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airenyah · 2 years ago

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on analyzing acting: ohm pawat as an example

attention: read my additions to this post first for some more context as it might help you understand a little better what i'm on about here...

ok so this post was born out of me wanting to give an example of what i mean by "actors perceiving something" bc you can see that really well in bad buddy ep 3 [3/4] in the music shop scene where they're hiding and pat smells pran. however, i realized i actually have a lot more to say on this moment and that i can also use it to try and showcase what i mean with "(having) thoughts"/"creating images" as well as what "directions" are supposed to be (i'm struggling the most with explaining directions in english lmao). i ended up having so much to say that it absolutely is worthy of its own post, so here it is

so this here is the moment in question that i'm going to analyze and i'm going to look at ohm specifically:

[sorry for the image quality of this gif, i had to compromise it in order to get the file size down]

before i say anything, here's a little disclaimer: obviously i have absolutely no idea what was going on in ohm's head in that moment when he was shooting that take. so whenever i make a mention of a specific sentence that the actor or the character could be thinking it will be my very own interpretation of what i personally am seeing or getting out of it. there are many thoughts and emotions one can read out of an actor's performance (often multiple at once!) and there are many ways of putting all of this into words. i will try to keep everything as technical as possible but sometimes i do need to say what i think is going on in the actor's/character's head in order to explain my point

ok so let's go and break down some of the acting things that ohm is doing here

[gif 1]

this is a wonderful example of an actor actually and actively perceiving something. at this point pat hasn't actively smelled pran yet, he hasn't reacted to that smell yet. in fact, up until this point pat is more focused on not being caught by chai. what ohm is doing here is showing us the process of going from "don't get caught" to "pran smells good af". and it starts right here. in order to do so, in order for this change of topic to work smoothly pat has to become aware of pran's smell first. and ohm is acting it out for us: he really is perceiving and noticing that smell as the actor and we can see the controls in his brain going "oh my nose is sensing something"

another thing i want to point out here is his "spielrichtung" (god i GOTTA figure out a word for this in english) aka this is where i talk about his "directions" even though it's difficult for me in english bc it sounds rather clunky. (for those who didn't read my original reblog where i talk about acting concepts: the literal translation of this german term is "direction of playing" or "direction of acting". this direction can refer to many things, such as where the focus is directed, or an action, a thought, etc...)

here in this moment ohm's directions are both downwards and very inwards. as in: his focus goes downwards to where the smell is entering his nose while his thoughts are very much directed inwards. this is a private moment for pat and ohm shows us this by acting towards the inside (ohm/pat is completely inside his own head in this moment) ("by acting towards the inside" – sorry, this sounds so clunky in english, i mean to say "indem er nach innen spielt")

alright, moving on. so in real life, once a person has perceived something and the brain has processed and determined it... what happens next? the person is going to react to it and have one or the other thought. in real life we go through a process of perceiving - processing - (re)acting and the same thing should happen in acting:

[gif 2]

first ohm showed us that pat has perceived something, now ohm shows us that whatever pat has perceived causes some thoughts/feelings inside of pat

(quick side-note on his directions: he's still very much inwards in his direction, the private moment in his head is continuing. and despite his eyes going to the side, the focus of his actions is still directed downwards because again, that's where the smell is)

(edit: i had my mom read this post and on the topic of directions in gif 2 she pointed out that you can actually split it up in three directions even: everything is happening on the inside, then you have the sensory direction that is going downwards because that's where the smell is, while he's sending his thoughts sideways)

i can't read minds, nor can i time travel so i have absolutely no idea what thought was crossing ohm's mind in that exact moment, but it has to be something along the lines of "i gotta smell that again". ohm/pat has perceived the smell, he considers it for a moment and whatever he's thinking here leads to the next moment where pat smells pran on purpose (note: i do love how his head is subconsciously moving slightly down towards the source of the smell again even before he's actively taken the decision to sniff pran):

[gif 3]

(edit: another thing that my mom said is that in gif 2 it's like his thoughts aren't quite focused yet, they're not quite formed, while in gif 3 his thoughts are very much focused. it's like his thoughts went from a subconscious level in gif 2 to a conscious level in gif 3. anatomically speaking you could even say that in gif 1 and 2 he percieves the smell emotionally and in gif 3 it goes over into a cognitive perception of the smell. because he percieves the smell subconsciously in the beginning and the very first thing that happens when you perceive a smell is that it goes to the emotional center of the brain. then the smell goes on to the cerebral cortex and only then you get the cognitive perception of the smell. ohm's performance here really is FLAWLESS. in the words of my mother, a trained nurse: "he plays that EXTREMELY WELL because you can analyze it anatomically even, and use his performance to showcase how the sense of smell works")

and now we have arrived at the point where pat is sniffing pran. what i really like about this is how subtle ohm portrays this. he doesn't stick his nose into nanon's back and we don't even see him breathe in. and yet we still know that pat is smelling pran here, all bc of ohm's body language where he moves his head down to the source of the smell and the thoughts that ohm is having in his head in that moment. you can just see that ohm is really and actively smelling something here. and by that i mean not only just the motion of him moving his head down, but rather that again he is actively perceiving a smell as his head is filled with thoughts (his thought process goes from something like "what was that smell" to "ok i'm smelling, i'm checking this out")

and now we're back to the point where we were earlier. once again our character is perceiving and processing something, our actor is acting it out for us and so what has to happen next? exactly, a reaction to the new information the character's brain has just processed:

[gif 4]

and again we can see that ohm's head was filled with actual thoughts in that moment (probably something along the lines of "wow he smells really good" or "oh what a nice smell". and it looks kind of unexpected to me, as if there's also some surprise coming with it along the lines of "oh i wasn't expecting to like his smell so much" or "i didn't think he would smell this nice")

i keep going on and on about thoughts, and it's because that was hammered into me by my fave monologue teacher. he kept going on about "getting your thoughts straight" and "having thoughts" ("die gedanken haben") and whenever we students had no idea what to do with our bodies he'd tell us that if we know exactly what we're thinking in that moment we shouldn't worry about our body because our body will follow our thoughts automatically. we can see that beautifully in gif 2 where an underlying thought (and i don't necessarily mean thought as in an actual thought or sentence inside the mind, but thought kind of in the sense of an emotion or feeling, if that makes sense), anyway in gif 2 there's an underlying thought along the lines of "this smell is good i want to get close to it i want to keep smelling it" and ohm's/pat's head is already moving slightly downwards towards the smell before ohm/pat has taken a conscious decision to take a purposeful sniff. the power of thought y'all. thought is a powerful tool when it comes to acting. and it's really obvious when an actor is in no-thoughts-head-empty mode. unfortunately i don't have an example of a thought-less actor on hand, or i would show you. ok, that's a lie, actually. i do have some examples, but they either don't work as a tumblr post (once again i wish i could do this one acting analysis project i did with my uni friend with online people as well) orrrr i don't want to share them publicly bc i don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings and i want to avoid angry anons in my ask box or getting into arguments with random internet users (i quite like my quiet, peaceful tumblr life where i'm a nobody, thanks)

okay, now back to bad buddy and ohm:

in the other post where i talk about acting i mention that while my monologue teacher would talk a lot about thoughts, my mother instead likes to talk about "creating images". my mom likes to think of it as a flipbook where you have individual pictures that make a moving image when going from one picture to the next at speed. personally i think you can also think of it as individual panels of a comic book that together tell a narrative arch. if we look at the first part from this perspective, as if if were a comic, we can see that ohm provides the audience with these clear images:

image 1: perceiving a smell, becoming aware of it, noticing it

image 2: reacting to that first whiff, something along the lines of "is this pran's smell? i gotta smell pran. for science. to see if that nice smell is him"

image 3: smelling on purpose, there is an aim to the action, it is motivated by thought and by what happened previously

image 4: another reaction to the perceived smell, this time it's a realization and/or a conclusion (the realization could be something like "oh i like the way pran smells" and the conclusion would be "yes what i sensed earlier was in fact pran's smell")

in full:

[gif 5]

it has only been three (3!!) seconds (yes i went and checked the duration of that clip on premiere pro) and ohm has already told us an entire story arc. god, i LOVE it when actors do actor things

alright, let's continue with part 2:

so now we get to the part where pran (nanon) comes in with an impatient "what now?" and pat (ohm) reacts

[gif 6]

since ohm is a good actor he once again presents us with that split second where we can see that he was actively listening to nanon's line, we get to see the moment where pat's brain is processing pran's comment and comes up with a reply. once again ohm is acting this all out for us. this is also what helps make it look like everything is spontaneous: as if the character didn't know pran was gonna say something and what he was gonna say, even though the actor, having memorized the script and likely having discussed it with his co-star and/or the director, definitely knew about it

now let's look at his directions again before we move on to the next gif: he's still in inwards-mode, but pran's line distracts him and snaps him away from the downward focus and now it's going to the side instead, towards nanon/pran

remember what happens after the processing? that's right, a (re)action. pat reacts to pran's comment with the action of saying "you smell good"

[gif 7]

what i find particularly interesting here are ohm's directions. before i sat down to gif these 10 seconds of scene i distinctively remembered ohm's spielrichtung (fuck it, i'm going with the german word bc "directions of playing" or "direction of acting" just doesn't sound right – quick german grammar lesson: spielrichtung = singular, just one single direction; spielrichtungen = plural, two or more directions) being very much towards the inside. and i had assumed that pran's comment would snap him out of it, that nanon's line would trigger a jump in his spielrichtung. but looking at it now? this... is not quite what i'm seeing. what i'm seeing instead is actually fascinating to me

you see, his actions and his line definitely have an outward focus, to the side where nanon is. however, it looks like that outward focus hasn't quite reached his eyes (it's in the way his eyes travel towards nanon, but they're not really focusing on anything in particular, he looks very distracted instead, as if his mind is somewhere else)

to reiterate: his words are traveling outwards while his eyes look like they're still in inwards-mode. outwards and inwards – two opposing sides. this creates conflict and it's exactly what makes me as a viewer sit up in curiosity and go "huh? what's this? what's going on here?" it fills me with a lot of questions about the character: why can't he snap out of it? did pran's smell really affect him this much? so much that his mind is still on it even when pran starts talking to him? why is it affecting him so much? what's going on inside him? aww does he have feelings? (yes. yes he does 🤭) it's these little subtle things that make me start caring about a character, that make me want to keep watching in order to find answers to my questions. (also! this would be an example of what i meant in the reblog from the other post when i talked about actor's showing conflicts that aren't in the plot/the script)

to be honest, i'd love to double check ohm's spielrichtungen during this line with my mom, but unfortunately it's gonna be another two weeks until i go home for semester break. because this is one of those moments where i realize that i still need to practice my acting analysis skills a lot, because to be quite honest i'm having a moment of is it just me or...? where i'm not entirely sure if i'm seeing this "right" (not that there's much of a right or wrong here...)

alright, moving on... once he finishes talking?

[gif 8]

right before ohm says his next line he falls back into inwards-mode again and once again we see that there are actual thoughts going through his head. what those thoughts are exactly i can't say, but to me it comes across as if pat is reflecting his statement of "you smell good", it looks like pat is lost in thought about pran smelling good (to be honest? at the end of the day it doesn't actually matter what ohm's exact thought process was, the important thing is that he had one at all, because now i as a viewer get to have fun with interpreting it)

and now we're finally coming to the end of the sequence i've decided to analyze. after a short moment of reflection pat adds "you smell so damn good" and goes to sniff pran one last time

[gif 9]

and what's ohm's acting choice here? this time he goes for an exaggerated sniff, he points his entire nose at pran and breathes in loudly (which we can't hear in a gif, of course, but we can definitely very clearly hear that sniff in the episode itself). and delights me very much because this sniff right here? in comparison to the ones in the beginning? is very much for show

the first two times pat/ohm smelled pran was very "quiet", rather small and subtle, and very much for himself. it was a private moment. this sniff now? it's loud, it's exaggerated, it's big with ohm bending his entire face down in order to almost shove his nose right into nanon's back. and of course he sniffs extra loudly, to make sure pran can hear it (and yes, i'm specifically referring to the character now, bc ofc nanon should hear the sniff, but more importantly pran should hear it bc pat is about to be a little shit to annoy him)

the reason why this big sniff delights me so much (especially with regard to how the scene continues after the excerpt that i have chosen for this analysis) goes away from the technical aspect of it and is much more about my own interpretation, but i'll tell you anyway: again, in the beginning it was a private moment, pat was smelling pran just for himself. but this causes him to fail to react to what pran just said about chai being gone now and that pat can get up. having that little story arc where pat notices pran's smell and goes to check it out causes pat to linger and that makes pran suspicious. pran more or less catches pat in his own private moment, and so pat turns sniffing pran into a full on show. "you smell good" he says, "do my laundry", he says. pat was nearly caught having feelings for pran (bc we all know this is why he's so affected by the smell) (fun fact: in german we have this idiom that goes "jemanden nicht riechen können" which translates to "not being able to smell someone". it means that you don't like someone and that's why you can't or rather don't want to smell this person. this idiom actually showcases how important the sense of smell is interpersonal relationships) pat was nearly caught and now he deflects. he gets annoying on purpose (by shoving his nose into pran's back and loudly insisting that he likes the smell) to keep pran from asking more questions, he jokingly demands that pran does his laundry bc obviously pat likes the smell of the detergent, it's definitely not the smell of pran that he likes, okay? yes, exactly, pat likes the detergent, not pran, and him sniffing pran definitely had a heterosexual reason and there were definitely no romantic feelings involved. that's the story pat is putting out into the world, that's the show he's pulling off here. ohm goes from quiet and inwards to loud and outwards (spielrichtungen!) and it just delights me because there is so much i can get out of it when it comes to my interpretation

alright, so i've now reached the end of my chosen excerpt and now that we've gone through the entire thing i just want to talk about one last thing: changes.

in the reblog of the other post i mention that when i analyze acting i look out for whether anything changes. (i didn't explicitly say it in that reblog, but it gets boring when an actor keeps doing the same thing over and over again). in the reblog specifically i take emotions as an example, but also make a note that changes can apply to things other than emotions as well. in this scene of bad buddy ohm provides us with a beautiful example of what changes look like when it comes to a specific action

in this 10 second excerpt that i have chosen, pat smells pran 3x in total:

do you see how each time the action of pat smelling pran is different? each time when pat smells pran it's motivated by a different thought, each time there's a different reason behind it:

the first time is all about pat noticing the smell in the first place, becoming aware of it at all. at this point it's rather accidental: pat never made a decision of "i'm going to smell pran now". no, it just happens. he percieves the smell on an emotional level. sniff one is all about the thought of "oh, i'm sensing a smell".

the second time is where the active decision to smell pran comes in. now he starts perceiving the smell on a cognitive level: this time pat is smelling pran on purpose, it's no longer accidental. pat has a reason to smell pran, he has a goal and it's to investigate that smell that he has just sensed. and as i've already said, he is in his own head and it's a private moment. his thoughts are kinda unfocused and he almost gets a little lost in these thoughts, in the smell. and it's a quiet, subtle action, he only slightly moves his head down to be a little closer to the source and get a better whiff, but that's it, no big loud breathing in, no exaggerated head bending. that sniff right here is for pat. that sniff is between pat and that smell, no one and nothing else. what ohm is doing here is creating a relation between pat and pran's smell

the third time the sniff also comes from an active decision. and again, it has a purpose behind it. this is also what happens in sniff no. 2, so in theory the same thing is happening twice, right? except no, bc the way ohm sniffs nanon for the 3rd time is completely different. while sniff no 2. was quiet and small, now sniff no. 3 is loud and big. it's exaggerated and it's for show. this sniff is no longer only between pat and pran's smell, no, now pran himself is involved too (whether pran likes it or not)

i've said it before and i'll say it again: i LOVE it when actors do actor things

alright, i really am done now. to be honest, i wish i had the time to go to my hometown and go through this whole analysis with my mom first before i post it. despite 3 full years of drama school and 2.5 years of intensely analyzing asian drama with my mom i still don't feel confident in the knowledge i've gained so far and i feel like i need someone with more experience to check my thoughts before i can go publish them for the whole internet to see. but i guess it's time for me to become a big girl that doesn't need to rely on her mommy's opinions. i guess it's because i feel like there is still so much more that i need to learn and there is so much more that i don't notice yet and so i'm afraid that what if what i'm saying is wrong? what if i'm talking bullshit here? but i guess it's time i trust the skills that i have gained so far. besides, when it comes to this there often isn't necessarily a right or wrong but rather a what do you see and how does that make you feel? so i'll go and post this anyway without having anyone look over it, because this is what i see right now at this point in time as i'm writing this. and if at some point in the future i realize i disagree i can always write an update (or another post)

all in all i had fun with this not so little analysis. and i hope you too had fun reading it <3

(edit: as you could already see from the previous edits, well, i actually did have my mom read this whole post at some point after all. she was very impressed and said my analysis is extremely well written. she had almost nothing to add. it's truly about time i start trusting my own skills fklslkkdlsf)

#airenyah talks acting #bbs #bbs ep3 #airenyah plappert #sometimes i'm annoyed that english doesn't distinguish between singular you and plural you the way german does #but this time i actually love it bc you'll never know if by you i mean tumblr user gillianthecat or you as in all the readers of this post #i started this analysis around 12pm and it is now midnight oops (writing this on friday january 14th)#(admittedly i did take a break for mealtimes and grocery shopping and for a short uni assignment)#tho you need to know that i've actually been sitting at this since 10:30am bc i wrote the 2nd reply on the reblog in the other post first #i wish i knew how to say the word ''anspielen'' in english bc that's something ohm does exceptionally well #it's one of the things he does that make everyone always say that ohm has chemistry with everyone #(the concept of anspielen is less relevant here i this short excerpt but it IS relevant in many other bbs scenes)#(er spielt seine spielpartner immer so verdammt gut an und sendet dabei so stark and it's BEAUTIFUL)#(hmm sollte ich das wort ''spielpartner'' im vorherigen tag gendern... then again it's mostly boys anyway lmao)#(at least the things i've watched)

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hihopelessromantics · 1 year ago

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OOOH! Definitely interested in your wips. Would love to hear more about these in particular (whichever one(s) you feel like sharing)

(also yes definitely still happily stuck inside this fandom bubble)

will indulge!!! (This is long but it's good to organize my thoughts lol)

I straight up forgot to put the name of this one lol. Meliodas doing dangerous antics is part of my Through the Wall sequel fic, called "Stakeout" which is the one where I have him cooking. I tried to mix in some humor with the angst here. It's basically Stigma Meliodas if Nakaba didn't nerf his intellegence. This one, I'll be feeding you guys soon!! Because I plan to try to finish Through the Wall this Thanksgiving Break, since I started it last thanksgiving break (ambitious I know, but imagine the poetism if I pull it off!) and Stakeout is farther along in its completion than that one. Stakeout is about Meliodas looking out for the TC and his brother from the opposite of the war. The first part is him deciding to try to get them dinner after seeing how worn-down they are, and the second . . . well, he can't exactly leave Zeldris to watch over both the Vampire and Demon Realms all by his lonesome, right? I'm actually really excited for you and @7-ratsinatrenchcoat to see this one in particular when it's finished because I tried to channel the melizabeth energy I liked in your work

This one is named such not cause I wanna name it something bulky (it has a better name! that's the exclusive lore lol) but I'm commited not to spoiling the plot twists in this one. This is gonna be my main gift to this fandom, a spiced up psychological horror rewrite of the whole show with original elizabeths and original adventures for the first and second season (that one is a backstory with Liz!) Plot point collaboration welcome. A bunch of season one, and the plot tiwsts, I made with my good friend zeldriszezinho, and I'm pretty antsy and excited to finally get around to it and present him with the result of our hard work, haha. I actually have a lot of senarios planned both in detail and loosely, just not written down. I'm currently procrastinating on Season 1 Pt. 2 because it's literally 5 or so arcs of content, one for all the sins, and uh. mental energy. So I'm trying to finish up a lot of small projects first just so my mind isn't everywhere. I can't remember if you've seen what I've posted on it so far but here's the masterpost and season one part one! It's on tumblr too! but I went ahead and pressed the space bar like 4 times every indent so it would be normally formatted on A03 sooooo https://archiveofourown.org/works/48567730 https://archiveofourown.org/works/48611485/chapters/122618557

3. Ironically, think Rings was another one inspired by you - it's old, almost 8 months by now, and the only reason I haven't published it yet is the second ellie spiraled out of control into her own adventure and I haven't had the time because I've been word vomiting so many other projects into existence. it's half meme format, half usual writing. The second ellie's meme story is complete and the third's just needs its wrapping up of its actual plot, which is simple: an arrogant man thinks his bride is secretly a nutcase, but feels pressured into marrying her because medival times, because she's a sweet and intellegent woman running an orphanage all by herself, and technically he can't do better, and because it would look disasterously on the both of them and destroy his carefully crafted persona if they somehow couldn't make this community-arranged marriage work. So he's "putting up with her quirks." Including the ancient what-looks-like-wedding-rings she wears around her neck, and the fact she genuinely thinks her one-that-got-away lover sold a prized possession to demons. (the significance of these rings is in the stories of the previous two elizabeths). Well. Actually. He steals them while she's distracted with wedding planning. It doesn't go well for him from there.

Let me know your opinion: should I try finishing the third ellie and then publishing it? I can always go back and make a full story out of "purple ring" ellie + friends later.

Basically, the purple ring's story is as thus: Meliodas decides he needs to rest, "REALLY rest", since his emotional stress is beginning to affect his demon biology in a bad way, and voluntarily coma-tizes himself for a while. He wakes some time later only to find out Elizabeth and her new 'family' have been considering him as their good luck charm. (Maybe even more than one Elizabeth has passed by now. Probably the apothecary he visits figures out what Meliodas meant to do and goes to fetch him, too late, and looks after him . . . see, that could be a whole OTHER story in itself. anyway.) He's a "good luck charm" because his demon aura has been disgusing the magical signature of her druid family, not that they've figured this out. Meliodas tries to get up and run away with an injured Ellie but surprise surprise he hasn't quite recovered from what his body and mind has been through, and the combination of that and the drugs has left him critcially weakened. He actually collapses falls down a small cliff with her. Ellie assures him they've gotten far enough to shake off the people who are searching for her, that it's okay. Moreover, she understands more or less what he's going through, since she lost her leg a while back. They reuinte with Ellie's little "siblings," druid children the family has rescued along their journey.

Later ~ the main organizers of their group are shocked to return to their isolated cabin to find that not only have all the children survived the winter, and possible clashes with whoever's been hunting them for decades, but there's one extra child! And a talking cow. (I haven't decided whether some of these people are semi-antagonsists.) Meliodas's condition never improves (angst angst <3) but he takes up the task of looking after the kids alongside Elizabeth anyway- especially when she and the others are gone, working or otherwise. Oftentimes he and the spunky talking cow go on adventures in the forest or in town, collecting herbs or materials for crafts and toys. She carries him, Hawk-style. I can't remember her name but it was a silly one, and he saves her life once with his wings. He's also fought away intruders once while the 'adults' weren't home with Full Counter, being able to stand for long enough to use it before collapsing.

In this iteration, Meliodas recieves his ring from his new 'siblings' as they say that "it's the same color as the magic you used to protect us." Referring to the times he's used his demon magic around the house, and, unknowingly, to the fact his very presence has been the only thing keeping them safe from raiders on more than one occasion. Throughout it all Meliodas struggles with having to be the one cared for for once, and not being able to be the muscle of this group that so clearly would benefit from him being his 'usual' self. While his siblings think he's a genuine gift from God, and are more than happy to look after him as he does them, trading stories between them and cuddling up like he truly belongs, adult members of the family never take a shine to him and resent him somewhat, even perrfering when he was comatose. There's more (and more angst) but I should probably say less.

4. (TW: this one gets DARK with the demon brothers angst) modern fantasy ireland boarding school au" is actually another gift for @gh0stofyesterday, who can't escape me, from back in like feburary or something lol. It's an angsty modern-day genderqueer demon brothers and genderqueer elizabeth. Basically Meliodas tricks his snooty father into letting him and his brother (who's not technically old enough but academically girlboss yourself outta that condundrum zeldris) go to boarding school in his deceased mother's home country, where Meliodas plans to study interior design (he's gonna design the boar hat himself <3) and, against his father's wishes, join the gymnastic team. Little does he know that his online friends in his tween gymnastics discord server or whatever (The TC) are also going to end up there. ( I have the scene where they realize he's not the snooty daughter of the DK ceo and actually their Captain planned out already actually. they realize it when he beats the snot out of some guy that chases zeldris through the gymnasium lol).

Other plot points include! Elizabeth and Meliodas have a secret online romance as "Study buddies" and plan to perform a ceremony to use whatever their magic is unsealed to share a bit of that magic with each other, as a kind of marriage ceremony (peak 14 year old romance lol). Meliodas and Zeldris learn (originally Irish) sign language in order to communicate without their father snooping. Cusack and Chandler deal with being technical slaves to the Demon King and attempt to parent their protegees in more important ways than teaching them fencing, keeping their secrets, and buying them things. Gelda explains she never cuddles with her sisters for emotional support, Zel and Mel feel sorry for her . . . then figure out they are touch-starved and probably need therapy for that too. Hot springs date. Zel discovers Mel has been cuddling him while laying on his side specifically because there are fresh child abuse wounds across his back. Meliodas commandeers his gymnastics coach's coaching authority and starts an underground fencing ring upon being told he can't do that (we go to school in a castle! c'mon!). Zeldris tries to deal with a ginger-haired kid who seems equally hellbent on being his friend as he is his school rival. Depending on how dark I'm gonna make this, you might even get to see a prolouge where Zeldris forgoes a plan to murder - suicide his brother following his mother's funeral after meeting a small Gelda at the playground. Oh, and the DK having to fidgit uncomfortably in court. This one is basically a for-fun daydream, but a pal volunteed to beta it for me so it will eventually get written up for you all!

#this is fun!#can you tell I take notes when I read y'alls angst?#rings includes a pretty sweet meliodas death scene but I should probabaly like shut up and actually write and not just talk about it cause #my summaries aren't as good as the real thing i think #and are five hundred pages long. you should see what my english teachers have had to put up with.#book report? yes sir here's three thousand words what do you mean that's too long WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO DO LEAVE OUT THE IMPORTANT STUFF #beginning to think a little horror goes into everything I write but. i mean. spice. plus everyone clearly loves torturing these characters #what's more torturous than not being able to protect the ones you love cause you c a n ' t #it's three am and I'm wondering how I got so obsessed with these characters. Oops? anyway good writing practice

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