#and the only reason she goes back is the 20 year separation we don’t talk abt it ❤️

[pizzawrench]

the fact that taylor lautner mr. jacob black himself is team jeremiah like yeah 💜

[xxnomadsxx]

Nomads AU! that before timeline I’ve been procrastinating but now I have to finish…Sorry

Once all the bros (plus Poppy) get on Rhonda Branch immediately regrets coming along. His brothers immediately try to get to know him, which starts out wrong as they ask him a bunch of very personal questions but over the trip he starts to actually get along with his brothers (he could do without the babying) but he starts to relight that hope of getting his brothers back as he and them are getting along!(finally)..until he finds out how Floyd is trapped

He didn’t actually hear the plan on how to save Floyd, all he heard was “Floyd in danger” but now he has to sing?!?! He quickly denies singing and says he will get Floyd out of there and they can sing and save him. The bros are shocked why is Bitty B acting like this he loves to sing. Poppy makes the situation worse because she keeps questioning him on it and why he is grey (and lowkey kinda insulting him) She then says stuff like “your a pop troll you have to sing it’s who you are!!” or “why are you being so grey about this come on can’t you just try and be happy.” The bros don’t interfere in the two fighting as they are talking amongst themselves on what they would do since Branch isn’t going to sing…Eventually they decide “Hey if we practice as a family I bet bitty b will realize how good it is to sing as a family again” then John breaks out the Brozone stuff they get there band gear together…John immediately tries to have Branch wear a diaper and Branch threatens to hit him (yea not the best move Johnny) so the band tries to practice but Branch just sorta sits to the side. Then John stops the song and gets on everyone’s case then complains that branch needs to start singing which Branch denies (this looks bad but to be fair he hasn’t sung in years because of his grandma and him thinking his singing is the reason the band broke up he doesn’t want anyone to leave because of it) Then Clay would speak up call John bossy blah blah blah say branch is scarier and taller now blah blah licensed cpa blah blah then the argument ends with the brothers saying “after we rescue Floyd we go our separate ways” this absolutely smothered whatever hope he had at the brothers coming back in his life. I mean they had the audacity to beg him to perform with them then once he thinks they can be a family again they want to…. TO ABANDON HIM AGAIN!!???!!!?!!! He absolutely loses it on them (rightfully so) they left him and didn’t come back, they left him to die ,they left grandma to die by the very thing he hates, they left him to be outcasted to be forced to fight to SURVIVE every single day, to be scared of EVERYTHING to lead a village to make acts he’s ashamed of… them leaving CAUSED EVERYTHING..when he tells them what he went through that he’s “sorry” he wants his family back the only family he had left and that he honestly whishes they just never showed up on his doorstep, that they should just pretend he is dead like they’ve done for 20 years so he can leave there lives completely…

Branch leaves the bus to get promptly chased down by Poppy (who currently got slapped in the face of reality and how bad Branch’s life is, and currently is having her world shattered that he LIVED IN THE VILLAGE!! And no ever talked about him how he and his suffering was forgotten and ignored by EVERYONE!!) she chases him down asking him if he is ok and Ned’s to talk about it (she’s learning!!!!) Branch immediately tells her to leave just like everyone else has in the past.. and Poppy was surprised by his answer. She said she wouldn’t leave him that she needs to make this right for what her people did and that he needs help to get Floyd. Branch (reluctantly) agrees with her and they go to save Floyd

After they did a bunch of cool breakin stuff they would get to the dressing room lo and behold Floyd!! immediately Branch goes down to greet his brother …….who didn’t recognize him (to be fair Branch looks completely deranged and wildly different) at this point I wouldn’t blame the guy if he just started crying, I mean I would. Poppy trying to fix the situation would tell Floyd it was Branch (who currently look distraught and reeeelllyyy sad) Floyd was shocked to say the least and quickly tried to push down his many MANY burning questions as he tried to hug his brother through the wall separating them, Branch does hug back! but then Velvet and Veneer come in and quickly break up the moment as Branch quickly tackles Poppy off the table swinging them to the vent before they where spotted.

At this point Velvet and Veneer had the brothers and were going to kill them at this rate with how much they were being used! Until- Branch came out of nowhere attacking Velvet (Branch can fight, we know he can fight why didn’t he fight during the actual fight in the movie it was basically a game of keep away!?!?) he would get the diamonds out of Velvet as Poppy and Viva get veneer (I forgot to mention viva showed up) Gristle and Bridget weren’t at the show since the whole Bergen thing hasn’t come up yet sooooo… Anyway Branch knows the only way to save his now dying brother from his diamond cage is to sing so he does for the first time in 20 years he sings so do the rest of the brothers (Branch actually feels happy for the first time in a while) He gets more vibrantly colorful as he sings feeling loved by his family(still grey just lighter) anyway harmony was harmoning and they saved Floyd..,,till he dropped to the ground and looking very translucent. The brothers go to Floyd. Branch confesses that he built the bunker just without the waterslide and Floyd woke up saying “but..how will we shower!” And day saved Booyah!!!

The timeline goes the same as whatever happens after the movie with the nomads au besides a few changes Poppy doesn’t leave Branch alone about singing (he goes immediately back on his vow of not singing) the brothers are very overprotective of Floyd (because he u know.. died!) and now Branch as well (he replaced them twice and has suffered for years because of them they feel pretty bad and try and make up for it anyway they can) Branch went back to the village and has less of a hard time leaving. Overall the rest stays the same.

[skeletonfarmer]

I know tumblr is not the best place for relationship advice but pls lol

Also fair warning this is a long post and TW for mention of suicide

Some backstory: my boyfriend (21) and I (22) have been together for two and a half years. I struggle with severe depression and occasional psychotic symptoms (mood swings, hallucinations, irrational thoughts, etc). I was also diagnosed with cancer in January 2022. I recently had to quit my full time job due to mental and physical health reasons, so he is the only one working right now.

So for the past several months, but especially the past few weeks or so my boyfriend and I have been arguing a lot and I’m not sure what to do or if it’s healthy.

There’s always an array of things the arguments are about but usually they can be boiled down to one of us not feeling appreciated/not feeling loved/feeling like we’re being taken advantage of.

Our most recent argument started yesterday afternoon. A mutual friend of ours surprised me yesterday late morning and helped me clean our apartment almost the whole day, it was like 4-5 hours, with a break for lunch of course. Later on she had asked me if my bf and I could babysit because her fiance had gotten tickets to a baseball game and she wanted to go, but she didn’t wanna ask her mom to babysit since she had been watching her all day. I agreed but let her know that it would probably just be me.

Later when we were on the way back to her apartment my boyfriend had gotten off work and gone home. He called me and was immediately rude as I answered the phone, and he complained about how when we were cleaning/organizing, we moved some of his stuff to where he didn’t like it. He was mainly upset that we moved his (large amount) of alcohol bottles to a separate shelf rather than it taking up 1/3 of our already limited counter space. I told him that if he didn’t like where we put the stuff then he should help me clean on the weekends so he could decide where it goes himself. He got really upset and said that since he works and I don’t, it’s my job to clean and he doesn’t have to clean since he works, and that I should know it’s rude to “throw his stuff on a shelf in the corner”

Our friend hears him and when she sees him she goes off on him for awhile about how you talk to someone you love that way, and I didn’t hear much of what was said but what I did hear it sounded like he mainly put blame on me and put me down to try and justify his words and actions.

We argued about it on and off for the rest of the night but I thought by the time we went to bed we were fine.

When we woke up this morning within 30 minutes he was mad again, this time about how we don’t have enough money for groceries this week, bills, or gas for him to get to work. The way he said it made it feel like he was blaming me for not being able to work, so I felt guilty and asked my mom for $30 to help with groceries. He also somehow got a refund for our dinner we had last night, so that was $25-30 back.

After we go grocery shopping I have to go make a return at Big Lots, and when we’re walking out he insists on going into the liquor store next door. I say okay but let him know he shouldn’t get anything since we don’t really have money to pay our bills. Well after 20 minutes in there he buys a bottle of liquor, not sure what or how much but most of the stuff he was looking at was $30-45.

I get visibly upset and when he asks I tell him that it’s irresponsible for him to have an attitude with me and get mad about not having enough money for bills and food, to where I have to ask family for money, but then he goes and buys alcohol. This causes another fight and he goes off on me about how he’s “tired of me bitching at him” and that I won’t let him have fun, I have a problem with everything he does, etc.

A couple of months ago he had mentioned that I need to be more appreciative of him because not many people would have stayed with me through my cancer treatments and my psychiatric hospital stay for a suicide attempt. I haven’t brought this up to him since he said it but I think about it often.

I know I am definitely not perfect and I know I can get an attitude pretty easily sometimes, but I feel like he doesn’t give me as much credit as I deserve. My mental health makes it extremely difficult for me to regularly keep up with house chores, and I always let him know when I’m having a particularly bad day and not much will get done. At the time he says it’s okay but he always holds it over my head the next time we have a confrontation. I really do love him but I am also so tired of feeling like I’m just a maid that’s shitty at her job. I don’t know how to go about fixing this or if there is any way to even do so.

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[gffa]

OKAY, I WILL DO MY BEST HERE, but it’s one of those cases where there’s A LOT of information and NOT A LOT of information at the same time!  We have a bunch of details and some good general ideas, but it’s not like it was a set-in-stone process, so there’s plenty of wiggle room if you want it. The Inquisitorius was started in 19 BBY, the same year as the fall of the Republic and the genocide of the Jedi, but seems to have been officially started after the Purge happened.  Sidious had been planning something like the  Inquisitorius for a long time, but this specific version of them wasn’t necessarily always the only version in development. The Inquisitors are all fallen Jedi, presumably ones that were captured by the Empire and tortured into becoming dark siders.  Several of them have mentioned that they were former Jedi, but the only one we’ve seen the process of is Trilla Suduri, who we saw being tortured for a very long time in Jedi: Fallen Order.  (Link of the relevant scenes here.  Warning:  It can be a bit of a tough watch, Trilla is physically tortured and some of it you see from her perspective, as the electricity is jolted into her body, which can be kinda disturbing.)  So, in theory, it’s possible that some of them fell on their own and agreed to join, but the one explicit example we have is where she was tortured into it and, while Cal is walking around their fortress, he talks about how multiple Jedi were broken there. (For another example, Prosset Dibs is a Jedi we saw falling to the dark in the Mace Windu: Jedi of the Republic comic, so he may have willingly joined or he may have healed while he was working in the Jedi Archives but not all the way and still had to be tortured into joining.) The Inquisitors are under the direct supervision of Darth Vader (after he’d discovered the program, he was put in charge of it), who trains them incredibly harshly--in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, he’s shown cutting an arm off one of them and basically telling them to suck it up and keep fighting, to remember what loss feels like.

Sometimes they’d work with Darth Vader (the Grand Inquisitor went to the Jedi Temple in 19 BBY with Vader, where they confronted Jocasta Nu, the Ninth Sister went with Vader on a mission to investigate a possible Jedi sighting on Cabarria, Vader took them with when he went to kill Eeth Koth and kidnap his baby daughter, Vader had them with when he went to Mon Cala to confront Lee-Char, etc.), sometimes they operated separately from each other (all the times in Rebels or Jedi: Fallen Order that Kanan, Ezra, or Cal faced them when Vader wasn’t around, etc.), probably based on whatever Vader felt like or whatever Sidious felt like on a given day. The Inquisitorius as a group seem to have some degree of command over Purge Troopers, as they would often be seen leading a group of them (this happened often in Jedi: Fallen Order especially) and they could commandeer military assets (or probably civilian assets as well) if they needed to, so they had a certain amount of leeway when it came to their missions--so long as they didn’t piss off Vader or Sidious. Their main goals were to hunt down any Force-sensitives in the galaxy, whether newly discovered Force-sensitive children, former Jedi (whether they had left the Jedi Order or were Jedi in hiding, it didn’t matter), or even Force-sensitive adults who had never been trained by the Jedi.  They would turn them if they could, but otherwise it was to kill anyone who might possibly be a Force-related threat of any kind.  (What this means for planets like the Bardottens, they’ve never said.) They were greatly successful at their missions, so they wound up killing a great number of Jedi who had made it into hiding, along with Darth Vader being one of the biggest reasons the Jedi were mostly entirely gone by the time of the OT, which was helped along by Vader training the Jedi style out of them.  Part of why he was so harsh to them (including cutting off limbs, etc.) was to force them to be more aggressive and less defensive, to be sharp and quick and fast to overpower Jedi, who were used to a different type of fight. They still had unique talents (as all Force-sensitives are not the same), like Ninth Sister had a great talent for reading emotions (including Vader’s, where she could sense how much he wanted to die),

As well as they weren’t actually Sith.  Only Sidious, Vader, and Maul were Sith, the Inquisitors were dark siders or fallen Jedi or possibly a category unto themselves. They have some sort of headquarters, as seen in Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, where Vader is seen training them in issue #6 (same scene as above where he cuts off their hands or lightsabers their eye out), which is labelled as being on Coruscant, somewhere in The Works in the Industrial District:

There’s a training arena we see there and at least some sort of communication/strategy rooms that Vader and the Grand Inquisitor walk off into, while they discuss the other Inquisitors. Which means it’s a pretty big complex/building, but (according to Wookieepedia and I’ll trust them on this, instead of digging out my copies of the Complete Vehicles and Complete Locations book), it was a building of Sidious’ that he used as a hideout during the Clone Wars. To what extent Vader and the Inquisitorius took it over (whether they just had a few rooms or the entire skyscraper), I don’t think we know?

Later, in issue #20, we see there’s some sort of break room that Vader storms in on, when he returns to Coruscant, that the Inquisitors were sitting around and hanging out in:

From there, it would be reasonable to extrapolate that this was a base for their operations, the place they returned to after they came back from wherever they’d been sent, possibly even this is where they slept and ate and were sheltered in between missions.  But that’s just reasonable conjecture, not hard canon! There is also Fortress Inquisitorius from Jedi: Fallen Order and it’s primary use was that it was where they took the Jedi they were torturing into becoming Inquisitors.  I wouldn’t say it’s an academy, per se, but it was a place that they likely used as a headquarters. In issue #20 of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, two of the Inquisitors rebel against Vader and he winds up chasing them down and cutting a huge swath of destruction in his path (LOL @ ANAKIN), which Sidious is not exactly pleased about.  He says that he’s going to move the Inquisitorious off Coruscant to another world so this won’t happen again:

The comic was written in 2018 and Jedi: Fallen Order came out about 11 months later in 2019, so the above isn’t necessarily directly referring to that the Inquisitorious were moved to Fortress Inquisitorious on the moon Nur, but it’s also a very reasonable (and probably likely) assumption. We don’t have an exact timeline for when this issue takes place, but it’s minimum three years after Revenge of the Sith (the Mon Cala arc earlier in the comic is set three years post-ROTS), so probably around 15 or 14 BBY.   However, Trilla seems to have been kidnapped much closer to Order 66, so it’s likely that Fortress Inquisitorius existed long before Order 66 happened, it was used to torture Jedi once their genocide happened, but it wasn’t the Inquisitor’s HQ until several years later. We don’t see a lot of Fortress Inquisitorious, the limited amount of areas you can play through it in Jedi: Fallen Order don’t tell you a ton about what goes on there, but it’s a pretty huge underwater skyscraper sized building and you do see several prison cells and at least one training dojo.

The galaxy at large didn’t know about Fortress Inquisitorious on the water moon of Nur or even the majority of the Empire itself didn’t know about it, it was a heavily kept secret. This is where Trilla and the other Jedi were taken, tortured, and forced into becoming Inquisitors and it’s likely that���s where the Inquisitors were based after the shitshow on Coruscant.  It’s a big enough building that it’s likely to have pretty much whatever kind of stuff your clubhouse needs for the Inquisitors!  But we don’t have much hard canon about it, no. As for the Inquisitors themselves, they’re complicated--some of them seemed almost loyal to each other, they would work together at times or even seem to avenge each other, but other times they would sneer at each other or mock each other, it seemed like they had a lot of shifting dynamics and probably a lot of it was fear at trying to survive being around Darth Vader. We don’t know for sure how many there specifically are or if, when one of them dies, they’re replaced by another, but it seems like there were at least twelve Inquisitors and we’ve never seen them be replaced, which I think implies that they were only ever meant to be a temporary measure and would be disposed of, as soon as Sidious knew all the Jedi were dead for sure/he could raise a new group of Force-sensitive children from birth. ANYWAY YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN:  LOTS OF INFO BUT NOT A LOT OF INFO.  😂

[maxwell-grant]

Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions once said :"If you can imagine your Batman comforting a shared child, then congratulations, you're righting Batman. If not, you're just writing the Punisher in a funny hat". This got me wondering: could the Shadow comfort a scared child?

Could he? You forget who was there to lift young Bruce to his feet at his first brush with death (sadly far from his last).

But it's an interesting question to pose still, because children were straight up not in the pulps, not in any I've read, and I can't recall any episodes of the radio show that feature them much (there's gotta be at least a few, because they had everything in that show). The most interaction I think The Shadow's ever had with children (from comics that I can discuss here, because Marshall Rogers' "Harold Goes to Washington" is way, way too much for me to go into right now, and the less I talk about some other DC comics, the better) is in the Street & Smith comics.

There's Jerry from the Devil Kyoti arc, a kid who was traumatized by an encounter with the villain who Sayre's looking after and who ends up having some kind of hidden power that allows him to see The Shadow and defeat the villain. There was a blonde Jerry who showed up later in the Monstradamus arc, but he isn't a kid so much as he's diet Jimmy Olsen or a replacement for Harry, but he had weird eyesight-based powers and a familiarity with The Shadow, so I assume it's the same character.

There was also Donald Jordan - Shadow Jr, and okay, I may have to talk more about this weird little failed experiment some other time, but the basic gist of it is that The Shadow had a friend in Tibet named Harry Jordan (and someday I'm also gonna write about the weird prevalence and significance of the name "Harry" in The Shadow's mythos in and out of universe) who was murdered, leaving his son orphaned and with nowhere to go. And, I'll admit that I have a real weakness for The Shadow calling people "son", which he does a lot in this story.

And as you can expect, it then turns out that the kid's also learned how to cloud minds and has basically the same powers The Shadow has in these comics, and they solve the mystery of his dad's murder together, and yeah, you can absolutely tell that they are setting up this kid to be The Shadow's Robin. Although, interestingly, they don't have The Shadow actually recruit the kid, instead it's Jordan who asks The Shadow if he can go with him and join his mission, and Cranston even states he's going to have to "earn" his way

"Must I stay here, sir? It will always remind me of dad - I'd like to devote my life to your fight against evil and evil doers!

Now, "Shadow Jr's" career was incredibly short-lived, it only lasted for about two other issues, and I have no idea what happened in his final appearence called "Snake Eyes" in Shadow Comics #77, I cannot find that issue anywhere and I really want to. But the one other solo story of his I've read was...well, I think it kinda illustrates why the idea of The Shadow having a Robin was doomed from the start.

...Yeah. Even The Shadow at his most sanitized and family friendly is still The Shadow, and there's no room for children in his network, obviously he shouldn't and wouldn't have children be in those positions or make decisions expected from grown-ups who have already had encounters with death and danger, why would anyone do that-

The only instance I can think of The Shadow interacting with a child in the pulps was during The Prince of Evil, when he has to rescue a young boy from Stark's thugs.

Cranston, dazed, tried to stagger to his feet. Before he could do so, the thug had picked up the limp figure of the boy and was darting out into the street. There was a scream of horror from pedestrians.

A heavy truck was racing at top speed along the avenue. Straight into the path of the truck, the thug threw the senseless boy!

The driver of the truck jammed on the brakes. But it was too late to halt the heavy vehicle. The broad-tired wheels rolled toward the limp head of the lad on the pavement.

An instant before it could crush out his life, Lamont Cranston dived headlong into the path of destruction. His shoulder struck the boy, rolling him toward the curb. A quick wriggle, and Cranston swerved aside from the grinding death that loomed over him.

He picked up the boy. One glance and he knew there was no time to lose. The attempted killer had leaped into a waiting sedan and had already made his escape.

The boy was all Cranston could see or think about. Brass knuckles had fractured his skull. He had suffered a concussion of the brain. A glance at his bluish lips and the fixed glaze of his staring eyes told Cranston that unless the boy was operated on immediately, he would die.

A leap, Cranston was in his car. He laid the boy gently on the seat beside him, then headed the car toward the nearest hospital. Traffic lights were ignored.

The boy was taken to an emergency operating room and a skilled surgeon went to work. When it was over, Cranston asked only one question: "Will the child live?"

"Hard to say. We'll do our best."

"Spare no expense. Put him in a private room. Engage day and night nurses."

Cranston's face was pale. He knew that he himself was indirectly responsible for the boy's attack. A supercriminal had made a prompt answer to Cranston's message over Jackson's telephone. That telephone must have been tapped. The attempt to kill the boy was a vicious warning for Lamont Cranston to mind his own business about the Harmon family. It was a follow-up of the attack on Jackson's dog.

Cranston felt a surge of hot anger. He kept it under control while he answered routine police questions. He told all he knew - which was nothing.

He had only one angry thought. He intended to drive straight to the office of David Chester. He'd get the truth out of the sleek Chester, if he had to batter him with vengeful fists!

Cranston was actually halfway to Chester's office before common sense returned to him. He realized he had lost his sense of balance. He was behaving exactly as the crooks wanted. He was playing their game, not his!

He parked, and the hot rage drained slowly from him. He stopped thinking about the limp figure of a young lad on a white operating table.

This is definitely because Tinsley writes the character differently than Gibson, but I actually cannot think of another occasion where we got to read about The Shadow actively wanting to hit someone with his fists. It's very, very rare to read about The Shadow actually getting mad in the first place in such an undignified way. And I think with this passage, you'll start to notice a pattern.

The problem isn't that The Shadow cannot interact with kids or that he can't comfort them, he does it to his agents and adults he wants to help just fine, he knows how to address people in their language, or any language. The problem is, The Shadow is constantly surrounded by danger everywhere he goes, because he is The Shadow. He can be any number of things at any number of occasions, but usually, when The Shadow shows up, it's usually because people are going to die, and people are going to kill, and it's his job to address that and work the scales.

Children should not be anywhere near this, and if The Shadow's interacting with a child, it usually means that some grave danger or tragedy fell upon them, and he's here to either prevent greater tragedy or address the fall-out, and he'd be the first to agree that neither of these options should be happening at all. It doesn't mean he's not gonna do what's right and give life and limb to protect them, but, it shouldn't be up to the Boogeyman to look after them in the first place. Maybe it shouldn't be up to the Boogeyman to protect us.

But then again, as I mentioned when I talked about my own reasons for liking The Shadow so much, there are many kids who would like nothing more than to have the Boogeyman by their side to protect them. There's comfort in knowing that the scariest man in the room is unconditionally there to protect you, and that is the comfort that The Shadow gives best. Not as Cranston, not under a friendly face, but as what he is.

Due to a lack of scenes from the pulps or satisfying scenes from elsewhere, I will instead be pulling one from a fan story written by Kimberly-Murphy Smith, editor and writer of The Hot Cornerm where The Shadow rescues a child who was kidnapped for blackmail. I couldn't care less that it's fanfic, and if you do, come back in 20 or so years after The Shadow's been made public domain and it's gonna be just as official as anything licensed (on my “to write about” list: how fickle the separation between “official” and ��fanfic” is, and the many times it plainly didn’t exist). There’s aspects of her writing I don’t care for, but I really like this scene and I do think The Shadow’s more gentle interactions with people are necessary to getting the character.

Annabelle.

She stopped crying for a minute. "Who's there?" she said, her voice choked.

A friend. Your mommy and daddy sent me to pick you up.

"Mommy? Mommy's here?"

Sh-h-h. Annabelle felt a gloved hand gently stroking her hair. She's waiting for you at home. So, we need to hurry up and leave.

"'kay." She looked around. "Where are you?"

It's kind of hard to see me. It's dark in here, plus you've been crying so much your eyes probably hurt.

"Yeah."

Don't be afraid. I'm here to help.

"'kay."

The implicit trust of children was simply amazing at times. Adults trembled in fear of The Shadow's wrath, but children somehow seemed to understand that he was there to help them, even if they couldn't see him.

Sit up, Annabelle. I'm going to pick you up. Be very quiet.

One hand took each of her arms and guided them around a neck she could not see. "Why are you wearin' a blanket?" she asked as the fabric of his cloak brushed against her shoulders.

Sometimes I get cold at night.

"Even in the summer?"

Even in the summer. He gently stroked her cheek and wiped away her tears. Now, you need to be very quiet so those bad men in the next room don't hear us. I'll bet you're tired.

She nodded.

He rocked her on his arms, projecting a very gentle hypnotic relaxation into her with his powers as he did. You probably didn't get your nap, either. Poor thing. Lean on my shoulder and go to sleep. And when you wake up, you'll be back with Mommy and Daddy.

She yawned, then snuggled against his shoulder and went to sleep.

The Shadow sighed with relief. Now to get past the men out front. He gently pulled the pistol out of its holster under his left arm and slipped it into the belted waist of his overcoat within easy reach, then secured his grip on Annabelle and draped his cloak over her.

She clutched the edge of his cloak in her hand like a security blanket and snuggled against his shoulder again.

(Art by Jill Thompson)

[grace13star]

There’s been a recent uptick in posts claiming that “c!Wilbur is a worse villain than c!Dream” or that he’s “more manipulative” and it’s made me think a lot about just....how villainized Wilbur is? Because while he has done bad things, I’ve seen people just making things up or projecting onto him and making him just. so much worse than he is in canon. 

Again, this is all about the characters in the Dream SMP roleplay and are not the actual people. 

Let’s go over the bad things Wilbur is accused of doing. These are arguments I have actually seen people use and defend with their whole chest. 

1. Created a nation. 2. Sell drugs. 3. Talk about rigging an election. 4. Was a dick. 5. Blew up a nation. 6. Died. 7. Manipulation. 8. Neglectful dad. 9. Child soldiers. 10. Dictator. 11. “Threw a fit” over losing. 

Let’s talk about these and break them down a little. Another disclaimer, this isn’t trying to excuse any hurt that Wilbur has caused, because his actions did cause harm, but this is trying to explain and add context to things that are often taken out of context or just wholly misinterpreted.

1. A common argument for why this makes Wilbur evil is that he “stole Dream’s land.” But like...no. L’Manberg was created on untouched land where no one was living, and had a combined area smaller than Purpled’s garden. Dream, until he declared war, didn’t even care about them making their nation. 

I’m also including in here the claim that he “turned Dream into a villain.” ....What are you talking about. Before Wilbur was even on the server, Dream was part of the disc war, where he stole Tommy’s discs, and then kept perusing them even after the initial conflict ended, including griefing Tommy’s lawn. Before war was declared, Dream and his friends kidnapped and killed Tubbo and Tommy. Dream then also declared war on a peaceful nation (Wilbur said “if they try to declare war we will just say ‘no’”). None of that was in any way forced by Wilbur. Dream made his decisions on his own. Just because someone comes in and says “hey you suck,” doesn’t mean you have to actually suck. Dream made his own decisions, and his decision was to become a villain. 

2. Potions (drugs) are an infinite resource in Minecraft and everyone uses them. This is a stupid argument. 

3. Some people act like he actually did rig the election but...he didn’t. He definitely could have! Quackity wasn’t a citizen of L’Manberg, Wilbur could have banned him from the election easily, especially since his running mate was a previous enemy of L’Manberg. But he let him run, and then he let Fundy and Schlatt run as well. The worst he did here was talk about doing something bad. Also the reason he was trying to consolidate power wasn’t just for the sake of having power. There was, at the time, a civil war going on, and Wilbur tried to stop it but no one listened to him. He wanted the power to be able to protect his citizens and stop a war. 

4. Being a dick is not evil.

5. This is by far the worst thing Wilbur did, and though it hurt a lot of people emotionally, it really wasn’t as bad as everyone says it was. Though the explosion caused property damage, it only destroyed the podium and some of the walkway. People’s actual houses- Manifoldland, Niki’s bakery- were totallu untouched. No one even died in the explosion- the worst thing that happened was Quackity being blown back, but he landed in water. (This isn’t to say that characters shouldn’t be hurt by this! Wilbur betrayed them and definitely hurt them, but people acting like the 16th was worse than Doomsday and also blaming Wilbur for Doomsday even though he was dead is weird.)

There’s also the claim that Wilbur blew it up for the sole purpose of hurting people, which is easily disproved by just...watching a Wilbur stream. Like seriously, stop trying to do analysis on Wilbur if you haven’t even watched his streams. Wilbur had multiple chances to blow everything up, but when he had the choice between blowing it up and hurting people or not hurting people and not blowing it up, he chose the latter every time. At the festival, while Tubbo was trapped on the stage, he stopped going for the button. When Tommy and Quackity were in the button room which would have exploded if he pressed it, he refused. Also I’m gonna use the Reddit post that’s confirmed canon again- Wilbur blew up L’Manberg because he saw how much power it had, and he saw how it hurt people. He tried to destroy it to save everyone from the pain and conflict caused by the nation. He didn’t think they would rebuild. 

6. This one is the one that actually makes me angry. Because guys....Wilbur’s death was a suicide. If Phil wasn’t there, Wilbur would have done it himself- he had been planning to do it himself for months, as there was originally TNT in the button room that would have killed him with the explosion. The reason it makes me angry is because suicide is an extremely serious topic. Characters and the fandom framing it as “Wilbur left or abandoned them” is an ableist take that enforces the stereotype that suicide is a “weak” option or that it’s “running away.” 

There’s also people that will villainizing him for “forcing Phil to kill him” but while I empathize with Phil and realize it was a stressful situation, Phil very much made his own decisions here too. Wilbur didn’t force Phil to kill him, he asked him a few times and then Phil did it. 

7. Again, this is not an attempt to excuse, but an attempt to explain. So first of all, people try to claim that Wilbur was manipulative from the beginning. This is false. Persuasion and making sure someone is “loyal to a cause” is not manipulation. And then Pogtopia- he’s never manipulative in Pogtopia, again, he is only persuasive. I have a longer post that goes into more detail, so definitely check that out. After he is revived, he is definitely guilt tripping Tommy in his most recent stream, but (again, not an excuse) it’s clearly from his desperation to not be alone anymore after 13 years of near constant isolation. 

I’ve also seen claims that Wilbur manipulated Techno and that Techno didn’t know they were planning on starting another government, but this is easily disproven by the fact that Wilbur said multiple times that they’re “taking back L’Manberg” and that he wants to be it’s “rightful ruler” again while Techno was in vc. What about that implies they’re not going back to the government. 

Also since this is relevant- he never manipulated Niki. He was always kind and caring with Niki, even through his mental breakdown. He wasn’t able to bring her into Pogtopia at first, but he talked to her and made sure she’d be okay there (and she said yes!), he offered his life for hers at the festival before hitting people around them and yelling at her to run, she was the first person he gave Blue to, he gave her an inspirational speech and showed her the fox that had been left for her, she was one of the few things Ghostbur remembered. He betrayed and hurt her, but it was not manipulation.

Gonna combine this with this point also but Wilbur was not in any way abusive. A lot of people in this fandom for some reason equate “unhealthy relationship” with “abuse”, especially after the exile arc. Wilbur and Tommy’s relationship, while unhealthy, was not abusive. Please learn the difference. 

Also, if you’ve ever said that “Wilbur gaslit anyone” or that Wilbur is “insane” I want you to define those terms for me right now. No looking anything up. Tell me what they mean. Do it.  

8. What about any of Wilbur and Fundy’s dynamic implies any kind of neglect. No, seriously, where did this take come from. Wilbur was canonically overbearing and he babied Fundy. While it definitely wasn’t the best relationship, it definitely wasn’t neglectful. The only times in canon we’ve seen Wilbur be separated from Fundy was when he was exiled and Fundy cheered while he was shot and killed, when Fundy disowned him in front of their enemy, and when he committed suicide. Even before his death, when they were still on rocky terms, Wilbur stepped forward to defend Fundy from Schlatt in the van. 

9. This take is irrelevant. Child soldiers don’t matter. For one, this is Minecraft. Every single person has equal opportunities. Anyone can become powerful no matter what age they are as long as they grind enough. For another thing, at the beginning part of the roleplay no one was trying to make a long serious story about war and trauma, it was just some friends fucking around and fighting each other. Wilbur also revealed that while writing the Revolution arc that he headcanoned Tommy and Tubbo to be about 20- we know these ages aren’t correct because they’ve been reffered to by their irl ages in lore- but it shows that the “these are children” plot point was added way later- no one mentions it at all in season 1. It doesn’t matter. 

10. This is directed at one person. You know who you are. 

A dictator is defined as “one holding complete autocratic control : a person with unlimited governmental power.” Wilbur didn’t have control. That’s the whole reason for the election. It literally takes one google search to prove you wrong. 

11. There’s a difference between “losing” and “being unfairly exiled by your political opponent who is now declaring himself emperor.” Wilbur was totally fine with losing. He said during the election that he was fine with Quackity winning, and when they actually did lose, though he wasn’t happy about it, he encouraged Tommy to calm down and told him “We’re citizens tonight.” He only “threw a fit” after he was thrown out of the nation he built by someone who immediately declared himself emperor. 

So in conclusion, Wilbur Soot is an antagonist, but he is villified way beyond canon and I’m getting tired of some of these takes that I see over and over again that are easily disproved by just using critical thinking skills. 

This is most of the takes I’ve seen- some I haven’t even dignified with a response because of how clear it is that someone is just lying to try and excuse someone else’s actions- but if anyone has anymore they’ve seen that they want me to talk about, my ask box is open. 

[jade-marie]

Post 4.08 Thoughts

I haven't felt this good after watching an episode since S3 tbh. Vindication is mine and it is fucking sweet. This episode literally confirms what I've been ranting on about for like a year, so I'm not particularly angry. Nothing that happened was new, it's the same game they've been playing since 2.13.

Occam's Razor

A principle from philosophy. Suppose an event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation.

Annie spelt it out for you lmao. Stop looking so hard for subtext to match the narrative you want to be true. Stop looking for outfits and parallels and song lyrics to change the meaning of what's happening on the screen. Look at Beth's face. Listen to the dialogue. They are telling you what they're trying to get across. People commend Christina's acting ability and her expressive face - well all season her face has flitted between uncomfortable, disgusted and scared whenever she's around Rio because that's how he makes her feel. Disgusted, uncomfortable and scared. That is where we're at now and it sucks, but it's the reality of what these asshole writers decided to do.

Rio's Arrest and the Whole Investigation

Literally, why do they want Rio more than Beth??? What is the justification for letting her get off scotfree? This isn't the FBI who've been trying to nail him for ages. He's a new person of interest for the Secret Service and they only know about him because of Beth. But realistically, how is he the bigger collar for them? They have a 3 woman counterfeiting operation dead to rights. What exactly do they think they're gonna get from Rio? Beth didn't even know he had a boss before and she knew nothing about his operation, so why are they so willing to let her get away with everything?

The arrest scene was beyond a joke. He's in handcuffs and multiple officers slam him down on a picnic bench for no fuckin reason and Beth has zero reaction. Entirely unsurprised, because like I keep saying, SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HIM. The fact that Phoebe and Dave were shocked he was released and the DA wasn't pursuing charges shows that they know nothing about him, so again, WHY DO THEY WANT HIM MORE THAN BETH????

Rio Threatening Beth's Family

Ok so I definitely think that was incredibly OOC, and before the "Rio's a bad guy" bandits come at me, I AM WELL AWARE OF WHO AND WHAT HE IS. Being a 'bad guy' doesn't mean he hurts kids or random innocent people for leverage. That's never been his MO. Back in S1, it would've made more sense. He was trying to scare Beth in a very real way but she never had any concerns that he would hurt her kids. Now, I don't necessarily think he meant he would kill her kids when he threatened her family. He probably meant Dean, Annie, and maybe even Ruby. However, the fact that Beth immediately thought he was talking about harming her kids is fucking telling. She has never been afraid he would hurt them, not even in s1 when she knew nothing about him. Not even post 2.13.

Once again, this is part of a pattern of consistent writing choices they've been making with Rio's character and the way Beth views him. We had the fake pregnancy storyline, where the implication was that Beth needed him to believe it was his baby because if not, she thought he was capable of killing a pregnant woman. Now she thinks he would actually harm her children. Because she sees him as a psychopathic serial killer who only cares about money. She doesn't have feelings for him, she likes fucking him.

But aside from that, they've been consistently positioning Rio as a true threat to Beth, her safety, and that of her family. They've been giving her justification for when, I predict, she eventually kills him or gets him sent to prison.

Beth's Choice

I mean.... I did say this last week. She never chose him. She never will choose him. So stop acting so surprised. This is literally Beth doing what she's always done and Rio being turned into the idiot who trusts her and falls for it.

Last episode ended with Rio telling her she had a choice to make, the whole of this episode was her making that choice and the final scene was Rio confirming that she didn't choose him. Occam's razor. It's not complex. The song lyrics and outfit choices don't change that.

Rio's Backstory

Again, I said it would be bullshit and look - it was bullshit. So it's now canon confirmed that Rio is as dumb as a pile of rocks and his brother cousin has been manipulating him basically his whole life. He's not the smart kingpin we thought he was, he's a puppet who's been taking the fall for Nick for the last 20+ years for no goddamn reason.

So many question marks about the whole thing. Like i always figured his boss was a politician, so that's fine. But how the shit does Rio go from petty theft at a country club to running a protection racket and killing innocent shop girls? Like he goes to jail for 6 months and gets a tattoo? Murder Birdy on his neck possessed him and the sweet lil grandbaby who was stealing to buy his grandma a new stove has left the building? Why would he even continue working with Nick? Why was he risking his whole future by stealing anyway? Gonna do a separate post on the flashbacks because this is getting mad long but it was so dumb.

[lets-imagine-fanfics]

Prompt: “Do you even care anymore?” with Klaus

Pairing: Klaus Mikaelson x reader

Words: 955

A/N: To be honest I only watched the first season of ‘The Originals’ - Klaus my fave, but i’m kinda basing this around only my knowledge from the first season and a little bit of the second season xxx

A/N/N: Okay so this request just said Klaus, and as I was about to type in the tags…The only Klaus I saw was Klaus Hargreeves… so I’mma do 2… 

[Klaus Mikaelson] [Klaus Hargreeves]

[Prompt List | Masterlist | My Fandoms | Send an Ask]

You and Nik had been together for years, so many in fact that hat you have lost count but to give an example of how long, you were born the same year the Miklesons had been turned.

For some reason, Klaus kept your relationship a secret, he told his family, and you all spoke to often with one another even when one avoided the other, but other than that nobody knew. You guessed it was because he wanted to keep you safe since he's been making enemies from the day he was born.

Since you had been with Klaus for so long, there were a few things that you had become desensitised to, slight torture, killing etc. - you were a vampire, yes, but you never killed anybody - There was one thing that you could never get over, Klaus cheating.

You had caught them, Klaus and this girl, one night and you had left there and then, cut all ties with him. Elijah and Rebekah had been there to pick up the pieces of your broken heart, and you promised yourself that you would never be tricked by Klaus again.

Eventually, Nik found you and begged for you to come back to him, be his again, he slowly got you to doubt yourself and your options using that silver tongue of his. He would so easily manipulate those thoughts and memories that you had made, and you ended up taking him back after 20 years of him giving you gifts every other day.

It's easy to say you loved Klaus with everything you had, and you used all the patience you had with him too.

You had both decided to take a business trip to Paris while Klaus had been lead to somewhere in America, you said your "goodbyes and See you soon" and headed off in your different directions. It was easier to be separated for such a short period of time when you've lived several hundred years; it isn't ideal to be away from the person you love. Still, it's more manageable for the lifeless vampires that live on throughout time.

Throughout your trip you had been excited for it to end, despite enjoying it so much, to be able to see Klaus again, it was one of those trips for Klaus were he was so busy and so caught up down the rabbit hole that he couldn't message, so this whole trip there's was barely anything from him, or his siblings who accompanied him to Mystic Falls, somewhere with a lot of vampire action that apparently was not going under the radar.

The last day of your trip you receive a text, a sentence which you had read multiple times from Klaus before, although this time it was from an unrecognisable number - "Meet me in New Orleans, we have much to discuss."

On your way to a place you had once fled, and when you did, it had broken your heart, you only hope it goes better this time.

You walk through the large house that you once called home, admiring the decor that you remember as you move through the house.

You can hear talking through the house and can pinpoint that it is coming from the office - Klaus' voice is coming from Klaus' office.

As you make your way to your love, happiness fades, and sorrow hits you like a train as you overhear what Klaus and his siblings are talking about.

"She's having your child, Nicklaus, you need to do something to protect her and the child."

"Really Nik? you had to have a rebound, from Caroline, who -"

"Don't you ever mention her name to me again!"

Now here you are, standing in the corridor refusing to breathe as you were listening in to Klause and Elijah as they spoke about how it was possible for Klaus to bear a child.

A woman, with a hand over her stomach protectively despite her even showing, walked up to you. She could see the sadness in your eyes as she asked you if you were okay and introduced herself as Haley.

Haley, you had learnt a moment earlier was the woman who was having Klaus' child... So this was her, not only that but there was two of them: Haley and a Caroline.

Haley looked at you with slight concern, that innocent girl- you could have killed her there and then and end it all - but no, you were never evil, maybe a little desensitised.

You boss and begin to walk away only for you to hear the door of the old house creak open.

"Y/N?" Klaus, the person you had dedicated most of your life to loving unconditionally, asks as if you weren't even invited to the party.

You turn, holding your feelings down but refusing to flick that switch, the switch that is just there - just beginning for the rage that has been waiting to be unleashed for decades.

"Oh sorry, am I interrupting you and your family matters?" You reply with a snark.

"It's dangerous, you being here."

"Yeah, I was just leaving."

"Is that all you have to say? You know I committed infidelity and you don't have anything else to say? Do you even care anymore? There's nothing left for you to say... After all this time?" Klaus says, trying to get a rise in you or seeing how far he can push you before you break.

"...The mother of your child...she's lovely," you say before you walk away. You left that house and that family; you would more than likely see Rebekah and Elijah again but never Klaus. You promised yourself you would never cry over that man again.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep15 [FINALE]

For better or worse I think Ryukishi achieved exactly what he set out to do with this series, and I guess everyone’s just gonna be forced to reckon with how they feel about his own perspective on this franchise versus how they feel about it, lol.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut, plus Umineko spoilers.

I’m not entirely sure where to even start with this, but I guess the TL;DR is that I honestly think Gou/Sotsu was ultimately just fine despite it’s issues, and part me of can’t help but be like ‘I told you so, lol’ about how this really did end with this episode, and also committed pretty hard to the Umineko prequel elements.

It’s not like all of my theories were correct in the end, but I at least think I was pretty spot on in my prediction last week that this would end with the miracle of them side-stepping the sword issue entirely and choosing the third option of forgiveness and reconciliation. And also them ending it with an epilogue where we go back to the Matsuribayashi timeline and get a happy ending for Rika and Satoko that provides a ‘non-magical interpretation’ for the story while also giving us an idea of how Bern and Lambda formally split off into their own entities and start the relationship we see in Umineko.

I didn’t quite expect them to go down the route of having them agree to just spend a few years apart and accept that they don’t need to literally always be together, but I think that was a really good way to wrap things up between them. It’s pretty much the healthiest compromise to their conflict that doesn’t come across like it completely invalidates one of their dreams. I get why it feels too anti-climactic and convenient for people, but when you pull at that thread you get into wider topics of what the entire story is about, since this was always going to end with Satoko being redeemed and forgiven. People might not have taken him seriously, but Ryukishi was 100% genuine about his regrets about Matsuribayashi’s ending, and how part of why he came up with this new story was to create a better ending, while also doing more with Satoko as a character.

Basically I think a lot of the fandom negativity towards this boils down to people fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that Matsuribayashi was even ‘flawed’ in this sort of way to begin with, or that Satoko was badly written. It’s valid to disagree on this stuff, but at the very least we all have to grapple with how Ryukishi has his own specific relationship with this series.

People like to focus on how he’s a troll who likes to mess with people, but I feel like this is a bit of a wake-up call for people about how he’s actually extremely sincere, almost to a fault, and he likes to use his stories as a vehicle for expressing his personal philosophies and ideals. 

This whole story is also a good example of how he just sees this as ultimately being a fictional story about fictional characters, and not literally a matter of real people who need to be sentenced for their crimes or whatever. As early as the original VN he was almost being outright preachy about the message that nobody is irredeemable, and that philosophy carries through to this. But to be more specific, nobody *in this story* is irredeemable. He’s pretty open about the fact that in practice you can’t apply this sort of ideal to real life, but fictional stories are their own separate matter.

I think this whole issue of how he views this as a story first and foremost is also the central reason why this ended in a way that comes across as Satoko being let off too easy for her crimes. One way or another, Ryukishi’s made it clear that he sees this as being no different to how other characters had arcs where they committed crimes but still got forgiven, or how Takano is basically a straight up war criminal who also got forgiven for her crimes.

Anyway, this episode at least committed to the Umineko stuff, so that was satisfying. Sure there’s people that still want to deny it, but at this point I think a lot of people are just being stubborn, so it’s not like anything would have really convinced them, lol. I’m also genuinely not sure what people even would have expected them to do beyond what we saw her, aside from having the two of them literally put on their gothic lolita outfits and turn to the camera and go ‘we are literally Bernkastel and Lambdadelta from the video game series Umineko When They Cry’. I almost feel like there’s some kind of misunderstanding from people who aren’t familiar with Umineko when it comes to the idea of what it even means for this to be ‘an Umineko prequel’, or ‘a Bern/Lambda origin story’. I mean, this is quite literally exactly what I expected and hoped for in that regard. It’s not like I was expecting them to incorporate anything related to, like, Beatrice or the Ushiromiya family.

I think this is also one of those things where you just have to decide for yourself whether or not you want to earnestly engage with the story that’s being told, or if you want to assume that there’s some level of malice or trickery going on.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to literally have Rika and Satoko recite part of Bern and Lambda’s final conversation with each other word for word, lmao. Combined with the scene at the end where ‘Witch Satoko’ talks to herself about how she’s going to give her body back to Satoko while she goes chasing after Rika, it was literally just the exact origin story of their relationship as it’s depicted in Umineko.

I still feel like this would all only really be ‘worth it’ if we actually get something like a full on anime remake for Umineko, but at this point I can’t help but feel satisfied with this part of it all.

It’s not like I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is perfect or anything, though. I don’t hate it as much as basically everyone else does, but I think Ryukishi’s the sort of VN writer who really struggles with the shift to writing for an anime. I think a big part of the frustration people have is just from how this is formatted as a weekly anime series spread across basically an entire year, instead of being something like a stand-alone VN chapter that you can read at whatever pace you want, even if it ultimately takes the same amount of time to read as it would to watch all of Gou/Sotsu.

There’s also the whole issue of this being a sort-of-remake, which snowballed into a whole list of structural problems. They absolutely tried too hard to have their cake and eat it too, and they should have just committed to it being made for old fans only, instead of trying to sincerely incorporate elements from the VN that old fans don’t care about anymore because they’ve gone over it already.

And as I’ve said several times before, it was a major issue for them to decide to put Nekodamashi in the middle of Gou and then spend like 20 episodes on flashback answer arcs until finally getting back to that cliffhanger. I’ve been waiting until this all ended to decide exactly how I feel about that, and now that it’s all over I still think it was a really bad idea. I don’t think it was an issue for them to reveal that Satoko’s the culprit that early, but having the gun cliffhanger specifically happen that early just gave people misguided expectations and tainted the answer arcs because people were just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. And then the cliffhanger itself ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, which is what I’d been fearing would happen. It would have worked fine if they shuffled it around so that the cliffhanger happened right before Kagurashi and was followed up in the very next episode, or if this was a VN where you could binge your way through the flashback stuff, but spending like half of an entire real-life year to get back to that point only to have the resolution be ‘Satoko just shoots Rika and the death loops keep going’ just didn’t really work properly.

I’m a lot more generous towards the Akashi arcs than most people are, since I think they really over-estimate how much re-used content there is there, but they still suffer from the central issue of the show trying to be accessible for new fans. It could have been heavily condensed otherwise, without losing anything in terms of Satoko’s whole character arc.

On the other hand I think the first half of Kagurashi was awful specifically because it highlighted how bad of an idea it was to put Nekodamashi so early in the story. They still ended up having to go back to that arc and repeat it anyway, in the most 1:1 recap-y way in the whole show, but that wouldn’t have even been an issue in the first place if that was instead the first time that arc happened in the show.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would rearrange the story to make it flow better while still following Ryukishi’s intentions, and I think they could have condensed it into a 2-cour season with this sort of structure if they did something like this:

-First arc where Rika gets thrown back into the loop and quickly figures out that somebody intentionally caused this to happen, and it’s not Takano because at least in this idea of mine she’d try and investigate her only to find out that this version of Takano regrets everything and is planning to flee the village with Tomitake.

Basically I think this could tie into the idea of Satoko initially wanting to just concoct an idea world for Rika so that she won’t want to leave this time, but sort of like what I think happens in Saikoroshi, Rika would still reject it, and this time around there’d be the additional layer of her knowing that somebody did this to her for an unknown reason. Maybe they could even initially market it as a new adaptation or a remake of Saikoroshi, and then reveal that it’s a sequel, to keep that whole element to the series. Either way I think this would end with everything going to shit when Rika rejects that fragment and wants to go back to St. Lucia’s, and Satoko basically snaps and kills her, and that way the audience can find out about her being the culprit without Rika finding out about it yet.

Maybe there could even be some dramatic irony where Rika’s attempts to meddle with certain ‘trigger events’, and her displaying her looper side, inadvertently triggers people around her to get paranoid, and the whole fragment would start to spiral into tragedy from there. I think they could at least use the whole conflict in Tatariakashi about Teppei actually being good this time as a starting point for that sorta thing.

-Second arc, rounding out the first cour, which is basically just Satokowashi. I don’t think there’s much that you’d need to change here, but like I said above I like the idea of her initially trying to just invent a perfect world for Rika and her to live in, instead of jumping straight to murder. But maybe instead of her literally just watching Rika’s loops, she could instead just be stuck using her looping powers to try and figure out how to create that ‘perfect world’ in the first place, by personally investigating all of the different tragedies and how to prevent them.

-Staring the second cour, a third arc where we basically just get to see those loops Satoko goes through, and her whole process of solving the tragedies and ‘purifying’ characters like Teppei and Takano, until we eventually see her perspective on the first arc, and how she reacts to Rika ultimately rejecting the world she tried to make for her.

-A fourth and final arc which is basically just Nekodamashi + Kagurashi, where she just totally snaps and tries to just torture Rika into never wanting to leave the village again, and eventually Satoko gets exposed and they have their direct confrontation with each other.

With that sorta story structure, you’d keep all the relevant bits of Gou/Sotsu as it is now, while being more focused on Rika and Satoko instead of doing kinda half-assed reruns of the Rena and Shion arcs. It’d also push the big cliffhanger between them until near the end of the show, while still revealing to the audience relatively early on that Satoko’s the culprit.

I’d also like them to do more with Satoshi and Shion, so maybe like with how Teppei gets redeemed and Satoko almost gets to have a happy life with him in Tatariakashi, the central question arc of this hypothetical story could also involve Satoko making sure that Satoshi wakes up from his coma, and Shion also gets to have a good relationship with all of them. You could probably do something interesting with the idea of Satoshi and Shion being in the camp of not trusting Teppei and his whole redemption arc.

Honestly I could spend a long time talking about how I would have done things differently, lol. For one thing, I think the Akashi arcs would have been much better if they just changed it so that Satoko used psychological tactics to make people paranoid, and we completely cut out the whole syringe plot device. I get how it fits with Satoko’s whole certainty gimmick, but it made those arcs way too predictable. Even if we knew the outcome, it’d at least be entertaining to see exactly how Satoko might go out of her way to set up the different tragedies. We kinda got glimpses of that sorta plot point in Wataakashi when things seemed to go outside of her control, but they didn’t really do much with it.

Anyway, this is a whole lot of words to say that I think that in spite of the serious structural issues going on, I think Gou/Sotsu as a whole is fine, and was at least working with a lot of perfectly good ideas that could have been executed much better.

Also, on a side note, that one scene during their fist-fight at the start where the art-style changes a bit was kinda weird, but I really liked how it looked, and part of me almost wishes the whole show looked like that, lol. I like Akio Watanabe’s character designs, but I feel like that sort of stylized, almost TWEWY-ish art style would have been really fitting for this series, especially in the horror/action parts.

Oh, and the new rendition of You was so good it almost felt emotionally manipulative, lol.

[ninjas-and-coffee]

WU SUCKS but not the reason you think

I'd like to preface by saying Wu has made a lot of mistakes and should be held accountable. But like the main arguments against Wu be like.

1: Morro

2: Traumatizing kids

3: Keeping secrets

4: Mot treating his nephew like is damn nephew.

5: Flirting with his brothers wife.

And the thing about that needs talked about. 1:Morro. First off getting kids hopes is not cool. It can be detrimental to development depending on the age of the child. BUT. Not a single soul told Morro to train tirelessly for 60+ years after his death to take revenge and be the green ninja. Absolutly no one. Wu had compassion for his failings and wanted to show Morro he could still he great without being the green ninja. But the little brat ran tf off and got trapped and died. And he got cursed, how- we dont know. But its implied that it's either intentional entrapment or you have to be a terrible person, guess which category he probably falls into. Mind you Wu also told our OGs that they could also be the green ninja and none of them went off the rails to settle some invisible score. Morro made his choices and he made shit ones. Wu was an influence but not the problem. Morro is unstable, dramatic, and holds grudges Wu didnt cause that.

2: the traumatic experiences the nina go through are also not exactly his fault. He didnt just pick them off the streets. THERE WAS A PROPHECY. Ok? Yall with me. Fate isnt uncontrolled by anyone the ninja needed to be trained to help Lloyd fight the Overlord. That wasnt his decision. And yall act like the ninja couldn't leave whenever they wanted to. He didnt gaslight them or belittle them in anyway that wasnt for teaching. Please bring me receipts if you think otherwise. I do admit he could help a little more, be more clear, but when has a old magic teacher character ever been straightforward. With that logic fuck Dumbledore, and Gandalf, and any wise old teacher that goes to find chosen one who once again are chosen by fate not the master himself. Yall literally cant blame Wu for Child's Play and you cant blame Wu for their experience with Nadakhan either. The enemies that go out of there way to attack the ninja are not a direct cause if Wu himself. Usually. It be like blaming Garmadon for Chen. Yes they had history but it's still not his fault

3: Secrets. I will admit there is next to no reason for keeping secrets from the ninja. Considering history always has kind of score to settle. But considering his age and the apparent imprisonment or death of his past enemies there no way to predict every problem that comes back to screw him over. The Time Twins for example. Yes they came back for Wu. But he did remove their powers and separated them over 20+ years ago. They were not exactly threats to his new students now were they? Again with Aspheera, who was literally locked in a tomb why take the time to educate the ninja on a problem he had no idea was going to come back for him. Same with Morro to a more confusing degree. MORRO DIED. How was he to prepare the ninja for that? Yes please tell me how they were supposed to prepare for a dead guy. I'll wait.........k. he should be more forthcoming with the ninja, about things he knows could harm them, like the Serpentine after Lloyds released them, Chen, the Overlord, the effects of Travelers Tea, Tomorrow's Tea, Oni, Etc. But most of the time the ninja go and do it first then wonder why Wu didn't warn them.

4: His nephew. Wow his parenting sucks. Morro is not his damn child let's start there. Comparing their relationship is unfair. Wu cared for Morro the way he cares for Kai and Nya. He never accentuates a paternal relationship with then. Cause they are students, students he has to train with he intent to send them out onto dangerous battle fields and mind games. He was alone so yes it looks different but it's also a leap to just assume that Wu viewed Morro as his own despite treating him the exact same way as his 6 other students. Now back to Lloyd. Why didnt he get his nephew from Darkleys where it was known he ran away from multiple times? I DONT KNOW. No one does. That is a bad move I can only theorize about. Maybe Misako said something about staying away, maybe he wasnt kept in the loop about his nephews whereabouts due to idk KICKING HIS FATHER INTO HELL. C'mon yall. Now in the later seasons my best guess is that he doesnt know how to differentiate his nephew from the chosen one side and the goofy child side. Hes never had a child and his early relations with Lloyd were scarce and when Lloyd came to live with him. It's not due to some familial obligation, destiny literally called for it. Putting some definite strain on their relationship. I'm not excusing it he should try better, but he'd have to build a relationship from nothing and most people know their immediate family upon birth or during childhood which is not the case here. Wu treats his nephew more like a vessel of power than a person which isnt cool but knowing that the kid might not come back after every fight is a good damper on happy relationships is it not?

5: Misako. Good lord I don't have to explain this one. No excuse. It shouldn't be happening. BUT. After Garmadons death she was a free woman as gross as it is. It's more a flaw on her than it is him she chose to have a baby with one brother and still try to get with the other. And I know it takes two to tango but dont get mad at the idiot that the cheater is cheating with. Be mad at the cheater. The thing people really dont get about love triangles. The "other guy" brings on the questions/options but the person who cant choose or screws with both parties is the one in the wrong. Lloyd seems ok with it. Because Tommy said so. I dont particular give two shits about his take on the show half the time. If Lloyd were actively against it the Wu would probably stop. If the Fsm family acted like a normal ass family we probably wouldnt be here. But their priorities are a little screwy compared to typical nuclear families. Not an excuse just some perspective

NOW, why he is a bad character despite all of those arguments. he chooses to train soldiers rather than care for impressionable teens. Yes the situation called for it but the pressure could he alleviated if he decided to actually help before the world was on fire. He chooses to teach by experience than be upfront. Which works sometimes but not when actual lives are at stake. His trial by fire teaching works but the possiblity it could go wrong is to big to be brushed aside. His seemingly unreachable vault of empathy is hard to swallow. He rarely actually feels things for other people, his lack of enthusiasm when they pull through something hurts to watch. His lack of empathy about raising his nephew to attempt to kill his father is frightening. The pride he demonstrates by choosing not to disclose his past until it's too late is dangerous. He doesnt directly put down the ninja unless he has to and its more implied than anything and is on his students and this fandom for taking it so harshly. He trusts them a lot because he doesnt see them as kids anymore. They are warriors and it was necesary. He should have more compassion. He should be more straight forward, he should try to act like a person and not some ethereal being of elsewhere that doesn't have time to appease feelings or care about people until after hes wronged them. His values are off kilter sometimes which is whatever until it starts to hurt people

But yall need to stop blaming him for other people actions. Morro was a mess to begin with. His problems are in the past because he took care of them already. Misako came onto him. (He should have resisted but he didnt start shit she did). He needs to try to be an uncle alongside being a teacher. He needs to act like a fucking person more than the infinite cache of wisdom and unforeseen unused power that he acts like. And also it's a kids show. How many children think the way yall do?, we're teens/YAs we're reading into things. A LOT which makes everything more complicated. Comments rebuttals open. There's a collection of little mistakes hes made along the way that dont fit into these categories but these are the main reasons I know people hate him and the little things add fuel to the fire. I will legit talk about anything Except for the morro thing I am so tired of seeing it Morro made his choices hes a fucking Villain Wu didnt make him that way being a bitter asshole did that. Thanks for reading!! :3

[x0401x]

Violet Evergarden Movie Summary

The initial plan was to make this a short bullet-point thing, but I felt like there was too much to clarify and I had no choice but use novel references to explain certain parts, so I decided to just write a normal summary. Many thanks before-hand to my friend Yuuki, who gave me all this info.

Apologies for taking relatively long with this thing. Not even I expected that I would end up writing this much. Buckle up for the ride, ‘cause it won’t be fun.

Nope, not kidding. It really won’t.

First thing I need to make clear is: this movie is one and a half hour long and divided into three parts and two different timelines: the times when Violet existed and the times after she dies. Already in the beginning of the movie, Violet is dead.

Yes, you read this right. She’s dead.

Now, I don’t mean that she’s dead in the literal sense. This is 60 years in the future. She might be alive or not, but it’s never said. However, the timeline of 60 years later is considered an era without Violet, apparently because she has retired and her “legend” is over, so to say. It’s also a time where Auto-Memories Dolls don’t exist. That’s one good punch in the face. Let’s keep counting.

The movie is sort of like a tale being read by someone else, which at some point goes into Violet’s first-person POV. The whole thing is kind of a look back on Violet’s life tragectory and how it took a new turn when she decided to continue looking for Gil despite all the mess of the TV series.

The era where Violet exists is an era where telephones are being introduced to the people, so Auto-Memories Dolls are starting to become unnecessary. I would argue that the creation of the telephone isn’t enough for an entire occupation to start disappearing so quickly, since new inventions are normally extremely expensive and not everyone has access to them (or even knows about their existence) so immediately after their conception. Realistically speaking, ghostwriters would still be important as long as there were still so many people unable to buy phones. Not to mention that this is a steampunk world where compulsory education doesn’t seem to be a thing yet, so even in the off chance that everybody can buy a phone, there would still be a lot of people who can’t read or write on their own. But all of this clearly went over the animators’ heads, so not only ghostwriters but also the mail business in general are nearing their doom in the movie.

The one looking back on Violet’s life was Ann, who was telling it all to her granddaughter, Daisy (who, by the way, is voiced by Morohoshi Sumire, the same girl who voiced the seven-year-old Ann). Ann had kept all the letters that Violet ghostwrote for her mother, as well as the newspapers about the CH Postal Company. Looks like the article was printed after Violet left CH, since she isn’t in the picture with everyone else.

In this era, CH’s main office has been turned into a museum. Nerine is shown working in it. Of course, she’s a grandma by then. Speaking of the CH personnel, Erica also quit being an Auto-Memories Doll and became a playwright like Oscar. She appears in the newspaper, though, so she probably a while left after Violet did. Taylor also appears there.

Back to Daisy, she was writing a letter to her parents, in order to learn how to properly convey feelings with written word. The message of this scene seems to be that, no matter the tools, what’s important is that we convey our feelings to the people we love.

As we see in the trailer, Gil’s mom has passed and Violet runs into Dietfried when visiting her grave on the anniversary of her death. To anyone who is wondering: yeah, Gil never went to see his mother and she died thinking that he was dead.

Nobody knew that Gil was alive. Not his mother, not Dietfried, not the Evergardens and not even Hodgins. No one.

Here’s what happened to Gil in the anime: he survived the incident at Intense, of course, but got separated from Violet in that explosion. His tag miraculously stayed on the same spot, though, as we saw in the TV series. Now, since this isn’t explained in the anime at all, I have to make it clear: the tag is that necklace the soldiers wear. It contains their names and ranks, so that their bodies can be identified even when they’re irrecognizable. Without the tag, the people who rescued Gil had no idea who he was, so he was sent to a different place to get treated. He ended up at a monastery hospital instead of the one in Enchaîné. I would debate that his uniform alone is enough to identify him as someone from the Leidenschaftlich Army, or maybe they could’ve just asked him which troop he belonged to after he woke up and relocated him to where his fellow men were, but who even cares about all these plot holes anymore? Definitely not me.

Anyway. After Gil was discharged, he ran the fuck away. Like, literally.

If anyone out there was hoping that Gil would finally have his moment to shine as the self-sacrificing, thoughtful and ridiculously kindhearted character that he is in the novel, I have bad news for you. What we had here was even worse than it being Gil’s excuse movie. It’s like the whole thing was made to drag his character so deep through the mud that he’ll never be able to get up again. There’s pretty much nothing in this one and a half hour that actually justifies what he did to Violet. I’ll elaborate on this as we go on.

Anime!Gil became a nomad and went traveling. He offed his ass to the island where that lighthouse displayed in the most recent official art is located (that’s why Gil and Violet were at the beach on the movie poster). He doesn’t have a prosthetic in the anime because, apparently, he was more worried about disappearing as fast as possible to somewhere he would never be found, and never attempted to contact anybody. So nobody knew that he was alive, hence the grave, which, as we feared, was not a fake one. His family really did think he had died.

This is a point that I have already addressed before, but that also means Gil really did abandon Violet to luck. If anything dangerous ever happened to her (as it did, and it was always very obviously likely to happen, since she was the southern army’s most outstanding soldier and quite literally fled from the military), he wouldn’t even know. If word ever got to him, it would probably be too late. And even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to help her. More than allowing her to live freely, it felt like he was running away from his responsibilities regarding Violet.

Punch on the face count is currently at six.

By sheer coincidence, Violet learns that Gil is living in that island. She goes to see him and Hodgins goes with her after trying to stop her at first. When Gil finds out that they came to see him, he outright refuses to meet them. It pretty much takes the near entirety of the goddamn movie for them to see each other face-to-face. I say face-to-face because all of the following shit happens:

Hodgins goes to talk to Gil. It lasts about 20 minutes.

Gil talks to Violet from behind a door. This one is about 10 minutes.

Dietfried also comes to the island to talk to him. Also about 10 minutes.

At long fucking last, Gil goes to see Violet. But that, too, is only for about 10 minutes.

Hodgins gives him a speech very similar to what happens in chapter 8. Now get ready to fall back from your seats: Dietfried basically goes there to tell Gil that he won’t run away from taking over the family anymore, so Gil can live freely. Yes, Dietfried is officially a better Gilbert than Gilbert himself. I crave death.

So, after much ado, they come to a conclusion: Gil will stay in the island. In order to completely free himself of the shackles of his bloodline, he stays behind, living the way he wants to. ‘Cause all anime!Gil wants is to rot away alone by the sea, apparently. Now prepare yourselves, for it gets worse. Ready?

Violet stays with him in the motherfucking island.

That’s right, ladies and gents. Another fear became true. She quits her job at the CH Postal Company and goes to live with him. Well, at least, not as a housewife. She starts working with mail services in the island, and Gil helps her with it. Her life goes on like this and she dies in the island as well.

This is where the timeline after Violet passes away comes into light, parallel to the era when Violet was alive. Daisy talks about what happened after Violet left CH, as if it were a tale from the distant past.

That’s it.

The movie paints this as a happy ending. I can hardly see it as one. I know it almost looks like everything was solved, but it just got swept under the rug.

The main point that makes me sad in this ending is that Violet’s character development did a 360 degree flip. In the end, she threw everything to the air and went to live in someone who she always put before everyone else, even herself, but who didn’t do the same for her (in the anime). She’s gone to a crammed little island, where she led an uneventful life away from everyone and everything that’s ever had a positive impact on her. All she has is Gil.

Of course, he’s all she needs, but he isn’t all she should have, and that was the entire point of pushing her to go live on her own. Which is exactly what she earns in the novel: two loving parents, a father figure, a brother figure, a best friend and several other friends and acquaintances whom she formed a bond with. She has all she needs, so she doesn’t have to cling to Gil for any reason. There’s no emotional dependance on him anymore. She doesn’t need him to be whole. She just wants him because he happens to be the best person she’s ever met.

Anime!Violet is most definitely not whole. She almost got there, but then she backtracked completely. And anime!Gil... in my friend’s words, is a weakling. There’s nothing in him actually worth all this undying blind love. Sure, he’s full of regret and shit, but it’s too easy to only act upon it now, by vanishing into thin air like a coward.

The deal with novel!Gil is that he looks around at everything he has, everything that had been burdening him and killing him on the inside all his life, and decides to make use of it for Violet’s sake. He continues being family head and working in the army, amassing money and connections in order to have every means possible to protect Violet should anything happen to her. And as it turns out, he does end up having to use those means, more than once, but he will keep this up for as long as he needs to, because he lives for her now. That’s what makes him worth all the blood, sweat, tears, mental sanity and even body parts that she gave away for his sake: he pays it back. Every cent.

Punch in the face count ends at twelve. Thirteen if I include the fact that the movie ends with a last shot of Violet after she and Gilbert do a pinky swear. Looks like they were really trying to buy everyone with tears.

Oh, well.

I hope this has been a good enough summary. Sorry if I rained on anyone’s parade. I’m pretty sure we won’t get a remake ever, so I really wish we all can get over this soon.

[rbbalmung]

Pokemon SwSh GPL AU: Get to know ______

Guys, it’s time for my favourite pokemon ship. Prepare for loads of fluff. 

Get to Know Gloria x Hop (Postwickshipping/Hpyu): 

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other? I headcannon that Gloria really likes pokemon plushies, so Hop is always unconsciously checking the stuffed animal section of stores to see if there’s any she doesn’t have. Gloria tries really hard to get him books that pertain to his research, but she really has no clue what he studies aside from the fact that it’s legendary pokemon (Legendary Pokemon are his focus). 

2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap? Gloria! They are the cuddliest couple ever. There’s about a foot size difference between them, so she fits perfectly in his lap. (Hop is def the little spoon, tho). 

3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes? TBH, they would both walk around the house half naked. They’re comfort first babies, so you know Gloria’s bra is coming off and Hop is discarding his work clothes the second their door is closed. I think it’s kind of a casual thing for them, though. They’ve known each other long enough that this kind of thing doesn’t bother them. 

4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway? Gloria has to drag Hop’s ass to bed pretty much every night. They’re both busy people, but we all know that Hop would lose track of time while working on his thesis. It is a fact that if Gloria doesn’t come to get him, he will fall asleep on his desk. 

5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies? They’re actually both pretty good cooks (Gloria’s mama owns a restaurant in Wedgehurst and Hop’s mom is obsessed with cooking), but I think Hop would probably be the one to burn all the food. The only reason why is because he has a harder time focusing solely on cooking instead of trying to multitask. Now, baking is a whole other story. They’re both terrible at it. 

6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”? Gloria would be the one to read the prompts and Hop would be the denier (he secretly thinks it’s really cute whenever she does it). 

7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes? Gloria. 100% Gloria. She is constantly cold and has a passion for stealing Hop’s hoodies. He thinks its adorable because they’re always really big on her. 

8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?” Hop would be the errand runner and Gloria would make sure he remembered everything. It goes back to Hop’s mind being a million places at once and Gloria hyper focusing on one thing at a time. 

9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions? Hop would drive and Gloria would give directions for similar reasons to the question above. 

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws? Hop doodles Gloria sometimes to keep his hands busy. It’s kind of an absent minded thing for him to do while reading an article/book. Once Sonia caught him doing it, and when I say she teases him relentlessly, I mean it. Hop absolutely does not let Gloria see these doodles (they’re very cutesy and he’d die of embarrassment). 

11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips? Hop would be the backflipper and Gloria would be the follower. Think back to their GPL season: Hop was blazing ahead at all times without a care in the world. Gloria is the slowest traveler in the world because she likes talking to everyone and visiting all the stores.  

12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking? Neither of them can hold their alcohol, but Hop at least has more body mass than Gloria. They’re a pair of lightweights and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. (Let’s be real: Bede has to be the one to make sure they get home). 

14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own? Gloria. I actually believe that Gloria would keep her last name even after she and Hop get married because it belongs to her mama (after the divorce, they both changed their last names to match her mama’s maiden name). Hop is also a proud Hoffman, so he wouldn’t use the name Park. However, everyone else will mix it up. Gloria gets called “Mrs. Hoffman” all the time if she’s arriving for restaurant reservations or something of the like. Newer reporters/young children call Hop “Mr. Park” because they just assume Park was his last name. 

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside? Neither of them are scared of bug pokemon. 

16: Which one gives the other their jacket? HOP. I mentioned it earlier, but Gloria is always cold. Bede asks why he doesn’t just make Gloria bring her own jacket and Hop replies that he likes it when she wears his jacket (they’re freaking sappy).  

17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling? Pft. Leon? Please. By this point, he’s become the big brother of Gloria as well. The League members are a completely different story. They all like Hop, but since Gloria is one of their younger members and the biggest sweetheart, they’re a protective bunch (Especially Melony and Gordie). 

18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other? Gloria, but it didn’t go well. It was right before he was leaving to finish up high school studying abroad, and the timing wasn’t right (aka Hop turned her down because he hadn’t yet realised his feelings for her). Gloria tries her best to move on but never truly gets over him. Luckily, his feelings hit him like a bag of bricks to the stomach when they reunite a couple years later.  

19: How good would your OTP be at parenting? The best. They would definitely be the cool parents (I mean, come on. They’re the freaking heroes of Galar!). I think they’d also be super supportive of their child’s choices. 10/10. They’re made to be parents. (Hop would especially want to be a good dad. He’s initially nervous because he never knew his dad and thinks he might mess up, but Gloria reassures him that he’s doing a good job). 

20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters? Hop would be Mr. Perfect Grammar. Gloria would use mostly good grammar, but her texts would be littered with emojis. 

21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them? Hop is the more confrontational of the two. Gloria tends to believe that people are only mean to others if something bad is happening in their life, but Hop will jump from 0 to 100 if someone even looks at Gloria funny.  

22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun? Gloria likes Hop’s bad puns, so everyone else has to cringe in discomfort at the oblivious pair. 

23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy? Hop. Gloria likes catching pokemon and sending them on poke jobs, so there’s a new member to their family at least once a week. 

24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired? Hop. He’s the only one she would show vulnerability to, and he makes sure not to make her feel ashamed of it. (also, Gloria absolutely could not carry Hop. He’s like, a foot taller than her).  

25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering? Both! They’re very supportive of each other to help ease the other’s insecurities. Hop gets really invested in her pokemon matches and Gloria throws him a little celebration every time he finishes a project.  

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder? Gloria. Since Hop never goes to sleep at night, it is very common for him to take 5 minute power naps without even realising it. Gloria definitely takes pictures when it happens as a reflex (They were long distance for the first 4 years of their relationship) because she wants to be able to look back at their memories together.  Like Gloria doesn’t know about Hop’s doodles of her, Hop doesn’t know about her phone album of him. 

27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked? Gloria? I think they both grow into their separate styles as the get older, but Gloria would push Hop to wear more colourful things. Sonia once told Hop that a man should never tell a woman what to wear because it’s rude. I don’t think Gloria would mind if he suggested something, but he is way too nervous to do it (Sonia scarred him).   

28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of? Hop is very nervous around Urshifu and Calyrex. Urshifu because he’s terrifying, large, and very protective of Gloria. Calyrex because the pokemon will take over his body without warning to tell Gloria something.  

29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains? Hop! If Gloria held it, Hop’s head would be in the umbrella. 

30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures? Oh my gosh, they’d go everywhere. I think that after Gloria steps down as champion, they travel to all the different regions for at least a couple of years. Gloria would be the one to take pictures and make a little scrapbook when they return home.  

[ghostie-gengar]

Ok so i have had this idea of an AU where N has like an actual known mother for like so long and i just. i have to get it out i need to so here’s a very very watered down version of her story with events that are so unlikely but whatever i just (warning it’s really long despite being a summary so prepared to get smacked with mom lore)

so. Her name is helen and she is a very nice lady. like SUPER NICE like you could break into her house and she’d be like “oh hey :) would you like some cookies i can put on a pot of tea” but also not a doormat. she Would Not hesitate to tell ghetsis off or smack anyone who hurts her kids.

anyways helen and ghetsis met in their mid to late teens, became friends (somehow :/ ghetsis was quite the charismatic young guy i imagine) and got married in their 20s. after a couple years twins!! im sure i don’t need to tell you how that happened. anyways concordia and anthea popped up and they were quite the handful but helen absolutely adored them and ghetsis was just kinda like “ok whatever children”

oh also im not sure if i’ll keep this but helen can sooooort of understand pokemon and N got that ability from her

oh also btw helen and ghetsis formed team plasma together see helen’s idea was to create like a pokemon relief center kinda like a sanctuary idk and ghetsis’ branch of family was kinda like a cult that thought humans and pokemon should be separate and ghetsis wanted to use that for more power and saw helen and was like “i can use this :)” anyways moving on

One day helen and ghetsis were taking a lovely stroll and they came across these young triplets who were homeless and helen was like “mine” so they adopted them and ghetsis twisted it to make it seem like He was the cool one who saved them so they’d listen to him (shadow triad)

this is kinda where team plasma begins to seem more evil and helen is catching on but she’s like “noooo ghetsis wouldn’t do that” (girl you’re wrong)

anyways once concordia and anthea are like eight or nine a little natural harmonia gropius pops up!! and helen is overjoyed cuz like she secretly always wanted six kids and now one two three four five six!!!!

she and ghetsis are also quick to notice how much n looks like ghetsis and ghetsis is mentally like “haha yes mini me >:D”

Then team plasma is very clearly a cult like helen can’t even deny it anymore and she tries to bring it up to ghetstink but he just waves her off like “now now dear don’t be silly” and she’s like >:(

ghetsis starts taking about making n the king of team plasma and helen’s like “well only if he wants to right” and ghetsis is like “no”

he only wants to use N more when he figured out N could understand pokemon cuz like he’d babble to helen’s minccino (oh yeah btw helen has a minccino)

theeeeeeeeeeen helen walks in on ghetsis being mmmmmmmmmmmm not good to concordia and concordia and anthea are both crying and helen is like “DUDE” and makes him sit down and have a serious talk about proper parenting which ghetsis also brushes off

then after a couple of days, concordia and anthea run away and helen is obviously absolutely devastated and she and ghetsis look for weeks. months. And no sign of them. ghetsis is like “well i guess they’re dead nvm then” and helen is like “DUDE” and she looks in the girls’ bedroom and finds a note from the girls that tells her to keep n safe and not to worry about them

after thinking about all the crap stuff ghetsis has done lately helen takes n in the middle of the night and runs. no looking back. bye bye ghetstink :( and life is much better honestly

she lives in that trailer in lostlorn with lil baby n and her plan was to wait for him to be able to walk and fend for himself and then they’d both go look for concordia and anthea but until then peaceful forest life playing with pokemon

And ghetsis upon waking up and seeing his wife and kid is gone he’s very upset. after a few years however he’s walking in like white forest or something and stUmbles upon concordia and anthea and he’s like “frickin sweet man” and snatches them and they are Not Happy but when they get back to the castle and see helen and n are gone? they are So Relieved those two got away even if they had to stay there

Anyways once n was three or four he was fine he could walk and he loved to wander around and make pokemon friends and he’d always come back to the trailer

one day ghetsis was walking through lostlorn for no particular reason and he came across n playing and recognized him immediately and was like “Oh My God No Way” and committed grand theft natural right there on the spot

but before he left he left a note for helen to find that said “did you really think you could hide forever” just to rub salt in the wound

anyways helen is like man it’s getting late i wonder where little natural is and so she gets a pidove to go look for him and the pidove brings back the note and when she sees it. tears. literal tears and sobbing she’s like “oh my god he has him He Has Him” and then she’s like “k you know what? Imma go get him i will go GET my child from this stinky man watch me grab my coat and i will get back the boy and if he has the girls too i’ll take them too and”

and then!! The shadow triad appear in the trailer (they all have names that only helen bothered to learn) and they’re like “hey so we kinda have strict orders from ghetsis that if we see you in the castle or anywhere near team plasma we kinda have to tell ghetsis and he’ll hurt n so maayyybe don’t?”

and helen is like crap. like genuinely there is no good solution cuz if she goes and fails to get the n back ghetsis would hurt n and if she did get the n back ghetsis would hurt the shadow triad and so she’s stuck and she has no choice but to just let everything happen

But!!! This story has a happy ending!!!

so i didn’t mention this cuz my thoughts are all over the place but helen likes to paint and so in order to cope with everything she painted her kids and they’re like really good anyways

N meets her at some point after bw2 cuz he was in lostlorn and it was raining and zoroark ran into her trailer and he was like “zoroark you Cannot Be Here we need to go” and helen walked in and she recognized him immediately like she was internally like holy arceus above that is my son that is my son that is my

but N doesn’t remember her like at all so she doesn’t want to say anything in case she overwhelms him and N is like “i am so sorry for coming in here my zoroark just hey you know what i’ll just leave”

Meanwhile she’s trying not to cry and she’s looking from n to a painting of n she did and she’s like holy arceus and she’s like “nono you can stay for tea until the rain is over”

And n had also noticed the painting and he was like that’s literally me but didn’t want to say anything

So n stays for tea and they have a lovely chat and helen is like this is literally my son and he has no idea who i am and then the rain stops so n leaves and helen is just like. Sad

But then n comes back another day and stays for tea again cuz they kinda became buddies and n is about to leave but he stops. at the doorway and slowly turns around and is like “i feel like i know you from somewhere” and helen is like “???” about to cry again

And you can like see the gears turning in n’s brain and he just freezes. and he looks up. And he’s like “.......mom?”

tears. Everywhere and both of them are sobbing and hugging each other and helen’s like “omg you’re so tall look at you how you’ve grown” and more tears and they literally hug for like hours while helen tells the story and helen was like starting to calm down and n’s like “btw connie and anthy are alive” and she just starts crying again and then they go to the house in driftveil so helen can see the girls and everyone just starts crying the girls are freaking out cuz they never knew what happened to mom and rood was there and crying like “mistress helen you’re alive ma’am” and just. big group hug and the shadow triad probably teleport in there for like five minutes and helen will absolutely not let them go without hugs even if they still work for ghetsis and yeah. that’s the very long summary of n’s mom imagine how long it would have been if i like actually wrote it professionally ok bye

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor). 

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

[gingersnapwolves]

The Untamed, a brief summary [part 6/6]

Part One: Sword Wizard School

Part Two:  The Search for the Yin Iron and the World’s Worst Summer Camp

Part Three: The Fall of Lotus Pier and the Sunshot Campaign

Part Four: The Downward Spiral

Part Five: Mo Manor, Hungry Sabers, and Yi City

Part Six: The Hidden Room, Burial Mounds Redux, and Guanyin Temple

Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Lan Xichen roll up to Koi Tower. Jiang Cheng is already there and decides to make it awkward for everyone by asking the Lans to introduce the masked Wei Wuxian, even though a) he knows or is at least pretty damn sure it’s Wei Wuxian, b) he knows that they know it’s Wei Wuxian, and c) he doesn’t know if they know that he knows. Thanks for making me type that sentence, Jiang Cheng.

ENTER A WOMAN WHO SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A BETTER PRE-NUP

Jin Guangyao comes out. He still has a great smile and he and Lan Xichen are still cute together. But it gets really awkward because, if you’ll remember (and I don’t blame you if you don’t), Wei Wuxian is pretending to be Mo Xuanyu, who is Jin Guangyao’s half-brother who got thrown out of Koi Tower for bad behavior. How bad? Well, apparently Mo Xuanyu had a habit of harassing Jin Guangyao’s wife, Qin Su. Whoops.

Of course, it’s difficult to say whether or not Mo Xuanyu actually did this, since all we have to go on is what people say about him, and ‘maybe don’t believe every rumor you hear’ is like the main thesis of this show.

 Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Nie Huaisang shows up too, and throws himself at Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen because “the old problems are solved, but new problems have arrived!” He is a drunk mess and it’s a little embarrassing for everyone.

 Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Jin Ling is being bullied. Wei Wuxian tells him that he should beat the bullies up, because once you’re an adult you can’t just beat people up anymore and it sucks. He teaches Jin Ling some moves and they have some nice nephew-uncle bonding time, even if Wei Wuxian is pretending to be a different uncle from the one he actually is.

 Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian uses a little paper man talisman spell to sneak into Jin Guangyao’s rooms. His wife is there and she’s upset about a letter she got. Jin Guangyao comes in and they argue about it. She keeps asking if what’s in it is true, and what happened to their son. He keeps asking her who wrote the letter and saying whoever it was only trying to upset her. When she won’t back down or answer his question, he burns the letter and then puts some sort of trance spell on her. Then he takes her into a hidden room behind a mirror.

The room is full of all sorts of treasure, including Wei Wuxian’s old sword, and more important, Nie Mingjue’s head. Yeah, just his head, with blinders over its eyes and everything. It’s weird. Wei Wuxian does a spell called Empathy to communicate with the dead guy.

  Int, Nie Mingjue’s mind [currently Lanling]

We see flashbacks to him first meeting and promoting Meng Yao, who was getting bullied by the other soldiers, then to the day he exiled Meng Yao (with slight differences from the way it was presented earlier because unreliable narration is fun). We see them argue a few times over the years, then see Jin Guangyao playing music for Nie Mingjue (ostensibly to keep him from qi deviation). They get into a big fight, Nie Mingjue throws Jin Guangyao down the steps of Koi Tower, but then his brain basically explodes. Jin Guangyao looks pretty satisfied with how things are turning out but then Nie Huaisang runs up, shouting for his brother, and Jin Guangyao switches to looking super worried instead. He keeps Nie Huaisang from running to his brother, saying he won’t recognize him. Then Nie Mingjue is held down in the treasure room we’re currently in, still alive and fighting qi deviation, and Jin Guangyao tells Xue Yang to kill him (with Baxia, which Xue Yang is holding), which he does.

  Int, the hidden room [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian separates his mind from Nie Mingjue’s and says ‘well that was fucked up’.

Jin Guangyao notices the little paper man and starts trying to catch it, or stab it. Wei Wuxian manages to use the paper man to manipulate his own former sword, which is very cool, and get away.

Jin Guangyao is like ‘gee, who could that have been, using Wei Wuxian’s paper man talisman to wield Wei Wuxian’s sword?’

  Int, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji about all the fucked up stuff he just witnessed. They go to force their way into the hidden chamber. Lan Xichen catches up with them on the way. A bunch of Jin disciples try to stop them, including Jin Ling. Lan Xichen asks Jin Guangyao to let them in if he has nothing to hide. Jin Guangyao tries to demur, but Lan Xichen insists. With so many witnesses, he’s left with no choice.

  Int, the hidden room [Lanling]

Nie Mingjue’s head is gone, but Qin Su is still there. Wei Wuxian goes over to try to talk to her, and Su She (remember this guy? Betrayed the Lan sect way back when, made friends with Jin Guangyao afterwards) says that ‘Mo Xuanyu’ just wanted to harass Qin Su some more. While Jin Guangyao is showing off a knife that’s part of his treasure, Qin Su grabs it and uses it to kill herself.

Everyone is super fucked up about this. (Don’t forget, Jin Ling is there! This 16 year old is having a Time of it.) Lan Xichen is like ‘holy shit my best friend’s wife just killed herself in front of me’ and Wei Wuxian basically blue-screens trying to figure out if she did that to herself because of whatever was in the letter, or if Jin Guangyao somehow coerced her to do it with the trance spell. (Unclear! Draw what conclusions you will.)

Jin Guangyao, who is either really upset or the world’s best actor (or both) asks them why they demanded to come into the treasure hall and what the fuck is going on. People outside, who have heard the commotion, come running in, including Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng (who looks at Wei Wuxian like ‘I leave you alone for five fucking minutes and now there’s a dead woman’).

Lan Xichen explains about the sword spirit and the body in Yi City and how they were looking for Nie Mingjue’s head. Jin Guangyao asks ‘did you really think I had our sworn brother’s head in my treasure room?’ Lan Xichen looks at his best friend cradling his dead wife that yes, he was in fact about to accuse of such a thing, and looks like he’s going to be physically ill. (Lan Wangji, however, is staring Jin Guangyao down like ‘listen up you lying asshole’ and Wei Wuxian is just impressed he’s found someone who’s even more shameless about crime than he is.)

Jin Guangyao takes the opportunity to blame ‘Mo Xuanyu’ for everything. He pulls his sword on Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji steps between them. Wei Wuxian tries to de-escalate things but it doesn’t work for shit because Su She attacks him, and he grabs his old sword off the display to protect himself. This is a Big Deal because the sword sealed itself when he died, so nobody except Wei Wuxian would be able to draw it. Oops. (Wei Wuxian has a sad moment with his sword for being so loyal, even though he was unable to use it for years before his death, since he had no golden core.) Then they run outside because fuck this shit.

  Ext, Koi Tower [Lanling]

Jin Guangyao reassures Jin Ling that it’s not his fault he got tricked by Wei Wuxian, because Wei Wuxian is so evil and everything. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji try to get away but get surrounded. Jin Guangyao again calls Wei Wuxian out on being Wei Wuxian, so he takes off his mask. Everyone acts shocked even though 90% of the characters already knew this.

The Jin cultivators surround him. Wei Wuxian pushes Lan Wangji away and says to tell them that he didn’t know who Wei Wuxian was and that he was tricked by him. Lan Wangji refuses, immediately telling everyone he knew damn well that Wei Wuxian was Wei Wuxian and what the fuck are they gonna do about it? Wei Wuxian still tries to get him to leave, and Lan Wangji runs up to the line of what the Chinese censors will allow in terms of declarations of devotion between two men and plays gay chicken with it. He and Wei Wuxian smile at each other. Jin Guangyao has a ‘really? Right in front of my salad?’ look on his face.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji fight off the Jin guys but then Jin Ling stabs Wei Wuxian in the stomach. It sucks for everybody. Lan Wangji grabs him and they run away.

 Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Lan Wangji has taken Wei Wuxian back here to heal. Lan Xichen is there, too, and says that it was with his permission. But he’s clearly pretty upset about what happened at Koi Tower, since he’s the one who forced Jin Guangyao to open the treasure room on Wei Wuxian’s word, and now he kind of looks like an asshole. He and Lan Wangji come as close to a fight as they’re capable of getting in. Lan Wangji thinks Lan Xichen should believe Wei Wuxian. Lan Xichen points out that he’s known Jin Guangyao for nearly 20 years at this point and he trusts him. Since neither of them saw Nie Mingjue’s head with their own eyes, they cannot know which of the two (Wei Wuxian or Jin Guangyao) is lying. It’s frustrating, but Lan Xichen has good reason to be wary, considering that witch hunts are what led to everything that happened to Wei Wuxian in the first place. In fact, Wei Wuxian is much less upset about it than Lan Wangji.

He tells Lan Xichen what he saw while using Empathy, and plays the Song of Clarity (the qi-deviation prevention music that Jin Guangyao was playing in the memories). Lan Xichen said he played it wrong and Wei Wuxian said he played it exactly as he heard it in the memory. They realize Jin Guangyao altered the song to cause qi deviation instead of prevent it. Lan Xichen still finds this pretty hard to believe, but he says he’ll test the version Wei Wuxian heard on himself and see what happens.

Lan Xichen walks Wei Wuxian back to where he’s been stashed, and Wei Wuxian takes the opportunity to ask him why Lan Wangji has so many whip scars. Lan Xichen explains that after Wei Wuxian died, Lan Wangji flipped his shit a bit and prevented all the other sects from sacking Wei Wuxian’s cave of neat stuff. It’s a bit vague but you get the impression he might have beaten up some important people. So Lan Qiren punished him with a whipping and three years of seclusion in the back hills of Cloud Recesses. Then they show him being beaten because sometimes this show’s continuity is not great.

(Lan Xichen is like ‘hey, you know my brother’s in love with you, right? I mean, only an idiot could not know that. But you really seem to be an idiot. Let me tell you a story about how our mother killed a guy and our father insisted on protecting her anyway. Please use your lone brain cell to connect the dots.’)

Lan Wangji comes back with booze for Wei Wuxian. They talk a bit about Lan Xichen, and Lan Wangji asks if they should tell him about the second flute. He talked to Wen Ning, who told him that he heard two flutes playing at Qiongqi Way. Wei Wuxian says he wanted to know at first, but now he’s not sure it matters. No matter what, people will always say he’s evil, but at least Lan Wangji still believes in him. He says to Lan Wangji ‘I’m sorry, and thank you’.

  Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Jin Guangyao has turned up, and says he definitely believes Lan Xichen that Wei Wuxian isn’t there, but maybe they could take a look anyway, to reassure the other clans? Lan Xichen doesn’t even dignify it. Then Jin Guangyao says that they’re all going to band together and do a siege on the Burial Mounds because strange things have been happening there, fierce corpses are roaming, and obviously Wei Wuxian is there and up to no good. Obviously Lan Xichen knows that this is not true since Wei Wuxian has been convalescing at Cloud Recesses. He is fucked up by the fact that Jin Guangyao is lying straight to his face and he really can’t deny it. Jin Guangyao leaves, and Lan Xichen says he’s going to go to Koi Tower, while Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian plan to go to the Burial Mounds.

  Ext, some random cabin [somewhere]

They meet up with Mianmian. She’s got a husband and a daughter and is a badass rogue cultivator. There’s really no point to this scene but it’s nice to see that at least one female character got a happy ending.

Then they meet up with Wen Ning, who’s been trying to scare people away from the area so they don’t encounter the fierce corpses that Jin Guangyao has raised with the yin iron (to make people think Wei Wuxian was doing it). They head to the Burial Mounds together.

  Ext, the Burial Mounds [Yiling]

Wei Wuxian and company find all the juniors tied up in the cave, and they say they were abducted but they’re not sure who was behind it. Then an absolute fuckton of cultivators show up, including Jiang Cheng, Lan Qiren, Su She, and Nie Huaisang (who says he’s just there to make up the numbers). They’re all shouting about how they want Wei Wuxian dead for all the crime he committed last time around. Jin Guangyao’s not there because ‘someone tried to assassinate him’ that morning, and Lan Xichen is tending to his injuries. Wei Wuxian looks extremely skeptical.

Then they get attacked by fierce corpses. The gathered cultivators realize that they’ve all had their spiritual power leached away by ill-gotten means. Ruh-roh! They all end up hiding in the cave.

  Int, the Burial Mounds [Yiling]

Wei Wuxian sits everyone down for an Agatha Christie reveal. He deduces that Su She is the one who took away their spiritual power, by playing malicious music on their way up the mountain. Su She denies it but Wei Wuxian tricks him into revealing that his own power is still intact.

Su She ruins the protection seal and then uses the teleportation talisman and bounces. Wen Ning tries to fight off the horde with some help from the juniors, who still have their spiritual power, but there are too many. Wei Wuxian paints a lure flag on himself and uses himself as bait, with Lan Wangji killing the fierce corpses, so the others can escape. When he catches up, he half-collapses into Lan Sizhui’s arms and Lan Sizhui is really worried about him. It’s cute. Wen Ning looks at Lan Sizhui and realizes he’s actually Wen Yuan.

  Ext, some docks [Yunmeng]

They’re heading back to Lotus Pier to figure out what to do. Wen Ning comes over to talk to Lan Sizhui. The juniors are scared of him but decide he seems harmless enough, and he did just help them fight the horde, after all. He tells Lan Sizhui that he looks like a cousin of his.

The parents tell their kids to stop associating with evil, and the kids tell their parents to get a grip, and it’s beautiful.

  Ext, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

Jiang Cheng won’t allow Wei Wuxian in, so he and Lan Wangji hang out on the steps. Wen Ning tells Lan Sizhui stories about the little boy that Wei Wuxian used to plant in the dirt.

  Int, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

Some mysterious ladies show up. Jiang Cheng talks to them for a while and then gathers everybody together (although he still makes Wei Wuxian basically stand in the doorway).

Mysterious lady A is a prostitute who was there when Jin Guangshan died. Basically Jin Guangyao had his father fucked to death. It’s gross, although to be fair, couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Then all the prostitutes except her were murdered. (Why she was spared is actually never explained in the show. It’s because she was friends with Jin Guangyao’s mother and was nice to him when he was a kid.)

Mysterious lady B is a maid who worked for Qin Su’s mother. She tells everyone that she wrote the letter to Qin Su, telling her that her mother had a secret. Qin Su is not the daughter of the man she always thought, but was actually conceived during an act of rape by Jin Guangshan. She and Jin Guangyao were half-siblings. It’s strongly implied (although never outright stated if I recall correctly) that their son had some developmental delays because of this and Jin Guangyao had him killed so nobody would find out. He then blamed his son’s death on a sect that was opposing him on some political stuff and wiped them out.

Everyone is Big Time Shook over all this news. They immediately begin calling for Jin Guangyao’s head.

Wei Wuxian is frankly disgusted. Because sure, he thinks Jin Guangyao’s evil and everything, but it’s sickening to him how quickly everyone turns against him, just based on a few rumors – so much like what happened to him. He wants to know where the ladies came from, and why they came forward after so much time has gone by. But in the end he acknowledges that the gathered cultivators being against Jin Guangyao helps him, and he can’t convince them of anything anyway, so whatever.

They go to the ancestral shrine so he can pay his respects to his parents. Jiang Cheng finds him there and picks a big fight. It’s really painful for everyone. After the first couple minutes, Wei Wuxian tries to leave but Jiang Cheng won’t let him go. Wei Wuxian ends up passing out. Lan Wangji tries to leave with him but Jiang Cheng is using the lightning whip to try to stop them.

Wen Ning shows up and he’s pissed. He tells Jiang Cheng the truth about his golden core, in basically the meanest way possible, directly targeting his insecurities with dead accuracy. It’s fucking brutal. Was Jiang Cheng being a dick? Yes. Did he deserve everything that Wen Ning said to him in this scene? Not really, given that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know. (Does Wen Ning have a right to be pissed at Jiang Cheng on general principle because Jiang Cheng didn’t help him and his family back then? Now we’re getting into the reams of meta that are written about this show.)

Anyway, in telling Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji finally finds out, too. He’s clearly horrified to find out that Wei Wuxian went through something so awful and he didn’t even know. He picks Wei Wuxian up and they leave.

  Ext, a boat [Yunmeng]

Wen Ning gives Lan Wangji the details about the golden core swap. Lan Wangji looks like he wants to cry for an hour. I feel you, Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian wakes up and tells Lan Wangji not to be mad at Jiang Cheng, he’s just a jerk sometimes. He wants to pick lotus seeds but Lan Wangji reminds him that the lake they’re on belongs to someone and so the lotus seeds are private property. Then he picks some and gives them to Wei Wuxian anyway. It’s super romantic. Wen Ning pretends he’s not the world’s thirdest wheel.

  Ext, Yunping City [Yunmeng]

So while Wei Wuxian was in the hidden room, he saw a deed for a temple in this city. They figure it has to be important since it was in Jin Guangyao’s safe, so they go to check it out. It has a weird vibe.

  Ext, Guanyin Temple [Yunmeng]

Literally so much happens in this scene you guys. It’s almost 4 entire episodes long. Let me try to sum up as quickly as possible.

First of all, the show never actually bothers to explain why Jin Guangyao is even here. It’s actually because this is where his mother is buried (and he had the temple built just for that). He’s planning to go on the run because the jig is obviously up, and wants to bring her remains with him. He also wants to get one last date with Lan Xichen in, possibly apologize for ruining everything, et c. Lan Xichen was with him in Koi Tower, and Jin Guangyao tricked him and sealed his spiritual power, then carted him off to the temple. Romance!

Anyway Jin Guangyao doesn’t get that date because literally everybody in the damn story shows up. First Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, for obvious reasons. He has Lan Xichen as a hostage so it’s pretty easy to catch them. Then Jin Ling shows up. Then Su She shows up, which is less problematic since he’s a henchman, but he brought Nie Huaisang with him because he found him passed out in a gutter or something. Jin Guangyao can’t just kill Jin Ling and Nie Huaisang because he still has feelings I guess.

Then Jiang Cheng shows up! He makes a grand entrance and then promptly gets his ass kicked. This is partly because Jin Guangyao tells Wei Wuxian that Jiang Cheng found out about the golden core thing, which upsets him. Lan Xichen tells everybody not to let Jin Guangyao talk because he’ll manipulate you and get the better of you. Everyone proceeds to let Jin Guangyao talk for the next forty-five minutes.

At some point during all this they confirm that yes, Jin Guangyao sent Jin Zixuan to Qiongqi  Way to get him killed, and that Su She was his accomplice playing the evil music. Su She is also the one who cursed Jin Zixun. Jin Guangyao’s basically like “whatever, I said what I said”.

They finally get the coffin dug up, but instead of Jin Guangyao’s mother, Nie Mingjue’s body, complete with head, is inside. Jin Guangyao has no idea how he got there and he freaks out, which seems reasonable.

Wei Wuxian points out that while Jin Guangyao has been so impressed with himself and neatly manipulated everyone around him, someone has been pulling his strings as well. He points out the letter sent to Qin Su, the emergence of the mysterious ladies at Lotus Pier, the release of the sword spirit at Mo Manor, even his own resurrection. Jin Guangyao freaks out more.

At this point they’ve dicked around long enough for Lan Xichen’s spiritual power to come back. He puts his sword at Jin Guangyao’s throat. Jin Guangyao makes sad ‘you don’t like me anymore?’ eyes at Lan Xichen. Lan Xichen responds ‘dude, you killed, like, everybody’. Jin Guangyao admits that this is a fair rebuttal, but begs his forgiveness and pity anyway. Lan Xichen seems to forget that he literally just told everyone not to let Jin Guangyao talk because he’ll manipulate you.

Then Wen Ning shows up, and he’s been possessed by the sword spirit. He chops Jin Guangyao’s arm off. Ouch. Then he attacks Jin Ling, because the sword is just pissed off about everything, which seems fair. Wen Ning manages to fight off the possession and not kill Jin Ling, so good for him. Wei Wuxian gets the sword suppressed using his awesome mojo.

Lan Sizhui shows up at some point. I really don’t remember why the hell he’s there. Late night field trip?

Nie Huaisang screams that Su She attacked him, and his leg is bleeding. The sword springs right back to angry spiritude and murders Su She. Wei Wuxian is like “wtf I just put you to bed” and has to do it again.

Lan Xichen patches Nie Huaisang up. Everyone else sits around thinking about how truly fucked up the last 2 hours have been, especially Jin Ling, who is really having trouble with realizing one of his uncles was evil and not the one he thought. He is going through it. Meanwhile Jin Guangyao is kind of slumped against a pillar behind Lan Xichen because somehow he is not dead after losing an arm, which seems kind of whack when you consider what killed some of our other characters.

Then Nie Huaisang shouts, “behind you!” and Lan Xichen, assuming that Jin Guangyao is about to attack him, whips around and stabs him through the chest. Double ouch. Jin Guangyao is, understandably, upset at being run through. Nie Huaisang says he had a knife but Jin Guangyao calls bullshit (yes, while being run through, I don’t even know), saying even though he’s done tons of terrible things, he never once hurt Lan Xichen. Meanwhile Lan Xichen is having a complete mental breakdown, standing there with his sword in Jin Guangyao’s chest. Jin Guangyao realizes that Nie Huaisang is the one who orchestrated all this, in revenge after Jin Guangyao killed his brother. Also the angry spirits are back. A lot is happening. The temple starts to collapse. Jin Guangyao asks Lan Xichen to die with him, and it looks like Lan Xichen is going to do so, but then Jin Guangyao pushes him clear at the last second. Lan Wangji grabs him and gets him out of the temple before it collapses.

  Ext, Guanyin Temple [Yunmeng]

Everyone is injured and in various states of shell shock. A ton of people show up and start fussing. Wei Wuxian reveals that the last curse mark from Mo Xuanyu is gone, indicating that Jin Guangyao was the last person Mo Xuanyu was holding a grudge against. (Presumably for throwing him out of the Jin sect and back to his abusive family, which Jin Guangyao presumably did because Mo Xuanyu found out about Qin Su’s parentage, which presumably Nie Huaisang told him. I know, it’s a lot of presuming. I’m trying not to be biased and pass judgment lol.)

Lan Xichen asks Nie Huaisang if Jin Guangyao really had a knife. Nie Huaisang prevaricates rather than answering.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are leaving. Jin Ling asks Jiang Cheng if he doesn’t want to talk to Wei Wuxian before he leaves. Jiang Cheng says everyone is going back to where they belong. He flashes back to just after his parents were killed, when he vanished from the inn, and we see him realize Wei Wuxian was about to get caught and lure the soldiers away. All this time we thought he just wandered off and got captured like an asshole, but no, he was saving Wei Wuxian and never told anybody. In the present, he says ‘take care’ to himself as Wei Wuxian leaves. Five thousand ‘Yunmeng bros reconciliation’ fics spring into existence.

  Ext, the forest [presumably still Yunmeng]

Lan Sizhui approaches Wei Wuxian and tells him what little he’s remembered about his childhood, and that he’s realized his family name used to be Wen. Wei Wuxian realizes that he’s Wen Yuan, and that Lan Wangji saved him back then. It’s super touching and I happy cried, like, so much.

  Ext, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are standing around by the waterfall acting married. Lan Wangji is chief cultivator now. Wei Wuxian has finally figured out how Lan Wangji recognized him even though he was wearing a mask when they first met up again – it’s because the song he was playing is the same song that Lan Wangji sang to him in the cave of the murder turtle. Lan Wangji actually wrote that song just for him and has never played it for anybody else.

Nie Huaisang comes for a visit. Wei Wuxian asks him if he wants to be chief cultivator. Nie Huaisang tells them that no, he was really only in it for the revenge. It’s awkward, especially given all the morally questionable choices Nie Huaisang made while on his revenge quest and the fact that Lan Xichen is super fucked up about everything, but we all hope that they’ll eventually work it out. Or at least I hope that. Your mileage may vary.

  Ext, a mountain [the world]

Wei Wuxian goes off to wander for a little while. The show really makes us think that it’ll end with the two of them splitting up, but then at the very last second they meet again. We all collapse into sobbing, emotional heaps.

 ~end of part 6~

Characters/naming notes, as promised

I use the Mandarin for names and titles in fanfiction because it just reads better. Some of these don’t have an exact translation, so, the original is better, here are the basic terms you need to know:

Zongzhu = sect leader

Gongzi = young master

Furen = madam

Guniang = maiden/miss

Ge = older brother

Jie = older sister

Xiong = kind of like “bro” in a friendly sort of way

Da, Er, San = first, second, third – these are used in conjunction with the above, so “da-ge” is “oldest brother”, “Lan-er-gongzi” is “second young master Lan”

A- = an affectionate diminutive

Wei Wuxian (courtesy name)

Birth name: Wei Ying (only Lan Wangji calls him this)

Title: Yiling-laozu (used mostly in the second half of the show)

Also called: Wei-gongzi (by Lan Xichen, Wen Ning, and assorted others), Wei-xiong (by Nie Huaisang), A-Xian (by Jiang Yanli)

Lan Wangji (courtesy name)

Birth name: Lan Zhan (only Wei Wuxian calls him this)

Title: Hanguang-Jun (by the juniors and various others)

Also called: Lan-er-gongzi (by various characters)

Jiang Cheng (birth name)

Courtesy name: Jiang Wanyin (Lan Wangji calls him this)

Also called: Jiang-gongzi before he’s sect leader, Jiang-zongzhu afterwards, A-Cheng (by Jiang Yanli)

Jiang Yanli (only name given, not specific if birth or courtesy)

Also called: a-jie (by Jiang Cheng), shijie (by Wei Wuxian), Jiang-guniang (by pretty much everyone else)

Lan Xichen (courtesy name)

Birth name: Lan Huan, but nobody uses this

Title: Zewu-Jun (most people use this)

Also called: Lan-zongzhu (I think a few people use this instead of his title), xiongzhang (by Lan Wangji, this is a formal word for older brother), er-ge (by Jin Guangyao)

Wen Qing (only name given, birth)

Also called: Wen-guniang (by Jiang Cheng), jiejie or just jie (by Wen Ning)

Wen Ning (birth name)

Courtesy name: Wen Qionglin (used very rarely)

Title: Ghost General (never used to his face, I don’t think)

Also called: A-Ning (by Wen Qing)

Nie Huaisang (only name given, courtesy)

Also called: Nie-xiong (by Wei Wuxian), Nie-gongzi (by assorted others)

Nie Mingjue (only name given, courtesy)

Title: Chifeng-Zun (called this by many people)

Also called: Nie-zongzhu (by Meng Yao and others), Mingjue-xiong (by Lan Xichen), da-ge (by Nie Huaisang, then later by Lan Xichen and Meng Yao)

Jin Zixuan (only name given, courtesy)

Also called: Jin-gongzi (by most people)

Meng Yao (birth name)

Later in series, courtesy name: Jin Guangyao (used commonly)

Title: Lianfang-Zun (used occasionally)

Also called: A-Yao (by Lan Xichen), Xiandu (after he becomes Chief Cultivator), Jin-zongzhu at some point probably

Hoo boy all. That was a lot, huh? “I’ll write a brief summary,” she said. 20 thousand words later ... but this was as condensed as I could make it without it reading too disjointedly! So I hope you’ve all enjoyed and that this will help those of you who want to plunge into the fandom but didn’t have the time or the spoons for the show itself. 

If you have any questions about something that wasn’t clear or a part of the story you want more detail on, feel free to ask me anything!

Love y’all!