#i want it so bad bECAUSE HE HAS THE SWORD IN THERE

[itwasntimethatdidit40]

How could you love somebody like me?

Pairing: f!reader x Javier Peña Words count: 3032 Rating: + 18, NSFW, MDNI. Summary: Javi is under protection and has asked you to join him in the hotel room where he is confined. When you discover his secrets and lies, however, that room will become too small. Too small for both of you. Tags/warnings: POV second person, no use of y/n, Javi is still a DEA agent but it's a modern setting so the man has a smartphone. Reader is described having female genitalia and breasts, no other description of her is given, she doesn't blush and her hair is not described. Mention of alcohol, mention of cheating, Javi is a cheater, no happy ending, we will go through the man's phone (you're not supposed to do that but I never said my reader could do no wrong, right?), use of pet names (gatita which means kitten in Spanish, baby, darling), smut, angry sex, unprotected p in v (do better irl), cream pie, of course a little nipple play ‘cause it’s still my fic, toxic relationship, self doubt, mention of Steve, a huge pile of lies, Javi is bad at feelings, some reader’s thoughts marked in italics. I think it's all, let me know if I forgot something and I'll add it right away. A/N: Written for @jolapeno 's "Dear-uary" challenge. This was my prompt, I struggled a little bit at first but I ended up having a blast writing this ❤︎ Heavily inspired by this song (from which the fic also takes its title), I heard it randomly on Spotify one day and I thought "wait, this is perfect for Javi!" and I ended up being obsessed with two more songs by the same artist. LOL Many thanks to: - @aurorawritestoescape , my beta, for her help and advice, she will probably dream of elephants because of me tonight hahaha Kate I own you a big one, thanks baby so much, I love you ❤️ - The person who basically pulled this out of my brain and supported me throughout the process, my precious, my peanut @joelmillerisapunk. 🥰 Love you so much it's ridiculous🥹 - @milla-frenchy for letting me blather about this thing some days ago. Love you, bb ❤︎ English is not my first language, every single mistake is still on me, I deeply apologize if you find any.

Edited - because I forgot to change the most important detail, of course. I’m not myself if I’m not doing a mess. Yay. It’s okay now.

“Why the hell am I here? Was I the only available hole this week?”

“No,” he whispers. 

“So what?” 

Javier came back and found you in the middle of the room.

You were brandishing his phone like a sword in the air, the banner of everything that was wrong.

His face went pale when he saw you like that. 

Eyes wide open. 

Mouth agape. 

He tried to say something but you immediately hit him with a vomit of words.

“I know what you’re doing,” you hiss under your breath, feeling your eyes sting.

Javier is a marble statue in front of you, his lips pressed together, his absent eyes not even looking at you, staring at a spot behind your shoulders, his arms abandoned along his sides. 

He seems anchored to the ground. 

His last words to you still burn on your skin like a fire you cannot extinguish.

A heavy silence between you fills the air of the room and makes it unbreathable. 

“Fuck, Javier, talk to me,” you whisper angrily.

You clutch his phone in your hands, so tightly that your knuckles are white from exertion, as if you were clinging to it to keep yourself from falling off a cliff. 

“You knew I was no good,” he says sternly.

You have been in this room for two days. 

Officially, Javier has to stay here because henchmen of one of the new drug lords in town are set on taking him out. 

Unofficially, he has you infiltrating the room. 

Typical Javier, spending his time under protection fucking someone. 

You foolishly almost believed it was romantic, until this morning. 

“So you’re trying to say that it’s my fault? Is that what you want to say? It’s my fault that as soon as I turn my back you go and stick your cock in someone else's pussy?” You don’t even have the strength to scream right now. Your voice comes out rancorous but low, hoarse, like a blown growl. 

Oh, you’re not going to accept being lectured by him, fuck no.

“No, I’m just saying -” he tries to explain and you glare at him, making the words die in his mouth.  

"What?" 

“Fuck, I'll never change,” he shrugs as if it were a truism that only you can't grasp.

His eyes shift to the ground, dull and absent.

“You don't change because you are convinced that you can't,” you admonish him, feeling anger rising from your chest. 

"That's not true," he murmurs, keeping his gaze on the crimson and gold carpet that lies at your feet.

“Yes, it is,” you insist, ”and you seem to like to think of yourself as an incurable asshole.”

He still fails to see the real problem, the elephant in the room that lives and thrives among you. 

"Then you tell me, if you think you know me so well,” he asks with defiance. 

“You bet I fucking know you,” you lash out. “You think you're so mysterious and complicated?! Well,  news flash, I've seen plenty like you. You’re just another man. You're not even that, you're a child. A child who's afraid of his own shadow when it comes to relationships.”

“Don’t fucking analyze me,” he hisses, finally setting his eyes back on you. 

Raven, angry and fearful. He knows you can read him like an open book and this unleashes an awareness upon him that crushes him to the ground.

You bitterly laugh, “Truth hurts, huh? I know something about it”. 

The wrinkle between his eyebrows deepens, his nostrils flare, and his mouth tightens into a line so thin you think he’s about to burst. He stays quiet instead, eyes back on the damask carpet decoration. 

_____________

“Yes, Steve, I'm fine. That jerk won't find me here, and anyway it's full of police outside the door.” 

A pause and a sigh. 

”No, no one followed her, they don't know who she is.”

You stood behind the half-closed bathroom door listening. 

You smiled. 

His voice sounded softer when he talked about you. You lulled yourself into that feeling. 

Until you heard something else. 

A booming laugh. 

Water ran in the shower, tiny droplets coated the wall as the mirror fogged up.

“Whatever. Of course I'm still screwing around. At least, I was doing it before that asshole started chasing me,” his voice suddenly lowered so you took a chance and opened the door a little more. You wanted to make sure you heard right. 

Your hand trembled against the doorknob, you grabbed your wrist to hold it steady. 

“You idiot,” he scoffed. “Yeah, we'll be in touch.”

Suspicion. The black wing of a crow that had been wrapped around your heart for a long time.

But then why did it hurt so much? 

You allowed yourself to hide it in a part of your brain where you never looked-that was a mistake. Making the hunch barely a firefly when it was supposed to be a bright neon sign.

He always places the phone with its screen down when you go out to dinner, softly smiling at it when he checks it after a few vibrations, telling you “it’s Steve” when you ask. 

But you know that crooked smile. 

He dodges when you ask him about his day "oh work, you know, just work." 

He tells you he is with Steve but you hear female voices in the background. 

Every time you try to confront him it always ends the same way, him telling you, “you’re paranoid, there’s no one else, just you, baby. You’re the only one I want.”

And then he fucks your doubts into oblivion.

You heard the thud of the phone on the blankets. And then Javier calling you. 

You swallowed the gall rising from the walls of your stomach and just smiled when he joined you in the bathroom and suggested that you shower together.

You wanted some proof before you charged him. 

If there was anything you had learned from being with him, it was that hard evidence was the key. So you played cool. 

He fucked you against the shower wall and you moaned into his neck. 

He licked your pussy like a man starved and you just bit your lips until you felt iron on your tongue.

He kissed you with that liar's mouth, and you let him.

And you fell asleep beside him, on the unmade bed of your uncertainties. 

This morning someone from outside called him into the hallway to report the latest movements of the guy who was looking for him. 

His phone was on the bedside table.

It was like a magnet, pulling your hand to it.

You were almost sure you knew his unlock code ‘cause you had watched the movements of his finger many times. 

You tried twice without success. 

The third time you let out a long sigh, visualized in your mind the movement one more time and unlocked it. 

You were in. 

Your heart was beating wildly in your chest as your fingers swiped and clicked on the screen. 

And there they were.

Dozens and dozens of messages and pics exchanged with 4 different women.

You scrolled through one of the chats with a certain Maria, who regularly sent him pictures of her tits and her legs spread wide, her pussy in the shot.

There was sexting, arranged dates, same promises he gave to you, things you never asked for but he kept repeating like a broken record. Even the same pet name. Gatita. 

Blood simmered in your veins, a jolt in your heart, throat dry. 

Your finger furiously scrolled through the chat, finding tons of messages he had sent her while he was with you.

You switched to another one and you found pretty much the same. And yet another, message after message containing flirting and explicit sex.  

“Oh Javi, you keep getting better and better with that cock of yours”

“My pussy needs you, darling, can you come over?”

“I can’t stop thinking about your huge cock dripping on me”

And the more you scrolled, the more a question formed in your brain, rumbling through your temples like a deafening drum. 

Was he ever sincere with you?

________

When he looks up at you again, you see it. A veil of fragility in the dense blackness of his gaze.

He looks almost helpless. “I know you tried,” he admits, ”You tried harder than anyone else.”

“Apparently it was no use,” you chastise him.

He doesn’t reply. 

Instead he comes closer and closer. 

You pull back, responding to his every step forward with a backward one. 

“Please,” he whispers. 

“No.” 

“Don't do that.”

“You have no right to tell me what to do,” you bark.

”I know...” 

“Fuck off, Javier, leave me alone.”

You pull back until you hit the wall behind you. 

Javier approaches, bending slightly to reach your mouth, his mustache brushes against your cupid’s bow and you don't even have the strength to turn your face away anymore. 

When your lips collide you let it happen. 

It’s like when you drink too much Tequila. 

It burns on your tongue, leaving you almost anesthetized as soon as you down it, and then an aromatic taste wafts into your mouth; it is lysergic, unusual, unmistakable.

You love it, so you keep doing it.

Javier is the same. 

He's sharp, stiff at the edges, burns like fire, but he has an aura that you won’t mistake for anything and he hypnotizes you. He’s not like anyone else, despite what you told him. There is an underlying despair in him, a cry dying in his throat, “How can you love someone like me?” 

He says it only with his eyes but you hear it clearly.

He is a time bomb that explodes in your heart every time he touches you. So you keep doing it.

“Fuck,” you whisper against his lips. 

“Yeah…I know. I’m not worthy.”

And yet, you’re still here.

You let him peel off your every layer of clothing, to leave you naked and vulnerable in front of him. 

You do nothing when he undresses too. Hastily taking off his shirt, fumbling with the button of his jeans, nervous hands and short breaths.

It is like some mind fuck game, intoxicating, dangerous, capable of leaving permanent marks.

He lowers his jeans just enough to free his cock, no boxers. Always ready.

His hands run over your hips and you groan. 

His tongue slides over your neck, his eyes closed, his breath heavy and warm on your skin. 

He makes you cry, but you don't say no.

His lips latch onto your nipple and adrenaline rushes through your veins up into your head, hitting hard like a jackhammer.

You don’t pull back anymore, you push your tit into his mouth so eagerly you feel his teeth closing on your bud and you whine in pleasure. 

His growing erection leaks against your center. You are trapped. Not so much because you are between him and the wall but because you no longer know how to get him out of your head. 

Right now it doesn't matter how much it hurts. 

He slides his hands down your thighs and you know what he wants, without needing to speak. You wrap your legs around his waist. He kneels on the bed with you still clinging to him, you lie back on the soft blankets that smell of you both, arch your back and press against his cock. You folds splayed and dripping for him.

His fingers go up your rib cage, stop under your breasts and grasp there, he draws you back to him and your mouths collide again.

You let his tongue enter. You let the fleeting pleasure of this instant take over all the no's you know you have to say.

There’s no right kind of love here, this room is drowned in angry sex.

Angry at how you can never say no to him, angry at how he makes you feel, angry because you know that no one has ever fucked you the way he did, invading your body with a pleasure so addictive that it makes you sick. Angry because maybe he's right, he can't change. 

You break the kiss and bite on his shoulder, a small act of revenge that really does no harm compared to your bleeding heart. 

Your hands grasp on the golden skin of his back, leaving marks with your nails digging into it, your miserable attempt to leave marks on him in return.

You moan convulsively under his touch, your mouth wide open against his, your tongue desperately seeking him out. 

His hands tighten on your ass, lifting you slightly, his cock slides over your wet opening, a guttural sound comes out of the back of your throat without you being able to hold it back. 

You want him inside you. 

You need him inside you.

And it’s wrong, and desperate. It’s masochistic.

You don’t even care for his jeans’s zip scraping your skin.

The thin line between pain and pleasure is so blurred now.

It’s a pathetic shit show of need and urgency. 

You’d walk away from any other guy but Javier is the person you can never have just for yourself and at the same time he is the only one you want. 

He is the knife and the wound at the same time.  

When he asks “Whose pussy is this?” in his deep groaning voice that fucks directly with your brain, you can only reply “yours.”

Digging your nails deeper, biting more, wailing louder but just pleading with him.

You take his shaft in your hand and rub it against you in blind desperation, wetting it with your juices. 

He groans into your ears while his hand reaches for your nipple and his big strong arm holds you close.

You are sitting on his thighs, your legs crossed behind his back.

His fingers pinch your nipple as you don't stop stroking his big throbbing cock.

Just put it in there. You think. I just need to feel your flesh against mine, inside me, claiming me like the rag doll that I am now. 

Stupid bitch trying to have you when you’re damaged like a shattered glass, when you can bring nothing than heat to my body and freezing ice to my heart. 

“Fuck me,” you groan. 

He pushes against your core, entering you with one deep thrust.

Your pussy is weeping so much it doesn’t even hurt.

You clench on him with all the strength you have, chocking his cock with your walls.

“Fuck,” he growls. “You’re gripping me so hard, baby. There’s nothing you want more than this, huh? Me fucking you raw?” 

“Shut up,” you hiss. 

He starts moving, pumping into you as his hand reaches for your clit, brushing it in circles.

You whine, clinging onto his back, your face hidden in the crook of his neck.

You can’t look him in the eye, you can’t face your own shameful reflection in his pupils, you can’t think of anything else than this pleasure firing your body, your limbs, your mind.

Your pussy never gets the memo when it comes to him. She just clenches, and cries and asks for more.

At the verge of your brink, when you’re so utterly overwhelmed you could swear, you’re about to jump out of your skin, you hear it.

It’s the softest whisper on your skin, so low you barely catch the words, “I love you” 

You cry a single tear that slides down the column of his neck, it could be mistaken for a bead of sweat so easily and Javier doesn’t notice it. But it’s there. You’re crying again.

You come, weeping.

Grasping to him like your last shred of hope.

But there’s no hope anymore.

You know you can’t go on like that.

You cried before. You argued before. It’s all useless.

A devastating orgasm shoots through you, leaving you without defense.

It’s the last thing you want but you need to get it over with. 

You lie on the bed, feeling his last twitches inside you, his cum dripping onto your walls, his cock pressing against that spot that belongs only to him.

He lies down on you, gently crushing you with his weight, his sweaty skin against yours, the smell of your orgasm filling your nostrils.

You’re hopeless and breathless. 

He's still inside you, like he doesn't want to leave. 

You know you have to. 

Eventually he shifts, lying on the other side of the bed muttering, “god, you really are something else.” He takes the pack of cigarettes from the nightstand and lights one, taking a long drag.

“I'm not enough,” you want to scream looking at him through the cloud of smoke enveloping him. “Or maybe you're not, for me.”

When he is about to fall asleep, you get up. You pick up your clothes off the floor and put them on silently.

“Where are you going, gatita?” he grunts. 

Does he think he has solved it? Does he think you will forgive him as you did the other times? 

You don’t reply.

"You only ever tell me the truth when you think I won't hear it,” you type on your phone and send it to him, before coming out of the door without turning your back.

You leave him there, wondering, lost as he makes you feel.

There will be two broken hearts. 

You know he loves you and you love him.

He is convinced that he doesn’t deserve you and pushes you away every time you get close to his soul. 

He knows that you see him clearly; that scares him.

You are tired of fighting for the both of you.

You push the elevator button under the gaze of an unsuspecting policeman who urges, “Where are you going, miss?”

“I'm leaving.”

“Do you need someone to accompany you?” 

“No, thank you.”

“Someone could follow you,” he counters.

“No one knows me, you don't have to worry.”

You wait for the elevator, still hoping to see his ruffled raven hair poking out the door, his voice calling to you, his hand tightening on your wrist. 

None of this happens.

The only ones who will follow you are your ghosts.

Tag list: @baronessvonglitter , @almostempty , @probablyreadinsmut , @thundermartini , @gothcsz , @cas-readsandwrites , @harriedandharassed

Archive tag: @pedrostories

If you want to be added or removed just let me know! Thank you very much for reading❤︎

[0neir0z]

So, I read your post about the idea of Alex and Nigel having internalised homophobia. And I’m actually kind of invested, so how do you think that internalised homophobia would present itself in both of them? Especially if let’s say miraculously Nigel didn’t die and they got to continue being crazy. Would they ever realise “this is kind of gay” or not?

omg hi this is my first ask but here's what i think!

tbh started thinking about this when i did this one trend on tik tok, and thought about far too much for a silly tik tok slideshow:

and specifically the order i put them in, as honestly it seeeemed intuitive at first and then i was hit with This Concept (will elaborate dw).

let's start with alex and his deal with this, i think it is less of a stretch. it's mostly just where and Who he is. (like come on teenage straight boys are So homophobic sometimes. can't even imagine how bad it was then if they're casual about that now.) the top student at a prestige school. the son of an incredibly rich and influential man set on the track of success. he has a girl he likes. and he can get away with anything he wants because of this and he will expend that privilege to no end. he is defensive of this life, against anything that would disrupt it. that's why he's So distressed by nigels presence. if we play with the gothic trope of murder and other deplorable or taboo actions as a substitute for repressed desire and queerness, this gets even clearer. getting dragged into nigels world and becoming intertwined and entangled in it is his worst fucking nightmare. of all the guys in the world that he could conceive of himself getting close with Like That it's a total Freak. this relationship, especially as alex remembers, is only violent. the only place he felt safe to first confront nigel about his deal was a place that he could easily threaten and endanger him. they're always fighting and alex almost always instigates. he doesn't want to be perceived like that, he doesn't want to feel so understood by nigel. he treats nigel and his actions with utmost disdain until after he died... but he mourned him. putting a pin in this rq to talk about nigel.

ngl this is a Bigger stretch as nigel obviously comes off as way more overtly gay. dawg was staring at his lips for like half the movie. (or maybe that's just how alex remembers it.) but also because his lifestyle is represented as an inherently taboo thing that plagues and poisons alex's life. (which in itself is kind of a homophobic media trope. the homosexual corrupting the upstanding member of society.) and i believe that his reclusion is kind of a double edged sword. he may have come to some terms that he is sexually attracted to men but his antisocial behavior doesn't ever indicate he'd be supportive of it outside of himself. but because he is all these things doesn't mean he understands it fully, understands himself fully. nigel was socialized generally in the same manner as alex, putting aside the abuse and dysfunction in the colbie household. he understands that some day he should be a powerful man. he understands his privilege can buy him time and freedom. he understands that there are social repercussions to how he lives his life and what would happen if he expressed what he wanted in less of a secretive way. i mean literally he keeps it contained to his dorm and his basement. and then The Concept hit me. it's maraclea. his internalized homophobia is manifested in his obsession with finding maraclea. that he and alex will have and take their own, the closest and most sacred relationship to the knights. their harvest widow. but nigel can't be maraclea. it's not right, it doesn't fit his mythology. he and alex cannot have each other in the way that he himself wants, he settles instead for being the spade. the right hand and the implement of killing for his knave, it's close but not quite right. and we see nigel getting close and doing everything but expressing his own feelings for alex. he's obsessed with alex's sex life and obsessed with susan and getting alex to take her as maraclea. he returns to his sexually abusive mother. basically he will do anything but actually kiss that mf. it is something he cannot accept yet.

as for if they'll ever realize if this relationship was queer? likely. ngl. it seemed like whatever they had going on was going to actually escalate there in their own fucked up way. (it's why i think alex mourned nigel and was sympathetic towards him when talking to sally about his life. and probably why he recalled nigel looking at him Like That. he was close to acceptance by that point.) in the inappropriate, obsessive, and violent way their friendship was. it probably wouldn't have been public and open, perhaps them labeling it as (knightly) brotherhood, alliance, or friendship still. but i don't think that would even be easy bc it would have to be secret. private only. if the feelings became romantic, i think that it would eat at nigel. ngl.

idk if that makes sense but ty for reading this if you did ig lol. way longer than i thought it would be.

[spikeface]

hiiii hello if you would ever like to rant about teen wolf s6a please do <3 i'm like five episodes in on my rewatch and i'm constantly oscillating between peeking at my phone like a proper zoomer and repeatedly asking myself where is theo my friend enemy theo.... i know he's here where is he...

Omg okay I will but you have to understand that this is the distillation of years in this fandom, the once loose coal of my irritation compressed into a diamond of haterism. There are parts of this season I love, and I've made peace with some of the stuff I complain about here. 

But we're not here for peace. :)

Never Say "Pineal Gland" Again. The Ghost Riders are fun as a plot device. People being kidnapped and forgotten, a mystical train station, that's fun! Teen Wolf loves monstrous, seemingly unknowable villains, and does great with them in two ways, both of which 6A fails at:

The first option is to get inside their heads. The alpha of season 1, the kanima, the darach, the nogitsune, the Dread Doctors—all are introduced as deeply alien creatures whose inner lives and personal connections to the main cast are slowly revealed. 6A seems like it's going down that route, because the crew spends a lot of time trying to figure out and talk to the Ghost Riders, but there's no payoff: they just want to hunt forever and that's that. No personal history with anyone, no connections beyond a willingness to mind control Parrish and a bit of nervous shuffling around Lydia.

Which might still be fine, because the second option with characters like these is to make them window dressing for a charismatic villain, a la the oni with the nogitsune or the berserkers with Kate. This framework would be great for 6A if not for the fact that the villain in this case is Garrett "Brain-Eating Nazi Lion Wolf" Douglas. 

Douglas does not get enough hate. I get that he's so forgettable, what else is there to say besides "blech," but we can do better. Teen Wolf has such fun villains: they're dramatic and camp, while also intimate and personal. They have deep connections with the main crew and almost always have a sympathetic side to them. Even the nogitsune, the most alien of the main villains, has an almost plaintive moment where it reminds Noshiko that it's only doing what it was created to, what she summoned it for.

Nothing about Douglas is challenging or charismatic or sympathetic or aesthetically appealing or well acted. Davis had a bad habit of hiring wooden blonde hunks as far back as the mechanic of season 2, and now there's one as a main villain. Douglas's closest connection is to Theo—their scene in the shed is easily Douglas's most engaging, though that doesn't say much—but their connection is superficial. How would Douglas even know who Theo was if he spent those years floating unconscious in a vat? 

His final showdown is deeply unsatisfying. By the time Scott faces him, they've barely interacted so far. What does it mean for Scott to challenge him? What does he mean to Scott? How has Scott grown to be able to face him? Why does Douglas want this power anyway? Why would this Nazi be telling a Mexican-American that he'd be a fine Hitler youth? What the fuck is happening here? 

In the end, Peter rightly points out that a brain-eating Nazi is such a low bar to clear that taking a stand against him is almost meaningless. Douglas is a mockery of the complex, charismatic, intimate, high-stakes villains of previous seasons. Damnatio memoriae is too good for him; we need to remember how bad he sucks.

If Only We Knew Someone With Lightning Powers. Dropping Arden Cho unceremoniously was gross. Following that with a season of lightning villains is gross. Having Kira's only legacy be a sword that is then given away and broken, after everything she sacrificed for it, is just foul.

Would It Kill You To Let Them Go To Prom? Teen Wolf is only sporadically interested in high school life. Sometimes, it's part of the show's appealing silliness, but 6a's indifference just gets to me. This is the final semester of senior year for Scott and co., but we get absolutely nothing. Stiles misses that final semester and apparently, so do we! There's no classes, barely any lacrosse, and definitely no prom or graduation or college acceptance letters, nothing that acknowledges this season as a rite of passage. Any hints to the characters' future are condensed into a few lines at the end. C'mon, man.

It goes beyond the expectations of a teen show. Davis is so indifferent to his characters that in the next season, he makes all the characters who should be juniors into seniors, just to add on a flimsy narrative about things ending. It's lazy. 6A, to me, also really brings out how little Davis has invested in the world of Beacon Hills. Beyond Coach, there are so few consistent background characters. The high school class, lacrosse team, hospital, and sheriff's department are all prime opportunities for recurring background characters, but the show only bothers with a few (e.g. Brett&Lori, Sydney, Danny until they dropped him without even telling the actor). Nathan, Gwen, and Phoebe are all new characters, rather than people who have existed in the background before this, and after this season, they disappear again. There's very little sense of the world of either the high school or the town in general, and it stands out in a season where the whole town is being targeted.

The Newest Werewolf. Hayden was a minor character in season 5, but still had a lot going on: a close relationship with her sister strained by the supernatural; having to work a shitty job to afford the medications for her life-threatening condition; being targeted by the Doctors; being pursued by a boy she's not sure if she likes; trying to flirt when she's naturally competitive and sarcastic; DYING; being revived by Theo and then exploited by him; fighting the Demon Wolf's attempts to get in her head; deciding to help her friends; walking a fine line to survive the Beast when she's kidnapped by him; discovering Tracy's body. Her life is rich, and ends with a groundbreaking moment where she's the first person onscreen that becomes a werewolf with fully informed consent.

In 6A, she's flattened into Liam's love interest. Almost all of her scenes are with him, and her decisions are almost entirely about him. Many of her lines are about reassuring him. The exception is her dynamic with Gwen, which is much more engaging, and to me only shows how much more they could have done with Hayden if they just let her cook. Why is Liam the only one to get scenes alone with Theo? Surely she and Theo would have stuff to say to each other. Or what about her relationship with Scott? Why is Liam the only beta to have an arc with him? Where's her relationship with her sister??

The Wailing Woman. This should have been such a good season for Lydia. The groundwork is all there! Banshees have a special power over the Ghost Riders, and to placate them, the Ghost Riders create a facsimile of someone the banshee has lost.

Hmm, whom has Lydia lost recently? Whose presence might give her a vested interest in ignoring evidence of the Wild Hunt? 

Allison would have been perfect as the deceptive product of the Wild Hunt, and would have matched the framework the show established far better than Claudia. Part of the reason the Hunt falls apart is because Lydia is instantly suspicious of Claudia, and has no emotional investment in her. With Allison, Lydia would get to say goodbye to her in a way that matches the season being set in the final semester of high school. 

This would also have built on season 5 in fruitful ways. Lydia's power makes her a target in season 5, but she has almost no agency over her power. She's driven to blow Valack's head off without any control over it. 6A could be about Lydia realizing that this fake Allison has been created for her because the Wild Hunt is afraid of her power, but only if she chooses to use it.

And with respect to Allison, Lydia has more grieving to do. She's been struggling to process her death since it happened. She spends all of season 4 trying to find a way to help people as a response to Allison's death, but then is locked in a basement for the finale. In season 5, she has to be told by Stiles about Allison's role in defeating the Beast. Lydia deserves a season in which she can properly grieve Allison. She's literally the wailing woman! Let her wail!

As a final note, I'll add that I was frustrated with the way Stydia was done in this season. I dislike it strongly but waffled on including it because I've never been a big Stydia shipper, and so I worry that this criticism will seem motivated by my disinterest in the ship, rather than my frustration with its execution. My issue, though, is not Stydia itself but how little the show explored Lydia's subjectivity. 

Imho 6a substitutes Lydia remembering Stiles for her liking him, and prioritizes exploring his feelings over hers. It's clear from the first episode that Stiles is still in love with her, even if he's accepted they'll never be a romantic couple—which is one of my favorite things about Stiles, and a great part of O'Brien's portrayal. But when it comes to Lydia liking Stiles, the show focuses on how she's the one to remember him. But that's also, apparently, because she's a banshee? They focus on that at the expense of her personal feelings for him, and when the scene is most explicitly about their connection—in the memory landscape sequence of "Memory Found"—the focus is on Stiles' feelings for her. It just didn't seem like it was about Lydia in a meaningful way. The previous season, she'd been into Parrish, which is a pairing I despise and don't want to see more of, but the fact remains it was important to Lydia. The lack of exploration of how Lydia had ended it or moved on from it felt like more dismissal of her experiences. Stydia seemed like it was ultimately about making sure the audience knew Stiles is important, at the expense of a real exploration of their dynamic, which I discuss more below.

You Don't Have To Stop But Could You. So, okay, stay with me on this one. I loved that Theo returned, and thought they did some great things with him, BUT that's not why we're gathered here today. Despite enjoying a lot about Theo's dreamscape sequence, I was really frustrated by the way it framed Tara and what its impact was clearly intended to be.

I really loved the first scenes of Theo's return: he's dirty, angry, confused, and biting. He looks exhausted with his own bullshit, but instantly attacks Liam and Hayden and then threatens to kill everyone, and lies by omission about Douglas (and his own powers?), reflexively playing his cards close to the vest. He's looking out for himself and averse to personal risk. I thought they did a good job of presenting a Theo who has the potential to change, but hasn't yet. He's not really ready to see Scott and Malia again, and reverts to flippancy. 

We also get a scene in “Ghosted” of how deeply Theo hurt Malia. She hallucinates his betrayal in connection with her guilt about her own family; both of them are still deep wounds for her. It makes sense that she would lose control at the sight of Theo suddenly showing up in Scott's living room with a little "you aren't still upset about the whole shooting thing, are you?"

But then the episode ends!

And the next one starts with the Tara dreamscape.

Again, I don't want to sound like I disliked this sequence full stop. I've written meta about its relationship with Scott's dreamscape sequence and what it says about Theo, but I remain frustrated with how the basic impact is about generating sympathy for Theo. Tara is the victim the viewer knows least (vs Josh or Tracy or Scott), her death the most ambiguous (we only see Theo watching in what could be a daze, like the one pre-resurrection Tracy was in), and her only role in this sequence is to hurt Theo. She doesn't have any subjectivity beyond that: she's not Theo's sister, betrayed by her little brother's violence towards her, ready to explain her point of view. She's a gory ghost who barely reacts to Theo, a walking prop.

Theo, meanwhile, is there to be pitiable. When he was pulled under, he was powerful, and attacking everyone, and wearing shoes. Now he wanders barefoot through the hospital, and at the sight of Tara, he just runs. Beyond some frustration with the door, there's none of the vicious anger he showed in season 5. 

To be clear, it's not that I think Theo shouldn't be pitied or doesn't have this vulnerability, and Cody Christian does a stellar job with this scene, which is also beautifully atmospheric. But in terms of the impact of the scene on the viewer, it's there to create pity for Theo at the expense of grappling with any of the violence he did. It frustrates me because the sequence easily could have addressed his violence while still making him look sympathetic.

Theo was trapped in and perpetuated a cycle of violence. The viewers don't know the full truth about Tara, but we do with Scott, Josh, and Tracy. Theo killed them. What's more, we know all three tried to have a connection with him: Josh followed him post-resurrection despite the fact that Theo had been the one to kill him the first time; Scott wanted Theo in his pack, trusted him, and tried to be there for him; and Tracy was in love with him, trying to help him, without judgement, even when he was at his lowest. It would have been much more meaningful to have Theo face them instead of Tara, or at least in addition to her. 

It also would have been more meaningful to have Theo reckon with his capacity to do violence, rather than his fear of suffering it. We all know Theo is scared of being hurt; Theo knows most of all. He's even honest about it: "I don't want to be one of the bodies, it's that simple." What he has more trouble with is confronting how he perpetuates a cycle of violence, or even that he's in one. The dream sequence as it is does have Theo confront the idea of an endless, unchanging cycle, but it would have been much more effective to have that cycle be about the violence Theo did.

Think about how it would have looked if, once Tara dragged Theo down, Theo went on to reenact any of the violence he did, over and over and over. He could push Tara off the bridge over and over, but it'd be even more impactful to have him kill Josh over and over. He already killed him twice, but now he has to do it forever.

Scott stands there, barely on his feet, betrayed and weary, and says, "Now you have to kill me yourself." 

And Theo does, over and over. 

Tracy tells him, over and over, "You're hurt. You need time to heal." 

And Theo kills her for it, over and over. 

You'd get the same progression towards despair, but now it would be much more about Theo confronting what he did. It would still be a sympathetic depiction of a lost kid, shaped and trapped by brutal forces, while addressing his own choices, and why Malia might be so upset to see him.

As it stands, the sequence undermines Theo's history and Malia's reasonable reaction to him. We get her flashback/hallucination, Theo's inflammatory return, but then an episode break, followed by an extended sequence in which Theo is nothing but helpless and pitiable, finally followed by Malia's rage. Her reaction is divorced from the catalysts of the previous episode, and the scene of her anger even contains a callback to the dreamscape ("you don't have to stop"). I've made my peace with it, but it remains frustrating as a choice from Davis, who wrote this episode.

Malia Middle Name Tate.* Again, there's a lot I love about what they do with Malia in 6A, but now is not the time for love. So much of Malia's screentime is about Stiles and Peter at her expense. Those are both huge relationships for Malia, but they're not explored on her terms. 

The last we saw of her and Stiles, they'd broken up over a complicated situation. Stiles ends things at a self-destructive moment, as Malia tells him she would accept him even if he did kill Donovan. In some ways, I think Stiles is punishing her for this acceptance out of self-loathing, but it's also about the fact that Malia's acceptance is clearly tied to her own desire to kill the Desert Wolf. She accepts what might be Stiles' violence because she wants him to accept that she plans to kill Corinne, and Stiles isn't cool with that. The two never speak about it again, though, even though Malia subsequently doesn't kill Corinne. By season 6, the two obviously have baggage, as seen in their clash over the senior portrait. 

Once Stiles is gone, we see that he's still her anchor. I thought this was an interesting choice, because Scott and Allison's breakup was what forced Scott to be his own anchor. It would have been interesting to see that for Malia, or for her to decide that she still wants Stiles to be her anchor as a friend, or any sort of arc where she processes the breakup or her own feelings or makes decisions about Stiles for herself. Instead, the anchor concept seems to exist to remind the viewer how important Stiles is in general: he's Malia's anchor! Look how lost she is without him! Stiles simply must be rescued from the Wild Hunt! Malia isn't the one to break through the veil, however, and after he's back, there's still no sense of what this means for Malia. Her subjectivity re: Stiles is just ignored. After he comes back, she doesn’t even get a scene to greet him.

It's even worse with her "arc" with Peter. The last we see of those two is in the finale of season 4, when Peter betrays her. After going out of his way to get close to her, he literally tosses her aside and tries to kill her friends. Season 5 begins with Malia confirming that she's Malia Tate, not Malia Hale. She then forgets Peter until he returns from the Wild Hunt, when she goes to take his pain and is suddenly struck with the memory of his betrayal. That's the entirety of their relationship. 

Meanwhile, Peter is busy carving the biggest revenge spiral of his life in Eichen, suggesting he hasn't changed much from the end of season 4, before he's swept away by the Wild Hunt. I didn't dislike his scenes with Stiles at the train station, but to the extent that it's about his relationship with Malia, it cuts out Malia. Stiles' contempt for how alone Peter is as a result of his actions is good, as is his desperate plea for Peter to help his daughter, if no one else—but Malia sees none of this. She goes to Peter after his return only because he seems marginally less horrible than Theo, and still doesn't trust him. And why would she? Why would the viewer? We saw how big that revenge spiral was. 

Peter does go on to sacrifice himself for Malia, but these moments are always about Peter and what he wants, and they lead to one of the most abhorrent moments of the show. The fact that Malia is forced to call him "dad" despite obviously not wanting to is just gross. It's all about what Peter wants, and honestly, why would he even want this? It's meaningless because it's forced, and it's especially foul that Lydia is written to be the one telling Malia to do this, given Peter's history with her. I hate it!!

Meanwhile, where is Henry, the father she chose? Was he kidnapped by the Wild Hunt? Did she ever tell him she's a werecoyote, or about the Desert Wolf? 6A won't tell us. We see in "Ghosted" that her mother and sister's death still haunts her, but does the season do anything with that? No.

The last grump I'll add re: Malia's treatment is how little she gets with Theo. I've already talked about how I disliked how her anger at Theo is framed, and it was especially frustrating that it wasn't followed up with anything beyond an angry quip in the finale. Liam gets a series of scenes (good ones!) where he works through his anger at Theo, and it's incredibly frustrating that Malia, after having a much more intimate dynamic with him in season 5, gets so little. I despise the writers' choice to ignore them.

*This is a tiny thing but in the birth certificate prop for Malia in season 4, you can see that her name is written as Baby Malia. So. Technically. Malia is her middle name. Baby: a beautiful name for a baby.

Mieczysław. You knew this was coming. My frustration with how Stiles was handled this season is about the ways in which it's done at the expense of other characters, and even of Stiles himself.

The premise of 6a was to work around O'Brien's absence by making it a plot point. Stiles becomes the focus of the season, but theoretically, characters could have space to work through their relationships with him, and potentially plenty more for dynamics with other characters. 

But in practice, the writers clutter the season with repeated empty claims about Stiles' importance that stifle exploration of Stiles' relationships. Yes, he's Malia's anchor, but what does that mean now, after season 5, and how does it change over the course of the season? Yes, he's Scott's best friend, but again, what does that mean now? How does the season help them grow and develop? A lot of screentime is given to the sheriff, who gets long soliloquies about Stiles' importance, but there's no sense of development in their relationship or even any context. We don't, for instance, get any sense of what it means for the sheriff to have forgotten his own son, or how this revelation relates to things like refusing to believe him about the supernatural in 3a. On top of all of that, the sheriff's consistent presence and the primacy of his relationship with Stiles only emphasizes how marginalized every other parent-child relationship is in 6a: Scott&Melissa, Lydia&Natalie, Malia&Henry, Liam&Dr. Geyer, and Hayden&Valerie get almost nothing. I wonder if Noshiko has any thoughts on the importance of your child being remembered.

Some of the references to Stiles are poignant—the Jeep, for instance—but their impression overall is that the writers thought that Stiles could be replaced with cardboard cutouts. We get a parade of props, disconnected anecdotes and lore, the useless introduction of Elias (never seen before or after and gives them no new information<3), and of course, my worstie, Claudia.

Claudia's presence is a reference to Stiles, but not meaningfully about him; Stiles only finds her at the very end, and instantly rejects her. The biggest arc re: Claudia is the sheriff's, and while I'm not, like, against the idea of him grieving Claudia, it's done at the expense of Lydia's arc. To the extent that Lydia focuses on Claudia, the show seems to be trying to suggest that Stiles is important to her, but the message is undermined by the cheap cipher. Is she thinking about Stiles because he's important to her, or because there's a fake lady in his house right now? Is her relationship to him about her feelings for him, or her role as a banshee?

And again, all of this is at the expense of something like Lydia's grief for Allison.

If we needed to pad Stiles’ absence with proxies for him, why not at least give us characters who explore his dynamic with the pack? Why not, say, a flashback scene of when baby him met baby Lydia? We have actors for both their younger counterparts. Or, better yet, why not scenes between Stiles and Scott as little kids? Again, we have the actors, and it would allow for more exploration of their relationships. It’d be especially meaningful for Sciles, given their anxieties this season, but I have more thoughts on that below.

The Alpha of Beacon Hills. The extent to which Scott is shut out of arcs and relationships is bananas. There are things I like (Scott&Liam, Scott&Lydia&Malia as besties), but we're here for the parts that frustrated me, which were numerous:

His future and dreams. This builds on my frustration with Davis's general disinterest in the characters' lives, which I discussed above, but it was an unresolved plot point for Scott last season and gets worse this season. Season 5 (last semester) made Scott's future more tenuous than ever. His dream is UC Davis's prestigious vet science program, and he's working his ass off to get into it: he's got school, extracurriculars, his job, and the constant life-or-death chaos of people trying to kill him or wreak havoc he's told he's duty-bound to stop. Season 5 Scott seems despairingly resigned to things always getting worse, but also throws himself into things like AP Bio, despite his friends' lack of faith in him (hated that scene) and his teacher's negging. Then, of course, Theo and the Dread Doctors show up, and the last we hear is that Scott has missed a deadline for a scholarship. In 6a, he's excelling at his psych elective (AP Psych?), but is still stressed about how much class he's missed.

Then we get nothing until the very end of the season, when Stiles asks in passing: "Real question is, how did you get into UC Davis?" Why is this such a tiny moment? Why is Stiles so uncharacteristically snide about this achievement, when he's been one of Scott's biggest cheerleaders, and this season is meant to be a Sciles season? Wtf?

Scira. Not one word about Scott dealing with Kira's absence. Not one word!! Everyone jail forever!

Scott&Peter. This could have been such a juicy arc. Scott's last interaction with Peter was the season 4 showdown, but Scott still has hope for Peter—a hope he's committed to even when it causes friction with his best friend. Peter's return and his tentative interest in connecting with his daughter would have been a great basis for exploring what it means for Scott to have this hope, or just an exploration of Scott and Peter in general. Peter is Scott's first supernatural villain and his own supernatural origin story, and Scott forgets him. The show gives us a beautifully devastating scene where Scott goes to help a seriously injured man and, in taking his pain, discovers that this was the man who caused him some of his own worst pain! Scream!

But then… nothing? Scott and Peter barely have interactions, never mind a meaningful dynamic. It could have been so powerful. Such a waste.

Scott&Theo. Some of this was really good! The moment when Scott walks into his house and suddenly sees the kid who murdered him standing in his living room, seemingly have once again convinced Liam to believe him! I loved it! We get a very rare moment of Scott being at the edge of his rope, ready to snap, and we can see Theo's shock. The last time he saw Scott, Scott was angry but also desperate to get away, shaking when he got close to him, staring at him with big sad eyes. But now things have changed! You can see it hit Theo. That's so good, and there are elements of the Sceo arc in this season that I adore.

But after that dynamic return, Scott and Theo split up, and we don't get any of the charged conversations and confrontations that Liam and Theo get—why not? It would have been so good!

What moments we do get prioritize Theo's perspective. In the finale showdown with Douglas, for example, he mocks Scott that a lone wolf never survives. At that point, Theo makes his entrance to declare: "He's not alone. He's got a pack."

This is so significant! It directly recalls the murder, when Theo trapped Scott alone and told him he didn't have a pack. Beyond that, Theo's risking his life in a seemingly impossible fight, just to back up Scott, without even claiming he's part of the pack, and in facing Douglas, he's confronting a demon from his own past.

But that's the point. This moment is mostly about Theo. We barely get Scott's reaction, beyond the shock of Theo's arrival, and then the tone changes with Malia and Peter's arrival. We don't get Scott's perspective on that moment, or Theo at this point, or anything else with them. Blech.

Scott&Melissa. I could go on about how their dynamic was dropped about halfway through season 2, but I'm gonna try to keep it to 6a here so please know I'm exhibiting great restraint! Anyway, they get so little. There's that devastating scene in "Ghosted" when Scott hallucinates that his mother's been murdered and doesn't yet realize it. So haunting, and potentially so resonant to their relationship: does he worry that being a constantly targeted werewolf has doomed her? That he can't protect her? That he's already lost her in some sense? How does it tie in to the fact that she's then taken by the Wild Hunt, and he's seemingly doomed to lose her, that he's lost her already? We barely linger on that moment.

We see him teach her to use a weapon, but the moment's gravity is ignored for the joke of her electrocuting her son. Melissa's arc with Chris is half-played for laughs, even though it represents a significant move on her part to become more involved. Why now? What does it mean for her? For that matter, what does it mean for her to date the man who once treated her son like a rabid dog? Does she even know about that? Does her son have any feelings about their relationship? We don't know. 

Scott&Stiles. Omg, ok, where to begin. This should have been the Sciles season, and its faults had nothing to do with the acting—the love and loss was palpable for Posey and O'Brien, and I think that gives their arc the poignancy people love about this season. They act their hearts out around some really awful writing.

The writing starts off well. It seems like the season is going to address some of the fallout and unresolved communication issues of season 5. Stiles, who's still petrified of losing everyone, is obsessed with being "needed," while Scott, who's been shackled to a nightmare since he was bitten, is desperate to no longer be required to fight. This recalls a lot of the tension of 5x01, which was never really addressed, and it's a great theme for the final semester of senior year.

The two also struggle to articulate how much they mean to each other, which seems like a lingering issue from s5. By the end of 5b, they'd affirmed that they were on the same page, in the same pack, and needed each other, but hadn't articulated their anxieties about losing each other. A season in which they're separated is the perfect way to explore it, and at first, it seems like they're going to. Scott uses his psych class to guess at how Stiles' anxieties are manifesting, as if it's been on his mind. He asks nervously if Stiles wants to split up (to look for clues), and seems relieved when Stiles refuses, as if the question is about something deeper.

Stiles, for his part, answers with meaningful intensity. He's clearly trying to express that he doesn't want to lose Scott, in the same way that his obsession with being "needed" is about not wanting to lose people, and being convinced that a crisis is the only way to hold on to them. Scott, meanwhile, sees crises as what get between him and his connections to people—they're what take people away from him, and him away from his life with them. This is a great theme to explore for Sciles, because the answer to both issues is the fact that their friendship has always been bigger than supernatural crises—older than Scott being bitten, bigger than the Wild Hunt. Scott could assure Stiles that he's never going to lose him—not because Scott needs his help, but because he wants his friendship. He'll never draw away even if it means tearing apart the Wild Hunt. Stiles, for his part, could assure Scott that no matter how many crises there are, how often Scott is forced to be the true alpha, he'll always be Stiles' friend first: "You'll always be human to me." Both significant statements after s5!

At the very least, the season seems like it's going to make these two articulate how much they mean to each other. In one of my favorite moments of the season, Stiles realizes he's going to be taken and tries to talk to Scott. O'Brien's acting is so good here, because you can see that Stiles is beyond trying to explain what the problem is. He just wants to tell Scott something like goodbye, how much Scott means to him—but he can't. There's no way he's saying goodbye, and his love for Scott is too big to articulate.

And Posey's reaction is soooo good. You can see Scott take in that Stiles is clearly struggling with something, and that this struggle is significant in the same way as the one from the previous season. He won't push Stiles to talk right now, and wants Stiles to know he isn't drawing away: "Tell me later." At the same time, he's holding Stiles to actually come talk to him, instead of stewing like he did in s5: tell me later.

But then Stiles is gone! Scream!

And then, once Stiles is gone, Scott struggles with how to articulate how much Stiles means through the hole his absence creates. All he can say is that it feels like he's missing a limb, and when it comes time to remember Stiles in "Memory Found," he gets so overwhelmed with how much Stiles means to him that he almost dies. 

All of this suggests that the payoff for this struggle is them finally articulating what they mean to each other--in the most basic way! They're traumatized eighteen year old guys, no one is expecting speeches. Just something about how their friendship answers some of their most existential worries: "I still got you."

But instead we get:

SCOTT: They still need us. STILES: They'll always need us. And, you know, I... I need you. You know that. SCOTT: I need you, too. I'm gonna miss you. STILES: No, really, I need you, though. Uh... I lost my license in the Hunt, so you have to drive.

Why is Davis so allergic to meaningful expressions of love in the context of characters leaving? So many characters disappear with no goodbyes (Jackson, Isaac, Danny), or only the briefest one (Kira, Derek). O'Brien and Posey do their best with this scene—both of them seem near tears—but the writing's joke-y tone works against them at every turn. It's Stiles' final scene before the finale, and the capstone to Scott's greatest relationship in the season and arguably his greatest in the show, and it could have been so much stronger if Davis weren't an infuriating mix of apathetic and cowardly.

This concludes this episode of Spikeface’s Sundry 6A Snipes! Thank you for letting me rant<3. 

[spectrum-core]

Fuck

Well, I saw this coming from miles away becaude of course the gacha game will throw any semblance of artistic integrity through the window if they can make cheap fanservice, hence why I made the og post in advance, I didn't want to elaborate more on it when it happened because whatever, people were already dicks about me making the initial post anyway lol

But a guy began bugging me about how the comparison made sense, actually, and I felt the need to elaborate with a final point about why I feel the comparison absolutely misses the point of what full stop is and represents and everything that made them special to me.

Ok, so this guy has been analyzing limbus ids for a while and trying to figure out common themes among them, his conclusion for sinclair ids was, simply put, these are people who are either extremely good at what they do but cant fully see it or arent proud of it (blade lineage, cinq), or people who are slow and trailing behind compared to their peers while also having the potential to be absurdly good at their line of work if they were given the proper support (molar office).

According to him, stephan would be the second case, a guy who is very bad at what he does but could be amazing at it with the proper motivation. The issue is that… if you look at stephan and i mean you really look at him instead of forcing him in a haha funny meme fandom archetype or mold him into whatever can fit the power fantasy of the month that'd be a limbus character, he's really not that.

That's not to say stephan lacks any talent at all, his pessimist and cautious personality makes me imagine he is probably a great planner, coming up with escape plans or alternatives if the team gets cornered or overwhelmed in any non color-fixer-chasing-them-with-killing-intent situation, his physical strength is also there, and i think he'd be at least half decent at unarmed one on one combat because of it, and i feel he appreciates this and the people around him do as well, he has talents and they are in plain sight, and he makes full use of them when the situation requires him to.

But the thing is… everything from his dice ranges to his card names to his passive name are very clear in one thing: he's fucking terrible at aiming and firing a gun, the very thing he's supposed to do and excel at if he doesn't want to lose money. Maybe he's nearsighted, maybe he has astigmatism, maybe he pulls the trigger too fast before being sure he's even aiming at a target, maybe his anxiety is so bad he's shaking and sweating constantly and his fine motor skills are shit because of that, maybe even all of these at the same time.

And it's not just stephan who has this going on either, liwei's keypage wouldn't be talking about "this is what people normally think and what i know i'm supposed to want but i simply can't see the point of all of it" (<- this is autism coding if you're delusional like me but i digress) if he was a "proper fixer", tamaki wouldn't be losing her cool regularly every time stephan begins to complain if she was a "proper fixer", everyone here is notoriously bad at their job one way or another due to things that are quite directly part of who they are so there's no "actually stephan would be a shi section 1 fixer if he wore glasses" or "liwei could become a color if he got rid of his gun and started fighting with a sword instead" for any of them, not without them losing who they are in the way as opposed to the character growth that represents sinclair.

For me these are average people, with average talents which can only take them so far, in a world where most people in their line of work has superhuman skills, and to make matters worse they're focusing their strengths in the wrong things, these aren't the people who will wake up one day and awaken whatever specialest boy ever superpower project moon comes up with next time and become the strongest people who ever lived in the city. Even if they decided to drop everything suddenly and start with something else, there's absolutely nothing they'd excel at.

And that's precisely the thing, they won't just drop everything and suddenly do something they are better at, because the sunk cost fallacy is a fucking bitch when you're risking bankrupcy with every job you take, and that's why the full stop office is to me, the tragedy of people who invested too much and worked for too long in the wrong thing and now they don't have the resources, time or evergy to reinvent themselves anymore even if it'd be better for them in the long run.

I wanted to write a cool conclusion or something but i dont have the energy so just take this instead

STEPHCLAIR IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

Alternative title: a very angry (and tired) Full Stop fan's thesis.

ok, so me being the stephan/sinclair comparison's strongest hater is a bit i really like to lean into, but for the sake of keeping things semi-serious i will try to keep the actual essay content as free of me ranting my frustrations as humanly possible (which i mean commitement to the bit aside this will be hard bc it is frustrating to see people calling them both the same character, at best it shows a very surface level understanding of either character and at worst it shows just reducing them to cookie cutter meme fandom archetypes neither character actually fits into, so bear with me if i slip up and make unserious comments from time to time)

so before i start the actual essay let me say this: this essay doesnt even scratch the surface of how much i hate this comparison you guys cant even possibly fucking imagine ive been obssessed and i mean OBSSESSED with the full stop office since 2021 and im glad i wasnt in the limbus prerelease fanbase because if i had to see people comparing my beautiful boy and beloved best friend to a guy we had no info about other than "hes based of the guy from demian" i would have turned into the joker this is not even about saving my own mental health this is about sparing the entire pjm fandom of the monster i would have turned into

spoilers for ruina and limbus, universe terminology heavy and surface level references and interpretations of demian by herman hesse because imma keep it real with you guys the first and only time i read that book i was still in high school and i barely remember shit.

Table of contents:

Stephan - a summary

Sinclair - a summary 2.1. Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919) 2.2. Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

Addressing common arguments

1.- Stephan - a summary

And of course I will start with Stephan, because I love him very much, just like Liwei he's one of my favorite pjm characters (yeah i like him more than your favorite popular character don't ask) so it's not surprising that i have A Lot to say about him, right?

And of course, I do.

As I said in the serrated duo post, a core part of my perception of the Full Stop office depends on the fact that they are poor. Mentions of money are common all across many factions in the game, yes, but the Full Stops are extremely constant about money, how taking a wrong turn means losing more than they can afford, how they can't afford to drop their weapons because they were too expensive, how even getting the permissions to be able to buy and wield these weapons was ridiculously expensive and so on. Of course, Stephan is the one talking about this the most (something I will elaborate on later), but Liwei and Tamaki also make a few ocassional mentions to it in their dialogue and keypages and considering this is a shared business it just makes sense that this is something that affects all of them.

These are just some few of the callbacks to money that Stephan alone does in his dialogue, without focusing in keypage text or what Liwei and Tamaki have to say about it.

And idk man, at least to me the difference between social classes is an important aspect for their characterization, specially because of how constant the concern with money is for Stephan. From this point alone comparing them feels like erasing a core aspect of Stephan's characterization, a lot about Stephan (and the Full Stop office as a whole, let's be real here) starts making more sense once you read the office as lower-middle class (and I'm saying lower middle class because they can afford some place to live and their weapons, but to me these guys are the types who precisely because of their need to keep bullets at all times can't pay for water or electricity all the time and sometimes they simply can't afford food or if they do they can spend a week straight eating nothing but unsalted pasta).

Now, going back to Stephan being the most outward about his complaints with money, he is in general the most outward about all problems the office is facing, to the point in which he doesn't mind inconveniencing everyone else with his rants, being one of the few guests who interrupt Angela's introductory speech and getting into Tamaki's nerves (something he's well aware he's doing, as these two know each other) at least two times through the course of their pre-battle cutscene, even Roland comments after the reception on how he wishes he would always have been as open about his problems as Stephan was.

However, it's worth nothing that he doesn't spend the entire cutscene crying about his miseries, and he only starts losing hope at three key moments: when they can't kill Eileen inmediately (making them waste more bullets than needed), when Argalia shows up (forcing them to retreat and making them fail their mission, meaning they won't get paid for this after they already lost a ton of money, as well as turning the situation into something much more dangerous than what they had signed up for) and once they enter the Library (an Urban Plague grade threat they have little to no information about, when him and Tamaki are almost out of bullets so Liwei is essentially the only fixer with some chance of putting up a fight and, you know, making it out alive).

Now, while it's true that Stephan is someone who dislikes danger, he isn't someone who isn't used to seeing gruesome events, his instinctive reaction to seeing a guy getting his head put into a meat grinder was cracking jokes and calling the concept of thought gears "a load of horseshit", which is something that falls in line with him being a somewhat experienced Fixer (sure, grade 5 isn't amazing but we can assume it's still either in the higher side of average or barely above average, and for someone specialized in firearms, which are far from the best weapon in the city, getting that high means he must have some experience and skill, right? more so considering he's been at this for 5 years at most) who has seen a fair share of horrid shit and can be unfazed by (most of) it as long as his own safety isn't on the line.

Another point is... he dislikes danger and is always wary about money and expenses, to the point in which he enjoys checking his bank account (or at least he believes so, if we go for the theory of the artbook profiles being more a mix of what the characters perceive themseves as/would describe themselves as to others, which is a theory i go by, I see him as someone who's convinced he does that for fun instead as out of desperation), but this seems to be more a generalized feeling of impending doom at everything rather than something that can be traced back to a particular traumatic event (anything can be dangerous, anything can cost him money), dude's from the backstreets after all, he's seen shit and he's used to assuming the worst. How I see Stephan, he's a guy who already expects bad things to happen but once things go wrong he starts freaking out about how this time They're Screwed For Real, but he never really tricks himself into believing "maybe things will turn out just fine this time?" or who thinks "well, we've done this before, surely we can handle it again."

This is not very related to Stephan as a character in terms of personality but I think it's still an important point to make as it is particularly related to body mods, his physical condition and his body shape.

So we can easily say that Stephan is a strong dude, at least if compared to real world standards without the fancy and insane body mods we see people in the city have access to. He carries that huge rifle around with his bare hands, something that Tamaki doesn't do and that not even Stephan himself in earlier iterations of his dessign did, and his main talent (which based of my theories is something that can be assumed as "something he's proud enough of to consider it the thing he does best") is physical labor.

Pictured, Tamaki's talksprite, carrying a rifle almost as long as she is tall with a strap supporting the weight on her shoulders, like a normal person.

Also pictured, an earlier iteration of Stephan's dessign, carrying the same rifle his current version does, but also holding it with the help of a similar strap supporting the weight on his shoulders.

And finally, Stephan's current dessign, holding that shit with his bare fucking hands in an exhibition of his brute animal strength, what the fuck is wrong with this man (affectionate)

And Stephan's artbook profile, the important part here is his speciality being physical labor, not only he's strong but he aknowledges this.

However, I made a point about the Full Stop office being poor, right? Even Roland says that "giving a whole office augmentation procedures is cheaper than keeping a decent supply of bullets in stock" (not the exact phrasing).

At least personally, I see this as Roland essentially saying "it would be cheaper (and more efficient) to get body mods for everyone in the office and buy another (cheaper) type of weaponry instead", but as things stand, the Full Stops can afford to either buy more ammunition and maintain their weapons, OR to get body mods, and since their whole deal is firearms... well, they can't really Stop investing in them, meaning they have no body mods At All and they got their grades purely out of their own physical strength.

Similarly, Stephan makes a similar point about how body augmentations are required for people to be able to run while carrying their weapons around (specifically talking about the rifles he and Tamaki use).

And... you know, the whole point is that they couldn't run carrying their weapons because they were too heavy, Argalia mocked them for that, Liwei urged them to drop their weapons, something they refused to do because of the prices.

Lastly on this point, while it's true that Ruina talksprites have a very bad case of Long Anime Legs (to the point in which how Roland's legs take about 2/3 of his height is a common joke), if we focus only on his head and torso, Stephan looks pretty Wide, and not only because he's wearing thick, fluffy and multilayered clothing, as other characters wearing similar clothing styles still look thinner than him.

This is all to say: I don't think this guy is a twink, or thin at all. He's a prime example of the strongman build to me and this is yet another hill I'm willing to die on watch project moon turn him into a beanpole once he inevitably shows up in limbus and me turning into the first real world distortion as a consequence.

Finally, Stephan is very notoriously the most informal member of the office, not only being the only one who doesn't wear any sort of formal clothing fully prioritizing comfort and practicality over looks but also completely disregarding formalities with his attitude at work (again, he interrupts Angela's introductory monologue, and again, his first two lines when being introduced are him cracking jokes), being the only member of the office to swear on screen and using several informal expressions and metaphors through both the reception dialogue and his keypage story.

And for good measure, he's a compilation of Stephan being the creature he is.

The literal introduction of the characters, also known as the moment in which Stephan became one of my favorite characters because he's Just Like Me Fr

Very normal behavior for someone who hates blood and violence and isn't used to seeing it. This man is more than capable (and willing, assuming money is involved) to murder kill.

Which, I mean, this attitude is very different from what we see from Sinclair.

2.- Sinclair, a summary

In retrospect I probably should have made this one first because I'm gonna be honest with you, Sinclair is one of the sinners I care about the least (I still like him and think he's pretty cool mind you I just don't vibe too much with most of the tropes making up the character) so what I have to say about him is less me grasping for straws and subtext because I don't care enough about him to be bothered with a super serious and in depth analysis like I did with Stephan and more things we can explicitly see about him in game and things that happen in the novel Demian.

And if I can have a small parenthesis here, people saying that one of my favorite pjm guys Ever is in any way similar to a guy who despite being pretty cool is just Not the type of character I fully vibe with... really, it gets annoying fast. Anyway back to the serious analysis now.

2.1- Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919)

To be able to understand Sinclair as he is depicted in Limbus Company, it is important to first be familiar with the source material of the original iteration of the character, that's it we're doing your high school homework by compiling several literary analysis of a symbolic psychological early 20th century autobiographical novel i hope you guys signed up for this (and if you didn't, though luck! i will do this anyway, I love literary analysis).

In the novel, young Emil finds himself torn between the worlds of light (which can be equated to the Garden of Eden, but it's more tangible meaning for our protagonist is his childhood home and family, a serene and well structure/organized space where he can be innocent, untainted by the evils of the outside world) and darkness (basically all the scary shit that goes on outside, where people do evil things for the sake of it), he finds himself tempted by the violence of the outside world, particularly through the actions of his classmate Franz Kromer, which eventually leads him to consider that due to being exposed to this tainted world of evil he no longer can return to the world of good and innocence.

Here, the character of Demian acts as a guide, someone who helps Sinclair to trascend this binary perception of good vs evil and to see himself as someone worthy of happiness because him witnessing the world of evil didn't taint him as a person but rather merely showed him another face of the world, Demian here mentions the Mark of Cain as a symbol of mental strenght and freedom, considering that bearers of this mark are capable of making their own choices and should be able to go beyond their assigned roles, being able to embody aspects of both worlds. This is to say that Demian's view is less focused on good vs evil, instead taking a more order vs chaos approach (without giving an explicit moral character to either).

In the book, the symbol of a bird breaking out of the egg is frequently used to represent Emil's personal growth, the egg represents safety and innocence, but a bird must eventually leave the egg or it will die, and getting out of the egg is a process than can be seen as violent, as a bird must fight to get out of the egg, and getting out of the egg represents birth but also an irreversible change, it can be seen as breaking out of the world of light and getting permanently in the world of darkness since a broken shell can't be fixed, but it can also mean achieving the enlightment and personal balance to not feel permanently bound to a condition, place or state of being and therefore growing as a person by learning to see himself as a whole human instead of supressing his "evil side" by only forcing the "good side" to surface.

Max Demian is here to show this second meaning of growth/self improvement (while also explaining that Sinclair is permamently growing and must always keep this balance between all the parts conforming the whole being that is himself rather that trying to make parts of himself antagonize each other). This idea of personal growth being one of the core themes of the book.

2.2- Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

With Sinclair's source media analyzed (at a very surface level, mind you), we now can start talking about the depiction of Sinclair in Limbus Company, how it parallels the book, why the book symbolism is important for this instance of Sinclair and so on.

When we are first introduced to Sinclair in the game he's clearly nervous, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do as he hasn't worked for a similar company before and he isn't used to the gruesome sight of the bus eating people, this does fit inmediately in the motif of a naive person with limited experience about the world (well, to be fair to him most people won't be seeing man-eating buses at a regular basis, but the average backstreets dweller would be familiar with equally violent situations).

With this said, despite Sinclair's obviously nervous behavior... he isn't really a pessimist like Stephan was, in fact, almost every chapter (counting cantos, intervallos and the short mini chapters such as the Dante's notes update episode) have at least one key moment with him trying to rationalize horrible stuff as something much less violent, or simply going "but I thought this thing didn't work like this..." when confronted with the more horrible realities in the city. He thought the G corp veterans were really going to let them pass without a fight, he thought the people being controlled by headhens were just actors wearing mascot costumes, he thought mermaids were the beautiful half-woman half-fish creatures he heard about in fairy tales, and there's more examples but I don't really feel like looking for The Entire Fucking Plot Because This Guy Is An Actual Protagonist Instead Of A Background Guy Like Stephan Was to make my point clearer than it already is. And it's only when he realizes that the real world doesn't fit his expectations that he panics.

Well, there is one exception to this pattern: his own canto. Here, he panics inmediately as soon as K corp's nest is mentioned and spends the first half of the chapter pleading to turn back while saying that they are going to get killed. So what is different here with the rest of the plot?

Obviously, the fact that is related to his very own very personal very specific trauma. That is to say, unlike Stephan who is wary of anything that can put him on danger or cost him more money than it should, Sinclair has a very specific traumatic event that makes him act Like That (sure, he gets scared and nervous outside that, but these are more normal "I'm unfamiliar with this and I don't fully know how to react, this is normal behavior in a human being" reactions than outright "I am Actually Terrified due to being reminded of an actual traumatic event, this reaction is a textbook definition of post-traumatic stress disorder").

HOWEVER, Sinclair being someone who's deeply traumatized and kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to violence and unfamiliar situations... it doesn't mean that he's incompetent or a bad fighter. Almost all of his identities are terrifyingly good fighters (at least in their lore), Los Mariachis fear jefe Sinclair, Cinq director Sinclair is someone most association members are terrified to duel even during training, Blade Lineage Sinclair is considered a talented killer (it's also worth noting that save maybe for the mariachi one, in none of these mirror worlds Sinclair is precisely happy of being recognized as "the guy who's very scary when he fights people", unlike Stephan who I don't think he particularly likes killing but has a more "as long as I get paid..." mentality about it), the only "not very good at this" Sinclair id I can think of is the molar boatworks id where he's more a mechanic than a fighter so he fears he's lagging behind in that aspect. Hell, even the Canon Timeline so to speak (which is to say: his base identity) has him carrying that huge halberd, going on a frenzy attacking some already mutilated inquisitor's corpse, piercing through Guido's armor and dealing a fatal blow that finally killed him for real. To compare, Stephan is good at physical work, but we don't know about his close combat capacities other than the fact that he dislikes it, for Sinclair however we know he's terrifyingly good at physical combat.

Now, I've seen a lot of people call Sinclair a twink and while it's one of these words that nobody agrees on what it means, let's give it the benefit of doubt and say "alright, for the duration of this analysis let's settle on a twink being a young looking (regardless of actual age), thin man with almost no facial/body hair".

Since Sinclair is a rich guy (not just Any Rich Guy though, we're talking of someone whose family had ties to a Wing, probably not some elite guy like Daniel or Hong Lu, but not a self perceived "mediocre" nest dweller like Samjo either), and pressumably not very experienced in combat in most mirror worlds (we know he has no prior experience in the base one where he joined Limbus, at least), let's say that he has enough body mods for him to be much stronger than he looks like despite being thin, he does look thin and young and much to my dissapointment he also has no facial hair, so yeah, under this very broad definition of the term he is a twink.

However if you start adding personality archetypes to the definition he stops being one almost inmediately, as we've been shown time after time that his "submissive" attitude is mostly a result of him not knowing too well how to impose himself and just going along with what the rest say or do, but he's starting to grow tired of that ever since Hell's Chicken (even if he clearly still isn't great at that), as it should be more than obvious for anyone who even just googled "demian herman hesse literary analysis", Sinclair is undergoing a lot of changes even now, and the game is doing a good job at portraying that.

Honestly I also think he'd be hotter with a sleeper build but really, I don't care enough about him to argue about that.

And for the last point, precisely due to his upbringing as a rich guy AND his traumatic experience with Kromer, Sinclair is not only a very polite and mild mannered guy (again, unlike resident creature Stephan), but also he tries to take as little space as possible, both literally and metaphorically, as Dante notices near the end of canto 3 when they finally comment on how Sinclair never talks about his own problems until it's too late because he doesn't want to bother the others as they probably have it worse (again, unlike Stephan "i don't mind loweing team morale and making everyone in the room uncomfortable as long as i get to vent" Full Stop office).

3.- Adressing common arguments

Alright, now that I talked about each character, let's see some of the most common arguments I've seen people use to compare them.

"They look the same!" No, they don't. The only thing they have in common is being blonde but even their hairstyles are different with Sinclair having a simple bowl-ish cut with slightly wavy hair and Stephan having curlier hair (not to mention the whole point I made about body types because I'm the sort of lunatic who cares about that stuff). I won't even bother with this argument.

"They have the same personalities!" Again, they don't. Stephan is very cynical with a lot of his attitude being clearly derivated from him coming from a poor background and having stayed there his whole life, he also doesn't care about his cynism getting in the way and bothering everyone else. On the other hand, Sinclair is someone who could almost be described as naive due to having lived a sheltered childhood and only having his experiences with Kromer and his time at Limbus as moments of realizing that the rest of the world is Not Like His Childhood House, still believing that the world is a binary of good vs evil and expecting things to turn out fine or be much better than they actually are, just to be hit with the reality of the city Not being a nice place where people are nice and polite and not trying to kill him, this is not to say he doesn't have his own issues but even Dante notices during his Canto that Sinclair makes a point to avoid bothering everyone else with his personal problems, keeping them to himself even if that makes things worse on the long run.

"Both are opposed and harmed by a lunatic!" This is an argument I've seen a lot and is incredibly filmsy at best, half of the city's population are lunatics and the other half are people who got opposed by them some way or another. Will you say that Ishmael and the rest of the Pequod crew can be compared to the Full Stop office (or really, even mention the other Full Stop fixers instead of just focusing on Stephan because he happens to be blonde and can be compared to Sinclair) because of their situations with Ahab? Or the W Corp crew who got their train targetted by Jae-heon and Elena (or, you know, the train passengers who were turned into Love townspeople or puppets)? What about the Vermillion Cross who got killed by the Reverb Ensemble? Or the Cane office fixers? or the Zwei association section 6 who got beaten to death by Gyeong-mi just because he felt like doing so? Or the Liu association section 1 who had to deal with Argalia taking Philip away? Or the Kurokumo clan members when they were attacked by Tanya? You aren't comparing them to either Stephan or Sinclair, right? Not to mention that in her weird and fucked up perception of things, Kromer was less opposed to Sinclair as she was trying to lead him to join her and her cause, even the last things she says before getting killed are her calling him to follow her.

"Both are compared to birds!" Oh, right, because I forgot that a very directed symbolic comparison to a baby bird breaking out of it's shell as a symbol of rebirth, learning about the nuances of the world and self improvement/liberation that is consistently used in the source material Sinclair comes from is exactly the same as one (1) throwaway line the big bad guy uses to mock not only Stephan but the whole Full Stop gang, right. And if you want to say "but Tamaki compares him to a bird once too", yeah she calls him a parrot because he keeps repeating the same complaints over and over, it's still not the same as a consistent metaphor.

"Both are sad blonde twinks! They're essentially the same guy." Sad? Yeah, everyone in the city is sad but their ways to be sad are polar opposites, and neither of them is the pure cinnamon roll uwu crybaby archetype people tend to lump both into, Stephan was merely having a bad day and people decided to make that his whole personality (when honestly we get more insight on his actual personality before Argalia shows up, when he's making sarcastic remarks and getting impatient because they weren't starting killing people fast enough) but he's still perfectly capable (and willing) to murder people, and Sinclair is just... someone who lacks experience about the real world and how it works and has a tendency to get nervous because of this, but he can adapt quickly to situations once he understands them. Blonde? Yeah, but I guess if that's a point to draw a comparison then we should also compare them to Don Quixote, the Tiphereths, Lenny, Yun, Lulu, Olga, every single npc, librarian, and agent who comes with blonde hair from the generator... Twinks? Stephan absolutely isn't one, Sinclair depends on how you define twink as nobody seems to get to an agreement with that, if you define it as merely "young looking thin man with almost no visible body hair" then yeah he is one, but if you go for any more specific definition than that he stops fitting into the definition almost instantly.

In conclusion: if I see anyone else comparing them I'll start blocking people liberally bc I'm sick of seeing that shit (I do that already tbh but just so you know), now scram

[brambletakato]

Do you have the 3d model of Tiny Descole from that Azran Legacy puzzle where he needs to destroy the statues that shoot lasers out of their eyes?

IVE BEEN TRYING TO FIND IT FOR YEARS... FOR YEARS TUMBLR USER EVIL CITY... BUT ALAS........ BUT ALAS...............

[drenched-in-sunlight]

one thing i find interesting is that Rellana's sword description said the red one is engraved with "golden flame", it's the same flame seen on Fire Knights' weapon and Messmer's spear. so, flame with gold tinge.

only the flame in Messmer's Orb has black tendrils of the Dark / Abyss, and it's the Orb description that specifically states he hates his fire. other items like his Kindling and Embers also have very distinctive dark outlines (the Kindling description confirms the Abyssal Serpent was eating away at the fire).

so we can safely assume Messmer's fire, when given to others, carries over the golden grace Marika blessed him with, whereas when it's Messmer himself wielding it, or if it's a catalyst that "can't find purchase" in other hosts like Fire Coil / Fire Serpent spell, it will always have the additional dark tendrils, since only Messmer carries the Abyssal Serpent. such a neat design choice and a very consistent way to showcase that.

and it kinda makes me emotional because Marika is vulnerable to fire, yet her blessing to her son is so strong that her gold bleeds into his fire, & it's something that carries over when he shared it to those under his command. like how full of warmth and love that blessing must be? man.

Ymir i get it. i get you. you covet the strength of a mother so much cuz that strength is truly incomparable. welcome back BIoodborne's "Let the pungence of Kos cling, like a mother's devotion...Mercy for the poor, wizened child."

[fromtheseventhhell]

I also find it funny that fandom will only accept Lyanna being her non-conforming, wild self in the context of saying that Arya isn't meant to be pretty; Any other day we get back-to-back posts about how Lyanna is actually super traditionally feminine cause she sniffled at a song once, so she's actually more like Sansa. Instead of constantly speaking on Arya and Lyanna, how about you guys reflect on why your standards of beauty for women are attached to how well they perform feminity within the patriarchy?

[kneworder]

“You know, Damian’s half convinced you let it happen.”  Tim scoffs. “Sounds like him.”  “Not like that. He’s different now, he wouldn’t say that.”  “What the hell else am I supposed to think?”  “You confronted Azrael alone, in civvies, after he’d already beaten you up once just for getting in his way. Is it that much of a stretch for Damian to think you might have had a death wish?”  “I didn’t have a death wish.” Steph gives him a long look. "Sure."

missed posting my annual november reverse robins timsteph angst so to make up for it here's an even angstier than usual painting from this AU <3 more coming soon hopefully!!

[pangyham]

been thinking about the liyue gang and how id draw their physical builds so here are some thoughts i had for xy cy and gm in particular

- xingqiu, unsurprisingly, would be quite lanky. i like to think he has broad-ish shoulders, like a thin athlete's build? hes a long boy to me haha, long face, neck, limbs, fingers etc, so naturally hes stands (comparatively) tall at 5'6" or 5'7"

i like to think hes most physically attractive one and has that handsome princely and boyish charm to him because it adds a lot to his fuckass duality LOL

- chongyun is a lot like xiao imo! short stature but with muscular arms. he seems nimble and flexible because of his normal attack animations (which bears a lot of similarities to xiao's actually! this + the fact that chongyun's normal attacks create gusts of wind further reinforces my hc that xiao trains him). sometimes i watch high energy choreography vids on youtube and some dancers look incredibly light on their feet, almost like their body is inherently bouncy? and i imagine chongyun to have that agility to him. chongyun has a delicate face and aura and i let that bleed into my hcs for his fighting style and physical capabilities hahaha. hes kind of like a cat who's deceptively strong. as for height.. just a few inches taller than xiao, so perceptibly short at 5'4"

- ga ming my new beloved. pretty much similar to chongyun but more muscular and stronger just because he wields his claymore with ease. theres a noticeable weight different between cy and his claymore the way he lugs it up after he swings (or even other claymore users like razor who, on his last hit, bounces from impact). meanwhile ga ming literally slams his to the ground LOL. i love his movements though hes very swift and expressive and radiant.. if cy has delicate movements then ga ming's is fierce and (charmingly!) assertive

ga ming is wonderfully charismatic though, i know hes not well known in liyue harbor yet, but he seems like the type to gain a reputation from his friendliness. how could no one adore him hahaha. 5'5" for height! just between xy and xq

[mad-hunts]

have i ever talked about how barton is genuinely jealous of people who seem happy because he feels so hollow a majority of the time that even when he's 'happy,' he's not really happy? because i just 😭 yeah...

[cubtales]

mydei...

[sevenseasaurus]

so do the rest of you guys just simplify your dreams when explaining them to people or do I just remember a significantly weirder degree of depth than the average bear

[katatonicimpression]

Like, I get that I talk about this every few months with a harsher take on it every time I come back to it

But that thing with the katana in Marauders was so fucking racist

[the-trails-we-blaze]

I finally finished the latest patch, and WOWIE!!! (thoughts will go into tags)

[hellonoblesky]

Repeating to myself over and over again that there is a multi-year time gap between rebels finale and Ashoka and Filoni movie version of HTTE so the Grysk conflict is probably concluded but by fucking god am I about to go rabid thinking about unresolved plots that have HUGE sway on a character because Thrawn has stuff to do and I love the htte triology but what is he doing there rn

[deglutitionborborygmus]

every day i grow closer and closer to getting a tattoo....