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deeplyshalllow · 12 hours ago

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I will agree with you that Fiyero is woefully underused in the musical, so we do have to use what we have to decipher what information we do have about him. Either way is headcanon.

However, this is what we get from act 1:

1) He is good at lying to people about who he is, all while being able to make himself likable

2) He is secretly unhappy and has been thinking about the day with the Lion Cub a lot

3) He takes the initiative to save Animals and help Elphaba, but in a way that doesn't immediately get them caught

With this in mind, along with his bitching in Thank Goodness and the fact that he immediately turns on the Wizard and runs off with Elphaba the moment he has a chance, I think it’s a much more plausible headcanon that he has always been working as a double agent than your headcanon that he’s decided instead to randomly embrace being a fascist.

“You're basing your interpretation of his character on speculation — because it is somewhat difficult, in some ways, to reconcile the compassionate boy we saw in the woods with the fascist commander he's become by Act II — but I'm basing my reading on sheer text; on the actions and statements on the page.”

Oh honey, you are so close!!! Maybe it’s hard to “reconcile the compassionate boy we saw in the woods with a fascist commander” because he isn’t one? Maybe if you “read by sheer text; on the actions and statements on the page” you’d realise that his actions in act one don’t make sense in act two if you read him as part of the regime? Are you sure you’re not “basing your interpretation of his character on speculation” because you don’t like Fiyeraba?

“Saying you'd totally join the Gestapo instead of the Resistance if given the chance — because of "resources and information" — is not the winning argument you think it is, I'm sorry, lol.”

Oh sorry, Fiyero should have just gone down to the resistance job shop and got a top post there! The resistance that, as far as we know, basically doesn’t exist, as it doesn’t seem like Elphaba has got much help either (we know there’s rebel Animals that shelter her, but she’s also at the point where she tries to beg her father for help and seriously considers just giving up and joining the Wizard). It is probably endlessly easier for Fiyero, especially with his connection to Glinda to get into the Gale Force.

You also completely ignored my second part of the argument. Someone has to do this job, if it’s not Fiyero it’s someone a lot worse. We know Fiyero has compassion for Animals, we know Fiyero wants to protect Elphaba (we literally see him doing so three times in act 2). If Fiyero places himself in command, however grim it might be, he now has some degree of control over Oz’s army and how much damage they can do to the Animals and Elphaba.

“None of which was REMOTELY planned, or even likely.”

It wasn’t planned that he’d meet her in the throne room, no, but it certainly was planned and relatively likely that, by putting himself as the head of the search for the Witch, that if she was found in a dangerous situation he could get her out of it. He manages to get all his guards away and for her to escape safely, he couldn’t have done this if he’d been in any other position.

If you’re talking about the wider context, no obviously Glinda taking over wasn’t planned from this. But you told me him being in the Gale Force achieved nothing, it saved Elphaba’s life and allowed the ending to happen.

“Yes, she was literally forced into that, lol. Claiming she wasn't forced into her position when she was literally captured and molded into an asset of the regime — and then moralizing about her trying to make the best out of her literal enslavement — whilst somehow insisting that Fiyero going out of his way to enlist as an armed servant of the regime wasn't "endorsing the regime", is actually absurd.”

Oh don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you patronise Glinda by saying she didn’t have a choice. Don’t you ignore those quotes I gave you showing how she enjoyed it. Even her sad verse in Thank Goodness imply she joined because she wanted it (and only later found out it wasn’t quite how she planned). No one was going to imprison her, (you think my headcanons are wild lol), in the movie she literally only went to follow Elphaba because Morrible told her to, in the play she was given a little more agency, but she still made it very clear she was going to “get her back”, there’s literally no reason at all to enslave her, even in their eyes she’s done nothing wrong.

But ok, let’s take your “enslavement” fantasy scenario. Fiyero is literally the next candidate for Morrible to “enslave”, she knows he and Elphaba were at least tentative friends, she might even have realised he was also absent after the day with the Lion Cub, he’s dating Glinda and his royal connections and fame and likeability make him a useful asset. If Morrible really is blackmailing people to join her on trumped up charges, it would be very easy for her to either use the Lion Cub situation to blackmail into it, or threaten to hurt Glinda if he does not.

Sounds far-fetched? Yeah, you’re right. He joined willingly. Like Glinda.

“He acted on spontaneous desire, as he always does, and is a nihilist who never gave a shit about any of the things (or people) he cast to the wind to begin with. "He lost everything" — and you expect me to find that brave and romantic, I take it? I don't. Throwing caution and care aside to run off and have a passionate night with the object of his affects isn't WRONG — and I've never said that it is — it's foolish and selfish and impulsive.”

This is headcanon.

This is canon: he pointed a gun at the Wizard to help Elphaba escape. He had to escape too. (Did they have to have sex in the woods? Obviously not, but that’s kind of not really here or there, the egg was already broken, might as well make an omelette).

“He doesn't think about the potential consequences of abandoning Glinda; for never cared about either his own safety or hers,”

I’m sorry, are you really blaming Glinda telling Morrible and the Wizard to spread a rumour about hurting Nessa on Fiyero? Talk about fucking victim blaming.

I’d argue he cares a lot about Glinda’s safety actually, it’s pretty telling that all three times he saved Elphaba in act 2 (funny, you haven’t mentioned that in your reply) he leaves Glinda in a place where she not only is safe but can’t possibly be seen as and arrested for supporting Elphaba. As for his own safety? Well he secures it in the throne room, by the cornfield scene he’s sort of out of options – so he gets his girls to safety and sacrifices himself – that’s not not knowing the consequences, it’s deciding he is ok with them.

“When he makes "plans", they're all very ad hoc and making resourceful use of situations that he absolutely did not (and could not) have planned for.”

Not the Elphaba faking her own death plan! That must have taken days as the scarecrow. And careful manoeuvring of everything involved!

“I think it's a bit sad that he behaves that way tbh: because it speaks to his pretty hollow existence, as Elphaba herself identified.”

Well I have happy news for you! He no longer has a hollow existence! That’s literally what act two is trying to tell us!

Elphaba: Fiyero, you frightened me. I thought, I though you might have changed.

Fiyero: I have... changed.

You’ve got me seeing through different eyes

Somehow I’ve fallen under your spell

and somehow I’m feeling it’s up that I fell

[Wicked Act II spoilers]

[edited for tone and clarity of purpose, apologies for initial crudeness and frustration]

Okay, obviously I'm biased, but I'm gonna need the Fiyeraba shippers to please set a lot of your people straight about some things. I've seen way too many people trying to say that Glinda is just a selfish bimbo and that Fiyero is a virtuous and selfless figure more worthy of Elphaba's love. I'll set aside for now the idea of "worthiness" in this context. But let's start off with Fiyero joining the Wizard. Hoo boy...

Yes, he was initially somewhat less tolerant of the propaganda against Elphaba than Glinda was; yes, he was secretly trying to find her so he could run away with her or whatever. But honey: those facts DO NOT fully absolve his actions as the Wizard's top officer, or selfish recklessness throughout Act II. I see so many popular threads and posts romanticizing and whitewashing with "oh but he didn't REALLY join the Wizard, he just pretended so he could try to get to Elphie! It's all for love, and he sacrificed everything for her!" As if the literal captain of the literally fascist forces responsible for the oppression of Animals wasn't equally responsible for said oppression?? Hello? Fiyero really didn't think of seeking out Elphaba in ANY other way that DIDN'T involve becoming *checks notes*... the trusted leader of the troops committing all the abuses she's fighting against in the first place???? Like it's cool and all that he helped with Brrr, and it's all well and good that he planned on betraying the Wizard as soon as he found Elphaba (which took literal years, so I guess we're left to assume he was prepared to just keep doing fascism indefinitely if she didn't show up????), but uh... it's kind of concerning to how eager some of you are to make excuses for this dude volunteering as the head of the Ozian Gestapo??? smdh

He didn't accomplish anything from it either, by the way — like yeah, we get it, he did everything he did whilst silently fantasizing about running away with the Witch he was being paid to hunt. Fine. But I can't be the only one who doesn't buy that as an actual excuse???? Like, guys: nobody forced him to join the fascist army — even with crazy ulterior motives. He wasn't coerced into it; it wasn't his only choice or anything. Searching for Elphaba did not somehow compel him to go and volunteer to follow (or to give!) orders in the name of the dictator who was trying to have her assassinated the entire time. He could have just not done all that. (Genuinely so curious how the second film plans on covering that material tbh)

Glinda made several questionable decisions that can be (and have been) debated, but she is still very unambiguously a victim. Her position in the Wizard's regime was foisted upon her. There are things we can discuss, but I find that many folks need reminding that Glinda would undoubtedly have been disposed of (or worse) if she failed to make herself useful. I mean hell: she wasn't even supposed to meet the Wizard in the first place — she was only there because of Elphie. If she'd tried to resist, it would have immediately gotten her labeled the Witch's accomplice. As soon as she'd chosen not to get on the broom, her fate was out of her hands, and all available options were varying degrees of horrible.

That's not the case with Fiyero. He went to the Wizard all on his own; no one ever cornered or forced him into it. Thinking Animals are people, and having a crush on Elphaba, simply did not stop him from carrying out the regime's orders — for years. It's not clear exactly how long he's been captain at the start of Act II, but the clear implication is that he's been a soldier for most of the time skip. I've seen Fiyeraba accounts with headcanons about him acting as a double agent, secretly doing stuff to help Animals — and that's a great idea, it would indeed serve to make a lot of his actions way more palatable — but until we actually get to SEE some of that (maybe they'll add it for the movie version of Act II; we'll have to see), there is nothing in the story to suggest that. He certainly didn't do a damn thing for all those Animals who were enslaved and caged in the Wizard's palace — and we don't see a single other Animal outside of there in Act II, so as far as we know Fiyero has participated over those years in the near-total removal of Animals from Ozian society. In the name of "finding Elphaba". Not fighting for her cause. Just finding HER. For HIMSELF.

It's fine to have a ship you like, obviously — and there is genuinely a lot to like about Fiyeraba, I don't dislike the idea of them as a couple or as friends — but come on guys: please stop those out there idealizing Fiyero as somehow a clear "morally-superior" alternative to Glinda, lol. The dude had power, access, and opportunities, for years, that he could have wielded in any number of really selfless, revolutionary ways. He didn't. And I propose (apparently controversially): he simply didn't want to. And that — at the end of the day — is (much as some would like to deny it) true to his character. He always WANTED to be self-absorbed and shallow, and all his actions are consistent with that. Elphaba saw depth and discontentment in him, yes: but (and I cannot stress this enough) when given the chance, he channeled that in the wrong direction. He didn't confront that and become a better person — for the most part he just displaced and projected it onto Elphaba as an object of obsession, and put on an even thicker pretense than before.

All his actions — regardless of the complexity he has deep down — are those of a man who never gives one fuck about anything or anyone, except (kinda sorta) Elphaba. But even then: at no time does the care he has for her seem to extend to caring about any of her wants or needs outside of sexual validation from him, or how she might feel about his actions, or indeed the impacts of those actions upon her, her cause, or anyone or anything else. I don't think it should be all that controversial to say: he doesn't think through the wider repercussions of anything he does — thoughtlessness is just one of his core character traits. He doesn't think ahead or see meaning in anything outside of what can temporarily excite him, in the moment. I think people place a little too much weight on Elphaba clocking him with regard to his internal pain, and seem to expect (understandably of course) that she is not only right, but moreover that he will grow from that in a positive direction, based on her influence.

But he doesn't. If anything, we get a surprising inverse: he pretty much proves her wrong. Not to say he didn't have hidden depth and all that, like she said: but his hypothetical heart of gold proves not to really amount to much in practice. He doesn't grow out of his shallowness and his self-centeredness: he grows into it in a way that he hadn't quite yet in school. Where once he was only masking an internal listlessness, after he's been cracked open by Elphaba he decides to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow, not just coasting by. He performs in new ways — as a soldier, eventually as a "fiancé", etc. — but by Act II we meet a Fiyero who has staked the last remaining shred of humanity in him on the vain pursuit of the only object of his desire that has ever been unavailable to him, and firmly chosen to say to hell with everyone and everything else.

When put to the test, Fiyero sacrifices Glinda, the Animals, and all else that Elphaba actually cared about, to pursue his own unresolved crush from college. Mostly to get in her pants, really — as harsh as I'm sure that sounds. But let me be frank: that is literally all he ever accomplishes in the show. He gives her dick one time, and one of his castles, and that's it. That's the culmination of his years trying to find her — years in which he actively worked as one of the stormtroopers (or even the one commanding them) committing untold crimes against Animalkind (who, again, it seems have been all but erased from Oz by Act II): y'know, the very crimes Elphaba sacrificed her life to try and stop????? He spent the most important time of his life — of his own free will — being a fascist soldier, but he "did it for her" somehow, so according to some, it's perfectly fine. Heroic, even. Yikes??

But let's make something very clear (since my original version of this post caught a lot of flak, including slurs and other rudeness):

I like Fiyero. I find his role extremely interesting (I could do a whole dissertation on him, but I'm especially a fan of the way his proving Elphaba's assessment of him wrong presents a fascinating parallel and contrast with Glinda, which I think is lost on a lot of people). But PLEASE stop with all the misguided Glinda slander and idealization of Fiyero. By all means, thirst! But don't give me all this bullshit about him deserving Elphaba more, or being super deep, or being really principled or noble or whatever else. He does have layers, and quite intriguing ones, but his insides are straw — he isn't meant to have some deep, overwrought emotional core or motivations; he has passions that he acts upon when given the chance. That's it. And that's fine. Actually kind of refreshing in a story rooted in simple children's fantasy but rife with intensely complicated personalities. Fiyero makes it his mission to represent denial of depth and embrace of raw, spontaneous desire — and I for one love that, and wish others appreciated it.

And in all seriousness, shipping wars aside: by the end of the story, it's Glinda who is ultimately vindicated, and has — for all her faults — made the necessary choices to fulfill Elphaba's wishes, bring down the regime, etc. And all that despite herself. She's miserable: not just because of the mistakes she made, but because of her correct moves as well. Fiyero is simply not — and could never be — that person. And that's okay! Like I said: I am not anti-Fiyero. Fiyero's willingness to throw it all away for the sake of sheer, overriding passion is a huge part of what people like about him, of course — and it's an obvious factor in the attraction between him and Elphaba, because she has her own flavor of that impulse as well — but I'd actually argue that it's not romantic, it's his fatal flaw. And thematically that's fantastic! But I just don't believe that it somehow means he "deserves Elphaba more" because he "gave up his life for her" or whatever. In part because NOBODY truly "deserves" Elphie tbh, not 100% (and I question anybody who claims otherwise), but ultimately because I don't accept the idea that his fleeting acts of passion make up for all the shit leading up to them (or even proceeding after them tbh). At least Glinda managed to do what Elphaba always wanted in the end — but I would die on this hill even if Gelphie didn't exist.

You don't have to agree with my analysis of Fiyero and his choices, relationships, etc. — that's fine. What isn't fine is trying to portray Glinda as some kind of spineless traitor whore for the Wizard and Fiyero as a conscientious hero who earned Elphie through self-sacrifice. That's just not the story that was written. It's WAY messier and more interesting than that.

#wicked meta #jesus media literacy has gone down the drain

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girl-named-matty · 3 days ago

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Random Sebastian Sallow Headcanons pt.5

Just really random headcanons about Sebastian Sallow, what more can I say?

Loves reading biographies. It's always an opportunity to learn, and we all know how he feels about that. However, I think he'd like reading autobiographies even more since he thinks it's more interesting coming from the perspective of the actual person.

That being said, he also has a diary he writes in quite often. And yes, he doodles in it constantly.

Pretty decent in Wizards Chess; however, he's only beaten Garreth once because we all know how good those Weasleys are at Wizards Chess. But Sebastian is 100% definitely the kind of guy to over-analyze every single move to the point where it's hardly fun to play with him anymore, but hey, at least he's determined!

Definitely the "rules are meant to be broken" kind of guy, but he understands the difference between important rules and useless rules (kinda 💀).

Coffee was definitely different back then; however, he'd probably be a bit of an addict, to be honest. I just KNOW that boy is staying up wayyyy too late and needs the caffeine to stay up. (He hates the taste, but it gives him energy before it makes him go kaput lol.)

He's an extrovert, but put a good book in his hands, and he might as well have become an introvert with the way he's ignoring people.

Big fan of exploring, whether that's the grounds around Hogwarts or exploring some book/literature. He likes being out in nature, so you can best believe he's been to the Forbidden Forest quite a few times.

He's quite a big flirt but doesn't know much of what to do after that. Flirtatious behavior comes naturally to him as he's a pretty confident guy, but once the other person actually shows genuine interest in him, he gets a little stuck because he was not expecting it.

He's clumsy; let's be real here.

Can trip on his own shoes, up the stairs, down the stairs, on air; literally anything. It happened a lot more when he was younger, and he's gotten better about fixing his balance, but he used to have bruises all the time from where he had fallen. (Me too, Seb. Me too.)

A tad impatient but not out of malice, he's just the kind of guy to really want to get up and do things, to try and get them done. Dwelling on issues has never brought him any peace of mind, so he's ready to get in there, do the job, and get out. Which could possibly lead to quite a few of his issues LOL. (ifykyk)

You know how his hair is hard to draw? (artists, I can hear you screaming from here). Yeah, well, it's hard to style as well. Ever since he was a boy, his hair was always quite messy, and his mother used to try her best to tame it, but he was a rather energetic boy, so it didn't really stay how it was styled.

And he never got old enough with his father for him to teach Sebastian how to do it, so he kinda had to learn it himself. But hey, we all love Sebastian's iconic hair. (Let's be real; we all probably want to run our hands through it.)

Behind his teenage-ish recklessness, his ambition contributes to his devotion. He's a very devoted person, whether that's to what he believes in, what he does, family, friends, or lovers; he's just a really devoted guy.

If he were in modern times, he'd have great music taste. I can't tell you exactly what he'd listen to since I have too many opinions about that overall; however, I can tell you that it absolutely rocks.

Over all, as much as I like to joke about this little twit, I love him. ;)

#hogwarts legacy #hl #sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow headcanons #sebastian sallow fanfiction

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blackknight-kai · 2 days ago

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Black Myth Wukong Monkeys: LORE/HC stuff

I’ve had some recent thoughts about BMW and Wukong/Destined One.

So everyone has their own “Wukong looks like this” idea based on different chapter animations, in game armor, some back end files, etc. *I will not be proving or disproving anyone fyi*

I decided to take a little bit of a deeper look.

A lot of people have different head canons about “how much fur” WK/DO actually has under his armor (Valid question 😏). This is based on ‘monkey types in real life’ or some hints / glimpses we see in game or even other media for Wukong. So I wanted to set out to look at the other monkeys we see in game. The issue? Blurry background monkeys LOL. (Some images will be…blurry ish…)

I was watching some TikTok’s with some Spider Monkeys - if you know the family youre awesome - and while looking on a first glance they look nearly identical. But looking closer you’ll start seeing the differences in fur, face color patterns - down to freckles, mannerisms etc etc etc. I already like anyone else was expecting Monkey demons to have some diversity to them but just like any ‘real life’ animal sometimes it’s not a lot of diversity between a same species. (I’m not thinking about house pets or birds, I’m thinking on the generic “lion” or “tiger” look if that makes sense).

Pulling up the game the first other monkey we see besides Wukong is the old Monkey - he has white hair and very thin fur (even a fur less tail). He almost looks like Destined One too in structure but not quite, he holds some less human mannerisms than even DO. (Will come back to that)

Shen Monkey was also the next monkey to look at - brightened up images show him to be dark in skin & fur color. He also has patches of fur and places like his under arms missing fur. He has a thin thatch of hair on the center of his chest with a bushy head of hair/fur and his face is a bit more ‘monkey’ than WK/DO’s. His feet are shorter than WK/DO’s too (toes also just a bit). Also, he has POINTY ears.

Link to the post I got these from @/aulostheremin https://www.tumblr.com/aulostheremin/773263251799687168/i-might-be-asking-too-much-but-can-we-have-fanart (wasn’t sure if you’d be okay tagging youuuuuuu)

After looking at him I took a look at the blurry background monkeys in that opening scene and started to notice something….interesting.

The background monkeys looked almost generic right? But on closer look I started to realize they had many differences.

You can see their fur colors vary for starters, some being tan, to brown, to that onyx greyish blue color. Same with skin color - some have peach/pail skin and others have that grey blue skin that Shen Monkey has.

*See above different color furs / skins.*

Most of them also have fur less chests, but this varies too - some having more fur less skin and others having a little less on their chests. For instance - these two monkeys *SEE BELOW*. Both are ‘wide’ bodied but one has a more square fur less pattern while the other has a more upside down triangle pattern. ALSO - the triangle pattern monkey seems to have thinner/furless skin on the underside of his arms where as the square pattern monkey seems to have full fur other than on his chest. (Also, is that war paint on the triangle monkey?? The two lines - one shown running down his pec? If so, that is a neat idea I am absolutely head canoning that they used tribal war paint for warriors for certain meanings be it rank or things like courage/bravery - maybe they have trials and such etc)- mini note yes I am incorporating stuff like this in future fics.

The next thing I noticed was their clothes. Some apparently wear loin clothes, pants only, shirt and pants, or nothing at all. Most seem to wear clothes though in some fashion. (You can see in above images some of those clothes.

Below - also as a note I think the tail placement here wasn’t supposed to be noticed because honestly its a little uh off - but there is a Monkey that runs in front of the camera at the beginning of the game. Fully nude. This monkey appears while blurry, to have THICK FULL body hair. Even on that booty and it’s hard to tell, but honestly it looks like he has fur on his chest.

As another note, we cannot tell, but based on look alone they have ROUND ears mostly vs pointy like Shen Monkey. So, we have different fur patterns, colors, states of dress/status where next? (Maybe pointy ears are something less common? Interesting thought)

Their mannerisms.

Watching the scene its clear these background monkeys really lean into ‘monkey’ walk and actions/behaviors. They are VERY bow legged and have that sway you see in Planet of The Apes. Their chests are a bit wider/barreled and their limbs a little thicker too than WK/DO. Some of them have their arms curled up to their bodies as well. They squat too (mostly) instead of sitting and remain closer to the ground, but looking around you’ll see another interesting thing - outside of WK/DO, the old Monkey, there is one other monkey deep into the background that ISNT squatting like the rest. Instead they are sitting like a person, like WK/DO was in that scene before he stands up.

Shen Monkey ALSO sits like a human (see above pics of him).

Even the way WK/DO & the old monkey walk is more ‘human leaning’ with WK/DO being even more so than the old monkey. It shows me that WK/DO is still an anomaly even in those that are ‘human leaning’ because he is a true blend of the two but also something all his own, the old monkey being the only one closest to him in this.

Why does this all of this matter? It shows me the difference and diversity between the monkeys. Some are very heavy in their ‘monkey’ appearance and body movements (maybe slightly even brain function on a more primal level?) and others lean into more human aspects. BUT the more human leaning monkeys are not as common it seems. Essentially this makes my brain run. It shows a level of difference that is somewhat on par with how humans are diverse as well which again was what caught my eye and made me wonder about these Monkey Demons. Such as are there preferences of appearance, or do certain features make them more warriors/gatherers or what about intelligence of some? What differentiates leaders & followers or what genes get passed on? (Yes I’m adding this shit to my head canons LOL)

As another side note, I think WK/DO is just taller than his monkey kind. Mainly because he stands so far upright. Also also also, paying close attention in that opening scene the background monkeys tails are so cute LOL we get to see a little tail movement.

Okay so what conclusion does this bring us to? They are suuuuuper diverse. Meaning, if you see WK/DO with specific fur patterns vs another person? It works either way you see it because genuinely there are so many different variations, be it mostly furry with a small patch on his chest furless or the fur running down most of his torso…or even missing fur on the underside of his arms or having fur on the underside of his arms. Also the booty discourse of does he have furry cheeks or not honestly….up to you. Also I think it shows WK/DO is truly a 1 of a kind (which we knew duh) but ‘human leaning’ is such a rare feature (I’m assuming) and WK/DO doesnt even quite fit there either.

So at the end of the day……theres no wrong answer here. Just was doing some digging 🧐☺️ this was to help ME because I have ideas 😉 and I can’t wait to start digging into them in fics.

@szynkaaa has another in depth look at this too sharing the same thoughts 😉 https://szynkaaa.tumblr.com/post/769217021192945664/the-shape-of-monkey

#black myth wukong #black myth wukong x reader #sun wukong #the destined one #journey to the west #monkey business #I was diving in deeply for no real reason 🤣

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numberonetacostan · 3 days ago

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TACO'S TIRADE ANALYSIS

OKAY! It is time for the requested analysis of Taco’s Tirade. This is my first time doing a big analysis of like, anything, so I’m very sorry if this is the worst take on the song of all time or if everything I’m saying is obvious!! Can anyone tell i'm nervous about posting this lol. I have a lot of thoughts about Taco and her Tirade. I love it so much. Feel free to imagine me gesturing wildly with tears in my eyes as you read this. We’ll go in sections based on the lyrics and visuals :) Lyrics will be inside brackets, then commentary will be below! Please enjoy!! <3

Tw: slight discussion of suicidal ideation

[Any moment now...

Are you sure this is what you want?

(Scoff) Oh spare me your spin, you tablet tabloid. If you want to psychoanalyze someone, don't look at me.]

Alright, so we immediately see Taco still in a very emotional state. Mepad asking if she’s sure she wants to interfere with the challenge immediately provokes her, and starts her off on her entire tirade. Because he asked if she was sure. She immediately insults him and moves to change the subject and get his attention off of herself and her own mental well-being. She’s very in-denial of her own emotions and emotional pain in this song, as we’ll see going forward, and remains quite defensive for a lot of the song.

[Look at them! It's so pathetic,

How they run to fetch their sticks.

Sure, call me polemic, unsympathetic,

At least I know other tricks!]

We start here with her, as I stated, changing the subject and shifting the view onto the contestants figuratively and somewhat literally, as they’re all seen picking up the sticks for the challenge, although she still remains the main focus of the shot. We move to her dancing around Mepad, who takes up the center of the shot, but Taco is still the focus here!! She’s moved from deflecting conversation to the contestants to, in a way, defending herself, despite Mepad not having insinuated anything yet. Taco is calling herself polemic and unsympathetic here, not only because she thinks that of herself, what with her abysmal self-esteem that we see more of later in the song, but because she thinks that’s what Mepad thinks of her. Not only do her only other two friends ever hate her (I wouldn’t go that far for Mic, but that’s definitely what Taco thinks), but the rest of the season 1 cast don’t seem to think too highly of her either, yeah? Mephone certainly isn’t happy to see her soon after the song ends, and season 2 contestants like Mic and Suitcase have been shown to be wary of her before they’ve even met her. (She doesn’t know about the season 3 cast so they don’t really matter here.) The point being, Mepad is Mephone’s right hand (leg?) man, and Taco doesn’t know about their argument, so she’s pretty reasonably assuming that Mepad dislikes her just as much as everyone else does. So, she’s saying what she thinks he’s thinking about her before he can!! Forgive me for not knowing the technical name for it, but this is an actual way of deflecting criticism!! I’ll use an example. Say you made a drawing of a person, a little stick guy, but the proportions are off. One of their legs are way bigger than another, but you still want to post it anyway. To keep people from telling you that one leg is bigger than another, you might say “here’s my stick dude!! One leg is bigger than another but I’m too lazy to fix it.” By stating the potential criticism before anyone else can, it makes others MUCH less likely to comment on it themselves!! And that’s what I believe Taco is doing here!!! I hope I explained that well enough. She then goes on defending herself, self-justifying by saying she at least “knows other tricks.” I read this as her doing things outside the game, and it’s limits. That could be her acknowledging how she doesn’t play by the rules of the competition like they do, but I see it as a note of the hypocrisy/lying to herself we see from Taco in the song. And!! In the transition to the next verse, she has her eyes closed!! Which happens everytime we travel in and out of that purple-y space! We are seeing Taco’s inner image here people!!!!!

[Look at me and all you'll see is the debris of some defective outcast,

A frenetic, antithetic (if poetic) little iconoclast,]

Here we have Taco insulting herself more! Yay! She’s getting more emotional as we get into the song, and she becomes less and less able to keep her usually sturdy walls up. She’s just lost Mic, and as I’ll go over later in the analysis, is expecting she will be permanently dead relatively soon. Of course she’s having a lot of trouble keeping it together! You know how sometimes, if you’re trying not to cry and someone asks if you’re okay, it makes you burst into tears? It’s like that! Mepad asked if she was sure, and the dam began to break. So, the descriptors she uses tell us a lot about her view of herself!!! Debris. Broken remains of what was. That’s pretty accurate to how Taco is feeling right now. She’s drowning in debris, really! The debris of her old, broken friendships, the debris of her master plan to win season 1, and it’s to the point where she sees herself as broken and incomplete as well. She believes she’s broken!!! And that leads us right into her calling herself defective. Imperfect or faulty. She’s very separated from everyone else, yeah? Everyone else (to her knowledge) lives in the hotel. Everyone else is part of the group. Everyone else has people who care about them. Everyone else happily plays by the rules of the game. After everything, compared to everyone else? No wonder she sees herself as incapable of changing, she believes there’s something just, deeply wrong with her as a being. If everyone else can do this and have this, she has to be the problem. And almost right after she started putting forth that effort to get Mic to trust her, focusing on someone other than herself, Mic left her. Rightfully so, but please it is so important to think of it from Taco’s perspective rather than Mic’s in this analysis. Taco was trying to give Mic what she thought she wanted (recognition), trying to be a good friend, and it immediately lost her the most important person in her life. She’s been watching for years, she sees everyone else making strong connections, but she can’t do it when she tries. And before that, it’s her plan failing. Like Brian said in a stream, it was inconceivable to her that her plan would fail. Yet it did. And after a long enough time alone out in the woods, there isn’t anyone left to blame for that but herself. She was the reason her plan had failed, and she’d lost everything. Of course she’d see herself as defective. Outcast is pretty obvious, because she checks all of those boxes. Lives hidden, alone, and very much away from everyone else. She is very very much not part of the group anymore.

Frenetic!! Fast, wild, and uncontrolled. Frankly, something you’d be more likely to describe Taco’s season 1 persona with, yeah? It’s quite different from how Taco usually tries to present herself, being cunning and calculating around others. But of course, the further we get into the song, the more honest Taco unintentionally can get about how she sees herself. She had her whole plan for season 1 down, but it was in the end where she lost control over the situation in which she lost control of herself in which she lost everything. It was in the ship, where something she didn’t and realistically couldn’t have planned for happens that she once again lost control of the situation and thus control of herself, and used violence despite Mic’s plea not to, in which she lost everything again. Of course she’d see herself as wild and uncontrollable, because moments in which she was are standout moments of her life! Not to mention again, how she’s the contestant who tried to steal the prize and cheated in season 2. For better or for worse, she’s much less controlled by the rules of the game than the other contestants. Just another thing that separates her from the group, yeah? Antithetic!!!! In direct opposition to something. And the following word as well, iconoclast, an attacker of a beloved institution or beliefs. She’s against the game that everyone else plays again and again, something that really matters a lot to them, but we see in the show and especially in the finale that the game isn’t good for them. As much as it’s not always for quite the right reason and exactly how she ends up going about it, she has a strong point about the game itself and what it can do to all of them. But she still sees herself as the villain. Despite her genuine, and correct, belief that ending the game will make things better for everyone, she still sees herself as the villain!! And it’s an image of herself that she’s had for a long time, and that she can’t shake after everything, because she doesn’t believe she can be anything else. And I did not forget how she mentions herself as being “poetic!” Whether that’s her believing in “karmic justice” or whatever and that she got what was coming with her, or believing her role as a season 1 finalist who’s come back out of the shadows to try and end season 2, it is one of the few neutral adjectives she uses for herself in the song. It might even be her previous popularity and persona she’s referencing here, that antitheticism and iconoclasm being how she went from a silly, well-loved character to a serious, well. She’s still loved out of canon but none of the people she knows like her at all. She’s the antithesis of what she used to be, and her coming out of the act destroyed the beloved image of who she had pretended to be.

As for the visuals here, how the scene fades back into her and Mepad is so important! She falls off of a cliff into darkness!! A very clear visual representation of how she sees things having gone. After her fight over the suitcase with OJ in the s1 finale, she kept falling and falling and falling, deeper down into the dark hole she’s dug herself, until she’s landed right where she is as she’s singing. Not only that, but this visual is another excellent representation of how she sees things as over for her. How she sees herself as incapable of changing, starting over, or getting better at all. Think about the cliff we know of on the island. Now think about who actually fell off that cliff at the end of season 1. Think about what happened to them. They all DIED!!! And she is picturing herself falling off this cliff!! I doubt this was intended to be a sign of suicidal ideation for her, since ii does have a younger target demographic (ex. Justy said in a stream that OJ and Paper sleeping in the same bed would be a bit too mature), but it can definitely be read that way. Seeing herself as “dead” in a way revolves around that disbelief in self-improvement she has, she thinks it’s too late for her in the same way it’s too late to save someone who’s died!!! And if anyone is questioning whether the scene is just a visual effect or if it’s definitely Taco’s inner picture-y thing, please note her closed eyes during the transition from her falling from the cliff to standing with Mepad!! She is picturing these visuals as she sings!!

[But I won't live in the past.

(Spoken) I almost won this game once, you know. But!]

So we all agree that Taco is totally living in the past, right? She’s saying she’s moved on, she’s telling Mepad and herself that the past doesn’t matter and that she doesn’t care about it, and then immediately she mentions how she almost won before. She has not healed at all, and is not over a single thing that happened!!! She is doing so awful I love her <3. She longs for everything she’s lost constantly, because she’s lost everything!!!!!

[History is rearranged just to credit those who win the glory,

So reality is changed in the edit when they spin the story,]

So!!! Interestingly enough, I think that these lines are quite a bit about the disparities between OJ and Taco!! So, Taco had a whole strategy going into season 1 that got her into the finals, and had it not been for Bow, she would have won! She’d planned meticulously, and in the s1 finale is shown to have great physical capabilities, at least to the point to which she was able to get way ahead of OJ. And, while this may be by great bias towards Taco speaking at least in part, OJ… did not go to such lengths. Don’t get me wrong though, this is definitely a thing. It’s brought up in the show that he wasn’t a huge player in the game! Multiple times!!! S1E15 “The Tile Divide,” after OJ wins immunity with help from Paper Mephone4 says “OJ wins! Wow, that hasn’t happened for a while.” And in S1EP16 “The Penultimate Poll,” Pickle says “-even though [OJ] barely actually won any challenges.” Yet after all is said and done, Taco is outcasted, has nothing, and is disliked by pretty much everyone, and OJ is hailed as the “King of Inanimate Insanity”, is rich, and becomes the de facto group leader with his hotel. The way the narrative has been spun does certainly glorify OJ beyond his actual performance in the competition. And with OJ having his massive ego problems, I don’t doubt that he definitely let that get to his head and contributed to that narrative himself.

And in this shot we have Taco looking down at the hotel from the forest, the same way she’s looking down on everyone participating in the game and how she’s been watching Mic (and presumably Pickle) from the outside. Only now, she’s even further away from them.

[And we choose, to feel this pain,]

Taco denying her emotions again!!!! She likes to be in control, and she can not control her feelings nor keep pushing them down as she has been, so she’s onto deny deny deny!! She is in a lot of pain, and she knows it, so she deflects by saying she’s choosing to feel the pain of her losses. She’s keeping up her act, her defense, by desperately holding on and pretending she has control over these feelings!! I’m certain she’s tried to control them!! To justify herself, replace loneliness with anger, but it hasn’t worked!!! And her defensiveness is reflected in the visuals as well, her putting her hand up to keep a distance between her and Mepad, her still stubbornly keeping up those walls and forcing him away as he looks concerned for her.

[And we lose, more than we gain…]

OH BOY TIME TO LOSE MORE THAN WE GAIN. I use this phrase daily. I'm serious. A pretty obvious reference to Mic having said she gained nothing, and also an acknowledgement that their partnership truly meant something to Taco and is still greatly affecting her. Which is obvious to the audience, but not only is Mepad learning things about Taco and her issues through the song, but we really see Taco starting to fall apart, accidentally implying the feelings that she’s so desperate to keep down!! She’s like a trauma volcano <3. Anyways, Taco had gained a lot when she’d met Mic, even if it took her quite some time to realise, and by the time she did she’d lost it all, again. AS FOR THE VISUALS we once again move into Taco’s head!! The transitions here for the beginning and end of this short sequence have her with her eyes closed!! She’s walking, and hard stops when she sees Pickle and the time travel portal. You see her little feet slide to a stop on her heels! She leans away from him, leans towards him just a tad, and immediately turns and walks away, only to see Mic. She hard stops when she sees Mic too, though it’s less extreme than it was for Pickle. And when she does this, she reaches a hand out towards Mic. It’s for a few reasons I think. Holding it out to try and keep that hurt away, protect her from her thoughts of missing Mic and how much she must hate her, fully reaching out because she misses Mic dearly and that pain is so fresh, reaching out to the person she’s been so close to, closer than anyone before. Another part of it, I think, is how her conflicts with both Pickle and Mic went. With Pickle, Taco was the one who insulted him, claimed they were never friends, and cut things off. Thus, she hard stops when she sees him, only leans a bit closer to him, before turning around and walking away. With Mic, Taco was the one who was left this time. Mic cut things off with her. So she’s left reaching out to Mic, as Mic’s image leaves the screen, and Taco collapses onto her knees where she is. Taco’s left on the ground, squeezing her eyes closed and clutching her head as the darkness in the background, the darkness in Taco’s head closes in on her, until she closes her eyes and jumps straight back into her villain act, the song speeding up with her as she keeps trying to get away from all of her feelings!!! My queen with awful coping skills <3.

[But I will break this cycle,

Of mistakes, unlike all,

Of these snakes whom I call to condemn,]

So! We see Taco hard cutting from her guilt and sadness, straight into her evil plan. Right back into her villain front as she realises she’s begun to open up and get emotional!!! So she’s explaining her plan to Mepad, and projects her own self-hatred and experiences very hard onto the contestants. She’s upset about what happened between her and Mic and sees the game as at fault for what happened as she’s trying to justify things to herself, and push down the guilt she feels about their split. Heck, I’d say she’s probably blaming the game for what happened between her and Pickle right now, even if that one is more on her. And she sees the final four as complacent in what the game does, with them all continuing even though none of them are even enjoying themselves anymore. Most of them haven’t been enjoying themselves for a while now, but they still stay in line and play, as they’re programmed to. This is a bit off track, but it’s important to keep in mind that at this point, Taco has been acting more outside of her programming for longer than any of the other contestants. She was never in whatever sort of waiting-mode they end up in inside the hotel, and she’s cared less and less about the rules of the game as time has gone on. Her plot in the first season was done fully inside the rules of the game, but we see her having broken out of those constraints in season 2, with her encouraging Mic to straight up attack other contestants, which is implied by Taco to be against the rules. And she keeps interfering against those same rules of the competition. Like Marsh breaking the rules by leaving the show’s parameters, Taco explicitly goes against what is meant to happen in the game. And here she is at the peak of that, having gone from breaking the rules of the game to wanting to break the game, the cycle of mistakes, entirely. Her calling the remaining contestants “snakes” of all things specifically is interesting as well, since I’m sure plenty of the season 1 cast would use that to describe Taco. Part of it is her projecting, but another part of it is her actually seeing her own mistakes in the remaining contestants. Keeping secrets from each other (Knife), never properly talking out interpersonal issues (Suitcase & Baseball), and plain loneliness (Lightbulb). And she’s condemning them for their complacency in all of it, for their actions, most certainly in part with her efforts to ignore her own feelings and as well to call out how the game changes people and makes them act.

[If I can't win the prize,

I'll play this last reprisal,

Just to bring their lies all to an end.

-Ack!]

The first line here is more of Taco playing up her villain act. She mentions later on in the episode, while she’s being more honest since it’s surrounding Mic territory, to the final four that she doesn’t care about the money anymore. And I really believe she doesn’t! She’s broken out of that programming after having connected with Mic. She was one of the contestants, if not the contestant, made to be most dedicated to getting that money, so of course she mentions it as she’s still desperately keeping up her front!!! But she says in the very next line that this is her “last reprisal,” she clearly doesn’t intend to interfere or interact with the game again, much less try to swoop in and steal the million. And the last reprisal line is very important!!!! Notice how in the visuals, Taco lets herself fall out of a tree as she says this and upon landing she’s hurt by her injury. There is symbolism here guys!!!!!!! She is letting herself fall here. In her eyes, she doesn’t have anything left to fight for anymore. She’s lost the people important to her, she’s lost any goals she’d had driving her forward, and she hates herself!! She knows she’s injured, and that her injury could very well be lethal, as we see later in the episode, but she’s doing nothing to minimize the risk to herself. She’s not going to sit away and let herself feel and process, she’s going to burn the game down and die with it!!!! This, my friends, is called passive suicidal ideation and self-destructive behavior!!!!! And her facade starts to falter again and she mentions bringing their lies to an end!! Because she is lying to herself, and she herself is not ready to stop holding on to her lies, either to herself or to others in her persona. Bringing the game and all the lies tangled up in it to an end means she would finally have to face everything, and just thinking about that is enough to wipe the villainous grin off her face. But she’s still stubbornly going through with her plot, because she isn’t truly expecting she’ll have to face it, again because she is fully expecting to die permanently in the near future!!!!

[You need regeneration.

Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in that process.

Of course not.

Why "of course not?".

You believe yourself to be incapable of starting over, in more ways than one. I do not know who you lost, but is it not possible to get them back?]

MEPAD TIME!!!! Okay, here we have Mepad (rip king you would have loved the storyboards of your own death) urging Taco to heal!!! He’s looking out for her physical well-being, he can tell that she’s in pain and that her injury is quite dangerous, that being especially obvious the way he emphasises “need” in the line. And he is implying that she needs emotional healing as well!! He starts his Therapad-ing in his next line!! <3 He is very clearly worried about her, a lot of his presence in the first half of the song is just him looking at Taco with big concerned eyes!!!

And Taco has zero faith in the recovery process, between her, as Mepad helpfully says, believing herself to be incapable of starting over in more ways than one, her believing no one would want her to be recovered, her having a hunch of Mephone’s reluctance to revive her, or her own inability to see much of a future for herself, she does not believe she can come back!!! Angst!!!!! She is hurting so bad I love her <3

And Mepad is an empathy king!! And is probably the least biased against her out of everyone on the island!! And he can see beneath her crumbling exterior!!!! So her self-loathing and regret and everything she’s trying to push down is obvious to him. Of course she doesn’t believe she can be revived. And we see even Taco is surprised and even a bit miffed by this!!! Aside from Mic to a lesser extent, Mepad is the only person who can really see through her facade. Mic did try, and saw that Taco was hiding things, don’t get me wrong, but Taco was much more stable at that point and shut Mic’s attempts to see underneath her image down much harder than she is able to do during the song.

And Mepad plainly spells out what she’s feeling. This is so important to why she opens up to him more in the next verse. Not only can she not hide her emotions from him, because he already knows, but having it spelled out like that means she can’t keep hiding it from herself either. She can’t ignore her feelings when they’re being clearly stated back to her. So all that she’s been pushing down comes springing right back up in the next verse!!!! She has to physically turn away from him and cross her arms in a final attempt to keep herself closed off, keep anyone from looking in, but after everything she just can’t do it anymore.

["Clear the slate, start again",

Are you hearing how preposterous that sounds?

How do you not comprehend that for someone with my MONSTROUS BACKGROUND,

the whole slate has fallen apart!]

Oh my god guys Taco is being honest about her feelings it’s happening guys it’s happening!!!!! She’s turned away from Mepad for the first two lines, but as she really opens up to him, she turns back around, and gets louder along with the music. And we have Taco be like, the most emotionally open we see her!!! She’s putting Mepad’s rather succinct evaluation of her feelings into her own words. She doesn’t just think she can’t change or have a new start, she finds the notion preposterous!!! Forgiveness is inconceivable to her!!! Inconceivable!!! I can’t emphasize enough that this is the first time Taco has ever emotionally opened up to anyone ever and it is her telling Mepad that she is evil, unable to change, and will never be forgiven. We really get a feel for how everything has been weighing down on her for years, and how everything has built up to a point that she really can’t take it anymore!! But she doesn’t believe there’s any chance of a happy ending for her. Not only the whole slate, but her entire life has fallen apart!! She has lost everything and is fully confident she will never get anything back!!!

[Taco, that is not true.

There are other ways to-

It's too late-

It's not too late,

For me to restart!]

Mepad coming in trying to help <3 Notice how he comes in while she’s still holding the previous note!! He is immediately refuting her idea that she’s irredeemable!! He does the same to refute her when she says it’s too late!!! He is very concerned for her and trying to convince her that it’s not too late for her. He’s trying to tell her there are other options, that she’s not so far gone, but this sort of ends up backfiring, since not only does she not listen to him when he says these things but his interjection ends up snapping her out of the state of emotional vulnerability, and she pulls her facade right back up. Taco saying it’s too late for her kind of breaks my heart honestly, I love it when my blorbo is in pain don’t get me wrong but ow, my taco it’s gonna be okay I love you. She really sees no redemption or even future for herself, and at her lowest she’s finally expressed that to someone!!! Which is a very important step to healing!!!! She accidentally started the healing process by talking about her issues. I mean, she backpedals immediately, but still!!!! Great job Taco <3 And at the end of this line we head into Mepad’s face!! Because there’s a shift from Taco’s feelings to her pushing him away, literally and figuratively, after that moment of vulnerability!! The audience is going with Mepad, at the moment, chasing after Taco!!!

[But it's not I, its they,

Who deign to play this game, so,

Cruel and inhumane, base and uncouth,]

AND HERE COMES TACO WITH THE IMMEDIATE SUBJECT CHANGE!! She just did her first ever emotional vulnerability, and as per her usual strategy with her emotions she’s hard changing the subject!!! In this case, back to the final four and the game!!! She’s deflecting back on to both of them in quick succession trying to get a topic that isn’t her to stick! She is quite literally walking away from the topic in the visuals too!! She’s trying to get away from Mepad, who is trying to keep them on the subject of Taco’s feelings, looks back at him angrily when he keeps talking about it, and then is even more angry when he keeps going, before storming away from him again!!!

[Let us talk about it when your,

head is not so clouded. You're no,

menace, Taco, how did they hurt you?

Please think this through]

Mepad is trying to get her to go back to that emotional vulnerability!!! He wants to help her, he wants to talk through her issues with her rather than watching her self-destruct!!! I think this is where the idea that running the Truth or Flare challenge will help her comes from, too. He can tell she’s vulnerable, despite how hard she’s trying not to be, and she is talking things out, in a way, during ToF!! In a healthy way, no, but it’s Taco so we need to take what we can get. As he says, he’d rather do it when Taco has calmed down, taken a moment to not bury her feelings and even gets recovered, maybe. And here we get to a very important line!! Mepad asks her how they hurt her!!!! I genuinely don’t think Taco’s been asked this, yeah? Her whole schtick is supposed to be that she is the villain, she hurts people, not how she’s been hurt herself! And dare I say, me, the biggest Taco apologist and forehead kisser you ever did see, they have hurt her. She’s seen every other person who’s hurt the others be let into the hotel and accepted into the group, yeah? Balloon was accepted, after quite a bit of effort on his part. No one really seemed to care that Knife had killed Marsh for fun, Taco mentioning it in episode 13 as they’re arguing. Nickel and Taco are relatively similar in personality, but Nickel seemed to have relatively free reign to asshole all he wanted until Suitcase snapped at him, and even then it was just Suitcase who was angry with him. But not her. She hasn’t apologized to Pickle in person, at this point, but she had sent letters. She’d at least tried to contact him, and while he was well within his rights to ignore her, I can’t really blame her for not wanting to go inside the hotel either. Not to mention, Taco has been watching them all very closely, at least for the duration of the second season and likely after the first as well, for her to have found out about the second season and to have begun scheming so quickly. So every time they’ve spoken about her, every insult and awkward silence after someone mentions her name, she’s heard. That’s got to hurt!! Taco is very much not perfect and I don’t really blame the others for not reaching out to her given she hadn’t decided to make a change yet, but it also can’t be easy to make a change for the better when you are homeless in the woods!! Mic and Mepad’s willingness to help her is what really convinced her change would be good and possible, she hadn’t had anyone else reach out to her before, and to be fair, she folds pretty damn quickly in the grand scheme of things. Mic showed her she was likable as a person, and Mepad showed her she was redeemable, and with that support she is doing her best now!!! Anyways. Uh. There’s still one more line!! Mepad is pleading with Taco not to make things worse for herself, because taking over the challenge and such is only going to make them think she hasn’t changed at all and feed into the persona he knows is a sham in shambles at this point! Talking it out with him would be a much better way to do this!!! But alas, she’s dead set.

[I think they're too afraid to,

Bear the bed they've made,

Can't bring themselves to face the awful truth.]

TACO & THE AWFUL TRUTH that she’s projecting. Yeah Taco is the one who is afraid to actually face her mistakes, the people she’d hurt. Though, she probably sees her isolation as doing so, yeah? She’s hurt people, so she has to be alone as punishment, even though that doesn’t give anyone closure. However! As for the awful truth, yeah, Taco really is one of the only ones who’s looked the competition in the eyes for everything it is and spat on it. She’s motivated by a lot of complicated feelings she tries not to feel, but she sees the game for what it is, and how it hurts the contestants involved!! And the final four are yet to take that look, until she gets everything laid out in front of them!!

[Feeling double-crossed is part of,

Dealing with a loss, yes, but the,

Healing is a process, that's the truth]

FEELING DOUBLE-CROSSED this line is also important because!! Taco does feel betrayed by Mic!! She feels guilty and blames herself for what happened, yes, but she still does feel that sting of betrayal, since Mic left her, yeah? Oh her part, she’d finally accepted Mic as her first true friend, someone who liked her for who she was and she liked being around, and almost immediately Mic left her. A lot of that is on Taco, don’t get me wrong, but from Taco’s end she still doesn’t even fully understand why Mic was mad at her!! She thinks it was all because of her getting violent, not because she didn’t listen to Mic. My low empathy queen is still struggling to fully grasp Mic’s motivations, her first friend that she could act “normal” around, so of course she’d feel betrayed! Taco is dealing with a loss!!!!!!!!! And she is NOT healing!! She is trying to push it down like always, but it’s become too much for her!!! And Mepad is telling her that healing is a process because it’s so much for her at the moment!! He’s trying to communicate that she’s going to feel better eventually, that she needs help and time to do so, instead of rushing into another scheme!!! He’s telling her the truth, that healing is possible!!! But as Taco rejects his pleas for her to reconsider and grabs him, we shift back into reality. Taco is unconvinced, and they’re more or less at square one, with Taco’s mask for the rest of the world securely back in place.

Everyone look at this shot RIGHT NOW I’m going to explode. All these cracks come from the ii logo that Taco stomped on, yeah? And those cracks in the game spread, and create the cracks in her. She has been broken by the game!!! Look at her face! Does she look whole and happy to you? I didn’t think so. And here we have Taco close to the camera, looking out towards the viewer, to illustrate how although she’s separate from the game, more of a spectator than the player anymore, she’s still trapped inside the competition that’s broken her!! And we have Mepad in the background, further away with his position as an assistant!! The cracks are all around him rather than through him, because he’s not being hurt by the game!! He’s not a competitor!! But the game is crumbling everything around him. He’s watched everything, just like Taco has!! Every betrayal, every fight this season, Mepad has been watching. And the more he’s been seeing, the more he’s been feeling, and the more he’s been able to see how the game tears people apart and breaks them, just like it’s broken Taco.

[So I'm turning up the heat to "sauté",

I've a beef to get grilled,

But I fully guarantee that today all the beans that get spilled,

Won't be mine, no I'm fine,

Shhhh...

Now it's time…]

Guys I think Taco might not be fine. She’s shoved her facade right up and has closed herself back off, moving to continue with her plot. She’s going to grill the final four and 100% not get upset or feel any feelings, nope. Of course this is not what happened, and from Taco’s facial expression when she claims to be fine she has a hunch it’s not going to be so easy. She knows and has acknowledged to herself that she is not okay, which is a big step, but she still stuck in her ways in terms of ignoring it in favor of playing the role she’s been designated. Her mask is cracked, her confidence is transparent, but she’s still acting. Mepad is still trying to help her here, but she physically silences him. Not literally, per say, as turning him invisible wouldn’t stop him from talking, but she shushes him and he gets the memo. The window to convince her to stop has closed, and she’s going forth with her plan regardless of how well she is.

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!! <3 I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!!! I REALLY HOPE THIS DIDN’T SUCK. IT TOOK A WHILE TO WRITE SO IF IT SUCKS THAT SUCKS FOR ME. HOPEFULLY I DIDN’T MISS TOO MUCH. THROW TOMATOES AT ME IF I DID (i will be sad). GIVE ME COOKIES IF NOT (joy inducers).

#inanimate insanity #ii taco #taco ii #ii mepad #mepad ii #fuck it #tacopad #tw suicidal ideation #loomy's analysis #loomy's metas #loomy's tired after this it was 12 pages #mic ii #ii mic #pickle ii #ii pickle #ii 15 #taco's tirade

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phoenixyfriend · 2 days ago

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Jango Fett the Mushroom Man

The other day, @threebea came to the DMs with the following:

Vampire Satine Very much at odds with other vampires of her lineage for how humans are treated etc etc, but mostly it was just aesthetics, and Obi-Wan in the wet heroine at the castle door, Satine trying very hard not to give into her nature while both of them are intensely pulled toward each other etc etc. Also vampire that could easily wreck the shit of hunters but is a pacifist so her fleshy boyfriend throws himself in the way of them Death watch hunter or w/e: You're letting your thrall fight for you. Satine, trying to grab Obi-Wan by the ear: We can just run stop it. Jedi probably mage/"hunters" who only hunt to keep balance but there's bad blood between their order and vampires (or whatever) For once I didn't get much into world building, [the clones] might not be and it's just the 'ruling' Mandalorians that are vampires. So the usual suspects like Tor, Jango, Jaster etc. Clones could be magic simulacrums (or that's what they're called) sim troopers. Vampire lords ruling the people, and it's for protection, but can get very abusive and predatory quick depending who is in rule.

Which is great! But my first thought in regards to the question of 'what's up with the clones' was uh. Well this was my message.

Help my first thought was "what if Jango buds like a fungus and got hit with some disease that makes him overproduce so he made thousands instead of like two".

And it's off to the races.

The weirdest magical malady. Jango the mushroom man. Adopted by vampires. They can't eat him because blood different and also fungus is weird. Jaster: This is my mushroom son [hugging Jango to him] Jango:

I didn't even mean for Jango budding to be a vampire AU thing unless vampires bud, but this is so much funnier.

Satine and Obi-Wan having dark gothic vampire romance, and meanwhile:

Montross: You cannot make a mushroom your heir >< you are a vampire lord! Jaster: It doesn't say in the rulebook that a mushroom can't be a vampire lord

Jaster pointing out that Jango looks and acts human other than the mushroom thing

Jaster: Show them. Jango: sigh [grows fangs, they're not hard or anything they just look like fangs]

The fangs pop off and turn into more sons.

Jango: …. Jango: [Puts them in a box with a bunch of other mushroom children] Jaster: Jango! Mushroom children:

The human form is basically a shape they take. They could be other shapes maybe a cuckoo kind of defense thing where they get raised by other races a lot.

For the sake of Jango's sanity, maybe they only need a few days to be walking and talking toddlers. And have rudimentary knowledge passed down genetically somehow instead of being taught (basically flash training but like the goa'uld).

Vamps try to bite them for blood but it's just. Mushroom.

Vamp: pah wtf? Lol yes they grow super fast

Chop off an arm and it not only grows back but it becomes another child. I'm imagining they wear the armor because it's easy to break off a piece like portobello mushroom.

Most are limbs slowly morphing into babies.

Lol yep it's a very hardy fighting force. More soldiers at the end of a battle than the beginning. Sort of scary actually. Although maybe part of the Kamino sorcerer thing was that they made it so that the babies grow even more rapidly.

Jango, confused: Why do they have bones

#jango fett #jaster mereel #satine kryze #star wars clones #obi wan kenobi #obitine #modern au #vampire au #supernatural au #phoenix posts #star wars #the clone wars #jango fett the mushroom man #sw legends

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ruewritesoccasionally · 14 hours ago

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The Reunion Pt.3 | Aaron Pierre

Pairing: Aaron Pierre x Black Reader

Warnings: themes of longing and emotional tension, mentions of relationship disconnect/dismissiveness, implied romantic conflict and some fluff to top it off

Chapter Summary: Cracks begin to show, confessions linger on the edge—could this be the moment Aaron finally takes a step forward?

Word Count: 3.5K

a/n: things are finally moving between these two !!!! i'm actually a sucker for a good friends to lovers trope. also i feel like the uk girly in me slipped out writing this lol

It had been almost a week since the reunion, and YN felt like she was finally shaking off the fog that had lingered over her. The days had been uneventful, but in the best way possible—long walks, slow mornings with her favourite playlist, and a little bit of space from the world. Even Trey had seemed to give her a bit of breathing room, though not intentionally. They’d texted back and forth, but he’d been busy with work, leaving her evenings to herself. For the first time in a long while, she felt a sense of clarity, even if it was faint and fleeting.

That Saturday morning, the two of them decided to meet up for a casual stroll through the city. The crisp winter air made their breaths visible as they wandered along the pavements, passing coffee shops and bustling market stalls. YN tucked her hands into her coat pockets, glancing up at Trey as they walked side by side.

“I was thinking,” she started, her voice light, “maybe we could pop into that new bookshop on Willow Street? Or check out a pottery workshop later this week. I heard they’re running a session on handbuilding vases, and it sounded fun.”

Trey gave a small hum, distracted by something on his phone. He barely looked up as he replied, “Didn’t you just buy a ton of books last week? And you do pottery, like, every other day.”

YN’s steps faltered just slightly, but she quickly recovered, forcing a light laugh. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, glancing away to hide the flicker of disappointment in her eyes.

The thing was, he wasn’t wrong. She had bought books last week, and she did spend a lot of time at pottery workshops. But it wasn’t about the books or the clay—it was about sharing something she loved, about finding joy in small things. She thought about Aaron, about how he’d once spent an entire Saturday afternoon in a freezing studio with her, his hands covered in clay as he tried to sculpt something resembling a cup. He’d laughed at himself the whole time, but by the end of the session, he was asking the instructor if there were any openings for another class.

Trey’s indifference stung in comparison, even if she tried to tell herself it wasn’t a big deal.

“So, what else is on your mind?” Trey asked, slipping his phone into his pocket and finally looking at her.

“Nothing,” YN said, shaking her head with a small smile. “It’s cool—we can just walk around and see where we end up.”

He nodded, his attention already shifting to the street ahead. She fell quiet beside him, her thoughts trailing back to the past week and the steady, unexpected warmth she’d felt since seeing Aaron again.

As they turned the corner onto a quieter street, YN spotted a figure jogging towards them in the distance. Her heart skipped a beat when she recognised the broad shoulders and familiar gait, the grey hoodie and black joggers he always seemed to wear on his morning runs.

Aaron’s jog had been unremarkable until he turned the corner and caught sight of YN. Even from a distance, he could see her walking beside Trey, the two of them engrossed in what appeared to be a light conversation. A smile instinctively tugged at Aaron’s lips, his pace slowing as he approached. It had been almost a week since the reunion, and though the last time he’d seen her had been tinged with nostalgia and unspoken feelings, just seeing her now felt like a small reprieve from the weight of it all.

As he drew closer, he noticed the way her expression shifted. There was something off—a flicker of disheartenment she was trying to hide behind a polite smile. Aaron’s brow furrowed slightly, but he masked his concern as he greeted them, his tone light and easy. “Fancy running into you two here,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow as he came to a stop.

YN’s face lit up when she saw him, her smile growing more genuine, and Aaron felt the smallest flutter of satisfaction in his chest. “Hey, stranger,” she replied, her tone brightening. “Out for a jog?”

Aaron nodded, his eyes softening as they met hers. “Yeah, trying to keep up with myself. How’ve you been?” He shifted his attention entirely to her, his tone carrying that subtle warmth she always found so disarming.

“I’ve been good,” YN replied, a little too quickly, as though she were trying to convince herself of it. “Just… you know, same old.”

He could hear the undercurrent of something unsaid, and it gnawed at him. Aaron leaned slightly closer, a quiet smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Still working on that hobby of yours? I remember you were so excited about it the last time we talked.” He wasn’t prying—just trying to draw her out a bit, to remind her he noticed the little things about her.

Her expression shifted, softening into something brighter, warmer. “I am, actually. It’s been keeping me sane,” she admitted, the first genuine laugh of the conversation slipping past her lips. “It’s probably getting out of hand, though. You’d think I’d have picked up a new one by now.”

Aaron chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, I think it’s great. If it makes you happy, why stop?”

Before YN could respond, Trey let out a low chuckle, cutting into the moment. “She’s always obsessing over that. It’s her thing.” He said it offhandedly, like a casual joke, but there was a dismissiveness to it that had Aaron’s jaw tightening imperceptibly. YN’s smile faltered for just a moment before she recovered, brushing off the comment with a shrug and a forced laugh.

Aaron felt anger bubble in his chest—subtle but persistent. It wasn’t anything overtly rude, but it was enough to irk him, to highlight the stark contrast between Trey’s offhanded indifference and the attentiveness YN deserved. Still, he swallowed the irritation, his tone calm but pointed as he replied, “Well, it clearly makes her happy, so why not?”

YN glanced at him, her eyes softening with gratitude for the way he smoothed over the moment. Aaron caught the look and held it for just a beat longer than necessary, his heart twisting at the subtle vulnerability he saw there.

Trey, oblivious to the subtle tension in the exchange, shifted the conversation onto something else entirely, leaving YN quietly retreating into herself again.

As they said their goodbyes and walked away, Aaron found himself watching their retreating figures, the pang in his chest sharper than usual. He noticed the way Trey’s attention drifted elsewhere, his phone already in hand as YN walked beside him, her expression contemplative.

Aaron ran a hand down his face, frustration simmering beneath the surface. How could Trey be so indifferent to her, so unaware of the little things that made her who she was? She deserved someone who saw her, someone who cherished those quirks and passions, not someone who brushed them aside as trivial.

A familiar thought surfaced, unbidden and painful: If she were mine, I’d never make her feel like that. But she wasn’t his—not yet, at least. And as much as it stung, he reminded himself that reacting impulsively would only complicate things. YN wasn’t his to protect, his to comfort. Not yet.

With a frustrated exhale, Aaron shook his head and resumed his jog, though the rhythm felt off now, his thoughts tangled in everything he couldn’t say.

That evening, YN sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her phone. The day had been long—longer than it needed to be—and the anticipation of spending some quality time with Trey had been the only thing keeping her going. She’d pictured a quiet night together, nothing extravagant, just the kind of evening that reminded her why they were trying to make this work.

But her phone buzzed, and her heart sank before she even opened the message.

“Sorry, babe. Work’s calling. Rain check?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line as she stared at the screen. She typed back a quick “no worries” and tossed her phone onto the bed beside her. It wasn’t the first time Trey had bailed, and she’d gotten good at pretending it didn’t bother her. But tonight, for some reason, it stung a little more. Maybe it was the way he’d brushed her off earlier about her hobby, or the way Aaron’s simple attentiveness had reminded her what it felt like to truly be seen.

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. Trey’s message wasn’t going to ruin her night—not entirely, at least. There was someone else who could salvage it. Grabbing her phone, she quickly typed out a text.

Change of plans—movie night? You bring the food…and the drinks, and I’ll bring me lol, as per usual.

She hit send, smiling softly at the thought of Aaron rolling his eyes at her dramatic tone but showing up anyway, just like he always did.

Aaron was halfway through folding laundry when his phone buzzed. He picked it up and grinned as soon as he saw YN’s name light up the screen. Her message made him chuckle, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards as he pictured her typing it out, probably with that little smirk she got when she was being cheeky.

Without thinking, his thumbs moved quickly across the keyboard.

You’re lucky I love you.

He hit send before his brain caught up with his hands, and when it did, his heart immediately lodged itself in his throat.

“Shit,” he muttered, staring at the screen like he could will the message back into his drafts. The words sat there, glaring at him in bright blue, and panic surged through his chest. He didn’t mean it—well, he did mean it, just not like that. Or maybe he did mean it like that, but this wasn’t how she was supposed to find out.

Before he could even begin to spiral, her reply popped up, cutting through his panic.

I know I’m lucky. Don’t forget the snacks though 😘.

Aaron blinked at the screen, rereading the message twice just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. A slow exhale escaped him, and the tension in his chest eased, replaced by an unfamiliar warmth spreading through him. He smiled, shaking his head at her nonchalant response. Of course she wouldn’t read too much into it. That was just YN—easygoing, lighthearted, completely unaware of the weight his words carried.

Still, Aaron couldn’t help the way his chest tightened at her reply, a quiet sense of relief mingling with the yearning he couldn’t quite suppress. He grabbed his keys and wallet, his laundry completely forgotten as he headed out to pick up the snacks and drinks.

Somewhere between the corner shop and his flat, the realisation settled over him like a second skin: He wasn’t just lucky to have YN in his life. He was lucky that tonight, at least, he got to be the one to make her smile. And maybe—just maybe—he’d get the chance to do it for a long time to come.

Tonight, for once she wasn’t alone.

Aaron sat at the other end of her sofa, a plate of takeaway balanced on his lap and a bottle of wine between them. The dim light of the television flickered across his face, casting warm shadows in the otherwise cosy room. The air smelled faintly of buttered popcorn, mingling with the rich scent of the red blend he’d brought along. Their laughter had filled the first half of the evening, but now, as the movie reached its slower, quieter scenes, the room had settled into a companionable silence.

A blanket was draped over YN’s lap, and she stretched her legs out, her toes brushing Aaron’s thigh unintentionally. He glanced over at her, a soft smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Comfortable?” he asked, his voice low and laced with warmth.

“Very,” she murmured, pulling the blanket higher as her eyes flicked back to the screen. She didn’t move her legs, though, and neither did he.

Aaron’s attention wasn’t on the movie. Instead, his mind lingered on the way her laughter had softened over the past week, her smiles not quite reaching her eyes. He couldn’t shake the memory of Trey’s dismissiveness earlier—the way YN’s expression had faltered, even if only for a second. It had left a dull ache in his chest, one he’d carried ever since.

She reached for her wine glass, her movements slow and deliberate. But there was something distant in her gaze, a quiet melancholy she hadn’t voiced. Without thinking, Aaron picked up the glass she’d been about to grab and replaced it with a fresh pour he’d quietly prepared earlier.

She blinked, glancing at the full glass now in her hand. “When did you…?”

“You looked like you were ready for another,” he said lightly, a small smile playing on his lips. “What can I say? I pay attention.”

Her laugh was soft but genuine, and she shook her head. “Always so thoughtful, Aaron. Thank you.”

“Always,” he echoed, almost to himself. His eyes lingered on her for a moment before turning back to the screen.

But YN wasn’t watching the film anymore. Her gaze rested on him, the flickering light illuminating the quiet thoughtfulness etched across his face. She caught herself staring and quickly looked away, but the moment lingered, heavy with unspoken emotion.

Aaron noticed, of course. He always did. He shifted slightly closer, his hand brushing hers where it rested on the sofa. It wasn’t intentional—or maybe it was—but the contact made his breath hitch.

“You’re too good to me, you know that?” she said suddenly, her voice softer than before. There was no teasing in her tone, just quiet sincerity that tightened something in his chest.

He shrugged, keeping his gaze forward. “You make it easy.”

Her silence stretched, and he risked a glance her way. She was watching him again, her brows drawn together in thought. He let the moment settle, waiting for her to speak.

“Aaron?”

“Yeah?”

“You asked me earlier, at the reunion, if I was happy.” Her voice was hesitant, thinking back to a private memory like she was feeling her way through unfamiliar territory.

He nodded slowly, his heart beating hard against his ribs. “I remember.”

“I didn’t answer you,” she continued, curling the blanket tighter around herself. “Not properly, anyway.”

Aaron’s throat felt dry, but he managed to ask, “Are you?”

She hesitated, her eyes dropping to her hands. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like I should be, you know? Like everything’s fine. Trey’s nice, my job’s steady, my life’s not exactly falling apart. But...” She trailed off, chewing on her bottom lip.

“But?” he prompted gently.

Her sigh was heavy, and she leaned her head back against the sofa. “But it’s like I’m waiting for something. Or someone.” Her words were quiet, barely above a whisper, but they hit him with the force of a tidal wave.

Aaron’s hand twitched, instinctively wanting to reach for hers, but he stopped himself. His heart ached for her—for the sadness she was trying to suppress and for the hope her words sparked in him.

“You’ve always been there for me, Aaron,” she said, turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were soft, filled with an emotion he couldn’t quite name. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much that means to me.”

His throat worked as he tried to find the right words. “You don’t have to. I’ll always be here for you, YN. That’s never going to change.”

Her lips curved into a small, bittersweet smile, and she gave his hand a brief squeeze before pulling away. “I know.”

The moment hung between them, unspoken feelings filling the space like a quiet hum. Eventually, YN shifted back into her corner of the sofa, her expression lighter than before.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said softly. “I needed this.”

Aaron forced a smile, masking the storm of emotions swirling within him. “Anytime. You know that.”

And as she turned her attention back to the screen, Aaron allowed himself to hope—just for a moment—that maybe, just maybe, the gap between them was finally starting to close.

Aaron stepped into the quiet of his flat, the faint glow of the city spilling through the window as he set down the bag he’d carried from YN’s. His chest still felt tight, heavy with the weight of everything left unsaid.

He leaned against the kitchen counter, running a hand over his jaw as the events of the night played back in his mind. The way she’d opened up to him, even if only a little, was a crack in the carefully constructed walls she kept between them. But that crack was enough to shake him.

Her words echoed in his ears: “But it’s like I’m waiting for something. Or someone.”

Aaron closed his eyes, exhaling a shaky breath. He knew he couldn’t keep doing this—hovering on the edge, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her how he felt. There would never be a perfect moment. Tonight had been proof enough of that. And the accidental “I love you” text? He’d barely recovered from the panic of seeing it on her screen, but her response... it had calmed him in ways he hadn’t expected.

She hadn’t made it awkward, hadn’t even acknowledged the slip. But it lingered in his chest now, like a quiet truth that refused to be ignored.

He thought of Trey—how casually dismissive he was of her, how blind he seemed to the woman in front of him. It made Aaron’s blood simmer with frustration. He’d seen her light up tonight, even if only in fleeting moments. Her smile when he handed her the wine, the way her laughter had softened as the evening wore on. He wanted to be the reason she smiled like that all the time.

And yet... the fear remained. What if telling her changed everything? What if she wasn’t ready to hear it?

Aaron pushed off the counter and headed for his bedroom, his mind a tangle of hope and hesitation. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling as the darkness pressed in. He thought of the way her hand had lingered near his, the way her eyes had searched his for answers she hadn’t been ready to voice.

She was searching for something. He could feel it. And part of him believed—knew—that what she was searching for had been standing right in front of her all along.

But the timing had to be right.

Aaron turned his head, catching sight of his phone on the bedside table. For a fleeting moment, he considered texting her again, just to say goodnight or to make her laugh. But he stopped himself. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he’d see her again, and maybe, if he could find the courage, he’d stop holding back.

Back at her flat, YN curled into her sofa, the blanket still wrapped around her. The film credits had long since rolled, but she hadn’t bothered to turn the TV off. Her thoughts were far from the screen anyway.

Aaron’s words replayed in her mind: “You make it easy.”

He always had. With him, everything felt effortless—the conversations, the laughter, the quiet understanding that needed no explanation. Tonight had reminded her just how different things were when she was with him.

Her mind drifted to Trey, to the distance that had grown between them in recent weeks. She’d told herself it was normal, that all relationships ebbed and flowed, but the truth was harder to face. Trey didn’t see her—not the way Aaron did. He didn’t notice the little things, didn’t make her feel like her quirks and passions mattered.

But Aaron...

She sighed, leaning her head back against the sofa. The thought tugged at her, gentle but persistent: Maybe what I’ve been waiting for has been in front of me all along.

Her phone buzzed on the table, and her heart leapt for a moment before she realised it wasn’t Aaron. It was Trey, a quick, apologetic text about having to bail tonight. YN stared at the message, her chest tightening with a mix of frustration and disappointment.

Setting the phone down, she let her mind wander back to Aaron’s smile, the warmth in his voice when he said, “I’ll always be here for you.” It wasn’t just words with him. He meant it, in a way that made her chest ache with equal parts gratitude and something else—something she wasn’t ready to name just yet.

But tonight had left her with one certainty: Aaron made her feel seen in a way she hadn’t realised she’d been craving. And as she finally turned off the TV and headed to bed, that thought stayed with her, wrapping around her like the blanket she still clutched.

taglist: @writingsbytee @venusincleo @nickidub718 @kxllanxtdoor

comments and reblogs are appreciated as well as feedback, i hope you liked it 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾

#aaron pierre #aaron pierre x black reader #aaron pierre fanfic #aaron pierre x black!reader #aaron pierre x fem!reader #aaron pierre x reader #aaron pierre fluff #ruewrites

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pinazee · 1 day ago

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Truer lies

Its interesting to see Shawn starting to deal with the fall out of pretending to be psychic for so long. I think that would really wear on him after a while, and im glad it did. Personally, as an overachieving teachers pet, i would want credit for all the smart things i did. But yeah, on top of that, it must be so frustrating that he cant just be like “I KNOW WHEN PEOPLE ARE LYING BECAUSE OF THESE TELLS, NOW CAN WE PLEASE JUST DO AS I SAY BECAUSE I KNOW THINGS??” Instead, he has to say its a psychic vibe and people roll their eyes because thats not evidence (fair). Shawn even had to convince gus to trust him this time- actually his plea was more than that. He was asking Gus to believe in him as a person. Like, please trust that i still know where the line is. I doubt he thought this psych stuff would last this long though. I expect he thought it would be a fun 3-6 months just like his dad did (and probably Gus too) but it turns out it never stopped being fun. So, what, like 3 years later-yeah, that has to get to you, and also exhausting, not only because his visions were quite physical in the beginning haha. He’s basically a fraud, and knowing who he is as a person, it has to tear him up inside every time he has to lie, especially to Juliet which we know later really bites him in the ass (which i cant wait for)

Speaking of juliet, i kind of wish she would have stood up for him a little bit with lassie, because he has a pretty good record of solving cases and making them look foolish in the process, despite all the silliness and flair for the dramatics. I kind of get why she’d still be on the fence, but i think she could have explained to him that hey, its not you i don’t trust, its this guy who has a reputation for lying. But i get that for the plot of the episode and for the sake of shawns arc they couldn’t exactly do that. I guess it says something that juliet and lassie did have his back in the end which was great. Like, we don’t always believe ya but we’ll be there anyways ;)

why did they both take this bit seriously though?? Hes clearly doing a bit Lol

Lassie may talk a big talk about hating shawn but he was running those hospital halls right beside jules when they thought shawn was injured ;) he loves him case closed.

What the heck is this thing supposed to be??? I googled old handheld games amd couldn’t find it.

Jumping to lieber being the murderer is kind of just bad detective work?? Like they jumped to that conclusion very fast, and frankly, they should have caught the double shadow. I know this is nitpicky but i couldn’t let it slide. Plus, overall i think its a bit meh, crime-wise. Like i was a bit lost with how lyin ryan fit into all of it and what the original crime was but its still fun. And lyin ryan was a fun character that im surprised didnt make a return too.

P.S Lassie likes a nice mustache. I wonder why he didnt keep his mustache that we saw in the flashback of the first ep?? He could have gone full Magnum P.I. Do you think the ex wife made him get rid of it?

#psych rewatch #psych #shawn and gus #shawn spencer #burton guster #james roday rodriguez #james roday #dulé hill #dule hill

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realtapiocafan · 16 hours ago

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hiiiiiii i was reading your tags from the fic snippet and learned something new in that i did not Know ja’marr moved to dallas omgg 😀 can u provide some more info on this ✍🏿✍🏿✍🏿

Ofc! (This is long)

So from what I gather, after opting out, Ja'Marr went back home (Harvey, Louisiana - close to NOLA) until about November, when he moved to Dallas to get ready for the draft. In the Najee-Jaylen-Ja'Marr house thing they did (which includes what Pro Day was like post-COVID and has some other videos about the draft itself), Ja'Marr says himself that he hasn't actually been at the LSU campus ever since he opted out. (Also if you look at his twitter, he was live-tweeting LSU games lol).

Everything else below are articles mentioning Ja'Marr going to Dallas, as well as some other information regarding COVID-era Ja'Marr, sprinkled with my own little comments in between 🙂

So first off, the Dallas thing is specifically mentioned in this article by the Advocate (I'm going to include the necessary paragraphs bc some of these are paywalled smh)

There were more uncertain times, too. Chase opted out of the 2020 season during preseason camp last year, a time in which the pandemic was surging and there was tension in the football operations building after a mishandled team meeting regarding the team's player-led march amid national protests against police brutality. Chase told reporters at LSU's Pro Day that his decision to leave was because "I had a lot of stuff going on with my family at the time." Chase dedicated his time toward becoming a professional. From November until March, he lived and worked out at the EXOS training facility in Dallas. After almost a year out of public sight, he coolly ran a 4.38-second 40-yard dash at pro day — an impressive enough time that Jimmy said coaches and trainers told Ja'Marr he could shut it down. "I came here to put on a show," Ja'Marr told them, then proceeded to run routes and individual drills.

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The Athletic (which i honestly trust more) goes more into detail into Ja'Marr's exact location. Apparently, Ja'Marr moved from Baton Rouge back home (it sounds like it was about September). Then in November, he went to Dallas. This article also includes some more information on Ja'Marr's experience in quarantine. That quote by Ja'Marr's dad really opened my eyes, because Ja'Marr was never really alone before this. He was always part of a team, always surrounded by people until... well, he wasn't. (Also now that I think about it, Ja'Marr did say he started watching tape because of Joe and apparently spent most of this year -which was away from Joe- watching tape... maybe it reminded him of Joe 👀)

Ja’Marr stayed in Baton Rouge initially after opting out in August. He remained close with his teammates, especially the receiving corps at first. But once the season cranked up, Ja’Marr moved back home, feeling a sense of isolation without football... “We kept him close to home. We noticed that he was struggling a little bit. Life without football. Life without a team. His whole life changed. It was his first time not playing sports since he was a young kid. Gamedays were the hardest day.” One thing jumped out to Jimmy as they watched games together, though. He never fully grasped his son’s football IQ. “We watched the games with him,” Jimmy said. “He would call the plays before the snap was gone. And he would say how Terrace (Marshall) needs to do this because the defense is about to do this. And Racey (McMath) needs to do this so he needs to watch out for this. He’d call the play and I was like, ‘Damn!’ It would happen just like he said. So sitting out actually helped in that sense. He never really watched football. He was always playing. Now all he could do was watch it. He told me and I saw how much it helped him.” Watching games with Ja’Marr, his parents sensed his pent-up energy. He was healthy, but he wasn’t playing. The energy fed right into Ja’Marr’s passion for working out. He’d run to the gym often after games to let that energy free. The regimented workout routine really kicked up about six months ago. “He’s been at EXOS (A Dallas-based training facility) since November,” Jimmy said. “They had an opt-out session group that started out where they would work out three days a week. So he started out there at the end of October or early November. That lasted until the end of December. Then in January, he started getting into the more combine workouts. He’s been working hard and getting stronger. That’s really the only thing that’s been keeping him sane is working. That’s all he could do.”

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This Sports Illustrated article further confirms he was in Dallas for at least part of 2020-2021. It also adds that Ja'Marr was so pent-up that he apparently wanted to opt back in (probably bothered by LSU being kinda shit that year -that third game, LSU lost 45-41 💀).

He spent the off-year training in Dallas, studying film and watching his former college teammates struggle through to a 5-5 COVID-impacted 2020 season. What many don’t know, his dad says, is Chase nearly returned to LSU midseason. “People don’t realize how close he was to coming back,” Jimmy says. “After the third game, he was watching and jumped off the sofa after they lost. He said ‘I’m about to opt back in!’ It was killing him.” The family seriously explored whether Chase would have been eligible to return (Jimmy says Ja’Marr would have) and spoke to coaches at length about his reinstatement. In the end, Ja’Marr remained on the sidelines.

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This Washington Post article also goes more into depth about the impact COVID had on Ja'Marr's family and what went into the decision to opt-out (Ja'Marr apparently has a hole in his heart which SHOCKED me the first time I read it) (It also goes the most in depth into Ja'Marr's aghast reaction at Les Miles saying he should be a DB and why Ja'Marr didn't want to commit to LSU at first)

But that March, Jimmy Chase says, their family began suffering from flu-like symptoms, and older son Jimmy Jr. and Toleah would be hospitalized with what they later learned was covid-19. “I was like: Shake it off, man,” Jimmy Chase Sr. says. “I can’t die now.” During a most unpredictable spring, when the coronavirus pandemic paused sports and shut down the world, the Chase family survived but eventually learned about “long covid” and the heart and respiratory problems some patients reported. Jimmy Chase says his son’s heart problem has healed, but it remained a frightening preexisting condition and again placed the father and son on opposite sides of a tense debate.

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Last thing, if you were wondering about the team meeting in the first article, here's what information i found. Again, I don't know how reliable The Advocate actually is and unlike the article above, this is literally the only source I found that mentions this. I don't recall Ja'Marr or any other LSU players saying anything remotely negative about Orgeron - most of them say he was a great coach!

(At the same time, an old white guy giving ... maybe not racist, but tone-deaf advice to a bunch of college-aged black men, in the height of Black Lives Matter -it's not out of the question.)

Multiple sources told The Advocate that team morale turned south before the season even began, when a large group of players felt Orgeron mishandled a team meeting regarding the team's player-led march in August amid national protests against police brutality. The players skipped practice that day, met outside Tiger Stadium and marched to the university president's office without Orgeron, who later told reporters he didn't know about the protest before it happened. Orgeron met up with the players at the president's office and took part in a meeting that lasted about an hour. He later told reporters he and the players talked "about the things they're going through and how we can be a part of the solution." Privately, the meeting did not come off as productive as described. Orgeron and some players were upset during the meeting, multiple sources said, and while some players said the situation could've been handled better by all sides, other players left feeling Orgeron wasn't supportive. Three days after the meeting, star wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase announced he was opting out of the season, joining starting nickel safety Kary Vincent in preparing for the NFL draft. By the end of the week, starting nose tackle Tyler Shelvin opted out as well.

#let me know if one of the links don't work or if you have any questions #i think the third and fourth article aren't paywalled but whatever i included the quotes anyways #ja'marr chase #i probably included more sources than needed. whatever ig.#i do love research <3 #covid-era ja'marr really gives me all the feels tho #🥺 all alone and forced to just WATCH lsu AND joe suffer (to a lesser extent justin)...#my personal headcanon regarding dallas (not backed by any articles btw): ceedee got drafted to the cowboys in 2020 #so ja'marr heard about the training camp from ceedee (who's also from louisiana and was also probably feeling a little alone in the nfl)#(ceedee played against lsu in the 2019 peach bowl (semifinal) so that's how ja'marr knew ceedee)#sorry for taking a while btw!#i hope i answered your question!#covid era ja'marr #anyone: feel free to use any info provided and ask if you have questions about the sources #articles #lsu era ja'marr #information #my asks

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vidavalor · 2 days ago

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Seems legit fishy to me. 😉 I've also got your shoes/cobbler/cholera thing almost set and the body of water aspect is also a part of that, as you'll see when I post it.

We don't entirely disagree about supreme archangel Aziraphale and I'll tell you why since I know you're probably like ok but vida your every third post is "he's falling, guys"... 😂

I think that there's the one level of the literal rank of the characters in Heaven but there's another level of the wordplay involved in the names of those ranks. It seems that, just as C&A are using demon/angel/fiend, etc. playfully in their alternate meanings, the overall wordplay in the series is such that the angelic and demonic ranks are ones assigned to the characters more to show what they say about those characters than anything else.

For example, the 'throne, or a dominion' is also a visual pun in S1, when Crowley goes from his throne in his flat into the other room and exercises a level of one kind of dominion over his plants. Aziraphale may well have had different ranks in Heaven over time but there's also that cherub is a word implying a sense of innocence while principality is one with an element of the first or an original. Aziraphale, character-wise is the principality-- our main character and the first angel to live the way he lives on Earth. Back in Eden, he was a bit of a cherub, in the more innocent/impressionable sense of the meaning.

Crowley also used "cherubs" to Beez in a way that seems to be more in the meaning of the word as innocent than of the actual rank of angels when he said that The Book of Life was something that the two of them made up "to frighten the cherubs." Not all the angels they teased probably were literal cherubs but they were all impressionable enough to believe the ghost story.

When people say that Aziraphale is going to be The Supreme Archangel in The Finale, they are referring to him being promoted to that position in Heaven, and that's the part that you know that I disagree with because I think we're watching Aziraphale's fall but I don't disagree with the idea that Aziraphale is a lower case supreme archangel. How so? Because what's a supreme archangel?

In terms of meaning of the actual words involved, a supreme archangel is one who is above being superior to the other angels. That's why Gabriel is The Supreme Archangel because he's also the one up there in heaven who is a supreme archangel, right? That title reflects his actual attitude, in that he doesn't see himself as superior to angelic beings (angels, demons, humans) and he rejects the ideas associated with Heaven when it comes to what they say is or is not the behaviors of an angel.

In this way? If you're an angel who is wonderfully above the definition of an angel and rebels against it, you're a supreme archangel... but... you're also something else at the same time, aren't you?

You're a demon.

So, yeah, I think Aziraphale's going to be supreme archangel alright because, while he's struggled with it, he's been a supreme archangel all along.

He's just not going to get the title because there's not going to be just the one person with it any longer. Aziraphale's fall can lead to the democratization of Heaven in the wake of overthrowing The Metatron in The Finale, which means a more equal distribution of power. It's possible that no one person will be Supreme Archangel anymore because our main ones will all be supreme archangels. It won't just be run by Heaven anymore-- the demons are going to be acknowledged as angels again. And what does Hell already have, even if it's a bit useless, thanks to Satan? The Dark Council.

The demons have something of a form of government in Hell. Sure, it's not terribly effectual lol but if the angels and the demons strike a peace accord, the existing governmental structure of Hell (minus the fact that it's run by Donal-- Satan. Run by Satan...) is the closest thing the group actually collectively has in place to a form of government that, if Satan can be taken out of the equation, honestly isn't that terrible in structure.

They struggle to actually use it effectively because they're all currently being held hostage by raging loons in Satan & The Metatron but the demons have effectively formed a system of checks and balances in Hell by having The Dark Council. It is a check on the position of The Grand Duke of Hell, who handles all the day-to-day stuff of Hell that Satan doesn't care about. It's a system that could become a functioning democracy if they get rid of Satan & The Metatron, which basically has to happen in The Finale in order for there to be the happy ending we all know is in the works.

When all is said and done, I'm not sure the position of Supreme Archangel will still exist. The closest thing to someone replacing Gabriel might actually wind up being Dagon, since she's the only one likely to remain with experience of running a form of government.

It's definitely not going to be perfect. The supernatural entities are about to form a government equivalent in irritating lunacy to the humans of the Whickber Street group passing resolutions condemning improper use of apostrophes in signs on shop windows-- but that's a happy ending. Being free to be silly and human and democratic about it is peace.

hello! i've read through a lot of your blogs and i think you've got really interesting ideas! i was wondering if you'd done something analyzing aziraphale's 'human name' and why he picked the name a. z. fell? perhaps it's got something to do with foreshadowing his fall?

Hi there! 💕 Thanks for reading & glad you're enjoying them. *puts on the tea kettle and gets the cookies*

There are two ways of looking at Aziraphale's choice of name, I think, and you mentioned both ways in your ask. One way is what the name might mean to Aziraphale-- why he chose it-- and the other is what the overall meaning of it is in the story.

In terms of the overall meaning level of his name, I think it gets into the question of what a fall is. Aziraphale's surname isn't even just Fall-- it's Fell. It's past tense. In this sense, the show is basically saying that even though Aziraphale's fall-- in the 'an angel literally falling to Hell' sense of it-- is just beginning to occur in the story, Aziraphale really fell, in other senses of the word, long ago.

He's fundamentally no different from Crowley-- something Aziraphale even says to him in the Job minisode when he says that he's a demon after lying to save the kids. He doesn't see Crowley as having ever done anything "worse" than that-- and Crowley and many others likely didn't. They asked questions. They sought knowledge.

A demon can also just mean someone who is knowledgeable about different things. In that sense, Aziraphale has always been a demon, even if he hasn't been a literal demon of Hell.

Aziraphale has always been a fallen angel by Heaven's definition and spiritually one of the demons, even if he has always still been seen by others as an angel. It gets at the idea that these definitions are all b.s. that Heaven has made up. They're all just people; they're all angelic beings walking the Earth who can be demonic in different ways-- just like the humans.

To fall, though, isn't just a literal fall or a fall from grace, like in the Heaven/Hell senses, but also other things, right? To fall in love, for instance... which then gets interesting when you consider why Aziraphale might have chosen this particular word to reflect himself.

I did a bit of a dive on thoughts about Aziraphale choosing the name Fell for himself as part of a post that is also about the fact that Crowley's distinctive signature on the Hell document when he takes the baby in 1.01 is-- rather curiously-- the very same, very unique capital letter F found in the inscription we were shown is in the front of Aziraphale's copy of Modern Magic. Why this is all the same topic will make more sense as you read it, should you be interested:

#good omens #good omens meta #aziraphale #aziracrow #crowley #good omens theory

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askchilchuck · 4 months ago

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Rip Chilchuck Tims, you would of loved the Beatles

We have beetles here too, you know. Also, quit telling people I’m dead.

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kagoutiss · 9 months ago

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junimo sight

#stardew valley #stardew valley spoilers #sdv #sdv spoilers #grandpa #mister qi #mr. qi #…im still thinking abt these two #ive decided qi has a ton of silly nicknames for the farmer’s grandpa since. we dont know his actual name lol #like qi presumably knows his name but we dont. so he calls him stuff like ‘hotshot’ and ‘cowboy’ and ‘mustang’#stuff that is like way cooler than you would expect. the gangly beardy farmer to be called #but qi thinks he’s cool so he calls him cool names. and because he can’t not flirt with him #and anyway. yeah i feel like peepaw could see junimos just like the farmer. maybe it runs in the family #my other stance is that qi in game can see junimos just fine but he couldnt always see them. that came with the immortality thing lol #and either way junimos are kind of deterred by him. they do not like his capitalist aura it freaks them out

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vaguely-concerned · 1 month ago

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just for fun this time during 'sea of blood' I counted out all the venatori corpses I think we can be pretty sure were lucanis' handiwork before we show up (not including the ones he kills in his initial cutscene, and with an assumption that he's been at work mainly up and down in the areas we move through until we find him, not behind the locked door -- I think that's mostly the work of rampaging undead and other venatori-hoisted-by-their-own-petard suchlikes). can thus happily inform you lucanis has killed at least 32 venatori before rook and company get there. at least one of them he's impaled on their own weird crystal spike things the venatori mages cast as an AOE attack and that they're trying to keep him contained with when we find him. so he's clearly been keeping busy lol. that's my boy dispensing poetic justice and claiming some enrichment in his enclosure while he's at it good for him!

#dragon age #dragon age: the veilguard #dragon age: the veilguard spoilers #dragon age spoilers #lucanis dellamorte #I think he's been scouting around found what's techincally the way out realized he can't leave without his blood #and been shepherded/cornered in the room where you find him. or just as likely he lured them in there to take them all out at once #and also he's not a mage. how the fuck is he going to actually get the door out open and then not just drown if he does #even though he found it. lucanis dellamorte's very bad no good extremely awful horrible day (300+ day streak)#CAN the non-mage venatori get in and out of here without a mage to take them. many questions #him coincidentally escaping right now seems to be down to everything falling the fuck apart down there after zara officially voided #whatever OSHA regulations they ever had and the fallout of solas' ritual made magic run wild across the continent #it's interesting to note that the ossuary we see in this is actually pretty much emptied -- she's already retrieved #what she considered her successes. there used to be way more experiments down here until like a week before this #it's just lucanis and the other rejects left lmao #I do like (well. like is probably the wrong word) to imagine that lucanis has spent a sisyphean year of nearly escaping in there #he's killed a guard gotten to look around for intel for five seconds and been thrown back into his cell multiple times before #this time he's just got chaos and rook (basically synonymous terms right lol) on his side #also to all the 'why is he in his full armor and already with a neat beard' complaints -- because this is a video game #and getting a whole new model for him done for all of 45 mins of content max would not be a wise or fruitful use of resources #hope that helps!#if we're going to go watsonian about it he must have been wearing something when he got there and he probably had luggage #so idk he found those in a store room or something b/c callivan... not the brighest bulb in the lamp store clearly

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riddlers-left-buttcheek · 18 hours ago

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Holy damn that's a lot of text, thank you so much for putting that amount of thought into this! 🙈

On communication:

Yeah, I wanna start off with commissions for personal use, and eventually get into commercial ones. Email communication seems pretty good actually, then I can have everything more organized and not overlook requests. I'll definitely get back to you on website and portfolio tips (once I even have enough finished works to showcase) thanks for offering!

On Pricing:

Ooo some price examples would be amazing, and the nonrefundable deposit is also pretty smart.

I've worked at a logo design company in management for a while (never again lol). We handled things much differently there, my boss basically had his apprentice employees teach him how to run his company, it was all over the place. And we gave away 12 free logo examples to each client, which was absolutely absurd. And then he'd complain that we put in all this effort for nothing 🤦‍♂️

That's also why I'm asking for advice, even though I've worked in this branch before, but it was just chaos all the time. And the clients - my god. Felt like all the worst people in my country decided to have their logo made by us. The price was always too high for them (despite us being the cheapest logo design company in the area at the time), complained that the results didn't come in fast enough, some clients were on their 30th revision, and they almost always wanted to converse over the phone to yell at you for not doing your job right, often over speaker in their car while driving. That's pretty much the reason why I'm so unsure about most of the process, and a little bit intimidated, because that's what I had to deal with for 4 years 🫡

Oh artist union sounds cool! Thanks for the tip, I'll check if there's something like that in my country. About the contract: omg that would be so nice if you could send me the base version, thanks for offering! Riiight, licensing fees exist, I think we also charged 50 flat back then.

On payment:

Damn, I didn't know about the friends/family thing on PayPal :o

About taxes, where I live you're allowed to make up to 800€, past that you have to tax it. But yeah, I'll worry about that when I get there, but it's still good to know about this stuff beforehand.

On Slots / Time

Yea, since I work slower in general, I'll probably calculate more time in, additionally to the time I think I need. Damn, I'm also chronically ill, which is also one of my concerns. The biggest issue are my chronic migraine that trigger really easily, so sometimes I'll be bedridden for a week. But I can probably let my clients know beforehand, I'm sure they'll understand, like with personal projects, right? Leaving some buffer reminds me, now that you say it, we used to do that at the logo design company as well, always telling clients it would take 2-3 weeks, when we actually had the first concepts in 1 week. And then the clients would be happy, sometimes, that they receive the designs sooner. Totally forgot about that, thanks for reminding me!

On Changes:

Omg thanks for the link! That's a really interesting way to go about commissions :o

On Scams:

You're riiiiight, hadn't thought of a form! That'll actually help a lot, then I don't have to do research on them and check if they're legit or not.

----

Thank you SO MUCH for all this advice, I'll study it thoroughly 🙈💕✨

It's so cool to also get insight into the business side of things. I will absolutely take this seriously, since I eventually want to be an artist full-time, because I really can't see myself anywhere else with my illnesses and disability.

I'll definitely visit your website and slide into your DMs for all the examples and stuff you offered, maybe also ask some more questions if anything comes up, if that's OK with you.

Again, thank you so much, it's so kind of you to take the time to write such a detailed reply, it helped me a lot! 🤗🩷

Commission Advice? (pls help)

Hey heyy

I wanna start doing commissions, but I've never done it before, and have no idea where to start. So I thought I'd make this post and ask any artist, that would like to share how they go about commissions, for advice.

I've summed up some of the questions that came to mind below the cut. I would want to take requests outside of Tumblr as well, just fyi. I'm well aware that most of what I ask depends on the individual artist and their works, and that there won't be a single formula to follow - I'd just like to gain a bit of perspective and see how different people go about these things, so that I can get an idea for myself.

Any helpful links to other posts or websites on this topic are much appreciated 💚

Replies to this in DMs are fine too ☺️

Questions below ⬇️

Communication?

Do you text with the client entirely through Tumblr (etc.) DMs, or do you use a different platform (like Discord, WhatsApp)?

Pricing?

My biggest issue is how much to charge for an art piece. I know it depends on multiple factors, like what type of drawing it is, is it lineart only, is it in colour, etc. Then there's also taxes. I've looked at a couple artists, but the prices vary so widely, and I have no idea where to put myself on that spectrum. I also have a huge problem knowing my worth, which definitely doesn't help.

Payment?

Which payment method do you use? My first thought was PayPal, I also read that many people use Stripe (that I never heard of before my research). And when do you ask for the transaction to be made? I've seen 50% upfront, the other 50% once it's done a lot. Some say to not give the customer the finished piece until you've received 100% of the money.

Slots?

How do you decide on how many you have available? Do have a fixed number or just take requests until you think you can't take any more?

Time?

How long does it take you to finish a request? Again, I know it depends on many many things. A couple examples would already help a lot.

Updates? Previews?

Do you give the client in-between updates on your progress? Do you send a preview before sending the finished piece? I've read that, before sending the final file, you should always have the images in low quality and with a watermark over it.

Changes?

If the client is dissatisfied with the final piece, do you allow changes? If yes, how many, where do you draw the line? Do you charge extra? Also, what do you do if the client doesn't like the entire thing?

Licensing

I absolutely suck at this, my brain just doesn't want to comprehend legal language. So most I've read on this, I still don't fully understand, but probably because I've never put it to practice. Is there a specific type of licensing you use? What do you tell your client on what they can do, but more importantly, can't do, with the art you create for them?

Final files?

In which file format do you send the finished art piece to the client? I was thinking pdf, maybe jpg and png? Also, how do you send it? In DMs? Per email?

Scams?

Also one of the more important questions for me, since I get paranoid about these things easily (and turn out to be right most of the time). Any advice on scams? I've read Instagram is filled with them, and to best avoid requests over Insta alltogether. Any experiences you've had, anything I should definitely look out for?

Any other advice?

Anything at all. I'm probably definitely overthinking this and it's most likely really not that complicated, but I'm a very anxious, insecure and paranoid person. 🙈 So I'll take any and all advice I can get.

Thank you 🤗💚

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