#but when you miss the point that badly that's on you and not the narrative

[livefromtheloam]

The reason I don't dive too deeply into fandom is because the entire landscape is littered with people who intentionally misinterpret the message and then blame the media for not fitting nicely into their absolute stinker of a take.

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[stardustizuku]

Unfortunately I came across a very strange and misinformed video about Black Butler.

It’s not good. Don’t watch it. Unless you wanna ruin your day, in which case have fun.

Despite it all, I watched it. What left me wondering, however, was how off the mark the person who made the video was on, well, everything.

From their insistence that the Book of Circus Arc theme or point is non existent, to reading Ciel’s character so badly they genuinely thought the Green Witch Arc did nothing for his character development.

While baffled, it also made me think on how someone could read Black Butler so badly.

Sure, you can say that there’s no real way to read or interpret something “in the wrong way” but interpreting The Hunger Games as a pure battle-royale action story would make you believe it’s bad.

“Why are we focusing so much on how the capitol preps them?” Or “Why isn’t Katniss winning everything?” Or “I wanna know more about the rebellion” All questions that miss the actual point of the story - which is criticizing (not solving or ignoring) the way that media distracts us from violence via spectacle.

The same thing applies here. While there is no “right” way to consume media, there’s things that the author makes clear they wanna focus when creating a story. Things that, if you understand, make the story you’re reading actually make sense.

And in Black Butler there’s three things that you have to understand to properly get what Yana is saying.

Sebastian is the protagonist

Ciel and Sebastian’s relationship IS the story.

And that relationship is, fundamentally, a positive one.

A quicker version of it would be:

Black Butler is a love story from the POV of Sebastian, and you have to ship it to get it

- but that’s not entirely true.

You can still look at it as a complex but ultimately positive rship and get in broad strokes of what it’s conveying. It doesn’t have to be romantic. Although, it helps much more than a platonic framing.

(That said, interpreting their rship as father and son, still isn’t the best way to go about it. Mostly because by its very nature of “soul consuming” their relationship is extremely sexually charged. And hey, if you’re into that I don’t judge. However, if you’re desperately trying to interpret their rship as NOT romantic to the point you fall back on heteronormative patriarchal ideals of nuclear familiar as framing device, I don’t think this interpretation bodes with you)

Now, having all that ground work:

Why do I say these are the key components to understand BB?

Okay so, first,

1. Sebastian is the Main Character. The protagonist.

There’s a lot of people who wanna argue against it, claiming he’s either the villain or the antagonist. Both wrong.

He does not function as an antagonist. Even if, and an emphasis on if, you consider Ciel to the protagonist, Sebastian isn’t a narrative antagonist.

If you wanna go back to Creative Writing 101, be my guest. An antagonist is directly defined by the protagonist. It’s the opposing force. If the protagonist wants A, the antagonist wants to stop them from getting A.

Sebastian’s catchphrase is “Yes, my Lord”. He never opposes Ciel, in fact quite the contrary. By the mere fact they’ve created contract, it means that they’ve both agreed in the inevitable outcome.

People want to frame Sebastian as the villain, because Ciel having his soul taken by a demon, would be a BAD END in the context of their moral compass. They see Ciel as a frail victim of abuse, who’s being tricked by Sebastian, who wants Ciel’s soul.

Which is an. Interpretation. A bad one. But still one.

The narrative (and whether the narrative fits your personal moral compass and lack of critical thinking is irrelevant) treats Ciel as an agent in his own destiny. The abuse he suffered was the moment in which he had no control. It’s only after he meets Sebastian that he can rid of both his guilt and his despair, and do what he wants.

In this case though, it’s revenge.

The famous “Asthma” scene shows this. If Ciel is taken back to his past, he becomes helpless. Swarmed with pain and memories that make it so that he can’t even react. Sebastian is his saving grace. If Ciel didn’t have him, and the power he wields to rebuilt what’s broken, he would crumble once more.

If Ciel has a panic attack, because of all the pain he has, Sebastian picks him up and says “you are not a helpless child anymore, you are not a victim anymore, you have the power to do anything. So, what do you wanna do?”

Ciel’s answer is to kill them.

A proper analogy would be to say that, if Sebastian offers a gun, Ciel pulls the trigger. They are both at fault. Sebastian, strictly speaking, is not here to directly cause Ciel’s downfall, but as a tool Ciel uses to plunge into the abyss.

If, again if, you were to frame Ciel as a protagonist, Sebastian falls closer to the “Voice of reason” character. Not a literal voice of reason, but a literary one. If you have a protagonist and an antagonist exchanging ideals, the Voice of Reason serves to engage with the protagonist on their own ideals.

That said, Ciel isn’t the protagonist. The story quickly falls apart if you interpret it as such.

Things such as Ciel’s character arc being…shall I say odd?

It’s not that his character arc isn’t there, but it’s never lineal. His goals stay the same, the only thing that happens is that we start to peel back the “why”s of his goals. Throughout the series it’s never about Ciel understanding himself better, he knows who he is, he knows what he wants, he knows why he wants it. He doesn’t ever need to uncover these, but simply remember them. Because it’s always about the audience understanding Ciel.

He knows he wants revenge.

In the Circus Arc: He knows that he needs Sebastian because without him, the pain of the abuse he suffered would be too much to bear. But WE are introduced to it.

In the Book of Atlantis: He knows that with this new lease he does not want happiness and peace, he wants revenge. The one being told this is the audience.

In Green Witch Arc: He knows that their revenge isn’t for his family, the real Ciel or guilt. It’s because he wants it. He’s angry, he’s upset, and this is entirely for him. The one being told this is the audience.

Except. Not really. The one either discovering or remembering these key moments - is always Sebastian.

Sebastian is the one who reassures him that he now holds the power of a demon to override the pain. Sebastian is the one who remembers that to override that pain, Ciel wants revenge. And Sebastian is the one who discovers that that revenge isn’t built out of grief or guilt, but for himself.

We are witnessing it all, through the eyes of Sebastian.

This is why we have an extremely vague idea of who Ciel is, Sebastian does not have the whole picture.

If you haven’t been reading this manga with your eyes closed, you’ll realize we have a better grasp at Sebastian’s character than that of Ciel. We get a lot of insight on how he thinks and what he values through light hearted dialogue he has with the servants. You even see the character development in these little interactions.

Think about how when he first arrived to the mansion he magically created food with no regards to taste, but when he meets Bard he states that food is created to see whoever will eat it, smile.

That is character development, more than you will be able to see from Ciel.

Because Ciel’s character, while not static, doesn’t go from point A to point B. Mostly, cause it doesn’t need to. He went through that when he lost the real Ciel and got Sebastian. Everything we are watching is the falling out.

Now, given the fact that I’ve told you that it makes more sense for Sebastian to be the protagonist/main character, and that he 100% isn’t either a villain or antagonist in ANY of the interpretations you can get:

Do you believe me?

If you don’t, you’ll probably believe Yana herself.

This is from the first Volume, where Yana herself describes the process of making Black Butler. The primary idea behind the creation of BB was a butler as a “hero”.

If you go back to the introductory chapter, you notice that Ciel is barely mentioned. He’s simply the one to give Sebastian impossible tasks and standards that Sebastian must find how to overcome.

Ciel is properly introduced until the NEXT chapter. The second chapter has this formula too, introducing Lizzie as a problem to overcome. Although, to Sebastian the best way to “get rid of the problem” is simply to indulge her.

The issue here being that the problem isn’t as simple as a business meeting but something directly tied to Ciel and Ciel’s past. Each time that Sebastian has to solve a problem, it chips away at Ciel. While with Lizzie he shows a persona, once he’s alone with Sebastian he acknowledges the toll it took on him. It serves to build Ciel as Sebastian’s master, and how some problems aren’t as simple as discarding a tablecloth.

The third and the fourth, are a unified narrative, with a similar premise to the first chapter. Ciel gets kidnapped and Sebastian must find a way to retrieve him without raising suspicions.

If the first chapter is to set up what Sebastian must do as a butler, the third and the fourth serve to set up what he must do as a demon.

The entirety of the volume, and up to Book of Circus Arc, is about how Sebastian tries to follow the increasingly absurd orders that Ciel has - it is not about Ciel trying to solve them.

That’s how they work, we follow Sebastian for the most part, because he’s the one having to come up with the solutions.

If anything, in early Kuro, where the emphasis was more on a slice of life conflict, Ciel is the antagonist. He’s the one creating problems for Sebastian to solve.

What’s more, in the second volume, the very first chapter is one from Sebastian’s POV. So far, we hadn’t gotten an entire chapter from Ciel’s POV. In fact, I would find it hard to point to a single chapter where Ciel is the POV throughout. The reveal of real Ciel and the flashback is the closest contender.

But once we move past early Kuro, and into Book of Circus, this set up changes.

It’s fairly easy to assume that Ciel is the main character, because from this point on the conflict of the plot sorta surrounded him. We spend a lot of time with him and with his story. The enemies start being people directly tied to Ciel and Ciel’s trauma. Rarely, if at all, we get to see Sebastian before he met Ciel.The framing device for the story, is Ciel.

This is where point 2 gets intertwined.

2.- Sebastian and Ciel’s relationship IS the story.

The story begins at the point where Sebastian and Ciel met. Who Ciel was before he met Sebastian, informs why he’s the way he is when he does. You have to know all he went through to understand why he’s a brat, why he lashes out. However Sebastian’s past doesn’t matter…because Sebastian himself doesn’t care much for who he was, before he was “Sebastian”. That’s also part of the narrative.

Unlike Ciel, he doesn’t seem opposed to revealing information from before the contract. He talks about how pets from where he is from are gross, he talks about how he knows how to dance because of other places he’s been to, and alludes to the life he's lived before.

Just that, to him, they're footnotes.

He makes allusions to a very bland, uninteresting life, up to the point he meets Ciel.

That’s why we don’t know more about his past.

As for why we focus on Ciel’s story…okay maybe we need Creative Writing lessons 102

I studied Dramaturgy for about 3 to 4 years. And something you notice is how play-writing is the quintessential story telling. It’s making it work with the bare bones of a story.

Some other mediums have more finesse, more depth, or more spectacle - all amazing things that work for whatever they’re created for. But understanding a play, how and why it works, helps understand the fundamentals of any derivative story telling medium.

Particularly, conflict.

Conflict is dialogue and dialogue can take many forms. A story, in its essence, is a dialogue between two opposing ideas.

Take Batman, for example, who embodies the ideas of justice and order. On his own, he’s not a well rounded character.

If you ONLY present him, in a vaccum with nothing else, you don’t have a character. You have a list of characteristics that you’re supposed to know.

You only know who he is when you have dialogue with another character.

I say Dialogue, but it doesn’t necessarily mean spoken language at one another. Dialogue can mean fist fighting, playing tabletop games, talking to other people about the other, or even just a competition. The idea is to simply to compare and contrast both ideas.

If you want an example on how tabletop games serve as dialogue, watch the video “Well, Someone Had to Explain the Liar’s Dice Scene” by Lord Ravecraft

Another example, were we to retake Batman, you have him fight Joker. Who’s the embodiment of chaos and randomness.

In the following picture, you get far more information than the one previously shown. While the Joke fights with daggers and fake guns, Batman only uses his fists. He doesn’t use the tricks that Joker does. His serious demeanor, contrasted with Joker’s glee at the dangerous situation. The fact that Batman has a deathly grip on Joker’s shirt, while the Joker doesn’t, which shows a desperation to catch him.

You are being shown, through a dialogue, who Batman is.

It’s so much easier and much more effective to explore a character through another character.

This is the reason why Shonen has a tendency to make incredibly good gay ships. If you want to explore Naruto’s personality, and his feelings of inferiority, you HAVE to have him interact with Sasuke.

If you wanna understand Hinata’s passion for volleyball, you have him enjoy himself the most with the only other crazy motherfucker who’s as obsessed with volleyball - Kageyama.

And I think that originally, Yana had this problem.

Sebastian was the protagonist, but she had little room to develop him as a character in the confines of the manor, dealing with random enemies.

She likely tried to create Grell as someone of the same stature as Sebastian. Someone who could be this other person to engage dialogue with and show or allude to his past a bit more.

The problem being that Sebastian didn’t care for his past. Or really, engaging with anyone. He sees everyone as below him, but when confronted with Grell who isn’t below him, he doesn’t wanna talk to her.

So you’re stuck in conundrum.

How do you have dialogue with a character, that as a character trait, doesn’t really wanna have dialogue?

Well, Grell also solves the problem. Because only the moment she gets him to start any semblance of a dialogue - is questioning why he’s serving Ciel.

And this is the moment when it’s perfectly cemented that the focus of the story is their relationship.

Why is Sebastian here? Why does he stay? What did he see in Ciel that made him want this extremely convoluted contract?

THATS the dialogue.

THATS the conversation we’re having in Black Butler.

We need to know Ciel because understanding who he is, let’s us know WHY /Sebastian/ is here.

Then slowly, with the introduction with the Undertaker, we find out Sebastian’s conflict.

Which is…

He’s scared of losing Ciel. It becomes apparent with the constant imagery of the Undertaker taking away Ciel and at some point even obtaining r!Ciel’s body, that he’s worried it might happen.

But he can only be worried that Ciel might be taken away if he wants to stay near Ciel.

And that’s his character arc.

Realizing that he actually likes Ciel, cares for him and the role he plays a butler that he doesn’t want this to end.

In the first chapters, he doesn’t feel a need to protect Ciel anymore than what’s strictly necessary. Just don’t die, that’s about as deep as his involvement in chapter 4 gets.

But by the Green Witch Arc, he feels a need to protect Ciel from ANY harm.

This is why I also said

3.- Their relationship is fundamentally a positive one.

In broad strokes, Sebastian to Ciel is the person who allows him to survive. He’s not worried about giving up his soul since he’s already dead. While Ciel to Sebastian, is someone who’s making him have fun. He’s slowly becoming more and more attached to Ciel and the life he has with Ciel.

Their relationship is not that of just a predator and prey, but also of master and pet.

In the terms that Black Butler itself would call: Sebastian is a wild wolf acting like a collared dog.

Ciel is aware that the wild beast will eat him at the end of the day, but if he clings hard to leash for now, he might just be able to have Sebastian maul his abusers.

Sebastian as a dog, currently finds that he enjoys being a chained dog.

(This is demonstrated in the Green Witch arc where he quite literally says, he doesn’t wanna be a wild beast and prefers to be a butler)

And much like the actual DOG Sebastian, Ciel constantly interprets his attempts to get close and protect him, as an act of aggression.

This push and pull of Ciel’s perception of Sebastian and Sebastian’s true motives is what feeds the story.

And the briefs interludes were that isn’t the case (what other people call the “plot”, but I would refer to as the connective tissue) such as Sullivan and Wolfram, the other servant’s past, the grim reapers and the like, serve as a parallel to Ciel and Sebastian relationship. Either to signify how they care for each other, highlight their weaknesses or fears, or explore how they feel.

It’s no surprise that Sullivan and Wolfram are parallels to Ciel and Sebastian. A sheltered sickly child who seeks the protection of a cold hearted machine that only knew how to kill, but who eventually found he cared for her genuinely.

Undertaker and Claudia’s relationship being heavily paralleled with them, even though we aren’t 109% sure what they had but heavily implied it was a romantic attraction from the undead supernatural creature and a Phantomhive.

Everything is a parallel.

That’s why, like the approach of the terrible original video, is flawed.

Trying to interpret Black Butler as action scene after action scene, with mystery after mystery with the only connective tissue being the mystery of who burned down the mansion - is missing the trees for the forest.

That’s not the point.

And if you’re too much of a prude to engage with gothic horror in its gothic horror game, I see little point as to why you even bother to engage with it at all.

A lot of people, including the person who create the video, simply refuse to acknowledge Black Butler IS the story of Sebastian and Ciel as a close and positive relationship, romantically and sexually charged. The reason for it being that they’re “put off” by it.

Part of me wonders how much that is genuinely true, and how much is just performative outrage. It’s like ignoring the fact that Cersei and Jami are in an incestous relationship and try to frame it as “platonic love”, because the idea of it is THAT off putting.

But regardless of that, if you don’t like the fact that it’s as canon as canon can get, I would reccomend you don’t engage with the story at all.

As I’ve explained, the entirety of the series is about them. If you refuse to see Sebastian and Ciel as, at the very least, a duo that cares deeply for the other - you aren’t reading Black Butler.

I have no idea what you’re reading.Perhaps your own biases and subconscious stigma with British aesthetic. At that point, watch the fucking British Royalty Gossip Magazine. You’d find more substance there.

Just don’t be like the person in the video, please? Don’t play dumb. Don’t ignore the fact that Yana is a Shotacon, don’t ignore the fact Sebastian is a hero, don’t ignore the fact that the entirety of the story is based on Sebastian and Ciel’s dynamic.

Because if you do, you are ashamed. You are ashamed of what this story is about. You don’t wanna engage with the text, you want to engage with yourself. You wanna project into Ciel whatever traumas and experiences you have, for the sake a vanity project, where you come out as the morally superior.

You don’t wanna talk about Black Butler, you wanna talk about how good YOU are. How you “don’t sin” by watching it “without all the gross unholy stuff”.

Which is the exact opposite of what BB is about.

So, if you don’t want to, save us all the humiliation fetish and leave.

[creatingblackcharacters]

hey there! so, im making a character who's Black, anddd i need help with them. badly so.

(sorry in advance bc this character isnt That developed or at least not as much as other OCs i have)

alright, they're an afab teen under the non-binary umbrella (im not sure on what gender i should give them). they're in a friend group with two other teens, one of whom found out she's trans, and that made them go like "wait maybe im not cis". they live in an extremely conservative christian town, and they're one of the few black kids there (it's an awful place to live, i make that very clear), which makes it so that they're not very connected with LGBTQ not POC communities - which is why their friend was the one who introduced queerness to them. they're the quietest of their friend group, quite autism coded but i dont think I'll really specify it, and they're a pretty normal kid all things considered (a bit of a self-insert personality wise lol)

when i first thought this character's gender arc, as the story will be very visual (animatics probably), i thought of them experimenting with gender by trying on their older brother's clothes. seeing they like how it looks, they decide to pick up a pack of scissors and cut their hair themself.

now, i remembered "oh fuck, POC usually don't like to have their hair messed with do they?" (i have read a bunch of posts abt that so im 99% certain lol-), then noticed how white the whole arc looks (i need more contact with POC i live in White Hell i have no other reference ;;), and that kinda discouraged me from writing them to the point i almost scrapped the whole character arc and even the concept- which is also why they're not as developed as they should be.

now, the actual question! how to write their transition arc, while also remaining respectful and realistic? also, have you noticed anything in this ask that's kinda fucked up, and how can i fix it if so? im doing my best to represent many groups of ppl with my OCs and i want to be accurate sorry if this ask is very long ;;

thank you so much for answering, and thank you for this blog!! you're very cool :)

So first, I deeply want to apologize for how late I am on answering this. I didn't want to answer without being informed, but I also know how much you want advice.

First, if this character is Black, say "Black" not "POC". Even in your head, start making that decision to be specific every time. We have a specific identity, we are not every man, and it's annoying to be referred to so generally when we have an identity.

For the hair part, check out this lesson. If your character decided to cut their hair off themselves, then it's not exactly an issue- it's their hair! It'd be different if it was someone they didn't know and trust touching their hair. You may feel free to refer to my entire syllabus if you want to do the reading to see if there's anything else you may have missed!

As for your question on their transition, this is the part that I was wavering on answering, because I'm currently doing the reading myself for a lesson I'm writing. So at the moment, all I can really say is to read narratives about and by Black trans people, and what that meant for them! That's a cool list I just found, I'm gonna save it for later as a reference.

It's not going to be received the same way as a white person transitioning, no; perception of gender identity and expression are going to be different depending on who's looking. For example, what does 'Black androgyny' look like to white people if they already believe that we have 'masculine' features? Thus the existence of the term 'stud'. Or how long hair is deemed feminine, but there are plenty of Black and Indigenous people whose hair growth is essential to their identity and has nothing to do with "making them girly".

I think what I plan on getting into more detail on in my lesson- and what you'll need to understand- is that following or even subverting gender "norms" is dependent upon what those cultural norms are, and how they might conflict at times. So to write a respectful narrative, you're going to have to understand what it means to live at that intersection. I hope this all made sense 😅 this is why I'm not confident in that lesson yet.

[myhamartiaishubris]

Ben Hargreeves is the worst written best character and I can prove it

This is a poorly organized meta/essay about my baby boy who got massacred. Originally posted in the discord server so some of y'all have seen it already.

Let me be clear: this is a love letter to my favourite Hargreeves boy. I could write him better. I could fix him (narratively).

Here's why Ben is a great character who, paradoxically, was very badly written.

Umbrella Ben

Listen. Listen to me. Ben Hargreeves was, from the moment I saw him, my absolute favourite character. He's already dead? Doomed by the narrative before the narrative even begins? Also, an East Asian character in the year of our Lord 2018?? I was on board. And Brelly Ben gets a lot of good moments! You know that scene where Klaus is in the motel closet, tied up, and Ben says something like, "How does it feel being helpless? This is how I feel, watching my brother piss his life away." Um, hello?? That's such a delicious line.

Because up until this point Ben's been kind of quiet, in that dead broody way, or we saw his young self being soft and reluctant. But suddenly we realize, oh, Ben isn't nice. In fact, he's kind of nasty to his addict brother, and you get this kernel of a glimpse into his character. This is a character who might have been soft-spoken in life, but death and the years since have shredded him down to all his razor edges. He's still that bookish little Ben, except he's not little and he's frustrated, angry, traumatized, and in pain.

And season 2 builds on this! He's willing to violate Klaus's personal boundaries just for a taste of life again. Holy shit that's so delicious. My problem is that, especially in season 2, this isn't explored nearly as much as it could be. Ben's possession shenanigans are mostly played for comedy, when in fact we could be delving into the implications of Ben's character and his relationship with Klaus. You have this character who's kind, who (from what we know so far) represented the "good" of the academy, who loves his brother so so hard and it hurts him so bad to see Klaus hit rock bottom every time. The little "I missed you guys" in season 2? Devastating. And yet despite his goodness he is capable of being a bad person, and he repeatedly hurts those around him (namely Klaus).

So surely this is part of his arc, right? This is going to be explored and resolved. Right?

The Season 2 Ending

So the thing is, I didn't immediately hate the way they had Ben move on / die to save Viktor. I was sad to see my favourite character go, but also excited to see where the writers would take that storyline. Because, obviously, it wasn't over. Right? Obviously Ben's arc isn't finished, he hasn't resolved his frustrations, his complicated relationship with Klaus is never fully untangled, plus the rest of the family never get a moment of real closure with him (except maybe Diego). So clearly, it wasn't over. Right?

Well, in light of season 4, I can confidently come back and say that killing Brelly Ben off here was a stupidass decision.

And here's why: you've effectively splintered his arc in half. Starting from season 3, Ben is an entirely different character, with an entirely different arc that needs to be built from the ground up. While everyone else gets 4 seasons of development, Ben only gets 2, both times. And I'm so not over the fact that his arc isn't over. We saw Ben do some reprehensible shit to Klaus, especially in season 2 with all that possession shit! And we just. Never hear from him again? That's bullshit.

But anyway, since we're here, let's make peace with being here. Hey, Justin H Min is still playing a version of Ben, and he seems interesting, if way different! Surely this will have some interesting implications.

Sparrow Ben

Oh god, Sparrow Ben. In terms of Ben's character writing, season 3 is... fine. Like I said, it suffers from effectively fracturing his arc in half and having to start over, and this isn't the complicated, kind but frustrated and prickly ghost Ben I originally fell in love with. But ok, I do like Justin, and EA rep is still a win to me, so let's go with the flow.

For the most part, season 3 does a solid job. We get some solid beats relating to Ben's ambition and inferiority complex being Number 2. There's a bit of overacting on Justin's part, but hey, that's camp. (I think. I have no idea if I'm using that word right. Am I hip with the kids?)

I really, really loved Ben's moment with Sloane as she's getting married, because it highlights the core of this Ben's character: someone who desperately yearns for family but has forced himself to be all hard shell and soldier. In a way, he's the other end of Brelly Ben's spectrum. (Like forsterite and fayalite - all Mg on one end, Fe on the other.) How much of this Ben is family softness, how much of it is defense mechanism and lashing out?

And then of course - the thing I've been craving so badly - the in-universe comparison to Brelly Ben. This was done... underwhelmingly, if I'm honest. I liked that Ben had a moment of crisis where he couldn't live up to the Umbrellas' dead version of himself, and his moment with Klaus was nice, but in light of season 4 it becomes clear that we could have had more. I wanted him to have an entire arc about it - after all, it's a pretty significant aspect of your character to be "the worse version of yourself from another timeline." (Refer to @vyther16's Gongye Jiwu fic.) I feel like there's a lot of meta you could pull from that, about how your siblings who aren't your siblings look at you and see someone different. Someone you won't be. Someone you can't be, even if you tried, so why bother trying? And they really don't dig through that at all, which is disappointing.

The tentacle samurai fight is badass, though.

Season 4

Oh buddy oh boy. There's so much dumpster fire here, but I'll start with the season 3 loose ends and then move on to season 4's own problems.

1) Sloane. Luther picks Ben up from prison, so I thought they might have an interesting bonding moment over Sloane - after all, they're the two people who cared most about her. But actually no, apparently Ben doesn't give a shit about the one real sister he actually had left at the end of s3.

2) The subway thing. Wasn't he in Korea? My grasping-at-straws ass truly thought that might have been Brelly Ben in the reset timeline, and we'd get a Ben-Ben confrontation or a battle in the minds thing. But I guess that doesn't matter.

3) The Jennifer Incident. So we all know that everyone forgetting about an incident they explicitly reference is stupid, right? Especially because the name Jennifer only exists because they reference it in s3. Ben obsessively draws Jennifer, and then he doesn't recognize or know her? Kill me.

The continuation of his arc is also just sloppy, if it even exists. No more identity crisis about being the worse Ben, no more secret yearning for family or inferiority complex about being a good soldier. Suddenly his arc amounts to, uh, being an asshole and getting hit with sex pollen so powerful it ends the world.

And look, there is a world where Sparrow Ben spiking everyone with marigold could parallel with Brelly Ben's consent problems with Klaus. There is a world where Sparrow Ben dying because of Jennifer could echo Brelly Ben's death in a haunting, tragic, destined kind of way.

But, uh, none of that happens. Here we are, finally getting a Ben-centric season, and it's this. Being relegated to a plot device in your own season. Looking back and realizing that you were always the plot device, even in season 2. Carrying all that tragedy in your little ghost body and being treated like Chekov's waterlogged gun.

And I can't help but look back at season 1, Klaus trying so desperately to prove Ben's existence, and contrast it with the literal next season where a single throwaway line from Klaus sidelines Ben for a whole season. And then he dies. And he dies again.

Fucking hell.

It feels like I'm being made a fool of. Oh, you cared about this East Asian character? You wanted him to have narrative weight and character presence instead of being a plot device for the benefit of his White brothers? Idiot.

Because you'll still be here anyway, right? You'll grasp onto your crumbs for a cool EA character, you'll let us run a character through a trash compactor and keep pretending he's a good character because you latched onto this one East Asian protagonist and you don't want to admit that maybe you should have let go years before.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

While not every story is a hit, I really think Parawatch has probably some of the most consistently enjoyable writing in the entire SCP wiki. Partly due to the fact that the whole premise boils down to classic creepypasta but with SCP wiki levels of moderation and enforced quality control, which means that you get the classic creepypasta vibes without most of the pitfalls of badly written creepypasta.

But also I think the stylistic rules about how the narrator should lack awareness of the whole picture of whatever is going on (because members of the in-universe Parawatch forum are hobbyist paranormal investigators with no access to the resources to actually investigate anything to its full extent) and that the exact nature of the paranormal anomaly should be left open-ended help avoid the most common pitfall infecting SCP articles as of the last few years: The fact that every other new article in the SCP list ends up feeling narratively incomplete because it's actually a jumping off point to build a 12-or-so-part tale series and if you just read the article by itself you miss most of the meat of the narrative.

By its nature, Parawatch intentionally leans into the fact that there are supposed to be puzzle pieces missing and that that should be made into the unsettling part. Even the few Parawatch articles that are intended to tie into a larger canon feel narratively satisfying when read as standalone pieces, because Parawatch deliberately creates its horror by hinting at the shadow of something bigger going on that neither the narrator nor the reader are supposed to be able to fully grasp from the details provided.

[academyofbrokenhearts]

Currently enjoying the beautiful episodes of The First Frost before the dreaded Hong Kong arc, and I have some additional thoughts.

The reason why this arc fails so badly is because we are shown during multiple episodes how Wen Yifan is processing and understanding the way she hurt Sang Yan back when she essentially pushed him away and ran off to Yihe. We see her being remorseful and repeatedly thinking that he deserves the entire world and that she will treat him better, being brave and taking steps towards him. And then they fall apart again, both in the novel and in the series, but it's how those moments are handled that makes all the difference in the world from a narrative point of view.

In the novel, the moment of them falling apart is a character progression. The misguided desire to protect him is still there, but she has learned from the past and she doesn't cut him off, she simply hides something unpleasant from him, and when she realises she has hurt him again, she gains a new understanding of what it means to be in a relationship, to be actually vulnerable and open up to the person you love the most - so she follows him to Yihe, opens up about her past and apologises for having dumped him in the past, and it's a moment that brings them even closer.

In the series, them falling apart cannot be described in any other way than character regression. She repeats the same mistake she did in the past - she runs away (and this time he doesn't even know where she went), cuts off all contact, dumps all her responsibilities (including her cat!) on him, and stays missing in action for more than half a year. And when they do reconnect, he's the one coming to her instead of the other way around, and while she does apologise for dumping him in the past, she doesn't apologise for her Hong Kong antics, leaving the viewer with the impression that she takes him for granted and expects him to always wait for her, no matter what. In that context, her subsequent worry and care for him come across as hollow, because they reflect her growth in the novel without said growth being supported by the novel storyline, and so the only way in which the viewer can keep investing in the relationship is treating the Hong Kong arc like it didn't exist (sort of like the characters themselves are doing). And it angers me because this exercise would have been completely unnecessary if they would just have followed the damn novel in the first place.

[eff-plays]

Also enby here! I hate how much I hate Taash's writing.

It's pretty clear to me how it could be a story that would resonate with a lot of people, something raw that came from the writer's own experiences... but it doesn't work for this character. Like, the catharsis of confronting an unsupportive parental figure is usually something I'm all for - except Shathann is not not supportive, she's confused. She's trying to understand Taash through her own cultural framework, but that's not good enough because she doesn't use the right words, so we still get to yell at her like she rejected Taash's identity. The way the writing engages with multiculturalism - or the qun in general - is atrocious.

And the Bharv scene had me seeing red, tbh. I know people have different reads on the scene, some more favorable than others, but it fundamentally misses the point why sometimes misgendering might happen - Isabella is telling a story she has told many times before, from a time when she still thought Taash was a she, so a slip up can happen even if she's fully supportive and accepting, because she's going against both muscle memory and the brain's silly habit of not applying new information retroactively as well as it should - and then, since Taash's entire gender discovery has this preachy tone and a vague cloud of A Teaching Moment hanging over it, it more or less casts that stupid performative act of self-flagellation as The Correct Way To Appease The Transes If You Commit The Sin Of Misgendering which is just... no. I don't want people who otherwise support me wholeheartedly to make a big deal of it if they misgender me by accident, actually. Just correct yourself and move right on - make it as mundane as messing up my address because I moved recently, actually. Treat it like it's not a big deal, like it's a normal thing for me to be enby, because that's the fastest way it will become the new norm. There are studies about this sort of thing.

It would be different if Taash had to struggle to get their new identity accepted by their peers, but that's not the case at all - the Lords, the companions, their mother, everyone is completely on board with them being nonbinary as soon as they understand what's up - so it felt like the narrative is targeting the wrong people for transgressions they didn't really commit, if that makes any sense.

Sorry this is so long, but the frustration over seeing the character I was most looking forward to messed up so badly has been festering in me for a while now. I hope you have a wonderful day. <3

Yeah! Taash themselves is written as though the whole world is against them and their gender identity, as though it's some never-before-seen struggle unique to them, but in an attempt to not bum anybody out by making that TRUE, everyone around them is like "oh good for you!! here's a pamphlet with all the up-to-date words to use for those who are just like you!!"

So we have this character who's angsting about their gender and how they're soooooo different and alone, while everyone around them bends over backwards to show their support. Even their mother, who's the main person who doesn't "support" them, is at worst confused, and she fucking DIES for that sin and in order to re-establish the 100% support rate Taash gets for their gender identity.

That's the part that makes them feel like a whiny teen and makes their struggle so hollow. You can't both have a huge fucking tragic coming-out story while the entire world around you is rolling out the red carpet in anticipation for your exit.

That's why I predicted Taash's whole story would fall apart for me the moment my Rook was like "I'm exactly like you and I know how you feel" in this very sympathetic way early on. I was like "oh boy. they're showing so much empathy and are being very supportive while being explicitly nonbinary, I imagine this will undercut Taash's entire storyline when the game will attempt to show them as uniquely isolated due to their identity." And I was right! Because the game doesn't account for the possibility of a nonbinary Rook being there to support them, all you get are like a few asides of "I know how it feels uwu" and Taash being like "woaow you soo know how it feels", but fundamentally their story is still about them being SO nonbinary, more nonbinary than anybody else has ever been nonbinary, to the point where your actual nonbinary Rook just has to stand there and pretend they don't exist at all. And then when Rook has to be a pseudo-mentor to Taash while seemingly being their peer is so weird, too, and doesn't help the feeling of Taash just being a huge fucking child about the whole thing. Like a teen whining that nobody gets them while the adults around them are like "it's ok! these feelings are natural! here's a pamphlet!"

Anyway yeah. I have feelings about how nonbinary Rook breaks Taash's whole storyline that I haven't even talked about yet. The way the game sort of expects Taash to be the one true enby of the world in a very self-important sort of way and ends up creating a bunch of contradictions. You can't both have "uwu being nonbinary is so normal and natural that nobody questions it and everyone automatically knows Rook's pronouns" and "uwu being nonbinary is normal but sooo unusual and not everybody will get it and you need to adjust and it'll take time and when you fuck up just apologize profusely for this grave offense." Like, which is it, game? You need to pick because otherwise Rook's nonbinary existence makes Taash's whole deal into a big fat nothingburger. And you'd think that the whole Qun/Rivain storyline would at least put a unique spin on their nonbinary story and set it apart from Rook's but. Well. That would require not having the Whitest Possible Take on that part, and I'm not sure BioWare could ever deliver that.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

“Also because I want [Nino] to be more narratively important but that is a rant for another day.” And will that day be someday soon? Wink wink nudge nudge :3c

I am happy to give Nino some love, but before we do, we need to talk about how badly canon has failed him. The reason we need to have that talk is that the love I'm going to give is far more headcanon-y than I usually go in these analysis posts. For most characters, I can give a strong canon-based argument for a core characterization. For Nino? Well, I am pulling this stuff from canon, but I wouldn't exactly label it a "strong" argument. There are even elements of my take on Nino that you could label "grasping at straws".

And I'm happy to own that! I delight in giving Nino all the love he deserves even if it doesn't perfectly match canon, but that means that my Nino is less me leaning into the best parts of canon and more me shifting through canon, grabbing a few shinny bits, and weaving them into something that you may not agree with because my vision for Nino is to elevate him to match Alya in terms of narrative importance because I want the team show season two promised me even if I have to make it myself!

And if you don't want that? Then that's fine! I'm not arguing that everyone should adopt this take. My version of Nino is about as close to an OC as I get when writing fanfic. So let's get into it and talk about why I had to do that. (Also note that I have nothing against OCs. It's just that, when it comes to my own writing, I try to reserve them for original fiction or for very minor roles that no canon character could fill. Totally a matter of personal preference and not some sort of judgement.)

The Many Ways that Canon has Done Nino Dirty

If we look at what is arguably the main group of friends - Alya, Marinette, Adrien, and Nino - then we can see a clear base concept for the first three. Alya is the plucky reporter. Marinette is the headstrong leader. Adrien is the sweet goofball. Nino is... Alya's boyfriend? Adrien's best friend? Chris' older brother?

This is the problem that I was referring to above. Alya, Adrien, and Marinette have clear roles that you could pick out by just watching Origins. Nino doesn't. He doesn't even speak in part one and part two gives him all of six lines. These lines establish him as a nice guy since they're all about him being kind to Adrien, but that's about it. Here's one of them as an example:

Miss Bustier: Agreste, Adrien? Nino: (quietly to Adrien) You say "present". Adrien: (jumps up with his hand raised) Uh, present!

This is a cute moment for sure, but when I look at it, I can't tell you who Nino is supposed to be other than a nice guy, which isn't much to go on. Nice guys can fit a lot of roles.

This isn't necessarily a flaw. Some characters have roles that are immediately obvious and some characters don't. This second class of character usually just has a more complex role that will be discovered and defined based on their actions as the story goes on. However, because Miraculous' writing is all over the place, Nino gets screwed. Instead of his actions defining his nebulous role, his actions make his role impossible to pin down! Here are a few examples:

Nino the Protector:

Season two was big on the idea that miraculous had to be suited to their holders. That's why Chloe kept getting the bee as we saw in Malediktator:

Marinette: I must choose someone who's not impressed by people in power. Who can help me trap Malediktator. Huh?! Of course! That's it. (reaches for the Miraculous of the Bee)

And why did Nino get the turtle in Anansi?

Marinette: I need a protective Miraculous. (gasps, and points at the Turtle Miraculous Master Fu is wearing) That's the one I need, Master! (Master Fu gasps) Uh, if it's okay with you. Master Fu: (smiles at Wayzz, who nods to him) Do you have someone in mind, Marinette?  Marinette: Actually, I think I found just the right person.

Okay, cool, we finally have a strong defining trait for Nino! He's a protector! Or, at least, he was here. Other episodes go directly against this role such as this nonsense from Illusion:

Nino: What's up is Ladybug and Cat Noir don't have us to help them anymore. Alya: (nervously) Um, um— uh— what do you mean, "us"? Nino: Well, us, you Rena Rouge, me Carapace! (Alya kicks his leg underneath the table) Ouch! What's the big deal? We can tell Marinette and Adrien we used to be superheroes.

This first issue with this episode is that we see Nino out his and Alya's secret identities without her permission even though the resistance did NOT require an identity reveal to be a thing. In other words, our supposed protector is taking a big risk for no reason. Then he goes and does this:

Nino: Hence my plan. We're gonna film an akumatization. Alya: And how are you, Comrade Ketchup, gonna be in the know when and where this akumatization takes place? Nino: Easy, Comrade Beurre Maître d'Hôtel. I'm gonna make it happen.

Which leads to the four friends antagonizing Gabriel even though Nino knows how complex Adrien and Gabriel's relationship is. A move that makes no sense for a supposed protector because Gabriel was far from their only option. Nino could have picked anyone, but he went with the riskiest candidate possible, exposing his best friend to a potentially massive backlash.

Nino also doesn't even try to contact Ladybug and Chat Noir prior to this insane plan, thereby putting the whole city at unnecessary risk! What kind of protector purposely causes an akuma without also coming up with mitigation strategies to minimize the resulting damage?

Everything Nino does in this episode should disqualify him from ever holding the turtle again or, at the very least, he should have to redeem himself before holding the turtle again. This is especially true since he never apologizes for anything he did in Illusion and this is just one example of the issue. It's actually kind of hard to find moments where Nino acts as a protector even though he holds the miraculous of Protection. So is he supposed to be a protector? Who knows!

Nino, The Empath:

That first example was long, so we'll pick two quicker ones to flesh this out. The first one is how Nino and Adrien's relationship is defined. In Origins and the New York Special Nino is written as a kind and sensitive guy who is acting as Adrien's guide to dating and other elements of the real world:

Nino: Yup. I love Adrien, but he's like a baby chick that's just started cracking out of his egg. He has a hard time understanding the signals people send him. Alya: What signals? Marinette isn't exactly sending them clearly. I mean, look! What is she doing with her arms? Telling him what to do in case of an emergency landing or something? Nino:(sighs) If only this trip could help Adrien finally come out of his shell.

But then you have episodes like Animan where Adrien is Nino's guide to dating:

Nino: Shhh! You know I'm no good with the ladies, especially this one all of a sudden. I mean, dude, do I go up to her and crack her a joke? Shoot her a compliment? Invite her to the zoo? Play it serious? Adrien: Nino, you're way over-thinking this. "Invite her to the zoo", you serious? Nino: Well, they have this really cool new exhibit there. Adrien: Listen, just be yourself, man.

And episodes like Illusion (discussed above) and Psycomedian (see below) where Adrien is deeply uncomfortable and Nino doesn't notice:

Nino: See, dude? I told you! Hilarious, right? Adrien: Uh... (laughs nervously) Right! Really funny, Nino. Nino: I gotta show you his other sketches. It's insane that you don't know Harry Clown! (laughs)

Which might work if these episodes were about Nino learning a lesson, but they're not. Nino learns nothing, so is he generally in tune with others or is he kind of oblivious to other peoples' feelings? And why did Nino ever think that Adrien was a good source of romantic advice if he also thinks that Adrien is "a baby chick"? Pick a lane people!

Nino's Hobbies

Our final source of confusion is trying to define what Nino even enjoys doing. Horrificator and Queen Banana have him playing around as an amature film maker, but we also see him acting as an amature DJ with the wiki even claiming that he's the head of the school's radio station. So which of these things is his passion? Movies or music?

To be clear, I think it's fine to have multiple passions, but this is a story. You want to keep your characters' non-story-relevant hobbies kind of simple, especially when the character in question is a relatively minor side character who rarely gets much screen time. It's why Alix is only really into roller skating and why Nathaniel is only really into art. You don't want them to be more complex than that.

Even the main characters get this "keep it simple" treatment with Marinette only really being into fashion and Alya only really being into her blog. The girls don't need two demanding passions that would eat up all of their free time, but that's what Nino gets! Film and music are both incredibly demanding passions and it's hard to balance a character who is into both who is also an active superhero. That's a lot for one dude to do well!

I've actually seen fics that cast Nino as wanting to be a director and fics that make him want to be a professional DJ because canon really isn't clear about this pretty basic aspect of his character, but you do need to pick a lane when writing anything that gives Nino a career and so people seem to pick a passion at random.

My Version of Nino

By now, we're hopefully in agreement that canon has made a mess of Nino's character to the point where it's near impossible to say "this is who Nino is supposed to be." However, if you want to write Nino, then you do kind of have to pick a characterization to go with, so here's what I've come up with. Feel free to embrace it or reject it, but know that you will pry my version of Nino out of my cold dead hands because I utterly adore him.

Since Nino is Carapace, I base everything about him around the concept of "protect and defend" because he needs to feel like he deserves his heroic alter ego. I do not want to make canon's mistake of giving him a miraculous that massively contradicts his writing. Especially when that writing makes him feel interchangeable with other characters. At this point, no one from canon screams "turtle miraculous" unless you want to give it to Adrien since he's Ladybug's defender.

I also designed Nino around Alya and Adrien as those will arguably be his most important relationships. He should feel like a perfect fit for boyfriend and best friend respectively. I also took Marinette into consideration because he's going to be part of her team/friend group, so he should work with her, too.

What all that means is that I basically said "okay, this is where Nino is supposed to fit in the story and this is the dumpster fire that canon gave us, how do I pull pieces from the fire and paste them together to make a character that fits who Nino should have been?"

To really get into my version of Nino, I'd almost have to give you a fic to read, but that's way too much for a Tumblr post, so let's keep this high-level and just look at some of my notes on Nino from my lore Bible:

Nino is a major audiophile. He loves listening to music and watching movies/TV shows to study how they play with sound. He wants to be an audio engineer when he's older, but he also has a general passion for all things music and film. He’ll listen to any genre and watch almost any movie or show. He loves to take charge of the music at events so that the music really fits the crowd (and so it sounds good). It isn’t unheard of for him to go see an unknown band or an odd indie film on his own. This will become a major bonding point for Nino and Adrien because of the influence of Adrien's mother. Nino has seen all of Emilie's films and loves them. It will also bond him and Alya as his knowledge of film making will allow him to help her learn the art of filming now that she's doing complex things like actions shots and editing together multiple recordings.

Nino is generally pretty laid back and likes to hear people out. His reaction to confrontation is to try to calm everyone down so that they can get to the heart of the issue. He wants everyone to get along, but he's also not going to let someone take the blame when they shouldn't. Nino protects the innocent.

Nino is incredibly protective of the people he loves. If someone he cares about is in danger, his peaceful nature goes straight out the window. He’s the kind of person who would happily take a bullet for his friends and family. This will lead to him following Alya around once the hero stuff starts because he wants to keep her safe. Never let Alya go out alone if Nino is around or even just aware that a fight is happening. Alya thinks "scoop" and Nino thinks "my Alya sense is tingling." He's NOT there to stop her from doing what she loves, he's just there to be her spotter who lets her focus on filming while he watches for danger, though that will initially be a struggle for him. Treat this as his audition/training for Carapace where he learns to balance protective instincts with getting the job done so that he's ready to perfectly take on his miraculous.

When Nino’s folks split up, his mother insisted that the kids should go to therapy to help process things. They had individual and family counseling. Nino was actually pretty cool with the divorce as he’d seen it coming, but his brother was really affected by it, so Nino spent his time working on ways to help Chris (and being told that he was a brother, not a parent, but he still wanted to help). He learned a lot from going through it and it’s why he’s so good at dealing with emotional issues. He’s also good at not taking those burdens on himself. He wants to help, but knows that it's your battle. Marinette often looks to Nino for guidance on emotional issues because she knows that she's terrible at navigating them. She has given him full permission to stop her when she's too focused on solutions over support. All of the friends will help Adrien figure out social situations, but Nino will be the main guide as he's the one with the strongest skills in that area. Plus Adrien makes Nino's protective big brother instincts go crazy.

Nino’s a bit of a loner by choice. He has "weird" hobbies that easily lend themselves to being done alone and he doesn't have any interest in "forcing" his hobbies on someone who doesn't actually enjoy them, so he spends a lot of time by himself and rarely invites others to share in his interests. He only does that when he thinks that they'll actually enjoy what he's sharing. He doesn’t mind this, but he’s also a very welcoming individual who doesn’t like to see people left out, so he’ll come out of his shell when he sees someone who needs a friend. This usually leads to him making friends who soon become closer with others, but still view him as a casual friend. He’s cool with that. He's just happy that they found their people. Adrien will be the first friend who really stays Nino’s due to an understanding of Nino’s “weird” hobbies. After all, Adrien’s the son of an actress. He’s used to weird indie films and discussions of cinematography. I'd even say that he revels in it and realizes that he has missed it desperately since his mom got too sick to do that kind of thing. Basically, Nino will fill a spot in Adrien's heart that Adrien didn't even know was empty. Adrien can listen to Nino talk about cinematography for hours and never get bored. Before Adrien, no one knew that Nino was this talkative!

If anyone wants more insights into this topic, feel free to send an ask, but I think we'll call this post done now because it's SUPER long.

[justenjoythegossip]

CHRIS & ABBA’S LATEST PR STUNT & THE VISIBLE ENDGAME OF THE PR STRATEGY or… “WILL YOU JUST GET OVER IT ALREADY? IT HAS BEEN TWO FREAKING YEARS”…

Recap of recent events: 

Yesterday was the premiere of Red One in Berlin. Go Germany. Chris didn’t walk the red carpet before Dwayne as he was supposed to, arrived late with his wife, walked the carpet (after almost missing it) without her, played with the precious very ostentatiously for the cameras, she and Chris shared a moment together as they hugged and she gave him a look of... disgust(?). Then they were filmed sitting together for the movie and Chris seemed angry/pissed(?) at her as he gestures, seemingly does a nervous tick by pressing on his glasses and she rolls her head… #couplegoals LOL

Side note: kudos to the PR agent sitting next to Abba for her clapping as it seemingly helped indicate to her she was supposed to applaud her loving husband and also served as miraculous blocking from this angle, to show us only what they want us to see. 

She was always going to be there…

I have been asked many times if I thought Abba would show up at the premiere. And I always answered that I was 50/50 on the matter. When we learned that it was actually Justin who arranged that podcast for her, I was leaning towards no. Because why would she feel the need to go on a podcast no one asked for, if she was going to get the exposure of a big Hollywood premiere soon, right? Then we got the Avengers’ PR stunt where they endorsed Kamala Harris and Chris was flashing his ringless hand so ostentatiously. And then I immediately thought, of course she will be there. Her saying her marriage year was terrible coupled with his non wearing his wedding ring was meant to manipulate his fans into thinking the end was near and like always to add shock value to their next PR stunt. 

And of course she was going to be there, this is actually a big part of why he did this PR stunt in the first place. He wanted the world to know he was a married man and there is no better platform than a Hollywood event to push a narrative… even when you push it as discreetly as you can so that you don’t offend your fandom and the general public any further…

Why did we get a remake of what happened at the Ghosted premiere and what does this mean?

If people remember the Ghosted Premiere, they did not walk together as they infamously made their red carpet debut for the Vanity Fair party. At the time, I theorized that the reason they didn’t was because they wanted to ease his fans in as they knew there was quite a lot of backlash from his fans but also from the general public. I still think that was the case but it’s even more obvious after today’s stunt, as this was a win-win for Chris. He gets to sell the married man brand he is craving so desperately while putting his kinda wife in a corner.  Go Berlin! She gets to come but has to make sure she is not seen too much as her presence could offend his fans and a part of the general public and more importantly have an impact on his movie’s box office and his career more generally speaking. And look how his “fans” take this as a victory… 

But it’s not, it’s just more manipulation and gaslighting on Chris and his team’s part. 

Because clearly all the content of the 2 of them was not meant for the general public but destined to his fandom. And as you can see they didn’t make it to the Just Jared article this time. But they did get to sell the “we are real and private/we are just PR” narrative. Badly like always because it’s the point. 

https://www.justjared.com/2024/11/03/dwayne-johnson-lucy-liu-chris-evans-more-premiere-new-holiday-movie-red-one-in-berlin/

But now we finally get a clearer sense of why Abba felt the need to go on a podcast no one cared about for the first edition of a small festival that got little to no media coverage! She is basically reduced to a prop that has basically no voice or agency but is taken out for minimal lowkey PR stunts when it’s absolutely necessary. But since she a Nazi sex worker, I am guessing we should all be ok with this. But more on that later. 

The latest appearance of the precious ring and its use from a PR standpoint… 

I have already discussed the ring profusely and even recently when he went to the walk of fame for Kevin Feige. Here are a couple of posts where I give my 2 cents about it.

Before I dive into the latest shenanigans with the precious, it’s important to note that playing with wedding rings is very “in” right now. And so what Chris did last night was textbook CAA. Just look at what Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck recently did with theirs or even more ridiculously how Dakota flashed her engagement ring during an arranged papwalk. 

Here you can see a video of Chris with the very purposefully loose ring:

As people have pointed out, the ring is way too big, isn’t it? And clearly that’s the whole point since it feeds the “it’s only PR” narrative, isn’t it? But that’s not even the most interesting part about this little clip. Look at where the fans are on this video, then pay closer attention to the camera placement. Can you see how much emphasis the person who is filming (not a fan) is putting on the loose ring and how CURATED this all is?

And now look at Chris playing with his ring so naturally and organically (sarcasm) as the photographers are taking his picture. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Evans Army (@cevans_army)

They want you to see it, they are showing it to you, as ostentatiously as it gets. Even when Chris plays the game of “hide the ring”, it is to draw more attention to it while trying to gain sympathy from fans who are so desperate to see a glimmer of regret in his demeanor. 

The programmed obsolescence of Team Real/Team PR and the endgame of the PR strategy 

I have discussed months ago, how this strategy of “divide and conquer” which was symbolized by the discourse and fighting between Team Real and Team PR was just a starting point. A PR strategy can only be understood and appreciated when it can be analyzed in the long run. Those 2 trolling teams were the loud extremist voices that were obnoxious and repulsive enough (in their tone or rhetoric) to drive fans away from them and the narratives they were selling, paving the way for the more reasoned and rational Team Middle. I wrote a post about it if you want to check it out. 

As Team PR and team Real have become completely redundant, all that is left is the narrative Team Middle are pushing. Notice how they purposefully keep blurring the line to disorient (classic manipulation tactics by the way) and make people accept what they are selling. And today they might distract you with the loose ring, the presence of her relatives, the not walking the red carpet together or taking pictures together (but just you wait for the NY premiere as it is just around the corner), their bad body language around each other, the awkwardness and coolness of their exchanges, her cheap outfit while he is dressed in designer clothes by his scientologist and rapist apologist stylist, or they will point out how over the top and fake he was in his reactions at the premiere and I could go on and on… All of this is true BUT it is all a distraction and misdirection. 

As they have pointed out repeatedly, it has been two years, so you should just accept it or move on. The fandom no longer needs your services if you are not capable of enjoying the content they “so kindly” provide for you. They will feed you the crumbs showing how fake it is to appease you and to distract from Chris’ complicity and manipulation as long as you behave. 

The seemingly counterintuitive promoting of this girl by plants, their vicious trolling and what purposes it serves..

So many plants allegedly hate Abba but talk about her constantly. The amount of attention she is getting from them seems incommensurable. Like posting her numbers religiously or obsessing about what she is wearing and so forth.

If it weren’t for them we would hear very little about her. For example, we would have known she was going to do a podcast in her home country only after she posted about it and not a long time before hand. It's also important to note that most of the time she is mentioned, it is in a very negative way as they usually make fun of her and humiliate her. As you know, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”. But in this instance, it’s interesting to ask ourselves why and also what purposes it serves more specifically.

Well, I have just mentioned that bad publicity is still publicly, but another key rule is: know your audience. And obviously Chris’ fandom dislikes her so intensely that talking about her in a negative way, showing animosity towards her is the smart approach to gain the trust of his fans you want to manipulate. The goal here is to paint her as an absolute villain. I am not defending her by the way as she is an awful person but she has 0 power in this story but she makes for a hell of a scapegoat in this shitshow. And indeed, people can easily project all of their disappointment, anger and negative emotions onto her in order to soothe their frustration. 

You see the industry makes you do things you don’t want to do if you let it, talent agencies are as unethical as it gets and will play an awful game if you let them, the PR wife that you selected (or agreed on) might be a POS… but at the end of the day, it’s all a reflection of your own choices and of who you are… 

NB: special thanks to friends and mods who provided me with content and shared with me their smart observations. If I don’t thank you by name it’s to protect you from being blocked LOL

[sofy-tofy]

Women enemies in horror deserve a mention for their effective scariness in narrative, especially when the lead is also one. Is normal for us feel safe when the same gender is around but.. when who should understand your struggles is instead against you.. is fucked in many ways 🧵

Let me explain it using the examples, starting with Mary from Clock Tower: She is a teacher, a figure which kids are told to trust and feel safe from danger, but that is what is scary about her. A woman who use this knowlege for pray on young girls for her satanic situal desires.

Dahlia from Silent Hill is more fucked in my opinion. Like Mary, she is obsessed with a cult-like religious identity but she take it to extremes. While the first use "other kids" for her mission, Dahlia literally abuse her OWN child for complete a fanatic and miserable ideology.

Daniella from Haunting Ground is, in my opinion, one of the best PS2 horror characters to analyze. She, like Fiona, was abused by the men in the house and heavily objectified simply because of her gender. But heres the thing: instead of understanding Fiona, she does the opposite-

Daniella despises her, seeing Fiona as competition regarding what the Belli family men taught her about women's duty, especially because she owns an "azoth." Rather than respect and help the girl to escape and return to a normal modern life, she hunts her down for be "complete."

To end the conversation, let's talk about Gloria (or Elisa) from the Remothered series. Due to the heavy pain caused by her brother and anyone close to him, she decided to take out her anger by taking down, step by step, anyone involved in her misery. Using the "Red Nun" figure-

This figure is actually, in this case, a "true face" of something that was somewhat watered down in modern media: the nun. These religious figures can be truly despicable. Indeed, this character does have moments when he talks in a very misogynistic way toward our protagonist.

Her point is to show how, even knowing how badly the world treated her, Gloria herself became part of the same problem. Another point to show is how she represents the "sister," despising the person who she consider as such due to things honestly no one could have controlled.

All of them played with figures whom we are told to trust, love, and respect but… we also need to realize how cruel and unfair the world can be. No matter what, some can be a danger. End of the talk! What do you think? A character i missed you think deserve a mention? Lets talk~

For see the full and better vers, check here!

Or here as well!

[frostycatblr-fandom-files]

*dances in badly* FROSTYYYY! I'm finally regaining energy, which means finally regaining some kind of ideas for fics.

Of course, I'm going to request f!reader x Rex (was there ever a doubt? 😅😅) where it's possibly coming up to life day (my brain is desperate to skip autumn nejjejririejjwjwhw), or it's just cold and snowy, and they're both soing a scouting mission but get cut off from the main group, so have to find safety (cave, abandoned building, etc etc). But it's cold, so there's snuggling close together to stay warm.

Established relationship or this being a confession piece is up to you! I'm all for it being super soft and fluffy, but if you want to add a little small dash of rex having an arm or leg boo boo that gets a bacta patch on is up to you 💞💞💞💞💞💞

@eternal-transcience

Lost on Life Day [Captain Rex x Fem!Reader]

Warnings and Information: While scouting an uncharted planet to patch up some outdated intel, you and Captain Rex end up taking shelter from a growing snow-storm when a minor avalanche separates you from the rest of Torrent Company. Fortunately, no one has died. Unfortunately, several troopers, Rex among them, have been injured, and it will take time before help arrives. Will you be able to endure and weather the storm long enough for help to arrive? It would be a terribly tragic thing to die on a holiday of all days, after all… Second Person POV, undescribed, unnamed Fem!Reader. Reader’s job is (unofficially) a navigational (and/or signal) officer; currently in training. Confessional fic with brief moments of peril, anxiety, as well as minor/mild whump and angst. Injury and vague mentions of blood and other medical supplies such as autoinjectors. Reader is given parts of Rex’s cold weather gear out of selflessness/love. [Same thing, really.] Speculative armor functions. Narrative and stylistic use of italics. Minor use of Star Wars and real-world swearing. Some use of Mando’a. Reader is referred to as “kid” a handful of times, all in an affectionate/apologetic sense. “Little miss” is used once, playfully/sarcastically. Takes place on a fictionalized planet.

Word count: 10,791

There was never a dull day when it came to working with the 501st Legion. 

Whether it owed to their unconventional tactics, or if it was simply just the way things worked in the Grand Army of the Republic, this particular deployment seemed to get saddled with some of the more interesting and dangerous missions with an above-average frequency.  

Perhaps a lot of that reasoning was rooted in the absolute bravery and unshakeable loyalty these men had not just to each other, but to the whole of the Republic. 

This blue-brushed unit was led by an exemplary captain who bore the name Rex, crowned by a helmet that had been emblazoned with a Mandalorian symbol of honor - the Jaig eyes. As a member of the crew aboard the Jedi flagship—the Resolute— you have been given the means to befriend the captain and his men by nature of the ship’s forced proximity. And though the exact act of battle-borne bravery that earned him the right to carry such an esteemed mark remains obscured by mystery, you know with far more certainty that Captain Rex has been fighting since the very beginning of the Clone Wars. 

When the planet of Geonosis became the war’s origin-point, he was among the first white-armored soldiers that had been deployed against Separatist forces. Rex has seen and led his men through a lot of excitement, both after and since the reorganization from a Battalion into the Legion they are today under Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker’s command. 

It was rather befitting that the designation for the Venator-class Star Destroyer worked not only for one of the many, positive qualities of the Jedi Order, but for the intergalactic transport of this particular deployment of soldiers as well. They were all hard-fighting, admirable and courageous men. 

Men that you greatly valued the friendship of; learning to be more comfortable in one another’s company when the war demands their attention, and even when it does not. 

You initially think nothing of it when early this morning, in the pre-dawn hours, Captain Rex steps into the starport bridge where you are working alongside Admiral Yularen and the rest of the crew. He carries his modified helmet at his left side, leaving his face visible and free. An expression of focused professionalism is softened with a warm, patient smile as he draws nearer, seeing you diligently complete this morning’s work. 

Recently, you had begun training in one of the Republic’s many programs to become a navigational officer. The captain encouraged you to ‘change course’ when he noticed that you were facing growing dissatisfaction in your current position, hoping it would inspire you to remain stationed here. 

It’s hard to resist reflexively returning that smile, or to remember the usual phrases of formality as you turn to address him. 

“Good morning, Captain.” Anticipating that he must have a message from General Skywalker or Commander Tano to give to Admiral Yularen, you offer to help him in case the matter is an urgent one after Rex echoes your greeting. “I’m afraid the admiral is a bit busy at the moment,” you say, speaking of the ship’s captain, “but I’d be happy to help you with whatever it is I can.” 

Chuckling politely, Rex first expresses his surprise to hear you sound so… formal. “Starting to sound just like a deck officer already. But it’s funny that you ask how you can help when that’s exactly what I came to see you about.” When you give him a puzzled expression, yet nod for him to continue, he adds, “I have… a really big favor I wanted to ask of you.” His voice, often so coherent when issuing even the most chilling or unpleasant orders, is full of uncertain halting. Hesitation. 

You assume that whatever he’s going to say, he understands he’s asking a lot of you. “Sure. What is it?” Making up the difference, there is no delay in seeking to determine what Rex’s big favor is. 

Gently tossing a nod in the direction of one of the nav-tables, your friend signals for you to follow him so the two of you will be more out of the way. Shifting the helmet off his hip and onto the edge of one of these consoles, Rex frees up both of his hands so that he can speak to you. This way, both you and himself can speak and behave less like a soldier and a member of the crew, and more like friends. Foregoing the formality of titles and the like without worry for the eavesdropping presence of higher-ranking associates. 

Trying to find the words to say, the captain takes a deep, quiet breath. It must be something serious on top of being a lot to ask. 

“We- I understand that you’re not yet a navigational officer—officially speaking—but I thought it would be best to find all the help I could get. You’re still training; but Commander Tano believes you show great promise. I think she was even trying to suggest she could sense it,” Rex carefully explains, making a nod to common abilities Jedi utilized of and through the Force with an uncharacteristically timid expression. 

“And, both from what I’ve heard as well as my trust in Commander Tano, I certainly believe her.” 

Giving it considerate thought, you allow yourself time to process. Then, nodding slowly, you ask what the mission is. 

“Okay… Well, that’s, uh, sweet of you and Commander Tano, and all, but… I guess what exactly do you need so much extra help for, Rex?”

“We’ve been asked to scout out a planet that it seems nobody can recognize, or name.”

It could prove to be a potentially dangerous mission, but it would—should—be far less dangerous than some of the other missions they’ve been assigned. The astrological body had been picked up by Republic scanners from one of the many fleets as it was passing by, and all of the data fields had returned with very sparse information. No known, recognizable name, peoples, or even local climate beyond an estimate this was an ice giant. They couldn’t even be certain there was even animal-life down there due to perpetual, shifting storms. 

The only thing anyone has been able to confirm of the planet is its size: 7,010.08 kilometers, a bit oddly specific… 

Speaking to you with the same amount of respect he would show any of his brothers, Captain Rex further explains, “I’d like you to join us as an extra set of eyes out there once we make it planetside. Situational awareness and communications will be crucial down there. I’m asking if you’ll join because you get along well with my men. They trust you. And I think we’ll need all the trust we can find.” General Skywalker and Commander Tano were busy with making preparations before all of you were due to exit hyperspace, but they had already provided the necessary permissions to Admiral Yularen and Captain Rex to temporarily add civilian crew under his command for the mission. At this point, it came down to your choice to join, or stay aboard the Resolute. 

“Well, uh…”

The reasoning seems sound, but you’re not wholly sure about jumping to accept just yet. A chance for real field experience? That would be the kind of thing that would look incredible on your training record. (Especially if it was with the 501st!) But you needed to make sure you had good-fitting gear before anything was made official. If you needed to scramble to borrow something, you’d want some extra time to take care of that.

“I just need to check that I have all the necessary equipment, first.” 

There are more than three rapid blinks in surprise. “You’ll-? You’re agreeing to join?” Rex asks, his voice brightening with hope. 

You can’t help a friendly chuckle before correcting him. 

“Well only if I either have or can borrow all the necessary gear. Won’t be any good to the team down there if I risk becoming half-frozen, now will I?” 

“Would you like some help?” Rex kindly offers. 

You graciously accept the captain’s offer, figuring it’s only fair. After all, you’re going to provide quite a lot of it once you’re on the planet’s surface, now aren’t you?

Once all of the appropriate gear has been collected, you and the rest of Torrent Company touch down on the unrecognized planet less than an hour later. 

Together, you’re set to embark on the lengthy process of surveillance and charting the findings. Accepting Captain Rex’s help in finding everything you needed pays off the instant your boots crunch down into the fresh, wind-driven snow. Great galaxy and all her stars… It’s well below freezing down here. The low temperatures prove a great concern to the well-seasoned pilots—General Skywalker among them—with the gravest reserved for the landing gear and engines. 

If it was necessary to make a hasty escape, they couldn’t very well do that when half of the most critical components were turned to ice. “Worse than I thought down here… Captain Rex - a word, please?” General Skywalker quickly asks to confer with Rex in order to shake out the last few details of his plan, who had been in the process of helping you properly fit the supply pack you were instructed to carry over the rest of the thick, cold-weather gear. 

Though he seems regretful to leave you, Rex wastes no time answering. Duty calls. “Of course, General.” He summons the 501st’s medic to take over for him. “Kix, mind helping our good friend here for me?”

“Consider it done, captain.” Kix responds. 

Taking over for his commanding officer, Kix finishes appropriately tightening the last shoulder strap. It needs to straddle that delicate knife’s-edge of ‘sturdy’ and ‘loose’; and who better than the man who you’ve heard has performed more than a few life-saving surgeries out in the battlefield if it’s not Captain Rex to finish what he’s started?

“How’s that feeling?” Kix asks after giving the other strap a final cinch. “Give it a wiggle for me, kid.” 

Kid: It was one of the Clones’ most common terms of affection when it comes to who they care about; shared both among themselves and those they had grown close to. 

Sure, it could be paired with a stinging insult on occasion, or used for a bit of mean-spirited teasing. But it had never been weaponized like that against you. “Kid” was used with less reservation and far more freely than the words the GAR had adopted into their speech from the language of Mando’a. When the moment called for more intimacy, more impact, these sons of Kamino called you ‘burc’ya’ - the Mandalorians’ word for friend. Your bonds with them were ‘burcyan’. The one applicable word they did not share with you was ‘vod’ika’ - though their reason for withholding it was understandable.

While half of its significance meant ‘close friend’, too often the Clones used it for the other half: sibling. 

For that reason, it was a precious word to them. And precious few things truly belonged to them. You would be “kid” if it meant they could have something to hold on to, just between brothers.

“Fits great. Thanks, Kix. Appreciate all your help.” 

Kix chuckles softly. “Wasn’t all me. But you’re welcome, kid. Excited to have you with us for this mission as one of our navigational officers.”

“Navigational officer in-training,” you’re somewhat firm to clarify. “It’s not official yet. I’m honored by Commander Tano’s level of trust in my training, and grateful that both she and General Skywalker signed off on the necessary data-work to give me permission to be here. But Captain Rex-”

“Thought it would be best to recruit all the people we can trust. I know.” Kix finishes on your behalf. “Sorry, kid; it’s not ideal to put together this plan without involving you first, but I’m afraid you’re the last one to find out about it.” 

Seeing as what’s done is done, all you can offer is half a shrug. “No, not ideal. But oh well. Honestly, if it had come from someone other than Captain Rex, I don’t know that I’d’ve agreed to do it.” It’s not like you didn’t have the choice to say “no” either. While he strongly suggested he wanted you to, Rex did ask you if you would agree to join when he spoke to you on the starport bridge. 

You were here by your own choice. It would be the responsibility of others to help make sure you would remain safe in the meantime. 

“Snips, I’m going to stay behind with a few troops and the pilots to make sure our ships remain operational. I want you to take command of the operation and assist Captain Rex with making sure Admiral Yularen’s future navigational officer makes it back to the Resolute in one piece.” General Skywalker, addressing his padawan, speaks loud enough to be heard by everyone over the subarctic winds lazily snaking through the landing zone. A rather efficient way of signaling to the troops they’ll be on the move soon, quite honestly. “You should take Artoo so he can help her boost the signal through the planetary storms.”

Commander Tano accepts the altered assignment. “Understood, Master.” The silver and blue-plated astromech demonstrates his excitement by rocking side to side on his two primary legs, chirping and warbling in a high, rapid pitch. “I’ll make sure Artooie doesn’t get into too much trouble.”

“And Lieutenant Jesse,” Skywalker adds, scanning the surrounding company for the trooper in question. “I have an assignment for you, too.” 

There’s some commotion near the back of the company before a clear, loud “Sir! On my way!” can be heard, the preceding rapid footfall announcing he’s hurrying forward to be properly addressed. 

“Very good,” General Skywalker replies once Jesse has moved in-sight of him, “I’d like you to be our third point-of-contact in charge of her safety. Can I count on you to do that?”

Opposite to the Republic crest tattooed over the left part of his face, Jesse promises with a firm salute both him and Captain Rex can count on him for this assignment. A loyal soldier and patriot, not to mention one of the Legion’s oldest soldiers, the ARC trooper is someone in whom you have absolute trust. He’s fun-loving and possesses an adaptable sense of humor; but when push comes to shove Jesse’s among the first to shove back. Just like his captain. 

You’re in good hands. 

“That settles it then. Ahsoka, you and Torrent Company can set out whenever you’re ready.”

Officially assuming command, Commander Tano issues the necessary orders to button up the last of the landing and preparation procedures before anyone sets foot beyond the landing zone, where together you’ll begin heading up a ridge to the north-northeast, first thing. 

“Carry only what’s necessary. We’ll make a plan once we have an idea of what we’re looking at from the ridge, so we won’t be deploying any speederbikes until then, understood?” Several soldiers around you reply in the affirmative, while you’re a little more unsure about a few things. What was considered necessary? 

Everything you had seemed pretty necessary since it was supposed to help you communicate between Commander Tano’s team and General Skywalker, and the crew aboard the Resolute, if it was needed… Should you ask?

Maybe she could sense it, but Commander Tano was quick and sweet to assure you not to worry after asking a trooper to help with a particular task. “Here, Tiethis. Looks like they need you to do your thing.” He’s handed a rope and pointed in the direction of a couple of crates full of gear that will be left behind at the landing zone, where his brothers are struggling to keep it all in one place due to the persistent winds. “Hey,” the Togruta padawan greets you kindly once Tiethis trots off, “If it helps, you can lighten your pack by caching a few things between me, Captain Rex and Jesse, to start out with. I know this is your first field exercise and you must be nervous. But you’re gonna do great, I know it. The three of us will be here to help if you get stuck.”

You chance a light, disbelieving laugh. “Thanks; but I think you mean “when”, Commander Tano.” You’re training, bound to make mistakes. 

She counters your pessimism with optimism. “Well, if or when you do, the three of us will still be there to help.” The promising reminder that you’re not going to be left to struggle by yourself is a comforting one. 

No, you’re certainly not. Not under the captain’s watch. 

Rather than take the entire company up to the ridge in order to put together a comprehensive plan of action, a small scouting party is created to get the lay of the land first before the whole company embarks anywhere by speederbike. 

Marching up there by foot would be the easy part, seeing as that’s the first and only clear step to this plan. After that, it’s anyone’s guess: the Republic was unfortunately a little too vague on what exactly the 501st had been deployed here to look for. (And that was more than a little frustrating.) You would be joining them to perform a bit of land surveillance before plotting out any kind of path, or opening a com-line to General Skywalker to report visual findings. 

And you’ve found what—right now—looks like a barren wasteland. 

Below the ridge, the landscape is made up of wind, snow and ice. In the distance, tall, craggy mountain ranges jut out of the snowfields - ominous, gray dorsal fins cutting through an otherwise serene surface. 

It’s a start. But you’re not sure you’re going to find more than that without retrieving some equipment from your pack. Maybe these shapes in the mid-ground obscured by snow-flurries will come into sharper focus with the borrowed pair of specs. A higher-end datapad than the one you own is added to your belt as you’ll be needing that next for a written sitrep. 

“Don’t forget: explain what you see.” Captain Rex helpfully reminds you. “Once you get the scopes properly calibrated for snow-based environments, of course.” It’ll make it harder to see what’s out there otherwise. 

Right, right… How do you do that?”

“I’ll help you with that, little miss.” Jesse offers. He fiddles with them for some time before declaring, “Here! Try that.”

While you surveilled, Rex and Commander Tano were going to talk over the next steps. Cook up ideas of what the Republic might have wanted them to look for. One brave soul breaks the weighted, nervous hush as you make a minor adjustment to the newly calibrated scopes. “What do you think they call this iceball?” the unmarked trooper asks. In an act of boredom or restlessness, he kicks his boot through the fresh-fallen powder as he speaks to the thus-far nebulous idea of potential inhabitants. 

The 501st learned their lesson after Orto Plutonia and the Talz: never assume a planet is uninhabited.

Carefully looking out into the vast stretch of snowfields, you now see the shape in the mid-ground are tors. (That’s the name for a geographical feature of free-standing rock formations created by weathering and erosion.) You note they look a little taller than ordinary. Maybe too tall to be a recognizable structure like a hut or other architectural dwelling that would suggest civilization. And though it was a long shot, you find yourself disappointed that it wasn’t. There are no foot-tracks to be seen (that can be picked up by the scope), nor navigational markers - save those left by Republic forces behind you. 

The instinct in your gut tells you this planet seems truly uninhabited. “I don’t think anyone calls it anything…” you murmur more to yourself than anyone in particular. “So far, the only thing I see down in the snowfield are a few spread-out tors. No plants, animals or people.” 

Unless someone among you (who isn’t one of the Jedi) knows how to “talk” to whatever wildlife you find here, any name this planet may have once had will remain unknown until there is contact with native inhabitants. For now, the written report will have to include a few placeholders until you can come up with something better (or find someone who can give the company answers). 

Expedition ICEBALL Carried out on the planet WHOKNOWS Led by Commander Ashoka Tano of the Jedi Order, and Captain Rex [CT-7567] of the Grand Army of the Republic 

That’ll have to do. The scouting party shouldn’t keep the others waiting for too much longer. 

Rex calls in the first report to General Skywalker so he can show you how it’s done for next time. Skywalker promises to help the men get the swoops and speeders ready by the time those who went to scout return; from the landing zone you’ll be heading north to investigate a point of interest near one of the distant mountain ranges you picked out with your scopes. It’ll prove safer to travel that way. Just somewhat inconvenient when it comes to securing a very vocal astromech on an improvised cargo rack on the back of someone’s CK-6 swoop or BARC speeder while covering greater distances. 

Given the chance, you think R2D2 would try to race some of these shinnies to help them learn a little humility by leaving them in his dust. He’d also probably race the older soldiers just for the sake of fun. Little guy certainly has been keeping things entertaining and spirits high around here. 

It'd be criminal not to mention how Artoo has proved he’s an invaluable resource to the company on this mission. Like he has many times before. On one of the many stops the company has made to check the surrounding area, the blue and white astromech scuttles off on his own for a time before coming back, whistling and beeping up a storm. 

Bw-woop! Woop!

“Artoo? What’s going on, little guy?” 

It looked like he’d just gone over a small hill, what could have happened to get him so worked up? Being careful not to stumble through the ankle-high snow, you make your way over. You could be wrong, but he sounds like he’s trying to get your attention specifically. This was as good a time as any to brush up on your Binary. 

“You got something to show me?”

Scuttling around to nudge you from behind, Artoo urges you to crest this relatively non-descript hill with a surprising amount of eagerness, even for him. 

Woo-WOO! Wheeee!

It won’t take being fluent in Droidspeak to understand this blue and white unit from the R2-series sounds pretty damn pleased with himself about finding this. 

Gathered together in a shallow depression, there are maybe six dozen creatures of some kind. They’re small, and coated in thick, puffed wool. Antlered. This is the only wildlife you’ve seen on the surface thus-far. They look like they could be ruminants; when one bleats, the mouth reveals the grinding molar teeth found among herbivores. 

“Artoo… Go get Rex and the commander. They’re gonna wanna see this.” 

The whole damn company will want to see this. There’s life down here! 

Comms become absolutely necessary if you have any hope of being heard over these forceful gales of wind and snow out in the open like this. 

A voice comes in on the short-range channel. “Think there’s a farm somewhere?” The question largely receives a rippling of uncertain murmurs in reply, though there is one unmistakable complaint among it all. 

“Not this again…” 

You offer a laughing retort. “Just because there was a farm on Saleucami, doesn’t mean there’s a farm here, Jesse.” There’s another laugh when the ARC trooper looks over to you and performs a highly exaggerated shrug. 

Rex had asked you to stay and watch from a distance as he, Jesse, and several brave troopers took as many pictures as they were safely able upon the young Jedi’s request. The captain would never order his men to do anything he himself would not do. As the nav officer in-training, Rex was not fond of the idea of you being involved, though you had asked if you could help.

“There’s no guarantee. They could just be wild.” 

This earns you another shrug. Less exaggerated this time. “Can’t rule it out, though. Look how docile they are!” Jesse replies, referring again to the possibility of farms. 

Farms would be an incredible clue of civilization. It’s one of the most solid markers in planetary exploration - proof that someone is being provided for, more than likely nearby.  

“No,” you agree simply, “Can’t rule it out yet.” 

Jesse did have a point. These creatures do seem relatively docile; none have shown the least bit of fear towards any of the troopers snapping stills around them. Maybe that means there is a farmer not far from here, someone who’s trained or gradually desensitized them to complete strangers. 

But tame behavior and looking friendly—perhaps aside from the wide, branched horns—is not enough to guarantee that they are threatless and domesticated. These creatures, whatever they are, may genuinely be wild, potentially feral…

For that reason Kix stands just as watchfully beside you, using a medic’s trained and critical eye to give his brothers stern warnings to give these ruminants breathing room. 

“Zipp, if you wanna be a pilot, your eyes need to be sharper than that. It keeps stamping its left hoof because you’re getting too close.”

“Sorry!” the rookie yelps, stumbling back. “I wanted to get a better look at the dirt in its wool…”

Almost a hundred heads turn in the trooper’s direction upon hearing the four-letter word. 

Did Zipp just say he found dirt?  

Over the open channel, Rex can be heard asking his soldier to repeat that several times, looking to be sure he heard correctly. Cautiously pinching a small amount out of the animal’s wool confirms this is, in fact, soil of an unknown composition. Where had the dirt come from? The company had been calling the planet by the nickname “Iceball” for good reason; there was no bare ground to be found, only ice and deep snow drifts. 

“If our hooved friend here has dirt in its wool, then they must have come from someplace else…” Rex hypothesizes. “Maybe there’s more of them.”  

When he lowers his rangefinder to search the horizon of this winterscape, the impression he’s looking for the wrong thing comes to you rather suddenly. He should be looking for something else. 

Something lower than the horizon. 

“Captain Rex! What about tracks?!” you call out to him on the channel. “We can follow tracks or where they’ve pushed through the snow back to where they came from!”

Impressed by your suggestion, Rex gives you a deserving mark of his respect. 

Thrice, he knowingly taps the blue emblem of the jai’gaalar’s eyes adorning the top of his helmet. Like the ancient avian of Mandalore, Rex sees the big-picture stuff when it comes to this war against the Separatists. When it’s not literal, it’s in the abstract sense. Thinking. This is part of what makes a man like Rex a triple threat and why you admire the blue-brushed captain so much. 

For his brains. 

Before he summons Artoo, you are left to imagine if that special smile given to someone you care for is under Rex’s helmet when he surprises you with a compliment. The kind that’s fond, tender, and makes you feel warm inside. “I knew I requested the right person for this mission: we’d probably feel pretty lost without you here, kid… Come help us look for tracks before the wind covers them all, little guy!” Rex could just be saying that in order to be modest, but… something tells you he isn’t. His words sound like they are more than just genuine.  

Apart from potentially covering the tracks, the wind brings concern of growing chill. Weather sensors in the second-generation Cold Assault armor worn by the men searching around the divot for prints trill out multiple, impatient warnings that temperatures are taking a slow, steady plunge. Best guess is a forming storm spotted from the gunships in the planet’s northern pole prior to landing has matured enough to start creeping further south. 

If it fledged, then you’re all going to have to move quickly. 

Current exploratory protocol dictates that so long as the duration of time that soldiers stay in-field does not exceed more-than-reasonable thresholds, Torrent Company and the remainder of the 501st aboard the Resolute are permitted to make as many expeditions as necessary in order to find their answers. The insulated gear dramatically increased a trooper’s tolerance for such extreme weather. The second gen of the HT-77 gear was better, and had seen great improvements that was worth the price increase from the 4,000 credits of the first. 

But as the Clones had been told by their trainers, they couldn’t expect the ‘77 to work miracles.

If the weather becomes so severe, or the risk of injury to you or the soldiers becomes too great, then this exploration must be curtailed and everyone will be instructed to leave this iceball behind until it is safer. 

Artoo makes his second incredible discovery of the day just when others vocalize their fear: maybe it’s too late to find anything, and the company should head back. Locating the creatures’ trail coming down from the north, he urges everyone to get back to the swoops with a garbled staccato of chirps and half-whistles. At six-dozen in number, the animals collectively cut a deep furrow through the snow. It would potentially be wide enough to use it like a makeshift road.  

“Good find, Artooie! Let’s not waste any time!” Commander Tano instructs her men. 

Tano leading the way, every bike races down the animal-made path to a mountain range with an unusual crescent-like shape. 

There in the deep belly of the curve, a cave’s yawning mouth awaits the explorers. Evidence of the same cloven hoofprints belonging to the ruminants can be found in abundance, here. While it must be safe enough for them to live inside—judging by the odor alone from standing outside—there are still many potential dangers to be found in any given cave system. 

So you think it would be best to call in another sitrep before anyone sets foot inside. 

This would end up being the last sitrep you make; the signal is thready even with Artoo boosting it for you. 

“General Skywalker? This is the nav officer with Torrent Company.” 

“I read you; go ahead.” the Jedi Knight responds. 

“Your resourceful little astromech found some kind of creature out here. Large group of them. Some kind of small herbivore. We followed their tracks back to a cave. It’s in the middle of one of the north…west mountain ranges relative to your position at the landing sight. Just disembarked our speeders, sir.” 

There’s a contemplative hum. “So you haven’t explored it, then. But I’m guessing the company is getting ready to.”

Commander Tano and Captain Rex, who had just conducted a short deliberation, have reached a decision. Flashing a thumbs up, everyone is given the answer that they’ll be proceeding inside shortly once the bikes have been dealt with. 

“Affirmative, General.”

“Understood. Tell Commander Tano and the captain that I trust their judgement to keep everyone safe. Thank you for checking in.” 

You promise to honor this request and sign off before the signal gets lost completely. Now full of worry and uncertainty, you turn again to your friend and ask in a fraught tone what the plan to explore the cave is. If Rex and Commander Tano don’t have one, the hope is they’re working on one… You and many of the rookies who had been listening in would really feel better knowing there’s a plan to deal with something Wampa-like living in the cave system, at the very least. 

“What are we going to do, Rex?”

With a comforting hand on your shoulder, he says, “Everyone’s going to stick together. We’ll pool half of our rope supply to mark our route, to start with, and use it as a guideline.” Beginning with the rope from Commander Tano’s pack, Rex hands Jesse a few tools to start from the mouth of the cave. Given several pitons and a hammer, the rope will be secured to the cave’s walls or floor. 

A tube of concentrated colorant is also offered in the shade ‘GLARE RED’ - the GAR uses this stuff as a visual aid to mark important items. It behaves more like a paste than paint, and as the name kind of implies it shows up as a visual glare in most optics equipment. It works just as well with the naked eye; such a stark red is rather impossible to miss. 

“This will keep us from getting lost. And I’ll be right there the entire time.” Rex promises you. 

So long as one one’s blasters froze to the inside of their holsters, you should have nothing to worry about. 

Moving as one group, exploring the cave and its rootlike system of passageways is done one cautious step at a time. 

Somewhere after the thirtieth iteration of “Piton, rope, color.” carried out every fifteen feet you’ve ventured through the mountain, you began losing track of time. The direction you seemed to be facing. Now, you’ve lost complete sense of both. With each light source building off of another’s radius, much of the passageways you’ve walked through have been well-lit. That serves as a great comfort; the blooming sense of trepidation knocking your heart against your ribcage lessening the better you can see.

No matter what may be skulking around in the dark, other than Artoo bravely scouting ahead, Rex is never more than half a step away from you the entire time. 

Walking beside you with his hand on your shoulder once more, nowhere in the galaxy feels safer than this. 

Following R2D2, Commander Tano walks further ahead than the rest of the company. The yellow-green blade of her activated shoto lightsaber bathes the walls of the passageway in a slightly eerie light, something that makes the medic’s cryptic observation all the more disturbing. “What the- Commander Tano?” Kix calls in a voice hedged by discomfort, “Take a closer look at the sides of the passage walls. Doesn’t that seem a little… unnaturally formed? They look too smooth; almost like the tunnel is man-made.” The Jedi’s attention drawn, Kix demonstrates his finding voluntarily. Sweeping his hand along the wall, he locates very few spots that have a rougher texture than the rest of it. 

“Maybe it’s an old magma tunnel, or something?” someone suggests. 

Kix shakes his head, uncertain. “No. No, I don’t think so, vod...” He looks behind the expedition team down the passage they’ve already explored, murmuring. “I think the tunnel’s width is too uniform to be natural.”

Unable to confirm any explanation for the time being, the 501st agrees to continue on lest they begin to lose their nerve and folks start to get that ‘eopie in the headlights’ look about them. (Perhaps you, most of all.) First, though, everyone takes one calming, centering breath to negate the surging anxiety they feel. Steady heads and grounded nerves will provide the best protection against the unknown, the unseen, and the unexplained. Your trust in one another must be absolute, here. All should have faith in their brothers, their friends, to rise to the occasion and have their six in times of peril and need. 

There must be five more repetitions of “Piton, rope, color…” before Torrent comes upon a large, inner chamber close to the heart of the mountain. 

Here, soldiers find a few items of interest yet not quite of note. 

Shed antlers are strewn throughout. Many are small. Perhaps a younger buck’s de-antlering at the conclusion of the year’s mating season, or an unlucky yearling who did not see the end of the revolutionary cycle. Some are larger. These are brittle; potentially due to age, deficiency, or lack of preservation against the cold. 

Jesse nabs one set - small, still attached to a skull by the pedicles. There’s a smattering of material with a soft “mossy” appearance peeling from the calcified bone that makes several shinies groan uneasily. You can visualize the disgust under their helmets from the way it exudes in their voice. 

“What are you doing with that…?”

“Collecting something for the vode in Analysis.” the ARC trooper replies matter-of-factly. 

“I-Is that a good idea?”

Jesse shrugs. “Don’t see why not.” If he’s told to return or ditch them later, he will. 

“Where are you gonna carry it? That won’t fit in your pack.” 

Kix is requested for assistance. Once the medic has gotten a series of pictures of how the antlers connect to the skull, Jesse snaps the skeletal remains apart with a few swift motions. “Just the antlers should be enough.” he concludes decidedly. The sickening kra-chik! of each antler coming loose makes one rookie gag. 

Artoo warbles with concern, scuttling to the trooper as fast as he can when they double over. 

Woo-wooh?

“I’m okay, little guy. Eeugh… It just sounds like breaking plastoid.” 

Hooo…

Torrent continues to explore this chamber for a few minutes more. No stone has been left unturned before the company proceeds through a tunnel found in a recession of the southern wall. The behavior of this slightly narrower tunnel differs from those prior - you climb in an endless, upward spiral, altitude alarms chirping all the while. Just before the spiral ends, the sound of high wind can be heard before this passage connects with another open space you predict is just below the summit. 

Everyone finds themselves in one final, upper chamber with a pair of naturally formed “windows” in the mountain rock to explain where the sound comes from. These sizable exposure-points have allowed a significant amount of snow to accumulate within, making it colder than the rest of the cave system previously explored. 

And here, you find proof of what you’ve been looking for at long last. 

Carved into the chamber wall is a series of messages kept safe and sheltered against the relentless gales and freezing of the elements. All of them have been written entirely in Domabesh, curiously; this creates a buzz amongst the Clones with linguistics training as they set to work on transcribing these for the mission reports. 

You feel the palpable high in everyone’s spirits now that there is evidence of life somewhere on this planet. Life that’s been here for a long time! This script has existed for at least a thousand years. Likely more. It may have potentially less prevalence than Aurebesh throughout the galaxy, but it’s not quite so forgotten that making heads or tails of the lettering will be a fruitless task. 

The elation sours before long, however... A soldier by the name of Chatterbox postulates that these messages may very well be ones of woe when Captain Rex asks what the messages say. 

“I’m not positive if it’s an earlier form or off-shoot of Domabesh yet, sir, but… I don’t think we’re going to find anyone here.”

“What makes you say that, Chatter?”

“The messages are all warnings, Captain. This one is a kind of farewell.” 

Chatterbox shares what he’s pieced together of an initial transcript with the company, and hearts grow heavy with unease as he reads. 

We humble, surviving people of Dethellum, leave a short series of accounts so that all this planet may know this is no habitable world. We have sought other planets after the Sky’s Great Shaking dis-anchored our beloved home from its place in the galaxy and flung us out among foreign stars.  For a time our people lived by burrow and cave, but there were too few for our vast number when the Lasting Hibernation bore down on us. We lost many. In desperation we made great scores in the Most Sacred Bow in hopes our stars would show us more favor.  But it was not to be. We leave by star-boat. May the Great Weaving guide us to greener worlds. If you have found our parting message, we implore you do the same. None will be here to bury you.  This world is lost: do not allow Dethellum to take your life along with it. 

While nearly sick with dread, you cannot recall ever hearing of a planet by this name. Nor can anyone, perhaps other than Commander Tano. 

Recognizing something from her lessons at the Jedi Temple, the Togruta asks to borrow Chatter’s device and highlights a selection of words. “Could the ‘Great Shaking’ be the Legacy Run disaster…? That was, er, 7745 by the Coruscant Reckoning Calendar?” Commander Tano’s pause as she reads something is brief, but heavy. “For more than two centuries and thirty years… The Republic and Order assumed this planet was completely destroyed by the Run’s near-collision with another ship. There was so much debris ejected from hyperspace, so many anomalies. But it’s… still here.” Many troopers have questions about the bewilderment and awe in their commander’s voice, but they will have to wait.

“We should keep looking… See what the other inscriptions say.”

Every last one is full of despair. Laments that their most frost-resistance crops could no longer grow. Sorrow that the last “fourtusk” had been slain and eaten. Great grievings that become too distressing to read any longer. Dethellum had become another victim to the Emergences, a name given to those further disasters in the aftermath of the Legacy Run tearing itself to pieces when the ship’s age caught up with it. They had probably become one of many civilizations that were just… wiped out. 

Apart from Dethellum’s accounts of woes, Torrent does find more items left behind by its people that suggest a potential connection to the ancestral heritage of another member of the Order (one that General Skywalker would need to confirm), and acknowledgement of the Force and its wielders. 

Three stone slabs that have been arranged to make a triptych have been found and dug out of the snow. Each sport rudimentary depictions of people with long hair and bright, yellow eyes. Among these, figures in long, hooded clothing stand opposite one another, a series of thin rectangles used to convey crossed blades. 

One blade had been painted blue. The other, red. 

It seems the concept of the Jedi—and a… precursor to the Sith?—was familiar to them. 

“Do you think they found another planet like they hoped? Still live somewhere, out in the galaxy?” Jesse wonders aloud, gingerly tracing the grooves and lines in the stone. 

“Can’t say for certain. But I’m betting there’s a decent chance. Get a few more stills, and then we should be on our way.” Captain Rex advises, looking to the northern pole of this frozen astrological body from one of the mountain’s natural windows. “Storm seems to be growing in strength…” Rounding his shoulders, he symbolically shakes the sense, the worry, of danger creeping on the horizon off of himself. 

Right now he needs to be level-headed; sitting and fretting is something the company doesn’t have time to afford if his instinct is to be believed. The soldiers that are charged with securing the samples in their personal packs should be offered help first. Ahsoka expressed that it would be important that the utmost care should be used to insure any located artifacts made it back to the Resolute in as close to one piece as possible. Something Rex certainly agreed with. 

Once he’s finished with them, Rex moves to check in on you. You’re knelt in the snow, looking for a way to stash something in your bag for the return trip. Torrent’s been advised they’ll need to move fast, so everything that isn’t critical to navigation is best stowed away.

“Can I give you a hand with that?”

“I’d love that,” you answer with a grateful smile. “Packing gets trickier the second time around, somehow.” 

Rex shares a hearty chuckle with you. “That it does. And how are you holding up?”

“Good; just eager to get back to the Resolute.”

The snow gear was doing an excellent job of keeping you warm, but you could really go for something warm to eat or drink right about now. And a thick blanket of some kind to burrow under until Dethellum’s chill had been forgotten. And a hot water soak in your personal quarter’s refresher.

You’d decide on what to do first once you got back to the gunships. Right now, you need to be more focused on not tripping over something while following the way back through the mountain using the rope left behind earlier. Jesse and the other ARC troopers collect the rope as the company makes its way back outside, seeing no sense to leave it behind. 

“What if the Republic plans to make other trips to Dethellum and explore the same mountain we did? Wouldn’t it help them find that chamber near the top?” 

Your confusion is reasonable, in his opinion, but Jesse has his own rationale for undoing the rope and piton system. 

“It would! But having this rope would be a good idea in case of an emergency.” 

Whatever kind of emergency would necessitate the use of this much rope is not something you wish to think about, so you utter a short “Oh, okay…” sort of phrase and turn your focus on helping the company round up the bikes. They had been left not too far from the cave entrance outside, though some of the speeders that had not been equipped with landing skis had managed to drift a little ways off. 

Something that would have a massive domino effect on what was to come when the mountain began to thunder.

A distant crackle and rumble starts from the very peak. A terrible sense of dread comes over the captain—the hair on the back of his neck standing on end—as the sound carries downhill, intensifying. His armor’s early warning system bleats panickedly in his ears. Then whoops. Finally, wails. 

This great noise is not from the storm. It's from something started by the storm. 

And you’re all sitting mynocks down here. 

Barreling down the mountainside is a lethal wall of snow, rock and debris, pressing down on all of Torrent Company. 

But most importantly: you. 

Rex throws open the comm channel and wastes no time; there is precious little of it to make his most crucial set of orders on this mission.  

“Everyone, double-up on the bikes! It’s an avalanche – get out of the path!!” 

Plunging into panic, you throw yourself into the rider’s saddle of the nearest swoop and punch the throttle forward. Running on base instincts, you’re fleeing southeast rather than following the flash-training on natural disasters. Escaping an avalanche means traveling in a direct, sideways route whenever possible if you’re not already caught up in one. 

Fortunately Rex is not far behind on his own speeder. He’s able to catch up with you quickly, signalling for you to follow. 

Unbeknownst to you, Captain Rex is the only one who followed after you in the commotion. 

When disaster strikes, there’s no one there to help you.

Everything happened so fast. 

Whether taken by surprise or dangerously distracted, two shouts of great alarm are made when Rex is suddenly launched forward, thrown from the speeder above the controls. 

He lands a short distance ahead, and some part of his armor makes that sickening KAR-CHIK! on impact. 

“REX!”

Punching the accelerator, your heart yo-yos between your throat and knees as you race for him. The two of you are still inside the avalanche's path, within its outer skirts, so you fervently pray to any galactic deity out there that he might be alive. To the Force itself. 

Crumpled but stirring in the snow, you dig Rex out and lift him into the saddle of your speeder at record speed. Owing to hysterical strength, you escape the snow-slide’s torrential course in the nick of time as you ride ahead in search of shelter. 

Reaching the eastern end of the ‘Sacred Bow’ mountain range, you locate a small cave in the foothills. After disembarking and finding nothing inside, you take the time you didn’t have before to carefully ease Rex off the speeder and keep him upright as you help him inside. With the winds blowing their hardest since your arrival and the fear of a second or even third avalanche, this is going to be your best bet for shelter. 

The pain that comes with such dramatic, repeated exertions of energy begins settling in as you carefully prop the wounded cobalt captain against a part of the wall deeper in. You’ll have to push through it for now. Rex needs you more. 

You hope to coax a few words out of him beyond pained groans. “Rex? Oh Force… Please talk to me. Just let me know you’re not dead, or something.” Momentarily stripped of their gloves, your hands carefully feel up his armor for fracturing or other damage to the plastoid. Panic stings through you when nothing is found on the first pass and Rex remains too still for your liking. “Please, Rex - I don’t know if you’re hurt, or-!”

“Been in… w-worse shape…” he bites out at last. It takes great effort to form every word, he’ll have to be forgiven for the lack of enunciation and the heavy slurring of his voice. “Are… You… okay?”

You’re relieved and stunned (and in pain) all at once. No. No, you’re really not okay, truthfully. Heart become a wild dove, you’re struggling to remain calm in a critical situation where you cannot afford to lose composure. You try to brush it off and insist to him that you need to make sure he is okay before you call Torrent Company for help, but Rex won’t let it go. “Are you okay?” he repeats, speaking with more force this time. 

You’ve read enough holo-novels and mags to recognize what’s happening here: Rex is more concerned about you than himself. If you tell him that you’re fine—or at least in better shape than him—he’ll stop resisting your efforts to look over him. Rex’ll allow himself to drop his vigilance, his worrying and protective nature, and relinquish himself to your care. 

You suck in a shaky breath. “I’m cold, and scared, and worried about the others. But I’m mostly okay... S-somehow.” Until you make contact with the company, there’s no telling how many troopers have been hurt. Or worse. Musculature injuries will be chump change compared to the loss of Rex’s men. 

“Good…” comes the soft, relieved sigh. “Good.”

“We should try to reach the others once I take care of your injuries,” you say. Carefully, you resume patting down his armor for damage, even carefully removing his helmet since you’re sheltered from the wind’s reach. This is the first time his helmet has been removed since boarding the gunships and touching down on Dethellum. A moment that becomes so overwhelming by how much quiet pain you find in that warm, deep tan of his handsome face. 

You incorporate these “tells” into your assessment, repeatedly asking “How badly does it hurt?” as you carefully prod along. 

Thick brows buckle and bunch together when you’ve brushed over developing bruises. A sharp wince as each arm is examined. Whiskey-dark eyes flaring in alarm before you determine the large patch of red staining his thigh armor comes from a punctured tube of GLARE, not a nicked artery. The short, labored breath when you find an injury on his upper back that he couldn’t tell was there. 

Not without you removing the back section of his armor, lifting part of his thermal bodysuit away, and pressing down on it with a glob of bacta and a glue-stat that you’ve pulled from the medkit in your supply-pack. 

“You really don’t feel that?”

“No, I don’t,” Rex admits in another pant, “probably from the adrenaline.” Or from the throw. Or how he landed. Or the cold. There were probably a dozen rational explanations for why he couldn’t. But those mattered less to him than making sure you had enough material to take care of yourself, too. 

Having lost his own pack, likely when he was thrown from the speeder, Rex refuses to take the singular dose of painkiller in your autoinjector. 

“No, cyare… Keep it for yourself. It’s your medicine.” 

“W-what? Why?” 

You’re not on Drongar; this isn’t a rare medicine like bota. Rex needs this now. The muscular pain you feel is growing more unpleasant, but you can wait. Typically his altruistic nature was downright admiral; hell, even attractive. Right now it only creates a surprising amount of guilt. Rex got hurt because of you. 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. I panicked and now you’re hurt, and now I-” You have to make this right. You have to put him at ease, and then find a way to get in touch with the others. There’s so much that has to be done to ease this guilt and give the two of you the best, fighting chance at survival. “I made such a mess…”

When he takes your hand, you know the captain is going to kindly—nobly—try to shoulder the blame instead. 

Rex has a little more than that in mind, however. 

“No, kid… I’m sorry I got you into this mess in the first place. I’m the one who asked you to join the ground crew. The one who made the call not to send you back to the Venator before the storm started getting worse… You shouldn’t be here. I care about you, and I put you in harm’s way.” 

“What are you talking like that for? We’ve been friends a long time; of course I know you care about me.” 

He shakes his head gently. That isn’t what he means.

“If you don’t already, you should know I mean I care about you in another sense…”

Oh no: he didn’t get hurt because of you. Rex got hurt for you. “I-I’m going to spoil the moment by asking if you’re freezing to death on me, talking like this, aren’t I?” Quickly easing him forward, you return the back plating and wrap him in the emergency blanket for good measure. A short dig through your pack finds an extra knitwear cap smooshed down at the bottom. 

It’s pulled over the naturally blond, close-shaven curls of his hair before Rex can get another word in. “S’okay, cyar’ika…” he murmurs comfortingly. A thick-gloved hand reaches just high enough to cup your cold-stung face, his thumb brushing over the apple in your cheek. “You couldn’t possibly spoil anything… And I’m not going anywhere.” Rex promises tenderly. 

Not when he has the General and the Republic to fight for. His brothers. 

You. 

You'll find a way to make it out of this together. He's sure of it. 

It'll just take a little hope that someone is there to answer the emergency transponder once the device has been activated. 

Bundled together under the emergency blanket, you and Rex have never been more grateful, or happy, than you are now to hear so many voices at once when the signal goes through. 

 Rookies and experienced soldiers alike speak at speeds that would put hyperspace to shame. 

“It’sthecaptainonheremergencybeacon! They’rebothalivethanktheForce!” 

Kix laughs apologetically, trying to move further away from the triumphant ruckus, and not for the first time. “Sorry, Captain! Jesse’s having a hell of a time settling them down. We’re just relieved to hear from you. You two were the last we needed to hear from after the snow slide!”

“The last?” Rex asks in worry. “Did we lose anyone?”

“No! I’m relieved to report we didn’t lose anyone, sir - everyone’s alive!” That news is more miraculous than a miracle. (Thank the stars. Thank the Force!) Knowing it’s nothing a long dip in the bacta tanks can’t fix for the brothers caught by the flow kept the medic’s spirits high while they worked with Skywalker’s astromech through the storm. Every available trooper was determined to locate the final two members of the company. And now they knew you were okay. “How’s the kid holding up?”

“I’m in better shape than the captain, Kix,” you reply, adding that it’s great to hear from him. “He’s injured, and shaking more than a nervous tooka; this sweet di’kut insisted on sharing a few parts of his armor to keep me warm. Scared me half to death because I thought it was paradoxical undressing at first.”

“How injured?”

An uneasy chuckle bubbles up out of you. “Can’t say for certain. I took care of what I could with what I have.” Better than nothing. You’re training to be a nav officer, not a medic. Basic and portions of emergency aid is all you’d be capable of without Kix on the comlink to walk you through a far more dire situation. “Should I check again for something I may have missed?”

Kix admires your willingness, but encourages you to holster it for the time being. “Wait on that for now. Focus on keeping sheltered, okay? Adjust the warming function so we have a better chance of finding you two nice and toasty.” He waits patiently for confirmation the advanced thermo-regulator sensors are sending more power to the heat-coils carefully strung through the plastoid armor split between the two of you. “Really couldn’t convince him to take turns?”

“He told me “Not a chance, cyar’ika”... So I compromised.”

It’s not difficult to imagine the smiles from his brothers when you hear Jesse join Kix on the comm. 

“How sweet of you, captain!”

“Jesse…”

Ignoring the warning, the ARC trooper assures you they’ll find you before long. “We’ll get to you as fast as we can, kid. Just hang tight. Keep your beacon on.” 

“Safely. Don’t forget safely, please.”

“Heh. You got it, ma’am. Jesse and Kix out.” 

Now came the impatient agony of settling in to wait for rescue. Not knowing how long it would be before seeing the faces of friends and brothers. Or how long you would need to keep each other calm, warm, and safe. But at least it could start with setting aside the transponder and moving closer together. Once adjusted, you and Rex each pull your ends of the first aid blanket tighter around yourselves. Locking in whatever warmth you can now will nudge the odds in your favor. 

You’ll be able to wait out until nightfall, if you have to. 

Rex feels there’s more he has to tell you before there’s any planning for that, first. More he should’ve said when you had cleaned and bandaged up his final injuries of blood earlier. Speaking in a sorrowful tone that threatens to cleave your heart in two, he again apologizes for getting you into this mess. 

“I’m so sorry it all happened like this, ner burc’ya…” He never meant for you to come in harm’s way like this. Never. Never in a million lightyears. Nor did he want to confess to you like this. Confessing something so important—so heartfelt and personal—in a horrible or dangerous situation was a scenario he had always hoped to avoid. “On today of all days, no less.”

“I don’t follow,” you confess softly. “What’s so special about today, Rex?”

“It’s Life Day.” 

You stifle a gasp of surprise. Having been so preoccupied with your work aboard the Resolute and the training to become a proper navigational officer, you had lost track of the holidays and didn’t even notice. It takes a little clever reflection to add truthful sentiment to your apologetic explanation when Rex, curious, asks why. 

“When every day I get to spend with you feels like Life Day, it’s hard to notice when the real deal comes around, Rex.”

With or without his brothers being included, it’s easy to lose track of time in his company. Hard to miss the way he makes you feel. Or ignore how much you care for him. About him. The way he helped you out of a few back scrapes when the Venator was under Separatist attack thrice in one standard week had just been the beginning. Now, you… 

You love him, undeniably. 

It’s for his brains, his brawn, and even his beauty, too. It’s for the Triple-B-Threat and so many other, innumerable reasons. Ones you would prefer not to share in such harsh conditions. 

In the light of your own confession, Rex has another he feels would be appropriate to share. 

“Well in that case… I got you a gift. I’d like to give it to you when we make it back.” When you ask if he really did, Rex answers with an unbelievably tender nod. “Can I tell you what it is, cyare?”

It may be a while before Jesse, Kix, and the others in Torrent find your beacon; trying to keep one another talking in the meantime would be the smartest idea. Not just for morale, but to ensure the other was fairly cognizant. 

So you agree. “Mhm.”

“It’s a book. Chatterbox got into book-binding recently… Asked him if he wouldn’t mind helping me make something special for you.” 

“Awh, Rex… You made me a book?” 

His head bobs beside you, the movement small. “Finished it last night. Haven’t wrapped it yet.” 

Putting together a hand-made book just for you is such a thoughtful gesture that you could practically swoon. “Kark the wrapping paper - I’d love it even if you gave it to me in a pillowcase!” you declare. You can feel Rex starting to chuckle before he quickly regrets it, spurring a new swell of pain. 

“Oh no,” he says with a decided shake of his head, “you don’t want one of our pillowcases… Deserve far better than that. More than a book, even.”

“Rex-”

“Mesh’la… You deserve the whole galaxy. And someone who has the power to give it to you.”

This is no time for humility. You panicked, and your friend put his damn life on the line to keep you safe. Not because you’re one of his brothers. Or because you’re part of the company today. But because he loves you. 

“I don’t want the whole galaxy, Rex.” Pulling him closer, cold-trembling lips crown his forehead with a row of kisses before finally locking his lips with his own. “I’d rather have you.” Such a tender declaration would ordinarily embolden the injured man now in your arms, but collective pains and freezing temperatures keep each of you from doing something a little more reckless. Maybe even sensual and passionate. 

So he finally agrees to take the painkiller when you offer it again from your medkit. The combination of the puh-chunk! and hissed release has never sounded so good. Immediate relief ebbs over him when the pharmaceutical enters his system, drawing a gentle sigh out as the tension fades away. 

“Practically a natural.” Maybe you should think about helping Kix, if you ever grow tired of being a nav officer. 

You rebuke him with a gentle laugh. “Hush. It’s so simple a B1 could do it.” That may be giving them too much credit. It makes Rex smile, at least. 

A welcome disturbance to the comfortable quiet fallen over you, the emergency beacon begins to ping in a steady rhythm. Someone has a lock on the signal and opened the one-way channel to communicate with you. 

“Captain Rex, this is General Skywalker. We have a lock on your beacon and we’re approaching you now. Heard that you had a little more excitement than the others from Artoo. How’s our nav officer doing; is she okay?” 

Hah. Figures there’d be a few details lost or omitted in just a few rounds of Holo-call. 

Spirits high, Rex smiles as he picks up the transponder, “Good to hear your voice, General. It’s a helluva Life Day miracle that she’s largely unharmed! I took the worst of it; but I should live to fight another day.”

“It’s a Life Day miracle that you’re both still with us, Captain. We’ll have you picked up and taken back to the Resolute in no time.” the Jedi promises. “Skywalker out.”

It was hard to argue with that. A shame you’d be leaving before determining whether or not Dethellum possessed any sort of atmospheric light phenomenon like many other polar worlds, but…

What better Life Day gift could there be than to make it out alive of a perilous set of circumstances with the people you loved and cared for most?

You may not believe me, but this is the abridged version of LoLD! I'm an over-explainer + writer by nature, I'm afraid... But I hope you all enjoyed this fic! A huge thank you to Kim for making a request and becoming a part of my 200 follower milestone celebration with everyone's favorite cobalt captain. 🩷

Taglist: @callsign-denmark @dukeoftheblackstar @dystopicjumpsuit @dreamie411 @msmeredithrose + @returnofthepineapple @lonely-day3636

[FFF Masterlist] [TCW Masterlist] [Taglist] [Requests: CLOSED]

[lovemyromance]

‼️ Warning: CANON TEXT AHEAD! ‼️

Elriels don't need to "force" this narrative of Elain being friends with N+C just because we want her to have ties to Azriel and a spy arc - that is already happening. It is in the canon text. that's on SJM, not Elriels

ACOWAR: There was a sparkle in Elain's eyes and she smiled making bread with them.

ACOFAS: Elain continues to spend time baking with N+C , buys them solstice presents

ACOSF: SJM BLATANTLY SAYS "as if she'd been taking lessons in stealth either from Azriel or the two half-wraiths she called friends" & says Elain had found joy and friends (In N+C specifically) in Velaris

They are friends. Just because we don't have Elain's POV doesn't change that fact. Just because Rhys pays them to take care of his household doesn't change that fact.

If they're not friends because Rhys pays them, then Gwyn isn't Nesta's friend because as HL he also provides Gwyn a place to live in the library, free of charge. Doesn't that sound absurd??

Next, Azriel & Elain are attracted to each other. They get aroused by touching each other. They want each other, badly. Again - this is not something Elriels made up. This is in canon text. There is no foreshadowing involved - it is flat out written on the pages

Azriel's bonus chapter:

You can say it's just lust. You can say he's toxic and an incel. It still doesn't change the fact that they want each other, and SJM wrote that down on the page.

Azriel is protective of Elain. He goes to rescue her himself, does not wait for anyone else to volunteer first. His shadows may vanish around her when he is comfortable and happy, but when he feels defensive of Elain, his shadows swarm him. Why tf would his shadows go crazy in her defense if they hated Elain?

ACOWAR: He is the first to notice Elain is missing. He is the first to volunteer to rescue her.

ACOSF: Azriel is visibly affected when he hears Elain might be hurt by Nesta's words. His shadows swarm him, and prepare to strike when Elain gets insulted by Nesta.

There are so many more Elriel moments that are explicitly written in the text that I could point to. So, so many because their relationship has been slowly being built up in the background for multiple books now. Why are we ignoring all their development? Why are we digging into absurd excuses to discredit the words SJM has written?

This is what the story has been setup for. If you don't like it, read something else I guess??

[physalian]

How to Make Clean Romance Entertaining

@bananasugarwarrior ask and you shall receive

As an ace/arospec, I approach writing romance very differently than many authors and this is kind of my wish-fulfillment list more than anything.

Biggest detractor of implying anything in scenes you didn’t write: You don’t have those scenes to explore character development. I touched on this in What No One Tells You About Writing #6 and the problem I ran into a few times when writing ENNS and other works is that if you fade to black, you can’t continue important conversation or an exploration of boundaries, or fluffy new emotions, if they’d otherwise be in those missing scenes. Sex scenes are, unfortunately, prime real estate for some rich character development.

So you have to work all that rich character development around it. It’s up to you where you want to draw the line of “use your imagination” but everything up to the missing smut, and after, remains more prime real estate. You have loads of other options to explore clean intimacy and some I borrowed from this list that I reblogged about ways to show non-sexual intimacy between characters.

There’s more to a relationship to explore between your characters than just how good each other is in the bedroom. Here’s a few suggestions:

Tragic Backstory stuff and emotional boundaries

One teaching the other a niche or important skill to succeed/survive

A common physical threat, like monetary problems, job insecurity, sickness, or an actual challenge/quest/adventure/mission

A common emotional threat, like a lack of communication, or exercising an anxiety or phobia, or issues over speaking their minds

A common goal: Marriage, children, a new car or home, competing for joint acceptance into a team/group/club/prize competition

There’s also plenty for your love interests to think about their significant others aside from how sexy they are and how badly they want to get in their pants.

Introvert A can love how much B is an extrovert, or vice versa

A loves that B is good with animals, or children, the elderly, etc

A can love B’s skill and passion for their hobbies or a movement they believe in, or their stances on morality and the actions they take to back it up

A can love B’s skill as a teacher, their patience, kindness, and understanding

A can love B’s relationships with their friends and family, their maturity (or lack thereof), their work ethic

A can love B’s quirks and tics, like how they organize things or if they sing in the shower or how they dance when they’re listening to headphones

Point being:

And take this with a grain of biased salt because I’m ace and think sex is superfluous anyway: If you can’t write your characters in love with each other without sex, I won’t believe they’re in love with sex. Fiction, for me, that takes the narrative shortcut of “these two are the main couple of course they’re going to get together, I don’t have to do any work on writing why they’re in love you just came here for sex” annoy me, and quite a lot of other people, too, if the amount of gay ships that ignore the canon hetero couple are anything to go by.

The arc of their relationship doesn’t have to culminate in sex. Their arc should be specific to what these two characters want to achieve out of a romantic relationship. For a lot of people, that’s sex, but for others, maybe it’s just someone to cuddle on the couch with and watch movies, or someone they can finally trust and let in and be emotionally vulnerable with. Someone they can explore the town with, or travel, or take to dinner. Someone who doesn’t belittle them or laugh at them or disregard their interests.

Substitute relationship climaxes other than sex:

A finally trusts B with a secret they’ve been hiding for fear of ridicule, and B accepts them wholeheartedly (not Liar Revealed)

A and B finally perfect some routine they’ve been slaving over for months (like a dance or if they’re combat partners, a difficult maneuver)

A has been in love, but in doubt, and finally understands that B is The One when B is the only one to show up for A’s big speech/recital/presentation/gallery that no one else cares about

A has never let themselves be in love and it’s something wholly unspectacular that completely bowls them over with an epiphany

A is touch-averse and their biggest leap into physical intimacy is a huge hug, and B can’t be prouder of them

A and B narrowly survive some dangerous situation and have a serious realignment of priorities and newfound mad respect for each other

Actually, circling back to the whole “gay ships that ignore the canon hetero couple” thing:

This has been said before but if you’re looking for how to write a romantic relationship without sex, look no further than the male leads of many mainstream pieces of pop culture. Here, the presumption of romance isn’t built in, thus the writer has to actually put in effort to make these two characters like and respect each other, and give them things to talk about that isn’t just flirting. That’s what makes them feel more believable than the main man’s relationship with the cardboard lady lead.

[lost-in-frog-land]

Angel and Spike are both equally bad for Buffy and arguing in circles about who's right for her misses the point entirely.

The thing about BTVS is that it's fundamentally a tragedy. it's about how Buffy can never really escape her obligation to the world and her destiny as the slayer, everything she has either gets caught up in the slaying or is destroyed by it, and in my mind Angel and Spike (and Riley as well but I don't see these arguments about him so much) are both supposed to highlight that.

Buffy can't have anything normal, no matter how much she wants it, her life revolves around being the slayer, and therefore so do her relationships. Her two longest standing romantic relationships are with vampires who, when you actually look at it, both treat her incredibly badly. But in her mind this is just how it is. She's the slayer, and she can't do anything about that, and it ruins her life! Neither of them are actually good or healthy for her but Buffy's life is fundamentally not good for her. It's not the life she wanted to live, so she gravitates towards people who understand, even if they're bad for her, because it's easier than trying to be this way around "normal" people. That's why she goes back to Angel after everything he did, and why she ends up with Spike. The thing with Spike is also a product of her hopelessness and self-destructive behaviour in season 6.

Buffy genuinely doesn't believe she deserves better, and every time she's tried to look for something better, her life as the slayer has ruined or destroyed it, so this is what she gets instead. And she does deserve better than either of them, but she also deserved to get to be a normal teenager and enjoy her life, and she didn't deserve to die twice before she could legally drink, or to have her life wrecked because she wasn't allowed to spend her young adulthood learning to be a person. Everything about her circumstances are tragic and fucked up and her relationships with Angel and Spike are no different. They are not supposed to be healhty or good for her, and to pretend they are removes a lot of interesting narrative points from Buffy's story.

She says it herself early season 1

[epitaph-echoes]

I wanted to go on a bit of a ramble about Misa so like

I've been seeing this sentiment recently about people expressing frustration over people ignoring Misa's wrongdoings and painting her as an innocent angel who never did any wrong. And you are all correct to point out the fact that yes, she very much DID do things wrong. The sentiment that she is pure and innocent is very much factually incorrect. She DID stalk Light and coerce her into dating him. She killed people. I just wanted to throw in my two cents on her real quick.

BUT I also want to point out that I kind of see people's love for her as almost a rebellion against the early days of the fandom. As a shonen series, a lot of the content and discussions around it were being had by anime dudebros. To add on, we KNOW how bad Ohba is about writing women. How many sexist undertones there are in all of his work. He himself has admitted with no shame that he cannot write women. (Which as a professional author should make you feel shame tbh but I digress)

When I was first getting into the fandom, Misa was pretty widely disliked as a character. The people that did like her were very much sexualizing her. The sentiment was that she was a dumb blonde bimbo unworthy amongst the genius of Light and L. There was SO much bashing of her. That came from fans that weren't the typical dudebro as well. This was peak shaming girly "shallow" girls era. The not like other girls era. I think this definitely played a role in at least some fans, now that the fandom is more chill, latching onto her as she was definitely treated pretty badly and people wanted to avenge her. Or people wised up more and thought more critically about her as a character. I think over time, that protectiveness over her, along with the somewhat humorous nature of it, morphed into the "uwu she did nothing wrong" narrative.

Additionally, I kinda have some thoughts on her as a character. I am not excusing her bad actions, maybe moreso rambling about my understanding of them.

She witnessed her family being murdered. This is stated to have happened a year before the series starts, so she was like? 16? 17? Understandably a very traumatic experience. She had to see the killer being allowed to walk free, her word, her testimony, not mattering. The man who took everything from her was allowed to walk with no repercussion while she had to live with that trauma. When Kira (aka Light) killed that man, avenged her family, it is understandable that she would form this odd parasocial relationship with him. She was mentally unstable enough to start with, griefstruck and seeing Kira as the one who helped her gain some faith in the world again.

To add onto that, she was also stalked by an obsessed fan, who after being rejected, was going to kill her. She was only saved by the sacrifice of Gelus, thus gaining the death note herself.

I see her as not an innocent angel who did nothing wrong, but as a deeply damaged young woman who had no agency in the world before this. Being hurt by multiple men, living in Japanese society which we know isn't very supportive of women in general. She finally gained some power, a way to protect herself in this world. And she saw the person, who helped her at her darkest, unbeknownst to himself, as her saviour.

Yes, she was absolutely not in the right for starting to kill people, yes she was absolutely wrong for stalking Light and forcing him to date her. I just wanted to ramble about her a little bit and give my silly little thoughts on her. I love her as a character, I can see WHY she is why she is. And it is absolutely okay to dislike her for those things! It is absolutely okay to criticize her actions because they are not okay. And yes I also believe her character missed a lot of the depth some of the other characters had simply because she was written by a misogynistic author. When I say she deserves better, I mean that she deserved MUCH better writing. But also Light is NOT innocent in their relationship either. I hope we can all still agree on that.