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whaddayadothatfor · 1 year

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Shit Outta Luck

Pairing: Gojo x fem!afab!reader x Nanami, mostly Gojo x Reader

Content warnings: Free use, dub-c*n, dirty talk, excessive amounts of c*m, degradation, teasing, naked female clothed male (kinda), cliffhanger

Word count: 2,595

Summary: One day your best friends Nanami and Gojo come over to hang out and help you pack to move. You end up stuck under your bed. Instead of helping you out, they help themselves.

AN: This is so ridiculous y’all. Unedited. Thanks to my bestie for hyping me up when I was writing this. Please like and reblog if you enjoyed it! ❤️

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, intended for audiences over 18+

Chapter One:

You can’t believe this is happening to you.

To think, the day has started off so normal. Maybe that should’ve been a hint. You’ve had the worst luck since grade school. You were always the kid to scrape your knee on the playground or get random bruises bumping into desks or walls. Hell, you even managed to be the only person to get bird poop on your cap and gown during your high school graduation. A series of unfortunate events. You’ve got the coordination of a preschooler and shitty luck. It’s a rare occasion when things work out well for you.

That’s why you should have been wary when you woke up early this morning, even without your alarm. You really should have caught on when the your face was free of breakouts and your shower was warm and toasty. Maybe you should’ve clued in when you found your comfort hoodie tucked squarely in the middle of your doom pile your desk chair. It had been missing for over two weeks and you hadn’t even washed it since the last time you wore it and it still smelled like laundry detergent. The last straw should have been having a perfectly normal breakfast, with perfectly seasoned eggs and a sweet coffee at just the right temperature. That really should have sealed the deal.

But alas, you’re as oblivious as you are unlucky.

Earlier

You scrolled through TikTok as you finished your breakfast and began making a mental

note of all the tasks you should complete today. Nanami and Gojo, your two best friends since uni, promised to help you bring your heavy furniture and boxes down to the moving truck and then move them up three flights of stairs into your new apartment. If there was one source of luck in your life, it’d be those two.

It was your sophomore year of college and the both of them happened to take the same upper division course you had signed up for that semester. Initially, you were nervous at being in a group with both of them, as they both were the most popular and attractive boys in your major. A feat, since all three of you attended one of the largest universities in Japan. However, you were amazed at how well you got on with both of them. You were calm enough to deter Gojo’s hyperactivity but energetic enough to bring Nanami out of his shell. For some reason, your group dynamic just worked.

They stuck to you like glue for the rest of University. You had lost touch a little after graduation, but then you had moved to the same city they lived in a year later. It was nothing to slip back into your old routine. Now, being with them both was as normal as brushing your teeth in the morning.

And it would keep working, as long as you could pretend to not notice how goddamn fine they were. That’s really why you had been friends so long. They had told you as much in University. They were sick of women on campus treating them like meat. They liked the fact that you only ever treated them like people. So, you hide how you feel about them and keep them at an arm’s length, so they never figure out the truth.

You finished the last bit of your breakfast and put your dishes in the sink before heading back to your room to finish packing up your things. The rest of the apartment was ready to go, but you had saved your room for last. Mostly because it had the most clutter and you had the worst habit of not cleaning your room well, something Nanami always chided you for. He was a stickler for neatness, after all. Anyway, Gojo said that he’d be by in an hour and Nanami said he’d come by after work, so you wanted to make sure that the bulk of your room was decluttered and packed up by then. So you set off to work, pulling up a playlist and busying yourself tidying things up and placing trash and old boxes into trash bags. After about 45 minutes, you decided to start cleaning the mess up under your bed.

And that’s how you found yourself in your current predicament.

Present

You can’t believe this is happening to you.

You really, really can’t believe this is happening to you.

You had gotten stuck, under your bed. It was like a scene straight out of a bad porno. You were cleaning up under bed, pulling different bins and Knick-knacks out from under it when your watch had gotten caught on something deep up under your bed. It was an older bed, with a brassy-colored metal box spring. Somehow, and you don’t know how (because you have been wracking your brain on how this could have happened for the past ten minutes) in the process of trying to untangle your watch from whatever it was caught onto, you tangled your hair into the box spring.

So, let’s recap:

You’re stuck. Under your bed. With your two best guy friends on the way. One of which is a notorious little shit who loves to tease you in any given situation. Your whole bottom half of your body exposed. With only a hoodie and spandex exercise shorts on. Face down, ass up.

You can’t even call for help as your phone is on the dresser at the opposite side of the room and Siri has, you think, purposely misunderstood your calls for help as a request to play Help! by the Beatles.

You don’t even like the Beatles.

The slight anxiety you had at being trapped did not hold a candle to the humiliation you’d feel once Gojo came in. You wished belatedly that Nanami was coming over first. He would have been much nicer about the whole thing. Or better yet, that you saw the signs early. You never have such an easy going day, you should’ve known something like this would happen.

Just as you were wallowing in self-pity at your own life choices, you hear the door unlock and tense up. You really regret giving Gojo a key to your place.

“Oh honey, I’m home!” His irritatingly deep voice calls out mockingly in a high pitched tone. Even when he’s goofing off he sounds sexy. You hate that about him. And when he finds you in the stupidest, most embarrassingly compromising position of your life, you know that he’ll hold it over your head until you die. Even at your funeral, he’d bring it up. You hated that about him more. You heard him plop his keys on the counter in the kitchen before calling out to you.

“Hello? Anybody home?” You remained silent, hoping he’d think you stepped out and leave. But no such luck. You heard his footsteps inching closer and closer to your bedroom. “I brought your favorite. A matcha latte,” he called out.

That jerk, you thought. He knows you hate Matcha lattes. He brought it just so he could drink it. Suddenly, you heard the door open.

“Y/N?”

You scrunched your eyes closed, desperately wishing that you could be anywhere else than you were in that moment. You anticipated laughter at any moment, but strangely it didn’t come.

“What happened?” You jumped at the sound of his voice. He sounded much closer than he did a moment ago.

“W-well, I was cleaning from under my bed and I got caught on something and now I can’t get out. Can you help me?” The embarrassment welled up inside you, causing you to stutter. Gojo said nothing for a while.

“Yeah, okay.” His voice sounded deeper, huskier than normal. It was strange as usually he put on this silly facade to lighten the mood. He was never this serious. “I’ll have to feel around a bit to see where you’re stuck, I don’t want to hurt you.” You nodded, and you were touched. A pang of guilt struck you. Maybe you didn’t give Gojo enough credit as a friend. You promised yourself you’d treat him better in the future.

Suddenly, you felt a hand caress the back of your thighs, moving closer and closer to your ass. You jumped a little.

“G-Gojo? What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you. That’s what you asked for, right?” He said, playing dumb. He continued touching you more boldly, squeezing your cheeks firmly before caressing your thighs again. You were too stunned to say anything until one of his thumbs lightly stroked your clit over your shorts. You jerked away from him, but your options to escape were limited.

“What the hell are you doing?” You screamed at him in frustration, in more ways than one. You should have never given him the benefit of the doubt. This kind of humiliation was much worse than any other kind you could think of. When you get loose, his ass is grass.

Worse, he was turning you on with his manhandling and gentle touches. You couldn’t help it, you hadn’t been fucked in over a year since your last situation ship and the only thing that had kept you company was your rose toy.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he cooed, rubbing your clit in a slow circular motion before stopping and running his hands all over your ass again. “I promised to help you. I think it’s a tight fit down there, so I’m gonna help you loosen up, that’s all. Then you’ll be able to slide right out, no problem,” he said.

His tone was saccharine sweet, but his actions were anything but. You wanted to protest, but he stopped you.

“Just relax. I can tell by that wet spot on your shorts that you’re really enjoying this.” Your face burned with embarrassment, and all your protests died down in an instant.

You focused instead on choking back heated whimpers and moans because you’ll be damned if you let him know how good he is at making you feel. And he is good. His touches are so experienced, you start getting mad at the imaginary women who taught him how to fuck that well. Although you wouldn’t be surprised if he was just naturally that good. He seems like the type.

It was almost as if he could tell that your mind was headed somewhere else, because he slowly pulled your spandex shorts and thong down in one go and that jolted you back to reality.

“Gojo,” you warned, but he ignored you as usual.

“A thong?” He questioned. And you could almost hear his eyebrow being raised.

“I packed the rest of my underwear! Plus, no one likes panty lines,” you mumble, embarrassed. He just chuckled at you.

“It’s okay baby, though in the future I’d rather you not wear anything at all.” Before you had any time to think about what he meant in the future, he licked a stripe up from you clit damn near to your ass. While you managed to stifle your moan, you couldn’t hold back the shudder that wracked your body.

“C’mon, don’t hold back. It’s no fun for me if you do,” he rang out. He paused. “Actually, try to stay silent. It’ll make it more fun for me knowing that I made you scream when you tried not to.” He chuckled, and you could feel his warm breath cover the expanse of your pussy as he spread your lips wide.

He proceeded to eat your pussy like it was his last meal.

All you could hear was him smacking and slurping up your wetness. He left no area untouched, especially your clit. He alternated between swirling his tongue around your nub and sucking on it till it was puffy and swollen. Your cries of pleasure only spurred him on, making him moan as you grinded back on his face.

Gojo attached his lips to your clit once again, humming this time as he sucked and licked all around it. It was too much. You kicked one of legs out in hopes that you’d receive a reprieve— no such luck. Gojo caught it and put it back into its original position. He chuckled with his lips still suctioned to tour most sensitive part. The sensation had you crying out, trying to run away. Finally, Gojo let go.

“Oh, c’mon. Is that all you can take? I remember all those conversations you’d have with your girlfriends, about how men never satisfy you. Can never go long enough. Are you running from me because you don’t like it? I can do more if you like.” He said teasingly. When you didn’t respond, he slapped your pussy, hard.

“You’re hurting my feelings, sweetheart. Answer me,” his tone, although still lighthearted, turned mean.

“Yes, Gojo, please, I-I can’t,” you responded, breath airy and sparse.

“Please what? I can’t help you relax if you don’t tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

“C-cum. I need to—“ you broke off your sentence with a moan, but it was enough for Gojo.

“Your wish is my command, princess.”

He worked you up until you were at the precipice of an orgasm, except this time he didn’t stop, not even after you tumbled over edge. You had never come that hard from oral, ever. Hell, you had never come that hard in general. He ate you out until the aftershocks of your orgasm died down. He stopped for a moment.

“You know, I still think you’re a bit tense. I think after another orgasm or two I’ll really be able to help free you.”

You moaned in response, still a bit out of it from your last orgasm. Gojo spit a thick glob of spit on your pussy, landing right on your hole before sticking two of his long slender fingers inside of you. It was an uncomfortable stretch and your whine said as much. You hear him unbuckle his pants with the hand that’s not on you as he shushes you.

“Just relax. I’ll make you feel good soon.”

An hour later

“Yes,” Gojo moaned out, deep and guttural, as he sunk into you. The stretch was so much worse than his fingers. You now understand why he made you come so many times. The burn would have been unbearable otherwise. Still, the slow sink into you had you writhing as much you could, still being trapped under the bed and between Gojo’s strong hands.

“Fuck, I knew I should have done this years ago. You feel better than I ever imagined.” You mewled as he sank in all the way to the hilt. He gave you no time to adjust as he slowly started to thrust in and out.

Everywhere felt so hot. You could hardly stand it. Gojo was merciless and soon set an unrelenting pace that had you curling your toes. It was a heady experience, one that made it hard to think about anything else except how hard and hot Gojo felt inside of you.

“I never should have listened to Nanami,” he muttered angrily.

“W-what? Are you—“

“I have been fantasizing about this moment since the moment I first met you, but I. Never. Thought. It’d. Be. This. Good. Fuck!” He shouted as he came. He stilled, his hips jumping slightly as he dumped his come into you. It only made you hornier. He languidly fucked his come deep within you. His tired voice rang out, but not to you.

“I bet you wish you had gotten here earlier, huh Nanamin?”

You froze.

#jjk manga #jujustsu kaisen x reader #gojo satoru #nanami kento #gojo x y/n #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x female reader #Gojo Satoru x afab! reader #nanami x reader #Nanami kento x reader #gojo x reader smut #nanami x reader smut #nanami x fem!reader #gojo x fem!reader #jjk smut #smut #jjk fluff

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cellarspider · 1 month

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25/?? Eschatology for Dummies

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Once again, we dive into that font of madness, Prometheus. I lied last time, we’re not talking about language today, I want to bash my head against the problem of “what in blazes is the intent of this movie”.

As the expedition enters the alien structure, suddenly Shaw remembers that germs can float.

“Wait. We still don’t know how Holloway got infected. If it’s in the air–”

This is one of those maddening little moments where the script tells me that no, the earlier removal of helmets was not just the oversight of someone who didn’t know better. The script chose violence.

“Smells fine to me.”

So does VX nerve gas. Truly, this is the mental acumen required to become rich.

The movie attempts to raise tension through a ZOOM AND ENHANCE, and cluing in those in the audience who may have been thinking “Ha! Foolish Engineers! How would they ever destroy life on Earth if they don’t have any spaceships?”

Well, turns out, there are these great big buildings called “hangars”, and you can put spaceships in them, sometimes even under the ground. I almost feel like if they hadn’t buried the ship, Holloway would’ve tried to see if he could do a burnout in it.

David, meanwhile, is having a great time. He’s giving a guided tour of the ship (that he explored more thoroughly than anyone else), pointing out their technology (that he learned how to use), explaining what they were doing (which he figured out before anyone else did), and assuring Weyland that yes, he can talk to the Engineer (which no one else can do), blithely skating by the reasons why he knows Holloway didn’t die from an airborne illness and how the Engineers were going to press the reset buttons on Earth. Simultaneously excelling at what he was supposed to do and also anticipating Weyland’s inevitable doom, possibly even that of humanity as a whole. It feels appropriately childish for a character that’s extremely young, extremely smart, and has had the worst socialization this side of Immortan Joe’s war boys.

Weyland doesn’t care about any of that, because he’s a horrible homunculus of an old Englishman formed out of a forty-five year old Aussie. This continues to vex me, even now. I keep trying to figure out why they did this. Did they originally intend for him to be depicted as young and change their mind? Was the mobility aid exoskeleton thing they put him in heavy and cumbersome? It’s hard to see in these screenshots, but he is wearing one.

Honestly, just have Lance Henriksen play another Weyland again. Lance can definitely play scumbags, and it would honestly be funny to have every single Weyland in every single time period played by him. Have him play Vickers too, for good measure. It would’ve taken me out of the film less than this.

At this point, I personally did not care about any characters besides David and the Engineer. Which is a very strange position to find oneself in, caring most about two characters who seem just fine with humanity going pft!

And I’d like to examine that. Because fiction can put you in all sorts of strange headspaces that can be thoroughly contradictory to personal morals and self-interest. What was the movie trying to do here, and where has it ended up?

I want to start with some assumptions that mass media tends to make. Fiction, in general culture, is often presented as a moral lesson. Your protagonists are virtuous, and anything that stands in their way is villainous evil. The protagonists are also expected to be likable, and the audience is expected to root for them. A moral tale of who is worthy and who is not.

This is only a small piece of what fiction is. No one of these things is required. Villains are not required, sometimes problems aren’t caused maliciously. Protagonists do not have to be moral. Moral characters don’t have to be likable. You don’t have to root for the protagonists. And none of these divisions are binary.

I am uncertain whether we are supposed to root for the protagonists in this movie. Ridley Scott isn’t a stranger to this idea–look at Blade Runner (1982). Is it good that Deckard hunts down fugitive replicants? No. Absolutely not. Is it a compelling story? Yes! It’s beautifully told and tragic! If you make me watch Roy Batty’s monologue I will cry.

So. It is entirely possible that we are supposed to find the human characters unsympathetic. The Engineers created humanity, and then decided to destroy it. This could have been planned from the start–many religions describe cyclical, world-ending death and rebirth, after all. But this movie is heavily influenced by christianity. Those sects that believe in a destructive apocalypse call it the Last Judgment of humanity, something that occurs when the world has fallen into a state of corruption.

Which then brings us to the question: Does humanity deserve that most fatal judgment?

I mean, in real life, I’d say no, absolutely fucking not. The problem of a suffering world is not sanely responded to with “I’ve got a solution: murder everything”.

This is fiction, though. We are being presented with a vision of humanity. This has the potential to be a counterpoint to the Engineers’ thinking, or their evidence, or a mix of both.

What is it, then? Most of the cast are morons, selfish, or featureless ciphers. They are a very pessimistic view of humanity. And remember, this is fiction. People don’t need to act like real people. When you think about redeeming qualities in yourself, in your friends, in your favorite so-and-so, this fictional realm does not necessarily contain them. In its barest form, it only contains the characters we see.

We’ve got Janek, who’s been charming and indicated he’s willing to stop the Engineers here, but that’s all we know about him. He’s also behaved in negligent ways that contributed to the deaths of Millburn, Fifield, and the nameless guys mutant Fifield wailed on. Christian morality is big on redemption as a path to unconditional absolution, so is he redeeming himself through a last-minute sobering up? Maybe. I’d note he’s missing the “confession” and “recanting past sins” parts that are usually bundled up with that.

We’ve also got Shaw. Shaw has all the makings of a Final Girl, somebody who is destined to survive the plot. They usually have some redeeming quality that makes you want to root for them. What does Shaw have?

Well, she’s got a never super-defined strain of christian faith. And she’s had a really shit time lately, so it would be cruel to watch her get kicked around more.

So, that’s two. Two could be enough in Abrahamic religions–Lot flees from Sodom to Zoar, and it’s spared from destruction because of its presence. Sure, he does some Weird Shit, but he qualified as righteous by whatever standards were at play there. But Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for want of ten righteous people.

And all that gets more complicated in New Testament stuff, after God’s pinky promised not to destroy everyone again, except for the aforementioned Last Judgment thing. Is this movie, as christian allegory, advocating for a god of forgiveness, or depicting a just god who punishes the wicked?

No idea. It doesn’t have to be clear, obviously, fiction doesn’t have to be clear, any more than it has to be moral. I didn’t personally want the Engineer to sail off and destroy Earth, but frankly, I could see it from that perspective, given what this poor bugger’s met with upon waking up.

Next time: our Engineer wakes up from a two thousand year trauma nap to find some little monkeys yelling at them. Surely, this will go well.

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Alt-text rambles:

https://extra-images.akamaized.net/image/8a/5by6/2021/04/17/8a6f54c4f0ca4bd397cc22aceb4cb30e_md.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torc

#Prometheus 2012 #Prometheus (2012)#This movie keeps trying to be biblical and I keep trying to meet it half-way on the analysis #only to be left hanging like the movie wandered off in the middle of offering up a high-five

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dustedmagazine · 1 year

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Music for Films, Vol. III: Night of the Dying Punks

“Send more cops.”

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Depending on how you’re ideologically situated, you may find that the funniest line in Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead (1985). The joke skirts the boundary of transgression, with some surprising chutzpah. Return of the Living Dead is, after all, a gag film, among a spate of gory horror-comedy flicks that proliferated in the 1980s and ran an extensive gamut, from the brilliant American Werewolf in London (1982) to the bonkers Evil Dead 2 (1987) to the utterly demented Re-Animator (1985; and for reasons obvious to those who know the film, it’s hard to find a safe link to its most infamously tasteless — ahem — moment; giving head has never been more awfully literalized). O’Bannon’s movie doesn’t have the gonzo visual creativity or the semi-satiric incisiveness that characterize the comic energy of those other, better films. But Return of the Living Dead has a sense of its subgenre’s history that allows its lowbrow cultural orientation to exceed its own limitations, more frequently than it probably has any right to. And it has a well-selected soundtrack.

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The film only incorporates a few seconds of “Eyes without a Face,” and it's hard to say how many ticketholders in those 1985 theaters would have been familiar enough with the song to appreciate the suggested pun: Flesh Eaters, har har. Of course, the pun’s obscurity may have been on point, since “flesh eater” is too broad a term. In the film’s iteration of the zombie mythos, the ghouls have a very specific appetite, rapturously intoning, “More brains!” The laffs cascade, and to be sure, Return of the Living Dead is often waggishly idiotic. The movie’s surface values are interested in satisfying simple, moronic pleasures, targeted to the young and primarily male audience attracted to horror flicks in the 1980s; see especially Linnea Quigley’s performance as young punk Trash, who spends nearly all her screentime naked or barely clothed. The gratuity of her nudity complements the lurid bloodshed, the dumb jokes and the movie’s revelry in its drooling, goofy trashiness.

The folks that built the soundtrack struck the right set of tones, matching that trashy sensibility. 45 Grave, the Damned and the Cramps are all represented, bands that operated on punk’s periphery and were as interested in campy humor as they were in aggro, hard-knuckled rock intensities. 45 Grave had always been more goth than punk, and the Damned was following a similar trajectory in 1985. But perhaps more than any other act on the soundtrack, the Cramps fit the film’s giddily queasy aesthetic. In 1985, the band was riding as high (in numerous senses of the word) as they ever would. Recently freed from legal wrangling with IRS Records that had prevented them from releasing new music for a few years, and fresh off a tour of the UK, where they were hugely popular, the Cramps had good reasons for happiness. But “Surfin Dead,” their contribution to Return of the Living Dead, is at best an inane confection, more honestly evaluated as a grab for quick cash. The song pales lifelessly in contrast with the kind of libidinally anarchic rock the band was capable of producing.

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“Tear It Up,” popularized by Johnny Burnette in 1956, is among the rockabilly and rhythm-and-blues tunes the Cramps transformed into feral rave-ups and torch-song nightmares: Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town” (1958); Mel Robbins’ “Save It” (1959); Hasil Adkins’ “She Said” (1964); Elvis Presley’s “Do the Clam” (1965); the Groupies’ “Primitive” (1966); the list goes on, at some length. The band’s interest in the pop detritus of an earlier period in rock music tracks alongside some of the more interesting cinematic aspects of Return of the Living Dead, whose young punks and middle-aged characters—notably Clu Gulager as medical supply huckster Burt and Don Calfa as mortician Ernie, in a nimble performance, by turns slyly funny and soulful—grapple with a mounting plague of zombies. As they struggle and bicker, their tactics and debates track alongside the plot and character tropes of another key text from the 1960s’ cultural underground, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968).

The references to Romero’s film start early in Return of the Living Dead. When medical supply workers Frank (James Karen) and Freddy (Thom Matthews) head down into a warehouse basement to gawk at some not-yet-animated corpses, O’Bannon quotes directly from Romero: the basement door, the wooden staircase, the lighting, the camera’s vantage all recall with precision a shot near the end of Night of the Living Dead, when Ben (Duane Jones) locks himself in the besieged and soon overrun farmhouse’s cellar. O’Bannon, who also wrote Return of the Living Dead’s screenplay, references other crucial moments from the earlier film: Ben and Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) arguing over whether it’s best to retreat into a space with a single entry and exit point; Tom (Keith Wayne) and Ben exiting the farmhouse in a doomed attempt to retrieve an escape vehicle. None of it ends well, in either film.

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Numerous critics and film historians have read that closing sequence of Night of the Living Dead as a lynching, a forceful response to the unsettled cultural anxieties intensified by the late-1960s radicalization of the Civil Rights movement. It appears to be a more serious engagement among pop culture, strongly coded symbolics and America’s repressed terrors when contrasted with the Cramps’ psycho-sexual freak-outs—but listen to Lux Interior work it out on “Fever” or “The Natives Are Restless” and the contagions may not seem so dissimilar. In any case, Romero’s additional zombie films incorporated satiric elements, some of them broadly comic (see Dawn of the Dead’s antic renditions of consumer culture) others sharper and more bitter. Day of the Dead, Romero’s third zombie movie and surely his bleakest, was released less than a month before Return of the Living Dead, in July 1985. It is certainly Romero’s most spectacularly violent film, in which an underground tunnel system full of scientists and military servicemen is invaded by a horde of ghouls. The climactic scenes of evisceration and intestine-munching carnage are prolonged and painstakingly horrendous.

Those images from Day of the Dead have an apocalyptic feeling, in tune with the film’s grim bunker mentality. It very much typifies its doomstruck, late-Cold War social context, when Reagan’s anti-Soviet rhetoric and enthusiastic support for nuclear missile systems intensified the superpowers’ antipathies. The film’s tunnel system may put you in mind of the underground warrens envisioned by some in Pentagon, through which mobile MX missile deployment technologies might move, evading Soviet tactical bombing assaults. Return of the Living Dead was made in the same context and atmosphere, and its response is much more emphatic.

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It is also a good deal clumsier, a violent tonal shift that is out of proportion with the movie’s own representations of violence. Those are largely cartoonish, characterized by explicitly silly gross-out enthusiasms. For the flick’s first 80 minutes, the bloody effects and occasional chills are in tune with the dominant atmosphere of dippy frivolity and cheap thrills. The sudden turn to social critique fails to instill either fear or rage. Put it this way: Imagine the Cramps attempting a straight cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” and you’ll have some sense for the weirdly wincing, mostly flat affect generated by the mushroom cloud in Return of the Living Dead. It wants to be horrific, or at least outrageous, but it ends in a shrug.

In that way, “Nothin’ for You,” the TSOL song on the movie’s soundtrack, ends up being oddly apt. “Nothin’ for You” found its way onto TSOL’s Revenge (1986), one of the records the band made while it coped with Jack Grisham’s departure and attempted a turn toward hard rock, aping the energies of younger Sunset Strip bands like Guns N’ Roses. One could note that the obvious TSOL song for Return of the Living Dead’s soundtrack would seem to be “Code Blue,” the necrophiliac anthem from the band’s death rocking LP Dance with Me (1981). But that song is distasteful in too confrontational a fashion. The vanilla, hair-metal-adjacent tones of “Nothin’ for You” are much more appropriate to the movie’s real imperatives: lascivious shocks, mild scares and lots of ticket sales.

So Return of the Living Dead provides a useful — if sort of unfortunate — index for the situation of transgressive cultural forms like horror cinema and punk music in the mid-1980s. Some genuinely interesting and intense horror films were being made; see Gerald Kargl’s Angst (1983), Brian DePalma’s Body Double (1984) and Day of the Dead for a selection among international, major studio and independent productions. And records by the Crucifucks, Black Flag and Butthole Surfers were continuing to move punk into discomfiting, vexing and exciting shapes. But the schlock was also arriving, in ever-increasing proportions that had the effect of diluting and even sanitizing the forms’ inherent sickness and threat. And when you’re working with already commodified genres, conceived at their core as commercial media, the dominant (and ultimately confining) logic of the culture industry can be hard to resist.

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Jonathan Shaw

#music for films #night of the living dead #jonathan shaw #dusted magazine #return of the living dead #the flesh eaters #the damned #the cramps #punk #horror cinema #tsol

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ask-marios-apprentice · 8 months

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The Hit

I don't know how to say this but...

There was a bounty on my head.

Well technically all of me.

It all started out as roughly a normal day. The flowers were blooming, Yoshi was still on the castle roof trying to avoid taxes. And I was in the gardens trying to perfect my wall jump technique.

Mario: Garth. you Don't slide on the wall. You might cut your hand on a brick or something.

Garth: But that's how it works in the games.

Mario: we went over this already. Not everything in the games reflects real life.

Garth: Keywords being "Not Everything" Mario Brothers 3 was a play in real life. Hotel Mario was based on a true story. And Clu Clu Land is one of the most accurate adventures on the KES.

Mario: We're all aware of the weird avant-garde play based on my life.

Garth: Based on the years of 1985

Mario: Just get down here so I can show you how to properly get it done.

I landed back on the ground. And not a moment too soon.

An arrow ended up hitting where my head would have been.

That would have made me loose like... a unit of health.

Then suddenly two more arrows followed.

That would have done me in.

Or least send me to the infirmary.

Mario: Mamma Mia. Who attacks someone like that.

Garth: I'm unsure. I'm just glad that they missed me.

We decided to head inside. Ending training for the day.

I decided to stay in the castle's throne room where Peach was having her weekly audience. It felt safer to be in a room with more than 10 people.

Unfortunately I had to leave after the audience ended.

I walked across the bridge to get to my home.

I felt a bit of Peace considering I probably could find sanctuary at my abode.

That wasn't till I saw frickin shirikens on my door.

I decided maybe it's best if I stick to crowds right now.

I would queue a montage. but I don't exactly have animation Studio on call

So I'll just bullet point the rest of the day.

Arrows at Astros

Shurikens at Burger Sync

Arrows at the comic shop

shurikens at warp org.

A tomahawk at Dreadpoint (that was unrelated)

Arrows at HEBuddy Grocery's

BOTH Arrows And Shurikens at my parents house.

I decided I would get to the bottom of this after having an arrow be shot in the Pollo of my Caldo and a shuriken cut the limes...

I met with them in a dark Agridulcian location

The Flamenco Bowl.

There i saw two people. A Starchild in a ninja get up. And a Niji dressed as Robin Hood.

Garth: so... Which one of you put the hit on me?

Ninji and Starchild: Neither.

Niji: That's not how it works.

Starchild: People will put a bounty on a person's head. And then bounty hunters will usually go and get that person.

Garth: wait are you assassins or bounty hunters?

Ninji: Bounty Hunter

Starchild: It depends on the job.

...

Garth: I want to know who put the hit on me.

Ninji: Fine. Let me get the laptop.

Both of them then set said laptop and put me on a video call with someone.

The caller ID said: Shiveria Max Security Penitentiary.

Pianta in prison suit: Is it done yet?

Garth: Um...no.

Pianta in prison suit:... Why is the target speaking to me.

Garth: "The Target" would like to have a word with you. For starters why did you want to send me to the afterward.

Pianta in prison suit: Do you seriously not know who I am.

Garth: No. Should I?

Pianta in prison suit: I am Pluto Ulpt. Son of S.K. Ulpt. Or should I say "the man whose dream you ruined"

...

Garth: wait. Like the creator of that giant teapot.

Pluto: It was called [a name I forgot].

Garth:It was gonna hurt people.

Pluto:...Screw it. Attack him.

Then they started attacking me with arrows and shurikens at me. And granted it was probably a bad idea to come to a meeting with two people hired to destroy you without any form of defense.

Thankfully my real plan came to action.

I got there a bit earlier and informed the owner to call for help.

It turns out you can actually call a bounty hunter on them they're Bounty Hunter.

After some tear gas and got dropped in.

I managed to avoid it by finding behind the pins.

That Bounty Hunter ended up taking the other two in for a hefty reward of 5,000 coins. Or at the very least hefty for modern day bounties considering these two.

Apparently Pluto might have an extended sentence due to hacking the computer lab computers at the penitentiary in addition to bring a hit on a future hero.

But he will probably get some new cell mates to keep him company.

That's pretty much all I have to say.

Garth signing off.

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martelldoran · 3 years

Note

WHAT'S THE CAUSALITY LOOP THEORY

Why Emma, thank you so much for asking. I’m not going to waste time before jumping into this because this is gonna get long so without further ado...

Steve Rogers’ Ending and How Endgame Doesn’t Support a Causality Loop and other such rambles

Last month, I came across a TikTok that proposed that Steve’s ending made sense because it existed within a causality loop. I would link the TikTok but I didn’t save it at the time and trying to find videos on that app is impossible. You think Tumblr’s search function is bad? 🙄 But I digress. The TL;DR of the video is that due to time travel and Steve choosing to go back in time to be Peggy’s husband, it created a causality loop where he was always meant to be her husband because he went back in time and stayed there. The TikToker supported his argument by using Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PoA), another film that uses time travel and has a clearly defined example of a causality loop. However, his argument is fundamentally flawed so I’m going to combine my knowledge of my two biggest fandoms to tell you why.

Continued under the cut because I have no chill. Beware, it's long.

To first tell you how Endgame (EG) doesn’t support a causality loop, we must establish how PoA does establish one and does it successfully. The TikToker specifically mentions the scenes that take place at Hagrid’s Hut surrounding Buckbeak the hippogriff’s execution, so we’ll look at those first. What the film does really well is establish early on that there is something weird going on well before anyone actually goes back in time. There are three things that happen in quick succession during this scene which sets up the causality loop we see later in the film. First, a rock flies through the window and breaks a jar. Second, another rock hits Harry in the back of the head. Third, once outside, Hermione hears a branch snap and thinks she sees ‘something’. There are also two additional moments later on in the film once the Harry, Ron, and Hermione have come out of the Shrieking Shack which should also be noted: a wolf howl that distracts Remus Lupin in werewolf form from attacking the group and somebody casting a full-bodied stag patronus at the edge of the lake to save Harry and Sirius from the Dementors.

Of these occurrences, the first is arguably the most important because it does the most to establish that there is something going on outside of the Trio’s current understanding of their situation. The film makes a point to frame the jar breaking as Important Information the Audience Must Remember because it shows a visibly confused Hermione reacting to it as she picks up the rock for closer inspection and we the audience are given close up of it in her hand. Not only is it framed front and centre in the shot but the rock itself is very distinctive. It’s almost wholly smooth but for a swirl of fossil, thus marking it as not just any rock but An Important Rock To Be Remembered. This was an intentional choice by director Alfonso Curon because he uses this rock to connect this moment to its mirrored scene later on once Harry and Hermione use the Time Turner.

The audience and the characters find out about the causality loop at the same time. There are clearly stated rules of time travel that say that they aren’t to meddle with time but when Harry and Hermione see that Dumbledore, the Minister for Magic, and the executioner are on their way to Hagrid’s hut they panic because their counterparts aren’t leaving. Then, we see Hermione notice something in the pumpkin patch: a distinctive rock, smooth with a swirl of fossil. Again, we see have a close up shot with the rock centred to show its importance. Stylistically, it’s very similar to the shot we saw earlier in the film which gives the audience an emotional pay off for noticing the connection. When Hermione throws the rock and breaks the jar, it sets the causality loop in motion. The jar was always going to break because they went back in time to throw the rock that breaks it.

And it’s the same with all the other instances. Hermione throws the second rock that hits Harry in the back of the head to alert him to the fact they need to get out of the hut. Hermione snaps the branch and is almost seen by her counterpart in the past. Hermione makes the wolf call to distract Lupin from attacking. Harry, and not his father as he had assumed, casts the patronus to save himself and Sirius from the Dementors. But each of these moments are set up clearly in the ‘first run through’ to set up their payoff when the characters realise, ‘Oh, I did these things. They were always meant to happen.’ From a narrative standpoint, these are planned out moments to clue the audience into the fact that there’s something bigger at play. It keeps them ‘in the loop’ as it were.

This doesn’t happen in EG.

To successfully have set up a causality loop that made sense and had the same kind of set up and pay off as we see in PoA, it would have had to have been established as early as 2014 in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (CA:TWS). This does not happen. One of the main themes of CA:TWS is moving on from the past. Peggy Carter herself even says, “I’ve lived my life, my only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.” Then saying soon after, “Sometimes the best thing we can do is to start over.” Peggy’s character in Captain America: The First Avenger is set up as someone who acts as the backup/back bone of Steve’s own moral compass. When Steve falters at Azzano about what to about the captured 107th, Peggy is there to remind him of what is right. She serves a similar narrative function in CA:TWS. Steve is struggling with life in the present. He’s just seen the helecarriers and argued with Nick Fury about protection vs fear after the botched Lumerian Star mission. Morally, he’s in turmoil and has turned to Peggy for council because he’s trying to find purpose in world where his rigid morality seems to have no place.

From the point of view of creating a causality loop, one would think that this scene in the hospital would be the place where an initial set-up could be made and alert the audience to the long term plan for Steve’s character. Instead, we have Peggy mourning the fact that Steve didn’t get to live his life the way it should have played out, and why would a woman who has supposedly been married to another version of Steve tell him to move on? In addition, when Steve visits the Smithsonian, he watches a video where he sees Peggy talking about how he influenced her life and how during one of his missions, he saved the man that would go on to become her husband. This is the only mention of Peggy’s husband in the entire franchise until Steve reappears as an old man at the end of EG.

Captain America: Civil War (CA:CW) also offers an opportunity to set up the causality loop at Peggy’s funeral but again, this does not happen. The only family we are introduced to is Sharon Carter, Peggy’s grand-niece. When it comes to filmmaking, every choice made is intentional. From the hair and makeup to the clothes, to the music used, everything in a film means something whether it is to further character development, world-building, or the plot. Filmmakers have a limited amount of time to convey a story and anything that doesn’t matter isn’t shown. Therefore, we can conclude from the text of the film that Peggy’s husband doesn’t matter to the narrative. The person in Peggy’s family who matters to the narrative is Sharon Carter which is why she is given prominence during CA:CW’s funeral scene. Had the causality loop been set up here, there would have been a defining moment like in PoA where the audience is clued into the larger story arc. Maybe someone says something, or he meets his older self, but that doesn’t happen. It should also be noted that apart from a small scene in Ant Man, Peggy isn’t mentioned again until EG.

In Endgame itself, the film still fails to set up a causality loop. It could be argued that this is the most important film for the set-up because this is when the audience gets the payoff. The first thing we see after the 5-yer time jump is Steve in a group therapy session for those that survived Thanos’ snap. Survivors share their stories and Steve talks about Peggy, a woman who has been dead in canon for 7-years and who died of old age. It’s incongruous and sticks out because narratively it doesn’t make sense for him to talk about her and not someone he watched disintegrate in front of his eyes. Steve watches his best friend and hundreds of others turn to ash around him and that film ends on his horrified face as he sits by his best friend’s ashes. Narratively, this is the thread that should carry through to EG but instead, he talks about missing his chance with Peggy. However, unlike PoA, there is no indication whether through dialogue or framing that clues the audience into Steve’s eventual ending at the end of the film.

Even when he goes back to the 70s, we see him looking mournfully at Peggy through the blinds in her office and a picture of him, pre-serum, on her desk. Steve and Peggy’s relationship prior to Endgame is supposed to represent the bittersweet loss of the life he could have had had he not sacrificed himself to the cause in CA:TFA. Then, since the audience knows from Steve and Peggy’s conversation in the hospital in CA:TWS that she moved on from Steve to live a happy life, we can assume that this picture is meant as nothing more than a fond memento of someone that meant a lot to her. Once more, there is no indication that Steve is ever meant to be her husband.

It’s impossible to infer a causality loop here in the same way as we saw in PoA. In PoA, there is a payoff for every single unusual or weird moment the story presents the audience before and after the use of time travel but this is something that’s completely absent from Endgame’s narrative. Steve himself doesn’t even vocalise a desire to go back in time at any point in EG nor at any point during the other films he appears in. In fact, when questioned by Tony Stark about the possibility of ‘going home’ in Avengers: Age of Ulton, he says, “The guy who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. I think someone else came out.” While it is indicative of his unhappiness in the modern-day, it does indicate a level of acceptance of the fact that this is his life and he has to make his peace with it. He’s taken what Peggy said in CA:TWS on board. He’s starting over and moving on.

With time travel, and Steve choosing to stay in the past came the fan theory that one of the pallbearers carrying Peggy’s casket in CA:CW is Old Man Steve, her husband. When presented with this fan theory, writer Christopher Markus said during an interview with the LA Times at SDCC 2019,

“I would very much like that. There is no set explanation for Cap’s time travel . . .I mean, we’ve had public disagreements with [directors Anthony and Joe Russo] about what it [time travel] necessarily means, but I love the idea of there being two Steve Rogers in the timeline. One who lived a long life with Peggy and is in the background of that funeral scene watching his young self carry his wife’s coffin up. Not just for the time travel mumbo jumbo of it, but for the just weird, personal pain and satisfaction that would be happening between two Steve Rogers there. I kind of love it.” [emphasis mine]

This shows that unlike in PoA there was no intention of creating a causality loop prior to Markus writing EG with his writing partner Stephen McFeely. In fact, it makes clear that the actual rules of time travel were in contention and that even those making the film didn’t have a unified idea of what they wanted to create in the first place. The fact that there is confusion surrounding EG's time travel is due to the fact that the people behind it, didn't seem to know what they were writing or consider the consequences of it.

What all of this shows is that an argument of a PoA style causality loop doesn’t hold water. The film doesn’t support it, nor do any of the previous films, because there aren’t any indicators for the audience to latch onto. There is no moment of the rock breaking the jar, or the patronus chasing away the dementors, no moment where that the audience is told to hold into this information for later because there’s some timey wimey stuff going on. Ultimately, when examined, there is no set-up for a causality loop that supports the theory he was always supposed to go back and be Peggy’s husband, particularly when examined against a film that successfully lays it out from the start.

Right, the more academic (lol) part of this post is done. I just want to address one more TikTok that bothered me because I have opinions and MCU Captain America is my Mastermind specialist subject.

The TL;DR of this one was that Steve’s ending made sense because he got out of the fight and was at peace and that that has been the ultimate goal of his character arc. This person argued that Steve used the Avengers to distract himself from the fact that he’s this man out of time and he can’t find peace without a fight which to some extent, I agree with. I don’t deny that that is a major driving force to his story. We see that in Age of Ultron with his WandaNightmare. I don’t deny that that is key to his character. However, this creator then made a comment at the end of this video to the tune of, ‘bUt BuCkY iS hIs StOrY aRc’ and tried to play it off like this wasn’t true or that people were wrong to think that this is the case.

These two things aren’t mutually exclusive. They’re both true. They’re intertwined. But you cannot say that Bucky Barnes isn’t at the heart of Steve Rogers’ story. Bucky was the catalyst for every single one of Steve’s movies. He becomes CA because of Bucky. He goes against SHIELD because of Bucky. He defies 107 countries and the Sokovia Accords because of Bucky. You take Bucky out of the equation and what do you have? What happens in those films if you take Bucky Barnes out of the equation? Viewing it objectively, and even without shipper goggles on, you simply cannot sit there and claim that Bucky Barnes isn't a defining component to Steve’s story. Steve Rogers is motivated by Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers is motivated by the depth of their relationship and the fact that Bucky Barnes is one of the few things connecting his new present to his old life.

You can definitely see the fact that Steve is uncomfortable in the modern world. He doesn’t address any of his trauma but he still attempts to move on. However, if they wanted him getting out of the fight and finding life as a civilian to be the natural end to his story arc then there was a way to do it which didn’t require him going back to Peggy. It would have been a better and more satisfying ending if he’d actively chosen to retire because I often see the argument that him going back to Peggy is him finally allowing him to be selfish after shouldering so much over the past decade or more. If Steve chose to retire and put himself first, then that sends a better message. He’s still getting the chance to ‘be selfish’ but he’s not throwing the life he’s built away. At this point in EG, he’s spent a huge portion of his adult life in the modern-day. This isn’t the future for him anymore, it’s the present and he’s lived a life and made real connections with people. The MCU does a piss poor job of showing the interpersonal relationships between the Avengers but he is at least shown to be friends with Sam, Nat, and Bucky.

But he goes back to a delusion. Or an idea of something that was never his in the first place.

When I see people make these videos and share their opinions, I can see their points but it’s like they’re taking EG on its own when that's impossible. Endgame only ‘works’ if you have the context of 10 years’ worth of films. You have to at least be somewhat familiar with the characters, who they are and what they’ve done up until now to be able to make sense of it.

However, in saying that, they wrote and filmed the movie in a way to make you think you didn’t have to take into account anything you’ve seen in the past ten years. If you only watch Endgame, you only see a grieving man mourning the love he never had. You see a man, regretful that he didn’t get to be with woman he loved. So at the end, of course it would make sense that he goes back to her. But you can only do that if you completely divorce Endgame from its ten-year canon and in a franchise like this where they make a big deal about everything being interconnected, it simply doesn’t work. Steve’s story arc in Endgame is incongruous to the narrative arc we’ve been presented in previous films.

Ultimately, Endgame is a movie you’re supposed to watch once and then not think about again. It’s made for that first viewing when everything is shocking and exciting because if you stop to think about it even a little bit, it falls apart under scrutiny.

Finally, I think that the downfall of a lot of these ‘Steve’s ending makes sense’ posts is that made by people who are most certainly MCU fans but not Steve Rogers fans and it shows.

#in this essay i will #endgame wank #anti endgame #for the filters #steve rogers #my writing #because this i didn't spend my afternoon on this for nothing #marvel #stevie #angelblue007

622 notes · View notes

lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

Video

'Loki' takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

Tom Hiddleston is Loki, and he is burdened with glorious purpose: After playing Thor's puckish brother for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no one understands the mercurial Asgardian God of Mischief as well as the actor. He can teach an entire seminar on Loki if given the opportunity — which he actually did during pre-production on his forthcoming Disney+ show. In conversation, Hiddleston quotes lines from his MCU debut, 2011's Thor, almost verbatim, and will playfully correct you if you mistakenly refer to Asgard's Rainbow Bridge as the Bifrost, which is the portal that connects Loki and Thor's homeworld to the Nine Realms, including Midgard, a.k.a. Earth. "Well, the Bifrost technically is the energy that runs through the bridge," he says with a smile. "But nine points to Gryffindor!" And when he shows up to the photo shoot for this very digital cover, he hops on a call with our photo editor to pitch ways the concept could be even more Loki, like incorporating the flourish the trickster does whenever magically conjuring something. The lasting impression is that playing Loki isn't just a paycheck.

"Rather than ownership, it's a sense of responsibility I feel to give my best every time and do the best I can because I feel so grateful to be a part of what Marvel Studios has created," the 40-year-old Brit tells EW over Zoom a few days after the shoot and a week out from Thor's 10th anniversary. "I just want to make sure I've honored that responsibility with the best that I can give and the most care and thought and energy."

After appearing in three Thor movies and three Avengers, Hiddleston is bringing that passion to his first solo Marvel project, Loki, the House of Ideas' third Disney+ series following the sitcom pastiche WandaVision and the topical The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Led by head writer Michael Waldron (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Heels), the six-episode drama sees Hiddleston's shapeshifting agent of chaos step out from behind his brother's shadow and into the spotlight for a timey-wimey, sci-fi adventure that aims to get to the bottom of who Loki really is. "I wanted to explore slightly more complex character questions," says Waldron. "It's not just good versus bad. Is anybody all good? Is anybody all bad? What makes a hero, a hero? A villain, a villain?"

Even though Loki — who loves sowing mayhem with his illusion magic and shapeshifting, all with a major chip on his shoulder — has never been one for introspection, the idea of building an entire show around him was a no-brainer for Marvel. When asked why Loki was one of the studio's first Disney+ shows, Marvel president Kevin Feige replies matter-of-factly, "More Hiddleston, more Loki." First introduced as Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) envious brother in Kenneth Branagh's Thor, Loki went full Big Bad in 2012's The Avengers. That film cemented the impish rogue as one of the shared universe's fan favorites, thanks to Hiddleston's ability to make him deliciously villainous yet charismatic and, most importantly, empathetic. The character's popularity is one of the reasons he's managed to avoid death many times.

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

The Loki we meet on the show is not the one who fought the Avengers in 2012 and evolved into an antihero in Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok before meeting his demise at the hands of the mad titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War. Instead, we'll be following a Loki from a branched timeline (a variant, if you will) after he stole the Tesseract following his thwarted New York invasion and escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody during the time heist featured in Avengers: Endgame. In other words, this Loki hasn't gone through any sort of redemption arc. He's still the charming yet petulant god who firmly believes he's destined to rule and has never gotten his due.

Premiering June 9, Loki begins with the Time Variance Authority — a bureaucratic organization tasked with safeguarding the proper flow of time — arresting the Loki Variant seen in Endgame because they want his help fixing all of the timeline problems he caused while on the run with the Tesseract. So there will be time travel, and a lot more of it than in Endgame. As Loki makes his way through his own procedural, he'll match wits with new characters including Owen Wilson's Agent Mobius, a brilliant TVA analyst, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's Judge Renslayer. The question in early episodes is whether Loki will help them or take over.

"One of the things Kevin Feige led on was, 'I think we should find a way of exploring the parts of Loki that are independent of his relationship with Thor,' or see him in a duality or in relationship with others, which I thought was very exciting," says Hiddleston, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. "So the Odinson saga, that trilogy of films, still has its integrity, and we don't have to reopen it and retell it."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

Hiddleston can't believe how long he and Loki have been connected. "I've been playing this character for 11 years," he says. "Which is the first time I have said that sentence, I realize, and it [blows] my mind. I don't know what percentage that is exactly of my 40 years of being alive, but it's substantial."

His time as Loki actually goes a bit further back, to 2009 — a year after Robert Downey Jr. big banged the MCU into existence with Iron Man — when he auditioned for Thor. It's no secret that Hiddleston initially went in for the role of the titular God of Thunder, but Feige and director Kenneth Branagh thought his natural charm and flexibility as an actor made him better suited for the movie's damaged antagonist. "Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise," says Branagh, who had previously worked with him on a West End revival of Checkov's Ivanov and the BBC series Wallander. "Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He's got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player."

Hiddleston fully immersed himself in the character. Outside of studying Loki's history in the Marvel Comics, he also researched how Loki and the Trickster God archetype appeared across mythology and different cultures. "He understood that he was already in something special [and] it was a special character in a special part of that early moment in the life of the Marvel universe where [he] also needed to step up in other ways," says Branagh, who was impressed by the emotional depth Hiddleston brought to the part, especially when it came to how isolated Loki felt in the Asgardian royal family.

There was a lot riding on that first Thor feature. For one, no one knew if audiences would immediately latch onto a Shakespearean superhero movie partially set on an alien planet populated by the Norse Gods of legend. Second, it was integral to Feige's plans for the shared universe. Loki was supposed to be the main villain in The Avengers, which would not only mirror how Earth's mightiest heroes joined forces in 1963's Avengers #1 but also give Thor a believable reason for teaming up with Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), and the rest of the capes. Feige first clued Hiddleston into those larger plans when the actor was in L.A. before Thor started shooting.

"I was like, 'Excuse me?' Because he was already three, four steps ahead," says Hiddleston. "That took me a few minutes to process, because I didn't quite realize how it just suddenly had a scope. And being cast as Loki, I realized, was a very significant moment for me in my life, and was going to remain. The creative journey was going to be so exciting."

Hiddleston relished the opportunity to go full villain in Avengers, like in the scene where Loki ordered a crowd to kneel before him outside a German opera house: "It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation," says the Machiavellian god. "The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel."

"I just knew that in the structure of that film, I had to lean into his role as a pure antagonist," Hiddleston recalls. "What I always found curious and complex about the way Loki is written in Avengers, is that his status as an antagonist comes from the same well of not belonging and being marginalized and isolated in the first Thor film. Loki now knows he has no place in Asgard."

Loki did find a place within the audience's hearts, though. Feige was "all in" on Hiddleston as his Loki from the beginning, but even he couldn't predict how much fans would love him. Feige recalls the reaction at the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con: "Did we know that after he was the villain in two movies, he would be bringing thousands of people to their feet in Hall H, in costume, chanting his name? No, that was above and beyond the plan that we were hoping for and dreaming of." It was a dream Feige first got an inkling of a year earlier during the Avengers press tour when a Russian fan slipped past security, snuck into Mark Ruffalo's car, and asked the Hulk actor to give Hiddleston a piece of fan art she created. "That was one of the early signs there was much more happening with this quote-unquote villain."

Despite that popularity, the plan was to kill Loki off in 2013's Thor: The Dark World, but the studio reversed course after test audiences refused to believe he actually died fighting the Dark Elves. Alas, he couldn't out-illusion death forever. After returning in Taika Waititi's colorful and idiosyncratic Thor: Ragnarok, Hiddleston's character perished for real in the opening moments of Infinity War. In typical Loki fashion, before Thanos crushed his windpipe, he delivered a defiant speech that indicated he'd finally made peace with the anger he felt toward his family.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

Credit: Charlie Gray for EW

When Hiddleston returned to film two scenes in Avengers: Endgame in 2017, he had no idea where Loki portaled off to after snatching the Tesseract. "Where'd he go? When does he go? How does he get there? These are all questions I remember asking on the day, and then not being given any answers," Hiddleston recalls. To be fair, it's likely the Powers That Be didn't necessarily have answers then. While Feige can't exactly recall when the writers' room for Endgame first devised Loki's escape sequence, he does know that setting up a future show wasn't the primary goal — because a Loki series wasn't on the horizon just yet.

"[That scene] was really more of a wrinkle so that one of the missions that the Avengers went on in Endgame could get screwed up and not go well, which is what required Cap and Tony to go further back in time to the '70s," says Feige. Soon after that, though, former Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige about producing content for the studio's forthcoming streaming service. "I think the notion that we had left this hanging loose end with Loki gave us the in for what a Loki series could be. So by the time [Endgame] came out, we did know where it was going."

As for Hiddleston, he didn't find out about the plans for a Loki show until spring 2018, a few weeks before Infinity War hit theaters. "I probably should not have been surprised, but I was," says the actor. "But only because Infinity War had felt so final."

Nevertheless, Hiddleston was excited about returning for his show. He was eager to explore Loki's powers, especially the shapeshifting, and what it meant that this disruptive figure still managed to find a seat beside the gods in mythology. "I love this idea [of] Loki's chaotic energy somehow being something we need. Even though, for all sorts of reasons, you don't know whether you can trust him. You don't know whether he's going to betray you. You don't why he's doing what he's doing," says Hiddleston. "If he's shapeshifting so often, does he even know who he is? And is he even interested in understanding who he is? Underneath all those masks, underneath the charm and the wit, which is kind of a defense anyway, does Loki have an authentic self? Is he introspective enough or brave enough to find out? I think all of those ideas are all in the series — ideas about identity, ideas about self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the difficulty of it."

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

The thing that truly sold Hiddleston on the show was Marvel's decision to include the Time Variance Authority, a move he describes as "the best idea that anybody had pertaining to the series." Feige and Loki executive producer Stephen Broussard had hoped to find a place for the TVA — an organization that debuted in 1986's Thor #372 and has appeared in She-Hulk and Fantastic Four stories — in the MCU for years, but the right opportunity never presented itself until Loki came along. "Putting Loki into his own procedural series became the eureka moment for the show," says Feige.

The TVA's perspective on time and reality also tied into the themes that Waldron, Loki's head writer, was hoping to explore. "Loki is a character that's always reckoning with his own identity, and the TVA, by virtue of what they do, is uniquely suited to hold up a mirror to Loki and make him really confront who he is and who he was supposed to be," says Waldron. Hiddleston adds: "[That] was very exciting because in the other films, there was always something about Loki that was very controlled. He seemed to know exactly what the cards in his hand were and how he was going to play them…. And Loki versus the TVA is Loki out of control immediately, and in an environment in which he's completely behind the pace, out of his comfort zone, destabilized, and acting out."

To truly dig into who Loki is, the creative team had to learn from the man who knows him best: Hiddleston. "I got him to do a thing called Loki School when we first started," says director Kate Herron. "I asked him to basically talk through his 10 years of the MCU — from costumes to stunts, to emotionally how he felt in each movie. It was fantastic."

Hiddleston got something out of the Loki school, too. Owen Wilson both attended the class and interviewed Hiddleston afterward so that he could better understand Loki, as his character Mobius is supposed to be an expert on him. During their conversation, Wilson pointedly asked Hiddleston what he loved about playing the character.

"And I said, 'I think it's because he has so much range,'" says Hiddleston. "I remember saying this to him: 'On the 88 keys on the piano, he can play the twinkly light keys at the top. He can keep it witty and light, and he's the God of Mischief, but he can also go down to the other side and play the heavy keys. And he can play some really profound chords down there, which are about grief and betrayal and loss and heartbreak and jealousy and pride.'" Hiddleston recalls Wilson being moved by the description: "He said, 'I think I might say that in the show.' And it was such a brilliant insight for me into how open Owen is as an artist and a performer.'"

Owen Wilson as Mobius and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in 'Loki.'| Credit: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Everyone involved is particularly excited for audiences to see Hiddleston and Wilson's on-screen chemistry. "Mobius is not unlike Owen Wilson in that he's sort of nonplussed by the MCU," says Feige. "[Loki] is used to getting a reaction out of people, whether it's his brother or his father, or the other Avengers. He likes to be very flamboyant and theatrical. Mobius doesn't give him the reaction he's looking for. That leads to a very unique relationship that Loki's not used to."

As for the rest of the series, we know that Loki will be jumping around time and reality, but the creative team isn't keen on revealing when and where. "Every episode, we tried to take inspiration from different things," says Waldron, citing Blade Runner's noir aesthetic as one example.

"Part of the fun of the multiverse and playing with time is seeing other versions of characters, and other versions of the titular character in particular," says Feige, who also declined to confirm if Loki ties into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and/or other upcoming projects.

Making Loki was especially meaningful to Hiddleston because they shot most of it during the pandemic, in late 2020. "It will remain one of the absolute most intense, most rewarding experiences of my life," he says. "It's a series about time, and the value of time, and what time is worth, and I suppose what the experience of being alive is worth. And I don't quite know yet, and maybe I don't have perspective on it, if all the thinking and the reflecting that we did during the lockdown ended up in the series. But in some way, it must have because everything we make is a snapshot of where we were in our lives at that time."

While it remains to be seen what the future holds for Loki beyond this initial season, Hiddleston isn't preparing to put the character to bed yet. "I'm open to everything," he says. "I have said goodbye to the character. I've said hello to the character. I said goodbye to the character [again]. I've learned not to make assumptions, I suppose. I'm just grateful that I'm still here, and there are still new roads to explore."

#Tom Hiddleston #Loki #Disney+#interview

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wecantseeyou · 3 years

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a note on color - how line of duty series 6 uses wardrobe to frame narrative (pt 1)

author’s note: this began as a personal observation on the use of cool tones for AC-12 and warm tones in opposition to AC-12, and evolved into a spreadsheet tracking most every outfit 3 of the 4 leads wear in every episode (through 6).

Why Jo, Kate, and Steve?

Jo: This is ultimately a rumination on Jo and her character, and the non-textual ways the show indicates Jo’s feelings, actions, and allegiances.

Kate: Jo’s major emotional connection in the series. Kate’s wardrobe often mirrors Jo’s in both style and color, and Kate’s wardrobe also gives hints to Jo’s true identity, while also reminding the audience of her allegiance with AC-12 (in both principles and action)

Steve: As the face of AC-12 in many ways (especially in this season, whereas past seasons that would’ve been Kate), Steve’s wardrobe is the control. He is firmly planted as an anti-corruption officer, is an ally of Kate, and he acts as Jo’s foil.

Why not Hastings?: Lord knows I love Ted, but the man really only ever wears his uniform (which is an entirely different essay about his views of the police force, ‘bent coppers’, and the ‘bad apples’ view of addressing police misconduct)

Some of the colors folks wear are difficult to quantify - I note circumstances where a shirt or sweater could be interpreted as multiple colors, and some instances where I believe that open interpretation is intentional. To be incredibly simplistic for how I coded the colors, cool tones are the good guys, and warm tones are the bad guys. Where possible, I have included reference images for the outfits I’m discussing (low quality screencaps ahead).

It took me some time to choose the organization of this essay, but ultimately there’s only one way to really do it - scene to scene. So buckle in, cause this is a doozy. I’m posting just episode 1 today, and then plan to post analyses breaking down the other episodes through Saturday. Essay under the cut.

DISCLAIMER: I’m American, so there’s likely something about the UK that I miss here. Alas, we’ll persevere. I barely edited this because I’m no longer a student and don’t have that kind of time. Also, I already wrote one dissertation and I refused to admit I wrote another one.

METHODOLOGY

To kick off, I went through and looked at every outfit worn by Jo Davidson and Kate Fleming, and most worn by Steve Arnott, in series 6. Steve acts as my control because he begins and ends my sample as a working member of AC-12, which for the purposes of this narrative represents police who are not corrupt. He is exclusively shown in cool tones in every scene I discuss here. Kate serves to bridge that gap in analysis between Jo and Steve - she is anti-corruption through and through, but she is no longer a member of AC-12, and she also has a close relationship with Jo, which is clearly romantic in tone. Kate often wears cool tones and white, but the occasional brown, orange, and green pop up (hold that thought on green). Jo is my main focus of my analysis, because I believe her wardrobe is most clearly impacted by the struggle between internal desires and external pressures. She wears a range of colors, but most frequently it is a combination of warm and cool tones. For the purpose of this analysis, black is considered a warm tone, white is both cool and absent allegiance, and grey is considered a cool tone.

THESIS

Since the first episode of series 6, Line of Duty has used color to indicate that Jo Davidson is not bent by aligning her with the tone of AC-12 as a whole and Kate Fleming specifically. TL;DR: The show has used wardrobe to tell us that Jo is not (intentionally) bent from the beginning.

Jo isn’t ‘bent’ in that she doesn’t want to be corrupt, but she’s forced to be. Surrounded on all sides by the OCG because of her uncle/father, Tommy Hunter, Jo therefore has no choice but to follow OCG orders for fear for her life. The show works to show us this visually in a few ways. Cool tones, representing ‘justice’ through AC-12, are seen throughout her screen time, but they are often peppered with warm tones, representing corruption and the OCG. This is true of her wardrobe overall, but is perhaps most succinctly demonstrated in her apartment. Keep these thoughts in mind as I break down each outfit.

EPISODE 1

There are points where the wardrobe informs us of things that the text directly contradicts. For instance, in the opening scene of episode 1, Jo arrives at the Hill wearing a black coat over a dark grey turtleneck, and is shown talking to Lomax about a new lead in the Gail Vella murder investigation. She is then shown talking to Buckells about this lead, an unknown CHIS who claims to have spoken with a man named Ross Turner who claimed to have killed Gail. The interaction seems innocuous, and Buckells denies permission for a raid on Turner’s home, but look more carefully at the dialogue here. Jo is manipulating Buckells by presenting him with information about the source, including that he was a sex worker and speculating on his potential drug use. These two factors are what makes Buckells hesitate, and he ultimately stops the raid from being carried out that night.

While Jo in this scene seems to push Buckells to give permission for the operation, Jo’s dark wardrobe is telling the audience that something else is happening on another level here. We learn later that Jo would take advantage of Buckells baser instincts and desire for upward advancement in order to manipulate him, which is what she does in this scene. She specifically mentions the CHIS’s sex work and the potential drug use because she knows Buckells will worry about the reliability of the witness and want more to go off of, hence cancelling the operation. Jo’s dark clothes hint at her manipulation of Buckells while the audience is not yet clued in.

The next time we see Jo during the team briefing about Ross Turner is also the first time we get a hint at the fliration between her and Kate. Jo’s “dirty stop-out” line and Kate’s “glass houses, boss” response, coupled with Jo’s smile that she hides by looking down show a clear shift in tone. The black jacket is removed, and she’s wearing a grey turtleneck. Jo is slightly more at ease here, enjoying the easy banter. Meanwhile, Kate is wearing a cream/light brown sweater, our first visual clue of her separation from AC-12 and her connection to Jo.

Note here that Jo’s black jacket was on top of her grey turtleneck, and could be removed. The turtleneck, a very modest and in some ways restrictive top, also serves as an armor Jo wears to brace herself against her own actions.

When the operation to arrest Ross Turner is approved, Jo again dons a black jacket under her body armor, while Kate wears a green coat under her body armor. Jo putting on the black jacket is symbolic of how she is about to waylay the team with the staged armed robbery at the bookie, allowing time for the OCG to replace Owen Banks with Terry Boyle. Kate’s green coat is symbolic of her mixed allegiances between AC-12’s blue and Jo’s yellow.

Later, when debriefing the operation with Lomax and discussing the importance of learning the CHIS’s identity, Jo and Kate are back to the grey and cream sweaters they were wearing earlier. Their banter is also back with Kate’s “great minds” line, demonstrating their comfort and also telling the audience these two women are in sync with one another.

Immediately after this series of scenes, we see Steve for the first time. His first scene is at AC-12, wearing a grey suit, white shirt, and red tie, when he is notified that Farida Jatri is there to see him. We learn in the next scene, where Steve is in a blue suit with a blue shirt and blue tie, that Farida brought her concerns about Jo to AC-12, particularly about the odd armed robbery that Jo spotted. He asks Hastings for permission to look into it further, which is granted. The all blue outfit on Steve represents his desire to root out potential corruption in this complaint. He continues to wear this outfit for most of the episode when dealing with the investigation and MIT.

(Note: there’s an interlude scene here of the MIT crew in crime scene suits at Terry’s, but I’m not including that here.)

We next see Jo with Lomax, interrogating a frightened Terry Boyle, while Kate watches the video feed of the interview. Jo is wearing another grey turtleneck, but this time is wearing a grey jacket, while Kate watches on with a cream oversized sweater. The interview with Terry goes nowhere for the most part, as he refuses to comment, which seems to be to Jo’s relief. Kate, however, clearly isn’t done.

Donned in a green mockneck and navy suit, Kate visits the crime scene at Terry’s apartment again. This green top still aligns her with both AC-12 and Jo, but the navy suit serves as a reminder that she doesn’t think the MIT has the full story on Terry Boyle.

Later, we see Kate in the same outfit debriefing Jo on the new information at the crime scene, namely that there is no new information because it’s been wiped clean. Jo is wearing a grey suit jacket, brown sweater, and a white shirt. Both agree that Terry isn’t a solid suspect, and want the ID of the CHIS in order to confirm that he’s the man identified as Ross Turner. Jo’s layering here is interesting - cool tone, warm tone, cool tone. She agrees with Kate externally, she knows Terry is in the frame for Vella’s murder, and she doesn’t feel comfortable pursuing Terry as a suspect she knows is innocent.

They then visit the CHIS’s handler, who refuses to give up his informant’s ID, but reveals to Kate that he is concerned about the CHIS’s welfare. Kate is wearing a long navy coat, while Jo is wearing a long grey coat with a blue and orange scarf. Kate wants to know the CHIS’s ID to genuinely pursue justice, hence the blue, while Jo wants the CHIS’s ID for ostensibly the same reason, but for her, pursuing justice with the CHIS would also clear Terry’s name. Jo doesn’t want Terry to be punished because he’s innocent, but she also knows a negative ID on Terry will lead to trouble for her with the OCG.

We see Jo in the same outfit minus outerwear in the next few scenes - when she is called into Buckell’s office and convinces him to put pressure on for the CHIS’s ID (while Kate watches), and later when Kate informs her that there was a surveillance gap on Terry Boyle’s flat due to the wrong authority being sought. Jo pushes Buckells and manipulates him to reveal the CHIS’s ID, and also blames him for the gap that she’s responsible for, hence the warm coloring of her sweater. Kate, meanwhile, is showing her allegiance to Jo by telling her about the gaffe, the green of her shirt being the visual representation of that act.

Next we have a scene of Steve looking at CCTV of the armed robbery, and their suspicions are raised about the speed the convoy was traveling and the likelihood that Jo could have actually spotted it. Again, Steve is in an all blue outfit.

Back to our favorite murder investigators, Lomax, Jo, and Kate arrive on the scene of a murder victim which turns out to be their missing CHIS. Jo is dressed in a long grey coat, green sweater, and light blue shirt, while Kate is rocking a long navy coat, navy suit, and an orange and navy striped turtleneck. Later at MIT, Kate and Jo discuss the CHIS further, lamenting the loss of the only witness who could ID Terry as Ross Turner. Throughout this scene, Jatri is watching the two of them interact. Jatri then calls Steve, in a grey suit with a blue tie, and tells him she can no longer be an informant.

Round two of interviewing sweet Terry begins, with Jo in the same outfit and Kate watching on video, again in the same striped turtleneck. They all seem to think Terry is hiding something, but Kate seems taken aback at some of Jo’s lines of questioning (Vicky McClure, expert reactor) but is mostly saddened by Terry. Later, Steve meets with Kate outside of Hillside and they discuss his inquiry into Jo. She refuses to help, but gives him the name Carl Banks as someone to look into.

We then see Jo arrive at Farida’s house with a suitcase, moving out her final belongings after their breakup, where they have a row over Jo’s refusal to introduce Farida to her nonexistent family. After, Jo returns to her own apartment with its 18 dead bolts. Nearly the entire place is blue - the walls, the furniture, even the refrigerator. However, those warm tones pop up throughout - lemons on the counter, golden pillows in the living room, gold lights framing the picture of her mother. Jo at her heart is good and believes in justice, but she has been groomed and manipulated by the OCG into acting against her nature in the name of self-preservation. She is blue, but the pops of gold and yellow of the OCG catch the eye.

The following scene shows Jo getting chewed out by Buckells in the briefing room in full view of the rest of MIT, again in the green sweater and blue shirt. Kate looks on in concern, still wearing the orange and navy striped sweater. Buckells storms out, and Jo rushes into the hallway. Kate follows quickly behind, asking after Jo, who vents her frustrations with the pressure to charge Terry with murder because she knows it isn’t right and wants to find real justice for Gail. The color choices in this scene are clear. Kate is wearing orange and navy, highlighting both her connection to Jo and her pursuit of justice. Jo is wearing green, combining the blue of her heart and the pollution of OCG yellow, with a light blue shirt, again highlighting her true self and alignment with Kate.

This also highlights something we don’t learn until episode 6 - Jo wanted Kate on her team to keep her in check and be a barrier to the things the OCG was asking her to do. This includes the arrest of Terry Boyle. Jo specifically identifies several odd things about the recent evidence - and tells Kate that something doesn’t add up, essentially encouraging the DI to look into these inconsistencies further. This is her way of looking for help when she still feels trapped in many ways.

Of course, no analysis of this scene would be complete without mentioning the hand grab and subsequent hold. They’re gay, kids!

The final scene shows Jo watching as Terry Boyle is released and remanded to police bail, a look of relief on her face. Because yeah, she’s done a lot of bent things, but Jo isn’t bent.

And that’s where the episode wraps.

Stay tuned for more wardrobe analysis tomorrow!

#line of duty #jo davidson #kate fleming #steve arnott #lod spoilers #line of duty spoilers #flemson #kate x jo #so sorry to anyone who follows me for cr but I do love a good crime drama #anyways defund the police #this is fully unedited pursue with caution

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my-mt-heart · 3 years

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I am a caryl shipper, however, I do think the ‘it’s not like that’ scene can be interpreted two ways and that it was intentional.

1) Daryl said it’s not like that and he could actually think Connie doesn’t like him back, so they are just friends. They could have had him say “I don’t like her like that” but that would be too final

2) they had the “we’re family” scene an episode before to make Daryl question things

3) they purposely had Daryl sigh and look down when Carol first asks about her, kinda like he’s blushing

4) in that same scene, Carol is also being untruthful to Daryl and hiding things from him

5) also, Daryl having a love interest is meant to be a surprise to the audience. They wouldn’t have him admit how he feels so early; it would ruin canon. Think Richonne.

These are the things that have me unsure and I think they need to be addressed. I’m sure tptb will forget about it anyway.

Yes, anyone can interpret it however they please. But in response to what you just laid out:

1) If we're getting granular about the language, Carol's response could have been way more open than "why not?" For example, "You sure?" Then Daryl's silence would have clued us in that in fact, he's not sure. But the line is what it is because we're not meant to question whether it really is or is not "like that." We're meant to realize there is a specific reason why it's "not like that." It can't be because he has no experience in romance since apparently he does. It can't be that he's just too embarrassed to talk to Carol about it because apparently he already talked to her about Leah. Clearly, Carol suspects the reason is that Daryl is still hung up on Leah but, IMO at least, this contradicts Daryl's attitude all throughout S10 where we see him actively building a future, not dwelling on the past. It's only when he's put back in the environment that housed all of his pain that he stirs up past emotions.

Yes, "It's not like that" is a very common trope that often carries the opposite subtext, but there has to be instances beforehand that clue us into that. Whereas in Daryl's case, a moment in the prior episode actually solidifies it's the truth. Which brings me to...

2) Referring to someone who you're romantically interested in (as opposed to already being in an established relationship with) as family is extremely odd. Connie and Daryl are not established nor do they even have the longevity that Carol and Daryl have to create a husband/wife dynamic. So when Connie says she and Daryl are family (not that they belong to the same family, she pointed to Daryl and herself to indicate she's talking about the two of them), it is because she thinks of their relationship as familial. Daryl's reaction was not one of disappointment, but of uncertainty. He wants to feel like they're family, but she hasn't given him a reason to believe it. She just got done devising a plan to lie to the community in order to protect Kelly and Magna, suggesting that her loyalty is with them. We've seen Daryl work hard to make them feel included like Rick and Hershel would have wanted (he fucking learned sign language), and then they go and alienate themselves, so no wonder he's not feeling so great about the family comment.

3) I didn't see a blush. I saw mild annoyance that Carol was bringing up something that makes him uncomfortable (love life in general, not Connie specifically), and worse, something that she had misinterpreted.

4) Daryl knows Carol's been untruthful with him. He's not using it as an invitation to be just as untruthful. Again, Daryl only lies when he thinks he's protecting her. You could interpret his earlier line "The King sends his best" as an attempt to do just that if he suspects Carol might get hurt by Ezekiel's rejection, or (and I think I swing this way), you can chalk it up to Daryl's usual sarcasm when it comes to Ezekiel.

5) The writing has not been nearly as subtle about the potential (key word) for a romantic relationship between Daryl and Connie because that is the whole point. We're meant to wonder about it, maybe anticipate it, and for some of us, fear it. There are much stronger clues that inform us we will never actually see it happen because it's not what Daryl and Connie actually want. Ever wonder why they stopped having private "shippy" moments after the solidifying "you and me are family" scene? Not because Daryl believes he misread the situation. All of it was only needed to earn the scene where Carol asks him about it. From that point on, anything "shippy" is through Carol's perspective in order to tee up her guilt for getting Connie trapped in the cave, which only had to happen because LR went off to film The Eternals.

Hopefully all of this helps you. If it doesn't, oh well. Not much else I can say. You'll just have to be pleasantly surprised when Caryl happens instead :)

#caryl #caryl positivity #caryl is endgame #twd #carol x daryl #twd bonds

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thesaltofcarthage · 3 years

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Loki takes over: Tom Hiddleston on his new TV series and a decade in the MCU

from Entertainment Weekly

Ten years after Hiddleston first chose chaos in Thor, Marvel’s fan favorite God of Mischief is going even bigger with his time-bending Disney+ show.

By Chancellor Agard May 20, 2021

"He's been around for thousands of years. He had all sorts of adventures," says Feige. "Wanting to fill in the blanks and see much more of Loki's story [was] the initial desire [for the series]."

Yet, in order to understand where Loki is going, it's important to see where he came from.

"It felt very, very final, and I thought, 'Okay, that's it. This is Loki's final bow and a conclusive end to the Odinson saga,'" says Hiddleston, who shot that well-earned death scene in 2017.

But, though he didn't know it yet, the actor's MCU story was far from over.

“The series will explore Loki's powers in a way they have not yet been explored, which is very, very exciting.”

Additional reporting by Jessica Derschowitz

#loki #loki series #tom hiddleston #entertainment weekly

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cinematicnomad · 3 years

Note

would you rather a big love confession between buck and eddie or a subtle relationship reveal?

oh, big love confession, obviously. personally i'm not a fan of relationship reveals where the audience is clued in after the fact that the characters have already gotten together. i was talking about this with somebody earlier this week, but the only show that successfully pulled that off for me was community with the revelation that jeff and britta were hooking up with each other off screen all season—but that was comedic, not serious, they weren't in love with each other, and the show actually did a great job at leaving hints through the whole season.

but yeah, i would feel like we'd missed out on something fundamental if towards the end of s5 they were like 'btw buck and eddie have been together this whole season!!!'

✨sleepover weekend✨

#ask #anonymous #i don't like when the story is hidden from the audience #especially when it's stuff that logically we should be clued in on #it has to do with perspective #i had the same issue with s7 of game of thrones?#like the whole arc at winterfell didn't work bc based on the previous 6 seasons the show had taught us that our POV into the world #was arya + sansa not littlefinger #and then suddenly in s7 for this particular storyline they wanted it to be a surprise so they shifted us to littlefinger's POV #with no warning and made us believe that we were still in arya and sansa's POV #it was frustrating #i would hate if 911 was like 'yeah we know that your entry into buddie's relationship is always buck and eddie's POV'#'but this time we decided to reveal halfway through that actually you haven't been in their POV at all!!'

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dilucsrevenge · 4 years

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unruly - chapter two.

wc: 1,155 author notes: minor talks of bdsm related content. mostly just hinting at the idea. chapter one content rating: for mature audiences.

las vegas was new territory for you and the tense flight there didn't help calm your nerves after the confrontation with spencer. you eventually revealed your thoughts on the case when the team was going over the evidence once more before landing, and they were impressed with how quickly you were getting accustomed to being put into action. but again, you got the glare from spencer just letting you know that he still thought the same thing he said to you earlier. and you were still getting that same tingling sensation in your stomach just from the way that spencer looked at you.

you were accustomed to virginia heat in the summer, but las vegas heat was completely different to you. jj walked up to you with a smile on her face, her hand digging in her pocket to hand you a hair tie.

"you'll learn quickly that in the field it's best to just get your hair out of the way." she spoke out softly to you, giving your shoulder a small pat before she caught up with the rest of the team.

while you were catching up with the team on their way up to the local police station, spencer was the first one you caught up to. you could feel his eyes on you as you pulled your hair back into a small braid, your finger skillfully weaving through the strands of your hair to finish the braid in just a few seconds. with a few small mental pep talks, you turned your gaze to spencer and could tell he was caught in one of the moments where he looked away quickly as soon as he was caught staring you down.

the team was quickly introduced to the police, you being introduced by hotch last as the specialist that would be the most helpful right now given some of the evidence. you were surprised that he would bring you up this quickly given your standing with the team so far, but you instantly led in with your ideas about the evidence that was on hand right now.

"all these victims are linked by the same bible verse, all crimes leading to believe the unsub is a woman in her early to late 20's driven by the idea that these men are unfaithful in some way," as you were looking over the evidence closer, you noticed one thing the team hadn't brought up yet. "there's also a pale spot on each victim's hand where we can assume a wedding ring had been taken as a token."

"good catch, agent (y/l/n). we had assumed it was just part of a robbery or the victim just forgot it for the night. these men were all tied to a local club here in vegas that involves... a more promiscuous group of people. it's not known to people outside of the community but we've gotten a few calls from people there that clued us in." the lead detective spoke to you, nodding your head along with his words.

as the detective spoke, you could see out of the corner of your eye that spencer tensed up once the nature of the club was mentioned to the team. you hadn't seen him act like that, but with your studies you knew his reaction had to be related to him hiding something that dealt with the nature of the case. you would've had the same reaction as he did if you hadn't been better at hiding your personal emotions than he seemed to be.

after clearing his throat, spencer finally spoke up although his voice slightly cracked when he first started speaking. "if you don't mind explaining, what is the nature of the club? it's important to know these details to get more insight into the mind of the unsub."

"we'll leave that up to you to figure out, agent. there's clients of the club waiting there to talk to your team."

* * *

the drive to the club was tense for you, you got stuck driving spencer to the club the team was headed to. prentiss had joked that it was initiation for the new member since spencer could be a little bit of a pain to drive somewhere, and you could see why. he critiqued your posture, the fact that you'd always go five over the speed limit even though you were just keeping up with traffic, and not to mention him critiquing the way that you'd take your eyes off the road to talk to him.

the blacked out windows of the club gave you a hint of what went on behind the doors, and as much as you didn't want to admit it, your subconscious was telling you to be nervous that you were walking into this place with spencer but also excited to be walking into this place with spencer. the two thoughts existing at once was enough to confuse you and make it so you didn't pay attention to the raised concrete that caused you to stumble over your feet. you were able to catch yourself before you fell, but that didn't get you away from spencer noticing.

"do you not know how to walk either?" he scoffed as he spoke, but that didn't stop you from noticing the smile that curved up the corners of his lips.

it was a smile that made your stomach fill with butterflies. the kind of smile you knew he was trying to hide which made it even better. your thoughts were quickly halted when you walked into the doors of the club and saw all the whips and strands of rope decorating the walls of what you now realized was more of a sex club. you weren't uncomfortable with these things, but you were only slightly uncomfortable with the fact that spencer's fingers were now running down the edge of one of the red whips hanging on the wall.

"we have people to be interviewing, agent (y/l/n). let's get going." you quickly snapped out of the daze you were in from watching spencer's fingers when you heard his voice, nodding your head and heading to the back of the club closer to the bar where to women were sitting in the high-rise chairs. spencer was the first person they acknowledged, barely giving you a glance.

for just a few seconds, it made you jealous that the attention was on him and you could just tell that he was giving them all of his attention. your thoughts changed as soon as the women referred to him by his first name and greeted him with a tight and way too friendly hug. he knew them by name too, even though their faces were half covered by black masks around their eyes, he still knew them by name.

and then the realization hit you of why he looked so comfortable here. and the thoughts hit you hard.

#spencer reid #criminal minds #my writing #criminal minds fanfic #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #reid x reader #self insert fanfic #.txt

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keelywolfe · 4 years

Text

FIC: A Pressing Engagement ch3 (Not baon AU)

Summary: Edge has questions. Stretch would pretty much like to avoid the answer.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Fluff and Angst, Dating, Developing Relationship, Humor

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Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

Edge was still waiting patiently for Stretch to pick up the ball of conversation he’d tossed in his direction and since talking was way down on the list of what Stretch actually wanted to do, he let it fall to the ground between them, rolling around loose.

The bedroom was at least a room he knew, even if he wasn’t usually upright when he saw it. The contrast to his own shabby chic was always impressive; there were no balled-up socks on the floor, no collection of dishes waiting with dismal hope for their chance to hit the dishwasher. Not perfect, though, not tonight. The blankets were drawn down and there was a book lying on the bed, a mug sitting on the side table. All clear signs that Edge had probably been settled all cozy into bed, ready to dive into his secret stash of trashy dime novels when he clued into their silent alarm.

Now he was sitting on the bed all but aiming the ring box at Stretch’s head as he picked up the conversation he’d dropped. “I understand you not wanting me to see these, but I’m failing to see why you thought committing a possible felony was the best route to keep it from happening.”

“oh, come on,” Stretch let out a dismal laugh, “seriously? like you would’ve let me root through your car without seeing what it was?” He’d learned a long time ago not to take Edge’s distrust personally, especially since Red was usually higher than he was on Edge’s shit list.

Edge hummed thoughtfully, “True, but what was stopping you from showing me literally anything else? A lucky lighter or one of those atrocious little toys you always have. I would never have known the difference.”

“yeah, that’s actually a pretty good idea,” Stretch groaned, sagging back in his chair, “shame i didn’t get your input earlier.”

“Well,” Edge didn’t open the box again, only twisted it in his hands. “That doesn’t really matter. I have seen them. Stretch?”

That was a hint for him to get talking and, fuck, did he want a cigarette, a little numbing nicotine buffer would go down swell right about now. Stretch went ahead and fumbled out his lighter but left his smokes where they were. He knew better than to try smoking in Edge’s room, adding a sprinkle of annoyance on top of this meal probably wouldn’t end well. Or maybe he should go ahead, he had a feeling this wasn’t going to end his favor, anyway. He thumbed the rasp of his lighter, watched the little spark form. “i don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Perhaps some insight into what you were thinking would be a good place to start,” Edge leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “We don’t even live together and here you are planning proposals?”

Said like that, it didn’t sound like he was thinking at all, not past the simple fact that when he heard about Alphys and Undyne planning to get hitch, he sort of…wanted that, for himself, and everything that came with it. He’d spent all day thinking about it, letting different scenarios play out in his head where Edge would say yes and maybe kiss him in the park right in front of everyone and then they’d all break into applause because hell, if you’re gonna daydream, do it right.

He’d even talked about it with Blue, a little piggly wiggly before he went whole hog with the shopping, but now that his head was below the clouds, Stretch figured that his bro probably wasn’t an impartial audience. He’d gone starry eyed, literally, yammering about planning weddings and flowers, hell, they’d both gotten swept up in the idea and before he knew it, he had rings and something like a plan to propose. Probably should’ve felt it out sooner to make sure he had a groom before they’d started thinking about receptions. The way this was going, the only thing he was gonna be going home with was his bruises, fuck the rings. He was gonna toss them out the window on the drive.

“all right, i was stupid, is that what you want to hear?” Stretch hunched over, wrapped his arms around himself. His head ached and so did, well, all of him, his reward for spending the evening getting knocked into walls. Worse was the tightness inside his chest, his soul squeezing together disappointment and hurt. “just give me those and let me go home.”

The gentle touch on the back of his skull startled him. Edge’s hand slid down to cup his cheek bone, trying to urge him to look up. “Don’t say that, you aren’t stupid. Stretch, I care about you, you do know that.”

“yeah.” The word came out small and he couldn’t keep the miserable hurt out of it. Cared. Yeah, right.

A soft sigh, then, roughly, “Fine, I love you. I have said it before.”

He had, a couple of times during sex and the more this chat dragged on, the dumber his impulse to buy rings seemed. He’d been blinded by his own hopes and goaded by Blue’s eagerness, thinking he and Edge were on the same page when a quick glance up at Edge’s impatient frown seemed to confirm they weren’t even in the same section of the librarby.

“All right, this isn’t working," Edge announced as he abruptly stood, "all I’m doing is hurting you.” Stretch squawked as Edge scooped him up right out of the chair and for one absurd second, he panickily thought he was about to get tossed out the door.

Instead, Edge settled them both on the bed, leaning against the headboard with Stretch lying back between his spread legs.

Okay, yeah, that helped, a little. Edge was warm and solid behind him, pressing soft kisses to Stretch’s skull as his gloved hands soothed over him. He made a quiet sound of dismay when he found a bruise, probably leftover from Blue attempt at scrubbing him against the garage, and brushed a gentler kiss over it, his breath a soft gust as he said, “All right. Let’s talk about marriage, then.”

Stretch squirmed, but it wasn’t their position bringing the uncomfortable, "why? we already talked about marriage, you were very clear on your opinion.”

“I know what I said, I was there. Now I’d like to talk about Underfell marriage. If I may?”

Then, despite his little announcement, Edge didn’t say anything. His hands moved absently, following the lines of Stretch’s jaw, down the bumps of his vertebrae to toy with the strings on his hoodie. The silence drew out, but Stretch didn’t rush him; the sooner Edge spoke, the less time he’d have to be here in his arms.

“Marriage in Underfell isn’t like here,” Edge said at last. That flatness in his voice was familiar, a relic from his old world; he always sounded like that when he talked about Underfell, like he couldn’t bear to discuss it if he didn’t have his mental shields in place, and Stretch hated himself, a little, for forcing Edge to dredge them up. “Generally, it was only done by royal decree. Asgore would arrange marriages to encourage offspring for his army, without any care for the wishes of the Monsters involved. I know your experience is different, but when I consider marriage, it is not a loving bond, it’s little more than royally sanctioned slavery.”

“I’m not liking the sound of that,” Stretch admitted. A soft puff of amused breath gusted over his cervical vertebrae in a soundless chuckle, that flat coldness fading.

“Neither do I,” Edge agreed, “We were on the surface for some time before I understood the differences here, but even in this world, it seems to be a contrivance that’s easily cast aside in divorce and used mostly for health benefits and to assign a next of kin.” Gloved fingers slipped beneath Stretch’s chin, urging him to look up into Edge’s gaze. “That brings us back here, to our relationship. What we have is entirely by our own consent and our freedom to choose.”

“And that’s fine,” Stretch said, trying to keep the desperation at a minimum, “we can keep doing that.”

Edge shook his head. “I don’t think we can. Because that’s what I want. It’s not fair to you, if you want more.”

Stretch tried to swallow around the sudden lump of his soul rising into his throat, managed to mumble out, “please don’t dump me.”

Not that he’d blame Edge if he did, ill-considered proposals followed by breaking and entering were probably not anywhere on Edge’s list of fun weekday activities.

It was impressive the way Edge managed to fit so much exasperation into an expression that barely changed, “I’m not about to leave you for loving me. If you care to recall, I love you, too,” He leaned in to brush a soft kiss over Stretch’s mouth and that simple, gentle touch wrung most of the aching fears out of the Stretch’s soul, relief surging in to fill the new real estate. He didn’t linger, drawing back to say, “And there were loving bonds in Underfell, they simply weren’t ones of marriage.”

“okay. then what would a loving bond be like?” He had to assume that’s where Edge was leading this, and how the hell did he always managed to be straightforward in such a roundabout way.

Edge hesitated and Stretch wondered at his answer, but what he got was, “Will you wait here until I come back? Please?”

That meant moving so Edge could get up and as much as Stretch wanted to latch on and cling ‘till dawn or joint cramps, that was probably not the multiple choice answer he was looking for. So he went with the first option and reluctantly roll off to let Edge get up. As long as he was going solo on the bed, Stretch took the chance to kick off his shoes, hey, the deeper he got under the covers, the harder it was for Edge to toss him out. Edge didn’t protest when Stretch burrowed into the blankets, only paused at the door and called, “If either of you are out there when I open this door, I will make you regret it.”

There was a muffled thump, the sound of brothers frantically scrambling away.

Typical. “you still got it, babe.”

“That implies I could possibly lose it.” Edge walked on out, closing the door behind him for which Stretch would always be grateful. He couldn’t do much about their brothers’ intense need to meddle, but he didn’t really want their podcast switching to pay-per-view.

Edge wasn’t gone long and when he came back, Stretch couldn’t really figure out why he left in the first place. He didn’t pull Stretch back in for another round of spoons, either, instead sitting cross-legged on top of the blankets.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that each section of the Underground had its own societal quirks,” Edge said, softly. He shifted a little, then again, and Stretch realized abruptly that he was actually fidgeting, seriously, this was a night of strange happenings. “Snowdin was far enough away from New Home to come up with its own way of handling familial bonds. My brother and I assumed them not long after we moved there and I joined the guard.” His gaze moved over Stretch’s face searchingly, “You’re aware that Red wears my collar.”

“yeah, of course,” Stretch said. All of them learned real quick that dog jokes did not go over well with either of the Fell brothers.

Edge nodded. “I believe the trend may have started with the Dog family, but it took hold quickly. Collars are distinctly visible from some distance with little room for protesting about misunderstandings. Red’s collar distinguishes him as being my brother and under my protection in a way that no one can mistake. Children often wore collars that allowed others to easily identify their parents. And—”

He hesitated again, shifted again in that peculiar fidget, then moved his arm. From his sleeve slid a long, plain box and he didn’t hesitate, boldly handing it to Stretch without another word.

The white cardboard revealed nothing and when Stretch cautiously lifted the lid, all his prickling suspicions were confirmed.

A simple collar, plain leather with none of the spikes that poked out threateningly from Red’s.

Hesitantly, Stretch picked it up, draping it over his hand. The leather was buttery soft, a narrow glossy black backlined with a border of rich crimson. The burnished buckle was delicately tooled into the shape of a soul, what Humans always wanted to call a heart. Lovely and simple, subtle instead of blatant. There weren’t many people who’d get the implications here, but as of about ten minutes ago, Stretch was one of them.

“oh,” Stretch said quietly.

“I had it made a few weeks ago,” Edge said hurriedly. He reached over to run his thumb down the length of it, more deep red against black. “Although I will admit, I wasn’t expecting this conversation to come up so soon.” His chuckle was tinging on shrill, holy shit, he was nervous, after everything tonight, how could he be…? “It would be considered a betrothal collar. Not a marriage, but a promise to a certain level of commitment to each other. I’m aware that it isn’t what you were hoping for—”

The words broke off as Stretch flung himself at Edge, kissing him silent, and then not so silent, a groan muffled between their mouths as Stretch straddled him. It shifted to a sound of displeasure as Stretch drew back, but he knew where that road ended and there was something that needed to be done before they hit the delicious trail.

The box and collar had fallen beside them onto the blankets and Stretch picked it up, holding it out as he asked, “can you put it on me?”

Edge rose up on his elbows and took the collar, and the rough way he said, ‘of course,’ almost ended him right back on the bed.

Down, boy, Stretch told himself, tipping his head back to exposing the line of his cervical vertebra. The leather was cool against his bones as it circled them, the buckle cooler still and hardly took a moment for the collar to settle. Stretch looked back down, taking in the deep satisfaction in Edge’s crimson eye lights, swallowing hard at the way they moved over him, lingering on the collar.

Oh, he could feel it when he swallowed and Stretch did it again, just to feel that faint rise and fall.

“does it look okay?” Like he even needed to ask.

In answer, Edge made a hungry sound and lurched up to take his mouth again, abruptly rolling them both until he was on top, his weight was settled between Stretch’s spread femurs, heavy and perfect. He kissed his way lower, down the line of Stretch’s jaw to the collar and Stretch shuddered at the feel of his tongue testing the difference between delicate bone and leather.

A gloved hand starting to work its way beneath the dark hoodie, oh, fuck yes, maybe the game tonight ended on an unexpected score, but they were going into overtime and—

It would probably be pretty rude to shout ‘fuck off’ at the knock on the door. Especially when his brother’s voice followed it.

“Can I please go home now?” Blue asked plaintively. “because I could use a hand, there’s a great deal of, well, road under and around my car, and not in the good way!”

“think we can talk him into sleeping over with red?” Stretch whispered.

“I think that merely assisting in a felony shouldn’t involve cruel and unusual punishment,” Edge said dryly, then called, “Hold on a moment, we’ll be right there.”

With a grimace, he rolled to his feet and Stretch started to follow, wincing as he accidently knelt on something hard, what the hell…he dug through the covers to pull out whatever trap was hidden in Edge’s bed, but what he pulled out was the ring box.

Oh.

It still pinched a little to see it, surrounded by all those deflated daydreams, and Stretch started stuffing it into his pocket, trying to laugh it off, “i’ll give ‘em to blue to toss into my place, see what the return policy is in the morning.”

A light touch on his arm stopped him.

“Don’t,” Edge said quietly.

“but—", and he’d said it before, a wedding ring laying around the house was like having a loaded gun, and Stretch was fast figuring out that neither should go off prematurely.

“Hold on to them,” Edge paused, struggling for words, then asked, pleadingly, “Give me time?” And it was stupid for that to make Stretch soul swell with love and hope and every other damn soft emotion that could cram its way in, but eh, he’d always said he was idiot. Might as well hold the title for it.

Stretch cleared his throat and managed a hoarse, “babe, you can have all the time in the world.” And then it was his turn for kisses, kept them as soft and reassuring as the collar around his throat.

“Thank you,” Edge murmured against his mouth. Then he pulled away with a grudging sigh and headed for the door.

Stretch touched the collar at his throat lightly. A level of commitment, Edge said, and fuck it, may as well go for broke, “you think we could go out on a date this weekend?”

Edge paused with the doorknob in hand, frowning faintly, “We have a standing date every Saturday for movies and dinner.”

“yeah, but.” But that usually included their brothers, along with Sans and Papyrus, and look, Stretch was openminded, but a six-way split was out. “how about something that’s just you and me?”

“Of course,” Edge said, surprised and pleased. “What did you have in mind?”

‘Anything with you’ probably came off as slightly desperate, so Stretch improvised, “let me surprise you.”

Which was code for ‘I have no idea, give me a day to panic and figure things out’. Good thing Edge spoke his language, he only smiled faintly and agreed, “All right.”

A date, Stretch thought giddily, a real date, and maybe proposals were off the table for now, but not for never.

Blue and Red were sitting on the sofa when they came down and Stretch couldn’t see Edge’s face, but he could see Red’s and knew the second he caught sight of the collar. The shifting emotions pouring across his face could’ve been made into a short film for Sundance, but in the end Red only slouched further into the sofa, and if he looked smug, eh, Stretch was feeling charitable, he’d give him that one.

Blue was less happy and followed anxiously behind as Edge led the way out to his car. “What happened?” he hissed.

“i’ll tell you later,” Stretch whispered furiously out of the corner of his mouth and at Blue’s doubtful look, he sighed out, “promise.”

He didn’t miss the way Blue glanced at the collar, but he blessedly didn’t ask. An hour in Red’s company was a good way to make even the stoutest teetotaler beg for a drink and Stretch didn’t want to stand in the way of his brother’s well-deserved hangover. Between the three of them, they got Blue’s car clear of the rubble and off he went, tires squealing and leaving Edge and Stretch standing alone beneath the darkened streetlight.

He missed out on getting the post-engagement kisses of his dreams, but suddenly getting swept up into Edge’s arms on an empty street was a pretty close second.

“Now, where were we?” Edge murmured. He paused with his mouth a breath away from Stretch’s, “Wait. How did you get in the garage?”

“um,” Stretch hedged, because that was sort of one of those secrets he was hoping to take to his grave.

Rescue came from an unexpected source, in the form of a hoarse, cheery voice, “Still up tonight, boys?”

Edge turned, carrying Stretch with him, to see Mrs. Gerson making her slow way down the road. Huh, she’d made it a whole house down since they last saw her.

“Not for much longer,” Edge said, politely, “Good night, Mrs. Gerson.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, carrying Stretch back to the house and yeah, it wasn’t a happily ever after, not yet.

But it was on the right path.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus

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ks-caster · 4 years

Text

The Future is Infinite (Chapter 5)

Start || Previous

Chapter-specific warnings: None.

Urgent knocking at the door woke her, and Octavia rolled over, frowning in the pre-dawn half-light to squint in the direction where the noise had originated.

“Octavia,” Bucky’s strained voice called. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” she called back, voice raspy either with too much sleep or not enough, she wasn’t sure. She fumbled to her feet and opened the door. “What’s going on?”

“Strange is gone,” Bucky explained hurriedly, as Steve joined him from his own room, pulling on a shirt and reaching inside the door for huge metal arm-shields he’d been using as a weapon yesterday. “Signs of a struggle. We needed to know if anyone else was taken.” Without further ado, he headed off to pound on her other neighbor’s door. “Thor, you in there?”

“Skrish,” Octavia swore, ducking back into the room to pull her clothes back on and grab her sword before heading out and following where everyone else was headed.

“I said clear the room!” Tony was shouting. “This is a crime scene, not a museum. Yes, you too kid.” He added, making a shooing motion towards Peter who, to his credit, was stuck to the wall and therefore not underfoot. He maneuvered lithely across the room and through the door to crouch on the hallway ceiling and watch as Tony scanned things with different colored lasers and asked questions, only to be answered by a woman’s disembodied voice.

“What happened?” Thor demanded.

“Dr. Banner went to see if Mr. Strange was still up because he saw lights under the door,” Peter recited, with the air of someone who’d given this talk a couple of times to different waves of people. “He didn’t answer, but then Mr. Stark thought maybe he was using the time stone thingy to look at the future again so he picked the lock, but when he got in, Mr. Strange was gone, and there was blood on the wall and the bed, and the lamp was broken.” He pointed to the two halves of a tall floor lamp. A smaller splatter of blood was soaking into the carpet near it. It had been broken over someone’s body, most likely.

“The guy can see fourteen million futures but not someone breaking into his bedroom?” She checked rhetorically, already wondering if he had seen this coming, if it was part of the plan.

The lamp post. A guide. A landmark, showing the way home. Broken on the floor.

She shook herself a little, knowing that she was being ridiculous and reading too much into things. He’d been attacked, he had or hadn’t seen it coming, and he was gone. Probably still alive - she knew she didn’t carry around dead bodies without a very good reason.

“Think this is still the one where we win?” Rocket commented darkly.

“I am Groot,” the tree said sadly, before returning to his game.

“Tony, is there any chance he didn’t have the stones on him when he was taken?” Steve asked, leaning on the doorframe but very carefully not setting foot in the room.

“If he didn’t take off his unnaturally loyal cape of destiny to sleep, I doubt he took off the infinity time necklace,” Tony responded, never pausing in his sweep of the room.

“Boss,” the disembodied voice addressed him, “I’ve finished scanning the room. Some of the blood belongs to Dr. Stephen Strange - the blood on the carpet isn’t his. From the dirt patterns on the balcony, the outer door hasn’t been opened in the last couple of days, and as you saw yourself, the inside door was locked.”

“I’ve seen three different guys make magic portals in the last 12 hours,” Octavia reminded everyone. “Not exactly a locked room mystery.”

“Oh, good point!” Peter exclaimed, a glimmer of hope in his voice. “Maybe he used magic to run away from his attacker?”

“He would’ve clued us in by now,” Natasha countered.

“I am Groot,” the tree added helpfully. Rocket did a double-take.

“What!?” He exclaimed. The tree looked up from his game.

“I. Am. Groot,” he repeated slowly. “I am Groot.”

“Care to translate?” Steve asked Rocket, but Thor answered first.

“He says that Strange gave the soul stone to Quill earlier this afternoon,” he explained quickly, then frowned. “Why would he do that? Quill’s not exactly…”

“Hey, he just lost the love of his life!” Rocket growled. Thor raised his hands placatingly.

“That’s what I meant, of course!” he backtracked. While man and beast (and tree) growled at each other, Octavia turned to Bucky.

“Has anyone checked to see if he’s still here?” she asked. He nodded.

“Nebula did that wing,” he gestured towards the blue woman. “Quill’s still here. And Shuri was able to remove the Mind Stone from Vision - she’s here, and confirmed that the stone is still safe in her lab. Anyone come after you?”

Octavia shook her head. “I was out on the balcony practically all night, and I left the doors open when I went to sleep. May as well have painted a target on my face - never saw a single threat.”

“But,” she added, frowning, “that makes perfect sense.”

“Care to share with the class?” Tony asked, and she realized uncomfortably that all eyes were on her. She wished she’d put her armor back on instead of the soft clothes she’d been given.

“If I was fighting an opponent who could see the future, who could see fourteen million futures and find only one version where I lose,” she explained, “then really my only real threat is the guy who can see the future, right? Eliminate him, make a few unpredictable moves, and then I’m almost certainly into one of the millions of futures where I win.” She shrugged.

“And if I only had one opportunity to use the element of surprise,” she continued as looks of comprehension dawned on her audience’s faces, “then I’m not going to waste it on people and things who, in the absence of the future-seeing wizard, aren’t a threat, am I? So now the real question here is, why not just kill the wizard? If it had been me, and if everything had been riding on this, I would’ve just stabbed him in the head so that I’m guaranteed a victory.”

“Not necessarily,” Tony responded. He looked like he was going to be sick. All eyes turned to him. “When he was taken the first time… Squidward was saying something about how if he delivered the stone to Thanos while it was still attached to Strange, it wouldn’t go so well for him. And that the spell wouldn’t just wear off after Strange died. They’re, ah. Probably working real hard to convince him to take it off.” He looked really, really sick.

This time Steve did enter the room, followed closely by Rhodey, but Tony waved both of them off, walking quickly out into the crowded hallway as if he was trying to walk away from his own thoughts.

“So Thanos does have the time stone, but he can’t use it for the length of time it takes Dr. Stephen Strange to break under torture,” Octavia caught up calmly. “From what I’ve seen of him, that buys us some time.”

“You’re disturbingly okay with that,” Tony exclaimed, breaths agitated.

“I’m disturbingly experienced,” she shot back. “But there is one positive we haven’t noticed yet - if Thanos was still able to surprise Strange, then clearly fourteen million wasn’t the total number of possible futures.”

“So,” Peter said, his voice sounding so, so young, “we might still win after all?”

“I make it a point never to rule that out until the end,” Octavia assured him, trying to remind herself that not all of the people around her were hardened the way she was. Not everyone had survived what she had.

“So,” T’Challa summed up rubbing his temple, “Either this is part of Strange’s plan and we’re still winning, or it isn’t and that means we still have a chance. Thanos has 3 infinity stones, and so do we, and we need to get the fight off of this planet and away from its people.”

“And we need to rescue the wizard. Again.” Peter added with a small, breathy laugh. Octavia watched the faces of all the adults who didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that they wouldn’t even know where to start, and saw Rhodey usher Tony a few steps away, rubbing his back… and then a thought burned through her brain like an alarm tone.

“Where do Strange’s loved ones live?” she demanded, glancing between Tony and Peter, since they were the only ones who seemed to know him. Everyone stared at her blankly. “His pressure points, people he’d give up the universe to save,” she clarified, hoping they’d get the picture without her having to say the word ‘torture’ again and risk making whatever Tony was going through worse.

“He used to work at New York Hospital,” Rhodey supplied helpfully. “But that was a few years ago - I don’t think he’s been back much.”

“Wong. Wong would know,” Tony muttered, pulling out his phone. The air around Thor crackled.

“I’m going to London,” he announced, striding quickly through the now vacant crime scene and flinging open the balcony door. “Rabbit, Tree, will you accompany me?” Rocket and Groot followed him, just in time for him to whirl his ax around a few times, and a blinding column of multi-colored light shone down from the sky, vanishing all three of them, and leaving a curling tracery of sparks singed into the balcony.

“He has an ex he’s still in contact with,” Tony was repeating from someone - presumably Wong - on the other end of the phone. “Dr. Christine Palmer. Still works at New York Hospital. I’m sending in the Iron Legion.” Everyone was yelling at once.

“Don’t draw attention—”

“—Alerting the local authorities—”

“Can you find her number?”

“—Hospital might be in danger!”

“Any other family? An ex can’t be it—”

“He’d need access to the planet, right?” Octavia murmured, and she saw Nebula’s eyes flit to her. “He brought a whole space fleet here - if he was gonna do that again, then he wouldn’t go too far with them… especially if there are a bunch of other, more powerful planets around who wouldn’t like what he’s doing; people who’d get in the way when he comes back. He’d need somewhere out of the way to regroup, but he’d hang close to the planet.

“Where nearby could you hide a battle fleet?” She asked, looking at Nebula who by now was clearly paying attention, having levered herself off the wall she’d been leaning on and taken a step forward.

“The closest planets are called Mars and Venus,” she recited, pressing her temple. Her eye lit up and projected out a map of the solar system - nine planets, and a debris field that might have been the ruins of a tenth. “Mars’s rotation cycle keeps one side dark at all times - Venus’s atmosphere hides the whole of the planet’s surface… and the heat and light make it an excellent location for recharging a number of different kinds of engines without being observed.”

“Venus will also remain within easy flying distance of Earth for the next few weeks,” Vision’s voice commented - out of a completely normal-looking man with tired eyes and mousy hair. Octavia did a double-take, but she had seen the red man’s face and heard his voice, and she supposed that she saw and heard the resemblance. Maybe his skin had turned red because of the infinity stone now conspicuously absent from his forehead.

Was her skin going to change colors too?

Not the time.

“We need a ship,” Nebula announced. Everyone was listening now.

“Or a Wong,” Tony countered, tapping a colorful square on his phone and holding it back to his ear. “Hey, on second thought…”

“You won’t survive Venus’s climate dressed like that,” Shuri commented, running her fingers over the beaded bracelet on her wrist and generating projected symbols into the air. “Luckily for all of you, I came prepared. Everyone planning on rescuing the doctor, to my lab right away.”

-0-

“We need to slow down and think this through for a minute,” Steve was demanding as everyone crowded into Shuri’s lab in their pajamas. “First of all, this could very easily be a trap—”

“The surface temperature on Venus holds steady at over 460 degrees celsius,” Shuri was explaining as Tony and Steve went at each other in the background. “The atmospheric pressure is similar to what we would find 900 meters below the ocean’s surface.”

“God, I forgot what it was like to try and save the world while tripping over an overgrown boy scout!”

“Because tripping over your massive ego is so much better!”

More and more of the crowd were moving to the Stark vs Rogers shouting match, either to join, intervene or rubberneck. Shuri glared in the direction of the crescendo of noise a few times, but when it became clear that they weren’t about to stop on her account, she turned her attention to the little knot of people surrounding her. Octavia, Nebula and Wong each took one of the pods she handed out, affixing them to the backs of their necks as she showed.

“What about my suit?” Peter asked from inside a red and blue metallic bodysuit. He was hanging upside down from a white stringy substance stuck to the ceiling. Octavia ran a hand over the top of her now forcefield-encased head, pressing her palm against her skull like she hoped she could squash out the quickly building headache.

“Pressure, yes. That level of heat, on the other hand, will eventually fry the electronics in the nanites of your suit. These are designed not only to withstand the heat…”

“No, YOU’RE wasting time with all of this POINTLESS DRAMA, but isn’t that what you do best—”

“OH, I didn't realize that saving my CAPTURED FRIEND’S LIFE was an inconvenience, oh, WAIT I’ve HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE!”

“THAT’S LOW, EVEN FOR YOU!”

“You’re the one who can get us through to the fleet, yes?” Nebula asked Wong quietly as the man slipped a second suit pod into his pocket for Strange.

“I am,” Wong responded, glancing at the battle lines being drawn around the room.

“Then what are we waiting for?” Octavia muttered, already imagining what a pain in the ass it would be to break up that fight and get everyone to work together.

It was safe to say that she did not miss being queen one bit.

The three of them shared a look, with Peter detaching from the ceiling and glancing rapidly between them and the (so far still largely verbal) fight.

“That room over there is safely insulated,” Shuri continued, accepting that she was only briefing four people instead of a room of them. Octavia noticed that the case she’d opened only had a total of eight slots for suits, so she supposed it was probably better for the team to be chosen quickly and quietly, rather than let the arguing masses debate who should go. “Don’t open the portal until the door is closed; don’t open the door until the portal is closed when you come back.”

“But… Mr. Stark,” Peter started helplessly.

“Is otherwise occupied - with being an idiot,” Nebula finished for him. “Are you coming or not?”

“I… yes,” Peter decided, fixing the pod to the back of his suit and following the adults toward the little room Shuri had pointed out. “I’m coming. Let’s go save the wizard.”

To Be Continued...

4 notes · View notes

roman-writing · 5 years

Text

two, across (3/?)

Fandom: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Pairing: Hilda Valentine Goneril / Lysithea von Ordelia

Rating: T

Wordcount: 6,415

Summary: Lysithea can barely keep afloat under the workload of giving undergrad lectures and finishing off her PhD thesis. Meanwhile Dr. Hilda V. Goneril is somehow both the laziest person as well as the most successful young professor she has ever known. It’s absolutely aggravating.

Read it here on AO3 or read it below the cut

Lysithea forgets to bring her mug back. She had even seen it at Hilda’s that morning, hidden behind a stack of cups and sauce pans, when she had gone hunting for where Hilda kept her plates. The urge to tidy everything in the cupboards into an orderly fashion had been so strong, that Lysithea had instead channeled her energy into trying to figure out the logic behind where Hilda kept everything in her kitchen. And by that point, she had completely forgotten about grabbing her mug and bringing it home with her.

So it is that at two in the afternoon, Lysithea arrives back at her own apartment, because Hilda had engaged her in lively conversation about new reference material she could use in her thesis, which made Lysithea miss two trains. By the time she fishes the keys from her bag, it has begun to rain. The sky above is a cloudbank of iron grey. Lysithea rushes to stick the key into the lock and get the door open.

The apartment inside is partially obscured by shadow. It's messy, but it's a far cry from Hilda's apartment. And Lysithea is comforted by the fact that none of this is her own mess. Indeed, it would have looked a great deal messier had it also included the usual football gear heaped into the entryway corner, but Raphael is out at practice on Sundays until five.

At the sound of Lysithea shutting the door behind her, Marianne drifts into the living room from the kitchen. She is holding a cup of something warm, and wearing her faded blue scrubs. "Oh, Lysithea. I was wondering what had happened to you."

"Sorry," Lysithea toes off her shoes and lines them up neatly on the rack by the door. Numerous other pairs are propped against the wire shoe rack as well, belonging to the various flatmates she shares the apartment with. "I spent the night at a friend's house."

Marianne leans against the kitchen doorway, looking as though she is on the verge of falling asleep where she stands. It’s her perennial state of being, as far as Lysithea can tell. A product of her ungodly work hours as a resident at the local hospital. “Is Edelgard in town?”

“No,” Lysithea slips her bag off her shoulder as an excuse to not meet Marianne’s questioning gaze. “It’s - It’s a different friend. Her name is Hilda.”

“Oh,” Marianne says. “Okay.”

“It isn’t like that. She’s a colleague at the university. We’re not - We’re not dating or anything.”

Marianne blinks, slow and languid. “I never said that. I’m just glad you’re alright. You usually tell one of us when you’re not going to come home. That’s all.”

Lysithea’s stomach sinks. “Sorry.”

“That’s alright.”

“I’ll be sure to text you next time.”

The words pop out before Lysithea can even comprehend that she has thought them. She had not intended for there to be a next time at all, but clearly that is not the case.

Marianne doesn’t seem to notice Lysithea’s moment of aporetic self-reflection. “Okay. Do you want some cocoa? I made a bit extra here, thinking Ignatz was still around but he’s gone to the studio for the afternoon.”

“Thanks. Cocoa sounds great.”

Hilda sends her the notes on the latest thesis draft the next week, and Lysithea returns the favour with her own laborious notes on Hilda’s article. Whereas her notes are typed and colour-coded, Hilda's are scrawled across margins with whole sections circled and arrows pointed to other pages.

It's early morning before Hilda's first class. The two of them are crowded over the newspaper. They sit so closely that their knees are pressed together, and Lysithea can feel the jitter of Hilda’s foot against her ankle. It had stopped bothering her ages ago. She doesn’t even notice it now.

Lysithea points to a section of her thesis that Hilda has scrawled across, trying to decipher the notes there. "What's this one here say?"

"AMATEUR," Hilda says.

Lysithea jerks her head up. "What?"

"Fifteen down. It's 'AMATEUR'." Hilda pens in the answer to the crossword.

Relief sweeps through Lysithea, and her shoulders relax. "Oh, that."

When Hilda has finished writing in the word, she sets the pen down and leans closer to look over Lysithea's shoulder. She reads her own notes, then points to the arrow in question. "This means you should move this whole section to the beginning of the chapter. You have a bad habit of waiting to tell the reader the point. Probably because you like the drama of the big reveal."

"I do not!"

"Listen. I'm into it. Like, a lot."

Lysithea can feel her cheeks warm, and then Hilda continues.

"But -" Hilda taps the circled section with her finger. "You gotta tell the audience this stuff way earlier. It's the right wording. You've just put it in the wrong place. Rearrange some stuff where I've indicated, and it'll flow way better. Trust me."

Lysithea deflates. "Thanks."

Hilda taps the underside of Lysithea's chin. "Hey, now. Chin up! You just know so much about this topic you forget that the audience isn't clued in yet. You're going to smash this last draft out of the park."

"Mmm," Lysithea says, unconvinced.

"Thesis notes away," Hilda scolds, prising the pages from Lysithea's grasp and setting them aside.

"But -!"

"Do the crossword with me." Hilda replaces the pages with the pen she had been wielding earlier, pressing Lysithea's fingers around it. "It will make you feel better. And if you don't do it, I know you'll have a bad day. So, c'mon."

With a huff of irritation at the fact that Hilda is right -- for nothing is so aggravating as Hilda being smug in her knowledge of anything -- Lysithea takes the pen and sets herself to task on the crossword.

"FASCINATOR," she writes in the word for fourteen across.

"Nice one! That's what I'm talking about!" Hilda bumps their shoulders together.

They are still wearing their coats. Outside, autumn has well and truly settled in, and the air is crisp as a good apple. Hilda has begun to dress in stylish black peacoats with gold buttons and pink scarves, while Lysithea stashes extra hand warming packets into her bag in anticipation for the coming winter.

As they steadily work their way through the crossword, Hilda's phone alarm begins to beep at her. Groaning in dismay, Hilda turns it off.

“This sucks,” Hilda leans her elbows on the table and props her chin in her hands. “I have to stay after hours today, too. They have a big assignment due at the end of the week, and I told them I’d be in my office this afternoon to answer any last minute questions. Who actually takes up professors like me on office hours?”

There’s a pause while they both think about the answer to that question, and then in unison they say, “Flayn.”

“She is my best student, though,” Lysithea adds.

Hilda is running her hands down her face. “I know. I know. And I like the little runt, but she asks way too many questions, and I just want to go home.”

“How many grandmothers have you killed this term?” Lysithea asks idly. She taps her ballpoint against the newspaper margin and chews on her lower lip until the answer for fifteen across comes to her.

“So so many. I am the bane of octogenarians everywhere. I haunt rest homes.” Hilda angles herself so that she’s facing Lysithea instead of the desk. “Wanna bet I’ve killed more than you?”

At that, Lysithea glances up from the crossword. “What are the stakes?”

A triumphant grin has already spread across Hilda’s face. “Loser takes the winner out to dinner next Friday.”

“Deal. How many of your students have claimed a grandparent died this term?”

“Four,” Hilda announces, as though she’s won.

Lysithea smiles. “Five.”

Hilda’s face falls. “What? Bullshit. What?”

In answer, Lysithea only shrugs.

“Okay, backup, backup. What kind of hardass assignments have you been giving out that killed five grandmothers?” Hilda cuts herself off with a gasp of realisation. “Oh, you’re one of those professors.”

“Because I’m nice,” Lysithea says pointedly, returning to the crossword, “I’ll let you take me to my favourite gelato place instead of a full dinner. We can get takeaway at your place after.”

“Pfft. ‘Nice’. Thank god I’m not one of your students, and you actually like me.”

Lysithea doesn’t debate that. She simply gestures to Hilda’s phone. “You’re going to be even later than usual.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going.” Hilda stands up, then points to fourteen across. “ASPIRANTS.”

Lysithea finishes the crossword that morning, and she’s only mildly irritated that Hilda was right. Her day goes far better having ticked off one of the steps in her routine. Plus, she gets free gelato, dinner, and another evening spent at Hilda’s apartment, which is starting to become a regular occurrence.

This time she makes sure to text Marianne. She receives a thumbs-up emoji in response, and nothing else. Marianne has probably only managed to send that in between patients.

It's not weird, Lysithea tells herself the next Friday when she's unwinding her scarf in Hilda's messy living room. It's an opportunity to work on her thesis some more. She even brings her laptop with every intention to do just that. And she does manage to get some extra work done despite Hilda's best efforts to derail her progress, which means that it is definitely alright for her to put her laptop away at seven in the evening and finish off the serving of takeaway she had left in the fridge.

"Lysithea," Hilda calls, her voice drifting from the bedroom. "Hurry up! I wanna put on the next season!"

"Just a minute!"

Lysithea is searching for a fork to no avail. Her carton of takeaway sits on the counter. She begins to systematically open up every drawer in Hilda's kitchen in her efforts. She hadn’t seen Hilda pull out their forks earlier that evening, and has no idea where they might be kept. No matter how much Lysithea understands that Hilda has a System, she cannot shake the feeling that things seem to be stored completely at random. She nearly has a crisis of faith when she opens up a cupboard to find a three piece bamboo steamer stowed alongside the cutting boards.

Finally -- after opening and closing nearly every drawer in the kitchen -- she finds what she's looking for.

"Hilda, who puts cutlery in the second to last drawer by the refrigerator?"

"Legends and kings."

Exasperated, Lysithea heads back to the bedroom. She nearly trips on the step down from the kitchen to the living room. The long hems of the black-branded sweatpants she is wearing are still too long even after rolling up the waistband. Hilda had lent her a set of clothes to sleep in, and Lysithea couldn't even pretend that she did not want to use them since she had forgone bringing her own set of pajamas to Hilda's apartment.

Bringing her own pajamas would be admitting that this was far more than what she was willing to label it. Not that she thought Hilda would have minded. Indeed, Hilda had made a show of handing Lysithea a brand new toothbrush still in its packaging, when they had entered the apartment earlier that evening.

Using one hand to tug at the waistband of the sweatpants, Lysithea plods into Hilda's bedroom and sits on the bed. Hilda already has another episode ready on the laptop screen.

"No spilling on the bed, please." Hilda says without looking up from where she's fiddling with her tablet.

"Your sheets are safe from me."

"Shame," Hilda sighs.

Shooting her an unimpressed glare, Lysithea hits the spacebar to play the episode. She defiantly ignores Hilda's smirk, and focuses instead on finishing her dinner and enjoying the show.

The evening occurs much like the last time she had spent the night, except this time when they fall asleep Hilda steals most of the blankets, and Lysithea is forced to wrestle them back. Hilda whines and mumbles something, but is clearly still fast asleep even as her back presses up against Lysithea's side.

Lysithea doesn't push Hilda away. She is, after all, cold.

She wakes to rain lashing the window overshadowing the side of Hilda's bed that Lysithea has begun to frequent. The sky is dark enough that she cannot determine what time it is. Lysithea clambers from the end of the bed so as not to disturb a slumbering Hilda, and grabs her bag from where it sits in a corner.

When she enters the bathroom and locks the door, she notices two things. One: Hilda owns a washing and drying machine, which she had not noticed on her first visit because they had been hidden under a mountain of laundry. Two: Hilda's bathroom is probably the tidiest room in the apartment, in terms of actual clear floor space.

Lysithea performs the same morning routine as ever. She takes out her hard-lined med case. She lines up all her pill bottles on the ledge of the sink. She twists off the first cap. She shakes a small round white pill into the centre of her palm. This time however, when she reaches for the sink tap, prepared to cup the water in one hand, she pauses.

Blinking, she has to rub at one of her eyes, thinking that she is seeing things. And yet there, clear as day, nestled alongside Hilda's various makeup and hair products on the sink sits her travel mug. Gingerly, Lysithea reaches out and picks it up. The mug has been cleaned. Its pastel purples and whites and cartoon kittens stand out among a sea of vibrantly coloured bottles and jars.

She sticks it under the tap and uses it to take her meds. She leaves it where she had found it. She does not put it into her bag to take it away.

There is the muted shuffle of bare footsteps through the door. Lysithea emerges from the bathroom, clutching her bag, to discover that the bed is empty and Hilda is nowhere in sight. Something clatters in the kitchen. Lysithea sets her bag down in the same corner as before, and wanders into the hallway.

Hilda is making breakfast, and Lysithea watches in bewildered fascination as the event unfolds. Just by walking from one side of the kitchen to the other, Hilda is somehow miraculously able to do everything needed to cook breakfast without ever needing to retrace her steps. What Lysithea had initially assumed was completely random turns out to have alien logic when Hilda does it. Indeed, the placement of everything is because that’s what is the most efficient layout for her to save time when doing set tasks, so that she can perform actions with as little effort as possible.

Hilda notices her presence, and yawns around one hand while maneuvering a frying pan with the other. “Morning. Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Lysithea says.

She continues to watch Hilda move about the kitchen, arrested by how easily she seems to be able to move from one action to another until, finally, Hilda is seated atop one of the counters with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast in her lap, drumming her heels lightly against one of the cupboards that has been strategically draped with a soft towel to cushion the blows. Another plate of food has already been set aside for her, without Lysithea needing to ask for it.

Hilda is -- much to her absolute horror -- beginning to make sense.

Despite the increased time spent in one another’s company, it remains a mystery how Hilda can do so much in her day. Slowly, Lysithea incorporates all of Hanneman's and Hilda's latest notes on her thesis. And at the same time she does her best to uncover the secret behind Hilda's System.

She has never met a person so dedicated to being lazy, that it means she is that much more efficient with every task. Nobody else Lysithea knows can automate their routine troubles the way Hilda can. Lysithea has known marketers and sales people of the highest calibre -- thanks to El's vast family network -- and none of them compare to Hilda, whose powers extend to the realm of uncanny. She can convince anyone of doing things for her so that she doesn't have to do them herself. Most bizarrely, they always seem to be pleased that they are doing it.

Case and point: she often sees Hilda's TA, a beleaguered young man who doesn't seem to actually have a name and whose face is as forgettable as his personality, running amok doing Hilda's grocery shopping and dry cleaning, on top of grading the papers turned in by her undergrad students.

Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t seem absolutely thrilled at the prospect of pleasing his professorial overlord, because he does. And which also isn’t to say that Hilda never does work, because she must.

Not that Lysithea has ever actually seen Hilda doing work -- thesis notes and lectures notwithstanding. The woman avoids work like it’s out of fashion.

It’s a further mystery how Hilda manages to have time to go to the gym when Lysithea knows her schedule must be crazy. But sure enough, she sees Hilda walk by her office one day in her gym clothes looking sweaty and wearing nothing but black tights and a pink sports bra with a small black towel draped around her neck like a stole. Her long pink-dyed hair is pulled back; it's damp at the temples.

She pauses in the doorway to Lysithea’s office, tilting her head back to drink from a water bottle, then says, “You doing anything tomorrow?”

Lysithea takes a moment to answer. Her finger is pressed down on the ‘J’ key of her laptop, sending a spiral of letters down the email she had been penning to Hanneman. Jerking her hands from the keyboard, she clears her throat. “Actually, I’m - uh - going out with my flatmates tomorrow for my birthday.”

“Oh, nice! Happy birthday!” Hilda glances around the floor for a moment, then gestures to the office with her water bottle. “No live pony as a gift from your mystery millionaire?”

In answer, Lysithea pushes her chair slightly out of the way to reveal the enormous box that had been shipped in earlier that afternoon, and which she had stashed under her desk to keep out of the way.

“Of course.” Hilda snorts with laughter, but it sounds genuinely amused. Had it been anyone else, Lysithea might have worried she was resentful, but not Hilda. “Want to come over tonight, then? We can bake you an early birthday cake, and then I can leave you alone tomorrow to hang out with your other friends."

Cake is a more than adequate method of bribery for Lysithea on any occasion, and these days she doesn't require much convincing to go to Hilda's apartment.

“You can come along if you -?” Lysithea begins to offer, but Hilda shakes her head.

“Nah. I’m a terrible third wheel. And you should chill with them.”

Lysithea thinks about her workload for the week. “I can do tonight.”

Hilda’s smile blinds like the midmorning sun. “Great! Just swing by anytime after four.”

She turns and walks into her own office before Lysithea can even respond. Lysithea watches, half twisted around atop her chair, as Hilda hums to herself while she rifles around her office. Hilda finds whatever she had been looking for, then turns off the lights and locks the door, and as she starts off back down the hallway, she waves in Lysithea’s direction with a parting wink.

Lysithea cranes her neck to watch Hilda swan away. It takes her a whole minute to remember that she had been writing an email.

Lysithea is digging into a sack of flour when her phone rings in her bag. “Can you get that for me?”

Behind her she can hear the zipper of her bag being opened. Hilda doesn’t mention the medicine case, and puts the bag down once she’s found the phone.

“Sure thing. It’s -” Hilda turns over Lysithea’s phone to check the name. “- ‘Mom’.”

“Oh, it’s not actually my mother. That’s Edelgard. It’s a joke,” Lysithea explains. “Just text her that -”

But Hilda has already pressed the green answer button, and is lifting the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom!! Lysithea can’t come to the phone right now. How can I help?”

Lysithea hisses Hilda’s name, and puts down the sack of flour and measuring cup she had been holding. She tries to jump up and take the phone, but can’t reach it when Hilda straightens to her full height.

There is silence on the other line, and then Edelgard’s distinct, cultured voice. “You must be Hilda. I’ve heard so much about you.”

A wide grin splits Hilda’s face. “Oh, you have, have you? Tell me more.”

“No, no, no, no, no.” Lysithea holds up her flour-smeared hands in a threatening manner. “I will put handprints on everything in your closet.”

Hilda makes a face at her. “Booo!”

“We’re making a cake,” Lysithea raises her voice so that Edelgard can hear through the mic. “Actually, I’m making a cake. Someone -” she aims a pointed glare at Hilda, “- isn’t helping very much.”

“It’s called ‘supervising,’” Hilda interrupts in her defense. “And let it be known that I got everything down from the high shelves for you.”

"Just -! Put her on speaker phone please."

“Fine, fine.” Hilda hits a button on the phone, and puts it down on the counter between them.

Edelgard’s voice issues from the speakers. “Is this a bad time?”

“No.” Lysithea continues to sift in flour to a large steel-brushed bowl, raising her voice a little for the phone’s mic to pick up. "My hands have stuff all over them because someone doesn't own a mixer."

"I own a perfectly good mixer! It's right here!" Hilda opens up a ground level cupboard with her foot and gestures to, admittedly, a very nice mixer.

"For which I can't find the paddle attachment," Lysithea counters.

"That's what -"

"Do not say: 'That's what she said.' Do not!"

“- the spatula is for,” Hilda finishes, trying and failing to look innocent. “You see? I didn’t say anything of the sort. Now what must your friend think of me?”

“Nothing that wasn’t true, I imagine,” is Edelgard’s dry response.

Lysithea wipes off her hands and snatches up her phone. “Hilda, can you -?” she gestures to the beginnings of the cake batter.

Hilda waves her off. “I’m on it. Shoo.”

Hitting the button to turn off speaker, Lysithea moves out of the kitchen. The only place that has a door between her and the kitchen is either outside or Hilda’s bedroom, so Lysithea wanders into Hilda’s bedroom and closes the door behind her. It feels odd being in this space without Hilda there, like she’s wandered into the forbidden temple of an ancient fashion deity.

“Sorry about that,” Lysithea says once the door is shut behind her.

“Well, I’m relieved to hear you two actually get along.”

“Yeah. We do. She’s - ” Sitting on the edge of the bed, the mattress sinks beneath Lysithea’s weight. “- nice.”

“I didn’t think you’d like her if she wasn’t. You’re awfully sensible about things like that.” In the background, Lysithea can hear Hubert’s low voice murmur something unintelligible. Edelgard pulls the phone away from her ear momentarily, before relaying the message. “Hubert says he can’t say much for your taste, but that Dr. Goneril does not pose a significant threat on your life unless you happen to be a clay pigeon. Hubert, I don’t know what that means.”

Lysithea screws up her face in bewilderment, but all she says is, “Tell Hubert to keep his nose out of my business.”

“A futile effort, Lys. You know that.” Edelgard switches topics, and there’s the sound of footsteps, as though she too is leaving for another room. “I have meetings all day tomorrow, so I figured I would ring to wish you an early happy birthday, rather than a belated one. Did you get my package?”

“Thank you. And yes. It’s too much, as usual.”

There’s a huff of amusement down the line. “Nonsense.”

“You really do spoil me, you know. You don’t have to -”

“Lysithea,” Edelgard interrupts, her tone firm. “We’ve already had this discussion.”

Lysithea bites her tongue, but she can’t stop the guilty squirm in her gut at being unable to properly reciprocate Edelgard’s lavish generosity. For years, Edelgard had insisted her kindness and friendship was enough in return, but it had never sat well with her.

“Yeah, I know,” Lysithea relents.

“Don’t go eating everything in the box all at once.”

“That,” Lysithea says primly, “would be physically impossible.”

“No, not you. That message was for Raphael.”

At that, Lysithea laughs softly. “I’ll be sure to tell him to keep his paws off my birthday haul. He and the rest of the flat are taking me out to dinner tomorrow.”

“The usual place?”

“Mmm,” Lysithea’s answer is a wordless hum of affirmation. Then she frowns. “Hang on. What time is it over there?”

“Not that late,” Edelgard says, but she sounds cagey, like an animal that has been cornered.

“When you have meetings all day tomorrow, too,” Lysithea scolds.

“I always have meetings.”

“Go to sleep, El.”

A sigh crackles through the speakers. “Has anyone told you you’re rather bossy?” Edelgard says not unkindly.

“Hilda does. All the time.”

“She really does know you, then.”

“Good night, El,” Lysithea says in a warning tone.

She can almost see the smile down the line when Edelgard says, “Good night. And again -- happy birthday.”

Lysithea lingers on the bed for a moment after the phone call ends. The bed has an extra mattress stacked beneath it, and she is too short for her feet to touch the ground. For a long moment, she looks down at the phone in her hands, before hopping off the bed and making her way back to the kitchen.

Hilda is finishing up the cake batter, when Lysithea walks in. "Is she gone already? I didn't get to tell her how much I admire her for trying to dress you in Valentino, and also maybe if she could send a few things in some bigger sizes."

“Good luck with that. She doesn’t trust easy.” Lysithea checks that the oven has been preheated, and then takes over from Hilda.

Hilda gives up control of the cake batter without complaint. "How did you meet mystery millionaire, anyway?"

"We were admitted at the same hospital when we were kids. Turns out having the same rare disease since childhood is a bonding experience."

Hilda hums a contemplative note at the back of her throat, but does not pry. Even so Lysithea can feel Hilda's eyes upon her. She can't bring herself to meet Hilda's gaze.

"It's -" Lysithea scrapes the cake mix into the baking tin, and levels it out with the spatula. "It's manageable. I'm managing it. I just don't like to talk about it much, because then it becomes the only thing people ever talk about. And I like talking to you about other things, so we should just -"

Hilda places a hand over hers, stopping Lysithea's fiddling. She takes the spatula from Lysithea's fingers, and sets it aside on the counter. "Lysithea, I need to ask you something."

Swallowing past a nervous lump in her throat, Lysithea looks anywhere but at Hilda, who has stepped closer, trapping her against the counter. "Wh-What?"

Hilda turns their clasped hands over so that she can run her thumb over the back of Lysithea's knuckles. She seems to take an age to inspect Lysithea's fingers before she says, "Will you let me do your nails while the cake is in the oven?"

Lysithea’s answering laugh is relieved. She puts the cake into the oven, sets a timer on her phone, and then allows herself to be led into Hilda’s room. There, Hilda starts excitedly rummaging through a drawer of her workstation. She sets out a plethora of colour options on the bed, and allows Lysithea to pick one. No sooner has Lysithea pointed at a pale lilac colour, than she is on Hilda’s bed, and one of her hands has been pulled into Hilda’s lap.

Hilda bows over Lysithea’s wrist, directing Lysithea’s fingers this way and that while she first files her nails back. Her own fingernails are perfectly shaped, blunt half-moons of bold red polish. On anyone else, they might have clashed with pink, but Hilda somehow makes it work.

Hilda fills the silence with chatter, pausing at one point to put on some music from her tablet on the bedside table. She crosses her legs atop the bed and shuffles closer so that she can get a better angle on Lysithea’s nails. Her hands are warm yet calloused, as though she had spent years wielding a woodman’s axe.

“Do you play sports?” Lysithea wonders aloud.

Hilda dips the tiny polish brush back into its bottle -- this is the second coat of colour after a clear coat, which Lysithea had never known was a necessary step until now. “Okay this is going to sound a little weird, but you know skeet shooting? The sport with shotguns where you shoot clay targets that are flung into the air?”

“Yes?”

Hilda shrugs. “My family’s kinda famous for it. My brother’s an Olympian. He got bronze a few years ago or something, and now he’s, like, a hometown hero or whatever. I used to compete until I was, like, fifteen and then decided that it really wasn’t for me, thanks.”

“That is,” Lysithea thinks back to her phone call with Edelgard, which suddenly makes sense, “probably not the strangest thing I could have learned about you. Though I can’t imagine holding up a shotgun requires you to do much lifting at the gym.”

“I would make a ‘guns’ joke, but I know you’d yell at me.”

“Has that ever stopped you before?”

“No, but in the past I wasn’t doing your nails, and I have priorities. Besides,” Hilda finishes the final coat and takes a moment to blow on Lysithea’s nails. “If I’m very very good, you might let me show you how to apply makeup, too.”

Lysithea leans over to glance at her phone on the bedside table. “Only if it takes less than fifteen minutes.”

Immediately, Hilda bounds off the bed, and goes racing to the bathroom, from which she emerges clutching a small velvet bag. Her eyes are alight. When she jumps back onto the bed, she says in excitement, “I’ve been dreaming of this moment.”

Lysithea eyes the bag warily. “I’m suddenly nervous for some reason.”

“I just have that effect on people.”

Hilda starts pulling out various bottles and brushes, and gets to work. She explains each and every step of what she’s doing with the familiarity of someone who has worn makeup nearly every day since the age of fourteen. She directs Lysithea with soft touches to her jaw and cheek, and it does not take long for Lysithea to become utterly distracted.

She is saved by the timer going off, and Hilda pronouncing her nails and makeup finished just in time to pull the cake from the oven. While Lysithea starts on the frosting, Hilda puts together a separate makeup case for her, stuffing it into Lysithea’s bag beside her laptop with specific instructions to use it.

They barely wait for the frosting to be applied before pulling out forks and digging in. They don’t bother with cutting slices. It isn’t the worst cake Lysithea has ever made, but it certainly isn’t the best. And yet, she is hard pressed the remember the last time she had enjoyed a cake as much.

Eventually, Lysithea leans to one side to get a better look out the window. “It’s getting late.”

Licking the frosting off her fork, Hilda shrugs, as unflappable as ever. “You can stay the night again, if you want.”

For a moment, Lysithea pauses. She cannot tell if Hilda seems almost too nonchalant, or if that is just how Hilda always was.

“I should head back to my apartment,” Lysithea says slowly.

Hilda smiles around the fork before removing it from her mouth and saying, “Next time, then.”

“Next time.”

When Lysithea returns to her own apartment later that evening, Ignatz looks up from where he's reading on the couch. "Oh! Lysithea, you look nice!"

Her hand tightens around the strap of her bag digging into her shoulder. "Thanks."

She stays up later than she normally would. She tells herself it’s because she wants to hang out with her flatmates, and not because she knows that when she goes to bed she’ll have to wash her face.

Lysithea has been twenty-five for three weeks, and still the oddest thing about living to be a quarter of a century is that she has miraculously finished a final draft of her doctoral thesis. Twelve years ago, she might have said living to be twenty-five was the miracle, but those days are long behind her.

It’s Friday, and it’s the first day of snowfall after a week of crisp autumnal weather. Lysithea reads and re-reads her thesis document for any changes she might need to make, even though Hanneman has already responded to her email saying that if he were an examiner he would be more than pleased to pass it.

For all intents and purposes, it is ready to submit. Subject to Tomas’ approval.

Her fingers tremble slightly with adrenaline as she types up the email to Tomas. She goes back multiple times to re-word sections of the email, even though the end result is functionally the same. Finally, Lysithea closes her laptop in triumph, and then immediately pulls out her phone, brimming with excitement. Her fingers fly across the screen, dialing the first person she can think of.

She wants to tell someone. She wants someone to know and share in this feeling. She wants -

“Hey there, short stack! How’d it go with Professor Handyman? He give you the all clear?” Hilda’s voice comes through the receiver, clear and bright as day.

Lysithea feels her mouth curve into a smile despite herself. “You know he hates it when you call him that.”

“Then he should pay the eighty six dollars to get a legal name change. I’ve given him the paperwork before.”

Lysithea snorts in amusement. “He thinks my updated draft is great, by the way.”

“And -?” Hilda drawls, waiting for more.

“And -” Lysithea bites her lower lip. “I’ve given the final version to Tomas for approval. I just need to wait for his sign off, and I’m done.”

Hilda crows down the line, and Lysithea has to hold the phone away from her ear. “Now that’s what I like to hear right before the weekend! You still at the office?”

“Just packing up now.” Lysithea pushes at the floor with her feet so that her office chair spins slowly. She stops herself after one rotation.

“Good.” There’s the distinct sound of a breeze cutting across Hilda’s phone, as though she has just stepped outside. “Meet me downstairs in five minutes. This calls for victory ice cream at that favourite gelato bar of yours downtown.”

“Hilda, it’s negative two degrees outside.”

“Yeah, and I want an ice cream sundae with warm brownies and an espresso. Get with the program!”

Lysithea shakes her head, but she can’t keep the grin from her face. She hasn’t been able to ever since she had hit the send button on that email. “Alright. Five minutes.” She stands up to pack her laptop away.

“Maybe make it ten.”

Lysithea rolls her eyes, and sits back down. “Just text me when you’re a block away from campus.”

“You got it.”

The text arrives eleven minutes later, and Lysithea has been sitting with her bag in her lap, ready to depart for four minutes. A quick elevator ride downstairs, and Hilda is striding towards her on the ground floor. As if to spite the light dusting of snow on the pavement, Hilda is wearing black high-heeled shoes with blood red undersides, like she’d walked across a valley of dead men to arrive at her destination.

It shouldn’t send a thrill skittering up Lysithea’s spine, but it does anyway.

Where Lysithea is wearing woolen gloves that Ignatz had knitted for her birthday, Hilda rubs her hands together and blows on them for warmth when they step outside.

“Fuck. It’s freezing.”

“Here.” Lysithea reaches into her bag, and pulls out a pocket hand warmer.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thankyou.”

“I can’t believe you still want ice cream.”

“This won’t be a problem once we’re done with the sundaes and back at my place with a hot toddy.”

“I shouldn’t have to explain to a molecular biologist the reason why drinking alcohol in freezing weather is a bad idea.”

“Unless you’re planning on abandoning me on the bleak wasteland that is high street, I think I’ll take my chances.” Hilda walks in such a way that Lysithea’s shoulder brushes up against her arm. “Thanks for the handwarmer.”

“Don’t mention it. Really. Don’t.”

Vaguely, Lysithea wonders if she is turning into one of those patsies that Hilda unloads all of her work onto, but in that moment Hilda is smiling softly down at her, and she can’t bring herself to care. She has only a mind for the promise of a warm brownie and Hilda’s company. Together they walk down the street to the nearby train station while fresh snow gathers at their footsteps.

NOTES

I swear the Olympic skeet shooting thing didn’t just come out of nowhere. Hilda’s relic is called “Freikugel” which is from a medieval German legend about a Freischütz. A Freischütz makes a contract with the devil, and in return receives seven magic bullets (called “Freikugeln”). Six of these bullets will hit their target without fail, whereas the seventh bullet belongs to the devil, and which he can use at his discretion.

Now, I went back and forth about making Hilda’s family a military one because of Holst, but then after doing a bit of digging I decided to run with the Freischütz legend and make it a joke about Hilda’s guns instead.

Also I can’t be bothered to try to work out what season Lysithea’s birthday actually falls in, so it’s late autumn now. Because reasons.

#lysithea/hilda #hilda valentine goneril #lysithea von ordelia #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #roman writes

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marinsawakening · 5 years

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hey can I rant for a second about how good FMA’s magic worldbuilding is? because it’s really really good.

In general, I prefer soft magic systems, because I like my magic with a large dose of whimsy, but FMA has probably the hardest magic system I’ve ever seen and does it brilliantly. FMA needed a hard magic system because a large part of the plot relies on subverting alchemy’s predictability. If alchemy was normally unpredictable, than a variety of plot points would completely fall apart.

A good example of this is Father’s control of Amestris’s alchemy and the scene in the climax where the Ishvalans help to form a counter transmutation circle against it. If we didn’t know exactly how alchemy worked, what its source was, and what its limits are, then we wouldn’t be able to understand the importance of that scene, and it would fall flat on its face.

But we also see this way earlier on in the story; in fact, with the very premise and how it ties into the first arc, the Cornello Arc. Alchemy, in-universe, is a science, and therefore follows strict rules, the most important of which is the law of equivalent exchange. This is how we’re already clued into the idea that resurrecting the dead, which Father Cornello claimes to be capable of, is probably bullshit; we, the audience, know that anything that’s ‘equivalent’ to a human soul is probably immoral to attain at best, and impossible to attain at worst. This is confirmed later in the arc, when Father Cornello turns out to be a fraud, and then re-affirmed in the Elrics’ backstory, showing that even alchemical geniuses like them must bend to the rules of the universe.

But in this same arc, we are also introduced to the concept of a ‘get out of jail free card’ in the form of the Philosopher’s Stone, which the Elrics want to use to defy God one last time and regain their bodies. We see that even a fake/depowered Philosopher’s Stone like Father Cornello’s is capable of giving you incredible power. So then, later, when we are introduced to the concept of a true Philosopher’s Stone, we know to be afraid, not just because of this, but because we’ve spent a series seeing brutal fights between fair-and-square alchemy; someone gaming the system is already a terrifying idea, when we haven’t even properly seen what it can do.

But still, even this method of gaming the system still fits within its established magic system and isn’t just a mcguffin to raise the stakes; Philosopher’s Stones utilize the souls of people who were sacrificed to make them to create alchemical reactions that seemingly defy the law of equivalent exchange. In reality, they are never defying this; they are simply using a different energy source that works by different rules. This is the first time we are introduced to this concept.

And this is later expanded on when we meet Mei for the first time, and Alkahestry is introduced. Alkahestry is basically just Xingese alchemy, but bears the important distinction of using a different source than alchemy, namely the life force of the planet itself (the so-called ‘Dragon’s Pulse’). While the things that Alkahestry can do (heal wounds, use long-distance transmutation circles) are foreign to Amestrian alchemy, this makes sense considering the fact that they have different energy sources and were developed with different goals in mind (and by different people, as we learn later). It’s a natural evolution in-universe, which helps with the believably of the wordlbuilding, and the introduction of Alkahestry cements the concept of ‘life force’ as a viable energy source that you can use to do transmutations with.

So when we see living Philospher’s Stones like Hohenheim and Father completely ignore the rule of Equivalent Exchange on a scale that even regular Philospher Stones can’t afford, we accept that immediately because we’ve already been shown, multiple times over (also with the Homunculi, although I didn’t touch on that), that this is a valid possibility within the rules of the universe; they are still adhering to the rule of Equivalent Exchange, but they simply have a lot more energy to form things with than regular people, so they can do seemingly impossible things.

This is also why the scene where Ed gets impaled in Baschool works: we have been shown, multiple times over, that life force is a genuine energy source that you can use to create things with and - more prominently - affect living things with. So when Ed comes up with the idea to use his own life force to seal his wound, it’s surprising, sure, but it’s also completely plausible within the universe that Arakawa’s built up. Ed isn’t inventing a new type of alchemy on the fly or stretching the rules of the universe paper thing; he’s using what he’s learnt about alkahestry and Philosopher’s Stones on his journey to get out of a serious problem with an unconventional but completely plausible idea. In any other work, this would’ve been a mcguffin activated by the protagonist’s plot armor; in this one, this is a plausible if unexpected move that’s been built up throughout the entire work.

And so too is the ending. Ed giving up his Gate and therefore his alchemy in order to bring Alphonse back, body and soul and all, comitting the closet thing to human transmutation that’s possible. This is breaking the rules. It is. But not in a universe-breaking, deus ex machina kind of way.

We’ve known throughout the series that being without a Gate exist; those are the Homunculi. We also know that proper human transmutation, with people who have died and passed through to the afterlife, is impossible. But Al hasn’t passed on to the afterlife; his soul has returned to his body, which we’ve seen it’s been wanting to do for a long time and would’ve done eventually, and he’s now waiting in front of the Gate. Ed doesn’t need to pull off a true human transmutation; just something very close to it. And we already know it’s possible to pass through someone else’s Gate back to the normal world; we’ve established this earlier, when Ed, Ling, and Envy escaped Gluttony’s stomach.

So Ed giving up his Gate (and with it, his alchemy) to bring Al back to the normal world and passing through Al’s Gate to do so is, like Baschool, an unexpected and daring solution, but one that’s completely substantiated by everything that we know about alchemy. The rules of the universe, itself, aren’t broken.

But thematically, they are. Ed gets Alphonse back, he has gained more friends and family than he’s ever had before, and he can now live a happy life. And what did he really give in return? His alchemy. But, as he points out, losing this doesn’t really change him all that much in the end; he is still the same ordinary person as he was with alchemy.

As many people have pointed out, FMA’s message is that Equivalent Exchange is bullshit. But the actual magic mechanic of Equivalent Exchange is never broken; rather, the theme of ‘Equivalent Exchange’ being a good way to live your life by is deconstructed and ultimately proven to be false. Because at the end, you can give more than you get, and you can get more than you give, and that is fine. That is good.

Fullmetal Alchemist’s magic system isn’t just amazing because of its high level of internal consistency, but because of how it contrasts with the ultimate theme of the show, which is why Ed losing his alchemy is the best thematically ending this series could’ve gotten.

#hi everyone thanks for coming to my ted talk on part one of why i love fma's worldbuilding #as always: if i missed things or misconstrued stuff feel free to correct me my memory is always shit and i'm absolutely capable of #messing up #im love fma's magic system #my posts #fma #also sorry this is super rambly and not at all structured #this post is literally just me writing down whatever comes to mind

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