#especially in terms of how he's written and his motivations/how he sort of grows and evolves over both ME2 and ME3

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF PRIORITY: TUCHANKA (PART 2)

Featuring: Cmdr. Sophie Shepard, Lt. James Vega, EDI, Urdnot Wrex, and Dr. Mordin Solus With: Urdnot Bakara And a Special Guest Appearance by: Kalros, Mother of All Thresher Maws I MADE A MISTAKE! I made a mistake... big picture made of little pictures- too many variables. Can't hide behind statistics... can't ignore new data- my responsibility. Need to go- running out of time. Not your work, not your cure- not your decision. Had to be me- someone else might have gotten it wrong... Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition (2021)

[lilacxquartz]

I’m enjoying TLSN so far! I am wondering what type of role Shoko will have in this fic because I feel like she doesn’t get a lot of credit sometimes :< I have been following you since BTL so I have to wonder how you will write Gojo & Geto too, bc I know you can write some really scary interpretations of characters haha.

oh hey long-term reader!! 🫶 this will be a very long response because i like to ramble and because character development is just a fun deep dive.

so let’s get into it.

firstly, it’s important to be reminded that this is pre-canon but it’s also canon divergent (suguru hasn’t gone a certain direction)—and everyone is aged 22-23 in this story which is a time of young adult discovery, understanding how you are, how the world is and finding your way. this can go either way for people, so we’re playing around with those sorts of concepts here.

i’ve written shoko in to be a genuinely good friend because i think she is; she looks out for those she cares about in this fic, makes them feel included, can talk about anything and her place is the main hangout because she’s the binding glue friend. she absolutely does not get neglected in this story. ♡

satoru is initially written for how he simply is: generous, caring, outgoing, laidback and a bit of an ass sometimes, but he’s still young so he has room to learn. former class clown turned teacher type beat.

so when i’m writing darker character concepts such as yandere, i try to take the good and turn it into the sinister in a careful way, not necessarily bad but it will depend on the character. we already know that satoru had a serious childhood and that’s why he acts immature, but what if he was also just a bit entitled? what if he felt certain actions and feelings were owed, while keeping up the good side? he wouldn’t show it initially, but it would build up until he does something he regrets.

suguru on the other hand was a bit more of a difficult write. i had to essentially partially drop how he was when he went rogue, while keeping some of the old personality to write into young adulthood. he’s got a bit of a quieter, elusive, reserved but also deeply caring personality as a result.

this can initially be misinterpreted as uncaring as rude, especially with how he will process his own feelings during the fic but he always picks up on the small details when the reader talks, pays attention to her body language and in general slowly grows infatuated while handling things like jealousy, a slowly growing disdain towards regular civilians (mentioned during the bully talks in chapter 2) and actually allowing himself to grow close to a person.

i think both characters are both written in equally frightening ways imo. satoru’s intentions are harder to read into because he gives himself a caring/carefree mask which makes it all that much more sinister, whereas suguru who is a harder read will be confusing the entire road until he isn’t.

as such, we are left with a perfectly toxic insight into playing with the reader and the low self esteem she’s trying to cover up while trying to fit in, because she has no idea what real friendships are supposed to look like, let alone relationships because her own parents’ relationship is also strained.

so while this isn’t quite as horrific as BTL if you’re coming from that background, it still isn’t going to be pretty, the feelings have a motive, the actions have a cause, but nothing about this has good intentions from the start.

which i think personally, makes those kind interactions from the earlier chapters all the more horrific.

but yeah, thanks for asking! hope this sheds some light on your question!

[animeyanderelover]

Also tell me if they need to be more specific but anyone you want from the naruto verse with a s/o with adhd

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a darling with ADHD. I am no expert so please forgive me if something is not accurate in here.

Tw: Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, possessiveness, obsessiveness, delusions, paranoia, stalking, overprotective behavior, manipulation, threatening, abduction, s/o with ADHD

Darling with ADHD

Hashirama Senju

🌳I feel like if there hasn't been already a diagnosis for ADHD, Hashirama might need a bit until he has discovered what is wrong with his darling. It's not that uncommon for a person to be very distracted and unmotivated or to be really hyperactive and energetic or even a mix of both, depending on which symptoms are strongest. Hashirama adores his darling either way and so it's either up to Mito or Tobirama to realize that something might not be completely right. The Hokage has probably stumbled across the term ADHD once since he is in general a really interested man willing to learn new things to help the village. His knowledge doesn't run professionally deep but the moment he knows that his s/o has ADHD, he memorizes as much as he can since he wants to be able to help.

🌳​He grows a tad bit more protective once he has enough knowledge and is fiercely defeating you against anyone who might give you a wry look, especially against the eldest of his clan. His devotion doesn't change a bit and now that he knows that you aren't at fault for the sometimes questionable behavior, he is keen on shielding you from possible rude comments and mean jokes. People with disorders shouldn't be put down and treated like outsiders and I feel like once he gets fully invested because of you into this topic, he'll enliven the development in such areas in his village. Hashirama is also rather careful to not say anything that might sound wrong which is sweet even if considering that he's only praising you. Pesters your doctor how he can help you constantly.

🌳​You're inattentive and can't concentrate for a longer time? That sounds scarily familiar for Tobirama since Hashirama tends to be distracted and lazy here and there himself. But that is no problem for the head of the Senju clan, he'll find a solution. Obviously his darling would have troubles being a good ninja under such conditions, Hashirama will help them with finding something fitting though. If they're unmotivated to finish a task he tries to motivate them by promising them to do something they want to do or he does it together with them. He entrusts Mito with you quite often since she's patient and will remind you of things you might forget. He'd rather spare you from the stricter treatment of Tobirama. In a way it helps Hashirama a bit as well since he learns to be more organized.

🌳​If his darling shows more symptoms for the hyperactive-impulsive type, Tobirama once again gets a bad headache. Instead of one very active person, there are suddenly two though s/o might even beat Hashirama. He adores his darling in either case but also feels slightly more worried in such a scenario. Due to your impulsive and restless nature, you might end up running around and climbing up things which could end in an accident so he asks once again for Mito or Tobirama to watch over you a bit when he can't because of work. Another thing he does is asking everyone to not say anything rude to you when you're talking with them and end up shouting or interrupting them a lot which comes over as impolite. He's quite concerned about hurtful words others might throw in your direction.

Tsunade Senju

🐌​She's called one of the best medics known to the ninja world for a reason, you know? I feel like even if her darling wouldn't have been diagnosed yet with ADHD, Tsunade would figure it out very soon. She's familiar with physical wounds much as she is with any sort of disorder and mental illness. Granted, she is really protective which stirs from her trauma of losing someone precious to her again. But she is never over-anaylzing something since she is a professional with plenty of experience. Your behavior and the symptoms that are giving it away won't be invisible for her eyes and she will run everything with you to confirm her suspicion. Honestly though, she will want to be involved in either case since the lady is confident that she can help with all her knowledge.

🐌​If there should be someone who is your doctor and helps you in regards of this problem, she'll just take over their place with the snap of her finger, she's the Fifth Hokage after all! If there shouldn't be that just means she's your personal doctor from the very start. She's attentive, patient and open for all sort of questions from you in regards of ADHD. It's important for her to insure you that she still loves you though, she'll help you through everything. She's mainly in charge but if work keeps her occupied, she'll let Shizune or Sakura take over. Her students are the only people she fully trusts with your therapy, with others she's a bit wary. All of her patience and sweetness aside though, Tsuna is very determined to pull through with her therapy because this is still about your health and life.

🐌​Let's assume you're the forgetful and unfocused type. This woman makes sure to arrange a whole schedule for you to remind you of things you are supposed to do. She's not one to overload you with tasks, there are only a few things that she wants you to remember and finish until the end of the day. She won't be exactly disappointed if you aren't able to do it, though you have either her or one of her two students as your motivator throughout the day. If you do it though, she's always rewarding you with something small and sweet. Throughout the day you always have small sessions where you have to focus on something to train your ability to stay a bit longer intent. Tsunade, as sweet as she is with you, can be quite short-tempered if someone says something wrong about you due to your disorder.

🐌​I'd say that she definitely keeps the sharper eye on you if you fall more into the symptoms of being hyperactive and impulsive. Being impulsive and unable to stand still means that you're more likely to act rash and hurt yourself in the process. I mean, she'll be able to heal such wounds since she's already made sure that you won't be a ninja, but she can be a bit of a mother hen from time to time. Rather brash and defensive since she knows very well that some people will target you for your inability to stay quiet and motionless since you instead can't sit still and blurt some things just out. The therapy doesn't only include you of course, your family and friends will be forced to join so everyone learns how to behave properly. She believes that with the right therapy, her s/o will be able to live normally.

Sasori

🦂​He's quite informed about medical ninjutsu as well and about the human body, but I'd say his limit is there. He's an expert in regards of poison and how to create human puppets so the term ADHD is new for him and that turns into a problem if you don't know yourself that you have ADHD. Sasori isn't violent but he can be quite mean with the words he chooses which means that if you annoy him, and we know that this man has not the best patience, he might end up putting you down. He still has an exceptional intelligence so at one point he will start to suspect that there is something more behind it and since he is a perfectionist he won't stop researching until he has found out what is wrong with his little darling. He prides himself after all in knowing everything about his doll and to keep them pretty.

🦂​He is maybe just a slightest bit annoyed with your behavior, tries to keep his tongue tied down though since you don't do this on purpose. Credits to him though since he sincerely attempts to expand his level of patience now because he has to. It isn't only your behavior, it's also the fact that this isn't something he can fix as easily as he could some other things and that bothers him maybe the most. His level of skill isn't enough to help in here which wounds his pride. He isn't a therapist so he can't help you in other ways quite either. Sasori does much though since his darling is his possession and he sees it as his job to take care of them. He doesn't want to alter your entire personality since that makes you so interesting, just enough so he doesn't have to suffer from permanent frustration.

🦂​He finds your lack of motivation and interest in his art insulting even if he knows why you are like this. His puppets are his pride though and he finds himself being fond of the thought of explaining the skills of each puppet to you and maybe even teaching you how to create them. He hides it well but he kinda wants the ego boost of having you being all amazed with his skill. Initially he wanted to force you to focus better, gave that up after a while though since it was the closest thing to giving him as a living puppet a headache so he does what he isn't good in: trying to be patient. It's tiring but his attempt alone proves that you mean something to him even if you're slow and constantly forget things of which he has to remind you all the time. Sasori complains quite often about it, somehow he has to let some steam off.

🦂​If you are maybe more energetic and hyperactive there is a chance for an increased interest in his art and craftmanship which is a easy way to have him warm up and engage in a good conversation. He hates being interrupted whilst talking or working and here comes the next problem. His darling constantly rambles about things that come randomly to mind and are always moving to the point where he considered tying them up or injecting them with something to help them calm down and relax, he is good in creating poison and medicine after all. It's quite risky to have someone as impulsive running around in his workshop filled with weapons, poison, puppets and bodies. A scratch could literally be lethal and on top of that he'll throw hands if his perfect doll does as much as cut themselves.

Kakashi Hatake

📖​He reads lots of books, just not the kind of book that would help him when he is faced with his darling and their disorder. He knows a ton of jutsu but ADHD is something new for him and when he realizes that he knows little about it, he feels sort of ashamed and wounded in his pride as well. Kakashi wants to be able to protect his s/o and take care of them yet he lacks the needed knowledge about ADHD at first which he must have in order to treat you the right way. What the jonin does notice even without the complete knowledge are the couple of symptoms and the special behavior you show which tends to make you stand out so even if he won't be able to instantly assume specifically what it is, he at least has a hunch that something is going on with you.

📖​He's quite determined to know what this disorder is about though so days and nights are spent reading books, stalking you and your sessions with your doctor and asking either Sakura or Tsunade about more details. Kakashi has a great memory so he knows about anything he has to know after a while, though the actual handling is something entirely different. Kakashi has the advantage that he is a chill dude though who has a good amount of patience for you, he has his worst experiences with loud or unmotivated kids. There is no denial that he grows significantly more protective over s/o after he knows how some symptoms could lead them to do something that might end in an accident or how some people might look at them the wrong way. Kakashi tolerates none of it.

📖​Being unmotivated isn't the biggest problem. Kakashi finds it easier to convince you into staying inside his house where he can just relax with you which satisfies him discreetly. As long as his darling doesn't neglect to take care of their health he doesn't complain as much about it, though since he doesn't do the chore as daily as some others and since his darling loses motivation and interest after a while, the house looks accordingly messy. Both parties seem to be able to live with it though. He can handle just as much the fact that his darling constantly forgets things. It all results in him never really leaving the room you're in though out of the slight fear that your ignorant and inattentive behavior might result in something bad. Pakkun and the other dogs are usually there to remind you of things you have to do.

📖​With the more hyperactive type of ADHD comes a little bit more exhaustion from Kakashi's side since he sometimes just wants to relax with you, he's used to it due to a blond student of his though. Kakashi is more careful in here though since you always run back and forth and find yourself unable to stand still, leading to scenarios where your impulsive nature ends in you attempting to do something that isn't safe. Kakashi has his hands full with you and is quite frankly worried that the therapy still won't stop you from doing something really stupid which would be Kakashi's cue to abduct you. He even turns the whole place as safe as he can so you don't even get a real chance to attempt anything. Normally not the very energetic and boisterous person, your personality is quite the contrast.

Deidara

💥​Deidara is a worshipper that lacks the sharp eye and medical knowledge that Sasori has so chances are that he will never notice it on his own if his darling doesn’t tell him about it. If they aren’t aware of it either then both parties will just live an oblivious life together, forced or not. The man glorifies his darling and their entire personality, everything is adorable and cute and he remains blind to the flaws since he either doesn’t see them at first or calls them perfect in the end as well. So even if his s/o would sit down with him and explain to him what ADHD exactly is and that they’re diagnosed with it, he wouldn’t see it as a problem or probably just not take it serious. As long as it doesn’t threaten their health seriously and affect them, he doesn’t overreact. He just brushed it off.

💥What’re you talking about? You are perfect in his eyes and that will never change. He doesn’t even want to give you a therapy if you want to continue one. It’s sort of hard for him as an Akatsuki member to find a doctor and to top it, he is against the idea of changing you since he adores you and your traits. It isn’t achieved with much begging or an accident that does hurt you because you couldn’t control your behavior properly that he might consider it. Even then his delusions remain an obstacle since Deidara views himself as your knight in shining armor. As your lover and partner he should protect you and take care of you and everyone who says something against you gets blown up. He doesn’t let things stay with a simple warning like Sasori. You are the finest art in his eyes.

💥He loves his darling so much so even if they’re forgetful, unmotivated and can’t focus properly, he doesn’t mind that much. Sure, he gets sort of pouty and grumpy when his s/o gets distracted whilst he shows them his art but it’s relatively easy to soothe him and he is quick to cool down on his own before he smothers his s/o once again in affection. He is incredibly pushy though and has too much enthusiasm and motivation so he drags his s/o along or does activities he likes together with them, whether they want too or not. Never stops annoying them if they can’t finish the task either. Admittedly, he tries to cheer them on but his inability to realize when enough is enough turns it all quickly annoying. He strikes me as a spontaneous person so there isn’t such a thing as remembering certain things since he comes up with most stuff on the spot.

💥The chemistry with the hyperactive and boisterous type is honestly just perfect though. He is a sucker for their energy which hypes him up even more in return. He does a lot with his darling because of their energy which is infectious. Everyday he has is spend outside and watching fireworks. He doesn’t even really realize or mind the fact that his darling interrupts him or sometimes accidentally shouts at him which might actually be good if s/o feels scared or insecure because of their impulsive behavior. Careful how much you tell him though. Not only will he drown you in his affection, he’ll also bombard a house or two if he has to. Maybe it is because he can be so incredibly alike to his darling that he doesn’t mind at all. The only times he actually stops his darling from doing something is when even he considers it too risky.

[seraphdarlimg]

wish I were (pt2)

 harry acts like everything is good and dandy but reader sees Heather wearing the sweater

part 1 here

‘heather’ by conan gray WARNINGS - ANGST WORD COUNT - 1,892

A/N: hehe because it was december 3rd, I just had to get this chapter done to post even if it might be a little late but here ya go 

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      My guitar rested on my thigh as i brought my head down to lay on the fret, staring at the blank piece of lined paper in front of me. I sighed, turning my head away and just bathed in the silence of the separate room from the main studio. The weight on my chest might of suggested the frustration out of my creative block, unable to produce words or lyrics for the past weeks. Or that I was progressively losing the will to even pick up an instrument, as strumming the strings took a lot of energy for me to do. 

The oversized hoodie I brought kept me warm, but i knew that wasn't satisfying enough. However the idea of wearing one of his hoodies I've place in a closed box in the corner of my apartment hurt too much and that now I'm back in the studio after weeks of trying to avoid coming here at all costs. After the New Year's party, I've done nothing but wallow up in my apartment alone, trying to come up with songs as quickly as possible just so I could get this project done and over with. That proved to be difficult however, especially with Harry trying to call on a normal basis.

  "Helllooo bubs, why haven't you been showing up at the studio eh?" "You said at the beginning of this project that I could work at home whenever I want. I'm just taking you up on that offer." "Of course, you'd remember me sayin' that. How've you been love, haven't seen you in a while though." "Fine, just been doing my job." "Well yeah, can't write all these lovely songs without your talent, can I? You gonna come in tomorrow then?" 

I hesitated for a second, biting my tongue when I felt my eyes pool up again. "I'll just send a pdf of lyrics to you Harry." "O-oh. Well that would conventionally work... yes but you have to come in tomorrow though." "Why? Just text me what you like and don't like about the verses and I'll fix them." "Bubs you know how I feel about in person collaboration. Plus the deadlines are coming up and it'll be easier and faster to have you in the studio." "Okay." He hesitates this time and I could see his brows furrowed together as well as having a hand on his hip. Most likely wearing lose sweats and the knitted cardigan he's been falling in love with over the months. His hair a bit longer than it was last time I saw him and his pink lips quirked to the side in thought. Maybe the bags under his eyes are gone, has been looking more happier lately. More happier than I could of made him to be over the months. "Are you okay?" "I have to go Harry, I'll see you tomorrow." "Oh see yo-"

      He was the first one to greet me when I arrived, and I wanted nothing more than to burst out sobbing when I see his smile. It took everything not to do so, giving him a tight lip smile and quick side hug before sitting down farthest away from him. For the first hour and a half of discussion, I didn't say much and zoned off a lot, tuning in and out of the conversation Harry leaded about a song he had written recently. I felt his glances on me when I turned away, probably sensing my unwillingness to comment so he was considerate enough to not put me under the spotlight in the discussion. In the middle of it, Harry's phone started ringing and he didn't waste a second to excuse himself to answer it. "Hello? Oh hey darling, you almost here?" I froze when he grows a cheesy smile on his face as he walks further to the other side of the studio before telling us to continue without him. I took a deep breathe, not mentally prepared to be in the same room as her. Has she always been coming to the studio or did I just choose to worse day to finally come in? I try to focus doodling in my little notebook, but it grew harder and harder to focus on anything else but the way he crosses his arms and laughs while on the phone with her. From the corner of my eye, it was definite he's completely captivated just hearing her voice and I could just picture the angelic tone of it. I didn't realize I was tapping my pencil till I hear Sarah calling out my name, breaking me out of my thoughts. "Are you okay, haven't seen you in a while." I nodded, putting on a smile. "Yeah sorry, been getting a lot of work opportunities and just a bunch of family stuff that's exhausted me." Sarah gives me a look that resembles one of a mother who knows their child isn't telling the full truth, but she nods and pats my hand. "Completely understandable. But that's exciting, new artists been reaching out to you n' all that?" "Ha surprisingly, considering saying yes to all of them." my smile was growing genuine a little, thinking about how content I was with my career. Being a lyricist and songwriter was a definite risky path to take in terms of stability, but it made me happier knowing I was able to to do. "Oh of course, you can totally do it. Probably wanted to see what all the hype was about when Harry couldn't stop talking about you at every social gathering he's been at." Sarah chuckles, rolling her eyes playfully. "Yeah?" I quickly looked down, feeling my eyes water as the pang in my chest came back. "Mhmm, acts like Thomas and Mitch don't even exist." I laugh lightly at that, fiddling with my fingers as I focused down on my notebook. I found myself in an awkward situation, not knowing how to continue the conversation but knowing I didn't want to try. I love Sarah, but I was close to break down right there if I tried and it was not the place to do so. Not when everyone is trying to meet deadlines and Harry was about to walk in with Heather at any moment. "Hey, I actually have a lot of emails to respond to so I'm gonna be in the other room." I stood up, taking a guitar and my notebook. "Might actually be better for me to focus in." "Sure, we'll let Harry know." I gave her a grateful smile, walking out into the hallway to a different room. I let out another shaky breath, feeling overwhelmed once I was finally alone. But before I could close the door, I hear her. I peak out to see both her and Harry standing at the entrance of the building, huddled close together. "Sorry I forget it gets this cold in LA sometimes." She says, looking up at him while he rubs the sleeves of his sweater that was wrapped perfectly around her. It was a simple orange stripped sweater. A vintage that Harry bought in Vienna and became one of his favorites. It was just a simple polyester sweater, but it became my favorite too. So it was hard to give it back after wearing it that night we kissed, but fuck was it harder to see her wearing it. Now as I sit alone with no sense of motivation to do anything else but wallow in my own pity I thought about a lot of things. I should be angry, be fuming and cursing at Harry for how he's been acting. I should confront him, make him feel as hurt as he made me for choosing her. Or maybe I should hate Heather, despise her for taking the chance I had with him. But deep down I know I couldn't hate Heather. She's such an angel, it wasn't her fault he's still hung up on her. And as much as the image of his arm wrapped around her kills me, I couldn't hate him either for the same reason. She looked prettier in his sweater than I did. "You okay in here bubs?" As if the tears welling up in my eyes and heavy weight on my chest wasn't enough, the sound of knuckles against the door and his voice calling out my name made me almost sob. "Yeah, I'm good. Door's open." I quickly try to compose myself when he enters the room, giving me that warming smile of his. "Just wanted to check up on ya, been quiet since you got here." Harry looks at me with concerning eyes as he places a hand on my shoulder before crossing his arms and leaning against the wall in front of me. Keep your hand on my shoulder, the second it was there all the nerves went away. I wanted to say but instead I fake a smile again, waving it off and shrugging. "Oh no, just have a lot on my plate don't worry." He nods, feeling his eyes on me while I try to avoid his by opening my laptop and skimming through my inbox. "Sarah told me about different singers reaching out to you." He points at my laptop before taking a seat on the chair to the side. I nodded, humming while I typed out quick responses. "Yup, thanks by the way but now I gotta sort out a whole schedule for this year." I took a glance up to see him focused on my song journal on the table in front of us.

“So...you and Heather huh?” The sheepish smile he has tugs my heart strings but I tried to keep from fumbling with my fingers.

“Yeah uhh...” He scratches the back of his neck, keeping his eyes on his hands and looking like a young kid with a crush. “Started talking again and catching up, been working out stuff between us since the party.”

I tilt my head to the side, motioning him to continue. “She’s gorgeous...”

“She’s amazing.”

I finally looked away from him and onto my screen, letting out a little chuckle. 

“So you guys are back together?”

“No no, we’re just sort of figuring things out at the moment.” Though it was an answer I was hoping for, the look in his face was none the less comforting. 

“Well, hope everything goes great. You guys look perfect together.” I managed to say, going back to typing while he only responds with a nod and hum.

There was silence. Does he not feel it too? Uncomfortable silence was never a thing between us but it was prevalent here. "Not gonna leave early are you though?" He says out of no where and I stopped typing for a sec to give my attention to him. "Not going to ditch me for someone else of course." He says it with a laugh, playing it off like an obvious joke... but the way he looked at me. Part of me wanted to scream at how oblivious and selfish that statement sounded coming from him, as if he has no idea the drastic shift our relationship has taken. But I see the vulnerability in his eyes, sensing the subtext in his question that is practically asking me to stay. Stick by his side and help finish this passion project he's dedicated to put out, not only for his fans but for himself. Be with him to figure out what to do next, even if I would be in a different county or continent and working with someone else. Keep in touch throughout because I've become an important person in his life. Even if that person who used to fill that spot came back, he's still here and asking me to stay with him in a similar sense. It wasn't the kind of love I wanted, but never the less, it was still love from Harry. Did the smile I wear at that moment reach my eyes? When I placed my hand on top of his in reassurance, was the hesitance obvious? Maybe he did notice the little signs, but he took my hand in his anyways and placed it against his heart. 

"Of course, 'm always gonna here Harry."

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part 3

A/N: guys my heart hurts writing this lol. There’s gonna be one or two more parts of this series, but thank you for reading! feedback is appreciated :)

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Darkling Character Analysis

Full disclaimer, I’ve not read the books, though I have ordered the first so I am hoping to have read that soon. But just so you are aware this character analysis is based entirely on the show version of the character. Obviously there will be spoilers for all of season one. Also I just want to say that my aim with this analysis was to sort of get into The character’s head and so alot of this is just what I think the character might have been thinking, feeling and what his motivations may be, it does not mean I agree or disagree with his actions. When I am giving my view on his actions I will try to make it as clear as possible. Also this is just my interpretation of the character and my own opinions on the character, it is ok if you disagree. So obviously this is an analysis of the character The Darkling but I am also going to be talking about his relationship with Alina so I guess its also a sort of analysis of their relationship too just solely from Aleksander’s side of it. I will be using all of the names he has interchangeably because he has so many that I don’t know which one to stick with (seriously haven’t seen a character with this many different names since Jace from Shadowhunters) so sorry if that’s annoying. Fair warning this one is probably the longest analysis I have ever written and they are usually pretty long so I would suggest if you are going to read this maybe get some beverages and snacks first. I mean I think it shows how compelling and interesting a character he is that I was able to waffle on as long as have about him. But yeah its long. Of course you can also always scroll on past. But if you would like to read it then the rest is under the tag. 

Ok so first off I think the show does a really good job of building up the character in the first episode by giving us some information on The Black General before we and Alina officially meet him, they really give the character this air of mystery by giving us only a small amount of information about him but also by not letting us see his face. We get small tantalising glimpses of him, a shot of his boots in the mud, his carriage passing by, the back of him with his cloak billowing in the wind as the skiff enters the fold. It’s just enough to peak the audience’s interest. But most of what we learn in episode one is from what other character’s tell us. The very first mention we get of The General is from Mal and it’s a very small detail but I actually think it can tell you alot about The Darkling’s character. When Mal and Alina come across the Grisha practising Mal says ‘They’re always picking on us when their General’s not around.’ This seems like such a throwaway comment designed to show us how the First Army feel about Grisha and paints this picture of the Grisha thinking they are higher and mightier than those who are not Grisha. But it actually suggests that if they only do it when The General is not around then he does not tolerate Grisha bullying First Army. That he doesn’t think its ok for them to act like they are higher and mightier than those who are not Grisha and that he believes in humility even. Which I think is really interesting. This tracks with Nadia’s comment later in episode three when she says that General Kirigan insists that the Grisha eat peasant fare to keep them humble. Yet while he encourages humility he also makes sure that the Grisha have everything they need in order to flourish and he obviously cares a great deal about the Grisha, I feel like rising the Grisha up and making them strong has been pretty much his only drive and motivation over the hundreds of years since the fold was created. 

The other thing we learn which is repeated a couple of times by a few of the characters is that The General cannot bring down the Shadow Fold. In fact I think there are two conversations about it. The first between Inej, Jesper and Kaz when Jesper asks why the General hasn’t taken it down to which Inej replies ‘Have you ever put out fire by adding more fire?’ The other conversation is more flippant and is between Dubrov and Mikhael, where Mikhael sarcastically says the General is there to save the day and Dubrov asks if he’s going to tear down the fold. So on two occasions we have characters believing the General is powerful enough to fix the problem of the fold only for them to be corrected and told that he can’t. It seems like the show wants to make it very clear that the General will not be destroying the fold and I could be reaching here but this could be foreshadowing for later when we learn he doesn’t desire to bring down the fold.       

Of course even after the first episode the character of the Darkling still remains a bit of a mystery. He’s the kind of character where the more you learn about him the more questions you have. This tactic of giving us small pieces of information about him, just enough to keep you interested continues throughout the season and of course you have the twist in episode 5 where its revealed that he’s the ‘villain’. And yes I did put villain in quotation marks because I personally feel like its too simplistic a term to use for the character. I do feel like he’s more than just a two dimensional villain and there is alot of complexity to the character and his actions just for him to be considered the ‘bad guy’. 

So lets have a look at some of those actions and think about what might have been his motivations and what he might have been thinking and feeling. I want to start with one of the more controversial of his actions and as a warning this is a sensitive topic. One of the earlier things we find out about is that General Kirigan gifted Genya to the Queen. I’ll be honest when I first watched this scene I was so caught up in the new character and what was going on in the scene that I didn’t think much about Genya’s comment about being a gift to the Queen but when I thought more on it later I realised that it was a rather dark idea, that you could gift a person to another person. It becomes especially darker later when you find out what Genya suffered at the King’s hands. I kept wondering a few things, one being why the General would gift a child to the Queen in the first place, two whether he knew what the King was when he put Genya under the royal family’s care and three if he didn’t why he didn’t remove Genya when he discovered what was happening with the King. I do feel that we didn’t get enough information in the show (I don’t know if there’s more information in the books) to really answer these questions but I’ll give it my best shot. Firstly why would the General gift a child to the Queen? Well I actually think this one is easy to answer, he needed a spy within the Royal Family. We know that Aleksander has suffered and been betrayed by a king in the past. He won the Old King a war and in turn that King turned on not just Aleksander but on his people too. I feel like Aleksander was blindsided when this happened and he just didn’t see it coming and because of that his people were slaughtered. It would make sense then that the General would want to keep an eye on the royals and get a warning if they were planning on turning on Grisha again. I also think this is why they refer to Genya as a ‘gift’. That was just the wording the General used to manipulate the royals. Here’s a gift that I am granting you out of respect and to honour and please you, is going to go over a lot better than hey here’s a spy I want in your household. Genya is essentially the General’s trojan horse. As for it being Genya as oppose to someone else, like a trained adult Grisha, well I think that’s because it would be easier to get the royals to take a child into their household than an adult, even as a gift. They will be alot less suspicious of a child than they would an adult. Also they might bond with a child and therefore treat them as more of a confidante as time goes on. As well as that Genya had a very specific set of Grisha abilities that made her perfect for a vain Queen. I may be wrong on this one but thinking back to my history education I think I remember being taught it was fairly common during the time period if a young lady was discovered to have a particularly special talent, like say singing for example, they may be given as a gift to the Queen as this may gain favour for the maiden’s family if she is made a lady in waiting. So if I am right about that then whilst it might seem strange to us it may have been a fairly normal practise to the characters. I mean Alina didn’t seem shocked when Genya said she was a gift to the queen it was learning about the King that upset her. 

Also I do wonder if some of the reason why he placed her with the royal family was because he believed she wouldn’t fit in with the other Grisha, she does say that she is almost as rare as Alina. I don’t know for sure but maybe the General suspected she would struggle with being different from the other Grisha and so decided the best way to help her grow and flourish was by giving a special mission of her own. 

Ok so what about question 2? Did he know what kind of person the King was when he placed Genya under his care. In my opinion I don’t think he did. I am basing this on how he always seems to want to make Grisha safe and wants them to flourish and also due to his actions with Alina when things between them became more intimate, we know that consent is something Aleksander cares about. So to me it would be out of character for him considering how much he cares about the Grisha and consent for him to knowingly put Genya under the King’s care whilst having the knowledge of what would happen to her. I feel like he would also consider it as a disrespect towards Grisha from the King for him to harm a Grisha woman like that especially as she was ‘gifted’ to them. Also when Alina herself asks a similar question in episode 7 when she says ‘did you think Genya was safe when you placed her under the King’s watch?’ To me I think the Darkling looked somewhat upset that she would think that he would knowingly put Genya in that situation. However I do think that by the time Alina was discovered and brought to the Little Palace he was aware of what was going on with Genya and the King as he makes that comment about Alina remaining at the Little Palace with him to train undisturbed. The way he said undisturbed made me think he thought the King might decide he wanted Alina and the General was warning the King away, making it clear that if he wanted the fold destroyed he would have to leave Alina alone. His actions here in protecting Alina also make me think that he didn’t know at the time of placing Genya with the Royal family what would happen to her. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake with Alina that he made with Genya. 

As for number 3, why didn’t he remove Genya from the King’s care once he did find out about what the King was doing? I saw a few comments about this. All of them saying the same that because he didn’t get Genya out he was as bad as the King and was complicit in what happened to Genya. But I actually think it’s more complicated than that. For one thing technically he did remove Genya from the King’s care when he had her poison the king and then made her Corporalnik. Though obviously he didn’t do it immediately. We’ve got no timescale as to when he find out so who knows how long they were planning this. But also there was one line in episode 3 that I think answers this question best, when the General says ‘I may lead the Second Army, but the King is still the King.’ Whilst the General is powerful he still only has so much power over the King. He needed the King’s permission just  to have Alina at the Little Palace and for her to train, which is what the demonstration Alina had to go through in episode 3 was all about. I don’t think the General had the power to just walk into the Grande Palace and take back Genya. The only way he was getting Genya out of there was by killing the King. Also correct me if I am wrong but I feel like what the King was doing to Genya was a large part of the General’s motivation for poisoning the King. I mean we weren’t given much information about the King other than what he was doing to Genya, which made me think that’s why he was poisoned as we weren’t told about any other bad things the King had done that might lead to the General deciding to poison him. I think once he found out what the King was doing to Genya he allowed her to be the one to carry out the poisoning knowing that she would want revenge rather than trying to remove her right away and potentially causing tension with the royal family and also making it harder if not impossible for Genya to be the one to exact her revenge on the King. I guess what I am saying is its possible that Genya was the one who wanted to stay because she wanted to be the one to kill the King. I mean that’s the impression I got from her conversation with Alina where she says ‘I waited for years for my chance at revenge.’ For all we know General Kirigan might have offered to remove her from the Royal household and she might have told him she wanted to be the one to help him take down the King. Whatever his motivations were and however much he may or may not have known I think we can all agree that him ‘gifting’ Genya to the Queen was a mistake. I personally feel like it was more of a similar mistake to when Alina burned the maps. She had good intentions, she did it to protect someone she cared about, but in the end she caused others harm. With Alina she wanted to protect Mal and her whole unit was killed. With Kirigan I think he hoped a spy in the Royal household would protect the Grisha but in the end Genya was harmed by the King. One question I do have is whether Kirigan feels any guilt over what happened to Genya, whether he regrets his decision. I mean we did see him protect Alina from the King when he insisted she remain at the Little Palace. But was that just because it was Alina, the Sun Summoner? What if it were someone else. For example say the King came to the General and said he had taken a fancy to Marie, or Nadia or Zoya, and asked for them to be sent to the Grande Palace, would the General have agreed or would he have made some excuse as to why they couldn’t go, maybe even sent them on an assignment to protect them? There’s no way we can really know the answers to these questions as we just don’t know enough about the situation. All we know is that the General ultimately decided to get rid of the King but even then we don’t know for certain what his motivations for that were.   

I suppose you could say that him plotting against the king and conspiring with the apparat to usurp the throne was also a ‘bad guy’ move. But to be honest after telling us everything that the King did and just generally presenting the royal family in a negative light, I was surprised that Alina had such a problem with what the General did. To me it didn’t make sense for her to be upset and using that against him. I mean after learning what he did to Genya I was fully on the Darkling’s side when it came to killing the King. If they were trying to present this as a ‘villain’ move on the Darkling’s part then they did a poor job of it because I completely understood where he was coming from with that one. 

I felt a similar way with his other big ‘villain’ move when he expanded The Fold into Novokribirsk. At first I found it hard to have sympathy for them considering literally a couple of minutes before we were being shown that the soldiers were planning on murdering everyone on the skiff as soon as it docked. Couple that with the fact that Zlatan had arranged to assassinate Alina and once again I found myself on the Darkling’s side, I mean screw Zlatan and his soldiers. It was another case of it wasn’t until I rewatched it that I realised the villainous part of what the Darkling did was that there were civilians in the city that were also killed. To be honest I do wish that the show had done a better job of showing those civilians to really get across the horror of what the Darkling did. I mean on a rewatch I could see a few civilians mixed in with the soldiers but they were blended in so were hard to spot. I guess that was the purpose of Zoya having family in the city, to tell the viewer that there were innocents there but I just don’t think it made enough of an impact. I feel like if they had focussed in on actual civilians running and being swallowed by the darkness as well as the West Ravkan soldiers it would have had a bigger and more horrific impact. Instead it just kind of came across as the bad guys who had been built up as being bad throughout the season, who were rebels and who had tried to kill the main character, were finally eliminated. Lets be real if Alina had been the one to take out those soldiers we would all have been cheering. Lets talk about Game of Thrones for a moment as an example (spoiler alert for GOT here) however you felt about the way Dany’s descent into madness was written one thing the writers did right in The Bells episode was focus on the civilians that Dany was killing on the ground. They cut away from Dany completely and stayed on the ground with her victims and so you get that impact of what she has done, you see the horror in what she has done and I think this is something that would have worked well with Shadow and Bone. If they had just cut away from the skiff for a scene showing the civilians, the victims that were being effected by what the Darkling was doing then I think I would have been more shocked and effected by his actions. 

Ok so lets focus back in on the character and talk about what his motivations might have been for Novokribirsk. Why did he expand the Fold and take out the city? Well again I don’t think its hard to answer that question. We have to remember that he is a General that is fighting a war on three fronts. He’s fighting the Fjerdans on one side, the Shu Han on another and then the cherry on top is that the West Ravkans are rising up in rebellion. It’s already hard enough having to fight two enemy countries without also having to split your forces again to deal with a rebellion. The General knows that they are already overstretched without having to split their force again to deal with Zlatan. So if you look at it from his point of view striking down Zlatan now before the rebellion gets too large is a tactical military move. Also the fact that it is such a violent move will act as a deterrent for any remaining rebels who might think of trying to restart Zlatan’s movement. As well as to Fjerda and Shu Han, a this is what we do to our own people when they act against us so think about what we might do to you if you cross us, kind of deal. As for the innocent civilians that were in the city well I think the Darkling would convince himself that it was a numbers game. He might have killed hundreds of civilians but as far as he sees it he has spared thousands of lives that would have been lost if they had gone to war with West Ravka. By now the General knows the cost of war, so to him sacrificing a few hundred civilians is worth the price of saving thousands of his soldiers. Of course there is another motivation for the General, one that is less military strategy and more personal and emotionally driven. As Kaz says he was a man fuelled by vengeance. These soldiers standing on the dock had turned their back on Grisha and even worse than that they had tried to kill Alina. In the scene where The Darkling is talking to the Conductor and the Conductor admits to agreeing to assassinate Alina for a million kruge you can see how angry this makes The Darkling. This idea that someone would harm Alina for something as material as money is unforgivable to him. I said in a previous post that I wondered if the General always planned to expand the fold into Novokribirsk and I actually think the answer to that is no he didn’t. I actually think he was trying to make up his mind about what to do about Zlatan and his rebels, its possible he had a number of strategies to go with and was trying to decide which to choose, with expanding the fold being the most extreme of them. I actually think this here is the moment he decides to go with that plan. As he walks away from the Conductor and the Conductor asks ‘tell me how I can help’ The Darkling replies ‘you already have.’ I actually think what he meant here was you’ve helped me make up my mind. Them daring to harm Alina was the linchpin.         

Which brings me to the next part of this analysis, The Darkling’s manipulation and relationship with Alina. One of the great things the show did with the Darkling’s character was making him so complex and nuanced that the audience is in very much the same position as Alina when that reveal is made about Aleksander being the Black Heretic. Just like Alina (if you haven’t read the books) you are left sort of blindsided. Also just like Alina the audience is left wondering how much of it was a manipulation. Was all of it part of his manipulation? Or were there some moments that were real? Did he care at all about Alina or was he just interested in her power? 

Well I will say this, while I do think he always planned to manipulate her, I don’t think he ever planned or tried to use seduction as part of that manipulation. I think we have to remember that he was waiting for the Sun Summoner for hundreds of years and I think he spent that time creating his plan for her and her power. We also have to remember that when he was creating this plan he was expecting to find a child. I think his plan was to earn her trust as a mentor and build a confidence between them. I think he planned to bring her up with his ideals, to bring her up believing the best thing was to use the fold as a weapon, to bring her up to always want to protect the Grisha and to bring her up to embrace her power. However this whole plan had a wrench thrown in it when he does finally find Alina and she’s not a child, she’s a grown woman and one that has been taught her whole life that the Sun Summoner’s purpose is to tear down the fold. Changing the ideals and beliefs of an adult is alot harder to do than a child. On top of that I think he does develop real feelings for her. But these feelings get in the way of his plans, which makes everything all the more complicated for him.        

Lets go to the moment they first meet. I do think right from the get go he is intrigued by her and mean I think when you watch the scene you are so focused on Alina and what she must be going through and feeling, how scared she must be being dragged in front of this powerful General that she’s only ever heard stories about, that we don’t think about what this moment meant to the General. I mean he has been waiting for this woman for so long. She could be the solution to all of his problems, a fix for all of his mistakes. She has been his one glimmer of hope in the vast darkness of eternity. And now she’s here in front of him. Jessie said in an interview that Alina felt a connection to Aleksander right from the beginning, but I think he felt a connection to her too. I think you can even see the moment they make that connection and it’s when he takes her wrist in the tent.

Once he takes her wrist they never break eye contact even as he draws her sleeve up higher, their eyes are glued to each other. Then they both pause for a few beats and again just stare at each other.

The tension between them is so thick it almost makes you want to yell get a room at the screen. It’s like they both suddenly felt something click between them, a oh I know you, kind of moment. But I also feel like Aleksander is a bit surprised by this feeling, he wasn’t expecting it. They don’t break eye contact until The General cuts her arm releasing her power and causing her to look down in surprise. But almost immediately Alina brings her eyes back to his. One kind of cool little detail I did notice is that you can see the reflection of the beam of light in both their eyes.

It’s like a thread connecting them both, I don’t know why but it sort of reminds me of that red thread of fate legend. But also with them both having dark eyes the beam of light reflected in them sort of reminds me of yin and yang. The other thing of note is the General’s facial expression when he sees her power. Whilst everyone else is looking on is awe and surprise, he looks almost content, definitely happy and maybe even a bit hopeful. To me he kind of looks like he’s just had all his prayers answered. 

I think Kirigan is further intrigued by Alina in episode two when she talks back to him with that rant about maybe he hasn’t found anyone with her power because they didn’t want to be found. I think its the first time in a long while that anyone has stood up to him and not just said yes sir. I actually found it really comical how surprised he was when she said no to him. You just know he hasn’t heard that word much in recent lifetimes. But I do think this plants those first seeds of him seeing her as an equal to him. I think this is where he starts to see her as not someone to bow at his feet but someone who belongs at his side. Then when she confesses that she hid from the testers because she didn’t want to feel even more alone I think he really saw something of himself in her. I mean you can see his facial expression shift. I think this furthers his idea that she is meant to be at his side, that she is the same as him and I think even at this early stage he begins to hope that maybe she is someone who will understand him as no one else ever has. In that moment he is determined to make sure she doesn’t ever feel alone again and that is why he tells her ‘you are Grisha, you are not alone.’ You can see from the passion in his voice when he says it that this is something very personal to him. 

However despite this connection he feels to her and the care I think he has for her too, he does manipulate her. I think one of the more obvious manipulations happens in episode 4 when he takes her to the fountain. Something that is worth noting is that before setting out on their ride Aleksander takes off his Kefta. Their Keftas in the show are presented as their armour, so I think it was a very deliberate move on his part to sort of send the message to her, look I’m taking my armour off for you and I am being vulnerable and open to you. He furthers this by giving her his name to create this familiarity between them. Then he takes her to a place that is personal to him and then he really gets into his manipulation game. Here’s the thing though, I feel like most of the time when we think of manipulation we think of lies. But sometimes the best way to manipulate a person is through twisting the truth and I think this is what he does here. From their conversations so far I think he has figured out that Alina feels like an outsider and that she fears being alone and not fitting in. I definitely think he uses this information to manipulate her by telling her the story about how he used to go to the fountain as a boy after he discovered he was descended from the most hated Grisha in Ravka and wished to be anybody else. He knows that Alina will respond to this story, that it will make her feel sympathy for him and also make her feel like he is someone who understands her and therefore someone she can trust and rely on. He is also most definitely being deceitful in that he knows she thinks he is talking about being related to the Black Heretic when in fact he is the Black Heretic. However that doesn’t mean that what he said was untrue. I really do think he used to go there as a boy and wish to be someone else. As for being the descendant of the most hated Grisha in Ravka well my theory there is that he could actually be talking about Morozova. In the flashback in episode 7 Aleksander says that he and Baghra are his descendants and that means that if he created the amplifiers than Aleksander could create an army. Baghra gives the warning that Aleksander will die like Morozova. This makes me think that Morozova died in quite an unpleasant way, maybe even killed because he was feared and hated. I mean sure the Black Heretic is the most hated Grisha in all of Ravka now, but whose to say there wasn’t someone who came before him? Another Grisha who was hated like the Black Heretic is now. And maybe when Aleksander was a boy he discovered he was the descendant of Morozova and that was a burden on him, so much so that he wished he was someone else. 

I also think he was being genuine when he talked about how he is never seen as the solution only a reminder of the problem. I mean we’ve seen this ourselves in episode one its one of the first things we learn about him, that he can’t bring down the fold. I also think he’s being truthful when he says they always need someone to blame but again he’s twisting this truth. Alina thinks he means he is being unjustly blamed for not being able to fix the Fold but I think he actually is talking about how the Old King turned on him. I’m also sure over the years many people have blamed him and the Grisha for all the ills the world has suffered. But I do think he really meant it when he told her that he wouldn’t let the world make her the new Heretic. I think making sure that doesn’t happen is something he cares deeply about and I think it shows that he does have some care for her that he is so determined that she doesn’t go through what he did with the world turning on him. 

Slight diversion here but I do want to talk about whether or not this hatred the world has for him is justified, I mean he did create the fold and that fold has killed alot of people since its creation. So surely just the fact that he created the fold is enough to solidify him as the villain. Well I think that depends on why he created the fold. I mean we get three different versions of how and why the Fold was created. The first one we hear is in episode 4 when Alina tells us the story that is taught to children in school. They say that history is written by the victors, and whilst I personally don’t think there were any victors in the creation of the fold, The Black Heretic disappeared with its creation, presumed to be dead, so the Old King probably considered himself the victor and was left to decide the history. Therefore this story was most likely the Old King’s version of events. In this version of the story it talks about how the Darkling hungered for more power after being made the Kings military advisor and this made the king fear that the Darkling would try to overthrow him. So he put a bounty on his head and that of anyone who stood by him. Eventually the Heretic realised he was outnumbered and decided to create an army using forbidden science. But he failed, creating the fold and killing himself and countless others. The second version we get is from Baghra and it is similar to this one. She says that he created the Fold to use as a weapon, that he tried making an army with merzost and that he didn’t think about what that would do to the people who lived there, that it turned the men, women and children into the Volcra. That she had warned him there would be a price and that he didn’t listen. She also says that he took a noble’s name to hide after. Baghra’s version paints Aleksander as power hungry and as someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants no matter the cost. But there are somethings I think its worth noting about her version. The first is that it is very brief, sort of like the cliff notes version, as they are in a hurry and she needs to get Alina out of there pronto. She doesn’t have time to go into all the details so she tells her enough to convince her to leave. Which brings me to my second point, Baghra’s motivation here is to get Alina to flee, so logically the best way to do that is to tell her the worst parts of the story and leave out anything that might make Alina feel sympathetic towards Aleksander and therefore hesitate about leaving. Another thing to remember is that Baghra whilst she might know somethings wasn’t there for a lot of it, she didn’t see Luda killed by the soldiers just knows that she was killed and she didn’t witness the confrontation between Aleksander and the soldiers. However what she did see likely had an effect on her. There is one moment in particular during Baghra’s story where she becomes emotional and choked up, there are tears in her eyes and you just know she is reliving a bad memory and that is when she talks about the women and children who were turned into the Volcra alongside the soldiers. Think for a moment about where Baghra was when the fold was created. She was inside the sanctuary with the women and children who were hiding from the soldiers. Which means that she would have witnessed them turning into the Volcra which must have been a horrifying scene. 

Eventually we get to episode 7 and we learn what really happened when the fold was created and the story is more tragic that first told. I mean first you have the whole situation with Luda. He obviously loved her deeply and I can only imagine how painful it must have been to see her murdered right in front of him and to feel that guilt of her dying because she was protecting him. I mean the words ‘just mortal’ now make me want to burst out crying anytime I hear them. Then he gets to the sanctuary and there’s all these Grisha there that need protecting. I think he feels a responsibility for them. Then his mother reminds him that they are not fighters, they make things. Which gives him the idea of creating an army using merzost. It is worth pointing out here that when telling the tale to Alina Baghra says that she warned Aleksander that there would be a price for using merzost, but when you actually see the conversation what she says is that whilst the small science feeds them merzost feeds on them. This suggests that the price to be paid is by him. So yes he was aware there would be a price but he assumed he would be the one paying it. I think if he knew that the people inside the sanctuary would be turned into Volcra he might not have gone through with it. This is another thing that makes the story even more tragic. Aleksander was driven to create his own army by his wish to protect his people, but he lost control and ended up destroying the very people he was trying so hard to protect. Another thing I noticed when Alina is telling the story of the heretic in episode four when she gets to the part about the Heretic being killed along with countless other you can hear what sound like screams in the background, also Aleksander looks really sad and guilty. It is also right after that he says he had devoted his life to undoing the great sin aka the creation of the fold. We see this look of guilt again when Alina confronts him in episode 7 about being the one to create the fold and therefore responsible for the deaths of her friends and parents. You see him look to the floor.

 I really do think that he has alot of guilt about the fold, he sees it as a mistake.  We see both Baghra and Alina make the claim, the fold was no mistake. But in episode 7 we learn that it was, Aleksander did not deliberately set out to create the fold. It wasn't his intention. It seems to me that he wanted to bend the will of the soldiers to his, to make them his own army, but I think he lost control due to the emotional state he was in at the time. I mean right before the soldiers were threatening to murder all the people inside, including his mother, and were mocking him about Luda’s death. He was grieving, he was angry and he was fearful for his people. We were told the fold was born out of greed but lets be real it was born out of grief and out of pain and anger and fear. 

So if he considers it such a big mistake why doesn’t he want to tear it down? Well I think its two fold. On one hand he might be afraid of what he’ll see. It’s like Kaz says to Zoya ��it’s dangerous to go looking for the dead. What you see may haunt you for the rest of your days.’ Tearing down the fold will reveal all the destruction he caused to the land and to the people who lived there, he’d have to really confront what he did to his own people. But I think another motivator is what he said about undoing the great sin. I think he thinks if he makes the fold useful then at least it would have made the ‘deaths’ of his people mean something somehow. If creating the fold cost them their lives then maybe by making it a weapon that can be used to protect Grisha will make their ‘deaths’ a worthwhile sacrifice.

Ok so diversion over, lets go back to the Darklina relationship and how much of his actions were a manipulation. We’ve already established that he was being manipulative when taking her to the fountain and was telling her twisted truths. But if we stick with episode 4 there’s the scene where she comes to visit him at night in the war room. This whole scene I actually think he was being completely genuine. I don’t think any of it was part of his manipulation of her. First off is the way they are both dressed. They are both in their nightclothes which gives this idea of them being more intimate and more exposed to each other. I said above that the Kefta is seen as the Grisha’s armour, well here neither one of them are wearing their Kefta. They have both taken off their armour and are letting each other in. When Alina first finds him he is looking over the war map and you can see that he looks troubled, which you know fair enough considering he’s fighting a war on two fronts, having to deal with getting supplies through the fold and how to deal with the rebels. I love the way he looks at Alina when she comes in though, its just so soft and I feel like he feels instantly calmer when he sees her. But then he starts talking about how he’s been fighting the war alone and lost friends, about how their own people are turning on Grisha just as their kin once did and he is clearly thinking back to when the Old King was hunting him and his people. When the shadows start creeping in I think his pain is very real, I don’t think this was an act at all and once again if you listen closely you can hear those faint screams in the background. Then Alina dispels the shadows with her light and repeats his words back to him, ‘you are not alone.’ I think in this moment he truly does feel like he’s not alone. That he has found someone who understands him and who is his equal, who is like him. So he reaches out and cups her face and tells her he’s been waiting for her a long time. But then she pulls away and says she should go. I think Aleksander is afraid at this moment that he has frightened her away or that he misinterpreted the situation and he becomes very confused. So when she lingers at the door he goes to it and contemplates calling her back, just as she struggles with whether she should go back. But then she walks away and I think he thinks that maybe he was wrong and she doesn’t feel the same as him and he is a little angry with himself for losing focus and for feeling something for her and so he locks the door between them.  

Another question I asked myself was whether he always intended to put the stag collar on her and to control her powers. In my opinion this one has a bit of a yes and a no answer. I think he kept changing his mind. He clearly knew that by killing the Stag and putting the amplifier on her he would gain control of her powers. As I said early I think his first draft of the plan, shall we say, was to find the Sun Summoner as a child, to gain her trust as her mentor and teach her that the Fold is a weapon to be used as opposed to something that needs to be torn down. If he had found her as a child he would have had a lot more control over her and could shape her into what he wanted. However when they find the Sun Summoner she’s an adult and believes that its her fate to tear down the fold so he has to do a rework of his plan. On top of that he’s got this problem that she clearly doesn’t want to be the Sun Summoner she has no interest in saving anyone and she just wants to go back to being a mapmaker in the First Army. I think it is during that speech where she talks about him transferring her power to someone else that he starts to look into whether that is possible. But as he gets to know her more I think this changes again and he starts to feel things for her and I think he starts to believe that they want the same things and that maybe taking control of her powers won’t be necessary. I think the turning point for him is in episode 5. In the breakdown video of their first kiss Jessie says Alina goes to the General’s rooms because of what happened the night before in the war room where they had a moment in episode 4. Alina wasn’t sure what that moment meant and so she was seeking out Aleksander because she was intrigued and wanted to know if there was something there. Aleksander is once again clearly happy to see her but I do feel like there is some awkwardness there because of what happened in episode 4 and because he feels like he had misinterpreted things and maybe was too intense with her. It’s an interesting dynamic because as Jessie says in that video in this moment he is the vulnerable one. One moment in particular that I think shows this vulnerability is right after she helps him into his Kefta. Again going back to the whole the Kefta is armour thing. When Alina first enters the room like in episode 4 she is wearing her dressing gown she has come to him with her armour off so to speak. He is also out of his Kefta and this early conversation is playful where they are joking about Ivan and the Volcra. But after she puts the Kefta on him is when his mood shifts a little and you see him kind of tug the Kefta tighter around himself. I feel like he was trying to protect himself because the more time he spends with her the more vulnerable and confused he feels, he’s feeling alot of feelings he hasn’t felt in a long time and I think he knows by now that he is well on his way to falling in love with her and this scares him a bit because he has lost loves in the past. Him putting the Kefta back on is like him attempting to put that armour back on. There is another way of looking at it too though. It’s worth noting that on this occasion Alina is the one helping him put the armour/Kefta on, like she is the one giving him protection. Then he turns around Alina is alot closer then he anticipated and you can actually see him struggling to even form words. Then she leans in close to him like she's about to kiss him but changes her mind and walks into the other room leaving our poor guy more confused than ever. Then Alina makes the speech about how she finally feels like she is part of something bigger and that they can offer hope to the Grisha and to Ravkans. In this moment our girl was talking straight to our boy’s heart. I think this is all he has ever wanted to hear her say, especially the ‘we can offer hope.’ I think he really means it when he says it means a lot to him and you can hear the passion in his voice when he says ‘you mean a lot.’ Of course when she looks down he once again becomes afraid he’s overstepped, gone too far and so he tries to backtrack with ‘to everyone’. And well we all know what happens next. Alina kisses him and as he says after he is surprised and not many people do surprise him. I think there is something about this woman that just makes him lose all his senses until his whole world becomes about her. I feel like throughout episode 5 Aleksander feels like he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted. Because maybe she does feel the same way he does, maybe she wants the same things he does, maybe he has found his life partner, another immortal who will always be by his side, finally he’ll never have to feel alone again. I think the moment I decided this fool was definitely in love with Alina was the look on his face when she enters the room and he sees her in his colours for the first time. After watching her demonstration I think he does see her as his equal. He’s in complete awe of her and the only time he looks away is to look at the Monarchs to see their reaction. Basically from the moment Alina kisses him to this moment where he is seeing her take command of the room and truly showing her power, having people bow to her, Aleksander is living his best life, he’s on cloud nine. 

Then he gets word that someone has located the stag. We don’t see the scene where he gets informed of this but you can imagine he probably can’t believe his luck. Not only are things perfect between him and Alina but now someone has found the amplifier. But I feel like he gets a bit of a reality check when he discovers that Mal is the one who found the stag and he’s now here in the Little Palace. I feel like Aleksander sort of came crashing down to earth here and realised he might have a bit of a problem. Once again he’s having to do a quick, rapid, rework of his plan. Which brings us to another moment where the Darkling is being manipulative. He uses Mal to find out what Alina’s favourite flower is. I mean I suppose you could argue that he’s only doing what every other person does when they want to get a gift for their crush and don’t know what would be best, ask the best friend. But all jokes aside this move was clearly calculative on The Darkling’s part. But I couldn’t help but wonder why he decided to use the Irises. What was his motivation here. It’s clear that he has already won Alina over seeing as she was kissing him not to long ago. Well I said earlier that I think he changed his mind about using the collar on her. I do think after their conversation in episode 2 where she talks about how she didn’t want any of it and could he transfer it he thought she was going to be a problem and difficult so maybe he should look into finding a way of controlling her power. In the beginning she was focussed on her old life and I feel like she didn’t have much loyalty or care for the Grisha, it took her awhile to accept who she was and she was also struggling to use her powers. All she wanted was to go back to Mal and I think this may be why, or at least part of the reason why The General takes their letters. For one he didn’t want her to go back to him and so making her think that Mal didn’t care would encourage her stay put and discourage any ideas of leaving. I mean given her comment in episode 3 where Alina asks Genya if anyone had ever escaped the Little Palace, which the General overheard, its not that surprising that he would decide to confiscate any of her correspondence out of the Palace in case she was organising a breakout with Mal. Secondly as I said she was having trouble using her powers and I think after reading the letters maybe he figures out that its because of Mal that she is struggling, so he either stopped the letters because he wanted her to continue feeling abandoned by Mal and therefore he was hoping she would shift her dependence onto him or because he knew if she let go of Mal then she would be able to control her power more and more power for Alina means more power for him to control. This was all very manipulative on his part and obviously not the actions of someone who cares about Alina’s feelings but at this point she wasn’t Alina to him she was the Sun Summoner, a tool to be used and he was thinking as a General who had people and a whole country to protect and if that meant putting the collar on this stranger then so be it. I think he set out to win her trust to make it easier for him to put that collar on her when the time came. But then as he got to know her more, started catching feelings for her and after their conversation in episode 5, I think he decided that maybe he wouldn’t need to use the collar after all. My theory is that he got her the flowers and he took her to the war room instead of the dinner because he was planning to tell her some of the truth. I don’t think he was going to tell her about who he really was and about him being the Fold’s creator but I do think its possible that he intended to tell her about the Stag and maybe even try to convince her about using the Fold as a weapon. So I think he just wanted to put her in as good a mood as he could if that makes sense, sweeten her up before he brought it up. Also telling her about the Stag means telling her about Mal. I think he actually felt a little threatened by Mal because having read their letters he knows how she feels about Mal. So he wants her attention as much on him as possible. I think he very much felt like his dream was slipping away. As for the make out on the war table moment, that could have also been an attempt to keep her sweet on him like the irises. But as I’ve said before Aleksander seems to lose all his senses when he’s with Alina. When he’s with her the only thing he’s focused on is her, and I personally think it was just a case of he really wanted to kiss her. Some of it might also have been to reassure himself that those feelings between them were real, especially now that Mal has shown up. I mean they are both so giddy and happy when they break apart for him to answer the door that I find it difficult to believe that the whole kiss was a cold manipulation, he was grinning like a school boy. My favourite kiss between them (as steamy as their make out session was) was actually the one where he comes back to kiss her one last time. This is right after he has learnt that she was the target of an attack that happened inside of his Palace, which is the one place where his people are supposed to be safe. I think in that moment he just needed to reassure himself that she is safe, you can see his desperation in the kiss. There was just something so soft and pure about it. If I am sure about anything is that one was definitely real, I may have small doubts about the other kisses but that one kiss was 100% true.   

Things only get worse for Aleksander in episode 6 when he realises that Alina is missing. I think how he behaves in this episode tells us alot about how he really feels about Alina. He becomes somewhat unhinged when she goes missing and only becomes more so the longer she is gone from him. His sole focus is on her and finding her, to the point where he kind of forgets about anything else as we see when Fedyor comes to report about Nina, The General has completely forgotten there were other missions and things he was dealing with. Later when he calls Zoya to tell her to prepare a team to track down ‘Alina’s abductors’ and she puts forward the suggestion that Alina ran by herself, he doesn’t even consider it a possibility. The idea that she would willingly leave him is just too hard for him to wrap his head around because as he says to Zoya he is sure he knows exactly how she feels. He is usually the composed, unfazed General but he very much snaps at this moment and I think reveals more than he intended to Zoya, who clearly looks surprised by his outburst. He even says himself with Alina gone he’s not himself, he’s feeling unbalanced and tense without her. So when Zoya offers to help him relax he tells her that he’ll relax when he has Alina. I think its important as well that he says Alina and not the Sun Summoner. It’s not the Sun Summoner he’s lost without its Alina. When he finally catches up with Kaz and is told that Alina fled on her own you can see how shocked he is at this.

 And even then he has trouble believing it because he once again asks where she is and its not until the line ‘It was pretty clear she wasn’t interested in being a captive any more’ that it begins to set in for him and you see his shadows creep in. After you can see the heartbreak set in and then the anger.

 This anger only grows when he learns that she is with Mal and that she is going after the Stag. I think he very much feels like everything has been snatched away from him in a blink of an eye. I think he is angry that he was blindsided by it and he’s angry that he let his feelings for her cloud his judgement and distract him from his plans. Because of his feelings for her he might now have ruined all his plans and, as he would see it, risked the safety of the Grisha in doing so. Naturally its back to plan A of forcing the collar on her, because no matter how he feels about her he can’t let that distract him from his mission to protect the Grisha again. 

However no matter how angry he is at her and how hurt is is that she ran from him, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about her. I see alot of arguments that he can’t have loved Alina because you can’t hurt someone you love like he did when he put the collar on her. But I’m calling BS on that one now because the people you love are the people who can hurt you the most, especially when they are hurt or angry. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t love you it just means they are human and make mistakes. However that doesn’t mean you should tolerate those mistakes or brush them under the rug, absolutely they should be called out for them and held accountable for them and I am really glad that Alina does do this. The Darkling's anger at her is what drives him to find her and to kill the stag himself so he can collar her and I think this anger builds up whilst he is away from her, again showing how unhinged he has become without her. But I feel like some of that anger ebbs away a bit when he does find her and once she is in front of him again. That moment when he finds her and the stag and Mal is hurt and he calls out to her that she can’t save them, that as powerful as she is she does not have the power to heal. He is obviously thinking back to Luda here. Because as powerful as he was he was not powerful enough to save her, in that moment he was utterly powerless to keep her from dying. I think despite how hurt he is he cares about her too much to watch her go through the same pain and grief he did which is why he offers to heal Mal if she gives him the Stag. The similarities between the two scenes (the one with Alina, mal and the Stag and the one with Aleksander, Luda and the king’s men) are clear and I think really have an effect on Aleksander. I think when he says that Mal was only protecting Miss Starkov there are two interesting points. One is the use of the term Miss Starkov. This is a name he mostly called her when they barely knew each other and I think he is trying to distance himself from her again by making things more formal between them. The other thing is that it draws a parallel between both Mal and Luda. Both Mal and Luda were just trying to protect the people they love and Aleksander clearly doesn’t think either one of them deserved to die for it so he lets Mal live. 

Another scene I want to talk about real quick is the one right before he puts the collar on her. This scene is eerily similar to when they first meet. Once again they are back in a tent. Once again the scene starts with the Darkling’s back to her and with Alina in the hands of a guard/s. I said before that I think alot of the reason why he decides to collar her is because she doesn’t share his views and he feels like he needs to control her so he can weaponize the fold and save his people. That he was angry at himself for believing she might be his equal and share his goals. I think this scene where he talks to her shows that. The fact that he lowers himself to her level I think shows that he does see her as an equal. Then he talks about how together they could end all wars and protect their own and asks isn’t that what she wants. I think he is still clinging to that belief that he wasn’t wrong and that they did want the same things and maybe some part of him was still hoping he might not need to use the collar. But then she asks if they are going to tear down the fold and you can see the disappointment on his face because he understands now that she won’t see it his way. So instead he deflects the question and I think this is the moment that cements his choice to collar her.  

Further evidence that he does still care about Alina comes when he puts the collar on her. This is obviously a very distressing and gruesome scene. What he is doing is obviously wrong and I think deep down he knows it too. He can’t bear to look at her as it happens and so her turns away and its the second time he does as he also looks away in guilt when he threatens Mal. I don’t think he can handle her looking at him like he’s a monster and he can’t cope with seeing the betrayal and hurt in her eyes. It is also worth noting that I think part of the reason why he goes through with putting the amplifier on her is like he said to Mal, he thinks that over the years she will come to forgive him. Now this conversation where he talks about how she might take years to forgive him but he had patience also tells us that the fact that he is hoping for forgiveness shows that he knows what he is doing to her is wrong, that it is something that will require forgiveness. When he comes to see her later in her tent, can we just talk for a moment how nice that tent was, I mean he really went all out for her with lace and flowers like he somehow thought that would make up for him fusing a antler into her collar bone, but again even the fact that he gives her all these nice things shows that he wants that forgiveness and the way he approaches her as well is cautiously, like you would a wounded animal. He knows he’s hurt her and made her angry so he comes in with sweet words of compliments, telling her how special she is, and very quickly comes to know that she’s not having any of it. I mean that look she gives him when he first comes in, if looks could kill he’d be six feet under now. But I really do think he did go to her just because he wanted to talk to her, despite his words to Mal about having the patience to wait however many years it will take for her to forgive him, he wants to fix things between them now. He doesn’t want her to be angry with him and he doesn’t want her to be in pain. He’s desperate to get back what they had in episode 5. Also I think its important that we remember that until that conversation with her in the tent he didn’t know that she had discovered who he really was, so when she ran he believed that she had ran because she wanted to be with Mal which I think contributed to his anger at her and his feeling of betrayal. He couldn’t understand why she would want to be with someone who he believes never appreciated who she really was and who is mortal and will eventually just be a blip in her very long lifetime, instead of being with him who is her equal and immortal like her. This is another occasion where I feel like he gets a bit of a reality check and realises that she didn’t run because of Mal, she ran because of his own lies. So all that anger he felt at her ‘betrayal’ was unjust. But then I think he feels a different sense of betrayal in how easily she believed Baghra. I mean looking at it from his point of view she didn’t come to him and ask for his side of the story or demand an explanation she just trusted Baghra and ran. He is clearly desperate to make her understand and you can see his composure begin to fail as he stands and tells her that everything he is ever done has been to make Grisha and Ravka safer. I really do think that line was true, he really does believe that what he’s doing is the right thing for his people and his country. You can feel his frustration and desperation continuing to build throughout the scene as he pretty much pleads with her to understand and can see that she doesn’t. I think the part that really hurts him though is when she says ‘we could have had this, all of it. You could have made me your equal, instead you made me this.’ This line is so powerful and I think its at this moment that he realises just how badly he has messed up. To be told that his actions are the reason why he hasn’t got her, the one thing he wants more than anything else in the world right now. Also the line of making her his equal I think would have hit him hard because he did see her as his equal and so I think he’s surprised that she believes that he didn’t make her his equal and then when she says ‘instead you made me this’ he realises that whilst he might have seen her as his equal he wasn’t treating her as one. His need for control made her a slave to him and I really think that in this moment he is realising that, I genuinely think this dumbass got so caught up in his own dream of what the two of them together could be that he didn’t realise that whilst he thought he was protecting her and helping her grow into this saviour for their people he was taking away her choices and he was making her feel like a captive, the dummy didn’t think to ask how she felt about any of it because he assumed he already knew, it was the same as what he wanted, to protect their country and people. So his anger when he says the line ‘fine make me your villain’ isn’t just directed at her but himself too. It’s not just his hurt and anger that she doesn’t understand his reasons and that she isn’t seeing it his way, it’s also because he knows it was his own actions that lead him to that moment when the woman he loves is standing in front of him and looking at him like he is a monster. He can’t go back and he can’t undo it and worse than that he can’t seem to get her to understand why he did it. I think he feels trapped and so the only thing he can be to her now is her villain. 

It’s after this conversation that his demeanour towards her changes and you can see that he sort of stops trying to win her over. He’s not as gentle with her, I mean he ties her to the deck of the skiff and answers mockingly when she points out it’s not a good look for him with the ambassadors. I did notice though that after that conversation he seems to have trouble looking at her. When they are walking to the skiff and he tells her that Mal is being held captive and will be released if she does her part, he isn’t looking at her but straight ahead and this is something he does alot when he is threatening Mal. The moment when he takes off her cloak he does glance down at her. I seen alot of debate about that scene, as it does come across as having a bit of sexual tension in it and some people thought it was a rather sexy scene whereas others pointed out that he was holding her captive and mocking her. Me personally I actually think its both. People talk about how it has to be one or the other. But yes in that scene he is holding her captive and that part’s not sexy but there is a moment where I feel like he still feels that draw to her. Before reaching up to undo her cloak it seems to me like a hesitates for a moment. When he goes to whisper in her ear that he doubts they’ll notice her feet and I think he feels that pull and that attraction to her and he is really close to her, I don’t think he’s been that close to her since the war room in episode 5. You can see him lean slightly towards her and I think he really is struggling with the desire he feels for her which is why he steps back with the cloak rather forcefully, like he's having to force himself away from her again. It kind of reminded me of the scene where she helped him into his Kefta. So no the situation itself is not sexy but I do still think there is tension in the scene because the attraction they feel for each other didn’t just disappear despite how hurt and angry they are at each other. It’s like their words are saying one thing but their body language is saying another. 

When they are in the Fold again at first The Darkling avoids looking at her particularly when he is forcing her to use her power to create the tunnel of light. His focus is on The Fold. Again I think this shows that he is determined to not let his feelings for her get in the way for his goals, yet he knows he is taking away her free will and her choice and that’s hurting her so he can’t really stand to look at her. Its the same when she asks to tear down the fold and he answers why would they destroy the best weapon they have. Again he doesn’t look at her when he says it because he knows that he deceived her by letting her believe that was what they were going to do and he doesn’t want to see the disappointment and betrayal in her eyes. Again this is something he does alot and look, I love The Darkling’s character, I do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise his flaws and for me I kind of saw him as a coward for this. I mean if you are going to deceive and manipulate a person and force them to do something you know they don’t want to do, then at least have the decency to look at them. He does however look at her when she tries to save Novokribirsk after he lets the fold consume it. He stops her and you can see the anger when he says they are traitors who tried to kill her and that this action was retribution. I think he hates the fact that she is trying to save the very people who tried to hurt her. But again he looks away from her when he sees the way she is looking at him and how horrified she is by what he has done. 

Their very last interaction is when she uses the dagger to cut the amplifier from his hand and shows him what she is and that she’s the one the stag chose. He sees this as her betraying their people which is interesting because at the end of the episode Alina says that Kirigan turned on his own people. So they both believe the other turned on their own people, the problem here is that I feel like Alina feels more loyalty towards the non Grisha Ravkans, she still sees them as more her people due to spending more time as just a ordinary mapmaker then as Grisha but the Darkling has more loyalty towards the Grisha. Its like how you know parents aren’t suppose to have a favourite child but we all know they do. Well I feel like the Ravkans are Alina’s favourite child and the Grisha are the Darkling’s. Of course they still care about the other but their ‘favourite’ is their priority if that makes sense. By the end of the season when we see the Darkling emerge from the fold I think he is feeling very angry and very betrayed by Alina, however I actually think the fact that she bested him has only made him look at her as even more of an equal than before. Not only is she someone who will stand up to him but now she has become someone who can match him. I do think he’s in this very complicated situation where he is on an opposite to the person he believes is essentially his soulmate. However as much as I think he does love her I still think he will put his people above her and so will continue to act in what he considers to be the best interests of his people. It also seems like he’s got some new powers and was able to create shadow soldiers which again is interesting because he basically just accomplished what he meant to do in the first place when he created the fold, he’s created his own army. 

Ok so that’s all for now to be honest I could talk about the Darkling forever but I think this is already long enough so if you have read all the way to the end thank you for your time. I am thinking of doing other character analysis posts so keep an eye for that if its something that interests you, I think I might do Alina next. I’ll also post my thoughts on the book once I’ve read it.        

[long-cosmos-overhead]

James Norrington x Reader

Prompt: I was thinking about this one for a while but if you're ever in the mood for writing PotC could you maybe do something with Barbossa or Norrington? Maybe something with a build up like a first kiss or the first time the character and the reader fight someone/something together by each other's side, and their coordination on the battlefield gets tested for the first time and perhaps it strengthens the connection or leads to taking certain measures like training/teaching how to use weapons and react under pressure

I’m going to split these into two parts this one is for Norrington the other will be for barbossa

(I do not own PoTC or its characters/ gif not mine)

Your hand gripped the hilt of the sword. If it were a warm sunny day the blade would’ve reflected the light back out into the vast port just like it did for the past few weeks. The sky was a dark grey possibly setting to rain making the atmosphere cold and dreary. The type of cold to get in your bones and latch on tight until the golden sun tore through the clouds again.

Your knuckles and fingertips turned a harsh red and your wrist ached from swinging the sword only to clash with his powerful defenses that returned in sending pain right up your wrist in swift pangs. You had concluded the moment James first swung at you, that you could never truly appreciate the extent of skill, concentration and pain it took to seem so effortlessly fluent in a field unless you yourself have tried to walk the same path with the same motive.

The more you attacked and defended from what would be fatal blows out on vast seas or faced with a man or woman with the intention to maim or kill, the more energy flowed out your body. You were drained. It felt like water passing from a stream downhill and into dry land most likely to never be seen again. You had improved since first starting you could barely lift a sword back then however your grip still faltered when you lost energy and your movements still became sloppy and delayed.

Your mind trailed away. A dangerous move much too dangerous. Once your mind and body was out of sync you had written your death sentence.

A kick to your legs dragged your mind back down. It was a harsh reminder that you had once again failed to meet your standards the reality knocked down the platform your stood on like a fire against wooden beams. You fell to the ground your sword clattering somewhere in the distance. Your hip instantly throbbed in pain, your wrist and elbow followed suit in acquainting themselves with the hard floor below you.

“Y/n!”

You hadn’t realised your face scrunched up in pain until you opened your eyes to meet the owner of the deep voice. James’ eyes wore worry like a new pair of shoes and his hand trailed inches away from your body before softly resting uncertainly on your cheek almost pleading you to react to his touch instead of pain.

“Y/n I am terribly sorry, I didn’t-”

Your words cut him off saving him an apology and you the salt being rubbed in the wound that you managed to be taken down by a kick to the legs.

“It’s fine James, I wasn’t paying attention, I’m at fault here.”

James picked you up from where you lay gently placing a hand round your arm and one under your waist. If anything standing up made it hurt a little more. Your eyes met James’ face, an almost unreadable expression settled on his features. Only a little readable emotion bled through. It read love however undertones of desperation and want. You weren’t sure what was going on and in all honesty you didn’t feel in the state of mind to be able to piece together such heavy emotions.

However you did pick up on how attractive he looked. Even fresh from a fight you couldn’t deny he was a beautiful man. The way the light caught his eyes and made them appear like the stars beaming in the dark. The way his facial features only seemed to compliment one another, the way he treated you as the most important and valued thing in his life. James Norrington was perfect to you.

James stared back at you and by all the grace of you gods he loved every part of you. The way your skin felt when it touched him, the way he could hold you, the way you made him feel safe and enough in such a plagued world. He was so proud of you. The way you picked up sword fighting the same way as his men once had despite the ridicule from ladies and hours of straining physical movements. James wanted you safe, as safe as you could be. He would always be there by your side to fight off evil but should the time come where he wasn’t he couldn’t even think of what he’d do without you.

His eyes wandered to your lips and it shook him at just how much he wanted to kiss you. To share all his love through such intimacy and feel your body against his and despite the looming cloud that stole all your energy and the dull throb in your side you wanted the exact same.

You two were entranced into a void where only each other existed, time slowed till the point where every little thing was almost slow motion and the intensity of the gases which you looked at each other were immeasurable. Your heart beat irregularly in your chest almost as if it were trying to meet James’ or to drag you closer and by all the power in the world you could not think to move away.

Nasty twangs of pain at your side bled into the void you and James got caught in. Your face suppressed the obvious uncomfortableness that seemed to follow blunt force injuries however as much as you tried James noticed. He had a thing for noticing things. He never let on that he observed far more than the average man or he picked up inconsistencies but you knew.

“Y/n if I may.”

He reached out a hand for you to take asking permission to touch you and lead you to your home. No matter how much you protested he must be tired, James always walked you home. He wanted to know you were safe and be able to share some sort of intimacy with you, to slip his fingers between yours and warm your cold hands.

It may not have seemed like much holding his hand but even the most simplistic touch from James was euphoric. Some days you walked down cobbled streets laughing, today James was pretty silent just focusing on you and on the way you walked with a slight limp to your step. James felt guilty, a growing guilt that thrived the more he looked at you. He shouldn’t have swiped your legs it was not only wrong in terms of fighting with honour - it was misconduct, it was cheating. However his mind wasn’t all too concerned with that. His priory, his true priority was that he had hurt you. He never loved anyone the way he loved you even if you hadn’t kissed yet but that was no way to treat you especially since he is supposed to make you feel safe.

You looked over at James. His strong features never failing to entrance you. You were more than disappointed when you reached your door. Your house was pale in comparison to James’ yet he never seemed to mind. Before you knew him you assumed he was wealthy, commanding and rather uptight however you discovered none of the sort. He was kind and ever so gentle uncaring if he was seen away from well kept and otherwise anything he wouldn’t be associated with. He’d even offered money for upkeeps or repairs yet still left it after you declined.

“I trust you will be safe here Y/n.”

“I will always be safe at my own door, James you need not worry.”

He took your hand in his lightly pressing his lips to your knuckles trying to ignore how cold and tense you seemed. However he failed to notice how your muscles relaxed under his touch and how your eyes almost sparkled from how it felt as if you had been flushed with serotonin.

The feeling ebbed away as quick as it came when he walked away. His long coat that wrapped around his shirt fluttering at the end from the wind. You didn’t like being away from him it felt as if a part of you left with him even if it were only for a few hours. You couldn’t let him just leave. The kiss to your hand was like a spoonful of magic but you wanted more. It seemed selfish but you’d never loved anyone the way you loved him.

“James.”

He turned round to met with your arms around his waist and your body against his chest. He felt happy. Much happier than he’d ever felt you in his hold felt right and for once he could look around the port and see something beautiful. His arms came around your body pressing you a little closer to him. James was warm much warmer than you expected yet he felt far warmer with you despite the cold taking claim to you. It was like the warmth spread across his whole body. He was utterly in love with you.

Neither of you wanted to pull away but eventually you did but this time even when the cold settled back in your body you felt comfortable. He made you dizzy on love.

“Goodnight Norrington.”

It took him a while to break from his lovesick trance.

“Goodnight Y/n.”

You lay in your bed, the soft sheets encasing you like battle armour braving the war against the cold. Yet it seemed like a losing battle your fingertips red and your breath releasing from your mouth as white whisps, the way you imagined a soul would part from its physical being. A shaky breath parted your lips as you rubbed your hands together in hope that the friction would spark some ounce of warmth. Faint drops of rain hammered in the distance, the first few drizzles making way for an inevitable harsher forecast and despite the rain making you feel that bit colder and worried for the wood of your house you felt calm.

You turned on your side. The rustling of sheets almost silenced by the downfall outside. The last pieces of warmth you owned were slowly leaving your body. However the only thing you could focus on was how it would feel to be in James’ embrace. You wished to lay in bed with him and instead of slow dancing with the bitter cold you would be embraced in his warmth. To be completely domestic in each other’s arms. James made you feel warm. A nice warm like bathing in the soft evening sunlight. Your lips tugged upwards slightly and your hands rubbed together once more to grasp the heat amoung the cold before the white whisps parted your lips and wrapped around the candles orange flame releasing darkness through your room.

You awoke with a hammering at your door. It was clearly not a sophisticated knock at the time you weren’t even sure it was a knock however it woke you up immediately. Light shone through the gaps in the wall illuminating strips of your skin. You heard the shouts of men and the screams of woman. Metal on metal rung in your ears until the silence of death were clear, dominating any other sound you could hear.

You shakily stood up, eyes still fixed on the same spot as earlier. You shifted on your feet slightly tripping on the uneven floorboards that was until you heard the distinct voices of the navy men.

“Groves, Mullroy man the east ports.”

James. Something about his voice hit something within you. All your nerves that froze you in fear dissipated. They weren’t replaced by rationality if anything blind need to help, not just James but every man, woman and child took the main stand.

The hilt of your sword gleamed in the dreary light beconing you deeper into your mind with its persuasive grip. The vision and need blurring its lines to rally your body to take the cold hilt of the blade into your hand.

You didn’t acknowledge how the cold metal gripped you back however rushing outside your house you felt bare to the world. You felt small like you were back in your mothers arms again. Men were fighting left and right, some laying on the floor clutching dyed clothing. Smashed glass and splintered wood covered any remaining road. In the distance you heard the fire of guns and cannons which, had they been any closer, would’ve reigned superior to your hearing.

Strangled shouts and chokes were no longer shielded by the walls that you lay in and for a minute it was already all too much. The thought of James and the ever present survival instincts kept you from cowardice and you took your first step into the heat of the fight.

James boot kicked against the chest of its opponent. Water bled through the thin shirt and for a split second he seemed dazed enough for James to get the upper hand. Yet his mind and body were travelling in different wave lengths, his body urging for defence as desperate as a drowning man but his mind was focused on you. James was practically pacing from worry. You were alone without him or anyone to watch your blind spot. Even your home was bordering on the ever expanding outskirts of the gruesome battle and he’d seen firsthand how vicious and merciless pirates were, if you got caught you would not be spared.

The blade swiped all too close to his eyes slicing a stay stand of hair parting it from the others. James sword clashed on the second offence and continued to create the devils music until the blade was wedged in the oppositions lower abdomen. Shock contorted to pain and for a moment his eyes cleared and it was just two men with complex lives staring at each other. It was perhaps the most cruel curse that only a step away from death were people remorseful. His eyes held the heaviest emotions until they glassed over with nothingness. His body fell limp and he stared without seeing. James tugged his arm removing the support on the body allowing the man to finally rest.

James’ head whipped around in every direction he was surrounded by chaos but he needed you, by his side or not he needed to know you were safe.

Your body ached worse than you’d ever felt previous. A gash at your side created a passage for blood to freely travel out of and you wished you stayed in the safety of your home. You were almost fully doubled over in pain and your hand pressed against the growing red stain on your white shirt. The pirate infront of you grinned baring his gold teeth you could smell the alcohol on his breath and his movements read tipsy yet experienced with the blade. You knew the final hit was coming.

You surged any bit of energy that still remained within you to block the attack. Both swords clashing together sending ugly throbbing pains through your hand and wrist, they faired far worse than the ones while training. You barely saw the confusion on the pirates face, he was a rather big and muscular man easily outmatching you. You swiped your foot hitting the back of his knee sending him to the floor where your blade struck true.

You couldn’t tell how long or far you’d been walking through the carnage. Puddles rippled and quaked beneath your foot. Your sword gripped in your hand, the hilt somewhat warmed however still plagued with a different kind of a cold. Your wound had since clotted somewhat just not enough to offer taking away the need for medical care. Your hand had been placed at your side so long it too was beginning to cramp and lose its abilities. Fights were ugly affairs and you just wanted James.

James had been searching for you for longer than his liking. His stress and worry grew each passing second he traced the port unable to find you. Tears sprung to his eyes, he was overwhelmed sometimes the love he held for you overwhelmed him. Being faced with a hideous reality of losing you without even sharing a kiss coupled with the ever growing pit of fear and frustration never ceased to tip him closer and closer into the dangerous territories of his mind.

James blinked back the moisture in his eyes forming a warm uncomfortable gloss over his waterline. His chances of holding you once more grew thinner and thinner thoughout the fight and if it were a physical concept he may as well be walking on string. Pirates swung at him left and right most clearly tipsy and some outright drunk which lessened the danger equipped to them. They had since taken their retreat leaving devastation upon the port but leaving immeasurable torment within James.

“James.”

Your breath was strained, the rise and fall of your chest tortured your side. Your body bent at such an angle it seemed as if you had been sliced in two but you found him you finally had him.

He was disheveled, his hair fallen out of place to hang loosely infront of his eyes, clothes wet and sticking to his body at odd angles creating little shadows patterning his chest, his body was tired and his eyes still searching for the comfort of finding a lost thing so close to your heart. But he was beautiful.

The second the words parted your lips James turned around glossy eyed and mouth slightly parted. He felt his body lose hidden tension he didn’t realise he held onto. His demeanour shifted from relieved to grief stricken once his eyes laid on the red of your shirt. After the red pattern revealed itself to his eyes, the rest followed; the way your body shook in the bitter cold, how the tiredness trickled from your skin, how pleading you seemed to be relieved from such a horrific ordeal.

James couldn’t even acknowledge himself gravitating towards you until you were in his arms. He too shook however out of pure fear for your condition.

“My love, oh god.”

His words were jumbled as his hand ghosted over the wound at your side unsure to touch you or not. His mind too scared and filled with adrenaline to think logically.

“Y/n-,”

His words died in his throat when he felt you launch yourself into his embrace. His chest sparked like a flame kissing wood and fuel was generously added when you buried yourself deeper into his warmth. He had you in his arms right where he yearned for you to be.

“James,”

Your voice came out weaker than you anticipated and tears gathered in your eyes.

“I went out for you.”

James felt his heart fill with pure love. You had trained before but going to battle among pirates was an entire new level. He knew then as he stood with you in his arms that you were his keeper.

His hand gently traced the outskirts of your wound, it had almost entirely clotted itself up now, giving James some peace of mind however he still dare not touch you to cause more harm.

“Does- does it hurt, my love.”

His fingers traced around your skin sending electric through your body despite having barely grazed it.

“A little but I would suffer a thousand times if it meant I could come back to you.”

James couldn’t resist himself any longer your words touched something so deep within him breaking down the wall that restrained him from you. His hand came to slide around your lower back and the other around the back of your shoulders perfectly avoiding anything that could cause you pain. He tugged you towards him, his grip so tight and protective yet gentle and considerate. His lips connected with yours and if you could describe how you felt it would be as if all the warmth and love in the world channeled through your body at once. It was a simple kiss nothing alluding but full of passion and love, the ultimate outlet for all the events that took place a short time ago.

When the two of you parted you were left dizzy searching for air get already addicted to the feeling you had felt in such sheer quality.

“Come back with me,” he almost pleaded. “I want to keep you safe at least for tonight.”

You responded by leaning further into him your mind and body were exhausted yet somewhere in the back of your mind there was an urge. James saved your life, if it weren’t for his countless hours spent teaching you defence and offense and his constant patience you would surely have not survived.

“James, thank you,”

He looked down a slight bit confused for a moment.

“If it weren’t for you I’d surely be dead.”

“I’d spend the rest of my life teaching you if it meant you were safe.”

@lau-rae-lei

[trisshawkeye]

I'm a little hesitant to weigh in on the discourse going around, since I can't speak to the Chinese LGBTQ+ experience, but what I can speak to is one of the reasons why a queer person might find the nature of the sex scenes in MDZS, and in particular the extras, interesting and relatable to their experience as a queer person.

First off I want to stress that YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ THE MDZS EXTRAS. In fact, if you think they might be triggering or upsetting to you, or just not your cup of tea, then just don't read them. You don't need to read them to enjoy everything else MDZS has to offer. Indeed, if any of the following would wig you out—slightly dub-con kissing, misunderstandings around a sexual encounter due to each party thinking the other didn't want it in the same way they did, an inexperienced couple figuring out what they like and finding out that includes mild consent-play—then maybe you might want to skip the scenes in the main novel too. It's okay to have preferences and for those preferences to not include that. If you don't want to read those sections, then I'm not gonna judge you, don't read them. There is plenty else to enjoy. Look after yourself first!

Okay, with that out the way, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about shame and sexual fantasy.

While not written to this particular audience at all, Lan Wangji is a painfully relatable character for a certain type of gifted queer kid growing up in conservative Evangelical Christian spaces. The combination of having a strict, rule-based moral code one is expected to follow, and being held up as a well-behaved, good example to others from a young age, both in terms of pseudo-academic achievement and in terms of following of said moral code, and then finding yourself and your worldview becoming increasingly incompatible with the code you are trying to live by, is one that really fucks you up. Lan Wangji is a character laser-targeted at my own set up of hang-ups and neuroses, oh boy. I love him so much and want him to be happy.

And to be fair, that's not to say the Gusu Lan sect rules are bad per se, and characters such as Lan Xichen show that it is possible to have a different relationship with them such that they inform your behaviour but still allow for flexibility and compromise. But Lan Wangji definitely strikes me as someone who took rule-following deep into his own sense of identity, and that gets very messy for him when he starts questioning how to handle moral quandaries that the rules can't easily address by themselves, or finds himself trying to follow them in a way that conflicts with how the rest of his sect are doing so.

So when this kind of strict moral purity forms a big part of your identity, and then you suddenly get attracted to someone 'inappropriate' (or indeed, anyone at all as a horny teenager who’s supposed to behave themselves), your new and growing sense of desire runs smack bang into your existential need to be someone who is Good(TM), who follows the rules, who wouldn't in their right mind to anything that contradicts them. You can't just dream soft dreams about sneaking away to kiss your crush and you both enjoying it, because even that is shameful, it's wrong, it flies in the face of everything you're supposed to be and you'd never do that. And so one way for your mind to get around this is for your fantasies to take a darker turn, to imagine that you were pushed beyond all reasonable human limits, that you lost all control, that you were drugged or manipulated, that the other person took advantage of you or somehow provoked you into assaulting them, and that way you can sort of excuse yourself, you can imagine yourself in that situation because at least then it wasn't really your fault, you can kind of keep your internal sense of identity consistent. But now you've imagined you're in that situation and you have that 'excuse', you have a kind of free rein to act out the things you want to do and it doesn't really 'count'. And all the while you're entirely aware that this is a fucked up fantasy, that it would be unforgivable if you did such a thing or such a thing was done to you in real life, and now you're worried that even imagining such a thing is a failure of your moral character, and it builds into a destructive cycle of shame and self-loathing, and it's just a real mess all round. 

Now, I think this is something that Lan Wangji worked through and came out the other side of, and he was no longer ashamed of his desire for Wei Wuxian by the time he came back in the body of Mo Xuanyu (and probably even by the time of the first siege of the Burial Mounds, though it was far too late at that point). But for a sixteen-year-old Lan Wangji to have these violent fantasies about being provoked into raping Wei Wuxian because that was the only way he could imagine himself in a situation in which he could express that desire? And then later in life finding out that consent-play holds some appeal? Yeah, I can see that, I can relate to it.

And so in the incense burner chapter? When it becomes clear they're visiting one of Lan Wangji's teenage fantasies, especially right after the adorably domestic scene that is Wei Wuxian's dream, he is absolutely embarrassed by it, he's mortified—it's obvious he still considers it to be shameful and would honestly rather Wei Wuxian didn't see this side of himself so clearly, although he loves and trusts Wei Wuxian enough not to hide it from him when he says wants to stay. And then, when Wei Wuxian sees where it's going, and finds it hilarious and honestly kinda hot, knowing that it is just a fantasy, and one that meshes well with his own consensual-non-consent kinks to boot, you know what? It's a relief! It's an honest-to-goodness relief and entirely delightful to me that he turns around and basically says, hey, it's okay, this doesn't make you a bad person, you don't have to be ashamed of this, I love you, I'm enjoying this too, I want to see where this goes, let's have sex! 

Because none of this does make Lan Wangji a bad person—none of these fantasies were acted upon except for one intensely-regretted kiss (and then only really regretted on his own part), and then later in the context of entirely consensual, mutually enjoyable sex as adults between him and Wei Wuxian. And being able to revisit those fantasies and take away the shame he's associated with them all this time is probably pretty healing for him! 

Like I said at the start, you don't have to read these chapters. They were not written for you personally, and you are not the target audience for them. If you're going to be at all distressed by the content then I actively encourage you not to read them, it would be a form of emotional self-harm to do so. It's not like you're missing out on anything important (or even very well-written, if I'm being honest, particularly once it's gone through the mangle of a translation that I don't personally think handles the nuances of the smut scenes very well, from what I can gather from various pieces of discussion about it). It's totally fine if you find these kinks unpleasant and don't want to touch them with a barge pole! But that doesn't make having or writing or enjoying these kinks or fantasies somehow morally wrong—it's not shameful, it's not homophobic, and please, please stop accusing the author or fans of being so just because you don't personally like it. Because you’re just reinforcing the shame-based, purity-based thinking that screws so many of us up in the first place.

(Aside: I’m not saying this is necessarily the correct way to interpret Lan Wangji’s character and motivations with respect to these scenes, since I too am a Westerner coming at all this material through the veil of translation and with very little understanding of its surrounding literary context—I’m more describing how, from my own experience as a young repressed religious queer, I found myself vibing a lot with this character and his relationship with sexual desire.)

[akatsuki-shin]

Review: 默读 Mò Dú (Silent Reading)

Notes:

(Very) long post ahead

Contains spoiler

This is my personal review and does not represent the entire audience, you are free to agree or not agree with what I’ve written here

Feel free to reply/send me a message if there are things you want to discuss

Using the Donghua poster because it fits the overall story more than the Audio Drama cover. :'))

Summary:

Yan City is a bright, bustling metropolis filled with all sorts of wonders, all sorts of people. From the richest occupying the city's most prestigious residential areas to the poorest huddling together in rundown slums, from the most fortunate blessed with a life of comfort to the wretched deemed to struggle until their last breath, from the virtuous walking in the path of light to the wicked lurking under the cover of darkness.

There is as much good as there is evil, and days gone by, people coming and going along with the passage of time.

Since their first meeting during a certain case seven years ago, Captain of the City Bureau's Crime Investigation Unit Luo Wenzhou thought he would never see eye to eye with Fei Du, son of a well-known conglomerate who inherited his father's position and wealth after the latter fell into comatose due to a near-fatal accident three years ago.

Words as sharp as knives dyed their bitter exchanges, even their personality was like the heaven and earth; the bold, blunt, and straightforward Luo Wenzhou - and the astute, secretive Fei Du, with his beautiful peach blossom eyes and a smile that is not quite a smile seducing countless people, his very presence seems as if it was covered under layers and layers of deceit.

Every single time they meet, they would always part on bad terms. Yet Luo Wenzhou would never have thought that a seemingly ordinary murder case of an ordinary deliveryman would lead him into the mystery of multiple long forgotten unsolved cases, turning over the Yan City and the City Bureau itself upside down, making him question his faith to those he respected and trust - and along with it, opening a door to the truth of Fei Du's past never once known to others.

STORY: 9/10

At first glance, the overall plot of Silent Reading seems neither extravagant nor exceptional. It's just one of those police drama where the main leads had to wrestle in a battle of wits with the villains looming around them, struggling to outsmart each other and eventually, bringing justice to those who deserve it.

But that is exactly what is so good about it. Silent reading could take all of those cliche and packed them into one nerve-wrecking, enticing journey from start to finish, complete with both intense and amusing interactions, and just the right amount of romance that does not disturb the flow of the main story.

And it actually does have its own uniqueness.

In most police dramas I've ever seen, the enemy is usually either a corrupt high-ranking official committing some hideous criminal acts by abusing their authority, or an individual/group with some very extreme values or obsession. Silent Reading, however, have both of those two most general types of villains in the story and what's more? It pits them against each other, pulling around and forcing the main leads to wreck their brains, slowly unravel the tangled mess until the truth finally comes to light.

The action and suspense, the atmosphere, the analysis, everything was almost impeccable to the point of perfection.

I have to especially give my kudos to how the author (Priest) structured the mystery in such a way, connecting one dots to the other from beginning to end. During the first few cases, I thought the resolution of the case didn't feel very solid, as if there are still some details that have yet to be properly elaborated. Yet halfway through, I realize that there is actually a bigger plot that encompass everything, tying all loose ends together.

And here, I would also like to highlight my two most favorite scene.

The first one is in Chapter 114-115 when Luo Wenzhou finally peeled of Fei Du's defense and for the first time exposed his true feelings, making Fei Du faced and spoke what he truly felt for Luo Wenzhou - that he really, actually did care for him. Their entire interactions and development up to this scene fits so well with these two main characters. There was no nonsense, no sappy crying and needless drama. Luo Wenzhou was as blunt as he was desperate and Fei Du, for once, admitted to the truth straight out with his own mouth.

The second one is in Chapter 157. In this case, one of Fei Du's most trusted men and an extremely important witness (that would later become their ally) were being chased and surrounded by thugs hired by their enemy. At this point of the story, the City Bureau was already in turmoil. Luo Wenzhou was suspended, nobody knows who they could or could not trust. Yet still, his subordinates all set out swiftly under his command and followed him to save the two witnesses, appearing at the most critical time.

It was actually a typical scene that exist in many police action drama, but given the development of the story, the well-built character relationship and interactions, I think it is Luo Wenzhou's coolest scene in the entire story and it makes me admire him a lot as the main lead and a leader figure.

One thing that does not quite sit well with me is Fan Siyuan's obsessiveness towards the late Gu Zhao. His motive for the crime was clear and I understand that he was using Gu Zhao's case as an example of injustice. But his extreme emotions whenever Gu Zhao was mentioned seems strange, even baseless. It makes me think whether he considers Gu Zhao as his own family or he was maybe madly in love with Gu Zhao, whereas in the entire story, unless I'm missing something, I have only ever known that Gu Zhao was Fan Siyuan's student - nothing more, nothing less.

CHARACTERS: 9/10

Silent Reading has a balanced, yet still very much appealing casts, from the major characters to the minor ones. Even the suspects and witnesses each had their own distinguishing features that didn't make them look like they were just there as canon fodders.

The composition of Luo Wenzhou's team itself is ideal; they've got the dependable leader, the smart advisor, the best friend and trustworthy right-hand man, the genius nerd, and the dependable aide.

I especially like Tao Ran (and I think most readers would agree with me). While he looks like the typical good guy type, he really, truly is a very good person. It's hard not to find him lovable. His relationship with Chang Ning was as cliche as it could get, but hey, as long as he's happy. Dude deserve it after everything he's done.

As for the two main leads, they are probably one of the most interesting couple I've found in the past few years.

Individually, Luo Wenzhou is the type of character I always like. He is confident to the point of having a narcissistic streak, but all of those are based on real talents and experiences. He speaks bluntly, but he cares for others through his action. He does not sugarcoat things and speaks the truth for what it is. Everything about him simply screams "reliable" as a leader (and a significant other to a certain someone). He deserves all of the respect and loyalty his subordinates gave to him.

Fei Du at first looks like a complex character whose real self is hidden beneath countless coats of pretense, but at the core, he is just a pitiful young man who does not know how to value himself, does not know how to love and be loved due to the abuse he suffered during childhood in the hands of his sadistic father. Despite his composure, his intelligence, his capability, he is almost like a lost little child, wandering in the darkness, going wherever the flow would take him until Luo Wenzhou pulled him out of that abyss. It is nothing less than commendable that he could restrain himself from succumbing into his father's manipulation, even if he has to correct himself through such extreme means for a long time.

And I'm glad that now he has someone who gives him the love he has long since been bereft of.

With Luo Wenzhou, Fei Du finally has a color in his life, someone to make happy memories with, and someone who genuinely love him for who he is. Likewise, with Fei Du, not only Luo Wenzhou got someone he could genuinely care for, he also finally has a place where he could relax, taking off the strong front he'd been putting before others all day long.

It was just so fulfilling to see two characters growing from "cat and dog" into inseparable lovers. They weren't sickeningly sweet, but just two people who are content with each other and would be each other's strength. I was especially happy when I saw how Fei Du changed his phone's ring tone into the one Luo Wenzhou in the extra chapter.

Now that I've finished reading this story, these two straight up went to the top of my all-time most favorite pairing list. But of course, this is just a personal opinion. Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du simply hits all of my favorite tropes, that's why. 😂

If I really have to point out one mini flaw, I suppose it's that the main villains aren't as appealing as the rest of the casts. They were practically overshadowed, even by some minor characters that only appeared for a short while.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS: 9/10

Just some very minor complaints:

1). When the story first introduced Fei Du in the beginning, it felt kind of abrupt. The narration had only been addressing him with his physical appearance, but suddenly they changed it into "Fei Du" with barely any proper start.

2). The international conference in Yan City (Chapter 2) was supposed to be a background information of the general setting of the first case, yet it was not properly mentioned at the start - rather, one sort paragraph about said conference was simply being slipped in the middle just for the sake to be there.

3). The switching of scenes between characters in the 3rd person POV are sometimes too quick with no signs of incoming transitions beforehand like taking shortcuts.

And by that, I mean that other than those three issues above, everything else was nothing less than perfect.

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

A realistic story with perfectly balanced action, mystery, suspense, and romance - with a dash of comedy sprinkled at the right time and place.

Reading the novel from start to finish was nothing less than enjoyable. Whenever there needed to be a flashback or explanation, it didn't feel like info dump being thrown in all of a sudden.

I would like to point out a bit about the Zhou Conglomerate Case in Book 3.

Personally speaking, I think this is the most realistic case out of the others, and by that, I don't mean the crazy rich family drama.

The other cases in the books are something that to me feels "faraway"; murders, child trafficking, psychopath, organized criminal gangs. Yet in Book 3, due to the nature of the case, it was posted publicly for all to see, and damn if it didn't bring out the most annoying thing I actually hate in real life.

Clout-chasing media, meddlesome netizens commenting without thinking on the Internet, spreading personal information of the involved individuals without consent, handing down judgment based on rumors and personal opinions even if they have nothing to do with it (and know nothing about it), crashing the website due to mere curiosity, further hindering the police working on the case from doing their job.

They weren't thinking about those actually involved in the case, especially the victim. They don't care, or maybe don't even think that their meddlesome acts could cost a human's life because they see everything as mere passing entertainment. And if something were to happen because of their meddling, the most they would say is, of course, as quoted from Chapter 72:

"I didn't do it on purpose"

"I wasn't doing it to you"

"I didn't expect this to be the outcome"

"From a certain point of view, I'm a victim, too"

Even if I was just reading a fiction, at that moment I truly wished I could shut down the Internet for a bit. 😂

Anyway, amazing story. I might re-read everything from the start again when I have some free time.

[mcudarklibrary]

Author Q&A: searchforanotherway

🖤 The MCU Dark Library encourages everyone to reblog and share the wonderful talents of this community, no matter how big or small your following is. Supporting each other is key to ensuring the longevity of this community. 🖤

Please be sure to reblog and share with your followers.

Tell us who you are!

@searchforanotherway​

How long have you been writing fanfics? If the MCU wasn’t your first fandom, what was?

I published my first fanfic on FFN in 2015 for Naruto and RWBY. From there, I discovered a community of Overwatch writers on Tumblr by 2018 and began writing fanfic for Overwatch until I got into the marvel and started writing Avengers fanfic in 2019.

What helps motivate you to write? Where do you find inspiration?

If I am procrastinating and looking for motivation, usually I will go back and re-read some of my works to get the gears in my head thinking about future scenes and plot. I like to think of myself as a maladaptive daydreamer and visualize my story to help organize the plot. I also try to re-read some of my favorites from other writers as good inspiration to remind myself of the type of dark!fic and writing style I'm hoping to achieve. 

If you could give new writers any advice, what would it be?

Read from your favorite fanfic authors and ANALYZE their work. I don't mean to say "be critical", but notice the things they do right! Or in better terms, notice the things you like about their writing. Some writers are talented at exposition or narration, detailed descriptions, setting the tone (especially for dark!fics) in their writing, paragraph formatting and grammar; understand all the writers that inspire you and adopt parts of their writing style that you like from all of them to help improve your own writing and create a unique style that you can appreciate.

The last advice I will give is a classic saying that I think all writers are well familiar with: "show, don't tell". It's something I'm still trying to get better at myself, but I do think that writing descriptively helps! And trying to balance that with some exposition and narration can make the difference in the pacing of your fic. There's a lot of resources online, so I suggest checking it out if your still confused! The internet is always available to help you with writing!

What is your favourite dark trope and/or kink? Why?

As much as I wouldn't mind listing off every trope and kink I love, I think I can sum them all up as any trope or kink that has disturbing intimacy. So breeding kinks and A/B/O's are a yes! Not so much other things like gun/knife kinks. Along that, any type of yandere trope that shows some sort of one-sided affection to the subject of said affections. 

Share a few lines/paragraphs of one of your stories that truly sums up your style. Don’t forget to share a link to the story!

I will leave a lengthy snippet below from my Overwatch story, 'Hime'. It's currently still in progress and available to read on AO3. (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539803/chapters/43942510)

- - - - -

“Don’t take me away from him! I’m not leaving!”

But no amount of strength you had could help you as Hanzo finally ripped you away from Genji.

“No! Nooo!” You beat your fists over the Shimada lord, but they did nothing while Hanzo quickly lifted you into his arms, carrying you like the bride you were supposed to be, walking the two of you away from the crowd.

You turned over to face them again, yelling louder, “Please! Someone save my husband, please!” You cried even harder watching all the shocked expressions from everyone. They all roamed closer to Genji’s dying body, but none of them made a move to help him.

You reached out for your love, and countless more tears washed down your face, but when the gates to the palace suddenly came into your vision, closing itself from the city, did you turn to Hanzo.

“Brother! W-where are you taking me?” Hanzo didn’t respond but instead continued to walk through the compound and up the stairs that led to the Shimada’s home. You struggled out of his grip, but Hanzo’s grasp was firm and unyielding. You cried out in pain when his hands held your body even tighter to his hot chest. The doors into the home opening as he led both of you inside. You continued to cry until he eventually led you to his room.

Hanzo released you then, placing you down on your feet only for you to try and bolt away from him a few seconds later. Hanzo quickly grabbed you by your forearm before you even reached the door, and pulled you further back into the room.

“Hanzo stop!” You yanked your arm, but he did not let go. “Stop Hanzo! Why are you doing this? Please! Genji is your brother! I am your sist—”

You couldn’t finish when Hanzo turned to you, more furious than you have ever seen a man before. “You are not my sister! You are my wife! And I will consummate this marriage tonight!”

What did he say?

His wife?... Consummate?

You screamed.

Is there a dark trait you like to interweave into your dark characters? Is there something in particular that draws you to this characteristic?

I enjoy dark!characters that have yandere and delusional characteristics, and I like to sum up the reason why as my intense fear and guilt to be in an actual irl relationship to which I use fanfics to create characters that would love the reader and be with her against her consent.

Which story did you struggle to complete? The one that made you drag your feet to finish.

I consider my story, 'Hunger' to be the most struggling to write. I initially wrote that just to let out my sexual frustrations, but a lot of feedback has been about the plot... That I've barely made outside of a few important events. With that, there's been some pressure to speed up the pacing. Also, fun fact: 'Hunger' was originally supposed to be an Overwatch fanfic.

Do you have a mutual who will hold your hand and support you when you’re doubting yourself? Do you have one who will truthfully and honestly help you grow as a writer?

@americasass81​ has been there for me a lot when I've been at my worst doubting myself, and the sweetest part about it was that she reached out to me on her own accord usually after I post a rant. She is incredible and literally carrying this community on her back--we don't deserve her. 

As for who helped me grow as a writer, I definitely confided with @darkdrabblings​ back when I first got into Overwatch fanfiction. We would throw each other headcanon ideas and all that, and she really did support me a lot. Since then, I don't really have a lot of conversations about my writing with other people.

Do you have a story that contains personal or important details from an experience that is your own?

My first story that I wrote on FFN, 'Nothing More, Nothing Less', was written when I was severely depressed, with a female protagonist that reflected me and my life. 'A Thousand Suns' is another one in which the protagonist's background would be similar to my own. 

Check out @searchforanotherway​ masterlist here

🖤Please reblog and help promote and support dark content creators 🖤

[demonologist-in-denim]

Okay, let’s get into this, because I have put off talking about Crowley’s cut monologue from 12x23 for long enough. If you haven’t already, you can read it here, or in this great gifset.

I absolutely see why this was cut. And I’m only acknowledging it here to talk about why I not only think it doesn’t add anything to Crowley’s story or our understanding of him, but how it actually detracts from it. After that, I intend to ignore it and let it fade away into the ether of the spn fandom. That being said, deleted scenes and cut scripts live in a sort of canonical limbo – you can choose for yourself whether to accept them as canon, consider them glimpses from some alternative universe, or do away with them entirely. I’m choosing the latter in this instance.

(This was meant to be a post, but it turned into an essay.)

Whomever wrote this was either unfamiliar with Crowley as a character, or was intentionally twisting the character in such a way as to fit into the convenient narrative that removed him from the show. Blame it on Chuck in text, blame it on the showrunners outside of text, whatever your preference – this doesn’t read like Crowley.

There are very few parts of this monologue that felt in character, that read like something Crowley would say. Not just in the tone or the choice of words, but the openness of it. And that’s coming from someone who writes reformed and/or human Crowley, with his admittance to remorse and shame and love. In this cut script, he is uncharacteristically vulnerable, sharing self-reflections he would never have shared aloud at this point in his character development. His dialogue lacks the layers of meaning or deflection that Crowley would normally employ, that he employed everywhere else in the show, even when being emotionally vulnerable.

That’s not to say that Crowley didn’t think or feel these things – I will argue to the end of my days (in spn fandom) that after the cure, Crowley hated himself. He hated that he was alone and unloved. Some part of that was due to being a demon and the horrible, evil, messy things he’d done, and some of it he believed was due to his inherent lack of worth. And I think this monologue was written in part to have Crowley make that final confession out loud. Final because, if that’s the case and he’s willing to admit it – to his former enemies and now the only people he really has in his life – his story can only take one of two directions: redemption or death. Embrace the desire for change and move forward as a reformed demon and full Winchester ally, or dramatically (and unnecessarily) sacrifice himself.

And there is a way to write that, but with Crowley properly in character and with the emotional complexity we know him to possess, not this blatant declaration. Maybe the line would have worked depending on how Mark Sheppard played it, and it only falls so flat because it’s just a script – I’m willing to allow for that. But this moment, facing down the boys after letting Lucifer loose, in front of an audience of Mary Winchester that he doesn’t know well and isn’t comfortable with, it doesn’t feel like a moment for Crowley to be this open, this vulnerable, about something so personal and so monumental.

I’ve no doubt that Crowley expected the Winchesters would one day kill him, “for good this time.” He was a demon working alongside a pair of hunters; there was always going to be that risk. Crowley was intelligent, one of the smartest characters on the show. He had to know that was how things would play out – either that, or he would die on their behalf, or because of their actions, even if he had ended up leaving Hell and joining Team Free Will. That was what happened to people around the Winchesters. Crowley warned Kevin of that himself. “They use people up, and leave them to die bloody.” Crowley knew. And as he internalized more and more of his blood-born conscience, Crowley had to believe on some level that he deserved it, especially if he hated himself and what he’d done.

But once again, if Crowley was going to say something like that, that’s not how he’d say it. It would be as a dismissive aside, or a knife in Dean’s gut in a moment of intense emotion between the two of them, or as a rebuke that the Winchesters badly deserved. Or better yet, as something remarked between himself and Cas, who Crowley likely suspected would outlast him but also ultimately die in service of the Winchester cause. Words like those have power. And it’s unlike Crowley to lay them down in supplication like this. It doesn’t even feel like a heart-felt confession, like his monologue in 8x23. It reads like someone wrote what was meant to be under Crowley’s words, the intention behind his dialogue, the much-exalted subtext, but failed to add all the layers on top of it, to put it in actual character.

I’m just going to bundle the whole beginning of the monologue together and toss it out entirely. Firstly because I’ve argued more than once that Crowley is an unreliable narrator when it comes to his human life. What we know of it from Rowena comes with an agenda, and what we know of it from Gavin comes from a man who had a difficult relationship with his father. It’s about as reliable as young Dean telling stories to Sammy about their parents’ time together. And there’s canonical errors in this monologue to back that up – we know Crowley wasn’t buried in a pauper’s grave, because we saw it 6x04. The “dying in a puddle of his own sick” is a great detail in terms of storytelling, but it’s almost directly repeated from Rowena, who said it as a belittling comment to a young Fergus. It’s too forced. And we know at least Gavin came to the funeral, because he tells us so in a deleted scene in 12x13 (remember what I said about getting to pick and choose when it comes to cut scripts and deleted scenes?).

But more importantly – and this is the part that really grates – Crowley’s iteration of his human life reinforces the narrative of absolute morality in the spn universe. It supports the argument that if a character becomes a demon, it must be because they were a terrible person. There is no room for human flaws, for characters to have made mistakes – and that doesn’t just hinder characters in terms of backstory, but in character development and emotional growth moving forward. It’s a stance spn takes more than once, and especially with non-human characters, though never in regards to the Winchesters. The Winchesters can become soulless or demons, but they were “always good” before that, so they are deserving of redemption. If Crowley or other non-humans were “always bad,” that absolves the Winchesters from seeing them as people deserving of help, or of their ability to change, or even to be seen as beings deserving of any level of respect or agency. And it absolves the showrunners from writing a character capable of development, of being able to grow beyond their previous flaws.

That’s not to say that Fergus MacLeod wasn’t some or all of those things. But if he was a complex character – if he was a person, as all stories should aim to present their characters – then he was all of that and more, just as the Winchesters are their virtues and their faults all wrapped up in an individual person. And if Crowley had brought this up some other time, in reference to his human life, none of this discussion would be necessary. It would be easy to say: he’s an unreliable narrator, and this provides us with insight into how Crowley feels about himself, and it would be interesting and valuable. But here, it’s used in justification for Crowley’s status as irredeemable – which is not true – and as part of justification for what happens next.

Crowley’s death was written by the showrunners as an excuse to remove him from the show – attribute that to budget costs for the show, or running out of story ideas for Crowley, or creative laziness, whatever you want. And within spn, it can be attributed to Chuck not wanting another character like Cas muddling up his Winchester Brothersᵀᴹ grand narrative. I’ve written before both in posts and in fic about how Crowley’s character-central instinct for self-preservation crumbles into depression after losing Hell and the seemingly-irreversible depletion of his and Dean’s friendship in 12x23. And that this ushers in a desire to End in such a way that achieves revenge against Lucifer (not a significant motivation, in my opinion, you’ve got to outlive your enemies to win against them), earns him the appreciation of the Winchesters, saves the world (proving his capacity for good), and brings about an end to his waiting. Glory through death, redemption in death – tropes that are hard to associate with Crowley unless you buy into his character’s devolvement in the latter half of season 12, but which the writers do their best to smooth into place and the fandom was forced to choke down.

And I won’t argue that Crowley didn’t wanted an end to his waiting – I’d argue the opposite in fact. This blatant preference for suicide, however, is antithesis to everything Crowley. What Crowley wanted in that End wasn’t an end of himself, but an end to existing in a state of perpetual limbo. Be accepted by the good guys, embrace his more human aspects, or return to the full dark depravity of demonkind. An end to the emotional rollercoaster, to continuous and destructive self-doubt, to striving to be both the king Hell needed and the ally the Winchesters refused to admit they benefited from having. That’s entirely different than wanting to end himself. As much as Crowley hated himself, he would never have considered death to be a preferable option – not unless some outside force, be it Chuck or the spn showrunners, decided otherwise for him.

Even if that had been the case, and I am wrong about Crowley’s characterization and his motivations, I still do not think he would have been as open about that motivation as is written in this cut script. It is just not like him. It is too vulnerable, too self-pitying. Crowley was always concerned about the others around him, and especially the Winchesters, thinking less of him. He never would have said something like this to them, not as this is written. Nor would Crowley have gone to the Winchesters with the intention of them killing him. He might have known it was a possibility, once he confessed his actions, (and from his perspective, there was the chance the Winchesters didn’t know of his involvement in Lucifer’s escape anyway), but it would never have been his intention. It’s not unknown for Crowley to encourage abuse from those he’s wronged, and to revel in the attention and emotions of it (here I’m thinking specifically of Kevin beating him in 9x02), maybe considering the punishment just and due. And Crowley at this point likely suspected he would eventually meet his end in some way involving the Winchesters. But death by their hands in this moment would have involved none of the justifying benefits of death by his own hand only a few scenes later – glory, revenge, redemption, a sense of closure.

Compare this cut monologue and its potential death – at the hands of the Winchesters after confessing his role in Lucifer’s escape – to this cut line of dialogue from later in 12x23. “Tell Dean he was right – you bloody fools have rubbed off on me.” This is Crowley. This is emotional complexity, admittance to a change of heart, self-awareness, and a brave act of equal defiance and sacrifice, with his usual smug, snarky dismissal. This isn’t suicide brought on by depression, by an uncharacteristic vulnerability. It is resolved, determined, if reluctant. This is Crowley choosing the greater good and the boys, even if it means sacrificing himself.

For me, this small addition smooths over much of the unevenness in the showrunner’s attempts to justify Crowley’s death. He has lost Hell, he believes he’s had an irreversible falling out with Dean – all of which could be overcome, grown beyond. But then a rift opens, and Lucifer is an immediate danger, and it requires a life to save the day. Crowley knows it can’t be either of the boys – that tends to have world-ending effects – and it can’t be Mary Winchesters or Castiel, because of “Winchester man-pain.” So that leaves Crowley. And having exhausted all immediate alternatives, Crowley does what internalized Winchester logic and conscience tells him is right. It would still require a moment of hesitation, a moment we see him combatting his deeply imbedded trait of self-preservation. But at least that would have been in character and show definitive character growth on Crowley’s part.

So yes, I completely agree with the decision to cut this monologue in 12x23. It doesn’t tell us anything about Crowley that we don’t already know, and is uncharacteristic of him, and provides out-of-character justification for his actions that wasn’t needed. You don’t have to agree with me, obviously. And I’ll end this rather long rant of an essay by saying what I always say: that Crowley deserved better. He deserved better than the mangling of his character’s motivations in the latter half of season 12, and he deserved better than this monologue. I’m glad it was cut from the final script.

[aboveallarescuer]

Transcripts of D&D’s Inside the Episode segments talking about Dany

This is a post with transcripts of all the Inside the Episode videos where show!Dany’s character and storyline are discussed by D&D.

We’ve already had enough of these two hacks, I know, but:

I still think discussions about the show can be productive, especially when similarities and differences between the book characters and show characters are explored. Comparing and contrasting book!Dany with show!Dany certainly brings to light interesting aspects that I may not have considered otherwise and enriches my understanding and appreciation of both of them (especially the former) in a similar way that comparing and contrasting book!Dany with book!Jon, book!Cersei and all the other book characters does.

I had already written transcripts of most of these Inside the Episode features for a while to comment on them in my books vs show reviews. However, since I’m no longer sure if I have enough energy and motivation to continue writing the reviews, I decided to finish writing the transcripts that were missing and to post them already. Maybe this can help people find more evidence that show!Dany’s ending was retconned at the last minute (which is what I firmly believe was the case).

Anyway, y’all know the drill... Expect a lot of mischaracterizations, inconsistencies, double standards, sexist remarks and implications and so on. Never accept what they say uncritically.

1.1: Winter is Coming

BENIOFF: Daenerys Targaryen, her nickname is Dany, basically went into exile from her homeland when she was so small she doesn't even remember it. She is the youngest child of the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen.

WEISS: She's never known her father, she's never known her family, she's never known her homeland, the only thing she's ever known has been her brother. She's been raised by her brother Viserys and Viserys has had his eyes on one thing and one thing only, and that is on regaining the throne that was taken from his father.

BENIOFF: She's had no stability in her life, the only constant has been this brother Viserys, so even though he is a cruel and sadistic older brother and even though he is really quite abusive to her, it's all she knows and she's been forced to - if not trust him, at least to follow his wishes, because not doing so would just lead to more abuse.

TIM VAN PATTEN: Like a lot of characters in the show, she is looking for an identity and a larger purpose in life. I think there's something deep inside her that's asleep, that's there, that she acknowledges and you see her start to acknowledge it, certainly, when she's thrown in with a Dothraki and she's presented with the dragon eggs. You could see this thought process starting, but there is something larger out there that I'm supposed to be a part of. I think she's on board for going back to the kingdom and to finding out about her culture and to having a home.

1.3: Lord Snow

BENIOFF: One of Dany's characteristics that comes to be incredibly important as the story progresses is her hatred of slavery, and I think part of the reason why she has great sympathy for the slaves is that she's grown up in a situation where she's had no power, she's basically been forced to follow the whims of her brother her entire life. Dany has a great deal of sympathy for those who are in difficult circumstances, for those who are the weak and the oppressed, and I think it comes to be one of the most compelling things about her as a character.

WEISS: She's been propriety for all intents and purposes, she's been her brother's slave and so I think she has an affinity for those people and she can actually look at these people and start to think about what their lives likely feel, the empathy with them that is natural to somebody who's sort of a slave herself and I think that she really kind of starts to realize that being somebody ese's property is no good and starts to show the beginnings of the impulse towards freedom that end up playing a much bigger role in her life and in the lives of the people around her as her story progresses.

1.4: Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

WEISS: Daenerys lashes out at her brother - it's just something that's been building up inside her probably for years and years as long as she remembers.

BENIOFF: She comes to realize that he is a fool, he thinks he's going to go back and reconquer the Seven Kingdoms, he can't conquer anything, he can't even beat her in the fight. She comes to believe that she's heir to the Iron Throne, she sees within herself the power that she wasn't even aware existed.

1.6: A Golden Crown

WEISS: Daenerys comes into the Dothraki horde as an outsider and a lot of her story up to this point has been her finding her place in that world.

DANIEL MINAHAN: Eating this stallion's heart becomes a symbol that she's actually carrying the person who's gonna be the savior of that Dothraki people.

WEISS: This is really the place where, in front of the tribe, she becomes one of them. She disconnects from her brother and her brother sees that and that, in turn, pushes him over the edge. Any importance and love or respect that she draws from these people is respect that he's not gonna be getting, so he's alone.

BENIOFF: After he threatens her unborn child and puts the sword point on her pregnant belly, from that point on, he's dead to her, I mean, quite literally dead to her.

WEISS: When Viserys gets his golden crown, you can see in her face that it doesn't mean anything to her.

BENIOFF: She doesn't look like a little girl anymore.

 1.9: Baelor

BENIOFF: Dany's high point with the horde is probably when she eats the stallion's heart and they're really behind their queen and then she starts doing things that they frown upon. For instance, when Drogo gets sick, people start to blame her, because she had this sorceress treat him and, you know, blood magic is very magic against the Dothraki code.

WEISS: Magic is pushed to the periphery of this world and, literally, it's way across the narrow sea in the east and it's way north of the Wall and also, it's very peripheral to people's daily lives. This isn't a world where a wizard shows up with a big pointy hat and a staff and creates all sorts of magical displays. This is a world that is more like our own world in terms of the role that the supernatural has in it, but Mirri is a source of actual magic.

1.10: Fire and Blood

BENIOFF: Mirri Maz Duur is a priestess of the lamb people and she sees a chance to get revenge, not only to avenge her people, but also to prevent this guy from doing it again to other people. From her point of view, it's completely just what she does.

WEISS: She has a pretty good point... I mean, these people did come in, completely rape, pillage and murder her entire village.

BENIOFF: Of course, from Daenerys's point of view, this woman betrayed her. She put her trust in this woman after showing her kindness and now the woman has turned around and betrayed that kindness and, again, it's a theme throughout the story that no good deed goes unpunished.

WEISS: We have people doing terrible things to people that you love and yet, if you were in their shoes and you knew what they know, you would probably do the same thing. Everybody is doing what they're doing for reasons that are grounded in the real human psychology and not in the fact that they're wearing a white hat or that they're wearing the black hat. Daenerys has an understanding that she has to give herself over to something larger than herself without knowing exactly what's going to happen, but she knows that, when she walks into that pyre, she's not going to burn up. Never in her mind is it an act of suicide, even though, in the minds of everybody around her, that's, of course, what it looks like.

BENIOFF: It's the crucial climax and Daenerys is standing there in the pyre and she's become the mother of dragons and the woman you would follow to the ends of the world because that's what those remaining followers are going to do.

WEISS: Dragons in this world are the ultimate source of power and, in a world where authority is directly derived from power, they're the ultimate source of authority and the people who had dragons were the people who shaped the world.

BENIOFF: Dragons are magical, but they're also supposed to be, in this world, real creatures and so, we're looking at bats and pterodactyls and other kind of great flying creatures like that for inspiration and always wanting them to look real, we don't want them to just look like magical creatures that have just popped up.

WEISS: If they survive to maturity and they grow to the size of school buses or however large they end up getting, as their mother, she becomes a very different person than the frightened little girl we saw being sold off to a barbarian in the first episode.

2.6: The Old Gods and the New

WEISS: This whole season is really the season where Dany learns the lesson of self-reliance, she's never, it's a very painful lesson for her to learn, I mean, she's lost all her people, she's lost her husband, she's lost her bloodriders. The temptation for her has always been to lean on someone else, a man of one kind or another. So, I think for her, what she's learning in this episode, especially, is that she can't trust in other people, ultimately, she ends up in a place where she needs to do things for herself and she needs to do things that nobody in the world could possibly do, except her.

BENIOFF: Dany is so defined by her dragons, they're so much a part of her identity at this point, they define her so much that when they're taken from her, it's almost like she reverts to the pre-dragon Daenerys, you know, everyone is a bit defined by who they were when they were an adolescent, you know, no matter how old you get, no matter how powerful you get, and Daenerys was a scared, timid, abused adolescent and I think when her dragons are taken for her, all those feelings, all those memories and emotions are triggered and come back and all the confidence that she's won over the last several months, it's as if that just evaporates and she's back to being a really frightened little girl.

2.10: Valar Morghulis

BENIOFF: I think there's a real, fairly radical change in Daenerys that happens over the course of the last couple episodes of the season, which is... For most of this season, she's been looking for help from others, you know, and asking for help and, by the end of the season, she realizes that she has to do it herself, she's got to help herself and that she's, she can't ask others to give her power, she's got to take it and that she can't rely on anyone else, really. You know, Daenerys Targaryen is not in a position where she can inherit the Iron Throne, the only way she's going to take the Iron Throne and take back the Seven Kingdoms is to conquer them and she's starting to learn what that means, I don't think she really knew before, even when she's asking Khal Drogo to conquer them for her, I don't think she really knew what that meant and she's starting to and it's gonna mean warfare, it's gonna mean slaughter, it's gonna mean a lot of people dying because that's, you know, the only way to conquer anything is through destruction and, I think by the end of the second season, you're seeing her really start to come into her own as the Mother of Dragons and the last of the Targaryens.

3.1: Valar Dohaeris

BENIOFF: For a great leader who is doing something unpopular for a certain segment, whether it's the Warlocks or the slave masters or whatnot, she's creating a lot of enemies, and powerful enemies, and those people are going to try to stop her regardless of how powerful she becomes, and it's something she's actually, in a weird way, used to, because she grew up running from assassins with her brother, you know, from the time, from the earliest time she can remember, she was being spirited from one city to another one step ahead of Robert Baratheon and the assassins, because there were so many people who wanted to destroy the Targaryen family and make King Robert happy and now there are thousands out there for all sorts of different reasons because she's made even more enemies, but, I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her.

Anatomy of a Scene: Daenerys Meets the Unsullied

WEISS: Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men - her brother, Drogo, Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos. She came out of season two realizing that the only person that she can completely trust is herself.

BENIOFF: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious. What she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright.

CLARKE: She needs the manpower to go back and conquer the Iron Throne and to be able to right the wrongs that she sees going on around her.

MINAHAN: She's been brought to Astapor, where she's reluctantly going to meet with slave traders. Her quest in this is to build an army without taking slaves.

Comments from Charlie Somers (location manager) and Christina Moore (supervising art director) that don't have anything to do with the storyline

BENIOFF: The Unsullied were kidnapped as babies from their home countries and brought to Astapor and trained in the ways of the spear and castrated.

EMMANUEL: They won't do anything without the command to do so first.

Comment from Tommy Dunne (weapons master) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline

CLARKE: She's being introduced to the Unsullied by Kraznys, the slave master in control of them.

EMMANUEL: Kraznys is being quite insulting to Daenerys. And Missandei very cleverly smoothes out her translation, just her initiative doing that shows her intelligence.

CLARKE: Dany sees a lot of herself in her and can kind of see that it's a young girl who's capable of much more than the position she's in. She's his No 1 slave. If you were in the UN, she would be the translator for everyone.

WEISS: Kraznys speaks a version of Valyrian that's been bastardized and mixed with other local languages.

Comment from Majella Hurley (dialect coach) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline

CLARKE: She's struggling with the moral aspect of the way that these cities are run. And it's something she's been grappling with because they are an army of slaves, which she fundamentally has moral issues with due to the fact that she herself was a slave.

WEISS: The only way she can make the world a better place is to become the biggest slaveowner in the world.

BENIOFF: She's put into a difficult position, and she's got her advisors whispering in her ears.

GLEN: Jorah encourages her to get over her moral scrupules, with taking an army that were duty-bound to follow whatever leader it was, and that could change in an instant.

BENIOFF: Idealism is wonderful, but it's not gonna happen if you're idealistic, you gotta be a realist. She feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it.

WEISS: What she wants to do isn't just conquest for the sake of conquest, but it's really conquest for the sake of making the world a better place, and she's a revolutionary in that sense.

BENIOFF: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso.

3.3: Walk of Punishment

BENIOFF: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious and, funnily, like a Littlefinger style ambition where she's trying to climb this, you know, the social ladder. It's almost like a Joan of Arc kind of ambition where she feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing's going to prevent her from achieving it, and that might mean sacrificing those who are closest to her.

WEISS: Giving away one of the dragons seems like a completely insane thing to do, especially the biggest one. I mean, we know that, historically, the biggest dragons were those bigger than school buses and they were weapons of mass destruction and able to lay cities to waste in minutes, and no matter how big or effective your army of 8,000 soldiers is. Taking even a small city is going to be a kind of a dangerous prospect for them, and the idea that she's going to give away what they see is her real future for a chance at a small army now seems insane to them.

3.4: And Now His Watch is Ended

WEISS: We never really got this, a sense of her capacity for cruelty. She's surrounded by people who are terrible people, but haven't done anything to her personally, and it's interesting to me that, as the sphere of her empathy widens, the sphere of her cruelty widens as well.

BENIOFF: I think she becomes harder to dismiss, you know, for a long time people have been saying, even if she was alive, you know, really, the only threat she poses is her name, she's a Targaryen, great, but she's a little girl in the edge of the world, so she's starting to knock on people's doors a little bit.

WEISS: All at once she becomes a major force to be reckoned with, she spent a lot of time kind of banging her fists on the doors and declaring that she was owed the Iron Throne by right, but now she's stepped in her own as a conqueror.

BENIOFF: Dany is becoming more and more viable as a threat, you know, both, you know, in attaining an army and because she's the mother of these three dragons who are only gonna get more and more fearsome.

3.7: The Bear and the Maiden Fair

WEISS: Daenerys is coming into her own in a powerful way in the season. She's always been very negatively predisposed towards slavery because she knows what it feels like to be property, I mean, she was a very fancy slave for all intents and purposes, she was somebody who was sold to another man, taken against her will and I think that her feelings about slavery have started to really inform her reasons for wanting the Iron Throne, it's finally started to occur to her that, if I want to take on this responsibility, it's almost - it's incumbent upon me to do something with it, and she sees this great wrong, probably the greatest possible wrong surrounding her, and she's decided that she's not just going to take back the Iron Throne because it's her right, she's gonna take back the Iron Throne because she is the person to make the world a better place than it is. She is going to not just take it, she's gonna use it for something greater than herself.

 3.10: Mhysa

BENIOFF: We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really, because she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many, and she's got the people she's freed from the other cities, but now she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

WEISS: And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

BENIOFF: The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is...  something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

WEISS: Here it seemed like it was really important to let us know just how many people were counting on her to see the full extent of, mostly, the full extent of her army and the tens of thousands of people who flooded out of these gates to pay tribute to her. And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

4.5: First of His Name

WEISS: This scene shows Dany learning a lesson that all revolutionaries learn at one point or another, which is that conquering in many ways is a whole lot easier than ruling.

BENIOFF: This is the pivotal moment for Daenerys because, for so long, her sole goal was getting back to Westeros, conquering Westeros and sitting on the Iron Throne and becoming the queen that she believes she has every right to be, now she has the opportunity.

WEISS: She is driven by a kind of a deep empathy, a much deeper empathy than probably anybody else in the show. It's something that makes her as charismatic as she is to people, because they get a sense of that sincerity of it. Her empathy allows her to look at the people of Westeros and say, why the hell would they follow me if I haven't proven myself through my actions to be somebody worth following, why would they let me rule if I hadn't proven myself to be somebody who has ruled well somewhere else?

4.7: Mockingbird

WEISS: In season one, Dany's sexuality was central to her transformation from basically a piece of propriety into a full-fledged human being and with Drogo the first thing that she took charge of was the only thing that was available to her at the time, which was her own body, and she came into her own as an adult, really, amongst the Dothraki, who were not shy about their bodies in any way. That Dany is not really cut out to be a virgin queen and Daario is a bad boy who seems like a good idea to her at this moment, and she takes her prerogatives as a powerful person as powerful people sometimes do, and yet he's made himself more than available. She didn't ever expect Jorah to find out, she loves Jorah in her own way, she makes it very clear to him that he's far more important to her means, far more to her than a person like Daario ever could, just not in the way that Jorah might like.

BENIOFF: He's been in love with Dany from pretty much her wedding day and now he sees this young upstart, who just entered her life relatively recently, come into his world and sweep her off her feet. I think he's both incredibly jealous and also a little bit angry at Dany that she would fall for a man who he considers so unworthy of her.

4.8: The Mountain and the Viper

WEISS: It's hard to keep a thing like that covered up forever, especially when your enemies are so invested in putting a wedge between you, I mean, they are a good team, they compliment each other nicely in lots of ways that are really troublesome to the Lannisters especially, so it shouldn't be a surprise, I think it's just one of those things that, in hindsight, he probably should've told her a long time ago, and it's more the fact that he kept it from her than the fact that he did it, which seals his fate. I think, from Dany's perspective, this is the most earth-shattering thing that could possibly happen to her. He's her rock and her anchor, the way in which he stops her from flying off into potentially dangerous directions, and when someone that important to you, that central to you, is shown to be not just a liar, but when their entire relationship to you is shown to be based upon a lie, I think it poisons every corner of her world with doubt and mistrust. From his perspective, he may have started as an informer, but she is his whole reason for being, at this point, I mean, he's completely given up on his desire to return to Westeros in any way except by her side. His home now is wherever she happens to be, so this is really like being expelled from the Garden for him, this is the worst thing that could happen to either of them. For her, it's her child; when Viserys put her child in danger and pointed the sword at her stomach, you saw some switch flipping her, you saw something change and she watched him die without blinking an eye, even though he was her family and the other family she had ever known, and when she realizes that Jorah was also responsible for putting that child in danger, I think that's what closes the door on him forever.

4.10: The Children

WEISS: Ruling is about maintaining order and creating an environment for your people that is safe and her dragons, which were such an asset for scaring the shit out of everybody and making people throw down their shores and run in the other direction when she would come knocking as a conqueror, they're becoming a liability that she can't afford anymore. It's one thing to be killing people's goats and you can pay off a goat herder for his goats, you can't pay off a goat herder for his children. So, she realizes that she has to put the interests of her people ahead of her dragons, who are the only real children she's ever going to have.

5.2: The House of Black and White

BENIOFF: There always seemed to be this sense of "manifest destiny" with Dany and that she was going to take what was hers with fire and blood, and she has, but there's a difference between taking and keeping and there's a difference between conquering and ruling and she's finding out that the latter is much more complicated. It's impossible to rule over a city as large as Meereen without infuriating certain people.

WEISS: Dany is trying her very best to do the right thing, to be a good ruler, and sometimes, within the context of this world, being a good ruler means doing things like executing Mossador, it's about laying down a justice that's blind and impartial and applying it evenly to everybody, former master or former slave.

BENIOFF: And, in this case, with Mossador, it's very complicated for her because she has a great deal of affection for this young man who was a slave until she came and that's the reason he was selected to represent the free people on her council and he's been a strong ally of hers and yet he disobeyed her and so, from her mind, she's making a very hard-headed but fair decision, and in the minds of the freedmen and freedwomen watching this execution, she's turning on them and she's executing one of her children, one of the people who called her a mhysa.

WEISS: When she steps up and actually does that, of course, she finds that she doesn't win any friends for her blind justice and her commitment to the law that she alienates her supporters and the people who hated her hate her as much as they did before, so it's one of those things where doing the right thing doesn't have any immediate rewards associated with it, it just leads to a riot that almost gets her head caved in with a bunch of rocks.

5.6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

(Dany doesn't appear in this episode; D&D discuss events from episode 5.5 here.)

BENIOFF: Looking at Dany in Meereen, she's facing a real tricky dilemma so far in that she's trying to create stability in the city where she's a foreigner, she's an outside power who's coming with a foreign army and she seizes power and about half the city hates her, so the way she's trying to stem the civil war is in part by police action and in part by marrying the head of an ancient family and creating an alliance with those old families and actually trying to bring them onto her side by marrying Hizdahr.

WEISS: She doesn't like Hizdahr, she doesn't trust Hizdahr, but she has enough wisdom to understand that she's not going to get this done by smashing heads alone, she's going to need to create ties to this world that she wants to be a part of and to rule, and she understands that marriage is the way to do that.

5.7: The Gift

BENIOFF: I think Dany is still not quite at that cynical level yet, she still believes that there's a higher purpose that she's there for, it's not just about power, it's about using that power to make humanity better.

WEISS: If somebody is telling you that one of those horrible things that's all the more horrible because you suspect that it's true, and she's an idealist who desperately wants to believe that that's not the case, but, in their relationship, Daario is one of the only people - the only person around her now - who tells her all the things she doesn't want to hear.

BENIOFF: So she's not yet convinced that she needs to be a butcher. At the same time, she realizes that, the longer the season goes on, that she has to be ruthless sometimes in order to maintain security, in order to keep herself in power, so that means some bastards are going to get sacrificed to her dragons, then so be it.

5.8: Hardhome

WEISS: Over the course of their conversation, the similarities in their experiences start to come to the fore, maybe the similarities in their worldview start to come to the fore.

BENIOFF: Tyrion has a lot of empathy for another orphan out there who had another terrible father, y'know, it certainly links that bond them. He realizes maybe Varys was right about her that she's the last chance for Westeros and this is someone who could cross the Narrow Sea and not only bring me back into power, because Tyrion still has his own ambitions, but create a better world for the people over there because, depite everything, despite his occasional cynicism and his lack of sentimentality, Tyrion is one of the few players in this game who believes that it's possible to make things a little bit better for people.

WEISS: Dany talks a good game and she's very charismatic and she's a very impressive young woman, but he's heard lots of people say lots of pretty words over the course of his life and he's seen how those plans go awry when they meet with reality. Like revolutionaries in our own world, she has every intention to change things, even if that means knocking everything down to do it.

5.9: The Dance of Dragons

BENIOFF: Even before we put it in the paper, I remember reading this scene in the book and saying "holy shit" and actually I remember emailing George right after I read the scene, even before I finished the book just after reading the scene and saying: "that's one of the best scenes in any of your books and I have no idea how we're going to do it". This seems like a big scene for a feature movie, let alone a TV show.

WEISS: It's one of the most powerful and seamless allusions we've ever created on the show; we've never had anything remotely like this before.

BENIOFF: Dany could stop this at any moment, as Tyrion says at the moment when it looks like Jorah is going to die, and she can, she's the queen, she can stop anything, right, and she doesn't, because, even if she is the queen, she is, as she says earlier, if I don't keep my word, why would anyone trust me? And she's exiled him from the city twice now, he's come back twice, so, from her perspective, she's not gonna step in and protect him, I mean, he's not worthy of her protection; but, at the same time, as tough as she is, she's watching this man that she's had great affection for for so long and it looks like she might lose him, it looks like he really might die, so there's just this witches' brew of conflicting emotions in Dany's head and Jorah, I think, is really hoping for her to stop and you know, at certain points, like, look what I'm willing to do to get back to you.

WEISS: The look he gives her in that moment, you can just feel how intensely it just digs into her and how it says volumes to her across that dusty arena without ever speaking a word.

WEISS: [the Sons' attack on the arena] It's one of my favorite moments in the scene and the season and in this series, that moment where she realizes this is over and she resigns herself to that faith.

BENIOFF: This isn't the way she saw it happening, it's not the way she wants it to end, but if it's going to happen, she doesn't want to die screaming, she doesn't to die in terror, she wants to have a moment of peace before it's over and then, at that moment, when all seems lost, Drogon comes. There seems to be a connection between them, it's been talked about before on the show and in the books, there's this very deep connection between the Targaryens and their dragons, and certainly that's true with Dany and Drogon, it's more than just a pet of hers, they are in a real sense for her her adopted children and so this is just evidence of Drogon's ability to sense when his mother is in great peril. Jorah has this conversation with Tyrion halfway through the season where he says, I used to be cynical like you, but then I saw this girl step out of the fire with three baby dragons and, if you've ever heard baby dragons singing, it's hard to be cynical after that, and it's the same thing happening here for Tyrion, it's hard to be cynical after watching this young queen fly off on a dragon and it's very hard not to believe that she really is the chosen one.

WEISS: I think at that point it's pretty hard for Tyrion to keep a grip on his cynicism. His expression watching her fly away completely captured what we wanted to capture in the moment, which is he's never seen a girl like this before.

5.10: Mother’s Mercy

WEISS: Daenerys is stuck on this beautiful, but isolated, plateau without any food and a dragon that mostly wants to sleep and get better, so she's got to find her on way, which is fine, except she encounters a group of people she probably didn't expect to encounter again anytime soon. When she sees the Dothraki, she knows what that means, and her relationship with Drogo was one thing, but Drogo is gone and she knows, in a way, that he was sort of an anomaly. She drops the ring because she's smart; that ring is the breadcrumb that's gonna point in the direction that she's being taken and somebody down the line hopefully who means her less harm than the Dothraki will notice.

6.1: The Red Woman

WEISS: Tyrion is very much in the situation along with Varys where they're sitting on a volatile powder keg of a society.

BENIOFF: The enemies of Daenerys see a city ripe to be overthrown and it's going to test Tyrion's political skills, his diplomatic skills, all of his experience.

WEISS: He's optimistic in a strange way for him, he's not generally an optimistic person, but I think he feels inspired for the first time and he feels equal to the challenge that's facing him when it comes to Meereen.

6.3: Oathbreaker

WEISS: I think when Dany returns to Vaes Dothrak it's obviously with a certain sense of dread, because she knows that these widows of the former khals are not likely to welcome her with open arms, it's not like a "long-lost sister, where have you been?", it's "here's a funny-looking, white-haired girl who has put herself on a record as thinking she's all that" and stringing a bunch of highfalutin titles after her name. But the High Priestess of the Dosh Khaleen is not coming at it from the perspective of somebody who's looking to punish this young person with inflated ideas of her own greatness, I think she remembers what it was like to think that a glorious destiny awaited her and to find out that that wasn't the case. I think the High Priestess has a certain amount of empathy with Dany's position, which you see in the way that she relates to her, which is stern, but not quite as awful as anybody might have expected it to be.

6.4: Book of the Stranger

BENIOFF: The historical examples that we looked to in writing these scenes was, oddly, that was Abraham Lincoln, because Lincoln was trying desperately to stave off a civil war between the North and the South and he wasn't ready to get rid of slavery quite as quickly as people think. I mean, he was trying to talk to the southerners and work out some kind of compromise at first and, you know, with Tyrion it's, as he says to Grey Worm and Missandei, slavery is an evil, war is an evil, and I can't have both at once, so what's the solution here? The whole point of diplomacy is compromise. He's proposed compromise, which he thinks of as a good idea, is incredibly offensive to Missandei and Grey Worm, who were slaves and, you know, from their point of view, you don't make a compromise with slavers because that's making a deal with the devil, so they're entering into these negotiations with slavers with deep skepticism, but Daenerys did choose this man to advise her, so if he's saying there's a chance, they're willing to try it, but with great suspicions.

BENIOFF: One of the things that was interesting for us was, you know, seeing how Dany can be strong when she is not in a position of power, you know, all the khals of all the gathered khalasars were within the temple of the Dosh Khaleen and Dany, an unarmed little woman, killed them all, by herself. You know, she didn't have a dragon flying and doing it, it was all Dany.

WEISS: The end of episode 604 definitely meant consciously to echo the end of episode 110. It's Dany stepping out of a flame to great effect; this time it was just on a much, much larger scale.

BENIOFF: Rebirth is clearly a theme this season, whether it's Jon Snow or Dany emerging again from the fires. When she did it the first time, only, you know, a few score people witnessed this miracle of Daenerys Targaryen emerging unscathed from the flames. Now it's the Dothraki as a people who witnessed this.

WEISS: The act of stepping out of that burning temple, in which all the Dothraki power structure had just perished, pretty much makes her the queen of the Dothraki in one fell swoop.

BENIOFF: And, of course, it's hard not to be impressed when you see her emerging from the fires unscathed. It's like a god being reborn, and that's why they all bow to her.

6.6: Blood of my Blood

BENIOFF: Daenerys talks about the dragons being her children and that the dragons are the only children she'll have. Of her three children, she's always been closest to Drogon, and they clearly have some kind of connection that goes beyond words and she just senses that he's out there in the scene. One of our favorite moments from season one was watching Khal Drogo deliver a speech to his gathered khalasar. That speech lingered in Daenerys's mind and she's echoing almost the exact same language when she's talking to the Dothraki now. So she's basically telling them the promise that one of the great khals had made years before and saying now's the time to live up to that promise and to fulfill it. It's something that's been set up for quite a long time and now we're seeing it come to pass.

6.9: Battle of the Bastards

WEISS: Daenerys, when she comes back to that situation, she has no idea what to expect, she doesn't know what's happened in Meereen. In a way, you feel for Tyrion because she left him with a terrible situation; the city was under siege from within and without and he really did, for so long, an excellent job of making things better there and, unfortunately, what she comes back to find is exactly what she would have expected to find when she left, and the fact that she has a city at all still is due to him.

BENIOFF: I think Dany's been becoming a Targaryen ever since the end of season one.

WEISS: She's not her father and she's not insane and she's not a sadist, but there's a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens.

BENIOFF: If you're one of the lords of Westeros or one of her potential opponents in the wars to come and you get word of what happened here in Meereen, you have to be pretty nervous because this is an unprecedented threat, you got a woman who's somehow formed an alliance where she's got a Dothraki horde, a legion of Unsullied, she's got the mercenary army of the Second Sons and she's got three dragons who are now pretty close to full-grown, so if she can make it all the way across the Narrow Sea and get to Westeros, who's gonna stand in her way?

6.10: The Winds of Winter

WEISS: Tyrion had a very steep slope to climb to win Dany's trust. His family played an integral part in nearly exterminating her family, but, at this point, especially given the hand he was dealt with Meereen after she left, he's earned her trust. One of the few people in this world at this point who's willing to speak the truth to her face.

BENIOFF: Mainly, he's proven himself to be very loyal, you know, she's gone for most of the season, but he didn't abandon her, he didn't go off looking for the next person to rule him, he was clearly trying to serve her interest while she was gone. Dany's not gonna do anything she doesn't want to do, she's not gonna take anyone's advice if it seems against her interests and so, when he recommends that she cut ties with Daario, she does it because she thinks he's right. The truth is, Tyrion's logic makes a lot of sense to her, you know, he's not gonna be a help for her when she gets to Westeros, she comes over there unencumbered and, as a queen without a king, that could be really useful in the future. You know, Tyrion has become a very capable adviser in a relatively short time, she clearly respects his intelligence and she now respects his loyalty. I think, especially given that she knows where they're heading, they're going back to Westeros, most of the people on her team have never been there, but Tyrion spent his whole life there, served as Hand of the King before, defended King's Landing during an attack, he knows these families, the ruling family, better than anyone, he certainly knows Cersei better than anyone, so, as long as she can trust him, which she does, he's the perfect adviser for her in this war for Westeros. He's the perfect Hand to the Queen and that's why she names him such.

WEISS: That shot of Dany's fleet with all of her newly arrayed allies making its way out of the Slaver's Bay towards the Narrow Sea and home, it's probably the biggest thing that's happened on the show thus far, it's the thing we've been waiting for since the pilot episode of the first season. The person she is now is very, very different from the person she was then. It hasn't been a smooth road, feels like she has earned it at this point.

BENIOFF: It's the shot that we're gonna leave everyone with.

WEISS: It was a real thrill to see her on the bow of that ship, with Tyrion by her side heading west. The ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens, I mean, these are the people who came over from across the narrow sea and conquered the known world. It'll be very interesting to see how that plays out going forward.

7.1: Dragonstone

BENIOFF: For [Cersei] now at this point, it's about survival, and the way to survive is to defeat her enemy. She will do whatever she has to do to win, she'll blow up the sept if that will allow her to win, even if that means killing hundreds, probably thousands of innocent people. She's capable of anything, unlike Dany, who is constrained a little bit by her morality and her fear of hurting innocents. For those of us who have been with the story from the beginning and really followed Dany's journey, coming home is such a massive, game-changer on so many levels, and we just wanted to see that.

WEISS: There is so much weight on that arrival that we felt that a bunch of dialogue was completely unnecessary, it would only step on the emotion of the moment.

BENIOFF: Everyone is giving her a little bit of distance; Tyrion, who is usually the most loquacious of people, he's not talking because he wants her to experience it and, at one point, Grey Worm is about to walk up alongside Dany to guard her and Missandei holds him back because she wants Dany to experience it on her own. And then she has that time and she's ready to begin.

7.2: Stormborn

WEISS: I don't think they're that many situations in film or television where you see four women sitting around a table discussing power and strategy and war. We didn't really plan it that way, but once it landed on that we knew that these things had to be discussed, we knew the plan to take Casterly Rock had to be put out there. I think it's a scene that, had it been the exact same information, situation being put forward by a bunch of old grizzled guys with gray beards, it would have been a lot less interesting to have it be Emilia at one end of the table and Diana at the other end of the table. To me, that just is such a breath of fresh air, and made writing it a lot more fun. The end, after all has been said and done, then Olenna sits her down and tells her to ignore all of that.

Show!Olenna: You're a dragon. Be a dragon.

WEISS: When Diana tells you to do that you start to... go outside the scene and wonder if that applies to every aspect of your life and not just the scene you happen to be shooting.

7.3: The Queen’s Justice

WEISS: The spine of the episode is about their meeting. It was an exciting, thrilling thing to watch happening even as we were shooting it. Once we realized that we're kind of getting a charge out of just seeing this happen on a set, which is a notoriously boring place, we had a sense that it would carry over to the finished version of the scene.

BENIOFF: That audience chamber was built by Aegon Targaryen to intimidate anyone who came there.

WEISS: He doesn't have much insight into what she's gone through. So, I think he sees a rich girl with a fancy name sitting in a big chair with a fancy dress on, proclaiming herself the queen of the world. So, I don't think he's looking upon her with as much respect as she has come to take as her due.

BENIOFF: He's a very strong-willed person. He didn't come down there to bend the knee. He didn't come down there to join her in her fight against Cersei. None of that matters at this point, though. All that matters is... fighting the dead.

WEISS: She looks at him, and she thinks this is some unwashed barbarian from the North and a bastard. His name is Jon Snow, yet he's calling himself king. If she knew what he'd seen, she'd be looking very, very differently... at what he's telling her, but at this moment in time, she only sees somebody who's trying to carve up her piece of her kingdom for himself. And if what this guy is saying is true, then it really is an issue, and she has... her own very serious issues to deal with in the shape of the woman who's now sitting on the throne.

7.4: The Spoils of War

BENIOFF: There's tension on two sides. One is the political, where Jon Snow has his own very specific purpose here on Dragonstone, and that's to get the Dragonglass and, if possible, to convince Dany to fight with him. And Dany has her own very specific purpose, which is to get Jon to bend the knee. There's conflict, and it's conflict between powerful people. And then to make it all even more complicated, they're starting to be attracted to each other. And so much of it is not from dialogue or anything we wrote, it's just the two of them in a small space standing near each other, and us just watching that and feeling the heat of that.

WEISS: She had a nicely triumphant return to Dragonstone, which nobody contested or got in the way of. From that point on, she's lost two of her principle allies, she's lost a lot of her fleet. She's in a position where if she doesn't step up soon and come up with a big win for her side, she's gonna lose this fight before it even begins. I think she really feels the pressure of her situation more than she ever has before. This is the fight she's been waiting for her whole life.

BENIOFF: I think there are several stories interplaying here. Part of it is that Dany's finally cutting loose. The whole first part of the season, she's been frustrated. In following Tyrion's counsel, she's been fighting with one hand behind her back, and so she hasn't really unleashed the Dothraki horde. She hasn't really set the dragons into combat yet.

WEISS: With the loot train battle, one of the things that's most exciting about it for us... This is the first time we've ever had two sets of main characters on opposite sides of the battlefield. And it's impossible to really want any one of them to win, and impossible to want any one of them to lose.

WEISS: This dragon flies up. That makes it a totally different situation. It's almost like, "What if somebody had an F-16 that they brought to a medieval battle?" You start to scrap the history of it a bit, and just think about how would those things interact with each other in a way that's exciting and believable to the extent that dragons are believable?

BENIOFF: Qyburn realized that the dragons were vulnerable. They might be fearsome beasts, but they are mortal and they can be hurt, and they can be killed. We see the scorpion come into play, manned by Bronn. And we see Drogon wounded. Things turn out okay for them, but I think it also changes the calculation a little bit, because now they know these weapons are on the board. This ongoing war with Cersei is entering into a dangerous territory.

WEISS: Jaime's charge at Daenerys is a hard thing to top for me in that sequence, only because when you have a principle character trying to murder another principle character, that doesn't happen all that often.

7.5: Eastwatch

BENIOFF: One of the things that Dany has found immensely frustrating in the beginnings of this war against Cersei is that she is being asked to fight on a certain moral standard and... Cersei isn't. Because of that, Cersei has an advantage over her. The more ruthless opponent will often win. I wouldn't say she's acting like the Mad King because it's rational. She's given them a choice and they choose not to bend the knee to her and she accepts that choice and she does exactly what she told them she would do. And from her standpoint, she's not acting insane in any way. She's just being tough, which is what she needs to be to win. That's one perspective. Tyrion has a different perspective and hopefully people watching will have their own and they'll decide for themselves whether they think what she did was just or immoral.

7.6: Beyond the Wall

BENIOFF: At a certain point, they're just fighting for their survival. Once they retreat all the way to the middle of the lake, there's nowhere farther to run. She's always been willing to risk her life to do what she thinks is right. And in terms of going North to rescue them, a number of people up there have different claims on her heart. And Jorah's been by her side from the beginning, and he saved her life so many times, I think she would feel as if it was a betrayal if she didn't at least try to save him. And then of course, there's Jon Snow. You definitely get the sense that he's become quite important to her in a pretty short amount of time. He sees that they're all gonna die if the dragon doesn't take off. The rational decision at that point is, "You guys go to safety, and I'll try to keep them off you as long as I can." He's the guy who jumps on the grenade to save the rest of the platoon. That's always been Jon.

WEISS: I think that when she sees him return on the back of Coldhand's horse, that's a big moment for her in terms of the way she feels about him.

BENIOFF: I don't think either one of them really knew exactly how powerful their feelings were towards each other until these moments. Just the notion of falling for someone, that involves weakness. It's not something a queen does. But she feels that happening, and he feels it happening for her. I think both of them are on, kinda, unfamiliar ground. And especially because it's with an equal. It's kind of hard for her at that point, I think not to look at this guy, and realize this is not like the other boys.

WEISS: What was fun about the sequence, you know, awful way to us is that up until the end, it's very close to one of those battles where all the good guys get out the other side, and, more or less, scot-free. But we knew that killing the dragon was gonna have a tremendous emotional impact, 'cause over the seasons and seasons of the show it's really been emphasized what they are to Dany. We knew that the Night King would see and seize this opportunity. I'd like to think that when the dragon dies, that it's kind of a one-two punch, 'cause on the one hand, you've just seen the horror of one of these three amazing beings like this in the world going under the water and not coming up again, and processing that. Then you're processing something that's even worse, which is when it comes back out from under the water again, and we see in the last shot of the episode, what it becomes.

7.7: The Dragon and the Wolf

BENIOFF: Jon's not Jon Sand. He's actually, as Bran finally overhears from Lyanna, Aegon Targaryen. And that means he's the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. That changes everything.

WEISS: I would say the challenge with this sequence was finding a way to present information that at least a good portion of the audience already had in a way that was dramatic and exciting, also had a new element to it. Part of the answer as to how to go about doing that was in the montage, inter-cut nature of it. It was about making it clear that this was almost like an information bomb that Jon was heading towards.

Show!Bran: Robert's rebellion was built on a lie.

WEISS: The only way to really emphasize that was to tie those two worlds together cinematically, and to have Bran actually narrating these facts over the footage of Jon and of Dany.

Show!Bran: He's the heir to the Iron Throne.

WEISS: Just as we're seeing these two people come together, we're hearing the information that will inevitably, if not tear them apart, at least cause real problems in their relationship. And she's his aunt.

BENIOFF: It complicates everything on a political level, on a personal level, and it just makes everything that could have been so neat and kind of perfect for Jon and Dany, and it really muddies the waters.

Show!Bran: We need to tell him.

BENIOFF: We tried to contrast the various season endings so that they don't feel too similar. So last season we had a pretty triumphant ending with Dany finally sailing west towards Westeros. This one is definitely much more horrific.

8.1: Winterfell

BENIOFF: It's a whole new procession, and so instead of Robert arriving with Queen Cersei and Jamie Lannister and The Hound, it's Daenerys coming with Jon Snow. I don't think the North is the most welcoming place to outsiders. Dany's smart. She senses that distrust, and she's... gonna make the best of a bad situation, but that doesn't mean that she likes it or she's happy.

WEISS: When you're doing something good for people, and you get met with what Sansa gives her when they meet in the courtyard, it's understandable that she would be upset.

WEISS: I think that if Tyrion were to have shown up on his own to Winterfell, he would've gotten a much different reception from Sansa than he did coming as the Hand of the Queen, Daenerys Targaryen.

BENIOFF: No one's ever ridden a dragon except for Dany. Only Targaryens can ride dragons, and that should be a sign for Jon. Jon's not always the quickest on the uptake, but eventually gets there.

WEISS: We wanted to kind of re-anchor their relationship. It seemed important for it to involve the dragons, since the dragons play such an important role.

BENIOFF: It's a major thing for her when she sees they have some kind of connection to him, they allow him to be around them. And when he flies up with her and shows her where he used to hunt as a kid, I think she falls even farther in love with him.

WEISS: Seeing Jon and Dany on the dragons together, it's a Jon and Dany moment, but it also seeds in the idea that these creatures will accept Jon Snow as one of their riders.

BENIOFF: One of the challenges, but also one of the exciting things about this episode, this whole season, is bringing together characters who have never met. Sam has long been one of the more important characters in the story. But he's never seen Queen Daenerys, and yet they're connected by various threads. The obvious one, which we know from the beginning of the scene, is Jorah. Sam saved him, and so Jorah owes him this great debt. What none of them realize until midway through this scene is that they have another, horrible connection.

WEISS: There are all these things that you know about those characters that the other characters don't know. And some of them are very important. Dany murdered Samwell's father and brother.

BENIOFF: That's a really complicated thing for Sam because he had a really fraught relationship with his father. Yet Sam's older brother was not a bad person, and died, really, quite bravely, standing by his father's side.

WEISS: John Bradley did an excellent job. The difference between the way he takes the news of his father's death and the way he takes the news of his brother's death, it was a subtle thing that he does with very few words. It's the kind of thing that he could find out in a number of different ways, but it seemed like a very ineffective preamble and way into that later moment.

WEISS: The fact that Jon's real parents were who Jon's real parents were is not news to us at this point, but what we don't know is the way that Jon is going to take this. How's the explosion gonna look?

BENIOFF: Sam, as a brother of the Night's Watch, and Jon are more brothers than Bran and Jon ever really were. He knows it's gonna hurt Jon and it's going to shatter his whole worldview. For all they know, the Army of the Dead could attack the next day, and someone has to tell Jon before that.

WEISS: He's being told something that he both knows is true and can't handle. So he tries to throw things in front of it to prevent him from having to deal with the-- the truth of what he's being told. The thing he throws in front of it here is the fact that it means his father was lying to him his whole life. The truth that Samwell tells Jon is probably the most incendiary fact in the entire world of the show. We chose to play the whole thing on Jon's face because, as great a job as John Bradley is doing presenting this information, he's really just presenting information we know already.

8.2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

WEISS: When Jaime shows up to Winterfell, it's very difficult for almost anybody to know how to feel about it. On the one hand, Dany looks at him as the person who murdered her father, and even if she has come to terms with who her father was and what her father really was, it probably doesn't entirely erase the sting of her father's murderer showing up on her doorstep.

BENIOFF: Tyrion has made a number of mistakes now, and Dany's really at the end of her patience. Because she has a lot of fondness and respect for Tyrion, but many of his plans have really gone awry. And now Jaime Lannister's here, but not with the Lannister army. Tyrion can't really fight back because he knows she's right. I mean, he really did make a grievous mistake. If Tyrion has a flaw, he's a very clever man, but sometimes clever people overestimate their own cleverness.

BENIOFF: Dany comes to Sansa with a bit of an olive branch, trying to find a way inside that kind of cool exterior that Sansa presents. And one commonality between them is they both love Jon. Dany's his lover and Sansa's his sister. It's very much coming at it from the point of view of a monarch trying to make peace with her subject, and Sansa's not quite willing to accept Dany as her monarch yet. She's suspicious of people for a reason. She's had too many hard experiences not to be suspicious of people. And she sees Dany as possibly a tyrant, as somebody who has a lot of power and is seeking to get even more.

8.3: The Long Night

WEISS: We wanted our characters to feel, like, that this-- maybe this is all gonna work out, maybe things are all gonna be okay. We've seen how devastating a Dothraki charge can be just with their regular swords, and now when they're galloping into combat with, uh, flaming arakhs, it's-- it's-- Uh... What could possibly stand against that?

BENIOFF: What they see is just the end of the Dothraki, essentially.

WEISS: They have a plan, and it's important to wait for the Night King to reveal himself, and then have two dragons against one dragon, and a really good chance of-- of defeating him. One thing that they couldn't have foreseen was Dany's reaction to seeing the Dothraki decimated. Jon is the person who wants to stick to the plan, but the Dothraki are not Jon's; they're not loyal to Jon, they're loyal to Dany, and I think that Dany can't bring herself to just watch them die, and so the plan starts to fall apart the second she gets on her dragon, so he does too, and then we take it from there.

BENIOFF: We knew this episode was gonna be almost entirely battle, and that can get really boring really quickly. You can watch it for a certain number of minutes before the effect starts to dampen. Part of it was making sure that we really stayed focused on the characters, and so whether it's Arya's storyline, or Sansa and Tyrion down the crypt, or Jon Snow and Dany up on the dragons. Kinda like all these separate little battles within the... within the greater battle.

BENIOFF: I mean, we talked about various endings for Jorah for a long time, but, you know, you think about Jorah, from the very first time we met him, he was with Dany, and from that time, he's been mostly by her side. Part of Jorah's tragedy is that he was in love with a woman who couldn't love him back, but he's accepted that for quite a long time, at the same time he was going to fight for her as long as he could and as well as he could.

WEISS: There'd never been a moment where she more needed someone to fight to protect her than this moment. And if he could've chosen a way to die, this is how he would've chosen to die. So, it was something we thought would be powerful to give him.

8.4: The Last of the Starks

WEISS: Dany kind of structures the feast scene, in a way. I mean, she's really the person whose emotions and choices are guiding the scene.

BENIOFF: And things start to shift a little bit when Daenerys calls for Gendry and-- and names him the new Lord of Storm's End.

WEISS: It's almost like, as the queen, she's giving people... permission to-- to celebrate what they've done.

BENIOFF:  Things start to relax a little bit, and these people did survive and they-- they won, and they emerged victorious. And so what started as a very funereal scene gradually starts to shift into more of a party atmosphere as people get drunker and drunker. That shift does not happen with Daenerys; she's scarred by the events that just took place, but she's also very much thinking about... what Jon Snow told her, and she's really shaken when she sees everyone celebrating with him, and talking about what a mad man and what a king he is for getting on a dragon.

WEISS:  He has love and respect from these people that, even with the gesture that she just made, she can't ever equal.

BENIOFF: She realizes that his true identity is a real threat to her if it comes out. So, she's in a fairly dark place and while other people are starting to try to celebrate their survival and their victory, Dany's not in a celebratory mood.

WEISS: After the feast, she comes to talk to him and... with the intention of-- of... of making this all work out, and of bringing things back to the way they were before.

BENIOFF: There's a moment when they're kissing, and-- and it seems like things are kind of getting back to where they were, but... it's almost as if he remembers all of a sudden what she really is. It's tense for him. For her, she grew up hearing all these stories about how their ancestors who were related to each other were also lovers, and it doesn't seem that strange to her.  For him, it is a strange thing.

WEISS: Once Dany introduces the idea that everything can be as it was if... Jon... keeps this secret buttoned down and tells no one, she's introducing a conflict that plays forward.

BENIOFF:  From his standpoint, he's already declared his loyalty to her. He's promised her and he's a man of his word. But he's also, you know, a family man, and so, the idea that he wouldn't tell Sansa and Arya about his true identity, it just seems very wrong to him.

BENIOFF: He thinks he can have it both ways; that he can tell Arya and Sansa the truth about who he really is, and he can maintain his loyalty to Dany and everyone's gonna learn to live together.

WEISS: One thing everybody who... comes into contact with this information seems to understand is how incendiary the information is. Sansa's left with a very difficult decision, 'cause she promises Jon that she won't tell anyone, and yet when she's sitting up there on that wall with Tyrion, she knows... what will happen if she gives Tyrion this information. She's a student of Littlefinger, and she knows how information travels, and she can think many steps ahead into the game, the way Littlefinger did, and know that if she tells Tyrion, it's almost impossible for Tyrion not to tell Varys, and if you tell-- I think these are all things that have been occurring to Sansa between the time we see her get that information and the time she passes the message on.

BENIOFF: Part of the story here is that while we've been concentrating on Winterfell and the fight against the army of the dead, Dany's other enemies have not been just sitting still; they've been planning for-- for the final battle. We saw in season seven that Qyburn had invented this giant dragon-killing scorpion and it didn't quite work. Qyburn went back to the drawing board and he made even larger, more powerful scorpions. Dozens of them are now lining the walls of King's Landing, and dozens more are mounted on the decks of the Iron Fleet. While Dany kind of forgot about the Iron fleet and Euron's forces, they certainly haven't forgotten about her, and they're just waiting for her to come back. By this point, they would have gotten news that her army's emerged victorious and were gonna head south, and so they're just waiting in ambush for her return.

WEISS: In some ways, the most important thing that happens... to Daenerys in four, is the death of her second dragon. Now she's got one dragon, and that dragon presumably is just as vulnerable... as Rhaegal was. So, there's this-- the mourning of a child, which is very real to her, and then their best friend is taken. Dany knows that once Cersei has Missandei that she's not going to see Missandei alive again.

BENIOFF: This is a moment for Cersei where she has a chance to... maybe to flee and get away if she surrenders, but that's-- I think anyone who knows Cersei knows she's not gonna make that choice. Her feeling is, "If I give up the throne, I'm dead, and so, my only chance now is to win." And that's what she says to Ned Stark in season one. Dany is this young queen coming to try to usurp her, and Cersei's not gonna give up the throne that easily. She's captured an enemy, and this is how Cersei deals with enemies. Tyrion's perspective is-- is, you know, while we have these various wars for supremacy and everything, let's not forget about the people who are gonna suffer the most from it. He can envision what will happen to King's Landing if these two armies clash and dragons are involved, and it's an obvious catastrophe. She feels like the odds are actually pretty good on-- on-- for her at this point, and she's willing to roll the dice. I think for Cersei, the only good prisoner is a dead prisoner.

WEISS: She's really back... where she was... at the very beginning. Emotionally, she's alone in the world, and she can't really trust anybody.

BENIOFF: People have underestimated Dany's strength many times before, and-- and... no one's really done very well underestimating her strengths.

WEISS: Unlike them, she's extremely powerful, and unlike them, she's filled with a rage that's aimed at one person specifically.

BENIOFF: I think what's probably echoing in Dany's head in those final moments would be Missandei's final words. Dracarys is clearly meant for Dany. Missandei knows that her life is over, and she is saying, you know, "Light them up."

8.5: The Bells

BENIOFF: Dany's an incredibly strong person, she's also someone who has had really close friendships and close advisors for her entire run of the show. You look at these people who have been closest to her for such a long time, and almost of them have either turned on her or died, and she's very much alone. And that's a dangerous thing for someone who's got so much power, to feel that isolated. So at the very time when she needs guidance and those kind of close friendships and advice the most, everyone's gone.

WEISS: I think that Varys knew that it was unlikely that he would survive the attempt to overthrow Dany in favor of Jon. And he also knew that he ethically, in his mind, had no choice but to... try to do that anyway. I think that Tyrion is saying goodbye to his best friend in the world outside of his brother. And the amount of guilt that he feels over being the cause for his best friend's imminent death, it's hard to really get your head around.

BENIOFF: Jon Snow is someone that she's fallen in love with. And as far as she's concerned, by this point, Jon has betrayed her by telling people about his true identity, and also the fact he's unable to return her affections at this point.

WEISS: I think that when she says, "Let it be fear," she's resigning herself to the fact that she may have to get things done in a way that isn't pleasant. And she may have to get things done in a way that is horrible for lots of people.

BENIOFF: She chose violence. A Targaryen choosing violence is a pretty terrifying thing.

BENIOFF: Even when you look back to season one, when Khal Drogo gives the golden crown to Viserys, and her reaction of watching her brother's head melted off ...and he was a terrible brother, you know, so I don't think anyone out there was-- was crying when Viserys died, but... there is something kind of chilling about the way that Dany has responded to the death of her enemies. And if circumstances had been different, I don't think this side of Dany ever would've come out. If Cersei hadn't betrayed her, if Cersei hadn't executed Missandei, if Jon hadn't told her the truth. Like, if all of these things had happened in any different way, then I don't think we'd be seeing this side of Daenerys Targaryen.

WEISS: I don't think she decided ahead of time that she was... going to do what she did. And then she sees the Red Keep, which is, to her, the home that her family built when they first came over to this country 300 years ago. It's in that moment, on the walls of King's Landing, where she's looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her, when she makes the decision to-- to make this personal. We wanted her to be just death from above, as seen from the perspective of the people who are on the business end of that dragon. In most large stories like this, it seems like there's a tendency to focus on the heroic figures and not pay much attention to the people who may be suffering the repercussions of the decisions made by those heroic people, and we-- we really wanted to keep our perspective and our-- our sympathies on the ground at this moment 'cause those are the people who are really paying the price for the decisions that she's making.

WEISS: I think that Jon is also in a kind of denial. At first, the siege is a war, soldiers killing soldiers. That's what war is. I think Jon is someone who's always been a very good soldier, who has never enjoyed being a soldier. He's been trained as a fighter from the time he was a little boy, and he's quite good at it, he's quite good at leading men into battle, and he also hates it. I think, for him, it all starts out seeming like it's gonna work out, and then it turns into a nightmare.

WEISS: When she takes off and starts burning the city, the Unsullied on the ground and the Northmen on the ground, take that as their cue that it's a moral free-for-all. The good guys are behaving like the bad guys, and the bad guys in this shot are the ones who are doing all of these horrific things around him, who are his own men. The moral lines that he's drawn, for himself, in his own life, can't be maintained for everyone in all situations.

WEISS: Feels like you needed a perspective to carry you through this horror. Like you need a Virgil to take you through the hell that Dany's building.

BENIOFF: The reason we decided to follow Arya out of King's Landing and to see the fall of King's Landing through her eyes is... something that we talked about with an earlier episode. You just care a lot more when you're with a character that you care about. So if we saw a lot of extras running around on fire and buildings falling apart, it might've been visually interesting, but it wouldn't have had much of an emotional impact. But when you're there on the ground with Arya, who's one of the people we care the most about, then everything takes on that much more of an edge.

WEISS: We knew that the Hound would be convincing her to part ways with him and to not go to her death. And once she decides she needs to get out of the city, well, she's in-- she's in the worst possible place you can be. So she's gotta get from that central point all the way outside the walls of the city. It's the longest, hardest journey anybody has to make in the entire episode.

8.6: The Iron Throne

WEISS: Dany has been above it all, literally, throughout this entire battle, she's fought the whole thing from the air, so, when she's in the plaza, all she's seeing is her own army's triumph in the city that she came to conquer for all the best reasons, and I think the idea of spreading her brand of revolution around the entire world is a very attractive idea to her at this moment in her mind, it's a very ethical idea because she's not seeing the cost the way Jon and the way Tyrion have seen the cost.

BENIOFF: What's interesting about it is that she's been making similar kinds of speeches for a long time and we've always been rooting for her and this is kind of a natural outcome of that philosophy and that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies and it's just not quite as fun anymore. 

WEISS: I think the final scene between Jon and Daenerys is something we came up with sometime, in the midst of the third season of the show? The broad strokes of it anyway. But there was a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right because we know this is not a scene that is giving people what they want.

BENIOFF: We got there and were like, oh my God this is gonna be so emotional and then it was realizing that we actually had to do so much work to get all those shots that we needed.

WEISS: There’s this discussion through the whole show of whether or not Daenerys is like her father, who was insane. Throughout the whole conversation they have, she maintains, like, a reasonable approach to the thing that she’s done and there are only a few places where something peaks out that tells him what’s really coming.

WEISS: The big question in people’s minds seem to be who’s going to end up on the Iron Throne. One of the things we decided about the same time we decided what would happen in the scene is that the throne would not survive, that the thing that everybody wanted, the thing that caused everybody to be so horrible to each other to everybody else over the course of the past eight seasons was going to melt away. The dragon flying away with Dany’s lifeless body, that’s the climax of the show.

[leahseclipse]

Difficult day

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Summary: (based on a prompt) Spencer and Reader give up coffee and help each other by trying to find ways to keep each other awake.

Warnings: Mentions of murder (not real, just ironically, don’t worry, nothing dangerous there.)

Word count: 2.3 k 

A/N: Hi there- so uh, this fic is rly meant to be a silly little one, so it's a bit whack,(and not rly written well to me) I just wrote it bc the idea was there and I felt like writing it at 1am……………...so hope u enjoy a bit lmao (also i never drank coffee once, so I just researched stuff online and wrote it)

**

          Deciding to start the day without coffee probably was a bad idea to think about, it just hit them while they were talking, and Spencer sort of announced the idea.

“Hey, why don’t we try to give up coffee, and see if we can survive without it, you know.”

What a...excellent idea.

She’s now looking like a zombie, wandering around, and can’t resist the idea of closing her eyes. 

 Y/N has been up since 6AM, and it’s about...11 now. Which felt more like a whole day.

The worst of all, is that she couldn’t even bug Spencer about it either, he decided to do it as well, but at least, she has a coffee-deprived friend to support her.

The real problem, is that, Hotch might not be happy with the consequences, which are...sleeping at work, so, not working.

What a great day ahead of them, yay.

She’s probably making a fuss about it, as after a bit of searching, it only lasts about a few days or so, but right now, she just wishes it could stop right now.

She already knows that as soon as Spencer is going to walk in the room and launch the subject, a mountain of facts is going to fall, and she wouldn’t even be aware of how long it’s, and when it’s ever going to stop.

Because, even if there’s four facts (which isn’t about to happen), he develops each of them in the form of essays, which seems like a whole conference.

Y/N doesn’t mind, it’s not annoying, she likes to hear about it, it gives more knowledge and stuff, but when it ends to be an essay long, especially when she doesn’t happen to have drunk coffee, things get complicated, in terms of focus.

Such as, being slightly, just a little, really not much irritated, but mostly tired as hell.

Working is not in her plans at all. Sleeping is.

Taking a day long nap, as much as possible, but, fucking work, has decided to annoy her, as much as it could, with a wonderful surprise: a pile of papers, that you have to read, think about, write about- as you think about it, make sure it’s well described, filled out, so your boss doesn’t bug you with it, causing you to re-write it, which...makes you lose motivation, as you have to go through the whole process, which makes you...even more tired.

She seriously has no idea how she’s going to make it through the whole day, and strangely feels like the coffee machine has been mocking her since she arrived.

All she wants is to hide it with whatever is in the room, or smash it against a wall, but that isn’t...possible, as not everyone is doing ‘their challenge’, if that can be seen as one, because to y/n, it’s more of a torture.

If Spencer didn’t have that pretty face to protect, she would punch him in the nose as soon as he’d appear in front of her.

That wasn’t even her idea, she didn’t think that when she mentioned it, he’d take it seriously, resume the subject and make it real.

She really regrets talking about it, because he didn’t just skip it or talk normally, no, Spencer doesn’t do that.

He really had to take it as far as he could.

Now she possibly wants to kill him, but unfortunately remembered that he’s going through the same thing, and will probably want to either kill her, or attempt something less violent, such as making her talk about a subject that interests him on purpose and make an essay out of it.

And, of course, steal all ways of distraction, and make sure she can’t go, because he also ‘tortures’ her by asking questions, and when she can’t answer, he develops it even more which makes the rest of the essay late, and last longer.

Again, it isn’t in a mean way, just annoying her as well.

They often do that, find ways to annoy each other, it’s kind of a habit they picked up throughout the years, they both find it distracting and can be a nice way to distract each other when work happens to be quite annoying.

But, never has she thought that he’d take the joke to the point of what keeps her awake. 

That sneaky bastard even left a box of tea on her desk, and she would have probably thrown it out if it wasn’t so expensive.

If only he wasn’t doing it as well, oh, how she would have grabbed a knife from the kitchen to throw it at him.

Also, also, as if it couldn’t get any better, one of them had to stay awake, in case one happens to fall asleep.

Double the dose of fun.

She can’t wait to see him cross...the door.

Strangely, as soon as she told it, Y/N saw a well known face make his way through the bureau.

She even had to keep her from standing up and possibly strangle him.

He didn’t even stop to talk to other people, just said ‘hi’, and basic stuff you say when you arrive at work, and arrived at the conference room.

It happened to be empty, so she took the occasion and settled there.

“Oh, you’re already there? Thought you’d come in later.”

“I came early, because I knew that I’d ignore my alarm and possibly arrive an hour later than you...or not at all.”

“Okay. How are-”

“Dead. What about you?”

“The same.” Spencer said, as he sat up. “So, about it-”

“...knew it.”

“...why don’t we discuss so, you know, we distract ourselves from...the fatigue, and...all of the other effects that come with a coffee withdrawal?”

“Do I look like I have the energy to do that?”

“...no.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“To distract ourselves, as said.”

“My head hurts, I want to sleep, I’m pissed off, how do I even do that?”

“By trying to avoid bright lights...oh, yeah, that doesn’t work.”

“As figured.”

“So...if I understood well, we’re screwed for the rest of the week?”

“Exactly, genius.”

“Great plan.”

“It was your idea.”

“Can’t deny.”

“You could have chosen something else than fucking coffee Spencer.”

“I didn’t have any idea but that.”

“Come on. You always have a ton of stuff in that brain, and just on that day: nothing.”

“My brain lagged.”

“Oh, I forgot your brain is a computer now apparently.”

“It is one, I am my own computer, I just have a system that can fail, like a regular computer.”

“Which OS are you on? Genius OS? Because your ‘intelligent’ system sucks right now. I prefer Windows.”

“Hey, when we agreed to do that, insulting each other wasn’t part of the thing.”

“It’s the only thing I have in mind, because if I don’t do it, I’m either killing you, or sleeping to try to calm down. I could also do both. Murder, then sleep, and I just pretend someone walked in and killed you while I was sleeping.”

“...that’s not very nice.”

“It’s the nicest thing I’ll probably be saying today, so, enjoy.” 

“I didn’t know that included you being rude. I’m also tired, but I don’t act meanly.”

“Oh, sorry, did I hurt your feelings?”

“...yes.”

“Too bad.”

“Rude.”

“ ‘s not.”

“If you continue like that, you’re going to be the one keeping watch.”

“We agreed on the other one doing it if one of us falls asleep. None of us are, we’ll see when one of us sleeps.”

"Is this a contest or what? You know that the minute one of us puts his head down on the table, they'll be out if nothing wakes them up?"

"Yeah, I know. But if that's a contest of who can stay awake longer, you're going to lose, you've been on coffee much longer, prepare to suffer."

"You look dead, you're the one that's going to sleep first. I almost caught you dozing off when I walked in." 

"No you didn't."

"I did."

"...no."

"You're lying. That small "no" gave it all away."

"I talk like that in general. It's nothing."

"You talk like that just today. The only thing that hasn't changed is your squeaky voice."

"I don't have a squeaky- I have one."

"Told it."

"Oh, shut it."

"You'd be too sad.without my knowledge."

"No...I wouldn't."

"You're smart because of me."

"Mhm. 'f you tell so." She says, propping up her chin on her hands. 

"You're already giving up five minutes in. You're very strong."

"Am not. I'm just...putting my hand on my hands, just that."

"Just that."

"Exactly."

"You don't know...how to lie properly." He said, stretching up a bit. 

"You're going to be sleeping in a bit too."

"Don't you know me by now? I'm stronger than you."

"Hm. Elevator accident."

"That doesn't count."

"You had a small voice."

"I was just scared, okay? I- I don't like being in small spaces for too long."

"Says the 'strong man'."

"Okay, I'm not as strong as I said, but just a bit more, because being at your level equals being weak."

"Hm. Okay." Y/N lazily responds, as a pair of heels begins clacking onto the floor, the sound growing closer, until a familiar face comes in.

"Is there a meeting I wasn't informed of or what?" Garcia asks.

"No, we just sat here. Trying to stay awake, and y/n is that close to sleeping."

"Shut up, you were about to as well."

"And you're just here like that? Imagine if Hotch even found you guys."

"Yeah that'd- y/n. Y/N." Spencer raised his voice, trying to get her attention.

"Let me." Garcia interrupted, walking to her as she shook her. "Y/N, wake up and stand up, you two are going to follow me."

"Hm…? Where?"

"You're going to stay in my office for a bit, but just for today. I'm taking a risk by doing that."

"Do we get to sleep there?" Spencer asked.

"Just for a bit. Not all day, I'm doing you guys a favor here, you're going to have to find a big way to thank me if Hotch finds out and yells at me."

"Deal." Y/N answers, quickly stretching as she stands up, lazily walking to the exit along with the two.

*

It's been just half an hour until Hotch begins to wander around, wondering why he can't find either of them anywhere.

He just saw them walking in, and now, they're nowhere to be found.

No one else saw them since, and the only person left to ask would be Garcia, she's been in her office all day.

Just when she begins to make her way back, a stern voice calling her name interrupts her.

"Garcia. Did you see Reid and y/l/n?"

"No, I haven't seen them all day..must be doing work." She answers.

"They're in there, aren't they? They're nowhere else."

"...maybe?"

"They're supposed to be working, and I doubt that's what they're doing right now."

"But Hotch, leave them; this is how true love starts in fanfiction. Don't you see it?"

"Fan what…? I really have to get you drug tested some day."

"Fanfiction you know, it's stories that people write, it's all cute, in some they fall in love and all, so, that's why you have to leave them, they fell asleep on each other, and it's so cute."

"Garcia, I thought you agreed to stop reading that stuff at work, didn't you?"

"...I read them on breaks." 

“Fanfiction or not, love or not, they’re not supposed to be sleeping, so, please don’t force me to break that door to come in.”

“Don’t yell, they were really tired, so I...offered them to stay. Mostly because I wanted to help, but also because they’re so cute, I couldn’t resist seeing them sleeping together.”

“That depends on how quick they can wake up.” Hotch announces, stepping to the entrance of the room.

When they both step in, you’re both sitting on chairs and Spencer is sleeping against y/n’s shoulder, while her head is on his.

As soon as Garcia wishes for Hotch not to wake them up, he steps further in the room, clearing his throat as his foot tapped against the tiles.

It didn’t take much for them to wake up, everyone knew that when Hotch’s voice was to be heard, you definitely had to be awake if you wanted to avoid a sermon. 

"I'm awake, I'm awake!" Y/N stated, as if it could make the situation somehow better.

"Reid." Hotch said.

"I'm there, I- oh, did I...fall asleep on your shoulder? Sorry for that."

"As much as I'd like to reassure you, Hotch is behind, so that'll have to wait."

"Oh...sir." 

"Care to explain?"

"Well uh...I don't think I actually have one."

"...we didn't have coffee for a day or two because we decided to stop so, yeah."

"Does this even look like a valuable reason?"

"No." They both admit.

"If I see this happen again, you're aware of the consequences."

"Yes sir." Spencer responds.

"Absolutely." Y/N answers, as the eyes of the group follow Hotch leaving the room, a sigh exiting their lips. "That was...the worst moment of my life."

"You two are disappointing, I was so excited to see a real life fanfiction, but you had to get caught."

"Garcia it doesn't exist, stop reading these. It's not like we're in love."

"It's because you don't know how to recognize true love y/n. You're a newbie."

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"Fairy tale stuff, you know. The couple falls in love, eventually gets married, has kids , and everything ends well."

"I think we should talk to Hotch about getting you to take a drug test or other." Spencer pointed out.

"We should."

**

[abraxos-the-phantom]

Scum Disciple: Alpha Stage

Alpha, described by google as "...an exploratory phase. Beta means the features have been locked down and are under development (no other features will be added). More commonly: Alpha: Usually the first normally interact-able thing out (private or public use is irrelevant)."

And here are some of the highlights that I liked from the first few versions lol.

Fun Times in Gusu

Lan Xichen walked to quite a strange sight.

While normally he would have greeted the younger Nie with a smile, the image of the famous Wei Wuxian pouting as YunmengJiang’s young master and QingheNie’s second master grinned was a little too ridiculous for him to process without chuckling.

“We both know you aren’t actually going to tell Ming-shixiong,” Nie Huaisang chuckled at the shifted to pat the other.

“Yeah,” Wei Wuxian sighed. “I’m worried though.”

Jiang Wanyin had raised his eyebrow, making quite the image as he looked over his crossed arms, “You’re worried about your brother? QingheNie Sect’s Monster Head disciple? The Youngest Rogue Cultivator in the Generations? The Peerless Prodigy? I think you’re a little delusioned Wei Wuxian.”

Wei Wuxian’s nose crumbled at that, “They really call Gēge that? Such lame names.”

“I think brother called him the Crane Dragon once,” Nie Huaisang added. “When you and Ming-shixiong went on a Night Hunt.”

Wei Wuxian shook his head, “Forget it, that’s not what I’m worried about- it’s just. Gēge has never let me on my own like this before. He gets antsy.”

Nie Huaisang pursed his lips, “I can understand but- A-Xian, you’re one of his best students.”

“He just- he gets this look sometimes,” Wei Wuxian sighed. “He doesn’t talk about it but sometimes he looks at me and I’m pretty sure he’s seeing something else. I never asked because he always looks sad after.”

“Didn’t you grow up together?” Nie Huaisang frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ming-shixiong with anyone else besides the three of us but the other disciples.”

“He’s never talked to anyone except father, mother, myself, sister, and some of the disciples at our sect,” Jiang Wanyin said in agreement. “You guys didn’t meet anyone when your Brother was still Rogue?”

Wei Wuxian shook his head in Jiang Wanyin’s direction, expression slightly pinched still, “I wouldn't remember, and I know we’re close- but there’s some stuff I know he hasn’t told me. You guys realize that my brother is nineteen?”

Jiang Wanyin blinked, as well as several other disciples who were not so covertly listening into the conversation about the mysterious prodigal Cultivator of the QingheNie Sect. “He seems much older, I didn’t think anyone knew his actual age.”

Because that was the curiosity wasn’t it, for all that he was well-known, there was never truly anyone who knew Wei Ming, because he would never actually say anything about his past save for vague hints. One could ask Wei Wuxian of course, but the latter had the same result because of the mere fact that Wei Wuxian didn’t know much about his older brother either beyond his personality, likes and dislikes. Any years before Wei Ming had lived with his brother was knowledge he couldn’t even forget because he never knew in the first place. Nie Mingjue never asked, and neither did Nie Huaisang. It took Wei Ying meeting other children to realize that nine-year-olds never talked the way Wei Ming did. They didn’t know facts about monsters, and they certainly never talked about demons. Yet Wei Ming had extensive knowledge since who knows how long, and no one ever questioned it.

Whether that was because Wei Ming knew how to subvert the conversation or because they simply never asked, that was a question no one could really answer. Not even Wei Wuxian, for all that he loved his Gēge, knew where to start.

Sensing the sudden dip in Wei Wuxian’s mood, Nie Huaisang brightened as much as he could, “Well it doesn’t even matter does it? He’s your brother, he’s my teacher- and he scares my brother to boot.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, if a little weakly, “He told me he actually enjoys it a little.”

Jiang Wanyin winced, “Isn’t your brother known to your Sect as the Punisher?”

With an enthusiastic nod from both Nie Sect members, they proceeded to scare everyone else by saying, “300 copies of Consequence, 200 paces across the hills and back in three days and patrolls in three of the Qinghe protected lands by the end of two weeks!”

They silently cackled as the other Sect disciples paled at the prospect.

<page break heyho>

After gently teasing Wangji of his interaction with Wei Wuxian, Lan Xichen bid his brother a good night as he suddenly remembered what he had sought the older Wei out for. The technique he used was quite unique and not among any technique he had some knowledge of, though granted it could purely be because he himself was not well learned in any but the Lan Sect style. Regardless, he was hoping to have a discussion about it and to possibly inquire if the older Wei would use his expertise to critique his own swordsmanship.

He was just about to do just that before he heard an audible thunk and grunt of pain from within the room Wei Ming had been assigned for his stay here.

Lan Xichen abruptly opened the door out of instinct, blinking in surprise to find Wei Ming wielding a brush in his hand and a paper in the other, dark eyes roving the entire wooden table with apprehension.

“Mn?” Wei Ming looked up with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, Zewu-jun. I was under the impression you had retired for the night.”

“I had initially been hoping to discuss swordsmanship with you before,” Lan Xichen looked at the papers, elegant calligraphy lining each and every one save for the large stack of paper at the corner of the table. “I admit, however, that this seems to take my interest far more at the moment.”

“Ah, well.” Wei Ming gestured to the papers. “These are lesson plans, notes if you will- but plans all the same.”

“...Lesson plans?”

Wei Ming nodded seriously, “It’s important for a teacher to understand what they are teaching every day, so as not to leave anything important out.”

“Ah…apologies, considering the subject you are teaching I thought-”

“To be fair, the material I’m teaching does require less theory than practical. Had I been teaching something akin to a bestiary subject or perhaps even medicinal practices, I wouldn’t be as extensive as this,” Wei Ming once again gestured to the large stacks. “This is not the case however, as I am teaching fighting techniques. I also have to come up with tests and exams, sort the students into pairs for sparing purposes, note everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, formulate proper lectures concerning the techniques I am teaching- that sort of thing. Besides the fact that I’m considering adding other techniques so that my students are well informed.”

Though granted the stuff he was doing was easier than when he had been Qing Jing Peak’s head disciple, the paperwork for that Sect was monstrous because of the additional lessons for music and the tactitionary course. Both were a requirement as a disciple of Qing Jing, as they were the main jack of trades within Cang Qiong as their roles were both in support and primary fighters when it came to battles. This was especially true during the pseudo war between Lou Binghe’s forces and during the battle with Tianlang-jun. Shizun would normally do most of the work but with the absence of Lou Binghe, a lot of it arrived to Ming Fan and he didn’t have the heart to inquire about it.

After Binghe’s return Ming Fan just never thought to question it anymore, Shizun was happy and he got used to the workload. It wasn’t as if he never had help either, he took charge of the male disciples while Ning Yingying took charge of the females. After Lou Binghe soon took up some work every now and then; it’s just the way things were after...After.

Wei Ming blinked after returning from his thoughts, “Hundreds of apologies, may Zewu-jun repeat himself?”

Lan Xichen smiled, “Of course, I only wished to ask if you would be open to giving me advice on my swordsmanship? Nie Mingjue mentioned before that your advice had helped him improve his saber technique and I would very much like to also improve myself now that the opportunity is open to me.”

“Or perhaps Xichen-ge would not like to be left behind by his dîdi?” Wei Ming said with an amused smile.

At this Lan Xichen’s ears colored slightly even as he smiled neutrally, “That is also a motivation, but I believe no brother would want their younger brother to leave them behind.”

“Very well, when Zewu-jun is free; we shall spar.” Wei Ming’s lips quirked. “I would also like to know if my observations are correct.”

“Let us have this spar soon Teacher Wei, thank you for your time.” Lan Xichen stood and dipped his head slightly before exiting with a final ‘good night’.

<page break hey-ho>

“Gege what are you doing?”

Wei Ming was currently in the Lan Sect library, pouring over old books that amused him and greatly reminded him of some of the brighter moments in his past life. Namely: The Resentment of Chunshan. The book itself was poor in terms of accuracy, but amusing nonetheless. He and the other disciples found themselves horrified and amused by the story described within. Even more so when the Song of BingQiu became popular among the locals.

He was also starring an old map of the land, clearly looked into by someone considering the small hand-written notes in black ink. The penmanship was oddly familiar but Wei Ming couldn’t exactly remember where.

There was also an area circled, the name Cang Qiong Sect written in careful script.

“What do you think?” He asked absentmindedly, fingers brushing over the circled area. It was far from the other Sects, inaccessible due to the mountain ranges that circled it. If one tried, they’d have to do so by climb rather than sword. The air would be thinner; challenging even for a Cultivator.

He vaguely wondered if the land had changed so much as to the sudden growth of mountains around the Cang Qiong Sect area.

“Looks like someone was trying to look for the mythical Cang Qiong Sect,” Wei Ying peered over his brother’s shoulder. Tilting his head at the map. “Weird.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Eh,” Wei Ying shrugged as he sat next to him. “Cause it’s just a legend, no one actually knows if the Cang Qiong Sect is still around. If it ever was around. I mean- demons, the War- it’s described in pretty poetry and details, but other than that- most people write it off as a fantasy since no one’s ever seen it.”

Wei Ming considered the next question carefully, “What do you believe?”

“I think there’s some truth to it,” To himself, Wei Ying vaguely wondered why the sudden inquiry. His brother had no interest in the stories that were normally told to children, he had been busy at the time and Wei Ying only knew of it because the Nie Brothers held a rather large collection of the stories of the illustrious Cang Qiong Sect and one of their most famous Lords: Shen Qingqiu. Nie Huaisang had admitted that most of these were his brother’s, and he himself was promptly amused. Now he was starting to wonder. The stories of the Cang Qiong Sect were often used for the children of Cultivators as lessons, Lan Sect used it too if what was in the library was any indication- it was an impressive collection.

Though it did have nothing on Sect Leader Nie’s secret collection of nearly all the tales of the General from Qing Jing Peak: Huázháo-jun.

“Hm, perhaps,” Wei Ming noted non-committedly, shaking his head. “Let’s talk about what to do for tomorrow.”

“Mn! You should teach-“

[Fun fact about this one up here! In this version of the story, MF brings WWX's body up through the mountains to Cang Qiong Sect in the hopes that he could get help in reviving his brother, thereby re-meeting with his fellow disciples of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect]

[officialleotolstoy]

Oh Dolokhov Brainrot We’re Really In It Now, aka Dolokhov playlist annotations!

A note on the cover photo: I don’t really like this one but I got tired of looking at men on Pinterest so I gave up. The window symbolizes the rum window and the smoking symbolizes uhhhhh habitual bad life choices idk

Drinking game take a shot every time I say “it’s about the vibes”

Wrecking Ball - Mother Mother

“I break it just because I can”

This is THEE ‘I am going to cause problems on purpose’ song and that is like his entire narrative purpose!! Argue with me about this one I dare you

The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty - Panic! At The Disco

“If you wanna start a fight you better throw the first punch, make it a good one”

Partially its just vibes, I won’t lie. But also the consistent spoiling for a fight is very in character

Shoot to Thrill - AC/DC

“I’m like evil, I get under your skin”

It’s got I Am Morally Repulsive But Also I’ll Steal Your Girl energy which really hits all of Dolokhov’s character traits. And of course the added bonus of gun imagery.

Mr. Brightside - The Killers

“It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this”

I added it strictly for vibes, but then I realized the quoted lyric is very much him @ the Kuragins if you take the reading that he refuses to admit he actually like them but grows genuinely fond of them over time even though he initially got to know them with a lot of ulterior motives.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

“Mama, I just killed a man”

The amount of songs that are on these playlists just for what are essentially your mom jokes since Dolokhov loves his mom so much is a little pathetic. But I’m not wrong! I can’t really put it into words but something about this song has Dolokhov energy.

Feel It Still - Portugal the Man

“Give in to that easy living, goodbye to your hopes and dreams”

A good deal of what I find interesting about Dolokhov is the internal conflict he has of knowing he’s become rather wicked and problematic but also not really trying very hard to change and almost enjoying it so a lot of the songs on here are about that, including this one. The “I’m a rebel just for kicks now” also very much screams Causing Problems On Purpose.

The Bidding - Tally Hall

“I like to take advantage of the bourgeoisie”

His whole role in volume one and two is to take advantage of the bourgeoisie! This song also oozes confidence and a sense of superiority that comes from being better than the sellouts in high society, Dolokhov’s not like other girls uwu (he really is, but I don’t think he would admit that).

Say Amen (Saturday Night) - Panic! At The Disco

“I could be better but baby it’s Saturday night”

Embracing his own wickedness! The idea that he knows he could be better than he is but he doesn’t want to take that opportunity...yeah vibes

Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) - Fall Out Boy

“I became such a strange shape from trying to fit in”

This is the epitome of the “woe is me I need to be purified” phase he goes through when he’s into Sonya. Also “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color” reminds me of Comet Dolokhov’s stupid eyeliner <3

Some Nights - fun.

“So what is this? I sold my soul for this?”

There’s a long stretch of this playlist that just boils down to “Woe is me I need to be purified” crisis hours, because Dolokhov’s oscillation between embracing his own cruelty and trying to be a good person is super interesting to me. This song captures the idea that he’s still having fun and there’s some good there, but he’s also aware that he’s losing himself a bit

Roaring 20s - Panic! At The Disco

“I don’t even know me”

“Woe is me i need to be purified” crisis AGAIN. This song gets more to the annoyance with society as a whole and feeling kind of lost in it

Send Them Off! - Bastille

“Help me exorcise my mind”

“Please purify me 16 year old girl! I’m 27 this isnt creepy at all ahahahha”. I do despise Sonyakhov but this has the vibes of a man feeling his own evil and wanting a woman to fix it. Not a great look.

Easy Days (Demo) - Bastille

“I don’t wanna fall back again, back into the easy days”

Near the end of the “woe is me I need to be purified” phase when he’s kind of drifting back to his old ways and he’s like wait no- wait- and then he does anyway because he’s horrible. I also really like the acknowledgment that his horribleness is easy and pleasant for him, and he has to fight against that (and he loses that fight HDJAJJD).

Undisclosed Desires - Muse

“You trick your lovers that you’re wicked and divine”

This is a Dolokhov/Nikolai song I do not take constructive criticism. Undisclosed desires...not being straight...lots to think about! It feels almost like a corruption arc? Nikolai isn’t corrupted nor does their...fling (?) last very long but Nikolai is obviously enamored with Dolokhov despite him being The Worst so I think this fits. I don’t have enough songs for a Nikolai/Dolokhov playlist so I just add those songs to both of their individual playlists

Thnks fr th Mmrs - Fall Out Boy

“Thanks for the memories even though they weren’t so great”

Also mostly a Nikolai/Dolokhov song. This man has never ended a relationship on good terms, huh. Also. Sighs heavily. “He tastes like you only sweeter” never fails to make me laugh when I think about it in the context of Dolokhov post-duel being like oh?? You’re just a stupid WOMAN Hélène your brother and/or Nikolai is hotter than you :/ which is not exactly what I think happened but it makes me laugh to consider. Dolokhov ur bitterrrrr

Dangerous - Royal Deluxe

“I’ll be the last man standing here, I’m not going anywhere”

I feel like this has the vibes of his cruelty, especially in that bit after the Kuragins have died when he and Petya infiltrate the French army.

Another One Bites The Dust - Queen

“There are plenty of ways you can hurt a man”

He will hurt you and kill you so violently :) It’s about the vibes.

White Wedding Pt. 1 - Billy Idol

“It’s a nice day to start again”

In the exact inverse to his “woe is me I need to be purified” phase, he’s like ok yes i will pick up bad habits again and enjoy them because frick you! I read once that this song is about a relapse into drugs, but I’m making it analogous to his relapse into Terrible Person Behavior after Sonya’s rejection. Also the repetition of the phrase little sister does something for my brain idk, after we know he loves his mom and sister it just fits.

Highway to Hell - AC/DC

“I’m on the highway to hell and I’m goin down”

Like White Wedding, it screams acceptance of his problematicness. He knows he’s cruel and evil and he revels in it. This is the phase we see him in most I think.

Back in Black - AC/DC

“It’s been too long, I’m glad to be back”

I think this plays every time he gets reinstated to an army position he lost by being reckless earlier. Just kidding sort of but listen to this song and tell me it doesn’t have Dolokhov vibes. If you do, you’re wrong <3

Poet - Bastille

“I have written you down now, you will live forever”

This is just here cause he ghostwrote Anatole’s love letters and I think it’s funny. It’s MY playlist and I get to choose the barely relevant Bastille songs

St. Jude - Florence + The Machine

“Maybe I’ve always been more comfortable in chaos”

This one’s more scattered lyrics than an overall vibe. “Each side is a loser so who cares who fired the gun” has duel energy also.

Hey Look Ma, I Made It - Panic! At The Disco

Confession: I hate this song. However, it’s about the about the MOM R U PROUD OF ME vibes (she is. Should she be? Probably not).

Rich Kids - Bea Miller

“It’s never enough for the stuck up types”

The not coming from wealth and having to almost scam your way into being part of the aristocratic scene is very Dolokhov. Also in my mind the rich kid he’s roasting is specifically Nikolai.

Money, Money, Money - ABBA

“It’s a rich man’s world”

I’m not SAYING the wealthy man they talk about is Anatole but - [i am shot]. Scheming and clawing your way up to wealth is Dolokhovcore.

This Is Gospel - Panic! At The Disco

I literally have no justification for this other than that i think modern AU Dolokhov would vibe with it. Look at the amount of eyeliner he wears in Comet and tell me he didn’t have an emo band phase. You can’t.

Trouble’s Coming - Royal Blood

This is not about the words at all, it’s more about the vibes. It just sounds Dolokhovish to me, don’t ask me to explain.

Sleep Alone - Two Door Cinema Club

“They’re just ghosts and they can’t hurt him if he can’t see them”

This gives me post-Kuragins’ death vibes, and I can’t pin down exactly why? I think it’s the idea of being very alone and closed off.

Golden Days - Panic! At The Disco

I can’t put a specific lyric to it but it’s the vibes of looking back on your hedonistic youths with nostalgia and rose-colored glasses. Post-Kuragins’ death vibes again.

Go Get Your Gun - The Dear Hunter

“One foot in the grave, the other one’s kickin’ its way right down to hell”

All we see of him after the Kuragins’ death is just him being particularly cruel and reckless, almost careless. This feels like it encapsulates that energy.

The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand

“They say you’re a troubled boy just because you like to destroy”

I’m aware that a good portion of this song is about a Christ figure but I’m going to respectfully ask you to ignore that bit and just focus on all the Sketchy Things the guy does instead. Thank you. He does in fact like to destroy things! Señor Cause Problems On Purpose back at it again at krispy kreme, huh.

[queer-crusader]

How do you think Silver & Flint's relationship would have evolved if things hadn't ended the way they did in S4? How do you think things would have progressed through time? I tend to think about the what ifs a lot. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it.

OOFT. I mean i have many thoughts! It’s... very hard to say really. Because i think one thing Black Sails does incredibly well is the way it builds a story and a character. Many choices made in this show are so dependent on what the characters want and who they intrinsically are and how they influence each other (willingly/knowingly or not), and i feel like there are many very complex interwoven roads that led them to the conclusion they got to. Which is one of the many reasons the finale felt like such a tragedy; you know things are going to end badly because you kind of see it coming. And dear god it does hurt, even with Flint being reunited with Thomas.

So. I think there are two ways to answer this question, and you can sort of divide them into canon-ish versus fanon wish. These may not exactly be clearly indicated bc like i said i have Many Thoughts, and i apologise in advance 😅 Another thing i’ll be looking at here is something we had to lay out for our characters when i studied acting - the goals/objectives/motivations of the character, and their emotional/mental state. None of this is meant to be critical against any character. I simply adore analyising them and the paths of the story, and I love each and every character i talk about here deeply.

So, looking at that finale. There’s several things that i could take from what you say about things not ending the way they did - for now, i’m looking at the confrontation between Flint and Silver in the woods, where Silver forces Flint to quit his war and reunites him with Thomas.

Firstly, let’s analyse what we get from the canon, and what i believe motivates these characters to bring them to the point they end up at. There’s that famous line i think of Silver where he says he doesn’t know anymore where he ends and Flint begins - their thinking patterns have become so intertwined, they basically share a braincell. The tricky thing about this is, just because he and Flint think similarly, share tactics, and a knowledge of how to use people in their means, just because they understand each other well, doesn’t mean they share opinions and morals. Flint especially seems to forget this. He believes Silver is with him in his cause to end Imperial rule. But from Silver’s final actions, it’s clear Silver values his personal wants and needs above that of this abstract crowd of people. He’s not oppressed - or hasn’t felt the effects of Imperial/religious oppression (as far as we canonically know) like Flint and Madi have. And that means he doesn’t have the same drive. He’s driven by his personal connections to these people, i believe, purely from his own point of view. Like, i suspect he struggles to place himself in the shoes of Madi or Flint to feel their pain and motivation. He can see it, he just... doesn’t fully grasp it. (There’s also a question of whether he wishes to, but i feel nowhere NEAR qualified on answering that, nor do i think the canon gives us enough material to give a perfectly cut & dry answer.)

So you have this big miscommunication. Flint believes that, because he and Silver have basically become one shared braincell, they have the same goals, while Silver is still driven from a point of selfishness. (Side-note: there was a moment in the show he became selfless! He wouldn’t give up his crew when faced with torture from Vane’s quartermaster! But then he lost a leg over it and it seemed to dampen that selflessness. I think from there on, moments where he seems to be motivated by the good of the crew come instead from an internal need to belong and be loved more so than a genuine sense of brotherhood. That brotherhood may still have been there, but i think he might have suppressed that instinct a little and instead let the more selfish needs take more of a front seat. Understandable and not bad/evil, like that’s super valid of him. But my point is, he’s not exactly ready to fight for another man’s cause he doesn’t have as much of a personal emotional profit in, especially when he knows it’ll end in certain death for everyone he cares about and he knows cares about him.)

So that’s sort of where the characters are mentally in that climax. I may be skirting details and summarising a bit hastily, but it’s also been a GOOD while since i’ve watched season 4, so i apologise. Flint (and Madi as well - she plays an equally important role i think!) is fuelled by a mix of rage born from oppression/discrimination, and a protectiveness for others who may suffer the same fate. Silver meanwhile is fuelled by a need much closer to home - to be loved and to keep those he cares for and deems important to him alive and around. I’ve framed it as their emotional drive, but really it is also their goal, their objective in that finale. Flint and Madi are looking to burn down an oppressive system while Silver... isn’t. For him, their goals stand directly in the way of his. And by the end of the show, he’s gained enough power to prevail in his objective, cancelling out those of Flint and Madi.

So, could it have gone differently? I think, if we wanna play with canon and keep it as close to canon as possible... It seems almost impossible. These people’s goals just do not align. (There’s that sweet sweet tragedy again.) So what you need for it to go differently in short is for one of, if not several, of these people to change their goal. But we’re talking their MAIN objective, their main driving force at this point in the show - so like, the chances of that are slim. ESPECIALLY if we’re talking about the canon characters. After all, for that, the characters would need to look inside themselves and fucking face up to some of their issues and work on them. (This is something which these characters are not very prone to do, bc jesus it’s a mess in there and if that were me i’d preferably not turn introspective either and be forced to look at all that.)

So if we wanted Flint to change his goal, he’d need to come to terms with the Empire being untouchable - which is bullshit bc like my man has a POINT, just because they seem to be able to be brought down doesn’t mean they ain’t - and to accept the homophobia and oppression they treated him and Thomas with, which, yeah fuck that, absolutely not, his rage and his goals are valid as FUCK. If we wanted to change Madi’s - lmao like listen i understand wanting her and Silver happy together bc we ship EVERYTHING in this house, but she’s poc and proper royalty and wants to end slavery. We ain’t touching her goals. So that just leaves Silver. Silver would need to face a part of himself that keeps him from placing Flint’s goals, or Madi’s goals, over his own. (I suspect we circle back to that insecurity and need to be loved, which defo stems from whatever trauma he swears doesn’t affect who he is today.) So for that he’d uhh... need therapy. And a shit tonne of it. But then you still have the issue that Flint and Madi will likely fight their war (bc they DESERVE IT), which may lead to what Silver considers inevitable - that they will die early and horribly, and he ends up all alone.

So, looking at playing with the canon-ish to change things? It’s gonna end in tragedy. There’s doesn’t seem any other way about it, i fear; not with the way these characters were written, with who they are and what drives them and what they want. If it doesn’t end in tragedy in one way, then almost certainly in another.

So what are our other options? What if we look at the fanon wish - whether it’s silverflint, or silvermadi, or madisilverflint, or just to have these kids be fucking happy? Well, you know what? Maybe it DOESNT have to end up in tragedy. Maybe, if Silver does align himself with the goals of the people he loves - after learning to communicate and place himself in other people’s shoes and prioritise the needs of his loved ones and compromising and all that jazz (god this boy needs therapy that only the fanon can likely give him, rip) - he could join them in their war. And maybe, his genius and creativity and quick wit will in fact propel their cause forward and help so much, none of them dies an early gruesome death. It’s not impossible! It just requires that sweet sweet character growth he doesn’t get the opportunity for in canon.

Another option, and this one is perhaps a little more plausible if the show had no episode limit or a desire to end in tragedy and “align” itself with “history” (they’ve played fast and loose with real history i’ve learned, and like,, it’s a story about fictional characters so why did it have to align itself with history?? Okay fine, as a prequel to Treasure Island, it still needed to end in tragedy for Silver bc we know where he ends up. Were there no Treasure Island and no rules and we could do what we wanted with the show and write a new ending, then what?). This one is more popular, you see it in loads of fics and i like it a lot. Silver sends Flint to the plantation. Flint and Thomas break out and get their war anyway. They’re pissed at Silver for a bit for being a selfish dick shitting on Flint’s dreams, but like,, it’s not as if it stopped Flint. (We can even look at it like Silver knew they’d probably fight their war and have better odds with Thomas in the mix, giving them a better opportunity - but like, that’s just a fun headcanon to play with that i don’t think aligns with what he explicitly states to want in canon.) And then, after some years, everyone learns to communicate and talk things out and maybe, maybe, Silver grows a bit and things become healthier between him and Flint.

Listen, the moral of the story is this. I love all the ships in this show. I think they’re all neat, and i love the different iterations in which people bring them to life and try to align them with canon. Do i think that with the canon we’ve been given, silverflint could happen? Maybe. Would it be healthy?? I mean... Probably not 😅 but like, that doesn’t prevent me from shipping it. (That’s not the point of shipping - sometimes you just wanna see that sweet sweet chemistry pay off, even tho u know it ain’t healthy. The characters are fictional. It’s okay. No-one will get hurt - apart from maybe you if you end up romanticising it and taking that into real life but ooft that’s a whole other kettle of fish.) But god, that’s the fucking JOY of fanfics ya know?? It may also be why i enjoy writing my modern au so much xD therapy is an option, and canon means even less than usual. All im saying is, when it comes to the relation between silver and flint, the fan community are a fucking godsend. You want them to be friends?? We got fics for that! Want them to bone? SO many fics for that! Want a sort of father-son role?? Uhh nowhere near enough fics for that, but the fandom’s still active so you never know! Partners in crime?? Hell YEAH that has potential, even in canon i think if u just stretch out fan-written episodes far enough!! (God can you imagine the POTENTIAL?? Ignore the war, the grittiness, the drama. Get me some pirate hijinks where the stakes are low but they’re still sharing a braincell.)

(Hmm. Now i need to add another idea to my WIP list lmao xD)

Anywayyy, hope this satisfies ur curiosity anon!!

[girlsbtrs]

An Interview with PLEXXAGLASS

Written by Olivia Khiel. Graphic by James N Grey. 

Non-binary dark pop artist PLEXXAGLASS has found their identity and carved out their own space in the music world. With the pandemic putting things on hold, they took to TikTok, reaching a new community of queer fans to connect with through songs like “Liar” and “Lilith” (the latter produced by Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda). GBTRS spoke with Plexxaglass about collaborating with Shinoda, their gender identity journey and what they hope listeners will connect with in their music.

Girls Behind the Rock Show: Now that you have more music out, how would you describe the evolution of your sound from when you started to where you are now?

Plexxaglass: I love that question. Because it's kind of funny- I feel like I made a little bit of a circle. I say that because the first two songs that I put out- "Lament en Route" and "Liar"- they're pretty similar sonically to the songs that I'm putting out. So much so that I'm actually going to include those songs on the LP that I'll be releasing, tentatively in October. There's an interesting little gap between those first two songs, and then I put out three other songs that was like my experimental phase. I'm always having fun, but I was trying some different things. I'm happy that I did that and there were two music videos that came out of that cycle or phase. Those songs are "Dead-Eyed Monsters" and "Ana Thema". But I feel like I found my way back to what I found initially, which is really interesting and fun to realize now.

GBTRS: What's the story behind your latest singles? What was it like collaborating with Mike Shinoda on "Lilith"?

Plexxaglass: "Lilith" was a half-finished song honestly- maybe even a quarter-finished song when I even got in touch with Mike. That happened so serendipitously-I had a listener who was also a regular viewer of my Twitch channel and a huge Linkin Park and Shinoda fan in general who hit me up on Instagram and was like, 'Mike Shinoda is producing independent artists' tracks, you should totally submit'. 

I submitted what I had of "Lilith" at the time, which was only a verse and the hook. It was a song that I loved and I knew that I wanted to be finished. I'm not one of those musicians that can just be like, 'alright, I'm gonna write a song today'. I really have to be called by the Muses or some shit. I have to be very inspired. But when Mike reached out to me, that was incentive and inspiration enough. I think when I was sitting down to finish it, I finished in maybe 20 minutes. That's just how it happens sometimes. When it's there, it's there and I finish songs really quickly. The process of working with Mike was amazing, and him and his team told me in the beginning that it was going to be pretty hands off on my part. I knew going in that I was gonna have to take it or leave it, which was sort of scary. I was like, oh shit, what if I don't like it? Am I gonna have to tell Mike Shinoda that I don't want to release the work that he did on my track? Oh my god, that's so scary. But no, of course, he's just so versatile. He really is a musician's musician, and he just gets music in general- doesn't matter what genre it is. I believe my song is the one that he finished the fastest, which is very flattering. It made me feel like it was just very ready. He didn't really have to do too much to it. It was a really, really cool experience that I just will cherish forever and ever and ever.

GBTRS: The song came out beautifully so it's great that things worked out so well.

Plexxaglass: Yeah! And the inspiration behind that one- I wrote it out of a fascination with the second season of The Handmaid's Tale. I found that dynamic so fascinating. I find women or femme-presenting people who [are] in a marginalized group who buys into very oppressive religious practices horrifying and fascinating at the same time. That was the inspiration behind writing that and really sitting with wondering if there's ever an awakening with those people. That was really the basis for that whole song.

GBTRS: You've gotten to collab with Mike Shinoda, but is there anyone else on your list that you'd love to be in the studio with in the future?

Plexxaglass: Oh god, yeah. So many. Right off the top of my head...I love Bishop Briggs, I love Dermot Kennedy, Bon Iver, Annie from St. Vincent, Florence Welch. Those are the big ones. I would die happy if I ever got to collaborate with any of them. That would be amazing.

GBTRS: What else do you find yourself drawing inspiration from these days?

Plexxaglass: Up until this point, it's been very autobiographical. It's been very much things that have happened in my life. I am trying to get away from that because I'm somebody who writes more somber music. I have some anthemic stuff that's more uplifting, but it is dark pop. I am at a point in my life where I'm generally- I'm mentally ill- but I'm generally a happy person. There's not a lot of dramatic tragedy going on in my life at 30 anymore. I'm trying to write a little more abstractly these days, but the themes that seem to always reoccur are very social justice motivated. Writing about mental illness and mental health are all themes that I tend to write about over and over again in different ways.

GBTRS: You've been very vocal and open about your gender identity and that's very important to so many people who are looking to find themselves in the people that they listen to. Do you have any advice for people who are struggling with that, or even advice for creatives who are in the industry who are working through that as well? 

Plexxaglass: So my coming out as non-binary is still honestly pretty new. I came out publicly about it a little over a year ago. It's something that I always knew, but growing up we just didn't have the language for it. I didn't really know why I felt so out of place and that it felt like such a struggle to present as feminine as possible so as not to feel like I was an outsider. I spent many years trying very hard to conform. 

I think a lot of it was literature that talked about neo-pronouns [that] was something that happened for me that was really an eye-opener. I knew at that point that there were people who used they/them pronouns [and] identified as non-binary, but for some reason, it didn't really click until a book called Black Sun. They have a character that uses neo-pronouns. It just really slapped me in the face. 

I'm really lucky. My friends and family have been almost apathetic about it- like 'that totally makes sense'. The other thing that really helped me was honestly TikTok as well. There is a large trans and non-binary community on TikTok. That was where I really found community, because it was scary to me, because I have conformed for so long. Being a woman was something that I made a very clear part of my identity for so long, that I was scared to lose that community.

I would just say to anyone who is afraid of that: anyone who doesn't still want to welcome you in their space isn't a person you want in your life anyway. I've been lucky that I haven't really had a lot of that. It was a struggle to let go of that. After I came out publicly, I was looking through my closet and I have all of these shirts that say Girl Club and Badass Woman [and] all of these because I was trying so hard. It was difficult to let go of that and come to terms with the fact that it really never was me- it was a mask that I was putting on to feel included and normal.

GBTRS: Do you have a song in your catalog that particularly resonates with you?

Plexxaglass: There's a song that's coming out in August. It's the last single off of this record [and] it's called "Tall". It is about being a trauma survivor- my trauma- and just a rallying cry for trauma survivors in general. I have put out little teasers of it on TikTok and it does seem like it's really resonating with people, which is very exciting. But out of the catalog of songs that I have out currently, the song "Liar"...it's kind of similar in tone. I wrote it after I was diagnosed Bipolar II. It's a song that's very clearly about mental health struggles and I think anyone who does struggle with depression really does relate to that song. That song was the one that really gifted me listeners from TikTok. So that's a song I'll always cherish for many, many reasons, but it has definitely brought me my little music family.

GBTRS: Now that you're starting to connect even more with your listeners, is there anything specific that you hope people take away from your music when they hear you for the first time?

Plexxaglass: I think, like most people, I wanted to create a little community, and I do feel like I'm finally getting to a point where I'm doing that with my music and connecting people and their experiences. 

GBTRS: Now that things are starting to move forward, what's coming up for you?

Plexxaglass: I want to get back to playing shows. I definitely want to pair a show with the release of the record, so I'm hoping I'm going to book some shows for the fall. Get back into rehearsals with a band and get that going and just keep writing and coming up with new material for the next wave of music.

GBTRS: Is there anything else that you want people to know about you or your music, or is there anything that you wish you got to talk about more that you might not get asked?

Plexxaglass: Wow, good question. I think a lot of people don't realize that musicians- especially independent artists- this is this is our small business. It takes a lot of work, obviously, it takes talent and patience, but it takes money. That's why they're there are gaps in time of when I put music out, because sometimes I just legitimately can't afford to- which is sad, I wish that the US had more support for artists like I know other countries do- I know that the UK is really good about grant opportunities for their artists out there. 

I know that people are happy to consume music, but I think people don't realize- especially in the independent side of things- how hard it is to be a musician who's trying to make it in this country. I appreciate everyone who has ever just randomly sent me like $2 on PayPal. It means so much to me because it means that they get that and I think that is something really special and cool about the family that I'm building with my music because they think that they really see me and they appreciate the work. It's people who genuinely want to be involved in my work, and that is something I've never experienced before until the past year or two. That's awesome because myself and my producer, Kevin...we love this project to death. It's awesome to see response from people who love it just as much as we do.