#also there was a character who i was like ‘I like the fact she has no love intrest since I think that adds to her story in an intresting wa

[spiderfunkz]

HYUN-JU x READER WHO WEARS GLASSES

pairings. cho hyun-ju x f!reader

author's note: totally didn't write this just because i wear glasses lol.. anyways, my requests for hyun-ju are open, but check this out if you wanna request for other squid game characters. if you don't see the character you want to request for send me an ask!

▸ hyun-ju herself has a sharp eye, we've all seen it. how she manages to target each guard with very little struggle & how she spots and hits! every security cam in the room with ease.

▸ her sight is precise, like an eagle. different from you, yours is more like a... woodpecker.

▸ it makes for a subtle dynamic in your relationship. like how she's the one that reads directions from afar when you aren't wearing your glasses, or how she always carries lens wipes in her purse or pocket.

▸ if you were in the games with her, she would be more protective over your glasses than you are. "just leave it, i'll buy a new one. eventually." you shrug, "are you joking? you're just gonna continue blind?" — "hyun-ju, i can still see!"

▸ she wouldn't be the type to joke about it, but she would definitely tease from time to time. like after you just woke up, she'll laugh while holding her fingers up, "how many fingers do you see?" just to get a laugh out of you.

▸she thinks its cute that you have glasses, she 100% would be type to say "it's adorable how you have your gorgeous eyes framed." while pushing your glasses up so they don't slip.

▸ if you ever bring up the fact that you want to change to just wearing contacts or if you do switch to contacts, she would bring your glasses everywhere just in case.

▸ oh and, when i say her sight is sharp, i also mean it in a way where she also notices everything. and not only when it comes to your glasses too. if you need something, she'll know right away. if your body language feels off, she'll ask if everything is okay. if you feel cold or let out a tiny cough, she'll immediately lend whatever jacket or coat she has on.

▸ oh and if it's raining, she'll wipe the raindrops from your glasses, softly of course, so they don't blur your lenses.

▸ i think her acts of service-ness really plays a part in your relationship. to summarize it all up, she would be really caring and protective, her purse filled with your eyedrops, glasses case, and everything you would ever need.

[zolo-san]

I know I just rambled in the tag, but if you took the time to read all that, might I direct you to this post & my ramblings there as well~

Something about Zoro being one of the most misunderstood and mischaracterized characters in One Piece is funny (not haha funny, funny sad) to me because?? That’s literally how his introduction starts?? With people misunderstanding him and thinking he’s some big, monstrous demon who kills with cause and cannot be trusted or tamed.

Meanwhile the actual Zoro is a driven guy who is often both literally and figuratively directionless in life and found his goals in life through good people (first Kuina and then Luffy). He's tied up in the Marine base not due to those actual crimes he commuted (well not inherently anyway) but because he ‘disrespected’ a Captain's son and stood up for a little girl. He accepts the challenge they present to him and because Zoro himself is a guy that puts his money where his mouth is he assumes the Marines will uphold their end of the deal and let him go (note the actual shock when Koby tells him the truth)

He joins Luffy's crew but also outright says he’s not gonna let his goal take second place to Luffy or anyone else's for that matter, he bears the weight of two people's dreams, his heart isn’t going to be swayed by some pirate.

Speaking of Kuina, her impact and influence on Zoro's life isn’t talked about enough for my liking. She was Zoro's first friend, his first rival, his first goal. He looked up to her so much and his reaction to her passing cracks my heart in half every time because you can seem him just..go numb. Kuina, dead? Kuina, the strongest person he knows, gone? Kuina, who swore to him just yesterday they’d race to the top of the world together, doesn’t exist anymore. His blank face only cracking within the privacy of his sensei before he begs. He begs on his knees, tears streaming down his face please please please let me take Kuina's sword with me. Let me take our dream to a high neither of us could imagine. I won’t let her name die here.

On top of gaining the Wado Ichimonji that day Zoro also gained…fear. Not of death, well at the very least not his own, he gained his fear of not being enough. Kuina kicked his ass every way a person could and still died, what could someone like him do? So he trains…and trains…and trains some more. Overly, obsessively, constantly telling himself he’s not enough, he’s weak, he can’t protect anyone like this and everyone's death would be on him.

As for Zoro being cold and stoic that’s just…not completely true? He’s not stone, he can be excited or sad or angry just as much as most characters he just sucks at showing it canonically (Kuina thinks he hates her before their final fight after all). Sure he’s not as forthcoming about it as some of the other Strawhats but Zoro's more of an action guy anyway, he'll show his love with his protection and unwavering faith.

In conclusion, Zoro is a ridiculously stubborn, incredibly loyal, mildly emotionally constipated, do what you say/say what you mean kinda guy.

(Also that whole ‘Zoro would kill the whole crew if Luffy asked him to’ thing? Top ten stupidest things I’ve ever heard from the fandom and that’s saying a lot. He’s loyal not brainless and heartless guys if Luffy asked him to do that, he would never but I digress, Zoro would square the fuck up with him so fast. DPMO.)

[inexplicifics]

I'm thoroughly intrigued by G/J whipping boy warlord AU, and I also love outsider POV's so maybe L/M outsider POV too if you're feeling extra generous?

And for the heck of it, can you add Buffalo, NY to the map? So much love to literally everything you write!!!

Sure, have a little more whipping boy!

“Mm,” the scarred witcher says, and glances at the old one, who nods. “Then I am sure you will be pleased to assist our older trainees in learning courtly swordsmanship.” Lord Antos looks pleased. Julian has the sneaking suspicion that isn’t nearly the honor Lord Antos clearly thinks it is. “Right then,” the scarred witcher says. “You two ladies come with me, and we’ll talk to Jan. You,” to Lord Antos, “can go with Vesemir. And you can stay here and discuss things with Geralt and Yennefer.” By which Julian is able to deduce that the old witcher must be Vesemir, and the sorceress Yennefer, which means that the Warlord of the North, the White Wolf feared across the continent, is - Is named Geralt?

Here's a snippet of the outsider POV, which is some variety of modern AU:

She’s chatting with one of the other receptionists near the drinks table when Lambert and his wife arrive. The wife is an entire head shorter than Lambert is, and at least a hundred pounds lighter, with long sleek dark hair pulled back in an elegant braid and absolutely perfect natural makeup emphasizing big dark eyes and delicate features. She’s wearing a blue sundress and elegant strappy sandals. She looks like a porcelain doll; she has one hand tucked into the crook of Lambert’s elbow, and the discrepancy between the two of them is absolutely mind-boggling. And Lambert - rough, crude, hot-tempered Lambert - is looking at her like she hung the moon. He escorts her over to the drinks like a knight in a stage play, glances over the offerings, and says, “Oh, hey, they’ve got that fizzy stuff you like.” “So they do,” the wife agrees, in a soft sweet voice, and takes a can of sparkling lemon water; Lambert, naturally, takes a beer. Emily knows for a fact, because she ordered the catering, that Lambert specifically requested the sparkling lemon water. She noted it at the time because it seemed so out of character.

And finally, hello in Buffalo! Hope you're staying warm!

[wixhing0nastar]

From Hound to Hawkeye: The Evolution of Vi's Protector

I remember when I first saw the interview lines from Amanda Overton post-S2 talking about Vi's character arc this season and feeling a little confused by them at first. Who is Vi when she doesn't have anyone to protect? The type of person to fall in love. Which while beautiful, begged the question in my mind; what about Caitlyn?

But the more I've thought about it in the interim the more obvious the answer has become. Vi doesn't have anyone left to protect because Caitlyn doesn't need Vi to protect her. In fact, over the course of the show Caitlyn undergoes a journey to become Vi's protector. Specifically, Caitlyn steps in and fills the hole, that need for love and protection, that was left behind after Vander's death in Vi's youth.

And once I made that connection it was suddenly really easy to start noticing all of the parallels between Caitlyn and Vander, especially when it comes to their interactions with Vi.

Caitlyn's journey on the path to becoming Vi's protector started in Stillwater, when she first freed her, but this arc doesn't really kick off until after Vi gets stabbed while fighting Sevika at the end of Episode 5 and she's then forced to depend on Caitlyn for safety, on account of the whole being stabbed thing. And that's when the Protector Arc, and the Caitlyn/Vander parallels, begin in earnest.

~Both lecture Vi for her impulsiveness before/while tending to her wounds~

Even this early on Caitlyn already cares for Vi's safety (a trait we quickly learn applies to most people) and we get the very obvious, show makes sure we know it's a parallel to Vander, Caitlyn telling Vi that she has a good heart.

This is quickly followed by her leaving to find Vi some type of medicine which leads to the next big parallel between Vander and Caitlyn.

~Both sacrifice their weapons in a dangerous situation to keep Vi safe~

Vander drops his gauntlets on the bridge in the middle of the fighting (even if it was dying down), sacrificing them in order to pick Vi and Powder up and take her to safety. In the same vein, Caitlyn sells her only firearm in the middle of a dangerous environment while tracking down a terrorist with almost no bureaucratic support to get Vi a cure for being stabbed.

Shortly thereafter we get the whole escape from Silco/finding Jinx sequence which isn't relevant except for how it leads to the next parallel when Vi and Caitlyn get captured by the Firelights.

~Both attempt to sacrifice their freedom for Vi's~

Now, Caitlyn's already captured here but I think it counts. Before the reveal that Vi's on good terms with the Firelights, Caitlyn is seen fighting tooth and nail to get them to release Vi and keep her in Vi's stead. Vander on the other hand willingly turned himself over to the Enforcers in Vi's place to keep her from having to spend who knows how many years in Stillwater.

~Both went to bat for Vi against politically powerful opponents~

Caitlyn immediately goes toe-to-toe with Cassandra when she makes it back topside, demanding assistance and offering reproachful glares whenever someone says something remotely offensive about Vi (honestly everything with Ambessa also fits here but she's later). Vander on the other hand was trying to juggle Silco's schemes (that he didn't even know about), Marcus' impudence, and Sevika's betrayal while trying to keep Vi's life unaffected.

After this there's only one major parallel between Caitlyn and Vander until the end of S2A2, but there's some other fun Protector Things to talk about in S2A1. Specifically, how Caitlyn steps up and becomes Vi's protector in the wrong way during this act.

There's this specific old-timey usage of Protector that's popular in like... period romances(?) I was a lit major but I didn't specialize in period romances lol to refer to an influential individual (typically a man) who bestows financial and social protections on someone (typically a woman) without granting them the legal protections of marriage.

This is, essentially, what's happened with Vi and Caitlyn in the first act of the second season. We know that Vi's not living with Caitlyn but she also doesn't seem to be working, so the logical conclusion is that Caitlyn is handling her accommodations. In terms of social we know Caitlyn went so far as to threaten to pull her family's funds from the city if they didn't, basically, treat Vi as an equal citizen instead of the sister of a terrorist. But they aren't together romantically and they aren't living together with any of the implied legal protections one might have as an actual ward of Caitlyn's house.

Which leads up to the next one:

~Both lash out in their grief at the wrong people~

And more specifically, they lash out at the wrong person who was sort of a tangential cause in the death of a loved one. Vander attacks and blames Silco for Felicia's death and while she's primarily holding herself responsible, Caitlyn is also aware that she would have stopped Jinx without hesitation if she wasn't Vi's sister; if Vi hadn't made her second guess herself and show mercy... well Cassandra might be alive.

There's also a very specific parallel between S2A2 Caitlyn and Post-Bridge Vander. Both allow an outside force (the Enforcers/the Noxians) to have unfettered access to the Undercity in the hopes of preventing escalating violence, only for things to continue to get even worse.

~Vi is able to pull them from the dark/reestablish their humanity~

When Vi reunites with both Vanderwick and Caitlyn in S2 Act 2 they've both completely lost themselves down darker paths. Vander's mind is being destroyed by Shimmer and he barely remembers he's a person and is largely just Warwick at this point while Caitlyn is lost in a sea of guilt-driven revenge and is donning the title "Commander" like a cloak of self-flagellation. And Vi's able to cut through Warwick to Vander and The Commander to Caitlyn because of their deep rooted love and need to protect her.

Then we get Caitlyn betraying Ambessa and the fight at the commune and I'll come back to this with the last parallel but first I wanna talk about the decisive moment where Caitlyn became Vi's protector, for real this time.

~Both choose to sacrifice revenge in order to save Vi~

During the fight at the commune, Vi is horribly, life-threateningly injured. As folks have noted before, Jinx gives Caitlyn a clear shot at her back while she's distracted (while there's enough chaos for it to be realistic for her to get caught by a stray bullet) and Caitlyn completely ignores her in favor of rushing to Vi's side. Plus she continues to put aside her feelings about Jinx in order for them to get Vi topside safely, and eventually allows Vi to free her when she willingly surrenders. Meanwhile, Vander pulled the same sorta deal in Episode 3 when the factory was about the blow up. He had a moment he could have gone, was going to go after Silco but realized the building was collapsing and Vi was still trapped inside after having a beam dropped on her. Naturally Vander rushed to save Vi, which allowed Silco to escape.

For Caitlyn, however, this is the exact moment she basically takes Vi properly under her protection. In fact, going back to the "old-timey romance novel" version of Protector. The way in which Caitlyn allows Vi to free Jinx, in addition to the fact they are living together post-canon, show that Vi now has legal protections and those protections come from her implied position as a Kiramman.

More to the point, the way in which Vi frees Jinx is reminiscent of how Caitlyn herself freed Vi back in Episode 5. With Caitlyn manipulating the pieces behind the scenes since Vi wasn't really aware she'd been granted Kiramman privileges yet. But to summarize:

Both were somewhere they weren't really supposed to be, but there wasn't anyone who'd question them (Caitlyn because she's a Kiramman, Vi because Caitlyn removed all the guards)

Both freed a prisoner unauthorized knowing hoping that someone higher up would have their back (Caitlyn knowing Jayce would have her back and Vi hoping Caitlyn would be willing to let Jinx help)

Both did indeed have someone higher up the food chain keep them from getting in trouble (Jayce covering for Caitlyn to Marcus and Caitlyn coming down to the cells to make sure she found/freed Vi before anyone else)

Another point in the "this is where Caitlyn becomes Vi's protector" agenda, but ever since that very first scene of the series on the bridge, Vi's always worn some sort of wraps right up until she wakes up in S2A3 in Caitlyn's bed.

Aka: she can finally put her weapon's down, because she's found herself placed firmly under Caitlyn's protection, which means she's finally, fully safe.

And then for the final (and this parts' going to be a dozy so buckle in) we can hop back to the battle at the commune and Caitlyn turning on Ambessa. And what I really love here is that Caitlyn, who has spent the last several months being manipulated at literally every turn, finds one single earnest, honest person again and is like

~Both are willing to start a war in order to protect Vi~

This parallel actually goes a little nuts. Because not only are both of them willing to start a war to protect Vi and her family, with Vander refusing to give the kids up to the Enforcers and nearly starting the civil war almost a decade early versus Caitlyn who refuses to give up Vanderwick real full circle moment here to Ambessa and Singed and actually starts a war with Noxus over it. No, they are both nearly killed in the fallout while taking a knife to the gut from someone they used to trust (Silco/Ambessa) after getting betrayed by someone they thought they could (Sevika/Maddie).

And Caitlyn actually does have to start and finish said war in order to protect Vi. Which brings me to my final point, which is actually something I've seen several complaints about but was really important for Vi's character arc.

Caitlyn needed to fight in the war without Vi. With Vi at a considerably safer location, all things told. Because an important part of Vi's arc is that she's just a normal girl who keeps getting caught up in matters far larger than her when really all she wants is to keep her little family safe, only to have it tragically clawed apart again and again.

So there are two parts to this. Firstly, why it was important for Vi to not need to be there. Because time and again Vi's watched as she'd failed to save her loved ones. Been feet away from them as they were brutally killed in front of her. Her being there hasn't ever been enough to save anyone. But with Caitlyn? Who's protecting not just Vi's fragile mortal form, but her battered, bleeding heart? Caitlyn didn't even need Vi there to come back alive (hurt, but alive).

Building from that we then circle back to the fact that, again, Vi's just your average girl from down in the lanes. There's a reason she nearly has a panic attack when she's sitting in on the war council and realizes how bad the situation is. And it's okay. In the end, Caitlyn and her people (well, mostly Mel) are able to handle Ambessa while Vi's allowed to basically focus on a family matter putting Warwick to rest with Jinx. Aka: Vi isn't responsible for dealing with the big major catastrophe and doesn't have to make it her priority. She can trust that Caitlyn's taking care of it and focus on taking care of her family, the thing she's wanted to do the whole time regardless of how it might have turned out.

While they don't really have a ton of screen time once they get together, the two scenes we do get also showcase this change in dynamics. Especially since, given Vi's affinity for fighting, most of the protection Caitlyn is providing at that point is emotional.

I just mentioned how Vi nearly had a panic attack in the war council, but note how it was nearly because Caitlyn immediately picked up on it (like, it took less than five seconds) and reached out for her, in an official, public setting mind you, to hold her hand and reassure her.

The final scene lends even further to this. Caitlyn is clearly hard-tuned in to Vi's emotional state. She's smirking and running off to see her after hearing her hum like, one line, clearly excited to witness some sort of levity out of her. And after Vi explains though Caitlyn offers some fairly non-evasive comfort (resting her head against Vi's shoulder and gently encouraging her to open up if need be) which serves as an invitation for Vi to choose to take more of said comfort, which she does, physically at least.

And it's such a perfect culmination of their respective arcs. Vi's a Lover, who's been forced to don a Fighter's mantle for years until nothing of her was left. While Caitlyn is a Fighter Protector who spent her whole life locked up in a gilded cage, desperate for more but constantly told her only role was to dance and sing for her public.

In the end Vi's allowed to start piecing herself back together, figuring out who the hell Violet is, while Caitlyn finally has a partner she can trust and rely on who does the same for her in turn.

Someone who sees her as an equal and loves her for herself, someone she can safely hand her heart over to.

And that's for both of them.

[pearlofthewoods]

@celluloiddream666

Like yes, and no. I think there’s a distinction to be made here. Most superhero films (particularly the early ones) have historically centred men as the superheroes. Crucially, Buffy is a woman.

The stereotypical superhero is a man who is given superpowers which he goes on to use to protect mankind. So far so similar. He may also be a physically weak person who then becomes strong, but there’s still a difference here in the intentions behind the character’s empowerment.

Because Buffy’s superhero arc comes from a slightly different place, It’s not just about a physically weak person becoming supernaturally strong, it’s crucially about a woman gaining the ability to overcome her oppressor, and to save her own life.

Whedon envisioned Buffy particularly as a subversion of the typical horror movie scene, in which a woman is attacked in an alley (often by a man) and dies as a result. For all his flaws in writing the series, his intention was for the premise to be a feminist reversal of that trope. The empowerment of an otherwise vulnerable woman to protect herself from violence and misogyny.

A quote from the article where I read this:

“Whedon created the character of Buffy as a reaction to the trope of the blonde girl who tends to die first in horror films.”

It was particularly the idea of the female victim’s early death that I felt I wanted to address. Because if subverting that was Whedon’s aim, in a roundabout way he failed to do so.

Visually, yes, that trope is subverted in the scene where Angel meets Buffy for the first time:

But in the longer term? Buffy’s superpowers didn’t save her from dying. In fact, she dies three times throughout the series. Directly as a result of being the slayer. It was this particular irony that I was trying to bring out.

And although historically male superheroes might have experienced bullying or been physically weak before receiving their powers, I don’t think many of them were so vulnerable as to be at risk of death before their transformation. I think that’s the difference.

It’s also ironic to me that in this very specific case, Whedon intended Buffy’s powers to be of particular use for her to defend herself from danger. Not everyone else. And that’s not an intention you can accredit to all other media in this genre.

So when I say it’s ironic that she has to sacrifice herself to save everyone else, I’m not talking about her being a superhero in general, I’m talking about Whedon’s failures to adhere to the intentions he had for Buffy when creating this specific piece of media.

I understand if my point was lost on you, since I added crucial parts of that analysis in my tags originally, so I’ll reupload them below for you.

I hope that helps get my point across a little better :)

I once saw a quote that said the idea for Buffy came from subverting the horror movie trope of ‘woman is attacked in dark alley’, by making the female protagonist stronger than her attacker.

But I do find it interesting that when the female MC is given the power to fight back, she’s not just expected to protect herself, but to save everyone else as well.

And I think that’s such a tragic side to Buffy’s character, that it’s never enough for her just to protect herself, she has to save the world too, even at the expense of her own life and happiness.

[loojii]

*GIANT DEEP BREATH*

I LOVE YOU AND YORU DESIGNS FOR EVERY CHARACTER I KNOW SO MUCH LOVE HAS BEEN PUT INTO IT AND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR IT LIKE OMG MOSTLY I GOT INTRODUCED TO YINA THE FEMALE HYENA AND THE FACT IS HIW YOU MADE HER MUSUCLAR CAUSE I LOVE ANIMAL STUDIES SO MUCH AND THE FACT IS FEMALE HYENAS HAVE MORE TESTOSTRONE THEN MALE HYENAS!!

I love them so much LIKE UGHHH BUT YINA GOT ME EXCITED BECAUSE ITS A CHARACTER BASED OFF OF AN ANIMAL SO YOU DONT NEED TO REPLY BUT I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT HWO I LOVE HOW YOU MADE YINA MUSCULAR!! So I kinda wanted to ramble to someone as awesome as you about how they court you can ignore this but I got so happy ⊂((・x・))⊃

Ahem!! In spotted hyena society, adult males are ranked at the very bottom of the clan hierarchy. That means that when it comes time to find a date, the males have A LOT of work to do to impress a female. Male hyenas are generally terrified of female hyenas, and the prospect of having to approach – let alone court – a female can elicit actual shivers of fear. Here are some of the tried-and-true tactics in a male hyena’s dating arsenal

They do the same thing humans do which os the Approach avoid behavior A male hyena approaches a female (who is usually ignoring him), and once he gets close to her, he backs off a few meters as if suddenly startled. He often repeats this over and over for minutes at a time, sometimes never even getting close enough to sniff or groom the female. As Leslie described in an earlier blog post, the male seems to be thinking, "I want you...but I'm scared of you...but you're cute....but also dangerous..." which im like oh that kinda suites ruggie yuna as its compared cause yes he cannot take her out to dinner he still is awkward which leads to some common actings for hyenas to either ne flashy to their mate or be awkward and shy away and contemplate if they had the acutal chances of getting a parter

A thing is my favorite hyena courtship behavior, and I recommend it for males of all species. A hyena male lifts one foreleg and crosses it over the other while facing the female. It is ridiculously adorable, especially when she completely ignores him but I think Yina would probs stare at him if he bowed to her I’d love to see her reaction! AHEM AGAIN SORRY FOR THE RAMBLES I JUST GOT EXCITEDDDD

Have an amazing day

Yeah thats exactly why I made her musclar :D Or rather; why I just feel in my guts that Ruggie likes them big and strong (I just make every character thinking what the guys would want lol)

Yina definitly will see anything Ruggie does as totaly for realz omg flirting - that casual leg thingy is totally him telling her he wants to take her out so she'll ask again or visit his school

[you-know-i-get-itt]

so it seems that a huge portion of the fandom has reached the conclusion that renee is “fake nice”. this is probably a direct result of neil’s narration—the narrator didn’t trust her to actually be a good person, so the readers didn’t trust her either. this was compounded by the fact that renee herself said that she was “a bad person trying [her] best to be a good person.”

now, first of all, neil’s narration is obviously incredibly biased. neil had known like one genuinely nice person in the past (coach hernandez) and this person wasn’t exactly overtly nice either. renee was kind. to him, people like her couldn’t exist because they couldn’t survive (re: his life on the run with his mother), so her kindness must have been a façade for something worse. this doesn’t mean that he was right, it just reflects the depth of his character and his own perceptions of other people

secondly, “i am a bad person trying my best to be a good person” isn’t reflective of renee’s, i don’t know, good-person-ness; she’s calling herself a person who has done bad things in the past, and a person who’s trying to do better things now. her primary intention is to be kind. trying to be better is not the same as pretending to be good

also, the fact that she tries her best to help people (andrew, jean) isn’t because she wants them to think she’s a good person, it’s because she knows what it’s like to feel like you have no one in your corner, and so she wants to make sure she can stop as many people from feeling that way as she can. if wymack has become the person that could have saved him when no one did, renee has become the person that did save her

[moistvonlipwig]

🔥

kara danvers :)

ok well you and i have discussed this at length so this will not be new to you but imco (in my correct opinion) kara danvers [as portrayed by the cw's supergirl, not necessarily in other versions] is actually pretty lazy, and i would argue this is one of her most central and consistent character traits. and i don't just mean physically lazy, although i should note that per 3.17 "trinity" she canonically Hates Walking and doesn't understand why humans exercise. i mostly mean on an intellectual & moral level.

kara wants to be a reporter, but when she figures this out (because......a pretty lady told her she should do it? ig?), she does not apply to journalism school, or take online classes. instead she is handed a reporter job by her boss (who scrawled 'reporter' on her hilariously terrible resume when they met for reasons known only to her) and from then on proceeds to basically just do whatever she wants and get offended when more seasoned reporters who have gone to journalism school ask her to do basic functions of the job like Acquire Sources and Report On The Facts And Not Just Your Personal Opinions. at no point do we really see her ask her colleagues, even friendly ones like james, for advice or help; instead, advice is something that's imposed upon her by the wicked snapper, who dares to be unimpressed by her uneducated slay. throughout the show, on multiple occasions, the idea of actually Doing Her Job seems to offend her -- lena even calls her out for this explicitly in 3.02 "triggers," but she continues to display this behavior with andrea in s5 & s6. in the finale, when she is promoted to editor-in-chief in an act of blatant cronyism that truthfully should prompt the entire catco staff to quit in protest, it is not on her initiative, nor due to her efforts, nor is it because anything about the position has piqued her interest; it is, again, simply handed to her, and she just accepts.

additionally, we rarely see her express meaningful curiosity about, well, any subject, really -- we know she learned calculus young, but her interest in math and science seems nil; she is deeply naive about the u.s. justice system in s6 in a way that suggests she has never looked into it, though her own mother was a judge on krypton; and a lot of her interests seem very Basic (pizza, potstickers [? why girl.], nsync, the wizard of oz, harry potter), which to be clear is not inherently a sign of intellectual laziness or incuriosity, but it also does nothing to suggest that she is someone with a wide knowledge of food, literature, music, or film.

she also demonstrates what i would argue is a kind of moral laziness, though you could call it an offshoot of her intellectual laziness, in her general lack of real self-reflection about, like, any of her actions. although some of the other characters sometimes bring up how messed-up the DEO is (e.g. james in s1 with the gitmo comparison -- which, CRAZY line to put in your show and then never address, btw), kara herself does not question it (until the Wrong People take over, of course). her rhetoric in early s2 about daxamites suggests that she is quite comfortable believing sweeping generalizations she was taught as a child and has never really sat down to interrogate them, but while mon-el being.....pretty bad but i guess not as bad as his mom? yay? inspires her to stop being bigoted against daxamites specifically, we will later still hear her say that certain species tend to be peaceful or aggressive, etc., with no self-reflection. in 3.05 "damage," when morgan edge tries to make it seem like lena's lead dispersal device that kara activated poisoned children, kara does not take the opportunity to self-reflect on the choice she made and whether it was worth it; instead, her arc for the episode is reacting emotionally to her best buddy feeling guilty (about the thing kara also did. i cannot emphasize that part enough).

i would argue the conclusion she draws in 5.13, too, smacks of this moral laziness; she spends the episode looking for a magic shortcut to not having to feel bad anymore, and when she can't find one, she decides that actually, meh, there was never a perfect way for things to go down, so all that lying wasn't such a big deal and lena should just get over it. kara is dripping with a lot of guilt in 5A, but throughout both 5A and 5B there's very little actual, thoughtful self-reflection on what she did wrong and why, and that carries over into S6 when, after like ten episodes of lena (and also william ig) repeatedly trying to tell her not to play god, she decides in the very penultimate episode to solve her problems by eating the sun, and then when she decides against it partway through doing it, there's again very little self-reflection on her part of why the hell she thought that was a good thing to do. kara's morality, on the whole, seems largely based on (a) alex and (b) vibes, and not so much on any actual thought she's dedicated to the moral questions at hand.

and similarly to when kara is asked to Do Her Damn Job at her place of work -- when kara is challenged on her morality (like when lena challenges her on the kryptonite in s3, or on myriad in 5.17), she acts annoyed at the very idea of having to do the hard work of thinking about the morals she espouses as a superhero. and it doesn't read as someone who has thought very hard about her moral choices and is offended because she believes so strongly that she's right, because we never actually see her thinking hard about these moral choices she makes at all. it reads as someone who hasn't thought about it beyond a very cursory level and is frustrated that she's being asked to. because, again, she's just fundamentally kind of lazy.

and the thing is this might sound like i am dunking on her but actually i think this is a trait that is incredibly funny. my favorite portrayal of supergirl/kara danvers is the one from the children's cartoon dc super hero girls 2019, whose version of kara is ALSO lazy, on top of being an aggressive, quick-to-anger, rude, irresponsible, selfish brat. and she's hilarious in that show, she's one of my favorite characters. another favorite character of mine, also a children's cartoon character, is anne boonchuy from amphibia, whose entire character journey is about learning not to be physically, intellectually, or morally lazy and learning to [school principal voice] Apply Herself instead. it can be incredibly fun to watch characters be lazy and incurious and self-centered, whether they change for the better or not. but it is a bit strange that some people act like kara is this super disciplined person who loves working out and loves learning and reads widely and is curious about everything and self-reflects on her own decisions and how she affects others to the point of obsession. i wonder if part of it is 'femslash same-character syndrome,' where people slap other characters' traits from other popular femslash ships onto each other. because the character i just described is adora from she-ra. who a lot of people think is similar to kara. except no. she's not at all. as evidenced by this whole write-up ☝️ lol. they're just both blonde and for some reason (#blondephobia?) femslash fandoms wanna act like all blonde girlies are the same. but they are not. #wakeupamerica.....

[wolfboy-himbo]

Not exactly this, but similar

Ryoma Hoshi and Kirumi Tojou's impact on the story should have been a lot bigger in the English translation of the game.

A lot of people don't know this, but Ryoma and Kirumi were actually made to be a lot bigger parts of the story than they were in the American localization. In the Japanese translation of new Danganronpa v3, the second trial is actually I want to say maybe 3 hours longer than it is in the English version. And during that trial, we not only learned that Kirumi was in fact the prime minister, but that she was also a soldier. Kirumi Tojo was heavily hinted at to be a soldier in the war against despair, and due to this, along with being the prime Minister (not the de facto prime minister, the actual prime minister.) Kirumi is seen as the ultimate symbol of hope. The ultimate symbol of hope, and of which fell into despair, and killed an innocent man in such a brutal way.

Not only this, but Hoshi actually ended up being a symbol of hope. In the Japanese translation, right before he is killed, he realizes that he has something to live for, and tells Tojo to stop. He says "wait-", but Tojo who is moving on autopilot, still kills him anyway. A soldier doing what she was trained to do, emotionless and robotic.

The two of them are supposed to be foils, the greatest hope falling into despair, and a man so deep in despair finally seeing hope. Kirumi Tojo is an antagonist, she is written to be an antagonist in the Japanese translation of the game, and quite literally calls Shuichi a little bitch boy or something along the lines. SHE'S SO PLOT IMPORTANT.

They're even mentioned directly by name during the final trial in the Japanese version of the game. They are hugely important, they make up quite a bit of the plot, they help tie to the fact that Danganronpa V3 was not a simulation, Kirumi Tojo is mentioned outside of V3 by name as prime minister Tojo in Danganronpa Togami. Kirumi is based on a real life prime minister Tojo, who was a terrible person from what I remember.

They're also heavily hinted at to be very emotionally connected to each other, which makes what drew me did to real my even worse but I digress.

And this could also get me into why Angie had her villain arc, because it is Canon that Angie and Kirumi had something going on, Angie literally calls Tojo my rose in Japanese translation but that's just my Tonaga brainrot talking again. Also it's very heavily hinted at the Japanese version that Kirumi knew Tsumugi was The Mastermind...

Anyway, yeah, Justice for my two favorite characters oops. Sorry I have this doesn't make any sense, I'm quite literally rambling. I love them so much, they are like an integral part of my personality.

hey, use this

[celli-ohs]

I Can't, I Have Rehearsal

pairing: socially awkward!park sunghoon x fem!reader

genre: high school au; crack, comedy, fluff

synopsis: What happens when you get seated right next to the most handsome boy in your entire grade? Well you thought it'd be a great excuse to get to know him better, but the guy won't even talk to you! After a mishap in the science lab, you come to find out that Park Sunghoon, the cold-hearted prince of EN High, isn't in fact rude, he's just afraid of women.

before you read: character profiles

warnings: language, physical violence in the forms of hitting and stomping, mentions of pushing someone in front of a bus, sunoo getting revenge on riki

word count: 3.7k

taglist (open): @ancnymcnzjy , @frankenstein852 @tasnemluvs

note: part 1 of my and scene! series, loosely based off en-drama.

Log 5: Monday - May 13th, 2024

“So why do you need to beat up Riki again?”

Sunoo rolls his eyes for the umpteenth time that morning. “Because I have to scare that damn Belift guy off.” 

Jaeyun blinks. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain why you need to beat up Riki.” 

“We’re not actually beating me up. He’s just gonna pretend.” Riki adds. “We’re gonna fake a fight and make it seem like Sunoo’s the leader of a gang. That way the recruiter gets scared and Sunoo never has to see him again.” 

“And who thought of this?” Sunghoon asks, skeptical.

“Me, duh!” Riki stands tall and proud as he says this, only to be slapped up the head.

“Ow! What the fuck was that for?” Riki growls. “For creating the most dumbfuck shit plan I’ve ever heard.” Jongseong sighs.

“You’ll be regretting that when my plan works and I save Sunoo.” Riki grumbles to himself. “Okay stop,” Sunoo swats Jongseong away. “Riki and I agreed to do this, we’ll be fine, Jongseong.”

“Anything he’s involved in already has me worried.” Jongseong throws a finger towards the youngest. “Hey! It’ll be fine, Riki A and C are gonna be there too, they’re gonna be Sunoo’s lackeys.” Riki rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, just don’t get caught up in anything, Jungwon and I have to go to election rehearsal after school today and I’m not gonna leave if something goes wrong.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me, I still have to write my speech.” Jungwon covers his face in shame.

Though he planned to drop out, Jungwon and everyone else soon found out that dropping out wasn’t allowed once you were nominated, as there was only one other person running for president, some second year named Byun Euijoo.

So now Jungwon was forced to actually run, though he showed absolutely no enthusiasm.

“You don’t even care though, don’t you want to lose?” Heeseung brings up. Jungwon nods as they all walk down the street. “Yeah but I also don’t want to go up there and make a fool of myself.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not actually gonna fight, Konon said we could borrow her makeup, we’ll make some fake bruises.” Riki assures the other boy.

“Did she actually say that or did you just steal her makeup without her knowing?” Sunghoon questions, though he already knew the answer. 

“Does it matter? What matters is we save our friend. Which none of you have done anything by the way, only me!” Riki marches forward, leading the seven inside the school building this morning.

Sunghoon slows down and grabs Sunoo’s arm. “Why are you going along with this? You could just call the police, you know?” 

“Oh I already did, I have a restraining order on that guy,” Sunoo agrees as they walk to Sunoo’s classroom. “But this is my revenge on Riki for his stupid April Fool’s prank. I told him to help me or I’ll tell Konon about the time he slept over at my house and he cried that night because he couldn’t sleep without her or Misora.” He grumbles. 

(Sunoo found out that Riki’s prank for him was making him audition for the newest “act” the theater club was performing: Spongebob Squarepants The Musical. Poor Sunoo had shown up with bright yellow face paint and suspenders while everyone else was auditioning for Les Miserables.)

Sunghoon shrugs it off and walks down the hall to his classroom. 

“Hi Sunghoon!” A random girl smiles and waves as he passes her. “Hi,” He gives her a small smile back, and pretends to not notice her squeal of excitement to her friends. 

Just last week it’d come to his attention that Sunghoon was in fact not hated in his entire school, but actually quite popular.

Well in reality, his friends told him.

“You were so scared of girls you never noticed more than half of them are in love with you,” Jaeyun laughs. “Yeah, and now that you can talk to them without running away, we thought we’d tell you.” Sunoo adds.

While he was initially a bit upset his friends would withhold such information from him, Sunghoon’s anger soon morphed into hope: does that mean you are also in love with him? That thought brought butterflies to his stomach immediately.

As he enters his classroom, he’s ambushed by a few female classmates.

“Good morning Sunghoon! I got these cookies for you-” 

“Yeah well I bought you some juice, and I wrote you this letter-”

“Move aside! Hi Sunghoon! I hope you like this muffin, I made it myself-”

“Ahem.” 

Someone behind him clears their throat, and he spins around. 

“Excuse me, you’re blocking the door,” You glare right past him and towards the other girls. Everyone moves out of the way, and you walk towards your cubby. “Excuse me,” Sunghoon mumbles, pushing the girls to the side to follow you.

“Hey,” He beams at you, opening his cubby to your left. Before you can greet him, a pile of letters and presents fall out. “Oh shit,” He scrambles to pick them up, stuffing them back in. 

You watch him as he struggles, giggling a little. “Need help?” You ask as you close the door to your cubby. “Nope! No, I’m good!” He tries to play it cool, finally shutting his door and leaning against it awkwardly. 

“Okay,” You eye him up and down before smirking and leaving for your desk. Sunghoon follows you like a puppy.

As you get your supplies out for the day, Sunghoon sits and watches patiently. Recently, he’s noticed something was off with you. You seem to be keeping your distance more often than not, and it’s more noticeable when around others. 

At first Sunghoon thought it was just his imagination, but then he started to notice the weird looks your friends would give you whenever he joined in the conversation.

The only time he felt like you were yourself was whenever you two had a calligraphy club together, away from the crowds. Your eyes seemed to sparkle whenever you two were alone. It didn’t help that he now had a massive crush on you, seeing you shine like that.

“So!” Sunghoon clears his throat. “How was your weekend? Do anything fun?” He tries his best to create small talk, hoping to remove the awkward air.

“Oh yeah,” You nod, glancing at him. “My family and I visited my grandmother, I’ll have to show you the-”

“Hey Sunghoon!” Another classmate calls from across the room. Sunghoon can’t remember her name, but she grins at him like they’ve known each other their whole lives. “Did you have a good weekend? I was wondering if you were free after school today, we could go to a cafe? Jaeyun and Yuri are coming too.”

The girl gestures to his best friend and another girl conversing by their desks. With the way this girl smiles, Sunghoon has a feeling her intentions aren’t just to go eat pastries after class. And using his best friend as bait wasn’t going to bite either. 

“I have club today, maybe another time.” He tries to apologize. The girl pouts. “What about after? I can wait-”

“No thanks, like I said, maybe later.” He waves her off, turning back to you, feeling embarrassed. Just weeks ago he would have cried if he knew a girl was even staring at him, now he was busy rejecting the hoards who got in his way. 

You on the other hand, don’t look happy at all, facing the book on your desk and shoulders tense. “Sorry, what were you saying-”

The bell suddenly rings, and everyone scrambles back into their seats as Ms. Hong enters the class to start homeroom.

“It’s nothing.” You mumble, sighing as your eyes dull. You don’t even look in Sunghoon’s direction for the rest of the day.

Sunghoon frowns as he stirs his spoon around his soup, moping.

“If you’re not gonna eat your rice, can I have it?” Heeseung asks with a full mouth as he points to the pile of untouched rice on Sunghoon’s tray. Silently, he slides it over to the senior, who looks delighted to have a second portion.

“Where is everyone?” Sunghoon finally asks, realizing 15 minutes had passed and the only people sitting at their table were him and Heeseung. 

“Huh? Oh, Jongseong is helping Jungwon write his speech in the library I think. Riki and Sunoo said they’re practicing their fake fight in the small gym with the other Rikis. I don’t know where Jaeyun is though, I thought you’d know.” Heeseung fills him in.

Sunghoon’s frown deepens. Heeseung suddenly clears his throat, taking big gulps of his milk.

“I don’t mean to pry, but are you okay? You’ve been kind of killing my appetite with your weird mood.” Heeseung asks. Sunghoon eyes the empty tray of food, as well as Sunghoon’s previously full tray dwindling down to zero with every bite the senior took. Sunghoon was pretty sure Heeseung was eating just fine.

But when he looked up at Heeseung, for some odd reason his mouth began to speak faster than his brain could comprehend.

“I think the girl I like hates me.” Sunghoon confesses.

Heeseung blinks, shocked. “Why do you think that? I thought Y/n was in love with you.” 

The sudden mention of your name has Sunghoon’s stomach doing a flip. He sits up straight, looking around to see if anyone had overheard them. “D-Don’t say that out loud!” He shushes the other boy.

“What? That you like Y/n-” One glare and Heeseung shuts up. 

Sunghoon sighs, rubbing his face, now stressed out. “Sorry.” Heeseung mutters. “But can I say something? I know we aren’t close or anything,” 

He peaks through his fingers, making eye contact with Heeseung’s big brown eyes. He can feel the sincerity through his gaze.

So he sits up again and nods, wondering what advice someone like Heeseung could ever give him.

Heeseung fiddles with his spoon, looking down at his tray. “I think you should try being more confident. You’ve got everything I’ve always wanted: you’re good-looking, humble, well-liked by everyone.”

“And I know you’ve been working hard on your social anxiety, but maybe you can show your newfound confidence by confessing your feelings to her. Why let yourself get in the way? You’ve gotten so far now, why not go a little further?”

Heeseung’s words click inside Sunghoon’s head. It’s true, he’s at an all-time high for the first time in his 17 years of living. He doesn’t know if he would have ever been able to conquer his fears without you. 

Sunghoon has always sabotaged himself, continuously mentally feeding himself the worst case scenarios, but you showed him how to break those walls down. You’ve been happier than himself at his growth.

Even if it killed him, he needed to tell you.

Sunghoon suddenly stands up from his seat, scrambling out the table. 

“Where are you going?!” Heeseung asks worriedly. But instead of answering, Sunghoon smiles fondly at his friend, running off. “Thanks Heeseung!” He shouts.

“Does this mean I can have the rest of your food?!” Heeseung calls out after him, only to get no answer.

And that’s how Sunghoon found himself running through the entire school, searching for you. 

He’s gasping for air as he checks the time on his watch. He had 30 more minutes before lunch ended, yet you were nowhere to be found.

While he knew EN-High was a giant school, with many twists and turns in the hallways, he also knew you wouldn’t just drop face off the earth in the middle of the school day.

Winded, he lands in an empty hall, leaning against the wall as he catches his breath. Looking around, Sunghoon realizes he’s right by the old library, where you two held calligraphy club. There’s no way, right? He thinks as he quietly enters.

The tables are empty, the room feels stiff, as if no one was there but him. It reminds him of the day he discovered it, where you two had your first real conversation. 

Silently Sunghoon walks around, his hopes of finding you falling. Though he knew he could just wait until later today, he felt as if he couldn’t keep this information to himself, and he swore to himself that he’d find the courage to confess-

Sunghoon stops in his step, head whipping around. He swore he heard a whisper. He stills, hoping to hear it again.

"...swhswhshwshwshwsh..."

There it was again! A whisper! Slowly Sunghoon makes his way down the aisles of books, getting closer and closer to the noise.

“-just say something. What’s the worst that can happen?” Sunghoon recognizes that voice, he peeks through a bookcase, and suddenly he connects the dots.

“I can’t, I couldn’t bear risking our friendship,” You sigh, looking distraught as you talk to your best friend Kai. The both of you are speaking low. Sunghoon tiptoes closer.

“Well sooner or later you’re going to have to say something,” Kai crosses his arms. You shake your head. “How can I?” You ask.

“Well you like him right? Don’t you think he deserves to know?”

Hold up. You like someone?! 

The pep talk Heeseung had given Sunghoon earlier begins to turn into slush as he starts to worry. Who could you possibly have a crush on? He hoped it was him of course, but he could never be so sure-

“Yeah,” You hum. “But you know Taehyun’s-”

“Ignore it, just tell him.” Kai opposes, just as Sunghoon’s heart shatters into a million pieces. He was no longer listening to the conversation.

Taehyun was one of your best friends. Someone you’ve known for years and have done everything with. To top it off, you’ve been helping him more frequently for the elections, spending more time together. It made sense why you’d like him. 

But no matter the truth, hearing it didn’t hurt any less, and Sunghoon had to refrain from bolting out of there and causing a scene. 

Except he does. Because of his distress, he doesn’t realize he’s bumped into the bookshelf behind him, causing one of the novels to fall and land loudly on the ground.

The slam of the book hitting the carpet is loud inside the silent library. You and Kai have stopped your conversation, and Sunghoon is regretting that he hadn’t run out when he first thought of it.

Swiftly, you round the aisle, finding Sunghoon looking at you with wide eyes full of terror. “Sunghoon?!” You gasp, looking just as horrified.

Out of habit, he spins around, facing away from you as he mentally prays you don’t see him if he stands still.

“Sunghoon, I can still see you, you know?” You call him out. Fearing for his life, as well as trying to tame a broken heart, he rigidly turns back around to you. “Hi. Fancy seeing you here,” he waves like a robot.

Kai tries to hide a giggle, covering his mouth. “I’m gonna go, see you later Y/n,” He nudges past you, giving you a playful wink as he leaves. 

You sigh, hiding your face as you mutter something to yourself.

“So I’m guessing you heard.” You finally say. Sunghoon feels his stomach drop as he nods.

Your cheeks are bright red, you can’t look at him. “I’m sor-

“No.” Sunghoon interrupts. You’re shocked, and so is he, but no matter what happens, he was going to tell you his feelings, even if you rejected him. 

“I mean- Uh, Can I say something first?” He stumbles over his words, realizing he probably came off too strong. You nod slowly, brows furrowed. 

Taking a deep breath, Sunghoon bites the inside of his gum. 

“Y/n, do you remember the first time we had calligraphy club together? When we were walking home that day, that was the first time I’ve ever really looked at a girl and not felt scared. You smiled at me.” Sunghoon begins sloppily. 

“I’m not really good at speaking, I’m better at writing, but I want to tell you how much you've helped me these past few months. I don’t even think I’d be able to talk to you right now if you hadn’t encouraged me. I’m really grateful for you.”

“I don’t know when I started to feel this way, but I do know one thing, I like you. More than a friend.” Sunghoon gulps as you gasp quietly. 

“I like you so much, if it meant I’d have to sacrifice everything I’ve worked hard for to disappear just to be with you, I would do it. If I have to embarrass myself in front of our class again, I will. Heck, I’ll even fight Taehyun- I mean I know you have a crush on him and that he’s the captain of the boxing club, but I just like you so much I don’t mind getting my ass kicked for you.” He begins to ramble, not noticing your confusion.

“Wait,” You hold a hand up to stop him. “Say that last part again.” 

Sunghoon freezes. “I like you so much I would push Jongseong in front of a bus if you told me to?”

“What? No! Before that!” You look at him bewildered.

“I’ll fight Taehyun for you because you like him?” He repeats and you suddenly slap your hand on your forehead. 

“Sunghoon,” You grumble, approaching him. Even when you’re glaring up at him, you make his heart race. “I don’t like Taehyun.”

Sunghoon blanks.

“Huh?”

You sigh, again, and grimace. “I don’t like Taehyun. I like you, idiot.”

Now he’s really confused. 

“But you and Kai were-” 

“You obviously heard wrong. I thought you heard the whole thing, which is why I was freaking out because Kai was trying to convince me to confess to you.” You poke his chest with your index finger, looking away shyly. 

“Him and Taehyun have been pushing me to say something for weeks.” You admit. “I’ve just been stalling since elections are so close.” 

Wait. So you like him back?!!

Sunghoon is malfunctioning as you wait for him to speak. 

“Hold on!” He suddenly yells, grabbing you by the shoulders. “Then why have you been ignoring me these past two weeks? You barely even talk to me!” He points out.

You blush again, scratching your head. “I-I wasn’t doing it on purpose,” You mumble. 

“It’s just every time we try to talk, someone interrupts. It’s been getting annoying. Especially the other girls-” You suddenly stop talking, glaring at yourself. Sunghoon cracks.

“You’re jealous? That I’m getting attention from other girls? Oh this is gold, I never took you as the possessive type.” He chuckles. “No I’m not! Stop laughing!” You argue, though your red face proves you wrong. 

As you try to make up some other reason why, Sunghoon can only smile. This is the you he likes, one so full of life and passion. You stop talking, words trailing off as you realize Sunghoon’s been watching you with a lovesick smile.

“D-Don’t look at me like that.” You turn away, but Sunghoon stops you, engulfing you in a hug. He feels you reciprocate, squeezing him tightly.

He can feel how fast your heart is beating. He wonders if you can feel his.

“Two months ago you would have rather eaten a bucket of bugs instead of hug me.” You mutter into his chest after a long silence.

“Way to ruin the mood.” He groans, cringing at his own past self (and how right you are). You two laugh, and as the bell rings, you both walk back to class together. 

“Does this mean we’re dating now?” Sunghoon asks you, ears pink. “I would hope so.” You joke. 

“Good, I’m telling everyone you’re my girlfriend now.” He grins to himself. “Well, as your girlfriend, I’d like it if you held my hand.” You tease.

“And as your boyfriend, I’d like for you to give me a minute, my palms are sweaty,” He wipes his hands on his pants as you laugh, before taking your hand in his.

The two of you don’t say anything more as you walk down the hall towards your shared classroom. Hands swaying together, Sunghoon only has one thing on his mind.

You two were a perfect match.

Bonus:

“Can you believe I’m the first person in my friend group to get a girlfriend?” 

You look at your boyfriend, astonished. “Seriously? I swear I thought at least Jongseong had a girlfriend,” Sunghoon shrugs as you two walk home together.

It’s only been a few hours since he’s become your boyfriend but he couldn’t be happier. He loved holding your hand, it fits so snugly into his own. Knowing that you were all his, and he was all yours now was the best feeling in the world. 

He hadn’t shut up about it since, and now the entire student body of EN-High knew you two were a couple. 

(Sunghoon marched you two up to the front of the class and announced to everyone you were dating. He claims he did this so that the other girls wouldn’t approach him so much anymore so you wouldn’t have to be jealous, but a part of you suspects he just wanted to brag. Either way, you were embarrassed.)

“Hey,” You suddenly slow down. “What’s up?” He asks, looking at you concerned. You’re not paying attention to him, looking forward. “Uh, isn’t that Riki and Sunoo?” You point.

Sunghoon follows your view, and sure enough he finds himself with a front view of Sunoo beating the shit out of Riki. 

“Y-You-Agk! You said you were going to pretend!” Riki whines as he lays on the street, shielding himself as Sunoo stomps on him.

“Gotta make it look believable!” Sunoo grins. Behind him, Riki C is recording while Riki A laughs.

“Should we stop them?” You ask, looking concerned. Sunghoon contemplates the idea, but in the end shakes his head. 

“Nah, they’ve got it covered.” He steers you away, assuring you his friend will make it out healthy and alive. 

“Come on, don't get distracted, we still have our first date to go on.”

Log 4: Monday - April 1st, 2024

I Can't, I Have Rehearsal masterlist | and scene! series masterlist | kpop masterlist

author's note: ahhhhh!!! finally finished with sunghoon's story! what did y'all think? i loved writing for him lol he's such a silly goofy guy stuck in a hot body. this entire plot was created based off that one scene in en-drama where he's like "girls never talk to me since I was young" lmaoo anyways thank you so much for reading and supporting! look forward to mr park jongseong's series next!!

[xia0mi-c0m]

The proshipping problem in the twst fandom | A rant.

Very obvious trigger warning for things normal for proshippers like p3dophilia, incest, etc.

Though I do know proshippers will be in every single fandom, it's getting especially worse in the twst fandom, specifically the Japanese side of the fandom (with some discussions about some in the English side too).

Before any proshippers come into the comment section: Proshipping is NOT a healthy coping mechanism. If your therapist recommended it, they should be fired.

This post is not to dehumanize and degrade underage proshippers as they have been obviously groomed into believing that it was okay to ship this sort of stuff.

The actual elephant in the room we WILL be shunning is the adult proshippers who actively encourage children (either actually or under law) to proship.

Before getting fully deep in this subject, I would like to admit something that I've talked about before.

I was a proshipper when I was younger than what I am now. This was because, not getting into too much detail, I was groomed by a man online to the point that i thought it was okay.

Not only was I a proshipper but I was also a darkshipper, problematic comshipper, and also supported the things present in Dead Dove fanfics.

In fact, I had an account on some sort of forum page with other proshippers and I shared my nasty ships there. I believed it was a good way of desensitizing myself to my trauma that fucked me up heavily, but it wasn't and it was making me relive the same trauma which in return, made it worse.

This is why I say that I do not want anyone to shun underage proshippers, they were groomed into it half of the time.

Now that I'm 18 (About to turn 19 on February 14th), I finally understand that proshipping is an unhealthy way of approaching your trauma and pain.

It may feel like it does something, but it really doesn't. And I want to reassure you that you're not alone in your pain, please, find other ways to cope and process what has happened to you that doesn't include glorifying very nasty things.

Now with that out the way, I would like to say what the title says.

Proshippers in the twst fandom has sadly grown overtime, but my niece made a very good point; stating that since twst does have a slightly dark story, that people with dark and nasty thoughts and ideas will be attracted to it, much like a moth to a flame that damages it's already fragile body.

There have been adults in the twst proshipper area, and I think they're the main cause of fueling minors in the fandom to do the same thing. Maybe with or without knowing the eventual psychological consequences.

The adults who are aware sadly lure and prey on the gullible underage individuals of the fandom, and though that might seem like an overexaggeration; it sadly is true.

I am Japanese, well, half-Japanese. But even then, due to that fact, I'm more prevalent in the Japanese fandom than the English fandom though I am trying to balance out both.

Since I am more present in the Japanese side of the fandom than I am with the English side (because I'm basically like an absent dad that went off to get the milk and never came back until years), I have seen a lot of shit in here and it's very scary even to this day.

Though the English side of the fandom is as equally bad, the Japanese side is worse with the whole l0li and sh0ta thing. Sadly I have seen English twst accounts do those things too.

The most popular proshipper you may know is Ugigi or however the fuck you spell her name, whether one likes to admit it or not, her selfships were very much proshipping. This is mainly due to how her OC could've been her actual age which was in her 20s if I'm remembering correctly.

But let's say the OC wasn't, it would still be problematic (but not in the proship way) since the characters she drew NSFW of were mainly the minors (again, if I remember correctly). If her OC was her actual age then she would be a proshipper.

However, watever the age of the OC she always drew, it's obvious that it was still leaning more on proshipping because that indicates that she's attracted to the characters despite knowing they're minors (and not even aging them up by the way).

So, very nasty, I was thinking of putting her In the TWs 😭

All jokes aside, proshipping is disgusting.

In fact, must I bring up any other thing?

LEECHCEST.

WHAT.

Well, you heard that right, people ship Floyd and Jade. Seriously, what is wrong with you guys. And I think I know why this ship is so popular in the Japanese fandom; The fact incest is not necessarily illegal in Japan in a way.

Yeah. You heard me correctly. I'm horrified and scarred for life <3

"Surely there isn't anymore I shall talk about, right? Right?? RIGHT?!?" I exclaim, not expecting anything else to come from the sky and hit me.

Then boom..

SHROUDCEST.

OH FUCK NOT AGAIN.

So, apparently people ship a dead robotic little boy with his big brother.. yeah... FNAF fandom called, they're telling you not to steal their bit much like how Deejus is trying to tell Johnny RaZeR not to steal his "YOUTUBEEE" outro bit that.. he also stole.

It can't get any worse than this, right? This is definitely the last tier of the iceberg, surely? Perhaps??-

KINGSCHOLARCEST.

Okay, now we're pushing it, this bit is getting old but whatever.

Kingscholarcest can refer to three (disgusting) "ships": A nasty ship of Cheka x Leona, a nasty ship of Falena x Leona, or a nasty ship of Falena x Leona x Cheka.

Sweet home Alabama all around but more extreme..

I think we all know why these ships are not okay and are disgusting (ESPECIALLY CHEKA X LEONA SINCE CHEKA IS A GOO GOO GA GA BABY.)

Finally.. It's over.. I can go back to ranting!-

FELLOW X GIDEL.

JESUS CHRIST STOP.

This madness needs to stop because if not I'm going to pull my fucking hair out!-

LILMAL, SILVER X LILIA, S-

OKAY STOP IT RIGHT HERE,, THE BIT IS OLD NOW.

So, I think you get my point.

Borderline incestuous ships, the drake specialty, and straight up sweet home right to Alabama.

Now, let's put aside the jokes and get serious again.

With all the things I have stated, you can definitely see the absolute horror of some parts of the fandom.

There's accounts that are VERY hypocritical, saying "P3dos DNI" when they are a sh0ta/l0licon. This is the literal definition of hypocrisy at it's finest.

There are mfs who have unironically said that Cheka was hot and romantically cute.. HE'S 7 YEARS OLD. OR MAYBE YOUNGER. I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER BUT I DO KNOW HE IS A CHILD.

I have said this MANY times before and I'll say it again; if that characters looks like a child, THEY ARE A CHILD.

Even if you age up characters like Ortho, Cheka, etc. You are still self-reporting that you're attracted to a literal child.

Fiction DOES affect reality no matter if you try to plug your mickey mouse ears with your fingers (or paws, I don't know) to gaslight yourself into believing it doesn't truly affect it.

In fact, there have been cases where people have been arrested for having l0li/sh0ta on their devices, though, sadly, its not a long sentence despite how it should be lifelong.

But even without the lifelong sentence, the law still considers l0li/sh0ta CSAM. (I hate calling it CP now since that implies that kids can do that in their own will.)

A grown adult proshipper even told me when I criticized Kanna from dragon maid for being a little girl the author sexualizes to no end all because I said that she doesn't have a listed age that I was being "contradicting" and I think this proves that.. proshippers DON'T know what contradictions ACTUALLY are because they've gaslit so much into believing this disgusting behavior is normal and okay to do.

And don't get me started on Dead Dove cai, chai, etc. bots and fanfics.

Dead Dove, proshipping, problematic comshipping, darkshipping, doveshipping, etc. doesn't give out awareness to the horrors of such depraved acts.

Another very nasty thing I've seen in the TWST fandom is people shipping the staff with the students, mainly Crewel with Deuce.

Teacher x Student is disgusting no matter what. Teachers are always more grown than the students, so yeah, teachers aren't the anime boy or girl of your dreams or something, he or she's going to be old and otherwise not "attractive" and young.

The training to become a teacher and any profession in fact will take years, which means you'll grow and turn old.

I understand many say "Well, it's just fiction!" but these people seem to forget that young individuals, especially young girls, can see these teacher x student fiction and will probably, in the worst case scenario, get the wrong impression from it, ESPECIALLY if the media glamorizes and romanticize it, and sadly become a victim.

Crewel, If I'm not wrong, is 31 meanwhile Deuce and the other first years that [Crewel] mainly gets shipped with are 16 years old.

This is not only a disgusting, vomit-inducing age gap but huge maturity gap whether one likes to admit so or not.

Yanderes especially in the twst fandom get romanticized, and people seem to forget the reality of the abuse that yanderes put their "love interest(s)" through.

And I think this is why fandoms (not just twst) should stop romanticizing yanderes and student x teacher, and vice versa.

Besides, these two tropes are grooming even if the victim is not a minor, adults and the elderly alike can also be groomed especially if they're gullible and need to depend on someone (for either a disability or something).

People will probably invalidate my point but I don't budge from what I said.

Sorry if this posts looks rushed and/or maybe even incoherent to some, I just wanted to get this off my chest and stuff.

I should start ranting more, I like yapping so yeah, expect more whenever I'm bored :3

Anyways, BAIIII!!

YOUTUBEEEEEE flies away into the void to the right

[vhstown]

malala windsor ★ general headcanons

a/n: i love this girl to death you don't even know man... thank you to my friend sadi for talking to me about this character at less than ideal hours 🙏 i hope you like these! a little shorter than my other ones but i don't have much to go off okay...

When she originally gets her powers she's at the mosque for Friday prayers and her hands get stuck to the carpet and she's just stuck in prostration. Everyone sheds a tear from how dedicated she is to her religion but really and truly she's praying the skin of her hands isn't ripped off 😭😭😭 The whole mosque is empty and my girl is STILL there.

Definitely the talk of the town for a while. Loved and hated by Muslim aunties alike. There's a chunk of the carpet missing that's in the shape of her hands. Everyone just knows thats her spot.

Apparently her last name is supposed to represent the House of Windsor... I don't really have anything to add except for the fact that I think it's really funny. I feel like she actually does have a Desi or Muslim last name but really plays into the "Bri'ish" joke at Spider Society except they take her 100% seriously and now she's stuck with the Windsor on her spider ID (and she cringes bad whenever she sees it.)

Hijabi activewear for life. Wears it everywhere for practicality and also the crazy UK heatwaves.

TfL warrior. She can quite literally swing to places when she becomes Spider-Woman but she can't give up her aesthetic tube girlie lifestyle. Has her book and headphones and everything and endures the horrible ear pop on older lines with a straight face. She's kind of serving but the restaurant is empty cause it's London and nobody really cares. (Also I feel like London would be really annoying to swing through cause everything is shaped so differently and the train is probably faster..)

Loves sports. Totally feels embarrassed and tries to act uninterested but is a beast on the court. Plays every single sport you could think of but lover of basketball and badminton (she is not a coconut when it comes to badminton like me OKAY!)

Cannot cook to save her life (she's trying okay... I AM NOT PROJEC)

Has so many frankensteined hijabs in her closet from making suits. Feels like a total genius when she figures it out and geeks out about it to other spiders at HQ even if they've heard it like a billion times.

I think she knows a woman who's a lot like Jessica Drew in her universe so she's more friendly with Jess than anyone else would be. They totally like to gossip over coffee and tea and the bajillion strange UK biscuit variations in the break room (she DESPISES the 2099 cafeteria food).

Her universe's Uncle Ben is an electrician and he sometimes drags her around to his electrician jobs. She's there begrudgingly but definitely has a eureka moment when she remembers something niche and engineery he explained to her while working at someone's house when she's on a sneaky little mission.

Humanities babe. I know all the spiders are STEM people but I like to think she's into humanities and absolutely just free balls all the tech stuff and actually gets pretty good at it. Maybe explodes a few things. I think she's one of those people in her class that LOVE to debate. An absolute menace in history and politics.

She's from East London. No elaboration needed.

That's about it for now! BIG UP MY DESI GIRLS!!!!!!!! YEAHHHHHHH

thank you for reading! check out my atsv masterlist here!

[lune-moon-nuit]

I completely, 100% agree with the theory that the cliff scene from Season 1 is being utilized in Season 5. Even before finishing the series, when I saw that scene for the very first time, I truly paused, perplexed: how could a 12-year-old boy be so desperate that he would actually end up jumping off a cliff? And I was genuinely astonished to see that the general audience either forgot about this scene entirely (in the worst cases) or simply summed it up as, "He sacrificed himself for his friend; he’s so heroic."

Sure, from that perspective, it’s heroic... but when you look at the bigger picture, you see a 12-year-old child who has clearly been bullied his entire life, whose best friend has disappeared, whose lifeless body was found and even had a funeral. Despite the faint hope offered by the mysterious girl with supernatural powers, whom he met the day after his best friend’s disappearance, she ran away, and he couldn’t find her again. This crushed any remaining hope of finding his friend alive. At this moment, the most likely explanation for Will’s "death" was either a homophobic hate crime or suicide, given that Will was bullied for being—or appearing to be—gay. This mindset was normalized and widespread, even among Mike’s conservative parents.

To top it all off, the bullies who had humiliated and hurt him and his friends continued to insult Will (missing and presumed dead) with homophobic slurs and threatened to harm Dustin by aggravating his disability to force Mike off the cliff. Mike, at this point, literally believed he was worth less than Dustin’s baby teeth. Let that sink in. Viewed this way, it changes everything, doesn’t it? It becomes much less heroic, doesn’t it?

And let’s not forget that the fall was deadly—there was no question about it. The water at the base of that cliff was where Will’s body was found. Mike had no idea that El would be there to save him. He deliberately jumped off the cliff, fully aware of the outcome. He heard the second bully realizing it was going too far and trying to reason with Troy. He heard Dustin pleading with him not to jump. Even the existence of his friends and family wasn’t enough to activate his survival instinct. He jumped off a cliff at 12 years old, knowing full well he wouldn’t survive. That act wasn’t heroic; it was suicidal.

This scene is, in truth, evidence that Mike has been depressed and suicidal since Season 1—that losing hope of finding Will alive caused him to lose his will to live. Numerous analyses have already done an excellent job explaining why Mike’s character in Seasons 1 and 2 feels so "different" in Seasons 3 and 4, so I won’t delve into that here. But it’s clear that puberty, combined with the increasingly concrete realization of what he feels for Will as a teenager in rural 1980s America, and his overwhelming guilt toward El—whom he cherishes but feels responsible for—have amplified his depression.

He feels obligated to love El as she wishes to be loved because she sacrificed herself to save his life, but he knows he has failed to love her the way he "should," even though he deeply cares for her. While Will being alive has given him one less reason to jump off a cliff, it hasn’t changed the fact that he places no value on his own life. This is evident in how recklessly he endangers himself to protect the people he loves (fighting the Mind Flayer, standing up to Billy, exposing himself to gunfire in Season 4 during the shootout at the house to clear the way for others).

I also won’t dive into Mike’s low self-esteem and insecurities, as these have been repeatedly pointed out and are particularly clear in his own words during the van scene (before Will reassures him). But all this is to say: this scene would be perfect to use in Season 5—not only as a memory Vecna could exploit against him but also as a way to remind the audience of this moment. It would finally highlight all the pain Mike has been carrying silently and hiding from everyone in the series and the audience by internalizing all his emotions.

We need to see Mike undergo a catharsis—potentially triggered by Vecna—to show the depths of his suffering and the factors fueling his depression: his love for Will, his internalized homophobia, his fear of losing Will, his fear of losing El, his fear of losing his family’s love, his self-hatred, his guilt for hurting both El and Will, and his sense of never being good enough despite trying so hard to help those he loves while being completely lost himself.

It’s time for the audience to finally see things from Mike’s perspective and realize just how much he’s been bottling up, only for the pressure to make everything crack. Mike needs that breaking point, the moment where he finally lets it all out, so he can begin to heal and move forward. So he can find himself. So the audience can rediscover him. So he can rediscover happiness—and love, too.

(2/3) Stranger Things/Labyrinth Theory: MC Escher's Relativity Prediction (LONG)

PART TWO IS REAL?! (sorry for the wait, i got busy). As I was saying in part one, I think there's a chance that the climax of Mike's arc in Stranger Things will parallel Sarah's from the movie Labyrinth.

In the movie Labyrinth, Sarah had exactly thirteen hours to rescue her baby brother Toby after accidentally wishing for him to be taken away. In the climax of the movie, she finally spots him crawling up (and down) a trippy ass staircase.

As one of Sarah's last challenges within the Labyrinth, she runs throughout this maze trying to catch up to her little brother. The laws of gravity and physics do not apply here. At one moment, little Toby might be crawling across the ceiling, in the next he might be catching a crystal bouncing up a flight of steps.- fandom wiki

In Labyrinth, the setting of the “endless stairs” scene is based on M.C Escher’s ‘Relativity’.

Which is foreshadowed earlier in the movie, by a poster hanging on Sarah’s bedroom wall:

And as you know from my earlier post, I think this MC Escher poster hanging in Mike's room, was a reference to Sarah's from Labyrinth.

Because it could potentially foreshadow a Snowball/GoblinBall parallel going down in season 5. (read theory: here)

I ended part one on a cliffhanger (cue uncontrollable laughter), by hinting that Sarah's "Relativity" poster might ALSO relate to a potential s5 Mike scene (the cliff). Because, based off of pure unadulterated vibes, the "endless staircase scene" from Labyrinth seemed like the perfect opportunity to visually parallel Mike's Cliff Jump to Sarah's Staircase Jump...

AND GUESS WHAT, THE VIBES WHERE PROPHETIC OR SOME SHIT, BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT THAT A POSTER OF RELATIVITY IS ALSO HANGING IN MIKE'S ROOM?!😱WHICH MAKES THIS THEORY (SLIGHTLY) LESS RANDOM?!

(thank you to @strangerchicka for telling me this, because when i originally paused to screenshot Mike's room, he was covering it LMAOOO)

Not only that, but it's hung directly underneath the notorious One Way Sign pointing directly into Mike's closet. The one way sign isn’t just pointing into his closet, though, it's also pointing at a mirror. Maybe this is because the upside-down is a mirrored version of the other side? In any case, its Suspicious as hell. So, hear me out:

What if the scene of Mike jumping off the cliff comes full circle in s5.

because it’s the only way (?)

Which leads me back to Labyrinth:

The Climax:

the final confrontation between Sarah and Jareth happens in the Relativity-themed room. When she finally reaches the top of the staircase, she looks down and spots sweet lil baby Toby.

but lil homie is contemplating life, staring into the abyss. He's looking over the edge of what appears to be a pretty steep drop.

When Sarah looks down and sees Toby...she JUMPS.

which successfully breaks her out of the spell!

According to multiple credible academic sources (LitCharts and Reddit) Toby the physical embodiment of Sarah's own childhood innocence👼

Which got me thinking: What if the baby is the physical embodiment of Mike’s childhood as well? In other words, what if the baby parallels s1 Mike, and Sarah parallels s5 Mike

(Disclaimer: If you think I sound like a crazy person rn....you're absolutely right. I'm fully aware of my own confirmation bias, and I recognize that, while it's fun to speculate, we really shouldn't expect any of this to actually happen. It's impossible to accur-

YOU THOUGHT BITCH, the voices are back and louder then ever! :D Before escaping from their basement, the Duffers told me (in cryptic riddles ofc) that the cliff scene WILL be brought back in s5, and that they will do it through either time travel or memories. Working backwards from this (highly classified) information, I came up with a few potential scenarios which could be used to write this in:

SPECIFIC S5 CLIFF SCENE PREDICTIONS:

1: MEMORY/ILLUSION: The baby is s1 Mike, and Sarah is s5 Mike. When Mike sees his s1 self on the cliff within a memory/illusion, he has to jump off the cliff again in s5, as it's the ONE WAY to break out of the illusion.

2: TIME TRAVEL TOMFOOLERY: Somehow, going back in time causes Mike to die on the cliff in s1. For example, if El never escaped from the lab in the first place, she wouldn't have been there to save Mike on the cliff in s1 (although he prob wouldn't have in that situation in the first place, but just ignore that for now). If changing the past is THE ONE WAY to stop Vecna, this might mean in s5, Mike is forced to watch s1 Mike jump off the cliff with no one there to save him. (This scenario doesn't seem very likely to me atm,idk why)

MY FAVORITE IDEA?!:

3: TIME TRAVEL TOMFOOLERY: This one is kinda edgy, but the writers almost made El mercy kill her mom in s2, so how crazy is it REALLY?

OKAY. So what if the ONE WAY to stop the end of the world, is go back in time and change things, but Mike unexpectedly dies as a result of this?

What if in s1, Mike still jumps off the cliff despite the bullies never threatening Dustin's teeth in the first place?

Let me explain: if time travel tomfoolery DOES have to go down in s5, then that means they might never meet El or get involved in any supernatural antics.

Meaning that in s1, Mike would't learn the truth about what actually happened to Will after his body was found in the quarry.

The Cliff overlooking The Quarry is the key to all of this.

Why? because if Will's "body" was found in the quarry, then the leading theory as to the cause of his death would probably be this:

Police would suspect that Will was either:

A: hate-crimed/pushed off of the cliff

B. committed sewerslide via jumping

In this altered timeline, Mike might still watch Will's body get pulled out of the quarry. Only this time, he would falsely believe that the cause of will's death was his sexuality.

Police would probably tell him that Will died as a result of the town's homophobia:

and this isn't a crazy assumption to make in the 80’s, which is why Hopper kept pressing Joyce about Will's perceived sexuality. It is a significant factor to consider, if being gay caused his death.

Ted knows this same thing, which is why he subtly implied to Mike that Will's disappearance wasn't shocking to him:

This implication wasn't lost on Mike either, who was understandably upset by it. One can only image how he'd react if it turned out to be true...oh wait,

What if after he finds out that Will "jumped" into the quarry, Mike jumps too

I think Mike's decision to jump will remain unchanged in this timeline, despite Dustin's baby teeth never being threatened. This reveal would reframe the s1 cliff scene, by giving his choice a more profound underlying cause

Only this time when Mike jumps, El won't there to save him:

Which might be why Mike was paralleled to Romeo in s4. Because just like Romeo, what if Mike tragically dies by his own hand after finding out about Will's fake "death" and seeing the body

(someone send me the Montegue image to inset here, i'm feeling lazy)

This scenario would conveniently add a whole new layer of meaning to this joke made by Ted in s2:

“So if your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re going to jump too?”

Might this line be yet another classic case of reverse story telling antics within Stranger Things???

no, cause hear me out! Reverse Storytelling is literally how they constructed Mike and Will's entire relationship! Which suggests that reframing prior seasons and Mike himself will be a pretty major focus of the final season.

If this joke is only supposed to be fully understood in reverse it would make a lot of sense because, as of now, it’s a pretty mid joke. Considering that Mike jumped off of the cliff to save Dustin's baby teeth, the dramatic irony only applies to the fact that Mike also "jumped off a cliff". The implication that he jumped "because his friend did" doesn't even apply to the s1 cliff scene!( I’m the comedy police, and your under arrest!😡👮‍♀️)

UNLESS this joke is actually in reference to the season 5 cliff scene😨Because in s5, Mike jumps off the cliff after finding out that his friend Will did!

Side note: If they can't figure out why Mike dies when they go back in time, maybe the ONE WAY to prevent his own death will be to realize WHY he still jumps (bc he loves will+his internalized homophobia). And so the one way to survive might actually be to admit his true feelings by coming out of the closet to the party/himself! GODDAMNNNN that would be such a cool freaking twist! (Not the unaliving himself part. actually, no yeah that part. I just mean the idea would be creative, but don’t get your hopes up. IF this does actually happen, I doubt Mike would actually stay dead. The duffers are WAY too pussy to kill him off fr, so don’t worry!👍)

Who do I need to bribe in order to get the writers to see this??? because NOT using Ted’s throw-away line to set up the most legendary case of foreshadowing and time travel fuckshit in the history of the universe would be SUCH a missed opportunity!!!! It would simultaneously shed a light on Mike’s internalized homophobia, PLUS demonstrate his love for Will since s1?! just a humble suggestion! 🤷‍♀️(i'm dead fucking serious).

4. Mike has powers: Mike was the one to freeze time in the upside down and/or make it look like Hawkins, not Will. He's the "babe with the power". I'll explain why I think this could be a possible in Labyrinthgate part 3. If the ONE WAY to resolve everything, is to take control of his powers by accepting himself/and coming out of the closet, ig the cliff scene could play into somehow by visually symbolizing Mike's internal struggle ? (link to theory here later)

5. ALTERNATE DIMENSION ANTICS: The baby is s1 Mike, and Sarah is s5 Mike. THE ONE WAY to get back to the other side/upside-down, is to jump off the cliff again, because the water becomes a portal (Bc of Donnie Darco LMAOSK I’ll explain later💀it doesn't make much sense, but i'm still gonna write a theory about it just for funzies . I'll link it here at some point)

Mark my words, something VAGUELY close to at least ONE of these scenarios WILL happen in s5. And that's a connect-dots7 promise🫵. (i'm talking out of my booty hole rn)

Also-

Reframing to the cliff scene in the final season makes sense from a writing perspective:

I mean, Mike jumped off A CLIFF. He was ready to DIE over some baby teeth?! Get real🥱Even if this was the original intent of the scene back when it was first written, there's definitely potential for the writers to reframe it now. Considering the direction Mike's arc is taking, it's a wee bit suspicious how after season one, this event is never brought up again (aside from Ted's cheeky lil joke). Almost like the writers are leaving the door open to potentially revisit it later perhaps??🤨🤨

The GA still needs to be convinced that there was evidence of Mike's internal struggle from the very beginning, which the cliff scene could be utilized to do. Considering that his POV has become increasingly hidden from the audience, it leaves the door open for Mike's character motivations to be "rewritten" in s5. To me, reframing the s1 cliff scene seems like THE PERFECT opportunity to also reframe his character’s perspective. The cliff scene is one of his most memorable scenes in general, and a key moment of characterization for Mike in s1. Also: him readily jumping off a cliff is lowkey sewerslide coded?🤨and if he’s struggling mentally that’s a lil suspicious. just sayingggg🤷‍♀️ btw, that isn’t to say necessarily that Mike jumped off the cliff in s1 bc he was actually just sewerslidal (unless option 3 ends up happening lol). It could also (pretty easily) just be re-framed, or paralleled with s5 Mike, in order to visually allude to/symbolically represent his internalized homophobia. I don’t know how exactly, but (for example) I could see Vecna spelling out for the audience Mike's internal struggle, and info dumping Mike’s secret feelings while a memory of the cliff scene happens, kind of like when Vecna exposed Max for her conflicted feelings about Billy. (this would be kinda bad writing tho imo, so I hope not. I kinda just really want option 3 to happen tbh😗)

More Potential Foreshadowing (Mike/Water)(watergate?!?)

I already thought another cliff scene was a possibility (before all this Labyrinth delusion started), based off of the water imagery surrounding Mike throughout s4:

link to that here

idk guuuuys...something something about all that water symbolism around Mike really makes me of the quarry, since it’s one of the only significant bodies of water in the show. It's also literally the setting where both Mike and Will briefly "died" in s1, cementing it as a pretty significant water themed setting for both of them, but especially for Mike. Of course, the water symbolism might also foreshadow him drowning in Lover's Lake. (more on that later maybe?)

Along with this, I also think that Mike's death will end up referencing Artax's in the Never-ending Story. If Will is Bastian, and El is Ateyu...then who's Mike?

HE'S THE DAMN HORSE. Arguably the most iconic scenes in the Neverending Story is when that depressed horse Artax drowns. (just tryna think outside the box guys, idfk)

the end! hope you liked it!

[inkshine]

I can't stop thinking about the concept of various Arcane characters breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience somehow. No matter who you imagine would do this, it would be an absolutely haunting moment, no matter how brief.

Jinx: Hi! Then her smile softens, saddens, grows wearier. Hi. Hi. You're still watching, huh? After-she gestures with her pistol-all that? You're still here... (If Jinx talks for longer, I don't think it would happen during one of her hallucinations, she should be absolutely, almost frighteningly, lucid when speaking to the audience)

Vi: So you saw all that, and you just...watched?

Silco: I mostly pictured Silco going into some lengthy soliloquy about something philosophical, and then ending it with looking directly into the camera and saying: "But you already knew that, didn't you?" If he is genuinely aware of the fact that he is a fictional character in this moment, it is not clear what his thoughts on this matter are. None of his thoughts ever are.

Ekko: I'm not sure what Ekko would say, but I think he would directly address the audience to narrate something about the Firelights, about hope, and the future, and pain. He is clearly in pain while talking to the audience, seemingly a little bitter about our role in just watching him suffer. Vi would probably be similar, if her response was more lengthy.

Mel: Mel, similar to Silco, would also probably choose to briefly meditate on philosophy and her own life, or maybe even sound like she's giving a speech. She is the daughter of Ambessa Medarda, and a Councilor, after all. And given that she has us briefly under her power, even in this odd capacity, would want to make every word count.

Jayce: It happens when Jayce is giving one of his speeches, or maybe when he's trapped in the bad timeline in season two, or maybe a combination of the two-he's exhausted to the point of delirium, and thinks he's giving a speech to Piltover, when the thousands of eyes on him are actually that of the show's audience. He talks about Progress. He talks about mistakes. He talks about love.

Viktor: It happens either when he's one of his states between life and death, or when he's ascended in season two, and I feel the second option is more likely. He has a lot to say about the matter of perspective, and the paths we take in life.

Isha: Isha's spirit is sitting peacefully next to Jinx on the airship. She looks at the camera. She begins to sign. She talks about the unpredictability of life, and love. She seems melancholy and poignant.

Bonus:

Heimerdinger: Heimerdinger, upon seeing the "camera", seems stunned and mesmerized at first, but then just waves.

Sevika: Sevika sees the "camera" and stares at it for a long time in silence with a completely unreadable look. She then says something about still having work to do, things still needing to be accomplished. She walks away, but she is looking at the "camera" over her shoulder the whole time.

[mohntilyet]

to the people who tagged that asian dellamortes post with “i thought lucanis was asian because of his eyes” firstly me too and before i even read the art book LOL because if i reach then he kind of looks like he has double eyelids but secondly i believe that was copium. if the designers ever come out and say “the dellamortes were always meant to be partially/half asian” then we should kill them because there is nothing that implies any kind of korean or asian coding. i think there is a clear and total failure in character design and writing if you present a character who is white passing and fail to address the fact that their quote unquote culture means something to them and the writing treats them like they’re (only) italian or spanish. like i think if he actually was supposed to be asian he would have mentioned literally any korean dish. while we’re here i kind of would have liked more references to worldbuilding for bellara (and cyrian) who has a hairpin (a cultural thing not seen before in thedas! but from where?) or irelin who has an accent which literally implies she is not from thedas or that she at least speaks another language. same goes for neve and dorian but i also would have had mixed feelings about south asian aesthetics pinned onto thedas’ proxy for the roman empire that is also filled with slavery. like i don’t think it’s gotta be one-to-one with coding especially with a world that is as broad as thedas but it is kind of crazy that a previous head writer said “idk. i guess there are just no asians on the continent. don’t ask me again” and then it was like hmmm actually the pavus family seem to be the only asians on the continent and then suddenly veilguard goes “HEY WE’VE HAD ASIAN PEOPLE THE WHOLE TIME!”

[nerdishpursuits]

And this is one of the countless reasons I love chatting about Mafin with @midniteowlet: she's my very own toma a Tierra and grounds me, so I can approach things more rationally.

Upon concluding our debate of the current turn of events on the show, Mafin on the whole and their narrative? I've come to look at things as follows. The show very much reflects society as it is: a sad state of affairs where good people hurt and unsavory characters often prevail. The fact that we want everything good and wholesome to triumph at every turn? Idealistic, not realistic. Not to mention lofty expectations actually prevent one from truly appreciating the show, with all its ups and downs and winding roads. And personally, I'd like to keep enjoying it, without getting dragged down the utopian rabbit-hole.

For the most part, the representation we get is actually well crafted: Mafin feels organic, tried and true, and the chemistry between them is undeniable and thrilling. More so? Their story doesn't feel forced and thus, can be promoted to any viewership without it coming across as preachy and condescending, or having an agenda. If anything, Mafin is by far the best developed, healthiest relationship on the show. I, for one, much prefer the portrayal of good communication, heartfelt romance and overcoming obstacles together than a deluge of r-rated scenes. And honestly? We are being offered a damn good story here, even as it fails to satisfy everyone's hopes and demands (which in all honesty, it never could - at the end of the day, someone will always be disappointed)

I'm also reminded of Marta B. mentioning in a recent interview that the show is not aimed exclusively at the sapphic community. As such, it will not depict or cater to its particular needs. It's part of a larger ensemble and needs to appeal to a broad audience. And, when all is said and done, it actually manages to accomplish more with this kind of storytelling: one that's simpler, one that doesn't try to be pedantic. Ergo, they will not linger and preach to the audience. What they will do instead is allow the characters, their circumstances and actions, to speak for themselves. And they will trust they're doing a good enough job to let people draw their own conclusions. So far, I think they've achieved that: there’s heterosexual people watching the novela who love Mafin and think they’re the best couple on the show, there’s elderly people learning to be more open-minded, everyone loves Damian's character development, everyone hates Santiago and acknowledges he is a despicable lowlife etc. The show is moving the pieces along the board quite deftly and it makes for an interesting, if not always gratifying, game.

As for today's episode? There's no doubt that Marta and Fina only have eyes for each other. They're an established couple who will face anything thrown their way as they always have, as one. No mustachioed men will ever change that. Marta and Fina's narrative will never be whether they desperately adore each other. That they do couldn’t be more obvious. Their story? Ever has it been, and will continue to be, about their fight to attain freedom: freedom to live their love in a society that forbids it.

Therefore, I've reached the point where I'm not worried at all about either Santiago or Pelayo. Based on Pelayo's reaction upon learning Marta is a lesbian? I doubt he'll help Santiago in his attempt to sink Marta's ships. To me he comes across as a calculated businessman, but not a heartless one. He stands to profit more from a partnership with the de la Reina family than throwing Marta to the wolves. He also didn't bat an eye at Santiago's reveal, wasn't surprised or outraged. Which, I'll go out on a limb and say, is telling. He's either gay himself or simply plans on advancing his business / political career by securing a partner that won't demand his attention or affection. The first scenario ensures he remains socially upstanding while the second allows him to live as he pleases. To a man like Pelayo? It's a jackpot either way. Hopefully, the benefits outweigh the costs for Marta as well, should the plot move in that direction. And given all the signs? It's already halfway there.

That being said. It remains to be seen what happens to Santiago. I assume, and hope, his little ploy at denouncing Marta to the Civil Guard will cost him, dearly or otherwise. His own thirst for vengeance pushed him to make the wrong move which is, in my opinion, seeking out Pelayo. And while there's plenty of outraged cries that Marta & Fina don't need another man to save them? Let's not forget it's 1958. The likelihood of neither of them attracting a suitor, fake or otherwise unwelcome, is as doubtful as improbable. The fact they managed to successfully evade them so far? Quite the feat.

As for what awaits? Marta won't go to jail, I think, since that card has already been played. Or who knows? We might be surprised. The fear they need to instill in her requires new heights, in order for Marta to reluctantly accept another cage. Mind you, she's still trapped: as much freedom as she currently wields, Marta remains a woman whose very social status entraps her, singling her out as prime real estate. She's the proverbial golden goose, especially as dictated by the mores of society back then. Marta and Fina's shared dream of freedom remains, for now, a dream. One they've almost had at their fingertips, which makes their current circumstances all the more painful. I will say: it stings that Fina won't be the first to read Marta's journal. Undoubtedly, at some point, she will. After all, that journal is a mirror of Marta's very heart. It lays out her deepest fears, her innermost longings. It chronicles the fiercest battles Marta has had to wage with herself, her losses and triumphs, her meditations and hymns, the anguish and the deliverance of her love for Fina. To have it fall into the wrong hands? A violation of the utmost personal, a desecration of what is deemed sacred and untouchable. The diary symbolizes Marta having a safe space to call her own, one where she was allowed to embrace her true self, one that initiated her journey to freedom, her quest to rid herself of her shackles. Santiago has no honorable bone in his body and his hatred towards women, and Marta in particular, drives him to invade and vandalize her privacy, this blessed sanctuary she got to call her own. Let's see if Pelayo rises to the occasion and proves himself as a noble character. You can never have too many allies. Do I still take issue with how certain things are handled, with the inconsistencies and shoddy character work? Definitely. But I’m also able to simply sit back and enjoy. Let's see where all this goeth, shall we? Hello pain, let's go again.