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petertingle-yipyip · 4 months ago

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WORLD CLASS SINNER - FRANK CASTLE

season two - ghosts

season one // two // masterlist

Pairing: platonic frank x reader

Word Count: 6,623

Summary: Peace never lasts long for vigilantes, even when they run from their city. Ghosts reappear and draw Y/N back to her home, but it also draws out Exodus.

A familiar bed from another life. Familiar arms around you. New nightmares filling your dreams.

You thought going to London would be some relief, and it partially was. Your hands didn’t feel constantly slick with a culmination of everyone’s blood. You didn’t dream of Midland anymore. Elektra’s weapon didn’t pierce your chest and Matt’s bloated corpse didn’t mock you as your late friend killed you. Instead, Billy tormented your nights.

His voice lingered in an otherwise normal dream, an omen of the nightmare barreling towards you that you couldn’t stop. His body pinned you down after he made you watch him shoot Frank in the head. His eyes stared into yours as he turned your own knife against you and buried it deep in your neck and you woke up choking on nothing more than an illusion. After those nights, you went through the morning with the tingling sensation of electricity in your wrist. A few nights you had even screamed in your sleep, waking up Marc or Steven in a panic. That always made you feel guilty and a little embarrassed.

It was always worse when it was Steven. Not because of anything he would do but because you couldn’t tell him everything. He knew it was something gone wrong from an FBI assignment but he didn’t know Billy’s name or his relationship to you. He didn’t know your connection to the Punisher and your alter ego. He didn’t know what really happened and why that had such deep and dangerous hooks into your subconscious.

You attributed the uptick in nightmares to the recent news from your bureau. In the time since the incident, Homeland Security had been working behind the scenes to erase themselves from the narrative. The pending possibility of a court case was now based on your evidence and testimony and the investigation into his work with Rawlins and Schoonover. Dinah was only the agent that arrested Billy, not the one who unofficially contracted two deadly vigilantes.

The idea of it being you against him caused you to somewhat fall apart. You began to reconsider your body, trying to find some place of you - literal and figurative - that he hadn’t touched. The muscles in your arm would twitch if you lingered in the thought too long, as if your brain wanted to bring the memory of that night to the surface. As if you needed another reminder of that tragic relationship, like the scar on your wrist wasn’t enough.

You had pushed the memory away for the most part. Dex and Fisk served as a fair distraction to keep you from wondering when he would finally succumb to his injuries and die in the early months after the incident or maybe you would’ve been more like Dinah, showing up to taunt him as a ghost of his former self. But that news never came and now that the more pressing threat was away from your focus, that idea began creeping back in.

Marc recognized that shift in you and took extra care to keep you mentally with him. But he never spoke on it and for that, you were grateful. He took you out to dinners, watched your favorite shows and movies with you, went out with you on late night walks when you couldn’t sleep. Steven would ask you to read to him, quiz him on Egyptian trivia, or walk you around the Egyptian wing of the museum and tell you all his favorite facts. They both would convince you to let them help you in the kitchen, and you recognized it as an excuse to keep an eye on you since sharp objects were involved.

During that time, it was easy to remember why you loved them and why you’d never deserve them.

You were sitting on the counter in the kitchen while Marc was doing dishes when you got the call. An unknown number.

You had been getting a lot of calls since you were in London. Some you answered, some you didn’t. Karen, Foggy, and Matt of course. Dinah once or twice, even Nat. You always listened to their messages after and the familiar voices felt nice to hear even if you never called them back. The little updates on their lives made you feel a little less disconnected from them, even though it was your own decision to seclude yourself.

“Hello?” You answered plainly.

“Hey Princess.” Frank said on the other end and your eyes went wide. “How you been?”

“Holy shit.” You laughed slightly.

“It’s good to hear your voice.” He said honestly and you smiled to yourself. “How you been holding up?”

There was the background noise of hard thuds that made your brows furrow.

“Hanging on by a thread as usual. You missed a lot.” You admitted. “What’s going on on your end?”

“Hey… What’s with the new crazy?” You faintly heard the young female voice in the background.

“And who’s that?”

“Long story.” He grumbled. “Listen, I hate to do this to you, but I think I’m gonna need your help.”

“Okay, um..” You glanced over and saw Marc was already looking at you in question. You simply held up a hand as a signal for him to hold his questions. “How soon?”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Where’s here exactly?”

“Somewhere around Michigan… Kinda.”

“Ah shit.” You muttered to yourself. “I hate the midwest.”

At that, Frank laughed.

“It’s almost a nine hour flight to Detroit.” You spoke out loud. “I’d probably have to land in New York first so-“

“Hang on. You left New York?” He cut in.

“Yeah, long story.” You said simply. “I can probably be there sometime tomorrow. Can you keep yourself and the girl good till then?”

“Honestly Y/N, I have no goddamn clue. She won’t tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know.” You shrugged. “I’ll call back when I get to New York and then when I get to Detroit so I can find you.”

“Thanks, Princess.”

“It’s what I do.” You ended the call.

“What was that about?” Marc asked. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah.” You breathed with an apologetic expression. “A friend of mine needs help.”

“What friend?” He pushed.

“A friend from New York.”

“But you said Detroit.”

“Yeah, I also said my friend was from New York, not in New York. It’s not a big deal anyway.”

“Sounds like it is.”

“Can we not do this? I’m sorry to just up and leave but I’m going. You’re not gonna stop me.” You blurted out, moving quickly around the small space to collect your things. The only thing that stopped your frantic movements was the scoff that Marc let out.

“I never understood what you saw in him.” He complained, not bothering to hide his disdain.

“What are you on about?”

“One call from Matt and you drop everything.”

“It wasn’t Matt.” You countered.

“Oh, it wasn’t? Who was it then?”

“It doesn’t matter. I still have to go and you still don’t get a say.”

“Right.” He nodded and the sarcasm dropped from his words. “Y’know, I thought you would’ve figured all this out by now but you’re still running yourself in circles for a guy you’re not even dating.”

“It isn’t like that.” You said tightly and began your packing again. “I promised I’d be there to help when he needed it. I can’t back out on that.”

“Anything for your precious Matt, right?”

“Give me a break!” You shouted suddenly. “You don’t even know him. You’ve made damn sure of that.”

“Good thing, too!” He yelled back and you couldn’t help rolling your eyes. “Cause if I did, I probably would’ve kicked the shit out of him by now!”

“I would love to see that.” You scoffed. “How do you think I stayed alive this long with all the bullshit I got caught up in?”

You ground your teeth as the familiar burn of your anger creeped through your veins while Marc went off on a rant. You did nothing with it, letting it sit under your skin as you continued your packing. You knew you had to keep Frank’s secret. You trusted Marc but saying that it was in fact Frank, the infamous Punisher who was allegedly still at large, that was an admittance that you weren’t allowed. It wasn’t your secret to tell. Even if you were telling it in a completely different country to someone who couldn’t care less if the Punisher was free or not.

By the time you were listening again, Marc was still talking.

“Enough, Matt!” You snapped without much thought. “What do you want me to do?”

“Matt?” He scoffed and your stomach dropped.

“Marc.” You corrected. “You know what I meant.”

“You know what, Y/N?” He took a step closer and you didn’t back down. “When you came back, I thought it was cause you wanted to be here with me or with Steven. But it’s never gonna be enough, is it?”

“You think it’d be fair to Steven for me to be here and constantly have to lie to him? About myself and about you? Jesus, Marc, do you hear yourself?”

“You chose to lie to him about yourself.”

“Oh, right.” You scoffed. “Because the guy would’ve been able to stomach the fact that he was in love with a killer? Because he wouldn’t have seen the blood when he looked at me?”

“You’re the one who came back here. You could’ve gone anywhere and you chose to come back.”

“That didn’t automatically mean we’d get back together.” You argued loudly.

“What else am I supposed to think when you’re in my bed every night? I’m enough for you to sleep with again but not good enough for you to stay?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to! Jesus, Y/N, it’s all over your face.”

“Marc, I care about you and you know that..” You tried but you knew it wasn’t enough. “I'm not gonna keep arguing about this but it isn’t about Matt. I give you my word, alright?”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t… Y’know what, yeah. Maybe I never should’ve come back here…”

“Maybe you’re right.”

You said nothing as you grabbed your bags. He scoffed and went around you, holding the door open for you.

“At least I know you’re leaving this time.” He commented as you stepped into the hall. As he went to shut the door, you turned and blocked it with your foot.

“I left before to protect you.” You said firmly.

“Move your foot.”

“No. Yel and the other Widows would’ve mowed you down and not thought twice.”

“You want to know what’s the worst part of all this?” Marc commented off-handedly, as if he was going to make a casual remark. “I wish I could hate you. Do you understand how guilty I feel to say that? Or how it feels to want to hate someone you would’ve done anything for?”

“It’d be easier if you did.” You agreed. “And yeah, I do… I used to wish there was a worse side to you, just so I wouldn’t feel so bad leaving… But you could hate me, you know. I could make it that way.”

“No..” He shook his head and put a hand gently to your cheek. “Cause I’d know I really don’t.”

“You’re better without me.” You tried with a nod and took his hand away, though you kept a loose hold of it. “Thank you for everything. I owe you and Steven so many explanations and apologies…”

“You can send him a letter.” He said when he noticed your expression fall. “Do all of us a favor and take care of yourself through whatever this is.”

“You know, if you ever come through New York again…”

“We’ll use your bed instead?”

“Shut up.” You laughed. “Till next time.”

“See you around, baby.” He tapped under your chin before stepping back inside the apartment. You moved your foot and smiled sadly before turning away and heading to the airport.

Your stop in New York was supposed to be quick. Just as you were arriving at your building, a dark vehicle rolled up and you stopped for a second.

A second too long.

“Been too long, Y/L/N.” Brett called as he got out and came around the sidewalk.

“Hey.” You breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, after Fisk I needed a break. I’m actually on my way out but-“

“Out the country again?” There was a small accusation in his tone.

“Can you really blame me?” You laughed slightly. “With Fisk locked up again and no official case against mush-for-brains there was no necessity to hang around.”

“Speaking of…”

“There’s a case now?” Your brows raised and your arm nearly twitched.

“Not yet. But he did remember something.”

“What?” Your stomach tightened in anticipation for the accusation of your alter ego.

“Your name.”

“My name…” You repeated, realizing that Brett’s appearance may very well be for an arrest.

“Mhmm. Out of the blue, he said ‘Y/N’.”

The knot in your stomach unraveled quickly and your body relaxed.

“Is that why you’re here?” You kept going, careful not to linger too long on any one response. “Would I even be able to see him?”

“You want to?”

You thought for a moment. It was a terrible idea, to come face to face with the man who nearly killed you.

No. You had to remind yourself that he did kill you.

Yeah, your heart stopped. Blood loss, they said. Your partner was able to get you started again but it was one of the worst minutes of my life, y’know.

The memory sent a shiver down your spine and you had to swallow the rising bile. You tried to quickly weigh the pros and cons but you did wonder if seeing him - just the once - would let your mind rest. You could understand what was left of the man you had potentially seen yourself truly caring about. You’d know if he was something to fear, the threat lurking in shadows and behind corners, or if he was useless. A pathetic remnant of who you once knew.

“Why the hell not.” You finally answered.

Brett took you to the hospital after that.

As you were heading to Billy’s room, you passed a window leading into a physical therapy room. You glanced in but one of the patients caused you to freeze. His back was to you and his hair had grown out some but you could still tell who it was, especially after spending months working with him.

“He didn’t die either then?” You said flatly as you stopped to watch Dex. Small movements, sitting upright on a stool and turning his upper body. Any threat of retaliation from him was miles away.

“He asked about you once.” Brett said from your side. “Wondered if you ever came to see him.”

“He should be glad I didn’t… I would’ve smothered him with his pillow once the nurses left.�� You shrugged and kept moving.

Finally, you were led into Billy’s room. Two armed officers waited at the door and you were patted down before allowed to enter. Their attention caught on the hard object at your waist but you lifted your sweater’s hem to show the badge. As you were ushered in, the woman you assumed was his psych ripped apart the velcro holding him in place.

“You can’t be in here.” She tried but you didn’t look at her.

Instead you looked at the man on the bed. Your eyes traced the thick black lines that adorned the plastic white mask he wore. You could barely see his eyes and that made you uneasy. Your hand twitched at your side and was begging to form a fist, to shatter the plastic mask and connect firmly with his face.

The part of the Red Room that would always live inside you wanted to see his scars. You wanted to know how you and Frank had broken him, the new patterns of his skin that you and Frank carved out using that shattered mirror. You wanted to see if fear would fill his eyes, the taunting yellow haze that appeared only to you.

The click of the door closing snapped you back to the present.

“Y/N.” Billy said softly, so softly you had barely heard it behind his mask. “Hey, beautiful. Jeez, you’re even… prettier than I remember..”

“No.” You shook your head, barely finding your voice. “You don’t get to-”

“Oh.” The woman said suddenly. “Y/N, of course. I’m sorry. I’m Dr. Dumont and I’ve been working with Billy for the past few months.”

“It’s Agent, actually.” You told her. The title meant nothing to you but she didn’t need to know that. “Agent Y/L/N.”

“Right.” She nodded with a rehearsed smile. “Well I’m glad you could join us. I assume you got my letter?”

You hummed slightly and dared a couple steps deeper into the room.

“What’s under the mask, Billy?” You asked plainly. “What do you look like now?”

“We try not to-“ The doctor tried but you kept going.

“Who did that to you?”

“I don’t…” He whined. “I don’t know. All I know is there was a… a skull and a mask.”

The skull was what he could remember of Frank. The white spray-painted skull across the black bulletproof. His memento mori as David Lieberman had once said. But the mask was another thing. You hadn’t worn your mask that night, had you? No, you were almost certain you didn’t have the time to put it on but he had seen you in it before.

Maybe his brain really was mush, combining different fights into one night.

“I’m guessing you don’t remember what you did to me.” You said honestly.

“I shoot you too?”

“Too? You know what you did to Agent Madani?”

“She comes by quite often.” Dumont added. Her uneasiness began to seep into your skin and you shivered in an effort to clear it.

“I know what I’ve been told but it doesn’t feel like I know anything.”

You held out the scarred wrist and moved another step closer.

“You shot me here. Twice. The first one didn’t penetrate so of course, you did it again.” You explained. “I was also stuck with a faulty taser that was frying the nerves in my hand.”

He said nothing, just turned his face away.

“You hung me by my wrists so tight, they bled.” You sneered, the memory serving as fuel for your words. “You watched and wanted me to beg for you to let me live. What kind of a man does that?”

You could feel the emotions mixing in his head, swirling into something you couldn’t describe. Neither could he and it ate at him, which you loved.

“Does it hurt?” You pressed, nothing other than sadism pushing you to speak. “Your face? Your body? Does it hurt to know that you wanted me dead?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Look me in the eyes and say that.” You said firmly. “Look at me and tell me that you don’t remember the way you wanted me to bleed out in front of you. The way you screamed for me to beg.”

The shadowed eyes met yours and you felt something strange from him. Uncertainty, self-pity, maybe even self-hatred. He didn’t know whether or not to believe your words. You smiled slightly and leaned away, putting your hands up slightly in a mock surrender.

“I didn’t come to torment you, Russo.” You said simply. You glanced at the other woman in the room and noticed she was nearly shaking, uncertain of how to react to your hostile presence. She seemed like she was about to run, throw open the doors and scream for the officers to take you away. “I know you got what you deserved. I just came to see how much of a man was left.”

“No.” The woman finally spoke and you turned with raised brows. “You didn’t deserve this, Billy.”

“You weren’t there.” You said flatly. “You didn’t see the hatred in his eyes when he looked at me, a woman he claimed to love.”

“It doesn’t matter. No one deserves this.”

“Maybe.” You shrugged. “But it happened, and I’m sure the ‘skull’ and the ‘mask’ don’t regret it.”

“You’re cruel.” She said quietly, a shocking revelation.

“No.” You pursed your lips and shook your head. “I’m mean, sure. I used to be more tame and gentle, but this damn circus-life I led made me meaner… Anyways, enough about me.” You waved a hand dismissively. “You’re not quite lost, are you?” You looked back at Billy.

“That what you want?” He lifted his chin.

You simply hummed, a sound of indifference as you headed towards the door. Dr. Dumont tried to call you back but you ignored her.

You could tell there were gears turning in Billy’s head. Dots were connecting, though nothing was staying. Flashes of memories, coming and going but never staying. For the time being, he was still just a man, but you had a feeling that if he did gain his memories, he’d be a threat again.

And he would come for you and Dinah.

You went to your apartment after the hospital, which was still full of unpacked boxes and your haphazardly laid out furniture, and exchanged your bags for a new one. You took only a carry on, a duffel with a couple handguns, extra bullets, and two knives. You tucked an extra jacket and a change of clothes and your phone charger with the weaponry before digging through the labeled ‘PERSONAL’ box to find the x-ray blocking pouch. Your hand caught on the long sleeve top from Matt, the gift from the first night you fought Fisk still stained with various blood splatters. You tucked your weaponry into the bag and shoved both into the duffel. With your practically useless badge to your belt, you headed back to the airport.

There was an envelope on your floor that caught your attention. It was labeled from the office of a psychologist, Dr. Dumont. It was stamped urgent but you had no need for it. You ripped it in half and threw it away.

As you were leaving your building, you received a call from another unknown number.

“This is a collect call from Larkville Sheriff's Department. Do you accept the charges?” The automated voice said and you almost laughed.

“Yeah, I accept.” You answered and after a few seconds, the tone clicked and it was a live call. “Collect call, huh?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He grumbled. “Where are you?”

“New York, heading back to the airport. You’re gonna owe me for going to Ohio of all goddamn places.”

“I tried Madani already but she pretty much told me to fuck off so…”

“So I’m all you got.” You nodded. “Any information on what I’m walking into?”

“Hell if I know.” He muttered. “Maybe your daughter’ll tell you something.”

“My daughter?” Your brows furrowed.

“Yeah, your daughter.”

There was some light shuffling before someone else took over the call.

“Hi, mom.” She said, equally as confused as you were.

“Hey, sweetie.” You answered kindly enough. You pressed your scar to put the call in your head while you moved your phone to text Dinah. “How’d you end up in Ohio?”

“I don’t know.” She confessed. “I don’t want to be here.”

“I don’t blame you.” You laughed.

-i know he called you- you typed quickly.

“Listen, I need you to trust the guy you’re with, okay?” You tried.

“Seriously?” She scoffed. “He tied me to a bed!”

“But has he hurt you?”

No answer.

“Has he shot at you or cut you or tried to kill you? Or has he saved your life?”

-not my problem- Dinah answered and you rolled your eyes.

-mahoney told me about you and russo. maybe we can work out something that benefits us both. i’m tired of waiting too- you typed furiously. Whether or not you and Frank dealt with Billy, you weren’t even worried about.

You were worried about Frank and the kid he was with. You knew he wouldn’t have called you unless it was something serious so you had to pull every string you had.

“Listen, hon.” You focused back on your phone call. “I’m gonna see you soon… Trust him and trust me, okay? But you have to tell me what you know when I get there.”

“Okay… Thanks, mom.”

“And let him know that I’m gonna stop to talk to her and try to convince her so I’ll meet you guys tonight.”

Almost instantly when you ended that call, Dinah called you. You two went back and forth for what felt like hours. She said Russo was faking it, you said you didn’t know. She said she could see it in his eyes, you said the ghost of him still stung your skin. She said she wants to hear him confess, you said you’d like him to stay powerless. She said Frank wasn’t her problem, you said he could be useful. An eye for an eye, trade favors.

Finally, you got her to agree to go to Ohio.

When you two met up at the helipad, some Homeland location she picked you up for, she explained that Russo had escaped that morning. You were partially glad because at least there wouldn’t be any expectation for you to visit again. It did leave a feeling of dread in the back of your mind, like another fight was barreling towards you.

But you had to think this time the fight would only come if you went looking for it. So you focused on whatever hell Frank ended up in.

You changed your tops as the helicopter got closer. Out of habit, you reached for your mask but came up empty. You tucked one knife under your fitted sleeve and the other at your back. You put a handgun at either hip and the extra clips in the front of your waistband.

“Drop me within a mile.” You instructed calmly. “Without the mask, I need to scout before I get too close.”

“What are you gonna do?” She asked loudly, straining to be heard over the whirling blades.

You offered her a slight smirk before scooting to sit at the edge of the open door and letting your feet hang out. You leaned slightly and watched the ground get closer and closer, mentally calculating for a safe jump. You vaguely heard Dinah’s voice but you slid down before you could actually process her words. You rolled through the landing and groaned slightly when you landed against a tree.

The sound of automatic gunfire almost immediately took your attention. You focused in as much as you could, trying to count the rifles. A dozen was your best guess

You damn near ran at that point.

You could see the Sheriff’s department and the gunfire continued inside the building. You found easy cover among the trees and tried for a recount of the gunners outside.

A lot to take on by yourself.

You opened yourself for a quick survey and found a calm confidence among them all, one standing out among them. Confident in himself and his purpose but an underlying darkness. You could only assume he was in charge but he was in the middle of the herd. And he wasn’t your mission.

No, you needed to find Frank.

You redirected your focus on the sheriff’s station. Panic, fear, uncertainty. All the expected emotions wafted from the small building. Underlying it all was what you were looking for. Confidence, comfortability among the chaos, and anticipation. Keeping low, you bolted towards the building.

The back door was blown off and you hesitated at the entrance. You reached to your hip and grabbed one of your guns. You held it comfortably between your hands and whistled, two sharp familiar notes that were usually answered by one of your cousins. After a second of silence, you whistled the two notes of response and stepped into the building.

You moved through the dark building carefully, grimacing at how the rubble crunched under your feet. You wished for a moment that you had your Exodus boots but wishing did you no favors. You swallowed the thought and found the collection of remaining deputies. A gun was raised at you quickly and you let both hands shoot upwards in surrender, though your own handgun didn’t leave your grip.

“Who the hell are you?” One of the female officers asked sharply.

“Relax.” You tried simply. “I’m here to help. You’ll thank me.”

“How many are out there?” A different man asked.

“Too many.” You shrugged as your eyes scanned the room. One deputy down, a younger girl with panic in her eyes, a few more officers, and Frank.

The down officer argued against turning over Frank and the girl and you smiled slightly to yourself. You moved across the room and knelt at his side while tucking your gun away. You rubbed your hands together and allowed yourself to absorb some of the anger in the room. Anger at the men outside and inside. You forced it down your hands and let it settle in your palm.

You nudged the other set of hands aside and pressed your now ignited skin against the wound. He groaned loudly and the faint smell of burnt flesh permeated the small space before you pulled your hand away. The bleeding had slowed substantially and you allowed an influx of his pain. He looked at you with wide eyes and you simply nodded.

“You’re the woman from the phone.” The young girl said from your side. “You really came.”

“Yeah.” You smiled softly and wiped the blood along your shirt. “Told you I would… You doing okay?”

“We can’t just sit here.” She said firmly, though she had no idea what to do. “They’re gonna kill us.”

You were going to answer, to reassure her that with you there, they wouldn’t get close. But outside, you felt life draining, slowly and painfully. He killed one of his own.

“Get her into a vest.” The sheriff commanded but you waved him off. “You go out there in a spandex-“

“It’s bulletproof.” You said flatly. “And it’s withstood more than this building has. Listen, Sheriff, let me take him-“ You gestured to Frank. “And we can take care of it.”

“And just who are you?”

“Special Agent with the FBI.” You said, a twisted truth but not a total lie. “I’ve done more missions than you can count and I know for this one, I need his help.”

“He’s in no shape for it.”

You glanced at Frank and he simply lifted the makeshift cast around his forearm. You shot him a glare and he shrugged.

“He’ll manage.” You answered finally. “If you don’t set him loose, this building will fall. Your deputies and that little girl will die. Do you want that?”

“Got any black tape?” Frank asked and your head snapped towards him.

You let out a small sigh and put up your hands. You turned on your heel and offered one last look to the girl.

Why hadn’t you asked her name? You decided quickly that you’d have to get the job done just so you could ask.

You gave a sharp nod and she pressed her lips into a line before her eyes fell. You didn’t turn around, heading to slip back out the back door instead. You made your way around the side of the building and habitually reached to tap your mask, making contact with your bare skin instead. You cursed the failed gesture and began moving around the side of the building again.

You saw two men rushing towards the entrance and you quickly palmed a knife before kneeling in the front bushes. You flipped it in your hand and pinched the tip before drawing back. The ignition of flames became an easy target and you threw the blade quickly. It smashed the bottle, triggering a bright explosion and igniting the two assailants. You stepped out proudly and watched the men burn before collecting your blade. You stood, illuminated by the blaze, and again whistled the two short notes. Your call was answered from somewhere within the trees and with confirmation that your friend was there, you bolted into the tree line.

Automatic rifle fire filled the silence as you moved, a blade in one hand and a handgun in the other. You moved quickly, at a truly deadly pace and you felt more yourself than you had since Matt came back.

You swiped you blade in a long line along a man’s back before you kicked out and he landed on his face. You flung the blade down and it buried itself in the back of his shoulder. When he cried out, you ducked into nearby shadows. You waited as two men came to help him and as soon as they grabbed the fallen man’s arms to haul him up, you fired. Two quick shots, two quick deaths. You came out to kneel on the man’s back, yanking your blade free and pressing your gun to the back of his head.

A single shot to make the third death.

Your assaults continued on either side, automatic fire from one and isolated shots from the other. You made use of the knife more than the gun. You enjoyed the thrill of throwing the small blade, took pride in the precision your hands still held. An unexpected comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. As you moved, you came across the sniper. You wondered for a split second who his target was but your instincts told you it was the girl.

You whipped the blade through the air and it dug into the man’s hand, at the base knuckle of his trigger finger to be exact. You were on him before he could cry out in pain. You dropped your shoulder and slammed into his side, tackling him into the nearest tree. He jammed the butt of his rifle at you and you took the hits to your ribs, refusing to fall back. You gripped his shirtfront with one bloodied hand and slammed the other against his face. Heavy hit after heavy hit until the bones cracked under your fist. He sputtered out blood instead of words and you threw him to the ground. You planted a foot on his chest and fired before dropping the empty clip and replacing it.

You collected your blade and tucked it away before you grew still. You listened for the gunfire but heard nothing. You listened for cries but heard nothing. At that point, you let yourself feel. Then a faint smoke seemed to show you the exact path to Frank. With your gun firmly in hand, you ran.

You were coming up behind him when you came up on another sniper. You froze for a second and looked around him, only to realize he had Frank in his sights. You instantly sprinted towards him and once you were close enough, your arm hooked around his neck. You yanked him backwards as he pulled his trigger and the shot went wide. You shifted your position so he would land facedown in the leaves with your knee digging his back.

You dropped the gun in your hand and gripped the shoulder of his shirt. You fisted the material and pulled, choking him with not only your arm but his own clothes. You pushed the other foot forward and kicked the rifle away as the Homeland helicopter loomed overhead. It’s spotlight shone down on you and you had to decide what you’d do.

Kill him, save the girl and likely end up on Dinah’s shit list.

Walk away, maybe Dinah takes him into custody and her justice system can do something.

You gut told you there’d be a way for him to get out. The justice system you once studied and wanted to defend had failed enough times that you didn’t hold your breath. You shook your free hand and allowed the hidden blade to fall into your palm. You adjusted your grip and raised your hand to slam it into the man’s temple when you felt a hand around your arm.

Your head snapped up and you saw Frank looking at you. He shook his head once and you took a deep breath before releasing the man. You slid the blade back up your sleeve and climbed off. You went to follow Frank, but not before kicking the man in his ribs.

As you two were heading back, your own ribs began to burn with their familiar pain. At that point, you were regretting not getting pins after the fight with Billy. You sat with Frank on the curb and you leaned onto his shoulder, rubbing the eternal fracture while he spoke to Dinah.

“Billy Russo broke out of the hospital.” Dinah told Frank and you felt Frank shift to look down at you so you sat up.

“You know ‘bout that?” He asked you. There was accusation in his tone, but not that you didn’t tell him. He didn’t seem to care about that. It was about whether that news had anything to do with your actions that night.

“Yeah, how do you think I got her to give me a ride?” You answered flatly. “You missed a lot.”

Dinah moved to talk to the Sheriff and you blew out a sigh.

“Never really ends for us, does it?” Frank muttered.

“No.” You laughed sadly. “No, it does not… You enjoy the time on the road at least?”

“Yeah.” He nodded as he stared ahead. “You?”

“Do you remember when we were in that cemetery after saving your ass from Kitchen Irish and I was talking about the place I was raised?” You glanced over when he didn’t answer and saw he was looking at you already. “My cousins and I, we got a chance to go after him. I thought he was dead this whole time but… He wasn’t. One of my cousins had been there the whole time.”

“You got yours then, hmm?” He gave a small, proud smile when you nodded. “Good for you, Princess.”

“Then I went to London, met up with an ex. But all of that was after my FBI partner tried to kill me and Red came back.”

“Red? Thought he died.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. The bastard survived the building and was hiding for months.”

“What got him to come back?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Let’s go.” Dinah said sharply as she walked by.

You quietly mocked her as you stood and the sheriff came over. You gestured to your spot on the curb and saw the girl coming out of the station. Her eyes went wide for a second and you knew it was the blood on your hands. You gestured for her to come with you and she hesitated. You could see it in her eyes that she was surveying her options.

“We can keep you safe.” You said honestly. “I never caught your name?”

“Rachel…” She said carefully. “Yours?”

“Y/N.” You smiled as she came to your side.

Frank eventually met you two at the helicopter, where Dinah sighed and stared pointedly at the girl.

“She’s coming.” You said forcefully.

“Or we don’t.” Frank nodded to you.

“Where are we going?” Rachel asked.

“New York.” You all answered.

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whatifxwereyou · 4 years ago

Text

The Oncoming Storm Second Interlude: Steam

Liu Kang x Reader

Listen, if I let this one go on any longer then they would have just had each other right there in the moment. Lord, have mercy on me Lol. Again, another idea that just doesn't fit in the actual narrative which is pretty planned out thus far! Still open to ideas and if they tickle me I will absolutely write them out! Enjoy.

Part 1 of The Oncoming Storm First Interlude (Kung Lao x Reader)

You couldn’t sleep. The day had been a long and stressful one and you were certain that the next day would be more of the same. Training for Mortal Kombat was no small thing and on top of that, you’d finally been woven into life amongst the other monks. That meant daily chores and responsibilities throughout Raiden’s Temple. In a way, it was nice to adjust to a communal life, to feel as though you weren’t a temporary fixture. It also meant that you were busy nearly all the time.

On top of that, you were exhausted. Even so, you resisted sleep. You understood now why Liu Kang enjoyed meditation and prayer as much as he did. Sometimes, amongst all the chaos, it was difficult to find peace. He made time for it and you hoped that would rub off on you.

After a bit longer spent not sleeping, you decided to go down to the springs. They were open at all hours of the day for any who wished to use them. You figured that with as late as it was, you would likely have the place to yourself. It wasn’t often that you had free time so since you didn’t think sleep would come easily, the springs were as good an idea as any.

Down you went, deep into the temple. you rinsed off and changed into the customary towel before walking into the expansive springs. They were beautiful and peaceful with the exception of the water falling from the occasional ledge. There were a handful of others relaxing amongst the stone and water but the most important of them was Liu Kang. You pretended not to notice him and sat on the edge of the pool. Should you stay? From the corner of your eye, you saw him meditating in silence. He was incredibly handsome. Something you had never told him even though you admired him greatly.

He was seated atop the stone next to the water across the spring from where you sat, dressed in nothing but the same type of towel you wore but it hung low upon his waist. As he breathed you could see the slow controlled movement of his muscles and it was hypnotic. He had such intense stability and control. You admired it. As he meditated, you caught a rare glimpse of the dragon marking on his right side.

Even as far as you were now, it was hard to be close to him. The air between you always grew so thick. The heat that radiated off of him was so intense that sometimes it burned you alive all without leaving a mark. The steam and humidity of the springs certainly didn’t make breathing any easier. There was a war in your head.

You wanted both to bask in the inescapable and inevitable tension of being near Liu Kang and also flee from it in fear of the unknown. Over time, you had begun to worry that you appeared weak to him but you realized very quickly that you were weak, specifically to him. He made you weak, not in a bad way, but in a way where you felt you could be vulnerable and sometimes that scared you.

You stood back up and decided to come back another time. As you made to leave, his voice very suddenly cut through the somehow already tense air. The room was so large that not a single other person seemed to hear him. His words were meant solely for you.

“You can join me if you like.” He had opened his eyes and was smiling at you, happy to see you. You blushed and didn’t bother hiding it. You were fools not to think the other knew what was happening between you.

“You seemed at peace and I didn’t want to disturb you. I didn’t think you noticed I was here.”

“You have an unmistakable presence, Y/N. I knew you were here the moment you arrived.” Ever since he’d first told you that he could sense your energy it had continued to make your heart pitter patter. You knew it could be attributed to the dragon marking but somehow it still felt special with Liu. “Come now. Join me.” He patted the rocks next to him and adjusted the towel around his waist. You did your best not to let your gaze linger on his hand as he did. Instead, you focused on making your way to where he’d perched himself. You stepped into the warm water and then made your way through it to the other side of the bath.

Liu offered you a hand and helped you atop the slippery rocks and you sat next to him. The steam was overwhelming there and it took you a short time to adjust but Liu Kang sat in peace the entire time. After you made it to sit next to him your bundle of nerves finally unraveled. The springs and Liu’s calming nature had brought you peace. After some time seated next to each other, arms just close enough to touch, he turned to face you.

“Would you like to see something remarkable?”

“If that’s a euphemism, Liu Kang, then so help me.” You had been spending way too much time with Kung Lao lately.

He laughed and slid into the water that was up to his waist and then offered you his hand. You took it and much to your surprise, once you’d dropped in the water next to him, he didn’t let go. Instead he led you through the water, across pools, and further into the springs. They extended further than you had expected. He led you until you reached the far wall and even then he climbed behind the waterfall there, letting go of your hand to do so.

Water cascaded down his back as he searched and when he returned to you, he pushed his wet hair back and offered you a charming smile. You peered around him to the waterfall to avoid the butterflies he almost constantly gave you to no avail. “Back here.” He took your hand again and led you through the waterfall that drenched you thoroughly. You had to grab onto your towel to make sure it didn’t get lost in the falls.

Then he led you beneath the waterfall into darkness and toward a tight crevice leading into the distance. It was claustrophobic and you hesitated but Liu Kang grasped your hand again and led you on. You trusted him more than you trusted yourself.

The path opened up in front of him. You could hear the pouring of water on the other side. Liu led you across a small stretch of dry land and on the other side of it was another pool, bubbling and steaming with the water of the springs. He let go of your hand and you climbed into the water and gasped. Water poured from a pool somewhere up above and to the left, far enough away that the sound wasn’t overwhelming. You were surrounded by the night sky. The spring overlooked the ravine and while it was further than you’d ever been into the ravine, the view was still breathtaking.

The stars above them twinkled and in that perfect moment, you forgot about everything else. You leaned against the edge of the pool; arms folded where the stone was risen to keep the water from spilling over the edge. Liu Kang came to rest beside you and you felt his eyes on you, admiring you while you admired the beauty of the world.

“I told you it was remarkable,” he whispered in your ear and you smiled. He took your hand and urged you away from the edge to float in the center of the pool. You ducked under the warm water and pushed your hair back. Most of it was white now. You’d trimmed it only days prior. Liu Kang took your hands again and pulled you back to him. Together you sat and stared at the stars, hands entwined with no need to say more.

You pulled your hands free to turn back toward the cliffside but his arms slipped around your middle, urging your back to rest against his chest. Who were you to fight it? He rested his chin against your shoulder and while his breath against your neck was distracting, it was also welcome. He was cautious around you, always, but in other ways he was bold and forward. Everything Liu Kang had ever done seemed like a graceful extension of his being. You closed your eyes and rested your head back on his shoulder.

Liu Kang hummed and when you turned to watch him, his eyes were closed and he had a content smile on his face. The song wasn’t one that you recognized but it was comforting and familiar enough. His voice was a quiet draw amongst the distant roar of the waterfall. When he stopped, you continued to admire him and when he opened his eyes, they were fixed on you- dark and mysterious. The light was far dimmer than it was inside the rest of the springs. There were lanterns hung on the wall behind the spring but they did little to stomp out the unshakeable dark of the night.

The shadows cast about him were both haunting and beautiful, drawing lines on his face that you had never noticed before and you found your fingers brushing over those lines on his cheeks without your permission. Liu Kang leaned into the touch and tilted his gaze to try and catch a glimpse of your fingertips. Realizing what you had done, you pulled your hand back and there was no hiding the red on your face.

Liu Kang took your hand, much to your surprise, and returned it to his cheek. Then he did the same to you, his thumb brushing over the corner of your lips and down your jaw, resting on the side of your neck. The intimacy of such a small gesture was overwhelming. If he noticed you blushing he said nothing but he seemed more at peace than you had ever seen him before. Liu Kang, in spite of his persistent meditation, always seemed to have worry on his mind. When you made to pull your fingers back again, to shift in the water, to start a conversation, anything to clear the choking air between you, he urged his hand from the side of your neck, over your wrist and up to your fingers.

You grasped his palm and he brought your fingers closer to his lips. His eyes traveled along your hand with adoration before he allowed his lips to brush just over your knuckles, then to your fingertips before he turned your palm in his hand and planted a soft kiss just upon the base of it.

“Liu…”

He searched your face as though coming from a stupor and not quite realizing what he had done. Even so, he quickly came to peace with his decision and then bowed his head politely and released your hand. You pulled your hand close but was careful to keep it out of the water. You’d never been given a kiss so tender and so sweet nonetheless on just your hand. It had shaken the very foundation that you’d built up over the past few weeks in defense of your heart.

He pulled back just enough to run his fingers through his hair and then turned his attention back to the stars. You sat there, dumbfounded by both his boldness and now the strange air of the moment. The tension hadn’t dissipated with your parting, in fact, it was worse than ever before. You’d shared only ghosts of kisses and tense moments that were interrupted in one way or another thus far.

You placed a hand on his shoulder and together you sat staring at the stars.

#liu kang x reader #liu kang #i think i accidentally formed a bias toward liu #still love them both tho #liu kang x you #imagine #liu kang/reader #liu kang/you #mk liu kang #mortal kombat movie #mortal kombat 2021

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solarpunks · 4 years ago

Quote

One might get the impression that for many of the characters in solarpunk stories, this has been their first run in with man-made, life obliterating disaster. Not so with Afrofuturists. Here’s a working definition for Afrofuturists: We are Black creatives who render our own science futures and past, because white people did not, and draw from our own critical pedagogy. As Alondra Nelson, founder of the first Afrofuturist internet community, has said, “The distillation of African diasporic experience [is] rooted in the past, but not weighed down by it.” Therefore, we are quite familiar with the boom and bust cycle of calamity, existing simultaneously in various dimensions of dystopia. The concept of the usable past is the third relevant tenet of solarpunk, and a touchstone between it and works that classify as Afrofuturist. ... You + your Android Galaxy smartphone = Cyborg. The metaphor of computer and software is not meant to emphasize any kind of Cartesian separation between body and spirit. Instead, it speaks to their interdependence and intersubjectivity, the networked nature of community, of us. Like software and hardware, One is nothing without the Other. We are not Vulcans. It is only through the manifold aspects of the computer software interface — the connected narratives, symbols, metaphors, categories, and systems of conceptual associations we live by and that live in us — that we can temporally arrest and process existence, which is large beyond complete description, constantly in flux, and inherently unknowable: In essence, divine. The software that is culture is the only way to express our humanness, fulfil our psychological and physical needs, and connect with others.

Promised Land: Religious Ideology and Solarpunk Science Fiction

Another absolutely fantastic essay from Rob Cameron. Building on his previous 2 part essay ‘In Search of Afro-Solarpunk’ for tor.com. (Which we thought was ‘the single most important essay about solarpunk that has been written this year (2019)’). Cameron casts his eye over the forrest stories and imaginaries that make up solarpunk as a whole and lays out its tenets in the most concise manner we’ve seen to date. Cameron then goes on to critique and gesture towards some of the genre’s elements that remain ‘under construction’. Namely coherent and vibrant inner lives.

“Imagining ways to create new from old, inducing change and being changed, interacting more mindfully with the environment and other people — this is the solarpunk mission. But to transform others, it would help if solarpunk becomes more open to self-transformation from unexpected places like spiritual traditions, which it has traditionally rejected. “

We know that there are witches, buddhists, occultists, traditional practitioners, and people of all faiths involved in solarpunk. Both as a movement and speculative fiction genre. But as Cameron notes this fundamental element of what it means to be human has yet to prominently make its way into its many worlds.

If solarpunk is to fully realise its potential as a collective ‘Memetic Engine’ - A cultural construct, or tool that powers and provides the ‘re-futuring’ of our collective imaginations. Then mechanisms for accepting and amplifying individuals inner worlds must activated, aligned and developed. This blog has been around since 2012, before solarpunk was really even ‘a thing’. We wondered allowed back then what were the “ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us”. Solarpunk is (we think), at a point where the community is established enough to engage with both individual and collective reckonings of ‘the spirt’ in its worlds. With the nuance, understanding and generosity of thought and heart that such a subject deserves (and requires).

These conversations have been already happening slowly and discretely. Indeed, one of the the first solarpunk zines we acquired was on the ‘Sacred’. But it is perhaps time to to create and imagine stories of the sacred under the brilliant light of the sun. Whilst recognising that one cannot speak for other solarpunks. One can only ever be in dialogue and occasional chorus them. 🙏

As Cemeron concludes in his essay:

“People are less likely to take risks on new ideas when hope is precarious. Anything new may be automatically categorized as dangerous and invasive. But if it’s coming from within their own narrative, a solarpunk rewiring would not be so scary. Indeed, it might be a revelation of the Promised Land.”

-- This really is a fantastic and timely essay. If you are writing, working in a utopian mode or participating in solarpunk in any of its myriad forms we highly recommend reading it in full.

#rob cameron #solarpunk #solar punk #spirituality #religion #speculative fiction #Imaginary #worldbuilding #memetic engine #faith #writing #dialogue #sacred #admin post #afrofuturism

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antialiasis · 3 years ago

Text

Morphic: the Musical

The Thousand Roads forums have a fanfic music thread. While I don't really do those kinds of threads usually because I don't really listen to a very wide variety of music and generally have a hard time associating music that already exists with unrelated fiction, one of the questions in it is this:

Talk about what would happen if some Broadway hit-maker scooped up your fic and turned it into a script. What songs would be in it? Describe a dance number/dance battle?

And immediately, the musical analysis glint lit up in my eyes. This question was presumably intended in a lighthearted jokey sort of way - imagining some fight staged as a dance battle, a hypothetical Broadway hit-maker doing the adaptation. But that's not enough for me, say I! Musicals are a good and interesting medium for serious fiction that I care about and I am going to serious this up.

See, to me, the musical format has two major strengths as a narrative medium. The first is that it can explore the inner worlds of characters in a pretty unique way. Characters get to monologue in a sort of heightened, non-literal manner, intensified by music: we can learn what they're about, what makes them tick, what's going on in their heads in a particular moment, in a way that wouldn't really make sense presented as actual inner monologue in another medium. The music aspect itself then adds a layer to it that's impossible to replicate in any other.

The second strength of the musical format is that it's really good at highlighting recurring themes, parallels and contrasts. Reprise the same melody, the same lyric, a parallel but opposite lyric, and you've instantly connected two things together. Is there a character arc? You can highlight what has changed. Are there two characters going through something similar? You can draw that out. Is there a recurring theme throughout? Use a recurring lyric, a recurring melodic phrase! Nudge the viewer into forming connections! Delicious! And you can do subtler things on the music level itself - particular instruments with particular connotations, recurring motifs...

So naturally I decided I should think up what a musical adaptation of Morphic would be like. It'd be a fun exercise in putting all my thoughts on musical adaptations into practice, but also an interesting way to help sort out some of my thoughts about characters arcs, etc. for the actual Morphic rewrite. And in the process, I may have gone slightly overboard. I regret nothing.

(I'm about to spoil most of the fic here, if this wasn't obvious)

Morphic: the Musical - tracklist

(Note: this musical is not sung-through; there are regular non-musical sections with regular dialogue in between. Morphic would almost definitely not make for a good sung-through musical.)

Act I

[Intro song] (Brian)

A monologue by Brian at the TV studio as he tries to work through what to say, how to explain or justify any of this (which conveniently serves to exposit to the audience as well as introduce his character). He makes nervous false starts and cuts himself off, starting the verse over each time, and through these false starts we learn what's going on, that the press has been calling them Pokémorphs, that this was all Dave's idea, that alcohol was involved, that it was meant as a basis for further research, that there were never supposed to be *children*, that he doesn't know what he'd even do with a kid, that Dave roped him into going on this show because he couldn't.

[Dave song] (Dave)

This musical properly introduces us to Dave via Jane walking out on him followed by this song, wherein he contemplates chucking baby Jean out the window. It's a dark rock song with big emotional contrasts and raw lyrics that is almost definitely my favorite song in this musical in the hypothetical reality where it is an actual musical and I didn't write it, because I am me. Probably starts with a couple slower lines of desperate disbelief before launching into wild anger about fuck that fucking whore, followed by what I will be referring to as the everything-is-shit verse (please bear with me), just a general cynicism rant about why the world is a shitty place not worth living in, followed by him wildly fantasizing about killing his infant child. What a delightful human being that I adore. The song ends abruptly, he's standing there staring at her in his arms for a moment, then he silently goes to feed her. On the soundtrack you probably might think he just did it.

Fatherhood (Brian)

A montage song covering the timeskip, which probably reprises [Intro song]. Brian initially has no idea what to do with his new squirming horrorblob child and is convinced he will screw it up the way he tends to screw up everything. Makes a couple of false starts again, but then gains confidence as time passes as he genuinely bonds with Gabriel and legitimately thinks he's a pretty amazing kid. There's a repeated line along the lines of that Gabriel's a weird, weird kid, but he's his, initially in a tone of "oh god I'm responsible for him what do" but towards the end is said with pride and fondness.

[Villain song] (Isaac and Jacob)

A duet between the two brothers, exploring what makes them tick. Isaac is all about this heavy pressure and sense of responsibility, originally imposed by his father, that he continues to impose on himself. He's been appointed to take over leading the family/cult and was raised with that constantly in the back of his mind as his future, and he believes that they're God's true righteous people and he cannot go wrong. He has dreams with some regularity that he interprets as visions from God, as he has been encouraged to since childhood by his father. When he has one about murder, it frightens him but he sees it as basically a divinely-appointed mission.

Jacob privately doesn't really believe any of that. He is trapped in this cult and goes through the motions but is not actually driven by any of the things that are driving Isaac. He's fairly quiet for most of the song - as Isaac is going on about his vision, Jacob has a line here and there obliquely challenging it, but Isaac has an answer for everything, and he doesn't press it, instead moving seamlessly on to suggestions for how he should do it. Jacob gets a quiet variant of part of the everything-is-shit verse from [Dave song], expressing the same kind of cynicism in a more reproachful, apathetic way - all in his own head, of course.

Just Like My Hero (Jean and Will)

Jean sings about how she is just like her hero, Sarah Hooter! Starts off describing how they look the same, moves on from there to how she will torch anyone who's mean, etc., just like her hero. Halfway through, Will joins in, and it becomes a counterpoint duet: Jean may be immature and ridiculous, but he deeply wishes he was confident and adored and nothing would get to him, and he admires and envies that about her. His just like my hero has a bit more of an ironic vibe, he'd hardly properly call her his hero, but he looks up to her more than he'd normally admit nonetheless.

Storming the Castle (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack and Gabriel are playing a D&D game with their friends, arguing about the best course of action. Jack is eager to waltz into the bad guys' fortress, storm the castle, while Gabriel urges lying low, says they're too weak. Jack wants to take the leap and try it; Gabriel insists no, we're not taking the leap, it's stupid. "It's brave!" Jack counters. (In the end, Gabriel gives in and they go ahead with it, and it goes fine.)

Unique (Mia and Lucy)

Mia and Lucy play one of their games. The song is about how Lucy needs someone like Mia to challenge her and let her actually indulge her powers, which are otherwise unsettling to people and she's ashamed and self-conscious about them, while Mia needs someone like Lucy to get a real outlet for her hunter's instinct. The word the lyrics are built around is unique; by being the precise way they are, they are each the only person who can provide this for the other.

Mia doesn't sing. She speaks her lyrics in her usual monotone, not even rhythmically. They also don't rhyme. It's technically a duet but really it's just Lucy singing and Mia talking.

[Peter/Katherine song] (Peter and Katherine)

A counterpoint duet between the siblings, contrasting their experience as Pokémorphs. Peter can pretty easily hide that he's different and be treated mostly as a normal kid, and feels free in his privilege, not confined quite the way the others are, able to be a bit reckless and incautious. Katherine, meanwhile, has a very different experience, being extremely noticeably different, getting stared at, and struggling with basic activities, and feels a huge sense of responsibility weighing her down, worrying about Peter and grounding him and reining him in. There's a lyrical contrast involving something something bird freedom plant rooted down something.

Brian's Death (Isaac and Dave)

This is one of those mostly-instrumental pieces that they include on the soundtrack anyway, but Isaac gets a couple of sung nondiegetic lines in here, a sort of frantic excitement, realizing in a brief panic that he shot the wrong guy before rationalizing that God must have planned it this way.

Dave is probably also in there screaming and attempting to call the police, because I am always in favor of screaming and panicking on musical soundtracks.

The Funeral (Gabriel and Jack)

Begins with Gabriel at the church during the funeral, singing about his vague discomfort being there, but slowly becomes increasingly frantic and anxious, working up to a breakdown where he exits and finally manages to cry for his dad. There's a verse about little things, how they ordered pizza the night before he died, etc., culminating in the bit about him having been in the middle of this mystery novel and never getting to learn who did it; the verse trails off quietly there, backing instruments gone, as Gabriel breaks down. Jack follows to comfort him.

Act II

[Montage song] (everyone)

A montage of the days after the attack, where everyone gets a couple lines about how they're coping, scared and grieving.

Dave's lines are like, spoken slightly too desperate annoyance at having to do some work that Brian didn't get to finish, or rebuking somebody who asks how he's doing by saying he barely even knew Brian. He is not singing along with this kind of grief-porn bullshit, fuck you.

[Villain song II] (Isaac and Jacob)

The brothers come up with a new plan. Isaac is agitated, reprising some of his bits from the original villain song in a quicker, more frantic tempo, while Jacob picks up the slack, walking him through a new idea. Isaac takes to it with conviction and goes back to the original melody/tempo, talking again about his God-given purpose. Jacob does not join in with any of that, only with the bits about the actual plan.

The Kidnapping (instrumental)

I'm just going to say this is on the soundtrack too and contains panicked Gabriel noises because I want it to be.

Storming the Castle Reprise (Jack)

Jack tries to rally the others for a rescue mission, echoing the D&D game from Act I. The lines about storming the castle and taking the leap make a reappearance.

Just Like My Hero Reprise (Jean)

Jean, on the bus, miserably contemplates how she is unlike her hero. Again, it begins with a verse talking about how she looks - not a thing like Sarah Hooter anymore - but then moves on to how she's scared and pathetic and running away, unlike anything a hero would do.

Church Sequence (Will, Jack, Mia)

A single track, largely instrumental/dialogue/sound effects, with a couple of brief song snippets:

- Will reprises "Just Like My Hero" as he wills himself to go on. He is cut off mid-line as he is shot.

- Mia slits that guy's throat and she actually sings a few words, for the first and only time, before she is also cut off mid-line by a gunshot. The line is something about, like, warm blood in her face or the guy's satisfying death throes, reprising part of the melody of "Unique".

Strong (Gabriel)

Gabriel discovers his powers. Starts slowly, calling back to the bits from "Storming the Castle" about lying low, being weak. But as the song continues and he makes his discovery, the tempo builds, and he starts reprising Jack's bits instead: he is strong, taking the leap, storming the castle.

Perish Song (Lucy)

Another brief reprise of "Unique", distorted and deafening and terrifying, mourning her sister.

[In the Hospital] (Jack and Gabriel)

The two of them work out their feelings about what happened. Includes Jack going "It was stupid" (i.e. the rescue mission) and Gabriel responding "It was brave", echoing the bit where they said the opposite in "Storming the Castle". Jack blames himself for how it all turned out, feels stupid and weak, while Gabriel actually felt kind of awesome. (This is also calling back to their opposite bits of "Storming the Castle".) They end with a shared duet verse as they realize they've both got that same innate desire to fight and win. Possibly calls back to the weird, weird kid line from "Fatherhood".

Eulogy (Dave)

Dave's eulogy for Mia (which also touches on Will, but this is Mia's funeral). It reprises "Unique". There will never again be anyone like the two of them, two of the only truly unique people on this Earth. (And, while he doesn't say it straight out because hahahaha, he needed Mia, too).

Taking the Leap (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack's suicide attempt and his swirling inner turmoil as he tries to talk himself into taking the leap once again. Gabriel, of course, comes in with don't take that leap. Am I overusing this one line by putting it in like half the songs in this thing? Well, who's going to stop me.

[Peter/Katherine song reprise] (Peter and Katherine)

The two of them contemplate indefinite house arrest (in contrast to the freedom Peter's enjoyed most of his life) and Katherine's failure to stop all this (despite her sense of responsibility). In the end, they both find their own ways to accept the new state of things and support each other through this.

Finale (Dave and Jean)

After Dave breaks down on his couch and Jean comes in to ask what's wrong, Dave sings a reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, going over the many things he's angry about, because that is the only emotion involved here clearly. At the exact point where Dave's song originally went from there to fantasizing about throwing her off the balcony, Jean throws her arms around him and sniffles "It'll be okay, Dad," and after a stunned "What? Jean, I'm--", he continues with a slow, hesitant *inverted* reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, "Everything'll be fine", constructing a little fantasy reality for her (and himself) where everything turns out all right in the end. It's backed by, like, a simple, quiet, slower piano rendition of the original melody, and trails off at the end, never quite coming to a satisfying conclusion before he tells Jean she should go back to bed.

#morphic #musicals #I spent far too much time thinking about this #except it was also exactly the right amount of time

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wordsoflittlewisdom · 4 years ago

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Watching bop again

I kinda forgot Cass was at the roller derby game. Love how all the characters are connected

Why does Roman’s voice...sound like that

Boss Bitch is weirdly nostalgic now

I like that the whole roller derby team is wearing like. team jackets. and harleys got her whole fringe sleeves thing going on

YES LOVE WHEN SHE THROWS THE NECKLACE AWAY

The chemical plant blowing up as fireworks was a very Harley choice

“So I’ll start where I fucking want” four minutes ago

huntress huntress huntress huntress huntress

I read somewhere that this huntress and Montoya scene was one take and they just changed the lighting to show the change

romans middle name being beauvais is probably the clearest clue they could have given that he was from a rich family

Love that Renee finds the necklace and knows Harley and the joker broke up. I like this idea that superheroes/villains are kinda like celebrities in this world

The egg sandwich scene is great what more can I say

Love that there’re cars and people just living their lives in this city

It’s a crime that we never see Harley wear this glittery fanny pack

The music is really good in this

It’s neat how the line between her narration and her dialogue is blurred, like how she’ll say the first part of something in narration and the second part in dialogue

Huntress’s little flute theme

And Montoya knows Cass; c o n n e c t i o n s

Montoya’s been going after Roman, too

And now we’re flipping back to the bertinelli massacre and diamond

Even if the whole missing diamond plot isn’t that unique, everything’s woven together so neatly

And now Dinah and Renee are on the phone about Cass and the diamond

It’s all connected

Harleys whole “I’m here to report a terrible crime”—she could have just run in there but she wanted to be Dramatic

I do wish the vocals were a little louder here maybe?

Big fan of this fight choreography

Harley pausing on a frame where she’s making a weird face before rewinding to explain about the diamond—it’s so rare to ever get to see women like. making weird faces in movies. All the women in his this are gorgeous but they don’t always have to be; they look beat up after fights and get dirty and make weird faces and it’s great

Dinah singing? Exceptional

“Loans, liquidity, laundering” ah yes the three L’s of illegal business

I unironically listen to Black Canary’s man’s world.

I like that everyone just calls Dinah “Canary”

“I’m all on my lonesome. It’s great” Harleys even an unreliable narrator when she’s just talking

I’ve really never seen a movie that feel like it’s from the female gaze visually as much as this one—all the rings and earrings, the hair, the makeup, it feels like what women might fantasize about dressing like

Dinah yelling “you motherfucker!” While beating some creeps up is quality

What time of day is it? Dinah would probably be leaving early in the morning, but I Refuse to believe that Roman would be awake particularly early any morning

She either canary is leaving her nightclub singing gig in the late morning/early afternoon or roman is still awake from the night before and is going to go to sleep soon

Cass and Dinah in the same building. (Bernie voice): I am once again talking about the connections

I’ve riffed on this before but i refuse to believe that Roman can drive

This Dinah and Renee scene establishes character, backstories, and moves the plot along all at once

Jesus some of ewan mcgregor’s acting in this is painfully bad

I love that Cass has a big bomber jacket and longer, looser shorts

Jurnee’s abs wow

The lights from behind the hands with the eyes behind Harley, who’s surrounded by people and then Roman and Victor emerge from the back, whispering to each other? Beautiful

One of the grievances roman has against Harley is “constantly interrupting him, like I’m doing right now”

Harleys “you’re really not as complicated as you think” bit is almost satirical of this cult we’ve created of “complicated” white male movie villains who have massive fan followings (cough cough joker)

Interesting that Roman holds the knife to Harleys face but hands it off to Victor to do that actual cutting

Someone handed Roman a bowl of popcorn

Harleys pocket tampon

It’s diamonds are a girls best friend yeah babey!

The male backup dancers are wearing muzzles/masks (Roman has one too for a split second) is an interesting flip on the way women are typically the ones being silenced, as well as Harleys desire to silence the men around her and be the one telling and controlling her own narrative

“Hey! you’re that singer no one listens to!” “Hey! You’re the asshole no one likes!”

Harley with her glitter gun

Harleys reaction when the sprinklers go off is perfect—Margot makes her feel like a living cartoon

This cell block fight scene is a showstopper

I like that cass doesn’t immediately want to stay with Harley. It gives her some agency in a story where she’s mostly just following the curveballs life throws her

Harleys little stare straight into the camera when cass admits to eating the diamond

Harley at the grocery store really emphasizes that she’s a total weirdo

I think I heard somewhere that the pic of child Harley with the nuns is a pic of young Margot??? Not totally sure though

Cass not knowing who the joker is goes with the whole supers are like celebrities thing—cass probably follows a whole different group of them (like how most kids follow different celebrities than their parents)

Huntress huntress huntresssss

“Give me number 32. Mild”

This kid in helenas flashback doesn’t really look like she’s grow up to look like Mary Elizabeth Winstead

This filming in this flashback has so much style

Helena practicing in the bathroom mirror with her drawing and her multiple bottles of travel mouthwash

We’re in the scene where Roman makes the girl dance on the table and oh god it’s so uncomfortable

No no no no no not this hate this

Alright that nightmare’s done

“and that’s why you should never pay federal income taxes”

Harley offering to bring cass to Roman after hearing doc say “business is business is interesting

OH ITS HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT TIME

Dinahs car is yellow because it’s...canary yellow

Roman putting on the mask is cool and all but he’s just gonna have to take it back off to get changed

This Harley vs Renee fight is fun because they keep mirroring each other—they’re fighting each other, but they’re really on the same side

The way the women all kind of circle each other at first and don’t immediately get along

Cass popping up with the gun also gives her some agency—she’s at the end of her rope with the diamond and being betrayed by Harley

“I am nOT THE CROSSBOW KILLER”

The way Huntress sounds so uncertain when she says “...and now I’m done” Mary’s acting really popped off

Roman’s a bitch but I like his outfits

Helenas little smile when Harley says “you just killed his BFF”

I love how excited Harley is when they all agree to work together

Roman’s giving his little speech in the back of a pickup truck?

When all the guys turned around with masks on I got chills

“I love this chick she’s got rage issues.” “I DONT HAVE RAGE ISSUES”

Huntress stabbing the guy while going down the slide is peak cinema

This set lights up as the scene progresses and reveals more

I love love love that Helena is genuinely caring towards Cass and recognizing that children shouldn’t have to go through trauma like her

“When the fuck did she have time to do a shoe change?”

THE HAIR TIE YEAH

Forgot to mention this but it’s a stroke of genius for this place to be called the booby trap

Love me some canary cry

“Told ya she had a killer voice”

Harleys chase was a real group hurrah—the canary cry cleared the way and pushed her forward, Huntress towed her, Renee gave her the gun with one bullet

Cass and Roman are just sitting in the back seat. That must have been an awkward car ride

Cass pulling the gun away from Roman when he tries to shoot up at Harley when Harleys on top of the car is elite

Damn this is one foggy pier

When Harley starts with “your protection is based on the fact that people are scared of you” you expect her to say that it’s wrong or something but she says “I’m the one they should be scared of” this movie messed with tropes so much

That also includes the whole “one bullet” thing—Harley misses with her one bullet, and you don’t really know what’s gonna happen next

“I took your ring”

You can pinpoint exactly when Harley and Roman realize what Cass did

I’d put the entire taco scene here if I could

Renee moving the drink away from cass shows her caring side—she doesn’t want a kid to get into alcohol and make the mistakes she did

“Does she always talk like the cop in a bad eighties movie?”

Harley and Cass stealing the car is a fun way to show that she may be on the side of the good guys sometimes, but that doesn’t necessarily make her one

“Woman” by Kesha

Wow the outfits in this scene are iconic

I mean they are in the whole movie but I especially like these

Cass riding around with Harley and a hyena, wearing cute outfits and learning the ways of chaos

Harley got her sandwich!

The credit art for this movie is cool

Especially how they represent each character

In conclusion this is still my favorite movie

I know I’ve been kinda absent recently, but watching this again has really reminded me how much I love it. I got really busy but I’m going to Make An Effort to be a contributing member of the bop fandom again.

#birds of prey and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn #birds of prey #harley quinn #huntress #black canary #Renee Montoya #Cassandra Cain #Roman sionis #Victor zsasz #words of little wisdom

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dreamersleeps · 4 years ago

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Red Wings of Temperance

A Possible Influence Behind the Color of Hawks’ Wings

A deck of tarot cards is made up of 78 cards, and the first twenty two are known as the Major Arcana. They were created in the 14th or 15th century but were not used for divination purposes until the 18th century. Tarot card readings are not meant to predict the future but to offer spiritual guidance.

The image above (from Oracloo) depicts the 14th Major Arcana card in the tarot deck which is known as: XIV Temperance.

Like me, I’m sure that your mind jumped to a certain pro hero as soon as you saw the figure’s red wings.

What might Temperance have to do with Hawks? Let’s first look at a couple definitions of the word first. According to Merriam-Webster:

Temperance

1. moderation in action, thought, or feeling

2. habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites or passions

If Temperance is drawn, it means:

Balance, patience, and moderation in life.

To think before we act. To look at both sides of an issue, to walk in another’s shoes or their path before we pass judgement. To be compassionate, considerate and fair in our dealings with others (bluestartarot).

That you have a clear, long-term vision of what you want to achieve. You are not rushing things along; instead, you are taking your time to ensuer that you do the best job you can. You know you need a moderate, guided appraoch to reach your goals (biddytarot).

Other Red-Winged Figures

Before we begin I’m going to point out that there are a couple other Red-Winged figures amongst the Major Arcana.

I’m not aware if nudity in art is allowed on Tumblr so just to be safe, I cut the bottom half of both these cards because they depict nude individuals.

The tarot card on the right is VI The Lovers and XX Judgement. Out of the two, I think you could perhaps make some connections with Judgement and Hawks but I think that Temperance works the best.

Symbols of the 14th Arcana

There are quite a few symbols on XIV Temperance, but I’m going to focus on a select few. Interpretations may differ based on the source but I tried to stick with those that were repeated throughout the different websites I read through.

The most important part of this card is the act of pouring water from one cup to another, signifying a balance of duality and a mixture of two separate objects. This is where the card gets its name, the process is called “tempering” which is a slow process to eventually find a perfect middle ground (wemystic).

Other dualities that is represented on this card can be: male/female, spiritual/physical, emotion/logic, conscious/subconscious and subconscious/superconscious (we mystic).

Temperance revolves around supreme balance. One foot is on land which represents the Earthly, material world and the other is in water, which represents the emotional, subconscious world.

The winding path leading to the mountains represents the journey through life with its twists and turns. The sun, appearing as a glowing light is a symbol of staying true to one’s life purpose and meaning (biddytarot).

Fire/Red wings: Physical passion, anger. Muscles and strength necessary to maintain composure and reach a higher being state.

Blue water: Emotions, peace, calm. Groundness and refreshment.

White gown: Pure thought.

Yellow Iris: Communication, thoughts, learning, feminine/masculine.

Temperance’s wings are either referred to as “fire wings” or “red wings.” If we want to make connections to we can argue that his Fierce Wings Quirk is the source of his physical strength, even though he displays some insecurity about his back not being “reassuring” enough for others to depend on.

Other than his red wings, I don’t think I’m confident enough to draw a clear connection between his appearance and the other prominent colors that appear on Temperance. Hawks’ visor was blue before the anime chose yellow, and he does have the yellow color palette going on.

However, the meanings of the colors do line up with Hawks’ character. He is a character who is always trying to be calm and collected no matter the situation. Hawks is a character who is constantly seeking, taking in, gathering, and analyzing information. According to the fandom website, Hawks’ surname translates as: “hawk” (taka 鷹) + “see, visible, idea” (mi 見 )

While his first name translates as: “disclose, open, say” (kei 啓) + “enlightenment, understanding” (go 悟).

Sun: Also appearing as the angel’s third eye, it represents the merging of personal aims with the universe’s plans for the individual.

So similar to many others, I like to see Endeavor as the sun to Hawks’ Icarus (side note: I also like to see Dabi as Apollo in the Icarus theme).

The bit about the eye is interesting as well: I believe that eyes play an important role in the story telling with Hawks, Endeavor and other characters. There are interesting similarities between the two characters and the Egyptian Gods Ra and Horus (@/bokunowtv also pointed out some interesting details as well).

Recently, it also seems like Hawks’ storyline will be intertwining with Endeavor’s. Hawks has expressed verbally in Chapter 299: “Starting with my origin, so to speak... Endeavor’s in trouble.” While they did team up professionally as heroes in the past, it seems that Hawks intentions this time will be personal. We have yet to see what he is planning to do and how things might pan out, however this path will probably lead him to Touya.

Triangle: Representative of the fire element and holy trinity.

Although Hawks does not wear a triangle or square on his chest like the angel, it is still interesting to note that he wears the Hero Public Safety Commission’s diamond symbol in about the same place. Again, there is the mention of fire again.

The Angel

Because Temperance has to do with balance and duality, the angel on the card is both masculine and feminine.

Whether they are just an unnamed angel or a Biblical angel depends on the source you are looking at. However when it comes to identifying them, while one states that it is the Archangel Gabriel, the sources I looked at overwhelmingly pointed towards the Archangel Michael.

This is very, very interesting considering that the Archangel Michael is the angel who is in all the paintings that people were comparing the cover of Volume 27 with, specifically the painting above: “The Fall of the Rebel Angels” by Luca Giordano.

My analysis first post on Tumblr had to do with pointing out similarities between the Archangel Michael and Hawks, and what that could mean. And my most recent post revisits the possible angel narrative which may be present in Hawks’ story, and how he is referred to as a “fallen angel.”

It’s exciting to see the Archangel Michael pop up again. Michael was also God’s angel of destruction and on XIV Temperance we see him tempering or blending his passionate anger with consicious thought to blend his fiery nature with his super-consciousness with calm (blustartarot).

Temperance Reversed

When Tarot cards are reversed, their definitions are flipped over.

When XIV Temperance meets XV The Devil we see imbalance, disharmony, indifference and lack of empathy. When we preactice excess in our lives without moderation and balance whether it be food, alcohol, drugs, and relationships, we lose ourselves in addiction and bondage (bluestartarot).

May call for a period of self-evaluation in which you can re-examine your life priorities. Self-healing: by creating more balance and moderation in your life (biddytarot).

We’ve seen Hawks indulge in something or trip up a couple of times. In Chapter 186, Hawks asks if he can have Endeavor’s leftover food and Endeavor calls him a glutton. Additionally, @/scarletrain1724 has done some analysis on how Hawks is a character who is often seen around or consuming food.

And in Chapter 265, Hawks takes Jin’s life. As Dabi states below, “sentiments” tripped him up. Hawks displays a lack of empathy here. He believes that he feels sorry for Jin and wants to help him, but Hawks is actually unable to understand him properly. I would also identify this action as one of Hawks’ narrative Icarus falls.

The Moral of Icarus’ Fall

This all ties in nicely as we see Hawks’ character following an Icarus narrative. There are a handful of “morals” that we the reader are supposed to gain from the Fall of Icarus but I’ll pull an excerpt from the part I’d like to focus on.

Before taking flight, Daedalus warned his son:

“Take care to fly halfway between the sun and the sea. If you fly too high, the sun’s heat will melt the wax that bids your wings. If you fly too low, the sea’s mist will dampen the feathers that give you life. Instead, aim for the middle course and avoid extremes.” (The Fall of Icarus - adapted from Metamorphoses by Ovid)

As we all know, Icarus does not heed his father’s warning, whether it be cause he purposely ignored him or forgot and flies up towards the sun. The sun’s heat melts the wax and loosens the feathers on his manmade wings, and he plummets in to the ocean below, drowning.

Avoid extremes, fly in the middle and seek temperance.

The card that comes before Temperance is XIII Death.

In death we go through transition, a rebirth, changes and with these we come to XIV Temperance for the need to take the time to pause and think. To integrate and blend what we have learned on our journey (bluestartarot).

So the question to ask is, has Hawks learned anything from his actions or will his story end with him drowning in the ocean?

To those who were able to make it through this post, thank you! I know that it was really long but I didn’t want to divide it into more than one part. I really appreciate your time and attention! :)

#visual #hawks #takami keigo #bnha analysis #mha analysis #mythological influences #religious influences #bnha #mha #bnha meta #mha meta #luna writes #my post

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flowerspecial · 4 years ago

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You Have Cute Squishy Cheeks

This would easily be JB’s favourite part of you. He thinks your squishy cheeks are absolutely adorable and he loves them so much! Honestly JB’s favourite thing to do will be waking up in the morning before you, watching you be sound asleep and just squishing your cheeks slightly. JB won’t squish them so hard that you end up waking up, nonetheless he is still squishing them. It's like he is addicted to them or something! He thinks that you are the most precious being in the entire universe. You're just so cute and adorable, and JB is so proud to call you his.

Mark

They are the first thing that attracted Mark to you! When Mark first saw you, he noticed how full and squishy looking your cheeks were, and he found them so cute and he needed to get to know you there and then. This is actually why he first approached you, Mark just wanted to see your squishy cheeks up close. Even when you and Mark are just in the talking phase, Mark would make it very apparent that his favourite thing about you are your squishy cheeks. You'd always catch him looking at them, and when he leans in for a kiss, he has a tendency to hold them.

Jackson

Now, when people have squishy cheeks, they can often make a person look younger than they are. And for some people, they don't want to look younger than they are, they hate looking like a child. This is you, your squishy cheeks are something that you don't actually like too much. Well, that was until you met Jackson. Jackson adores everything about you, and he is the type of boyfriend to constantly remind you just how beautiful you are. But you'd notice that Jackson has a particular liking to your cheeks, so it’d make you realise that maybe they aren't as bad as you think!

Jinyoung

If Jinyoung ever needed even more of a reason to want to protect you, this is it. Don't get me wrong, it is in Jinyoung’s nature to be the protector in the relationship. He wants no harm to come your way and he will do everything in his power to protect you. The fact that you have cute squishy cheeks just kinda reinforces this idea that you are a doe like creature and should be protected. It's up to you how you receive this, because some people don't like the idea of being protected. But know that Jinyoung is not doing anything in a weird way, it's just his way of showing his love for you.

Youngjae

Youngjae will think you are the cutest person alive, and your squishy cheeks are just the tip of the iceberg. Youngjae absolutely adores you, he literally has constant heart eyes every time he looks at you. Youngjae can never get over the fact that you graced his world, he has to count his blessings every day! Youngjae loves taking photos of you, and please know that his favourite pose for you is you squishing your cheeks even more for the camera! He has these photos as his lock screen and his home screen, and every time he sees the photos it makes his heart swell with happiness.

Bambam

Bambam will tease you relentlessly about your squishy cheeks, but please know that it is because he is in absolute adoration over them. “You know your cheeks are so squishy, they are like two tiny little pillows on your face!” “What the actual hell Bambam? That is such a weird thing to say!” But Bambam would shrug his shoulders every time and would just smile and stare at them for a second. When you guys in private, Bambam will love it when you lay on his chest and he strokes the side of your cheek lovingly. He might tease them a lot, but his attention always gravitates towards them.

Yugyeom

Yep, Yugyeom absolutely loves your squishy cheeks, because even if you are older than him, your squishy cheeks will make you look younger. So in a way it kinda feeds into the male narrative that they should be the one in the protector/defender role. To be fair, your squishy cheeks are the reason why Yugyeom guessed your age wrong at the beginning. Not that Yugyeom really minds, it doesn't really matter to him if you are older or younger than him. Just a note though, Yugyeom will absolutely love it when you wear blusher, because it draws attention to your squishy cheeks.

#got7 #got7 imagines #got7 reactions #got7 scenarios #got7 blurbs #got7 imagine

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yaboigamerghost · 4 years ago

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Imperfection Is Beautiful: An Analysis of Hordak From Netflix’s She-Ra

Before I start I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m normally not the kind of person who really becomes attached to the villains in the media I consume (Zuko from ATLA being an obvious exception). However, leading into She-Ra’s final season I found myself asking one question “Why do I care about what happens to Hordak?” In the back of my head while watching the final I was constantly wondering where he currently was, and was even more invested than I already was during scenes featuring him, during his reunion with Entrapta, and later when he turned on Horde Prime to save her I was cheering the whole time. While I still completely agree with those takes I had while watching, this made me decide to try and take a deep dive into why I and many other fans felt that way. Specifically, what did lead writer Josie Campbell, her team, and the rest of the staff do to turn a character once presented as likely being the shows final boss into a sympathetic and understandable one, and how did they turn Entrapdak, which was once and still partly is viewed as a crackship into one of the stronger presentations of the shows themes of love, and the power of friendship. My hope is that by the end of this essay people who are fans of Hordak’s character can understand better the possible reasons as to WHY they feel that way, and maybe try to explain to those who really don’t like him why so many people do. Now without further ado, let’s get analyzing.

To begin, let me talk about how he’s used in the first season, and how the writers chose to position him in the viewers’ heads. For those who haven’t taken a marketing class before, positioning typically refers to how companies try to position their brand in comparison to other brands in the minds of consumers, and the same concept can be somewhat applied to how storytellers position their characters in regards to each other in the minds of their audience.With that out of the way how is Hordak positioned in the audience’s head during season 1? By the first time he appears on screen Adora has been established as the show's protagonist, her and Catra were friends who have went their separate ways in a tragic scene where Adora pleads for Catra to join her, and Shadow Weaver has been established as a uh… well a giant asshole. So by the time Shadow Weaver brings Catra to Hordak for judgement on not bringing Adora back we are already inclined to sympathize with Catra and likely already dislike Shadow Weaver, Hordak himself has been mentioned in passing but never really anything specific about him, so when we see him for the first time drenched in shadows with red eyes and teeth we’re likely expecting the worst for Catra, a character we probably are sympathetic to at this point in the story. However something interesting happens here, Hordak essentially sides with Catra in this scene. He makes Shadow Weaver promote her, and tells her to stop focusing on finding Adora. So while the show had to this point presented the idea that the endgame for the show is defeating the Horde, and Hordak being the assumed leader of the Horde… he’s still not presented as the character that’s the most hated based on his interactions with other characters. Throughout season 1 the basis of his screen time is telling Shadow Weaver to stop wasting resources trying to bring Adora back, and then at the end of the season assisting Catra’s plan to use the Black Garnet. Essentially every time Shadow Weaver tries to make a move against Adora and Catra; the characters we’re sympathetic towards; he tells her off on it and when she makes an open act of defiance against Catra's plan he throws her in prison. What all of these acts do to the audience is kind of present him as not being as bad as Shadow Weaver. Let me frame it this way. The character who at this point is thought to eventually be the final boss is not the most hated of the antagonists. To me that seems fairly telling, and retrospectively to kind of foreshadow the direction his character would eventually go.

Season 2 I would say is the most he’s ever played as a straight up villain. He’s patronizing to his subordinates and he uses intimidation tactics and light forms of torture on Catra which I think might be the biggest reasons as to why some fans of the show despise him even now. However, this is also the season where the most important relationship he has throughout the show starts to form. One of the scenes Entrapdak fans bring up a lot is when he catches her in his Sanctum (classy) working on the portal machine and he yells “Get out!” in what is pretty obviously somewhat a callback to Beauty and the Beast when you think about it. It’s what I’d call being subtle by throwing subtlety out the window. Sure it is a line from BatB but it’s also just something an angry person says to someone trespassing and considering at this point we know nothing about their relationship and we likely aren’t thinking that these two characters would have an arc together. What I’m basically saying is that while on multiple viewings this scene pretty obviously foreshadows them as part of a beauty/beast narrative, someone watching the show for the first time may not notice that during this scene. At the end of the day however season 2 Hordak is the most purely villainous he ever is during the show, he suffocates Catra in one of his contraptions as intimidation, he starts off disparaging all of Etheria to Entrapta in their initial conversation about portals, he plans to send Shadow Weaver to Beast Island (although the viewer may not care about this one), and if not for Entrapta convincing him otherwise he probably would have had Catra executed. Again, this season is him at his worst and at his most high and mighty. The way the insecure clone of Horde Prime WANTS to be seen, a façade that gets broken down in front of the audience for the rest of the series, in fact it partly gets broken down in this season during the scenes of him without his armor.

The way Season 3 chooses to frame Hordak actually starts in an episode in which he’s not present. During the season’s first episode Adora has a conversation with Bow and Glimmer after Shadow Weaver is found in Bright Moon. During this conversation she talks about how she changed for the better after having been in the Horde all her life, and she says she chooses to believe that if she can then maybe everyone can, even Shadow Weaver. Subconsciously many of us probably thought during this scene “Even Hordak?”. Essentially what this scene does is have the show’s protagonist make a case for not demonizing the show’s current antagonist like many would, it plants the idea that in the viewer’s head that maybe he isn’t too far gone. The previous season showed him growing to trust Entrapta enough to spare Catra because of her advising, which could be enough to show that to be true. While always rough around the edges and teeming with anger he’s never presented as someone incapable of seeing reason, and with Adora’s monologue about believing in the ability of anyone to change that makes us think that maybe he could be given reason to turn away from his presumed history of villainy. Additionally, when Shadow Weaver talked about her motivations for defecting she said “I want to destroy Hordak”, Shadow Weaver being a character that most viewers of the show likely already hate from seeing how abusive and power hungry she behaves seemingly on instinct. The fact that she’s the one bringing up the concept of killing him coinciding with Adora’s monologue may make the viewer sit back and try to reframe how they view Hordak as a character. This idea is what gets played with in his screen time for the rest of the season.

The very next episode is the big one (the holy grail for Entrapdak shippers). During this episode he blocks Entrapta from the blast of a failed portal experiment, she discovers his physical condition, he tells her about his past with Horde Prime and why he’s doing what he’s doing, she builds him new armor while saying one of the most inspirational quotes of all time (Imperfection is beautiful), and he awkwardly tries to properly thank her while getting help from his clone son Imp… Okay so let me just get to the biggest thing I want to talk about for this particular episode. The reveal of Horde Prime as the leader of a Galactic Horde has a huge impact on how Hordak himself is presented as a character. Firstly it presents the idea that Hordak himself won’t be the final boss of the series, thus opening up the audience to be more inclined to sympathize with him going forward. Secondly him literally being a clone brings forth the idea that he never really had a choice in how he turned out, and in a show that to this point has largely been about characters feeling trapped in terms of who they’re supposed to be by their familial figures in itself is likely to make the audience start to sympathize with him in realizing that war and being part of dictatorship is all he knows. Finally, we have him calling himself a failure and a defect in this scene. I feel as though this was done to draw forth parallels between Hordak’s relationship to Prime and Catra’s to Shadow Weaver. Prime called Hordak defective, Shadow Weaver called Catra worthless. Most people watching the show to this point will sympathize with Catra in one way or another and by having another villain in your show be paralleled to her is a way to invoke the audience to sympathize with them as well.

Now, for his interactions with Entrapta this particular episode. First we see him; a man with what seems to be muscular deterioration; using his body to shield her from an explosion. This would seem to show him as someone capable of putting others before himself, which as we learn in season 5 is something completely separating him from being like Horde Prime. After this we have him opening up to her about being a clone, having a defect, his feelings of being a failure, and him awkwardly trying to thank her. This whole sequence of scenes in part reveals a deeper truth about his character, namely the fact that he was for the most part programmed. All of his awfulness of season 2 and from presumed acts from before the show was pretty much what he was made for. He is someone who was literally engineered by an intergalactic dictator and essentially was born into a cult environment. When the only way he can thank her is by awkwardly saying “I acknowledge your work here, it’s very… technologically sound” and after some coaxing from Imp continuing with “No matter what you say, you are not a failure. And any who underestimate you are utter fools” we can gather one kind of tragic fact. Hordak before this point had never felt a positive emotion from anything not related to conquering and technological advancement, in all his time he had never before this felt love or companionship. While the line itself is funny and kind of endearing, it also reveals the underlying tragedy of his backstory. That tragedy being that realistically there was no alternative way for him to turn out up to this point, the fact that this comes from being born in the Horde and the indoctrination and abuse from a familial figure adds another parallel to Catra, and how the abuse cycle of what Prime did to Hordak set him in a place to start up his own empire, bring Shadow Weaver into it, and then she does the same thing to Catra that Prime did to Hordak. Essentially the source of Hordak’s stress and likely trauma is the first domino to fall in causing the events of the show to happen, Prime’s own ego and perfectionism is what eventually caused his downfall.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, as I still have more to say about this episode. I haven’t even really gotten into specifics on his defect, or his physical disability. Hordak would seem to have extreme muscular deterioration, he seems to have no tissue on his forearms leaving the bone exposed. The reveal is that his armor and technology are holding his physical body together. Most of the time a reveal like this regarding our presumed main villain would be a “The villain is more machine than man” type of trope like Darth Vader in A New Hope, however that’s not what’s done here. The armor and later pseudo-cybernetics aren’t so much to make him truly powerful and intimidate others as they are to cover up a vulnerability, and vulnerability is a very humanizing trait. The way this show chooses to completely subvert a trope here is interesting to me and says something about the series as a whole that I’ll probably extrapolate on later. What this decision says to me is that this show is one that cares about its characters, all of them, even in its villains they will ask you to look at and consider any vulnerability or redeemable quality in your judgement of them.

The next major scene involving him is the conversation between him and Entrapta having the portal machine almost ready. During the conversation they both seem sad about the prospect of being separated when Hordak rejoins Prime and they ultimately decide that they’ll wait to try it until the portal is absolutely perfect. This plan being ended by Catra coming back with the sword of protection. The reason for all he had done up to this point was rejoin with Horde Prime and he was now willing to slow down with trying to return to his brother, perhaps at this point if Catra hadn’t returned he might have scaled back the war efforts and settled for just continuing scientific pursuits with Entrapta, this isn’t guaranteed but it’s something that left open enough in the text of the show to where it can read as an aspect of his character.

The next major scene is when Catra lies about Entrapta betraying him and letting the princesses into the Fright Zone. This scene sets forth where his emotional state is during season 4, he falls to believe that; in spite of their work together and her telling him to not worry so much about being a failure and telling him that imperfection is beautiful; she never really cared about him and was just using him for his own destruction. The end of this season is probably Catra at her absolute worst. Entrapta outright told her that the portal would destroy the planet and then sent her to Beast Island after she used the words “Adora was right”. Having Hordak be another character hurt by some of Catra’s actions at a time when he may or may not have been on a trajectory to become a better person is an interesting interpretation of this scene to me (especially in light of her continuing by pulling the lever of the portal machine) because I feel like it was a great way to show Catra’s continued fall deeper and deeper into desperation and lashing out in anger and her potentially having at this point outgrown Hordak in terms of villainy (expressed in her Azula moment early in season 4). This idea kind of more puts Hordak on a similar level as the other characters, he’s no longer the untouchable ruler of the Etherian Horde if this bad kitty can come in and cause him to have what boils down to a broken heart. This scene is the final piece that to the audience completely breaks down the façade he had been putting on for so long.

Season 4 Hordak is a bit hard to explain. This season is when we see him committing the most on-screen villainous acts of the entire series, however largely he was being manipulated by Catra into actually setting foot on the battlefield. While this season has him being his most morally wrong, we also see this at a time when we’re somewhat newly aware of his vulnerabilities and insecurities and while he’s doing this we also see characters like Catra and Glimmer also falling further and further into behaving immorally or unethically. This kind of puts the audience in a really unique seat where we’re seeing the characters that we’ve grown to care about since the beginning of the series start to fall into something resembling tyrannical behavior like we’ve assumed from Hordak for so long. So while he’s at his worst at this time so is everyone else and in his case many of his actions here stem from believing that Entrapta betrayed him so there’s an extra layer of folly to what’s going on since it all stems from a lie. When Catra is trying to get him to step up the war effort to conquer all of Etheria she succeeds by pulling out the crystal that powers his armor that Entrapta gave him. When it’s removed he essentially collapses powerless. The crystal says LUVD (not that he or Entrapta knew, but the audience can learn it). Essentially this says that he is weak without love, when Entrapta was there, and she made him the armor he was made strong, when she’s gone and the crystal is removed he’s weak.

There’s a scene where Hordak is talking to Catra about how their success would mean that he’d return to Prime’s side triumphant and worthy. When she hears him talk about this she kind of gives a look that shows just how much she actually understands the motivations. The audience knows this as well, we all saw the times when Shadow Weaver called her unworthy. This scene is the show itself basically telling us that any similarities between Hordak and Catra we gleaned from the reveal of his backstory wasn’t just us seeing something that wasn’t there. This scene essentially asks the audience to look at these two characters through similar lenses. It doesn’t tell you exactly HOW to view them, but asks for you to take a step back and measure any hypocrisy regarding how you view their various actions and then leave it at the door. The show asks you to sympathize with Hordak based on similarities with Catra;a character whom the audience probably sympathizes with from the very beginning; and having them both commit similar actions for similar motivations.

Skipping ahead we have this sequence late in the season where Double Trouble cleverly tells Hordak that Catra sent Entrapta to Beast Island and the subsequent battle he has with the cat. The absolute rage and sadness in his eyes as the background completely fades out and we’re just focused on his face with tears starting to come out of his big red eyes while drenched in blackness, and then he just fires off his arm cannon around the room in anger. There’s just… so much to be said about this little sequence right here, it was beautifully done. What this scene expressed more than anything is that even if he didn’t know it, he was totally in love with Entrapta. He heard she was sent to beast Island, a place where he has sent people to DIE. He likely thinks she’s dead, and his first reaction was tears and to destroy part of his lab and then try to kill his second in command in revenge. I don’t know about you but this is something one would pretty much only do if they were in love with someone. Additionally I think the stylization of having the whole background fade to black during this scene is an interesting one. I think one meaning that could be taken from it is that with him believing she was dead he was sinking deeper into the darkness, that his ability to see the lighter side of the world was gone, the one person who could understand him was gone forever and he had spent all that time angry with her while working with her killer. A man who already was prone to self loathing and feeling like a failure now had nothing to lose. I think this is probably why early in season 5 after seeing Catra he goes to get his mind wiped again. Seeing Catra and her calling him by his name brought back some memories, memories that at this point only bring him pain.

Speaking of Hordak and mindwipes though, the next major scene in my reading is the first time we truly see Horde Prime in his full glory. I’m going to focus less on Hordak saying that he did all his conquering for Prime, but more how Prime winds up seeing through him, and the horror that being part of the cultish Galactic Horde actually is. Prime is able to see into Hordak’s thoughts, he brushes his hands against the slot where the LUVD crystal once was and says “There was a time when you wished I wouldn’t come for you” confirming what everyone knew about his feelings towards Entrapta. After that Hordak seems to get basically reset to factory settings so to speak. Horde Prime immediately turns to Glimmer and apologises for his defective brother, she asks if this means he’d leave them alone to which he expresses that he’d have to destroy the planet to cover up the failures, he would have done it if Catra hadn’t brought up knowledge of the Heart of Etheria. What Horde Prime’s introduction does most of all is tell the audience that if they thought Hordak was evil then they really hadn’t seen anything yet. Hordak was but a child lashing out compared to the insane cult of planetary destruction and forced hegemony that is Horde Prime. If the brutality of the mindwipe of Hordak was anything to go off of it probably isn’t pleasant to be a clone either, but it’s their purpose for creation. “All beings must suffer to become pure” after all.

This helps me segue into talking more about the rest of season 5 and get into detail about the Galactic Horde itself. Based on everything from the language used by Horde Prime and his clones, the fanaticism of most of said clones, the obsession with the color white, and the ideology it would seem as though the Galactic Horde is one thing. A cult. Horde Prime is a souped-up version of Shoko Asahara. He presents himself very charismatically and uses that as a way to mask the constant manipulation he does to everyone from his own clones, to any “Honored guests” he may have, and even his adversaries. He does all of this in a self serving effort to further his own perceived greatness. He is something that no other antagonist in this series ever was, a being of pure ego. Shadow Weaver, Hordak, and Catra even at their very worst were always shown to be affected by the histories and relationships they formed with other people. Even when they committed evil acts there was something recognizable about it, you still knew that this was a PERSON. Horde Prime, while being in the body of a man is surprisingly more reminiscent of something Lovecraftian than your typical supervillain. He’s ancient, his origin is never even hinted at, as though he’s been around forever and no one really knows. He can transfer his consciousness into any being within his hivemind, he has presumably hundreds or even thousands of his former bodies around for him to be able to check their memories, that means he has entire parts of his life he doesn’t remember. Horde Prime may have a humanoid figure, but as a character he’s much more like Cthulhu than Palpatine…. This is the being that created and essentially raised Hordak. A Lovecraftian style cult leader who either conquers planets, assimilates them into his hivemind, or destroys them all for shits and giggles. Hordak never stood a chance of being a good, well rounded person out of that environment. It all puts the Hordak of seasons 1-4 in a different context, shows just how deeply rooted indoctrination was for him.

After the second “purification” he undergoes one might wonder one thing regarding Hordak. Where could he possibly go from here? He’s had his mind wiped twice, he’s on Horde Prime’s ship, even if he did have his memories he believes that the one being who ever cared about him is dead, it really seems like he has nowhere to go… and then he sees the LUVD crystal lying on the floor near some rubble after Entrapta helped with rescuing Catra. He picks it up and looks into it for a second before letting out a somewhat surprised “Entrapta?” he may not fully remember who that is at the moment but they definitely mean something to him. There may be hope for Hordak after all. The audience knows this, especially since earlier in this same episode it’s revealed that Entrapta is keeping a list of clones that could be Hordak, she’s still looking for him.

Later he has another few scenes where he starts to remember some of his past. The cloning tanks with Prime’s former vessels reminding him of Entrapta and when he revealed who he was to her, he doesn’t have it all yet but the pieces are coming back slowly. They come back faster during Failsafe. When he finally sees Entrapta again he’s confused. “Why do I know your face?” She knows that it’s him. He’s not entirely sure he wants to remember, he considers his memories imperfections. As Swift Wind drags her away from the encounter like an idiot she reminds him “Your imperfections are beautiful”. Later in the episode we see her looking him up in the chip network and show a sweet smile on knowing that it really was him. At the beginning of the season the LUVD Crystal was tiny, but now it covers almost the entirety of the palm of his large clawed hands. His love has grown, and grown him as a person, this sets what happens next.

During the two part finale he makes the most important decision of his life. Entrapta gets teleported up to Prime’s ship, directly in front of Hordak. As the rebels start making ground in the battle she starts making noise, telling Prime how he can’t win, he doesn’t know what makes them strong. Prime orders Hordak to kill her. He has a blank, confused, scared expression as he points the arm cannon at her at his brother’s command, tears start to form in her eyes. Is this because she’s afraid to die or because possibly the only person to truly understand her was lost and would be the one to make it happen? Hordak makes a split second decision to turn on his brother. He’s finally able to break through the abuse and indoctrination of Prime’s borderline Lovecraftian cult, throwing Prime’s body down a pit in the ship… Until Prime takes over Hordak’s body temporarily to once again try to intimidate the Etherians.

There is one final scene involving Hordak that is important, that happens right after Adora purges out Horde Prime. We’re given a flashback of Hordak out in a meadow where he’s holding a baby Adora. He likely detected portal activity thinking perhaps Prime had come for him. Instead it was this helpless child, lost from her home and now on this strange world. Perhaps in a quick decision this man starting his own empire saw a piece of himself within her and would take her in. A small piece he forgot about in the many years later, but in this moment of her purging his creator from his mind now remembers. Adora looks at him with no derision or spite, but a soft smile, as though after all these years she finally is starting to understand who he is on a deeper level.

She-Ra and The Princesses of Power is a show that started airing on Netflix in 2018 and finished its run in 2020, and it is a show that is ostensibly about the connections we form with other people and how those affect us moving forward. On top of that it goes out of its way to say that in the end those connections are a positive that we’re better off for experiencing. Horde Prime is the show’s main antagonist and he is a being of pure ego, he views the connections the Etherians form with each other to be a weakness. Meanwhile, time and time again in season 5 those are exactly why he gets defeated. Adora can get through to Catra to break her from the chip, Netossa does the same with Spinnerella, Seahawk and Perfuma slightly do that with Mermista and Scorpia respectively… But where does Hordak fit into this? In s5e3 Corridors Hordak goes to Prime to be “Purified'' after seeing Catra and she calls him by his name, a name being something clones of Lord Prime shouldn’t have. After the painful ritual Prime refers to him as “The purest among you” to the other clones surrounding the ritual. But in the end the connection he had formed with Entrapta led to even him turning on Prime anyway, that purity meant nothing because the bonds we form with other people supersedes all of that. If Hordak doesn’t turn on Prime like he did, for the reason he did then the messaging and themes of the show would have a place where they didn’t follow through as strongly. We’d have a victim of abuse that wasn’t able to get past their abuser, and a flawed person who didn’t wind up doing the right thing because they wanted to do right by the person they love. Without a positive ending for Hordak it makes the rest of the show’s positive endings weaker because it has a blatant exception to those victories, and while that could be poignant in some shows, I don’t think SPOP is that kind of show. So you might be wondering… Why write all this? What made me think that writing a wall of text about Hordak of all fictional characters would be worth it? Part of it is because I wanted to explore why I care so much about this character and look into how his arc worked from a storytelling standpoint. I think the other part of it is simply seeing a lot of people not really seem to understand him as a character. There seems to be a very vocal group of people who hate him, or the Entrapdak ship for one reason or another and use that to kind of call those of us who do enjoy it bad people, so part of writing this is to maybe help some of those people who just flat out don’t understand how we could possibly be fans of the character get to know a bit of the reasoning behind it, and maybe show that the show specifically wrote him to be sympathetic. And maybe if you can see how it would be possible for us to love this character, maybe you can learn to appreciate him too. I can't force you to, but hopefully I can at least help you see where I’m coming from, and if you made it this far all I can say is thank you for reading.

TLDR; Hordak is a very deeply complicated character who’s arc is more important to the themes of SPOP than you might think.

#hordak #entrapdak #spop #essay #character analysis #catra #adora #shadow weaver #horde prime

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linkspooky · 4 years ago

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Your analysis are interesting but feel overly bias since many aspects of the story you forgo despite them being influencers. In the case of the villains, so much of what makes them redeemable to the audience is seperate from their interactions with the heroes, the heroes only get to see violent killers and mass murderers who they have to stop and protect people. They are a immediate threat, so their not going to pull out the therapy chairs mid battle and that is not a flaw.

You phrase things like Shigaraki is only responding to violence against him which is false because through most of the story he was the one initiating attacks on the heroes (USJ, Hosu, Forest training) it's only after Kamino but by this stage he's already established himself as a dangerous threat to children and society - post Kamino it was mostly other villains but the reason Heroes attack his experiment is in response to intelligence of PLIF's planned attack. Heroes are mainly responsive.

I do agree with the point that there is a cycle of violence that has to be broken because the story has set up a good illustration of it's escalation but while the story reasons why the villains want to attack society that let them down doesn't change how the villains are going about that in a violent and deadly way that is going to spark a suppressive response - it's not necessarily faultly judgement on the heroes to respond based on their knowledge and what has traditionally worked to protect.

Your analysis of Bakugou I disagree with. Horikoshi takes care when writing All Might because everything he says has value and he never lies. Additionally violence in heroics is not inherently wrong as many of your meta's imply, so much All Might says to Bakugou, it's not wrong to seek being strong (so that is not regressive) and Bakugou seeking of strength and win is to be like All Might "I will win, that is what heroes do". Bakugou and Deku do understand each other on a personal level, pt1

“ Bakugo’s focus is still being stronger than the bad guys, rather than on saving people. It’s still all about winning to him”. This is not true. Since Kamino Bakugou’s development has prioritised saving. Leaving the battle with the purse snatcher to save All Might and the civilian from the lap post while also saving the people’s belongings, saving his team in joint training, saving Natsuo instead of fighting Ending, Saving Deku because he knows how self sacrificing Deku is and how that will get

that will get him killed. Furthermore he even forgo seeking more strength at Endeavours to look for what he was missing as a hero. Denying all this of his character is reductionist.“Bakugo was set up to learn something, and he didn’t, and that’s character regression! – again this is not true. He did learn, hence he started to actually progress as a hero whereas before when he was not learning he was punished for it. I am not saying the majority of your analysis is wrong – like Bakugou not yet

like Bakugou not yet dealing with his trauma or guilt both to All Might and Deku which leads to self harming battles and suicidal acts of saving but I do think a big flaw in your arguments is to ignore that Bakugou’s character has been exploring other aspects outside of strength and power to improve himself. You also cut off the part of the internship arc where Bakugou listens to Natsuo after the fight with Ending and after that Bakugou does think of his hero name signifying he’s grown somewhat

grown somewhat in thinking about what hero he wants to be – especially since atonement is what Bakugou mentions in chapter 284. Your analysis make great points but also feel very bias because you cut out a lot of information, information the story mentioned and connects up There is a difference between knowing the character’s fundamental flaw – how to deal with the feelings of guilt and weakness beyond simply pushing passed them unaddressed- and claiming they have not grown at all or regressed.

"..but All Might didn’t show up that day because he was turning a blind eye to his responsibilities." <- WHAT! You can't just put that in your analysis like it's fact. All Might might have been saving people at the other end of the country. Same with your writing on Gran Torino, lets ignore that Nana asked the opposite of what you claimed for him not to interact with her family to protect from AFO.

Okay, anon. I’m going to reply with more politeness than you’ve shown me. Your main problem seems to be that I don’t mention the hero’s perspective as often as you think I should, or the positive aspects or intentions of the heroes. However, what you call bias is incorrect because it’s simply the essential tool of making an argument.

Literary Criticism is the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of literary works. It’s an analysis, interpretation and/or evaluation of works of literature. It is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, related to theme, style or setting. All literary criticism is opinion based, it is a personal response to the text. I have always been forward and upfront that I consider myself to be using literary criticism. The best I can do is make my argument and support it with panels. Because these are my arguments that come from my head, they are inherently personal.

It usually includes discussion of the work’s content and integrates your ideas with other insights gained from research. Literary criticism may have a positive or a negative bias and may be a study of an individual piece of literature or an author’s body of work. (source.)

You are supposed to include your ideas whether positive or negative because the act of reading in itself is a cooperation between reader and author. Without audience response, a manga is simply a bunch of drawings on paper. It’s a story that exists only within the author’s head. However, people respond to texts in different ways, that’s the beauty of literary criticism itself. A story doesn’t have to be told in one way, it can be told in many ways.

Literary criticism is by its nature personal? I received two asks which asked what I thought about whether Bakugo has trauma from being kidnapped, and then an ask on whether I thought Bakugo was thinking on the relationships between heroes and villains. Whether Bakugo has progressed in saving people is not relevant, because I don’t think Bakugo cares much about the villain’s perspective at all and that to me is the more pertinent thematic question.

If I think the central theme of the text is “Are villain’s worth saving” then I’m going to include arguments that relate to that theme. The act of presenting an argument means I’m going to look for evidence that supports my side of the argument.

If I wibble back and forth if I add “I think” if I constantly bring up the other side of the argument, those are things that are only going to serve to weaken my argument. My goal is never to talk about things like they’re objective facts but rather present them as I see them.

Can you please try to understand what it’s like anon, to receive messages asking for my thoughts, and then when I share them? For free. On the internet. To receive criticism for... sharing those same thoughts.

Your argument starts with a personal argument against me, accusing me of biased and being unfair. However, I’m not writing whether or not you should like or dislike certain characters. I’m trying to make arguments about themes, Ideas, and justify my own observations on those matters. Once again, all text is a response through a certain narrow lens, because it’s impossible for someone to talk about a text from every single angle possible and mention every single detail. (The posts would be so, so, long and they’re long enough already. What I’m using is a story lens.

For example, there’s a feminist lens.

What does it mean to read through a feminist lens? The feminist lens allows us to look at text through the eyes of a feminist to closely analyze how women are portrayed and presented in comparison to men. Feminism- a movement for social, political, economic, and cultural equality between men and women; campaigns against gender inequalities.

A Narrative lens is by its nature reductive. You are reducing a text that can (and should) be read many different ways into one lens. It’s like if you’re writing a story from a first-person perspective, you can’t have a character telling the audience other people’s thoughts unless their a mind reader, because you have to carefully consider what point of view you’re TELLING the story from.

In the opposite case when analyzing a text under a certain lens, you have to carefully consider the point of view you’re READING the story from.

My blog is titled “No Heroes, Only Villains”. I have made it clear in the past that I’m arguing in favor that the central theme of the story is “Do villains deserve to be saved? Are heroes contributing to the violence of the system.” I read the story through that lens, and make arguments in favor of that lens.

I am, in fact, completely at liberty to say that All Might neglected his responsibility towards Shimura Tenko. Because the THEME of the STORY is that Shigaraki was created by the neglect of everyone around him and hero society as a whole. All Might is told years later that Shigaraki was captured by All for One and tortured for years, and rather than take responsibility then and there, he handed it off to Gran Torino. If the story is continuously building up the idea that the people who could have helped Shimura Tenko in some way, didn’t end up helping him, then I can respond to that idea.

It’s a repeating motif. Shimura Tenko being alone in the street waiting for one hero to save him when nobody did. In real life it probably wouldn’t be anybody’s fault, yes. It would just be a sad accident. However, in stories, there are always reasons behind the characters actions. The reason why is because the authors intentionally craft stories to make some theme come across. So, in regards to theme, All Might did contribute to the fact Shigaraki did not get saved. Not only that, but if you were to not hold All Might accountable that only weakens his character.

Characters are stronger when they are at fault. Characters are stronger when things are decided through their choices and actions. Otherwise a story is a bunch of things, happening to people. All Might chooses not to try going after Shigaraki when Gran Torino advises him to treat Shigaraki like any other villain and that choice means something.

Other things are things that are just, already obvious? I think the story already makes the case clear enough the good intentions of the heroes, so my commentary on it is unnecessary or redundant. The story already tells us how good All Might is, the story already holds Nana Shimura, Toshinori and waxes on about their good qualities. I’m simply offering a different perspective. If I can find evidence of the text of my perspective then the argument is valid. It doesn’t have to be right, it just has to be supported. Another thing is, while it may be true that the villains are dangerous and bad people there are countless cases of villains at least trying to make their arguments, and plead their cases to the heroes, only for heroes like Endeavor to completely brush them off, or tell them to shut up. Shigaraki gives an entire speech about his perceived flaws with the hero system and Endeavor doesn’t even listen and tells him to just die. So yes, I think it is fair game to say that the heroes for the most part are blind to their own faults. Maybe in real life people wouldn’t have to listen, but it’s a story. The point of villains appearing in a story, and pointing out those faults to the heroes, is to have them confront those faults. The confrontation of those faults is what leads to character growth. If the villains weren’t supposed to be right to at least some extent they’d always be chaotic evil monsters. They’d be captain planet villains. The heroes have to be wrong to at least some extent because otherwise there’d be no story because the character has to learn over the course of the story.

The goal of literary criticism isn’t to be right, to have my opinions be more correct than the opinions of other people. You and I are able to have two completely opposite opinions of the text and neither of those opinions negates or cancels out the other. They can in fact coexist because we are different people of different perspectives that simply read things differently.

The goal of literary criticism is to do the best job I possibly can of making my argument easy to understand, which is why I present a clear argument, don’t contradict myself, don’t use wishy-washy language.

I’m being polite and responding to you, but please don’t do this again. As I said, it’s my firm belief that my opinion doesn’t contradict yours in any way. I wouldn’t try to go out of my way to invalidate your argument like this. I love hearing about people’s different perspectives on the manga, and talking with people with different opinions than my own, but only if they’re willing to play ball with me.

#askspookies #Anonymous

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giant-sketches · 5 years ago

Photo

I’m super excited to show you all this one because it’s just so cute!!! I loved drawing this part and I hope you keep enjoying my little narrative. I plan on making the next one a little animated since you all seem to enjoy those ones as well. I feel like you all are now starting to understand the story and my portrayal of these characters thus far, so if you have any questions about where this might be going or about the sides/their world please shoot me an ask! I’d love to answer them!!!

I’m also open for prompts, requests, and commission! ;3

Anyway, let’s get to this!!!

- Patton with Virgil in hand have entered into the fort to find Roman and Logan. Surprisingly, it’s actually Roman who finds them first. As they first stepped inside they caught a glimpse of him zipping down one of the distant corridors, only to pivot back around and begin sprinting towards the two. Roman seemed to be out of breath and frantic for some reason. Patton began to worry something drastic had happened while he was talking with Virgil in the facility. Roman was now in front of him with both hands gripping Patton’s shoulders.

Roman: “Patton! Where have you been?”

Patton: “Roman, I’m sorry I had something to do for a little bit inside the facility. You look really worked up, is everything okay?”

Roman: “What? Oh, yeah everything’s fine I just kind of overdid it with the workout and then Logan asked me to go looking for you since you hadn’t returned. I’ve been running all over! I had no idea you’d still be inside the facility.”

Patton: “Goodness Roman you had me worried there for a second. I’m sorry I didn’t report in for so long, but everything’s okie dokie…or at least most of it. We do have a bit of a puzzle on our hands. More specifically in MY hands.”

- Roman gave Patton a confused look until he turned his attention down towards the elevated hand that carried a shrunken Virgil inside. Virgil the whole time had been gripping Patton’s thumb as Roman’s shoulder grab had caused him to shift around. Roman quickly released his grip and jumped back in surprise.

Roman: “AH!”

Patton: “Roman! There’s no need to shout.”

- Roman couldn’t help it! How else was he supposed to act when the last time he saw Virgil was a 1000 feet tall giant? It was a huge surprise to now see him so tiny and sitting on Patton’s palm. He gingerly moved back over to get a closer look.

Roman: “Virgil? Ho-how did this happen?”

- Virgil tilted his head up to meet Roman’s gaze and gave him a weak smile. He still wasn’t sure how to act around Roman after hearing about how he acted during and after the experiment. He knew to trust in Patton’s words that Roman really cared for him, but it was still hard not to think back to those more painful moments. He hesitated before answering.

Virgil: “I-I’m not sure actually. I don’t remember a lot of what happened afterwards.”

Roman: “You don’t remember? Then you have no idea how big you grew?”

Virgil: “I didn’t at first so I asked Patton and he told me. I-It still sounds unbelievable to me but I know deep down it’s true.”

- Roman didn’t know what to say, for once. If Virgil knew about how massive he had become then there was no way he wouldn’t have asked Patton about their reactions. Roman felt like he had failed to keep his word to Virgil, to see him as family and not as a monster. He could feel the guilty lodging itself in his throat. Virgil noticed this and felt a nudge from behind. Patton was rubbing his fingers against Virgil’s back to encourage him to speak up.

Virgil: “I heard that I might have rattled you back inside the facility. Instead of saying sorry I want to let you know that it’s okay to be scared of me sometimes.”

Roman: “You can’t mean that Virgil!”

Virgil: “I do. After shrinking down like this I’ve come to understand that you can’t help it. Even though you know you’re not in any danger, you have this instinctive feeling of fear when in front of something that big. It subsides quickly though so I know that right now instead of being constantly afraid of me, that the guilt you’re feeling right now is what’s eating you up inside and I don’t like to see you like that Roman. Know that I forgive you and it’s okay to forgive yourself too.”

- Roman’s face filled with relief at those words and he gave a loud sigh.

Roman: “Thank you Virgil. I really needed to hear that. I was going crazy from the guilt of how I felt after that testing session. I thought I was no good, that I was a bad person for being afraid of my friend. You’ve saved me from those dark thoughts.”

- Virgil smiled gently at Roman and Roman smiled back.

Roman: “Anyway we should start making our way to Logan’s study to have a talk with him about what might have happened.”

Patton: “Yeah, let’s get going.”

- The three of them started moving down the halls towards Logan’s study. Roman first entered and announced their arrival with a single knock. Patton with Virgil followed second and it doesn’t take long for Logan to realize what has happened.

Logan: “Yet another unexpected development I see. This must be why you were gone for so long Patton. Can you explain what happened?”

Patton: “Sorry to say I can’t. I just found him like this on the floor of the facility and both Virgil and I have no explanation as to why.”

Logan: “How curious.”

- Logan stepped in for a closer look. Virgil on the other hand was worried he might want to do another round of testing. He gulped his nerves down the best he could.

Logan: “Are you unable to grow back?”

Virgil: “Yes. I think I’m still too worn out.”

Logan: “I see, then we’ll save any other tests for a future time. I personally have some ideas on what’s going on; However, even I can see that not only was the experience physically straining, but also caused quite a bit of mental exhaustion. It’s late so we should all get some rest, but first-”

- Logan had walked back over to his desk and opened up his right-hand drawer to look for something. Virgil wasn’t sure what was going on, but was relieved to hear he wouldn’t be asked to participate in any further testing for awhile. Logan then came back with a sticker sheet in hand. The sheet was covered in stars of different colors in six orderly, vertical lines.

Logan: “Patton, you did a wonderful job today in finding Virgil, calming him down, and returning him to base. To show you my appreciation for your hard work I’ll give you a star. What color would you like this time?”

Patton: “Usually I go with blue, but I want a purple one today please. It reminds me of Virgil!”

- Virgil’s face turned to a bright red instantly from Patton’s remark. He pulled his hood up over his head to hide his embarrassment. Logan carefully peeled off one of the purple colored stars from the sheet and placed it on Patton’s cheek. Patton giggled a bit and smiled widely.

Patton: “Thanks for the kiss Logan.”

- Logan’s face blushed slightly as he covered up his face to hide his crooked smile. Virgil was completely lost as to what was going on.

Virgil: “Patton, what do you mean by kiss? What are the stars for?”

Patton: “Oh I guess you wouldn’t know yet since you haven’t been here for very long. Logan doesn’t enjoy physical forms of affection like Roman and I do so to show his appreciation he gives out these stickers instead. Cute right?”

Logan: “It’s not meant to be cute Patton. I’ve already explained to you before it’s in order to boost morale and keep the status que of our relationships.”

Patton: “Sure, sure. Whatever you say Logan.”

- Virgil had never seen Logan so flustered and couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle. Logan glared at him with a look of caution and Virgil quickly ceased. Logan then felt eyes on him and turned his attention towards Roman who was shooting him pup dog eyes in anticipation. He sighed heavily.

Logan: “I can surmise from your expression that you too would also like a star Roman.”

Roman: “Yes please!”

Logan: “Hmmm, I suppose that even though you ran ahead during the rescue operation and verbally harassed a comrade until they feld, you did show humility by apologizing and have thus made solid amends with them by talking it out.”

- Logan paused in contemplation. Roman left waiting anxiously.

Logan: “All right you can have a star for your efforts to correct your mistakes and grow from them. What color would you like?”

Roman: “Red please!”

- Logan once again gently peeled off another star, this time a bright red one, and placed it on his cheek.

Roman: “Thanks for the kiss love!”

Logan: “….sure. Now I’d like to give one to Virgil as well for participating in the testing, but since he’s so small I’ll refrain for now. I hope you understand.”

- Virgil was somewhat disappointed he couldn’t receive a kiss from Logan like the others because of his current size, but he did understand.

Virgil: “I understand.”

Patton: “Awe Virgil don’t look so down kiddo! Here, I’ll give you a kiss instead!!!”

Virgil: “Wha-”

- Before Virgil could even utter a word he was lifted up towards Patton’s face and felt a pair of soft lips press up against him. It was such a pleasant feeling that he lost himself in it as he let himself curl up against them. Resting his face against Patton’s thumb and lips made him feel so warm and safe. Roman then suddenly joined in by wrapping his arms around Patton’s shoulders. The motion caught Virgil off guard for a moment, but he fell back into his previous position quickly.

Roman: “No fair! Don’t leave me out!”

- Roman then proceeded to kiss Patton on the head while keeping him in an embrace. The entire scene was full of love for one another and comfort. It was only broken from a slight cough coming from Logan who was the on-looker left out. All three turned their attention towards him.

Logan: “Not to cut this short, but as I stated before it has become rather late and I think it best for all of us to get some rest. It’s been a long day afterall.”

- Indeed it had. First Virgil was lured out by Deceit’s note to meet him in the forest, then the others went out to look for him only for Roman to chase him off even more. Virgil’s secret had been revealed and it took a lot of convincing to get him to come back to base where he would be safe. Afterwards apologies were given, but a sudden test was brought up by Logan when everything had just been resolved. That test later ended with extremely unexpected results, but all of this made the family stronger and more connected in the end. It was finally time to rest and start over fresh in the morning.

Logan: “I presume you would like to keep watch over Virgil tonight, correct Patton?”

Patton: “Yes I would. He can sleep with me in my bed for the night.”

Virgil: “You want to share a bed?!”

Patton: “Sorry if it’s uncomfortable kiddo, but you need to stick with one of us when you’re stuck at that size.”

- Virgil understood why, but he was still nervous to share a bed. He’d never once slept with someone else before. How was he supposed to act?

Patton: “No need to look so worried. I promise that I won’t roll over on you or anything. Just think of it like a slumber party.”

- Patton hadn’t fully understood Virgil’s woes and gave him a reassuring smile. Virgil wasn’t worried about being squashed by Patton, but he had never had a sleepover before so he was still perplexed. Would he even be able to calm down enough to sleep?

Logan: “Then I leave him to you, goodnight.”

Roman: “Sweet dreams!”

Patton: “Night, night!”

- Logan returned to his desk for a moment to organize a few things and Roman was the first to leave the study. Patton left right after and started towards his room. He took out his room key from a necklace he tucked underneath his clothes and walked inside. The lights turned on automatically and a soft, female voice said ‘Welcome Patton.’

Patton: “Hello room!”

- The interior was covered in warm, pastel colors. Mainly shades of blue, pink, and pale yellows. The walls were decorated with photos of the three hanging out, of cute animals, and a few motivational posters. There were quite a few of Logan’s star stickers too scattered around the room stuck to all sorts of objects. Patton had set Virgil down on the pillow on top of the bed as he went inside his closet to change.

Patton: “Virgil, I’ll change in here and you can change out there. Unless you like to sleep in your hoodie then I guess you can just wait for me.”

- Virgil usually didn’t sleep in his hoodie so he took it off and set it next to himself. Shortly after, Patton came out of the closet and walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in. He then laid down facing Virgil and patted his hand on the pillow to motion for Virgil to lie down as well. Virgil did so and Patton proceeded to hand him a small cloth to use as a blanket.

Patton: “Here you go kiddo, don’t want you getting cold. Also, hand me your jacket and I’ll put it on the nightstand for you.”

- Virgil did as he was instructed and snuggled himself into the tiny blanket. He smiled at Patton to let him know he was comfortable and Patton smiled back in response.

Patton: “Goodnight Virgil.”

Virgil: “Night Patton.”

Patton: “Goodnight room.”

- With that the female voice responded ‘Goodnight Patton’ and the lights turned off, followed by a spinning night-light engaging to cast a pattern of stars on the ceiling. That’s so like Patton, Virgil thought to himself as he drifted off to sleep. He began to dream about the feelings he had felt when being held and kissed by Patton and he could feel his fatigue fading away and his body growing.

To be continued.

@paranoidgurl @suckedinfandoms @pattonvirglsanders @crystalk17 @enby-phoenix @avenirunknown @gentlegiantdreamer @sanders-sides-virgil @bluegreeninbtwn @notkolaidoscop @just-some-gt-trash @lgbtqiaemo

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jaepies · 4 years ago

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𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙤𝙢 - attack on titan

*contains spoilers of s4

reader!imagine

word count : 1,456

┍━━━━━━━✿━━━━━━━┑

you descended towards the mayhem of marley. flames were roaring, having no mercy on anyone as they licked anything they were able to get their hands on. if this was something of a movie, you would have stood there astonished at the scene playing out in front of you. truly it was a place where war had rampaged. eren’s titan stood in the middle of it like he was the puppeteer and the minuscule humans below him were his pawns, only able to move at his tyrant will.

no, he wasn't a tyrant.

he was eren, right?

eren wouldn’t want to inflict such pain onto others like this. the titan who savagely had just eaten willy tybur minutes before was merely a ghost of the boy who you had grown up with. this monster lacked the passion and empathy that used to reside inside humanity’s hope.

buildings were crashing down as you desperately manoeuvred yourself around the unfamiliar surroundings. even the air which you breathed in felt so different from across the ocean. it had been 4 years since the discovery of a world outside the island yet just being in marley gave you the same feeling of disbelief that you had experienced all those years ago.

except you couldn’t help but be entangled by the ropes of guilt.

all this destruction, all this anguish

each scream which rang out in the night sky,

was all caused by you and your comrades. with each thunder spear that you unleashed came with a haunting flashback to when bertholdt the colossal titan and the armoured titan reminded your people of the fear and destruction that laid beyond the walls.

chills crawled up your spine just thinking about it. the havoc that ensued that day was the exact same as the disarray underneath your feet. dead bodies crushed by the weight of fallen debris, you shut your eyes visualising the despair that will befall the corpses’ families. never able to get closure nor will they ever get the chance to say goodbye.

children were under those collapsed walls. their lives cinched from them before they could really begin. you felt as though you were an outsider looking into something you were not a part of. there was a sensation of detachment from reality as the ongoing battle scene became blurry around you. the realisation that you were the trigger for all of this was an agonizing punch to the stomach.

a sudden hand on your back forced you back into consciousness. it was connie - his face wearing a pronounced look of worry however the steel touch of his fingers held a separate message of its own.

‘follow the plan and make it out alive,’

solemnly, you trailed after the bald man onto one of the last standing roofs in the district, leaving all sins committed behind. still, there was a bitterness that laced the atmosphere; stifling your comrades' ability to talk

or maybe no one had the correct words to say.

there was so much that could be done, you had the advantage of power here. you were superior ones for once. these people ‘started it’ first as childish as that sounds. so why did you all feel so awful? standing on the rooftop gave you such height yet it felt as though you were falling into a pit of disgust and shame.

somehow, it was better when humanity’s only enemy at the time was the titans. there was an element of simplicity in knowing who the ‘bad guys and good guys’ were. the saying of ‘curiosity killed the cat’ seemed fitting and whilst you all were not dead yet, you couldn’t help but think everyone had gone too far. the greed of information led to the erasure of the line of distinction.

out of nowhere, more characters joined the narrative, more lives were put on the line which meant there was more to lose. the fiery passion which once encapsulated the faces of your friends was blown out by the coldness of knowledge. historia became another cog in this greater machine with no regards to her wishes, no one even stopped to entertain armin’s idea of communication.

this wasn’t the scout’s plan in the first place. if only time ran more slowly rather than propelling forward, lurching at the next tragedy about to occur. it was frustrating how no one could formulate an alternative to whatever you were doing, there had to be another, more constructive way to solve this issue. you were taught growing up that violence was and will never be the issue.

only a fool would draw a sword in the face of danger and a person with at least a morsel of integrity will bare all their vulnerability and use that as their weapon of choice.

the discomfort of the blades caught up to you. your hands drenched in a clammy sensation as weariness crept its way into your head. these weapons were your lifeline - a medium to plough your way through to the temporary camp of safety. each arduous day in the training corps was spent soaring through forests with the odm gear - you should be used to the feeling by now.

another building came crumbling down as eren boundlessly shattered the body of the town. confined by nothing and no one. was this was the freedom that he was always seeking? or was he just a lost boy hopelessly grasping at a mirage?

you couldn’t help but convince yourself that there had to be a conclusion for all this. every story has an ending whether it be a dismal one where the main character dies or a path where the protagonist encounters a happier alternative. a finale is a finale all the same. the flow of pages eventually come to an end as you move onto the next enticing book.

the ever-evolving idea of freedom made it ever so difficult to anticipate the finish line. just when everyone thinks they can see it on the horizon, more hurdles are placed in front of them, forcing all the runners to continue despite having been pushed past exhaustion a few laps ago.

you and your friends share the same desire of wanting to see how this all ends. the wish for all of this to be over someday is what keep you all going. constantly being fed that if you do your part in the narrative then all the pieces will fall into place. this is what drives you to seize the nearest machine of war and put two men into a long-lasting sleep.

guilt came trickling back - both of its arms threatening to envelope itself around your delicate neck, poised and ready to pull you down a pit that kept spiralling. but you kept meticulously moving forward.

all the clocks had been destroyed in the chaos nonetheless the incessant ticking taxed away in your mind. each tick hurried you further away from your morals. each tick painted your hands a deeper shade of crimson. each tick made more fall victim to the squabbles of humanity.

an explosion was released in the distance and the disruption of the ocean could be felt under your numb feet. the ships upturned against their will before even being given a chance to breathe. the sheer force of armin overwhelming liberio more than it already had been.

he strolled through the port so carelessly as if he was walking through the meadow during the springtime. sardonically, his steps drowned out the yelps of agony coming from the sailors swimming for the last time. you were grateful. your mind had reached the limits of its allotted space that held screams which would keep you tossing and turning at night.

the bristly feeling of a ladder came tumbling down onto you. peering into the ink of the sky, the recent discovery of the aeroplane came gliding in. the bite of its draft nipped at your skin as you began to ascend. the material of the rope rubbed your hands raw from gripping tightly.

fighting against the unwavering twisting and turning, the sight of the entrance gifts your body with a slight feeling of relief. you had survived another round of trying to live.

the embers of fire continued to rage on, proceeding to devour the remains of what you had left. you mused at how picturesque the landscape looked. it had to be a crime that such an abomination could be so alluring. the distance concealed any evidence of the bodies so all that could be seen was the fallen architecture. it reminded everyone of what they had accomplished as you flew away from marley and one step closer to freedom.

there had to be another way.

┕━━━━━━━✿━━━━━━━┙

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ihaspoorgrammer · 4 years ago

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Legend of Korra: Alternate Season 2

In honor of LoK coming to Netflix, I’ve decided to vomit all my feelings towards that show the best way I can - creative writing - In a “What I think Should’ve Happened” essay for your reading pleasure. For those who don’t have the time, I’ll just come out and say it -- Legend of Korra was created with one season in mind, and that’s how it should've stayed.

All the concepts and ideas they introduced in the first season (and The Last Airbender) were more-or-less abandoned by the sequel so they could flounder and come to a deflating end.

So, I wrote this as a way to actually make use of them in a meaningful way that the creators so casually disregarded:

A few months after the battle with Amon, the Equalists have splintered into different cells throughout Republic City. Amon being revealed as a Waterbender weakened them, but that doesn’t take away from the larger points they championed about Bender/Non-Bender inequality. As a consequence, the United Forces soldiers are still a presence in the city, and Chief Biefong has made use of them as additional keepers of the peace, working with the Metalbending police to help rebuild and establish order, and has benefited greatly from the leadership of General Iroh and Commander Bumi.Korra is still airbending training with Tenzin as well as learning about the Avatar State, and she seems to have done a complete 180 in terms of her training; now dedicating herself to it full time to it. Tenzin is naturally happy about this development, but cautions her that the training will have to come naturally and it’s not something she can force, and is wary of how deeply her fight with Amon affected her. The Fire Ferrets are preparing for their first match since last season against the Polar Leopards, Mako and Bolin steel their nerves while their new waterbender - Tahno - tells them to "relax" and "prepare to be amazed." After putting up a spirited fight, the Fire Ferrets and their opponents are tied. After ganging up on Tahno - who is at a disadvantage, being more accustomed to cheating - is saved by Mako. With seconds left, Tahno subtly bends the water on the opposing team’s side, and creates an ice-patch, causing an opponent to slip. Tahno takes advantage of this, and wins the match with a “Korra Special.” Only Mako notices the cheat. After the match, Mako approaches Tahno about the cheating, but lets it slide. At Bolin’s suggestion, the two brothers go out to celebrate and invite Tahno along, but he opts out for "training” (after this, we see that Tahno has a picture of Korra in his locker, hinting that he only joined the Ferrets to make it up to her for restoring his bending).Asami has taken full control of Future Industries and personally oversees the production of new satomobiles and has saved Future Industries from bankruptcy with new airplanes designs. However, the company can't shake the black-eye her father gave it and her name, so business contacts have become scarce and shareholders have started pulling out. Worse, the board of directors have begun flexing their muscles to try and squeeze her out. She needs to come up with something good and fast.Mako, Bolin, and Tahno are in the middle of free-for-all sparring, when Tahno accidentally makes ice and headshots Bolin (which makes his vision comically go double). Mako scolds Tahno about it, causing Tahno to storm off. Later that night on Air Temple Island, Mako brings Korra a meat dinner (Tenzin has put her on a vegetarian diet), but she declines. They begin to discuss Tahno’s participation in the team, which Mako believes was a bad idea, but Korra reminds him that Tahno has cut back on cheating, worked hard, and overall been a good addition (or stand-in for Korra). They share a nice couple-moment and laugh. We see Asami in the distance looking at them longingly, showing that she is still hurt over Mako leaving her for Korra. She starts to walk back to her room when she hears a strange noise in the distance. The source is Commander Bumi throwing his boomerang back and forth. After talking for a bit (and Bumi revealing that the boomerang once belonged to his uncle, Sokka), Bumi allows Asami to give it a throw. After a successful first try, she accidentally throws it through Tenzin's window. Bumi tells her "I didn't see anything if you didn't see anything." As he hops in the bushes to hide and Asami runs away. Laughing. Meanwhile, a group of once-small time Triad gangs (they were "little people" before Amon "de-bended" the major families), are attacked by members of the Triple Threat. After a small battle, the Triple Threats win, and take with them a powerful bloodbender (or they start interrogating someone), leaving behind a message: “Lightning strikes twice.” ------

After that, Season 2 is in full swing. The Triads are the major Big Bad of this season because the purpose of the show was to be the opposite of Airbender, narratively speaking. So, that means keeping Korra and the cast firmly in Republic City and no more globe trotting.

This puts a bigger emphasis on the characters and their interpersonal relationships (which was the big draw of the show to begin with), rather than having to build up and explain the geo-politics of a new setting.

If they did stay for at least one more season, it probably would have emphasized a larger untapped well; the city was designed to be a 1920’s New York-style “melting-pot”, a place where all cultures come together and mix (Mako and Bolin are a product of a Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom union, and Tahno seems to be the a product of a Fire Nation and Water Tribe union). So, essentially, it’s the architectural equivalent of the Avatar. Just as the Avatar is the synergy of the four nations, Republic City does the exact same thing, just on a larger scale. One more season would better emphasize this fact, and show that despite what people think, it is possible for the four nations to co-exist as long as it’s based on mutual respect and sharing of differences, not domination of differences. This imaginary second season could also be used to address multiculturalism in any number of ways.

Maybe the new Big Bad could’ve been a terrorist group dedicated to keeping the nations separate and "pure," and see the City as an affront to the Avatar’s “true responsibility.” And maybe Korra can see that, despite its flaws, the city and what it represents is worth saving. It also would have emphasised the “super-hero” aspect of the show; Korra being a Superman-figure who constantly has to protect her Metropolis from ever-constant calamities. Another aspect that could’ve been added, was that the people of Republic City could’ve helped the Krew. You see, the citizens of Rep. City are constantly infantilized to the point of helplessness until Korra and co. show up to help. The opposite approach would have emphasised the multicultural aspect of the city, and how when push comes to shove, they are all one big family.Maybe even having a scene like from the original Spider-Man movie where the citizens actually help the Krew out, saying “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

From my perspective, there’s no better way to kick this off than introducing this monkey-wrench into the Krew’s system -- the return of Lightning Bolt Zolt, Mako and Bolin’s adoptive father.

See, in the backstory that the show never did anything with, after their parents died, Mako and Bolin became part of the Triads. Though Mako stresses to Korra that he only "ran numbers" for them during his time there. . . So either Mako is a mathematical prodigy, or he's lying. Because I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say he probably received no formal education on the streets that would enable him to work for the Triads in that capacity. So that begs the question: why would he lie? What did he do during his time working for the Triads, that would make him leave and never speak of it again? It’s because he was specially trained by Zolt personally. Learning Lightningbending in the process.

Now, Zolt will use this connection to manipulate Mako for his own purposes, which involves getting his bending back, which will of course drive a wedge between him and Korra.

Zolt may be a bastard, but he was arguably more of a father to him than Mako’s actual father, and that kind of emotional connection is hard to ignore. In fact, it’s such a shock to his system that his Lightningbending stops working.

Which brings him in contact with General Iroh.

When we first meet Mako, he’s determined, blunt, stubborn, and reserved. Understandably so, seeing as how his parents were murdered in front of him Batman-style and was forced to basically raise his little brother on his own, on the streets. As a consequence, one of his most defining characteristics is his inability to relax. He’s constantly trying to fix everything, constantly trying to help everybody, and constantly trying to remain in control. So, Avatar-style development demands that he gradually realize that he can’t control everything and learn to relax, allowing Bolin to become his own person, and learning to go with the flow. Which is something they actually didn’t do in the fourth season. He was largely extraneous to the story and they actually took every opportunity they had to show how useless he was.

Meanwhile, Bolin starts being approached by Lin Biefong, who believes the young man has the potential to be part of the Metalbending police force, despite his claims that he can’t Metalbend. However, Lin eventually realizes why he never could; he’s never had to apply himself. You need to have an unrelenting drive to force the minerals within to move, and that’s not something Bolin has ever needed. In Season 4 of the actual show, I almost applauded it for having Bolin sign up for the army because I thought that’s exactly what he needed -- a place to apply himself. Mako being such a mother-hen accidentally stunted Bolin’s emotional growth, never allowing him to mature and become independent. Which could lead into a very Sokka-like confession:

B: “Do you want to know something really terrible; I don’t miss them. Mako was the one that really knew them. I remember bits of things, but … They’re just … People I didn’t get to know. Mako’s the one that’s always been there for me.”

So here, Lin takes it upon herself to be his teacher and actually show his true potential. They grow closer as a result, and she and Bolin start developing a mother-son relationship. When we first meet Bolin, he’s immature, a show-off, something of a womanizer, a shameless flirt, and a goof-off. The unifying detail with the Bending Brothers is that Mako was sort of holding them both back; Mako’s over-protectiveness never allowed him to choose what was best for himself, and stunted Bolin’s emotional growth into becoming a more independent adult. What they could’ve done - if they wanted to save time - was to have their character arcs work off of each other -- while Mako becomes more relaxed and free-spirited, Bolin becomes more responsible and goal-oriented.

The only other place that the phrase “wasted potential” belongs besides in association with Tahno we’ll get to in a minute, but for now let’s focus on him. The creators once said that they “care about all the characters … except Tahno,” which should show the lack of imagination that was rather systemic in the thinking process there (and what liars they are).

From the start, Tahno is clearly deeply affected by Amon stripping him of his bending, even if Korra gave it back to him. And while he still resorts to cheating now and then, it’s not entirely because he’s a natural cheater … it’s because his bending hasn’t completely come back, and neither has Korra’s for that matter.

They’re both so traumatized by Amon’s Bloodbending that they’re experiencing “hiccups” in their powers.

Korra has tried to deal with it by doubling-down on her Airbender training to “find inner peace,” while Tahno is just trying to ignore it.

Eventually, their arcs cross paths, and they bond of their attempts at healing, having to come to terms with the fact that the “body heals only after the mind heals.” Which further draws a wedge between her and Mako.

Now, there is still a love-triangle here, but it’s in service to why Mako and Korra were brought together in the first place: they aren't supposed to be like Katara and Aang, where it was love-at-first-sight. They’re supposed to be the more realistic couple that have problems and have to make compromises because they love each other.

Love isn’t something that just happens, you have to work hard at it and make the other person happy without looking for the advantage. Relationships - both platonic and romantic - need to be built on mutual trust and understanding, and with understanding means taking a person for both their good and bad qualities.

Infatuation is the kind of love that is more shallow and doesn’t last.

Under direct orders from Fire Lord Zuko himself, General Iroh has started staying at Air Temple Island to watch over the Avatar, which leads him to becoming an unofficial therapist to the people staying there, namely Korra, Tahno, and Mako.Iroh is unique among the cast because he’s inherited Uncle Iroh’s position of someone who already has everything figured out themselves.

He grew up with loving parents and loving grandparents, and we learn that he had the honor of being one of the first firebenders taught by the Sun Warriors, who Zuko spent most of his life helping reconstruct (where he gained the nickname, “The Young Dragon”).

This new living situation makes him a part of the Krew later on, and brings him closer contact with Asami, who he develops a rapport with. And finally, we come to Asami, who is still dealing with losing her father and potentially losing everything else.

You don’t have the founder of a company be linked to a terrorist organisation and expect that company to survive, no matter what financial magic you can conjure. Which is something Asami is learning all too well.But in this madness, she meets two people -- Commander Bumi and General Iroh (who’s under an official Fire Lord order to watch over the Avatar).

She soon becomes Bumi’s ward, eventually, Bumi will act as a surrogate father for Asami, and she will help him organize, and win, a blimp race. From then on, she starts exclusively referring to him with the honorific, "commander."

They become so close that he starts teaching her everything Sokka taught him. You see, because Aang spent more time with Tenzin and Katara more time with Kya, that meant that Bumi ended up bonding with his non-bending uncle, (who later in life became master Piandao’s best student).

That’s why Bumi carries around Sokka's boomerang; Sokka was probably more of a father to him than Aang was.

So Sokka, never having children of his own after Suki tragically died, taught Bumi everything he knew, including how to recreate Space Earth Metal.And, after they grow closer, he decides to trust Asami with this sacred technique. …

Which she immediately tries to patent and market in order to save Future Industries. However, when she learns how deeply she hurt Bumi by doing this, she finally cuts her losses and sells the company. After that, she decides to pursue a different career, perhaps by joining the United Forces.

And, while all of this is happening, Tenzin is informed by the White Lotus that global bending birth rates are going down with the modernization and mechanization of the world. Signifying that people's disconnection with nature and spirituality is robbing them of their bending.

Just like what happened to the Fire Nation.

And if this rate continues, in a few generations, bending might completely disappear.

------

Avatar: The Last Airbender was aimed primarily at children and early teens, because those are big transitional times in young people's lives. But late-teens and early 20's are also big transitional phases in young people's lives. Perhaps even more so, because those are the times where you have to learn how to be an adult. A very alien concept.

So, Legend of Korra seemed primed to tackle the challenges of this time, but for one reason or another, they never did.

Despite having a golden opportunity to say some meaningful things about interracial families and multiculturalism, they instead, did nothing.

This is a quote from a Tumblr post who I sadly can’t track down, but it speaks volumes to what AtLA represented to people:

“You need ALL these things to survive and grow, to hold up your community and push yourself forward. You need to unlearn myths and lies, reform them to fit new realities. You need to respect the past but mold it for the future. In short, you have to “draw wisdom from many different places” while keeping true to who you are and where you come from. IDK if the creators of AtLA thought about these things when crafting this story; I think when a story is well told, with authenticity and love, it has the potential to illuminate many perspectives and strike empathy in many different people. Diasporic consciousness is incredibly valuable because it teaches us a different way of being, a way of interconnectedness and mutual love. The Gaang symbolizes this perfectly: it took all of them with all their different skills, to end the War and restore peace and balance. A diasporic consciousness has the same power: to model a newer, more just, more empathetic way of life.”

Tying into this, I think all the Avatars were wrong in their assertion that the four nations needed to be separated. Think about it. Every single nation failed, in their own way, because they were isolated: the Fire Nation became too proud of its own accomplishments, and became a fascist regime. The Air Nomads' loose and "free" nature allowed the Fire Nation to easily wipe them out. The "go with the flow" attitude of the Southern Water Tribe - similar to the Air Nomads - made them easy targets for the Fire Nation; while the Northern Water Tribe "froze over," becoming rigid in their doctrine and tradition, and could never stand against the Fire Nation alone; and the Earth Kingdom fell too far into its "virtue" of endurance, and became a military dictatorship with a puppet king, cutting off any ties to the outside world.

“It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If we take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations, will help you become whole.”

While the "separate, but equal" stance towards the Four Nations may have been a good idea in the past, in recent years, it's proven to be a recipe for disaster. Most, if not all, of these failings could've been avoided if there had been more open dialogue between the Nations. There is a saving grace in the form of the Order of the White Lotus, but seeing how they all kindly fucked off until the shit really started to hit the fan, I can hardly see how they were a solution to the problem. Now, I really don’t know what else to say. I wrote this entire thing as an exercise to show how Legend of Korra failed in its duties to be an equal to its predecessor, because I was a fan.

Not just of AtLA, but of Lok as well. I watched it, I invested in it, and I was disappointed by it.

Others may have had all their hopes answered by the ending, but I was left with a pit in my stomach over how far the mighty had fallen.

And I don’t look forward to the show being adapted into live action because I don’t think I can take seeing all the lapses in creativity and common sense all over again.

#Legend of Korra #Netflix #LoK #irohsami #makorra #bryke #anti bryke #if anyone wants to make a fanfic about this i would be honored

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

Text

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 21

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because after that big shocking reveal last time I don’t really need another because!

Last times on book: Kylan, Naia, Amri, and Tavra are finally on their way to Ha’rar after the disappointment of finding that the firca of Gyr the Song Teller was broken. When Kylan went ahead to ask Tavra if they could take a break, he discovered she wasn’t Tavra and was colluding with the Skeksis against them! He knows but she doesn’t knows he knows! How tense!

Chapter 21

Kylan is a sweet little blue berry

When Fake-Tavra and Kylan get back to the clearing, Naia immediately insists that no matter what Tavra thinks, they need to rest.

Fake-Tavra actually draws her sword although she stops short of being actually threatening with it. Still, GEEZ FAKE TAVRA!

Its only thanks to the improbability of an imposter situation that you’ve been getting away with impostering because you are terrible at pretending to be a reasonable individual!

Kylan, who has reason to worry about whether Fake-Tavra would actually use the sword knowing that her Skeksis master is getting impatient with her, steps in.

He’s stepped between Fake Tavra and Naia so many times that he’s basically an expert at this point.

“Tavra. Listen. Amri needs shoes, or soon we’ll have to carry him, which will surely slow us down further than if we stop for just a little while.”

“It’s not my fault he decided to come. If he needs shoes so badly, he can have mine.”

Tavra reached down and tore the sandals from her feet, tossing them at the Grottan boy, who flinched at the gesture.

“That’s really not necessary,” Amri began. “Naia cut some hide from her jerkin, so...”

Geez, poor Amri. He didn’t ask to be in the middle of this drama.

Kylan deflects again because he can sense that this is argument is gonna escalate and then Fake Tavra’s gonna kick their asses.

“I got a note from Rian. It came by swoothu, early this evening. His boat was damaged by a rock in the river, and he was waylaid. He’s close by and he said he’ll wait for us if we’re near. I already told him we would meet him tomorrow evening.”

Tavra snatches the note from Kylan, looks at it, and then dunks it into the fire.

Naia looks at Kylan skeptically but he hits her with the full force of puppy dog ‘please play along’ eyes.

“Oh,” she said in a normal tone, as if she had just remembered. “So that’s what you were doing out in the wood earlier. Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

Ain’t friends who’ll back up your random lies the best?

Kylan builds up on his lie by claiming that he didn’t mention it earlier because he was worried it was secretly a secret Skeksis scheme trap.

Fake Tavra confidently says its not a trap (because she is the trap and the Skeksis wouldn’t double book).

Kylan suggests that they wait until morning and then go meet him.

Tavra stared into the fire, free hand cupping her chin in thought. He hoped she was thinking what he wanted her to think - that this opportunity was too sweet to miss. Her master wanted Rian, and this was a way she could regain favor.

He was rewarded when she sheathed her sword.

“Yes. Fit those sandals to the Shadowling. We leave first thing in the dawn.”

And then Fake Tavra sits against a tree and falls asleep. Or pretends to fall asleep?

... Huh. Y’know. With all the emphasis on the Skeksis wanting to drink Naia and Gurjin, I forgot that the inciting incident of all this was them trying to catch Rian.

With that settled, Amri turns his attention to the sandals that Tavra threw at him because he doesn’t have context for all of this and his number one priority is his aching feet.

The sandals are pretty close to his own foot size but Fake Tavra broke the cords when she ripped them off.

Kylan tells Amri he’ll fix them but first fishes the fire-resistant parchment out of the fire and hands it to Amri.

Naia comes over to talk to Kylan while he fixes the sandals, which he’s really good at because it was one of the tasks Maudra Mera taught him when he was a child.

When Kylan whispers back, he whispers loud enough for Fake Tavra to overhear. Oh, Kylan, what scheme are you up to?

“I don’t trust Tavra.” He watched the Silverling when he spoke. She did not stir. “Something about her has been all wrong since we ran into her. You remember... with the blue mouth?”

Naia frowned. “Of course I remember the blue mouth.”

Kylan chose his words as carefully as if he were telling a song. This was the most important part of all.

“Good,” he said. “Because if you remember, then you’ll understand why I want to meet with Rian in private. Tonight. I don’t want Tavra to get her hands on him... I think she’s working for the Skeksis. So, tonight, when it’s quiet, I’m going to sneak out and meet him and tell him. I’m going to tell him to go on to Ha’rar without us, and tell the All-Maudra that her daughter is a traitor.”

Kylan watches from a reaction from Fake Tavra but all he notices is that earring of hers twinkling in the fire light and he thinks it moves on its own.

HMMMMMMMM.

Naia protests Kylan having to go alone but Kylan can’t explain it without giving the game away and dreamfasting would draw Fake Tavra’s attention. Especially since she’d mentioned to her Skeksis master that she could sense it. So he has to trust Naia to trust him and figure out what his plan is. THROUGH FRIENDSHIP and shared experiences.

“Remember the blue mouth?” Kylan asked. “It was good we weren’t alone then.”

Amri had been quiet, since he likely had no idea what the blue mouth was or what it had done. In the meantime, he had uncrumpled the scrap of paper Kylan had handed him, smoothing it on his lap. Kylan focused on mending the last of the broken cord, waiting for Amri’s reaction. It came shortly: a glance of confusion, then the flicker of understanding.

Hmmm.

I have to say, I love Amri just being completely baffled at these references and deciding ‘I guess I’ll read garbage.’

I’m not sure what would be on the note that would give the game away but that also wouldn’t clue Fake Tavra in... unless Fake Tavra can’t read?

It’s been mentioned a couple times that she’s shown no interest in all the writing everywhere.

Also, I forgot what the blue mouth was supposed to be and only just vaguely remembered that its the plant that tried to eat them. I don’t think they ever call it a blue mouth? I’ve flipped back and while it had a mouth it wasn’t described as blue. But the fruit are blue. And that makes me think I know what the reference means and what Naia is supposed to take from it.

Kylan takes first watch and waits and waits and waits until he can’t waits any more.

Kylan watched the fire die in quiet, holding his hands in his lap to keep from fidgeting. Though the night was the same as any other, knowing what would soon come made it seem as if he existed inside a dome of his own thoughts. His mind felt like Aughra’s observatory: constantly moving, full of things.

Stay focused, he told himself. Tell the song. It will work... it has to.

He takes off into the dark wood (not the Dark Wood although it reminds him of the night he spent then and how scared he was compared to how brave he is now and hopes if someone tells his story they remember his character development. You’re such a Song Teller, Kylan).

Since he’s listening carefully, he hears footsteps following behind him at a distance.

The follower (I mean, its Fake Tavra, there’s no ambiguity there) isn’t bothering too hard to hide.

It proved to him that she had meant it when she had called him weak, and for the first time, he smiled about it to himself.

Kylan leads Fake Tavra stalking him towards a perfect ambush zone. Just a great place with ledges and boulders and all kinds of lunging places.

And then Tavra ambushes him.

Kylan turned toward Tavra’s voice just as she shoved him against the cliffside with her forearm, pinning him with her body. In her other hand she held a short knife, but more wicked was the grin on her ghostly face. She did not look like Tavra. She did not look like a Gelfling at all.

She’s being a spooky.

She demands Kylan tell her where Rian is and when he stammers that Rian isn’t here yet, Fake Tavra declares that when Rian does arrive, he’ll find a dead Kylan.

That’s the worst welcoming gift!

ALSO yeah that little earring thing thats repeatedly had attention drawn to it in the text? Its moving? And it has eight legs?

SPIDER-TAVRA. I KNEW IT.

Oh but the real ambush is the ambush that ambushes the ambush.

Kylan ducks out of the way as a bunch of finger-vines are dumped all over Tavra. They leave Kylan alone but snare Tavra in an unbreakable grip.

Amri and Naia climb down from the ledge on the finger-vines. Ah ha! Naia’s ability to talk to plants!

“How dare you!” [Tavra] cried, but the vines near her face slithered across her mouth and silenced her. It seemed the plant did not like her, either.

Hah.

“You make quite a good little blue mouth berry,” Naia said.

Kylan chuckled.

“Sweet and small. We make the best bait.”

HAH.

Okay so the blue mouth plant with its tempting little blue fruits. And Kylan was the tempting little blue fruit in this context because he’s small and sweet. And also the one that Spider-Tavra perceived as weak and no threat.

It all comes together! Good way to draw the plot threads together, Kylan!

And good way to make that weird tree that tried to eat them woven into the narrative and not just a weird random encounter.

Much respect, J.M. Lee. You wordsmith.

The three Gelfling look on the trapped traitor.

“Now, tell us who you are and what you’ve done with Tavra,” said Naia.

YEAH.

I mean, I have a decent idea but I wouldn’t mind some exposition to fill in the gaps. We’re seventy some pages to the end and I don’t know where the rest of the plot is going! Somehow I feel that we’re not going to go to Ha’rar after all.

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #Song of the Dark Crystal #liveblog #Kylan #Naia #Amri #Tavra?#kylan rules; ok?

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gwaciechang · 3 years ago

Text

I Don't Want To Go Home (2/15?)

We're kicking off into the actual plot now! The dialogue still comes from the pdas in the outpost base, but rewritten to fit the characters and the new story. Again, no need to have played Subnautica Below Zero to understand this fic, although it does help.

No warnings for this chapter, but please be aware that the reader character discusses an intergalactic pandemic and lockdown, written before the current one. It's not ongoing as far as the plot of the fic is concerned.

As soon as it hits the end of your shift, you put your samples on top of your workstation and practically run all the way back to the habitat to get there before anyone else.

“Oh, hey,” Mundy greets you, “you’re here early,” he attempts to wink seductively and succeeds in looking like he’s having a stroke.

“I know, I ran here to make sure I got here first,” you hang up your coat. “I need to borrow your pyro-what are you doing?” you ask when you realize Mundy’s holding something behind his back

“I’m just slacking off,” Mundy’s voice is shrill in the way it gets when he panics. “Don’t tell the boss lady!” he gives you a terrible, fake chuckle as he tries to hide his drawings behind his back.

You feint to the left, before grabbing the sheets with your right hand. “Ha!” you cheer as you examine his art of some strange green thing that makes you smile to remember. “It’s beautiful! Why would you try to hide these? Also, what are they?” You’ve definitely seen them around the island.

Mundy scratches the back of his neck, and his voice is at least an octave higher than normal. “I'm doing a series inspired by bacteria. Mutant beauty, life, death, risk. You know, that kind of thing?”

Ah, bacteria, now you know what he means. “What do you mean, bacteria?” you hold one up that you really hope isn’t what you think it is. “It looks like Kharaa, but,” you look more closely at it even though you already know why. “Gordon, is this a mutation?”

Mundy’s nervous again. “It’s just a personal art project,” he insists. Somehow, his voice is still rising in pitch.

You don’t dare look down at your skin for fear of seeing glowing green pustules. “You know you’re doing that thing with your voice,” you say as calmly as you can, “like when you're trying to bluff in Alien Intruder?”

Mundy sighs, before confessing, “Alright fine, I’m bad at lying.” He gives you a weakly hopeful smile.

You can hardly believe what you’re hearing. “Are you mutating Kharaa bacteria, from the frozen Leviathan, here, in this lab? If this bacteria gets out, then-”

“Why would it get out? We have professional containment, we’re protected from contact at every step of the process, and we know how to neutralize it in an emergency.”

You feel ice settle in your stomach. “Not when it’s mutated, we don’t. And you responded way too fast.”

“It was my area of research before Jensen made you take over!”

“Hey, uh, am I interrupting something?” Monk asks from the doorway.

“Uh, no,” you say hastily, walking toward the fireplace to start one with more force than is really necessary, or helpful. “You want some roast Chinese potato?” you ask, pulling a few out of the growbed as you wait for the flames to reach a decent height.

“I could take one, I took the salt deposits out of the water filter,” Monk says carefully. “Mundy, you want to shred some marblemelons?”

Mundy starts, like he only just realized Monk was there. “Uh, yeah,” he reaches out to grab the melon from your hand, and his face falls when you don’t let your fingers touch.

There’s a timid knock at the door, followed by an even more timid, “Hello? It’s Ernst.” Suddenly, your heart soars, and you wipe your tears as you open the door.

“Hey, Schmidt.”

He stares at you before asking, “Are you alright?”

Jesus, you must look really miserable, if even Schmidt is concerned about you. “I’m fine, go help Monk and Mundy shred the marblemelons.”

Schmidt puts down a bottle of, holy shit, “Is that lantern fruit wine?”

Schmidt blushes. “I discovered that lantern fruit has a chemical composition similar to-”

“Yeah, no one cares,” Mundy says, pouring at least half the bottle into his glass, making Schmidt wince, before handing it to Monk.

“I don’t drink,” Monk refuses it, so Mundy puts it down. Schmidt picks it up again and hands it to you.

“You’re not drinking?” you ask.

“I can always make some for myself later,” Schmidt demures, but you leave a quarter of the bottle out for him. He looks up at you, just for a second, before looking back down at his feet. “So, how do we play alien intruder?” Schmidt asks in a voice so quiet, it’s almost nonexistent. With his head bowed, it’s even harder to hear him.

“Well, we guess who the alien intruder is,” Mundy stares at Schmidt like he’s an imbecile, something you doubt the robotics technician has any experience with.

He shrinks ever further into himself at the accusation. He doesn’t get any better when the game starts, constantly looking at you before doing anything, which gets him accused of being the alien, more out of Mundy’s jealousy than anything else. You know this, so you keep shooting down Mundy’s accusations.

Monk innocently kicks off the argument. “If you ask me, Schmidt’s been blinking a lot,” he says casually. “I think it's a tell.”

“He does have a point there!” Mundy looks at you.

“It's allergies!” Schmidt says stiffly.

“Allergies?! Oh no!” Mundy says mockingly. “Is something in bloom in our little frozen habitat?”

“There are thermal lilies,” Schmidt scowls at him. “And if you gang up on me, I swear, you're all fired.”

“You're not our real boss,” Monk reminds him.

“Let's just take this to a vote,” Mundy downs his glass and slams it on the floor. All those who think Schmidt’s allergies are a bad case of alienitis, say, ‘Intruder.’ Intruder!”

“Intruder,” Monk cheers.

The two turn to you, but you stay nothing except, “I’m going to use my pass.”

“There’s no such thing as a pass!” Mundy argues.

Schmidt slides himself between you and Mundy. “Are you two cheating?” he asks with smoothness he hadn’t displayed all night. “You two are suddenly very aligned.”

“You know what, I’m starting to wish I had cheated,” Mundy looks directly at you, leaving no way for you to miss his meaning.

Neither did Schmidt, because he’s on his feet, screaming for Mundy to apologize. Mundy jumps up to his feet as well, and your heart thumps in your chest. You press your hand against Schmidt at the same time Monk does the same for Mundy, but Monk actually manages to force Mundy to sit down again. All you can do is stand between the two of them and hope.

“No, wait, don’t,” you press a hand ineffectually on Schmidt’s chest at the same time Monk does the same for Mundy. But Monk manages to force Mundy to sit down. All you can do is stand between Schmidt and Mundy, and hope neither of them speak again.

Schmidt searches your face, and whatever he finds has him take a step back. “I made a mistake, coming here,” he says, his voice stiff and formal. “Thank you for inviting me, and I’m sorry I caused so much tension. I’ll go now,” and he turns and exits the room.

“It wasn’t your fault!” you won’t let him take all the blame, and you follow him out of the room. The moment the door closes behind you, he turns around and takes your hands in his. You hadn’t realized how cold your hands had become until you felt his soft, warm skin around yours.

“I’m the new person, the outlier. Monk and Mundy will be more than happy to blame any existing tension from today on me,” his voice is oddly desperate. “Go back in, let them construct their narrative, and have fun like you normally would.”

You shake your head. “The tension between me and Mundy isn’t going to go away until I resolve this-” you freeze. Schmidt is in the cave with the leviathan all day, so there’s no way he has no idea what Mundy’s been doing.

Schmidt lets go of you and holds his hands up. “What do you need help with?”

Well, you can’t trust Mundy, so you might as well see how deep this conspiracy goes. “The Kharaa samples from the frozen leviathan-”

“Is nothing to worry about in and of itself,” his tone is reassuring, almost. The way the light reflects off his glasses obscures his eyes.

“I have it on good authority that mutation experiments are being performed on this bacterium. I don’t need to tell you that the bacteria, as it was, killed billions, and we’ve only just discovered a cure. If it mutates-”

“Are you feeling unsafe?” Schmidt interrupts.

“Yes!”

He takes his glasses off to look at you eye to eye. “If I escalate the issue for you, will you feel comfortable enough to concentrate again? I have deadlines for the Snowfox and the mining bots coming up. I really need you not to fight with our coworkers.”

“Oh,” you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, “yeah.” A giggle bubbles out of your chest. “That’s a relief, actually.”

Schmidt puts his glasses back on, but his gaze is no less severe, or sincere. “Nothing is more important than your safety, and the safety of all of my crew. I will take care of it, do you trust me?”

You nod enthusiastically. “Thank you, I won’t let you down, sir,” you add a cheeky wink to the end.

The corners of his mouth twitch. “No, thank you, and thank you for inviting me. Go back in and,” he hesitates as the corners of his lips droop, “go have fun with Monk and your boyfriend.”

#my writing #ernst schmidt x reader

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fairydust-stuff · 5 years ago

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Wendy Darling Embodiment of Motherhood

Here’s the thing ,I have never been a big fan of Wendy Darling from JM Barrie’s classic novel Peter Pan. Not only is she a cocktail of every bad stereotype about Victorian women casually thrown into a blender to make the ultimate Grimm’s fairy tale heroines are more bad ass then you smoothie. But Wendy is just straight up the most boring character in Peter Pan. That being said she does play a very important role in Peter Pan. Also it’s gotten the point where I’m a bit tired of seeing this idea that the Never land ladies have nothing to offer. If we don’t change everything about them or let’s just leave them out entirely trend via Hollywood. Seriously when is the last time Tink got more than a cameo and I’m not talking about the sugary princess clone Disney created from her mutilated body. Anyway I want to take a look Wendy Darling how she works, how she doesn’t work what she embodies and how she’s been portrayed in various adaptations.

First let’s take a look at some themes. Peter pan is at its core a coming of age story about accepting the inevitability of growing up. However Wendy as a point of view character is kind of an odd choice for this theme. In the original novel Wendy brings a flower to her mother who declares “Why can’t you stay like this” Then the narrator proceeds to talk about how Wendy knew she must grow up. So we already have a character who accepts the fact she must grow up on page one. In fact Wendy doesn’t run away to Never land as much as take a holiday, and to be fair John and Michel suffer from the same problem. Honestly I think the closest thing we get to a character arch in the novel is George Darling who is a seriously underrated character in my opinion. So Wendy just never struggles with growing up. However another theme of Peter Pan is motherhood and oh boy does Wendy fit into that.

“She used to come to me in my and I’d say pretty mother, now she has come and I’ve shot her” Tootles laments after thinking he shot and killed Wendy. Even Hook want to take Wendy to be the mothers of himself and his crew in typical pirate fashion coveting what Peter Pan and the lost boys have Wendy becomes a treasure for them to steal. Smee when carrying Wendy even promises “I’ll save you if you promise to only be my Mother” Every boy and man child in Never land craves a mother and want Wendy to fill the position. Wendy taking on the role turns her into a kind of ideal in the eyes of everyone in Never land even her own brothers get in on the treating her as the perfect mom.

In fact Wendy only gets to be a little girl in the narrative when Hook offers his hand to her and she takes it and only because the narrative felt the need to defend her submission to her own capture. But looking back that may very well be the point when you look at Wendy and Peter’s relationship without the shipping googles it’s actually quite interesting. You’ve got two pre teen’s on two different wave lengths. Wendy states in the novel “Peter what are true feelings towards me?” and is displeased with Peter’s answer “That of a devoted son” this seems up their relationship perfectly. Wendy uses the role of mother to try to basically become Peter’s wife something which he is deeply uncomfortable with needing constant reassurance that playing an adult couple is “ Only make believe” now whether or not Peter is flat out not interested or scared of his own feelings is up for debate. I personally lean toward the former because Peter is constantly surrounded by busty topless mermaids who like to flirt with him. So if he hasn’t had his sexual awakening yet it’s not happening ever, but the point is Peter uses the reaffirmation of Wendy as Mother to keep her at a distance. When Wendy returns home Miss Darlings offers to adopt Peter which he refuses. This highlights the fact when given the chance to have an actual mother he doesn’t want one.

Wendy is a reflection of Peter’s warped relationship with motherhood. He confesses to Wendy that he did at one point did return to his mother only to find the window barred and “There was another little boy sleeping in my bed!” It could be argued Peter’s desire to stay a little boy forever actually steam from the fear of abandonment and being replaced. This shapes Peter’s relationship with Wendy in sense he wants a mother he can actually control. One who never makes him feels too grown up or who challenges him or his choices in a meaningful way. This shows that motherhood is important and that without a proper mom boys will never truly grow into men.

Wendy plays a similar role to the lost boys only she actually ends up helping them. While the lost boys clearly already have mommy craving’s Wendy gives them a taste of what having a mom is actually like or at least what an ideal mom from a Victorian upper middle class family structure would be like. So when Wendy wants to go home the lost boys who getting a taste of what their missing decides to go with her. Where they get adopted into the Darling Family and grow into respectable members of society who all get boring office jobs in the prolog which completely contrast their colorful energetic personalities, moving on. Wendy acts as kind of encouraging benevolent guide for the lost boys and Peter her inevitable goal being to encourage to move beyond the superficial trappings of childhood and take a step forward into adulthood. Peter is the failure, deficient as the novel itself states but the lost boys are a triumph of the power of proper maternal nurturing.

Wendy Darling has appeared in various adaptations and Spin offs though I’m mostly going to focus on Movies and TV because most of the Peter Pan book retellings where Wendy plays a key role just do not fill me with any positive feelings. And I want to mostly focus on the good today with some casual snark thrown in.

So let’s start with Wendy from the 2003 Peter Pan Live Action adaptation. I love this version it makes changes from the novel while still paying homage by using actual lines from the book. Though I have very mixed feelings about 2003 Wendy.

The movie heavily leans into the annoying I’m not like other girls trope. Here Victorian lady Wendy turns fairy tales into gore fests, and has an interest in sword play and pirates. I’m not saying girls from that era can’t have those interests but it just feels like their Wendy is the product of listening to too many focus groups not to mention she learns to be an expert sword fighter who can go toe to toe with adults after five seconds with Peter. And what is with the sudden unexplained blood thirst? Where did that come from?

Though I do like how the film unlike the novel actually gave Wendy an arch. Wendy’s aunt is mortified at her niece’s interest in becoming a novelist who travels the world. She insists Wendy’s parents separate Wendy from her brothers and allow her to tutor, Wendy to teach her how to be a proper lady. They also have a school teacher shame Wendy for drawing a picture of Peter flying above her bed. This seems to be subtext for the Victorian shaming of sexual expression from girls as dirty and shameful. This actually makes Wendy feel like her life is changing way too fast and it scares her. Since she is twelve and her family is already talking about marriage prospects. While the scene where Peter and her meet is pretty much played like in the novel. There’s the added moment of Peter whispering in Wendy’s ear “ Forget them Wendy Forget them all come with me and we’ll never ever have to think about grown up things again” which unlike the novel frames Wendy as running away from growing up.

Then she develops a crush on Peter Pan and this being Hollywood they go with the scared of his own feeling interpretation. I guess her whining and screaming his name for a day was just too sexy to resist. Wendy contemplates joining Hook’s crew because when your crush rejects you validation by pirate man children is good salve for your wounds. But then realizes she can’t remember her mother and much like the novel becomes scared that her and her brothers have forgotten their parents. Then they all get kidnapped by the pirates and Hook and Peter have a show down which is way better than the novel because here Hook attacks Peter’s abandonment issues and actually brings him to his knees. But then Wendy kisses Peter and he gains the strength to defeat Hook. Basically the implication is Wendy realizes growing up is ok because romantic love is a thing. Hey, I didn’t say it was a great arch but it’s more than the novel gave her or anyone. I’m not a huge fan of this Wendy depiction but I’ve got to take my hat off to the writers for at least giving Wendy a coming of age narrative.

Disney’s classic Peter Pan pulled a similar move taking the focus from Peter and putting it entirely on Wendy. The implications at the end imply that Wendy’s adventure was all a dream and that Tinker bell and Tiger Lilly were reflections of her own manifesting sexuality. Peter Pan her desire not to grow up and Hook I’m going to guess that he was her daddy issues.

I actually think Walt did Wendy a solid in her characterization. This is one of the few Wendy’s were her concern for her brothers and the lost boys don’t feel tacked on. Since most adaptations do very little to build Wendy’s dynamic with the other kids. Here it’s in every face wipe and tearful good bye and every “Do be careful” thrown over Wendy’s shoulder.

Also the Disney movie does a one eighty from everyone in Neverland worshiping her to Neverland treating her rather badly. It takes Wendy’s annoyance from called her squaw from the Novel and has the Indians bully her into fetching firewood instead of joining the celebrations. Also the mermaids not only try to drown her but Peter thinks is all a big joke. Disney’s Wendy constantly stands up for herself but often gets brushed off or forced to walk the plank. In this version you can one hundred percent understand why Wendy is so done with this place and ready to grow up. Here the reality of what it’s like to experience everyone acting like a self-centered child is here on full display.

Also Disney’s Wendy is not perfect she gets angry and loses her temper attacking mermaids or yelling at Indians. She gets jealous of Tiger Lilly being all over Peter and is sour towards him. Wendy is dreamy eyed, and polite but this version of her also doesn’t take anyone’s crap and will let you know if you’ve crossed a line or if you’re flat out awful. But she’s still pleads with Peter on her attempted murder’s behalf. Wendy also reminds Peter that Tiger Lilly is drowning when he gets caught up in celebrating his cleverness. She still makes sure she can say goodbye to her brothers and the lost boys before Hook kills her. Even on her worst day Disney’s Wendy is a kind person even when those around her are less so.

But my favorite portrayal of Wendy has got to be from the 90’s classic “Peter Pan and the Pirates” TV series which aired on Fox was about one season then got cancelled. While it doesn’t really focus on Wendy a whole lot since its more concerned with the relationship between Peter Pan his lost boys and Hook’s crew.

She still has a pretty important role. Wendy often serves as a voice of reason to the group which doesn’t go against her original role in the novel since she takes a cake that’s been left out all night away from the lost boys. Which does present her as the one with the most common sense but the show lets Wendy tell Peter this is a bad idea way more often than the book and blow up at him after he does the stupid thing every one told him not to do. Also Wendy gets to be more of a moral center lecturing Peter for stealing the picture of Hook’s mother in the episode “Hooks mother” and encouraging him to return it and even getting Peter to take care of Hook after he’s injured. This is in a positive change in my opinion because it actually expands on Wendy’s role as a guide to adult hood. Here Wendy Darling encourages a kind of good behavior she helps build moral character in her boys. Wendy has strong ideals and this adaptation actually has her stand by her principals for better or worse. This not only gives her more of a central role in the story but also gives her more chances to be active. Yay character agency!

Also this version of Wendy was the first to have a bit of an interesting relationship with Hook. (Who is voiced by Tim curry and does an excellent job.) While the writers got rid of the almost pedophilic undertones of Hook wanting to keep Wendy from the novel and the “My beauty” pet name. Thank god for that even in the novel i thought it was too much. There’s still a bit of a dynamic even if its way more innocent.

In the episode In Peter on Trial Wendy not only lands on the ship unharmed but reminds Hook executing Peter without a trial would not be proper form at all. She then hits Hook in the ego by declaring “Surely you don’t doubt your powers of debate against that of a mere girl” And not only gets a trial but manages to win even when the trial is rigged against them. Hook even congratulates her before proceeding to find his own loophole and kill Peter Pan anyway. The point is this suggests this Wendy has a bit of an insight into Hook maybe more so then Peter. She knows he’s obsessed with good form and has an ego that prides its self on being the smartest person in the room.

This cuts both ways while Wendy is capable of manipulating Hook, he also consistently manipulates Wendy by offering his word as a gentlemen when he intends to break it as a pirate. This dynamic highlights Wendy’s flaw of trusting dangerous people and allowing them to hurt her friends. Hook has picked up that she trusts or wants to trust him. In this version Hook actually treats Wendy as opponent vs the usual she belongs to Peter and I want to steal her like in most adaptations. Also despite Hook being terrifying Wendy has no problem being all “There’s no need to get cranky Captain” and I kind of love how comfortable she is with the guy despite him being an enemy.

This proves Wendy doesn’t have to be a sword wielding “Who are you to call me girlie” action girl to be a good character. She can be flawed but still remain a good person and giving her a spine is always appreciated.

Wendy Darling is at her core a guide into adulthood with a strong moral character and a voice of reason who is used to shine a light on how important motherhood is since the result of mothers abandoning or neglecting their children shape the Peter’s of the world. This makes her important to the overall story and themes of Peter Pan.

#wendy darling #wendy darling appreciation #peter pan disney #Peter Pan 2003 #Peter Pan and the Pirates

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