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camrensrealbish · 3 years ago

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Lauren's Zach Sang interview Dec 2021

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*Please watch the interview before you read this. I don't want you to be biased. This is an important one and worth your time*

Before we start, let me tell you what we know about Zach Sang, his other interviews, and Dan. He interviewed 5H in 2016, 2017, then Camila in 2018 for her self-titled promo and Lauren in 2018 for Expectations.

During Camila's interview he got a lot out of her. Dan was really digging in and trying to connect the dots about who the songs were about. He asked: "How do you keep all this so private because you haven't had any big public relationships other than Austin Mahone when you were twelve?". And asked who Consequences, Something's Gotta Give and All These Years are about. Notice how they always use they/them pronouns. Interviewers who aren't in the known never do that. Zach also said he had seen her at a party and she ended the subject really quick.

Zach has definitely seen and heard about stuff behind the scenes. He's also friends with Ariana Grande.

Ok let's get into it.

7:50 How do you define a pop star?

There is a machine behind it. In the way it operates behind the scenes and in the way the art reaches people.

She made sure to point out (a few times) that there are a lot of pop stars who are artists. You have to be connected to your art.

Pop starts are told they have to be things. Being a pop star takes a tremendous amount of work. [..] Money is what makes things move. You would expect them to invest in organic things and they do when they want to. They tell you that you're amazing, but really what they think is amazing is what they can make you, not who you are.

We've seen exactly that with Camila and we've all of them in the group.

12:40 Why she went independent

If they don't want to invest in me, I'll invest in me. I'll put my own money behind it because I believe in me.

(Funny coincidence, there is a moment of Camila's roundtable talking about the same thing).

Hopefully, it works out, because if not, shit...

I hope so too. Look how hard it is to be independent. The industry tries to do everything to have control over you. Even for someone like Lauren, with a fanbase and a platform and resources, it's a risky move.

14:10 New beginning

The pandemic was a reset on a lot for me. 2020 in general was a reset on a lot for me. It made me confront what success meant to me. A lot of things were swiped away from me and I was just confronted with a new moment in my life, an independent moment in my life.

16:00 What was success for you in Fifth Harmony?

Change of priorities. I hate how they're always talking about the same shit around the same time. Camila recently posted on ig how success isn't constantly working on the next accomplishment but being grateful for what you have at the moment.

Btw since when do we call Fifth Harmony "Fifth", Lauren. Lol.

25:50 Journals and 5H journals.

Same, Dan. Same. Imagine how much information is there if it's from 2014.

28:10 Don't Wanna Say

I was, like, damn. This is so sexy, man, I gotta speak Spanish. And then I said something dirty in Spanish, that my mom helped me proofread. I'll wait on you. Open your mouth, say something. Don't be scared, baby. Come closer, I dare you. ("I'm daring him to dare himself... or herself. Them") I already know that you know exactly what to do With this body, that you look at. You're thirsty

Notice how she translated with he/him pronouns first.

30:44 Queer icon

First of all, we know what still is the most popular in the queer world when it comes to Lauren.

Second of all, she said she wrote it [Don't Wanna Say] for a couple people. And although it might not be true and can be a tactic not to answer a question (as we've seen with Camila e.g.), I have a feeling she's honest here. Lauren is a bad liar and gets awkward. Here she answered without thinking too long, she was consistent with pronouns. Then followed with the specific number of people.

31:45 Do you listen to your music when you have sex

She said no. Wasn't thinking too much about that. I think, if she had sex listening to her partner's music, she would hesitate a little bit.

32:05 Has anyone played their music for you while getting intimate with them?

Played their music for me? Is that a weird way of asking me if I've been with an artist? You've met some of my exes? No, I'm just kidding

I can't believe she slipped like this. How do you forget about a two years long relationship? A relationship that was talked about on the exact same podcast? Her mind was completely somewhere else, so when he reminded her about Ty, her first reaction was to call tyren bs. She didn't catch herself. Can't believe she debunked tyren like this lol. The truth always comes out.

When she realized, she had to clarify very fast, not to get in trouble. "Yes I was and yes sometimes we did." Just a short sentence to end the subject. Bullshit.

And the way she added "just kidding" when she didn't even say anything. Camila always does that when she says something gay or something she shouldn't about Shawn.

What artist, that Zach met was she thinking about, if not Ty, you ask?

The same one she thinks about in the next question.

32:34 Who were you apologizing to in Sorry?

The way she looks at Zach and then tells him he's a sneaky motherfucker. Because Zach knows some things and she knows he knows.

She takes her time, not to slip up this time. She already did in the previous question.

What do you think based off of that reaction. No, yeah. No, though.... Yeah... yeah. That relationship meant a lot to me. ... So a lot of the songs... it moved me to write music.

Omfg. I'm gonna scream, cry and throw up. There is only one person she stutters this much when talking about. The tactic here is talking as little as possible. Not leaving clues. Maybe because it's dangerous, or maybe it's too emotional. And look at her face. She only has this expression three times in this interview. Here and 39:57 when talking about Fifth Harmony again.

Then she talks about On Guard.

Take a look under my heart Run your hands over my scars Maybe too much So I gotta see who you are Before you inspire the art

Can you see Dan connecting the dots? Same, Dan. Same.

This song clearly relates to No Way "everybody comes with scares, but you can love them away" and In The Dark. Or is it just me

35:00 Do you write about the positive emotions as well?

Is that another dig?

Now she's alert. If he knows who she's talking about in the two previous questions, now he wants to know the outcome of that relationship. And she stops him right there.

35:40 What do you learn about yourself after releasing Prelude?

She gets sad. Sighs. Rubs her neck. But decides to talk about the positive sides and the craft. Moves on from the emotional questions.

38:50 That story is crazy, the Fifth Harmony story.

Oh yeah. Top to bottom

Has everyone moved on to the point, where nobody even wants to tell that story anymore? Because the story hasn't even been told, ever.

I think you've gotta wait a few more years for that one. When we're in our 50s, 60s. When people can't tour anymore and make money.

Lol Lauren

No, but I love those women very much. And I'm so grateful to see everybody doing their shit. That's all that matters. We got to where we wanted to be.

Is that a sisterhood that lasts forever, or is that a coworkership?

No. We went through too much life shit together for it to just be a coworkership. I think that... [it's this facial expression again!], in a sisterhood there is just this constant love, no matter what. We all took our time to heal, that's the path that we're on right now. 'Cause a lot of what happened wasn't even us. It was all of the pieces around us. And we were all really young. We were literally adolescence. We had to 15-year-olds, two 16-year-olds and an 19-year-old. [...] There is a lot of factors into it. There is a lot of different realities at play. [...] Like I said, we were young, adolescence. Thrown into spotlight. Because remember, X factor is a reality show. You're on TV in front of millions off the bat. And we all just had our own way of processing that, that affected obviously one another. And that affected the group in general and that affected us personally. And now we're at the point in our lives where we're healing from it and we're each doing what we were truly meant to do for ourselves.

And a very important sentence.

I can't blame people for who they are when they're hurt. [...] So many adults taking advantage of this naivety. It's abusive. And I can't blame anybody for how they had to process going through that.

45:30

Oof that's that for the heavy stuff. That was a lot. I like the last part of the interview. She got so comfortable with them, showed a little bit of her normal self. What we learned is that Lauren is horny. Just imagine how much sex they had to have if they are both like this.

Ok but... Let's come back to the important things we found out.

When watching this interview, I changed my opinion on a few things, because we got a lot of clues here and some clarification.

1. There were some real conflicts in 5H and tension, but now they understand that the circumstances and people got in between them.

2. Not all of Lauren's songs are about Camila, although "a lot of songs [are about this relationship]". I'm sure she talks about her at 32.34 when talking about Sorry.

And then came a huge revelation for me.

They are not together anymore.

I've been hesitant for a while, but always said I want to wait for some clue, suggesting that they either are together or not. And I got it here.

I believe her when she says "that relationship meant a lot to me". She got so sad, but at the same time, you can see there is no regret. She says a lot of songs are about this relationship. I'm sure it's gonna be a majority of her album. That explains, why she still writes about her when they are not together anymore.

Listen to Sorry again. It's both about 2014 and now/2020.

I don't think Don't Wanna Say is about Camila. I think it is about someone she's been with since they broke up. Maybe a polyamorous relationship, maybe an open relationship, maybe two separate ones, since she talks about two people.

We had clear proofs in 2018 and 2019. You can't deny they got back together (I think at the beginning of 2018). AMAs, then Latin grammys then Romance with every song about Lauren. But the clues stopped in the middle of 2020. The only thing was Lauren's connection to Shawn on social media. They are still connected in the business/public aspect and they're always going to be. But that isn't enough of a proof to me that they're in a relationship.

They still care about each other very much and I really believe that was the most important relationship in their lives for both of them. I can't claim they're together anymore though. Because of the explanation for Sorry and the one for Don't Wanna Say.

That's it. I'm gonna go cry now.

#2021 #Youtube

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im-in-love-with-pizza-bites · 4 years ago

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Holland!sister maybe being paddy’s twin and all the siblings are staying at toms house with Harrison and tuwaine as well and just what they get up to maybe during lockdown together. So you think that this would be possible ? Love you work btw

Quarantine

Holland brothers X Sister!Reader, Harrison Osterfield X Platonic!Reader, Tuwaine Barrett X Platonic!Reader

Warnings: Covid, glitter

Reader's Age: 15, twins with Paddy. (They'd be 15 when this is taking place)

A/n: So I haven't done a headcanon before so I thought I could do one with this request! You can send another request again if you wanted a one-shot instead. Thank you for the request and I'm so happy you love my work!!! I needed that confidence boost.😅

You would've been just staying with them for a week originally, but covid hit and you couldn't get back to staying with your parents.

So you and Paddy were stuck there, under the same roof as your brothers, for awhile.

You were enjoying it though obviously. You adored Tom.

I totally think he'd be your favorite older brother. So it's not counting Paddy, cause I believe you'd be the older twin.

You totally would be convincing them to do tiktoks. You probably joined Tiktok 2019 so not just because of covid.

You probably got Tom in some.

You and paddy made one with the sibling song, that goes "this is my brother and this is my sister"

Then you convinced all of your siblings to do a video with the other sibling song.

Now don't think that Tuwaine and Haz are safe from this just because they aren't your blood related brothers. No boo no one in that house was safe.

You were forcing them to do challenges with you, and trends.

The fans were going crazy with all the content you were putting out for them. They loved it.

You probably used the "got brother check. I checked he isn't" sound with all of your brothers. The fans didn't agree, but found it funny.

Okay my personal opinion? Movie night every night. Unless one of you had early zoom meetings in the morning.

Those movies would range for family movies, animated movies, all kinds of movies. Except horror, I feel like you'd be a bit too scared for horror movies.

Anytime you had a early zoom meeting, they'd watch a horror movie.

You and Harry probably found a show for the two of you to binge together. It caused a few fights cause one of you would get ahead in the show and the other would get mad.

The others would keep the peace though.

Sam taught you how to cook, which you were super excited about.

Tom and Haz would sometimes go into the guest room where you and Paddy were staying, it had to beds obviously. The room was set up for sleepovers just for you two. But they'd go to that room while you both were in zoom classes and just chill in the background.

Probably sitting on either bed talking or they'd go in with masks on to mess with you two.

If either of you were on mic Tom would exclaim Paddy! Or y/n!

Tuwaine, Harry, and Sam joined in once too along with Paddy as this class you didn't have together.

It was a class that your crush was in. You made the mistake of doing the class in the dinning room.

They all were messing around in the background, when you went on mic they started being louder, causing a ruckus.

Your teacher eventually told you to find somewhere quieter to do class. Which you did, you locked yourself in your room.

You definitely got pay back. When Tom was in zoom meetings you'd sneak in and mock him with facial expressions until he noticed and sent you away.

Fans loved the interviews where you did this.

For paddy, you once pushed him out of his chair during one of his classes then walked away without a word.

You did similar things to Tom for Haz and Tuwaine. Once again I say fans found it hilarious.

For Sam and Harry. You waited, made them fear what you'd do. Then when Harry fell asleep during one of the movie nights you drew on his face with permanent marker.

That wasn't enough though. You posted a picture on your Instagram to mess with him more.

You did though take it down, but by then a lot of people already saw it.

Sam was scared. He watched you closely everything you did. But you were striking yet.

Obviously it would take longer for you to strike with him you had to come up with the perfect prank.

The others found it funny how paranoid Sam was.

"Mate chillax she can't do anything that bad to you." Tom had told him.

"You don't know that, she always saves the worse prank for last you know that!" Sam exclaimed.

"The worst? We didn't even get that bad." Haz said.

"Sam!" You shouted walking in with a smile.

"What?"

You gave a sweet smile to him before handing him a box. "You got a package."

"What?"

You were out there quickly. When he opened the box he got sprayed with glitter. You were watching around the corner laughing at him.

You teamed up with Paddy who filmed the prank.

Sam chased you and gave you a hug.

You all were cleaning glitter up for months. There's still glitter being found in the house.

Sam got to say "I told you so" to his brother, and Haz.

Things calmed down since then though you were still seem in the background of Tom's interviews.

When restrictions lifted you were more than excited to be home with your parents. You were going to miss it since Tom and Harry shipped out to New York to film spiderman: no way home.

A/n: this was my first headcanon what do you guys think?

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accio-victuuri · 4 years ago

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2017 BJYX Timeline : At First Sight.

Everything starts with a blank canvass. Oh we painted each others lives inch by inch. from black, gray and blue to colors we never thought existed. Two photos from different places, longing to be one.

Let’s start from the beginning of this whirlwind timeline. There will be very minimal interaction between our boys, but this will also be a good time to see how they were before working together. I wanted to paint a picture of XNINE’s Xiao Zhan and Idol Wang Yibo. Before their names got tied to the Untamed and each other.

They were doing their own thing, working hard with their careers, no clue that one chance meeting will be so important. Warning, this post is video links, image and information heavy. I am missing some stuff because this hell site refuses to save things and continues to glitch.

🡆 MARCH 2017

03242017 : The story starts when XNINE was a guest in Day Day Up. When asked, they always say that this is the first time they met. However, they did not interact at all.

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But there are definitely times on this episode where they pay attention to each other and it’s so cute. You can find different videos that will highlight these moments better than any screencaps can.

1. Web Stealing a glance at GG

2. First meeting

3. Gun heart - This is the gesture GG used when he introduced himself. The hosts all imitated him and teased, that included Web who smiled too. The same love gesture will be seen in the following years as “their thing”.

4. Doing the same steps for the dance.

5. Web allowing GG to pass and did not lift up the bamboo to trap him when it’s his turn.

6. Red string of Fate

7. Love at first sight-ology

When asked about this shooting, especially the segment when they were in the fields— GG said it was too cold. There is also CPN that the bag Web was using was GG’s.

03252017: Yin Yue V-Chart Interview with XNINE. GG talking about being scolded for not updating his video diaries and updating his fans. 😂 On the same day that this interview came out, he posted a selfie.

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🡆 APRIL 2017

04022017 : XNINE shanghai concert - BE A MAN. blessing us with this dance from GG. The next one is the one that the Untamed Cast were watching. He also posted a selfie for this night.

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Full video of the concert

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04082017 : The Wolf starts filming. According to GG, this is the drama that made him decide to really be an actor.

04092017 : Web attends the 17th Top Chinese Music Awards and wins Best New Idol. This also blessed us with the blindfold dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9gM7tfyFM

04132017: Southern Metropolis Entertainment Interview - XNINE. GG sings Jay Chou’s Love confession on this one ( I died ). We also see his very shy side when people say that he is the Visual of the group. Also, LOL at Peng Chuyue’s face when GG says this.

https://youtu.be/X8Xoax8dIHM

04162017: Posts a selfie on set of The Wolf in the blistering cold.

04242017: XNINE “Say No” BTS is released.

https://youtu.be/wU_tKzK64Ns

04252017: GG posts a selfie.

04282017 : Release of Single “Say No” - XNINE

04292017 : Wang Yibo X Guan Xiaoton release of the song Once Again for the Once Again OST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0TT8y7VXNk

🡆 MAY 2017

05072017: GG posts himself with that stubble.

05292017: Another selfie in specs.

🡆 JUNE 2017

060172017 : Both GG and Web posted selfies for Children’s Day.

06082017: Zhelife

06222017: Another selfie. I’m side eyeing the date this was posted wtf. 622.

06232017 : Posted alot of selfies this time. This is one of those.

🡆 JULY 2017

072017 - Filming for GG’s “Battle through the Heavens” has ended where played the role of Lin Xiuya.

07032017 : GG posted a bare face selfie, wearing Stussy!

07032017: Adidas NEO CF for Web

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNYqVa58mgg

07102017 : Web CF for Estee Lauder. Our boi in shorts and white shorts, using estee lauder in the morning.

https://youtu.be/xeTT0QR_iKs

07192017: Idol Interview - XNINE @ Asian Music Gala. They won the Most Popular Group award. This is Where you can see a very quiet GG who does not speak at all. https://youtu.be/7dwA6WwD-5c

07202017: Cute selfie.

07272017: Posted a selfie photoset which includes the photo he sent to Web, apparently, in 2018. I’m a love at first sight believer, so I don’t buy the story that this was only sent in 2018. hahahah! don’t believe me.

🡆 AUGUST 2017

08042017: GG posted a Happy Birthday message to DDU for their anniversary. DDU weibo account responded with :

“Thank you handsome and attractive little zhan zhan! ( btw little Day Day won’t tell you that a colleague of us already became your fan. )”

08082017 : XNINE Metersbonwe photoshoot.

https://youtu.be/jM9lla6aF08

08152017: Episode 1 of Love Actually Drama aired with Web acting alongside Joe Chen. He played the role of Zhai Zhiwei who is an IT genius.

08162017 : First episode of the TV program "When we were young" airing. Web guest starred on this, for episodes 16-17 and played the role of Lin Jiayi.

08242017 : Web shoot for Once Again MV the making released.

https://youtu.be/-yn_st5vOO0

08252017: XNINE “be strong girl” campaign message. Have some encouraging words from GG.

08272017 : XNINE performs at Fresh Asia Awards.

https://youtu.be/PzGlTQ3Fga0

08302017 : “Unsurpassed Conference” ; Where we got this absolute gem of him not wanting to talk but ended up being a host on DDU.

Web : I don’t really like talking

Host : so you went to DDU

Web : I don’t know why I went too..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjO5vIfD_PQ

🡆 SEPTEMBER 2017.

09052017 : Wang Yibo and Joe Chen video in an Amusement Park shooting the drama “Love Actually”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gIWih39Is

09162017 : Wang Yibo attended the “2017 Asian Influence Awards Ceremony.” and won Best New actor.

09222017: Web interview and photo shoot for Hey idol. This shoot is responsible for that photo where Web eats an orange like an Apple.

https://youtu.be/wCqVxog9i18

09232017: Selfie time again

09262017: Web and Wenhan represent UNIQ as they perform in TV Online Video Influence Ceremony

https://youtu.be/lc_cvlLtSaA

09272017: Web AD for KFC. Please watch this. He looks good in Yellow- dancing and eating chicken. I STAN THIS BOI!

https://youtu.be/ABH3BfZf4dg

🡆 OCTOBER 2017

10102017: Posted cute selfies with him as a cat and a Pig. hmmm. pig?

🡆 NOVEMBER 2017

11072017: Web’s Just Dance single is announced. This is the Theme song of 4th Xuan Wu Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvsyOxC6cs4

11092017 : Filming of Oh My Emperor has finished. GG plays the role of Bei Tang Moran in this drama that will be broadcast in 2018.

11092017 : Web attends the Ifeng Fashion show event where he won Most Popular New Actor.

11162017 : Web recording the song “just Dance”. does the clothes he’s wearing remind you of another recording session?

11212017 : Web x Fashionable Photoshoot

11262017 : Attending and performing in Star Night of Mister Inke. His style in this one is really Joker-like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75wtl-JAjis

🡆 DECEMBER 2017

2020 : Web is cast in the science fiction drama Super Talent/ My strange friend.

12032027: XNINE performs “ We want what we want”.

https://youtu.be/IJNIgPl8ImI

12032017: Web performs JUST DANCE in Tencent Games Carnival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbIzvMut2CY

12092017: Photoshoot with Rayli

12122017: Photoshoot with Cheese Fashion

12132017: Photoshoot with NTSnap

12142017 : BEST TASTE releases one of it’s short films that include Wang Yibo. We see two personas in this feature and it’s really interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP83-bEOEv0

This one called “耳” Ear; about sounds. [What we heard can’t take away by time 🕙 ]all the good memories when we were a child, some one them we might not be able to remember what happened, but when you hear the sound/voice of them, they trigger our memories

12152017: Volunteer Union photoshoot / campaign

12172017 : Attending Tencent Star Charity Night

12202017 : Photoshoot feature with our street style AKA everyone's favorite Web flower boi spread.

12222017: "Just Dance" single MV release

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asb8I3oqG00

12222017 : Winter solstice post from both of them. Talking about eating tangyuan. It’s of those mirroring posts, but again, could just be coincidence that they posted something similar.

12312017 : Web Participates in Hunan TV’s new year countdown as a Host.

*** Note 01 : In 2017, XNINE was transferred from EE media to Long Danni’s Wajijiwa Ent. Company. Some initial problems that they had was that their company was more interested in promoting them as actors and not as an idol group. They were also not kept safe in public venues which will be a recurring issue to GG as we go along other timelines.

*** Note 02 : I wanted to add Web’s Rossi posts and more pictures but it won’t save (will try again at a later date, but I think Web’s awards and projects are more important to highlight here). LOL. Thankfully, GG’s selfies worked. I mainly added stuff that they did in 2017 to give a sense of where they were career-wise.

*** Note 03 : Looking at how this timeline turned into a monster, I will probably split the 2018 timeline into two parts. Forever Summer Part I & Forever Summer Part 2. Seeing the amount of Activity these two did in 2018 alone is STAGGERING. Plus, this site is glitching with all the content when I save it so splitting it might be better. if you have suggestions, let me know.

#yizhan #bjyx #bjyx timeline

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lululawrence · 3 years ago

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Wordplay 5.0 Reflections

I dunno what else to call it lmao it doesn't sound right to call this a meme, but whatever it is, here we are! lol @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed came up with these questions after @wordplayfics wrapped up last year and I love them so i'm gonna use them for this year as well.

I'm going to start out with listing the prompts and linking the fics i wrote for each one for everyone's reference, though I'll be linking them again through the answers as well. I'm also putting all the questions and answers beneath a read more because, as usual, I rambled lmao Alright! Here we go!

Struggle: I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right Reduce: I Love This Feeling (But I Hate This Part) Divide: He Carries The Key Rise: Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy Sketch: I Heard You Talking

How did you come up with your ideas for the fics? Can you take us through your process after first receiving the prompt?

I don't know that I have a set way I come up with my fic ideas for Wordplay. It all depends on the prompt and what fic ideas I've got on my "to write list" that might fit that prompt. If nothing on my to write list fits or can be tweaked for a prompt, then I just go through my prompts tag until something strikes me for it, or I just ruminate on the different ways the word can be used and see if something comes up.

So, when I did the random word generator for the first prompt and "struggle" was the word that came up, I immediately thought of "struggle bus". lolllll and when I went looking through my to write list, I saw the girl Payneshaw fic I wanted to write and I was like omgggggg Nick ABSOLUTELY is riding the struggle bus the ENTIRE FUCKING TIME and I knew that was my fic for the week. lmaoooo and there you have it.

What is your favorite fic you wrote for Wordplay this year?

oooohhhh this one is HARD AND MEAN lmaoooo i forgot this was a question asked. okay legitimately i cannot choose a favorite because i'm actually stupidly proud and happy with all of the fics i wrote this year.

If you’ve participated in previous years of Wordplay, what has been your favorite prompt from all years you participated in?

WELP. as the creator of this challenge, i've participated in all 5 years which means there've been 25 prompts i've written. lolllll and honestly i think my favorite prompt is STILL from the first year. it was "bloodsucker". like, how great of a prompt is that???

What was the shortest fic you wrote this year? The longest?

the shortest one this year was... I Said It Wrong, But I Meant It Right at 4381 words.

the longest one was... I Heard You Talking at 10580 words.

What fic of yours surprised you?

i think all of them surprised me in some way. that's part of the joy of writing fics, isn't it? lollll but i think the one that surprised me the most was Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy. it was a last minute change (i'll elaborate in the answer to the next question haha) and it was a VERY different direction than i had planned. it was all based off of a photo i saw on tumblr, and there was no prompt with the photo. i got to just take in the basic idea of the sticker being placed on a bridge overlooking the city and what might make that spot a good kissing spot.

now, as an ace who doesn't actually ENJOY kissing, i... didn't think about the fact that i would be writing a lot of it. lollll i actually have a super hard time writing kisses and trying to make them varied while also relaying the emotional intimacy of the moment, and then add on top of that the fact that once i started writing the fic, both harry and louis let me know pretty much as soon as words started getting written that they were both genderqueer and that worked differently for each of them, so harry would use they/them pronouns and louis would use he/him still, it just made things more interesting. and the way the fic developed??? like, i had a very vague idea of what would happen in the fic. so the way it actually came about all surprised me.

long answer short, from the very start, this fic surprised me and i was just along for the ride. it was a BLAST and i sure do love it, even if it does have the second lowest hits of all the fics i wrote this year haha

Were there any prompts you struggled to find an idea for?

STRUGGLED HAHAHA sorry. just funny since struggle was a prompt this year. ANYWAY. the prompt i had the hardest time with was defo rise. i've had this fic idea ever since greg james tweeted with shawn mendes months ago about how shawn basically forgot his interview with greg on the breakfast show, so greg had to last minute wing a LOT OF AIR TIME AND SHOW CONTENT and he did a great job, but it brought about some funny content... anyway. that made me wanna write a triad a/b/o fic where greg is louis and harry's beta. rise was going to be used in a lot of different ways through the fic, as well. because breakfast show requires greg to rise from bed early, he gets a rise out of harry and louis with his behavior and overt flirtations with shawn, they have to rise above their jealousy, etc etc etc. i was VERY EXCITED.

except i only had three days i was able to write every week this summer, and those were really really difficult to get. if i wanted to write on tuesday or thursday, i was often curling up with my laptop in a dark room with some caffeine and candles burning to soothe me after the insanity that is my life atm, and write for as long as i could before my brain stopped functioning, which was often only around 30 min. but see, that particularly week was the worst part of my son's 18 month sleep regression, which meant instead of him sleeping and letting me write, i was driving him around or trying to rock him back to sleep or letting him play in an attempt to tire him out etc etc etc and by friday morning i had to admit to myself there was no way i could write that a/b/o fic in my one guaranteed evening to write every week (saturday, btw). so i was suddenly left with around 36 hours to find a new fic idea and develop it enough to be able to write it in one evening.

as i said in the answer to the first question, i usually go to my prompts tag to see what might inspire me with this prompt word in mind, but for this one that wasn't the first place i went. i tried looking at more definitions even though i'd done that earlier and nothing was inspiring me. so i then spoke to several friends and was still having a hard time finding any ideas that felt like something i would enjoy writing and could do so quickly.

by saturday morning, knowing i had less than 12 hours to figure out what i was writing so i could actually WRITE IT in only like 2-3 hours of writing time, i finally sat down and scrolled through my prompts tag. once i did, i saw the photo for the "good kissing spot", and i immediately thought of sunrise. so i ran with it. but i wanted to make it stylinshaw, so how would i work that in, etc etc etc. it was just very fast and very difficult trying to figure out how i would structure it so it could be a fun meet cute kind of fic, but also work into them actually building a meaningful connection etc and... well. it was a lot. haha so yeah, it was just a hard time overall that week, but i'm super proud of it in the end.

Were there any prompts you had an idea for but ended up writing something different? If so, what made you choose to change what you wrote? Do you think you’ll ever write your original idea at a later date?

HA okay well i already answered most of this above, but for the last part of this question, yes i will absolutely write my original idea at a later date. the whole reason i decided not to do it wasn't because i couldn't turn it into a fic that could be written in that one writing session, but because i had hopes for what that fic would be, and i didn't want to shorten and condense it enough to do that. i didn't want to have to lessen the dreams i have for that fic in my head, so i decided i would just put it back on my to write list and save it for later. who knows when, but that fic will absolutely get written.

What do you think was the most difficult as well as the easiest part about the Wordplay Challenge?

most difficult was 100% finding the time to write. that was insanely hard for me all summer, but by the time wordplay was going, things at home had ramped up to being very overwhelming regarding the demands on me and my time, and what i had been doing to carve out some time for myself and writing wasn't working anymore, so i had to adjust even more with the understanding that i was working on a really strict timeline too. so yeah. just finding the time was absolutely the hardest part for me.

easiest part was the actual writing. these fics really flowed from me, outside of the pack fic, that one was actually pretty difficult to make sure i was getting the dynamics exactly the way i wanted to have them turn out, but even with that aspect, it still was like it flowed from me most of the time. these fics really just took over and i was along for the ride. it was a blast.

If you participate again next year, is there anything you’ll do differently? If so, what?

lmao well assuming people still want wordplay to happen again, i'll run it again and very likely will take part. so... with the difficulty i had in finding any time to do anything this summer, i was actually ridiculously stressed when it came to the writing part, but also the modding aspect of it. so i am not sure that i'll run it during the summer again next year. i might have it go during the early fall once school is back in session so i at least have only one child at home instead of three to battle lol so that's one thing i'll hopefully be doing differently.

as for the writing aspect, i don't think so actually. i've done 5 years of this, and i'm having fun with it. haha if i ever find a fic idea i think could work for it, i would consider doing a series for it next year, but it all depends on if there's something i'd like to write that could work for that kind of set up with this challenge.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading!!! xxx

#wordplay 5.0 #writing stuff #my fics #mine

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hollandstanevans · 4 years ago

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Awkward.

Chapter 6

masterlist

warnings: mentions of death, swear words,

Previously on awkward:

“So are we all just going to ignore the fact that he called my wife babe?”, Chris asked the room.

Your wife? Y/n you’re married?”, Tom asked you.

“Only on paper,” you retorted. Your shock starting to wear off you walked towards Tom and said, “Can we take this somewhere where everyone isn’t. I hate everyone knowing my business and I’ll explain everything once we’re alone ok,” you told him.

“Ok”

Now:

You lead Tom up to your room so you could talk. He walked before you and you shut the door.

“So I actually don’t know where to start, I know you probably have a shit ton of questions and I honestly don’t know where to fucking start so I guess storytime and if I don’t answer all of your questions feel free to ask. Is that ok with you?” you asked Tom.

“Yeah y/n I guess”, he responded

“Ok when we met all those years ago I got the job at Hopkins so I moved up here and I started spending time with my brother Chris the Hemsworth one.” you chuckle after that trying to ease up the tension.

“How are you and Chris siblings and I’ve never heard him talk about a sister?”

“I didn’t either. Um, when I was 16 his dad died I found out he left me a pretty big sum of money. Then one day there Chris Hemsworth is outside of my door telling me I’m his sister. Yea I didn’t believe it either and suddenly my mom is telling me that my dad isn’t my biological dad and it just took me a while to get used to everything. Then suddenly Hemsworth and I are as thick as thieves. So the first time we ever really spent real quality time together is when we first met that year. I mean I mentioned having a brother but you didn’t ask more about and I wasn’t just gonna volunteer information. Imagine how that would’ve gone hey Tom btw you know the Hemsworth brothers Chris, Liam, and Luke yea so those are my brothers. You wouldn’t have believed me especially now finding out that you’re Spider-man.”

You didn’t let Tom catch a word in before you went on your next explanation.

“So no I just don’t go around telling people that Hemsworth is my brother and after that happened with Chris I tried to stay out of MCU workers’ hairs. I guess that didn’t work too well.’

You let out a chuckle to ease the tension.

“After Chris and I separated I didn’t keep up with anything marvel related. I mean I didn’t really beforehand either but definitely now. I guess that gets back to the big thing. Chris and I being married. We met a couple of weeks after we lost touch. I got the job and moved back up here so during my free time I spent a lot of time with Hemsworth and that meant going to set, parties, dinners, you get it and Chris and I met. We got married after about a year of dating. We were great for the first couple of years and then we weren’t. I don’t really go into detail about that right now. I left him and spent some time crying here and I finally got my life back and you show back up being the amazing guy that I remember and here we are now me in my bedroom telling you all of this.”

You finally finish and that whole ordeal and you realized that your face was wet not knowing that you started crying from all of this going on. You fully expected Tom to leave right after that but he stayed and pulled you into a bear hug and you just stayed there and sat in eahother silent presence for the moment nothing being heard except the silent whimpers of your tears and the ending of a party that was going on in the distance. It lasted for what felt like for eternity and you never wanted it to end and you thought it was going to stay that way until you heard those words fall from his lips and you honestly thought you were dreaming.. so you asked him “Am I dreaming or did you really just say that?’ So he said it again for you to hear it clear so there were no mistakes.

“I love you y/n”

And for the first time in a long time you felt content with life you were on the verge of falling asleep but right before you passed out you said something that made Tom know how you felt about him.

So the next day you woke up and it was 12 pm you don’t know the last time you slept in that long but you looked around and Tom was gone. It didn’t bother you because the day was halfway through and you were just getting up. So you did the first thing any normal person would and looked for your phone to see what you’ve missed and low and behold you had a million notifications not literally but you know. The most recent message was from Tom and it read.

Tom: Hey had to leave earlier to go to set text me when you wake and I’ll call you on my next break.

You were going to respond until another message caught your eye.

From Chris: Hey we need to talk about last night. Can you meet later today?

You did what a mature person would do and powered off your phone off and went to look for your brother because he got you in this mess and he was gonna help you get out of it or at least understand it. And the next thing you did was yell down the halls.

“Hemsworth where are you? Christopher Hemsworth-”

“I’m in the living room y’n”

So you ran down to the living room as quick as you could and naturally you tumbled down the stairs while doing it and landed face first but who had time to think about to think about that but of course Hemsworth that a big deal needed to be made out of this such a big deal and after explaining to him that we did not have the time to see if I was ok we had to discus more important issues.

“What’s more important l/n that you are dating Tom Holland while still being married to Chris Evans and that they work together and neither of them knew? Is that what’s more important? Or that you didn’t tell your brother that you were dating on of his co-stars again? Ya let’s talk about that then.”

“It’s not like that. I didn’t know that Tom worked with you guys. I met him years ago when I did I came up here for that interview and we lost contact after we both went back home and I ran back into him a couple of months ago and we started dating. You know I don’t have time for movies or news. My life doesn’t revolve around the MCU like y’alls I am a doctor for pete’s sake. So I am sorry that I didn’t know all of this to keep you in the loop, but that has already happened and I can’t change that. So I am here asking you to help me now.”

“Y/n you know I didn’t mean it like that”

“This wouldn’t be so hard if-”

The doorbell rang and Chris went to open the door and spoke to the person and they had a very familiar voice but you couldn’t pin point it from the couch.

A/N: umm heyy guys long time no update. I say this everytime that i’m gonna update regularly and then I don’t well I tried and then this happened. I started this chapter and just started to get super busy but I do hope to write more often and get into a pattern soo that’s the plan hopefully I can get the next part out in the next week or two. So if you want to be tagged when that comes out lmk!!! lots of love - j!!!

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captain-aralias · 3 years ago

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Life stuff

this feels kind of weird, because i’ve never used my tumblr like this, but i would have written something on my livejournal, and i want people to know - i just dont want to have to tell people about it, or really talk about it at all.

but i also wanted to write this, idk.

(TW: impending death of a parent)

my mum has cancer.

it’s a rare form of cancer, called peritoneal cancer, which is similar to but different from ovarian cancer - i think it mostly gets diagnosed (like my mum’s) when it’s too late to do anything about it. all the treatment has been palliative only i.e. letting her live as long and as comfortably as possible.

she was diagnosed in september last year - about a year ago, a few months after running the ‘virtual’ london marathon on the isle of wight, where she lives, and obviously deep in lockdown.

as someone undergoing chemo, she was deemed extremely vulnerable to covid, and so she spent most of the early pandemic isolating. she also said she didn’t see any point in my brother and i visitng her, particularly given the risks, because we could talk via facetime - which is fair enough - all of which meant my brother and i didn’t go to visit her until May this year, after she’d done the first lot of chemo and was already doing much better again.

a few months after that, we found out that while she’d responded really well to the chemo, her cancer wasn’t responding at all to the maintenance drugs that were suposed to stop it coming back, so she came off the drugs completely. medical advice was basically chemo is as effective whenever you do it, so you might as well enjoy your life for a while, we’ll monitor it every month, and when things start to get too bad, we’ll put you back in chemo.

it’s friday tomorrow - so two fridays ago, i saw my mum in london after she’d just seen hamilton with her partner, graham. both of them loved hamilton. her hair had grown back, she seemed pretty normal. about a week later, she was in A&E - and she’s been in the hospital all week. she’s got a total bowel obstruction, which means she can’t eat and hasn’t eaten since last week.

now in a weird situation where there are a few tricky, difficult options (including being moved off the island back onto the mainland to a bigger hospital) that will mean that she stays alive long enough to get the chemo, which will probably get her back to hamilton-watching strength, or ... she could die really soon. like, in a few days.

we can’t visit. her partner can’t visit because covid - there’s this really sad-making photo of him looking happy on the phone through a window to my mum, also on the phone, inside the hospital.

i feel...

???? :( :( :( ....

i guess this is the main point of the post. i’m not writing this crying, i’m writing it pretty neutrally - because my brain isn’t really processing it right now, and mostly doesn’t process it.

i did cry earlier today while on the phone to various people, and then i went back to work. i hate crying, i hate being sad, and i dont like people comforting me, because it makes me realise that i have something to be sad about.

i’ve known she had cancer for a year. i haven’t been able to hang out with her most of that time. i would say, we are fairly close, although not nearly as close as some families. we don’t talk every week, but we talk regularly, and have seen each other regularly.

i’m so incredibly privileged that nothing that bad has ever happened to me, even though i’m 35. i’ve never been to a funeral, which seemed like a major life win and now i think was a mistake, i should have gone to funerals for people i card about less to help get used to it.

the literal only comparison i have to how i feel is when my cat Anton died suddenly about 3 years ago - i handled it with a mix of not thinking about it, being intensely sad for as brief a period as i could, and probably by thinking about how sad my girlfriend was about it, and sort of sidestepping my own feelings in comparison.

i remember when my last remaining grandparent died - and i was about 14 or something - i wasn’t sad for myself, i was only sad for her my dad being sad. for ages, i worried that i was not going to be sad enough about this - and i still sort of am.

but i also passionately hate the idea of being sad and i know i’ll look to avoid it as much as possible, and try and get on with my life.

i know my mum dying isn’t about me - when people write after death it’s about the person who died, obviously. that makes sense. but this post isn’t about my mum, who is a very cool person, much cooler than me - it’s about me. because i am self-obsessed and this is going to wreck my life for a while.

it’s weird, because i can see it on the horizon but it’s not happening yet. and i dont know whether that’s good or bad - i feel like it’s good, in a way. someone ages ago told me that the grieving period starts when you get the news. that seems very true to me - but also, i know that it’s going to ramp up, and so i’m like in the expectation of true grief right now.

it’s sort of like she died, but also is still going to die, but also i can magically still talk to her. which is really nice, in a way, it’s like a second chance, because i know i didn’t reach out enough before she had cancer. and i’m aware enough of my own actions that i know this is what’s been going on in my head the past year - i should reach out more, because she has cancer, but i dont want to make it seem like i’m reaching out because she has cancer, even though she knows i know she has cancer....... and also, i’m busy writing this fic. /o\

the fact that she seemed to recover (even though my mum insisted on saying ‘i am not recovered, i’m going to die soon’ like several time as a day as a disclaimer) also totally messed with my head, because i knew logically - ok, it’s happening. but also, things seemed so normal when we speak. even when i called her today, and she hasn’t eaten for a week, it seemed normal.

btw - i realised this week i had no idea how cancer killed people. my mum is a scientist and has looked up all kinds of things about what’s killing her; i’m clearly a simon snow and didn’t want to think about things i can’t help. if you’d asked me, i’d have said like... it poisons you or something, or blocks bloodflow to your brain. not what i think will actually do it which is.... starvation. or being too weak to survive being pumped full of the poison that is intended to kill the cancer. (that one i guess i could have predicted.) man - cancer sucks. i mean, we all knew it.

(i failed to get into cambridge university at interview stage, many years ago. the man who interviewed me gave me some extremely memorable feedback, which is that i needed to dial back the ‘defensive irony’ - which i thnk in that context meant i put myself down and tried to make a joke of everything. i remember when i got the phonecall to say Anton, my cat, was dead, i literally did not know what to do with my voice - because my instinct was to try and make the vet feel better, and also to present myself as bright and capable, and yet this unexpected and devasting news had just come through. rainbow wrote something sort of similar because she’s a good writer, for shepard as he tells penny about his curse. i feel like that.)

what else did i want to say?

i thought i had more time. ‘hamilton’ will probably always be tied to this moment in my mind, because of how much i’ve spoken to my mum about it in the past few weeks (i sent her the remix - she liked it, she listened to it in hospital while trying to drink more than 100ml of fluids) but yeah - this is basically a line from hamilton here. whatever. don’t make me feel my own feelings, let me just quote things. i dont like my own feelings. (no, i dont want to go to therapy - they’d make me talk about my feelings all the time, i’m british for god’s sake.)

i’m 35 - my mum is 68. i didn’t think she’d die this early or that i’d have to deal with this yet. but then i also don’t think bad things are ever going to happen to me - because mostly they haven’t, see above. i wear a mask and am double vaccinated because i’m not an asshole, but i dont really believe i’ll get covid because bad things don’t happen to me. i didn’t think my mum would die - maybe ever, but definitely not yet. she’s been retired a decade after teaching (science) and has enjoyed it.

i thought i had time to not have kids yet - which is the other thing (like hamilton) that this moment is really tied up with for me. i feel like 35 is getting quite old, but also not that old to still not have kids, but intend to maybe have them. my feelings about kids were basically like - up until like 25, i thought, yes, definitely. i mean, before i had a realtiosnhip (22-ish), i just assumed i would probably have a het marriage and have kids etc, like people do, but after that we were still talking, yes, children at some point.

didn’t prioritise it for a few reasons - none of my close friends had children until quite recently, so it just didn’t seem like an urgent thing in the way that it probably does for people with different friendship groups. waiting to be settled enough in a job to be able to take maternity leave without it feeling like a rip off for my employer. waiting for a good time in erin’s PhD writing cycle. and then pandemic. and then a few years ago, maybe as i turned 30, i thought - maybe we won’ have kids, because we still haven’t - and i vocalised that to erin.

also, i know a lot of people are gay and have children, so it’s not like it’s a thing that is impossible at all, but it’s much much harder if you have to leave your home and your relationship in order to get a child. it has to be a very very conscious decisions. i have friend who are men who have good genes, but we’re not so close i want to ask them for their sperm/to be involved however remotely in making a child - and (i was surprised to discover) (what a lot of things i dont know anything about) you an’t really just buy sperm, it’s not truly legal except through a clinic. and it’s extremely expensive to get inseminated in a clinic, and the NHS don’t really do that, so you do have to pay it. i thought kids would be expensive after they were born, but not before. and i REALLY wanted a house, much much more than - i think even today - i’ve ever wanted a child. i REALLY wanted a house - and now we have a house, and it’s pretty good. but - that’s where the money went, until the pandemic - thanks pandemic - so now we do have some disposable cash at last, because i didn’t commute.

but now erin is worried about climate change - and wheher it’s right to bring more children into the world, and other things. and.... i think i do want to be pregnant, it’s what i’m planning for - don’t leave this job (which admittedly i also really like, and pays me well - i dont thin i need to leave) because next stop maternity leave, but.....

i don’t know whether i am thinking, time ot have kids because my best friend just had a baby (the baby’s name is horatio - for real, i actually love this name) (i also haven’t seen her or the baby except over skype, because anna - my friend - is, like my mother, also scared of pandemic) and my brain is like - ok, well, if anna is doing it, i guess the time is here

AND - i know there’s a large part of me that was like, gotta be pregnant and ideally have the baby before my mum dies so she gets to see that she had a grandchild. my brother and i are both queer, btw, in case you were wondering - he’s considering whether he wants to transition right now (but is still happy with he/him pronouns) and - you may find this astonishing, but i genuinely don’t know whether he’d consider himself ace, or has been in relationships. he’s very private, he has OCD and is in therapy - but anyway, he’s probably not having kids anytime soon (i think!) and graham - my mum’s boyfriend/partner of 10+ years. -has grandchildren, but my extremely middleclass white (but definitely not conservative voters, always 100% not-tory) parents ended up with me and my brother.... and i don’t know, as i say, i don’t know whether my brain is saying ‘have kids before it’s too late’ - although i know by now that it will be too late. even if my mum recovers from this, this time, i don’t think i can produce a child before she dies - and she isn’t asking me too, she’s not like that, but i would have liked her to be there. i thought she would be.

so - i’m thinking about that. also, about getting a dog. i really want a dog - although i don’t want to upset the three cats (one we’ve had for eight years or so, the other two we got after Anton died). it’s ALSO really hard and expensive to get a dog. you’d think with all these ‘a dog isn’t just for the pandemic, a dog is for life’ type adverts around, that it would be easy to adcidentally get a dog - i’ve looked! you ccan’t get a dog unless you have no cats and you’re super experienced and can take a dog with lots of trauma or medical problems, or you’re willing to pay thousands of pounds. like - even for a regular not even pedigree dog - at least a thousand. pedigree dog - several thousand. i dont want a puppy either - i want a dog.

and - this is embarrassing to admit, but i’ve alrady told erin - i genuinely had a phase of being super annoyed when i’d read fics where someone just ‘got a dog’. it’s not that simple!!! it’s fiction, it doesn’t matter - chill out. the baby thing too - although weirdly not fics where magic meant it was possible to get a baby, weirdly it was smut. i had a brief week or so of crazy (and i don’t think i am that crazy) where i’d read about fictional semen and just be like - wtf, it’s so hard to get hold of that shit. (it’s not real, this isn’t real semen being wasted, calm down - and i dont even really know if i want kids, i might just think i do.)

the other thing about the bad thing being soon but not yet (but also being all the time, but not if you dnt think about it) is that i’m thinking - should i prioritise writing my remix now, in case my mum dies and i’m too sad to do it, and then i didn’t do my remix? i was definitely thinking this while writing classroom politics (i hope my mum doesn’t die becaue i dont want to be too sad to miss the deadline) and in the run up to AWTWB .....

today i wrote a list of things for work that would need to be picked up if i have to unexpectedly stop working, either because i’m too sad, or because i have to do funeral stuff, or .... i guess legal stuff about settling the estate. (i guess this happens to a lot of people, too, but it’s also a bit of a mindfuck that my brother and i will inherit her house and a bunch of cash when she dies - i’m pretty well off, my brotehr does virtual reality theatre stuff so really isn’t - we’ve talked about how much easier both of our lives will be with a huge injection of cash, and how we dont know what to feel about that) (great news, dogs and kids are really expensive! time to find out whether i really wanted to spend my money on those.) told people i like at work that it’s coming, and that i dont want to talk about it. and mostly just... carrying on with life, really. until it happens.

it’s so weird how easy it is to carry on most of the time.i know my mum’s partner is not doing nearly so well - he has to cope with an empty house and he’s retired. i’ve had periods - including right now - where i wake up every morning and check my phone to see whehter someone called me or texted me to tell me it’s over. but most of the day i’m actually really fine. i even had an ok day today. and i don’t know whether i want that to be the case, or whether i shouldn’t let myself do that. i dont know what i should prepare for in terms of where i’ll be - will i want lots of stuff to distract me (this is my guess) and work is very good for that, or i will want to clear time and space because i can’t operate and dont want people to offer me comfort. (FYI - this post isn’t written to make people say anything to me, i definitely dont want to talk about it, so please don’t feel you either have to comment or check in on me - i don’t really want you to. it’s enough to have written it, in my own time, in my own space.)

i think i wanted to write this post in a way because i thought i probably wouldnt want to write it after my mum died - because i probably wouldn’t want to say anything about it at all, for a few years.

my mum keeps telling me about the show ‘jane the virgin’ - which she’s half way through. shhe asked me to give it a try, so i did (she often tells me about shows on radio 4, which i rarely listen to. i thouht i had more time.) i’ve watched an episode (because she has cancer, i should listen to her recommendations)(but i dont want her to know that’s why i did it) and i do quite like - it’s light and frothy and well cut together (although about kids and artificial insemination, of course). i guess in a worse case scenario where i’m too sad to work or write, i will probably watch a lot of this show - which is incredibly not sad - and feel sad about how my mum never finished it.

BUT ALSO SHE MIGHT BE OK. for a while.

i dont know how i feel, blargh. anyway. this was a long post. i think i wrote it mostly for me. feelings are weird. covid really sucks and so does cancer.

going to order some chicken and watch inuyasha.

#my content #tw: death #tw: death of a parent #tw: death of a loved one #personal #tw: cancer

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quirklessidiot · 4 years ago

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aoba johsai’s sport’s journalist (h/c’s)

just crack+ fluff + platonic-ish relationship (gn!y/n) (w: language!) a/n: this has been bugging me for awhile now since i havent seen headcanons of this yet (if their are do send them on my ask box) and since im on a slump, i decided to write this down. this is completely fun, easy-going, and self-indulgent, really perfect for someone stuck on a slump ksks. idk if i should make some for the other schools but oh welp enjoy! happy 900 btw werkwerk uwu so weird to reach this when im not even very active.

Now let’s be honest here, it’s no surprise that the volleyball team of aoba johsai has their own sports journalist. Like, c’mon, they’re one of the best in the prefecture.

But let’s start with the basics here, shall we? Let’s start with you, how this all goes through, and how you got into this heaping pile of mess.

Yep, you.

There you were in high hopes to get into journalism for college so what better way was it than to apply for the school paper? It would definitely look good and pretty in those college applications *chef’s kiss* you’re a second year btw idk if that matters but yeah..

Much to your surprise no one was applying for the news section which was kind of sad since you wanted a buddy there.

but-but it turns out though everyone was applying for the sports section completely understandable, next to feature, it was the most exciting thing to write because there was going to be a special section and writer for the volleyball team.

You knew that volleyball was kind of a big thing around your school?? you just didn’t expect it to amass like that much people.

The editor in chief is obviously surprised, you were the first person on that day to come in there and actually apply for something else.

and guess where that led you to?

Yep, the sport’s section, specifically the volleyball team’s personal sports journalist. Your brain goes brrt brrt because you were not a sports writer at all and you were, ironically, scared of ball games.

VOLLEYBALL WAS COMPLETELY NEW TERRITORY FOR YOU.

Your editor in chief laughs it off and says, “you’ll do fine… its like news bUT SPORTS! IT’LL DEFINITELY LOOK GOOD IN YOUR APPLICATIONS!”

You’re not sure if you should be terrified or terrified?

It doesn’t help that on the first day when you enter the gym you look terribly constipated and panicking a lot because of all the stray balls being spiked and tossed around.

It also didn’t help that you crash course the terminologies and the member’s name a night before and you were just running on iced coffee that day.

Yeah, way to make a first impression, huh?

When you approach the coach, you’re not exactly sure what to say and you were this close to chickening out until you saw one of the players come up to you and ask if you were alright and if you wanted to talk to oikawa.

you’re loading for a second there.

and the poor guy who asks you if you were alright, starts looking actually worried because you weren’t responding at all.

“OH, oH IS THAT THE CAPTAIN?”

the guy literally looks very confused?? because what kind of rock were you living under that you didn’t know Oikawa???

so you go ahead and introduce yourself and say that your name was Y/N and you were the new sports journalist for the team.

“....soooo you write?”

“...”

at this point on, you’re also confused too

and idk man, first impressions do indeed last because you ended up (unknowingly) sharing the same brain cell with Matsukawa Issei.

you both were just confused there, straight up looking like two kids who got left behind by their mom in the grocery check-out line.

anyways...

He tells you the team’s pretty chill and you should stop looking like they spiked a ball on your puppy or something.

Basically introduces you to the whole team after,

no questions asked, just go with the flow.

You basically just click and vibe???

Not only because you crash coursed and related to whatever they said,

you literally all shared the same brain cell together.

Kentaro was another story though, kid basically hated your guts at first, it felt like if you were to say one sentence to him that day, he’d literally spike a ball at your direction.

“we’re basically the same year tho :(” -Y/N

“lmao well do i’ve got news for you, y/n-chan.” - Oikawa and basically everyone on the team.

you gradually start to understand the coolness of the sport since you had to incorporate visiting them once or twice a week during practice.

but suddenly it becomes almost a daily routine after a month because they’re just really friendly people??

like wow, they’re all friendly giants.

You’re literally just there to write about them but they’re really patient and kind, they even invite you to practice games so that you could practice out your skills in writing since you mentioned that you’ve never written for sports yet.

they even give you some added key terms that aren’t found in books and online.

you’re def closest to iwaizumi and matsukawa.

iwaizumi because he makes really funny fish jokes about oikawa (yes you arent supposed to be laughing but man theyre funny af, oikawa would usually call you and iwa corny because the jokes aren’t even that funny) and yes its canon that whenever iwaizumi sees an oikawa fish in textbooks, he starts laughing and joking about it.

no explanation needed why you ended up being close to matsukawa.

its obvious after that first meeting ya both would be besties.

same brain cell bros go brrt brrt.

incredibly!! supportive!! I CANNOT STRESS THAT ENOUGH

like when you release a new write up about them, Oikawa would usually go, “It’s such an honor to be apart of your first steps, can you sign this?”

dramatic but hella supportive, we stan the gr8 king

“oh, wow, i thought you said you didn’t write before? how come you sound like a professional already?” - Hanamaki

another dramatic best boi.

akira + kindaichi getting shy because they’ve never experienced this yet. So whenever you try to interview them about stats or something for a special issue, they usually end up a stuttering mess

“w-well, L/N-san...”

kentaro slowly warming up to you but still looks like he wants to spike a volleyball at your face 90% of the time but unlike before you’re used to his whole thing already.

“Move, extra.”

“You were great, by the way. That was a powerful spike!”

you may or may not be included in random ramen nights with the team

yes, oikawa buys you your own bowl of ramen

itadakimasu.

he doesn’t mind tho, he really loves how you write them.

so its sort of a thank you for giving the team justice when you write about them.

team says you’re technically part of the team so they make you your own jersey. Now when you watch your games people ask if you’re like the manager or smthng.

“ no :’) “

When they lost against shiratorizawa and karasuno, you were bawling too like you were apart of the team.

this pretty much cheered everyone up despite the loss because your crying face was apparently very funny and memable.

oh right, your article was passed on to the town’s newspaper

it was literally like 7 am on a saturday and your notifs went zoop.

they added you to their group chat and spammed you with pictures of the articles that you wrote.

“...wOW I CAN’T BELIEVE IT?? YOU GOT FRONT PAGE FOR SPORTS???” -Oikawa

“we didn’t even win the tournament but we still get a feature?? thats so cool?? holy shit?? CONGRATS KSKSKS” -matsukawa

lmao idk matsukawa looks like a keyboard smasher tbh idk why

pretty much its normal for you to even start hanging out already outside of the court and after practice to get steam buns.

more chaotic mess and clumsy you running around.

your volleyball sports writing experience wouldn’t be complete until someone accidentally spikes a ball at the back of your head amaright?

ironically, it’s yahaba who does that to you. poor smoll bean.

“wow, you’re dumb.” -kentaro says to you

“ :’)” -you.

“y/N-SAN I SWEAR IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.” -yahaba

overall, you found yourself in a safe haven with the volleyball team and yes, you also cried when the third years graduated.

the third years have a picture with everyone on the team + you with a very red face from all the crying?? once again, you’ve proven yourself to be a meme.

continued to write for them up until graduation.

and its def obvious you kept in touch with all of them after, duh.

#haikyuu!!#haikyū!!#haikyuu imagines #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu aoba johsai #haikyuu scenarios #aoba johsai x reader #haikyu headcanons #haikyu scenarios

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notallthosewho-wanderarelost · 3 years ago

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Since it’s Tuesday and we get Loki 1x05 tomorrow and then I’m seeing Black Widow the day after, and I guess I’m doing these now, some thoughts on Loki 1x04.

Hopefully this will be a shorter post due to me not knowing wtf is going on. This show is so chaotic and it’s perfect but that makes trying to predict it impossible. How VERY LOKI OF IT.

NOPE, NOPE THIS IS NOT A SHORTER POST, I have no idea what is going on plot wise but this episode gave me a lot of character stuff to talk about apparently.

Alright, let me get the big one out of the way. I’ve already said this in various places, mostly tags, but if I’m gonna make this post it’s gotta be here. I’m uncomfortable with Loki/Sylvie being romantic. Would prefer for Marvel to stay away from selfcest. PLEASE. I’m kind of hoping and wondering if it’s a fakeout for a reveal that Loki has finally learned to love or at least accept himself through his care of and admiration for Sylvie, which would be VERY Agent of Asgard-esque and I can see it being very probable.

I think giving Loki a love interest of any kind was always going to be difficult to pull off, but especially Loki as he is at the point in time when the show finds him- fresh off his attempted takeover of Earth and probably still deeply reeling from the revelation of his adoption and also likely mentally affected by any torture and/or mental manipulation Thanos might have done on him. Loki’s self-loathing is probably still close to an all-time high here and he’s questioning who he even is. I’m not saying that you have to love yourself before you can love someone else- I don’t think that at all; in fact I think loving someone else would probably encourage someone to value themselves more- but Loki as he is here I think would need to work through some of his own issues before he could get involved with anyone else. I think that Loki would need to learn to love himself first, to accept that he’s worthy of love, before he could genuinely fall in love with anyone else. (Remember this, I’ll come back to it.)

I got major sibling vibes from Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis. Like I said last post, they felt like alternate universe twins to me. They’re the same person from different universe, but also very much not the same- I feel like twins is the closest description? I can admittedly be pretty awful at picking up romantic vibes when I’m not expecting them, but I did not get romance vibes at all.

I also feel kind of annoyed that we would never be having this conversation or having this as a canonical ship option if Sylvie hadn’t been female. Loki is now officially canonically bi, (which means Sylvie is too btw) but in comics Loki is both bi and also genderfluid. Lady Loki is just Loki when Loki is identifying as female. So having Loki fall in love with a female version of himself feels both unnecessarily heteronormative and kind of...awkward in terms of 616!Loki’s genderfluidity, to put it lightly. (Note: I am not genderfluid, this is just my opinion, please prioritize actual genderfluid people’s opinions on the subject over mine.)

That said, after I finished the episode I was genuinely confused if they were actually going there and had to go look up interviews to see what the Loki team was saying about it. I found this interview with head writer Michael Waldron, also featuring quotes from director Kate Herron and from Tom Hiddleston. Relevant quotes below:

“That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story,” head writer Michael Waldron explains to Marvel.com. “We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy? But in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story.”

Loki reassures her that while they might lose, they don’t die — they survive. He goes on to call Sylvie “amazing” for how she almost took down the TVA on her own, and it’s clear from the look on his face that even though they’ve only been together a short while, Loki’s already come to admire and respect her. As the moon literally crumbles around them, Sylvie places a hand on Loki’s arm, and that’s when it happens: A branch on the Sacred Timeline. These two Lokis are having a moment they were never supposed to have, which as Mobius puts it, is “pure chaos.”

“The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship,” continues Waldron. “Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA.”

...

“Who’s a better match for Loki than himself?” director Kate Herron chimes in. “The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey. He sees things in Sylvie that he is like, ‘Oh, I've been there. I know what you feel.’ But she's like, ‘Well, I don't feel that way.’ And I think that was the kind of fun thing about it. She is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences. So just from an identity perspective, it was interesting to dig into that.”

“When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity,” reveals Hiddleston. “He wants to talk to her and understand her and try to discern what was similar about their experiences, and what was different. He keeps asking her questions because he wants to see if his experience was also her experience. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same.”

Aside from the parts where Michael Waldron says “...have this guy fall in love with another version of himself...” and “the same person falling in with another version of one another,” everything they talk about in this article could be read as Loki and Sylvie caring for each other in a way that’s not necessarily romantic. Waldron even says that the series is specifically about self-love and forgiving yourself.

(Coming back to the thing from earlier about Loki needing to love himself now.) The way I’d read Loki and Sylvie’s relationship, especially from Loki’s side since we know more of his history, is that this is the first time that either of them actually cares about themselves. Because of their trust in and their love for each other, they’re each able to see themselves as a person worthy of love. I think that’s what the Nexus Event was. I think that’s why Loki and Sylvie’s moment of connection destabilized the timeline. Because Loki’s self-loathing is a deep root of his villainy, and the sacred timeline needs Loki to be a villain, two versions of Loki feeling self-worth, at the same time and place, created a HUGE nexus event. Loki even says it himself in the first episode: he doesn’t enjoy hurting people, he does it because (he feels) he has to, in a desperate play for control. He lashes out and hurts people because he thinks it’s the only way for him to have some control over things.

What Loki starts to speak to Sylvie at the end, he says, “This is new for me,” and references the nexus event on Lamentis. We never get to hear what it is that’s new for him. The episode sets it up to make us think that Loki’s about to tell Sylvie that he’s in love with her. But I think (or hope) that he was about to say something more along the lines of how the time he spent getting to know Sylvie on Lamentis helped him learn to care about himself and see his own self worth. That’s certainly a new feeling for him, since Loki seems to have always been an outsider and been looked down upon. And actually saying out loud that he’s starting to gain a sense of self worth would definitely be new for him. Loki knows that he and Sylvie will figure this out because he’s figured out the nexus event on Lamentis- that when they accept themselves and their own self worth, they can do pretty much anything.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that we never actually hear from Loki himself that he’s in love with Sylvie. We only hear it from Mobius, who’s feeling pretty betrayed by Loki and uses the entire concept to write Loki off as a huge narcissist. That way, he won’t feel as bad about Loki betraying him, or about sticking Loki in a time loop jail. Not that Loki would be the type to shout any romantic feelings to the world, especially in this situation, but the way he kept denying it didn’t seem like it was something he had to lie about.

This episode also called Loki a narcissist a lot; I assume to set up the “reveal” of his feelings for Sylvie and explain why he would fall in love with an alternate version of himself. But while Loki is many things and sure has a lot of issues, I do NOT think narcissism is one of them. When the time loops really start to get to him, he says to Sif: “I crave attention, because I’m a narcissist. And I suppose it’s because I’m scared of being alone.” But that second sentence completely contradicts the whole idea of narcissism! According to a quick google, the definition of “narcissist” is “a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves.” But Loki is the exact opposite. He has such a low opinion of himself that he acts out to get attention, because he’s so used to being overshadowed, overlooked and alone that he’s afraid that if he doesn’t do things for attention then nobody will give him any. He can be arrogant, yes, but even a lot of that stems from well-earned confidence. Loki is very talented magically and is used to being the smartest person in the room. He knows what he’s good at. But he sure isn’t attention-seeking just for its own sake. Any narcissism he’s displayed, he’s done since becoming a “villain” in Thor, and it’s actually been a mask to cover up his massive inferiority complex.

I also think it’s definitely worth mentioning that when Loki calls himself a narcissist, he’s repeating what Mobius said to him earlier. Loki clearly does care about Mobius and his opinion of him and feels bad about how things have fallen out with him. He’s also been through the time loop dozens of times now, and there’s a reason the TVA picked that memory. Because what Sif says to Loki really reflects his deepest fear. He doesn’t want to be alone, but he has such little love for himself that he might very well think he deserves to be. Loki’s emotionally exhausted at that point and just wants things to stop.

Okay. I think that covered most of my character analysis of the episode. I have some theories about Sylvie and the Time Keepers/TVA, etc, but they won’t be anywhere near as long as THAT^ was.

To start at the beginning of the episode: Sylvie’s backstory is SO SAD. I want to hug her. She spent almost her entire life on the run, growing up and living in apocalypses so the TVA wouldn’t catch her again. She didn’t deserve any of that and I’m so upset on her behalf.

Especially because as I said in another post, I think that the reason Sylvie got taken by the TVA was because she was never going to be a villain. Sylvie was kind and wanted to be heroic in the clip we see of her as a child, and she knew she was adopted. She was never going to be the Loki the TVA needed her to be for the Sacred Timeline because nothing would have ever pushed her to do what our Loki did.

The scene with Sylvie and B-15 was so good. Sylvie was kind to B-15, because her natural instinct is to be kind, and I have so many feelings about that. I love Sylvie. And then B-15 coming to the rescue to uncollar Sylvie and Loki and give Sylvie her sword was EPIC. She’s so cool.

Small aside, I got emotional seeing Asgard again in Sylvie’s flashback. I miss Asgard. :(

Also, if a kid can escape the TVA just by biting the agent holding her, the TVA have really got to step up their game. That’s kind of pathetic. Good for Sylvie though, that was very clever of her. The most juvenile yet effective tactic.

The Time Keepers being fake robots was an excellent twist, and one that I kind of saw coming as soon as they didn’t show Ravonna’s conversation with them earlier in the episode. It immediately made me feel like there were no Time Keepers at all. (And I was wondering if the no-robots rule from episode 1 would be plot relevant! I wonder if it has anything to do with the Time Keepers actually being robots?) It was also really clear that Ravonna was lying about what happened to C-20. As of now I think that Ravonna might actually be the real power behind the TVA. Or possibly a designated lieutenant to the real power behind the TVA:

When I was looking up interviews about Loki/Sylvie in this episode, I stumbled across an article about Ravonna’s comic counterpart and started kicking myself so hard for not recognizing her. In comics, Ravonna Renslayer is Kang the Conqueror’s wife. (Now, in my defense, my previous exposure to Ravonna was in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, in which she spends most of her screentime in a coma.) For anyone who doesn’t know, Kang the Conqueror is a time traveling classic Avengers villain. His whole thing is that he time travels, and wants to take over all of time. So it’s possible that Ravonna runs the TVA to benefit Kang somehow (maybe because Kang needs a certain sequence of events to assure a future victory over the Avengers?) or even does it on his orders. Kang the Conqueror is also set to be in Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania. (Aka Antman 3.)

(I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Kang the Conqueror also happens to be the reason the Young Avengers form. The very first member, Iron Lad aka Nate Richards, is a teenage Kang who meets his future self and decides he doesn’t want to be evil, so he travels back in time to get the help of Kang’s nemeses, the Avengers. However, he lands when the Avengers have disbanded and winds up putting together a team of Avengers-affiliated teenagers instead. The team gets bigger over time and a later version of it notably includes Kid Loki. I’m not going to go off on a Young Avengers tangent here but I LOVE the Young Avengers, please read Young Avengers volume 1 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung and all of its associated tie-ins. It’s fantastic. Unfortunately Kid Loki is only in volume 2, which gets a very solid “no thank you” from me but ymmv. Imo if you want Loki, read Agent of Asgard instead; I keep bringing it up for a reason and that’s because it’s amazing. Kid Loki is also in Journey into Mystery prior to his appearance in Young Avengers, and I haven’t read that yet but it looks very good.)

I’m VERY curious as to what the deal is behind the TVA. This could go a lot of different ways but they all seem exciting.

This show is definitely gearing up for a finale in which the TVA no longer exists or at least no longer decides everyone’s fates, which is exactly what I predicted back in episode 1.

Final thoughts on the episode: I was just wondering after Mobius was pruned if maybe the pruning sticks are actually teleporters of some kind, instead of time tasers, and then we got THAT CREDITS SCENE. I am so confused but also VERY EXCITED. I almost screamed when I saw Kid Loki. MY CHILD. I just had this thought but oh, I would kill for a Thori reference. Best murder dog. Classic Loki’s costume looks so terrible, it’s absolutely on purpose, and I love it.

THIS SHOW HAD BETTER END WITH MOBIUS GETTING A JETSKI. AND BOTH SYLVIE AND LOKI HAPPY.

I’ve been wondering since the show was announced if this show would somehow end with a version of the comics Kid Loki + AoA Loki storyline, where this Loki gets reborn into the main MCU as Kid/Teen Loki so he can join the Young Avengers, and I still don’t know how I feel about that, but with how things are going I can still see it happening.

LET EVERYONE WE LOVE BE HAPPY AT THE END MARVEL.

#long post #loki spoilers #loki 1x04 #loki series #a rare text post appears #loki #sylvie #mobius #tva #ravonna renslayer #kang the conqueror #meta #my stuff

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everlastingfable · 4 years ago

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a jumbled mess of my thoughts about voltron

This’ll probably be the messiest post you’ll ever read. I’m done trying to finish this and edit it into something coherent, so I’m just combining the 3 drafts I have written out into one massive post. I doubt anyone will read this whole thing, but each draft is a sort of rewrite of the last, so there’s a lot of overlap. But there’s also a lot of new thoughts too as I kept thinking about this. There’s also a lot of unfinished thoughts.

There’s mostly negativity in this btw. This fandom had/has an amazing ability in making you think that this show was utter garbage. on par with riv//erdale or s//pn, but it really wasn’t. Like many shows they had weak points, it was never perfect, but it’s much better than we’re told to remember it as.

Intro from Draft 3 because I liked the way I started it:

This is all of my thoughts about Voltron, the show itself and the fandom. I have tried to write this post out for over a year or two now, so it was originally intended to be my final thoughts about the show. Obviously, it’s evolved since then into whatever this is. There may be some things that I’ll be wrong about, because I’m not about to dig through hundreds of discourse posts and old interview videos to prove a point that I doubt anyone’s gonna care about. This will 100% be based on my thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

That said, I don’t even know how to begin to describe how much I love this show. I’m probably one of the few people who have no regrets about enjoying this show as much as I do. I’d wholeheartedly recommend watching it, because it’s genuinely a good show. Voltron did the unimaginable for me. I don’t usually enjoy sci-fi stories. I especially don’t enjoy mecha stories. Yet somehow, Voltron combined the two and made a show that I loved so much I can’t stop thinking about it even though it ended over 2 years ago.

Draft 1: thoughts about a year after it ended without rewatching any seasons since it ended

It’s been about a year since voltron ended. I never wrote my thoughts about s8/the show then so here it is now. Because I decided to wait a year I honestly don’t remember a lot of specifics. But I still have a lot to say about it. This is very long and is basically everything I have to say about this show. I love voltron. It’s been an important part of my life during college. 90% of all papers I wrote were about voltron. But as much as I love it, I won’t deny that it fell apart at the end.

Note: I tried to categorize these thoughts so I don’t get off topic and can talk about everything fully. But because they overlap so much there’s definitely some minor repeats when I connect two parts but decided to hold off talking about it all the way until the right section.

PRODUCTION

This is something I’ve expressed concern over while it was airing, but in a span of 2 and a half years, they premiered 78 episodes. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that production for s3 started after s1 premiered. There’s a lot of really good voltron review videos out there that aren’t just “oh I’m so cool I hate voltron” but there was one that talked about how the production was a mess and the writers couldn’t make up their mind for the endgame ship. And while that doesn’t sound like an important issue, it really does show when it comes to how characters are written together and (I think) the fandom war.

Summarizing what that video said because I don’t remember who made it, the writers/producers never made up their mind on which ship was supposed to be endgame (klance, sheith, allurance, kallura). And this really does show in the show itself. I don’t like klance. I especially hate it because of my experience with the fandom, but I won’t deny that they were sometimes written romantically. The same goes for sheith. And that’s the problem.

I don’t think the world building parts of the show was fully developed either. Shiro was supposed to be a teen like everyone else but then he was an adult. His and keith’s relationship was honestly vague for a good while. I don’t think anyone really knew how each characters’ relationships with each other was supposed to progress. Was allurance always supposed to be endgame? Because they didn’t really interact that much until like season 6, and then it was kinda sudden from what I remember. There was very little, if at all, parts where we were shown oh allura might like lance romantically. Keith’s relationship with the main cast didn’t exist for like 3 seasons. It was messy.

Speaking of which, keith disappeared for a good portion of the show. I assume it’s because steven yeun was busy. Which is fine but then I think about how quickly voltron came and went, I wonder why they couldn’t slow down a bit so they could still have steven voice keith during those episodes. Maybe it’s because of how much I love keith, but he honestly felt like a central character to me.

If I think about teen titans, for example, this show also had 5 main characters. Sometimes certain characters would get a spotlight for a season, but all-in-all they were fairly equally represented. It didn’t feel like robin was the main character. But that’s how I feel about voltron. Keith, and shiro to an extent are the main characters. A good portion of the plot relies on them. Shiro got kidnapped, keith leads them to the blue lion. Shiro is the leader with keith has his right-hand man and they mostly interact with each other. So when shiro “dies” and keith takes over, it starts to feel like keith is now the main character. Now he’s the leader and the arc is about him growing into becoming the black paladin and stopping lotor, who is his main enemy. But then he disappears.

Again this is most likely because of my bias towards keith, but the episodes after that felt lackluster. Lance didn’t really get his character growth to become a good second-in-command. Because that development was supposed to be based around keith. :P. A big part of lance’s growth is to learn to stop needing to feel that he’s better than keith. And him accepting keith as the black paladin was a huge part of it. But with shiro as the leader again lance loses that development. Keith’s not in the picture anymore, and the person in-charge was already in a leadership position and has nothing to learn by being there.

Before I go way too deep into my thoughts about the plot/characterization, I do want to mention the animation. The fighting scenes are amazing and one of the most beautiful 2d animation I’ve seen. That is, when it is actually animated and not just the camera panning on a still image. Here’s where my biggest concern over the time comes in. 2 years is absolutely not enough time to animate that many episodes. I was genuinely worried for the animation company because it could not have been a good experience. And yes, we got more episodes sooner, the quality definitely dropped and it’s a real shame. Who knows when we’ll get another american cartoon in this style. I love this animation style but it takes time and a lot of skills to do, so not that many companies do it. I honestly wished they took their time with the show not just to get more time to animate, but also to flesh out some of the plot.

PLOT

As hunk said in one episode, they don’t linger on dramatic events that just happened. This show is very fast paced, and that’s not a bad thing. But they never took the time they needed to really feel the weight of everything that happens. Keith’s galra heritage reveal was basically swept under the rug. So was the shiro clone, lotor’s death, zarkon’s death, naxzela, and so many more. In general, that was a big problem with how the episodes went. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of fanfics covering those topics, they were really swept under the rug. It honestly kinda felt like the writers didn’t know what to do with the aftermath of their reveals. But some of these were pretty essential to the plot of the story.

Keith’s part galra! So he doesn’t look it but there had to be obstacles with voltron forming the coalition. He’s part of the race that caused this war. I honestly think we should’ve seen that reveal become part of the plot, or what was the point of it? They could’ve just as easily wrote keith to be a regular human just like everyone else. Taking the time to add that part of his character needs to have some significance in the story. And yeah, they had krolia appear but she wasn’t really a significant character except to kinda magically fix keith’s problems. In general it felt like they forgot parts that they were foreshadowing with keith. Why could he turn purple sometimes? Did that quintessence he was hit with fix him or help him hide the galra parts? Why does he look so human? What is up with him having that quintessence sensitivity? I’m all for shows ending with some questions unanswered because sometimes it’s impossible to answer it all and let it feel natural, but this just felt like they forgot or decided it’s too much of a hassle and just ignored it.

Okay going into more specifics now, s8 was kinda meh. It especially felt bad because it came out the same day as spiderverse which had a very similar villain motivation, but objectively done better. I think honerva’s motivation came out of nowhere. We see in the flashback episode that she was so intent on getting knowledge that it literally destroyed daibazaal. So, it was established that her motivation is knowledge. Even though she lost her memory and regained it, as haggar she was still very focused on quintessence. We know she was gathering a lot of it, and maybe they said it and I forgot, but we never knew why. Family wasn’t really shown as a motivation for her. Even with lotor it didn’t seem like she wanted to be a family again, but instead was using him for her own unknown motivations. Anyways, the season felt awkward. And the new dynamic they had really needed more time. The last season should’ve expanded to be at least 2 more. It would’ve fit a lot better imo. S1-2 would have zarkon as the main villain, s3-6 would have lotor, and s7-8 would have haggar, who was also the puppeteer throughout the entire show. But she didn’t appear for s7 and her motivations didn’t really make sense in s8 so it evidently felt rushed. There were also so many major characters in s8 we needed more time to see them interact.

So the ending with allura becoming constellations. Gonna be honest that whole last part had me confused. Especially with the fact that I barely remember what happened, why are the old paladins like trapped in the lions? I could excuse the other 4 but zarkon? Especially a zarkon that’s not corrupted? It was weird and didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and that’s all I’ll say about that. I don’t even want to try to suggest an alternative because I think that whole last half of the season is so messy it can’t be fixed. But it was so obviously pandering to the fandom it hurt. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted lance to be altean in response to keith’s galra heritage. The shiro/curtis kiss was very “look see he is gay and not just because we said so” while nice, was very weak (why wasn’t keith in the shot?).

Despite my complaints, I remember liking s8. I really liked the addition of the atlas, even though it didn’t feel like we were watching voltron anymore sometimes. S7 had to be one of my favorite episodes since s2. Not to say that s7 is better or worse, but I really like it because it felt like a genre shift. I usually don’t like space sci-fi or mecha stories. Voltron somehow managed to combine the two and make me love it. S7 did not feel like either of those. First, a good half of it took place on earth. And I believe two episodes didn’t even have the main cast, and when team voltron finally made it to earth, voltron wasn’t even there until the final battle. I genuinely loved it. I think it was a very well done invasion/apocalyptic story that doesn’t get told in animation that often. But if I think about s7 with the rest of the show, it was awful. It broke up the tone the show usually had and it was a very different way of storytelling that voltron didn’t have before. It wasn’t a space sci-fi mecha story, it was an apocalyptic action story. Voltron was so unimportant they sat on a moon for episodes. It stopped becoming voltron and started becoming a spin-off.

I do have to add that I absolutely loved the color themes in s7. We already had purple for the galra, but in s7 it was very obvious that alteans are themed blue and earth is themed with orange. I loved it so much and it was great. I do like that they gave shiro something to do. Honestly not killing him off in s2 made him an awkward character afterwards. But I didn’t like that they brought back sendak. There was no explanation for it and it wasn’t good imo. He didn’t really do anything besides conquer earth then die. Haggar was also absent the entire season which definitely didn’t help her storyline in s8 because we didn’t know what she was doing the entire time except abandoning everyone who was loyal to her.

I’m usually not a fan of time skips, it has the tendency to gloss over character development or create glossed over recap. Honestly I wish voltron spent more time over the blade of marmora massacre or just the bom in general. They received no rest. Literally everyone part of that group died except for kolivan. Speaking of that episode, there was no explanation for how keith was able to know where macidus was about to appear and that honestly bugs me. There’s so much about keith we don’t know. He has so many abilities we were just never told.

Again a lot of problems within team voltron is that there was never any follow up on things that happened, like keith leaving the team. He becomes the black paladin and no one bats an eye. Lance did make one comment about keith leaving but then it wasn’t ever mentioned again. I get that the writers/producers wanted the dynamic the original had, but they didn’t take the time to work up to it. Keith wasn’t a natural leader, but he suddenly is because he spent 2 years on a space whale with his mom and a space wolf. Like I mentioned earlier, voltron feels like keith is the main character but then they dropped him for a few episodes, realized that he’s important and added him back in while saying “oh he went through a time skip so he grew into the role he needs to be in now”. It feels like a cheap pay off.

I’d like to specifically talk about my thoughts on each season and work back but honestly I don’t think I can remember s3-6 separately. So they’re being chunked together.

Lotor had the potential to be a really great villain. But he had to be foiled with keith. They have a lot of similarities that I think could’ve really played off well together. Lotor isn’t really allowed to have a leadership position. Yeah he was technically in charge while zarkon was recovering, but haggar didn’t really allow him full control. But, he was a great leader. He knew how to read his enemies and form an alliance. Meanwhile, keith had a leadership position thrusted to him, and frankly he wasn’t a good leader. He tends to keep to himself so he never really has to make decisions with a team. It could’ve been great, but shiro had to still be in the story. I’m honestly conflicted about this because on the one hand, I think it really ruined character developments for the main cast, but then I loved the clone shiro plot line. I think keeping shiro prevented keith from growing. He was able to remain dependent on shiro instead of actually bonding with the rest of the paladins. And of course he had to just go awol. Also, lance didn’t really get to have as prominent of a role as I think he could’ve had with keith.

These seasons are also when the lions stopped being sentient robots that specifically choose their paladins to just really cool spaceships. We don’t get that level of bonding that was so prominent in s1 and 2. That’s also something I’m conflicted with. I think the lion swap was a great way for character developments, but it also removed a lot of it. It kinda made the bonding feel useless. The swap also changed the dynamic of the group. Instead of shiro and allura being co-leaders, and everyone else feeling like they’re on equal footing, it felt like Keith was the leader with lance being a needed right-hand man. Hunk and pidge were off doing their thing and allura was a leader but also not. Maybe if they had spent more time working with this dynamic it would’ve felt better. But they didn’t and it didn’t. Voltron also implied that allura was the only one that could control the castle ship, but then she goes to become a paladin and who’s driving the ship?

I do wish we could’ve gotten more about the altean colony and the reveal about lotor’s plans, but that got overshadowed and forgotten by the clone shiro reveal. Maybe I just missed it, but I wasn’t sure what the galra empire and lotor were collecting quintessence for. Was it just to make mechs to rival voltron? Lotor’s death was also very unclear.

The coalition was a much needed thing, but I think very badly executed. They were gathering people from malls. These people are regular civilians who probably don’t know how to fight or fly a ship. I thought it was really weird that they were just getting regular people (aliens?) to sign up like they’re applying to be part of the army. But we never see them maybe join the rebel force matt is part of to learn how exactly to help. I think about avatar and how they also had a rag tag group of people to fight against the fire nation, but these weren’t just regular people living in a village. They were either warriors or very skilled benders. The voltron coalition was just regular people. That genuinely annoyed me because the voltron show just felt like those army propaganda ads, but exciting. Not to mention it was a very hard to watch episode.

It was definitely making fun of how the fandom complains about how characters are getting reduced to a certain characteristic. But it wasn’t done in an entertaining way like the ember island players episode from atla because some of those were legit complaints (like hunk being the fat/food guy) and that stuff wasn’t resolved. Like the ember island players made fun of sokka constantly talking about meat or katara crying all the time, but the show made it very clear beforehand that these characters are much more than that. Is hunk really more than the food guy? As far as the show mentions, the only things he’s done was make the machine to help find the blue lion, and help save the balmera. All of which was in season 1. After that hunk honestly took the backseat in voltron.

I mentioned earlier, but the time skip on the space whale felt like we were cheated out of keith’s character development. I mean we got development, but we didn’t get to see it. The vlog short showed that keith believes a lot of his problems stems from not having a mom (and a dad) in his life. But instead of seeing keith learning to trust and open up to people despite having so many people in his life leaving him, we get a cute montage of him with his mom. As if it makes sense that two years with his mom would fix everything. (side note, I know a lot of people were saying how obvious it was that krolia was keith’s mom, I genuinely did not know until she said so at the end of that episode).

I’m not gonna talk about my thoughts on s1 and 2 because I’m pretty sure I live blogged those and honestly I don’t think I remember it.

CHARACTERS

Now I’m finally talking about the characters and I’m starting off with keith as if I haven’t talked about him enough already. I love keith. He’s undeniably one of my (if not the) favorite characters ever. And he’s obviously a fandom favorite if we’re considering the two biggest ships in the fandom. Or maybe he really is just the secret main character of voltron. We know so much about him, for someone who loves keith, it’s great. We basically know his entire backstory, and yet we know no one else’s (except maybe lotor but even that’s iffy).

I never rewatched a single voltron episode since it ended, and I can’t watch any of the connected shows (meaning shows that have the same ppl that worked on it or the same fans, think dragon prince and she-ra) because the fandom was the absolute worst one I’ve ever been in and parts legit trigger me. I am fascinated with fandoms. I love it. I chose my major because it was the closest I could get to just learning about them 24/7. But the voltron fandom was so incredibly toxic and over two ships? Honestly the fandom itself was a major reason why I couldn’t get super invested in the later seasons. I get afraid when it seems like a certain ship might happen. I actually hoped that certain characters just didn’t interact. (I’m not gonna get much deeper in this because I don’t want to touch this topic with a ten-foot pole, at least not now) Aside from that, I think that the plot and characterizations for voltron got really messy post s2. The lion switch was never handled well imo, and post switch the lions lost that sentient personality that was established in the first two seasons. It also didn’t make sense aside from the writers wanted everyone in the original lions. Or at least, we never got the proper character developments into those roles. Keith left right after becoming the black paladin.

I think another major problem with the show is how some decisions felt like pandering. I remember hearing that they didn’t kill off shiro because he was a fan favorite, so he had to stay for marketing and to make more money. But then keeping shiro alive would’ve derailed the original plot idea. I wish I could see how the story would’ve played out with shiro staying dead.

Draft 2: rewatched the show then started writing this

So I wrote a draft of this like a year ago, realized I don’t remember the show much, so I rewatched the whole show and started rewriting my thoughts.

Pre-rewatch thoughts: It was a good show that was poorly executed

Mid-rewatch thoughts: it’s a really good show that just has some weak points (the second half of lotor’s arc, team voltron’s importance in season 4-6 it feels like a lot of filler episodes until keith shows up again)

End-rewatch thoughts: it's actually a really good show. It has some weak points and some really strong points. Season 8 was confusing though. I went through most of it going yeah okay I guess that can happen.

Final verdict: it's a genuinely good show

What went wrong

It ended on its weakest season, which was also the most abstract and different season. While the main antagonist changed throughout the seasons, it still continued to be the galra empire. Even when lotor joined, the team was still fighting fractions of the galra empire. Meanwhile, season 8 didn’t have any conflict with the galra. The antagonists were honerva and the alteans, who are very different types of villains compared to the galra. There was also little build up to that change. Sure, we got to experience that briefly in season 3 when they went to the alternate reality, but I don’t think that was built up well. Also, the protagonists and the audience are just not prepared. We don’t know how the alteans work like the extent of their abilities, but we were given dozens of episodes to learn about the galra. As a result season 8 just wound up with me feeling confused and thinking “uhh sure I guess they can do that, that makes sense maybe?”

It could not pick who its protagonist is. Yeah the five humans plus allura (and coran?) are the main characters but most shows with multiple major characters still focus one one character as the protagonist. Like atla has aang, adventure time has finn, umbrella academy has five. Voltron just never picks someone and the group constantly changes too, so you end up having to not focus on any character for the sake of time. Of course not all shows do that. Teen Titans had each season focus on a particular member of the team, and tbh I was wondering if that was what they were planning for the show, especially when season 2 was so Keith focused but guess not.

It feels like they did not have the time to fully flesh out the story. Voltron came and went so incredibly fast. They had 8 seasons (technically 6 if you group up the halved seasons). But also the show only lasted 2 years. It honestly horrifies me to think of the time crunch everyone on the team was going through, especially the animators. You can see the drop in quality as there were very few scenes that involved actual animation for the middle bulk of the show. So then, how much time did they have to develop the story, in addition to execs telling them what they can and can’t do. There’s so many arcs that seemed to start then get forgotten, and I don’t blame the writers for that at all. Although I wish we could’ve learned more about Lance and the Altean sword and Keith with his apparent quintessence sensitivity, they probably just didn’t have the time to plot those out.

It had too much outside influence. Such as, the writers wanting to kill off shiro, but then being forced to keep him on the show because the execs said to. And honestly, the fandom. For example, the whole last episode with Lance getting the Altean marks (an obvious omage to ppl wanting Altean Lance).

What went right

There’s a reason why the show became so popular (aside from being a reboot of a popular 80′s show) and it’s because of the characters. I’m not about the whole “we become attached to characters because the writers did them wrong but we fans can see the potential and that’s why fan works are better” bs that I see going around this site all the time. The first season particularly wrote these characters so well. They’re relatable but also intriguing enough for you to care about what’s going to happen to them.

Some thoughts regarding popular fandom discussions:

It’s a plot-driven show with character-focused fans

I like to think of there being two ways to tell a story: by being character-focused or plot-driven. Plot driven shows are ones like atla, young justice, legend of korra, etc. There’s a conflict that gets introduced and the story revolves around that conflict. Character-focused shows are ones like adventure time or we bare bears, they’re less concerned about a plot line and focus more on the characters interacting with their world. Of course all stories incorporate both parts, just some focus more on one than the other. So, here’s where I think a lot of the issues about voltron and the fandom comes from. Voltron is a very obviously plot-driven show but the fandom is very character-focused. I won’t deny I loved the episodes about keith. Season 4 and 5 were hard for me to watch because I missed my boy. But that’s where the arguments come from. People get upset that their fav isn’t in the spotlight

It didn’t queerbait

I understand watching a show for representation, I really do, but voltron is not that show and that's okay. Not every show has to be revolutionary in its representation of marginalized people. I won't pretend to know the harmful tropes for marginalized people. My consumption of media is not usually diverse. But I will stand by my stance that a large part of voltron's later seasons is about the casualties of war. So of course a lot of people died. I also firmly believe that the producers had a much easier time adding diversity to their own created characters than the main voltron characters, because of rights and all that complicated nonsense. So as a result the ones who were more expendable and could die were also the same characters that they could add diversity too.

I’m gonna add the definition of queerbait here so we’re all on the same page: Queerbait is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ representation.

But here’s the thing. We were told at comic-con or one of those cons that Shiro is gay, and he had a boyfriend. They actually gave us that. Yeah it wasn’t as explicit as She-ra got, but that’s another point for later. There was no lying about it. Shiro is canonically gay, and his boyfriend was Adam. If anything, this whole thing came out of wanting Keith in a relationship with Shiro or Lance. Yes. I will admit, there are plenty of scenes between Keith and Lance, and Keith and Shiro that can be read as romantic. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but did any of the cast members tease the possibility of Kl//ance or Sh//eith (VAs don’t count, sorry but they don’t really have a say in the story)? Because unless they did, and they did repeatedly, the fandom queerbaited themselves. So many people in the fandom were so certain that Keith would be in a relationship with one of them, there was basically an all out war. Even if there was a chance, did you really think the creators (who were pretty active in early fandom days) would continue that development? It was so so toxic they were forced to shut off any possibilities of that.

In regards to minority characters

Again, I'll admit vld is not the place to go for real, proper representation. Their characters tend to be characters that happen to be a part of a minority rather than a minority character. wtf does that mean? Well, you can swap (earth) races for just about any character and it wouldn't make too much of a difference in how they act. There's some lines that wouldn't work like Lance's "I'm just a boy from Cuba" but other than that there would be no significant change. Of course this goes down to preference. Would you want a minority character whose struggles reflect those in real life and as a result be defined by that aspect of themselves, or do you want a character that just happens to be a part of a minority group but whose life is not really affected by that?

Draft 3: months after the rewatch, mostly an attempt to reorganize the previous two drafts

I’m gonna start with the negatives just to get the ranting off my chest. Season 8 was bad. Yeah. No argument there. Although I wouldn’t say it was bad in the same way Game of Thrones and Supernatural was bad. Rather, it was an interesting and complex premise that didn’t have the build up it needed and honestly needed a few more passthroughs to iron out some parts. At worse, I felt it was confusing to the point where I just accepted whatever new worldbuilding thing they threw at me. The issue with Season 8 vs Seasons 1-7 is that Season 8 had a completely different villain, and a brand new cast dynamic. We got 7 seasons (65 episodes) developing the Galra as the villain. We got to learn who they are, their motives, how they operate, etc. Not only that, but they were pretty basic and easy to understand villains. They’re conquerors. They don’t have any sort of magic, they really just use brute force to attack and enslave the planets. In striking contrast, the Alteans in Season 8 weren’t conquerors. They didn’t care about controlling the universe. They also had magic abilities that our main characters don’t understand and didn’t explore. Season 8 had villains who could create illusions, mind control, and manipulate quintessence. The Alteans are leagues beyond the Galra in terms of complexities as an antagonist, but they didn’t get nearly enough time to be fully developed.

Also, Season 8 essentially doubled the cast size. So despite the fact that we have yet to see much of Keith-as-the-black-paladin Voltron group dynamic, now that screentime is being balanced with the MFE pilots and other Garrison characters. Essentially, there were too many characters, and too little time to flesh out the ideas of this season. A side note, Haggar’s (Honerva?) motivations were lame. I think it would’ve been much more interesting if her plans were just to continue the research she did 10,000 years ago with the rift. That would’ve also brought back the rift monsters which we never got an answer for. What even are they? Instead, her goal to have a family again is really weak. Even in the flashbacks she never showed any care for the more familial aspects of her life. It didn’t make sense for that to be her drive. It also didn’t help that Season 8 came out on like the same day as Spiderverse and the antagonists for both had the same goal, but Spiderverse did an immensely better job.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Keith giving the speech to the rest of the Galra. He is not the right character to give that speech. Sure he’s Galra, but he didn’t even know for most of his life. For him to say “we” like he’s also a citizen of the Galra empire feels so weird. He never grew up with the Empire’s influence, and we never saw him experiencing Galra culture with the Blade. He learned about the Galra as an outsider, and despite the fact that he’s part Galra (he doesn’t even remotely look Galra), I don’t think that gives him the authority to say a speech like that. The speech is similar to Zuko’s at the end of ATLA, and that makes me feel like it would’ve been a lot better had Lotor said it. I think even Kolivan would’ve been a better fit than Keith.

The more I’m writing about Season 8, the more I’m remembering just how messy and confusing it was. Additionally, the last bit of Season 8 was so obviously pandering to the fandom it gives me second-hand embarrassment. Lance getting those marks was so obviously referencing when people wanted Lance to be Altean in response to Keith's galra heritage. The Shiro getting married was just to make it more obvious that he’s gay, but had no build up. (There were definitely more but I didn’t write myself a list and I’m not rewatching that season)

Second, “Voltron queerbaited”. [this was posted before here]

Speaking of which, Voltron premiered summer of 2016 and ended in winter of 2018. That’s about 2 and a half years where they aired 78 episodes. That’s stupid fast, especially for an animated series. I’m constantly worried about what the people working on that show had to endure. For sure, Season 3 with Shiro coming back wasn’t written until at least Season 1. I recalled the execs demanding that Shiro not be dead since he was a popular character. It’s honestly concerning how little time they had to work on the show, and it unfortunately showed. In the later seasons, a lot of the shots were just still frames that moved across the scene. And the plot line with Lotor could’ve used some work. Although, I think Shiro being forced in there was also a reason for it being so shaky.

I honestly hate Seasons 4 & 5. I cannot tell you what happened because my brain keeps erasing it. Obviously, the lack of Keith had a huge impact on my opinion of those seasons, but it also felt like a whole lot of filler episodes, and not the fun ones with character development. With Keith mostly out of the picture, and Lance becoming the right hand of Voltron, that should’ve been a great time to develop Lance to become a second-in-command. To have him go through an arc where he overcomes his insecurities. It would’ve also been an amazing time to develop his and Shiro’s relationship. But we didn’t get any of that.

I genuinely believe Keith was supposed to stay the black paladin and Shiro wasn’t supposed to come back. Keith would be an amazing foil to Lotor. They’re both half-Galra. They’ve both been given a new leadership role that they don’t want. The middle arc always felt so weak to me, and as I mentioned earlier, the Allura/Lotor interactions were awkward. It feels shoehorned in because someone has to interact with Lotor and I guess the writers decided Allura was the best option?

Season 3-6 felt like the epitome of what happens when showrunners are forced to do whatever the execs say and have no time to properly develop their story. I’ll forever be bitter at all the character and relationship development we lost because of that. We never got to see Keith really learn to open up to the team and start to trust others. But Keith still had to get to that point, which is why I assume they had the time jump for him. It’s so disappointing because we lost what could’ve been a great character development. It also made Keith being the Black Paladin again feel cheap. We didn’t get to see the struggle he had to be the leader Shiro saw he could be. He was just suddenly leading them and they worked like a proper team.

Voltron also had a lot of plot holes. Now, I don’t expect shows to answer every question, because it’s impossible to tie everything up and leave no questions unanswered in a natural way. But, there’s a lot of things that felt like the beginning of a plot line or honestly needed some answers. Like, Lance shifting his bayard to a sword. What was the point of that if it was never mentioned again? It felt like that was an important start to an arc for him that just got forgotten. Also, what was up with Keith’s quintessence sensitivity? How was he able to sense where that druid was. How did he know he could summon his bayard to him. I think the part that bugged me the most was that Keith was the only one who did that. Also, Keith’s eyes becoming slitted during his fight with Kuron was never addressed, and I really wish it was. It felt like such a throwaway moment that could’ve been interesting to explore more. Although I’m not too upset with that one as I think we were given enough to piece together a reason for it.

#have fun with this monstrosity of a post #over 7k words #personal #my thoughts about #frxstguardian #kingofthewilderwest #honestly the only two people this post was intended for #I give up!!

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smartzelda · 4 years ago

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Okay, so now that that's out of the way, here are all my thoughts on the khmom

So starting out, I know some were hoping this was the big Kairi game, and I'm sad it didn't live up to my hopes in that regard, but we also have to remember that Nomura said in interview before it came out not to expect too much, and then we learned that the story mode is an average of 10 hours.

As a fandom we need to remember that KHMoM was never advertised as "the big Kairi game", so while you can be sad that the game didn't live up to your hopes and dreams, Nomura did not "basically" tell us we were gonna get a big Kairi game and then let us down. With all due respect, this game is only a "Kairi game" in the sense that she's on the front cover and the story cutscenes at the end show her side of searching for Sora. Even the advertisements and interviews about this game were mostly focused on the rhythm game aspect, so besides cutscenes, the only talk about Kairi was the change from Chirithy to her doing narration

Now let's continue on keeping in mind that this is all my opinion and analysis, and there are various opinions out there.

Let's start with Kairi, since most of this game is about her. I haven't played the game myself yet (I watched cutscenes for now), but although it's sad Kairi herself wasn't part of any teams (which honestly makes sense since she wasn't a main character focused on in any of the games as much as those chosen for teams. KH1, CoM, and KH2 really were Sora, Donald, and Goofy, Days really was our sea salt trio, wayfinder trio was obviously the main protagonists for BBS, and even though Sora was in DDD, Sora is already on a team and Riku got a bigger charactsr focus in that game, so why not include the dream eater pals. And then honestly kh3 was Donald and Goofy and Sora again), at least we get her in the end. And her getting a small playable section at the end honestly makes sense considering the cutscene portion is the part of the game about her/following her/focuses on her, and she's been getting better as a keyblade wielder.

Now, this section shows us the pink flower thing from remind, and I'm even more convinced that it isn't her heart. For one, in remind, it was used in kh2 fashion, like an object to create a pathway to the next world or in this case Kairi herself. Then, in this game, while she's sleeping and in the final world, she finds it and it breaks apart. If it was Kairi's heart, would it make sense for it to break apart inside of her and not have an affect on her or her body? And what convinces me more is that after you collect all these pieces of the flower with Kairi, she clutches her head and has a memory moment.

What is the pink flower thing, then, you wonder? Well tbh I wonder too, but I had a thought. It's not essential enough to her state of being to be her heart, but it's definitely a part of her or a representation of part of her. My thought is that it could be a semi-physical representation of her memories or a physical metaphor of her state of being at the time it shows up. For example, in remind, it could have been scattered pices of her memory, because we remember that in kh3 they learned that a person (like Roxas, Xion, etc) couldn't completely come back or wake up from wherever their hearts were until their memories were returned to them too. So if the flower is representative of her memory, it then would make sense why it needed to be gathered, why it made Sora feel Kairi, and why it can also act as an object related to Kairi that can pave a path to her. It could also be a metaphor for her state of being at the same time since just like the flower, Kairi's body is shattered. This also makes sense for KHMoM, because if it's partly a metaphor representation of Kairi's state of being, then her "state of being" in this case refers to her repressed childhood memories and the links in those chains of memories that have broken apart. And so if the flower is representative of her memories, it would make sense that when she gathered all the pieces she remembered these memories because it brought these repressed memories to light and essentially pieced them back together when she gathered the heart pieces. If not because the flower has to do with her memories, at least in this case, why else would she remember repressed memories after gathering the flower pieces?

Continuing on from here, when Kairi holds her head and begins to remember, we get this interesting turn of the camera that flips Kairi and her reflection in the water before transitioning to the memories. I don't know much about camera techniques, but it definitely symbolizes or means something.

So we get the memory of Apprentice Terranort taking young Kairi (I honestly laughed when it showed him reaching for her just because of that "gimme your phone" meme) and it transitions to showing the scene with Kairi in one of the pods. This scene tells us a few things. For one, somehow, Apprentice Terranort knows about "unreality" or what's essentially a parallel universe to the KH universe, you can somehow get there with a strong enough connection to it (like using someone who's from there like Riku did or your heart resonating in some way with someone there. For example, if Kairi's poh heart resonated with a keyblade wielder from the alternate universe instead of Riku on Destiny Islands). It also may tell us that it's possible that Apprentice Xehanort knew the stuff we learned in the kh3 ending with the Luxu reveal would come to pass. Obviously Xehanort knew by doing what he did with Kairi that he would cause Sora's disappearance, but since we know (from Dark Road I think?) that the ancient wielders went to another world and all that, we know the stuff with Kairi was his final plan, and we know Xehanort got his peaceful death, I don't think Xehanorts final plan with Kairi was a ploy for him to do more summon kingdom hearts or a petty go at removing Sora since he might win. More than likely this "final plan" has to do with preventing a possible future and setting things up accordingly. Apprentice Terranort told 4 yr old Kairi her mission as if it's success would affect the future of the universe. And on one hand it makes sense because they needed a keyblade wielder to defeat the heartless and restore the worlds and lock their keyholes, but what if it's double meaning is that making sure the worlds last past that is dependent on making sure "the keyblade wielder" would also be in the position to prevent a future crisis? Because I doubt Quadratum is gonna only be important for getting Sora and coming back. This place is gonna have some significance, and if preventing or battling the crisis also hinges on the Keyblade wielder going to the alternate universe as Xehanort's backup plan to balance the worlds or keep them safe, then the foretellers, Luxu, the box, and that whole thing are more connected to what's happening in the alternate universe as we would've thought. Anyways, to sorta summarize that, I think that Sora had to have ended up in the Alternate universe to give our main crew a chance of dealing with something big, and if Xehanort couldn't make a new world with the keyblade, he at least had to make sure Sora could be in the right place to make sure things happen as they should to save all the worlds.

Then we get Kairi faced with the man in a cloak who's revealed to be Xehanort. This part also honestly made me laugh because we knew it would be Xehanort, but also on behalf of those who insisted it was MoM (no offense to them btw because I get their thought process. It just kinda made me laugh). I liked this sequence in the khmom trailer (especially in og Japanese because what Kairi says there is better put), and I like it because it essentially serves as Kairi facing her fear and the one who changed her fate head on, channeling all those thoughts and feelings and letting them out. So, whether or not this Xehanort is real or fake, Kairi takes him head on.

Now the fight sequence has a variation of thoughts on it, and here are mine. For one, I spent this whole sequence being so excited because she was fighting so good and hard to the best of her ability. Second, this is memory Xehanort created from her heart, so I like the explanation that he too is influenced by her personal fears and doubts, mainly an insecurity and doubt in her own abilities. So the reason Xehanort is so easily able to catch her keyblade and dodge hits from her (the first time he grabbed it I honestly thought he would insult her and snap it like Xemnas did with Lea) is because no matter how much she wants to defeat him, deep down she doesn't believe she's strong enough, and so here leads into when she turns into Sora.

Now, to preface, if the literal explanation of this from Nomura is "Kairi isn't strong enough so Sora's sleeping heart sensed her danger and possessed her to do the boss fight for her", then I think this sequence is 1000% bad, unnecessary, and people have every right to be mad. However, my thoughts on this scene is that it also has to do with her memories and anxieties. Remember that memory Xehanort says that everything in this specific version of the final world was created by Kairi's heart. And so if her doubts are on her own strength, my thoughts are that it was these doubts and feelings of inferiority that had her become Sora (or a memory Sora more specifically) because she doesn't believe she can win or beat Xehanort with out him yet. In other words, she still felt dependent on him, so in that moment her heart responded by temporarily turning her into Sora to reaffirm her fears (like when she was losing against xehanort) and beat Xehanort for her. If this is true, then that gives some depth to Kairi's character in how she currently percieves herself as of khmom, and maybe how she believes others view her. And with Xehanort's comment, I think it may reaffirm that this Sora is a projection. Because if Sora came there through his bond to Kairi, then there's no reason Kairi would've disappeared or there's no reason why he wouldn't have talked or just something. So then, Xehanort's line about Sora being where his voice cannot reach them has a double meaning. The first is that this Sora that fights memory Xehanort does not speak (and also he's fighting like a controlled puppet without a will of it's own like, did you see his soulless face?), which affirms to him that Sora is in the alternate universe, and the second may be that he realized it's a version of him from Kairi's heart (just like he himself is), and he being there instead of the real Sora affirms that Sora's bonds in this world have broken and he couldn't have been there himself, meaning he must've been in the alternate universe (if not dead, which Xehanort knows he isn't because he knows his final plan with Kairi).

Side note, also during the earlier battle with Xehanort, Xehanort told Kairi she wouldn't find Sora in her heart and that the key to him is in memories long gone. And part of my reaction to that is that I felt validated and angry, because we've been saying that Kairi wouldn't find Sora through the search of her heart and dudebros and s/ks and the like said that we were thinking about our ship and being misogynistic in thinking Kairi wouldn't have that role, and then Xehanort himself, created from Kairi's heart said "You won't find anything here". My other reaction was to "memories long gone", and it honestly made me wonder if it meant that Kairi had some of Sora's memories in her heart that he lost and they're not there anymore, or that the key to Sora is memories of his he not only lost, but are literally missing and in someone no one can reach currently (like within Yozora or something)

So anyways, Xehanort gives Kairi a clue about how to find Sora through that line referring to the alternate universe (again it being brought up in the future for a different thing is why I think Apprentice Terranort gave his speech as a double meaning in the past), and she finally wakes up where the whole lab crew work it out

As for AtW and crew assuming the alternate universe is fictional, that may or may not be true. They worked it out by saying "The opposite of our reality is unreality or fiction", but we also know that could be referring to a parallel universe, meaning both universes could very much be real. As for Yozora telling Sora "this isn't the real world", I'm not gonna go far into it as others have, but if Sora is theoretically inside Yozora's heart, hence how he can visit him in his dream, then Sora is technically not in the real world, but the alternate universe is in the real world. And if the alternate universe is a fake world, it's not impossible, but it's still odd to me how Yozora would be self aware that the world he was born in wasn't real.

Forward from here, Riku enters, Kairi and Riku have their leads to Sora (tbh one of my hopes was that Kairi and Riku would have a real talk about the odd status of their friendship and how it's honestly not great, but maybe it'll happen in the future), and Fairy God Mother magics Kairi and Riku and herself into the final world (sorry this is a bit passive aggressive, but no, we knew that Riku wouldn't need to dream dive into Kairi's dreams to make it into the final world so they could get to Sora). FGM then starts talking about the final key, alerts the two teens about the hearts in the final world, and takes them to Nameless star. It was about this point I literally had a moment over how beautiful Kairi and Nameless star's respective voices sounded because they both sounded so pretty. This is also where they learn that shibuya in the other universe is named Quadratum (haha another square reference I see, square😂), and FGM says that you can get to the other universe with the power of waking and Nameless Star's strong dream and will. I honestly can't wait until we get to see Nameless star for real and hear her name. It's honestly so sweet that Riku wanted to make her dream come true (in like a "Riku is so nice and sweet" way, not in a shippy way) and was also willing to help her not just because she could lead him to Sora.

Then, FGM informs the crew that this is as far as she goes, and leaves the rest to Riku. This is another widely opinionated section of MoM's story, because here Kairi expresses her wishes to go and is ultimately rejected. I have seen people rant about how Riku is a misogynist and explain this scene as if Riku literally told Kairi "You're too weak", shoved her aside, and called her useless, but here's an analysis of the scene with some of my pov. That part wasn't nearly as bad as people exaggerated it to be. When Kairi expressed her wish to go, Riku literally stuttered, failing to actually say she can't. He didn't even really say anything before Kairi sighed and was like "I know". So to say Riku is misogynistic for that?😬 Also, this is a completely new universe, one where Yen Sid didn't even let Mickey Mouse follow, and as FGM said you have to have the power of waking to get there. Kairi is strong, as memory Xehanort said, but she's not to master level (or at Sora or Riku's level for that matter), not strong enough to deal with a whole new world, especially since her only real experience was being plunged into war just after some training (like Sora and Riku got this whole experience starting with dealing with low level heartless and getting used to it all, and they had been practicing and self teaching themselves how to fight since they were kids, to which Kairi did not), and she doesn't have the power of waking, so no matter how much Kairi wants to go with Riku, as he was trying to tell her and failing, it's not possible for her right now. It's like how Sora wanted so badly to join Riku and Mickey in the RoD on saving Aqua, but he hadn't regained his strength yet and didn't have the Power of Waking. Example one of the Kingdom Hearts fandom's double standards: Sora being denied access to also go to the RoD to save Aqua because he doesn't have the strength or PoW is fine, but Kairi being denied access to also go to the alternate universe with Riku for the same reasons is Misogyny🙄.

And also on Kairi's rejection to go with Riku to the alternate universe, I felt like this moment was a parallel to kh1 that showed that Kairi is beginning her character development. In kh1, Kairi insisted to go with Sora to save Riku, and Sora outright said she would be in his way so she couldn't go (idk what it says in the jp version), and after being told this, Kairi accepts her situation and resigns to wait on the islands for Sora to return with Riku. During this whole time she also makes no effort to train. However, in this moment in khmom, when Riku fails to stutter out "No", Kairi very visibly and audibly is frustrated when she says "I know". She's been here before, but it says something that her being left like this, waiting to the side, isn't something she wants anymore. She wants to go, and she's frustrated that she still can't. And I know this came off to people as "Nomura is just shafting Kairi again", but in my opinion if he wanted to toss her aside, he wouldn't have done this. He would've had her okay with Riku going by himself from the get-go and had Kairi just kind of go "well, back to training with Merlin again". Heck, if he really wasn't doing anything with her, he would have just left her while FGM and Riku met Nameless star in the Final World. But what he did was present us a Kairi that is strong, but knows she needs to be stronger. He gave us a Kairi that is visibly frustrated in knowing she can't help her best friend. And her response after accepting she can't go currently? She takes the initiative to train under Aqua (a real keyblade master), meaning that she really wants to take the steps to get stronger now, and she tells Riku that one day she'll stand by him and Sora (not just Sora). The girl has resolved to take her own path and take real responsibility for her training so she never has to stay behind again. It's showing Kairi's shift from "Sora and Riku are leaving me behind and I'm struggling to catch up so I try to make sure they come back to me or I do the bare minimum to still be around them" to "I take control of my own destiny, and I'm gonna close this gap myself, by my own efforts, not by waiting for them to do something". I'm fully aware Nomura could still shaft Kairi, but I truly feel like this little we got in khmom is the beginning of her development as a character. And I feel this way because while remind at times arguably came off as pandering to people who wanted K to do something, khmom, taking into account all the things Nomura could have done instead of what he did, felt more genuine, and actually made me hopeful and excited for her character and what she does in the future. Also, example two of the Kingdom Hearts fandom's double standards: Riku struggling to tell Kairi she can't go with him (and him not actually saying it) is considered misogynistic by this fandom, but Sora in kh1 bluntly telling Kairi she would be in his way and therefore couldn't go is "UwU he's protecting his love! So cute!"🙄

Anyways, going forward, I'm so excited to witness some actual development for Kairi amd seeing her interact with the wayfinder trio! Like training with Aqua? Yes!

Also, not to be passive-aggressive, but I know a number of S/Rs who would like an apology for being told that believing that Riku would be the one to save Sora was us reaching and being delusional and thinking Kairi wouldn't go is misogynistic🙂

Anyways, besides that, Soriku endgame actually?! Like Sorikus and Riku stans how you feeling about all this? Like, can you believe we were right when we said Riku would go save Sora? Can you believe in the same week we got confirmation Riku would be the one to go save Sora, we learned that there would be three sets of Soriku Nendoroids? Like we just keep on winning and honestly that makes me so happy. I honestly can't wait to see not only Kairi's training and possible future development, but also Riku's journey! This may have just been a bridge game, but I'm so excited!😊

#khmom #melody of memory #kingdom hearts melody of memory #khmom spoilers #melody of memory spoilers #kh spoilers #kingdom hearts spoilers #kingdom hearts melody of memory spoilers #long post #mentions of Misogyny

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