it's my job to use you

nick | he/him | 29

main is @communistkenobi

thalius on ao3

mission impossible & top gun posting

Like there are several little comments made in the beginning of the film that paint a picture of her life prior to meeting Ethan as a woman entering her 30s, has little dating experience, and whose friends and family are all married with children except for her. Some cut lines from the MI3 script are 1) her sister saying she’s surprised Julia finally amounted to something and 2) Julia telling a coworker that she works too much and doesn’t take any time off. Those comments + Julia saying “you make it sound like I’ve never dated” to her friends + her sister also demanding she have kids with Ethan at their engagement party (which you can see Julia shakes her head no at lol) all hint at this intense fixation on Julia being an incomplete person and a failure because she hasn’t settled down like everyone else in her life has.

She obviously develops a complex about this because she’s been condemned to spinsterdom at the ripe old age of 28. So she goes to New Zealand by herself to repeatedly jump out of a helicopter for fun. While doing this, she meets a guy 12 years her senior who looks like a scumbag and is evasive about where he’s from or what he does for work. She’s immediately like oh hell yeah this dude is a walking red flag. I’m gonna have very mid drunk sex with him. cue 5.5/10 drunk sex. Then she posts this photo to myspace and all her friends are like ohhhh she’s definitely lost it for sure. We all knew this was coming. Cue more spite-fuelled sex with scumbag. This continues happening as Julia plunges further into the I Actually Have A Better And More Interesting Life Than All Of You crisis spiral.

And then time with Julia is just charcuterie boards and gossip about Ethan at her place but it's very cozy.

yeah I think especially post-Fallout Ilsa & Benji would vibe a lot re: being tormented by Lane. Benji gets over Ilsa trying to kill him so they can commiserate about that other guy trying to kill both of them <3

Which brings me to SECOND: chapter 4 has me pondering AUs and hypotheticals relevant to your canon specifically because I live to maximize profits (Ethan’s anguish). These include, but are not limited to, what if Ilsa had lived AND Erick was still dead? And, what if Ethan eventually felt comfortable enough to send that message to Benji, only to learn that Benji is now also dead?

Unfortunately, I also find these hypotheticals extremely funny and I’m not sure what that says about me ☹️ but anyway, thank you again for such a lovely new installment ❤️