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astermath · 1 year ago

Text

nemesis; part two.

pairing: carmen berzatto x fem!reader

summary: with carmen reworking the restaurant, you’d think his mind would be far too occupied to even think about anything else. yet he can’t shake the guilt from what he’d put you through a month prior. after some talks in therapy, he decides to take a leap of faith and see if he can talk it out with you. he not only wants to convince you that he can be better, but he's got an offer for you too. one you truly can't refuse.

♡ landing page ♡

word count: 4.9K

tags: carmen being unsure about his feelings but trying to be better episode 3265742, letting reader in a little more, APOLOGIES!!!, cursing ig, carm goes to therapy yippee, syd being the absolute realest, regular font below!

notes: sorry this took literally forever omg, I lost my carmen muse for a bit but we are SO back baby. I missed him so much and so sorry if some things don't follow the canon completely (I've been watching season 2 on and off bc I've been so busy lol BUT my fics never follow the canon completely anyways),, hope u guys enjoy and let me know if you'd like a part three ;))

lmk if you'd like to be added to the tag list for further carmen berzatto related content! comments and reblogs are highly appreciated!

Carmen’s life hadn’t known a moment of mental rest in ages. If you asked him when he last sat down with his thoughts or acknowledged his mental anguish, he probably would have said he couldn’t remember the last time. If ever.

With plans to completely revamp The Beef and everything that came with it, now his feelings should be the last thing on his mind. Renovation plans, unforeseen costs and a completely new menu, sure, he could worry his ass off about those, but feelings? Absolutely not. Good thing he was usually so good at suppressing those anyways.

So why was it that he couldn’t shake the thought of what he did to you?

Why, every time he had a moment to himself, would he be overtaken by this intense feeling of guilt? He didn’t even have to be alone, just a second of quiet and the image of you crying in distress would intrude on his thoughts.

It was getting to a point where he’d told his sister, Natalie, about it. Well, not all of it, he wasn’t even sure if he knew all of it. Just that he knows he hurt you, and that coming to terms with what he projected onto you might be a good first step in understanding himself better.

Or maybe it was something more along the lines of “I gotta talk my shit to some people”. Probably that.

To his surprise, it was actually helping. Besides the group therapy sessions where he’d talk about Mikey, the business and his future, he was talking to other people in his life too. Even told Sydney about you, kind of on accident. The words just seemed to… Flow out. It was probably the exhaustion doing its thing.

“I guess I just felt like,” he kept his eyes on the floor he was sweeping, “she was doing it all to fuck with me. I don’t even know where I got the sick idea that she had some obsession over me, but it— it drove me at the same time. It’s like her being on my heels at every aspect of culinary school just made me want to try even harder.”

“Maybe you painted her in that light because you knew it was a good way to keep pushing yourself.” Sydney spoke almost absentmindedly, sweeping the other side of the room. She listened to everything he said in the meantime, and though what he was telling her was a bit worrying, she was glad they got to have talks like this. Carmen often doesn’t like to bring up his past like that.

“Huh,” he paused sweeping for a moment, “yeah… yeah, maybe. Or maybe it was something else.”

Sydney wasn’t even sure he knew what he was referring to. It sounded like something entirely different, like a crush, but what kind of person treats their crushes like that?

Probably an overworked, pressured, overachieving culinary student with a dangerous need for validation. But she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“So yeah, I visited her restaurant, and… It just felt the exact same as back in New York, you know? Like she was rubbing it in my face again, and— and I know that sounds insane, or conceited, but I just can’t let it go. It’s like the thought of her is stuck to my brain like a stubborn piece of gum.” He wanted to smack himself for that stupid analogy, but what was said was said.

“So how’d you handle it?” Sydney’s head perked up, some of her braids now draping over her shoulders.

“Handle what?” Carmen became more and more uneasy the more he talked about you. Like his chest was tight, it was uncomfortable, but not in the way he was when the health inspection came by, it was different. Weirder. Unfamiliar. He didn’t like it, because he didn’t understand it.

“The talk with her.” She emptied the last bit of dust into the trash bag.

“Oh,” his mind took him back to the parking lot a month ago. The way he could almost taste the tears of your skin from how close he stood, he could hear the shakiness of your breath and the profound desperation in your voice when you apologized to him, when you really had no reason to.

If it was still so clear in his mind, then what must it be like for you?

“Carmen?” Sydney snapped him out of his oncoming train of thought.

“Yeah? Sorry, I— Uh, I don’t know it was…” He runs a hand through his hair, suddenly finding it in his best interest to look anywhere else but her face. “Bad. It was— It was bad.” He looks a bit shameful when he meets her eyes. “I fucked up. I like, went all New York boss on her. And then I just… Left.”

His colleague just stares at him for a moment. She knew what he was like when he snapped like that, but that was with his staff, people he liked. So how badly did he snap on you, a person he’d been resenting for years?

“I’m gonna go take out this trash, and uh… Head home.” She lifts the grey plastic bag she was holding. “But uh, Carm?”

“Yeah?”

“You got issues, man.” She has a bit of an awkward smile on her face, but he knows she means it. He knows she’s right. She usually is.

He nods, silently, letting her words sink in. He did have issues, everyone knew that, but most people didn’t just say it. That’s why he liked Sydney, she was so real, so honest. She was so good for the business, for the kitchen. And maybe her saying that to him was all part of grounding him in the reality of it all. Of his issues, just that they existed.

“Heard.” he says. His voice comes out raspier than he expected, like he’s struggling to say it.

“Goodnight, chef.”

“Night.”

He’d thought about what Sydney said the entire night. He does have issues, he knows that, he’s just mad at himself for letting everything get this far before seeking help. It scares him. Because it reminds him too much of Mikey. Or what he heard about him when things got bad.

He doesn’t want to make the same mistakes his brother did. Lock people out of his life just because it seems easier, because it’s better to minimize the damage than to figure out why you’re doing damage at all. And yes it’s uncomfortable, yes it’s scary, terrifying even. But he keeps being reminded of how it must feel for you.

It’s something he’d never considered before. He always thought he had you all figured out, all fake smiles and backhanded compliments to distract him. It never occurred to him to just… Ask. It was always just easier to assume. It fit his view of you and it kept him going, even if it was at the expense of ever getting to know you at all.

He’s hoping he can change that with a few text messages and a long, probably uncomfortable, talk over coffee. Just hoping, trying, that’s really all he can do. He’s well aware of how bad he is at communicating, but he has to give it a shot. For you, at least.

He stares at his phone screen for far longer than is necessary, continuously rereading the messages he’d typed. His eyes keep flicking to your contact, making sure he sent it to the right person. The only thing you two had texted about before was a time and place for him to try your new restaurant. His heart aches at the exclamation points and emojis you’d sent; you were so excited, and he drove all that excitement straight into the ground.

He closes his eyes and shuts off the phone. His chest hurts, like he’s been holding his breath the entire time. Maybe he has. You could have that effect on him, making it harder to breathe. He always wondered why he had such nervous reactions around you specifically. He always figured it had to do with your one sided rivalry, but it feels… Different. More complex.

Your eyes are finally peeled off your computer screen when numerous phone notifications alarm you. Truth be told, you’ve been trying your best to keep yourself occupied as much as possible. That usually helps when you get waves of emotions like this, keeping busy, distracting your mind from overthinking.

Ever since your last encounter with Carmen, you’ve been so on edge. Always trying to do something, anything, so you wouldn’t have to think about what happened, why he acted like that to you. Because you know if you did, you’d just start blaming yourself again, and you’d be back to square one.

Your eyebrows raise at the name of the contact. You were sure he’d blocked you, or at least deleted your number after last time. He was avoidant like that, and frankly, you weren’t sure if you wanted him to talk to you again after that anyways. Maybe it was just to drive the point home, make you feel even more worthless.

Still, you were curious. Even if it was just to cuss you out even more, at least you knew what to expect, right?

[carmen]: hey, I really want to talk to you about what happened last time.

[carmen]: well

[carmen]: I want to apologise

[carmen]: but I can’t do that like this

[carmen]: I’d much rather do it in person

[carmen]: if you’d let me

[carmen]: meet me at odette’s tomorrow around 10? coffee’s on me, I just want to talk

[carmen]: please

The last message was sent minutes later than the rest, while you were reading them. He was desperate for an answer, and though you wanted to hear him out, to talk to him, something in you felt off about the whole thing. Like he was just doing this to clear off his own guilt, only to then ditch you just like he ditched you after culinary school. Because you’re rivals, apparently. That’s what you do.

But then there’s something else in you too. The part that’s still nostalgic about New York with him. About the glances back and forth when you were timed on preparing certain things, about the way he’d stare at you when you got feedback, the ignorant bliss you lived in. When you still believed he might have liked you just a little.

That part of you takes the upper hand when you reply and take his offer. Your heart is in your throat, nerves overtaking you already and you weren’t even with him yet. He had that effect on you sometimes, making it harder to breathe.

You wondered what that meant.

Carmen sits alone at a booth, all the way at the back of the café he’d chosen. It’s rather quiet, as most Mondays are, yet at the same time, it’s so loud. Loud in the way he hears the clinking of every spoon against porcelain cups, the crinkling of a napkin and the not so subtle ticking of the clock above the entrance. 10:06. You were late.

Suddenly he's filled with more regret than he's ever felt before. He's not ready to see you again, only to be reminded of how he made you cry, and of his own tumultuous emotions and shortcomings that lead to this moment. It's surprising how fast the emotions he associates with you changed; he's not angry anymore, he's scared, guilty, nervous. He wants to see you so bad and yet he feels like you'd be better off never talking to him again.

It's too late to make a run for it when you finally walk through the door. Hair a little damp from the rain, just a bit disheveled from what he could only assume to be rushing over to the café. And that same angelic smile you offer to the barista that greets you, the same one you'd offer him every morning, whether he looked at you or not.

He had no choice but to look now.

Your smile falters into something more nervous, a little melancholic, when your eyes meet his across the café. Though you knew he was going to be there, something in you feels surprised to see him again. Maybe it’s because he isn’t yelling at you or throwing insults at your head this time. Or maybe because he’s actually looking you in the eye. Since when did he get so good at that?

You sit down across him, taking off your coat and putting your bag besides you.

“Hey.” You smile again, much more awkward this time.

“Hey.” He returns the same thin lipped smile.

It’s quiet for a few seconds. Carmen swears the whole café has gone silent in that moment, leaving the two of you to listen to the sound of your own breathing and heartrate picking up. You’re not sure where to look, not being used to being in such an intimate setting with him.

“Do you want a coffee?”

“Sorry I was late.”

You both talk over each other, and the urge to chuckle about it overtakes you. Carmen can’t help but smile as well. You seem nervous, and somehow that puts him a little more at ease. Like he’s not the only one who’s in their head about it.

“Sorry, I, uhm, yeah— I would like a coffee.” You scramble over your words. “Please.”

“Sure,” he nods, “and no worries.”

“Hm?”

“That you were late. I haven’t been here that long either.” He lied. He’d been there half an hour early, cursing himself for letting him sit along with his thoughts for that long and psyching himself out into almost leaving.

You both order and another heavy silence sits between you two. You both know why you’re there, what needs to be talked about. Yet neither of you know how to bring it up.

You’ve lived most of your lives believing this version of each other you had in your minds. Because it kept you grounded. Because it was easier. He never let you in and for the longest time, you were at peace with that. You could have a slightly distant view of who he was, your classmate, your rival. And he could do the same. Keep you out, pretend you were there to keep him on his toes, to always try to outdo him.

Those facades of each other don’t work anymore. The real world has forced you to reconcile with each other, whether you liked it or not.

Your coffee gets brought to your table, and both of you feel this urgency to say something, anything, at least.

“The pastries here are good too, if you want to get one.” He finally broke the awkward silence. He can start with talking about food, something he knows. If all else fails, resort back to that.

“I haven’t tried a pastry besides my own in a long time. Maybe I could learn a thing or two here.” You admit. He knows that feeling. He’s not nearly as adventurous with his food choices as he wants to be, but as a busy chef on the brink of a new entrepreneurship, it’s usually beef sandwiches and frozen meals.

“I think yours were better though.” He takes a sip of his coffee.

“Huh?” You look up, realizing you were avoiding eye contact by staring into your cup.

“The danish I tried at your place. It was fire.”

“Oh. Right. Thank you, we make everything from scratch.”

“I could tell.” He takes another sip. “I guess I— I kinda forgot to tell you that. In the heat of it all.” He huffs to himself. “Food was so good it made me upset.”

“Upset?” His word use frustrates you. Upset is when they forget to give you your sauce with your order. What happened back there was not upset. That was rage. Wrath. You raise an eyebrow and he realizes he said something wrong.

“Well, more than upset. Listen, I— We need to talk about what happened.” His blue eyes peer into your own. They’re almost distracting enough to avoid you noticing his fidgeting hands.

“I’m listening.” You lean back slightly in your seat. You’d played nice with Carmen all your life, given him every chance to return it. Now it was his turn to try.

"Right." Of course he has to talk. It's his fault, isn't it? He's the one who snapped-- why did he even imply you'd have to explain yourself? He runs a hand through his hair, and there he goes again, eyes darting across the café to find something to focus on as he sought out the right words. You'd almost find it endearing, how bad he is at this, if it wasn't so important to you.

"You don't do this often, do you?"

"What, like-- meeting up for coffee?"

"Talking about stuff. Your feelings and shit." You hid your slightly amused smile behind your coffee cup before taking a small sip.

"Oh. Yeah, no, I-- I don't. Not until recently." He takes a deep breath. Just like they had told him to. “I’ve been going to this therapy thing my sister recommended. S’not much, but… It’s a start. Talked about the restaurant, my brother—“

“Your brother?” Your eyebrows raise slightly.

“Yeah, my— my brother. Mikey.” He looks a bit surprised. He’s come to the shattering realization that he’s never told you anything about his personal life, ever. You don’t even know about one of the most important people in his life, his main drive. You’ve known each other for so long yet you know so little. “I never told you about him?”

“You never told me anything.” You answer curtly. “We never really… Talked, you know?”

“Yeah— yeah, you’re right. I just thought… Wow.” He smiles, more out of shock than anything. He feels so stupid. How immature is it to be feuding this much with a person who doesn’t know anything about you?

“I guess I really don’t know much about you either.” His fingers rake through his messy curls again. “Makes me feel like even more of an idiot for going off on you like that. Like I had you all figured out.”

“Yeah, that was uh... That was something." The mood shifts a little. His smile fades as soon as he sees the melancholy in your eyes return. Of course it wouldn't be that easy for you to forgive him, to feel better about all this. "You know, I never knew you thought of me like that." A small smile graces your features. Somehow it's sadder than the expression you had before.

"I mean, I knew you didn't like me. I was pretty much at peace with the fact that you were never going to like me, either. But I never thought you hated me that much." You sniffle, trying your hardest to blink away any oncoming tears. "Like your life, your entire career, would have been easier without me there at all."

His heart aches at the sight of you, all teary eyed and trying to be brave. You're much braver than him. Sadness is a much harder thing to express than anger. He's starting to figure that out more and more.

"I don't hate you." He starts. He sees the confusion contort your features, and he knows he's not making any sense. "I mean I did-- I did hate you. Or, maybe not you, just... The fucked up idea I had of you. And-- and that was on me, that was my own fault." He feels an urge to touch you; to rub your back, hold your hand, anything to comfort you. It's tearing him apart to know that he's the cause of all this.

"But why?" A single tear rolls down your cheek, leaving a wet streak on your skin in its wake. "Why did you think that about me? I-- I get that we had a little rivalry going but jesus Carmen, did you really think I spent my whole culinary school career trying to outdo you?"

"To be honest... Yeah." He feels ashamed. So ashamed. He hopes the waitress doesn't walk by and listen to any of this, see you crying, and make you feel even worse. "Cooking was always just... My thing. If I was good for anything, it would be that. So seeing you do so well at something I'd started to base my whole existence around, it made me jealous, so fucking jealous." He meets your eyes, even if it's hard. You have to know he's being sincere.

"And it's-- it's unfair, it's so unfair to you, I know, and I'm really fuckin' sorry. I'm trying to work on myself, on everything, and I hope I can prove that to you." His face has that red tint you recognize whenever he's nervous or stressed. You can tell this is taking a lot from him.

"Is that really all? You were just jealous?" Your voice is quieter, fragile almost.

"I don't know. I wanna think it's that simple but I really don't know. There's a lot I don't understand about me, or you, or us. My mind doesn't know how to react when I see you anymore I think, now that things are different." He takes a deep breath, like saying that took a physical toll on him. "You have this-- this weird effect on me, and I don't know how to cope with it. I think it was just easier to be mad at you than to be anything else."

Anger is easier to express than sadness. The easiest out of all emotions, actually. Sometimes a little too easy.

You look to the side, wiping your cheek with the back of your hand. You huff out something close to a laugh, and though he’s caught off guard by it, he doesn’t mind it. Even if you’re laughing at him, at least that means you’re not crying.

“You’ve got issues Berzatto. You know that?”

“Yeah. I’ve been told.” He smiles, and it’s heartfelt this time. Not nervous, or sad, or awkward. He’s happy to see you a little more at ease.

“It’s just really crazy to me.” You trace your finger over the edge of your coffee cup as you talk. “I spent so much time in culinary school looking up to you. And then I find out you were always just trying to keep up with me.”

Carmen’s eyebrows raise a little at your words. “Looked up to me?”

“Yeah, like… Your drive, your passion, it’s so impressive. Always looking to improve, to do better, it just— it inspired me to do better too. As cheesy as that may sound.” You smiled. “S’why I opened up in Chicago, you know.”

“Really? Huh.” He leaned back in his seat.

“Because I wanted to work with you. Or for you. Either would have been fine with me.” You sigh. “I like owning my own place, but… I don’t know, for some reason I always imagined us working together.” You smiled. “Is that stupid?”

“No,” he replied quickly, “no not at all, I— I totally get that.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, and you can practically hear the gears turning in his head when he stares at you for a moment.

“I mean you’re a remarkable chef, really, like— insanely remarkable, and, well, we’re revamping the restaurant completely right now. We need people— more people, new people, and so, I was wondering— or I’ve been thinking—“ He stops himself from losing his breath from all his rambling, before he freaks you out even more than he already has.

“I want you to come work for us at the Bear.” He puts his hands together, as if he’s about to beg. “Please.”

You can almost hear yourself blinking out of confusion. There’s suddenly no more loud silences, no, the café seems dead quiet for once. All you can do is stare at him, wait for a laugh, because clearly this was a joke right? There’s no way Carmen Berzatto, chef supreme, arch nemesis of yours, would want you anywhere near him, let alone work in his own establishment.

“I’m sorry?”

He feels stupid already. You had every reason to say no. He’d been the biggest asshole in the world to you, he’d kept his distance all his life, and now he expects you to be his employee. Or, well, colleague, more so.

“I’m uh— we’re redoing the restaurant entirely. New equipment, new staff, new everything.” He swallows; the thought of everything that needed to be done arises for a moment. “We need people that work hard, who know what they’re doing and who are passionate about it. And I barely know anyone who’s better at what you do than yourself.” He pauses, waiting for you to stop him. But you don’t.

“So I’m asking if you’d work for me. With me. It won’t be anything like old days, if anything I— I need to learn from you.” He scoffs at himself. “Could take a thing or two about how to communicate with my staff.”

You smile, and he genuinely thinks you’re about to start laughing at him. You chuckle, but it’s not mean, it’s honest. Cute.

“You know, you have great timing.” You grin.

“I do?” the smile on his face reflects the hope he feels.

“One of my chefs wants to take over the place for me. Well, has been wanting to. I haven’t had an exact reason to say yes to her yet.” You shrugged. “Guess I do now.”

“…Is that you saying yes?”

“It’s definitely not me saying no.” Your eyes meet his, and there’s something between you both that’s different now. It’s not like there’s a switch that’s been flipped. It‘s more like this conversation was the turning page of a new chapter.

“I’ll think about it. I want to see it first. Maybe talk to some of your staff.” Carmen’s chest strains a little when he thinks about you interacting with Richie. Then he’s reassured when he thinks about you interacting with Sydney or Marcus. You’d fit in well, you have great feeling for people.

“Yeah— yeah, I get that. Totally. I can arrange that. Uhm, we’re renovating right now, actually, it’s all really kinda wild, but if you wanna stop by, chat with Syd, or Nat, or talk about the plans, let me know. I’m sure they’d love to talk to you.” He’s not lying, you seem like you’d get along well with them. Especially Sydney. Your thinking processes are very similar to each other. And to his.

Carmen gets the bill, even though you try to pay for it.

“It’s just a coffee, just let me get this one.”

You let him have this one, simply because you can’t argue with him after the conversation you just had. You’re in too good of a mood after his proposition too.

He walks you to your car, hands in his pockets when you reach it. It’s cold outside, and his breath comes out in visible puffs of air. His nose is a little red, but you think it looks cute.

“Thanks for coming, by the way,” he starts, “I know you didn’t have to. Like— after how I acted to you. But— But I really do appreciate that you’re givin' me a chance here.” He’d always been confused about how positive and faithful you were in people. He never thought he’d be grateful for those exact features too.

“No worries, I… I had a good time. I’m glad we talked.” The keys jingle as you fidget with them. Among them is a keychain in the shape of a cherry, he recognizes it. It reminds him of how little you’ve both changed. And how much.

“Yeah.” He sighs. Relieved, almost. “Me too. But I’ll let you leave, might wanna tell your chef the good news.”

“Good news?” You quirk an eyebrow.

“That you’re selling them the business.”

“I haven’t decided yet, Carm.” You scoff. But he can tell you have, you look too excited about it all to not have your mind made up yet. It excites him too. Scares him a bit as well, but what’s a new chapter without a bit of tension?

“Right. Sorry.” He huffs. “Just text me when you wanna head over to see the place. It’s uh… It’s a work in progress, but it’s getting somewhere.”

“I believe you. I’m looking forward to it.” You lean back against your car a little.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“See y’around?” You unlock it and walk up to the driver’s side.

“Course. Uh, don’t be a stranger.”

You grin, leaning down to get into the vehicle. “Never with you, Berzatto.”

He watches you drive off, standing in the cold for far longer than any sensible person has any business standing there. But he feels good. He feels warm.

He thinks about what you said to him before you left. You were right, you were never a stranger to him. You were always like a constant in his life; whether you were actually present or not. And even if he didn’t know that much about you, which he was insistent on changing, you were never a stranger.

Never with him.

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 3 months ago

Note

@grimharuspex in the comments of that @zoe-oneesama post said it the best; Butterfly should’ve been Emotion and Peacock should’ve been Desire. I know that Zoe has a limit on what canon she changes for her comic which I respect/appreciate given the thought she puts into it (even when canon’s various nonsensical magic rules are especially grating like this) but how do you think things would’ve gone in-show if this was the setup from the get-go? On that note, do you think it’s a good setup for canon in the first place? Why or why not?

This is going to be a rather long lecture on lore and world building and how the peacock fails on every level, so before we get into that, let's start with the positives. I saw a few people pointed out the Desire idea - that being that the peacock's associated Force should have been Desire while the butterfly got Emotions - and I think that they're absolutely right. That one tiny change does fix the surface level issues and make the peacock make sense for its larger role in the narrative.

It would complicate the whole magical slave thing and also mean that you probably have to rework a few of the minor sentimonsters, but generally speaking, it makes way more sense for Desire to birth a fully realized human being. The sentipeople being people while also coming from a single emotion will always be total BS in my eyes.

At the same time, I blame no one for just sticking to canon's lore. Reworking the lore is a serious thing and even I only do it when I'm telling a lore-heavy story. There are plenty of stories where I just stick to canon's nonsense because the lore isn't important.

Now that we've done our positives, let's getting into the negatives! The issue of the day is this: changing the Force from Emotions to Desire doesn't solve the larger problems with the peacock. Problems that we'll now get into. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

Issue 1: Power Diversity

While I would not call myself a superhero expert, I have seen a good deal of superhero and magical girl team shows in my time. Most of you probably have. If you think about the power sets that we see in those shows, then you'll notice that one thing is pretty much always true: every power is unique OR the powers are all closely related in some way. You never do both because the two concepts don't mix. It makes no sense for half of the characters to have totally unique powers while the other half have copies unless there's some sort of special thematic reason for this like siblings sharing a power.

Without that sort of explanation, it just feels weird and it also makes the characters feel redundant. You don't need two speedsters or two supermen! One is enough. Heck, Avatar the Last Airbender takes place in a world where whole civilizations have the same power and they STILL didn't duplicate powers for the core team because they understood that it's important to keep the characters unique.

Miraculous is pretty obviously supposed to be the type of show where the powers don't overlap. Every character gets a unique power that's uniquely suited to them. We even have this confirmed in universe during that confusing scene in the episode Destruction where Orikko - the rooster - tries to explain how his powers work:

Orikko: No, you're mistaken! Time travel is Fluff's power and I can't grant the power that already belongs to another Kwami!

This brings us to the problem with the peacock: it is not a unique power. It's derivative on multiple levels.

Derivation Level One: Akumas

The first and most obvious level is how similar sentimonsters are to akumas. In terms of how they're normally used in the narrative, they're pretty much the exact same power to the point that you literally can't tell which one you're dealing with until someone tells you. The narrative uses them interchangeably with some episodes using an akuma, some using a sentimonster, and some using both.

In fact, I thought that it was really weird that Gabriel didn't switch to maining sentimonsters back in season four. You had akumas breaking their bonds left and right, which is a thing that sentimonsters literally cannot do, making them the obvious fix to this new problem.

To really highlight the whole "indistinguishable power" issue, allow me to highlight some dialogue from Kuro Neko to show that this is very much an in-universe problem:

Cat Walker: You think that's Cat Noir? Ladybug: Of course it's Cat Noir! He must've been akumatized because he regrets having given up his Miraculous!

Ladybug: You'll see once we deakumatize him. (She runs towards Kuro Neko.) Cataclysm his bell, I'm sure that's where the akuma is! Cat Walker: Hang on! (follows her) Ladybug, what if that's a sentimonster? If I use my power on him, he'll lose control and become more dangerous!

Cat Walker: (cringes) What I mean is you're right to doubt, and I agree with you. Until we know for sure whether we're dealing with a sentimonster or someone who's been akumatized, we shouldn't make any brash decisions. (Kuro Neko leaps away.) Let's find out more.

This sort of confusion should be impossible unless it's the result of clever planning by the villain, but that's not what we're dealing with here. Kuro Neko was not about Gabriel tricking the heroes. He sent out a normal sentimonster having no idea that Chat Noir had just quit. And yet Ladybug had no idea that this was a sentimonster. She looked at it and saw an akuma.

Cat Walker also didn't know that it was a sentimonster. He just knew that it wasn't Chat Noir, which was probably the only reason that he thought to question Ladybug and warn her to be cautious. They only realize that it's a sentimonster once they learn that there's a child inside it.

This is canon accidentally telling us that akumas and sentimonster are just straight up indistinguishable unless you see then made or do some experiments to figure out what you're dealing with. That's not a good look if your claiming that each miraculous grants a unique power. It is, however, a great lead in to the second power that the peacock copies: the power of illusions.

Derivation Level Two: Illusions

I said above that it should take careful planning for a sentimonster to be confused with an akuma. While we never see that type of carefully planned setup, we do see sentimonsters used to successfully impersonate humans on several occasions. One example is the episode Optigami which gave us SentiNino and SentiAlec. Seemingly perfect clones of Nino and Alec who did whatever Shadow Moth told them to. We even see a scene where Shadow Moth is telling SentiAlec exactly what to say.

You know who else gives us this type of scene? Rena Furtive in Rocketear:

Ladybug: You said that if Nino could have heard what you were saying, there'd be no misunderstanding? Rena Furtive: Absolutely! Ladybug: How well do you remember what you guys said on the balcony? Rena Furtive: Every. Word. Ladybug: Do you think you could make... a sound illusion? Rena Furtive: Totally.

Is there any doubt in your mind that the peacock can do anything that the fox can do? What's even worse is that the peacock does illusions better than the fox! Fox illusion vanish in a puff of smoke if you touch them. SentiNino was real enough to wield a miraculous because he was a fully corporeal illusion that would have kept on going if he hadn't been snapped away. This brings us to derivation level three: the power of creation.

Derivation Level Three: Creation

The peacock doesn't just outshine the fox, it outshines the ladybug! Lucky charms vanish as soon as Ladybug detransforms. Sentimonsters last forever. The ladybug is only useful in battle as it requires a super villain to cast its cure (which is asinine, but let's not get into that here). The peacock can be used at any time. The ladybug doesn't give you what you want, it just gives you a puzzle to solve. The peacock can fulfill your deepest desires and even create life.

Outside of the extremely specific circumstances that the show gives us - aka an ongoing battle with a super villain - the ladybug is kind of useless. If you want the power of Creation, you're going to use the peacock. This brings us to our second main issue: power balancing.

Issue Two: Power Balancing

The ladybug and the black cat are supposed to be the two most powerful miraculous in existence, but it really doesn't feel like that's true. Sure, if you put them together they rewrite the universe, but that's not part of their individual base power sets. At an individual level, they don't actually feel all that powerful when compared to the butterfly and the peacock. It's more like Marinette and Adrien are smart enough to make their very limited powers work while Gabriel and Nathalie are dancing along easy street and making fools of themselves with every step.

I've mentioned before that I can forgive the butterfly's overpowered nature because this is an episodic show. They want each episode's fight to be unique and interesting and so we have to give them room to have one power set that should be an insta-win card, but isn't because plot.

I can give them that grace once. I cannot give it to them twice.

There is no reason why both the butterfly and the peacock need to feel more powerful than the supposed most powerful miraculous in existence. I've even talked to one person who is rewriting canon with the assumption that the peacock and the butterfly ARE the most powerful ones because they are! Nothing proves this better than the fact that they've both made creations that can copy the powers of the ladybug and the black cat (see: Copycat, Strikeback, Ladybug, Sandboy, Miraculer, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting).

They're also the only miraculous that don't require an active user. You can create a sentimonster or an akuma, then detransform and have a snack while your creation does whatever you need it to do. That's so incredibly broken and such a terrible move in terms of power balancing. Either have all of the powers require active users or, at the very least, have more of a mix of active and passive powers. Why do Mirage, Shelter, and Lucky Charm vanish when their caster's detransform while akumas and amoks stick around? There is no in-universe logic to explain this. It works this way because that's what the writers needed these miraculous to do. A fact that makes it impossible to get invested in the lore of this show.

When designing a complex magic system, you generally don't want "because plot" to be the only answer to why things work they way they do. You want your magic system to feel real and organic to the world. That's how fictional worlds come to life! If Miraculous' magic system was well designed, then you could take it and use it to tell a wildly different story set in the same universe, but you can't. Everything about it is designed around making canon's story work and not around making an immersive world that you can almost believe exists.

There are stories that I wouldn't hold to that standard, but they're mostly short form stories. Anything as big and complex as Miraculous needs to have a solid lore system backing it or else you lose all sense of stakes. A great example of this is the Bunnyx problem where you know that she can show up at any time and reset the timeline even if things are happening in her own past, so why do we need to worry about bad things happening? And how are the ladybug and the black cat the most powerful ones when you have nonsense like time travel and the power to create human-like creatures? Early canon lore was decently solid, but the longer the show goes, the more nonsense the lore gets and that makes me sad because I love good lore.

Some Final Thoughts

You may have noticed that I didn't really talk about the sentikid issue in this post. That's because my dislike of the peacock came long before that fun little twist. While sentiAdrien is yet another great reason to dislike the peacock, it didn't need to be a thing for the peacock to be a terrible idea. Take away the sentikids and you still have an incredibly derivative and lore-breaking power set that never should have made it into the show.

I actually completely redesigned the peacock for my own rewrite which I start plotting back when I was first watching season three, long before sentiAdrein was even on my radar. That's not something that I usually do in my fix it stuff. I usually try to stick close to canon and make more minor tweaks, but the peacock is so fundamentally world breaking that I had no choice but to do a total overhaul. This is already an incredibly long post, so I won't go into that here. I'll save it for another ask that's sitting in my inbox. I'll schedule them to post back to back.

For this post, I'll just end by pointing out that switching the peacock to Desire makes it derivative of and arguably better than the pig, too, since the pig can only tease you with what you want. The peacock actually gives it to you. In fact, I'd say that the peacock may be a better pig even without the switch!

You can also argue that the peacock is better than or at least equal to the rooster and the goat because they're also just variations of the butterfly and the ladybug's power. Like there is legitimatly potential in taking those miraculous and doing an AU where each Kwami's power is an aspect of creation because the powers are so awkwardly intertwined. Probably make the peacock the master and all others spawn from that one or something like that.

Anyway, this is why you can't design powers around characters if you want good lore and a large team! You have to start with the powers and go from there! It's why I edit Nino's character to be more of a protector since that's his supposed True Force! Also because I want him to be more narratively important but that is a rant for another day.

#anon ask #ml writing critical #ml writing salt #peacock salt #lore discussion #Has anyone noticed that I try to schedules posts with the same theme together?#Because I 100% do #I have my queue post 2 times a day and sometimes up it to 3 to keep a theme together #I'm nice like that

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wendytestabrat · 5 months ago

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kyle "liking" heidi was a HUGE cop-out

i can't believe we just got a 50 min long kyle-sided kyman episode and still all i wanna talk about is this episode from 2017 LOL. "doubling down" is prob the episode i've done the most rants on and i ain't stopping now. ok so like what i wanna talk abt his how fucking forced the whole kyle liking heidi thing was and how it came out of completely nowhere. and i have a theory on why that is...bc if kyle rlly was supposed to like heidi they rlly did NOT do a good job convincing us that was the case. ok so what i think what happened was this episode was originally intended to be a SUPER on the nose kyman episode abt kyle confronting his feelings for cartman but then trey parker pussied out and changed the script at last second bc he was too afraid of canonizing kyman lol. and trey does this bs A LOT especially with the 6 days to air format, he'll write the script one way and then he suddenly changes his mind at last second and wants it to be something completely different lol. bc yeah it's sus AF how in s20 they were originally setting things up for kyle to realize he's gay for cartman like in the little red riding kyle scene and then the scene of him crying over the picture of cartman (which was how we knew right away his jealousy was bc he had feelings for cartman NOT heidi) and then out of nowhere they revealed kyle liked heidi like hWat. that made us feel gaslighted AF. and i remember back in the day (in the ancient year of 2017) when they dropped the promo for that episode the description said "kyle is playing with fire when he gets in the middle of cartman and heidi's relationship" or some shit like that, which was ambiguous AF but kyman shippers got all excited bc we assumed the episode was abt all of kyle's jealousy with cartman & heidi finally coming to the forefront BC OF HIS FEELINGS FOR CARTMAN NOT HEIDI. so i feel like they released that description to be ambiguous on purpose bc they didn't know if they were gonna continue the route of having kyle liking cartman or change it to kyle liking heidi. and the only reason why they changed it to kyle "liking" heidi was bc they were too chicken to go forward with a kyman plot that strong, and bc it would've been too hard to change the episode to something completely unrelated on such short notice. it's not bc matt & trey give two shifts about kydi lol. it's obvious they LOVE kyman and deep down wanna make it happen, i think they either just don't know the best way to write it in yet or they're too afraid to piss off the non-shipping fans of the show. so that's the reason why we only get hints and they never take it any further than that. bc even tho kyle supposedly "liked" heidi this attraction was hardly believable and it still seemed EXTREMELY obvious that when kyle "liked" heidi, he was still repressing his feelings for cartman and those feelings came out in more unconscious ways throughout the episode. bc yeah for YEARS they've been writing kyle's character as gay and obsessed with cartman so that's why it was hard for them to make us believe kyle actually liked heidi and why him and heidi had 0 chemistry dhdhskks. and the reason why all kyle did was ask heidi about cartman was bc the original premise set up for the episode was for him to be a jealous snake bc he HATES heidi and LOVES cartman. he even deadass trashed heidi in the beginning when he was like "why is she still supporting him?!?!" which showed how much disdain he had for heidi (and cartman also called him out for having a problem with heidi back in s20), yet they expect us to believe he actually liked her??? LOL. kyle also literally says "i think we're all going out with cartman right now" so i think the way things were set up in the first half of the episode was actually the original vision for the script about kyle liking cartman. the moment when the girls told kyle he "likes" heidi was when they decided to change it up out of nowhere. they probably originally intended to have one of the characters call him out for liking cartman or some shit which stan and butters got pretty close to doing LOL.

#south park #kyman #KYMANRANTGARBAGE

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weebsinstash · 9 months ago

Note

I didn't notice vals coat was his wings until you mentioned it, but side note, val and vox were literally frenching it in the last episode, vox literally had vals spit all over his mouth wdym they're not dating???

Oh yeah, the wing reveal was an entire thing!

In episode 4, Masquerade, Charlie decides to put her foot down and use her authority as Princess of Hell to try and visit Angel at the studio to talk to Valentino, but, um, she cannot read a room to save her life, massively fucks it up, starts a small fire (not entirely her fault, that surge protector was a mess), and Valentino actually uses his wings and his weird smoke/pheromone powers to put out the flames (so also I've thought of him rescuing Reader from fires now because of course)

I'm not sure how the logic of the coat wrapping around his arms to form sleeves works but it fucks severely. then I also think, what are alternatives for a moth Reader? Someone sent in an ask about Reader being a silk moth so that you have the moth powers but you're ultimately helpless because you either don't have wings or they're too small for you to actually fly and escape ( because domesticated silk moths were bred to not be able to fly) and I think that would be great. Maybe Reader just has a tattoo of moth wings across their back, OR you have just, magical poofing powers where you can retract that shit back in, like Anthony's second pair of arms, and when they're hidden away, you have a tattoo. It leaves potential for hiding who you are from Val. This whole mystery of him chasing down some cute moth he sees in blurry footage from your first night in the afterlife and he doesn't realize the mysterious moth with rumors of a special dust that knocks you on your ass and makes you see stars is right next to him

I just. I keep thinking of butterfly/moth Readers and different powers they can have, like a silk moth Reader who can create silk and lowkey be Spiderman (or... bondage powers? 👀) , or the pheromone powers we mentioned before, or just a Reader who has their own fuck huge wings. Most moth species have female moths be physically larger than the males and I can just see like, a luna moth Reader who's wings are big and elegant and can become an evening gown or whatever, just a moth Reader whose wings become something pretty 😍 (ughhhh callback to my "Reader becomes an incognito Overlord called Big Blue" poeer fantasy except now I'm thinking of a Reader who's tall like Val and you're a blue morpho butterfly.

Reader being in the midst of being Val's weird pet slash forced partner, waking up and Valentino is sleeping beside you and he's just got those big ass wings open and they're draped all over the bed and they're covering you like a blanket while he squeaks in his sleep... you wind up as the filling in a VoxVal sandwich and those big red bitches are huge enough to cover everybody... also... what if Valentino used his wings lowkey like a tripwire so if you try to get up out of bed, you can't move without touching the wings, and he wakes up the instant you leave the bed, I'm talking you're 5 feet away still tippy toeing and you hear "you better get the fuck back here before I have to get you" and you're instantly scrambling back to his bed and now he's wrapping his arms around you so you can't leave again

I feel like Vivienne saying Val and Vox aren't dating is.... I saw someone phrase it as "dating is a really heteronormative concept and you'll have people be in domestic partnerships who aren't married" which is a good point and i also saw someone say "you've got two men throwing nasty hissy fits and probably having the world's best hate sex afterwards, you know Valentino isn't taking this man to dinner"

I feel like staticmoth IS sort of canon but it's not, explicitly like, they would DIE for each other or anything, idk. Maybe Valentino is only truly capable of loving himself and he loves the attention Vox gives him, and Vox is toxic codependent but he truly loves Alastor, who fucking knows, I'm still over here writing them both as my favorite problematic horny queers. Now I can just see Val and Vox fighting for "custody" of their shared darling, arguing who gets them which days, stealing them from each other, sabotaging each other's dates, just being selfish nasty evil obsessive gross dudes 😩❤️

#hh #yandere hazbin hotel #sinprompts

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wangxianficfinder · 1 year ago

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Fic Finder

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1. Looking for a smut fic I remember reading. WWX was testing an invisibility talisman and ended up in the jingshi in time to watch LWJ masturbating, and rode him after he fell asleep. LWJ woke up and made WWX get rid of the invisibility after a bit. I think it was a roleplay between the two but I'm not fully sure

FOUND! Clinomania by malkinmalkout (E, 6k, wangxian, Voyeurism, Masturbation, Somnophilia, misuse of talismans, PWP, Riding, Oral Sex, binding, Happy Ending, canon typical non-con)

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2. Hi! So I'm looking for this one fic, I remember that it was set in post-canon & Wangxian go to help this village, I remember that the Juniors (all four) followed them without their knowledge & the village had a barrier preventing people from leaving, the village had a curse where they got to see their close-ones negative memories, the juniors learnt of what actually happened to WWX & the villain turns out to be a "god" like on Dafan, it had 4 chapter (I think) & was finished. @i-like-snakes-and-spiders

FOUND? Down comes the night by danegen (E, 67k, wangxian, Alternate Universe, Canon Era, inspired by From, Horror, Sharing a Room, POV LWJ, no jiangs, a whole village of OCs, tiny mention of past wwx/omc, Happy Ending)

FOUND? unhappy stories with happy endings by Last_for_Hell (M, 30k, WangXian, Memories, Memory Fic, Kinda, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, sexual content maybe, References to Torture, PTSD, Characters Watching Their Series, kinda, but not entirely, very light consensual non-consent)

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3. good day! 😊 I read this fic before and I know that I've bookmarked it but I can't find it in the list. So the story is after wwx fell, baoshan sanren and lan yi rescued him, nursed him back to health, and waited for him to wake up. I remember that when he woke up, they also taught him cultivation (he got a new sword). He also hid his face (i think he also wore a different name and different voice(?)). There's a yi city scene where xxc asked them who they were because he cant see, then bssr is also with them at that time. thank yoooooou! 💓💓💓

FOUND! Until The End by abCEE (M, 365k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, war changes people, resulting to OOC, no pinning, Established Relationship, Mpreg, Good Uncle LQR, a little grey LWJ, a bit of JC bashing from LWJ, BAMF JYL, 16 years of yearning, mainly CQL verse but has scenes from the novel as well, LSZ is WangXian's Child, WWX Has a New Golden Core, Canon Rewrite, Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts)

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4. hi, I hope you can help me find this fic I've been looking for, I'm sorry I don't really remember much, just that WWX can cook non-spicy food but he does it on purpose, it might have been because of his time in the streets? or because someone would take his food? (maybe JC???)

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5. I cannot for the life of me remember anything else about the fic but I think it was cql based with lwj as chief cultivator? wwx returned to cloud recesses and the first thing he did was beat someone up for saying horrible things about lwj. I can't remember if it was multichapter or not so it might have been in the middle of a longfic?

FOUND? 🔒make this chaos count by devotedbones (E, 15k, WangXian, Post-Canon, CQL Compliant, canon compliant until the very last scene of episode 50, Getting Together, First Time, First Kiss, Hand Jobs, Chief Cultivator LWJ, a flute used as a melee weapon, Fist Fights, Gossip, Self-Worth Issues, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Mentions of Canonical Abuse, Minor Misunderstandings, [podfic] make this chaos count, by devotedbones by inkpens)

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6. this may as well be an itmf for its general nature, but it's actually a ficfinder! except. i only remember a single detail LMAO, and it's that wwx and lwj consider all four juniors to be their children, blood relation be damned. I'm so sorry i have literally nothing else to go on 😅 i think there's a similar theme in 'tragedy is not the end' specifically with zizhen, but not the exact detail im looking for... thank you for the help!

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7. Hi, first of all I want to thank y'all for the hard work, and I wanted to know if a fic has been deleted or if anyone has it, I don't remember the name but it was a time travel fic where Qishan Wen win the sunshot campaign and asked for war prizes (?) Zewu-Jun goes instead of his brother, Yanli is alive, they all have them captive, Meng Yao betrayed them and ultimately sided with the Wen's who were winning the war, and I think no one remembers Wei Wuxian, something like that, it would be great if someone could help! Thanks so much 🩷🩷

FOUND? The Way It Wasn’t by KouriArashi (T, 72k, WangXian, XiYao, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, (eventually haha), Slow Build, Family Feels, Moral Ambiguity, Eventual Happy Ending)

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8. Hi!!! Its me again!! Thanknyiu so much again!!! This time im looking for a time travel fic with lan qiren as the timentraveller. Pretty sure him and wen ruohan travelled together and MAYBE involved with each other??? Im not so sure but i do know that lan qiren time travelled. Sorry its not much thats all i remember hehe @sirius-bus1ness

might be one of Nirejseki's works. They wrote several on that subject (including in a big anthology work, so finding it might take some time)

FOUND? Cursed Couple by shorimochi (M, 121k, LQR/WRH, CSSR/WCZ, Time Travel, Canon Divergence, Out of Character)

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9. Hello, I am looking for a fic but I only remember a scene from it

It was a fic wwhere wwx died and there was a scene where a-yuan was crying while laying above wwx's grave in the burial mounds. Thank you!

FOUND? To Offer a Heart by WhiteCrane (M, 111k, wangxian, major character death, Sad WWX, Hurt WWX, YLLZ WWX, soft wangxian, Cinnamon Roll WN, WWX Whump, WQ is a good sister, WN is a good brother, everybody loves wwx, yunmeng siblings, Triggers, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst with a Happy Ending, Taking care of WWX, Give WWX a break, Canon Divergence, Disturbing Themes, Changing Perspectives, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Grief/Mourning, Temporary Character Death, Getting Together, Redemption, Sibling Bonding, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Brother-Sister Relationships, Parent-Child Relationship, Sad and Sweet, Tragedy, BAMF WWX, BAMF JC, BAMF JYL, BAMF WQ, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Everyone Needs A Hug, WIP)

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10. Hi Mods (＾◡＾) I really hope that you can help me find some fics I've been looking for! (＾◡＾) if you can't that's ok, if you can then many thanks in advance! y'all are awesome!

A) this one is set during CR studies, and wangxian go on a date? in Caiyi and I think WWX gets emotional about something they are talking about? and I know they hug, and WWX don't want to let go.

B) this one wangxian gets married, WWX marries into the Lan, and there are a lot of rules specifically for married people/how to be in a relationship, I'm pretty sure that is a very big part of the story

10A)

FOUND! 🧡 Stunted, Starving Juvenility by TomatenMark (E, 712k, WangXian, WIP, Fix-it of sorts, Talisman master WWX, Not JFM Friendly, Study Arc, Getting together, Fluff and Angst, Engagement) The scene described sounds like something that happens pretty early on

10B)

NOT FOUND! Into the Oubliette by Ruixx (M, 124k, wangxian, JYL/JZX, graphic depictions of violence, underage, Growing Up, Fix-It of Sorts, Arranged Marriage, Time Travel, Sibling Bonding, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Canon Divergence, Light BDSM, Breathplay, WWX protection squad, Sunshot Campaign, War, Politics, Hostage JYL, Visions, LXC Redemption, general LWJ, Internal Sect Politics, Good Uncle LQR, Lan OCs, No Golden Core Transfer, Empire Building, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence)

NOT FOUND! seldom all they seem by Fahye (E, 25k, wangxian, Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, or rather Arranged Betrothal, followed by Weapons-Grade Thirst)

FOUND? Wouldn't fall for someone I thought couldn't misbehave by failedcharismacheck (M, 15k, WIP, WangXian, Marriage Proposal, Fluff, Protective LWJ, Domestic Fluff, Kissing, POV LWJ, Hair Brushing, Implied Sexual Content, soft horny)

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11. Noncon tw. Looking for a fic where when the wens burn lotus pier, they threaten to rape yanli but Wei Wuxian offers himself instead. So the wen soldiers rape Wei Wuxian in front of the Jiang sect,l. Yanli cries

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12. Looking for a specific fix where Wei Ying is dead and the sects come together to watch through his memories and end up finding out for selfless he was. @aviidaviibiitchboii

FOUND! Misunderstood by Silver_Flame_2724 (M, 250k, WIP, WangXian, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Heavy Angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence, Self-Worth Issues)

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13. Hi, I'm looking for a modern au where Wei Ying is a grad student in an orchestra and A-yuan is dropped off at his door by his cousin Mo Xuanyu. Wei Ying and Lan Zhan get together while caring for A-yuan and end up getting married. A-yuan has a fear of airports in this fic because of his abandonment issues. This was on AO3 but I can't seem to find it. @amindonbreak

FOUND! The Simplest Way Forward by harriet_vane (E, 70k, WangXian, Modern AU, Accidental baby acquisition, Kid fic, Green card marriage (but not really), Slow Burn, Endless Pining, Happy ending, [Podfic of] The Simplest Way Forward by knight_tracer, Translation into Русский: Самый Простой Путь Вперёд (The Simplest Way Forward) by grand_R, Spanish Translation, Turkish translation )

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14. hello! im looking for specific fic, where after burial mounds wwx thinks he's dead. instead of joining sunshot campain he storms nightless city and kills all cultivators without anyone knowing it was him (exept meng yao who survived but is wounded)

he then "haunts" yumeng for a while until he runs into wen quing and takes wens to burrial mounds

eventually ppl find out and together with meng yao they outsmart jgs to pardon all wens @chellsky

I can't find 14, but I do remember reading it; they ended up pretending Wen Qing was the one controling the dead and killing the Wen, and they faked her death

FOUND! can't find a way home by KouriArashi (M, 109k, WangXian, XiYao, XuanLi, ChengQing, Canon Divergence, Angst, Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Politics, Family Feels, Post-Sunshot Campaign, Developing Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, canon-typical political bullshit, Mental Health Issues, Eventual Happy Ending, Descriptions of suicide, (caused by dark magic))

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15. Hello! I'm looking for a fic where Sizhui's bio parents are alive and come to Cloud Recesses looking for him (post-canon, iirc)

Hello! I'm #15 from the latest fic finder. I'm quite sure that the fic was on ao3. It may have been inspired from the angstymdzsthoughts posts but it was a proper fic posted on ao3

NOT FOUND! This Post by angstymdzsthoughts Mad idea, could 15 be from angstymdzsthoughts?

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16. Hi! I was reading a really interesting story about LWJ being cursed and WWX helping him and I lost it! Arg, now I'm so curious to know how it ends, I hope you can help me!

The story is about LWJ being cursed with a change in his private body parts. (The curse changes his p to a v). Then WWX notices this and decide to help LWJ and the way to revert the curse is that LWJ has to have an org@sm.

Can you help me? I'm dying to know how to continues!! 🤗🤗 @wangxiansgirl

FOUND! Coming Back to Yourself by acernor (E, 21k, wangxian, Vaginal Fingering, Cunnilingus, Oral Sex, Pining, Gender or Sex Swap, Vaginal Sex)

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17. Hi! Looking for a fic wherein wangxian married and suddenly Mo Xuanyu woke up again in his body, he fell in love with Lan Wangji but Lan Wangji just ignore or formal with him. Mo Xuanyu heartbroken tried to bring back Wei Wuxian Soul on his body

I feel like this might be in the angstymdzs collection, since I think it's was inspired by one of those asks?

~*~

18. Kind of random, but I’m trying to find a fic I read awhile ago that featured hagfish? My memory of it is kind of vague, it was a college au and wwx was some sort of biology major i think and there were hagfish. Compelled to read it again because of hagfish reasons.

~*~

19. Hello! I'm looking for a specific fic which I've seen in a few people's bookmarks but for some reason neglected to even mark for later. It's a modern AU where LWJ is looking for a pet sitter for his bunnies and is recommended WWX's pet sitting/walking venture (no dogs allowed ofc). Can you help? 🐇 @linderel

FOUND! A Single Note by airinshaw (E, 19k, WangXian, Modern AU, Getting Together, Mutual Pining, Kissing, Anal Sex, Fluff and Smut, Light Dom/sub)

~*~

20. I search a fic where Jiang Cheng tries to ask Lan Xichen to marry him and Lan Xichen is super offended by it. Nie Huaisang may have done something to make JC fail even more in his proposal.

FOUND? To Take A Wife- Or Perhaps A Husband by Admiranda (T, 2k, one-sided LXC/JC, one-sided NHS/JC, JC's canonical homophobia, JC's canonical inability to get married, Decides to solve his problems with spite, not JC friendly, We all love NHS in this household, JC's canonical blind spots, Post-Canon, JC's canonical classism)

~*~

#wangxian #mdzs #wangxian fic finder #wangxian fic search #the untamed #wangxianficfinder #long post

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yuttikkele · 3 months ago

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ok so I saw that anon giving very persuasive reasons to be a zukaang shipper, and I like was writing a bunch of tags on the reblog so I just decided to make my own post 😭😭 it was way too many tags. I have a lot to say about zukaang guys.

Everything’s under the cut, but this gets very chatty very ramble-y fair warning.

anyways the part I was mostly talking about was how zukaang has a lot of what mainline ships have to offer. but like, more. and like no offense to the ships mentioned, I think they’re cool banger ships! I'm just biased towards zukaang. ofc I'm gonna think it has everything those ships have to offer and more.

though I do like these ships, there might be a little negativity towards them in this post, but I assure you, I do not mean it in any mean-spirited way.

zkka for example. I liked it a lot at first, but then I got into zukaang, and, it's just no comparison. zkka is still amazing tho it's a really silly and heartwarming ship, and sokka deserves a popular gay ship as a treat. I like them 💙❤️

but text wise?? zkka went on a two part prisonbreaking journey. zukaang spent the whole show revolving around each other with multiple key episodes exploring their dynamic. zkka can't compete with that.

and sorry to bring ztara and ktng into this as well but I gotta.

Listen, ktng is great. I think they’re really cute! Though there’s tons of discourse about which ship should’ve been canon, I think the creators made the right choice making this one canon (it was set up from the beginning, and I do think it’s the more popular ship. I think they would’ve gotten MORE backlash had they not made it canon). BUT, they’re literally middle schoolers. Of course they DO end up together, but the chances of that actually happening are off the walls! They only stayed together because of bryke, fan popularity, and what the show ended on (it would be really awkward if it ended with them getting together, and then bryke saying they broke up later. I get that. I don’t think they made a bad decision there). It’s just a liiiiiiiittle unrealistic (and I don’t wanna hear nothin bout “this is a fantasy world everything’s unrealistic.” You know what I mean go smart off somewhere else). Zuko and Aang, on the other hand, are bound by fate. They’re best friends, and they stay best friends for like, ever. Platonic soulmates, ying yang, does that not ring a bell? They’re not separating, it’s in the code. Though Katara and Aang don’t break up, I still think, realistically, it’s possible that they’d last a couple years then grow apart. Meanwhile, Aang and Zuko get closer and closer and then boom: just as much gay tension as roku and sozin. But not doomed this time.

ztara I can’t see happening based on the text. they have a lot of sweet moments from them talking about their respective moms' death (kinda sorta death) to like zuko accompanying her for "revenge" (not really revenge) to katara fighting azula with zuko. and their dynamics are cute like rivals to lovers and stuff. but, I just can’t see it. Plus, zukaang has that.

zuko’s mom was taken away from him, and aang’s father figure was threatened to be taken away from him. but it doesn’t stop there. no, shortly after these events, zuko was banished from his nation while aang fled from his. (MIRRORING CHECK DO I GET A MIRRORING CHECK???) zuko might’ve gone with katara to tie up loose ends of her past, but zuko went with aang to learn from the past for the future. and not to mention, on that journey, zuko and aang met mirroring red and blue dragons that formed a heart around them then proceeded to shroud them in rainbow flames while they learned firebending from the first firebenders not unlike oma and shu who were lovers from opposing sides of a war. (DO I HEAR SYMBOLISM AND STORY COMPARISON???) and zuko? he said “it’s my destiny for me to help the avatar.” and he DID. Yeah fighting azula was a culminating moment of his character arc and was imperative to taking down the imperial fire nation, but do you think zuko would just go attack his sister if she wasn’t a threat to Aang and peace? No, he would not. And you may be saying “uh yeah you said ‘and peace,’ zuko’s doing this because he believes it’s the right thing, and to take down his corrupt family, and for peace, not Aang.” BUT DO YOU SEE IT. AANG AND PEACE ARE LIKE SYNONYMS TO ZUKO. THEY COINCIDE. THEY’RE THE SAME THING. And in that Azula fight Zuko was given a MIRRORING scar with Aang. Aang’s back scar and his chest scar. (DO I HEAR DEVOTION???)

also headcanon-wise, I just really think Zuko is gay, so the ztara thing also kinda falls apart at that for me. Zuko just doesn’t?? Treat women very well??? Sorry, it IS kinda true tho. For so much of his life being spent with his main friends being only girls, he does not treat the women he dates very well. He actually treats Katara the best out of the girls he interacted with in my opinion even though he totally crushed her trust first try. (Some ships are about to get stray shots here while I explain this so sorry 🙏🙏)

Alright now here’s Zuko just not being the best with girls in general with romantic and platonic relationships. Not saying he hasn’t had his good moments, but, if I knew him irl I’d be trashing him for how he treats girls. Him and Mai always had continual problems on both ends. Zuko never really seemed interested in her genuinely, but on top of me just not really feeling the chemistry, Zuko was unhealthily distrusting and jealous of her like an object, he broke up with her through a note, and she risked her life for him and he didn’t even think about busting her out of jail. he really didn’t think about Mai much at all when he was with team avatar, and when he did, it was usually with weariness. he never really seemed upset that he was away from her. Now there was the “that’s rough buddy” conversation, but that’s when Zuko said “oh yeah leaving the Fire Nation was EASY” to which Sokka brought up leaving behind loved ones and Zuko went “Oh yeah, I had a girlfriend. Bummer I had to leave her to go FOLLOW THE AVATAR. AGAIN.” I was never convinced either of them actually liked each other romantically. The best thing I can say about their relationship is that Mai didn’t want Zuko to die, and the hardest part about Zuko’s easy decision to leave the fire nation was leaving Mai. For Katara, obviously, he severed things with her pretty early on, but was able to regain her trust so kudos to him. I guess he and Suki’s minimal interactions were positive I don’t really remember them sorry. Zuko DIABOLICALLY denied Toph her field trip. And Jin from Ba Sing Sei. j1nko is actually the Zuko het ship I like the most and that’s just cause I think they’re cute, and also this is like one of the times Zuko does something romantic that the girl actually likes. And he just never saw her again. Like I understand he was in a bit of a complex situation, but he could’ve gone to visit her or give condolences once everything settled down?? imagine you go on a date with this guy and the next day he’s ghosted you so hard he’s not even in the same city anymore? Jin was probably so heartbroken and then she sees HE’S THE FIRE LORD?? Nah I’d be so mad. Zuko has issues with girls. Men tho? I don’t see this problem arising. He just really reads as a gay dude to me.

Switching topics abruptly here, angsty zukaang has its place, but me personally, zukaang is not one of my angsty ships 😭😭 they worked so hard to be together y’all let them have it. There’s multiple solutions to the kid problem in my opinion, some more ideal than others but yknow. they could find out they loved each other after they already had kids and got a divorce? They could get surrogate mothers? They could say “screw you” to having to have bio kids and just adopt (and probably not announce it publicly cause how would the people know? Just keep them believing.). My personal favorite, they could avatar magic it and bring in some storks ectobiology and poof! magic bio baby they’re both blood related to. Hey, crazier things have happened. And zukkang has made a world where they can both be together and it’s beautiful and lovely and sweet ❤️��

and like, I don’t think it’s an all-out solution to the ship war. I think zutaraang is the all-out solution to the ship war. BUT, zukaang is a solution. It’s that one Thomas Sanders Prince vine where he goes “you’ll never have her! because I want you…”

uhhh anyways thank for comin to my tedtalk ramble about zukaang. Enjoy the rest of your day, and God loves you :DD

#I was asked to post this thang bruh #enjoy :DD #atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar aang #prince zuko #fire lord zuko #zukaang #ack #text post

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epickiya722 · 2 months ago

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I haven't even read the ending and I won't have a full opinion on it until the actual chapter comes out, but from I have seen about "loose ends"... I could imagine that Gege actually wanted to explore more but there are certain reasons that kind of halted that. Similarly, like with MHA's ending.

(I'm sorry but I'm not deciding on just leaks on whether a chapter is good or bad.)

It just feels odd to me. I don't know, it just does.

I think about the overall scheduling and that Gege can't and can do certain things because he does work with other people he has answer to. I wouldn't be surprised if after this, Gege comes out with a statement saying there was a lot he wanted to continue to explore but couldn't due to reasons. There's also Gege's health to consider.

Whether the ending got fumbled or not, again, I don't know. I'm not here defending Gege or making excuses, but putting insight and why the ending possibly became what it is.

Hell, just last year people were upset because how some of the episodes of the anime looked but then it's turns out how the workers literally had to crunch for time and apologized (which I think was just so sad to do because the animation and pacing was fine for me and I know that has to be hard to do with little time to perfect it but some of you couldn't relate but I digress) as if they are actually to blame when they're just employees.

Maybe it is just me but it just seems odd to me.

And I know some people are upset about Gojo. If you are, I'm not holding it against you. I like him, too and yeah, I'm shedding a tear or two.

However, how this fandom acts now compared to before is such major whiplash for me.

Some of you want to throw around "Gege hates Gojo" so much but Gege is the same creator who gave the audience Gojo and a story to understand and yet a lot of people still mischaracterize him and only see him as "a hot character" or "the powerhouse that should come back because how dare he be happy in the afterlife" or "the blue eyed twink".

Actually, I find that some of you probably hate canon Gojo more than Gege supposedly does because of all these different versions that the fandom have conjured up.

The most Gojo did deserve is a funeral after he died and I get being upset if he didn't get that in the story, I would be upset for sure.

But given how much I have seen the fandom act when it comes to Satoru Gojo's character, I'm taking a lot of opinions on "Gege mistreated Gojo's character", the ending and everything else with a very teeny grain of salt. Yeah, be "critical" all you want but it just seems for anything nowadays that's all people want to do without considering other factors.

You can still hate or like something and acknowledge other things that play into why that something is the way it is.

#whether i hate or don't hate the ending that's just for me to tell #sometimes yeah some stories don't pan out well but sometimes #it's not because the writer can't write #or the writer has some vendetta against you get the fuck over your damn self you ain't that fucking special #it is because outside factors #they do exist #it is very clear some of you forget that #yeah the ending to any story could be better but sometimes it's okay to sit back and think why it wasn't #without the urge to grab a damn pitchfork #starting to think that some of you never actually written or drew anything before to experience outside factors #i write and sometimes i feel like i mess up on my writing but it's because i do have a life that I cannot stop #I'm sure gege probably did want to explore more with the ending and probably beating himself over it #but it does seem quite odd to me how mha ended so soon and then jjk follows after both being major shonen mangas #and around this time aren't other mangas getting popular? I don't know just seems... odd #just kiya's thoughts #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk 271 #jjk manga spoilers #jjk spoilers

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phyrexian-lesbian · 5 months ago

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Final Take on Series 14/Season 40

(It will never be season one cry about it)

Alright so Space Babies brings the while season down at least 50% so we're gonna ignore that episode- which is also useful advice for anyone watching Doctor who.

Excluding space babies, there are a handful of episodes that, stand-alone, are really good. Of course, there'd never be more than a handful because the international franchise pairing with corporate overlords only had time for 9 episodes apparently.

In fact, I like most of the season, considering I don't watch them as a season. Church on Ruby Road was interesting, playing with the idea of magic and the Timeless Child arc.

The Devil's Chord was fun and intriguing, playing with the gods and monsters idea again, and having cool 4th wall breaks and a fun villain. Its drawbacks were the stupid fucking musical number that rtd wrote with no canon reason other than "Maestro's influence", which is a repeat of what he did with the 60th (writing utter bullshit and pinning it on a stupid fucking cause that makes 0 canon sense).

Boom was incredible. For starters, it was written by someone who wasn't rtd, so that's amazing. Also, as a theatre kid, having tur central actor unable to move their body for the entire performance tickled my brain in all the best ways. All in all, it felt like an episode from 12's era, when Doctor was at its peak for me. Great episode. Made me hopeful for the future (hahahaha😶)

73 Yards was also incredible (ignoring the finale). It heightened that (false) sense of mystery surrounding Ruby, and ramped up the horror subtheme started by Wild Blue Yonder. I really enjoyed it, and it was a great story. Felt a lot like Heaven Sent, which is am achievement (All of this praise is for the standalone. RTD pissed all over his good writing with the finale, and 73 Yards was ruined by EoD).

Dot and Bubble played with some interesting ideas but was kinda meh. It was a cool reality to see 15 suffer racism (bit like 13 suffering misogyny), and it was good to see the Doctor mad again.

Rogue was very cool, and I thought it was great. Made me wish we had a Thasmin kiss tho.

Legend of Ruby Sunday, aka the good half of the finale, was very interesting. All the mystery and the magic and the reunions. They dismissed the whole bigeneration plot line, and the fact that 15 didn't see any of this shit coming meant that the bigeneration plot line was completely fucked. 14 and 15 aren't the same person in a looped time line. They're just clones of each other. The whole "therapy" situation is utter bullshit. RTD just can't kill t*nnant for shit (fr love David Tennant in other stuff and as a person in general just getting sick of him in Dr who). Sutekh's reveal could have been handled a bit better, but overall his entrance gave me chills. Loved that. Just needed a bit more detail on how he avoided the TARDIS sensors for two thousand years.

And finally, the episode that untied all the others from each other, Empire of Death. The mystery that terrified Maestro, the God of music and revels, and caught the obsession of Sutekh, the God of death and eternity, was utter bullshit. Ruby's mum is just some guy. A nice thought- we thought she was some godlike entity but she was just an ordinary human. Except. We didn't think that. RTD wrote that. The snow, the "song in her soul", the fact that Ruby's mum couldn't be perceived with anything but the naked eye, not even with Time Lord equipment- that's all superhuman shit. You can't explain that away with "she's normal". That's not how it works. Oh and the God of literal actual Death was defeated by a real good dogleash? Nah man. If you want us to take things seriously, don't pull shit like that. Also they defeated him literally the same way they did last time, adding the aforementioned dog leash. Also the fact that her mum is just normal means that the whole mystery about the specter's words in 73 yards is just... pointless? Completely useless?

Also, no one names their daughter by pointing at a sign (that wasn't there in the original shot).

And Ruby's exit was so nothing. I didn't feel a single thing. There was no emotional connection to the character. She left of her own directive. After 9 45minute episodes. Don't know if people honestly were emotional about that, because there was nothing there.

Overall, good episodes. Bad season.

#doctor who #anti rtd #fifteenth doctor #ncuti gatwa #rtd critical #series 14 #dr who spoilers

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rapha-reads · 5 months ago

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Doctor Who does Gay Sci-Fi Bridgerton

and Shonda Rhimes babes I hope you've been taking notes because THAT WAS ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC, I'm shaking.

Oh. My. Stars. I can't remember the last time a Doctor Who episode had me actually stop the episode in the middle of it to go scream in a pillow and jump all around the room because the emotions were too much? And then I was literally kicking my feet up and squealing face in my hands? That was. I need a minute.

Ruby living her best life teaching 19th century proper British ladies some rebellion while the Doctor is off flirting with an outer-space roguish bounty hunter had me in stitches and also definitely reminded me of Eleventh and River rocking on while the Ponds were having drama behind, albeit with a Doctor that's sooooo much better at flirting and also accepting his feelings.

Like, really, Doctor, you just met the guy. Admittedly, Jonathan Groff is one hell of a tall glass of awsome, but still, I think it's the first time the Doctor falls for someone so fast and actually recognises the feeling for attraction? Rose took two season, even River took countless awkward (for him, River was enjoying flustering him) meetings, before he realized what was happening, Thirteenth was better at it but she was hurting so much she always kept Yaz at arm's length... Ninth was great at the flirting but characteristically not great at the feelings and admitting part. Twelfth definitely didn't care about it all and only had Clara and Missy in mind. Pre-Time War Doctors, maybe? Though if I remember the War Doctor's comment during the Tenth/Elisabeth's wedding, "that" (flirting and falling for people and relationships and the whole of it, I guess) didn't use to happen (and I'm not as familiar with Classic Who as I'd wish but I know there are quite some ships involving the Doctor, some of them queer ships too, but they're more subtext/fanon than canon).

... Sorry, I'm thinking out loud. Where was I? Ah, yes.

What a brilliant episode. Very meta too, with the cosplay and Susan Twist, and soooo very queer, RTD definitely said "it's 2024, time to get with the times and those who don't like it can cry me a river" and I adore that. Man, I hope Rogue comes back.

#doctor who #doctor who spoilers #dw spoilers #dw series 14 #rogue #fifteenth doctor #ruby sunday #rapha is being a whovian #doctor who goes bridgerton

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ladykailitha · 1 year ago

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I saw a post earlier that I want to address, because while it was the most recent (and dumbest) take, it was not the only time I had seen this "problem" crop up.

But before I get there, as always headcanon and let headcanon.

And note to the OP and those who think like them: nothing in a fanfic HAS to be rooted in canon. We all know that Eddie would never work retail, but we do love making him a record store employee/owner, florist, barista. It's called FAN fiction.

You also don't get to decide if Eddie coming back or not until the last credit rolls on the final episode and it fades to black. We all thought Hopper was a goner, and he came back for season 4.

Now, do I have things that take me out of a story, sure. See post here for an example of those things. Or really anything under my #ladykailitha rants tag. But this topic is not one of them.

The topic for today:

Steve staying at Eddie's bedside and "ignoring" Max. Also OP what the fuck do you mean that Steve and Eddie didn't earn devotion for each other? That scene RIGHT before they go after Vecna is FILLED with devotion for each other.

Right, right, breathe. This isn't about whether or not Eddie and Steve had a connection or not. Although...

Maybe, in a way, it does. Maybe that's these people's problem. They didn't see how close two got in such a short time. Their conversation in the forest is very indicative how close they got in the span of less than a week.

But as close as they get, the reason that Steve would be at Eddie's bedside and not Max's boils down to good ole fashion guilt (and that Max would have literally EVERYONE else watching over her.)

Guilt that he didn't have an adult or older kid stay with Max and the Sinclair siblings. Guilt he told Eddie not be a hero when all Eddie had talked about was how he felt like a coward and how shitty it made him feel. Guilt that he let Max be bait. Guilt that he didn't push harder for that one hour! Just think of the things that could have been avoided if they had waited ONE HOUR.

Jason and his goons would found the house, saw it was empty and left. The bats would have dropped dead, leaving Dustin and Eddie safe. El would have been better prepared for Vecna. The cascade of things that would have been better if only they had waited that one hour.

So he can't look at her because he sees his greatest failure. She DIED. El brought her back. But she died. And maybe Eddie died too, but he was brought back through CPR and other medical means. El had bring her back. How can he even be in her presence when it was his fault she was there in the first place?

Conversely with Eddie, he's by his bedside with a nail bat and a mission to keep him safe. He may have been cleared of the murders, but people don't care. They'll try to hurt him. So Steve stands guard. To make sure nothing more happens to the sweet boy who was only trying to help a scared teenager get some relief and got dragged into the Upside Down stuff.

So yeah, there is plenty of reasons for Steve to stay at Eddie's side, but the biggest one? Guilt.

#ladykailitha rants #stranger things #steddie #meta #steve harrington #eddie munson #max mayfield

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duhragonball · 7 months ago

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End of Evangelion: 25'

Yeah... that's...

"You don't understand!" is pretty much Neon Genesis Evangelion in a nutshell.

Or "You do (not) understand! (true²) Director's Cut" is how the franchise would put it.

Let's just get on with this.

I watched End of Evangelion last night. Well, early A.M. I took a nap and woke up at midnight and it seemed like the right time to watch a thing like this.

I did not enjoy the movie. I'll explain this, of course, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. There are positives, sure, but I went into this thing hoping for a more satisfying conclusion than what was presented in the TV show, and I didn't get it. Both endings suck. There you go.

Let me back up a bit. So the TV series ran from 1995 to 1996. The final episodes, 25 and 26, were controversial because they were expected to wrap up the whole story, but instead they went in a bizarrely abstract direction. Both of those episodes apparently take place inside Shinji Ikari's mind as he struggles to accept being part of a collective gestalt of every human mind on Earth. This is the result of the "Human Instrumentality Project" a concept mentioned in Episodes 1 -24, but never adequately explained. The final episodes just skip past the part where Human Instrumentality was achieved and shows the result, without bothering to discuss the background or the cause, or the long-term ramifications.

From what I gather, the main reason Episodes 25 and 26 were Like That was because the studio was short on time and money, so a more satisfying conclusion was not practical. But since the series turned out to be so successful, they were able to take another crack at it with End of Evangelion. The film is very clear about its purpose as an "alternative" to Episodes 25 and 26. It's divided into two sections, numbered 25' and 26'.

I'm not sure the viewer is expected to pick one over the other. The original 25&26 take place in Shinji's mind when Human Instrumentality happens. 25' and 26' take place in the outside world, showing the events leading to Human Instrumentality and the aftermath. There may be some continuity issues to iron out, but a fan could easily accept both endings as canon.

That's not my problem here. The problem is not that there are multiple endings, or that the endings are too "abstract", or that the endings aren't "happy". Fundamentally, my gripe is that the endings are confusing. Perhaps it might be said that the endings are pathologically confusing.

I think this is one of those Big, Emotionally Raw Works, where you can't really discuss it without revealing something about yourself in the process. So let's do that. End of Evangelion makes me feel stupid. There's parts of the movie where I'm just completely confused and I have no idea what is happening or why. It feels less like entertainment and more like I'm about to take a test I didn't study for.

Except I did study, because I've literally been taking notes on this thing for the past three weeks. I was looking forward to this, and last night I'm near the end of the movie wondering what the hell I'm going to write here, because I don't understand what the hell happened in the movie.

So I poked around a fan wiki for a bit, trying to get a handle on some of the major concepts, and as I read the articles, I realized that a lot of this information just stone cold never made it into the TV show or the movie. There was one thing I looked up that had to reference a Playstation 2 game that released six years after the movie premiered.

It's not that I'm too stupid to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's that the franchise appears deliberately designed to hide information from the viewer. You're just supposed to roll with it, I guess. Or spend days researching all this side material. Read the manga, read the wiki, read fan commentaries. I hate this. I hate this so much.

So maybe I'm not stupid. Maybe the anime was just badly designed. That would be comforting, except I still feel stupid for investing so much time into trying to understand this thing that seems purposely rigged to defy understanding. It's not just the ending. That's what everyone talks about, but the ending is just a symptom of a bigger problem. The beginning is really slow. Then the middle starts to get weird, and there's a lot of mysteries and subplots and lore that gets set up with the implied promise that "we'll explain later". And the ending(s) drop that ball. The surgery was a success, but the patient died.

I feel stupid because I got a reply to one of my liveblog posts, I think Episode 12, in response to some comment I made about all the characters having the same backstory. Ritsuko has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother. Misato has a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist father. Shinji has a complicated relationship with his workaholic scientist father. Is that a theme or did they only have one idea? My point is that eventually it stops being clever and starts being redundant. Later, we learn that Asuka has... a complicated relationship with her workaholic scientist mother.

"What, are you stupid?" asked the reply guy to my wry observation. They deleted it a few minutes after I saw it, so maybe they felt some remorse over the comment. Normally, I let these things slide. I might respond if I get legitimately hot about it. But this one got to me. "Am I stupid?" I asked myself last week. I seem to be complaining a lot about this show, but it's supposed to be a classic. Am I not giving it a chance? Am I missing something here? Am I just not smart enough to appreciate this thing? Am I just not trying hard enough?

If you're reading this, Reply Guy, please know that I didn't take it personally. I'm not upset with you at all, but I am trying to be honest with myself about this. This Neon Genesis Evangelion business has been frustrating me all month long. Now I'm at the end and it all feels very hollow, like I wasted my time.

I think that's my philosophy on life. I try to seek out new things to explore, usually stories, and sometimes they don't work out the way I wanted them to, and that's okay, because it's the journey that counts. Shinji Ikari keeps shutting down throughout his story, asking why he should bother doing anything, because he's too terrified of the possible outcomes of his actions. My thing is that bad stuff happens all the time no matter what, and you just sort of have to recover and move forward, because that's the only way to see what happens next. So I'm not sure if I can relate to Shinji or not.

Anyway, let's talk about Shinji masturbating in a hospital room over Asuka's comatose body.

I had heard about this scene, but I didn't realize how long and pathetic it is. Asuka had a nervous breakdown in Episode 23. This movie has to follow up on that, becuase Episodes 24, 25, and 26 each refused to pick up on her character arc.

Meanwhile, Shinji is wracked with guilt and dread over his battle with the 17th Angel in Episode 24. He had to kill Kaworu, but in spite of Kaworu's betrayal, he was still a friend to Shinji when he needed it the most, and he was such a good sport about getting killed, you know?

So this movie has to get us back to that moment, when Shinji and Asuka are at their lowest ebb, and I guess they decided that Shinji should go see her in the hospital because he's desperate to talk to someone about what's he's been going through. But Asuka's unresponsive, so he starts shaking her like he's trying to wake her up. Instead she just rolls over, which somehow exposes her half-naked body, and Shinji is so overcome with lust that he rubs one out right there and then. Doesn't even get a Kleenex, doesn't find a place to sit, he just whips it out and goes to town right in front of her.

I guess this is supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't land. It's not even a matter of the joke not aging well. Yeah, this is a 27 year old movie, but Shinji admits this is terrible behavior almost immediately. The "joke" didn't age at all. It was stillborn. This is like when you go to a graveyard and you see one of the tiny graves and the dates are from the same year. That's how funny this is.

The most charitable reading I can give this scene is that it represents the hypocrisy of Shinji's whole deal. He constantly insists that he can only do as he's told, because he's afraid of people not liking him if he makes a mistake or thinks for himself. But here he's doing some pretty disgraceful shit, and I sure as fuck didn't tell him to do this. did you? Did anyone? Of course not. He goes limp for most of the rest of the movie, but not here. Nossir. Seems pretty sure of himself in the minute or so it took him to finish his business.

The other aspect of Shinji on display here is that his ideal social interactions are one-sided. He's most comfortable with people when they can't see what he's doing, when they can't touch him back. That's why he wished for isolation in Episode 25. Here, with Asuka unresponsive, he's basically got the same thing.

I suppose the flip side of this is when Asuka kissed Shinji in the TV series. Her hangups are kind of the opposite of his, where she wants to be in charge of everything and everyone constantly showers her with praise for her achievements. She wants to kiss Shinji but she can't be vulnerable enough to admit that, so she orders him to just stand there and be kissed because she wants to "pass the time". And she makes him hold his nose shut because she doesn't want to be breathed on while she does it. I mean, they both have intimacy issues, but at least Shinji had a chance to consent to her weirdness.

In the NERV base, the crew wonder why they're still on alert status, since the last Angel was defeated. There should be no more threats, and it kind of makes sense for NERV to be disbanded. The only business left is the Human Instrumentality Project, and none of these ham-and-eggers know what that is.

But Misato has some information about it, which she mulls over while she's in her car. I guess? Let me explain this in more detail, because the movie never totally gets into the "why" of it all.

Okay, so the SEELE group has access to something called the "Dead Sea Scrolls". According to the NGE wiki, SEELE got it from the two angels that came to Earth, Adam and Lilith, in the distant past. SEELE has used the information contained in the scrolls to establish themselves as the secret rulers of the whole world. And they founded NERV, and its predecessor organizations, to study the Angels and figure out how to preserve the human race.

They talk a lot about Second Impact on this show, but they never explain exactly what caused it. Second Impact was not a meteorite strike or a rampaging angel who self-destructed, or even a lab accident. It was caused deliberately by SEELE, as part of an effort to contain Adam, who lay dormant in Antarctica.

If I understand correctly, this was necessary because at some point, Second Impact would occur anyway, and then Adam's children, the fifteen Angels we saw in the TV series, would come looking for Adam's body and unite with it, triggering a Third Impact that would definitely wipe out humanity. This is all supposedly explained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So SEELE's play was to trigger Second Impact deliberately, so that they could confront the Angels on their own terms. This gave NERV time to develop the Evas to fight the Angels, and to shrink Adam down to a more manageable size so he'd be harder to find.

Once the Angels were all defeated, SEELE could then trigger Third Impact. See, the TV series made it seem like the objective was to prevent Third Impact, but that was never possible. Third Impact is inevitable, I guess, so the only way to ensure humanity's survival is to evolve humans into something that can withstand the disaster. Thus, the Human Instrumentality Project, which will combine all human minds into some sort of disembodied superorganism at the moment of Third Impact.

However, throughout the TV series, SEELE has butted heads with the NERV Director, Gendo Ikari, about how this plan is to be implemented. Gendo wants to transform humanity into something new. But SEELE seems to want to retain their human nature and just use the plan as a lifeboat until the disaster has passed. At least, I think that's the disagreement here. Like I said, I had to learn about SEELE's agenda from the description of the PS2 game. It's not exactly a shock that the cabal of worldly oligarchs should want to save themselves and hold onto their wealth and power at the same time.

Gendo, on the other hand, seems mostly fixated on reuniting with his wife, Yui Ikari, who apparently died in 2004 during an experiment with Eva Unit 01. In the TV series, it was heavily implied that Yui lives on inside of Unit 01. Since Gendo's version of Human Instrumentality involves drawing up human minds into a noncorporeal union, I guess he figures that this will include Yui's mind, even if she has no body. It's unclear in this movie if Gendo actually intends to include anyone but himself and Yui in this merger, but in Episodes 25 and 26 of the TV show, Human Instrumentality is presented like it's all humans, even dead ones, and Gendo Ikari talked about it like that's what his version of Third Impact was supposed to be.

I suppose the only thing keeping Gendo and SEELE from turning on each other was the Angel threat, but now that this is over, SEELE attacks. First they try to hack NERV's supercomputers, but this is foiled when they recruit the aid of...

...Ritsuko Akagai, who betrayed NERV in Episode 23 when she destroyed all the Rei clones they had in storage. But she's the only one smart enough with computers to block the hack, so she crawls back inside one of them and uses her dead mother's notes to build a more robust firewall or something. I think she j-pegged a RAM or something, I don't know.

Ritsuko wonders why she's even bothering, since she already turned on Gendo. They had been banging on the down-low, but she got fed up with him when she realized he loved his dead wife more than Ritsuko or her mother, who also used to bang Gendo on the down-low.

With that cyberattack fended off, NERV now has to brace for an actual attack. Admiral Clownshoes notes the irony of NERV defeating all those Angels, only for their final opponent to be the humans they were trying to save.

Tactically, the entire battle is a formality. SEELE runs the whole world, and they can send wave after wave of soldiers into the NERV facility, which is already badly weakened after months of Angel attacks and budget cuts. NERV's defenses were designed for dealing with Angels, and their greatest weapons were the Evas, except Unit-00 was destroyed in Episode 22, and Unit-02's pilot has lost the ability to sync. Nonetheless, Misato wants the pilot kids secured, since she knows SEELE's goons will try to take them out first. She orders Shinji to deploy in Unit-01, and even though Asuka's in no condition to fight, she has her put in Unit-02 and then sent to the bottom of the lake. It's not much of a hiding place, but at least she'll be safer there than inside the base.

Where's Rei? Well, no one can find her, but she's gone down to the room where they keep Lilith and she's soaking in that orange goop they have down there.

Perhaps anticipating this, Gendo excuses himself and orders Clownshoes to take over the defense of the base. Clownshoes seems to know what he's up to, and sends his regards to Gendo's dead wife.

At this point, it's basically a race to see who can trigger their version of Third Impact first. SEELE wanted to use the Lance of Longinus and Lilith somehow, but since the Lance is in space now, they now plan to use Unit-01, the only Eva created from Lilith. That's what makes it special, apparently. Units 00 and 02 were made from Adam, I guess?

Anyway, Gendo plans to do it by combining Adam and Lillith together. He's got Adam's body within his own, and he wants to join with Rei, who contains some essence of Lillith. This was Rei's main purpose all along, I think.

Meanwhile, Misato leaves her post to find Shinji, who was sulking in some corner instead of reporting to his Eva like she ordered. She saves him from some goons, but they're cut off from Unit-01, so she has to find a way to get him where he needs to go. She also has to convince him to cooperate, since Shinji's completely gone to mush in the midst of this new crisis.

As she drives him to where they need to go, she explains (most of) the necessary backstory to him. Second Impact was triggered deliberately to buy time for Human Instrumentality, and humans are descended from Lilith, just as the Angels came from Adam. So in that sence, the human species is collectively the 18th Angel, just another candidate to inherit the future of Earth. Humans, like any of the fifteen Angels spawned from Adam, have the opportunity to trigger Third Impact and secure their place as the dominant life form of Earth, but we had to beat all the Angels first to do it, and then find a way to survive Third Impact when it finally happened.

And while Gendo plans to do with with Adam and Lilith, SEELE wants to use the Eva series, somehow, so it's vital that Shinji use Unit-01 to destroy all the other Evas.

Speaking of destroying Evas, Asuka finally wakes up in Unit-02, which is currently getting battered with depth charges. She still can't control the Eva, and she just keeps whimpering that she doesn't want to die. Eventually, she hears her dead mother promising to protect Asuka, and she realizes the truth: that Asuka's mother, Kyoko Zeppelin, was absorbed into Unit-02, much the same way Shinji's mom was absorbed into Unit-01.

Now, at long last, Asuka can operate her Eva again, and she goes apeshit on the SEELE troops. They sever her power cable, but she doesn't care, boasting that five minutes is plenty of time to take out these creeps. This is honestly the best part of the movie, because they had reduced Asuka to a pitiful shell for so long, and now she's finally taking charge and whoopin' ass.

It won't last.

With the conventional forces beaten, SEELE sends in nine Eva Units of their own. These are units 05 through 13, but they all look the same, and I'm not even sure they have pilots. It's a pretty cool design for a "bad guy" Eva, but they don't figure into the plot very much. They're here to destroy Asuka and Unit-02, and Asuka has to destroy them to stop SEELE.

Meanwhile, Misato has almost gotten Shinji to the Unit-01 launch bay, but she got shot, so she tells Shinji he's on his own from here. Shinji continues to resist taking any responsibility here. He says he's not worthy to pilot the Eva because he hurts people. He killed Kaworu, and he "did something terrible to Asuka". So at least the movie recognizes that. I guess it was included just to show the audience that Shinji isn't exaggerating when he doubts himself like this.

Misato refuses to indulge his self-pity, and she doesn't care how much he cries or tries to use his past actions to disqualify himself. She tells him she's made plenty of her own mistakes, but she still learned something about herself anyway. Hey, I guess Misato kind of gets what I was saying earlier. I guess this makes her my favorite character?

Well, yeah, but I don't like how she gives him a long kiss goodbye, then promises they'll "do the rest" when he gets back. I mean, she dies immediately after he leaves, so I think she was just feeding him empty gestures to motivate him while she still could, but... that's kind of fucked up.

Meanwhile, Gendo and Rei reach the room where Lillith is to begin their attempt at Third Impact, but they find Ritsuko waiting for them. She pulls a gun on Gendo and tells him that she sabotaged the supercomputer while she was reprogramming it to stop SEELE's hackers. Except... when she tries to execute her plan, the computer doesn't do it. This is because it's been imprinted with the mind of its original creator, Ritsuko's mother, and apparently mom still carries a torch for Gendo, even after Gendo screwed both Akagis over. Gendo then pulls a gun on Ritsuko, and says "I truly..." but the sound cuts out as he says the rest of it, so we don't know what he wanted to tell her.

In any case, she calls him a liar after she hears it, so either he told her he loved her and she didn't buy it, or he said something really cruel and she knew he didn't mean it. Either way, Gendo shoots, her which normally would suggest his true feelings, except I think this Human Instrumentality business works on dead people too, so life and death kind of becomes meaningless in this movie. We see a ghostly apparition of Rei as Ritsuko falls into the LCL fluid. We also saw ghost Rei when Misato died, so this seems to be a thing now.

Meanwhile, Shinji makes it to Unit 01, but it's immersed in Bakelite, which Misato had ordered dispersed through the base to impede the invading goons. I'm not sure how it got here, though, unless the bad guys used Misato's own trick to secure Unit-01. So it looks like Shinji can't get in the robot, even though it's not a robot, and he doesn't even have to be inside the stupid thing to control it. He literally proved that on his first day on the job. Yo, Shinji, get in the robot, your mom loves you.

Meanwhile, Asuka seems to be doing just fine killing the bad guy Evas without Shinji, but just as she finishes the last of them off, the Lance of Longinus suddenly flies back to Earth and improbably stabs Unit 02 through the face. Uh... how? Why? What the fuck?

Also, all the Evas Asuka defeated suddenly reactivate. With her battery drained, Asuka is helpless to stop them as they crack open Unit-02 and eat it. I'm pretty sure Asuka herself is killed during this, but we don't see a body.

I guess this was the catalyst to get Unit 01 off its duff, as it finally breaks out of the Bakelite and grabs Shinji like it's gonna put him in. Unit 01 busts out to join the battle, and it's thig big impressive spectacle. It even has angel wings now.

But it doesn't actually do anything. Shinji just gets a look at what's left of Unit-02's mangled corpse and screams.

And that's the cliffhanger for 25'. There's a credits sequence, then a dedication note from the director, and then the second half starts as Episode 26'. So this is a good place to take a break.

If you're curious, the part where Eva 05-13 show up to confront Asuka is about where things ended in "Evangelion: Rebirth". But 25' is about twenty minutes longer than that, so I'm not sure what the significance of that cutoff point was supposed to be. I guess it works as a cliffhanger, but it's kind of dumb to have Asuka finally wake up and kick ass, only to get utterly destroyed a few minutes later. Then Shinji shows up to set up the real cliffhanger.

To be fair, this half of the movie is better than the second half. Mostly, it benefits from the parts where they actually show the characters recovering from Episode 24 and beginning to move to the next phase of the story. This was what the TV show failed to do with its Episode 25. Now, we get to see the SEELE vs. NERV battle that was only implied before, and we get to see how Human Instrumentality is arranged.

We also see why it needs to be done. In the original ending, it seemed completely arbitrary, like Gendo Ikari just decided this was a cool thing to try and he just did it to the whole world without asking anyone's permission. Here, it becomes clear that if Gendo doesn't pull the trigger, SEELE will, and it's just a race to see who can get their vision accomplished first.

And we actually get to see the other characters in this version. Asuka wakes up and gets her groove back, Rei's part in the drama is revealed, and Ritsuko and Misato get shot. Seeing this stuff makes me even more irritated that the TV series just jumped right past it all.

Still, this half of the movie has problems. For one thing, a lot of runtime is spent just showing troops slaughtering NERV personnel, and showing Misato leading Shinji to his Eva. Also, there's a healthy dose of Gendo and Rei just staring pensively at Lilith without actually doing anything. A lot of the footage doesn't actually progress the plot, and only Misato and Shinji's scenes are useful for providing exposition. Gendo and SEELE's words are too cryptic to be of much use.

The main point of this installment was to reinforce things we already knew: Rei's important to all of this somehow, Shinji is a sad sack, and Asuka is helpless. And maybe it needed to be reinforced in July 1997, more than a year after the TV show ended, but I don't think it needed to be hammered home this much.

And like I said from the start, this whole thing relies on a lot of ridiculous stuff that I feel like I should have been told about in the TV series. How did the Lance of Longinus come back? SEELE couldn't have arranged this, since they were the ones who were so upset about losing it in the first place. Why are there two methods to trigger Third Impact? How did Asuka's mother get sucked into the Eva and yet she remained in human form long enough to go insane and hang herself? Why did the bad guy Evas suddenly recover from their injuries when it was convenient for the plot?

Perhaps most critically: Why are they just treating Third Impact and Human Instrumentality like the same thing? Like if you do one, then the other one just automatically happens? Is that how it works? Then why were they so worried about the progress on that project? It could be done at will, right?

Oh, and how did SEELE figure out how to do all this stuff? They have their own fleet of Evas, which seem to work better than NERV's. They made their own Angel in the form of Kaworu. They seem to know how to make Third Impact happen, without Gendo's help. And however they got this far, they seemed to pull it off without anyone from NERV knowing about it. So why did SEELE even need NERV in the first place? As it currently stands, the only reason Gendo's ahead of them is because he's physically closer to what he needs to work with. SEELE could have nuked the base from orbit and hauled Eva Unit 01 from the wreckage.

Again, the whole movie just makes me feel like I missed an episode, except I didn't. I watched the whole thing, which leads me to assume that the next chapter will clarify everything, except it doesn't, as we'll see next time. See you there.

#neon genesis evangelion #2024ngeliveblog #end of evangelion #shinji ikari #asuka langley soryu #rei ayanami #misato katsuragi #ritsuko akagi #clownshoes

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inkblackorchid · 1 year ago

Text

I was gonna try to keep my mouth shut, but I can't. I just can't. I have to go on another Aki rant because I feel like I'm going to explode. It's about this scene:

This drives me insane and I'm putting this under a readmore. Expect incoherent screaming, all ye who enter here.

Ok. Ok. I have so many issues with this scene. Specifically, with the way it develops later, when Aki's busy trying to figure out how to save a child from being swept up by a storm:

And I just. Look, I think the fact that I already wrote a fic that basically completely turns Aki's reaction here on its head should basically tell you everything. But! But. Allow me to defend why I think this whole scene is one big heap of horseshit, with a bit of analysis of canon and actual evidence to back up my claims and shit.

The thing is, I have seen people give this scene a charitable read. I've seen people be happy for Aki to enjoy freedom from the psychic powers that have given her so much trouble in her life. And the thing is, if this were season one or season two Aki, I would be completely on board with that take. Unfortunately, this scene is preceded by the pre-WRGP arc. But more on that below.

Moreover, I can make an educated guess about what they were going for here (in terms of messaging, because this is a kids' show at the end of the day and messaging is something you have to be properly concerned with when it comes to these). I can imagine it running somewhere along the lines of "you don't need special powers to be a hero". Or even "you can grow past the hurt and/or the mistakes in your life and still become a good person or even a hero". And really, I wish I could believe that take. It's just. The writing simply doesn't add up. I wish it did, but it doesn't.

This is where we get back to the pre-WRGP arc. And not just that, actually, but the timeskip between the dark signers and pre-WRGP arc, too. Because the thing is, the last time we have seen Aki in anguish about her powers on-screen by the time the episodes above (108-109) arrive was during the DS arc, during the duel with her father, which happened during episodes 40-41. 40. to. 41. This was over sixty episodes ago at this point. And after that, that's it. As far as the DS arc is concerned, Aki's conflict about her powers is resolved the second she controls them for the first time when her father tries to interfere in her second duel against Yusei.

(Yeah, remember this moment? That was literally the last time we saw Aki in conflict with her powers.)

And I know some people would argue "but what about the dark signer duel with Misty?". And yes, I get it. Misty does accuse her of having murdered her brother with her powers and Aki gets incredibly (understandably) upset about it. But the thing is, we know that's fake, and during the duel, Aki knows that, too. She goes as far as insisting that there were no casualties at the duel where Misty thinks Toby died.

(Yes, I have screenshot proof for literally every dumb little thing in this show, why do you ask?)

It's only after Misty keeps pushing and backing her into a corner during their duel (and literally gaslighting her) that she begins to believe Misty's version of the events. Which is why this doesn't "count" as Aki being in conflict with her powers the way her second duel with Yusei does. At least not to me, feel free to debate me over this if you wanna.

Okay, but what am I driving at here? Fair question. Let me hop back to after the dark signers' defeat.

So, we know there's a half-year timeskip between the DS and the pre-WRGP arc (which was allegedly enough for NDC to connect the city and Satellite, deal with all the social issues that entailed, and also build a giant duel network, which I will never believe but I digress). Unfortunately, what exactly our main characters did during that timeskip is never addressed, it's just kind of there to segway immediately into the WRGP setup. So the only thing we can do is guess at what they got up to based on where they are as people by the time we get back to them during the start of the pre-WRGP arc. So where's Aki at when we see her again after the dark signers' defeat then?

Oh, she's attending duel academy again now! That's nice. So that probably means the student body isn't scared shitless of her anymore and she's not being ostracised anymore.

Wow, she's an exceptional student! That means she must be a really good duellist. So she got the hang of her powers, then?

...Ah.

Do you start to see my problem? Past the DS arc, we are not being given any indication that Aki is still struggling with her powers or still resents them or herself like she used to. You could be forgiven for thinking that she's healed in the meantime. She's fine. She has accepted herself and can now use her powers safely. Which makes her later claiming "she no longer needs that cursed power" a bit... hmmm. And another thing. The fact that she refers to it as "cursed" rubs me the wrong way. After the defeat of the dark signers, she literally never does that even a single time before the moment in the hospital during the storm. (I'd post all the screenshots to prove it here but for one, tumblr doesn't allow it, and for two, I hope you'll believe I did my due diligence without it.)

And it just irks me. If the powers are still a "curse" to Aki by episodes 108-109, why give us the moment above?

And why give us this moment, where she saves Sherry, Yusei, and herself with those powers?

And why give us this moment, where she literally uses her powers at a public event to protect people, and is evidently not cussed out as a witch for it? Neither of these moments do anything to indicate that Aki still hates her powers. They don't indicate that she sees them as a "beast of burden" or necessary evil of a sort, either. On the contrary, I don't think it would be too out there to claim all these moments make her look rather badass. Like a small celebration of "hey, now she can finally use these powers for cool and not evil things!".

Yet, somehow, we still end up with episodes 108-109, where the writers expect the audience to buy that Aki was secretly still hoping she might eventually be rid of these powers after all. And maybe this would be easier to swallow if there weren't also the fact that they later literally go back on it to add to this confusing mess. Because the thing is, we all know the finale scene after the three-way duel with Sherry where Aki protects them with her powers (which have suddenly reappeared, aha!) again and also finds out she can use these powers to heal. So not only is the framing of Aki suddenly being glad to have lost her powers extremely weird, it's also temporary anyway!

So my question is. What was the point. What was the point of all this if the writers ended up going back on it anyway? Because I want to believe there's a reasonable, charitable explanation that also makes sense with what they show us in terms of Aki's characterisation past the DS arc, but if there is, I cannot for the life of me find it. If anything, this whole thing feels like it completely contradicts itself.

First, they tie up Aki's conflict with her powers with a neat bow after she manages not to hurt her father anymore. Then, they launch into the pre-WRGP arc and blatantly tell us that she can now control them. No questions asked. Indisputable fact, and we get nothing that contradicts that, either. Then, we get a bunch of setup showing her using her powers, too, and what's more, we get other significant players in the cast taking notice of it, too, as though it might become relevant. Because Sherry isn't the only one who gets curious about Aki's powers.

(I will never understand how Placido's hood works together with his horn-thingies and have stopped trying at this point.)

The literal, central antagonists of season 3-4 also take notice of it. Like that means something. Like it'll come up again later. But, well. We know it doesn't.

Instead, she suddenly loses her powers out of nowhere (and we are never given a reason for it, either, which does nothing to make this writing decision seem anymore understandable). And, look. The thing that upsets me most about this isn't even the fact that it feels a little inconsistent with Aki's character post DS arc. If that were the only problem, I could still suspend my disbelief far enough to go along with the idea that she secretly still hated her powers quietly in the background and wanted them gone anyway. What really pisses me off is that it reeks of zero setup and knee-jerk decisions in the writing room ten miles against the wind. If they wanted us to believe Aki's glad to be rid of her powers, why give absolutely no indication that she's at odds with them past episode 41 anymore? Why let her state outright that she can now control them? Why show her on several occasions using them to her own and other people's benefit, the way a hero would? And if her powers are supposed to vanish and it's supposed to make sense, why is there no reason for it? They already used cyborg timetravel at that point, they could have literally come up with any nonsense related to that and it would have probably made at least more sense than just letting her powers vanish for no reason at all. Also, if the message behind all this is supposed to be either of the things I mentioned way above—if the idea the audience is supposed to be getting is either "you don't need special powers to be a hero" or "your past and/or your mistakes don't define you and you can heal and grow past them"—why reintroduce the powers, which, in this reading, would be a symbol of Aki's pain, of her mistakes and her dreaded past, at the very end, during the finale, then? It just doesn't add up, and it frustrates me to no end.

The writers wanted to make the moment Aki realises she can help people (well, one person, a child) without her powers seem triumphant so bad, but every time I watch it, it just completely falls flat for me. This isn't a triumph, this is a hot mess of bad writing decisions. All I'm saying is, if they wanted me to buy that Aki would be happy about losing her powers here, they were missing a hefty amount of setup and also shouldn't actually have given them back to her during the finale (no, not even as healing powers).

Moreover... I'll freely admit I also have a personal problem with this scene. I've seen this show and these episodes several times by now, and during my last rewatch and my current one, something about this scene has been creeping up on me, and I think I've figured out what that is now. So I talked about the possible message behind this scene already, and the reading I've given so far was fairly forgiving. But the thing is, there is another reading that has occurred to me that I can't unsee anymore. As much as you could make a valid case that this scene is trying to say that people don't need to be special to be heroes and save others, that past mistakes don't define us, and yadda yadda, there's also a much, much less pleasant way to interpret this scene: "You're better off if you don't stand out." And I'll freely admit, this interpretation probably occurs to me specifically because I was considered a "weird kid" at school, singled out by bullies, and avoided by "popular" kids (take a wild guess why I relate to Aki so much!). And over the years, you learn to downplay that "weirdness" because you become desperate to be accepted by someone, anyone. And given everything the show gives us about Aki's relationship with her powers, it'd make sense that this idea would be buried somewhere in her head, too. It's better not to stand out. Don't be weird. Sand down your edges so there's no chance people could get upset about them. You're better off being whatever everyone else considers "normal" than being whoever you are. It doesn't matter if this is a part of who you are, just become someone else. Someone who's easier to accept. Who's easier to love. You don't need your "weirdness".

You don't need this cursed power.

You know, the "cursed power" that Aki had from the beginning of the show, that was a part of her for years, and that the show didn't give any indication could vanish. The power that we were led to believe would just be there forever, because it was simply a part of Aki, not a conscious thing she (or the narrative) could choose. The power that we were, for all intents and purposes, led to believe she had mastered and maybe even accepted along the way. But sure, let's get rid of that. It's better if she's """normal""". And more convenient for the writers, too! After all, if she doesn't have powers anymore, they can't cause plotholes (of which the WRGP already has enough) and can't possibly give Aki any more badass moments, which makes it that much easier to sideline her. And let's package this weird, shittily set-up moment in a message about how she's better off without her powers anyway. She's happy! It makes complete sense that she's happy. She's finally normal like everyone else. Ignore the way people who might relate to the character could possibly interpret this moment differently. And ignore how none of the writing surrounding this moment makes sense.

...Sigh.

Okay, I think I've let off enough steam. I just. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me view this scene in a favourable way and watching it today made me want to chew glass tbh. My only solace is that they went back on this trainwreck writing decision in the finale. Which, really, just makes this whole mess really, really pointless, doesn't it?

For anyone who stuck around this long, thanks for reading. Sorry if this got extra-rant-y. Idk man, I just think “it’s worth the effort to accept yourself as you are, even with all the bits you might not like at first” would have been a better message than whatever this turned out to be.

#yugioh 5ds #aki izayoi #akiza izinski #ygo 5ds #5ds #character analysis #orchid watches 5ds (again)#episode 108 #episode 109 #orchid rambles

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