#just the people who thinks he’s actually innocent

[prncssguya]

on hwang in-ho/front man, seong gi-hun and their dynamic.

first, idk why people are getting so upset at other people calling gi-hun dumb, we were told that in the first season. lol being bright is not his strongest trait but he has a good heart and we love that about him. however, he is still an idealistic gullible idiot with a gambling problem. except this time his gambling addiction is backed by a sense of justice and righteousness and he no longer gambles with money, he’s gambling with people’s lives. front man asked a good question at the end of the season, “did you have fun playing the hero?” can we even call gi-hun the hero of the story anymore? he gambled with people’s lives and front man showed him the consequences of his moral heroics.

front man only agreed to help gi-hun with his revolution when he mentioned about "small sacrifices for the greater good". i think he reveled in the fact that the “good guy” was willing to allow a few innocent people to die for the greater good to stop the games, which is exactly what the entire VIP theory is to rid the world of 'trash' to improve the world. notice how gi-hun's moral code and belief also changed, from being "nobody should die" into "yeah small sacrifice is okay as long it's for the greater good" at this point, he just proved that front man's belief is actually valid. AND he gets more of his own people killed in the pointless battle with the soldiers that they had no chance of winning. now he gets to feel responsible for all those deaths and the death of his friend and for whatever additional torture they cook up in the next games (as punishment for the escape attempt).

now on hwang in-ho, i believe he was once a good man and the story he told gi-hun was the truth. but in the end he lost a kidney, lost a wife, a baby, lost his money, got fucked over by the wrong people and got into serious debt and had to play this game to help his wife and probably it was too late to save her. he might have played the games like gi-hun but saw how ruthless and greedy people are and resolved that they don't deserve help

i don’t think in-ho wants/will kill gi-hun, but he wants him to understand things from his perspective and show him that his compassion for the people in the games is foolish. you can tell the frontmen (the old man and in-ho) are extremely fond of gi hun. not only did he protect their original front man when nobody else did, he then won the games and thus their respect as he is now as rich as them. he's no longer "trash", he’s an elite like them. i think they both actually kept tabs on him after he won (i wonder if they do that for all winners? inserting them with gps chips?) because they knew he had not used his reward money and in-ho wanted gi-hun to get on the plane and be happy with his daughter

there’s one interesting aspect of the games that makes front man such a complex character. the fact that they’re operating a organ transplant trafficking network. in a way, he’s creating some good to come from a really fucked up situation. but is it really for the good of others who desperately need it, people like his wife, like his brother? or is it just a money making scheme?

either way, i don’t think there is going to be a redemption arc for in-ho, he’s too far gone. we may get to see more of his human side if he manages to see jun-ho again. the only time we’ve seen genuine emotions from him was when he shot his brother like he seemed distraught

the real cliffhanger for me, is will gi-hun stay true to his belief that people can be good, or will he be forever changed into a villain and become the next front man…? after the events of this season i don’t see how his will doesn’t shatter. he’s witnessed how humanity consistently chose money over survival, he’s lost two close friends, his mother, abandoned his daughter. he has gained nothing from wanting to stop the games and this clearly feels like an origin story for the next front man. it’s clear the front man has won this round and i think squid game will either die with 001 or continue with gi-hun as game master

another thing i find funny that i don’t see many mention is how gi-hun is like the luckiest guy in the fucking world. but i don’t think him being alive this long is plot armor, it makes sense. the games exist for the entertainment of rich sadists who have so much money they don't know what to do with it (remember what old 001 said in s1 about life being no fun for both people with no money and people with too much money). and i’d imagine killing hundreds of poor debt-ridden fools year after year gets boring. especially when said fools are desperate enough to gamble with their lives because they think they can beat the system by playing better than everyone else and surviving and getting the money.

gihun is different because he got the money, got out, and still came back. not because he's unfeeling or because he wants more money, but because he's still convinced he can beat the system.

if you're a rich bored gazillionaire, would you rather watch some randos die or would you rather watch this exceptional idiot fail again and again until he learns that his ideals are meaningless and people are inherently greedy and equality is a myth and people at the bottom of the barrel don't get to question the system?

if you're an asshole gazillionaire, you don't want someone to challenge you and just get away with it. you want to hand them 45.6 billion won and make them go away quietly, traumatized, after breaking them psychologically by making them do horrible things until they understand they're just powerless "horses". if they insist on challenging you and your system and your beliefs (money = boundless power), you teach them a lesson and show them their place in the most manipulative and cruel way possible. if gihun dies right away, that's boring. so he can't die, he needs to suffer. he needs to concede defeat.

also, i find it funny how people are comparing hwang inho and gihun dynamic to hannibal and will graham. makes sense, their whole cat and mouse game, front man hiding his true nature from gi-hun the same way hannibal does, trying to corrupt the righteous protagonist, sowing chaos, testing him and observing his behavior like a lab rat, the crazy tension and staring contests, the gaslighting and manipulation. and with the fact that they think lee byung-hun looks like mads mikkelsen. i never put the two of them together but now i can’t unsee it lol

[ikkyfics]

Rush Hour

Dave Lizewski x f!reader

Summary: "Actually, I think I like it." "The chaos?" Dave asked, confused but already smiling, knowing you well enough to sense you were up to something. "Not exactly," you said, leaning closer to his arm. "I like being this close to you."

Warnings: none

Masterlist

The bus was full of chaotic energy, typical of rush hour. You and Dave were standing side by side, his hands gripping the back of a nearby seat to help with balance as the vehicle swayed on the road. You were far too comfortable with the closeness, enjoying the warmth he radiated and the natural way he made sure to keep you protected from any jostles or stumbles.

"Is the crowd bothering you?" he asked, leaning slightly toward you, his voice soft over the noise of the conversations around.

"Not at all," you answered with a smile, your eyes sparkling as you looked at him. "Actually, I think I like it."

"The chaos?" he asked, confused but already smiling, knowing you well enough to sense you were up to something.

"Not exactly," you said, leaning closer to his arm. "I like being this close to you."

His smile faltered for a second, his blue eyes widening slightly before he laughed quietly, nervous but clearly charmed. "You have a special talent for making me blush, you know that?"

"I know," you replied, shrugging with false innocence. "It's just that you look adorable when you're flustered."

Dave sighed, but the smile on his face couldn't deny it. "You're impossible," he said, with a tone that sounded more like a compliment.

The bus braked suddenly, and you stumbled forward, letting out a small surprised gasp. Before you could process it, Dave’s arms were around you, firm and protective, holding you against him. The warmth of his body enveloped you, and you felt your heart race again, realizing once more how much stronger he was than he appeared under those loose clothes. It never ceased to surprise you, even though you’d spent a generous amount of time with your hands—and your mouth—on him.

"I got you," he said, his voice deep and reassuring, his eyes full of concern as he checked to see if you were alright.

"My hero," you replied, your lips curving into a tender smile.

"Are you really okay?" he asked, his fingers still holding your waist as if he didn’t trust the bus’s balance—or maybe yours.

"Perfectly fine," you replied, but you didn’t bother pulling away. On the contrary, you wrapped your arms around him, resting your chin lightly on his chest, a shameless smile curving your lips. "I think I’ll stay here for a while. It’s a good spot, you know?"

He let out a low laugh, tilting his head to look at you. "Oh, yes, super comfortable. Limited space, people bumping into us every second. A paradise, really."

"It’s comfortable because it’s you," you said softly, your voice full of sincerity.

Dave blinked, clearly taken by surprise, before a slow smile spread across his face. "You have no idea how you dismantle me when you say things like that."

"That’s the idea," you replied, your eyes sparkling with amusement.

But then, you stood on your tiptoes, the movement forcing him to tilt his head a little more. Your lips hovered near his ear as you whispered, "I love you, Dave."

He froze for a second, his face immediately reddening, but the arms around you tightened slightly, as if he wanted to hold you even closer. "I love you too," he replied, his voice low but full of emotion.

You pulled back just enough to meet his gaze, and there was so much tenderness in his blue eyes that your heart seemed to melt. "Now I’m the one who’s flustered," you admitted, laughing quietly as you looked away.

"Nice," he teased, confidence coloring the smile on his face. "Finally, it’s my turn."

You rolled your eyes, but there was a mischievous smile on your lips. Leaning against him, you took advantage of the small space between you to let your hands rest gently on his chest, your fingers tracing lazy circles on his shirt. The warmth of the closeness made him swallow hard, but Dave didn’t look away – maybe a bit more confident, maybe just unable to pull away from you.

"Do you think the others would get really upset if I kissed you now?" you asked, your voice soft and sweet, full of that teasing tone he knew so well.

Dave blinked, clearly trying to process the question as a blush quickly rose from his neck to his cheeks. He looked away for a second, as if he was genuinely considering the people around, but soon met your gaze again, a small smile playing on his lips. "Well, considering how cramped this bus is, I think someone might complain... if they wanted to."

You raised an eyebrow, tilting your head slightly. "And you? Would you complain?"

"Me?" He let out a low laugh, shaking his head. "You already know the answer."

The smile on your lips grew, and before he could think of anything else to say, you rose on your tiptoes and pressed a quick, light kiss to his lips. It was sweet and subtle, but the intensity in the way you looked at him afterward made the moment feel so much bigger.

Dave stood frozen, his eyes sparkling and his mouth slightly open, as if he was trying to find words that didn’t come. "You shouldn’t do that," he finally said, his voice low and a little hoarse.

You furrowed your brow, more curious than worried. "Why not?"

He sighed, a small smile forming as he lowered his head to whisper near your ear. "Because here, right now, I can’t kiss you the way I want to."

The sentence hung in the air between you, and the heat spread across your face instantly. Your eyes met his, and there was something in Dave’s gaze that mixed both affection and a touch of boldness, leaving you completely speechless for a second.

"Dave Lizewski," you murmured, feeling the smile form on your lips again. "You’re getting really good at this, you know?"

He shrugged, but the casual tone was broken by the way he looked at you, a constant gleam in his eyes that said more than any words could. "I learned from the best," he replied, sincerity evident in his voice.

You couldn’t resist, resting your head against his chest again, the rhythmic sound of his heart making you smile even more. He wrapped his arm around your shoulders, giving a light squeeze, as if the presence of so many people around just didn’t matter.

The bus jolted again, but neither of you seemed to care. You were there, together, immersed in the sweet and quiet moment that only the two of you could share.

"Promise you’ll kiss me properly later?" you asked softly, just for him to hear.

"I promise," he replied, and there was something in his voice that made your heart race – something between fun, tenderness, and the kind of certainty only Dave could put into such simple words.

[alottiegoingon]

glinda has a crush.

glinda upland x fem!reader

summary: glinda upland is smitten, and she’s making sure the whole world (especially you) knows it, whether you catch on or not. warnings: fluff overload, afab reader, lesbian glinda, glinda being dramatic, harmless meddling, lots of pink, not proofread, nsfw at the very end, MDNI.

glinda is not subtle. when glinda has a crush, the whole of oz could probably figure it out before you do. she’s extra giggly around you, tossing her hair and flashing her most radiant smile whenever you’re in sight.

she has been fighting people that call her "glinda" for her whole life. "it's gah-linda. with a gah". but you could call her belinda and she'd be like "okay, guess that's my name now hehe :D".

lots of "toss toss". when you're around, she performs this move even more flamboyantly, ensuring you notice her. she even practice it in front of a mirror to perfect it all in hopes of impressing you.

her love language is... extravagant. expect surprise deliveries of glittery pink bouquets, handwritten notes sealed with her signature wax stamp, new clothes, and occasionally, enchanted trinkets she insists you “simply must have.”

“oh, wow, that outfit is so scandalocious! no one wears pink like you do!” glinda’s endless flattery toes the line between sweet and over-the-top.

despite her bubbly demeanor, glinda gets a little possessive... she might interrupt your conversations with others by swooping in, linking arms with you, and whisking you away under the guise of “urgent matters.”

elphaba is so done. she immediately catches on to glinda’s feelings and rolls her eyes at every lovestruck sigh or poorly veiled attempt to get your attention. “just tell her already,” she mutters, but glinda insists she’s being subtle.

not even fiyero can get away. he becomes glinda’s reluctant confidant. she quizzes him endlessly. “do you think she noticed my new hairpin? was it obvious when i accidentally brushed her hand?”

glinda occasionally ropes her more impressionable classmates into “spontaneous” group activities that just happen to involve you. picnic by the emerald city fountain? surprise study group? all glinda’s doing.

when you don’t pick up on her hints, glinda cranks up the theatrics. she might “accidentally” trip so you can catch her, dramatically swoon when you compliment her, or claim she needs your advice about “a dear friend who’s in love with someone amazing…”

subtlety? what subtlety? if all else fails, she starts making outrageous claims, like how the stars in the night sky don’t shine as brightly as your eyes. by this point, even munchkins are side-eyeing her obviousness.

very possessive. very jealous. careful, she bites. if she sees you talking to someone she doesn’t quite trust, glinda will immediately try to steal your attention. whether it’s showing up next to you with a loud “oh, darling, there you are!” or tugging you away by the waist with a soft, dramatic "i need you for just a second...", her jealousy is obvious, but she tries to play it off with a sweet, innocent demeanor. It's almost too cute to notice, but not quite.

when she finally confesses, you can expect a dramatic monologue.

glinda’s confession is a whirlwind of dramatic proclamations and heartfelt vulnerability. “dearest, i simply cannot go another day without telling you… you are the brightest star in my sky, the melody in my heart, and the only person who can make me feel like this!”

when you admit you feel the same, glinda’s jaw actually drops even if she had spent weeks trying to make you notice her. she recovers quickly, though, already planning millions of dates.

expect her to immediately start gushing to everyone who’ll listen. “attention, everyone! she said yes! isn’t she just perfect?” meanwhile, you’re trying to hide your face from the attention.

in a relationship, when you catch her being a little too clingy or dramatic after seeing someone else talk to you, glinda will act innocent, flashing you her most dazzling smile while saying, "me? jealous? oh, princess, no. i’m simply making sure you know you’re mine.” she’ll lean in for a kiss as if nothing's wrong, but you can tell she's putting on an act.

if she feels like she’s losing your attention for too long, she might retreat into a little meltdown, just to get you to reassure her. she’ll dramatically sigh and pout, plopping herself next to you on the couch or across the room. “ugh, why do they even talk to you like that? you’re too good for them!” her jealousy is always a bit over the top, but the underlying sentiment is clear: she wants all your love, and she wants it now.

expect your individuality to be gone when you become her girlfriend. you could be in a party and someone offered you pizza and glinda would wrap her arm around your waist, pull you close and say "oh, we would love it, don't we, my dear?"

personal space? there's no such a thing when glinda is your girlfriend, please! physical touch is a must. kissing, hugging, biting your cheeks or ears affectionately (or more), holding hands anywhere and any time, rubbing your back or your knee when sitting next to each other, you name it.

NSFW (MDNI)!!!

a very soft top!!!

glinda throws herself into everything with gusto, and intimacy is no exception. she treats every moment as though it’s a grand performance, designed to leave you utterly breathless.

glinda loves to talk during intimate moments. she’s shamelessly loud, peppering the air with compliments, exclamations of delight, and plenty of your name. it’s never quiet with her, not that you’d want it to be.

she talks you through it and she isn't shy about it. she likes giving orders and watching you fall apart when following religiously every word she says.

she’ll tease you mercilessly, grinning as she whispers things like, “oh, darling, you’ll have to beg if you want more. i couldn't quite hear you.”

while glinda radiates self-assurance, there’s also an adorable side of her that craves reassurance and exploration. “do you like it when i do this?” she’ll ask, watching your every reaction like her life depends on it.

if you wear glasses, she would love to keep it during sex. "let's put that back in," she says, while gracefully on top of you.

during your first time, she'd be so gentle and attentive to how you'd react to every touch of hers. you feel like passing out when she runs her fingers through your soaked folds so patiently just to see your face contorting in pleasure.

"oh, there it is," she says softly, with that adorable smile feigning innocence, when you trembled at the pad of her thumb touching your clit.

sometimes, when you are in your shared dorm after class, tired and sitting on your bed, you decide to read a book. it takes glinda nothing more than 5 seconds to get bored and impatient and climb onto the bed, crawling to you to spread your legs open and sit in between them. you'd complain and say you were reading and she'd go like "of course. keep doing that, darling, i'm not stopping you," before having her face buried in your pretty pussy.

glinda loves trailing her lips along your neck, often leaving faint marks she calls “little declarations of my adoration.” the hollow of your collarbone is her second favorite spot, especially if you’re wearing something that exposes it. you can't blame her, she likes showing you off!

she finds kissing your thighs endlessly fascinating, claiming it’s the “perfect way to worship you.” expect slow, lingering kisses here, especially when she’s feeling extra romantic (or very horny).

there’s something incredibly intimate about the way she kisses your fingertips and palms, sometimes intertwining your fingers with hers as she gazes at you like you’re the only person in existence.

tell her how beautiful she is, how good she’s making you feel, or how much you want her, and she’ll melt into a puddle of happiness. her confidence skyrockets when you’re vocal about your admiration.

glinda adores the little things. running her hands over every curve of your body, memorizing your favorite spots, and taking her time to make sure you feel completely adored.

post-intimacy, glinda becomes the clingiest cuddle bug ever. she insists on holding you close, peppering you with soft kisses, and telling you (loudly) just how much she adores you. if you let go of her to go get some water, she'll get very upset. do you even love her? do you hate her now? how dare you to abandon her for... 10 seconds?

[scarletdreamers]

There ultimately is one question that bothers many when it comes to Will: Is Will Graham actually a bad person? (because no one knows what exactly swims around in the hot darkness of his mind, but I tried to sum it up anyway)

The thing about Will is that yes, he is certainly not a ‘good’ person. At least not after Hannibal started messing with his head, though I’m convinced Will never was in the first place. However, not only Will’s character, but pretty much the whole show is about the thin and multi-shaded line of good and bad. Moral and immoral. It’s exactly that blurry line that makes Will such an interesting protagonist. He is not the bad guy, neither is he the hero in his own story. He tried to play the roles of both (FBI agent vs killer), managed to fool even himself for a while, but Will knows very well who he is and what he was doing.

It’s an ancient question, isn’t it? What is good and what is bad? Are those two defined by societal norms and standards? Are they based on culture, religion, or is morality something personal? Something only you can decide for yourself? 

I’m going to include Hannibal here for a second, because when it comes to Hannibal, the last one of those options applies. The thing with Hannibal is that he has his own philosophies, his own ideals and morals. Hannibal constantly rivals God, claiming that he himself can’t be called evil because God does the same things and isn’t considered ‘’bad’’. Hannibal has his own borders and limits very straight. He can recognise plain cruelty, but the thing with Hannibal is that he is a very stylised manifestation of sin.

Hannibal is religious, though there might not be a specific religion or deity he believes in and he worships no higher beings, he does believe in the ‘’rules’’ of certain religions. He is well aware that he crosses most of those. They hold no value for him. He makes his own rules, plays his own game. In his world, there is no ‘’good’’ or ‘’bad’’ when it comes to actual crimes against humanity. A bad person is for him someone very rude, someone who lacks respect and manners. He doesn’t consider himself a ‘’good’’ person. He is something entirely else. A way of perceiving life and his own morality that no one except from Will can truly understand. 

Hannibal, however, is to us a bad person. He is the ‘’ultimate bad guy’’, because the way he feels about Will doesn’t excuse the rest of his behaviour. Hannibal is a sadist, a narcissist, a manipulative and awful man. He kills and feels no remorse for most if not all of his victims. For him killing is an art, a pleasure, he delights in it. For him, that is not as ‘’bad’’ or evil as it is for us (society), though he knows he is alone in that world. 

For that same reason, Hannibal doesn’t consider Will a bad person. He considers Will his equal. He knows that the both of them are deemed ‘’bad’’ people to the public, but that doesn’t matter in his world. In Hannibal’s mind, it’s just him and Will against the rest of the world. They are neither good nor evil. They simply are.

So back to Will, who understands Hannibal’s view of morality, but doesn’t necessarily think the same. If we look at it the same way as we looked at Hannibal, in a societal and common sense, yes, Will is a bad person. Can a stereotypically ‘’good’’ person like killing, even if it’s bad men? The satisfaction in killing, even if it’s a bad person, isn’t a moral thing. Someone truly ‘’good’’ would always choose punishment over murder. Then there’s also the fact that Will didn’t blink twice when he and Hannibal ate human meat and that he consumed it, knowingly, without a single complaint.

Will had no issues using innocent people (Chilton, Freddie Lounds, etc) to achieve his own goals. He is as (if not more) manipulative as Hannibal and is sometimes cruel in ways that even shocks the Chesapeake Ripper. Will made absurd sacrifices to get what he wanted, did things no stereotypically ‘’good’’ man would ever think of doing. Then I’m not even talking about maybe the simplest and most ordinary example of how little he actually cares for most things, which is his sweet wife, Molly (her son Walter, too). 

However, Will did try to be good. He tried very hard. He wanted to be a good person, to save people. Will can care for others in ways Hannibal can’t. Hannibal has no moral compass, Will does. A broken one, but he does. Will wants to help people more often than he wants to hurt them (The conversation with Bedelia about crushing or saving a wounded bird is a perfect example of this. So are his needs to save dogs and Abigail.) The thing about Will is that he desired to be good. He worked for the FBI, saved many lives, because he understands pain and suffering like no other. He doesn’t wish such horrid things upon innocent people. 

During the show, Will's morality is completely tied to Hannibal, so much that Hannibal himself and the stag even serve as metaphors for his corruption, while at the same time, his morality has nothing to do with Hannibal. Will always had dark urges. He always knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with him, with the things he wanted and was capable of doing. Perhaps that’s why he joined the police and later the FBI. He suppressed the worst of him by focusing on the best of himself. By forcing himself to save people through a job, he couldn’t afford to misbehave and do things he knew were wrong. Will’s fantasies, dreams and understanding of killers throughout the show make it very clear that he struggled with his own morality, even before Hannibal.

Then came, of course, Hannibal. Who fueled those urges and gave them attention. Who didn’t create them, but cared for them. Allowed them to sprout and grow until Will got entangled in such a web of situations and feelings that he couldn’t suppress them anymore. Hannibal forced Will to deal with who he really is, he broke Will’s shield. His costume, the same way Will did with Hannibal’s person suit. Hannibal is a ‘bad’ influence on Will because he brings out what’s always been inside him, but was repressed for years because Will was aware that society would label him a monster or a freak if he acted on those feelings. Will felt alone and alienated his entire life, of course he tried everything to not fall into a complete pit of loneliness and darkness. 

That was until Hannibal came into his life and Will realised that there was someone who understood him, who loved him for who he really was, even (especially) his ‘darker’ side. Someone who was like him. Who understood how he felt and didn’t see him as an immoral person because of it. Will spent his whole life understanding others, but Hannibal was the first person to actually understand him in return. 

Hannibal thinks Will’s ‘worst’ side is the most beautiful version of him. Will himself is torn between what Hannibal (the one person who understands and cares for him) and society (his upbringing, religion, anyone he ever met, norms and values) think of him. He doesn’t know what to believe. He knows he’s a bad person, he doesn’t try to make himself believe he isn’t. As I said, Will still has a moral compass, he’s self conscious about the things he does.

However, there is a great possibility that Hannibal changed Will’s perception of himself. That he made Will see that there’s no need to think of himself as a bad person. Just as a person. A human with urges and desires. Who can decide for themselves whether their actions are good or bad. Law is far beneath them at this point. In the end, Will and Hannibal navigate their own morality through their perceptions of their own actions. They both have a dislike for labels. Good and bad, moral and immoral, those are all labels society has forced upon humanity. Cruelty and kindness are not. Will knows very well when he’s cruel and when he’s kind.

So my conclusion is, yes, Will Graham is stereotypically a self-conscious yet immoral person. At the ending of the series after everything has happened, at least. 

But, I think that, just like Will himself, it’s up to you to decide whether he’s truly good or bad. Some people have other reasons to believe someone is one of the two than others. Some believe that if a person can love, or if they feel guilt or know what they’re doing, they aren’t a bad person. Others don’t. I think that’s entirely up to you to decide. It’s just what you like to believe, because believe me, to Will the line is just as blurry as it is to us. He is as unpredictable to Hannibal as he is for the audience. Will is a mystery of a character, certainly when it comes to his morality. And I think that that is exactly what makes him so fascinating.

[merlinmylove]

I always find it so funny (in a heartbreaking way) when Arthur says “why didn’t you tell me?”

like dude ??

Merlin’s entire existence is outlawed

he was born a crime

how could he have, especially if Uther was still alive?

I understand Arthur feels betrayed and hurt because Merlin didn’t trust him but cmon let’s look at the show

Merlin has been sent to the stocks and the dungeons for being late with breakfast and missing laundry — what would the punishment be if he told the Crown Prince he was a traitor to the kingdom? Banishment, death, or worse? And what if Uther found out?

I don’t think Arthur would’ve killed Merlin, but he would’ve sent him away or hated himself for harbouring a sorcerer — he’s now a hypocrite for putting one person above the law while his father burns druid children

Gaius would’ve been hanged by association, and his mother killed for having concealed a dragonlord (let alone giving birth to another one)

Gwen was arrested twice on suspicion of sorcery, and Uther ordered her pyre built — the only reason she didn’t burn is because 1.Morgana spoke in her favour and, 2. Another sorcerer took the blame

(I love arthur so much but why does he never consider the fact that the love of his life and future queen, was almost innocently executed twice because there is no way of confirming she didn’t use magic — because how does one prove a negative?)

And I doubt Gwen is the first and only person to be falsely accused of sorcery, but she’s the one of few who had friends in high places who were willing to defy the King in order to save her life

If a Kings word is law then why even bother with a trial?

We’ve seen several times that Witchfinders or Druid catchers can steal people (probably citizens from other kingdoms) and earn a living by selling them to the King of Camelot

(and i don’t belive for a second every one of them had magic or were druids. Besides, the whole court now believes the witchfinder to be a fraud, so why does no one think about the future people accused of magic — how does one prove it?)

Mordred was hunted throughout the kingdom for a week simply for being born a druid (neither the King nor Arthur had any way of knowing if he actually had magic, he was simply guilty for existing within the borders of Camelot)

(Arthur risked everything in order to save the little druid boy — i wish this was spoken about more in the show but alas. Also, Gaius mentioned that Uther drowned several children — why does no one in the show discuss this? Does Arthur not know?

We know he feels immense guilt and grief over the raid in the druid camp he led and he did atone for it. I love Bradley’s acting in that scene, his voice breaks as he accepts the reality of what he has been apart of

Merlin saw all this. He lived all of it. How could he have told Arthur he had magic and expected a good outcome? He wanted to, multiple times — but the risk of banishment was too great.

But what about after Arthur is King? How could Merlin tell Arthur he has magic after Uther dies from magic, Morgana has gone mad from magic, and Aggrevaine betrayed him? Merlin could not bring himself to add more betrayal and heartbreak onto Arthur

I adore when fanfic discusses these aspects of the show and actually talks in detail about the horror Uther caused for over 20 years

Make Arthur think for himself and come to terms with what his father did, and also what his own legacy now is

Make Mordred, Morgana, Gaius, and Merlin talk about the horrors of the purge, and the the fear of living under Uthers rule

Make Gwen speak of what she experienced when she, and her father, were wrongly accused of a crime they didn’t commit — they were going to burn innocently, just like those children Uther killed

By Uthers logic Magic corrupts. It is a power one seeks out and must be studied. It is an evil — if that is the case then why did he allow Gaius to remain at court, and privately attend the king and his children? Surely Gaius would be corrupted by now…unless magic does not always corrupt…

I want Arthur to ask himself these questions— why was Gaius (the Kings friend) allowed to stay alive if he simply promised not to use magic again? Why were those innocent druid children not given the same choice?

Arthur asks himself several times if Magic is always evil, or if it can be used for good — and some times it’s almost successful, but in the end it’s like a catch 22 — Arthur sees (mostly) magic being used for evil so therefore it must be evil

I don’t want Merlin to be angry with Arthur or to have a screaming match with him — but I do love when Merlin passively aggressively sets the record straight

The canon answer he gives is “you would’ve chopped my head off” is perfect in my opinion because YES death always a possibility

Especially if Uther found out

(i don’t think Merlin is entirely blameless of course, he could’ve tried harder to sow the seed of doubt in arthur’s mind that maybe magic is not always evil — like after morgause or when arthur requested magic to heal his father, or when magic saves gwens life)

(if only merlin was braver, if only gaius was bolder, if only aggrevaine didn’t betray him, if only gwen spoke up, if only if only if only)

i love these boys so much and i love the angst and arthur’s heartbreak is so painful and merlin’s guilt is all-consuming

thank god for fanfic lol

but anyways this is my rant because i’m bored at my family christmas dinner so

[morphean42]

Falsettos unpopular opinions because two people asked for this and honestly I don’t give a fuck anymore. I want to state this isn’t in response to anyone in particular, though, and if you get offended by any of these think about why. For a good reason? Please tell me and I’d love to debate it, truly. For a petty reason? You’re simply part of the problem.

1. They are Jewish. End of story. If I see anything related to Christianity or Christmas or whatever the fuck with them… shut up. Yes Whizzer is half-Jewish, yes in the revival Cordelia isn’t Jewish (WHICH BRINGS ME TO ANOTHER POINT ILL GET INTO LATER), yes they are most likely secular as evidenced by Mendel’s “religions just a trap” and ‘Days Like This’, no this does not give you the right to ignore their ETHNICITY AND CULTURE.

2. It’s okay to like the revival more. It’s not okay to ignore the original just because you get blinded by conventionally attractive men. Going to my Cordelia point, she’s Jewish in the original, her line ‘Shiksa caterer’ is ‘Kosher caterer’. Again it’s fine if your headcanons and fanfics and fanarts are based on the revival, I love it too, but stop acting like it’s the only version.

3. Whizzer’s entire personality does not revolve around being gay. He’s not a sassy twink. He’s a full grown man with issues that need to be addressed. Again, I reiterate, he is not a twink. Stop. Drawing. Him. Skinny. And. Hairless. I don’t care if ‘ oh but but that’s just my art style!’ Shut up.

4. Correlated to the above point, here are things Whizzer is not: a prostitute, a drug addict, relying on Marvin for everything, a twink (saying that again to get it through peoples fucking skulls), innocent. I’m 100% positive if the people who had these headcanons watched the OBC version of the show they’d never continue to advocate for them… once more I’m begging you guys to look past Andy Randy’s beautiful face and actually use critical thinking skills when it comes to Whizzer.

5. Short but (not) sweet: don’t claim to understand Marvin if you haven’t watched In Trousers. Just don’t.

6. If you flat out hate any character in the show, you’re wrong. Yes I’m still mad about the Mendel thing; if you think any one character is worse than the rest and isn’t just a fully human person with flaws and nuance, you don’t understand the musical as well as you claim.

7. It’s not the ‘gay’ musical. If you like falsettos for Whizzvin and nothing else, please, just… I don’t even know. There’s so much more to it than ‘ooo boys kissing.’ Please grow up, this leads into a whole other point but fetishisation is never okay, no matter who does it.

8. So many people treat Trina as either a perfect angel or just the side character in the way of the gay people. She’s an entire person, an entire character with flaws and hardship and terrible actions done by her and to her. Treat my homophobic queen with the respect she deserves, and acknowledge her faults too. It’s more misogynistic to treat her as perfect when she has issues too than just saying ‘she’s never done anything wrong’.

9. Stop making AIDS jokes.

10. This next one is probably the most iffy on the list. I will never be one to police fandom and creation, you can engage with material in any fucking way you like it literally doesn’t matter to me… but I dislike AUs. Now, I’ll always enjoy a little fun, adding in a twist like lesbian Whizzvin, or enjoying a feel good college AU. But. Especially for Falsettos the canon events are so fucking important and cannot be disregarded as casually as some do. AIDS is an extremely important part of the story, as well as the fact that both Marvin and Whizzer are men. I’m trans myself, but I dislike making them so simply because everything about their characters, all the characters, are so highly specific and important to take these aspects away is to disrespect the message of the musical.

11. It’s very important Mendel is straight. I see some people headcanon him as bisexual or trans or so on, and this just feels so wrong to me. Trina and Mendel are straight and that’s why their acceptance and love for the others in the Tight Knit Family is so important, especially Trina struggles with moving away from the idea that these ‘homosexual tendencies’ are wrong. They are straight but they love Whizzvin and the lesbians just as much as anyone else.

12. This one is so petty and I accept that, but… HIS NAME IS NOT MARVIN GARDENS. GARDEN IS A JOKE CHRISTIAN BORLE MADE BASED ON MONOPOLY. Jesus guys please just stop it it’s so stupid, William Finn didn’t have a last name for Marvin on purpose, and though I can’t do more than theorise what that purpose was, Gardens is so stupid. It’s not even funny. Same goes for Cohen, which just is odd. The only name I could begin to accept is Falsetto, and even then… just work around the last name in your fics.

12 1/2. SIDE TANGENT Jason would never take Weisenbachfeld as his last name. As a child of divorce… no. He’ll never view Mendel as a true father over his own dad, especially after Falsettoland, and he wouldn’t take that name. Hell, I’d known my ex step-father since I was two and I’d never have taken his last name. So, please, I never want to see Jason Weisenbachfeld again. That’s just not how it works.

At the end of the day this is just me alone in my room bitching… I just hope these points resonate with others.

[kalinara]

(A+X #18)

This post is a rerun. If you scroll back twelve years on this tumblr, you're going to see these exact panels. But I was reminded of it when @rei-ismyname posted this review of X-Women.

So for some context, this is part of a series that plays with team ups of Avengers and X-Men characters post Avengers vs. X-Men.

Scott Summers and Steve Rogers was a natural team-up as they're both leader types who generally act with restraint and try to be idealists and sometimes fall short but never maliciously.

There's a natural source of tension too. Steve is a law-and-order type (except when he isn't.) And Scott, at this point in time, is a fugitive Mutant revolutionary who had (under Phoenix possession) killed Charles Xavier.

They actually do work together pretty well. But this is the ending of the story. Where you have both characters coming to blows because Steve wants Scott to submit to arrest and trial.

Presumably in the meantime, Scott is supposed to go back to that prison run by a human supremacist who put him in a shock collar, tortured him, tried to have other prisoners murder him, and got a comparatively innocent young civilian murdered instead.

And then he's supposed to have a jury of his "peers". And Scott has a good question about whether those peers are supposed to be mutants, or whether they'll be human - you know, the people who generally are completely fine with the existence of genocidal robots who attack mutants immediately.

After a conflict that came about because the Avengers (led by Steve) invaded Utopia's sovereign soil and demanded a child, then an Avenger (Tony Stark) split the Phoenix, causing five unprepared people to suddenly be forced to be Phoenix hosts.

And the whole need for the Phoenix came about because an Avenger (Wanda Maximoff) decimated the mutant race. I like Wanda, and acknowledge that since then she's more than made up for it. But at the time, the question was valid: where was HER trial by jury?

Okay, I reluctantly admit that Steve Rogers has his own flaws and blind spots. He could genuinely believe that Scott would get a fair trial and that justice would be served. He might think he can ensure an imprisonment that doesn't involve brutality. But since he doesn't SAY those things, he just looks like a cartoon here.

And that's not even getting into the callousness of the observers. Let's let them "have their moment", as though they're just fighting over whose turn it is to buy dinner, and not whether or not one of them should go back to be tortured in prison.

I actually mostly liked A vs. X (the X-Men parts anyway), and I loved most of the aftermath stuff. And I even loved the vast majority of this team up. But this wasn't a funny ending. Sorry.

...okay, the cowboy hat is pretty funny. I'll give them that.

[kikyoupdates]

Tears of a Villainess ⭑˚🗡️⭑ 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠

yandere!ocs x reader

yandere, reverse harem, isekai, original characters x fem!reader, slowburn, slowburn yandere

Reincarnation isn't as great as it sounds, especially when you've been reborn as none other than the villainess. Fated to die if you stand in the heroine's way, you immediately resolve to distance yourself from the plot. As long as you have nothing to do with any of the relevant characters, surely, you'll be able to avoid an untimely death. But in a horrible turn of events, the heroine ends up wanting to get close to you. Are you really doomed to meet the villainess' tragic end? Or is there an even more sinister fate that awaits you?

previous | story masterlist | next

There are three possible love interests that you can pursue in the game.  

Firstly, Alistair Calderwood. Prior to meeting the heroine, he is engaged to the villainess, but holds no romantic feelings for her. Needless to say, he falls deeply in love with the heroine and ends his engagement, which drives the villainess absolutely insane. In Alistair’s route, her obsessive tendencies result in her regularly harassing the heroine. Although it starts off small, similar to playground bullying, it quickly devolves into something more vicious. On one occasion, she even succeeds in poisoning the heroine, though she survives because the dose is thankfully non-lethal. And also because of plot armor. Definitely plot armor.  

Anyways, long story short, the villainess spirals more and more due to her obsession with Alistair, and she is eventually punished for her crimes through execution—by none other than Carmine, the man standing before you.  

That’s only the first route, though.  

Carmine Mortis is the second love interest in the game. His is an admittedly clichéd story, with that whole trope of a knight falling for a noblewoman and coveting her affections, but societal norms and social status end up standing in the way of their relationship. It’s not a particularly original concept, but you’ve always had a soft spot for characters that will fight tooth and nail for their loved ones, which is why he was your favorite out of the trio.  

Eventually, Carmine and the heroine overcome all the obstacles in their way and obtain their happy ending. But this ending unsurprisingly comes at the cost of the villainess’ life. She is a recurring antagonist, regardless of whether or not you choose Alistair’s route and her engagement falls through. Yet another reason why you think she’s such a poorly written character, because her motives in this route are much less established. The premise of the game is that the heroine is from a failing noble household, and her family moves to a new kingdom after being driven from their own land. The villainess kind of just decides to pick on her when she is introduced into high society, for remarkably petty reasons.  

God. You seriously don’t know who’s writing these villainess-type characters, but it’s a literal tragedy how poorly done they are. How hard is it to create a convincing and humane antagonist that people can maybe even sympathize with at times? Even villains that are flat-out meant to be hated can still be well-written, provided you understand their motives and they have a compelling character arc.  

But you suppose it’s a bit too late for such criticism, because from now on, this isn’t just a story, and these people are no longer simply characters.  

This is your life.  

And you’re sure as hell not going to throw it away.  

Carmine purses his lips. “Is everything alright, my lady? You seem a bit disoriented. The shock of the situation must have really frightened you.”  

You blink, realizing that you’re still holding onto his hand after he helped you to your feet. You pull away as fast as you can, and while it’s true that coming face to face with your would-be executioner is jarring, to say the least, there’s no reason for you to actually panic at this stage.  

You are innocent. You have yet to commit any of the crimes the villainess did—and you don’t ever plan to. There’s no reason why Carmine would ever slice your head off with his sword. Having played the game, you know exactly how powerful he is, and how incredibly easy it would be for him to end your life, but there’s simply no situation where that would ever occur.  

As far as you’re concerned, this will be the last meeting the two of you ever have.  

“I’m fine,” you reassure. The longer you stare at him, the more you calm down. He’s still a knight, after all. A protector of the people. He only punishes criminals, and since you’re not a piece of shit (presumably), there’s no conflict to be had.  

“Why did you try to apprehend that thief all by yourself?” Carmine frowns. Rather than looking angry, he just looks confused, which seems to be how most people react to you these days. “Even if he wasn’t concealing a weapon, did you plan on restraining him on your own? He would have overpowered you with ease.”  

Well, that’s not necessarily true. You could have done… something. Probably. Maybe.  

…fine, it was a stupid, spur-of-the-moment idea. But at least your heart was in the right place.  

“I just wanted to help,” you shrug. “I couldn’t let that man get away with stealing. I wasn’t sure if anyone else would act in time, so I took my chances. Admittedly, the thought that he might have a weapon didn’t really cross my mind… but I’m sure he wasn’t actually going to hurt me.”  

From a little distance off, the thief, who has since been tied up and bound with rope, proceeds to glare at you. 

“No, I had every intention of stabbing you,” he states.  

“Oh. Well, that’s… good to know. Thank you for your candor, I guess.”  

You flash him an awkward thumbs-up, but he merely spits on the floor and curses you in response. Meanwhile, Carmine stares at you in abject horror, and Fiona looks like she wants to curl up in a ball and die.  

Carmine shakes his head. “Try to ignore him, my lady. Deplorable scum like that isn’t worth your time. I assure you, he will be punished accordingly. Not only did he steal, but he also threatened violence. It’s a good thing I was able to apprehend him before anyone actually got hurt.”  

You look back at the thief again, who is muttering under his breath, no doubt saying immensely unflattering things about you. Still, you catch him muttering something about ‘spoiled nobles’, and how ‘people like you will never understand what it’s like to go hungry’. While you certainly don’t condone his crimes, you try to remain sympathetic to the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than you, and sometimes, those people turn to drastic measures in order to survive.  

“I wish I’d at least ripped a hole in your stomach before I got arrested,” the thief snarls.  

Dude. You’re making it really hard to feel sorry for you right now.  

Carmine narrows his eyes. “On your feet, criminal. And don’t speak to her like that. Have you no concept of respect?”  

Carmine jerks the thief up by the rope binding his limbs together, and makes a big show of keeping one hand poised above the hilt of his blade. It’s a silent threat. A warning of what will happen if he doesn’t cooperate. 

“I need to have this man brought in,” Carmine says, turning towards you again. He pauses to look you over. It seems like he’s still worried you might be hurt, or perhaps shaken up, and it’s true that you were shaken up—but for a different reason entirely. 

After what feels like an eternity of silence, he smiles.  

“There’s no doubt that what you did earlier was incredibly reckless. However… I can appreciate that you have a penchant for justice. It’s very admirable that you were willing to put yourself in harm’s way to stop a criminal.”  

Oh, wow. He’s actually complimenting you? That’s awesome! This was pretty much exactly what you intended. The more favorable impressions people have of you, the better your reputation will be, and the less likely it is that you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of a pointed blade.  

It’s definitely going to take a while, but already, it looks like your villainess title is starting to be stripped away.  

“I just want to help, however I can,” you say, smiling sweetly and batting your eyes.  

Carmine chuckles. “Yes, well, your intentions are respectable, but from now on, please be more careful and avoid placing yourself in harm’s way. Us knights are always on the lookout for criminals. We’ll be sure to keep everyone safe.”  

“Will do, boss.”  

Your smile turns to a wide grin, and Carmine gives you a curious look, clearly not used to your modern-day slang. You’ve been trying to adopt the mannerisms and way of speaking of people in this setting, but it’s difficult to completely overwrite old habits. Maybe you’ll get used to it with time. Or maybe other people will get used to how much you’ve changed. Whichever comes first.  

What started off as a rather tense encounter has fortunately ended without any issues. If you avoid the heroine, there’s no reason your path should ever cross with Carmine’s again. It’s possible you might catch glimpses of him in town every now and then, but otherwise, you will both lead separate lives.  

So far, it looks like you’ve managed to distance yourself from two of the three major love interests in the game. Not bad for less than a week in your new body. Not bad at all.  

“God, I’m so epic,” you sigh. 

Fiona, however, doesn’t seem to think you’re that epic. In fact, she has rather strong opinions on the matter.  

“Lady [Name]!” she fumes, and you watch as she balls her hands into cute little fists and shakes them wildly. She’s clearly upset, but honestly, she’s just too adorable to take seriously.  

“What is it?” you chuckle.  

“How can you even ask me that? You could have gotten seriously hurt earlier! If that man’s knife had struck you, you could have died!”  

She gasps for breath after exclaiming her last point, more riled up than you’ve ever seen her. What a loud scream to be coming from such a small little maid. It’s actually rather impressive.  

“Yes, I was reckless,” you admit. You reach out, hesitating for a moment, then you grin and pat her on the head. “It’s a good thing you reacted so fast. I sure am glad I brought you with me. You saved my life, Fiona. You’re amazing.”  

Fiona bristles. “Huh? O-Oh. Well, of course! I couldn’t possibly have let my lady get hurt! B-But what you did still wasn’t safe! There’s no telling what could have happened if that knight hadn’t been passing by!”  

She puffs out her cheeks, still very much indignant, but it looks like she’s not opposed to you patting her head. It actually seems like she’s enjoying it quite a bit. 

You finally let your hand drop, then smile again. “You’re right, Fiona. That was very rash of me, and I promise it won’t happen again. I overestimated my authority and thought I could get a criminal to behave. I guess I just wanted to feel like I was doing a good deed.”  

Fiona’s eyes widen, and you can’t blame her, because based on everything she knows of the previous [Name], wanting to ‘do good’ must sound like some kind of sick joke.  

But you can see it in her expression. Slowly but surely, her doubts and reservations are melting away. Perhaps she felt your sincerity when you patted her head, or even before, when you expressed interest in remembering her name. Whatever the case, you can tell that she’s making an effort to look past all the offenses [Name] committed against her, and is choosing to believe in the you of the present.  

You’ve just gained the cutest little ally you could possibly ask for.  

“I-I understand what you were trying to accomplish, but it was still terrifying!” she insists. She presses a palm to her chest and exhales shakily. “Just… please don’t ever do that again. I’m not sure if my heart will hold out.” 

“Aw. I’m sorry for scaring you. Don’t worry. I’ve learned my lesson.”  

You wink playfully, to which she just sighs and hangs her head in resignation.   

Still, Fiona has a point.  

At this rate, it’s much more likely that you’ll die because of your own stupidity, rather than the plot of the game.  

“...holy shit, is that stall selling mini donuts?!” 

“I’m telling you, honey, our daughter might actually be a genius!”  

Your father beams proudly as he flips through the latest pages of homework he assigned you. Needless to say, you completed everything again, and with stellar marks too. Your mother watches on with obvious skepticism, peeking out from behind her frilly hand fan. She can’t quite seem to wrap her head around what’s happening. As far as she knows, you’ve always been, well… an idiot.  

“[Name] really solved all of these questions herself?” your mother asks, still not buying into the whole thing.  

“She most certainly did,” your father hums. “I even sat here and watched her do it! Isn’t that incredible? To think that we were housing such a prodigy all this time!”  

You grin cheekily, to which your mother starts fanning herself faster, mumbling something inaudible under her breath. Probably to do with the fact that she thinks you might be possessed. It’s a popular theory that still hasn’t died down, by the looks of it.  

Whatever. You’re fully aware of the fact that you’re behaving very differently than the previous [Name], but you need to do this. You need to make a massive change, otherwise, there’s no doubt that people will resent you for the heinous acts the villainess committed before. Besides, it’s not entirely unheard of for people to reinvent themselves. It’s not especially common, but it does happen every now and then.  

Also, you think it’s really funny how your parents keep acting like you’re the second coming of Einstein. You’ve always considered yourself to be decently smart, but given how straightforward your father’s math problems are… they’re definitely giving you too much credit.  

Oh, well. It’s much better to have naive, supportive parents than ones that will make your life hell.  

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” your mother frowns. “[Name], you always used to whine and avoid studying. You said you would rather die than have to do homework, and one time you threw a fit and threatened to jump out the window.”  

“...”  

I already knew the villainess was a whiny little bitch, but come on. Whatever happened to standards, sis?  

“Um.” You awkwardly clear your throat. “Yes, well, I’d rather not speak of that incident. I’m embarrassed with how I behaved. It’s true that my sudden change in demeanor might seem rather shocking, but I really am trying to become a better, more accomplished person. Once I started actually applying myself, I realized it wasn’t as difficult as I initially thought. I only wish I’d done this sooner.”  

Unlike your father, who is absolutely giddy with the newly-improved version of his daughter, your mother seems to be much more dubious of this whole situation. Perhaps it’s a mother’s intuition or something. Obviously, she would never be able to guess that you’re an entirely different person trapped inside a new body, but it’s clear that she still has her suspicions.  

She snaps her hand fan shut, then nods. “I see. Well, this is a relief. It’s good to see you taking things seriously for a change. A strong work ethic is something to be admired.”  

She pats your shoulder and smiles encouragingly, but as she’s walking away, you swear you catch her frowning at you out of the corner of her eye.  

Yeah. She’s definitely not fully on board yet. You can only hope that, with time, she’ll come to accept the change.  

At least your father’s having a field day.  

“My darling little genius,” he praises, ruffling your hair affectionately. “[Name], I want you to know that your mother and I are both very proud of you. In fact, we’re considering finding a tutor for you to work with. Clearly, someone of your intellect needs to be challenged accordingly, and with their help, you’ll learn at a much more accelerated pace.”  

A tutor, huh? Well, you’re not opposed to it. You’ve spent the past few years of your life listening to countless professors drone on during lectures, most of which didn’t teach you jack shit. The better portion of your academic career has been self-taught. A tutor should be fine, because you get to work one-on-one with them and they’ll actually listen to your questions.  

“Of course, father. I’m excited to expand my knowledge and push past my limits.”  

He outright squeals in delight, then pulls you into his arms and gives you the biggest bear hug of all time. He was initially furious when you broke off your engagement with Alistair, but it looks like he’s completely gotten over to it.  

And to think that all it took was solving a few math problems. 

“Thank you, math,” you mumble quietly, which are undoubtedly words that nobody has ever spoken before.  

Your father eventually pulls away from you, still smiling. “Keep up the good work, my dear. And remember that we’ve been invited to attend a social function tonight. I wanted to remind you in case you’d forgotten. If you continue to be diligent with your studies, I’d be more than happy to let you pick out some new dresses for future events. You mentioned before that your wardrobe has been looking rather sparse as of late.”  

You’re tempted to roll your eyes, because what the villainess considers to be sparse is easily a hundred times more clothes than you’ve ever had. 

“Thank you for your generosity, father. I would certainly appreciate some new clothes, but I’ll shelf the issue for the time being. I’d like to make sure I’ve earned my reward. It still feels like I have a long way to go.”  

Your father chuckles. “My, my. To think that you’re even exerting so much restraint! Who are you and what have you done with my daughter? Haha.”  

“Haha… ha.”  

Don’t play with me, old man.  

He grins one last time, pure adoration in his eyes, before eventually leaving. So far, it’s pretty safe to say that your father is on your side, Fiona is loyal and is slowly coming around to the fact that you’re a better person, and your mother remains to be fully convinced. But either way, you’ve successfully broken up with Alistair and haven’t had to face any consequences, which is a win in your book.  

Now, then. It’s time for the most challenging task you’ve had thus far.  

Etiquette. 

Having played the game, you’re somewhat conscious of how certain characters within the nobility were expected to behave, but putting it in practice is a different matter entirely.  

Up until now, you’ve been able to get away with your crude, modern-day way of acting, mainly because you haven’t attended any parties or notable social gatherings. You’ve stayed within the confines of your manor, and save for when you went into town that day, you haven’t made any public appearances.  

This time, however, things are different.  

Your parents can mostly excuse your erratic behavior. You are their daughter, after all, and so long as no one important is there to bear witness, they don’t seem too concerned with it. But when faced with countless members of the nobility, most of which are looking for just about any opportunity to gossip and scrutinize, your carefree attitude won’t go over that well.  

Your one saving grace is that people already have a bad impression of the villainess. They already expect you to make rude, shameless remarks and go around trying to stir up trouble. Obviously, you won’t be doing any of that, but you hope that whatever mistakes you might make tonight will be overlooked. The last thing you want is to stick out like a sore thumb.  

“Can you believe it? [Name] actually had the gall to show up.” 

“Didn’t she make one of the other ladies cry at the last party?”  

“She did. I heard that poor thing couldn't handle the abuse and ran out into the garden, then she tripped and broke her ankle.”  

You blink tiredly.  

Looks like not standing out is a hollow dream. 

“Shh! She’s coming over here,” one of the gossiping women chides. They’re all huddled up in a group, but the second they notice you passing by, they throw on practiced smiles and pretend like nothing ever happened.  

“[Name]!” the same woman coos, using a very obviously fake, superficial tone of voice. She then curtsies, most likely because you outrank her. “Oh, how lovely it is to see you! I was wondering if you’d been invited. You always have a way of… spicing the evening up.”  

The women standing behind her giggle obnoxiously. It’s obvious that this is intended to be a passive-aggressive display, as well as an attempt to humiliate you. 

But what they don’t realize is that you’re not the same person anymore—quite literally. Therefore, no matter how they try to insult you, there’s no reason for you to take it seriously. And besides, your foremost concern is ensuring that you survive. What’s a few catty bitches compared to the threat of death?  

“Hello,” you smile. “It’s nice to see all of you as well. Also, in regards to what you were whispering about earlier, I’m afraid I don’t remember. Did I make someone cry? Truly, it must have slipped my mind. Perhaps I need a reminder.”  

They stiffen up, because normally in high society, these underhanded remarks are rarely acknowledged face to face. You’re expected to play the long game and retort with passive-aggressive comments of your own, not call them out on their bullshit.  

You have to admit, pretending to be a villainess can be pretty fun at times.  

“I-I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” the woman mutters. She then gestures towards her lackeys, glaring at you before she leaves. “I believe a close friend of mine has just arrived. You’ll have to excuse us.”  

They leave without further issue, good riddance. It’s best to keep people like that at arm’s length. You do want to establish a better reputation for yourself, but if you let others walk all over you instead of holding your ground, you’ll never be taken seriously.  

Anyways, for obvious reasons, it looks like most people are avoiding you. Officially, your parents are the actual guests, but as their daughter, you’re expected to accompany them. They’ve already gone off to exchange niceties with the host of the evening, which fortunately leaves you free to do what you want.  

And right now, what you want is to have some of that expensive wine that everyone’s drinking.  

There are a few servants roaming around carrying trays stacked with alcohol, and you gingerly pick up a glass, smiling appreciatively.  

“Thank you,” you say, and the servant reacts by flinching in surprise. Being thanked by the villainess is probably just as big of a shock as being hit by a bus.  

He scurries off, and surprise, surprise—no one else has come to talk to you yet. You take a sip of the wine and let out a sigh. Well, this is fine. From what you remember, the villainess doesn’t have many actual friends, for obvious reasons. There are a few noblewomen who occasionally flock around her and help her harass the heroine, but those same noblewomen also talk shit about the villainess behind her back, so it’s hardly a genuine friendship.  

You decide to make like a wallflower for a bit and just observe. There’s a lot to be learned, after all. High society has all kinds of unwritten rules, and the more you know, the better you’ll fare.  

Okay, so… that dude is apparently having an affair. Everyone knows it, including his wife, but they’re pretending like it doesn’t exist. And that woman over there showed up wearing the same dress as someone else, which is apparently mortifying enough to quietly cry over.  

“This is all so confusing,” you mutter, taking another gulp of wine.  

“What’s confusing?”  

You squeal. You’re so startled that you nearly drop the glass of wine in the process, but fortunately, your amazing (self-proclaimed) reflexes kick in just in time.  

Some rude bastard just snuck up on you! The absolute nerve! You’re actually about to chew him out for it, since you nearly had a damn heart attack, but you stop yourself the moment you make eye contact.  

Standing before you is none other than the third and final love interest—Flynn Pearce.  

Flynn leans closer, tilting his head. “What’s so confusing? You look unusually focused. I noticed you standing over here and mumbling to yourself. You seem to be drinking much more slowly than usual too.”  

You press your lips together. The third love interest from the game, Flynn, is none other than the villainess’ close childhood friend. They basically grew up together. That’s how far back their friendship dates. This of course means that when he starts developing feelings for the heroine, someone that the villainess has decided she hates, she openly expresses her disapproval and makes efforts to keep the two of them apart.  

Flynn is an interesting character, because he’s a bit more morally gray than the other love interests. He is obviously aware of all the villainess’ flaws, but still defends her in the initial acts of his route, because of their long-standing friendship. Unlike Alistair, who is written to be charming, poised, and compassionate, or Carmine, who despises acts of injustice and can’t stand the villainess’ wrongdoings, Flynn isn’t meant to be so clear-cut. It takes a while for him to come to terms with his feelings for the heroine and realize how permissive he’s been of the villainess’ behavior over the years. His character arc leads him to realize how guilty he is by association, and after dealing with the self-loathing that comes with this realization, he eventually casts the villainess out of his life.  

This is the only ending where the villainess isn’t executed by Carmine. In an act of hateful desperation, she lunges at the heroine with a knife, fully intent on killing her.  

But the villainess obviously doesn’t succeed, and instead, she finds that same knife plunged into her chest.  

By none other than her dearest friend.  

You could argue that Flynn is the only real friend the villainess ever had, which could have potentially made her death more tragic, if not for the fact that she was horribly written and had no redeemable qualities.  

Anyways, that same friend is now standing right in front of you. Just like Carmine, if you make the wrong choices and somehow end up tangled in the plot, he too has the potential to end your life.  

It’s always fun staring death in the face.  

“Um, nothing really,” you say, doing your best not to openly grimace. “I was just thinking… that this wine is a weird choice. I’m not sure why they picked it. It’s a bit confusing, is all.”  

Flynn frowns. “I tried the wine. Didn’t you say before that it was one of your favorites?”  

“Oh. D-Did I? Well, maybe the batch is off or something. Either way, it’s not a big deal. I’ll drink it all the same.”  

To prove your point, you throw your head back and chug the rest of the wine. Come to think of it, you do recall that the villainess is a bit of a heavy drinker. You suppose you should do your best to play the part.  

You hoped that would put Flynn’s suspicions to rest, but instead, he narrows his eyes even further. 

“Not a big deal…? If the wine really wasn’t to your taste, surely you’d have more to say about it. Normally, you would have been more vocal about your complaints. I remember you once argued with the hosts for their poor choice of hors d’oeuvres.”  

You gape at him. 

Oh my god. Fuck you, shitty villainess! Why do you have to be such a massive asshole all the time? It’s impossible to meet your ridiculously trashy standards! 

“Ah, right,” you chuckle, hurrying to compose yourself. You wave your hand dismissively. “It’s true. To be honest, I have a lot of improvements in mind for tonight, but I’m rather tired. I just don’t have the energy to go and throw their mistakes in their face. Besides, incompetent people will never learn, I’m afraid. It’s just a waste of my time. Anyways. I’m off to go grab more wine! It may not be good, but it’s palatable, at the very least. I need something to keep me busy for the rest of this mind-numbing ordeal.”  

You leave without giving him another chance to comment. Shit! You weren’t expecting to run into him so soon, and you knew from the start that he’d be the most troublesome one to deal with, since he knows the villainess so well. It won’t be as easy to cut him out of your life as it was with Alistair and Carmine. You’ll need to avoid him to the best of your ability, but you just don’t know how.  

While you clumsily weave through all the people, freaking out internally, Flynn stares at you from afar, without blinking once.  

He purses his lips.  

“She’s… acting strange.”  

More chapters are available on Quotev!

⊱.⋅follow + post notifications on for story update announcements or join the author's discord!⋅.⊰

🗡️ main masterlist! ♡ character appearances

[touchlikethesun]

TW: sa. Hi! I hope it's okay to talk about it but about your tags in that post about SVSSS and SA being a recurring theme, I agree with a lot of it. I would say that even Bingge can be argued to be have some trauma since his first time was coerced. Someone pointed out Bingge could've become hypersexual as a result of that trauma and that it made me see the whole harem thing in a new light (but it doesn't make him innocent since he forced himself on a bunch of wives). It really is such a recurring theme it's hinted for Shen Jiu and for Su Xiyan and Binghe with the Old Palace Master. Su Xiyan's story is even the catalyst for Binghe's tragic backstory... You made a very good observation OP!

hey anon, yeah it's alright to talk about! i do appreciate you including a tw, but this is a topic i find really interesting, i actually opened my laptop back up to answer you lol

as for luo bingge, i didn't get into it in my tags bc… lowkey didn't expect ppl to read them lol (ty for doing so tho xx) and also he's quite a complicated case. we obviously can't say for certain since we see so little of him and what we do know is told to us thru multiple layers of unreliable narration, but i do think there is enough to suggest many of luo bingge's early sexual experiences were probably coerced or non-consensual, leading to trauma-induced hypersexual behavior. (edit: i am adding this parenthetical a few hours later after writing the rest of this and i didn't know how to fit it in otherwise so apologies, but i think it's worth pointing out that luo binghe - both bingmei and bingge, so i think we can consider it to be a core trait - do naturally have a much higher libido than most people. with bingmei we see how this causes issues for him in his relationship with shen qingqiu, but it's managed with kindness because sqq loves him and is patient enough to teach him boundaries and managed by binghe himself who loves and doesn't want to hurt sqq and who has been taught consent and respect from a younger age. when it comes to bingge, who lacks the sort of safe space provided by sqq and has no education in the matter, i think it's easy to see how he would have a much harder time understanding and managing his libido - again it isn't an excuse for SA, but this is just another convention of the genre that were it to be realised has horrible implications and consequences.)

but also, luo bingge lives in a world where healthy consensual sexual dynamics are so rarely modeled for him (the aforementioned coercive sex, but also constantly being gifted wives by other men, and the normalisation of rape in a world with sex pollen (sorry ik i already said that but like really it is so incredibly fucked up if you think about the implications of sex pollen in a real world)), and where he is being taught that the only way to be safe is to have physical power over others - of course we the reader know this is because it's being written as a venting male fantasy revenge story with a target audience of incels, but concretely this is bad for luo bingge's psyche, and you know, also leads him to do horrible things in retaliation and hurt and innombrable amount of people

and again, i don't know how much of this was really intentional on mxtx's part and how much i am reading into it, but svsss is about making one-dimensional smut novel characters into fully realised people and extrapolating out the implications for what it would mean for that world to be a real one. like, shanq qinghua and especially shen qingqiu have to learn that the people they live with are not as simple as they might have appeared on the screen of the webnovel. and part of the extrapolating, from my read of svsss, involves interrogating the ways characters have and have had their agency infringed upon in the original pidw and finding ways to return their agency to them in svsss. this is perhaps most clearly seen in the way all the "wife" characters in svsss are allowed to be their own people separate from binghe, with different passions and drives and again, agency to direct their own lives, contrary to sqq's expectations of them. however this also involves bringing to light just how pervasive and damaging the sexual violence in the original story really is, by showing the abuse that su xiyan suffered, by showing how binghe is negatively affected by xin mo and the other coercive elements of this world, by subverting expectations with shen jiu and showing how he was also a victim, and by making the only truly irredeemably evil character the old palace master, a disgusting old pervert and sexual harasser.

anyways yeah i think it's a really interesting aspect of svsss, and while i can understand why it might not be at the forefront of everyone's mind (good lord is it a BUMMER to think about), it would be a disservice to the narrative to forget it entirely.

[pomefioredove]

I really liked the advice for writing about Rook ;u; I was thinking if there was one for writing about Vil's character too?) :'0

I can try!

I think what you want to avoid is making vil a stereotypical "mean girl", for lack of a better term. he has a low tolerance for bullshit but he's not a bully. he's just... german...

he's also not perfect. like, that, to me, is a huge part of his character. when I write him, I give him a sense of humor, I give him flaws, I make him a little... uglier, so to speak, because that's who he is to me. especially with yuu

what makes him an interesting character (to me) is his relationship with morality. he definitely has insecurities about his appearance, he's very meticulous and critical of himself, he has an eating disorder, to me, at least, but... like, that's not what makes him tick. vil is extremely insecure about his morality. he thinks he's a bad person, an irredeemably bad person, an intrinsically bad person, and he believes, in some way, that he's unlovable. he hates who he is, he hates that he can't be good enough, or innocent enough, or nice enough, like neige. it's not about looks, not really. it's also fucking insane to me how all the adults in his life profiled him as a villain and put him in that role again and again, both on stage and in real life. being told that you're a bad person really fucks you up as a child

so, feeling like he's inherently evil and unlovable, he pours all of his effort and time and care into his appearance, because, unlike his morality, that can be changed. he needs that control. of course, the result of this is that he becomes really insecure about his body, and is always looking to improve, because it's never enough to heal what actually needs to be healed

he puts on this mask of indifference and perfection, he acts like he think he should (or how other people assumes he should), he makes himself untouchable because he feels like he doesn't deserve to be touched, but god, is he scared. and so, so lonely. and jealous. and sort of resentful of everyone for making him that way, but dependent on their comfort and approval all the same

people don't really look at vil as if he were human and I think that bothers him. even though he makes himself inhuman, godlike, he doesn't really want that. he wants to be loved for who he is, he wants to be reassured that he's not broken, he wants a break from being looked at, he wants to be felt instead

I read a post once, forgive me for I do not remember the OP, that said that it wasn't jealousy or rage or bitter ugliness that had caused vil to overblot. it was when he realized that he was about to hurt neige, and that he had become the villain everyone already saw him as. his conflict with his morality is the most interesting part of his character and it's rarely explored, he's rarely even humanized

tldr, uhhh, vil is a person, he longs to be seen as a person, he is not a mean girl. got emotional writing this bc I love vil so muc,

[wolfofcelestia]

oh, i didn’t really think about that. but yeah judging by what we know from the main story, sylus seems well liked by people who know him.

the mechanic he takes MC to talks about how sylus is often scapegoated, and implies sylus is a much kinder man than the impression he gives

the fact that the defected branch of onichynus created unnecessary casualties and bombed civilian areas show that some of the criminals within the organisation didn’t agree with sylus’s management style, which suggests they just didn’t like how he sort of played by a code of honour and wasn’t actually greedy for more power. like they think he’s not doing enough to “dominate” the city.

sylus’s biggest asset is mephisto—who he uses to watch over the N109 zone like a protector. he’s just sort of in the shadows watching over everyone, making sure things are going smoothly while keeping an eye on the EVER group

which reminds me, i think he watches over MC for the same reason. like ofc that’s his soulmate he’s been searching for through space and time but i think he also does it because MC’s life truly is at risk and he keeps tabs to make sure she isn’t exploited or taken as a test subject like tobias was.

we’ve only ever seen sylus kill corrupt people. so he clearly is an antihero with a moral code. he killed the EVER guy to send a message because these people are literally enslaving and abducting innocent people (including the almost extinct lemurians) and doing experiments on them to prolong their lifespans. sylus has seen firsthand what happened to the twins and i’m sure he’s seen even worse. the other guy he kills was a defected member of onichynus who was double-crossing him and was using the onichynus name to bomb civilian areas. i don’t think he killed the man because of betrayal, but rather because he was a threat to innocent lives and was absolutely shameless about it. like you said, he’s not a cop so he takes justice into his own hands. very antihero behaviour.

sylus also repeatedly has said he doesn’t like picking on the weak. in his anecdote he frees the captive beasts and returns the treasures back to their rightful owners after killing a tyrannical overlord.

you’re definitely right. he’s not only distrusting of the law, he’s been burnt by the law system. he’s been treated unfairly and he knows the real criminals are the people in power (like the story he mentioned in Lost Oasis of the seven gods that were beheaded for being capricious and exploiting their followers). every aspect of his story is so heavily connected to corruption in power, greed, and exploitation of the weak by individuals and organisations who want to “play god”. and he’s at odds with such people because these people are the kind who wiped out his entire species in a genocide, trapped him in an abyss for centuries, are directly related to the EVER group who successfully managed to prolong human life and move to philos, etc etc.

i’d love more anecdotes on sylus and his life and yes! more companions. i’m almost entirely sure that he was imprisoned in the space-time prison for going against some corrupt person in power, or he was scapegoated.

Yeah, we don't actually know the reason why he was in that top security prison huh? I wouldn't be surprised if it was Ever behind it all, either using him as a scapegoat or sentencing him harsher than normal. Even in one of the first glimpses we saw of Sylus, when he deliberately walked past the flower struggling to grow in an unnatural environment, it was clear that he isn't one to hurt or destroy anyone/anything that didn't warrant it

Even though we have his myth, we still don't know much about him in the present timeline. They really need to step up with giving us his lore before he gets overshadowed by Caleb entering the game

He was definitely keeping tabs on MC to keep her safe. We know a lot of people are after her aether core, but I also like to imagine him letting her do her own thing to see how brazen and strong she can get without him. If she had failed to become a hunter, I feel like he would step in sooner when she began investigating her past. And I feel like he would train her himself so that she could protect herself from people tracking her down and so she could come along to some of his "deals"

[theredhairedmonkey]

What Dark Callum Means

And what it doesn't.

So, I think it's worth discussing what the appearance of this particular guy at this point of the series means and symbolizes, as I'm sure many people are going to have a field day with his.

And by "this particular guy," I mean Dark Callum.

Who, funny enough, is actually still more reasonable and moral than the psychopathic gremlin known as "snake boi callum" found across the fandom (as he acknowledges that he loves and cares for more people than just Rayla and Ezran), but I digress. In particular, I think what some fans are zeroing in on is that the show confirms (and it actually does confirm) that there’s always been this part of Callum that is willing to abandon his sense of right and wrong for the sake of those he loves.

But...that actually plays to the larger part of this season's themes in a way that ends up enriching Callum's position as the show's moral center. Let me explain why.

Book Dark (i.e. season 7) is about the loss of innocence, told not just through symbolism (the Garden of Innocents being where Unicorns went to die being a bit on the nose) but directly by Aaravos:

Aaravos: All children have a true heart. But as we grow up, we are forced to take choices, sacrifices, compromises. And they change us forever. Childhood innocence gives way to something...complicated.

The fact that Ezran is shown here as Aaravos speaks is not a coincidence - no matter how pure, life wears all of us down.

Then Aaravos' next speech contextualizes this further - not having a dark side isn't an attribute of goodness, but innocence. Eventually, all of us develop a dark side, and inevitable outgrowth of being forced to make compromises, harsh decisions, and sacrifices.

Aaravos: The true heart is a gift of childhood. For a few wonder-filled years, we each have innocent eyes to experience the world's beauty in a simple way. Terrestrius, you were lucky and held that innocent wonder longer than most. I have seen generations of humans and elves accept the darkness that lurks inside all of us beside the light. There is no black and white, only shades of gray. We must all carry complexity. But please believe me that there is beauty in this burden. Your heart will be a little heavier. But now, there will be no more half-truths, Terrestrius. Together, we will do what must be done. However dangerous. However vile.

It is worth pointing out how many people are shown together with the quote about "humans and elves accept the darkness that lurks inside of all of us." So when Callum meets Dark Callum, who tells him he's always been inside him even before he used dark magic, we shouldn't be surprised.

But his appearance actually tells us something different - that Callum had not yet accepted him. That the Callum we have been seeing throughout the show is not the one who would do whatever he had to for his loved ones "however dangerous, however vile."

And that is the critical part here, and why despite seeing the world as Aaravos does, understanding the need for compromises, Callum nevertheless opposes him - being good isn't about lacking the capacity for darkness, but about choosing what to do with that capacity. Callum's strength isn't that he never feels the pull to abandon principles for love, but that he develops the wisdom to channel that impulse in ways that ultimately serve good rather than evil.

In short, he sees the world as Aaravos does...yet chooses differently.

Consider how this differs from Aaravos's prediction. Aaravos sees this willingness to compromise for love and assumes it must lead down the same path of progressive moral erosion that he took. What he misses is that acknowledging this capacity doesn't mean surrendering to it entirely. Callum shows that you can recognize this part of yourself while still choosing how to express it.

This makes Callum's role as a moral center more complex and meaningful. He's not a moral center because he lacks dark impulses or the willingness to break rules for love - he's a moral center because he shows us how to acknowledge these aspects of ourselves while still making choices that serve rather than destroy our principles.

[velvetvexations]

My commentary on the whole "if dipper is transmasc mable is a terf" thing is that dipper and Mabel are 12 years old and exist in a cartoon set in 2012. Mable does not know what a terf is. Mabel is 12 years old, 12 year Olds can't be terfs. If her actions persisted into adulthood yeah she'd be transphobic but she is a cartoon character who can never age. I don't look at a real life 12 year old saying transphobic things and think they're a terf, because that's stupid. I'm sure if this character could have the intricacies of transphobia explained to her she'd understand her actions were wrong, but she can't, because she's a twelve year old from a cartoon that stopped airing in 2016.

the anon who pointed out it's exactly the same with Chihiro is so gigabrained

cannot get over how much some transfems get mad at transmascs for doing the same shit transfems do. "transmascs are obsessed with headcanoning characters as transmasc even when it makes no sense" coming from the "estrogen would save her" crowd is, maddening

well thanks to epistemological standpoint trans women will always have a deeper and more complex relationship to gender

Its literally nauseating and disgusting listening to - say that trans mascs don't face the same rate of SA as trans fems or that we're lying about the statistics of the violence against us

I know anon <3

whats really funny about the whole "mabel would be transphobic" thing is that she would be transphobic regardless. saying that someone isn't a man cuz they're too girly is transphobic. like just straight up. it's not like. the worst form of transphobia ever. but it's like how telling a guy that he throws like a girl is still sexist regardless. and you know what? mabel is 12. she's a child. so what if she's a little bit mean? the whole thing is just so stupid because it's trying to make a headcanon thats relatively completely innocent seem problematic. and idk if i really want that sort of precedent to be set around trans headcanons. anyways i hope ur having a good day ^^

I keep saying this but it's wild how the "trans men are so comfortable with being girls and calling themselves girls" crowd is dogmatic that a twelve year old girl misgendering a twelve year old trans boy is committing the worst possible crime against him.

- i'm sorry but is this person implying that in order to not be discriminated against trans men should stop being men or is it something out of my fucked-up head?

Unintentionally, yes.

Idk if you saw the Twitter blahaj drama but like, some trf’s loose their minds if trans men also like a stuffed animal but god fucking forbid we also have transmasc headcanons like idk it’s always the same people doing this shit too at this point I think they just hate any other kind of trans person and just post-hoc rationalize it whenever there’s a “”tme”” being happy

Correct! And then transmasc TRFs are like "so true queen, don't these sissies know that being a man is all about suffering."

Potentially hot take but if you really REALLY can't find a trans actor to play your trans character I would VASTLY prefer a cis actor of the character's actual gender not their ASAB. "But anon, what if they're early transition?" Plenty of cis people are clocky, that's a very common pushback against TERF bullshit; that they're applying such a narrow standard of gender presentation that even cis people get caught up in it. Makeup exists. Prosthetics exist. Good actors who can make you believe they're fucking trans exist.

Yeah! Just look at the fantastic job Demi Bennett does playing Rhea Ripley!

'transandro dudes are stupid cause they say androphobia is bad but they're too scared to go up to the buffest gym dude and ask for his testosterone supply' are you stupid on purpose. it's not because he's a man it's because he's cis and a lot of cis people are SO down to beat up anyone they suspect might be a trans person. and a pre t trans dude asking for testosterone when the gym guy perceives said trans dude as a woman is DEFINITELY gonna get clocked and then be at risk of getting injured. can we please bring back thinking with our brains

transmasc and transfem TRFs are both so desperate to see themselves as having places in society identical to cis men and cis women and it's not going to fucking work out any time soon

Now personally I adore all the aesthetic posts and they give me a ton of material for my technology tag sooo thank you 4 reblogging so many dope gifs ^^

Thank you!

Maybe one day a week where the only messages people are allowed to send are fawning/simping/lusting after you idk lmao

that IS half my inbox already lol

weird thing but as a kid i was labeled tomboy so often i would consider my gender as a kid to BE tomboy. but when i decided to start being just a boy (trans boy) instead everyone acted like it was something out of left field and that there was "no proof" that i was trans (keep in mind this is like 2014-ish. i am still 99.9% sure i was the first ever person to come out as not cis at my school). like... what the hell do you mean "no proof"?? you literally spent my childhood calling me a tomboy and, after my sister started walking and talking, pointing out how much of a girly girl i WASNT compared to her.

the idea of cis people wanting "proof" is so weird

i like ur aesthetic posts tho, they make me happy also why tf r they complaining about aesthetic posts on tumblr of all places lol

literallyyyyy

Now personally I adore all the aesthetic posts and they give me a ton of material for my technology tag sooo thank you 4 reblogging so many dope gifs ^^

You're welcome!

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

// You know, I'm worried about Eloise's personality, from her FTEs, I feel like there's something hidden inside her...

// Basically I'm scared Eloise will be the next Kanade Otonokoji.

//I do know what you’re talking about by this point, because I did Eloise’s FTE’s, and yeah. The thing is, I think Eden’s Garden are being managed by a team who is kind of tired of all the classical DR tropes, and doesn’t really want to employ them. At least I hope.

//Eloise is definitely my favourite character in Eden’s Garden right now because of how much POTENTIAL she has as a character to develop, either positively, or negatively.

//Just for the sake of protecting the innocent, since this is still early days, and I talked way longer about this than I thought I would, I’m going to hide the rest of this post under a cut in case I spoil something major. But this is my take on Eloise as a character so far:

//It’s true that Eloise is giving me the vibes of early-game Kanade, since she’s ordinarily pretty meek, but when things get serious, she gets strangely…methodical, and driven.

//However, I think we’re leaning more towards how Mikan acted when she underwent her personality shift instead of Kanade. As things currently stand, I can definitely see Eloise going the route that Mikan SHOULD have gone, and that she eventually snaps when being pushed to her limit by some bully.

//The only issue is I don’t really see who could be her victim in this case. The most likely candidate is Grace, but I do actually think she’s going to get some development after this chapter.

//Because yes, I have made it to the body discovery by now. We haven’t done the trial yet, but we will soon.

//And also, Grace is not NEARLY as bad as Hiyoko was to Mikan. She’s just rough around the edges more than anything, and considering she talks about how the golfing industry is far more cutthroat than it seems, especially for a young woman, then it’s less of her being rude, and more treating everyone like a potential enemy and doubting everyone’s intentions. It’s largely why she punched Damon on sight, stoped everyone from investigating Wolfgang’s room, and demanded her blackmail from Eloise in such a vicious way.

//Speaking of Grace’s issues, based on what I saw in Eloise’s FTE’s, my current line of thinking is that she has something similar. And with the way that Eloise and Grace seem to so subtly parallel each other, I feel it makes a lot more sense.

//Unlike Grace, who clearly has to fight for her life to get to where she is, Eloise got to where she was by LITERALLY not having to lift a finger.

//The other members of Eloise’s fencing club were too scared to face off against her. She explains in FTE 3 that in fencing, forfeiting a match counts as a win for your opponent, so basically, the main reason she became the Ultimate Fencer is because people refused to fight her, and she climbed up the ranks that way. Damon even mentions that he would call her skills into question had it not been for the fact that she'd trained with her teacher.

//And then, in the fourth and final FTE, for now at least, she talks about how her family aren’t especially well off, and that’s kind of where we see the not-so innocent and meek side of her.

//Damon tells Eloise that he makes enough money through winning debate competitions that his parents don't really have to work anymore. Eloise is in a similar position with her fencing, but says her sisters are bratty and come off as ungrateful for the life she's giving them, and she's worried about her mother, having to take care of them.

//Damon immediately asks if her mother has a boyfriend or a girlfriend that can help her out, and phrases it that way because Eloise never mentions anything about having a father before. And as Damon pries, this PISSES HER OFF.

//As far as Eloise’s family situation goes, I have no real comments. At least not yet; because it could be almost anything at this point in time. However, based on Eloise’s nature as it’s been shown so far, I do have two lines of thinking:

//The first is that I think she has some sort of anger problems that she's clearly trying to get help for, but Damon has brought them out. That anger caused her to badly hurt someone in a match before, and because of that, everyone else in her club is scared of her. This why she climbed so high in the ranks, because no one wanted to fight her.

//With that said, as unfortunate as it is, there is also a very real possibility of there being a degree of sadism to her character through her actions. In the investigation segment of this chapter, when Grace blocks the door to Wolfgang’s room and prevents anyone from investigating, Eloise very subtly threatens her, and says that she’ll call Tozu to move her if she doesn’t move herself.

//Knowing full well that Grace especially has just been repeatedly abused by Tozu, and is probably terrified of him, even if she doesn’t show it.

//This method works, and you could always say Eloise was angling for the most effective method, but there’s just something so sinister about the way that her dialogue completely changes tone, and how she speaks very directly about it, instead of beating around the bush, or hesitations like she always does.

//Again, I REALLY don’t want that to be the case, but in the instance that it IS like that, then please Eden’s Garden, at least PORTAY it well!

-Mod

[zeroducks-2]

People hating evil characters is weird to me. I guess the only characters I actually hate are annoying ones cause usually that’s not a point of their character in the story, they just happen to be infuriating. Like Slade being a bad guy is cause he’s a bad guy, that’s like his whole point as a character. Yeah he can be nuanced and worse at times but he exists to be an antagonist. It completely makes sense to me that the Tara thing makes people uncomfortable but he’s still a fictional antagonist, it’s not really a moral failing on the part of the creators.

Tbh if you've experienced these characters in any way (read TJC or watched the more recent animated movie or read Deathstroke 2016 or watched Teen Titans 2003, or whatever else features their interaction) and you don't like Slade, that's fair enough.

Loving and hating characters (and every other emotion) happens all the time and it's part of the experience. HOWEVER, I do take issues when it's people who do not know the character, who have barely ever seen them and just heard "stuff" from other fandom people, who go on crusades against said character because "they did bad stuff".

You see it in people who hate Tarantula "because she raped Dick" and they have not read one single comic in which she appears - they have no idea what she even looks like or what's her real name, but they "hate her" because they read a post in which the sexual assault was mentioned and since she "did a bad thing" they "hate her now". This has to be the most shallow fucking thing, but it's convenient because if you hate on the "bad guy" it must mean you're morally pure and upstanding and you're one of the good ones.

Back to your point, hating on a character without any kind of reasoning or nuance only because they did "bad things" is the death of critical thinking. But people out there act like characters who do shit that's even vaguely considered unethical or morally reprehensible irl need to be hated, and like their existence is some sort of moral failing from the writer's part, and it's so fucking annoying and childish.

Which leads me to my second point which is a tad more controversial, but hey I'm a bitch with insufferable opinions so here we go I guess.

I'm bothered by people who pick a character and use them as their scapegoat, and I mean collectively as a fandom. It kind of is the case with Slade but he isn't the perfect example, however the principle is the same: hating on the villain, especially when the villain is very human and makes very human mistakes, using them as the only person who is capable of doing evil and therefore acquitting every other character of anything they ever did.

With Slade it becomes that Slade is the only bad guy of his story, who hurt Grant and hurt Adeline and hurt Joseph and raped Tara and killed and maimed and tortured, and therefore Grant has no blame in what he did to himself, and Adeline is just a poor innocent woman who was hurt by her unfaithful husband, and Joey did nothing wrong and everything that happened to him is solely Slade's fault, and Tara wasn't already a mercenary hitwoman for hire who lied and cheated and killed - rather she was just a poor innocent girl who was manipulated and corrupted by the Big Bad Guy.

I don't know if you see what I mean with this, but it's very much a thing in a lot of fandoms, especially when it comes to horror media where there is a cast of controversial, "imperfect" characters. One example of this is Mouthwashing, in which (spoilers ahead of course) there is a cast composed of people who range from being downright horrible to having very human but very noticeable flaws - every single one of them is "guilty" of something, and the protagonist in particular is also the one with the most prominent antisocial behaviors. But he's not benefiting from them - Jimmy isn't someone whose life is made better by his piece of shit behavior, rather this is a person with issues and who struggles with mental health (he's suicidal and has very strong delusions), giving him a very hard time keeping his life in order. Which of course doesn't make any of the horrible shit he does less horrible, but I think it's interesting how he's (mostly) not acting out of convenience, rather he's acting out his own demons. And what the fandom did was deciding that this guy is the only one to blame, and that his shitty behavior absolves everyone else of their sins. He's effectively the scapegoat and everyone else - it doesn't matter if they act selfishly, childishly, violently, cowardly or anything really - is guileless and has never done anything wrong in their lives. Jimmy is the only one who's to blame, and the rest of the cast is made of pure perfect angels.

I've seen this happen in many many cases. And it sort of turns into a mob of people whose only fandom personality is to hate on this one guy and gather Upstanding Morality Points, and of course the natural consequence of this is bothering or even outright harassing people who instead are fans of such flawed characters.

I hate it. I'm not saying anyone should have to like a character in particular, but the way people hate on the "easy to hate" guy instead of trying to understand them, especially when it's a complex character whose action make them suffer as much as the people they're hurting, distances me from fandom spaces. People will see a feral beast of a character with their leg caught in a bear trap hissing and growling while in the process of chewing their own limb off, and will toss stones at them and call them disgusting and weird. It's so unkind and I hate it so much.

[superkooku]

Look, this is us filling the Asclepius tag with ramblings :

Irl I'm super giddy right now !!

Honestly I was hoping this post would eventually reach someone else who wanted to ramble about Asclepius 🤣. Because oh boy ! These past few months I realized that he's actually very interesting but I couldn't find the opportunity to really start a discussion about him :3

Don't worry about the initial context, this post contains most of it. @kill-me-with-a-spoon and I began this in a comment section of this post :

I need a "read more" section because this is gonna be a long one.

First of all, calling Asclepius a crimebag is hilariously fitting. Not only did this man resurrect people and got punished for it, he casually does it again to a random woman. Not Coronis, not someone he knows, just a chick that the doctors decapitated to get some worm out and he was so exasperated by their stupid mistake that he just brought her back to life.

He's a criminal AND a recidivist. And Zeus just gave up at this point I think, because he was only punished once. He reminds me of Robin Hood in a way, an unrepentant criminal who helps people around him against an oppressive system.

Another figure he reminds me of is Prometheus. Seriously, I feel like Asclepius and Prometheus would be very good friends if they met, because they share a very similar philosophy of wanting to help mortals, being punished for it and still wanting to do it despite the risks, to push the limit and ultimately bring a wonderful gift to humanity, being heating and medicine. THAT and issues with Zeus 😂. He punished both of them for kinda the same reason. Maybe his grandson reminded him of Prometheus.

Now I'll try coming back to your points because there's so many things to say. I'll try respecting the order to hopefully make it easier.

You mentioned his birth and honestly it's so fascinating. Because, from the get-go, Asclepius cheats death, he runs away from it, he was supposed to die but thanks to Apollo's dad radar, he got saved.

Ok I know those are his ordinary god powers, but to me Apollo 100% has a sixth sense specifically warning him when his kids are in danger. I mean, look at what he said in the picture you sent !! It's clearly his fatherly instinct that drove him to do that, to save his innocent offspring from Coronis' punishment. And yeah, if he hesitated any longer, he would've lost one of humanity's biggest helpers, but most importantly his own son. And I feel like he would've hated himself for it.

This kinda reminds me of Zeus saving baby Dionysus once Semele died, also burnt, but because of his real godly form. It's a powerful way to connect Zeus and Apollo too.

Tying this unusual birth to his future activities is definitely a clever approach. Asclepius seems to fear death, even more than the average Greek. But, contrary so Sisyphus, he doesn't selfishly try to cheat his own way out of the Underworld. Or to extend his youth. Quite the contrary. He uses it to help his fellow mortals, exposing himself directly.

I'll jump to the end of your post to talk about his altruism but I'll come back to previous points. Asclepius committed a very unique kind of hubris. It's not a "I'm better than the gods" thing but a "I'm more helpful than the gods". He saw that none of them, including his own father, went out of their way to undo death. So he did it. And again, he didn't just go and resurrect Coronis or Phlegyas or any family member. I feel like he was given missions, given how random the people on the list are. And he dutifully accepted them. Like a god being prayed to, even by an Olympian deity like Artemis ! And THAT pushed another limit.

The random woman myth is so important because it shows that Asclepius doesn't only resurrect kings and princes, but also regular people. He didn't seek glory or anything, he just did his best to achieve his goals of helping those around him.

You worded everything about the Apollonian family line and the egregious pursuit of curing death so well !!

Even if it wasn't explicitly said, it would still be so blatant that Asclepius was raised by his father, because they have similar tendencies. They have this same stubborn drive to act on their principles, even if it involves disobeying other gods.

There's also this negative relationship with death, wanting to preserve the life around them and grieving when they can't (except Asclepius didn't accept this last part and went on to undo it).

Plus some gremlin energy and the staff from uncle Hermes 😂. Hermes was also said to help Apollo save him and since he collects human souls, he'd 100% be there in his birth to have Coronis AND in Asclepius' death.

Speaking of gods, yes he had godly support, through Athena and Artemis. Heck, even what you said about Zeus tolerating occasional resurrections fits because otherwise, Asclepius would be dead before even trying.

That whole thing about oppression and death is spot on. Coming back to Hippolytus, his demise was very unfair. A result of Aphrodite's spite in front of his indifference, Phaedra's maddening love and Theseus being Theseus. Asclepius seized the opportunity to restore his life and stolen youth. Hippolytus doesn't die again afterwards, at least not from some extraordinary reason. He probably passed from natural causes at a natural age.

But then comes the money thing. It's so interesting because it brings another nuance to his character. The desire and need for money is purely human, gods don't need it. He's only a mortal and this is a proof of it. Why was he "enthralled" by money ? He doesn't seem specially greedy. Maybe it's because he needed it to maintain equipment, buy more resources so he can do his job even better. Maybe it's because he isn't said to be paid anything for helping people, and even if he's a prince, he didn't live with Phlegyas (Coronis' dad) but in the fields with Chiron. So maybe he wanted better life conditions. Or maybe money to pass on. Idk, honestly.

There's so much more stuff to say but I'll let you with this. You're welcome (and encouraged) to answer any time you want. I'll probably post more about Asclepius in the future, so tell me if you want to be tagged.

Who did Asclepius resurrect ?

A couple days ago, I discussed the idea of mortals defeating gods with @kill-me-with-a-spoon on a comment section of my "thoughts on Epic" post.

We talked about Diomedes and Perseus briefly, but then a third example came in : Asclepius.

And I find this specific mention interesting because I didn't think about it but it kinda makes sense 😂

He didn't defeat any god like the two former heroes, that being physically overwhelming them. Instead, he simply "cures" death, thus Thanatos' doing. Not only his, but the Fates' too considering they cut the thread of life. And he meddled with Hades' realm, something that he hated and we know how that ended.

(Hades hating doctors will never not be funny)

I made some research on him for personal projects and so I want to use it right now for personal ramblings about who exactly Asclepius resurrected.

@kill-me-with-a-spoon was pointing out that if, by technicality, he didn't interfere with Hades' domain if souls he resurrected didn't cross the Styx. And I've got to say, I think he did.

Also, I completely agree with the fact that they're still killable. They won't die from the same cause since Asclepius heals their injuries but he doesn't deify anyone.

If we look up different sources, here's the list of people he resurrected.

Hippolytus (according to Pausanias and latin sources like Pseudo-Hyginus or Ovid)

What makes this particularly interesting is that Artemis is the one who has this idea. It shows that portraying her as a man hater is completely wrong since she asks her male nephew to resurrect her male friend/devotee. It shows her bond with Hippolytus (his death was very unfair, so I get it) and with Apollo too, since she trusted her brother's son completely.

Then, it's just funny but in-character that Theseus isn't the one who has the idea to resurrect his son, because of course he wouldn't think about it 😂. It's even funnier if we take late sources stating that Asclepius was among the Argonauts. Because Theseus was too, so they knew each other personally and yet Theseus couldn't think about it.

Another detail : Hippolytus seems to forgive Theseus in Euripides' play, but NOT after coming back to life in Pausanias' version. Different versions, I know, but if we mix the two, then we could interpret that maybe all this time in the Underworld gave him the opportunity to think about it, or maybe, with a new chance to live, he doesn't want to stay with his father.

I get you, Hippolytus. Go have fun.

Capaneus (according to Stesichorus)

What's interesting here is how Capaneus died : he participated in Polynice's siege against Thebes but was killed... by Zeus. He was struck by lightning because of hubris.

And then Asclepius comes and resurrects this guy. All the more reasons for Zeus to be angered. That means he came in and decided to undo divine punishment, the same one that will be his own doom in the future. It's pretty chilling for me.

Lycurgus

So, there are a lot of Lycurguses in mythology.

In the beginning, I thought it was Lycurgus of Thrace, which would've been hilarious because if this guy comes back to life, he'll come back traumatized and insane (also, any grapevine would be the source of PTSD flashbacks). And again, that would've mean undoing divine punishments.

BUT it seems to be a separate Lycurgus that was resurrected. Not the one who offended Dionysus.

It's also not Admetus' brother of the same name, though the logical link would've been easy to make (because of Apollo's servitude and Admetus also being an Argonaut according to some sources).

Honestly, Wikipedia is the only place where the Lycurgus that Asclepius resurrected is distinguished. Even then, the article speaks of a probable case and lists Apollodorus as a source. So not even researchers are completely sure of which Lycurgus it was.

Hymen/Hymenaios : yeah, according to the Orphics, he resurrected some guy named Hymen, even though the only figure with this name is a god... it would've been very interesting to analyze if I had more details about it. Unfortunately, there aren't really.

Tyndareus

Glaucus : It's funny how Asclepius resurrects both Theseus AND Minos' son. Though that exploit is more often attributed to the prophet and healer Polyidos. I wonder if there was some untold teacher-student relationship between the two, since Asclepius is one of the inventors of medicine (with Chiron)

And then there's this woman :

This cracks me up, because this little story alone states that Asclepius as a GOD still resurrects the dead even though he was punished for it. Tbf, he probably had to explain this to Zeus, that he had to compensate his partners' mistake. Still, that's hilarious that not even divine might stopped him.

Don't tell me he didn't know what he was doing. He's a smart guy and his father is literally mr. God of prophecy. I like his audacity.

So, coming back to the initial subject, with the sheer number of mentioned names, I do think they had the time to be buried and cross the Styx (except Capaneus, who was probably turned into ashes lol).

Asclepius definetly meddled with Hades' domain, thus angering the god of the dead and he 100% provoked Zeus.

But, not all the gods were agaisnt him. If we take the version where he resurrects people with gorgon blood, then Athena, who gave it to him, was in favor of his operations.

Then, there is Artemis who asked him to bring back Hippolytus and finally, quite obviously, his n°1 supporter is his own father Apollo (oh god, I could make a whole new post rambling just about Apollo and Asclepius).

So yeah, I really like this myth for many reasons and this is one of them : how it's tied to many other stories, how different figures behave and react to Asclepius' antics, how it puts the system of life and death into questions, etc...

Anyways, if you have anything to comment on about this myth, don't hesitate. I'd love to discuss it more !

My main source about all of this was Theoi.