jawbone almost killing adaine in a nightclub brawl to jawbone apologizing to adaine & getting his life together to jawbone helping adaine through a panic attack & battling a dragon together to jawbone becoming adaine’s de facto guardian when her parents abandoned her to jawbone officially adopting adaine and giving her gifts for every one of her birthdays that he didn’t get to be there for her
One thing that I’d like us to appreciate more is how Jade does have an absolute flair for the dramatic.
Just look at her scenes in Nockmaar.
Why is this girl standing in the rain? There are watchtowers, there are covered portions of walkway. Standing with rain in your eyes probably makes it harder to actually watch out for the Gales.
But she was having an emotional moment and needed to stand in the rain for it.
More library AU pls? Maybe they’re still in the dating phase of their relationship and maybe their friends are being a little annoying needling them about when they’re getting married already?
library au collection (<read more here!)
Camila rather enjoys Board Game Night, mostly because it always provides a front-row seat to whatever nonsense Ava's decided she and Beatrice are going to be part of this week.
"Eight hundred-"
Beatrice doesn't even manage to get the whole sentence out.
"Eight hundred?!" Ava looks about two seconds away from lunging across the board. "How is it a three-digit number? And how is the first number eight?"
Beatrice frowns down at the cards in her hands, as if Ava's ire has anything to do with the actual rules of the game.
"Well, I've got hotels on two of them-"
Ava shoots the little red plastic buildings a look of pure malice.
"This is ludicrous. You're extorting me out of house and home!"
Camila catches Mary's eye.
'Should we stop them?' she mouths.
Mary looks like she wants to say no, but also like she'd like to go home at some point. This internal debate lasts about three seconds before she reaches into the open Monopoly box, retrieves one of the little green houses, and tosses it at Ava.
Ava flinches back.
"Hey!"
Mary just raises an eyebrow at her.
"You two done bickering? I swear, sometimes it's like you're already married."
Camila latches onto that hook with the avid glee of a child left to run amok in a chocolate factory.
"Ooh," she chirps. "Did you elope?"
Ava goes an alarming shade of pink, proceeds to splutter brokenly through an attempt at a reply.
Meanwhile, Beatrice just shakes her head.
"We did not," she says, perfectly calm. "Even if we wanted to, we simply wouldn't have the time."
Mary—choosing, as expected, to focus on the funnier response— turns fully to Ava.
"You good? Got anything to say?"
Ava just turns, presses her face into Beatrice's shoulder. She mumbles something that Camila can't quite hear, but Beatrice definitely catches, judging from the reassuring head pats Ava is now receiving.
Mary throws her wad of paper money down.
"On that note, I'm going home. I've got a 9am tomorrow, and Shan’s probably waiting up.”
Camila puts her money back in the box, neatly separating them by their value.
"I should head back to my dorm," she says. "My roommate doesn't like when I get back too late."
Beatrice smiles genially at them.
"Thank you for coming. It was a lot of fun, as always."
Ava peeks up at them.
"Thanks for coming," she echoes, though the words are half-swaddled by the fabric of Beatrice's sweater.
Mary waves them goodbye, then disappears out the door.
Camila stands.
"Do you guys need help with cleaning up?"
"We'll be alright." Beatrice is now running gentle fingers through Ava's hair. "Get home safe, and let us know when you're there."
"You got it. See you soon, guys."
Camila smiles at them, turns to let herself out. As she's closing the door, she catches a glimpse of her friends, right where she'd left them. Beatrice seems to be speaking softly, and Ava is peering up at her, eyes wide with wonder and adoration.
If I’m not a bridesmaid, Camila thinks, there’ll be hell to pay.
Okay we don't get tornadoes in Wales so I am admittedly unsure of the etiquette but if four of the fuckers are going off simultaneously should he not be staying in a house right now
So fun fact, Midwestern USAmericans are seemingly uniquely habituated to tornadoes because their region is literally the most tornadoed place on earth by far.
Another website says that 75% of the Earth's tornadoes are in the United States. I have no idea why this is the case.
I just love the different ways that aloto approaches queerness and parenthood.
Toni recognizes Max’s queerness and fears it, but mostly she fears her daughter being hurt in the way that she’s undoubtedly seen happen to Bertie. The core of their conflict being that she wants to provide for Max, since she’s a pillar in her community and she provides for everyone, at the salon, ushering at church, being motherly towards people like Clance who need it. She does like Max as well as love her, but she can’t see Max living a future with the way she is, so she wants her to change all the same. It’s such a realistic conflict with so much urgency in the time (and now too). Edgar is much more accepting of Max’s reality because he didn’t experience losing Bertie the way that Toni did, and his family has been settled in Rockford for much longer, so he’s farther removed from the immediate need to establish himself in the community the way that Toni has. Toni, on the other hand, knows how hard it is for Black women, and she knows how much more dangerous it is for people who are gender non-conforming and queer. On the flip side of the coin, there’s Bertie and Gracie, who are pillars in their own community, who bring Max in and encourage her to learn of the world beyond Toni’s sphere. All of them love Max, but none of them can tell her who she is.
For Lupe, motherhood is a complicated obligation. We see her sending money home, so there’s someone she’s providing for, but we never find out who exactly that is to her. From what she tells Esti, her family intervened and took her daughter from her because they thought she would be a bad influence in some way. Bad influence in that she was a young, single mother? That she was queer? Something else entirely? It’s not clear. But whatever it was, Lupe recognizes, and regrets to an extent, that she has benefitted from being relieved of the responsibility of motherhood. So when she’s forced back into a caretaker position, expected to meet all of Esti’s needs because she is the only one who can communicate with her, she resists. It’s cruel, yes, to contribute more directly in Esti’s exclusion, while the others do it carelessly, out of ignorance and lack of effort. But it’s an understandable response to the unfair expectations placed on her, especially given that she’s harshly scrutinized by her teammates and subjected to casual racism on a daily basis. That’s not even getting into the ways that Esti reminds her of her daughter, and of the youth that she herself was denied, having a child at that age. It’s all been denied to her, because, in letting go of her daughter, she lost all claim to those feelings. In deciding to go find Esti, deciding to open up to her about it, she gets just a little bit of that back. Her motherhood is inextricable to who she is, and so is her queerness, and so is baseball. She’s never been allowed to have all three. And opening up about it doesn’t fix that, but it’s something. Esti’s forgiveness is something that Lupe rarely receives, but constantly gives. And forgiveness is something we constantly deny mothers who give up their children.
Carson’s sister immediately mentions the absence of their mother on the phone and half-accuses her of leaving Charlie. It’s not until later that we find out that Carson’s mother left when she was young, probably forcing her sister into that motherly role. Carson clearly misses her mom, maybe idealizes her more than you’d expect from a kid who was abandoned. I don’t know if Carson ever realizes it fully, but I think she takes comfort in knowing that, even if her sister and husband are disappointed about her running off to play pro ball, putting off having children for it, her mother would probably be proud of her decision. Charlie’s accusation that “whatever made your mother leave is in you,” is heavy with the implication that her mother was queer. That it was selfish to choose that over her family. And it was. But Carson decides to do it, too, because the newfound sense of self she has is more than any of the stability or love that her husband could give her. In a way, it’s just the same as Greta confiding that she’d like to have children but could never put herself through commitment to a man. I think a part of Carson knew that about her mother all along, which is why she shows such an unexpected amount of grace about being left behind.
It’s just so intense to see these different ways that queerness intersects with and complicates parenthood, especially in this time period, when the expectation of women to become mothers was even more prevalent than it is now. The strangeness of having so many men off at war is enough to shift the perception just slightly enough for something like the League to exist, but it’s all about to snap back like a rubber band during the baby boom to come.