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hedghost · 5 months ago

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Hedge’s Official Ranking of the 24/25 WSL Kits That Literally Nobody Asked For - Home Edition

please please tell me your thoughts in the reblogs or tags!!! i love hearing other people’s critiques. this is the one time the woso community can all come together and complain about the same thing!

1.Liverpool

potentially a controversial opinion but this is Nice As Hell! i know a lot of people said the collars are ugly but like idk it’s kinda giving if you ask me. it’s bold, it’s a statement. i love retro. this is just a good kit. it’s doing bits without doing too much. simple, tasteful, plus a little subtle pizzazz with those jaunty ass stripes - werk it ladies!

plus this kit is made from recycled plastic bottles, nice job! save those turtles liverpool!

apparently the pattern spells out ynwa, which i’m totally Not seeing (maybe i misunderstood this). i’m getting a Y, and then like an H in there maybe? and then i’m just lost, so not sure you hit the mark with that one, but love you for trying! it’s a cool pattern regardless, so i’d maybe just ditch the whole symbolism jargon and stick with that. overall nice job guys - 9/10

bonus points for that prematch shirt, love the detailing on it very sexy top marks

2. Arsenal

sorry arsenal fans, this shit is ugly as fuckkkkk - i’m not even being biased or trying to start fights (for once) it’s just like so hideous. i didn’t really like last season’s but compared to this that was a masterpiece. it’s so PLAIN! the weird red splodge is like not flattering at all and the blue? what’s that all about? also i fucking hate the back it looks like a used period pad, so hopefully the numbers fix that.

praying for your sakes you get a nice third kit or something bc this is ass.

also i’m a HATER for minimalist badge designs. this cannon logo makes the shirt look like a uniform for a museum volunteer. don’t get me wrong - arsenal is not the only culprit. what has a good old crest ever done to you? why do we hate maximalism? why do we hate fun? - 4/10

3. Manchester City

now this is fine. it’s just fine. it’s objectively nice, but it’s also objectively boring! as! fuck! the solid blue is clean but a little too flat. something looks off. it’s missing something. idk it’s nice ig, but it also seems identical to last season? if i saw these pics with no context i’d literally think it was from this year, but that’s the case with most top tier clubs it seems. have some fun guys! push the boat out! where’s the whimsy? but yeah anyway it’s alright.

at least they tried with the sleeves. allegedly they have the manchester dialling code 0161 on them but i mean - do they? do they really? because it looks like a bus seat to me. city fans decide for yourself i guess, because i for one won’t be getting close enough to a city shirt to look

it’s also made from recycled waste textiles so yay again! probably made from all the city shirts people threw out after they all but fucked the title 🤭 - 7/10

4. Tottenham Hotspur

wow spurs this is nice. it’s just so clean, so crisp. my normal issue with spurs kits is their absolute undying commitment to being plain as fuck. they picked one colour, white - arguably the most boring colour of all, arguably even the total absence of colour - and stuck to it. this however? it’s simplicity done well. it’s still plain and simple, but in a gorgeous sexy way. those navy retro colourblock sleeves? stunning! the crispest white you’ve ever seen? stunning! the tiniest of sleeve embellishments? stunning! simplicity done well. it’s just so crispy. pleases my eye.

also huge respect to them for not jumping of the band wagon with the whole ‘every shirt must have ugly details with symbolic meaning we grasped at straws to come up with in order to do something new and edgy’. spurs said no! they said ‘oh this? yeah this is a football shirt. what does it mean? it means football shirt.’ thanks spurs, good job - 9.5/10

5. Crystal Palace

ummmm. now. hmm. uhh. what? this is, um, what? give me a second to get my thoughts in order. i don’t know what is happening here and i’m at a loss for words.

right. crystal palace. inaugural season in the wsl. making a statement. making a splash. right. here’s the thing. i’m always saying wsl kits are too boring. i’m always saying we want fun patterns and whimsy. i’m looking at this in genuine confusion because i actually do not know what is going on here. do i like it? not sure? do i hate it? also not sure?

i think i kind of like it? but i also kind of hate it? it’s insanely busy, it’s probably the most garish kit i’ve ever seen in my life. i think part of the problem is that the club doesn’t have a great colour palette to work from. it’s very bright. i do love the pattern of the eagle crest in the blue, that’s a huge win from me. it’s just those spray paint red splatters that’s throwing me off. it looks like they spent ages making a lovely blue eagle pattern and then remembered they needed red in there so just used the funky spray tools on microsoft paint to draw over the top. it’s giving shit cgi blood splatter in a low budget zombie film. it’s like the barcelona shirts if they were designed by a gcse art student on an acid trip.

the more i’m looking at it however, i’m kind of loving it? kinda camp i guess. this one could be a grower. i’m still confused. at least they’ll make a splash in the wsl - 6/10

6. Manchester United

you’d think by now that i would have learnt to not get my hopes up with this club. remember the long long list of disappointments from yanited this season that i never shut up about? yeah, add this kit to that list.

listen it’s not awful. it’s not ugly, it’s not an eyesore. at the very least, it’s classic united. but it’s just so! bloody! dull! i’m literally falling asleep looking at it. it’s a t-shirt. its literally just a t-shirt. the problem is they set the bar too high last year, with that beautiful pattern and beautiful shade of red. and now, in proper united style, we’re straight back to mediocrity.

let’s talk details. oh wait, they aren’t ANY. there is nothing to say about this kit because there is nothing going ON with this kit. i like the white stripes. that’s it. theres the ombré red at the bottom, which is like- it’s okay. problem is - there’s like four too many shades of red on this shirt, and none of them are that nice. it needs a pattern or something! a pop! a little pizzazz! not a fan of the curved back panel, but it does look a whole lot better than arsenal’s at least.

this is absolutely nothing groundbreaking but it’s fine. it’s just so fucking plain. i know my girls will still serve in it, but i hoped for more. of course, in true united fashion: it’s the hope that kills you - 6/10

7. Chelsea

the tagline for this release is 'we burn blue', because 'the hottest part of the flame burns blue'. congrats on passing year seven chemistry guys. anyway, with that in mind, this kit is, naturally of course, patterned with a mystery blue LIQUID. im not seeing flames in any part of this kit. literally how is this meant to look like fire. this tagline is pure bollocks. it literally could not look more like water if it tried. aka, the opposite of fire.

the kit itself, i'm honestly struggling to form an opinion. i dont think i hate it, but i dont love it either. it may have been easier to figure out if i could actually SEE the kit in any of the release photos, instead of some stupid fucking slow motion blur effect. this pic makes mayra look like she's undergoing mitosis. poor girl's been through enough. it says a lot that in your official kit release you're actively preventing me from looking at the kit.

its not awful? i'm not a fan of these kind of realistic graphics on kits, just makes it look fake and cheap, but like, idk its kinda cool ig. the more i look the more i'm down with it. the colours are nice. its shiny. i'm glad we've gone for originality at least. patterns are fun. - 7.5/10

8. Brighton

i missed this release bc i saw the pictures and genuinely did not realise it was a different kit oops. i do feel bad for clubs who have committed to a striped kit because honestly there’s not really many ways you can play with that. but also that’s kind of their own fault. there’s really not much you can say about this. the sleeves are white this time… okay… there’s a faint pinstripe down each stripe… okayyy… yep that’s kind of it really.

it’s clean, it’s classic brighton, it’s a decent kit. there’s just genuinely nothing new about this. it’s fine. they just clearly couldn’t be bothered and i respect that. - 6/10

9. West Ham

okay we’re doing turtlenecks now apparently!! interesting choice!! i think it kinda looks fuckass silly but also i kind of like it actually. bit of fun innit. good stripes.

the rest of the kit is pretty mid. plainer than a toast sandwich. except for the sleeves! because this year, not only are they bringing in turtlenecks, west ham have decided to also bring in milkmaid sleeves! why is it like that? like is it just a weird bad fit or have they put a fucking elasticated band on? who’s idea was that? what is going on! also am i having a stroke or has the badge changed colour. because it looks fucking hideous. what did they do that for.

i do love the fact they did this shoot in a pub though. very funny. and the kit isn’t too bad. i like the stripes - 6/10

10. Leicester

this is the plainest most boring kit i have ever seen with my own two eyes. that is literally all i can say about this. boring. much like the city of leicester itself.

however - the women have a different kit sponsor to the men and i respect that so you can have one bonus point - 4/10

11. Everton

i’ll be totally honest - i wasn’t expecting everton to give me like the best kit of the bunch. this is the kit for me. i like this one a lot. castore may be mega shit quality but at least they don’t just copy paste all their kits.

i fucking love the pattern here. it’s subtle but it’s nice! and it’s different! we’re not doing any mad shit like chelsea, we’re not doing absolutely nothing at all like leicester. the perfect middle ground of the blue kits. the sponsor is hideous but i’m ignoring that. this is just lovely to look at. stylish, sleek. it’s giving high quality bus seats. this is no stagecoach, this is private hire only. i just love it. and then to top it all off, just the perfect amount of collar detailing. i would be a happy toffee if i was wearing this. gorgeous. loses half a point because the badge fell off during the game which is hysterical.- 9.5/10

12. Aston Villa

this is just the west ham kit if west ham were normal. it’s nothing to write home about, but i do like it. i like the block sleeves and the stripe colour. i like the subtle stripes down the side. i like the simplicity. i like the collar stripes. i even like the flat badge. also i’m assuming this is a betting sponsor which sucks but i do have to say that the sponsor looks great with this kit. it blends in, which is rare. this is a clean, classic kit, and i’m glad that at least one team could be normal. i don’t like that there’s pretty much nothing i can make fun of here. unfortunate for me, good for villa. good job - 8/10

note - all this was written as soon as each club released their kit, so some of my opinions have changed, and a lot have grown on me (looking at you united), but i’ve left the review untouched so you can get purely my honest first impression.

away, third and goalkeeper ratings are currently in progress so expect them once they've all been released! these posts literally never get any notes but i absolutely love doing them so i'm doing it anyway, but if you did wanna encourage me with some nice comments that wouldn't go amiss ;) xx

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begebege28 · 6 months ago

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Can we talk about 7x04 for a minute? Still to this day; out of all the episodes from the season, it is the most discussed? Why? If the show wanted us to believe Tommy was the person who buck wanted their attention, WHY is there a debate? The more i think and the more i look at the bigger picture, i can see. The episode is purpoursly trying to make it a debate between both Eddie and Tommy. That way, ABC is able to test out the waters. Another thing is, Christopher. Christopher isn’t even in the episode but yet is mentioned and a small but important plot. If this was truly about Tommy, AND NOT EDDIE, why involve Eddie? Why didn’t they parallel Tommy to 2x01. Where after the boat cruise, he comes back to the 118 and is jealous of everyone. Buck thinks he will come back for his spot. Eddie didn’t need to be involved. They could have easily done chimney. What stopped buck from reaching out to Tommy after the air hanger. NOTHING? He never called or texted… NEITHER DID TOMMY REACH OUT BACK…. also, idk if anyone realized buck Tommy knew he was going te to hang out with Eddie THE SAME DAY, and YET CONTINUED to invite buck… AND LEFT HIM ALONE AND STRANDED. maybe that was a potential foreshadowing? why show us the last maybe minute before they begin to talk about Eddie and where Eddie is NOW in the frame. Why didn’t they show the beginning where buck comes and meets Tommy? Buck getting upset at Eddie for having on his calendar the basketball game and it being circled. Buck grilling Christopher on his thoughts about Tommy? When did he care about Christophers thoughts before about his dads girlfriends or friends? Accusing Tommy of lying to get bonus points with Chris. You think he truly cared which movie is better? Buck putting up AIR QUOTES “chris thinks he’s so cool”. Really? That’s the way the show is trying to tell us, he likes Tommy? If so, they did a piss poor job. Why does he try to make him a bad guy to Maddie? He really didn’t have the time to talk to Eddie to go to the basketball game? Really? You mean to tell he HAD to wait until the gym scene? Or hell… even ask Tommy or chimney to go. Or, just go up to Eddie, and “hey, is there a spot for the basketball game this week?”. Literally simple as that. They made buck deliver AT THE station a basketball. Even before that, buck wanted Eddie to spot him so by grunting and moaning to get his attention? So he could talk about it Tommy💀💀💀. That’s what you are trying to tell me💀💀 PLEASE. Tommy says to buck “my attention” after buck told him “trying to get your attention has been exhausting” and I’m like just where is this on my screen. Is it a deleted scene? Before the kiss, Eddie and Christopher are mentioned literally the most throughout. The way Tommy says to buck “you know Eddie can have more than 1 friend” and “that kid cannot shut up about you” and the way buck smiles. I truly and honestly believe buck did have an attraction to Tommy, but was scared he was losing Eddie and Chris. Otherwise why act like a child? Why hurt Eddie ON PURPOSE to simply get Tommy’s “attention”. Otherwise why act like a child? Why hurt Eddie ON PURPOSE to simply get Tommy’s “attention”. Or better yet, when speaking with Maddie after he hurt Eddie,

Maddie says “you don’t mean to hurt HIM, did you”,

Buck: I was pissed, you know? Seeing him and Tommy being such good friend after only two weeks. I FELT LEFT OUT and I guess I was trying to get HIS attention.

Maddie: Well, that's not how you get someone's attention.You clear your throat. You tap them on the shoulder. You don't hurt them.

Buck: I know, Maddie. Trust me, I feel awful.

This entire conversation is about Eddie. They don’t need to say his name. The context is regarding someone who Buck had HURT. Who was HURT, Eddie Diaz.

#buddie #buckxeddie #buckeddie #buckley diaz family #buddie 911

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arrowmaker15 · 10 months ago

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There is only FOUR scenes in media to date that make me feel things consistently. Those scenes are:

• Aunt May's death scene in Spider-Man PS4. That scene hits so hard, mostly because we spend so much time talking to her, hearing about her, and if you do the side missions, learn more about the history. And with the context of Spider-Man 2 also added onto the mix, it only hits harder.

• The scene in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom where all of the dinosaurs are running away from the volcano. The desperation, the hopelessness, knowing that most of them aren't going to make it, it hurts. Especially once you see all of them running off of the edge, so desperate for safety that they don't pay attention and they fall. And you realize, they don't know how to swim. At all. And a bonus for that scene, when they're all being loaded up and they seem to be in all sorts of pain, along with the scene on the boat when they are sailing away from Isla Nublar.

• Later on in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom when Maisie lets all of the dinosaurs. That line of, "They're alive. Like me." Hits so hard, especially with the emotion in their voice, plus the preface of the poison getting so close to killing all of them, of making dinosaurs extinct once again (they don't know about the Mosasaur being loose), and the pure shock, and utter defeat. Claire having to make the decision not to release them into the world due to the future consequences, of being an activist for dinosaurs staying alive but having to basically be the one to kill them all once again, this time for humanity. Then they turn away to watch, and this kid, who had just learned she was a clone not even two hours ago, released them due to a shared kinship.

• The scene in Jurassic World: Dominion where Maisie addresses Claire and Owen as her parents. The denial up to that point, the insistence that she's not important, makes the scene amazing. The shock and glee at seeing them. A bonus for the gushing about the leads from both the JP trilogy and the JW trilogy trading notes.

All of these scenes hit so goddamn hard, and they never cease to make me feel something EVERY TIME. I know two of these for scenes come from the same movie, but Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a movie jammed full of big emotional moments. It's why out of the JW trilogy, it's my favorite. And yes, that means a grand total of three out of four scenes come from the JW trilogy, sue me. The Jurassic World trilogy is really good, and so full of moments that deserve praise, because they are so goddamn amazing. The characters feel like real people with real development. It's just... It's amazing.

#jurassic world #jurassic park #spider man ps4 #spider man #maisie lockwood #owen grady #claire dearing #scenes #emotions

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buddiebeginz · 6 months ago

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Maddie says “you don’t mean to hurt HIM, did you”,

Buck: I was pissed, you know? Seeing him and Tommy being such good friend after only two weeks. I FELT LEFT OUT and I guess I was trying to get his attention.

Maddie: Well, that's not how you get someone's attention.You clear your throat. You tap them on the shoulder. You don't hurt them.

Buck: I know, Maddie. Trust me, I feel awful.

This entire conversation is about Eddie. They don’t need to say his name. The context is regarding someone who Buck had HURT.

Some really great thoughts here

The reason there is still debate about 7x04 is for a couple of reasons.

I fully believe we were supposed to get more of a confirmation about Buck and Eddie's feelings for each other in s7. Even if they didn't go canon by the end of the season I think there was supposed to be more emphasis on showing them growing closer (even closer than we already got). One or both of them would have likely also had their oh moment too. But when they got the greenlight for s8 they decided to hold off on all of that (I wrote a post about that here).

The thing is 7x04 would have made much more sense if it was confirmed by the end of the season that Buck had feelings for Eddie. 7x04 is the kind of episode that needed to have a connecting episode later in the season (especially for the general audience) that was like no you're not losing your mind this is what was really happening. But because Tim and ABC decided they wanted to hold off on Buddie it left that ep just kind hanging and left questions unanswered. We didn't even get to see Buck and Eddie discuss what happened which we should have. We should have been able to see Buck apologize to Eddie and we also should have seen Buck talk about feeling scared Eddie was going to replace him in his life. The audience and Buck also needed to hear Eddie say that no one could ever replace him in Eddie's life.

The other reason this episode gets debated is because B*mmy shippers have twisted it into something it's not. They've come up with their own version as a way to confirm their ship more. And look I get that media can be very subjective. We all bring our own emotions and opinions and life experiences to what we watch and that will alter how we see something. Still B*mmy stans continually ignore what is factually shown on screen yet argue with everyone else that their headcanoned version of B/T is the right one. I'm not saying Buddie shippers aren't guilty of this too sometimes but more often than not we're pulling from actual quotes Buddie have said and scenes that have actually happened.

What we saw in 7x04 is yes Buck took an interest in T*mmy and yes he was attracted to T*mmy but those strong emotions we saw from Buck throughout the majority of the ep they weren't about Eddie taking T*mmy away from Buck they were about T*mmy taking Buck's place and taking Eddie away from Buck. The kind of emotions we saw from Buck in 7x04 made literally no sense if you see them through the lens of Buck being all about T*mmy and only viewing Eddie platonically. No sane person gets that upset over a guy they barely know. Who at that time Buck hadn't even spent any time with minus the helicopter rescue.

B*mmys continue to spin a false narrative about this episode and confuse people who didn't totally understand the ep to begin with. So then you have people saying oh Buck must have been confused and actually into T*mmy or maybe into Both. But his attraction to T*mmy isn't comparable to Eddie because one person he knows better than he probably knows himself and the other he didn't really know at all at that point. It's also not a coincidence that in that ep the show repeatedly drove home how similar T*mmy and Eddie are. Buck was only ever even interested in T*mmy because of his similarities to Eddie who it's never occurred to him he could even have.

Oh I wanted to point out one thing you said:

"Why show us the last maybe minute before they begin to talk about Eddie and where Eddie is NOW in the frame. Why didn’t they show the beginning where buck comes and meets Tommy?"

This a really good point. If the episode was supposed to be about T*mmy and Buck's feelings for T*mmy it easily could have started out that way showing the two of them together for longer so the audience got a feel for them and their chemistry more but we saw them for all of like a minute before Eddie showed up.

B*mmy's will try to say it's because the episode was a misdirect like the episode is trying to make you think it's about Eddie and Buck's feelings for Eddie when it's really about T*mmy but that makes no sense either. Everyone behind the scenes knows how much people ship Buddie and I don't believe for one second they'd do an episode like 7x04 if Buddie isn't in the plans. Like you said they didn't have to include Eddie at all there were so many other ways they could have done a storyline with Buck and T*mmy if the end goal was just to get Buck and T*mmy together. Most especially they didn't have to make T*mmy have every exact same hobby as Eddie.

They definitely didn't have to make Buck talk about Eddie a whole bunch of times literally right before T*mmy kissed him. Also having T*mmy say "my attention" and Buck's response being "yeah I guess so". If this was really about Buck's feelings for T*mmy wouldn't the writers want to drive home that Buck had been confused but he had this moment of clarity and realized oh I like T*mmy. Instead of having Buck respond with, "I guess so" and sound so unsure. He could have said something like, "Yeah, your attention. I like you T*mmy. Was that not obvious?" Then you could easily take the conversation from there. But the important thing is it would make Buck's feelings clearer to the audience if the intention was to highlight Buck's feelings for T*mmy. But it never was.

The misdirect of that ep is having Buck end up kissing T*mmy at the end when the audience spends the whole ep knowing Buck's feelings are about Eddie. Which is why I said we needed an ep by the end of s7 that made Buck's feelings indisputable. If you watch eps 4,5,6 you can see that's where they were going with Buddie. And even though they paused things till s8 you can still see how loud Tim was about Buddie's feelings throughout s7. In ep 7 with the cologne scene in the loft, the medal scene with Eddie watching Buck get his award and the kitchen scene in ep 9, all the chris stuff and the hospital in ep 10.

I think we will still see some of the stuff they were planning on doing with Buddie including circling back around to things that need to be addressed from 7x04 in s8. If T*mmy comes back we may even get a scene where he tells Buck he knew it wasn't his attention Buck was after. The show would just be really stupid to not follow through with any of the stuff they've set up.

I could seriously talk about this ep forever (you kind of opened Pandora's Box messaging me about 😝). I hate seeing people try to make that ep all about T*mmy and Buck's feelings for him when it was so clearly about 1. Buck realizing he's attracted to men and can act on that attraction 2. Buck's feelings for Eddie.

Btw here's my giant post on the ep I wrote when it came out if you're interested in any more of my rambles. Also sorry this took me forever to respond to I'm horrible at getting back to messages in a timely fashion.

#ask #anon #911!#buddie #911 buddie #911 7x04 #long post

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tidesreach · 6 months ago

Note

Maddie says “you don’t mean to hurt HIM, did you”,

Buck: I was pissed, you know? Seeing him and Tommy being such good friend after only two weeks. I FELT LEFT OUT and I guess I was trying to get his attention.

Maddie: Well, that's not how you get someone's attention.You clear your throat. You tap them on the shoulder. You don't hurt them.

Buck: I know, Maddie. Trust me, I feel awful.

This entire conversation is about Eddie. They don’t need to say his name. The context is regarding someone who Buck had HURT.

yeah. that's it. i think that's what bothers me most about all of this. it's that considering and discussing any of this, like the actual context of it all, is somehow considered now as being delusional. but the thing is, a (seemingly) very deliberate choice has been made to incorporate eddie into buck's sexuality arc. like, i do think buck likes and is attracted to tommy. that is clear. but it is also clear that a lot (most, even) of buck's feelings in 7x04 are tangled up and misplaced. he is very obviously trying to get eddie's attention throughout, he just isn't in a place where he is able to recognise or acknowledge that. or subconsciously he doesn't want to. because feeling something like that for someone so fucking important, so intrinsic to your life, is very dangerous. and well. especially to the guy who's terrified of abandonment, so. of course he doesn't want to feel anything that could jeopardise what he and eddie (and christopher) have.

like, YEAH. as you said, there are multiple instances where it is very obviously about eddie. to the extent where even tommy is like, wait. "my attention?" and i think there's an argument to be made there that tommy doesn't want to question it more, wants to take it at face value because. well, because he clearly has a lot of his own issues. he's jealous of the 118, this version of the 118 that he's not part of but wants to be. and buck is validating his place in it and it feels good. like, purely from context clues (because honestly the show has given us NOTHING on tommy. which, well. interesting choice) there's a sense that tommy wants to be part of this 118 because the 118 he was a part of (an active part of in some of the worst ways) is something he's ashamed of. like, i don't know whether he sees this as a second chance or a redemption or what, but he clearly wants to be a part of it. that jealously keeps cropping up, and it's a very deliberate choice. he says himself that he's jealous of the family the 118 has become. and i think his relationship with buck is less about buck and more about the 118. and his friendship with eddie and how much he put into that is also evidence of that. like, HONESTLY. i think tommy is aware that buck's deranged behaviour in 7x04 wasn’t really about him, but he doesn't question buck on it because that way he can believe it was. like buck's "i guess so" in reply to tommy's "my attention?" was enough for him. no need to look at that more closely. you know?

anyway, i digress. what i am trying to say is i think it's being written in a very deliberate way and everything you have mentioned there speaks to that. the fact that eddie and christopher were tangled up in buck's feelings about tommy speaks to that. they could have went literally any other way about it, eddie and christopher didn't need to be involved in it. except they were. except maybe they did need to be involved. because maybe it wasn’t about tommy. eddie is literally haunting the narrative. 7x04 speaks for itself. 7x05 buck's main concern is that he's lying to eddie. 7x06 eddie is there, popping up between them (dressed in a suit that matches buck's no less). 7x09 the camera pans to eddie. at almost every turn the show has chose to highlight eddie's presence rather than develop the relationship. so, well. what am i supposed to think? either it's very clever storytelling leading to buck and eddie figuring their shit out or. it's just really bad storytelling.

#aela answers things #911

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captainbobbin · 6 months ago

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@goth-automaton tagged me in a writing game, where for each letter in a given word, I must give a sentence from one of my writing wips (or a previously posted written work). I am going to actually do more than one sentence for some, just for a bit of bonus context haha my word was moonlight -

M - Murakumo had a bad habit of his sheer size bulldozing and breaking things around him without trying or meaning to - one sudden movement here, or perhaps more steady, creeping movements, and The Blue Moon might just collapse around them due to Kumo’s…. Anger? Sickness? Ares wasn’t sure, but it was a lot, whatever it was.

O - One only needed a single glance of the ship's innards to know who it belonged to. The soft furnishings even smelled of his perfume, not that Hendrik would try to notice such a thing.

O - Oddly - whether it was manipulative or not, Saïx could not tell, but all the same it had an effect - Ansem’s voice tapered, became almost weak, pleading, sad and small. “What he lacks has become so intense that it found home in me, pet. I ache - you have broken me, by simply being what you are.”

N - Norberto had always loathed birds. Hendrik wondered why Sylvando gave such an adoring look towards the symbol of The Eagle upon the breastplate of his armour.

L - Lea had always seen him for him, not his face and pout and eventual scars, but, still. Isa wasn't a looker. Too grizzly, too awkwardly put together. He mussed up his damp hair a little. Too messy. Too complicated. Too beastly.

I - “I would expect you to carve ‘here lies Hendrik, he vomited on my boat,’ upon my gravestone.”

“Right above the ‘and I also made him dress as a clown.’,” Sylvando beamed, and slowly he stood up straight, hands on the wheel rather than simply lazing over it.

G - "Goodnight, my dear VII." Xemnas allows himself to say as Saïx opens the door to leave, his voice as soft as he can manage and sounding like nothing that could possibly come from the Lord of All Nobodies. Gold flashed back at him, his underling meeting his gaze for barely a moment.

H - He could not recall - whatever dreams he may have had were dashed the second he opened his eyes and saw the fool right there, like he always used to be, like he always was meant to be, like he had never left at all.

T - Terra was sure that Berserk, inside of Isa, was growling. “It’s first memory is of that padded little cage. A shoebox for Xemnas to house a specimen he wanted to study."

These are all from wips haha - I really need to write faster; I will tag @finlands-beret, @bookworm-liv, @we-are-trickster and @winxixia as I know they write quite a bit - if anyone else would like to do this, please go ahead! There is no pressure though of course. If you would like to do this, then why don't we have your word be kingdom

#writing meme #text post #my writing #wip

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lazlolullaby · 1 year ago

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wish rewrite but Queen Amaya has a minor influence on the plot, aka: Divorce arc! + Bonus song context changes

(it sucks that a person with so much potential was put in the story but just utilized as the Villain's sounding board. You could have replaced her with an animal sidekick! She could have been a classic evil cat! Anyway.)

Tl:Dr: Amaya and Magnifico's relationship is utilized more in the movie for both plot and character development.

Plot: the same but Amaya is having a mid life crisis and relationship issues with Magnifico, giving them both more depth than "childhood trauma made me a control freak + evil book possession" and "I'm the indicator that something is going wrong with my husband".

(tw: verbal and emotional abuse tactics.)

Movie opens on a book. It's not adorned or flashy, just a simple journal. Amaya is writing in it, narrating.

Teen Amaya arriving on a boat with a small group of people. She looks up, enraptured by the stars but no one else does and she's left alone. There's no voice, but you can see that she says "I wish". Then someone calls for her and she leaves. The next night Magnifico appears from the forest, performing magic.

Then we get "City of Rosas" montage going through years. Amaya as the singer, giving the tour. You see the 7 friends interact with her as quick help, then Asha pops up, first next to Amaya then taking over the tour guide spot.

There's a quick establishing walk around the Castle. Amaya checking in on the 7, the servants and people. Everything is going well! The Castle is humming along perfectly! Amaya doesn't need to lend a hand, or explain what's needed. She's a bit of a workaholic and doesn't know what to do with herself.

She ends up in the kitchen with the 7 and Asha. Dahlia gets a check in, her new medication is working well so she's just got her crutch today instead of a full wheelchair. Asha is told "you care plenty, but don't let it blind you." Asha is the one who says that her grandpa Sabino is having his 100th birthday. And wants his wish granted.

Simon is sleepy, everyone is concerned. Amaya excuses herself.

She goes to Magnifico. "Mi rey. You need to give Simon's wish back. He's not well."

"You mean grant it? what do we need Knights for? We're perfectly safe!"

And with Sabino - "there's nothing that needs changing! I'm all the inspiration the Kingdom needs!"

There's hints that Magnifico doesn't like people too much. "we have to keep these safe. They are the best parts of our people." Implying that he just likes what he can choose and control out of people.

And cue "At all costs" as a duet between Magnifico and Amaya. Starting as a love song addressed to Amaya, but then his focus shifts to the Wishes. Her face falls as she realizes that he won't do what she asks. And she leaves.

(what happens when your picture perfect life falls apart? When the job you have chosen, put your whole body and soul into, doesn't need as much time or effort? When the person you love, that you have partnered with for over several decades, doesn't have the same goals you do anymore? Doesn't value you like they used to?)

Only to find Asha was eavesdropping the whole time. "Wait. Are you. Having an argument? I thought you were happy?"

"we are. It's just difficult right now. It's a disagreement. We're fine."

Cut to Asha in the kitchen gathered with the 7. "They are not fine." So. Lighthearted scheme to get the Queen and King back in love by setting up a romantic date.

The lunch date fails. Amaya asks questions, probing more into Magnifico's self serving logic. He launches into "This is the Thanks I get?" (Less of a solo tantrum, more of a mocking dialogue between them.) And shuts her down. Amaya is stricken.

"if they break up, who gets the Wishes? Who's in charge? I don't think divorce is a thing that Royalty goes through!"

They retreat - Magnifico to a wish granting and Amaya to the kitchen. Asha wants to convince Amaya to keep going, keep pushing for the wishes.

"Has he always been like that?"

"Magnifico - oh he always wanted an audience. He hasn't changed since the day we met. He was fun. We needed that support, people who believe in him, in our rule. back then, when there were so many unknowns."

"But it's not back then anymore. We deserve our wishes. Maybe if we can show him that a dangerous wish won't be so bad, he'll come around!"

"Asha, don't tell me-"

"my Grandfather Sabino! He just said wanted to play the lute, right?"

"not exactly..." Amaya felt the true nature of the wish, to inspire.

"what more time does he have! My father already lost out on his wish! I'm not letting anyone else lose!"

"this is what I can do. For now. Go home."

"I can't wait for this change. Until I'm 18? Then what? I'm just supposed to give up my wish like everyone has? Be like Simon?"

Amaya doesn't have an answer to that. Asha goes home. She talks to her family and has her solo "This Wish" song.

The Star shows up. But as in the concept art, it's a mute boy! He starts the animals singing "You're a Star" - and eventually joins in once he gets the hang of talking. "Here I are!" Is his first line.

Once that's over, Star explains. "The Stars grant Wishes. Sometimes they come down to help out personally. But that was a while ago. I want to find them, but you're the first person in a long time to make a wish on a star." They make a plan to release the Wishes themselves.

Meanwhile, Magnifico and Amaya see the light show from Star coming to the Kingdom. Amaya has vague recognition, Magnifico is mad. "Absolutely not. No one is stealing my Wishes from me."

Amaya takes this time that he's distracted to find Simon and Sabino's wishes. She sings a solo version of "Knowing what I know now" with more personal touches and she sends the wishes down the dumbwaiter.

Asha sneaks Starboy into the Castle. Gets her friends to help. They open up the dumbwaiter and find the wishes. Simon gets his back, starts to feel better. Asha grabs Sabino's and runs.

Magnifico starts to build up power. He gathers the town and tells them that there's a rogue magic user on the loose.

Asha brings the wish to Sabino. And he immediately starts to inspire people to question Magnifico. (Seriously. That was the easiest thread to follow through. And it didn't happen!!! What- who dropped the ball?)

Asha regroups with her friends. Does the full "knowing what I know now" song. Runs away to distract Magnifico while her friends release the wishes.

Star looks at Amaya - "your wish wasn't granted. There's a trick to it, if you want to hear." Amaya looks sad again.

Big courtyard confrontation. Magnifico has been absorbing Wishes to get more power.

"I haven't granted my first wish. A lot of them, actually. I won't leave." Magnifico stands his ground.

"unless I retract it."

"you won't." Magnifico laughs. "Who would love you? You're past your prime, far too bossy-"

"You. Wanted love?" Asha asks.

"I was younger than you are. I had lost everything. When I came here and looked at the stars, I thought I could have anything I wanted. And I wanted love. After everything that happened, I wanted love. That was only mine. But not like this."

"we love you. We see you. Even if you can't do magic or fix everything. We love you." Asha and the 7 say to Amaya.

So she reaches into Magnifico, pulling out her wish herself. Everyone sees that and starts to pull theirs from Magnifico.

And it leaves him as a slip of a silvery man. Star taps on him and Magnifico turns completely into his silver white star form. "That's where you've been!"

"so Stars can't stay on earth for too long or they'll go mad?"

"pfft. No. It's just this guy. C'mon let's get you some perspective." And Star takes him away into the sky.

It fades into a picture that Asha is drawing. Her and Amaya are making a book to explain what happened.

Amaya narrates the ending, telling us that it doesn't really end.

The 7 friends and Asha are made apprentices to Queen Amaya. Amaya starts to give the Wishes back, setting people up to achieve their dreams. Star pops back to say hi and go and grant more Wishes.

The handwritten book closes and Amaya stamps "Wish" on the cover with leather tools.

The end

#disney wish 2023 #queen amaya #king magnifico #princess asha #disney wish rewrite #Amaya gets some workaholic tendencies and Asha gets to be an impulsive teenager #This is basically for all the Disney Adults I suppose. I doubt that Disney would ever support Divorce at least not for another 100 years #...yes I skipped over Asha for another blank unknown basically build an oc #But also the implications of Amaya existing where she's difficult to justify and in narrative is basically a prop? Kind of chewy #Lazlo's lulls #Also featuring a fan-theory of Magnifico being a Star. since his genes come from outer space. and only Stars have Magic #and the wildly popular starboy from the concept art - but throw in some English as second language because he's Not From Here.#Aw no I just redid the older lady is the catalyst for everything trope from Encanto and Turning Red!!!#But also subtext of older women being past their prime and not valued or desirable - then refusing that IS the point #But the intent is Asha protagonist and Amaya deuteragonist. Like. Quasimodo and Phoebus.#Thank you. Love you.

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elleenvs3000f23 · 1 year ago

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Week 2: A Trip Down River

PROMPT: Describe your ideal role of environmental interpreter. What might it entail? Where might it be? What skills might you need?

As may be slowly becoming evident on this blog, I really like rivers. They are the blood that moves energy and matter over land while providing home, food and transportation to so many living things. Rivers also have amazing historical importance; they have been used for navigation and transportation across large areas, often linking countries and communities to the larger world. Different cultures have had unique ways of either living with or taming rivers that are reflective of their views and practices towards nature. If you ever get the chance to look at old maps of where you live, look for the rivers. Are they in the same place and shape? Do they have the same name as the one you know?

I live on the Grand River and spend as much time as I can in my kayak or canoe. It's a great workout and I have gotten to know my personal stretch of The Grand quite well; the way the two blue herons that always seem to look with expressions disdain and judgment, the beavers who I never see out of the water but evidently work hard as they leave stumps for me to find near the shore, the jumping brown trout who thrive in the cold water of the river that comes up from the bottom of Bellwood Lake. I have become familiar with the favorite spots and behaviors of a lot of the backyard wildlife.

My home on the river has a unique human history as well. It was the site of the first settlement in what is now the town of Fergus. Richard Pierpoint was the founder of this community; he was a black man who was granted the land near the river after serving in the British army. He built a community on the river and if you look over the low lying floodplain you can see rows of old apple trees and piles of stones left by the Pierpoint community. I will to make a post telling Mr. Pierpoints story as best I can in full later on; it deserves its own space and time.

My goal in explaining all this is that I would love to be an interpreter who tells the stories of rivers. I could talk about the geological features of shape and structure that tell us how the river came to flow through a given place in a certain way. I would tell stories of the people who had traveled through an area on boats and point out what animals make their lives around the water and why. I would do this all in my kayak or canoe, with small groups of visitors or with a waterproof video camera to share online. Exercise and nature are two things we all benefit immensely from but often struggle to find time for. I think my dream kayak tours would be a fun way to do both at once with the added bonus of educating people on their local environment; we need water, we should probably try to understand its role in the environment a little better.

I was involved in a lot of improv theater as well as competitive public speaking in high school so I think leaning into that love and experience with storytelling would be a good use of my strengths. Adding historical context and stories is something I have never tried to do in my work as a scientist. Knowing how to research and effectively deliver stories about people and their lives is a necessary skill set for this type of interpretation and I would need to find someone(s) online or offline to learn from.

I like physical recreation and interpretation largely because my learning styles are dominantly auditory followed by kinesthetic, I like to be moving and listening or talking. Any advice from more visual learners as to how to make this set up more engaging to you would be greatly appreciated!

Until next time,

Elle

Note: The first photo is one my friend Jack took of The Grand River a few years ago, the second is one I took a few months ago - it isn't any kind of pollution in the water, the shiny layer you see on the water is from decomposing microbes; it is evidence that groundwater is seeping up through the limestone!

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years ago

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More of the Untamed modern AU D&D thing! (Oh lord there's so much D&D in this one. This might actually be easier to follow if you don't know the Untamed than if you don't at least a little bit know D&D.) (On the other hand, if you know zero things about D&D, you are at least in the same boat as Lan Zhan, so there's that. Poor, poor Lan Zhan.)

Pre-Wangxian, starring the Yunmeng Trio knowing each other very very well, Jin Zixuan being an awkward disaster, and Nie Huaisang not getting paid nearly enough to play therapist at the D&D table, plus bonus Lan Zhan refusing to have a panic attack about not knowing what a tiefling is.

-------------------------

"So," Nie Huaisang says, folding his hands over his source manual and smiling in the friendly, cheerful way that he knows only strikes terror into the hearts of his veteran players, so far. "Let's talk about your character concept."

Lan Zhan had read the full Lord of the Rings trilogy, once, in high school, ceeding to the argument that it seemed to be a Western cultural touchstone that would elucidate the bulk of the modern Western fantasy genre. It meant that he had slightly more than no context whatsoever, which he supposed was better than nothing.

"And so last you heard, the increasing giant attacks were being kept at bay in the northwest by the mysterious sorcerers controlled by the Meishan Dynasty, nobody has heard from the northern centaurs of the Tianma Dynasty in the past two years, and as far as anyone knows, the empty streets of Nevernight City still lie undisturbed by any living thing, waiting for the rise of the next emperor to try and claim dominion over all fifteen dynasties," Nie Huaisang finished. Lan Zhan...did not know what to do, as it turned out, with that many mismatched and inexplicable references to Chinese history and mythology, mixed in with that many poorly-jumbled bits of Western fantasy and things he didn't recognize.

"So!" Nie Huaisang said. "Now that we all know what's going on in the campaign, what do you two want to play?"

Lan Zhan did not begin to know how to express just how much of an overstatement that sentence was.

"We need a healer," Jiang Cheng said flatly, fixing Jin Zixuan with a gimlet stare. "You can fill in and play healer for us, right?"

"I -- I mean, I can--" Jin Zixuan stuttered slightly, and Lan Zhan would be full of sympathy if he weren't currently hyperfocused both on the fact that Wei Ying's arm was approximately six millimeters away from his own on the table, and his creeping, gut-sinking panic over not having any idea what a "tiefling" was.

"Of course he can," Wei Ying said, grinning in a way that showed all of his teeth but did not, somehow, seem to be friendly at all. "Otherwise Huaisang will have to go easy on us to make up for us not having a healer, and we don't want to need Huaisang to go easy on us, do we?"

"No?"

"I mean, I don't know if I could go easy on you..."

Lan Zhan cleared his throat. 'Healer' at least seemed like a self-explanatory group role, surely. If he had a specific task then maybe this would start to make sense. "I could play healer."

"Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying's attention was entirely on him again. Lan Zhan had no idea why he'd invited that hell back onto himself. He was going to do it again and again. "You don't have to do that, it's your first time playing! You should get to play whatever class you want."

"I..." do not know what I want, but he couldn't say that, or want to be safe in my dorm room right now, or want you to keep looking at me like that. I want to play whatever won't make you look at me like you were looking at Jin Zixuan just now. I don't know how to pick the thing that won't disappoint you. I... "am unfamiliar with the options."

"A-Ying, you should slow down," Jiang Yanli scolded. "You remember when you were brand new. We haven't even explained what the classes are yet."

"Right!" Wei Ying said, and leaned even further into the space of Lan Zhan's body to reach for one of the colorful hardcover books in front of Nie Huaisang on the other side of the table. Lan Zhan tried not to breathe, and also not to have an aneurysm. "So okay, every character in D&D has a race and a class, and a race is what you are and a class is what you do, basically--"

"Oh, just what we said at session zero," Yanli says, brushing it off with a one-handed gesture. "I want to be a very large barbarian who's very good at chopping things in half, and never relied upon to make decisions."

"Oh that's relatable," Huaisang agrees. "Except for wanting to be good at chopping things in half part, if I ever said something like that where my da-ge could hear he'd start trying to make me go to the gym with him again, and eughhhhh." He shudders in dramatic horror, and Yanli giggles, which is perfect.

"But Yanli-jie," he whines, laying it on just a little thicker. "You know I can't make a good story out of nothing but 'tall and good at chopping things in half'. You all like it so much when I make a good story for you, but I can't do it if you don't tell me what you want! You have to give me something, Yanli-jie, please."

"You're very good at this, you know," Yanli says. "You're much better at it than me."

"Who, me?" Huaisang flutters. "No, no, no--"

"Mmm, you know, a-Cheng and a-Ying have been telling me about your games since Freshman year," she says. "All the wonderful stories you tell. I worked very, very hard when they were younger, and they're very kind and they love me very much, but a-Ying has always been cleverer than me, and a-Cheng is much more stubborn about wanting to win."

"They love your games," Huaisang protests, although he's starting to see where this is going now. "They always say so."

"Yes, they do," Yanli says. "They're very good, very kind brothers, and I worked very hard at making games for them that were good enough for them to love." She smiles at him, still very sweetly, like a sugar coating over steel. "I don't want to have to work that hard this semester, Huaisang."

"I understand completely," Huaisang says. "It can be so exhausting!"

"Always having to be nice?" Yanli confirms. She nods, very, very sweet. "I'd like to go apeshit, please."

"Good character concept!" Huaisang says, making a mental note to never, ever give Jiang Yanli a reason to dismember his body and cook him into delicious soup. "Let's make sure you get that proficiency in intimidation."

"There's about a million races now, plus the whole Tasha's custom lineage rules, which is really cool because it means you can be anything," Wei Ying grinned. "What does Lan-er-gege want to be? An angelically perfect aasimar? A beautiful immortal ageless elf?" Obviously Lan Zhan would be great at anything he wanted to play, because Lan Zhan was good at everything except maybe having fun, and obviously he was here to actually try to do that which meant that Wei Ying could help him learn, finally, so obviously he was going to be awesome. It was hard to envision him as a short beardy dwarf, though, or anything like that. Or a tiefling, really, no matter how much Lan Zhan obviously deserved that charisma bonus. Lan Zhan was too good to be a tiefling. "Ooh, maybe a pretty Persian tabaxi?"

"What do you recommend?" Jin Zixuan was asking Jiejie with way too much cow-eyed sincerity. Ugh, like he could just peacock his way into everybody's good graces by being a doormat. Wei Ying was trying to help his actual friend here.

"Oh, I like playing all sorts of things," Jiejie said, and ugh, why was she smiling at him like that??? "A-Cheng knows all of the different mechanics, you could ask him?"

Jin Zixuan looked at Jiang Cheng, and then apparently decided to be a pussy and turned back to Jiejie instead. "I could just be a human?" he suggested, and Wei Ying groaned almost as loudly as is brother.

"You're not being a human," Jiang Cheng informed him. "You've got eight other PHB races, twelve options from Volo's, four things from Eberron if you don't even count the re-statted orc, all that shit from Ravnica, the Tasha's custom rules, and bare minimum two different subraces for at least half of them. Pick something else."

"He should be a halfling," Wei Ying suggested, because bullying Jin Zixuan into being an adorable round-cheeked halfling cleric with hairy feet sounded like exactly the sort of plan he could get Jiang Cheng on board with. Plus, if Jiejie was a goliath, their characters probably couldn't hook up in-game. "Halflings make good clerics, right Jiang Cheng?"

"Hmmph," Jiang Cheng said, which probably meant he was thinking about Halfling Luck and the inability to torture the peacock over every embarrassing nat 1, which was fair. Still: tiny, chubby-cheeked halfling.

Also, they knew what Huaisang was like as a DM. He might look like a small innocent man fastidiously checking his nails while his players argued about character creation, but inside was the heart of a cold, manipulative evil genius. It was awesome. If the peacock didn't remember to invoke his halfling luck himself, Huaisang wasn't going to remind him, and Wei Ying was pretty sure they could get some more than decent mileage out of that.

"Yeah," Jiang Cheng said. "Be a halfling."

Wei Ying looked back at Lan Zhan, because forcing him to take his eyes away from that perfection in order to glare was just one more of the peacock's many crimes. Lan Zhan looked a little wide-eyed, which was saying a lot for somebody with that few facial expressions. Wei Ying bumped his shoulder against Lan Zhan's encouragingly before he remembered that, oh right, Lan Zhan still didn't like to be touched.

"Lan Zhan, don't worry," he promised. "I'll help you pick the perfect thing."

"You know, you don't have to play a halfling Life domain cleric," Huaisang offers, and Jin Zixuan winces.

"No, I...I should," he says. "I will. I want to be a good sport."

"I mean, if that's what you want to do, of course you can!" Huaisang says, although he has his doubts about Jin Zixuan managing to win over either of Yanli's brothers simply by 'being a good sport'. Ah well, so long as he keeps the game going. "You and me are really here to talk about backstory."

"Backstory?" Jin Zixuan asks, looking trapped. "I need a backstory?"

"Everyone gets a backstory!" Huaisang declares. "You can pick a background to help decide what it should be. You could be from a noble family, or an acolyte raised by a church, or--"

"I want to be a poor farmer setting out to prove myself," Jin Zixuan cuts in. "I want to seek my fortune and show that I'm capable of being a hero."

Huaisang winces, just a little. "Okay, okay, we can find a way to do that," he says. "You get skills and tool proficiencies from your background, though, and there's no poor farmer background, so we'll have to figure it out...are you sure you don't want to be an artisan? Or a fisherman? Or a rich landowner?"

"A farmer," Zixuan says definitively. "A poor lotus farmer. Someone who worked his father's lotus fields for years before setting out on his own to make his own destiny."

"Right, yes, okay," Huaisang says, thinking frantically about where on his map he could fit lotus farming. Maybe in the Sheng River floodplain? "We can work with that, we can adapt the fisherman background for foraging for water plants." It'll be fine. At least Jin Zixuan has a character concept. Huaisang can make the world work around it.

"Okay!" Huaisang says. "So that's your backstory. Do you know what god you want to follow? How did you find them?"

Zixuan looks blank. "A god?"

Oh no. "You're...a cleric?" Huaisang tries.

Zixuan fidgets. He's starting to look trapped again. "Does that...mean I need a god?"

"See, there's lots of different things you can do, and Huaisang's a pretty good DM so he'll let you do more of whatever thing you most like," a-Ying explained to his friend. Yanli and a-Cheng had heard a great deal about this Lan Zhan last spring -- a-Cheng, she suspected, even more than her, since he and a-Ying had been living together at the time and she was still out of state completing her gap year internship. A-Ying clearly hadn't noticed his brother rolling his eyes just yet, but Yanli hoped Lan Zhan didn't take offense.

At least a-Ying was distracted enough that he wasn't as focused on making poor Zixuan's session zero miserable. Yanli held back a sigh. She did want this to work, sooner or later, and once they all got to actually playing she was sure they'd all start getting along at least a little better.

She'd promised herself, though, that she wasn't going to spend the whole game managing other people's behavior. She was going to let it go.

(And maybe she didn't mind, if her brothers made Zixuan work a little harder to win their approval. Just a little. Just for a while.)

"See, I like puzzles, and talking to NPCs, and solving problems, and finding new ways to do stuff," a-Ying said, in his version of a summary. Well, how else did you briefly cover everything from 'engineering a complex chain reaction to take down a CR 15 boss with a magic item, three skill checks, and a single second-level spell' to 'doggedly chasing down one passing comment a DM had made for the sake of worldbuilding, derailing an entire plot and somehow creating a completely different one'? Yes, Nie Huaisang was a much better DM for her brothers than Yanli had ever been.

"Jiang Cheng likes Winning At D&D," and Yanli could hear the capital letters, "and jiejie likes exploring and finding cool things."

It wasn't untrue. Yanli was, perhaps, still trying to decide what she liked best. Last semester, Nie Huaisang had promised to help her try.

"I didn't know this was a game you could win," Zixuan said, and she knew it was a question because she knew Zixuan, but Yanli was also familiar enough with her brothers to realize exactly how much they would take it as a challenge. She held back another sigh.

"It's not," Yanli cut in, breaking her rules just a little. "A-Cheng's just a little competitive sometimes."

"How?" Lan Zhan asked, looking up from where he was staring intently at his still-blank character sheet, apparently to avoid looking at a-Ying at all. Oh dear. "Do you win?" he added, when nobody seemed to know how to answer his question.

"You convince Huaisang to let you do point buy for stats and then try to minmax a half-elf hexadin that can oneshot a god," a-Ying grinned.

"And now we can't do point buy any more," a-Cheng grumbled.

"Jiang Cheng, you can't do that to me again, my poor skills can't keep up!" Nie Huaisang protested. Yanli wasn't sure exactly how much of it was an act, but she'd been behind that DM screen, so she had some suspicions.

Lan Zhan looked even more lost than Zixuan -- somebody was really going to need to make sure that a-Ying's scattered, enthusiastic attempts to explain an entire manual's worth of rules in twenty minutes didn't confuse him even more, poor thing -- and a-Ying laughed.

"Jiang Cheng played himself," he agreed cheerfully. "So how are you going to win beastmaster ranger, then?"

"Variant human, dex-based ranged attacker, using beast companion alongside additional summons to grant advantage and rack up damage in melee and aid skill checks out of combat," a-Cheng rattled off promptly, because of course he could. Oh, a-Cheng. Yanli loved her silly little brothers so very much.

"Wait," Zixuan said, and oh dear, now he did look annoyed. "You said I couldn't be a human."

A-Cheng snorted. Oh no.

"Jiang Cheng has been playing since he was twelve," a-Ying cut in, expression darkening dangerously. "He knows what his other options are."

That at least cut a-Cheng's glare away from Zixuan for a moment to give his brother a withering look of I can fight my own battles, but then he swung right back, and oh dear.

"I'm playing variant human because I get +2 dex, +1 wis, and a bonus feat at first level that I can turn into a power build which'll have me regularly doing consistent damage to AC 16 to 18 targets at level one with a class and subclass that's generally considered middle of the pack at best," a-Cheng said, scathing enough to make the insult clear even if Zixuan didn't understand all the language yet. "You wanted to play a human because you think you're too good for D&D."

Zixuan bristled. A-Ying shifted. Nie Huaisang, at the head of the table, raised his hands and fluttered, trying to call back attention.

Yanli had promised herself she wasn't going to spend her gaming time managing her little brothers and her possibly maybe would-be boyfriend.

Oh dear.

"Piercer feat, obviously, I'll pick up Sharpshooter at level 4 and bump wis at 8." Jiang Cheng has a written list. Huaisang is familiar with Jiang Cheng's lists, and more than a little scared of them.

"Jiang Cheng, you know you're much better with all the mechanics than me," Huaisang flutters, about 40% flattery. He could learn all the ins and outs of every powergaming build that Jiang Cheng tried to bring to his table, but that would take so much time that he could spend drawing maps, or painting backgrounds or minis, or doing his actual homework for his scientific illustration course. It might be the only class he ever takes in his life with 'science' in the name where he gets above a C+! Surely that's more important than trying to memorize every single mechanic Jiang Cheng might try to game and abuse before he even uses it. "You know I just need to see your finished character sheet unless you want to change something from the way it was written."

"I want to reskin a background from Eberron," Jiang Cheng says, shifting gears slightly. "House Agent, it gives me two tool proficiencies, persuasion, investigation, plus I'm taking stealth, survival, perception from the ranger list and acrobatics as a variant human, so--"

"Jiang Cheng! I need to know your backstory to let you do that, you know I do," he interrupts.

Jiang Cheng always has excellent, detailed, and thought-out character backstories. Always! It's just like pulling teeth, sometimes, to get him to admit it, and Nie Huaisang really doesn't know why, he just doesn't.

(That's a lie. He's been DMing for Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying for two and a half years, and there's enough therapy involved in that job that he knows much, much more about what it was like in the Jiang household growing up than anyone who wasn't part of their family really should. But he'll never tell.)

Jiang Cheng sighs. He glares, just slightly, at the paper in his hands.

"We're definitely for sure using the Fifteen Dynasties setting from last year?" he demands. "With the same political aftermath of what we did last time?"

"I have so many maps, Jiang Cheng! You have to let me use my maps again," he says. Jiang Cheng sighs again, even more put-upon.

"I'm the eldest son of the most powerful clan of humans living in the Twilight Forest province. I was charged by my clan to go out looking for allies, weapons, or whatever power I could find. I'm going to return and help my family overthrow the wood elves of the Peng dynasty, so our clan can ascend as rulers of the Twilight Forest," he says flatly. "I have two younger sisters and an older cousin who'll probably inherit leadership of the clan if I die while I'm off adventuring. My mother is a level fifteen ranger, either beastmaster or gloomstalker, who keeps our clan's whole area of the Twilight Forest safe for humans and anything else living there." His glare sharpens again. "If you say anything about my mother..."

"You'll break my kneecaps, I know, I would never, Jiang Cheng!" Nie Huaisang is a good unofficial therapist, thank you very much. He believes in DM-player confidentiality.

"It's what makes sense for the character," Jiang Cheng says grumpily, and Nie Huaisang absolutely does not grin.

"So what do you think, Lan Zhan?" Wei Ying asked, because Jiang Cheng's brother was an absolute fucking disaster. "Did anything there sound good? Tabaxi monk? Aasimar paladin? Kalashtar? Warforged? Half-elf? Elf?"

Lan Zhan didn't have much of a facial expression. He hadn't had much of a facial expression since he walked in here, because Jiang Cheng's brother apparently had the world's most embarrassing crush on a literal block of wood, but in the guy's defense, Jiang Cheng had known Wei Ying long enough to recognize completely overwhelmed by a literal fucking hurricane of personality when he saw it.

"Elf?" he said, as much question as answer. Wei Ying latched onto it like it wasn't screamingly obvious that it was just literally the only thing on his list of insane babble that Lan Zhan recognized.

"Of course Lan-er-gege would be an elf," he said, and Jiang Cheng groaned out loud before the whole table could be treated to another five minutes on how pristine and perfect and carved out of literal fucking jade Lan-er-gege was.

"Okay, great, we've got goliath, human, halfling, elf, and whatever you're going to be," he said, moving things along. Huaisang was a perfectly competent DM, but he was way too ready to let the party wander off into inane shenanigans without reining them in. Luckily, Jiang Cheng had about fifteen years of experience with that on his side.

"Levistus tiefling," Wei Ying said promptly. "I get cool horns and cool bonus spells." Jiang Cheng was absolutely not going to acknowledge the pun. Nobody at this table, except possibly Huaisang, would know off the top of their heads that Levistus bloodline tieflings got Ray of Frost as a free cantrip at level one. Wei Ying was baiting him for attention and also probably so he could call Jiang Cheng a nerd again, and Jiang Cheng was not going to give in to it. "She's going to be super chill." Goddamnit.

"She?" Jin Zixuan asked, and great, a whole new thing to deal with. Jiejie made them promise not to start any real fights, but if the asshole started getting homophobic Jiang Cheng was going to have to punch him probably unless Wei Ying did it first, and maybe jiejie would take that as a sign that she deserved better and move on. Huh. Maybe that was something to hope for.

"Peacock, peacock, playing a girl in D&D is great," Wei Ying taunted, clearly already thinking the same thing. "You get to actually be creative playing at being something you're not, and I'm keeping the party dynamics from turning into total gross cliche since jiejie's playing a guy." He fixed Zixuan with the kind of terrifyingly dark look that Jiang Cheng really wished he'd stop giving people, except it was an effective glare so maybe not just yet. "It's fine that jiejie's playing a guy, right?"

"O--of course," Jin Zixuan stuttered. Well. Good.

"Good," Wei Ying agreed, holding that slightly serial killer stare for five more seconds before sinking back in his chair what his usual bright grin like nothing had happened. "Plus I get to be super hot and flirt with all the NPCs," he added, like he wouldn't have just done that anyway no matter what class or gender he was playing. He flirted for an entire campaign as a hobgoblin artificer with -1 charisma. "What do you say, Lan Zhan, want to play a girl with me?"

Lan Zhan flicked a glance at the rest of the table, and ugh, now Jiang Cheng was going to have to step in just so his weird brother's weird real-life flirting didn't completely derail their game before it even started. Except then Lan Zhan said, "Okay."

Fucking hell, this semester was going to be a nightmare.

"Oh you know I have so many ideas." Wei Ying grins, and Huaisang grins back because does he ever know about Wei Ying's ideas. He can't wait to hear what tops the kenku College of Spirits bard.

"Tell me about your lady," he says. "Tiefling warlock? Isn't that too basic for you?"

"Not if she's a celestial warlock," Wei Ying fires back, and okay, yes, good, this is a great start. "And here's the catch, I need you to work with me here, Huaisang, I don't want the rest of the party to know."

"But Ying-ge, aren't they going to notice?" Character-building with Wei Ying is always so fun. He has an answer to everything, and it's always so incredibly weird.

"Hey, not if you don't tell them." Wei Ying winks. "I'll goth it up, tell everyone my patron's a fiend, and fake it. You'll let me make sleight of hand checks to give them a couple of hit points when I signal at you, right? I'll even let you roll the dice so you know I'm not cheating..."

"Won't they wonder where the hit points are coming from?" Huaisang asks, and Wei Ying fixes him with an unimpressed, knowing look.

"A-Sang, are you telling me you can't let me text you under the table to give a party full of distracted PCs a couple of random bonus hit points without them noticing too much? I expected more from you."

"Okay, okay, fine, for you, I'll do it." Oh this is going to be so much fun. "But why do you want to secretly be a celestial warlock?"

"Okay, get this." Wei Ying leans forwards, one foot half tucked up under him, leaning half on the table and half on his own knee, twisted up like he doesn't even realize he's sort of a pretzel. Huaisang still doesn't know if that's the Extreme (recently self-diagnosed) ADHD or the Extreme (also recently self-diagnosed) Bisexuality, but it's always really impressive to watch. "Folk hero for a small town she can't go back to because they think she caused the thing she saved them from."

Oh, here they go. "Tiefling prejudice?"

"Yeah, yeah, tiefling prejudice, but also she's kind of a slutty goth mess," Wei Ying waves off. "So some bad thing happened, I don't know what, that's up to you, I trust you, a-Sang--" which is gratifying to hear, and Huaisang's head is already buzzing through options, "and it wasn't her fault, but she goes out to the woods or wherever and prays because she doesn't know what else to do, and there's this qilin who agrees to save the town if she agrees to go out and save other people and never go home again."

It's very cool, and very Wei Ying. It's also absolutely not the whole story. "But why can't she just admit she saved the town? I don't understand," Huaisang pushes.

"Oh, because there's like five hundred stories going around about this mythic visiting hero who rained down divine aid or vengeance or whatever on this town, and nobody would ever believe it was her," Wei Ying says, like it's obvious. "It was all some old laozu. Also probably the people from her village still think whatever bad thing was her fault and might try to kill her if they heard she was around again, especially if she was trying to take credit for saving them."

On the whole it makes no sense, of course. If a bunch of villagers heard about a traveling tiefling warlock who made a deal with a fiend, or they heard about one who'd made a deal with a qilin and went around healing people, the one they were probably going to want to chase down for vengeance was the one working for the fiend. Huaisang's pretty sure he's got it, though. It makes no sense the exact same way a lot of Wei Ying's characters' weirdly self-sacrificing internal logic makes no sense. Huaisang knows just what to do with it.

"Why this character?" Huaisang asks. "Why do you want to be a celestial warlock in the first place?"

"Huaisang, you know I think warlocks are super cool," Wei Ying says, and looks distractedly at some other cluster of students chattering on the other side of the common room, and doesn't answer the question.

"But why a celestial warlock?" Huaisang persists. He's going to need Wei Ying to say it out loud, probably, even if he does already think he might know the answer.

"It's just really nice, right? Going around to do good deeds because someone else tells you what they are, plus they're not a god and you don't have to bow down and worship them and convince other people to worship them too?" Wei Ying says, toying with the end of his shoelace. "You were willing to trade your life away because you needed power or whatever, but it turns out now your life's being run by someone who only wants to use it to do good stuff."

Fuck, Huaisang isn't getting paid enough for this. He's not getting paid at all. Who said it was his job to give his friends and players this much therapy?

Dungeons and Dragons, as far as Lan Zhan could tell, was a game about pretending to be something other than yourself.

He was not good at that, Lan Zhan would absolutely under no circumstances ever describe himself as good at that. But. Maybe, if he tried to pretend hard enough, to be somebody different enough, with rules and numbers to tell him how to do it--maybe he could pretend to be good at pretending. Just enough. Just for a little while.

"A female elf," he said, and didn't think about Wei Ying's promise -- his threat -- to flirt with everyone in the game. Playing a female character seemed safer on that front too. "I still need a class."

"We've got melee, tank, ranged, support, blaster caster, party face, stealth, and general skill check coverage for strength, dex, wis, and charisma," Jiang Cheng rattled off. "We need knowledge checks, battlefield control, and a secondary caster for when that one runs out of spell slots five times a day." That one seemed to indicate Wei Ying, but Lan Zhan didn't care to even try to guess why.

"Which means?" Lan Zhan asked, a bit more sharply than he'd meant to. Jiang Cheng was looking at him with challenge in the set of his shoulders, which were easier to look at than whatever that expression was in Wei Ying's eyes. He didn't know what battlefield control meant, but anything with control in the name sounded appealing.

"It's your first time playing," Jiang Cheng said. "Think you can handle a massive pile of spells well enough to play a wizard?"

"Um, yeah he can," Wei Ying insisted instantly, pulling Lan Zhan's attention back, as though Lan Zhan's attention had ever left. "Obviously Lan Zhan's a genius who can figure out all those lists and tables and play anything."

He was always saying things like that. Lan Zhan didn't know why.

"Don't be pushy," Jiang Yanli scolded her brothers. "Of course he can play anything."

"It's fine," said Lan Zhan, who didn't know nearly enough about the game to make a different choice anyway. That was fine. He knew how to stick to a choice, whether he'd known what it meant when he was making it or not.

"Elven wizard. Female. Battlefield control," he said. He looked at Nie Huaisang. "I trust that's acceptable?"

"I know very little about this game," Lan Zhan admits, like Huaisang couldn't have told that from the first moment he walked in for session zero. "What else is there to discuss?"

"All sorts of things!" Huaisang tells him. "We should talk about what your character can do, I can lend you books and recommend some youtube channels, but first we should decide who they are. Where did she come from? Why is she studying magic? What does she want out of life? Why is she on an adventure with these other weird people?"

Lan Zhan doesn't have a lot of facial expressions. Huaisang really hopes that the one he's wearing now doesn't actually mean, 'I will light you on fire with my mind, here, in the real world, for daring to think I would care about D&D.'

"You don't have to play, of course," Huaisang hurries to assure him. "I know Jin Zixuan asked you, and Wei Ying is sort of pushy -- but he means well! -- but if you don't want to play, it's okay. And if you ever change your mind and want to leave, that's okay too, just...text me? Send me an email?"

"I'll play," Lan Zhan says. Shit, Huaisang is going to have to get better at reading him, he can't tell at all what's going on in his head. "I don't know how to answer your questions."

"Well, let's start at the beginning," Huaisang says, trying to figure out just where the beginning even is here. "Why did you want to play a girl elf wizard?"

Lan Zhan hesitates. He's very quiet, Huaisang's noticed, when he's not making simple declarative statements or asking questions that sound like them. Hmm. Doesn't like to put himself in the position of looking like he doesn't know exactly what's going on?

"A 'girl elf wizard,'" he says, and Huaisang can hear the air quotes, even if he can't imagine Lan Zhan making the gesture in a million years, "is. Not like me." He hesitates again, and then adds, "I hear that's the point of the game."

Aw, fuck, he's shy.

Shy and scared and has absolutely no idea what he's doing. He's going to have an even harder time at this than Jin Zixuan. Also he might get even more into it than Wei Ying, once he figures out what it even is, which is going to be a whole different thing to deal with.

"Can I make a suggestion?" Nie Huaisang asks, pulling up his map of the continent. "There's a city of elves with a big school for magic, law, and philosophy, out here on the edge of the old empire, not run by any particular dynasty. Cloud Recesses. It used to be where all the legislators and court officials and lawyers and imperial scholars all got trained, it's a really easy place to learn to be a wizard, it's already full of elves, it would make sense..." He trails off under Lan Zhan's steady stare.

"A scholar at a college for legislators and politicians?" Lan Zhan asks. Right, Wei Ying had mentioned he's a polisci major.

"I know, I know it sounds like you and that's just what you said you don't want!" Huaisang hurries. "But there's a good reason, I promise!"

He waits to be given the go-ahead. Lan Zhan waits, apparently expecting him to continue. Good enough. Huaisang forges on.

"You already said it, right, a female elf wizard who's probably at least a hundred years old and can throw fire around and magically turn things into other things already isn't like you," he babbles quickly. "No matter what you do, of course it'll be different! But sometimes it's easier if you start somewhere sort of familiar, so you know how she's different already." Either he's not saying this right, or Lan Zhan understands completely and just doesn't make facial expressions. "You didn't leave school to go on a study-abroad adventure where you have to kill goblins and monsters and giant spiders, right? So that's why she's different, because she did!"

Huaisang pauses, hoping for something in return. Something to tell him whether he's on any kind of right track. Maybe he's got it completely backwards, maybe Lan Zhan needs a character who grew up raised by pirates on the south coast and learned magic in bits and pieces from scrolls she looted off of downed ships --

"Why..." Lan Zhan starts, almost quietly, then clears his throat and tries again. "Why would she leave?"

He sounds so hesitant. Oh god. Huaisang is going to have to do so much therapy in this one. His friends are so lucky that he's a nosy intrusive bitch that has fun figuring out their deepest malfunctions and coaxing them out in an RP setting. He could do so much damage with this.

"We can figure it out!" Huaisang chirps. "Maybe somebody sent her on a quest. I'm the DM, I can help you decide on that. We can figure this out." He offers what is hopefully his most winning grin. "Want to try?"

Lan Zhan takes a deep breath. Oh, this semester is going to be something. "Yes," he says. "I'd like to try."

So.

A goliath barbarian played by a girl who wants to stop feeling like she has to fix everything, who stepped in to chide or nudge or correct her brothers half a dozen times during Session Zero today before Huaisang could even open his mouth.

A halfling cleric played by a rich kid who doesn't know how to let go of his pride, who bit back awkward fumbles and defensive snapping every other time he spoke today, but wants to live out the fantasy of leaving his family entirely behind to forge out his own destiny.

A human ranger played by a business heir who also doesn't know how to let go of his pride, who's tried to build a character who's good enough to win in every game Huaisang's ever run for him, who wants to live out the fantasy of living up to his family, making them proud.

A tiefling warlock played by a genius foster kid who spent literally the entire afternoon begging for whatever positive or negative attention he could get, who wants the freedom and restriction of being forced to do good in private while everyone around him assumes he's at least slightly evil.

And an elf wizard played by a terrified shy boy with a resting bitch face that could kill a man at a dozen paces who doesn't even realize how much he wants to pretend to leave his whole life behind to do something chaotic and exciting. Probably because he hasn't played pretend since about the age of four. If then.

Huaisang sits in his room thinking about it, sketching out scenes of a secluded school in the mountains, a tiny hamlet on the edge of the rocky hills, a manor house deep amid thick woods, a farm full of flowers astride a river, a sandy fighting pit out behind a shitty tavern. He thinks, and he slides pieces together, and the shape of a campaign begins to take form.

#c writes stuff #the untamed #dnd #so much d&d #yup this is a thing now

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deceasedanddesist · 4 years ago

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unrequited ( lily evans )

this is for @strawberrywafer‘s 300 writing challenge

pairing: lily evans x griffyndor!reader

fem! reader ( pronouns are not specified )

warnings: lots of angst, not a happy ending, mentions of homophobia, lots of talk about emotional turmoil and pain.

notes: i love me some angst, especially if its sapphic. i personally have experienced being in love with your straight best friend and I may or may not have cried writing this. enjoy :)

word count: 2.2k

you were in love with your best friend. it was the most gut wrenching form of self sabotage that you could fathom, and the worst part was you couldn’t even be mad at her, or even james potter for that matter.

its not like you couldn’t see the appeal, i mean he was stuck in the same boat as you. almost. if you didn’t see her subtle double takes when he walked into a room or the lingering disappointment in her eyes when he did something ridiculously immature, you probably would have bought the half-hearted glares and demeaning nicknames. if only you hadn’t paid so much attention to her striking emerald eyes as she watched the back of his head at the first feast of seventh year, you probably would have been fooled along with everyone else.

that was when you knew you were royally fucked, because she just didn’t seem into it this year. at first you tricked yourself into thinking it was because she was finally sick of him after all the years of extravagantly expressing his undying love for her, but a few weeks into your final year at hogwarts you knew. you knew it wasn’t because she was tired of him, it was because she was tired of pretending she didn’t love him back.

so no, you weren’t mad at james potter, in all of his arrogant, quidditch all-star glory. and you weren’t mad at lily evans—but who were you kidding, you could never be mad at her. you realized the anger you felt, that burning, self destructive pit in your stomach, was directed at yourself.

how could you let this happen? it had been in fifth year when you realized the feelings you harboured towards your roommate were not something a friend should feel for a friend. you kicked yourself for it then and you do the same thing now, because you always knew the red-head talked about james potter too much for it to just be out of hatred. what was it that you were always telling her, “there’s a thin line between hate and love, lils”, and it felt like you took a stake to the heart when you found out that she began to look at him with something in her eyes that you knew oh-so well. it was the one thing you and potter had in common.

then they were together, it happened faster than you could say quidditch. one minute james potter was professing his love, as per usual, and none of your peers looked twice at the impromptu great hall confessional. well, until people realized lily wasn't yelling and calling him an ‘arrogant toerag’.

you knew it was coming, and as much as you wanted to squeeze your eyes shut until they’d have to be pried opened by marlene, you forced yourself to watch as she finally said yes to the love of her life. you don't know why you did it, looking back, you would’ve walked out as soon as you came to the realization. maybe you felt you deserved it, after all, your parents aren't very supportive of who you love. maybe your mom’s world-crushing passive aggressive comments, or your dad’s suggestion about sending you away to some church town in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere were finally getting to your head.

they found out this summer, unbeknownst to all of your friends and peers. you still aren’t quite sure what happened, all you knew was that they found a more than friendly unsent letter to a beautiful red-head, and you certainly didn’t think your life could get any worse.....until now.

you hadn't realized your head had gone off into space until mary macdonald nudged you back into reality, giving you time to evaluate the situation.

lily had sat back down and began to furiously blush, while james was getting patted on the back by people from numerous houses, even he himself looked quite shocked she actually agreed to go out with him.

you told yourself you tried to listen to what lily was telling the group of girls, but in reality you were accumulating strategies in your head on how to slip away unnoticed to go cry somewhere. you didn't want to hear lily talking about where james was going to take her, and you certainly weren't gonna listen to her go on about how hard it was to keep up her resolve all of these years.

so you left, and when you looked back, she hadn't even glanced your way.

it didn't even come to a surprise to you that you were easily forgotten, and you hated yourself for it. you hated yourself for ignoring the obvious fact that lily evans and james potter were always meant to be together, and you hated that you would ignore factoring it into the equations you imagined in your head.

you hated being out of control, so you focused on the one thing you could. staying away from her.

it was completely selfish. you knew it, and so did marlene, mary, and dorcas. but you didn't give them time to convince you, because in your head this was the only option to help you get over her.

you walked into the dorm after you got confirmation lily was asleep, and you were gone before she woke up. lily didn't have any idea why and you almost felt bad for her, but you couldn’t bring yourself to. why? because she's the one that gets a happy ending, and the absence of one friend ( no matter how important you were to her ) isn’t going to fuck that up.

you were unlucky enough to get the short end of the stick, and it made you want to scream. the pressure of doing good on your n.e.w.t.s so you don't have to spend another suffocating summer with your parents, and now, with all of this unexplained weight on your chest that you have yet to figure out how to get rid of. it was infuriating, and letting it all brew up inside yourself was bound to make a mess later.

you knew that later would come eventually, but you never knew it would be in the form of james potter.

the realization came to you as soon as you saw the look on his face as he walked towards you in the hallway outside of the potions classroom you just walked out of. he looked spooked almost, like he felt a severe sense of dread to have this conversation with you.

“hey.” he dragged it out as the one word left his mouth. yup, definitely dreading this.

“hi.” you matched his awkwardness, he cringed like he was realizing how stupid he sounded. “you’re here about lily.”

you saved him the trouble. both of you didn't want to be here having this conversation, and he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. not the confrontational type, you noted silently.

“yeah,” he paused and took the time to observe your stance, his brows furrowed almost, like he was wondering why you were so nonchalant about this. “just here to clear up a few things.”

it was your turn to furrow your brows. clear up a few things? why would lily send james to do her bidding?

“I don't know what exactly needs to be cleared between us, potter.” you unintentionally spat his name out like it was poison to you. immediately deflating when you saw his face drop, this wasn’t his fault after all.

“okay, it’s clear that you don't like me, but I don't know what that has to do with lily.” he paused once again before reluctantly continuing, “at first I thought it was because you fancied me-”

his words were cut off by your laugh, “how heteronormative. no offence james, but you’re really far from my type.”

his eyes widened, you nodded.

“if lily wants to ‘clear up a few things’ she can come to me herself.”

you left with the last words, and a bewildered james potter as an added bonus.

it had been a few weeks since that conversation, and you didn’t think lily got the message. well, that was until she somehow bribed mary into telling you she went to sleep early and managed to clear out the room. you guys always joked that she was the weakest link.

you were dissatisfied with yourself when you found that when you looked at her, all you could think about was how beautiful her eyes were. her red tresses appeared to be lazily thrown up into a bun, and she adorned some gryffindor pyjamas that the school provides you with every year.

you let out a breath you’ve been holding ever since the decision to distance yourself from her. it was like the weight you’ve been carrying was replaced with dread, because now you had to tell her, and you weren’t worried for your feelings, you were worried for hers. one think you knew for sure was that lily evans had an enormous heart, and it would be like passing the weight of your unrequited feelings onto her, and who would want someone they loved to deal with that.

“hi.” you decided to initiate the heavy exchange that was about to occur, you don’t know why you did it.

“we need to talk, y/n”

you just nodded. wanting to hear what she had to say first, you gestured to her meekly.

“i know you and james had a conversation, he told me,” she paused, seemingly collecting herself before she addressed the question that you knew she already knew the answer to. “i’m just a tad confused about the context of your side of it.”

“no you’re not lily.” you whispered it so softly you weren’t even sure she heard you, but the bit of breath she took in out of shock let you know she caught the innuendo.

“i-,” she collected herself once again, “i don’t know what to say, y/n.”

you looked down, because the pitying look she was giving you was going to make you mad if you looked at it any longer. with every utterance of your name, you felt a pang in your chest, the congestion of emotions finally clawing their way out. it was thick and it was coming out of you with the speed of a freight train, you broke the silence first.”

“look, you don’t have to say anything. i know you don’t reciprocate, and i’ve accepted it.” you hoped the one conversation you could never control the outcome of was over, and you did try to leave it at that by walking to your trunk and grabbing your night clothes, but something lily said stopped you.

“why did you keep this from me?” she seemed a bit angry, and the shock of it rolled through you as you processed the tone in which she spoke.

but to her surprise you just let out a wet laugh, wishing she would just let it go and let you sob it out in peace, but before you could even open your mouth to speak she did it for you.

“you just ignored me, like i had no business knowing that you feel this way towards me. it could have been different, you know.” she looked like what she said pained her to do so, and you hated it.

the tears were already flowing freely down your cheeks when you turned back around to face her,

“i was right here lily, by your side all along but you never saw me, did you?” you were full on snot nosed crying now, but you continued anyways.

“i know you’re angry because i’ve been ignoring you, but i just want you to be happy, and that can’t happen if you know i’m in love with you.”

“why-”

“because i’m around you constantly, lily. you’d never forgive yourself for not reciprocating, so we’re better off like this.” she looked like she was gonna disagree, so you added “i know you, and you know it’s true too.”

she took one unconscious step closer to you, to which you stepped back.

“just let me go,” you begged, “it’s better this way, i promise.”

she took one good look at your tear stricken face, “how can you know this is better y/n, look at you.”

you wiped your nose on your sleeve, “i’ve been dealing with this for so long. just let me go, if not for your sake, do it for mine.” she wasn’t going to let up until you looked at her and attempted to once again beg, but it just came out as a silent plea overcome by your fresh tears.

you just looked down, waiting until you heard her footsteps out the door to let your knees give out.

you really hoped all this pain would be better for you in the long run.

#harry potter #lily evans #lily evans x reader #jily #angst #not the good kind #sorry #hogwarts #marauders era #tw angst #tw pain #tw homophobic parents #fuck y/n's parents

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oswinpond · 5 years ago

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Even after the new film, which certainly popularized Amy/Laurie in a way I’ve never seen before, I keep hearing a lot of the same old arguments: “Laurie never stopped loving Jo”, “Laurie didn’t really love Amy”, “Amy was a second choice/consolation prize”, “Jo should’ve been with Laurie” etc. And a lot of these people claim this is book canon. As I’ve just reread the book, I’ve got a lot of thoughts on all of this...

(Note: This is all purely based on book canon.)

In the book, after Amy harshly scolds Laurie, he decides to go back to London and work for his grandfather to better himself. At first, he thinks he’s doing it for two reasons: Amy despises him and that hurts him, but also the idea that if he does something “splendid” Jo may love him (or at least respect him, as Amy put it).

So Laurie decides to write a requiem for Jo “which should harrow up Jo’s soul and melt the heart of every hearer”. But he can’t come up with anything because he keeps humming the dance music reminiscent of the Christmas ball in Nice which he spent devoting himself to Amy all evening. So then he tries to compose an opera with Jo as his heroine, but it doesn’t work. “He wanted Jo for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. But memory turned traitor; and, as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Jo’s oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects.”

Jo no longer fits as his heroine, no matter how hard he tries. So he gives up on that, and his imagination promptly comes up with another heroine for him without even trying:

“This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind’s eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman.”

While Laurie doesn’t realize it, the woman he’s imagining is Amy. Amy with the blue ribbons in her golden hair, who put roses in his buttonhole, who he watched feed the peacocks in Paris, and who he first saw again in a carriage drawn by ponies. It’s also a little prophetic, as he does escort the real Amy through future trials. (Bonus: at the same time, Amy spends her time sketching some faceless man who clearly resembles Laurie, but she doesn’t realize it either.)

Contrary to what some in the fandom would claim, Laurie isn’t at all forcing himself to love Amy just so that he can be part of the March family. He doesn’t even realize that she’s become the “heroine” in his story, that she’s the woman he’s fantasizing about. He thinks he’s doing this to improve himself for Jo, but it’s Amy that’s inspiring him.

And then Laurie realizes that his feelings for Jo are disappearing:

“Laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it grew easier every day. He refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn’t understand it [...] Laurie’s heart wouldn’t ache; the wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burn into a blaze: there was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end.”

This passage alone pretty much puts to rest the idea that Laurie never got over Jo. He actually got over her so easily and quickly that he felt disgusted with himself, thinking this made him fickle. His romantic feelings are gone, and soon will leave only a “brotherly affection” when the last of the hurt is gone as well. Maybe he got over her so easily because he simply mistook his strong bond with her for romance, or maybe it was just a rash and immature first love that was never going to last long anyways, or whatever else... point being, he got over her.

And Laurie was actually trying, and failing, to rekindle any love for Jo (unlike his unconscious growing feelings for Amy, which he wasn’t pushing for at all). As a last ditch attempt to revive that love, he writes to Jo asking if she was sure about her refusal, and when she responds that she absolutely could never love him that way, he accepts it without sadness or complaint this time. He’s already over her, so there’s nothing to be heartbroken over. That was his closure. He takes off the ring she gave him and locks it away with her letters, and that’s that.

And that’s when he’s ready to open his heart to Amy. He starts corresponding with her so often their letters are flying back and forth constantly. He wants to go back to her, but he doesn’t want to until she asks; she finally does after she hears about Beth’s passing, and Laurie immediately drops everything to go to her “with a heart full of joy and sorrow, hope and suspense” (and this is after he knows she’s turned down Fred, so we know what he’s hoping for now). Amy is his first priority after Beth dies, even though Beth was dearest to Jo. Laurie meets Amy in Switzerland and, without saying anything, they both know their relationship has changed.

They spend weeks doing everything together and spend all their time out at the lake. Despite the sad tidings, they wind up being their happiest together in Vevey. They both know that they’re in love with each other without even having to say it (they really seem to develop an unspoken communication at this point). And while Laurie knows that she’ll say “yes” to his proposal, he’s still nervous so he puts it off to enjoy his time with Amy in Switzerland. He imagines proposing to her in the chateau garden at moonlight, but instead blurts it out while they’re on a lake in the middle of the day:

Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar. She rowed as well as she did many other things; and, though she used both hands, and Laurie but one, the oars kept time, and the boat went smoothly through the water. “How well we pull together, don’t we?” said Amy, who objected to silence just then. “So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you, Amy?” very tenderly. “Yes, Laurie,” very low. Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little tableau of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.

And there’s so much to say about this little scene. While he had to beg and argue with Jo just to finally accept her firm “no”, he just has to ask a simple question with Amy and he gets his simple answer because they’re on the same page. The rather blunt metaphor of rowing well together, even when he uses one hand and she uses two, is all about how despite their differences they work. They keep time. And it calls back to Jo’s talk with Marmee where they both agree that Jo and Laurie never would’ve worked, in part because their similarities would clash horribly in a romantic relationship (but mainly because , y’know, Jo never once felt a single shred of romantic love for Laurie).

Now, I can understand where people come from thinking Laurie was “replacing” Jo with Amy with lines like "Laurie decided that Amy was the only woman in the world who could fill Jo’s place and make him happy”. I get how this can be interpreted as Amy filling in for what was meant to be Jo’s place in his heart. But it makes a lot more sense in the context of Laurie’s speech to Jo towards the end when he explains his feelings:

“I never shall stop loving you; but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you changed places in my heart, that’s all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me; but I never could be patient, and so I got a heartache. I was a boy then, headstrong and violent; and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn’t know which I loved best, you or Amy, and tried to love you both alike; but I couldn’t. And when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places.”

Laurie didn’t settle for Amy. Amy took Jo’s place in the sense that they swapped places in how he saw them, from romantic to platonic for Jo and vice versa for Amy. And those wound up being their “right” places. He believes he was always meant to fall in love with Amy and see Jo as his sister, and that he would’ve gotten to this point naturally even if things had played out differently.

I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan of how the 2019 film portrayed Jo in this situation, because in the book she was absolutely thrilled for Laurie and Amy, and is happily surprised when Marmee tells her she’d been hoping for them to fall in love. But in the film, they take her sadness over her loneliness too far IMO, and make it seem like she was actually bitter over Amy and Laurie being together, which unfortunately fuelled the “Amy stole Laurie from Jo” crowd a bit. And after her conversation with Marmee where she admits that she only wants Laurie because she longs to be loved, and Marmee points that “that isn’t the same as loving”, this makes movie!Jo seem “silly and selfish” as book!Jo puts it (because in the book, that was only a “what if” she entertained and never wrote any letter).

Anyways, to conclude on all of this, when Amy and Laurie are married at and home, we get the thoughts of other characters on their relationship, and the unanimous opinion is that they’re completely in love and happy with each other. Jo herself insists that their happiness will for sure last, and notes how proud Laurie seems to be to call Amy his wife. Laurie, meanwhile, can’t stop talking about Amy through to the end (and Amy is clearly just as smitten). I dare you to read the last half of Part 2 and not find Amy and Laurie adorable together.

And to hammer that last nail in the coffin on Jo/Laurie as a romance, we get Laurie meeting Professor Bhaer. It’s specifically noted that while Laurie is suspicious of Bhaer and notices his interest in Jo, it was “not of jealousy” but a “brotherly circumspection”. Amy even asks him if he’s at all jealous and Laurie tells her “I assure you I can dance at Jo’s wedding with a heart as light as my heels. Do you doubt it, my darling?” and it says that Amy’s “last little jealous fear vanished forever”. Laurie actually winds up happily supporting Bhaer once he sees he’s a great guy for his sister Jo, and suggests to Amy that they should try to help them out as a couple.

So no, Jo never loved Laurie romantically, Laurie absolutely did get over Jo, Laurie and Amy are so happy together it’s almost obnoxious, Jo is pro-Amy/Laurie and Laurie is pro-Jo/Bhaer, and Amy wasn’t a second choice, she was Laurie’s “meant to be” by his own words.

#amy x laurie #laurie x amy #amy march #laurie laurence #little women #this wound up way longer than i intended #oops #so i added a read more #anyways all this to say that laurie and amy are OTP and laurie and jo are brotp #and jo and amy are my favourite sisters and their relationship is amazing

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