#maybe i picked up on it before the story was developed enough to be obvious but it keeps going down the path i said it would

[twig-tea]

Hi!

So Cherry Magic Thailand was amazing. Which really surprised me. I still have reservations about the next jbl adaptations by Thailand, but I guess we'll see. Anyway, because of that I have been thinking about this.

Which existing series do you think could benefit from an adaptation by a different country? That could maybe give the story a different perspective or simply because they would have different resources? Thanks

Rose💜

Thank you so much for this ask, Rose, and apologies for being so slow to answer!

The first obvious answer to this is anything from the censored era of Chinese BL being picked up by a different country. We're already seeing the benefits of that in Taiwan's adaptation of DaGe in Unknown the series, which from what I've been told is not only going to allow some intense kisses (possibly, if the actors aren't trolling us, more explicit sex scenes than are actually in the original Priest novel, though I'm not going to assume we're getting anything until I see it), but also with changes like a reduction in the homophobia of characters. Recently they announced SaYe/Chasing the Light was optioned for a film version outside of mainland China, so I'm now hopeful some of the stuff that was shelved is going to get made after all, and maybe with less censorship. That being said, a whole list of just censored dramas that were based on BL novels would be boring. So instead I'm considering what shows did I like but wanted to see done again in a different way, and which country would handle the themes and style of the original in a way that would be fun to watch?

I'm thinking about Love Stage!!! Which was a Japanese manga adaptation with a version from both Japan and Thailand, and My Dead Gangster Oppa which was adapted from a Korean webtoon, and Why R U Korea adapted from the Thai show, and how the productions in the different countries would change what we get. So, I'll be basing my answer on those as well as CMT you referenced.

[Sidenote: originally I was going to say Thailand should adapt Man Who Defies the World of BL except with Series-Y tropes and then realized that's exactly what Why R U was supposed to be in the first place--it would be neat to see a Korean version of this storyline with webtoon tropes (we kind of got that with Our Dating Sim but they went with dating game tropes instead). ANYWAY that's not really an adaptation so I'm not including it below, but putting it into the universe.]

Enough waffling, let's go!

Twig's Foreign Adaptation Wish List

Taiwanese adaptation of 2gether

Hear me out. If we're going to see this story again, I want better reasons for needing to fake date and better chemistry once they're actually dating, and I can imagine Taiwan adding in the angst and chemistry to make this show work through to the end. Taiwan would also have no problem keeping Sarawat's obsession with Tine's pecs in the storyline (critical inclusion, imho), and we know Taiwan loves a "they met before and this is fate" plot so I think this would work well. Switching Sarawat's obsession with Scrubb to something else would be a really interesting cultural shift and would help ground the series in the adaptation country.

Korean adaptation of I Can Hear the Sunspot / Silhouette of Your Voice

@absolutebl has said this before and they're right, this is the one JBL manga adaptation that I'd love to see it done again as a series with enough time to fully handle the character development that happens in the manga. NGL in my heart of hearts I'd want Japan to take another crack at it, but for this game I'll say Korea. I know Korea has a few good disability narratives (thinking of the love for Twinkling Watermelon I've heard about recently) so I think they could do a good job. Korean media also handles silence well and that's pretty critical for this one; they could also do some interesting things to illustrate the changes in the main character's hearing.

Japanese adaptation of Love Sick

I am envisioning a reverse Cherry Magic scenario, in which the foreign adaptation follows the written source material better than the domestic adaptation did, and then adds their own flair. Now take this with a grain of salt because I haven't read the novel, but my understanding is that the original Thai novel is about Pun and Noh as the main characters with the music club all there but the dramatic side heterosexual storylines are not nearly as front and center, and they were added to pad out the show because folks weren't sure how a BL series would land. I know there is already a Thai remake but let's pretend that's not happening. Japan handles earnest and sweet school-aged first loves well, and can handle the goofiness required of the Noh character, and deeply understands and portrays found family core friendships well, and I bet a Japanese production would do a great job with that core storyline. We don't get a lot of larger friend groups in Japanese BL and I want to see a Japanese production handle that. The one thing that gave me hesitation about this was the importance of the busking subplot and I don't think busking is a big thing in Japan the way it is in Thailand and Korea but that could be another opportunity for making it feel more grounded in the adapting country so I'm keeping it as-is.

Thai adaptation of Boyband Love

I'm going to steal the idea that I've seen @lurkingshan @bengiyo and @shortpplfedup mention before and riff of it to say that Daou and Offroad should be in a boyband BL; this is a main reason why I want a Thai remake of the Filipino series Boyband Love [which I don't actually recommend but, fun fact, had an out gay couple starring in it but they were not paired together in the show--Gus, who plays the lead Danny, has 2 kids with Louie who plays the side character Rico]. Thailand is clearly desperate to do a boyband BL so that they can make money off the concerts; Boyband Love as a story is already calibrated to be cheap to make because it's about a band getting ready to debut, and Thailand can scale it up from the original show. It's also no longer a period of COVID restrictions so crowds can be brought in. The storyline is pretty much what I would want of a Boyband BL: rivals within a band to lovers, pining amongst band members, underwater kiss, industry drama, and (spoilers for a 2020 series) the decision to essentially do BGP but keep their relationship secret. Thailand would have fun with that, I think. And they can add a little more heat, it's very important to me that something happens in the practice room pls and thank you.

Japanese adaptation of Middleman's Love

Japan gets two because they can do this type of comedy so well, and I really liked the bones of the Thai version so I'd love to see it done again. Japan can also handle trauma narratives so if they wanted to do both Bed Friend and Middleman Love they would be able to handle it. Korea is really good at balancing humour and trauma, but Japan is so good at losers who don't think they deserve love, and also excellent at pining, so I'm giving this one to Japan.

Korean adaptation of Triage

We're getting Korea twice because I haven't seen Korea do much in the way of genre BL yet, and while I admit this may be slightly influenced by me watching Hospital Playlist right now, Korea can handle the fast-paced ER scenes that are throughout this show, as well as the mix of drama and comedy. I'd love to see a more highly produced version of this show, and I know Korea can handle this kind of time loop shenanigans and heavenly spirits helping the protagonist along from kdramas. I liked the original a lot but I'd love to see it done again a little more tightly!

Bonus nonsense one: Taiwanese version of Calculating Love

This one is literally just for me. Ok listen I know I'm the only one who likes this show, and that's fine, it doesn't actually deserve attention. And it's so small that it would never be adapted. But I loved this dorky little short about nerds flirting with calculus and I want more. Taiwan is fantastic at dorks falling in love narratives, and so many of the HIStory series were short school BL, so I think they'd do an excellent job tightening up the story in the back half which got a bit meander-y and keeping the heat that's already there.

Thank you again for the really fun ask, Rose! 💕

[nevermindirah]

Booker vibes hard with scifi. he has so many visceral sense-memories of reading early scifi novels as the genre developed in his first decades of immortality. all the dystopia speaks to him for obvious being God's chew toy reasons, but there are times over the years when hopeful scifi stories boost him emotionally in a way no amount of good deeds or warm hugs seem to manage.

so by the time he gets stoned and goes to the movies in 1977, he's ready.

he falls hard for Han/Leia. he too was a scoundrel who fell in love with the coolest and smartest girl around who somehow found his scruffiness charming. he too came of age and put down roots amid galaxy-shaking political and social upheaval. but Star Wars was so safely cartoony in its far-away galaxy that he found he could earnestly enjoy how hopeful it was.

over the years he tore through the novels, he picked up fan magazines here and there, stopped by the occasional con. when he discovered fanfiction, hoo boy. he wrote over 100k of Han and Leia's snarky, sappy, smutty, blaster-heavy post-RotJ adventures in like the first month alone.

decades later, he very nearly had to leave the theater when Kylo Ren killed his father.

some of those same decades later, Nile. she's only 5 years old when Episode I comes out and by the time she's old enough to sit through all-ages blockbusters the prequels have been so ragged on that she doesn't bother. maybe she catches some of the original trilogy on cable at some point but she doesn't particularly connect to it.

Star Wars becomes relevant to Nile when she's in her figuring things out after high school era and she hears the guy from Attack the Block is gonna be in the new trilogy.

rip Finn's character arc and everything else that could've been so good about the sequel trilogy, but there's still some stuff to treasure there, and Nile — well.

a few months into immortality she does a marathon of the whole Skywalker saga. it's fun and silly and a way to spend a few days. the others pop in sometimes to watch with her but for the most part she's enjoying her own private screening. then she sees Rey all alone in that AT-AT carcass and suddenly she can't stop crying. Finn's storyline is just as wonderful and frustrating as she remembered, but the way he and Rey keep finding each other, keep fighting for each other — yeah.

suddenly she's WRITING. she's usually been drawn to visual arts when she has the time and interest to create, but here she is now, writing tens of thousands of words at a time, pouring her heart out through these two space orphans who have living family they just can't get back to and through a lot of galactic bullshit manage to build a new home in each other.

she starts getting regular comments from an ao3 account with a hilarious mishmash of works in a bunch of different fandoms going back years. there's some original trilogy fic on this person's account all dated the same day in 2009, and when she reads one, an intricately plotted and super romantic Han/Leia mission fic, she notices details that make it seem like it was written before the prequels came out.

the comments get longer. she and her commenter start chatting on discord, about their blorbos and fandom drama and increasingly just life. to the extent that Nile can tell anyone about her life, that is. it's nice, having an online friend.

then one day Booker fucks up. he lets a too-specific detail slip. Nile laughs in disbelief, types into discord "hey uh if I'm right about something, pick up your phone," and then she calls him.

years later, Booker will finally admit he did a little hacking to double-check it was her before dropping that purposeful slip. then he'll write Nile a lightning-hot fic where Finn introduces Rey to holonet cybersex.

[w1f1n1ghtm4r3]

kyushumi and change

okay uh. not sure about the coherency of this post but i will try my best. this is just me being like "oops i picked butterfly imagery for my kyushumi age up redesigns to match their vs and to lean into the fae theme a bit more but it also fits their stories incredibly well"

but first i need to actually show those redesigns because i never did. because i was saving them until i did the rest of the units and then i never got there. oops. look at my butterflies now

the general idea was giving them a more cohesive theme with their outfits (a more elegant style plus butterflies) while having a distinct set of colors fitting to each of them. instead of their original outfits which have a more unified color scheme but mismatched themes. i think it makes sense for their story overall, since early on they kind of cling to each other because theres nowhere else for them to go but now they stick together because theyre genuinely close friends. does that make sense? i dont know.

ANYWAY

the butterfly imagery. and change (and fear) as a theme with kyushumi as a whole.

even though theres like a really obvious reasoning for a butterfly being extremely thematic for mizuki (transgender moment) thats actually NOT the important reason with kyushumi. because its kind of an open secret among them. no one pushes them about it but like when nene also goes to the same school its hard for her to not hear about it yknow. nene cares more about her friends than what people say about her friends.

really i think where its interesting is like. how each of them have a major change in approach to something during the story. something theyre afraid of but eventually overcome. does that make sense i hope that makes sense

nene and honami both are some sort of fear of perception by others. both are basically the same as canon (nene being afraid of failing in front of others so she stops trying and honami being afraid of being an outcast if she stops trying to please everyone) and the end outcomes are roughly the same. honami stands up for herself, stops being so afraid of what everyone else might think, etc. not that she doesnt care about her perception by others of course but she starts to be able to overcome the pressure to do what she wants to.

nene isnt as drastic as canon, tbh, but she does regain her confidence to sing again. i think kyushumi becomes an online vocaloid music group and nene, having had notable experience with singing before, ends up as the one mainly behind working with the vocaloids. but in that whole process she gradually starts singing again to first help get a feel for how the song should work and eventually because at heart she still loves doing it. she starts posting her singing online since its less committal (she could just delete the videos if things go badly) but it also helps break down the fear of how people perceive her skills again. maybe not enough to get her back on stage, but enough that she starts to believe in her potential again.

mizukis is mostly about being open........... running away and hiding whenever things go wrong but gradually getting less flighty and more honest about their feelings......... also the fear of connection getting broken because mizunene 👍 two years ago me was cooking with this

promising that theyll stick together because what theyve developed together is more important than what other people might threaten their bond with. yeah. i love kyushumi mizunene so much guys (i made their dynamic this way myself)

minoris is least about fear and most about change in the way of changing directions with her goals......... she never stops chasing that idol dream but also opens herself up to new paths. making music with kyushumi so she has more to show for what shes capable of and also having a new direction to pour her passion into when things dont go her way.

does any of this make any sense. who knows. it makes sense in my head. i love my butterflies regardless and i hope you guys all like them too

[sepyana]

Noir 2001 Ep. 1-10 Thoughts

I really love her France Shirt dhshbd

I figured stopping at Chloe's introduction would be the best idea. From what I know this should be when the main plot picks up.

First, the bad:

The first episode was really jarring to watch. The cuts were awkward, the music was too loud at parts and certain scenes dragged out for too long. Maybe this is just me, but I didn't realize the music was coming from the watch until the end of the episode, which made things really confusing.

From then onwards isn't like this. Maybe I just got used to it, but the cuts didn't feel jarring and the flow between scenes was smooth enough.

There is a lot of reused animation, which is fine for the most part. It's not as elegant about it as shows like Utena but it's not a big deal.

What annoys me is sometimes the plot will screech to a halt to show you a falshback you have already seen before. Personally, I'm fine if a conversation is just one still frame or made of reused animation. The flashbacks and the occasional training is clearly there for budget reasons and nothing else. That's why it takes me out of the story sometimes.

Kirika and Mireille don't have much going on. They are pretty bland which makes it hard to care for them. The "I will kill you when this is over." thing is the most interesting bit. There is still plenty of time to develop them so I'm not that bothered about it.

The show feels rather empty at times, if that's the word. It feels like onthing is happening. For example: the information we get about the main mystery is not enough to make any conclusions or draw connections, so whenever a new development happens I can only think "Oh, we learned this now". We don't learn anything about what our protagonists are like either. The quiet moments are great for that, but I still feel like I know nothing about them.

I don't mind the censorship but it can be really funny sometimes. Kirika will get hit but her arm will look completely fine, making it impossible to tell how bad she was hurt until she reacts.

When I started episode 7 I genuinely though I skipped an episode. They don't make it even slightly obvious that a time skip happened.

This one is really stupid: I can't seperate Mireille from Misato in my mind. I'm sure Noir fans are annoyed by the comparison by this point but I'm really trying guys (ﾉД`)

Okay,, we can get to the good stuff now:

The atmosphere is great. The backgeound art is lovely and complements the animation well. They definitely achieved the aesthetic they were going for.

The soundtrack is pretty nice. Again, adds to the atmosphere.

Kirika especially can be super clever, making the fights fun to watch (only about 50% of the time though)

The composition of the shots draw your eye to the focus well. It's a good way to make shots interesting with a small budget.

It's fantastically homosexual, while also not being about romance at all. All the notable characters are women. That might add to the yuri vibes I guess.

I liked Silvana. She is one of the few side characters that have anything going on. Her relationship to Mireille is intriguing to me, they have met only once. But it's clear their one interaction has left a big inpression on not only Mireille but also her, especially since they were kids at the time. Her pulling out a knife and cutting the crown off of Mireille when she says she is scared tells us everything we need to know about her.

There is also something to be said about the crowns. Mireille's innocence being destroyed by Silvana. It's important to Silvana that she has control, removing the crown she gave to Mireille is a way fot her to feel superior, I guess. Even at a small age.

Mireille is still scared in their final confrontation, but she fights anyway.

I am very interested in Chloe because clearly, the two maidens who gover death are suppose to be Kirika and Mireille. However, she is insist she is Noir. I imagine things will go south when she realises that's not the case. (I doubt it's the case). The woman we see is most likely using her and Chloe is dependent on her validation. That's what I am guessing.

[mr-deblob]

Hear me out on this: I honestly think Kairi could be the main playable character in Kingdom Hearts 4

Or at least a significant playable one.

I know that it sounds ridiculous to entertain the idea, especially with how badly she's been sidelined for the past 20 years. But taking into account the structure of mainline games and the current locations of our characters, it starts to look likely for both narrative and game design purposes.

Sora and Riku are stuck in Quadratum

First things first- there's no way in hell Nomura's letting Riku rescue Sora in the beginning hours of KH4. They definitely won't just hop back to the Realm of Light when they find each other. He might make questionable plot decisions, but he's not gonna pass up a chance to torture the two of them even more, especially since *something's* going on with Yozora and the Master of Masters.

In a GameInformer interview he gave, he was asked about how much time we'd spend in Quadratum.

I think it will be a pretty good amount of time since it is set as the initial base within the game. You spend time there and then go to different worlds and then go back there. Because the graphics are more realistic this time around, I feel like there’s more of a realistic daily life aspect to Sora’s life. You can see him go in and out of his room and spend time there. I feel like players will get to see more of the day-to-day routines he goes through.

It sounds like Quadratum will act more like an interlude between worlds, where the developments that happen in the Realm of Light (or wherever else) will cause more troubles to pop in the city. We've already seen Sora fighting a giant Heartless(?) that just showed up out of nowhere. There might be more events like that, or even encounters with the mysterious figures staring down from the rooftops. And when nothing's threatening the world, Sora might simply be living daily life with Strelitzia.

I'm uncertain on how much we'll actually get on the nature of Quadratum since it is just Tokyo, but part of me is feeling like the story beats will be more important than the setting on this side.

Kairi can have a blank-slate start

I'm sure everyone who picked Kairi in that final fight was a bit surprised by how aggressive it was. A strike raid teleport and a barrage of light flooding the battlefield were amazing to see in her first time in the spotlight. We know she can fight, so wouldn't those skills carry over to her next game?

But she's been asleep for a whole year to have her memories explored. They could easily explain the loss of former skills. Besides, the reasons for Sora always resetting to Level 1 are basically on the same scale. If you wanted more reasoning, then maybe Aqua's training is having her develop her own fighting style from scratch. It's very obvious she's trying to emulate Sora in her stance.

We also know that Kairi has her own unique combat pose. They've shown it to us at least twice in DDD and the KH3 opening, but we've never seen her actively using it in-game AFAIK. It sure would be an opportune moment to have her adopt it to signify her becoming her own person independent of Sora and Riku.

If the training time with Aqua seems like it would be too short to warrant Kairi going off on her own, keep in mind that we don't know how much time disparity there is between Quadratum and the RoL It could be synched up or be off by weeks, even months, more than enough to get her through the fundamentals.

Also, a mini-timeskip would give Nomura the chance to give the Destiny Trio new designs again. How Riku gets a new outfit and hairstyle while looking for Sora, I don't know, but he already pushed him through the Shadow Barber Shop. He can probably come up with something.

We still gotta have different Keyblades

Straight-up the title of this section. It's incredibly unlikely that Nomura would cut these, but as before, it's equally unlikely that Sora will get out of Quadratum into the RoL. Disney worlds are confirmed, and unless all of them are entirely new, I don't think there's a satisfying way to justify why he couldn't get help from the inhabitants, try to get off-world, or at least get in touch with someone if he still has his Gummiphone.

So if anyone else could go around to these worlds and collect these keychains, Kairi seems like a good candidate for that.

"But what about Destiny's Embrace?" Fair point. It's still got sentimental value to her and has familiarity. They wouldn't just dump it entirely.

However, I believe (and earnestly hope) that Kairi finally gets meaningful character development now. There's so much we could delve into (and we will later), but her current goal of growing stronger seemingly stems from a desire to determine her fate. For so long she's been carried by the tides of chance, waiting for what will happen rather than actively reaching towards her goals. In the end, it brought her down the path that led to Sora's disappearance, so she can't keep placing her faith in destiny.

Kairi might temporarily retire Destiny's Embrace, or perhaps her new mindset will trigger something in her Keyblade. We've seen that with Riku and the Way to the Dawn. It might be a more basic Keyblade like Braveheart, or she could end up wielding an iteration of the Kingdom Key to represent herself starting anew. Hell, maybe Sora fighting in her place in MoM passed it on to her, or she manifests it from her memories.

It'd be a convenient way to keep giving out new keychains while still making it feel like Sora experienced actual consequences for his misuse of the Power of Waking. They could even have Sora gain access to them through Kairi. His temporary possession of her at the end of MoM could be used as an in-universe way to hand-off the main PoV in a natural-feeling way, and she might be able to send him manifestations of the keychains as memories or something else that could cross over to Quadratum.

Masters and Maleficent will go wild

The KH3 ending brought back the Lost Masters through some unexplained mechanic. It also implies that they'll be the main antagonists of the new arc, but they're currently in the Realm of Light. I don't know how much Sora could do from the other side of reality. Not to mention Maleficent making even more schemes.

So the Keyblade wielders and their allies will have to defend against them and whatever other enemies crop up in their wake. But why would Kairi be the one pursuing their main goal? Why not Master Aqua, or at least one of the battle-hardened wielders?

Depending on the numbers, it'd be easy to say the other wielders are busy defending the worlds from the new threats, that they're spread too thin to take up whatever role Kairi would theoretically take. Maybe her status as a Princess of Heart could come up as another reason why it'd have to be her.

In any case, whatever Luxu has in that mysterious box spells bad news. The fact that there are going to be five ancient Keyblade Masters carrying out the Master of Masters' plan spells catastrophic news. Perhaps the missing Master Ava could work from the shadows to stymie them or to help Kairi on her quest.

Also, the Heartless are still gonna be wreaking havoc even if the Masters aren't. That will practically always be true, especially now that Xehanort's not controlling them all. Maleficent is going to do what Maleficent does best and use this to her advantage. With all these potential villains in the RoL, someone's gotta take care of them.

New worlds can develop Kairi further

Now that KH3 is finished and out of development hell, they're now free to consider new Disney properties, even those beyond 2014. And there's quite a few that could easily be connected to Kairi's desire to grow beyond her past and choose her own path:

Moana - Island girls who want to seize their destinies to see what lies beyond everyday life, both struggling with self-doubt. Also have grandmas who know more than they let on.

Coco - How memories connect us, that we can be together in heart when apart, the pains of love and separation. Fighting for your dream even when you're alone.

Encanto - Especially heavy exploration of breaking from the roles others place on us and that we take on, acknowledging and expressing emotions we hide from others.

Brave - "If you had the chance to change your fate, would ya?" Besides that, accepting that people can grow apart, that we each take our own paths, that it doesn't need to break our bonds.

WALL-E - Be open to change, don't let familiarity keep you stuck. Trust in the future, trust in yourself, break through the limits of your past. Go on even when all seems lost.

Frozen 2 - Self-determination and independence, grieving what has been lost, righting the wrongs of the past. Pain is a fact of life, do not let your fear of it keep you from doing what is necessary.

There's likely other films that could fit or other themes of these movies that parallel with Kairi, but these are rife with potential. Plus, the trend of female protagonists with little to no romantic storylines could let Kairi be perceived as more than Sora's love interest or someone to be saved.

Kairi is finally free to change

I don't think it's controversial to say that Nomura really mishandled Kairi's role in the series up til now. She's been stuck in character limbo, and even if we know more stuff *about* her since KH1, we haven't really gotten much *from* her. She's never had enough focus to really showcase her inner world, but I don't think it's due to disinterest on Nomura's part. Instead, I think that it was a result of very poor planning of her arc and his weakness at indirect characterization.

From the start, he probably had an idea of where he wanted to take Kairi's character. He must've, at minimum, pinned down the major strokes of her backstory involving Radiant Garden given the brief mention of her not remembering her home and the flashback with her grandma in KH1. KH2 and BBS both manage to flesh her out a bit more, and even her portrayal in the first game seemed to hint at something going on beneath her surface. Even so, she still outwardly appears as the same cheerful, kind, caring girl from the beginning of the series. I don't think Nomura decided to completely rip those seeds of growth from her character, but he has at least stifled them up til now.

In comparison to all the other main and supporting characters in KH, Kairi is noticeably lacking in any major character insights. From what I've seen, even people who dislike how the female cast is written can tell that the story is practically avoiding any chances for Kairi to verbalize her emotions. The conversations we do get with her almost always shift focus to the other person's feelings. If it does focus on her, the thoughts she does express tend to explore her relationships with other people instead of letting us know more about Kairi herself. As to why he'd make this writing choice with her, there's two possible answers beyond him just not wanting to deal with her.

The first is that he's trying to characterize her through her lack of characterization, that she's a people-pleaser who tends to put others' needs and wants before her own. We've already seen shades of this in KH1 on the dock and when Sora tells her to stay behind in Traverse Town.

In the former, it comes across as her trying to convince herself to go along with the plan about the raft, telling herself that she's ready to go wherever and holding onto the idea that she can always come back to Destiny Islands. Even so, you can hear a hesitation and uncertainty in those words. The only parts where she lets her fears bleed through are when she tells Sora not to change and arguably when she jokes about just the two of them taking the raft. Kairi tests the waters to see if Sora would be willing to go along with her alone before backing down. I don't think she'd actually go through with it, she's not that type of person. I can't say for certain that she hasn't entertained the thought, even if only half-seriously, but it's clear that she said it to avoid her thoughts on how Riku's changed. Kairi doesn't want to show Sora her doubts, especially when they're so close to setting sail. The only assurance she allows herself is asking Sora not to change, to stay her familiar friend, before shifting to expressing apparent excitement at setting sail.

When Sora and Kairi make their promise with the Wayfinder, she's afraid of how their friendship with Riku will have changed if he comes back. Still, she's willing to go help save Riku after seeing Sora's resolve to do so. When he tells her no, she pushes back, telling him that they have to stick together. She only starts to relent when Sora tells her that they won't be alone even if they're apart, then gives up entirely when he says she'd be in his way. Her laugh almost seems like an automatic response to cope with the hurt that statement would naturally provoke. Before he goes, she makes a compromise between their wants, getting Sora to promise that he'll return her Wayfinder to her- that he'll come back after everything's done. Then she tells him that she's always with him wherever he goes, taking Sora's statement and using it to reassure herself more than him. She doesn't want to inconvenience the ones she cares for, so she changes herself, adapting to their desires and opinions to ease any friction between them.

The other answer would be that Nomura's plan for her required her to retain her starting character traits until certain conditions were fulfilled. From where we are in the story, I'd wager that he she needed to be separated from Sora and Riku and for her to gain a meaningful motivation get stronger, at least according to Nomura's standards. The first half of that has been true for almost the entire series, as sad as it is, but we've only just now fulfilled the second. It's possible that he underestimated how long he would need to keep Kairi relatively unchanged for whatever he had planned in the future, causing her to be a static character for all this time.

Now, she's had to confront her fears head-on, needed to acknowledge the feelings of weakness and inferiority getting shattered by Xehanort gave her. It's Xehanort's fault that Sora disappeared, but she might partly blame herself for needing to be rescued rather than saving herself. Her tendencies of staying out of everyone's way and going along with their plans wasn't enough to keep Sora out of harm's way, to protect him. That failure can drive her to grow strong, to realize that valuing herself doesn't mean having to devalue others, that caring for yourself is an act of kindness for those who care about you.

I will acknowledge that even if these answers are accurate, reasonable intentions still don't excuse a sloppy execution. Nomura has skill in weaving a character's motivation into their actions and personality to add depth. However, he often relies on the characters voicing these out loud instead of letting the audience draw their own conclusions from what's presented. While this works well-enough for the series, it means that any indirect characterization he tries to do often ends up falling flat. Aqua at the Keyblade Graveyard is the biggest example of this. It's clear now that her time in the Realm of Darkness left her with some serious PTSD and that the massive storm of Heartless caused her to freeze up at the sight, but the way it was shown pre-Re:Mind ended up frustrating more people with her inaction instead of having them understand why she didn't act.

I'd argue the same thing's been happening with Kairi throughout the series up until now. A character like Kairi isn't inclined to express their unfiltered thoughts, leaving her to rely on indirect characterization to be fleshed out. Combine that with a weakness at subtle storytelling and a severe lack of focus and screentime, and you'll leave your audience almost nothing to discern about her character without close examination. Not to mention, any frustrations or disappointments or boredom regarding her character would only serve to make people even less willing to engage with her, especially stretched out over two decades.

Hopefully, Nomura feels free to put his plans regarding Kairi into motion now that she's gained the space for agency beyond Sora and Riku. I even think Nomura himself is aware of his struggles with nuanced character writing, something he hopes to fix. If you haven't heard, he brought on Akiko Ishibashi, the writer for Neo: The World Ends with You, to help write KH4. Anyone whose played that game can tell you about the amount of depth and complexity the cast of that game had, and her ability to transform one-dimensional archetypes into fully-realized people. I have little doubt that she'll breathe new life into the world of Kingdom Hearts, and I think that we'll see the start of this change through Kairi first and foremost.

In the future

This all sounds like wishful thinking, and it is, but I hope that it's not entirely unfounded. I'm mainly making this before any major trailers drop because, if this does happen, I can't imagine them hiding it for too long.

Maybe Nomura will finally give Kairi the screentime she deserves, and if he doesn't... well, guess we'll go through even more years of rightful disappointment in Nomura's handling of her.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 34 – Defekt by Nino Cipri

This is the second book of Cipri’s I’ve read, and I enjoyed it significantly more than Finna. Which still isn’t falling in love with it, if I’m being honest, but I’m not at all annoyed I read this one. The overall impression is kind of like watching the kind of rough pilot to an indescribably cheesy by fun adventure serial? Up to you how harsh a discretion that seems.

The story shares a setting with Finna – as in, it’s set literally in the same story, less than a week after. It follows Derek, a special exempt employee of the suspiciously Ikea-like retail megacorp who started a few weeks before, lives in a shipping crate behind the store’s loading dock, and has no memory of ever leaving store property. After he calls in and takes his very first sick day (a coworker saw him basically collapse while assembling furniture and browbeat him into it), his extremely disappointed manager has him come in late to help the outside team with a ‘special inventory’. The outside turns out to be, well, alternate universe versions of him – variations on the same mould, all mass produced in some of the controlled alternate realities the company’s insourced its production and logistics hubs too. The ‘special inventory’ likewise turns out to be a bug hunt, hunting down and killing all the products that have mutated or come alive due to glitches in their production before they have a chance to escape or damage company property.

The plot goes more or less how you’d expect – the alternate Derek’s are a queer and quirky band of likeable misfits (one might even say a found family!), except for their leader who is a monster convinced that if he’s enough of an abusive hardass to the others corporate will see ow valuable he is. The Defekta turn out to be basically benevolent, and Derek turns out to be defective himself, with literal magic empathy and enhanced senses and an involuntary sort of broadcast telekinesis when he’s dealing with strong emotions (which sounds like literal actual hell to me, for the record).In the end the shitty direct supervisor is trapped in an alternate reality, and everyone else unionizes and holds the store hostage until the company caves to their desired reforms Happy ending for everyone!

I’m not sure if it’s intentional or just an artifact of how Cirpri came up with the idea, but the whole ‘taking place literal days after the last book’ thing very much does make it seem like either this one Midwestern store in particular or possibly the company as a whole is like 90% of the way there to spiralling into a complete metaphysical collapse and possible destroying the world. The one scene with Jules at the start of the book also honestly made me like her more than the entire previous book where she was literally the second most important character and on like every other page.

I do think the kind of absurdist corporate horror setting worked better in this book than the prequel, if only because it was a bit more restrained and picked the one aesthetic/setting to actually develop a bit. Having a little bit more edge helped too. Reagan as the polished-until-she’s-glass always upbeat and friendly corporate upper management definitely worked as a more sinister and threatening figure than absolutely anyone in Finna, at least. I do still think the corporate jargon was like 20% too over the top and obvious to really work as satire or horror and just, well, not really funny enough to work as comedy. But that’s probably just a matter of taste

Speaking of funny – I’m not sure whether the megacorp in this is transparently specifically Ikea instead of something more generic (or, like, Wallmart) – Cipri spent some shitty years working at one, maybe. But given literally everything else about the book’s politics, it is kind of surprising how many times the books go back to the ‘look, this thing’s name is a funny-looking foreign word!’ well for humour. Or, well, ‘humour’.

Derek’s whole character arc from enthusiastically brainwashed retail drone to radicalized monster-whisperer was perhaps a bit abrupt, but it worked for me overall. The rest of the inventory team were all pretty much just archtypes with character designs attached, all basically being exactly what you would expect – the only real ‘reveal’ is that Dirk the supervisor isn’t the longsuffering professional leader trying to wrangle the rest of them and get the job done, he’s just an abusive piece of shit the rest of them actively fantasize about murdering – but none of them are, like, offensive.

The themes are, look, they’re really on the nose. There’s no way around it. Derek is so repressed and out of touch with/incapable of expressing his real emotions that his throat splits open and grows a second mouth that starts psychically broadcasting them. There are multiple conversations where people just explain their characters. There’s an interstitial bit of corporate propaganda between chapters about the risks of employees being radicalized by alternate universes into union organizers shortly before the main characters force the company to give them better treatment by sitting down and threatening to hold the store hostage the night before a big product release. And so on.

Still, I honestly enjoyed the read? Very possible my expectations were just lowered enough enough by the first one that I could just take this as it was, honestly, but still. Largely insubstantial popcorn, but not popcorn I regretted spending a few hours on.

[foxymoxynoona]

Hey Foxy

As a writer, do you tend to stick with what you’ve planned and mapped out and written / or does your editing process usually come with big changes or revisions? Like, do you ever think, “what would make this story better?” once you see it written, and make changes? I was checking out your Trello categories and thinking hmmm I wonder if everything is pretty much set at the Planning phase, or if it’s a general outline and get fleshed (flushed? Lol) out during the writing and/or editing? I can’t imagine how your mind works but it’s fascinating to me. Cheers for all you do

There are layers to this!

When it comes to plotter vs. panster (do you plot or do you just write by the seat of your pants) I am pretty much in the middle, maybe nudging more one direction or the other on any given story.

I do have an overarching plan for my stories when we begin, though I always leave space for changes along the way. I generally know where we're going but then I feel my way along, pulling in this or that as it shows up chapter-by-chapter.

For a few of them I actually have several potential endings and then as we get further along I prune off the endings that don't work anymore until I can see the one that does --Lowlander and To Kill A King are examples. Meadow is a funny example because I wanted very badly for the story to not go the way it did and yet at every turn it felt so obvious to me what had to happen, I had to accept it along the characters and just do my best to pull it off. So in a way I knew how it was going to end from the beginning, but I really did try to solve it other ways.

For the stories that I've already written a ton of (like Secret Song Series), things don't really change at the macro level. Some chapters I can edit quickly because it's really just tweaks. Other arcs have needed a heavier editing (re-writing, really) because things have changed enough on our journey to that point or because things happened along the way organically that I want to follow. Anytime I've planned or written something in the future, I go into it knowing that if it doesn't feel right when we get there in the story, it has to be scrapped. If it comes down to what i planned or what actually feels right for the characters and plot when we get there, the live story will always win.

When a chapter is in planning stage, I may be starrting with anything from a blurb ("characters need to develop this relationship and X needs to get revealed") to a thorough sketch that just needs a little more filling in before I can really get to writing. I try to write an outline of the next chapter as soon as I finish writing the previous chapter so it's waiting for me next time. This actually comes from some Ernest Hemengway advice: "The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck." I think there's another similar quote once that I keep wanting to attribute to Mark Twain about leaving your last sentence of the day unfinished so you can pick it up tomorrow.

So whether much changes during the actual writing really varies by stories. Some of them I have a clearer plan for, others I feel like I'm riding shotgun with the rest of you on how exactly we're getting to our destination 😂 Usually every few chapters I reflect on the last few and assess whether I need to undo and rebraid the remainder of the story or if we're still on my original track.

Hope this long meandering answer answers your question! I clearly had no outline for this when I started 😂😂

[tonyspank]

Good evening, I’m here as a representative of the “threesome” side….

A. I didn’t read every response you got cause it felt like I was reading a conversation between pornhub penpals😂… but I did see somebody bring up Olivia and Eli as a possible pairing. I think that’d be so cute, could be why Eli wants reader to set boundaries with Olivia, at the beginning it could be he doesn’t necessarily have feelings for her but thinks she’s interesting. It’d be an opportunity for short conflict too, once they’ve both developed feelings maybe Eli catches the end of a conversation between reader and Olivia, his feelings for her are enough to have him unknowingly irrational towards reader.

Eli: “Either pick Olivia or leave her out of this, she really likes you and I don’t think it’s fair that you‘re stringing her along with you just because Jenna won’t leave her prick of a fiancé.”

R: “Do you really think I’m like that? Eli we both know I’m not gonna pick Olivia after everything that’s happened with Jenna, where the fuck is all of this coming from? Why the hell are you blowing up at me right now?” (Eli snaps out of it after seeing how genuinely hurt his best friend is about him assuming she wants to intentionally hurt someone else in that way)

maybe as it turns out the conversation he caught was Olivia confessing she liked Eli and Olivia was asking the reader if she still had a chance with Eli despite having previously liked his best friend, reader says yes because she’s had a hunch about them for awhile now but never brought it up.

B. I could definitely sympathize with the jealous anons, and I mean this in the nicest way possible but I think I’m my personal opinion opposing the threesome either comes from them genuinely preferring they stay monogamous which I definitely respect or it comes from insecurity. HEAR ME OUT! I only say that because some of them are implying Jenna would focus on Emma more or leave reader for Emma, but Jenna in this case as you’ve mentioned is all for reader, this is something that’s been established many times. I know she’s still with Jacob but right now but she’s doing that thing that I’ve been a party to, and that’s sticking around until you’ve completely and entirely exhausted the idea of it ever working out (even if it’s obvious it’s not gonna work out, the fact that there’s history blinds you). Which brings me to my next point!

C. I think this would fit in perfectly as a one time thing that happens while they’re all a little drunk, maybe at the end of it all they all fall asleep in the same bed but sometime early in the morning Jenna has to go back into the guest room because Jacob is supposed to come back. Right before Jenna leaves the room she hears reader and Emma start to stir, they don’t wake up but she sees Emma unconsciously cuddle the reader in her sleep and reader doing the same.

SCENE; -the sound of her opening your door on her way out being rather loud, Jenna worriedly keeps her eyes trained on the two for any hints that she’d accidentally woken either of them up. The worry is quickly replaced with an indescribable feeling after noticing Emma unconsciously cuddle you in her sleep, she knew it was all accidental but the idea of another person having you this way, having you at all really made her feel sick. Jenna’s been dancing around the decision to leave Jacob for so long she forgot about what would happen if she didn’t, you’d be with someone else. Jenna suddenly can’t fathom how you’ve been able to handle Jacob being around at all, maybe it’s because you know she belongs to you but even that does nothing to quell the countless scenarios in which you no longer belong to her the longer she stares at how peaceful you look with Emma in your arms.

D. I’m pretty sure you as an author wouldn’t derail the story with something as trivial as Jenna liking Emma or vise versa because there’s been absolutely no evidence of a such a thing and it would be a random possibly conclusion to take this plot towards. This isn’t one of those situations where you have to imagine that as a what if because you’re writing a “Jenna x reader” not a “Jenna x reader, Emma x Jenna”

E.ALRIGHT NOW THIS REASON IS JUST SLUTTY. I imagined how the threesome would start and I do think it’d be a unanimous decision but I think it’d be an unspoken agreement that Jenna initiates! (I can’t write smut for the life of me but you’ll have a rough idea of what I mean)

SCENE; -Jenna couldn’t place what exactly brought the thought on. Maybe it was because of all the wine she’d been having or maybe it was the way you glanced at Emma’s ass in that skirt when she’d gone on her hands and knees to pick up the fallen wine glass hidden underneath the living room table…. perhaps it reminded Jenna of an ‘accidental’ steamy make out with Emma they had way back then.

“Anybody want more wine?” Emma asked the both of you, Jenna decides what she wants more than wine in a split second. Emma and you are more than surprised when you’ve realized Jenna’s pushed Emma onto your lap, she’s quick to join her. Neither of you put a fight, both of you feeling as needy as Jenna at this very moment. Jenna pulls you by the collar of your shirt until you’re close enough to kiss, with Emma in between you obediently follow Jenna’s guidance letting her grab both your hands and place them on Emma’s hips, wordlessly instructing you grind against her while Jenna reaches to touch Emma underneath her skirt. Emma starts to rut against your hardening cock and Jenna’s hand for more friction-

WELL YEAH IDK WHAT ELSE TO WRITE THERE. I’m not sure if this is considered a kink but I love love love fucking a girl in a skirt, the easy access is just ✨. WITH THAT SAID the reader fucking Emma in a skirt after maybe only being able to take off her shirt and pull out her cock because of how horny everybody is in the beginning is 😮‍💨 and the idea of Jenna being the power bottom, Emma being a bottom and reader being a service top 👌🏼 (all of them having a praise kink would be a DREAM COME TRUE)

PORNHUB PENPALS 🤣🤣 Yooo I cannot that is the funniest thing I’ve heard today.

But to shorten up what I have to say, so this doesn’t turn into a even longer post… 🤣

I like the way you think. I understand the Eli and Olivia thing completely. And you’re right, everyone is freaking out about Jenna leaving reader but our girl is obsessed with her.

I never really thought a slight idea would cause such a big discussion in this book. 😭😭

[marypsue]

I am back on my bullshit (thinking about your stranger thing fics 24/7 and getting confused that your canon is not universal) but i was wondering if you had any extra body swap AU tidbits to share!! Or some Robin and Jonathan interactions in any verse!!

Lastly, I would love to hear your thoughts about how the Duffers pick their outcasts!! Also one thing that’s always struck me about stranger things (especially s1) is how much the narrative beats strike along those of ecological disasters(a la Erin brokovitch) and how in some ways ST seemed to understand that tragedy is random but some people are less protected from tragedy/authority fails them/the knowledge something is wrong but having no recourse yet lost all sense of finesse in later seasons. Idk if others have had those thoughts especially bc in some way it’s been lampshaded with the Barb cover story.

Anon I'm chewing gravel, you articulated it so well and so precisely. the narrative beats strike along those of ecological disasters!!!! I never thought about it that way but you're absolutely right!! Now I want somebody who has more knowledge than me to do a blow-by-blow comparing season 1 against Chernobyl or some equally prestigious piece of nuclear-disaster literature, because I'm really curious about whether that tracks, too. Just given the era and the anxieties of the era.

(Cut because here be salt.)

The ways in which it's lost all finesse, I think, are part sophomore slump (the show was a pet project in development for something like ten years before Netflix picked up season one, and then they wanted like a season a year after that? Or something along those lines?), part Franchising Is The Death Of Art, and part the Duffers just letting success go to their heads. The more I hear about the behind-the-scenes, the more sense I get that the showrunners just...don't put a lot of thought into what they make. Part of it is almost certainly time crunch, and part of it is absolutely economic pressure (the fabled Studio Meddling, and the studio is, instead of beholden to the companies who'd run ads during the show's runtime, beholden to the companies who'd buy product placement), and then there's the whole 'the US military won't let you use their infrastructure as props/sets if your film or TV show is too openly critical of the US military' thing.

But enough other showrunners work around these forces in interesting ways that it becomes really obvious how simply lazy a lot of the Duffers' choices are. They just pick something they think sounds cool and run with it. And that's a great way for every bias or anxiety or grudge they've ever had and not examined to float up to the surface to get skimmed off and shoved into their show.

I really do think that they set out with good intentions, in terms of 'outcasts' and challenging social norms. I just think that they've got a bunch of big ol' blind spots that they maybe don't even realise they have, have never examined, and now have an army of fans telling them aren't actually problems and they don't need to change anything. Honestly, it's the same problem a lot of actual 80s media has - John Hughes' whole canon is based off of this kind of 'identification with the outsider' thing, but. Well, Long Duck Dong exists.

It's the assumption that the white straight dude is the default, and everybody can relate to him, and should relate to him, and that if He is ever outcast then something is Wrong in Society - but hey, if people oppress women or gays or minorities, that's just how things work. And it's frustrating to see unironically and uncritically repeated in something that's patting itself so loudly and enthusiastically on the back about how it's All For The Freaks! (So Long As They're, You Know, Our Kind Of Freaks.)

Also it sounds like these motherfuckers keep ignoring the characterisation notes Winona Ryder is giving them and they Will one day die by my blade for disrespecting her. She's got more creative integrity, talent, and hard-earned skill in her little finger than the both of them have in their entire bodies. Put together. She made your careers you dumb fucking walnuts, do you think anybody would have cared that much about season one if it hadn't had Winona fucking Ryder in it????????

Anyway. On a less depressing note. I absolutely do have some Jonathan and Robin interactions I can share, and I'm going to pop them in a separate post because this one turned into a bummer, because I am a bummer. Expect that in a minute or two!

[teawitch]

I am still somewhat confused about being able to afford to pay people to help as part of the process. Which parts? Because Nano is perhaps useful for writing a first draft that will be heavily reworked to create a real novel and, unless you are flat out hiring a ghost writer, that first draft has to come from you.

There are probably more free writing communities for beta readers and advice than there were when I began and those will help you develop your skills - something that has to come from you if you want a writing career.

(There are exceptions - people who just want to write family stories for the grandkids or draft their life story. But those aren't generally your heavy Nanowrimo participant.)

A good editing program can help with grammar and sentence structure - but a creative work may break those rules. Grammar programs often don't grasp the rules of your fantasy novel or what some characters may use incorrect grammar. You do need to understand what you are doing and why so you know when to override the program.

If you get picked up by a traditional publisher, they will provide an editor to work with you and they will handle the cover art and other aspects. You will still need to do a ton of marketing yourself.

An editor may ask for significant changes in certain parts of the manuscript. The problem is AI doesn't remember that it wrote the manuscript so you're going to need to deal with that yourself.

They will also want to see your next manuscript, which they will expect to have some relationship with your current writing. I don't just mean a series or set of characters but the style that makes your writing yours. Can AI keep up with that for 80,000 words or so?

Now if you go the self-publishing route, you might be able to use AI to help with some of this process. Cover art comes to mind. Maybe an outline? A paragraph you're struggling with?

Hell, you can stitch a few thousand AI generated words together and an AI book cover and drop it on Amazon to sell. Apparently a family in the UK is stuggling with a case of mushroom poisoning from an AI generated foraging book, so perhaps can and should are not the same thing.

Now I do know a consultant who uses Copilot to help rewrite his email but mainly to check his tone because, well, he knows he has a problem with that. So it's not completely unhelpful. But he's not writing novels.

I worked as a editor for a small press at one point. One problem I would sometimes run into before AI was the "book doctor" problem. Someone would be talked into paying hundreds of dollars to have a book doctor/editor help them with their manuscript to make it more appealing to a publisher. The publisher wouldn't know this when they accepted the work.

But then something would come up in the editing review that would require a section to be rewritten. (book doctors sometimes missed little details like a character who died in chapter 3 being alive in chapter 15.) I'd get the attempt at the rewrite back and it would be obvious - this is not the same writer. So I'd have to help them through the issue because they usually didn't have the funds to go back to the book doctor. And report why we were delayed.

There was at least once where the issue was severe enough the book offer was withdrawn. More often, it was the only book published by that author. Which was okay if they just wanted a book to brag about but not likely to get anyone a viable career.

Yes, a lot of the writing industry is classist. Too much depends on who you know or having a finacial safety net long enough to establish a career. I just don't see how AI is going to fix that. And it certainly won't give you the skill to survive the publishing industry demands long term.

So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.

Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.

[eoangstlover56]

After sleeping on it, I didn’t hate last night’s SVU but I think the main issue I did have with it and that I’ve had with some others in the past is that they sometimes spoonfeed their audience as if we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves. When they do parallels to things like Lewis they go too hard at it. They make it too obvious and give us so many parallels to the point where it’s like they’re just copying almost like they are more focused on sparking outrage rather than getting a point across that adds to character development. because i think they were attempting to correct past wrongs in a way? and show healing but that point was missed because they picked such outrageous parallels that people couldnt overlook those things to see the rest. I don’t think they should never do a Lewis parallel…unfortunately as awful as it was it was something that happened to Olivia and healing isn’t linear so it’s gonna come up from time to time. I just think they should be more SUBTLE about it rather than making it so obvious that it’s a parallel to the point that it’s triggering for people because it feels like it’s just shock value(they’re picking the most obvious parallels they can find). They could’ve accomplished what I think they might’ve been trying to without doing that.

Like…don’t pick the crazy juror. Everyone remembers that. Don’t pick him representing himself. Everyone remembers that. Pick some random small detail that no one is gonna remember unless they rewatched that arc within the last week and a half. Something none of us really pick up on until the end when there’s a resolution and then we’re like “oh wait! That’s what they were doing. I didn’t realize but I see now. I’m glad they fixed that. I’m glad Olivia got to have that moment of closure.” Make me THINK in other words. Make me have to be a bit confused at first and critically analyze what’s in front of me. +and make predictions. Not be exactly sure that’s where you’re going with it. OC doesn’t spoonfeed us which is why sometimes their plots are confusing. You don’t have to go so hard with the parallels. Pick some random thing and then at the very end Olivia mentions it in therapy or to Fin and we’re all like “oh wait I didn’t even think about that and now all this stuff that happened makes sense that was good writing”. And don’t make it have no point. I did really like the ending though I just wish the ending wasn’t overshadowed by such blatant parallels. Even if we didn’t get a Lewis convo with Elliot I would’ve either liked to think we were leading up to one or see Olivia working through something/talking through something to encourage Maddie that she’d get through this because she dealt with those feelings (because maybe Maddie says something to her and it’s small enough that we didn’t even remember Olivia having those same thoughts until the end etc). She recognized as something as part of her own journey and she’s finally addressing it at the end because of that random thing that happened in the episode and then it wouldn’t be so blatant and shocking and obvious and we’d be like finally we are getting some healing and something is being addressed that hasn’t been before yay continuity! Rather than just blatantly tell me this is a parallel. Make me guess. You don’t have to spoonfeed me I’m an adult I can think for myself. Make me go ohhhh I see what you did there I wasn’t expecting it and it took me a minute to get it but now I do and it’s not one of the most obvious offensive ones like making a female juror a nutjob who wants to sleep with the suspect. We all remember bronwyn freed. It makes it more compelling when we have to think. When we go I didn’t remember that shit at all until your context clues led me to realize it and then it made it a more compelling story than if you’re just picking an obvious one. Be more subtle so I could pick up on the good parts.

[findjackwalten]

what do you think of the white guy from the new update?

for context, this is what we're talking about

I have a lot of thoughts on this development and especially on the implications of the previously untouched idea of "bon". Almost literally all of this is speculation because right now this guy is a picture and a sentance.

I think that the 'white guy' is. "bon". The "bon" we've been hearing about in bits and pieces, another side to Bon, the animatronic. It's pretty obvious Bon always had an internal AI, being a preforming robot with scripted movements and greetings and jokes or whatever else he was doing on the stage. "bon", to me, is that AI. The original script, given form.

As for why he's shown as some random humanoid, I have no clue. I would've preffered it to be a rabbit to closer connect it to the Bon we know, but I'm not mad at it. The featureless look definately is uncanny, if that's what Martin was going for.

I've been rotating it in my head and wondering what the AI's role actually is in the story. I'm jumping to conclusions on this but I'm enjoying the idea of a positive-negative push and pull between the AI and Jack; Not that either really takes on positive or negative- they're concepts past good and bad, emotion and robot. Each serves their purpose, parrallel or paired for a purpose.

I don't think at all that the AI is influenced only by Jack. I've always believed that Bon's AI has a learning algorithm front-and-center. Originally innocent, learning which scripted greetings work better on what groups, what movements are the most pleasing for an audience, what makes people happy or what makes them sad. This algorithm was the original flaw, even unknowingly.

as for the other robots, i'm not sure if each bot has their own AI or if it's essentially the same with embellishments. I think it would be interesting if the natural AI of all the robots were a learning algorithm AIs but Bon's was the only one exposed to violence. Like an animal or a young child, the AI learns how to play and act from its enviornment and what it's exposed to. And it does what it learns.

Jack, Bon and "bon"-s relationship is infinately complex in my mind. I dont think Jack's spirit is nearly concious or coherent enough to understand and be able to 'take advantage' of the hulking robot form it resides in. Possession, sure but by no means a poltergeist. To me, Jack is a bleeding aura of human pain and grief and anger garbled by death and confusion. He effects objects passively, but the object at his disposal happens to be a killing machine with a pre-programmed AI keenly interested in stimuli- absorbing those emotions and trying to learn how to feel them, with unknown success

I think the AI paired with Jack is what makes the particularly volatile creature we see now- something ghostly, angry and wanting and expressing it in every breath paired with a well seasoned murder-suggestible AI.

I think without Jack- bon's killings would be much. Less. I think "bon" is very interested in learning and especially in new stimuli and responses (like. seing someone be afraid and then being killed) but in the end its a robot preforming. A little stiff, a little boring, but doing its job. I think Jacks addition is that chasing, desperate thing that wasn't there before. The robot never knew about fear or rage or sorrow and it now understands what happens if it fails. The abstract idea of Jack bleeding these garbled emotions and the AI picking it up in some strange symbiosis. All in all, AI doing what it learned to do with the infinate advantage of something previously human behind it.

my feelings on Jack-bon situation are really complex so this is them fairly simplified. its infinately complex to me and by no means do they have any solid acknowlegement of eachother. maybe one day ill get it perfectly on paper but for noww this will do

[sometimesrosy]

Do you think Clarke’s suicidal tendencies will ever be addressed more, or do you think they suitably were and resolved in s6?

I don’t know.

I think they spent quite a bit of time on them, going into her mindspace and having her give up and then having the Monty-in-her-mind argue out of them. I’m not sure her suicidal tendencies aren’t situation specific. After Praimfaya, with the eclipse psychosis, and in her mindspace when she had lost her body. Praimfaya and mindspace happened after she’d “lost.” When she thought there was nothing left. The psychosis was eclipse induced but I think it came from her self-hate and tendency to “bear it so they don’t have to.” She doesn’t just bear it, she takes on the blame. THAT I think has not been resolved.

I don’t think that, ultimately, Clarke IS actually suicidal. Her will to survive is too strong. She can’t give up, even when the world is dead or she is dead. She keeps fighting. Granted I am not an expert on the issues surrounding suicidal tendencies, but then, i’m not sure the writers are either, so I’m going to continue to assess it as a literary obstacle. 

I think it’s part of her personality taken to extremes. The part that Abby warned her about in the pilot, where she warned her about wanting to take care of everyone else. She kind of erases herself and her own needs. She bears it so they don’t have to and then she breaks... or almost breaks.

She keeps coming back though. That’s part of why she’s Wanheda. Death has been after her since the pilot, when she was sent to earth days before her birthday/execution. 

I feel like part of her story is death can’t take her without her permission. So the times when we are most worried about her survival are when she has lost her own will to survive. The psychosis was outside of that, but even that, she forced to quiet down. Murphy made her put her suicidal tendencies aside... why? To save Bellamy. Double whammy of taking care of her people and protecting Bellamy. She almost killed herself after praimfaya because she lost everything, right before she found a way out, the valley. She almost gave up in the mindspace, until Monty, the moral center of the story, appeared and told her no that was not doing the right thing. Even the finale of season 6, when she put a gun to her own head, that was not actually suicidal tendencies, but the last weapon she had in her arsenal, something she knew would make Madi fight, like she fought in the mindspace-- her love. 

Hmm. Death transformed by love. Death transformed by love? 

That...that fits the genre. Post apocalyptic science fiction survival show, right? Everything has died. This is about coming back from death. This is about rebirth. This is about transformation. This is about the redemption of humanity and of the various characters. This...fits Bellarke. 

In Day Trip, Bellamy was the one with suicidal tendencies, the one who thought he was the monster, and Clarke brought him back, told him he had worth and value, forgave him, fought for him, gave him dignity and even power. Ever since then, Bellamy has been trying to do the same for her. As she takes on more and more of the burden of the horrible things they have to, he has been supporting her and giving her absolution and bearing it with her and centering her and giving her something to believe in. Comparing the end of season 2 to the end of season 6, it’s finally working. She can’t bear it, in s2 she leaves. She can’t bear it, and in s6 he tells her they did do better and it was worth it and she comes back to him and they end the season in an embrace.

He’s done it. He’s transformed her pain through love, he’s brought her back from death, and given her the key to save everyone and stop the evil of the primes from spreading.

I don’t think Clarke’s suicidal tendencies will be resolved the way they might in therapy. None of these people get therapy. I think it might be resolved by her making the choice to choose life and pain and love and recognize it is not a weakness and is, instead a strength.

And... that has already happened in the s6 finale. 

I think s7 might be moving on. What happens AFTER death. After you survive death coming for you and you turn out to be stronger than the pain and loss and desire to give up??? Again. That fits the post apocalyptic genre. Get smacked down, get up again. Right? THAT’S survival. But we’re looking to do more than just survive, so what? 

So.

What?

So love. 

Love keeps you getting up again. Love keeps you fighting. Love gives you strength. Love gives you a reason to keep going. Love gives you a future... Clarke and Bellamy never think about the future. When people do think about the future, like Bryan or Kane or Monty, it’s a domestic future, a safe home, chickens, trade, children. Love.

I think.

This show.

Is about.

Love.

Love is how you survive.

Love is WHY you survive.

Clarke is Survival. Bellamy is Love. Bellamy is the key. Clarke is Commander of Death. Bellamy is Love. The head and the heart. Yin Yang, death and life. 

Hmm. Love alone doesn’t do it though, it can go off target and become cruel, off balance, like with Pike. It can also break, like with Octavia, who lost her love and then lost her brother in praimfaya. Survival alone can be too much to bear, which is why Clarke could go on when she found hope in the valley, and love for Madi, and why she kept the fantasy of Bellamy alive all that time. LOVE made it worthwhile. 

I went off track, didn’t I?

I think Clarke’s suicidal tendencies were addressed and I think they have been transformed through love, and Clarke has come back from the darkness with her superpower. Through love, humanity can be REBORN. That’s the trick about death, you see, it is the key to the life cycle. We die. We feed the earth. New life is born from our ashes. From the ashes we will rise. Love is the energy that keeps us moving.

If this is so, then I’m going back to my initial theory that I cam up with after Hakeldama in season 3, but taking it farther. So. Bellarke is endgame, because UNITY is one of the essential themes, and being the head and the heart, they need to be together to function. But to take it farther, this is not just about survival, this about love. Bellamy is the heart to Clarke’s survival head. Therefore the key to humanity’s redemption is the unification of survival with LOVE. Bellarke is the symbolic representation of the main goal, which is the REBIRTH of humanity. Humanity needs to find LOVE again. 

I suspect that within the survival and death of season 7, we’ll see love in all its forms, from the first flush of romance to long established couples to sibling love to platonic love to parental love. Because LOVE is how you redeem everyone. And yes Bellarke. 

I might also speculate, as I did before praimfaya, that Clarke will become pregnant. Because rebirth/fertility/pregnancy are symbolically linked and if Bellarke represents the redemption and salvation of humanity, (C=salvation and B=redemption,) then a pregnancy would represent the rebirth of humanity. In s5 we got the symbolism of Clarke being a mother with Madi, which means I was right about the symbols, but they had not achieved their redemption yet and so no true pregnancy/rebirth. This damn story is so slow burn. But if I’m correct, as I seem to be, then it is a distinct possibility that by the end of the series we’ll find out Clarke is pregnant with Bellamy’s child. It might be at the end of the season as part of the action (depending upon how time flows within the season actually and how soon they get together,) or it might be in a post script as a kind of flashforward like they did with s4, to have Clarke and Bellamy surviving in the after, with a family and a peaceful home, much like Harper and Monty got on the Eligius ship. Hard to know how it might go down, but the symbolism is stronger than it was in s4, and there is now a path to have it happen in the narrative. Plus they teased it with s4/s5 and Madi, especially with her looking like a child that could be theirs and Abby first seeing a picture of a five year old Madi who would be the age of a Bellarke child if there were one. 

this... this did not go where i expected it to go.

[jq37]

I know what the original Cinderella story is. In the original Cinderella story, she isn't being allowed to go to school and have friends. She also isn't asked out by Charming ahead of time. Clearly they've taken some liberties. It's very possible and even probable that she would have been arbitrarily banned anyway but we didn't see that. What we saw was that, as the results of Chloe's actions, Ella got banned from the ball. And anyway, my point was that it's more interesting if there is set-up and pay off rather than the past playing out with no hitches. Literally, that's the whole point of a time travel story. "What else is new?" My question exactly! Why isn't there anything new happening there?

If they didn't want to compete with a dance scene from a previous movie then it was weird to set up a ball as the central event of this movie when they could have picked anything else. I don't see any narrative reason to set up a big event for a whole movie and then not show it in some form. Set up with no payoff.

I did say that guilt at not being there for her was a possibility. "Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her" I literally said that in the original post. Not sure what you're getting at here. Narratively, the only person who was set up as close enough to hurt her was Ella and the obvious two ways that could have happened was betrayal or (perceived) abandonment and I laid both options out. And while Ella doesn't seem like betrayal/social climber type, it would make narrative sense for them to go back and see that the mom who is super cruel in the present day is really nice and the one who's really nice did this bad thing (especially since Chloe's arc is seeing that things aren't black and white). "My nice mom is mean as a teenager" is a thing in Totally Killer which is the last time travel movie I saw and it was an interesting dynamic. I'm not out here campaigning for Ella to be a bitch. All I said is that it would be a cohesive place to take the story seeing as what we got was entirely flat.

I know some people didn't know ASTV was a two parter but the information was out there (I knew). It was initially called ASTV: Part One before they changed it. And even still, the fact that someone else made a weird choice doesn't make the choice not weird here. Also, ASTV (imo) was a more complete story than this. It was the second act of a trilogy with a third movie already in development. I felt like I was left waiting but not entirely left hanging. Whereas with this movie I checked the time, saw there were 6 minutes left, and felt like a rug had been pulled from under me.

Again, I said that in an ideal sequel the angst of her not relating to this new version of her mom is a good hook. My main point is that it's weird that this is half a movie. That's the first thing I say.

It's the movie's responsibility to show me how Bridget went from sweet to murderer and it didn't do that. Maybe it means to do it in the sequel but it didn't give us anything to reasonably show that progression so that's on them. And, as an aside, it's an insane choice to show her in a bright, poppy dance number with all the students and then say, "No I don't have any friends." I fully understand that you can get along with people and not be friends with them but that is not the vibe you give by doing a number like that. If you had that number and then showed that everyone takes her cupcakes but also declines to sit with her at lunch or go to her house to hang out or whatever then we would get the sense that everyone is using her but in the language of musical theater, what they're showing and what they're saying is incongruent.

Anyway, like I said before, I literally can't judge if this story makes sense or not because it is half a movie. It's entirely possible that everything is totally cleared up in the sequel but I don't know because they aired half a story. Anyone who wants to can try and extrapolate plot points and explain what x, y, z meant but it's gonna be a guess because they paid off almost none of their set ups. That was their choice. That's what I'm critiquing.

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[snippychicke]

Moonstone--Jealousy

So, a long, long, long time ago, @rmoonstoner (and maybe someone else) admitted that possession sex would be amazing. And I fully, 100% agreed. Except I couldn't find a way that satisfied my need to have everything (vaguely) in character and fit into plot.

And then we finally got a hint of Jake in the season finale. And I have been working on this since, here and there. I'm not the best at smut, and I needed to develop Jake's character before I threw him into the fray like this. Because yes, this fits into the Moonstone timeline, just a bit past our current point.

So, if you haven't guessed already.*** THIS IS EXPLICIT CONTENT.*** Minors shouldn't be reading this series anyways, but definitely not this piece. Warnings include: Some manipulation (but not in the way you think) Plenty of oral, followed by unprotected piv. I'm putting questionable consent because of the mess of Marc/Steven/Jake's body, some implied voyeurism? and definitely some rough sex, overstim. I'm probably missing some, so let me know.

Anyways, here you go, my fellow Khonshu lovers. Enjoy.

Jake had to admit, you were one hell of a woman. Sure, he was fond of Layla. She was a beautiful woman, he maybe even loved her in a way.

But he never talked, never interacted with her. But you? Hell, just fighting side-by side against Harrow and his goons had been enough for him to fall in love. You got it. That drive to do whatever was necessary. You didn’t hold back in a true fight. You had a ruthless streak in you as bright as the full moon. No wonder Khonshu loved you.

Except, that was a problem too. Khonshu loved you, and was fiercely protective of you. There was no way he’d let Jake do anymore than the occasional leer or brush that could be excused as something else. 

But the bird was also secretly worried you still would leave him. And that gave him an edge.

“Ya know, she laughed the other day,” Jake reported to Khonshu from the safety of Marc’s fractured mindscape, recalling fondly of dinner the other night, watching silently as you, Layla, Steven and Marc ate and drank. He was never really ‘present’ during those times, but always just a whisper away. Sneaking glances in the many mirrors that now lined the home, listening to the domestics he’d never be a part of. Never admit that he wanted.

You knew he was there, though. He caught brief expressions he was sure were for him. A bitten back smile when his alters complained of missing time despite their teamwork. Or when you were just a little extra when you tried to reassure them, your acting was not nearly as good as his. Marc and Steven fell for it, but he knew that brief smile you hid was for him. Likely recalling how he often came to pick you up and cart you off to whatever work Khonshu had. You would try and reassure them it was nothing, when it in reality it was the moments you and him worked in tandem, Khonshu watching and guiding you both.

At first Khonshu seemed pleased at Jake’s information, a feeling of contentment in knowing something had delighted you. Oh, Jake was going to enjoy turning that on its head. “Said you wouldn’t know what to do with a mouth if you had one.”

The god looked down at him, bafflement obvious despite the lack of expression. Then annoyance, quickly burning into indignation. “What?”

Jake only shrugged, playing with the toothpick in his mouth. “I don’t know either. Layla was reminiscing about her first kiss with those other two. I mean, I never thought your lady friend would say something like that to them.” 

“I would think she would know by now not to doubt me.”

“Eh, you know them girls. Gossiping about kissing, swapping stories about lovers. She’s probably just a bit bitter that she’s never been ate out before.” 

----

Jake was at your door. Except it wasn’t his intentionally relaxed posture with a slight smirk when you opened the door. Instead, he stood tall, jaw set, and his eyes hard; though that was nothing new, his dark eyes always simmered with rage just beyond the peripheral. Even when he was happy, there was anger. IT was how you could tell him apart from the others.

“Hello, dearest moonstone,” he crooned, voice deeper and missing its usual accent, replaced but a familiar and utterly unique one.

Ah. 

Khonshu. 

Now you could see the faint flicker of light in his dark eyes. “Well hello,” you greeted after the surprise passed, a smile stretching across your face. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you darkening my doorstep like this.”

His eyes narrowed, and you weren’t sure if Khonshu was angry, or Jake. “You doubt my ability to please you despite everything?” He snarled, stalking closer. You allowed him to back you inside your apartment, the door rattling as he slammed it shut. Your mind was whirring, trying to figure out what you said or done to upset his mood this time. He did not truly scare you, you knew he wouldn’t hurt you, but there was still that subconscious flicker of fear at his imposing anger. “That I wouldn’t know how to use a mouth if I had one?”

Ah. You had forgotten about that little joke. And of course Jake had to listen in on that particular drunk conversation and report it to Khonshu. 

But hey, if the god wanted to give it a shot…"I know you love proving me wrong."

Jake’s lips were on you in a second, rough and firm. You hissed in pleasure as Khonshu pinned you to the wall, your hands quickly restrained by his. There was no hesitancy, no unsureness. The old bird knew exactly what he was doing as he bit and sucked your lips between dominating kisses, making your lips even more sensitive. 

And then he moved to your neck, continuing to suck and bite, and you knew you were going to be bruised and well marked by morning. Yet, that only made you groan more, shifting your hips in anticipation. 

His tongue played with the shell of your ear, Jake’s hot breath sending goosebumps down your spine. “I hope you have nothing planned, because I’m not letting you leave your bed until tomorrow morning.” 

Khonshu suddenly picked you up, your legs wrapping around Jake’s hips as he carried you to your bedroom. You took the time to pepper his neck with kisses, careful not to leave a mark, unlike him. You didn’t want to imagine the fallout of Layla finding hickeys on Marc/Steven that didn’t come from her.

He tossed you onto your bed, barely giving you time to adjust before he was on you once more. His tongue invaded your mouth, fighting yours for dominance as he quickly pulled at your clothes, uncaring of the fabric tearing in his rush.

You pushed off Jake’s cap, shoving his leather jacket from his shoulders and then finally helping Khonshu rid the white shirt beneath. It wasn’t his body, but there was no denying you didn’t feel a rush of arousal from feeling hardened muscle beneath your hands, or the soft, sparse hair along his chest, growing thicker close to where his pants sat low on his hips.

“Not now, my little moonstone,” he purred as he pulled your hands away from Jake’s belt (and you were completely unaware of the curses Jake was spitting in their mind.) “I have to teach you a lesson first.” 

For being a god that didn’t have lips or a tongue (that you knew about) Khonshu was surprisingly talented. While he was rough against your neck, biting you hard enough you were sure he was about to draw blood; his touch became gentle as he reached your breasts. You gasped as he took your nipple in his borrowed mouth, sucking gently as his tongue swirled over the stiffening peak. You tangled your fingers in their hair, your breath coming in small gasps as his hand cupped your other breast, giving it attention as well, though rougher as he pinched and rolled your nipple between well-calloused fingers. 

“God, fuck, Khonshu,” you moaned, hips rolling in an attempt to find some kind of friction to the growing need between your legs. But his own were too far for you to rut against, and his other hand was pressed against your hip, keeping you pinned down into the mattress. “Please.”

He gave one last hard suck to your nipple before letting go, Jake’s dark eyes glancing up at you, but you swore the moon was somehow reflected in them. “So needy already? I’ve barely done anything.” 

“Quit being so smug,” you whined. “I need you.” 

He chuckled, the hand holding you down moving to slip beneath your underwear, fingers rubbing against your moistened core. You cried as you arched against him, fingers raking over his muscled shoulders. “Once I’m done with you, you’ll realize I have every right to be smug.”

He pulled your underwear down as he sat back on his heels, adjusting himself between your legs. You felt yourself grow warm seeing him like that. It may have been Jake’s face, but something in you recognized that heady expression as Khonshu. Maybe it was the moonlight reflected in his eyes, the almost-arrogant, righteous expression on his face. 

Or maybe your soul just recognized him by now, even if he was possessing another’s body. 

He gripped your thighs, pulling them over his shoulders and making you squeak out of surprise, which only made his smirk widen. His gaze shifted to your groin, and a shiver ran through you as he licked his lips. 

Heavens, if you weren’t already ruined before, that expression would have been warning enough. You instinctively gripped the pillow beneath your head moments before his mouth met your flesh. 

Jake’s tongue was hot and firm as he used it to split your lower lips, brushing against the tender tissue they hid. You managed to take a deep breath to hold back a cry, but that was all the restraint you could manage before his tongue plunged into you, curling and stroking between harsh sucks with far too much experience for this to be his first time. 

Obscene sounds filled the room as he continued his attack, both the sloppy noise as he ate you out as well as your own begs and whines. It was only a short matter of minutes before you felt your first orgasm approaching; your muscles tightening in your abdomen almost painfully before ecstasy snapped through your body, your scream echoing into the room.

But Khonshu didn’t stop. He merely adjusted his position, his fingers replacing his tongue inside you while he teased your clit with his tongue. Your legs spasmed as you cried out again, bucking against his face until his grip became too strong for you to barely wiggle against him. 

A second, and then third orgasm washed over you. Tears pricked your eyes from the over-stimulation and you were nearly ready to beg him to stop when he allowed your hips to fall back to the mattress as he sat up, wiping his face and then sucking his fingers clean. 

“I don’t want to hear another word about my lack of skill again,” he warned as he pulled himself up from your legs, the street light bathing Jake’s muscular form in golden light as he towered over you. “Or I’ll be forced to deal more harshly with your impudence.”

Your body was limp, worn out from the multiple orgasms he wrung from you. Unfortunately, with your mind barely more the mush, you had no sense of self preservation as you shot out: “Going to have to run that… by Layla,” you panted, your eyes closed as you struggled with the overwhelming sensations. “Make sure the boys… aren’t sharing their abilities with you.“ 

Khonshu gripped your face, guiding you to look up at him; pitch black eyes with the small speck of silver moonlight. You couldn’t tell if he was aroused, angry, or both as he glared down at you. “Give up, my little moonstone. I doubt your body can handle much more.” 

Despite everything, you grinned back at him, looking as impish as ever. “Now, have you ever known me to give up so easily?” you let go of the headboard and gripped Jake’s black, curly locks and pulled him into a rough kiss.

He matched the passion as he cradled your head tenderly despite the small bites and growls. The kisses he left along your neck and cheek were reverent, the roll of his hips against yours needy, begging for your acceptance. “You think handle one more, dearest?” 

Your answer was just your hands finding the buckle of Jake’s belt once more, fumbling with it in desperation. He broke away from you, making quick work of both belt and pants, letting Jake’s cock free. It was hard and engorged already, yet Khonshu seemed to enjoy the expression on your face as he took it in hand, stroking it slowly. 

“Khonshu," you whined, parting your legs, opening yourself to him in a silent beg. You wanted him inside you, now. Former orgasms be damned. 

And heavens, seeing you so wet and wanting was about to drive the god insane. He quickly settled his avatar’s body between your parted thighs, groaning as your thick thighs quickly wrapped around Jake’s narrow hips. You were so wet and wanting that he slipped inside you with the slightest thrust. Khonshu groaned against your neck as he hilted completely inside you, delighting and indulging in the sensations as your cunt quivered around him. Soft and tight and deliciously wet against Jake’s hard, throbbing member.

Khonshu delighted even more in the noises that escaped your lips when he started to move. He took his time thrusting into your core, trying to memorize the feel of you before he lost himself to pleasure as well. He praised you as his lips moved against your neck, and then swallowed your pleas as Jake’s lips met yours.

When he could feel his own orgasm approaching, he shifted and gripped your thighs once more, the shift in position making you cry out. Your eyes met his, blown wide with pleasure before he changed his pace; his thrusts becoming sharp, quick, and verging on vicious as his hips slammed against yours again and again. All to hear your quiet sounds become screams of pleasure. Your nails dug and scratched down whatever grip you could find, and he delighted in the points of pain as he came, filling you full.

He was gasping for breath as he fell against you, shifting so he laid beside you. The feeling of exhaustion next to bliss was an odd, new, yet rather pleasant experience for the god. 

You groaned as you shifted to curl next to him, bumping the top of your head against his chin. “Marc and Steven are going to be pissed about those scratches.”

“I can heal them.” But not right now. He liked the idea of his beloved marking his body, even if it wasn’t technically his. Just as he enjoyed the image of his work scattered across your own, proof about how wrong your little quip was. 

He looked down, barely able to see you as you rest against him. His avatar’s body was smaller than his own, and it didn’t quite feel right as he tried to wrap his arm around your shoulders but not reaching quite as far as normal. You didn’t fit quite right against him, leaving him feel slightly disgruntled. 

“No offense to Marc, Steven, or Jake,” you muttered, either thinking the same thing or feeling him through the bond. “They are definitely a very handsome man. But I like your body better, though I’m not even sure why.” 

“Because I am a god and they’re merely a mortal?” He offered, a hint of jesting in his tone that makes you snort and slap him slightly on the chest. 

“Sure, whatever you say. Or maybe it’s just because I have a monster fetish” 

“I am a god, not a monster.” 

“Depends really on who you ask,” you quipped, before silencing his argument with a kiss. He grumbled against your lips, but cupped your cheek to prevent your from pulling too far away.

Pleasantly exhausted himself, Jake made a mental note to find more excuses in the future that would stir Khonshu’s jealousy.

[widow-maximov]

can you do a one shot where we’re with wanda and nat but thor brings valkyrie down to the compound for the first time and we get super flustered and stuttery whenever she talks and flirts with us because cmon we all know valkyrie is a big flirt😩😩🤲🏼 then having wanda and nat are amused but also jealous by our little crush on valkyrie

New Crush?

Pairing: Natasha x Wanda x Reader

Warning: Language, fluff, angst :3

Summary: What happens if you develop a crush on someone else than your girlfriends; Wanda and Natasha.

Word count: 3.7k

My requests are always open so feel more than welcome to pop in a suggestion for the next story :3

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Having queer teammates will never be enough, you were first open queer person on the team which was something everyone liked about you, though you were open about your sexuality, you were pretty shit at flirting and that was pretty obvious.

Before Wanda and Natasha, you tried your luck at flirting with women as practice but it failed so horribly when you received a hard slap across your face and then you owned Bucky 20 bucks.

So when you said you sucked, you really sucked. You were beyond happy that the two redheads asked you out first because you would be still single if it was up to you to make a move.

The two women were very possessive over you in the teams eyes, you didn't really mind because you knew the reason behind it, but most of the team was a little worried about you and them.

Whenever there was a party that Tony organised, there were a lot of 'threats', well that was only according to Wanda and Natasha, they disliked how everyone practically drooled over you.

Natasha would be the one who would threaten any man or woman approaching you and Wanda would use her powers to 'gently' move away anyone who gotten too close to you.

The only reason they really became this protective was because of your fear of saying no, there was always something in you that just wanted to say yes to everyone when in reality you wanted to say no.

If someone offered you a drink, you said yes to which you nearly got drugged and god knows what would've happened if Steve didn't save you.

So when you became really close with Wanda and Natasha, you opened up to them and they decided that they will now keep an eye out for you at parties and people around you.

Of course the team didn't know anything about this because you were pretty ashamed of this fear, you didn't want to get laughed at, even if Natasha threatened to punch anyone who would, to which she earned a giggle from you.

You really loved these two women but you were a human being, meaning you might have a crush on other people, to which the two girls were not happy with.

The team was pretty shocked by how they reacted because usually they would be throwing threats left and right at anyone but when Thor brought down Valkyrie they just stared from afar as they observed with death stares..

This had the team very curious to their behaviour so whenever you was around Valkyrie they just observed you and the two women. There was this time where the team almost died of shock...

There was an urgent meeting in the early morning whilst you wanted to sleep, you were forced to get out of the bed to attend this meeting, you were informed by F.R.I.D.A.Y. 5 times already that the meeting is going to start soon.

But the urge to get out of bed was really little, since there was no sign of you anywhere, the redheads where sent to get you before you missed any important information.

Wanda used her powers to unlock your door whilst Natasha barged inside with a sly smile across her lips. She plopped herself on you as you groaned at the extra weight on you.

"Sleepp!" Your raspy voice made itself out of your throat as you sounded like you were a zombie.

Wanda did the opposite of Natasha, she laid next to you as she moved your hair out of your face and just smiled at your relaxed face "You have to get up my love"

You opened one eye to look at her and smiled at the nickname "Say it again"

"Say what again" She repeated herself, she knew what she was doing, she just wanted to keep you awake.

"My love" Even if you were half asleep, the blush across your face was visible.

"My love.." Wanda said it with so much love in her voice which made your heart skip a beat.

"Hello! I am here as well don't forget about me" Natasha made herself known.

You looked at her "Oh I know, I wouldn't forget the weight of a whale on me"

She raised her brows at you, as her mouth opened wide taking offence to your words whilst Wanda giggled "When did you pick up this attitude котенок (kitten)"

"From spending too much time with you" Wanda added as she looked at Natasha with a huge smile.

The redhead rolled her eyes at the both of you as she leaned down to your ear "Call me a whale again and you'll see the punishment that comes with"

You nodded quickly to which she smirked and got off you "If you're not down in 10 minutes and we have to come back again, I wont be so nice котенок (kitten)"

Wanda quickly placed a soft kiss on your cheek and giggled out of the room along with Natasha, leaving you alone again, you really wanted to go back to sleep but you didn't want the Russian to literally drag you out.

You got out and got ready as quick as you could, making your way out of the room and where the meeting was being held, you ended up quick far away from your girlfriends than you would like to but you could only blame yourself for not getting up earlier.

Everyone looks your way which makes you panic a little so you turn around and there was Thor with some girl, she was gorgeous from head to toe, and she noticed you as well.

They both made their way towards the group to which she stood next to you, Thor started his speech to which you tried to listen to but she spoke up.

"What's your name sweetheart" She slightly turned her face to look at you.

A blush was already there on your face when you looked into her eyes "Uh.. Y-y/n"

There was a slight smirk across her face, as she looked away a little and then back at you "Nice to meet you Y/n, I'm Valkyrie but you can call me Val"

You smiled shyly at her and looked at the floor briefly as you nodded, she spoke up again when you didn't reply "Are you doing anything after this?"

You shook your head, your eyes finding hers within seconds, she smiled widely "Could you maybe give me a proper tour?"

It took a second to realise what she just asked, you didn't even think about looking over at your girlfriends, you just nodded "S-sure I wouldn't mind"

Valkyrie bit her bottom lip "Well Thank you princess"

You giggled very awkwardly which didn't go unnoticed by the whole team or the two redheads "Heh- You don't have to thank me"

Valkyrie reached over to your hand as she grabbed it gently and placed a light kiss on your hand "None sense, pretty women like you deserve the world"

Your checks turning a more red colour as you watch her kiss your head, it felt like your brain stopped working and you just nodded at her because words will betray you if you speak.

Steve ended the meeting soon after and before Natasha or Wanda could make their way to you, you were being dragged away by Valkyrie.

Suddenly all of the teams heads turned towards the two redheads as if to expect a reaction, they looked at each other and then back at the team.

Natasha narrowed her eyes "What?"

They all shrugged and mumbled stuff under their noses, slowly scattering all over the place to avoid the black widows stare, shocking each and every one of them to core with their lack of reaction.

This has happened a lot, Valkyrie being all over you and you being okay with it, after that first day, many followed and you were practically all the time busy with her.

She took most of your time which Wanda didn't like, Natasha was more amused by your sudden confidence, usually you would be a mess when it came to choices.

But when you were with her you tried your best to show off as confident which failed so badly, you were a mess around her which only annoyed Wanda more.

She wanted to confront you about it but Natasha kept discouraging her, she trusted you but Wanda started to question it at some point in this whole situation.

"Natasha we can't just stand by and watch as she slowly takes our Y/n away!" Wanda paced around the room.

Natasha was on her phone during Wanda rant, she has been through this with her many times but with each issue raised by Wanda, she slowly started to believe her.

"Mhm" Natasha agreed, not paying attention to what Wanda was saying.

"Would you listen to me!" She raised her voice and soon Natasha's phone went flying across the room.

"Hey! I was reading something" Natasha stood up from the bed as she walked over to Wanda.

"I am talking to you Nat, it's really important" Wanda's voice turned soft as Natasha walked closer.

"I was listening, I understand what you're feeling but you shouldn't question Y/n's trust, you know Y/n would never do something like that" Natasha crossed her arms as she started to explain.

Wanda nodded "I know and I'm not questioning her trust, I just don't like how she talks all about Valkyrie, it's like we are her friends rather than girlfriends"

The Russian looked down for a brief moment and Wanda continued "She doesn't swoon over us anymore, she gets all flustered and all nervous like she was with us at first but now it's nothing"

Natasha shook her head "Okay, that's not true"

"But it is, I haven't seen it at all lately" Now Wanda crossed her arms.

"I'm sure it's not true" Now Natasha tried to sound convincing but something in her was saying that Wanda was right.

"Then prove me wrong" Wanda raised her eyebrow at Natasha "Please..." there was a hint of pain in the plead that came from Wanda.

"Okay, I will show you she still is ours Wands" Natasha had a sad smile across her lips as she pulled Wanda into her.

She kissed the top of Wanda's head as she rubbed her hand down the smaller redheads back, to which you witnessed as you walked inside the room.

Your heart nearly burst at the sight of them being so cute, you wanted to join them but Val was waiting for you along with some teammates, you guys were watching a movie.

"Aww, if we weren't a couple, I would totally ship the two of you together" You spoke up as you stared at them with love in your eyes.

Their heads snapped towards your voice, they pulled away to which you spoke up again "Aww noo, I didn't want to disturb yous"

"You never disturb us котенок (kitten)" Natasha voice made itself known rather quickly, the butterflies in your stomach always been there just by looking at the two women so imagine what their voices did to you.

You nodded with a smile at them as you walked over to take your favourite pillow when you watched movies, Wanda's eyes followed you as she asked "What is it that you are doing my love?"

You looked up at her with a small smile "Me and some of the team are watching a movie so I wanted to get my pillow.."

Wanda nodded "You didn't invite us..?"

Here came the tension, whenever Wanda didn't like something and made her jealousy known, you would always just ignore her for the rest of the day, she always treated you like you weren't allowed to hang out with her around.

You knew it was only because she was scared that if she wasn't there and something happened to you she would blame herself but you had protection, not only the team but Valkyrie.

"Well, I wasn't sure whether yous wanted to, Val will be there and I know that you don't exactly like her, for whatever reason that is" You stood up with your pillow in hand.

"I have a perfect reason Y/n!" Wanda slightly raised her voice.

Natasha sighed "Okay, come on we don't need to fight about this.."

"I'm not fighting, I just don't understand why Val is hated so much by Wanda" You looked at Natasha as you spoke up.

The Sokovian huffed in irritation "She is all over you моя любовь (My love) and you're not doing anything about it. You spend more time with her than us combined"

You rolled your eyes, not really thinking through what she was saying "When you stop being jealous then we can have this conversation Wanda"

"I have enough of this" Wanda threw her hands in the air.

You rolled your eyes again as you walked of the room, this time not saying anything and walked on to the living room where everyone was waiting for you.

The whole movie you couldn't really concentrate, your mind was filled with Wanda and how this whole disagreement went, you love her so much and you would be damned if you lost her but she didn't have to be so rude to you.

But at the same time you weren't the best either, you were just as bitter as she was, you wanted to fix this but maybe not tonight, she needs to calm down and you just wanted to think before going into this conversation.

Valkyrie noticed your absent from the movie, she kept looking over at you, and as soon as the movie finished, you stood up as you made your way to the kitchen to grab something to eat.

Natasha followed you into the kitchen as she smirked, Wanda wasn't far from the kitchen to see how this would play out, she was standing with Vision, Bucky and Steve.

There was always something about Natasha that just screamed top energy but when she really wanted to she was the most softest person you could meet.

She slowly made her way towards you with a small smile across her lips as she hugged you gently from behind, placing her hands where you always relaxed into her "I hate it when you're sad детка (baby)"

You leaned into her hug with your back against her front "I'm more disappointed than sad Talia"

She placed a soft kiss on your neck as she spoke again "have I told you, you're the most beautiful woman alive?"

You chuckled slightly as you nodded "Yeah you did but you always said that to Wanda many times"

Natasha smiled against your neck "Well because the two of you rock my world"

Natasha's compliments always had you stuttering and flustered but with time you have gotten used to those love filled compliments even if they still make your heart skip a beat.

"How about we take a wine bottle up to the roof and just talk about everything?" Natasha spoke when silence slowly settled.

You moved out of the hug as you faced her, with a sad smile "Not tonight"

You placed a gentle kiss on her cheek as you walked out with a tin of cookies, you looked up at Wanda who looked like she was ready to approach you but you just continued on.

Valkyrie observed the scene that unfolded and as soon as you walked away, she followed you. Wanda didn't want to cause more trouble than it already has happened so she let Valkyrie follow you even if she wanted to literally lock her in some closet.

You sat on the roof with your cookies and some drink that you managed to grab from the party room, you looked out into the city and how each of the lights made it look so much prettier.

Valkyrie observed you for some time before making her way to sit next to you "Pretty women like you should never be left alone"

You looked up at Val as you smiled at her words, you were debating if opening your mouth was a good idea so instead she spoke up again "So tell me pretty woman what's bothering you"

You looked away from her because if you were going to speak up, you didn't want to stutter "I had a fight with Wanda.."

Val nodded "Your other girlfriend?"

You nodded as you continued "Her jealousy is really tiring"

"How so" She asked as she turned her whole body towards you.

"Her constant doubt makes me go crazy, I just really want her to trust me and my choices in life, she's not even acting like a girlfriend but a mother or some shit" You explained as you looked down at your hands.

Valkyrie moved closer to you as her fingers found your chin, making you look at her "Y/n you deserve someone who will never doubt their love for you, it makes my heart break just seeing you so sad"

You swallowed hardly as you stared into her eyes, even if you told Valkyrie many times that you were taken, she still tried her best to make you fall for her, it would work if you weren't so in love with the two dorky redheads.

"She doesn't doubt in the love between us-" You tried to speak up but Val only put her finger on your lips to shush you.

"I would never spend a second in my life doubting my love for you, you are the most smartest, funniest and nerdy woman I have ever met and I wish you would look at me the same way you look at them"

You started to feel the blush appear on your face, you smiled at her "I don't doubt but they have my heart Val, I have already told you that"

She dropped her hand from your chin as she nodded "I know, You will always have my heart Y/n if that's something you would want"

You smiled at her being so understanding and gentle with this "You're an amazing friend Val and I'm sure that one day you'll find someone who will want you right away instead of making you wait for something that might not happen"

She smiled at your words as she placed her hand on top of yours "You should talk to her before things get worse and you lose her forever"

"I will but at the moment I want to finish my drink and sit here for couple more hours before going back to that issue"

She nodded as she was ready to get up but you stopped her "W-would you stay with me for now? I don't want to be alone"

She nodded with no hesitation as she let you place your head on her shoulder, as the both of you looked out into the city, admiring the view and enjoying this quiet moment.

After couple hours, you finally had enough energy and courage to speak to Wanda, you walked inside the shared room where Natasha was laying down with her laptop on her lap and Wanda with a book.

You sighed as you cleared your throat, making yourself known to the two redheads, they both looked up at you at the same time, you walked over to Wanda's side as you sat on the edge.

Even though you smelt like cookies and some alcohol, you felt like you had enough courage to finally speak out "Can we talk?"

Wanda stared at you for a moment "You're drunk"

You shook your head "No, I just had one glass but I want to talk because I don't want to go bed with this issue unsolved"

Wanda wanted to refuse but Natasha agreed for her, especially since she knew there wouldn't be another opportunity to solve this "Yes we can talk and solve this"

"You were right Wands, I don't spend time with yous anymore and I hate myself for leaving yous behind like that"

Wanda looked at you as you spoke "That's not the issue here Y/n/n, you can have friends and spend crazy amounts of time with them but at least be honest with us"

You looked at her confused "Honest about what?"

"That you no longer love us, we at least deserve this" She looked into your eyes with pain.

You shook your head as you took her hand into yours "I never stopped loving yous"

Natasha smiled at your words as she knew she was right, Wanda questioned once again "So why is she all over you Y/n/n?"

"She knows yous have my heart and every second of my attention, I could never fall for anyone else apart from yous, she likes me but I don't feel anything towards her"

Natasha raised her brows "So she doesn't take hint? Do you want me to tell her something so she can back off?"

You giggled at her "No baby, I can manage with her you don't need to threat anyone"

"I'm sorry my love, I never doubted in you but I was just scared that I would lose you, you and the redhead over here are my whole world I'm really sorry for how I behaved" Wanda's grip on your hand tightened.

You smiled as Natasha frowned "What do you mean redhead over here? For you I am Солнечный свет (sunshine)"

You and Wanda looked over at Natasha as you giggled at her being offended, Wanda nodded as she placed a light kiss on Nats cheek to which she smiled proudly.

You stared at them with so much love in your eyes "I am completely in love with the pair of you"

It has taken back the redheads as now they tried to form words, their butterflies being so strong that now you giggled "Now yous have the nervous, this is a first"

Natasha chuckled "we are in love with you just as much Y/n/n"

You smiled as you squeezed yourself in between the two girls as they showered you in kisses, for the first time in a while, you felt like life was getting better within seconds and finally being able to feel like you are on top of the world with the two most important women.

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