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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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fishfingersandjellybabies · 3 years

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Still a Little Bit Yours (Part 1) - fic

Characters: Jon Kent, Damian Wayne, bit of Tim Drake and Maya Ducard Pairing: jondami Summary: Damian broke up with him, out of the blue. It didn’t make any sense. But, as it turns out, there’s a reason why it didn’t. A/N: Damian and Jon are in their mid-twenties and no longer go by Robin or Superboy (but not really Batman or Superman either, Tim’s last line is kind of a joke.) Title, and maybe vibe of this part, is based on ‘A Little Bit Yours’ by JP Saxe.

Part One | Part Two

The phone almost slipped from his fingers.

Damian…did Damian just say what he thought he said?

“…What?” He whispered near breathlessly. “W-what did you just say?”

“I said I think we should see other people.” Damian replied calmly. “It would be for the betterment of both of us.”

“Since when?” Jon snapped, anger flaring immediately, but instantly morphing into confusion and sadness. His heart breaking by the second.

They’d been together for three years. Secretly pined after each other for the two years prior to that. Had recently talked about moving in together. Had been happy.

Jon was so, so sure they’d been happy.

“Since…recently.” Damian hummed blankly. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“And the thought of doing this in person didn’t occur to you in your fucking contemplation?” Jon snapped. “Christ, Damian, we were just talking about getting an apartment!”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you. I know this isn’t what you want.” There was a hint of regret in Damian’s voice, but not enough for Jon’s liking, so it only fueled his growing anger further. “I…I don’t know what else to say.”

“Oh, really? Three fucking years and this is all you have to say?” Jon hissed. “I know you’re emotionally constipated, Damian, but…god. This is low. Even for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not!” Jon shouted. A store clerk nearby glanced at him. And that was right, he was in the grocery store. He’d…forgotten. Forgotten the whole world existed, forgot it was collapsing around him by the second, as Damian hummed those words. “Because if you were sorry, you wouldn’t have fucking done it this way in the first place!”

He heard a mother a few aisles down murmur to her children to not use language like that. That people who talked like that were pathetic.

“I…I don’t know what your game here is, Damian.” He whispered harshly.

“It’s not a game.” Damian promised. “I respect you too much to play games with you. I’m just trying to be honest.”

“But you don’t love me enough to break up with me in person, apparently.” Jon countered. He closed his eyes, wouldn’t allow the tears to fall. “I…Damian, I’m going to hang up on you right now. I…I don’t want to say something I might regret.”

“That’s fine.” Damian promised. Then again: “I’m sorry, Beloved.”

Jon scoffed and pulled the phone away from his ear. He hit the call end button so hard the screen cracked under his touch.

…Great.

He stood there a moment, trying to take deep, even breaths. But it wasn’t working real well. Each breath was trembling, and it’s like his lungs suddenly didn’t work, couldn’t hold any air.

Did he do something wrong? Did he say something? They’d fought before, all couples do. They were getting better at communication, Damian was coming out of that emotional shell the League of Assassins put him in.

They’d kissed yesterday. Jon had held him in his arms, had kissed his nose and told him how beautiful his smile was. Damian had laughed and held Jon’s face, stroking his thumb along his cheek.

And now…now they were here?

“…Honey?” Jon jumped as a hand gently touched his elbow. He spun to find an old woman in an apron matching the store’s color scheme glancing up at him. “Are you okay?”

The world around him came whooshing back. He was in the middle of the grocery store. He…he was sobbing in the middle of the grocery store. Fat, ugly tears rolling down his face as he practically crushed his phone in his hand.

“Do you need me to call someone?” The woman whispered.

“No, I…” He gently placed his shopping basket – half full of this week’s groceries – on the floor and backed away. He clumsily ran his nose along his sleeve, a trail of snot left in his wake. “I’m alright. I’m…I’m sorry.”

He turned and barely stopped himself from flying out of the store.

Jon laid in bed for two days, exhausting himself racking his brain, trying to figure out what happened, what changed, what he did.

He texted Damian, almost exactly twenty-four hours after the fateful call, but the other never answered. Never answered any text Jon sent. Or any call that he drunkenly made after that. Didn’t even give him the knowledge of being left on read.

He cried a few times, threw things a few other times.

None of this made any sense.

He thought about going over to Gotham. Walking up to the manor and banging on the door until someone answered. Thought about staging a protest until Damian agreed to see him, if the door answerer wasn’t said boyfriend.

…Ex-boyfriend.

Tears welled up in his eyes every time he thought of the term.

Ex. Boyfriend.

Jon closed his eyes, buried his face in his pillow. Honestly, he thought they were going to get married. He thought they were going to be together forever. He wasn’t ready to plan a life without Damian, not yet. They were supposed to grow old together, die minutes apart like in the movies. Holding hands until the end.

He didn’t lose Damian to death, like he always thought he would. He didn’t lose Damian to space or assassins or even to grief in the potential loss of Bruce or Dick. He lost Damian because Damian…simply didn’t want him anymore.

God. They weren’t supposed to break up after three years. They weren’t supposed to part ways in their twenties. They weren’t supposed to end things for no reason.

He thought he’d gotten pretty good at reading Damian. His ticks, his quirks. What upset him, what didn’t. He thought he was an expert. The world’s leading expert in Damian Wayne.

Apparently he was fooling himself.

He sighed, pressed his face further into the fabric of his pillow. Tried to ignore the memories threatening to overflow. Of he and Damian in this bed. Kissing, cuddling, lazing. Of Jon promising Damian the whole world, and Damian countering with the whole universe instead.

He wondered if he should call Kathy. Or Maya. Hell, one of Damian’s siblings. See if Damian had talked to them, if they had seen any signs. If they knew of anything going on.

He just burrowed under his covers, and kept his eyes closed.

In the end, he didn’t tell anyone about the breakup. Not even his parents. There were intergalactic wars starting and government coups commencing – they had more important things to worry about than their youngest’s love life. And judging by the fact he hadn’t heard from any of the Bats, he had a feeling Damian didn’t mention it to his family either.

Just as well. They were adults. They could handle this as just that. Adults.

So he wallowed in self-pity for a few days, but eventually forced himself up. Took a deep breath, dried his own eyes and distracted himself with continuing his life. Focused on his job, on heroing. The world kept turning, even if he and Damian weren’t together.

His heart hurt less as the days passed on. Not by much, his heart was still utterly shattered after all, but it didn’t hurt as much to inhale. Didn’t hurt as much to smile. Didn’t hurt as much to get a text or a call and it not be Damian.

Damian never answered when Jon tried to contact him. The first few days were understandable, but now the texts were housekeeping. Do you want your shirt back? I think you left Alfred’s cat treats here. I have a box of your stuff and your apartment key, if you’re in town soon, you can stop by and get it.

And still, like always, nothing. Damian was always stubborn, but now he was just being downright rude. It’d been almost a month now! Surely if someone as emotional as Jon could somewhat start to get over it, someone as stoic as Damian had probably completely forgotten about it by now!

He huffed as he watched a couple walk by the park bench he was sitting on, taking the momentary surge of frustration-induced courage to hit the call button on his (recently fixed) phone and hold it up to his ear.

They wouldn’t have to talk. This was just tying up the loose ends. Getting rid of the sentimental things. Getting rid of things that didn’t belong to him. That was all. That was all.

But the line didn’t even ring. It went straight to voicemail. And the frustration turned to hurt. Did…did Damian change his number? No, impossible. It still went to Damian’s voicemail, his phone was just off.

But Damian never turned his phone off. No hero did, and especially no one in the Wayne family. They were always on call, even when they shouldn’t be.

So, for Damian’s phone to be off…was he avoiding someone? Avoiding Jon?

He lowered his phone to his lap and stared at it. He was one of those people who put emojis in people’s contact names. Damian’s name was surrounded by the pink, growing heart, and the cat emoji that looked like Alfred.

He didn’t have the strength to take those away. Not yet.

He swallowed the lump in his throat that he didn’t realize was there, and put his phone back in his pocket.

He’ll just ship Damian his shit, then.

He shouldn’t have. He really shouldn’t have. It’d make him the crazy ex. The ones Taylor Swift wrote songs about.

But at least once a day, he found himself listening. Tapping into his powers and listening for Damian’s heartbeat.

He didn’t do it often while they were together. Mostly because while together they were almost always together. Physically. So he could just reach out and hold Damian’s wrist. Put his ear to Damian’s chest. Watch the pulse as it beat along Damian’s neck.

It was a coping mechanism back then, used to calm himself. When the world got too much. When his day was bad. He could just focus on Damian’s heartbeat in any form. Drown the rest of the noise out.

Damian’s heartbeat now sounded far away, but Jon didn’t feel like pinpointing how far. It was slow and even, and that almost made him angry. Damian was calm. Damian was relaxed. Probably sitting at his easel drawing without a care in the world, while here Jon was listening for him like some kind of fucking lost puppy.

Every time he listened, it was slow and steady.

Stupid Damian, he’d think as he tuned his powers back out, furiously go back to whatever he was doing. Stupid relationships.

Relationships were overrated. Damian was overrated.

“He what?!”

Maya’s shriek had Jon pulling the phone away from his ear with an amused grimace. He laughed as he switched the audio to be on speaker, and absently opened an app on his phone.

(A…dating app.)

“You didn’t know?” Jon hummed. His friend had called to ask some questions on a man she was tracking, someone who rumours said was from another planet. Kathy hadn’t known of the solar system, so she was trying the next best alien. As they talked, something about a crime scene came up, and she asked if Damian could help, if Jon could give him the phone. He had to break the news. “I thought you guys talked like…every day.”

“No way.” Maya scoffed. “Once a month, if that.” Jon could hear the frown in her voice. “And we did talk about a month ago. Maybe a bit longer. He didn’t say anything. In fact, he told me you guys were going to move in together, that he wanted me to plan a trip back to the States for a housewarming party.”

“Well…life comes at you fast, I guess.” Jon chuckled bitterly, remembering that call. He was in the room for that call, dozing in Damian’s arms, half listening to their conversation. He sneered at the choices the app was giving him. None of them were very attractive. “Because about a month ago was when he called it off.”

“Huh.” Maya mumbled. “I’m so sorry, Jon. If I’d had known that’s what he was planning, I would have beat the shit out of him. You were the best thing to ever happen to him, for gods’ sake! What the hell did he willingly throw it all away for?!”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jon shrugged. This potential match wore a shirt that said Joker’s Biggest Fan on it, and Jon cringed instantly. “He didn’t give a reason. Just said that it was for the betterment of both of us, and that he was sorry.”

“Fucking turd.” Maya sighed. “I’ll call him here in the next few days, and see if he’ll tell me anything.”

“Good luck.” Jon drawled. “He hasn’t answered a single text or phone call since he broke things off. And I don’t know if that’s to just me or everyone.”

“You ask one of his brothers? Which one’s friends with your brother again? Jason?”

“Tim.” Jon corrected. He hesitated on this potential match option. Just stared. It was a woman. Dark hair, tan skin, standing in a desert. She was beautiful. And she reminded him of Damian. “And I haven’t seen or talked to any of them either. No cases have taken me out to Gotham lately.”

The next match had sharp eyes, ones that said they were smarter than everyone else. Cocky. That was like Damian too.

“Eh, they’d probably cover for him anyway. They’re all a bunch of freaks like that.” She grumbled. “Are you…doing okay?”

“I’m fine.” Jon lied, and he knew Maya heard right through it. “Time heals all wounds and all that. Better every day.”

“Oh, Jon…” Maya sighed sympathetically. Jon didn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed at her pity. Not when the next person on the app was standing on a rooftop, flag tied to his neck, blowing gloriously behind him. Looking far too much like every hero persona Damian’s ever been. “Hey – I’ll be back in the States soon. And I promise, I’ll make my first stop coming to see you so we can get drunk and stuff ourselves with pizza and scream about what an asshole Damian is. Okay?”

The next match was posed in the photo in a fencing match. Damian. The next surrounded by Great Danes. Damian. The next playing a violin. Damian. The next wearing a Batman costume at a Halloween party.

Damian.

Damian. Damian. Damian.

He sighed and closed the app. Stupid.

“Yeah. That sounds like exactly what I need, Maya.”

“Great. It’s a date.” She paused a moment. “Love you, dude.”

Jon hesitated, because he hadn’t said those words since Damian. Hadn’t thought them. Hadn’t wanted to think them, not for anyone. Not for family, not for friends. Not for a single person in his life. Still left in his life.

“Love you too, Maya.”

Jon wasn’t a dreamer. He didn’t know if it was his Kryptonian side, or just how he was, but he didn’t dream often. And if he did, if he remembered them, it was only flashes. Only later moments of déjà vu. Never full sequences. Never lucid.

But…this.

They were in Kansas, out in one of Pa’s fields, lying among the wheat. Damian was flat against the ground as Jon laid over him, kissing him as hard and deeply as he could. They both had their arms around the other, grips tight and unyielding. Like if one of them let go, the whole world would disappear.

He doesn’t know why, but it was a noise Damian made. A quiet moan, and his fingers digging desperately into Jon’s shoulders that snapped him out of it. Made him realize.

This wasn’t real.

He began to lean back, pulled his arms from Damian’s shoulders to steady himself. Damian shifted too, but only to hold Jon’s face, to try and chase his lips.

“No, I…” Jon stuttered, his body wanting to do just that. Dive back in and devour Damian whole. But his mind didn’t let him, forced him to continue back until he was on his knees. “We can’t.”

He got to his feet and backed up a step, half turning away. Couldn’t bear the sight of Damian lying in the dirt, shirt half open and hair disheveled, chest heaving from arousal and exertion. “…Jonathan?”

“You’re not real.” Jon almost whined, running his fingers through his hair.

“Is that so?” Damian scoffed. “Since when?”

“Since I know we haven’t been back to Kansas in like a year.” Jon sighed, turning back. “Since I just remembered you broke up with me.”

“Absurd.” Damian laughed. Jon glared down at him, watched as Damian stood, and wiped the dust from his butt. “I would never do such a thing.”

“Well…you did!” Jon spat. “And over the phone! Not even in person!”

“You’re not listening to me.” Damian scolded. He raised his sharp gaze. “I would never do such a thing.”

“…What?” Jon whispered incredulously. “I just…I just told you that you did! And I…” He snorted, shook his head. “You’re not even real. Why the hell am I even trying to argue with you?”

“Because despite what you tell those around you, you miss me.” Damian sauntered over to him with a smirk, and poked at his temple. “Now I need you to use that big brain of yours and focus on what I’m saying. What it means.”

Jon looked down sadly. Gently reached up to take Damian’s hand in his, and turned so he could kiss his palm, could hide his face against Damian’s hand.

Damian just smiled warmly, stepped closer into Jon’s space. Cupped his other hand around the side of Jon’s throat. “Please just remember.” He begged softly. “I would never do such a thing. Never.” He leaned up on his toes, and pressed their foreheads together. “Not to you, Beloved.”

Jon leaned into the gesture, and parted his lips to kiss Damian again.

But then he woke up.

He woke up in the dead of night, with tears streaming down his face, and the memory of the dream burning against his skull.

I would never do such a thing.

“But you did, Damian.” Jon sobbed, clutching his pillow, curling his knees to his chest. Because it felt like his heart was going to tumble out, all the pieces that it had shattered into were going to come spilling out onto his sheets. “You did.”

He didn’t go back to sleep.

Jon let out a low growl as he stomped out of the café. That was a bust. That was a huge fucking waste of his time.

But that’s what he got for trying to jump back into the dating pool.

The girl seemed nice enough in their limited texting interaction. She was cute and not purposefully looked nothing like Damian. She was bubbly and loud, and also not purposefully acted nothing like Damian either.

(Totally not purposefully. Totally.)

But he’d just spent the last hour listening to her rant about conspiracy theories that were already disproven one hundred times over, and rave about how Lex Luthor was the best and coolest and smartest person to ever exist, because he was rich and going to get them all to Mars. She never stopped to let Jon talk. Never stopped to take a breath for herself either.

Needless to say, there’d be no second date. He’d frankly excused himself with a lie to get out of this one early.

(And she’d already texted him about how great of a time she had, and she couldn’t wait to see him again, despite still sitting in the restaurant ten feet behind him.

Jon didn’t like to ghost people – not like certain ex-boyfriends of his – but this one…he couldn’t wait to.)

So it must have been fate that he chose that moment to leave. Not a few minutes before, or decided to suffer through the rest of his rendezvous. Because as soon as he walked out of the café, he spotted one Tim Drake coming out of the building across the street.

Funnily enough, Tim spotted him at almost the exact same moment. Except instead of waving or smiling like Tim normally would, his face visibly paled and his eyes widened, like Jon was the last person on Earth he wanted to see.

Jon frowned when he saw Tim glance around, like he was looking for an escape route. “Tim!” He called before the other could do just that, glancing up and down the street before jogging quickly towards him. “Hey, wait up!”

Tim took a step backwards, like he was going to try to bolt, but in the end stayed where he was, waited for Jon to reach him. Quickly pulled his phone out and scanned the screen before pocketing it again. “Hey Jon…what, uh. What’s going on? How are you?”

“Oh…been better. But trying to stay positive.” Jon laughed knowingly. Tim didn’t react. “How’s the family?”

“Good. Busy.” Tim shrugged. “Lots of, uh…stuff to do. You know how it is.”

Jon nodded, and the two fell into an awkward silence. Tim pulled his phone out again, but quickly threw it back in his pocket.

“How’s…” And Jon didn’t want to ask, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. Wasn’t desperate to actually know, instead of guessing and assuming. “How’s Damian?”

But to Jon’s the surprise, at the sound of Damian’s name, Tim seemed to practically deflate. He threw his hands across his face, began shaking his head. “God, Jon, I’m so sorry. I know we should have called, or kept you in the loop or something. But we didn’t want you to become a target too or get hurt, or…”

“What?” Jon cut off, gut suddenly dropping. “What are you talking about?”

Tim peeked between his fingers, eyes narrowed. “…What are you talking about?”

“I…I haven’t talked to Damian since he broke up with me.” Jon murmured. Tim’s eyes instantly widened even more in surprise. “I just…wanted to know if he was doing okay?”

“Damian broke up with you?” Tim whispered. “When?”

“Um, I don’t know a month or so ago?” Jon shrugged. “Why? Tim, what’s going on?”

“How did he break up with you?” Tim demanded, suddenly all but lunging at Jon. His eyes darted between Jon’s desperately. “Was it in person?”

“No, it was over the phone.”

“What day?” Tim asked, almost giddy now. “What day did he break up with you, exactly? What day did you get that call?”

“Uh…” Jon pulled out his phone, and went to the call feature. He scanned the list until he found the one he was looking for. The one that ruined his whole life. “The seventh.”

“What time?”

“Like three or four in the afternoon?” Jon huffed. “Tim, why is this relevant? What happened?”

“Have you talked to him since then?” Tim continued, undeterred. “In any way? Text? Call? Carrier pigeon?”

“What? No! I…I tried calling him a few times, to return his stuff and all that, but he never answered.” Tim suddenly backed away from him, running both hands through his hair, like a case was just blown wide open. For the third time, Jon asked: “Tim, what the hell is going on?”

Tim hesitated for a moment, then looked Jon dead in the eyes. “Damian’s been missing for a month.” He said plainly. “He disappeared on the morning of the seventh.”

And just like that day on the phone, it felt like the world was being swallowed into a black hole beneath him. That the universe was disappearing around him, that it wasn’t real.

He could barely breath. “…What?”

“He, Duke and Cass were on a case in France. Without warning all three of them went radio silent. When we got there, we only found Duke and Cass half dead in a vineyard. They said they were attacked by a…a shapeshifter or something, lured them in by transforming into members of the Justice League. That they saw the shapeshifter and their crew dragging Damian away, but they didn’t see where to, or even what direction.”

Jon’s head was spinning.

“We’ve been looking for him day and night ever since. And when you didn’t come looking for him…” Tim winced. “We assumed he’d told you that he would be away on a mission, potentially for a long time. So your absence didn’t concern us. In fact, like I said, we were grateful. We didn’t want you getting wrapped up in this too, and potentially hurt.”

Jon was barely listening anymore, too wrapped up in what he’d just been told. That Damian had been missing since that day. That the reason Damian’s heartbeat sounded so far away was because he was, he was somewhere in Europe. That he wasn’t answering his phone because he was being held captive.

…That it wasn’t Damian on that call.

I would never do such a thing. Never. Not to you.

“…Beloved.” He murmured. Tim instantly stopped in his ramblings.

“…What?” Tim asked.

“On the call, when he broke up with me. First, he never gave a reason, which I thought was crazy. I guess…I guess it makes sense now.” Jon said thoughtfully. “But before we hung up. He said ‘I’m sorry, Beloved.’”

“…So?”

“That’s what Damian had me as in his phone. Not my name.” Jon explained. “Why would he still call me Beloved if he was breaking up with me?”

“…He would have said your name.” Tim said, the truth dawning on him. “The kidnapper wouldn’t know that. They wouldn’t know your name. So they called you what you were listed as.”

“And recognized that I was someone important to him.” Jon finished. “But…why? Why call me just to…break up with me? Why call me at all?”

“I don’t know. We can think about it later.” Tim was instantly back in detective mode, holding out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“Why?”

“Because we can track where that phone call came from.” Tim wiggled his fingers impatiently. With his other hand, he pulled out his own phone, typing furiously with his thumb. Jon realized that’s why he was checking it so much, that’s why he was in Metropolis at all. He was looking for clues for Damian, anywhere he could. “And that might take us to where this bastard took my brother.”

“...Need a ride to the Batcave?” Jon asked with a sheepish smile. “…The sooner we get there, the sooner we can track this fucker and find Damian.”

Tim pursed his lips in thought, clearly not thrilled at the idea of including Jon, not after they all tried so hard to keep him detached, but eventually returned the grin.

“Get us in the air, Superman.”

#jonathan kent #jon kent #Damian Wayne #jondami #Tim Drake

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jadelotusflower · 3 years

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Robin Hood Rewatch: 2x08 Get Carter!

This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the season, partly because I really enjoy relationship angst, but mostly because we get multiple characters dealing with their trauma/grief. If we can't get these guys and gals into therapy, at least we get to see them talk (and hug) it out.

Also the best episode title they're had for a while - I have no doubt one of the writers is a fan, and Carter is so named only because they wanted to make this reference. The assassin seeking revenge for a dead brother is wholesale lifted from the plot of the film, and Joseph Kennedy almost has a passing resemblance to Michael Caine's look in that role.

"Get Carter - before Carter gets you!"

Carter is one of the only guest stars they actually will bring back later, and for good reason.

"Why don't you ever kiss my ring?" Vaisey, always making things creepy.

Marian is simmering with unrestrained anger, eager to get into the fight, while Robin is the one advocating for the watch and see approach, and it’s quite the role reversal.

The gang's reaction to her charging off is quite funny though, she knocks John over completely and Djaq throws her hands in the air.

Robin’s now getting a taste of what the rest of the gang have to put up with dealing with his recklessness.

Tying Marian up in the middle of a melee, however, is disgusting behaviour - while Marian was hot-headed throwing herself into the fight (nothing Robin hasn't done before himself), he knows that she can hold her own with a sword and doesn't need protecting. Tying her hands is the absolute worst thing he could have done, because how is she meant to defend herself? I can somewhat understand where Robin is coming from in this episode (even if he goes about it badly), but this is unjustifiable.

Clearly she gave that guard she clanked on the head amnesia, because he never reports back that Marian was fighting with the gang.

“I owe you my life”/“I won’t take it just yet.” Nice.

Scimitar is still missing in action.

Robin doesn’t want Marian to be seen in case she needs to return to the castle, when he’s spent the whole season urging for her to join the gang. I think he realises he made a mistake asking her to flee last episode without giving her time to deal with her grief, and wants to leave her options open. But telling her that she’s not ready to make the decision (about whatever she wants to go back), however correct, is patronising.

There's a fundamental conflict that Marian wants to be treated like a member of the gang, but doesn't want to cede to Robin's authority like the rest of the gang - in turn Robin expects her to follow his orders like the others, but isn't treating her like he would the others either - he would never tie them up to keep them out of a fight, and Marian has every right to pissed at him about it.

Djaq and Much having a little tête-à-tête about Carter - I just really enjoy that they’re often paired together in these gang scenes, they balance/play off each other so well. Just this pure platonic frazzled vs calm vibe.

Much just has this really great memory for faces - he was able to recognise fake Richard last season just from his profile despite wearing a helmet, and now he knows he remembers Carter's face from somewhere (or as it will turn out, Carter's brother).

Much really just does not let up, and I love that about him. "You'll be disappointed though, with uh, today's wound. I mean if you're planning to go back to the Holy Land and, uh, kill him." That not so subtle probing for information and Sam Troughton's delivery is always perfect.

"Wasn't me, was it?" Oh Much, so close.

“The crusty one” - lol

It's not explicit, but implied that Vaisey and Guy believe Edward was the one passing information to Robin, and Marian is cleared of any suspicion (paving the way for her return). Guess Guy never showed the Sheriff that hair dagger after all.

Vaisey is actually giving Guy some really good advice here, albeit laced with his usual cruelty and getting all up in Guy's personal space.

"Grow up Gisborne" - now I don't think it's deliberate on Vaisey's part to invoke a Marian parlance, seeing as she really only says this to Robin (and once to Much), but it's a nice little callback, however unintentional.

Marian asks for an apology (and deserves one), but Robin doubles down and doesn't come out of this exchange well.

Because his delivery is terrible, but he's otherwise quite correct - as skilled as Marian is, she’s used to relying on (and having to worry about) only herself and not work in a team, and look to a single point of command. But both of them have their backs up - they're two strong personalities and neither is going to give ground, reverting to the ideological clashes of season 1, except now in much closer quarters.

Robin's also not used to being challenged in this particular way, and in his frustration is reacting like a captain disciplining a soldier, not a lover helping their partner through their grief. I do wonder if the conversation would have gone differently if they'd been alone.

lol at the gang awkwardly standing around listening to Robin and Marian fight. Djaq trying to busy herself with her mortar and pestle as Robin and Marian argue around her.

A really great scene between Marian and John aka the camp dad. Marian really just needs someone to listen to her and appreciate what she's going through - Robin is too fixated on the dangerous way she's channeling her grief and not even trying to address the root cause. He trying to tell her what to do, not listen to what she actually needs.

On the other hand it's probably better coming from John, a neutral party without the emotional baggage she has with Robin.

Because Robin and Marian are really being driven by completely different motives - Marian by grief and therefore loss, and Robin by trauma and therefore fear. In her sorrow, Marian has lost all her fear of being discovered, in fact she wants to make it know she's with the gang, to finally be free to say which side she's on and fight openly, to make her father's death worthwhile, and can't understand why Robin is trying to stifle that.

"I thought you used to have your own men Little John?" So someone remembers Forrest and Hanton!

After Carter takes down the gang one by one, Robin takes down Carter in three seconds (including catching the long dagger Carter throws at him, and flinging it back) and it's lights out. Can you believe it's the first concussion of the season? (Notwithstanding the multiple head injuries Allan sustained last episode).

While Marian has been known to be punch-happy, the "he'll tell us more if he knows we're willing to hurt him" is just so (intentionally) out of character - it is however somewhat reminiscent of Robin in 1x08, wanting to get his punch and torture on with Guy. However rather than understanding where Marian is coming from, he pushes her away with the "go and cook something" jibe. This almost feels like he was going for familiar banter and miscued, but is also an asshole thing to say. When their positions were reversed in 1x08 Marian at least tried to reason with him - Robin is seems to be ill-equipped to do the same.

Allan just having a little snooze against the castle wall. He really seems defeated and depressed after last episode.

Marian's corset has a pouch to hold a dagger - or at least I hope there is because otherwise it's ouch time.

Leaving Marian at the camp is again a mistake on Robin's part - it excludes and isolates her from the gang, rather than trying to involve her so she can bond with them, engaging in their outreach to the peasants - who she helped as the Nightwatchman, but never really had the opportunity to come to know. It would remind her that they are not just fighting against the Sheriff but for the people, which in her frenzied grief she has perhaps lost sight of.

Instead, Robin's focus is on Carter, who he rather identifies with and so finds it easier to address his motives, and try and change them.

Carter is in many ways Robin’s dark mirror, what he could have become in the Holy Land if he chose a different path. It’s important that this happens right when Robin is backsliding - he’s trying to save his own soul as much as Carter’s.

Okay, let's talk about Marian’s forest gear - fashioned from the outfit she wore when she fled the castle the previous episode - but dear me it's awful. The grey culottes, rather than becoming trousers have now been turned into that corset, and her vest/skirt overlay have now become those trousers. Just baffling.

“I’m good with nuns” followed by Allan straight up knocking the Mother Superior over and stealing her ring is iconic.

Much gives Robin a sword to use going after Carter - still no scimitar.

I really love the confrontation/fight scene between Robin and Carter - it's very well choreographed and written, but we also see the best of Robin's character (after seeing some of the worst earlier).

Carter's brother is called Thomas - Allan's brother was called Tom. Lots of dead brothers in this show (including Djaq's).

The story of Carter's brother Thomas dying because he "stopped listening" and led a raid against orders is a little on the nose, but gives context to Robin’s fear for Marian’s safety in part triggered by his war trauma - someone charging in against orders and then dying in his arms.

But it shows Robin as a man who, even when Thomas' recklessness had cost not only his own life but others of Robin's men, was still moved to instruct the stretcher-bearers to make Thomas the hero, and himself the negligent captain, in order to comfort his family.

The fight is fairly even, and although Robin gets the upper hand in the end, it's only partly his skill - rather his true strength is in reaching the man inside the assassin, and then surrender and allow Carter to take his revenge if that's what he wants, and despite his fear, trust that there is good still in him, and that he can leave behind the life as a killer as Robin has done (tried to do).

This scene is the core of why I really love Robin as a character. He's riddled with PTSD and a reckless bravado, he's at time emotionally stunted with those he loves, makes terrible mistakes and often says the wrong thing, but he also has this great heart and compassion that allows him to reach people, to understand and help them, even at the risk of his own life. He's trying.

"He was a hero - just not on that day" is quite a poignant line.

Much and Djaq together again, just saying.

Robin finally finds out that Roger of Stoke was intercepted. I had assumed he'd figured that out once he knew Allan was a traitor but okay.

Poor Much crying out for Robin's attention - he's got his own trauma from the war and wants to talk about it, to commiserate with Robin about what they went though, but Robin can only cope by not talking about it, not even thinking about it.

Much makes a good point that Robin should have listened to him about recognising Carter, but it comes across as jealously over Marian and Robin misses just how deeply Much carries his hurt.

One of Robin's biggest flaws is that he's overwhelming in his affection, compassion, and understanding for strangers, but takes those he loves for granted - Carter's response to grief was the same as Marian's, but Robin listened to Carter, consoled and comforted him, while keeping Marian at arm's length. Perhaps because strangers don't ask for anything beyond that - it is the granting of kindness, but not the sharing of self. It's the latter Robin truly fears, but what Much and Marian deserve (although tbf Marian has problems with this as well).

“Either I’m part of your gang or I’m not” is a valid point, and Robin's still not happy even when she agrees to stay behind!

But she disobeys him, and saves his life. It's a rite of passage - almost all of the members of the gang have this.

Allan looking rather distressed as Guy is about the chop off Robin's head, and he makes a small movement just before the swing (as does Much).

Guy again pushing Marian past the point of discomfort - she left, wrote him a letter asking him to leave her alone, straight up told him to his face to leave her alone, and still he persists.

Her kissing Guy (to distract him from seeing Much and Will) is really the only time she sends mixed signals, but Guy's whole energy seems to be just to wear her down until she agrees to be with him and it's gross. It is however kind of amusing that he tries to be authoritative and forbid her from leaving, and she immediately walks away.

Robin and Marian are back in playful banter mode, although I wish there had been a deeper discussion (and that Robin had apologised in return). It doesn't quite feel like the conflict between them has been resolved, it really is just a "truce".

But I do like that it's Marian who reaches out to Robin at the end of this episode, because up until this point it's Robin who has been (somewhat) the one making overtures - asking her to join the gang, telling her he needs her, telling her he loves her, while Marian's been more reserved. This feels like her acknowledging that sometimes she needs to take the first step.

This was a long one - but as a I said, I really love this episode!

#robin hood bbc #robin hood rewatch #rewatch #2x08 #get carter!#long post #lots of rambling here sorry

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thoughtfulfangirling · 3 years

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January 2021 Books

I tend not to come to dislike or hating things very easily. Generally, the things I try, I can find a lot I like in them and go with the flow. I feel like it doesn’t make me very good about recommending things because I’m not too picky once I get invested in things, but here are my takes on the books I’ve read this month. (I can be super picky about what I pick up in the first place, but once I overcome that and get a foothold in something, the above applies.)

Anyway, belatedly, here’s last months reads and blurbs on my thoughts under the cut (long)

1. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

I somehow didn’t realize this was YA. It has the plot simplicity I’m used to seeing in YA but it definitely got darker and more sexual than I would have expected for the genre. I actually rather appreciate this series for that reason. It did some things alternatively I didn't expect and was quite delighted by it. Fantasy, romance (f/m), fairies, light political intrigue (setup for book 2), etc.. I have since read book 2 and would have caveats about this depending on who was interested.

2. This is How you Lose a Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This was amazing! A quick read of poetic language and dark love across sci fi warring factions. Primarily told through a series of letters exchanged back and forth between protagonists and focused on the characters.

3. Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

What a great ghost story! it's told a lot like a series of short stories that come together into a winding narrative of a ghost's journey through the roads of America. Heavily American mythology vibes. Fascinating world building, intriguing characters, and beautiful message and arc. I'm thinking I might pick up more from this series in October. I got pointed in this book's direction due to how the way the book is structure feeling like a great depiction of trauma and how things get segmented and out of order and intangible, and it was just a really neat book. Would definitely recommend.

4. No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder

I’ve now read a fair amount on the topic of domestic abuse, but they have largely focused on the individuals involved, and while this book does pick particular individuals as an example of extreme DV, this book zoomed out and looked at this problem from a broader perspective, talking about stats and looking at environmental and systemic factors. It’s a dark book that gets heavy and dissects sensitive situations but didn’t feel like it failed to humanize the issue, sometimes more so than a reader may expect. I definitely found it an insightful and interesting read. It’s the first book in quite a long time that was a physical book I held in my hands. I expected I might struggle too much between it not being audio and being nonfiction, but I moved through it quite quickly.

5. Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins

This was a re-read. It’s a cute little wlw class romance. I think I read it in 2018, and it was fun to revisit. It’s a quick read with some enjoyable characters, and for those who do audiobooks, some cute accents.

6. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett

This was a beautiful story about grief and the way our connections open us up to new possibilities and changes in our lives if only we’ll reach out grasp them. It’s a slow paced story, functioning mostly in the internal monologue of our protagonist dealing with the loss of the man she’s loved and the things she comes to find out she didn’t know about him.

7. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

This was another reread, doing a chapter an evening with Empty. It helped so much to listen to this a second time between being able to see the pieces put down and not listening to it at such stressful times and in such a fragmented way. I love how it is somehow a puzzle, a haunting, and a journey of growth in an old relationship that seemed doomed to fail in so many ways. Plus I love big, sarcastic, sentimental butch disaster Gideon so goddamn much. XD

8. Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

This was very enjoyable, but I can definitely tell that I’ve outgrown a lot of YA. It’s not that there’s anything wrong these stories-I would have loved to have grown up with this book-it’s just that it lacked a complexity I’m getting used to and that I look for in these stories. I’m so glad though to be seeing more writers of color writing experiences and characters more like them getting attention in the literary world, and I will continue to find reading these stories worth it to get glimpses into that, but I wish I saw more of this sort of hype for these writers around more adult books. It’s out there I’m sure; I just have to find it yet. Working on it! But for a YA reader I think this is a great story. I like the worldbuilding so much and the costs of the magic and the journey. I might still have to check out book two when I need an easier read.

9. Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

I’ve been holding onto a hard copy borrowed from a friend of this for well over a year now. I got this book around the same time I got my hands on So you Want to Talk About Race and thought they were going to have very similar contents. I was incorrect. Well, That Escalated Quickly is much more about what it means to have a popular online presence. It was a really great read in a time when being online is, right now, for many of us, the only consistent way we can interact with others. I really appreciated her sharing her stories of her mess ups both as someone who needed to be called out and as someone who, for a time, was considered a ‘call out queen’ and her thoughts on community responsibility and bearing responsibility on both ends of those spectrums: it’s not just a person who messes up who bears a responsibility to act with community goals in mind to reduce harm, but also the responsibility of those who call out and when and how those might look for most effectiveness for change, personal wellbeing, and community responsibility. (The term community responsibility I’m using probably comes more from Conflict is not Abuse than this book, but I could very well see this book being a great primer for Conflict is not Abuse and might rec this to someone not yet ready for the later.)

10. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas

This book was a roller coaster. I started off really excited about some ideas and themes it was exploring that I don’t really see done hardly ever and was really intrigued. About a third of the way through, it did something that I felt very much undermined one of the themes I was enjoying a lot, and up until the very end, I was very close to deciding against reading book three. At pretty much that last minute though, it intrigued me enough to want to see how a thing would be played out and a resolution would be found. I don’t even know if I’d say I super liked the book and thus series by the time I was done reading this one, but I was intrigued. Sometimes I get the feeling the author doesn’t trust her audience and spells certain things out way too much, sometimes to the detriment of the plot, and I’m really not a fan of the ‘so totally outclassed, all odds staked against the heroes’ thing that’s pulled in this book that comes out of nowhere and when this time we actually have powerful characters but here we are. I don’t think I’d actually recommend the series to others unless I knew their tastes aligned well, but I think I will be finishing it.

#tf reads #a court of thorns and roses #this is how you lose the time war #sparrow hill road #no visible bruises: what we don't know about domestic violence can kill us #her royal highness #the magician's assistant #Gideon the ninth #labryinth lost #well that escalated quickly: memoirs and mistakes of an accidental activist #a court of mist and fury #books #long post #under the cut #thinky thoughts #tf rambles #2021 Reads

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onelungmcclung · 3 years

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im sorry if you've answered this before im relatively new to the ship hehe but-- how'd mcclung fall for toye? was it in bastogne? before bastogne? in holland? in aldbourne? after the war? what were the circumstances? when did he realize it? and after he'd overcome that high of finding out he's in love, how did he deal with the aftermath once it started to settle in? hehe, i hope this week isnt as rough on you as you're anticipating. sending you much love and strength and calm vibes.

💜💜💜

ok, firstly, I have not been asked this before; secondly, even if I had no earthly power would stop me from answering it again; and thirdly, obviously no pressure but pls consider coming off anon and being my tumblr friend

probably everyone is new to this ship lmao

so, I started writing a (probably long) mctoye fic starting in fort bragg or aldbourne and continuing to postwar (enablers always welcome). but for the purposes of this ask, I’m mostly going off character insights revealed to me developed over the course of writing the ask him to dance universe.

(counterpart to this ask: toye noticing/falling for mcclung)

essentially: mcclung is/would be kind of theoretically ok with the idea of falling for a guy, if it had occurred to him he might fall for anyone right now, but falling for anyone is — for the time being — a concept he has strategically compartmentalised out of his entire thought process. (please clap.)

maybe he’s relatively ok with the possibility falling for a guy because he did not really grow up with white conservatism the way most of the easy co guys did; he’s always been aware of it, and his worldview is not informed by it in the same way. his family is arrow lakes/settler and he has friends & acquaintances among the other confederated tribes. and though he doesn’t take a strong interest in domestic/international politics, he has a more critical attitude towards the us govt and its laws (he’s still quietly angry about the grand coulee dam, constructed during his childhood). he’s never really considered that he might be into men; he likes women and he’s always assumed, without thinking much about it, that he’ll get married at some point; but he’s not particularly homophobic, outwardly or inwardly.

he’s not thinking much about these things when the war comes. he gets drafted into the army, thinks “not with these fucking clowns” and besides the airborne pay is better, and volunteers as a paratrooper. he joins up with easy after he’s completed his jump training.

he is excellent at training, naturally; he’s spent days at a time alone, fishing and hunting, since he was a child. he’s an exceptional sniper and scout. he’s confident in his own abilities. some of the toccoa guys initially assume he won’t be as skilled as them because he didn’t have their training, but in fact he has a headstart on most of them; and he knows it. (if he knew it any better it would probably come off as arrogance, but he’s just very clear on what he’s good at. and if he wasn’t beforehand, the airborne has proved it, to him & everyone else.)

he recognises, of course, that toye is an excellent soldier too (not as good a shot as himself or shifty, but overall one of the best paratroopers in the company), and they’re in the same platoon, so that helps. he never really gets afraid, not while training and not in combat; he just keeps his focus and gets on with it. for the most part, he doesn’t form close friendships until they get into combat.

he has some instinct towards helping and protecting others, but once they’re in a combat zone he realises that’s going to hurt him a lot. while they’re training, he helps some of the guys make their shots by shooting the targets for them; but after they jump into normandy, he avoids befriending the replacements because so many of them are killed early on. it’s — a little — easier that way.

he and toye don’t become close friends before bastogne, but they get familiar with each other’s combat style, and they’re comfortable working together. they trust each other; they’re both good soldiers, and toye is a good nco.

and then of course in bastogne they share a foxhole, and that is (I think for all the other characters as well) an incredibly vital, pivotal relationship. he and toye rely on each other entirely; without that, they’d probably die. they learn each other backwards; there’s no possibility of pretence. he knows what toye’s flaws are (stubbornness, prickliness, a reluctance to accept help), but there’s a lot more about him that mcclung likes, trusts and admires (not that he’d say so), and he knows those things are genuine.

he does his level best to stop toye from developing trench foot when he loses his boots. sure, he pretty much calls toye an idiot for getting into this situation and for refusing to tell the medics, but he does everything he can think of. it hasn’t occurred to him that he cares deeply about toye; it just seems inevitable.

(and he tells smokey to let the medics know. he doesn’t tell toye he’s told smokey, because it’s funnier this way. like everyone else, he’s starved for entertainment.)

but toye gets hit, and they’ve spent months beside each other — sleeping in shifts, keeping each other safe, trying to keep each other warm, kvetching, arguing with each other; he’s put up with toye’s singing and toye’s put up with mcclung talking to himself. a synchronicity and interdependence has developed between them, throughout the war but particularly in bastogne, to the point where it’s almost telepathic. he doesn’t consider what a powerful kind of intimacy this is, both physical and psychological, until it’s gone.

toye gets hit, and mcclung loses him. toye gets hit, and mcclung is blindsided by the enormity of it. you can’t take anyone’s survival for granted, he’s always tried to be careful of that, but losing toye is like losing part of himself.

he’s pretty determinedly unsentimental about everything: he’s not going to fall in love with anyone while he’s fighting a war, and he’s not going to dwell on situations beyond his control, and he’s not going to let himself be distracted by worrying about someone who isn’t here anymore. or at least that’s the attitude he’s internalised, and he takes it so much for granted that he never even considers that he could have fallen for anyone: right here, right now.

but he can’t forget anything that’s happened, even if he’d like to, and there’s no other friendship that can quite replace what had developed between toye and himself. bastogne was when things were at their worst, and toye is the one with whom he survived the worst. without toye, he feels an inescapable sense of wrongness, unevenness.

he’s half aware that he misses joe. he tries not to acknowledge that to himself, because that would mean acknowledging that he may not have any chance to see joe again, that one or both of them may not survive. that’s a line of thought he keeps away from altogether; it’s there, but he won’t look at it.

he knows it’s not his fault toye was injured. sometimes it has nothing to do with being a good soldier; sometimes it’s just luck and timing; he’s nearly been hit himself. he knows that, but deep down inside he wonders if he could have saved joe, by making sure he was in their foxhole before the shelling started. he heard toye and second-guessed himself. he stayed where he was. he thinks he probably did the sensible thing. he still feels guilty about it.

(sidenote: the glaring exception to his “don’t befriend the replacements” rule ends up being babe. after toye, guarnere & compton are taken off the line, he and babe start sharing a foxhole. possibly he could have found someone else, but his protective instinct resurfaces and maybe it helps to take his mind off missing toye. it’s a friendship that comes out of grief and loss.)

he gets through foy, and haguenau, and he focuses on the situation at hand and he doesn’t think about toye.

when they reach austria, mcclung is ordered to hunt animals to feed landsberg’s prisoners, and so he sets up camp alone in the woods. it’s beautiful; it’s peaceful; it’s the first time he’s been truly alone in two years. it’s the first time his mind is able to relax, and the memories come back — prewar life, everything he’s been through since, bastogne, toye — and the thoughts of the future, what he might do after the war.

he’d like to see toye again.

he still hasn’t thought that maybe he has feelings for joe.

and then the war ends, and he has the freedom to decide what to do next. he returns to england, and then ships back to the us. the memory/loss of toye is still a weight on him, and so he tracks toye down and goes to see him. that’s the obvious, logical course of action.

it’s also making him much more nervous than it has any right to.

(for the past year and a half, he’s been compartmentalising very hard because he intuitively understood that as the best way to survive the war. he learnt it early on, and it’s hard to let go of it. he’s convinced he’s handling everything great, very matter of fact and pragmatic, getting the job done, no emotional baggage here, etc etc. this is... not 100% true, but a coping mechanism is a coping mechanism is a coping mechanism. he is doing pretty well; nobody thinks he’s not; so obviously that counts as a roaring success.

but once the war is over, the psychological walls he’s maintained throughout combat — between survival and emotion — begin gradually to disintegrate. he has to let himself become whole again, learn to navigate who he is now, accept that the war has scarred him. he still feels himself to be one of the lucky ones. some of the things he’s been avoiding hit harder than others, and he can’t control that anymore.

insofar as he’s aware of these developments, he considers it extremely unfair.)

but, ensuing stupid panic or no ensuing stupid panic, he commits to meeting up with toye. he figures they’ll catch up, maybe keep in contact, that now he’ll be able to stop wondering how toye’s doing, stop this strange off-balance feeling he’s had since toye got hit.

seeing toye again is actually a lot more than he’d ever anticipated, and he’s forced to acknowledge that maybe there’s more going on here than he’d figured.

he realises he’s attracted to this guy, and he doesn’t know when that started: probably in bastogne, but maybe earlier. it feels new but not new; if he hadn’t pointedly avoided thinking about joe after foy, maybe he’d have figured it out sooner. if they’d made it through the war together, maybe something would have happened between them in europe, but they lost each other too soon for him to know. he’s a little discomfited by these feelings suddenly creeping up on him, but he’s trying hard not to let any of it show: not the attraction, not the unease.

he reasons that his feelings are only a problem if toye doesn’t share them. he thinks he could deal with that, but he is afraid they may not have a friendship anymore, that it was left behind in wartime.

he tells himself he’s not afraid of rejection. but he is. he doesn’t like feeling vulnerable, and suddenly he is.

when he thinks there’s a chance the attraction is mutual, he takes it. it works out for him. they stay together. he accepts that he’s falling in love and he lets it happen.

he falls in love with joe’s courage and honesty and selflessness, and he finds it incredibly hard to actually say that. (this is someone who considers “hanging out with you voluntarily” to be a love language.) he’s moved just by the fact joe wants to be with him, that he’s able to acknowledge that attraction and act on it despite his provincial catholic upbringing lol. he knows that joe’s recovery has been difficult, and he sees how joe is dealing with it, and, like in bastogne, he tries to support him as quietly and simply as possible.

he finds it hard to tell joe he loves him, but he pays attention to what joe does and says, and does whatever he can to make his life better. he never thinks joe needs him there, and he wouldn’t want it that way. he helps joe to adapt their old calisthenics training; they take roadtrips together. they’re still deeply protective of each other, and they still express it via touch, practical acts, and snark. they don’t struggle with physical affection as much as either of them might have worried; they’re a little hesitant at first, but it falls into place.

they’re fumbling their way a little, but they respect each other completely and unconditionally, and they’re kind and careful, and their relationship gets stronger as it goes on.

and they dance together.

#thank you for the good wishes <33 #toye x mcclung #mctoye #earl mcclung #joe toye #replies #'charactering'#long post under the cut bc I love going All Out and uh. also this ship #fine to reblog btw #writing manifesto: all characters are idiots in their own way

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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Hey Rosy. I'm excited for the new season and I enjoyed the trailer. I just felt it was very dark. Usually we have a couple of scenes that gives us hope, a more positive vibe between all the conflicts and all the fights. Do you think that was intentional this year? And if so, why? To make us fear more bc it's the last season? On another note, I just came back to tumblr to start seeing what you have to say about the show. Always an insighful perspective. Thank you for being a positive voice

I think it told us. Here are your conflicts. Here is your chaos. This is the last war we will have to fight.

Also, I think it’s really the continuation of season 6 rather than a new story, so we’re developing the questions that brought up. There’s no need for an establishing shot of “this is the new normal” because we got that with s6 i think? We’re going to go straight into the story, I think, with Octavia’s loss and Bellamy being kidnapped, probably directly from his grief over losign O. This is spec, trying to put together the pieces that we’ve seen.

If it’s starting with that Anomaly flare, AND with the meeting of Sanctumites/COG/Wonkru/Prisoners.... that’s conflict. Not comfort. We’re STARTING with Clarke grieving over Abby. With Russell, the psychopathic megalomaniac who left his people to die and doomed another people to living death... or tried to until Clarke stopped him. Also, he might be Sheidheda.

I know this is technically a new season, but I can’t help thinking that it’s REALLY the midseason premiere of a 29 episode long season broadcast over two years. The season finale didn’t feel like a finale, it felt like a hiatus. And this trailer seems to be continuing the stories we already had on deck.

BUT, as good news, this works with people’s worries that 16 eps is too few to get the story told in. BECAUSE the story is already half done. They aren’t STARTING the new stories, they are wrapping up the old ones. The new characters will, I’m sure, help us wrap those up. But we’ll see about that.

Also, something to look forward to... there WILL be good moments. That we’re not seeing them does not mean they won’t be there. It might mean they’ll stop being the start of the story that is what the conflict stops them from living, andn start being the END of the story, that is the goal they’ll have once they’ve conquered the obstacles.

#the 100 #trailer #two season story #narrative structure

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ficclique · 4 years

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Fic Clique hosts choices for our top fics of the decade - as featured in our Minisode from Jan 3rd.

Brenna’s choices:

Honorable Mentions:

Worldwide Lonesome by loindexter (BTS)

2018, 39k, Yoongi/Jin

The biggest gut-punch I’ve ever felt from a character confession. The Jin of this fic has stuck with me every day since reading it. This fic examines sexuality in a way that made me feel seen & I love that.

Timeshare by Astolat (HP)

2016, 14k, Draco/Harry

This is sort of a stand-in for all of astolat’s drarry fic, which as a bundle are one of my top fics for the decade. They are fics that feel like instant-classics and the variety of characterizations, stories and tropes helped establish astolat as perhaps my all time favorite fic author. Timeshare won out above the others because it’s one of the fics that helped us decide to do this podcast! Thank you Timeshare!

Top 5 picks:

The Student Prince, by Fayjay (Merlin)

2010, 145k, Merlin/Arthur

A fic that has defined fanfiction for me. Perhaps the fic that first convinced me to love fanfiction. Something I keep coming back to and have reread numerous times. Funny, heartfelt, just different enough from the canon versions of characters. Perhaps the only University AU I will ever fully love.

The Love Song of the North American Douchebag, by Gyzym (Star Trek RPF)

2013, 25k, Chris/Zach

If you want to hear me (and my lovely co-hosts) discuss this fic in depth, then I recommend listening to Episode 6! However, one of our listeners also submitted this as a top fic of the decade, so I’m going to add what the lovely Scout said:

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I HOPE I CAN SWEAR. I'm not even in this fandom. The world building is just THAT good. It's one of my highlights *because* of its power to draw me in as a standalone. So much fucking talent in the transformative work community. The banter, characterization, sardonic-ness of this – international impact baby!”

Not Easily Conquered (series), by dropdeaddream & whatarefears (MCU)

2015, 117k, Steve/Bucky

An incredibly, precise, gut-wrenching trilogy. Each part is astounding both together and apart. A devastating exploration of love and dedication. One of those fics that created a Fandom Moment. I sobbed through the entirety of part 2 when I first read it. Womb to tomb, sweetheart.

Azoth by zeitgeistic (HP)

2013, 88k, Draco/Harry

A stunning exploration of magic beyond JKR’s universe. A timeless coming together of two characters. A frankly genius use of a plot device (and something as simple as a school project) to foster an incredibly touching and meaningful relationship, one in which they are not able to find what they need to complete their task until they find what they need in each other. ALCHEMY BABY!

Honeysuckle Arch by junkshopdisco (1d)

2015, 46k, Niall/Harry

Perhaps the most I’ve ever related to a character in fic. The Niall of this fic lives in my heart, and I feel like reading him helps me understand myself, and everytime I come back to it I understand him better too. It’s a touching portrayal of a character coming to terms with their sexuality in a way that feels completely grounded and who is surrounded by characters who love them, even if they don’t always know how to show it.

Nicole’s choices:

Honorable Mentions:

Protostellar by ninamondays

bts, 64k, pub 2019, Namjoon/Jungkook & Taehyung/Jimin

Space, cryogenics, fate, reincarnation, class struggles, revolution, climate change, character death. Having hope is punk rock. Processing grief is a slow and ugly process. [deep breath] Have I ever felt so profoundly touched by a fic while I was reading it?

the other thing by cornfields

hockey rpf, 16k, pub 2015, Jamie/Tyler

An absolutely unflinching look at personal accountability and internalized homophobia. What happens when your self-hatred has collateral damage? It’s about healing but it’ll fucking hurt first. Bleached out vibes. Makes texas feel very big, and the world feel very, very small. A story I’d only trust a fic author to tell.

Top 5 picks:

Murmuration by fringecity (indiachick)

bts, 167k, pub 2018, Yoongi/Jimin/Taehyung

Film noir/murder mystery meets gritty sci fi and superpowers. Everyone is morally gray. You Will sob about Kim Taehyung. A masterclass in plot. Felt like a trilogy all wrapped tightly into one fic. A kaleidoscope. An unfurling. This fic mesmerizes.

The River and the Deep Green Bend by liquidmeasure

1d, 70k, pub 2016, Harry/Niall

Dark tower au, but only technically. Makes me want to believe in the multiverse. An arid western, a sideways coming of age story, an elegy. The first time I’ve ever cried because an ending was perfect.

the undiscovered country by indigostohelit

hamlet, 56k, pub 2014, Hamlet/Horatio

What else can I say about this fic. What else can I Fucking say.

(note: we discuss this fic at length during episode 5)

All Things Shining by Askance and standbyme

spn, 142k, pub 2013, Dean/Castiel & Sam/ofc

A story about miracles. Literary as hell, with long luxuriant scenes that never drag. Masterful characterization. The thing I wanted from spn fic—connection, plot, and a fic that not only can handle the lore of the show, but is willing to expand upon it.

Who Painted the Moon Black by throughthedark

1d, 95k, pub 2013, Louis/Harry

Hunger games crossover. Doesn’t just use the other fandom for setting, but entirely inhabits it. I had to stop partway through my reread because I knew I’d have nightmares, but this fic never stops hoping. Trauma is not an ending. This fic is certain of that the whole way through.

Reid’s Choices:

Honorable Mentions:

songs from the ash, by explosivesky, 2017

Critical Role, Percy/Vex, Keyleth/Vax, 54k, WIP (sort of)

rockstar/movie star AU

A fantastic example of how fic can just standalone as really good original fiction. A lovingly rendered, devastating and beautifully crafted portrait of four broken people doing their best to navigate through their lives and around one another.

delta, by sharpa, 2019

BTS, rapline ot3, 60k

What happens when you’re a public figure who gets unwillingly outed, and two people you used to love reach out to offer you sanctuary? You make Reid cry, that’s what.

Top 5 picks:

Salt on the Western Wind by Saras_Girl, 2013

Harry Potter, drarry, 60k

Immediately post war, bond

It represents a lot of what I was looking for when I started really getting into Drarry fic, which was an exploration of what canon wouldn’t give me. My favorite Drarry fics have always been the ones that let them dig into their shared trauma, and while this fic isn’t the heaviest one I’ve read, I think the fact that it’s set literally hours after the Battle of Hogwarts ends lends itself well to that concept. I couldn’t have a list of the decade without a Drarry fic, tbh.

The Great Sealand Takeover, by whalehuntingboyfriends, 2015

Roosterteeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, ot6 (gavin, michael, ray, geoff, ryan, jack), 365k

FAHC

When I think about fics that set the standard for a fandom, this is one of the first ones that comes to mind. This fic means a lot to me because it was my introduction to RPF, and in addition to its intricate plot and fandom-constructed lore, also was a take on poly relationships and found families in a way I had never experienced before, with themes of belonging and a love that transcends typical convention.

The Twice-Told Tale by arysteia, 2012

Marvel, steve/tony, 15k

This fic hits a sweet spot for me where it does have some of that 2012 tower-fic nostalgia, but I also think it holds up well in terms of what I (and fandom) find so fascinating about Tony, which is all this grief and trauma that he struggles so hard to process, and the way puts himself at the center of attention to obfuscate the fact that he keeps everyone at a long arm’s length.

There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, by Shoshanah-ben-hohim, 2015

Hockey, Sid/Geno, Canon Divergent, 77k

& the whole series, including There is a Field, I’ll Meet You There, Alex Galchenyuk/Olli Maata, 131k

When I think about this fic I want to scream from every rooftop I’ve ever been on “please read this fic”. The way it weaves together details to provide a level of grounding and realism in what sounds like the most absurd concept for a fic just floors me. The empathy and compassion and fear in this fic just gets at the most tender parts of my heart, and the fact that it’s ostensibly a ship fic, and yet Sid and Geno spend nearly the entire fic with no communication, but instead are just holding on to the innate truth that they know about one another to get them through this crazy endeavour they’re on elevates the entire fic for me.

what comes after, by poppyseedheart, 2018

Roosterteeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, mavinseg (gavin, meg, michael, lindsay), 36k

Dystopia/Spy AU

When I first read this fic, I finished it and I put it down and then I spent a few days feeling like I was just sort of wandering around in a haze because every single thought was consumed by this fic. In addition to its impeccable worldbuilding and the tone work that it does with its setting, I don’t know that I had ever resonated so deeply with fic characters before. Reading this felt like someone had pried my ribcage open one by one and revealed the softest, most tender parts of me and then went “I’m going to write something that targets this.” This fic is an ode to loss and love, to mourning something that you once had and then hesitantly and clumsily opening yourself up to building something new, and recognizing that, impossibly, that new thing you built can somehow be better than what you had before.

And I felt all of these things, I felt like my world had just been shattered by this new author I discovered… and then, somehow, I became her friend. Then through Nic I met Brenna, and now when I think about this fic I not only love it for being a work of art, but also for being representative of the thing that brought me to two of the most important people in my life, and that to me will always make it my favorite fic I’ve ever read.

#fic clique #fic recs #multifandom #minisode #fics of the decade

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xbrokenxtragedies · 4 years

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⌜ •° ✦ °• — cody christian + cismale + he/him + teen wolf┆this is your stop. welcome to 𝐓𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒. you must be THEO RAEKEN. a little birdie told me you’re looking for ALDERWOOD CEMETERY it’s not too far from here and i’m sure your CHARISMATIC, INTELLIGENT + CUNNING self will lead you down the right path. you’ve had EIGHTEEN years of experience anyway. what were you saying ? you DO remember BEING PULLED UNDERGROUND? oh well, good luck with that! hey, before you go, has anyone ever told you that you give off a DETACHED SOUL, TAINTED HANDS, TORMENTED DREAMS, SHARP FANGS, ELECTROMAGNETIC ENERGY vibe? i better get going, enjoy your stay ! ──

From what part of the canon did you take your character from?

Theo was pulled from the end of season 6A, where his dead sister dragged him through a sinkhole and trapped him underground, after all the acts of war and evil he put the McCall pack through due to him desiring to gain more power for himself.

What gender is your character and what pronouns do they use?

Theo is a cismale and uses he/him pronouns.

What do they identify as sexual/romantic orientation speaking?

Theo identifies as bisexual.

Anything else?

The memories of his life are still intact, such as killing his sister when he was nine in order for the Dread Doctors to turn him into a chimera, which they had insisted was her request. He watched her die and did nothing. His parents left, leaving him all alone. The Dread Doctors raised him; causing him to turn off his humanity.

Since a little boy, Theo has been in constant grief over the loss of his sister, pain that never goes away but eats at him daily.

The recollection of returning back to Beacon Hills, killing his foster parents, members of his own pack(taking their power), anyone that gets in his way of gaining power, or trying to take down the McCall pack is still with him today; as well as his dead sister dragging him down underground once he had been defeated.

When Theo was in hell he was tortured the entire time by his dead sister who he had killed all those years back.

Liam Dunbar later released him in order for Theo to help the McCall pack take down the Ghost Riders. However, any wrong move they swore they would send Theo back; which of course he does not want.

Theo’s motives have been altered slightly. Instead of trying to gain more power, his only want now is to survive, though he will still do what is necessary if it comes to that, even here. However he has not needed to play anyone thus far in the city, so instead, he keeps to himself.

#trhq:intro

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ilcuoreardendo-fic · 4 years

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Overall Thoughts on TROS

It's definitely a Star Wars movie. Full of pew pew and snap-hiss crackle. There's not much time to stop and absorb anything because it's just go go go: we have a lot of fanservice to give and not a lot of time to give it.

I enjoyed myself. I'm just kind of....whelmed. (Neither over nor under.) It was fun. But with the ending of the trilogy, I’m finally able to put all my thoughts together (or at least somewhat together) and I have a lot of them...but I think they can be somewhat summed up like this: I wanted the sequel trilogy to be something more than what it was. But I digress.

Spoilers under the cut. Including my peeve with "generational midichlorians." Yeah. Kind of like “generational wealth.”

Also, this is stream of thought. Not a well put together essay/analysis.

Specific things I liked:

Confirmation that Leia did train as a Jedi (and built a saber).

The festival on Pasaana. (Honestly, this is the kind of thing I like most about Star Wars - seeing the worlds and the peoples [humanoids or otherwise] on them.)

The Dyad Bond. More than a Force bond. Two sides of the same coin. Not just able to see the other but to physically interact with the other (Kylo taking Rey's necklace; Rey giving Ben the lightsaber.)

Poe and Finn running things together. (But it would have been better as space boyfriends. Come on, Disney.)

The voices of the past Jedi. In Star Wars, no one is ever really gone.

Things I didn't Like

A trilogy complaint: the lack of tight, cohesive storyline. For the love of god, this is not the 1970s and you are not George Lucas with a one-off idea. Disney is a megacorp that purchased the most well known story/franchise in history and you're going to come into this thing and fucking wing it? Stop!

Palpatine introduced in the crawl. This goes back to my issue with the lack of a solid overarching storyline for the trilogy. This feels like shoehorning in a bigger bad. There should have been some hint of this from the beginning. And since JJ did TFA, I'm looking at him. He could have laid down some foundation instead of just questions in TFA. (Outlines! People, come on.)

Tying on to those first two things: Exposition. Oh, Snoke? I created him. All those voices in your head? Yeah, that was me. I know there was a comic that showed the abuse Ben Solo suffered at Snoke’s hand. This stuff would have been good to see within the trilogy. Cut down on some of the extraneous characters and pew-pew moments and give us some depth by showing us not telling us. (I know it’s Star Wars, but come on.)

Retconning Rey's lack of lineage. Don't retcon things because some parts of fandom don't like it. Tell the story being laid out. Do not pander. The whole point of TLJ was that those of lineage don't own the Force. The Jedi and the Sith do not own the Force. The Force just is. And you don't have to be from a specific bloodline to have a strong connection to it. The reason Rey was so strong was already established in the earlier films. Snoke said: Darkness rises and Light to meet it. The Force isn't a passive element; it seeks a balance. That's why Rey was so strong. We didn't need the "Oh, well, generational midichlorians, ya know." Sigh. We could have even kept the whole Palpatine as the hidden big bad without having Rey related to him. "Darkness rises and Light to meet it" applies to Old Palpy as well.

Redemption and Death. This is a peeve for me. I'm tired of the "redeemed through sacrificing my life" trope. For once, I'd like to see the redeemed bad guy survive and go out into the world and work on actively making things right. Ben's death was poetic and all. And it did run counter to Anakin in that he was able to save/bring back to life the woman he loved. But.... I want more. I want different. I was never expecting Reylo on screen or happily ever afters and riding off into the sunset. But I was hoping for something different than Return of the Jedi, Part Deux. I don't even have to see it. (In a less than two hour movie, that's not going to happen.) Just give me a hint.

There are more things, but they can pretty much be taken from these articles:

The Lack of Anakin Skywalker

From a storytelling/craft perspective. All of this. In all of the newness and nostalgic fan service, we just didn’t get the ties to the first six movies.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-9-rise-skywalker-disrespects-darth-vader-anakin/?fbclid=IwAR1JG34DPkgKF1ho9cs6cP_qDEcQB7Tu0mwBgA0KGLhK-AvDwoylp27eUiE

While the sequel trilogy shouldn't be bogged down by too many ties to past movies, it should be the culmination to a nine-part saga that had, thus far, revolved around the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. To feel cohesive as episodes 7, 8, and 9 as opposed to just another trilogy that happens to take place after the first six movies, the final three movies should be tied to his legacy as well.

Lack of Substance, Lack of Loss, Too Much Myth

https://www.cbr.com/the-rise-of-skywalker-star-wars-rian-johnson/?fbclid=IwAR3TRCtLL-Uxehr7Vn2U2CmSkhbX4pmWXXUHcv3eWX-4RD0TCvpfhf6xipk

In The Last Jedi, Johnson uses conflict as a means to make the situation direr. Every flashy scene pushes the plot forward, but it pushes it in a way that makes it more clear the heroes are in over their heads. Holdo lightspeed ramming those ships? It's beautiful and epic, but it also leaves the Resistance vulnerable. The Kylo/Rey fight against Snoke's guards? That's a crowd-pleaser, but it also ends with Kylo Ren leading the First Order.

In every fight, there was some risk. And, as Yoda puts it in The Last Jedi, "The greatest teacher failure is." Every character learned from their failure, no matter how severe it may be.

There is plenty of fights in The Rise of Skywalker that are intended to entertain fans of action, but they add precious little. Chewie dying? Oh, no, he's fine. Wait, a planet blew up? Oh, no, don't worry, all the relevant characters on the planet escaped. Hold on, Palpatine electrocuted every ship in the sky? Oh no, none of the characters fans liked died. Don't worry. It's a lot of style, but we never get that substantial loss.

Things I'm Mixed About

There will probably be more of this as I digest but, right now:

The Kiss

I’m always the person rooting for the conflicted villain to come back to good. To become, if not a hero, then an anti-hero.

And I’m a Reylo shipper. I glommed onto the Bastilla Shan/Revan vibes, the Hades and Persephone symbolism, etc. from the get-go.

I’m glad to see a kiss between the two. It gives me a warm fuzzy. But it’s so sudden, it feels somewhat dizzying. But then Rey and Ben are probably having an entire conversation as they’re sitting they’re staring at each other, so...

The Tatooine Ending

It's fan service. I get the whole nod to where things started, with the dual sunset. Luke looked out on the horizon wondering what was out there in the galaxy. Rey's doing the same, but from a different perspective (she knows something of what's out there, but she still doesn't know what the future will hold for her as the last Jedi).

But functionally, I'm just like...why bury them in the sand? Keep them with you. Start a new training temple and keep them there.

Also...all that sand. Anakin’s turning in his grave. Rude.

Things People Have Complained About that I Don’t Mind

This has mostly been from other Reylo shippers, but....

“Rey stuck on Tatooine” She’s not stuck. She has the Falcon. She went to bury the lightsabers. Luke already told her, essentially, to not do what he did and cloister herself away. I don’t know why some people think she was going to build herself a new lightsaber and become a hermit on Tatooine.

“Rey’s lack of grief over Ben”

This is a Star Wars movie. In a Star Wars movie we don’t really see grief. We see a bit with Leia, but that’s in large part because Carrie Fisher died and this was essentially a memorial for her on film.

Beyond that...characters die all the time throughout every movie. (Look how many died in the battle between the Resistance and Final Order. And what do we get? Partying. Congratulations. Kissing. “Yay, we’re still alive!” Not grief.) Maybe we get a funeral or a mention in passing, but we don’t really see characters working through their feelings.

I’m sure Rey did her grieving. And may still be. Grief changes form as time passes and it looks different from person to person.

#star wars: the rise of skywalker #ben solo #rey #reylo #kylo ren #tros spoilers #star wars #star wars sequels #star wars sequel trilogy #outlines people outlines

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thenerdparty · 5 years

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Avengers: Endgame Film Review

Written by Shawn Eastridge Has it really been 11 years since the first Iron Man? The Dark Knight might have taken all the credit that year for revolutionizing the superhero genre, but Iron Man’s legacy has proved just as important. While other films in Phase One hobbled somewhere between decent and mediocre, Joss Whedon’s first Avengers exceeded any and all expectations. To this day, it stands as one of the greatest superhero films ever, and it paved the way for the remainder of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

Over the course of the past decade, the MCU has seen its fair share of highs (Anything directed by the Russos), lows (Thor movies not directed by Taika Waititi) and everything in between. But through it all, Marvel Studios has maintained a consistent level of quality, conjuring up box office numbers that made Warner Bros SO JEALOUS they ruined Superman in the attempt to catch up. (Hey, WB: I’m still available to help get you on the right track with the Man of Steel. Call me.)

But now, twenty-two movies later, it’s all come down to this. We’re in the Endgame now, the long-awaited BIG FINALE to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.

Let’s be real, though - we all know this isn’t really the finale. The MCU will chug on and on forever. In fact, we’ve even got another Marvel movie right around the corner. (That would be July’s Spider-Man: Far From Home) And while that knowledge does dilute Endgame’s overall effectiveness - can anyone ever stay dead in the realm of comic books - it seems foolish to recognize Endgame as anything other than a monumental success.

Seriously, this ‘conclusion’ to the MCU’s recently dubbed ‘Infinity Saga’ satisfies on nearly every level, fulfilling arcs set up in prior films and providing proper send offs for characters we’ve come to know and love over the past decade. Instead of collapsing under the weight of its ongoing 22-film arc, the Russo Brothers, along with screenwriting duo Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, rise to the challenge and then some, wrapping things up with style, grace and a surprising amount of emotion. That is perhaps the most pleasant surprise: Endgame is genuinely touching in the way it thoughtfully concludes this ongoing story arc. You may find yourself dabbing the corners of your eyes more frequently than expected through the film’s brisk three-hour runtime.

This isn’t all to say that Endgame is without its fair share of flaws - and there are plenty that I’ll get into during the spoiler section of this review - but honestly, the nitpicks feel so minor when compared to all the things that work. Marvel Studios hasn’t just raised the bar for superhero filmmaking and ‘big finales’ in general. They’ve obliterated it.

There. That’s my non-spoiler reaction. MASSIVE SPOILERS await you ahead. So, do yourself a favor: if you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame already, see it. Immediately. If you have any fondness for any of the films in this massive franchise, there’s no way you’ll be disappointed. Once you’re in the know, come back and check out the rest of this review.

Sound good? Okay. Let’s push forward.

. . . . .

Where Infinity War brought the comic book action early and often, Endgame’s opening moments are more meditative and somber. Our heroes have just faced a crushing loss. They’re still reeling from the devastation of Thanos’s infamous Finger-Snap Heard ‘round the Universe. Nothing will ever be the same.

After staging an effectively heart-wrenching opening scene, giving us a brief glimpse at Hawkeye’s family life before his wife and kids fade into ash, the Russos keep the mood low-key and mournful for the duration of the film’s first act. Then we get one of Endgame’s earliest and best twists: within the film’s first twenty minutes, the Avengers find Thanos and discover he’s destroyed the Infinity Stones to prevent anyone from undoing his monstrous deed. In an empty gesture, Thor chops off the purple dude’s head. It’s a brilliant way to kick things off, throwing the audience for a loop and suggesting an ‘anything goes’ vibe to keep us on the edge of our seats.

The story jumps ahead five years(!!) to find our heroes scattered and broken, attempting to mend together the pieces in a world still devastated by its new reality. I loved that the Russos let us wallow in our heroes’ misery for a bit. You really get a sense of the loss they’ve experienced, that the entire world has experienced. These scenes offer some wonderful character beats and conversations, something that has always elevated Marvel above the rest of the pack.

Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, escapes the Quantum Realm (you saw Ant-Man and the Wasp, right?) to discover a significantly altered world. But he brings a message of hope with him: the duration of time he experienced in the Quantum Realm was only 5 hours, suggesting the potential for time travel. Maybe they can find a way to fix the devastation Thanos has wrought by traveling back in time?

P.S. Can I just take a moment to talk about how much I love Paul Rudd in this movie? Ant-Man has been on the periphery of the MCU’s big events and to see him take on such a big role in this movie was a huge thrill.

This glimmer of hope inspires the band to get back together and it’s genuinely surprising where some of them have ended up. Bruce Banner has finally made peace with his meaner, greener side, resulting in Professor Hulk, a version of the character that maintains Banner’s intelligence and personality. Thor never overcame his grief and has spent the past five years descending into drunken slobbery and gaining a significant amount of weight in the process. This provides one of the film’s best sight gags. Plus, it’s maintained throughout! Kudos to you, Russos!

And then we have Mr. Tony Stark himself, the key to figuring out how to make time travel work. But he’s moved on. He and Pepper have an adorable daughter. He has absolutely zero desire to lose what he has. Ultimately the realization that he can save the lives of countless billions - including one surrogate son Peter Parker - drives him to support the cause.

Endgame’s 2nd act centers around the newly reassembled Avengers time-traveling into the past to gather the Infinity Stones, bring them to their future and use them to ‘un-snap’ their fallen comrades. These sequences are fun and light on their feet. They’re especially effective in lieu of the grim opening scenes.

Here’s the thing, though: As much as I love this portion of the film and the way the time travel stuff is handled, I couldn’t help feeling there was a general lack of consequence to everything that happened during this sequence. Even when things skew from the team’s set plan, it doesn’t feel like a significant snag or an insurmountable obstacle. These moments are treated as minor annoyances before our heroes carry on with a new solution, nary breaking their strides or a sweat in the process.

It’s all fun in a Back to the Future Part II kind of way, but it’s treated more as an extended comedy bit than anything else, and to a certain extent, this robs Endgame of some level of suspense. Plus, it’s time travel. Once you throw time travel into the mix, all bets are off, and I couldn’t help shaking that feeling. After all, what’s to stop them from using this plot device again and again in the future, consequences be damned?

At the very least, the wackiness of the time travel sequence is balanced with some great character beats. I loved Thor’s tender moment with his mom. I loved Captain America vs. Captain America. I loved that Tony gets a sincere heart to heart with his dad, offering some much-needed closure. Robert Downey Jr. has never been anything less than wonderful in this role, but his performance in Endgame might take the cake. Honestly, everyone brings their A-game to the table and these moments ground the sequence, keeping it from getting too bonkers.

This sequence is also balanced with a genuinely tragic moment: Black Widow sacrifices herself to get the Soul Stone. I don’t know why this scene has been stirring up some people, because here’s the thing: this moment works perfectly. Natasha (Black Widow) and Clint (Hawkeye) travel to Vormir to obtain the Soul Stone. As established in Infinity War, the only way to obtain said stone is to sacrifice the thing you love most. Clint’s willing to take the plunge. He’s become a monster in the five years since his family’s disappearance (but an awesome, katana-wielding monster) and he doesn’t feel he deserves to see them again. Natasha knows this isn’t true and she’s willing to sacrifice herself to ensure Clint gets his happy ending. After all, he saved her all those years ago. It’s time to return the favor. It’s heartbreaking, but it feels right and Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner sell every minute.

The plan is a success, but it's not without its snags. Past Thanos ends up getting involved when past Nebula tunes into future Nebula’s wifi and begins broadcasting everything future Nebula has seen, including the Avengers’ time travel plan. Thanos gets worked up into a tizzy and he and past Nebula devise a plan to get him into the Avengers’ future so he can ensure everyone snapped out of existence stays snapped out of existence. Also, why not wipe out everyone else in the process just for good measure? Because that’s what big, angry, purple maniacs do. Don’t question it.

Is it a bit weird that the Thanos the Avengers face isn’t the same Thanos so carefully fleshed out in Infinity War? Yeah, a little bit. To be honest, it makes things feel kind of impersonal. This Thanos feels more like the mysterious being teased in dozens of MCU post-credits sequence than the layered, thoughtful villain of the previous film. It’s a bit of a bummer, but it is what it is.

Ultimately, my biggest gripe with Endgame is the same gripe caused by Infinity War’s conclusion. We already knew the disintegrated heroes were going to come back for their obligatory sequels. Their arrival during Endgame’s epic battle to end all epic battles feels inevitable more than surprising.

And, look, let me be clear: Endgame’s climax is the ultimate superhero big battle you’ve been dreaming of since Nick Fury first name-dropped the ‘Avengers Initiative.’ I went nuts with the best of them when all our heroes returned from the abyss for this ultimate showdown, so understand my next criticism comes from a place of love. Once all the heroes show up, the stakes disappear. I didn’t have any doubt the Avengers would win. As a result, the climax is robbed of its suspense. It’s basically fan service to the nth degree, which again, I’d like to emphasize I was totally cool with. It just prevents the battle from conjuring up any emotional depth.

This isn’t The Return of the King. It's not the Battle of Hogwarts or the Death Star trench run or even the first Avengers' Battle for New York. It’s a big, flashy special effects extravaganza overflowing with crowd-pleasing beats, but lacking in genuine (here’s this word again) consequence. Again, I want to emphasize that I loved every second of it, but there’s a significant lack of loss during these scenes. Ultimately, Tony Stark sacrifices himself to save the universe and it’s absolutely BRILLIANT and heart-wrenching, but no one else seems in danger. Iron Man dies so that dozens of franchises can live on.

The remaining twenty minutes or so of Endgame are low key. We witness Tony’s emotional funeral, torches are passed (go, Sam Wilson, go!) and some unexpected-slash-exciting team-ups are teased (Fat Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy? I am SO in.) But it’s during these quiet scenes that the Russos skillfully remind us what has always mattered the most: the characters. And I’m not going to lie, it’s difficult not to get choked up when Steve Rogers, a man who has sacrificed so much for the greater good, finally gets his happy ending, dancing the day away with the love of his life.

Big finales don’t get much more enjoyable or fulfilling than this. Marvel’s Cinematic Universe will go on and on and on. Inevitably, its quality will wane and fade, but we can rest easy knowing that the heroes that kicked everything off got the send-off they deserved. It might not be perfect, but it’s pretty damn great. Most importantly, it’s satisfying.

With the Infinity Saga, Marvel Studios has accomplished something extraordinary. They’ve touched countless millions across the globe without compromising the artistic quality of this multi-billion dollar franchise. We can rage on and on about Disney’s domination and how everything is just a corporate product and blah, blah, blah, but we’d be ignoring the fact that they got to where they are because they honored their source material and went out of their way to give the fans something special.

So to Kevin Feige and the entire team at Marvel Studios, cast, crew, writers, bean pushers, etc., I’d like to say thank you. You’ve earned every record-breaking penny. We love you 3000.

Now can someone please un-cancel Daredevil?? Come on!!

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writcraft · 5 years

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Rec List #1 Theme: 2018 Favourites (Non-Drarry)

One of my fandom resolutions is to rec more in 2019. I’m going to post rec lists for some of my favourite HP fics divided up by theme/content/ship or whatever I fancy throughout the year, aiming for one rec list a month with two in January. I thought I would kick off 2019 with two lists of 2018 favourites. This first one excludes Drarry because I’ve read mostly Drarry this year and limiting myself to ten recs per list would be impossible if I included all the Drarry I’ve enjoyed within a list of just ten. The second list will be my favourite Drarry fics of 2018, then I’ll move on to other themes for the remaining months.

Usual caveats for recs apply. This is by no means an exhaustive list, I could have recced many more. I’ve read and enjoyed a whole raft of terrific stories and this rec list is simply based on my personal tastes which may not be everybody else’s cuppa. Please heed the content warnings the author has flagged on AO3 in each case, some of these fics contain darker content and I haven’t listed out any warnings in my recs and summaries.

#1. A Radical Change in (Self) Perception by AnyaElizabeth

Severus Snape/Harry Potter | 57,114

Harry should know better than to touch museum exhibits, especially in a magical museum. Now he's in trouble...

My Rec: I haven’t read a huge amount of body swap fics and I can’t remember the last body swap Snarry I read, and I was so intrigued by how the author would handle this premise. I devoured the whole 50,000+ words in one sitting I was so engaged by this charming story. The body swap forced Harry and Severus to spend more time together but it did so much more than that - it enabled them to better understand one another and also themselves, when they saw each other through a different lens. The writing is terrific and if you’re a Snarry shipper this one is guaranteed to give you all the warm and fuzzies. A great addition to the wonderful Snarry fanfic that has posted throughout 2018.

#2. Hallo Spaceboy by @shiftylinguini

James Potter/Teddy Lupin | 10,075

“If this mirror could talk,” James remembers declaring, already one drink down and trying to tidy up his ridiculous costume eyeliner, “it would say we look bloody amazing.”

Teddy’s arm was warm when he wrapped it around James’s shoulder, pulling him closer.

“We always do, love.” Teddy tugged on a long curl of James’s hair before tucking it behind his ear, then smoothing the whole lot of it back. “We’re the fittest blokes at the party, us.”

James’d had to give up on the eyeliner after that; he was grinning too hard, flushed and happy and basking in Teddy’s attention (fit blokes, we’re fit blokes, that’s us), and he couldn't bloody stop.

Or: James kissed Teddy last night. This may or may not be the end of the world.

My Rec: A thoroughly charming fic featuring trans James waking up in the morning and coming to terms with a kiss with his best mate Teddy Lupin the night before. I loved the quietness of this story, the way James being trans was part of it but not the primary focus. James feeding bread to the ducks on a grotty park bench is honestly such a beautiful, persistent and soothing image, and I loved the whole story from start to finish. It’s got lovely, warm coming of age vibes to it and I felt James’ conflict and fears come through so well in the telling of this story. Wonderfully written.

#3. Of Reckoning and Ruin by @half-light-01

Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore | 10,585

"And it is the eternal rule that drops of blood spilled on the ground demand yet more blood."

One year after Lily Potter's death, Severus Snape's Dark Mark comes to life. Caught between a creature that wants him dead, and a Headmaster who needs him alive, the young Hogwarts professor is forced to reckon with his past and negotiate his future.

My Rec: I discovered this terrific fic at the end of this year and boy oh boy am I glad I did. The relationship between Severus and Albus is, in my view, one of the most complex and fascinating of the Harry Potter series. This story explores the darker sides we see of Dumbledore in canon through his interactions with Snape, but most of all it is a complex and fascinating character study of Severus, his grief, his guilt, his inner turmoil. The author really gets into the grit of both characters without flinching away from it and the creature in the story gives it a very unsettling quality which forces us to question who can be trusted, if anyone. A really engaging, well told story with a deft handling of complex characters.

#4. my heart beat a tattoo on my ribs by @candybarrnerd / icarusinflight

Ginny Weasley/Luna Lovegood | 7,403

Ginny can't understand why anyone would want to mark themselves by choice but she still agrees to go with Harry when he says he wants a tattoo.

My Rec: I loved this beautiful story of tattoo artist Luna and a Ginny still processing the trauma and grief of war. The friendship between Ginny and Harry is wonderfully crafted and the dull ache of grief that grips Ginny is beautifully handled - it’s softly done and never overwrought and the story is ultimately one of healing and hope. A really terrific, sexy read and one I’ll definitely return to again.

#5. Distortion by DorthyAnn (JenniferMarie)

Harry Potter Centric (see AO3 for more detail) | 8,924

Harry wakes in darkness. A darkness that goes on and on without end. He can’t see or feel, he doesn’t know what’s happened. All he can do is hold on, replaying his memories to keep him sane. Until it’s over. Until he can go home again.

My Rec: This is horror as I love it the most. A strange, unsettling, superbly written story which grapples with identity, perception of self, loss of identity and evokes a creepy, oppressive sense of things going horribly awry. The Potterverse is so rich with details of magic and potions which can be used to alter ones own perception of themselves and the rest of the world, and the author uses the magic of canon in a deft and eerie way to create a gripping, unnerving tale of psychological horror.

#6. Soft Touch by perverse_idyll

Severus Snape/Harry Potter | 15,167

Harry's love life has been dismal, and he finds himself checking into a therapeutic massage clinic just to get off - the same clinic to which Snape had been delivered three years earlier for physical therapy.

My Rec: Perverse Idyll is one of those authors whose fics I read and they stay with me for a long time after. One of the first Snarry authors I properly discovered on the journals, Perverse Idyll and I see Snape somewhat differently at times (although the meta conversations that results in are always an absolute privilege and pleasure) but I think that’s one of the things I find so compelling whenever I read PI’s fic. Perverse Idyll takes Snape to places I struggle to as a writer, and I find him absolutely captivating. He never loses his sharpness, his bitterness or his moral ambiguity and there is nothing more compelling than reading an unapologetically brittle Snape from the deft hand of a terrific writer who knows the character inside out and has formed deep, intricate views about his complexities and motivations and lets all his flaws sing instead of silencing or softening them in an attempt to make him more palatable. This is such an electric, sensual, sexy story with tension ramped up to the max. Brilliant.

#7. Rooftop Ruminations by @thealmostrhetoricalquestion

Pansy Parkinson/Ginny Weasley | 12,209

Ginny barely registered the evening. The musician, whose bow wrung sounds from the strings with a casual, carefree elegance that Ginny would have usually envied, was just a blur in front of her face. The steps she took to the Rialto Bridge once everyone was ready felt too light and airy, and Luna’s hand in hers was just a wisp of citrus-scented silk. The night grew cooler and Ginny didn’t feel it. Simpering crush, Daphne had said. Pansy had a simpering crush. The words bobbed to the surface of her thoughts and pinched at her wrists and looped around her ears. She kept glancing at Pansy in her velvet skirt and towering heels, and she kept not knowing what to feel.

She wasn’t sure who she wanted Pansy’s crush to be on, and she hated that she didn’t know.

My Rec: This is such a gorgeous piece of writing. The scene setting is so immersive and wistful somehow, there’s a quietness to the pace of the story and the telling of it that made it such a wonderful read. I found myself completely engaged by the unfolding of the story, the richness of the details and descriptions sprinkled throughout, the handling of Ginny’s grief, the sparks and flickers of her feelings as she explores her growing attraction to Pansy and past feelings for Luna. I highly recommend this beautifully told story.

#8. The Frame by mindabbles

Sirius Black/James Sirius Potter | 11,703

What are the ethical implications of falling for a person you're named after? How about the logistical complications of falling for someone who shouldn’t be alive? James would rather, he finds, not look too closely at either, not when Sirius makes him forget anyone else exists.

My Rec: I left a prompt for Next Gen Fest involving time travel and James Sirius meeting his namesake and I was so excited when I saw it had been claimed. This fic was absolutely terrific. The idea of the portrait / painting being suspended on the wall mirrors this moment of James Sirius and Sirius suspended in time and I love that the author chose to end the story when they did, leaving things open and ambiguous but in a way that still felt very satisfying. Sirius and James are brilliantly characterised and there are wonderful doses of humour throughout what is a fairly tragic premise. The sex is hot enough to burn and the story has a gentle hopefulness which left me feeling really warm and content, despite the openness of the ending. We see James Sirius and Sirius in this one, suspended moment, as one might view a painting or photograph. Brilliantly written, with nods to Jeddy and Wolfstar too. I loved it.

#9. Games People Play by kelly_chambliss

Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape | 5,610

Life is not easy when you are Severus Snape or Remus Lupin. But sometimes, there are compensations.

My Rec: I fell in love with this fic when it posted anon and for this year’s HP Crossgenfest and I wasn’t surprised when the author was revealed to be the immensely talented Kelly, one of my favourite writers of the older women in the Potterverse with a brilliant grasp of Minerva and Severus as characters. The story weaves Remus into the narrative and as ever Kelly’s prose is delightful, the use of second person working particularly well for this story with its shifting POVs. Severus displays moments of his surly, jealous, childish self but also appears a much reformed man although Kelly expertly retains a level of ambiguity around his true motivations in a fully-fleshed out, rich story of human complexity and the ways in which our past informs our perception of the present. If you only ever read one author writing Minerva McGonagall again, read Kelly. Although we are in the heads of Remus and Severus, it is smart, perceptive Minerva who is the star of the show. Wonderful.

#10. Summer’s End by Barry_Manilows_Wardrobe

Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald | 9,505

Gellert was the embodiment of summer: sunlit hair, warm skin beneath Albus's hands, and a smile that made Albus feel hot down to his very bones. But all summers must come to an end.

My Rec: This story is utterly breathtaking. The writing is so confident and rich and the characters and their doomed love beautifully rendered. I read the fic with a lump in my throat, a gorgeously angsty, evocative tale of loving too much, too young, of powerful, intelligent wizards losing themselves in one another and the heat of an irrevocable passion which pulls them towards one another before everything breaks apart. At times the writing is so lyrical and poetic, I had to go back and read several phrases over and over, to really take them in. An absolutely stunning tale of lost love and the path that his past sets Albus on as he sets about preparing Harry for his future trials. Captivating, from start to finish.

#recs #writ recs #harry potter #harry potter fic #harry potter fic recs

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littlemisssquiggles · 7 years

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RWBY Musings #14: In rewatching Chapter 5 of Volume 5, did anyone else come to the same realization that Oscar’s whole outburst at Ruby was intentional?

There is something that I’ve noticed about the notorious dojo scene with Ruby and Oscar from Chapter 5 of RWBY Volume 5.

As I’ve remarked time and time again in past musings, Chapter 5 is and still continues to reign as my top favourite episode of this current season to date. Shameless to say, I’ve downloaded the episode and have been revisiting it continuously, purely for the conversation between our two young heroes.

However in doing so, there has always been something about that particular scene that’s boggled me or rather someone. It’s Oscar. Specifically the face he makes after he calms down from just shouting at Ruby.

At first I figured, okay, the kid’s scared and probably more than a little frustrated so it’s natural that he would chastise Ruby the way he did. However then there’s the next shot where Oscar is looking at Ruby after regaining his composure and he makes this face.

Carefully observe Oscar’s facial expression.

Somehow that face has always bugged me about that shot. I found it a rather odd one for Oscar to make, given the scenario. Why, you might ask?

Because this is a kid who immediately looked remorseful after accidentally punching Ruby in the face during a sparring match and apologized one time on the spot after freaking out over the thought of possibly hurting her.

Yet here, he just finished screaming at her in sheer frustration and he doesn’t look the least bit apologetic about it.

On the contrary, he looked almost patient. As if he was waiting to see Ruby’s reaction to what he just said.

It is here when I realized from the beginning, every action that was made, every word that was said out of Oscar’s mouth from that moment on was deliberate. Oscar wasn’t lashing out at Ruby out of fear. He did it in order to jolt the truth out of her. To get her to admit all the pain she’d been suppressing.

He didn’t have the right words of encouragement to cheer her up, so he did the only thing he could do in the moment. He asked her about how she had managed to keep moving forward and keep such a positive sense of resolve despite all the horrible things she has bared witness to and been through in the past; which was the right question to ask and a very important one to boot cause I don’t think we’ve had anyone truly ask Ruby how she’s been since the Fall of Beacon. Not really.

So having Oscar, essentially still a person who wants to know or understand Ruby more ask her this very significant question is quite excellent.

Oscar acknowledged Ruby’s grief over the loss of her friends that she’s been bottling for so long and rather than give her the sugar, spice and everything is nice schlock of telling her not to worry and whatnot, instead he attempts to comfort her by getting her to finally open up about how she’s been truly feeling.

At first, I guess he figured that admitting how scared he was would encourage Ruby to consequently admit how afraid she was. Giving her a bit of the ole you-show-me-yours-if-I-show-you-mine- kind of psychology there. However Ruby doesn’t snag the first bait and Oscar’s first efforts fail. When Ruby still continued to hold onto her brave facade, that’s when Oscar decided to change tactics.

Yes he yelled at her but what I found interesting is what he yelled at her.

Notice how he didn’t yell accusations. He didn’t berate Ruby for being naive about everything and glossing over his fear with her own indifference to the sheer severity of what is to come. Instead, he yelled questions and facts. Important questions and facts.

Instead of Oscar going: ‘How can you be so stupid and naive for thinking you could ever be strong enough to stop Salem!’ He says this:

‘How can you be so confident? People have tried to kill you, the world is about to go to war all over again, how are you OK with any of this?!’

This is why I love Oscar as a character and desperately need to see more of him in the series. This scene made me understand fully why Ozpin chose him as his successor and what he meant by being reincarnated in the body of a ‘like-minded soul’

Oscar helping Ruby the way he did in this scene is the most Ozpin-like thing he’s done so far while not channelling Ozpin. Rather than coddle her, Oscar gets Ruby to admit her true feelings about everything at long last so that in doing so, not only does she gain comfort but also reaffirmation in her own resolution to stop Salem and her forces. Forget drinking cocoa or fighting with a cane, this is the side of Oscar that’s most akin to Ozpin that I’ve seen so far in RWBY.

I don’t want it to be a thing where just because Ozpin is in his head, that means that Ozpin probably put Oscar up to comforting Ruby. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think Oscar wanted to help Ruby of his own accord. You can tell that by the way he tried to say something earlier on in the scene but couldn’t cause he didn’t know how or didn’t know what was the best thing to say to make her feel better.

Oscar’s failure to say something earlier on is actually quite understandable, given the type of relationship he and Ruby currently have. They’re still in the mere acquaintance stage. Still in the process of getting to know each other.

When you get to know a person really well, you also get to learn of the best method of comforting them during those dire moments. For some people, all they might need is a hug or a pat on the back along with a simple ‘You can do it!’ to get them to feel positive again. Whereas others might need more deeper words accompanied by probably reminders of their own self worth with examples of past achievements and emotional victories to jolt them out of that pitiful rut. This is a type of understanding that can only come from truly knowing a person which takes time.

Oscar isn’t there yet with Ruby (and my foot is starting to get a little weary of tapping to see when the series is going to get us there at some point. But to be fair to the writers, Ruby and Oscar only met this season so they might not have that kind of friendship and knowledge of each other till at least another season of close contact. But I digress).

To Oscar, he doesn’t honestly know the full details of all that has happened to Ruby before, during and after the Fall of Beacon. Sure Oz must’ve told him some facts about our red-haired main heroine beforehand but beyond that, Oscar doesn’t know Ruby well enough to try and comfort her in a way that would be helpful to her. I guess that would justify why he went with asking her how she felt.

He might not know her all that well despite being in his presence and company for a few weeks but he figured if he asked her how she felt personally, then maybe she’d be able to comfort herself by finally admitting her qualms out loud through his encouragement while at the same time helping him to better understand her in the process.

For what it’s worth, Oscar’s efforts worked. Ruby admitted everything. She finally mentioned Pyrrha and Penny and addressed her feelings on losing them. And one she was done giving her big speech, what did Oscar do?

Did he press her further? No. Did he slate her anymore? No.

Instead the kid just casually walks to her side and gives her a very comforting smile of approval (It definitely looked like a ‘I’ll accept that answer’ kind of face to me), now satisfied with her response.

I’m pretty certain if Ruby had continued to act all unconcerned about her past pains, then Oscar would have continued to talk her down until she did. Not out of disrespect or anything but because he saw how much she needed to get that off her chest. He probably shouldn’t have yelled at her the way he did however; in this case yelling was the more effective method since it brought the right amount of forceful impact to jolt Ruby out of her impassiveness.

You might as well as had Ozpin go ‘...Well our work here is done! Mission accomplished!’ cause that’s pretty much the vibe I felt from Oscar after Ruby had walked off. He finally got her to admit not just to him but to herself about her feelings regarding everything and now that she’d gotten that emotional load she’s been harbouring for probably months off her chest, he can now smile knowing that she’s a little less stressed and that he had helped to do it.

Guys, this scene was SO IMPORTANT, not just for Ruby but Oscar too.

Do fans even realize how amazing Oscar is? I certainly do. He’s more than just a cute face. He’s a kind soul (well...two kind souls).

Oscar is such an amazing character and honestly has such potential. I really would love to have more moments with him helping other characters like this. If I haven’t stressed this enough whenever I muse about Oscar, there needs to be more key character-building moments with him. We’ve only just (barely) scratched the surface on what he can do as a true-blue voice of reason and mature wisdom for one his age. And this has nothing to do with Ozpin. Oh no.

I think on his own, Oscar is a very mature and outspoken young man. He may not possess the countless decades of vocabulary repertoire such as Ozpin but he does have heart. He’s compassionate and has a much greater power; stronger than any kind of battle skill or magic. He can connect well to others, if given the opportunity and is able to help them through their burdening issues. This is clearly evidenced by his acknowledgement and attempts at helping Ruby in the moment. And I think even Ozpin was able to sense Oscar’s true intent on talking to Ruby, hence I believe that’s why he was surprisingly absent during the whole ordeal and never intervened, even when Oscar yelled at Ruby.

Notice how Ozpin never interrupted or even spoke up once during the whole scene, no matter how tense it became? This was good, especially for me as a fan, since I was literally yelling “...Ozpin don’t you DARE freaking interrupt this very intimate moment between these two kids. Keep it between them please!” at my computer screen during the episode. Thankfully, Ozpin only spoke up after Ruby had walked away.

He allowed Oscar to handle the entire moment on his own. While Ozpin probably would’ve handled it differently (and possibly with a little more tact) if he were in Oscar’s shoes (literally), he respected the young farm boy’s methods enough to take a backseat because he understood fully well what his intentions were and respected him for it.

This reminds me of a scene from way back in Volume 2. It was from the episode with the school dance where, after Yang and Weiss abandoned an awkward introverted Ruby alone at this prestigious social event, it was Professor Ozpin who approached her and gave her some brief company, even if it was to simply provide some whimsical advice.

It was one of my favourite memorable moments from that volume simply for the exchange of dialogue between Ruby and Ozpin. It’s what he said to her that cemented why I like Ozpin so much as a character. And why I’m having a hard time accepting the theory of him being evil.

Oz may be the physical embodiment of magic, cursed by the Gods of Remnant and flawed with more x’s against him than a game of Tic-Tac-Toe but at his core, he’s human. It’s his empathy towards others who he believes might need his help and guidance that makes him human; despite the sheer irony that he’s the least human character in the show, secondary to Salem herself.

I loved the talk Ozpin had with Ruby from the dance episode but what made it better was the aftermath, seeing Ruby’s response to Ozpin’s words. She definitely seemed a bit more at ease following Ozpin’s reassurance. It’s no different than things were with her and Oscar.

In one scene, our boy Oscar got Ruby to open up more. I’ve watched a few reviews of this episode from some of my favourite Youtubers however up until now, I haven’t really seen any other fan really talk about the importance of this scene in terms of what Oscar’s involvement did for Ruby.

No one else has made this point, to my knowledge. It’s mostly been talk about either Oscar being afraid of what’s to come or, more commonly, Ruby’s epic speech. While Ruby’s speech was good, I personally find that this scene was important for Oscar because it highlighted more about his personality.

It revealed more to me about the kind of character he is or is at least shaping up to be and...I truly, truly, TRULY hope we get more moments with him like this one.

I pray that Chapter 5 isn’t going to be the only episode where fans get to see this side of Oscar. I’m fearful that with the reintroduction of Yang and Weiss that any further moments between Ruby and Oscar may become scarcer. Hoping that will not be the case. I’m hoping that what Ruby told Oscar from Chapter 5 will be brought back into hindsight later.

Perhaps there will come a time where, even for a brief moment, Ruby just breaks down and loses all hope. And in a surprising twist, it’s Oscar as the one to remind her of the very words she spoke to him from this episode because he now believed in her.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Haters be like...Ruby doesn’t need Oscar to inspire her cause she’s inspired by the people she cares about. That’s the thing; Ruby has shown to care about Oscar too so it’s safe to say that she likes him enough to consider him another cherished life she needs to fight for.

That being said let Oscar be a sort of shining beacon that inspires Ruby to regain herself in the same manner she has inspired others around her, including him. Or even better:

I just realized something. Oscar’s full name is Oscar Pine. Pine is a type of wood. A spark is essentially like a flame that continues to burn.

Isn’t wood not a kind of material used to keep a fire burning?

If Ruby possesses a spark, then let Oscar possess the fuel that keeps her burning at her brightest. Whether it’s through motivational words or actions of selfless bravery, let him be her support. I’m just saying.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2017)

#rwby #rwby volume 5 #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #rwby volume 5 chapter 5 #oscar and ozpine #ruby and ozpin #rwby musings

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