#alas we live in the bad timeline

[applegreenrunnerbean]

here's how 'andretti 11th team 2025, gives Franco and Danny seats' can still win...

[lambjock]

i think that viewing the little hope relationships as just ‘family’ ( specifically : blood family, ones with traditional roles and relationships, one bred from a nuclear familial structure ) has a habit of dismissing them entirely. it is not blood that binds them together, nor is it family structures, and throughout every iteration of their lives things change. sometimes they’re merely neighbors with a slim portion of blood relation, sometimes they’re bound by flimsy paper or war, and sometimes they’re students at a college following their professor around. the nature of their relationships change, as do their circumstances and surroundings, but they ( as a mismatched unit ) are eternally bound and divided by a child and an inherent, unescapable tragedy. the important aspect of their relationships is that they are agonized individuals who are stuck together and wouldn’t like to be. the important theme between them is that despite their determined suffering, all the bad ways they clash, and in spite of a bubbling self loathing so awful that it literally kills them, they have found love and comfort in each other anyway, or perhaps have realized a love that has always been there. there’s no ‘i love you as a daughter’ between angela and taylor, just as much as there isn’t any ‘i love you as a sibling’ between dennis and tanya. they just love each other. even the clarke family, arguably the most familial bond they have, still isn’t traditional. none of them are blood and all of them are strangers inside their own home. they don’t look alike and they don’t share dna and they typically don’t care for the facade of a family either, more content to treat each other like roommates at best, and that’s fascinating because why would they care? why would standard labels matter to souls as ancient as theirs? it’s just another flesh they adorn, it’s just another pain they’ll carry and shape and hate. idk! i just think forcing titles on it all is rather boring in nature, and actively hinders the genuine relationships there, in an attempt to have a rulebook of sorts to follow. i also just loathe how the found family trope is constantly turned into a literal family, when it was made to spit in the face of a nuclear family structure. but that’s just me <3

[germiyahu]

Um, I don't think the Palestinian National Identity is illegitimate just because it didn't fully coalesce until the 60s... people who mock that are being... assholes?

Taiwanese is also a relatively new National Identity, and it's seen as so inherently legitimate (by non Maoists anyway) that we (America) are definitely going to go to war with China over it in the next 10 years.

If a bunch of disparate Europeans (though mostly English) can come together in a shared common interest to throw off the shackles of an outdated monarchy then why not a bunch of disparate people from the Ottoman/Arab world too? Would they have created a secular republic? Maybe, maybe not. But that's hardly relevant.

There was never any Decree from on High that the National Spirits of Jews and Palestinians/Arabs/What Have You couldn't coexist, and maybe even prop each other up, grow in proximity and take the best of each other. But alas we live in the Bad Timeline so we'll never know.

But let's not do what the Baby Leftists do and forget our own role in things. I speak to presumed Americans who are not antizionists here. We are Americans, that is not an indigenous identity, almost the exact opposite from it. I've seen it said we're a Nationless State, and yet we do have our own culture. It's undeniable. Our Americanness is real and if anyone advocated taking that away from us we'd laugh at them on the face of it. Why do you feel so confident taking away Palestinians' Palestinianness?

Do not deny that Palestinians have their own culture and nationality, it doesn't matter how old it is, just like it doesn't matter how old Jewish indigeneity is, there should be room for both. There must be room for both.

[eluxcastar]

Writing here because the type limit for comment in that one anon is FEOLSEKFMSEF.

NAUR, NOT THE FINAL LESSON NUH UH. If Arlecchino canonically doesn't die next patch, Brighella shouldn't too… BET. I do love the idea of a match between Cap and Brig! (wait, tf do we name her if she ain't "brighella" the fatui harbinger like it is the name she only knows) I mean, I did think about about her dying too… so tempting. I kinda ride that Acheron idea, some intense danceeee ehe… Her ult kinda has the Arle schemed and vice versa.

Angst material… hmmm, I did have an idea but it was only IF Arlecchino was centuries old but due to her taking over recently by canon that is scrapped because it is too inaccurate by the possibility lol. (It involved lowkey dying, and giving her heart to Arle then did get resurrected by the abyss order for them to use but she went rebellious and just lingers around Teyvat and the Abyss). A dance between the two, YES. I've always thought of Arlecchino being incapable of being romantic with Brighella beyond obsession. But, with all those fanfics I am consumed by sweet Arle with acts of service... Hahaha! We shall wait for the next patch on her potential emotional stance ykyk... Maybe she does care, despite having the reputation of discarding anything that does not benefit her. For me, Arlecchino is more of "You belong to me" kind of person not "You belong with me" Hold up gotta reread the lore stuff, after doing an assignment

Hehe Final Lesson inspiration I knew it was evil ALRIGHT it's on if Arle doesn't die I won't kill Brig either but if she does not only will I cry but I'll make it worse

I still call her Brighella, but she was also briefly called Matilda in my notes after the folksong Waltzing Matilda (what is she but a jolly swagman camped by a billabong (￣▽￣) wait I just realised she lives in Wangshuu Inn next to a body of water—she IS a jolly swagman camped by a billabong (°ロ°) !)

I also struggled so bad with the fact Arle is young because like, the timeline was screwing me over in my original plans (；￣Д￣) I was like WHY CAN'T YOU JUST BE OLD (to my friend if you're reading this GO AWAY it's NOT because of the accusations I like old people) it would've made my life easier, but alas miHoYo can never do such things. I would have loved that idea because it's so edible— SACRIFICING herself for Arle??? Then Arle having to grapple with potentially being responsible for Brig becoming an unwilling pawn of the abyss??? delicious (*/▽＼*)

I LOVE the dance between Acheron and Black Swan sm something about those vibes just fits them so well

Yk I agree with that philosophy that Arle is a "you belong to me" not a "you belong with me" kinda person. I also like the idea Arle is lowkey obsessed with her (and though it's subtle in OoR it's sprinkled in there ( ´ ꒳ ` ) ) I wish that it didn't get so long it lagged every word program I put it through because I think when I rewrite it, I'll lean into that more and draw out the time it takes for them to come to an agreement ( ◡‿◡ *) Possibly a mix of the two where her 'love' for Brighella is born of obsession, their relationship is probably in some manner unhealthy, but she may be able to learn to love her normally as well (I doubt either of these people are capable of a healthy or normal relationship LMAO)

Random fun fact to throw into this one: the differences in thinking about their relationship are also what prompted me to have her completely unable to understand why Brighella gave up so easily and generally have there be a disconnect between what Brig wants and what Arle wants for her (ノ*°▽°*) because those are two very different things

Second song idea for the two of them I had five seconds ago: Fire and the Flood by Vance Joy ♡( ◡‿◡ )

[constantineshots]

as someone wit cancer (posting this anonymously because some ppl on the internet hear this and go fucking crazy) I’ve always found John Constantine is actually a really interesting rep In theory. I do think Delano like most things fumbles the bag when it comes to that topic but… it’s Delano what do you expect. I really like timelines where John gets treatment before it’s terminal (though usually that very idea seems out of character) or something it’s such a comfort hc. sorry for rambling. I was wondering how YOU interpreted johns cancer storylines as the John Constantine guy.

hey, you’re safe here, do what’s best for you! and I wish you the best. and never apologize for rambling! i love rambling. please keep rambling.

i’ll put this under a read more because i realized how long this is, but i hope it helps answer your question!

but as the john constantine girlie, it’s always been such an incredibly interesting plotline to me. he does take drastic measures to cure himself in the main vertigo timeline, and his interactions with other cancer patients and then realizing that this thing is terminal… it was intriguing. because it’s john. how he handles things is so much different than how others will. you’re never going to get the logical answer- “maybe he’ll get treatment.” “maybe he’ll go find healing magics that could help him.” “maybe he’ll go spend more time with his loved ones.” this is how most people would think to act. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have cancer, but if it were me, i feel like i’d be angry to be living on a timer, so i’d probably check a few things off my bucket list out of spite. not john constantine, though. instead he threatens a war in hell over his soul so everyone has to cure him.

john smokes cigarettes. we all know this to be a fact. however, he ends up getting terminal lung cancer as a result. it shows a very possible risk that most people aren’t willing to acknowledge until it’s too late.

i haven’t spoken to my mother in forever because our relationship was never good ( can’t you see why i like john constantine now? ), but in a way, it reminded me of her. she was a heavy smoker, and i, as a child who sometimes went over to her house begrudgingly, would be caught up in second hand smoke. as a result, these sorts of things were big worries of mine, and yet every time i told her she can’t do things like smoke inside the house and such, she’d just do it anyway. which put everyone at risk.

while, of course, cancer isn’t always caused by smoking, it can be, and she never took it seriously, not even when she was coughing badly and it was clearly dangerous for her health anyway. I don’t think she ever will.

within john’s character, though, we know he clearly didn’t care much. of course, he didn’t want to die because he knew he was going straight to hell at the time. so he concocted his little plan and ended up curing himself of cancer and not dying as a result… and then continuing with the bad habit. he’s a comic book character, so i guess it’s different, but i think it kind of sent the wrong message.

after a tale of john being distressed about having cancer and having to say goodbye to the people he cared about, or john meeting others who had cancer and being affected by the loss of someone who had died as a result of it, i think some expected him to put down the cigarettes. but alas, john has never been the kind of person to make good decisions.

so when i see him doing the smart thing in some storylines or aus that people write and so forth, i’m always stunned. like good on him, of course, handling his shit before it gets worse, but john has always liked to be a pain in the ass and wait until the worst possible moment. like the exact day he’s supposed to die for example. though i do enjoy these more, because it sends the right message…. john isn’t the kind of character you look to to give you the right message in most aspects. his political beliefs are good, but everything else is a dumpster fire.

but in my opinion, john constantine is a character- one of a rare few- who has cancer. there’s a described time of his struggles with it, some depression from it, the loss of someone he’d met who had it, and that was a journey. but then, in true john constantine fashion, the cornered rat idea he has, he cures himself of it- or, well, more forces some other beings to cure him of it, but hey.

that’s all i got, but feel free to explain further on anything you want to!

[pinkpinkmermayyy]

I finally watched Wish. And I gotta say, it's not as bad as people say it is. Don't get me wrong, it's not good by any means. But it's still not so awful I felt frustrated and sick to my stomach after watching it. But it's also not so bad it's good to the point where it becomes a guilty pleasure for me like the live-action Bratz movie. It's just...bad. But not horrible. It had potential. It COULD'VE been good if the writers actually gave a single damn, and knew what they were doing. Or, alternatively, if they simply spent a few more hours on the damn movie. But alas, they did not, and since we're in the bad timeline, this is what we got. The music is what really weighs it down, with just about every song being meaningless, badly-written, and having terrible grammar/confusing metaphors that don't hold up under a microscope or even make any sense at all, really. The only thing stopping them from being completely insufferable is the fact that the actors are legitimately good singers, making it a crying shame that none of them weren't given better material to work with.

The characters themselves, though, are unfortunately very boring, one-dimensional, and contradictory/confusing in their writing. The setting, plot, and worldbuilding are all very bland and haphazard as well, to the point where I actually laughed out loud during the climactic scene at the end where the king brutalizes Asha with his evil magic. It was that ridiculous! The side characters, both human, animal, and star, were all boring and pointless(except for the Star ig) and I really have a bone to pick with Gabo especially. He goes from thinking that Asha killed her family(for no reason, mind you) to shaming Simon for being a bad friend and betraying Asha to the king, both in the SAME SCENE!!! It's like...all of the characters are this inconsistent honestly.

And I don't buy that people would be happy to "forget without regret" when it comes to their wishes. It just makes no sense to me. The writers should've come up with a better excuse for why the people of Rosas put their faith in the wishing system rather than "they forget what they wanted in the first place but are totally all right with that!" especially when Asha acts like this is a new revelation. Like come on, guys, you work at Disney! Give us something! But they gave us nothing. Because they are lazy. A shame.

Also the costumes in this movie were boring and bland af, and everything was really monochrome and lifeless. It definitely fails in comparison to the costume designs in Encanto, The Princess and the Frog, and even Tangled. Everything just feels so dull, cheap, lazy, and uninspired. Though I do like Asha's design aside from her outfit, she is very pretty and it's sad what this movie does to her. This movie in short didn't feel like a Disney 100 Anniversary. In fact, it didn't even feel like a Disney movie at all. It felt like a student film that was inspired by Disney, or like those direct to video films made for really little kids that have a low budget and even lower-quality CGI. Just a massive disappointment. I'm afraid that Disney is no longer the gold standard of animation that it used to be. Oh well. 😔

this is what really ticks me off about wish. I would be fine if it was just terrible if it ended up not being amazing or even good, but it’s mediocre. And that drives me INSANE because I see so much potential in the story and characters and the villains but they just let it bite the dust and left us with this infuriatingly mediocre movie that was supposed to be the 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL FOR DISNEY! That’s supposed to be something fantastical and amazing and have that wow factor but it’s just so bland and it makes me angry. Also the fact that it was originally supposed to be traditionally animated but they changed that also makes my blood boil.

[blackbutlerfandomnerddomain]

I watched Rise of red and have some complaints/thoughts:

Some of the songs were good, but the soundtrack wasn't as good as the others in my opinion.

LOVE the outfits, hints and the heart card skirt is fucking adorable!

Chloe and Red and fucking enemies to friends to lover lesbians I HOPE cause I will scream if Disney doesn't do that

I feel like the setting of the time travel is weird. Like, they go back in time when the adults are teens, but they're all in high school??? In a world I thought we at most confirmed to be mostly canon in animated movie timelines????? I mean, the villains who died in their movies are brought back to be banished with no magic on the Isle, so like...why???

Also, it adds a bit more levels of fucked up with the idea Belle and Beast are SOMEWHERE in the past and maybe grew up with everyone and then somewhere along the way when a new country/era was made with them being the rulers but basically shoved a lot of their old classmates onto a literal island with no magic cause "living with no magic is a fate worst than death".

All in all, it's a good movie. Did it have to been promoted in trailers and ads with Uma, implying she's a main focus, when they could've done either just the film as a fun in universe movie with the same plot of maybe a lil' book series that plays with the lore? I'm more upset with the fact we didn't get the original casts much and when we did it was very slim even though their faces were all over this project.

If I had to do a rating system of all the movies counting the Royal Wedding with ten being the highest and bestest film ever, I'll say:

Descendants - 8/10. Great story idea, soundtrack always slaps even if you were like me at the time and heard it like a million times if you live/work with children, and all the characters have changed a bit throughout the movie!

Descendants 2 - 9/10 Same for the first one, great plot. It's a good sequel. It gave me one of my favorite plot tropes of identity crisis and being comfortable in your own skin in Mal, the songs are so good to the point I still add What's My Name in my playlist, the costumes (minus Mal's wig but it gets a pass) are amazing as fuck, Uma and her crew are just *chef's kiss* Also this movie was just a lot of bi/pan energy and you can't convince me other wise! China was one of my earliest girl crushes and of course she's an amazing character, Harry Hook made me physically stop at my tracks when I first watched the movie, the kind of funny tension between any guy with Harry or any girl with Mal and of course THIS THING-

LIKE DISNEY, I SWEAR YOU DID A FIGHTING VERSION OF THIS IN RISE OF RED, IF YOU PULL THE "oh they're just good friends" LIE ON ME AGAIN I WILL BE PISSED!!

Descendants 3 - 6/10 It's not bad but it's just not as good as the others, ya know? Some of the costumes were weird, what was Doug's hair????, Jane and Carlos are just the fucking CUTESTS ever, while I was upset the songs didn't stick as hard, I do love Queen of Mean and Do What You Had To Do, the plot was sadly not a good one to follow even though there were so many things that were a good idea. Alas, so many good ideas yet so little time. But I think it has a higher ranking in my heart simply because this one was the main one that started my Disney Villain Recruiters Descendants AU that I still love so much

Speaking of which, I think since I wrote the one with Dalmatia not that long ago I'll try and see what I can do with the AU with all the movies, not just Rise of Red. I already have an idea of Jack Heart in this world since watching it, I still have drafts of certain events such as Apple seeing Snow again, I also think I need to cause I found out Harry and Audrey, a ship I grew to love over time since first watching it (Literally I was very into Harry and Uma and was at first annoyed when they baited and switched me in the end but I LOVE these two more!!!), are apparently not together in this! Now this is rumors I think but like I think someone confirmed she's engaged or married to a prince and Harry is sailing with his own crew.

DISNEY!!!

ANYWAYS!

I'll see what I'll be doing! I'm a little curious what they'll do from here is they do anything even if I personally didn't like it. Maybe we'll see the bad choices of the time traveling? I would like an idea of what if Red's mum wasn't evil then her and her dad may or not met, since in the original Disney Alice In Wonderland our lil king LOVES his wife even when she's scary! I personally think that would be a fun idea. And I seriously can't be the ONLY ONE who thought we were gonna have some big reveal that Cinderella was mean or ghosted to Bridget (love the pun name btw, good job Disney) in the past. Cause like her rage was a lot more than just they were friends when a prank happened and suddenly she's evil now. Like I was expecting a reveal like Cinderella went to the party and either knowingly knew but didn't stop the prank or unknowingly helped. Or maybe even had them be friends but she left Bridget alone/didn't stop the bullying in a kind of early Amity and Willow situation from Owl House with maybe Tremaine doing something to cause that to happen like a rumor Bridget is a bad influence, that could give her a edge as an adult of "you want mad, I'll give you mad" kind of scene.

Also the timeline of the film is a little weird minus the whole high school thing. They did a throwaway line of Chad being in collage which made me pump the breaks a bit. I assumed first Descendants they're all 14-16 years old, Descendants 2 takes place a year or so later, and Descendants 3 taking place another year or two depending on how I viewed the timeline of the Wicked World show with everyone being graduated and doing their parts in society and helping the school cause more kids from the Isle are added in, ending the series with the cast being mostly 18-19 years old at least with maybe Carlos and Jane being 17 since they may be younger in the cast. Yet with this line implies to me Mal and Ben got married right after graduating from school, and while we don't know what was happening during the moment of the wedding and the other movies, Uma being in charge would be rushed and sudden for everyone even herself since she should be the same age as the two who got married not that long ago. Also adds a interesting question of when did Carlos die within the timeline? Cause now I'm scared we got that cute moment with him and Jane having their ship name necklace and just all that sappy sappy cuteness and just afterwards Carlos died off screen before Royal Wedding which I'm guessing takes places the same year at least since everyone's designs imply so with hair and wardrobe.

I literally just wrote a fic of Dalmatia grieving Carlos on the same night of the wedding and I wasn't thinking much on timeline until NOW!

Ideas I have before I leave:

Instead of going back in time in the time your parent(s) are in highschool, I would've liked if it was before the Isle was locked away, like starting off. We could have an excuse to see younger casts of the Villain Kids and maybe even get more hints of who the other parents are, maybe even reveal some kids from the books even if it's a cameo in the back.

Have Red be more conflicted of how she rules. Her being scared to be like her mum is great, and her being a rebel is amazing, maybe show her be a great ruler in the rebellion and have a scene afterwards of her complaining about being a ruler. I would write her with that fear with maybe her seeing throughout the story that maybe there's a reason her mum was a little mad.

Have Chloe's struggle of what to do and break out her shell a bit more and not rushed??

Maybe do a reveal of Bridget being the Queen of Hearts later if you want to do that. Like, have a character fans assume is her and then like a saying happens and we get that plot twist.

That's all for now, I'd like to hear other's thoughts and ideas tho!

[tamelee]

hi tamelee :) i’ve been thinking a lot recently about how fucked up konoha really is (i won’t go as far as saying everyone there is a bad person) but aspects of the shinobi system is so fucked up. even everything with the uchiha clan. like konoha was literally made to bring peace between the senju and the uchiha. and when the first hokage was chosen to be a senju, the uchiha said and did nothing in opposition. but despite everything, the senju still commanded more trust and respect than the uchiha. and the second hokage (who i strongly believe should’ve been an uchiha but alas was just another senju. like how have there been eight hokages with not a single one of them have been an uchiha. which have literally been said to be one of two strongest clans there) passed on the konoha military police onto the uchiha. which only made it so that the uchiha would have less of an impact on the konoha government. the uchiha were said to be rightfully pissed but they did nothing. as in nothing bad. and then the real kicker was the nine tailed demon fox’s attack. their sharingan would have helped much better on the demon fox but where were they forced off to out of unevidenced suspicions? to patrol the borders. and so many people see naruto’s dad’s sacrifice as this big sacrifice (which it was) but THERE WAS LITERALLY NO NEED. they didn’t let one of the strongest clans to help and then praise the sacrifice that had to happen because of it. naruto was forced to live with a literal demon inside of him and two dead parents. the uchiha were right to want to revolt. they’ve done nothing but serve konoha only to be met with suspicion and distrust. and of course everyone knows what happened after that (the uchiha massacre). i will never understand boruto because how does aasuke go from hating konoha and literally saying that he would never forgive them to saying that he was out his life down for konoha. sounds like bad writing. because part 1 and 2 but mainly part2, we see naruto understanding how fucked up things are. BUT NOTHINGS CHANGED. naruto became hokage and we see that nothing has changed. and that’s not an attack on naruto but i think kishinoto sees nothing wrong with konoha. either that or he can’t write another naruto with boruto if things start changing.

and that was only one example. not to mention the chunin exams where literal kids are met with the very real possibility of death and the teachers barely even act like it’s a big deal. like it’s an entire system based on the death of teenagers. and yeah they “have the option” of not partaking but look at the numbers that partake year after year. oh and then the hyuga clan. i could literally go on.

i’m sorry that was so unprovoked and probably doesn’t make any sense. i was talking to someone else in the naruto fandom and it honestly baffles me how rude some people get towards people who hold different opinions. and i love that you don’t so i really wanted to know your opinions. (i’m gonna be completely honest, i just rambling. I don’t even know what I wrote so it’s totally understandable if you don’t want to answer)

Hi~ 💕

Definitely. Well, It wasn’t that Konoha had to be built so Senju and Uchiha could be at peace, it was Senju and Uchiha putting aside their differences and becoming allies that Konoha could exist in the first place. Regardless, it’s fucked what happened to the Uchiha and I would’ve like to see one have become Hokage also. 

‘M not sure where they were during the attack. Itachi said their parents were ‘out’. Any other info came from that Shinden novel which has many mistakes in it also, screwing up the Akatsuki timeline even more. Keeping them out may have been a deliberate choice to keep any ‘suspicion’ up for the reader if there was any. Yeah those are major problems with anything that came after the original story, huh? In order to even make place for it they had to shift the world/system problems towards Aliens. (It also brushes aside all the pain characters had to endure because of it since "it was never a problem if it doesn't exist!" which pisses me off.) That way, Sasuke’s “they only worked together because they had a common enemy” and Naruto’s “we can all work together” both hold true, but in the cheapest, most lousy, awful, second-rate rotten way possible. It’s hateful. Nothing needs to change for the ‘Boruto-verse’ if you just change the way things work. That’s why it’s not the same world, not the same rules and certainly not a continuation of that which we’ve come to know and love. Because if we follow the original story, then both Naruto and Sasuke would’ve had to work their asses off to make it happen even if there suddenly are a bunch of aliens. I even would’ve understood Sasuke’s “I’d give my life for Konoha” because it wouldn’t be just about the village, it would be because they’re working on their dream. Because Naruto being Hokage would be important and meaningful. They would’ve made progress so this ‘Konoha’ wouldn’t even be the Konoha we knew anymore- things would’ve changed, but it didn’t. Now, Sasuke saying it rightfully feels off. A straight up lie. Naruto claiming the village is ‘family’ just the same. He doesn’t say it because he means it, he said it literally parroting previous Hokage ‘because the Third always said so’. All meaning is lost man. But yeah it’s not their fault. The posts blaming Naruto for the shitshow that is the sequel are so ridiculous lmao. Anyway, like you, I could go on about it as well 🤷🏻‍♀️

[spirit-of-the-westao3]

CLICK ON IT FOR BETTER QUALITY!

Usagi, the mighty rabbit samurai, is still alive and well in my own fic.

But alas, we know how the future ends.

How do we get to that point though?…

All Roads Lead Home answers questions like these and more- give it a try if you’re interested!

…

TW: implied thoughts of self unaliving

*takes place in the bad timeline, after a lot of sad events in the bad future*

“Please, please, I can’t do this anymore- I don’t…I can’t keep living like this-“

Leo cried in anguish, and he clutched to Usagi, despite his form being translucent and only partly physical. He closed his eyes tightly, pretending, praying that Usagi was really and truly there-

Hoping he would stay.

Usagi’s sparkling form smiled softly, the smallest hint of sadness in his eyes.

His mouth never opened, but his cheek was gently pressing into the sliders. He closed his own eyes,

‘You are still needed,’

His voice echoed in Leo’s head, despite his mouth staying closed.

His cheeks were shiny and wet, and he opened his eyes. They wore a look of exhaustion and pain, tragedy and anguish. He didn’t want to stay here anymore. He didn’t care what the afterlife was like. He wanted to go home.

“I can’t,” he pleaded, desperately seeking the rabbits approval. Yearning for him to open his arms and welcome him into the spirit realm.

‘You will know when it’s time,’ the voice echoed, oozing nothing but wisdom and love. ‘You are still needed,’

The turtle shook his head aggressively in disagreement, but the rabbit pulled him in close and nuzzled his cheek once more.

‘I’m here,’the voice whispered, as Usagi rubbed his own cheeks into Leo’s. ‘I’ve got you…my love’

…

Reminder that this is not a scene from the fic…yet. You’ll have to read in order to find out!

❤️🐾

[sunnysideaeggs]

what do you imagine the relationship like between Daeron and Alicent, and the rest of his siblings? like how would you cast it/present it if you could, and what would be his intro to the show? xx

In my Daeron feels getting ready for S2 <3333

Daeron is a kind of mysterious type of guy for me, the undeniable hero of Team Green and surrounded by mystery in his life and death.

By all means he’s a good kid, his mom’s favorite and the golden child. Being the youngest he probably was closer to Alicent than most of his siblings, and was the one they protected the most. I can see him getting a strict Hightower education (faith of the seven, scholarly inclined, politics and diplomacy) and excelling at it. Otto secretly wishing he was the firstborn lol.

I can see him looking up to his big brothers. He trains hard to be like Aemond, and cut his hair short like Aegon. Maybe as a kid he was following around Aegon and laughing at his jokes, and wanted so bad for Aemond to teach him to fight <3333

He gives me young Jaime and Sansa vibes, liking the stories about knights and fairytales. Him listening to Hel and her prophecies <333 or them both making life at court. Him and Hel were the most beloved of the Targtowers, so maybe Alicent took them both to do charity or to pray together. PR king.

Ideally, I would have introduced him by the time Jacaerys was born. Instead of the Joffrey birth scene, we can have a Jace birth scene along with a Daeron one. It would’ve brought more Rhaenyra/Alicent parallels and given Alicent a much needed birth scene, which the writers didn’t gave her. It makes the timeline smoother, the time jumps smaller and gives more time to develop the factions and rift between A/R. Also it brings a Jace/Daeron parallel too, as they’re the only heros of the dance. They were supposed to have shared the cradle. It also makes noise about Vizzy having a child and a grandchild the same age. But alas, hotd writers can’t write.

In S2, I would introduce Daeron by Otto sending ravens to their allies around Westeros. They’re our ‘eyes’ in all this. We can get some sneak peeks of how the ideological side of the conflict affects lords around Westeros and even peasants. For example, would a lord be more willing to support Aegon because he has a married older sister whose children could lay claim to his castle? Or a heiress lady who fears her bastard older brother? We can give actual reasons for the greens having support instead of “SHE HAS A PWUSSY, SHE CANT RULE” narrative the writers were pushing on S1.

And then, we have Oldtown. The great high tower, the citadel, the city vibrant and lively. We get closer, and in the training yard there’s our boy. A happy teen, he’s training with a few knights and the master of arms mentions how just recently he started training with real steel (this is important, shows his youth and how he’s not yet ready for war). From above, Gwayne (I’m going to assume he’s at Oldtown, since there was no mention of him at court lol) and Ormund are talking about the future, how Daeron is doing good, how will they start ‘movements’, etc. Ormund is called by his maester (the raven by Otto) and Gwayne gets a lil uncle-nephew bonding moment where Dae shows all his charisma and endears the audience because he’s the best boy.

While they talk (idk about what, how he misses him mom and sibs?) they head somewhere to see the blue queen, Tessarion, in all her magnificence. She’s happily purring while some maesters take care of her (grand maester conspiracy!) and make some annotations about godknowswhat. Tess and Dae bonds and Gwayne stays behind saying ‘he doesn’t trust dragons’.

(Just as an annotation, if Gwayne was indeed at KL and they just forgot to invite him to the coronation in E9, Ormund watches Dae alone, the talk can be done between Ormund and Dae, and the maester with the letter can be an ending to the scene with Tessarion. I am a flexible queen.)

The rest of the episode continues, yadda yadda. Btw, this is the first episode, Vhagar-ate aftermath. War is now imminent and this episode centers in the game of thrones aspects of all of this. We can also add Nyra grieving, Daemon being slimy and Aemond getting the chancla. Aegon’s party is a must too. We can even get Alicent being worried about her son at Oldtown, wishing he was with her and she could protect him (</3). If you want to get REALLY bookish, get me an old and wrinkled Vaegon at the citadel, frowning and staying tf out of it. As an easter egg.

At the end of the episode, we go to Oldtown again and Ormund sent for Daeron in his office. He asks him about family, politics, etc (makes him smart and gives redundancy to why the greens are fighting for). Ormund then asks about Tessarion, and how she’s growing well, etc. How she could fight in battles, if the need arose. Dae understands the danger and shows his loyalty to his family. Then we get the news of Vizzy, Aegon, Luke, etc. Daeron finishes with ‘What happens next?’, having a frame of his face. The shot ends. We get a view of Oldtown at night, getting closer to the high tower. We watch the beacon light up green. The credits roll up.

[nieves-de-sugui]

My personal experience with BL history for @waitmyturtles​

After reading through the posts of your Old GMMTv Challenge, I decided to add my own perspective, as a watcher, of how BL has evolved as a genre as time went by. I hope this “history from the perspective of the viewer” might shed some light in some of the questions you might have or bring up interesting things for your viewing and understanding of the shows. I will try to not repeat what has already been said through your posts by all the wonderful people in this fandom and keep it as concise as possible (turns out it’s still super long).

I’m gonna use ABL’s chronology of the shows as a timeline guide for easy understanding:

Context: How I made my way to Thailand

I’ve always been into BL (yaoi, gay shows, whatever you wanna call it), but I became commited to it around 2008. The options for queer content back then were very limited, as I’m sure we all remember. But for the sake of adding context this were my go to:

Youtube playlists of cuts of “the gay storyline” from western shows (Brothers and Sisters, Hit The Floor, Shameless, Skins and soap operas (Salatut Elamat, Days of Our Lives), etc), 

Queer as Folk, 

bad japanese live action adaptations of yaoi mangas (Takumi kun) or just sad/melancholic movies about lost men, 

sad chinese movies (usually with fucked up plots), 

indie queer movies (Were The World Mine, Judas Kiss, Shelter, Yes or No, Love of Siam etc). 

But I was starving for more. I wanted shows. 

In the search for more content, through Love of Siam enters My Bromance (very sad ending, also pseudo incest?, still part of what I thought were just indie movies with yaoi influences) and then appears Lovesick (S1 and S2), with very questionable subs, but finally a show with a gay couple as protagonists. 

Lovesick was for me the first show that finally put a queer story as a main thing to focus on, finally breaking free of the eternal side story filled with drama and hurt that was never comforted. After that only Make it Right was around. It was more of the same thing but this time the cast was a lot more reduced and everyone is gay. Also, it showed some of the sexual aspects of the genre (which now feels wrong for so many reasons, but alas). 

One day, SOTUS is on youtube with subs, plus it’s the official channels (yay! finally we can be legal!). 

First shock, there’s an actual plot centered around these two people, who are their own characters besides being gay, and they actually kiss (I remember it was so impactful to me (in a never seen before way) that I did fanart of it). Thai shows became my guilty pleasure, they were bad but they were telling the stories I wanted to see and no one else was doing it. Only Thai shows cared to show cute love stories that ended well, without the big drama we were used to in the west. My thoughts were “It’s bad but I’ll take it, I’m staying here”

Living through the different booms

When Together With Me came out it brought proper making out session and high heat to the genre. Sround here is when I started watching everything that I could find because I had finally found my jam. So I watched all that now I could not watch again (because, man! they’re bad) like 2moons, Puppy Honey S2, What The Duck, My Dream,... And then, with Love By Chance we got the first signs of consent and communication with AePete. It finally felt like we could get stories with healthy relationships. 

Also, Our Skyy came in! Great moment! Treats for everyone! And honestly, it was such a fun project to watch. Iconic side-couples from straight shows getting their moment of spotlight on the same level as the main couples from BL shows. To me, Our Skyy comfirmed the importance of the main 3 (OG, TN, KS) and cemented the path GMM was taking with their BL shows. It started to be part of the norm and not just some shows here and there. It was no longer waiting for someone to make a BL once in a while, but an assurance a small but constant flow of BLs. 

Also Taiwan started the HIStory franchise.

BIG BOOM#1 - TharnType! Also, Ossan’s Love. 

TharnType comes in. The 1st episode ends and everybody hates it for the lack of consent, but everybody loves it for the high heat and the chemistry (also for those of us who had liked Mew in WTD it was nice to see him in this show, that seemed to have less drama around it). Plus, the hype of knowing more about Tharn from LBC, who was such a nice older gay character when he was palyed by Earth (Pirapat).

I think to me, TT was a mix of a lot of the usual flaws with the very new (only achieved before by MaxTul) high heat chemistry  (which despite the controversy is an important part of the BL genre, you can’t take the sex out of BL) and an interesting idea for a plot. 

Also I watched Great Men Academy for Captain (Noh in Lovesick), and he slays. Plus the BL in the show is good (even tho technically not bl, but queer enough)

Simultaneously Japan gets Ossan’s Love, it’s first mainstream BL boom, with very well known actors and gets talked about by the regular drama watchers. Everyone was watching Ossan’s Love in Japan, it brought the genre to the mainstream for the first time. (And prepared the grounds for Cherry Magic, imo)

Other shows that left an impact at the time were He’s Coming To Me and Dark Blue Kiss. HCTM was the great Ohm comeback (who I though we would never see again), paired with Singto doing a BL again. Besides the chemistry, the change in themes was very interesting, it was the first thai bl that showed thai culture for me. For its part, DBK had an interesting opening and Aof personal queer touch to the storyline (which made it wonderful) Especially for MorkSun. It was the first taste of what we know Aof for, but it was also the first time BL had such mature and nuanced themes to it.

little BOOM#1 - Until We Meet Again and Theory of Love

UWMA and TOL, to me were surprises. I thought that like KirstSingto and TayNew, OffGun would never do another BL with new characters. That BL was still just an undervaluated stepping stone that people didn’t treat as a proper genre (as everybody had been doing up to that point, do it once and never be seen near the genre again). 

However, UWMA confirmed that BL was here to stay. It was growing, it was exploring mixing with other genres and famous thai actors were in it. It was also moving away from the usual university storyline. And TOL was the comback of the year. I remember everyone losing their shit (me included), it was the lengendary OG afterall. Up until then they had done cameos and Puppy Honey season 1 and 2 but that was it. TOL also did something interesting with its theme, and the romcom references. AND! it was the first proper kiss in a gmmtv BL. From dead fish PickRome to full on make out with KhaiThird.

BIG BOOM#2 - 2gether and Why R U?

The BL expansion thanks to the pandemic was very very noticeable. Everybody was seeing 2gether and WRU. First time anything BL trended on Tumblr. Everyone was descovering thailand. 

Also 2gether was again a first, it felt like the story made more sense. It was more believable, with tolerable tropes and a cute main pair (this was the first thai show I dared to recommend to someone who was not into BL), plus the music. The ending of the show ruined it for me, however Still2gether Fixed everything that was wrong from the 1st season and showed quickly how the show could’ve been. WRU’s plot was directly affected by the pandemic and bettered what TharnType had started with the high heat chemistry. The whole success of the show is due to SaintZee having amazing chemistry and going with it. 

My engineer was the surprise of the year, it had nothing going for it promising but it managed to be good (I think thanks to some parts of the story and the cast mainly). 

little BOOMS#2 - Cherry Magic and ITSAY and others

The riples of the pandemic 2gether boom were felt in Japan. Nothing breaks throught the japanese content barrier. Japan only consumes MADE IN JAPAN, and yet 2gether made it there. And showed the Japanese show runners that there’s an interest there. Cherry Magic aired a few months after and it was big success, like OL had been. Korea starts with Where Your Eyes Linger here too.

The thing about I Told Sunset About You was that nobody knew what we were getting. I had heard about My ambulance, I even saw some of the clips, but it seemed to be side couple queerbaiting and honestly I wasn’t expecting much. But they had promised a BilkinPP series. I think it’s no wonder it blew our minds, nobody was expecting that! 

Then the big comeback of MaxTul with Manner of Death, broke our minds just as OF had with TOL and bringing again the mature themes to the genre (they are called the daddies of BL for a reason). No one thought they’d come back.

Around here I started watching the GMMtv end of the year announcements. All the build up we had had from the growing of the BL genre and p’Aof culminated on the annoucement of A Tale of Thousand Stars. Because of how it breaks the rules of thai bl (no engineers, no university, no highschool, no city, no 2000′s yaoi tropes just regular shoujo tropes) and tells a compeling story that tasted so new the hype didn’t die even when it came one year later than it should have. 

And Lovely Writer, was the first to present the criticizing of the industry as well as expanding on the mature themes outside of university and the lack of need for fanservice off screen between the actors. They acted like normal people :D

Light on Me appared around here too, and showed us that korea can do better than it had. And Taiwan gave us We Best Love.

BIG BOOM#3 -  Bad Buddy and Kinnporsche

BB was the biggest annoucement GMMtv has ever made. The thing about it was the combo AofOhmNanon. Always grazing BL and forever ghost shipped with Chimon, Nanon decided to do his first (and probably only) BL with none other than Ohm (with who he had great chemistry since they became friends in Blacklist) and under the guidance of Aof. Here I want to add that Aof considers BB to be his first Y series, the ones before were dramas, so I assume by that that the thai public makes a difference between the more mature tone series and the more highschool/university BLs (??). Such a year that was! Accompanied by the epicness that was the annoucement of Not Me (confirmed to be the last OG show... but then they went and annouced another). 

And last but not least, Kinnporsche breaks the internet, everyone knows about thailand now. It entered the realm of darker themes and violence. Accompanied by other shows exploring other themes like: You’re My Sky (sports), Something In My Room (ghosts), etc...

Which is the flow we have now, some of the known old stuff some of the new expanding stuff, waiting for the next boom. My, what a journey!

I hope this was an interesting read and that I managed to show how these shows were perceived when they came out, even though now they might not be as groundbreaking. If anybody else wants to add how they perceived these shows when they came out, feel free to add to this!

[jams-sims]

I'm assuming 1 of 2 things must have happened with the promise. One

We fucked up and set off a really powerful trap thats going to idk fucking put us in a box for x amount of years ala Gojo style.

Or

Two, this is the reason why in every timeline we always come back to the brother. This is the very moment we unintentionally fucked with the our own fate. It why we never want to go home, its why they will always make pacts with us. We will always be there and even if we die, the promises still must be fullfilled or im assuming something really bad will happen. Its like in that moment we created a red string of fate to all of them.

That being said, I think I agree with someone who said this feels like we are playing in the timeline where Belphie killed us. We take the maxium risk by giving Lucifer the book back and it pays off. Beel gonna get better but Belphie anger will not. We are the reason the human transfer student shit happens in the first place. Belphie is sealed in his room and we fastforward to the almost present.

I mean come on we have the REAPER saying she wants our soul and can't wait to see us die. We have this narrative of we should side with the human and not the demons. We don't have a clear way home.

What if our way home is through death, in this "timeline" we are apprentice sorceress from the future. We become the attendant for some demon. We live and work with them for some plus years. They find out we are human all hell break lose and we get killed/die. The brothers in the future never talk about it but, when you show up this human exchange student. They feel real close to you like they havent felt that way in centuries.

It been so long that we have to start the process over again of learning who they are. But this time we've been reincarnated so it makes sense we have no memories of the shit we did previously.

[starshine-valley]

HI I’M BACK: MOVING ON TO MY SUN-KUN AU !! Might make a masterlist on this who knows. BUT ANYWAYS ONTO AN’S EXPLANATION !!

Before we start, just a few things before we begin (again).

1) This AU takes place after Light Up The Fire (An’s recent event story), stricken by guilt and shame at their defeat with Taiga, Vivid Bad Squad decides to stay in the Street SEKAI until they get their mojo back. Kohane realizes that there are manholes in street SEKAI. This transfers them to another universe’s SEKAI. Sooner or later, they start jumping to more realities because once they start, they can’t stop. Forgetting their original dreams and motivation on why they move realities (surpassing RAD weekend for VBS as well as having Nagi still being alive with An), they become the BAD Vivids who are hopping dimensions to ruin them and cause chaos (in the eyes of others that is.)

2) The RADders previously having street SEKAI is canon in this AU. In this lore, they only had Miku (which is why Miku is the mostly distorted one) and their sekai was only limited to a street SEKAI without the cafe.

3) Taiga is an anti-hero in this AU. Think of him as the Miguel to Vivid Bad Squad’s Miles in a way but at the same time, he’s trying. He’s chilling in the main universe until suspicious things start happening and he, Ken and the vbs npcs (Kotaro, Arata and Tatsuya) team up to find vbs and bring them back.

4) Both groups (RADders + NPCs and VBS) are trying to find their ways to each other to not make the multiverse fall apart or something.

5) Other main project Sekai characters are likely not to be too important but i plan that Ena, the Tenmas and MinoHaru and MizuRui will play a more major role than the others.

An Shiraishi

(Onto my girl)

-> Resides in Dimension X, Living with her dad where Aunt Nagi and Uncle Taiga frequently come and visit. Nagi and Taiga gives An tips on performing and she aims to surpass their main event, RAD Weekend!

wait.. why is this so familiar?

-> She asks her friends: Mizuki Akiyama, a girl who seems bubbly at first but has something hidden deep down, Her friend, Rui Kamishiro, a strange inventor, and his best friend, Nene Kusanagi but they don’t have the same drive as she does and in the end, decides to perform solo for the meantime.

-> She even asks her childhood best friend, Haruka Kiritani to sing with her for a while but alas, she still feels insecure being up on stage whether for idol work or not.

-> Feeling hopeless, she starts to sing on her own for a while, until she sees a girl her age with dark hair sing in WEEKEND Garage.

-> Mesmerized by her singing, she asks if she could join her. Before Kohane could say anything, she presses play on Sun-Kun, sending them to the broken SEKAI.

-> Miku (pink haired apparently, An is confused) gives more insight about their original reality and how their dimension hopping is effecting everyone.

-> An doesn’t listen. She just can’t believe there’s a timeline where Nagi is dead. She is in denial and doesn’t want to listen to Miku, thinking this is all a dream. She kindly asks Kohane to bring her back.

-> An doesn’t join the BAD Vivids until later when all members are complete and she finally lets herself grieve and move forward. Making new memories with everyone.

FUN FACTS:

WEEKEND Garage is always in every dimension they’re in. It is either abandoned (Akito’s and Toya’s dimension) or ran by someone else (Kohane’s dimension).

Nagi is the only person who stays the same no matter how distorted the reality is. This is because she is made up of memories and not actually being effected. She’s kinda like Chiaki but also not. I’m not sure what to do with her character just yet but there ya go!

AKITO AND TOYA’S LORE WILL BE POSTED TOMORROW!! I need to do work lol

[honeycrispjamz]

What do you think would have happened if Crystal lived or if she started haunting Misty like Jackie and Shauna………..

Sorry this took forever for me to answer 😭 I kept waiting to think of a better response but alas,,,

But yeah!! I think if Crystal survived the cliff fall, what would happen next depends on wether Misty finds her first. I truly think if Misty was able to explain her reasonings (in my own personal hc of her breaking the box to escape abuse) then MAYBE Crystal could forgive her or at least choose not to tell any of the other girls.

But if Misty wasn’t able to convince her, I think Misty would genuinely hunt her down before she let Crystal tell anyone. I love Misty but there is no way she was going to risk her own survival over Crystal wanting to snitch. I definitely think she would be distraught, obvs, but part of her would know it was either Crystal or her,,,, :(((

I HOPE SO BAD we get crystal ghost scenes,,, to be completely honest I am still partially playing with the “Crystal isn’t real” theory in the back of my head but I’m well aware that it probably Isn’t True lmao. But it would explain why we never got any ghost scenes of her in the adult timeline if she wasn’t real/an extension of Misty’s personality.

[galactic-pirates]

Hello! For the Truth & Dare ask game:

🛼, 🍄,🍬, and☁️, please! :)

🛼 describe your latest wip with five emojis

😼🔫🐉🔥🌳

🍄 share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

I absolutely LOVE this question and then when I get to answering it I am like “hmm?” because honestly sometimes I forget what is headcanon and what is canon 😛 I have so many I think.

Ok I will go with the first one that comes to mind - reason for the distance between Helen and James in the one present day episode he appears.

Now I ship them obviously and so them being on opposite sides of the world?!? That’s just sad. Until I watched season 3 (so the headcanon I used in my first long fic Our Darkest Hour) I thought that maybe it was hard enough for Helen to live with her own pain re: John, and she couldn’t live with James’ as well. This was totally jossed with Helen and James obviously being together in Normandy but then season 4 and the time travel came out and it all made perfect sense.

James didn’t move to Old City with Helen, because future/time travel Helen needed him. He could never tell Helen about her future self (protecting the timeline) and it would have been a little funny but also not if she thought he was having an affair. Future/time travel Helen didn’t have anyone else. So James concocted some lie about how London had been the first Sanctuary, consequently the British government was much more involved etc. and that he should stay head of house. So they went very long distance. I suspect Helen believed that James maybe had an issue with her unchanging state, and his increasing reliance on technology to fight infirmity. How pleased he was to see her whenever she visited/he visited, and how ok he was with her then, would kind of go against that but what other explanation was there? It was her only theory.

I do feel bad for Helen for not understanding and being lonely. Then when the time travel happened she went “oh.” as she realised that James had always chosen her, she just hadn’t seen it.

Also as a connected headcanon I firmly believe that Helen “coloured between the lines” in the sense of so long as she ensured her past selfs memories remained the same, then who is to say it didn’t always go this way? And thus she found a way to save James, and John, and of course Ashley. I touched on this in my “Out of the Shadows” fic which was supposed to be an AU of the ‘missing moments’ fic I was going to write about what was really going on behind season 4 (aka you can’t prove it’s not canon) but alas I never got round to it and now never will.

🍬 post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

Fun question! Mind is blank. I think where I struggle is the “unpopular” part. I don’t know if something is unpopular or not, I’m a champion at missing social things. Maybe a lot of people would agree with me - or maybe nobody would. I tend to find it mostly falls somewhere in between. It’s like in fandom the whole “stay in your lane” thing. We find people who mostly view the media like we do, or are accepting enough of differences in opinion so as not to cause conflict.

Take Sanctuary for instance. I know I am in a minority in shipping Helen/James/John because it certainly feels like the popular ship is Teslen. I like Nikola a lot but I just prefer him and Helen as friends. No hate to shippers. I think I write it in most of my fics that if John and James weren’t around then Helen and Nikola might develop romantically one day (immortality is a long time). I suppose an unpopular opinion could be my discomfort if I ever do peek into Teslen content, at what they do to John’s character. That’s entirely on me of course, I know better than to be curious, and obviously I use the backspace button and never say a word.

I firmly believe that John’s abusive/evil tendencies came from the energy parasite we saw in Haunted. That the compulsion was not his own. That he learned to manage it over time, to make the killings less brutal, and to need to kill less, but he had to give in/feed it otherwise he did lose all control. And worse of course is that he didn’t know he was possessed (and I do see it as a possession). I realise that this read is not universal. I have seen people instead relate it to an addiction and that John had more of a choice in everything, and that he chose wrong. They say that that he was always bad: misogynistic. That the evidence of him wanting to go back in time, wipe out Helen’s independence - I don’t see it that way either. I think he didn’t want to have that damn parasite AND he still had that parasite. I think that evil parasitic voice, that for a century he didn’t realise wasn’t his own demons, was capable of twisting almost anything. Taking John’s wish to not be a killer, his pain, his regret and twisting it to justify the time travel. Plus show me someone that doesn’t want a redo, and I will show you a liar. I’m not really joking. So many nights I lay in bed just wishing I could go back and do things differently - it’s a very natural impulse. John did take it too far in actually trying to make it reality but then - possession.

Ahem sorry that got long.

I don’t know how much of this is unpopular ^^ but probably quite a lot. John is vilified far more than he is defended. I just can’t see Helen ever giving John the time of day if he was always a bastard. I know women do that - smart, intelligent, otherwise strong women - can get in messes of relationships. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s not how I see it.

Please don’t anyone take this the wrong way. This is just my opinion and zero hate to anyone for thinking otherwise. I do obviously disagree as stated but we are all entitled to our interpretations and there’s room enough in the fandom for everyone.

☁️ what made you choose your username?

I saw an aesthetic for Vala Mal Doran (Stargate SG-1) and it had a graphic for “Space Merc” and I thought that was so cool. Obviously that username was taken so I played around with word variants until I found one that wasn’t taken - galactic pirates. I have grown rather fond of it now 🥰

[freelanceexorcist]

FFVIIR Musings and the Multiroth of Madness

There are so many theories going around about FFVIIR and Sephiroth that its hard to keep up with them all. Some are great theories, some strain plausibility a bit but are still pretty good, while others are straight up ridink to the hinkulous. Others, good or bad, were Jossed. I’ll try to list as many as I can and, of course, give my opinion. The rest of this is under a cut because it’s very spoilery and very, very, very, very LOOOONNNNNGGG. And pedantic. And probably boring to anyone but me.

I’m going to assume anyone reading this knows about Japanese first-person pronoun usage, but if you don’t, check out this link (warning: TV Tropes), specifically the Ore and Watashi sections.

When His Voice is Like Ice but He Seems Sorta Nice,  That’s an Ore…

There are at least two versions of Sephiroth running around the Remake-verse.

This is established fact, because the devs said as much in the Remake Ultimania (full disclosure: I know very, very little to no Japanese and have been relying on the largesse of those who do and are providing accurate, good faith translations). In fact, there are four: one who is an illusion (hallucination?) on Cloud’s part. The second is him (or Jenova taking on his appearance) hijacking a black cloaked man to use as a meat suit. The third is a flashback of the Nibelheim incident. The fourth is Ore Sephiroth, who is identified as ??? in the book. The last one stands apart from the rest not just because of the pronoun, but because he is the only version that anyone other than Cloud can also see and he is described as a version that has never been seen in the Compilation before. At this time it is not clear if just one person (or alien eldritch abomination) is responsible for the other three.

Ore Sephiroth is the Crisis Core version, who never had a psychotic episode and therefore sidestepped the Nibelheim incident.

This is a good one, in fact it’s one of my favorites because I love me some CC Sephiroth. Alas, it was Jossed by the Rebirth trailer. He uses Ore when he says “you know I killed Tifa,” which shows that Ore is guilty of the events in Nibelheim and knows it or is at least accepting responsibility for it.

There’s also the problem that crops up if Ore Sephiroth is from the same timeline that Remake takes place in, because that causes a whopper of a temporal paradox. If Sephiroth doesn’t lose his mind and burn down Nibelheim, the characters would not have the experiences that shaped them into the people they are when the story begins or go on to form relationships with each other. But they are these people anyway, with the same experiences and issues that resulted from the Nibelheim incident and its aftermath, hence the paradox.

Ore Sephiroth is from a time post-Advent Children.

This was a good one at first but upon further inspection it doesn’t really hold up, at least for me. Since Remake is referencing portions of the Compilation, we need to take Case of the Lifestream: Black into account. In this story, following his defeat in the original game, Sephiroth released all of his memories to the Lifestream. He had to send the remnants out to scan peoples’ memories just to get an idea of what he looked like, let alone what his motivations ever were. He was essentially a blank canvas with only his rage, despair and white-hot hatred of Cloud forming his core and keeping him anchored to reality.

About those memories. Trauma and grief can really mess with the memory to various degrees. Grief can cause memory loss, and the intensity of the grief can determine how long that lasts, so there would be things some people just don’t remember. The trauma could cause existing memories to be blown out of proportion and exaggerated. Fears can become bigger, too. Sephiroth was the source of this trauma and grief, so it also follows that he went from “big, scary guy who wants to reboot the world and doesn’t think humans should get to live rent-free in the new digs” to “terrifying boogeyman who wants to wipe the planet of every living thing on it.” It’s possibly why he went from being a perfectly good-looking man in the rest of the Compilation to a ghostly pale, unnatural wraith in AC (but still hot. Who said that?!). Throw in Jenova’s species’ MO of eating a planet bare and using the barren husk to move on to do the same to the next one, and you’ve got his AC motivation.

It doesn’t even seem like it’s really Sephiroth anymore in AC so much as a rage-fueled golem made of Jenova cells, spite and the traumatized memories of a bunch of unreliable narrators. This doesn’t seem at all like Ore Sephiroth (although it is admittedly too early to know much about that).

Also, considering AC Sephiroth Flanderized himself into being the personification of “fuck this guy in particular” when it comes to Cloud, it doesn’t fit that Ore Sephiroth is so goshdarn NICE to him.  

Ore Sephiroth is the memories OG Sephiroth released to the Lifestream after his defeat given flesh.

I really like this one that I’ve seen here and there. It makes sense, too, when you take Case of the Lifestream: Black into account. Jenova is corrosive to the Lifestream, as we see with Geostigma. Angeal, Zack and Lucrecia can’t really cease to exist as individuals or even plain old die because the Lifestream would poison itself by letting them in. It makes sense that Sephiroth’s spirit energy would be kept intact and tucked away somewhere safe like an encapsulated tumor that can’t grow any bigger. In this case, the Lifestream found a use for him or he just straight up escaped.

Ore Sephiroth is a separate person but just as evil as Watashi Sephiroth.

But why though? What would be the point of having two identical characters both pursuing the same goal? “Like the original game, but BIGGER?” So they would cancel each other out? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just ditch Ore and keep Watashi if that were the case? Having Ore and Watashi as murder twinsies would result in Ore Sephiroth not serving any real function in the story, which is pretty sloppy writing. This seems like a bit of a stretch on the part of people who simply will not accept a version of Sephiroth that isn’t the mustache-twirlingly evil classic villain.

It doesn’t matter what pronoun he uses, because he used Ore after losing his shpadoinkles in the library and Watashi before luring the party into the singularity.

This seems like another stretch for the same reason. It does matter.

Yes, Sephiroth used Ore even after emerging from the library and putting Nibelheim to the torch. But the creators didn’t say that’s when he stopped using it, they said he switched when he met Jenova. This meeting took place after the village burned. Yeah, that seems like a distinction without a difference, but during this meeting, he was completely broken mentally and his physical proximity to her was the closest it had ever been. He was still himself to a degree before that, but what if his shattered psyche combined with the proximity really let her dig in? In the reactor the first time, he still had it together enough to shake himself out of it when he started glitching.

Also, there are signs that it’s not Sephiroth controlling the Whispers, but vice versa, at least to enough of a degree that they can keep him from really rearranging events in ways they can’t correct. He doesn’t start using Ore until the Edge of Creation, when the Whispers were completely eradicated (at least so far). This really great analysis explains this far better and more thoroughly than I could, so give it a look.

Watashi Sephiroth is the real deal and Ore Sephiroth is actually Jenova manipulating Cloud

I hope this isn’t the case, but man it’s plausible. In The Kids Are Alright, it’s noted that Jenova not only had the ability to mimic people the Cetra knew, she also would get into their heads, making them think that their fellow Cetra were plotting against them, effectively making them turn on each other and doing her job for her. What if Ore Sephiroth is actually Jenova trying to drive a wedge between Cloud and the rest of the party and getting him to turn on them by presenting herself as a version of Sephiroth that Cloud used to know and who died?

This one kind of breaks down upon further inspection too, though. If this is Jenova, she’s choosing a pretty cumbersome way of executing this strategy. Wouldn’t she be better served to impersonate someone Cloud already trusted and cared for, like Tifa (dun dun DUNNNNN – see below), or Zack or his mother? Why go through all the work of impersonating someone Cloud hates and then trying to get him to bury the hatchet and trust her that way? Not only would that be doing the fans of CC-era Sephiroth pretty damn dirty by making us get our hopes up only to get clowned, but it would also be unnecessarily complicated writing.  

Ore Sephiroth is from a different timeline.

Honestly, this is the one that is most likely, IMO. We know that alternate timelines are in play. We also know that Ore Sephiroth had at least some degree of autonomy if he was being controlled by the Whispers, or the final boss battle wouldn’t have happened because it didn’t happen that way in the OG.

That raises some questions, too. When was this timeline created? Does Remake take place in a timeline that is separate from the original game’s prime one? If so, do the Whispers exist only in Remake’s timeline to keep things from getting even more out of hand by different choices spawning new timelines? And does Aerith’s declaration of “everything about you is WRONG” mean that this version of Sephiroth isn’t supposed to exist here as long as the Whispers are around to keep things contained, meaning that his presence signifies that the Whispers dropped the timey wimey ball BIG TIME?

I guess we’ll find out in future installments, but one thing I want to say is that for as much as I would like it to be so, I don’t think Ore Sephiroth is one of the heroes here even if he does end up serving as a protagonist. I don’t think he’s an antagonist or villain either, but after all the shit he has done and has been done to him, he’s been through too much to come out the other end of it the same person he was in Crisis Core.

He may sincerely want to do the right thing this time around, but he’ll be morally grey, doing the right thing for probably selfish reasons and won’t care much about the personal moral code of anyone he has to align himself with to make it happen. Any altruism or defense of others would be because it gets him one step closer to his goal – true freedom. Boundless, terrifying freedom from Hojo, Shinra, Jenova, the Whispers or anyone else who would ever try to use him as a tool for their own purposes.

He might be truly selfless at some point, but probably not before a whole lot of convincing and not before he decides the risks to his own hide are worth it. There’s a reason I like to compare this vision of him to Negan from The Walking Dead, Joseph Lawrence from The Handmaid’s Tale and the man himself as he was characterized in Dissidia.   

Anyway. Moving on.

You Done Messed Up, A-A-Ron! Or Did You?

This will be a short section (“Oh, thank GOD!!” – everybody) because it’s just a bit from the Rebirth trailer and some other parts as well. I should stress it’s probably good practice to not come to any solid conclusions based on a few lines of out-of-context dialogue in what may or may not be a classic trailer misdirection. That last bit might be more likely than we think, since Purple Maybe Jenova Maybe Sephiroth Maybe Both appears to be speaking while the words are being said and how many people can really read lips, let alone read the lips of someone speaking Japanese? Speculate away, though! I sure plan to.

This is about the snippet of dialogue laid over Purple Jenovaroth being all menacing. Ore Sephiroth talks about how Jenova is said to be a monster who can imitate those her targets hate, fear or love. Then he insinuates that because he killed Tifa all those years ago, the current version must be some kind of Jenova-fueled imposter.

Many people quickly concluded that Sephiroth is just messing with Cloud’s head, but I don’t feel like that’s the case. I think it’s very possible that he simply doesn’t know she survived. After he slashed her, he walked away and never saw her again. A short time later, he was dead. What if Ore Sephiroth isn’t being calculating? What if he’s fallen for Jenova’s trick described above and is genuinely paranoid over the idea that she’s imitating people who Cloud trusts and who can influence him?

Sephiroth is powerful, but he’s not omniscient, nor was he in the original game either. So he may be thinking “yeah, no one escapes death at the end of my blade,” because Tifa is one of only a few who have, but she managed to beat the odds and survive. If he’s from a different timeline where he did succeed in killing her he would be correct in his assumption, but it’s not the case in this timeline.

Time will tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t grow into a big plot point so much as serve to show the audience that, like Cloud, Ore Sephiroth is fallible. Like Cloud, he has gaps in his own memory and is just as much of an unreliable narrator. Like Cloud, he’s mentally unstable, making him susceptible to gaslighting that leads to paranoia. Like Cloud, he has lost people close to him who maybe can appear to him courtesy of Jenovillusions.

Odds and Ends

Sephiroth is just lying about all the things!

Funny thing is, Sephiroth only lied once in the Compilation when he impersonated Tifa in order to trick Barret into giving up the Black Materia, unless I’m forgetting something. He’s actually rather transparent and tells what he thinks is the truth.

And he didn’t mind rape Cloud with lies. Cloud was already good and mind raped by everything he’d gone through up until then. Sephiroth ripped the scales from Cloud’s eyes and told him a truth that he wasn’t ready to face yet, and that’s what pushed him over the edge but eventually led to him becoming stronger then ever before. Mind you, Sephiroth didn’t do any of this to be altruistic and was probably trying to soften Cloud up enough to make him easier to commandeer, but he did still tell him the truth. It was just the truth as he understood it.

See, he was in Potemkin Nibelheim at the same time as the party and was encountered in the basement library. He would have had plenty of time to read the notes on the Sephiroth Clone project and based his thinking on that. Because reading Hojo’s boogered-up notes and coming to his own conclusion worked out so well for him the last time he did it. /s

Sephiroth wanted the Whispers gone so he could change his own fate and win!

How boring, if true. That would just be a retread of the plot of the original game but with a twist everyone guessed a mile out, and if that’s all some people want, they’re free to play that and save their money.

At this point, we don’t really know what anyone’s motives really are. We know that Ore Sephiroth wants to save the planet and defy destiny, but that’s about it. We know that Watashi Sephiroth wants to troll the shit out of Cloud and turn into gigantic 80s metal band mascots to fight the party, but that’s about it for him as well. The Kalm flashback may clarify a few things, but it may also muddy the waters even more in order to spring a big twist on us later.

Sephiroth was controlling the Whispers!

What would he gain from that? The Whispers are there to make sure events chug along just as they did in the original game and presumably the Compilation. We know he’s a bit of a glutton for punishment, but why would he want a fate where he is defeated and killed over and over again? If anything, they were controlling him, at least to a degree, and what they were controlling is a version of him we’ve never seen before.

The eradication of the Whispers seems to have set Ore Sephiroth free. He talks of destiny, but in the Edge of Creation scene he wants to defy it and needs Cloud’s help to do so. His personality in this scene is subtly different, because he’s nicer. He merely disarms Cloud to end their duel when if this is the same Sephiroth from the original game, that would have been the perfect opportunity to take him out.

So yeah, that implies that Ore Sephiroth was being twisted into his OG/Compilation self in Remake’s timeline. So…what if Ore Sephiroth is from a different timeline and somehow made his way to Remake’s, prompting the planet to create the Whispers to contain him (and anyone else whose choices could potentially be effected by his anomalous presence)?

But the creators said there wouldn’t be any major changes!

Obviously the team changed their minds, because there have been some whoppers so far. They also said there would no new characters, but we’ve got loads of them in sizeable roles, unless they were referring to playable characters. It’s their sandbox, and if they decide that This Thing works better than That Other Thing, then it’s This Thing that will make it into the finished work, even if they stated in some pre-production interview that they were pretty married to That Other Thing at the time.

And the thing about remakes is that they are never exactly the same as the original or previous adaptations and the only things that remain intact-at least in a well-made remake-are the major plot points that move the story along from start to finish.

The movie A Star is Born is a good example of this. There are four versions of it than have been released, and they’re all different to varying degrees except for the major beats: he’s always a famous star when the story starts. He’s always an addict. She’s always a small-time performer at first and he’s plowed when they meet. He always takes her under his wing. They always fall in love. Her career always goes through the roof while his fizzles out. He always gets clean for a while but falls off the wagon. He always dies in the end. She always picks up the pieces and moves on. The same basic story is still told, but the space between point A and point B is a little different each time. What doesn’t change is anything that would significantly alter the basic plot. And these changes were pretty well received, considering all four movies got plenty of attention from the Academy.

So far, hardly any of the major beats of the story have changed yet. The only major difference is Sephiroth showing up for the final boss battle WAY too early, which gives us our first hint that the Whispers are losing control of fate. Now that they’re gone, there’s going to be a whooooole lot more that’s different, because getting rid of them enabled the creation of alternate timelines. About the only thing that is guaranteed is fans who will complain bitterly about the changes and flounce dramatically out of the fandom only to come right back a week later to complain some more. I know this because it happens in every fandom. Yes, all of them.

Watashi Sephiroth will not kill Aerith!

That big boom you just heard was the heads of every OG purist reading this exploding at once but hear me out.

I didn’t say she wasn’t going to die, I said it wouldn’t be him that kills her, and I base this on the assumption that he and Aerith are aware of previous iterations of the cycle and know what will happen next. If that is the case, he would know how badly he played himself by allowing her to enter the Lifestream where she becomes a Force ghost, completes Holy, thwarts his plan and goes on to eradicate Jenova entirely a few years later. He’d know that it was in his best interests to keep her out of the Lifestream and find another way to stop her from using the White Materia. He could even try to persuade her to join him since knowing how powerful she was is why he killed her the first time around.

That’s about all I’ve got for now (“We reiterate: oh, thank GOD!” – everybody). If you’ve managed to read this whole thing, you have the patience of saints. If you disagree with me, that’s fine, just don’t be a dick about it.

Thank you.