i failed!”, it’s also a personal, particular anguish. they matter to each other, by then. (though even then i think there’s a lot to be said about the…unhealthy tragedy of merlin giving up on his own wants and needs and worth as a person who exists outside the context of this narrow mandate to protect someone who doesn’t know who merlin really is and wouldn’t love him if he did - but that’s just the situation merlin’s trapped himself in, by that point. it’s what he’s accepted for himself. it’s all he thinks he deserves.)]

[that’s a post for another day, though, so. back to the point.]

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. merlin had a life all his own before he came to camelot, and during the last quarter of season 1, every part of it that matters to him is falling apart.

i keep coming back to this, every time i think about this kid. there’s just no way to overstate the fact that merlin’s world up until this point has always been just two people. his whole life has been just two people. his whole life has been just one parent. his whole life has been just one friend.

and after 1.10, his one friend is dead.

i think we dramatically underestimate the impact of merlin having half of his world obliterated, just like that.

that’s not something he gets up and strolls away from. he can’t roll with that punch. he carries that for the rest of his life.

you know what i mean? it would be a disastrous enough thing on its own, without even getting into the fact that it unfolds in a way that is SO complicated and tied up with messy personal history and regret/guilt that it needs to be parsed in an essay of its own (which, yes, i might already have half-written; yes, i have too much extra time on my hands this month.) we’re also not getting into the fact that like - okay, the sort of grimly positive flip side to only having two significant relationships in your life is that you’ve also never personally experienced any significant bereavement. you don’t have any extended family to mourn, no friends to lose, et cetera. so to have your first experience with loss be something so huge, when you’ve had no practice dealing with grief, and to be trapped in a place where you aren’t allowed to discuss it honestly because if you told somebody what it all really meant you’d be executed?

i’d be in a bad mood, too.

merlin is such a good kid and he tries so hard to have a smile for everyone, but i can’t watch the last quarter of S1 without seeing the strain of this weighing on him. it affects how he reacts to the situation with gwen’s father in 1.12 (more on that another time), and it absolutely plays into the fact that he spends the season finale racing from one side of the kingdom to the other, desperate to sacrifice his life for someone else’s.

^^ regarding that last bit - i think about that a lot. merlin tries to die three separate times over the last three episodes of S1, and it’s not that he’s...running around trying to get someone to kill him, exactly, but there’s definitely a very real sense that he’s dumped any interest in self-preservation, at this point, that he doesn’t care what happens to him. if dying is what it takes to make sure nobody else is taken away from him, then that’s fine. he will do literally anything to not feel this again.

merlin is trying to process something so big for him and he’s trying, by necessity, to do it alone, because he left his mother behind and came back to camelot where nobody understands that the only person other than his mother who ever loved him just died lying for him. he is so stressed out in the last three episodes of this season and so desperately unhappy about things he isn’t allowed to even mention, and i just think it’s impossible to evaluate these episodes outside of that particular context.

“we haven’t done all the things we’re meant to do,” he protests in the finale - and you can feel that aching admission come welling right up out of his soul. it’s uttered in a new context, yes, but he’s been thinking it for weeks and weeks and weeks already, too late to change anything, too late to buy his friend any more time. he’s hurting. and he goes zipping around from life-sacrifice to life-sacrifice in the last three episodes in a desperate attempt to keep himself from hurting more.

iii. i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass

the point of all this is the following: the reason merlin sounds like he’s fed up with arthur in 1.11 is because he is fed up with arthur in 1.11. he’s fed up with everything. they all just got home from ealdor somewhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks ago, and merlin is reeling. he feels like his head and his heart are still trapped on the other side of the border. he’s sick of looking at arthur’s arrogant, insensitive, infuriatingly alive face - and i say this while recognizing that, even at the same time, merlin also cares about arthur, and believes in him, and lionizes him; admires him; hero-worships him, even. these two things can be simultaneously true. merlin’s relationship with arthur is already so fraught with dissonance (how can you care about someone who thinks people like you are inherently evil? how can you respect someone who oppresses you?) - and merlin’s always carried two contradictory truths when he navigates their relationship, one in each hand. and right now it’s just that one hand is holding something too heavy. he’s not being bitchy, he’s busy - he’s trying to deal with something that is taking up 100% of his mental and emotional energy; he doesn’t have anything left over to accommodate arthur pendragon’s dumbassery.

and arthur pendragon IS a dumbass; let’s not pretend that he isn’t. i love him, and he has moments that are so admirable and glorious and shining that they take your breath away, when you can see why gwen says you are going to live to be the man i see inside you; i can see a king that the people will love and be proud to call their sovereign (that speech makes my eyes sting EVERY TIME, it gets me right there) - but arthur is STILL a dumbass. no question about it. he has so far to go, still. he’s dumb in all the generic ‘oblivious rich dude’ ways, and he’s also a jerk in his own specific ‘arrogant arthur pendragon TM’ ways, and merlin at this particular moment doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. he likes arthur, even at this early stage, despite all the mental gymnastics he has to do in order to like someone who hates magic-users. but merlin’s closest friend in the world is dead, and arthur is such an asshole sometimes and it’s like - this is what i got in exchange? this is the trade the universe made? what the hell makes arthur more deserving of being here than somebody who loved me without being told, without being taught, without needing to be constantly convinced that i should be allowed to exist and be safe and be loved on this earth?

are we really surprised that merlin wants to strangle arthur after that trademark ‘you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says’ comment? merlin has enough reasons to resent that on his own behalf, but his own secret isn’t the problem, this time; the problem is that they literally just got home from their little jaunt to ealdor and the only reason arthur even made it back from ealdor in the first place was because (as far as arthur knows) a ‘sorcerer’ died saving his stupid life, and arthur knows that, and still, this is what he has to say?

and that’s on top of like - back in ealdor before they left, the fact that arthur really felt it was necessary to take time out of his day to come over and reproachfully chastise merlin about not disclosing will’s ‘magic,’ AT WILL’S FUCKING FUNERAL??? “you know how dangerous magic is. you shouldn’t have kept this from me.” AT WILL’S FUNERAL? RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS BURNING CORPSE? LIKE???? HELLO????

can you imagine being in this scenario??? and thinking??? yeah this is appropriate. this is the time.

how is merlin supposed to respond to that? when arthur’s like ‘you know how dangerous magic is’ and merlin is just like ????!! we are AT HIS FUNERAL!!! we are literally WATCHING HIS BODY BURN!!!! you know how dangerous magic is FFS THAT ‘MAGIC-USER’ COULDN’T STAND YOU AND HE STILL SAVED YOUR UNGRATEFUL LIFE AND HE’S DEAD BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT AND WE’RE AT HIS FUNERAL OMG IS THIS THE TIME? IS IT EVER GOING TO BE THE TIME? SHUT! UP!

of course merlin wants to kill him.

so anyway. i really appreciate merlin’s sudden prickliness in this episode. it’s subtle enough not to be completely jarring, but it’s still clearly perceptible, and i’m glad for that, because this is something that should be perceptible, given the timeline, but at the same time merlin would never, ever mention what’s really bothering him out loud, because a) the sorcery element and arthur’s involvement in how things went down have made it an absolutely unbroachable, forbidden topic, and b) guilt has wired merlin’s jaw shut.

^^ re: that last thing - it’s a post for another day, and i won’t really get into it now, but suffice to say, once again, that merlin spends the last quarter of season 1 running around trying his absolute hardest to throw his life away for someone, and i just feel like...i think it says something about the kind of pain he is in, and the kind of apology he feels he needs to make.

he is having a very hard time. merlin in the back quarter of S1 is feeling very alone and very much like he doesn’t deserve to ever feel better.

so if he’s a little bitey with arthur’s trademark noble nonsense, i think we can cut him some slack.

#meta #the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #tl;dr: merlin in 1.11 is grieving #this is...a lot of meta about not-arthur for an episode with such a frequently giffed arthur+merlin scene lol #but i don't care #not everything in merlin's life is about arthur pendragon #some things are just his #and will is one of those things #it has been so desperately rare for merlin to experience love without fear #every other relationship he has is tainted with 'they don't love the real me. they will hate me when they know.'#the very very few people who give him a breath of relief from this - who let him Exist and know beyond a doubt that he is cared for -#we RESPECT those people in this house!!!#how crucially important they are to him #how essential to his existence #how fundamental to his survival #how much they mean to him and how deeply it changes him when they're torn away #will and lancelot and hunith and gaius are the real mvps folks

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thesaltysocialworker · 4 years

Text

Are you with me?

While I intend to complete the third piece of my Loki piece using the lyrics from The Greatest Showmen, I was rewatching crimson peak the other day and another muse hit me. There is just something so appealing about Thomas Sharpe.

Are you with me?

Wordcount: 4323

Warnings: Smut, character death.

Synopsis: Reader is a world renowned psychic who met Thomas Sharpe during an investigation of the infamous Crimson Peak. After growing closer with Thomas, the reader buys the home and the two can no longer ignore their feelings for each other.

“This is your home, love?”

The cab driver stared at the massive, gothic home in disbelief as you dug through your wallet for the proper change. “Yes, Sir. This is it.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as you offered the older man your money but he was still drawn towards the home. “Is it- comfortable?” he asked, causing you to sigh under your hat and sunglasses; attire that had been meant to hide your identity. “You can outright ask me if it’s haunted, Sir. It is the infamous Crimson Peak. We all know the stories.”

“Bad things happened here. Even if it’s not haunted some of that has to resonate here.” He accepted your money, and you slid off of the leather seats of the car. As you stepped out into the sunlight, the cab driver lingered to count his money. He got out of the car, helping you with your bags. “Wait… I recognize you! You’re the psychic! You’re y/n!” He announced, a hint of excitement in his voice. You thought you’d be able to make it all the way home from the airport without being recognized, damn! You smiled kindly as you pulled off your hat and glasses, spinning around on your door-step. “It’s me, y/n. The owner of Crimson Peak.”

“No wonder you’re so interested in owning this house! We all wondered who’d be mad enough to buy this place and put so much money into renovations. Are you hoping to commune with something here? Release some demons?” You glanced at the house, it looked different now that the landscapers had finished their work. It certainly looked more approachable. “I’m a psychic, Sir. Not an exorcist.” You announced, opening the massive front doors and stepping inside. The man placed your bags into the entryway, and you noticed his hands were shaking as he did so. He glanced around, as if waiting for something to jump out at him. You moved to offer him a few folded bills for his tip and when you reached towards him the fireplace roared to life in the background behind you. In front of the fireplace was an illuminated shadow figure of a man.

The driver shrieked, scaring you more than the shadow figure and bolted out the front door without closing them to the chilly spring air. The last you saw of the driver, his tires were squealing out of your driveway and he was tearing up the gravel of the drive. You turned to look back at the fireplace; the tall, shadow figure took a few soundless steps forward to reveal a pale man with dark hair, handsomely chiseled features and bright blue eyes. “Damnit, Thomas. We’ve talked about this! You can’t go scaring off everyone in Cumberland and making them believe this place is legitimately haunted if you wish to be left alone.” You sighed, moving to shut the doors and bolt them. “You should’ve heard what he was thinking about you. Lewd, disgusting things.”

You slid out of your coat and tossed it over a near-by chair before moving to Thomas. You stopped, setting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s 2020 now, Thomas. Men aren’t as dashingly old fashioned or as noble as you.” His smile was tense, but it was there. His blue eyes meeting yours. You could feel his longing for you, feel it resonating through your chest and causing your pulse to race. You cleared your throat. “I should bring my things upstairs, start putting them away.” You announced, breaking the tension between the two of you. “We’ll be having company in a few days.” You called over your shoulder as you moved to lift the heavy leather bags and past the massive white marble fireplace to the elevator. “Oh?” Thomas asked curiously. “I’m inviting some friends over now that the renovations are done and it’s how we want it to look.”

You went up the few floors to the third floor, Thomas was already there waiting for you. “No Ghost Hunters, right? I find them tiring and demanding.” He moved alongside me, causing me to chuckle. “No Ghost Hunters. No other psychics. Just my friends.” His master suite had become your room, and you set your bags on the bed before you began unpacking them. You and Thomas spoke about your trip in America, and you allowed him to look at your cellphone at the pictures you’d taken- mostly with him in my mind- knowing he was bound to the house yet he longed to see how the world had changed. You paused, sitting on the end of the bed and staring openly at him as he struggled with the I-phone and made comments under his breath about how New York had changed.

When you’d first made the decision to do a walkthrough of Crimson Peak for a Television series about Haunted Houses around the World; you didn’t know what to expect. The place was dilapidated and you worried about the safety of the cast and crew. From the rumors of the town’s people in Cumberland, the house had a portal to hell inside. You’d done your research and knew about the murders that happened there, so you were cautious. What you didn’t expect was a lone spirit there, a confused and exceptionally lonely man named Thomas Sharp. He had been shocked that you could see him, speak to him. Something about him had caused you to lie to your producer; there was nothing there you could sense. You had no desire to cause unease with or exploit Thomas, who seemed easily startled to begin with. It that moment, you had earned his trust.

You had visited a few times after that, alone. You sat with Thomas and spoke with him at length about the history of the house, his family, what had really happened at Crimson Peak. Although in the history books he had been painted as nothing more than a heartless murderer, you had begun to realize that perhaps he wasn’t heartless and just easily manipulated; especially when it came to his sister, Lucille. “She’s not still here, is she?” you asked, hoping to never come across her. Thomas was melancholy about your question. “No, it’s just me now.” You had almost wondered if he was afraid to move on, and wondered what he was hanging onto. But recently you had begun to wonder if he was hanging onto you. Recently, in a turn of events even you couldn’t understand or anticipate, he had begun to be able to physically touch you. You’d never seen anything like it in any of your investigations or home visits and you’d had your abilities since you were three years old.

You’d returned so frequently that you decided to use your new found fortune from television and appearances to buy the house. It was the first time you’d seen Thomas happy ever. He wasn’t even upset about the renovations even though you’d tried to include him in those renovations just to be considerate. It was his home, too. At first you assumed he was just happy to have some company, but then it became clear that he was happy to have your company.

“Are you well?” He asked, lingering over you. “Tired. Jet-lagged.” You sighed, opening your eyes and glancing up at Thomas. He looked uncomfortable. “Your friend Derrick sent you a message.” He handed you the phone. Thomas didn’t care much for Derrick; especially once he found out the two of you had previously dated. You knew Derrick was an idiot, you weren’t sure why you kept him around or even communicated with him anymore. But somehow he had managed to find out about your house warming party and invited himself. You sighed, looking at the phone then tossing it somewhere onto the bed. “Great.” You muttered, rubbing your eyes and moving to sit up.

“I’m going up to my work shop.” Thomas whispered, refusing to look at you as he turned to go. Aside from fixing the roofing and the heating up there; it was the one room you left untouched for him. It was his space and you didn’t intrude unless he invited you in. “Thomas, please don’t go.” You called out to him, and he lingered in the doorway between the hallway and your room. His fingers gripped the polished wood of the doorway. “I’m not sure if you’ve realized this, y/n. But I’m in love with you. I know I can never go you a normal life like Derrick, but he will never care for you as much as I do. No one will ever love you like I do.” With that, he was gone. He disappeared into thin air. You knew that took a lot for him, though he’d began to trust you he was still closed lipped about his feelings.

You had to do something, you were sharing a house with him and neither of you would be leaving anytime soon. You were bound by the amount of money you’d put into the renovations, and he was bound by death. But it was more than that, you were bound to Thomas and he was bound to you and somehow you felt distance would never change that.

“Thomas, are you with me?” It was how you had started every conversation with him when you called out to him; especially when you first started visiting the house and he had been shy about showing himself to you. You stood in the entryway in your little black dress, waiting for your first guest to arrive. He didn’t come, he didn’t answer. “Thomas, it’s been twenty-four hours. End the radio silence.” You called out in frustration to nothing. He was ignoring you, he was still mad or upset. You’d tried to speak to him numerous times and there was nothing. God, please don’t let him have moved on. The thought made your blood run cold. The realization hit you, you weren’t ready to let him go.

There was a knock at the door, and you moved over the wooden floor in your favorite red heels. When you opened the doors you were not surprised to find your first guest was Derrick. You had secretly hoped he wouldn’t come; but you knew that your new found fame was too tempting to him. “Wow, y/n! You look great!” He took you in from head-to-toe with dark eyes, grinning as he stepped in without being invited. “Thanks, you’re early.” You closed the doors, and as you spun around you glanced up to the intricate staircase to find Thomas watching the two of you; glowering from the shadows as he leaned on the handrail. “Damn, it’s cold in here. It’s colder in here than it is outside!” Derrick laughed, rubbing his upper-arms. You didn’t dare tell him that it was because the resident ghost was jealous of him.

“So, this is Crimson Peak, huh?” He glanced around as if he expected to see a body lying on the floor in a chalk outline. “You did a really nice job renovating the house.” You offered him the tour, showing him the modernized kitchen and the living areas; the backyard that you’d put so much landscaping into. You moved into the office/library and you had framed some black and white newspaper copies of when the murders at Crimson peak first came to light. You had black and white photos of Thomas and Lucille in the office. Derrick read the newspapers, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re comfortable living here, knowing all this.” He lifted his cellphone to take a picture of one of the newspaper stories. You saw it in slow motion, Thomas appeared and slapped the phone out of Derrick’s hand. Thomas had done it with such purpose that it didn’t just hit the floor and shatter; it fell into the fireplace with an active fire. Derrick looked around in disbelief. “One of them is here, aren’t they?” His voice waivered as he spoke, his hands shaking.

“He’s so brave, heart of a lion.” Thomas whispered, he wasn’t present but he whispered it in your ear and it caused goose flesh to form over your arms. You glanced around, but he still wasn’t present. “Yes.” It was all you had to say, and Derrick practically flew out of the room. “I need a drink, this shit is freaking me out!” He called, taking the steps two at a time. You exited the library to follow him when Thomas stopped you at the top of the landing. “I would’ve tripped him but if he dies here we’ll be stuck with him forever.” He was bitter when he spoke, but his dark sarcasm actually made you laugh a little. “It’s good to see you, Thomas.” You reached out to him, and he vanished again without saying anything. You found yourself hurt, and released a heavy sigh as you went downstairs. The doorbell rang and your next set of visitors had arrived.

Your friends mingled over drinks and appetizers while it felt like you gave a million tours of the house. Thomas had gone missing again and his silence made you hit the champagne a little heavier than you wanted too. You’d retreated to one of the back hallways near midnight to go to the bathroom when you ran into Derrick again. His hand went to your hip, you could smell the alcohol on his breath. “You know why I’m here, y/n. I know things ended badly for us last time but I’d like to give it another try. I’m willing to move here to be with you.” He tried to press his lips to yours, and you stopped him. “It didn’t work the first three times, Derrick. It’s not going to work the fourth time because you want to be seen with a celebrity.”

Derrick sputtered with laughter, stepping back from you. “I’m the best you’ll ever get, and this is my last offer.” You felt insecurity creeping into your soul, but the sound of someone clearing their throat from the background made you turn around. “She’s not interested, she’s spoken for.” Thomas’ voice rang out in the hallway. You glanced over your shoulder and found Thomas taking a few slow steps towards Derrick. Derrick looked perplexed. “Who the hell are you?” You couldn’t let Thomas tell him the truth. “Thomas Sharp the third, the great grandchild of the owner of the house.”

“You’re choosing the greasy, thin bloke over me, huh?” Derrick smirked like he’d just won a battle. You couldn’t have stopped Thomas if you wanted too at that point. He was enraged. “Get out of my house. NOW.” He roared. The lights started to flicker, the chandelier in the entryway shook as the fires raged out of control. The framed photos on the wall shook, and Derrick panicked. You heard him muttering ‘holy shit’ as he raced out of the hallway. You could hear some of your guests screaming, you heard footfalls racing towards the exit. Then there was silence. You and Thomas stared at each other from opposite ends of the hallway. “Do you feel better now?” you asked, your hands falling to your hips. Thomas exhaled, as though he was physically releasing the stress from his body. “Yes, I do. Almost.”

He was toe-to-toe with you at a speed that your human brain, especially intoxicated, couldn’t comprehend. Then his cold hands were on you, one of his hands moved to your lower back while the other caught your chin and pulled you towards him. Your lips met his, and you felt like the wind had been knocked out of you. You were going to push him away as your hands found his chest but then you relaxed against him. Your hands slid up his chest and rest on his shoulders. His hands had begun to move over your body, and you let out a moan into his mouth that you never intended. You were embarrassed. How were you supposed to act around him? He wouldn’t have been your first lover, your first time with a ghost but not a man. You were no wilting flower, while the women of his era were not meant to own their sexuality.

Thomas lifted you, holding you in his arms and carrying you up the stairs like he would a bride. The two of you made it to the bedroom, and he set you down gently. “Are you sure about this, y/n? I don’t think I could bear it if we followed through with this and you had a change of heart later.” He uttered, his fingers lingering on the zipper of your dress. The alcohol made you honest. “I can live without you, Thomas. But I don’t want too.” You whispered, your hands cupping his face. He pressed his lips to yours again, tugging the zipper of your dress to hard that your dress ripped. You shimmied out of it, kicking your shoes off and leaving you in just my panties underneath him. Your hands worked the buttons of his white shirt but it wasn’t quick enough and with a tug and a rip you heard the buttons hit the wood floor of the bedroom. Thomas slid out of the shirt, his eyes reminded you of a stormy sea as he stared at you. “You’re so beautiful.” Thomas uttered, his fingers brushing over the bare skin of your stomach and my hips.

He was over you, his hands moving over your body wherever he could touch as though he was mesmerizing you through touch. The two of you pushed your bodies against each other, as though you couldn’t get enough of each other as the atmosphere in the room grew heady. You pushed him underneath you, and he let you take charge. Your lips moved from his, down to his neck and across his chest. Your eyes lingered on his, as you moved lower and lower. You could see the nervousness forming on his features, his discomfort. “Relax, Thomas.” You purred. Despite his discomfort, he could take his eyes off you as you pulled off his belt and tugged his trousers down his legs. Your fingers very gently wrapped around his shaft, moving up and down as his breathing became ragged and a moan fell from his lips. It was one of the most erotic things you’d ever heard in your life.

You pressed your lips to the tip of his shaft, your tongue darting out to taste him. Then you wrapped your mouth around him and began moving slowly up and down his massive length. “Y/n…” He breathed out your name like a prayer, his head thrown back in utter bliss. How could this even be? You mused to yourself, wondering how this was able to even happen. But you were quickly losing your train of thought, your own arousal causing you to reach between your legs and rub yourself through your panties. “If you don’t stop…” Thomas groaned, and you removed your lips from with cock with a ‘pop’ echoing throughout your bedroom. You sat up, and before you had time to react Thomas pinned you underneath him. He pulled your panties off and tossed them somewhere into the darkness of your bedroom.

He was gentle with you, at first. But you could see his resolve breaking and his eyes becoming lust blown. He slid himself inside of you, your hands gripping as his arms. Thomas was well-endowed, and he seemed to know that. He lingered over you, pressing his lips against your forehead. “Are you—okay?” he asked through his panting. You could tell it was taking everything in him not to move into you. “Yes. Thomas, please. I need you.” You practically begged him. He was controlled, watching your facial expressions and making sure he wasn’t hurting you. He was ever the gentlemen, but you didn’t want that. Your fingers nails grazed up and down his back, and then tangled in his hair. You could see him gradually losing control, his muscles tensing as his controlled thrusting became erratic and wild. You could feel yourself spiraling, wrapping your legs around his thighs.

You melded your body to his, wanting to feel every inch of him. “Sweet, sweet girl. Gods, I love you. I love you so much y/n.” Thomas muttered, just on the precipice of control. His hand reached between the two of you, pressing against your clit as you felt yourself tighten around him as you reached your release. “Thomas!” You shouted his name, sure the neighbor’s miles away heard you glass-shattering shrieks as you peaked. Thomas threw his head as he came, you could feel him pulsating inside you. He took a few moments to collect himself, breathing deeply and reaching up to wipe the sweat from his brow. Then he collapsed next to you; pulling you against his body so you were facing each other.

“I love you too, Thomas.” You finally said the words, and his smile caused butterflies to flutter in your stomach. “But I don’t know how this is going to work with you being…” You hesitated, not wanting to ruin the mood. “It’ll never be normal, love. But it’ll be worth it.” He whispered. “I’m not sure I even know what normal is.” You chuckled. The two of you slid under the covers, wrapped around each other. The two of you fell asleep, intertwined and utterly spent.

You awoke the next morning and you were alone. You sat up, looking around the room for any sign of Thomas and trying to make sure that last night wasn’t some sort of bizarre dream. “Thomas, are you with me?” You asked, and there was no answer. You could smell something cooking downstairs, and you could hear the piano playing a song you didn’t recognize. You rose, wrapping your robe around you and heading downstairs towards whatever Thomas was making. It smelled divine and you were ravenous.

You walked past the library, and you did a double take as you walked by. Was there someone at the piano? At first you assumed it was a shadow figure. But then you saw the fanning of the skirt black as night, the skeletal hands dancing over the keys. “Lucille.” You uttered, barely recognizing the withered skeleton before you. She rose slowly from the piano, letting out an inhuman shriek as she flew across the room towards you. You backed up, getting ready to run. But as you were getting ready to run you ran into Thomas, and he pushed you behind him. Lucille stopped at her brother’s form, it was as if she was unable to move. “Go, Lucille. I won’t let you control me any longer, and you won’t hurt any other woman I love.” He spat. She shrieked, and then seemed to explode in a cloud of dust before the two of you.

“How did she? You told me she wasn’t—“ You started, as Thomas wrapped an arm around your shoulder and lead you to the kitchen. “I kept her at bay. You’ve given me the strength to stand up to her. She won’t hurt you, I won’t allow it.” He brought you into the kitchen, sitting you down in front of your breakfast and a cup of coffee. You were a bit shell shocked, hesitating before you started eating your eggs and toast. After the shock of the morning wore off, you wanted to talk to Thomas about how this was going to work. He sat across from you, reading the paper and occasionally glancing up at you with a small, tense smile.

“Thomas, I—“ As you opened your mouth to speak but you felt sick to your stomach. You glanced up at him, gripping your stomach as a horrible realization dawned on you. “Thomas, what did you do?” You asked, as he set the paper down on the table. He looked pained, pursing his lips. “It’ll be quick and painless this way, my love. I—couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. I knew eventually you would tire of me, you’d want someone normal. I can’t chance you leaving me. This is the only way.” He brushed his hand over your sweaty brow, and you drew back from him. “You said you loved me.” You were anguished in pain, both physically and emotionally. You trusted him, you believed him!

“I do love you, y/n. I love you so much I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I had to do something. I’m sorry.” You felt blood running from your mouth, trying to pull yourself away from him across the kitchen floor towards your phone but you were growing weaker and weaker as you did so. Your vision was blurring, and eventually you collapsed before you could reach the phone. You saw Thomas bend down in front of you, holding you in his arms. Everything he had said was a lie, and you wanted to shove him away. But you were too weak, and it felt like you were drifting off into a heavy sleep.

You weren’t sure how long it’d been, but when you awoke you felt no pain and you feared the worst. You were still in his arms, and as your eyes opened to meet his he uttered an all too familiar phrase. “Y/n, are you with me?”

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#thomas sharpe #crimson peak #thomas sharpe x reader #thomas sharpe x you #thomas hiddleston #crimson peak imagine #imagine

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letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

Horse Power.

The Nest’s writer-director Sean Durkin talks about creating atmosphere, watching films without judgment, and the best movies of 1986.

Downfalls in Hollywood movies tend to be chaotic, dramatic and a lot of fun along the way. From Citizen Kane to The Wolf of Wall Street, outsized ambitions are realized on screen in castles, exotic holidays, wild parties, sweeping us up in the extravagance of it all, before the inevitable crash. The Nest takes a slower, far more British view of ambition and its effects on family—or, as Charlie writes, “this movie is a reminder that people who call themselves entrepreneurs should instead be stay-at-home dads”.

The new film from writer-director Sean Durkin, the brain behind cult-survivor slow-burn Martha Marcy May Marlene, is less “strap in and enjoy the ride”, more “slow disintegration of all sense of sanity”—a tense psychological drama focused on the person who usually gets hurt the most: the wife. And that horse-lovin’ dream wife Allison, as played by Carrie Coon, is a character to behold (and the subject of many obsessive The Nest reviews on Letterboxd).

Just as Durkin takes time to carefully explore Martha’s vulnerability in his earlier film, in The Nest, he closes in on Allison, as she and their children adjust to 1980s life in an English manor, far from the comfort of Allison’s American home, while wheeler-dealer husband Rory (Jude Law) chases a new opportunity.

There are thematic similarities in both films; a case to be made that ambitious men wreak a comparable mental destruction on their families as cult leaders do on their followers, breaking them down with charm, persuasion, false promises. There’s also something about the juxtaposition of periods in the film—the fifteenth-century manor vs the ’80s bangers on the soundtrack—that adds to The Nest’s unnerving atmosphere (other parts of the soundtrack are composed by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry in his first film-score credit).

Keen to understand more about Durkin’s influences and memories, Jack Moulton put him through the Letterboxd Life in Film interrogation.

Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in ‘The Nest’.

The Nest feels like a very personal film. In what ways are the emotions of the premise personal to you? When I was making Southcliffe in 2012, I was back in England where I spent my childhood and I hadn’t been back in close to twenty years. It really struck me how London and New York felt very similar now but they didn’t when I was a kid. I thought maybe I wanted to make a film about a family that moves in that time and how a move can affect a family. As I wrote the script, I became a parent, so it became as much a reflection of modern adulthood as it did about my childhood in the ’80s. Although it’s a period piece, I wanted to make it feel very close to today to look at the celebrated values of the time and how those are still very relevant.

The mansion the family moves into is the titular ‘nest’, and the use of space and atmosphere contribute so much to the film’s subtext. What were you looking for when location scouting for the house? Was it an easy or difficult process? Yeah, it was difficult. It was like doing an open casting call. I had a very specific idea in my head but [my production designer] was able to put it into actual architectural terms so we were able to find a house that a successful commodities broker would live and commute from in Surrey. We needed something beyond that, but if you go too far, you get small castles. Once we located the right exterior, there were a bunch of [houses] that would’ve been great, but when we got inside, there were no open spaces. I wanted to have long hallways to be able to see through multiple rooms to create that isolation—the opposite of the cozy American house that they were living in before, to really highlight the good life they left behind.

Carrie Coon and Jude Law in ‘The Nest’.

We love the soundtrack; not just the choice of songs but the way that they’re mixed. Can you give us some insight into the song selection? When writing, I build a playlist that I write to. This one was a mix of personal memories from childhood—like Simply Red, which takes me back to falling asleep in the back of my dad’s car—so there’s a way into writing there on a sensory level, and then I build upon it with songs that I love from the time. I was listening to Richard Reed Parry’s Music for Heart and Breath album a lot and he ended up being the composer of the film, so his music was always part of the heart of the movie as I was writing it.

I would spend my drives to set with my assistant talking about music and he would turn me onto some stuff that would make it into the movie. It was a mix of a long-running preparation and things that I pick up in the moment then making that all work at the right level so it feels of the world. Like with The Cure, we actually played that off a tape cassette when Allison walks into the room.

Since your debut feature in 2011, you’ve had a prolific career in television and as a film producer; you’re a founding member of Borderline Films with fellow directors Antonio Campos and Josh Mond. Do you see yourself more as a producer who only occasionally directs films yourself? No, I don’t really consider myself a producer. I’ve produced movies for filmmakers and friends and I help people where I can. I’m not someone who’s out getting properties and thinking about how to put together a film, I’m only thinking about my own work as a writer and a director. Between finishing Southcliffe in 2013 and The Nest in 2018, I had a five-year gap where I was developing lots of projects one after the other—two features and a television show—that were both so close to [being greenlit] but something fell through, which was really bad luck.

What film made you want to become a filmmaker? The Goonies and Back to the Future were those movies as a kid that first made me want to make movies and tell stories, but the moment where I realized what filmmaking is was seeing The Shining. I saw it for the first time when I was eleven or twelve and a friend showed it to me because his older brother had the VHS. It was my first time understanding atmosphere and direction and I just had a sense that I could do it too. It was a really crucial moment, and I kept that thought to myself for a very long time.

Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély shoots Carrie Coon in Soho.

What’s your scariest film that is not technically horror? AKA, your area of expertise. Oh man, scariest? Something I’ve watched recently is The Vanishing and it’s probably one of the most unsettling films I’ve ever seen. It was incredible to rewatch it because I’d last seen it when I was in college—I watched everything back then—and I’d also seen the American remake, so when I watched it this time, I was trying to remember things [that were different] from the remake. I was like “he’s gonna get out, right?—oh no, that’s in the American version!” I find it an astonishing movie. There’s a real human element to the pain of the killer.

Let’s nerd out: what’s your top film of 1986, the year that The Nest is set? [Laughs] I’ve no idea what came out in 1986. Can I look up a list and I’ll tell you? Let’s see, films of 1986… This is fun! Alright, “popular films of 1986” I’m seeing: Blue Velvet, Short Circuit, Stand by Me, Platoon, The Color of Money, what else have we got here? River’s Edge… Pretty in Pink… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—Ferris Bueller’s gotta be up there. Big Trouble in Little China! That’s it! I’m sure there’s other things, but from my quick search, I’d say Big Trouble in Little China. That was a movie that was always on in my house because it was one of my dad’s all-time favorites.

Which is Jude Law’s best performance? I love The Talented Mr. Ripley so much. I constantly rewatch that movie—it’s perfect. I also loved him in Vox Lux recently.

Sean Durkin and Jude Law on the set of ‘The Nest’.

What is the best film about marriage and why does it resonate with you? Shoot the Moon was really influential for me. I’d say it’s a bit more about divorce and family than it is about marriage but [it depends on] if you take the ending to mean that they’re going to stay together—I kind of do. You could say a separation is part of a marriage. I love that movie for how it finds light in humor. Albert Finney is struggling with his masculinity where, even though he’s the one who left, he still thinks he owns it all, and Diane Keaton is quite liberated by this scenario. It’s like their journey to find language again. I find it very beautiful.

Which film was your entry-point into international cinema? I’m trying to think back to what I would’ve seen, there certainly wasn’t a lot growing up. In college I really discovered Michael Haneke and Michelangelo Antonioni. L’Avventura made a huge impact on me. I think [because of the way] the mystery kind of dissolves and it’s about the journey, not the solution.

What film do you wish you’d made? I don’t. Filmmaking is personal and it’s so much an expression of perspective when done with care and love—though obviously, there’s stuff that’s just churned out. I never see something and say “I wish I made that”. One of the things I find hard is when people critique films and say they would’ve done this differently. I’ve become very sensitive to that over time because every choice you make as a filmmaker is so specific and thought out. I try to consume movies without knowing anything about them or making any kind of judgment. I just let them be what they are and wash over me.

Which newcomer director should we all keep our eyes on? I don’t think I’m looking out for new stuff necessarily. Once I get to see something, everyone else already knows about it. One person I would say is Dave Franco, who I just worked with on The Rental. I was an executive producer and I was a creative bounce-board for Dave through the process. It’s his first film and it’s astonishingly directed. We were getting dailies from the first week and we were like, “This is his first movie? This is insane!” I think he will do some exciting things.

Finally, what’s your favorite film of 2020 so far? I was absolutely blown away by Eliza Hittman’s film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. I miss having retrospectives at local theaters, which I’m always keyed into no matter the city I’m living in. I’ve started watching a lot of Criterion Channel and I watched a movie recently that’s taken over my brain: Variety, by Bette Gordon, from 1983. It’s set in New York City around Times Square, and it’s this incredible journey that this woman goes on that captured my mind.

Related content

Sean Durkin’s Life in Film list

Sean Durkin’s Sight & Sound Top 10

Clarissa’s list of films that burn slowly

Everything Carrie Coon watched during quarantine (and the best of that huge list)

Tracy Letts and Carrie Coon’s 24-Hour Movie Marathon

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

#sean durkin #the nest #film director #filmmaker #jude law #carrie coon #slow burn #psychological thriller #letterboxd #life in film #martha marcy may marlene

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annakie · 5 years

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Thoughts on a DW Rewatch & Mass Effect replay.

So I’m in the Eleven / Clara half-season now.

Also I’m now replaying Andromeda. I have thoughts, about both. I’ll start with Doctor Who then label it when I get to Mass Effect stuff.

Oh my God this gets long and rambly. Apparently, I have a lot of thoughts.

So, season 702... I’m ready for it to be over. I miss the Ponds. I felt like most of the first half of this season was pretty great, honestly. I’d forgotten how fun some of those episodes were, I think at the time we were anticipating a new companion so heavily that it was harder to appreciate those episodes? I feel like there was a lot of criticism levied towards them that now I felt like was a bit too much. The western episode was kinda meh but still not bad.

I’m not sure what exactly it is about these Clara / Eleven episodes that I’m still not connecting with but I’m in the middle of the Crimson Horror episode (which is a Vastra/Jenny/Strax heavy episode and enjoying it more than anything else so far this half-season.

*edit later* NOPE NOPE NOPE I’D FORGOTTEN HOW THE DOCTOR FORCES A KISS ON JENNY. GROSS. SUPER GROSS. SHE’S A MARRIED WOMAN, A LESBIAN AND DID NOT CONSENT TO ANY OF THIS. BAD DOCTOR, BAD.

Honestly even with some excellent guest start acting, the Russian Submarine episode was STILL a slog and the ghosts in the 1950′s episode no better. Like they still weren’t ridiculous and unwatchable but... just didn’t feel fun or interesting at all? The Journey to the Center of the TARDIS episode was decent, and I felt like that wasn’t nearly as cool as it should have been..

I remember reading a criticism of these episodes early on where they said that the biggest fault is that they failed to give Clara any real characterization or solid personality other than “girl the Doctor is obsessed with”. She’s SUPER IMPORTANT but not only do we not know why at this point but it really doesn’t feel... earned? I don’t recall it ever feeling earned that Clara was supposedly always so important? “The most importantest companion EVAR!”

And as someone who stanned the hell out of a character who was hated in the fandom for “replacing” a previous companion I’m checking myself to make sure it’s still not because I Miss the Ponds. Like, I don’t HATE Clara, I just, at least at this point in the rewatch, can’t find any reason to really LOVE her? She’s there, she’s fine, Jenna-Louise Coleman is doing a great job with what they’re giving to her but... I don’t know. It all feels... off.

I had forgotten all about the “the Doctor rides a motorcycle up the side of a skyscraper” moment and something hit me in that moment that made me remember that wow people hated that moment. It felt really... shark-jumpy somehow.

I love Eleven, but this half-season isn’t connecting with me, AT ALL. It feels like the writers just went and dug through a bunch of rejected script ideas, polished them up and were likle “let’s just do this until Matt Smith is gone.” I’m anxious to get to Twelve.

Mass Effect Stuff

OK TECHNICALLY I haven’t finished ME3. I still need to do the party and the goodbye scene, (Citadel Epiloge Mod installed) but I’ve gotten all the Stuff and done all the missions in the arena. I just wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye yet, so I started Andromeda a bit early.

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

OK look I had a point I wanted to make and never quite got where I wanted to go with it right here. I’m too tired of trying to fix it, so this stands as written.

This playthrough had me ruminating a lot on Kaidan and Garrus. I really love both of those characters, though in my heart I’ll always primarily love Kaidan, I’ve done the Garrus romance and wouldn’t mind playing that character again to see the romance one more time. In ME1, I bring Kaidan everywhere all the time, and pick which other companion I bring to the story-based missions based on what I know is gonna happen like I’m sure most people do. Wrex for Therum, Tali for Feros (though I REALLY wish you could switch before going to see the Thorian), Liara for Noveria, Ashley on Virmire, Garrus for Ilos/Endgame. I rotate through all five for sidemissions.

In ME2, Garrus is my always-bring companion, with Garrus + Miranda being my favorite team. Except after the Omega relay, where characters with Throw really shine with all those husks running at us, Jack holds the bubble, and Miranda and Thane, who both have Warp to help take down the Reaper Baby, are the preferred team. Also so Miranda can tell TIM to fuck off.

Then in ME3, once the game opens up, Garrus is back on the perma-team, with a preference towards bringing Liara along... until we get Kaidan back. And then I realized I didn’t bring him to a single thing except a side mission or two until Earth. Mostly, this is because I’m following the Kaidan Banter guide and it turns out Garrus is a real banter hog for most of the missions. At leat he’s not James, who I literally never use unless I’m going on an N7 mission and feel bad that I haven’t taken him off the Normandy in awhile. I mean, even Javik gets more play. Also EDI doesnt leave the Normandy til near the end when all of a sudden she gets real important.

But Garrus is always on the team for Priority Earth. And that always felt like the way the main game should end, with your two favorites. (Also what kind of monster wouldn’t bring Wrex to the combat-centric areas of Citadel DLC? I keep thinking I should have runs where I bring other people but... Wrex is my other fave and we don’t get him with us AT ALL since ME1.)

I love Garrus, so much. And I was thinking with this whole parallel DW rewatch / Mass Effect replay think I’m doing right now how both Rose Tyler and Garrus Vakaraian are characters that were ruined for me for awhile due to their respective... overly enthusiastic fanbases who a small percentage of were dicks to people who loved other characters. The Kaidan tag (and from what I understand Thane got some of this too, but not nearly as bad) was a pretty hostile place for awhile (and yeah I used to check the Garrus tag too and there was a small amount of tag-invasion there but uh, like 5% of what the Kaidan tag got) which made loving the character of Garrus a lot harder for awhile. But when actually watching seasons 1 & 2 / the end of 4 of DW, or actually playing the games, those characters are awesome.

Fanbases can be amazing or terrible, and time and time again I think you start to realize that no matter how great a fandom is, there are going to be a few people who can only enjoy themselves by feeding on drama, or on lifting up what they love by stomping on other people/characters/plotlines. Going back through my blog reminded me that even the TAH fandom had some of this, with a small percentage of fans being real dicks to two prominent female characters in favor of their favorite ship, which soured even that just a tiny bit.

It’s not fair to characterize everyone who loves a popular thing as someone who does this. It’s also hard to avoid completely because there will always be jerks, or young/new people who don’t realize what bad form they’re showing. I did learn by trying to fight it for a year or two, that responding might help that one person not do it again, but it’s not going to stop overall. Maybe yelling a lot about Martha Jones did change some people’s minds. It still isn’t that good of a look now, even knowing that in general I was pretty polite and logical about it. I might respond to an odd comment now and again in some favorite character tags, but in general, turns out that kind of fight just isn’t worth it.

And those fights seem so stupid in the light of everything else happening in the world today.

Anyway, don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.

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

I also wanted to say, and I know I said it in a few other posts about this ME3 playthrough, but seriously I cannot believe how much ME3 is a changed game because of the modders. I cannot imagine ever playing ME3 again without these mods. There were so many small things that I kept thinking I should take note of to talk about and I’m sure I forgot 90% of them, but there’s things like... adding in mentions of the Andromeda Initiative, closing a few plotholes, mentioning Emily Wong, adding in many more Spectre console options which end up having their own plotlines, adding in an entire plotline about the VI civilization that had previously only been talked about in like, social media or Cerberus News Network posts, having the Normandy be so much more populated, seeing so many more other species on the Citadel with more variety in clothing for those species that have clothing / could have more variety, way more female Turians.... every time I play ME3 the game is more and more like the game we wanted when it came out.

I am kind of itching to go back and replay it even now.

But hey, instead, its time to talk about Andromeda.

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So first of all, yes, mods for Andromeda. A few appearance mods, a lot of convenience mods.

After having recently played DA:I and I think Andromeda and DA:I are a lot more similar than Andromeda and the previous trilogy, I had decided it was time to cut down on the stupid stuff Andromeda does, like “Oh, you want minerals? Spend 10 minutes in each mining zone finding the PERFECT place to gather materials or you’re fucked” No, thanks. I’ll mine but give me that “one probe placed anywhere and you’re done” mod.

Make the modifications and crafting materials I use actually matter. 2% damage increase is nothing. Make my squadmates not suck because I remember doing 90% of the work myself before and that got exhausting with the number of spawns.

I tried to not go overboard so things feel like cheating, but there’s enough out there to just get rid of the stupid stuff, and it’s nice. And works together a lot easier than the DA:I mods did.

One thing I did do was install the Multiple Romance Mod. I enjoyed it in DA:I, even though ultimately I only did 2 full romances. I am **NOT** romancing Gil or Cora with the mod, I just wanted to experience all the content available for female Ryders at once, since I’m not going to have the energy to replay this 100+ hour game enough times to see every romance on its own. So I am poly-romancing Liam, Jaal, Vetra, Suvi, Peebee, Keri, and if it lets me, Reyes when it’s time.

I’ve only gotten all the way through Andromeda once (where I romanced Liam) My second playthrough was right after my first and stalled out about halfway through (was romancing Jaal.) It was one of those “I’m totally gonna get back to this! (She didn’t.)” things. I’m gonna be honest, I enjoyed the Liam romance and was enjoying the Jaal romance, I’d done a fling with Reyes but not the full romance my first time through and the fling with PeeBee on my second. Reyes was probably my favorite out of all of them. So this time I decided.. let’s see which I love the most, all at once. I don’t know if I’ll do this in the future, but this game is too long to not see all the content I wanna see, TBH.

And you know, I still really do like Andromeda. It’s a GOOD game. And I’m forever going to be mad that we’re not going to see how this story ends. This story deserved to finish being told. Like, there are a lot of very legit criticisms about Andromeda, but it didn’t deserve the harshness it got. And the worst thing about it, and DA:I both is that... there’s just a little TOO MUCH of it. 100 hours is an amazing amount of game but... it’s also just too much. For now I’m not trying to 100% this playthrough. My plan is on each planet to get the planet to 100%, take out the Kett or whatever major base, the Remnant Architect, and yeah probably clear out the sidequests that show up on the map, but fuck quests that are like “visit random Kett camps until you find the right datapads that don’t show up on the map!” or “scan random blobs in the forest that don’t show up on the map!”

So like, do the content, not the filler.

I still hate the vaults. The first one is cool. The rest are tedious. But they’re mandatory.

I love everyone on this spaceship though. They did the Tempest stuff SO WELL. All the companions I think are... good? There’s no one I don’t like, even the non-squadmate shipmates ship have so much interaction and so much to do/say. It’s not like “a bunch of randos and Joker, with occasional appearances by Chakwas and the Engineers” There’s no randos, it’s just a few people you have real interactions with, and its great.

The lack of enough beds in the bedroom will never not annoy me. There’s 4 beds for... Lexi, Liam, Cora, Suvi, Kallo, Vetra and Gil? Even if Liam slept on his couch, and Vetra put a bed in her supply room... still doesn’t add up. What, do Salarains not sleep or something? Does Lexi sleep in a medical bed?!? Peebee sleeps in the escape pod, Jaal brings a bed with him, and Drack’s like “Eh I’ll just sleep in the kitchen”. WHAT? THE KITCHEN?

I mean sure there weren’t enough beds, even with the sleeper pods, on the Normandy either, but somehow that was less disturbing.

Also, I know you’re supposed to HATE Director Tann but I love Kumail Nanjiani so I find it hard to be a total dick to him, even if he usually deserves it. If he wasn’t an anti-Krogan racist I think it’d be easier to like him. He was thrown into a pretty shitty situation and... did actually hold things together for some time. He’s not doing anything out of malice. He’s a dick, but also doing what he needs to do to keep the Initiatiave going. Oh, except for being a anti-krogan racist. (Honestly, I also think “until he turned Cerberus Udina was just doing his job pretty well” too, so...)

Taking some screenshots as I go. I mostly just take screenshots for me now. I have a few thousands screenshots from a dozen or more games rotating through my desktop background, and I keep adding to it, and love it.

Anyway, I’ve gotten Eos, Voeld and Havral to 100%. Time to go save the Moeshe. I’m having fun.

*edit from later* I’d forgotten that... idk if the dialog they recorded for Jaal was the first thing they recorded for him or they used a different VA or what but on the Save the Moshe mission his voice is VERY DIFFERENT and oh man, that is still bad.

Might take a break for when Onslaught comes out for SWTOR, though. I haven’t really played SWTOR in months. Oops.

#personal post tag thingy #annakie's mass effect stuff #doctor who stuff #hey this gets REAL RAMBLY sorry not sorry

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friendlycybird · 6 years

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1X07 - Double Dipper - Rewatch

So last time @amigolupus told me that according to Journal 3, there is a very real chance that this episode actually happens the SAME DAY as Dipper vs Manliness. Because if it doesn’t, that means the episodes aired slightly out of the order in which they occurred. So with that in mind...

Let’s get started.

Party hat on a Rhino Horn.

Pretending to puke up silly string is strangely hilarious. Like, I’m way more amused by that bit then I expected to be. and I love Wendy getting into it.

It occurs to me how much happens in such a short amount of time on this show. I’m hard pressed to filter out my relevant thoughts from my irrelevant ones because everything happens so fast. Even when nothing substantial is really happening.

“They want fun? I’ll SMOTHER them with fun!” “Maybe saying things like that is why kids don’t come to the Mystery Shack?” y’know...for how good he is with the twins, Stan just legitimately doesn’t understand children does he? Like. At all. ...there’s an entire subplot about this later in the series, isn’t there?

I feel like Mabel calling whatever those insects were (moths?) buzzing around the “Fixed up” copier “Butterflies!” is really like...a good moment to tell someone about if you need to explain who Mabel Pines is as a person.

...I just got all this out of a minute and a half of content. I should probably restrain myself a little.

The disembodied arm is...I want to say surprisingly creepy but there’s nothing really surprising about a disembodied arm manifesting out of an old copy machine being creepy, is there?

I can’t tell if Stan’s double-checking Dipper ACTUALLY wants to work the ticket stand when he assumed he could just order Mabel to do it and she’d be fine is an example of him being mean to Dipper (deliberately underestimating him and implying he’s less capable) or just a way to push the wendip joke with no real watsonion answer. Because I know not everything on this show is gonna have an explanation in-universe but...most things Stan does is subject to further examination.

Dipper is so fond of making lists for things one shouldn’t make lists for that Mabel both anticipates that’s what he did just based on the word “plan” and is fed up with it instantly.

Also, Dipper, sweetie...you can’t...banter...by anticipating what the other person is gonna say and having a pre-planned response. That’s...that’s not how banter works. That’s how you get awkwardness.

Oh, are Mabel’s triangular earrings green? Or does she just have multiple pairs of triangular earrings? A friend of mine and I have made jokes about her destroying her yellow triangular earrings before returning home, so these stand out to me.

Grenda and Candy are freaking adorable from the get-go.

You know, there’s another moment here that genuinely defines Mabel. Her first impression of Pascifica is that she is entitled and makes others, specifically others who Mabel has decided are “my people” feel bad about themselves. So naturally she chooses to compete with this obviously horrible person to stand up for her brand-new friends (because Mabel makes friends THAT quickly) ...but her first impulse on how to actually INTERACT with Pascifica is a friendly introduction and an offer of a handshake. Like. That’s. Inhumanly sweet.

“I wonder if this is a good idea.” Dipper. What. In every story you have ever heard, every movie you’ve ever watched, every thought you have ever had, WHAT made you think for even a SECOND this was a good idea?

Dipper’s initial interactions with Tyrone are the best. ...really, if everything had gone according to plan, this might actually have been a good idea. Which I guess is Dipper’s point...his flaw here is expecting things to go according to plan. More on that later.

Okay so, I know we’re assuming (unless it’s Word of God or otherwise confirmed somewhere?) that Robbie says he doesn’t remember Dipper from the convenience store because of the Society...but you know the vibe I got from his “No”? (Next paragraph has spoilers for a recent Steven Universe episode. Skip if you haven’t seen/care.)

When Yellow Diamond told Peridot she didn’t remember being called a Clod. Which, for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here because this is about Gravity Falls, not Steven Universe, I never bought for a second.

Which of course, makes me wonder if it’s actually the Society, or just a simple case of Robbie being a jerk and lying because he doesn’t like Dipper and the entirety of The Inconveniencing is super embarrassing to him. I know it’s weird to be making theories that make Gravity Falls less weird and conspiracy-heavy, but what if.

Also. Paper Jam Dipper is fucking Nightmare Fuel personified. Just. Fuck.

I can’t help but wonder if Grendas “I use to sing like that before my voice changed” is real or just jealousy talking?

Random thought. Where did Dipper get the bike helmets for 3 and 4?

...Dipper had the perfect opportunity and instead of taking it he just...panicked and made a shitload of clones for reasons I can’t quite figure out. ...and yet I can totally relate.

Haha Soos is like a kitten and I love it. I also love that Stan completely knows better and still falls for the money on the fishingline trap.

Oh hey, the first we see of Dipper’s birthmark.

“I think we all knew we were lying.” Dipper 100% had reservations about this from the very beginning. He was the one who brought up the possibility of them getting jealous and turning on each other in the first place. And he STILL DID IT. ...hey...remember what I just said a minute ago about Stan falling for the money on the fishing line trick anyway? Did...did I just stumble across another thing Dipper has in common with Stan? When they want something, both of them will go against their own common sense to get it.

Seriously though, Paper Jam Dipper freaks me the FUCK out.

Also...when you set off sprinklers I’m pretty sure they don’t just...stop...going off like that when you stop needing them. Actually don’t they tend to go off through entire buildings instead of just one localized area? Dipper kinda almost ruined the party...unless he knew the sprinklers in the halls weren’t connected to the ones that I would hope are in the parlor? ...I’m over-thinking a joke again. But it’s a plot-relevant joke so I’m entitled!

Wow. Pascifica was really fucking awful at first. Like. Wow. I forgot how bad she was.

Also did Robbie just like...give up on his bike? What even happened there? I love Dipper and Tyrone falling back into sync though.

Oh hey, Stan caught the money.

Soos is so disappointed Pascifica won. I want to say that it’s ‘cause he really loves Mabel...but it might also be because of the aforementioned Pascifica being awful.

I want to say something about the conversation Dipper and Tyrone have on the roof but I’m really not sure what to make of it. I think on this viewing what really stood out to me was how weirdly calm Tyrone was while he was dissolving. Like, I guess all the clones were sort of...calmer then you’d expect from the rough equivalent of twelve year olds basically literally dying? But Tyrone especially so. His reaction was basically just “Don’t look now” and “I had a good run.” Which...honestly makes me a little bit worried about Dipper? I can’t quite articulate exactly what that worry is though. Somebody help me with this.

Dipper ripping up the list at the end is a really nice moment though.

#Gravity Falls #cybird says things #Double Dipper

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forthemultiverse · 6 years

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Young Justice Headcanons (2)

A Teenaged Night In

- They still found a way to blame Robin when they found out Batman had walked in on them again.

- Technically he was the one that set up the game station in the cave…

- And technically it was his hard drive of illegally downloaded TV Shows and Movies.

- It all began when Artemis outed that Dick and Wally weren’t available one night because they were at the Batcave, playing video games.

- M’gann asked what video games they played. having heard the time a few times at school, and instead of just welcoming everyone to the cave, Dick and Wally decided to relocate to the mountain.

- He linked the training simulator to the video game so it was like some super high tech virtual reality game.

- Wally and Dick started explaining how to play the game to the group and Kaldur picked it up immediately.

- He destroyed them all.

- They never saw him coming

- He’d just appear, score points, disappear and somehow gain even more points.

- Conner…not so much

- He’s a button masher but doesn’t know the actual combos

- No technique, just hit and hope for the best.

- They can’t let him play certain characters in fighter games because button mashing started to work for him and Dick refused to lose.

- They started a rotation thing, every one pairing up to try and complete one of the levels

- Dick and Wally are an unbeatable combination, they didn’t even need to communicate in full sentences.

- They just played off each other to destroy all of the bad guys

- Seeing them be such nerds and so successful set off the next part of the night.

- M’gann watched them and suddenly started singing Two-Player Game from Be More Chill

- Dick started joining in as he played, attempting to sing at the top of his lungs and still play well.

- Wally and he were distracted by the song and started stupidly dancing along to the words.

- When they completed the level and the song had stopped, everyone was laughing and wanted to know why Robin knew all of the words.

- “My dad supports theatre and stuff…” he carefully phrased. “But if we are introducing musicals, a throwback to the other night, we need to show them High School Musical.”

- “Oh my god yes!” Zatanna clapped

- That discussion turned into a full-blown debate

- They all knew that they had to show theme High School Musical, but what about all the other Disney movies?

- What order to you watch DCOMS and the normal Animated Movies

- And what about Pixar

- What about the Pixar Timeline

- Or the must-watch animated TV shows like Avatar The Last Airbender

(Fight me, we all know Wally or Dick would have watched it and worshipped it)

- They binged all three High School Musical movies, the group that already knew the words trying their best not to ruin the musical numbers

- They failed, Dick started singing and dancing ‘I Don’t Dance because it’s his jam (+he’s the youngest and a ball of sunshine with no self-control yet)

- They also starting ‘arguing’ about whether Sharpay was truly a bad character.

- They started Avatar the Last Airbender and made Kaldur do the water movement each opening credits.

- They also didn’t get very far into the episode because they kept making Kaldur copy Katara.

- They stopped because Artemis started thinking about M’gann’s love of ‘Hey Megan’

- She suggested they should watch Friends

- The thing about Artemis is, she didn’t have much of a happy childhood, and she certainly didn’t have all the TV channels or a Netflix account to watch all of these shows on.

- She watched them illegally from rooftops and closet when she was hiding from her dad. She’d watch every time he and Jade had an argument before Jade ran away.

- She binged hundreds of shows when joining Gotham Academy to try and fit in, she thought she’d understand all the references, but she was wrong.

- Watching the shows now, surrounded by a group of people who loved her, laughing out loud and saying whatever she wanted, without the fear of being found and told off/caught in the middle of an argument.

- Thinking about it all made her snuggle even closer to Wally’s chest.

- She wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

- Artemis and Wally started the clapping in the Friends Theme Tune since they had it on constantly when they had more relaxed dates.

- Soon M’gann joined in. Overly excited, and clapping far too many times since she didn’t know what the rhythm was.

- Soon everyone was clapping randomly.

- Dick and Wally started deliberately trolling the group by clapping out of time, or adding too many times.

- They watched the first three seasons and started classifying each other as the characters.

- They didn’t settle on anyone definitely because they all kept arguing.

- Some people would say Wally was Joey, since he used to flirt with everyone - but now he was with Artemis…it was harder

- Wally said Robin was definitely a Joey but no one agreed with him. They didn’t know Dick Grayson - ward of the billionaire playboy, the Dog who kissed Barbara Gordan in a closet during his fourteenth birthday party. (Dick identifies as Janice)

- Since they’d watched friends, Raquel said they needed to watch How I Met Your Mother, since she’d started watching it from the recommended section on Netflix.

- The Slap Bet is now banned from the mountain because if Conner manages to somehow win - you are screwed

- Plus, M’gann knows if you’re cheating to get extra slaps

- And Dick always wins, even if the bet is over something as small as the most popular ice cream flavour or the name of some random background actor.

- He then goes on a mini-rant how he’s constantly pressured by Batman and the second he lives home, he’s going to relax his head and focus on the things he wants to know - like people and real team leading, not just I always have a planning team leading.

- After the mini-rant, they needed something to lighten the mood. They could see the tension Robin’s feeling about Batman, and they aren’t ready to be the catalyst to their breakup.

- Wally suggested ICarly

- The Theme tune is all that’s heard from Kaldur’s room from that point forward for about a month and a half.

- Seddie versus Ceddie.

- They’re all team Seddie, and Dick totally doesn’t make them rewatch the first kiss from Season Five three times just because he can’t deal with how amazing it was.

- That pisses Wally off even more as the gang then say that a hopeless romantic like that couldn’t possibly be a dog/flirt

- Little do they know Dick just has emotional problems that stop him from expressing his hopeless love for people.

- They thought about all the videos of them up from their last non-superhero adventure and considered making their own little online show. Just some small vlogs about them training, or the stupid things Kid Flash does.

- They decided against ever publishing them since they can’t trust themselves not to use real names by accident (or just showing too much personality that would allow people to figure out who they are)

- Batman had said they were a team to work on the sly.

(cackling from a distance)

- Robin makes the Youtube channel anyway, just in case they ever change their mind.

- Zatanna also makes a team Instagram to post short videos or photos, they all have the password so they can post whenever they feel like it.

- They have to be careful they don’t accidentally post on their civilian account

(I reckon Dick fucks up one time, and that’s how the team find out his identity, but all the civilians just assume that something’s up with the Wayne’s so the team were brought in for protection)

- Watching ICarly leads them into looking at what exactly Dick has on his hard drive

- Phineas and Ferb came on by accident, and even though they’re all tired and half asleep, it’s too entertaining to turn off.

- It also got Wally in the mood for Snow Cones, due to the Swinter episode, meaning they attempted to make them, sending him and his superspeed off to grab the stuff for it.

- Watching Phineas and Ferbs starts an OG Team meme

- “Aren’t you kids a little young to be saving the world?”

- “Yes, yes we are,”

- Batman saw the social media account and wants to know what’s going on/ Why Dick hasn’t been home for over twenty-four hours?

- He walked into the mountain, and they were all too caught up in Snow Cones, lack of sleep, and kids cartoons to notice his arrival (even though the system announced it)

- He heard them laughing and thought about all the argument’s he and Dick had been having recently.

- He thought of Artemis’s stolen childhood

- How M’gann and Kaldur were now apart of earth culture, but they never grew up here, M’gann faced discrimination on Mars, Kaldur trained in magic. They didn’t get childhoods in their worlds, and they at least should get a moment of childhood here on earth.

- He thought of Zatanna, being forced to see Fate every time the Justice League was around, and how she can’t do anything to free her dad. Her family was so close, yet, she had still lost him.

- Raquel was inspired to help people by the team, that was her choice, but it still wasn’t fair. She may have chosen to give up a normal life, but she deserved a break.

- He thought of Conner. Clark was working harder to welcome Conner into his family, but it’s hard enough dealing with teenagers and Conner had appeared as a sixteen-year-old, and he was going to be that age forever. Conner was brainwashed to think he was a weapon; he deserved to feel like he was more than that.

- He retreated into the teleporter, disappearing away to let the kids have that weekend off.

- They deserved a weekend off, a night in.

- They deserved to enjoy teenaged culture.

Part One: Teenaged Night Out

Sorry guys, I wanted to write some cutie TV show stuff plus some sadness that was just on my mind. Hope people like it <3<3

xx Scarlett

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bird-pun · 6 years

Text

Seraphs and Sleepovers

I’ve had this WIP for months now and I finally decided to push through and finish it! Shout out to @hummingbird-pink who helped come up with some of the ideas in this

Summary: After finding out that Takayama hasn’t seen many movies, the bird club has a sleepover.

Words: like 2k

Surprisingly, out of all the references made throughout the months, no one knew Takayama didn’t watch movies until Umino brought up The Lion King.

The middle-schoolers were laying on the roof after a hard practice. A game of tag, training of flying techniques, and other things left the club of kids quite exhausted. Takayama was sitting peacefully besides Karasuma, who was lying on the floor, while Kamoda and Sagisawa chatted away. Umino was fumbling with her wings while humming a tune.

She kept humming what seemed to be a chorus, and despite how hard Karasuma wracked his exhausted brain, he couldn’t place the song despite the familiarity.

After a few seconds of gears turning, he finally gave in and asked Umino to name the song. Shocked, and a little embarrassed that she had been caught, Umino blinked before straightening up and smiling; “It’s from The Lion King! My brother made me rewatch it, and I’ve had the songs stuck in my head all day.”

Karasuma snorted slightly as he remembered the goofy film, and turned his head to see Takayama, whose head was tilted to the side, which confused Karasuma.

Takayama spotted Karasuma squinting at him, and returned it as if to humor him.

“Y’know, Disney’s The Lion King? 1994?” Umino continued.

Takayama shook his head. “Haven’t seen it.”

Karasuma stared wide-eyed at him as Umino screeched her disbelief. Takayama in return shifted, his palms pressed against the floor behind him.

“I...haven’t seen a lot of movies?” He replied shyly.

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?”

“No?”

“Frozen.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Tangled?”

“What?”

“Cinderella!”

“I think I fell asleep during that.”

Umino faked an offended gasp as Sagisawa and Kamoda joined in.

“What’s happening?” Sagisawa inquired.

“Umino’s having a crisis,” Karasuma replies, “because Takayama hasn’t seen The Lion King.”

“Oh you mean that Kimba, the White Lion ripoff?” Sagisawa blinks.

“Nevermind that!” Umino huffs. “He hasn’t even seen Tangled!!”

Sagisawa whistled “Now that is a crime.”

“My thoughts exactly!”

“Well then!” Sagisawa chuckles lightly, “In light of this recent news, I, the club president, demand a club movie marathon to teach our fellow comrade.”

Karasuma shot up. “What?!”

Sagisawa dramatically turned towards Karasuma, “We have to show Takayama the joys of Disney!”

“No, we don’t.” Karasuma pouted, crossing his arms.

“Are we having a sleepover?” Kamoda grins.

Sagisawa answers “yes” at the same time Karasuma yelled “no!”.

“We don’t have to-” Takayama begins.

“Nonsense! It’ll be fun.” Sagisawa grins. “Right?”

“Right!” Kamoda and Umino cheer.

Karasuma groans and plops on the ground.

…

Karasuma isn’t sure how he agreed to this. Damn it, Kamoda’s energy is just too infectious, and the grins on his friends’ faces did NOT help.

Which is how Karasuma found himself outside Sagisawa’s place the next day with a sleeping bag and backpack of essentials. Kamoda, who had walked with him there, was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked into the building.

...

The first thing Karasuma noticed in Sagisawa’s room were the dvds on the floor. Umino and Sagisawa were giddily organizing them as Kamoda and Karasuma stared in utter awe. Umino screeched happily and dove for a case, knocking down the careful stack Sagisawa had just finished, warranting a screech of his own. Umino tossed two dvds at the two boys on the side, Kamoda catching it, while Karasuma simply blocked it with his hand. He looked at the cover, now on the floor, and raised a brow at the image of two dogs eating pasta.

“What the fuck is this.” Karasuma stated.

“It’s fucking Lady and The Tramp. Have you not seen it?” Sagisawa snickered back.

“Oi, language.” Umino huffed from the pile of movies. Kamoda scooted over to her and the two started rebuilding the stacks.

“I’m not a movie guy.” Karasuma mutters, causing Sagisawa to snort.

“See, this is exactly why we need a movie marathon! Our local bellwether and our local cryptid need to see some classics.”

Karasuma rolled his eyes. “Speaking of cryptids, where is Takayama anyways?”

“Probably saving some dog?” Kamoda shrugged, as he placed two movies together, forming a tower.

“Maybe you should tweet at him?” Suggests Umino.

Karasuma’s ears grew hot. “It’s embarrassing!”

Sagisawa sighed and tossed the movie case at him. “Do it anyway.”

Karasuma steamed for a moment, before giving up.

But before Karasuma could even say the first syllable, Takayama had trodded into Sagisawa’s room.

They all stopped, and Takayama paused at the door, half way through the door frame.

“Uh, hi.” He said.

The others giggled as Karasuma growled into his hand.

…

“I really don’t understand why you bought so much pizza.”

“We’re growing kids with enormous appetites!” Sagisawa defends, stacking a third slice onto his plate. “Besides, it’s not a slumber party unless there’s boat loads of pizza.”

Karasuma smiled at that, although slightly annoyed. He grabbed a couple slices and sat back on the floor where the others were.

Umino had maybe 5 slices, but Kamoda had won with……

“What the hell? Why do you have 8 slices???” Karasuma demanded.

Kamoda pouted as he shoved a slice in his mouth. “I don’t to get up and miss the movie,” he mumbled through the food.”Takayama, are you going to eat those?” he points towards the small pile of picked-off pepperonis on the boy’s plate.

“Ah, no.” Takayama says, and leans forward to dump it on Komoda's plate as Kamoda giggles.

Sagisawa chews on his slice “You could’ve just said you only eat plain cheese pizza?”

“It’s fine,” Takayama slightly smiles.

“So what movie first?” Umino asks.

Takayama picks up a movie cover. “This?”

“Oh! Lilo and Stitch! That’s a good one!” Umino grins as she snatches up the disk from Takayama.

“Why aren’t we just using Netflix?” Karasuma mutters.

“It’s more fun this way!” Umino laughs, opening the disk player.

…

Several slices of pizza eaten, and several terrible jokes later, the movie ended.

“So, what’s everyone's thoughts on the -“ Sagisawa started to ask, before seeing Takayama’s practically sparkling eyes. “Liked it that much, huh?” He chuckled. Who knew Disney would be Takayama’s weakspot?

Kamoda giddily raised his hand “Ooh! Ooh! Are we watching more?!”

Sagisawa grinned. “Of course!!!! Karasuma, your turn to pick.”

Karasuma, who had been lazily laying on the floor, sat upright. “What!? Why me?”

“Because you haven’t seen any either! and because I said so,” Sagisawa pleaded.

Karasuma rolled his eyes half-heartedly, and pulled a random movie from the stack. His nose crinkled up.

“What?” Umino asked

Karasuma flipped the cover for her to see. Hercules was plastered across, smiling demigod and all.

Umino’s face screwed up “Hey! I love this movie!”

“It’s good, but it has a lot of mistakes!” Karasuma pouts back.

“Like what?”

“Titans didn’t look like that.” Takayama offers.

The rest of the club blinks.

“You know about Greek mythology?” Karasuma asks.

Takayama shrugs “A bit.” He smiles shyly, and shifts in his seat.

“Enough to point out every flaw in the entire movie?” Kamoda challenges.

Takayama doesn’t skip a beat. “Of course.”

He sounds so confident that Karasuma snorts. Umino laughs at Karasuma’s snort, and the rest dissolve into giggles. Even Takayama, who Karasuma had questioned if he even could laugh, was silently laughing along, hand over mouth.

Once Umino recovers, she plucks the DVD from Karasuma’s hand, and inserts it into the disc player.

“Let’s see how you do.” Umino beams.

….

“The underworld wasn’t a pit you jumped into.” Takayama points out, causing the other’s to laugh.

Umino places a few more scoops of ice cream into the blender. “We finished the movie 15 minutes ago and you’re still pointing out inaccuracies!” She’s grinning.

“It’s the most we’ve heard you talk!” Kamoda laughs, and dumps a few chocolates into the growing mess of milkshakes.

Takayama rubs the back of his neck. “Whoops?”

“Aw, don’t take it as a bad thing!” Sagisawa places the lid on the blender, much to Umino’s complaints. “It’s nice to hear what our friend says.”

Takayama grins, and adjusts in his seat while the blender runs. Karasuma, meanwhile, walks back into the kitchen after coming back from the restroom.

“Milkshakes? At midnight? Really?”

“No better time” Sagisawa grins back, and pours Karasuma a cup. He slides it over.

Karasuma is silent for a few moments. “Bet I can chug this in under a minute?”

Kamoda, mid gulp, almost shoots milkshake out of his nose from laughing. “You’re on!!”

Umino slams her hands on the counter “DO IT!”

Sagisawa raises an eyebrow, but laughs while doing it. He takes out his phone and tosses it to Takayama.

“Only if we can film it” Sagisawa grins.

Karasuma glares at him and the shake. “Fine.”

Karasuma raises the glass towards his friends. “I’m going to regret this.” And chugs.

…..

“I regret this,” Karasuma whines, sprawled out on the kitchen counter.

“I’m still suprised you actually did it,” Sagisawa offers.

“I though you were gonna barf in the homestretch,” Kamoda adds, sipping his own shake.

“Who the hell even made these? They taste like someone poured 3 packets of sugar in them.”

Takayama glances at Umino, and Umino brightly chirps a “No comment!” before chugging a part of her own shake.

Karasuma points his finger at her “My insides are now more sugar than blood.”

Takayama shrugs. “It could’ve used more chocolate.”

….

Kamoda tosses a few more blankets on the floor. “Do you think this is enough to make a fort?”

Umino grins “Plenty!”

Karasuma plops on the blankets “A blanket fort? Really? Aren’t we a little old for this?”

Umino huffs and plops a pillow on Karasuma’s face “You’re never too old to have fun!!”

Karasuma throws the pillow back at Umino, and she yelps to duck.

“Hey!!!”

Karasuma laughs as another pillow hits his face. Sagisawa grins as he holds more pillows in his ammo.

Karasuma grabs the pillow “Oh, this is war.”

Sagisawa laughs as he evades Karasuma’s pillow.

Umino grabs a stray pillow and throws it at Karasuma “Every Seraph for themselves!!”

“Hey, where’s Takayama?” Kamoda questions evading a pillow from Sagisawa.

“Good question!” Umino chirps from behind the couch.

Karasuma huffs. “I’m sure he’s around somewhere-“ a pillow hits Karasuma’s back, warranting an “AGH” as he trips forward.

“Hey.” Takayama laughs, holding a throw pillow.

Karasuma growls. “Damnit, Takayama! I’ll get you for that!”

Takayama laughs as he ducks the pillow, which hits Sagisawa instead.

……

After a grueling battle, the teens all lay on ground.

“I am so tired right now.” Kamoda groans, sprawled out on the floor.

Karasuma grumbles a “same” from the floor. Takayama, who's sitting on top of Karasuma’s back in victory, nods.

“Then I guess we should turn in for the night?” Suggests Sagisawa, stretching as he stands up.

“I’m going to steal all of these blankets” Umino laughs, scooping a bundle of them up.

Takayama rolls off Karasuma and onto the floor with a thud.

“What, just going to sleep on the cold floor?” Karasuma jabs.

“Maybe so.” He replies, but doesn’t say anything when Sagisawa plops a blanket and pillow on top of him.

“What time is it anyways?” Sagisawa asks.

Karasuma looks up from his phone “2:30 am”

“Waaah, that’s way too late!” Kamoda yawns.

Karasuma shrugs. “For you, maybe. Though I’m sure you’ll pass out soon.”

A loud snore is heard “Wow, that’s gotta be a record.”

“Umino is out, too” Sagisawa confirms.

“What the hell, I wish I could pass out that easily.” Karasuma groans.

“And now the three insomniacs are left.” Sagisawa chuckles.

“Yippee.”

The three grow quiet, with only the noise of their friends’ snoring and the sounds of the night to be heard.

A pause.

“I’m surprised there wasn’t a blackout.” Takayama states.

“Takayama, if we wake up 2 hours from now with a blackout on our tails I am personally going to kick your ass.”

The three of them laugh softly into the night.

#my writing #takayama sou #karasuma eishi #umino tsubame #sagisawa rei #kamoda mikisada #birdmen #no angst only fluff

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florencetheflowerfairy · 6 years

Text

Home

A Mimi x Miyako fic for the wonderful @transkoushirou!

Word Count: ~1,800

Peach, you happened to ask for the wlw pairing that I have the most headcanons for. I was so excited to write about them! Some of the ideas in this story are based on scenes that my sister has written with me over the years.

This was a confidence booster for me and I hope it makes you happy!

Home

Miyako stood still in the airport terminal, staring at the screen listing incoming flights. A crowd of people bustled around her. Most of the travelers ogled her for a minute before hurrying on their way. She couldn’t blame them. Miyako was holding a bouquet of no less than 100 pink roses.

Sora had tried to help her create a flower bouquet. But all of Sora’s designs were too…simple? Tasteful? They simply weren’t enough. Tachikawa Mimi deserved the absolute best. As she thought that, Miyako bit her lip. She carefully adjusted her grip so that she could reach up with one hand to flatten her hair.

The status of Flight 0206 changed to “Landed.” Miyako gasped and nearly dropped the flowers. She held them tight and fixed her gaze on the stairs instead. After 20 minutes, passengers started to trickle down. There were American tourists, Japanese businessmen on their cellphones, college students, tired families… But no sign of the most beautiful woman in the universe.

“Koushiro!” Miyako remembered talking to her old friend after Computer Club in middle school. “Mimi is visiting home from the United States!”

“Oh, right. Mimi. I think I heard that.” Koushiro didn’t look up from typing.

“It’s been so long!”

“Mm-hm.”

“I talk to her a lot online, but it’ll be much better talking to her in person!”

“Yes, she’s very good at talking. So are you. So it’s a good match.”

Miyako’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes? I mean you’re both energetic, so you match each other?” He sipped his oolong tea.

“Koushiro,” Miyako spoke seriously. “I’m in love with Mimi.”

Koushiro spat out his tea. “Oh! A romantic match! Uh...congratulations!”

She sighed. “Thanks. I’m glad to finally say it out loud. But it doesn’t always make me happy. It’s torture!”

Koushiro stroked his chin. “Yes, I suppose Mimi is way out of our league.”

Miyako was crestfallen at her club president’s words. Koushiro realized that he had said the wrong thing.

“I mean, she’s way out of MY league. But you’re the cool kind of nerd!”

“Thanks,” Miyako said sarcastically.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know! I don’t want to ruin everything!”

“Right. Maybe you shouldn’t tell Mimi,” Koushiro said unhelpfully.

The door swung open. “Tell me what?”

The computer nerds gasped. There was Mimi, standing in the doorway. She wore a sequined jacket over a white dress. Her hair was curled and blonde. Miyako imagined that a spotlight was shining on her. Then Miyako panicked at sudden stage fright and ducked under the desk.

Mimi laughed. “I was summoned by the sound of my name! Were you two talking about me?”

“No,” Koushiro lied faithfully. “How—how much did you hear?”

Miyako squirmed under the desk. She pinched herself, hoping that she would wake up from this nightmare.

“I didn’t hear anything interesting or I wouldn’t be asking, you silly goose!” Mimi lilted. “You know I’m not smart enough to understand computer gibberish anyway.”

“Uhh…” Koushiro stuttered as Mimi walked forward.

Then Mimi knelt on the floor and smiled at the cowering girl. “Hi Miyako. Are you all right?” Miyako finally met Mimi’s eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry that I scared you by being so dazzling!” She offered Miyako her perfectly manicured hand.

Miyako accepted it and both girls rose to their feet. Miyako felt breathless. “Mimi, I…”

Mimi giggled and blushed. “I missed you too.”

“I…Mimi…youuuuu…”

Behind the girls, Koushiro covered his face in hands.

“MIMI WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME?!” Miyako shouted. Mimi’s jaw dropped. Koushiro peeked through his fingers curiously.

“Oh Miyako…” Mimi squeezed the girl’s hand. “I would love to go out with you. But you know I’m only staying for two weeks, right? Then I’m going back home to New York.”

“I don’t care!” Miyako said.

Mimi grinned. “I like that attitude!”

“You should sit down. I can take a turn holding the flowers,” Hawkmon offered, the perfect gentleman as always.

“You’re too tiny to hold something this big,” Miyako argued. She sat down on one of the airport benches. It had been almost an hour since Mimi’s flight landed. The other travelers had already picked up their luggage. Where was Mimi?

She remembered her first kiss with Mimi. They had partnered for a mission in the Digital World. They were flying on Aquilamon through the clouds. Unlike clouds in the real world, these clouds felt solid. They were bouncy to the touch, like a rubber ball made of water. Miyako was itching to study the consistency of the strange matter.

Mimi was sitting behind her on the bird digimon, her arms around the girl’s waist, her chin resting on Miyako’s shoulder. Truthfully, it was hard for Miyako to focus on the mission with Mimi so close to her. Mimi had recently announced that she would be going to college in New York City. She threw a big “going away” party for all of her friends. Mimi had so many friends. She chatted easily with them all. But she was obviously the most emotional when she said good bye to Jyou, Sora, and Koushiro. Miyako didn’t know what to say when it was her turn…

Miyako suddenly felt Mimi’s fingers on her cheek. She blinked rapidly.

“Are you crying?” Mimi whispered.

Miyako sniffed. Mimi tilted her face towards her. Miyako realized that there were tears in Mimi’s eyes as well. Mimi smiled bashfully.

Miyako twisted herself around and grabbed Mimi’s arms. Mimi’s eyes widened. Miyako leaned closer and hesitated. “Is this okay?”

Mimi nodded. Miyako kissed her.

In all the world, there was no one as special as Mimi. So far from the real world, so high above the Digital World, Miyako had her all to herself. It wasn’t her first kiss, but nothing, nothing could ever compare to this.

Mimi suddenly squealed and pushed them both off of Aquilamon’s back. Miyako screamed and Aquilamon shouted. But they both landed pleasantly on a bouncy cloud, holding each other tight. Mimi giggled madly. Miyako grinned and ignored her digimon’s scolding voice above them. She rolled Mimi over and kissed her again.

Years later, Miyako got a phone call in the middle of the night. She groaned and reached lazily for her glasses. After she put them on, she read the name on her cell phone and perked up. She quickly answered. “Mimi? What’s up—?”

Mimi was crying.

“Mimi!”

“It’s over…”

“What? What’s over?” Miyako was scared. Why did Mimi have to live so far away?

“My television career!” She sobbed.

“Don’t say that. Your career can’t be over. You’re too young!”

“You don’t understand… I just quit my internship. Riggs said that he only hired me because I was pretty. I can’t work for that man!”

Miyako’s heart sunk. “That bastard. I’m so sorry.”

“What’s the point of staying here? People aren’t interested in my ideas. They don’t care about what I think. They only care what I look like!”

“That’s not true!”

“What do you know? You belong with smart people!” Mimi sobbed again.

“Mimi…” Miyako waited for Mimi to calm down. “Please, you can’t give up. The world is a lot bigger than Riggs. You have so many friends—you have so many people who like you—it’s not because of what you look like! People admire you because you’re confident! You can do anything! You flew halfway round the world for your dream. You inspired an army of digimon to follow you. Mimi, I would—we would all follow you anywhere!”

“But I’m not always confident…” Mimi sniffled. “I can’t be confident every day. I’m homesick all the time.”

“That’s okay!” Miyako insisted. “I get homesick just…thinking about you…But I know you’ll be okay. This isn’t the end of everything, Mimi. You’re having a rough time. It’ll get better. Think on the bright side. You’re passing all your classes. Your YouTube channel is starting to get more views! And—and most importantly, you have so many people who love you and will support you no matter what happens. Because you’re a star to all of us already!”

Mimi was quiet for a moment. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Miyako cringed at how loud her voice was.

“Thank you for answering my phone call at whatever godforsaken time it is in Japan.”

“2:47 AM.”

Mimi sighed and Miyako giggled, which made Mimi giggle too.

“Good night, my love,” Mimi said.

Miyako and Hawkmon had been waiting in the airport for nearly two hours. She had set down the giant flower bouquet, and was rewatching one of Mimi’s YouTube videos. Mimi had invited Daisuke to cook ramen with her for the “season finale” of Mimi’s American Cooking Tour. It was the last video that Mimi had filmed before graduating college. Both Mimi and Daisuke were consummate entertainers. Miyako kept laughing at their jokes, even though she had seen this before.

The video ended with Ken entering Mimi’s apartment to pick up his boyfriend, and then the cooking show hosts forced him to eat the finished ramen. Ken obliged and noted that it tasted excellent. Daisuke kissed him in response. Ken shouted to turn off the camera. Mimi argued that it was the season finale and everyone loved seeing cute boys kiss! But she finally turned the camera away from the boys so that she and Palmon could do their signature sign-off. Palmon promised Mimi’s fans that they would return with more content from Japan. Mimi picked her up and spun around happily. Then the video ended.

“Customs must be giving Palmon a hard time,” Hawkmon said sadly. Miyako nodded. She suspected the same. It didn’t matter to government officials that Palmon had helped to save the world, or that thousands of more children around the world were getting digimon partners. Palmon was still dangerous in their eyes.

“What a lousy way to end their trip,” Miyako muttered. Then she shook her fist at the ceiling. “Poor Mimi! She deserves the whole world!”

“Did somebody say my name?”

Miyako gasped. She grabbed the rose bouquet off of the floor and scrambled to her feet.

Mimi seemed to float down the stairs. She wore an emerald dress, and her long pink hair flowed behind her. Even though she had just flown in a plane for fifteen hours, she had the poise and composure of a queen.

“Mimi! Your girlfriend bought you flowers!” Palmon exclaimed. Miyako blushed.

“Aah!” Mimi hurried to Miyako’s side and opened her arms for the flowers. “Thank you Miyako! You darling!” Mimi was so happy that Palmon glowed and became Togemon on the spot. The other travelers in the airport terminal gave the giant cactus a wide berth.

“Welcome back, Mimi,” Miyako said. “I love…making you happy!”

Mimi handed the bouquet to Togemon, who held it carefully in her boxing gloves. Then Mimi threw her arms around Miyako and hugged her fiercely.

“I’m home.”

#Miyako Inoue #Mimi Tachikawa #Miyami #Koushiro Izumi #Miyako and Koushiro #and this story has just a dash of Daiken ;)#because why not #my fanfiction #my drabbles #(I know it's not technically a drabble at this point)#Thank you so much for asking!!!#transkoushirou #0206 is a reference to season 2 episode 6 #:)#Femslash February

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