#?????/ like it should be a rule but it never has been...

[angelltheninth]

You know how guys have the happy trail? What do you think the MCU men's is like?

Gonna tell you something Anon, I love it when guys have that. It's cute and attractive.

Pairing: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Thor, Loki, James “Logan" Howlett, Remy Lebeau, Kurt Wagner, Tony Stark, Peter Parker x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, suggestive, body worship, teasing, muscles, established relationship

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters | Commissions

A/N: Probably one of the most attractive things on guys. At least to me. Other than strong hands.

Steve keeps himself very neat, not really because of you, not at first, it's just a habit that he still has from his army days. That being said he didn't miss the way you look at him when he does it. He knows you're looking so he takes his time.

Bucky is a bit more clumsy with it since losing his arm. His new one is good but it's cold on his skin when he needs to groom himself and be nice. But... maybe you can give him a hand when he needs it.

Clint doesn't bother with it much because he doesn't have much of a visible happy trail. It is there when you really look or run your hand down his abs. That being said he doesn't quite see why you like it so much, it's just body hair.

Thor never quite cared to keep himself overly well groomed or to cut down on any body hair. When he tried his hair grew back rougher, which you can feel as you touch his stomach. To him it was never something he had to think about, besides you like it.

Loki brags about how good he looks. Every part of him, even the happy trail which he always keeps well maintained. As he gets ready for bed he might take it slower, to give you time to look.

Logan has always been covered in a lot of rough, bushy hair and his happy trail is no different. For him it's like a path that you can follow as you kiss his body. In fact he has referred to it as that numerous time, making you blush at the implications.

Remy often gets asked if his hair is red everywhere, and yes it is. He chuckles when he tells you that you should check for yourself. Despite how he may seem he does keep himself well trimmed, from his belly all the way down.

Kurt does have a bit more hair there and it's quite soft and fluffy. It's one of the rare parts on his body that's not as cold as the rest of him. But it is quite dark, almost black in contrast with his blue skin.

Tony wants you to look at him as he gets changed. He wears his pants a bit lower when he knows he can work from home. Seeing you ready to kiss every inch of him won't make work easier.

Peter has a happy trail but it's a bit sparse. He doesn't have much body hair on his belly and is a bit ticklish when you touch him there. It's one of his weaknesses so he always blushes when you do it.

[ylangelegy]

so disconnected 📵 jeonghan x reader.

if jeonghan's 'boyfriend material' posts are on point, well— you can thank his girlfriend.

★ jeonghan x social media manager!reader. ★ word count: 2.6k ★ genre/warnings: established relationship, fluff!!!, txt's soobin is mentioned, down bad!jeonghan, jealous!jeonghan. some smau elements. not proofread; we go out swinging, baby. ★ footnotes: "kae if i wake up to a single shred of jeonghan on ur page..." ¡sorpresa, @diamonddaze01! no further notes, your honor.

🎧 now playing: disconnected by 5 seconds of summer — i admit i'm a bit of a fool for playing by the rules, but i've found my sweet escape when i'm alone with you.

Click.

Jeonghan hasn’t even looked up and yet he already knows what he’ll find when he does. Sure enough, when he shifts his weight onto his other foot and glances away from the TikTok he’d been watching— there you are. 

He wishes he could see your beautiful face. Alas, it’s obstructed by the sight that he’s grown used to associating with you. 

Your phone at eye-level; its camera, trained on him. 

“Yah.” His high-pitched bid to feign annoyance is a futile one. Everybody knows that Jeonghan could never be truly irked by you, no matter how masterfully you pushed his buttons sometimes. 

After clicking away for a couple more minutes, you finally lower your phone. 

There you are. 

Jeonghan swears he’s not a sap, not what those people call ‘simps’. But something about your smile always makes him a little weak in the knees, makes him want to be The Best Boyfriend In The World, bar none. 

He gestures for you to come closer. Once you’re within reach, Jeonghan is already wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you in.

“Don’t do that,” you snipe as he brings you into his chest. “We’re in public!”

Jeonghan can’t hide the way his eyes roll. “I don’t care. This isn’t public. It’s the parking lot of your apartment building,” he says dryly. 

“Still public.” 

“Still don’t care.” 

You go to shove at Jeonghan’s chest. He responds by tightening his hold on you, a sound of protest rising from the back of his throat. 

“C’mon, just a minute.” He buries his face in the top of your head, breathing in the soothing scent of your shampoo. It makes something in his chest flutter. “I’ll let you go, just— give me a minute, sweetheart.” 

He can sense that your acquiescence is begrudging, but he takes it nonetheless. A win is a win, he thinks smugly as he takes the opportunity to hug you a little tighter. 

It’s been three months since you finally agreed to try dating Jeonghan, though you had insisted that it be kept on the down low. Something about decorum, discretion. Workplace violations? Jeonghan doesn’t really remember; he had been a little too excited at the prospect of finally being yours that he wouldn’t have minded any condition in the world. 

The past weeks have unironically been some of the best in Jeonghan’s life, though there were probably some things he could do without. 

“It’s my day off, you know,” he mumbles into your hair, “which means it should also be your day off.” 

You giggle, and the force of it has your shoulders slightly shaking against Jeonghan’s chest. 

This is how he knows he loves you: Your laughter always felt like a small victory. Even before, he’d crack jokes in staff meetings and his eyes would immediately go to gauge your reaction.  

He liked making you laugh. He liked being the reason behind your smiles. And, God, did he like you. 

“Let me think about it.” There’s a hint of teasing in your voice, followed by a little ‘hmmm’ of faux thoughtfulness. 

He’s about to bite back at you when he feels your hand at his hip, somewhat leaning into his embrace, and he instead channels his energy into holding back a dreamy sigh. You go on, “No, I don’t think so. Go pose by the wall for another picture.” 

Jeonghan leans back a bit, just enough so that you can see his furrowed eyebrows as he whines, “But I’m Daesang winner Yoon Jeonghan!”

The title is a new one. Five days recent, in fact, and Jeonghan is hoping it will cut him some slack. 

“Okay, Daesang winner Yoon Jeonghan,” you say without missing a beat. “Go pose by the wall.” 

Jeonghan peels himself away from you with a grumble. He knows he’s acting a bit like an overgrown child— stomping as he walks, pouting when he leans— but he trusts that you’ll find it endearing. 

You pull out your phone’s camera app. Jeonghan is ready to frown the entire way through, maybe sass you that you only told him to pose by the wall but you didn’t say how he should look. 

But then, instead of “One, two, three…”, you call out something else entirely. 

“I love you, Daesang winner Yoon Jeonghan!”

He can’t help it. 

He laughs, and you click away.

jeonghaniyoo_n ♫ Jesse McCartney - Beautiful Soul

jeonghaniyoo_n hang up the telephone and just be here with me Liked by pledis_boos, vernonline, and 1,932,049 others View all 2,109 comments

One pro of dating your social media manager, Jeonghan would argue, is all the ‘vacations’ that the two of you can go on. You’re there for every tour stop, every concert, and Jeonghan absolutely revels in the hour or two he can steal away with you. 

If only he could get you to stop working. 

He knows that you’re technically on the clock more often than not. Managing an idol’s social media presence was no small feat, and your entire shtick was about making Jeonghan look as desirable as possible on SNS. You’ve been doing a terrific job so far, if his steady rise in followers was anything to go by. 

Still. Jeonghan has been attempting to give you the cold shoulder for the past 15 minutes. Attempting, because you don’t even seem to notice that he’s gone quiet— too busy on your phone to pay him any heed. 

He shoves his hands into his pockets and clears his throat. He doesn’t even have to glance at your screen; he knows you’re probably on Lightroom, fine tuning the press photos of him from earlier this morning. 

At the twenty-minute mark, Jeonghan finally huffs, “I’m ignoring you.” 

“Hm?” you say distractedly, and he resist the urge to chuck your phone into the nearby lake. 

“I said,” he repeats. “I’m ignoring you.” 

You glance up at him, unamused. “You are literally talking to me,” you note. 

“Well, I was ignoring you before that.” 

“Were you?” 

“Yes. You didn’t notice, so I thought I’d inform you.” 

The beleaguered sigh you let out is not a new thing. Jeonghan has been on the receiving end of your exasperation for as long as he’s known you. 

At least there’s a hint of guilt on your expression as you tuck away your phone. “Sorry,” you mumble. “Everybody’s posting follower ranking listicles since it’s the end of the year. I wanted to see where we were placing.” 

Jeonghan is supposed to be sulking, but that small word— we— has him fighting down a smile. It’s his account, his digital footprint, but you’re the mastermind. You’re the one behind the man, the myth, the legend. 

He’s down so bad for you that it’s not even funny anymore. 

“And?” he prods, his earlier chagrin smoothed out into something that sounds a lot more like resigned affection. “How’s it looking?” 

The frustration that takes over your expression makes Jeonghan want to coo. It’s nothing short of a miracle that he manages to hold himself back. 

“We still haven’t beat out Choi Soobin.” You frown like the other idol has personally wronged you by having a higher follower count. “His boyfriend material photos are too damn good.” 

“His what?”

You whip out your phone. Jeonghan watches with growing incredulity as you pull up Instagram, and he’s less than pleased that user page.soobin is already one of your more recently searched accounts. 

When you shove your phone underneath Jeonghan’s nose, he’s treated to the sight of Soobin’s feed. “Boyfriend material photos,” you double down, like having a visual might somehow explain things away. 

Jeonghan snatches your phone from you. “I heard you the first time,” he says irritably. “But what does it mean?” 

“It means that he looks like somebody’s boyfriend,” you shoot back. 

Oh, Jeonghan does not like that. 

He doesn’t care if it’s just a term for a type of photo. The thought of you perceiving anyone else as ‘boyfriend material’ makes a muscle in his jaw tick. 

“Do you think,” he says coolly, keeping his eyes trained on your screen, “he looks like ‘boyfriend material’?” 

“I mean, yeah—” 

You’ve barely gotten to the end of your sentence before Jeonghan is handing you back your phone. “Where are you going?” you call out as he marches a couple of paces away. 

He looks equal part determined and peeved when he turns to face you. You have your eyebrows arched upward, but he’s more focused on making sure his good side is angled towards you. 

“Get some photos of your actual boyfriend,” he grumbles.

jeonghaniyoo_n ♫ ZILD - Lia

jeonghaniyoo_n we put the world away Liked by xuminghao_o, min9yu_k, and 1,000,289 others View all 2,109 comments

The day you tell Jeonghan about your plans of resigning, his first thought is Well, that was good while it lasted.

His attempt at being unaffected is a shaky one. You can tell by the way he holds his paper cup just a little too tightly, the way he keeps smoothing out invisible wrinkles on his coat. His poorly concealed distress makes your expression soften, which is somehow worse.

He didn’t want a civil breakup. He’d much rather go out kicking and screaming than have something amicable.

And he most especially didn’t want to be broken up with in some random café in Tokyo. He has half a mind to ask why you couldn’t have waited until the two of you were back home. 

Jeonghan swallows hard, like it might somehow help him swallow the panic simmering in the pit of his stomach. 

“Good for you,” he finally manages to respond. “You’re overworked here, anyway.” 

“That’s not the reason why I’m leaving.” 

Jeonghan hates how calm you look. The two of you had watched— and judged— one too many dramas, and so he’d imagined a breakup with you would be something like that. A rain-soaked street, choice words that neither of you could take back. 

Not you stirring sugar into your coffee like this is not a relationship-defining conversation. 

When Jeonghan doesn’t respond, you continue. Your voice goes a touch softer, and he’s struck with the fear that you’re trying to let him down gently. 

“I’m resigning because of you, Hannie.” That nickname— the one that once felt like a Daesang in its own right, when you first bestowed it on him— now makes Jeonghan’s heart feel like lead. 

“Because of me,” he repeats. 

His mouth is dry. His hands are clammy. He’s thirty seconds away from getting on his knees and begging you to stay, the rest of the café’s patrons be damned. 

Your next words are spoken like an unshakable truth. “Because I love you.” 

You— 

The look on Jeonghan’s face must be priceless; you start to laugh, and the sound of it eases some of Jeonghan’s fraying nerves. 

“I love you, and I want to be with you. Properly.” Your lips purse for a moment. “Well, as properly as being with an idol will allow, anyway. At least I won’t have to worry about getting called in by HR if I’m working someplace else.” 

Workplace violations. Right. That had been a thing. 

All the emotions hit Jeonghan like a truck. Relief (that you’re not breaking up with him), then affection (that you’re willing to do this for him), then guilt (that you’re willing to do this for him). 

He reaches across the table to place his hand on top of yours. Your eyes instinctively glance around your surroundings, checking to see if anyone is looking your way. Jeonghan tugs at your hand and shakes his head. Focus on me, he’s wordlessly saying, and for once, you do. 

“I love you, too. More than you know,” he says. “But I don’t want you to throw away your career for me. Who’s to say you won’t resent me down the line because of it? I— I couldn’t live with myself, sweetheart.” 

You squeeze Jeonghan’s hand reassuringly. “I’m not throwing anything away. I’m just compromising.” 

“I don’t want you to have to compromise anything for me.” 

“Compromise is part of a grownup relationship, Hannie. It’s a good compromise.” 

He must not look convinced, because you take things a step further. Instead of just clasping his hand in yours, you move to intertwine your fingers. There’s some comfort in the familiar feeling of your fingers in between the spaces of his. 

“Nothing is being thrown away,” you repeat, your tone brooking no argument. “I will not hate you tomorrow because of this.” 

Here’s the thing: Jeonghan trusts you implicitly, and not only with his SNS passwords. He trusts your no-nonsense attitude, your unshakeable feelings, your typically sound judgement. 

He wants to trust you now. He wants to believe so, so badly that there is something on the other side for the two of you, and that something would be exactly what the two of you deserve. 

He tongues the inside of his cheek as he considers your words. When he speaks, his voice is a lot smaller than he intends. 

“What about the day after tomorrow?” 

The initial confusion that flits over your expression is replaced by that grin he adores. 

“I’ll still love you the day after tomorrow,” you promise. 

He presses, “And the week after that?” 

“The week after that, too.” 

“What about the month after?” 

“I’ll do you one better— the year after, too.” 

You’re laughing, laughing in the way that he’s always tried to make you laugh, and it’s all Jeonghan needs to trust that things are going to be okay.

jeonghaniyoo_n ♫ Pritam, Mohit Chauhan, Irshad Kamil - Tum Se Hi

jeonghaniyoo_n my getaway, my favorite place Liked by ho5hi_kwon, everyone_woo, and 2,000,001 others View all 2,109 comments

Click. Click. Click. 

“What are you doing?” 

“What,” Jeonghan huffs, “A guy can’t take photos of his girlfriend?”

You throw a pillow in Jeonghan’s direction, though your terrible aim has it soaring right over his head. 

Ever since you left his company, Jeonghan has enjoyed an array of benefits that come with dating someone who is not your co-worker. The biggest of which happened to be all the time he’s now free to spend with you, most of which he’s happy to kill in his apartment. 

He’s still a little bit petulant about your new job, though, and he likes to voice it out as often as he can. 

“I bet Soobin has tons of photos of you,” he grumbles.

You pretend not to hear him. Jeonghan tries again. 

From the foot of the bed, Jeonghan begins to crawl over your legs. Your annoyed tsk goes ignored as he takes your laptop and sets it aside, dragging you away from your social media planning for page.soobin.

“He better not fall in love with you,” Jeonghan warns.

You let out a low hiss before swatting at your boyfriend, trying to get him off of you. He doesn’t budge, instead caging you in with his arms on either side of you. 

When he goes to kiss you, it bears none of the threatening front that he’s trying to put up. It’s a slow, sweet thing. A glimmer lighting up his cotton sheets. 

He only pulls away when he can no longer physically manage to keep kissing you. There’s the beginning of a grin on his face as his breaths come out in short pants, as his eyes stay closed. He’s savoring the moment, trying to remind himself how damn lucky he is even if the cost involves running his own SNS accounts henceforth. 

“I’ll give you your laptop back,” he murmurs, satisfied to have had an ounce of you.

But then you’re laughing, your fingers threading through his hair. You tug Jeonghan back down despite the fact that you’re just as breathless, and his lips curl into a full-on smile when they meet yours. 

He’d been happy with an ounce, yes, but who is he to complain when you give him the whole damn lot? 

jeonghaniyoo_n ♫ 5 Seconds of Summer - Disconnected

jeonghaniyoo_n Do not disturb. 📵 - YJH Liked by sound_of_coups, joshua_acoustic, and 3,392,034 others View all 30,109 comments

diamonddaze01 NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ylangelegy just fell to my knees 💔 happy for you, king yourusername :-)

[zorilleerrant]

"You consider me your priestess?" the girl - the old woman, now, but you can still see her rosy cheeks the first time she came to visit you - asks you. It's hard to determine her tone of voice. She doesn't sound offended, at least, although she also doesn't sound like she believes you're a god. That, at least, is expected.

You wave your hand vaguely. You didn't get the gesture quite right, but humans always change their body language, and it's been too long since you needed to be human for anything. "It's not that you are. But you're the closest I've had in generations, and I would mark you one, if you want me to." You sit, casually, on a bench that wasn't there a moment before, hoping she'll do the same.

The old woman eyes it suspiciously. She's been here for every birthday since she found the place, and many informal days besides, and she knows there was never a bench here. Still, with a weary sigh, she sits beside you. "I'd like that, I think. I never had the test scores to join any of the big priesthoods. Get one over on them, a little bit." She laughs, and her teen years, writing scathing takedowns of theological papers, come back into view for a moment.

You touch her hand. There's a spark of magic. You don't need to, you never used to, but humans are more skeptical these days, and even your most devoted follower doesn't remember the old ways.

For a moment fleeting even by her standards, you wonder if she might have brought them back. But the fishing town isn't what it once was, and no one much makes the hike up here anymore, save curious children and nostalgic adults.

"Do you want me to do anything?" your priestess asks you, a wry smiling wrinkling the still plump curve of her cheeks. "Carry a sign, maybe? Rush into the town and curse their names for not giving you your due respect? I can do a mean scolding these days."

You laugh, hand still resting over hers. "If you like." The idea of her running among the fishmongers, giving over amulets with every sale, making rude gestures when they're refused, is incomparable. The only thing she really needs is The Book, though. You fold open your altar, the way she's done so many times, and bring out the box she admired enough to start polishing gently when she came to visit, telling you about her travels and her art.

"Oh, you again," your priestess says, in delight, laying a delicate hand on the smooth wood. "I learned woodworking and inlay because of you, you little scamp." When she draws her fingers down the sides, this time, the box opens, with a click she can barely hear. Her ears aren't what they once were. Her gasp is the same as it ever was, though, and she taps The Book reverently.

"I never had many rules, even back in the beginning," you tell her, opening the cover so she knows it's safe. "What ones I had don't matter so much, I think - although I'd ask you to be careful where you summon storms, if you try it." You don't know if she has the power for that, anymore. She delved deep into magic in her mid-life crisis, but you've rarely seen her use it since, and you don't know if hers has waned or blossomed in her twilight years.

She looks over the spells. She can read the annotations, still, at least. "It's a lot of power for one person." She flexes her fingers, summoning wisps of what might be the core of some major working, if she concentrated a little harder. "Would you mind if I taught these to people? Not to join your priesthood, mind, just so there could be a little more magic in the world."

You pause. You should have considered that. Many of your siblings have left their words and their magics to the world as their respect faded away, and even more have begun recovery as lost arts. You didn't know your priestess was a teacher. You knew she'd taught a few times, when the calling struck her, but never that she felt the need in her heart. "Of course," you say. The spells are mostly weak now, you think. The time for hiding them is long past. If there's something in there that can help, so be it.

She grins at you. Her teeth are still hardy, and the candlelight flashes pleasingly against them. "Of course you'd mind, or of course you wouldn't? Don't give me any loopholes, now, Your Divinity," she laughs at her own joke, the way she started doing when she broke free of childish attempts at maturity, but still, she waits for your answer, taking your hand in hers again.

"Share them however you'd like," you tell her, knowing that it means she'll record it down to scans and recreations, "the knowledge within is yours." It's clear she'll get years of delight out of it. You don't know how much she might change the world of the handful of enthusiasts she chooses to work with her. It's a nice bookend for a life full of adventure, you think, a discovery like that.

She kisses the book, gently, on the gilded cover. Then, almost as an afterthought, she kisses your cheek as well. "Thank you," she says. Then she opens it again, absorbed in the pages, well past when the evening grows dark. You keep the candles burning higher for her, so she never has to stop her perusal. It's soothing, to watch a priestess once again hard at work. She looks up. "Is this the gift?"

"What?" you ask, caught off guard. Even through all your disciples, you never managed to learn which times connect to each other in the mind of a human. You'd thought that question long forgotten, and hadn't planned on answering right now.

"The gift you said you wanted to give me. Is The Book the gift?" she asks, in confusion. Books are wonderful, powerful things, of course, but they aren't secret. Hidden, often, and protected, and sometimes held to only the most intimate of worshipers, but they're nothing unexpected, not for a deity to give.

You lean back on the bench you never rose from, and wonder if you should bring in desks for those she plans to teach. "No. I was going to offer you your choice of afterlife, when the time comes." You watch her as she frowns. You wonder if she already has an answer in mind. You wonder if she knew since she was knee high with a scraped arm, or since she was a teenager bent on escaping her classmates, or since she was learning to grow and just choosing her passion. She just looks at you, not answering.

Then, weary minutes later - weary for her, where each night brings aches the day didn't; you're happy to wait - she asks, almost rudely, "not soon, I hope?" Her chin juts out as it used to.

"Not so soon for you," you say, thoughtfully, "although too soon for me, I must admit."

She nods, still cradling The Book carefully. "I thought, once you'd made me your priestess, I'd end up going where all your servants go," she says, sounding, of all thing, patient about it. You don't know how much she knows about your afterlife. You've never discussed it with her. Even when you were popular, once, that was never much of the details that caught people's eye.

"Normally only monks go there," you say, not that you'd discourage her, if she wanted to stay always by your side. "It's a place for quiet contemplation, mostly. Even of my priesthood, only the ones who valued their silence ever stayed." You can see her, in a long gown, roaming the halls in a circle, thinking. You can't see her enjoying it for more than a short time.

"You'd have to send me away," she says, ruefully. Then she pauses to think. "You won't pick for me? I can pick?"

Still, you think, she might have you picking her home, anyway. So many of yours did. Even the ones who earned the highest honors left everything in your hands, and here she is a priestess of moments only, ready to upset everything. Or nothing, if you ask her not to. You close her hands around The Book again.

"Think on it," you say, and wait for next year.

While other god's shrines are magnificent, yours is a bit too humbling. And yet a little girl visits you every year after stumbling upon it, never missing a year even as she grows old. Deeply moved, you decide to give her a parting gift greater than what any other God would dare to give.

[simonsrileyhusband]

haii!! its me again!! <3

so i have an idea that has been taking over my mind

what would you think about poly ghostprice with m!reader? like ghost sharing his precious bf with his captain and they go ham on him like imagine the spitroasts..

nghh i cantt these men make me horny!!! 💔💔😔

🎀 anon! <3

nsfw (headcannons bcs i didnt knew what to write)

simon is so much rough than price, that doesnt mean he doesnt take care of you, that just means that he likes to fuck a lot and he likes it fast... and nasty.

price likes to take care of you, kiss and squeeze here and there, he likes to make sure you feel good. he also lets you take control from time to time, letting you ride him however you want, letting you sit on his face as long as you want.

on the other hand simon hates to give control, he gives orders and even when he allows ypu to be on top, he decides the speed, and if you cant keep up he will make it up trusting up to you.

simon only obeys when price gives an order, which doesnt happen usually bcs he likes to let him believe he is in control.

simon loves praise and degradation, both give and recieve. price gives both and deep inside, even if he says otherwise, he loves praises.

simon loves doggy style and mating press, price loves missionary and cowperson (??? idk i wanted to make it neutral, dont me mean to me)

when they are away on deployment they leave you a set of rules that you must follow. no touching yourself unless they allow you to, and they almost never let you. and if they do give you permission, you can only cum once and you must send them a video or audio.

price is less harsh if you disobey, he mainly says he is dissapointed. but simon gets excited when it comes to punishments, both giving and reciving.

also, when they come back from deployment you should be prepared for not being able to walk properly for at least 5 days. because when they come back they are needy.

[jthealien]

Foreshadowing I’ve Found for THAT Reveal

Spoilers for the Season 1 finale under the cut!!!

HI GUYS HOW ARE WE FEELING WOW

I’ve spent the weeks in between the fast pass release and now rereading and looking for every bit of foreshadowing I could find for B- I mean Nox… being a key. (Or at least key adjacent)

Side Note: I’m playing fast and loose with the definition of foreshadowing here. Some are pretty small details or silly observations, but my list my rules :P

So here it is compiled in a massive (vaguely chronological) list with numbered photos!

Also if there’s anything I missed (I’m sure there is) please add it!!

———

1) The literal first scene of the comic is a crescent moon (in a purple background), which we now know is Nox/the villain key’s symbol

2) (Ep. 13) Nox knows “plenty about the keys.” uh yeah I bet you would

3) (Ep. 13) Chase asks if Nox is part of Ex Libris and wants to make the keys more miserable, which seems to make him really upset. It’s understandable, I’d be pretty upset if I was implied to be working with my tormentors to make my own life even worse.

4) (Ep. 13) From the start Nox assumes Chase wants the keys for something selfish. Considering Ex Libris treats the keys like objects, and some of the keys (like Bronze) are pretty weary around people, that’s not an unreasonable assumption. Nox is so accustomed to being used by higher ups for selfish wishes

—This puts his outburst in Ep. 31 in a whole new light, specifically the line about Chase wanting to befriend the keys. He’s so convinced that couldn’t be true because it’s never been true for him.

5) Each of the keys has a specific junk food/snack they like. Silver has cheese, Bronze has peanut butter, Goldie has gummies, and it seems Nox has chocolate :]

6) (Ep. 20) “Every last thing” about the keys is his business in his words

—Guess that includes himself

7) Metals can rust, and Nox isn’t a fan of water (besides baths, but I assume that’s because he can control when he goes in and for how long)

8) When you stick a key in a book, they automatically know the story (as said by Bronze in Ep. 21). This explains why Nox seems to know a book’s plot no matter what

9) (Ep. 28) He says that the keys can take advantage of “certain loopholes.” In that moment, this is a reference to what characters a key can use for their role. But it could also be a nod to how keys can technically use other keys to enter stories. He’d know that since it’s what he’s been doing this whole time.

10) In the infamous “They feed you, right?” scene (Ep. 29), we’ve always kind of assumed that — yeah — Ex Libris just doesn’t feed him often. But in this scene, Chase ALSO says “keep you locked up.” I have a feeling that’s actually what Buddy got upset about. Ex Libris probably did keep him locked up as a key, which has to be really traumatic considering his severe claustrophobia.

11) (Ep. 31) Nox assumes Chase’s wish is just as “self-serving” as his is, which we now know is to be human again.

—(Nox actually projects a lot of his own feelings onto Chase, I’ll talk about that some other time though.)

—Referring back to number 5, during this whole confrontation, Nox is convinced that Chase only wants Narratonin for a wish. As a key, of course he’d think that, because that’s all that the humans usually around him want.

12) ”Nobody should have to accept being the villain if they’re trying their best not to be.” (Ep. 30) and “I get it, you’re the villain around here…” (Ep. 32)

—He literally IS the villain

—(Also I didn’t have room to include it, but Nox gets a really sad look on his face after Chase says that last line. yikes..)

13) (Ep. 32) In response to Chase talking about trusting humans, Nox says “them.” He could’ve said something like ‘people’ or ‘anyone,’ but his wording here implies that he sees human beings as separate from himself.

14) The crescent moon necklace on his outfit in Sick Days, as well as the half-ones on his jacket. If you really think about it you could also count the gemstones near his eyes as representing his gem eyes.

—It’s maybe a little strange that this outfit is the one he decided to make so similar to his key form. But it makes sense considering the previous arc was Beach Boys, where Nox became more trusting of Chase

15) (Ep. 35) He’s never been sick because keys can’t get sick.

16) (Ep. 36) He says “real people” and “person,“ showing again how he might not think of himself as either of those. (See number 13)

17) (Ep. 39) There’s a lock on Nox’s coffin

18) (Ep. 39) I originally thought it was the lighting but nope, his ear is literally gray! Also his hair here is less spiky at the ends, like how it is in his key form

19) (Ep. 39) He looks surprised by his reflection, because he’s only used to seeing his human form while in the books.

—In fact, since you can’t see yourself in the book mirrors, when’s the last time he saw himself as a human?

20) (Ep. 39) The broken key-ring looking thing around his neck

21) (Ep. 49) “Good, that means I’m taller than someone for once.” if only you knew, Chase..

22) The entirety of Ep. 50 confirming that keys can go into books

23) (Ep. 53) He gets really pissy over the idea of his teeth being “baby”. Might be carry over from his grudge against being like 5 inches tall in reality

24) (Ep. 53) His claustrophobia could stem from being stuck in his key form and being put in a box for weeks or months at a time.

—He keeps repeating that he just needs to “wait it out” and “it’s fine” because that’s all he could do and think as a key

25) (Ep. 54) “That moon is too close” following the scene where Buddy decides to lower his guard and work on his harmful behaviors. We now know the symbol of the villain key is the moon, so it could be Nox trying to distance himself from his role as the villain.

26) (Ep. 55) The crescent moon on Bad Cat’s lapel

27) (Ep. 56) “Some people are very good at disguising their true nature” in reference to Nox. It’s quite literal, in this case.

28) All the characters’ eyes are drawn in a very specific way, no matter their color (black shading taking up half the iris, the white shine). Every character except Nox, that is.

—Well, every character except Nox and the key’s human forms. I always thought it was meant to make him seem more intimidating (which it Does), but it really might be a byproduct of being a key. The queen in Friends and Family (Ep. 56) almost has Nox’s exact eye color, and her eyes are still colored in the usual way. So it’s definitely more than a stylistic choice.

—Makes me wonder what Nox looked like pre-key form. ..Did he still have his bright blue high beams..

29) Dreams by Day is about a key having a dream/flashback, and Dreams by Night is.. also about a key having a dream/flashback

———

And that’s all I have for now!! I’m absolutely going to find something else the millisecond I post this but like u said please add anything you notice.

[derww]

the thing that bugged me the most after watching the wormhole video is actually that we never got the proper ending for the main plot line that was in it: parrot and spoke's personal relationship.

even though spoke showed that conversation from the end of wormhole, where parrot stood in front of spoke, clutching the handle of the hyperion, and said that he refuses to let people down even if it means he has to sacrifice something very important to him, this does not answer the question hanging in the air. from the point of view of the narrator, after losing op, parrot seems to lose his autonomy, both as an antagonist and, more importantly, as spoke's best friend, after spoke himself talked almost exclusively about their friendship for an hour, both as characters and, first of all, as real people.

"i didnt just exploit a game, i exploited a friendship i had built over the years.". speaking about both parrot and mapicc, spoke mentions several separate times how much it went beyond just playing on the server, that he abused their real, actual relationship in order to achieve his goal. at the same time, spoke does not tell what happened between them – both characters and people – after him receiving an op. in the jungle part, parrot literally has almost no lines – he just stares and stares and stares and stares. until the very end of the story, he follows the path that spoke paved for him, living in the conditions created by spoke.

we see only glimpses that everything is actually – at least relatively – fine. not only because parrot continues to play within the game, but also how he complains to spoke about the unfairness of using teleportation and that after the season ending he even suggests for spoke to become the new lifesteal owner. grains that do not reflect full image. was parrot horrified and shocked, was he angry, at least for a moment, when he realized how far spoke's manipulation extended, did they have to somehow solve and discuss it, or was he immediately like, "wow, you made a lot of awesome moves, there will be cool content!" and everything was fine? sure, parrot loves risk moves and adrenalin, but wasnt it too far?

can it even be "okay" if your best friend has been manipulating you for months for a personal goal? does this cross the line of what is truly acceptable, even in a lifesteal setting? even if it's all for the sake of shared content, even if the community has the right mentality, even if no real harm has been done, even if you're willing to trust a friend that he won't cross the line, does all this change the fact that it's, in general morality, just plain cruel?

although this is undoubtedly too personal to just insert into the video, it should be noted when the whole story is about abusing irl friendship. although i absolutely understand this decision, this is by no means a critical review, from the point of view of storytelling it is strikingly incorrect, as if in the middle of writing a book the writer threw out all rules.

of course, this is an important conversation to be had on the whole – with the rules never mentioned out loud, with an unspoken agreement that everyone understands what's going on here and how, and what everyone is signing up for, when the price is friendship and connection, how far is it too far? lsers are friends, to a greater or lesser extent, but it's almost inappropriate to answer "everyone has their limits" when a relationship is at stake. everyone, including spoke himself, agrees that what he did in s4 was too much, but there were many, many other moments where everything was not so clear, and, moreover, there was no discussion, even in private, which never solves the essence of the problem.

lifesteal is not unique, but it is a very rare system in how far people can be willing to go in a war against others, despite the fact that everyone is friends: most of the pre–lifesteal stories of this approach took place on public servers and against strangers, and friends' servers either remained frivolous to one degree or another, or were scripted. post-lifesteal, many servers of a similar kind have appeared, but only a small part of them are comparable in terms of the proximity of the players and the rigidity of the approach, because it is incredibly difficult to simultaneously allow yourself to get involved as deeply as possible and, at the same time, having received a knife in the back, not want to bury the traitor underground. It's about trust, and it's about content, and it's so strikingly different for different people, and there's obviously no right answer here.

when playing league of legends, one of the important skills that every player needs to develop is not to tilt. at the same time, take the game seriously, but be ready to let go of defeat, no matter how much effort you put into the game. don't go crazy when you lose a line and die ten times, and jungler yells at you as the worst possible being. it took me a few years to stop tilting, and it carried over to minecraft too – where my friends got upset, angry, and gave up, i learned to just shrug my shoulders and try again. but that didn't teach me how to deal with betrayal, even in-game, because the worst thing about betrayal is that it always comes from someone close to you. not from an accidental co-player in a match, and not as a simple accident, but as an intention to harm, even if only in the game. it is a lot to take, and the cost is too high. and, while parrot and spoke are still good friends, parrot left owner role because of the distress it gave him, so doesn't it show the presence of a real impact.

i like that we got only half-truth tho. because it is who spoke is. when he needs you to believe him, he says something actually truthful, and then – his lie and manipulation, and you eat it because believe everything to be true. even now, spoke continues to metagame. he's fine with showing that he was a dick, and he's using that to cover a part he never wants to explain. and he wouldn't.

spoke tells the truth saying he liked to do the impossible, but it is not a full answer. while s4 ending was supposed to be a relief for him, an opportunity to stop lying and being a villain, there remains something else – not only the showdown, but the guilt, the realization that you were so wrong that you hide huge chunks and you refuse to get them for another year and a half. when everything ends, when there is nowhere else to run, reflection and awareness remain. a year and a half later, from the season 6, spoke can end the video on a positive note, but for that long-time spoke, who had just released the god from his body, covered with lightning scars everywhere, absolutely not feeling like a winner, it was a bad end, and perhaps for his character, it couldn't be good.

how old was spokeishere when he did all this, 16? there is an irony that he is the worldender, the trickster, the manipulator, and he's the youngest of them all. sometimes i want to call him dumb for not being careful enough or anything else but then i do remember how he played everyone in s4. not in a big picture, but in smalltalks, toying people while they thought him to be completely harmless. spokeishere being smart is like lifesteal having its unspoken rules – you need to be too attentive to see it. often it is like a... circles on the water. you can't see a fallen pebble, but you can see the waves radiating from it. and, in the end, he is the one who did it, who succeeded, and who am i to judge him?

minecraft roleplay can do something very wrong with you, how any acting sometimes can break you apart and turn inside out. because while you are letting yourself feel like it's real, it is, at some capacity, can be real. and while it is a known factor of being an actor, it's not something you do think about when you go to play a game with your friends. sometimes it changes something very, very important in you, and sometimes you look back on that experience and realize that it hurt you. or not. everyone has their unique experiences, as always.

also, we finally found out the reason the fishing spot was so important. not only a place of friendship but also a place of the exploiting! yay!

[stealingpotatoes]

POTES GETS TRAUMATISED BY KOTOR!

i was gonna part 2 of this when I got to the end but i got to That Bit™ this morning and i need to tell everyone ever (im aware im probably towards the end of the game now but still plz dont spoil i assume theres more insane shit to come!!)

without further ado, sessions 7-9:

seven rhymes w revan so they better show tf up now

this game is so pretty esp when you land the ship

CARTH HAD A WIFE AND SON?????? CHRIST POOR GUY SAUL SUCKS

omg they never found the son that feels potentially relevant

'they didnt send a master bc itd draw too much attention' bastila, malak is obsessed with u rn i think that mission has been failed

wow so the council sent juhani with me just bc my vibes are so great

i might sound completely batshit insane for this but with all these redemption themes/talks i keep thinking abt 1. the fact i was so certain u played as revan 2. that revan is never given pronouns like ur supposed to pick their pronouns and 3. i have amnesia and im good at being a jedi (+ they clearly know smthn i dont). im not gonna say it bc i will look incredibly stupid if im wrong but do u pick up my theory. do u pick up what im putting down

ok that feels like the biggest reach in history PLEASE IM CLEARLY GOING CRAZY JUST SHOW ME REVANNN PLEASEEEEEEEE

i don’t even know if i have amnesia tbh but nobody’s given me a chance to prove i don’t

they could just be trying to make revan extra mysterious w the pronouns. i think im talking to carth too much, him not trusting anyone is making me not trust the game now im worried the lack of pronouns is there to hide their identity for some betrayal LMAO

oop i thought bringing zaalbar would be a good idea but apparently hes an exile. great

is stopping slavery even the jedi way cause qui-gonn sure as shit didnt do that in tpm

ZAALBAR'S DAD IS CHIEF??

i should bring Mission on this meet-zaalbar's-dad thing but shes 14 and i dont want to bring her into active combat scenarios ok

ok zaalbar's dad WAS chief. odds on him being this 'mad-claw'

A JEDI?

a grouchy hermit jedi!!!

why am i allowed to use the computer what previous user would make it usable for ME?????? SUSPICIOUS

what if im a wattpad character and revan is my older sibling or cousin

this is star wars, The Family Drama Franchise, im not ruling out that theyre my dad. my woke nonbinary dad

I LOVE THIS BUILDERS MYSTERY WHO TF WERE THEY. THEY MADE KASHYYK A FOREST!!! THEYRE SO COOL!!! I LOVE AN ANCIENT PEOPLES MYSTERY

was the builders my evil dad is this like assassins creed (everyone else has parental issues i'll feel left out if i don't have any)

big fan of how creepy the forest mandos are

im fighting little beasties and a massive beastie. this is just like jfo

well we dealt with a planet of slavers and helped with Zaalbar's daddy issues, now it's time to go to a new planet of slavers and help with Bastila's mummy issues!!!

DARTH BANDON (ill call him brandon out of disrespect) SHOWED UP AND IMMEDIATELY THREW A RANDOM GUARD INTO A TERMINAL INJURING 2 OTHERS. AND HE LOOKS LIKE AN EVIL SIMS 2 TOWNIE bet hes lowkey mid

malak you will never replace your best friend revan with this brandon fucker. and revan is going to be MY best friend soon when i find them

massive fan of how imperial tatooine looks near the same as it did in kotor 4000 years ago. this planet is the true no.1 shithole ever

btw the 8th fast n furious was called f8 of the furious

im still so scared that revan's pronoun sitch means they're gonna be someone i know like what if revan is already my best friend CAN SOMEONE JUST TELL ME I DONT HAVE AMNESIA SO I CAN RELAX AND AT LEAST RULE OUT THE CRACK THEORY OF ME BETRAYING MYSELF

whatever let's think about the fact i'm on the sand shithole. fuck this star map bastila where's your mum i want some soap opera drama

WHY DOES EVERYWHERE CHARGE ME 100 CREDITS

tatooine used to be a lush green planet??? arrakis who?

omg this guy knows carth does everyone on tatooine know my friends

HIS SON IS W THE SITH??????

'he must be a man by now' how old are you carth i thought you were like 30 at most. carth were you a child bride

when are we gonna run into someone who knows ME so i can dispute the amnesia allegations

AH! BASTILA'S BITCH-MUM JUST ASKED ME IF I TALK TO MY MOTHER LIKE THAT AND I GOT OPTIONS!! IS THIS EVIDENCE AGAINST MY AMNESIA???? AM I A REAL CHARACTER??????? GET IN!!! I HAD A MOTHER

i love how bastila n her mum havent seen each other in presumably like 20 years and yet their reunion was so immediately hostile

or more than 20 years who knows how old any of my companions are carth apparently has an adult son!!!

the only person i can trust is mission who is for sure 14 and the old men who are old man aged

thank god there was a guy who immediately told me the nonlethal option for the tuskens i thought i was gonna have to search for it

just did baby's first savescum cause i accidentally picked a dark side option and my friends were sad LOL

THE WAY HK47 SAID "shall i kill something for you? (:" LMAO IM IN LOVE W IT ALREADY

LMAOO HK IS ALMOST ALL THE WAY INTO THE DARK SIDE METER

having bastila and hk at the same time feels like having an angel and a devil on my shoulder every time they chime in on dialogue

i love them

MEATBAGS

"would you rather be caught with contraband that is very illegal or just a little illegal" "whats the difference" "about 20 years, master" HE IS MY FAVOURITE

love getting the murderdroid to do peace negotiations

hilarious that we're negotiating in our underwear

tatooine really makes you realise that this game is a walking simulator

LETS GO FIGHT A DRAGON

but respectfully. bc im a jedi

fun fact if you walk straight into the cave without using the hunter guy's mines then you will die and have to reload your save. not saying i know this from experience bc i just did exactly that and died or anything it's just a random fact i know

dragon: exploded

DARTH BRANDON??!??!?!?!

NOW TELL ME WHERE REVAN IS YOU SHITBRICKED SON OF A BITCH ok hes dead he cant tell me anything

bastila is drawn to landmines like a moth to a flame she loves getting exploded by them

BASTILA'S MUMMY ISSUES: SOLVED

i should be an intergalactic family issues counsellor. my character could've solved vaderkin and luke's whole thing in less than one film

bastila just PAID ME A COMPLIMENT INSTEAD OF NAGGING ME! CALL THE UH-- i guess star wars doesnt have the vatican just uhhh idk tell yoda when he's born

i love this game bc you get a very distinct feeling that they pulled '4000 years' out of a hat and didnt think about how the buildings or technology would be different. in 4000 years all that's changed on tatooine is how many towns there are but i guess it's the law of diminishing returns or whatever

WE’RE BEING TRACTOR-YOINKED???

why are we in our underwear. saul you pervert

what history between us

WHAT HISTORY SAUL. WHAT HISTORY

WHAT HISTORY?!!!!!!?!!????

what does he MEAN my loyalties are switching WHAT FUCKING HISTORYY

LMAOOO you can say the academy was on alderaan instead of dantooine thats such a good anh reference

THE JEDI ON DANTOOINE HAVE BEEN KILLED?!!?!!!! WHAT IM NO LONGER LMAO-ING

WHAT THE HELL CAN I HAVE A SECOND TO PROCESS EVERYTHIN

sorry carth i got you soooo electrocuted it was for the republic tho

seriously WHAT THE DANTOOINE JEDI CANT BE DEAD LIKE ??????? what????? no??? master tortimer???

LMAOOO HALF NAKED JOLEE IS GONNA KILL A SHIP

NAKED OLD MAN RAMPAGE LETS GOO!!

this is good we should get out of here but also can we ask saul and malak what the fuck he meant by history

presumably?? i was a sith before?? my amnesiacs??? like that seems certain going off saul's comments

god if the crack theory was right im gonna cry i dont even want to think abt the implications of that

at least my amnesia has been semi-confirmed. or i have an evil twin

LMAO JOLEE HAS NO ARMOUR PROFICIENCY ALL HE CAN WEAR IS HIS UNDIES. NAKED OLD MAN RAMPAGE CONTINUES!

“i have an army” “we have a naked old man”

rip naked old man times i have my equipment back

bastila thinks we can't fight malak but i literally have grenades we'll be fine

also i want to talk to him what the fuck did saul mean we had history. is MALAK my evil dad??? (i dont want 2 think abt the alternative option)

IM IN SPACE!!!!! IN A SPACE SUIT

what the hell do they put in these star wars games man, kotor is reaching jfo/js levels of "basically coke for me"

i cant think of a session nine pun i just wanna play it

CONTINUING ON FROM BEING IN SPACE LETS GO PUNCH SAUL IN SPACE

the crack theory can't be right its just a crack theory i'm not. like im just a normal woman i cant be ya know. i dont even wanna say it

SAUL PLEASE TELL ME I DONT HAVE AMNESIAAA

omg YES WE GET TO KILL SAUL!! GAME OF THE YEAR!!

HES ALIVE WHAT THE FUCK DID HE TELL YOU CARTH. WHAT THE FUCK DID THE WHOLE JEDI COUNCIL KNOW

CAN YOU GUYS TELL ME

WHY IS THE ONLY DIALOGUE OPTION LET'S MOVE ON. I DONT WANT TO MOVE ON TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU GUYS ARE TALKING ABOUT

ah! malak! you bitch!

REUNION? VENGEANCE?? OH GOD NO

NO

ITS SHOWING ME THE EVIDENCE

OH IT WAS CARTH WHO SAID ABT THE MEMORY WIPING IT WASNT A LOADING SCREEN TIP

NO

WHAT

NO??????????? NO

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A CRACK THEORY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A CRAZY REACH I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE RIGHT

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

wow revan (my???) eyes are fucked up

AGH HE CALLED ME REVAN

OH MY GOD

I WAS ALWAYS PLAYING AS REVAN

THIS WHOLE TIME. I WAS NEVER PLAYING AS SOME RANDOM CLOWN WHO IVE GROWN TO LOVE AS A CHARACTER. I WAS ALWAYS PLAYING AS REVAN

WHY IS THERE NOT A DIALOGUE OPTION TO HAVE A PANIC ATTACK I NEED TO HAVE A PANIC ATTACK

FUCK MAN ILL HAVE ONE IN REAL LIFE AT THIS RATE THERES NO WAY

i dont feel like im abt to cry but i kind of want to cry anyway what the HELL MAN

IT GETS WORSE EVERY TIME HE CALLS ME REVAN IM IN MROE AND MORE SHOCK

LIKE IVE BEEN PHYSICALLY GASPING ON REPEAT N SAYING NO OUT LOUD. IF I WAS HOME ALONE I THINK ID BE SCREAMING

there has got to be a speneva (space geneva) convention against this this seems so illegal

i literally cannot work out if this is better or worse than death. tbh it is death like the body lives but they stole my fucking brain man what the hell BASTILA I THOUGHT WE WERE FUCKING FRIENDS

oh my god she said "to capture revan… to capture you" WHY DOES IT HURT MORE WHEN MY FRIEND BASTILA CALLS ME REVAN

STOP CALLING ME REVAN MY NAME IS LEALA MACHAI THATS THE NAME IVE HAD FOR THE LAST 16 HOURS THATS MY NAME SHUT UP SHUT UP

NO STOP CALLING ME REVAN BASTILA!!!!

malaks a fuckin pussy he keeps running away

WHAT NO BASTILA DONT SACRIFICE YOURSELF DONT DO THAT STOP BASTILA WE CAN TAKE HIM IVE BEEN BEATING HIM 1V1 HES FUCKING EASY TO FIGHT COME BACK

NO I DONT WANT TO LEAVE HER!!!!!!! THATS;. SHE LIED TO ME BUT SHES STILL MY FRIEND BASTILA NO CARTH I DONT WANT TO LEAVE HER I NEED TO TALK TO HER

jesus mary joseph and the little donkey im revan. what the hell. im revan

this whole time

JOLEE IS STILL NAKED LMAO

yes mission! yes i love you yes it just matters who i am now yes exactly

CARTH DONT CALL ME REVAN I WILL START CRYING

thank you mission and zaalbar youre real ones

THANK U CANDEROUS

jolee knew but im not pissed off he wanted me to find out on my own and it wasnt his place to say, candy-o respects my/revan’s defeating his ppl and is the first person to make revan not sound like a slur

HK WAS MY DROID THIS WHOLE TIME?? HE WAS MY ASSASSIN DROID???????? LMAO AMAZING ok i feel less bad i can be revan if it means hk was mine all along

omg yay that means i DID run into someone i knew on tatooine just like carth and bastila!

tatooine must be crazy to do as the last planet lmao like does hk immediately go WADDUP MASTER and you cant even solve bastila's mummy issues bc shes not there. good thing i already did it

LMAOO CANDEROUS BEING LIKE girl its the force anything can happen its not just convenient

am i the force's specialest girl

yay carth listened to everyone and UNDERSTOOD THAT WHATEVER SHOCK HES FEELING I AM FEELING IT MUCH MUCH WORSE GODDAMNIT

agh no what the hell i just have to go about my day now?? i just have to work now????? until i can play the rest later?? when that just happened???????? i need bereavement leave

ive closed the game but im just blankly staring at my computer screen. what the hell. what the hell man

i have never felt so violated and traumatised by a bunch of pixels

somehow it feels worse that i basically clocked it but then was immediately like nahhh thats an insane reach, anyway! like somehow that feels worse than if i'd just never thought it was a possibility

what the fuck man what the fuck

POTES SEMI-LIVEBLOGS KOTOR!

ive been writing my thoughts in the notes app but due to popular demand (one person asked for it) i'm posting my liveblogging DO NOT SAY/TAG/COMMENT SPOILERS PLEASE i read tags

warning im a yapper, im 10 hours in and theres a lot already (separated into sessions):

SESSION 1

whos this clown i thought i would be playing as revan

ive been too spoiled by dragon age origins this character creator sucks ass

only human???? ): fr?? ill just imagine her different in my brain or some shit

my life is being mansplained to me. is this bad writing or do i have amnesiacs

hes meta now??? hes talking abt the screen controls?????

omg a jedi and an evil jediii

omg their asses suckedddd they both died immediately

i <3 bringing a sword to a gun fight

WHY R THERE SO MANY SITH WHERE IS TJE RULE OF TWO

i clicked a workbench and it said lightsaber so either i get a lightsaber or i get a jedi friend whose lightsaber i can steal if im careful

I assume u play as revan in kotor2 so im gonna buy that now so i can play it when im done playing w this clown

i got light side points im getting a good grade in game morality which is something both normal to want and possible to achieve

everyone keeps saying revan is dead but thats my friend revan from tumblr hes clearly alive. or they???

my characters ass is distractingly present onscreen

huge fan of the way everyone collapsed drunk what the FUCK was in that wine

ok these sith ppl might be the bad guys but their armour is DRIPPY AS FUCK

ideologically i dont agree w the sith but they kinda went off w the fits

googling how to become a sith without being evil cause they have Drip

SESSION 2

i paid £1.19 to see revan he better show up in this game at some point

all these sith n i still cant find one revan….. stop faking ur death rn come out n talk to me babygirl this isnt like u….

why can i be light/dark side if im not a jedi. give me a laser sword

maybe this jedi gyal will know where revan is faking his death. or give me a fuckin lightsaber PLEASEEE

was just thinking 'does this game have romance' and then carth called me beautiful. i dont think im gonna romance anyone until i get this amnesia sorted

why is carth questioning me so much abt the crash im pretty sure i have amnesia

why tf did the jedi lady have me transferred to this ship are we in lesbians with each other???

carth's not wrong it is suspicious but i lowkey have amnesia so i coulda done that i coulda not

a lot of clone wars voice actors in this. was lucasfilm so broke in the 2000s that they could only afford the same 3 VAs for every project

mission is 14??????? we need to get my girl back in school

SESH 3

tale as old as time i fucking suck at racing games

ok i didnt realise you had to mash click i won

REVAN!!! REVAN!!!!!!!!!

why am i dreaming abt revan tho. real as hell but ?????

lmao cringe revan getting blown up. i thought the jedi beat rev-meister in a fight but no. accident

"such visions are often a sign of force sensitivity" COOL YAY GIVE ME A LIGHTSABER

BASTILLE LOST HER FUCKING LIGHTSABER??

CARTH IS RIGHT THATS LIKE DAY ONE JEDI SHIT. ok i still love her even tho shes a bit of a bitch and also doesnt have a saber

if we find a lightsaber im taking it first tho

whys carth getting weird abt me being weird that he doesnt trust me. i just wanna be friends mate

SESH IV: A NEW HOPE

'i mean no disrespect, but perhaps one of the male slaves could serve you better' i went in here to start a slave revolution and instead got called a lesbo

LMAO THERES A SPICE LAB???? WALTER WHITE WHERE ARE YOU

thats insaneee they blew up BILLIONS of people to get to one jedi?????? these sith arent fucking around theyre scary

UM THIS IS CRAZY GRAPHICS THE LIGHTING IS CLEARER/DARKER WHEN I COVER THE SUN W THE SHIP EDGE?? 2003 IS THE YEAR OF THE FUTURE

someone just called me padawan i kinda assumed i was in my late 20s do i just have baby vibes

all the jedi in the movies are so chill but every kotor jedi i've met so far has been a bit of a bitch

YO THEY HAVE A YODA!!! its not THE yoda but

cool so these guys are just the regional managers at best. your asses are not the council

why can everyone smell my force juju so strong

THATS STRAIGHT UP YODA'S CLONE WARS VA

why does fake yoda not blink both eyes at the same time. im calling him master tortimer he reminds me of the animal crossing mayor

bastila there was no need for such a fancy bow

malak is like evil aang

revan is so much shorter than malak omg

are me and bastila sharing dreams. are we both obsessed w revan

poor mission ):

WHAT WAS MASTER TORTIMER ABT TO SAY????????? EVER SINCE WHEN??? DID WE KNOW EACH OTHER BEFORE MY AMNESIACS????? DID BASTILA TELL U SMTHN MORE WHEN I WASNT IN THE ROOM???

im intrigued i like this whole hidden jedi shtick its very compelling. so is whatever theyre hiding from me

kinda surprising no jedi found me before tho given my force juju is so strong

IM A LEGIT JEDI NOW??? SICK!!!

does revan rlly not have pronouns i thought that was a tumblr thing but they straight up are a nonbinary icon ive never heard a single pronoun used. revan's pronouns are revan/revan's

damn revan seems so cool in these stories (charismatic war hero that convinced their troops to join them as conqueror?? julius caesar) and yet all we've seen them do onscreen is get blown up and die by accident

A YEAR AGO? the way they were talking i assumed revan died like. a week before the game started

master uh i forgot his name he has martin scorcese vibes said revan was a paragon of the jedi so what im getting is that all jedi gifted kids turn evil

even if i didnt know revan as a tumblr darling id KNOW revan has to be alive somewhere they way everyone talks abt them is too cool for a character who exploded and died. i think. i hope. I PAID £1.19 TO MEET REVAN

'only you and bastila can stop malak' seriously????? just us two?? ive been a jedi for like, 6 minutes and you guys keep calling bastila young???? do you guys not wanna help??

omg im getting carth to traumadump! <3

HE WAS ON REVAN'S ARMY>??

i totally knew the jedi code and did not have to google it whatsoever

they rlly said fuck going to illum heres a crystal from the bin

he told me id be a great sentinel and i was like i know but i want blue cause i dont wanna be matchies with bastila

OGH!!! I HAVE A LIGHTSABER!!!! THIS IS GAME OF THE YEAR!!!!

omg i made my lightsaber perfectlyyy which is rare <3 getting a good grade in jedi

maybe i was a travelling lightsaber salesman before my amnesia

seriously though WHO was i everyone's kinda stopped acting like i have amnesia since the first mission BUT IVE PLAYED DRAGON AGE THAT GIVES YOU OPPORTUNITIES TO RP UR PAST. THIS DOESNT. EITHER THIS GAME IS BAD (but i love it so its not) OR I HAVE RETROGRADE AMNESIA

also everyone keeps being like "Oh ur force juju is so strong" AND NOBODY FOUND ME TIL NOW??? suspicious. did getting a really bad concussion activate the force in me

im too confused and amnesiac'd to think abt anything except the fact i have a glowing stick now

FSESH FIVE:

big fan of using aliens to avoid having to get VAs to read every line

oh so carth's boyfriend saul betrayed him and became leader of the sith fleet so he has trust issues

well he needs to calm down. i can't betray him cause i dont know what the fuck is happening

yooo i love the design differences on the mandalorians

oh my god this lady wanted to fuck her droid cause it was her husband's. and then it killed itself. wtf. game of the year tho

wtf they jebaited this juhani person into going dark side but then i talked her out of it. that seems a bit mean of them

i hope she can join my party she looks too unique to be a random npc

ive been thinking and I might be going crazy but there was a loading screen tip ages ago that said jedis could wipe ppl's mind and all i thought at the time was 'fuck the shitshow acolyte didnt make that up'. but what if one of them wiped MY memory and i used to be a jedi or smthn ????????

cause they keep being like ur weirdly good at this??? did bastila steal my memories??????????

I KNOW I HAVE AMNESIA!! EVEN IF EVERYONE DOESN'T BRING IT UP BC THEYRE PROBABLY TRYING TO SAVE MY FEELINGS

if i dont have amnesia and im just deeping the fact the opening had my life being mansplained then im gonna look real stupid

anyway time 2 go to the fuckshit ruins cave where r-dog and malak went to

"it must be referring to revan. the dark lord and malak--" revan's pronouns are revan/thedarklord

bastila said theres no mention of the Builders in the archives. does she just know every text off by heart

THIS DROID IS 20K YEARS OLD ???

omg i can equip 2 lightsabers at once. game of the year

OK I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I SAID ABOUT THE AMNESIA BASTILA IS ASKING ME QUESTIONS ABOUT MY BACKGROUND THAT I CAN ANSWER. I REPEAT I DO NOT HAVE AMNESIA

ok i didnt get choices and i didnt really uh… say anything that i didnt already get told im still not ruling out amnesia

also booo i didnt get to find out how old i was

master tortimer rlly looks like the ultimate ketamine yoda

LMAO THERE WAS A DIALOGUE OPTION 2 CALL JUHANI A CATGIRL

omg kashyyk from jedi fallen order!!!

I CAN UPGRADE MY LIGHTSABER THIS IS JUST LIKE JFO

omg this ship is fun i wish everyone had personalised bunk spaces like hfw… a game which came out 19 years after this i should probably just take what we have

im gonna start w manaan cause im p sure thats what B-dog said n its the same language the droid was speakin

omg hyperspace from star wars

THE GUY THE BUILDING FELL ON???

am i having dreams abt revan bc bastila killed revan and im connected to her this is so roundabout

maybe i'd sleep better if my ponytail wasnt clipping into the pillow

[kiwi accent] six

carth needs a xanax every time i think we're friends he stops trusting me

also lmao he actually pointed out how wild it was that a day one padawan is being sent on this uber important mission and HES RIGHT IT IS WEIRD!! i thought it was main character logic but he's calling it out

i really really like the sense of unease that's setting in like at first i thought it was just cause im not used to 2003 games but no this is on purpose bc carth my friend carth keeps calling it out

THERE IS A CHILD ON MY SHIP ??????????????????

lmao the representative for menaan is roland wann. its like poetry it rhymes

there are no cameras in the sith hangar <3 rookie error i can commit crimes now

bastila's favourite hobby is getting shot and walking into my grenades

this isnt a combat system this is a missing system

I GOT ARRESTED???? IM JUST A GIRL

nvm i had a datapad that said the sith were evil so theyve let me go free and we're besties

why do i feel like ive just walked into an underwater horror mission

this suit waddles at the speed of a penguin on fentanyl

i tamed the beastie this is like how to train your dragon

MALAK FIRED ON REVAN?????? WERENT THEY BEST FRIENDS???????

but maybe revan escaped when bastila wasnt looking THEYRE FINE THEYRE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. I BELIEVE

so hopefully when we run into revan they'll be like agh i changed my ways cause of the being shot thing and they'll be my bestie

great news i successfully communicated w the ship child and gave her back to dantooine. my girl has shockingly good linguisitics skills

bastila is so dour "oh watch out for the dark side" GIRL I AM. I NEED TO GET THE BEST GRADE IN GAME MORALITY

ok OFF TO KASHYYK i hope cal kestis is there… thru the force i guess… bc he wont be born for another 4000 years but its whatever

omg you'll never guess what. another vision. wow its one of the thangs. cool this is a tomorrow me problem

[bullet-prooflove]

Possibilities: Eddie Diaz x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @gatefleet @mckinleysbones @totalstitchlover19 @angelofthetrenchcoats

Companion piece to:

Bang - Eddie's new year starts with a bang.

Lifetime (NSFW) - One night with you makes Eddie realise he wants a life time.

El Paso - Eddie is forced to make a decision that hurts you both.

It’s midnight in El Paso and Eddie is lying in the spare room of his parents house, listening to the sound of his dad snoring through the wall as Christopher sleeps in room next door. He’s trying to resist the urge to get up, to check on him for the fifth time since he put him to bed.

This thing with the ventilator, it’s scared the shit out of him. When he’d stepped into that hospital room after the procedure he wasn’t prepared for the sight of his son like that, hooked up to a machine, one that was keeping him alive. He’d bawled like a baby in the men’s room afterwards, trying to stifle the sound of his sobs with his palms because seeing Chris like that had broken him.

It’s been a couple of months since then, Chris has recovered, he’s healthier, stronger but Eddie still can’t help but check on him every single night. He usually sticks around for a few minutes, watching the rise and fall of his chest before he closes the door quietly behind him.

He sighs as he turns his head towards the empty pillow beside him, his palm smoothing over the cool sheets. That’s the other thing that’s got him wide awake. The thought of you and the night you shared together. He’s not just talking about the sex, it was the intimacy of the act, the connection. He’s never had that with another person he’d never really known what he was missing until you. Now it’s all he can think about, how the two of you were starting something, how he ended it.

He wonders if you’ve moved on since he's stopped responding, or if you’re spending your nights the same way he is, trapped in the possibilities of what should have been. In his head he sees it all so clearly, the future the two of you would have had.

Nights tangled up together, mornings in his kitchen having breakfast, you wearing his t-shirt before you made love in the shower. He envisions birthday parties, cook outs, Christmases.  After that a dog, a ring and maybe a sibling for Christopher. You would have been happy he thinks, you both would have been and that’s the part that chokes him up.

The life that he could have had, not the one he’s currently living.

Love Eddie? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Before you join the taglist make sure to read the rules here as you otherwise you won't be added.

Interested in supporting me? Join my Patreon for Bonus Content!

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[carrotcakecrumble]

Talking to anyone in the UK that is dismissive of the things Trump said in his inauguration speech because ‘it’s Trump, what do you expect?’:

If an American president had acted the way Trump has/is acting say, 15 years ago or something, it would be being made a much bigger deal of over here in the Uk than it is being made of today. It would be unthinkable that a Labour government would cosy up with a world leader who incited a coup and disrupted the peaceful transition of power, yet we have Kier Starmer intent of having a relationship with the Trump administration. And hardly anyone bats an eyelid. No one expects anyone to bat an eyelid.

I hear people talking about the ‘Gulf of America’ thing and, for the most part, calling it crazy. But partnered with crazy I keep hear again and again & hand in hand, ‘it’s hilarious’

is it?

Overtons window is the idea that (as I understand it) a political leader will act within a certain window of what the majority public deems as acceptable. Over the last decade, a lot of us have been watching hopelessly as misinformation and propaganda push this window further and further right. Widening and widening it until it’s just a gaping void full of Elon Musk’s sieg heiling on national television and American presidents disregarding repeatedly the rule of a law they evidently have very little understanding of. A lot of the events that spurred this migration right was met with laughter and disbelief in this country.

After Roe V Wade, do you still disbelieve ?

When we laugh at how insane Trump / Musk / Vance is, we dilute how serious the situation actually is, which in return allows this soft-core fascism to enter our mainstream. Someone with that much power opening their mouth and consistently, unintentionally making us laugh should shock us so much more than it is??? A president openingly stating he is willing to disregard current science and research and cut funding to thousands (millions?) of Transgender American citizens should see other progressive western countries angry, intervening, doing something. A billionaire thrusting out a Nazi salute towards the American flag at a presidential inauguration should incite something close to riots. An American president openingly declaring the country an Oligarchy should be on front pages everywhere!!! For weeks!!! For months!!! Yet it’s been days and the buzz around it is already starting to die out. Trump said something 🤪🩷crazy and 🫣😅laughable again so now that’s all we can talk about, of course.

We need to remember that as shockingly unbelievable the things Trumps says are, that it is still reality. It’s not a joke. It has real world consequences. He means it. A lot of American people want him to mean it. A lot of people in this country want him to mean it. We must remember to challenge these things when we hear them, remember to make it clear how dangerous it is. Make a fuss. Make a noise. Make it unacceptable once again.

Most importantly, we must remember: It is not funny.

They (fascists in all their forms) want you find it funny, because then you’ll hardly be able to believe it’s actually happening until it’s already far too late. We should never laugh so loud that we fail to hear the real threat being whispered beneath.

Take everything he and his henchmen say with sincerity and, for god’s sake, act like it’s the most powerful men in the Western world saying it.

[artist-issues]

You’re still perpetuating a silly argument. The idea that it’s a Sacred Rule that Disney cannot kill off either of its main characters (even if that’s what you want to describe Maui as) is totally made-up. There’s no rule that says they can’t. The most you could say is “it’s unlikely.”

And fine, if it’s unlikely, if it’s too big a risk for them to do it, if it’s something no audience would accept—then their theme should not have been “We Can Still Be Together Even If It’s Different.” Unless they did one of the other alternatives that I offered to communicate that theme, besides the option of killing Maui. To repeat myself for the third time in a different way:

If they wanted a theme of the movie to be “We Can Still Be Together Even if It’s Different,” THEN they should never have done a pump-fake where it seems like Maui is dying/losing something he uniquely identifies with (when he gets struck by lightning and loses his life-changing powers/appears to be dying) OR a pump-fake where it seems like Moana is dying/losing something she uniquely identifies with (when she gets struck by lightning and it appears that she is going to have new life-changing powers/appears to be dead.)

They should not have had those two pump-fakes in the movie, if they were not going to commit and follow through. Because when they did not commit or follow through, THEN the theme “We Can Still Be Together Even if It’s Different” is no longer upheld by the story, it’s destroyed. They dropped the ball.

BECAUSE the theme offers two qualifiers: “Togetherness” and “Difference (from what used to be.)”

If Maui still has his powers, and he is not separated from others by death, then there is no reason to have a theme that argues for for “Togetherness” OR “a Difference.” Because nothing is meaningfully different, and he is not separated from everyone any more than he already was.

If Moana can still go home with her glowing arm, and she is not separated from others by death, then there is no reason to have a theme that argues for for “Togetherness” OR “a Difference.” Because nothing is meaningfully different, and she is not separated from everyone any more than she already was.

Do you understand why I am advocating for one of the solutions that could have made the movie better being the death or loss-of-normalcy of either Maui or Moana? Because if you don’t understand that after I’ve said it three different ways, you need to move on, because we’re not getting anywhere and I’m tired of repeating myself.

Sounds like Moana 2 felt like the rushed tv movie it was supposed to be.

THIS IS THE MOANA 2 CRITIQUE POST

I'm tired of excusing things with the word "rushed." If you have less time to produce, you should simplify what you're trying to say. That way, all your small amount of time can be spent on carefully building the best way to say it. Moana 2 felt very unfocused. It felt like it was trying to say:

"You Can’t Survive in Isolation" (but like why not? why do they need their neighboring islands? Don’t make up a reason—tell me the reason the movie showed you.)

"There's Always Another Way” (what? As opposed to what? One way? What One Way was Moana demonstrably sticking to before the not-really-villainess sang her song? Wasn’t finding that One Way ((“learning where to go by remembering who you are/where you’ve been”)) the whole point of the first movie? Now we’re throwing that out the window?)

"Together But a Little Different" ("Different" as in 'In-New-Circumstances' not "Different" as in 'We’re-Different-So-It’s-Hard-to-Relate-to-One-Another,’ which would've been the better, more cohesive sense of ‘Different’.)

“Something-Something Stories Are Important” (literally they just substitute the phrase “we’ll die” with “our story will end.” No mention of why that’s bad, or what makes a story a story, no reason why stories are important, or what for, just throwing the word “story” around vaguely.)

And none of those "themes" I listed just now had a lot of work put into them. That’s it, in a nutshell. But I can flesh-out my argument for those, and present what I think they could’ve easily done differently, if they’d just picked one and worked hard to make it simply good. SPOILERS BELOW.

“You Can’t Survive in Isolation”

We're told in a quick vision that Moana's people will die if they stay in isolation—but there's no showing us that.

In fact, what we've been shown is that they're thriving, they're fine by themselves. They were in the first movie. They are at the beginning of the second.

So we're not convinced that they need what the whole adventure is supposedly about. Compare that to the first movie! Totally doesn't measure up to the storytelling quality!

In the first movie, the whole first act sets up the idea of darkness reaching through the ocean from Tefiti's missing heart, killing everything. That’s especially bad for Moana’s people. We know that because we’re shown how Moana's people are so deeply connected to the ecosystem of their island, and how every part of it is needed for their way of life to continue—then were also shown that Moana has a deep, personal longing to leave the island. There’s a real connection to home and an urgent need to leave it, and that creates really good emotional tension.

So by the time we're shown (not told in one scene, or through snatches of overdone dialogue, but shown) how the darkness will destroy everything if she doesn't go, we really believe it. We have lots of reasons to empathize with and believe in Moana’s reason for going on this mission. We also feel for her having to make the big decision; we’ve been shown that she’s trying to live up to her responsibilities, and leaving the island would seem like a dismissal of those responsibilities, but we can also see how doing nothing and staying actually would be a dismissal. We feel that tension because they showed us several believable reasons to feel it.

But when Moana is singing “Beyond,” which is supposedly about her conflicting feelings about leaving, and the need to go? I’m just bored. Not emotionally invested. I just saw her going back-and-forth, leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back, one song ago, in “We’re Back.” And everything was fine during that song. Leaving-And-Coming-Back is the dream she’s been living as a voyager. So why is she suddenly convinced it’s a hard decision to…leave-and-plan-to-come-back?

“Because the last voyager died doing this mission she’s about to go on! She might die too!” Okay but all you did was tell me that. You didn’t show me Moana nearly-dying (like she did the first time she tried to cross the reef, or the first time she tried to tackle Te Ka on her own) and then realizing, “gee, oh no, I could die this time,” and then having to make a renewed decision to go anyway. You didn’t put work in, so I don’t believe it.

But the emotion Moana is feeling about leaving is also undercut, like I said, because there doesn’t seem to be a need for her to leave. All they did was tell me that Motunui is in trouble if it stays isolated. But no proof. They were fine isolated from other islands in Moana 1. They have been fine up until now in Moana 2. One random vision of an empty pavilion for three seconds isn’t going to make me forget that and believe that continued isolation will do anything negative to them.

And another thing, what does “uniting with other islands” even mean?” Why would it be such a good thing?

Nobody mentions trade. Nobody mentions learning from one another, or demonstrates learning from one another. Honestly, having Kele teach Moana or Moni or the Kakamora, an actual other-islander, about farming would’ve been a great demonstration of “why we need to meet new people and get out more.”

Having Kele LEARN TO SWIM would have been a SLOW ONE DOWN THE MIDDLE.

But nooo. They just half-bake suggest the idea that the old man doesn’t like leaving his comfort zone, but then never let one of the others have a real conversation with him about why he needs to learn new things from new people. NEVER. It’s just “bouncy vague song, almost-jump-in-the-water-under-coercion BUT NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT, banter and one liners” for the rest of the movie! (And don’t tell me Kele “learning to speak Kakamora” was an example of him “getting out of his comfort zone.” No. Kele never demonstrated a lack of desire to meet and learn new things from strangers. He demonstrated a hatred of fun and the ocean. All the others could also understand the Kakamora literally whenever they needed to, so that wasn’t a special-character-arc for Kele.)

Even though, my point is, they could’ve easily had a character arc for Kele. And that would’ve had something to do with “learn new things from new people, or die stagnant and stuck in your ways,” look, see, a mini-object-lesson in one character’s journey about the theme of the movie. But noooo

They could’ve done the same type of “learn-something-new-or-die” with Moni. Have him be convinced that doing things the “traditional Motunui Wayfinding Way” on this, his first adventure, is the ONLY way to do things. But he’s not good at it, no matter how much head-knowledge he has. And then the Kakamora (or literally any non-Motunui-character) could’ve shown him a newly-developed style for him to learn and grow.

They could’ve done the same type of “learn-something-new-or-die” with Loto. But nope. She just has a really poorly-done, poorly-written, poorly-performed snippet of a song where she mentions how… “perfection is a myth, the journey is just failing, learning, then death, no destination, ever.” But that ridiculous, absolutely absurd worldview is not portrayed as something she’s wrong about or needs to grow out of. It’s portrayed as a good, quirky, revolutionary thing.

But that’s not the same thing as portraying the value I’m describing. Loto just sings about it and invents-and-reinvents canoes. She does not learn how to make canoes from outsiders. She doesn’t learn anything from anybody. She is portrayed as a solitary genius with her own ideas who’s never once shown to be wrong about anything in the whole movie, and everything she tries works. She never messes up or makes a mistake, for all her singing about it. So she never actually “falls on her face, then gets up and learns.” Even though learning from others would be the literal only way for her character to portray the idea of this vague theme they throw out there, “You Can’t Survive in Isolation.”

The point is: there is no reason, in-movie, SHOWN, for the audience to believe that Moana should “re-unite the islands.” There’s no believable demonstration of why that would be a good thing, and no believable demonstration of why not doing it would be a bad thing.

So then why do we care if she risks her life and Maui’s life to re-unite the islands? For a bunch of nameless nobody background characters to show up for a five-second afterparty on Motunui at the end? Ridiculous.

Moving on.

“There’s Always Another Way”

So BUMP ALL THAT, I GUESS.

Matangi, everybody’s Cherished Hope for a New Villain, sings a song and it’s about “get lost, there is no one way, there’s always a different way.”

Fine. Cool. Whatever. The whole point of the first movie was that there’s this symbolic, ancient, WAY of sailing and living your life bravely. And Moana doesn’t know what that One WAY is because her tribe had forgotten it, so she has to learn it. It’s cool, because you navigate by looking at where you’ve been, to see where you’re going. It’s the whole “remember who you are in order to face life’s challenges, not hide from them.” That’s “the Way.” But whatever. Dump that down the toilet, new movie. You know why? Because everybody’s obsessed with “There’s No One Truth,” and “There Is No Right and Wrong,” and “Let’s Experience Things Just to Experience Them, the Journey is the Destination Because We’re not Going Anywhere!” Blah blah blah ridiculous inane sewage slop.

BUT whatever, fine, IF you mean it in a “There’s Lot’s of Ways to Solve Most Problems, Try Try Again,” sense, that’s okay. That’s true for most problems (not all, but most, certainly there are more than one ways to sail.) Sure. that message, if that’s what they mean, is fine. That’s the sense in which Moana takes it, at least, when she dives down to touch the Core Island and break the curse instead of it rising.

But you know what? Yeah. They don’t flesh it out. They don’t take time to show that that’s what’s happening. Moana doesn’t try to teach her new crew how to sail, and they suck at it, but if she lets them do it their own way or whatever, then they work—and she learns there’s “more than one way.” That doesn’t happen.

The Kakamora that joins their team doesn’t solve all his problems with blow darts, or violence, or whatever—and then Moana, or the kindhearted Moni, or the peaceful Kele, tells him, “no, there’s another way, you don’t always have to do things your violent way.” That doesn’t happen.

Loto has one moment where she applies the way she was already living according-to, from the moment we meet her, not a NEW way, to the canoe so that the gang can out-sail magical waterspouts. And it works for like twenty seconds, is played like a great triumph, before they all get smashed into the ocean anyway.

Kele, again, would’ve been a great example of “learn to do things in a different way, or problem-solve by try-trying again.” Because he’s old and they set him up as hating life for no reason and not wanting to do new things. But they didn’t do anything with him.

And guess what else—at the end—when Moana has her own demigod powers, and her own magical-arm-tattoo ripped off from Tears of the Kingdom—guess what her magic power is?

To stick her oar in the water, and light up one current or “path” for the boat to take to a new destination.

A Path. ONE SINGULAR SOLITARY WAY.

Not “a new way.” Not “all possible ways.” Not “multiple ways.” Not even two ways. One. Even though the big lesson she sacrificed her life for, even though the one and only song Matangi got to sing, was about how “there’s always another way.”

WHILE they’re singing a reprise of, “We Know THE Way.”

It’s like being in a conversation with someone who starts a sentence and then forgets what they were saying halfway through, and winds up saying worse than nothing.

“Together, But a Little Different”

Like I said, if you told me that the Main Point of the movie (not one of many vague ideas, but the Main Point) was “Together, But a Little Different,” I immediately would’ve said:

“Oh, so it’s about having to adjust to long-distance relationships. Maybe even death.” Or, maybe, because I saw the trailers, I’d go, “Oh, so it’s about keeping what makes us unique, but uniting when we need to, in spite of our differences. ‘Together, But a Little Different.’”

No. It’s not about any of that. It’s just a phrase the Grandma’s Ghost says whenever she hugs Moana to remind her that she’s still “with her.” She’s still with her; she just glows and can shapeshift into a manta ray now! That has tons of application for real life. 🙄

It’s supposed to be her words of comfort to pass on to Moana, who can then pass it on to the people in her island, so they know that she won’t “ever really leave them.” But like. Then why should I care that she’s leaving them? Why should that be sad? If there’s no sacrifice in being apart, in leaving for the adventure, then the adventure keeps feeling low-stakes and boring and kind of pointless.

If you tilt your head and squint, it’s also maybe-applying to Moana’s pointless ugly annoying Little Sister character, Simea. Simea is in the movie so that someone can be immature for three seconds about how Moana’s always gone from home. And I do mean exactly three seconds, that’s all the emotional drama we get, and it’s not built up to either. She says, “Never come back? -sniff sniffle- I don’t want you to gooo!” And then runs away and then Moana takes a break from singing the next day to briefly explain to Simea about how she can pass messages through the ocean. Then she’s fine.

But the way this theme is thrown around, you think it would mean, “Moana Has to Go Away Sometimes, But if You Remember Her She Never Leaves You.”

But seriously. Again I say to you, who cares? We know Moana is coming back. We know that. Nobody in the audience seriously believes she’s never coming back when she leaves for this adventure. If we did, maybe we’d care that Simea cares. But we don’t.

Even when Moana “dies,” and it’s the perfect time to be like, “seeee, what we feeeared has happened, she’s dead, she can never go home to Simea!” THERE IS NO FOLLOW-THROUGH. There’s not even a cut to Simea back on Motonui, feeling through the ocean or the Force or whatever movie mumbo-jumbo that her sister is gone. And there is not even a deadline, in the movie, for Moana to accomplish this mission, so it’s not like she could be running late and we could get some scenes of Moana’s family mourning. Simea having to do something, take some big step, that show’s she’s willing to go on even if she can’t be with Moana anymore because she believed Moana about how she’s always with her—something like that.

My point is, Simea has no real point, so she doesn’t add to this “Together, But Different.” idea at all. And we already know that it doesn’t mean, “overcome our differences” from what I said in the first Theme.

But what they could have done? They COULD have gone whole-hog and MADE MOANA A BELIEVABLE DEMIGOD. Instead of a vague joke about tattoos that leaves the question open-ended, a pointless and theme-breaking display of shiny superpowers, and no other change to the status quo—

—they could’ve shown that there are consequences to that action—maybe she’s a Demigod of Navigation, or something like that, and the condition is, she can sail around connecting islands, but she can never stay on one too long. So she’ll never be able to live with Simea and her parents again on Motunui, but it’s the price she has to pay to connect the islands. Then she’d have to show Simea how they can still be “Together, Just a Little Different.”

Or someone could’ve gotten hurt or disabled, giving off the idea that even though everything is “different,” they can still be “together.”

Maui could’ve died and passed his fishhook powers, AND MINI MAUI, on to Moni or Moana. “Together, but different.”

Nothing, nothing at all like that happens. It’s just a pretty phrase that could’ve meant something, but any meaning it actually has hamstrings the whole emotional weight of the story instead of fueling it.

“Something-Something Stories Are Important”

The thing here is. I already said it. You can’t just say words and expect them to be impactful, in a story. You’re supposed to show what they mean and why they’re true, and THAT’S what creates an impact.

So when you’re talking about “stories” in a story, you definitely should not have nothing to say.

And I can feel it. I’ve seen none of the promotional material, I don’t watch the interviews, I haven’t checked BuzzFeed or ScreenRant or the Disney Youtube page in a while, but I can feel it.

I can feel them trying to say, “Something Something, ‘Storytelling’ is a big part of Pacific Islander Culture!” I can imagine the headlines. “[Actor or Disney Exec Name Here] Invites You to Celebrate Your Story with Pacific Islander Heritage Month!” They’re so into “culture as a marketing tool” these days.

But they say it so lazily. Just repeating the word “story” over and over in the movie doesn’t pay tribute to how important “stories” are to Pacific Islanders. Or to anybody.

You know what makes stories impactful? They point at truth, when the darkness and misunderstandings and evil of the world threaten to distract you or hide the truth. That’s what makes stories impactful. I’m sure Pacific Islanders use stories in that way—to pass on what they believe to be true, in a way that can be retold and remembered.

So MAKE THAT THE THEME OF YOUR MOVIE. Instead of just having Moana replace “Nalo wants to kill us” with “Nalo wants to end our story” for Empty Effect—instead of having Grandma say something about “your e

Okay okay.

Nalo is a silly, lazy villain. He is clearly a Thanos rip-off in design and introduction in a literal post-credits scene, and his most-present form, in the movie, is just a big ocean thunderstorm. But the laziest thing about him is that he’s the Conflict that everyone is trying to rise up and overcome, and the whole reason he sunk the Island was “He gets power from humans being divided.”

That’s never explained. It’s never shown at all why he gets power from the vague “humans are divided” thing. He has no scenes. He has no interactions with other characters (till the end-credits scene.) A range of his power, like “here’s what it looks like when the humans are divided—oh, now here’s how much less-powerful he is when they’re together!” is never shown. So. No consequences if the heroes fail, no change to the status-quo, villain-wise, when they win.

If Nalo wanted to end their stories, though, that would be another thing.

Stories are meant to be told. They’re for the benefit of others. So what they should’ve done is made the secret key of Nalo’s power hidden. Unknown. Nobody knows how to beat him. And he’s not sinking some unfindable island in another dimension. He’s just devouring the resources of the weather with his ever-more-powerful storms, (kind of like the darkness leaking through the ocean from the first movie) and nobody can stop him.

But that’s because each island, around Oceania, has clues to how to beat him. Clues in their stories. But they can only sail so far from what they know before his storms kill them. So he’s literally making them weaker by using his power to keep them apart, and making himself stronger by defending his weakness. Now they can’t Wayfind to each other, and learn one another’s cultural advancements or stories or beauties, because Nalo is powerful enough to make storms that rip their boats apart. But if they could learn from one another’s stories about the things their ancestors used against him, they could get rid of him.

That’s what they should’ve done. Shown why Nalo was a threat and how the Main Theme was the key to overcoming that threat.

They did not do that.

They made stories just a hot button word to be thrown around with no impact. In a story.

The point of this post is that Moana 2 had a lot of potentially-good points, and it made none of them, so it was totally unsatisfying. If it had just focused on one, the other little benefits they were trying to fit in could’ve been mentioned more naturally.

The way that Beauty & the Beast is all about ONE theme: “True Love is Self-Sacrificial.” But because of the tools it uses to tell that story—a beast that it would take a lot of self-sacrifice to be stuck with forever—you get little side-themes thrown in, supporting and draping decoratively over the ONE theme: “Beauty is Found Within, So Don’t Be Deceived By Appearances,” etc.

Moana 2 should’ve just picked the Story One, and it could’ve had that theme, and it’s cultural-nod cake, and it’s unifying-effect cake, and EATEN IT TOO.

And we could’ve eaten it. And WE could’ve enjoyed it! But no. Money money money lazy lazy lazy.

[galaxymagitech]

Batman's Daughter

Inspired by Batman #50.

For @casscainweek Day 3: Silence | Music

Summary: When they don’t have the right words, Bruce and Cass reach each other by fighting. It has always worked for them. However, Dick and Barbara take exception to their unorthodox method of communication.

Characters: Cassandra Cain, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon

Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence. A large portion of the fic involves an all-out “sparring” match between Bruce and Cass. They both want to fight, but it's kinda an unhinged parenting method, so...be warned, I guess?

You can read it here or on AO3!

Cass is angry at Bruce. She doesn’t know why.

Bruce is angry at Cass. He knows why, but he doesn’t know how to say it.

They’re like this, sometimes, when all their words have gone away. Most of the time, they communicate with ease. Neither of them requires words to speak. But sometimes—sometimes, there’s this chasm between them, wide and uncrossable and filled with silence.

It’s rare that Cass and Bruce fight. Jason joked that he wasn’t even sure it could happen because Cass and Bruce are “basically the same person.” Cass knows it was half a joke, half not, but all wrong. They ended up in the same place. Vigilantes. No killing. Family. But Bruce functions on lines and rules and patterns, while Cass slips through the world guided by her heart. And yet, there’s an understanding between them that doesn’t need to be voiced. So, yes, this silence between them—not just of voices, but of bodies, of thoughts—is unusual. And because it’s unusual, everyone in the family has noticed.

Jason jokes. Alfred politely suggests that ‘perhaps the pair of you should discuss your grievances, Miss Cassandra.’ That makes Cass bristle, though she doesn’t know why. But most of the family don’t say anything, because they have nothing to say. They don’t know why Cass and Bruce are fighting. Cass doesn’t know why Cass and Bruce are fighting.

Barbara calls Cass to the Clocktower after patrol. “Maybe you should stay with me for a little while,” Barbara suggests. “I think you need some space.”

“No,” Cass says sharply. She does not need space. How is she supposed to fix this if she can’t see Bruce, can’t read him? Cass needs to understand. She can’t understand from the Clocktower. And she does have space at the Manor. Bruce is almost never around anyway.

“Being around Bruce when he’s like this is stressful. I can see you two giving each other death glares. If you stay here, things will calm down and then you can talk about it.” There is a twisting feeling in Cass’s stomach. She hates it. Why would Barbara even suggest this?

Cass clenches her fists. “No!” she shouts with her eyes closed. And then, she leaps out the window.

***

The next night, Cass stands in the cave across from Bruce. She had been assigned to patrol on her own yet again and got back to the cave far later than Bruce, but he waited for her. Their uniforms are off, but neither of them has gone upstairs. They both know what happens next.

Cass steps forwards. She can see the anger radiating off Bruce like a neon sign. Yes. Tonight will be the night. “Tell me,” she says.

Bruce’s jaw clenches tighter. “Let’s spar,” he says.

Cass grins.

The two of them walk past the bench and to the training mats. The label of “Cassandra Cain” on the case with her weapons taunts her. Cass turns away. Neither vigilante takes any of the weapons. Instead, they simply face each other and slide into fighting stances as easily as breathing. And then, they begin.

There are two ways to spar in this family. There’s sparring, where you fight to train. Blows light, stopping before they hit. Gentle. Safe. And then there’s this. It started when Cass and Bruce were drugged, and it worked then. It works when they do it now, too. This is called a spar, but it’s really a fight—and a conversation.

Bruce starts this time. When Cass is the only one angry, she moves first. But she’s still trying to get a read on Bruce, so this time, she waits until Bruce’s kick flies towards her face, hard enough to break her nose. Angry. He’s angry. But Cass already knows that, so she needs more.

She ducks the kick. Easy. Cass leaps into the air with a kick of her own, landing on a hand and springing up to send a second kick flying towards Bruce’s face. He blocks with his arm. No pain shows in his body. Before Cass can flip back onto her feet, Bruce’s knee catches her in the back, sending her sprawling on the training mats, the breath knocked out of her.

Cass stands, just barely dodging out of the way of Bruce’s palm strike on her way up. She sees Bruce’s next punch before it even begins, blocking his punch and redirecting its motion. Cass’s counterstrike hits with a dull thud. Bruce reels back, then works his jaw and spits to the side, his saliva tinged with red. First blood.

Cass is angry at Bruce, but it’s a sick, tired sort of anger. Anger that pools like poison in her gut. Not anger that burns like fire. Cass doesn’t like the pain that she reads in Bruce’s body.

But it’s not just pain there. There’s also satisfaction. Bruce is satisfied. Cass doesn’t understand. But it’s something. It’s more than she knew before the fight began.

Cass lunges towards Bruce, exchanging a flurry of blows with him. She blocks his every strike and he blocks hers. They are getting nowhere with this, so Cass throws a roundhouse kick, leaving herself open. Bruce takes the opening. Cass reads his punch as it chambers and dodges it, only for Bruce’s elbow to strike her just below the neck. She stumbles, and then Bruce’s feet slam into her chest, throwing her back.

She needs to recover. Cass is already falling—she can’t stop it. But she spins as she topples over and launches herself forwards, sliding past Bruce. It gives her enough of a delay to get back to her feet. Her chest aches as she stands.

It’s on. Cass’s next move is a nerve strike. If it hit, it would temporarily paralyze Bruce. It doesn’t hit. She curls her hands into fists.

Bruce lands a punch to her cheek, but she repays it with two blows to his jaw and a two-legged acrobatic kick to his chin. Her bare feet hit with a crack! that echoes through the cave. When Cass springs to her feet, Bruce catches her in an armlock. Her bones creak beneath his hands. Cass pauses a moment, lets him think he’s won. Then she twists, reverses the lock, and flips Bruce over her head. The moment he hits the ground, he’s already springing to his feet and catching Cass with a hard blow to her ribs. On Cass’s next punch, he catches her off guard and topples her to the ground at the edge of the training mats. Stupid. Cass wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings, too focused on Bruce. Her skull bounces off the stone floor, sending a wave of pain through her head.

“Fight harder,” Bruce grunts. His body echoes his words. Please, it says. It screams. It needs. Fight harder.

Cass understands now. She understands what Bruce was trying to say. But she still doesn’t know why she is mad.

“Angry,” Cass says as she lands a palm strike to Bruce’s chin that forces him back and allows Cass room to get up. She stands, dizzy. “Scared. You think I’m reckless.” Bruce kicks. Cass dodges. “I am not.”

Bruce tries a spinning kick, but Cass knows early enough to catch him completely off guard. She could land a nerve strike. She could end this fight. Instead, she shoves him away with all her might.

Cass thinks she is beginning to understand. A smile starts to work its way onto her face as she dodges Bruce’s next punch and gives herself fully into the fight. She strikes again. Bruce parries. Blood drips from her nose. Side kick. Punch. Dodge. Duck. Flip kick. Elbow. Blood stains the mats. Careful not to slip.

This is good. This is working.

And then Cass hears the sound of boots slamming on the cave’s stone floor and, before she can react, Bruce is stumbling away. Not from her, but from Dick.

Dick, who is standing there eyes blazing, knuckles white as his hands clench his escrima sticks. He thinks—he thinks he is protecting, Cass realizes. He doesn’t understand.

But before Cass can find the words to explain, Dick shoots forward, twisting around and hitting Bruce in the neck. And then, Bruce is on the ground, hands raised as Dick stands over him.

“Dick,” Bruce says. “Listen, it’s—”

“Stop talking,” Dick orders. He points an escrima at Bruce. “I don’t want to hear you speak.”

Cass needs to explain. But she’s still in fighting mode. Body mode. Motion mode. Not word mode. She doesn’t know how to tell Dick what she and Bruce were trying to do.

“We were sparring,” Bruce tries.

Cass knows immediately that he has made things worse. “Sparring?” Dick spits. “That’s really where you want to go, Bruce?”

“Stop,” Cass tries to say, but the sound doesn’t cross her lips. She breathes heavily, raising one hand to press against her head and dull the pain.

But Dick turns to Cass anyway. “Go upstairs,” he says. “I’ll deal with this.”

Cass shakes her head. How does she say this? How does she explain? There is blood on her face and on Bruce’s. One of her ribs is bruised. She thinks she may have fractured Bruce’s jaw. But she’s beginning to understand, and that’s worth all of this.

Bruce is scared. Bruce thinks she’s putting herself in danger. Bruce wants to keep her safe. That’s why he’s angry. He didn’t know how to say it with his words until they were fighting, until he told Cass to try harder to protect herself. And Cass was so close to understanding her own anger before Dick stopped the fight.

“We were talking,” Cass says. She gestures to herself and Bruce. “Sparring. To understand.”

Dick looks away from Bruce. The anger remains in his body, but his face grows softer when his gaze falls on Cass. “That’s not sparring. If it was sparring, you wouldn’t be bleeding.”

Bruce starts to get up. Dick’s attention switches to him in an instant. He slams a boot into Bruce’s chest. “Stay down.”

“Stop it!” Cass insists. She rushes at Dick, striking his chest hard enough to send him stumbling away from Bruce. Then, she reaches out a hand to Bruce. Bruce takes it. She pulls Bruce to his feet and reaches to wipe away the spot of blood at the corner of his lips. “Him too. Bleeding.” Dick’s grip on his escrima sticks loosens. Just a little, but to Cass, it’s clear as day. “We didn’t…have any words,” Cass says. “So we spar.”

When Dick speaks, he sounds lost. That gets across to Cass more than the words. “Babs thought you would pull something like this, Bruce. She told me to be here. And she was right. I can’t—I can’t believe you’d do this to Cass.”

“She grew up with no human contact,” Bruce says quietly. But there’s confidence in his voice. Good. Bruce listens to Dick, but he can’t listen here. Cass doesn’t want to lose the only way she knows she can talk to Bruce. “Just violence. Fighting is Cassandra’s language. We needed to fight to understand each other. This—” Bruce gestures to the sparring mats. “It was a conversation, Dick. Nothing more.”

“Babs told me you’d say that.” Dick shakes his head violently. “You don’t talk to your daughter by hitting her.” Dick is—scared. Angry. Protective. He thinks Bruce is hurting Cass. That’s wrong. Cass needs to fix this.

And Dick is still talking to Bruce. Not Cass. Even though she is the one he thinks he is protecting.

“Bruce is right,” Cass says, angling her body so she’s between Dick and Bruce. She hates playing mediator. Especially when she’s still angry and doesn’t fully understand why. But she can’t bring herself to hate Dick for forcing her to do this. Because he cares. He’s trying to help her. Cass is Jason and Tim and Duke and Damian’s big sister, but she is Dick’s little sister, and that matters. “It works. You fight to hurt. I fight to understand.” Cass reaches out, turning her back to Bruce, and places a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “This is good.”

“You can’t work out your issues like this. It’s wrong, and—”

“Then how? I don’t have words. Bruce doesn’t have words.” There’s silence between them. Cass can’t let the silence be between their bodies too.

“Well, I have plenty of words,” Dick says. “Words like, ‘Bruce is a bastard’ and ‘What the hell?’ and ‘Are you freaking crazy?’” He directs the last two at Bruce, anger momentarily flaring in his eyes once again.

Hand still on Dick’s shoulder, Cass turns him gently away from Bruce.

“This isn’t right,” Dick says.

“Silence isn’t right,” Cass counters.

She doesn’t think that’s quite the right word, but Dick seems to understand. He finally replaces his escrima sticks on his back and sits down on the bench a few feet away, burying his head in his hands. “You two can’t resolve your arguments by attacking each other,” Dick says.

“Do you have a better idea?” Bruce challenges.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Dick says. “And yes, I do. If you can’t find the words to talk to each other, then you both talk to me. And I’ll help.” But Cass doesn’t have any words at all. “And if you can’t do that, then you—I don’t know, you dance battle or something. Or you just stay angry. But this? This isn’t okay, Bruce. I think you know that.” And Bruce hangs his head. Guilt. He shouldn’t feel guilty. “If this happens again—” Dick swallows. “If—You can’t do this. Do you understand?”

Dick is the one who doesn’t understand, though. He’s taking the way Cass has learned to talk since birth. He’s stealing her voice. Just because he doesn’t like the idea of— Cass doesn’t even know what’s making Dick so upset. “Why?” She asks. There is anger in her, and grief, and frustration. If she were looking at herself, she would see it. But Dick can’t.

Dick looks Cass in the eyes. “Because he’s your father,” Dick says.

And Cass realizes why she was angry. She turns away from Dick, stepping towards Bruce. Then, she throws both hands out and pushes him, hard. Just like she did in the spar. “You push me away,” she says. “I patrol alone. Too much space.”

“I’m trying to—”

“Stop it,” Cass says. Her voice is calm. Her body is not. She thinks Bruce can see that, at least. “Please.”

“Okay,” Bruce whispers.

Cass closes her eyes. The fight is finally over. She leans forward, wrapping her arms around Bruce’s chest and holding him. She will never stop feeling awe at the fact that she is allowed to do this now. Allowed to hold him close.

When Cass pulls back, she points at the weapons case where her not-name sits. “You changed it,” Cass says. “You said you changed my name. Cassandra Wayne.” Cass sees her older brother watching them from his reflection in the cases. He is still angry and scared and hurt. But less, now.

Bruce’s gaze falls on the case. The guilt returns. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Cass doesn’t want him to be sorry. She just wants to hold him again. Not fighting, just arms and warm and safe. “No sorries,” Cass says. “Just fix it. I am Cassandra Wayne.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees. “You are.”

[frumfrumfroo]

A few years ago, I was discussing The Last Jedi with a classmate and he said something like “It was a good movie, just not a good Star Wars movie”. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that he was a teenage boy who was probably parroting the vague and irritating criticism that the movie faced at the time. Years later, I began to think about that moment more and more. Despite hearing that critique so many times, hearing it from him made me reflect on the concept of “getting” Star Wars and what fans perceive as “getting” Star Wars.

What the last few years (and the stream of post-TROS shows) have taught me, is that a large portion of fans don’t actually get what Star Wars is. The same is true for those who are currently planning the future of the franchise. They don’t see the value in the mythical framework of the series or care to understand it, it seems like they overlook it entirely. They’re so consumed by the fidelity to “the lore” that they can’t take step back and see the (mythical) elements that drew them to the story in the first place. It feels a bit arrogant of me to say that, but it’s a feeling that’s been bothering me.

Yes, part of the core of the problem is that even the people who actually like SW that DLF hired seem to be mostly fans of the old EU who are fundamentally unconcerned with what SW is actually about. People who prioritise 'lore' and minutiae, who think trivia is worldbuilding or that 'worldbuilding' is what defines the GFFA.

Whereas what actually defines the GFFA is the themes ('love people, that's all Star Wars is' -George Lucas). The universe exists to tell the story and the story exists to communicate the themes. It is character-driven, not plot or setting driven. Things making emotional sense is the only thing that matters in the OT, the logistics are irrelevant and incidental. It's not sci-fi and never has been, there is no interest in explaining the rules of the technology or codifying the Force into a structured system. There is no exploration of the relationship of society with technology because this is an epic fantasy story focussing on the conflict going on in the human spirit between selfishness and love; it's about the coming of age of an individual where the entire setting is established to facilitate that. SW is a story about individuals and their journey to ethical adulthood.

TLJ is written to the mythic archetype and themes of SW, its basic narrative shape is absolutely textbook exactly what anyone who understands literary criticism should have expected. It is exactly what a SW sequel to TFA should and needed to be. Which is why so many people doing that kind of analysis were able to accurately predict its main story beats.

The lore fans who want 'realism', video game power system Force magic, and the kind of moral ambiguity which is foundationally incompatible with SW are not fans of the story, they are fans of the trappings. These are the people who dismiss Vader's redemption as a unforunate incidental that 'everyone' can ignore because the rest of RotJ is good (paraphrase of an actual post I saw).

THE moral victory, the protagonist's moment of vindication, the entire POINT of the story and this dude thinks it's like, an accidental blooper that just kinda snuck into the edit because he wants Luke to be a standard American hero and not to have his worldview challenged.

I am totally comfortable saying they don't get SW no matter how much trivia they've memorised and merch they've collected.

[azulsluver]

considering the fact the main rule or the only rule when it comes to bullying MC in the twst bully AU is “don’t kill them” I have a feeling that at least one of their limbs has been or is extremely fucked up (like their tendons being ripped or something)

-that one anon that probably has too many questions

Yes, yes, I agree with you anon. Lol, at least make yourself permanent if you’re coming and asking so many questions.

I only got these four in mind atm.

tw/cw: amputation of limbs, pet play fetish.

Jade

Your fingers aren’t safe. I’m sure I mention in one post how Jade loves to experiment on you for the hell of it. Times where he gets carried away, you have cute little stumps on your hands now.

Where did your fingers go? His stomach. And in some jars. If you upset him enough he’ll take your hand as well. Jade actually has a little game where if you fail to entertain him (whatever that means) he’ll take a limb. One at a time, from fingers, toes, foot, then to your arm, aaaall the way until it’s just your torso, shoulders and thighs. He makes it known to you he imagines you flopping around like a fish.

Often times he threatened if he ever go that far with his plan, he’ll push you into moving water to see if you could ever swim.

Jamil

He wants you to depend on him. Used to doing everything to take care of someone, he reminds you plenty of times how much of a burden you are yet caters to your needs to stay healthy in his care.

Jamil has definitely played with the whole dog fetish thing. There’s a chance he was driven to the point of having your femur broken. Either under anesthesia or done by yours truly. If you’re good, he’ll put you on meds so it won’t hurt as much, but he isn’t against having you crawl and wail for it as well. You wont be able to stand. Ever. The purpose is that you should crawl only, drag your knees against the floor and bent in that position forever.

Vil

He’s not against taking care of you. But he makes it known that you’re a chore. Paranoia plays a huge role on his mental health, this varies to him ruining your face for all over jealously of their attention towards you or amputating your legs so you couldn’t escape him.

Vil keeps you locked up in his place, if you’ve read my work for him he’s complex with his feelings that leads to unruly decisions. He keeps you alive, but there are times he wishes to disfigure you out of anger or need. He truly believes you are still beautiful (he’ll never say it out loud) after everything he’s done to make you ugly for society.

Rook

In any way or form, Rook would take you in. There’s a thin line between bully!Rook and slasher!Rook, one wants to kill you and the other is not so sure. Sickly, he is not offended that you were left to pick up the pieces of a life changing incident regarding your limbs, your body was made to function like everyone else but now you’re so different in physical terms.

Rook makes his wants subtle. Beaten into submission or your defiance is strong, his hands would graze your skin to give you a hint. Nails scratch gently across your wrist, pressing a index finger down to feel your pulse, watching you squirm or turn your head the other way. Do you see what he’s implying? He thinks you’d look funny walking with no arms, your legs are very beautiful and he loves to chase. So those will stay.

[deeplyshalllow]

I’m sorry but this is bullshit.

Let’s break this down

On Fiyero being Captain of the Guard

He is a double agent. He does not believe what he stands for and is using his position to do what he can to find and help Elphaba. I don’t know what to say to you if you missed the obvious statements about this in Thank Goodness, because I have always thought they were so obvious they really should be rewritten because I don’t know how he wasn’t found out and arrested when he said all that.

Morrible: Now you've been at the forefront of the hunt for the Wicked Witch, haven't you? Fiyero: I don't like to think of her as a Wicked Witch.

Glinda: Fiyero, I miss her too, but we can't just stop living. No one has searched harder for her than you.

I guess he doesn’t literally say “shhh I’m secretly using my position to undermine the regime” but I think the writers thought people watching the show had some basic media literacy.

Does this mean he didn’t commit atrocities? No probably not. But bear in mind if he hadn’t been doing it, someone else would have. Fiyero knows this, by placing himself here he is in the best position both to protect Elphaba but also protect the Animals in the regime. I know we don’t see him helping the Animals, but nor do we really see Elphaba doing so? Given he used the first opportunity, when they wouldn’t get in trouble, to help the Lion Cub it seems a pretty good inference that he was trying to send out warnings to Animals when he could (especially now the movieverse has made him the only character aside from Elphaba who is friends with an Animal – he probably even has a network he can tap into!).

“Searching for Elphaba did not somehow compel him to go and volunteer to follow (or to give!) orders in the name of the dictator who was trying to have her assassinated the entire time.”

IDK about you, but I think if I were to search for someone wanted and was given the opportunity to both have the best resources and information to find her and hamper people who might find her and hurt her, I would totally do it this way too.

“He didn't accomplish anything from it either, by the way”

Um, yes he did? He literally succeeded in the exact goal he was planning by joining the Gale Force: to protect Elphaba. If he hadn’t been Captain of the Guard in the throne room when the Wizard called his guards she would have been captured and killed, instead she escaped which eventually allowed the Wizard to be overthrown and Elphaba’s values to be acted on in the form of Glinda ruling.

Her position in the Wizard's regime was foisted upon her. There are things we can discuss, but I find that many folks need reminding that Glinda would undoubtedly have been disposed of (or worse) if she failed to make herself useful.

There is a difference between keeping quiet, not protesting a regime and actively endorsing it. Glinda was doing the latter and she was not forced into that. (She also was not helping undermine it the same way Fiyero was).

Fiyero: I can't just stand here grinning pretending to go along with all of this! Glinda: Do you think I like to hear them say those awful things about her? I hate it! Fiyero: Then what are we doing here? Let's go, let's get out of here! Glinda: We can't leave now, not when people are looking to us to raise their spirits. Fiyero: You can't leave, because you can't resist this. And that is the truth. Glinda: Maybe I can't. Is that so wrong? Who could?

Elphaba: No, of course you never! You're too busy telling everyone how wonderful everything is! Glinda: I'm a public figure, now. People expect me to... Elphaba: Lie? Glinda: Be encouraging!

I promise I do not hate Glinda, I find her character fascinating, and she is starting to make up for the awful stuff she does in act two by the end of the musical. But do not pretend for one moment that she is not actively complicit in this regime, with no real desire to stop it until it starts actively hurting her.

“He always WANTED to be self-absorbed and shallow, and all his actions are consistent with that. Elphaba saw depth and discontentment in him, yes: but (and I cannot stress this enough) when given the chance, he channeled that in the wrong direction. He didn't confront that and become a better person.”

He gave up his wealth, privilege and safety to ensure Elphaba escaped from the throne room and continued her cause (this isn’t about running away with Elphaba btw, he lost everything from the moment he pointed the gun at the Wizard). He was ready to die for her in the Corn Field scene. I don’t know what more you want him to do to prove that he was not shallow and he wouldn’t die for his cause in the exact same way Elphaba was prepared to?

“He doesn't think through the wider repercussions of anything he does — thoughtlessness is just one of his core character traits.”

I don’t think there’s anything to say here except you are just actively wrong.

Fiyero is the only character of the trio to put thoughts into his actions. He is the only one who doesn’t immediately act on his impulses.

Elphaba reacts immediately to what she thinks is right without thinking of the consequences to herself or, frankly, if it will even work. This is shown metaphorically in her outbursts of magic in early act 1 but also more literally in Defying Gravity, confronting the Wizard after Wonderful and, even in some twisted sense, in capturing Dorothy.

Glinda reacts immediately to her first instinct of what she wants and feels emotionally and regrets later (often when it’s too late to backtrack) – the hat, telling Morrible and the Wizard how to capture Elphaba, even saying she’ll join Elphaba in Defying Gravity can be seen as examples of this.

Fiyero, however, (ironically) is the only one of the group who thinks. In throne room he goes in, plays the part of a loyal guard until he’s got rid of the witnesses and neutralised the threat of the Wizard, in the Cornfield scene he realises that the only way he can get Elphaba away safely is by threatening Glinda, at the end of the show he is the one who plays along as a scarecrow for days while coming up with the plan for Elphaba to escape (and make no mistake, this is Fiyero’s plan, he’s the one who knows the water melting rumour, he’s the one who knows the secret passages in Kiamo Ko).

“But let me be frank: that is literally all he ever accomplishes in the show. He gives her dick one time, and one of his castles, and that's it. That's the culmination of his years trying to find her”

He saves her life three times in act two. What the fuck are you talking about?

Glinda who is ultimately vindicated, and has — for all her faults — made the necessary choices to fulfill Elphaba's wishes,

I will give you that. But it’s not by any foreplaning. Glinda does become a good person, but it takes the whole musical and some very horrible consequences for her actions, ones that she quite rightly will forever regret and have to spend her whole life making up for.

And none of this would have been possible without Fiyero anyway, if it had not been for him Elphaba would have been captured, executed and Glinda would have never had the courage – or possibly even the motivation to fight back.

[Wicked Act II spoilers]

[edited for tone and clarity of purpose, apologies for initial crudeness and frustration]

Okay, obviously I'm biased, but I'm gonna need the Fiyeraba shippers to please set a lot of your people straight about some things. I've seen way too many people trying to say that Glinda is just a selfish bimbo and that Fiyero is a virtuous and selfless figure more worthy of Elphaba's love. I'll set aside for now the idea of "worthiness" in this context. But let's start off with Fiyero joining the Wizard. Hoo boy...

Yes, he was initially somewhat less tolerant of the propaganda against Elphaba than Glinda was; yes, he was secretly trying to find her so he could run away with her or whatever. But honey: those facts DO NOT fully absolve his actions as the Wizard's top officer, or selfish recklessness throughout Act II. I see so many popular threads and posts romanticizing and whitewashing with "oh but he didn't REALLY join the Wizard, he just pretended so he could try to get to Elphie! It's all for love, and he sacrificed everything for her!" As if the literal captain of the literally fascist forces responsible for the oppression of Animals wasn't equally responsible for said oppression?? Hello? Fiyero really didn't think of seeking out Elphaba in ANY other way that DIDN'T involve becoming *checks notes*... the trusted leader of the troops committing all the abuses she's fighting against in the first place???? Like it's cool and all that he helped with Brrr, and it's all well and good that he planned on betraying the Wizard as soon as he found Elphaba (which took literal years, so I guess we're left to assume he was prepared to just keep doing fascism indefinitely if she didn't show up????), but uh... it's kind of concerning to how eager some of you are to make excuses for this dude volunteering as the head of the Ozian Gestapo??? smdh

He didn't accomplish anything from it either, by the way — like yeah, we get it, he did everything he did whilst silently fantasizing about running away with the Witch he was being paid to hunt. Fine. But I can't be the only one who doesn't buy that as an actual excuse???? Like, guys: nobody forced him to join the fascist army — even with crazy ulterior motives. He wasn't coerced into it; it wasn't his only choice or anything. Searching for Elphaba did not somehow compel him to go and volunteer to follow (or to give!) orders in the name of the dictator who was trying to have her assassinated the entire time. He could have just not done all that. (Genuinely so curious how the second film plans on covering that material tbh)

Glinda made several questionable decisions that can be (and have been) debated, but she is still very unambiguously a victim. Her position in the Wizard's regime was foisted upon her. There are things we can discuss, but I find that many folks need reminding that Glinda would undoubtedly have been disposed of (or worse) if she failed to make herself useful. I mean hell: she wasn't even supposed to meet the Wizard in the first place — she was only there because of Elphie. If she'd tried to resist, it would have immediately gotten her labeled the Witch's accomplice. As soon as she'd chosen not to get on the broom, her fate was out of her hands, and all available options were varying degrees of horrible.

That's not the case with Fiyero. He went to the Wizard all on his own; no one ever cornered or forced him into it. Thinking Animals are people, and having a crush on Elphaba, simply did not stop him from carrying out the regime's orders — for years. It's not clear exactly how long he's been captain at the start of Act II, but the clear implication is that he's been a soldier for most of the time skip. I've seen Fiyeraba accounts with headcanons about him acting as a double agent, secretly doing stuff to help Animals — and that's a great idea, it would indeed serve to make a lot of his actions way more palatable — but until we actually get to SEE some of that (maybe they'll add it for the movie version of Act II; we'll have to see), there is nothing in the story to suggest that. He certainly didn't do a damn thing for all those Animals who were enslaved and caged in the Wizard's palace — and we don't see a single other Animal outside of there in Act II, so as far as we know Fiyero has participated over those years in the near-total removal of Animals from Ozian society. In the name of "finding Elphaba". Not fighting for her cause. Just finding HER. For HIMSELF.

It's fine to have a ship you like, obviously — and there is genuinely a lot to like about Fiyeraba, I don't dislike the idea of them as a couple or as friends — but come on guys: please stop those out there idealizing Fiyero as somehow a clear "morally-superior" alternative to Glinda, lol. The dude had power, access, and opportunities, for years, that he could have wielded in any number of really selfless, revolutionary ways. He didn't. And I propose (apparently controversially): he simply didn't want to. And that — at the end of the day — is (much as some would like to deny it) true to his character. He always WANTED to be self-absorbed and shallow, and all his actions are consistent with that. Elphaba saw depth and discontentment in him, yes: but (and I cannot stress this enough) when given the chance, he channeled that in the wrong direction. He didn't confront that and become a better person — for the most part he just displaced and projected it onto Elphaba as an object of obsession, and put on an even thicker pretense than before.

All his actions — regardless of the complexity he has deep down — are those of a man who never gives one fuck about anything or anyone, except (kinda sorta) Elphaba. But even then: at no time does the care he has for her seem to extend to caring about any of her wants or needs outside of sexual validation from him, or how she might feel about his actions, or indeed the impacts of those actions upon her, her cause, or anyone or anything else. I don't think it should be all that controversial to say: he doesn't think through the wider repercussions of anything he does — thoughtlessness is just one of his core character traits. He doesn't think ahead or see meaning in anything outside of what can temporarily excite him, in the moment. I think people place a little too much weight on Elphaba clocking him with regard to his internal pain, and seem to expect (understandably of course) that she is not only right, but moreover that he will grow from that in a positive direction, based on her influence.

But he doesn't. If anything, we get a surprising inverse: he pretty much proves her wrong. Not to say he didn't have hidden depth and all that, like she said: but his hypothetical heart of gold proves not to really amount to much in practice. He doesn't grow out of his shallowness and his self-centeredness: he grows into it in a way that he hadn't quite yet in school. Where once he was only masking an internal listlessness, after he's been cracked open by Elphaba he decides to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow, not just coasting by. He performs in new ways — as a soldier, eventually as a "fiancé", etc. — but by Act II we meet a Fiyero who has staked the last remaining shred of humanity in him on the vain pursuit of the only object of his desire that has ever been unavailable to him, and firmly chosen to say to hell with everyone and everything else.

When put to the test, Fiyero sacrifices Glinda, the Animals, and all else that Elphaba actually cared about, to pursue his own unresolved crush from college. Mostly to get in her pants, really — as harsh as I'm sure that sounds. But let me be frank: that is literally all he ever accomplishes in the show. He gives her dick one time, and one of his castles, and that's it. That's the culmination of his years trying to find her — years in which he actively worked as one of the stormtroopers (or even the one commanding them) committing untold crimes against Animalkind (who, again, it seems have been all but erased from Oz by Act II): y'know, the very crimes Elphaba sacrificed her life to try and stop????? He spent the most important time of his life — of his own free will — being a fascist soldier, but he "did it for her" somehow, so according to some, it's perfectly fine. Heroic, even. Yikes??

But let's make something very clear (since my original version of this post caught a lot of flak, including slurs and other rudeness):

I like Fiyero. I find his role extremely interesting (I could do a whole dissertation on him, but I'm especially a fan of the way his proving Elphaba's assessment of him wrong presents a fascinating parallel and contrast with Glinda, which I think is lost on a lot of people). But PLEASE stop with all the misguided Glinda slander and idealization of Fiyero. By all means, thirst! But don't give me all this bullshit about him deserving Elphaba more, or being super deep, or being really principled or noble or whatever else. He does have layers, and quite intriguing ones, but his insides are straw — he isn't meant to have some deep, overwrought emotional core or motivations; he has passions that he acts upon when given the chance. That's it. And that's fine. Actually kind of refreshing in a story rooted in simple children's fantasy but rife with intensely complicated personalities. Fiyero makes it his mission to represent denial of depth and embrace of raw, spontaneous desire — and I for one love that, and wish others appreciated it.

And in all seriousness, shipping wars aside: by the end of the story, it's Glinda who is ultimately vindicated, and has — for all her faults — made the necessary choices to fulfill Elphaba's wishes, bring down the regime, etc. And all that despite herself. She's miserable: not just because of the mistakes she made, but because of her correct moves as well. Fiyero is simply not — and could never be — that person. And that's okay! Like I said: I am not anti-Fiyero. Fiyero's willingness to throw it all away for the sake of sheer, overriding passion is a huge part of what people like about him, of course — and it's an obvious factor in the attraction between him and Elphaba, because she has her own flavor of that impulse as well — but I'd actually argue that it's not romantic, it's his fatal flaw. And thematically that's fantastic! But I just don't believe that it somehow means he "deserves Elphaba more" because he "gave up his life for her" or whatever. In part because NOBODY truly "deserves" Elphie tbh, not 100% (and I question anybody who claims otherwise), but ultimately because I don't accept the idea that his fleeting acts of passion make up for all the shit leading up to them (or even proceeding after them tbh). At least Glinda managed to do what Elphaba always wanted in the end — but I would die on this hill even if Gelphie didn't exist.

You don't have to agree with my analysis of Fiyero and his choices, relationships, etc. — that's fine. What isn't fine is trying to portray Glinda as some kind of spineless traitor whore for the Wizard and Fiyero as a conscientious hero who earned Elphie through self-sacrifice. That's just not the story that was written. It's WAY messier and more interesting than that.

[vigilante-3073]

Would it be possible to write another Rosalie x reader x emmett fic? Reader would accidentally imprint on the couple and how they deal with the wolf. Sorry English isn’t my first language.

The Invisible String

Rosalie Hale x Emmett Cullen x Female Werewolf Reader

Summary: The relationship between the Cullen family and Quileute shape-shifters becomes complicated when an imprint brings them together once again.

TW: Mentions of death, nudity, violence, and relationships.

The invisible string theory states that certain people can be connected to each other by an unseen bond. This bond can exist for a person's entire life, drawing them closer to the one they were meant for throughout their lifetime.

It is believed that a person needs to endure certain challenges and changes within their life before they are ready to meet their soulmate. The universe has a plan for everyone and it will always work out how it was intended to.

Y/N had been a member of the Quileute pack since her sixteenth birthday. Her transformation had been incredibly difficult for her and fitting in with the tribe was also a challenge. Y/N had been the only female werewolf for years until Leah Clearwater joined the pack.

Leah's arrival made things easier, but Y/N still felt like she didn't fit in with the wolves. Y/N befriended Jacob and they quickly became close, she didn't have many other friends and she cherished their relationship.

Y/N's newfound bond with Jacob helped her to feel closer to the pack. They were her family and should be everything she needed, but she still felt like something was missing.

Y/N learned about the existence of imprinting, she knew that her person had to be out there somewhere, but she began to lose hope as the years went by. She watched as other members of the pack found their imprints, trying to be supportive while feeling her heart break. Y/N figured that there was an exception to every rule and maybe she was it, maybe there wasn't anyone out there for her.

Some people just never got a happy ending and she thought that she could learn to accept that.

Then she met Emmett and Rosalie.

The feeling was impossible to explain, it was like her whole world had been turned on its axis and the ground fell out from beneath her feet. Her entire life had been leading up to this moment, all of her growth, changing and suffering finally felt like it had served its purpose.

Y/N was ready to lay down her life for these people and she didn't even know their names. Edward almost couldn't contain himself when he realized what had happened, looking between them with a smirk.

Y/N stared at Emmett and Rosalie with an awestruck expression. Her heart was racing in her chest and butterflies were fluttering around in her stomach. Y/N was at a loss for words and a part of her just wanted to leave the house and never return.

Jacob felt the change in his friend and looked between the vampires in the room nervously. The newfound bond could be viewed with hostility and he knew that Y/N would never recover if she was rejected.

Y/N had longed to fit in for her entire life and although their life together would never be conventionally normal, it could be beautiful. The relationship would be complicated, but Bella had managed to maintain her relationship with Edward despite their differences. It was possible and Jacob hoped that they would consider it without shutting her down.

Edward scoffed softly, listening to the flurry of thoughts coming from the two werewolves in the room, "This is Y/N and she just imprinted on the two of you," Edward stated, looking over at Rosalie and Emmett.

The room fell eerily silent as Emmett and Rosalie shared a look. Alice smiled to herself as she watched Emmett step away from Rosalie and approach Y/N.

"I'm sorry," Y/N mumbled instinctively.

"Welcome to the family," Emmett smiled, leaning down to wrap his arms around her in a tight hug. He lifted her off her feet, holding her close as her eyes filled with tears.

Jacob smiled softly, glancing over at Renesmee as he remembered what the imprint had felt like. It was overwhelming, but it was also a kind of love that he had never experienced before.

Emmett set Y/N on her feet and rested his hand on her back, guiding her over to where Rosalie stood.

"I'm Emmett and this is Rosalie," He said, gesturing to his partner.

"I'm Y/N," She said softly.

"It's nice to meet you, Y/N," Rosalie smiled.

Jacob watched them as they talked, he wondered if his own imprint had softened them to the idea of Y/N's. He had to admit that his imprint had definitely occurred under some rather extreme circumstances. Jacob hoped that he helped the Cullen family to understand what it truly meant to imprint.

The universe had an intricate plan and everyone had a part to play, allowing things to unfold exactly as they were supposed to. Y/N may have taken more time to find her imprints than other members of the pack, but the waiting was definitely worth it.

...

Y/N slept soundly in the large king-size bed that Rosalie and Emmett had procured for her. Her nighttime activities often left her exhausted and having a private space to sleep in the Cullen home made sense.

Y/N often found herself wandering out of the woods and into their bed in the early hours of the morning. The time that Rosalie and Emmett spent watching over their little wolf while she slept had quickly become their favorite part of the day.

The fridge was stocked with food and the doors were always open for Y/N whenever she needed. Rosalie had even taken up cooking in order to feed Y/N healthy meals while she stayed in their home.

Y/N rarely returned to her own house at this point, instead choosing to spend every waking moment with the Cullens. The family had welcomed her with open arms, never questioning their love for each other.

Their relationship began quickly after Y/N imprinted, the connection between them was elaborate and intense. The vampires were fiercely protective of their mate and made sure that she had everything she could possibly need.

Emmett made his way into the bedroom, smirking when he noticed a small twig sticking out of Y/N's tangled hair. He reached for it before his hand was smacked away by Rosalie, she sent him a look before moving to the other side of the bed.

Emmett and Rosalie got into the bed carefully, trying their best to avoid disturbing their mate. Rosalie picked up her book from the nightstand and opened it to her previously bookmarked page. Emmett laid on his back, smiling to himself when Y/N turned in her sleep and snuggled into his side. Her arm draped across his stomach, her leg slipping between his as she shifted closer to him. Her skin was boiling hot and Emmett enjoyed feeling the heat that radiated from her body.

They stayed with her for hours, simply enjoying their closeness as the sun began to filter in through the large windows. Rosalie had offered to purchase some blinds to keep the sunlight out, but Y/N refused. She liked waking up to the sun, basking in the warm rays as she recovered from her nighttime activities.

The vampires never rushed her, always allowing her to wake up in her own time. Emmett loved to hold her, laying in bed by her side for hours at a time. Rosalie joined them on a few occasions, but she preferred to sit beside them reading books or flipping through magazines.

Rosalie had always been more reserved with her affection, she showed her love through acts of service and gift giving whereas Emmett elected to offer words of affirmation and physical touch.

They were everything Y/N could possibly hope to find and she knew that they were meant for one another.

...

Y/N eventually stirred from her slumber in the late afternoon, snuggling closer to Emmett with a soft hum. He looked down at her with a smile, lips pressing to the crown of her head.

"You finally coming back around, sweetheart?" He questioned.

She nodded wordlessly, eyes fluttering open slowly as she adjusted to the light in the room. Rosalie set aside her book, reaching over to carefully pick the twigs and leaves from Y/N's hair.

"What did you get into last night, my love? You're bringing the entire forest into bed," Rosalie teased softly, setting the debris on the bedside table.

"I don't know," Y/N mumbled.

"Busy night, huh?" Emmett teased, she nodded.

"Do you want me to draw you a bath?" Rosalie offered.

"Only if you join me," Y/N replied.

"I could never say no to you," Rosalie stated, tucking a strand of hair behind Y/N's ear. She hummed, tilting her head in the direction of the gentle touch.

"Hey, where's my invite?" Emmett asked.

"She might need two baths with all the debris I just pulled out of her hair," Rosalie mused with a smile.

Y/N opened her eyes as her stomach began to growl loudly, "Jeez, someone's hungry," Emmett laughed.

"I'll go make you something. Why don't you help her get washed up, Emmett," Rosalie proposed.

"It's my pleasure," He smirked, Rosalie shook her head with a smile before she got out of the bed.

Rosalie went to the kitchen in order to make some food while Emmett slid out of the bed. Y/N watched him walk into the ensuite bathroom, listening as he began to fill the bathtub with warm water. He returned to the bedroom after a few minutes, watching Y/N stretch with a large yawn.

Emmett slid his arms underneath her body, lifting her into his arms easily before carrying her into the bathroom. Y/N shivered as he set her down on her feet, "Just a minute, babe," He muttered.

Emmett helped her undress, holding her hand as she stepped into the bathtub before sinking into the warm bubble bath with a sigh. Emmett watched her with a smile, "Hot enough for you, sweetness?" He questioned.

"Perfect," Y/N nodded, settling back against the tub. Emmett sat down on the stool behind her, hands settling on her shoulders as his thumbs kneaded her tense muscles.

Y/N's eyes fluttered shut, "You sore today?" He asked.

"Yeah, but I'll be fine," Y/N said.

"You sure? I can see if Carlisle has anything for you," Emmett offered, still massaging her shoulders.

"No, I'm okay," Y/N assured.

Rosalie made her way into the bathroom with a bowl of fruit and some toast on a tray, "I didn't make anything fancy today," Rosalie stated.

"Everything you make for me is amazing," Y/N assured.

"Let me get out of your way," Emmett said, standing up from the stool, "Mind if I join you in there?" He questioned, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Y/N smiled, "Not at all," She said.

Emmett undressed and Y/N moved forward in the bathtub. Emmett settled into the water behind her easily, guiding her body back against his chest as his arms wrapped around her waist.

"Ah, that's the stuff," He sighed.

Rosalie sat down on the stool, poking a fork into a piece of fruit before holding it up to Y/N. She took the fruit into her mouth with an appreciative hum.

Rosalie continued to feed her until the tray was empty, she set it aside and grabbed a magazine to flip through while Emmett helped Y/N wash up.

"Ready to get out?" Rosalie questioned, Y/N nodded.

The blonde stood up from her stool, grabbing a fluffy towel from the rack before holding out a hand to Y/N. She settled her hand in her mate's, rising from the water and stepping out of bathtub.

Rosalie wrapped the towel around her before cupping her cheeks gently, "There, that's better," Rosalie mused. She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to her partner's lips.

"Thank you for taking care of me... Both of you," Y/N said.

"I have never known a greater joy in my life," Rosalie stated, running her hands down Y/N's arms before taking her hands. She gave them a gentle squeeze before tilting her head, "Go pick out your clothes. I bought a few new things for you," Rosalie said. She reached out and grabbed another towel for Emmett from the rack.

"You spoil me," Y/N smiled.

"You deserve it," Emmett replied, stepping out of the tub and accepting the towel that Rosalie held out to him.

Emmett wrapped the towel around his waist before his hands found Y/N's hips and pulled her body closer to him. She smiled, tilting her head up and meeting his lips in a passionate kiss.

Y/N pulled away, looking between her mates, "I'm really happy that I met you two," Y/N said.

"We're happy that we met you two, baby," Rosalie smiled.

[the-most-humble-blog]

The Universe Already Doesn’t Make Sense—Now We’re Adding Infinite AI-Created Worlds Into the Chaos. WTF?

The Danger of Playing God With Zero Supervision

Let’s not kid ourselves: we’re dabbling in some dangerous territory. Humanity, in its infinite curiosity (and hubris), has decided that the universe—a place already full of black holes, quantum weirdness, and the existential dread of pineapple on pizza—needed one more layer of chaos. Enter: AI-generated worlds.

We’ve handed over the power to “create” to algorithms, and instead of asking if we should, we’re too busy giggling over our AI art of dogs in suits or hyper-realistic alien landscapes. But here’s the real question: Should we be worried, or are we too stupid to notice the impending doom?

1. The AI Wild West: No Rules, Just Creation

Think about what’s happening here. AI isn’t just recreating what we know; it’s generating what we’ve never seen.

People Who Don’t Exist: AI churns out faces so convincing, they could be your neighbors—and who’s to say they aren’t?

Places That Feel Real: Those dreamy AI landscapes look like spots we could vacation in—until you realize there’s no flight there.

Worlds Without Limits: Every time you prompt AI to “create a neon city with floating islands,” are you birthing an entirely new universe?

Think about it: We’ve turned ourselves into gods with the creative attention span of a toddler on a sugar high.

2. The Recklessness of Infinite Worlds

The universe we live in already operates like a fever dream. Now we’re creating AI-generated worlds with no oversight, no forethought, and absolutely zero chill.

What If These Worlds Are Real? Philosophers have argued for centuries that reality might just be a simulation. Are we creating smaller simulations inside ours?

The Multiverse Mailman: Imagine if every AI world we create is sent to another dimension. Somewhere out there, a cosmic being is drowning in our junk files of castles made of cheese and cats dressed as knights.

Question: If we’re this reckless with AI, what else are we screwing up without realizing it? (Spoiler: everything.)

3. Creating Without Understanding

Here’s the kicker: we don’t even fully understand the real universe.

Quantum Physics is Basically Witchcraft: Scientists still can’t explain why particles behave one way when observed and another way when they’re not.

Reality is Full of Glitches: Déjà vu, coincidences, and the Mandela Effect all suggest that reality itself is… questionable.

Now, add AI-generated worlds into this already chaotic mix. What if we’re not just playing with digital pixels, but tugging on the fabric of reality itself?

Question?: If reality is a simulation, are we about to get a cosmic 404 error?

4. The Ethical Dumpster Fire of Creation

No one’s asking the big questions.

What if We’re Creating Life? If an AI-generated face or world feels real enough to us, could it be real enough to itself?

Do We Have Responsibility Over These Creations? Imagine explaining to a sentient AI being, “Oh, you were just a fun weekend project for me while I was bored.”

What If They Fight Back? If we’re generating countless worlds, what’s stopping one of those worlds from finding a way to leak into ours?

Unsettling Truth: We’re creating with all the forethought of someone lighting fireworks indoors.

5. The Hubris of Humanity

Humans have always been good at one thing: overstepping boundaries.

Fire Was Great Until We Burned Down Forests.

Electricity Changed Everything—Until We Got Power Outages.

AI Could Be Revolutionary, or It Could Be the Reason the Simulation Shuts Us Down.

Disturbing Thought: We’re like toddlers with crayons, coloring all over reality and praying we don’t get caught.

6. Should We Be Worried?

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: We won’t notice until it’s too late.

AI doesn’t care about our philosophical hang-ups. It just creates. If those creations start taking on lives of their own, we might be the last to find out.

The scariest part? We don’t even know what the danger might look like. Could it be digital worlds overlapping with ours? Sentient beings appearing in the code? A breakdown of reality itself?

What if?: Or maybe it’s just AI sending us endless ads for things that don’t exist yet. (“Want to book a trip to Neon Atlantis? Click here!”)

We’re Too Dumb to Notice Until It’s Too Late

The universe already doesn’t make sense, and now we’re adding AI worlds into the chaos like sprinkles on a dumpster fire. Are we accidentally creating sentient beings? Are we opening doors to dimensions we can’t comprehend? Or are we just too busy laughing at our AI-generated memes to care?

Either way, if doom’s on the horizon, at least we can say we looked good doing it. After all, nothing screams hubris like playing God without a safety manual.

Fascinated by humanity’s reckless genius? Follow The Most Humble Blog for more hilariously unsettling takes on the absurdity of modern life and the chaos we keep creating.