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wolvesandpetals · 3 years ago

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Loki x Sylvie Post-Finale Fanfiction (Angst, Rated Teen) Part 2 of 2

Part 1 is here:

She never knew it would hurt this much when the person she loves is right in front of her, but she can't reach out and touch him; when she is still her, he is still him, but everything else has changed, like an invisible lever in an old theatre changing the scenery in the background, bringing them both to the part of the play where they are hopelessly lost.

[[MORE]]

All it took was one single moment, one single decision, and everything feels irrevocably broken now. It makes her contemplate on the true nature of relationships, how fragile they are, and how easy it is to shatter them- and her.

The smoke is slowly clearing, and all that seems to be left is a man who is doing his best to keep his distance from her, physically and emotionally.

She can tell from the way he stands with his arms crossed, or his fists clenced when his hands are by his side, that he really doesn't want to hold her hand. How can something so simple as the touch of his fingers be so vital to her existence that it feels like something has been ripped out from inside her?

She wants to reach out and touch him, but she is scared that if he pulls away outright, any hope of reconciliation that she still has left will shatter into pieces.

And she really needs this hope. It's the only thing she still has left. It's the only thing that keeps her going.

---

He looks like a man with a mission.

They spent quite a long time together, running from the TVA, running towards the citadel at the end of time, hoping to achieve their goal of bringing down the one behind the curtains.

But that was her mission, and he was there for her. She was the one behind the wheels, he was the one keeping the sails afloat.

Now it's different. Now he has a defined goal, a glorious purpose.

She's seeing him in a whole new light now, and not just because he has switched to Asgardian leather and metal armors.

As far as she is concerned, she is better off doing it all alone. One woman army, nobody to get in her way, nobody to screw up her plans. Nobody to blame her if it all goes to shit.

Or so it was, until two months ago, when Mobius decided to enlist her help in fixing the multiversal madness.

She has never really worked with people before, and it's weird, to say the least. She never considered herself a team player, but she is finding herself hating the idea less and less lately.

And she swears it has nothing to do with him. Not the fact that they are working together, and seeing his face first thing in the morning brings her a sense of calm that she quite can't explain. Or the fact that their rooms are next to each other and it makes her feel secure enough to finally get some rest at nights. Or that this whole arrangement has kept them on talking terms, when they had gone their own separate ways otherwise.

Nothing to do with that at all.

---

Humans are stupid, and the biggest evidence of this is how they decided that two extremely powerful Gods skilled at magic, enchantment, and defeating an evil extra dimensional cloud that swallows everything it touches, should be delegated to the role of research. "You're clever. You're good at reading people. You can put yourselves in the shoes of the bad guys, no offense", they said, but really, what they meant was, "We can't trust you out in the field much." She knows it, he knows it. She just doesn't know why he's complying.

That's how they find themselves researching every single day.

She likes to think he's not the only reason why she's studying in the library instead of in the comfort of her room, but that'd be a lie.

At first, he chooses to sit at a separate table. But she keeps going over to his to "get his opinion" on something in the file she's reading, and finally, he gives in. Their current arrangement consists of him sitting in the chair in front of her, to the left, prim and proper, while she hoists her feet up on the table.

He falls asleep on the desk one night, face smacked against a file, the tiniest bit of drool forming at the corner of his mouth. It would be a hilarious sight, if her heart wasn't feeling what she can only describe as longing.

They should probably talk about it, like mature adults, but neither of them know how to do that.

All she can do right now is gather the courage to run her fingers through his hair. The touch is hesitant at first, as if one wrong move would make him wake up and push her back to square one. Slowly, she relaxes, letting her fingers dance on his scalp.

He stirs in his sleep. "Please Sif. I'm sorry. Don't cut off my glorious locks, please."

Now this is a story she must hear when things are better.

If things are better.

---

Doctor Strange joins them very briefly, very rarely, but the tension between him and Loki is hard to miss. It's worse than the current situation with her, and that's saying something.

"You don't really like Stephen, do you?"

Something inside him seems to shift, but he masks it behind a non-chalant look immediately and just arches an eyebrow at her. "He's Stephen now, is he?"

"Well, that is his name." She shrugs. "What do you call him?"

"Strange", he spits the word out with an amount of irritation that indicates there definitely is a story there. "That is his name", he mimics.

She can't help the smirk that spreads across her lips. "What did he do to you?"

"Nothing", he lies, ignoring the horrifying flashbacks of thirty minutes of endless falling. Not a single soul must ever know a mere human got the best of him. "What can he do to me? I'm a God among those mortals. He just irks me because he is so pompous, and arrogant, and he ceaselessly uses magic to toy with others."

She pretends to think deeply. "Now where have I seen that before?"

He scoffs. "You mock me, but I am nothing like him. For one, I am not rude."

"He seems fine to me", she declares decisively.

It's the first time in months that he gives her a cheeky grin. "That's because you're rude too."

---

They are still just containing the threats to their world, instead of finding a way to fortify the barriers between worlds and stop the threats from coming.

"Shouldn't we have a plan to seal off the other worlds from ours?" She asks him one day.

"They are working on it." He tells her, and then with a look of worry, adds, "I hope."

There are debates on what to do at the Avengers tower and at the TVA. Nobody seems to agree on what the best course of action is, but everyone seems to be following the general instructions of Doctor Strange.

During one such meeting, a Minuteman makes the mistake of voicing out loud how she wondered if things would be better if they were running according to their old boss's plans.

Sylvie feels the guilt wash over her once more.

"No", Loki tells them all firmly. The determination in his voice takes her completely by surprise. "Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition’s blurred." She catches him steal a glance at her direction. "We couldn't have left a dictator in charge just because it's convenient. Listen, I'm the bad guy. I've done horrible, unspeakable things. I thought humans needed to be ruled. I wanted to rule. But even I know that it's not right to take away a person's life completely. These are innocent people. You are innocent people. You have families back home, parents, children", a pause and a softening of his features, "-love. A whole past, a whole future. That man had no right to take it away from you."

His powers of persuasion are foreign to her, and it's mesmerizing to watch. Her enchantments cannot hold a candle to how he is able to just talk people into doing what he wants, thinking what he thinks, seeing what he sees.

"He who remains had a plan. One, singular plan, from one, singular man." There is absolute conviction in his voice. "It's not the only way. We'll find another way. A better way."

She has never known what it is like to have someone see you for who you are- broken and flawed, and defend you- even your well-intentioned actions that yielded different results than what you expected and hurt them in the process. She suspects it has been the same for him, a lifetime of not having anyone have his back.

The warm feeling inside her is brand new. What is the name of this? Comfort? Relief?

Happiness?

---

This will be their first time out in the field in a long time, and she feels a little sick to the stomach.

He notices. "Are you alright?"

The concern in his voice tugs at her heartstrings. She nods. She has faced way worse, she shouldn't be so nervous about this, but she is. "I've never done this before."

"We can always just kill him and blame it on the Chitauris", he suggests with a serious face.

"I heard that", Peter yells from the other room, where he is doing whatever it is that teenagers do to prepare for battle.

She shakes her head in disbelief. "I can't believe we're babysitting."

"I've done this before", he assures her, and it surprises her to picture him being entrusted with such a serious task. "The trick is to conjure up illusions that keep them distracted enough to not cry."

She laughs. "You're thinking of infants. This one is a little older."

"I'm over a thousand years old, Sylvie. They're all infants to me."

Peter joins them, mask covering his face so that he doesn't reveal his identity. "So what do I call you? Loki and Loki? That's confusing. How about Loki and Lady Loki? Or is that offensive? I'm not suggesting women are inferior, because they're absolutely not..."

"Does he come with an off switch?" She whispers in horror as Peter rambles on.

Loki grins. With one wave of his hand and a flash of green, Peter's own webbing shoots out and seals his mouth shut.

---

Things are fine but not fine at the same time. He's right there beside her, but not there at all. They have their banters, they have their stolen glances, but they haven't had a meaningful conversation since that first day when she got back. She's been putting it off for a long time, but she knows they really do need to have the talk.

She corners him in his room one evening while he's tinkering with a temporal collar. She takes a seat in the chair next to his bed and rests her hand on the table, leaning her head against her palm, before switching position and crossing her arms and legs. Everything about her posture screams uneasiness. If he notices- he probably does- he doesn't say anything.

"You defended me that day."

He briefly looks up from the task at hand and gives her a soft smile. "Of course."

She blinks. "I don't understand." Her hands involuntary rise up to rub her temples. "If you can justify my actions to them, then how can you still be mad at me?"

"I'm not mad at you", he says without missing a beat.

"Rubbish", her words come out angrier than she intended. This frustration is the result of the months of status quo they have had. She has to know now, one way or the other. "You're distant. You're guarded", she accuses. Then her voice breaks, as she feels a part of her break all over again with her next words. "You don't hold my hand. Why? Tell me."

He abandons the collar and focuses his full attention on her. Staring straight into her eyes, he answers her. "You know why."

"I wouldn't be asking if I did. Look, if it's because I chose the mission over you-"

"-Of course it's not that." He says decisively. Then a sad smile clouds his face. It's the same look he had when she accused him of conning her to gain the throne. "Do you think I'm the type of man who would want a woman to abandon her life-long ambitions just because she has met someone?"

She knows he isn't. But it still doesn't answer why he is so cross with her. "What is it then?"

He pauses for a moment, trying to decide whether he wants to bare his soul out to her once more or not. There are two ways he can go from here- choose to not let her in again and save himself from the hurt, or trust her again and open himself up to potential pain.

Who is he kidding? Pushing her away- keeping her away- doesn't hurt any less.

There were a thousand things that had to go wrong to bring two Lokis from two universes together. A connection like that, it doesn't just happen.

And it doesn't just go away. The pain is constant, it's a part of him, pounding like a second heart every second he has to stop himself from reaching out for her hand.

This has to come to an end.

He takes in a deep breath, bracing himself. "You didn't have to send me away, Sylvie. I wanted to stop you from making the same mistakes I did. But in the end, I didn't care what you chose. I just wanted us to do it together."

She never even imagined this could be the reason for his hurt. All these months spent thinking he hates her for her choices, and now it turns out he is hurt simply because she chose to do it alone? "I'm sorry." She says sincerely. "I just wanted you to be safe."

"And I just wanted to be there with you till the end." He confesses. His eyes shimmer with the emotions he has kept bottled in for so long. "You go, I go."

She doesn't know what to say to that. She has never been good at articulating her feelings. Tears stream down her cheeks at the realisation that even after everything, he is still there for her.

She didn't cry even back at Lamentis when they thought they were going to die. She doesn't let anyone see her cry when she is sad or scared. That's all she has known her whole life. She's used to it by now.

This is new. These are tears of relief. Comfort.

Happiness.

Tentatively, she crosses over to the bed and sits by his side.

It's quiet for a few minutes. But unlike the months of tension so thick she could cut it into splices with her daggers, this is comfortable silence. The kind they had before it all went wrong.

"Did you even miss me?" He whispers.

"What kind of silly question is that? Of course I did." Her shaking hands grab his, and oh how she missed this.

He intertwines their fingers. His eyes draw closed. Bliss. That's the only word for this feeling.

He opens his eyes again and studies her. She's staring back at him, teary-eyed, but with a hopeful smile. "Really? Because you have a really unique way of showing it. You didn't even come looking for me."

"I didn't know how to face you", she tells him honestly. No tricks, no enchantment, no treachery. Not with him. "I didn't know if you even wanted to see me." Her voice grows quieter, dropping to a timbre that perfectly encapsulates her deepest fear. "I thought you hated me."

"Hate you?" He is shocked that she thinks that is even possible, specially after seeing him these last few months. "Sylvie, I'm working with the Avengers. The Avengers. Do you know how much I hate them? They are my nemesis. They're self-righteous, condescending, and so completely dull. Every second with them makes me want to rip their hearts out. Why do you think I'm here with them?"

She thinks she knows. But she needs to hear it anyway.

"It's because of you." He lays it all out on the table. All cards on deck, win or lose. "You've been running away. I have been the one who has been here, trying to hold down the fort, working to fix everything. Because that is what one does when one loves-"

Shit. The word slips out before he realises it.

Their eyes go wide in unison.

"Sylvie, I-"

"-Don't you dare take it back now." She warns him. "I-" She doesn't know how to say it either. They make such a great pair, both equally daft at saying how they feel, like they are teenagers, not Gods who have lived for centuries. "I've been running because I didn't think I could bear the burden of knowing I found you and then I lost you. I don't want to lose you. Not now, not ever."

He kisses the back of her hand, before letting it go. He cups her face, gently caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. "I don't want to lose you either."

She leans in closer, until their foreheads touch. She can feel his breath on her face, warm and soft. That is exactly how she feels inside. "You won't", she promises. "You go, I go."

---

(Quote on Lesser Evil from The Witcher. Thanks for reading!!)

#fanfiction #fanfic #loki #loki disney+#loki x sylvie #sylki #sylvie laufeydottir #sylvie x loki #pro sylki

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teatitty · 3 years ago

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*rolls up sleeves* As you wish! This is a long one though, so buckle up! ☆

So, in Lostbelt 6 we finally got Beryl's backstory. And it was every bit as awful as a lot of people had been surmising, if not worse. He did horrible things to Mash, and the worst part of all is it was justified in his mind through his "love" for her. But the crowning jewel of it all was it being confirmed that when Roman booted Beryl from Mash's room during the infamous "sneaking in incident" itself, he didn't do it kindly. It was also implied pretty strongly that not only was he not calm about throwing Beryl out, but that it was a miracle that Beryl walked away from the experience at all. This fits nicely with the "Romani is super protective of the people he cares about, almost to a fault, and can be absolutely vicious about it if pushed hard enough" vibe, which is cool. Very validating to see the doc getting to be more three-dimensional as a character. But we also know Roman is suuuper hard on himself, and tends to earnestly gather the opinions of others to assess who he is as a person. So I'd imagine he'd be a little out of sorts following such a huge event, especially since there's part of him that knows if he still had his clairvoyance, he could have prevented the entire thing from happening at all. But he's still a bit green as a normal human, and so not very good at hiding his emotions, and the turbulence he's feeling towards Beryl and himself and everything else is written aaalll over his face. And between the blaze in his eyes and the rumors spreading around Chaldea like wildfire, a lot of people start to... steer clear of him. Cautionary whispers start to circulate that it's best not to anger the Director's favorite doctor, that he's secretly a loose canon just waiting to unload on the next unfortunate soul to give him a chance. No one could be that sincere anyway, they reason, so it makes sense that Roman's bubbly facade was hiding something nasty beneath it. And Roman's seen this behavior before. The whispering, the distance, all of it. Being the King of Mages illicited similar reactions, after all, and he was no stranger to being, well, a stranger. So he settles in to the notion of a second life of isolation, and draws back from the people around him. It was only a matter of time before the jig was up anyway.

At least, that's what he was thinking before he was startled halfway back to the Throne by the resounding clink of a coffee cup being set down beside him. The clang was loud enough that the whole cafeteria came to a halt, the spotlight suddenly placed securely on the secluded little corner Romani had been brooding in, and truthfully he was half-afraid to look for fear that the empty cup of his own he'd been ignoring had shattered on its own. That was honestly the last thing he needed right now, more evidence that he was frothing at the mouth, right? But then a laugh like bells reached his ears, and he turned to see Leo standing there with the warmest, softest look he'd ever seen her wear. She looked angelic, absolutely ethereal, and the slight crease at her eyes seemed to say "it's all going to be okay now." Naturally, he blinked and it was gone, and with perfect timing Leonardo had slid into one of the seats opposed to him with a flourish, loudly proclaiming to the shock of the onlookers that it was near criminal to mope in the presence of a genius, especially one who'd brought coffee to share. Beside himself, Romani could only gawk, blinking owlishly at the Heroic Spirit who, up until this point, seemed to only regard him with frustration and mild annoyance at best. But if Da Vinci recollected such experiences, she didn't show it, her gaze instead regarding him as if they were the oldest of friends before sweeping around challengingly across her audience, daring them to speak against her judgement. And though it was a bit awkward at first, it was... nice to have someone to talk to, Roman thought. (Even someone who liked coffee with not nearly enough sugar in it).

Of course, that was hardly the end of it. And when the rumors spread to Leo, hissed in secret by concerned staff, suddenly people find that green wasn't quite so scary a color as blue. She listens to the stir with a smile sharp as the talons drumming idly on the table in front of her, and the look in her dazzling doe eyes threatens them to give her every last detail they know. The picture of poise, her champagne tone is so thick with murder you could paint with it, and yet crafted so artfully it leaves the gossipers wondering if they've hallucinated the malicious aura around them or not. But a genius knows the value of patience when weaving a trap, and so she waits, and she waits, and she waits. She provides polite insight, little nods that she was paying attention, and little else, little more. Just a friendly conversation.... until the gossipers have so thoroughly locked themselves in with lies it's almost too easy to obliterate them in their tracks.

You see, what nobody knew was that Leo was there when Roman through Beryl out, her instincts as a high ranking Heroic Spirit tipping her off to the sudden tidal wave of of mana coming from Mash's quarters in the medbay. She saw it all, from start to bloody finish, her presence missed among the commotion, and where others had found something to fear, Leo had felt the stir of an emotion far more ginger. How many times in her natural life had she wished for someone to protect her from the evils of the world like that? How many times had she wished in her cell for someone to sweep in and decimate the people who'd wronged her like that? Broader still, how many times had she borne witness to someone shaking their head sadly, or lamenting because yet another little girl had fallen prey to a predator who wielded too much power to ever be stopped? And yet here was this strange little pushover of a man, completely obliterating one of the Director's prized A-Team members to protect a little girl many had considered a pet project at most. She couldn't be sure about a lot of what she saw— mainly the mana where there should be none, or the strange, golden glint to Roman's eyes. But she knew she had witnessed something done in pure altruism, and that there was one less innocent who went undefended because of it. Leo was also quite used to being ostracized to various degrees herself, not that she took it personally of course! (aha...) Being such an eccentric, beautiful, charismatic, talented genius was a tough existence, after all! Not many could keep up with her, and insecure people get so mean sometimes. (Not to mention that it was even tougher when she was still back in Italy, and often twice as lonely.) So, seeing as she is also so very compassionate and wise, she simply could not allow the same fate to happen to Roman! Especially not over something like this! It was only right to rescue him from infinite exile. Anyone with a conscience would have done the same!

(But oh, if only she'd known how he'd rescue her too, and how preciously love could bloom, even in the arctic, even at the end of the world.)

GRIPS YOU TIGHTLY

ANON WE ARE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH WITH THESE TWO, YOU UNDERSTAND WHY ME AND LYRE WERE ROMAVINCI STANS THE FIRST TIME WE SAW THEM TOGETHER, THEY ARE M A R R I E D BUT EVEN OUTSIDE OF THAT YES YES YES TO ALL OF THIS BEAUTIFUL META ON THEIR CHARACTERS AND HOW THEY INTERACT WITH PEOPLE AND ALSO FUCK BERYL LIVES ACTUALLY LMAOOO

#fgo spoilers #long post #romavinci nerd #romavinci #added the tag u suggested too since u wanted it uwu #amen to asks having longer word limits now btw #I wish i had better words to share #but i am instead flailing and squealing with delight #Anonymous #asks

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moonbeambucky · 5 years ago

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Hey Neighbor (Part 16)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader Word Count: 2694 Warnings: fluff

Summary: You had a plan and then life came along with one of its own. With your future almost derailed you worked hard to get yourself back on track and finally everything seemed to be going right… that is, until your new neighbor moved in.

A/N: Feedback is always appreciated!

PART 15 | HEY NEIGHBOR MASTERLIST

Six weeks. That’s how much notice Bucky gave you until the wedding. You said yes to being his date before you had actually confirmed anything with work. The wedding was on the first Saturday in June but you would need to take off of work that Friday as well.

Technically one day off from Stark Industries wouldn’t be so bad and as predicted you were given the day easily. Unfortunately, you would have to take two days off at Metro-General and you really hoped that would be alright.

You hadn’t taken many days off since you began; a day for when you had food poisoning, another on the day of Wanda’s museum exhibit, but the hospital was a busy place and Elena was notoriously strict. Plus the more days you took off meant the more hours you would have to make up, which meant the longer it would take to fulfill your final requirement before graduating.

Once again, Marya’s words come to mind. Life will not wait for you so you needed to live it in the moment. It’s only two days.

With renewed confidence you knocked on Elena’s door and asked for the days off.

“Vacation?” she wondered.

“It’s for a wedding actually.”

Her dark eyes lit up at your answer. “Oh very nice. Where is it?”

“I’m not sure exactly. Somewhere in Long Island,” you chuckled, explaining that you were asked by a close friend to be his date.

After all these months of working together you realized this was the most personal conversation you’ve ever had with Elena. You had always tried to respect the boundaries of her as your boss but it was surprising as she seemed to open up first, letting down the guard she had carefully built up to protect herself while working in this field. Her approach carried over with her co-workers up until now.

“Mack was a close friend of mine once...” she said, turning the picture frame on her desk around towards you.

The photo showed her in the arms of a medium-brown skinned man with a dark beard and shaved head. Her whole face was smiling as she stared into his eyes and he was looking back at her like she was the only thing that gave meaning to life. Judging by their clothes you realized this was a wedding photo.

“You’re married? Since when?” You may have blurted that out a little bit louder than you expected but it was a bit of a shock considering she doesn’t wear a ring.

“Since I asked him,” she laughed. “Two years now, but we’ve been together for six and friends for a lot longer than that.”

Ahh now you understand what she was implying. “It’s not like that with me and Bucky. Well…” You bit your lip with uncertainty. “I don’t know. We’re friends and we kissed once but he’s dating other people and–”

“Yet he asked you to be his date.” She smirked, giving you a knowing stare.

Elena had given you the days off but part of you wished she didn’t. On the surface, Bucky was just a friend asking another friend for a favor but the more you thought about your history the more conflicted you felt.

From the moment he’s come into your life you’ve felt something towards Bucky. Sure his looks were undeniable but there was so much more about him. The passion he had for music matched what you felt for social work, and you connected, both of you realizing that each field plays an important role in helping people.

The more your friendship grew it felt like you were always meant to be in each other’s lives and you couldn’t imagine life without Bucky since he had become such a huge part of it. But you weren’t anything more than friends. That’s all.

The warm sun shines directly into your eyes as you exit the subway, trying your best to hear Peggy over the increased amount of people on the street. New York was always crowded but warm weather was a magnet that seemed to pull everyone out of their homes, drawing them outdoors to enjoy the beautiful day.

With Wanda on your left the three of you talk plans for Memorial Day weekend; it’s two weeks away and you’re trying to organize something for everyone to do together.

“I’m not sure if Sam has off or not yet but I do have some news,” Wanda said enticingly, biting her lip to contain her excitement. So many thoughts ran through your head as you waited for her to drop the details. “Sam and I are gonna move in together!”

“Oh Wanda, that’s brilliant!” Peggy said, her red painted lips stretching across her face in a beaming smile.

“I’m so happy for you two! When are you moving? And where?” you asked.

“His apartment is bigger so I’m moving there, hopefully by the end of the month but we’ll see. It’s hard with his schedule sometimes but I definitely want to be out as soon as possible.”

You offered assistance to help her pack and Peggy suggested making it a night with girls, with wine as a little motivation. “Yes, perfect!” Wanda agreed.

If only finding a dress for the wedding was as easy as helping Wanda move. You had already made a few trips to the department stores, trying on the perfect dress that fit like a dream and made you look incredible. Unfortunately, it cost more than your rent so it went back on the rack.

Your disappointing trip was made a little better by the promise of your friends to help you which is what you were doing now. One more block to go and you would be at the boutique you’ve never heard of before where Natasha was meeting you.

Opening the doors made you a little concerned. The place looked like it was from another planet. The glossy black ceiling stood in contrast to the bright white walls that were made up of three dimensional geometric tiles.

Silver accented the space from the large framed mirrors that leaned against the walls to the velvet pewter asymmetrically curved couch outside the dressing room. The clothes themselves looked normal at least, dresses of all kinds displayed on racks within silver frames, making them look like they were encased in glass.

Peggy and Wanda spread out to look for dresses, trying to find ones that resembled the overpriced gown you had only taken a selfie of to remember it by. Immediately you were drawn to a rack of flowy pastel colored ones, draping a few different styles over your arm.

In the middle of your search you heard Natasha call your name, and turning around to greet her you didn’t expect to see an unfamiliar face. She stood next to a man that towered over her small frame. A shock of ice blonde hair and matching bleached eyebrows caught your attention first before you moved on to his outfit, a red vest, leather pants and fur coat that seemed to only have one sleeve.

“Y/N, this is Taneleer Tivan, owner of The Tivan Collection,” she whispered the last line in a way as if you were meant to know who he was.

“Oh, it’s nice to meet you,” you said, though his facial expression didn’t change.

Though his eyes were surrounded by a smudge of dark liner you were able to see clearly the way he looked down in disgust at the dresses you held.

“Carina!” he shouted, and a moment later a girl came running forward. She wore a white vinyl dress that looked more like something you expected the store to sell, although her outfit is much more subdued than her boss’s.

She waited in silence with her hands clasped in front of her, in what seemed like a routine she was quite familiar with. “These are all wrong,” Taneleer said to you and suddenly the dresses were being taken out of your hands by his assistant. “I have much better in my collection.”

To your shock Carina was beside you again, ushering you towards a different section of racks that had more appropriate gowns despite neither her or her boss knowing what event you were shopping for. Thinking back, the pastels might have been a bit too casual anyway.

As you perused the new section you found an assortment of beautiful dresses, some absolutely stunning ones that had you worrying about the price. Natasha can certainly afford a lot more than you but glancing down at the tag you were surprised to see how reasonable things were. You took out a few jewel toned ones to try on that caught your eye.

“Y/N, what do you think of these?”

Peggy’s soft voice made you turn around. The first dress she held up was a satin one shoulder gown in black.

“Oh I like the design,” you said, pointing to the ruffles falling from the shoulder.

The next one she held up was a shimmering emerald dress whose classic mermaid style made you feel like you should be going to the Oscars instead of a wedding.

“Peggy, that’s too formal!” Wanda chimed in, huffing as she came over with more than a half dozen sparkly dresses.

She made room on the nearest rack to hang them, excitedly showing each one off to you. The first was a gorgeous sequined dress, rose gold sparkling in the light. It was undeniably beautiful but you had reservations. You were a guest at someone’s wedding and didn’t want to draw too much attention.

“This one is similar but you’ll see the difference,” she added, holding up another rose gold sequined dress, this one with a plunging V-neckline and a low open back.

“Wanda, that’s…” You stopped yourself from saying anything, grimacing uncomfortably at the dress that was so wrong.

“That looks like a slutty prom dress,” Natasha laughed, saying the thoughts you didn’t say aloud.

Wanda scrunched her face at Natasha before continuing with the next set of dresses. They were less eye catching as the others but still in the sparkly realm. You set aside a shimmering off the shoulder dress in turquoise that looked more like the ocean glittering in sunshine. The neckline was still a bit low but the back was more appropriately cut.

Natasha handed you one dress, a stunning red gown of flowing chiffon with a beautifully embellished bodice of lace and beading. The high neck of the dress complimented the tasteful open back design.

“Okay I’m getting overwhelmed. I have to start trying things on.”

With dresses in tow you made your way inside the fitting room and closed the curtain. Natasha sat across from Peggy and Wanda, checking work emails from her phone despite it being Sunday.

“Nat, did you get your wedding dress from here?” Wanda curiously wondered as her eyes roamed the store.

Her lips pursed as she took a deep breath. “I haven’t found a dress yet. I think we might have to push off the wedding again.”

“What was that?” you said, pushing open the curtains.

Peggy’s face lit up with a smile as you stepped out in a purple dress with lace detailing on the bodice. “You look beautiful!”

Your head turned towards the larger mirrors for a second to admire how you looked in the dress before you remembered the muffled conversation you heard through the curtain.

“Wait, Tash, did you say you’re pushing off the wedding again?”

She huffed loudly, leaning over and covering the frustration on her face with her hands. When she finally lifted her head you saw the desperation in her eyes. “I’m ready to say ‘fuck it’ and go to the courthouse.”

With Natasha’s ever increasing workload you’re quite surprised she hasn’t done this already. It doesn’t seem like she and Clint have made any progress since you’ve known them.

“Forget me,” she said, waving her hand as if to push the burdensome thoughts away. “That dress is pretty but there’s no wow factor.”

You looked in the mirror, realizing she was right. The next dress you put on was the red one Natasha picked out and that one definitely wowed but not in a good way. The bodice of the dress had an uneven cut that exposed part of your sides making you feel uncomfortable.

The one shoulder dress Peggy picked out was too tight but even if there was another size you didn’t like the satin. Wanda’s sparkly dress was a maybe but you weren’t completely sold on it yet. After changing in and out of a few more dresses you started to sweat and all you wanted to do was leave.

While hanging the dress you just stepped out of back up you saw there was one more left and your eyes lit up. You don’t remember grabbing this dress but it was meant to be from the moment you slipped it on.

It was a beautiful navy blue gown, with fluttering ruffles down the modest V-neck that also mirrored the back. Compared to some of the others this was a much simpler dress but there was something about it that felt right. It fit like a dream, flattering every part of you while still allowing for movement. Weddings mean dancing and the thought of dancing with Bucky made goosebumps prickle all over your skin.

As you opened the curtain you saw everyone’s jaws drop, their eyes lighting up as you stood in front of them.

“This! This is it!”

“You really think?” you asked, looking over your shoulder to see how it looks from behind.

Peggy nodded her head, “Definitely. It’s perfect.”

“Bucky’s going to love it,” Natasha added.

You rolled your eyes, missing the knowing look the three of them shared. “Guys, this isn’t for Bucky. I want to look good for myself.”

“And you do,” Wanda said, “But he’ll also appreciate how good your ass looks in that, damn!”

Rolling your eyes as they burst out laughing, you admired yourself in the dress a little longer knowing this is the one. You went back into the dressing room with Bucky on your mind. Sure, he might stare at you all night in this dress but the truth is it doesn’t mean much more than that.

Bucky was actively dating and the only reason you’re going with him to the wedding is so he doesn’t spend a weekend with someone he really doesn’t know. Panic washes over you as you worry about the near future. What if he meets someone he really gets along with before the wedding and he resents the fact that he asked you to go. What if he uninvites you? What if–

“Hey I found a really cute clutch to go with the dress,” Wanda said through the curtain.

You finished getting dressed, grabbing the dresses you didn’t want first. Opening the curtain you found Carina waiting beside Wanda, ready to take the dresses from you. You thanked her and took the dress you were buying, holding it up next to the clutch Wanda found. It was glittering gold with a metal trim on the opening.

“Oooh I love it.”

Carina was waiting silently at the register in anticipation of you bringing everything up to pay. As you took care of that Natasha said goodbye to Taneleer, kissing him on both cheeks. You thanked him as well before leaving and his mouth curved into the slightest smile.

Late lunch with the girls went by faster than you expected and you were happy to finally be home, hanging up the dress in your closet. You knew you had shoes that would pair well with it somewhere in your closet, a search meant for another day.

Before bed you decided to text Bucky, even though part of you was hesitant about it. You typed away quickly, sending the text and turning off your phone before he could respond. From the other side of the wall Bucky smiled when he saw a notification with your name.

You: Hope your suit game is good because I just bought my dress and it’s 🔥🔥

He couldn’t wait.

PART 17

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes series

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dirtyrottenraskel · 4 years ago

Text

my take on yueki's personalities

yue

notes / personality

cocky (but also like understated confidence - r e g a l af)

kind of a nerd

maybe a little entitled, and a little bratty and suki loves to indulge her or to rile her up depending on her mood

books

seems soft but made of steel

strong sense of duty

socially intelligent - can be manipulative and suki (the dork) thinks it is so hot

aloof queen bee typa beat

supportive, both in ur day to day and in going after your big moral life goals

deep water - steady and powerful, often underestimated

untold depths, private yet surprisingly nurturing - master of deflecting away from herself

political nerd - well read, and when she has someone she trusts not to take advantage of her, she goes OFF

distrusting of most people, has been used and ignored and underestimated her whole life

patient - homegirl knows how to play the long game

excellent at pai sho / chess

she and suki have epic battles of wits - dif types of strategy but both are really into it and get a little too competitive (multiple board games have had to be replaced over the years)

loves travel bc wasn’t allowed to much, esp when she was sick

was super repressed growing up - never let her be herself or really have any sort of independence

used to sneak out and wander around in rebellion and casually sabotage plans and decisions she didn’t agree with

introverted, many opinions but keeps them to herself, discreet but well spoken

weaponizes secrets and information - doesn’t often use it but...she could

definitlyyyyy worries and overthinks and re-evaluates - worries ab social politics a lot

obsessive about picking things - wants it to be perfect

shes growing into her confidence as a leader

prefers quite intimate places

incredibly romantic

classic lit

planner for the future - visionary

kind / sweet / gentle - yes, but that’s also her “front” to a degree (seriously, i feel like she gets painted as so sweet and submissive and one dimensional by the fandom a lot of times and it freakin kills me)

INFJ-T (The Advocate) ((yes this is from 16p which i know is not super accurate but u can still catch her overall vibes from it ya know)

Creative/insightful/principled/compassionate/altruistic

sensitive/reluctant to open up/perfectionist/prone to burnout/not a fan of the ordinary

friendships / relationships

(<> indicates that they’re one of her best friends)

sokka - puppy love crushes, laugh ab it now, get into deep late night talks about responsibilities and leading, water tribe culture, prank wars (no one believes sokka when he says yue is a mean prank master (expect suki comes to see it in action lol))

katara - <> badass women friendship, totally would go to matches and protests together, tough girl shit, waterbending practice/duels - start of cautious, but then get rough in a good way bc they trust each other, they do water tribe food adventures together

toph - indulges her chaos, bonding over stupid royal upbringings, odd yet weirdly endearing pair

zuko - both sort of standoffish gay royals, but once they come to see that they are friends - take up similar spaces though, so only hang out in a group or rarely by themselves, they do hang out at like political parties and stuff when they get more comfortable together

aang - <> he has an impressive world view, yue is super studied and well read, so she and aang nerd out over past cultures together, and also their peace keeping nature, they have tea together often - usually after she and katara wipe the floor w/ each other

clothing / aesthetic:

blues and pale colors

classy and understated wealth

like those cute feminine button down shirts

dresses

like cold weather classy

complicated braids

sort of soft girl aesthetic?

pleated skirts !!!

i feel like she would wear ethically sourced fur (i don’t wear fur but idk how to get it in an ethical way - maybe it’s just fake??)

knit sweaters and skinny jeans and heeled ankle boots

light academia !!!

hella funky earrings - to mark her native pride and also cuz gay

from my readings, tattoos have a lot of cultural significance for Inuit women, and so i feel like yue would totally have some (when she comes of age ofc)

suki

notes / personality

extroverted

also very strategic

more spontaneous tho - will totally calculate the odds in a spilt second in her head and then just go for it

like still a careful planner, but willing to say fuck it, yolo if it seems right

reflects on her mistakes, but more in like a healthy way - unless it was a leadership mistake, then it eats her up inside - worries more ab keeping her girls safe and making the right call

likes lively places

total bashful romantic

manages the present and the short term - realist

loves to do lists

a little punch happy - loves to make violent threats, but also does it out of excitement and she’s just a really physical person tbh

steady, can come off as stubborn and abrasive but she really just wants what’s best for everyone she loves

harsh on herself and worries about her girls a lot

always ends up in the oddest situations

totally would kick someone’s ass for being racist/sexist/homophobic/etc

dedicated to her training and her regime

not a great cook, but she can manage

would drink monsters

has a weird relationship with femininity - took her awhile to reconcile strength and toughness and being assertive and aggressive with also wanting to feel pretty and feminine and embracing being a girl and how those things can coincide and amplify each other

abandonment issues - parents absent/dead

was imprisoned - obvi she had several almost successful escape attempts, but she got really close to breaking

was incredibly independent really early, grew up really fast and tries to make up for that now by sometimes being reckless

tough/assertive/woman of action

dry sense of humor/sarcastic - not good at nickname/pun humor tho

practical/dedicated/strong-willed/direct/honest/reliable/loyal/patient

stubborn/judgmental/difficult to relax/difficulty expressing emotions/too selfless

friendships / relationships

(<> indicates that they’re one of her best friends)

sokka - <> man they’re like platonic soulmates - she beat him up, and now they spar all the time, totally funny and crack jokes all the time, go skating together, they do shitty art together, and then show their lovers after zuko and yue come back from their high society mixers, broke her out of prison, m/f friendship !!!

katara - also sparring buddies (suki will throw down at any literally moment (and tbh so will katara)), not close but will hang in a group - go to each other for advice

toph - <> listen these two wreak havoc together, they help each other out a lot, i feel like they’re shopping buddies (similar enough style to frequent the same shops) toph knows suki won’t judge her for wanting to feel pretty and suki knows toph will be honest, they are both blunt sarcastic assholes and get along like a house on fire

zuko - <> shows zuko how to like,,,enjoy things (and how to let go of some of that pressure to be always right and the adult and in charge bc they were raised with so much responsibility on their shoulders even tho they were just kids)? she is also super protective of him (once she trusts him), one of the only ppl who can match suki fully in hand to hand combat, both do the Disappointed Parent Look when the group falls into chaos, but by themselves, the two of them end up in hijinks

aang- suki enjoys his optimism and they’re just chill bros, they love exploring abandoned placed together

clothing / aesthetic

sporty and skater mixed

ripped jeans, crewnecks, vans

green and yellow and dark red

gym clothes/athleisure - lifting style gym clothes - cut off t-shirts and bike shorts

skirts too, likes to play into femininity

she’s a gold jewelry kinda girl - but stuff that won’t hinder her movements

necklaces that end in the hollow of her throat & occasionally rings

definitely cuffs all of her jeans (it’s just bisexual culture ya know)

so many crop tops - some came like that, some were more of a diy project

yueki’s relationship!!!

nerd/jock solidarity

feel the burden of responsibility and the weight on their shoulders

they create a safe space between them, full of trust and warmth and vulnerability

yue will read suki sappy passages from poetry books while suki polishes her fans

they slow dance in the kitchen a lot

they get good at ordering takeout - and they have some weird decision making process that only they understand - bc neither of them are great cooks

yue would feel jealous of suki and sokka, if it weren’t for how stupid in love sokka was with zuko and yue can see that suki really only has eyes for her

yue is taller than suki and it amuses her to no end to pick suki up and carry her away from a fight (we all know suki could get away if she wanted to, but when ur hot tall sexy gf throws u over her shoulder,,,,,,u don’t complain)

joke they’ve adopted kataang and zukka, bc they’re all dummies, but in reality every last one of them is stupid LMAO

they love to do each other’s hair and it’s like super intimate and really cute

sometimes it’s these epic elaborate hairstyles and then at other times, they try to see how many ponytails they can fit on suki’s head and how many little braid yue can do

they travel EVERYWHERE

since yue is royalty and suki is her body guard,,,, well i mean, they totally have to see these kingdoms they are doing trade deals with in person

it helps that they're friends with a lot of them

they stay over in everything from camping so they can stargaze to ritzy hotels with hot tubs in the bathroom

yue gives suki rocks she finds on all their travels and suki lines them up on their mantle around the pictures of them in increasingly weird locations

suki loves guarding yue’s meetings bc she gets to watch her absolutely rip a new one into misogynistic old men and it never fails to bring her joy

While yue doesn’t love getting attacked, the ruthless efficiency suki defends her with is like,,,,,stupid attractive

#wow this got long #this is a mix of modern au and canon verse headcanons #but yeah #let these girls have more dimension than just soft uwu gfs #esp yue #yueki #headcanon #atla #yue #suki #yue x suki #wlw #zukka #kataang #sapphic

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walker-journal · 4 years ago

Text

Lenan and Lampchops (Adam and Caoimhe)

Characters: Adam Walker (Hunter- Tapir), Caoimhe Brennan (Leanan-Sidhe-Sadie)

Timing: Before the events of Hell’s True North

Summary: The search for Nell continues on a deceptive world of sheep and stray sod where Adam happens to run into, Caoimhe, one of the music professors who isn’t quite as surprised about Sheep Hell as she should be.

Content Warning: Gun Use

Adam looked into a bright sky with unfamiliar stars and other verdant worlds of fields and jungles that loomed in the sky. Fields of soft grass extended unbroken toward the horizon, undulating in the breeze. Towering thickets of Illuabris Ferns, larger than he’d ever seen them grow on Earth, were pillars of black and violet that stood stark against the rolling green.

Vegetable Lambs grazed around the Hunter, paying him no mind as they basked in the off-color light of alien suns. Adam had been wandering for what felt like many days now, but the strange sky didn’t give much clue if that was true. Only the deterioration of his clothes, now bleached by sun and sporting tattered holes hinted that the Hunter had been hiking for far longer than he realized. He couldn’t even count how many of these barometz lambs he’d eaten to keep his strength up, the rest of the herds always just staring with dull dispassion as Adam butchered and cooked one of their number.

He was lost, and had been so long enough for his tactical gear to fray, fade, and make Adam look more like a beleaguered deserter than someone who’d come here armed to the teeth on a mission.

The Hunter had to admit that of all the worlds he’d been to so far while trying to find Nell, Lambchops Land was definitely the most surprising with its ass-kicking at the moment, and it hadn’t even given him a scratch.

Adam felt a flicker of a paranormal presence that definitely wasn’t another goddam lamb. He crested another hill at a slow cautious gait, raising his rifle at the…

The new music teacher?

Wait….was that her? Was he…?

Ok, so if her chest burst open and she’s been a Lamb Alien the whole time Adam was just done, so done.

“Hey ...uh..Professor Brennan,” said the sunburnt ragged soldier, “what brings you to Lambchop Land?”

It was like something Caoimhe had seen in a picture, or dancing between the flames of the bonfires they’d light in Ireland. It was a world forever just out of reach, only as permanent as any single tendril of flame. It was beautiful, painted in hues of blue and green, all movement as the grass swayed back and forth, a patchwork quilt of stars overhead, and–

And Vegetable Lambs. Vegetable Lambs as far as the eye could see. They dotted the otherwise pristine landscape, cutting figures of cotton-fluff and fruit against the horizon. The peaceful breeze brought with it the bleating of different herds. It was by far the best portal Caoimhe had poked her head into yet: picturesque with a touch of levity.

Then the view changed with the barrel of a rifle. She followed the length of it up until she was met with ruffled hair and sun-bleached clothes, and the kind of weariness only seen in well-worn travelers who hadn’t seen home in far too long. He looked out of place, a single ragged figure painted in dusty pencil over a backdrop of vibrant oils. It was a concept, but Caoimhe wasn’t sure it quite suited him. The way his grip sat against the rifle, she thought maybe he might better fit in the climax of an old western; the twanging of the guitar builds.

“Just me.” She held her hands up for a moment before letting them fall back to her side. He looked like he’d been prepared at one point in time. This trip wasn’t an accident for him. “Would you believe me, if I told you I just stumbled in? Can’t say I expected White Crest to be so...dimensionally inclusive.”

Adam cocked his head at the music professor, features moving from confusion to frowning wariness as her lack of disorientation set off alarm bells in his brain. The Hunter could feel that she wasn’t human but didn’t narrow things down much.

“I’d believe it,” Adam affirmed. “There have been some other folks that’ve gotten yoinked by these space rips,” the planar wanderer noted. “White Crest is in a weak spot in reality,” the apocalypse prepper claimed, not really bothering to pretend ignorance when he was gun totting on the Veggie Lamb Planet. “I just hope we can find some way to seal that shit up before everything goes to hell...like permanently y’know?”

Adam sighed. “So uh...you would have happened to have seen a portal anywhere?”

Yes.

Caoimhe hesitated a moment. She’d pegged it right, he was prepared. Whatever had actually brought him to a planet of Vegetable Lambs, he at least had a mission now. And it seemed like the knowledge to accomplish it, if he could ever find a portal again. If she helped him find a portal again. His expression shifted, and her eyebrows lifted; curious.

He needed help, something curious in and of itself, considering. The portal she’d come through herself wasn’t too far away, obscured by the rolling hills. If he could manage to walk a straight line for more than a few minutes, he might even be able to stumble back through it without her help. But the state of him told her he’d been trying just that, to no avail. If something had him that turned around–

“I haven’t been here very long, so logically there should be one not too far away.” She kicked the grass at her feet. “If we put our heads together, we can find a way out. Don’t think either of us will be doing much good solving the portal crisis here. Any ideas what’s caused it yet?”

“I uh...can’t find my way,” Adam admitted. The Hunter reached into his pack and pulled out a battered compass. Adam closed his eyes and placed home at the forefront of his mind, focusing on the faces of friends and the DIE fraternity house. The compass Penelope had enchanted on the eve of their last night began to spin. The sorceress’ magic sensed the intention of Adam’s heart and soon the compass needle was dutifully pointing the way to portal back White Crest.

The only problem was, no matter how far Adam walked on these paradisiacal rolling hills in the direction of an exit, he kept circling back and retracing his way out.

“This compass was enchanted by a witch to help me find the way,” Adam said, choosing to simplify the painful knot of emotions that came with this gift. “But no matter what happens I keep circling back.”

Adam shook his head at the question of a bigger picture. “I know there are keys and big-ass worm boring through dimensions but I’ve got no idea how they all fit together yet.”

“I’ve gathered.” Caoimhe grinned up at the disheveled Adam, obviously having been wandering for longer than he ever should have been. Curiosity brought her the rest of the way up the hill to stand next to him. It was a neat trick, to say the least. With a needle to point him exactly where he should go, he should have found his way out long before the sun could bleach his clothes. The hills were just redundant enough to be confusing, but not that confusing.

“You focus on the compass, then. Nowhere else, just the compass. I’ll make sure we’re not doing any circles.” Placing a gentle hand on his elbow, Caoimhe led them in the direction the compass pointed, a direction she knew would eventually yield a portal and a ticket home again. “You know, if you ignore the fact this portal has you all sorts of twisted up, it’s kind of beautiful.”

It was. Blues and greens and yellows and the gentle bleating of the Vegetables Lambs. It was rather harmless, but then, Caoimhe still knew exactly where she was standing and in which direction she needed to go. “Keys and worms. That’s...way too vague. Have there always been portals, or did I just move in at the wrong time?”

“Yeah in a Little House on the Prairie butter-churning sort of way,” Adam admitted, controlling himself enough not to flinch Caoimhe put his hand on his elbow. His Hunter senses send icy hot pinpricks through him at the paranormal woman’s touch and not in the sexy way. Adam was thankful that his time in White Crest had made the feeling of being around supernatural beings routine enough that he didn't go into fight or flight mode as much as he used to.

“So uh, is finding your way out in the country just a superpower you’d got then,” Adam asked as they crested another hill of strange colorful plants whose tendril polyps writhing and curled in the sunshine. Outright asking ‘what’ Caoimhe was seemed a bit on the nose considering that she was in a helpful mood.

“White Crest is in a like, dimensional weakspot,” Adam posited, seeing no reason to conceal the information considering how literally to hell everything was going. “It’s properly why there are so many demons and whatnot around, but this is definitely a huge spike in Hellmouth stuff.”

With Adam following, Caoimhe let go and walked a few steps ahead. Her fingers curled into her palms and she spun herself through a few different answers. What she did wasn’t a superpower, though some might construe it as such. With their eyes glazed over and their hands moving over the keys of a piano, with a whole world of inspiration spreading itself in front of them. The divine muse. Caoimhe swallowed. It wasn’t a superpower. It was a mystical science at best. She wouldn’t go so far as to say a curse; she could hear her mother screaming from Ireland.

“Have you considered you might be exceptionally good at getting lost?” She cast a glance his direction, tone light. She had a feeling he wasn’t. She had a feeling he’d see right through her dancing around the point. “I’ve spent a lot of my life traveling, you tend to get good at the cardinal directions.”

She didn’t want to be seen. “Lovely. Welcome to White Crest, right? Portals and Hellmouths, and– what, what is that?”

The sun blotted out and the bleating seemed to increase in volume. Something deeper and louder broke through the din, then. Something Caoimhe could feel rattle in her chest.

“I mean...that’s fair,” Adam allowed, sunburned face breaking into a smile at Caoimhe’s counterpoint as he kept his eyes locked on the compass as they weaved their way through blossoming heaths and swaying forests of Illuabris Ferns.

Caoimhe’s exclamation raised Adam’s gaze to the verdant valley spread out below them.

In a cleft between four grassy hills was a circle of cairn stones. Within the cairn circle was what seemed to be a pit of pure sunlight that shone like a beacon in the sudden gloom that’d encroached across the sky.

Beyond the sunwell was what Adam had first taken to be an enormous tree before it shambled forward on hoofed feet. It was then that the Hunter realized it was a giant Barometz, bigger than any Earthly ecosystem would’ve made possible. It’s roots were a cluster of long hooved legs and scrambled forward like a bovine millipede. Engorged clusters of Vegetable Lambs hung from its branches in the matter of grapes on a vine, their discordant cacophony of shrieking growing closer.

“Well shit, its like a…. Megalamp King.”

“It’s coming our way, is what it is.” And directly in their way. Caoimhe thought throwing a dog on a piano might sound better than the thing trampling its way towards them. She’d heard middle-school bands who could give it a run for its money. Which was all entirely ignoring the fact that one misplaced, vine-thick hoof could squash her. It was a beautiful place, but she really didn’t want it to be the last place she ever saw.

“We shouldn’t be too far from the portal, but…” The sound of shuffling and the increasing din of the creature moving towards them was almost too loud, “We’re going to need to get through or around that. And unlike you, I don’t have a rifle.”

Nor were her gifts particularly suited for Vegetable Kombat. Round one, fight. “Any ideas?”

Adam reached behind to his back and produced a metal sphere topped with a fuse clip and safety to offered it to the professor. “I’ll fire at it and try to draw the Lamb Tree off the side,” he suggested as the towering Barometz began to lumber up the hill. “Run to the portal while I distract it. When you get there, pull this clip and throw this explosive at it.”

Adam doubted a handheld grenade would actually kill something this big but it’d at least buy a moment or two hopefully. “That might give me enough to run to you and we can get the hell out. Sound good?”

A bomb. He handed her a bomb. And really it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, considering the rifle with which he’d greeted her, but Caoimhe still took a moment to stare at it. Her strengths had always been a little more subtle. It was in gentle but purposeful touches, encouragement, making someone weak just for existing and creating in a space with her. Adam’s strengths appeared to be explosive weaponry.

“...Sounds better than anything I could’ve come up with.” Caoimhe took the metal sphere gingerly, like it was liable to go off if she squeezed it too hard. Okay, she knew how a grenade worked. She’d watched movies before. She was entirely prepared. She nodded, “Just make sure you don’t get lost trying to find me.”

She cast a grin over her shoulder and ran. And it was shaky at best. The kind of grin worked around a desperate joke and a heart hammering a sharp staccato against her chest, through legs that felt more like jelly than muscle and bone. The ground shook as she did her best to flank it, each thunderous footstep displacing the earth around it. A quick glance up and Caoimhe could catch wide-eyes with different clusters of Vegetable Lambs dangling off the main beast, their mouths dropped open but the cacophony too loud to pick out the individuals.

She was going to throw up. Perhaps not right in the moment, but later, after the adrenaline fully wore off. After she had a chance to remember how tightly she’d been holding the grenade and how many times she’d almost tripped over her own feet. How the grass itself seemed to tangle around her ankles and she could only catch glimpses of Adam through the weaving roots and swaying lambs. She might even laugh, too. Since when was a lamb so horrifying?

By the time she spotted the portal, her chest burned, and it would be so easy to jump through and be done with the whole experience, but Adam. She pivoted around, pulled the pin, and lobbed the grenade as hard as she could.

Adam sprinted out of the ensuing cloud of splintered wood and sheep guts, wiping fleece and gory vines out of his eyes. He bled from an array of bites from entire clusters of ravenous sheep and burns from vine constriction. The Megalamp Tree staggered in a panicked frenzy, thrashing out wildly in the splinters and smoke. Enormous limbs carved deep furrows through the bright grass as they slammed blindly down. Adam wove back and forth among the heather as he tried to avoid the descent of column-like branches and the vegetable lambs being flung everywhere like shrieking dandelion seeds.

Adam sprinted over to Caoimhe, plastered in bloody fleece and leaves. He looked over to the vortex swirling between the cairn stones. “Thanks! Nearly got strangled by the Bo-Peep there.”

Caoimhe almost didn’t expect to see him come out the other side. Between the thrashing off the Megalamp Tree and Adam’s penchant for getting completely turned around, the odds were not in their favor. But he rounded the thrashing beast with a thanks and Caoimhe promptly doubled over, dry-heaving into the once-serene, swaying grass. For a moment, a thumbs up was all she could manage over pulling in one breath after another.

She was made for classrooms. For violins in bar bathrooms and crooked smiles and french horns and running from her problems. Adam was obviously built of tougher stuff. He didn’t seem much phased by red-stained fleece and sticky leaves. He had a rifle and a bomb, and something twisted in Caoimhe’s chest, but she wasn’t going to question him when he’d handed her a ticket out. He was made for something else.

“I found the portal.” She rubbed at her eyes and grinned behind the column of her forearms. She found the portal, and he fought their way out. Caoimhe supposed she should be thankful. “Wouldn’t have been much good if I had been crushed, though.”

The ground shook as clumps of lambs fell wildly onto the ground, little feet scrambling every which direction, lost. Whatever Adam was made for, she was glad she’d found him. “Thank you.” She crooked a thumb over her shoulder at the mess of a beast behind them, “That was all you. I think...I think maybe we’d both have been stuck here.”

She stopped short of a ‘we make a good team,’ and settled for a thankful smile, stepping back to make sure he was able to pass through the portal and casting one last glance at the mess they left behind them.

#evebrennan #caoimhe #Portal Combat #potw #adam #gun use tw

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life-rewritten · 4 years ago

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Manner Of D*eath Analysis: The role of Tan, Friend or Foe?

Manner of Death has been a whirlwind of emotions, and intrigues and angst in just the first three episodes. I don't know who we can trust, but the story and the clues are slowly starting to come together to give us the big picture, and that is about Jane's suspicious d*ath. From Episode 1, we have been intrigued and scared to fall for Tan; he's mysterious, attractive, some times shady, and also at times flirty and swoon-worthy. It's been a confusing time because I don't want to give my heart away to a murderer or someone who is involved with the murder of women, and I'm sure that's also what Bun is feeling, yeah Tan is gorgeous, and we all want to jump on him including Bun who can't seem to keep his wants at bay, but we must remember that so far Tan is shady? So here's an analysis focused on Tan is he friend who we should we protect and love with all our heart, or is he a foe who we shouldn't yet trust and believe in. Let's find out.

For me, Tan is a big suspect with all the clues pointing to him in episode 1-3. You could argue about the many facets of his personality shown to us so far; that indicates that there are layers to him and that's exciting because it means that he's going to be a three-dimensional character to break down and learn about. Right now I don't trust any smile, or moments with him and Bun because I'm pretty sure that secretly he has not yet even romantically thought about Bun in the way we think he has. Reason one because I don't even think he's ever thought about love or even had an experience with it; funny because he's the person who's the assumed boyfriend of our victim Jane. However, I don't think Tan even feels emotions or is allowed to feel emotions pertaining to romance and love.

He's wearing a mask, and the mask he wears aligns to what role he's meant to play for different people;

Is he the boyfriend who is mourning and desperate to find out who did that to his girlfriend?

Is he the shareholder and teacher at the school who is obsessed with biochemistry and making students learn?

Is he the protective partner who will fight anyone from trying to steal his lover as he did for Jane when he beat up Pued?

Is he a friend to Bun who is actually determined to work with him to prove he's not the suspect and also help with the case for Jane?

Or is he actually the real monster behind the mask, is he the actual suspect of his said girlfriend; was he involved in her m*rder because he wanted her not to reveal the truth she discovered?

Is he Dam the gang/mafia second hand who has a gang of children as his followers, who's absolutely violent and scary when it comes to protecting what's theirs?

Is he righteous and just was as determined as Jane to prevent corruption from happening but then, something went awry?

These are the questions we have to ask about Tan from what we know so far from this show from episode 1-3. The way he controls all his masks and which ones he should show is scary. I feel like we haven't even gotten to see who he really is, Bun hasn't met the real him yet, right now everything that comes out of his mouth comes with a motive. The question is what that motive is? Let's analyse even further:

THE ROLES OF TAN

Tan as Jane's Boyfriend

The first sign that Tan isn't maybe who he says he is; is from watching his interaction with Bun when we're introduced to him, he's not shocked/upset at Bun for kissing him instead he's intrigued, he teases, he flirts, he hints and takes up his personal space. It's odd for someone who's meant to be devoted to their partner. Upon seeing Bun again, he smirks and enjoys his discomfort and likes the fact he makes him feel anxious. It's even more interesting when he, later on, becomes protective of Jane being dragged by Pued. Pued says it's because he's been her ex before, it was just one of those types of scuffles, but the way Tan beats up Pued and the way he violently reacted was not just some random act of jealousy. Like all Pued did was drag Jane to speak to her, it's not okay for him to pull her the way he did like some object forcefully, but it was also weird how he just brushed of Tan beating him up as a jealousy thing.

Tan's reactions later as well to Jane's loss is weird, he immediately is unfeeling, no emotions of stress or depression at the news of his girlfriend, it's like he anticipated it and he found it bothersome to be questioned about it. First, take a look at his reaction when being interviewed in ep 1, he's tired and looks annoyed but not shaken up at the fact that someone he possibly loves committed suicide, he's colder and frustrated, and a little bit defeated. He proceeds the next day to go teach, and act like everything is normal, and he shows discomfort at people prodding into Jane's death, especially the students. Maybe he's just really cold and emotionless to when someone he loves and cherishes dies because he's used to it, but his reaction is more like someone who expected it to happen and is frustrated by people trying to make it more serious, and that's not how a boyfriend should act.

Next, he also proceeds to warn Bun to stop looking into the case, and Bun notices his distant aura. But also it's like he's moved on, he's more focused on Bun when he sees him, on teasing and flirting but he also gets irritated when Bun tries to blame him for the murder. As a boyfriend he does not seem like someone who really cared about Jane's well being he says the reason why he wants to work with Bun is to really find out who the suspect is, but truthfully it's odd when you think about how he says it, he should have said that with more of vengeful or angry way because the person took someone who he apparently is very protective of.

Tan, as Jane's boyfriend, also brings this question of his role when focusing on foreshadowing in the show. For example, the little mermaid is mentioned as a cautionary tale of a girl who died for love. Now, this could be predicting Jane's reasons for her death, and why she got entangled with the suspect of these girls or it could be a foreshadowing of the relationship brewing with Tan and Bun. (Tan falling in love in Bun and being forced to at the end choose one of them to live or d*ie the same with what happened with the original little mermaid). But we can talk about this later on.

If Jane supposedly became a victim for love then the first person to question is Tan, what connections does he have that connects to her death, why would she die for him, why would he be hiding why she d*ied, and what is his plans now that people seem determined to find out why she died. This is if Tan and Jane are in 'love', but we've found out that she was more affected by Pued, she went into massive depression before meeting Tan because of Pued, so Pued could be the reason for why she did for love. But then Tan is still in the know then for why she died, because he knows Pued has something to do with it.

This brings this question of is Jane and Tan really dating? Were they as happy in a relationship as they say they were, or is this role one of Tan's masks? My guess? Yes, it's one of his acts, he's clearly playing a protective role with her, he either was keeping an eye on her or she and he teamed together to protect her from whoever it is that is trying to murder her. So this means he is involved in this somehow because either he was part of the reason for why it happened (when he kept an eye on her for the suspect) or he was part of the reason because they both had their plans ruined when she was gone. So he knows more about why she could have been a victim.

It's interesting because her final words to him in episode 1 contradicts this fact, in fact, she tells him she'll let him know more as he worries about her state. So again this suggests he didn't know fully what she was involved in unless he pretended he didn't know and she also didn't know his actual role. See it isn't straightforward, Tan's mask as Jane's boyfriend is the role where he's not even trying the most to make it seem real, he acts more like she was a step/ job to do and then he moved on. The worrying thing is we need to know what he was to Jane, so we also need to understand if that's his same plans for Bun. Is he doing precisely the same thing; is he wearing another mask with Bun to keep an eye on him just like he did with Jane assumingly or is he wearing another mask with Bun to protect him from Jane's suspect. It could be either, right now I'm leaning towards the latter because it's unveiled he knows the person who's sending Bun threats and he's involved in that. Which brings me to his next role:

The teacher

Tan is interesting. We've introduced to him apart from the whole Bun kiss thing; we're introduced to him as a shareholder of the school (so he's wealthy) and a teacher for biochemistry. The students he teaches; we see are involved in this murder case, one is Nam a girl who is slowly being inducted into this mess, and the other was Nat who is already a victim of the suspect at episode 1

Pause, he's also teaching Sorowit who from his story we see he was beaten up by That who is part of a gang that is quite v*olent and protective over their own. Sorowit explains that That works under Dam, this violent Mafia second hand to Por (Pued's father). So Tan is very acquainted with everyone connected to this mafia and murder case. Which makes him even more suspicious because first, he's dating one of the victims, he's a teacher of a to be victim, and he's also a teacher of the other victim. It's interesting.

The reason I bring up the teacher role though is because I think it's another mask/role he's forced to play. I believe there is a lot of corruption going on in this show, with whatever Gang/Mafia organisation Tan or Pued is involved in. They are powerful enough to control the justice system, it seems like they've placed a lot of their people in places of power to hide and assimilate, Tan could also be a teacher, for this reason, being a shareholder of the school puts him in a very favourable position. Also if this Mafia is grooming kids, it makes it easier for him to control his little gang of That and others as Dam, that is if he is Dam. It's a way for him to stay undercover as whatever role he plays in the Mafia.

The kids are essential; it's That who's sending the scary threats to Bun (probably under Tan's orders) it's Nam who is the next victim showing signs of the previous murders. The kids are who are being inducted into this Mafia, and I think Jane wanted to come clean about it finally and that's why she died. She tried to hold a sense of responsibility because she discovered what was going on, and she felt guilty knowing what happened to Nat. Instead, the suspect stopped her to shut her up.

Is Tan the psychopathic, and heartless suspect trying to prevent his cover from being blown? Maybe but then that makes his other future roles as our love interest in this show, will be very angsty and sketchy. It also means we're headed for a terribly sad ending if he is. However, I don't think he is. I still stay with my opinion that this gang is like a family affair; the watch they wear is probably a sign of blood and unity, and it hints at wolfpack Alpha vibes. We see that That is very protective of who he calls his friends, the reason why he gangs up on Sorowit is to stop him because he hurt one of his friends who lied to him that Nam was his girlfriend. That showed regret, but you could tell that with his gang loyalty is important, they don't ask questions they protect each other and get rid of what bothers their peers.

I think Tan is also part of the organisation with rules like this; he's been groomed by either family or Pued's dad to be someone unfeeling, and a protector of his group. Clearly, someone hurt Jane, and he's being forced to keep it a secret, so the group is not unveiled, so the organisation is not broken because unity comes first. I don't think he's ever had his own aspirations or goals; he's just followed the organisation rules and has a job that is probably not his own dreams/wants, a girlfriend that he was set up with to either protect or keep an eye on. Thus he has a protective role for the organisation. Like a bodyguard/ henchman he fights for them, (just like he showed he could, with Jane) and it's just like what Sorowit said about Dam if you cross him or his gang he will beat you up. I think Tan is Dam and he's a teacher as a way to keep a role undercover and also to keep an eye on the kids who work beside him.

So now we look at his other roles that he's starting to play? What other secrets is he not showing?

The FACADES OF TAN

Pued's rival

I don't know if I've said this before, but I don't think Tan and Pued hate each other. In fact, it's even more proved to me that they are in this together, Pued goes missing in episode 3 and Tan is the last person to be with him because it's a hoax, Pued wasn't taken, he was faking it to scare Bun and others who are trying to pry. Tan and Pued are determined to hide the truth about Jane.

This brings me to similarities Tan and Pued have with each other;

Pued and Tan both have a connection with Jane, Pued and Tan are working for the system; Pued is a prosecutor for the justice system, (this again brings up proof that his father's power or control is placing people in places of power and control). Tan is a massive shareholder of the education system and a known teacher there. Pued and Tan both wore that watch, Bun remembers it faintly by staring at it, but the person he saw with that golden watch is also Tan if you look carefully at the flashback.

They are in the same Mafia; it's why they both look at each other suspiciously, not angrily when they walk past each other when he goes to convince Bun to drop the case. They both are working together right now to prevent Jane's truth being found. The question is, why? If they are working together, why would we see Tan beat Pued for Jane? My answer; it's a cover, it's not real, it's a show, don't know why they are doing it, but it's clearly to make people not think Tan and Pued know each other. But if Tan is Dam like I believe and Por is Pued's father, then Tan and Pued are closer than we think. Tan may even work for Pued as a bodyguard as well. Or the fight could suggest that he and Jane loved each other so much and he was planning on running away from the Mafia with her, and they didn't like that, so they stopped her, made him feel defeated and forced him to cover up the truth. I mean that also could be why, but Jane's last words weren't like that, she knew more than Tan did or she assumed she knew more than Tan did; they weren't working together on anything to do with romance and love.

If they were working together, then Tan was hired to protect her by her, and she didn't know he worked for Pued's dad. These are just speculations, but if Tan is Dam, Pued and Tan are closer than we think, and they are working together to hide Jane's truth Whatever Jane did, it was to mess up the organisation, and both Tan and Pued don't want it to be ruined, or Tan is being forced to protect the organisation's secrets. I think he's protecting the suspect so I assume the person is part of the organisation and it could be Pued, but I still think he's a red herring.

Bun's lover/friend

This is the one that keeps me on my toes. Tan does not have any feelings yet whatsoever for Bun, maybe the kiss they had, made him excited and attracted, but he definitely isn't going to Bun with those ideas. He's with Bun, making him stay with him at his, to keep an eye on him. It's either to protect him as I said from the suspect or it's to keep an eye on him and prevent him from finding out who it is. Right now from my analysis so far, I don't even think he's ever had to care for someone in that way (apart from priorities he has to protect).

I think he's playing another role with Bun, and we haven't seen him fall yet. There are moments where he smiles that I do believe is genuine, Bun makes him intrigued and smile, and want to tease him and for someone who I think hasn't ever had to think about what he wants or his emotions, I think that's a sign that he likes Bun without knowing it. I don't think he cares about Bun's welfare yet; I think he's still more focused on the job because he's the one who's sending That to scare Bun away, if he's Dam then he doesn't want Bun to interfere with his organisation. Bun is like Jane, a dangerous target, a whistleblower; someone who either needs to be stopped or eliminated. Now I don't think Tan wants to eliminate Bun because I don't think he's evil or anything, just forced by his environment. So yes that cactus probably is bugged, his reasons for wanting Bun to stay at his house is the same, he wants to stop Bun from uncovering the truth, but it could change later to wanting to protect Bun.

I think this is why the little mermaid could be foreshadowing for them with Ariel and The prince in the original story; the mermaid has to choose either her life or the prince's life, she chooses his for love, and then ends and grow a soul. Tan is, in my opinion, is going to be forced to get rid of Bun but the more he falls for him, which hasn't happened yet, the more he'll struggle with that. I'm excited for when we get there. Tan is going to notice that Bun brings warmth to him, he's already cooking for him, and showing him he's attracted despite being cautious, I think he's going to start becoming more afraid of Bun finding the truth. The question is, will Bun find out who he is before he changes his agenda with him. Or will Tan soon realise he wants to protect Bun from the organisation with the disguise of keeping an eye on him? We'll find out. Either way, it's going be an angsty, dramatic and passionate love story. And I can't wait.

THE REAL TAN

Obligations vs Wants

As my analysis has shown I think Tan has many masks so far, this doesn't make him the suspect but he's more in a situation where he's forced to be part of the reason why Jane was hurt. For me, I think he's never really had a chance to be good/righteous. Actually, I won't be surprised if he was inducted into the Mafia when he was a child like That. Cause it seems like that's what they do. Either that or his family is involved as well in the Mafia.

He could have been forced to protect the people he sees as family, as he's meant to as Dam, to be the protector role. He's probably always had to protect someone in the group despite being wrong like That does for his friends. I want to keep watching out for this, but I do think That and Sorowit are going to be mirroring Tan and Bun's relationship, Sorowit is innocent and naïve and That is working under the organisation with Tan as Dam. He also seems protective of people he sees as his own, and he appears hurtful and even under orders. It's the same way I view Tan.

They're like puppets for this organisation, and so even if Tan didn't kill Jane, he was either forced to hide her truth because it's a norm for him to do so without feeling with everyone. She was just a problem to the organisation, and his love for her didn't matter, or he never even saw her as someone important to him, and he was just playing a role. Now that role is over, he doesn't need to act like he cares about her, and he needs to move to the next part which is to do the same thing all over again with Bun. It makes it a more delicious plotline when he falls for Bun, and he has to try now and protect something he wants for himself. Bun is going to be a surprise, instead of following orders, and rules, he's going to find himself falling on love and wanting to stay with him.

Masks vs Smiles

Which brings us to this question. Have we even seen the real Tan? Have we seen Tan when he's not under the organisation or doing his roles? I think we've seen small snippets of him, moments like when he accepts the kiss from Bun surprisingly showing he liked it, or moments where he smiles when Bun says something about Jane, he notices Bun is a good person, but Tan can't be trusted right now. He's always probably had to wear a mask, slowly we'll see his real self uncovered soon, his genuine smiles, and who he actually wants to be. But for now, I think he's still playing a role with Bun. We'll soon start to see his mask uncover because we see him interact with That at the end of episode 3. We'll finally maybe see what's been going on with him.

Attraction vs Confusion This makes it even scarier for Bun for now, because Tan's intentions aren't pure. Bun is very attracted to Tan, and he finds him self forgetting that he shouldn't trust him, so he's going to be very blindsided by the truth, I wonder if he'll soon find out Tan is Dam, if he'll find out Tan is secretly sending threats for him to stop, but it's worrying though romantic when he asks Tan to sleep on the bed with him, he agrees to stay over at his house, he decides to work with Tan to find Jane's murderer. But he'll be fine like I said, Tan is not a crazy psychopathic , he's not the suspect he's the protector or connected to the person, but the more time shifts he'll switch and change his roles, he'll become protective of Bun no matter what. Let's hope we still get a happy ending after all this angst.

Let me know what your theories are with Tan. Do you think he's a friend or a foe? I just want to say Max is so brilliant as this character; he's so good at showing nuances and moments when Tan's mask shifts, it's been fun and exhilarating to see him play this role. And as for the plot if my theory is right, then Tan and Bun are going to be very angsty, passionate and Romeo and Juliet esque. We've had many stories where someone from the wrong group falls for someone who could be their downfall (little mermaid for example), where you have to betray someone, where you have to lie and hide who you are as you fall for someone. This is a really great plot and a love story to see unfold. It'll be crazy, dramatic but it'll be so fun and so romantic at the same time. Perhaps it'll even make us cry.

Either way, I'm enjoying manner of death, it's nice to piece together slowly the mystery, for now, there is definitely corruption of the justice system, so the police is not meant to be trusted, students are being pulled into this mess, and there are secrets about dr*ugs and s*x and money that still needs to be uncovered. Why are these girls willingly being d*rugged for the money? Was Jane involved in this was she also in dire need of money? Or was she connected to someone with who she found out what was going on overall? Is Tan a right person or a wrong person is he being forced to be harmful, or is he a red herring, and we're all falling for someone who is the villain? Let me know what you think. Thank you.

#thai bl #bl series #bl drama #manner of death #maxtul #december #cwg #fvete

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yourdesertsunflower · 4 years ago

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Boruto did a disservice to Temari

Sorry, in anticipation I warn you, this will be long.

Okay, okay. I love Temari. She is my favorite kunoichi, I love each and everyone of her appearances in Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, I watched all filler that she was on, and I even have her on my avatar. So, yes, this by no means is to hate on the character but to actually show how Boruto writers completely misunderstood her.

I’ll always love her character, but I got to admit I am not okay at all with somethings they are making her do in the Boruto’s anime. And no, it’s not because she moved to Konoha, or decided to take mainly the role a housewife (a bloody difficult job if you ask me) because I frankly couldn’t care less of any of that if she is happy. I really think that Shikamaru and Shikadai make her genuinely happy and that’s all I want for her. She had went from so much shit that I only want to see her feeling value and loved, that’s the least she deserves and her husband and son give her that.

The problem is that, in most of her characterization in Boruto, I hardly see that Temari we got to know and love in the anime and manga of Naruto. Now when we get to see her in her recurring role in Boruto she is capitalized by her writers as a joke of the “crazy wife and mother that would rather hit you with your fan than having a civilized talk and will be angry twenty-four seven with no apparent reason.”

And that, my friends, is not Temari. At least not the Temari I grew to love in Naruto.

Through this post I’ll try to explain why I think that that portrayal of the abusive housewife and mother that they give her in most of Nara Family moments in the Boruto manga, and specially the anime, is (in point of view) completely mislead. It had become clear to me, through my time watching the show, that Boruto writers are clearly not even trying to understand Temari’s character and how they are using her as a recurring joke rather than considering her as a real three-dimensional character. And I despise them for that same reason.

So, without more vacillation, I’ll get started.

1. Who is Temari?

Before venturing into everything that is wrong about the characterization of Temari in Boruto and trying to pin point when this actually started to happen, I would like to see deeper into Temari’s character. I think it’s only wby understanding her character previously from Boruto that we will actually understand how inconsistent is her writing in the show.

I decided to base my analysis of Temari’s character in the Naruto series in two key aspects: an overarching analysis of Temari’s character profile using the Myres Briggs Personality Types and the Enneagram and in pin-pointing will pin point some specific moments of characterization in the manga of Naruto that show her character.

Before starting with the analysis, I want to be clear about why I use the Myers Briggs Personality Types and the Enneagram in my analysis of Temari. I really don’t usually tend to care for the function of neither of those test in real life (if you do I am perfectly fine with it, it’s just something I don’t do myself) but I think they can be great tools for any author to understand better the behavior, desires and motivations behind their characters. I personally do this in my work and I highly recommend it for any other writer out there.

Remember, this is my own personal analysis and I’ll tell you when my opinion differs from the majority, I’ll justify everything said in my analysis, and I’ll leave links to every info that I give you.

Well, speaking specifically about Temari. Who is she? What she wants? Why she wants it? What she’ll do to achieve it? What she really needs? Which is her fear?

This between others are questions that any author or actor has to ask themselves when they are writing their characters. It’s a question of giving the character depth, making it seem “like a living breathing human-being.”

Kishimoto state it in the most bluntly, yet efficient ways, when he presented Team Seven by making Kakashi ask them about their likes, dislikes and dreams. Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke’s response reflect all this questions even though they are not saying it directly. I won’t analyse this respective scene, because if not this will be really long, but I promise to do it sometime in the future.

Well using the Myers Briggs Personality and Enneagram Test we can get to full-picture of these questions. Myers Briggs Personality test will tell us who the character is in it’s core; how they’ll behave, how they’ll face a situation and their outllook of life. The Enneagram on the other side show us their wants and needs, what they long to archieve and their fears.

In the case of Temari I would classify her as an ENTJ but,her most common classification is ESTJ and a 8w9 as her Enneagram. If you want me to explain why I think she is an ENTJ an not a ESTJ (thoiugh I’ll construct my case over ESTJ) just ask for it cause I’ll be more than happy to do it. But for now, and in order not to make it way longer than it will already be I’ll focus on Te (Extraverted Thinking) and Fi (Introverted Feelings) both functions that both types share as their primary and inferior function respectively and will be key for my analysis.

Source Temari’s Personal Database

(If you want to understand the differences between ESTJs and ENTJs here is a good tumblr source that explains everything quite complete yet quite simply explained)

Let’s go first with the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator)

What means to have Te as a primary function and Fi as in inferior function?

Te as a Primary Function (Extroverted Thinking): Think of your primary function as your strongest suit, things you are good at. Dominant Extroverted Thinkers tend to be logical, objective and fair. They are very organized and try to arrange the real world to suit their needs.

Strives to bring order, control, and rationality to the systems and operations of the outside world.Evidence: Temari is able to rationalize situations and access their pros and cons quite easily. This is showing in the flashback where she doubts of the productivity of the Konoha Crush since she maintained that there alliance with Konoha was much more valuable any they could gain from the attack.

Insists on objective standards and measurable goals. Evidence: She is prone to be involved in and thinks in things as if they were projects like the preparations of the Chunin Exam, the Allied Shinobi Forces, etc. (see the image of the Fourth Databook)

Tendency to quickly express their judgments and opinion, to literally think (i.e., make judgments, conclusions, and decisions) aloud. Evidence: In her match against Shikamaru she was pretty quick in express her analysis of his movements aloud.

Speak before they listen which can either make them strong and courageous leaders or seem abrasive, dogmatic, or controlling. Evidence: Temari asserted a leadership position within her village and also within the Allied Shinobi forces (despite not being strictly one) showing us her natural inclination to take charge.

Source of the Image

Prone to overstating things. Evidence: In her fight against Shikamaru thinking she knew all the extent of his technique.

They may say things that, in retrospect, they wish they could rescind, or at least soften (specially true for hypersensitive Fi), which can lead them to respond defensively or re-actively. Evidence: Sasuke Retrieval Arc, Temari’s expression as Shikaku reprimanded his son. Konoha Hiden, Temari feels ashamed about what happened the

Fi as a Inferior Funtion (Introverted Feeling): Inferior Function is that thing that we often push aside the most and find most difficult to fully grasp. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play a key role in our behavior. People with Fi are driven by an internal moral compass, helping them adjust their actions in order that what they are doing helps or affects people in a meaningful way. This gives them a sense of loyalty to those around them, considering the wants and needs of those close to them.

Loyalty and dutiful nature due to a well constructed inner moral compass. Evidence: Fierce sense of loyalty to her village and her moral and ethical duty towards it.

Not prone to display emotions, may see them as a weakness.Evidence: The famous, “Had you received emotional training?” after the failed mission against Sasuke.

If taken to their worst they can have an all-or-nothing nature, this is neutralized when more “healthy” and less hypersensitive their Fi is. Evidence: Her whole fight against Tenten. She should to be someone strong, determined, disciplined with a strong chracter that will never let anyone mock her.

Image Source

Strong sense of inner control reached by vigorously working to control the outside world. The only way they can feel in control of themselves is by taking control of their surroundings. Evidence: How she managed to control the situation when Shikamaru was trying to ask her out on a date, her reasoning during their Chuinin Exams fight.

Fi might also inspire them to take up causes that have personally affected them, ingrained on a deep fear of being a bad person or having corrupted moral. Evidence: Given her participation in the Konoha Crush Temari is one of the main actors to amend the relationship between Konoha and Suna in the time skip. Also she wants to archive a peace she never had due to her childhood as a Gaara’s sister and Rasa’s daughter, shown in her important participation in the Shinobi Alliance. Her deep care for both of her brothers given their mother’s death and she taking a position of caretaker within the family on an unconscious level.

Unconscious yet particular empathy and concern for children, often finding great fulfillment in having and caring for children. Evidence: In Part I, after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, The Sand Siblings stay in Konoha to help at the Academy. Temari reveals to Shikamaru that she had done it because she was fond of it. Children seem to really respect and admire her.

Source MBTI

Enneagram: 8w9 (The Diplomat)

Basic Fear

Eights with a nine wing fear being hurt by others. They avoid situations in which they have less control, generally preferring to be in positions of leadership.

Basic Desire

Their basic desire is to guard themselves against threats and control their own destiny. They may express this by asserting independence at a young age.

Hence Diplomats (8w9) defend themselves by building emotional walls and denying vulnerability. They seek to appear strong, subconsciously believing that being too emotional will make them seem weak (Haven’t you received emotional training?). They,

Dislike taking orders from other people

Though they are certainly not the most chill of all types the most calm and laid-back of the eights.

Struggle to openly share emotions

Fear being controlled by others

Seek autonomy and independence.

At their best diplomats use their wit and ability to see different perspectives to face different projects. Their naturally energetic and confident persona make of them people that can lead others effectively, through support and guidance. They have a talent to give others what they need, and are empowering and advocating for others. They feel a need to protect the ones they love and enjoy their-selves the most when they are surrounded by these people.

Image Source

At their worst diplomats, given their struggle to control their temper and their tendencies to be stubborn or rigid can enter excessively in conflict or disagreement or directly reject and dismiss others. They struggle to face emotionally vulnerable situations due to their sense of lack of inner control with can make them seems overly confident or emotionally detached. They also can develop a dislike for rules from authority figures.

Image Source

The best way to communicate with a 8w9 is to be direct and straightforward, while encouraging them to share their ideas. If conflict arises it’s better to address conflict directly and logically; discuss and work together toward the best solution.

Source of Enneagram 8w9

Conclusion

For that we have seen through this analysis some key things about Temari.

She is quite a direct and logical and rational individual who values to get things done in the outside world.

She has leadership skills, given their courageous and confident attitude, but can also come up a abrasive or controlling.

Tend to overstate things and may say or do things that they, later on, wish they could soften.

Is incredibly loyal to her set of values and those around her and tends to involve personally with the things she works on.

She tends to want to have a control of the outside world and her worst fear is to loose it, cause is in the only way she can feel in control of herself.

She wants independence cause that is the way she can feel in control of herself. Therefore she tends to leave emotions on one side, they are less controllable cause they are in her inner world, and focus her energies on the outside (rational) world.

2. Shikamaru and Konoha Hiden: The Beginning of Everything.

I can begin to trace the disservice towards Temari in this point in time, in the anime’s adaptation of her character from the light novels. From here we can begin to see how they are starting to tweak Temari’s character (in a way that’s unfair and clearly not coherent) to fit her into the mold of the angry or crazy girlfriend/wife though with moderation.

Why? Why, do you have to adapt an moment like this...

Clutching his back, Shikamaru turned his eyes toward the voice.

A woman with a sharp gaze and golden hair tied into two bundles stood there, holding a giant fan in both hands. And that fan had no doubt created the wind that had knocked Shikamaru flying.

Temari...

"So you're just gonna skip out?! You're gonna do whatever he tells you to? That's not like you at all! I expect a lot more from you! Get it together, you idiot! I mean, I know you actually think this guy's boring! His stupid lecture's total garbage! Am I right? Say something! Shikamaru!"

His ears, now accustomed to Gengo's weighty tone, took in the screeching, loud voice, and his eyes flickered with pain. "Ah!"

The haze blanketing his head vanished cleanly and completely. The thing squeezing his heart was gone; it was as if a hole had popped open in his chest.

But it felt amazingly good. He inhaled deeply, down to the bottom of his stomach, and slowly let it out. A laugh naturally followed.

A single blow to pull him out of the genjutsu...

"So you show up out of nowhere to badmouth me?" He put a hand on the back of his head, eyes fixed on Temari as he stood up.

"I came to save you. Quit grumbling and thank me." She rammed the end of the folding fan into the ground, rested her right elbow on the pivot, and puffed her chest out. Behind her stood a line of ninja. They all had the mark of Sunagakure carved into their forehead protectors.

"I can't exactly go letting you die now, can I?" She grinned.

Her smile, glittering like the fire of the desert sun, cleared Shikamaru's heart. Her earlier words came back to life in his head.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darknes (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

as this?

I know this may be completely unpopular but, hey I am here to say what I think. You can always count that’ll be honest. And I don’t like this.

This in my opinion this is not female empowerment, this is not funny and this is not Temari reacting naturally to the situation she is involved in. Is just simply her hitting Shikamaru with no reason at all.

In the novel, as we have seen, Temari lectured him (oh, boy did she lectured him just rightly). She basically made her come into his senses using logic and reason, using words, the same through which Gengo almost defeat him. And that is Temari, she may not be the best at expressing her emotions but when conflict arises she address conflict directly and logically. She explains, in a way that yes may seem imposing for others, but that always uses Te (extroverted thinking) as her main weapon.

Temari would never make someone come to his senses by a love declaration but she wouldn’t slap him on his face either.

Temari does this because, although Shikamaru hurt her, Shikamaru is someone dear to her and she knows that he needs of a little bit of tough love in order to function. This is Temari’s way of being empowering and advocating for others.

And you may be asking. But hey, Temari had already slapped Shikamaru before and you didn’t say nothing about that moment? Yes she did, but that moment was intrinsically different to this second one.

This slap...

It’s justified in Temari’s character. Maybe it’s not the best thing she could do, nor what I pictured her to do, but is not that detached with the situation.

Let’s see another extract of the Light Novel to understand better the context:

"Oil" A voice called to Shikamaru from behind.

He clicked his tongue imperceptibly. The voice belonged to the person he least wanted to speak with at that moment. Ignoring it, he kept moving forward.

"Shikamaru, hold up!" The voice beat at his back, threatening to send him flying.

"What?" He turned just his head to look at the woman over his shoulder.

Temari from Sunagakure. Her hair was shorter now than it had been two years ago, and she had pulled it back into two bundles on either side of her head. Her eyes were gentler now than they had been, set in a fairly adult looking face. But given that she was older than Shikamaru, her face didn't just look grown-up; she was actually already a very fine adult.

"What's going on with you?" She stared at Shikamaru with eyes that drooped somewhat more than they used to.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been weird lately." Temari's slender hand reached out to Shikamaru's shoulder and pulled him around to face her.

What a drag... The words made it all the way to his throat before he managed to desperately swallow them back down.

"I mean your attitude at the meeting there. You just sit there with your mouth shut. Everyone gets nervous; the whole place tenses up, you know."

"It does?"

"You didn't notice it?" Temari's eyes grew wide. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"It's something you can't talk to me about?" Temari's hard gaze hurt.

In the two years since the Great War ended, Temari had been a good and understanding partner in their work on the alliance. She shared his desire to keep the shinobi from fracturing into factions once more after they had finally come together in the face of a powerful enemy. She had rallied the Allied Forces with him. The strong bond between Naruto, seen as a candidate for the next Hokage of Konoha, and Gaara, the Kazekage of Sunagakure, also played a part; the relationship between the two villages was extremely good, even among the five great nations. With these kinds of outside factors also at work, Shikamaru and Temari each recognized the other as their greatest ally in the alliance.

"Something's happening in Konoha." She had fairly good insight.

However, her shot was a little off. Nothing was happening in Konoha, although it was true that they were trying to take care of the situation with only the shinobi of Konoha. So Temari was half-right, half-wrong.

The basic policy of the alliance was that matters relating to the life or death of shinobi themselves exceeded the framework of the villages and should be shared with the entire group. What Shikamaru and Kakashi were attempting to do was in very clear violation of this policy. Even so, he couldn't say anything. Getting the alliance involved now and stirring up trouble with the Land of Silence was not a good plan.

I'll handle it... His resolve hardened.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"There's not."

Temari dropped her eyes at Shikamaru's curt reply. "Okay," she muttered, lifelessly. In the next instant, the brief look of sadness on her face changed to anger.

It was all he could do to take a breath. He had no room to dodge; before he knew it, Shikamaru was flying. He tumbled down the hall a few times before ending up on his backside in a seated position. The right side of his face swelled up, bright red. Stroking his hot cheek, Shikamaru looked up at an indignant Temari glaring down at him.

"I never actually thought I could've misjudged you so badly!" Her angry yell turned into a powerful wind, pushing up against his face.

"I-I'm sorry..." The words were unconscious. He unthinkingly took on the persona of his father stumbling home in the morning, only to get yelled at by his mother in the entryway.

Taking long strides, Temari passed by Shikamaru and disappeared, her eyes slightly damp.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darknes (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

We see a Temari that is continuously trying to reach someone who she had become closed to and with whom she had worked side by side since the war ended two years ago. Someone who she thought trusted her. The slap is given her sadness with ended up being represented in anger (inferior Fi). She had a real reason to be sad: Temari isn’t someone who lightly trust or cares about someone and Shikamaru was just closing the door to her. Saying that he didn’t need her. And there’s nothing that Temari wants more than feeling need, something that is evidence in her Tsukuyomi Dream, which may not be canon, but yet captured Temari’s character.

Not only that but, as we said, Temari’s basic fear was to be hurt by others. That’s why she usually has that overly confident and seemingly emotionally detached attitude. And once she left her guard down she was hurt by non other than a person she hold dear, which we have seen ain’t an easy point to reach with someone with Temari’s personality. Given her “all or nothing” outlook this might be a really bad wound for her, like if he was back-stabbing her.

That’s why "I never actually thought I could've misjudged you so badly!" and Temari’s cry really is so important. It shows she’s truly hurt. It justifies her punch, no. But it explains it. (I won’t lie, I also wanted give Shikamaru a good punch when I read this)

Also this moment wasn’t exactly the best adapted sequence but it’s much better than the previous one and with the right context it all comes quite justified.

You could also say that there was also that one time were Temari hits Shikamaru with her fan after she realizes in the Konoha Hiden that Shikamaru and her were actually searching for a wedding gift for Naruto and Hinata,

“Hmm, so that’s what it all was....” She said, smiling peacefully.

“No, hold on ...Ah!!” Shikamaru inadvertently let out an exclamation.

It was possible that Temari’s misunderstanding had been- “Hey, oi ...You couldn’t have thought that, right.”

When he said that, for some reason, Temari silently took her tessen off her back, holding it in her hand.

“H-hey...what is it?” He asked. “Why’re you suddenly taking that out...? Wh- what’s up with your chakra...?!”

Temari grinned affectionately at him.

Shikamaru was captivated by the sight, and found a smile forming on his face, too.

Smiling at each other like that, they looked like the very picture of an intimate pair of lovers.

That night in Konoha...

One sudden, out-of-season gale swept over Konoha’s hot springs, and lasted the entirety of the night. The residents and tourists spent the whole night awake, too frightened to sleep...

Source: Konoha Hiden: The Perfect Day for a Wedding (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto and Shō Hinata

And I agree I am not saying this is fine either (though there isn’t that much of an explicit but an implicit hit), but is also something Temari shows to be sorry and ashamed about later in the story. Even though she is prideful and won’t be able to admit it she finally does. Because at the end of the day Temari is a lover and fighter but, even though she won’t admit it, will love rather than fight.

Besides the context in here is different. They had already went on a date and could almost be consider a couple. I had already posted a quote were Ino and Sakura talked about Shikamaru and Temari’s relationship. It was obvious there was something going on for months (If you want to get to know better you can see the time line). It wasn’t that far-fetched to understand the situation as Temari, someone who’s pretty direct, was interpreting them.

It’s something through which they both learn and grew together. Shikamaru will never be as frontal as she might want to but he is willing to give it a try for her and she is willing to try to understand what is going in his mind.

Also I think that this novels suffered of having different writers so it sometimes feels as the story unnecessarily regresses. Kishimoto only illustrates the stories and this becomes pretty showing. However and despite I don’t enjoy Temari hitting Shikamaru, the novels itself aren’t that detached from Temari’s character. The soul of her character is still there.

But are these slight changes in the anime showed us the way that they were trying to head Temari’s character in Boruto, changes that as we had seen during her analysis don’t seem to fit rightly her character. Specially in Perriots adaptation of the manga we see a deep misunderstanding of Temari, from her behaviour to her wants and feelings. Unluckily, the worst was yet to come.

3. Boruto: Why did they did this?

Well, here is what triggered this whole post. Temari’s portrayal in Boruto. And I got to say one thing before starting with this analysis. I really like some scenes of Temari in Boruto.

To see her in action, training with the new generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho and protecting her son were fairly enjoyable but, more importantly, are congruent with her character. It’s her more domestic scenes which I tend to dislike a lot.

I consider than in this scenes they depict Temari as an angry housewife and an aggressive mother which, in my opinion, are the greatest disservice to Temari’s character. Maybe I am the only one that thinks this, but (as I said previously) I don’t find them funny nor that they depict Temari correctly, serve a motif in the narrative or serve any agenda. They are simply treated as comic relief.

This is truly hurting for someone that is not only a Temari fan but a ShikaTema shipper since they transformed a relationship that was based on mutual trust, respect and communication above anything else into this dynamic we see in Boruto.

And I have to hypothesize why they made Temari do this I would have two main factors:

Lazy Writing and Appeal to Nostalgia: All Nara men marry to troublesome woman so they found in this moments a cheep way to remind the audience constantly that Temari is troublesome and therefore be able to make easy correlations to Shikaku’s relationship with Yoshino.

The Tsundere Trend: Maybe this is me overthinking a little bit too much (but when I don’t) but the Tsundere one of the most capitalized dere types in anime. People seem to love them in a way I don’t fully understand. Having a woman inflict danger to his partner is the most easy way to scream “tsundere” maybe not the best but an easy one. Mind that when we speak about a tsundere I mean:

A stock love interest who is usually stern, cold or hostile to the person they like, while occasionally letting slip the warm and loving feelings hidden inside due to being shy, nervous, insecure or simply unable to help acting badly in front of the person they like.

The Japanese term tsundere refers to an outwardly violent character who "runs hot and cold", alternating between two distinct moods: tsuntsun (aloof or irritable) and deredere (lovestruck).

Tsundere Source

Funny enough I never saw Temari as a Tsundere. I would never say, from the manga, that Temari ‘runs hot and cold.’ Yes, you don’t want to mess up with her when she is angry but it’s not like this happen often in the manga.

The only time I consider we have seen Temari go angry pretty quickly (in Naruto) was in her match with Shikamaru when he said that he wouldn’t be defeated by a woman. But I think we can’t apply one situation to larger and broader spectrum. That was in the middle of a fight and, as I explained in a previous post of mine, there were much more other things involved in the context of the manga/anime at that point in time.

I have always consider Temari someone who was deep in control of herself and her emotions, capable of displaying what she wants to show when she wants. This is because of her own basic fear of being hurt, hence she only shows this emotions when she is either, truly hurt, angry or when she trust enough the other person.

That’s why is so important that the only times we have seen Temari fully displaying this emotions were around Shikamaru or her brothers.

I don’t like that much dere types but, if I had to chose one, her sarcastic humor and realistic outlook of life, always seemed more alike to the profile of a hinedere

The hinedere is a sarcastic, cynical person who always looks to the darker, more realistic side of things and is very quick to reveal that to other characters. They tend to be arrogant and cold-hearted however, the hinedere will have a soft spot for their love interest and will reluctantly but reliably do anything for them.

Hinedere Source

This dere type may not be as popular but, I think, fits much more her personality all through Naruto. However, that’s a personal opinion and no falling into a dere type should, if it’s understood correctly, disrupt the core character.

Okay so, they wanted to make Temari fall into this direction but... Why isn’t this her? Well that’s the following point.

4. Why this isn’t Temari?

Temari at the beginning of Naruto is someone that thinks that life is like in the dessert: everything is though and hard and only the fittest are meant to survive. Anything or anyone that shows her weakness is naturally inferior or undesirable. That is her outlook of life: you have to be pragmatic, logic and strong if you want to continue fighting another day. The weak are naturally destined to loose, and hence she doesn’t care to be the one to destroy them since it’s only when you impose fear that you’ll be actually able to survive.

That ideology, she had learn all through her childhood, translates in her battle against Tenten and began to be challenged in her battle against Shikamaru. At the end we see a Temari that, despite being born to fight, develops as a character chooses to dedicate her life to the search of peace in order to protect those weaker ones that she once loathed. That’s why she is an incredible ambassador for Suna and good adviser of Gaara: she yet has that pragmatic, logical and sometimes cynical point of view but that contrast with the idealism of her brother and helps them to balance each other out. She is highly loyal and I am sure she’ll do anything for her family and to protect that peace she found in it.

Hence, I always find it pretty hard to believe that Temari would rather take her fan and hit someone before having a reasonable, direct and straightforward conversation.

Even, before her evolution, we see that Temari is much less willing to enter a unreasonable and violent dispute than her brothers and that is what, in the first instances sets her apart from them.

When Temari first hits the scene just before the start of the Chunin Exams, by mere virtue of the fact that the group that she’s with is intimidating, she becomes a bit scary herself, but she shows to be different than both of them.

Kankuro comes off as the tough, scary guy who you don’t want to mess with only to be swiftly upstaged by the seriously blood-chilling Gaara.

(Sorry for the image in spanish but basically Temari is telling Kankuro to leave Konohamaru alone and to not involve her in his actions)

Temari, on the other hand, stands by coolly, occasionally offering her brothers warnings or plays referee. Her sit-back-and-bide-her-time attitude makes her look like the most stable of the three in comparison; Kankuro picks a pointless fight with a kid and Gaara ends up looking psychopathic.

Temari’s rational and cool behavior also pays testament to what readers later see are some of her major strengths which keeps repeating itself through the manga, in the Forest of Death during The Chunin Exams and in The Five Kages’s Summit it was Temari who during tense times was able to cool them up.

(Temari asking Gaara to calm down during the second stage of the Chunin Exams)

However, I got to admit that Temari isn’t a saint. She has a sharp tongue and she is straight foward and direct what, as we said before may lead to her to say things that, in retrospect, they wish they could rescind, or at least soften, which can lead them to respond defensively or re-actively.

Things like this we see them while she looks at Shikamaru after the failure of Sasuke’s Rescue Mission. Even when she had lectured Shikamaru she then looked at him as if she questioned if she had been to harsh on him. It was clear that she had misjudge him as she realized how much she cared for his friends. Or in the Konoha Hiden as, after having that little incident with Shikamaru she is nervous to see him again.

Images Sources (Manga in Spanish)

That’s why I can’t imagine Temari simply hitting someone just for kicks. Is not like she can’t but that she doesn’t want or sees the appeal to do it.

The is in a lot of senses the perfect kunoichi, disciplined, determined, strong and intelligent and will never let anyone mock her (that’s for sure). She is ruthless towards her opponents cause that is her way of approaching a rival but she will never be violent for violence’s sake.

It’s not like we just attacked the Leaf Village for kicks, you know? We were following orders. That’s all, just like we’re doing on this mission.

Temari to Shikamaru during the Sasuke’s Retrieval Arc

But even less than this I imagine being violent towards people she appreciates and cares as Shikamaru and Shikadai. Yes, I think she would most likely express herself through some tough love, being strict with Shikadai and not letting Shikamaru just slack and complain about everything. But, never, ever, I imagined her being physically or verbally violent towards them without feeling any remorse. Cause she never was in Naruto.

She was direct and honest, maybe a bit to much for people, but after her the Chunin Exams her character never showed to be like that to anyone. Even less towards Shikamaru.

You have the “crybaby” thing going on but I would rather think that of a positive rather than a negative aspect because of the way in which she says it. It shows their connection as individuals which is full of bickering and this back and forth of clever commentaries but that is build on common ground. You may not be the people that like these but that doesn’t mean that Shikamaru feel the same as you.

If not he would never have this expression on this face...

Source Image

Temari is the one that trusted fully in him during war even to the point of considering him capable of being Hokage because “he has the power to reach/.sway away people’s hearts” and she wants to create a world of peace with him. Their relationship was about bringing out the best of each other not the worst, which doesn’t mean they don’t function like fully capable individuals without the other (cause they do) but that through their interactions they developed into better people. We are after all, social creatures and we need of others and the Sand Siblings are exemplary that that doesn’t make you weak but stronger. That you can change your preconceived notions of the world and learn from others, change for the better and use that strength protect instead to attack or seclude yourself.

So why, if Temari was capable to reach a point where she was at her best, letting her fear to be hurt to fall, and use her naturally energetic and confident persona to lead others effectively, through support and guidance, Boruto writers tend to write her in her moments with Shikamaru at what would be her worst, struggling to control her temper and with her stubbornness and rigidness making her excessively enter in conflict or disagreement or directly reject and dismiss others?

This is a complete character regression for Temari. And I don’t mean that characters can’t have their moments, nor that Temari should be perfect, when they are at that stage. But that should be addressed in that manner and not as comic relief.

In my opinion Temari had always a talent to give Shikamaru what he needed, giving him some tough love when he needed but at the same time being empowering.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darkness (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

That’s why, with the clear feel and need to protect and be appreciated by the ones they love and enjoying herself the most when they are surrounded by them, I can’t really see Temari acting like this.

5. PS: I still love you

This turned out to be really long so I won’t pull it any further. Just let me say this last words.

I really like Temari, I really do, and in part a lot of my dislike of her portrayal in Boruto comes from that same factor. I truly think she is an amazing kunoichi and someone girls could look up to when watching Naruto, cause yes she had flaws, but this were addressed as such and were never used as comic relief. Besides, her good qualities and strengths quickly unnumbered her flaws: she was intelligent, strong, honest, disciplined, determined, dutiful, loyal and caring. Yes she might be prideful, overly confident, way to upfront and may not like to show that much her emotions but I don’t consider that this flaws could beat her logical and rational mindset that first matched her with characters like Shikamaru.

Truly I think these scenes are a disservice towards my favorite female character of this whole manga and anime to the extent that if there was one thing I could change about the whole series would be this.

Temari wasn’t that much in the manga or in the anime but she was capable of leaving a palpable impression in me (to the extent that I wrote a +6.6k word essay about her, counting quotes and all) as well as in lots of other people. And that should tell you a lot about her as a character, a character that yes; could have been even better in terms of story and narrative than she was in the Naruto but that also certainly is much better than how they portray her in Boruto.

#naruto #manga #anime #boruto #opinion #temari #shikamaru x temari #nara #shikatema #temashika #shikadai #violence as comic relief is not funny #i will get so much hate for this #character analysis

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rpmemesbyarat · 4 years ago

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These are some tips for good villains that I’ve written up, without relying on giving them tragedy or good intentions. Not that tragic backstories or good intentions are bad to give your villains, they’re often GREAT, but you can have an interesting villain without them too, and I think they’re a topic most people already know and understanding, so I wanted to cover other ways a bad guy can be fleshed-out and compelling. “Good villains” here doesn’t mean “morally good” or even “sympathetic” but simply “interesting and well-written”. It’s geared towards bad guys you want to be prominent (perhaps the Big Bad or at least someone fairly important in the villain hierarchy, perhaps a personal nemesis to your character, etc), particularly those with a close connection to your hero (though that’s not necessary), that you want to be competent and threatening rather than comical or inept, and that you aim to make feel complex and “real” without necessarily being sympathetic at any point (though it’s fine if you do that too). It’s also geared more towards teen and adult audiences, and the fantasy/sci-fi/superhero genres (though not exclusive to them) You’ll notice that I use the word “consider” a whole lot in this list. That’s because none of this is a rule. Every character is different, including villains, so what “works” for your villain is going to vary; in fact, depending on who your villain is, some of these suggestions might be a bad idea! So take them as just that, suggestions, to think about and determine for yourself if they’re something that would work for what you have in mind. Not doing them, or even doing the opposite, will not automatically make your villain poorly written. Likewise, using common tropes and even cliches don’t necessarily make a villain poorly written either; some of the best-written villains out there employ quite a lot of cliches! Basically, think of this as simply a list of IDEAS, not necessities. And more than that, a list of OPINIONS, specifically just MY opinions. And I’m just one person, whose taste carries no more authority than anyone else’s, certainly not your own. Take what you like, and leave the rest. Because there is a LOT here. Like a LOT. It’s very VERY long with lots of points. So that’s why the cut!

- Whether your villain is a school bully or a high fantasy Dark Lord, reconsider having them OBSESSED with your hero. A lot of times when I see this, it’s just a way for the writer to prop up the hero and re-emphasize how SPECIAL they are, without the hero themselves actually having to DO anything special. They’re special because the bad guy hates them and the bad guy hates them because they’re special, and that’s why we should root for them. It’s circular and annoying in that alone, but it also reduces the villain to a mere prop who would have no character themselves (aside from, perhaps, generic “evil” traits) if you took the hero out of the picture. Consider maybe they’re NOT obsessed with the hero, or at least not more than any other obstacle to their plans. Consider the FOR ME IT WAS TUESDAY trope. Consider the villain having a life and personality apart from the good guy, and other aspects to their goals besides them. A hero-obsessive villain can certainly work, such as the Joker with Batman, but like the Joker they should still be a character in their own right too, not just a foil to the hero. For instance, Shadow-Weaver in the new She-Ra series is certainly obsessed with Adora, but there’s a lot more to her character; her favoritism for Adora is just a facet/extension of that. - Don’t make a strawman. A good villain should be more than just a 2-dimensional construct of everything evil and detestable for the hero to knock down. Give their personality the same consideration and depth that hero gets, and let them have traits that are not evil in and of themselves, such as perhaps being brave, artistic, or loyal. Some “good” traits work very well in the service of evil (a villain who is brave is far more dangerous than one who is cowardly, and one who is loyal to their evil empire is more dangerous than one who is disloyal to it) and some can simply be unrelated, such as enjoying painting or collecting fine pottery pieces. - Consider letting your hero admire something about the villain. It is very, VERY common for villains to admire something about the hero. They will often find them impressive for some reason another, and may even praise them or wish they’d join them. It is EXTREMELY rare for heroes to return the favor. And isn’t that kind of funny? What does it say, that the villain can find something worthy in their foes, but our hero can’t? Especially if this is a villain who has bested them fair and square over and over through power, cunning, or talent. It’s understandable in some cases — for instance, it’s hard to expect an eleven year old to see anything worthy in the man who murdered his parents—there’s nothing wrong with letting your good guy admit that the bad guy is better with a sword, or has great style, or thinks up schemes that the hero could never imagine (and not just because the hero is too moral to think of such things), or wishing someone with the bad guy’s skills were on their side. These aren’t the same thing as endorsing the villain’s actions, they have nothing to do with morality or justification, any more than the villain saying they admire the hero’s determination or loyalty or resourcefulness is the villain saying they admire goodness. - This is more a “hero” tip, but…don’t fall into the hypocrisy of Protagonist-Centered Morality. PCM is when everything the hero does is uncritically framed as “good” just because the hero does it. Yes, she murders when she doesn’t technically have to, just like the villain, but it was BAD people! Yes, she uses others without their knowledge or consent to get her way, just like the villain, but it was for a GOOD reason. Yes, she loves beautiful dresses and jewels and that’s fine when she does it, but when her rival does it, it’s because she’s vain and shallow and materialistic. Yes, she checks out the hot new boy, but when other girls gush and giggle over him, they’re brainless stereotypes unlike HER. While a hypocritical protagonist, or one that is not so different from the villain in the end, are both EXTREMELY interesting concepts and can make for a GREAT flawed hero to explore and develop, the problem with PCM is that ISN’T what the author is trying to do; they simply think that it’s all fine so long as the hero is doing it, whereas the villain is bad because it’s the villain doing it. This sort of unaware hypocrisy puts readers off VERY quickly once they pick up on it. Heroes should be held to the same standards as villains at least, if not MORE so, if we’re meant to consider them heroes. And the more pure, perfect, good, and right that we’re meant to perceive this hero as, the higher standard they should be held to. For instance, the Punisher and Sailor Moon are very different sorts of heroes, so the lines for them are in very different places—but they’re still there. You can’t have Sailor Moon act like the Punisher, and still have her be seen as Sailor Moon. Flawed heroes are great—I love them!—but they must be TREATED as flawed. We can’t be expected to root for them against the villains if there’s no difference in what they do and how they act. - In a battle of wits with the hero, let the villain be equally armed. Yes, we’ve all WANTED to leave the school bully gobsmacked with our witty retort, or to stun people into silence who annoy us, and these things are actually fine in stories. A witty hero can be a LOT of fun. But so can a witty villain. And a battle of verbal barbs between TWO very witty people can be a lot of fun to read! Not to mention that having the HERO be stunned into silence and unable to retort is actually fairly relatable; how many of us having only thought of what we SHOULD have said to someone hours later in the shower? Not to mention that if the villain keeps being made to look like an idiot incapable of making a single comeback, their threat level goes down quite a bit in the reader’s eyes, even if WHY they’re a threat is unrelated. Also…if you’re going to do this, make sure you can ACTUALLY write a witty hero. Wit is super hard, I know it’s hard for me, but it’s painful to read a scene where everyone is STUNNED at some “clever” thing the hero just said…and it’s not clever at all. - Consider letting the villain win a battle sometimes even if the hero wins the war in the end. If you hero overtakes the bad guy in each and every confrontation, there’s no suspense at all for any of their fights, let alone the final one (which should be the most dramatic and suspenseful). Giving the villain some minor victories—or better yet, substantial ones–can truly make the viewers worry what will happen. They may logically know the good guy will triumph, but you can still get them on the edge of their seats, and wondering at what cost that triumph will be. - Let the hero’s victories have a cost. If you want the villain to truly feel like a threat, let the hero have to lose something—or someone—in the course of defeating them. Maybe it’s something small, maybe it’s something huge, depending on the scale of the battle and what’s at stake, and you need not do it EVERY time, but for the biggest victories, consider a dramatic cost of SOME kind to the hero. This adds a sense of risk to dealing with the villain, and thus a sense of suspense and concern for the reader. - Consider letting your villain take defeat with grace, or even get something out of it. While the hero’s victory costs them, the villain may in fact get a consolation prize of some sort. For instance, on the “Gargoyles” TV show, the villain Xanatos fails to find out the hiding place of the gargoyles, but he feels fine about it because he still regained a treasure, earned a favor from the city, got to test out his new battle armor design, and has reassured himself that he wasn’t going soft like he’d worried. Why let your villain do this, while doing the opposite to your hero? For the hero, it makes their victories feel truly earned that they had to lose something in the process; it shows their dedication to whatever they’re doing, and it can give them new challenges or development—does their loss make them not want to keep going? Does it drive them harder? How does it affect them? And you can do that with a bad guy too, just like you can totally give the hero some fringe benefits to a defeat sometimes too. It just tends to be more fun and unexpected with villains, since most writers will save all the goodies for the heroes because the heroes “deserve” them; it’s almost expected that things will work out for them in the end. But if you can make it feel like the villain “deserved” it too through their cleverness or effort, it can be quite surprising, not to mention keeps things interesting since the reader is no longer able to predict exactly where the chips will fall. As for letting them take defeat with grace…even if they DON’T get something out of their defeat, consider NOT having them flip out over it. Emotional outbursts definitely work for some villains and helps communicate something about them, but a villain who keeps his cool after a loss, even a big one, can be just as effective at communicating something about his character too (and it’s much more rare). - For a hero or a villain, let the victory feel EARNED. Regardless of which one beat the other, let the victory feel like something they MADE happen, rather than something that just fell into their laps. Even if the villain cheated to do it, they should still have to put effort into the cheating! - No stupid villains. If their plan is easy to figure out or sabotage, go back and rework it. Give them one or two contingency plans that the reader also has to contend with, or perhaps didn’t see coming at all. Note that it doesn’t matter how smart your villain is SUPPOSED to be if what actually happens in practice is your villain being stupid. Not to mention that, as with letting the villain win sometimes, this makes your hero have to WORK for their victory, which makes it feel EARNED. Keep a watch for cliches (ex: “I’m going to put the good guys in a cell with one easily tricked, poorly armed guard!”) and consult the good ol’ EVIL OVERLORD LIST. - If they’re already terrible people in some specific or general way, reconsider how necessary it is they be terrible in some additional way just to show how eeevil they are. For instance, a heartless factory owner with no regard for the health, safety, or mental well-being of his employees is pretty despicable on for that alone; does he really need to abuse animals for fun too? If you want to make sure the animal-lovers in the crowd hate him, maybe it’s not that he abuses animals for fun, but simply doesn’t care how the animals in his company—such as work horses, depending on the time period—are treated so long as there’s a profit, just like how he sees humans. That way, it’s something that’s consistent with what’s already been shown of him—someone who values profit at all else, including other living beings—rather than feeling like it’s been tacked-on at random for shock value. - Especially do not use violence (especially sexual violence) to manipulate your audience if it involves children or animals. That doesn’t just make your readers hate the villain, it will make them hate YOU. There’s one comic book writer who killed a ton of people in his run, but it was the horrible death of a puppy that he got the angry letters over. Besides outraging readers, though, it’s also just a cheap tactic that a good writer shouldn’t have to rely on. This isn’t to say you can never use torture, graphic violence, rape, hurting children/animals, etc, at all—there are some truly fantastic works out there that have involved all these things—but to not reach for them willy-nilly. Be sure it’s actually necessary and that there’s no other option you can reach for, and don’t overuse it either. Doing it once has an effect; doing it ten times over decreases that effect. Which brings me to my next point… - Your villain should not be a mere vehicle for torture porn. A lot of times, it’s pretty clear to me that a writer just wants to write their hero being tortured/raped/lose a loved one/etc over, and over, and over. In addition to losing the emotional impact with repeats, this also ends up just annoying to the reader most of the time, especially since their usually seems something masturbatory in it. Not necessarily in a sexual sense, but as in some people just REALLY enjoy writing their characters suffer or trying to engender sympathy for them, and will do it ad nauseaum to the detriment of plot and development. If this is something you enjoy writing just for yourself, by all means go ahead with it, but if it’s something you intend to share or publish, consider moving on from repeatedly going over graphic, lingering ways in which your hero is yet again going to be tortured by the bad guy. - If your villain is a woman, LGBT, ethnic or religious minority, etc., reconsider any evil or cruel traits that reinforce negative stereotypes about that group as a whole. For instance, it’s probably not a great idea to have an LGBT villain be a sexual predator, or a Muslim villain who is misogynistic or religiously motivated against “infidels” for his crimes, or for you to use “doesn’t like children and/or men” as a way to show how evil your lady villain is. - If your hero is female, don’t have the male villain rape her just because. Please. I’m not saying this can never happen–we need stories about rape and survivors, not talking about it and not having stories is far worse—but there’s a real THING with writers feeling that all heroines need to face the threat of sexual assault, and all male villains are automatically ready to commit it, and it’s kind of messed up. - Give your villain good arguments for their motive/actions that can’t be easily and immediately refuted, and that an intelligent, reasonable person (assuming your villain is meant to be one) could realistically believe. This doesn’t mean that their argument has to be moral or sympathetic at all, it can in fact be completely cruel, but it should be something that doesn’t immediately fall apart like a Jenga stack under the least bit of logic. Try thinking up ways your villain’s rationale could be refuted, and craft rebuttals towards them, strengthening their argument. After all, if they got this far, they’ve probably encountered quite a few such arguments BEFORE the hero brings them up. Of course, lots of villains are driven by emotional/psychological reasons, but most real people will still create “logical” rationales and philosophies to justify acting out their issues and doing what they want. Give your bad guy the courtesy of doing the same, especially if they’re not intended as delusional or irrational people. Their plans should likewise make sense in service of these arguments; for instance, Thanos might have a point about limited resources, but as many people have pointed out, his “snap” actually did nothing to fix it because the resources-to-population ratio remained the same, the resources were not re-distributed in any way, etc. Your villain’s means to accomplish their goals don’t need to be the best way in a moral sense—they’re VILLAINS—but they should still make some sense in terms of being EFFECTIVE. - Remember your villains motives, one type of villainy doesn’t guarantee another. Someone who is motivated purely by profit is unlikely to join up with an ideological organization (unless there’s some way to get profit from that) Someone who is an eco-terrorist is unlikely to be interest in jewel heists (unless it’s justified by her using the money from selling the jewels to fund her eco-terrorism) And someone who is a mercenary for the sheer thrill and challenge of it, is probably not going to take a job that’s the equivalent of stealing candy from a baby. A person being morally okay with one type of evil doesn’t equate to them being down for ALL kinds, and their morality may not align with the common view. For instance, most people would consider rape to be far worse than petty theft, but maybe in your villain’s worldview, theft takes something physical and tangible and objectively real from someone, so it’s therefore worse. And most people would see human life as being worth objectively more than plant life, but try telling that to Poison Ivy! Likewise, many villains are only okay with evil IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR GOALS. Magneto is fine with mass murder, but only when it’s to advance or protect mutantkind; he’s not going to do it for funsies. Some villains don’t have any moral opposition to any kind of wrongdoing, but may simply have no INTEREST in some types, while being very interested in others. It’s hard to see Sabretooth or Hannibal Lector being morally opposed to embezzlement and white collar crime, but they’ve got no interest in committing it, because it’s not what they enjoy and/or feel compelled to do, they want to kill (and eat) people. Yet, as fine as Hannibal is with killing and eating people, rudeness enrages him. So basically, if your villain is “bad” in one way, don’t feel he has to be evil in every single way, especially if those ways don’t logically line up with his interests, goals, or philosophy/worldview. Indeed, giving a bad guy certain moral limits, with reasons that make within said worldviews, can be extremely helpful in fleshing them out and making them more interesting, even if those moral limits don’t actually make them better people in any way (ex: the rapist who refuses to rob) - The above point also means you can let your villain commit GOOD acts without it seeming out of character or undermining their evil. For instance, Hitler was an animal lover, and there was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany. Many people think that loving animals is automatically the trait of a “good” person, and animal cruelty is commonly (to the point of cliche) used in media to show how awful and evil a bad guy is. But we know from this that it’s not the case. Your opinion can do “good” things or have “good” opinions, if you do so in a way that doesn’t counteract their villainy, and in fact may make sense in tandem with it. Maybe your heartless hotel mogul helps the heroes fight a kaiju because it’s threatening his property. Maybe the villain who is obsessed with defeating the hero will help the hero against another villain because he doesn’t want to be upstaged by them. Maybe someone who hates the concept of “law” as enforced by the government, rather than determined by each individual to live as they see fit, argues in favor of same-sex marriage because they don’t think anyone should be told they CAN’T do something by the state, whether it’s murder or marrying. Maybe they want to conquer Earth, but that’s no reason NOT to help a pregnant woman; she’s no threat to them, and in fact is one of (in their mind) their future subjects, as is her child. Or, as with the Hitler, maybe they just like animals and won’t treat them badly, even while doing unforgivable things to their fellow human beings. There’s really no limit of ways you can have them do something “good” without it actually making them any less evil, which enables them to feel like more of a real person without actually risking their status as a villain. - Consider letting your villain have loved ones WITHOUT it being a redeeming factor for them. This is extremely rare; the only time villains are typically allowed to love anyone is when it’s used to show them in a redemptive light, or at least reveal they’re not as bad as they seem. There’s an idea in our society that love and evil are diametrically opposed, that “love” is an inherently “good” trait, so someone who loves cannot be wholly evil and in fact has the capacity for good, so therefore letting villain have loved ones (or had them in the past) automatically makes them sympathetic. I disagree. Love isn’t a “good” trait in itself. Lots of the worst people in real-world history have had loved ones, whom they most likely genuinely did love, and did not abuse or mistreat. In fact, caring for one’s own can be the motive behind a great deal of evil, or simply unrelated to it. A mafia don can be a loving family man, and still order other families to be killed, because those things aren’t related to each other in his mind. Of course, you can have love be a sympathetic/redeeming factor for your bad guy too, nothing wrong with that, this is just an alternative. - Let your villain learn and develop. Oftentimes, the hero will change a lot over the course of the story due to their interactions with the villain…but the villain remains the same. This isn’t very realistic. Your bad guy should be learning and growing just as much from their experiences; it just doesn’t need to be in a positive way. Maybe they learn to change tactics, to adapt and try new schemes against the hero when the first ones don’t work, instead of doing the same thing over and over. Maybe they start out as a less ruthless, less adamant villain, and get “harder” as they go. Maybe they started out with a completely binary, black and white view of things, and they’ve since encountered situations that aren’t so cut and dried, so their view and approaches have become more nuanced, but still villainous. Maybe they focus more now on not getting caught. Maybe they made new allies and enemies along the way, and develop through their interactions with them. Basically, they can change and be dynamic in an organic way that makes sense for them, without ever having to stop being a bad guy. They may even learn to be a more effective, more dangerous bad guy! - Care about consistency with your villain as much as you would the hero. If he does something “because he knew it would hurt the hero more than anything” at one point, it doesn’t follow for “he does bad things because he doesn’t understand it hurts others” to come up at a later point; if he doesn’t understand the things he does hurt others, how did he work out how to hurt the hero the most? That doesn’t make sense. Yes, I just said villains should get to grow and change, but randomly contradicting previous characterization with no explanation is NOT the same as organic development. - Don’t rely on “they’re just evil” for a motive, and DEFINITELY don’t rely on “they’re just insane”. Mentally ill villains can be done well, but it’s very tricky territory to tread, with a lot of Unfortunate Implications to beware of. But if you are making a villain who has a mental illness, that shouldn’t be what MAKES them evil. It may influence their thought process, how they reached the conclusions they did, or how they go about things, but it doesn’t HAVE to. In fact, I’d like to see more villains for whom insanity isn’t what gave them their goals or tactics, but does end up being a hindrance to them. After all, most mental illnesses negatively impact a person’s ability to accomplish tasks (work, hobbies, etc) in real life. Why not let it do the same to their ability to be a villain? It’d be a good spin on the usual trope of “insanity makes you evil” - Lack of empathy can be a good way for a person to be villain, why they can be fine with the atrocities they commit, and there are many great villains who display this. But consider also villains with a keen sense of empathy; Hannibal Lector, for instance, displays a great sense of empathy in how he can profile others, such as Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill. He may not care about most people, but he UNDERSTANDS them deeply. In fact, a great many villains in media who are CLAIMED not to have empathy, actually do; it’s what allows them to work out how to be cruel in the most effective way, or to predict what they would do in the hero’s shoes and thus make plans for that. Your high-empathy villain might be like that. Or they might be high-empathy in a more “positive” way as is typically associated with the term, and have that be part of what made them decide to be a villain, if they’re meant to be the kind of person who has good motives but bad means of accomplishing them. This also makes for the challenge of writing someone who can have high empathy in the typical sense, and still hurt others, and how they might do that—perhaps only doing it from a distance where they don’t have to see it, hurting people en masse so they become just a faceless mass to them instead of individuals, or only hurting people they’ve dubbed as being no longer worthy of their compassion for whatever reason—as scary as it is, the human psyche can very easily decide that a certain category of “people” are not actually worth as much as other people, whether it’s because of what they ARE or what they’ve DONE. - A tragic past isn’t necessary in and of itself. It absolutely is for SOME villains, such as Magneto, but it’s not needed for EVERY villain who is interesting, compelling, or even sympathetic. It should also not be over-relied on as a shortcut to sympathy or understanding; it begins to feel like a cop-out or excuse if it’s over-done or not done well. Make the background you think fits the character best and explains them most; don’t feel the need to make it the saddest thing ever if you don’t NEED to. A little can go a long way, and a villain being UNDERSTANDABLE doesn’t have to mean SYMPATHETIC. Also, as with mental illness, do NOT rely on being an abuse survivor as a shortcut to why someone is a villain; a villain can have this in their past, but it should not be the ONLY thing that led them to villainy. It’s extremely insulting to abuse survivors, most of whom do NOT become abusers themselves as is often claimed. - Finally, as with so much else in writing…show, don’t tell. Your villain is meant to be smart? Craft ingenious weapons and schemes for them, without obvious weak spots that the heroes can easily find. Your villain is meant to be a skilled fighter? Let them wipe the floor with the hero, or at the least put up an incredible fight; don’t build them up as being the best there is at what they do, only to be felled easily to show how cool your hero is. Your villain is meant to be socially savvy? Show them interacting with others in a way that is genuinely likeable and charismatic and endearing, don’t just have someone say they’re “charming” while they act like assholes. Your villain is meant to be cultured? Let them have a discussion with someone about art or opera, or take them on a tour of their collection of Ming Dynasty artwork. Your villain is meant to be cruel? You get the idea. Whatever the trait you’re giving your bad guy, don’t just SAY they have it—write it out! Basically…treat your villain like a character! It doesn’t have to mean making them tragic or sympathetic if you want to avoid that, and that’s fine! They can still be INTERESTING! And even fun!

#writeblr #writing villains #villains #villain tips #writing tip #writing tips #rp tip #rp tips #rp advice

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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years ago

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@katarahairloopies thank you so much for the tag!! talking about my writing to procrastinate writing is one of my favorite hobbies <3

prompt-share your:

first fic: the actual first fic I ever wrote was a pjo self insert fic I wrote in a binder when I was eleven and shredded six months later, in which the whole love triangle plot between Leo, Frank, and Hazel was resolved in three pages because even then I hated love triangles, my self-insert proudly declared that they were “too smart to date” (this was the excuse I was using at the time to escape the fact that I was a lesbian), and the completely un-child friendly myth of Philomena and Procne featured heavily because it was the coolest thing in the Mythology Book For Adults That Little Arthur Should Have Never Got Their Grimy Little Hands On, among other things. the first fic I ever posted was a 1D self-insert fic that I regret deeply.

favorite fic: ughhhh this is so hard I think it’s a tie between let him fly, victory lap, and like ripples, like love. let him fly was really important to me to write because the way the kataang family was portrayed in lok felt like a horrible twisted funhouse mirror version of my own family, and I knew that a lot of other mixed folks were upset by that portrayal, so I wanted to do something that showed Tenzin growing up with both Water Tribe and Air Nomad influences. honestly that’s the fic I’m proudest of, because I got feedback from a lot of other mixed folks saying that they felt seen by what I wrote, which is really all I’ve ever wanted. victory lap I love because I love writing and reading character study fics of characters who don’t get to do much on their own in the show, and I just love the concept of deconstructing the perfect badass Suki whomst we all stan and making her an actual human being. And like ripples, like love just makes me feel good, honestly. Writing it puts me in a good mood, and none of my other profoundly depressing wips do that quite as well.

EDIT: ok I think the original intent of this question was favorite fic that someone else wrote fjsdkfjsdjfklsjf my bad. for me it’s between Hooked by @listless-brainrot, Balance My Heart in the Palm of Your Hand by the lovely sukis_fans on ao3, where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor on ao3, and paint it red, they’ll cover it up anyway by snowandfire on ao3. Hooked I love because it’s the original Jetru fic and because it’s one of the most nuanced characterizations of both Jet and Haru that I’ve seen in any fic ever, also List’s descriptions are phenomenal, also BRUH THE FRAMING DEVICE ok listen framing devices are so easy to mess up and List just made his perfect the rest of us can all go home I guess. Balance My Heart is to this day my favorite mailee fic, I’m obsessed with it it’s so sweet and so well thought out. The author pays so much attention to Mai and Ty Lee as characters and also!!! Mai and Sokka friendship!!! we stan!!!! where the stars do not take sides is honestly a fandom classic (or should be, anyway). Y’all know I love a good major canon divergence and this is honestly one of the most well thought out ones I’ve ever seen. Also the characterization of Azula and of Azula and Zuko’s bond is INCREDIBLE. god-tier content honestly. paint it red is also something that should be a fandom classic and really readjusted my opinions of Jet as a character with its well thought out characterization. I love the concept of past jetko when it’s not “Jet was a total asshole and Zuko was perfect in every way” and paint it red ABSOLUTELY delivers on this it is so wonderful. A common thread with all of these is that they prioritize characterization over “ship dynamics” and they make sure that all of their characterizations are nuanced and three dimensional, and I love them for that.

most recent fic: love will always find you, the second installment in the donnaverse (in which the girls of Avatar inexplicably love Donna Summer and start a band together), which is about Yue and Suki going on their first date. There’s lots to love about this fic for me: it’s yueki (my favorite atla wlw ship), there’s a philosophical discussion of a Donna Summer song as they drive through LA, Suki backstory, background mailee, just good vibes all around.

fic with the most notes: like ripples, like love by far, but my most popular fics on ao3 are the greatest of them all (in which Toph and Bumi I duel and become besties) and keep the world at bay (Avatar Sokka)

a line or two from a wip: what I’m currently working on for atla femslash week-

She’d never needed anyone before, and she didn’t want to need anyone ever again. It was torture, picturing Yue’s face without being able to see her for real.

Just one night. Only one night.

How do you know?

The moon always comes back.

Suki felt the tears roll down her cheeks, the dry sobs wracking her body as she hid her face in her chest. I don’t know. I don’t know.

favorite character to write for (and why): Mako 100%. I vibe so hard with the tired older sibling with several undiagnosed mental illnesses energy he gives off.

character(s) you find hard to write: I hate to say it but Katara. I love her to pieces but I have no clue where to start with her characterization wise, which is why if she’s in a fic she’s usually not the pov character and she’s sidelined more than I would like her to be.

tagging: @listless-brainrot @the-hot-zone @miannmian @scrtminlikesdrawing and anyone who wants to!

#tag games #arthur's wips #again thank you so much for the tag kit #caps tw

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horde-princess · 6 years ago

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-sighs- hey guys sorry to do this but i have a painful follow up to this character analysis

I mentioned in passing how Adora isn’t a fan of Scorpia because she is “enabling Catra’s descent into darkness,” but then I went on to talk about how Scorpia’s love is going to be transformative for Catra. I think there’s a logic gap between these ideas that I need to close up.

Scortra is beautiful like I love them with my whole heart :’) but there’s a reason that most of us believe catradora is endgame.

Catra’s understanding of what love means was influenced a lot by Adora’s presence and protection as a kid. When Adora left her, Catra’s faith in love was shattered--because she had expected Adora to be there for her, always, unconditionally.

Then, in walks Scorpia. She offers what Adora did not--her unconditional love, support, and protection. No matter what Catra says or does, no matter how selfish her behavior is--Scorpia stands by her through it all.

I think what we have to ask is... is that actually a good thing?

What does “love” really mean? Does loving someone mean you support them in everything, even while they’re self-destructing? ...Adora would say no.

I went back and watched some parts of 1x02 and 1x11, and god, Adora really does beg Catra to leave the Horde. What’s interesting though is the context of these scenes.

In the first picture, they were discussing how the Horde manipulated them. In the second and third pictures, Catra had just expressed anger about Adora not being there to protect her anymore. In the fourth picture, they’re talking about Shadow Weaver’s abuse.

My point is, Adora’s motivation to see Catra leave the Horde has very little to do with Catra’s morality, and a lot to do with Catra’s safety and welfare.

They had this discussion three different times, and each time, Catra refused to leave. Adora may not quite know how to express it, but I think part of the reason she left Catra, despite it breaking her own heart, was that she loves Catra too much to stand by while she destroys herself.

Coming back to Scorpia... I think Scorpia’s unconditional love is exactly what Catra needs at this point in her life. It’s an extreme that will help restore her faith in love after Adora broke it. But it cannot sustain her. Catra may want unconditional loyalty, but eventually she’s going to realize it’s not what she truly needs.

This is exactly what I was getting at when I said that Scorpia defying Catra’s orders in 2x05 caused Catra is see her in a new light. Because that was a true expression of love. And Scorpia, with her unwavering loyalty, is the only person in the world right now who can help Catra understand that.

(Don’t worry, this meta is about get a lot worse 😊)

Once Scorpia helps Catra re-evaluate her understanding of love... Catra is going to finally understand why Adora did what she did. She’s going to realize that Adora loved her all along, that she never stopped loving her, not even for a second.

She’s going to realize that it’s not Scorpia’s brand of love that she wants.

It’s Adora’s.

After everything that Scorpia did for Catra... she’s still going to go back to Adora.

Now, Scorpia is not a one-dimensional character. She has proved that she will risk upsetting Catra, risk Catra’s trust in her, if it means doing what’s right for her. In the case of 2x05, literally saving her life--but also less obviously, helping to break Catra’s vengeful obsession with Adora. Remember what she said right before she destroyed the First Ones disc?

She wasn’t just talking about saving her from the giant robot--she was talking about Catra’s mental state lol. She recognizes that Catra’s hatred is eating her alive, and here she goes against Catra’s wishes to save her from that.

So depending on where the writers are taking all this, I imagine Scorpia’s expressions of love will continue to grow and develop... And inevitably push Catra right into Adora’s arms.

#wtf who let me do this?#i shouldn't be allowed to have a blog #she ra #spop #catradora #meta

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in-tua-deep · 6 years ago

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Honestly God and five and siblings goals. Also do you have any more info on that au??

(about the late addition/universe child au here ;3c)

adsfSDFGH are you kidding they would be the most insufferable kind of siblings where God and Five are consistently bothering each other and getting on one another’s nerves because they both are strong personalities that clash but at the same time if you even THINK about being mean to the other they will kill you without mercy

of course there’s being protective AND being irritating to multitask which God considers her job as a big sister clearly??

at some point Five figures out how to shift the academy like two inches to the left dimensionally speaking so that it sort of becomes something almost like how the Commission HQ was out of time but not quite?? it’s the house that when you enter you kind of feel like you’re entering a liminal space because it’s not quite in the dimension but it’s also not not in the dimension?

which is a longwinded way of saying that Five figures out how to squirm right through a loophole so God can come to their family dinners sometimes, when she wants to come

absolutely no one is sure what to do with,, you know,, God as their,,,, what? step-sibling? Like,, yeah the universe didn’t marry Reginald or whatever but she’s five’s sister and five is their brother so??

klaus just rolls with it and teams up with god to irritate five while also taking her side on genuinely everything because she gave Dave and Ben back

(“That was actually me??” Five protests loudly, because he was the one who had to fucking jump into an active warzone after Klaus ditched and grab a big old adult corpse and lug it home like does no one have ANY respect for the effort he makes?)

Five only brings up being ‘older’ than God exactly one (1) time because she immediately turns him into a 3-year-old until he manages to contact their mother to set it right (and even then she made him stay that way for a couple of days for “teasing his sister” before returning him to age 13)

“Hey how come you can change Five’s age but he can’t?” Allison asks over breakfast. No one touches the coffee pot because God made it, and it’s like black sludge. Well, Five drinks it - but he hardly counts.

She takes a sip of her tar. “Eventually he’ll be able to do it, but he’s too young right now.”

“HEY you know the conversion rates, right?” Klaus interjects, “How old is Five in universe years?”

God just kind of shrugs. “I spent my first few hundred years cradled in our mother’s arms as she spoke galaxies into being. I was probably a few hundred thousand years old when I made my first planet, and then a few hundred thousand more than that when I figured out life.”

Five is also drinking sludge tar coffee and carefully not commenting.

“Is Five a baby?” Luther asks incredulously, and he absolutely deserves the mug that is thrown at his head. He’s only fortunate Allison yanked him out of the way so it shattered on the wall instead of his thick skull, and that Vanya immediately moved to restrain Five from lunging across the table.

God, for her part, simply shrugs. “It’s a bit difficult to say. We aren’t the same as other people. We aren’t even the same as each other. One day, when we’re old enough, we’re supposed to leave our mother and become universes unto ourselves - but that’s so far into the future as to be eternity.”

Mollified, Five sits back and nods his head, because it isn’t fair to judge his age by human standards or by universe standards really.

Except then God smirks and says, “But he’s definitely younger than me and being not even a hundred definitely makes him a baby.”

They end up just having to cut God’s visit short that day before they manage to completely destroy the kitchen. As it stands they’re going to have to entirely replace the flatware. Diego ended up just bear hugging Five to his chest and walking out of the room at one point, which Five quickly escaped and jumped back in. Klaus told Diego it was a bad idea, and so the black eye is Diego’s own fault.

honestly just the knowledge that your brother is kind of ?? a god? or a demi-god? they’re all somewhat unclear on everything

“I think I’m having a crisis of faith.” Klaus wheezes from the floor when Five finally ends up trying to explain after he does his thing so he can have God over at the house. “Are we religious? Are we supposed to be religious now? Are angels real?”

“You’ve been calling Dave your angel for literal months, Klaus.” Five points out, unimpressed.

Klaus rolls over to prop himself up on his elbows and give his littlest brother the stink eye. “YEAH. But like, in a GAY way not a CELESTIAL way thank you.”

“Important clarification.” God deadpans from where she’s sitting on the couch inspecting her nails. Allison is painting her other hand in confident strokes that only faltered a little upon finding the exact identity of the little girl in front of her.

“Does no one care about my crisis?” Klaus howls mournfully to the ceiling.

“I finished the tea.” Dave announces, coming into the room and just looking at Klaus on the floor with fondness instead of the general exasperation that’s sitting on every other sibling’s face. That’s how they know it’s love.

“That’s why he’s an angel.” Klaus sighs dreamily, accepting the cup and reaching up to pull Dave down to cuddle while Five makes a face at the blatant PDA going on in the house

honestly just Dave being super calm and just very very calmly turning to Klaus upon finding all this out and being like “Klaus, love of my life, I know you told me your family was weird but what the actual fuck.”

And he’s from like, the old days when fuck was a really really bad word so you know it’s bad

(someone: i have questions about religion -

god: actually i’m agnostic

someone: …

god: …

someone: but aren’t you goD -)

now i’m picturing claire coming over and having a tea party with her uncle five and also oh, god

(patrick, frantically, in the background after being filled in on all of this: what the fuck allison what the fuck)

but basically five in this au is like,, a very weak god?? because he’s a baby in terms of years and their power is supposed to grow with their years (which probably means that the universe absolutely could have interfered but it would have been a little like using a nuclear bomb to get rid of a spider in the house)

Five can: part the fabric of the universe to travel - both spatially and temporally, do some quick and dirty magic tricks like swapping two items or jumping an item to his hand instead of going to it, and speak the language of the universe - which is how he contacts his mother (it’s a little bit like yelling for your parent from across the house and hoping they’ll come closer to hear you)

God can do a whole heck of a lot more than that but she binds herself with a lot of personal rules - the chief of which is not to interfere too badly in mortal affairs because she’s a big believe in free will. And also if she tries to help one person, where does she draw the line?

(God likes Allison because she gets what it’s like to be capable of overriding someone’s free will and then choosing to not do that - even when it’s the easiest option available)

“So like, do I get my own planet?” Five asks, idly spreading peanut butter on bread as he prepares his favorite snack.

“Maybe when you’re older.” God says, just that side of condescending as she loudly clicks buttons on a gaming system she stole directly out of Ben’s hands not even ten minutes ago. He just let her have it and sat down at the table with a book and a deep sigh.

“I’ll kill you.” Five says mildly, like he’s commenting on the weather. “I’ll kill you, and no jury would convict me.”

“On no.” God deadpans, not even looking up from her game. It may or may not be pokemon. “Whatever will I do. I wonder where people go when they die. Surely it isn’t my own home dimension. Oh, the horror.”

“Don’t bring me into this.” Ben mutters, loudly flipping a page and making Five snort in laughter.

honestly i’m just picturing a whole lot of shenanigans tbh,, like not even connected series of flashes of just sort of a slice of life comedy

(“Some big sisters teach their little brothers to ride bikes.” Diego mutters, rubbing at the side of his head where his entire goddamn ear vanished a moment ago when he’d be volunteered for God to try and demonstrate something on him, “Just harmless bike riding. Not vanishing people’s fucking ears. The nerve. See if I hang around you two again.”)

Just Diego at the police station getting really frustrated with a case and being like “Hold up Eudora -” (“Don’t call me that.”) “I’m gonna call home and see if god is in, see if she knows that the hell is going on here. If not we might have to talk with Klaus, ugh.” (“Diego what the FUCK.”)

technically god has a name but it’s in like,, universe language?? it’s in starsong and not really,, applicable to human ears? the universe has a starsong name as well, and technically so does Five, which is probably why this au five was so resistant to getting a ‘name’ - he already had one

(Luther, horrified: wait when you said about being the four horsemen were you being literal

Five: don’t be silly Luther, if my sister wanted to cause the apocalypse she’d come down here and do it herself, not outsource

Luther: i am not comforted by that)

even after their first somewhat interesting meeting, god actually does get along with klaus very well - partially because his powers most directly relate with her ‘dimension’ so to speak, the one she calls home most of the time

i’m currently picturing a team up between god, claire, and five and it’s horrifying and wonderful and i’m sure causes more than one stress ulcer in the house goodness

but yes needless to say i do have a lot of thoughts about this au lmao

#late addition au #universe's son au #universe child five au #universe child au #tua #The Umbrella Academy #five hargreeves #number five #tua god #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves

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smallblueandloud · 5 years ago

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thoughts on episode ii

subtitled let’s fix attack of the clones!!: anakin edition

i came out of this movie really not shipping anakin and padme. he is selfish, awkward, and distracting - and she should too busy to consider a romance.

the prequels are trying to tell two stories (anakin’s fall and the fall of the republic) and it barely tries to link them, instead just spending time on the boring, clunky one (anakin) at the expense of the more interesting one (the republic/the clones, represented in this movie by obi-wan), which seems like it’s missing vital conversations.

but this post is about anakin and anakin/padme. so let’s get started.

this movie, at least in terms of anakin’s development, suffers from middle-of-trilogy syndrome. nothing really happens. his mother dies (oh my GOD) and he angsts about it for a while, commits mass murder, and then jumps right back to pursuing his terrible “romance” with padme.

i mean, there are NO lasting effects of his mother’s death. he learns no coping techniques, feels no real emotions about it...

shmi was done dirty in general though. the idea of her marrying the guy that bought her is pretty icky. i’m becoming more and more fond of fialleril’s headcanon that shmi meets beru and adopts her as her daughter. cliegg is nothing but owen’s offscreen father.

i mean, that would’ve been SO MUCH BETTER, even if you keep the whole shmi-dying-solely-to-cause-her-idiot-son-pain. WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT. why spend all of episode i talking about freeing the slaves and then do absolutely nothing about it??

picture shmi, her adoptive daughter beru, and her adoptive daughter’s boyfriend owen (who really isn’t sure how he got involved in this but isn’t complaining) running an underground slave-freeing operation.

not sure how this would tie into the movie, plot-wise or anakin-development-wise, because yeah, you do need to start getting nervous around this kid. (I MEAN, IN MY PLAN FOR THE PHANTOM MENACE, YOU WOULD’VE STARTED THIS IN THE VERY BEGINNING BY USING A SLIGHTLY WORRYINGLY COMPETENT AND BRUTAL 14-YEAR-OLD, NOT THE PREPUBESCENT NONSENSE WE GOT. but regardless.)

i guess you’d need anakin and padme to be hanging at on naboo, in her lake house (god padme’s so freaking bougie), and padme asks how anakin’s mom is.

queue the obligatory “oh, haha, i don’t actually,,,, know??”

padme proposes that since they have no duties and she’s actually bored out of her mind, they should go visit shmi. anakin protests for about two seconds before realizing a) there’s no stopping her, and b) he’d actually kinda like to see his mom.

(padme has some ulterior motives besides wanting anakin to see his goddamn mom again. she wants to buy her freedom, since she’s actually prepared with real funds this time, and she wants to ask her advice on helping out with abolition, since she and sabe had failed miserably when they tried on their own. [this is canon, go read queen’s shadow if you haven’t already because it’s an excellent book.] we love women acknowledging other women’s expertise!! padme has grown a lot and wants to stop being so core world-y.)

so anyways, they go there, meet shmi (who’s already freed herself, thanks so much), and beru and owen. anakin, because he has had no emotional support network since he was nine goddamn years old, is jealous, but does his best to keep it under wraps.

at some point, while anakin and padme are helping out with the freedom trail, and someone (not sure who) gets a little violent with shmi.

anakin... goes ballistic, we’ll say. it gets violent. he gets harsh. it’s an overreaction, but shmi manages to calm him down.

(padme, on the other hand, is frightened. she takes a step back the next time anakin turns to her. but she manages to hold it down until later.)

the flighty escapee that beru is operating on goes into hysterics. shmi pulls anakin outside and tells him, quietly, that she’s so overjoyed to see him but that she thinks he needs to be getting on his way.

padme, meanwhile, gets pinged on her communication device. obi-wan has contacted them, just like he did in canon.

also, there’s some kind of beru&anakin moment, or maybe a beru&padme moment. just a conversation of some kind, for uber talented gifset-makers to gif and put alongside beru talking to luke so i can be destroyed emotionally.

this serves several purposes.

the movie feels more emotionally coherent. anakin doesn’t jump from awkward flirting to mass murder to making out with his girlfriend.

shmi gets some closure.

we’re introduced to beru, who clearly meets anakin and padme.

we get to see the little people making a difference, which is a huge theme in star wars. this can act as a foil to the hugely ineffective senate.

padme gets the opportunity for some character growth (she’s my wife and all but she’s so bougie).

we get to see anakin be dark, over something.... sorta understandable?? and it doesn’t quite make us think he should be locked up (unlike murder) (except the movie says it’s okay because they’re just sand people and i really don’t like the implications of that). also, we can see the inherent tragedy of someone who needs so much community support being “”chosen”” by the force to go into an order of emotionally private individuals (not that that isn’t a bad thing for someone like obi-wan, but it really isn’t good for anakin).

AND I HAVEN’T EVEN REALLY MENTIONED PADME. i have a wishlist for padme, and it boils down to: at least mention her relationship with sabe, show her being good at politics, let her have character development, don’t make her have to mother anakin, and oh by the way make her two-dimensional enough that her abandoning her ideals to get together with a jedi actually makes sense.

because like! i can believe she likes anakin! he’s an old friend, from a time that seems simpler in hindsight, and he’s in love with her and flirts awkwardly and makes jokes. i mean, the dialogue makes it impossible for anakin to seem remotely attractive, but we’ll leave it at the fact that padme desperately wants something simple and a relationship with anakin, paradoxically, looks like a winner.

but i want to see her like anakin. show, not tell, georgie boy!! all we see in the movie is her giggling at him and her rejecting him, and then her kissing him, and there’s really no falling in love.

because okay. they’re a fundamentally doomed relationship, total opposites who are both startlingly naive wrt their personal lives. so i accept that they’re not really in love - they’re just clinging to ideals of each other. well. at least padme is. she’s smart enough to recognize what she’s doing, but she pushes it down because she is forced to hold too much on her shoulders (BECAUSE THE SENATE DOESN’T WORK) and she needs something that is just for her.

look, i really need sabe in these movies, okay. this is unrelated to my humongous crush on keira knightley. i need padme to have a friend, someone she can express this to, who can look at her doubtfully when she says she’s in love with anakin, because we really need to drive in the idea of this being a tragedy and we can’t see it unless we see how goddamn foolish even padme “good choices” amidala is being.

also like. padme needs friends. and i firmly believe that the “mother” that leia remembers was sabe, who is actively involved in the rebellion during the OT. because like. i have emotions, and most of them come back to luke&leia.

i’m not sure i’d have them get married, but that’s just a matter of taste. and you have to admit the set of final shots - the victory with the clones, baby boba pressing his forehead to his dad’s helmet, the marriage - with the overlaid music is really something. i mean, there you have the myth stuff that george wanted. i vibe with it.

anyways. thank you for coming to my ted talk, part the second.

#star wars #episode ii #attack of the clones #anakin skywalker #sw critical #sb and l rambles #sb and l watches sw #idiot goth boy anakin skywalker #i'll probably think of more things to say later but ah well #me: gets a hint of free time #me immediately: writes 1.3k of how to fix aotc

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thecorteztwins · 5 years ago

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These are some tips for good villains that I’ve written up, without relying on giving them tragedy or good intentions. Not that tragic backstories or good intentions are bad to give your villains, they're often GREAT, but you can have an interesting villain without them too, and I think they’re a topic most people already know and understanding, so I wanted to cover other ways a bad guy can be fleshed-out and compelling. “Good villains” here doesn’t mean “morally good” or even “sympathetic” but simply “interesting and well-written”. It’s geared towards bad guys you want to be prominent (perhaps the Big Bad or at least someone fairly important in the villain hierarchy, perhaps a personal nemesis to your character, etc), particularly those with a close connection to your hero (though that’s not necessary), that you want to be competent and threatening rather than comical or inept, and that you aim to make feel complex and “real” without necessarily being sympathetic at any point (though it’s fine if you do that too). It’s also geared more towards teen and adult audiences, and the fantasy/sci-fi/superhero genres (though not exclusive to them) You’ll notice that I use the word “consider” a whole lot in this list. That’s because none of this is a rule. Every character is different, including villains, so what “works” for your villain is going to vary; in fact, depending on who your villain is, some of these suggestions might be a bad idea! So take them as just that, suggestions, to think about and determine for yourself if they’re something that would work for what you have in mind. Not doing them, or even doing the opposite, will not automatically make your villain poorly written. Likewise, using common tropes and even cliches don’t necessarily make a villain poorly written either; some of the best-written villains out there employ quite a lot of cliches! Basically, think of this as simply a list of IDEAS, not necessities. And more than that, a list of OPINIONS, specifically just MY opinions. And I’m just one person, whose taste carries no more authority than anyone else’s, certainly not your own. Take what you like, and leave the rest. Because there is a LOT here. Like a LOT. It’s very VERY long with lots of points. So that’s why the cut!

- Whether your villain is a school bully or a high fantasy Dark Lord, reconsider having them OBSESSED with your hero. A lot of times when I see this, it’s just a way for the writer to prop up the hero and re-emphasize how SPECIAL they are, without the hero themselves actually having to DO anything special. They’re special because the bad guy hates them and the bad guy hates them because they’re special, and that’s why we should root for them. It’s circular and annoying in that alone, but it also reduces the villain to a mere prop who would have no character themselves (aside from, perhaps, generic “evil” traits) if you took the hero out of the picture. Consider maybe they’re NOT obsessed with the hero, or at least not more than any other obstacle to their plans. Consider the FOR ME IT WAS TUESDAY trope. Consider the villain having a life and personality apart from the good guy, and other aspects to their goals besides them. A hero-obsessive villain can certainly work, such as the Joker with Batman, but like the Joker they should still be a character in their own right too, not just a foil to the hero. For instance, Shadow-Weaver in the new She-Ra series is certainly obsessed with Adora, but there’s a lot more to her character; her favoritism for Adora is just a facet/extension of that. - Don’t make a strawman. A good villain should be more than just a 2-dimensional construct of everything evil and detestable for the hero to knock down. Give their personality the same consideration and depth that hero gets, and let them have traits that are not evil in and of themselves, such as perhaps being brave, artistic, or loyal. Some “good” traits work very well in the service of evil (a villain who is brave is far more dangerous than one who is cowardly, and one who is loyal to their evil empire is more dangerous than one who is disloyal to it) and some can simply be unrelated, such as enjoying painting or collecting fine pottery pieces. - Consider letting your hero admire something about the villain. It is very, VERY common for villains to admire something about the hero. They will often find them impressive for some reason another, and may even praise them or wish they’d join them. It is EXTREMELY rare for heroes to return the favor. And isn’t that kind of funny? What does it say, that the villain can find something worthy in their foes, but our hero can’t? Especially if this is a villain who has bested them fair and square over and over through power, cunning, or talent. It’s understandable in some cases --- for instance, it’s hard to expect an eleven year old to see anything worthy in the man who murdered his parents---there’s nothing wrong with letting your good guy admit that the bad guy is better with a sword, or has great style, or thinks up schemes that the hero could never imagine (and not just because the hero is too moral to think of such things), or wishing someone with the bad guy’s skills were on their side. These aren’t the same thing as endorsing the villain’s actions, they have nothing to do with morality or justification, any more than the villain saying they admire the hero’s determination or loyalty or resourcefulness is the villain saying they admire goodness. - This is more a “hero” tip, but...don’t fall into the hypocrisy of Protagonist-Centered Morality. PCM is when everything the hero does is uncritically framed as “good” just because the hero does it. Yes, she murders when she doesn’t technically have to, just like the villain, but it was BAD people! Yes, she uses others without their knowledge or consent to get her way, just like the villain, but it was for a GOOD reason. Yes, she loves beautiful dresses and jewels but when her rival does it, it’s because she’s vain and shallow and materialistic. Yes, she checks out the hot new boy, but when other girls gush and giggle over it, they’re brainless stereotypes unlike HER. While a hypocritical protagonist, or one that is not so different from the villain in the end, are both EXTREMELY interesting concepts and can make for a GREAT flawed hero to explore and develop, the problem with PCM is that ISN’T what the author is trying to do; they simply think that it’s all fine so long as the hero is doing it, whereas the villain is bad because it’s the villain doing it. This sort of unaware hypocrisy puts readers off VERY quickly once they pick up on it. Heroes should be held to the same standards as villains at least, if not MORE so, if we’re meant to consider them heroes. And the more pure, perfect, good, and right that we’re meant to perceive this hero as, the higher standard they should be held to. For instance, the Punisher and Sailor Moon are very different sorts of heroes, so the lines for them are in very different places---but they’re still there. You can’t have Sailor Moon act like the Punisher, and still have her be seen as Sailor Moon. Flawed heroes are great---I love them!---but they must be TREATED as flawed. We can’t be expected to root for them against the villains if there’s no difference in what they do and how they act. - In a battle of wits with the hero, let the villain be equally armed. Yes, we’ve all WANTED to leave the school bully gobsmacked with our witty retort, or to stun people into silence who annoy us, and these things are actually fine in stories. A witty hero can be a LOT of fun. But so can a witty villain. And a battle of verbal barbs between TWO very witty people can be a lot of fun to read! Not to mention that having the HERO be stunned into silence and unable to retort is actually fairly relatable; how many of us having only thought of what we SHOULD have said to someone hours later in the shower? Not to mention that if the villain keeps being made to look like an idiot incapable of making a single comeback, their threat level goes down quite a bit in the reader’s eyes, even if WHY they’re a threat is unrelated. Also...if you’re going to do this, make sure you can ACTUALLY write a witty hero. Wit is super hard, I know it’s hard for me, but it’s painful to read a scene where everyone is STUNNED at some “clever” thing the hero just said...and it’s not clever at all. - Consider letting the villain win a battle sometimes even if the hero wins the war in the end. If you hero overtakes the bad guy in each and every confrontation, there’s no suspense at all for any of their fights, let alone the final one (which should be the most dramatic and suspenseful). Giving the villain some minor victories---or better yet, substantial ones--can truly make the viewers worry what will happen. They may logically know the good guy will triumph, but you can still get them on the edge of their seats, and wondering at what cost that triumph will be. - Let the hero’s victories have a cost. If you want the villain to truly feel like a threat, let the hero have to lose something---or someone---in the course of defeating them. Maybe it’s something small, maybe it’s something huge, depending on the scale of the battle and what’s at stake, and you need not do it EVERY time, but for the biggest victories, consider a dramatic cost of SOME kind to the hero. This adds a sense of risk to dealing with the villain, and thus a sense of suspense and concern for the reader. - Consider letting your villain take defeat with grace, or even get something out of it. While the hero’s victory costs them, the villain may in fact get a consolation prize of some sort. For instance, on the “Gargoyles” TV show, the villain Xanatos fails to find out the hiding place of the gargoyles, but he feels fine about it because he still regained a treasure, earned a favor from the city, got to test out his new battle armor design, and has reassured himself that he wasn’t going soft like he’d worried. Why let your villain do this, while doing the opposite to your hero? For the hero, it makes their victories feel truly earned that they had to lose something in the process; it shows their dedication to whatever they’re doing, and it can give them new challenges or development---does their loss make them not want to keep going? Does it drive them harder? How does it affect them? And you can do that with a bad guy too, just like you can totally give the hero some fringe benefits to a defeat sometimes too. It just tends to be more fun and unexpected with villains, since most writers will save all the goodies for the heroes because the heroes “deserve” them; it’s almost expected that things will work out for them in the end. But if you can make it feel like the villain “deserved” it too through their cleverness or effort, it can be quite surprising, not to mention keeps things interesting since the reader is no longer able to predict exactly where the chips will fall. As for letting them take defeat with grace...even if they DON’T get something out of their defeat, consider NOT having them flip out over it. Emotional outbursts definitely work for some villains and helps communicate something about them, but a villain who keeps his cool after a loss, even a big one, can be just as effective at communicating something about his character too (and it’s much more rare). - For a hero or a villain, let the victory feel EARNED. Regardless of which one beat the other, let the victory feel like something they MADE happen, rather than something that just fell into their laps. Even if the villain cheated to do it, they should still have to put effort into the cheating! - No stupid villains. If their plan is easy to figure out or sabotage, go back and rework it. Give them one or two contingency plans that the reader also has to contend with, or perhaps didn’t see coming at all. Note that it doesn’t matter how smart your villain is SUPPOSED to be if what actually happens in practice is your villain being stupid. Not to mention that, as with letting the villain win sometimes, this makes your hero have to WORK for their victory, which makes it feel EARNED. Keep a watch for cliches (ex: “I’m going to put the good guys in a cell with one easily tricked, poorly armed guard!”) and consult the good ol’ EVIL OVERLORD LIST. - If they’re already terrible in some specific or general way, reconsider how necessary it is they be terrible in some additional way just to show how eeevil they are. For instance, a heartless factory owner with no regard for the health, safety, or mental well-being of his employees is pretty despicable on for that alone; does he really need to abuse animals for fun too? If you want to make sure the animal-lovers in the crowd hate him, maybe it’s not that he abuses animals for fun, but simply doesn’t care how the animals in his company---such as work horses, depending on the time period---are treated so long as there’s a profit, just like how he sees humans. That way, it’s something that’s consistent with what’s already been shown of him---someone who values profit at all else, including other living beings---rather than feeling like it’s been tacked-on at random for shock value. - Especially do not use violence (especially sexual violence) to manipulate your audience if it involves children or animals. That doesn’t just make your readers hate the villain, it will make them hate YOU. There’s one comic book writer who killed a ton of people in his run, but it was the horrible death of a puppy that he got the angry letters over. Besides outraging readers, though, it’s also just a cheap tactic that a good writer shouldn’t have to rely on. This isn’t to say you can never use torture, graphic violence, rape, hurting children/animals, etc, at all---there are some truly fantastic works out there that have involved all these things---but to not reach for them willy-nilly. Be sure it’s actually necessary and that there’s no other option you can reach for, and don’t overuse it either. Doing it once has an effect; doing it ten times over decreases that effect. Which brings me to my next point... - Your villain should not be a mere vehicle for torture porn. A lot of times, it’s pretty clear to me that a writer just wants to write their hero being tortured/raped/lose a loved one/etc over, and over, and over. In addition to losing the emotional impact with repeats, this also ends up just annoying to the reader most of the time, especially since their usually seems something masturbatory in it. Not necessarily in a sexual sense, but as in some people just REALLY enjoy writing their characters suffer or trying to engender sympathy for them, and will do it ad nauseaum to the detriment of plot and development. If this is something you enjoy writing just for yourself, by all means go ahead with it, but if it’s something you intend to share or publish, consider moving on from repeatedly going over graphic, lingering ways in which your hero is yet again going to be tortured by the bad guy. - If your villain is a woman, LGBT, ethnic or religious minority, etc., reconsider any evil or cruel traits that reinforce negative stereotypes about that group as a whole. For instance, it’s probably not a great idea to have an LGBT villain be a sexual predator, or a Muslim villain who is misogynistic or religiously motivated against “infidels” for his crimes, or for you to use “doesn’t like children and/or men” as a way to show how evil your lady villain is. - If your hero is female, don’t have the male villain rape her just because. Please. I’m not saying this can never happen--we need stories about rape and survivors, not talking about it and not having stories is far worse---but there’s a real THING with writers feeling that all heroines need to face the threat of sexual assault, and all male villains are automatically ready to commit it, and it’s kind of messed up. - Give your villain good arguments for their motive/actions that can’t be easily and immediately refuted, and that an intelligent, reasonable person (assuming your villain is meant to be one) could realistically believe. This doesn’t mean that their argument has to be moral or sympathetic at all, it can in fact be completely cruel, but it should be something that doesn’t immediately fall apart like a Jenga stack under the least bit of logic. Try thinking up ways your villain’s rationale could be refuted, and craft rebuttals towards them, strengthening their argument. After all, if they got this far, they’ve probably encountered quite a few such arguments BEFORE the hero brings them up. Of course, lots of villains are driven by emotional/psychological reasons, but most real people will still create “logical” rationales and philosophies to justify acting out their issues and doing what they want. Give your bad guy the courtesy of doing the same, especially if they’re not intended as delusional or irrational people. Their plans should likewise make sense in service of these arguments; for instance, Thanos might have a point about limited resources, but as many people have pointed out, his “snap” actually did nothing to fix it because the resources-to-population ratio remained the same, the resources were not re-distributed in any way, etc. Your villain’s means to accomplish their goals don’t need to be the best way in a moral sense---they’re VILLAINS---but they should still make some sense in terms of being EFFECTIVE. - Remember your villains motives, one type of villainy doesn’t guarantee another. Someone who is motivated purely by profit is unlikely to join up with an ideological organization (unless there’s some way to get profit from that) Someone who is an eco-terrorist is unlikely to be interest in jewel heists (unless it’s justified by her using the money from selling the jewels to fund her eco-terrorism) And someone who is a mercenary for the sheer thrill and challenge of it, is probably not going to take a job that’s the equivalent of stealing candy from a baby. A person being morally okay with one type of evil doesn’t equate to them being down for ALL kinds, and their morality may not align with the common view. For instance, most people would consider rape to be far worse than petty theft, but maybe in your villain’s worldview, theft takes something physical and tangible and objectively real from someone, so it’s therefore worse. And most people would see human life as being worth objectively more than plant life, but try telling that to Poison Ivy! Likewise, many villains are only okay with evil IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR GOALS. Magneto is fine with mass murder, but only when it’s to advance or protect mutantkind; he’s not going to do it for funsies. Some villains don’t have any moral opposition to any kind of wrongdoing, but may simply have no INTEREST in some types, while being very interested in others. It’s hard to see Sabretooth or Hannibal Lector being morally opposed to embezzlement and white collar crime, but they’ve got no interest in committing it, because it’s not what they enjoy and/or feel compelled to do, they want to kill (and eat) people. Yet, as fine as Hannibal is with killing and eating people, rudeness enrages him. So basically, if your villain is “bad” in one way, don’t feel he has to be evil in every single way, especially if those ways don’t logically line up with his interests, goals, or philosophy/worldview. Indeed, giving a bad guy certain moral limits, with reasons that make within said worldviews, can be extremely helpful in fleshing them out and making them more interesting, even if those moral limits don’t actually make them better people in any way (ex: the rapist who refuses to rob) - The above point also means you can let your villain commit GOOD acts without it seeming out of character or undermining their evil. For instance, Hitler was an animal lover, and there was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany. Many people think that loving animals is automatically the trait of a “good” person, and animal cruelty is commonly (to the point of cliche) used in media to show how awful and evil a bad guy is. But we know from this that it’s not the case. Your opinion can do “good” things or have “good” opinions, if you do so in a way that doesn’t counteract their villainy, and in fact may make sense in tandem with it. Maybe your heartless hotel mogul helps the heroes fight a kaiju because it’s threatening his property. Maybe the villain who is obsessed with defeating the hero will help the hero against another villain because he doesn’t want to be upstaged by them. Maybe someone who hates the concept of “law” as enforced by the government, rather than determined by each individual to live as they see fit, argues in favor of same-sex marriage because they don’t think anyone should be told they CAN’T do something by the state, whether it’s murder or marrying. Maybe they want to conquer Earth, but that’s no reason NOT to help a pregnant woman; she’s no threat to them, and in fact is one of (in their mind) their future subjects, as is her child. Or, as with the Hitler, maybe they just like animals and won’t treat them badly, even while doing unforgivable things to their fellow human beings. There’s really no limit of ways you can have them do something “good” without it actually making them any less evil, which enables them to feel like more of a real person without actually risking their status as a villain. - Consider letting your villain have loved ones WITHOUT it being a redeeming factor for them. This is extremely rare; the only time villains are typically allowed to love anyone is when it’s used to show them in a redemptive light, or at least reveal they’re not as bad as they seem. There’s an idea in our society that love and evil are diametrically opposed, that “love” is an inherently “good” trait, so someone who loves cannot be wholly evil and in fact has the capacity for good, so therefore letting villain have loved ones (or had them in the past) automatically makes them sympathetic. I disagree. Love isn’t a “good” trait in itself. Lots of the worst people in real-world history have had loved ones, whom they most likely genuinely did love, and did not abuse or mistreat. In fact, caring for one’s own can be the motive behind a great deal of evil, or simply unrelated to it. A mafia don can be a loving family man, and still order other families to be killed, because those things aren’t related to each other in his mind. Of course, you can have love be a sympathetic/redeeming factor for your bad guy too, nothing wrong with that, this is just an alternative. - Let your villain learn and develop. Oftentimes, the hero will change a lot over the course of the story due to their interactions with the villain...but the villain remains the same. This isn’t very realistic. Your bad guy should be learning and growing just as much from their experiences; it just doesn’t need to be in a positive way. Maybe they learn to change tactics, to adapt and try new schemes against the hero when the first ones don’t work, instead of doing the same thing over and over. Maybe they start out as a less ruthless, less adamant villain, and get “harder” as they go. Maybe they started out with a completely binary, black and white view of things, and they’ve since encountered situations that aren’t so cut and dried, so their view and approaches have become more nuanced, but still villainous. Maybe they focus more now on not getting caught. Maybe they made new allies and enemies along the way, and develop through their interactions with them. Basically, they can change and be dynamic in an organic way that makes sense for them, without ever having to stop being a bad guy. They may even learn to be a more effective, more dangerous bad guy! - Care about consistency with your villain as much as you would the hero. If he does something “because he knew it would hurt the hero more than anything” at one point, it doesn’t follow for “he does bad things because he doesn’t understand it hurts others” to come up at a later point; if he doesn’t understand the things he does hurt others, how did he work out how to hurt the hero the most? That doesn’t make sense. Yes, I just said villains should get to grow and change, but randomly contradicting previous characterization with no explanation is NOT the same as organic development. - Don’t rely on “they’re just evil” for a motive, and DEFINITELY don’t rely on “they’re just insane”. Mentally ill villains can be done well, but it’s very tricky territory to tread, with a lot of Unfortunate Implications to beware of. But if you are making a villain who has a mental illness, that shouldn’t be what MAKES them evil. It may influence their thought process, how they reached the conclusions they did, or how they go about things, but it doesn’t HAVE to. In fact, I’d like to see more villains for whom insanity isn’t what gave them their goals or tactics, but does end up being a hindrance to them. After all, most mental illnesses negatively impact a person’s ability to accomplish tasks (work, hobbies, etc) in real life. Why not let it do the same to their ability to be a villain? It’d be a good spin on the usual trope of “insanity makes you evil” - Lack of empathy can be a good way for a person to be villain, why they can be fine with the atrocities they commit, and there are many great villains who display this. But consider also villains with a keen sense of empathy; Hannibal Lector, for instance, displays a great sense of empathy in how he can profile others, such as Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill. He may not care about most people, but he UNDERSTANDS them deeply. In fact, a great many villains in media who are CLAIMED not to have empathy, actually do; it’s what allows them to work out how to be cruel in the most effective way, or to predict what they would do in the hero’s shoes and thus make plans for that. Your high-empathy villain might be like that. Or they might be high-empathy in a more “positive” way as is typically associated with the term, and have that be part of what made them decide to be a villain, if they’re meant to be the kind of person who has good motives but bad means of accomplishing them. This also makes for the challenge of writing someone who can have high empathy in the typical sense, and still hurt others, and how they might do that---perhaps only doing it from a distance where they don’t have to see it, hurting people en masse so they become just a faceless mass to them instead of individuals, or only hurting people they’ve dubbed as being no longer worthy of their compassion for whatever reason---as scary as it is, the human psyche can very easily decide that a certain category of “people” are not actually worth as much as other people, whether it’s because of what they ARE or what they’ve DONE. - A tragic past isn’t necessary in and of itself. It absolutely is for SOME villains, such as Magneto, but it’s not needed for EVERY villain who is interesting, compelling, or even sympathetic. It should also not be over-relied on as a shortcut to sympathy or understanding; it begins to feel like a cop-out or excuse if it’s over-done or not done well. Make the background you think fits the character best and explains them most; don’t feel the need to make it the saddest thing ever if you don’t NEED to. A little can go a long way, and a villain being UNDERSTANDABLE doesn’t have to mean SYMPATHETIC. Also, as with mental illness, do NOT rely on being an abuse survivor as a shortcut to why someone is a villain; a villain can have this in their past, but it should not be the ONLY thing that led them to villainy. It’s extremely insulting to abuse survivors, most of whom do NOT become abusers themselves as is often claimed. - Finally, as with so much else in writing...show, don’t tell. Your villain is meant to be smart? Craft ingenious weapons and schemes for them, without obvious weak spots that the heroes can easily find. Your villain is meant to be a skilled fighter? Let them wipe the floor with the hero, or at the least put up an incredible fight; don’t build them up as being the best there is at what they do, only to be felled easily to show how cool your hero is. Your villain is meant to be socially savvy? Show them interacting with others in a way that is genuinely likeable and charismatic and endearing, don’t just have someone say they’re “charming” while they act like assholes. Your villain is meant to be cultured? Let them have a discussion with someone about art or opera, or take them on a tour of their collection of Ming Dynasty artwork. Your villain is meant to be cruel? You get the idea. Whatever the trait you’re giving your bad guy, don’t just SAY they have it---write it out! Basically...treat your villain like a character! It doesn’t have to mean making them tragic or sympathetic if you want to avoid that, and that’s fine! They can still be INTERESTING! And even fun!

#writing tips #writing advice #writing villains #villain advice #rp stuff #not really for rp but that's what I tagged a lot of my writing articles under for a long time #I mean you could use it for rp too!

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willidleaway · 5 years ago

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Doctor Who, series 12, episodes 1 and 2

In short: I love two-parters and I’m glad Spyfall was a two-parter. The conclusion wasn’t entirely satisfying, parts of this felt like a retread of old favourite story elements (including from The Curse of Fatal Death—seriously!), and I think there was a bit of disjointness between the two parts, but this is still a very good start to series 12, and I’m 90% sure I’m not saying that just because he’s back.

In slightly less short, still without spoilers:

—Positives: good tension throughout part 1, including the cliffhanger (hangar?); loved seeing historical characters tag along and interact in part 2, in one of the better attempts of Chibnall!Who at being educational; strong performances all around from heroes and villains.

—Negatives: part 2 has me fearing for a regression from some of the positive aspects of series 11; the villains weren't really fleshed out enough, especially in their motivation.

Verdict: Go watch Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. It’s quite funny.

Oh, you mean about this two-parter? It’s good. Could have been great, though—almost should have been with its set pieces—and it didn’t strike me as great.

In less short, with spoilers:

OK, so I don’t even have much to say about part 1 because it really is all setup. We’ve got weird higher-dimensional ghosty things, they’re attacking spies all around the world and swapping their DNA out with something else, except they either won’t or can’t attack Yas and send her instead to some weird alternate dimension. Yas and Ryan go off to find out that Google are involved [0] in some sinister fashion because their CEO is totally in league with the aliens and is himself 7% alien, but it turns out the real mastermind is ... the Master! Dun dun dun. Very much the Dark Water reveal, right down to the gender swap.

So at the end of part 1, the situation is that the Doctor is in the same realm that Yas had ended up in, and her companions are in a crashing plane. So how is this all resolved?

Well, the second one is easy. It’s a time travel show. Do the Blink gambit! [1] Just go back in time after everything’s done, plant some signs and a recording on the plane, and they can land completely unscathed! In Essex! (I’d say ‘unscathed/Essex: pick one’, but obviously Graham feels differently.)

This is fine, but ultimately the companions don’t ... do much from there? It’s the series 3 finale thing again where they’ve got to go off-grid, except in series 3 where Martha is planting the seeds for, well, that conclusion. But she’s at least got some kind of agency in the story. Here, Graham and Yas and Ryan are ... chased? I mean, it did give us Graham laser-tap-dancing his way out of those situations, and I will be forever happy that that was a thing that happened, but overall they had so little to do other than have villainous speeches and antics spouted at them. Frankly, from a purely logistical point of view, it would have made very little difference if the Doctor had just picked them up on the plane before it crashed, because of course the Doctor had sorted everything out about the Silver Lady and the Kasaavins and all.

So I found that fairly unfortunate, especially given Yas and Ryan’s crucial actions (and their rather excellent performances) in part 1.

Resolving the Doctor’s cliffhanger seems a little trickier, and it leads to some of the disjointness I was talking about at the start between parts 1 and 2. In part 1 we’re led to believe that these pointy-hat white ghosts [2] are alien spies spying on Earth’s spies today. Here it turns out that, no, actually, they’re also spying on the Who’s Who of Earth computing and telecommunications.

This includes Ada Lovelace [3]—why she was also known as Ada Gordon is baffling to me given she was Lord Byron’s legitimate daughter and it’s not like Gordon was Byron’s surname (not blaming the show, just baffled at the apparent historical fact)—and later Noor Inayat Khan, the pacifist SOE hero with expertise in wireless telegraphy. It was really good to learn about them and their contributions, however briefly (although I have mixed feelings about the episode avoiding discussing Noor’s ultimate fate).

Thankfully they also get more to do than the companions—Ada hijacks a gun and fights off the Master while he’s distracted, while Noor hides Ada and the Doctor from Nazis and later feeds information to the Nazis to trap the Master. They then both go out and track down the Master’s TARDIS (although given his hubris it turns out to be not so difficult). That’s way more than laser-tap-dancing and being rather ineffectual otherwise!

My main gripe is how the Doctor wipes both their memories at the end—it’s not like the Doctor’s wiped the memories of Dickens or Shakespeare or even Queen Elizabeth! Anti-STEM discrimination, this is.

But overall I very much liked the Doctor in this power trio of women, although I think Ada got the short end of the stick out of the three of them. I suppose it may have been difficult because her abilities are relatively abstract—computer science is a bit more difficult to get across on screen compared to telegraphy and disinformation, so she has to make do with a gun instead.

So: strong companions in part 1 (although not so much in part 2), strong Doctor and historical figures in part 2. All fine and dandy. But let’s talk about the villains, because of course that’s the meat of the story.

OK, first off: that’s Lenny Henry?! God he’s unrecognisable. Goatee suits him, though. He looks sharp.

Daniel Barton, though, seems not so sharp, and not terribly interesting either. First off, he has all the information in the world yet can’t seem to be bothered to run a face recognition routine on Yas and Ryan when they’re undercover in his office as journalists. (Maybe he’s wilfully ignoring it. Maybe he just wants attention.) Then it turns out he’s 7% non-human, which is intriguing at the start but gets rather casually dismissed towards the end of part 2 as just him test-driving the DNA replacement idea.

But the real trouble was that I never found it terribly clear why Barton would have been interested in joining forces with the aliens to wipe out humanity. Did he just find the idea of using seven billion humans as data centres really appealing? Maybe, but what’s the use of all that data? Barton is most powerful as the head of basically Google, and all his data becomes utterly useless without the civilisation that actually needs it, surely.

Oh, then there are the Kasaavins themselves.

At first, their basic plan seems like it’s to wipe out Earth’s intelligence network, which makes sense as a step in an invasion. But then it turns out the ultimate point of their invasion is all about ... computers? And disk space, basically???

Why did they attach themselves to people like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and Steve Jobs? Was it to influence the evolution of computing in ways that made today’s computer architectures more vulnerable to ... whatever it is the Kasaavins later do through the Silver Lady and all of our modern devices? Sure, Ada Lovelace’s notes on computing engines were prescient and unquestionably influenced her spiritual successors like Turing, but I would personally have said more in the abstract. You'd definitely want to go after people like Woz, doing design on microcomputers much closer to our modern laptops and phones. I guess they figured it couldn’t hurt, anyway.

What exactly were they going to do with all that disk space? Why don’t they have their own massive storage devices? Why do they need to overwrite human DNA? Can’t they just build more DNA?

I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking it. I thought they were building towards a Matrix-style thing where all of human civilisation was going to just be someone’s cloud computing instance—but no, it’s hard drive space. It seemed a bit weak.

I think the Kasaavins suffered mostly for being in the same story as the newest incarnation of the Master.

The good thing about the Master, at least, is that he needs little motivation. He’s just mad. If he wants to wipe out all of humanity and the Kasaavins needing storage space happens to mean there may be a common interest there, the Master can just do that. That’s how the Master works.

He cuts an imposing figure at the start, I suppose—maniacal slick sort of fellow, shades of Simm’s incarnation in series 3 but still his own thing. But the way he works in this episode is just ... goofy. I mean, really? He just keeps tracking the Doctor through time? Can’t be bothered to keep tabs on whether someone’s trying to sabotage his master plan?

And then there’s the way the whole situation with the Nazis gets resolved.

I really thought he was going to go ‘seventy-seven years ... in a sodding twentieth century ...’, à la Jonathan Pryce’s excellent Master from Steven Moffat’s Comic Relief special. You know, the one from all the way back in 1999 where for the first half-ish, the Doctor and Master basically try to outwit each other through increasingly ridiculous time-travel hijinks, ending up with the Master having to crawl out a sewer for over nine hundred years.

Totally unlike this story, where the second half-ish involves the Doctor and Master trying to outwit each other through time-travel hijinks, and the Master ends up having to crawl out of his predicament for almost eight decades.

I’m not sure that’s a complaint, myself, frankly. For one thing, of course, when a show has gone on for over half a century, it’s difficult to avoid new stories running into old ones. But for another thing, saying something feels right out of a Comic Relief special isn’t necessarily a, erm, fatal flaw for Doctor Who. I prefer it when Doctor Who isn’t taking itself too seriously, just seriously enough.

Still, when you look at the big picture and look at all the retreads, I can’t help but think we’re heading back into the worst excesses of past new!Who.

For all its faults, I really enjoyed series 11 for how the narrative focus returned to the companions after much of the Moffat era’s obsession with ridiculously overpowered characters—Clara as the impossible girl, the Doctor as the Hybrid, the Doctor as literally where we get the word ‘doctor’, and so forth.

Well, now we’ve got the Master back and he’s gone and destroyed Gallifrey (negating the big winning moment of the 50th anniversary special, to boot) and it’s all because of some mysterious lie and it involves the Timeless Child that was mentioned for a hot five seconds last series??? It smacks of past new!Who arcs, especially under Moffat—and at least in my eyes those arcs have never gone terribly well. Those arcs have come at the expense of good companion characterisation as well, so overall it has me a bit concerned about series 12.

Sure, all these aspects of pre-series 11 Who returning to the show—the Daleks last year, and now the Master—maybe makes the show feel more like itself, much like how having a functional rebel force that’s not just confined to a single light freighter makes a Star Wars film feel more like Star Wars. I just worry that it’s a instinctive reaction against some of the mixed reactions to series 11, and that ultimately it’ll be an overreaction.

Good start, though, this two-parter. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the best story that series 12 gets.

Footnotes:

[0: Sure, they’re called Vor in the episodes, but first off they’re clearly meant to be Google, and second off it’s very awkward talking about ‘Vor’ being everywhere on the Internet and on everyone’s devices ... so for the purposes of this write-up I’m going to call them Google.]

[1: I know that in Blink, the Doctor and Martha are trapped in the past and have to plant the message in DVDs to get someone to get them out of trouble. But you know what I mean. Timey-wimey out-of-order rescue plan.

Maybe I ought to call it the Arrival gambit, after the excellent film from a few years back.]

[2: Makes them sound like alien Klansmen, doesn’t it?]

[3: What’s the opposite of née for the purposes of distinguishing maiden and married names in time travel stories? I guess mariée is as good as any ...]

#(Doctor Who series 12 spoilers!)

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