#I wish I could grieve her from that little girl’s perspective

[thecowboykatsuki-anon]

So like. At what point do I stop getting sucker punched with grief with no warning

[coraniaid]

I'm pretty critical of Buffy's final season (because ... well, I've watched it), but there are some things I think it does well and, since I'm trying to talk myself into working on my S7 AU fic again, I thought it might be worth trying to write down what they are.

I like the sense of completeness there is in going back to some of the show's beginnings. I like seeing Buffy in school again, but this time as an adult with a job. It doesn't just let us re-examine the high school years from a new perspective, it gives Buffy's arc over the last few seasons a nice sense of direction. I like what little we see of Dawn in high school. (I wish there were more episodes like Help.) In principle, I even like the fact that this season's Big Bad is a supernatural threat we've seen on the show before.

While I think there are a lot of problems with the execution (and even with the wider concept) of making the First Evil the primary (frequently the only) antagonist, the First being around does give you a lot of possibilities for having characters literally come face to face with their pasts. I like the final scene of Lessons and I like Conversations With Dead People and I like seeing the Mayor on screen again. I wish the show had done more with this concept.

I like meeting new (Potential) Slayers and finding out more about past Slayers. I like Robin Wood. I like Kennedy. (I wish the show did a better job making the audience care about any of the other Potentials.) I like that Faith comes back. I like that there is a focus on what it means to be a Slayer this season (compare how the show opens, with Buffy taking Dawn on patrol and telling her "it's about power..." [which Dawn doesn't have], to the scene in Chosen where Buffy asks the Potentials "what if you could have that power?").

I also (sorry) really like the fact that the writers resisted the urge to make Dawn a Potential or have her suddenly develop any magical powers as a result of being the Key (which there are at least rumours they were talking about doing). I like that the show stuck with the idea that Dawn is the part of Buffy who gets to be an ordinary girl.

For all its flaws (silly CGI battle against monsters I don't care about which is resolved by a random mcguffin from a different show; weird retcon about Sunnydale apparently being inland; a bunch of other unfortunate writing choices I won't get into here) I really do like Chosen a lot. It feels very fitting that the show ends with Buffy both finally getting to leave Sunnydale and with her no longer having to shoulde the burden of being "the" Slayer (or one of only two Slayers, anyway) anymore. I love how open-ended and hopeful that manages to be.

And speaking of Chosen, I like Buffy's "cookie dough" speech. I like the fact that the show lets Buffy end the series single, and recognizing that she doesn't have to be in a serious romantic relationship if she doesn't feel she's ready for one right now. (I like post-S7 Fuffy as a concept a lot, sure, but I think I prefer it as something that neither of them rushes into.)

I like that Amy comes back? I mean, I don't like anything the season does with her, but still: points for remembering she exists, I guess.

I like the fact that Willow gets to grieve Tara but also move on with her life and start dating again. [I don't know if I would have killed Tara off if I was writing S6 -- I think probably not -- but given that Tara did die I think this is the only good option.]

Empty Places is a good .... name for an episode?

For all my (many, many) issues with Andrew Wells this season (and in particular with just how much Andrew Wells is in this season, which is ... a lot), I think Storyteller is ... pretty good? I liked Jonathan, I think it's sad he dies (and his speech about missing high school now that he's left is another good moment from this season) but I wouldn't really have wanted to have him turn up and help save the day either. Having Andrew kill him (and then have to face up to the fact) feels like the right choice, to me, if you were going to bring either character back [I'm not really sure I would have done that though, to be honest].

Equally, for all my irritation at the time wasted on the "is Giles the First Evil?" subplot and at some of the other character deaths the writers did go for, I'm glad that the Core Four all survive. What the season actually does with Giles isn't very good, and neither Xander nor Willow are in this season enough (especially not in its second half), but at least they all get to live.

Oh, and Anya. I'm glad the writers didn't give in to the temptation to kill off Anya for some sort of cheap shock value, the way some leaked early drafts of Chosen suggest they were thinking of doing. Can you imagine how infuriating that would have been? I don't know if I would ever have accepted it. I might even now be living in denial. Thankfully common sense prevailed there and Anya definitely survived.

[vestaclinicpod]

Audio Drama Sunday - 13th August ✨

Happy #AudioDramaSunday, lovely people! I’ve listened to so much audio drama this week and my house is so clean as a result 🫧 

SPOILERS BELOW!

🌲@hellofromthehallowoods Starcrossed Gods!! I felt so brave daring to listen to this again. My heart 💔 Marolmar is written so well! Every sentence contains something to flinch at, it makes me sick to hear it all again. I’d also repressed the memory of how gut-wrenching Nikignik’s shouting at the end was, and how much it hurts to hear people trying to sing with a closed up throat. ANYWAY, I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’m not sure if the live show was released early due to logistical reasons, but I am fearful that it’s to provide context for what’s about to happen in the regular episodes (AKA tears and tears and tears for me). 

🦀 What an absolute delight to hear from the @thesiltverses cast again! These season recaps are so funny and it’s so heart warming to hear it when the cast of a show are clearly also its biggest fans. I’m SO excited for S3!!

🦮 @malevolentcast (34) what an episode!! If I recall correctly, this is the first time we’ve had an episode entirely without Arthur & John’s perspective? The Butcher is a worthy character to hold that mantle. Do I feel like I understand him more? No. Did I love being along for the ride? Absolutely. It’s also so weird to hear Arthur talking to John out loud when he thinks no-one can hear. I hope he makes it out in time! 

📻 @monstrousagonies (107) So thrilled to have this show back and I hope Hero is feeling much better! The first letter was so cute!! I’m sure there are lots of us who can relate to choosing love and kindness when we’re used to the opposite! Whichever bridge that little one finds, I’m sure it’ll be the loveliest by far!! 

🌒 @monkeymanproductions gave us the low-down on just how incredibly talented the Moonbase Theta, Out cast are in their Cast Special. Spoiler: Very. It was very wholesome to hear DJ Sylvis hyping everyone up and the episode is full of great AD and other recommendations! 

🎙Welcome to Night Vale is back!! I felt particularly targeted by the ad copy in this episode, but I’m sure that was their intention! This ep’s weather was particularly up my street too! I loved the harmonies! 

🎞 Tiny Terrors OOF hey so I found out what was up with Angela… and I didn’t like it one bit! I also need to know what the hell was happening at the end there. Jess, girl, you’ve got to stop getting yourself in these situations. It’s too much (for me to listen to)! 

🌍 @lastechoespod (8) I can’t believe it’s the last episode! Ishani Kanetkar was wonderful as Trast. I wish we could hear the final decision, but I guess I’ll just have to relisten and try decide for myself . . . 

🧛‍♂️ @re-dracula Uhoh, someone’s arrived in Whitby . . . I love Mina so much and Isabel AdomakohYoung is doing amazing job as her VA. She captures the good-hearted intelligence I love so much about the character!

 💫 Wolf 359 (38-46 + Special!) Oh MAN this podcast has my entire heart. Isn’t Memoria one of the best episodes of anything ever? Oh, Hera, I love you sooo much!!!!! I also loved the Lovelace cliffhanger at the end of 46 and the special was so different but so good! (Although listening to 2 hours of anything is a challenge!! I need a 20-30 min ep or I can’t fit it into my life) 

🎩 @ethicstownpod (7) OH MY GOD. January fans are looking a little bit bloody silly right now! What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On???? Please, if you haven’t yet started listening to this show, now is your time! It’s SO good and has so many twists and turns!! 

🥾@doyoucopypod (5) oh my GOD, imagine how horrifying it would be to be out in the woods to grieve your partner, only to hear their voice in the middle of the night. Nope. Absolutely not. Get out of the dead zone!! Wilson remains the goodest boy, even if his growls give me goosebumps! 

🎧 In this week’s The First Episode Of, W Keith Tims talks to the creator of Untrue Stories! These interviews are always fantastic and this show sounds so interesting for fans of sci-fi!! 

Thanks for reading! I’m so excited for more Regina Prime and to catch up with happenings in the Hallowoods next week! Hope you all have a restful weekend ✨

[horizon-verizon]

what do you think of this post. i think people should ship what they want but this fandom cannot stand opinions that differ from theirs.

https://www.tumblr.com/livinginafantasysposts/726238416723935233

Going to the link you provided, the original author (lagosbratzdoll) is criticizing the JacexSara Snow ship for the shipper's racism:

They say it'll [including Sara Snow in the show] deepen Jace’s character and make him “interesting”, whatever that means. The problem with this assertion is that Jace is already plenty interesting, he led the war councils while his mother grieved, and he recruited the blacks' most important allies. Allies who remained steadfast even after his mother's and his own demise. Furthermore, Jace has existing relationships in his life that the show could explore to delve into his connection with bastardy. Three of whom are canonically Black, by the way. So, the question arises: what unique perspective or insight can Sara Snow provide to Jace's struggle with his bastard status that Nettles, Addam, and Alyn cannot?

When the OP asked what made Sara so enticing or "interesting", more than Nettles and the other dragonseeed as well as Baela, there was no salient answer in the comments. Or there were just denials. And OP has made points. Including this:

but now you cannot go five minutes in Jace or Baela’s tag without seeing someone wish they'd include Sara Snow in the show.

You: "i think people should ship what they want but this fandom cannot stand opinions that differ from theirs."

My questions to you, anon are:

What is with people trying to overwhelm and disrupt the hype shippers have for Baela and Jace in particular?

With these two supposed to be betrothed to each other in canon and continue to be so in the show, why is it that there is a change in how people see Sara Snow and Jace and Baela after we see the Velaryons and dragon twins' actors are Black?

Why is it that there is such an overwhelming intercession on the online JacexBaela shipping from JacexSara shippers as opposed to ships with white/white-adjacent couples?

Why is it that with such stronger evidence for Jace and Baela being romantic over Sara's very existence much less the ship, that the Sara Snow x Jace ship is as popular as it is?

Sara Snow is a character, in F&B, who Mushroom brings in to add intrigue, and he was never there to witness such a thing happening, so how could he know about this girl and witnessed Jace fall for her?! And the other thing is the implications of Sara Snow being Jace's "Jeyne Westerling". Unlike Robb Stark & Jeyne, Jace & Sara are presented by Mushroom and real shippers as true and closely-bonded lovers. Robb married Jeyne because he wanted to honor her and not have bastards. It was not lovey-dovey. Narratively, Baela was so dedicated to Jace (and just fierce all on her own) that she wanted to stay and fight with him at Dragonstone or follow him. For all the desire for a couple who desires and is devoted to each other, it's funny how Sara x Jace shippers aren't impressed enough with Baela. So shippers of Sara and Jace are going off of pure conjecture and desire more than other ships/shippers. This would be fine, if not for the change in actors coming with a higher support for a character that doesn't seem to exist.

Before HotD aired with its black Velaryons and dragon twins (and I've looked around at dates) there was very little hype for Sara Snow even as a person, bc there was literally no evidence--not even suggestive--for her existence besides Mushroom's unsupported say-so AND it was understood that Jace wouldn't even endanger his family and himself or hurt Baela by endangering their Velaryon alliance. Especially when his brother dies and there is no heir to Driftmark aside from Joff (a whittling-down of heirs). The blacks needed the Velaryons even after Rhaneyra dies (Alyn and Daenaera)!

It is totally antithetical to Jace's needs short-term and long-term needs to set aside his betrothal to Baela.

We have to remember that he and his two brothers have been suspected as bastards and likely treated accordingly if people could get away with it. For more than 10 years! Rhaenyra had to essentially flee to Dragonstone to get away and provide a quieter, freer life for herself and her family as well as actively "practice" and get in the groove for ruling. He would be anxious to prove how he is fit to follow his mother after she dies and rule Westeros. And like Jon/unlike Robb Stark, bc of that niggling bastardry claim, he would be more motivated to not have bastards of his own or do possibly introduce an innocent, less-able-to-take-care-of herself-girl into an incoming war. (Jenny of Oldstones doesn't count bc she was proven real through her interactions with courtiers, Prince Duncan's parent was not female and set against, his parent was not usurped, there was no war, nor was Duncannever suspected a bastard. He could afford it).

I mean, it's supported by what Jace says here ("The Blacks and the Greens"):

He has lived physically and emotionally close to Baela all his life, and considering this need to consolidate power as well as his contracting his trust towards mostly family, it's not likely that he just trusts any person he isn't likely to get aid from. Cregan Stark was the lord and liable to help Rhaneyra bc he just imprisoned and ousted his uncle to get his Winterfell seat. Supporting Rhaenyra helps him, and this lubed them both up for a closer bond.

It is way more likely that Jace, rather than show!Aemond, was the devoted son trying to actually help and protect his family by reading "philosophies" and presenting himself as a capable ruler. I think that it is dumb of the writers to then flip this show of loyalty to one's family into Aemond using it to show disloyalty to his own and not emphasize Jacaerys' own development. Aemond even left his mother, sister, and brother all to basically fend for themselves in two opportunities to join Daeron or fly to KL and fight Rhaenyra, Daemon, or any black who he would happen to see. Even though he was the one to order Criston Cole to march their army to KL so he could also confront the blacks. He specifically states that going south to Daeron and grouping up was "craven" and cowardly! In this one way, Aemond is Jace's foil and it emphasizes Jace's loyalty and devotion and Aemond's self-serving ambition, even though both have that desire to show their military worth. One works for unity, the other for individual glory and disunity. Jace ios the one to actively came up with effective plans and arrangements for the blacks, as OP stated. It shows his intelligence, care, and concern for protecting his family as well as his mindfulness towards bastardy. We're supposed to see the irony of this suspected bastard using the bastard phobia made against him for their own benefit. (Even though there were two traitors, Rhaenyra still depended on these dragon riders to intimidate/fight against any would-be greens and their armies. One of which is responsible [Addam Velaryon/of Hull] for at least pushing back Daeron and Lord Hightower's forces even with his own death. This event more showed how deep in paranoia & blood purist Rhaenyra was, not how dumb or incompetent Jace was.)

And Baela is not a bad person, merely self-confident and a Targ. Show!Baela is Black, and there has been no standoffishness towards her book character before the show besides the usual misogyny towards self-confident girls and Targ women. She has done nothing wrong to anyone, and has only displayed bravery until presumedly the day she died and set aside by history.

So from my standpoint, it looks like the motivation behind thinking Baela x Jace as less appealing or "interesting" than Jace x Sara is that Jace x Sara can undermine his relationship with Baela, his ties to the Velaryons and their alliance, and separate Jace's devotion to his family and reduce any tie to his Targ identity. This is definitely not what this character would likely be drawn in by if he ever did meet a Sara Snow who he might be at least sexually attracted to.

Just as making Rhaenyra not want to imprison Otto bc of a damned page from a woman who tried to get said sons killed, Jacaerys allowing himself to not only marry someone other than his betrothed siphons out his intelligence, unique sense of self-assertiveness and responsibility.

Other Ships I Wish Were Not as Shipped Exist, Why, and are Really the TV Shows' Faults

See, I talk about people saying one shouldn't ship ANYTHING in ASoIaF/GoT/HotD/Fire & Blood HERE, where I argue that shipping is people presenting political and social taboo/dynamics, i,e, a particular narrative they are fascinated with.

It's not just about what one thinks should be reality. However, for some people, it is and some ships gather more…bigoted people than other ships. Rhaenicent is one of those ships. There are some genuinely good or at least self-aware Rhaenicent shippers, but the most vocal ones tend to be misogynist and think themselves feminists when they are actually saying that Rhaenyra should grant Alicent all sorts of graces and expect nothing in return bc Alicent is a feminine goddess who looks out for "the realm". Some call her "mannish" or the "man" of the relationship. Most are tradcaths and transphobic (Emma D'Arcy). Most hate Targs and Valyrian customs, esp citing their hatred against incest…meanwhile, their own ship is incestuous, and even the Faith they admire and see their Catholism in at one time had a High Septon vocally denounce a Hightower lord marrying and having a relationship with his dead father's wife, his own stepmother--Samnatha Tarly. On the specific claim of incest. Later, when this Septon died, they were finally allowed to marry by the next one--their influence had grown enough or stayed its Hightower self, assumedly, as well over the years.

Jonsa is another ship that mostly has misogynists and praisers of "soft femininity". Sansa becomes a totally different creature in their eyes, and Arya also gets interpreted as "mannish", even having "internalized misogyny" for not being as "girly" as Sansa. Jon, like Rhaenyra, is also totally reduced and recharacterization to make Sansa this higher kind of feminine goddess through the chivalric narrative canon!Sansa is actually growing out of bc it has led to her many losses, including her own innocence! Jon doesn't even like (as in attracted to) "girly" girls who cannot even attempt to physically defend themselves! His favorite sister is Arya and Sansa has dismissed him for his bastardry several times! Because they think he will become some sort of great leader, even King Beyond the Wall, and Sansa will be Queen in the North or some jazz, they believe that this version of "Jon" as a "knight" is perfect for their "delicate princess" Sansa.

Daemon x Nettles

I'm a Daemyra shipper and I do not think Daemon x Nettles is either a canon or good ship in of itself, and the material in F&B that wants us to think they were sexual or romantic uses misogynist and classism to present Nettles as Daemon's lover AS WELL AS not his lover. But always it's logic that is against Nettles' true, brave heart, and Daemon's fidelity to Rhaenyra, despite him choosing to die for her instead of just leaving Rhaenyra behind and vocalizing hatred toward Mysaria's for deceiving her. And though it is not my passionate ship like the Daemyra one, I definitely think Jace x Baela makes way more sense than Jace x Sara Snow. And Nettles doesn't need to "steal" Rhaneyra's man to actually dominate Rhaneyra for her blood purity or to be an impressive girl, and this would not be a healthy relationship (she was 17, Daemon 49-50). If they seriously consider grooming wrong and believe Daemon groomed Nettles, then they shouldn't enthusiastically ship Nettles with Daemon.

Conclusion

Some ships just do not make sense or are totally antithetical to the arcs and personalities of the original characters. They are more making wish-fulfillment fanons struggling to be canon so they can generate antipathy against those shippers/characters/storylines that should really be appreciated for the nuance they provide. Instead of vacuuming out nuance to replace them with fairytale, bigoted, and flat narratives. And so they should be put into skeptical investigation instead of just flat-out "accepted", like how some artists have purposefully drawn the dragon twins out of their family portraiture of the blacks.

EDIT (8/22/23)

It's also funny how--with the examples of other ships--when it's something race-related or when some people in the fandom want to protest against such intrusions and the subsequent denials of intrusions it tends to be about certain PoC or interracial ships. AND that it defaults as "everyone has the right to ship/draw/etc however they want!" when someone brings up race more than ships with gender or sexuality or class switching. Hm...

[into--folklore]

okay i listened to the leak dont @ me

i only listened through once because thats what i had time for tonight but ill be listening more over time lol

anyway it has some good songs it has some bad songs and cringe lyrics but eh ! overall its alright. i would say middle tier tsw*ft content. i would say it would fall in my rankings here atm:

folklore > rep > midnights > evermore > speak now > ttpd > 1989 > lover > red > fearless > debut

spoilers i guess for implied TayLore but uh its implied joe not only suicide baited her but also love bombed her, abadoned her in their home alone and then cheats on her possibly multiple times while continuing to love bomb

some folk are saying that its prob m*tty he*ly that did the suicide baiting but i dont have enough context to dissect the muses of each song. idk it feels weird to have ur title track song be about your apparant fling from last spring and not the 6 yr relationship guy

eh again i need see written lyrics to really dissect each song like. just in terms of lyrical analysis (outside of the implications of her actual life too bc i think that gives for more personal connection to the songs)

again everything with a grain of salt bc we never know whats real and whats not. but i can "Understand" that for lil billionaire tsw*ft that having ur partner suicide bait u fucks you up a lot and why she "can" consider herself tortured because of it.

i mean i would be hypocritical to say otherwise bc my current art project is navigating the same feelings. or again, at least the feelings shes projecting in this music

i think its good at like. being her obviously trying to process these emotions honestly. of course from the perspective from someone so out of touch with "normal life" but still. who are we to tell someone how to grieve a complicated toxic relationship

im seeing some sw*fties say they really cannot relate but idk i could and can find myself relating to it more over time. it feels like an album that could be more of a grower over time than an immediate banger

florida is so good and its absolutely because florence has such a big part of it and shes such a vocal powerhouse. i wish we can get a full florence cover one day 🥺

top songs from first listen are: florida, whos afraid of little old me, and i can do it with a broken heart

^ florida ofc bc of florence but the other two have this like. angry manic episode energy that feels similar to rep. like genuinely i told my partner whos afraid of little old me reminded me of florence's dream girl evil. and i.... love dream girl evil

but really wild for multiple songs in this with lyrics about t*ylor wanting to kill herself bc she feels so bad. girlie.. relatable...

[pocketedmelody]

Nightmare

He said, you choose what you want to believe in. You choose your perspective.

The past few weeks have torn my world apart. All that I knew. Cracked foundation. I feel my being torn into two, then into pieces. During moments I feel whole again, in a split second when reality sinks in once more I feel my soul seep out again. Im running on a tank threatening to implode, yet so full of sadness, resentment, anger, emptiness. Full of emptiness, the irony.

Mostly i feel dissociated, like I am looking at someone else from a third person's perspective and feeling all the feelings that person would, fully. How I wish i could press the stop button on this reality.

Im still trying to come to terms with the reality that is now, that is what has always been but them sheltering it from me.

I felt empathetic, then I felt angry. Really, really angry. That she would choose herself, give this up, give my family up. I cannot separate the idea of my relationship with her, our relationship with her, from their relationship. It all means the same thing to me - family. it wouldnt be one without anyone. She chose to walk away and put herself first, for the first time. Without warning.

Most of the time i felt that he was in the dark, then he walked out too. Despite my tangible pleas.

They both said we had ourselves to focus on, that things will be the same. That angered me even more.

How could things ever be the same

The physical place - everything could be in the same position but it will never be the same.

I chose to be angry. I choose to be angry now. For most of the past 2 weeks I actively chose to avoid relenting. I dont know, does relenting to the good side mean giving up? I did not want to give her easy access to me. After all that shes done to me. But its hard. Y was right. it is harder to be someone i want to be who isnt intrinsically me. but i choose to be dark because its the easier way to cope.

i want to keep being angry because i dont want to accept the truth. that my family unit will never be the same. at the toughest moments in the past, my family was the solid rock, my parents were the pillars of support i knew would always be constant. even this constant, can break apart? what?

it feels that my reality had all been a lie. i did not appreciate being kept in the dark for so long. J told me, at least i had 30y of a happy family. I felt angry when i heard that. why should it be a thing of the past. and why does that discount the hurt and loss i feel. like am i supposed to grieve less?

no.

many times in my mind i told myself i'd rather they did not shield me from reality, they did not paint a perfect picture of life and family, and love and harmony. only to break it now.

that was my foundation, that was my core.

and then she broke the saddest of news two nights ago.

i felt indignant, but a little less angry. i was even more lost.

i tried to be angrier. but i couldnt. i found myself leaning towards the tissues even when i really did not want to display any sign of understanding or sympathy. her constant apologies flew over my head. in that motherly figure i always leaned on i see a lost girl who has been lost for so long. a girl who was deprived of love and had been surviving on a nearly empty tank but could only show that she was one overflowing and unconditionally giving. not only because she was expected to fulfil her role as a mother but because she wanted to.

nobody would ever have guessed. even when she was running on a tank almost empty she would give, and give, and give.

i felt hurt when i knew he had another reality. and she didnt get what she had deserved. i still want to believe he had good reasons. that it wasnt a mistake, because it would be the saddest thing.

For the first time ever, today on the bus ride back home. I felt this surge of conviction to show them and her that it wasnt the wrong thing. I came out of it, we came out of it. She is the reason why i have the heart to give even when i feel like i am breaking down and have nothing left. he is the reason why i have this focus on excellence even when i feel inadequate. they are the reason why i held on even when all i wanted to do was give up. they are the reason why i love the way i do, i want others around me to feel loved and be loved. they are the reason why i know a family unit the way it is. that family is everything, and family will be there for you no matter what.

all these will never change, no matter the background and context. i will never forget the feelings they make me feel.

i want to embrace her in the biggest embrace now i am where and who i am, to let her know that her difficulties are not for nought. that she is not alone anymore, that its ok for her to be herself and she is more than enough.

i want to let him know its ok to make mistakes, that he will always be the one i turn to like how i did when i was 4 and all i looked forward to every 2 weeks was returning to his embrace and hearing his bedtime stories of 3 little cats. that the respect for him will be boundless no matter what.

still, the child in me is screaming for good things in life to never end. can it not end?

[aceironwood]

Hi! Here's to you having a good month before New Year. What are your opinions on the Brother Gods? What do you think Hazel meant by "No more Gretchens"? Do you think he'll get his wish: no more Hunstmen Academies, which would be counterproductive if there are still Grimm wandering around destroying things (I hope when he meets Gretchen again in the afterlife she smacks his head like a whack-a-mole because seriously, "no more Gretchens"? Hypocrite much? What about all the Gretchens YOU made? Even if Ozpin is a hypocrite at least he didn't deliberately go after Hunstmen kids to kill them. Bitch) How do you think CRWY and RWBY are gonna handle the Gods? Do you think there still exists some Ozma in Oz that still loves Salem, or he just wants to get away from her now? What is it that you want CRWBY to explore more in the show that you feel they did not do enough? Do you think Salem's punishment was fitting, given that she refuses to let go or accept death? Drink water and eat fruits!

Hi! Thanks for the ask, and I hope the time leading up to new year is good for you too!

The Brother Gods

I think that it's interesting to include the Brother Gods, and that they help provide a lot of good backstory for the conflict between Salem and Oz. I do think that the God of Light's whole ultimatum about humanity needing to prove itself by uniting or be destroyed is a little bit unfair, but at the same time, from a story perspective really works well as a motivation for what's to come. It's a task that would be near impossible, but it's one that aligns perfectly with the themes of the show. Other than that, tho, tbh I do not think a ton about the Gods at the moment. I definitely will more as I get closer to talking about them in my fic, but for now I don't have a ton of thoughts

I do think tho than when it comes time for RWBY to confront the Gods, if they ever do, it will ultimately be a situation where while I think they will manage to unite humanity (or at least mostly do so), they don't need the Gods the guide them like the GoL mentioned. Remnant has been a literally godless world for so long. They're able to be self-sufficient. I don't think the Gods would necessarily be completely turned away, but I do think that some of their ideas will be challenged. After all, another major theme of the series is the current generation making changes to avoid the mistakes of past ones. Why shouldn't that include acknowledging the flaws in some of the ways the Brother Gods operated things, and trying to better adapt to the challenges and experiences of mortals?

I do think that their punishment for Salem was fairly fitting tho. It really seemed like something straight out of mythology and fairy tales for one, and it was a way they wanted to try and help her gain an appreciation for life. It didn't work out the way they hoped it would, but I don't think they can really be blamed for that (tho I do think immortality is the worst fate a person could ever endure). Also I just think Salem's backstory and motivation is the most metal thing in existence

No More Gretchens

The way I personally interpreted that line was less about no more Huntsman academies in the future, and more him saying that Ozpin needs to be more cautious in using children to fight his battles. Gretchen died on a training mission at Beacon, and while I don't think it was something directly tied to Ozpin's fight with Salem, there are connections to be made there, especially when you're a grieving brother. And, regardless of what the mission was for, it was a girl who was likely not much older than a teenager, who died under Ozpin's watch. Hazel believes that Ozpin is sending children to their death in a fight that cannot be won, so the way I interpreted that was that he was saying that he doesn't want this cycle to keep going. The people running the academies need to be careful in the future, they need to protect their students, and they need to make sure that no one else dies fighting against what may be inevitable.

Because of that, I think that while Huntsman academies will persist, following the main series they will have to evolve and become something that's a little safer, while still preparing their students to fight the Grimm. There needs to be less risks taken, and more support given to reduce the chances of anyone else dying the way Gretchen did

Oz and Salem

While I do think that there may be a tiny, buried part of Oz with some affection towards Salem still, I also think it would be hard to continue to love someone who over the years you've been locked in conflict with

What I would want to see CRWBY explore more in show

I mean, the obvious answer for me would have been more about Ironwood and especially his Semblance. Since Mettle's never addressed in the show, I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand what it even does, or even that it exists. Them clarifying it more would have been good. But Ironwood is did (rip bozo (affectionate)), so other than that, idk

On one hand, I wish they would do a little more with the Faunus. Especially when they were in Atlas, I think exploring what it's like to be a Faunus there would have been really interesting. But on the other hand, the series is still predominantly written by white people, and while I do think their understandings of how to handle writing fantasy racism have improved, I still would be cautious of them getting too deep into it without more people from racial minority groups involved

Also, kind of a basic answer, but I really want to see Ruby and Blake interact more. They barely get opportunities too, which is a shame because I like their relationship a lot. Hopefully in v9 we'll get more of that since it'll be very focused on Team RWBY

[baymaksu]

Big Hero One

“Well, Papa. It’s just you and me now,” Chief Cruz sighed as he looked towards the colorfully decorated photograph adorned with marigold petals around it. Within the photo was the image of a kind- eyed man smiling fondly back at him.

His daughter, Megan, had just left with Aunt Cass and Hiro, allowing his time alone with his father’s grave. He chuckled softly, “I’m glad you could see Megan. She’s really grown up, hasn’t she? Not so much a little girl anymore. Rebellious as ever. I’m sure you’d tell me she acts just like me, but who do you think I got it from?”

As he laughed aloud, he could see a tall figure in his periphery. Without subtlety, it was adorned with brilliantly bright blue and red that was all too familiar. He recognized it instantly. The heroic figure of his former idol… the sole object of his life’s scorn and ire that betrayed his trust and faith.

“To what honor do I owe a visit from the world’s greatest superhero of all time?” Chief Cruz turned towards Boss Awesome, his voice venomous yet subdued. “You of all people have a lot of nerve to be here. Leave now. Have you no respect for those you failed.”

The legendary superhero looked to him, then to the photograph at the altar. Then lifted a bouquet of memorial flowers from his hand, a thoughtfully-selected arrangement for his immortelle. The man beneath the mask spoke solemnly, “My apologies, Chief Cruz. To be certain, I am indeed here to pay my respects to an old friend.”

“An old friend?” Chief Cruz was surprised at his answer, angered yet curious. He didn’t want to quarrel with him, especially not in this sacred place before his father’s resting place. Despite himself, something within him allowed the gesture as he nodded to the superhero.

Seeing it as permission, Boss Awesome stepped forward. Kneeling down to place the immortelle, he took a moment to speak silent words in respect. He then stood back up and looked to the police chief, “But more so, I am here to try to fulfill my promise to your father.”

Keeping himself under control, Cruz responded, “What are you talking about? Just how did you know my father?”

“Chief Cruz… No. Diego… I’m sorry. I understand how you feel about me. When I saw how you hunted those kids down, I realized that your wounds haven’t healed. Before, I tried to help you in my own way from afar…” Boss Awesome began, reflecting on his own past actions trying to support Diego not as a hero but as himself, as Mr. Frederickson. From afar, with his wealth and resources, he saw to it that the young orphan would be taken care of.

To Diego’s surprise, the legendary hero removed the cowl that disguised his visage. To his shock, he recognized the face of his benefactor. “But I see now that you must come to learn about your father’s sacrifice and his legacy. Detective Cruz’s… Manuel’s last investigation and the pivotal part he played in saving San Fransokyo with me.” Mr. Frederickson nodded at him, “Let me tell you about this city’s hero.”

___

Note: If there were another series I wish they would do, if even as a comic series, would be a prequel featuring Boss Awesome. It would pay much respect to Stan Lee and his role in BH6TS. There are many stories that Boss Awesome could have, all helping to world-build the BH6-verse.

And one of those stories would involve Chief Cruz’ father. Which needs more expansion and depth. I think it was the presentation that gives Chief Cruz his poor reception. But what if there was far more to the story? We only got the perception of grieving boy whose father wasn’t saved in time. What about Boss Awesome’s perspective and why would Cruz’s father be killed by a villain anyways?

I think it’s deeper than even Chief Cruz knows. And I think Megan would be someone whose wanted to dig deeper on what happened to her grandfather. The story ideas are out there and gets deeper. So, hopefully one day I can write this prequel series that I’d call “Big Hero One.” Stories from the legend himself, before the current era of superhero’s.

[hamliet]

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

[just2bubbly]

Cursed Souls

Masterlist

TLC Ship Week 2021!

*written for tlcshipweek2021- kaider for the prompt 'Cursed'

@kaiderforever

Summary:

"Thorne, Do you think I'm cursed?"

"What?"

"Uh- like do you think I'm cursed? that Cinder- s-she is-"

"Is suffering because of you?"

"You really love Cinder."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

...

Grief can make your mind think distressed thoughts, Kai with a haywire mind turns to Thorne for help- feeling overwhelmed just moments after the rebellion as he waits to hear news of Cinder.

A snippet of Kai alone with his thoughts as he waits outside the OT following the brutal injury of Cinder in Winter.

Ship: Kaider

Words: 2.5k

Genre: Angst, Hurt-Comfort

Prompt: 'Cursed'

__

*Sort-of canon-divergence.

Kai's Perspective:

Saying that he was anxious would be an understatement of his (let's assume long) lifetime. Everything around him was intense. After making sure that the Earthens were in a secure place, Kai followed by Torin had hastily returned to the Throne room. He could not focus on anything after Iko had told him that Cinder had gone to face Levana- alone.

Kai was praying to anyone who would listen- he prayed for Cinder's safety. Everything around him had been so rushed in the last few days- he had been high on adrenaline since the time he had helped Cress stick to the plan, coming back for crowning Levana as the Empress, to the sudden outburst of Lunars, the rebellion, him being captured and later escaping.

Kai was not sure how he remained on his own two feet walking through the pale halls of Artemisia Palace.

"Kaito, she shall be fine", Torin assured.

Kai was not going to buy it- how could Cinder be fine with a tyrant like Levana, who was likely trying to kill her?

He yelled at his own mind for letting Cinder go alone to confront Levana.

All of a sudden the sound of gunshots was heard, followed by a cry of pain making Kai look in horror at his advisor. He hoped it was anyone but Cinder. His heart was pumping loudly- at some inhuman speed and the rush of adrenaline forced him to walk faster than humanly possible. As the elegant and large doors of the throne room became visible, memories- horrors of incidents that would likely haunt him for the rest of his days flooded in Kai's mind.

Now was not the time to be sentimental- it was the time to be brave and help Cinder... if she was in a position to be helped.

The sight that was before his eyes stopped him in his tracks. Kai was dumbstruck at the sight of so much blood pooling in the throne room- the red a stark contrast to the pale marble floor and the real condition of the usually-disguised face of Levana- the face behind the glamour was enough to make him go stiff and be rooted to the spot.

However, Torin shook him out of his reverie to point out things- people. No, not just any people, his newly made friends.

He exhaled sharply when he saw Thorne, Scarlet and Wolf alive. He could not say the same when his eyes fell on Cress and Cinder. A sob escaped his shaking lips as Kai ordered Torin to call for doctors.

As he ran towards her with a thumping heart, he hoped he would not collapse at the sight of Cinder's misery.

A pool of dark red blood had surrounded her, her bosom had a knife- it did not take much to conclude that Levana had stabbed Cinder. His cheeks were damp with moisture as he huddled next to her- not sure what to do. Cinder coughed blood, her face gone pale because of the loss of so much blood. She could not cry but the worried lines along her forehead full with beads of sweat as she nibbled on her lower lip to think of anything but the wound- to avoid screaming with agony were enough to speak about her misery.

"Cinder," he cried through trembling lips.

"Kai, help Cress first. I won't-" she said through irregular words. Even in death, Cinder thought about saving others above herself.

"Shh, she is going to be fine. You're going to be fine." He said with questionable certainty. He had never known any person who had been stabbed to know how fine the after-effects were. Yet he refused to lose hope.

"Kai," she said smiling a bit sarcastically. As if both of them knew that they were lying to each other- to console, to convince.

"Don't speak I'm here- help is coming. Try to breathe. You're going to be fine." He said trying to assure him more than her.

"No- listen, Kai, look at me I might not have enough-" she hacked blood mid-sentence. Her stuttering words were cut short due to her current state. However, Kai very well knew what she was to say.

"All my ears to you, Cinder." He smiled at her, the same cheeky smile he had shown her at the garage, where they had met for the first time.

"Don't mourn for me Kai," she said. "-And I know I will not make it. My time as the revolutionary is over. I was not meant to be Queen or Princess. I trust you to do what you can for everyone," she muttered through ragged breaths, stopping from time to time to inhale sharply.

Kai would mourn for her death even if she prohibited it, even if it was forbidden. His throat ached as he tried to form sentences, probably not the last one she would hear.

"Cinder you are going to live through it. You will live long enough to rule yourself and do what you can for Luna." He said as his voice threatened to quiver, to cry out loud. He knew she was slipping away from him, as her glazed eyes rolled at the back of her head, eyes that would spontaneously shake looking at the ceiling. He would not lose her- hadn't he suffered enough grief to last a lifetime?

She closed her eyes and as calm resided over her features, Kai thought he had lost her. He could not hold it anymore, he cried not giving a damn- the Emperor of EC was crying for his beloved who was in his lap. Dying.

"No, Kai. I am a lowly mechanic. The Emperor should not cry for someone like me- Be h-happy Kai," she said with her eyes closed. It felt like she could bear to gaze into his eyes.

Kai begged for a miracle. How he wished that he would wake up and all this would just be a bad dream. He hoped that Cinder would live to see that she was never just a lowly mechanic. How she was always more than someone to him!

She cleared her mouth to say something instead a sharp breath was inhaled. Her lips now red with her own blood.

"You were the happy ending to my tragic life, Kai. I hope you remember that," She murmured.

He did not know if it was her or fragments of his own imagination speaking to him. He watched over as the others raised her and lay her across a stretcher. She was taken out to someplace where Kai followed blindly. They argued over something with Torin in the corner as he kept losing his mind- little by little.

He wanted to tell her, wanted to say them till she believed it.

"His ending without her would no longer be happy."

Still, he could not mutter any words as he choked on his own sobs. he was not brave enough to think that Cinder was dying inside. His haywire mind failing to register the happenings around him.

Torin appeared beside him and held him tight, unknowingly muttering soothing words- not knowing how to comfort the grieving Emperor. He stood outside white doors while Cinder lay inside, he cried his heart out on Torin's shoulder having had no clue if she was alive or not. He refused to listen to anything, he refused to talk- to ask about her state.

His mind played back the whole scenario over and over trying to make sense of his messed-up present.

Selene had been a mystery to him, she was a lost princess born out of his imagination, Torin used to describe it as a lost cause once. When he gave up on her, Cinder walked into his life. When the matter was revealed, he had hope. Selene and Cinder- just different names had been his hope for a long time, his ray of hope was struggling indoors. She was far away from him, from the world. He clutched on tightly to Torin trying to make sense of his falling apart life.

"T-Torin, is she a-a- okay?" he inquired.

"She will be."

"You think so?"

"Yes, Kai. She is a strong woman."

He remained silent for a long time- staring at the doors that would not allow him to enter. Trying to avoid thinking about the 'what-ifs'.

He did not move from his position for the entire day, keeping himself rooted to the seat before the door, with Torin beside him.

"You killed her, Kai. You are responsible for her fate... if not for you she would have never been drawn into this mess-"

"-She would not be dying right now"

"How selfish of you to use her for your own gain!?"

"She was just a poor girl aching to be loved- and look what you did!"

"You cursed her"

"'She is dead because of YOU"

He opened his eyes- panting for breath. All the voices sounded like Levana... she was dead right? He had never bothered to check if she was alive or dead, as he was in the haste due to Cinder's state- could she have survived?

Realizing he was just hyperventilating, it was a nightmare- nothing about it should trouble Kai into thinking that the tyrannical Queen was alive. He might have dozed off, sitting in the medical chamber of the palace, he thought trying to make his mind stray away from the loud thoughts of his mind.

'Was he cursed?'

Kai did not have many people in his life that he would have claimed to love, but the ones he did were either dead or dying.

'He had loved his parents, hadn't he? And where were they now?', He thought bitterly.

They hadn't even be buried like royals ought to, their goods burnt down to prevent the spreading of the disease to Kai or others. Their bodies were cremated in an incinerator as a precaution. Kai could not even be near them, being asked to see the whole ordeal from far away for his own safety. He had lost both of them to Leutomosis.

He loved Cinder and there she was a few metres away from him, perhaps already gone on another journey beyond life.

Maybe he was a cursed person, otherwise, why would all his loved ones die? Was he not capable of love? Could he not love anyone without having to lose them? And the ones he loved would all wither and die, while he watched them from far away?

Or was she the cursed one?

The girl who could not be loved, the one who would have a near-death experience, every time someone tried loving her. Cinder and Kai- were they two cursed souls?

Didn't she say, 'You were the happy ending to my tragic life.' and hadn't he thought, 'His ending without her would no longer be happy'?

Did she think he was responsible for her tragic life- her death? Hadn't she been an outcast for a major part of her life thanks to Kai, who failed to realize the sorrow of the cyborgs living in his own nation?

Were they just going to be each other's broken, sorrowful endings?

Not able to cope with his overwhelming thoughts, he looked around for Torin, only to find him nowhere.

He gawked at Thorne, who sat adjoining him and asked, "Thorne, Do you think I'm cursed?"

Thorne was confused, to say the least, maybe he was being too vague so he briefed, "Uh- like do you think I'm cursed? that Cinder- s-she is-"

"Is suffering because of you?" he provided, as Kai failed to continue. He nodded slightly, confirming that he was thinking the same thing.

Much to his surprise, Thorne smiled, not the flirty smile that usually did but a genuine smiled that reached his eyes and said, "You really love Cinder."

Taken aback by his remark he asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You are so alike, I can only imagine if the roles were reversed she would be here thinking the same thing."

"You think so?"

"I know so"

"What makes you so confident?"

"You had no idea how tensed Cinder was when you decided to marry Levana to prevent the wolf-hybrid soldiers from doing more damage. She never said it but she thought that she was responsible for all the mess created in your life."

"Okay," he replied, not knowing what else to say.

"Kai, what makes you think you are cursed anyways?"

"It's just- you know, all the people that I have cared about are dead and I do care about Cinder and she is inside fighting to stay alive- I just think I'm cursed, not capable of loving people," he explained.

Kai, would not admit it but saying it aloud made it seem foolish. Thorne would likely laugh at him for feeling he was 'cursed'- like was he even thinking through before popping the question to Thorne.

"Really Kai, sometimes I wonder the future of your country if you happen to be sentimental- how did we get two so feeble-minded monarchs to look after us?!" He asked, dramatically- can always rely on Thorne to disguise his sorrow with charm.

Kai rolled his eyes thinking to himself, 'why did he bother in the first place?' and looked away.

A sigh escaped him and he stated, "You are not cursed, Kai."

Now Thorne did have his attention, it might have been the first sincere thing he said after Cress was taken in OT. Kai realized how he was not the only one waiting for some news outside the medical chamber, not the only one who was afraid.

"You care about your advisor, umm what's his name?"

"Torin," Kai provided.

"Yeah Torin- you care about him, probably look up to him as well and he is neither dead nor trying hard to stay alive. You care about your people and I don't think all of them are dead right now, now are they?"

"No, they are not," he said even though it was a rhetorical question.

"I'm just afraid," he admitted after a long time to which Thorne honestly replied, "Me as well."

He looked at Thorne, trying to understand his grief- if Cress did not make it, Thorne would not be able to live with the guilt- knowing very well that he was responsible for her loss, that if not for him stabbing her in the stomach she would be alive.

"They would make it, right?" he asked, terrified of what Thorne would say.

He did not reply just pressed his lips in a thin line and looked before him. None of them was capable enough to answer it. So, Kai looked ahead as well and prayed because that's what all he could do. Pray.

"Kai stop thinking about bullshit things like being cursed."

Kai nodded, pointing out that he was listening and likely not going to think about how he might be cursed.

He thought before saying it aloud, rolling the words over and over before finally saying them.

"You are really a nice guy, Thorne. No wonder Cress really likes you."

__

A/N: I had promised I had come up with angst, and see here I am- keeping my promise to you guys.

I know I have knocked a lot of medical facts, I know she should be unconscious within seconds but I just choose to overlook it for my plot. I wanted some deep farewell/ goodbye shit before Cinder becomes unconscious (builds up the angst you know).

I wanted to this idea for a long time now, Cinder's almost-death through Kai's POV. This fic was likely going to have a different ending than one the it has now- I was just going to live the ending in grey area but I had to change it to keep up with the prompt 'Cursed' for ship week. Don't blame me writing angst, I am just writing ship week prompts- and apparently all of them happen to be angst!

Tell me what's on your mind after reading it!

Votes and comments are always appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Taglist: @cinderswrench @gingerale2017 @linhcinder686 @shellyseashell @ladyvesuvia @shelbylmkaider @levanariddlebackup @cindersassasin @kaider-is-my-otp (Tell me if you wanna be added/removed)

[bluetraverser]

NewLife - Chapter 12 - Teaser

Elliott turned the light off and wiped the tears from his eyes. Walking through the living room felt like walking through his own grave. There were so many pictures of him here… It made him fundamentally sad. It was important to him that Robert had kept him a part of their children's life. But it also showed him that Robert had never moved on. It had made him almost happy when he’d first realized this, thinking that he could just… get back together with him and try to make it all better. But now that he felt himself fading and losing this horrible fight, he wished it was different. He didn’t want his husband to suffer so much. It had been five years and Robert still hadn’t moved on. Still grieved what they’d had… He could tell he was already feeling this much less than he would have at an earlier time and yet the magnitude of his sadness threatened to extinguish his flame here and now.

But he couldn’t.

If he had to die, he would at least bring his daughter to bed first. He would see his husband one last time. And then…

...well...

Maybe hamlet’s soliloquy...

He walked up into his daughters bedroom. He thought about the things he had talked to her about throughout this day. The things she had said. What had been bothering her. What words he wanted her to hear before he died. What would be relevant. What would help her on her way.

The biggest problem seemed to have been the rift between her and Robert. However… with her guilt over his current unconsciousness, it felt like this was already put into perspective. He reached her bedroom. His daughter was already in bed, reading. There were a lot of books scattered around the room and he tried not to show his displeasure at books laid down on their faces with their spines surely breaking… It was harrowing. But if this was the last evening he got to spend with her, he didn’t want to turn it into a lecture…

“I’m happy to see your appetite for literature has grown.”

She grinned at him. “I could never understand why anyone would not love reading. I have a million worlds to visit ready at my fingertips.”

He made an effort to smile at her. “A fine view to take, dear.” He sat down at the head of the bed and his daughter immediately scooched over to be closer to him, leaning into his side. He put one arm around her and tried to think of something to say. He had to be careful not to give away what was happening. She was a clever kid and wouldn’t be fooled easily.

“Do you have a favorite book?”

“Hmm, I like fantasy books and philosophical joke books. I got this one book that is full of comics on philosophers with explanations who they were and why they are relevant.”

“Oah, that sounds fascinating. Do you have a favorite philosopher?”

“Mmmh… I like Judith Butler. She’s a clever woman who takes no bullshit!”

Elliott laughed quietly. “What’s your dads policy on swearing these days?”

“I don’t remember… But he’s asleep so… I can curse however much I want!” She grinned hugely and her eyes sparkled with wit and a joy of life…

He swallowed hard.

He wouldn’t get to see her grow up.

He hadn’t seen those precious last five years and he wouldn’t see her go through adolescence either.

It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair and suddenly he couldn’t keep the mask on anymore. He hugged her hard, trying to blink the tears away but he couldn’t quite manage. She was such a clever, beautiful girl and they had both had had far too little time together. Eight years and a single day five years later...it was far too little. She deserved so much better, so much more! There were so many things he had wanted to show his children, so much he had wanted to do with and for them and he just would not be allowed to…

“Papaw...what’s wrong? Are you sad?” Ayleen had hugged him back hesitantly. Of course it would worry her…

He sighed, trying to somehow muster up the strength to lie, to keep her save from this horrible truth…

“No. No I’m..I’m happy, sweetheart. I missed so much of your life and I’m… I’m so happy I get to see you again. I’m so happy I’m here now. It’s… a bit overwhelming. Forgive me. I don’t know if your dad told you what a ridiculous dramatic sap I am or if you can remember it...” he cried a bit harder although he so tried to stop. “But I really am...just… terribly sentimental.”

There was a small pause, then Ayleen laughed quietly and awkwardly patted his shoulder. “That’s okay Papaw… I’m happy you’re back too.”

Elliott closed the door behind him, devastated.

He could barely feel his own body now.

It was progressing so rapidly now…

Oh god, what will happen to me? What will happen to this body? Will it disappear with me? Please, I don’t want them to see another corpse...

Should he leave? Should he go outside and walk into the ocean to make sure they wouldn’t find a body?

No.

He walked to the bedroom.

He had to see his husband.

Full chapter at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37490239/chapters/94420819

[disaster-ace-is-me]

evermore lyrics that hit different

what’s up y’all i made a list of specific lyrics from taylor swift’s evermore album that really hit different for me because i just want everyone to focus on them for a bit :) (i originally wasn’t going to post this but now i’m working on analyses for the album and posting this helps me with that and might give y’all insight to what’s already going on in my brain when i hear these songs)

*pretty much the entire song

“champagne problems”:

“Your heart was glass, I dropped it”

“‘This dorm was once a madhouse’/I made a joke, ‘Well, it’s made for me’”

“How evergreen, our group of friends/Don’t think we’ll say that word again”

“I never was ready, so I watch you go”

“‘She would’ve made such a lovely bride/What a shame she’s fucked in the head,’ they said”

“gold rush”:

“I don’t like that falling feels like flying till the bone crush”

“And then it fades into the gray of my day-old tea/’Cause it could never be”

“I can’t dare to dream about you anymore”

“And the coastal town we never found will never see a love as pure as it”

“’tis the damn season”:

“It’s the kind of cold, fogs up windshield glass/But I felt it when I passed you”

“And the road not taken looks real good now/And it always leads to you and my hometown”

“I escaped it too, remember how you watched me leave?”

“Time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires/Now, I’m missing your smile, hear me out”

“And wonder about the only soul/Who can tell which smiles I’m faking”

“And the heart I know I’m breaking is my own/To leave the warmest bed I’ve ever known”

“tolerate it”*:

“I sit and watch you/I notice everything you do or don’t do/You’re so much older and wiser and I”

“I wait by the door like I’m just a kid/Use my best colors for you portrait”

“If it’s all in my head, tell me now/Tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow”

“I know my love should be celebrated/But you tolerate it”

“I take your indiscretions all in good fun/I sit and listen/I polish plates until they gleam and glisten”

“Where’s that man who’d throw blankets over my barbed wire?”

“I made you my temple, my mural, my sky/Now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of you life/Drawing hearts in the byline”

“Always taking up too much space or time”

“You assume I’m fine, but what would you do if I/Break free and left us in ruins?/Took this dagger in me and removed it?/Gain the weight of you then lose it?”

“happiness”*:

“All the years I’ve given/Is just shit we’re dividing up”

“I was dancing when the music stopped/And in the disbelief, I can’t face reinvention”

“Past the curses and cries/Beyond the terror in the nightfall”

“Haunted by the look in my eyes/That would’ve loved you for a lifetime/Leave it all behind”

“Tell me, when did your winning smile/Begin to look like a smirk?/When did all our lessons start to look like weapons/Pointed at my deepest hurt?”

“Sorry, I can’t see facts through all of my fury”

“There is a glorious sunrise/Dappled with the flickers of light/From the dress I wore at midnight/Leave it all behind”

“I can’t make it go away by making you a villain”

“And I pulled your body into mine/Every goddamn night, now I get fake niceties”

“No one teaches you what to do/When a good man hurts you/And you know you hurt him too”

“But now my eyes leak acid rain on the pillow where you used to lay your head”

“After giving you the best I had/Tell me what to give after that/All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness”

“dorothea”*:

“Hey, Dorothea, do you ever stop and think about me?/When we were younger down in the park/Honey, making a lark of the misery”

“You got shiny friends since you left town/A tiny screen’s the only place I see you now/And I got nothing but well wishes for ya”

“You know that you’ll always know me, Dorothea”

“From you, I’d buy anything”

“Hey, Dorothea, do you ever stop and think about me?/When it was calmer skipping the prom just to piss off your mom and her pageant schemes”

“But are you still the same soul I met under the bleachers?/Well I guess I’ll never know/And you’ll go on with the show”

“coney island”:

“If I can’t relate to you anymore/Then who am I related to?”

“Disappointments, close your eyes/And it gets colder and colder/As the sun goes down”

“What’s a lifetime of achievement/If I pushed you to the edge?”

“Will you forgive my soul/When you’re too wise to trust me and too old to care?”

“And when I got into the accident/The sight that flashed before me was your face/But when I walked up to the podium, I think that I forgot to say your name”

“ivy”:

“I just sit here and wait/Grieving for the living”

“Oh, goddamn/My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand”

“So, yeah/It’s a fire/It’s a goddamn blaze in the dark/And you started it”

“long story short”:

“Fatefully/I tried to pick my battles till the battle picked me”

“I was in the alley surrounded on all sides/The knife cuts both ways/If the shoe fits, walk in it till your high heels break”

“And I fell from the pedestal/Right down the rabbit hole/Long story short, it was a bad time”

“Past me/I wanna tell you not to get caught up in these petty things”

“marjorie”*:

“Never be so kind/You forget to be clever/Never be so clever/You forget to be kind”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were still around”

“What died didn’t stay dead/You’re alive, you’re alive in my head”

“Never be so polite/You forget you power/Never wield such power/You forget to be polite”

“And if I didn’t know better/I’d think you were listening to me now”

“You loved the amber skies so much”

“I should’ve asked you questions”

“Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt/’Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me”

“All your closets of backlogged dreams/And how you left them all to me”

“evermore”*:

“Gray November/I’ve been down since July”

“I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone/Trying to find the one where I went wrong/Writing letters/Addressed to the fire”

“And I couldn’t be sure/I had a feeling so peculiar/That this pain would be for/Evermore”

“Hey, December/Guess I’m feeling unmoored/Can’t remember/What I used to fight for”

“Barefoot in the wildest winter/Catching my death”

“Can’t not think of all the cost/And the things that will be lost”

“I’m on waves, out being tossed”

“In the cracks of light/I dreamed of you/It was real enough/To get me through”

“right where you left me”*:

“I, I swear you could hear a hair pin drop/Right when I felt the moment stop”

“Everybody moved on I, I stayed there/Dust collected on my pinned-up hair/They expected me to find somewhere/Some perspective, but I sat and stared/Right where you left me”

“She’s still twenty-three inside her fantasy”

“Did you hear about the girl who lives in delusion?”

“But I’m unaware/’Cause I’m right where I cause no harm/Mind my business/If our love died young/I can’t bear to witness/And it’s been so long”

“it’s time to go”*:

“When the words of a sister come back in whispers/That prove she was not in fact what she seemed”

“That old familiar body ache/The snaps from the same little break in your soul/You know when it’s time to go”

“We’re trying to stay for the kids/When keeping it how it is will only break their hearts worse”

“Sometimes giving up is the strong thing/Sometimes to run is the brave thing/Sometimes walking out is the one thing/That will find you the right thing”

“Begging till my knees bled/I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all/Then wondered why I left”

“He’s got my past frozen behind glass/But I’ve got me”

“You know/When it’s time to go/So then you go”

[karnakian]

anyway,  speaking  of  maria  ...  you  know  the  drill,  annual  maria  rant  (  under  the  cut  this  time  because  it’s  long  and  i’m  sure  some  people  might  get  tired  of  me  talking  about  her  lol  )

i  think  if  i  ever  did  actually  bring  her  in  as  a  guest  muse  (  which  ...  idk,  maybe  ?  i’ve  always  wanted  to  at  least  lol  )  i  might  rethink  the  way  that  i’ve  been  envisioning  her  for  the  past  few  years.  keep  in  mind  that  the  only  time  maria  is  brought  up  in  -  game  is  during  leon’s  proposal  event,  although  she  is  subtly  alluded  to  in  his  date  event  as  well,  though  this  is  only  realized  upon  retrospection.

the  event  makes  it  clear  of  course  that  maria  was  leon’s  closest  (  human  lol  )  childhood  friend  and  that  they  did  everything  and  went  everywhere  together  from  a  young  age.  while  he  viewed  him  as  a  younger  sister,  she  had  romantic  feelings  for  him  since  they  were  children.  he  also  described  her  as  being  a  crybaby  when  she  was  young,  too,  which  eventually  led  to  their  infamous  promise  -  leon,  desperate  to  stop  maria  from  crying  when  she  was  inconsolable  one  day,  questioned  if  there  was  anything  that  he  could  do  to  get  her  to  stop,  and  she  asked  if  she  could  marry  him  one  day.  he  agreed,  and  they  later  marked  their  names  on  the  temple  (  leon  karnak  )  in  the  old  tongue  as  a  symbol  of  this  vow.  since  that  day,  even  though  leon  later  forgot  all  about  the  promise  after  having  dismissed  it  as  just  another  silly  childhood  game  or  otherwise  a  phase  she  would  eventually  grow  out  of,  she  never  cried  again  :

even  on  the  day  when  leon  left  to  become  a  guardian,  maria  stood  at  a  distance  behind  everyone  else,  looking  as  though  she  might  cry  at  any  minute  but  not  allowing  herself  to  even  once  :

this,  of  course,  is  what  led  him  to  remembering  their  childhood  promise,  and  became  the  crux  of  his  guilt  that  wound  up  as  his  basis  for  distancing  himself  from  the  rest  of  the  townsfolk  once  he  woke  up  in  the  modern  age  and  vowing  to  never  marry  anyone  so  as  not  to  trample  on  her  feelings  more  than  he  already  had.  her  letters  that  she  wrote  to  him  also  reveal  that  she  waited  for  him  for  decades,  still  not  crying  even  once,  eager  to  keep  their  promise  even  after  he  was  gone.  even  though  it  is  later  revealed  through  a  ~  wacky  turn  of  events  ~  that  maria  did  eventually  find  someone  and  get  married  (  and,  ultimately,  became  happy  ),  this  becomes  the  main  conflict  in  lftp  --  should  leon  allow  himself  to  find  his  own  happiness  after  believing  he  had  taken  away  hers  ?  on  top  of  that,  maria  also  revealed  that  her  neighbors,  not  knowing  about  their  promise,  found  her  harsh  and  unfeeling  after  she  never  appeared  to  grieve,  even  after  her  parents  died  and  her  other  friends  slowly  left  her,  leaving  her  alone.  why  should  leon  get  to  have  friends  and  start  his  own  family  when,  he  thought,  he  took  away  her  chance  of  having  her  own  by  stealing  her  tears  ?

the  story  of  course  does  have  a  happy  ending,  revealing  that  maria  did  end  up  having  a  happy  life  as  stated  above  and  that  she  wrote  a  book  detailing  her  married  life,  written  in  the  ancient  tongue  that  she  and  leon  had  learned  together  as  children,  that  she  hoped  that  leon  would  one  day  be  able  to  read  when  he  woke  up  again  so  that  he  would  know  not  to  feel  guilty.  she  even  made  a  wish  for  him  using  a  blessing  from  their  childhood  that  he  would  find  his  own  happiness  as  well.

this  is  all  information  that  has  been  integral  to  my  portrayal  of  leon  since  ...  i  started  this  blog,  actually  LMAO.  his  guilt  towards  maria  and  believing  that  he  irrevocably  ruined  the  life  and  stole  the  happiness  of  one  of  the  people  most  dear  to  him,  alongside  his  inability  to  relate  to  the  modern  age  and  some  good  old  -  fashioned  survivor’s  guilt  to  boot,  are  the  main  reasons,  in  my  opinion,  that  he  works  so  hard  to  ensure  that  the  people  of  selphia  only  know  him  on  a  superficial,  surface  level  --  haha  he’s  the  guy  that  jokes  around  and  teases  people  !  you  don’t  want  to  become  his  next  target,  do  you  ?  it’s  not  that   deep,  don’t  look  at  him  too  closely,  haha  !  that  being  said,  i  did  notice  on  my  most  recent  playthrough  there  a  couple  of  thing  that  over  the  past  few  years  i  had  kind  of  ...  forgotten  about.

i  mentioned  earlier  that  i  had  always  kind  of  hoped  to  add  maria  as  a  guest  muse  here,  so  i’ve  always  been  pretty  interested  in  what  kind  of  person  maria  was.  of  course  maria  is  someone  who  leon  cherishes  highly,  referring  to  her  as  a  ‘  sweet  girl  ’  that  he  regarded  as  a  little  sister,  someone  who  used  to  cry  all  the  time  and  was  later  thought  of  as  cold  and  mean  after  leon  left.  given  that  this  event  is  the  only  time  in  game  we  hear  about  her,  there  is  so  little  information  that  we  actually  know  about  her,  and  all  of  it  is  from  leon’s  word  of  mouth  or  from  maria’s  direct  perspective.  i’ve  always  taken  what  little  info  we  do  know  and  have  seen  her  as  someone  who  was  ...  kind  of  quiet,  but  kind.  timid,  perhaps,  and  maybe  didn’t  have  many  friends  due  to  her  shyness.  a  lot  of  this,  i  do  still  absolutely  stand  by  !!  however,  there  are  a  couple  of  things  that  i  noticed  during  my  most  recent  playthrough  that  i  think  are  really  vital  in  understanding  the  kind  of  person  maria  was.

the  first  thing  i  noticed  that  stood  out  to  me  was  the  emphasis  on  leon  being  really  maria’s  only  friend,  and  perhaps  even  him  being  the  only  person  that  really  actually  cared  for  her.  when  he  talks  about  viewing  maria  as  a  little  sister,  he  does  explicitly  say  that  perhaps  he  was  the  only  one  who  thought  of  her  in  that  light.

it’s  hard  to  know  exactly  what  he  means  by  this  because  there  is  just  sooo  little  information  regarding  their  childhood,  but  to  me  this  reads  that  she  was  someone  who  didn’t  really  have  anyone  but  leon,  maybe  even  possibly  someone  who  was  shunned  or  disliked  by  her  peers.  

another  thing  that  struck  me  when  playing  through  it  again  was,  of  course,  leon’s  breakdown  upon  finding  maria’s  “  final  “  letter.  at  the  beginning  of  his  rant,  there  have  always  been  a  handful  of  lines  that  have  stayed  with  me  through  the  years  :

these  are  the  first  lines  that  leon  says  right  at  the  beginning  of  his  speech,  right  when  he’s  transitioning  from  shock  to  spilling  over  in  grief.  keep  in  mind  that  his  partner  with  him  has  never  said  a  single  word  throughout  this  (  except  for  maybe  his  name  ?  i  can’t  quite  remember  lol  )  and  that  this  is  his  instinctual  first  response  to  finding  and  reading  this  letter  --  to  protect  maria.  it  could  just  be  in  response  to  what  maria  said  in  the  letter  about  people  finding  her  distant  and  mean,  but  keeping  the  information  above  about  him  being  the  only  person  that  thought  of  her  kindly  (  or,  at  least,  in  a  sisterly  way  )  i  find  that  the  fact  that  leon’s  very  first  response  is  to  guard  her  from  accusations  of  being  ‘  cold  ’  to  be  really  interesting.  to  me,  it  seems  like  it’s  almost  second  nature  to  him,  like  it’s  something  that  he’s  done  in  the  past.

i’m  not  entirely  sure  exactly  where  i  stand  on  the  topic  of  maria’s  personality,  but  it’s  clear  that  she’s  a  lot  more  interesting  and  complex  than  i  think  i  previous  gave  her  credit  for.

[yaboylevi]

Hi! I love ur blog, especially ur Snk Metas and Ereri metas. What are your thoughts on the whole “Eren has always been like this” (always been evil or capable of great evils like genocide) that a lot of people seem to agree on? I’ve always had a hard time believing in that idea because we’ve been shown multiple times that Eren is capable of sympathy and empathy, so to say he’s ALWAYS been like this is wrong.

Hi! Thank you!!

Looking through my snk 121 tag I found that I have already received similar questions, so I’m gonna link one here if you want the short version of it. Even if it was something I wrote up right after the chapter was out, it’s not like my opinion has changed much... more like, my faith in Isayama writing a decent conclusion and explanation in regards to Eren has plummeted in the past year and a half.

But anyway, now we have some new information pertaining Eren, so I feel like I can add more on this moment and my take on it in light of such new perspective.

Let me preface this with: Eren hates what he’s doing, is despising every second, was scared of his future visions, often paralyzed, desperate to find a better solution than this, because he knows - let me repeat it - HE KNOWS this is horrifying. We had hints throughtout the story, but many have ignored them. For me, Eren going through grief and apologizing for something he hadn’t even done yet in chapters 131 was no shocker at all, but I guess some people may have actually been surprised, I don’t know. It was right there since the Marley arc and his breakdown over Sasha, but many have completely misinterpreted that scene, denying it was desperation that he was feeling, so it was nice to finally have confirmation. Kinda.

However, you know, Isayama doesn’t seem to have picked a side on his characterization of Eren. Or maybe there is still something that’s concealed, because everything we have seen, isn’t evething that has happened, and it doesn’t explain yet some things about Eren and, relevant to this post, why Eren has decided to give up and give in to his future self’s memories of destruction. I’m sorry, but Eren believing “there is no other way, other than killing the whole world’s population, because the future cannot be changed” due to some memories is not gonna cut it, especially because we haven’t seen him fight too hard against it. In my opinion, at least. Or maybe he did, but we haven’t been shown.

The most hopeful part of my heart wishes he is already trying to change things, in a very roundabout and secret way, but the tired and logical part is done hoping. After all, Eren is alternating between being hellbent on going through with rumbling the world, and being absolutely horrified by it. I’ve been getting whiplash every month for a couple of years now.

As for your actual question, and that line during the Paths Time Travel...

Let’s start from here, shall we? That whole conversation with Zeke in Paths was to Zeke what chapter 112 was to Mikasa and Armin, imo. Chapter 121, huh, same numbers...but anyways. I think I have already wrote it somewhere, but I believe Eren lied, and purposely hurt Zeke. To make him, and Mikasa and Armin, realize something and act accordingly, maybe against Eren himself.

In Mikasa’s case, the realization was gradual since then, because Eren’s lies kickstarted it immediately. In Armin’s case, I think we still haven’t seen the full potential of it, though it may come next chapter - and I mean the “You were influenced by Bertolt, an enemy” angle. I am surprised Armin hasn’t followed this reasoning in regards to Eren, who has three titans within him, none of them particularly allied with Paradis. We left Armin seeing Bertolt, who is, in turn, watching him. I wonder if a conversation won’t happen right off the bat in chapter 136.

Anyhow, Eren, in chapter 112, also very much hit Armin and Mikasa where it hurt them the most - which is the same thing he did to Zeke here, bringing up his hate for Grisha and how it was the only think really fuelling him, and went through all the effort of making him reconcile with Grisha. Mmm, sus. Am I the only one feeling it’s sus??? I really have to wonder if he doesn’t kind of want/need Zeke to stop him, just like I believe he did with Armin and Mikasa. After all, there was no need to antagonize them and make them have reasons to stop caring for him, if he didn’t want to be stopped.

So, if it wasn’t already clear, Eren is a big liar, and he’s good at it if you don’t know him (and Zeke, Armin, and Mikasa have proven they don’t know or understand him very well at times). His acting skills have been shown all the way back in the cabin scene when he was 8 years old and tricked those traffickers.

There is another layer to these lies that I’d like to touch upon, though.

The line you were inquiring about feels exactly like his “I am free” in chapter 112. He sounds so sure, but it is a freaking lie.

See how both Armin and Mikasa are confused by such a bold, out-of-the-blue statement, the same way Zeke asks Eren “Since birth?” because, like, what is that all even about?

Eren has been feeling trapped in his own future memories to the point that his freedom of choice even existing anymore has become a big question mark. There is no freedom in following the path you were shown.

Eren’s urge to save someone from “having their freedom solen” by “physically assaulting the perpetrators first” has never, ever meant that he was willing to or okay with sacrificing innocents. Quite the opposite, in fact. There have been whole arcs about that. About Eren freaking out over people dying for him, refusing to sacrifice friends for the bigger picture, grieving for or sympathizing with innocents losing their lives or having them destroyed by some bigger threat. That has not changed.

So the big question remains: Why?

With these outrageous and confident statements about himself, I don’t think Eren is merely lying to his interlocutor to change their perception of him. I think he is lying to himself as well in the meantime. It looks like it did the trick, or not - based on how you want to interpret it. He really has been dissociating hard during his rampage.

But it all depends on what Isayama's angle is with Eren. In 112 Eren seemed to believe his “I am free” statement because he had an instant reaction to Armin challenging it. At the same time, now that we also have chapter 130-131 to enrich our reading, there is no way Eren felt free into the choices he made after hearing Willy’s declaration of war. He saw a terrifying future, he hoped against hope that it would change, but felt powerless and gutted and desperate that all pointed to such a future being unchangeable. So I do wonder if maybe he didn’t end up lying to himself - subconsciously or not - that he is free... and that he is always been this way - a cold-blooded murderer who did it all for justice.

Zoom in on Eren forlornly watching himself as a kid show pure kindess to a girl who just went through the most traumatizing experience in her life.

For the matter, I don’t believe Eren “has always been this way”. I actually don’t believe he’s ever been that way. I don’t know why many(?) people just accept whatever Eren says at face value, ignoring all context surronding it.

As I posted very recently, it doesn’t make sense for Eren to go from one extreme to the other without a better excuse, or explanation, or a more believable writing of it...or a plot twist that I guess I will wait for for another 4 months:

Eren came to realize that outside the walls people are just...well, people. There are good ones everywhere, people who suffered just like him, people who deserve better, certainly don’t deserve to be caught up in the Rumbling, people who have lives, children, moms, loved ones. This is highlighted again in chapter 131, because maybe, when Eren brought it up in the basement with Falco and Reiner, people didn’t think he was being genuine. So Isayama shows us again that Eren truly believed that.

And yet, the chapter before, Eren put those very same people on the same level of Titans when he used to think Titans were scum, a nightmare sent to eat them alive, because he addressed them with “匹”, a derogatory counter when applied to people, because it is usually used for small animals.

The parallel to how he used to feel towards Titans is smacked in our faces, because in Japanese, it’s the same exact line. He now feels that way about people.

...What?

It doesn’t make sense, right?

Because really, the same way Eren’s first impulse in Marley was to save Ramzi when he was being beaten up (and threatened with a worse fate than some bruises), the same way Eren helped him regardless and again went against 3 full-grown men, it’s the same way Eren rushed to Mikasa’s rescue when he didn’t even know her... or the same way he pushed himself into a Titan’s mouth just to save Armin. it doesn’t come from a sentiment of “I need to punish these monsters because they are threatening me”. It comes from a natural, intrinsic need to help and save others. It is deeply saddening that at the end of this journey, with Ramzi, he just feels like this natural predisposition of his is just a fake and turns him into a hypocrite.

So for Eren to say he has always been that way while looking at his 8 years old self stabbing a human trafficker in the chest to save a little girl to try and explain why he’s killing innocent people who happens to be living alongside “the bad guys” is a false equivalence. Either it’s a lie Eren tells himself and to Zeke to make both of them believe this is what Eren is, and has always been, and there is nothing they could do to prevent it - in a sort of twisted liberation from guilt because “if I was always like this, then you and I both shouldn’t have expected anything different”...

...or it’s Isayama’s failed attempt at presenting a theoretical concept he liked and talked about in interviews, suddenly turning Eren into a poster boy for it and canceling previous sides of Eren’s complexity as a character. I would like to believe Isayama hasn’t lost his magic touch this badly, but every day I’m less sure of it.

My opinion, for what is worth, is that that line you quoted is something he said to trick Zeke into detaching himself from Eren and going against him - breaking the bonds of love all around him has been a very deliberate choice Eren has made post time-skip - and at the same time it’s something Eren is trying to believe himself, in a desperate attempt at explaining to his own conscience that he was destined to bring such destruction, that he was always capable of it, and that there is a sort of justice in it where there isn’t. And he knows, deep down. That’s why he dissociates in the end.

In a very twisted, self-deprecating way, Eren is a liar to everyone, himself included. He has become an unreliable narrator about himself. Eren has completely shut down because he cannot stand what he is doing.

And I would very much like to know why he gave up on trying to find a different solution, if that’s what it is that happened, and why he sounds like a different person every other scene he appears in, in the next 4 months.

[holdin-out-for-a-hero]

Creep- FFVII Biggs X Reader Ch.13/?

A/n: Sorry it’s late again. I feel like a broken record saying there will be weekly updates and not delivering. Not gonna lie, I’ve been going through it™️ this year, but this series has been my escape. Thanks for the patience

You figured you would find her here, but the sight still made your breath catch in your throat. She rarely let her guard down like this. She often put on an act, always there to help others with their problems but never sharing her own. Seeing her this vulnerable meant something was really wrong- and of course it was. Cloud was an old friend. The only piece left of a burned-down hometown. And now he was gone.

Her shoulders shook slightly, you noticed. She must've been crying, which made your job much harder. You had came in to tell her the carriage was waiting, but it seemed like the carriage would have to wait a little longer. It felt wrong to delay or pause Tifa's grieving process just to help you get your ass out of trouble, but she did volunteer and no matter how hard you tried to talk her out of it, she always stood her ground.

You took a quiet step closer, and then another, and another, until you were just a foot away from her. Placing a hand on her shoulder, you smoothed a piece of her hair behind her back. She jumped the slightest bit, but didn't turn. She knew she had been caught; there was no use in hiding it.

"The carriage is here," you said. You hoped it didn't come off as insensitive, but there really was no time. Her eyes traced the sheets a moment more.

"I think I messed up my makeup," Tifa whispered, ashamed. She turned to you but didn't make eye contact, instead focusing on your necklace. Her eyes were red and watery, and just like she said, there was a small trail of black under each eye.

"I can fix it," you reassured, "But are you sure you want to do this? You don't have to."

She finally looked into your eyes, wiping her tears away and plastering on a smile.

"You can't talk me out of this."

You led her to the bathroom, taking some tissue and cleaning up the black smudges from under her eyes. Thank God she wasn't wearing foundation or else the whole thing would've been ruined.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think I was gonna cry..." she said, "I shouldn't have come in here in the first place. It was a bad call..."

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Tifa. It hasn't even been a day since it happ-" you stopped yourself. It was best not to remind her.

She didn't reply. Instead, she seemed to get stuck in her own head, torturing herself with memories new and old.

"Tifa," you said, placing a hand on her shoulder. She stayed in her trance a moment more.

"Huh?" She finally turned to look at you.

"Don't do that to yourself."

"...You're right."

She looked herself over in the mirror, examining her eyes to see if you had fixed the smudged mascara. To her relief, the makeup left no remnants; it looked as though it had never been messed up. The redness had started to fade away, but whether or not anyone would notice was another issue. There was no time for it anyway.

"Are you two ready?" A muffled voice asked from behind the door. It was Biggs.

"Almost done!" You replied. Then you looked back at Tifa, silently waiting for her confirmation.

She let out a held breath, "let's go."

You opened the door of the apartment, meeting eyes with the three people standing just outside it. Jessie stood to the far left, leaning on to the railing with her side to help support her weight: her leg was still hurting her a little, so it was best to stay off of it. Biggs was in the middle, his back against the railing and his arms crossed over his chest. And Wedge stood to the right of him, awkwardly looking between the four of you. After what he had just seen a few minutes ago, you couldn't blame him.

Wedge must've kept his mouth shut, because Jessie wasn't pestering you or Biggs. You'd have to thank him later. Speaking of Biggs, he was playing it off as well. Nothing in his demeanor was different than usual. From Jessie's perspective, nothing had happened between you.

"Oooh~ you two sure clean up nice!" Jessie said, "I really am the ugly one in our friend group."

You rolled your eyes. The nerve of her to call herself ugly...

"Chocobo's waiting just around the corner," Biggs said, "Can't keep 'em waiting."

Tifa led the way, speed-walking down the steps with relative ease in order to avoid any questioning about her red eyes. You were about to catch up with her when Jessie spoke up from behind you.

"Damn, Y/N, I really think you should keep that dress! It really accentuates your best features."

And then she slapped your ass.

"Jessie!" You yelped, turning around to glare at her.

"Just saying..." she smirked, passing you and walking down the stairs. You stood frozen as you watched her walk away. The nerve of that girl...

Another body took her place beside you, Biggs, and he seemed to wait for you to continue. You glanced over at him and noticed his hand was outstretched as if to help you down. A small smile formed on your lips when you took it.

"Thanks," you said, grabbing some of your dress with your other hand so you wouldn't trip on it. You took careful steps down the stairs; one bad move in your heels and you could faceplant, "I really can't stand her sometimes..."

"I know what you mean. She's a real character, that's for sure."

You both reached the bottom of the steps and you unclasped your hand from his, giving him a nod before catching up to Jessie and Tifa.

Just up ahead was the chocobo carriage and a stable hand checking his watch in annoyance. A look of relief washed across his face when he saw your group walking towards him.

"Hurry up! We ain't got all night." He said, ushering you, Tifa, and Jessie over. He must've remembered there were only supposed to be two girls going to to Corneo's, because his brows furrowed as he looked between the three of you.

"I'm assuming you're not coming with us," he said, looking Jessie up and down. While Jessie was naturally gorgeous, she really wasn't dressed the part, especially when put next to you and Tifa.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" She questioned. He only ignored her, instead looking behind at Biggs and Wedge. He rolled his eyes and sighed.

"Didn't know you two were having a farewell party. Make the final goodbyes quick, will ya? I've got a schedule to keep."

"Final?" Biggs questioned. The man didn't care to answer him either.

The stable hand turned around, muttering to himself in annoyance as he went to tend to the chocobo at the front of the carriage. It gave your group a small amount of privacy.

You said goodbye to Wedge first, pulling him into a tight hug. He was like a brother to you, and though you knew you would make it back to see him again, the thought of a 'final goodbye' shook you to your core. And though he never explicitly agreed, you could tell he felt it too. 

Next was Jessie. She had just gotten done with wishing Tifa farewell and was waiting not-so-patiently for Wedge to get done. As soon as he walked away, Jessie tackled you with a surprise hug.

"Jessie!" You shouted.

"Sorry," she smiled, pulling away to stand in front of you. She took your hands in your own, her playful expression fading into something more serious, "Kick his ass. End his life. I don't care. Just makes sure this ends tonight, ok?"

You swallowed the lump in your throat before nodding your head. Hopefully you wouldn't have to end any lives tonight.

"And you better come back here in one piece so I can pick on you some more."

"Wouldn't want to take that away from you. Your purpose in life," you said, trying to lighten the mood.

"It sure as hell is."

She pulled you into another hug, a real one this time. Holding on tight, you prayed that this wouldn't be a final goodbye. Her hair still smelled of green apple. You were sure yours did too, since you used her conditioner last night. After all this was over, you'd have to buy a bottle yourself. After this was all over, you thought. That was the phrase getting you through it all.

Biggs stood just a few feet away, watching you and Jessie's goodbye. He had already said goodbye to Tifa and was waiting for his turn to get to you.

Jessie noticed his presence, and though she knew he wasn't trying to rush her, she got the hint. She took a step away and looked over at Biggs.

"I'll give you two your privacy," she said, walking back to Tifa and Wedge for a second goodbye.

Biggs took Jessie's spot in front of you. Something was different about this encounter with him than all the others, it was tense, awkward even. Well, that's what happens when you almost kiss a guy but get interrupted. Things get awkward.

But you could tell that wasn't what made him so uncomfortable. It was about the mission itself, something that you two had fought over many times. The tension was only grew as you stared into his eyes. It was becoming too much; you had to clear the air.

"Look, I know you're not happy that I'm doing this, but do you at least trust me?" You asked.

He hesitated, and as the moments passed your heart started to sink. Why couldn't he just trust you like everyone else? Did he not believe in your capabilities?

"...I do. I trust you." He finally said.

Relief hit you like a wave. You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding as a smile settled on your lips. You pulled him into a tight hug and he reciprocated with the same urgency. His hand ran over your hair, then cupping your head as he leaned in to whisper something.

"Like Jessie said, if you have to kill him, do it. You'll probably be helping out a lot of other women."

Your smile faded at the thought. You didn't want to kill him or anybody. Sure, you wanted to deck him right in that stupid smile of his, kick him in the balls so hard he wished he were dead, but you didn't want to kill him. Why did one asshole's life matter so much though? Your hands were already covered in blood: the blood of Shinra troops and the unfortunate casualties of the bombing mishap. Those were innocents, this man wasn't.

You shook the thoughts away; you didn't want to face that reality yet.

"So you were listening," you replied, and you felt his body stiffen under your fingers. He pulled away and you released your grip on his shirt.

"You caught me," he said, trying to play off his obvious embarrassment. There was another uncomfortable silence as you both separated; you shifted your weight from foot to foot as he rubbed the back of his neck. Wow, almost kissing someone really makes things tense.

"So I guess this is goodbye," he said.

"Yeah, I guess it is," you trailed off, another beat of silence, "but not a final goodbye."

"Yeah... no, not a final goodbye." The air was still thick, filled with the weight of all your feelings and confessions left unsaid.

You couldn't leave like this, not without him really knowing how you felt. But you couldn't just confess, not in front of everybody. You didn't think you had the balls for it either.

But a gut feeling told you that you had to do something. So, with all your built up courage, you placed a quick kiss on his cheek. And though it only lasted a moment, you had memorized the feeling of his stubble against your lips.

You turned away immediately so you wouldn't have to see his reaction, and luckily for you, the stable hand was walking towards the back do the carriage. He opened up the wooden gate, ushering you and Tifa in.

Picking up the invitation that was in your seat, you held it in your lap as you sat down. Tifa seemed to do the same, giving a last smile and wave to the group. Just a moment later, the stable hand took off.

————————

The gate of sector seven creaked open, revealing the mess that was sector 6. At least that's what you assumed, since you couldn't really see anything that wasn't directly behind the carriage. There was an old playground just outside the gate, you remembered. It was mostly untouched from the destruction of the sector 6 plate. Lots of children still sneak into the abandoned playground since it's so close.

Looking back at Tifa, she seemed distant, an empty look on her face. She was probably thinking about her friend, the mercenary. It was a shame what happened to him.

You placed a hand over her own and she looked came out of her daze, looking up at you. As soon as she did, your mouth went dry. There was nothing you felt like you could say to make her feel better, so you stayed silent instead.

"Tifa!" A voice called from outside the carriage. It sounded familiar. You and Tifa turned to the voice. A man was keeping up with the carriage. His spiky hair, his flourescent eyes, and that ridiculously large sword strapped to his back... it couldn't be...

"Cloud, Your alive! I thought we'd lost you!" Tifa said, crouching down on the floor of the carriage to speak to him better. Cloud jumped onto the back railing of the Carriage, holding onto the wooden bars as it continued through sector 6.

"What's going on?" He asked. Tifa shushed him.

"I'll explain everything later. But now, we're on our way to see Don Corneo. You should head back to Seventh Heaven, meet up with the gang."

"But-" Cloud started, but Tifa cut him off.

"We'll be fine!" She reassured, "you've seen how much ass we can kick."

Cloud looked between the two of you, creating a small dip in the conversation.

"I have..." he sighed, before jumping down from the carriage.

Watching his figure grow smaller in the distance, you let out a laugh of disbelief.

Tifa did the same, a massive weight taken off of her shoulders. She couldn't hide the smile blossoming on her face. Cloud, her childhood friend, was still alive.

————————

The two of you were dropped off at the door of a large, wutainese-style mansion. It was both gorgeous and disgustingly lavish; a real slap in the face to anyone in the slums. You knew this Corneo guy was a jerk, but you didn't realize the extent.

There was a shady aura to the mansion; something to be expected from a crimelord, but it still put you on edge. You could tell Tifa noticed too, as she grabbed onto your forearm. You looked down at the invitation in your hand, the ticket in. Then you looked back up at Tifa.

"You ready?" You asked her. She nodded, a soft hum escaping her lips as she did.

You both hesitantly opened the door, revealing a small hall and another ornate door with three men guarding it. Your heartbeat rose as you saw them, and you sighed in relief when you didn't recognize any of them. No creep yet.

You walked towards the man in the middle; a young, skinny guy with silver hair. Despite his age and stature, he carried a presence like he'd seen some real shit and was jaded by it all.

"Invitation?" He asked apathetically, and you gave yours to him. Tifa did the same, and he read the invitations, "Two from Sam, huh? That's unusual."

"Looks like he's tryna get on the Don's good side. I mean, look at 'em!" The guard on the right side said, gesturing to the both of you.

"He's gonna have a hard time picking, that's for sure," The other guard, a large, gruff man, said, "Hell, he might just pick both!"

"He'd better leave us some leftovers!"

What the hell did he mean leftovers? As much as you wanted to tell them off for objectifying you and Tifa, you held your tongue. A lack of discretion was what got you in trouble in the first place; you didn't want to screw up again.

The silver-haired man looked up from the invitations, taking a few steps forward and signaling to the two guards to open the fancy double doors.

"Your room is the third room up the stairs. Don't touch anything."

Taking a few apprehensive steps forward and into the main room, you noticed two more Corneo lackeys who stood in the very center of it. You didn't recognize either of them as the creep or any of his men, which was a relief. But you would have to face him sometime. That was the whole point of you coming here: to put an end to your torment, whatever means necessary.

The piles and piles of junk caught your eye. Valuables were scattered all around the room, from expensive furniture to bricks of gold. You remembered what you'd heard about this Corneo guy- a lot of people were in debt to him. So maybe all of this was his payment. The sight sickened you; no man should have this much.

"Hey! Keep your eyes to yourself. You know where to go." One of the men said. Tifa took your arm again, leading you up the stairs.

"It's disgusting," you whispered to her.

"I know," she agreed, "Corneo's a sick man."

"Damn!" One of the men shouted, "Take a look at that ass!"

"Yeah," the other man laughed, "Did you see the other girls' boobs?"

You stopped in your tracks on the staircase, considering whether or not to march back down and slap the shit out of them.

"Come on," Tifa whispered, tugging softly on your arm, "let's just go."

Thank God for Tifa, cause if she hadn't snapped you out of your trance, you might have just followed that urge and gotten yourself into more trouble.

You turned away from those gross men, attempting to tune them out. Following Tifa up the rest of the stairs, you remembered why you were here: to figure out what Corneo wanted with Barrett and to end your creep problem. It wasn't your job to teach these guys to respect women.

Tifa pushed open the third room's door and held it open for you. Stepping inside, you rolled your eyes. It was another room filled to the brim with junk. Corneo was disgusting.

"Seriously, who needs this much stuff?" you sighed.

"Apparently the Don of the slums," She replied, glancing around the room, "How much of this stuff do you think is rightfully his?"

Before you could reply, a click caught your attention. The sound came from the double doors behind you.

"Shit!" You hissed. Turning quick on your heels, you ran to the knob, trying to force the door open. Tifa joined you, having no luck either. She groaned as she struggled against the door.

A soft hissing sound began.

"Y/N!" She said, her eyes wide as she looked across the room. You followed her gaze and noticed a pink, opaque gas pouring out of the vents.

This was a mistake, this was a huge fucking mistake. You walked right into this trap. And you got Tifa into this mess. Tears were starting to prick at your eyes as you banged on the door. You couldn't tell if it was fear, guilt, or the gas. It was probably all three.

"Let us out!" Tifa shouted, to no avail. Nobody was gonna get you out; they planned this. The gas had filled the room now, and you were starting to get dizzy. You tried to cover your nose and but it was a futile effort. There was no way to avoid it. Backing away from the door, you couldn't believe what you had gotten yourself into, what you got Tifa into. You screwed up. You screwed up so bad.

Tifa lost her balance, dropping onto her hands and knees. You tried to help her, but you were so dizzy you had to kneel down onto the floor to keep from falling.

"Tifa!" You called, nearly choking on the gas. She didn't respond.

The doors bust open. And then there were figures and voices, fuzzy and distant. You could barely hear them because of the loud ringing in your ears. That awful ringing, and the splotches in your eyes. They were growing worse and worse, until they took over your eyesight; your consciousness slipped away with it.

[bcwallin]

One Nostalgia Later

Zero barely talks about his great lost love. As the “aged proprietor” of an “enchanted old ruin” known as the Grand Budapest Hotel, he tells his life story by skipping around her presence, touching on the existence of his “darling Agatha,” but avoiding falling into the pit of despair. Beautiful things don’t get to be completed in his world, where poems are always cut off, nice sentiments are interrupted, and the dark specter of war and disease cuts short any hope of living long, living with love. The man who “struck one as being, deeply and truly, lonely” knows what it is to lose.

For a brief time, Zero and Agatha shared a love. They were outcasts, ignored, working in service jobs that required self-abnegation—he as a hotel lobby boy; she, the pastry girl at a bakery. We see them in their bedrooms; it’s not much. “We did not have 50 Klubecks between the two of us,” recalls the older Zero. They worked long, demanding hours and had few moments to spare. Zero’s meals were held with the rest of the hotel staff. Agatha suffered the overbearing, watchful eye of her boss at the bakery, Herr Mendl. Being together was difficult, but the few moments they shared were rapturous. Their courtship felt like young love feels: furtive, secretive, and bursting with flushed emotion.

That young love never gets to mature. Agatha dies too early. “An absurd little disease,” the older Zero says parenthetically of the cause of death. So, every moment is preserved in amber, but never lingered on for too long. “She is a nearly absent presence in the story, by Zero’s choice: a narrative door marked ‘Do Not Enter,’” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, in his book about the movie. “He won’t speak of her. It’s too painful, and he’s too private.” But the aged Zero can’t tell his story without including her, try as he might. And we get glimpses.

On one good day, Zero and Agatha go to a carousel. They’re accompanied by Herr Mendl, but they barely notice. Zero gives his love a gift. He’s so anxious for her to like it, he can’t even wait for her to open the wrapping before he bursts out with what it is. He can’t contain his love in the inscription, either: “For my dearest, darling, treasured, cherished Agatha, whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love.”

Throughout their courtship, the world around Zero and Agatha bursts at the seams with the portents of war, as newspapers tease, armies gather, and the brightly colored, idyllic world of the fictional state of Zubrowka teeters on the brink. The start of the war, after all, sees the appearance of black-clad death squads, and eventually, the draining of color from the film itself. Darkness and death loom quietly, but no matter what’s going on in the world, a first love is a first love. And it’s all encapsulated in a single image.

Agatha’s face takes up the center of the boxy frame—her gaze is transfixing. She stares lovingly, straight through the camera. We’re Zero, locking eyes with her. The colors shift over her face as carousel lights turn behind and around her. She is radiant, then shadowed, then red. She has the slightest hint of a smile, her head tilted, just so. Agatha stares with her deep blue eyes and it’s near-impossible to look away. But who would want to?

In this single moment, the music fades as if it’s playing somewhere else, the lights haze, as the focus can only be directed toward Agatha. Time is frozen, if only for a moment, as we experience the ecstasy of loving and knowing you are loved. Of early love, with its rushed heartbeats, tingling limbs, empty stomachs, stuttering lips, and sweaty brows. We hold onto this eternally familiar moment. As Italo Calvino once wrote, describing a different, frozen moment in time: “The suspicion that has gripped me is precisely this: that I have come to find myself in a space not new to me, that I have returned to a point where we had already passed by.”

* * *

The Grand Budapest Hotel continues a literary tradition that’s stretched from Dante to Moulin Rouge!: women die tragically and their lovers memorialize them in their writings. Agatha is an ideal, an image. Like Madeleine to Scotty in Vertigo (but less creepy), like the woman of an aged Mr. Bernstein’s tale in Citizen Kane (but more meaningful), Agatha exists as a memory or a reference.

With its frames within frames of shifting perspectives and aspect ratios, The Grand Budapest Hotel is distinctly literary. Its opening monologue is lifted nearly verbatim from Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, an author whose work is credited with inspiring the film, whose mustache seems to appear on more than one character’s face, and whose disappearing world is fictionalized as the setting. Zweig’s non-fiction is a great example of the longing for a lost place; his fiction for lost people. In his novella Journey into the Past, Zweig chronicles the long-awaited reunion of a man and a woman who had once been deeply in love, years ago. “How much time, how much lost time, and yet in the space of a second a single thought took him back to the very beginning.”

Zweig’s stories are often framed as recollections told over, as stories shared with strangers because of their absolute meaningfulness—much like the memorializing by grieving lovers of literary tradition—because these memories needed to be stories, to be remembered by somebody else. Zweig’s framing characters look to create the literature of their own lived stories. Journey into the Past sees two characters, Ludwig and an unnamed woman,  returning to their own story, with one seeking to consummate his unrequited love of nine years’ distance. They had had an emotional affair, tucked into passionate glances and tacit communication, years earlier, while her husband was alive. They kissed where they could, but they had to hide from the servants who always seemed to be around at the least opportune time. Ludwig’s desires were never fully satisfied and he was called away on business so he could build his fortune. And he and his love made a promise to be together once he’d return.

But the trouble with remembering love is that its amber glow sets up dangerous expectations. After being away far longer than he’d have liked to be, Ludwig is greeted fondly by the woman’s staff. He joins his love to the literary tradition and wonders to himself, as Zweig writes, “Odysseus…the household dogs recognize you, will the mistress of the house know you again too?” He’s been away for nine years. He’s gotten married, but he still returns for a rendezvous with the woman he loved and lost, to fulfill a promise she had made him, but which she realizes she cannot keep. Ludwig recalls a couplet from a French poem by Paul Verlaine: “In the old park, in ice and snow caught fast / Two specters walk, still searching for the past.” The poem, which cuts off there in Zweig’s story, imagines a dialogue between lost lovers:

—Does your heart still surge at my very name?

Do you still see my soul when you dream?—No.

—Ah, the beautiful days of inexpressible bliss

When our lips met!—It may have been so.

—How blue the sky, how hopes ran high!

—Hope has fled, vanquished, to the black sky.

Like Jay Gatsby or Mr. Bernstein or Lemony Snicket, wondering what might have been, Ludwig and Verlaine’s narrator and an old Zero romanticize their visions of love as time goes by.

“Any adequate view of nostalgia will acknowledge that it involves a felt difference between past and present: the very irretrievability of the past is salient in the experience,” wrote philosophy professor Scott Alexander Howard. We may seek to stay in the past through memory, Howard tells us, because the present seems worse, because we didn’t realize how good life was, or because we’re spontaneously overtaken by nostalgia. Nostalgia may mean that we see the past as a time that was better, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that our vision of the past is false, it does mean that things get amplified to a whole other level:

The nostalgist knows the past in question was unpleasant at the time, but in memory it is altered by certain effects: for example, the memory has acquired a gold patina, or it seems to be an uncanny distillation of a whole time period. Neither effect strikes the self-aware nostalgist as true to the quality of one’s experiences at the time when those memories were encoded. Yet they are part of what is targeted by nostalgia. The emotion seems to be directed precisely at the “fictional” features of the memory image—things which one recognizes to be not inside the scene on the other side of the window, but drawn onto the glass.

That amber glow or gold patina grows as we distance ourselves from a disappeared world. Zero’s story, his world, his love are by definition irretrievable.

The carousel (in reality, a wood frame built around a camera setup) is irretrievable. The lights (in reality, constructed to be evocative more than representative) are irretrievable. The shared moment—stolen between long shifts of service as Herr Mendl looks on—is gone, and its memory is a fictionalized, amberized construction of nostalgia and longing.

As the elder Zero looks back, the once garishly pink and red hotel now looks like a holdover from Soviet-era architecture, its colors a drab collection of beiges and oranges. The grand ballroom holds few diners and the place, in general, is empty. Guests push their own elevator buttons, serve themselves from vending machines, and, at times, even retrieve their own keys.

And Agatha. Zero holds onto her memory, but reveals very little of it. She has 15 lines in the film’s screenplay. The first time we hear of Agatha, the older Zero avoids saying much, and talks of her only when he has to. It’s all gone and irretrievable. Sort of.

* * *

One cold November night at Penn Station, the poet Alandra Markman, then going by the pseudonym Allan Andre, wrote a poem for me and a friend (we missed our train, but the delay was worth it). “One nostalgia later” gave a compelling portrait of family meals, “as winter nights dissolve into warm / recollection and company we’re still keeping.” The way the poem goes, we create our nostalgia as we live through moments, readying our stories to be told and remembered some time later on. “Let every glow, mechanical or felt, be one / with the shadows we’re still casting, / and guide our bodies into greater light.”

The story of Zero and Agatha’s love was created on the carousel. In that moment, we see their love blossoming, deepening, exploding with the soft-focus lights of ecstasy. The elder Zero tells us he’s exercising restraint, avoiding talking about Agatha as much as he can, but if he were truly offering a utilitarian telling, there’d be no need to include this gaze frozen in time. In that moment, we never see Zero head-on, never see the reverse shot of adoration. It’s only Agatha and light. And us.

The elder Zero tells the story to a writer, the writer remembers it long enough to write it as an older man, the older man’s book becomes important enough for him to become a beloved national author, and through the eyes of a devotee, we read this book. When Stefan Zweig incorporates listeners into the story, it’s not just for the purpose of framing. The value of a memory is in how it feels to the rememberer, but the value of a story is in how it feels to the one who hears it. It is the storyteller himself who seeks out the opportunity to tell his story—the older Zero needles the writer into admitting his curiosity and offers, of his own volition, to tell it  in full. The telling is not for the benefit of Zero himself; he is giving something to the author, creating an experience for his audience. With its multiple framings, The Grand Budapest Hotel tells us that we are the viewers, the listeners, the readers. We are part of the experience, and we create our nostalgia as we experience it, so we can tell the story later of a place with bright reds, dark blacks, and swirling lights.

I remember The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I remember those swirling lights and the clutched breath and the deep longing. I think about that one frame of Agatha, frozen in time, holding her lover’s gaze—holding our gaze—as the darkness briefly clouds her face. Every time Zero and the writer and Wes Anderson tell me the story, I see that darkness and I face the irretrievability. I don’t feel nostalgia; I feel regret. For Zubrowka and everything it represents. For the grandness of the Grand Budapest. For Agatha.

* * *

When Calvino wrote about his frozen moment, it was in the story “t zero,” in which the narrator, a hunter, faces a lion L, the arrow A just fired from the hunter’s bow at the time tx. The hunter considers the possibility that A will collide with L at point X and he will be saved, or that A will miss the target L, which would then sink its very sharp claws into his chest in the less preferable of situations. It feels familiar, the narrator tells us, though not because of a comparable lion he’s fought or some feeling of ancestral memory lodged in his DNA. “If I say this moment I am living through is not being lived for the first time by me, it’s because the sensation I have of it is one of a slight doubling of images, as if at the same time I were seeing not one lion or one arrow but two or more lions and two or more arrows superimposed with a barely perceptible overlapping, so the sinuous outlines of the lion’s form and the segment of the arrow seem underlined or rather haloed by finer lines and a more delicate color.” He is experiencing a sense of timelessness, as if he’s lived through this moment in time and space, again and again. “What, after all, is the use of continuing if sooner or later we will only find ourselves in this situation again?”

While the elder Zero withholds a lot, rewatching The Grand Budapest Hotel can feel like a slight glimpse into the heart of an old man, thinking about his lost love and the potential of bright colors and bursting emotion that could have continued for the rest of his life (the internet loves a revisionist theory about a movie—what if the Grand Budapest Hotel of the past only looks that way because of how Zero remembers it?). Calvino’s hunter is doubtful. Zero seems assured. He memorializes his beloved with the hotel that stands for their love. With the story he tells of her. And he lets us see a little.

And we see the near-imperceptible smile, the tilt of a head, the unblinking eyes, the brightness and the dark. We see the warm glow of memory that says how great this was and the hint of sorrow asking how great this could have been.

Originally published on Bright Wall/Dark Room