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clare-875 · 3 months ago

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Until The End (Levi x Reader)- Chapter 11

[Loss]

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A/N: Posted on Wattpad (@CLARE_875) but also decided to post here :)

Summary:

"You can push me away, but I will still fight by you, and I will still follow you… until the end."

The ever-so-stoic Levi Ackerman has only ever known the terrors that living in a cruel world could bring. This all changed one fateful day when he encountered [y/n]; a girl renowned for her looks and abnormal speed. As they escape the confines of the Underground together, they soon discover that freedom doesn't come easy in a world full of Titans. As they rise through the ranks, [y/n] becomes known as "Humanity's Angel", a beacon of hope to humanity as she melts the walls Levi had built around his heart. However, she has her secrets too, and a dark past that might just threaten to pull them apart.

The storyline and characters of Attack on Titan do NOT belong to me, but all to Hajime Isayama; however, I do own this story, and all that occurs disparate to that storyline.

[Series Masterlist] [Chapter Ten] <--> [Chapter Twelve]

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Warnings: Blood, Grief, Canonical Violence, Descriptions of Injuries

Levi unsheathes his sword, eyes glinting and ready to attack while you stand beside him, your blades already drawn. "Wait, Levi," Erwin says quickly, noticing his darkening expression. "An eye for an eye." Erwin then raises his hand over his head, "Waves 2 and 3 fire! Fire the spare rounds!" His shout echoes across the trees as more wires spring quickly forward, further impaling the Female Titan. This continued for several minutes as you stared unflinchingly at the sight in front of you. Despite the way the Titan twitched and squirmed as hundreds of wires rendered it useless, you couldn't help but frown.

How many people had died because of this plan to capture one Titan? How much distress and loss had we caused just by keeping all of those soldiers in the dark; my squad in the dark? Just because we suspected a spy had entered within the walls five years ago, the day Wall Maria first fell? You shake your head softly. Erwin wasn't wrong. No one knows how things will turn out. And even so, you make a choice. He made a choice. The choice to brief Levi, yourself and all those who were with him on the day Wall Maria fell and leave the others to figure out "what they thought the enemy was." To see if they were the enemy themselves. People may not know it yet, but there was a reason why the man next to you was entrusted with humanity's hope: the Survey Corps. There was a reason why Levi trusted him; why you trusted him. Someone willing to sacrifice their humanity, in order to defeat monsters. That was Erwin Smith.

"Fire!" again, Erwin's voice reaches the ears of the Scouts as you see Hange release more wires, piercing the Titan even more. Levi looks at you as you nod, the both of us jumping off the branch of the tree where we stood, maneuver gear bursting under pressure. You coordinate with Levi's movements as we both attach to a tree on either side of us. Using the burst of energy, you usually get with your speed; you start to twist down to the Titan's nape, which was covered by its hands protectively. Lurching downwards, you spin with Levi, using the momentum to deliver an ear-splitting blow at the same time. A second passes before you hear the sharp ring of metal. Looking up, you see your blades, along with Levi's, had been shattered as a crystal-like substance formed over the Titan's hands, making it impenetrable.

Using our gear, we attached back onto a branch near where Erwin stood and landed next to him. You glance at your broken blades, giving Erwin a shake of your head, to which he slightly sighs under his breath. Seemingly deep in thought, he suddenly raises a hand, a Scout promptly appearing at his side. "Prepare the explosives." You see the blue in his eyes shine dangerously. "Blow off its hands." The Scout looks at him, "Y-yes, sir. But there's a chance the amount we carry has enough power to also blow up what's inside." Erwin nods, "Then set them to amputate the wrists," he then moves forward, putting a hand on the shoulder of the soldier as he walks past. "Set them all off at once, at my signal." The soldier stands tall, "Roger!"

You look at Levi as we nod, approaching the Female Titan once again. You sit on a tree nearby whilst Levi stands on the Titan's head. "Hey. Why don't you just come out? We don't have time to waste." Levi's tone is bored as you watch him mock the Titan from above. "So... What do you think will happen to you now? Do you believe you can escape?" You tense, seeing Levi's face darken beyond recognition, pupils barely noticeable as he stares down at the Titan under his feet. "I wish you'd consider all the trouble we're going through... As I recall, you killed my troops in various ways. Did you find that fun?" You feel your own rage seep into your thoughts as you look at the Titan. "Right now, I'm having fun." Your grip tightens around your new blades as you continue to observe Levi's taunts, holding back silently. "Well, so am I right? I think you can understand me." Levi pauses, staring as deadly as ever, matching the darkened look on your face.

"That's right... I wanted to ask you something... Is it okay if we cut off your hands and legs? They'll grow back... right? I'm talking about your limbs, not the Titan's." Levi adjusts the grip on one of his swords, "We need you alive, after all..." A second of silence passes before the Titan starts to move. You jump up on your feet in surprise, "Levi!" You call out before the Titan lets out a deafening wail. It cried out again and again, shouts mingling with its voice, echoing across spaces and sending wave after wave of shocks that shook the Earth. You clench your hands over your ears, trying to protect your eardrums as it continues to scream. Dust rose as you saw soldiers let out their own cries of pain at the screeching noise the Titan let out before, finally, their shouts settled. You slowly put your hands from your ears to your side as you looked down, still seeing Levi on top of the Titan.

"Well, that was a surprise." You hear him mutter, though you're shocked the shouts didn't burst his eardrums. "Erwin, it stinks." You turned to see that it was Miche who spoke. That's not good; Miche's sense of smell never lies. "Which Direction?" You hear Erwin ask urgently. "Multiple sources, from all directions at once." You freeze, eyes widening along with Erwin at Miche's darkened face. "Ready the explosives!" Erwin shouts but is quickly interrupted by Miche again, "The first wave will come from the East. They're almost here." Soon enough, you hear the trampling sound of Titan's footprints approaching the area. "Cart guard team, intercept!" Erwin yells, but as you see several Scouts take off to get rid of the Titans, they get ignored. The Titans merely continue, barely paying any mind to the Scouts as they make a beeline for the Female Titan.

"Oi, you just did something, didn't you, bitch?" You hear Levi utter as he kicks the Female Titan from under him. "Levi! Three Titans, incoming," You yell out before Levi swiftly turns his head and takes off, killing the three. You join him, as more and more Titans approach the female Titan, killing two swiftly with your speed. "Titans from all directions!" You hear a Scout shout as you go for another kill. "All men engage. Defend the Female Titan, even if it costs your lives!" More soldiers join the fray, causing a bloodbath, as Titans are flung and killed over and over again. You continue with your movements, the Titans so adamant about getting to the Female Titan. Flinging yourself through the air, you twist, taking down three in a row. You continue, killing Titans and saving Scouts. Several minutes pass as you lose track of the number you have killed, but it is no use. No matter how quickly you turn, no matter if you take out five or ten in a row, more Titans simply keep coming, tearing away at the Female Titan.

You breathe harshly before taking out another Titan, too quick for the human eye to see before the shout of Erwin reaches the sky. "Soldiers, retreat! Back into formation!" You freeze at his words, landing on a branch of a tree and seeing Levi do the same. "Return to Karaness." You feel your heart drop to the floor as you sheathe your sword, hands trembling. After all that, we still lost. "We've been had." Your eyes flicker to Erwin, who looks at the sight of Titans on Titans, tearing at the Female Titan. "Just look at you," Levi says, staring at the blond-haired man next to him. "Don't tell me..." Erwin interrupts him, "The enemy was willing to sacrifice everything. I didn't expect the enemy to destroy itself along with the evidence by making the Titans devour itself."

You look at the sight in front of you, voice slightly shaking as you mutter, "All that talk at the court-martial, and this is what happens. If we return empty-handed, who knows what will happen to Eren or us." Erwin remains unmoving. "We can think about that after we return. Our priority now is getting home without additional casualties. For now..." Erwin replies stiffly while you look to Levi, "We need to call the squad." He nods towards me, eyes travelling to your hands that shake under your rage and defeat. "Wait, Levi, [y/n]," Erwin calls us, stopping us in our tracks, "Refill your gas and blades." We both look up, "There isn't time. I think we have plenty," Levi says, slowly looking at Erwin. "Why?" Erwin looks at the both of us, a grim expression on his face. "That's an order. Follow it." You and Levi exchange a glance before he looks to the Commander again, "Roger, Erwin. I trust your decision." You nod along as we take off, wondering why you have a sinking feeling in your chest.

.....

You and Levi quickly get the supplies you need, but for some reason, the worry you feel in your gut projects through your body in waves. You remember back to the sight that was in front of you. Titans tearing away at the Female Titan, steam bellowing from its corpse. But you also remember Eren in that state, how, though weakened, he was able to move once outside of the Titan. If the person inside the Female Titan was more experienced, is it possible that- No. You hastily get the new blades and fill up on gas, feeling Levi's eyes on you and your sharp movements. "Oi, [y/n]?" he looks at you questioningly as you look up at his concerned stare. "Levi," you say, forcing a smile, before looking down and continuing to change your gas tanks. But he quickly takes it from your grasp after seeing you struggle with it, changing it for you before quickly doing his own. He meets your eyes before getting ready to take off. "You're worried, right?" Your eyes widen as he glances your way. "Tch, let's go then." You nod, forcing yourself to settle as we push off with the maneuver gear.

We attached from one branch to the next, going in the direction where our squad should be. You slightly lead the way in haste, Levi following close behind you. We continued our descent through the forest in silence, but your heart jolted when a sudden noise echoed throughout the forest. It was a sound of a monster; an echoing growl, shaking the trees and the ground below us. You turn to Levi, whose eyes spark with shock. It can't be, can it? We exchange a glance before coming to a silent agreement to follow the direction of the noise. The yells continued to reverberate, echoing across space, but then you felt your heart drop beneath you.

Gunther?

The man you had just seen nodding up at you, the man you had laughed with just last night, hung from the trees unmoving. His maneuver gear was still wrapped on a branch as his deadweight slowly moved with the wind, his neck in an awkward position. Your body tenses, emotions threatening to consume you. You feel the pounding in your chest as you force yourself forward despite the choking feeling building in your throat. Dead silence reaches your ears as tension consumes you and Levi as you move faster through the trees. The quiet consumes your thoughts, leaving an unsettling wave of adrenaline coursing through your body. Despite the distant growls, everything was quiet, too quiet. You take in a sharp intake of breath. Surely, they can't all be-

Your eyes fall to the floor, your heart stuttering further. The green grass below was now enveloped by a pool of red, mingling with blond hair. Eld. A man so certain and composed stared back at you, nothing left from the waist down. Blood seeped slowly from the man that we respected, the man who had been our comrade and your friend. Darkness enveloped your emotions as you pushed yourself onwards, ignoring the feeling in your mind that just made you want to fall by his side and stop. For everything to stop, just for a moment. Your eyes flick nearby. Oluo. The man you had bickered with, the man an endless source to our laughter, a man revered despite himself of strength and skill lay on his side. Blood seeping from his mouth and nose, eyes blankly looking to the grass. Your heart thumps loudly in your chest, threatening to give way. Grief struggles to make itself known through endless waves of shock. But then your eyes go to the final member of your squad, and you feel the remains of your heart shatter.

Petra. You slow down as you attach to the tree above her, her body leaning heavily against it. Your mind breaks at the sight of her once glinting eyes, full of warmth, now dull as they stare back at you. Blood trailed down her face as she looked upwards, her face empty of the usual joy and teasing you would always see when you called out to her... when she used to call out to you. "Petra," you whisper, hands shaking as you look down at her. This can't be happening right now. No, no, no. You take in a sharp breath, unable to wake up from another nightmare. I was too late... again. You hear the sound of Levi descending behind you, but you can't seem to face him; you can't look at him. Your mind swam with grief and regret. You feel his tight grasp on your shoulder, knowing he had also felt the pain of losing his squad as you look forward to where the growls of a monster still echo. You take in a shaky breath. You know what Levi is trying to convey despite the silence. So, you take off, forcing resentment and despair to pull back down your throat, Levi following next to you, ready to face the Female Titan once again.

.....

You look up just in time, as your eyes widen. The Female Titan had leant down to Eren's Titan, and just when the brief presence of Eren popped out from within, the Female chopped down and ate him whole. The growls of monsters are now silent, replaced by the screams of Mikasa as she chases the Female Titan with vigour and wrath as you and Levi try to catch up to where she fought. Mikasa now had a darkened glare, eyes full of hatred and rage as she looked at the Titan from where she was hung on a tree. Levi reacts quickly, as he grabs at her before she can push off to attack the Titan once again. "W-wait! What are you-?!"

You follow him when he has Mikasa in his grasp. "Fall back now," Levi states, his eyes sharpening at the girl who seems outraged by his disturbance. You see the resentment seep from her eyes, the resentment you knew Levi also held, the resentment you held. But now was a time of sharp and steady decisions, unless we wanted to risk more casualties. We had more experience; we knew how to handle situations shrouded with grief. Mikasa remains surprisingly silent as she is let go from Levi's grasp, following the two of us as we look in the direction of the Female Titan running away.

"Keep this distance for now. It may be tired," You mutter lowly, eyes faced forward. "It does not appear to be going very fast." The two follow closely. Levi then looks to Mikasa, "He seems to have been bit right out of the neck. Is Eren dead?" You turn to see Mikasa's face grim and enveloped by terror. "He's alive." Mikasa looks to the Female Titan, "The target appears to be intelligent, and its goal seems to be capturing Eren. If it wanted him dead, it would've crushed him. The target is fighting to escape after going through the trouble of putting him in his mouth." Levi's face darkens, "Its goal may have been to eat Eren. If that's the case, he's in its stomach. It's more reasonable to assume that he's dead."

"He's alive!" Mikasa's determined eyes continue to stay sharp despite Levi's words. "I hope you're right," You mutter as her eyes look to the both of us. "If you'd only protected Eren, this wouldn't have happened!" Levi then turns back, facing Mikasa as we still whip through the trees, brief recognition flashing through his eyes, "I see... You're the one from back then. Eren's close friend?" Despite everything, you can't help but sigh. Is he really just realising this now?

Mikasa's eyes widen briefly as he continues, "We'll limit ourselves to a single goal. First, give up on killing the Female Titan." Mikasa looked outraged, "It killed many of our comrades!" You feel yourself tense, eyes looking darkly ahead. Petra, Oluo, Eld, Gunther. "As long as it can harden its skin, we can't kill it. Do as we say," You speak up, your voice firm despite your contradicting heart. "We'll pin our hopes on Eren still being alive and rescue him before it leaves the forest." Levi agrees, "[y/n] and I will tear away at it," he then looks to Mikasa, "you, distract it."

We take off, Mikasa and you making your way in front of the Female Titan as Levi hangs above. You see the Titan's eyes flicker between us and Levi before halting and going to punch Levi. He turns, spinning against the arm that reached over to him, blades burying themselves into the eyes of the Titan as blood seeped through the air. You join in, using your speed to twist and cut across the Titan's body so quickly it has no time to react; You and Levi coordinate our movements, too fast for Mikasa's wide eyes to follow as the Titan finally falls to the floor from the damage. We continued slashing at the muscle of its arms, whipping past so that only the shine of our blades was visible. The Titan's arms then fell to the side, ready for us to retrieve Eren from its jaw, but also leaving the neck wide open.

Your eyes then flicker to Mikasa, seeing a glint in her eyes as we hung in the air, ready to retrieve Eren. "No, wait!" you yell at her as Levi looks at Mikasa in horror as she aims her swords for the neck of the Titan, going for the kill instead. You flash over to her in a millisecond as the Titan uses its remaining strength to try to slap Mikasa away forcibly. You aim your swords at the Titan's jaw, ripping through its muscle, where it releases Eren in a spool of substance before sheathing your swords and pushing Mikasa out of the way. However, no matter if you moved like lightning to where she was, you were now dead in the air, your maneuver gear quickly attaching to a branch of a tree but not fast enough to avoid the Titan's hand as it thwacked you through the air. "[y/n]!"

The air was knocked out of you as you desperately used your blurry vision to continue to the branch your maneuver gear attached to, but the momentum of the Titan's hand was too harsh. You crash into the tree, your body pounding on impact, feeling pricks of bark and leaves digging into your skin as you collapse. Your speed and maneuver gear had saved you from falling to your doom as you found yourself on the intended branch, just faster than expected from the hit you had taken from the Titan. You were fortunate the Titan's arms had taken damage, or you would have been dead by the time its hand touched your body. Your head blurs, a harsh ringing in your head as you look down. Bits of your uniform had been torn on impact, but you then felt a sharp pain on your side. Whilst one side of your maneuver gear had attached to the branch, saving your life, the other had released on impact, leaving a deep gash on the right side of your body.

You groaned, grasping tightly onto the tree as you released the other side of the maneuver gear so you were no longer attached to the branch you had collapsed on. You let in a shaky breath, holding onto your side as blood started to seep slowly through the wound, hearing muffled yells in the distance. You looked up, forcing your eyes to focus, though it faded in and out. "Le-Levi?" you stutter out, head lulling against the tree, trying to ignore the raging pain you feel in your body. "[y/n]!" His eyes were wide and frantic along with his movements as he made his way towards you. "[y-/n]," your eyes focused to see he was now right in front of you, his eyes now looking at the gash on your side. At the red that enveloped your upper body and hands. You see a flurry of emotions rush past his face: fear, worry, anger, and another you couldn't quite place.

You try to stay focused and present, but you feel your body start to weaken from blood loss. "Shit, what the fuck were you thinking," Levi shouts out, grabbing a piece of cloth and pushing it against your side. You wince; if you weren't on the verge of death, you would've enjoyed the way his eyes flickered over you, clear worry and shock shining in his eyes as he moved you gently, but you could feel consciousness slowly seeping away. "Levi," you mutter as you see the rare shine of mist reach his eyes. He looks at you in hopelessness, and you squeeze his hand with as much effort as you can provide. "No, [y/n], don't you fucking dare." His voice cracks subtly as he sees your unfocused eyes that try desperately to stay open. "Stay with me... not you, you can't... you can't..."

You can't help but think back to Isabel and Furlan, their smiling faces. Our squad and their laughter, teasing and friendly nudges. We lost countless comrades and friends to this battle against the Titans. Was it my time now to join them? But how could I leave this man behind? Your head brims with deep fear, an emotion you had thought to have locked away. You think back to your words as darkness slowly caves in despite Levi's hold on you tightening. I will still fight by you, and I will still follow you until the end. Tears fall slowly from your eyes as you take one last look at the man you love, his grey eyes shining desperately in front of you. "I'm sorry," you mutter against his shouts as darkness pulls you in.

#x reader #reader insert #fem reader #aot #levi ackerman #levi aot #levi x y/n #aot x reader #captain levi #levi x reader #series #levixreader #aot levi #aot x y/n #fanfic #untiltheend #anime x reader

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vyladromeave · 1 year ago

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all of them >:)

jkjk

17 and 27?

17. any headcanons you're attached to?

BOY DO I HAVE SOME HEADCANONS IM ATTACHED TO. First off this post is required reading. its over a year old and its all stuff i stand by pretty strongly in regards to vylad. lets just start there.

ok hmmmmmmm see now this is hard for me because you could ask me about any specific like character or location or concept within mcd and i could give you headcanons for them immediately i have too many options. here's what I'm going to do I'm going to open the aphmau wiki and randomize a page on the mcd characters section and whatever I land on is what I'm going to talk about here i go.

I GOT KENMUR OK ITS KENMUR TIME. Well first off he's bi4bi and t4t with emmalyn so jot that down. Emmalyn is more on the history and literature side of things, but Kenmur is much more on the science side, he likes reverse-engineering things and he likes understanding how things work. He doesn't usually get as visibly excited over findings as Emmalyn does, but they are still very much equal in nerdiness.

Despite him going to the Irene Dimension, we don't get a lot of his thoughts about the weird stuff that happens to/around him in canon. I think he'd be very interested in Irene's Dimension, not necessarily because it's Irene's, but because it's a weird weird place with weird rules about how you enter and leave and how time flows while you're there and that's fascinating to him. He would've loved talking about the process of Zoey's portal activation with her if she wasn't so cagey about it.

I'm not big on the whole "Sasha was his fiancee thing" but I do like the idea of them being friends :) And I ESPECIALLY like the idea of him trying to figure out how to cope with the fact that a lot of the people he knew and grew up with turned into Shadowknights. Sasha, Laurance, even Hayden's guard, these were people he knew who all just died around him, some of which becoming much worse people for it. Shadowknights are so poorly understood that nobody (not even Shadowknights!) seems to really understand how it works or why it happens, and that frustrates him deeply. I think he'd be very interested in studying Shadowknights, but also feels very weird about asking Laurance to essentially be his lab rat. So he just quietly makes notes whenever he notices something weird and moves on. World's First Shadowknight Scholar!

27. what's something really interesting that you wished canon decided to explore more? alternatively, what's something interesting that you wished the fandom acknowledged more?

this question is fun because its actually two questions in one which means i get to spend more time talking heehee. there's pleeeenty of stuff in canon, not to go Kenmur-mode but we still barely have anything on how Shadowknights actually work aside from "you died oh noooo now you have to kill someone." This is not helped by how much conflicting information we get.

We ALSO also don't get a lot on how the magicks system works??? Oh everyone has magicks but not really but also kinda but you have to find it and some abilities are passive (Kiki can talk to animals all the time) but also most are active (KC animates dolls, gets tired when she uses it too much, its a big ordeal she has to work up to) and also some are so well-documented that there are entire categories for them (WHAT THE HELL IS BARRIER MAGICKS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THATS JUST A WELL-KNOWN THING. EVERYONE ELSE HAS UNIQUE ABILITIES AND THEN THERES JUST "BARRIER MAGICKS" WHAT DOES THIS MEAN) and also maybe magicks are passed on by blood but also maybe not and also theres WITCHES now fuck you. And they hate magicks users for noooo reason despite "magick" being incredibly poorly defined at best. What is a curse? How do potions work??? Cursed Objects???? Cursed AMULETS????? WHY????????????? At least they tried to explain things about Shadowknights, when it came to magicks they just fucking gave up. I know its like this because they just used magicks as the macguffin of the week and had no plans on actually developing how it works, but i would literally kill to see plans on how they intended for this to work.

Interesting things Fandom should acknowledge is also fun. There are many. There are so many. I think the politics side of mcd is VERY interesting and very rarely looked at by fans, which is shocking to me considering how central it is to mcd's plot. Because despite the title of "Lord" there IS no active monarchy in Ru'aun, and that's BECAUSE of Irene (which was incredibly based of her), which changes the definition of Lord entirely. ITS REALLY NEAT!! O'khasis has a council!! Who the fucks on it? I don't know!!! But they have a council!!! Isn't that exciting?? This is not a joke I mean this so genuinely. Do you ever wonder if maybe the High Priest is on that council and thats why Zane got the job. Do you ever wonder if there's a reason someone so young and literally THE SON OF THE LORD got put into a position so early? Do you think having that extra vote on Garte's side helped things crumble at a quicker rate than it had been previously?? I do. I wonder these things. And you should too. please.

And SPEAKING of Irene being incredibly based, she did in fact do some things that are incredibly based!!! I know most people like to write her as a Secretly Malevolent God™, which like fair whatever I like to give her some evils too, but I really wish people would take more of a look at what was established about her in S1. There is a reason she is worshipped so widely by the people of Ru'aun and it's because she Literally Is a hero of the people. I think people are generally blinded by how she was portrayed in MCD S3 and in Mystreet that they forget that she was a person for a very long time before she lost it. Go back and look at some of the earlier Irene lore!!! I promise its much more complex and fun than "oooo your goddess is secretly evil and was never good and there is no hope or joy in the world ooooo."

(ask prompts from here!)

#long post #big post #ask #mcd meta #mcd

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alicehattera03 · 1 year ago

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I come with theories this time!

You died. But hey! You were lucky and some Goddess took pity on your soul and stuffed it into the body of the still unborn Athanasia de Alger Obelia. Oh and you have no Idea if this new world follows the book, the manwha, or some fanfiction.

How would you cope? Would you run away like Athy tried at the beginning? Would you crave your new dads attention and try to win his love? Would you start a revolution? Follow Aetherntrash? Give Jeanette the throne and be her shadow? Fall in Love with somebody? (Our Male Protagonist or even the reclusive wizard? Or find a new love not being known to you?) Would you even be able to see them as people? Not just characters you loved and liked to read about? How would you cope being an older soul in a younger body?

How would you rule if you tried the Empress Route and sit someday on your golden throne? How would you manage?

Just...general stuff I am really interested about because of what you write normally and what you would do personally would differ I guess.

Love and hoping the heat didnt grill you yet because here its only a few grades away :(

Hello dearest!!!

And - I WHAT NOW!?!

[AliceHatter has died.]

Ah, shit. Here we go again. 💀

Ahahaha okok well, this is something new. Considering, I've never really thought about what it'd be like if I was actually Athy, cause well, hmm...idk really, I guess I just never really thought about me personally, so this will be interesting. Also, pls goddess, let it NOT be my fics because good god, that is hell on earth whew.

How would I cope?

Well, humans are by nature very adaptable(whether that's good or bad idk lol) so I'd probably get used to not having wifi and throw myself into studying for some validation and probably ways to get rid of black magic lmao

Would you run away like Athy tried at the beginning?

I wouldn't run away, but I'd probably try to kms when I'm able to walk after being born because hello, there are no phones, no laptops, no wifi!!! What do I do for entertainment when I run out of books!!?!?

Would you crave your new dads attention and try to win his love?

Considering I tried to kms when I was just a baby, maybe at some very early point Claude would get interested and keep me at his side just to keep watch over what I do and in turn, starts saving me from the brink of death?? Maybe around then, I'd start to get attached to him and try to attract his attention by acting older than a baby...maybe like those FLs who act like geniuses at a young age when they're actually reincarnated(wow that sounds awful when I write it out but hey, it's a solid idea)

Would you start a revolution? Follow Aetherntrash?

To the first, probably not? I'd make lots of alliances with foreign countries and within Obelia itself just in case but I'd want Claude to still rule cause I'd be legitimate that way. Plus, he IS the strongest emperor ever, so...as long as I can figure out how to get rid of the black magic, he's a safer bet than Aeternitas who would get rid of me in a heartbeat so he can sit on the throne himself. So in answer to the second, hell nah, he can go fuck himself or Roger lololol Athy will- I mean, I will find a way to intercept his plans, probably from the debutante.

Give Jeanette the throne and be her shadow?

WHAT- I mean, ok, that's a reasonable option, but in the world where I wouldn't know which plot the world is following, I wouldn't know for sure until I meet her, but even still, a very high probability of no. I wouldn't hate her if she's the WMMAP version but if she's the novel version, ugh. If she's a fanfic version...depends on who she's written by. If she's by me, except for very few, I wouldn't like that at all...if she's written by someone who loves her dearly(which means they hate me...) then I'd die, so I'd rather just keep my distance and send her and Roger packing.

Fall in Love with somebody? (Our Male Protagonist or even the reclusive wizard? Or find a new love not being known to you?

Oooh, I'd love to fall in love with somebody. The question is, would they fall in love with me? Or the version I present as my version of Athy? If I acted like the lovable and intelligent Athanasia, thousands would fall, but if I acted like me and the way I want to portray her as I wanted her to be: stronger, harsher, an heir with an iron fist just like her father- would they be able to fall in love? Anyways, leaving those existential questions for when I actually get isekai-d lmao I wouldn't fall in love with Lucas. Unfortunate ahaha but I'd love to have him as an ally. Ijekiel on the other hand...I was pushing for Athy to end up with him, so he'd be a strong contender. If someone else comes into the picture, I wouldn't mind as long as they have the qualities of: a high rank that is near or matches Athy's, appearance-wise doesn't look like a squid next to her, and is intelligent enough to keep up with her conversations.

Would you even be able to see them as people? Not just characters you loved and liked to read about?

That's a real question...I think for a long while, I wouldn't be able to see them as anything but words on a page. Descriptors that I used to write, strokes of a pen across a tablet screen, I would feel their warmth and even look in the mirror and think, this world feels amazingly real. Would it even register to me that it was, in fact, now my reality? That they were, in fact, tangible people that could laugh, cry, love and die? It would be inevitable that I would find them to be people, but I think it'd be a long road to get there.

How would you cope being an older soul in a younger body?

AHAHAHA depends~ am I an older soul in the first place?? But if we're going off that I was older when I died and got stuffed into Athy's body, I'd use it as well as I could- plus be happy at restarting life lmao. Using all the knowledge I had from my previous life to prepare for my later years instead of learning the basics from scratch. I'd probably go as Athy did, learning new languages and studying early on, I have to make sure I don't act like a useless pawn but a useful heir. I'd also, frankly be annoyed at having to act like a child in a child's body so I'd do away with that and just have people get creeped out by how adult-like I act. Tell them to deal with it, I've got no time for their feelings ahaha

How would you rule if you tried the Empress Route and sit someday on your golden throne? How would you manage?

If I really did go into Athy's body, there would be no other route other than the Empress route imo. I don't have the patience or the large heart to let anyone else take the throne other than Athy. In my eyes, she's always been the one who deserved it the most after Claude, so I'd do anything and everything in my power to make sure she sits on it. Well...that I sit on it. I'd rule with generosity to those who help the weak out of the goodness of their hearts, rule with bared fangs at those who dared to overstep. I'd hope to be a ruler that would go down as being great rather than a powerless coward, but not as a bloodthirsty tyrant. I'd keep Obelia the same size, maybe expand, just a little, being too greedy was the downfall of many Emperors. Increase the networks by sea to increase trade itself, travel to widen my horizons.

Managing though....eek. I hate the idea of managing all those territories and worrying about people coming to assassinate me in the middle of the night + all the political jargon I'll have to learn and assimilate into every meeting with the nobility + having to do so much work...I'll probably make Claude and Ijekiel pull their weight and help me out while I pick out at least one secretary to help me for a while. Maybe my obstinateness will never let me pass the work onto someone else, my pride will get in the way? There goes my lazy days 😭

All in all, I do hope this was alright in terms of an answer-! It was very hard knowing that I was the one doing this and not Athy- at least a version of Athy- but I stopped cringing halfway because I had forgotten how fun it was to imagine myself in situations instead of a character. So, thank you, lovely for the wonderful, wonderful, ask!!! 🥰

#answering asks #asks answered #ask response #ask reply #ask box #ask #wmmap

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wontbyers · 2 years ago

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12, 18, 19, 27 👀

Salty Ask List

Thank you for sending, Rae!! My answers ended up way too long/detailed so I’m putting them under a read more to save space <333

12: Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I’m trying to think of an arc that’s unpopular…Maybe Eddie? Just Eddie in general, because I feel like most people either hate that he died (or the way he died) because they love him and think it was a shitty plot for him, or they’re indifferent to him as a character so they’re upset that the show even introduced him in the first place just to die (instead of focusing on other original main characters.)

But I have a unique relationship to his story-line, in which I didn’t really care for him when he was introduced (the way he acted towards the party made it seem like he’s just the equal opposite of the conservative jocks where you still have to conform to his specific “anti-conformist” ideals to be accepted—Lucas playing basketball is demeaned and he’s excluded from the Hellfire session bc of it), and I could tell he was gonna die obviously so I didn’t want to bother to get attached either (even when he had an admittedly sweet scene with Chrissy in the woods.) But he slowly grew on me towards the end of the season until he finally died and that was the very exact point where I actually cared enough about him to cry over his death.

So it was an interesting sort of situation TO ME where the peak of a character’s arc was just finally making you like them once they have no time left for this world. Especially when you knew they were gonna die the whole time and it was just unavoidable, but you still managed to grieve for it.

Could they have figured out a way to drive the Hawkins plot of s4 without creating Eddie? Probably. Do I think the show suffered for spending time introducing a character who was written to die? Not really. It was an interesting/unique experience for me the way his arc played out. Besides, his death is going to affect characters (especially Dustin) in season 5. Bob was also written as a one-season-and-he’s-dead character and I still appreciate his role and that grief was still felt by Joyce through s4, like Nancy’s grief for Barb, etc.

18. Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?

On a general basis, no, not at all. Everyone doesn’t have the same taste in ships whether something is canon or popular or not. Simply not shipping something isn’t really within a person’s control just like not enjoying a certain food or music style, it’s just down to personal taste. There doesn’t need to be mental gymnastics involved (like being in denial) to not liking a certain thing.

That said, if someone is hardcore against a certain popular ship that is...literally not harming anybody, like for example a super innocent childhood-best-friends-to-lovers trope with two boys in the 80s, and they absolutely refuse to believe there’s even a chance that ship could be canon and are really mad that it became the biggest ship in the fanbase after the 4th season of the show when one of the characters involved was confirmed to be in love with the other…idk they might have some biases to uncover and deal with?

(Anti-Bylers get some help challenge. You don’t have to ship it, but don’t be homophobic. If you just don’t ship it, but accept that its canonization would be a win for gay representation, you’re cool.)

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

People who deny that Billy was a racist abuser just because he was abused himself and was still young when he died. I mean. That one’s low-hanging fruit. But tbh I don’t really consider his fans part of the same fanbase as me even though we technically like the same show…I feel like they’re in their own group that’s cordoned off from the rational world? They don’t usually cross my path, I just know they exist...

So what I hate most about the side of the fanbase that I actually interact with—which is not the racists/homophobes/abuse apologists/etc. More the fans of the party, like Byler side of tumblr? I feel like people vague-blog here a lot. (Tbf nobody’s innocent because even I’ve seen a post with a headcanon/opinion I disagreed with and then made my own post with my contrary opinion, not out of spite but in a light-hearted/humorous way.)

Which I’m sure is probably better than directly arguing with people on their own posts if they weren’t specifically seeking a discussion/debate, that’s just tumblr culture (“don’t agree? make your own post”) but the way some people act like their interpretation of the show is the only correct one, and anyone who sees it differently is obviously missing something. Until the show is complete, a lot of what we talk about and theorize could be proven otherwise, so idk. It would be nice if people were more respectful of others’ ideas. We’re all on the same team here.

Least shippable character?

Ooh I’m not gonna say something easy & obvious like any of the antagonists (because if anybody is shipping Brenner or Henry or Billy with anyone I’m side-eying hard, and I think that’s a pretty popular opinion except for amongst B*lly stans 💀)

Out of the main characters, I’m gonna be so honest and controversial and brave rn and say fan-favorite Steve is actually not super shippable. Despite Steve’s whole appeal as the apparently most-shippable figure in the fanbase (I mean, you’ve got the Steddies and Stancys and H*rringroves and Stonathans—and even romantic Stobins if they exist which I don’t like to believe is possible🤮) And I kinda do like Stonathan/Stoncy in a crack-shippy way, not super seriously, but otherwise?? He’s a good dude and he deserves to live his dream life with a wife and 6 nuggets in the future, but I don’t think that’s any of the characters we’ve met in the show (certainly not Nancy.) I don’t seriously ship him with anyone.

Honorable mention is Dustin, but just because I feel like the rest of the party members I have a really strong ship for with another main character (Byler, Lumax, Elmax) whereas Dustin has his own solid long-distance relationship with Suzie instead of a potentially romantic bond with any of the other party members. So like Duzie is cute enough that I don’t need to pair Dustin off with anyone else, but bc Suzie isn’t super relevant on her own and they don’t have much screen-time together (the s3 duet being amazing but that’s all they have) I also don’t really think about them enough to have a strong OTP status for them?? They’re there, they’re cute, it’s whatever.

I also feel like with Steve and Dustin often being paired together as a platonic, brotherly duo of sorts—they don’t strike me as very shippable in canon because if they’re not in group settings they’re just paired together (whereas Byler, Jopper, Jancy, Lumax and even Elmax in s3 are often getting solo scenes/plots together.) Unless you actually really enjoy Stancy for some reason, bc they’ve had solo “romantic” time, but to me they’ve been specifically designed/presented to not be good together so? Idk idk

#ask games #i am so sorry i went off like this #if u read it all u are entitled to compensation

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martyfromgiant · 2 years ago

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thinking about how pretty much every single show with lesbian representation has been cancelled or ended by the network in the last year. it hurts so fucking much to see shows being cancelled that have a huge fan base or killing off lesbian characters without a second thought. it’s not gay shows that are being canceled, no, it is wlw shows. mlm shows have continued to go on getting praise and renewals where shows like first kill, even though they’re cheesy and shitty, that have lesbian main characters one being a black woman and having a half black cast are cancelled. it had twice the viewing of shows like heartstopper, a show with two white gay men leads, that got renewed in the first few weeks of its release. even with netflix setting first kill up to fail by releasing it at the same time as huge shows like stranger things and umbrella academy, it still was a huge hit and had such a loving fan base.

the wilds with a lesbian main couple and diverse female cast literally centered around the concept of girl power. huge and dedicated fan base. cancelled. killing eve lesbian main characters one of them being sandra fucking oh that explores the dark side of ourselves while giving really good rep. one of the most dedicated fan bases i’ve seen. cancelled. and not just that, what could have so easily been a happy ending for the couple was ripped from us in the last five minutes right after the characters finally admitted feelings after four fucking seasons. one of them is murdered right in front of the other.

i can’t speak much to shows like everything sucks and the society because i haven’t bothered to watch them knowing they get cancelled. i don’t want to get attached to beautifully written and relatable characters for some big rich homophobic network to tell me no, no you can’t have this anymore. that’s happened too many times to me. right as the couple is happy and things are okay, one of them dies in front of the other like clexa, villaneve, dani and jamie from bly manor. some don’t even really get the opportunity to get to that point and others are just left with their relationship unfinished, with things left unsaid. and don’t even get me started on queer baiting.

yeah gay shows in general with good representation are fucking hard to come by but i’m sorry. mlm don’t face the same kind of hardships that wlw do. there’s a reason burying your lesbians became such a well known trope. because lesbians in shows die all of the fucking time for no good reason. i wish companies like netflix, hbo, and prime would stop fucking being cowards and admit the real reason they’re cancelling these shows. it’s not because they’re not being viewed enough or don’t have a strong fan base. it’s because they’re fucking lesbophobic i don’t want to hear anything else about it or any bullshit that it wasn’t a big enough hit. it may be the 21st century but lesbians aren’t magically equal even within the lgbtq community. the only place to get good representation these days is from fan made sources like fan fiction and fan art. made by people who understand how hard it is.

it’s where we get to see what we’ve always wanted to see, the characters we love, loving each other and being happy. we don’t have big writers scratching ideas because it “wouldn’t look good or be good for ratings”. we get a world where villanelle and eve lived happily ever after instead of villanelle dying in front of eves eyes and and floating into the abyss. not some bullshit from laura fucking neal who knows absolutely nothing about the characters we know telling us it’s what they felt was right. glad burying your lesbians feels right to people. but in our fan spaces we get to see villanelle make it out alive, we get to see them have a normal life and watch movies together. we also get to see and express what we feel is right with the fuck ton of queer coding in media. we get to see nancy and robin fall in love, emma and regina confess their feelings for one another, and any of the endless amount of amazing ships that we desire. there is a reason we flock to those spaces, it’s where we feel safe, seen, and where we feel like maybe one day we can have a relationship like that, to be loved like that. but it sometimes doesn’t make up for seeing it all play out endorsed by a company and written by people that actually care about representation and their viewers instead of just money. we all want to be loved and feel accepted and seen but sadly, because of the events of the last year, i’m not gonna hold my fucking breath.

sorry this is a lot, i’m just so fucking pissed

#killing eve #first kill #the wilds #once upon a time #netflix #wlw #fuck netflix #the haunting of bly manor

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bbangsoonie · 4 years ago

Text

backdoor

member: jaehyun (hyunjae) genre: fluff (requested) word count: 3,120 synopsis: jaehyun has always been your rival. so when he bets that he could make you fall for him, you can’t back down and say no. but when you’re too confident, you let your guard done.

backdoor: a term used in league of legends; when you secretly attack the enemy’s nexus while they’re focused elsewhere. this is done by sneaking into the enemy base and taking them by surprise

Lee Jaehyun was the cockiest and most annoying person you had ever met. You would think that growing up as childhood “friends” would make you two close. After all, your parents were best friends with his parents.

But no, you and Jaehyun had been rivals ever since you were both enrolled into a tennis club as young children. You always had the upper hand until he suddenly hit puberty and became a lot more physically fit than you. Once he started beating you in nearly every match, he became your #1 enemy.

He had always been super competitive and made everything into a contest. Who could run to the car faster? Who could receive a higher score on the exam? Who could make the other lose their temper first?

With high school came his sudden increase in popularity. It inflamed his ego to the max, which irked you to no end.

Every Valentine’s Day, he would brag about all the gifts and confessions he received. And every White Day, he would compare the numbers to yours.

He was loved by the girls for being a casanova and admired by the guys for his athleticism and gaming skills.

You, on the other hand, could not comprehend why the entire school was infatuated with him. You had your eyes on someone else. Kim Sunwoo. He had caught your attention since the first day of freshman year. Now, as a senior, you were about to graduate without ever making a move.

You were too shy to approach him. You couldn’t even find a common interest to naturally bring up and talk about. All he ever did was make music and play League of Legends.

So you found Jacob during lunch and practically begged him to teach you how to play the game.

“Please please please?” you whined.

“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t,” Jacob said apologetically. “I have basketball practice every day. Besides, I haven’t played in almost half a year. I’m rusty.”

“I just need you to teach me the basics!”

“I’m sorry, Y/n.”

Sighing, you gave up and slumped in your seat. You poked at the food in front of you with a pout.

“Did I just hear the Y/n ask Jacob to teach her how to play League?” Jaehyun suddenly popped out of nowhere.

“Fuck off,” you rolled your eyes at him as you set your chopsticks down.

“You know, I’m the highest ranked player in our school,” he said smugly. You wanted nothing but to wipe that look off his face.

You ignored him and took a sip of your water. Jacob awkwardly glanced between you and Jaehyun as he tightly held onto his spoon. He could sense another argument coming.

“I can teach you if you want,” Jaehyun offered.

“I don’t want,” you coldly rejected.

“Of course you don’t,” he scoffed. “You’re too afraid to spend time with me because you might realize that you actually like me.”

“Oh please. There are a few things in this world that will never change. The sun rising from the east, the sun setting in the west, and my hatred for you,” you said.

“Well if you hate me that much, then let’s make a bet out of it. The first one to fall for the other’s seducing loses,” he smirked.

Still stuck in the middle, Jacob shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“You don’t have to accept the challenge if you’re not confident,” Jaehyun shrugged, making you narrow your eyes at him.

A list of pros and cons was being made in your head as you contemplated the crazy suggestion. The logical part of your mind wanted nothing to do with him. You knew that stooping down to his level was childish. You had much better things to do than go along with his bet.

The competitive part of you, however, couldn’t bear to back down. You would have to deal with him flaunting over you and calling you a coward if you didn’t agree to this.

So you disregarded all rationale and crossed your arms with a curt “deal”.

The walk to school the next day was full of complaints as you whined about falling for Jaehyun’s trick and Kevin chided you for it.

“I don’t know why you thought it would be a good idea,” Kevin tsk-ed. “He makes your blood boil within seconds. How are you going to hold back from tearing him apart? Never mind flirt with him.”

“I’m already regretting it,” you groaned.

“Speaking of the devil,” Jacob coughed, nudging you.

You looked up to see Jaehyun waiting by the school gates. He was holding a bouquet of flowers and every girl who passed by whispered to their friend about it. To everyone’s shock, he walked up to you and handed you the flowers.

“So it starts now?” you stared at the roses. “You call this seducing?”

“I call this romantic,” he grinned.

Rolling your eyes, you handed Kevin the bouquet and walked away. He awkwardly chased after you as Jacob offered Jaehyun a pat on the shoulder.

“She doesn’t like roses. She thinks they’re cliché,” he said before leaving.

When the dismissal bell rang, Jaehyun was waiting for you outside of your classroom. Hushed whispers erupted again as your classmates tried to figure out why he was being so affectionate to you. It was no secret that you two never got along.

After gathering your belongings, you grabbed your backpack and left without sparing him another glance. Unfazed, he easily caught up to you and slung his arm around your shoulder.

“What? Are you wavering already?” he teased.

“Not a chance,” you scoffed.

“As a part of the bet, I can teach you how to play League. That’s what you wanted anyway. Think of it as killing two birds with one stone.”

You ignored all the incredulous looks you received with Jaehyun by your side as you left the school grounds. You didn’t realize that you weren’t headed home until you stopped in front of a PC Room. Puzzled, you stared at the building in front of you.

“I promised that I’d teach you. Our first lesson starts today,” he said as he dragged you inside.

Your brain was bombarded with a whole new world. You struggled to keep up as he rambled on about bots and gold. He was showing you a demonstration by playing a round but your inability to multitask made it difficult to understand what was going on on the screen.

“My main is Jace and I usually go jungle,” he explained and you pretended to understand by nodding. At your silence, he eyed your expression and chuckled.

“So is Sunwoo the reason why you’re suddenly interested in League?” he asked, catching you off guard.

“How did you know?” you gaped.

“You thought I wouldn’t notice your little crush on him?” he raised a brow.

You were taken aback to say the least. You didn’t think he paid much attention to you other than when he was bored and wanted to mess around.

“Anyway, he usually goes mid as Zed,” he shrugged. “To be honest, the best way for you to bond with him through the game is for him to play ADC and for you to be support.”

“As if I know what all that means,” you frowned.

At that moment, his character died and the screen went gray. You snickered, earning a light flick on your forehead.

“ADC stands for attack damage carry. It’s the champion who usually does the most attacking. They go in the bottom lane with whoever’s playing support. Supports are supposed to aid and heal the ADC. So you would follow and communicate with them.”

“Sounds complicated,” your nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Sounds fun,” he corrected before turning back to the computer.

The next day, Jaehyun surprised you with a small potted plant in front of the gates.

“Since you don’t like roses, I got you a succulent instead,” he said proudly.

Next to you, Kevin giggled and Jacob let out a soft “aww”. Slightly touched yet also slightly embarrassed, you took it from him in a hurry and stormed off.

“You’re slowly getting there,” Jacob laughed as Kevin shot him a thumbs up.

Smiling, Jaehyun watched as they ran to catch up with you. He heard you yell at them after what was probably a teasing remark. You then began to chase Kevin, who ran away shrieking.

After two weeks of spending hours at the PC Room after school, you were starting to get a hang of the game. You found Teemo, who you insisted was a dog (he’s actually a rodent), and gushed over how cute he is.

Jaehyun made fun of your champion choice and shook his head as he explained that Teemo was the most hated character.

“Why? He’s adorable!” you defended. “And I love the little eggs he plants.”

“For the nth time, those are mushrooms! Not eggs,” he exclaimed. “And that’s exactly why everyone hates him. He’s so annoying.”

“You’re annoying,” you shot back.

“Well, Teemo’s not an option right now,” he pointed out.

He was teaching you how to play Howling Abyss that day. And playing ARAM meant your champion would be randomly given.

“Oh! The cute cat is available,” you excitedly clicked.

“That’s Yuumi and that’s actually not a bad choice,” he nodded in approval. “You just have to attach onto me and heal me.”

You hated to admit that you had grown closer with Jaehyun. Only a couple of weeks had passed by since the bet and you didn’t completely despise him anymore.

He gifted you something small each morning, whether it was a plant or piece of bread. He was always waiting for you at the gates. Dating rumors were already circulating the school but you hadn’t forgotten about the bet. You were determined to win it.

Which was why you began to wake up earlier to put on makeup and even complimented him during games. It was easy to make him smile. All you needed to do was throw a lame joke in here and there and he would burst out in laughter.

It was almost suspiciously easy. He was too willing to respond to your advances and never put up a wall.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t get on your nerves. His antics still bothered you to no end.

On the way home, he insisted on feeding you ice cream instead of having you hold it yourself. Except he kept pulling the spoon back when you opened your mouth to eat it.

The first time, you gave him a dirty look. The second time, you punched his arm. The third time, you gave him the finger and walked off after a “fuck you”.

“Is that a threat or a promise?” he laughed.

Once again, you were reminded of how immature he was.

“So has there been any progress?” Kevin asked.

It was gym period and all the students were running around in the field. Jacob was playing volleyball with Jaehyun while you and Kevin were sitting on the sidelines.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged.

“It would be the best enemies-to-lovers trope if you two actually end up dating like this,” he commented.

“Never,” you snorted in disbelief.

You had seen Jaehyun ever since he was a snotty little kid. Even back then, he was a mischievous brat. There was no way you could ever see him as anything but that.

The teacher blew his whistle, signaling the end of gym class. You got up, dusted your pants, and skipped down the steps. Unfortunately, you landed wrong and felt a sharp pain in your ankle as you fell down.

After Kevin shouted your name, Jaehyun turned his head to see you on the ground. Without thinking twice, he ran towards you and asked if you were okay. When you couldn’t reply, he put you on his back with Kevin’s help and sprinted to the nurse’s office.

Your heart was beating fast but you couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why. Was it because of the pain? Or all the attention you were receiving from your classmates?

By the time you reached the office, your ankle was throbbing and swelling up. The nurse was nowhere to be seen so Jaehyun retrieved an ice pack himself and wrapped a towel around it before applying it.

You were sitting on a cot while he was bent down to tend to your wound. His forehead was wrinkled with worry and you stared at him. This was the first time he had ever treated you with such gentleness.

“I don’t think you broke anything but it’s definitely gonna hurt for at least a week,” he winced in vicarious pain.

You suddenly didn’t know how to act around him. You weren’t used to receiving sympathy from him.

“Uh that’s okay,” you coughed to cover up the awkwardness. You’d rather have him make fun of you for being clumsy. But instead, he seemed genuinely concerned for you.

“You should’ve been more careful,” he scolded.

There was something about the way he looked at you. His eyes were no longer playful but you couldn’t figure out what emotions hid behind those eyes.

Those eyes. His eyes clouded your mind. For some reason, you couldn’t get it out of your head.

You found yourself avoiding him as you struggled to organize your thoughts. Or rather, your feelings.

Wanting to distract yourself, you decided to finally talk to Sunwoo. Surely, spending time with him would help you forget about Jaehyun.

So you mustered up the courage to ask him out on a date. To your surprise, he happily agreed and suggested that you watch a movie together. There was a new romcom film that came out and that he had been wanting to watch.

The date wasn’t as awkward as you thought it would be. Sunwoo’s goofiness offset any nervousness and it was fun to be around him. But yet, it also wasn’t as heart fluttering as you thought it would be.

Perhaps you had idealized him too much in your imagination. Your romantic feelings for him dissipated and you saw him as a good friend. Luckily, he felt the same.

However, word about your date had already spread by the time you got to school on Monday. It had reached Jaehyun’s ears and his expression hardened when he saw you laughing with Sunwoo at lunch.

He knew what the ugly feeling in his stomach was. And he wasn’t happy about it. So he reacted in the only way he knew. By clinging to your side and pestering you.

He spent the whole day messing up your hair and being sarcastic. Eventually, you finally snapped and told him to piss off.

“I’ll consider it if you can beat me in tennis today,” he said.

You crossed your arms, wondering what was going on in his head. You hadn’t been able to defeat him since middle school.

“If you can get a single ball past me, I’ll leave you alone,” he proposed. With a huff, you reluctantly agreed. It would be faster to just get it over with.

That was how you two ended up at a tennis court after school. He never went easy on you but he was going especially hard that day. He gave you no breaks and flung the ball back at you with what felt like all his strength. Ball after ball flew past you as he grabbed another one to start again.

“What the hell, Lee Jaehyun?” you yelled across the court. “Why the fuck are you so aggressive today?”

“Are you giving up?” he taunted while bouncing the ball.

“Oh hell no,” you grumbled as you got in position.

Another half an hour passed by with him beating you again and again. You were drenched in sweat and starting to feel sore. But you refused to give him the pleasure of watching you admit defeat.

So you kept going until the ball accidentally hit your shoulder. The amount of force he put into that backhand made you yelp in pain as you dropped the racket.

Startled, Jaehyun ran over to make sure you were okay.

“You just can’t bear to see me win once, can you?” you glared as you shoved his hand away. “You turn everything into a competition and act like you’re superior over me.”

“I-I didn’t mean to do that,” his brows furrowed in guilt.

“Didn’t mean to do what? Make my childhood a living hell by ruining my favorite sport? Use my crush on Sunwoo to trick me into another stupid bet? Confuse me into thinking that you might actually not hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Then why are you so clingy?”

“Because I like you!”

His words brought upon silence. The tension in the air was thick as you both stared at each other.

“You’re so dense,” he sighed. “I wanted your attention, okay? But back then, I was a kid and didn’t know how to stay by your side without annoying the hell out of you. And then I didn’t know how to transition out of that.”

He fidgeted with a loose string on his shirt and took a deep breath before continuing.

“This stupid bet was supposed to change our relationship. I was supposed to show you that I’m not as bad as you think I am. That I’m a guy too. That I’ve been in love with you for a whole decade now.”

To say you were surprised would be a massive understatement. All your life, you had been sure that Jaehyun’s purpose in life was to irritate you. So when your heart began to skip around him, you cursed yourself for giving into the hormones that made you see him in a different light. You never thought that the feelings would be reciprocated.

“You don’t feel the same way? At all?” he carefully asked.

Your mouth opened but no words came out. You couldn’t find the right words to answer his question.

“You’re not saying no,” the corners of his lips curved up.

He took a step closer to you and held your cheeks. You felt your heart race at the proximity and froze.

“For confirmation?” his lips ghosted over yours. You barely managed to nod slightly before he closed the gap between you two.

As cheesy as it sounded, you felt sparks fly the moment you had your first kiss. By the time he pulled away, you felt your cheeks heat up.

“So I guess that means I won the bet before it even began,” you joked, making him laugh.

“Yes, yes you did,” he smiled as he hugged you.

#deobiwritersnet #the boyz fluff #tbz fluff #hyunjae fluff #jaehyun fluff #the boyz fic #tbz fic #hyunjae fic #jaehyun fic #the boyz scenarios #tbz scenarios #hyunjae scenarios #jaehyun scenarios #the boyz imagines #tbz imagines #hyunjae imagines #jaehyun imagines

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ruby-whistler · 3 years ago

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Why c!Dream should (and probably will be) redeemed

Hi! I’m bad with intros. You’ve read the title, so, let’s start with the definitions.

In this essay, we are considering the popularized definition of “redemption” instead of the classical one, which is, as per the Oxford Dictionary, “the act of saving or state of being saved from the power of evil; the act of redeeming.” That’s not however the way the word is used in fandom and media.

/dsmp /rp

The definition of redemption I’ll be working with in this essay is not forgiveness by the people who c!Dream has hurt, nor is it removing himself entirely from his past actions, but moreso the decision to change for the better and abandon destructive mindsets for himself and others.

A “redemption” in a narrative sense would be circumstances and a character arc that would allow that kind of healing and betterment.

I’d like to start this off by the fact that being “irredeemable”, in this sense, also doesn’t exist; redemption is a thing of conditions and choice, not of being allowed by someone else. You can’t gatekeep healing from people who seek it, just to be clear, and that even goes for people who have done terrible things.

Since I understand there is a lot of concern for c!Dream’s past actions, here is a post from people who are much more fit than me to speak on the matter, about the way in which they see a possible c!Dream redemption arc.

Another disclaimer, I am not going to be considering c!Dream only from the perspective of c!Tommy in this essay. c!Dream appears in other people’s perspectives and he himself has his own, unseen perspective. As a character, he is an individual person in his own right rather than just the antagonist of c!Tommy’s story, and so I do not have much concern for their narratives intertwining too much should this writing choice occur.

I’d also like to note that redemption is, in this sense, always a positive thing for everyone involved - someone who’s been prone to doing bad things in the past deciding not to do them anymore and try to change, or just simply heal enough to consider it, isn’t going to have a long-term negative effect in any of the characters, but rather the other way around. Healing is an unlimited resource, and the victims do not have to heal first for the person who hurt them to consider being better.

Here’s a well-written thread on Twitter that elaborates a bit to finish off this point, and let’s move on to actually talking about redemption in the context of the Dream SMP, and c!Dream specifically.

Why a c!Dream redemption arc is not only a good writing choice, but in this case the only good writing choice;

c!Dream, as we all know, has been subject to mental and physical abuse to the point of straight up torture by both c!Sam and c!Quackity (to different extents). He has been in indescribable amounts of suffering for the past 74 days at the time this essay will be published. That is six and something times the duration of the entire exile arc in canon.

Whatever the interpretation of his words in prison is, what is undeniable is first of all the fact his mental stability is absolutely crushed at this point, second that no human being could possibly ever deserve to undergo this, and third, his stay in the prison is showing off his humanity and making him out to be sympathetic.

Now, consider this; how would it feel if c!Tommy died at the end of the exile arc? Empty, there would be no catharsis to such an end, especially because of all of the hurt he’d gone through. Objectively, a bad writing choice.

Let’s compare, narratively of course, this situation to the prison arc. Even though I would never say one of them is “better” or “worse” than the other, since both are terrible and undeserved, c!Dream’s current state checks off all of the boxes that would make his death unsatisfying in the storyline; even if people want him gone, there would still be the dissatisfaction at the current build-up and why they even did it in the first place (it really wasn’t necessary to anyone else’s story to make him out as a victim, and yet they did) if they were planning to kill him off anyways. And since the prison arc is naturally meant to induce sympathy, even from an angst perspective it would simply not make sense within the themes and writing of the plot.

So, c!Dream can’t die, and he also can’t stay in the prison forever - the build-up must lead to something, which is logically a breakout. Great… what now?

Well, the Dream SMP prides itself in accurate representation of trauma and mental instability, specifically cc!Tommy and cc!Dream who have pulled it off incredibly during the exile arc.

Now, undoubtedly, after the prison, c!Dream is going to be just terribly traumatized- considering the writers’ past creative decisions, would it make sense for him to play the role of a dangerous, heartless villain in other people’s stories, while completely ignoring the logical fallout of what he’s been through?

In my mind, no. The most possible result is that cc!Dream is going to rightfully portray someone who’s been hurt so much he is broken, scared and tortured into submissions over months of agony and slowly stripping away of his agency, his dignity, his humanity. And that is… not going to be pretty, nor is he going to be in any way the same as before.

After everything, I’d be surprised if he can properly look at shears without shaking. That’s not villain behaviour, that’s the behaviour of someone who needs help.

Which leads me to another point, which is relatability. Believe me or not, there are people out there who heavily relate to c!Dream because they have been through things that allow them to see themselves in the character - abandonment, mental illness, etc. - or who have had destructive mindsets they have struggled to let go of in the past.

To them, as well as to the viewer, redeeming c!Dream could actually be a very good example, showcasing that anyone who has done bad things or has been hurt in the past can learn that it is possible to be better, to move on, to not be stuck in a loop but to actively seek help and then use that support to find the path to healing.

Making c!Dream a better person, who in a way, wins over his past, over his trauma, over the hurt he’s caused, and manages to actually get better… is inspiring, in a sense. It shows that you can abandon unhealthy mindsets, you can find a support group of people who care about you, you can make your life better simply by deciding to be better and then sticking to that, no matter how difficult the process.

This is why I believe that redeeming c!Dream would not be bad writing, but quite the opposite, and that the prison arc is an obvious set-up. Alright, but how does that work with the character? How could someone so widely hated mentally improve in such a seemingly violent and terrible environment? Would it even make sense within the context of c!Dream’s character so far? Well,

Why c!Dream has the capacity for healing and the Dream SMP the ability to provide it;

First of all, let’s remind ourselves that through c!Dream’s entire spiral he wasn’t ever directly given a chance to change. He was regarded as someone to defeat in order to accomplish a happy ending, or as someone who needed to be removed in order to achieve power on the SMP. Ever since the 16th, which is when the corruption of the character is the most obvious, there have been no attempts to reach out or to help him. I do not blame the characters for this - I am simply pointing out that since it has never happened before, we do not know how he would respond, and that, after everything he’s been through, any bit of kindness or compassion towards him will be a new concept he will have to learn to deal with somehow.

This point is especially driven home by the fact that both c!Quackity and c!Sam would often tell him he is a monster who deserves nothing but to suffer, and that what he’s going through is never going to amount to all the hurt he’s caused - basically removing any possibility for ever getting better (because by this logic, he doesn’t deserve support, and he doesn’t deserve to get better) from his line of sight.

He also hasn’t had a support system since shortly after the 16th, when his friends left him over c!George’s dethronement and made no effort to mend their relationship afterwards. c!Dream isn’t used to having allies and people on his side, but to being hated; again, wouldn’t that mean positive reinforcement could very well be all he needs to make the choice?

His bad mindsets - attachments are weakness, ends always justify the means, people will consider you a bad person no matter what you do - have been continuously proven right by his environment, even in prison. Any kind of subversion, plus an explanation as to why they are wrong, could be of great help to c!Dream.

Just another disclaimer; I do not believe c!Dream would change thanks to the treatment in prison, but rather despite it. His mental stability is non-existent at that point, and in order to get better he needs genuine emotional support from the people around him as well as to heal before he can redeem himself.

Alright, but… c!Dream has hurt a lot of people. Who would be fit to help him?

Let’s start off with the worst option and why it’s impossible the writers would even attempt this; c!Tommy.

c!Tommy has no responsibility to help or ever forgive c!Dream - not to say he could. The two, as it is, would drag each other down instead of helping in any capacity, and only make matters worse. The two of them shouldn’t even interact in the best case scenario - the best thing for both of them would be if they got enough healing and support individually that they could live around each other and not get their trauma or toxic habits triggered when interacting for whatever purpose of the plot.

So, if not c!Tommy (and c!Tubbo neither by extension), who could redeem c!Dream?

Well, he can’t do it on his own for sure. Being in nature with animals is nice, but further isolation from other people would merely help with the prison trauma, not with the state of his tendencies when interacting with others. He, once again, needs positive reinforcement from other people for him to heal properly.

There are two main options for this in my mind, and then there’s a few individuals he could also find comfort in, including people from both groups or those unaligned.

1) Kinoko Kingdom

From the people of this new country, c!Dream has never negatively interacted with c!Karl before, he has never hurt c!George and he hasn’t directly harmed c!Sapnap. Although the relationship with his old friend group could be difficult to rekindle, none of them have grudges against him that are too personal, and they have been canonically close friends since the beginning of the SMP, so it would be very much possible to rebuild burnt bridges. They’d be familiar, and with the addition of c!Karl they could be a good source of comfort for c!Dream after he either breaks out or is released from prison - just gotta convince c!Sapnap not to kill him first.

2) The Syndicate

From the Syndicate, c!Dream has never directly interacted with c!Nikki, and from what I know of her character she never seemed to be very affected by his actions - even doing his work for him when he was planning to burn down the L’Mantree. c!Techno is an ally who doesn’t have anything against him, and as for c!Ranboo, here is why I believe c!Dream being in the Syndicate could be positively influential on his character arc as well;

c!Ranboo and c!Philza have had a conversation about change, during which c!Ranboo made it clear he thinks everyone can change except for c!Dream; who, in his mind, is “too deep down the rabbit hole”. c!Philza replied that he thinks anyone can change if given enough time.

… you see what I’m getting at?

c!Dream has been implied to be an ally to c!Ranboo’s enderwalk state (or the state when he has access to his full memory), and hence would most likely not behave negatively towards him at all. While it might make it more difficult for c!Ranboo to deal with his own issues, it might also give him more motivation to get to the bottom of it as well, especially since he now has access to the person who, presumably, started this all. While this is going on, c!Dream would show himself in a much different light than c!Ranboo sees himin, which could lead to confusion, realization of the flaws in his own logic, and hence, positive character development.

Here’s a great post about why c!Techno as a character could be a great asset in c!Dream’s healing process & redemption, and why there is not much need to worry about him not knowing or finding out about c!Dream’s actions.

Of Kinoko Kingdom and the Syndicate, as far as I know, neither c!Tommy nor c!Tubbo have ever been directly involved with these groups, nor are they planning to.

Another important point to make is that, while c!Tommy needs to be kept away from c!Dream in order to heal properly, the same goes for c!Quackity and c!Sam in c!Dream’s case. While c!Quackity has high chances to interact with either Kinoko Kingdom or the Syndicate in the future, there’s an even higher chance, in that situation, that c!Dream would be offered protection, which is also important; there is no healing from trauma without the knowledge of safety, to some degree.

So, this was an essay as to why I think c!Dream’s recovery and redemption (one needs to come before the other, naturally) is not only extremely possible but also could be pulled off well and have a positive impact on both the characters, and the audience.

#dreblr #dream smp #c!dream #c!dream sympathetic #c!quackity neg #c!sam neg #dsmp analysis #tw torture #tw abuse #long post #i really should start writing longer essays #i need more material #anyways #hope y'all liked this #just joining the debate #:]

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taelonsamada · 3 years ago

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WIP Wednesday

Thank you @ejunkiet for reminding me that today is WIP Wednesday!!

The sequel to Silvered Scars is trucking along smoothly, so I figured it’s a good choice for WIP Wednesday! I’ve also noticed that I seem to have a fondness for having my two MCs meet in moments of peril…. LOL proof I love the whole hurt/comfort vibe ^^;;

I’m also getting more and more attached to Felix the more I write him, which is hilarious considering he initially started out as just a bit character meant to annoy Rowan X3 which he still does, obviously LOL he just has someone else to annoy more often now LOL

I am also a huge sucker for the “falling in love with your bodyguard” trope, soooo…. Definitely some self indulgence going on here >,> ❤️

~~~

This was very frustrating.

Felix walked down the same sidewalk for what felt like the fourth time, trying to track down the person he was literally being paid to protect. He knew he had the right address, the name was right there on the mailbox. The fact that said mailbox was stuffed to overflowing wasn’t a good sign, of course, and he was starting to worry that his new charge had died before he’d even gotten a chance to meet him.

Everyone in this area he’d spoken to had known who he was talking about as soon as he’d said the word ‘seer’, though a number of them had corrected him, claiming the proper term was ‘augur’. He didn’t really care what the term was, he just wanted to find the guy, but he was always very polite and thanked them graciously for the clarification.

All of them had said he’d find him if he’d just walked from here to the bar known as Last Call, that the seer would be somewhere on that route. That he never diverged from it. Luckily, Felix was familiar with the bar, since Rowan worked there as a bouncer. If he didn’t find the guy in the next ten minutes, he was going to just call the woman and ask her if she knew where he could find him.

Movement caught his eye from deep within a nearby alley, and he paused in his search, staring for a moment. At first he thought he’d stumbled upon two people making out (he’d hardly be one to judge, there had been a number of dates of his that had involved a quick bit of fun in an alley, though he preferred cleaner ones than this), but the flash of a knife had his stomach twisting.

When he caught the scent of blood, he moved swiftly, grabbing hold of the arm that had swung back with the intention of inflicting more wounds on the man the guy currently had pinned to the wall.

Offering a charming smile as the attacker whipped around to glare at him, he tightened his grip, not even blinking at the wail of pain that accompanied the sound of bones snapping under his hand.

“Something tells me you’ve made some very poor decisions in life.” Felix mused, flexing his fingers and smirking as what he was assuming was a mugger buckled under the pain, his legs giving out so he now hung by his broken arm that the shifter still held. “I’m gonna give you a chance to make a much smarter decision for once.”

Letting go, he watched the guy drop fully to the ground, stumbling to his feet after a pause and bolting down the alley. Nodding once, he looked over at the mugger’s victim, who’d slid down the brick wall at this point and was clutching his side where blood was quickly spreading. “Not gonna bother asking if you’re alright, it’s pretty clear.” He mused, crouching down to help the larger man to his feet.

Dodging the arm that swung out defensively at him, he took the chance to duck under the raised limb, catching the wrist and standing in a fluid move that pulled the wounded man to his feet with his arm over Felix’s shoulders. Studying the shaggy head of dirty blonde hair, he frowned, a thought occurring to him, and moved his free hand to tilt the guy’s chin up.

The hazel eyes that glared tiredly at him had a heavy sigh escaping Felix, shaking his head as he tugged him a bit closer to support his weight properly. Yep, that was the face from the photo he’d gotten. “Well, no wonder I couldn’t find you… guess they were right about you needing a bodyguard.”

“Fuck off… ‘m fine.”

“Yeah, you absolutely look it, the way your side is bleeding all over me.” Felix agreed, smirking as he could feel the hand the guy still had clamped against the stab wound in his side flexing slightly. “Not quite the way I wanted to start our new partnership, but certainly an interesting one.”

“…the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m your new bodyguard. We were supposed to meet at your house today, remember?” The black haired shifter explained, and lifted an eyebrow at the groan that came from the man, wondering if it was from pain or annoyance. It was honestly hard to tell.

“…ah, fuck… you’re the new guy they sent, huh?”

“Yep! I’m Felix, your government appointed bodyguard. One you’re sorely needing it seems. Lucky for you, I’m friends with a very skilled healer.”

#My writing #modern fantasy #urban fantasy #queer fantasy #queer romance #werewolf romance #werewolf wednesday #wip excerpt

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transmalewife · 3 years ago

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Alright, let's talk about attachment

I can’t find clear information on when exactly the non-attachment rule was added to the code. It was either soon before or soon after the great sith war. Either way, for the VAST majority of the existence of the Jedi, it wasn’t a thing. Jedi got married and had families for over 20000 years, then added the non-attachment rule, which ultimately led to their destruction. And before anyone tries to tell me I believe they deserved to be genocided, I don’t. I have never actually seen anyone say that, but I see people argue against it constantly, and imply anyone who doesn’t think the Jedi were perfect and blameless thinks that. I don’t think they deserved to die, I think they needed to change. And Yoda says that himself, many times. The Jedi weren’t prepared for the return of the sith, or the war. They had separated from the military 1000 years before, and the galaxy was in relative peace all this time, so the order’s role changed to one that worked very well with their rules. Detachment meant they could be impartial when overseeing political disagreements, lack of possessions meant they would be focused on the mission at hand and not prone to taking bribes, and distancing themselves from the general population meant they were more or less uniform, and could be trusted not to side with someone for personal reasons.

All of this falls apart once they become an army again. Impartiality is a flaw when they have to defend one side at all cost and not even allow themselves to consider compromise. Lack of possessions and attachment to people means they are prone to taking unnecessary risks, because they have nothing to lose, and do things like send 14 year olds into battle, thinking of the “greater good” over the safety of children. And the order being a monolith, with set rules and philosophy distinct from the rest of the population meant the Jedi trusted Dooku long after they should have stopped, because he used to be a Jedi after all, surely he still follows the code.

Now, I am not saying non-attachment is always bad, I think it served a very specific purpose in the order, and to some extent worked for many years. However.

Humans are a social species. Human babies NEED physical contact and affection to develop physically. Children need a stable, strong, and supportive relationship to their caregiver to properly develop psychologically. And after last year I don’t think anyone will argue that adults don't need connection with other people just as much. And not just shallow interactions, but open affection and love. Love of any kind, because claiming that the Jedi only forbid romantic love is just untrue. I think people tend to forget that "Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life. So you might say, that we are encouraged to love." isn’t the actual doctrine, it’s a literal pick up line that Anakin uses on Padme.

Ahsoka and Obi-Wan both get criticized by other Jedi for their entirely platonic attachment to Anakin, and vice versa. Now, humans are the most common species in the galaxy, and in the Jedi order. Many other species are near-human, so it’s safe to assume at least some, if not most of them also need that companionship and affection to develop and live happy and stable lives. I do believe that non-attachment is a valid philosophy and chosen path in life if done carefully and within reason, I just don’t think we have a single major character that actually applies to. And chosen is an important word here. Jedi don’t get much of a choice. I’m not trying to start the baby-stealing debate here. I hear the argument of ‘force sensitives are dangerous if left untrained, and said training should start as early as possible’. I think finding a way to deal with that problem was an insanely complicated decision, and taking children into the temple as young as possible is not a bad solution. I don’t entirely agree with not letting them see their families later, (especially since in legends Obi-Wan was allowed to visit his family, which implies Anakin couldn’t go free his mother specifically because he was already too attached), but the idea is sound. I do also understand that no one is forcing Jedi to stay in the order and they can leave for whatever reason at any time. But that isn’t exactly a free choice either. Leaving the order means leaving the only home you remember, the only people you know to make your own way in the galaxy, and staying with those people means you can never fully love them. It’s a difficult solution to a complicated question, and for the most part, it worked (not always, and not exactly as intended, but I’ll come back to that.) Children grew up in the order, were trained to control themselves and the force, and became Jedi who were impartial, patient, and balanced. But everything falls apart when you introduce someone who wasn’t raised in the temple.

In The Rising Force, 13 year old Obi-Wan had barely been off Coruscant in his life. He describes himself as sheltered and unaware of all the pain in the galaxy, and says it was done on purpose, so younglings wouldn’t have to face the dark side before they were ready for it. But Anakin had seen nothing but darkness, pain and injustice before he joined the order. He was severely traumatized, and while the temple might have had some ways of dealing with trauma and PTSD in adults, they had no experience in treating the same in a child, because their children were kept safe and protected. The idea of letting go of your pain and fear only works if you know you have a safe place to come back to, if you’ve spent the first decade or so of your life in the most protected place in the galaxy. Anakin spent the first decade of his life as a slave. He couldn’t let go of his fear, because fear was what kept him alive. Fear is not irrational if you are constantly in danger, it’s what protects you, keeps you aware of the limits you can push before you get punished. And that mindset doesn’t fade just because you’re out of that situation, especially if your only family, the closest person to you, is still facing that danger every day.

I’ve seen people use every excuse possible to explain why Anakin didn’t see his mother again to avoid blaming the council, including, and I shit you not, “He just didn’t have her comm number”. But to me that seems disingenuous, when we see in his first meeting with the council that they already consider him too attached. It's one of the main reasons they don’t want him to be trained, so it seems logical that they wouldn’t allow him to see her once he became a padawan. I also want to mention that what Yoda says, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” Is just… blatant catastrophizing. Right? Like we can all see that the escalation is not rational there at all. Maybe it could apply to something else, but not to a child who just left his mother for the first time in his life and went from a tiny dustball in the middle of nowhere to the most populated planet in the galaxy, and is now being tested by a bunch of old people with the power to decide his future. Obviously he’s afraid, and obviously he’s not dealing with it the way Jedi younglings do. That, in and of itself doesn't doom him to fall. Also what Yoda misses there is that suffering leads to fear. This is a closed loop, and one that has defined Anakin’s entire childhood.

Let’s come back to how the system doesn’t always work. The way I see it, most of the characters we see are attached. Obi-Wan is considered one of the greatest Jedi of his time. Windu describes him as “our most cunning and insightful Master—and our most tenacious”. And yet, he was not insightful enough to look past his love for Anakin, his attachment, and see how close to falling he was. Ahsoka was so attached to Anakin she refused to listen to Maul on Mandalore, refused to even consider the posibility he could fall. She was arguably the person with the best shot at preventing the empire forming at that point, and she loved anakin so much she doomed him and the entire galaxy. Aayla admitted to thinking of Quinlan as her father, and also, apparently in legends had a long relationship with Kit. Even Mace didn’t follow the code when he decided to kill Palpatine, which directly led to his death and the empire. He also indirectly caused the war to start. According to wookiepedia “Windu viewed Dooku as the shatterpoint of the entire Separatist movement, which meant striking Dooku down would theoretically end the imminent clone war before it even began. However, Windu's prior attachments to Dooku clouded his judgment.” I’m not even going to mention Kanan and Ezra, who are obviously family.

So basically everyone is attached and lying about it. How has no one thought that maybe this isn’t the healthiest way to live and tried to change the code? Well, I have a theory, and it’s Yoda. He was 900 years old when he died, and was on the council for the vast majority of his life. I can’t find when exactly he became grand master, but it’s safe to assume he held some degree of power over the entire order for most of a millennium. At the end of TPM he tells Obi-Wan “Confer on you the level of Jedi knight, the council does. But agree with your taking this boy as your padawan learner, I do not.” Then he reverses that decision by himself. So either he has the power to veto the council’s word, or who gets trained is entirely up to him. Either way, not great, considering his lifespan is so much longer than most Jedi, and therefore his approach to life is vastly different. Humans need love and closeness to live. However, while we don’t know much about Yoda’s species, it probably isn’t a social one. You could count all the characters of this species on two (human) hands, and Yoda lived in complete isolation for 20 years on Dagobah, and only went a little bit insane. They are naturally rare, and therefore probably lead solitary lives in nature. Moreover, Yoda outlived every master who trained him, and almost every padawan he trained himself, (there’s a great post about that here) so even if he wasn’t naturally predisposed to non-attachment, he would have had to learn it to deal with all the loss he had to live through over the years.

A lot of people think that Anakin fell because he had attachments, which is not true. He fell because of how his attachments played out and/or ended. The most obvious example being Palpatine, who used Anakin’s trust and friendship to groom him for over a decade and actively undermine Anakin’s trust towards anyone else, especially the order. (more on that here). Obi-Wan refused to take on the role of a father figure that Anakin tried to shove him into, so he turned to someone who did accept it. It’s not Anakin’s fault that it turned out to be the worst person alive, nor can we expect him to notice when he’s known Palpatine since he was a child. Another failure of jedi non-attachment, because a loving parent or guardian would not let their child be used as a bargaining chip when the most powerful politician in the galaxy blackmailed the order into allowing him to meet Anakin regularly, but a distant teacher and detached knight thinking of the greater good might. The other attachments Anakin had were taken from him (Shmi and Ahsoka, the last orchestrated by Palpatine who was fully ready to give her the death penalty to make Anakin more unstable), or he was forced to lie and hide them, compromising his vows as a Jedi (Padme) or refused to choose Anakin over the order/their principles (Obi-Wan, and again Ahsoka, and to some extent Padme, but he’d already fallen then). All these people had every right to make the choices they made, but it wasn’t the act of loving them that made Anakin turn to the dark side, it was how those attachments played out.

I think everyone agrees that Yoda is as detached as a Jedi should, if not can, be, and that didn’t prevent Dooku from falling. We see that explored in more detail with Barriss and Luminara. Luminara is detached and distant, she’s fond of Barriss, but their relationship is not familial in the slightest, and she repeatedly shows her willingness to put the greater good and the mission before Barriss’ safety and even life. And yet Barriss still falls. A complex combination of events and choices caused each of those characters to fall, not the simple presence or absence of attachment.

And lastly, just as attachment can make you unstable if your relationship with that person is unstable, it can also make you stronger. There is a reason Anakin and Obi-Wan were the face of the army. Not only did their obvious attachment (the strongest between two jedi we are shown) make them more relatable to the public, but they, when working as a team, are shown repeatedly to be more or less undefeatable. They spend half of aotc flinging themselves off great heights because they know the other will be there to catch them. They know from years of experience that they have backup and they know each other well enough (or force bond communicate) that they can trust the other will be where he needs to be to help/save them. Contrast that to how Windu and Palpatine fight in rots once the window breaks- very carefully, clearly holding back to keep themselves safe. Neither of them has backup until Anakin arrives, but until the last second they can't be sure which one he will choose. Anakin and Obi-Wan fight the same way on Mustafar, especially when balancing on that thin bridge. No acrobatics, swinging arms to keep balance, keeping their distance, being almost uncharacteristically careful compared to how they treated heights in aotc, in tcw, and on the invisible hand in rots, because they both know the other won't catch them if they fall this time.

#star wars meta #attachment #star wars #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #yoda #jedi order #mine

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stxleslyds · 3 years ago

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You always seem down on the idea of the Batfam. I mean, it is hard to take seriously when writers make Bruce hostile or downright abusive towards his kids, or when Batfam members never interact. But do you think the concept itself is good, and it's just been the victim of bad writing? Or do you think the Batfam is a bad idea that can never work?

Hi there Anon! Thank you for the ask!

Hmm, this is a difficult question. Maybe I can answer this better if I do it in parts because the concept of “Batfamily” is used in different ways currently. A way to separate them can be, DC’s Batfamily, Fandom’s Batfamily and Fandom’s Batfamily lore being introduced in comics’ canon.

DC’s Batfamily:

My rejection of this version of Batfamily comes from all angles, it is not a good concept within comics lore anymore, it’s badly written and used to hide and move on from truly horrendous actions done by Bruce towards the rest of the family, and DC uses the concept of “Batfamily” that fandom has become so attached to, so they can profit off of it without writing anything of real essence with it.

Why did I say that the Batfamily isn’t a good concept anymore? Well, because the Batfamily that I first came across in comics included, Bruce, Dick, Alfred, Barbara, Tim and Cassandra. It was rather small and their books interconnected and had pretty solid relationships with one another. Dick and Tim got along and spent time together, Barbara mentored Cass so she could become Batgirl and so on and so forth. The family was smaller and more connected. But they still had problems and bad habits then. So, I liked them as a group of people that worked together and the name they received was “Batfamily” as a way for DC to profit from it.

Right now, the Batfamily is huge, I don’t know if you have seen those splash pages with all the members of it for Rebirth and Infinite Frontier, but those promotional pages were crazy big, characters like Harley and Clownhunter are now considered part of the “Batfamily” and all that. Then there is the kind of characters like Cass, Steph and Kate who are all connected to Batman but that haven’t been appearing in books for very long, so putting them on that page really feels like DC is trying to prove that their “Batfamily” actually has women on it, but it’s just for show.

And then there is Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian, the most recognizable faces of the Batfamily aside from Bruce and Alfred (but Alfred is dead now so he doesn’t really count), all of them have had issues with Bruce or are indifferent to the existence of one another. Yes, Tom Taylor has included Tim in Dick’s book but here is the thing, it feels like he put him there just to make fans shut up about the lack of content with both of them acting as they used to do. But its false and lazy, Taylor just brought Tim to the book but we don’t get to see Tim and Dick interact in ways that can explain why they drifted off, it kinda seems like all those years where Dick and Tim were pulled apart never happened to DC and that makes me think “cash grab”. I would have loved to see them interact again if it meant that we would have some solid story for them to develop their relationship once more.

At the end of Rebirth, Damian was pissed off at Bruce and they had a fight and Damian left the manor completely. Bruce beat up Jason, then gave him a hug but still told him that he was banned from Gotham and all that abuse and manipulation was swept under the rug when DC came out with Urban Legends: Cheer, all they did with that story is lie and made-up stories about Jason wanting Bruce to go on a killing spree so Gotham can finally be the home to his beloved family (lies, lies, lies).

On top of all that we have the neglect, abuse and manipulation that Bruce had going on with Dick, ever since Bruce manipulated Dick into joining Spyral his actions haven’t faced any consequences (the family still believes that Dick was the one who lied about dying). And as recently as the end of Rebirth, Dick suffered from a head injury that left him amnesiac and Bruce absolutely didn’t care enough to look after him when he was so vulnerable and alone. DC had the audacity of having Bruce say that he was looking after Dick while Dick went from one villain manipulating and hurting him to another, and if we look at Batman’s run, we can see that he spent some of that time in a weird pit or playing catch the pussy with Selina in a tropical island.

So, taking all those things into account, I honestly believe that the Batfamily is a concept that absolutely does not belong in comics. If it were to be taken seriously then DC should come up with (organic, not forced) stories that make these characters connect once again, but they have to be careful, just because they can connect it doesn’t mean that everyone gets along and they have group chats and eat dinner together of Fridays, that would be a blatant lie and just too out there for their kind of dynamic, so, they should take things slow, start re-building what once was an make it better (if they want to make it work and feel like less of a cash grab).

I heard that there is a book with Cass and Steph being mentored as Batgirls by Barbara coming out in December, that to me is a good thing, what was done in Robin #5 was awful, Jason didn’t have or want to be there, Tim, what the hell was Tim doing there? The only ones that have gotten along with Damian and have had a solid relationship with him were Dick and Steph. Dick had a very nice moment with Damian in that issue, but Steph didn’t, they preferred to have Jason wanting to hug Damian instead (what the actual hell was that?).

Fandom’s Batfamily:

Fandom is a place where people can take any concept from anywhere and transform it into whatever they please. This fandom is just like any other in that matter, but I have noticed that sometimes the Batfamily Fandom tends to blur the lines between what’s fanon and canon. Their lore is so deep and established among people that they sometimes (willingly or not) make new readers or other people believe that how things and perceived in fandom is how things actually are in comics, and that is a huge problem.

Things like “Dick sent Jason to Arkham when the Joker was just a cell away”, “Jason has pit madness and when he gets mad his eyes turn glowy green”, “Dick was a horrendous brother to Jason before Jason died”, “Jason would be good friends with Tim and Cass”, “Jason is the only one that sees the world differently from Bruce and the other robins because he is the only one that comes from a life with no luxury” and so on and on and on…

All of those things are sometimes treated as the absolute truth by fandom and no matter how many times people have debunked and explained that those things aren’t part of comics’ canon because they are simply not true, fandom stills treats those things as the basis of their Batfamily lore.

That lore would be actually fascinating if people didn’t lose sight so easily of the fact that at the end of the day none of that lore can be applied to comics’ canon.

When you enter this fandom things can be extremely confusing and the way some of the characters are characterized are completely different to their canon characterizations, I knew that the Dick fandom was writing about was not real, but I had no idea that Tim being a coffee addict that hasn’t slept in five months and is an absolute genius in everything and anything that he does was completely out of character for him, I just thought that was true to his character in comics too. Something like that happened to me when I took a peek at Jason’s side of fandom, by that time I had read Red Hood/Arsenal, UtRH and New 52 RHatO (yeah in that order, Red Hood/Arsenal wasn’t finished yet though), with the already conflicting characterizations of those books, the first look that I had at fandom’s Jason confused me even more. After considering all those I decided that the Jason that I wanted to see and actually looked appealing to me was UtRH Jason.

Not all people in fandom read comics and that is ABSOLUTELY VALID, I have zero problems with people not liking the comic characterizations of the “Batfamily” characters, but that in itself also creates a rift between fans themselves.

Fandom’s Batfamily lore being introduced in comics’ canon:

This is obviously the intersection of the other two points and this is the biggest problem that I have with the Batfamily concept. The fandom lore has been leaking into comic’s canon for a while now but right now we are kinda drowning in it. Decisions that have been made recently in DC like, Jason giving up his guns, the group chats in Nightwing issues, the family dinners that were hinted at in Cheer #6, and Bruce having had at the ready a Red Hood suit for Jason with a Batman logo in its chest, have been proof enough that DC is planning on skipping any kind of solid writing for these characters to actually get along. We are never going to see these people sit down and talk about their differences and respect each other’s work ethics.

We are never going to get stories of actual essence that prove that these characters understand and care for each other, we are just going to be told that “all is good” and now everyone loves one another and they will build from there.

That is a problem for me.

And it also takes away duality from Gotham’s vigilantes, I know I say this too much but it’s the truth, putting all these characters under the ruling of Batman makes them all bland. Jason shouldn’t be part of any sort of group that involves Bruce! My god, I don’t want to see them interact anymore! Bruce has been absolute trash to Jason ever since he came back from the dead and I am tired of DC trying to make them be on good terms!

Jason and Bruce not getting along can co-exist with the fact that Jason isn’t a villain to Batman’s legendary hero. Jason is his own character, with his own morals and he doesn’t need a bat symbol on his chest or book logo to be relevant. Same with Dick, Tim and Barbara, let them be characters that can stand on their own because they have already done that!

Barbara as Oracle worked WITH Batman if she wanted, she had her own logo and had passed on the mantle of Batgirl because he had grown out of it.

Dick is Nightwing and has become an even better hero than Batman could even aspire to become, he has contacts with everyone in the DC universe, has led countless teams, he doesn’t NEED a batman logo on his book or to be constantly dragged back to him just to make the Bat more compelling.

Jason, my sweet Jason, he had his own logo! It was gorgeous and then Lobdell had the audacity to stamp a Batman logo in the middle of the book name and in Jason’s chest! Have we gone absolutely mad? Why did they do that? Lobdell’s constant back and forth with Jason and his feelings for Bruce, he respects him and he doesn’t, he kills and he doesn’t… each issue felt like a new take on the character! It was crazy!

And that has happened with everyone in the “family”. I will end this by saying that Bruce/Batman being at the centre of this “Batfamily” dynamic is the most laughable thing in the DC Universe. Batman isn’t family to any of the people that they constantly surround him with, he is a piece of shit.

Anyway Anon, I hope this answer doesn’t ruin your day and that you understand that even though I really don’t like the “Batfamily” concept, you and everyone else are allowed and encouraged to think differently!

Hope you have a marvellous day Anon!

#jason todd #red hood #dick grayson #nightwing #tim drake #damian wayne #batfamily #batfam #dc comics #asksss

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lesbianrobin · 3 years ago

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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