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mythgirlimagines · 3 years ago

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As the creation of two calming waves crashing together, a calm ocean breeze is quickly birthed through them. And that calm ocean breeze is commonly known as Myth Anon, Former Ultimate Swimmer!

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BACKSTORY

Born to two happy owners of a beach house on a scenic and heart-rending beach, Myth knew how to swim, before she could even crawl, much like her older sisters before her. Upon entering middle school, she was encouraged to enter her school’s swim team and quickly became the star of the team. However, because she only likes to swim for fun, inner peace, and poetic inspiration, Myth eventually quit competing, but still managed to get enough coverage from the media to gain her Ultimate status. In her adult years, she is currently working part-time alongside her sisters at her parents’ beach house, and is currently studying to become a marine biologist, which she (unsurprisingly) turns out to be both very passionate and a veritable expert about.

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RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Detective

Wyre and Myth have been only the best of friends ever since they were children and have met one faithful day on the beach. Although Wyre is also known for their criminal sketchworks and their skills as a physical enforcer/bodyguard, it’s Wyre‘s skills as a homicide detective that made Wyre gain their Ultimate status, that is still going strong (and even stronger) in their adult years. For the eternally scatterbrained and innocent swimmer, Wyre is usually around to watch over both her and her belongings and to prevent weirdos from trying anything funny with their friend. Myth really appreciates Wyre’s help in finding misplaced items and she just loves walking across the beach with them all the time.

Outfit: A brown overcoat and a light green and yellow striped vest and a black tie over a white button-up shirt, pants that match their overcoat, darker brown leather gloves and loafers.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Programmer

Famous for creating one of the first ever instances of self-sufficient, self-teaching, and ultimately benevolent AI (known by the code name “D-3M-0N”), Scar is also a big name in online role-playing groups, where she is known as “Mother-Board, the Master Technomancer”, a ruler of a tech-based science-fiction realm who is in charge of all the high-end technology in it. On particularly busy and sleepless nights, she can even be caught acting as Mother-Board herself. Because Myth lived in a tech-less beach house, she is absolutely clueless in the ways of modern technology, and that is where heroic Scar swoops in and tries her best to teach the swimmer the way of the computer.

Outfit: Messier hair that is done up in two messy side buns, a purple hoodie worn hood-up with black and white striped sleeves, a ruffled purple skirt, black and white striped stockings and purple boots, the mask from her original design.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Affluent Progeny

Despite only striking it rich very recently, Fusion’s business acumen helped expand his father’s failed company into a multi-million dollar industry and it also ensured that his noveau-riche parents’ finances would stay with them for a long time. He may get constantly underestimated by equally influential but longer-running business magnates, due to his situation and age. When not performing business operations, he loves gorging himself on lavish buffets and learning all he can from the massive library installed in his house. Upon entering the Kibo-Con, he began showering his fellow con-mates with lavish gifts. Needless to say, Myth really appreciated the life-sized plush walrus.

Outfit: Hair tied into a ponytail, a blue overcoat (that has a pocket watch in his right lapel) over a white button-up shirt, a pink vest, and a yellow and red striped tie, white gloves, pants that match his overcoat and the glasses and loafers from his original design.

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Moral Compass

Fusion II attended a school with a rather high rate of delinquency, and, by the time she left for Hope’s Peak, all instances of delinquency have diminished in an instant. Claiming that she became a public moral committee because “you can‘t break the law, if you are the law” and ”I just want power”, Fusion II wishes to rise to the top of the corporate ladder and become like the rich magnates that she idolised so much, all to prove to her classmates that she is so much more than just a mousy little overachiever. Myth may not understand the moral compass’s dreams and ideals, but anyone who praises Myth’s mindset and thought process (read: actually unread sarcasm) must be a good person in her book.

Outfit: Fake reading glasses, a grey blazer over a white button-up shirt and a light blue and dark blue striped tie, a red armband indicating her position, a long skirt that matches her tie, black stockings and brown Mary Janes.

Just Anon, Ultimate Fanfiction Author

With a sparse and sporadic uploading schedule, Janon’s (or as he is known online, ”JustInThisForFun”) fans and followers commonly refer to the times he actually bothers to upload one of his fica as “Random-Time Rapture”, for you could never really predict when he will upload a fic, but anyone who reads his fanfiction would know that they are veritable masterpieces that can almost match the quality of the original works. Despite their differing temperaments, Myth and Janon love to relax together and introduce entirely new ways of relaxing to each other. Myth’s suggestions of relaxing on a particularly warm rock and lying face-up in the Con’s fountain are Janon’s two new favorite relaxation methods.

Outfit: Same outfit as the original, but with a bandolier of pens and other writing supplies.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Baseball Player

Considered a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to both Little and Major League Baseball, Sparkle catapulted her all-girl’s softball team (called The Shimmering Meteors) into stardom, with both her skills in the sport and her bombastic and dramatic personality, when on the diamond. Despite both being pioneers in women’s athletics, Sparkle and Myth‘s personalities and philosophies couldn’t be any more different, much to the confusion of the two girls. While the loud yet intelligent Sparkle plays mainly for the glory and thrill of competition, the calm yet ditzy Myth only swims for fun and for poetic inspiration. Sparkle and Myth just can’t comprehend each other’s athletic philosophies and motives.

Outfit: Hair in a bobcut, orange and pink sports jacket with her team’s logo on the back (and matching hat on her head) over a black and white baseball uniform, black cleats and a sparkly pink bandana around her neck.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Idol, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Fashionista

With their twin as their loyal costume designer in tow, Egg takes in to the stage with such cursed songs as, “Deodorant Push-Pop” and “Discord DM Detonator”, which have garnered quite the cult following online, and quickly became one of the most infamous idols in show business, thanks to their song’s subject matter, as well as being one of the few ever NB idols. Egg and Wet Sock regularly love to antagonise Myth, but thanks to her ditzy and unaware nature, any and all cursed comments uttered by the twins would either be unintentionally ignored, giggled at and agreed to, or even getting used in one of Myth’s poems much to the ire of the duo who live off of attention, positive or otherwise.

Egg’s Outfit: A garishly covered fedora, a t-shirt with a cursed meme on the front, green and red striped upside-down pants, pink crocs.

Wet Sock’s Outfit: Hair over one of their eyes, pink eyeshadow, a black hoodie with white fluff, tight jeans, white and black converses.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Clairvoyant

Raised in a family that are all experts in supernatural powers, Curious stands out amongst the rest of their family with their clairvoyance powers being far above that of any other ancestor before them. This caused the fortune-telling booth that was passed down from Curious’s parents to them to skyrocket in popularity, and earn Curious a free spot in the Hope’s Peak Middle School roster as the “Jr. Ultimate Clairvoyant”. As a lover of the spiritual herself, Myth found herself fascinated by Curious’s powers, and Curious was all too happy to show off and teach the awestruck swimmer all about their powers. But than again, one could ask Curious to do anything, and they’d do it without hesitation.

Outfit: A green and off-white kimono with a red obi, brown prayer beads around their neck, white socks and brown geta sandals.

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Soldier

Born and raised in a territory that was eventually wracked by the spoils of war, Nerd was drafted into his cruel nation’s army, thanks to a combination of his natural anger-induced strength and his natural talent in piloting, repairing and even inventing war weapons and machinery. All the time spent combating both potential and certain threats made him constantly hostile and quick to anger, even in his adult years, when the war was long over. Taking sympathy on her fellow chaperone, Myth decided to teach Nerd all sorts of relaxation techniques (that mostly just involve wading or lying in water), but to no avail, for Nerd has feelings for someone that he would much rather blast with his scouter (read: Myth).

Outfit: A black suit of armor with built-in-weapons and the scouter from his original design.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Novelist

Under the pen name “R.C. Wells” (because he doesn’t want evil corporate executives to trace his location), Eldritch particularly specialises in dystopian novels that seek to expose the real world for the apocalyptic wasteland that it‘ll become, if the sheep (read: his audience) remain oblivious to all the horrors of the world they’re living in. Despite Eldritch’s blatant dislike and constant insulting of his audience, he only has the best of intentions for the world, and he thinks that the written word is the best way to combat against the propaganda in the media. Needless to say, Myth‘s relaxation tactics doesn’t exactly sit well with the constantly-worried novelist, so he avoids her like the plague.

Outfit: Reading glasses, a pencil behind his ear, a brown overcoat over a white dress shirt and a red tie, dark brown pants and matching shoes.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Gambler

Despite what her age and her childish personality would suggest, Dream is a veritable genius, when it comes to turning the odds to her favor, and winning boatloads of money at the gambling tables and betting on sports. Dream is infamously referred to, by her foes, as “Lady Luck’s Lovechild”, for her seemingly supernatural ability to make luck fall into her favor and guarantee her automatic wins, against otherwise dangerous odds. Just like with Curious, Myth found herself fascinated with Dream’s supernatural luck-changing powers and likes to sneak under the gambling tables and watch Dream gamble to uncover her secret, much to the embarrassment of the gambler.

Outfit: A grey and white fedora and pantsuit with card suit-themed buttons, a pink undershirt and heels.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Martial Artist

As current heiress to the Ryuseitai Martial Art’s Dojo, despite what her clumsiness and regular slip-ups suggest, Iris is regarded by martial artists everywhere as a prodigy in combat, who is able to take down foes that are at least a foot taller than her. Iris is also quite the excellent instructor, teaching her elementary-aged students all about mindfulness and positive thinking, which helps breed a brand new generation of strong martial artists. Because of their shared interest in mindfulness and odd philosophies, Iris gets along very well with Myth, who has a similar nature to her, and they have regular meditation sessions underneath a waterfall hidden in the forest behind the Kibo-Con.

Outfit: Hair tied into two Sailor-Moon-esque buns, a pink gi with a big purple star on the front and back, pink sandals, bandages all over her body, the hoodie from her original design tied around her waist.

Purple Anon, Ultimate Lucky Student

Being from one of the more wealthy families in her neighbourhood, Purple was signed up to Hope’s Peak’s annual Lucky Student raffle by her parents, and her supernatural luck meant that she was the lucky girl selected to attend. Because Purple was sheltered a lot, she is very timid and regularly speaks in old-fashioned and archaic terms. Because of a majority of these qualities, Myth and Purple get along very well, thanks to their shared interest in writing poetry, and Myth’s fascination with both Purple’s supernatural luck powers and her odd mode of speech, which sounds much like her own. Whenever they get together, hardly anyone can tell what the two girls are saying.

Outfit: The original outfit, but without the beret and a four-leaf-clover pinned to her sweater.

Watch as this oddball swimmer either befriends or baffles the people around her!

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PERSONALITY

Needless to say, Swimmer!Myth is one hard-to-read swimmer, for she has quite the odd thought process and an equally eccentric vocabulary, often speaking in odd poetic terms about water or marine life, and always searches for inspiration for her poetry. Swimmer!Myth also has a strong love for the supernatural, and can usually be seen learning about and getting in touch with her calm and spiritual side, if she’s not swimming or lying back-up in shallow bodies of water. Swimmer!Myth also gets easily distracted, and regularly wanders off, requiring a buddy to help ground her back to Earth (read: Detective!Wyre). Swimmer!Myth is also heavily empathetic, and, in spite of being an athlete, actually hates competition, which is why she dropped out of being an Olympic-level competitive swimmer years ago, and she really treasures her loved ones.

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APPEARANCE

Swimmmer!Myth has long and wavy brown hair with a French braid tieback, that she can put up in a ponytail while swimming, and blue swimming goggles on her head. Swimmer!Myth swims practically all the time, and her simplistic outfit reflects that perfectly. She wears a pink, blue, and purple wetsuit with blue frills on her sides, a pink translucent shawl and a seashell necklace around her neck, along with purple flip-flops on her feet.

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Now that I’m finished with this AU, I’d love to hear your opinions on the talentswap! In the meantime, look out for more content made by your’s truly!

-Fusion Anon

4 notes · View notes

randomnameless · 4 years ago

Note

I don't know if this has been asked before, but I was wondering what your thoughts on Rhea are.

Oh, I don't think someone asked it, but I remember a character meme.

Rhea's in the Julia tier : you're expecting things and the game doesn't give you any.

you asked for thoughts so this is long and rather unorganised even if i tried a bit and i feel like i repeated myself a lot so meh

If Edel and Rhea have one thing in common, it's being shafted by the need to make Billy the most special being every with the monstrous "I was lonely before you player-chan uwu".

Seteth'n'Flayn ? In the same trashcan Hubert went in.

Catherine, Shamir, the randoms living in the monastery? Dgaf but still she's willing to die for them so does she really gaf or not? Rhea's willing to give her blood and crest stone shards (to this day I still don't understand what those are) to trusted randoms who would become cardinals? "uwu player-chan". I know I've written a bit about it with the seirelm anon, but with the Canon-ish info? Post Zanado Rhea told a random dude she could turn in a dragon, gave her blood to the same dude and remained in his empire/fighting by his side for at least 30 years. Still “lonely without U Billy <3″

I've written this in the meme entry, but Rhea has her own net of relationships. They're not as important as Dimitri and his childhood friends, but erasing them for the sake of "player-chan" feels wrong.

Role and goals

Rhea's in an interesting place, being a former "legendary hero" like Athos, Sephiran etc.

Still her fight isn't over, she only defeated Nemesis and couldn't end the mastermind behind (a bit like Seliph if you only kill Arvis or Roy when you forget to pick up every legendary weapon). Also, if Seiros killed Nemesis, she hasn't won. In the current Fodlan, she still has to pretend to be a human, the Nabateans as a culture/population are dead. They're still 5 (ish? I think the apostles are lizards), she's still afraid humans will dice them if they learn the truth. Has she won? Idk. Could she win and make a Fodlan were lizards and humans could live together? I don't think so.

Her role as the Archbishop? Well, the game really liked Rhea as a red herring during white clouds and the way FE16 is built, around the monastery, reinforces it. Rhea's the head of the monastery, so she's the head of your world. Everything wrong with the world is automatically linked to Rhea.

So, when Marianne complains about people wanting to kill/ostracise her because of her crest, thinking it's a curse, we of course wonder "why Rhea can't tell to the randoms that no Marianne shouldn't be killed/shunned because of her crest?". Completely forgetting that, hey, Marianne's from the Alliance and heiress of Edmund, so if some people should intervene, it should be her dad "why the fuck are you trying to kill my daughter" or the Alliance council "Duke Riegan, could you please make a public statement about my daughter and how she isn't some sort of demonic beast so stop throwing rocks at her?".

Same thing with the Empire, why should you blame the church and the crests instead of the people doing shit? Hanneman's brother in law? Like is marriage so absolute that a husband can force multiple pregnancies on his wife to the point of literally killing her? The von Essar aren't as important as the Bergliez, but Hanneman's sister dying like that should have rang some bells? Hanneman's dad didn't care? No one wanted to appeal to the Emperor or something? If Jane the random or Karen the peasant died this way, it’d be usual class nonsense. But a noble woman??

Rhea should have done more to prevent crest abuse. She wrote tenets in her Bible and apparently doesn't discriminate in her monastery. But in the other countries? Idk. Her tenets are interpreted like your shopping list by Gloucester Sr "and add a part where interacting with foreigners goes against Seiros's teachings what yes I know better than those dunces from the eastern/central church".

It's not because Riegan Sr and Ionius aren't doing shit that she should do nothing too, but ultimately it falls on the usual landmine about Rhea's influence and power over Fodlan and if we consider Fodlan isn't just the Monastery we see but a continent made up of 4 autonomous states...

The so-called status quo isn't upheld by the church alone (if it is upheld in the first place!), but also by the empire and the Alliance... Lambert was toasted before making any changes, the Alliance is that weird thing where money is anything and crests/old nobility doesn't matter anymore, and the Empire is... Well. The Empire.

Regarding this, I find it really strange that Rhea went to Goneril and rescued one of their slaves, with how much she cares about protecting her monastery and not antagonising anyone, picking Cyril up, risking the ire of house Goneril, feels really risky from her perspective.

Imo WC doesn't sell me the "church rules over the continent" take.

Ultimately it doesn't matter because Rhea thinks she should have done more, and abused her position as the archbishop to rez her mom - I understand the "abused her position" as regretting her various omissions, like helping more people around etc etc.

I also feel like Rhea’s got a big survivor complex, and tries to fulfill impossible tasks. "leading/guiding the world?" she won't take an active role in it, but still resents the state of current Fodlan and wishes Sothis could restore some order (crest abuse? Or relics popping up right and left meaning more sibs dying). She wants to :

1/ guide the world and make it a better place (why complaining about the wayward Fodlan otherwise?)

2/ protect randoms who live under her protection

3/ make sure no one learns the truth about her appearance and relics at the same time.

I don't think it's possible given her current role and especially not possible on her own.

About 3/, call back to FE9 or not, but Rhea's paranoia is... Actually, not proven to be exaggerated in the game.

Ranulf was lynched in Crimea when he was discovered to be a laguz? In a certain route, Rhea's called a cruel beast due to her appearance, accused of not having "human" feelings and is depicted as a creature masquerading as a human. Hate and attack the woman all you want for things she did or might have done, but getting rid of her because she's not human? Rhea's right about not revealing her true nature, because, relics notwithstanding, humans will try to kill her for being a nabatean. Relic wise, in the DLC, we learn Aubin was recently turned in a relic, so that's even more reason to hide.

On 1/, wanting to promote peace in the land? National bias at play with rewriting history “to promote peace” issue. Rhea also built the officer's academy (if nobles from different states can live and study together surely they won't try to kill each other when they return home because they might have become friends?) and with help from the everyone in Fodlan (even the empire iirc?) built the locket to fend off Almyrian invasions. Not saying this is the best way to protect your borders but at least she tried to help instead of staying holed in her monastery.

Imo if Rhea didn't care about Fodlan, she'd have followed her bros and fortified herself in her monastery without accepting random humans to live with her, wouldn't have written a book about how everyone had to get along "unless it goes against the goddess" and wouldn't basically run what seems to be the biggest orphanage/place for the needy/and whatever is the abyss in the continent.

Not saying she doesn't have a priority, but Rhea tries to care, on her scale, about Fodlan's randoms.

About said randoms (and 2/)...

Well there's this bout with Lonato's rebellion and another herring where Rhea's all "I will destroy anyone who takes arms against the church and its believers" and it's extreme, I can’t deny. But if Lonato took arms and mounted a militia to attack Ositia's castle and its randoms? Hector'd have Armads'd Lonato without a second thought. Elincia had qualms about taking her weapons against her own countrymen who were used by Ludveck, but in the end, she took up her weapons to defend her castle, even if it meant she had to kill militiamen. Rhea's line seemed random and cold in the context, but it's the same general idea, attack her people and she will kill you. Still, if you don't take weapons against her, she won't react violently. Duke Gerth is apparently dick waving with Aubin's relic, but Shamir wasn't sent to recover the thing or to get rid of Gerth.

Ultimately Rhea blows her cover and abandons her dream to reunite with her mother to protect the monastery and its inhabitants in 3 routes (arguably in CF too). Someone once made a post about the differences between Seiros's and Edel's crowns and the symbolism of wings - the IO's wings are meant to protect. The IO is the guardian/protector. Rhea tanks missiles and buys time for the students to escape at the cost of her life.

Relationships

Rhea and Sothis? someone made a post summarizing my thoughts about their relationship, or lack of, and if we can argue Sothis was shafted by the devs like Rhea and Edel, ultimately the only important person to Sothis is Billy.

Billy doesn't warp Sothis's preexisting net of relationships, Sothis doesn't have relationships with anyone save for Billy. Rhea wants to meet her mom more than anything else (save for protecting randoms) but Sothis will never address that plot point. She only does in SS and off screen, and it ends up with Rhea wondering if she should live... so take it as you want, but to me it mustn't have been the "hug and pat on the head" kind of reunion.

Ultimately we see Rhea is able to let go of her dream (rez mom) in several routes, she understands and acknowledges Sothis will never return and Billy has her powers now, so either she dies more or less at peace knowing she can trust Billy with Fodlan's future, or she can return to Zanado and live peacefully with Catherine.

Which leads me to the Billy relationship,

As much as I hate player pandering, it makes some sense that Rhea would support Billy and not, let's say, Caspar. I still hate it though because Billy exclusive support means we were robbed of Rhea's other supports with, idk, her fam, Cyril, Catherine, Shamir, Alois, Hanneman, Manu etc etc.

In the beginning of WC, Rhea's pretty sure Billy's Sothis but without memories. Then in the non-cf chapter 12, she tells Billy they know what they are and thus must guide Fodlan, also telling Seteth Billy's a vector for sothis's powers, but not Sothis herself. In SS's finale she calls them "mother" but in her S-support finally acknowledges Billy's their own thing.

In CF Rhea's vicious in her trash talk but immediately jumps to the conclusion that Billy cannot be or hear Sothis, because, to her, logically, Sothis wouldn't side with Edel and her Agarthian allies (stealing the crest stones, Flayn, etc etc). Billy is something that stole Sothis's crest stone and sword and wants to finish what Nemesis started. I don't think CF Rhea snaps because Billy isn't Sothis, CF Rhea snaps because, again, someone is using her mother to kill her.

Rhea's also supposed to have been fond of Citrus to the point of talking to her remains (something she does with her mom) which could explain her sympathy for Billy regardless of the Sothis project.

Jeralt's a different issue, apparently they worked together for more than 100 years but Rhea never told him the truth about her nature, only about how he was saved. Still, Jeralt betrays when his baby is "weird" and unlike regular human babies so... Would he have ran away if he learnt what rhea was? Dumped Citrus if he knew she was an artificial being? Idk.

Catherine Shamir cyril and pals (Alois)? We don't know bcs the game dgaf about anyone not named Billy. As I said above, It’d have been nice to get more interactions with randoms she is working with, or at least showed some care, but nope. “Player-chan uwu” strikes again.

Seteth'n'Flayn? Rhea's close to them, she gets out of her room to look for Flayn and Cyril and Catherine note how she seems close to Seteth (who's totally her bro), but again, the game hates us. FFS don't think she has a line with Flayn!

Secrets and explosions

Tied to 3/ and 1/ from earlier, Rhea keeps a lot of secrets which could justify her lack of relationships/supports with the others... but this argument falls flat, because she’s not the only one with a secret and if Flayn doesn’t seem to care that much about hers, Seteth does and is still able to support students and staff members. Which leads to tragedies.

The Christophe incident is not well documented, and while we learn Rhea was the target of Christophe’s attempt because Western peeps told him so, it is not very well explained why she didn’t execute him on those grounds instead of falsifying charges about involvement with the Regicide. We are told it was to stabilise the Kingdom, but I still don’t know how the Kingdom would have suffered backlash if Rhea told the truth (maybe it would have led to open conflict between the western church and the central church in the kingdom, when the kingdom needed stability at that point? idk).

Still, Lonato wants revenge for Christophe, not because he was executed on false charges, but because he died ; imo, if Lonato learnt the truth, he’d still be out for Catherine and Rhea’s head.

Aelfie’s gambit is more of a direct result of Rhea’s secrecy, because she had “no words” for him about why Citrus was still in pristine condition, he gave up and tried to rez her. Would it had been different if she told him what Citrus was (and by extent, what she was)? Idk. Maybe, maybe not.

Still, Rhea doesn’t keep secrets from everyone every time - she once trusted Willy and told him about her alternate form and it exploded 1k years later, when Willy’s descendants are out for her head because she’s a creature masquerading as a human (I know mole people also played a part, but I guess it sticked more with Edel and the gang who already knew Rhea was a dragon ; trying to convince a random that “hey, this woman is a dragon !” would be more difficult). CF-wise again, Rhea trusts Billy with the SoC and, again, it explodes. In CF Rhea feels betrayed, she trusted some people and now the very same people (or their descendant in Edel’s case) are trying to kill her.

So it’s not a case of someone never trusting anyone, it’s someone trusting some people and regretting it afterwards (in both routes + CF at least, even if I firmly believe the “evil lizards ruling over the world” spiel doesn’t come from Willy, but from later emperors influenced by mole people).

There can also be a point made for Aelfie, who might have been able to merge with Citrus to create an umbral beast because he had Rhea’s blood and a crest stone shard - Citrus being a fake Nabatean and Aelfie having a crest stone + blood might have produced CS’s final boss? Rhea trusted Aelfie with a crest stone shard and her blood, and he became an umbral beast.

Interestingly, Rhea is hell bent on keeping her secrets regarding her identity, in SS Seteth has to beg her to reveal everything to Billy when Billy is the most important person in the world “uwu” or at least, the only person Rhea supposedly opened to. Even the “uwu” factor isn’t enough, on its own, to make her reveal the truth about her identity.

She gives Claude half-truths, and has to be on death’s door to tell him everything - still occulting Seteth’n’Flayn, to the point where Claude later wonders if there are other children of the goddess around.

Vengeful Rhea?

Rhea isn't a stale piece of bread like Julia. She says mean words to Nemesis but also brutally kills him. Rhea cannot forgive the Elites. I know it's very different, but Julia "dad is the kindest man I ever knew" making a 180° “i must atone for what dad did eff him” will always make me throw up - she doesn’t have to be vengeful or try to stab Seliph with a butter knife, but no acknowledgement of “dad’s the bestest” after his death, or even, of his death is meh.

To Rhea, Nemesis and the Elites are a trigger point, and everything related to Zanado. CF!Billy using her mom’s powers is like Nemesis, CF!Billy + Edel pillaging what remains of her siblings in Nemesis’n’Dudes. Flamey doing his shit with Flayn also parallels that. There’s the usual “vengeance sucks” speech to be given, but also the Tellius verse where Laguz aren’t depicted in a bad light when they want to destroy Izuka or when Tibarn learns Lekain was responsible for Serenes’s massacre.

Still, unlike Tibarn’n’pals, Rhea, unlike Macuil, doesn't seem to hold a grudge against descendants of the Elites. Maybe she had faith in them when she told them not to abuse the power of their crests, but then their descendants forgot or didn’t care and we’re in the so-called crest system.

In SS, Seteth asks the BE students if they want to return home to the Empire and how he won’t hold it against them. Seteth’s being Rhea’s right hand bro in this situation, I doubt he’d have proposed this solution without her approval.

She is vengeful and ready to pursue for more 90 years someone to kill them, but she won’t target that someone’s descendants or potential allies. I’ve read some takes about the Western Church being razed to the ground after Catherine’s paralogue, but iirc, Rhea’s only going to execute the Bishop there ; they appoint a new bishop in hopes to ease the relationships between the central and western church. There’d be no point to appoint someone to rule over a body that doesn’t exist...

Grey waves

Wave 1 : Another parallel with Edel is the will to sink in troubled waters to reach their goals.

However, Rhea stays on the surface.

Aelfie thinks Seiros failed to rez Sothis with the chalice because she didn't take more blood from the apostles. Blood rituals are creepy and gave an umbral beast. Seiros didn't pursue and sought another mean to rez Sothis without killing her bros. Rhea makes homunculi to host Sothis's soul? It fails but the homunculi isn't destroyed asap to make another one, hell, Rhea cares about them (which is all kinds of fucked up on its own).

AM wise, iirc, Seteth and Catherine say Rhea'd never forgive them if they run to save her instead of saving randoms first.

Still, making homunculus to create a vessel for her mom - making artificial lives - is problematic, she’s ashamed of it “i did questionable things” and Seteth berates her on her “questionable” experiments.

CF!Rhea eats babies during the final map. She burns the city to make her last stronghold and refuses to run away. CF!Rhea, at the end of this route, completely abandoned goal 1 2 and 3. She wants to survive, yes, but to recover Sothis, no matter how. She still seems to care about humanity, but takes everything too literally and is persuaded humanity and humans are after her to hurt her and her mother (i’m pretty sure uncle Arry was waiting with his Agarthan tech suitcase for Edel to deal with the beast in the background). Contrary to CF’s chapter 12, Endgame!Rhea doesn’t have lines when Catherine and Cyril fall. She’s still siding with humans, but she’s in this for herself now.

Of course, CF!Rhea is special, because CF!Rhea lives again through her trauma, CF!Rhea lost her home, her bro and niece a few chapters ago, she lost her human allies, apparently some peons from her church are deserting and Uncle is waiting with his portable electric saw to turn her in a shiny sword, because she trusted a corpse with Sothis’s heart and spine and trusted a human 1000 years ago with her secret. And now said corpse follows someone who rings at her door with an army, wishes to obliterate her unless she surrenders (?) and works with Uncle and his dubstep pals.

In the other routes, Billy doesn’t want to killer her with her mother’s spine and tries to defend her home, Seteth’n’Flayn aren’t forced into exile or dead and depending on the route she gets to see Uncle and his dubstep friends being buried under rubble.

Troubled waters to reach her goals also include slowing Fodlan’s technological advancements (but was it really slowing down Fodlan’s R&D’s department or cliking “no” when Mole People offer a free (for now) new technology that makes you advance from bronze age to the industrial era in one go?)

Wave 2 : Rhea’s anchored in the past, she wants to return to happier days with her mom and her family, but also wants to help randoms in Fodlan

She doesn’t seem to mind the present where humans do whatever they want, and yet will protect her people and tries (or tried since it’s history) to keep Fodlan safe.

I think the game wanted to tell us Rhea’s stuck in the past, but she also manages to form bonds (albeit fickle) in the present with Catherine, Shamir and, arguably, Cyril. Seteth’n’Flayn accept the past and try to move forward, Rhea cannot and yet is making baby steps forward, or at least to live in the present. “uwu factor” is supposed to mean Rhea’s stuck in the past and can only see Billy for what they are once she accepts to live in the present, but Rhea’s already fond of Catherine, calls Aelfie her child, was fond of Citrus and Jeralt, makes time for Cyril, etc etc. It’s not as clear cut as drinking tea with them but it’s still something that quashes the “lonely B4 U player-chan uwu”.

Rhea thinks her biggest grey wave is how she didn’t do enough for Fodlan and feels inadequate to walk in Sothis’s shoes as the guardian/protector of Fodlan - she could have done more, but she’s busy juggling with three goals, rez mom, protect fodlan, protect the fam.

I think one of her main issue (but the game was also made this way so) is to try to reach those goals alone, save for the “rez mom” goal, everyone in Fodlan, especially the heads of the three states should be concerned with keeping peace in the continent!

Lambert was BBQ’s, Riegan’s busy shitting on Gloucester and Ionius is... well, Ionius. Add to that Mole People starting up shit all around the continent and you have the recipe for a disaster. I’m not saying Lambert and Ionius should have participated to the “protect her family” goal, but at least not trying to eradicate them to turn them in relics would have been nice, sadly Ionius’s bro in law was an Agarthan.

Even if she is nearly immortal compared to a human, Rhea can’t do everything on her own. That’s why I ultimately think a SS ending is doomed to fail, Billy will try to be Rhea 2.0. and in 1000 years it will fall apart again.

AM ending? Billy will become like Rhea was post War of Heroes, but when Dimitri’s descendants start to do shit, his Kingdom disappears and humans start to return to their usual shitty selves, what will Billy do?

VW ending is kind of the same, Claude wants to open the borders and make everyone able to live regardless of their differences, but what if 940 years later an Almyrian president decides to build a wall between Fodlan and Almyra and make Fodlaneses pay for it? What is immortal Billy, who knew Claude and his ideals, going to do?

Wave 3 (lol i nearly forgot but remembered when i was rambling in the tags) : Rhea and technology !

The DLC book and Word of God said she slowed advance of technology in Fodlan to protect peace etc etc. But there’s a book where a cardinal said “eff to autopsies else people won’t rely on us with faith magic” which is... kind of weird. There’s a reason why Rhea might have approved that ban (Why does Freikugel look like a hip bone?) but it still deprived Fodlan’s randoms from the scientifical advance of autopsies... and made people reliant on faith magic.

Actually, the book goes

“Though it is widely believed that this is medically relevant, such actions upon a corpse are considered desecration of the dead. Since white magic can be used to a similar end, autopsies were deemed taboo. A notable cardinal asserted that if medical science were to excel over faith-based white magic, it would destabilize the foundation of the church “

I already pointed out the WTF between faith and white magic (Seteth doesn’t believe his mom is real so he has no faith boon) but interesting to note “desecrating the dead” is still something of an argument nowadays, not regarding autopsies but other practices like anatomical theaters etc etc. Maybe White Magic isn’t intrusive and yields the same results? idk.

Interesting to note, it’s a cardinal who edicted/justified that ban (Rhea as the head of the Church would have given her approval oc). As pointed out with the Freikugel example, Rhea’d have a personal interest in preventing humans to know more about anatomy (goal 3/). Would people stop looking to the church to be healed if “medical science” progresses too much? Maybe. From what we see in the curren Fodlan, it doesn’t.

Also, French version translated the “foundation of the church” as “stability” of the church - would the church become unstable or challenged if people could heal without using white magic? Again, we ultimately know that it doesn’t, magical science and medical science coexist, Manuela gives a short summary of the two - they have different effects.

As for things Rhea herself banned : Telescopes, Oil exploitation and Printed Press.

Telescopes were banned because Rhea thought it would increase violence during wartimes and would make it too easy to snipe from afar (TFW mages with bolting can do the same without telescopes, but they’re limited by their range and if they have a gloucester’s crest by Rhea’s sister’s femur’s range or whatever is Thyrsus). We know the mole people use (and most likely used before during the Sothis war) this technology. The “lessening the mystery of the goddess” thing is noted by Edel herself who wonders if the Goddess could really have come from space since it’s super far away. Edel doesn’t know the Goddess is an alien dragon-thing though.

Oil exploitation : “Misuse could result in accidental death” tfw random Faerghus countryman thought it was water and died :’(

Used tactically by those lacking magical abilities - like gambits? Was Rhea thinking that a random human cannot set fire to an entire city (lol) on his own with his limited spell pool/uses, but if he uses oil then he would only be limited by the quatity of oil? So it’d be easier to cause mass fires? Or whatever Robin did in FE13 with the ships and the Valmese army? Also, if Rhea thought oil could replace humans with magic, does it mean humans with magic were supposed to do everything oil can do? Like making a lamp or they still used something else as fuel? “Competition for it could cause strife” Rhea acknowledged that if humans discovered this ressource they’d deem it as essential and try to get their hands on it, even if they had to wage war?

Metal molding Printing Machine : “after careful consideration” Rhea banned it because it’d be useless for illiterate randoms - well yes, but why should this be an argument? You don’t ban something because it’s useless, look, no one banned airpods - risk of mass circulation of false information or rumors : rhea wanted to prevent redshit from existing This is a way to control information, but funnily enough in the game, we see the results or someone deliberately using manifestos spreading misinformation - risk of “increasing disparity between church branches” (fr version has “rivalry” instead of disparity) what does it mean? The central church would have more means to print books than the eastern church so the eastern church would be jealous? Or the Western Church could mass print its doctrine and have more zealots than the central or the easter church?

Ultimately, all those bans were lifted with time, Manuela performs Jeralt’s autopsy, Edel’s imperial science division managed to guess the distance between the Blue sea star and Fodlan, Oil is apparently used in several gambits, Edel’s able to send manifestos around the continent and Seteth can write children books and sell them without difficulties. Hilda can also lose books which would be a big no-no even if you are a noble if books weren’t, kind of, mass printed.

So why those bans? To protect Fodlan and the fam, but since they were lifted with time, I don’t think Rhea abandonned her goals, most likely, she thought humans were making small steps to discover those technologies, slowly learning about them so they won’t have them when they’re not “ready enough” to use them.

The “ready enough” thing sounds paternalistic or what can be expected from a more technologically advanced alien, but technically Rhea’s part alien and she lived through (or not?) an episode where humans received technology and did shit with it (mole people) so maybe she won’t hand them the car with the keys this time, and instead let them figure out how to build the car.

Still, this is HC because, as usual, the game doesn’t let us talk or question Rhea about those things, so we can only infer, read between the lines or between pixels.

****

TBH, I didn’t care a lot about her when I played, but when she had to eat babies in CF I grew more interested. Other bloggers already pointed it out, but Rhea’s a Tiki, but also a “traditional FE lord” in the sense she avenged her mom who was killed by the king of another kingdom, lived in exile and raised an army to fight against the King.

Still, Rhea didn’t end up as the leader of the world, or as the first Empress of United Fodlan, or something like that. She let Willy do his thing. Why? How? Why didn’t she became an integral part of the Empire, if she had been politically important, or a kind of seer/oracle, it would have been difficult for the Empire to go against her!

But nope, Rhea figged away in her mountains to rez her mom, sprout some “doctrine” (she could have done the same as an Emperor/Seer/Oracle) and watched over randoms who made up her “church”. She sometimes tries to intervene in Fodlan’s best interests, but it failed. Because Rhea doesn’t want to rule. She feels like she has to be a guide, but when humans don’t follow her? Well, what can she do? FE16 doesn’t show us Rhea sending her knights against the Empire when the Empire kicked out her Church and basically said “fig” to her face. FE16 doesn’t show us Rhea being angry and punching Gloucester in the face because he doesn’t show “real piety” and sprouts doctrine out of his rear.

Still, when she has to take a more hands-on approach and cannot be a distant figure/guide, she complains about maintaining a certain image as the Archbishop and how she cannot socialise with students or even walk around without Seteth randoms guarding her. She feels her mother would do a better job and tries to act as a proxy. Imo, Rhea’s bound by duty to her mom, to her sibs dead and living, and to Fodlan. She doesn’t reject her role, she accepts it, she doesn’t like it yes, but if going Gandalf in non-CF chapter 12 shows, she will fulfill it.

What’s most saddening though, is how her duty is a self-imposed one. Rez her mom? She personally took the challenge, because she misses Sothis the most and feels ashamed of this feeling to the point of not telling Seteth about it (interesting enough, Indech seems to be aware Billy’s Sothis incarnation and didn’t jump to the “Billy must be one of Nemesis’s kids with the crest of flames” conclusion, as if he knew Sothis could “incarnate” one day, but was he thinking Sothis would incarnate on her own or Rhea would trigger it? Flayn also suspects a thing about Billy being related to them because of Rhea). Rhea personally thinks she has to lead/guide Fodlan and make it a better place, ignoring the heads of the 3 states who should also be concerned with this goal. Rhea will create a false history to protect her living siblings when Macuil and Indech won’t give a fuck and live in their bestial forms somewhere, and when Seteth hides, but made it clear his only wish is to protect Flayn and the apostles, if they were really lizards, disappeared in random villages.

FE16 isn’t interested by Rhea’s story though.

That’s why I’m desperately waiting for a War of Heroes DLC or prequel of BSFE or whatever because I don’t really care about Fodlan in 1180 and who can have a perfect tea time with Billy or not.

I’d like to know why Birdie and Indech figged away, why Rhea thought letting Willy control the entire continent when he knows she’s a dragon was a good idea, why the Apostles didn’t take part in the Nemesis fight, why Fodlan’s humans decided to side with Willy in his brand new Empire instead of staying with King Nemesis, did Sothis have a previous faithful and what happened when she disappeared, were the Nabateans tyrannical rulers over humans which made some with Nemesis’n’pals, what were they supposed to do when they left Zanado, etc, etc.

So just like Julia and the baijilions AU ideas I came up with, Rhea’s a fuel for AUs because her base game dgaf about her.

#anon #replies #long reply #FE16 #Rhea stuff #the julia tier #everyone hates that tier #it's when you have something interesting but you're not supposed to care about it #fuck the uwu factor ffs #burn it to oblivion #i really really hope next FE won't have an avatar #eff billy #tfw you could have Tellius' herons but Reyson's more interested in Billy than in explaining what happened in the forest #what happened in the forest will only be explained in an infodump at the end of the game #i hate it #relics? we don't care #the equivalent of AU where Julia gets her memory is AU where Rhea is playable and gets 10 chapters #i read somewhere that bar Edel'n'Hubert CF warps every character to their worst selves #Endgame CF!Rhea doesn't care about wanting to keep peace or protecting her fam she wants her mom back she litterally screams it #banana point though #depending on your PT she might not have any family left save for Birdie and Indech #i won't say rhea did nothing wrong though #but i hope i didn't forget a thing #i like her #less than hilda of course bcs Hilda is my fave #FE4!Hilda of course #give me a WoH DLC IS or even a manga at this point i'm desperate even a Seiros alt with 5 lines #Rhea parallels the 3 lords but won't talk to them #only claude could but then Nemesis rang at their door and we wasted that convo with a billy reveal like fuck idc #like 'relics were made from my family bones but also billy's not a human' and the only reaction is 'omg billy's not a human???'

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silver-wield · 5 years ago

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Nobody asked for this one, but I said I was gonna do it anyway. Barret and Cloud's friendship development.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna make a mile long post. I'm just gonna hit on the key moments, but I think these two deserve a bit of spotlight.

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven’t played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it’s gonna be reasonably long.

Also, this is one person’s interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that’s cool and we’ll agree to disagree.

You’re also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I’m grabbing them from Youtube and it’s frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone’s interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis)

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog)

Tifa character analysis

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory – I should probably update this since I’ve had other ideas since then)

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti)

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis

Cloti reunion analysis

The Promise Analysis

Andrea’s approval (Cloti ask response)

Leslie analysis (not mine, but a good read)

Cloti action touching

Aerti friendship analysis

Cloti body language chapter 3

Cloti healthy disagreement

Cloti post heliboss battle (chapter 15)

Clerith playground scene

Cloti body language plate fall

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

I'm not recapping the whole game lol

Chapter 1: Barret isn't impressed one bit with Cloud. Watching back their early interactions and I keep noticing this sad look on Cloud's face when he's excluded. But then, I'm also like “Well you pushed them away first”. But I also wanna hug him.

Yeah, so Barret isn't impressed and he's outright hostile, calling Cloud names and antagonising him. He even shoots at Cloud and then raises his gun to take out a security bot. This man doesn't like Cloud and isn't afraid to show it.

You gotta remember, Barret is 6'5 and built like a brick shit house and has a machine gun on his arm. He's not someone to mess with. Taking that in, Cloud's dismissiveness is pretty impressive. I mean he's almost a foot shorter than Barret, after all, and his sword probably weighs more than him lol

Perhaps by the end of the chapter – after Cloud saves Jessie – Barret might have thawed a tiny bit towards him, but he's still mistrusting and doesn't like him.

Chapter 2 and there's not a lot of interaction between them. Barret does actually agree with Cloud when he says “what's done is done” in reference to the destruction. This shows Barret is pragmatic and not against Cloud himself, just his role. After that, Cloud's alone for the rest of the chapter until the above screen when he leaps into the cargo carriage of the train and Barret says, “You had me worried for a minute.”

He looks caught out when the others all look at him because he's been a total dick to Cloud throughout the mission, but this shows he cares about his team, even if he doesn't like everyone on it. Showing concern for his people is the trait of a leader and if the game were showcased differently we could assume that Barret is our leading man.

“The folks down here don't have the luxury of choice, you know.”

Still in chapter 2 and this is such a great moment between Cloud and Barret! There's no arguing, just Barret giving Cloud a different perspective that's not the badass merc “Idc” one he's showcasing. You can see once the conversation is over that Cloud grows introspective, so Barret's words clearly resonated with him. This looks like another marker on Cloud's chart of going from a douchebag to a decent human being. He thinks about how things are for other people. Later, Marle tells him to consider others feelings, too. To listen. I'm loving all these small moments that come together to build a clearer of picture of Cloud's development.

Barret actually removes his sunglasses – why is he wearing them at night? – to meet Cloud's eye. This is a gesture that shows his sincerity and belief in his words. He's not just blustering for the sake of it. He cares about the people and the planet.

Chapter 3 and we don't see Barret until near the end. He's back to being snappy with Cloud – understandable since he's being a dick going on about money.

(aside: can I just squee at Cloud smiling at Tifa through this whole bit. He's such a dork)

And when we see Barret again he's very professional and courteous. There's no emotion in his tone and his words are very formal. He could be talking to anybody. His head dips as he's speaking, in an effort to lower himself more to Cloud's physical level. On an emotional one, he's making himself non-threatening. This isn’t a confrontation is what he’s putting out.

Cloud doesn't look happy at the dismissal and something we know about him is his desire for acceptance, so this probably hurts, although he acts otherwise.

We're up to chapter 5 and this is a turning point between Cloud and Barret's budding friendship. Barret's in battle dialogue makes it clear he's trying to show off in front of Cloud, who's dismissive still. There's a lot of back and forth between them in the kind of guy banter that suggests they kind of respect each other, but they also just have to put up with each other.

The above screen is the second before Cloud says to Barret that he's better than that in response to his arguing with the Shinra manager. Barret seems surprised Cloud even tries with him, but what's more telling is this expression from Cloud shows he gave it some thought before speaking. He considered the right words to address Barret which shows he's thought about the kind of reaction Barret could have. He took in Barret’s words from chapter 2 and Marle’s from chapter 3. This is called character development!

Chapter and Cloud throws some shade and Barret blusters lol

Tbf Barret's grown a lot less hostile since chapter 1. He's not as combative to Cloud, nor is he maliciously insulting him anymore. They've entered a stage of snarky banter, which we all know is one of the big steps on the road to friendship lol

Clearly Barret being able to see Cloud in action and rely on him in battle – not to mention Tifa's enduring good opinion – are starting to colour his own opinion.

(Tifa actually rears back when Barret waves his arm around in this bit lol)

Barret looking to Cloud for back up here. I mean, they're all in the shit, but this is interesting that he's looking to Cloud for that reassurance they're gonna continue kicking ass. The fact Cloud agrees without even the tiniest disagreement is probably the first time they're genuinely on the same page through their own choice.

Let the friendship begin!

Now, I bet you're thinking I picked this one to showcase cloti, well you're wrong. This is an example of how Barret's mellowed towards Cloud from his chapter 1 hostility to now. Cloud disagrees with him and instead of getting pissed that his leader decision is overruled, he lets it go.This could be a moment of contention between them, but they’ve both grown enough over the game to get to the point that not everything between them is a fight.

Now, maybe Barret's saying this because he thinks Cloud is about to die, but that seems selfish and like he's saying it to make himself feel better after being a douchebag, and for a selfless man like Barret I just don't buy it. He's genuinely regretful of his past actions and this is the point between the two of them that they can start again and actually become proper friends.

There's no time for much of a guy reunion between them when Barret does see Cloud again all the way over in chapter 12 -- that’s a long ass time apart for Barret to think about how he treated Cloud -- and we kind of brush past Barret's feelings because the plate collapse takes priority.

After that, Barret is much nicer to Cloud, trying to get his praise in battle and being a proper support to him. There's still that snarky banter between them, but the hostile edge has gone. We see a culmination of their friendship development during the stairs climbing sequence. Where before their banter had a hard edge and combative nature to it, this is very friendly and full of jokes and warmth. Barret has definitely softened towards Cloud and considers him a real friend. You can't fake that shit.

Conclusion

Yeah, I kinda cut this short and didn't do the latter half of the game, but that's because it's much more clear than this early development. Focusing on the small interactions between them that built a gradual friendship, it took a huge shock to get Barret to reassess his opinion of Cloud and him dropping from the reactor, going missing and then showing up to save the day covered it. It was like he got a reset and from that he dropped his prejudiced preconceived ideas about Cloud and opened up to him more. Because there’s such a huge gap between the time Barret sees Cloud again, it’s easy to miss the middle part of their friendship. The part where it goes from dislike to like. It’s easy to remember Barret hating Cloud and then see them being a team after chapter 12 because those moments stick in your mind more. It’s the transition that gets lost.

I love their development and how they become friends. It's not the kind of friendship that Barret shows with Red. Those two are bros the instant they met. Cloud and Barret's relationship is more complicated because of Cloud's role and identity. It takes Barret a long time to see past that persona, especially when he's only got evidence of that to go on – unlike Tifa. Once he does, he gives Cloud his full support and trust.

I, for one, can’t wait to see how they go forward in Barret’s arc.

#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers #final fantasy 7 remake analysis #Barret wallace #Cloud strife #friendship is the best ship

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fangirl-ramblings · 5 years ago

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Their First Time [18+]

📷 Picture by @the-neigh-sayer

Pairing: John Marston x Lilly Mae James ( @lilly-and-alice )

Summary: Lilly has been running with the Van der Linde Gang for a while. During that time, her relationship with John has been hard to define. Practically the same age as each other, a rocky friendship of sorts has developed between them; which has not been helped by John's seeming indifference towards her in the beginning.

That all changed a few nights previously when John took the opportunity to kiss Lilly

I'm gifting this story my wonderful friend, the lovely @gangofgunslingers for her birthday as a huge thank you for being one of John x Lilly's biggest fans and constantly inspiring & motivating me (and wanting to kick my ass) to try finish all my stories. (But most importantly - it’s because ilysm and I hope you have a wonderful day 😘😘😘)

Also huge thank you to @sad-sweet-cowboah & @verai-marcel who took the time beta read this story and give me some excellent advice.

Requested tags: @amina-celestial & @cupofhana (If you also want to be tagged in anything I write, or no longer want to be tagged, just send me a message)

Unrequested tags: For my remaining John hoes @theunholyoutlaw @the-neigh-sayer & @redeadepression (because we need more John content in our lives - even if it is my poor attempt at something)

~* Tumblr Masterlist | Stories on AO3 *~

“Hey sugar, you look like you’re having a fine old time tonight.”

“Why thank you, kind sir,” Lilly slurred, smiling at the stranger who spoke to her. “I am having a fine old time tonight! For, indeed, it is my birthday and I am celebrating with my friend!” She gestured wildly to where she last saw John, who had been talking to the barkeeper. A look of confusion crossed her face as she struggled to find him in the sea of people that had suddenly developed around the bar.

“Well a very happy birthday to you Miss, but it looks like your so-called 'friend' has upped and left you.” The stranger leaned in, whispering in her ear, as he placed a firm hand on her backside. “How about we go someplace private and celebrate together instead?”

Looking down towards his hand, it took a few seconds for Lilly to realise what the man was implying to her. “Erm, no thank you,” she replied, grabbing the man’s wrist and removing it from her person, before looking around the packed saloon, yelling "Marston? Where you at, you damned fool?"

While she was distracted, she felt a sharp tug at her own wrist. The man had grabbed hold and was now pulling her towards the door. “Oh, I wasn’t asking sweetheart, now move yourself!” he barked at her.

Anger spiked immediately and Lilly was quick to attempt to remove herself from the situation. She swiftly grabbed an empty beer bottle from a nearby table and raised it high. However, before she had a chance to smash it over the man's head, she felt another arm wrap tightly around her waist, pulling her from her pursuer’s grasp.

“Hey! You got a problem with my lady?” A raspy voice asked, appearing from seemingly nowhere. Lilly glanced at the familiar face that was now beside her, pulling her ever closer to him.

“Your lady?” Both Lilly and her antagoniser questioned, looking John up and down.

“As if she'd even look twice at you, ya greasy streak of piss. You can’t be much older than 18, if that!” The older man snarled as he cast his eye over young Marston, who now had his hand upon the revolver resting in his gun belt. “No, what she really needs is a real man, not a jumped up little boy who thinks he’s playin’ Cowboys & Injuns.”

Lilly closed her eyes, envisioning John's anger over those comments. She waited for the quick firing of bullets she knew he was capable of. However, she was surprised to hear nothing but silence. As she tentatively reopened her eyes, she looked down to find both of John’s hands firmly on her waist, pulling her against him, before gently placing his lips against hers in such a tender way that she didn't realise John Marston was actually capable of.

Not knowing whether it was the drink or the kiss that was making her feel intoxicated, she allowed herself to reply by allowing the tip of her tongue to brush against his whiskey stained lips, practically insisting that he should let her in.

The kiss itself was over within seconds, but it seemed to the pair of them that time had stood still, igniting something deep in both of them, something they had tried so hard to previously ignore and now would change their friendship forever.

Breaking away from each other to catch their breath, Lilly and John placed their foreheads against each other's. They took a brief moment to stare into each other's eyes, attempting to make sense of what was happening between them.

"Thanks for saving me,” she breathlessly whispered, noticing out the corner of her eye that the man had moved to the other side of the bar to try his luck with some other poor, unsuspecting girl. “But did you really need to kiss me to prove a point?”

“It was either that or shoot him, and Dutch did ask us to stay outta trouble, so...” he replied, with a smirk plastered on his face, his hands still holding onto her hips. “Anyways, did you need to try and stick your tongue down my throat?”

Not knowing whether she was caught up in the moment, felt embarrassed by his comment, or just flushed from the effects of the alcohol, Lilly found herself breaking away from the embrace and headed towards the door. "I think...I think I need some fresh air."

***

Lilly stumbled through the swinging doors, stopping for a moment to breathe in and savour the freshness of the night air. Taking a deep breath, she made her way down the small dirt path at the side of the saloon. Placing her back against the wooden wall and closing her eyes, she tried to make sense of everything: Could it be that she truly enjoyed this kiss, and the one they shared a few nights ago? Were the butterflies that appeared in her stomach at his mere touch a new feeling, or was it something she'd unconsciously tried to repress? Maybe these feelings had gone on even longer than she originally thought. She was always disappointed to find John had left camp without her and she couldn't deny that her heart leaped with joy every time he returned.

The sound of John's raspy laugh brought her back out of her daydream.

“So you finished celebratin' your birthday yet?” he asked, leaning against the side of the saloon with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He casually struck a match against the wall to light it.

“For now at least,” she replied, leaning in the empty space next to him. Pausing for a second she turned to face him, “Hey can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what about?” He replied, staring straight ahead, outstretching his hand to offer her his cigarette.

“What is this?" Lilly questioned, taking a drag before handing it back to him.

"It's a cigarette." John teased, though it was clear he knew full well what she truly meant.

"No dumbass! What is *this* happening between us?” she gestured, waving her hands wildly in the empty space in between them.

“I thought that was obvious,” he chuckled, exhaling a puff of smoke in that calm, collected manner of his.

Struggling to take her eyes off him, Lilly leaned back, resting her head against the woodwork. “It's just...well...I've been running with you guys for a while now, and you hardly ever used to speak to me and all of a sudden, you keep kissing me?”

"What? You don't like me kissin' ya?"

"Well yeah, I do like it. But..." Before she could finish her sentence, John had flicked his cigarette to the floor. He moved quickly to face her, one hand resting next to her head on the wall, the other one back on her hip. His thumb began to rub circles on a patch of exposed skin, and he pulled her body closer to him.

"But what?" He whispered into her ear; his breath so close she could practically taste the whiskey and tobacco.

Staring into his eyes, Lilly no longer had the words to answer him. She instead leaned forward to kiss him, her tongue prodding through his already parted lips. John took the opportunity to suck gently on her tongue as one hand moved to palm her breast. His other hand moved gently over her body, feeling every curve and groaning as he watched her succumb to his touch.

He smirked, immensely enjoying the soft moans that escaped from her mouth into his. Her hips rolled subconsciously against him, grinding against his growing erection. Her jeans soon felt loosened as he unbuckled them. She groaned into his ear as he slid his hand in and moved a finger along her already wet folds.

"Nice to see I have this effect on you." he smirked. He observed her expression as he thumbed her sensitive nub before moving a finger inside of her core.

Burying her head against his shoulder as she arched her hips to his touch, Lilly couldn't help but cry out a breathless, "Oh…God."

Holding Lilly's jaw with his other hand, he rasped into her ear, "You never struck me as being so needy for my touch," he brushed a thumb against her lips, which she eagerly took into her mouth. "Yet here you are, takin’ everything I'm givin’ you."

Lilly nodded, finding herself unable to speak. Her face contorted with pleasure as he quickened his pace with his other hand, curling his fingers against her sweet spot. Grabbing a tight hold of his arm, Lilly dug her nails in as the crest of her first wave quickly built up and washed over her.

As she eased down from her high, John moved his hand away, prompting her to whine from the loss of contact. She caught her breath and watched in anticipation as John started to unbuckle his own trousers. His rock hard erection sprang free and he moved his hand over the shaft, coating it with a mix of her slick and his own precum.

With John helping her out of her jeans, Lilly was not used to the strange sensation of the cool night air nip at her exposed flesh. The heat of her core quickly returned upon catching the pure lust in John’s eyes, him staring at her as if she were the most gorgeous being he’d ever set his sights on.

Moving in closer to her, he carefully positioned himself at her entrance. "You ready for me?" he asked.

Nodding sheepishly, Lilly pulled him into a short and sweet kiss, gingerly placing her hands on his shoulders. John eased her up against the wall and placed a hand on her thigh, lifting her leg up to rest on his waist. He slowly pushed into her, watching her face for any signs of discomfort. As her body grew accustomed to him, he began to thrust at a steady pace. Her hands moved to his backside, pushing him closer and deeper within her with each thrust.

John firmly placed his hand under her chin, pulling her mouth closer to his own. Her hot breath breezed against his cheek as she moaned, her body tingling in pleasure from how deep he’d reached inside her. Nipping at her bottom lip, Lilly couldn't help but groan his name into his mouth. Her hands moved under his shirt to claw at his back.

“Feelin’ okay?” John whispered, his nimble fingers unlacing her blouse. With her breasts exposed to his hungry gaze, he brought his mouth against her supple flesh. His tongue and teeth toyed and grazed against her hardened nipple, only heightening her ecstasy.

“Mmm...better than...okay….I…..I…..” Unable to finish the sentence, Lilly’s body began to shake and tighten around him, tugging at his hair as she attempted to keep herself quiet. With another climax on the rise, John quickly moved to muffle her screams by covering her mouth with his hand. He continued to thrust deep into her, helping her ride out the ever heightening wave of pleasure.

He wasn’t too far behind, only short moments passing before he quickly pulled out and spilt himself onto the floor. He panted heavily and leaned his head against her shoulder, the night air filled with their breathless sighs.

Lilly was the first to speak, "Wow!" she exclaimed, simply at a loss for other words. She leaned against the wall, dragging her tired fingers through his hair.

John placed soft kisses along her collarbone before he tucked himself back into his trousers. A small look of concern crossed his face, and he muttered, "Sorry."

"For what?"

"I practically forced myself on you just then...but it's just…I've wanted you ever since I first laid eyes on you."

Lilly smiled at him, grabbing her jeans to pull them back on. "You didn't force yourself on me. I kissed you this time, remember?" As she laced her blouse back up, she noted the look of confusion John had etched across his face. A giggle escaped her. "I obviously wanted it too. It just took me a bit longer to realise my feelings towards you."

Her reassurance seemed to do the trick as a smile appeared on John’s lips. “I’m glad to hear you say that, didn’t want you thinkin’ that this had to be a one off”

Placing a gentle kiss on his cheek, she linked his arm and walked back with him onto the main street. "Come on, I think I’m done with my birthday drinks. But what say we continue celebrating over at the hotel?"

#fangirl writes #nsft #red dead redemption 2 #john marston x original female character #rdr2 fanfic #my oc: Lilly Mae James

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thenugking · 7 years ago

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I agree with all of your unpopular opinions (especially the Cullen stuff fuck that guy) except I cannot for the life of me understand Anders/Fenris. I know you think the slaver thing was OOC (I agree), but do you have any more insight to the appeal or to how/why it could work. I have never had someone give me a response I found reasonable, so I'm curious.

I mean firstly, if you just go off their interactions in the game then no, it wouldn’t work. DA2 keeps them being antagonistic to each other the whole game but imo, that was an incredibly missed opportunity. Like. They’re in the same friend group and regularly fighting together and saving each other’s lives for seven years. I feel like there really should have been some development in that time, that at some point, they should have actually talked about their issues and come to understand each other a little better, and maybe could start becoming friends.

Sure, it doesn’t happen in the game, but I mean, DA2 was rushed, Anders’ writer hated him and kept trying to villainise him and act as though his problems weren’t serious, the game is really just Varric telling a story and missing out who knows what. There are plenty of reasons to ignore “anders and fenris dislike each other and have no interest in ever understanding each other, the end” in favour of “if anders and fenris actually tried to get along, they could realise they’re more similar than they thought and start becoming friends.

Anders and Fenris are more similar people than they first appear. They’ve both fled a life of oppression and abuse and want to fight against that. They start out angry for their fellow mages/slaves but just trying to keep themselves safe, before moving on to actively fighting for mages and slaves (Anders makes the jump when Justice possesses him, while Fenris has started hunting down slavers in Inquisition). They’re both still clearly hurting from everything they’ve been through, and what they’re still going through now, and instead of antagonising each other for it, I want them to realise that and start helping each other.

The reasons they dislike each other are that Fenris hates mages because he was abused by mages and came from a place where they were oppressors, making him cynical of the abuse mages face in the rest of Thedas and dismissive of Anders’ oppression. Meanwhile, Anders grew up surrounded by the plight of mages and (particularly after merging with Justice) is too single-minded to realise other groups suffer too, making him dismissive of Fenris’ oppression. And while they’re both wrong, and these are character flaws, it’s understandable that they feel this way.

But people can grow and become less flawed and in the course of seven years, should at least once genuinely consider the other person’s point of view, and if it’s understandable, could maybe start to understand it. They both care about oppression, so I want to see them start to care about each other’s oppression, to be furious about what each other have had to suffer, to protect each other from templars and slavers because nobody should have to go through that, to fight for each other.

I want to see them recognise signs of trauma in each other, and help get each other out of a situation that might trigger them because they know how unpleasant that is, and share coping strategies with each other, and talk to each other about what they’ve been through because it’s good to talk about it with someone who can understand. I want Anders and Fenris to grow, and to help each other grow, and not let their traumas stop them becoming friends.

If that happens, there’s respect and admiration and understanding and the ability to confide in each other there, and that’s what I like to imagine a romantic relationship being built on. And I love that relationship. They’re both snarky people and would likely keep snarking at each other, though less antagonistically, and I love ships like that, ships that fight at first and gradually the fighting turns to affectionate teasing. And there’s A Trope for fenders where fenris stops calling Anders “mage” angrily and starts doing it affectionately, which I really enjoy.

There’s the fact that Fenris has been hurt by magic, and Anders uses his magic to heal people, and Anders’ healing Fenris means Fenris can experience magic helping him for the first time in his life. Plus Anders can probably do something to help with Fenris’ chronic pain. (There’s my favourite crackfic fodder, which is the fact that Fenris has lyrium in his skin and Justice is possessing Anders and Justice talks in Awakening about how lyrium sings to him and his lyrium ring is the most precious thing in the world, and all this makes Anders want to lick Fenris.)

So yeah, that is why I ship Fenders, and while you may not personally find the relationship stuff in the last couple of paragraphs appealing, I hope I’ve helped you understand how the ship (and the friendship) could work.

Tl;dr Anders and Fenris are similar people, underneath their individual traumas, and if their DA2 relationship had been explored more deeply, they could have come to understand and respect each other, and help each other with their traumas.

#anders #fenris #fenders #dragon age #dragon age 2 #asks post #asks about dragon age #long post #da spoilers #abuse cw #institutionalised abuse cw #slavery cw #Anonymous

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architectnews · 3 years ago

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"I respond to every fucking detail of the time we're in" says Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry's new tower in Arles fits with both the ancient Roman city and today's environmental agenda, the architect claimed in an exclusive interview with Dezeen.

Speaking to Dezeen in Arles last week the Pritzker Prize-winner said The Tower, which has a steel-and-concrete frame and a glazed drum at its base, responds to current concerns about the carbon footprint of architecture.

The Tower opened last week

"We fit into it," said the Canadian-American architect. "But I can't explain it. I respond to every fucking detail of the time we're in with the people we live with, in this place," added the 92-year-old when asked about the building's environmental performance.

"So it's all taken into account as best I can," he continued.

"You know, I believe that's the most important thing to do," he added, gesturing to the face mask in his hands. "To live in the place and time you are in and what the issue is, you know, even with these fucking masks."

Sustainable elements include natural ventilation of the circular glazed podium while some of the building's energy comes from renewable sources. However, precise details of the building's embodied carbon have not been disclosed. The team did not submit the building for environmental certification under the French HQE programme.

The tower forms part of the Luma Arles cultural campus

The Tower finally opened last week along with the rest of the vast Luma Arles cultural campus after a 14-year gestation period.

It serves as an entrance pavilion, lookout tower, exhibition-and-events space and beacon for the 27-acre campus commissioned by Maja Hoffmann, the art-collecting founder of Luma Foundation and the heiress to the Hoffmann-La Roche (now Roche) pharmaceutical fortune.

Founded in 2004, the philanthropic foundation "focuses on the direct relationships between art, culture, environmental issues, human rights, education and research".

The Luma name comes from Hoffmann's children, Lucas and Marina, echoing the way her father, the eminent environmentalist and World Wildlife Fund co-founder Luc Hoffmann, named his philanthropic conservation body MAVA Foundation after the initials of his children.

"I try not to repeat myself"

Gehry and Hoffmann, who is Swiss but grew up on her father's estate in the Camargue wetlands near Arles, first began discussing the building in 2006. This was long before sustainability topped the architectural agenda but when shiny icons were still very much the rage.

Their conversations began nine years after the opening of Gehry's titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and three years after the completion of his stainless-steel Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

But Gehry said that each project is a one-off rather than fitting into an evolution of his architectural approach.

"I try not to repeat myself," he said. "I just think about it at the time I'm doing it, the people I'm working with, like Maja, the community."

"So I don't think of it," he added. "I mean, naturally, there's like this historical lineage but it's just how I feel at this time in this place."

Gehry's influences include Roman and Romanesque architecture

The 1997 Bilbao building introduced Gehry to the world, rebooted the city's economy and self-image, and fuelled the trend for iconic cultural buildings in cities hoping to replicate "the Bilbao effect".

Gehry sounds a little bemused by the term. "I don't really care about that, but it's nice that it changed the community," he said, as one of his team interjected, pointing out that he received death threats when the building was first proposed.

"When I went to Bilbao it was sad," he continued. "They were having a hard time economically. The kids growing up left Bilbao to go to college. They didn't stay there."

Gehry's Guggenheim is credited with turning around the fortunes of the post-industrial city in Spain's Basque country.

"I didn't mean to change the city"

"This has changed the economy," he said. "People come. I've been told they earn over eight billion Euros since the building opened. When you go there now it's friendly and open and happy."

"People are always telling me how I changed the city," he added. "I didn't mean to change the city, I just meant to be part of the city."

But Arles is no Bilbao. The UNESCO world heritage site is already a magnet for visitors coming for its spectacular Roman remains, its connection with artist Vincent van Gogh and Les Rencontres d'Arles, its world-renowned annual photography festival.

Located in a former SNCF railway engineering works on the edge of town, the Luma Arles campus adds another world-class attraction to the tiny city, which has a population of just 50,000.

The Luma Arles campus is at the edge of the ancient city

The railway sheds, repurposed into workshops, galleries and performance spaces by Selldorf Architects, are monumental in scale but these are eclipsed by Gehry's 56-metre-high tower. It is by far the tallest building in the area and dominates Avenue Victor Hugo, the main route into Arles, on a rise above the campus.

It towers over French architect Marc Barani's low-slung and discreetly minimalist École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, the French national photography school that sprang from the photo festival and opened in 2019, which lies directly across the road.

Arles, once a Roman provincial capital, sits on a low hill beside the river Rhône just before it enters the Camargue wetlands (which Hoffmann's father is credited with saving and where he established the Tour du Valat nature reserve) on its way to the Mediterranean, which is over 40 kilometres away.

"I don't antagonise. I don't try that"

The idea to build a tower came from Hoffmann, who expressed a desire to be able to "see the sea from the tower". But despite the requirement to build tall, Gehry said he did not intend to build a provocative structure.

"Well, I try to make it the scale of where we are," he said when reminded of the backlash from neighbours when he built his seminal 1978 home in Santa Monica. "And I try to make it user-friendly and not off-putting. So, you know, I don't make it black. And I don't antagonise. I don't try that. That's not my way."

The design process involved making dozens of scale models, many of which are exhibited in the vast exhibition space beneath the tower. These show how various approaches were explored including stacks of cubes, piles of oblongs and fabric-like forms.

However, none of the early models shows the twin concrete lift towers that break up the sculptural form at the rear of the tower.

A pair of concrete lift towers protrude from the rear of the tower

"There are over 100 models made of metal, wood… it was a long, long journey," said Gehry.

Over his career, Gehry has pioneered new approaches to creating architectural form, including scanning roughly made paper and card models and manipulating them in 3D software.

But this time, the models were made by his team. "I don't make them myself," he said. "I used to. It is a collaborative effort."

Gehry cites numerous local influences on the tower's form. Vincent van Gogh, the artist who lived in the city between 1888 and 1889 and painted many of his best-known works here, is one of them.

Gehry has compared the stainless-steel facade to the brushwork in Van Gogh's painting of Les Alpilles, a low range of mountains to the north-east of Arles that features distinctive limestone outcrops. He has also cited the nocturnal Starry Night painting as an influence.

The cladding was informed by Vincent van Gogh's paintings

The Roman architecture of Arles is another influence, with its famous amphitheatre informing the glazed drum at the base of The Tower.

"Certainly the Roman amphitheatres were in my mind but I didn't want to copy them," he said at the press conference that marked the building's opening, when he joked that The Tower is "my first Roman building".

"But I thought that having a drum on the boulevard that became the foyer for the whole building was a simple way of inviting people from all sides, from all directions, as well as having a strong symbol, presence on the street."

The drum is naturally ventilated, one of a number of energy-saving features that were reverse-engineered into the project to make it more sustainable as the project rumbled on.

Others include a biodiesel plant and solar panels that provide some of the power for the campus, and the use of interior cladding made from local materials including agricultural waste, algae and salt to replace the originally specified gypsum drywall.

The glazed drum is informed by Arles' Roman amphitheatre

The latter interventions were carried out by designers at Atelier Luma, a design research lab located at the campus and headed by curator and educator Jan Boelen. There was apparently some tension over these interventions: when another journalist asked one of Gehry's team about the materials, he replied: "That wasn't us".

Gehry took further inspiration from Romanesque architecture, including landmarks he visited when studying architecture in Paris in the 1950s.

"I visited here," he said at the press conference. "I was living in Paris and studying Roman architecture. I was very moved by the architecture."

Speaking to Dezeen later, he rattled off a list of Roman-influenced medieval buildings around the country he recalls visiting in his student days, admiring their stonework.

"Autun, Vézelay, Tournus... I guess that's Romanesque. Yeah. I liked the stone blocks but I didn't want to repeat that."

Rather than stone, The Tower is faced in 11,000 hollow, non-structural blocks made of stainless steel sheets that have a textured pattern on them, allowing them to reflect the harsh Provençal light in a softer way.

"So we studied metal because it reflects the light. But I wondered if it could be soft and feel comfortable. Which it does."

Inevitably, the building has its detractors. Does criticism concern Gehry? Or does he prefer to give people a bit of time to get used to new buildings in their neighbourhood?

"It's more like the latter," he replied. "I don't presume anything. Really. I call it friendly or happy insecurity."

The post "I respond to every fucking detail of the time we're in" says Frank Gehry appeared first on Dezeen.

#Architecture – Dezeen

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tsunrugi · 7 years ago

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So I have a lot of thoughts about Ares that I haven’t been writing down/sharing on here! I was going to go through point by point with that trailer they did a few months ago, going in to my personal opinions/predictions for each team, situation, and what I think that means for the characters in them… but then I realised I really just want to talk about Teikoku. So i’m gonna. do that.

so aliea is a super influential arc for a lot of characters, and three of those have ended up at teikoku - sakuma, fudou and kazemaru (just mentally add + genda every time i mention sakuma, i love him but unfortunately he doesn’t get built on much after aliea). and actually the minute hino said this was an alternate timeline i was v. concerned in regards to the development for these characters bcs i see them as being v important to them growing up in to strong healthy beautiful adults! very briefly:

- it reaffirms sakuma’s sense of self in a teikoku w/out kidou. it helps him define himself w/out kidou. also like it’s super fucking mature of him to be able to encourage kidou to go to raimon when he knows it’ll hurt him in the process!! props for sakuma, look at all that Character Growth.

- it sets up fudou’s whole deal. on subsequent viewings it actually also sets up his isolation which is super super important for his later development.

- it shifts kazemaru’s perspective, shows us (and him) how destructive it can be to cling to things like being the best, how having high standards for yourself can, when left unchecked, be self destructive. the whole dark emperors thing makes him grow up very fast and kind of refocuses his priorities in sport (and life?).

so in ares, these things haven’t happened. maybe they won’t happen! that concerns me because i love that these things happened because it’s a testament to how well i11 develops its characters subtly and continuously through the series. i want to have faith but lbr, this is going to be one fucking crowded series. here’s maybe my thoughts re: all of these characters being together, on what appears to be the most fucked team in the competition. like, rip teikoku, you’re not getting anywhere and it’s not fair because you’re beautiful and you deserve it.

first up with sakuma. he’ll probably suffer enough being a captain on a team coached by kageyama, but i’m curious to see exactly how. not just because i enjoy suffering, but because kageyama brand suffering is pretty bland at this point, so the real question is - will this suffering bring about as nice character moments as shin teikoku did? shin teikoku was such a good story arc. it had purpose in the overall season as well as for the characters involved! and i’ll say it again, i really love how sakuma Grew because of it. it takes a lot to own up to your own mistakes, let alone as big as the one he made. he wasn’t just trying to absolve kidou of his guilt by telling him he was better at raimon: he was also in a way repenting himself, giving himself a stern talking to, to try and see past his own desires and fears and paranoia and to fight his loneliness with his friend’s happiness. it sounds so petty but this can be hard!! fomo is a Real Thing. and i think this kind of shapes sakuma later, in ffi - he gets setback after setback but he works through it and it’s Brilliant. he works hard to get back in to shape so he can play again. he works even harder to try and be on the representative team, and then gets knocked back. picks himself up and keeps going. puts aside his own beef with kageyama to support kidou. he works on himself constantly, physically and mentally and just As A Person, and it all starts with that guilt from shin teikoku. will ares have these moments for him?

i can see the whole “kidou come back to teikoku :cccccc” thing being solved by a casual conversation. it might even be OFF SCREEN. and that feels super anti-climactic considering the lasting impact of shin teikoku? what i want is for sakuma to lose it again - maybe have his anger at his own inability as captain boil over, have him lash out at kageyama in the Worst Possible Way. he’d have to be isolated. he’d have to ignore support from genda and kazemaru and whatever interaction he has with kidou. but it would be FUN and we also get to have his development and learning growth and i’d be happy*

i want to jump in with kazemaru next. because he’s kind of similar with sakuma in how dark emperors impacted his character, only his attachment was to the idea of winning/being the best rather than a person or idealised team/friendship situation. kazemaru doesn’t look like he’s in a good position in aliea which ngl gives me Life, but the question is - will this lead to his realisation and reconfiguration of his toxic mindset?

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, or with having ambition or goals. but we all know how that ended for kazemaru, because of the way he internalised loss and failure and was eventually tempted by pure power. he’s very de-powered in ares. he has to play second fiddle to KAGEYAMA, of all fucking people, and idk i got the vibe from the trailer that he’s trying to start a coup with sakuma at least to usurp it all. but… is this consistent with s1 kazemaru, or even early aliea kazemaru? he feels very ffi kazemaru already. again, no doubt he’ll Suffer, but there was something to dark emperors that was so shocking, so impactful, that you can’t help but want something just as big? i don’t think there’s space for it in the ares story. and like sakuma, i don’t think he’s isolated to the point he was in aliea for it to happen all that naturally. so the question is - will his toxic mindset get addressed? will the dark parts of his ambition be dealt with, or will they still be there ready to explode?

i think that’s my major concern. aliea built kazemaru’s dark emperor turn so well. i don’t want that aspect of his character to just be ignored like it was never a thing, because imo it’d make the whole thing feel less like natural, human development and more like contrived plot device. and yeah, i know this is fiction, i know things have to happen for the plot, but i like i11 because it does treat character seriously, and does have the plot evolve along character lines. even in s1 kazemaru talks about how he wants to fight on the world stage. his break in s2 is believable. his stress, his fear, his anxiety, his despair, it’s all believable! please let elements of that stay in whatever he has to go through in ares.

and now for fudou! i love fudou. i was v. concerned when he turned up in the outer code and seemed Actually Stable. see, the thing with these three in aliea is that they were all isolated (sakuma you could argue had mentally separated his own suffering from genda’s, when you consider the extend he went to in shin teikoku in comparison). and they all dealt with that isolation by taking the power of the aliea meteorite. sakuma and kazemaru did that with a whole lot of passion. they let it consume them. fudou… didn’t. fudou was in control. and he seems to discard it without having to break like the other two did.

fudou is so interesting, i’d recommend an aliea rewatch just focusing on him. he’s all about the calculated revenge agains the world. he wants chaos, but he himself is not chaotic. he wants it to come apart around him, but to stay above it all. that’s why the only real moment of shock for him comes when kageyama rubs it in his face that he’s just as much of a pawn as the rest of them. this is a Deep Cut for him. this is Huge. and it’s huge because, as much as he wants to stay separate, he is still insanely affected by his family situation. it follows him in to ffi in that he can’t open up or trust any of his teammates, and how he deliberately antagonises them to keep them away. he doesn’t want, closeness. he doesn’t think he needs it, even though in many ways he craves it (snarky comments to himself that just serve to show how lonely he is, the fact that 90% of his hissatsu are combo moves, etc).

ANYWAY. why does this matter? well, in what we’ve seen of him in ares he’s…. playing nice? he’s sitting quietly and listening? he’s involved in team play? HE’S WEARING THE NO. 10 JERSEY JFC. this fudou already feels post-ffi. i can give them the benefit of the doubt - he doesn’t know why he’s at the teikoku meeting, and he doesn’t seem to have an established relationship with kageyama. maybe he’s just playing it save, sussing things out. but i hope there is some chaos. i hope he doesn’t play nice from the get-go. ffi was really fun in deconstructing his actions vs. everyone else’s intense dislike of him. it’s a really subtle unravelling of a villain, one that i missed on first watch because i was too god damn mad at him. but!! it’s so good. it’s so well done. and there are so many layers: we see fudou as we know him, just that Shithead who caused shin teikoku. we see fudou from the POV of kidou and sakuma, as someone who can’t be trusted, as someone who might still be working with kageyama. and then we see him through his own actions: he was fucked over too, and he wants to get back at kageyama just the same as everyone else. he’s insanely attentive to his teammates, even in the early stages of the season. he’s alone. and he grows. i love adult fudou because it’s such a lovely transformation from this isolated kid who dealt with his pain by causing chaos, to an actual well adjusted human being who has Friends and who Coaches and Helps people and Supports them while still retaining his own sense of self. IT’S REALLY NICE. BUT WE CAN’T HAVE THAT ARC IF HE’S ALREADY THERE.

so hino, please, make fudou a shit. make him the biggest shit. make him ambiguous and unpredictable and look I know there’s not that much time to deal with this but make him chaotic, just for a little bit. he is the joker - let him act like it before he joins up all buddy with sakuma and kazemaru, as per the implications of the trailer. you can do it, i have faith in you.

*i will most likely be happy with anything they do anyway this is all moot

#inazuma eleven #inazuma eleven ares #magic soccer

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sheltered-by-viktuuri · 8 years ago

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Katsuki Yuuri’s favourite move the triple axel and self-expression

Welcome to my first attempt of YOI meta-writing - this meta draws attention to Yuuri’s “favourite move” the triple axel, and his growth in mental strength and self-expression. Even half-dedicated fans are aware that Victor’s signature move is the quadruple flip as it’s been remarked several times in the series, Yuuri’s attempts of the quad flip signifies his blossoming relationship with his coach, soulmate and fiance Victor Nikiforov. This meta is about his performance of the triple axel, which in a way is to Yuuri the quad flip is to Victor. His performance of this jump correlates to his growing confidence in self-expression and assertion. Please be prepared that this won’t be a short meta, elaboration with screen maps from the show will be under the cut. Ready? On we go.

The times Yuuri performs triple axel successfully coincide with his success in self-expression, in front of Victor as well as his audience. In Episode 7 where Yuuri performed his short programme in China he had a breakthrough - right after he and Victor had a major fight. Triple axel features twice in his free skate, he touched down the first time but remarked that he wasn’t as tired as he should be given that he didn’t sleep well, and successfully landed the second triple axel, which launched a series of successful jumps right up to the flubbed quad flip which still had enough rotations.

Yuuri fell performing the first triple axel

but landed his second attempt in a combination, leaving Victor open-mouthed shocked and the audience amazed

This echoes how Viktuuri/Victuuri started off with a miscommunication in the garage (stupid Victor!), and Yuuri putting things right by rejecting Victor’s offer of a kiss, an oft-misused tactic to calm down a romantic partner which not only does not solve the problem, but risks intensifying it due to the lack of a proper address - in this case Yuuri’s anxiety. He ended up having to teach his coach and love/soulmate/boyfriend how to deal with it, and that’s simply to stay by his side. Often a coach-student relationship makes the coach superior, in Victuuri’s case it is even more complex due to their romantic entanglement and Yuuri’s years of idolization. But Yuuri’s ability to express himself and his needs makes their relationship an equal one, built on mutual-learning and support. Yuuri is aware that Victor is not perfect, that he makes stupid mistakes sometimes.

But by expressing his fears and his needs, Yuuri ensured he and Victor are growing alongside each other. In Episode 7 Yuuri’s performance is in no way flawless, but it’s impressive in its element of surprise (quad flip!) and a demonstration of the skater’s stamina. This routine is also a superb realization of Yuuri’s internal monologue.

In the next episode Yuuri once again communicates his competence as a skater and Victor’s equal in a literal perfect performance, this time his short programme Eros. Eros is of course an expression of his sexual attractiveness that enraptures Victor, whom he had allegedly stole from the competitive figure skating scene. Yuuri’s urge to prove himself in “enemy territory” fuelled his energy in a good way, he was not daunted by the crowd for chanting Victor’s name and half-jeering at him, because his love for Victor is reciprocated, he knew it and so did the world. His mental strength had improved impressively, as he evolved from the guy who sobbed in a bathroom to one that can proudly show his charm and competence to an antagonising audience waiting to see him fail, and subsequently win their respect and support. His determination is self-evident, and his triple axel is “very clean”

How and why was he this confident in asserting himself? Because Victor was by his side.

And what happened when Victor was not physically by his side in the next episode? His free skate in Episode 9 was not disastrous, but a a bit of a mess - a reflection of his distressed mind. He flubbed a series of jumps at the beginning of his free programme, right up to the point he told himself not to think, and found strength in the memories with Victor. What was the first jump he landed successfully? You know which.

While some say that Episode 9 shows that Victuuri is a dependent relationship, this episode in actually tells us that this is exactly what Victuuri is not. Yuuri found love and support with Victor, but he knows that he is a competent skater, he is sure of his strength, and he knows that his attractiveness is not dependent on Victor.

His literal perfect performance of the same programme in Episode 12 consummates his journey of growth and self-realization. I find it neat that while Yuuri’s stamina is remarked and stressed on many times throughout the series, the narrative is about the development of a mental/psychological strength that matches his physical one. By the end of the series Yuuri has executed a flawless performance that demonstrates how far he has progressed as a skater with Victor by his side, having no problem expressing himself, his love for Victor, and the sport on ice.

I’d love to also include the performance of triple axel as the signifier of self-expression by Yuuri’s competitors. In Episode 8, immediately after a comment of Seung-gil having the same theme of male sexual appeal as Yuuri, we see Seung-gil fail to land a triple axel. Unlike Yuuri, Seung-gil’s feelings were pretty constipated. He put on an air of cold calculation and not caring in front of the world, but actually cared deeply about winning (hell, his theme is greed ffs). In fact he cared so much that he could not help crying by the end of the episode, but unlike Yuuri, he hadn’t found a way to channel his theme, hence the uncontrollable stream of tears in a semi-public hallway.

Another skater failing to express his theme, thus flubbing the triple axel is surprisingly (or not) the sublime Yuri Plisetsky. Unlike Yuuri who channels his theme of Eros to the full extent in Victor’s presence, the absence of Yurio’s grandpa, among other factors such as his lack of experience caused Yurio to fail this jump for the first time in one year, thus unable to fully demonstrate his agape.

Triple axel correlates to Yuuri’s progress in self-expression. Well technically every jump and every programme does, but my attention is drawn to the protagonist’s “favourite” jump to better understand his psychological journey of making peace with his anxieties and desires. Triple axel to Yuuri mirrors quadruple flip to Victor. If we’re blessed with a second season, I’d be paying extra attention to the role of this jump, especially in Victor’s routines!

#yoi #yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #yoi meta #victuuri #katsuki yuuri #viktuuri #victor nikiforov #viktor nikiforov #katsuki yuri #my meta

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n1ghtt1me-stars · 5 years ago

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Read the full fic above if you want as I will be posting the chapters as separate

Chapter One

Alexander Hamilton/Thomas Jefferson

Based on the prompt: You started messing with me by putting stuff on the top shelf so now I'm getting you back by hiding everything in the bottom drawers/cupboards

At first, Alexander didn’t think it was done purposely. Misplacing a few inconsequential items happened quite often in an apartment shared by two work-orientated men. So, whenever something appeared on the top shelves that were just too high, Alexander dragged a chair over and moved on with his day. It just wasn’t annoying enough for the wasted seconds to even register on his radar.

He realised that these strategic misplacings were deliberate when the toothpaste was moved to the highest cabinet in the bathroom. Alexander may have been able to reach it if not for the sink in the way; the cold edge dug into his hip as he stretched upwards. His fingertips brushed the edge of the shelf, nowhere near the toothpaste. Cursing, he wanted to forget about his teeth, go to bed and sleep because work had been hectic lately and it had been weeks since he and Thomas were both free on the same night and Alexander hadn’t slept properly during that time and he was really really tired…

“I can literally see you rambling in your head,” Thomas said, moving into the ensuite and standing behind him. Placing a hand on Alexander’s hip, he didn’t even have to stretch to grab the toothpaste.

Noticing his boyfriend’s smirk, Alexander snatched the toothpaste off him and said, “You’re mean.”

“Plan your revenge after you sleep, darling,” he said before kissing Alexander’s forehead and slipping back out of the bathroom.

See, their relationship was built on antagonising each other so Alexander couldn’t ignore the challenge – it would go against their whole foundation. Executing the perfect revenge was vital for maintaining their relationship (and his pride).

He waited a few days – in that time Thomas moved several of his files and Alexander was annoyed that he didn’t figure out that something was going on earlier – until Thomas lowered his guard. Starting small, Thomas barely blinked when he found cooking utensils in the bottom kitchen drawers.

It escalated rapidly from there.

From stationary to hair products, Alexander moved all of Thomas’ possessions to the lower drawers and even the floor in the wardrobe. He didn’t show his annoyance until it took him ten minutes to find his dress socks in the storage under the bed. Apparently, he made Thomas ten minutes late for a very important work event and Alexander nearly died from laughter as Thomas tried to smooth the creases in his trousers.

It all came to a head the next morning.

“The coffee’s off limits.”

Not even attempting to be subtle, Thomas had placed the coffee on top of the fridge. Smiling at Alexander’s mournful expression, he said, “So, I win?”

“Truce?” he offered instead because Alexander does not admit defeat.

“Why on earth would I agree to that?”

Spying his wallet, he thought of the perfect plan, “Truce or I will go and buy extortionately priced coffee each morning instead.”

“Fine,” Thomas agreed easily, “Truce.”

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allthethingsiwishicouldtellyou · 7 years ago

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Every day I write more and add to this, all I've done is thought about you and thought about us and cried. I know it's become an essay now but please take the time to read it, as I will yours when it comes. And I guess you can ask me whatever you want about what I wrote. I imagine you'll have felt different things and perceived your feelings differently to how I perceived what you have told me, but this is honest and this is how I feel right now and I feel like I've articulated everything that I want you to know in this message. For now I have hard raw feelings, and this message may be harsh, but it's honest and you always wanted me to be honest. One day these feelings will ease and I'll be happy again and I'll only remember all the good things and hopefully the hurt will have faded and maybe you'll play a positive role in my life again. I know things are different now and every day I wake up and I feel the difference deep down inside me. Firstly I feel I need to address this; How I loved you, the support I gave you, the friendship we had built, the relationship we shared, was because I was your girlfriend and under that girlfriend had was motivator, companion and lover was also best friend. I don't think you'll ever understand that we worked so well together was because we had so much more then just a friendship between us. Maybe because you say you've never had a best friend before or a relationship before, you couldn't distinguish the difference between the two because you didn't know that the two were. In my opinion, girlfriend and best friend are two different roles in someone's life. I just wish You could see that we evolved to where we were, the comfort between us and knowing that we had one another's backs, the ease, the trust, whilst we became best friends along the way it was because it was love even if you won't admit that to yourself. Well for me, it was because I really loved you and I can't say I've ever loved anyone before like I loved you. You dont want a relationship with me because you wont put in the effort and are in this illusion that in a few months time I'll be all good to be your best friend and only your best friend is hard for me to think about right now. I hate to say that but i can't put a date on when I'm going to be okay with being just friends. And if I am ever okay at just being friends or best friends even, you have to know that I'll be acting in a different way and I know you will be too. Best friends or even close friends don't call each other and talk or text to each other every day, they don't care this deeply about one another, they don't get jealous if the other one has a male or a female friend. I just don't think you know the distinction and how different a best friendship would be to a relationship. I think if I ever found out you were seeing someone who lived in Melbourne whilst you were still in Geelong that I'd find myself wanting to push them in front of a train, I know that is extreme and I'd never actually do it, but that would be nail in the coffin even if I had a boyfriend or a husband of my own then. What I want from you right now is more then a usual best friendship, and knowing I'll probably never have that again with you makes it hard for me to even think about being your friend. Maybe at one day I'll be at peace with what's happened, but for now it's really hard for me. Secondly; You were saying you're the one that's going to be lonely. That's unfair. You can't be the one to walk away from this and then say you're the biggest loser. I'm so lonely already, I've lost my best friend, my rock, my pep talker, someone who change my mood for the better in a few words, my favourite person. The person I wanted to make time for to see, that I'd work my ass off during the week to make time for. You walked away from me, and I know you've had people walk away from your life in the past so you know how it feels, and it's just shit to have that happen to you. I am loosing my best friend too in this collateral damage and whilst it seems like I have a big support network that I can turn to, none of them compare to you. In all this pain I'm feeling, you're still the only person I want to talk to. Everyone keeps trying to make me feel better but nothing changes, I just feel so empty. I was trying to give you every possibility to make it work, and one day I'll accept that it just wasn't enough to make the distance worthwhile. I cry at work, I cry at uni, I cry at home, in bed, when I'm trying to study, I cry in the car and I have to pull over. All I do is cry and even know I know it won't bring you back into my life how I want you to be, I can't stop myself from feeling so shit because I'm not worth the effort. We are both emotionally dependent on each other, I know I am and I think you'll realise how much you have been in the next few weeks when I'm not there for you to call about your work achievements or anything else that happens in your day. All I want to do is tell you about my day and why I'm stressed today and how work was and about stupid things like usual, but I know we don't have that anymore. Maybe I became too reliant on you, who knows. I'm going to be lonely and you will be lonely too. This situation is a lose-lose for the both of us. I just wish it didn't have to suck, I wish things were different and you could see that too. Thirdly, It kills me to think you told people we had some issues to work out when the issue was distance and you wouldn't even try and work it out with me. You just gave up, that's the most disappointing part. The facts were the facts and the distance was there, it wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible, the distance had always been there, but for me, it's not like we couldn't of made it work like we had for the months prior. Or at least tried to make it work with a bit more effort and then rationalise it to see if it was worthwhile after we tried to work on the distance when it had become a problem. You know I'm a problem solver and that I pride myself on making things work, and it kills me to think that you wouldn't try and solve the problem before calling it quits. It also kills me that you said things that were like "well if you were 30mins away it would of been different", of course it would of been, it would have been much easier I won't lie, but knowing in the mean time I couldn't be that 30mins away really shot me down. Ideally for me you'd live super locally too, but it just wasn't the case. I knew If you were local, I still wouldn't have seen you more then I saw you in Belmont. I loved coming to Geelong and going to the beach and spending time with you in your house, maybe more then you ever knew. It was an escape for me, things were great, I was laughing and with my favourite person. I tried not to resent the distance because I knew it was just there and I accepted it and that I liked you enough not to have override my emotions and leave me questioning if it was all worthwhile. You did let me down, because you stopped wanting to put in the effort to make it work and gave up on me, on us. Maybe you just couldn't do it any more, but I wish you had communicated that with me earlier before it got to this, so we could have talked about it and maybe had some action to change some things rather then just irrationally breaking up. Or maybe you just never wanted a girlfriend, I don't know. It's just cruel, the last 3 weeks of you trying to make up your mind were really cruel. I know you're confused with what you wanted, but Ive never felt so worthless in my life, I hope you know how I cried in front of you in the last week, was how I've cried for almost the last 3 weeks every single night at least now when I cry it'll be because I have a reason, you've broken me by disappointing me and made me lose my best friend and my boyfriend. At least it won't be because I feel like I'm in limbo pain which was almost as antagonising. I've let you hurt me twice now, even if the first time met nothing to you, it meant something to me and obviously I'm just dumb for being so stupid. When you've called it quits because you didn't think it was going to work and didn't even try and rectify it before you ended it. What's the real kicker, that you didn't believe in us enough to give it another chance, or make the effort to make things better for us both. I have to be honest and say maybe you're delusional to think we're going to be good mates anytime soon. That we will be able to sit and laugh together and travel together or just catch up for drinks as friends. That you get your decision one way and get to reduce the effort you put in and still will have me in your life and for me to be your best friend, for you to call me and text me when you want, but it's unfair for you to take the cake and eat it too. It was silly for me to let you become a huge priority when it feels that this relationship was only ever an option for you. I wish I could just rebound from this and be friends with you straight away, but I can't. I just want to see you and have you hold me and tell me stupid jokes and laugh with you. And I'm scared that I'll never be able to do that in the same way again even as friends because I'll never be able to forgive you for making me feel this way and for giving up on us. When I could call you my boyfriend, I used to think you were one of the best things that ever happened to me, and sometimes now I think you were the worst. Maybe that's a hard call, but if I had to put my feelings on a scale of 1-100 right now, 100 being the happiest I've ever been, and 0 being the saddest, I'd put myself right now at a 7. Our time in the US, where we had fun and looked after each other and didn't fight and just had a great time adventuring around, and laughing in each other's company, on that scale would be 90+easily. Fourthly, Your ideal situation is being best friends and catching up once a month to have drinks doesn't seem likely to me. The only way that would happen is if I was to find someone else and or to have my heart heal completely. Which won't bloody happen any time soon, I'm so emotionally scarred. I was scarred last time and I never moved on properly, I'll have to distance myself so much which hurts me to even think about the months ahead without you because I just don't want to. I want you in my life but I just can't have that can I? And plus when I do date someone else it'll be because they're my best friend. Because I'm the kind of girl who wants a relationship with their best friend, because that's the ideal situation for everyone. People don't date someone because they look good or smell nice, that might be how it starts, but they continue to date someone because they are good company and they make each other laugh and they become their best friend, because things are easy when they're together and they're fun. That person is their companion and their team mate. They put in effort for each other to make it work and make one another feel good. Ask anyone in a relationship and they will say their partner is their best friend. Ask Ashley, ask Matt ask Scottie they'll say Claudia and Stacey and T are their best friends, I'll put $1000 on it. As much as I don't want to, you will just be replaced and you doesn't realise that the relationship we've got now worked so well because you were my everything, my best friend and my boyfriend. My number one priority, well maybe number two just after uni. I won't lie, I was motivating myself to work so hard at uni, to do everything so I had the opportunity to go wherever I wanted for work, to do whatever I wanted to do. It was always in the back of my head that maybe I'll be finding a job in Geelong or the CBD easily if I pushed myself to be an all round great candidate for a law firm, so I could be closer to you, so that it closed the distance gap between us. I'm so scared about my career josh but I honestly all I wanted was you in my future because you motivated me and gave me so much confidence in everything that I was trying to achieve. Maybe it was just dumb and assumptions to have such a view of the future, but a girl has to think a relationship is going somewhere right. You either break up or get married, I guess I got the break up option with you. I shouldn't have hoped to put all my eggs in one basket, I should of known better really, I think I should of protected myself a bit better, but I didn't want anything to stop me from feeling love towards you, because the time we spent together, deserved that love. The support you've given me in the last 9 months is second to none and when I graduate I'll be thinking of you and how you've gotten me through so much and I'll owe a little bit of me getting through the JD to you. I have no one to call now at 3am when I'm crying and I feel alone and stressed with uni, because I will be alone and thats a fact I don't want to face. I can't thank you enough for helping me get through this course, I really can't. And it'll be something that I'll always remember you for, for picking up my calls and talking me through times when I'm emotional and just getting me through the days when I thought I couldn't do it. Some days those were even when we were together and I will never forget the comfort you had me feel. You really just made me feel good enough and smart enough and I'll always be thankful for that support. Finally, It feels to me like someone has died and something did die, and even if it wasn't a real person, it was aspirations and ideas and hopes for my future and it's the hardest thing to experience something you want so much being taken from you without a choice. Every day I've woken up for the last two weeks and I just wish you had woken up and realised that you've made a mistake, and that you're throwing this away for a reason that could be worked upon and that it was worth working upon. I'll stop hoping now, because you're firm on your decision and I should respect that as much as it's not what I wanted at all. It's hard because it's not like we can even have a halfway where both of us are happy. Its so hard to hear the distance was too testing for your feelings, it's so so hard. You taught me so much, and how to relax and how to take things slow if I needed the time to. You taught me not to compare myself to others even though I do and that sometimes just sitting next to someone and laughing is the cure for most things. I'll always cherish our trip away and the walks on the beach and eating take away in your car. I'm so happy we got to do the rooftop cinema together and have drinks and listen to the people singing karaoke at tonic bar and walk/bike the Golden Gate Bridge together. I have to say that the Golden Gate Bridge biking day had to be one of the best days of my entire life, and I've had a lot of good days but not much can trump that. I wanted to hike the you yangs with you so badly, now just thinking about them makes me sad. You made me laugh so much with all your dumb jokes and things were so easy between us. You made me strong and willing and you're so kind and funny and dumb and you just made me laugh so much and I always thought of you and beamed knowing you were mine. All your silly comments even if I wasn't laughing on the outside, I was giggling on the inside. All those moments we had together were worth all the struggle of the distance for me. I feel like I've just written an obituary. If for whatever reason, in two months time, set the alarm in your phone, when we've had this break and time apart, that you want to try again then and put in the effort to make it work like how I would be willing to, know that I'll always be open to that. If you don't, you don't and that's fine, in my head two months will be enough time apart to see how we are both feeling. Even if you think that in 2 years time you want to try again, and if I wasn't seeing someone, knowing how well we got on and how happy you made me, I'd probably still give this another go, as silly as that is. I promise that I won't think that you'll turn around and change your mind in the next two months, because I honestly think you won't and I'm going to keep telling myself you won't. If you've made these kind of decisions twice now to blame it on the distance, I don't see you ever changing your mind. But set the calendar alarm. I won't hold out hope for us every getting back together to a relationship, but I hope we can be talking a lot more then we are now by the time that alarm goes off anyway, I hope we are back to being friendly, but I'm just not sure how I'll go. I really want to be, I just need some of my own time I guess. I read this article last night, typical me just trying to get some reference to what was happening in my head. And if said that "The art of letting go isn’t about making all of their memories disappear, though. It’s about accepting that some parts will stick with you, but that’s okay". Maybe that's true. I don't know yet. I don't want to delete you off Facebook or Snapchat or delete your number, I still want you around even if it's just in cyberspace. No matter what happens, you'll always have a special place in my heart. But for the meanwhile, I'm just going to go on through this week and the next and get through all my exam next week and the other ones to follow and focus all my energy on myself and my study. I don't know when I'll talk to you next and I wish I could say it was tomorrow or in a few hours time or even in a few weeks but I just don't know. Because all I want to do is talk to you and I'm not sure if that's the best idea or not. I still want you in my life, please don't ever doubt that. I just know right now and how I've perceived things have left me really hurt, and honestly I don't think I've felt this way before and I'm not sure how long it will take me to feel better. I'm trying to keep myself busy and I guess focus on myself but it's hard you know, I feel like a big chunk of me is gone. Like we said when you were on the train and spoke on the phone, I just feel really empty and just sad, really sad, really hollow. You are an incredible person, and I know you'll mature well and do so well in your career. I know you'll get to where you want to be and I'm proud of you for getting a bit out of your comfort zone and working at nab. I know I've said it to you before, but I'm really lucky to have been able to spend the time that we had together with you. I don't think I'll ever forget one date we've been on or one activity we did, and I'll always remember that Westlake will never let me down when I want to eat in Chinatown. I hope along the line, we can still be in each other's future, somewhere, somehow. I know that one day soon I'll be able to admit that I couldn't do anything more as much as I felt I could, that it was the distance that made us breakdown and that you wouldn't put the effort in when times got tough. Everything you said still rings in my head, and I know it's not my fault, but for now it just still hurts me for now because I felt you could of tried harder and I felt like I was worth trying hard for and that our relationship was worth trying harder for. And that after all this time that I deserved to have you try for me. I know I'm worth trying for and I'm trying to keep that little bit of dignity with me because I feel like I lost a lot of dignity crying in front of you and just trying to win you back I guess. I know one day, whether it's you or someone else, they'll really try for me regardless of the situation and the distance and everything else going on and I'll be happy to do the same for them, because distance shouldn't mean anything if you really love someone, that's what my dad always told me and I believe him. He reminded me of that on Tuesday and I remember him telling me the exact same thing last time we stopped seeing each other and I believe it. As hurt as I am, I'm just disappointed that once again it seems like the distance has let us down. It was something that was manageable for so long because we both put in the effort, and wanted it until you over thought it. You then made a choice not to put in the effort the needed to make it work. You can blame it on distance all you like, but distance wouldn't matter if you had really been willing to put in the effort. That might seem harsh, but I feel it's somewhat true, and you may disagree because I guess everyone can only do their best in different situations and what I could do is obviously different to you. It just really hurts me to think that I'd go a million miles for someone I'd loved and appreciated and wanted to spend time with, but you just wouldn't do the same. A relationship shouldn't be measured in months or years, it's the calibre of the memories that matter. Their impact, their permanence and the degree to which they change you. The last 7 months included the greatest moments of my life, they were irreplaceable moments, perfect memories and so much fun. They will always be in my mind. You were so special to me and I know you always will be in whatever form our future takes. I just wish you could realise what we had was the real deal, I just wish right now that you would of tried to make it work for the short term, because in my mind, the long term looked amazing for us both, together. I felt like we had a lot more left in the tank and thats really disappointing. I just wish it was longer then 7 months, I really do.

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lhistoiredehannah-blog · 8 years ago

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We are not the snide comments uttered by cowards dressed as friends. We are rich social tapestries. We are complex amalgamations of our interactions. More than a sneer, or a sum, or a reduction of some fuzzy anecdote as it slides from the memory. Do not allow yourself to be compartmentalised. Not only are you a piece of art in your own right, but your colourful threads weave in and out of more lives than you can imagine.

My tapestry is messy; mostly there are colours, so many colours, dotted with grey masses and black masses from when the sun hid behind cloud. I will not allow a person to weave grey thread as I remember that life has a rather tactile ability to provide that itself.

It started with two: deep green and bright red. A reserved man and a vibrant woman, riding the wave of uncomplicated love that characterised that period, for them. She taught me to love passionately, to tie laces and to not be jealous. To be daring, to exaggerate, to tell the truth even where it might hurt. I remember her loud stomach laugh, but I also remember her angry, flushed shout. He taught me to love quietly, to read, to be curious and remain sceptically asking questions. I was a loud girl. A brave girl. A scuffed knees, scuffed shoes, singing in the rain girl. I was a ‘not-afraid-to-be-top-of-the-class’ girl.

Soon the red and green were crossed by a thick, navy blue. An honourable man, a strong man with a weakness. Me. He taught me what she had, though uncensored. He taught me to be true, to be blunt as a flint, to not be afraid to drive off road. Alongside it, a pastel pink, the woman with the warmest smile. She would teach me to add soft edges and to appreciate the virtues of sometimes just caring. She taught me that silly was OK and that your age had no correlation to whether or not you were actually young.

There is a tiny thread, a growing thread that runs alongside me as these four mammoth adults teach me who I can become. He is little and blonde, a face speckled with freckles, and he becomes my side kick. He teaches me how to be the eldest and I teach him how to be the youngest. Later he will teach me how dangerous the ego can be. He will also teach me more about identity, about the fluidity of social labels, than any book or analysis ever could have done. He will teach me tolerance and understanding and the beauty of diversity. But that will come later.

The greys start to run through. Bureaucratic beige: the man with the cords teaches me that you cannot cure by asking how things make you feel. It just is not enough. Clerical NHS turquoise: the ladies in blue teach me that lying doesn’t work. The green thread starts to fray. The red thread becomes scarlet, with passion, with strength. Some days the red is a flame, some days it is blood. Some days I avoid both, I avoid everything, and it teaches me that absence pauses time. Without people, a person becomes nothing.

A boy on the outside taught me that the outside, in reality, was just someone else’s inside. He taught me that jagged bones were the same as thin, red cuts. He taught me that deflection was as valid a way as any to plaster up holes. His maroon continues to thread across my tapestry because friendships like these never cease to be. This boy sees the darkness, but somehow together, we can still see.

At this point I was learning lots of lessons, from lots of people, and the picture becomes a flash of primary colours. It’s all basic and brash because I am unable to comprehend the beauty of subtlety. I learn skills and knowledge that I may never need. I learn that boys like girls who smile and giggle, and I learn that I am frankly not like that. I learn that spending years in a cave had left me very far behind. I try to catch up and keep falling. I learn from other people’s adolescent mistakes rather than making them myself. The couples teach me what I need from love and loss. The competitors teach me ambition. The rejection teaches me my place.

Everyone leaves.

A person becomes nothing. The canvas becomes blank.

Fleetingly, customers teach me how selfish people are. Staff teach me how stupid people are. Being hungry teaches me how strong life is. It teaches me how to separate the mind from the body. It teaches me how to be selfless whilst simultaneously being labelled the most selfish of all. ‘How can you do this whilst your mother is sick? A person can only handle so much. I have to choose and I do not choose you.’

How does disappearing constitute a selfish act?

With that,

The green thread SNAPS.

Six skeletons teach me how complex a person can be whilst masquerading behind a single word. Being anorexic is easier than being Ella, being bulimic easier than being Ellie. Being crazy is simpler than being a mum and crying at a dinner table somehow makes sense when you live in a bubble. Bitching over a garden cigarette somehow made the difficulties seem legitimate. Being trapped taught me all the things I didn’t want to be. I filled the crevasses and I followed the rules and I left.

A week of sirens.

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

I pinch my eyes closed. The sobs that reverberate through the thin semi walls teach me that strength is sometimes the ability to bow down and let go. The whispers teach me that people in love can be the most selfish of all. The long nights that never seem to become days chip away at respect, at colour and at life until that crisp November morning.

The red thread is tied in a thick, tangled knot.

That moment taught some to seek hope in God. It didn’t for me. For others it dug up countless lessons she had already championed. Stories floated to the surface that she had never pushed. I realised how many lives she had touched. She taught me what it means to be inspired.

But man was I tired.

The chain breaks and every thread starts to fray. People do not know what they can say.

The bones resurface and the face becomes gaunt. The boy with the scars takes me by the hand and I know that I love him though I don’t know what that means. We watch the stars and make the kind of jokes that make other people shudder. I spend days being spoon fed and not knowing who I am. I build something from the ripped shreds, though my memory plays tricks on me and I somehow can’t remember who I was before. In the whitewash, a hospital bed becomes a cross road and I turn right.

This time eight skeletons teach me that easy isn’t always good. Each pointed chin got there through pathetic lies, each rib represented a relationship they had severed and an opportunity they had elaborately by-passed. ‘You’re better than this’ went from cliché to truth, because I was. The doctors taught me the cockiness of the human mind. In recovery, I learnt the relationship between selfish and selfless, and how they are both arcs on the same circle.

Walking out the door, walking head held high, I realised I was eighteen. I realised it was my time to be selfish because it was my time to learn. The pastels of the EDU and the ICU and the hospice abruptly become brighter: sharp and alive.

Sambuca taught me how to mix, with lemonades and sours and garish liquids I can’t even comprehend now. Pink and red and green and blue. Artificial colours of artificial memories with an edge of sharp alcohol that somehow makes them feel like pop-art.

A pin-up red head taught me how to get phone numbers and how to look like a girl a man would want to kiss. A brunette with an STI taught me that a kiss was enough, for now at-least. Weed taught me that I could finish a tube of Pringles with ease. My return taught me that the people I had once idolised were just people, and I was one too. The foundations were built for relationships with strength and I got about with my hammer.

I learnt to love the boy who I had antagonised over as a great, clever friend. A blue thread. I learnt to shelf my envy to appreciate the arty girl for her deep heart and creative soul. A gold thread. I learnt to be a sister to the sisters, to be wild-card for the partiers and to be a rock to the fleeting worriers. My circle grew like my mother’s and that made me feel pride. I made sure to give more than I took and that always paid off.

I met a boy and he taught me how quick you can lust then lose. That was a lesson I will never cease to thank him for. I wasted my first flirt with pink with a boy I could never had built anything more with. And that is not an insult, some people are just not made to be.

New city, new canvas. Black over white. Nights over day.

I am independent in the dark. My past has made me someone who is somehow more prepared than the teenagers that hustle around me. I am a sleek and sassy adult and I work out what I value. A muscly boy teaches me that I value the kind of strength you find in Northern honesty and a complete disregard of the norm despite the ability to espouse it. His thick, metallic strand still supports me today. A blonde teaches me not to use and abuse, and the ripples she casts somehow provide me with great friends who believe they’ve been wronged. Mistakes teach me that your own mistakes make the best stories. And I never stop telling them.

There is a plait on the black, my thread crossing with that of two boys. I think that I am in love again and I probably am but it’s different this time and I ruin it. I am cut lose and I realise that I don’t like drama as much as I had thought. But it makes for good stories. Plus I get laid. So I cannot complain (though of course I did). As an adult I somehow bring these two back as friends. It’s crazy how petty the past can seem.

I learn way too much about the New World. I then learn that the term does not include Africa. This is when I vow to only write essays when sober. I break the vow to discuss Machiavelli on a bottle of Glens. I get a first.

I move each year, in a little circle around a little town strewn with litter and shattered bottles. I pretend each shabby room is home because I can’t even remember what the green thread ever meant. I feel like an atom and I base myself in the people I choose. I make shallow friends and deep friends. I loose some because I don’t treat them right, but that only teaches me to change my approach. Then there are those who don’t treat me right, but for some reason I fail to lose them.

A dark November brought me a new thread, a strong one which had more impact than anyone for some time. A boy with deep brown eyes made me feel like a woman. He told me he loved me. I loved him back. We did stupid couple things. We went from honeymoon haste to deeply comfortable. We had three years, but that was enough. This bright yellow took me to Germany. It taught me to enjoy the succulence of wine and to despise the selfishness that came with wealth. I learnt to love more passionately than I ever had, and I learnt to resew broken threads. He taught me to communicate but he also taught me that beauty can rot and sweet can turn sour. He taught me that nothing is black v white, because nothing is so simple.

When he said goodbye he taught me to heal, and that nothing can be reduced to simply one man’s fault. I was independent again and his paradigm had led me through such rich changes that I now stood an adult with the world being seen through new eyes. In this relationship I created a new world and just because he left my side didn’t mean we both had to leave that world. That’s what it means to be an adult. It’s an acceptance of the flowing nature of time, and the appreciation of shapes that don’t need to be sharp.

Yellow, like red, and like blue, and like maroon, will probably shape how I think for some time. And I do not resent that, I respect it.

My canvas is now beige. I am an adult now, who pays taxes and reads politics. I get excited when the chamber erupts (sometimes I heckle along). Wild farm girl would have been so disappointed. I only hope she would be appeased by my less civilised behaviour when I’m presented with a glass of fizz.

Most of the tapestry now is pure, the colours are clean and their trajectories are straight and toned. I have the subtle autumnal shades of my flatmates, the couple who have taught me how friendships and love should be played. They have taught me raw, human, honest happiness. I have the silver influence a blond drug user who never stops teaching me how ambition and knowledge don’t stop an individual from indulging in whatever the fuck they want.

I have a new thread, a pale blue that is warm and young and right. It fits alongside me as though it has always been there and it makes me feel so much less afraid.

I have others, new friends and old friends. Revitalised loves and memories that don’t stop swelling. I have the kind of people who support and the kind of people that critique. They both balance in a way which helps me grow. I have a new brother in the musical boy, the one who drinks and drives. I have a drinking buddy in the sassy Northern girl who I know will always force my accountability. The artist is still here and so are the sisters and so is the outsider. Some things don’t disappear, they grow.

But my reasons for writing, for confession, they were not to chronicle everything that I have learnt. They weren’t to share wisdom or to be pretentious. They were to note that I am a person with a history. I am a person who makes decisions that aren’t right sometimes. I make choices based on less than fact. I make mistakes.

As an adult, we look at mistakes differently than when we were children. We learn. We feel shame but we bend down and pick up the pieces to glue them back together. There is value in having enough pride to sometimes say ‘no, OK, I was not in the wrong here’ and standing our ground.

I am an adult. I am not a child on the school ground. To act like one would reduce my wealth of life experience to nothing.

Ask yourself, what is your tapestry? Whose threads have contributed to the colourful shapes? Whose threads have been cut, or tied… was it worth it? Who stands out and do they do so for the right reasons?

We learn from everything and everyone. We are built from our experience. Sometimes people are malicious, shallow and nasty. As an adult, these people are to be pitied and learnt from. And finally, if they continue to act as a sharp, threadless needle, unpicking more than they sew, chuck them. They are not worth the ground beneath your feet.

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