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astxrwar · 6 months

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ties that bind [4/8]

SUMMARY: Quentin Beck– your old college biology professor– is still a bastard. Apparently, you’re kind of in to that.

RATING: Explicit

WORD COUNT: 8k+

CONTENT WARNINGS: extremely under-negotiated kink, character-typical behavior, more sex albeit less gratuitous, established-dynamic-typical Everything. Some plot in this one, finally!

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | [PART 4] | PART 5

The thing about lab work is–

There’s generally always going to be something that could use doing after-hours.

Dr. Banner presumably interprets your sudden apparent willingness to be the one to sacrifice your evenings once or twice a week or so as an attempt to suck up; or maybe just a deep, avowed interest in microbiology.

Neither are true.

You’re not sure how Beck even knows; who he must be talking to– interrogating, more likely– to figure out when you’ll be there, at night, with everyone else gone. You don’t care. On those days you wind yourself so tight with anticipation that you can hardly think straight, never more grateful for your deep familiarity with the lab procedures, given you’re so fucking distracted. It’s hard not to be– after that second time, Beck goes right back to showing up everywhere, like he’d only been waiting, the week before, biding his time until you inevitably came back within reach of him again, and once you were and once he knew beyond suspicion that you still– that you wanted– that you would let him –

It’s like after that, all bets are off. Before, he’d always been careful, words measured and insinuations meticulous, pre-planned, balancing so expertly on the knife’s-edge boundary of appropriate and acceptable that half the time you felt like you must have been imagining it, the way he tormented you. You don’t really even have to imagine anymore; he crosses the line with impunity, now, with an unrepentant and unapologetic enjoyment. All he ever has to do is look at you the way that he does, for too long, the sum of it too familiar, the way his eyes swallow up every inch of you, or press his palm to your lower back to move past you through a doorway, just for a dizzying fraction of a second, or call you honey in that voice– sly and deliberate and fucking patronizing, that twitching half-smile hidden behind a cup of dining hall coffee at seven in the morning, so early that you’re unable to remember to even try to hide the reflexive, immediate shiver that trembles straight through you, every nerve in your body already humming and alive.

Most times Beck’s waiting for you when you leave, lingering at the other end of the building, engaged in some plausibly-deniable excuse of an activity like grading exams or stocking lab supplies or writing up. Once, though, you run into him before you’re even finished, when you step out to grab something for the lab, and that’s both better and worse– he fucks you in the closed-off third-floor bathroom, the one that’s been disconnected from the water main and essentially abandoned for the last six months, and then you just have to go back to work like nothing happened, your muscles twitching, your body liquid and sated and sore–

He gets off on that, probably.

So do you, though, is the thing.

It’s worse this time around, too, because of that– because this time you can identify attraction and desire and wanting and name them for what they are, something you couldn’t have done before. It was so much easier when those feelings were distant and incomprehensible, when the worst thing he could ever elicit in you was anger, when you could say that you hated him and still wholeheartedly believe that it wasn’t more complicated.

Needless to say, it’s actually extremely complicated.

You do this for the entire rest of the semester– you actively make time for it, even towards the end with finals on the horizon for you and the undergrads that you TA for, glad for the fact that there’s actually no possible way for him to know that you’re, technically, prioritizing this over review for your structural biochemistry final.

It’s six-thirty in the evening and you’re in his office when you should be anywhere else, in the library or in the commuter lounge or just fucking home, the exam is tomorrow, and instead of studying or preparing or even really thinking about it at all you’re letting him stick his tongue in your mouth and his hands under your skirt, letting him bend you flat over his desk until your hands can reach all the way across to the other side of it, until your fingers can curl around the edges so tight that your knuckles go pale and bloodless when he fists a hand in your hair and pulls it until it hurts and aligns himself with an ease that is, by now, practiced and familiar, bottoms out inside of you with a groan that reverbates through your whole body like some kind of horrible electric fucking shock–

He fucks you hard, and it wipes from your brain anything about your exam or your fucked priorities or the abysmally fucking long to-do list of your responsibilities that apparently all came second to this, a terrible and grating truth that he would never let you live down– but he doesn’t know, and you don’t tell him, and the stress of the entire fucking week thus far and the tension that had built in you trying to manage all the end-of-semester bullshit stops mattering for all of a horribly gratifying fifteen minutes.

When you let go of the edge of his desk to touch yourself, turning to the crook of your arm to muffle the traitorous and immediate gasp that breaks out of you, he chuckles, the tenor of his voice ragged and rough and split in pieces by the absolutely fucking ruthless rhythm of his thrusts– like he’s trying to break you, shatter your resolve, like that’s what he wants most out of all of this. “You gonna come for me, honey?”

“Fuck you,” you bite back at him, the words dissolving into a choked-off moan, and then you do.

And then you go home and you study for your structural biochemistry exam and you still do pretty decently on it, somehow, and you resolve to take to your grave the fact that your ability to weigh the relative importance of immediate gratification versus the entirely less gratifying things that you should be doing is broken beyond all repair. That he broke it. Or maybe you both did; combined effort. Irrelevant, really. You’re not anything, you and him, you’re not friends, or acquaintances, and you don’t, strictly speaking, even actually like each other, which means that you never have to tell him any of that.

And so you don’t.

You do, though, see him on the last day before break, coat already on and stupid little expensive leather laptop bag slung over one shoulder, and you do walk a little faster to catch up to him before he reaches the door, glancing at him sidelong and saying with far less nonchalance than you’d intended, far more want– “Leaving?”

Beck turns to you and stares and his eyes are dark and amused and the sight of that alone sends some merciless heat searing right through your stomach. “Yeah,” he says, the silence after just as pointed and intentional as the fact that he hasn’t moved.

He wants you to ask for it, and you know that, and maybe the fact that you don’t care can be blamed on the abject fucking lack of adequate sleep you’ve gotten all week or the burning bright pulse of want that thunders dangerously through your nervous system or maybe just on– whatever. Who cares.

“Do you have to be somewhere right now?” you say, so blunt that it almost surprises you, “Or in the next, what, ten to fifteen minutes?”

The smile that spreads slow across his face is arrogant and vicious and deeply self-satisfied and if it inspires any sort of anger in you at all, you can’t even begin to separate it from the frenetic surge of desire and the dizzying rush of anticipation that ramps up even higher at the sight, and later you can be upset about it or pissed off or whatever, but right now you can’t even really summon the barest fucking remnants of any of that. Can’t do anything but want.

“No,” he says, grinning like a wolf, “No, I don’t.”

Whatever complete absence of ability for rational thought or logic or reasoning you’re experiencing then – it doesn’t magically abate after the door to that same stupid small supply closet is closed, certainly doesn’t when his hands are on you again, his mouth , not even when he breaks from kissing you to to whisper against your jaw you want it that bad you’re gonna have to do something for me, honey, and still not even when he says, lower, rougher, the words dripping with implication and so clearly a power play that you should, rationally, tell him to go fuck himself, but–

“On your knees,” he tells you, and–

And you let him, god, you let him tell you to kneel and you let him wind his fingers through your hair and pull, tip your head back to force you to look up at him, to witness whatever wild and vicious thing is swirling in the dark of his irises; you let him reach for you and press the pad of his thumb past your lips and against your tongue and you let him squeeze the hinge of your jaw to force it open and you let him work the head of his cock into the heat of your mouth and urge you to take it, take more, all of it, just like that, fuck, honey, there you go, his hand steady and firm and warm at the base of your skull–

Something absolutely fucking treacherous inside of you vibrates when he doesn’t even really try to cage back an immediate groan this time, lazy and dark and satisfied.

Yeah. Okay. This–

You don’t actually think about it then, not when he’s fucking your mouth and not when you’re letting him and not when he’s rucking up the hem of the little t-shirt dress you’d worn because you couldn’t be bothered with pants on the fucking last day of class. Definitely not when he’s dragging your panties to the side or when his cock is pressing hot and solid between your legs and slipping and sliding up and nudging your clit and missing the mark more than once with the way you’re fucking dripping for him, god, and not when he grits out fuck all breathless and disbelieving and still somehow fucking smug, not when he has to actually use a hand around the base of his dick to guide it into you and not when he fills you up, again, the second time in two days–

You don’t, in that moment, really think about how your reaction to any of this– all of it, really, to all of it, or maybe just to him in general, whatever’s worse– may, technically, potentially, be approaching territory that is getting dangerously close to an actual fucking problem.

In your defense, it’s really fucking easy to not think about it, with the dull plastic edge of the shelf digging into the small of your back and one of your legs hitched over the crook of his arm and your entire center of balance so dependent on him like this that you don’t even have to actually move at all, your bodies so close together that the warmth of him bleeds right through his clothes. His stupid coat and that satchel-thing- whatever are discarded and forgotten somewhere on the dusty, cobwebbed floor, and him even doing that conflicts with fucking everything you know about him, but that, too, is conveniently not something you think about. He bites at your bottom lip and plies your mouth open with his tongue and licks into it like he can take this and anything else he wants from you and you’d just– let him. You’d like it. He barely even has to touch you this time and you’re already just– gone, and maybe the immediacy of it is what drags him over the edge too, because he doesn’t last much longer after that, either.

“Wait,” you say, breathless, when he moves to pull back, your head dropping onto his shoulder and your thoughts spinning, directionless, bouncing around inside your skull like it’s fucking empty in there, like your brain is the size of a fucking ping-pong ball, god, embarrassing, terrible – “Hold on, give me a second, or I really am going to fall this time.”

Beck just laughs, only vaguely mocking, breathing ragged but steadying, and holds you until your perception of things like gravity and your own center of balance and the otherwise generally simple concept of, like, standing upright, realign themselves in the disarray that must be your motor cortex. And he laughs, too, when you make a whiny and petulant noise at the fucking mess that’s between your legs, fumbles around in the dark of the supply closet until he finds one of those rolls of scratchy recycled paper towels that the bathrooms are all stocked with, and then you laugh when he grumbles under his breath at the dust clinging stubbornly to the heavy wool outer lining of his coat when he picks it up off the floor again.

You do not think about any of that, either, at least not until you’re home, and then you do think about it– all of it, the weird parts and the concerning parts and the fact that there’s still, even now, that tiny little flicker of warmth somewhere inside of you.

Bad, you think, lying in your room in the dark, very bad.

But by then the semester is over, and it’s winter break for four weeks, and there’s the holidays to think about; Christmas, and all the logistical details that need to be worked out for that, and then New Years, which you’re pretty sure nobody even counts as a real holiday anyways, and then you realize you forgot to work out a second lab rotation and spend the rest of the break frantically sending emails– life happens, basically, and everything with Beck ends up on the back-burner, at least while he’s not within your immediate line of sight.

Maybe, you think, sometime in early January, the upcoming semester looming in the distance, maybe in the span of time between now and when you see him again, you’ll manage to get your head screwed back on straight.

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

Perhaps predictably, that is not what happens at all.

Beck corners you in the east stairwell your second day back. This is despite his office being on the west side and despite the fact that there’s absolutely no fucking reason for him to even be there– he still is, of course, smiling, smirking, pressing his palm flat to the dusty brick wall near your head, his arm between you and the ascending stair. None of this is new, anymore, technically, and you’d spent the last month promising yourself that you’d fucking get over this, but for whatever reason it’s like that little base and instinctive part of your hindbrain– or maybe just your body, your entire nervous system, the way it reacts to him– hasn’t realized any of that, yet. Or just doesn’t care.

“Hey, honey,” he says, grinning wide, “Miss me?”

“No,” you reply, dry and emphatic and somehow mostly steady, rolling your eyes if only to avoid looking at him and wishing it was more than only half-true.

Later– when you’re done for the day at one-thirty, stupidly and unusually early, and when you’re walking the long way out to the parking lot through the length of the still-mostly-empty biology building for absolutely no justifiable reason at all, you pass the cracked-open door to his office, and–

You just cannot seem to fucking help yourself.

Beck is at his desk, posture relaxed and attention directed at something important, ostensibly; the door creaks even though you don’t so much as touch it, drifting further ajar behind you by a matter of what must have only been millimeters. The sound draws his attention and it’s like the second his eyes are on you or the second it registers he’s standing and across the room in an impossibly small number of strides, so fast that you don’t really have time to move or breathe or think . And maybe if you had time to do any of those things you would have thought to taunt him for it, how quick he is to just abandon everything else, the single-minded ferocity of his focus and how much it undercuts him when he says “You need it that bad, honey?” all arrogant and mocking like you’re alone in that, like the total sum of his own actions when laid out side by side doesn’t absolutely fucking betray him too—

“Fuck you,” is what you say instead, because it doesn’t register, not with him slamming the door shut with his hand above your head and forcing you right back against it, not with the immediate, precarious, dizzying lurch of adrenaline that vibrates right through you, brighter and warmer and sharper than anything you’ve felt in the month since you last saw him.

And, god, you will think, still later and still not then, not when it’s happening, because you never do– isn’t that just the fucking worst.

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

You don’t actually come back from break early to get railed by your undergraduate biology professor. No, the actual reason is to help out in Dr. Banner’s lab, assisting in setup for his introduction to microbiology class both as part of the terms of your scholarship as well as in exchange for his advice on your nebulous future plans— you needed to at least tentatively have picked out a lab to do your thesis in and an actual official faculty advisor to pursue by the end of the semester, and you still hadn’t seriously started on either, yet.

“I was thinking about immunology, actually,” you tell him, sifting through a dusty, crumpled cardboard box full of micropipettes that you’ve been tasked with sorting by size, “I took intro in undergrad, and I did really well and I thought it was interesting, so I’m taking advanced immunology this semester with Dr. Stark– I was going to ask if he has space in his lab for me to do my third rotation.”

Dr. Banner doesn’t look up from where he’s painstakingly filling rows of those annoying too-small centrifuge tubes with pre-mixed DNA primer; yet another of an endless array of menial, boring tasks that need to be done to get everything set up for the class.

“I think that’s a great idea.The only thing, though,” he says, reaching the end of the row, snapping closed all of the tiny plastic caps, and then starting on the next one, “Tony’s the Dean, and everybody’s always falling over themselves trying to get into his lab, so I would keep your options open. Just in case. I can talk to him for you, put a good word in, and if you do well in the class I don’t see why he wouldn’t be up for it, because your grades are otherwise great, but– still, y’know?”

You make a noncommittal sound, catching your bottom lip between your teeth and worrying at it; with the micropipettes now sorted, you work your way methodically around the room to set one of each size at every seat. “Yeah, I know– I just don’t know what I would want to do otherwise.”

“Who do you have for your second rotation?”

“Dr. Cho.”

“And, what– you’re not thinking about asking her?”

You shrug, emptying the box at the last bench. “I’m less interested in structural biochemistry,” you reply, and the degree to which you’re actually incredibly not interested in structural biochemistry must be evident in your expression, because Dr. Banner chuckles under his breath.

“Don’t let her hear that, it’ll break her heart,” he says, smiling.

There’s a brief, not-uncomfortable silence, filled only with the sounds of the plastic casing of the micropipettes set down on the epoxy surface of the lab benches, the quiet, rhythmic click-click of the syringe depressing as he fills and then empties it over and over.

Finally, he makes this noise, a hum, kind of, like he’s considering the merits of whatever he’s about to say. “Tony’s not the only one who does immunology research. If that’s what you really want to pursue, I mean.”

You’re halfway into the adjacent storage room when he says it, off to fill the empty box with pipette tips that you’d have to similarly deposit at each lab station– god, you don’t know how he does this, year after year, it’s so fucking boring– but something about the tone of his voice makes you pause in the doorway. “He’s the only one listed on the department research page,” you reply, nonplussed, “I’ve checked.”

“Yeah, I know.” The prickle of annoyance underlying his voice– one that you recognize– betrays who he must be talking about before he even says it. “Beck’s lab isn’t listed, because he doesn’t want to have to deal with taking on undergrads for research experience. And Tony, he just– lets him, for whatever reason.”

Your mouth goes a little dry and that stupid traitorous thing inside of you trembles, the response so embarrassingly pavlovian that you should honestly be multiple times more ashamed than you are. You ignore it, and focus instead on the fact that somewhere in the back of your mind you were at least marginally aware of what he’s told you– that Beck had a lab, he did research, he wasn’t just teaching faculty.

“It’s really not worth asking, though,” Dr. Banner continues; if he’s at all cognizant of the way you’d gone suddenly and uncharacteristically silent, he doesn’t make mention of it at all. “He’s– I mean, you know how he is.”

Yeah, you think; yeah, I do.

“What does he– um, what’s his research area?” you ask, kicking yourself internally at the way that you stumble through the question, awkward and stilted and uncomfortable, trying to focus instead on stacking the little sachets of pipette tips into the cardboard box in neat, orderly rows. You only need forty-two– one of each of three sizes, for fourteen lab benches– but somewhere along the way you realize you’ve lost count and just mindlessly filled the entire thing.

“You’re not seriously considering it, are you?” Dr. Banner’s voice, incredulous, drifts from somewhere in the lab room proper.

“I’m seriously considering needing a backup plan,” you reply, bringing the too-full box of pipette sachets back into the lab classroom and beginning to lay those out, too.

That much, at least, is true.

He makes another sound that could best be described as the wordless equivalent of the phrase your funeral, which is distressingly appropriate. “I think he mostly does biologics. Developing new immune regulators, monoclonal antibodies, stuff like that.”

Right.

It would work out that way, wouldn’t it– that Beck’s research aligns so neatly with the only ideas about your future that aren’t ill-defined. You’re sure of at least one thing; that being you wanted to go into industry after this, private research and development for some pharmaceutical company, ideally; something that pays well and that’s far outside the bureaucracy and tedium and bullshit that is academia. Dr. Stark’s research is in a similar vein, but focused more on exploratory models of immune systems than the development of novel treatment strategies for, like, humans ; the difference, while small, is meaningful in the grand scheme of considering how well your PhD experience would translate to valuable skills in industry.

“Look at it this way,” Dr. Banner says, having finished filling up the primer tubes, moving past you to the storage room ostensibly to start on whatever the next menial, repetitive task needed to be accomplished, “At least you have time to figure it out. And who knows, you might get into Tony’s lab, and then you won’t have to worry about it.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, “I guess,” staring down at the box of pipette tips, still half-full even after all the lab benches were stocked, mind racing and thoughts elsewhere and not feeling all that much better about it.

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

Your rotation in Dr. Cho’s lab goes fine. That is the best descriptor because it is itself the most nondescript; nothing special, but nothing bad, either.

You become gradually acquainted beyond a vague theoretical understanding with stuff like x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and cryoelectron microscopy, familiar with the weird and kind of janky processing software that analyzes the data and renders the images of the molecules and the cell receptors and essential enzymes and whatever else, and eventually you become friendly with a new set of labmates. It’s not boring, it’s just that it’s not what you think you want to do for the five (but, really, in life sciences it’s always more like six or seven) years of your PhD, and markedly less adjacent than the work you’d done in Dr. Banner’s lab in your rotation last semester.

A not-insignificant part of your uneasy ambivalence might be attributable to just how goddamn much you hated organic chemistry.

Nonetheless, you do the work, and the semester does the same things all semesters always do– it starts off slow, and then sometime after the third week it starts to pick up, until around the fifth or sixth it’s just this never-ending stream of assignments to complete and projects to finish and responsibilities to fulfill; an endless march towards some nebulous, ill-defined end.

Somehow through all of it, for reasons that you could not explain, you still end up seeing Beck.

A lot.

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

Well, no-

The reasons are not that difficult to explain. They are, actually, extremely simple.

The sex is really good.

End of story.

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

Dr. Banner gets the flu towards the end of February.

This is important only because it means his intro microbiology laboratory class falls a week behind. Normally, they’d have done the first few baby steps of their extractions that week, and you and the other TAs would have handled the rest of the process the following week. With him out, the lab gets pushed back, meaning the kids do their part the first week in March, and somebody would need to do the rest of it over the week of spring break, or the entire course would fall even further behind.

Dr. Banner explains this to you in his office on Friday morning in that still-kind-of-sick voice that sounds like somebody’s forcibly holding his nose shut, growing increasingly dismayed.

“Please,” he says finally, slumping in his chair, looking far too pale and far too wan to be even out of bed, much less back to work yet, “If you could. I know you always get stuck doing it, but everyone else has plans for spring break, and I’m supposed to be giving a presentation at a conference in Toronto, and–”

“It’s fine,” you reply, “Don’t even worry about it. I haven’t done anything for spring break since, like, sophomore year.”

“Thank you,” he says, visibly relieved. “You are a lifesaver. Really.”

Later, as you’re leaving his office after stressing to him that he really should go home and rest if he’s insisting on still going to a conference he’ll have to leave for in less than six hours, you allow yourself to think about the things that usually tended to happen last semester, all the other times you stayed late.

And then you think about it for what amounts to basically the entire day. Which, you know– fine. It’s the Friday before spring break. It’s not like you’re actually doing anything.

You’re still thinking about it when you’re in lab, as you work mindlessly through the familiar task of the extractions, as you siphon pungent ethyl acetone off from the bottles you’d done last week, the smell like drug-store nail polish remover still making your nose burn despite the fume hood; as you wait, otherwise unoccupied, for the rows of neatly-labeled glass bottles to finish steeping in the steaming vat of dry ice. It’s perhaps slightly– perhaps more than slightly– embarrassing, how much time you actually spend thinking about it– him– but by now when you’re by yourself you don’t even bother warring with the thoughts anymore. Whatever you think about when you’re alone stays between you and god– it doesn’t count.

(That, the still-rational piece of you thinks– the piece that hasn’t been reduced to a hormone-addled perpetually-horny teenager, however small it might be – that’s a terrible excuse.)

You’re still thinking about it as you clean and lock up the lab, though, right up until the moment that you’re not.

In the hallway, you fumble for your car keys in the pockets of your coat, outside ones first, and then the inside pocket, anxiety starting to prickle, and then your jeans, and then your backpack— and come up empty.

Oh, fuck.

You try to peer through the little rectangular frame of glass in the door to the lab to see if you’d left them on the stainless steel tabletops or the back counter, squinting into the dark of the room. In your head you’re already retracing your steps, the pace of your thoughts rapidly bordering on frantic, trying to figure out where you had–

“Hey, honey. Long day?”

You nearly jump out of your skin, the mounting stress having already done a number on your startle response– Beck is standing there, watching you quizzically, hands in his pockets. For once, you’re too focused on something else for the immediate, instinctive pang of warmth that flares at the sight of him to be anything more than an afterthought, and you’re kind of glad for that, unfortunate circumstances aside– that you’re at all capable of prioritizing this.

“I think I just locked my car keys in the lab,” you tell him in lieu of returning his greeting, a frown worrying at the corners of your mouth.

“Oh yeah?” His bark of answering laughter grates on your nerves, and, god, isn’t that just like him, you think sourly, already pissing you off. “Amazing job. Really proud of you.”

“Fuck off,” you tell him, acerbic and sharp and so not in the mood, even as that stupid impulsive part of you remains painfully aware of the shrinking distance between you when he moves closer, your pulse stubbornly ticking up, your autonomous nervous system incapable of caring whether you want it to or not.

“Relax,” Beck says, unaffected, “I have a key.”

You’re too irritated to thank him, and he looks at you with amusement, because he knows that, presumably, and because it’s funny to him. That heat you’d felt at the sight of him you think must be mostly frustration, now; it should maybe be a little concerning how difficult it is to even tell the difference in the first place, but you’re still too anxious to care.

He unlocks the door for you and flicks on the two rows of industrial overhead lights, which buzz to flickering life, bathing the room back in artificial brightness. You know within the first few seconds of glancing around that they’re not there, a realization that triggers a panic that lurches through your stomach like a cold stone.

“God damn it,” you grit out, dragging your hand over your face, the other clenching into a fist at your side, not even wanting to say out loud what you’ve realized– wishing more than anything that he wasn’t here, his particular brand of smug, condescending bullshit the exact opposite of what you needed right now. “They’ve got to be in Dr. Banner’s office, because they’re not here.”

You wait for another bordering-on-insulting remark, but it doesn’t come, even as the silence stretches on, pointed and expectant.

“Well, I can’t get you in there,” he says, trailing behind you as you leave the lab, flicking the lights back off and pulling the door shut behind him as you rifle through your pockets again, the pockets of your coat, too, anxiety driving the search to be disorganized and frenetic as your desperation ramps higher. “The master keys only work on the rooms with hazardous materials, for emergencies. Labs and storage, mostly.”

He watches you, impassive, as you tear your backpack apart, find nothing, and then dejectedly put everything back together again. “You should call Bruce, you know he’d come back.”

You slump forward, defeated, burying your face in your bag where it’s still hanging on the wall hook. “He’s in fucking Toronto,” you mutter into the fabric, muffled, “For three days.”

At a loss for what else to do, you eventually right yourself and take your backpack up off the hook, slinging it over your shoulder with a long-suffering sigh. When you turn in the direction of the door, Beck follows after you; you’re not really thinking about what he’s probably thinking about, not right now, too concerned with how you’re going to get home, but– and this triggers a wince and a flicker of shame, a feeling that has become a lot harder to elicit in you as of late– you could probably be convinced to stop thinking about that for some indeterminate length of time, if he were to try.

“I can give you a ride to your apartment,” he offers.

Somehow, the realization hadn’t struck you until then, but– “Oh my god, my house keys. I can’t even get in.”

“Wow,” he says dryly, “You’ve really fucked up, huh?”

“Shut up.”

There’s a pause, as you near the doors; your mood somehow sinks even lower at the state of the sky outside, already an absolute pitch black. It’s only six, but it’s still somewhere between spring and winter; the time hasn’t changed yet and a late cold front had swept in earlier in the week, so not only is it dark, it’s freezing. And you still had no fucking idea what you were going to do.

The lights are still on in the biology building, and because of the contrast you can see both yourself and Beck clearly reflected in the glass of the door; he’s looking at you, expression unreadable.

“You have a friend you can call? Roommate?”

“No roommates. I don’t even have a spare key.”

You chew on your bottom lip for a moment, and then turn to look at him– really look at him, not just his reflection, pointedly ignoring the way you have to squash down the rise of something warm up through your abdomen just to do it. “Look– I appreciate it, but I’ll be all right. It’s my fault I got into this stupid mess anyways, I’ll figure it out. You don’t have to stay any later.”

He looks at you a moment longer, eyes steady, and then his mouth twitches up at one corner, more of an acknowledgement than a proper smile. “No, I guess not, huh?”

Part of you is more than a little irritated at that, at the implication, because, seriously, did he think you would just, what, decide to put off figuring out how you’re going to get home– where you’re even going to sleep– because he wanted to get laid?

(A smaller part of you is angrier still at the fact that, yeah, you probably would, if only he were capable of being more empathetic and less of an asshole for all of a meager five fucking minutes –)

“You could come with me.”

Your brain stalls, grinds to a halt and then stutters and rights itself enough for the words to process and the meaning to crystallize– and, yeah, okay, there’s a spark of electricity that strikes up in your belly at the idea, the precarity of it, even just the notion triggering that spiraling, panicky, adrenaline-infused sensation of being wildly out of your depth-- but that same small idiotic impulsive part of you, though, likes that feeling. Wants to chase it, past the point of reason or excuse.

“No,” you blurt out, before you can think about it for any longer, resolutely ignoring the part of you that’s kind of disappointed in your response. You’re not going to his fucking house, that sounds like a horrible, horrible idea.

Beck looks at you a moment more, and then his expression seals off– you wonder absently if you’d upset him. Hurt his feelings, maybe? Did he even have those?-- and he moves towards the door. When he pushes it open there’s a blast of dry and frigid air that still tastes like winter, a mixture of wood smoke and car exhaust, and he looks at you one last time, his eyes tracking back and forth across your face like he’s searching for something. “Suit yourself,” he says finally, and then he’s gone.

You stand there for a while just staring at your solitary, sullen reflection in the glass, before you pull out your cell phone and try to call someone– anyone, really, family, a friend; you even consider the merits of calling the campus police until a cursory google search reveals that all available master keys for buildings lie with the corresponding department head and are then disbursed at their discretion. The department head, of course, being Dr. Banner. Who was in Toronto. For three fucking days.

No one answers their phones; you send a few text messages out to make sure they’re not just avoiding answering calls, and after that, having realized you’ve run out of Useful Things to do, you settle for just trying to not panic. It’s admittedly a task that requires most of what limited attention you still possess at six-thirty at night, and for that reason you don’t notice the car when it appears outside; not until the driver lays on the horn for several uninterrupted seconds.

The sound jolts you, violently, out of whatever dissociative trance you were in; you register beams of light from those obnoxious, blinding-bright LED headlights and the steady rumble of an engine, the car itself parked at such an angle that you can’t make out the model from inside for the glare. You hesitate for a while, squinting at the shape of it in the darkness and trying to make out the details from the nice comfy warmth of inside, until the driver punches the horn again, three times in quick succession.

“Okay, okay, Jesus Christ,” you mutter to yourself, zipping up your coat and bracing for the solid wall of cold air that rushes to meet you when you open the door.

You have your arms wrapped around yourself as you approach the passenger side of the car— newer-model BMW, sedan, black, tinted windows, expensive— trying to ward off the cold and not succeeding. The window rolls down as you get close; without a light on, it’s still too dark for you to make out anything inside, but you know the voice when it calls out to you.

“Come on; I’m not gonna just leave you here, honey.”

Beck must have reached out to pull the latch for the door, because it swings wide open. The interior light flicks on with it, illuminating his face and the inside of the car, which is spotless and leather-upholstered and warm, the glow rendering the heat visible, rising out of the cabin in wavering lines. Standing as close as you are you can feel it, radiating outwards, and you sway towards it without meaning to, drawn instinctively away from the cold.

“I said I’d be fine,” you protest, with far less conviction than the first time.

“Yeah? You didn’t prop the door open, and you don’t have your keys,” he says, lips pressed together in a way that tells you he’s trying not to laugh, “So now you can either wait there or you can wait in my car, because I’m not getting out just to let you back in again.”

“Oh my god,” you reply, equal parts indignant and alarmed, glancing back to check— god damn it, you really had just locked yourself out. “I wouldn’t even be out here if you didn’t–”

“I know,” he says, cutting you off, properly smiling now– and of course he’d only been fucking with you, and of course you’d just headlong and blindly let him get you riled up. Again . “Look– were you even able to get ahold of anyone?”

A lengthy beat of silence passes; the wind picks up, the door sways on its hinges, and you try– fail– to hide a violent shiver.

“No,” you admit, reluctant.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, tone long-suffering but that stupid fucking smile still playing at his mouth, “Quit being so stubborn and just get in the car.”

You weigh your options for a moment, again, thinking about all the ways in which this is a spectacularly bad idea– there was probably somebody still inside who’d let you in the main door if you walked around to the front of the building, and once there you could wait and maybe somebody would respond to your texts– but it’s half-hearted. You don’t actually want to do any of that. When he’d first asked, there had been this part of you– stupid, impulsive, impetuous part of you– that wanted to just say yes , without forethought or consideration, interested only in the way that the offer had brought back the same feeling as when he had first cornered you in his office, like something inside of you had melted, turned liquid and pliable and hot .

That part of you is an unabashed and committed hedonist, apparently, and a sucker for being totally out of your depth— and the second time around, that part wins.

Buzzing with adrenaline, you reach for the grab handle on the ceiling of his car and, wordlessly, you pull yourself into the passenger seat, yank the door closed behind you, and stow your backpack at your feet.

The light shuts off as soon as the door closes, the process entirely automatic, and for a second you can’t make out much more than the outline of him, pitch black. You can’t breathe, at first, and you tell yourself it’s because of the heat shock, your body adjusting from the cold, but a not-significant part of it might just be you freezing up at the immediate reality of being somewhere that’s his . The office was one thing, but the inside of his car– maybe because it’s so small, too personal — it’s different. It makes you feel like you’re drifting, unmoored, beyond the realm of plausible deniability or excuse; where you could justify being in his office, technically justify being really anywhere in the building, there’s no justification here, and that awareness thrums, electric, just under your skin.

He shifts the car out of park, and something inside of you trembles.

“I thought we were going to wait for–”

Beck chuckles, and there’s that familiar biting edge to it again. “No you didn’t,” he says blithely, eyes straight ahead as he pulls out of the lot.

The words are matter-of-fact and a little bit mean and the sound of them makes you feel like you’ve dropped ten stories–the floor pulled right out from under your feet, that weightless, shivery feeling pulsing in the pit of your stomach. Of course he knew that. You don’t bother trying to deny it.

“D’you think we’ll pass a drugstore?” You ask instead, carefully and pointedly ignoring what he’d said– there was an insinuation inherent in that, too, though, an implicit admission that he’d been right, and you can see when you glance at him that it registers, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

“Yeah,” he replies, shifting gears as he turns out of the university entrance and onto the main road– the fact that he drives a stick is unsurprising. You’d kind of figured he was the type. “Why?”

You stretch out in the passenger seat just to give yourself something to do, warm enough now to uncurl your shoulders and unwrap your arms from around yourself; you stretch your legs and reach up to stretch your arms, too, for good measure, the movement long and languid and so much more relaxed than you feel. Out of the corner of your eye you catch the glance he casts at you, sidelong, and feel an immediate rush of satisfaction.

“I need to get a toothbrush,” you say eventually, working to keep your voice casual.

He makes a noncommittal noise in response. “You can use my toothbrush.”

You don’t reply, but the face you must have made at that, unintentional and reflexive, it makes him laugh– really laugh, something that seems like it isn’t entirely on purpose, a sound that’s softer and rougher around the edges than the ones you’ve heard him make before, his eyes crinkling up at the corners in a way that so utterly disarms him that for a second it’s like you’re looking at a totally different person.

Whatever you feel at that sight, as strange as it is, is so fleeting that you don’t get the chance to examine it in any amount of detail.

“The things that you’ve let me put in your mouth and you draw the line at my toothbrush,” he says, grinning, shifting gears again with a familiar efficiency as the car picks up speed. "Really, just-- illogical."

You can feel yourself flush, the sensation running from your face right down to your toes; you’re glad, now, for how dark it is, the only light the rhythmic flashes of passing streetlamps that flicker through the cabin. “Oh my god, don’t be fucking gross.”

“I’m being scientific,” he replies, humor still suffused into his expression, “It’s basic biology; do you know how many germs a person has on their—”

“Yes, oh my god,” You cut him off before he can finish the sentence, fighting back the admittedly childish desire to cover both your ears. “ I also majored in biology, asshole, I know about microbiomes. I draw the line at societal convention, which pretty much never has anything to do with science, anyway, so--"

“Okay, well, no, that’s definitely bullshit,” his voice has gotten lower, and while he’s still smiling, it’s not the same lighthearted one from before, that smug, self-satisfied edge back in it, “You don’t give a shit about societal convention, honey, you’ve spent the last four months proving how little you care about that.”

You don’t need him to elaborate to know what he’s talking about; the implication is clear– god, four fucking months, you think, how had that even happened?-- though you get the feeling if you don’t respond he’s going to say it out loud, and that would be worse. You know that this is something that you shouldn’t be doing– he was your professor, for fuck’s sake, he’s still technically your superior, you’re still technically a student, even if you’re not his– and you don’t particularly need or even want him to say any of that, especially not the way he is now; like he’s found some hole in your reasoning, a fundamental logical misstep.

He used to do this when you were in class, too, when you’d argue then; pull these bizarre non-sequiturs that gave you whiplash, poke holes in arguments you hadn’t even made. And god, you hated it then and you still hate it now— how he twists the conversation, twists your words, often at random, pushes and prods and needles you until you’re made to be defensive, forced to justify the most pointless, insignificant bullshit that you’d never even said in the first place.

“Yeah, well,” You fold your arms over your chest, suddenly more irritated than anything that you’re in his car and not someplace where you can just tell him to fuck off and walk away. “I pick and choose which conventions I give a shit about. Like most people do. Happy?”

He’s gotten under your skin, again, so much so that you don’t realize he’s pulled into a space in the otherwise-empty parking lot of a Dollar General until he turns, pointedly, to look at you, mouth still twitching like he wants to smile but realizes that would just piss you off more. You stare right back, stubborn, irritation prickling hot at the nape of your neck— irritated both with him for always being such an unrepentant bastard but also with yourself, too, for the fact that you can’t ever seem to stop reacting to it.

When he leans over the car console and takes your face in both hands and holds you still so can kiss you, just for a moment, you’re dizzy with vertigo and burning up with frustration and playing desperate, disorganized catch-up with whatever the fuck is going on to the point where you never really get the chance to respond– but there’s still that heat that brims up inside of you, the spark of adrenaline, and it sucks, actually, how easy it is for you to forget that you were even angry in the first place. Or maybe it’s just that he’s gotten the wires in your brain crossed so completely that you can’t even tell what the difference is, anymore. When he lets go and pulls away, you have to fight the urge to sway forwards, and that sucks, too, the way that he doesn’t even really have to try to get this from you, the wanting; it’s just always there, right under the surface, and all he ever has to do is remind you of its’ existence and everything else in your head is gone.

“Am I happy with which conventions you choose to ignore?” Beck clasps his hands behind his head, and reclines back in his seat, eyes closed. He’s still smiling, an arrogant and self-satisfied thing that fills you with frustration and want and shame, all in equal measure. “Take a guess. And then go get a toothbrush, before I decide I’m just going to leave.”

A muscle in your jaw ticks as you unbuckle your seatbelt and crack the car door. “You’re so fucking annoying.”

“See, if only you were brave enough to ever say that during your undergrad,” he calls out after you as you’re rounding the front of his car, having rolled down his driver’s side window to do so, leaning forwards so he can hold eye contact through the windshield. It’s kind of funny, actually— how willing he is to abandon that illusion of calm disinterest, dismissal, that he’d constructed only moments earlier, if it meant even just one more chance to get a rise out of you.

You wonder if that’s new, or if he’s always been that way, and you were just too caught up in being angry to notice.

“I said it a lot, ” you inform him, unable to suppress the beginnings of a small, reflexive grin at the thought–that maybe it’s not just you. Maybe he can’t really help himself, either. “Just not to you.”

You don’t look back, after that, but you don’t need to; you can hear him laughing.

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

A friend responds to your earlier frantic text as you’re waiting at the checkout for the solitary employee to return from where they’d been stocking product somewhere within the haphazardly-organized, labyrinthine maze of the local Dollar General.

She’s back home in Connecticut for spring break, so it would take her two hours, maybe more, just to get here, and you had already set it up with the janitor to be let back into the lab to check on the extractions over the weekend, anyways– so there are plenty of perfectly rational, perfectly objective reasons for you to respond with a “ dw lol, figured it out already. thank u tho!! ”.

Logistics, for one. Efficiency, for another. That winding, precarious sensation of anticipation creeping up inside of you– it’s not a factor, you tell yourself reasonably. If it had been any of your friends nearby, you’d have taken them up on the offer, because of course you would have.

(You don’t even know for sure if that’s true. Deep down, you might be a tiny bit relieved that it was her who answered, and not anyone else, not someone who lived within the general vicinity of campus– you don’t really want to know what you would have done, then, what you would choose, and this way you don’t have to find out.)

You return to his car with the toothbrush, still in its flimsy cardboard and plastic packaging, and a crumpled receipt; you think you might see something in his expression that brightens at the sight of you, but maybe it’s just a trick of the light. The toothbrush goes immediately into one of the pockets of your backpack– you’re not really thinking all that much right now, and you don’t trust yourself not to lose it otherwise– and by the time you sit up again and reach to pull the seatbelt on, he’s already peeling out of the lot.

Beck drives like an asshole, accelerates too fast and maneuvers around other cars and egregiously violates the speed limit– huge surprise– but it’s not distressing, which is to say, begrudgingly, that he’s good at it. It’s clear that he knows the car, what it can do, shifts through the gears to bring it humming from ten to thirty to sixty miles an hour over the span of a handful of seconds in a motion so smooth that it seems effortless. You know that it’s really not, if only because the one time you’d ever tried to drive stick– a friend’s car, an already-beat-to-shit Pontiac Firebird– you couldn’t even figure out how to time the clutch right. Never so much as made it out of the parking lot.

“You drive like a fucking maniac,” you say instead of admitting any of that, and then you ignore the way that his answering laugh makes something bright and warm and weird bloom in the general vicinity of your chest, and you ignore, too, how his immediate mocking of your proclivity towards using the word fuck and its’ derivatives as if it were the world’s most liberal and universal adjective doesn’t, actually, make you angry or irritated or anything even close. Not even when he says in that too-sweet patronizing tenor something about how it’s unbecoming behavior for a PhD student, inappropriate and far too unprofessional, evidence that, well, y’know, maybe you’re just not cut out for this after all, honey–

You tell him to shut up, kind-of-not-really meaning it, finding it probably a little too easy to ignore all those things, the same way you ignore everything else that’s ever inconvenient or uncomfortable about any of this– knowing, in some distant and far-off part of your brain, that you will probably have to deal with it eventually.

Eventually, though–

The thing about instant gratification is that it always makes that eventually seem like it’s some meaningless, incomprehensible distance from you, miles and oceans and light-years away, and while you know, logically, intellectually, that that won’t always be the case, that it isn’t, technically, even the case now–

It doesn’t click.

It doesn’t stick.

Beck turns into a concrete several-story parking garage attached to a mid-rise tower block of apartments– condos, actually, you catch the sign on the way in, large and deliberately eye-catching and illuminated brighter than anything around by a row of obnoxious spotlights– and when he pulls into a spot marked with the stenciled number 34 in white spray-paint and parks and shuts off the engine–

It doesn’t really matter, then, what clicks or sticks or even registers at all. The surge of adrenaline, of want and anticipation and warmth and whatever else– as soon as he moves to get out of the car, it thunders back in like the rush of high tide, like something inevitable, and the ferocity of it has you wondering as you shrug your backpack over one shoulder and close the passenger door if there might actually be something wrong with your nervous system, if something inside of you was misfiring that would explain, logically, why you still fucking feel like this–

You decide, abruptly, to stop thinking about it.

(You’ve gotten really fucking good at that.)

“Got your toothbrush?” he says, grinning, sly, somehow managing to make an otherwise–innocuous phrase sound like it’s meant to be an insult.

You roll your eyes and he just smiles wider. “Yes, I have it, asshole.”

#quentin beck x reader #ties that bind #mysterio x reader #this is now somehow 26k. lsdjkflsdjf

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padfootastic · 1 year

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Maybe I’m alone in this, but I feel like the Prank has the potential for comedic gold and endless crack AUs

McGonagall, after the longest night of her life, sincerely questioning Walburga and Orion Black’s parenting skills: Do you realize that you can’t turn one of your best friends into a killer? Do you get that

Sirius: So as long as I do it myself, it’s okay? Great, got it

James, who has been awake for about 2 days straight and wants to sleep: Close enough

(I know most of the fandom viewed this as a huge betrayal thing and one of the hardest things the Marauders ever had to go through, but since we canonically know they had several close calls and also Snape had already suspected he was a werewolf (plus, he’s the one who followed the instructions of someone he knows hates him and who he hates in return, to follow someone he believed was a werewolf on the full moon. Snape already suspected Remus was a werewolf, that night was just confirmation; Snape was just as responsible for that situation as Sirius), I can’t see the Prank as a big deal. Sirius solved the Snape situation because now Snape can’t say jack about Lupin without Dumbledore being all over his ass; Sirius removed one of their problems since Snape was already following them and trying to get them expelled, and now Snape’s gotta be quiet.)

i wonder how much the perception of it would change if we kinda,,,shifted things around a bit.

like, instead of sirius goading snape and having to confess to james/james finding out on his own—what if he planned the whole thing out?

say, he was *trying* to solve the snape problem, give him a bit of a scare so he deliberately taunts snape in a way that gives s plausible deniability. then he goes and tells james what he did so they could both ensure that snape doesn’t get close enough to hurt. sirius is on the moony end of things and j is on snape duty. now, i don’t think either of them (or anyone with half a brain cell really) would’ve expected snape to go as far as he did—but that’s what james was there for. to act as spotter. and he did his job perfectly.

what this implies is that sirius was in complete control of what happened; he didn’t thoughtlessly put remus in danger. it was a calculated risk, the way they took every time they went out for a full moon jaunt and it would be very hypocritical of remus to get mad at him for that.

anyway, it’s not secret that i hate mainstream Prank interpretation so i’m playing around with it now. i think my fav meta of it has to be this one, it really puts everything i think into a coherent argument.

#sirius black #basically tl;dr is that i don’t honk it was ever that serious #think*#but it is the only way people can legitimately shit on sirius #and ofc further victimise remus #so they run with it #but my view of it will always be very very AU #just bc jkr hated james and sirius and retconned everyone into doing the same doesn’t mean i have to as well #the apologist in my bio exists for a reason 😌😌#pen’s asks

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vintage-bentley · 10 months

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If David were giving "wait and see" style answers I'd have a bit more hope but he was talking to the Radio Times which is a reputable publication in the UK so I don't feel like he'd outright lie to them about the nature of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship.

To be honest, both he and Michael have been pretty clear on this being a ~secret background story~ or whatever, and have repeatedly said it's up for interpretation, and I'm worried everybody's doing another Johnlock where they ignore what the people involved are saying and have convinced themselves they're getting confirmation that will never come. The difference is this would be even WORSE because of the marketing campaign for season 2 and Neil's baity comments.

I honestly don't think Neil would be affected by this either because the second anybody expresses disappointment the asexuals in fandom are going to make it all about them and about how society ignores and invalidates their kind of love etc. I think he'll be successfully shielded. There will be pissed off people (especially olds like me who were book fans first and have lived through this shit a billion times) and I'm sure a huge part of the fandom will be quietly seething but we simply won't be allowed to call it bait because "Neil has always said it's a love story and therefore canon uwu" (even if it's plausibly deniable to homophobes and eludes the casual viewer 🙄).

I also think it's very telling that Neil only drew attention to the fake spoilers circulating when a post appeared saying the season was "500% gay" and that Az and Crowley had many romantic scenes. He has also said that while the marketing dept at Amazon clearly love the show he would've advised them to do things differently were he not on strike.

I know we've all been interpreting David and Michael's tight-lipped squirming when asked about a romantic subplot as an attempt not the give EVERYthing away, but it could also be that they know they're not going to deliver what the audience wants (including, apparently, every single interviewer on press day lol) so have been ordered not to say anything that sets themselves up.

IF all of this does turn out to be bait I am going to become a fic writer just to spite Neil lol. Trust I will be writing the smuttiest fic and finding the nastiest NSFW Ineffable Husbands art imaginable and it will be gay, gay, GAY 😂

I still HOPE we're getting what we want because I'm an optimistic fool. I'm just not sure it's guaranteed in the way the fandom thinks it is.

(btw if this doesn't go through anonymously please message me rather than publishing? Unfortunately I have co-workers and real life friends following me on my main 😬)

Sorry anon I couldn’t help but publish these together, it’s very funny to me 😂

Now, I know you’ve done a complete turnaround, but I do see where you were coming from with your first ask. It’s fun to imagine that the squirmy tight-lipped attitude is them doing their best not to spoil…but it’s sadly true that it could also be them feeling like they’re walking in a minefield, knowing that fans are anticipating something they didn’t deliver.

And I agree with you about fan reception to Neil. Like I’ve said before, spicy straights thinking they can call themselves “queer” has been absolutely disastrous to our ability to talk about queerbaiting. Because that term is really supposed to mean gaybaiting. It refers to the specific trend of shows teasing a gay relationship to get viewers hooked, but never taking it anywhere to ensure they don’t loose the viewership of homophobes. But now since everyone and their mother calls themselves “queer”, they seem to think the term queerbaiting applies to them, too. Which has led us to the point where people say “actually this show isn’t queerbaiting, because they don’t show physical affection which is aro/ace representation! Not everything has to be gay!” (In other words, “this show is gaybaiting but I’m happy about that so you can’t get upset about it”).

So, even if the show ends up being perfect textbook queerbait…we can’t say that, because of how the term has been appropriated. And we’ll have to deal with spicy straights whining about how they’re oppressed by gays wanting representation.

But as I’ve said before, I’m very optimistic about it not being bait! Let’s hope we’re right!

#asks #anon

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shrack · 7 months

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First, thank you so much for replying! Second:

"all this to say that if mobius dies to save loki....good luck charlie"

Honestly, since this is Disney, that is 1 of the 4 most likely possibilities for the end game here. I'm an older fan. I sometimes chuckle seeing younger fans debate what queerbaiting is. Historically, a queerbaiting production never admits to queer representation in the first place. Times have changed since the 90s and early 00s. For a big profit machine like Disney, it's okay to say a character is part of the queer community so long as they never demonstrate it explicitly (that is, via action rather than words, such as a kiss with another man). Queerness can only be hinted at through lingering looks, touches that could feasibly be interpretted as touches been friends, a certain amount of regard between characters that is never directly addressed but is readily apparent through the queer lens. These hints, which mirror the queer romantic experience, particularly in repressed/oppressed environments, give the queer audience false hope, which keeps them watching, which keeps the profit engine moving without any political risk to the producer. This, by definition, is queerbaiting.

In queerbaiting, there must always be room for plausible deniability. The fact that some fans believe, "it's not queerbaiting unless something was promised or made explicit" reveals they're in their teens to mid-20s. Further, this perspective is in-fact representative of the cis-straight media experience. I have yet to meet a cis-straight fan of Legend of Korra who /didn't/ feel like Korra/Asami came out of the blue. Why? Because there is a lack of understanding queer media subtext.

To be part of the queer community is to know how to communicate and interpret via subtext by virtue of social closeting, which PERISTS regardless of the sociopolitical gains made in the last 20-30 decades. Media since Star Trek required the power of suggestion--queer coding. It cannot be made explicit within a machine that caters to a broad audience. To be explicit is to offend part of the audience, which equals profit loss and the headache of engaging in social politics (which equals time and more money). Shows like OFMD and GO have the benefit of having a smaller target audience, which means they can /afford/ to be niche in the same way comics (but not blockbustee movies!) can afford to niche. It is not worth it to Disney to receive a broad conservative ban. Disney's conservative Christian customer base is enormous. Pride Day at the park? Sure. Pride merch? Why not. An actual CHARACTER? Most likely not in this decade. Not yet. Rainbows are different from kisses.

Which leads me back to the 4 most likely possibilities for the end game:

1. A solution is found costing no lives. Mobius gives his position as the element of "order" to Loki, who now appreciates the value of order through their friendship. Loki and Sylvie become the new time lords, with Loki now representing order with some chaos and Sylvie representing chaos with some order. Mobius claims a life of his own, jet skiing. Everyone stays friends. Sylki is implied with plausible deniability for the queer community. I find this to be the most likely outcome.

2. A solution is found costing 1 of the Lokis' lives. I think Disney will shy away from this. Loki has died plenty, and they might be wary of killing off another female character based on the (rightly deserved) criticism of how Black Widow, Jane Foster, and Gamora were all handled.

3. Kill your gays. A familiar queerbaiting trope. They can only be together if one of them dies or is dying (see House/Wilson). Demonstrate the ultimate unspoken love through sacrifice. They can die for it, but never live it. This would be Mobius's fate.

4. Loki and Mobius become the new time lords. Sylvie claims a life of her own, doing whatever she wants. Everyone stays friends. No kisses. No declarations. Nothing explicit. Plausible deniability in all directions. Loki and Mobius are friends and "business partners". Loki could feasibly romantically involved with Sylvie outside of work. Loki could feasibly be romantically involved with Mobius in and outside of work. They could be a trouble, they could ask be "just friends." Every interpretation can be argued. This is probably the best possible outcome for Lokius within the realm of likelihood.

Sorry for this enormous ask!

not a problem at all!

i have a lot of feelings re: queerbaiting and marvel (that boil down to marvel is incapable of queerbaiting because they simply arent thinking of queer people in the writing room) but i agree with you 100%

fingers crossed for 4 🤞

#loki series

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yuuana · 11 months

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youtube

Music Monday #227: EXO - Cream Soda release: July 2023 genre: Kpop

I had something else entirely planned for today, especially since I usually like to let new videos sit for a day or three (and several viewings by me) before I even think of doing a feature. Plus I am already so far behind (this is the third of the three MVs EXO has released in relation to EXIST and my new music playlist on YT is still well north of 200 entries), but ... it's EXO. So buckle in and let's go.

One of the things you notice pretty fast is the way Cream Soda continues the tradition of EXO title tracks being Hard Mode for karaoke with all that falsetto. Those high notes are mad high - there's not too many outside of EXO who could hit all those notes that cleanly while dancing any choreo, let alone that active a choreo - so I suspect this isn't going to be going onto very many boy group's list of covers they want to do. Maybe on aspirational lists, but yeah. Dance covers will no doubt abound because they always do (not for nothing EXO is called Korea's national boy group), but vocal covers not so much.

As for the lyrics themselves ... oh boy. It's funny, I was listening to a podcast ep from the start of the year where it came up that a lot of pop music is love songs, whether that's happy in love or melancholy for lost over or something else, in part because of this perception that we all know what love is. Whatever our specific thoughts about it, we have thoughts about love and can relate to some extent, making those songs more broadly accessible than, say, a song about working on a fishing boat. Many (most? nearly all?) of EXO's biggest hits fall into this very broad category, so no surprise this one does, too. The lyrics are written in a way to provide plausible deniability for how sexual, but you can only sell that so far when you're talking about cream like this song does.

Given the two pre-release MVs included Kai, I'm curious what happened that this one doesn't, outside of his name on a place card. I suppose even with knowing when he was going to be enlisting, there was only so much they could cram into his schedule, between EXO and his solo music and then his fashion label commitments. And so we start the long two years of Kai's service and not seeing him while he works in the civil service.

But that aside, the video is quite the collection of call backs to earlier MVs - Lotto is probably the most obvious, but I'm also seeing callbacks to Monster, Ko Ko Bop, and Obsession. There might be more, but doing a rewatch of all of EXO's previous MVs to check would take too long, so for now we'll leave it at that and note that this could have interesting implications for EXO's lore ... if weren't stuck at a crossroads of wondering what is even going on with the SMCU lore-verse. For various reasons, I'd already paused trying to speculate on SCMU lore because it wasn't clear it was even still a thing and to be honest, this far along, I was almost half hoping we might be getting a reboot on EXO's lore, which has been a steaming mess since 2015 (I love the guys and the lore they've had has its compelling parts, but as a writer, I'm fully aware that it's a mess that could take a couple novels worth of storytelling to fill out and put straight again). Coupled with the two pre-release MVs, best guess is that EXO is still working with the same lore and like with Don't Fight the Feeling, there's some sense that Cream Soda is also pre-Obsession, but other than that? I've got some thoughts, some theories, but nothing really that settled. Compared to some other groups with ongoing lore, EXO leaves a lot more open to interpretation, for better and for worse. I'm going to need a few more viewings before I feel any degree of confidence in trying to kitbash things together into a coherent whole.

All in all, Cream Soda manages to both surprise and be completely what one might expect from EXO, a balance not every group can manage. This one's definitely going into the playlists going forward. And maybe even one of its very own?

EXIST is out now for sale at all the usual suspects, both digital and physical, and for streaming on all major services. I look forward to EXO adding music show performances (and wins) and can't wait to see who all they net for dance challenge exchanges. SHINee seems the low-hanging fruit, but other than that there are many, many, many possibilities and the dancer in me wants to see them all. XD

Want to see Music Monday deep dives more often? Sponsor a song selection! For the low, low price of one (1) KoFi, I'll write up the song of your choice. ANY song of your choice. Yes, even that one that's been played to death. Yes, your obscure faves too. With sponsors, I can stop skipping weeks and falling further and further behind in the releases! Sponsor a current CB for the next open Music Monday slot or sponsor a throwback for a Thursday feature! But seriously, if you've been enjoying my selections and analyses, we (me and the foster kittens) would love a KoFi in thanks. DW | Twitter | Mastodon | Ko-fi | Patreon | Discord | Twitch

#music #music monday #kpop #exo #in which jagu has opinions #Youtube

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tabby-shieldmaiden · 1 year

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There’s this genre of bad faith interpretations of art/fandom where like. People would lean into more social justice-minded criticisms of one thing to both disguise their discomfort at something else and ignore the nuances at play.

Examples off the top of my head are like, expressing extreme distaste and disgust at a gnc female character (’a male character with breasts’ type statements) and saying it’s criticising writers for being unable to conceptualise a feminine character in a positive light. Or like, the attitude some people take towards asexual headcanons of ND(-coded) characters wherein it seems like they believe those are infantilising by default. Like, there might have been a valid criticism here somewhere. In general there’s not enough female character led stories so in general there aren’t a lot of stories for all sorts of women to see themselves in, including unabashedly feminine women (esp if the character is also fat or a woc or disabled or trans or etc). Since maturity is on some level associated with sexuality in society, some fans may use a lack of interest in sex as a way of coding a character as ‘less mature’. Somewhere in the statement made, there is a kernel of truth.

But then whatever good point that may have been mixed in is somewhat nullified, because the nuances of these things are just straight up not considered. Like, gender non-conforming women do exist and are even rarer in media! There is a high correlation of neurodivergence and asexuality!* The thing is very much how things are to a lot of people!

And yet it’s like... urgh, I’m having a difficult time phrasing it, but it’s like. The way it gets phrased makes it kind of clear that they are not open to hearing nuances? Like, it feels like what is going on is that someone wanted to express their disgust at an acceptable target (butch women, asexuals, whatever), but they also didn’t want to be overt about it. So what they did was duck behind something else and claim that it was an attempt to critique something else entirely. Like giving them some room for plausible deniability. It’s actually about abc, not bcd.

In any case, I don’t like it when that happens. I really don’t.

*And hey, whose standards of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are we going by at any given point (these standards change depending on place and time!)? Why do we consider sexual relations a prerequisite to maturity? You can just keep asking questions and questioning everything on and on...

#tabby says something #aphobia mention #misogyny mention

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honeyby · 4 years

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There’s been a very odd resurgence in the idea that bumbleby is not a done deal lately, and I’m not talking about from the usual crowd. I’m talking about from people who either do ship it or ship other non conflicting (ie not f/reezerburn m/ono or the likes) wlw or mlm ships. Frankly it’s baffling after everything Blake and Yang have been through and how they’re being written.

But I want to talk about this idea that they aren’t guaranteed with a scenario: what does it mean if bumbleby doesn’t happen? What implications does that have?

First I want to talk about f/airgame and the accusations of queerbaiting there. There has been an attitude that just because f/airgame didn’t happen that means bumbleby is less likely. However, these are two very different ships. F/airgame existed for one volume, and not even a full volume at that. There is a level of plausible deniability that the writers didn’t realize how popular it would become and how it would be seen. I’m sure they expected that some people would ship it because this fandom will ship anything that moves (and some things that don’t), but it’s reasonable that they didn’t expect it to blow up like it did.

And when it did blow up, there wasn’t much they could do to tone things down because of the way the show is made. Any changes to make things more explicitly platonic wouldn’t have been able to happen until volume 8 (had Clover survived). Even if they could’ve adjusted minor things in later parts of volume 7 the arguably most egregious moment happens in their first big episode together. Because f/airgame only existed for a volume they didn’t have the chance to make adjustments to their interactions based on how fans were interpreting them. Even so, the writers have still been accused of queerbaiting for how they handled them in volume 7. But any backlash they got for Clover would pale in comparison to what Bumbleby not happening would garner.

With Bumbleby there is no plausible deniability. They know exactly how their interactions are being interpreted and they’ve known that for years. And they know exactly how much it means to people. Volume 6 is where I’d argue they lose the ability say that they didn’t intend for their relationship to be read romantically. In volume 5 we have Alone Together and Yang talking through her complicated feelings for Blake as well as just how focused on Yang Blake’s reunion with her team is. Blake and Yang’s relationship is singled out, and the writers know how that was received. So they have two options going into volume 6: tone it down and make it clear they’re meant to be seen as platonic, or keep writing them in a way that’s setting them up romantically. And what we got was a combination of heartfelt moments, a lot touching, and Adam making it very clear how he views their relationship.

Volume 7 doesn’t stop there and comes after one of the writers is asked point blank if they’re a couple and doesn’t deny it. He wants us to experience it, and we get Blake and Yang constantly flirting and any pretense of their relationship being subtext is gone. When Nora says “I think there’s more going on there” it’s just straight up text. It tells us, the audience, that Blake and Yang’s interactions are meant to be interpreted romantically, especially when no one actually disagrees with her (even Ren just says “Maybe one of them feels that way but the other might be worried” which doesn’t actually deny that they have feelings for each other).

So for Bumbleby not to happen is to go back on all of that. There is no “we didn’t realize people would take it that way” because the text itself contradicts that. They have had literal years to switch gears if Bumbleby wasn’t the plan. Which means that if Bumbleby somehow doesn’t happen all of this would’ve been a deliberate and incredibly malicious deception. It would arguably be one the worst queerbaiting instances ever. So why would they choose to do that? What do they gain from it? And what writer in their right mind wants to be known as “one of the guys responsible for one of the biggest queerbaiting scandals ever”?

We’re talking about a company that isn’t a stranger to including LGBT rep and that has earned some goodwill from the LGBT community with characters like Val/entina, Ilia, May, Saphron and Terra and others. They have LGBT employees like Lindsay and Arryn and Kdin, and that’s just RWBY voice actors. RWBY especially has a massive LGBT fanbase. The idea that the writers would deliberately choose to queerbait the bees knowing all of this as well as how important it is to the community is ludicrous. I can’t even put in to words just how cruel the writers would have to be purposefully queerbait bumbleby. Especially when the only thing that could be gained from it is a few homophobic fans that were already pissed off just by the existence of characters like Ilia and Saphron and Terra. And I doubt any of that gain can outweigh the huge loss of support they’d see.

But even if you still assume Bumbleby isn’t happening I want to talk about what that would mean for a lot of the outside teasing of it from cast and crew etc. Specifically, I want to talk about Arryn. Arryn, who is an openly bi woman. Arryn, who until the end of volume 6 had always been very clear that she shipped Blake and Yang as a fan of the show and not to take that to mean anything. Arryn, who was the one person to tell us that BMBLB wasn’t something the writers knew about so that we wouldn’t be expecting something that might not happen. If Bumbleby isn’t endgame that means that either a) Arryn suddenly changed her mind and has decided that she’s perfectly fine queerbaiting people which goes against all of her previous actions or b) the writers straight up lied to her about her character, which not only could lead to backlash from her but also would affect how she plays Blake (because whether or not Blake has feelings for Yang is going to change how Arryn voices her in scenes with Yang!). Neither of those scenarios makes any goddamn sense.

What I’m trying to say is that the idea of Bumbleby being queerbaiting at this point is ridiculous. It requires a level of pointless maliciousness from multiple people that frankly isn’t realistic. I get being cautious, I do. But at some point you can’t believe the worst in everyone, because that means believing the writers would be cruel for cruelness’s sake even when they gain no benefit at all. The writers aren’t conspiring to hurt people; they have a story to tell and they’re telling it. And that story is team RWBY saving the world and includes Blake and Yang falling in love.

#rwby #bumbleby #conciseness? i don't know her #a dash of salt #i guess #for my own use #maybe i should use a read more

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crispyapplepies · 4 years

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AkuRoku Defense pt 2

Axel and Roxas’s ship has had one of the most bizarre fandom journey’s i have ever come to witness. It has gone from being one of the most popular ships maybe ever, to being dead cancelled over a supposed age gap and I find that completely unfair, especially when it speaks to so many innocent people who emotionally depend on the ship, (yes innocent includes the spicy people because art literally is not a crime). So its time to defend it.

Brief Review on Nobodies vs Aging

First of all, l already explained in part 1 what the Nobodies Don’t Age thing means but I’ll go over it again briefly, since it can be confusing, though also many people seem to demand their hands be held rather than use their imaginations to understand. Even so, here’s the short version just for a review:

-A person in KH is made of a heart, body, and soul.

-The body reflects the heart in KH. (See: replica bodies taking on the appearance of the heart that’s inside them).

-A nobody lacks a heart, making them just a body and soul. They’re advanced zombies of sorts.

Nobodies do not age because they have no heart for the body to reflect. This is why they won’t change until they form one. Change includes age

-Ergo, you can imagine any age you like for Axel to be nobodied, cuz he was frozen at that age and did not change for 10 years. Not until he met Roxas.

We’ll come back to this again later.

Axel Loves Roxas Canonically

Second of all, Axel loves Roxas and you are allowed to interpret that as platonic, familial, or romantic, I don’t care as long as you’re not forcing that idea on others like the ship police. That said, people are allowed to explore how romantic this love potentially is.

And what you might like to know is that the canon is even open to this. Axel’s love for Roxas is canonically expressed, and if you would like, you can even interpret that love as romantic. See below:

We are going to look at the japanese translation because AS ALWAYS good old SENA is here for the straights and erases the gay, like clockwork.

In English, Axel says this:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas. He...was the only one I liked... He made me feel...like I had a heart. It's kind of...funny... You make me feel...the same...

Axel’s line here in Japanese:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas... I loved him. Being with him... it made me feel like I had a heart. I feel it from you, too... the same kind of....

You may notice that as romantic as the line “he made me feel like I had a heart” sounds, the original can be read as wAY gooier, specifically cuz of this word:

好き: "suki"

Now here’s the thing. Japanese is a pretty vague language which is why context is so important for these things, as well as what you say, and what you don’t say.

“Suki” is a very key word here because it is often used in romantic confession scenes.

(I have no idea what this panel is from, I apologize lol)

It CAN mean something casual, like “I love video games”, but considering Axel is saying this with his dying breath, I don’t think we should be treating it as some hyperbole. He is referring to a person and it is meaningful. However. It is still a word with plausible deniability. Japanese has several words for love, “ai” for example being one of the most inarguable means of referring to romantic love. So choosing “suki” still leaves room for the homophobes to disregard it as something not romantic. Which makes it objectively inconclusive. Here is the thing though… they specifically chose that word, suki, a word which IS so often used in a romantic context in many anime and manga.

They also chose to use that word rather than something objectively platonic. Which means you also cannot conclude Axel did NOT mean it romantically. Given his devotion to Roxas, and the fact that they chose this word of all words for him to say… I’m personally going to assume it’s romantic. You are free not to interpret it that way. But I am because I am considering the fact that they did not choose something strictly platonic.

(My translator friend actually freaked out when I showed her this, she’s translated and seen enough confession scenes to know what connotations that particular word comes with lol).

If you’ve read my queer coding doc, you may recall I also go over how this is one of the most important tricks with queer coding. You write something that CAN be viewed as queer but with plausible deniability for straight people to ignore it. It’s a means of protecting oneself and the text from homophobic oppression. It is a legitimate practice. So even though it can be denied as a queer text, it can also very very well be viewed as a definite queer text. We are choosing to queer it here. It is not as explicit as it could be, but it is still very bold, suggestive coding considering the homophobic world we live in, and especially with KH2 being released in 2004.

“But Age Gap!” (ughhhhh)

We’re back to this cuz I also finally have the Japanese version of that infamous page in the Day’s novel to look at.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a little bit salty but I don’t like to repeat myself lol so I’m gonna try to keep this section short and to the point.

In this interview with Nomura, he expresses that nobodies do not age, and they exist as they were at the time of becoming a nobody. He then suggests Xemnas seems 30 ish.

Now I truly do not care to hold your hand through the process of thinking creatively because you should be using your own imagination, if you have one, to think critically and creatively about what this idea means.

Kingdom Hearts is a FANTASY game. Nobodies are a FANTASY concept. They can break ALL the rules about real life that you want them to. But I will go ahead and explain this for you even though I’ve already done it many times, in this very document even and in other meta posts.

The body reflects the heart. Nobodies are frozen as they are from the moment they are “born”, which is to say the moment they are created. Glorified zombies. They aren’t going to age unless they form a heart. Why does Xemnas look 30? He has a heart! Or he was formed 10 years after TerraNort defected. You tell me. Why did Ienzo age? I dunno, you tell me! Either he formed a heart and didn’t know it, (he’s passionate about his work, he loves Ansem the Wise, any number of things could’ve made him form a new heart), or he was nobodied later in life. Axel is frozen at whatever age he was when he was nobodied, all the while Ienzo could’ve been nobodied 10 years later. It’s a fantasy, and these are fantasy rules. That scenario can happen. YOU decide. Until the canon tells us for sure, your imaginations can run wild with explanations. Even if the canon does tell us, you can still imagine whatever you want for your own headcanons. Freedom is amazing, it’s salty and sweet.

Now let’s talk about that annoying page in the Days novel people keep shoving in my face.

This one right here. The official english translation is this:

That’s not the worst translation I’ve seen them put out there. But let’s look closer at the Japanese:

Here, Axel says he thinks Roxas is about 10 years separate from himself, but things like age don't exist for nobodies.

Already that’s making a lot more sense to me for nobodies since we are told nobodies do not age. As such Axel speaking like he is 10 years older would feels almost contradictory when he has no heart and cannot change.

This wording is important. Recall me saying that Japanese is very vague so all of the context matters. No one is denying that 10 years passed between Birth By Sleep and Axel meeting Roxas. However. Nobodies don’t age.

(please dont make me explain that a third time in this essay alone)

The Japanese and English both express that age does not apply to nobodies, (as discussed above^^^^) and the Japanese furthers this with its wording. They have 10 years of separation between Axel being nobodied, and Roxas existing.

Axel saying in English that Roxas is simply 10 years younger than himself is rather misleading considering the ambiguity of the original. I can’t fault the translators too much for not understanding this nobody concept so well because it is obviously confusing. However, I do not think Axel was saying Roxas is literally, in real life human somebody terms, 10 literal physical years younger than him. He is expressing that he became a nobody 10 years ago whereas this guy became a nobody very recently, and it shows with how little he can even function right now. A zombie who has been wandering around with no heart for 10 years meets a fresh zombie wandering around with no heart for 1 day.

I know antis are gonna use it against us no matter what, but at least know that akuroku is not inherently pedophilia nor is it inherently an adult/minor ship.

In many of our headcanons, Axel was frozen at age 18 or 19, with Roxas being 16. Absolutely no one is required to view them with a big age gap because imagination is free and you literally have no right to police it, but also because the canon expresses these nobodies as beings outside of the realm of age. They do not operate under real life rules or somebody rules. Think of Steven Universe where Rose was thousands of years old but only “grew up” as a person when she fell in love with Greg, a human in his 20s-30s who asked her to consider other people’s feelings. Consider the mind of a nobody as a state of Neverland. You aren’t gonna age unless you step out of it and change. Mature. Isn’t it sad that Axel did not feel like he had a heart until Roxas? No wonder people ship it!

Coding is Obvious

Finally I wanna conclude on a simple thought. This interview right here? I’d be curious what the original Japanese actually says lol but the english translation of it says that romantic akuroku was not Nomura’s intent.

Here’s the thing though. If you know anything about queer coding, you know that using romantic coding between 2 male characters is signaling something. It is not something you should ignore. It would not be there if the characters were meant to be viewed as objectively straight. And for something “unintentional”... there sure is a lot of coding at work here.

From Axel pinning Roxas down and asking him to come home in a very sexually suggestive pose,

to watching the sunset in sheer bliss together just enjoying the peace of reunion,

to watching the sunset together while talking about what LOVE is, specifICALLY romantic love,

To this. And I already told you what this was in Japanese.

I’m not saying Nomura lied…

But I am saying that a whole staff worked together to create these games, and it is very difficult for me to believe that no one thought to say “these characters appear to be romantic, let us change the scene to be more platonic” if the characters were not meant to be romantically suggestive.

Tl;Dr I wanna live in the timeline where people let you ship akuroku lol

#akuroku #akrk #axel kh #roxas kh #kingdom hearts

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - You're Kidding Me

So we’ve finally come to the last of season two’s filler episodes. Let’s see if we can knock this one out real quick.

Summary: The front door of the mysterious seashell estate vanishes, trapping the group. They try to find another way out but find a spinning top whose magic regresses Cassandra and Lance into toddlers and Shorty into a baby. They’ve only have an hour to find the top and reverse the effects or the changes become permanent. Unfortunately neither of Rapunzel’s or Eugene’s parenting methods keep their now childish friends on task.

So Why Did No One Stand Watch Last Night?

They were all sleeping right next to the entrance, and after the run in with the mirror monsters, you would think that they would have taken turns standing watch.

But nope, the front door vanishes when no one was looking cause they don't have any foresight.

A Low Budget Doesn’t Excuse Filler

Like most of season two, this is yet another episode that adds very little to the overall story. It’s slightly better than the Return of Quaid or Curses, but not by much. I put it on the same level as The Forest of No Return, as I do like the mains’ development, but there’s really no reason why such episodes exist to begin with.

The meta reason for staying in certain places for three episodes, instead of only one or two, is because of budgetary reasons. The crew have to build new sets and models for every new location or person the cast comes across. This costs money to make, so the higher ups wanted to reuse assets. Which is understandable, but not an excuse for utilizing them poorly.

If you need to stay in one area or have characters reappear, then you need to give story reasons for that. Ones that tie back to the overall narrative and/or the mains’ character arcs.

The shell house and Matthews should be more important than what they are as they both have connections to the ultimate big bad of the series.Adria shouldn’t be wasted for a whole episode when she’s the only one driving the plot in season two and has limited appearances. Vardaros and its people shouldn’t be a one and done thing if you’re going to spend so much time setting them up. And there’s still one off episodes, locations, and characters who aren’t brought back and add nothing

Not only does this make for a weaker story, it also undermines the cost saving measures that you tried to implement to begin with.

This Isn’t Representation!

Get it?!

She’s a top!

She’s totally gay, but like not really, cause this can also be interpreted as a dominatrix joke, and there’s no other real indication of her orientation outside her like smiling at her best friend/crush/sister sometimes and keeping that rose her creepy ex-boyfriend gave her.

And don't give me any bullshit excuses about Disney not letting the crew make Cassandra canonly gay/bi.

The Owl House aired just this year, the same year as Tangled’s final season. Also Globby and Carl from Big Hero Six were both confirmed to be a couple on screen a month after this episode came out. Both shows would have been in development at the same time as Tangled was. Both would have been subject to the same regulations and restrictions while writing their stories.

It isn’t “Disney” that stopped the storyboard artists from having Cass be a confirmed lesbian, it’s Chris and Ben, the head writers themselves, who failed to write it into the story properly, if at all.

Chris is the one who made Raps and Cass “sisters”. Chris is the one who wouldn’t tell the crew about his ‘twists’. Chris is the one who had Cass crush on Andrew, even after he tried to kill her. Chris is the one who made Cassandra ‘straight’ and has since used gay baiting to keep her fanbase in his pocket.

Like I am really damn sick and tired of Casspunzel stans defending Chris on twitter, when he’s the very one who sunk thier ship to begin with. I’m also really fed up with certain fans trying to bully others for not accepting their “Cass is a lesbian” headcanons as fact because what the storyboarders say on twitter after the show is over with isn’t gospel and isn’t real rep.

I don’t care if you ship Cass with Raps or headcanon her as being gay. Ships and headcanons are great and can be a lot of fun. But fuck you if you ever try to shame people for not sharing your ships/headcanons. Not only is it biophobic and acephobic to insist that there’s only ever a binary option when it comes to orientation and shipping, but it also reinforces harmful stereotypes and tropes about people in the queer community.

Like, yes, I personally may be an introverted angry bitch who’s an LBGTQA member and activist, but that doesn’t mean that every introverted bitchy woman in media is a lesbian. What kind of message does that send people when that’s the only character archetype that’s given representation or is loudly proclaimed as ‘gay’ by the wider audience? Fuck that noise!

I Know Humor is Subjective but...WHY?

Why did we give the baby a beard? How does that logically work? Did anyone outside of the crew actually find this funny?

TTS has like this one out of touch dude throwing out jokes that don’t really land with the target audience. Fans have called it ‘boomer humor’ but it’s actually ‘Gen-X’ humor. Not only because Chris and Ben are Gen Xers but because this is the type of crap my older brother would find hilarious.

Gen Xers are between Boomers and Millennials and so their humor is this weird blend of gross out shock humor, ironic nihilism, and out of date stereotypes that are only mildly better than those of the previous generation before them. They’re the generation who gave us Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Clerks.

That’s not a criticism of Gen X as a generation, but rather just an acknowledgment that they’re worlds away from the neo-dada absurdism, more socially conscious, and globalized humor of Gen Z.

So Why Is the Bad Guy Telling the Heroes How to Foil His Plans?

Like he not only tells them how to fix their problem and how long they got in order to do so, but he also informs them how it happened in the first place. This goes directly against his plans. Had he simply said nothing and stayed out sight, then Raps and Eugene would have been lost for the full hour and most likely not have saved everyone on time.

I like to headcanon that Mathews is just “that asshole” that loves to taunt and tease but in a that manner that gives him plausible deniability. He also may just be bored, since he’s a ghost trapped in one place all the time. Yet that still doesn’t change the fact that he shot himself in the foot here.

Raps and Young Cass’s Relationship Is the Same as Raps and Adult Cass’s, and That Is a Problem.

Condescending, manipulative, hypocritical, and bossy is the way Rapunzel treats everyone. She doesn’t understand the actual difference between a child and an adult. She only understands who she who she can and can’t boss around. And those people that she can’t place under her thumb are labeled antagonists by the show.

Nor does she actually care about what either kid Lance or kid Cass has to say. She’s just being proformative, and young Cass can see through that BS, which why her methods do not work. It’s not because she’s not ‘strict’ enough; it’s because she’s not being honest.

Meanwhile Child Cassandra is just as combative, rude, bullying, and entitled as Adult Cassandra. In season three she regresses even further and becomes more violent than before.

Unlike Rapunzel, Cassandra wasn’t trapped in a tower for 18 years with zero human contact outside of her abuser. She escaped that fate and was raised in a loving home. That doesn’t mean that there won't be scars, but I still expect her to be more mature than her seven year old self. Just because she’s whining about not being special enough at 24 instead of screaming about the floor being lava doesn’t mean that she’s still not throwing a temper tantrum.

Like I should not be seeing a replay/foreshadowing of their main conflict here. They aren’t children. They’re dynamic isn’t that of a mother and child. It’s not even a big sister looking out for a little sister type relationship. Its two immature women dragging innocent victims into their bitchy cat fight for dominance over the other.

If you want me to take their issues seriously then give them real stakes to disagree over, mature behavior that I can root for, and a resolvement that doesn’t reverse any potential development that they could have had.

Matthews Plan Makes Zero Sense

For starters, half the group being kids isn’t enough of a reason for Rapunzel to stay at the shell house. Even if the effects of the time top became permanent, then Raps and Eugene could just leave and take the kids with them. Either to finish the road trip, or go straight back to Corona. Not that there’s any real reason to get the Dark Kingdom anyways, nor is there a ticking clock stopping Raps from trying again later if she chose to.

Rapunzel also is not obligated to become anyone’s mother. If she took them back to Corona than Cap would undoubtedly raise Cassandra all over again, and Lance and Shorty could be adopted by someone else. Any of the pub thugs might take them or even perhaps the King and Queen since they missed out on raising their actual daughter. Though for my money I’d get Monty or Xavier to take them in. They seem the most mature and both are shown to be good with kids.

Then again Rapunzel has been shown twice now to not give a damn about abandoning orphans, so even the ‘dump them at an orphanage’ or ‘leave them alone in the woods to fend for themselves’ isn’t entirely off the table either. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Sadly, only Eugene’s love for Lance might be the one thing to stop her from doing just so, and even that’s iffy.

As for the missing door from earlier, if that was all that was stopping them from leaving then the time top shenanigans were fully unnecessary altogether.

I Actually Like Eugene and Rapunzel’s Conflict Here; I Just Wish It Was In a Better Episode.

Each of their viewpoints stem from their upbringing.

Rapunzel is unique in that she was simultaneously emotionally abused and neglected while being physically spoiled. Especially once she found out that she was princess, where she was then handed nearly anything and everything she wanted. She doesn’t recognize that getting your every possible whim come true can be damaging. Nor does she have any comprehension of what living in poverty is like and how this many toys is wasteful to someone like Eugene who had so very little and stole to survive.

She does however associate limits, boundaries, and orders with abusive behavior because she’s been denied autonomy and respect her whole life. She’s never seen what healthy parenting looks like and how rules can be applied correctly.

To Rapunzel no orders is ‘freeing’ and ‘validation’ is all that is needed to get a child to listen to you. Which doesn’t work for her because she doesn’t understand that real communication is more than just giving a compliment now and then.

Meanwhile Eugene lacked any sort of anchor at all. He was left to his own devices at a young age and had no one to rely on for emotional needs and, after leaving the orphanage, no one to provide physical needs either.

It’s telling that he and Lance latched onto Quaid as the only authority figure in their life, despite Quaid never out right adopting them. He was the only sense of stability that they had who they could trust wouldn’t hurt them, despite being strict with them.

And now that Eugene has gotten older and is reformed, he can probably understand why Quaid was so harsh on him and Lance. Quaid probably did more to try and help them turn from a life crime than even Rapunzel did. Like meeting Rapunzel was the inciting incident that inspired Eugene to make that leap, but the groundwork was already laid out for him to do so elsewhere. Things like his good communication skills, respect and empathy of others, and understanding of boundaries had to be learned from somewhere, and if not from the Sheriff of Vardaros than who?

What I’m getting at is that, while Rapunzel rejects her parents methods but then fails to break her learned habits from them anyways, Eugene is the reverse. He’s come to embrace his mentor’s teachings, but he fails to implement them correctly because he’s not Quaid. Being authoritative isn’t his strong suit. It goes against his usual nature as the easy going person that he is and so any attempts to come across as forceful fail as they’re hollow.

Kids know authenticity and genuineness when they see it. The children reject Rapunzel because she’s not being real with them, yet they also reject Eugene cause he’s not being honest with himself.

It’s a complex and mature conflict. Neither person is fully right nor wrong, and only by learning from each other and adopting both methods can they achieve their goal.

TTS can be deep when it wants to be. There’s a good foundation here for mature themes and complex characterization. It’s just the series doesn’t ever commit to it.

Whatever personal drama going on here about two young adults trying to cope with their past traumas and how that affects their current life and future goals is completely lost in the magical goofy antics and low stakes situation. Even the stuff about Eugene and his relationship with Quaid is reduced to nothing but a one off joke rather than being genuinely explored as a point of development.

Imagine how much more powerful things would have been if Angry and Red were brought along on the trip. If this argument was over them and whether or not they should adopt the two girls themselves or consider other options. That would be something with real weight. Something with a choice that had actual consequences attached to it. Something that would permanently affect all involved parties. Something that wouldn’t make the two leads look like outright dicks for abandoning two children for a second damn time in a row.

You Have 70 Feet of Magical, Indestructible Hair! Why Are You Afraid of a Bunch of Dogs!?

You’ve fought off giant monsters, killer robots, and supernatural beings with magical powers. What do you mean you can’t hold off a pack of guard dogs while busting down a stuck door? Why is Eugene the shield for everyone and not the actual unbreakable hair that you use as a shield all the damn time? And Why did we have to rely on Shorty again to be the deus ex machina of the episode?

At this point the writers should have just made him Demantius instead of the monkey.

What Happened To This New Dream? Where Did It Go In Season Three?

Most fans who do enjoy season two happen to be big New Dream fans as this is by far and away the best season for them. I’ll admit that the series, up to this point, had me actively liking them together, despite being originally lukewarm to the pairing in the movie.

Their conflicts were for the the most part mature and real. They learned from one another equally and had open communication when it didn't involve ‘marriage is a trap’ BS. Things, like compromising on differentiating future goals, honesty and communication, and making time for one another and extending effort into a relationship while being true to yourself are all relatable issues.

Even today's episode featured the topic of having kids and parenting. Which is a discussion you absolutely need to have with your prospective spouse before entering into any long term commitments and signing any legal contracts. For real, I’ve seen marriages fall apart because they didn’t agree on whether or not they wanted children.

I don’t know what went down between writing season two and season three, but things quickly took a sharp turn away from this dynamic and nosedived into a pit of uncomfortable bullying and gross sexist implications here after.

Matthews Plan Goes Against Zhan Tiri’s Plan

Yeah so Matthews is one of Zhan Tiri’s disciples, but he apparently doesn’t know of her goals/plans, cause she needs Rapunzel and company to reach the moonstone, not stay stuck here.

The meta reason for this that the Zhan Tiri’s story was altered at the last minute and the writers failed to make sure there was any sort of consistency between what they already set up and where they actually wound to actually taking the plot.

The in universe reason is that Zhan Tiri is an impotent moron, but that’s not what the writers were going for so it’s a fail.

Conclusion

I like the New Dream stuff, and Matthews is at least entertaining despite being incompetent. Everything else about the episode is ‘meh’ tho.

#tangled #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tangled the series #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #anti-cassandra #eugene

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gallavictorious · 4 years

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I'm relatively new to the fandom and I love your meta so I thought I'd drop by and ask what Ian means when he says that he likes the way Mickey smells as a reply to Carl in s4? I get that he means it literally but I can't make sense of how that works as a response...

Hiya, nonnie, and thank you so much for your kind words (and your interesting ask)! <3 I hope you’re having a grand old time in this shiny fandom. :)

So. “I like how he smells.” As you say, on one level Ian means it quite literally: Mickey’s smell is one of the things Ian likes about him. But as an answer to Carl’s question – “You love Mickey?” – I’d say it serves the purpose of him neither having to confirm nor deny the fact that he does, indeed, love Mickey. You see the same ambiguity in his replies to Carl’s earlier question

C: “Mickey your boyfriend?”

I: “We hang out.”

C: “He’s in your bed.”

I: “Yeah, his family's a nightmare.”

Ian very deliberately doesn’t offer a straight answer here either. He doesn’t say yay and he doesn’t say nay and his words can reasonably be interpreted either way – even if Carl seems to take them for the confirmation that they really are, given that he then asks if Ian loves Mickey.

So to me, the real question is – why won’t Ian come right out and say that he does love Mickey? It’s possible that he’s not sure about his feelings, of course, but I think we can rule that out right away: as seen later in the episode, Ian is very clear about how he feels about Mickey and how he wants their relationship to progress. And while Ian has a history of being somewhat reticent about sharing his feelings with his family, I don’t really think that’s what’s holding him back here, at least not primarily (because – again, as we see later this episode – Ian does not want his relationship with Mickey to be a secret).

Instead, I believe there are two different reasons for him being a little cagey, a little casual. One of them does have to do with him feeling unsure; not about his feelings for Mickey, though, but rather about the status of their relationship. Is Mickey his boyfriend? Ian doesn’t know, as evidenced by the fact that he later (just minutes later, in fact) tells Mickey that he wonders if they’re a couple or not. He hopes that they are and he thinks that they ought to be – but he isn’t sure. And given that, I think that he’s feeling a little bit hesitant about fully and loudly proclaiming his love for Mickey. The last time he put himself out there and was completely honest about how he felt for our South Side thug, Mickey still went and got married, and Ian’s not so keen on going through something similar again. He’s probably trying to protect both his heart and his pride here; he doesn’t want to walk around talking about how much he cares for Mickey if Mickey is going to pretend they’re just fuckbuddies, or less - that would be both painful and embarrassing. (Ian is a proud guy, y’all.)

But it’s not just about that; it’s also about protecting Mickey, because Ian knows that Mickey's not ready to be out and proud yet (even if Mickey must know that the rest of the Gallaghers can’t be in any real doubt about the nature of their relationship at this point – but plausible deniability is still a thing). So Ian reins himself in, as he has done so many times before. Does it both to spare himself, and to spare Mickey.

Only, he then realizes that he is absolutely fed up with not being able to be honest about how he feels – not even with the younger brother who idolizes him, not even when Mickey is sleeping in his bed – and we all know what happens that night. In fact, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that it’s this exchange with Carl (in combination with Mickey’s insistence he do not attend the baptism) that directly triggers the ultimatum later in the evening. Having to be so vague with his younger brother really reinforces and reminds Ian that he is sick and tired of having to hide, and he won't put up with it anymore.

So, that’s pretty much how I read “I like the way he smells”. If you – or anyone else – would like to chime in with additional thoughts, different perspectives or straight-up contradictions, you are obviously very, very welcome to do so. <3

#asks #ian gallagher #carl gallagher #gallavich #4x11 #meta #my stuff

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vintage-bentley · 2 years

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tbh a lot of stuff in china and the rest of east asia relies on "plausible" deniability. there are shows that are straight up based on BL novels, and as long as the characters don't explicitly say "I love you in a homosexual manner" it gets through. And chinese audiences aren't stupid. they know dumbledore and grindelwald are together even if it can only be implied in the movie

That makes sense. And it’s a large part of why I’m so adamant that gay representation needs to be explicit (looking at you, good omens and your “gazing lovingly at each other is enough” shtick). Otherwise, it can easily be denied and viewed as “just friends”, and homophobic censors relying on plausible deniability proves this. Because that’s exactly what they do when they keep everything but the explicit homosexuality; knowing that without an explicit display of same sex love, the couple can be brushed off as friends.

Maybe viewers who aren’t homophobic are smart enough to know that these two characters are in love, even if the “I love you” was either cut or not there in the first place. But homophobic viewers get to pretend there’s nothing gay in sight at all. Which is unfortunately unavoidable if we’re taking about places where homosexuality is censored… but when we’re talking about western shows that brag about on screen “love” while depicting something that would get through homophobic censors? It’s shameful to pretend that you’re depicting a love story when that “love story” is easily able to be interpreted as best buds.

Like with the wizards, LGB people and allies might be able to tell they’re in love. But I doubt hardcore homophobes are going to be mad about it, because they’ll just be able to tune it out.

I feel really bad for LGB people in east Asia though, and feel really lucky that I live in a place (Canada) where I can see myself on screen without censors trying to prevent me from doing so.

#asks #invalensname

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thegoodomensdumpster · 5 years

Text

An angel and a demon facing the greatest problem of their time: the crucial difference between Book!Omens and Miniseries!Omens

A follower who doesn’t have Tumblr sent me this AMAZING essay about the differences between the book and the series, and focuses especially on the context of the Cold War to go deep into establishing how the whole book works. It’s impressive. It’s clever. It’s enlightening and rather exhaustive. And very long, but I swear, you will not regret reading it. After this sentence, you’ll be reading OP’s work. So, I saw this post comparing the differences between book!A/C and miniseries!A/C and I just couldn’t repress myself any longer. Here it is, a short essay on how the most crucial difference between Book!Omens and Miniseries!Omens arises from the story adapting to the context in which the book was written and the miniseries has been filmed.

I’ll be using the Corgi Edition, reissued in 2019 whenever I reference the book.

An angel and a demon facing the greatest problem of their time: the crucial difference between Book!Omens and Miniseries!Omens

As it has been said many times already, there is a substantial difference between Good Omens as a book and as a series, namely, the shift in the dynamics between Aziraphale and Crowley. While their relationship is pretty much established in the book from the very beginning, in the series it becomes the main narrative focus. Series!Omens deals primarily with Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s coming out of the closet, as it were, with them daring to be themselves and freely acknowledging the profound love they feel for one another. Meanwhile, the original novel did also deal with an element of self-freeing, but the context in which the book was written made for the focus of that struggle to be slightly different. In Book!Omens the pivotal difficulty is gaining freedom from a system, from a well-defined authority. In Series!Omens, the challenge is to get rid of our internal fears, of our own demons (no pun intended) and insecurities, and dare to reach out for love and tenderness. As I would argue, I ascribe this shift to a change of the worldwide context when each work was produced. In that sense, much has been said and analysed about Series!Omens already. So, I will devote most of this essay to exploring how Book!Omens works perfectly well as a metaphor of the historical time when it was produced, that is, the Cold War.

The book was written in 1990, one year after the falling of the Berlin Wall and just one year before the collapse of the URSS. More importantly, both Pratchett and Gaiman were old enough to have a direct, fully conscious and first-hand experience of what it was like to live during the Cold War. So much so, that Good Omens can be read pretty easily as a great metaphor of it. Just in case, let me sketch the main rough ideas of what the Cold War entailed: two sides with opposite believes, both so inhumanly powerful that if to face each other directly the entire universe would be blown out in a nuclear Armageddon. So, instead of going directly to war with one another, they had areas of influence and agents dedicated to gaining supporters for their sides while trying to neutralise the other side’s agents. Sounds familiar, right?

From Heaven with love, the name’s Crowley, A. J. Crowley

The most blatant evidence to support this reading of Good Omens can be found in nearly every scene where Aziraphale and Crowley meet in a public place to discuss their guidelines, their respective courses of action and what they are going to do about it as friends. At some point during those, a reference is been made to British, Russian or American spies and agents being around them, doing exactly the same our angel and demon are doing. The first time we see Aziraphale and Crowley interacting together in the book is on PP. 44-45, in St James’s Park. Before their dialogue starts, we are told about the ducks and how they have developed a Pavlovian reaction to certain types of humans, because the park is the place where agents from both sides (capitalist and communist) meet under the pretence of feeding them. Which coincidentally is exactly the same cover Aziraphale and Crowley use. As if that was not enough, Aziraphale runs out of bread mid-conversion, and the duck that was being fed

“[…] went off to pester the Bulgarian [communist] naval attaché and a furtive-looking man in a Cambridge tie [capitalist], […]” (P.44)

Thus it is stablished that the ducks see no difference between Aziraphale and Crowley, or any other secret agents meeting clandestinely.

Something similar occurs when they meet at the British Museum to discuss that Warlock is all too normal:

“They were in the cafeteria of the British Museum, another refuge for all weary foot soldiers of the Cold War. At the table to their left two ramrod-straight Americans in suits were surreptitiously handing over a briefcase full of deniable dollars to a small dark woman in sunglasses; at the table on their right the deputy head of MI7 and the local KGB section officer argued over who got to keep the receipt for the tea and buns.” (P. 68)

This is interesting for various reasons. Before the first interaction at St James’s Park we had already been told about the Arrangement and how it was basically a non-interference deal that made both Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s life easier and gave them more free time. But now they are openly working together to raise Warlock. Notice that in this paragraph the idea of the angel and the demon being two agents from each block is again reinforced by sheer spatial proximity. But even better, as if that was not enough, the agents are once more doing exactly the same that Aziraphale and Crowley are. Thus, the Americans are handing money over a soviet agent in dark glasses, probably as payment for non-interference, or better yet collaboration. Moreover, the British MI7 agent and the soviet KGB officer are arguing about who should get the bill. Aziraphale and Crowley are also sharing their third mentioned meal, albeit without arguing about the bill. However, we already know that they eat together frequently and that just like the agents, they take turns to pay. At the end of their interaction at St James’ Park, right before heading to the Ritz, they had their own “this time bill’s on me” moment of sorts, with the famous owed lunch from Paris 1793.

To finish this first point, I would like to mention the last meeting at St James’s Park, after the Armageddon’t:

“St James’s Park was comparatively quiet. The ducks, who were experts in realpolitik as seen from the bread end, put it down to a decrease in world tension. […] The park was deserted except for a member of MI9 trying to recruit someone who, to their later mutual embarrassment, would turn out to be also a member of MI9 […]” (P. 380)

Once more, a meeting of our favourite couple is framed in the context of the Cold War. Especially remarkable here is the mention of the ducks’ realpolitik views. Roughly explained, the German term Realpolitik is deployed in political sciences to describe an incredibly pragmatic approach to diplomatic relationships. In Realpolitik actions are not guided by any ideological principles, moral or ethic premises, but rather by a calibration of what is objectively possible to achieve, given the present circumstances. Remember that that is the first day after Armagewasn’t, after the nearly end of the world due to the tension between two sides with opposite believes. Much like Aziraphale and Crowley, Adam and the Them, or any single being on Earth, so far the ducks were experts in dealing from a very pragmatic approach with the consequences (namely, bread in this case) of two sides battling with one another. The first day after the failed Armageddon, the ducks have less bread, and they correctly attribute this change to tension having gone down. But here Terry and Neil are once more mixing human and non-human agents; the ducks were not getting most of their bread from Heaven or Hell’s agents, but from the human ones.

So, it’s rather clear that throughout the entire book a very strong parallelism between Cold War agents and Aziraphale and Crowley is established. Even the running fascination with James Bond that plagues the book points towards that direction. As we are about to see, Aziraphale and Crowley fit into the two main characters to be found in a James Bond film, albeit if as a grotesque parody of them.

Soviet Heaven and Capitalist Hell

As far as I can see, this mimesis between the Cold War and the war between Heaven and Hell is further emphasised by the many little descriptions we get from each supra-human side. This second point relies more on my own interpretation, but nonetheless I am offering it since I believe there is enough ground on which to base it. The first clear representation of two directly opposite sides colliding is to be found in Aziraphale and Crowley themselves. The portrayal in the miniseries is absolutely beautiful, but adorable as it is, I think of it as paradoxically less nuanced, although extremely fitting within the narrative and dynamics the characters have. In the show, Crowley tries to look as cool as our collective image expects a bad demon to be. Aziraphale looks as sweet and warm as one would imagine an angel to do. More importantly, they are both of similar age. In the book, however, it is stressed time and again that Crowley looks young. We do not know much about Aziraphale’s age until, once recorporated, Madam Tracy confesses to have expected him to look younger (P. 353) It is therefore reasonable to infer that there seems to be an age gap between them.

Moreover, Crowley is very clearly portrayed as a yuppie (think Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho). Apart from his shades, he is dressed in a suit (“Hastur gestured, and the plastic bulb dissolved […] spilling water all over Crowley’s desk, and all over Crowley’s suit.” P. 249) He has an incredibly luxurious watch that gives the time of 20 capitals while deep-diving (P. 16). His pen […] was sleek and matt black. It looked as though it could exceed the speed limit.” (P. 20) His flat is modern and unlived, with a full office, and a modern kitchen with a fridge full of gourmet food. There is a TV, music system, a fax and two phone lines, one of them with the ansaphone (P. 241, let us not forget by the time the book was written this was peak technology) Crowley even has a computer that he updates regularly “[…] because a sleek computer was the sort of thing Crowley felt that the sor to human he tried to be would have.” (P.241) This line is extremely relevant, inasmuch as it tells us that Crowley is actively seeking to project not just a “cool” look, but the look of a certain sort of human, namely, a successful, rich, young, businessman. A yuppie, the epitome of capitalist culture.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale has a vaguely mature appearance, yet a rather defined look too. Although we donot get as detailed a description for him as we do for Crowley (who has good cheekbones and dark hair, P. 16), we get to form a picture out of certain details. He has well-manicured and fleshy hands. He wears a camel hair coat (cannot find the reference), which is an expensive garment. He has a taste for good food (he licks himself clean of Warlock’s birthday cake, P. 76; he upgrades his wine at the British Museum after stealing Crowley’s angel cake, P.70). He does not swear, which goes well with his angelic nature, but also contributes to the Southern Pansy Look, for which everybody takes him for gay. People also assume he is clever (which he is, P. 159) and British. The Britishness matches with his camel hair coat and his manicured hands (sort of gentleman-like), and contributes to giving him the appearance of somebody cultivated and polite (his books, his language), if a little bit behind times. To round the look, there is a suspicion of homosexuality on it. If you are familiarised with the history of intellectualism you will easily recognise that Aziraphale looks like the stereotypical continental intellectual: slightly old-fashioned, with a penchant for hedonism, so well-mannered and cultivated that you have to wonder: Is he gay, or European? As anybody in 4chan would tell you, what is for sure is that he is a leftist.

The connection between being educated, well-spoken, well-mannered, homosexual and a leftist is not something that the altright has come up with recently, but steams out of a rather long tradition. Even before the fascist regimes of the 30s institutionalized this connection, leftist and progressive intellectuals had already been consistently slandered with suspicion of being corruptly hedonistic and weak (because they do not work like men and instead are femininely sensitive towards art, literature, music, etc.) and homosexuality (because, well, homophobia).All in all, what I am trying to say is that even with the sparse information we have from him, Aziraphale fits perfectly into the stereotype, so prevalent in British history, of a noble-born intellectual who has turned towards progressive ideas but has not really lost his manners and refined tastes inherited from his upper-class background. As I mentioned earlier, Aziraphale and Crowley bear a caricature-like resemblance with the two main characters of every James Bond film: the effeminate, poised, intellectual Russian baddie (that would be Aziraphale, who is an angel), and the stylish, nice-car-driving, always-with-a-come-back-ready (“ngk”, P. 274) hero. Crowley even bought petrol to get the James Bond’s bullet transfer for the Bentley, which he quite fancied at that time.

That Aziraphale could be seen as the agent from Communism and Crowley the agent representing Capitalism does not only seem plausible after examining what little description we have from them, but it also befits Heaven’s and Hell’s portrayal in the book:

“Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered hat Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.” (P. 22)

In just a couple of sentences Pratchett and Gaiman tell us that Heaven and Hell are each other’s flipped coin. They are the same, because they are both the end of a spectrum: Heaven is so peaceful and calm that you will die of boredom; Hell is so restless and fast-paced that you will suffer from excitement. Aziraphale and Crowley do a fair job as representants of both sides. Book!Aziraphale is not as much soft and sweet as maturely calm, collected and paused. He literally does not keep up with the time, and in the 90s he is still stuck in the 50s, both in terms of fashion and speech. His luxuries and tastes could not be more traditional (good wine, books, classically rich clothes –tartan, camel hair coat) but he is surely going to enjoy them all the same. Instead, Crowley rushes and dashes around during the whole story. Book!Crowley is not only always driving way over the speed limit, but we are told that he is a lithe figure (P. 20), a young, flashy man living to the latest trend. His music system does not have speakers because Crowley eventually forgot about the most crucial part of any music system. He is surrounded with luxuries he does not enjoy, because he actually has them for conspicuous consumption. In fact, the only possession he cherishes is the one that truly frees him, allowing him to go around as quickly as his live requires, but comfortably (horses were not really his thing). Befitting for a demon, Crowley life is so fast-paced that he does not really have the time to enjoy its niceties, and sometimes forgets the most relevant aspect of things (putting speakers, double-checking which room he is delivering the Antichrist to). Coincidentally, for us Millennials, this may sound like a familiar description of our lives under capitalism.

To round up the parallelism between Communism!Heaven and Capitalism!Hell, I will comment on the little facts we got about both sides from the book. Unlike the miniseries, we never get to see Heaven or Hell in the book and there is hardly any description of Heaven and Hell other than the one I quoted before. That is not to say, however, that we have no information regarding them. We are told that Hell does take Crowley suggestion to use electronics to communicate, even if they got it wrong. In fact, as it has been pointed out more than once, Book!Crowley gets recognition from his achievements. At the same time, though, he is constantly reminded of the dangers of failing. Interestingly, that does not only apply to Crowley (who is just a demon) but to every single hellish entity. In the book, Hastur kills all the call-centre workers not solely out of malice, but also because he knows he has failed (has lost Crowley) and is consequently scared of reporting back:

“And anyway, he reflected, if he were going to have to face the possible wrath of the Dark Council, at least it wouldn’t be on an empty stomach.” (P. 300)

Hastur is basically that employee having a snickers bar at the common area before facing a difficult meeting. Moreover, we are told Crowley is able to trick him because “Hastur was paranoid, which was simply a sensible and well-adjusted reaction to living in Hell, where they really were all out to get you.” (P. 250) Hell is thus a place of all-against-all, where you can be doing relatively fine until one mistake gets you horribly punished. Hell is flexible and ready to incorporate change (Crowley not only suggest electronics as a channel for communicating, but also sends the computer warranty as inspiration). Lastly, Hell communicates with its employees in a direct manner, either by high-jacking whatever medium Crowley is using, or by straight up getting into his head.

What is fascinating is that the dynamics that are attributed to Hell are also shown in the book on another group of people. More specifically, the employees of Industrial Holdings (Holdings PLC partaking in their management training. Through pages 98 and 99, and through the character of Tompkins, Assistant Head (Purchasing) it is made clear how things at the Industrial Holdings are. Although theoretically their paintball exercise aims to team building, they all know that in reality it is a “all-against-all” battle. The young trainees are hungry to escalate. The old ones like Tompkins are eager to climb the Holdings ladder too, while eliminating concurrence. Their communication style is as rough and direct as Hell’s. It was simply impossible for Crowley not to understand their desires, since it could be said both the Industrial Holdings and Hell operate on the same frequency:

“Tompkins thumbed another paint pellet into the gun and muttered business mantras to himself. Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You. Kill Or Be Killed. Either Shit Or Get Out Of The Kitchen. Survival Of The Fittest. Make My Day.” (P. 99)

Again, if it sounds too familiar altogether it is because we Millennials know a couple of things about living in Hell… or Capitalism.

On the flipped side of the coin, we got Heaven, for which precisely the lack of information is the information. Like communist regimes, in the book it is truly impossible to discern how Heaven operates and who is ultimately responsible for it. On Tumblr it has been already pointed out that Hell seems to be more efficient, since Crowley appears to be under a stricter supervision and reporting-basis than Aziraphale. Indeed, this impression is remarkable, specially once we remember that Aziraphale “[…] was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days.” (P. 42) Although in the most purely Good Omens’ fashion this sentence is obscure enough to be interpreted as one wished (who are the people? Humans? Other angels?) it is at least clear that allegedly Aziraphale has a higher charge in Heaven than Crowley does in Hell. Yet his (nobiliary) title does not make that much of a difference in how unattended he is left.

An even greater, and factually more sinister example of how remote and inaccessible Heaven is, specially for its primary supporters (those who work for its cause), is to be found when Aziraphale tries to report his findings of concerning Adam’s whereabouts:

“Getting in touch with Heaven for two-way communications was far more difficult for Aziraphale than it is for humans, who don’t expect an answer and in nearly all cases would be rather surprised to get one.” (P. 235)

Notice how Pratchett and Gaiman mention that it is difficult for Aziraphale to get a two-way communication. The implication is that, like communist regimes, communication in Heaven only happens from the higher-ups downwards, never from the bottom “citizens” upwards. The parallelism can border on dark humour when it is said that it is easy for humans to get an answer from Heaven, even if they were not expecting one. As if Heaven, not unlike the Stalin’s URSS or North Korea, was randomly listening to conversations, and acting upon them regardless of whether that conversation was public or private.

Moreover, the adherence Aziraphale has for Heaven is as reminiscent of that expected in communist regimes, as Crowley’s acceptance of Hell parallels our own resignation with capitalism. Aziraphale ascribes his support to Heaven to his very nature. Unlike Crowley, who belongs to Hell circumstantially (he fell) Aziraphale belongs to Heaven in as literal a sense as those under communist regimes belonged to the state. Thus, he tells Crowley:

“All right. All right. I don’t like it any more than you, but I told you. I can’t disod – disoy – not do what I’m told. ‘M a’nangel.” (P. 54)

And again, when he realises that he wants to share his discovery about Adam with Crowley, but should report to Heaven instead:

“He was an angel, after all. You had to do the right thing. It was built-in- You see a wile, you thwart.” (P. 234)

It is easy to recognise in this reasoning the same course of mindless obedience indoctrinated in communist regimes: as a citizen of the state, one should behave as it is expected from them, that is, to the benefit of the state always in mind. What really matters is to never diverge from the party’s line, which Aziraphale valiantly tries to do. Meanwhile, Capitalism!Hell, it is all about maximising results, which by the way Crowley tries to achieve as well, even if Hastur and Ligur fail to see so.

Finally, the entire conversation Aziraphale holds with the Metatron further evidences how detached Heaven as an institution is from its most devoted acolytes. A quick rereading of the entire passage will prove that Aziraphale gets no clue as who is picking up the phone, so to speak. Neither does the Metatron see it fit to identify himself to Aziraphale (the angel has to explicitly ask him to do so). Even though Aziraphale’s eagerness and willingness to provide alternatives is clear in his speech, the Metatron never warms up and stays in his role of an annoyed high-ranked official who suddenly has to attend a petty man’s administrative request. Nonetheless, although it could seem that Heaven can hardly be bothered to take Aziraphale seriously, after being admonished, our angel notices that

“[t]he light faded, but did not quite vanish. They’re leaving the line open, Aziraphale thought. I’m not getting out of this one.” (P. 237)

Heaven exerts the same control over its workers as Hell does, but for those of us who have always lived in a capitalist system, Hell’s ways are recognisable, and thus look more efficient. However, Heaven has got a firm grip over its employees too. While Aziraphale was keeping a low profile (allegedly working within party’s line) he was left unbothered, even if in reality he was not being that productive. As soon as he raises his voice, even if a little, even if it is not to express disagreement but a mere alternative, they claim him back, they leave him no possibility of escaping. Most dismal of all is, Aziraphale realises so straight away and knows to have no possible way out, unlike Crowley. Similarly, notice how in the book we never know what happens once Aziraphale goes back to Heaven, nor how he manages to return to Earth and start his search for a receptive body at a convenient geographic location. Much like in the URSS, within Heaven’s walls everything is a secret.

What’s going to be left for you?

The third way in which Book!Good Omens brings to mind the Cold War is to be found in the notion of Armageddon, and in how it is avoid. Pratchett and Gaiman go as far as jokingly have the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse baffled at the fact that the end of the world will not be triggered in a traditional fashion. Instead, as the Metatron explains to Aziraphale, it will all begin “[…] a multi-nation nuclear exchange” (P. 237) I am sure the dark humour did not fly under the radar for the first readers of the book.

Although by 1990 the idea that computers, and more broadly technology, could destroy the world was already flourishing (The Matrix was just 9 years away), the real fear was for nuclear war. Again, James Bond’s movies are brought to mind. In them, the mere pressing of a red button sets into motion a technological weapon able to erase all life around. Thankfully, Sean Connery is always around, knowing exactly how to fix the mess while looking dapper. I would like to quickly point out that in keeping with the James Bond mockery, in Good Omens this job is performed by Newt Pulsifer, who Anathema notices “[…] was tall, but with a rolled-out, thin look. And while his hair was undoubtedly dark, it wasn’t any sort fashion accessory; […] It was the same with suits. The clothing hadn’t been invented that would make him look suave and sophisticated and comfortable. […] And he wasn’t handsome.” (PP. 202-203). To round up the joke, Newt is able to deactivate nuclear Armageddon precisely because he has not a clue of what he is doing.

Thus, the idea of a nuclear Armageddon was not really something that Pratchett and Gaiman came up with, but rather, like any good writers, the result of their ability to pick up the general ambience of their time and express it artistically. And in that sense, Book!Good Omens is the reallt punk tale of getting rid of not one, but two systems. Like the Western and Eastern blocks, Heaven and Hell must be stopped because both of them had become so wrapped up in their ideology, so devoted to their own glory, that they have completely forgotten about the people they both pretended to serve, and for whom they both were allegedly created. Book!Good Omens is truly the hilarious journey to return power to the people, to the collective. It is really a cry towards tolerance and acceptance, towards embracing even those who appear to be your complete opposite, because in becoming united we become unstoppable. I would argue that that is precisely the reason behind the constant mockery of the James Bond films. Book!Good Omens tells us that the world will not be saved by transferring the power from the systems to a single individual (the Hero), but by transferring it to a collective that embraces each and every of its members, because they are all valid. In this sense, one of the wisest choices that Pratchett and Gaiman made was to never get God to meddle in the story. God remains entirely unknown, since in keeping up with the Christian tradition and the Good Omens universe, his/her appearance would mark the revealing of the ultimate truth, the ultimate right (or the ineffable truth and right). But the story is not really about sorting out who is right, so God must stay out of the way.

In that regard, many book fans have complained about Greasy Johnson and the Johnsonites being omitted from the series. Out of all the wonderful details that could not make it to the final cut, I must agree that this is the one I believe to be the most detrimental, since it undermines Adam’s arch and part of the narrative. Both in the book and the series, Adam’s powers awaken with his awareness of how the world is being polluted, deforested, and shortly, destroyed. We manage to sympathise with him even in his darkest hour because all the time his intentions are good. He might be getting his means wrong (antichristing around) but his ends are commendable. We all would like to save the world too. But the entire point of Good Omens is precisely that that is what Heaven and Hell intended to do as well: “‘But after we win life will be better!’ croaked the angel.” (P. 45) Pratchett and Gaiman are being as generous as giving both capitalism (Hell) and communism (Heaven) the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they both sprang from good intentions, but the direction that the whole thing has taken is deplorable. Eventually it has all being reduced to who is going to get to administer the world, who is going to impose their view. That is why Pepper really manages to shake Adam up by asking the crucial question, the question that makes him realises how pointless his intend is: “What bit’re you going to have, Adam?” (P. 303) As Pepper realises, if you transform everything, if you change everything –even if for the good– nothing that you knew before will be left.

However, although that is what helps Adam come back to his senses, it is not what allows him to argue Heaven’s and Hell’s discourse back. Again, that is such a feather in Pratchett and Gaiman’s cap; sometimes you know what you want to do, but you are clueless at how to do it (like a certain angel and demon). Enter here the Johnsonites. Adam eventually realises that Heaven and Hell are like the Them and the Johnsonites, only that the latter pair are clever enough to acknowledge that what makes life fun is actually having a rival to wrestle with:

“I just don’t see why everyone and everything has to be burned up and everything. […] An’ not even for anything important. Jus’ to see who’s got the best gang. […] But even if you win, you can’t really beat the other side, because you don’t really want to. I mean, not for good.” (P. 356)

Just as Crowley slyly pointed out to Aziraphale at the beginning, if Heaven wins maybe life may become better, but it will not be that interesting. His point is exactly the same that Pepper makes to Adam: what is going to be left for you?

More interestingly, as the Metatron and Beelzebub try to rebuke Adam’s argument, the boy tells them:

“I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then getting’ upset ‘cos they act like people […]” (P. 357)

And again, that is the same thing Aziraphale and Crowley have been saying all along. As many have noticed, in Book!Omens the angel and the demon are more explicitly united by their love towards humanity. Aziraphale and Crowley have come to love humanity even with all its flaws. They were meant to try and influence (change) humans and instead they have eventually accepted them as they are. Which is exactly what Adam realises in the end: it is not about trying to perfect humanity or the world, even if you intentions are the best. It is about accepting that there is no definite right or truth (God is ) and that good and evil are so tightly laced that the same politician can be in Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s list. Neither communism nor capitalism are 100% good or bad. However, they become dangerous when they try to change people, to transform the world entirely, because in doing so they annihilate the very reason for which they exerted themselves: the people.

Thanks to the Them, and the Johnsonites, and Anathema and her wacky magazines, and Mr. R. Tyler who chases them around town, Adam understands that the world needs no fixing and embraces it as it is. The generosity that such acceptance involves is what enables him to to free himself from his “nature”. Similarly, all along the story Aziraphale and Crowley knew that they had zero interest in changing the world. But both of them –and I can stress this enough, in the book it’s both of them– struggled to free themselves. Crowley, being always under direct threat, was too afraid to disobey; Aziraphale, being wrapped up in his party’s discourse, thought he was incapable of disobeying. But just as Adam Young eventually finds the generosity to repress his young and naïve impulse to change the world for the better, so do Aziraphale and Crowley. For most of the story, Crowley has been the one who knew that neither of them wanted for the world to change. Aziraphale had trouble admitting that because as I have said, he had to break some mental barriers (“I cannot possibly do that). But once he breaks them, he is the one helping Crowley overcome his fear of Hell’s punishment by using the very argument Crowley has put forward to him. As Satan is approaching, Aziraphale talks Crowley into adopting as generous a course of action as Adam has already done:

“ ‘There are humans here,’ he [Aziraphale] said.

‘Yes,’ said Crowley. ‘And me.’

‘I mean we shouldn’t let this happen to them […] we’ve got them into enough trouble as it is. You and me. Over the years. […]

‘We were only doing our jobs,’ muttered Crowley.

‘Yes. So what? Lots of people in history have only done their jobs and look at the trouble they caused.’

‘You don’t mean we should actually try to stop Him?’

‘What have you got to lose?’ (P. 363)

Just as we do not get to see or hear God (the ultimate good), in Book!Omens we do not get to see Satan either. In the Dramatis Personae at the beginning, Satan is defined as “the Adversary”. And rightly so. If God is that ineffable goodness, Satan is the ineffable badness. Hence why, once Adam is rejecting to obey his nature out of sheer generosity (goodness) Satan stars raising to scold him. It is the ultimate attempt of all evil in the world (all selfishness, all self-entitlement) to take things back to the status quo. But it is to late already. What Satan (evil) is about to face when he raises up is a compactly united world where everybody has accepted ad embraced their opposite. The Them cherish the Johnsonites; the Witch and the Witchfinder love each other; Madam Tracy and Shadwell are together. And the two agents, the angel and the demon, have just finally told each other that they are together not because the circumstance have forced them to, but because the appreciate each other.

That is exactly why I would argue that their love confession of sorts in the books is as powerful as the final Ritz scene in the series. All throughout the story, Aziraphale and Crowley have tried to tell themselves that their relationship, the Arrangement, steams out of circumstances:

“It was the sort of sensible arrangement that many isolated agents, working in awkward conditions a long way from their superiors, reach with their opposite number when they realize that they have more in common with their immediate opponents than their remote allies.” (P. 43)

“They got along. They nearly understood one another He [Aziraphale] sometimes suspected they had far more in common with one another than with their respective superiors.” (P. 234)

Hence why their open declaration right before facing the Adversary becomes so striking. As readers we have been able to recognise all along that the angel and the demon like each other, even if they do not want to admit so. But once faced with utter destruction, and ready to try to protect the humanity out of pure generosity and acceptance for humans as they are, they become free to accept each other openly as well. And they do so by acknowledging the impossible in the other. Thus, Aziraphale, the one who was wrapped up in a black&white discourse of right and wrong tells Crowley that there is good in him. Meanwhile, Crowley, the one imbued in a all-against-all system based on appearances and excitement, tells the old-fashioned and bookish angel that he is enough of a bastard to be worth liking. Try to imagine a communist saying to a capitalist that there is good in them and you will get how powerful a confession that is. Try to imagine a wolf of Wallstreet saying to a leftist intellectual that they are enough of a bastard to be cool and likeable and you will get how unlikely a confession that is.

Pratchett and Gaiman eventually come to exemplify how powerless evil is when faced with such a united world, where all are supporting one another despite their differences. Satan does not make it to the surface because it has already been defeated. In the end, in Book!Omens each and every single character relies so much so on the others that as it has been pointed out by many, there is no individual hero. It is not that Aziraphale and Crowley are useless. It is that they needed to rely on humanity as much as humanity needed for them to leave their sides. Just as Adam could not have made it without the Them and the Johnsonites, Anathema could not have been successful without Newt, and Newt would still be the outsider without Anathema. The same applies to Madam Tracy and Shadwell. And that is the whole point of Book!Omens: there is no single hero, no James Bond. Instead, Armageddon, the Adversary, the Cold War are prevented when opposites embrace each other and accept each other. Because the miniseries has been made at a different time, it is accordingly more focused on what is most missing in nowadays ultra-liberal world: love and tenderness, the brave act of allowing oneself to be soft and vulnerable, to confide in others. Paradoxically, what we lack in our current, extremely individualistic world, is the ability to accept ourselves as we are, and demand to treat others and be treated by others with tenderness. But at the time of Book!Omens, the most punk and radical act was paradoxically to abandon two incredibly well-established discourses, two solid blocks that offered equally solid definitions of good vs wrong. Instead, the bravest act was to choose to adhere no narrative, and take part for nobody but humanity itself, embracing all of it. What makes both Good Omens the same work is the struggle for freedom; what makes them different is what that freedom is. But in both Book!Omens and Series!Omens not fighting for freedom entails the same danger: eventually the most precious thing would be lost, namely, the world itself, be it humanity or the most loved being on Earth.

Accordingly, on the first day of the rest of their lives the only two agents to be found at St James’s Park turn out to be working for the same side, although neither of them realised so, to their mutual embarrassment. Aziraphale and Crowley were also on the same side all along, although they did not –or wanted not– to acknowledge so. But now that they have embraced each other, they are free. Like their human counterparts, they are no longer under the influence of Above, Below, or even the Past (as is the case of Anathema). Very much like the rest of the characters, they can look at the future freely and with their own eyes and minds. And so, a nightingale sings in Berkeley Square and an angel and a demon dine at the Ritz.

#submission #meta #text post #long post #good omens #book omens #cold war

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