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lucithornz · 1 year

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Unsought is Better - Director's Commentary

Here are some personal thoughts now that I've finished Unsought is Better. Creating this post as much for myself as potentially curious readers. Another fic author I love made a “Director's Commentary post” and I loved the idea, so I wanted to try my hand at it.

The Concept

I have had a few omegaverse ideas rattling around for some months. But didn't do anything with them. Then I came across a few fics that a group of authors did called “The Wheel of Fate Challenge.” Where challenge was to randomly assign secondary genders for the main cast of DNF and write a story using that dynamic.

The collection of WOF works is here, my work isn't a part of it, but inspired by the challenge these wonderful authors came up with.

I love writing challenges, and my lovely beta reader had been begging me to write in omegaverse. I told her I'd write it to say thanks when I finished another work(different fandom). Well I did, and she was like, “Hey, spin the wheel.” We are both omegaverse fans, but she's got me beat in pure obsession for the sub-genre.

So I put the standard 3 omegaverse genders into a random spin app and spun for each character.

The results: Omega Dream, Omega Sapnap, Alpha George, Beta Karl. I did spin for characters added later, but these are the ones I started with.

Upon seeing this I was like “WTF am I supposed to do with this?” I very much enjoy stories with Alpha Dream and Omega George(I'm basic, but it's a classic). So reversing the dynamic was tough for me to wrap my brain around. Like in my head those designations fit their characters personalities best. So I had to figure out a way to write the dynamic and still make it feel authentic to characterization.

But something clicked a few days later. I'd had the idea of finding someone in heat in public with no other information, and ending up in an accident. Essentially those first two chapters are the inciting incident concept. I love the tension that creates. And I wrote the first chapter to see if it felt right.

My beta reader loved it, and said I better not mess up writing omega Dream, but that she was totally on board for the rest.

Chapter Commentary

Chapters 1 and 2:

This was my setup, the concept I'd had for a while just waiting to be used. When I got the random assignments this just felt right.

My intention was to contrast a really dark setup with people just doing the right thing. I think it's easy to see how horrifically wrong things could have gone. People doing the right thing, even when they aren't asked, was a big theme for me.

I did make sure to include tags to let people know that even though it seems dark nothing awful is gonna happen to the main cast. Because after I wrote the chapter I was like “damn this could be the start to a really good horror”.

The Twelfth Night definitely served as some inspiration in this piece. I won't go over all of the references, as I'm sure that will bore people. I had a lot of fun picking out quotes that applied to each chapter. The famous line “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.” was the inspiration for the title, and just fit the story I had conceptualized so well. At this point it's a theme with me to include classical literature references in my DNF works.

Finally my beta reader very much wanted social issues for omegaverse included and explored in the story. I really like fleshing out my worlds, so that ended up being quite fun. This was more prevalent in some chapters than others.

Chapter 3 and 4:

These chapters include an idea I also wanted to play around with; that being platonic heat care. Plays into the “doing the right thing” theme, and also adds a lot of commentary about consent, especially in omegaverse. It was really important to me to show that who a character is isn't defined by their identity designation. I wanted to get into what happens when someone feels at odds with their secondary gender, how that affects their self esteem etc. And also exploring the ideas of consent of being looked at or touched.

These chapters also are where I really figured out how to make alpha George make sense to me. He may not be super aggressive or boisterous etc, but he is very good at caring and providing. Like he really wants to protect Dream and make sure he's okay. Once I figured that out alpha George made a lot more sense to me. So those are the alpha traits I really ran with for George.

Originally these were going to be one chapter, but I write a lot, so two chapters it is.

Finally the random alpha character was not my smoothest inclusion. But I wanted to have a diverse portrayal of all the genders, and up until that point alphas in society were being painted in a pretty bad light in general, so I wanted to show that George isn't “the token good alpha” if that makes sense.

Chapter 5 and 6:

The conversation where Dream explains what happened was actually one of the first things I wrote. I sometimes will write key conversations well before getting to them chronologically. That was the case with the Dream scene.

Both of these chapters were the hardest to write overall. Firstly because they are transitional in a lot of respects: the end of the stay at the motel, the start of Dream being an active participant in the story, and a lot more characters got added. A lot of friendship had to develop in these chapters.

Writing omega Dream was significantly easier than alpha George. I thought it would be more difficult, but when I actually started writing, the character came together quite nicely for me.

Fluff and humor are where I struggle the most as a writer. Every time I sit down to write knowing that a story calls for including fluff I write slower. I am trying to improve, but fluff doesn't come naturally to me. So writing a bunch of cute scenes in a row was fucking hard. Feedback was good, and I was so excited that the work paid off for some readers.

Niki and Alex were important characters to add for me, because they flesh out both George and Dream's lives. Like they had friends and stuff before meeting. I thought it was fun to mess around with different people meeting in different ways, but still finding each other in the end.

Chapter 7:

Oh what to say about Jared?

Something else I wanted to tackle in this fic is the way betas can have their own biases toward the other genders. I wanted them to be active participants in the omegaverse of it all, rather than being like the NPC gender.

Jared and Karl really serve as contrasting characters(which is where a little confusion on Sapnap's part comes in). Jared has a lot of ugly biases and expectations when it comes to omegas, while Karl has taken the time to understand his partner.

I think if anyone has known someone like Jared, they understand the way things panned out immediately. People don't start fighting, they let that painful tension drag out under the veil of politeness. I knew full well that may not be the most popular narrative choice. But I had a very specific vision for this interaction.

The conversation between Dream and Jared was another scene that I wrote way ahead of a lot of other stuff. That section I probably read and tweaked the most to get it right. It's another one of my favorite scenes, and definitely one I'm the most proud of.

I already wrote a post detailing how and why I went about the fallout with Jared's character, so you can find that here.

And Jared living in Everett is really only a dig people from WA would get. Everett is kind of memed as being the city that produces a lot of assholes. The city itself doesn't have the best rep, so it felt fitting for the character, and is a subtle dig. I made a lot of locational references in this fic, but when I was figuring out where Jared lived I was like “yeah, he feels like he's from Everett.”

Oh boy the steamy scenes. Yes if you've read my author's note on that chapter I wrote a full E rated version of events. I actually do this in a lot in my writing, write the smut all the way through to explore the dynamic between the characters. I almost never include it, as it doesn't usually fit with the rest of a work I'm writing.

With this specific fic I was very torn. I went back and forth about if the scene was good, if I wanted to actually go through with changing the rating on the fic. So I asked my beta reader, and she said she liked the scene, but that it felt excessive and might be a little out of place with the rest of the piece. When she put it like that I agreed. As I said, I am nervous about taking the step to include smut under my name(it is something I very much want to do), but I want to write smut that was intended to be there from the start, and is designed to play important roles in the plot/character development/relationships. This scene didn't do that, so ultimately it was cut.

Chapter 8:

This chapter contains my favorite part of the entire fic.

The phone conversation with Dream and Sapnap is my favorite. I loved writing it, I have re-read it the most. It just makes me happy, I don't know why. I just love those little character interactions between the main three there.

George's thought process was really important to me. It calls back to the stuff he was struggling with in the first few chapters. And also reveals a few of his own insecurities as well as underlying biases/assumptions. No character is perfect, and it's easy to make bad assumptions about the other gender, even with good intentions.

If this was going to be a 100k fic I would have drawn that line of angsty thinking out for like 30k more words. But that was not the case here, so they talk it out, and I had a blast writing their conversation.

Chapter 9:

Picture me trying to convince my beta reader how beautiful and tragic it would be if they drove back over the pass to take things to the next level, and got into a fatal car accident. Like the mirroring, the symbology, the ill fated decision to go back.

I was told that this was a romance and that romances have “happy endings”. I write dark fantasy outside of DNF, so sometimes my instincts are not exactly great. I write DNF because I love the ship, unfortunately the type of stuff I typically read and write is far outside of “romances with happy endings”. I will begrudgingly agree it was the right call. Sylith is the one who reins me in on my bullshit. And that's why she's the best beta reader!

Thank Sylith that this got a happy ending.

Additionally, I may be evil, but not so evil that I'd add MCD tag on the last chapter without warning. I do have a heart. But I won't pretend that I wasn't a little tempted.

I didn't change or add much to this story based on feedback in the comments. I stuck with my original vision for the most part, and was more focused on pleasing my beta reader. I added a few lines and references here and there based on some stuff I saw in the comments, but nothing major.

However, originally this chapter was only going to be the flash forward. But several people really wanted to see that Minecraft stream I'd said was happening, and I realized that I kind of set that expectation up plot-wise. To not include anything about it would be kind of weird. So I wrote the stream section and I think it came out pretty good. I did have fun adding Alex to the mix.

The flash forward is pretty simple. Gives a look at what their relationship has become, and what is in the future for these two. Of course we have the mirroring of the beginning. This started with a drive over Snoqualmie pass, so it will end with one.

Shakespeare

Obviously The Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare played a pretty important role for me in formulating this story. You might be wondering “What made you cross over Twelfth night with this DNF fic?” and to be honest. I have no idea. I've been on a binge re-read of the great playwright and something in my brain just clicked. The line “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better,” in Act III Scene I, is one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes about love. And it really fit with this story about a bunch of mistakes leading to people who might never have met finding each other.

This has also been a theme for me when writing DNF in general. I am a classical literature nerd(shocker), and for some reason the classic tragedies and romances really help me conceptualize writing DNF. The Hounds of Love pulled heavily from Ovid's Metamorphosis, and February 15th was themed around Jane Eyre and Rebecca(Really more Jane Eyre though). So I've just decided to lean into it at this point.

Any other Shakespeare fans who find this fic are either going to be losing their minds over certain narrative choices, or are going to be horrified by what I've done here.

Including quotes at the beginning was just fun for me. I liked pulling quotes that helped guide some emotional plot beats. Fanfic is fun because you get to be a little extra with a project.

Misc. and Final Thoughts

All of the locations mentioned in this fic are real places, and described pretty accurately. You could recreate this fic if you wanted(I DO NOT recommend that though). I won't list them all out because I'm not sure anyone will care.

I won't spoil all of the references I made in this fic. But if you're reading it and pause and think “Hey, are they making a reference on purpose to X piece of media?” the answer is probably yes.

Did I just write a DNF omegaverse fic incorporating quotes and themes from Shakespeare? Yup. Never would have guessed I'd be writing that sentence, but I couldn't be happier.

#lucithornz #lucithornz directors commentary #unsought is better

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m0e-ru · 1 year

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I posted 858 times in 2022

That's 340 more posts than 2021!

757 posts created (88%)

101 posts reblogged (12%)

I tagged 856 of my posts in 2022

#kommento - 577 posts <- was talkative this year. ehehe

#p4 - 220 posts <- BANE OF MY EXISTENCE !!!!

#⛽️🌫 - 146 posts <- NUMBER 1 ALWAYS !!!! ALWAYS ALWAYS

#arttag - 136 posts <- 136 art posts ? no waay .....

#boot.tingting - 116 posts <- i did not do a lot of full art this year but WHO CARES !!! i had fun the whole year thats great for me

#moel gas station attendant - 95 posts <- NO IZNMI IN THE LEADERBOARD THIS YEAR. brain fungus

#persona 4 spoilers - 93 posts <- still tags spoilers in the year of whose lord 2022

#gsa sl au - 90 posts <- WHOO YEAHHHHEAH WHOO YEAH WHAHAOOOAHOOOO HYEAH !!! YEAH !!!

#salaaaaamin - 89 posts <- 89 SELF REBLOGS i am so so silly

#persona 4 - 74 posts <- things i decided should be in the tracked tags. i said look at my posts, boy

NO ADACHI IN THE TOP TEN I FUCKING WINN I FUCKING WIN i. im sorry marie i promised id do more of you.maybe this year—IF I STILL KEEP THIS BLOG GOING?

My Top Posts in 2022:

hiii girlies and gamers sharing my digital copy of the pq2 art book (Persona Q2 New Cinema Labyrinth Official Visual Materials) <3

I LOVE SHARING clink the link for the full artbook it's very sillay

139 notes - Posted June 16, 2022

❝ But it turns out there was something behind it too…

And that “something” was… a guy at the gas station!? ❞

3/20 POST TOP 4 BANGER !!!! TO ANOTHER YEAR 🥂🍾 !!! i told this before but i had like four drafts for the 3/20 art this is the one i ended up going with. it got experimental since i was RUNNING OUT OF TIME but i like how it turned out in the end im glad everyone liked it :]

143 notes - Posted March 20, 2022

happy birthday to the bear fanatic ever @/craske here is your

EVERYONE LOVES THE BEAR BESTIE !!! one of my favorite pieces too im so happy it got here. commentary was i actually sketched this out WAAY before and i ended up finishing around. well. birthfay time .... IM GLAD EVERYONE LIKED IT TOO 1!!!

191 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

happy women's day to the girl i refer to when i say 'girl help' (she leaves me on read)

THIS MARGARET WAS THE BANE OF MY FUCKING EXISTENCE I SPENT JUST AN HOUR ON HER HOW DID SHE FUCKING GET. HERE. becomes a misogynist idc about women's day <- gets megidolaon'd to death

258 notes - Posted March 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

264 notes - Posted January 28, 2022

WHOOO YEAH WHOO YEAH WHOOOOOO YAHOOOOO THE FUCKING SHITPOST EVER !!!!! <- SPENT TOO MUCH TIME ON IT. OH YEAH I REPOSTED THIS TO MY FUCKING YT someone said mim was in the wrong place. did they see the rest of my channel. the very stageplay clips i chose to exclusively sub. huh . huh. h. anyway i did chug jug last year and cpr x misery x reese's puff this year i wonder what silly music shitpost i'll do next year

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tw eye strain #persona 4 spoilers #kommento #tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #// special shoutotu to crask.e you put my birthday art as your discord icon i was smiling and kicking my feet for a while if.i'lll admit i #// hopeyou had a nice birthdgday ohhmykeyboard is fallng apart #// wish there was stats for whose asks i answered the most.like 77 anons probably and these guys who were brave enoughto ask with their url #// ANYWAY HAPPY NEW YEAR HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! this isnt really the new year post i said i'd make though ehehe #// SO HERES MY TUMBLR WRAPPED WITH COMMENTARY !! orwatever. HAPPY NEW YEAAAR !!!

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francesderwent · 3 years

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I have no commentary about the last 140 pages of Penderwicks in Spring because I spent all of it crying.

#Cate rereads #I’m honestly not sure about the choice to include this in a children’s series?#it makes the characters SO compelling #but it is so so so emotional #and there’s people there the entire time who love her #not just her family but nick and the Ayvazians and Mrs. Grunfeld #but it’s really hard to watch her go through it #and Skye does such a terrible job at fixing things #to be fair to her she’s like seventeen and she’s just had a huge upset #but we don’t get to see inside her head and so I think the whole plot line suffers #you have to go back and remember moments when Skye was better at being a sister #despite all her hurt and grief #for instance when I remember Skye taking batty’s hand and telling her she’s perfect I wanna die #Skye trying so very very hard to take care of her in Point Mouette #well that’s a lot of tags for someone who said she had no commentary

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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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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Spilled Pearls Extra 1

- ao3 -

Lan Xichen spent a lot of time learning his family’s rules.

They were important to his uncle, who raised him, and that meant that they were important to him. They were his heritage and his birthright, and anyway he loved his uncle and it made him happy which was good enough for Lan Xichen, but that didn’t make learning them easy or anything. Each rule had to be learned both by itself and in context with others; it wasn’t as simple as memorizing a list and calling it done. You had to learn them and know them and then live up to them to the best of your ability, and that was the work of a lifetime – which Lan Xichen, now six years old, had been informed was an awful long time.

Moreover, though his uncle had never said so, Lan Xichen had heard from the other people in the sect that learning the rules was important because following the rules would make sure he didn’t turn out like his father, who had let down so many people in their sect. Many of the elders said things like that when his uncle wasn’t around, though his uncle never did – his uncle spoke well of their father, although in abstract tones, but sometimes he looked sad about it, too, and therefore Lan Xichen was determined to listen and learn the rules well so that he would never disappoint his uncle the way his father had.

Of course, there were other advantages to learning the rules.

The commentary, for instance.

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Talking behind other people's backs is prohibited.

“Unless it’s really funny,” Lan Yueheng said, and – as always – seemed not to notice the way Lan Xichen’s uncle glared at him. “Oooh, actually, let me give you an example, I just heard the best story –”

“If you don’t understand those around you, you will be at their mercy, rather than they at yours,” Wen Ruohan said, perfectly poised and with a sharp smirk, just the way he always was unless he happened to be talking to Lan Xichen’s uncle. “How better to learn to understand people than to know what others say about them when they are not around?” His smirk widened. “Look at what people say about me.”

“What are you supposed to do if you don’t?” Lao Nie asked, grinning wickedly. “Say mean things about them in front of their faces instead? I can do that!”

“I mean, if it’s news, it’s not gossip, right?” Cangse Sanren said, tapping her cheek while pretending to be thoughtful as if it would hide her great big smile. “I’m sure that’s how I learned it, and I was a very good student – no, no, don’t listen to what your uncle says!”

“Well, I wish my mother would do less of it,” Wen Xu said, rolling his eyes. He’d come along to visit with his father again the way he always did – he was always tagging along with his father, really, and his father indulged him more often than he probably should, according to both sects’ elders. Not that Wen Ruohan listened to anyone but Lan Xichen’s uncle. “Sometimes I think that’s all she does! It’s boring!”

“If you mean what you say and say what you mean, then your friends will never doubt you whether you are in front of them or not,” Nie Mingjue said, then frowned. “I mean, I think?”

“Listen to A-Jue,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said when Lan Xichen reported on the discussions, throwing up his hands in disgust. “He’s the only one of the lot of them worth anything.”

“It’s his mother’s contribution,” Lao Nie opined.

“It’s certainly not yours,” Wen Ruohan said. “Anyway, what was wrong with A-Xu’s answer? It was accurate.”

“It has nothing to do with the rule!”

“That’s because I’ve already mastered it years ago,” Wen Xu said cheerfully. Surprisingly cheerfully, given that Nie Mingjue was sitting on him again; maybe he’d gotten used to Nie Mingjue always winning.

Lan Xichen’s uncle rubbed his forehead. “A-Xu, if you really want to go copy the rules on humility a few more times, you don’t have to wait for me to instruct you to do so –”

“He’s right, though,” Cangse Sanren cackled from her husband’s lap. “Madame Wen is an amazing source of gossip, but it does get a bit boring sometimes. You can’t punish him for being right!”

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Do not succumb to rage.

“Unless there’s a very good reason,” Lao Nie said, picking Lan Xichen up in one arm as if he weighed as little as a feather, and Nie Mingjue in the other just as easily, even though he was much bigger. “In the world there are many injustices, and it is your duty to fight against them with everything that you have – if you are wholly above the feeling of rage, then you have forgotten your empathy, and soon will follow the crooked path into indifference.”

“The issue is succumbing to rage,” Wen Ruohan said. “You can be angry, or even furious, but you should always maintain your self-control. Once you’ve mastered yourself, you can master others.”

“He means get revenge,” Wen Xu said knowledgably. “You get angry, then you get even.”

“Oh, rage?” Cangse Sanren asked, rolling up her sleeves. “Well, as it happens, I’m going to go have a chat with your mother, I’ll give you a good demonstration of –”

“You are doing no such thing,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said, exasperated. “Get back here.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Lan Yueheng said. “Getting angry takes time and energy. Why not be happy instead?” He thought about it. “Well, I mean, sometimes cursing a little bit when something goes wrong is nice. Even the calmest concoction needs to blow off steam sometimes to retain its equilibrium!”

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Do not disrespect your elders.

“And I,” Wen Ruohan said, looking positively gleeful, “am the eldest.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said at once. “Xichen, you hear me? Don’t listen to him.”

“There’s a difference between disrespect and disobedience,” Cangse Sanren said. “Being old doesn’t mean being right, it means that there’s a greater probability that they’ve encountered something in their lifetime that will give them an insight you lack. You should honor and respect their insight, but always make your own decisions in the end.”

“I mean, you could always listen to me, instead,” Lao Nie said. “I’m your elder too, aren’t I?”

“Don’t listen to either Uncle Wen or my father,” Nie Mingjue said, looking long-suffering. “They both like to play tricks.”

“Wait,” Lan Yueheng said. “I’m an elder? Since when? That’s a terrible idea!”

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Do not take advantage of your position to oppress others.

“Don’t listen to Wen Ruohan,” Cangse Sanren said.

“Don’t listen to Sect Leader Wen,” Lan Yueheng said.

“Definitely do not listen to Hanhan,” Lao Nie said. “At all. In any way.”

“Probably best not to listen to A-Xu’s dad,” Nie Mingjue said, and glanced over apologetically.

“No, no, you’re right,” Wen Xu said, nodding furiously. “He’s kind of awful about these sorts of things.”

“They’re all being absolutely ridiculous,” Wen Ruohan said. “I’m perfectly reliable on such matters. After all, what’s the point of working so hard to obtain and maintain power if you don’t oppress those that deserve it? If you don’t take advantage, who will?”

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Do not make assumptions about others.

“I used to assume that Cangse Sanren was a normal human being,” Lan Yueheng said. “Goes to show what I know, right?”

“I used to assume that Wen Ruohan was a perfectly normal self-absorbed murderer that would keep his greedy hands to his own people,” Cangse Sanren said, sounding irritable. “And not have perfectly ordinary rogue cultivators followed around by complete weirdos because he’s secretly worried about them like a mother hen!”

“I used to assume that people would be grateful when someone rescued them and their husband from near certain death,” Wen Ruohan said.

“I used to assume that the funniest thing in the world was watching Hanhan argue with your uncle,” Lao Nie said, chin on his hands. “Little did I know that adding Cangse Sanren to the mix made it even funnier.”

“Grown-ups are stupid sometimes,” Wen Xu said. “That’s why you have to verify everything they say for yourself.”

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Embrace the entirety of the world.

“By being righteous,” Nie Mingjue said.

“By taking it all over, as far as I can tell from my father,” Wen Xu said.

“Depends on what you define as the world, doesn’t it?” Lao Nie said.

“Be ambitious,” Wen Ruohan said. “Define it broadly.”

“I mean, I don’t think your arms are quite long enough yet, the world’s pretty big,” Lan Yueheng said. “But I pick you up and swing you around, maybe they’ll stretch a little. Want to try?”

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Do not associate with evil.

“I mean, it’s true, but you have to think carefully about what you categorize as evil,” Lao Nie said. “Just being a man-eating nation-destroying inhuman amoral nine-tailed fox isn’t automatically enough to qualify, right?”

“That’s, uh, a really weirdly specific example,” Lan Yueheng said. “I feel like at least three of the things on that list probably rise to the level of evil? Or have I missed something?”

“Lao Nie said – oh no, not again,” Wen Ruohan said, and patted Lan Xichen on the head before he stalked out the door. “I’m the only evil you should associate with, you hear me?”

“I bet she’s got teeth in interesting places,” Cangse Sanren said. “I’ve got to meet her…hmm? Evil? Does that really matter? It’s going to be funny.”

“She’s not evil,” Nie Mingjue said. “She’s pretty nice, actually. She calls me ‘meatball’ and ‘pork bun’ and says I’m so cute that she wants to eat me right up.”

“I’m pretty sure she means it literally,” Wen Xu said. “Gear up, Xichen! We’ve got to go save Mingjue!”

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Do not tell lies.

“People don’t believe the truth, so why not tell it?” Cangse Sanren said.

“Using the truth makes your misdirections more believable and your critiques more devastating,” Wen Ruohan said.

“Why would you even want to lie?” Nie Mingjue asked, puzzled.

“There’s a difference between not telling lies and not having the slightest bit of tact,” Lao Nie said, rubbing his face. “Maybe you can help A-Jue figure that out.”

“Silence is always a good alternative when you don’t want to admit to stuff you’ve done that maybe, just maybe, might annoy some people,” Lan Yueheng said, looking over his collapsed laboratory with a wince. “Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.”

“Telling a lie will only get you into more trouble later when they figure it out,” Wen Xu said. “Because then they’re angry at you for what you did and for lying about it. It’s just not worth it!”

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Do not disregard the rules.

“Unless they’re really stupid,” Lao Nie said.

“I mean,” Nie Mingjue said, wrinkling his nose. “As a general rule, yes. But it’s different if following the rules would permit injustice to happen, that’s for sure.”

“It’s a matter of picking what rule is the relevant one,” Wen Ruohan said. “Be thoughtful, and you can have the moral high ground in any situation…your uncle is irritatingly good at that.”

“You’ve got to know what the rule is before you break it,” Wen Xu said. “That way you can decide if it’s worth the cost of breaking it or not.”

“If there’s any you think are wrong, you should say something,” Lan Yueheng said. “The rules are a gift handed down from our ancestors and ought to be respected, but each of us has a duty to put in our own thoughts as well – our contribution to the next generation down. Anyway, your uncle will probably be able to put together a reasonable argument as to why changing the rule is appropriate and truer to our sect’s principles than the version carved on the wall. He’s good at that!”

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“I want the rules to be a foundation under your feet,” Lan Xichen’s uncle said. “They should give you confidence in your actions and pride in your family and sect; they should not feel like they are binding you. If they are, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Maybe if it was just Lan Xichen and his uncle, the two of them and maybe also little baby Lan Wangji and the rather unreliable Lan Yueheng and the even more unreliable Lao Nie, Lan Xichen would immediately and unhesitatingly agree, and then never say anything anyway no matter what he felt. He loved his uncle so much, and every one in a while his uncle seemed so sad; he couldn’t bear to be the one to add more pain and burden to his uncle’s shoulders, already weighed down with the expectations of the sect that should have been his father’s responsibility and would one day be Lan Xichen’s.

But it wasn’t just them, and Lan Xichen frowned a little, really thinking about it. “Maybe,” he said after a while. “Or maybe I’d tell Uncle Wen about it, and then he’d find a way to fix it, or to tell you about it in a way that didn’t make you sad. Does that work, too?”

His uncle looked amused.

“Yes,” he said. “That works. Just remember –”

“Don’t listen to him about ‘oppressing others’?”

“Exactly.”

#mdzs #lan xichen #lan quiren #wen ruohan #sect leader nie #nie mingjue #wen xu #cangse sanren #my fic #my fics #spilled pearls

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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With Digimon Ghost Game starting, I thought about how different it is from previous Digimon series, though it's still undoubtedly Digimon... and then I realized all Digimon series are like that. So I wonder, what do you think sets each Digimon series apart from the rest?

I think both Ghost Game but also the reboot have been a wake-up call for people in terms of realizing that likes, dislikes, and tastes are subjective, and I think it's especially important in terms of this fanbase that is so obsessed with this idea you can objectively rank things by quality -- especially when each series is often deliberately trying to have its own identity, so it's arguably apples and oranges -- and forcing this idea of what's Good and Not Good on everyone else (especially when there's a nasty double standard phenomenon where Adventure and often Tamers get to be so impervious to criticism that people conveniently forget they're perfectly capable of being scrutinized for a lot of things they're weaker in). Very frustrating to see everyone who likes less popular series treated as if they have to accept that they like a "badly written series" for some things and everything else is a guilty pleasure, which I find to be incredibly dumb.

The most important take-home here is that the fact each series has its own identity is always going to be the main factor in what makes it "good" or not to you, not some arbitrary bar of comparison that's based on some narrow-minded view of "good writing" (which is usually unreasonably based on Adventure). For instance, the reason why 02 is so important to me is because (see below), to me, it has the highest amount of meaningful, important life lessons and themes that it wanted its audience to remember, to the point that I frankly do not care about where the plot goes in comparison. That may not be the case for everyone else, and that's fine, but should my tastes be called unreasonable for that? I think we're also coming to realize that because of Adventure (and kind of 02)'s precedent, so many people have been judging series purely by how intimate their individual character development style is, but this is unfair because Adventure and 02's ridiculous level of character depth to psychological detail is extremely unusual and unrealistic to expect of others; Adventure and 02 only achieved this by practically considering the plot utterly subservient to its character arcs, and it's arguably why they have some of the weakest "plots" in this franchise. It's so bizarre that I can see character development in other Digimon series that outstrips even most kids' anime on the market, but it's not as much as Adventure's so apparently it's bad. And, moreover, as it turns out, some people have priorities other than characterization; just because Adventure had that as its strength doesn't mean that's the only thing anyone should care about. Is the plot fun? Is there a meaningful message besides characters (also important to me)? Do you vibe with the tone being dark, or being silly? How much do you care about resourceful usage of Digimon lore? That kind of thing. Everyone is different, so that's why everyone has their own priorities. If you’re someone who prefers darker content, you may not realize that writing good and well-timed comedy is actually a very, very difficult task, especially when said comedy simultaneously has meaning (in comparison, it’s surprisingly easy to write “dark” but shallow content).

I think it's fair to like every Digimon series for its own thing, depending on your personal tastes. I can't speak for everyone, but my impressions are that it has to do with the following:

Adventure: Significantly easier to understand than 02 due to its more straightforward plot, and focus on individual character development ("individualism" being a strong point here). In terms of characters, it goes a lot into some very real social problems (the divorce around the Ishida and Takaishi families and the pressures surrounding Jou, for instance) in a very realistic manner. Also, it has that sense of mystique and absurdism to the Digital World that's both whimsical but also mysterious, and while 02 has it too, Adventure's the isekai story that has it the most.

02: The first is its focus on the importance of human relationships and the compelling group dynamic unparalleled in this franchise, and the second is its important themes and life lessons that I think are some of the strongest in said franchise. I have a whole tag for the ridiculous amount of nuance packed into every detail and dialogue line for this series, and I think every time I've rewatched an episode I've learned something new about it because there are so many things that clearly wanted to be said in each line. The entire series is basically an unpacking of the feelings of insidious self-hatred and the crushing feeling of being subject to society's expectations, and ones that are so deep-seated that you often don’t even have a single answer to how to unpack it (for instance, Miyako hardly has a tragic single event in her backstory, but she says and does a lot of things that'll be painfully familiar to those who have experienced chronic anxiety). Almost every plot point can be said to connect to each character arc in some way, and the mantras for appreciating and treasuring your own life and living life the way you will make this, in my opinion, the strongest series in terms of speaking to those who struggle with this kind of existential crisis for reasons of depression or otherwise. (Oops, I think I went too passionate about this; my biases are obvious...)

Tamers: I think it forms an interesting study and unpacking of the kinds of things you take for granted in Digimon or the monster-collecting genre in general, and an examination of how they'd work in a real-world context (although 02 had a focus on daily life, it didn't quite merge the Digimon and the real world factors until very late in the series). Also, probably the second highest on "hard sci-fi" (the only one that outstrips it is probably Appmon, but Appmon has a very different, more simplified take on it).

Frontier: A series that lies somewhere between Adventure's scale of individualism and 02's scale of group dynamic, and one more discussing the feeling of having your heart hardened from being an outcast, and what it takes to accept the idea of opening yourself up to others again. Recommended for those who like transforming hero and magical girl stories, too. From the Digimon perspective, also the one with the most detailed and consistent Digital World mythos.

Savers: I think this is the series that most drives home "life is complicated" (i.e. there isn't a single mastermind behind everything) in the most tasteful manner, because while it drives home the point that you can't just simplify everything into a good side and a bad side, some bad things really are evil (hi, Kurata), and it doesn't change the fact that everyone's responsible for cleaning up the fallout. The portrayal of the evils of government bureaucracy is probably the most realistic out of any of these series.

Xros Wars: For those who like fun, most of all! For those who like seeing Digimon finally get more of the spotlight and individuality since so much of it had been geared and biased towards the humans prior to this. For those who really like worldbuilding, and, after all, this is called Xros Wars, so it's interesting to see shakeups on the usual formulas in the form of the different factions and their priorities. Hunters is very different in tone, but I do think they have some of these aspects in common; that said, it being closer to having single partnerships brings it a bit closer in line to conventional Digimon partnerships, and it also has more of a picture of daily life. Also, as much as Tagiru is probably your-mileage-may-vary since he's not exactly a very nice kid (I get it if you don't vibe with that), which may also rub those hoping for not nice kids to become nice the wrong way, I do have to say I find him to be one of the funniest characters in this entire franchise, and you'd be surprised how hard good comedy is to write.

Appmon: Probably one of the strongest theme narratives besides 02, since it has a very clear and obvious theme about the importance of kindness in a world where technology is dominating and we're almost encouraged to strip the feelings out of everything. (Bonus for more straightforward plot than Adventure or 02 while still retaining a lot of its elements in terms of how to characterize them.) Also the first series to be speculative about the near future instead of taking place around the time it airs, and it's very obvious it wants to provide important and necessary commentary about what we need to do in the incoming era, especially as a lot of what it has to say becomes increasingly relevant.

Reboot: For those who like Digimon mythos and null canon -- this is probably the only series to show it off in this level of detail -- and the kind of cool action fights that would usually be saved for the climax in prior series (and animated in much more intimate detail with battle choreography than prior series would have). There are a lot of people into this franchise who felt like it genuinely was not making enough use of its Digimon roster and its potential because it kept going back to the old standbys (especially Adventure-based ones), so it was a huge relief for that crowd to see attention finally being paid.

#digimon #shiha's ask box #demonoflight #digimon multi series talk

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leverage-commentary · 3 years

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Leverage Season 3, Episode 4, The Scheherezade Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

John: From left to right on your radio dial this is John Rogers, executive producer.

Aldis: This is DJ Chocolate Skittles, also known as Aldis Hodge.

Chris: And this is Chris Downey, executive producer and writer of this episode, The Scheherazade Job.

John: Aldis has very kindly decided to join us for this commentary since he was-

Aldis: Hello!

John: He did a lot of work on this episode. This one rode-

Chris: Oh yeah

John: This was one of those ones where you're just like, ‘This actor's gonna be working his ass off for this.’

Aldis: Oh joy.

John: Well Chris, why don't you tell us the origin of this episode?

Chris: Ah well the origin came from a- my friend here to the left, Aldis, back in season one we were just talking about you know things we like to do in our spare time and Aldis mentioned that he loved the violin, he’d been studying it, it was the closest thing to the human voice for an instrument.

Aldis: Yes.

Chris: And coincidentally my wife is a violinist and at the time I said to you, ‘I'm gonna find a way in an episode of Leverage to have you play the violin’ and what did you say to me?

Aldis: I think I said, ‘Do it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: And then you laughed at me.

Aldis: Yeah, we were shooting what was that, the season finale?

Chris: Might've been the season finale

Aldis: That was- yeah, Pasadena?

John: Yup

Aldis: Yeah, yeah, I remember that conversation.

Chris: And this is Martha Boles, terrific actress from Los Angeles.

John: This is interesting actually, we had a- when we were setting up the bad guy here, we had an interesting conversation about- and this is one of those things you talk about in television. Should the reporter be white or not?

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah. We were looking at casting and we were like, no it should be a black reporter working with that. And then we got some, you know, feedback that's like, well now it's a white crew of criminals, apparently missing Aldis’s presence, helping out a black reporter.

Aldis: Don’t worry, they miss me all the time.

John: It's one of those- it’s tricky, it's one of those things where one of the reasons we kinda were leery of doing international crimes, first season and second season. And you kinda- because it's always a minefield, it just is. And now in third season, everyone’s comfortable and everyone knows the show well enough that you can kinda try to swing outside the box. I think Chris did a great job taking this outside the box for the first time on the show.

Chris: Yeah it was- it was interesting cause most- I think we talked about this, most episodes start with the bad guy and we kinda work our way from there. We kinda talk about ‘what's the bad guy, what does he want, what is his weaknesses’. And this is one of those episodes that started with a big idea late in the episode which was the orchestra heist, and we kinda worked from there to kind of try and figure out whose our bad guy? And that's- we decided- we hadn't done an African kleptocrat, we wanted to do that for a long time, and this seemed like a good opportunity to do that.

John: Now also when doing a straight heist, because we were coming at it as a straight heist, we wanted a small highly portable object. The cleaner the object, the cleaner the goal of the heist, the more you can work around the elegance of the heist itself. And when you're staring with an elegant heist, which is the music heist, you have to do something very clean, which was diamonds. And so it all sort of fed into this one storyline.

Chris: Yes, yes.

Aldis: Didn't you want to play the organ? At first I mean that's plain and portable and-

[Laughter]

John: Yes, originally it was a giant Wurlitzer organ.

Aldis: Yeah, just a whole thing.

John: This was a ton of fun, this was a great little fight scene.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Kane had too much fun shooting this.

Chris: He had a lot of fun here. And these gentlemen are Garfield Wedderburn and- yeah, Garfield Wedderburn is the lead goon here; his name is goon.

Aldis: Goon.

[Laughter]

Chris: And there he is doing this- some kind of scary tai chi?

Aldis: That was actually a joke and it just made it on the reel, it was like-

John: You know what? We saw it in the dailies, we were gonna cut out of it but it was like- but the idea he would just scare the shit out of those guys to get them to go. ‘Can your dog do that?’ That was great.

Chris: ‘Can your dog do that?’

John: It is nice every now and then to remind people exactly why everyone on the team is there.

Chris: By the way, I love that you named the dog Megabyte.

Aldis: Megabyte, yeah, yes.

John: That was you, that’s right.

Chris: That was all you.

Aldis: If anybody can get that, Megabyte, yes. Now if one of those days we just see the dog, which will probably be a poofy little yorkie or something like that.

John: Dogs are too expensive; we can't afford them.

Chris: We can't afford them.

Aldis: We can't afford dogs.

Chris: We'll do a virtual dog.

Aldis: A virtual dog, yes.

John: That's sad.

Aldis: The little mechanical one with the batteries? Yeah.

Chris: Sure.

John: Now continuing the original conversation, so we knew we were working backwards towards an African kleptocrat, but how do you find a guy who’s like based in the states, so we’re not flying overseas, we’re not trying to fake a city you can't fake on our budget. And so that led us to the research and- did we find someone who was real, Chris?

Chris: Well, there's no similarities to persons living or dead. But, um-

John: We’d like to say for both legal reasons, and so we don't get shot in the face.

Chris: Yes, please.

John: Oh my god, this guy is real and he's horrible!

Chris: He's real, he's horrible. He's not a classical music fan, that was something we brought to it, to facilitate the story. But he is a very wealthy relative of an African kleptocrat who has a house here in the United States and in Paris and has a Bugatti and all the things you would imagine a kleptocrat would.

John: All the way down, actually, to the fact that the reason he does not fall under the- is not criminalized under some of the kleptocrat laws we have here in the States, with the same plot point we have in the show, which is he's been a friend in the war on terror.

Chris: Yes, yes that’s all true.

John: Which looks like he pretty much turns in political opponents.

Chris: Wow, we certainly don't want to say that he does that, but-

John: But oh come on.

Chris: And here we have-

John: Your name’s on the show, they're gonna kill you. I'm not too worried.

[Laughter]

John: And here's Elisabetta Canalis, the loveliest Elisabetta Canalis.

Aldis: Aldis Hodge was never here, was never here. This actually is the second time we've seen her in the entire arc of this third season. So now the audience is getting another taste of exactly who she is, because she just left us off with blackmail, and now, you know, we're digging into her story. Of course at the end of the show, we get to see that she's not as fair game as she comes up to be.

Chris: Yeah, and we wanted to make her kind of you know sexy and mysterious, and I like this scene cause-

Aldis: Sexy what? Sexy?

Chris: Yeah well she-

John: Well there's no reason we just shoot her legs in every scene.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Exactly, there's no reason to put her in heels and closeups on the face, no! Not at all.

John: This was a nice bit that you came up with: the idea that kind of flirting, sexy, dangerous. And Nate Ford being smart enough to realize it’s a very bad idea.

Chris: I love this, this is one of my favorite flashes.

John: It's one of my favorite zooms, it's a hypothetical zoom, it's something we never usually do.

Chris: I like it because right here she looks so bored,

[Laughter]

Chris: There's something about the insouciance of it, of her.

John: Oh another guy being garotted in front of me.

Chris: Oh stop the tape.

John: It's another Thursday for me.

Chris: And he was- Tim was great at, you know, holding his throat like that.

John: Yeah the- well the sort of implication, again, is again, it’s tricky the team has been playing a lot without ever being taken down themselves. Tim has to carry a lot of the weight acting because he's the one who interacts with Elizabetta the most, to convey the threat she portrays to make sure you take her seriously. And nice diagrams on the glass boards. I always love the glass boards

Aldis: Provided by…?

John: Who drew on that one? I don't think I drew on that one, I wasn't there for that one.

Aldis: Really?

John: No, that handwriting is too good that's not me. Usually- yeah, usually I spew the bullshit that goes up on the glass.

Chris: Now what's nice-

Aldis: And it- oh, sorry, go ahead

Chris: Oh I was gonna say it’s a nice opportunity to get a little bit into Eliot's backstory which we, in the early scene in the bar, he alludes to the fact that knows about these- what goes on in these countries, these Chinese- these child soldiers. And you know I think here you can kinda see this whole- this whole particular case is really, you know, affecting him directly.

John: Yeah it's part of the over the course of the arc, kind of peeling back everybodys past this season. And we gave Eliot you know- we really wanted to sort of reset and remind people for the finale that Eliot, you know Eliot killed people. Eliot was not a good guy and is trying to be a better guy.

Aldis: What I had to say was nowhere near as intuitive as that, but the prior scene a lot of- a lot of times you'll see Sophie wearing that dog tag, it’s blank. It's like a name tag, but it's blank, and that's an ode to the fact that she hasn't given Nate her real name. And it kind plays throughout the entire season so for those of you have paid attention-

John: We actually used it, we actually- the audience doesn't know those dog tags are blank because she doesnt show the dog tags. But when she told us she was doing it we wrote-

Aldis: Did I just give up a secret?

John: No, no, no it’s cool. What happened is: she wears them. And we were like, ‘What are those?’ And she told us dog tags are blank, it's a little private joke. So we wrote it into the show, that's why she gets the blank pendant in episode 13, cause we just thought that was really cool and that's something Gina came up with on her own.

Aldis: It's just gonna be a drinking game every time they spot the dog tags.

John: Sure, there's already a lot of drinking games.

Aldis: There are.

John: There are a lot on the web, you go on there's a lot of drinking games.

Aldis: Every time we say ‘seriously’, drink!

[Laughter]

Aldis: Not that we promote that here, no.

Chris: Not at all.

John: No, I don't do all of these with a beer in my hand.

Chris: No no drinking games.

Aldis: What is that you're drinking John, water?

John: It’s- yes, dark Irish water.

Aldis: Yes.

John: This was a nice again- we started splitting people up so we could- the coverage is a little easier. and it helped us remind- Third season we started taking a lot of the prep that was implied in act 0 of seasons 1 and 2 and moving it into act 1 and act 2 of this season. Where you see them doing the prep and putting together the plan on the fly as they get information.

Chris: Right.

John: Which both makes it more dynamic, and helps us with shooting.

Chris: Yeah, I mean this is a very plan-intensive episode, and you want to try and make the planning side interesting visually.

John: Yeah because there's so much pipe to lay in a believable way to get to that great fourth act. I mean you have to make sure the audience is utterly invested by that point.

Chris: I like this little bit with you guys right here.

Aldis: Me and Kane man, when we get together it's always a party.

Chris: But what's great about you guys is it's not always the bickering brothers, where you're yelling at each other that makes me laugh. It's just the little throwaway things of the two of you together.

Aldis: It's the little things that bring the sparkle to your eye, the little things.

[Laughter]

Chris: And they just the way we did this-

Aldis: This was a funny sequence to shoot.

John: Yeah this was great. This was- what did we name the reporter?

Chris: Guy Hamilton which is an ode to Mel Gibson's character in The Year of Living Dangerously.

[Laughter]

Chris: For all you folks out there keeping score. By the way, I forgot yesterday when we did Gone Fishing Job that you are- your names when you went into the bank and were Brody and Quinn from Jaws.

John: Because you're gonna need a bigger boat.

Chris: This looks great, by the way!

Aldis: I'm pretty sure you need another drink for that.

Chris: Look at that, he's there!

John: I've seen far less convincing stuff on CNN.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure, yeah

Chris: And there's Giancarlo Esposito fantastic.

John: Friend of Tim, came in and did this for us. Really really great, flew in.

Aldis: His daughters’ actually in the orchestra, they- one plays violin the other plays viola.

John: Oh cool.

Aldis: Yeah, so he had a lot to discuss.

John: I love seeing the evil dude Skype list; I just realized we could see it on there. It’s like ‘Lefou is away. Where is Lefou?’

Chris: Pizza Hut? Why does he have Pizza Hut on Skype?

John: On Skype? That's weird. And who is that lurking behind him?

Chris: Oh lurking behind him is Nnamdi Asomugha who is an all pro cornerback for the Oakland Raiders. Arguably the best cornerback in the NFL.

Aldis: And you have your Raiders ball here, it's perfect.

Chris: And I have my Raiders ball here to prove it.

John: Now how did he wind up on the show?

Chris: Well, you know, like any famous Hollywood story, it started at a hockey game.

[Laughter]

Chris: My- we have a mutual agent, and he invited me to a hockey game and said, ‘This is my friend Nnamdi.’ And although I am a big sports fan, for some reason the best cornerback in the NFL eluded me and I just met him as a guy. And we were chatting and found out he was- he acted and I asked him at the time, his families from Nigeria and I- this was a year ago, and I said, ‘Can you do a good African accent?’ He said, ‘Oh definitely.’ I said, ‘Alright, well if we get a part for, you know a big guy, menacing guy with an African accent I'll call you’. And lo and behold, episode came up and he did a fantastic job.

John: I think his family is from Ethiopia, actually.

Chris: No, I think he’s Nigerian.

John: Nigerian? Oh ok. And here- this is her playing Christie Connelly again.

Chris: Yes, yes.

John: Yes, this is why we started bringing back the- as we realized that they are gonna be roles that the- it also sort of came up as we did our research that con artists tend to settle into certain roles that they've done background on, and also that they've established the credentials to. We mention later actually on another episode that she's like, ‘I got seven years worth of work on this identity’, so she's doing a similar gig, so why not use the same name?

Chris: And let's be honest it's also our nod to James Garner, who was Jimmy Joe Meeker in multiple episodes of the Rockford Files.

John: Yes exactly, also she gets to use her native accent in this.

Chris: Yeah, that’s right!

John: Cause Gina is from New Zealand, not England. Most people- she grew up in England but she was born in New Zealand, and was a child in New Zealand, so she gets to use her kiwi accent here. Very kicky little gold chain going on there.

Chris: And I love this, this is a great kind of subtle sales pitch that she just sells so well.

John: Yeah. And again this is one of those great things in the show, not blowing smoke up our own skirts, but the fun of having great actors is you con, con, con, and then you park it on these little two-person scenes and it's fun, you know, it actually plays.

Chris: And here's- you know I like the idea that we've kind of developed with Hardison’s character that, you know, he's chafing a little bit around the crew, and, kind of, as the youngest member of the crew, kind of like, sees that he’d like to run his own crew someday and kind of expressing that here. I mean how did you approach this Aldis? Was that something that you kinda thought of for the character?

Aldis: I approached it, I stretched, I, uh, did a couple push ups.

John: Well we get a lot of emails from him ‘I should be the lead of the show,’ so it's a similar thing.

[Laughter]

Chris: But I know we had discussions about it not being a typical father/son kind of vibe. Right?

Aldis: Right, right, right. This is- this entire situation was newly presented to me in the script. That's when I found out that I was like, ‘OK, Hardison wants to step up.’ But I think that- I mean, it's a great premise and he is the youngest, so he has the most to learn because he hasn't figured out all of his bad habits just yet.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: And so he can sit back, watch his team, watch how they work, watch the mistakes they make, and then ten season later, hint hint, audience, hint hint-

Chris: Ten seasons when you'll be all of 35.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Exactly.

John: Then you'll be ready to lead the crew.

Aldis: Exactly.

John: Yeah no it's- we really played around with it. It's not father/son it's sort of- it’s really Paper Chase but for crime.

Chris: Yes, yes, very much, I think that's a great way of putting it. And I love, here, too, if I can blow some more smoke up you, that, you know, we play big characters in these cons that are, like, larger than life. I mean, I think, you know, the Ice Man Job character comes to mind-

Aldis: [Mimicking the accent he did] The Ice Man Job.

Chris: When you play a kind of a small reserved guy, all inside, it's such a nice change, and it’s like it adds a vulnerability to these con characters that I think is great.

Aldis: He's very not- he wasn't a meek character, but he's very, very humble.

Chris: Humble that's better.

Aldis: He came from a hard life, he knew how to appreciate what was there, he knows how to prioritize, you know, to put everything else before his own needs. And that's kinda where I felt this character was coming from. He couldn't be too big or else, you know, with all of the skills, his grandeur, he would have done something with that by now; he's a cab driver, so he's gotta be quiet about something.

John: And the- also, this was the first time I think we put- we had talked about the different skills, as you go into every season you talk about like, ‘How do we make sure we focus on the characters? How do we make sure nobody blends in the background?’ And one of the things is reminding everyone- and we did this really in the Jailbreak and especially in this one to set it up, Parker is great at three dimensional heists. Parker rotates objects in three dimensional space. So she's Nate's partner here; he might be able to cook up plans, but she's the one telling him the parameters of those plans with the physical heists.

Aldis: Right.

John: No one is better than her at physical insertion, and that's one of the things we kinda hammered during this season.

Aldis: I think our skills- I mean we’re all necessary to one another, but our skills kinda levy a system of checks and balances-

John: Yeah.

Aldis: The way the government should do it. But we can do one thing and take it only so far and then pass it off, then the next team member polishes it up and takes you to the very next level.

John: What- Chris why don't you talk about how we structured the heist?

Chris: Well you know the- back when we were trying to break the story the initial idea behind it was that there would be two levels of tension in the big act, in the big heist. There would be part of the team breaking in to steal the object, and there would be Hardison on stage sweating out having to play this impossible solo in front of people. And the problem that I was running into was: why did these two things have to happen at the same time? Why now? Why can't they be breaking in on a Wednesday, you know, when Hardison's not scheduled to play this. And John, you said- thought about it for a minute, and you said, ‘Well obviously it's the only time that they can do the heist is when there’s- when the orchestra is playing because that's when they have to turn off the motion detectors.’

Aldis: Because John has stolen from an orchestra before, when they-

[Laughter]

Aldis: He speaks from personal experience.

Chris: And I took a minute and I said, ‘I could kiss you on the mouth.’

[Laughter]

John: That was one of those ‘what's in the Arclight’ days? I contributed almost nothing else to this episode. I was busy off doing the season opener. We were banging these out before the rest of the staff- and I came up with that bit and I'm like, ‘You're gold, go have fun, I’m out.’ I got that, and then we basically- knowing the motion detectors couldn't be beaten and played us back into the other security measures, and created this impossible vault. And that was also fun, we started for the first time throwing stuff at the team where it's like, ‘yeah there's some stuff you just can't beat,’ you know, that you have to go sideways.

Aldis: I’d like to note here that I'm wearing every possible shade of gray that there is known to man.

[Laughter]

John: Why is that? Is that an emotional choice? Is that about his ambivalence about his role in the con? Or is that-?

Aldis: I have no idea

John: Always say- you know what? Do the thing I just did with him, start with ‘obviously’ it's a good way- when you wanna throw up an enormous amount of bullshit just start with ‘Obviously.’

Aldis: Obviously!

John: And then just, people buy it.

Aldis: What we wanted to do was confuse the audience.

John: Oh Scheherezade, exactly how'd you choose Scheherezade?

Chris: Well we needed- we needed a piece that was public domain, as a practical matter, because we have budget constraints in this show. And that ended on a violin solo. And it was- I forgot what the other candidates were, but my wife, I have to give her credit at least a little, fantastic violinist, picked Scheherezade and said, ‘You gotta listen to this.’ And I listened to the last 7 minutes because I knew we needed it to kind of roll out in real time over the course of the heist. And the solo just kinda like dropped me, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be fantastic.’ And then when I did a little research on Scheherezade’s story, how she was the wife of a- in the story of the Arabian Nights he killed- every night he married a different wife, and killed them the next morning. And then Scheherezade walked in and figured she'd be finished, but every night she told him a story, and the story kept him on- you know, on the edge of his seat, she never told him the ending and finally after 1001 nights he married her. So I said OK, that’s the first grifter in history’. And that just kinda fit in thematically with the whole episode, and that's when we knew we had to use that piece.

John: And our music guy Joe Deluca putting a lovely little sort of spin, sort of-

Chris: Yeah he had a very nice-

John: -Arabian Nights spin on the score there. Now, you play violin. What did you think when we dropped Scheherezade on your lap?

Aldis: Well I was screaming inside, running for my life.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Jesus I've only been playing just for- not even five years, and when I took the music to my music teacher, she like- lord have mercy, she had a heart attack. She was like- she had been playing professionally for 20 years before she tackled Scheherezade. My other teacher had been playing, also, I believe between 20 and 30 years before she tackled Scheherezade so I had no confidence whatsoever. No, kidding, obviously I was very impressed with the piece. It's a beautiful piece. I love the song and I was actually very open to the challenge. I just wanted to make sure I did it well enough to do the song some justice. Now shooting these scenes being surrounded by actual musicians was awe-inspiring and-

John: Really? You really? Oh.

Aldis: Man, it was terrifying.

Chris: Yeah where did this rank among the scarier things you've done on the show? Where would you put this?

Aldis: This is the top right here.

Chris: This is the top right here.

John: So not running on top of a moving train.

[Laughter]

Aldis: Not at all man.

John: Really? That was fine, but this? This was terrifying.

Aldis: I'm a nut man, I'm a nut. I can do that because-

John: I can tell you as your executive producer with an insurance policy on you, you can do this whenever you want, don't do the train again.

Aldis: I shan't! I shall not.

Chris: And this actor, Michael Winther, fantastic New York stage actor who came in and did an amazing job. It was originally written I think he was Spanish and then I asked Michael-

John: Well you were kinda basing it on Dudamel.

Chris: Exactly it was based on Gustavo Dudamel who was the Venezuelan, kind of, rockstar conductor of the LA Philharmonic.

Aldis: Oh yeah.

Chris: Yeah, and Michael said that he could do German and I thought well there's nothing more intimidating than someone talking to you with a German accent.

Aldis: German accent, yeah.

John: Really?

Chris: And he was just great.

John: Even if it's like ‘I would like some hugs now,’ still it's creepy, it's not- yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Apologies, and now the angry letters from people with a German accent will be coming in.

Aldis: Exactly, you'll be getting a letter from the government.

John: A nice stall, you can't get it too far. And, you know, this again is kinda focusing on how everyone does things. Parker needs paper. Parker needs plans. Parker needs drawings. This is how she thinks. She was trained by an old school thief, and it's cool cause we're kinda hinting at the thing you're gonna find out in episode 5, like how she was trained, you know, trained by an old school thief, she thinks like an old school thief.

Aldis: Yeah

John: And then we do the fun- and this is, when you're constructing something based on a high concept, the fun of it was we have an impossible heist, stuff rolls back from that. Okay if it's impossible, that means we have to see the planning, we have to see the surveillance, we have to see the surveillance to establish to the audience the rules of the heist.

Chris: Right.

John: Cause you had already said, and I will say the first thing you said to me was ‘I wanna do a heist where there's no words.’

Chris: Yes.

John: And I said ‘You're out of your mind and it's unshootable’. I actually utterly dismissed you, and then you came back like, ‘We do it this way.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, that’s slightly less insane.’ But that required the rest of the episode to do an enormous amount of work.

Chris: Yeah, you need to know- once you got to the heist, you need to know exactly what people were doing and why, without any dialogue. And so- and that kinda required that the heist needed to be fairly simple.

John: Yes.

Chris: So, you know, that kinda was a little bit liberating for me, cause once I realized, OK, I drew this corridor, you know, we had to get past this keypad, and then there was a room, we had to blow a hole in the floor, it was like from a to b to c, as long as I made it fairly simple and easy to remember in the planning stages, we could carry it out.

John: And this is also one of the great things about physical production. You actually flew up and scouted this, right?

Chris: Yeah, we did.

John: You adjusted the heist based around the physical location.

Chris: Yeah well, we built this hallway here-

John: Is that a build? I thought it was a-

Chris: This is the hardest working hallway in show business.

John: I thought it was the hallway on the other side of the concert hall?

Chris: No, no.

Aldis: No, me and Chrisitan built it ourselves.

John: Oh that's where Elizabetta was. That's right, there you go.

Chris: That’s right.

John: Yeah, now we're establishing the rules, and a little hint there that Nnamdi is not your ordinary thug.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Yes.

John: Yeah, just that little wince.

Chris: And here, again, you know, it was we had plans in front of Tim that he could actually trace the line and that's exactly where you were going. Those are the plans of the set.

John: Those are the plans for the set?

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Yeah!

John: That’s great!

Chris: I mean that showed him, he could draw- I showed him here's where you draw the hole, that’s where it’s gonna be.

John: Yeah and big props to Bekka Melino and everybody in production design this year. That vault looked gorgeous.

Chris: Yeah, it did.

John: Everything looked gorgeous, you know, set dec.

Chris: I have to give her credit for something else in that too. In the original script, the locker numbers in the vault were numbered; they were just numbered. And she called me up and said, ‘What do you think if we made like some kind of symbol or something for them, and maybe like musical terms?’ And I said, ‘That's fantastic.’ And it kinda helped build the character of Moto as someone who is just, you know, obsessed with music.

Aldis: Appreciates music.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And here's where-

Aldis: This is a tough thing, a tough deal for me. Not me personally, but for Hardison because of the fact that- I mean, this is a big deal trying to walk away from a mission with such reasonable cause.

Chris: Right.

Aldis: Only because of the fact that he's afraid, it's not because his life is endangered, it's simply because he's afraid.

Chris: Did you feel like that was- I mean, but performing without being prepared is like the, sort of, go to nightmare that people have, right?

John: Only if you were pantless could this be worse.

Aldis: Exactly, it's also the fact that if he performs poorly he could mess up the entire heist.

Chris: Yes

Aldis: But he was more afraid of himself performing badly then messing up the heist. And-

John: It's an interesting look into the character, because he's a perfectionist and he tends to- he’s tended to take the path he has in life because he's been able to be good at it.

Aldis: Yes.

Chris: Right.

John: You know, it's always interesting once you're past school and once you're an adult when you try to do things, you try to learn a new skill once you're out of your teens, and you realize ‘Oh, this is very hard.‘

Aldis: Yeah it's like learning violin.

John: Yeah exactly.

Aldis: As an adult, as I am doing now.

John: Really hard. But no, you just couldn't drop Scheherezade on you.

Chris: Here's a great-

John: This is a great shot actually, because we actually never shot this. This was footage of them actually getting into place.

Chris: Yes.

John: From the dailies that we had when we rolled the camera on. And that we wound up assembling together into a shot and then digitally placing the conductor into the middle of it.

Chris: Oh yeah, when we get to the later shot of the conductor there, that was- that’s totally digital. This the- orchestra is Marshall Tuttle is the conductor of the orchestra, it’s a local Portland community college orchestra. And they, you know, I have to give a lot of props to them because they got the music and they had to mock play the piece, but that meant they had to prepare for it, they had to know.

Aldis: Yeah I actually learned from them that day the rest of the piece. I mean all I knew up to that point was the solo. Until they said- and I knew bits and pieces of the other music until they said, ‘Hey, so we actually wanna shoot you playing the, you know, the bit before stuff.’ I’m like, ‘Right now, guys?’

John: Oh yes, a surprise by the way.

Aldis: Surprise!

John: This quick thing, they're gonna pop the camera on you there as you do this thing you just learned how to do.

Aldis: So I was just watching my fellow musicians around me as we shot, I was just watching their fingers and going off of them but hopefully you can’t tell.

John: That's a great little shake, that head shake like, ‘No, let's not get too heavily invested’.

Aldis: That was a real head shake that was ‘I do not wanna shoot this scene right now.’

[Laughter]

John: Could we please stop?

Aldis: None of the trepidation in this is faked, it’s real fear people. Real fear.

[Laughter]

Aldis: I dreaded this more than anything.

Chris: So there was less acting in this than typical episodes because you actually had fear.

Aldis: The fear yes, no acting at all, man, it was not hard to be afraid. At all. Whatsoever.

John: And here's Elizabetta, and it was interesting- I will be totally honest we knew we needed stuff for the finale-

Chris: Yeah.

John: And no idea what we needed it to be yet.

Chris: Right and right. And also to a certain degree, you know, when you have a MacGuffin, you know an item I want you to get, and you struggle as to what it could be, and we did struggle, we argued what is- what's in the envelope? And ultimately it's pretty cool when you don't know what it is.

John: Yeah it's point blank. It’s- yeah.

Chris: And you know we don't want to give anything away, but it did help us in the finale.

John: Yeah, well they've seen it by now, in theory.

Chris: Oh, okay.

John: Usually they watch all the way through and then do the commentaries.

Chris: That’s fine then. So that's fine, I'm not a spoiler.

Aldis: So what was in the envelope, fellows?

John: In the envelope is the evidence that the Italian needs because she's part of the shadowy international intelligence organization that launders money through Moto’s blood diamond accounts.

Chris: Yes.

John: And yeah that's actually- if you do a lot of research in money laundering, we did a lot of money laundering this year.

Aldis: Yes we did.

John: You find out that a lot of sort of black ops stuff, and a lot of the governments- there's a reason it's still around. You know governments find it useful, you know, and certain parts of governments find money laundering, international money laundering useful.

Chris: And here we go now we start- we start the clock and the dialogue is about to end pretty quickly.

John: Yeah I think we did like two touches, two clarifying things once we test screened it.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: We did an entire fourth act with just pure music.

Chris: Yeah, this is it here, we go.

John: Yeah this is it. Nnamdi did a great job in this, by the way, I want to say, because he's acting without dialogue and that's hard, you know, for a young actor.

Aldis: It’s like stare at this paper bag and make it interesting.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Chris: And I have to give Brian Gonosey here, our editor, a lot of credit here, too, because this was like editing a music video, because this was- we had to kinda time this stuff to the music, and this was, you know, this- in listening to the piece, you know, in my mind I had punching in numbers for this part, cause I could hear it in my head, and-

Aldis: Now this-

Chris: And now- oh.

Aldis: No, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Chris: Well this is just when you have an all pro quarterback from the NFL on your show, and you have Christian Kane who is a gigantic football fan, you're gonna have him knock him down in full run.

Aldis: Now Christian really took that hit.

Chris: He sure did folks.

John: He hit that wall hard, baby!

Aldis: This man is paid to hit people.

[Laughter]

John: Beth took this hit too.

Aldis: Yeah.

Chris: She did take that hit.

Aldis: She took it like a trooper.

John: Wait where'd- Chris played football for a while, what was he, tailback? What was Chris?

Chris: Well I know, back in high school, yeah.

Aldis: He played in it, and he wrestled, too. Nnamdi is a big guy.

John: Nnamdi is a big guy.

Aldis: He's like 6’ 4” something, 6’ 6”?

Chris: And he wanted to do all his own stunts and we were like, ‘Please, we do not want Al Davis on our ass.’

[Laughter]

John: ‘I'm sorry, did you hurt the greatest quarterback in the NFL in your little pretend show this weekend?’

Chris: He's like, ‘You know what the stunt mans doing? I can do that!’ And we said, ‘We know! Please don’t!’

Aldis: Now the NFL owns Leverage.

John: We’d have a bigger budget, that'd be alright.

[Laughter]

John: And then now down through the floor, this was fun playing around with- thank you Mythbusters, playing around with directional blowouts, and thermite and all the other sort of how to- oh that's a- and Nnamdi won't go down.

Chris: No, he won’t.

John: We were- this- he’s the thug who ate his Wheaties.

Aldis: I think that's a great part about this entire sequence and just the character in general is: cause he finally- somebody gave Eliot a challenge, a real challenge you know. It was kinda like the season finale for the first season.

John: But that guy had technique, you know, that was the thing. What Eliot is facing right now is another dude who kills people professionally.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: You know, and just with power. It's also fun cause it’s- all Eliot/Parker scenes are inherently fun.

Chris: And here, and this was all built around the music. We knew this was gonna- we were gonna build to- there's a giant gong hit here and that was gonna be- that was the whole thing was timed to the explosion and now one of the words ‘boom’.

Aldis: We really blew a hole in a floor and let Nnamdi fall through? He was a trooper, he took it?

John: Yes, please don’t tell the Raiders.

Chris: Please don't tell Al Davis.

Aldis: I'm kidding, guys. Kinda.

John: This was actually shot later, we actually rebuilt the ceiling and then dropped it in later.

Chris: Yeah, it’s great.

John: They did a great job because they- it was like ‘We need you to build that ceiling that we built a couple episodes, but put a hole in it.’ Like, ‘Alright.’ Yeah. And Nate being in the middle of it unexpectedly is a wonderful development.

Chris: Even this, all this all the editing was just timed perfectly to the music as he pulls, Walle is his character, pulls into the corner. And here it is.

John: That's a nice beat, actually, was Sophie- that's a nice choice by Gina, Sophie being totally confident because she knows, she's already in on the hypnosis thing. So she's already ahead of it, and what that was meant to be encouraging.

Chris: Now here it is.

Aldis: [Humming the song]

Chris: And, you know, I have to say my wife, violinist, gives you huge props here for your fingering and your bow work.

Aldis: Thank you. You do realize this song haunted me as I was practicing and preparing for it? It literally was playing in my head when no other sound was on in the room. I painted a picture called The Scheherazade. I painted the notes themselves because I had to get it outta my head. It was-

Chris: That’s great.

John: Where's the painting?

Aldis: It’s still back in Portland waiting for me to get back to it.

John: Nice.

Chris: Now what kind of response did you get from people when this aired?

Aldis: A lot of musicians actually said I did a good job, which I was proud about. I was- I was more concerned about how musicians would take it. Because they know what to look for, and as I watched I was like, ‘Alright,’ you know, cringing, but a lot of them they really, really dug it.

John: Well you always see the flaws in your performance, you know.

Aldis: Yeah of course because I’m looking for it, as the actor. By the way, this scene when Beth has the tear, that wasn't a tear she just had allergies, but played to her strengths and- right there the yeah.

John: It's just the smoke and stuff, the allergies.

Aldis: Very dusty, you know, we just kept it, we kept it. I’m kidding Beth’s a great actress, she did that on her own.

Chris: She’s fantastic. She did that, I mean, that's pretty amazing.

Aldis: Yeah was that her choice there?

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, that wasn’t in the script.

Chris: And we didn't have a lot of time for that, too, we were really running out of time for that scene and they, boy were they great reacting to it.

Aldis: The boy did it! Uh!

[Laughter]

Aldis: Y'all know what this is! Sexual chocolate!

John: We’re gonna have to make t-shirts now, I hope.

Aldis: We are gonna have to make t-shirts.

Chris: Now in the original script, you got a girl's phone number; we had to cut it for time but there was.

John: Sexy violinists.

Aldis: It's alright, Hardison gets numbers.

Chris: You know, Hardison, we've been trying to hook you up and I'm sorry we ran out of time.

John: Well, you know that's alright, there's- I don't think the fans would like the girl.

Aldis: I think if I ever got hooked up, fans would just murder Hardison because-

John: They would not be happy.

Aldis: They're waiting on Parker.

John: Well also, you know, and what's interesting is: you've kind of changed looks since the first season. You were a very skinny kid when you came in that first season. You turned 21 the night we hired you.

Aldis: Yeah 21, I'm 24 now.

John: Yeah, you put a little man weight on you now.

Aldis: Man weight, shaved the whiskers a little bit, try to give you a little something different each year. Next year I'm gonna come in about 250 pounds.

John: Nice, maybe with a cane cause you can't quite walk, you got the gout.

Aldis: Cankles baby.

John: Rock the gout. This is brutal- just looking for the rematch.

Chris: I love the look.

John: Every time I see this, I try to figure out a way to bring that character back.

Chris: Can we bring him back?

John: Seriously man, that look as he rolls forward is like, I want that rematch.

Chris: You know he makes more money than everyone in- you know, I mean he's- he’ll fly out on a private jet and come do it.

John: Just I gotta figure out something. And then I remember cause it was great, cause- I was actually out of town and then you shot this, and I didn’t see anything until I saw the first cut of this. I didn't see any dailies and so I saw the first cut of this and when he rolled forward that time I'm like ‘Oh! No wait, I know there's no rematch’ but-

Aldis: Yeah.

John: It’s- it was fun it was being able to watch this episode as a fan was a big treat.

Chris: Yeah, and here it was trying to pay off the Scheherezade story by having Nate make up something on the fly.

John: Yeah, it's the- thematically it yeah it starts with a con, it has a heist in the middle, and ends with a con.

Chris: Ends with a con.

Aldis: Yeah.

John: And you just the balls- the sheer stones it takes, ‘I have no idea what's in this.’

Chris: Yeah, right?

John: Just absolute sheer stones. To just bet on a sealed deck. We actually talked about that, we had played around with poker episodes and just what kind of- we talked at length- and it's one of those things that will never wind up in the show but we wind up talking in the room, what kind of gambler Nate is. And Nate is a guy who will bet on whole cards he hasn't seen.

Chris: Right, yes.

John: Yeah which is not necessarily the smartest thing in the world, but that’s that guy.

Aldis: He's the kind of guy who loses all his money first at the table, but eventually gains a couple chips back.

John: Yeah, yeah. Or manages to just be luckier than smarter, but smart enough to know he's lucky.

Chris: And I have to say Marcel Davis here played Simian Moto the president, and did an amazing job. I mean he's a local Portland actor.

John: Yeah, really- Portland. Never disappoints, Portland is a great place with great actors.

Chris: Now you can kinda see Gina slipping in there. It was- I know we had a couple of comments.

John: We had ten people on that set!

Chris: It was hard.

John: She's that black shape that kinda moves in with the secret service.

Aldis: I just saw her slip in there, keep your eyes open.

Chris: Keep your eyes open folks. She had- apparently she had a great time assembling this gun.

John: She was kinda rocking out the Helen Mirren in RED there.

Chris: She was.

John: She was really kinda- that was hot. She did- I watched the dailies on that like eight times, come on, she's very good at this. And the gloat, the drag out, the gloat.

Chris: The gloat and the drag away.

John: Very nice and the president. Oh Nnamdi wants to go! Let them go! Let them fight! That drinking game for Enter the Dragon. It’s like every time.

Chris: There we go, another time we’ll bring him back.

Aldis: Let's just send this out to all the Oakland raiders fans and see if they put in a vote, do you want Nnamdi back?

Chris: Do you wanna see Nnamdi back, please?

Aldis: Let's see what happens.

John: Promised by the DVD. Yeah.

Aldis: I feel it'll be promising.

John: And this was a nice set up, and again it was interesting because she had such the upper hand in the first episode, this is the one where Chris really kinda reset that, yeah, Nate Ford is not a patsy.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know he is- there's a reason they’re using him. He's a dangerous guy, and he's become more of a dangerous guy this year because he's acknowledged who he is. Last year this would've played out differently.

Chris: Yeah, no it was- you know, the sequence was flirty, dangerous, a little bit of banter then she puts the screws to him and then he puts the screws to her here.

John: Yeah cause he knows. He knows, he dealt with these types of people, you know, he's not ignorant of exactly how big a game he's playing in right now. Great, great shot. She- this is a 1960s shot, that shot right there, I really love this. And she's got a very classic late 60s look and that was interesting because we used it- we actually called the character the Italian as shorthand because it was an archetype from the 60s, and then when she came on the show we were trying to come up with a name it's like, we're not gonna beat The Italian.

Chris: No no, it’s the best.

John: Just keep it there. And it kinda kept her in the headspace, when we wrote the scripts it kept her in that zone.

Aldis: And when she happened to actually be Italian!

John: We started with that, that was the-

Aldis: Ahhh, ohhh, ahhhh!

John: Did we not explain that to you?

Aldis: Ahhhh!

John: We just happened to get Elisabetta. Yeah, there you go.

Aldis: There go- ahhh!

Chris: And this is a nice kind of close out to, you know we sort of set up earlier that Eliot has some regrets of things that he may have done back when he was a soldier. Things he saw in Africa. And I thought Tim had a nice ad lib here, cause he kinda indicated that it was Eliot's idea to provide money for kids in the community based on them selling the violin.

John: And that's- and yeah it was another thing, too, as we moved into the third season of, why are these people still together. You know the second year they had realized they were family but were not emotionally evolved enough to explain, to acknowledge that. Third year where they are together and you begin to see- you know Hardison sees this as his crime college. And he loves these people, but this is his crime college. You know, Eliot is beginning to see the path to his redemption. You know, Nate is the acknowledgement of his identity. Parker is becoming a human being. You know, everyone has their reason they're there. You know, Sophie's reason to be there is basically, she had come back to run the crew while Nate was in prison. And to be acknowledged as the co-lead. This is a great scene. By the way, you play this wonderfully, this is a big turn here.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Thanks.

Chris: It was- you know this was a tricky reveal here because- and I'll say that on the hypnosis front I consulted with a hypnotist-

[Laughter]

Chris: This is not just me making stuff up out of thin air.

John: I'm the one to make stuff up out of thin air, Chris actually researches shit.

Chris: And in fact, the hypnotist said to me that if somebody had a- was extremely proficient in something at an early age, whether it was athletics or music, that he could put someone in a deep trance state and return them to their ability, that their life experience is kinda what's gotten in the way of their ability, that it's all up there in their head. And that's all that we’re saying here, we’re not saying that he made you- Nate made Hardison able to play, Hardison always knew how to play, it was just cleaning out the cobwebs to get you back.

Aldis: Right.

John: Also Sophie's- Gina's playing that complicitness in a really nice way, which is she went with it, she didn't like it, and she doesn't necessarily like what Nate’s become. Also fun, you had really focused on this is, during the research, the idea that prison is a bad idea for most criminals. Most criminals just go in and become better criminals. It's- they call it crime college, you know, and what tricks had Nate picked up while he was inside.

Chris: And look ultimately that the one of the things that makes Nate able to run this crew from- is that he's not a nice guy. And that he will push any button to get whatever he wants done. And that makes him, I think, a better leader, and a more interesting character than if he's just you know got your back every time you're in trouble.

John: We cannot say this enough: Nate Ford is not a nice man.

Chris: Yeah.

Aldis: Right.

John: But that's what's required in the world that we set up in this show. And that's Scheherezade Job! Amazing job, both of you. I really wanna say this, I came to this as a viewer and this is one of my favorite episodes of the season, and of the entire run.

Aldis: It's one of my favorites.

John: I told the first time I watched this, I told Chris I wish my name was on it. I wish that I had the ‘Written by’ credit.

Chris: And you, you know I made a little comment to you back in season one, and boy did you make me happy.

Aldis: It happened.

John: It’s great.

Aldis: Well thank you man I enjoyed it. The script was one of my best scripts, one of my favorite scripts from the entire three seasons, so.

John: Thanks man.

Chris: Thanks.

John: Alright stay tuned more coming up.

Aldis: Peace.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 3 #Episode 4 #Season 3 Episode 4 #The Scheherazade Job

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liesoverthec · 3 years

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the post hasn't surfaced yet so please use this ask to talk abt the objectification of the 911 men!!

Ahh May you’re too nice but also thank you, I’m gonna 😂💛

This got. CRAZY long bc I just had a million thoughts so I’m gonna stick it under a cut.

To be honest, I think the reason they do *any* sort of objectification at all is that middle aged and older viewers are used to being able to objectify actors to a certain extent. Lord knows it happens on literally every other single piece of media, and this is a mainstream broadcast show, not an indie series or the likes, so I think they have to cater to those people as well as us, and the WAY they do it is so interesting to me bc even when they’re doing it, they use it as a way to drive home other, deeper messages.

For starters, I feel like the show OG was trying to be in the pilot and the first few episodes would have objectified the men WAY more than we see now if there hadn’t been that shift in tone - the sex addict plot could have been SO much more extended and given us a lot more opportunities to see Buck shirtless and to objectify him and his body. So I find it SO interesting that around the same time as Bobby opening up about his family and his past, we also stop w/ Buck being blatantly shirtless all the time. Narratively, it signals to me the point where the writers moved away from the the typical tv show that will treat their actors like meat, and moved more into a “female gaze” show. And then what’s really interesting to me, is that for Buck, after that, when he has sex w Taylor Kelly in s2, both times we NEVER see him undressed. The second time they don’t get very far, but he’s wearing a buttonable shirt. He absolutely could have been wearing that shirt closed, and she could have opened it, and he could have been wearing nothing underneath it, and we would have seen his chest again in a sexy scenario - but they didn’t. In fact they made the DELIBERATE choice to give him an undershirt. And of course with the first time they cut away and just left us w the understanding that sex was happening, yet again taking away an opportunity to show O.S. at least partially undressed. Which is SO different from how s1 goes about it, where we actually see Buck w his shirt open and his underwear exposed MULTIPLE times. So it’s so incredibly interesting to me that while none of the (main/regular) women’s stories are ever about sex like Buck’s is, I also think it’s REALLY interesting that the objectification of the men was, and could have been, much worse and that they didn’t have to move away from that, but they did.

But then secondly! The very last time we get into a plot that revolves around the men’s bodies specifically is in 2x01, which is SUCH an interesting plot. Surface level - it’s just about the men competing about who’s more attractive, and we get lots of muscle flexing and hot manliness to go along with it. And it is, at a surface level, incredibly shallow. But simultaneously they use it to 1. Introduce the idea that Buck wasn’t a sex addict bc he was “dealing w the stress of the job” like s1 mostly implied. It was bc he’s desperate to feel useful and wanted by someone, and at that point he really wanted that acceptance within the firehouse, rather than from other people. (Bc lbr, Abby didn’t do shit for Buck. It was Bobby, opening up and accepting the family, and specifically Buck, that gave him the connection he’d been seeking through sex.) And then 2. They also use it as an opportunity to SPECIFICALLY, IN CANON, say that it’s what you do that makes you attractive, and that makes you a hero, not how you look. Which is just!!! A crazy message!!! Especially considering they follow through on it, particularly in the areas where the women are concerned!

And in regards to 2x01, it’s soooooo fucking interesting to me that the ONLY time we really truly see Eddie shirtless, he’s actually putting clothes ON. They literally do the opposite trope of 'giving the hot male an excuse to take his shirt off'. And sure, they make it a sexy moment, but there's absolutely interesting commentary there about him actively covering himself up at the moment he is most sexualized, and it being taken as a sexy thing. Something about how you don't have to be naked to be attractive, it's about your intent in your actions, rather than your physical body. (Probably me reading too far into it, but again, they COULD have had him striping off his regular shirt, a good few seconds of him shirtless digging through a bag, and THEN the sexy slow mo pulling shirt on. At the very least, when they objectify him there, they make it MUCH shorter than they could have, which is SO DAMN INTERESTING to me).

But then finally, we still do have shirtless scenes! But the fact that it’s Chim who’s shirtless is just SO FASCINATING. Bc THE WAY THEY DO IT - they're never dunking Chim in a lake, or having something spilled on him, like other shows would do, to get his shirt clinging to him and him to whip it off in a spray of water or whatever. It's in scenes where it makes sense for him to be shirtless, and its NEVER treated like a big deal. It's just Chim, in his body, comfortably living his life. So I think the way they do it gives him more respect than other shows give their male characters, let alone their female characters 💀

And it's SO interesting to me that they use Chim (I mean, besides the fact that K.C. clearly has muscles for days and wow of course you'd use Chim). But I just think - on any other show, it would absolutely be Buck who we see casually shirtless. And that WAS almost this show, which is why we saw him shirtless at all. But failing that, it should have been Eddie. And then of course, after Eddie, it should be Bobby. I mean, plenty of other shows go for the 'sexy middle-aged white man' (cough cough LS) so Bobby would be the next logical step in the "who are we gonna make our hot man?" ladder, also - P.K. has BICEPS THAT COULD CRUSH ME so I would not blame them for making him the hot one.

But - like I said in my tags on my original post - I'm always thinking about Chim's story in 2x01 with the calendar, and feeling like he never gets to be the hero (WHICH I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT HOW BEING THE HERO IS EQUATED THERE TO BEING THE HOT ONE, SO LIKE, CHIM BEING SHIRTLESS, SUBTLE REINFORCEMENT OF HIM BEING A HERO!) I love that for him, being the truly hot one on the team. And then you throw in his story from 2x04, and feeling like his life wasn't going anywhere and seeing him now, comfortable in his body and his life and being happy??

I wish no one had to be objectified and shirtless but I know this is broadcast tv, and honestly, the choice for it to be Chim, with his story and his background, in itself is I think a choice that makes me happy.

Of course, the show is nowhere near perfect, and I’d argue that it’s one of the areas they fall shortest in. Buck sleeping w his therapist would never have happened for a woman on this show, and it CERTAINLY wouldn’t have been brushed off again as a joke like it was in s3. And it really bothered me in 4x07 when the lady slapped Eddie’s ass, esp since he was clearly uncomfortable with it. I’d actually really enjoy seeing them write a plot for one of the men that addresses them feeling oversexualized as firefighters, and how people seem to think they have permission since the men are all public employees, bc I think the show could do it really well, and I think it’s an area that hasn’t been addressed on other shows recently (plus lbr I know I’m biased but I think OG would do it better if it has been done…)

So idk. I don’t know if I have a solid conclusion here. The show does SUCH a good job with the women, and a solidly less good job with the men - but I also see some really interesting choices at work that I really respect.

Thanks for the opportunity May, sorry if there was no coherent thread to this. 😂🤷‍♀️

#911 fox #asked and answered #evan buckley #eddie diaz #chimney han #the one area re:the men I think they do super super well in #is the fact that none of them experience or act w any sort of toxic masculinity #we’ve seen all of them cry MULTIPLE times #and they’re comfortable being vulnerable w both men and women #and none of their personalities are built are ‘hello I am a MAN’#which I really really like and enjoy

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drabbles-mc · 3 years

Text

I Know A Place

Juice Ortiz x F!Reader

Request by Anon: can you do a Juice x female reader where she's out with Juice as part of a small errand that she needed to do, and her dad Piney insisted she needed an escort due to the shit happening with Zobelle - and they have to hide at one point and (there's already some tension going on at this point) after impressing him with how much she can run, at one point he needs to pull her flush against him, and his hand gets a feel of how ripped she is and it all comes to a head when they reach a motel

Warnings: language, unprotected sex

Word Count: 3k

A/N: I did tweak a few things from the original request, hope that’s alright! I try not to be too descriptive of body types when I do reader inserts because it’s just not as inclusive, so I left it kind of vague as I do with all of my fics that are written in this style. Also, instead of a motel it’s a safehouse. But Juice still gets some so it all evens out haha. Enjoy! xo

SOA Taglist: @mijop @adela-topaz-caelon @masterlistforimagines @garbinge (As always, if you want to be tagged in anything going forward just let me know!)

You couldn’t deny that you were a little annoyed when the club essentially assigned you a babysitter. You’d fought Opie and Tig on it for a hot minute, only caving when Piney spoke up. There were a lot of people that you could afford to piss off but he really wasn’t one of them. He told you that you were going to have someone with you until things calmed down again, and that was that.

“Oh sure,” Opie said with a shake of his head, “you’ll listen when he says it.”

“Yea, ‘cause you’re not my father,” you shot back at him with a roll of your eyes.

“And you’re also not as scary,” Jax piped in with a laugh.

You wanted to hold onto your frustration but you couldn’t help but to crack a smile, knowing that he was completely right. Opie might’ve been tall and stoic, but he was still your brother and you still knew too many embarrassing things about him to ever be fully intimidated by him the way that you were with your father. Opie had a softness in him that your father never had.

“Who’s gonna be babysitting me, then?” you asked as you plopped down at the bar.

“Got a preference?” Jax chuckled, “I’ll see if I can make it happen.”

You looked over at him, clearly unamused, “I’d prefer to not have anyone stuck to me like glue.”

“Well that’s out of the question,” Piney spoke up with a shake of his head. He paused, turning to Juice, “Juice.”

He looked up from his laptop, eyes bright, “Yea?”

“You’re gonna be keeping an eye on Y/N for a while. Got it?”

He nodded, always glad to be given a task. You don’t think that he’d ever said no to the guys the entire time he’d been involved with the club, even when he probably should have. You looked over at him, and as annoyed as you were that you were going to have a protective detail with you, you had to admit that there were much worse people to be stuck looking at all day while you ran errands. The two of you never got a whole lot of quality time together, but he seemed sweet enough.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” you looked over at him, trying not to take your frustration out on him, “I got some shit I gotta take care of.”

“Now,” he stammered slightly as he shut his laptop, “N-I’m ready now. I’m good to go,” he nodded.

You chuckled, “Alright,” you tossed him the keys to your car, “then let’s hit the road, Juan Carlos.”

He caught the keys, but barely. You bit back a laugh as you shook your head. He tossed his laptop to the side and made his way over to you. He led the way, opening the clubhouse door for you. You flashed him a smile as you walked out, wondering how a man like him ended up in a club like this.

Letting Juice drive was a calculated decision on your part. You felt like you’d learn more about him from the passenger seat. Plus he was nice to look at and that was difficult when you needed to have your eyes on the road to drive.

“This because of what happened to Gemma?” you asked, breaking the seal of silence in the car.

“Wh-what?” his body tensed.

“All of the women being assigned body guards,” you clarified, “Is it because of what happened with Zobelle and Gemma?”

You could see him hesitate, but that answered your question as well as anything. After a moment he nodded, “Yea. Protocol until further notice.”

You nodded slowly, “Gotcha,” you looked over at him as he parked your car, “You pissed that you’ve been demoted to babysitter?”

There was a small smirk on his face as he turned and looked over at you, “Guess I didn’t consider this a demotion.”

There was something about his tone and the look in his eyes that made your face suddenly feel warm. You smiled and shook your head, “Right,” you took a deep breath to try and get your mind right, “You ready?”

He nodded, hopping out of the car so he could come around and open the door for you. You smiled, surprised by the gesture. He held his hand out to you and you took it despite the fact that you didn’t need it. You saw the way that the muscles in his arms flexed as he helped you and you found yourself involuntarily biting your bottom lip.

“You okay?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

You cleared your throat and nodded, “Yea. All good. Let’s go.”

He chuckled just loud enough so that you could hear it and you shook your head at yourself. You went from extremely annoyed with the entire situation to very into it in the matter of one car-ride and you wished that your hormones would stay out of your thought pattern. There was a reason he was assigned to make sure you stayed safe, it wasn’t exactly the best time to be gawking at him.

As you continued to check things off of your to-do list, you found that Juice really wasn’t bad company. He was sweet, and funny. You didn’t remember the last time someone made you laugh that hard while you were grocery shopping. He pushed the cart for you and you really wondered why someone who had so much gentleness in them would want to be part of an outlaw motorcycle club.

“Can we stop and grab a coffee?” you asked after you’d stacked your grocery bags in the back of the car, “My treat, since you’ve been so helpful today despite the fact that I was kinda shitty to you about it at first.”

He laughed, “Yea, coffee sounds good.”

“I know a good spot a couple blocks up. Up for a walk?”

“Sure,” he nodded, waiting for you to start leading the way.

The two of you walked together, and you chuckled as Juice provided commentary on everyone and everything that you walked past. There was something about him that made you think that he was the kind of person to never run out of stories.

Your conversation was interrupted by the sound of yelling and cursing coming from farther up the block. Juice stopped in his tracks. Throwing his arm out in front of you to make you do the same. His brows furrowed as he listened intently, trying to figure out who was making all of the noise and why.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath before turning to you, “you gotta go.”

“What?”

He nodded back in the direction the two of you had just come from, “Get back to the car. Quickly. I’ll meet you there.”

“Juice what’s going—”

“Just go,” he nudged you in the right direction as the voices got closer, “please.”

You saw him reach into his kutte for his gun and that was the moment you decided that whatever the problem was, it was above your paygrade. You took off at a swift run as the voices got louder, and you could hear Juice yelling something back at them. You were nervous, but the only thing reassuring you at all was that you didn’t hear any gunshots. Whatever was happening, the chaos must’ve been somewhat controlled.

The run back to your car felt much longer than the walk away from it. You were practically gasping for breath as you fumbled around for your keys in your purse. Just as you were about to slide the key into the lock, you felt someone’s body press firmly up against yours. You started to let out a scream but they clapped their hand over your mouth.

“It’s me,” Juice sounded about as winded as you did, “Sorry, it’s me,” he let go of you, but his body was still flush up against yours, “Quick, unlock the door.”

You wanted to make a smart remark about how that’s what you had been trying to do before you got body-slammed, but your brain wasn’t working well enough for that. You were trying to turn your key in the lock while not thinking about the way his chest pressed against your back with each deep breath he took to recover from his run to you.

You were finally rewarded with the clicking sound of the door unlocking. You flung it open and scrambled over to the passenger seat, letting Juice climb in after you. He slammed the door shut and immediately turned the car on, throwing it in drive and peeling out of the parking lot.

Both of you were silent as he tore down the streets of Charming. You wanted to ask what that was all about, but you weren’t sure how much you really wanted to know.

Once his breathing started to level out, he glanced over at you, “You’re fucking fast,” he laughed.

You chuckled, leaning your head back against the seat, “Adrenaline and fearing for your life will do that,” you looked over at him, trying to search his face for some answers. Despite your better judgment, you asked, “What was all of that about?”

Juice sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to lie to you about it, “Zobelle isn’t the only person the club has pissed off lately.”

“Really racking up popularity points, huh?” you shook your head.

He laughed, “Yea. Mayans called off the truce. So it’s pretty much on-sight at this point.”

“Jesus Christ,” you ran your hands down your face, “So what now?”

He shrugged, still with a white-knuckle grip on his steering wheel, “Um. Good question. We can head back to the clubhouse, or we can find somewhere to lay low for a couple hours.”

The last thing you wanted to do right now was face your father and your brother. You looked at him, watching the way he stared intently at the road, “Where’d you have in mind?”

“Hm?”

“To lay low,” you sighed, “I don’t wanna fucking deal with Opie right now,” you let out a humorless laugh, “And if I don’t, I know you definitely don’t.”

He laughed despite the stress weighing on his brain, “That’s fair. I think I know a place.”

He didn’t elaborate further, and you didn’t ask him to. You rested back against the seat and watched the buildings and yards fly by your window as Juice drove you off to wherever he figured was a safe place to land. The longer he drove, the more relaxed he became, which in turn made you feel a little better as well. There was a tiny part of you that wanted to reach out and rest your hand on him, but you knew that was just the adrenaline talking, or at least that’s what you told yourself.

The car came to a stop in the driveway of a small house in a town that neighbored Charming. You’d never been there, and it didn’t look like anyone had been there in quite some time. You looked over to Juice, eyebrows raised as you waited for some kind of an explanation.

He looked over at you and gave a small shrug, “Club safehouse. Seemed like as good of a place as any to kill a couple hours.”

You shrugged and nodded, “Fair enough. It got a fridge? I don’t want all my groceries going to waste.”

He laughed, “Yea, it’s got a fridge. Your ice cream will be fine.”

You grabbed the bags out of the back of the car while he went and unlocked the house, checking to make sure that everything was alright. You knew the chances of anything happening to the two of you were slim to none. It wasn’t likely that they were able to tail you, Juice had driven all over god’s green earth to make sure that didn’t happen. Still, you felt a little better knowing that this was a designated place for laying low and staying out of trouble.

Setting the bags down on the counter, you started to take out everything that needed to be in the refrigerator or the freezer. It wasn’t much, but Juice was right when he called you out about the ice cream. It was the first thing you took out and tossed to be chilled.

You spun around to grab one last thing out of the bag and collided directly into Juice. Your hands landed on his chest while his grabbed onto your hips to keep you from stumbling further. You let out a nervous laugh, your face instantly getting hot. There was a small smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. Your entire body was trembling and as much as you wanted to blame it all on the chaos of the day, you knew there was a little more to it than that.

“You good?” his hands slid up your sides as he asked, pushing up the fabric of your shirt.

You swallowed hard, trying to focus on maintaining feeling in your legs as you nodded, “I’m good.”

He could feel the way your body was trembling slightly underneath his fingertips, “You sure?”

Your brain couldn’t come up with a single coherent thought. You were too distracted by the heat radiating from his hands, the way his chest rose and fell beneath your palms. The day had already been a trip and you figured there was no way that you could really make it all that much worse. So you gave in to the impulsive, needy part of your brain that had been quietly nagging at you all day.

Before you could try to reel yourself in, your lips crashed into his. It must’ve been exactly what he had been expecting, because his arms instantly snaked tightly around your waist and kept your body flush up against his. A quiet moan slipped past your lips as your hands roughly cupped his face, keeping his lips pressed against yours.

Hit bit down on your bottom lip with a quiet moan and the thought crossed your mind that it was one of the most beautiful sounds you’d ever heard. You pushed the kutte down off of his shoulders and instantly started to lift his shirt off over his head. He let out a quiet, breathy laugh as he obliged, gripping onto yours to help you do the same.

With no hesitation he scooped you up off the floor and carried you to the bedroom. You let out a gasp as he dropped you onto the bed and instantly began undoing your shorts. You lifted your hips to make it easier for him to slide them down your legs. He smiled as he tossed them aside, along with your underwear. You sat upright and your hands instantly went to work on his belt. You looked up at him for a moment and when you saw the way he was smiling down at you, it became almost impossible to focus on the task at hand.

Despite the distraction, you were rewarded with the sound of his jeans falling to the floor in a denim pool around his ankles. He stepped out of them and back you onto the bed, hands roaming over your body the entire time.

His lips found yours and within moments you felt his tongue running along your bottom lip. He situated himself between your legs as he kissed you, one hand sliding down your stomach and landing between your legs. His fingers traced lightly over your folds and he moaned into your mouth when he felt how wet you already were.

He took his lips off of yours only long enough so that he could position himself at your entrance. He looked up at you, eyes searching yours for the go-ahead to continue. Your hands gripped onto his hips and pulled him into you, causing both of you to moan. He buried his face into the crook of your neck, biting down onto your shoulder as he thrusted into you.

Your nails raked down his back as you lost yourself in the feeling of having him inside of you. His name fell from your lips repeatedly as his body continued to connect with yours. His hands traveled all over you, caressing every inch of exposed skin with a gentleness that didn’t at all match the intensity that he was using to fuck you, but it felt right nonetheless.

You gripped onto his biceps, nails sinking into his tattoo as you felt your orgasm building. You cursed as his pace continued to increase, his hands finding their home on your hips as he pinned you down.

“Fuck,” every muscle in your body tensed as you came. Your hands grabbed and scratched at his back and shoulders for a grip that they couldn’t find.

Juice wasn’t far behind you, quickly pulling out of you a few moments later before he did something he’d regret. He collapsed onto your chest with a deep sigh, hands gently sliding up and down your sides. It was the first time all afternoon that your body stopped trembling. After a few moments of nothing but the sound of your breathing filling the room, you heard Juice let out a quiet laugh.

You looked down at him, “What’s so funny?”

He rested his hands on your chest before placing his chin on them. There was a tiny smirk on his face as he fought to get his breathing evened out again, “Told you this wasn’t a demotion.”

You laughed, shaking your head, “You’re ridiculous.”

“C’mon,” he joked, “you gotta admit that this all could’ve gone so much worse.”

You rolled your eyes but you couldn’t wipe the smile off of your face, “I guess so,” you locked eyes with him, “How much longer you think you’ll have to keep an eye on me?”

He laughed, leaning up to place a soft kiss on the side of your neck, “Probably for a long time. Just to be safe.”

#soa #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy imagine #juice ortiz #juice ortiz x reader #juice ortiz x you #juice ortiz imagine #juan carlos ortiz #juan carlos #my writing #fanfiction #drabblesmc

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sarahwroteathing · 3 years

Text

Take a Chance (2)

[Sam Wilson x Reader]

Word Count: 1062

Summary: Sam draws you out of your comfort zone to spend an evening with the team.

Warnings: Vague social anxiety

A/N: Look at me posting twice in a week! Wack. Chapter 1 if you missed it

@star-spangled-bingo 2021 Square Fill: Cuddling

That weekend, after much coaxing (whining), arguing (complaining), and outright bribery (outright bribery), Sam convinced you to spend an evening with him and his fellow Avengers. A hard won victory considering you generally spent any time off as far away from the compound and all associated individuals as possible.

“You are going to owe me at least ten favors for this,” you sighed when Sam met you at the elevator, tugging self consciously at the hem of your skirt.

“And here I was about to tell you how nice you look. I’m gonna owe you favors for hanging out with me?” Sam offered you his arm with a curious smile, and you took it without hesitation, eyes still flashing around the room, cataloguing the showroom- esque furnishings and the impressive people they supported. Bucky and Steve lounging on a couch, beers in hand. Clint sprawled on the floor, apparently already asleep while Wanda tossed pretzels at him. The relative relaxation in the room didn’t ease your tension in the slightest.

“You’re gonna owe me favors for making me come back here and spend my day off with people who probably consider themselves my bosses,” you corrected in a low voice, flashing a smile and wave at the few calls of greeting your entrance had prompted.

“Oh trust me, nobody here is stupid enough to try bossing you around,” a new voice cut in, making both you and Sam jolt in surprise. Natasha materialized at your side, linking her arm with yours in a familiar way Sam wasn't sure your relationship warranted. “Steve might even be scared of you.”

“Please,” you scoffed. “He is in no way afraid of me. What am I gonna do? Write a strongly worded email?”

“He’s impressed by you. Which I think is the closest he gets to being scared of someone,” Sam said, not missing the pleased little smirk that flickered across your lips for a moment.

“You been bragging on me, Sam?” you asked, leaning your head on his shoulder and fluttering your eyelashes in a way that made his stomach flip despite your teasing smile.

“Constantly,” Natasha answered as she started to steer you towards the low couches on the right side of the room.

“Interesting.” You dragged Sam along with you, keeping a firm grip on his arm to avoid separation. “And here I thought all he did was complain about how much time I spend at work.”

“He does that too,” Bucky mumbled from his place on the couch, leveling a baleful look at Sam. “It’s annoying.”

“It is annoying,” you agreed, earning a begrudging nod of approval from Barnes before Steve hopped up from his seat with a polite smile.

“It’s nice to see you out from behind the desk though. Thanks for joining us.” He offered you his hand, but Sam slapped it down.

“Man, you’re not interviewing her. This is a movie night.”

Steve held up his hands in surrender, an annoyingly knowing smile on his lips.

“Fine. Plenty of food and drinks on the table. Help yourself since manners are off limits.”

Sam rolled his eyes and followed you to the table as Natasha shook a dozing Clint awake.

“What movie are we watching?” you asked quietly, nudging Sam gently as he poured your drinks.

Natasha is the one who answered.

“We’ve been doing a tour of the genre classics. Tonight is the original Friday the 13th.”

“Brace yourself for Kevin Bacon in tiny red shorts,” Clint said with a yawn. “It's a lot to handle sober, so I suggest drinking. Heavily.”

“Can’t be any smaller than the blue ones Steve used to wear,” Bucky commented mildly. “But maybe the tights helped.”

“Wait - ”

“What?”

“You have no proof,” Steve responded smugly.

“I’m sure some of those posters survived.”

“None that made the shorts obvious.”

“There will obviously be some in-depth internet searching after this is over, but let’s focus up. We’ve got a movie to heckle,” Sam cut in as you tugged him onto an empty couch with you.

There was a chorus of sighs and vague shuffling as everyone claimed their spaces and settled in.

Under different circumstances, Sam might have considered this a successful movie night. Clint and Natasha offered well-timed commentary, and Steve and Wanda’s purposefully stupid questions made even Bucky laugh. But while you smiled along and responded cheerfully to any comments directed your way, you never seemed fully engaged. Your posture just a bit too stiff, laughter coming a beat too late, like you weren’t sure it was welcome. Like you didn’t know it was Sam’s favorite sound.

You were out of your element here, far past the bounds of your comfort zone, and it showed. But it was a sacrifice you were making for him, because he wanted you here, because he’d asked.

Most days, Sam couldn’t tell whether you liked him the way that he liked you. He still couldn’t. But maybe you being here meant something. So he decided to try again.

Sam carefully slid his hand into yours, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen as another camp counselor met a grizzly fate. He caught your glance in his peripheral vision but didn’t turn, keeping his demeanor casual and calm as your fingers laced together and you scooted closer on the couch.

“All the things you’ve seen, and scary movies can still getcha, huh?” you whispered, giving his hand a squeeze.

And no that wasn’t at all why he wanted to hold your hand, but it was hard to correct you when you were looking at him like that. Your eyes were sympathetic, smile comforting, as you reached to press his hand between both of yours.

“Guess so,” Sam answered evenly, thoroughly enjoying the way your thumb stroked gently over his wrist.

A conspiratorial spark flickered into your eyes and you leaned a bit closer.

“As long as you don’t sleep with Kevin Bacon I think you should be fine.”

“Damn. There go my evening plans.”

There was a laugh, a genuine one, sudden enough to make you snort as you dropped your head against his shoulder to muffle the sound. Sam grinned as you made an effort to calm yourself. You turned to face the movie again but stayed nestled against his shoulder, giving his hand another squeeze when he tilted his head to rest it against yours.

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We’ve got these two crazy kids cuddling, and that’s what I call PROGRESS. What’s the mood? How are we feeling about their prospects? What would you like to see from them?

Reblogs, comments, and asks make the world go round!

Chapter 3

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Tags: @shifutheshihtzu @internalbullshit @lilasiannerd-blog @kennadance14 @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory @iwillbeinmynest @scotlandasshole @netflixa @hardcorehippos @singingprincessstudent @sophiealiice @blue1928 @tinuviel015 @jacks-on-krack @a-book-pressed-rose @fvckjamesbarnes @bbparker @battlebunnyteardropsinthesun @feelmyroarrrr @breezy1415 @orangespocks

#sam wilson x reader #sam wilson fluff #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson series #ssb2021

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itjazzbicch · 3 years

Text

Lessons

Pairing: Santana x Fem Reader

Summary: The reader is the Princess of Long Island, now the women's champion in AEW. She had always been cocky and confident, that doubling now that she is champion and when she crosses paths with the Inner Circle, she isn't afraid to speak her mind, but also triggers Santana, her attitude wanting to make him teach her a lesson and put her in her place...

Warnings: SMUT!! (LIKE A LOT) (18+!!)

Requested by: Anon (Whoever you are, I hope you enjoy!)

Word Count: 3209

Tag List: @demonqueen29 @jessiebean00 @new-zealand-chic @crowleysqueenofhell @justamess44 @thatpanpal @hungmanhorsecarriage @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @linziland13 @xxx-jazz-xxx @writtingrose

I DO OWN THIS GIF

Just when we all thought the beef between the Inner Circle and the Pinnacle would die down, it didn't. Which became a nuisance for everyone.

I had just won the AEW women's championship at Double or Nothing. My match should have been the main event! Not all of these childish boys bickering.

Inner Circle had some screen time, celebrating their victory, but of course, MJF tried to ruin that and their little moment ran up part of my time, and little did they know, they made a big mistake because the time they took was mine.

Everyone was a bit confused whenever they heard my music playing, strutting in my red bottom heels and brand-new black, cocktail dress and that new, shiny title over my shoulder.

"Aye, cut my music," I demanded, smiling at all of the men in the ring, all of their eyes on me, "Don't get me wrong. Inner Circle versus Pinnacle. You have had your shining moments. Your stadium stampede match, not bad at all. Nowhere near as good as mine, but not bad."

I was laughing at all of them, they were clearly upset by my words and I wasn't even done yet, sighing:

"You all are talented, but this feud, oh god! It's more stale than Shida's run as women's champion, haha! You guys got to have your Lion King moment at Blood and Guts, you had your pathetic excuse for a stadium stampede match. Now, get the hell out of here."

They all were exchanging looks, in disbelief, but I snapped some sense into them, my inner bitch coming out when I cocked my hip, scoffing, "Did I stutter? The princess of Long Island is here and I am your women's champion. Show some respect, let the real star here shine, and get the hell out of my ring."

Finally, one of them did something, Wardlow sitting on the ropes for me so I could enter the ring.

"Nice to see one of you have manners," I groaned, but smiling at Wardlow, "Thanks, honey."

"Congrats on winning the title," MJF tried to smile at me, but I always saw through his fakeness, just rolling my eyes, taking the center of the ring with my microphone.

I was ready to have my moment, addressing my victory, but Inner Circle was still in the ring and it annoyed me quickly.

"You boys sure are stubborn," I murmured under my breath, but let them have a moment whenever Jericho stepped up to me, saying:

"The princess of Long Island, Y/N! Nice to see that you're an even bigger brat now that you are champion."

Any time someone called me a brat, it never bothered me. I just smiled, being sarcastic like usual when I smiled at Chris:

"Thank you for addressing me by my titles. I really appreciate it. Now Chris, you know what it's like to be a champion here in AEW. You sure had your moments and celebrations while you were the world champ. Let the princess enjoy hers. Now, go make yourself useful and get me a bottle of champagne backstage and not that disgusting thing you call the bubbly."

The crowd had mixed emotions about me, but one thing I did know was that they sure loved it whenever I was making rude comments to someone and embarrassing them. Again, I went to the middle of the ring, expecting them to leave, but I heard behind me:

"Naw, shorty needs to learn a lesson."

Quickly, I turned around to see Santana in front of Chris, clearly pissed off. I didn't back down at all; I was the one to take a step closer, smiling in Santana's face. Even though I was smiling, I was pissed off too.

When I lifted my microphone, my New Yorker accent began to came out, making sure there was plenty of attitude when I scoffed, "I need to learn a lesson?"

"Yeah, you do and I'll gladly put you in your place!" Santana yelled at me, taking Chris's microphone, "We fought like hell at Double or Nothing. We fought for something a lot more important than a title! We-"

"That's exactly your problem!" I yelled interrupting him, all of them listening when I continued, "Here's the thing about wrestling. It's about wrestling and winning championships! Everyone wants to make alliances, make 'families' and that leads to failure! I've been solo my whole career and you see, everywhere I go, I got boys drooling, girls wanting to be me, always being booked, and most importantly, winning titles!"

Santana had nothing to say just yet, but steaming with anger whenever I added:

"For example, other than Chris, when the hell did any of you win a title here in AEW?"

I left a moment of silence, waiting for an answer but there wasn't any.

"Oof," I cringed, "That's what I thought. You guys think you're the shit but in reality, you're a bunch of losers!"

"Losers, my ass!" Santana snapped and seeing how angry he was made me laugh hysterically, but I snapped back into bitch mode, flashing my title, cocking my hip, and flipping my hair.

"My time is very expensive and you boys wasted enough of it. And Santana, you better watch who you're talking to. You're lucky I'm in my red bottoms and this dress or I'd show you how a champion does it right here in this ring."

"Is that right?" Santana smiled, licking his lip and getting in my face.

He was hiding his anger by smiling, but I smiled right back, inches away from his face, if I got any closer our noses would have touched.

"That's right," I whispered, "Unless you want to prove me wrong. Actually, it wouldn't be the first time I wrestled in a dress."

"I got you, girl," Santana smiled, backing away, "You just wait!"

"Don't keep me waiting too long," I smiled back, winking at him, but when I turned to the crowd, I rolled my eyes.

Finally! Finally! I had my time in the ring and I also sat on commentary for one of the women's matches. It annoyed me that Tony tried to keep asking me questions about what just took place between me and the Inner Circle, but I told him to shut up and he listened. Thankfully, Jim told him how he shouldn't piss of royalty.

Right after that match, I went back to my dressing room. A bottle of champagne was truly calling my name. Too much annoyance consumed my mind for the night.

"Y/N," One of the backstage crew members called out, a bottle in his hands when he approached me, "A gift for you."

"No way," I laughed, taking the bottle that was champagne, one of my favorites actually, "That stupid idiot actually got me a bottle!"

"Actually," The member murmured, a bit scared as he did interrupt me a bit, "Here's the note."

I took the note from him, reading it and it said, "From one New Yorker to another."

MJF maybe? I tried thinking of who would have left it behind. After what I said out there, it definitely wasn't anyone in the Inner Circle. Either way, I didn't care. I just took it and went inside my room, demanding from the crew member:

"A Champagne glass. Now."

That member did not hesitate and while in my room, I was just watching the show, opening up the bottle while waiting. After what felt like forever, I heard a knock on my door.

"Finally," I groaned, "It's open!"

That same crew member opened the door, but then someone grabbed it. I couldn't tell who it was, but I saw their hand taking the champagne glass and a small bucket of ice.

"Thanks, but I got it from here."

Santana? Well, I found my fellow New Yorker who gifted me with champagne.

"Aww," I smiled while sitting up, "I only asked for a glass and he also brought me some ice for the bottle. How sweet is that?"

Santana wasn't thrilled to see me and I made sure he didn't get away from my smart comments whenever I stood up, mumbling, "Only if he got here sooner."

Without any words, I took the glass and ice over to the small table where I had the bottle waiting.

"So, you came over here for a reason. Care to tell?" I asked, pouring a glass, "Also, nice choice."

"I already told you out in the ring," Santana sighed, his hands in his pockets while he came around the couch and to the table where I was standing, "Maybe now that you're not on camera with the crowd around you, just maybe your ego won't get to your head."

"You're funny," I whispered, giggling while taking a sip, "Nothing about an ego. I just know my worth."

"Chris was right whenever he called you a brat," He mumbled, becoming annoyed with me, but I stopped beating around the bush.

"As I recall, you said that I need to be taught a lesson," I reminded him, smiling, "It would be a shame if I passed up the offer, but I don't think this would be the place to have a proper wrestling match."

"You really think you can beat me in the ring?" He smirked, thinking I was crazy.

"I know that I can," I smiled, "You think I'm afraid to wrestle a man? I could take that world title off of Omega if I wanted to."

Santana just laughed at me, shaking his head when he said, "You're crazy."

"Not crazy, just very ambitious and self-confident. What's wrong with that?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow, "No matter what 'lesson' you teach me-"

I was sure we both knew what was going to happen next, so I made the first move, getting close to him like when we were in the ring, just inches away from one another, finishing with:

"It's not going to change a thing."

There was no fighting the smile that was creeping onto my face when Santana got even closer, towering over me but still keeping direct eye contact, leaning his head down a little, our noses almost touching when he whispered:

"You sure about that?"

"We just went through this. Go ahead. Try to prove me wrong," I chuckled, seeing him shake a little when I picked up my leg, my thigh running between both of his, whispering, "But be careful how you hold me. I'm not just a princess, I'm a weapon."

All of the tension between us shattered like glass, about dropping my glass whenever his lips hit mine like a truck. There was no way I could deny it, he was a damn good kisser and it drove me crazy, taking him by surprise when I pushed him against the wall.

His hands were tugging at my dress, pulling it above my hips. I was smiling more when I felt his large, warm hands sliding down, taking two handfuls of my ass, biting my lip, and making me gasp hard when he planted a firm, swift smack on my ass.

It had me breathing heavily and it fired me up. I took two handfuls of his shirt, whispering against his lips, "Damn, you trying to make me cum already?"

"You like that?" Santana smiled, getting a moan out of me when he hit me with another one.

After that one, I snapped, wanting to get down and dirty. His eyes were locked on me, smiling when I stepped out of my panties, letting my dress fall, staying in my heels.

"You must not have listened when I told you that I'm a weapon," I huffed, ready to go back to him, but he came at me, throwing off his jacket, sitting me on the back of the couch, his shirt going next, hands at his jeans when I pulled him by his shoulders into another kiss.

I hopped down from the couch the moment I saw his briefs, getting a good look for myself, liking what I saw, making the rush in me pick up the speed.

"I'm not known for being speechless, but damn," I chuckled, my hand stroking his cock softly, watching him bite his lip.

He let me have my own little moment of fun, but immediately after, he took me by the wrist, twirling me around so that I was facing the couch, bending me over it. The anticipation was killing me; Santana adding to it with every move he made, his hand around my throat, bringing my head back a little so he could whisper in my ear:

"It's time you learn your lesson."

"This seems like a very fun lesson if you ask me-" I chuckled, but ended up breathless, gasping for a moment, then biting my lip.

I felt his crown pop into me, having to stretch me wide with every inch that slid up, which was a good bit, hitting every sensitive part along my walls. I had to bite my lip hard, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing me truly moan just yet.

"Got nothing smart to say now huh?" He snickered, thrusting into me hard, keeping his hips pinned against me and that made the moans I was holding back jump out, "Come on, I know you have a loud mouth."

"Got damn you," I whispered under my breath, closing my eyes and just taking in the crazy good feeling, it becoming hard to handle how he was bottoming me out already.

It was hard to believe how hard and fast he could go for so long, my hands gripping onto the end of the couch, trying to rock my hips back into him, but his pace was a bit too fast for me, his hands at my hips, sliding down to my thighs a bit, squeezing them hard with each thrust.

Again, I tried rocking back into him and when I did, his crown went past my sweet spot, making my legs shake like hell, bending over a little further, burying my face in the couch cushion.

Of course, he had to add to it, slapping my ass hard, then taking my hair, pulling my head back.

"Trying to hide something?" He huffed, laughing a bit, but burying himself deep, making me moan out so loudly, barely pulling his hips back, then pounding into me, growling in my ear, "Everyone in this damn building is going to hear you screaming my name. There ain't no hiding it, Y/N."

I was already a moaning mess, but there was one thing I wasn't doing and that was saying his name. With the mindset I have, I didn't want to give him that satisfaction, but that mindset was broken.

Being in heels definitely didn't help my legs, they were still shaking like hell, Santana's hand still pulling at my hair when he leaned back, pulling his cock all the way down and slamming every inch back.

"Fuck Santana!" I cried out, not even trying to fight it anymore.

"Huh?" He huffed, pulling back on me a little more so that I was almost standing, "I couldn't hear you."

I could feel tears form a bit from the way every nerve in my body was burning. My whole body burning like a wildfire. All of the heat coiling up in my core, the burning making my knees weak; I was barely able to stand up and if that wasn't enough, my ass received another swift smack. It made me smile, my ass tingling and I could feel it steaming.

"You're fucking amazing, Santana," I praised, smiling with more moans, but he had me right back to whining and nearly screaming, using his foot to move my legs, spreading them a little wider, bringing me up all the way, his chest against my back.

My body was ready to fall like a game of Jenga, his hand sliding down my inner hip and rubbing my clit rapidly, his hips still rolling, using his forearm to push mine down, making his crown go even deeper. I was sure he was at my lower stomach, that's where I felt all of the impact.

All I could do was whine and moan helplessly, my walls beginning to pulsate hard and I was ready to let it all go, let my orgasm run free, but he started slowing down.

"Santana," I whined, trying to move my hips, "Don't do this to me."

"I'm not fully convinced that you learned your lesson," Santana scoffed, "But I'm about to find out."

He began to give me slow thrusts, but every single one was hard, still able to keep the sense of my orgasm around, almost triggering it, but not letting it happen. Sharp whines fell from my lips with every thrust, his hand still at my clit.

"Please, Santana," I asked, trying not to sound like I was begging, but that's what he wanted.

"Huh?" He teased, beginning to pick up his pace a little more, "I'm having a hard time hearing you. Especially with you moaning like that."

He knew I was ready to snap. I tried to fight it, but with every thrust, every moan, I was becoming desperate, his ungodly speed bringing my orgasm right back again and I didn't want it going anywhere; So, I gave him what he wanted.

"Please just-" I began, having to swallow my pride, "Please just let me cum, Santana. Please, please."

"That's all you had to do," He whispered, bending me over the couch again, lifting one of my legs and going so hard, but finally, with a super tight clench of my walls, wrapped around him so tight, I could feel every part of his cock slide up and when his crown went past my sweet spot again, I actually let out a loud scream.

"Oh, my fuc-" I cried, holding onto one of his hands for dear life, "Santana!"

My body was going crazy, shaking and tensing up at the same time. Santana actually helped a bit when he held me by the sides, feeding me some softer thrusts while all of the wet heat just fell out onto him, still getting some faint moans out of me while I was trying to catch my breath.

"Told you I was going to put you in your place," Santana chuckled, but I just ignored his comment for now.

My brain felt like it was lagging, my body ready to just drop and I even admitted that when I whispered, "And I thought wrestling was rough."

Santana heard me and laughed, leaning down, teasing me, "Aww, the princess can't take a few rough strokes?"

"I'm still standing ain't I?" I smirked, fighting through the shaking and standing up, "In red bottoms too."

"They ain't as red as your ass though," He noted, stroking my ass where he slapped it, and even, I laughed at it.

"I will admit," I sighed, swallowing my pride, looking back at him to say, "Maybe you did actually teach me a lesson."

"Trust me, whether if you admit it or not," Santana smiled, lighting tapping my ass again, kissing me when he whispered, "I know I did."

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