[scrolling Through A Fandom Tag] Wrong. Wrong. Incomprehensibly Wrong. Wrong But Harmless. Nice Style

I have nothing against Farcille, genuinely. But it's been very interesting seeing that a fandom mostly defined by a femslash ship for once can get just as brainwormed about their OTP to the point of ultimately and fundamentally misunderstanding/mischaracterizing the entire thing as any other fandom dominated by mslash.

someday i will write an essay on the way fandom likes to recreate the exact same flavor of aggressively heteronormative relationship dynamics in every popular slash ship ever invented regardless of how the characters behave or interact with each other in canon.

'The Fairy Tailor' by Charles Edward Burton Bernard, (1890 - 1977).

Happiness Will Come To You.

dawn

Rosaria is not usually this transparent.

She isn’t Barbara, who wears her heart on her sleeve, or Jean, who does not count lying among her many talents. She isn’t even Kaeya, whose intricate masks and careful dissembling only hold up as long as the wind doesn’t blow too hard.

Rosaria is implacable, unreadable, barely even there. She’s spent enough years learning how to let people’s eyes slide right off her. It turns out that you can wear fishnets and claw rings and people will still let themselves ignore you if you give them the right excuse.

But she has been drinking, tonight — not quite to the edge of tipsy, but close, right on the line where the lights are warmer and the wine is sweeter and the chatter of the bar patrons tips from grating to almost melodic.

And so maybe she lets her eyes linger, just a little, on the broad back and flaming hair of tonight’s bartender. 

No one would blame her if they caught the way her gaze flits over to him and away, one stolen glance every couple of minutes. Diluc cuts a dashing figure in his bartender’s uniform: all straight lines and stark contrasts, his red hair bright against the white of his vest. He carries himself with a quiet composure born of physical power and a bank vault full of cash. Half the people in this tavern have been ogling him all evening; she’s still not sure if he’s truly oblivious or willfully blind. 

As she watches, he slides a drink over to the Traveler at the end of the bar, waving away the offer of payment. He wipes down the counter with a practiced hand before tossing the cloth over his shoulder once more. Then he turns back, and Rosaria doesn’t look away quite quick enough to stop their gazes from catching and holding. 

Diluc’s gaze burns like the embers of a campfire, low and controlled, but with the promise of destruction unleashed. For a long second, he watches her watching him. 

Then he smiles. 

It’s a different smile from the confident one he gives her in the middle of the night when they’re on a manhunt, or the rueful shouldn’t-have-let-my-guard-down grin he sports when he’s taken an injury he should have been able to dodge. 

This smile is small, meant just for her: the corner of his mouth quirks up, boyish and almost shy, and for a moment Rosaria catches a glimpse of the young man who’d brought Mondstadt to its knees. 

He’s so godsdamned pretty it makes her throat tight. Despite her better judgement, Rosaria finds herself smiling back. 

She suppresses her smile as soon as she registers it — but Kaeya has always been too perceptive for his own good. 

“Playing with fire there, Rosaria,” he murmurs once Diluc turns away. He leans an elbow on the bar counter and fixes her with an unreadable smile. 

“What do you mean?” she asks evenly, taking a swig of her wine.

Kaeya looks unimpressed by her attempt at deflection. “Falling in love with him is a bad idea.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Rosaria says. She realizes too late that this too is a confession. She ought to have asked who he meant; she’s shown her hand too early.

“Sure,” Kaeya says, serious for once. “But you’re getting there.”

“Am not.”

He shakes his head at her. “I wouldn’t get too close, if I were you. He burns everything he touches.”

Kaeya was her first real friend in Mondstadt. She knows what Diluc did — in broad strokes, if not in detail. It definitely makes her a bad friend that she likes him anyway. 

Kaeya’s lone visible eye tracks Diluc’s movement as he weaves his way through the bar, clearing tables. “The thing is, he doesn’t mean to,” he says, his voice low and almost affectionate. “He tries so hard, you know? He’d try, if you asked him to.”

“I’m not asking him shit. There’s nothing going on between us.”

“He just always ends up destroying things anyways,” he continues as if she hadn’t spoken, his fingers tracing lines of frost on the condensation of his glass, his eye still fixed on the back of Diluc’s head. “It tears him apart, but good intentions don’t restore what’s been broken.”

He looks back at her. For a moment she thinks she sees wildfire flames licking at the deep blue of his visible eye, before they resolve into the gentle glow of the lamps that light the Angel’s Share. “I know you’re not going to listen to me,” he says, and smiles mirthlessly. “You can make your own decisions, of course. But be careful, alright? I’d hate to see you hurt in the course of protecting Mondstadt.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Rosaria knows it as soon as it leaves his lips. 

Because no matter how bad Diluc is, Rosaria is worse. Kaeya has forgotten that frost burns too. 

Diluc is a fine, upstanding citizen, the uncrowned king of Mondstadt. Rosaria is a scrappy orphan at the mercy of the Church. Diluc has a bent for justice and a mission to take care of the weak. Rosaria only knows revenge.

Kaeya forgets — or ignores, because he is a good friend, and he cares for her in his own way — that Rosaria deserves nothing but destruction and pain. Everything she has received from Mondstadt has been at the cost of its citizens. She owes a debt she can never repay; if she takes some injury in the course of protecting this country, it will simply be what she deserves. 

She lays a hand on Kaeya’s arm and watches him jolt. “Getting burned is part of the job.”

“Of protecting Mondstadt?” He sounds skeptical. “The nation has never asked that of you.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Someone’s gotta do it. Don’t act like you haven’t sacrificed for Mondstadt too.”

“Oh, I won’t pretend I haven’t,” he says lightly. “But I’m a hedonist, you know — I’ll always pick pleasure over pain.”

She laughs, opting not to call him on this obvious lie. “I guess that makes me a masochist, because I don’t care if I get hurt.” 

“I care,” he mutters, then sighs. “Look, you’re a grown-up. If you want to flirt with the sun, I won’t stop you. I just reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ when your wax wings go up in smoke.”

“I’ll be careful,” Rosaria promises. 

(Across the tavern, Diluc laughs at something Venti says, low and rolling and resonant. The eyes of half of Mondstadt follow the sound, and Rosaria has never been one to go with the crowd, but in this and this only—)

Kaeya rolls his eyes, shrugging her hand off his arm. “No, you won’t.”

“No,” she agrees, and grins. “I won’t.”

one of my favorite laios traits is the way he understands some of his impulses are socially unacceptable but at the end of the day curiosity wins out so he loves to just quietly do something the others wont approve of and hope nobody notices. just tucks something in his pocket for later. monster cookbook. man eating plant seeds. monster sword. monster sword again

Simon Leclerc

👁‍🗨

Seek Truth in Darkness

This is an expansion and continuation of many of the ideas expressed in my previous meta ‘Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8.’ You may wish to read that first if you haven’t already, though it is not necessary to understand this meta.

Herein is contained all the actual textual evidence  I’ve gathered of Voltron Legendary Defender, Season 8 having been edited post-production, as well as a handful of circumstantial conclusions I feel have strong enough textual evidence supporting them to stand up to scrutiny. This is as ship-neutral as I can make it, given a number of the most highly edited scenes are ones that in the edited version of s8 are played as distinctly romantic in nature.

Continua a leggere