#but I love scenes of people literally backstabbing Forever | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mermaidsirennikita · 4 years ago

Note

Hello, I hope I'm not bothering you, but do you have any good "enemies to lovers" recs, may they be books or movies?

I neeeever am bothered by people asking for recommendations. Those are my favorite asks because I am nothing if not in love with my own opinions, lol

Books

Obviously, The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn, the best Bridgerton book, because I’ve been blogging about it lol. If you haven’t read it, it’s basically “rake tries to seduce the beauty of the ton, beauty’s older sister cockblocks him, he realizes that He Is Into It”

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne is a classic. Very light and fluffy contemporary, two people who’ve always hated each other begin competing for the same job and fall in love.

Kate Quinn’s Mistress of Rome series is a saga and the initial big ship of the first book (which you do have to read lol) is not enemies to lovers. However, the NEXT ship which dominates the last two books of the series (which is four books long, and tbh... I recommend the second book but it’s a prequel and can be skipped technically) is SOOOOOOO GOOD. It’s really “childhood friends to young lovers to SEVERE ENEMIES still secretly in love” and it’s literally epic lol. Essentially, the series is set in Ancient Rome and Sabina (very bitchy Roman noblewoman) and Vix (child of a former gladiator, soldier) are friends who I think lose their virginities to each other? And are in love as kids. But then she fucks him over and marries the emperor. Who he actually begins to loyally serve! But he haaaates Sabina because she.... constantly backstabs him lol. But he also looooves Sabina and gets off on everything she does. And she wants him so badly. And it is delicious. And I live for it.

Both of the Evie Dunmore books I’ve read, Bringing Down the Duke and especially A Rogue of One’s Own are very enemies to lovers. In Bringing Down the Duke it’s a bluestocking versus a duke who for political reasons is her enemy. In A Rogue of One’s Own it’s another bluestocking versus a rake who has known her basically all their lives. They have to begin working together and fall in looove.

Sarah MacLean LIVES for this trope lol. Her first true enemies to lovers was Twelve Scandals to Start to Win An Earl’s Heart, in which the heroine is a scandalous young woman and the hero is a duke determined to avoid scandal--and he rebuffed her before the book began, so they hate each other. But he also has a massive boner around her, of course.

My favorite MacLean book, A Rogue By Another Name is another “childhood friends turn enemies to lovers”. The leads, Penelope and Bourne (last name lol) were best friends as kid and he basically fell off after life set in. Her family now has hold of his ancestral lands, and Bourne essentially blackmails Penelope into marrying him so that he can get those lands, after which she DESPISES him even though they had..... extremely great sex lol. It’s SUPER GOOD, and it involves borderline voyeurism, which is great.

Then No Good Duke Goes Unpunished is very enemies to lovers. The heroine was set to become the hero’s stepmother--then he woke up covered in blood with her missing. He then finds out, after years of being despised by society as a presumed murderer, that she is very much alive with a fake identity lol. It’s WILD.

The Rogue Not Taken is an enemies to lovers roadtrip romance. The heroine thinks the hero is a horrid rake who purposefully ruins marriages. He thinks she’s a stuck up brat. They end up journeying together and he eats her out in a moving carriage.

Theeen there’s Daring and the Duke. The hero literally thought the heroine was dead (MacLean loves this) and is OBSESSED with her, but she hates him because the man who raised them both basically pitted them against each other after their days of being childhood sweethearts. It’s very dark and delicious, and there are blow jobs! Blow jobs don’t happen enough in romances, especially historical romances. More BJs! They are fun!

If you’re interested in a dark and BONKERS romance, Desperate Measures by Katee Robert is a retelling of Disney’s Aladdin about a modern Jafar and Jasmine getting together after he takes over her father’s criminal empire. It’s definitely extremely explicit and a bit fucked up. The book comes with content warnings; the first sex scene is dubcon. (Like you’re reading from her perspective and she WANTS IT but she says no.)

Beach Read by Emily Henry is a cute contemporary in which the hero is a literary author and the heroine is a romance novelist. They find themselves in neighboring beach houses and basically challenge each other to write in the other person’s genre. Very light enemies to lovers.

A Heart of Blood and Ashes is a fantasy romance by Milla Vane! Essentially, the hero’s parents were killed by the heroine’s father and he’s out to kill her father and overtake his throne. Luckily, she’s on board. But he needs to marry her in order to accomplish his goals. They do not trust each other whatsoever and torment one another a lot. For context, within the first fifty pages she gives him a handjob while her hand is covered in her own brother’s blood (and yes, he did kill her brother). It’s great.

The Worst Best Man is about a wedding planner who suddenly finds herself needing to work with her ex-fiance’s brother... who she holds responsible for her fiance leaving her at the altar. Very fun and sexy contemporary.

The entire Four Horsemen series by Laura Thalassa. In each book, the heroine falls in love with a literal embodiment of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who is here to bring the end of the world. VERY heavy enemies to lovers. Kinda dark at times? Kinda fucked up at times? I love it a lot? It begins with Pestilence; War and Famine have already been released, but Death has not.

From Lukov with Love by Marina Zapata. It’s a figure skating romance; a down on her luck skater pairs up with a male skater who is extremely successful, and who she’s known for years and hated. Verrrrry slow burn, but fun.

Movies

The Proposal, of course, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. You’ve probably seen this, but the setup is that she’s his evil boss, he’s her assistant, and she’s about to lose her visa so she bribes him into marrying her so that she can get citizenship. But ruh-roh, they have to go to Alaska for his family reunion and he’s also got a great body and is like, an Alaskan Rockefeller?

Obviously, Clueless which is enemies to lovers by way of former stepsiblings, and also by way of the only valid retelling of Emma. Emma itself is not enemies to lovers, really, but Clueless amps that aspect up a bit.

If you want a super tragic version, warning lol--House of Flying Daggers. It’s a wuxia movie, so melodramatic to the max. She’s a blind daughter of the leader of a vigilante group, he’s a soldier who’s gone undercover to follow her to their stronghold. Many reveals and one of my favorite dramatic love stories ensues.

Princess Diaries 2, duh. Baby Chris Pine? Anne Hathaway? PLEASE BITCH.

365 DNI. If you haven’t watched yet, watch it and thank me later. The greatest cinematic contribution of the last decade.

Down with Love. It’s a delightful take on like, 50s/60s sex comedies in which the heroine writes a book that convinces women to ignore love and men, which makes the hero look bad and makes it difficult for him to get laid. So he sets out to basically..... wear a different persona? And seduce her? It is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and I adore it. Renee Zellweger and Ewan Macgregor have great chemistry in it too.

The Thomas Crown Affair, starring extremely hot Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo. She’s an insurance investigator, he’s a billionaire who basically is suspected of stealing priceless works of art because he’s bored. She investigates him and immediately begins fucking him. Has a scene where she dances with him while wearing a completely transparent dress. Then they fuck everywhere in his house. I have never wanted to be between two people more.

The Painted Veil. A socialite marries a dorky scientist for convenience, then cheats on him. He finds out and basically forces her to go to China with him, where he is fighting the cholera epidemic, as an extremely long and petty murder suicide attempt. But they get to know each other! And the ice begins to melt! Warning: tragic but lovely.

Casino Royale YES I SAID THAT. The James Bond reboot movie that explains why he’s such a whore!!! HE WAS BROKEN!!! Basically James Bond is not like... a learned man... in this movie. So he’s a cocky bastard and the Bond girl is impossibly sexy Eva Green as Vesper, who’s the “money man” on his mission. They begin as bickering assholes and then fall in love. But also! Tragedy!

The animated Anastasia movie is one of the finest enemies to lovers movies of any time, I will defend this forever

Anyway.... Hope this gives you some ideas! Lol

#Anonymous

27 notes · View notes

roccinan · 4 years ago

Note

1/? simply because you have the most galaxy brain thoughts ever,,, what do you think would've happened if they waited until s5 to reveal sergio and andrés were (half)brothers?

i do know that when my fam started watching lcdp at first i was so put off. like i watched ep 1 and the prof creeped me out. ""berlin"" creeped me out. e v e r y o n e creeped me out. and i was cringing so hard becz of the short lived romance angle with alison parker. i literally did not watch s1 at all xcept for like sneak peeks. highlights being the scene where berlin discovers monica is alive and does his dramatic door by door thing? that was so SUSPENSEFUL even tho i had no idea what was going on. DOMINGO DE RESURECCION remains forever iconic.

2/? And OF COURSE the group bella ciao dance when they hit earth (hahah i thought the banda were actually like a "found family where they all love each other LOL") i am a SUCKER for found family. but anyhoo when i properly got intrigued was s2 when tokyo was kicked out (the music from that scene is still my favourite) it's just so dramatic..!! why am i telling u all this again? right, i haven't slept a wink and it's nearly 7 am pls forgive me if these rambles make no sense. i have a point with this.. i'm going somewhere

RIGHT. so when the fam actually rewound the ep cz i wanted to know WHY berlin did that (didn't fully realise how batsht crazy he can be), the russian roulette scene played. and pedro's acting. MAN. and like just that ep they made a point of showing us these flashbacks where sergio and andrés hug....

Hi anon! Thanks for stopping by- sorry took me a while to get back to you, will do my best to answer this string of messages (got all 4 parts)! Glad you like my thoughts XD

Firstly, I believe Andres/Sergio would be the biggest LCDP ship if the writers were evil enough to wait until s5 to reveal that they’re brothers asdfasdf. They’re already the two most popular male characters anyway.

It’d be especially crazy because it’s not like they tell the actors these things beforehand either. So that means there’d probably be a Serdres vs Berlermo vs Serquel fight every 5 minutes. I mean, even if not everyone agrees on everything in the lcdp fandom, it’s the most “peaceful” one I’ve ever been in because no character really gets in the way of any other ship (like even with helermo and berlermo there’s no true conflict since Andres is dead). But with Serdres in the mix?? CATASTROPHE. Everyone out here writing essays about how much of a bastard/bitch/homewrecker/motherfucker that Andres or Sergio or Martin or Raquel is. Never a moment’s peace!! so basically, a regular fandom lmao.

Then when we find out they’re brothers, it goes from catastrophe to Apocalypse. Suddenly serquel and berlermo have the upper hand. Everyone would double down and harass the crew/cast into whatever’s going on. Plot-wise, everything is the same though, just without Andres calling Sergio “hermanito.” Fandom however, would be a minefield! And I’m glad that’s not the case because I’d probably be an unfortunate serdres shippers XD No joke, my mother and I thought they were a couple in S1. So bullet dodged!

Secondly: haha, everyone creeped me out in S1 too, especially Berlin, I hated him, but thinking back, I think I mostly hated the fact that I didn’t hate him as much as I should have. I’ve made peace with it now but oh boy, was he a controversial figure in my head. I actually like the professor on sight though! IDK why, maybe because I thought his plans were cool or because of Alvaro’s delivery. I was afraid of an Alison Parker romance thing too- like, I do feel like she had a storyline that got dropped, but that part was quite cringey and overall unnecessary to the plot. Same with Ariadna, which was even cringier and even Less necessary to the plot.

Domingo de resurrecion was iconic though yes! And even with all that said, I genuinely enjoyed parts 1 and 2 because it was so different from anything else I’d seen. Not content wise, but maybe tonally? IDK, they were just really bold with a lot of things, like being objectively unafraid of having the protagonists (plural because all of them did LMAO) do objectively shitty things. Really kept me in suspense from beginning to end!

I’m usually a big fan of found families too! The funny thing is, then banda never struck me as a “family” until season 3. In 1 and 2, I was wondering what felt different about this show; then it hit me that these people remained colleagues to the end. Like, they backstabbed each other (repeatedly) and everyone was quite selfish, and only the bonds that were already there stuck. They were the opposite of a found family LOL But I think by S3, they went down the found family route and I didn’t mind because it makes quite a lot of sense for them to feel that bond after the Mint heist and almost dying/living together (and having witnessed 3 deaths together on the team). But I still doubt Berlin and Palermo were ever really part of this found family, with good reason XD

LOL the scene where Tokyo got kicked out is also among my favorites!! It was so funny and dramatic, and it was like, wow we can go anywhere with this now! Don’t worry- your rambles and thoughts are always welcome :D

I’m rolling over how you watched the Tokyo expulsion scene before the Russian Roulette scene haha. Also yes, PEDRO. Berlin may have been “controversial” to me at first, but I became Pedro’s fan from day one! Also the Hug is probably what made me like Berlin (despite my determination to hate him rip) in the first place.

3/? ... and like now that i think about it... tokyo had real guts huh. like she KNEW berlin was close enough to el prof to know his name (fhshshs imagine if she'd heard andrés saying 'hermanito' it's unrealistic that she didn't TBH. i mean obviously they decided to make them brothers only towards the end but like in canon universe. how tf did andrés de 'i raised my bby brother since he was 12 and i'd actually die for him and his stupidly brilliant plans' fonollosa go 5 months without slipping up once and calling sergio hermanito. or like,,, i like to imagine sergio kinda gave him lots of leeway(?) sergio's a lil oblivious too but like i'm sure half of it is.. that's my dumbass older bro shut up i'm not being partial you all have city names .. andr-berlin, pass the salt. like OOF. + sergio also knew his big bro was dYiNG so like. i'm sure they were sneaking in some quality time (i hope they did 😭 gosh imagine if sergio really did not ever consider the possibility of andrés dying in the heist so he'd tell himself he needs to perfect the plan now & anyway he'll have enough time to spend w/ his brother post heist in philippines. and then ... that happened :/

Tokyo has guts in place of braincells you bet that she’d do something like this, consequences be damned XD I also think it’s unrealistic for Andres not to slip up, but I have a feeling nobody besides Tokyo really tried to spy on them in private. I headcanon that Andres instead slips up and does things like ruffle Sergio’s hair or adjust his tie when other people are around. I also think Tokyo was convinced that they were a gay couple when she saw them hug XD And if Sergio never went on to tell the banda that Berlin was his brother, everyone would be giving Palermo such awkward looks after Nairobi accused him of being in love with Berlin LMAO.

I agree! I also imagine Sergio giving Andres leeway because he’s just so used to interacting with his brother that way haha. So either he’d go out of his way to ignore Berlin in front of everyone else or IDK, borderline telepathically communicate with him. Not even “pass the salt” has to leave his mouth- Berlin just puts salt into his food and cuts it up for him, in front of everyone who’s just staring like O.O

I actually do think Sergio never considered the possibility of Andres dying in the heist because he was just that confident in his own plan. Plus, Andres was probably the one person he expected to survive. And a lot of it has to do with Sergio’s attachment to him + Andres’ own habit of downplaying any illness/injury over the years, which I think is safe to believe canon. He was really in no condition to be in the heist, let alone lead it. Just the fact that he needs to take those injections is a big sign that he shouldn’t be there, but Sergio didn’t catch it because he’s human and blinded by faith :’) So yeah, I think Sergio was planning to spend proper time with Andres in Palawan and at Toledo, they just settled for those little moments by the fireplace.

4/? what always also just GETS me in the feels is that el prof was shown to be this in control creepily calm dude who is miles ahead of everyone. + in the 1st Toledo class itself we see how detached,, like how impersonal he is, how professional - choosing frickin CITY NAMES?! no 'personal relationships' ? (after recruiting his older brother, a father son pair, and war cousins... oh sergio 😂 he's such a frickin nerd and i love him) but like the earlier seasons really emphasised how robotic and down right COLD he can be. it still sometimes bothers me that he put the button in the car. he lead the police to his own damn brother, his blood, who took care of him and adopted him and was terminally ill and like - UGH i try to rationalise that sergio is that cold and unbothered. or that he has strict morals. but it still bothers me becz that button really sort of tipped andres' already unstable sanity. like andrés tells denver someth like you've robbed my future and after that he just seems so much more suicidal and accepting that he can't get out of the mint alive - WHY SERGIO WHY. I KNOW THAT AT THAT POINT YOU BASICALLY DIDN'T KNOW ANDRÉS WAS GOING TO BE YOUR BROTHER YET BECZ IT WASN'T WRITTEN IN THE SCRIPT BUT WHYYYYY

That’s so funny to me too LMAO No personal relationships, then he recruits these guys. Sergio, hello?? Also can’t forget how he just recruited his own girfrleind in the second heist too. Buddy! Love this nerd.

I don’t think that cold aspect of Sergio went away in later seasons either; he just had more opportunity to show a more open side of himself + without Andres, he had to metaphorically leave his comfort zone without a safety net. But in earlier seasons, he really did seem heartless at times XD Then again, we can argue that the same goes for Andres.

To be fair, I didn’t feel sorry for Andres over the button thing lol, but once the brothers reveal happened and all of Alvaro/Pedro’s headcanons came out and we know everything Andres did for Sergio, it makes what Sergio did REALLY harsh. We really just have to explain it through Sergio’s strict morals and him believing this to be the best non-fatal punishment for Andres, who at that point had convinced him he killed a hostage. And because he knew the television interview was coming up, maybe Sergio assumed Andres would use it to “clear” his name anyway. And empathy isn’t one of Sergio’s strong suits either, so through that lens, I can rationalize it.

Also it was lowkey funny to me how Andres was there like DENVER MUST DIE until he found out Sergio put the button there, then he was like “oh hermanito, you and your practical jokes <3″

Still, like you said, Andres and Sergio weren’t brothers yet at this point. They were probably supposed to be lovers lmao and had a dysfunctional Hannibal Lecter x Will thing going on. But because they made #hermanos canon, that button moment just feels very out of place now, especially given how much the two genuinely love each other.

Guess we could also say that Sergio’s just generally kinda bratty with Andres XD Like, he knows no matter what, Andres would forgive him anything. That’s how I see it anyway!

#anonymous #thanks for stopping by!#royalpaperhouse is this you my friend? :D

9 notes · View notes

thecloserkin · 6 years ago

Text

fic rec: we get dark, only to shine by anghraine

fandom: The Borgias (Showtime 2011)

pairing: Cesare Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia

word count: 168k, unfinished

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Yes

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: hi my name is asdfghhkl i’ve been in fandom half my life and this is without a doubt a top 5 fic for me. i mean i got to the end and i went right back to the beginning to reread it

This is a Season 1 AU where Cesare and Lucrezia are each other’s first loves, as they ought to have been. First of all I absorbed more Borgia history via this fic than three published biographies put together (Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Life Love and Death in Renaissance Italy; GJ Meyer, The Borgias: The Secret History; Christopher Hibbert, The Borgias and Their Enemies). I found myself looking forward to the end of every chapter so I could devour the footnotes. This is a meticulously researched, perfectly paced, ingeniously plotted gem of a story that made all the historical details relevant. It is also a very cerebral story, which is not to say it didn’t sucker-punch me in the gut, just that it isn’t rough around the edges — it is SHARP. Lucrezia and Cesare are whip-smart; all the secondary characters are smart; the author is obviously brill and you, dear reader, better bring both your brain cells if you want to keep up.

To set the scene, we are in Rome at the beginning of the papacy of Alexander VI aka Rodrigo Borgia, the first pope to openly acknowledge his children gotten out of wedlock. The primary thing to understand about the Borgias is they are FOREIGNERS. They are from Valencia and their native tongue is Catalan; and while Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia and Jofre may have been born in Rome, foreigners they will forever remain in the eyes of the xenophobic populace. Rome is a cesspit of backstabbing and the Borgias are an unusually close-knit, insular clan. Here is an overview of Cesare and Lucrezia’s codependent-from-the-cradle relationship, intensified ofc by the hostile environment of Rome:

At first, Lucrezia would scream whenever the nurse took her away, and sneak after him at all hours. Cesare scarcely spoke, except to her. They looked like kicked puppies.

Yet it had always been that way with them: Lucr��cia a little queen reigning over their games, Cèsar devoted to her.

he never paid much attention to other women around Lucrezia, even when she was little more than a prattling child.

Cesare had woken with Lucrezia in his bed more times than he could count. At eight, twelve, a newly-returned sixteen, he often opened his eyes to his sister sprawled beside him or curled up under his blankets. On more anxious nights, when she had an unpleasant dream or felt particularly troubled, he would find her pressed against him

“When he left for Perugia, one might have believed him going to his gallows. Their letters must have stripped a forest.”

Ok not to be an incest junkie on main but shoutout to the Childhood Bedsharing Trope. “When he left for Perguia” is when he went away to university, leaving Lucrezia disconsolate. When he came home following this extended absence is when her feelings for him flowered into sexual desire. The fic opens on the eve of Lucrezia’s marriage to Giovanni Sforza. Her impending nuptials are causing her anxiety:

”But I am a Borgia. I should not be afraid of anything.” “Nonsense,” said Cesare, “I fear dozens of things, myself.” “You?”

So much to unpack here:

being a Borgia means never letting the world see your weakness

Lucrezia’s hero-worship!!! she obviously thinks he’s the bravest person she knows

Cesare confessing his vulnerability, his fears, chief of which is “I fear most of all for your happiness. I shall not be able to ensure it from so far.” i am y e l l i n g

To relieve her anxiety about pleasing her bridegroom, she convinces Cesare to give her KISSING LESSONS. That’s how it starts. Did someone say I Want My Brother to Be My First because I love this song.

“Is there no one else?” he demanded. She tilted her head inquisitively. “Is there a man you would rather instructed me? Really, is there another man you would permit to touch me? To even remain alone with me? Juan? Should I ask him instead?” “No!” Cesare scrambled to his feet.

She knows exactly how to push his buttons, doesn’t she? She baits him with the idea of another man touching her—specifically Juan, his archrival—an idea guaranteed to get his blood up, and Cesare instantly shoves his scruples aside. A kissing lesson ensues, Lucrezia is married shortly thereafter, and that’s how things stand when this fic diverges from canon: Cesare stops by Pesaro to visit Lucrezia.

Now we all know how Lucrezia’s first marriage went—her husband treated his horse a sight better than he treated her. And we see her struggle with telling Cesare the truth about the abuse, because the importance of the Sforza alliance must stay Cesare’s hand from his natural impulse to pulverize anyone who hurts Lucrezia. I like how this fic draws a distinction between the family’s reaction and Cesare’s reaction:

as soon as Cesare understood, he would be set on vengeance. Any brother would, even one less devoted than Cesare. Jofrè would probably cheer him on. Juan would have strung Sforza up already. And of course, Cesare was Cesare.

Juan and Jofre are her brothers too, and neither of them would have let Sforza’s behavior slide. Cesare, though, is on a whole other level. Cesare actually sees red. The most romantic thing he does in this entire story is play chess with Lucrezia all night to spare her the nightly ordeal of marital rape. That was the first night. The second day he has Micheletto loosen the girth of Sforza’s saddle to cause a nonfatal riding accident which—honestly it makes way more sense thematically for the brother who loves her more than life to do this, than for an untutored stableboy whom Lucrezia met 5 minutes ago to suddenly exhibit master assassin skills?!! Fuck canon, this is what happened. Also fuck insta-love, I’m so glad Cesare and Lucrezia are head over heels for each other rather than some randos.

His pulse quickened in his throat, yet it was nothing he had not seen before, when he read to her until she fell asleep, talked to her as she sulked in her room, sat at her bedside wiping cloths all over her feverish head.

I’m so soft for this!!! Tfw it’s not the physical proximity to your sibling—that part’s familiar—what’s new is your feelings shifting like tectonic plates?? Askjdfkdjfd.

The thing that really precipitates the affair is Lucrezia’s brute of a husband, obviously. This fic has one or two Giovanni Sforza POVS and it does such a great job of depicting that discomfort of being laughed at by people smarter than you. Sforza was strong-armed into this match and he feels slighted by the choice of bride—because she’s bastard-born, because she’s Spanish, he thinks he’s married down. This brings him into inevitable conflict with Cesare, who will brook no insult to Lucrezia on his watch:

“My sister, Lord Sforza, is a daughter of Rome. Roman-born, Roman-bred, Roman to her fingertips. Is it not so, Lucretia?”

The POWER of this line—remember when i said the Borgias are forever seen as outsiders despite being BORN IN ROME? i felt that.

Perhaps their mother was right, and she loved him too much. Too much, at any rate, to spare that kind of love for anyone else. Sforza was a monster, but if he had not been, she still would not have loved him.

Vanozza is very perceptive; she fears her children’s all-consuming love for each other leaves little room for other attachments AND SHE WAS RIGHT. To put it baldly:

They had spent their hearts on each other, all they had to give, with only scraps left for anyone else.

“I am your brother, Lucrezia … There is a word for this. I would not have anyone say it of you.” “A word for what? … For loving me more than the baronessa Ursula, or some other woman you only half-know?”

THERE IS A WORD, Cesare intimates. He won’t even say it aloud. But this black cloud of rumor and innuendo that hangs over their family is not going to dissipate just because they refrain from giving into their feelings. The first time Cesare heard someone call his sister a whore, she was literally four years old. They’ve had to guard their hearts their whole lives because there is no one they can trust outside the family — and yet the family itself is riven by strife and jealousy (Lucrezia has a good laugh when her maid mistakes “my brother is coming to dinner” for “the Duke of Gandia is coming to dinner”— as if Juan would ever visit her in Pesaro!):

“I am the only person in the world you love without qualification or resentment or confusion, aren’t I?” “Yes … Well. Some confusion.” “And yet you pull away from me. You have spent our lives pulling away from me, because--what? There is a word? You will not even say it. Why should we care if people who hate us, hate our blood and our language and our father, use one more insult? For heavens’ sake, Cesare, you yourself told me that this friar in Florence preaches against my hair.”

!!!! The dig at Savonarola I fell out of my chair looooool

“We have no real friends here, do we? We don’t even have allies beyond the Sforza. Everything depends on Papa. If anything happens, perhaps--perhaps it would be better to go home.” “We could run away to Valencia,” he murmured, eyes distant, almost wistful.

They never entertain this as a serious possibility because “anything is better than obscurity” and sry2say a modern AU is the only place these kids are going to get a happy ending. They’re too ambitious and fiercely protective of their family for aught else.

the affinity they’d always felt flaring to life, the certainty that he could depend on her abilities as well as her loyalties. Together they had outwitted Giovanni Sforza and all of Pesaro; now there was the Pope, their family, Rome, and then--all of Italy? The world? Why not?

I say again, HE COULD DEPEND ON HER ABILITIES AS WELL AS HER LOYALTIES. Because they’re a team. Picture Cesare and Lucrezia, weapons in hand, back to back holding off a horde of enemies—but like, metaphorically. That’s the kind of partnership they have, that’s the kind of trust they share.

he would put her before ambition and glory. Even their father had not … Cesare wasn’t like the Pope. He loved her more than anything.

Meaning there are things her father would put before her happiness, but there is absolutely NOTHING Cesare would not do for her. What woman could resist this utter unhesitating devotion when it is laid at her feet??

gazing at her with all the adoration he had never offered to God

He would never hurt me. If she knew nothing else, she knew that.

She resolves to consummate their relationship, despite all her knowledge of sex being bound up with pain. Like, she literally doesn’t know if sex can even be pleasurable for women, but she wants Cesare in the face of her fear, which is impressive and heartbreaking:

there were Roman courtesans who knew something of him that Lucrezia did not, and it was intolerable. She wanted everything.

Yessss she already has the rest of him, she just wants this one last piece of Cesare to belong to her too. And as for Cesare, this is the first & only time physical attraction and emotional connection have been united in the same partner:

he had never been one to stay in a woman’s bed, afterwards, but he felt no inclination to move.

She laid her hand against his face, rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone, gazing at him with her impossible mix of steady, companionable affection and rapture.

He had long known that he did not love anyone as he did Lucrezia; now he could not imagine desiring anyone as much, either.

What I love is that the romantic/sexual aspect is just another layer overlaid on what has always been the most important relationship in their respective lives; it doesn’t change the underlying dynamic:

“Have we been mauled by bears, do you think?” “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. We would need scratches for that.”

This is them putting their clothes on after an assignation in the woods (they go riding a lot). What strikes me is the companionable tenor of their conspirational lies.

She relished each touch, yet there was something ordinary in it, familiar and commonplace. Your cross is crooked. Your cap is falling off. Let me adjust your sleeve. I can mend your tunic. They had always been peculiarly domestic together, a comfortable intimacy they never repeated with their brothers.

hello siblings being simultaneously incestuous & domestic is my kink byeeeee

“Cesare,” said Lucrezia, eyes widening, “am I your mistress now?” “You are Lucrezia Borgia. The Pope’s daughter and my beloved sister. The man who calls you anyone’s mistress will lose his tongue. As for you and I, we are what we are. I love you. We belong to each other. That is all.”

NO LABELS WE JUST BELONG TO EACH OTHER. Favorite favorite favorite line forever

His sister, his — lover? How could he give up either? What have I done?

Please picture me shoveling popcorn into my mouth as I type this. This is the pinnacle of everything I love about incest ships. You don’t fuck your sister unless you fucking mean it. It’s like you’re married from the first kiss. As Lucrezia explains later to someone who has ferreted out their secret: “He is not some lover to be mourned and forgotten. If I lose him over this, I lose him in everything.”

You can’t date your brother casually, the stakes are HIGH.

A lover is invented in order to explain Lucrezia’s love bites and torn clothing to her maid. Micheletto accepts this explanation as well, until one day he realizes the true state of affairs, and it’s such an innocuous little moment, it’s not like Micheletto wALks iN On tHEM or anything similarly dramatic, oh no. He is watching them—he is always watching—and he must have picked up on some subtle cue of body language or something bc all of a sudden it hits him they’re in love:

Valentino bent his head down; Lucrezia was saying something, Catalan, scarcely comprehensible through her heavy accent and giggles--Micheletto thought it had to do with the Duke of Gandía and a race. Whatever it was, Valentino whispered back to her, mouth against her ear, and they burst out laughing. There was no lover. He could not say, exactly, how he knew for certain then, with no proof, and not before or after. But he knew it. There were no others for them, no room for others: only Valentino and Lucrezia, and Micheletto watching over them.

The perfect encapsulation of this show tbh!!!

They are recalled to Rome to attend Joffre’s wedding to Sancia d’Aragon. They leave Lucrezia’s recuperating husband behind in Pesaro.

“If this all depends upon the impression that Juan makes--” “God help us,” said Cesare.

first of all, FINISHING EACH OTHER’S SENTENCES. but also, this is a delicate mission Juan’s been dispatched on—sent to Naples to woo Jofre’s bride—and i am l i v i n g as I watch Cesare & Lucrezia bond over their low opinion of Juan’s diplomatic mettle. it reminds me of that scene in S2E1 during the masquerade ball when Lucrezia asks Cesare if he can make her laugh, and IMMEDIATELY he causes Juan (who is dancing) to take a humiliating stumble and then Lucrezia & Cesare choke back giggles behind their masks. What’s great about returning to Rome is we get to see them interact with the rest of their family. The Pope is wroth with Cesare for staying so long away and for ignoring his summonses, but Cesare tells him the truth—that Lucrezia needed him:

“Your daughter, Holy Father, could wring concessions out of a saint, and I am anything but that.”

The audacity!! Cesare straight up confessed to fucking the Pope’s daughter but he said it flippantly, so Alexander heard what he wanted to hear.

Then there’s Giulia, who takes one look at Lucrezia and detects the glow of first love. Lucrezia fobs her off with the same story of a clandestine lover, assignations in the woods, etc.:

“Swear to me that you will not repeat what I have said.” “To your father? I already promised that.” “To anyone! … Father would separate us. Juan would kill him. If my husband discovered it …” Lucrezia shuddered. “That would indeed be a disaster,” Giulia said, “but I think you have forgotten someone, Lucrezia.” “What do you mean?” She touched Lucrezia's face. “Your brother Cesare.” Lucrezia absolutely froze.

BWAHAHAHA and then Lucrezia scrambles to convince Giulia that her secret is that Cesare is discreetly facilitating her affair, rather than the far more salacious secret that Cesare is her affair.

“Men,” Giulia said carefully, “say many things, Lucrezia.” “Other men,” said Lucrezia …. The very idea that Cesare might not love her!

And of course Lucrezia is in a v unique situation here but it is the lot of highborn girls in Renaissance Europe to be bartered off to seal an alliance; Lucrezia was raised to expect it. She did no more than her duty. She also recognizes the balance of power is never going to be in her favor when it comes to matters of the heart. With one notable exception, of course:

But Lucrezia had never shown the slightest inclination to guard herself from him. I love you, she’d said as soon as she could babble out the words, clambering into his lap, wrapping her arms about his neck, toddling after him, I love you best, I love you most. And now she declared herself dozens of times a day, in word or deed: whispering into his ear, laughing at his side, crawling into his arms when she could and watching him with a greedy, possessive look when she could not.

Cesare is the only one she trusts to never hurt her, whose interests are always aligned with hers, are never opposed to her family’s since Cesare is her family. The only wrinkle is, he can’t protect her adequately as he promised to. Cesare reflects that if the truth about the incest ever came out “he would be lucky to escape with excommunication, while Giovanni Sforza could violate her nightly and nobody would say a word.” The unjustness of this, the way patriarchy arrays itself in Sforza’s defense, galls Cesare to no end.

Another person who comes into their orbit in Rome is Jofre’s new bride, Sancia of Aragon. It’s historical canon that she slept with both Juan and Cesare; in this fic of course Cesare/Lucrezia are exclusive. Lucrezia can’t decide whether Sancia is predatory (she wants to bang Cesare) or suspicious (she has a hunch Cesare is banging Lucrezia). Either way:

Lucrezia wanted Sancia dead, or disfigured, or shamed--and she wanted her to leave happily with Jofrè--and she wanted Juan to take her away, to satisfy her with some kind of discretion--and for one mad moment, Lucrezia wanted everyone to know what Cesare was to her.

Sancia and Juan, by the way, conduct an outrageously indiscreet affair where their lovemaking is so obnoxious it keeps Lucrezia up at night. She does what she always does when she seeks solace: she crawls into Cesare’s bed. They’re young, they’re honry, they’re in love … but the sound of Juan pounding away at Sancia definitively kills the mood. Lmao. The next morning at breakfast Cesare & Lucrezia lay their complaints before Alexander, who gives Cesare a cardinal’s palace to live in and bids him take Lucrezia with him. So now the two of them move out of the papal palace into their very own palace. I mean, the possibilities are endless! Here is a gem from Sancia and Juan’s pillowtalk, where Juan’s assessment is simultaneously hilariously off base and 100% accurate:

“Cesare has always been a sanctimonious prude, if you ask me. At any rate, Lucrezia says he's having a fit of celibacy.” “Lucrezia?” Sancia said, nearly laughing. “What, he tells her about his—?” Juan snorted. “They probably tell each other about their bowel movements.”

Some of my favorite moments from this “Cesare + Lucrezia keeping house together” idyll: She visits him in the confessional, they hold a lengthy strategy conference about Sancia’s divided loyalties, and he wraps up with:

“Have you any other sins to confess?” “No … Well, I am guilty of the sin of lust, but you knew that already.”

LOOOOOL and how could I forget this:

She always wanted him: when he approached her, when he touched her, looked at her, when she thought of him, when someone mentioned his name.

I give you my main bitch Lucrezia Borgia, who fantasizes about being rawed by her brother WHENEVER SOMEONE MENTIONS HIS NAME. We stan a bona fide legend.

Ok so among the people they encounter in Rome are their cousins Isabel and Bernardo, who are also Borgias, and who independently unravel the truth re: Cesare & Lucrezia, which means that we get not one but two Outsider POVs which means I have probably died and gone to heaven. My friends TONIGHT WE FEAST IN VALHALLA. Ain’t nothing I love more than an Outsider POV angle on an incestuous romance, and in this case we are truly blessed because we get two. This is Bernardo as he listens to Cesare wax lyrical about his new paramour:

Yet Bernardo heard none of the wild passion or simpering folly of men in the throes of infatuation; Cesare looked and sounded less like a newly enthralled lover, and more like a man speaking of someone he knew well and liked a great deal. Bernardo felt a flicker of alarm.

Bruh you’re supposed to talk about your mistress’s tits not her personality clearly Cesare did not get the memo?? And this is Bernardo when the pieces finally click into place for him—he walks in on Lucrezia dyeing her hair:

A Spaniard, very fair? By nature? No, Cesare had said, half-laughing, and even then Bernardo caught the odd shift in his tone, from the adoration of a lover to an easy, familiar affection. And he remembered Cesare, indignant even for a young man in the throes of infatuation. She is not my mistress!

It’s the vehemence with which he denies it, the “not my mistress” part, that gives Cesare away. Because she’s not; she’s his everything. Bernardo cannot seem to wrap his head around how they can be both siblings and soulmates, since for him there is just no overlap between those categories:

Cesare certainly looked and sounded more brother than forbidden paramour. That, in itself, troubled him; if they had rejected the fact of their blood relationship in pursuit of their lusts, convinced themselves that they did not truly feel themselves family, pretended to be something other than what they were—well, that would have been bad enough. But they did not pretend. They acted less as if they willfully transgressed the boundary between siblings and lovers, and more as if they utterly failed to notice its existence.

Cesare and Lucrezia glanced at each other, their conspiratorial smiles alarmingly familiar. He’d seen those exact expressions on their faces before, dozens if not hundreds of times. They’d always had secrets, their little schemes and confidences, childish mischief. And now—what? Deeper secrets, more convoluted schemes, more dangerous mischief. Was that it? Did they lie together and think it little different from the rest?—altered in degree, but not kind? Did they … when had catapulting oranges at the unwary become a hidden incestuous affair?

This is Bernardo watching Cesare & Lucrezia argue about who “made the first move” as far as initiating their relationship:

he knew not whether he was witnessing a lovers’ quarrel or a sibling one. He felt uncomfortably that, subject aside, it sounded very much more like the latter.

I think part of Bernardo’s difficulty is the way patriarchy teaches men to think about women, and treat them as means to an end:

There were, after all, other ways to avoid a pregnancy—though in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not bother with such things, and rarely thought that far in the first place. But then, in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not fuck their sisters, either.

Because eighteen-year-old boys are typically in lust whereas Cesare Borgia has found the love of his life. Can we also take a moment to appreciate that Cesare and Lucrezia are eighteen and fourteen respectively?? This must be their canon ages. They’re not even fetuses they’re like, homunculi. I won’t bother to look it up since this author clearly has forgotten more details about the Borgias than I ever knew—as God is my witness I would take her footnotes with me to a desert island over 80% of the other fics in existence. Holliday Grainger was 22 when The Borgias started filming, and Isolde Dychauk was 17 in S1 of Borgia, and of course we’re used to Hollywood giving us thirty-year-olds playing high schoolers so it’s not as if Lucrezia’s been aged up an unconscionable amount, but wow, fourteen is young.

Isabel and Bernardo have another sister, Jeromina, whose husband’s neglect is indirectly responsible for her death in childbed. Lucrezia holds up poor Jeromina’s fate as a cautionary tale of what can happen to any woman who lacks a male protector in her corner:

”We are not speaking of Jeromina.” “Indeed not. Her brother never came for her.”

Shots fired!!! This is Lucrezia’s implied rebuke to Bernardo: that he wasn’t there for Jeromina, that Lucrezia’s own brother would never have let her down as Bernardo let Jeromina down. Later on Lucrezia even locates the origins of her incestuous passion in the same system that killed Jeromina—she describes loving Cesare thusly:

“Something I chose, for myself,” said Lucrezia. “Everything else has been chosen for me”

Excuse me while I emit a series of high-pitched pterodactyl noises. It’s a subject the fic touches on very lightly, but the topic of aristocratic girls falling in love with their brothers as a big middle finger to The Patriarchy? This is a topic NEAR AND DEAR to my heart.

Isabel is a woman and sees more clearly than Bernardo does that Cesare & Lucrezia’s attachment is not mere puppy love:

Nor did she believe that a passion built on lifelong intimacy would be easily broken.

Damn straight, this is the real deal. Isabel then takes a different tack—she suggests that Lucrezia is at an age where girls itch to exercise their power over men. Lucrezia grants her the justice of this observation but counters that she’d never use Cesare so ill:

“Do you mean to say that your distress was such that you would have seduced any man who cared for you? You chose your brother because … he was there?” ”I could not have seduced a satyr. Cesare desired me as I did him.”

I COULD NOT HAVE SEDUCED A SATYR lmao. But it’s true, she was bruised body and soul, and Cesare rode up like a white knight and the dam burst. It wasn’t inevitable, but a confluence of events forced them to reckon with their feelings. And once they crossed that Rubicon there was of course no going back. Because they fit and they’re perfect for each other obvs. Just look at my babies reminiscing about childhood hijinks:

“The night that Juan switched your glass with Mother’s,” said Cesare, “You were what, nine?” Lucrezia stared at him, then laughed. “Ten. I spent a wretched night, and morning too. What made you think of it?” “Only that we have shared every part of our lives,” he said. “There is nothing to hide or pretend. We already know everything there is to know.”

otpotpotpotpotpotpotpotpotp

I need to quote a few more Bernardo POV passages because that’s where Cesare gives us some declarations of love worthy of the ages:

”I cannot remember a time when I did not love her above all else. Above the family, the world, God. I remember nothing of any time when I have not lived for her, when I would not die for her.”

“Some degree of remorse would not go amiss.” “I regret nothing,” said Cesare. “And your—” Bernardo shook his head. “What do I even call her now?” “My sister,” Cesare replied.

tl;dr Cesare: I HAVE ZERO REGRETS NONE

“Tell me that somewhere in Italy, or Spain, or any other nation, exists a woman I could love as I have loved Lucrezia. Tell me that there is a woman who could understand me half as well as she does. A woman who would know me as I am, and not as the world or my father or anyone would shape me. A woman who would see my true nature without fear—see the mark on it—share it. Look me in the eye, Bernardo, and tell me there is any woman who is so much my own soul.”

If you don’t ship them after that speech then your mom’s a hoe, I don’t make the rules.

Cesare: I am sanctified in her.

Bernardo:

Narrator: Bernardo hardly knew where to look.

Me: ascends to a higher plane

Bernardo eventually comes around. He’s had longer than Isabel to adjust to the incest revelation, so he tries to soften the blow for her. This is the two of them comparing notes:

”The last time I saw them together, Cesare had his hand on his dagger half the time, and then they started arguing about which one of them was the more responsible, as if they’d stolen a pastry. He laughs about her hair. Outside of themselves, they treat the whole matter as a … a lark.” This aligned so exactly with Cesare and Lucrezia as Isabel knew them that she winced. Nevertheless, her dry voice didn’t alter. “How uncivil. They might at least have the courtesy to pretend that they regard the change as a matter of gravity.” “They don’t think they have changed,” he replied.

THEY DON’T THINK THEY HAVE CHANGED— winner winner chicken dinner. Finally he gets it.

So there is this ring. A family heirloom which belonged to their grandfather, which Lucrezia inherits from poor died-in-childbed Jeromina, and recklessly bestows upon Cesare. This is the visible token of her affection, this is her way of letting the whole world know what he means to her. The problem is that Isabel is the one who disbursed Jeromina’s effects, so she knows full well the provenance of the ring in question, and what it signifies that Lucrezia gave it to Cesare. Subtlety, these kids do not have it. Cesare openly wearing the ring clues Isabel in on the incest, which is maybe not the worst result ever because family is still family but damn kids you gotta be more careful. What happens next, though, is a scene that absolutely wrecked me. We get a a scene where they EXCHANGE RINGS:

“Isabel gave it to me.” Lucrezia clasped her fingers in her lap. “For my husband.” “Do you remember what I studied at Pisa?” “Civil and canon law.” “Yes.” His voice was hoarse. “Did you know that if a man and a woman consent together, the ring and vows alone bind them in marriage? The Church does not wish for unblessed marriages, but by precedent and decree, they are marriages nonetheless.” His cardinal ring rested still in her palm. Cesare closed her fingers over it. “Alexander III declared that if the parties concerned say I receive you as mine to one another, they are married as solemnly as if blessed by a priest.”

So he gives her his cardinal’s ring to wear. And when his father notes its absence on his finger he straight up admits Lucrezia made off with it, you know how i can’t deny her anything, and the dinner table conversation turns to another topic. Because Cesare & Lucrezia are apparently just Like That and everyone who knows them is used to it. For pete’s sake they are supposed to be the well-adjusted ones among the Pope’s children. Every other member of this family is further along the disaster spectrum than these two, according to Isabel’s internal monologue:

Cesare and Lucrezia, those oases of sense and proper feeling among Alexander’s children, committing incest. Adultery too, now that she thought of it. Perhaps. It depended on the particulars.

Adultery is almost an afterthought lol

Parenthetically I do wanna draw y’all’s attention to this passage:

“I will kill him. I swear to you, Lucrezia, I shall carve his heart out of his body and give it to you on a platter.” Lucrezia put a hand over his chest. “I don’t want his heart,” she said. “I want yours.”

The above passage has the same energy as this passage:

One night she had Jaime follow him, to confirm her suspicions. When her brother returned he asked her if she wanted Robert dead. "No," she had replied, "I want him horned." She liked to think that was the night when Joffrey was conceived.

That’s a Cersei POV and the thing about looking at Cesare/Lucrezia and Cersei/Jaime parallels is I feel like the former is usually more sinned against than sinning, and the latter is the opposite. Cersei doesn’t want Jaime, she wants Robert cuckolded, she wants to Show Them that she’s Lord Tywin’s daughter and nobody gets away with disrespecting her. Idk maybe it would have read differently if we’d had the same events from Jaime’s POV?

I realize that you guys don’t need any more reasons to love this fic but I want to end with the scene where Cesare’s gearing up to challenge Count What’s-His-Face, Ursula’s dumbass husband, for the insupportable insult he gave Vanozza at Lucrezia’s wedding. One thing I appreciate about Showtime!The Borgias over Canal+!Borgia is this Cesare’s relationship with his mom is much closer than his counterpart’s. His willingness to fight a duel for his mother’s honor demonstrates (1) that his sister isn’t the only woman he cares about and (2) that he puts his family first. Lucrezia’s “Return to me victorious” still slaps more than any line in actual canon, don’t @ me. In that moment, he could have slain Mars. “I will,” he promises her.

If I don’t burn

if you don’t burn

if we don’t burn

how will the light

vanquish the darkness?

That’s Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet writing about a folk hero who spontaneously combusted of love. In conclusion no one burns brighter than Cesare & Lucrezia, the actual loves of my life.

#cesare x lucrezia #Borgiacest #fic rec #cause of death

82 notes · View notes

truthbeetoldmedia · 6 years ago

Text

The 100 6x06 “Memento Mori” Review

Along with its impeccable world building, what Season 6 of The 100 has done so well is remind us that no matter how strong one’s moral compass is, every action has a reaction. Monty’s words to “do better” may be lingering in the minds of all of our heroes, but then again, they weren’t exactly expecting to encounter body snatchers in their new world.

Episode 6x06 of The 100, “Memento Mori,” written by newcomer Alyssa Clark and directed by P.J. Pesce is reminiscent of the “old” The 100 in more ways than one, but with a Sanctum twist. There are equal parts lore and moral conflict, and a pinch of backstabbing thrown in for good measure.

Heart Over Head

Try as he might to remain rational and think with his head, Bellamy was certainly not expecting this curveball: Clarke is dead. Josephine restrains Bellamy in her bedroom, and we can tell once she’s thrown Murphy in there with him that it’s been torn apart. While Murphy attempts to subtly convince Bellamy to stay and take the mind drives for the rest of their people, Bellamy has a one track mind. Clarke is gone, and there’s no bringing her back. (Or is there?)

It’s heartbreaking to see Bellamy mourn Clarke in such an outward way. We missed this in the years lost on the ring, and even in the brief moments we did see him grapple with her death, it was clear he was going about it logically. After all, Clarke had just told him to use his head. Now though, after Jordan has reminded him that his heart is what allowed him to be such a heroic and inspiring person, his head seems to have taken a back seat in his processing.

Though Bellamy tells the rest of Spacekru at the end of the episode that they must do what Clarke would want and survive, it’s likely he won’t be able to stick to that for long, at least I hope not. Murder is wrong, kids, but this has been a long time coming. Bellamy’s passion is what makes him such a standout character. That version of him resurfacing would be the cherry on top of such a good season.

Once a Cockroach, Always a Cockroach

The tagline of the season is “Face your demons”. While for Madi this is the Dark Commander and for Diyoza it may be her likeness to Hitler, for Murphy it’s what he’s seen in the afterlife and his unwillingness to go back. This is a character that has cheated death so many times that’s he’s never perhaps grappled with the thought of his own mortality. Now that he knows there’s a way to cheat death forever, he must decide whether to be the hero or slay his demon.

It isn’t surprising in the least that Murphy has taken a deal to save himself. After all, this is his trademark. Even he knows it. However, it’s difficult to tell if his motives will change at any point in the season. What does Josephine have to do to lose him? Though Murphy acts in this episode like he can deal with losing Bellamy, we’ve seen just how ferociously loyal he is to those he loves.

When Clarke, Abby and co. threatened to test the nightblood solution on Emori back in Season 4, Murphy literally had to be restrained. He promised he’d kill Clarke if anything happened to her. Now more than ever, Murphy has a family. Something tells me that as much as he refuses that fact sometimes, he won’t let the Primes harm them — especially since he’s witnessed death firsthand.

Murphy has always been an unpredictable character though. Just when he seems the most bastardly and selfish, he bends and does something to save someone. I wouldn’t be surprised if Murphy turned into the hero of the season.

Echo, Emori and Raven

When Josephine tells an oblivious Echo that Bellamy has gone into the forest on a scouting mission, she’s suspicious but she takes the bait. Josephine figures this will buy her enough time to sway Abby and get the nightblood solution, but she still sends Jade to follow Echo.

While Echo is ultimately looking for Bellamy, she finds herself mercy killing someone who’s quite literally being eaten alive by a tree and learns about Josephine/Clarke from Jade. While it’s nice to see Echo go off on her own and have an independent storyline, it’s short-lived when she returns to the compound and reunites with her friends.

However, we still got a brief taste of a possible new pairing: Echo and Jade. Both spies, they have the potential to either grow closer as they empathize with one another, or play a very entertaining game to see who can gather more intel. Either way, I’m seriously hoping we get more of these two.

Meanwhile, Raven and Emori help Ryker, a Prime, work on the radiation problem. However, once Raven knows about the body snatching, there isn’t much working at all. While it’s understandable that Raven would question the morality of this all, the argument seems to go in circles. Ryker defends the way of the Primes as a significant aspect of Sanctum culture, and Raven argues its immorality.

Raven doesn’t seem to persuade Ryker, but it’s possible that his mind may change later on and he may become a key ally in helping our heroes to defeat the Primes and get Clarke back. He seems the most willing of the Primes we’ve met to break, anyway.

The issue here is that Raven continues to argue that she’s done nothing wrong, she’s innocent, and she has no demons. She can’t realistically keep up this facade forever, no matter how much she projects onto other people. Raven is a character that needs a serious reality check, and soon. She was once one of my favorites, but I’m beginning to lose hope that Raven can redeem herself from all the bitterness and egotism.

The Mysterious Spiral

Also in the forest are Octavia, Diyoza and their new friend Xavier. Octavia has been exposed to flares that rapidly aged her hand, and the aging is rapidly spreading. Xavier fears she may only have hours before the aging spreads to her mind, killing her. So, the three unlikely confidants search for a possible cure. It turns out that Xavier is a fan of homeopathic medicine. He collects the sap from a tree to apply to Octavia’s wrinkled skin, and while it doesn’t exactly help, her hand does begin to twitch uncontrollably.

The gang soon discover that her tremors aren’t random at all. In fact, they’re forming a spiral that shows up elsewhere in nature, and inked on Xavier’s skin. He says this anomaly called him and it is calling Octavia now.

While it’s unknown what exactly the anomaly is, it’s likely that it will give Octavia some kind of purpose she didn’t have before. Maybe it will even encourage her to live. Octavia’s demons are arguably the most difficult to face of any character on the show, so she likely needs some strong ammo to fight back.

I have to note that watching Octavia and Diyoza’s unlikely friendship blossom has been nothing short of a treat. This is a pair so many were hoping for at the end of Season 5 when they had a brief interaction in the Eligius ship, and one that is definitely not disappointing now. Diyoza and Octavia both have a lot to regret, so it only makes sense that they help each other get their humanity back.

Befriending the Dark Commander

Not knowing that Clarke is dead, Madi struggles in this episode with a commander who won’t let up taunting her. Gaia calls him Sheidheda, the Dark Commander. While in a deep meditative state, Madi speaks to Sheidheda and attempts to reason with him. However, he acts as the metaphorical devil on one’s shoulder, encouraging Madi to kill Gaia before she herself is harmed. Madi questions his words, but once she wakes up in chains, she seems to second guess herself. And when Madi learns that Clarke is dead (in the most heartbreaking scene, might I add), something clicks.

Madi banishes Gaia, and with Sheidheda now by her side, plans to kill everyone in order to avenge Clarke. While half of me was jumping for joy at this new heart-heavy side to Madi, the other half of me was frozen in place, worried about what may become of her without Gaia to guide her, and with this new, evil spirit guide.

Lola Flannery’s performance as Madi in this episode was magnetizing. My eyes were completely glued to the screen during her scenes. Even the most innocent of characters like Madi and Jordan have been forced to face their demons in Sanctum, which means that Lola has had to show a whole different part of her range. It’s always exciting to watch actors explore different sides of their characters, like Marie Avgeropoulos with her rendition of Blodreina last year. I’m anticipating many more Madi scenes worth singing praises about in the near future.

Mother Knows Best?

Still in the dark about Clarke death is her own mother, Abby. Abby has been so preoccupied with finding a way to save Kane that she’s ignored every suspicious thing Josephine has said to her. While Josephine originally believed that Abby would be her most difficult challenge, she’s actually been the opposite. Josephine takes Murphy’s advice and uses all of Abby’s demons against her, bringing up her addiction and her questionable decision to sell out her husband on the Ark.

Josephine doesn’t just taunt her with her past actions though. She tells Abby that she fears what will become of her if she loses Kane too and reminds her that she needs her mom. Abby falls for this hook, line and sinker. I have a theory that once Abby finds out about Josephine and learns she was the last to know, her priorities will shift. Her real demon should be what she’s done to her daughter. She can probably live without Kane, but can she live without Clarke, knowing she’s, at times, been an arguably bad mother?

Can’t Get You Out of My Head

When Murphy tells Josephine’s dad on her, she’s forced to bargain with him and give him the mind drives. Instead of dwelling on the impending shitstorm coming her way, Josephine ends her day by telling herself tomorrow will be better, taking a mystery pill, and laying her head on her pillow. When she closes her eyes though, Clarke is alive inside her mind! And then: boom, out.

I never had a doubt in my mind that Clarke would be alive somewhere, somehow. After all, she’s a fighter. This could be of course because Clarke is a synthetic nightblood and this may not pair with the memory drive as well as a natural born nightblood would. If this is the case, it would certainly spoil Josephine’s plan.

So there’s a way out of this for Clarke. Now the rest of our heroes just need to figure that out and hurry up!

Once again, this episode left me speechless in a way that only The 100 can. Right now, there are a bunch of unconnected storylines all taking up equal parts of screen time. I’m eager for that moment when they start to intertwine. I suspect that Gabriel may be the missing link in all of this. Perhaps he’ll have a way to save Octavia and even get Clarke back.

Stray Thoughts:

I miss Jordan. I can only suspect that given his situation with Delilah, he won’t want to just try to survive. Maybe he’ll even team up with Bellamy and Madi to get Clarke back (wishful thinking?).

Bellamy sitting outside by himself crying was so heart wrenching but so, so telling. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Josephine and Bellamy saying “Shut up Murphy” at the same time was excellent.

Where is Indra this season? I miss her and her words of wisdom dearly.

Jessica’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

The 100 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on the CW.

#The 100 #Memento Mori

7 notes · View notes

themattress · 7 years ago

Text

Assorted Future Diary Opinions

Because I recently watched that series in full.

The premise of this series was interesting, but I think the execution needed work, since there’s too much that doesn’t add up (mostly centered around the character of Deus Ex Machina - I like the guy, but what exactly was his deal? How/why is a god even dying?)

As I’m sure anyone can tell you, Yuno is the star of the show. She alone makes it worth the watch. While she well deserves her reputation as the Queen (or Goddess) of Yandere, she’s also one of the most nuanced examples of that trope. Her whole life revolving around her obsession with Yuki is actually a result of there being so much more to her than just said obsession with Yuki, hidden depths that make her disturbing, repulsive, sympathetic, and lovable all in turns, but on the whole it makes her human. She’s not a true monster, just a broken girl in need of help. Also, she’s a complete badass. You just gotta love her for that.

Like Shinji Ikari, Yuki gets a lot of hate for not being the decisive, assertive, more masculine male protagonist viewers expect him to be. But honestly? Just like with Shinji, I don’t get it. I like him just fine! He’s no Yuno, but she and the show would be worse off without him. He’s sympathetic and likable enough (up until he fully embraces the killing aspect of the game, although even then it’s understandable), and by the end he does become more decisive and assertive in a single conviction: save Yuno from herself (in more ways than one). The only thing I don’t care for is his sad backstory: his parents divorced. Really? That’s it? Weak!

I have a big love/hate relationship with Uryuu Minene, and there are three reasons for that. The first reason is that her character is very inconsistent - it’s one thing to have chronic backstabbing disorder, and quite another to have your personality make wild shifts without explanation, particularly after her first appearance where she was shown as more or less pure evil and psychotic, then all of a sudden she’s mellowed out and admirable. Her “why do birds fly south?” explanation is NOT sufficient. The second reason is toward the end the narrative starts pushing her as a hero, without any acknowledgement or remorse from her about her heinous crimes. And the third reason is the nature of those heinous crimes and the motivation behind them - she’s a terrorist, born from a harsh life in the Middle East, who has religious hang-ups and kills people, even children, as a result of them. So basically, she’s Atheist ISIS. That hits way too close to home for me to ever not be somewhat disturbed by her character, no matter how much erratic character development she receives. With that said, she is cool and sexy, with great hammy voice acting in both Japanese and English.

I freaking LOVE Mur Mur. She’s adorable and hilarious, and the twist that she’s essentially the Big Bad was the best one in the story, outdoing the twists regarding Aru and Yuno’s origins in effectiveness. And her end-of-episode omakes were all highlights of the show.

The other Diary Holders I really enjoyed were 5th, 7th, 10th and 11th. 5th, the insane child prodigy, was both awesome and creepy as hell, and I loved how he and Yuno were so evenly matched in their battle. 7th, the battle couple, was just all-around likable and touching and made the perfect foil for Yuno and Yuki, even though that backstory was really unnecessary and stupid. 10th, the dog breeder, not only had an awesome English dub voice, but I also found it interesting how misanthropic he was to the point of manipulating his own estranged daughter, yet deep down was full of regret for this and cared for her enough to be honest with her and give her some words of comfort and parental advice just before he was killed. And 11th was a pretty cool villain with an interesting style in how untouchable he made himself.

I didn’t care as much for 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 12th. 3rd, the serial killer, was an undeveloped plot device to get the story started. 4th, the crooked cop, had too big a character shift that came out of left field, and the whole confrontation with him was underwhelming. 8th was just uninteresting to me, and the entire scenario featuring 6th and 12th was so completely bizarre and extremely uncomfortable that it negatively affected my perceptions of the characters.

I have just five characters who I flat-out HATE: Yuki’s father, whose redemption was incredibly half-assed and not believable, Yuno’s mother, who I really don’t think should be allowed custody of her daughter no matter what psychological help she might be getting at the end, the cultist bastard from 6th’s backstory, the over-the-top evil high school bitch from 7th’s backstory, and Masumi Nishijima, a character who was just so stupid, hypocritical, useless and all-around nonsensical that I don’t quite get the point. Minene, you can do better!

I actually quite like Ouji Kousaka, Mao Nonosaka and especially Hinata Hino. I know that many fans don’t and just consider them unwanted burdens, but I think they were all endearing and added some much-needed normalcy to the story...well, relatively speaking.

I only like Aru Akise in the English dub, since Todd Haberkorn’s voice really added a likability to him. In the manga, his actions toward the end really soured me on him, as they made him look worse than both Yuno and Yuki in that moment. While this was cut out in the anime, the Japanese version cast Akira Ishida in the role, which means he’s literally just Kaworu Nagisa (as if Yuki wasn’t similar to Shinji enough!) and I thus can’t appreciate him as an individual.

The last four episodes were the best in the series. With all the other Diary Holders and side characters out of the way, everything now centered solely around the heart of the story: Yuno and Yuki, and their twisted and dysfunctional yet also strangely touching and uplifting love for each other. And I will admit it: this scene with this music made me cry. It was beautifully done.

The anime definitely handled the ending better than the manga. In the manga, the last three-or-so pages suddenly have Yuno smash through space-time with a hammer, no explanation given, and a rushed happy ending is given to the story. It just...doesn’t feel right to me. Whereas in the anime, it ends on the appropriately melancholy note of Yuki ruling an empty void, alone and forever mourning Yuno, then having a post-credits shot of his phone suddenly changing to say that “Yuno came to see me”, a light shining overhead and Yuno’s voice saying “Yuki!” being heard. That mysterious, ambiguous shot is the perfect one to leave it on, and if you want the full ending, you watch Redial, which actually provides the full context behind the “Yuno smashes through space-time with a hammer” ending before reaching it.

And lastly: Yunoteru forever! (Credit to @yunoteru4ever for that line. XD)

#Future Diary #Opinion #This has been a PSA

10 notes · View notes

samurailovewriter · 7 years ago

Text

Masamune’s MBTI Analysis P2

Now that we’ve assigned all the lords their MBTI (except Kenshin. I figured out I and P, but I still need those middle two letters), time to dive in deeper on what it means to be in a relationship with them! I’ve listed below a concise list of Strengths and Weaknesses from 16personalities to guide us, but once the actual analysis begins, that’s completely my own. This is going to be even longer btw. I apologize in advance!

Strengths: Creative, insightful, inspiring and convincing, decisive, determined and passionate, and altruistic

Weaknesses: Sensitive, extremely private, perfectionist, always need to have a cause, and tend to burn out easily

INFJ relationship

There are two types of INFJs when it comes to relationships: the one that never looks for a relationship, and the one that does but constantly reminds him/herself that the relationship might end. In this case, Masamune is the first - the one that never looks for a relationship in the first place. I think we’ve seen enough of his MS and ES to know that literally everyone around him wonders if he’ll ever be interested in ANYONE, and he just simply doesn’t care. You can gossip about him possibly being gay all you want, he doesn’t want to look for one neither does he plan to.

In this case, the girl has to be the more proactive one, which we clearly see in the MS. She’s always the one that’s reaching out to him, the one that literally admitted to his face on how much she loved him without a moment of hesitation, and the one who tends to hug, laugh, and kiss when they are alone. This connects a lot to his weakness of extremely private and is something that heavily permeates into the relationship as a whole.

INTJs and INFJs are officially the two most private MBTIs compared to the remaining 14. Their reasons, however, are vastly different. While INTJs are private because they are worried about how enemies could possibly use a slip up to backstab them, INFJs are private merely because they don’t feel or see the need to tell others about what’s going on. They think venting is bothersome to those around them, and they also don’t want to make a scene for a situation that may very much be of little consequence when in the moment they feel as if a volcano has erupted.

Which is something their counterparts will constantly face when being in a relationship with INFJs. They swallow problems down extraordinarily well, and act like nothing’s wrong. Masamune LITERALLY does that countless times in every single ES and the MS as well. Which is why I really like how the MC is written, because she is perfectly compatible to our INFJ lord. She doesn’t let problems wallow. She constantly goes to him directly to ask about whether anything is wrong, and she does it without ever giving up. In the one time he blew up on her (ES on wedding planning), she calmed down after the initial fight and decided she was going to try again the VERY NEXT NIGHT. She knows that if she lets it just pass, he’s never going to attempt bringing it up again, and the problem will never be fully solve.

But that certainly does not mean you can aggressively return to Masamune over and over again until he caves. Don’t forget that the INFJ is also quite sensitive and one must be good with words to get their thoughts extracted out into the open. Pay special attention to MC the next time you see her prying Masamune for his thoughts (or even just in the MS). She’s consistent and not backing down, but she’s very gentle in the words she uses. It’s not a simple “What’s going on? Tell me what’s going on? You can’t just keep these thoughts to yourself” demands, but gradual questions to ease comfort into Masamune: “Did something happen? Is it something of great concern? Has it made things harder for you? Is there anything I can do to help?” By not giving up, you communicate to him that you really want to know his thoughts, and by being gentle, signify that you are willing to listen patiently.

Ease past that privacy and sensitivity wall of INFJ Masamune, you’re in for a wonderful relationship ride. INFJs are extraordinarily insightful to the people around them, and nothing escapes their intuition. Masamune illustrates that several times whenever MC decides to swallow her thoughts and troubles down, as well as when he’s a supporting character in Kojuro’s story whenever Kojuro is having issues, physically or mentally. And though Masamune is sometimes not the best at communicating his thoughts, he spares no extra time to make sure he can spend some alone time with MC. It can also be very inspiring when Masamune becomes passionate not only to Oshu and his clan, but his family and friends and soldiers. He won’t ever try to push your buttons, does his best to make sure conflicts never appear with his extraordinary convincing skills (Hush, hush fact on INFJs, they’re actually secretly QUITE GOOD at manipulating situations to ease tensions), and will forever try his best in the relationship. And even if it doesn’t work out (which it obviously DOES here), unless MC has done something unforgivable, he will be surprisingly accepting and logical of how and why the relationship has failed.

Who Masamune prefers: INFJs tend to naturally connect with fellow _NF_ and analysts _NT_ better than _S_J and _S_P. However, if put in order of preference, it would be _NF_, _NT_, _S_J, and finally _S_P. With how the MC is written, it seems Masamune has a tendency to gravitate more towards extroverts than introverts. So congrats to girls who are ENFJ and ENFP as those are likely to be his top 2.

#samurai love ballad party #slbp #slbp mbti #slbp masamune

45 notes · View notes

talknow · 5 years ago

Text

When Clarity Is More Important than Even Talking

I didn’t see no racism from whites in school because the racism was with the black dudes. And I didn’t fool with them anyways nor wanted them. So since all the racism was within the black male group behind the scene even if my mom did keep them away, I wouldn’t have seen it because I was busy in my studies. The only way I would have seen racism of the black men was if I was fucking with black men. And that is exactly what I was NOT doing. I never did a black dude. Never talked to them. Never even hung with them. In school and college where there was black dudes, is where I left quickly. In the university center where student hung out - whenever the black dudes were there I left. All universities had places where the black men hung out and that was not me. Like me or not, I know why. Cuz I distanced myself from that N8GGER shit. Even when I went to disco clubs- the N8ggers hung out in parking lots after closing. Why I thought other then fucking. Nope. I danced. And went HOME. N8GGERS that I knew would stand in the club talking to me choosing on men to have after the club. I didn’t do that. I just laughed shot the breeze and left. Yeah I knew dudes wanted to get with me but dude what dafuck? One night? What if the shit is good? Fuck you. Nope. I act up when I am horny - and I don’t need to be getting horny over no dumb dirty ass N8gger! It won’t happen in my life. Never. Dirty ass N8ggers fucking everything walking NEVER. Racist black N8GGER!

Even in elementary school, guess who I ate lunch with? No body. The blacks were to rowdy. And all my friends hung with blacks. And I couldn’t. And didn’t. In high school, I sat by myself at a table by myself at lunchtime. That was because I wanted to. N8GGERs scared me then - and I knew for a fact - that if a N8gger got too close to me we would fight. And I knew something that no one ever thought. And that is “if I ever have to fight a N8GGER, he most likely would end up dead.” So keep this N8GGER away from me cuz I don’t play with no N8GGERs.

They are dumb. And dumb is a threat to me. A total threat to my life to have N8GGERs coming around me unannounced unsuspecting unprepared. I don’t sleep where there are N8GGERs.

Only once and the doors were locked from the inside and chairs were placed behind the door knob from my side of the room. When the N8GGER came home, I disappeared. Poof gone. The POE mouth, the deep raspy nasty voice, the untamed untrained manners, the eating with their mouth opened, the lax-daisy don’t care, the non urgency unless it’s a H9NKY, the “I don’t know English” unless a H9NKY male- the black ass N8GGER is a disgust to Terry Dwayne Ashford. I just look at a N8GGER and that is IT. Never.

Talking to ME? No you ain’t! Not me. You don’t see you a N8GGER? No you ain’t talking to me! So what I am nice. Nope you ain’t AINT talking to ME!

Ok. Keep trying and I am gonna have your ass LOCKED away. You AINT talking to ME! Period!

I don’t even recall having a N8gger co-worker. Hold on let me think! Nope I have never HAD a N8GGER even as a co-worker anywhere. That IS kinda amazing isn’t is it.

That must have been mom. I can tell you that my freshman year in college - there was this N8gger dude following me. I literally was home over the weekend living in the dorms and told my mom in a casual discussion. That this “N8GGER man keeps following me around” next thing I know the N8GGER dude was gone and had been hospitalized ever since that weekend from an immediate tragic wreak. Good, I said. But I didn’t have a clue it was from my telling my parents.

One more N8gger I am going to tell you about was James Mitchell. When I moved to Atlanta was my roommate. Guess what this N8GGER came in telling me? That he “had orgasms from his butt cakes”. Omg how is that? I asked in my most corniness. How in the hell does a man have an orgasm without touching himself in his butterfly 🦋? This man used to have sex so much with everyone and smiled like it was cute. Guess what happened to him. Within a MONTH he was dead! YEAP. Show was and I had the apartment all to myself. His family came fo clean his shit out. Every N8GGER that has gotten close to me have been put to sleep. Juan Spencer was a N8GGER and the dude was beaten to a pulp for following me.

Let me think of other N8GGERs that tried to get close to me. Every N8gger that I can think of who tried to get too close to me have been put to rest.

The James Mitchell guy seriously I used to use him chasing every man that even smiled at me. I didn’t like the crazy ass men and when I wanted to get them away from me- I introduced them to James my roommate and made James go after them. Knowing James wanted everything he thought I wanted. James went after them ugly stank and all, and I laughed seeing that James didn’t like me. And that was proof. In my house and pretending. When I found that out that is when he was put to sleep. And never woke up again. Abrah-Ka-Debra. Bye Butt Orgasm BOY. And the N8GGER was gone. Every N8gger I know have tried to backstab me on my nice appearance only to find in the end - nice was the exact nasty that took the HOE to his grave. All I did was “wiggle my nose” and ask “is this N8GGER even supposed to be HERE? Get this HOE out of my face. And that is what happened.

A n8gger liking ME - HOW? How did some shit like that happen?

Now I can tell you how would such thing happen- is if i was tipsy. First of all, a half of a drink is enough for me to feel good and smile profusely at “UGLY”. YEAP shooooooooo will. See UGLY and my heart sees jokes. Jokes that I cannot say “OUT LOUD”. But when I have a drink I laugh at them to myself. LoLing. Shoooooooooooooo DO. Being civil. I could never say what I really think out loud and maintain a reputation to be the acclaimed journalist that I am. So I laugh inside tickled to death at the arrogance of Ugly and shitmonkey. LoLing. It tickles me to death. I just be wanting to ask “how the fuck did you become such a shit monkey in year 2020? How indaFUCK did such thing happen? And why YOU? LoLing. But I keep the shit to myself. Mom and I used to laugh together. “Mom look 👀 you see that?” YEAP she would say “Wayne is it a bitch like they say in the street”. Yeah mom that is what they call a “HOE”. We call it a whore for the correct word. But N8GGERs call it a “HOE” like the grass chopping tool. I call it a HOE when I am hanging out and have a drink. Then we change the subject. Mom why you won’t have a glass of wine with me? Mom don’t get drunk - sorry mommy don’t do that!

That’s mom and me - and that was us talking that we didn’t show them. We looked at each other when y’all were around and laughed. Winked. And said look 👀 what is wrong with that ugly thang- is it crazy? I would say something like “mom that’s animal shit”. Now mom and I never used the word N8GGER ever before a N8GGER tried us. Never. We would also say something is wrong with those people and we would try to prove to ourselves that they were like us. We couldn’t believe that something could be wrong with a person based on skin tone and having a sack of nuts in his pants. We nicely: politely: classically: just asked ourselves- what’s wrong with them? And felt tearful that they were so different. Anyways we don’t and did not do N8GGERs. And honestly I believed it was our GOD that gave us grace in being civil to them. “Well baby they are human too” she said. And we have to live for ourselves. Somehow they love you she said. And I accepted the words but I, InDaCarSeat DaTGUY, never believed no shit like that. Nevertheless I honored my mom’s wishes that as siblings they loved me. And I should love them too. “Oh well mom, if you say so!”

And I then LEFT. Cuz I don’t know how to love something that makes me feel that strange. It made me feel so strange that it angered me. And that anger was kept a secret. I just got away. And when I did see them- guess what InDaCarSeat DaTGuY did? I smiled. And held myself quietly as mom watched me knowing I was as uncomfortable in their presence as a hot comb would be straightening a H9NKY’s hair. I just held myself tightly and didn’t talk. They entered and sat and looked at me and I looked at them. When the clock struck the hour “oops times up. My flight back to Atlanta leaves in an hour gotta go. And that was the saving grace. We kept friendship forever just like that.

Those people didn’t like me either. They just looked at me and were jealous. Seemingly all of them. And that confirmed they must be a gang. How could ALL of them hate one person altogether?

They talk loud. OMG what’s wrong with those people. Then their voices are mono toned - no feeling. What in the hell they hiding? Voices seems to be trained to be one tone to avoid showing feelings. One guy that I knew liked me - his voice got so deep when others came as he talked to me - his voice threw me OFF. Offensive as if he didn’t want the other person to know he liked me. That was enough right there- dude get the FUCK away from me! I just thought “he must BE DUMB👋! That’s what I thought and put his ass on the tennis court and told him to “HIT the ball”. My favorite was an African named EBEY cuz he was big and thought bigger was bad. I used to enjoy whooping his big ole ass but I liked him too as a friend. It’s offensive the find that HE is GAY! Sorry it’s so offensive that all these N8GGERs are GAY it’s a shame. Sorry I HATE you N8GGER. Do you know how many of you I kinda adored and refused talk about anything of such to protect you. Do you know how many I have turned away because I liked you and saw your kids or your wife or your family or honored your straight LIE? And to find that YOU are FAGGITs and Racists AGAINST ME is a disgust. My ex-friend SHONGO, sorry I can’t even LOOK at the level of offense. The respect I held and find that YOU may be a GAY man- and saw you look at white men in my presence. No I can’t DEAL with such Disrespect. Lies. Deceit. Just the thought that my friends may have been GAYER than me - remembering when we used to hang out as buddies and with the Hispanic night club now comes to mind with explanations. Sorry don’t talk to me NO MORE ever! I could never talk to a N8GGER again. I rather DIE than to have a N8GGER in my life. And that is whether it is true or NOT.

The fact that such disgust has penetrated my brain to see SHIT TURDS when I see a N8GGER is enough. Right or Wrong; true or false; done or not; I see a N8gger and I see a big wad of H9NKY shit turds! And that is something I cannot deal with in my face. Could be a billionaire - dude take your N8gger-ASS on!

If one wonders how such sibling mistake was made, the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY, Terry Dwayne Ashford has already explained in other terms. But as the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY, Terry Dwayne Ashford does so well as a writer of technicality as well as being a journalist, the technical writer will go above and beyond to explain “this one too” in the staple motto that the InDaCarSeat reports “in a way that YOU may understand!”

While the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford was growing up during the exact times when the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford was avoiding black boys in school, the conspirator brother was caught up in the sex trafficking promiscuity with the whiter men. The oldest brother leading the conspiracy, who’s responsible for the behind the scene pre-emptive attack on Terry Dwayne Ashford, has been noted several times - as the exact same brother who were amidst a secret “gay bashing” of his little brother by not speaking to his then teen-age (now attacked) brother. Written in words that may be published, from the ages of 11 years old as Terry Dwayne Ashford was then just a little boy until the age of 22 the oldest black brothers would not speak to Terry Dwayne Ashford. That shunning hurt the little boy so bad that it shaped the then “astute little black boy’s mentality towards himself. That ordeal led to Terry Dwayne Ashford’s internal and secret plight to find a way on his own. “My brother’s don’t like me.” And that was my mother’s purpose for hovering over InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford when the brothers who attacked continued throughout childhood leaving Terry Dwayne Ashford. And there with the then Little Boy Terry Dwayne Ashford, was no one but the mother who was the one who they allegedly killed. Mom was the only one there consoling the little boy when the brothers who attacked left InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford. And sadly now we find that those exact black men are the ONES that allegedly KILLED the mother relying on having also KILLED and LEFT (in terms of attacking) ME, the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford. To be exact- the older brothers did not speak to the attacked person, (Terry Dwayne Ashford InDaCarSeat DaTGuY) who is also son of the assassinated mother, from about 15 years until the then boy-growing through pubity throughout the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY’s teenage years refused to associate or even talk to their younger brother. And the fact of shunning and gay bashing abuse of InDaCarSeat Terry Dwayne Ashford has been noted and may even be published, as happening when InDaCarSeat DaTGuY was aged “10 years old” until the InDaCarSeat was about 25 years old and had relocated to Atlanta. The new light in the then gay bashing black oldest brother occurred until the introduction of a new woman’s pregnancy beholding the fetus of the son whom the same brother also had put away at age 14. Lenetta was pregnant with Chris whom the brother seems to have also attacked by framing him into jail at aged 14. The oldest conspiring brother (who led the assault) finally spoke to the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY brother (who is the attacked brother) upon his relocation to Nashville. It was noted in as the first time his brother had spoken to him in over 15 years. To show the nice guy we are dealing with in the attacked DaTGuY of InDaCarSeat - he even thought “wow he is actually talking to me.” And InDaCarSeat DaTGuY told lenetta the pregnant lady that “She must have had some special powers over this black man. He hasn’t spoken to me (the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY) since before he turned a teen. The attacking brothers hated their black brother InDaCarSeat and GAY BASHED Terry Dwayne Ashford through shunning activity that caused our mother to console InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford. The exact same gay bashing in the Ashford’s family that protected Terry Dwayne Ashford from his then-gay bashing brothers- saw black men all over the schools gay bashed people who appeared as black and effeminate. Meanwhile the exact same black men was seen embracing the white effeminacy in men. This shaped InDaCarSeat DaTGuY Terry Dwayne Ashford’s masculinity and his approach to black men outside of the home that observed and sometimes even angered him to see the black men hurting other black men like Darell, and Terry Richardson, and Bobby Loveberry, and Alvin Williams. InDaCarSeat DaTGuY had butched UP and that saw him distanced from the gay bashing. The reason why the InDaCarSeat DaTGuY distanced himself

0 notes

perpetuallyfive · 7 years ago

Text

okay actual spoiler shit on Atomic Blonde:

I think it’s a lot less joyful than John Wick, which is going to be treated largely as a mark against it although I disagree with that. While a lot about its pace and overall sense of style creates the impression that it’s going to be a similar love letter to violence, the setting and tone place it apart as something that aspires to be more grounded in the brutal reality and consequence of violent living.

The relationship with Delphine is central to this. Those moments of stillness and gentleness are used to demonstrate all that they have given up by choosing this life. As much as they enjoy those brief moments together, they can’t stay there forever. (Even the city as they know it won’t be there for very much longer.)

This is made most apparent when Delphine tells Lorraine that she sees her for who she really is when they’re together and Lorraine says that she will have to work on that because it will only result in her death. (She doesn’t exactly fix it, and it ends up getting Delphine killed instead.)

In many ways Delphine represents lost innocence for Lorraine, which could fall into a pretty large and obvious trap of reducing her to no more than a device for the protagonist’s evolution -- not exactly better just because it’s a woman this time -- but I feel like in making some of her own choices in the end and even being vital to a few key moments, Delphine is given more of a primary role and even shown to choose to abandon that innocence herself.

It didn’t feel like fridging to me. Not exactly. Delphine is given more agency than that, though her choices in the moments leading up to it are almost inexplicable. It feels like a scene is missing or something.

I feel like we’re still meant to guess and wonder at who Satchel could be, to the point that they wasted some of Delphine’s demise on misdirects. Annoying and unnecessary.

I’m just really, really glad she’s only dead and not the evil backstabbing betrayer (who would also end up dead).

The good news is almost fucking everyone dies, so Delphine is not given particularly worse treatment. This is further in line with the whole premise of the brutality of this world and how destructive it is.

I love the camera work in this film? I saw some straight dudes before it came out saying that they felt like the sex scene from the trailer was “male gazey.” I can’t tell if this is because it actually is and I’m fundamentally broken as a person because I fall for that shit now, or if people just ignore queer ladies to the point that they would actually forget that another group exists that might appreciate it too. Anyway: the camera doesn’t actually feel exploitative to me. Those moments are fast and frantic to evoke the feelings of the characters, but their other moments together in bed are treated very gently. (Again, to match their mood.)

I love the use of nudity. The first time we see Lorraine naked, it’s so utterly removed from the usual sexualization. You can see her full body and, you know what, she has curves. She’s slouching and not every line is perfect. She is bruised and frankly looks her age. She has hips in the way that women actually have hips but women in film are almost never allowed to. The camera observes her just as it would a man in this position, placing her center frame and highlighting the injuries without any attempt to titillate. (Apart from the pure aesthetic pleasure of how good that shot looks, because holy shit.)

That shot of Delphine sleeping nude in bed is so beautiful because while you obviously see most of her naked body, the way it’s shot -- the framing of the scene and the camera work itself -- really makes it feel as though we’re viewing her from Lorraine’s perspective and not that of the male director.

I’m admittedly a pretty huge chump because when they showed Lorraine in Paris at the end I had a moment where I imagined that it was all a huge fake out and Delphine was going to have faked her death as part of a massive ploy they got into together.

In fact a part of me basically wants to write that, so whatever.

They’re living on a farm together in Colorado (or raising Huskies in Alaska) when, five years later, the government comes to call. Hijinks etc.

It was never going to be that kind of a film and while I accept that on a purely rational level that’s not what happened in my heart. In my heart, Delphine was waiting on that fucking plane with John Goodman, just slightly out of frame.

Literally everyone’s covering it, but the music was fantastic. I loved the fight choreography. I loved the color grading.

The original 99 Luftballons is an anti-war protest song created in West Berlin during the Cold War about how small misunderstandings can escalate to tragedy, centered around the futility of war and violence. I saw a few people call the song out as being tonally out of place, but it wasn’t an accidental choice.

I’m really glad I finally saw Stalker just earlier this year!

Stalker is also in many ways a similar protest work, this one made right before Tarkovsky left the Soviet Union. It’s hard to articulate what the film is about precisely but it focuses on concepts like yearning for that which is visible yet out of reach and can only be attained indirectly, through great struggle and suffering within a larger, unknowable system that functions off the futile exertion of those within.

Since apparently some people are super confused about this: Lorraine was Satchel.

The List, which David saw, absolutely identified her as the double agent. (He might have killed Spyglass to keep her from having access. He might have done it to give his copy of the List greater value. Hard to say for sure what his motives were.) Lorraine has most likely planned all along to frame it on David. But as we learn, instead of being a double agent in the pocket of the Russians, she has been fucking over the Russians by giving them bad intel or using what they tell her to kill their people. The reason MI6 did not know she was doing this is she is revealed, at the very end, to be an American agent who went deep under cover within MI6 as well. Goodman is the only one who knows who she really is.

#atomic blonde #atomic blonde spoilers #i wrote this hilariously fast at work on friday and i'm not sure how well thought out it is #but here we go anyway!

14 notes · View notes

oumakokichi · 8 years ago

Note

So Ouma's sent everyone into a paralyzing state of despair come chapter 5, yanked the gameboard away from the ringleader and ground the game to a halt. What exactly was his plan after that? Did he expect them to all stay in a listless despair forever and be alright with him continuing to live given that he was the "mastermind" that "destroyed the world"? Does he have plans to get out as he knows the world can't be completely destroyed if there's still viewers? Is it ever mentioned?

Ouma’s plans for what came next in Chapter 5 are only alluded to rather than mentioned directly, mostly because between his self-isolation in the machinery bay and the twist with the remember light which set Maki into action to try and kill him, he never really gets a chance to go back to his own investigation. However, there are a few things we can surmise about what he likely had up his sleeves next, as well as how he expected the group to react and why he told them about the outside world in the first place.

It’s important to remember that the first and foremost reason why he showed all of them the “truth of the outside world” is because they kept asking. No matter how much he or Gonta in Chapter 4 were determined not to tell them about it because it was so horrible and depressing, the entire group kept maintaining that it couldn’t possibly be so bad, and this culminates in Momota basically inspiring the rest of them with his own plan in Chapter 5. He says that if they stage an uprising against Monokuma now that the Exisals are gone, there’s nothing stopping them from going to see the outside world for themselves, and that it’s “probably not so bad anyway.”

This, of course, is a very bad plan. While it’s true that the Exisals are momentarily out of commission without the Monokumerz around, Monokuma has plenty of other tricks up his sleeve, as shown by the fact that he can literally bring the Monokumerz back whenever he wants, which he does at the end of the Chapter 5 trial. The Exisals aren’t nearly as difficult for other people to control either; while only the Monokumerz can unlock them, pretty much anyone can pilot one if you use the right technology to get one open, such as one of Miu’s electric bombs, or the remote control she made for Ouma that could hijack electronic devices.

Ouma overheard Momota sharing his plan in the cafeteria, and knew it was pretty much a certain death trap, or else an opportunity for the real ringleader to get more of their kicks in. Not only that, but even if they had miraculously managed to successfully rebel against Monokuma using only a handful of weapons from Maki’s research lab (and only Maki was actually successfully trained in how to use them), the only exit to the outside world available to them was still the one located at the end of the death trap mini-game, which is nearly impossible for anyone to clear without assistance, and would have posed very real threats to their safety regardless of whether Monokuma was around or not.

Ouma shows up in Chapter 5 and hands them literally all the tools they’ll need to clear the mini-game on a silver platter, making them considerably better-armed against both the Exisals and the platformer mini-game. Despite the fact that his offer of assistance was quite literally met with Maki attempting to choke him to death in front of multiple witnesses for the second time, he still followed the rest of the group’s progress, and when they reached the door leading to the outside world for themselves, that’s where he put his revised plan into action.

I believe that his original plan with the hammers and electric bombs was something very similar to Momota’s. However, Miu’s inability to trust the rest of the group was something which I think deeply shook Ouma, considering his own deep-seated skepticism. Knowing that group unity was something that would likely never be fully achieved as long as the real ringleader was hiding among them (which is actually true, considering Tsumugi is right there within the group listening in on all their plans the whole time), he decided instead to target the broadcast, rather than relying on a plan that would potentially allow someone to backstab the others, or even worse, potentially risk letting the killing game continue.

Following up on the act he put on ever since Chapter 4, Ouma stages his grand coup d’état against the real ringleader, and even though his entire plan was essentially for the group’s safety, so that they wouldn’t get themselves killed in a much riskier plan against Monokuma and the ringleader, turns it into a claim that he “just wanted to see the despair-filled looks on their faces” by “showing them the truth.” He claims that he’s the ringleader who thought up the whole killing game, that he’s gotten bored of it now, and that everyone can pretty much do as they please, he doesn’t really care about them anymore now.

His plan was meant to make the group depressed by taking away their “hope” that the outside world was safe and fine and somewhere worth getting out to. Rather than making them despair, per se, it was meant to eliminate that hope entirely, in a scenario very similar to what Saihara and the others realize near the end of Chapter 6: precisely because hope exists, despair exists, too. The reason people within the group kept killing, and the reason for the entire killing game show’s existence, is precisely because of “hope.” Every culprit who killed had some “hope” that they were doing the right thing, hope that they were returning to their loved ones and the outside world, hope that they were making horrible sacrifices for the “right reasons.”

But this “hope” played into exactly what the ringleader and the audience wanted from all of them. Their desires, wishes, ambitions, all of these were why they killed—not despair. And so as Ouma tells Momota himself in Chapter 5 before dying, he tried to eliminate their reasons for killing one another by first taking that hope away, and showing them the “horrible, single, unchanging truth” of the outside world.

It’s important to note too that while he certainly takes credit for engineering the killing game and for being the leader of the religious cult (not the Remnants of Despair per se, but a cult which Tsumugi twists into being the Remnants of Despair in her remember lights) which had wanted to stop the Gopher Plan, he does not and cannot claim credit for destroying the world per se. The meteor showers were a natural disaster which he remembered just the same as everyone else in the group, and it’s pretty clear from some of his more cynical remarks in the scene in which he breaks the truth to everyone that he seems to believe those meteor showers fucked the earth up in some ways for good, regardless of the fact that there are people viewing the killing game show.

He was tired. He was very, very full of self-loathing after violating his single most important moral code not to kill people in Chapter 4. Part of his claims that he’s the big, evil ringleader who they should all hate and blame for everything is because it’s part of his plan to snatch the gameboard away from the real ringleader, and it’s partly because he knew the group was going to blame him for everything by that point anyway. There’s a certain level of “self-fulfilling prophecy” to his actions in Chapter 5, and it’s the first point at which his actions become somewhat reckless when he’s normally so careful with every single move he makes—because he definitely stopped caring about his own life after Chapter 4, precisely because of the sort of underhanded tricks he had to use in order to stay alive.

If Ouma is a SHSL Chessmaster (and I still think he is) capable of analyzing potential moves and predicting far ahead, similar to how Junko and Kamukura can analyze and predict for future situations, then Chapter 5 and his coup d’état mark the point at which he stopped making moves on the chessboard specifically in terms of victory, and started making moves for the sake of being incomprehensible. On the one hand, it’s much, much harder for your opponent to read your next move if your objective isn’t victory in the traditional sense. But on the other hand, if you start sacrificing much cleaner, more open moves that would lead to you winning the game quickly and efficiently, the difficulty increases immensely. You start sacrificing your own possible moves for the sake of hoping your opponent can’t see through you.

That’s essentially what he does the whole way through. By acting extremely contradictory and making huge claims about being the ringleader with only shaky “proof” to back them up at best, he was hoping to simultaneously force the rest of the group to stop the killing game and make the real ringleader nervous—but by no longer caring about his own life, he had begun leaving huge openings in his plan, such as the fact that he could no longer investigate or eavesdrop on the rest of the group after holing up in the machinery bay.

Because we know that he wanted to take down the real ringleader, we can surmise that he was hoping they would react by giving themselves away somehow. His plan was nothing short of a direct blow against the killing game itself. With everyone deprived of reasons to kill anymore, the show instantly went from a “killing game show” into a “watch everyone lie around depressed in their rooms show.” There was no more hope or despair in the days following Ouma’s broadcast, and just like with Saihara’s plan to abstain from voting, this was seen by the audience and ringleader both as the worst-case scenario. It wasn’t interesting, or fun, and it certainly wasn’t anything they expected from Danganronpa. The longer this sort of bland stalemate lasted, the more likely it was that the real ringleader would start sweating bullets and launch a counter-attack.

The downside, of course, is that Tsumugi as a ringleader was nothing like what he expected. She flew far too under his radar, and her plans of countering were vastly different from what someone like himself, or even someone like Junko, would have thought up. Where Ouma was probably expecting a form of retaliation involving a direct murder attempt in order to start the game back up again (which is exactly what Junko did when the game came to a stalemate in dr1 Chapter 5), Tsumugi worked in a far more insidious way, relying on hope once again, rather than despair, to jumpstart the killing game back into action.

And so Ouma was blindsided, because his mistake was in thinking about his opponent in terms of what he would do, rather than thinking in terms of an opponent who went beyond his chessboard strategy and who was perhaps not the super grand, strategic, imposing ringleader the way he himself would be. As bitter as he is about it, he still accepts his mistakes in Chapter 5 as something of his own doing, and retaliates as quickly and as hard as he possibly can in the span of less than two hours.

We also know for a fact that…well, dying wasn’t outside of Ouma’s expectations. The fact that he wrote his own suicide note and left it to be found in his room, and the fact that he willingly let himself be killed by the press, as well as constant allusions to “having no one who would miss him if he were gone” meant that at some point, he did probably suspect this would be a likely outcome if he weren’t able to carry out his plans against the ringleader as far as he wanted to. He was suicidal and tired, particularly after Chapter 4—and having embraced his villain role to the fullest already by that point, I think he did assume there was no way for the others to ever understand his mindset or his plans, or him, as an individual.

Ouma didn’t want forgiveness and didn’t expect it, and that’s part of why he went to his death willingly, leaving only the most basic explanations of his plans, probably knowing that Momota and the others would be unlikely to believe him anyway. That’s really the tragedy of his character: he leaves his entire self in the catbox upon dying, knowing that understanding was really beyond his grasp anyway. He wanted to retaliate against the real ringleader as much as possible, and he left all the tools necessary to do so with the rest of the group—but even leaving them all the right clues and answers they needed to find the truth, he knew it was likely impossible for them to ever really, truly understand what he was like or what he’d been trying to do.

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #ouma kokichi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #i'm never going to stop being sad about ouma in chapter 5 #anonymous

36 notes · View notes

tumblunni · 6 years ago

Text

Digimon frontier ocs?

Randomly started rewatching CactusCasual's great Digimon Frontier critique series. He's leaving youtube soon and making the weird decision to delete his whole account and everything he's ever done. But he's uploaded a bunch of his best stuff to google drive so if people wanna keep.it they can. Still i think its a lil dumb to not just leave the account open even if you're not using it? I dont know anything about why he's quitting the site though so maybe he has his reasons.

ANYWAY this got me thinking again about how Frontier is so goddamn boring and weirdly cliche and badly paced, and like everyone just focuses on "but they changed how digivolution works" and ignores all the actual reasons its bad. Like, kids have fused with digimon in previous seasons too! And haven't we all wished we could be the awesome characters like angemon and etc? A digimonny power rangers henshin thing isnt an inherantly bad idea, it was just executed badly. I dislike it cos it meant we completely lost any sort of digimon and human bonding experience plotline. They gave us two recurring digimon characters but they were just basically a pokedex and the world's least funny comic relief. Gimme a version of the show where the kids actually talk to their "spirit evolutions"! Like maybe they have a digimon partner but its forever stuck in baby form or spirit egg form and cant fight without fusing with a human host? Or just give us a better non-combat digimon pal like bokomon and neemon but like.. Fully developed with their own character arc and relationships with everyone else. Maybe ophanimon could have been around the whole time and been a mentor and parental figure? And we could actually explore her moral ambiguity, cos seriously the show makes her kind of a "ends justify the means" asshole and just NEVER AKNOWLEDGES IT. Wtf was up with that scene where she illusions Cherubimon with a fake dream of him being purified and getting to just go back home and be friends? And then she just backstabs him and we never mention it again. Like seriously even if she couldnt actually cure him that scene at least revealed that he WANTED to be cured and it made him so much more sympathetic! If he can be reasoned with, maybe they could have talked him down and then gone on an adventure together to find an actual cure for him? Also seriously what is up with his entire plot! Cos he just gets 'infected with darkness' cos he 'had darkness in his soul' but its just cos he thought the humanoid digimon were being racist against the beast digimon? And like.. The council was 2/3rds humanoid with him as the only beast representative and since he got infected by evilness they never remotely tried to recruit a new one or listen to what beast digimon have to say. So he was kinda right, yo! Also wtf with the reveal that actually no everything we just said is pointless because his REAL motivation was just blindly obeying ANOTHER humanoid digimon that comes out of nowhere to be the final boss. Also what is up with all the increased sexism in this series!! Its so weirdly worse than even adventure which had the excuse of being "a product of the times" yet still had way better variety of female characters and less bigoted stuff! And frontier came right after tamers which was one of the best series for gender equality and even used the medium of the setting as an opportunity to talk about the subject. Shame they censored that in the dub tho, Renamon talking about how digimon have no biological sex and how she only came to think of herself as a girl when she came to the human world. And rika's family accepting her and inviting her to family girls's night and stuff! Like as a metaphor for transgender issues it really worked to try and explain it to a younger audience in a natural way. And then one season later in frontier we have ONLY ONE GIRL IN THE CAST and wah wah whining about fashion and oh no she cant ever win a fight and her goddamn spirit form is in skimpy lingerie despite her being 12, and the show is always perving on her! And then she loses her powers halfway through the first season without winning a single fight, and has to be the damsel in distress to motivate the dudes in a stupid love triangle. And even when she does get to fight she's only allowed to fight the ONE SINGLE GIRL ON THE VILLAIN TEAM and they have stupid slap fights and "who's the most pretty" and BEACH EPISODE and GAHHHHH

...anyway as you can see i have a lot of reasons why i didnt really like the series. But what i meant to make this post about (BEFORE I GOT DISTRACTED) is that the fundemental concept itself isnt bad, they just wasted all its potential. And its a really good concept for ocs! Make your own digi superhero person and explore the fragmented world doing stuff offscreen during the series! Like they left so much open?? We know that other kids also got on other trains to the digiworld and they all just failed or gave up or got captured by the bad guys. And we know there's a bunch of spirits that the heroes never use because the villains got them again, so its cool to imagine an alt universe where the roles were swapped. What if different kids became the chosen heroes? What if different spirits were corrupted by the villains? What would a good guy Grumblemon be like? What would the kid be like who got that spirit? Would their evolution form be wildly different from grumblemon? Do the villain forms and purified forms look as different as Duskmon and Lowemon did?

SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!!

So yeah i wasted so much space here blabbering, so i'll probably make a separate post about my oc ideas lol. But i'd love to see other people's ideas for ocs/reinterpretations/other ways to fix that wasted potential!

So! Digimon frontier oc ideas!

To start off,have an undeveloped idea of someone on the team having Angemon as their spirit evolution. Cos it would have made the transition to such a new series a lot easier if they had some sort of "hey this is for you" to the fans of the previous ones. And angemon is the Adventure digimon that already looks the most like a regular human in a weird mask.

SPEAKING OF WHICH! less regular humans in weird masks! Whats the point of "you turn into a digimon" if you dont turn into a digimon? Like i know the whole gimmick is "humanoid mode and beast mode" but even the beast modes often look like humans in a costume! And there's been so many humanoid digimon before who actually looked like HUMANOID MONSTERS rather than just normal dudes cosplaying! There's literally nothing "monster" about agunimon, he's just a guy in some knight armour. Like the most you can do is charitably assume maybe the horns are his own and not just attatched to the helmet. And its annoying cos the villains have way cooler evolutions! And also double annoying that they always bend the humanoid/beast rule in such transparently self serving ways. Tommy gets two beast forms cos he's meant to be the cute mascot-looking character. Zoey gets two human forms cos she's meant to be grossly sexualized all the time. When kouichi turns from bad to good he loses his interesting looking actually monsterous evolutions and just becomes another dude in an armour. A friggin palette swap of his brother!

Anyway anyway LOL IM RAMBLING AGAIN yo...

Ideas for ocs!

I was thinking of a main girl character who's basically just a "fuk u" to all the stereotypes they did with Zoey. Actually gets a monster lookin beast form and a warrior lookin human form and actually gets to goddamn fight! Maybe her name is Hilda or Hildegarde? And i'm imagining her as a chubby nerdy kid with glasses and curly hair and a super cute oversized sweater kind of fashion sense. And her main spirit form would be this super badass lady knight giant orc thing who can Protec All The Peoples! Maybe earth element or the irony of being light element but she's this big ol monster goblin with just a tiny pair of angel wings on the back, lol! And then her personality is normally super shy and socially anxious, but she actually finds the digimon world kind of freeing? She's a total badass in battle and acts like a big ol powerful protector of all her friends! And she's always super excited aboyt adventuring and gets carried away comparing stuff to her favourite books. And now we must learn everything about this new place!! TO THE DIGI LIBRARY!!! So she's able to be confident and bubbly when it comes to actual adventure stuff, but she's still shy about regular life and anything social. Maybe its her weakness? Like she's scared about going home because she thinks she'll be "just a nobody" again, and lose all the great friends she made here. And also maybe a backstory of her heroic side still existing even before she got magic powers, but in the most tragic way? She managed to fend off a burglar once all on her own, she just snapped and did everything possible to defend her family, even though this was a man three times her size! But instead of being seen as a hero it just made all the neighbours and kids at school spread rumours about her being dangerous. Oh she must be in *a gang* if she knew how to fight like that! Oh its so *dangerous* for a kid that age to have such anger inside! Maybe she's a *scary mentally ill person*! So the whole situation ruined her social status even more and made her retreat even more inside her shell. And this is why the circumstances of the digital world are such a wish fullfillment for her and she's so scared of just waking up and it all being a dream. I think the villains could manipulate her fears, and it could maybe lead to her Skullgreymon Moment?

And then another idea i had was for a trans boy? I just thought this would be a good framework to explore LGBT stuff. He'd maybe be the wind element? And his personality would be very "classic shonen hero" but without the "dumbass" part, instead he's the cynical planner type dude while Hilda is the "i didnt even think, i just wanted to save everyone" type. But he's still super peppy and tries to be the class clown all the time so people will like him, and loves to climb trees and stuff. I think maybe his fighting style would be all about trickery and random chance? If there was such a thing as an element of surprise then he'd have that one! And then his story is that he doesn't have anyone supporting him for who he truly is at home, and he's afraid that his new friends will call him a freak too if they find out. He took the opportunity and cut his hair short as soon as this adventure started, and just introduced himself to everyone as a boy. But he's scared that people will find out he "lied" even though he didnt, he's just been so beaten down with the idea that he's not allowed to be himself and he has to pretend to be everyone else's idea of an ideal cis man or else they'll reject him. So maybe he starts off a bit obsessed with cliche masculinity and has low confidence about himself? And this could reflect in his digivolutions actually changing! He starts off with a really over the top buff warrior dude form, even though his fighting style is entirely about speed and trickery. So he tends to get into trouble with this fake form getting in the way of his ability to fight. And then when everyone accepts him he gets all powered up and changes into a new form! A way less "cliche macho" dude who looks like a stage magician instead and actually synchronizes with his element to become super powerful! And he's all like "oh no i became less manly" but everyone is like "wtf dont let yourself believe you're any less of a man because of dumb stereotypes!" And Also Big Friendship Hugs.

And then maybe this provides a resolution to both him and Hilda's plots? Like when the story is over they still stay friends in the real world, and having a friend who supports them gives them enough power to withstand all the haters and stay confident in themselves. But itd be kind of a coincidence for all the digidestined to live in the same city lol! So maybe in real life they live at least a few towns away, and they become long distance pals who send letters/emails. Because I LOVE ALL MY LONG DISTANCE PALS!! Also itd make sense to have a Internet Good message in a digimon show, lol.

And then i dunno about the rest of the team yet but i thought itd be good to have a sort of moral divide? Like these are the two who have a shitty home life and dont want to leave the digital world. But then the other half of the group has big reasons to wanna go home. So the villains could play on this difference in goals and make them fight amoungst each other. Just generally make the villains more actually competant, yknow? Oh also if there's a Dark Agunimon on the villains he needs to be EVEN MORE of a boring human in a costume! Cos it sucks that all the villains have better character designs and the show seems to think theyre worse ones. Give me one case of more boring not meaning more heroic!

2 notes · View notes

talknow · 5 years ago

Text

I didn’t see no racism from whites in school be wise the racism was with the black dudes. And I didn’t fool with them anyways nor wanted them. So since all the racism was within the black male group behind the scene even if my mom did keep them away, I wouldn’t have seen it because I was busy in my studies. The only way I would have seen racism of the black men was if I was fucking with black men. And that is exactly what I was NOT doing. I never did a black dude. Never talked to them. Never even hung with them. In school and college where there was black dudes, is where I left quickly. In the university center where student hung out - whenever the black dudes were there I left. All universities had places where the black men hung out and that was not me. Like me or not, I know why. Cuz I distanced myself from that N8GGER shit. Even when I went to disco clubs- the N8ggers hung out in parking lots after closing. Why I thought other then fucking. Nope. I danced. And went HOME. N8GGERS that I knew would stand in the club talking to me choosing on men to have after the club. I didn’t do that. I just laughed shot the breeze and left. Yeah I knew dudes wanted to get with me but dude what dafuck? One night? What if the shit is good? Fuck you. Nope. I act up when I am horny - and I don’t need to be getting horny over no dumb dirty ass N8gger! It won’t happen in my life. Never. Dirty ass N8ggers fucking everything walking NEVER. Racist black N8GGER!

They are dumb. And dumb is a threat to me. A total threat to my life to have N8GGERs coming around me unannounced unsuspecting unprepared. I don’t sleep where there are N8GGERs.

Talking to ME? No you ain’t! Not me. You don’t see you a N8GGER? No you ain’t talking to me! So what I am nice. Nope you ain’t AINT talking to ME!

Ok. Keep trying and I am gonna have your ass LOCKED away. You AINT talking to ME! Period!

I don’t even recall having a N8gger co-worker. Hold on let me think! Nope I have never HAD a N8GGER even as a co-worker anywhere. That IS kinda amazing isn’t is it.

Let me think of other N8GGERs that tried to get close to me. Every N8gger that I can think of who tried to get too close to me have been put to rest.

A n8gger liking ME - HOW? How did some shit like that happen?

Those people didn’t like me either. They just looked at me and were jealous. Seemingly all of them. And that confirmed they must be a gang. How could ALL of them hate one person altogether?

0 notes