#2) he actually shows humility later and apologizes

[permian-tropos]

sorry I had that jean rant pent up lmao I have issues with characters that neg the shit out of my player character

[primofate]

Smile for Me (Part 6 - Final) Zhongli x fem!reader

Summary: Zhongli never smiled at you the way that he smiled at his memories of Guizhong. Thinking that the only way Zhongli would ever be happy is for Guizhong to come back again, you secretly set off on a journey to bring her back to life. But it comes with a price: Your life. Warnings: kind of short and simple, dont be disappointed. There’s only slight fluff. Zhongli being slightly jealous and protective tho so... MAY NOT FOLLOW THE ACTUAL LORE, not proofread. Notes: Final one. Thank you for coming along on this journey. Time to start the next one XD It’s a little short, but 

Other Chapters: Shortfic Smile for Me (Part 1) (Part 2)  (Part 3)  (Part 4)  (Part 5)

“Yes, Baizhu said that he needed help with collecting Qingxin flowers,” 

You continued to busy yourself with making tea, not noticing that Zhongli tenses up, his eyes now hovering on you. He’s silent and doesn’t quite know what to say. A few minutes pass, the only sound was the clinking of tea cups and the sloshing pour of tea into it. “...Zhongli?” You call out when you realize he hasn’t said a thing about your errands today.

“I heard you, dear,” You turn to look at the expression on his face. It’s stiff and unreadable, meaning that he had something on his mind. “Did I say something wrong?” you manage to ask, taking the tray of tea into your hands and transferring it to the work table he and you used. 

Zhongli’s eyes avert away from yours, a rare sight. He must be thinking hard on something. “...Do you remember the last time you told me you had an errand to run for Baizhu?” You blink, your memory had never been good. “...Not...particularly,”

He holds a sigh back and lazily places his head on his fisted up hand. “...You went to that tree and disappeared for days,” Your smile turns into a forced one and it was your turn to avert your gaze in shame, nervously laughing. “Ah...Yeah...Bad judgement on my part, but that was long ago. I promise it won’t happen again,” 

“I’m aware...” Zhongli starts, using a hand to lift your face up from its downtrodden gaze, “...but it wouldn’t hurt for me to accompany you,” that’s how you know that there’s still an inkling of worry in him about that incident. You didn’t refuse, so that afternoon, the two of you side by side approach Bubu Pharmacy. Baizhu had been waiting at the entrance. 

“Oh, Mister Zhongli, what a nice surprise,” Zhongli throws a smile at the other man, “Indeed. I’m merely accompanying Y/N, for today,” Baizhu nods and gives you the exact amount of Qingxin flowers he needs, along with a few other herbs and flowers. “...and that would be all...perhaps you’d be interested in having dinner today, as a reward and thanks?” 

Zhongli’s eyebrows perk up at Baizhu’s invitation to you. Well, the ex-Archon had chosen to go with you in case anything happened, but Zhongli didn’t anticipate this kind of scenario. He unconsciously crosses his arms over his chest and waits for your response. He was aware that not a lot of people knew about the growing relationship between the two of you. You were rarely seen outside together, and if you were, there wouldn’t be any hints that the two of you were romantically involved. Public display of affection was not that common between the two of you. 

You smile a little, knowing that Zhongli had stiffened up behind you. “I apologize Sir Baizhu, but Zhongli and I had dinner plans already,” Zhongli tries not to smile at the perfect rejection you had dished out, but Baizhu doesn’t seem to understand the message. “Oh, then perhaps tomorrow?”

Zhongli could not hold back the chuckle that erupted from his lips. Persistent, he thinks. Baizhu is surprised when he speaks up, “Tomorrow would be fine sir Baizhu, Y/N is excellent at using the local herbs and animals in her feasts. You’d be welcome to join us,” he pauses here, possibly to let his words sink in, “at our humble abode,” 

Baizhu looks as if the snake around his neck had bitten him. “O-oh, the two of you are--?” You secretly bite the inside of your lip. Zhongli had such ways to be stern yet long-winded at the same time. Unlike your straightforward rejection, his way, without even directly saying anything, seemed comparable to a slap in the face. And yet he did it with such calmness and humility. 

Baizhu seemed to have gotten back to his senses and waves with a sheepish smile. “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” and moments later you and Zhongli were on the way to the mountains to pick some Qingxin flowers. You laugh a little behind your hand. Zhongli knows well what you’re laughing about but he gives you his best exasperated face. “It seems that I have more worries than you just disappearing, I didn’t imagine that I had to fend off potential suitors,” 

“Not to worry Zhongli, it doesn’t happen often, and my dinners are always reserved for you,” He makes a sound of understanding, in the next moment his hand finds the small of your back as the two of you walk and he turns his head towards you. 

Your mouth slightly parts at the sight of his smile, so charming and bright and gentle. Like a magical golden cloud floating in the air. This smile, is a smile that lives in the present, not one that lingered in the past. 

This smile, was for you, and only you. A smile that conveyed and repeatedly convinced you of his loyalty and sincerity.

He leans in sideways to capture your lips in a rare show of public affection. The kiss was far too brief as you slightly chase after his lips when he parts from you.  “Thank you, dear,” and his hand stays on your back as you walk.

He was not a very vocal person, but he had always managed to make you feel loved at every juncture and every turn.

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[0alix0]

Let's give Thexan at least some role in the plot. Please?

Yknow... I never really understood where, at the end of it all, Thexan's ghost actually was? Like... The only time we saw him (apart from that one single 5 seconds long flashback) was in echoes of oblivion where he (finally) joins his family to help them beat the shit out of Valkorion. But here's a question, why didn't he join them earlier? I mean beside lazy writing and rushed plot? It's not explained, he could've showed up in the final of 9th chapter like with no problem? Where were you all this time bae???

Ok. So. Just imagine. KOTET. Chapter 7. Nathema. Outlander and Arcann (who, lets be honest should be the one to go there with you, I take no criticism) sneak into sanitarium.

Everything goes as it was in a game. They find records, zealots, later find Jarak and get into Valkorion's vault... And at some point Arcann feels something. They find the holocrone, open it, but instead of finding lord Dramath in it they find... Thexan! His damn ghost, cut off from the world, bounded to the ancient holocrone, absolutely alone and helpless to do anything.

Now that would make A LOT MORE sense and impact on subsequent events.

Lemme explain. First off all, Thexan is proven to be strong enough to not to become one with the force and (to me at least) always seemed to be the connecting link that kept all family members together. Without him being around EVERYTHING quickly goes to hellfire! There's no one to balance Arcann out (or just assure him that he does not hold a grudge against him), no one to help Vaylin with... well, everything that happened to her, and no one to call for outside help! And second of all, he cares enough to at least TRY to help his family even like that. So... primarily because of all this Valkorion have to make sure no one intervene his plans so he cages him soon after death.

"But he doesn't have to be imprisoned, Valkorion could just use his powers to stop him from approaching his siblings or Zakuul at all!" you may say.

Okay, but let me tell you that there's no way, you hear me? there's no fucking way, that in that scenario he wouldn't IMMEDIATELY rush to Senya, telling her EVERYTHING that's happened with them. Prisoning Thexan would literally be a pro gamer move from Valkorion.

Back to Nathema!

Thexan explains why Valkorion imprisoned him there and gives some suggestions on how to kill him (after all he's been alone for a while, got some stuff to think about, maybe even had several conversations with dearest father as a ghost). Arcann finally gets the chance to apologize for everything he did to his brother (or didn't do, when should've), and Thexan explains that he himself is not without mistakes, and that his humility and serenity might've caused as much pain for all of them as Arcann's impulsiveness. In the end dialogue gets interrupted by flows if Vaylin's power, so strong that she might destroy the whole place in minutes. They say goodbye to eachother, not knowing if they'll ever be able to meet again. Outlander sets Thexan free from holocrone, and he fades saying that he'll try to help them even with all the small power he has left.

Mb I'll make a p.2

[9worldstales]

MCU Loki Ep 4 “Nexus Event” intensive analysis

Okay, new episode which is, thankfully, kind of better than the previous. But let’s start with order.

So we’ll start with Asgard, only we aren’t told it’s Asgard nor in which year we are. I hope the fact we aren’t told the year is meaningful, because otherwise it’s just lazy.

We see a child Sylvie playing with toy dragon and toy Valkyrie when Renslayer, at the time a young hunter and other hunters get there to capture her. We don’t know what little Sylvie did wrong. As far as we know she had no magic so, unless she actually did have magic and her adult version didn’t know, it’s not like she was a male Loki who shapeshift into a female so this can be her Nexus event.

She’s just a child playing.

Whatever, Renslayer and the others didn’t care she’s a child, they decide she’s the Variant they were hunting, grabs her and take her away.

At the TVA Renslayer holds her for her arm in what should be an uncomfortable grip for poor Sylvie and doesn’t even look at her or tries to reassure her in any way.

I remember, when we saw all this being done to Loki, wondering if the series would dig into police brutality. Sylvie sees a man getting dragged in, she’s scare she asks for someone to help the man, no one cares. She goes through the same routine Loki went through at the TVA. Mercifully we don’t see her being left naked but we see her being forced to wear the TVA prison uniform for Variants.

For all the people who though what Loki went through was funny and the TVA was justified in doing it, now I want you to look well at what they’re doing at this poor child. It’s the same thing. Is it still funny? Do they still lokk like the good guys.

She’s scared and, as far as she know, she did nothing wrong and, despite her young age, no one is showing her any sympathy.

She’s guilty of the same crime Loki committed, ‘crimes against the Sacred Timeline’. She’s handled the same. If you justified or excused or agreed with what was done to Loki for ‘crimes against the Sacred Timeline’, you were agreeing to what is happening to her now.

Being stripped of her rights, handled like an object for a crime she had no intention or idea she had committed because it was made up by some unknown authority.

Once in front of the judge Sylvie manages to escape to Renslayer’s grip and steal her tempad.

Now, I can excuse the escaping and also the stealing. Maybe Renslayer is inexperienced and maybe she didn’t expect dangers from such a young child but how did she figured she has to steal the tempad and how to use it?

Up till now how Renslayer has used the Tempad for was to recognize her as the Variant they were searching for. She shouldn’t know it’s the Tempad which opens the Timedoors or how to work it. Sure, we can assume it’s really easy to use it but it  still makes no sense she knows she has to use it to open the timedoors.

Whatever, Renslayer remains frozen on the spot when little Sylvie escapes and I can wonder if she felt a bit of sympathy for her… only the scene is kinda weird because she looked angry and ready to strike when the Sylvie stomped on her feet so this sudden sympathy when she’s about to escape is out of place. They just stare at each other, NO ONE making an attempt to grab Sylvie before Sylvie escape through the timedoor which, differently from how it had done with Loki in Episode 2, immediately close behind her.

The scene switches to Renslayer who has her eyes closed as if this was her memory.

She then opens them and enter through a golden door, supposedly going to see the Time-Keepers.

We get a glimpse to the Time-Keepers and then the title.

In the next scene the door opens and Renslayer marches out of it, Mobius confirming she went to see the Time-Keepers. He asks her how she feels and she says she’s not well because she had to meet the Time-Keepers in a bad situation and it’s stressing enough to meet them when everything goes well so this is really terrible.

Now… I don’t know. Later in the episode it’ll turn out the Time-Keepers are fake so… didn’t she know? Is she pretending to be stressed for Mobius’ benefit?

She says the Time-Keepers are blaming her for the situation and for how Sylvie and Loki escaped. She doesn’t mention Loki tried to stop Sylvie from meeting the Time-Keepers.

In short although Loki tried to stop Sylvie and used the Tempad to escape only when Renslayer tried to kill them both,  through the whole episode they’ll handle him as if he tried to escape with her or worse help her to kill the Time-Keepers.

Renslayers remarks how

The Time-Keepers are all that stand between us and full-scale calamity.

…basically fuelling their own Time-Keepers cult.

Mobius though is more interested in talking with C-20 but Renslayer, with a tragic performance, tells him she’s dead because when she was enchanted this scrambled her mind and basically she began to decline till death. Tissues anyone?

Even Mobius feels a slight scent of b*llsh*t at this story since C-20 seemed fine when he brought her back to the TVA but since he trusts Renslayer he swallows it.

Poor C-20 clearly either got pruned or reset, somehow they didn’t decide to make the smart thing and re-brainwash her, but just preferred to kill her off.

Renslayer persuades Mobius to keep C-20’s death a secret so as not to create panic.

By the way, NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE BOMBED TIMELINE AND NO ONE WILL TALK ABOUT IT LATER ON. It felt like the bombed timeline was merely something they did in Ep 2 to distract TVA and the viewers so that Sylvie could sneak in but nothing serious since it gets dropped so easily which is beyond disappointing. I mean, in Ep 2 it seemed to be such a huge problem and now… it’s nothing. All solved, all forgotten, just some extra work done in a short time.

Apparently, resetting the timeline in god knows how many points did nothing.

Really, that feel more like a dropped plot point or a plot hole than anything else.

For all that’s worth I find the acting between Mobius and Renslayer good. Every actor is working really hard in this series and I feel bad if it were to get lost into plot contrivances and plot holes.

Back to the story Renslayer pressures Mobius into tracking Sylvie and Loki.

The scene switches back to Lamentis. A lot more meteorites are falling but none of them close to Loki and Sylvie.

Sylvie is sit on a stone. Loki reaches her and apologizes. Because this episode wants him to be a narcissist but he again shows empathy to her.

Sylvie opens up to him, talking with him about her life.

Now is what Loki said about love being a dagger is something that’s not profound and pompous what about this that Sylvie says?

The universe wants to break free, so it manifests chaos. Like me being born the Goddess of Mischief.

It’s completely her speculation and gives her a sense of grandiosity. SHE’S IN A MISSION FOR THE UNIVERSE! THE UNIVERSE WANTS IT!

Don’t take me wrong, the TVA is keeping everyone prisoner but the universe didn’t create the Loki so as they could become its saviours.

We continue with Sylvie story. We’re supposed to swallow not only she figured the Tempad could open timedoor and how it worked but also how to recharge it and how to escape the TVA despite their many attempts to get her. Sylvie, who was already amazing for teaching herself how to enchant people, is set up to be even more amazing as she’s basically teaching herself everything and escaping from the TVA by centuries from when she was a young kid.

Who’s Tony Stark compared to her?

If this were to be a fanfic we would call her a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu.

She’s simply so awesome it doesn’t seem realistic for no reason at all especially compared to the other Loki Variant with her.

As Waldron is not a young girl writing for free I fear nobody will dare tell him he created a Mary Sue and people will only praise him for the oh so competent Sylvie.

And mind you, we need characters like Sylvie, who’re very competent.

Characters who’re sex fluid and bisexual and with a woman body and can still be strong and competent and above others… but the whole thing feels forced because she’s too good without a logic behind it, from figuring out it’s the Tempad that opens time door without never seeing it to do, to successfully escaping the TVA for so long.

When Loki managed to steal the Time Twister and use it, he has seen it being used previously more than once so it made sense he could use it and he had, to figure out how it worked, all the time Mobius spent discussing with B-15.

It made him smart to realize he could use it and he used it in a clever way but it wasn’t unbelievable because he had a grasp of how it worked, of what it could do.

Sylvie only saw it being used to identify her yet she guessed it was the thing that opened the Timedoors and how to make it work despite the Tempad having more than one function in basically a moment.

Then, although she apparently keeps on causing Nexus events everywhere she goes, she always manages to be one step ahead the TVA, escaping their grasp and, in all this, she also managed to recharge the Tempad using amazing power sources where Loki supposedly has no idea how it’s done. She fed herself, she learnt how to fight, she got herself a sword, she learn enchantment without having any basis whatsoever…

She’s the ‘superior Loki’ in a way, but why she should be superior to all the other Loki is absolutely random.

Anyway she says she grew up among ‘ends of the worlds’ and she will die in one of them, all while the scenery around them didn’t seem apocalyptic but romantic.

And mind you, the visual is really pretty but I feel the romance is misplaced, unnecessary.

And I’m still not sold in how they’re representing the moon.

Meanwhile Mobius is searching for them or better for a Nexus event that will lead him to them.

B-15, who hates variants, suggests they’re gone planning their next massacre… which isn’t true but if it were… can you blame them when you were the one who wanted to kill them in the first place and humiliated and belittled them? Should they have thanked you for your mistreatment?

She then asks about C-20 and Mobius says he has none so, worriedly, B-15 tries to urge him to… do something.

We go back to Loki and Sylvie and to the moon conveniently crumbling above them and yet not hitting them with them perfectly calm and enjoying the show.

Sylvie starts getting depressed.

Sylvie: Not long now. Do you think that what makes a Loki a Loki is the fact that we're destined to lose?

So okay, she feels she has lost but this is kind of a big leap. I mean, if the fact Loki was destined to lose is what made him Loki… then Thanos is Loki and Obadiah Stane is Loki and Red Skull is Loki and Killmongrel is Loki and so on.

Loki counters with something… interesting.

Loki: No. We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don’t die. We survive. I mean, you did. You were just a child when the TVA took you, but you nearly took down the organization that claims to govern the order of time. You did it on your own. You ran rings around them. You’re amazing!

Okay… so he knows he died in the sacred timeline. What’s his basis for saying they don’t die? The fact he survived to the wormhole? When he specifically wanted to die? Or that he survived through Thanos? Is the series ever going to touch that or we should pretend it never happened and Loki had a nice holiday with him?

Or a Time Charge hit the timeline in that point and erased that year Loki spent with Thanos?

Whatever, Loki is now busy admiring Sylvie for her efforts and being supportive… but it seems Marvel doesn’t want to count this as him being empathic and supportive with another being because she’s Loki… only episode 3 and the beginning of episode 4 went to great lengths to establish she’s not and hey, technically episode 3 is right in this.

I’ll point it out here and not later on because it’s probably important to discuss it immediately as it’ll come up later on a lot.

The identity of a person is made up by nature and nurture. Part of you is what you physically are, your genetic code that decide if you’re black or white, male or female or something else, human or a horse, tall or short, healthy or sick.

What you are will dictate part of what you will experience so it has a huge impact on you as it will decide part of your skills and part of your weaknesses.

Then, of course, there’s nurture.

Let’s pick twins. It’s worth to mention not all the identical twins share EXACTLY the same DNA because recent studies have proved mutation occurs in around the 15% of identical twins.

It’s also worth to mention that nurture begins really early. Even if we assume the two managed to keep the same genetic code, during development in the womb one twin might not receive the same amount of nutrients and this might affect his development.

And nurture will continue to affect them as they can even experience similar things (same parents, same house, same school) but there will be always differences that will end up affecting them.

Each twin is his own person, they’re not the same.

So now, Loki and Sylvie.

They’re clearly genetically not the same. What’s more we’ll see at the end there’s even a black Loki so basically this series doesn’t require the same genetic code for a Loki to be a Loki. So nature isn’t relevant here.

What about nurture?

We just learnt Sylvie’s story is completely different from Loki.

As a result her powers are different from his own. Her skillsets, her reactions, her temper is different from his own. She has different goals and different wants. As Sophia Di Martino said, she’s Sylvie, not Loki.

She’s as different from him as another person could be.

To me she even looked more like Thor than Loki.

So really, how’s self admiration when she’s actually not him? The only way for it to be self admiration would be if Loki isn’t admiring her for her own accomplishment, but just because he was told she’s him. But in this case he wouldn’t have been babbling for ours about who’s the lesser Loki.

If all Lokis are made equal in his eyes and worth his admiration because Loki then there’s no point to discuss who among them is better.

In short it’s a damn mess.

Anyway Sylvie touches Loki and he’s kind of surprised, in fact he looks at his arm.

In “Thor” the touch of a Frost Giant could turn Loki into his original look but we know Sylvie has touched Loki already when she tried to enchant him and that’s not the problem.

I wish the trick were she has enchanted him but later Mobius will say the problem is that they had started swooning on each other which opens a huge can of worms but we’ll discuss them later.

So now back to Mobius we go and to the timeline which begins to branch, signalling problems on Lamentis 1.

We return to Loki who raises his eyes from his arm and he and Sylvie look at each other for a moment before returning to pay attention to the show of meteorites falling closer. They turn again to look at each other, holding hands this time and smiling.

Back to Mobius we go and to how the branching timeline seems to go on a perpendicular line rather quickly. It impresses Mobius as it’s apparently an unheard event.

Back to Loki and Sylvie we go and to how two TimeDoor open in front of them.

We don’t know if they jumped through them to survive or if the TVA came out, grabbed them and dragged them through and it doesn’t matter.

In the next scene we see that both Sylvie and Loki are collared, held by guard as they struggle and escorted through the corridors of the TVA, Mobius leading them.

They’re then parted and when this happens they look at each other.

As they walk Mobius begins to talk with Loki. Evidently Mobius has no idea that Loki had been trying to stop Sylvie when they were at the TVA and works on the assumption they were accomplices. Maybe. It’s not really clear on which assumption Mobius is working.

Loki accuses him to have betrayed him and Mobius counters it’s Loki who betrayed him.

Actually they’re both wrong, Mobius more than Loki.

For a betrayal to happen, there needs to be a break of trust.

Now, in regard to Loki, trusting Mobius was a mistake. Mobius picked him up from the trial because he needed him for a use and was never honest with him.

Meeting the Time-Keepers? Mobius can’t met them himself, how could he help Loki meeting them?

But whatever, Loki apparently trusted him so I take he feels betrayed by how Mobius had him arrested when he actually didn’t betray Mobius. He tried stopping Sylvie, he tried capturing her, he ended on Lamentis 1 because Renslayer tried to kill them both, he didn’t cause the timeline to branch on purpose, for most of his permanence on Lamentis 1 he wanted to leave the planet and stick to his own plan to bring Sylvie back to the TVA.

So Mobius arresting him clearly feels an act of betrayal to Loki. He doesn’t know Renslayer didn’t report he tried to stop Sylvie and the fact Mobius didn’t trust him to do what he was supposed to but handled him like a criminal likely hurt.

But, as I said before, for all Mobius can say, he’s not his friend, he’s not someone who would trust and support him, Mobius cares about the TVA.

And Mobius feel betrayed because he thinks Loki plotted against the TVA with Sylvie.

This is wrong for two reasons, the first and most obvious being that Loki didn’t plot with her, the second being that, although Loki seemed to have missed it, he was working with Mobius under coercion. The TVA wanted to prune him, Mobius saved him but in exchange Loki had to make himself useful. This was made clear in episode 2 as well. Mobius said if using Loki didn’t work he would delete him himself and he made Loki sure this was his last chance (before being deleted) and that he had to work to make himself useful while Mobius went and have lunch.

You aren’t entitled to expect genuine loyalty from someone when you tell them ‘if you don’t give me what I want I’ll kill you’. I hope no one has forgotten this little talk from episode 2:

Mobius: This is the final step. Your last chance.

Loki: Oh, and what does my desperate last chance require?

Mobius: Work.

Loki: Work?

Mobius: I need you to go over each and every one of the Variant's case files, and then, give me your... How do I put it? Your unique Loki perspective. And who knows? Maybe there's something that we missed.

Loki: Well, you're idiots. I suspect you probably missed a lot.

Mobius: That's why I'm lucky I got ya for a little bit longer. Let me park ya at this desk. And don't be afraid to really lean into this work. Here's a good trick for you. Pretend your life depends on it. I'm gonna get a snack.

Mobius made really clear if Loki didn’t give him what he wants he’s a dead man.

For some weird reasons Loki decided to still be loyal to him (okay, so he wanted to get to the Time-Keepers and might suffer of Stockholm syndrome), but the most logical thing, as many had pointed out, was escape from the TVA first chance he were to get as Sylvie has been doing.

Now… to be honest there are situations in which you could ask this from another.

If Mobius had told Loki ���Sorry, I know this is unfair and I want to help you but I can’t do more or I’ll get killed too. So I’ll protect you but I’ve to ask you to protect me as well by putting up with this.’

This though would have required Mobius to prioritize Loki’s survival and consider the fact he needed Loki to catch the Variant as an excuse to keep Loki alive.

That’s not the case, Mobius made clear although he has sympathy for Loki, he prioritizes catching the Variant. He didn’t suffer any repercussion when things went wrong.

He’s absolutely safe, his only risk comes from the Variant but this was the same even prior to Loki getting involved.

Mobius is using Loki and, in exchange for using him, he let him enjoy the benefit of being alive, albeit belittled by others around him. As I said talking about Episode 2, they don’t have an equal partnership.

I hate how Mobius says this:

Mobius: You know, it occurred to me that you're not really the God of Mischief.

Loki: Oh, here it comes. The folksy, dopey insult from the folksy dope. What am I? The God of Self-Sabotage, yeah? The God of Back-Stabbing?

Mobius: Just kind of an asshole and a bad friend.

The worst part is that Mobius seems to genuinely believe he’s a good friend to Loki, opposed to Loki who’s a bad friend. He didn’t even listen to his reasons or asked him what had happened. When Loki tries to tell him something ‘the TVA is lying to you’, he merely assumes Loki is lying. Mobius has no idea what a friend is. He’s angry in the way a pet owner is angry when his dog peed on the carpet, he doesn’t view Loki as equal, which is the basis for being friends.

His idea to deal with Loki now isn’t to listen to him, it’s to punish him by having him being beaten and belittled, as well as tossed hurtful words about Loki’s worst fear, being left alone. He doesn’t even dirty his hands with doing it himself, he just traps Loki in a timeloop in which Sif slaps him, kick him in the groins and punches him telling him he is a ‘conniving, craven, pathetic worm’ and that she ‘hope you know you deserve to be alone and you always will be’, all this because Loki cut her hair.

Now, this is based on something the Loki of the myth did, and that Marvel also had Loki do more than once in the comics, either with Sif or with other characters. In the original version and in the Marvel version Loki didn’t just cut some locks from Sif’s hair as he did here, but basically turned her bald.

It doesn’t matter, yes he was an *ssh*le and yes, I think Sif had all the rights to be angry and call him names and beat him.

BACK THEN.

Loki hurt her, she hurt him back, they are even. That’s the end.

Even Sif knows as she doesn’t remain there to beat him further until all his bones are broken.

Of course this is not going to work because beating someone and calling him names doesn’t magically turn that person into a better person, that’s why many countries abolished corporal punishment and considered it an useless torture.

But this doesn’t mean it’s okay for Mobius to take that moment and traps Loki into a time loop so he can get beaten and humiliated to Mobius’ heart content until he says he’s bad, bad, bad, which in real life is equally useless because we know if you start beating a person and won’t stop until he says what you want him to say, people in the long run will say everything to make the beating stop, they even confess crimes they didn’t commit.

That’s why, in many states, if you arrest someone you can’t beat him until he confess and any confession obtained by beating him is null and void.

And I particularly loathe the framing of all this for more than one reason but let’s start digging with the first ones.

“Thor” side material established that Sif is a better fighter than Loki but sadly the idea a girl can’t hit as hard as a man rules so Sif beating Loki doesn’t feel as bad as, let’s say, Cull Obsidian punching him over and over. Some see as fun that a male can be beaten by a girl and hit on the crotch, a rightful demeaning which excuses what’s being done because she’s just a girl and if Loki can’t defend himself it’s his fault… which is a rather disgusting mindsetting.

The fact Sif was, ‘supposedly’ Loki’s friend is clearly chosen to draw a comparison with Mobius… which doesn’t really work really well because we never truly saw Sif and Loki being friends.

In “Thor” she was fast in thinking he was plotting the downfall of Asgard. If the idea is their relation turned sour because Loki cut her hair… well, this is up to speculation because we never saw it being friendly.

And anyway, even Sif knew when to stop while Mobius evidently doesn’t as he continues to let him be beaten, again without even doing the job himself, framing it as if it was all Loki’s fault.

If he had to beat Loki into submission I would have honestly preferred him to just take a whip and beat him, this framing in which he ‘remains innocent’ while his dog gets punished for peeing on the carpet honestly disgust him. But okay, if the series were to use it to make a point about ‘police brutality’ I would have been fine with it. Mobius wants a confession, wants to force Loki to comply and beat him. The viewers will be shown how wrong is this and the message will be that you shouldn’t do it.

It would be great if Mobius were playing the part of the Bernardo Gui of the TVA.

Bernardo Gui: Brother Salvatore... these torments will cause me as much pain as you. You can end it before we even begin. Open the gates of your heart, search the depths of your soul. [Name of the Rose]

Too bad that’s not the case.

The scene switches to Renslayer’s office.

This is how Mobius defines what he’s doing to Loki:

Mobius: He's softening in the Time Cell, but while he marinates, I thought maybe I'd interview the other Variant.

Please, don’t tell me you never heard this sort of excuses in movies that included police brutality. Or outright torture to make you confess you were an heretic or guilty of a murder.

He’s not being beaten into compliance, he’s softening. We’re making him better, we’re making him willing. We’re absolutely not making anything bad in having him being beaten over and over. Because if you beat someone over and over you’ll always have a honest confession, won’t you?

Bernardo Gui: Since the verdict of the Inquisition has been disputed by Brother William... we are obliged to extract the prisoner's confession to murder. Take him to the forge and show him the instruments.

Remigio Da Varagine: I'll confess anything you want, but don't torture me. I can't go through a night like Salvatore!

Bernardo Gui: Very well. Why did you kill them?

Remigio Da Varagine: Why? I don't know why.

Bernardo Gui: Because you were inspired by the devil?

Remigio Da Varagine: Yes... that's it. I was inspired by the devil. [Name of the Rose]

But I’m running ahead.

Mobius would like to talk with the other Variant, aka Sylvie. Would he also torture her psychologically or physically or it would look bad on him to abuse of a woman? We don’t know as Renslayer, rather cheerfully, refuses to let him speak with her. Nobosy should speak with her.

Mobius tries in another way:

Mobius: I mean, if there's a mastermind here, I don't think it's Loki.

The problem I have with this sentence is that it’s not said because geez, it makes no sense Loki willingly escaped with a variant into an apocalypse with no means to leave it, all to create a branch that would allow the TVA to detect them and capture them.

It’s not even said because Loki is his friend and wouldn’t do it.

Or any other logical reason why Loki wouldn’t have done it.

The implication here seems to be just that Loki doesn’t seem smart enough to be the mastermind of all this fiasco, because this is a fiasco, mind you, as they were captured and if they weren’t they would be dead.

Renslayer’s reply isn’t what Mobius wants.

Renslayer: Good. Then he should be the easiest to break. Work your Loki and figure out what caused that spike. Time-Keepers are watching, Mobius.

She at least calls things with their name as she says Mobius is supposed to break Loki. To break him to get the truth. She has figured Mobius is having him beaten and she’s okay with breaking him. Because a regime beat people into compliance.

Then she put pressures on Mobius by telling him the Time-Keepers are watching which reminds me of how, in the past, people used to say to scare others ‘Remember: God is always watching you!’ and it wasn’t meant to be encouraging, as he’s watching you to protect you, no, he’s watching you because if you mess up he’s ready to punish you.

Welcome to the Time-Keepers cult everyone.

Mobius leaves.

We move to B-15 who’s asking to another hunter Sylvie has beaten if she’s Okay because Sylvie is the superior Loki and of course she has managed to beat one of the hunters guarding her.

Mobius joins B-15 and saying the hunter hurt comments:

Mobius: They don't go gently, do they?

WHY SHOULD THEY?

Are you going gently with Loki? You’re having him beaten over and over and my guess is you’re not doing the same with Sylvie because the show thinks it would look bad if they were shown beating a woman over and over.

Anyway B-15 is right when she calls Loki his ‘Variant pet’, as I said that’s how Mobius sees Loki, as a pet who peed on the carpet.

Mobius goes on:

Mobius: You know, we brought in Kree, Titans, vampires. Why is it the two orphan demigods are such a pain in the ass?

I hate this question honestly because it implies two orphan demigods should just go down quietly, that they aren’t as terrible as Kree, Titans, vampires. Why are they opposing to the TVA, why don’t let themselves just be erased. Or reprogrammed as you let the TVA do to you, Mobius.

You know, there’s people that’s not thrilled with the idea you can kill or submit them.

But Hunter B-15 despite looking down on the Variants, is worried so she asks if Loki said anything to him.

Mobius replies Loki told him the TVA is lying him. Oh, think the audacity! The TVA which is so honest. The agency he can believe it’s real because he believes it’s real.

Mobius: Odin, God of the Heavens. Asgard, mystical realm, beyond the stars. Frost Giants. Listen to yourself...

Loki: It's not the same. It's completely different. No. It's not the same.

Mobius: It's exactly the same thing. Because if you think too hard about where any of us came from, who we truly are, it sounds kinda ridiculous. Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it. And I'm just lucky that the chaos I emerged into gave me all this... My own glorious purpose.

Mobius: Cause the TVA is my life. And it's real because I believe it's real.

Such a solid base. And Loki tells him they’re lying. No, really? His little personal cult, lying TO HIM?

Of course B-15 fears differently but she had an experience Mobius couldn’t share.

We go back to Loki who now is on the ground and is begging Sif to hit him no more. And a side of me facepalm.

Okay, as said before Sif was established to be stronger than him but he knows she’s coming. He could goddamn prepare and put up a fight instead than just stay there and get beaten which, I guess, is painful.

I’ll assume he can’t use his magic so I’ll forgive him for not using that but he could just take a flower vase, hit and crash it against Sif’s head when she enters.

Never mentioning that if he kept on getting punched and beaten, since HE doesn’t rewind, by now he should have a quite bruised check. Again, since Mobius wanted him beaten it would have made more sense if he just had whipped him but no, we needed to get this thing that supposedly tame the beating down so we don’t feel disgusted if we don’t think at it too hard.

Anyway Loki has enough and gives Sif what she wanted to hear.

Loki: Please, please, no more. Please, I beg you. I'm a horrible person. I get it. I really am. I cut off your hair because I thought it'd be funny. And it's not. Uh... I crave attention... because I'm... I'm a... I'm a narcissist. And I suppose it's... It's because I'm scared of being alone.

So let’s talk of all that’s wrong with this.

First of all Loki was coerced in saying this. It means goddamn nothing.

Second if this is meant to be the truth and someone doesn’t point out a little louder how the TVA is a fascist organization that deploy torture and anyway it’s bad to coerce people into saying the truth this way, it basically encourages to beat people to get them to be honest. Which is disgusting.

Third, it makes a HUGE deal of something that it’s relatively minor. I mean, Mobius wanted him to say he’s a horrible person? For cutting Sif’s hair?!? This is his worst crime, something Loki need to regret?

The TVA in Ep 1 was all about pinning on him the blame for the attack on New York but Sif’s hair, oh, cutting Sif’s hair is obviously worse. Only no, because it meant to happen in the Sacred Timeline so the TVA would have punished him hadn’t he done it.

So you can read this in two ways.

Either Mobius’ logic is dumb or the episode’s logic is dumb. If the story is trying to paint Mobius as an idiot and an hypocrite or he’s just trying to confuse Loki so that he’ll say everything and the opposite of everything and it doesn’t matter if it make sense or not fine, I’m cool, but if I’m supposed to run with this instead and think Mobius’ amazingly therapeutic way to get Loki to realize his faults and think at his behaviour and realize what he is, is to have Sif beat him into submission they’ll do better to think it twice.

Now… this part ‘I crave attention... because I'm... I'm a... I'm a narcissist. And I suppose it's... It's because I'm scared of being alone’ doesn’t make sense.

You don’t become a Narcissist because you’re scared of being alone. If you’re a Narcissist you crave attention and are scared to be alone but fears of loneliness doesn’t turn people into narcissists.

Now… is Loki a Narcissist? It’s kind of ridicule Loki would self diagnose it to himself, especially without any competence in psychology which on Asgard doesn’t seem to exist or they would know adopting a child and not telling him he’s adopted ends up badly in 99,9% of the cases. He’s probably using the term loosely but whatever, let’s run with it.

@lucianalight wrote an awesome essay (whose reading I recommend along with the others of the same series) explaining why he isn’t and Cinematherapy who can count on a real therapist, did a video explaining why he is. So who’s right?

Both and neither.

Let’s start with Cinematherapy as they employ a professional.

If you watch the video (recorded prior to the series) you realize they make a HUGE canon mistake right at the start. They assume Loki’s magical powers come from Loki being a Frost Giant.

That’s not bad will from their part, this is actually based on how they’ve watched the movies… and nothing else so they skipped all the additional side material and cut scenes. They didn’t watch the cut scene in “Thor: The Dark World” saying how Loki learnt magic from his mother nor read it in a side material publication or interview. They have no idea Loki’s sceptre was influencing him in “The Avengers” because that’s only written on Marvel’s web and not present in the movies and don’t seem to consider Loki in the year between “Thor” and “The Avengers” had to go through something terrible that could involve Thanos and torture or even death since that was only mentioned in interviews and in pretty vague terms. They consider “Thor: Ragnarok” part of the canon without considering how Taika Waititi deliberately, for his own admission, retconned it.

So their analysis uses the 5 movies and considers Loki in ‘perfect’ psychological state through the 5 of them. And it makes sense Cinematherapy analysis are meant to talk to casual viewers not to fans who knows everything about the movies.

@lucianalight instead considers all the side material included the cut scenes and the interview and discard “Thor: Ragnarok”. As a fan who well knows the story and the authors’ intentions she has access to a completely different set of information that Cinematherapy didn’t use in their analysis.

The result is that Cinematherapy and @lucianalight fundamentally looked at two different stories, albeit rooted on the same movies, and since they analyzed different material, they came up with contrasting analysis in which neither is wrong because they’re basically analyzing two different Variants of Loki.

But what’s the Variant we should look at to understand if the Loki of “Loki” is a Narcissist or not?

The real problem with diagnosing a character of fictional works is that said character is well… fictional. He can’t have a personality disorder, said disorder needs to be scripted into him by the writers… who often know very little of psychology, which is why I prefer to use trope to analyze characters than the effective mental disorders.

But with Loki we’ve a huge problem, because, in addition to the writers not being experienced about disorders, we’re talking about writerS, plural.

There’s more people writing Loki, and each of them can’t agree on how to interpret him.

So we have:

“Thor” in which Loki hardly presents traits of Narcissism.

“The Avengers” in which he presents them.

“Thor: The Dark World” in which he alternates presenting them, depending on the scene being written by Whedon or Don Payne (who also worked on “Thor”) and Robert Rodat.

“Thor: Ragnarok” in which he presents traits of Narcissism.

“Avengers: Infinity War” in which he doesn’t present them, if you read the interview, he’s just saying whatever comes to his mind to try to get a chance to kill Thanos and save his brother aware he can easily get killed… or in which he presents them if you don’t read the interviews and believes he’s persuaded he will come on the top.

If you mix the movies together and take them as they are without checking the additional material, the ones in which he presents traits of Narcissisms ends up colouring the view of the ones in which he doesn’t.

If you consider only “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World” (the Don Payne and Robert Rodat part) which tried to keep the same continuity as the same scriptwriter was involved in both of them, he doesn’t.

I’ll be honest though, I think Marvel wants to slap that disorder on him.

They’ve discovered it’s oh so funny to have Loki feel so high and mighty and then be humbled down by having the Hulk smash him or Thor tossing him out of a spaceship or electrocuting him or Sif kicking him in his groins.

However I think Marvel is trying to milk their cow too much.

The scenes in which Loki is humbled work wonderfully in “The Avengers” because Loki genuinely felt high and mighty to the viewers to the point we didn’t expect him to be defeated, so seeing him being humbled down by the Hulk, by Hawkeye’s arrow, by Coulson shooting at him, were all powerful moves.

You didn’t expect them, Loki was a real threat in the movie and you’re as surprised as him when he gets defeated.

I mean when Hawkeye throws his arrow and Loki grabs it with no effort, it pushes you to think ‘oh, he’s too strong’ only for it to explode in his face.

You don’t get the same feeling in this series.

Loki is not strong nor particularly competent or bright. His words aren’t profound nor persuasive. His confidence seems baseless, his humbling down becomes expected, here, against Sif, he basically did NOTHING, except being beaten up. His verbal efforts to stop her were pathetic.

You aren’t surprised by Sif beating him, by Sif not being persuaded by his first weak attempts at stopping her verbally, his words aren’t convincing, his attempts at stopping her physically, inexistent.

It gets boring for the viewer as well as it ultimately gets ‘boring’ for Loki who, at a certain point says:

Loki: I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. "You. You conniving, craven, pathetic worm. You did this." Right?

He’s no more affected, it had become routine and it is for us too.

It’s a fail a wasted scene.

Overall I think Waldron doesn’t think highly of Loki. He views him as a Narcissist who thinks highly about himself but in truth is nothing special. A comic relief, an agent of chaos. At the same time… I’m not sure he knows what a Narcissist is, or that he’s thinking at the Narcissistic personality disorder because this Loki shows empathy. In this episode he showed he is not envious of Sylvie and his arrogant behaviour is a cover to cover up his weakness.

So honestly… whatever, I don’t care. No, okay, I do.

I’m sad because I see a lot of people working hard in this series, from the actors to Kate Herron who really love Loki and wanted this job but for me the plot of a story and the characterization of the characters are important and only Sergio Leone can pull out a masterpiece with a man with no name and a poor script.

Mind you, this episode is better than the previous in terms of plot but… overall is weak. I really, really hope the series will improve in Ep 5 and 6 because episode 3 & 4 just weren’t that great.

I really want Loki to have a great series but wanting it and getting it aren’t necessarily the same things.

Anyway back to the plot.

Although after Loki’s confession Sif doesn’t beat him and help him to get up this is what she tells him.

Sif: You are alone and you always will be.

Basically yeah, Loki’s confession meant nothing because he can’t change anything. He can’t get attention or company, not even behaving better. This is Sif’s message in the end. He’s pathetic and this time she doesn’t beat him up because it feels like beating a pathetic person.

Now, I’m not saying she should have forgiven him. Not this Sif. But the overall situation is warped. Although she didn’t mean to, she technically beat him nonstop, he had way more than enough, and if Sif hadn’t been trapped into a timeloop she would have known.

This Sif was used as a toy to do a job Mobius didn’t want to do personally.

It’s overall a sick situation and, since this Sif didn’t know she had been abusing Loki for only God knows how long, although she helps him to stand she rightfully doesn’t feel they’re even.

And though Loki had gotten a break from being beaten, it’s clear his admission ultimately did nothing good to him psychologically. If he’s alone and will always be as such… why should he care he hurts others? Why shouldn’t he take a bit of fun where he can?

And all this is psychological manipulation of course because then Mobius appears like a balm.

LOKI: There's not many people that can sneak up on me. (turns to see NATASHA STANDING THERE)

NATASHA: But you figured I'd come.

LOKI: After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.

Now… I have not the slightest idea of what Mobius is planning to do here. He doesn’t trust Loki, he doesn’t really want the truth, whatever that can be, he wants a truth of his liking and this is not negotiable.

Loki tells him that he’ll give him info only if he’ll let him out of the place and stop beating him and he decides this means Loki previously wasn’t telling the truth because he’s not being submissive enough.

Mobius makes clear he wants to hear about the plan between Loki and the Variant and that he wants Loki to give him the answers he wants, not the truth. Which is stupid because instead he needs the truth.

When Loki tells him the truth, that he wasn’t partner with Sylvie, he’s dismissive of his answer.

Mobius: Yeah, I guess you don't do partners. Unless, of course, it benefits you, and you intend to betray them at some point.

Loki insists on not having a partnership with Sylvie.

Loki: It was a means to an end, Mobius. Welcome to the real world. Down there, we're awful to get what we want.

Mobius: Now I gotta have a prince tell me how the real world works?

I hate this mentality that has started to develop into Marvel movies as if royalty lived a fairy tale life and could have no idea of the real world, especially the part in which ‘we're awful to get what we want’ because it’s dumb. Royalty has an history of being awful to get what they want that’s as long as the start of civilization. If Mobius doesn’t know, maybe he is the one who has no idea how the real world work, how many wars had been declared because a king wanted the land of his neighbour or something else. How they could accuse people of betrayal or of imaginary crimes to get rid of them.

Laufey is a king and moved war to Earth. Odin is a king and drowned civilizations in blood.

T’Chaka is a king and abandoned his nephew so as to cover an unwanted truth.

The Supreme Intelligence of the Kree Empire took advantage of Carol Danvers, altering her memories.

And that’s just the Marvel universe. So really Mobius, are you sure that all royalty is the equivalent of Disney princesses who sings are lovely and have talking pets?

And then Mobius does a really STUPID question.

Mobius: Why don't you just tell me what caused the nexus event on Lamentis?

So the series has gone to a great length to establish people doesn’t know they cause a nexus event. They can’t see the sacred timeline they move at random and SLAM, sometimes they end up doing something they didn’t know they weren’t planned to do and it results in a nexus event. BUT THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT BEFOREHAND! SO HOW IS LOKI SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!?

But anyway they clearly weren’t supposed to be there so everything they do can create a disturbance if it’s not erased by the apocalypse. For example if they sent a missile to destroy the neighbour planet before Lamentis 1 was destroyed they clearly would affect the Sacred Timeline because the neighbouring planet wasn’t meant to get blasted away.

But still… they found them there, waiting for destruction with no means to escape and with no idea the TVA would have appeared because they broke the sacred timeline.

It’s kind of a giant warning sign they’ve no idea what they’ve done.

So Mobius demanding to know feels as if they had dumbed down Mobius as well.

Loki wants to play stubborn and he has good reasons since he fears for his life.

Loki: Let me say this again. I'm not going to tell you just so you can turn around immediately afterwards and prune me.

In reply Mobius decides Loki needs to be tortured by Sif some more.

So Loki does what Remigio Da Varagine did when Bernardo Gui promised to torture him, he tells Mobius what he believes Mobius wants to hear, that of course they were accomplices and of course they had a plan and he was in charge of it.

Only Mobius has decided that Sylvie is the better Loki so he doesn’t believe Loki is in control and, to test him, he tells him Sylvie was pruned.

This hits Loki as he has grown feelings for Sylvie. He tries to play it as he doesn’t care but Mobius guesses he’s affected.

On a sidenote the series painting Loki oh so transparent affects negatively Thor as well as Thor never seems to realize it when Loki is affected, which leads to the implication Thor is either dumb or doesn’t care or… he’s written by someone else who thinks Loki is better at masking his feelings.

Mind you, in the movies Loki has moments in which is feelings are on display for everyone to see but also moments in which they’re guarded. Here they simply are not. In the series his feelings are constantly on display as if he somehow has lost the ability to guard them even if he tries to.

Anyway Mobius decides that Loki caring for the variant means he got a crush on her. I wish I could say he’s wrong but this is what Waldron has to say on the topic:

“That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story. We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story. The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship. Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.” [Loki Writer Explains Episode 4's Sylvie Love Story Reveal]

Why there needs to be a love story? A romantic love story? Self-love is different from self-cest. Learning to appreciate yourself doesn’t mean you suddenly wants to date yourself.

Besides, if the whole point was having Loki fall for himself, then let Sylvie be him!

Sylvie is so different from him she could very well be a different person... and it’s actually worth to ponder a bit on this.

As I said before Sylvie is genetically different from Loki. By logic this would mean more than Loki, she’s Loki’s fraternal twin from a parallel dimension. Only, if the TVA prunes whatever diverges by the sacred timeline this means she should have been pruned at birth because the sacred timeline has a male Loki. But no, she gets the time to grow up till… the Asgardian equivalent of 10 years old?

And only because back then she has somehow made something that didn’t fit with the timeline?

What was that, she was told she was adopted and, since her parents this time did things properly she felt loved instead than the monster parents tell their children at night and was about to grow up as a psychologically healthy girl?

Anyway, back to the problem, we’ll see at the end that, among the other Loki there’s also another Loki who clearly doesn’t have the same genetic code of Loki. No, I’m not talking of the Loki played by Deobia Oparei, Loki’s skin colour was supposed to be blue, it’s of course worth questioning why Odin went for black instead than white this time (does he come with an Asgard where everyone is a person of colour?) but it can be just the result of Odin’s magic. What I’m talking about is the Loki alligator.

Because normally who give birth to alligators aren’t frost giants but alligators… that or Asgard was populated by alligators. Or, that Loki was magically turned into an alligator but somehow I doubt it.

So anyway, if Loki might not share the same genetic code with his variants and not being pruned at birth… this works for Laufey too. This works for everyone.

Basically all the Variants could be completely different people who happen to share the same name.

In a way we know about the TVA work as much as we knew before episode 1. Sometimes they accuse someone deciding he broke the timeline… but sometime they don’t care if such break is done. Why? Because the Time-Keepers say so.

Great, whatever, I really don’t see the need of Loki falling in love for a version of himself who couldn’t be more different from himself than Sylvie is. At this point he could have fallen in love for anyone, even B-15.

Couldn’t they put in the show Verity Willis instead than Mobius and Sylvie?

The genuine friendship and appreciation they have in the comic which is also part of what saved Loki in the end was much better than the ‘friendship’ he has with Mobius or the abrupt crush for Sylvie.

And mind you, I like Sylvie as a character. I just don’t like what the series is doing with her.

Mobius too is well done as a character… but he’s the farthest thing from a friend for Loki.

Back to the story Mobius is having the time of his life because Loki is in pain for Sylvie’s supposed death since he has fallen for her.

Because friends obviously love it when you’re in pain when you believe your crush is dead.

Then he goes and say:

Mobius: No wonder you have no clue what caused the nexus event on Lamentis. Both of you are swooning over each other.

Wait so he knew Loki has no clue about what caused the Nexus event? And despite this he tortured Loki? And now he claims Loki has no clue because he and Sylvie were swooning over each other? Because that’s always what happened when a Nexus event happens, isn’t it? People swoon on someone else and don’t realize they’re causing a Nexus event. Loki was probably swooning on the Tesseract and Sylvie on her Valkyrie doll, right? The logic here is big.

Mobius: It's the apocalypse. Two Variants of the same being, especially you, forming this kind of sick, twisted romantic relationship. That's pure chaos. That could break reality. It's breaking my reality right now. What a incredible seismic narcissist. You fell for yourself.

Yeah, the sacred timeline is something that can bear people being turned into slaves, Jewish people being gassed into concentration camps, children being abused, terrorism, the destruction of Pompeii, New York being attacked by the Chitauri, Lamentis 1 getting destroyed, Bucky being turned into a slave of Hydra, Asgard being destroyed, Peter losing his parents, Thanos purging half of the universe, Tony Stark having to die when they could have just wiped away the Thanos that went into the future but God forbid two Loki were to commit selfcest. What are lives lost compared to selfcest?

Much, much better to wipe away half of all the living things than that.

Because…

“These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.” [Loki Writer Explains Episode 4's Sylvie Love Story Reveal]

Ah, okay, great, it’s just because they’re two beings of pure chaos. If it had been Captain America falling for a Variant of himself the timeline would have clapped at him. No really, I still hope you take back this somehow and say it was all to mislead us because for me it’s not a problem of selfcest. It’s a HUGE problem of something called LOGIC. What’s this “Alice in the wonderland”? Mobius continues being a good, supportive friend by mocking Loki when she tells him the Variant’s name was Sylvie. Really Loki, with friends like this you were better with Thanos calling himself your dad. Finally anyway Loki manages to have Mobius tell him Sylvie is still alive, which gives him some relief, then Mobius goes on.

Mobius: And was infiltrating the TVA, was that always sort of the grand plan?

Wait, is he implying that when Loki produced his first Nexus event he did it so he could infiltrate in the TVA? Because of course he would know that they wouldn’t prune him but Mobius would come to his rescue? What had Mobius been drinking? Then when Loki tells Mobius maybe the Time-Keepers need to be overthrown Mobius goes:

Mobius: I ought to box your ears.

Because of course, violence is the solution and Loki should only be grateful to the Time-Keepers who kidnapped him and want to terminate him, shouldn’t he? Mobius is simply terrible here… which I don’t like because in a while I’ll be supposed to feel sad for him.

Loki now tries to tell Mobius the truth… only Mobius doesn’t want to listen, he claims Loki already told him 50 lies in the past 10 minutes without even considering he called for them as he tortured Loki to get what he wanted to hear, not the truth and anyway, if Loki isn’t trustworthy why they’re having that discussion?

Plus he belittles everything Loki says by basically downplaying Sylvie. She’s his girlfriend, his female self. She’s not her own. And of course in addition to downplaying Sylvie he has to insult Loki’s feelings because that’s what friends are for.

Mobius: Whatever you want to call her. What, your female self that you have some demented crush on...

Honestly, if Mobius had had a crush on Loki I would have waved this as him being jealous and bitter Loki found someone else but he does not. He took possession of Loki, looked down on him as some sort of pet, tried to manipulate him into obedience and babbled of a friendship that clearly didn’t exist and that had no reason to exist even if he hadn’t acted as a jerk because they barely know each other.

Friendship is something earned over time, not something others own you because you save them from death provided they’ll work for you.

What in the world is the TVA idea of friendship?

Anyway Loki informs him they’re all Variants and all the truth connected to it.

For a moment it seems to work, Mobius seems to be affected.

But this isn’t a truth Mobius wanted to hear because it ruins the basis of the TVA and the TVA is…

Mobius: Cause the TVA is my life. And it's real because I believe it's real.

So Mobius goes and call all of that a lie and since he hadn’t been a jerk enough he felt the need to play Odin’s role and remind Loki of his path in the sacred timeline.

Mobius: You two, what a pair! Gosh! Unbelievable. Wherever you go, it's just death, destruction, the literal ends of worlds.

What a friend, huh? Honestly I think he went for that line deliberately, because he has seen Loki’s life in the sacred timeline and saw Odin tossing a similar line to him and knows it hurt him.

Odin: Do you not truly feel the gravity of your crimes? Wherever you go there is war, ruin and death.

It’s also probably worth to mention this Loki hadn’t caused any of the ends of the worlds he’s been in.

Then he does what everyone expected, he decided he didn’t need Loki anymore and could get rid of him.

Mobius: Well, I'm gonna have to close this case now, 'cause I don't need you anymore. Yeah, or as you might say, our interests are no longer aligned.

Honestly I don’t like the idea of Loki falling for Sylvie but with people like Mobius around him… why am I complaining? Sylvie, who also attacked and belittled him, was much better as she didn’t go and called herself his friend at least. She was more honest than Mobius so congratulation Mobius, you beat the Goddess of Mischief.

On a sidenote the lines red and grey on the wall give me the feeling they’re in a circus tent. So yeah

Loki: The Time-Keepers have built quite the circus, and I see the clowns are playing their parts to perfection.

Anyway Loki is dragged away to be tortured by Sif again. Because Mobius hadn’t had him beaten up into submission enough before killing him. This is just sadistic.

This time Loki though is so angry he’s calm.

Loki: You know, of all the liars in this place, and there are a great many, you're the biggest.

Mobius: Why? 'Cause I lied about your girlfriend?

Loki: Oh, no. That I can respect. I mean, the lies you tell yourself.

Honestly I hate how Mobius continues to call Sylvie ‘his girlfriend’, not because I don’t like the idea of them paired together but because I get it’s Mobius’ way to belittle them both. She’s not her own person, not Sylvie, she’s Loki’s female self that he has some demented crush on. That’s all he makes her to be.

I don’t know what happened to Mobius in this episode. He seemed to have moral standards in Ep 1 & 2. He didn’t seem to enjoy hurting others for no reason. Now he does.

Well, at least Loki gets to call him on the lies he tells himself.

So, a break here. Great acting from both, good direction from Kate Herron, dumb plot.

The idea is that Mobius is questioning Loki to know what caused the Nexus event, right? But instead than his intelligence he uses physical torture. Now it would be fine if he needed to get a confession and didn’t care about the truth but he cares about the truth, he needs it to prevent future nexus events. Only no, he doesn’t care. Whatever.

Then he tries to see if Loki has feelings about Sylvie, which he does and jumps to the idea that Loki must love her because since they’re a male and a female there’s no other way to care for each other if not romantic love. He can’t view her as a sister or have pity of her, no it has to be romantic love and Waldron backs him up so it is and so this has to be what broke the timeline because… the timeline can tolerate any sort of crime but not selfcest committed by chaotic beings?

It must be this because if Mobius find something demented the timeline would as well, we’ve proofs… no we don’t have it is just speculation but Mobius read Waldron’s interview so he knows it’s true.

So Mobius has his answer, the timeline is against selfcest. Case closed. Logic thrown out of the window notwithstanding.

But then Loki really tells him the truth but Mobius doesn’t like it so let’s torture Loki some more. Because Mobius is so intelligent he can tell when Loki is lying, the series has already established it, so this has to be Loki lying right? And Mobius let him be tortured despite claiming he’s Loki’s friend and having tons of doubts about what C-20 saw and how Rendlayer is acting oddly because that’s what friends do. It has Thanos’ seal of approbation after all.

Whatever, let’s go on.

So we move to Hunter B-15 doing calming breaths as she’s clearly very upset. It’s worth to remember she was depicted as hating Variants the most. Her gaze falls on a poster recommending to capture all the variants and make sure to delete them all.

The fun part is that the guy on that poster remind me of the Mobius of the comics… but maybe it’s just me.

After this B-15 turns on her weapon and orders the ones guarding the entrance of the theatre in which they had put Sylvie to let her in. They don’t even discuss or hesitate, they just let her in.

Sylvie acts in the confident manner Loki used to act in “The Avengers” when he was prisoner of the Avengers.

Sylvie: Hello... Oh, I don't know. Your name's a number. Can't read it from here.

As she says so she moves closer. B-15 though put away her weapon, opens a timedoor and tells her to come with her.

Why they go away through a timedoor? Couldn’t they talk there? Isn’t it more risky as not only Sylvie could use this to escape but they might risk altering the oh so sacred timeline? Are there hearing devices in the theatre? Does the guards outside eavesdrop?

Whatever, we’re back to Renslayer’s office.

Mobius is thoughtful, Renslayer is happy because the case is closed. So Mobius really presented as excuse for the branch the fact that Loki and Sylvie supposedly fell in love? Because if Loki cares for someone is romantic love? He cried for Frigga too, for Asgard? Why it has to be romantic love for Mobius? Because Sylvie is a woman and Loki is a man and God forbid a man could care for a female in any other way that’s not romantic? Because the script said so? Couldn’t he care for her like a twin sister? She even acts like Thor here and there but she’s smarter than him. Would the timeline branch anyway?

Whatever, I guess I’m not meant to make questions but if the case is closed why he had to stuck Loki again in that timeloop to be beaten and humiliated? It’s not like Renslayer is checking him and even if she were or the Time-Keepers were which would have been the harm in letting him sit there like Sylvie is?

For which reason Mobius is trying so hard to break him? Revenge? He didn’t seem such a jerk in Ep 1 & 2 and now… why has he changed?

Anyway Mobius is beyond obvious acting weird despite Renslayer being all happy for the case closed and asking him

Renslayer: If you could go anywhere, anytime, where would it be?

She clearly mean for personal pleasure, maybe she plans on letting him have a holiday anywere he’d like but Mobius doesn’t seem to get it.

Mobius: I can go anywhere, anytime.

His reply hints he reduces everything to work, to going anywhere, anytime for work and while Renslayer tries to get him to open up he asks again why she didn’t let him interrogate ‘Sylvie’, which is a mistake as when in Renslayer’s office he usually calls the Variants just Variants, not by name, unless it’s necessary. Besides Renslayer doesn’t know the Variant’s chosen alias so she’s twice as confused.

Mobius has to explain ‘Sylvie’ is how Loki calls the Variant and Renslayer tells him it wasn’t so as to make sure it wouldn’t escape, and when Mobius says she wouldn’t have escaped (because Mobius is so good at keeping the Loki Variants close) she reminds him the other Variant did escape while in his care (yeah, twice, Mobius you aren’t as good as you like to present yourself).

Renslayer tries again to get him to answer her on where he’s like to go and he replies

Mobius: I like being here now, with you, doing the work.

Which is solely because he’s deadly scared of admitting he’d like to be some other place. He doesn’t like his life there, he loves jet ski and would like to ride one but he’s just scared to do so and finds comfort in the monotony of his own life. Which is beyond depressing and is part of the lies he tells himself.

Renslayer gives up and informs him she’d heard the Time-Keepers and they will personally oversee the Variant's pruning and they want Mobius to be there as well. I take that with ‘the Variant’ they mean Sylvie but later we’ll see Loki too is carried in front of them.

Why they want Mobius too though? To make sure he’ll stay put? To prune him as well because he’s being as suspicious as possible?

Mobius seems pleased he’ll finally met the Time-Keeper then oh so discreetly goes back on questioning Renslayer. On C-20 this time. Which obviously makes Renslayer even more suspicious.

She tries to deflect his question by pointing out how everything went well, the Time-Keepers are happy and yadda, yadda and Mobius insists again on wanting to know about C-20… because this was totally smooth and not suspicious at all.

And this is bad because this guy is the one who’s supposed to be at Loki’s same level if not above. If he’s so incompetent it reflects poorly on Loki too.

Yeah, he was very upset by C-20’s death so maybe this is messing him up but still he couldn’t be more obvious, insisting over and over when Renslayer clearly doesn’t want to tell him more. What does he expect, her to admit she lied? She’s not a Variant he can torture, or keep there until he gets the answers he wants, she’s basically his boss.

Anyway Renslayer, probably due to her fondness for him, confirms her previous version and tells him if he’s not allowed to meet the Variant that’s because she’s protecting him from facing the horrible fate C-20 went through.

I think this requires a bit of appropriate singing from another movie:

Shhh.. Trust me Mobius, Ravonna, knows best. Ravonna knows best. Listen to your Ravonna. She's a scary Variant that Sylvie. Ravonna knows best. One way or another. Something will go wrong, I swear. Stabbing, kicking, poison, punching. Stealing, and humiliating, the lies. Also large sword, a woman with pointy teeth. And stop, no more, you'll just upset me. Ravonna's right here. Ravonna will protect you. Darling here's what I suggest. Skip the drama, stay with Ravonna. RAVONNA!! Knows best! Ravonna knows best. Take it from your Ravonna. On your own, you won't survive. Sloppy underdressed, immature, clumsy, Please, they'll eat you up, alive. Gullible, nave, positively grubby. Ditzy and a bit, well, hmm vague. Plus I believe, getting kinda chubby. I'm just saying, 'Cause I wuv you. Ravonna understands, Ravonnas here to help you. All I have is one request. (singing ends) Mobius? Don't ever ask to see the Variant, again.

Evidently Mother Gothel… pardon Renslayer’s performance doesn’t fully win Mobius over.

Mobius: Yeah, if it's the truth.

Intelligence? Or, like with Loki he has already decided with answer he needs to get?

Renslayer now tries to distract him blaming everything on the time Mobius spent with the Lokis, implying that because they lie he came up to think she would lie too and then she gives him an inspirational speech about how their work matter and how they’re special friends.

Renslayer: When we're out there fighting for the fate of the Sacred Timeline we're also fighting for this. For us. Friends against time, allies to the end. You've seen all of existence, same as me. So, you know, friendship like ours is uncommon. And worth fighting for. Same as the Sacred Timeline.

So Mobius has friends.

Or at least he has Renslayer.

Does he plan to close her too in a timeloop for lying to him? Or, since she was used to always humour him (this is apparently the first time she told him ‘no’) he expected Loki too had to play on his tune, especially considering Loki isn’t his boss, and got upset when Loki showed a mind of his own?

Or is Renslayer who taught him who disappoint gets closed in a timeloop where he’s punched and insulted by doing this to Mobius?

I’d like to know.

Whatever, this speech persuaded Mobius so much he distract Renslayer suggesting to find a place for her new trophy only to swap the Tempads behind her back… and then oh so discreetly try to run away because this wouldn’t be suspicious at all.

Smooth, Mobius, smooth.

 Okay, so B-15 took Sylvie to the Roxxcart apocalypse since now she knows the TVA can’t detect changes if they happen in an apocalypse.

Sylvie thinks she wants a fight but B-15 is instead tormented by what Sylvie had shown her when she possessed her.

Now, everyone, let’s refresh our memory on how enchantment works.

Sylvie: It depends on the mind. Most are easy and I can overtake them instantly. Others, the stronger ones, it gets tricky. I'm in control, but they're there, too. In order to preserve the connection, I have to create a fantasy from their memories.

B-15 was overtaken very easily with Sylvie fully in control of her as she moved her like a puppet and had her say what she wanted. So why in the world she needed to show her a memory? We saw how things worked with C-20, she used the memory to answer in kind to her questions believing she was with a friend. What she did to B-15 to make her move and say what she wanted, did she had a memory in which she was an actress and Sylvie read her the script?

I’ve no words, they gave the rule 1 episode ago, don’t they remember them anymore?

So anyway Sylvie tells B-15 the truth and B-15, the one who believes talking to Variant is a mistake and they should all be pruned as they’re cosmic mistakes immediately swallows what the Variant who’d been killing TVA agents non-stop tells her and volunteers to let herself be possessed again.

Because this wouldn’t be dangerous at all, I mean, surely Sylvie who has a grudge against the TVA and has been killing TVA agents won’t lie to her and wouldn’t just possess her to steal her tempad and escape leaving her to die in the apocalypse.

Yeah, surely because Sylvie, instead than possessing her, does as she request and shows her those memories and B-15 can be sure they’re true and not a trick because… she too read the script and know they’re true.

So B-15, who had been pruning, abusing and belittling other Variants like her, once knowing she’s a Variant says:

Hunter B-15: I looked happy.

With tears in her voice. Okay, so she also sides with Sylvie but… don’t take me wrong, different people react differently but let’s look for a moment B-15’s reaction at discovering she’s a Variant, a cosmic mistake.

B-15 was the one who hated Variants the most… but knowing she was one all she cares was she looked happy. What’s her problem she was miserable at the TVA? I didn’t notice. She just accepted she’s a Variant so easily… everyone else, even people who didn’t hate Variants will have more problems with it. C-20 was in shock, Mobius goes in denial, Loki basically went mad with grief when he discovered he was a Frost Giant.

B-15 mourns that she was happy and then asks for instructions to Sylvie.

I wonder if she’s the sort of person who can’t think on her own. She did what the TVA propaganda said because she never stopped to think about it, she got an easy to posses mind, and now she’s willing to do what Sylvie says because she can’t think at it on her own.

To be honest… although I feel what the TVA did to the people working there was pretty disgusting, I find hard on an intellectual level to empathize with someone who had been enjoying pruning and abusing Variants and now that she has discovered she’s one she doesn’t regret what she did to the others like her but mourn her old happiness.

Anyway I compliment Wunmi Mosaku for this scene. I’m not persuaded by how they decided she would just swallow she’s a Variant so easily, but still she played well the part.

Empathically, to see another being so grief stricken, causes me to react emotionally, even though logically I feel I shouldn’t care because they didn’t give me reasons to feel sorry for someone who was so happy to be an abuser and doesn’t regret having been one, she still managed to make me feel sorry for her character because her sadness was emotionally involving.

Really, good job, and good job to Kate Herron who played that scene well.

We switch to Mobius who hides among bookshelves to check Renslayer’s tempad.

I love the visual here, how it seems we’re pecking on Mobius by a hole but whatever, might be just me.

Renslayer’s tempad confirms C-20 died so Mobius is about to close it when he decides to check the classified report of the mission on Renslayer’s tempad. Renslayer conveniently recorded C-20 saying:

Hunter C-20: You're not hearing me. I was there. This was real, what I saw. This is a place that I've been. This wasn't the TVA. This was a memory. I lived down there. I went to that bar. I had friends. I had a whole life on the Sacred Timeline.

Interrogator: Calm down.

Hunter C-20: "Calm down"? I'm a Variant. So are you. So is every single person in this place. I'm ending this.

So yeah, Mobius, Loki didn’t lie to you, you moron, that excuse was way too dumb to be a lie.

Also C-20 never went mad as Renslayer said. Because it was Renslayer who lied to you, Mobius. Because in the real world people are awful to get what we want and maybe you should take lessons from a prince.

Just as to remark Renslayer knew this and not just because it’s on her tempad, she also appear on the screen, proof she was listening. To do what I don’t know.

We go back to Loki who’s just being beaten by Sif again because Mobius, his friend, couldn’t let him sit on a chair while he checked if Loki told him the truth. We also see how all this beating isn’t really breaking Loki.

Although he has previously apologized to Sif and accepted his fault, now he’s just annoyed he has to hear her saying such things over and over and beating him.

Because beating people doesn’t make them better.

On another side, since Loki knew what he had to tell to Sif to make her stop I wonder why he didn’t repeat it… or why he didn’t try to think of a plan. Whatever.

Mobius drops there with the dumbest question of the year:

Mobius: What are you doing?

Loki has a sarcastic reply for his idiotic question:

Loki: Passing the time.

No, really, Mobius trapped him there, what was he thinking Loki was doing, playing poker with Sif?

So now is Mobius’ time for another dumb question:

Mobius: Do you care about her?

I mean, after you called her his female self that he, a seismic narcissist, have some demented crush on, of course Loki wants to open his heart to you. Who wouldn’t?

Mobius tells him to shut up and then asks if he really think you deserve to be alone… as if this was Loki’s idea and not something Mobius’ tried to brainwash him into believing. Loki doesn’t reply which upset Mobius as when Mobius says ‘jump’ Loki should only say ‘how high?’, so Loki point out how MOBIUS TOLD HIM TO SHUT UP. Because Mobius is not making any sense and Loki needs to lampshade this.

Mobius asks him if he thinks he deserves to be alone.

Loki replies he doesn’t know which means his pretty words to Sif were all pretty words. He didn’t believe them, not fully. Thanks God.

So now the conversation starts to get surreal.

Mobius: You better figure it out quick, because the nexus event the two of you caused, whatever that connection is, can bring this whole place down.

Okay, I’m not following this, after belittling Loki’s relation with Sylvie now he’s trying to tell him he has to get together with her for the sake of bringing down the TVA? That’s why Loki has to get with Sylvie? Why he doesn’t have to believe he deserves to be alone? So now Loki’s crush is no more demented but a key to throw down the TVA?

What was sticking him with Sif then, an attempt at manipulating him into not getting in relationship with other Lokis? So Mobius knew already he and Sylvie had a crush on each other? Because it looked like he stuck Loki with Sif PRIOR to knowing it.

I’m lost but whatever, Mobius decide THEY have to do something so Loki remarks on the use of plural.

Mobius asks him to swear Sylvie didn’t implant whose memories in C-20.

It’s a dumb question as not only Loki could lie but Sylvie could have lied to him and anyway Renslayer lied so it’s not like she’s safe to trust either.

Loki vouches for Sylvie and Mobius asks:

Mobius: So, I just have to trust the word of two Lokis?

No, please, Mobius, don’t. You’ve wasted everyone’s time questioning Loki when you don’t believe him. Really, I don’t get why you wanted to use someone you don’t trust. What did you come there for if you can’t believe him?

At this Loki, who’s at first hurt, replies:

Loki: How about the word of a friend?

And okay, it has to be Stockholm Syndrome talking. That or masochism. Because friends don’t close you in a timeloop in which you get beaten and humiliated for all that time so really Loki, don’t be Mobius’ friend.

So now Mobius admits Loki was right about the TVA from the beginning, which was damn time and would have realized it sooner had he spared 5 minutes of his time on this and tells him if Loki wants to save Sylvie he has to trust him. Because Mobius never lied and manipulated him, no, really. You’re lucky Loki has Stockholm Syndrome so of course he’ll trust you.

So Mobius goes:

Mobius: Okay. You could be whoever, whatever you wanna be, even someone good. I mean, just in case anyone ever told you different.

Yeah, someone did. Should I refresh you, your memory Mobius?

Mobius: You weren't born to be king, Loki. You were born to cause pain and suffering and death. That's how it is, that's how it was, that's how it will be. All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves.

Or maybe you prefer this, which includes Sylvie too?

Mobius: You two, what a pair! Gosh! Unbelievable. Wherever you go, it's just death, destruction, the literal ends of worlds.

I mean, if this is Mobius’ way to apologize for all the things it tossed at Loki, it honestly sucks, and it gets worse because he’s merely doing because he needs him to cooperate with him because, guess what? As Loki told him from the start the TVA sucks and had been lying to him and he just didn’t want to see and has exchanged his own belief in the TVA for ‘truth’.

I mean, he’s probably being as sincere as he can be, as we know he has wondered if Loki could be good, but he has been so manipulative with Loki up until now that really, him saying Loki this when he needs Loki to trust him, only feels like him being manipulative.

Are we sure Mobius isn’t another Loki variant, one Renslayer wanted to keep as her pet?

Still I think Loki understood this was Mobius’ way to apologize as he smiles and follows him.

The moment they leave the Timeloop they find themselves face to face with Renslayer and four hunters.

And here it’s where the writer forgot Mobius too is supposed to be smart. For start because it didn’t dawn on him to remove Loki’s collar from him, to continue because when Renslayer points out she has something of hers he returns the Tempad, their only way to leave the place, to her.

I can explain this merely by going under the idea that Mobius still think that the fact they’re friends would push Renslayer to cover up for him, which clearly means he doesn’t know/understand her as much as he thinks.

Mbatha-Raw:

“She’s really worked hard to get where she is, so she’s not going to be reckless with the power that has been hard-earned for her. She, in some ways, is deeply indoctrinated with the ways of the TVA. She’s completely conditioned by their thinking and the idea of the Sacred Timeline, and the concept of free will is quite alien to her. She’s a believer. She believes in law and order, and it’s done quite well for her so far in terms of getting her to where she is. She’s not going to abandon her philosophy lightly.”

[‘Loki’: Owen Wilson Says Renslayer’s Betrayal of Mobius in Episode 4 Was ‘Pretty Shocking’

]

And in a way the situation we’re facing is really funny because Mobius believes Renslayer betrayed him… but she believes he’s the one who betrayed her. And this in a way mirrors Mobius’ relation with Loki.

To Renslayer Mobius had no right to doubt her, to question her decisions, to doubt the TVA even if the TVA is lying and she knows it. To her, Mobius is the dog who peed on the carpet.

Mobius instead somehow believed to be an equal friend, to whom she owed the truth, so he’s hurt by her acting as if he was just her disobedient dog.

She lied to him, manipulated him, demanded from him to be a loyal TVA supporter who only seek for her approbation and when he goes and doesn’t do this, she punishes him by pruning him. She doesn’t even try to beat him into submission again, she just get rid of him because her faith in her cult is more important than their ‘friendship’.

She’s a real Nazi in a way.

But the irony is that Mobius was the same with Loki and now he experiences what it means to be on the other side.

His emotional speech:

Mobius: What's the problem, Ravonna? You know where I'd go if I could go anywhere? Wherever it is I'm really from. Yeah, wherever I had a life before the TVA came along. Maybe I had a jet ski. That's what I'd like to do. Just riding around on my jet ski.

…it changes nothing in Renslayer’s mind, she’s like him, she doesn’t want the truth, the honesty, she wants submission but she’s not even going to waste time to work him into submission again. She probably plans to replace him with another Mobius Variant who’ll be more obedient this time.

Note that pruning him hurts her… but she has it done anyway, the way Mobius had oh so many branches pruned. Because that’s what they did at the TVA.

It’s a damn case of “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party”.

Mobius never thought he would be the one ending up pruned, being a Variant and ending up pruned was other people’s problem, Loki’s problem, not Mobius’, Mobius was one of the good guys, he was created by the TVA so such things wouldn’t happen to him.

Now… this is the same problem I had with B-15.

We are supposed to feel sorry for Mobius and I probably would feel very sorry for him if he hadn’t been a complete asshole to Loki up till 5 minutes ago. I get maybe they were aiming to take advantage of Owen Wilson’s fans, who loved Mobius no matter what they do or to how Loki and Renslayer still mourn him because Stockholm syndrome pushes you to do this and your pet dog is always your pet dog even if you decide to shoot him down because, to you, he’s rabid but all I felt was that Mobius had got what he deserved, what he did to Loki was done to him.

And this is a goddamn shame because I would have been a lot sadder if Mobius hadn’t act in such a way in this episode.

I mean, yes, in episode 1 & 2 he was still manipulative but he had genuine moments in which he was sympathetic and didn’t want to gratuitously hurt people.

Mobius: What are you doing? Hey! These people are scared.

Hunter D-90: They're about to die. They should be scared.

Mobius: Okay. Not of us.

I love this scene because he just stood up for those people even if he had nothing to gain, just because he didn’t want the TVA to scare them even if they were about to die and would have been rest if they weren’t to die. This wasn’t manipulation, this was Mobius being a decent being and… and this episode just tossed it away.

His whole interrogation scene with Loki, from the moment he just had him beaten and belittled to ‘soften him’ to how he ends by having him beaten and belittled again even though the case is closed is nonsense and disgusting. That’s not what a decent human being would do.

On a positive note Mbatha-Raw is very good in the scene. It’s clear a part of her is suffering, yet another remains hard. She turns her face away because she can’t watch when Mobius is pruned, even the way she squeezed her eyes shut and then relaxed them but kept them closed is a nice detail and so is the way she looks at Loki, still hurt by Mobius’ disappearance but firm, how she takes long breaths after saying they’ve to wait for her, how she first looks down, as if ashamed then up, as if to ask the moral support of her gods or whatever and then closes her eyes and mouth as if to swallow it all and go on.

She’s good.

Mind you, I loved how Owen Wilson gave his speech and I love Tom Hiddleston’s reacting to him being pruned which interestingly opposes to Mbatha-Raw’s as he keeps his eyes wide open and he tries to reach for him where she instead close them and kind of tries to ‘hold away’ from him, her body posture close where Tom Hiddleston’s is open and then he closes his eyes, calm down and straighten up before facing her in a ‘it was your doing’ way. He let himself be carried away but he turns to look at her so as to keep eye contact with her and she’s the one who has to lower her gaze.

Now, I personally wish Loki wouldn’t mourn Mobius because really, Mobius wasn’t good to him, but since he’s supposed to do it, I can only say Tom Hiddleston’s performance here is good as well.

Very fitting also the background music, especially when Loki is escorted through the corridor and now he seems to be worn out as he waves a little as he walks and then… he stops, and I’m not sure if there’s a reason or he just waves a little for the sake of him being emotionally hurt and the guards have to steady him and then force him to resume walking. In itself that pause was good to animate a walking scene who otherwise would have been pretty boring… but I don’t know if there’s a reason for it beyond that. But well, Loki had been beaten up till now so maybe he has a right at also being physically worn out.

So anyway Renslayer go to see Sylvie and as soon as she does she claims someone was there with her and wants to know who. Well, I guess the fact Sylvie is soaked was a dead giveaway so really, they should have found her a hairdryer before sending her back there. Besides why not to get inside the Roxxcart where it’s dry, instead than outside?

I get that outside, under the rain, the scene came a lot more dramatic and so technically better but logic is king of important as well. Giving away that Sylvie was taken outside to chat, as Sylvie has no bruises on herself, is dumb. I mean, had B-15 given her a black eye they could have at least pass if for B-15 taking her revenge on her but like this… it’s so dumb…

In fact as soon as Renslayer discovers it was B-15, she decides she too had been compromised and people has to search for her. Not that it matters as they won’t find her. After all she has a Tempad and has learnt she can hide in apocalypses.

Sylvie smiles at her smugly because she is enjoying seeing Renslayer under pressure and how could she not? It was Renslayer who captured her.

Sylvie is then taken away but this time only by two guards because they’ve decided giving her more when the last time she managed to punch one is useless. No, actually Renslayer might have figured if Sylvie has remained in her ‘theater’ (yeah, she and Loki were put into rooms called ‘time theaters’) instead than escaping with B-15, she’s willing to let herself be dragged to meet the Time-Keepers.

Or not, the plot had the characters act in dumb or irrational ways way too often so I don’t know.

Sylvie is anyway taken in front of the same door in front of which Loki is waiting. I love how she whispers to him an ‘You okay?’ even if I would prefer it wasn’t because she’s also crushing on him but because she was touched by how he gave her appreciation and validation. Loki nods once, deeply, but doesn’t verbally replies which is kind of worrisome per se.

Renslayer says she’ll handle things from there and open the door of the golden elevator with her ‘electronic key’ meaning when Sylvie got there the first time, as she was without key, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Loki and Sylvie follow Renslayer while the guards remain behind.

Sylvie asks Renslayer is she remembers her and when she answers affirmatively, always calling her Variant, she asks her which was her Nexus event. To Renslayer who asks her what does it matter she replies:

Sylvie: It was enough to take my life from me, lead to all of this. Must have been important. So, what was it?

I feel bad for Sylvie because maybe she doesn’t remember Miss Minute’s video (by the way did Miss Minute had a reason to exist or we’re meant to forget about her?) in which they said to create a Nexus even it’s enough to be late for work. Maybe Sylvie wasn’t meant to be there to play but should have been in the Vault with Thor and Odin learning about how glorious was Asgard for having beaten the Frost Giants. Maybe she was just meant to play ball instead than dolls but in short, what destroyed her life didn’t have to be important because that’s the kind of jerks the TVA is.

They punish someone for doing something completely innocent without having any idea it was the ‘wrong’ thing, ‘wrong’ being a matter of perspective because I bet they pruned all the Lokis who didn’t sent the Frost Giants in the Vault or didn’t try to kill Thor or didn’t attack New York because THOSE WERE THINGS MEANT TO HAPPEN.

The TVA is not about morality, I wonder if it’s about the entertainment of the Time-Keepers.

Anyway Renslayer smirks and then tells Sylvie she doesn’t remember. Honestly I doubt she doesn’t remember and even if she did, she could have made up something but she just prefers to hurt Sylvie by implying her Nexus event was so unimportant it wasn’t even worth remembering.

The door open and they are in a bluish, foggy place. There are two guards giving them their back and two instead facing them and, in front of them there are the three space lizards known as the Time-Keepers. Hum… the impression I get is that the place is foggy because it’s freezing cold since there are white bits that seem ice but… I’m not sure as nobody seems to be feeling cold.

Renslayer announces to the Time-Keeper she had brought them the Variants.

Now I was thinking it was poor effects, as the space lizard talk in a mechanical way and are so still they seem robot and even when their face move as they speak they seem mechanical… but no, it’ll turn out they’re robot. Whatever, I’m running ahead.

The lizards ask them what they have to say before being killed.

Okay, so Loki says and I quote:

Loki: Is that the only reason you brought us here? To kill us? I've lost track of the number of times I've been killed, so go ahead. Do your worst.

And I am WAIT, YOU’VE BEEN KILLED BEFORE? EVEN IF YOU’RE STILL UNDER THE WRONG BELIEF THOR TOSSED YOU INTO AN ABYSS, WHICH HE DIDN’T AS HE WANTED TO SAVE YOU AND YOU LET GO DUE TO ODIN’S HIGHLY MOTIVATIONAL WORDS (really, Odin should write demotivational posters quote along with Mobius) THAT COUNTS ONLY AS ONE. YOU DIDN’T DIE IN “THE AVENGERS”. CAN WE HOPE THIS MEANS WE’LL BE REVEALED WHAT HAPPENED IN THE YEAR IN BETWEEN “THOR” AND “THE AVENGERS”? OR IT’S JUST TO BE MEANT RANDOM BABBLING? PLEASE, LET ME KNOW!

Anyway okay, back to normal.

The Time-keepers tell them they’re no threat to them and Sylvie counters she believes they’re scared. She tries to get closer but Renslayer uses the Time Twister so she can’t.

The Time-Keepers complains they’re just a ‘cosmic disappointment’ why I’ve no idea as it’s not like they created the Variants so the Variants aren’t supposed to please them, and tell to delete them.

Sylvie tries to protest she’s not done with them but Renslayer tries to use the Time Twister and only manages to stop her because B-15 all of sudden comes to rescue because the TVA did a horrible job at tracking her apparently. B-15 disables Loki and Sylvie’s collars, then she mockingly repeats the TVA motto ‘For all time. Always’, before handing Sylvie her sword that originally had been put as a trophy in Renslayer’s office.

The two guards behind immediately knock down B-15 who didn’t even bother bring her weapon or, if she had, didn’t pull it out. Renslayer orders to the four guards to protect the Time-Keepers, so now it’s Renslayers and 4 guards against Loki and Sylvie. Renslayer decides not to fight, to be honest because the guards evidently had been given a better version of the Supersoldier serum and can comfortably stand against Loki and Sylvie with no problems whatsoever.

Really, if I don’t get an explanation on why human Variants are all of sudden strong enough they can stand against Loki I’ll think those guys have never seen “The Avengers”.

In fact the 2 guards fighting Loki are about to overpower Loki who asks for Sylvie’s help as she’s holding against her 2 guards just fine and she hands him her sword. Meanwhile, despite being weaponless, Sylvie… kicks to unconsciousness? Is that what she did? a guard, steals his weapon and instead than prune his companion with it, she stabs her. Because, you know, this is cooler and rule of cool always win.

All while Renslayer watches because whoever rules at the TVA has never read the ‘Evil Overlord list’ rule 75 “I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.”

Actually there’s a huge list of rules the TVA ignored but this is the most important at the moment.

Anyway while the camera ignores Loki fighting with two guards in the background, we’re supposed to focus on Sylvie and Renslayer. Sylvie gives Renslayer a sporting chance letting her pick up a weapon. No idea why, really. Who cares about sport when you’re there to kill the Time-Keepers?

Besides, who cares about Loki? This is Sylvie’s moment to look cool.

Anyway Renslayer tells her this time she’ll finish the job, they fight, she ends on the ground, manages to turn their positions and punches Renslayer into unconsciousness, just in time for Loki to finish killing his guards. Why she didn’t kill Renslayer? Because the plot needs Renslayer to make troubles afterward so Sylvie, despite having a weapon and having used it to kill a guard, only punches Renslayer, which she should hate as much as the Time-Keepers, into unconsciousness.

Let me facepalm, please.

Now the Time-Keepers go:

Time-Keeper 1: You're a child of the Time-Keepers too, Sylvie. We can talk.

And okay, I’m not following this. Are they implying they created the Variants? Are they trying to pass themselves for Gods? Or it’s just Sylvie they created?

Sylvie tosses against one of the sword Loki gave her back, decapitating him. The Time-Keepers starts laughing as it turns out the Time-Keeper she decapitate was a robot.

I get “Wizard of Oz” feelings and I swear if it turn out this was created by an evil Loki Variant I’m gonna scream.

The Time-Keepers somehow deactivates, not sure if someone did it, or it was Sylvie pointing a weapon at them.

Sylvie picks up the head and, seeing it’s a robotic one and never having heard of Ultron and Vision, decides since they had robotic head they’re fake, mindless androids. Which yes, they have to be because we’re missing 2 episodes and they were beaten too easily but she’s not supposed to be aware of the episode count.

Whatever, Loki decides, I think, this would probably be a good moment to declare his love only they forget Renslayer is alive and she prunes Loki in front of Sylvie. At this point Renslayer forgets her warrior skills and Sylvie easily rips her weapon from her but, instead than pruning Renslayer as she asks, she informs her she’ll tell her everything. Meaning she will use her powers to force Renslayer to be cooperative.

The episode apparently ends, with the ending credit replaced by a love song, “If you love me” by Brenda Lee. Just in case you didn’t get Loki was about to make a Love confession.

When the ending… well, ends though, we see Loki opening his eyes and wondering if he’s dead and in Hel.

He’s told:

“Not yet. But you will be unless you come with us.”

As he looks up he sees four version of himself, a child, an old man, a POC and an alligator.

I can’t help but point out the costume the old Loki is wearing, despite being based on the one old Loki wears in the comics somehow feels like a poor cosplay.

Behind them the ruins of a city which, I bet, is New York. I wonder if they’re in an apocalypse created by the attack of New York succeeding.

And so the episode ends.

Now… this episode is, plotwise, better than the previous, as the previous was basically an excuse to get Loki and Sylvie to spend time together so as for them to fall in love. Oh and the revelation everyone in the TVA is a variant but really, Sylvie could have told Loki that in Ep 2 and we wouldn’t have missed anything big.

This one episode as, instead, a plot… but there are some things that just don’t add up and felt tossed there at random. I mostly mourn how the ruined Mobius’ character because this episode seriously damaged the sympathy I had for him, with that useless decision to have Loki belittled and beaten for… fundamentally nothing since he doesn’t believe him. Then he further insults him for falling for Sylvie before he decides to switch sides and no, Loki shouldn’t believe all the cruel things he told him because… hum… they weren’t true because Mobius is his friend. Not like how he said he was before, this time he’s really his friend the fact he needs him doesn’t matter, he’s not like Loki who uses people he’s one of the good guys of the TVA, you know, the ones who belittle and prune Variants unaware they’re Variants too.

Okay, I’m still very salty on this bit but I just didn’t enjoy the useless abuse of Loki.

It wasn’t funny, it had no purpose and it also ruined Mobius as a character.

It even impacted negatively on Sif which was fundamentally used to beat Loki up over and over when she already had, just for Mobius’ purposes, whatever they were.

Honestly I’m sick and tired of Marvel thinking that abusing of someone is a funny joke, especially if the one doing the beating is a girl.

The only thing it serves was to remark Sif had no love for Loki, which everyone seeing the movie could have guessed already.

Another thing I didn’t quite enjoy was how this is turning into Sylvie’s story. Is the purpose of this series pass the Loki baton to Sylvie?

We have the guards of the TVA being as strong as supersoldiers so far without explanation whatsoever, with Loki, who, in Asgard was trained to fight, in “Thor” could hold his ground against Frost Giants and even fight with Thor and who, in “The Avengers” gets punched by Cap and merely turns his face before he hits Cap with the sceptre and sent him flying and this not with magical powers but merely with his strength. And he does so TWICE, completely able to avoid Caps’ blows. Caps kicks him in the face and Loki remains standing and tosses him on the ground again.

Loki lets himself be arrested because:

a) Iron Man joins and he manages to send him on the ground by shooting at him and

b) because this was part of the plan.

Coulson shot him with a super powerful weapon and still Loki got up and left the Helicarrier on his feet. When Thor tried to hit Loki with his hammer, Loki could stop the blow by having it hit his sceptre without him even wavering on his feet.

And then okay, this Loki hadn’t lived through them but in “Thor: The Dark World” he could hold his ground against elves while in “Thor: Ragnarok” against Hela’s undead Asgardian soldiers.

And now we’ve those Variants of humans who can give him problems? Sylvie even gives him his weapon!

And all this while Sylvie, who had to learn to fight on her own, can hold her ground weaponless against two of them and save time to fight and beat Renslayer too?

Whatever, let’s hope we’ll get an explanation.

And then there’s the romance between Sylvie and Loki, which is useless or the whole idea Sylvie is Loki and all those other guys plus the alligator are Loki and I’d like to know what decides they’re Loki variants since they’re clearly genetically different from him… never mention one of them managed to get old when Loki supposedly died ‘young’ in the sacred timeline so what? The truth is he didn’t die in “Avengers: Infinity War” and grew old?

And why genetically different Variants of Loki were allowed to exist? How come this didn’t cause a Nexus event?

But whatever, let’s put aside my complains about the plot holes or the messed characterization and the nonsense dialogues and talk of the good stuff, like the acting or the director’s job or the music which really fit some scenes. There’s some really good stuff here.

And well, let’s mention the plot is not all to waste.

There were some good ideas in this.

To have the TVA agents discover they’re also Variants like the people they discriminated and pruned could have been great, I mean, one of the best scenes of “Thor” is Loki discovering he’s a Frost Giant so this could have been SO VERY COOL.

The Lokis forming a bond also had potential as idea on paper. If they were the same this could have pushed them to learn to appreciate themselves, if they were different, this could have pushed them to appreciate others. They didn’t need the romantic story and the idea they’re the same only they’re completely different so the fact they’re the same seems an idiocy.

Really, from a series who give space to a lot of female characters, who don’t just talk among them about men but about plot related issues, I don’t see why we need to pair together the two Lokis.

Mobius being Loki’s friend could have been great if he had acted as such and not as an abusive pet owner whose dog has peed on the carpet. But whatever, it could have been great to have Renslayer do the same to him, if this were to be acknowledged, if it were to be acknowledged how they both are poor friends.

Also Mobius’ death could have been a lot more moving if they hadn’t ruined him in this very same episode.

Seeing Sif again and learning of Loki’s past mischief? Could have been great if it wasn’t used for what turned into a torture scene or ‘police brutality’ who however wasn’t meant to be seen as bad as it was because it’s a woman who beat Loki.

Even the police brutality or the fascist agency could have been great plot point if it wasn’t they’re barely brushed over.

Loki reflecting on his behaviour could have been good if it wasn’t inserted into what was basically a torture scene.

Little Sylvie’s backstory could have been awesome if it had been realist, if this little escaping child had had knowledge of a Tempad and had had someone to help her.

I mean, there are some genuine good things in this plot… but then they got ruined by poor planning or poor explanation or abrupt character OOC.

It’s a pity.

We’ll see if episode 5 will redeem himself.

[nillegible]

Stay

(JGY Time Travel Universe, part 2. Read Part 1 here!)

The Lan doctor who checks Meng Yao over is grave, and says that Meng Yao has been under strong spiritual and emotional distress of unknown origin.

You don’t say, he wants to laugh. Perhaps some of his dark amusement shows, because the healer scowls, and warns that if his cultivation had been stronger, the healer would have thought he had had a qi deviated. There was residual qi within him still – not Meng Yao’s own – but the doctor was wary of speculating about its origin. “Whether it was a curse or benign, I could not say, Sect Leader. But it was rapidly dissipating,” he says, to the anxious Lan Xichen.

“Could Wen Ruohan’s death have been why it fell apart?” Lan Xichen asks, but the doctor can only speculate. He took his leave then; there were too many casualties for a doctor to linger where his skills weren’t desperately needed, and Meng Yao wasn’t dying.

Anymore, that is.

*

Meng Yao was Lan Xichen’s spy, so he stays with the Lan encampment while the war gets wound up. The Lan doctor from before checks in on him every other day, the rest of his time is spent helping with the dead.

There are so many, and Meng Yao is one of the few who can actually identify the Wen they have killed, and they must hurry to quiet the spirits of the dead, so they’re on a punishing schedule. No one particularly wishes to watch over the pyres of the Wen, the disciples from multiple sects assigned to it only doing just enough to keep the spirits from lingering, dissatisfied.

Which is more than the Wens at the burial mounds got, just a few years later.

The arrival of the cowardly sect leaders, the ones who had sent soldiers but never stepped on the battlefield themselves, but who had turned up now for their share of the territory, for the loot, had meant most of the Sect Leaders were shut away in meetings, and Lan Xichen was with them. Their paths rarely crossed, aside from early mornings, when Meng Yao helped with the breakfast service, and Lan Xichen would smile tiredly at him from across their meals.

His path never crossed with the newly arrived Sect Leader Jin.

Last time, Meng Yao had waited desperately for a chance to meet him, for his attention. Fresh off of killing Wen Ruohan, with so few trusted contacts on this side of the war, he’d still managed to stir a whisper about how the Jin Sect had no war heroes, not the way the Lan, the Nie, and the Jiang did. Anything within his power to nudge his father into legitimizing him.

Meng Yao gets a letter from Jin Guangshan late one night, two weeks now, since Wen Ruohan had been beheaded, just two days since the last of the pyres finished burning. The letter asked him to meet Jin Guangshan three days hence. Meng Yao remembers this meeting, remembers being terrified, hoping against hope that he’d been enough, that he had proved his right to be acknowledged. He has to consciously reign in his first instinct to toss the letter in the small, borrowed, coal brazier. To set it on the table, and smooth out where it had been crushed by fingers careless in anger.

Meng Yao wants nothing to do with his father, but he is not suicidal. And angering or insulting Jin Guangshan would be indescribably stupid.

Just as repeating his own mistakes and putting himself in his father’s power again, would be indescribably stupid.

Meng Yao is not a stupid man.

The next morning, bright and early, he approaches the encampment of Laoling Qin, and asks if he could possibly be allowed to meet with their sect leader.

Three hours later, Qin Cangye, still grateful to Meng Yao for saving his daughter, has invited him to join his sect as an outer sect disciple.

Meng Yao says yes.

Three days later, Meng Yao wears borrowed sunset-blue Qin sect robes to the meeting with his father.

He sees the way Jin Guangshan’s eyes narrow the moment he sees them, and still bows, perfectly polite, until his father tells him to rise. He keeps his eyes politely lowered, meeting neither Jin Guangshan’s nor Jin Zixuan’s eyes, as he listens to Jin Guangshan’s curt explanation for why he was invited.

Gratitude from the Jin sect, for helping to kill Wen Ruohan, and a place in the sect, as an inner disciple.

And a name. “You do not yet have your courtesy name, Meng Yao. I believe it is time that you receive one.”

Jin Guangyao falls to his knees, and bows again, inhaling deeply before he speaks. “Sect Leader Jin,” he says, not father, this man is nothing to him. “This lowly one is undeserving of your condescension. Please do not be angered at the lack of humility, for he must turn you down…”

Meng Yao plays his part well, he is appropriately regretful that he must turn down his father’s offer to join Jin Sect as his acknowledged son. “Having already been turned away not once but twice, I taught myself not to hope. I dare not insult Sect Leader Qin’s generosity by immediately turning to the greater Sect when given an opportunity, and truly, would not my loyalty to any sect be suspect if I do? For I have given Sect Leader Qin my word, and would not break it for my own convenience.”

A small, small dig, one that he only attempted because Jin Zixuan is at his side. Because his father is a snake, Jin Guangshan’s dismissal is equally gracious, words honeyed. In his father’s eyes he sees the truth; Meng Yao will be punished for this insult. He is not forgiven. He should watch his back.

Meng Yao is well practiced at living with those who would wish to kill him; and he watches his back out of reflex, now. He is not afraid.

Meng Yao returns to the Qin contingent, where he’s already starting to remake friends, cultivators he knew from years of visits to Qin Su’s sect with whom he is establishing friendlier ties. He has good will here; for killing Wen Ruohan and ending the war, and for saving their young mistress, who is well liked by all of them.

How long will this reputation last him, without Jin Guangshan carefully fanning it to enhance Jin sect’s own glory? How long will he be remembered, without the Sect Leaders of Lan and Nie bolstering their memories?

For once, Meng Yao does not care. He listens to their stories as he shares their meal, and finds it easy to smile when appropriate. It feels like he can breathe. There is little ill will, here.

*

“Meng Yao, I heard that you had joined Laoling Qin Sect,” says Lan Xichen two days later.

Meng Yao no longer freezes when he sees Lan Xichen, but this is an uncharacteristically dull observation, so he stares; Meng Yao had returned his Lan Sect supplies, and moved here a few days before. He is still wearing borrowed Qin robes, and has begun to find his place within this smaller sect already, and only now has Lan Xichen found him. “I have, Sect Leader Lan,” he says, bowing. “Your generosity was much appreciated, but I have always disliked being given things without working for them.” I don’t need your charity, he means.

Lan Xichen looks pained. “I only thought you deserved to join Jin Sect, for you once told me… if I had known you were willing.” He cuts himself off. “Forgive me, I am sure you had reasons for joining Laoling Qin, but I would have… I would have liked to have had a chance to invite you into Gusu Lan sect before you made your decision.”

“Then I apologize for my haste, and for the secrecy, Sect Leader Lan,” says Meng Yao. “I did not wish to trouble you at so busy a time. I do regret that I didn’t inform you of my decision directly.”

But not that he hadn’t joined Lan Xichen’s sect. Meng Yao loves him still, but it is too soon. Everything hurts too much, and this Lan Xichen is not his Er-ge. Is not the one who sought his companionship through the years, the one who played the guqin for him, and held him after Rusong’s death. He is not the Er-ge who Meng Yao had carelessly broken, who had stared at him so betrayed, and yet still been ready to die at his side, for no greater crime than trusting him.

Perhaps Lan Xichen recognizes this, because he asks, “Meng Yao, are we not friends? I had wished to propose a sworn brotherhood between you, Mingjue-xiong, and myself, but I begin to think you would find it unwelcome.”

‘Do not call me that,’ he’d said, not three full weeks ago.

Meng Yao cannot go through that again.

“Thank you, Sect Leader Lan. This one is flattered to be thought of so highly. But he cannot accept.” Lan Xichen looks so hurt that Meng Yao explains, “Sect Leader Nie would not be happy with such an arrangement, between us. It might be years before our relationship can be repaired, to ask him such a thing now… I am sorry, Sect Leader Lan. Maybe. Maybe someday?”

“Do not be sorry,” says Lan Xichen quietly. “Meng Yao has the right, and the skills to work for whomever he chooses, and anyone could only be grateful to have him.” The sincerity floors him, all over again. Why. Why would you make it so easy for me?

Lan Xichen is, as he ever was, intoxicating in his regard.

In your presence, I could delude myself that I was a good man.  

Meng Yao will not fall into that trap a second time.

“Thank you,” says Meng Yao simply. “If Sect Leader Lan ever has need, I would be honoured to help.”

No longer would that be the wealth of the Jin sect to aid the Lan’s reconstruction efforts, nor would it be Meng Yao helping Lan Xichen mediate between an irate Jin Guangshan and a furious Nie Mingjue. Actually, he’s not sure how he can help Lan Xichen anymore, given how he’s removed himself from his previous life, and he contemplates that while they take tea together, the motions so familiar to him that it feels cruel that he’s voluntarily depriving himself of years of similar moments.

This might even be the last time.

“Do not be a stranger,” says Lan Xichen before he leaves. “You are always welcome to visit the Cloud Recesses. You opened your home to me when I had nothing, and you put yourself in so much danger just so we might win this war. There is nothing in my power I would not do for you.”

One day, that would be an absolute untruth. One day, Lan Xichen would look at him and say ‘I do not think I should trust you.’ And he would be right.

If Meng Yao is lucky, he would not become the man that Lan Xichen would look at in such a way again.

“Sect Leader Lan is so very gracious. I will not forget,” says Meng Yao, before taking his leave. He’s still off-centre from the meeting. I have never been lucky, Meng Yao thinks to himself as he returns to the duties Qin Cangye had assigned him. It is for the best that he keeps his distance form Sect Leader Lan.

[Read part 3 here!]

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - Evolution of Pines

Ford attempts to give Mabel a science lesson.

~~~~~~~~~~

Takes place between Stanchurian Candidate and The Last Mabelcorn…

“BOB! BOB! BOB! BOB!”

Ford paused pouring his coffee when he heard the odd chanting coming from the living room, but then he heard the sounds of the television and he smiled to himself, guessing the kids were watching some program they enjoyed. Deciding he could take a tiny break from going over his old journals, he wandered towards the living room with the hot mug of coffee in his six-fingered hand.

He smiled at the doorway, seeing a young pair of twins share the big armchair, Dipper grinning and shaking his fists excitedly while Mabel knitted a new sweater with her eyes glued to the TV.

“Bob Dry the Science Guy!” The theme song and the kids finished, and the episode began.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you kids are watching Bob Dry the Science Guy?” Ford asked, leaning against the armchair, greeted by an energetic man in a lab-coat.

“Yup!” Dipper answered. “It’s really good! He teaches about magnets, volcanoes, global warming, bugs, all sorts of things! You knew you were gonna have a good day at school when the teachers pulled out the old TV and the theme song plays.”

“He’s so funny!” Mabel laughed as Bob printed a picture of his parents to explain something and it exploded. “My favorite episode is when he talked about the desert and got chased by a camel.”

Ford watched the TV for a second as Bob Dry explained to his audience that when things copy, they slightly change, explaining evolution. He could definitely understand why both children would love the show, but his interest peaked and his smile crashed down when he heard his niece say, “Eh, I don’t buy it.”

Ford turned his head sharply, like a hunting owl, and managed to make a smile through his shock. “Wh-What do you mean, you don’t buy it?”

Dipper snorted and smirked, “Yeah, Mabel doesn’t believe in evolution.”

Ford swore he could hear glass break. “You… You don’t believe in evolution?”

“Not really.” Mabel said with a shrug, still watching the TV just as invested as she was a few moments ago. “I mean… monkeys, Darwin, it’s a nice story, I just think it’s a little too easy.”

“T-T-T-T-Too easy.” Ford repeated, swallowing hard and standing up. “Too easy? Wait, so, the process of every living thing evolving over millions of years from single-celled organisms is too easy?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Once the shock wore off, Ford was actually quite amused. To him, this was simply a child misunderstanding the knowledge offered to them, like teaching a child that 2+2=4, not 22. He chuckled warming and moved around the chair to be next to Mabel and got on one knee to be closer to her level. “Mabel, evolution is scientific fact. It’s just as real as the air we breathe or gravity or…”

“Oh, don’t even get me started on gravity.”

Ford stared at Mabel, confused and startled and maybe even a bit amazed. “Y-You don’t believe in gravity?”

“Oh, I believe in it, I just… I dunno,” Mabel paused her knitting to better explain her idea to her stranger of an uncle. “Lately I’ve just been feeling pushed down instead of pulled down.”

Ford snorted a laugh, caught it in his throat, coughed into his fist, and took in and out a deep breath. “You know, Mabel, there are times I wish my mind was like what yours is right now, so clean, a blank slate, an empty sponge so ready to soak up new knowledge. It’s truly a wonderful time.”

Mabel gave a timid smile back as he walked away, but something about what he said rubbed the young girl a wrong way. Needless to say, she was too distracted about what he had said to pay much attention to Bob Dry.

~~~~~~~~~~

Later that night, Mabel petted Waddles in bed robotically, still thinking. Dipper came into the room in his shorts and t-shirt and turned off the main light, leaving only his lantern on, and she decided to ask her brother something.

“Hey Dipper, do you think I’m stupid?”

Dipper turned and stared at her. “What? No, of course not. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met! No one can think of as many colors and games and escape plans as you can.” He stood next to her bed and asked, “Why? What’s up?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” Mabel bit her lip, hesitant to tell Dipper how she felt. But this was the first time since Ford came home that Dipper had paid her this much attention, so maybe she should seize her opportunity why she could. “When Great-Uncle Ford said those things it made me feel… stupid.”

Dipper had to take a second to remember what Mabel was talking about. “Oh.” And he sat next to her, legs dangling off the edge, to listen to her.

“Y’know, clean, blank slate, empty… I think… I think he thinks I’m dumb, and if the Author of the Journals thinks that…”

“Hey, hey,” Dipper put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “I’m sure he doesn’t think that. He loves us, we’re great. And even if he does think you’re not very smart, he’s wrong. You’re brilliant! You’re super creative and always thinking outside the box. Who cares if you think a little differently or if you don’t believe in something others do and vise versa. I mean, you believe in gnomes and not a lot of people do.”

Mabel snorted at Dipper’s slightly pathetic try at a joke, but she was still grateful. “Thanks, Dip-Dip.”

“Don’t start unbelieving what you believe in, sis.” Dipper advised, making Mabel laugh, and they both accidentally started singing a cheesy song that always got people hyped.

~~~~~~~~~~

At breakfast, Mabel and Dipper were eating Stancakes with the chef cooking up one more batch for himself. They were joined by Ford, who held a rolled-up poster in his hands, and he grinned at the sight of the only female in the room. “There you are Mabel, I wanted to talk to you.”

Mabel perked up and smiled. “Really?”

“Yes,” He unrolled the poster on the table and her smile dropped when it was about evolution. “I wanted to show you the proof that we scientists have collected over the years that evolution exists…”

“Oh boy what did you do to unleash the beast?” Stan groaned.

“Ford found out Mabel doesn’t believe in evolution.” Dipper answered.

“This should be fun.”

“... so you see, they found these fossils all over the world, stretching back as far as four-hundred million years ago.” Ford explained as this poster showed the fossils and what they looked like in life.

“Uh, wow.” Mabel said, holding her chin in thought. “You can actually see it.”

“Yes! See, you can.” Ford said proudly, glad he could help his niece.

“Now,” Mabel looked away, giving this serious thought. “Who puts those fossils there, and why?”

Dipper snorted into his milk and Stan bit his lip when they saw the look on Ford’s face. “Mabel sweetie, I love you so much.” Stan said as he sat down to have some breakfast.

“M-M-Mabel, Mabel, listen to me.” Ford chuckled nervously as he put a hand on her shoulder. “What about… What about thumbs?” He held up his own and further asked, “We human beings have opposable thumbs, now how did we get those without evolution?”

“Oh!” Mabel gasped and removed her hand from her chin to slam a fist down at the table. “Maybe the overlords needed them to steer their spacecrafts!”

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “While they do, evolution…”

“Great-Uncle Ford, can I ask you something?” Mabel said sweetly, with eyes filled with wonder and sparkles.

Ford grinned. “Yes, of course, my dear. Anything you want.”

“Okay, so, wasn’t there a time when the smartest guys in the world thought the Earth was flat?”

“Uh… y-yes…”

“And, up until sixty years ago, everybody thought the atom was the smallest thing ever, until some dudes split it open and this whole bunch of other stuff came out?”

“Um… y-y-yes, I suppose…”

“Okay, so, one last question, Great-Uncle Ford,” Mabel said. “Is there the teeny tiny-est possibility that you and every other scientist could be wrong about evolution?”

Ford was absolutely dumbfounded. He looked at Dipper and Stan for some sort of assistance or reassurance, but they only peered at him, interested in what Ford had to say now. The aged scientist cleared his throat; his niece’s logic certainly added up, and with all of that said, he felt that he was obligated to swallow his pride and croak out slowly, “There is a teeny… tiny… possibility… that I could be wrong, yes.”

Mabel blinked and put her hands over her heart in shock. Ford was ready to apologize if he had accidentally made her feel that he was so strict and by-the-book that he wouldn’t have enough humility to admit he could be wrong, but his jaw dropped when she said, “I can’t believe you caved.”

“Wh-What?”

“You just abandoned your whole belief system…”

“N-N…”

“... I mean, I didn’t agree with you, gut at least I respected you.”

“B-B-But…”

“Oh my gosh, how are you gonna go to another science convention?”

“I…”

“How will you ever set foot in another museum or planetarium again?” Mabel gasped sadly. “How are you going to face the other science guys? H-How are you going to face yourself?” And she puckered her lips innocently at her uncle, feeling sorry for him.

Ford had absolutely no clue what the heck just happened or how to respond. Feeling numb and needing a moment to digest, he slowly rolled up the poster, but rather than carry it in his hand, he cradled it like it was his own first born son, and hurried back down to the basement with as much dignity as he could muster.

“That was fun.” Mabel said casually as she popped another bite of Stancake into her mouth.

[drummergirl231-2]

I apologize in advance if this is a heavy topic, but do you still see many comments/thoughts from people who heavily detest Della? I recall that you mentioned there being many of them back in May when she was still new. I was wondering what your thoughts might be on Della now and how some react to her, following the events of the last episode bomb of S2. For the record, I still admire her, but I'd be lying if my thoughts on her didn't sour a bit after some of the writing choices made.

I feel like those who full-on hate her are going to hate her no matter what she does or how she’s characterized. The very haters who criticized her for not disciplining her kids before “Timephoon!” turned around and started criticizing her for disciplining her kid after “Timephoon!”

Sooner or later though, part of Della’s story arc in learning how to be a mom was going to have to include her learning how to discipline her kids, because that’s part of motherhood. And I can think of no better setup than the one the writers gave her.

1. Louie reeeeally messed up. 

She didn’t ground him for forgetting to take out the trash or something. She grounded him for stealing Gyro’s time tub out of greed, and nearly killing his family and destroying the universe. If that doesn’t call for action, I don’t know what does. Technically, Louie could be incarcerated for what he did.

If a teenager without a license stole a car and caused an accident that nearly killed a dozen people and then stood in front of a judge and said, “But I’m reeeally sorrrry...” the judge wouldn’t sit there and go, “Oh, alright. I’m sure you’ve learned... something,” and let him off the hook. That kid’s butt would be going to juvie! XD

Della was merciful in grounding Louie when she could have reported his crimes and had him locked up in juvenile hall. At least he doesn’t have a criminal record now.

2. No one else was going to discipline Louie.

As far as people’s objection that Della was new in his life and therefore didn’t have a right to discipline him, that’s incredibly childish thinking. And considering no one else was stepping up to discipline Louie when he deserved it more than ever, it was definitely up to Della.

The whole episode, Mrs. Beakley was trying to coach Della on how to be a stricter parent and put her foot down, telling her “Even good kids do dumb things, and we have to make sure those dumb things don’t turn into bad things, like destroying all of existence.”

But after they discovered what Louie did, and after he did almost destroy all of existence, Beakley was like, “Oh, okay.”

What else could fans want of a situation where Della had to learn to discipline her kids? Louie almost destroyed the universe in his quest for selfish gain (it’s nearly villain stuff) and all other parental figures stepped aside and were refusing to do anything about it.

Della had to endure losing two of her sons all over again, and then technically all three of them once she was zapped to the middle ages - stranded and with no way of getting back. It was the Moon all over again. Then as soon as she was back, the very person who told her she needed to be stricter decided not to do anything at all, and Della stood there listening to her family call this stunt, “classic Louie,” and say that they “always,” let these things go. If this was as regular a thing as they were making it sound, Della knew she needed to do something to stop this behavior and teach him that his actions have consequences.

And no one else has more authority to teach him that than someone who had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Here, Louie acted like Della hadn’t learned from her mistakes or like she was a hypocrite. But Della had more than ten years of imprisonment on the Moon to think about what she did and battle self-hatred as she desperately tried to make things right and get home to her family. Just because a parent did something they regret in their youth doesn’t mean they can’t warn their child not to do the same thing, and it certainly doesn’t give the child the right to throw their parent’s deepest regrets back in their face like they don’t regret it at all. 

^I know this moment was the one that was a bit sour for you, because it seemed like after humbly asking to be part of her sons’ lives, she was threatening Louie’s place in the family. But I don’t think it was a threat to boot him out at all. She knows taking the Spear of Selene, whatever her motive, hurt her family. She knew it would hurt them before she left, so we know it wasn’t blind adventure. But again, whatever her motive, her plans to explore space only led to bad things for her family, and now she doesn’t feel like part of the family, as desperately as she’s trying to fit in. She wanted to warn Louie not to make a similar mistake and lose his place in the family by chasing plans - or in his case - schemes.

And despite Louie defending himself and saying how he really was sorry, we know he wasn’t sorry for the time tub scheme itself... only for the unexpected consequences. He hadn’t actually learned that selfish scheming was wrong after what happened. 

So it’s not like he really learned his lesson nearly losing his family. He’d have just gone on to come up with some other scheme to get rich. And technically, he did... but I really think this incident helped prepare his heart to learn the lesson he needed to learn later on.

Also, from a storytelling perspective, if he hadn’t been home when Glomgold showed up, he wouldn’t have conned the bad guys and Scrooge out of their money, become the richest duck in the world, freed the Bombie, learned humility, or taught Scrooge humility.

And for all the Louie stans’ talk of speaking on Louie’s behalf and saying how he feels... they didn’t actually get it right. They were just saying how they felt. Louie didn’t feel like his mom didn’t have a right to discipline him just because she was new in his life. Louie didn’t feel like she was kicking him out of the family (though it may have stirred up some feelings of trying desperately to fit in and not knowing how). Louie didn’t hate his mom or reject her as a parent. 

He just hated getting disciplined - as all people do - and he didn’t know how to handle the surprise of his mom coming back. But we learned in the finale, once Louie had been humbled and grew up a little, that he feels his mom coming back was actually a good surprise.

“Sometimes, a robot boy uses you as a piñata.”“......I think I’m losing the thread, here.”“But sometimes, the mom you thought you lost... comes back. And that’s a surprise, too. So you deal with bad surprises because they may lead to a good one.”

[ontowanderlust]

How to say I love you?  (2)

A/N: Another one? Really? Gosh. Bear with me, I’ve got like six more to go. I haven’t started writing the third one so if you guys are waiting for the next one- I’m gonna be frank with you, it will take me a long time before I publish it out. I would like to give this fic to the anon who had requested a different Five Hargreeves fanfic- (I tried writing your prompt, dearie, but I just couldn’t find the inspiration to recreate the magic of the song. That, and I am not really familiar with the song itself and tried googling it but I really cannot replicate the magic.) so instead, this part is dedicated to you whoever you are, anon.

Special thanks to: @grimpower-s you are awesome and amazing and I might pop out sooner or later depending on my motivation so yup.. I love you, my beta.

One of the reasons why I haven’t posted this was because of the sucky title. Let me know if you guys have better ideas. The other reason was just I’m too lazy to post this. My betas knew that I had a name written here but I had to revert to second person since… this is tumblr. (Though, the last name is predetermined already, don’t fight me on this.) Let me know if this sucks or if you guys like it.

Also some reminders:

Five is eighteen in this fic

The apocalypse had already happened

(Spoiler) They are sent back in time

And there are some of the 43 involved in this fic- there are 16 actually. Find them all and hit me in my asks if you knew the reference of the names.

Alternatively: 7 times he confessed and the 1 time she accepted his confession / 8 ways to say I Love You

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Fem!reader

Prompt: This prompt is brought to you by R. McKinley (you write beautifully, may I just say) and @chickenshit​‘s photo edit. I did say that I’m gonna write something about this, right?

=Masterlist=

For as long as Y/N can remember Tuesdays had always been allocated as a day where she and her brother, Crutchie gets to be “special” (or so as people in their household says.)

Coming from a rich household, their mother had given them Tuesday as a time for reprieve from the whirlwind of studies from their different tutors, (seriously, why do they need to learn the 14 different uses of forks?) she and her brother would have a mock battle with each other- her, usually making her brother pause at mid-action while he retaliates by setting off a series of events at her misfortune. 

As much as she loved spending time with her brother, back then, it always felt as if Tuesdays are nothing more than the only day where she felt extraordinary and that if Tuesdays were removed, she would be… nothing more than some girl who got lucky and was born to wealth.

She hated how Tuesdays dictate her worth. She hated it so much that she had to resort to all kinds of excuses.

That is until her mother brought home the foster kid who would eventually become her big brother, Jack. 

Despite their initial distrust with each other, she learned that there is a purpose why her mother is adamant with their Tuesday routine. There is a purpose why she let her children discover what their abilities can do and make up for the loss of what the others can’t.

And right now, she couldn’t be more thankful to her mom than ever.

Throughout the years, Tuesdays with her brothers had somehow evolved with having more company- the kids she and her brothers had encountered on their run from their relatives- and their neighbors who were all born the same day as them. 

Crutchie liked to call it predetermined. Fate, if he will. She and Jack simply would scoff at their brother’s belief. Although, deep down, they all knew that having these kids make up for the space their mother had left them. In a way, they are all what they have, they are family.

When the Umbrella Academy showed up on their doorstep a few months back, she knew her twin had been right all along. (She never doubted him in his predictions. She just hated how optimistic his way of thinking is.) 

And so here they were Tuesday morning, in the middle of a massive courtyard-turned-grassy field courtesy of Katherine’s ability, about to face these superheroes. And since the Academy is massively outnumbered, Jack chose seven people from their team to battle the opposing team. 

“Heads up, mi hermano!” She heard Klaus holler at Five as she saw JoJo swooping down from above, grabbing the fifth Hargreeves child as if he weighed nothing before dropping him 30 ft from the sky.

She watched with interest as Klaus tried to levitate to save his brother, failing when Katherine touched the grass, willing some blades to transform into vines as it wrapped around the unsuspecting seance’s ankle, pulling him to the ground.

“We’re being floored,” she heard Diego deadpanned at Five as he spatial jumped back beside him. “We need a new plan.”

Five rolled his eyes as she watched him search the field for what she presumed would be the victim of this boy’s ire.

Having spent her time with them, she knew the Academy had somehow built this holier-than-thou attitude- a result of their glorified superhero days.

It’s no surprise that their hubris is their downfall and her family have no qualms in kicking their sorry asses.

Good. She scoffed inwardly. Someone has to teach them some humility. She thought as she absentmindedly reached up to steal Henry’s popcorn, ignoring his protests as her attention went back to the battle in front of her. 

Her family had adopted the strategy of keeping the Academy from each other while they keep themselves open to assist their own should the need arise.

Davey is managing on his own after he had borrowed Vanya’s ability, facing her by himself as he isolated her from her siblings, Katherine and JoJo teaming up to confuse Klaus and Diego, messing with them, Mush steeling himself well against Luther’s strength while Elmer and Romeo are fighting off Allison and Ben side by side. Crutchie, on the other hand, is providing all the assistance from every corner, setting off one series of unfortunate events to another, simply cast on the side as an open target.

Apparently, Five is thinking the same thing as her as she saw his gaze fell upon her twin, his fists started to glow blue.

She stood up abruptly, startling Race who was using her shoulder to sleep on, jumping off the bleachers (graciously provided by Katherine, “for your entertainment, losers”) prompting the rest to ask where she’s going. 

“He’s going after Crutchie!” she called over her shoulder, eyes locked onto Five’s running figure, trying to concentrate on him in order to slow him down. 

“Y/N, get back here!” She heard Jack yell but she had already entered the field, running as fast as she can, barely dodging JoJo as she shook her head, irritated at her lack of control over her ability.

Just as she ran past Elmer, she vaguely heard his panicked tone, voicing his worries to Romeo. 

“Time out!” Romeo yelled, stretching his arm as he wrapped it around Allison and Ben, easily trapping them. “Time out, Jack! Elmer’s lost control of his portal!”

What.

Too late now. She thought as strings of profanities left her lips. True to Romeo’s statement, Elmer’s portals had been emerging from different places and so she used her momentum, dodging the stray portals, her eyes searching for the spatial jumping boy, not noticing the portal that appeared beneath her feet. 

Having grown up alongside Elmer, there wasn’t a Tuesday where she hadn’t accidentally gotten sucked into his portal so why would this Tuesday any be of different?

Perhaps, the fact that she entered the void, momentarily disorienting her as she fell from above, her arms outstretched in order to brace herself, instead she found her hands colliding with a body part- a shoulder? She’s certain it was a shoulder since arms immediately wrapped around her waist as the person braced for the impact.

She couldn’t be any more grateful at Katherine for making today’s landscape a grassy field as the grass soften the impact of collision of the back of the person who had grabbed her to the ground while her knees were the ones that caught her weight, accidentally straddling the person.

Y/N couldn’t care any less for the pain that is engulfing her.

She shouldn’t care except… because of the force from the gravity, her head had collided with the person’s face, her lips effectively planting exactly on the person’s lips.

What the fuck.

Instinctively, she pulled away faster than she could utter a profanity, glancing down as apology is ready to leave her lips.

Only, the apology died as her eyes widened at the sight of the boy she is seeking out, sprawled beneath her, groaning in pain.

What the fuck.

She opened her mouth, about to sputter out apologies- anything to save face- when Five’s eyes creaked open, his face morphing into quick panic as his arms around her waist tightened before flipping them both easily, shielding her as stray objects that entered the portals (stray branches, small pebbles, handful of dirt) rained upon them. 

The vague smell of coffee overwhelmed her senses as she opened her eyes only for her breath to hitch as her eyes met the bluest pair of eyes she had ever seen. 

Time slowed down as flicker of blue lights enveloped the two of them momentarily. Is it even possible for someone to possess such fascinating eyes? She wondered silently as conflicted expression graced Five’s face before leaning down, softly brushing his lips against hers before fully capturing her lips.

Have I mentioned what the fuck already?

She is vaguely aware of her surroundings, the blue lights flaring for a bit as time alternated on freezing or slowing down everything around them and yet, that didn’t stop the warmth spreading on her ears, her hands tapping slightly on the grass as she could feel his lips moving against hers as if he was muttering something.

If she weren’t the type to pay attention to the littlest detail, she might’ve missed it but surely, the stoic Five Hargreeves hadn’t muttered those three words on her mouth now, would he?

[andrcs]

hey  friends  waddup  !  i’m  jen  ,  just  turned  23  (  n  am  already  feelin  it  )  ,  from  the  gmt-2  tmz  ,  n  i  go  by  she/her  pronouns  .  i  had  about  ,  like  ,  half  an  hour  of  sleep  today n  i’m  actually  redoing  this  entire  intro  because  as   i  was  editing  the  finished  version  to  post  it  ,  i  accidentally  deleted  the  whole  thing  n  tumblr  wouldnt  let  me  have  it  back !  it’s  fine  i’m  fine   :-)  anywho  i’m  gonna  let  yall  go  n  learn a  lil  more  about  our  friend  andre !  hopefully  u  like  him  but  if  u  don’t  thats  ok  bc  sometimes i don’t  either !!

𝐈.    𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒  :

𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞   :   andre  harris  solomon  .

𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞   :   n/a  .

𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲   :   august  fourth  ,  1991  .

𝐳𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐜 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧   :   leo  .

𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧   :  cco  of  solo  conglomerate  .

𝐈𝐈.   𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃  :

during  the  solomon’s  dynasty  ,   the  family  had  its  fair  share  of  tumbles  and  quite  a  few  scandals  .  great  uncle  abel being�� arrested  after  trying  to  steal  half  his  brother’s  fortune  was  one   was  a  big  example .  may  god  bless  the traitous  bastard’s  soul  .  also  cousin  denzel  ,  declaring   in  the  middle  of  thanksgiving  dinner  he  wanted  to  be  a  opera  singer  ,  of  all  fucking  things  ,  and  giving grandpa  harrison  an  almost  stroke  ,  could  be  counted  .  no  matter  what  ,  though  ,  nothing  prepared  the  family  to  watch  the  solomon  fortune’s  heiress  coming  home  on  her  christmas  break  during  her  freshman  year  in  college  with  a  baby  bump  and  no  father  to  claim  the  child  she  carried  . 

in  the  following  years  ,  with  the  slightly  judgemental  help  of  all  of  her  closest  relatives  ,  but  most  of  all  ,  the  never  ending  support  of  her  parents  ,  gaia  solomon  managed  not  only  to  get  her  college  diploma  ,  enter  the  family  business   and  help  solo  grow  into  the  biggest  media  conglomerate  of  the  western  hemisphere  ,  one  that  had  a  solid  hand  over  pretty  much  all  aspects  of  media  and  entertainment  .  chances  are  if  you  wanted  to  publish  or  sign  a  record  label  deal  or  be  on  a  tv  show  ,  sooner  or  later  you  would  encounter  someone  from  solo  .  but   she  had  also  manage  to  raise  with  the  utmost  love  and  care  ,  no  lack  of  sacrifices  ,  and  a  healthy  amount  of  ear-pulling  ,  a  man  she  can’t  help  to  be  most  proud  of  .

andre  solomon  never  knew  who  his  father  was  ,  or  cared  to .  and  as  far  as  his  mother  was  concerned  ,  he  didn’t  have  a  father .  as  a  child  ,  he  never  felt  like  he  was  missing  anything  in  life  ,  there  was  no  angry  void  aching  to  be  filled  ,  no  painful  moments  to  remember  his  childhood  by  .  he  had  been  happy .   no  matter  how  busy  his  mom  was  ,  she  was  always  loving  and  attentive  whenever she  was  around  ,  played  baseball and  football  and  soccer  with  him  whenever  he  asked  her  to  ,  and  grandpa  harrison  was  always  available  if  the  boy  ever  needed  a  guy  figure  in  his  life .  of  course  ,  there  were  some  bumps  and  bruises  along  the  way  ,  and  a  pinky  finger  he  never  fully  got  the  feeling  back  , but  it  was  a  beautiful  ,  fulfilling  childhood  .

as  a  teenager  ,  recently  acquainted  with  a  never  seen  before  freedom  ,  and  just  out  of  puberty  ,  andre  grew  more  acquainted  with  getting  in  trouble  .  thankfully  ,  nothing  like  cousin  gina  , who  had  to  cut  off  a  part  of  her  ear  after  piercing  it  by  herself  with  her  tenth  grade  friends  .  while  rambunctious  and  mischievous  ,  he  was  always  to  smart  to  get  caught  doing  something  that  could  get  him  in  any  kind  of  real  trouble  ,  and  by  then  ,  the  family  knew  that  they  could  trust  andre  to  not  be  too  irresponsible  ,  and  even  if  they  didn’t  ,  at  least  he  had  both  ears  intact  .

 a  full  grown  adult  ,  after  getting  his  marketing  degree in  northwestern  university  ,  andre  followed  his  mother’s  footsteps  and  worked  hard  to  climb  the  organizational   ladder  and  reach  the  cco  position ,  becoming  one  of  his  grandfather’s   valued  advisors  along  the  way  .  these  days  ,  he  works  hard  to  keep  his  image  clean  and  his  professional  life  very  well  separated  from  his  private  one  ,  being  very  succesful  at  it  thus  far  .

𝐈𝐈𝐈.   𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘  :

andre can  definitely  be  considered  a  little bit   too  cocky  in  his  confidence  .  he  knows  his  strengths  and  doesn’t  believe  in  fake  humility  ,  always  eager  to  be  praised  by  whatever  actions  .  also  very  focused  ,  he  feels  as  if  he  knows  exactly  what  he  deserves  in  all  aspects  of  his  life  ,  and  doesn’t  hesitate  to  work  for  it  until  he’s  satisfied .

he  is also  ,  however  ,  a  very  fun  loving  individual  .  andre  believes  in  the  motto  work  hard  ,  play  hard  .  and  you  can  definitely  find  him  going  on  expensive  trips  to  exotic  locations  or   some  rich  person  adventure  more  often  that  he’d  like  to  admit  .  is  constantly  surrounded  by  a-list  celebrities  or  clout  chasers  who  attach  to  him  due  to  his  connections  into  the  industry  .  and  as  being  the   center  of  attention   is  one  of  his  favorite  things  ,  he  absolutely  adores  it  .

very  ,   extremely  sarcastic  and  definitely  not  the  most  outwardly  affectionate  person  ,  it  takes  a  lot  to  get  him  to  soften  up   ,   but  andre’s  also  extremely  loyal  to  those  he  knows  are  his  real  friends ,  and  always  makes  sure  that  they  are  with  him  no  matter  where  he  goes  and  what  he  gets  .

is  known  to  be  quite  the  ladies’  man  ,  and  often  lives  up  to  the  reputation  ,  even  though  he’s  settled  down  quite  happily  a  few  times  during  his  adulthood  .  he’s  not  averse  to  relationships ,  per say  ,  but  also  doesnt  want  to  jump  in  carelessly  ,  specially  when  he’s  not  felling  the  situation  .  is  frequently  engaged  in  some  sort  of  drama  with  the  girls  in  his  life  and  even  though  he  claims  to  dislike  it  ,  he  loves  all the  attention  he  gets  from  them  ( ew , i  hate  him  ,  he’s  gross  )

𝐈𝐕.   𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒  :

childhood  best  friend  /  chicago  native  ( 1 / 2 )  :  people  who’ve  known  him  since  before  he  hit  puberty  and  became  cool  and  who  are  with  him til  this  very  day  .  they  might  not  be  best  friends  for  whatever  reason  but  still  are  closer than  most  friendships  out  there . ( pearl , )

flings /  could  be  past  or  present  :  could  also  range  from  the  silliest  to  the  most  angsty  stuff  ,  andre  definitely  has  the  repertoire  for  it .

ride  or  dies  (  2 / 6  )  :  truly  ride  or  dies  ,  his  closest  group  of  friends  ,  the  ppl  that  are with  him  no  matter where  he  is  and  the only  people  outside  his  family  he’d  do  whatever for  . ( devin , watson )

exes  /  chicago  native  (  2 /  2  )  :  i  have  some  ideas  about  them  but  lets  just  say  one  would  have  ended  in  decently  good terms  and  one  would  not . ( vera , aurora )

friend  with  interests  (  0 / 2  )  : andre  has  a  lot  of  ins  with  the  media  industry  ,  and  this  person  would  definitely  have  an  ulterior  motive  to  hang  around  him  ,  whether  he’s  realised  it  yet  or  no  .

flirtationship   (  1 / 1  )  : first  of  all  i  hate  that  word  my  GOD  but  also  ,  would  be  a  kind  of  thing  where  they’d  both  be  feeling  each  other  but  for  some  reason  things  just  wouldn’t  progress ? ( elissa )

there is a  lot  more  but  i’ve  just  written  this  thing  twice  in  a  row  n  my  brain  is  currently  just  2  neurons  barely  communicating  so  i  should  probably  quit  while  i’m  ahead  ?  but  pls  message  me  bc  if  u  want  to  know  some  more  about  andre  or  come  up w  plots  or  just  talk  about  how  hot mbj  is   n  how  unfair  it  is  that  the rpc  doesnt  gif  him nearly  enough  ?  or  we  could  also  talk  abt  something  i  might  be  delusional  rn  so  i  have  a bunch  of  interesting  topics  ok  bye  thanks  for  sticking  around i  love uuuu

[ribbonsed]

To Build A Home: An Ode To A Certain Enigmatic Crow

Disclaimer: Okay before proceeding, please note several of these things:

These are merely my headcanon, being my headcanon, these are how I view Lin’s actions for this season.  THIS IS SO MESSY OK I'm so sorry for any of you bothered to read this mess, I'm not a writer I'm dying I love Thunderbolt Fantasy so much;

I’m an annoying Lin Xue Ya stan and apologist first and foremost, and needless to say that this headcanon will be heavily centered on him. I do love and attached to ALL characters and puppets on Thunderbolt Fantasy, and I would gladly write for every single of them if only my knowledge, my time and my creativity reservoir would allow me write any worthy piece for them. But I can’t help to get this out of my head, and for now, this will do for Lin;

I can’t help but notice Lin’s actions especially during the course of Season Two, especially his breakdown after failing to trap Xiao Kuang Juan’s prompted me to write this. So, the start point of this headcanon will be from there. Also, I’m beginning to start building this headcanon in the middle of watching Season Two, and I start writing this after Episode 11 Season 2 and added a little bit after watching Episode 12. So I might be going a little back and forth with the timeline so please do bear with me;

I can't speak nor I can read Chinese/Mandarin and Japanese. Thus, I can't understand Thunderbolt Fantasy on its original language, so, all materials I use for reference on this headcanon will be based on from translated materials in English (the show, the movie, the manga, wikipedias, news articles, etc.) and I apologize if there are mistake on from my understanding of translated material (whether is it because of my lack knowledge or because of mistranslation or just misinformation altogether, let me apologize first here);

trigger warning: mild curse words (lmao I can't be civil);

tldr: Lin Xue Ya is getting way way more softer in Season Two compared to previous materials (The Movie, Season One) and here is my take on why is a certain Wandering Tired Man Way Too Soft and Too Good For This World is responsible for that

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Lin's visible foul mood over Xiao Kuang Juan outsmarting him by refusing to go back to Xi You over the course of Episode 11 Season 2 doesn't make all that much sense to me on first glance. Why? Because no matter how hard I think about it, it just doesn't make sense that Lin would get 'that' mad just because Xiao refusing to go back to Xi You. I mean yeah, Lin got the taste of humilation and defeat on Season 1 finale at Mie Tian Hai's hand where the latter literally killed himself and broke Tengyouken, depriving Lin of tasting his complete, successful scheme of stealing Mie Tian Hai's pride. That's where we saw Lin Xue Ya, the notorious Enigmatic Gale, for the first time ever, truly losing his composure and his vulnerable, emotional side breaking through an ice-cold, unpenetrable facade he has been keeping for the whole course of Season 1.

So, this is where it got tricky to me. Does Lin Xue Ya really learn nothing at all from his whole fiasco with Mie Tian Hai? Does Lin Xue Ya, is really so above himself that he flat out refuses to use his defeat on Mie Tian Hai as a lesson learned to avoid him the same mistake on near future? Does Lin Xue Ya, the infamous, great thief and trickster across Dong Li did NOT, even consider, just freaking once, of the possibility of Xiao Kuang Juan, a high-ranking, corrupt, shady, military official that is powerful enough to cross The Wasteland of Spirit, making a choice that would thwarted his plan over? Wouldn't a great, high-functioning schemer like Lin Xue Ya know first thing first that things would not always go like the plan, that there is always a possibility after a possibility, a single stone that could overturn the flow of the river. Why is the emo breakdown, Lin?

This is also highlighted by the fact that, unlike Mie Tian Hai who straight up killed himself, making Lin stripped of another chance at fucking him over again, Xiao Kuang Juan is literally, still alive. Dude is literally still out there, alive, breathing, running amok. Wouldn't a calm, reasonable, level-headed choice here would be playing along with Xiao newfound plan of starting over in Dong Li, let him do whatever he pleases, then strikes him, humiliate him when another opportunity strikes. Doesn't Lin also has upper hand with this would-be scenario, since The Enigmatic Gale knows Dong Li inside out like the back of his own hand. So, why not wait, Lin? Why not let Xiao slip this time, giving him the illusion of how easy to escape persecution of his own crime and to start anew, to crush him later when the time is prime. Are you really that upset, that your plan got thwarted so easily, Lin? Are you? Why the rush, Lin?

Another comparation to Mie Tian Hai case, where Lin waited until the very last, opportune moment, to confirm it himself clear that Mie Tian Hai utmost pride was his sword skill, and him collecting fancy powerful holy sword is because he wants swords worthy enough for his skill. Doesn't it indirectly implies that the whole cave scene of Episode 11 Season 2 basically Xiao Kuang Juan confirming it himself that his pride does not lie with his wealth, status, nor title back in Xi You? Xiao Kuang Juan flat-out admitted in Episode 11, that he is glad he is still in Dong Li where his stolen goods is currently being exposed on Xi You now, that he is glad that his head is even still intact and attached to his body right now. Interesting part of their whole conversation in the cave excerpted here:

Xiao Kuang Juan   : Whatever, it doesn't matter. If anything, it's a relief. If I've lost all my prestige and authority, I at least don't have to act like a pompous jackass anymore. I can take things easy from here on out.

Lin Xue Ya                : What's gotten into you? Are you feeling alright, Sir Fugitive Hunter?

Xiao Kuang Juan   : When you deal in dangerous and dirty deeds, you've gotta know when to give it up. Sure, I was hoping I could score enough loot for early retirement first. But, whenever you make the long, risky gamble, you've gotta realize that one wrong play, and you'll end up going bust. If anything, I'm just glad my head's still attached to my shoulders.

Wouldn't his very confession infers that, Xiao Kuang Juan treasures his own life, his own survival, no matter how wretched his soul is, how many life he stole, how many wealth he embezzled, more than anything else? So, if Lin's initial goal of sending Xiao Kuang Juan back to Xi You along with his corrupt deeds failed because he mistakenly certain that man's pride lies within his boastful honor and titles in Xi You Imperial Army, wouldn't The Hunting Fox confession on that cave just confirms that Lin is just mistaken about his pride all along? So, why the big fuss, Lin? Didn't you also made the effort to swap Tengyouken's part in Season 1, because you were still uncertain about Mie Tian Hai's utmost pride, while also keep patiently waiting until the very last minute to confirm Mie Tian Hai's actual pride---his sword skill--not him merely wanting to posses Tengyouken.  So, Xiao Kuang Juan  just revealed his utter, most, prized possesion on his life, his own life. Wouldn't it be a simple matter for you to rework your strategy and concoct another plan for Xiao, Lin?  Don't you seek amusement and thrill out of outsmarting the most corrupt and wretched individual, Lin? So, isn't Xiao Kuang Juan---a shameless, corrupt official banished from his original country, trying to rebuild his life in a foreign land---, just the perfect target to occupy your time, Lin?  

That is, if Lin Xue Ya end goal is solely to humiliate Xiao Kuang Juan, as per Lin usual motive with his scheme. So, what makes this job is not Lin Xue ya usual scheme? This is where Shang Bu Huan, Lang Wu Yao, and the whole Sword Index feud comes into play. What if Lin started to play Xiao on the first place, because he, genuinely wanted to help Shang? Yes, Lin triggered the whole plot of Season 2 by spreading the word of Shang Bu Huan's heroic deeds against Mie Tian Hai, and that's how hordes of Xi You people came crossing The Wasteland of Spirit in pursuit of Shang and The Sword Index. But what if, that was Lin way of trying to help and repay Shang? By inviting people who has been against Shang Bu Huan this whole time, to his dominion, Dong Li, and play them here, where he arguably has the upper hand to his familiarity with the country.

Even if Lin, still, intentionally invited Xiao Kuang Juan to Dong Li himself, Lin's whole trap for Xiao is set up specifically to be resulting in the infamous fugitive hunter getting back into Xi You, humiliated with his stolen goods and corrupt deeds exposed in front of Royal Army. Xiao Kuang Juan back in Xi You, his corrupt deeds exposed and facing Imperial Court punishment kills two birds one stone. It clears Shang the additional trouble of getting chased by Xiao in Dong Li when he is already busy enough protecting his Sword Index and trying to contain Seven Blasphemous Death, and maybe, Xiao crooked dealings getting punished would also exposes other Xi You corrupt military doing and would be a start of getting Shang's name cleared, even if it's for just bit by bit, and even if Shang himself cares not about clearing his name back in Xi You. Lin is going out of his way to make sure his (initial) endgame plan for Xiao Kuang Juan benefits Shang Bu Huan.

Lin greatly implies during his two pool scene with Shang (where he was fishing) that all he has been doing on Season 2 is for Shang's sake. He stated explicitly, from their 'first' Pool Scene, on Episode 7, with excerpt from said scene goes like this:

Lin Xue Ya           : I want to propose a mutually benefical deal regarding something    else, actually. I'd like you to tell me about Xiao Kuang Juan. His accomplishments, insight into his character, past conflicts between the two of you... anything will do. It will be information that will go into the calculations of my next scheme.

Shang Bu Huan : And then, you're gonna screw him over for the fun of it, huh?

Lin Xue Ya           : Exactly! He is your enemy, isn't he? I can't imagine you'd have any reason to show him sympathy.

Shang Bu Huan : Yeah, I wouldn't shed any tears over him getting his. He's earned everything you've got cooked up for him. That doesn't mean I have to go help you with your fun, though.

Lin Xue Ya          : I had thought that my sabotage of his efforts would be benefical to you.

Shang Bu Huan : That guy's free to dig his own grave. I just don't wanna sneak up behind him and kick him into it. Feeling guilty about it later might spoil a meal.

(Note: I would like to note that Shang Bu Huan's and Lin Xue Ya pool scenes on this season are very important to me (as a viewer, and yes, as a shipper) because in my opinion it holds a significant purpose as running symbolism to testament  their relationship and character growth, and I might be go back and refers The Pool Scenes many times later).

So, when Xiao Kuang Juan refuses to fall into Lin's sweetly prepared trap, and instead choosing to reside in Dong Li and build his new way into crime, Lin goes frenzy, because Xiao retaliates in one of the worst way possible that goes against Lin's initial goal of fucking him over in the first place. Xiao Kuang Juan residing in Dong Li, Night of Mourning on his hand, building his new band of thugs would mean that: (1) his past crimes committed during his time in Xi You goes unpunished because he doesn't return there and it would be impossible to indict him; (2) Shang Bu Huan reputation in Xi You is still in murky water; (3) it adds to the trouble they already facing on top of the imminent danger Lou Zhen Jie---powerfully wielding Seven Blasphemous Death making his way across Dong Li holy sword shrines---, and who knows how dangerous Xiao could get knowing how resilient and how little he regards others life and how he would not mind making innocent civilians as his victim.

Lin's mistakenly judge Xiao Kuang Juan's pride over his honor and titles, when actually Xiao is so shameless, he is happy just to be alive after his corrupt scheme on the Imperial Army exposed. Not only Lin unintentionally humiliate himself by misjudging his foe true nature, he also completely fucks over his supposed one job. During the second Pool Scene on Episode 10, Lin boasted to Shang that his plan is ripe to take Xiao Kuang Juan down. But, how is the reality, our sweet dear thief? Nope, it ain't working out. Killing Xiao Kuang Juan right there and taking his life as his life is most precious to him right now is arguably the most efficient way of stopping him, but it also goes against Lin's principle of spilling unnecessary blood and drawing Yan Zhue unless it is most necessary. On the other hand, waiting for Xiao Kuang Juan to thrive with his plan and destroy him when the opportunity arises also takes way way too much time, because after the whole event of Season Two unfolds, and underneath Lin needing to get his share of getting high over fucking Xiao Kuang Juan over, Lin realizes a little too late that what needed most is for said Fugitive Hunter, to get away from Dong Li, as far as possible from Shang.

For the first time ever, Lin Xue Ya finally feels it how devastating it feels to fail in something you proudly prides yourself with when it's directly involves the well-being of someone you care about (re: Shang Bu Huan, and also arguably, yes, to Lang, also--because despite how hostile their interaction on Episode 4 and 5 seems, deep down Lin respects Lang as someone who used to be Shang's partner in Xi Yo) For the first time ever, Lin feels... for lack of better word, useless. Lin prides himself so much as master manipulator, more so than his carefully hidden yet unbelievable gift as swordsman--, but when the occasion calls for it, he failed. He said it so himself during his fight with Mie Tian Hai that he shied away from swordmanship because it would straight up send him down into villainy path, and that's the reason Lin resorts to trickery and manipulation instead, BUT when the the time needed for him to be, he failed manage to use his trickery to protect the people he cared about.

Of course when talking about Lin Xue Ya, one can not simply throw terms like 'endearment', 'affection', and 'care' around. We clearly see throughout the course of Thunderbolt Fantasy timeline, depicted effortlessly throughout The Movie, Season One, and also side material like the novel and the manga, how Lin seemed to completely show no remorse over fucking up Sha Wu Sheng, Xing Hai, getting Shou Yun Xiao killed with his so called expedition against Mie Tian Hai. But, as we also see from the event of Season One, and expanded in the manga itself, when Lin was shown visibly quite somber after he saw his master brutally killed, partly also because of him, because he toyed with Sha Wu Sheng and that karma comes back to bite him in the ass by taking his master away. The manga even goes in length to show how he kindly asked the group to help him bury his master body.

Season 2 had that scene where he objected Xiao Kuang Juan method of slaughtering innocent townfolks during his confrontation against Xie Yingluo. Albeit, yes, Lin arrived way too fashionably late to prevent the slaughter of the people controlled by Night of Mourning on the hand of Xiao Kuang Juan, but my stance is that he is also against taking the lives of people who do not actively take up arms. Heck, dude even did not straight up kill Mie Tian Hai and pulled his blade away before Mie Tian Hai's neck. I think it is safe to say that Lin, is against killing. My point is that, (also as I said in the disclaimer before, this is coming from huuuuuuge annoying Lin Xue Ya stan/apologist so yeah hahahahahahaha) yes, Lin is capable of feeling emotion despite it is his trade to get high off his target misery. He is capable of feeling affection and adoration toward other people, albeit said people receiving his admiration maybe is so very easily to count with fingers. The question is, how does our dear thief fare when it comes to building trust and relationship with other people?

This is where Shang Bu Huan comes into the equation. Lin explicitly stated by the end of Season One that Shang is so fascinating to him, that keeping him around will most likely to draw the most wicked, the trashiest people for him to toy around. Are we sure this is Lin's only motivation for triggering the event of Season Two by posing as that jester, spreading the word of Shang Bu Huan's heroic deeds? Are we sure, there is nothing more, to Lin Xue Ya actions throughout Season Two, especially in relation to the man that is Shang Bu Huan? Why did Lin managed to meticulously showed up at Certain Dong Li Government Office, right where Xiao Kuang Juan popped up first thing first he arrived at Dong Li, complete with a whole fake identity he already secured before? Why did Lin, even amidst 'entertaining' Xiao Kuang Juan during the first three episodes of Season Two, also bothered to track Shang down and cured him out of his ailment from Xie Yingluo deadly, first-rate poison?

My personal answer is that, Lin Xue Ya, is, attempting to build a healthy, trustful relationship with Shang Bu Huan (note at ATTEMPTING, because as much as I like this trashy garbage snow bird puppet as a character I acknowledge his messy ass personality and his questionably ability /so far/ to keep healthy functional relationship like most of normal people). Yes, he is, attempting to build a healthy, trustful relationship with Shang Bu Huan, as two people, who despite their complete utmost difference, acknowledge each other strong and weak side, trust each other, and help each other during needed times.

Why Shang Bu Huan?

Despite his motor mouth and Shang constant no-nonsense attitude toward Lin's antics, he really never ask him to... change. He asked why Lin is the way he is, during Season One, and Lin answered with smart ass, sassy, "Do you really want to know because I could go on length here but do you have the time for that", but Shang, never ask Lin to change.

Shang, the guy who is so against taking the live of another person, who intentionally tires himself using a battle technique that drains his qi, who believes every single person, even the most villainous ones, deserves a second chance and that they are capable of change and transformation. But Shang saw Lin, this shady ass dude, who intentionally plunged him into a dangerous journey against evil dark dude along with several other evil dudes, saw with his own two eyes that said shady ass dude fucked up real bad by dooming an entire country to a giant praying mantis eldrich abomination, proceeded to clean up said dude mess, left off wishing he would never have to meet said shady guy again, only for said shady guy to spread his rumor and whereabouts to and Shang reaction basically could be summed up as something along the line of "Man, you are really fucked up man... But, but... But whatever!".

Because Shang, deep down, despite always raising his eyebrows and we, as viewer, could personally hear him whispered softly "What the fuck" at every single Lin's Options in Life, he acknowledges and sees Lin's redeeming qualities under his lying, manipulating ass. That, Lin Xue Ya is Lin Xue Ya. And Shang knows, that deep down, there is part of him that is also intrigued by Lin despite another part of him (initially) repulsed by Lin's way of scamming. But Shang could not help but admit that Lin's method works most of the time, especially against big time villains since they share common principle against unnecessary killing. A whole, interesting mix of fascination, repulse, but the fascination part always outweigh the repulsed part, and by the end of Season 2,  I dare say that the repulsed part for Lin Xue Ya's antics on Shang would be completely gone.

The fascination goes both way of course, but in Lin's part, there is nothing in Shang that repulses him, only endless fascination and surprise. Shang is far from the definition of a 'villain' or a 'bad guy', he does not seeks destruction, really, just a humble, wandering, a slightly bit old (the 4-koma comic had me rolling) but really powerful guy who happens to possess three dozens of stolen mythical swords. But no! It's okay, there is nothing bad, he is not going to use those swords for Evil, he just want to keep them safe out of bad people who will use them wrongly. At first glance, there should be nothing in Shang that should fascinate him, right? Dude is so chill, laidback, and berates his antics more than anything. But Shang just keep surprising him over and over again. As flat-out admitted by Lin himself on Episode 4 Season Two:

Shang Bu Huan : And who the hell is my friend in this equation?

Lin Xue Ya          : Ah, a good question. Does a friend lend their aid because they're a friend? Or does someone become a friend once they've lent their aid? Sorting out the course of events can be a bit like solving a riddle.

And still on the same episode, but different scene with different character asking him the question;:

Ling Ya                : Hey man, why do you care so much about Shang, anyway?

Lin Xue Ya          : I'd say my interest begins and ends with how much fun he is. Come now, spare me the probing looks. This is no lie or exaggeration. Amusement is the solitary motivating force in my life. You could call it my very reason for living.

Upon knowing and seeing it firsthand Lin's usual dealing yes, Shang may be disgusted, but does Shang completely cut his ties off with Lin? No. For as much as Lin spreading mischief, intentionally spreading Shang's tale of taking down Mie Tian Hai and his horde of Black Demon Force, Shang just casually find him, pop up, give him several sigh and that's that.

Lin feels acknowledged by Shang. Lin feels acknowledged by Shang not asking him to change. And Lin feels appreciated. Yes, he feels appreciated because to him, Shang is easily categorized under his decent dude on his list of relation, and by Lin's standard to the people he kept company so far, Shang is basically a hero. A good guy. And for such upright guy to not immediately fend him off despite knowing his trickery? So, for the rare instance on his life, Lin decided to do something he just knows he is highkey sucks at doing, and that is, yes, building a trustful, healthy relationship with Shang Bu Huan.

Speaking of pursuing a healthy, mutual trust, this where Lin Xue Ya failed to do on his past relationship with Sha Wu Sheng. See, Sha Wu Sheng, for as merciless and as skillful a warrior he was, he also managed to peer underneath the facade Lin kept. Sha Wu Sheng wanted and planned to still be Lin's bodyguard even after he gained Sword Saint title, prolly out of his pity seeing how lonely Lin is, underneath all that. However, Lin's instinct and thirst for mischief outweighed his subconscious that sees Sha Wu Sheng's sincere, genuine attempt at starting a new life free from killing and Sha Wu Sheng's gesture of reaching out to him. Instead, Lin one-sidedly decide it himself that Sha Wu Sheng talent is too good to waste on building a sword school and set the ploy of what would be The Sword Saint Tournament.

By doing this to Sha, Lin Xue Ya not only ended up depriving Sha Wu Sheng of his what-could-have been life, but also his future and plunges him into his suicidal mission that makes Sha looking for an enemy stronger than him and him ending up dying on Mie Tian Hai's hand. Since Sha Wu Sheng arc is beautifully crafted onto the timeline that spans from The Movie first half into Season One, where Shang is present halfway, this could infer that maybe, Lin deep down regretted over what happened to Sha Wu Sheng so much and this too, could also goes into part of Lin's decision to keep an open, honest relationship with Shang ('honest' by Lin Xue Ya's standard, by all means) over the end of Season One and into Season Two.

This goes into the part that the whole event of Season Two was Lin trying to help Shang, albeit yes, it's still done on Lin's fucked up, round about way that ends up getting way more people hurt and killed than necessary. But his underlying motive is purely to help Shang Bu Huan. Yes, Lin might be hoping to secure a good prey along the way, but his whole priority is still Shang and his attempt to make Shang believe in him, that he, too, capable of forming a meaningful, trustful, healthy, relationship. No tricks, no ploy.  

By finally encouraging himself to build a healthy relationship with someone else that involves no trickery and lies (no trick and lies on 'most' part, remember that we are talking about Lin Xue Ya here, little lies here and ther counts as a honesty with him considering his usual trade), Lin is also, inevitably and unconsciously making himself more vulnerable emotionally, in a good way. I always felt that the way Lin's puppeteer making him move on Season Two and the way the directing is shot during his scene is way, way more extra compared to Season One and The Movie. I initially guessed that this is maybe because the cat is out of the bag, that Lin Xue Ya is Enigmatic Gale, a notorious, infamous thief across Dong Li for his scheme, compared to Season One where his reveal was held off until the good last quarter of the season. That's why Lin's movement and mannerism is more subdued in Season One, especially on the first three quarters, in order to avoid spoiling way too much into his true nature and reveal.

But now that we've got to Episode 11, with his whole emotional fit over Xiao refusing to go back to Xi You (he has emotional breakdown in front of two people, one being his supposed victim, Xiao Kuang Juan and the other one being Lang Wu Yao), to me this opens the interpretation that the dramatic, over the top puppeteering, writing, and directing style for Lin Xue Ya this season is intentionally on the showrunners part as a way of telling us how soft he has become. Lin Xue Ya is far, far more, expressful this season due to him more open of letting his guard down and expresses himself more emotionally. It's as if, in Season One and The Movie (I refer to the first part of the movie only, when we saw Lin and Sha Wu Sheng story, and not including the second part of the movie where he goes around as a jester spreading Shang's telltale), there is a dark, black cloth that Lin is purposely putting up between himself and us viewer. We could never see him past beyond the dark cloth, and the only way for us to see him is when he intentionally puts himself in front of the dark cloth and show us what's he doing. But beyond that, nothing. Compared to the dark cloth, the Season Two Lin forgoes the dark cloth completely, and instead replaces them with a kind of white mesh fabric, that is sheer and see-through. Despite the fabric still conceals his true doing, but with the mesh fabric we could guess his movement through his silhouette.

Going back to Lin's whole motivation of Season Two in helping Shang, this is also why Lin hurried his ass to save Lang Wu Yao and Ling Ya from Lou Zhen Jie and Seven Blasphemous Death after he failed his plan to send Xiao back to Dong Li. He sure nonchalantly dodged Ling Ya question and stated that he merely just passed by and the sight of someone chuckling so proudly just after his humiliation on Xiao Kuang Juan's hand is so irritating to him he want to turn said person into his pet food. But, is it all that there is to it, Lin?

I already mentioned briefly how expertly Lin's handling his whole cover during the first three episodes of Season Two. While he was pretending to be a government envoy, humoring Xiao Kuang Juan spreading lies about Shang being absurdly evil individual about to threaten Dong Li, Lin also managed to keep track on Shang and Lang's whereabout. When he knew that Shang and Lang are at disadvantage due to Xie Yingluo poison, Lin quickly hurried off and tracked them to their hideout, all the while covering up Lang's previous track, and putting up off new, fake tracks meant to throw Xiao Kuang Juan. Our resident Thief then proceed to find Shang, diagnoses his poison, and together with Lang managed to find the antidote for Scorpion Princess best poison all the while still keeping his cover as a government envoy in front of Xiao Kuang Juan.

Based from these events, it would not be far too much of a stretch to guess that Lin is actively keeping track of Shang and Lang's whereabout during the course of Season Two. So, assuming Lin keeping track of Lang's whereabout, sensing that Lang was in danger, up against Lou Zhen Jie, a proficient man wielding a notorious demon sword, Lin goes and proceed to save him. Why, Lin? Isn't he the man who is not hesitant to pull his sword attacking him you back when you guys in the middle of Wasteland of Spirit, procuring dragon's horn together? I know you hate seeing unnecessary bloodshed, but you never strikes me as the type who would go in such active way into saving people, Lin. Were you not in the middle of your mental breakdown, Lin Xue Ya?

Plot-wise, it would be to heartless and maybe, a tad anticlimatic just to let Lou Zhen Jie finishes off Lang right then without Lin interfering. But also, if we track back to the second Shang and Lin's pool scene, during Episode 10, and if we put the context of Episode 10 and Episode 11 weaven together, it makes it clear that the whole pond scene was Shang entrusting Lin with... his best buddy, Lang's safety, because Shang is about to went away to meet Juan Can Yun. Shang Bu Huan knew a psychopatic nihilistic monk is running amok with a freaking demon sword that enchants and drains life-force from people. As much as Shang have faith on Lang's ability as a warrior, Shang also desperately wants Lang to be alive, safe and sound, from the mess he created and Lang had nothing to do on the first place, and Shang wanted some kind of an insurance--fail proof way to ensure Lang safe no matter what. So, he asked Lin Xue Ya for help. He asked Lin Xue Ya for help, he entrust Lin Xue Ya to help him keep his dearest friend, alive. It might not be explicitly stated, but;

Lin Xue Ya          : Urgent and distant business, then?

Shang Bu Huan : You could say that. I'm gonna try and get back as soon as possible, so until I do, try not to make things even worse, all right?

This is the freaking Shang Bu Huan, who knows Lin's track record and also Lin's tendency to  fuck things up just for the sake of fucking things up and experienced it first hand. So, he asked Lin Xue Ya, specifically, to keep everything under control until he gets back pawning The Sword Index off to Juan Can Yun. This is, a big deal, because when in the beginning of Season Two, Shang vehemently refused Lang's idea to call someone for help (which is, in this case, incidentally said person on Shang mind happens to be Lin) until Lin showed up himself at his doorstep and forced his way to cure Shang, and now, several episodes later, Shang, specifically asked Lin for help. This means so much, because in a way, this is Shang's way of reciprocating and acknowledging Lin's attempt to be a better version of himself. Shang sees Lin's effort, and he acknowledges it.

And... AND... LIN KEPT HIS WORDS !!!!!! THIS THIEF FUCKERY VAPING WIZARD IS KEEPING HIS PROMISE!!! Even though Lin, partly on his fault, lowkey already fucked things up by failing to send Xiao away back to Xi You, but he managed to save Lang from great peril, and this is of course, the better deal. Lin's honoring Shang's request, even though he admitted himself that he has some kind incompatibility with Lang, shows how Lin respects both Shang Bu Huan, and even, to some degree, to Lang. Lin understands and accepts that Lang, is a part of Shang's life, and needless to say that Shang would be broken if anything ever happens to him.

Instead of succumbing into a dark desire lurking somewhere within his unconsciousness to toy with Lang's life (and given he context of Season Two, if Lin plays Lang then he would indirectly toy with Shang’s too), Lin represses that urge and strive to work with Lang instead, not just once, but twice. It could be also that Lang has nothing that Lin would ever want, and that Lang is not Lin's target and he had nothing on fucking up his life, but this also does not automatically making Lang exempt and safe from Lin Xue Ya's destructive tendencies to people around him, because Lin's past actions have shown that his machinations often proven fatal and claims collateral damage on Lin's own acquaintance even whom he did not actively mark as his prey at the moment (re: Sha Wu Sheng and Shou Yun Xiao dead bodies during their 'expedition' against Mie Tian Hai). Lin's active action on saving Lang's life is a great deal, because not only by doing so he is committed to his mission learning how to have a healthy relationship, it also shows Lin's character development striving to be a... less destructive version of him.

On top of saving Lang, Lin does not even bother on concealing his pissed stance in front of him, showing Lang his, ungraceful side as he shamelessly continues his emotional breakdown in front of Lang the moment Xiao Kuang Juan name mentioned. This part is just so, so endearing to me because we can see in the screen, both Lang and Ling Ya too, are baffled seeing Lin's throwing tantrum, something that they does never expect coming off from the dude who nonchalantly, politely asked a dragon before chopping off said dragon's horn. Retreating back into Season One, Lin Xue Ya was alone when Mie Tian Hai humiliated his ass off, nobody is even there to saw him getting his trickster ass owned and yet, the moment Shang came up to him, asking how the hell did a giant praying mantis monster got unleashed, Lin is seen masking his agony over his humiliation and feigning a nonchalant attitude as per usual. This contrasts heavily with Season Two, where Lin is visibly upset over his failure at scheming Xiao Kuang Juan, and even goes on a rampage to show how upset he is to someone he just know several days ago.

Now into Episode 12, when Shang Bu Huan finally retrieved Night of Mourning off from Xiao Kuang Juan, and Shang called out to Lin Xue Ya to undo his disguise, we can see how the two of them have full come circle and reaches another level of trust and bond between the two of them. On this scene, with Shang Bu Huan, Lang Wu Ya, and Ling Ya all present, Lin really went and admitted how he is pissy af because he fucked up his plan with Xiao Kuang Juan. Lin. Freaking. Xue. Ya. Admitting. His. Failure. He nonchalantly brought up his failure of messing with The Fugitive Hunter and reasoned that he wants to tag along because he want to see Xiao getting his due with his own eyes (or don't you really, just wanna help, Lin). And Shang Bu Huan, hearing Lin's failure, did not flinch, did not even comment, did not even make fun of it or rejoice on Lin's failure despite Shang never agreeing with his method. Shang just brushed it by and instead offered Lin to tag along and help them.

(You want Lin on his usual fancy clothing instead of those boring lawmen outfit, don’t you Shang ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

Shang Bu Huan : Why are you following us?

Lin Xue Ya           : Well, what else? I'm hoping that you might lead me to some new amusement. To be honest, I'm feeling incredibly frustrated. I'm willing to do just about anything to clear my head as a result. If I don't see someone get their painful just dessert's soon, I think I might go mad.

Ling Ya                  : Man, this guy's as twisted as they come, huh?

Shang Bu Huan   : Well, we're about to go after Xiao Kuang Juan. You willing to help?

One episode left for Season Two, and where this season has it's ups and downs, and it's owns pros and cons, I personally think with the lesser amount of main cast we really get our main cast fleshed out more and I'm really happy with this development of Lin. As much as his trickster, jester side of a character is entertaining and incredibly potent and powerful on it's own right, but I as viewer could not help but happy seeing Lin's making some good decisions for once. Here is to praying that our main trio makes it out alive of Season Two.

[nancydrew65]

SKAM NL Season 2 Episode 3 Thoughts

This episode really hit me hard. There were a lot of things in it that I didn’t expect. Also two seven minute clips!

You’re Such a Cliche

I feel like every episode I get a little reminder of how much I love SKAM NL. They used a song by Aurora! For those who don’t know, Aurora is a young Norwegian singer. She is fantastic and such a beautiful performer. You should really check out some of her live videos. If you couldn’t tell, she is my favorite artist, and I am so happy whenever a SKAM remake includes one of her songs. I literally jumped out of my seat when I first heard one of her songs in SKAM Season 3 Episode 10. (Yes, I really memorized the episode her song appears in). Also, cool to use the song “Churchyard” as the date ends up being in a church.

I love how Liv is just in a T-shirt and sweats, like she is not putting any effort into this date at all.

Ralph and Esra are the dynamic duo I never knew I needed in my life. I love their chemistry and how they play off of each other. Lol, at them trying to join Liv when she says she is going to the movies.

Liv and Ralph fight over who answers the door, and Liv literally shoves Ralph into a table. It is glorious.

Liv takes Ralph’s jacket out of spite. They really are like siblings.

Noah doesn’t take Liv to a place with a pretty city view. THANK GOD! I mentioned before, I didn’t think that would work because Liv’s apartment already has a great view, so I am so happy they changed it. Instead Noah takes Liv to a beautiful, old, abandoned church.

Noah approaches Liv with his flashlight, accidentally shining it in her eyes and she responds by holding her phone’s light directly in front of his eyes. She can be so petty and I love it.

Noah’s “Echo” was so cute. He is really growing on me.

Noah challenges Liv on her definition of cliche. I think that was actually very interesting because the character of William really was the definition of a cliche, and for Noah to spin that as something “true” was cool.

Liv asks him if he thinks she is a cliche, which I thought was kind of weird. I have never thought that any of the Noora’s were written to be interpreted as a cliche.

Noah lists what he thinks Liv is like, which of course, as we know, is what Liv is like. I guess it’s supposed to be a moment of “Aha! He understands her”, but like, when has Noah ever had time to figure all this stuff out?

Liv asks if he trusts her, and Noah responds: “I don’t know you.” Wow. I honestly think that is one of my favorite lines that a William has ever stated. Most of the Williams have a very arrogant attitude and pretend they completely understand Noora. There is a kind of humility in Noah’s line. He acknowledges that he doesn’t know her fully. I thought that was rather beautiful.

And just as Liv starts to open up, Noah receives the phone call. LMAO at that ringtone. I laughed so hard when I heard the frogs.

There is a nice, long moment where Liv is left alone in the church, waiting for Noah and you can see the moment where she decides to leave.

I know a lot of people were speculating beforehand what the phone call was about and I am very happy to state that at the very least, the entire fandom was on the same page about it being impossible for Noah to get in a fight.

Have You Heard it Already?

Janna and Isa have been hanging out a lot this season and I love it.

By the way, I love Liv’s shirt. Fits her character.

Kes looks like such a nerd in this scene. I don’t know if that was intentional, or… ?

Engel always wants to protect people, but she goes about it in such a clueless way.

Isa is in denial that Kes went down on a girl. It doesn’t have the same impact as the OG scene though because in the cabin episode it was pretty obvious that Kes was about to go down on Isa.

I’m slightly disappointed we didn’t get Kes’ walk of fame because I think he was one of the Jonas’ that could have actually pulled it off. (Unlike Marlon from SKAM Austin, cough, cough).

But in its place, we get the slo-mo of the senior girls which more than made up for it. And damn, all those girls were gorgeous.

Janna finally puts her foot down about Engel talking about that “weird-ass artist”. Not gonna lie, it’s my new favorite description of Noah.

And then the bomb dropped. Apparently, a lot of people guessed what happened, but I was not one of them. Noah’s mother just died. As in probably on Sunday night when he was on the date with Liv. That is such a drastic change from OG, and I hope to god, they follow through on it. Like really change the storyline to accommodate for that massive change. This really changes the whole dynamic of the season because Noah will be dealing with this horrible loss. I am very interested and intrigued to see where this goes.

We can see the knowledge hit Liv as she realizes that was probably the phone call Noah got on their date. I love how kind and caring she is; she immediately texts him to apologize and see how he is doing.

A lot of people were commenting on this scene and saying, “Oh, well finally Liv feels bad.” And I was like, yeah, I would feel bad too if that happened, but Liv had no way of knowing what happened to Noah and she had every right to leave that date.

Indeed, I Think You are More of a Tiger

Esra and Ralph crashing the girls’ nail outing which is just like them.

Also, I know I say this a lot, but the aesthetics of SKAM NL are so great. The pink in this scene really stands out.

I have to say, I think the girls are being rather unfair to Engel. She basically organized the whole benefit herself. She deserves some credit and respect for that.

Liv checks her phone to see if Noah has replied. He has not.

She also pretends to have a sore throat in order to get out of singing. I think she is feeling low after she got rejected by the record studio.

I love the little banter between Engel and Janna. I wish we got more of those moments because Janna and Engel have been friends for quite some time.

Isa asks Liv what she is doing when she keeps looking at her phone, and Ralph pops his head out of his private room and asks if Liv is checking her phone again. Ralph knows what’s up.

Tallinn, Here We Come

Engel is dressed up like a traditional Estonian dancer. She looks so cute.

Wow, there is basically no one there. Ah, but we see Jayden, Kes, and Lucas, so they came to support their friends. That’s actually pretty nice of them.

Esra and Ralph come storming in, soaked to the bone from their bike ride. Engel quickly shushes them before continuing with her speech.

Everyone is bored out of their minds, watching the Estonian dancers. Everyone, that is, except Janna and Engel. My loves.

Isa finally pulls Liv aside and confronts her about her weird behavior. At first, I thought Liv would tell her all about Noah, but instead she confides about the record deal. I actually liked this because it showed what was really important to her: her music.

Isa, correctly, tells Liv that just because she got rejected by the label, it doesn’t mean she can’t sing.

Isa tries to push Liv further because she knows the record deal isn’t all that’s bothering Liv, but then Engel basically forces Liv to sing.

Oooh, and we get a moment where Isa sees Kes making out with another girl.

Liv starts singing, beautifully as always. Everyone joins in and it’s quite the uplifting scene.

Later in the evening, Ralph graces us with a stunning rendition of “Part of Your World” from ‘The Little Mermaid’. I didn’t know he could sing that well! That falsetto, though.

Liv finally gets a text from Noah. It says: “OK, no problem”. How curt. But I don’t really blame him; he has to be dealing with so much right now.

Esra turns on a song and she, Janna, and Ralph start dancing in a ridiculous, let lovable fashion. I love these three.

General Thoughts

What an episode! This week was a wild, emotional ride. Tbh, I never know when to upload these reactions because I never know when an episode ends, and a new one begins. That is really my only complaint about SKAM NL. Besides that, I really loved this episode. I know a lot of people were hoping for Noah to appear again at the end of the episode at the benefit or for Liv to go find him at the church. But personally, I enjoyed not seeing him. I think it really builds up that tension and also… it’s realistic? I mean, Noah’s mother just died (she was probably sick for a while, but I know from personal experience, even if you know it’s coming, it is still awful). Also, I want this season to focus more on Liv as a person. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really like Noah, but Liv’s season is supposed to be about Liv. I think a lot of remakes don’t really understand that and like to hype up the Noorhelm aspect of the season. I think the best remake that handled a Noora season as her own while still portraying a (reasonably) healthy relationship with a William was DRUCK. I hope SKAM NL follows in its footsteps, and so far, it really has. So, cheers to the next episode. I honestly have no idea what is going to happen!

[reneeacaseyfl]

If you hate the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup party, you’re a cop – ThinkProgress

On Wednesday morning, Megan Rapinoe, dressed in her “World Champion 2019” shirt, massive red-framed sunglasses, and her now-signature pink hair, was on a float in the ticker-tape parade in New York City, surrounded by teammates, fans, and, because nothing can be perfect, New York mayor Bill DeBlasio. She had been partying for three days straight with her teammates, ever since the moment they won their second consecutive — and fourth overall — World Cup championship in Lyon, France. But the party was far from over.

Her left foot was propped high in the air, putting her left knee about parallel with her shoulder. The World Cup trophy was in her left hand, and resting atop her knee. In her right hand, was a bottle of champagne. She turned to her friend, Ashlyn Harris — a back-up goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) whose documentation of the group’s post-victory celebration bender will go down in the annals of women’s sports history — and told the whole world through Instagram stories, “I deserve this. I deserve this. Everything.”

To some, this might be considered an off-the-cuff, light-hearted statement. But it was far from that. This was an earth-shattering declaration, a pointed rebuttal to everyone who has ever told women that their worth was tied directly to humility and modesty; a mantra for women everywhere who feel pressured to tone down their happiness to make others more comfortable, to turn down compliments or brush-off accolades. It was the opposite of, “thank you,” and a complete rejection of, “I’m sorry,” a phrase that most women utter, on average, 100 times a day, often to nobody in particular, as they merely move around the world.

It was a motto that summed up the entire World Cup run of the USWNT. Three months before the tournament began, they sued U.S. Soccer for equal pay, taking the fight for equality onto the biggest stage in the sport. Once in France, they smashed record after record and celebrated with abandon at every turn — drawing massive amounts of criticism for being too demonstrative about their happiness. They didn’t apologize; they just kept winning, and sipping tea. And then, when the last whistle blew in Lyon, France, to solidify their 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in the final, they kicked off a globe-trotting, ass-shaking, champagne-soaked, expletive-laden party, which the players — particularly Harris — shared with the public on social media.

Seeing these women cussing and pouring champagne on one another, holding signs asking for beers, unapologetically flaunting their drunken happiness in public — in a display that rivaled the shirtless shenanigans of J.R. Smith when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship, or the over-the-top water-fountain antics of Alex Ovechkin when the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup Finals last year — wasn’t just entertaining; it was down-right inspiring.

Other elite female athletes acclaimed the champs.

“I’m kind of obsessed with them right now. I just can’t. Like, they’re so dope,” Ariel Atkins, a second-year player for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, told ThinkProgress. “They’re not trying to flex for the media and trying to be like, all preppy and professional all the time. I mean, they are who they are, And that is professionalism, being exactly who you are and showing people that athletes are humans too.”

Atkins admitted that like the rest of the world, she’s spent a lot of time over the last week watching Harris’s Instagram stories. So has Sophie Cunningham, a rookie for the Phoenix Mercury.

“They are so badass. Having them go out there and being feisty the way they have been, it has been inspiring to me. For them to go out there, to see them having fun, now I want to win a championship so this team can experience that,” Cunningham said.

“They’re not hiding who they are. They are themselves. I think that is so awesome for all women and men to see.”

This all began on Sunday, after the confetti was cannoned and the trophies delivered, when the players got back to the tarp-covered locker room, put on their goggles, turned up the music, and started popping bottles. We got to see what it looked like, in real time, as the weight of the world was lifted off of their shoulders, and the women began to realize what exactly they had accomplished. The early mornings and healthy eating, the skipped parties and long workouts, the time away from family and friends and all the doubts that this team faced when it came to France, it had all been worth it. Heck, the President of the United States had even come after Rapinoe during the tournament, after a clip of her saying, “I’m not going to the fucking White House” went viral, and the team only got stronger after that.

So of course they partied. Alex Morgan twerked. Crystal Dunn chugged beer. Tobin Heath sang, “We are the champions” at the top of her lungs. Harris documented it all, and then turned the camera on herself and said, in instantly-iconic fashion, “You’re fucking welcome for this content, bitch.”

Ashlyn Harris’ instastories are the best thing on the internet rn pic.twitter.com/JLDjftOSpj

— em (@East_From_Eden) July 7, 2019

After the locker-room celebration, the players went to an after-party, where they danced on the bar, took shots, and did a lot more shouting. On Monday, they took a chartered flight back to New York City, and when they landed, they were still singing and dancing and drinking. Tuesday, after waking up early to go to Good Morning America, they had a private roof-top player’s-only pool party, and then took the party to a Yacht in the East River.

Some how, on Wednesday morning, they were still standing and able to participate in the parade, which became about far more than their World Cup victory, and turned into a rally for equality. All along the parade route, fans held signs that read, “Equal Pay.” And the players — who, it must be stressed, were surrounded by the U.S. Soccer officials they are suing during this celebration — actually used their lawsuit as confetti during the parade.

When the players stood in City Hall — still drinking — and waiting to come out on stage for the speech portion of the program, Harris took to Instagram to show copies of the lawsuit in the trees outside, and strewn across the floor of City Hall.

“Our lawsuit is in the fucking trees,” Harris said. Moments later, as Allie Long literally ate the lawsuit, Harris added, “Pay us, bitch.”

Daddy will pay us. He loves his girls.

https://t.co/WuWyb9fnWu

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 10, 2019

That afternoon, they got on a cross-country flight, received hair and makeup on the plane, and then took the ESPYs — a sports-centric awards show hosted by ESPN — by storm.

From Sunday morning to Wednesday night, every single thing these women did was about celebrating themselves. It was a flashy, raucous, attention-grabbing, euphoric, and often crude showcase of success. It was revolutionary. It was true equality.

Most of the time, female athletes either lack the time, resources, or platform to hold a celebration like this one — a celebration like we see male athletes have every single time a championship is clinched. Diana Taurasi, a guard for the Phoenix Mercury and the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, said that because of the year-round demands on female basketball players, they never get the time to celebrate like the USWNT did this week.

“We usually win something, and we never get to celebrate it. We’ve won four [Olympic] gold medals, and the next day, you’re flying back to your WNBA team,” Taurasi said. “It’s like you don’t even get to enjoy winning.”

That’s a big reason why the USWNT’s drunken victory tour meant so much to women everywhere — because most of the time, athletes or not, women aren’t encouraged or even given the time to celebrate their accomplishments.

It’s also why so many pearl-clutchers expressed outrage at the audaciousness of the championship parade. Because the world never gets to see women let loose like this. Under every single social media post about these antics, there are floods of people calling the players classless, arrogant, and embarrassing, and scolding them for not being good enough role models for little girls everywhere. But the best part of the celebration was that is wasn’t about anyone else; this team has worked so hard, not only to be the best at their craft, but to fight for equal pay for the next generation, and to stand up for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and minorities. This party was about taking a moment to celebrate themselves. Because, as Rapinoe said, they deserved it.

“I mean, they’re just being themselves. I think that’s all you can do. Just be authentically you. They’re great people, and they’re great athletes,” said Mystics’ All-Star Kristi Toliver, who is friends with Pinoe and Harris. 

“And you know, they’re about the right thing. So if that upsets people, [those people are] probably in the wrong.”

Credit: Source link

The post If you hate the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup party, you’re a cop – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/if-you-hate-the-u-s-womens-soccer-teams-world-cup-party-youre-a-cop-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-you-hate-the-u-s-womens-soccer-teams-world-cup-party-youre-a-cop-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186267054737

[robertlchapa30]

If you hate the U.S. womens soccer teams World Cup party youre a cop ThinkProgress

On Wednesday morning, Megan Rapinoe, dressed in her “World Champion 2019” shirt, massive red-framed sunglasses, and her now-signature pink hair, was on a float in the ticker-tape parade in New York City, surrounded by teammates, fans, and, because nothing can be perfect, New York mayor Bill DeBlasio. She had been partying for three days straight with her teammates, ever since the moment they won their second consecutive — and fourth overall — World Cup championship in Lyon, France. But the party was far from over.

Her left foot was propped high in the air, putting her left knee about parallel with her shoulder. The World Cup trophy was in her left hand, and resting atop her knee. In her right hand, was a bottle of champagne. She turned to her friend, Ashlyn Harris — a back-up goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) whose documentation of the group’s post-victory celebration bender will go down in the annals of women’s sports history — and told the whole world through Instagram stories, “I deserve this. I deserve this. Everything.”

To some, this might be considered an off-the-cuff, light-hearted statement. But it was far from that. This was an earth-shattering declaration, a pointed rebuttal to everyone who has ever told women that their worth was tied directly to humility and modesty; a mantra for women everywhere who feel pressured to tone down their happiness to make others more comfortable, to turn down compliments or brush-off accolades. It was the opposite of, “thank you,” and a complete rejection of, “I’m sorry,” a phrase that most women utter, on average, 100 times a day, often to nobody in particular, as they merely move around the world.

It was a motto that summed up the entire World Cup run of the USWNT. Three months before the tournament began, they sued U.S. Soccer for equal pay, taking the fight for equality onto the biggest stage in the sport. Once in France, they smashed record after record and celebrated with abandon at every turn — drawing massive amounts of criticism for being too demonstrative about their happiness. They didn’t apologize; they just kept winning, and sipping tea. And then, when the last whistle blew in Lyon, France, to solidify their 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in the final, they kicked off a globe-trotting, ass-shaking, champagne-soaked, expletive-laden party, which the players — particularly Harris — shared with the public on social media.

Seeing these women cussing and pouring champagne on one another, holding signs asking for beers, unapologetically flaunting their drunken happiness in public — in a display that rivaled the shirtless shenanigans of J.R. Smith when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship, or the over-the-top water-fountain antics of Alex Ovechkin when the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup Finals last year — wasn’t just entertaining; it was down-right inspiring.

Other elite female athletes acclaimed the champs.

“I’m kind of obsessed with them right now. I just can’t. Like, they’re so dope,” Ariel Atkins, a second-year player for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, told ThinkProgress. “They’re not trying to flex for the media and trying to be like, all preppy and professional all the time. I mean, they are who they are, And that is professionalism, being exactly who you are and showing people that athletes are humans too.”

Atkins admitted that like the rest of the world, she’s spent a lot of time over the last week watching Harris’s Instagram stories. So has Sophie Cunningham, a rookie for the Phoenix Mercury.

“They are so badass. Having them go out there and being feisty the way they have been, it has been inspiring to me. For them to go out there, to see them having fun, now I want to win a championship so this team can experience that,” Cunningham said.

“They’re not hiding who they are. They are themselves. I think that is so awesome for all women and men to see.”

This all began on Sunday, after the confetti was cannoned and the trophies delivered, when the players got back to the tarp-covered locker room, put on their goggles, turned up the music, and started popping bottles. We got to see what it looked like, in real time, as the weight of the world was lifted off of their shoulders, and the women began to realize what exactly they had accomplished. The early mornings and healthy eating, the skipped parties and long workouts, the time away from family and friends and all the doubts that this team faced when it came to France, it had all been worth it. Heck, the President of the United States had even come after Rapinoe during the tournament, after a clip of her saying, “I’m not going to the fucking White House” went viral, and the team only got stronger after that.

So of course they partied. Alex Morgan twerked. Crystal Dunn chugged beer. Tobin Heath sang, “We are the champions” at the top of her lungs. Harris documented it all, and then turned the camera on herself and said, in instantly-iconic fashion, “You’re fucking welcome for this content, bitch.”

Ashlyn Harris’ instastories are the best thing on the internet rn pic.twitter.com/JLDjftOSpj

— em (@East_From_Eden) July 7, 2019

After the locker-room celebration, the players went to an after-party, where they danced on the bar, took shots, and did a lot more shouting. On Monday, they took a chartered flight back to New York City, and when they landed, they were still singing and dancing and drinking. Tuesday, after waking up early to go to Good Morning America, they had a private roof-top player’s-only pool party, and then took the party to a Yacht in the East River.

Some how, on Wednesday morning, they were still standing and able to participate in the parade, which became about far more than their World Cup victory, and turned into a rally for equality. All along the parade route, fans held signs that read, “Equal Pay.” And the players — who, it must be stressed, were surrounded by the U.S. Soccer officials they are suing during this celebration — actually used their lawsuit as confetti during the parade.

When the players stood in City Hall — still drinking — and waiting to come out on stage for the speech portion of the program, Harris took to Instagram to show copies of the lawsuit in the trees outside, and strewn across the floor of City Hall.

“Our lawsuit is in the fucking trees,” Harris said. Moments later, as Allie Long literally ate the lawsuit, Harris added, “Pay us, bitch.”

Daddy will pay us. He loves his girls.

https://t.co/WuWyb9fnWu

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 10, 2019

That afternoon, they got on a cross-country flight, received hair and makeup on the plane, and then took the ESPYs — a sports-centric awards show hosted by ESPN — by storm.

From Sunday morning to Wednesday night, every single thing these women did was about celebrating themselves. It was a flashy, raucous, attention-grabbing, euphoric, and often crude showcase of success. It was revolutionary. It was true equality.

Most of the time, female athletes either lack the time, resources, or platform to hold a celebration like this one — a celebration like we see male athletes have every single time a championship is clinched. Diana Taurasi, a guard for the Phoenix Mercury and the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, said that because of the year-round demands on female basketball players, they never get the time to celebrate like the USWNT did this week.

“We usually win something, and we never get to celebrate it. We’ve won four [Olympic] gold medals, and the next day, you’re flying back to your WNBA team,” Taurasi said. “It’s like you don’t even get to enjoy winning.”

That’s a big reason why the USWNT’s drunken victory tour meant so much to women everywhere — because most of the time, athletes or not, women aren’t encouraged or even given the time to celebrate their accomplishments.

It’s also why so many pearl-clutchers expressed outrage at the audaciousness of the championship parade. Because the world never gets to see women let loose like this. Under every single social media post about these antics, there are floods of people calling the players classless, arrogant, and embarrassing, and scolding them for not being good enough role models for little girls everywhere. But the best part of the celebration was that is wasn’t about anyone else; this team has worked so hard, not only to be the best at their craft, but to fight for equal pay for the next generation, and to stand up for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and minorities. This party was about taking a moment to celebrate themselves. Because, as Rapinoe said, they deserved it.

“I mean, they’re just being themselves. I think that’s all you can do. Just be authentically you. They’re great people, and they’re great athletes,” said Mystics’ All-Star Kristi Toliver, who is friends with Pinoe and Harris. 

“And you know, they’re about the right thing. So if that upsets people, [those people are] probably in the wrong.”

  Credit: Source link

The post If you hate the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup party, you’re a cop – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

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[velmaemyers88]

If you hate the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup party, you’re a cop – ThinkProgress

On Wednesday morning, Megan Rapinoe, dressed in her “World Champion 2019” shirt, massive red-framed sunglasses, and her now-signature pink hair, was on a float in the ticker-tape parade in New York City, surrounded by teammates, fans, and, because nothing can be perfect, New York mayor Bill DeBlasio. She had been partying for three days straight with her teammates, ever since the moment they won their second consecutive — and fourth overall — World Cup championship in Lyon, France. But the party was far from over.

Her left foot was propped high in the air, putting her left knee about parallel with her shoulder. The World Cup trophy was in her left hand, and resting atop her knee. In her right hand, was a bottle of champagne. She turned to her friend, Ashlyn Harris — a back-up goalkeeper for the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) whose documentation of the group’s post-victory celebration bender will go down in the annals of women’s sports history — and told the whole world through Instagram stories, “I deserve this. I deserve this. Everything.”

To some, this might be considered an off-the-cuff, light-hearted statement. But it was far from that. This was an earth-shattering declaration, a pointed rebuttal to everyone who has ever told women that their worth was tied directly to humility and modesty; a mantra for women everywhere who feel pressured to tone down their happiness to make others more comfortable, to turn down compliments or brush-off accolades. It was the opposite of, “thank you,” and a complete rejection of, “I’m sorry,” a phrase that most women utter, on average, 100 times a day, often to nobody in particular, as they merely move around the world.

It was a motto that summed up the entire World Cup run of the USWNT. Three months before the tournament began, they sued U.S. Soccer for equal pay, taking the fight for equality onto the biggest stage in the sport. Once in France, they smashed record after record and celebrated with abandon at every turn — drawing massive amounts of criticism for being too demonstrative about their happiness. They didn’t apologize; they just kept winning, and sipping tea. And then, when the last whistle blew in Lyon, France, to solidify their 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in the final, they kicked off a globe-trotting, ass-shaking, champagne-soaked, expletive-laden party, which the players — particularly Harris — shared with the public on social media.

Seeing these women cussing and pouring champagne on one another, holding signs asking for beers, unapologetically flaunting their drunken happiness in public — in a display that rivaled the shirtless shenanigans of J.R. Smith when the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship, or the over-the-top water-fountain antics of Alex Ovechkin when the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup Finals last year — wasn’t just entertaining; it was down-right inspiring.

Other elite female athletes acclaimed the champs.

“I’m kind of obsessed with them right now. I just can’t. Like, they’re so dope,” Ariel Atkins, a second-year player for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, told ThinkProgress. “They’re not trying to flex for the media and trying to be like, all preppy and professional all the time. I mean, they are who they are, And that is professionalism, being exactly who you are and showing people that athletes are humans too.”

Atkins admitted that like the rest of the world, she’s spent a lot of time over the last week watching Harris’s Instagram stories. So has Sophie Cunningham, a rookie for the Phoenix Mercury.

“They are so badass. Having them go out there and being feisty the way they have been, it has been inspiring to me. For them to go out there, to see them having fun, now I want to win a championship so this team can experience that,” Cunningham said.

“They’re not hiding who they are. They are themselves. I think that is so awesome for all women and men to see.”

This all began on Sunday, after the confetti was cannoned and the trophies delivered, when the players got back to the tarp-covered locker room, put on their goggles, turned up the music, and started popping bottles. We got to see what it looked like, in real time, as the weight of the world was lifted off of their shoulders, and the women began to realize what exactly they had accomplished. The early mornings and healthy eating, the skipped parties and long workouts, the time away from family and friends and all the doubts that this team faced when it came to France, it had all been worth it. Heck, the President of the United States had even come after Rapinoe during the tournament, after a clip of her saying, “I’m not going to the fucking White House” went viral, and the team only got stronger after that.

So of course they partied. Alex Morgan twerked. Crystal Dunn chugged beer. Tobin Heath sang, “We are the champions” at the top of her lungs. Harris documented it all, and then turned the camera on herself and said, in instantly-iconic fashion, “You’re fucking welcome for this content, bitch.”

Ashlyn Harris’ instastories are the best thing on the internet rn pic.twitter.com/JLDjftOSpj

— em (@East_From_Eden) July 7, 2019

After the locker-room celebration, the players went to an after-party, where they danced on the bar, took shots, and did a lot more shouting. On Monday, they took a chartered flight back to New York City, and when they landed, they were still singing and dancing and drinking. Tuesday, after waking up early to go to Good Morning America, they had a private roof-top player’s-only pool party, and then took the party to a Yacht in the East River.

Some how, on Wednesday morning, they were still standing and able to participate in the parade, which became about far more than their World Cup victory, and turned into a rally for equality. All along the parade route, fans held signs that read, “Equal Pay.” And the players — who, it must be stressed, were surrounded by the U.S. Soccer officials they are suing during this celebration — actually used their lawsuit as confetti during the parade.

When the players stood in City Hall — still drinking — and waiting to come out on stage for the speech portion of the program, Harris took to Instagram to show copies of the lawsuit in the trees outside, and strewn across the floor of City Hall.

“Our lawsuit is in the fucking trees,” Harris said. Moments later, as Allie Long literally ate the lawsuit, Harris added, “Pay us, bitch.”

Daddy will pay us. He loves his girls.

https://t.co/WuWyb9fnWu

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 10, 2019

That afternoon, they got on a cross-country flight, received hair and makeup on the plane, and then took the ESPYs — a sports-centric awards show hosted by ESPN — by storm.

From Sunday morning to Wednesday night, every single thing these women did was about celebrating themselves. It was a flashy, raucous, attention-grabbing, euphoric, and often crude showcase of success. It was revolutionary. It was true equality.

Most of the time, female athletes either lack the time, resources, or platform to hold a celebration like this one — a celebration like we see male athletes have every single time a championship is clinched. Diana Taurasi, a guard for the Phoenix Mercury and the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, said that because of the year-round demands on female basketball players, they never get the time to celebrate like the USWNT did this week.

“We usually win something, and we never get to celebrate it. We’ve won four [Olympic] gold medals, and the next day, you’re flying back to your WNBA team,” Taurasi said. “It’s like you don’t even get to enjoy winning.”

That’s a big reason why the USWNT’s drunken victory tour meant so much to women everywhere — because most of the time, athletes or not, women aren’t encouraged or even given the time to celebrate their accomplishments.

It’s also why so many pearl-clutchers expressed outrage at the audaciousness of the championship parade. Because the world never gets to see women let loose like this. Under every single social media post about these antics, there are floods of people calling the players classless, arrogant, and embarrassing, and scolding them for not being good enough role models for little girls everywhere. But the best part of the celebration was that is wasn’t about anyone else; this team has worked so hard, not only to be the best at their craft, but to fight for equal pay for the next generation, and to stand up for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and minorities. This party was about taking a moment to celebrate themselves. Because, as Rapinoe said, they deserved it.

“I mean, they’re just being themselves. I think that’s all you can do. Just be authentically you. They’re great people, and they’re great athletes,” said Mystics’ All-Star Kristi Toliver, who is friends with Pinoe and Harris. 

“And you know, they’re about the right thing. So if that upsets people, [those people are] probably in the wrong.”

Credit: Source link

The post If you hate the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup party, you’re a cop – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/if-you-hate-the-u-s-womens-soccer-teams-world-cup-party-youre-a-cop-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-you-hate-the-u-s-womens-soccer-teams-world-cup-party-youre-a-cop-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186267054737

[jishwatylrandtop]

Open Late Pt. 2--Josh Dun

pt. 1

The first date did not go as planned, but Josh won’t let some bitchy waitress get in the way.

Words:

TW: Panic Attack

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Your POV)

     You spent the next two days sitting in your apartment. Never had you been so embarrassed on a first date, and the humility is what kept you locked in your apartment sulking and eating cartons of ice cream with a fork because apparently all your dignity left the minute you walked out of that restroom at that cafe. If you were making a list, this date would have to be at the top of the list of ‘Worst Dates in the History of Mankind.’ An exaggeration? Maybe, but that’s what it felt like to you.

     The first thing you had done after that disaster of a date, despite taking a three hour depression nap, was call Lili, your best friend and co-owner. The quickly building self-doubt and insecurity that had been stewed up by your encounter with a certain waitress had quickly overshadowed the guilt that was bound to show up by calling her while she was on vacation. It took her longer than normal to pick up her phone, making the guilt bubbling up intensify ten-fold, but it eventually connected. “Y/n? Hi!” 

“Hi, Lili.”

“Oh, no what’s wrong?” Her ability to discover your mood was not surprising. It was a testament to how well you knew each other and how much you’d been through with her by your side.

“I’m sorry for calling you on vacation. I just don’t know what to do now.”

“It’s alright, y/n. Tell me what happened.” You almost wanted to hang up and tell her to forget it. You thought it was ridiculous and embarrassing that you had let that stupid waitress get to you, but your insecurity and hurt forced you to recount the whole date to your friend, and by the time you were done, more tears had been added to the dried tear tracks, and the yearning to crawl into bed and never leave out of embarrassment was five times stronger than it had been before the call. Thinking about it, that might be karma.

“Y/n,” Lili started, “I love you, but you are ridiculous sometimes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, that waitress shouldn’t have done that. It was a bitchy ting to do, but don’t you see, y/n, you don’t need to be jealous of her because she was jealous of you.”

“What do you mean, Lili?”

“She said and did all that to try to get his attention, and then she said all that to you because it wasn’t working. She was jealous that this Josh was on a date with you and not her.”

So you’re saying the only reason that she was trying to sabotage my date was because Josh is hot and she was jealous of me, and that the only reason it worked is because I let her get under my skin?”

“Yes.” It was a simple statement, no hesitation from your best friend. You hadn’t thought about it that way, but now that you are, you realize how right she is, and how ridiculously insecure you are. “Y/n, I love you girl, but you can’t let your insecurities ruin this for you. He sounds like a real nice guy, which is the exact opposite of your previous relationship if you needed reminding. I really hope you can find this guy again because you deserve to be happy, y/n. After everything you’ve been through, you deserve someone like him. Please don’t let this one stupid waitress ruin this for you.”

“I’ll think about it, Lili. Thank you.”

“No problem, y/n.” She responded, obviously latching onto the hesitation in your voice in your last reply. “I’ll be back at the clinic in ten days. Please don’t die of embarrassment between now and then.” She chuckled as she had hung up the phone. 

     That brings you to now, two days after the date and three cartons of ice cream later. Despite your best friends advice and perspective, you were hesitant to try and connect with Josh again. You didn’t know how were going to explain everything to him even if you had the courage to face him after the fool you made of yourself. It’s not like it mattered, you had convinced yourself that he had moved on. There’s no way that an amazing guy like him could like someone like you. You had to convince yourself to just forget him. He wouldn’t want you now anyway. 

    Halfway through your fourth carton of ice cream, your phone rang. Not bothering to look at the caller ID you answer, expecting some sort of emergency at the clinic. “Hello” you mumble through a mouthful of ice cream, “this is y/n. What can I do for you?” 

“Y/N, it’s Josh.” You almost hung up as you heard his voice, but the panicked tone caused you to wait. “There’s something wrong with Jim. He won’t eat or move, and if I touch him he whimpers in pain. I’m too afraid to move him.”

“Text me your address” you reply as you spring up from bed to change and grab your emergency supplies. “Let me grab my things. I’ll be over as soon as possible.” 

“Thank you so much.” After hanging up your phone, you finish getting dressed and making yourself more presentable by actually brushing your hair and putting a little bit of makeup on to remove any signs of the previous sleepless nights. With a quick glance at the clock on your phone, you grab your bag and head out to the address illuminating your phone screen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Josh’s POV)

     I waited a couple days, still unsure whether or not to call her. Considering how things went, I doubted that she would want me to call, but I had to contact her. So I waited two days, whether that was to give her or myself more time I’m still not sure, but I waited and I planned. So two days after our date I called her, telling her that Jim was hurt or sick and that I needed her help. I just hope she could forgive me lying. Then, after I hung up, it was back to waiting. 

    It only took twenty minutes for her to show up, and if the panicked knocks weren’t enough of a clue that y/n was standing outside my door the voice that rang out “Josh, I’m here” through the door confirmed the fact. As I opened the door, she stormed in, bag in hand and stethoscope around her neck. “Take me to him” she said as I shut the door behind her. 

“Um about that...”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Your POV)

     “um about that...” he started, rubbing his neck portraying his nervousness, “I may have lied.”

“What?”

“Jim’s not actually sick or hurt. I just needed an excuse to see you. I didn’t know if you would want to speak with me after what happened so I lied to get you here.” Great, you thought to yourself, no sick dog and no reason to stay. You wanted to leave as soon as possible, so you turned attempting to go for the door before he stepped into your path, making you collide with his solid chest instead of the door. You refused to acknowledge the slight blush on your cheeks caused by the unintentional but not disappointing feel you got of his abs as you shoved yourself away. 

“Then there’s no reason to stay.” 

“Please, y/n. Hear me out.”

With a deep sigh, you reply “okay sure, but I won’t be here for long. I’m not happy you lied to me.”

     He lead you further into his house, giving you a few minutes to look around. It was quaint but not so small that you felt trapped. The inside walls were painted in nice earth tones, mostly tans and browns, but it was pleasant. The furniture was nice, most looking relatively new and expensive but not flashy. It was a nice apartment, put together in a pleasing way, but something about the place made it seemed like it was a place to stay, not really a home. Josh lead you to brown sectional in the living room, where upon closer inspection, you could see Jim sleeping, curled up by the arm. 

     “Please sit.” It wasn’t so much a command as a plea, but you sat anyway. “I want to apologize again for the lie. It’s not a habit of mine to lie to people I care about, but after that disaster of a date, I didn’t know if you would talk to me again. This seemed like the easiest way to get you here.”

“Yeah you’re right about the fact that I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Why? Did I do something wrong? Because if I did I apologize for that too.”

“No, Josh, it wasn’t you. I just couldn’t stand to face you after I embarrassed myself like that. It was so childish of me to let that waitress get into my head like that. I didn’t want to see you because I was ashamed.”

“Ashamed? You have no reason to be ashamed. That waitress had no right to do that. I don’t even know what she said to you, but y/n, it doesn’t matter.” He gave you a smile. “Y/n, I was there with you because I wanted to be. I was there with a beautiful girl who was happy to he with just Josh and not Josh Dun the drummer. I was there with a smart, funny, caring girl who deserves the world.” His mini-speech left you breathless with tears in your eyes. 

“You barely know me, Josh. Trust me, I’m not worth the trouble.”

“You’re right, y/n. I don’t know you that well, but I want to. I want to get to know you, y/n.”

“I don’t deserve it” you replied, dropping your eyes from his face to your hands which were twitching nervously in your lap. “I’m broken. You shouldn’t have to deal with my brokenness. I don’t want to do that to you.”

He gave you a sad smile, and grabbed your hands. “No one’s broken, y/n, just a little bent, but that’s okay.” He smiled again. “I’d like to take you out again. If that’s okay?”

“I’d like that.” 

“Awesome.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Two days later, and Josh was leading you into the nicest restaurant in Columbus. You had found it odd that Josh had called you hours before your date to tell you to wear your nicest outfit and to be ready to go at 7:30, and now you knew why. Bel Amour restaurant was the best restaurant in Columbus. It had five stars and a waiting list of a year, so you were baffled by the fact that Josh had somehow been able to get you two a table in a matter of days. You were way out of your comfort zone. You weren’t a fancy person, but when Josh smiled at you while dragging you to the entrance, you couldn’t bring yourself to turn around. A waiter led you both to a table in the back corner. “Josh, how did you get us in here so quickly?” The question had been bothering you since you pulled up at the valet.

“I, uh, have some pull around here. Being a famous drummer in a band from Columbus kinda gives me some perks.” He laughed nervously. “Why? Is it too much?”

“No. I just--” you took a deep breath, “I just don’t feel like I belong here.” He gave you a confused look. “I don’t belong in fancy places like this.”

“Of course you do, y/n. You may not think the same, but you’re the most beautiful woman in this room.” You blushed. 

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. Y/n, you belong in a museum.”

“That was super cheesy.” You laughed in return. 

“Well, I’m a very cheesy guy” he replied with a wink and a laugh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     The dinner went well, and there were no stupid waitresses trying to ruin the date. Josh was a gentleman, always asking questions and waiting for your responses. The conversation flowed easily and he often had you in fits of laughter. It was one of the best dates you’ve ever been on as the food was just as great as the company. At the end of the date, Josh paid the bill telling you not to worry about it that it was a date and it was his pleasure to treat such a beautiful girl. 

     You took his hand as you left the restaurant, but the flashing lights of paparazzi cameras caught you and Josh off guard. There was nothing but flashing lights and lots of yelling. “Josh Dun! Over here!” “Who’s your friend?” “What’s your name?” “Josh! How’s Tyler?” It was bizarre. Never in your life had anything like this happened to you. It was only when Josh tightened his grip on your hand and shoved through the crowd directly into his waiting car that you had realized that the two of you had been standing completely still for about one minute surrounded by the paparazzi. 

     He drove in silence, the air tense and his knuckles white against the steering wheel. It was only ten minutes back to your apartment, but the whole ride was spent in silence, but Josh, ever the gentleman, insisted that he walk you up to your apartment. “I’m sorry” he said as you unlocked your door. 

“It’s okay,” you said, turning around to face him. The look on his face caused you to pause. His eyes were downcast and watery, and he had the saddest look on his face. 

“No, y/n, I’m so sorry. This was supposed to be a good date, and it was ruined.” Years of dealing with anxiety immediately led you recognize his rapid breathing and twitching limbs. 

“Josh?” He looked up, his eyes wide. “Come inside. Let me help you.” 

You gently took his arm and led him to your couch. Despite their excitement, your two dogs obeyed your command to sit and stay. Normally when there’s new people, you let your dogs say hi, but you didn’t want to overwhelm Josh any further. “Sit here, Josh.” You sat him on the couch, pulled a blanket over his shoulders. “Relax, Josh. It’s okay. The date wasn’t ruined. I loved it, and I had a wonderful night.” 

“You did?” He looked at you again, his breathing evening out a little.

“Yeah, I did. And I’d love to do it again.” With those words, he relaxed a little, sitting back against the couch and giving you a small smile. 

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Awesome.” You huffed a laugh, and grabbed a seat next to him. 

“You okay?” You asked, leaning against his shoulder and nuzzling against him. He grabbed the blanket and wrapped his arm around you. 

“I am now.”

 You turned the TV on, and the two of you settled on watching some old black and white movies. “Hey Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“I really did enjoy tonight, despite the paparazzi.”

“Me too, y/n.” There was another bout of silence before he sucked in a nervous breath. “Y/n?” 

“Yeah Josh?” You looked up at him from your place cuddled into his side. 

“Can I kiss you?” You chuckled at the obvious nervousness.

“Yeah.” 

It was slow. He wanted to give you plenty of time to back out. When your lips touched, its like time slowed down. It was just you, him, and the feeling of your lips together. The kiss only lasted about thirty seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. You broke apart, a slow smile spreading across your face. He smiled back as he gave a little laugh. You spent the next hour cuddled against Josh, watching movies and laughing and talking. At 11:30, Josh regretfully says that he has to get home, and he stands and makes his way to your door. You give him another kiss, the height difference causing you to stand on your tippy toes. “I had a really great time tonight, y/n.”

“Me too.”

He gave you a shy smile and asked “are you free next Friday?”

“Why? Got something planned?”

“Yeah, a date with a hot girl hopefully.”

“Oh, then yeah I’m free.”

“Awesome, I’ll pick you up at 6:00.” With that, he winked and turned down the hallway, leaving you speechless and blushing. You closed your door, turning to lean against it, letting out a breath and smiling to yourself. You spend the next twenty minutes getting ready for bed, and as you lay down, you can’t help but replay this night over and over. You couldn’t contain your smile. The buzzing of your phone drew you from your daydream. 

Josh:

I had a great time tonight. Can’t wait to fall in love with you!

You smiled again, and it’s with that smile that you fell asleep, getting the best sleep you’ve had in a long time.

~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: thanks so much for the patience. I might do a part three so let me know if that’s something you might want. Feedback is not only welcome but appreciated. 

tag list: @holdingontomytacobell @its-a-me-eva

[man-i-dont-know]

BNHA Chapter 165: Thoughts and Spoilers

This chapter is lacking on action, so bombastic commentary won’t be present, sorry, but this chapter is interesting to think about, and I did do quite a bit of thinking. Anyway, getting into it (this chapter is a gold mine for background character faces, so I recommend going through it once just to see them).

This test is exactly like what we thought it would be, a test of personality. The teacher fears for her students, because they are going through the years that form who they will be, and right now they are turds. The high school students are here to set an example and to help settle the kids and make them more understanding, though the people suppose to be setting the example are not exactly.... ummm... role models? That is probably the best term, and we’ll get more into that later.

Bakugou immediately devises a plan, and I love seeing this, it really solidifies his character for me. In the past he has been described as a ball of instincts, reflexes and battle knowledge, and his standing in class also proves his intelligence. Due to his personality however, I came to the conclusion that he thinks like this: “What? Of course I got the answer right. Show my work? Well isn’t it obvious?” This kind of intelligence seems to sprout straight from the mind, but Bakugou’s plan showed that his thoughts are grounded in logic. He immediately realizes that they lost the initiative, and that there is a “boss” lurking within the crowd somewhere. This knowledge was probably gained from first hand experience of being the “boss,” but the fact that he understands and can verbalize this dynamic impressed me greatly. Knowing and verbalizing are two very different skills, and I assumed that Bakugou could not verbalize his intentions quite like that before. It is possible that this is proof of growth, that he is actually talking with comrades and setting down some base work (even though his ultimate plan is to humiliate the boss... he still has a ways to go). Though I personally believe that the boss is, pretty obviously, that weird side-part kid who has already dissed Bakugou. Bakugou is put on the side after the supposed boss says that violence won’t work and accurately guesses about his upbringing, stealing the advantage once again.

Inasa then tries, and he makes considerable progress compared to Bakugou. He starts with something safe, heroes, and works from there. His personality is much better for this type of thing (as the meat grinder guy says in his 100% necessary narration), and starts telling the kids what type of people they should be. This gets shot down too however, since the kid he was talking too pointed out that he wasn’t in any place to talk from either. This made me think some. Inasa took a good approach, no B.S. and just told them what a good person should do and two thoughts hit me. 1.) If Inasa admitted his mistake and continued to push the thought, would he have succeeded? Would humility work in this scenario or would the kids see that as completely destroying his credibility? And 2.) Was lecturing them in the first place a good idea? This could very well be showing that lecturing about something good with good intentions is still lecturing and no one really has any moral high ground, so a fundamentally flawed approach. Inasa apologizes for overstepping his bounds and he tags out (with a fiery flare).

Then we get a handful of panels that show... something. Bakugou wants to settle this with violence (shocker), but Todoroki stops him, and says that there is a better way. Bakugou claims this was how he was raised, but he remembers when he accidentally eavesdropped on Todoroki confessing to Deku about the abusive upbringing he had and the overwhelming hatred that Todoroki still carries. Bakugou stops, and lets Todoroki do it his way. This is improvement, this is consideration and empathy. Bakugou has impressed me twice this chapter, and his growth and improvement may appear small, but it is certainly there, he is growing and learning.

Endeavor is also growing in the stands slightly. He admits to All Might that he understands the difference between them as heroes, but in his words it shows that he also rejects the part of All Might that made him the Number One Hero, Endeavor rejects the so-called “crowd-pleasing,” because he wants to be the strongest. I have already shared my opinions on why All Might was ranked higher (a general feeling of security), but All Might took the conversation in an unexpected direction (at least it was nothing I predicted, though it makes sense). All Might states what made him want to be the symbol that he was, he spoke about wanting to be hope for the innocent and a warning (”warning,” is not aggressive) for criminals. He spoke about the sacrifices that he made for it, which Endeavor knows about Sir Nighteye, but he says it passively, with no meaning, for such a terrible guy, being respectful of the dead was surprising. All Might also shares some understanding, he knows the situation Endeavor is in and tells him this, “you don’t have to be the same type of symbol.” This struck me. I always wanted Deku to grow into something different than All Might, but I feared him falling into All Might’s legacy, but here is All Might, telling a man who hated him for years to be a different symbol. A different symbol was something I hadn’t imagined for anyone other than Deku, I suppose I imagined a symbol-less place until Deku matured. As much as everyone hates Endeavor, I see genuine potential from him. He is already growing and maturing and seeking advice, he won’t be any symbol of hope, but he certainly could become a symbol of strength. If he mellows out, becomes calm, confident, swift and determined, he could set people at ease, or at least ward off crime for a time. A good analogy would be this: Endeavor is a standing army, scary yes, but it would be comforting to know that it stands with you rather than against you. We might have a couple symbols before Deku takes the stage, and I am okay with that, plus, the fan art could be really cool. Blue background All Might, “Peace,” Red background Endeavor, “Strength,” some other primary or secondary color background hero, “some abstract idea.” It could be cool.

Unfortunately, Endeavor does not comprehend the word “chill,” and whips around when Todoroki steps up to bat and screams his support once more. Todoroki understands the generals of what you have to do to get people to trust you, but he can’t seem to execute it. He basically gives a character description of himself and the kids lose interest, or they are amazed by his total lack of social skills. Todoroki is forced to retire and try again later.

The next idea is brought up by Camie, and Bakugou agrees. Show off our quirks and show them who we are. This is a good take, “lead by example,” but those leading kinda don’t know restraint... so this could get rough. But once again, the kids steal the initiative. They activate their quirks as well, but only after a brief discussion that explains where all this confidence comes from. The live in a world where they hear all the criticisms of heroes all the time, and with the fall of the symbol of peace, the raise of the League of Villains, and several other social factors, to them, this generation of heroes can not be trusted or that they are unreliable, thus, they believe that they can be better. This is good in moderation, but it seems that the presence of this “boss” has jacked up their pride one hundred-fold. The boss probably took advantage of this social criticism of heroes to wreck havoc, meaning, the boss is a turd. The display of quirks by the high schoolers is the best way to show that they are competent and that their unease and pride are... unfounded? That seems a little harsh, maybe just the realization that they are safer than they believed will settle their spirits.

Well, that’s all. I said this my last post, but I am glad that this arc is right after the raid arc. It is a good change of pace and it looks more closely at the specifics and technicalities of what it means to be a hero instead of just punching villains. The only other comment that I want to make is this: I am curious as to what Camie’s quirk is, we haven’t seen her use it yet since last time we saw her do anything was actually Toga. So I am curious as to what it is, how well she can control it, and what her role will be in appeasing the children. Thank you for reading this and I hope you have a great day, and happy new year.