#not to mention the character dynamics between the brothers... between the childhood trio... are so brain rot inducing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

plagued-melodies · 2 years ago

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Could you write about an Reader that is close friends, almost family, with Diluc & Kaeya? In particular how Kaeya and Diluc's falling out would affect that. I'm equally happy with fluff, angst or a mix of the two! :)

Ahhh! YESSS! I love this so much I may actually finish this within a reasonable time frame!!! Hope you don't mind if I just made the reader just their younger sibling.

Characters and dynamics: GN!reader, Diluc, and Kaeya as siblings

Warnings: SPOILERS for Diluc and Kaeya's stories, mentions of a corpse, mental breakdowns, mentions of Akeya and Diluc fighting, grief

Sorry if this, at best, is incomprehensible. I may have made too many questions which may or may not give the feeling of distressed grieving .

Please let me know if I messed up on anything grammatical or spelling wise! 🙏

You, Diluc, and Kaeya, a trio of siblings that were once thought to be inseparable. Both you and Kaeya were children taken in by Crepus and were raised as though you were his own. However, you were slightly younger than your two elder brothers.

You three were always getting into trouble, especially when you were considered old enough to wield your polearm and spar with your two contrasting siblings, though Crepus was always very wary of how rough the three of you get, but he knew they would never hurt you on purpose. Even if you attempted to use all the strength in your ten year old bones to fight fiercely. At times, being the youngest sucked. Like, really sucked. Sometimes the contrasting pair didn't want to play with their little sibling (you weren't even that younger than them for Pete's sake!) and would sometimes leave you at the manor with Adeline and/or Crepus and did their own thing.

You could point to any time in your young childhood and smile fondly, having your two older brothers there made even the dullest moments far more enjoyable and you treasured each moment. Each holiday, each cup of juice, each birthday, all of it was paradise. A fond memory to wake up to.

You remember the excitement in your brother's eyes as he grew in status as a knight, and eventual captain at such a young age. You remember the pride in your father's eyes as he watched your brother, his son, accomplish what he couldn't. You remembered the world around you shattering at the news of your fathers death.

You were barely 15 at the time, it was Diluc's 18th birthday and word from the new head of the estate of Crepus' passing had spread quickly. Conflict broke within the family, with you being caught in the crossfire.

Diluc blamed many people for Crepus' death, he blamed the knights, he blamed the ratio, he even blamed Kaeya and himself. But despite your neutrality in their feud, he could never blame you. You were just as much a victim. Diluc and Kaeya were adults, you were still a teenager, having seen the corpse of the man you saw as your father, neither could bring themselves to hold the same resentment as they held for each other.

You watched in horror as the two fought, each brother scraping by the skin of their teeth in not getting killed by the other. Pyro energy enveloped the air around you, the sickening clash between fire and ice making the air damp and humid. When did things go so wrong? Weren't you three just planning Diluc's celebration last week? How did the two turn on each other so quickly, were there any signs you could have missed?

It was also that day that both of your brothers gained a vision, a mocking from the gods.

You were barely just processing everything when they realized you were there, seeing the world around you fall apart. Neither said anything as the two trudged away from one another, the world had a silence just as deadly as the battle you watched.

You didn't see either of them for several weeks after that, you got word from Captain Jean at the time of Diluc's resignation, leaving his vision behind as he travelled to somewhere unknown. Within the weeks both were missing, it was Adeline and the other maids who took care of you.

You attempted to go forward, to not let grief take hold of you. It hurts, yes, more than anything. You kept walking downstairs every morning expecting all of this to be some twisted nightmare. To walk downstairs one day and see right where you three left off in planning the perfect 18th birthday for Diluc with Crepus wandering the estate just months prior.

But that never happened.

Luckily you weren't left to grieve alone for too long on your own. When the steadily rising knight, Kaeya, heard that Diluc had practically dipped off the face of Teyvat, he made no hesitation in coming to the estate immediately. Apparently avoiding anything having to do with the pyro red head. You were an emotional mess.

Your emotional state was entirely dependent on this routine you built. Wake up, eat and brush your teeth, practice sparring, continue your studies, rinse and repeat until nightfall. Never confront the issue. That's what you told yourself. So long as you never face your problems, your problems will never face you!

So why is that when you woke up at the ungodly hours of the early morning, met face to face with Kaeya who seemed more than frazzled, everything broke down? All the tears, the screaming, the cursing, and the denial flooding out in treacherous waves of grief. Kaeya was never all too great at comforting people, only knowing how to do the bare minimum. For all his jokes and self-assurance, it never seemed to shine through in moments like these, opting to awkwardly assure someone it'll be okay. Yet, despite that initial shock and awkwardness, he kneeled down and held your sobbing form in an attempt to calm you down in some way, rubbing soothing circles into your hunched form. Your painful wails soon softened into hushed cries as the two of you steadily stood back up. Adeline, having heard the commotion came rushing to the door, leading the both of you inside.

Needless to say, Alberich was not happy. He was angry! Not at you, of course. You were a kid in all this. He was angry at the missing third in your broken trio, Diluc. Where in Teyvat was he? How could he just up and leave his teenage sibling all alone in the manor?! Kaeya silently cursed himself for doing virtually the same thing, but honestly, what was he supposed to do? He was under the impression Diluc would be sensible enough to stick around. Now it was he who was picking up the pieces Diluc left behind.

He was even more upset at the fact you were perfectly fine with it, but how could you blame either of them? It hurt and sucked, but you can't exactly scold your older brother(s) for grieving the way they do. Diluc had witnessed (and supposedly been somewhat responsible) his father's death. That has to take a toll on a person, especially someone who is just barely an "adult" at the time. Whatever he was doing, he had to have a reason for it, right? You'll just wait for his return and hopefully understand him better, apparently you don't understand your brother's as well as you thought you did.

You never did find out what he was doing for all those months, why he did what he did, or why he continued to live what seemed like a completely second life while still living in the same house as you. All of it remained unanswered and as time went on, he only ever seemed to grow more distant. Even up till the day you turned 18, he wasn't cold or hostile toward you, by no means no! He was just... Distant. It was like trying to wade through a river towards someone only for a wave to drag you back to where you started.

Kaeya, although more involved, was similar in a way, he was still removed in a way, he was just better at covering it than others. You began to notice... Little details. Such as the way his brows slightly creased when you brought up the red head, but it never seemed to be out of hatred or disdain like Diluc when mentioning the cryo visioned knight, it seemed more like regret. You decided that, after seeing how the two fought and butted heads all the time nowadays, it was best to not say anything.

When you were halfway through being 16, that the moment you turned 18, you'd leave. Leave the Manor, leave the city, and leave Mondstadt. You didn't hate it, no you loved this city! But you felt isolated. You were just the unfortunate sibling of two distant but once close brothers of a dead father. You didn't have the chance to make many friends, and with how things were now, you didn't feel like it was possible to make any after everything that happened. You were already branded as someone to either pity, or avoid.

The only person you informed of your departure was Adeline, the closest thing you had to a mother. It was just a month before you turned 18 did you say anything. She was heavily concerned if you planned to just... Drop off the face of the Teyvat, you assured her that you'll keep in touch, that if anything goes wrong, you'd come home. Years to turn months, months turn to weeks, weeks turn to days, days into hours, and before you knew it, you were 18. Second thoughts, doubts, and early regret began to stir in your gut, but all of those feelings dissipated when you noticed the empty manor.

Aside from you and Adeline, who was sweet enough to see you off, the manor was silent and void of any life. Your breath hitched and your heart sunk, not like you planned to say goodbye anyways, right? Diluc was gone again that night. Completely closed off on what he was doing, headed towards the city where he'd surely stay until the dawn breaks across the winery. By then, by morning, you'd be gone. Hopefully far into the lands of Liyue where you'd continue southeast through Sumeru.

The darkness faced back into you, its call beckoning you further. With one last string of doubt snapped and resolve being threaded, you turn around and give one last goodbye to the only mother you've ever known, her lips kissing your temple just like she did when you were younger, and you left.

Growing up, you, like many children, were terrified of the dark. But right then, as you trudged southward towards the marshes just passed the stone gate, you couldnt help but feel a sense of... Comfort from its envelopment. For once in years, you felt free.

It was later that morning, dew drops from the vineyard dripping into harmonious puddles, along came the trudging dark night hero of Mondstadt. His body hunched from exhaustion and eyelids swollen from strain, he didn't think twice when entering the silent manor.

It was still relatively early in the morning, and while usually you'd be up by now, he figured you decided to sleep in just a bit. He smiled at that thought. He knew you were stressed as of late, how hard you work and he was happy you were taking it easy today. It was your special day after all. He internally tells himself to tell you happy birthday once he wakes up again later that day.

His footsteps are heavy going up the stairs, energy is depleted from his body as he slowly begins to strip the pieces of clothing from his body. Gods, he just needs to sleep right now, he would kill for a sound nap today. However, he has responsibilities and he must reap the consequences he sews. His eyes scrunch in confusion when he notices a neatly sealed envelope sitting daintily on his desk. He pays it no mind, quickly nothing how it was your handwriting. He'd read it later, it was most likely regarding whatever plans you held that day in the city when you awoke. It should be fine to put it off for just a few more hours, right? He doesn't think about it too much, his body and mind are exhausted

Well, when he finally awakens later that night, silently cursing himself for having missed the entirety of your birthday, does an uneven knot form in his brain. Its silent, very very silent, too silent. Surely, by now you must have been up and around, and usually you're up and around the mansion but all that could be heard was the buzzing sounds of the world outside.

"Y/n?" His voice echoes across the hall, uneven and unknowing. He makes his way to your room, lightly knocking on the old worn wood in an effort to have you hear him. "Y/N, are you there? I was wondering if tomorrow you'd like to do something in Mondstadt for your birth-"

However, when Diluc's knuckles go to hit the door once more, it opens slightly. Feeling like something was wrong, he opens the door wider. The room is barren. a good amount of your clothes, your bag, money, and gear are missing. He feels panic fill his mind as he rushes back into his own room in search of your letter.

Damn it! What if you were hurt? Did someone, or something, take you? Where were you?

His answers are found in your last words to him. A numbness spreading through him.

"To my older brother, Diluc,

By the time you read this, I'll have been gone for a while. I know just how much you hate idle chit chat so I'll be forward.

I left.

This is nobody's fault. It isn't yours, it isn't Kaeya's, and it isn't Mondstadt's. I made this choice on my own accord. Truth is, I don't fit in with the city, I don't feel happy cooped up all alone in the manor and I needed to get out. I'm at a standstill in a wave, it just isn't working.

Im sorry I couldn't say goodbye, you're busy and I understand, but I also fear that if I made my plans known to you, that I wouldn't have left.

I understand if you're upset with me, angry even, but please know that I still care about you greatly. Please do forgive me, I won't be gone forever, and Ill still try to keep in touch. I just need to see somewhere that isn't as... Isolating. I can't quite describe it, even in my writing.

sincerely, Y/N"

Diluc's hands were trembling, tears that once pricked the corners of his eyes threatened to spill. Only ever cascading down when he regains his body and rushes through the manor in a haze. Was this a joke? Some cruel joke on him? All these questions rush through him as he scans the manor room by room, crevice by crevice. When he confirms that it wasn't, he makes haste in preparing to find you. You couldn't have possibly gone far. Maybe to the next nation over if not further on slightly.

When he opens the door he's met with Kaeya, whose eyes are wide blown, hair in disarray as he holds a letter he most likely only recently received.

Despite all searches nearby, you were long gone. Determined to keep hidden as you explored the world.

It was only about a month later did they hear from you, your location still anonymous but at least they could confirm you were alive and well.

You sent letters often, telling of your new experiences. It came in steady flows, so when either one of the pair heard nothing but radio silence, they'd put aside their growing disdain for each other and confront the other brother.

It's been years since that happened. You're now nearing 23 and life has only gone up from that troubled point in your life.

After 5 long years of being gone, you found yourself entering the nation of wine wind and freedom. Your chest felt light, your head dizzy with recognition, your hands instinctually reach for the Anemo vision at your side and clutch it tightly.

While your brothers heard from you, you haven't heard anything from them in over 5 years. It was impossible. You never stayed in one place long enough or revealed where you were while you still dwelled there.

But here you were, tracking along a long worn trail you often once took while heading into the city as a mindless teen, before everything crashed. The city hasn't changed much. It was still as worn and cozy as ever. A sense of relief washes over you at the thought.

Whistling a tune to yourself you approach the gates of the city you remember growing up in decorated to the nines for Widblume, a knight speaks up.

"Mondstadt welcomes you, are you here for Mondstadt's yearly celebrations?" You nod slightly.

"Yeah? Sort of? I just so happened to visit during so, so may as well have a few glasses of some of Teyvat's best wine am I right?" He gives a hardy laugh at your comment.

"Why indeed I can attest to that, well if it weren't for our festival that drew you to Mondstadt, may I ask what caught your attention?"

You scratch the back of your neck in response, "Ah well, honestly? I have a couple of family members here that I haven't seen in a while. It just so happened that it landed on this festival so I doubt I'll be able to see them for very long before they're swept up by the hectics of it all..." Your voice trails off in thought, yeah maybe you should have kept better memory of the date.

"Agh, don't worry, I'm sure they'll make time for you, nothing can break a family bond after all!" You internally wince at the comment at how unaware he is of your history.

"Heheheh.... Yeah.. anyways, I should probably be heading into the city then...." He waves a quick goodbye to you as the knight turns to greet some other incoming tourists.

You didn't think this through, you really REALLY didn't think about this. Diluc is more than assured to be busy with winery dealings, especially during a Mondstadt festival and Kaeya, if rumors correct, is a cavalry captain who has to oversee the knights during special events.

Besides, would they even recognize you? It's been half a decade, countless changes have occurred. Where once was clear unblemished skin, now lays scars of burns, cuts, and many other injuries alike. Evidence of your journey. You now wield a vision and wear clothes of a foreign nation, better suited to your life of traveling.

"Y/n!" A voice all too familiar drowns out your questions, turning around when you see her, Adeline, standing there with what seems to be some essentials for the manor in her basket. Her eyes brighten when taking in your form, a smile gracing her lips.

"Oh Y/N it is you!" Her basket is forgotten when she places as nearly as she could before wrapping her arms around you in a boar trap tight hug. You return the gesture ten fold. You take note of how your arms are firmer than the last time you hugged her.

"Adeline! It's been forever since I've seen you last!" She pulls away from you slightly to get a better look at you.

"My! have you grown! Look at you! You're about as tall as your brother's..." Her eyes show unfiltered fondness towards you before she turns to grab her abandoned basket once more.

"You shod come by the winery, Diluc and Kaeya would be thrilled to see you again!" Your form perks at this, a buzzing question about to leave your tongue before she continues.

"Unfortunately, the two still don't get along. However, those bone heads are willing to quit their squabbling if the sake of Mondstadt is in consideration." Her voice switches between fondness and irritation of a tired mother.

"Eh?! Are you sure?! Would they even recognize me? Do they even want to see me after I just up and left?" You whisper that last sentence, not expecting the maid to hear you.

"Y/N don't be silly, they'd be happy to see you, thrilled even! Don't you worry about being recognized, if I could tell it was you, then they will too." Her voice is kind, just like it was the time following Crepus' death. A sad wave of nostalgia fills you, you comply and urge her to lead the way (not that you need it really).

The walk outside of the city is quiet, it's strained but not uncomfortable. Your and Adeline's footsteps being the only things you hear trailing behind you. Noises of chatter and laughing of the festival falling dim. Adeline clears her throat.

"I never did say to Master Diluc about that night." She pauses, "when he realized you were gone, he went into a frenzy. For the first time in years, both Master Diluc and Kaeya cooperated with each other. All in hopes of finding you. Master Diluc tore himself up about it for weeks after it, I'd say even months. It took a while to understand that you left of your own choice, even with your letters saying such as."

You know she didn't say this to make you feel bad, but it sure as hell began to create a pit of guilt in your stomach.

"I'm sorry. I was hoping that leaving while he was gone would have been easier on both of them..." Lame excuse, you know. But what could you say? You were 18, not the smartest pea in the pod but hey, what's done is done.

"Yeah well you're back now," Adeline laughs, "be it for good or temporary, I'm sure they're gonna be ecstatic." As if to punctuate her sentence, you both stop, the Dawn Winery leaking from the distance.

You swallow a nervous lump in your throat as you both draw closer to the manor. Nerves prickle your skin like lightning as you help the older woman with the door, her hands preoccupied with the baskets.

"Master Diluc and Master Kaeya, I'm back!" She announces as she places the baskets of goods on a nearby table. She turns to you, a sense of mirth in her eyes, "And I brought someone who wants- cut that- who you both would like to see!" You panic slightly at how abrupt she was but quickly calm down.

You hear bickering from within the kitchen, the familiar voices of your brothers growing closer as they approach.

"Now I'm just saying that you could afford to be a bit more...hospitable, after all we are family." Diluc's fiery red hair comes into view as he exits that room before the blue haired captain.

"And in saying that you are hardly a welcomed guest here, if you want hospitality, you can go ahead and book a room for the Goth hotel and leave this manor." Less than a minute home and you're already deadpanning at the theatrics.

He breezes by the both of you, Kaeya in tow, not registering Adeline's words due his bickering nature with Kaeya.

"Master Diluc, must I repeat myself in stating you have a special guest over?" Diluc waves a dismissive hand while his back is turned to you. Kaeya scoffs before turning to give a gesture of goodwill before freezing as though his vision took hold of him.

"Well, I can't see how important this guest truly is if they didn't even bother to schedule a proper meeting with me." He continues to sort through papers, his voice edging on irritation but only slightly.

"Diluc." Kaeya's tone is flat as his eyes stay completely trained onto your form, as though if he dared to even look away you'd vanish once more.

"Honestly, if this meeting is truly that imperative you're just going to have to wait. To try and walk in on such a busy and hectic time such as Windblume is hardly a good look on yourself in this moment." You don't blame him, you can see the stress visible on his features, clearly overworked with whatever he's been up to the past few years.

"Diluc." The knights tone is firm. Far less languid as it usually is as he tries his hardest to gain the others attention.

"Kaeya whatever you have to say, you can say without needing my complete attention-" he turns around swiftly to chide him for repeating himself before he freezes up all the same.

"Y/n?" His once harsh and sharp tone taken with your brother is now much softer when in reference to you. Disbelief drawn onto both their features.

You stand there awkwardly, shifting your heart from one foot to the other in a tense and silent battle. You let out a breathy laugh, Kaeya following suit as you raise your arms in mock surrender. Diluc is frozen still as the other lurches forward to wrap you in a death defying embrace that never falters. You laugh once more as he scoops you up. Diluc, having jumped out of his own stupor walks forward in opposing silence. He reaches a hand out to slightly tug at your unkempt hair.

You struggle to swat his hand away as the cavalry captains hold only tightens. You resign yourself before you belt out a joking remark.

"I'm back! Did you guys miss me?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#melodic musings post <3 #genshin spoilers #genshin impact diluc #genshin impact kaeya #kaeya #diluc #platonic/familial #genshin impact #reader insert #gn reader

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morninkim · 1 year ago

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What's your favorite example of an underdeveloped relationship/dynamic from the show that you put a lot of thought into for Rise? c:

Ooooooohhhhh good question good question

I think the relationships between the Rangers specifically were pretty well explored in the show, and I'll have to do a proper rewatch at some point to really get a feel for what could be missing from some interactions BUT I have a couple

Rise Tommy and Zack are so important to me. Like. They both love their mothers, Zack's a lot more open about it than Tommy since he's known his WAY longer. They encourage each other with their respective girlfriends - the S1 ep where they team up and Zack gets the dragon shield is so so good, that influenced a lot of my thoughts about them - and, especially when it comes to trans stuff, they feel like the other just gets it. They're T4T friendship goals fr

Kim and Trini, while I think is very cute and fun in the show, is another relationship I LOVE in Rise. I mentioned in the series outline post that Trini's there to let Kim cut loose when her parents get divorced, since hers did the same thing years ago, plus similar with Zack/Tommy, they both love their dads so much (idk if I'll design parents but I imagine that Trini's dad has obvious smile lines and Kim's dad's forehead is permanently wrinkled from Business Man Things) - Trini's also there to help Kim with queer stuff when she realises she likes Tommy, since she's never liked a girl before!! But she's excited about it!! But nervous!! And through Kim's excitement for discovering herself, Trini's able to get more and more comfortable with coming out to everyone

Skull and Billy's childhood friend thing from GGPR was something I wanted to carry over to Rise, difference being that they were friends in kindergarten until Billy's parents took him out of public school to teach him at home. Now in High School Billy sometimes lends Skull a hand with schoolwork (Autistic to ADHD Communication) and while Skull does get frustrated and they clash sometimes, they're good friends at the end of the day.

Similarly, Jason and Kim were friends in early Elementary School but went to different Middle Schools, so they're just kinda friendily floating around each other at first. But by the finale, Jason's like the older brother Kim never had but always wanted and acts like the biggest goober in the world around her to keep her smiling, while she's. Very Loud at football games to support him and Zack, and eventually Tommy as well she joins the team.

OH OH OH OKAY ACTUALLY REAL ANSWER Richie, Tommy and Curtis as a friend group are SO IMPORTANT. RISE SEASON 1 NEW KID TRIO. Richie and Curtis are lot more extroverted than Tommy and help her get a lil more comfortable around school, Curtis introduces her to Zack, which obvs leads to her meeting the rest of the Rangers and becoming friends with them. One of my fave things has been taking these two characters who really were just introduced to be White Ranger red herrings and making them MATTER. Richie sees Tommy getting close with Kim and is like "oh like, y'know, Kim's friends with Trini right? And you're also friends with her? Think you could,,, hook a butch up?" and Tommy just. Is terrible at being a wingwoman and is like "woahhh y'know Richie's preeeetty cool, she once saved a cat from a tree without using a ladder. Just fully flew up there. Ain't that neat, Trini? Don't you think that's sick?" and Trini's like. Ah. I know what's going on here. Curtis is sweet, but he does get insecure about being stuck as the "funny haha friend" no one really takes seriously but Richie and Tommy are like No dude. We love you. Let's go see a movie. Plus he's just so helpful and will drop anything to lend a hand, so Richie genuinely appreciates his un-asked-for-but-desperately-needed help at the Juice Bar

#rotmmpr #power rangers #mmpr #asks #stream of consciousness GO #honorable mention to stone canyon trio's dynamic w bulk and skull - but i havent talked about that yet lmao

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acacia-may · 2 years ago

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Who are your top ten favourite black clover characters and ships (platonic or romantic) ? Talk about them.

Hi there, Anon! Thank you for the ask! 💖 Oh this is so difficult because Black Clover is just full of all these wonderful dynamics between its amazing, multi-dimensional characters! Friendships and family bonds get to shine so much in the story and those platonic relationships are what I got invested in the most when I was watching the anime and reading the manga so I think my list will reflect that, but I tried to pick a variety. In no particular order, if I had to narrow it down to just 10, these are probably my favourites. I’m going to list them here, then put my ramblings under the cut since this was long…😅 [The top 10 favourite characters post is going to have to be separate, but here's the relationship one]

*Some warnings for a few vague mentions of some of the characters’ childhood trauma/abuse. Also some vauge-ish manga spoilers.*

Finral and Langris (Familial Bond)

Finral and Vanessa (Either Platonic or Romantic. I like both but love their friendship most of all).

Rill and Charmy (Either Platonic or Romantic. I like both, but I’d say I actually ship this one to a certain extent)

Vanessa, Magna, and Luck (Probably My Favourite Friendship Trio in the series)

Gordon, Grey, and Gauche (Another Favourite Trio)

Langris and Finesse (Either Platonic or Romantic. It’s underrated either way)

Nozel and Dorothy (Friendship—I guess it could be romantic(?) Not opposed to that, but I wouldn’t say I actively ship it).

Vanessa and Noelle (Friendship & Sister-Like Bond)

Mereoleona, Fuegoleon, & Leopold (Familial Bonds)

Asta and Yuno (Familial Bonds) — I feel like this is just the heart of the series.

Finral & Langris’ brotherly bond is probably the dynamic I am most invested in, in the whole series, or at least is tied for first place. I did not like either of the spatial brothers much in the beginning (though my sister used to tease me that Finral was my “secret favourite” when we were binging the anime together 😂), but as the series progressed and provided the opportunity to learn more about them and to really understand why they act the way that they do, they became two of my favourite characters, albeit very complex ones. One of things I want most out of the series is for them to reach an understanding and reconciliation with each other and rebuild that familial relationship they could have had with each other if they hadn’t grown up in such a toxic environment that pitted them against each other, strained their relationship, and fostered resentment. I think they could really understand and support each other too, if given the opportunity (and if, in Langris’s case especially, they’re actually willing to open up to each other) because I really think that despite their many differences, Langris and Finral’s deepest wants and motivations are extremely similar: they were denied unconditional love as children and are starving for it as adults. They go about trying to fill that void in different ways—Finral with his excessive flirting & pursuing romantic relationships and Langris with his achievements and accomplishments & fighting to be “the best,” but it’s really the same wound at root, in my opinion. Rebuilding their relationship could really help them begin to heal from that because there would be an understanding there as well as the opportunity to experience the real love of a family as actual brothers. In so many words, I just want them to get along and be happy!

Finral and Vanessa’s dynamic is just wonderful—whether platonic or romantic (either is fine with me). It’s probably tied for my favourite dynamic in the story and is definitely one of my favorite things in Black Clover especially in the anime where it really got its opportunity to be fleshed out. It's just such a healthy dynamic for a male-female friendship in media which I think is unfortunately kind of rare in fiction especially when one of the characters is the "token flirt" like Finral. I really think that at some point, in order for them to have the healthy friendship they have in the canon, Vanessa had to have made her boundaries incredibly clear and made sure Finral understood where they stood in the relationship--that this is an actual friendship, not a stepping stone to a romantic relationship (because Finral’s problem, especially early on in the canon is that he sees all women as potential romantic interests), and Finral has so much respect for her that he is just never ever going to act on anything that could even potentially be there (even subconsciously?) on his side because he values their friendship & respects her boundaries. This is rare–in fiction and in real life, and there's something really beautiful about it. I have no doubt that Finral’s friendship with Vanessa is probably the healthiest (or one of the healthiest) relationships he has with a woman in his life, and it definitely helped me have more respect for him as a character.

I think the canon makes it obvious how good a friend Vanessa is to Finral–I just love how she really builds him up and encourages him (also the bond she has with him, however one wants to classify it, literally brought him back from the dead in the Forest of Witches)–but I think Finral is just as good a friend to her as well, we just get to see less of that side. On Vanessa’s side, I think that her friendship with Finral gives her the chance to be vulnerable. One of the greatest things about Vanessa’s character is that she is so empathetic and supportive of her friends, but she spends most of her time being the “shoulder” to cry on whereas it’s hard for her to open up and seek support when she is the one who needs it. In my mind, Finral knows her well enough to know when she needs that help and support that she isn’t usually comfortable asking for. I think there’s a great balance in Vanessa & Finral’s friendship that allows them both to open up to each other and support each other. They also have so much fun together and trust each other completely! It’s so wonderful–I just love it! As much as they are platonic soulmates in my mind, I’m not opposed to the idea of the relationship taking a romantic turn, and I could imagine them being happy together in that way under particular circumstances. (It’s certainly fun to play with from time to time and I can see the possibilities & potential) I don’t think it’s a “mutual pining” situation, and if something was to happen there, I imagine it would be way in the future, post-canon and would just build onto their already strong foundation of friendship and mutual respect, like icing on the cake. Whether platonic or romantic, this dynamic is just chef’s kiss, in my opinion! (I also like their friendship with Asta, but I have said way too much about them already).

3. Rill and Charmy both make me laugh so much, and I love their friendship when we get to see those glimpses of it when they’re training together in the Heart Kingdom. Also, Rill not realising that Charmy is his “food goddess” is hilarious to me. He’s so oblivious—it’s really kind of endearing. I’m not sure what will come of it all, but I like to think Rill might be a bit happy to learn his “food goddess” and his friend Charmy are actually one in the same. I’d really like to see more of these two--they seem like such a fun and chaotic force when they’re together. I imagine they are very supportive of each other and each other’s dreams even if other people think they’re a bit eccentric [i.e. it wouldn’t phase Charmy too much if Rill repaints their living room for the third time this month, and Rill wouldn’t mind at all if Charmy wanted to go on a month long expedition through who-knows-where to find some magical mushrooms for stew]. Also, I felt like I needed to pick a romantic relationship for the list and this is probably the ship I like the most besides really obscure ones like Gadjah x Lolopetchka and Dominante x Fanzell.

4. Vanessa, Magna, and Luck is probably my favourite trio in Black Clover! I love them all so much, and the individual friendships in the trio too–however, I listed them together because watching Magna and Vanessa fight to save Luck during the elf arc was so genuinely moving to me (especially knowing Luck’s backstory), and I’ve been incredibly attached to their friendship ever since! I love those softer, goofier moments between them too where Vanessa is the big sister to her chaotic “little brothers.” It’s very sweet!!

5. Gordon, Grey, and Gauche is another trio I love very much! I was not expecting this dynamic, but it is so very welcome. They seem like such an odd combination and yet they work together so well and actually have a lot in common. What really gets me about the G-Squad is that they all have these strong themes of loneliness and isolation in their backstories, but now they have this great friendship with each other where they can support and care for one another. It’s so wholesome and warms my heart! G-Squad for the win!!

6. I allowed myself one “out of the box” dynamic for this list, and Langris and Finesse is by far my favourite in that category. It “has the pizzazz” as my sister would say. Now these two certainly had a rocky start and things are complicated because of that whole arranged marriage business, but I do think they genuinely care for each other–not necessarily in a romantic way but in the way that they want what’s best for each other and want each other to be happy. Lady Finesse brings out this softer, gentler side of Langris (which is probably what I love the most about their dynamic), and I think Langris truly takes the time to listen to what Finesse wants and needs and he values her wishes when they have been dismissed for most of her life (Plus I have no doubt he’d defend her to the death, bend over backward to make her happy, and fight for whatever she wanted, even when she’s a bit too sweet and meek to fight for herself). They have many differences in their personalities but they have a lot of similarities in worldview and their attitudes towards life—being more traditional, formal, and proper ‘old souls,’ and I like to think that even if it started off as an obligation to spend time together because of this arranged marriage they were going to be in, eventually Langris and Finesse actually became fairly good friends and came to genuinely enjoy each other's company (i.e. like when they’re having tea together in that one episode of the anime).

I think it’s clear that Finesse cares deeply for both of her boys (and Finral and Langris care for her as well), and while Langris has a genuine love and respect for her (not necessarily in a romantic sense though I could see it, perhaps), I think it’s sealed off somewhere and not something he really thinks about or allows himself to feel (let alone label) until his brother’s ‘declaring war’ on him brings all of that to the surface and he kind of has to reconcile how much he wants to be the Head of House Vaude (what he’s worked for his entire life) with how much he wants Lady Finesse to be happy. I think Finesse's happiness is an extremely powerful motivator for Langris. That’s really the only reason I can make sense of why he is so insistent on Finral cleaning up his act and becoming “worthy” of Lady Finesse (Why else would he be helping his brother take over as heir to House Vaude when that actually seems to be something Langris wants for himself? I often ask myself. I'm definitely open to other interpretations but that's the best I've got at the moment). It’s almost like Langris has realized that he can’t make Lady Finesse happy but he thinks that Finral can so he wants to make Finral into the best he can be for her. Once Langris is reasonably sure that Finral is at a place that he can make Finesse happy and has become a man ‘worthy of her’ I could definitely see him stepping aside so that his brother could take over their House and marry her—but purely out of concern for Finesse’s happiness, not Finral’s. I love the selflessness in that (especially for someone like Langris who is/comes off as such a selfish character in the beginning). I don’t want to add to the House Vaude soap opera but if there’s a world where Finral and Finesse decide they aren’t right for each other, I could see her and Langris being genuinely happy together–perhaps even growing to love each other in that romantic sense after a slow burn (and him just doting on and adoring her in the sweetest most tsundere way one would expect from Langris) so really however you want to take that relationship, I just like the dynamic.

7. The post-anime manga content really did a lot to change my perception of Nozel, and that’s when I really got invested in his friendship with Dorothy. I like to think they get along really well and have a strong foundation of mutual respect for each other. I think that they can be a good balance for each other as well because they're so different (i.e. he keeps her grounded whereas I could see her teasing him & getting him to lighten up a little. He needs that). What I like most about this friendship though is the idea that Nozel has someone he can open up to about these heavy secrets he has been carrying around about his mother. I can’t imagine what a heavy burden that was for him—so the fact that he even has the opportunity to set it down for awhile and to not have to shoulder it alone really warms my heart. While their friendship may have started off as just a matter of convience (i.e. he can literally only talk about the curse in Dorothy’s Glamour World), I like to think she proved to be a supportive and kind confidant and friend, and Nozel soon felt comfortable opening up and being vulnerable with her about other things as well (like his regrets about how strained his sibling relationship with Noelle is, for instance, which is why Dorothy canonically knows he’s such a tsun about how much he cares for his sister) Then, she shared things with him in return and they became better friends than one might expect given their differences. I suppose I could see them happy together in a romantic sense if certain things played out in certain ways and I can definitely understand why people would ship them. I’m just not sure if I would say that I do, at least not actively—I really see them as just very good and close friends.

8. Vanessa and Noelle’s sisterly friendship is just the sweetest! After everything Noelle has been through with her siblings, it warms my heart to think that she’s found such a wonderful “big sister” in Vanessa, and for Vanessa having grown up in isolation probably always wishing she had a sister, it's great to see her get to have a "little sister" in Noelle too. Vanessa really encourages and helps Noelle build her confidence when she really needs that support, and it’s really her love for Noelle as her “little sister” that allows her to unlock her fate power/Rouge. Their hug after Vanessa defeats Her Majesty the Queen of Witches is just so incredibly wholesome and one of my favourite moments in the series!

9. Mereleona, Fuegoleon, and Leo and their sibling relationship has always been really special to me (I actually have a magnet of them hanging up on my refrigerator). This might be because I have a pretty sizable age gap between me and my siblings in real life which is not something that is portrayed all that often in media and especially not portrayed with the siblings actually being close to each other despite the differences in age. I love how supportive Mereoleona, Fuegoleon, and Leo are of each other and how the encourage and motivate each other to be their best selves–in their own unique ways but at heart they really do all care for each other and I think that’s very sweet.

10. I debated this 10th spot for awhile before eventually deciding on Yuno and Asta since their brotherly bond is really at the heart of the series and was one of the first things that really endeared Black Clover to me. I just love that sort of bait-and-switch with Yuno in the very beginning where he starts out as this really "cool," naturally gifted rival for the protagonist trope, but then we find out he truly sees Asta as his brother and respects him more than anyone else. I love how they’re foils for each other and really bring out the best sides of each other too!

Thank you again for the ask, Anon, and for bearing with me through all the ramblings! Feel free to drop in anytime. I could talk about Black Clover and its friendships & characters for ages! 💖

#black clover ask #spatial mage brothers #answered asks #I could talk about this for hours #ramblings #clearly I have a problem #my boys 💚💙#lady finesse is underrated #G-Squad For The Win!!#healthy male-female friendships for the win!!#finral and vanessa's friendship is my favourite thing ngl #black clover spoilers

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recentanimenews · 4 years ago

Text

FEATURE: How ODDTAXI's Big Cast Keeps Its Mystery Interesting

How many different characters can an anime have before things get too hairy? Or — furry?

Animal crime drama ODDTAXI takes its menagerie of a cast very seriously. ODDTAXI is about walrus taxi driver Odokawa, a runaway girl, organized crime, idols, and city living. It shares a “panoramic” day-in-the-life angle … with a twist. Despite its unique anthropomorphic animal character designs, its world is grounded in a reality where species is the least of anyone’s concerns.

Taichi Kabawa explains the importance of social media to old man Odokawa

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

You won’t find one-dimensional prey versus predator dynamics or a shallow status quo vaguely resembling a food chain. ODDTAXI’s cast unexpectedly finds themselves in Rashomon-esque contradictions and conspiracies with all the modern conveniences of social media.

Mystery Kiss members Shiho Ichimura and Yuki Mitsuya contemplate their future

Rather than tell a linear story, ODDTAXI insists on showing us offbeat paths, as if we were a city-dweller bumping into eccentric personalities across the street. What matters most is first impressions: your job, gender, income. Even the most mundane facts can change everything.

Sensational idol Rui Nikaido and fanboy Shun Imai at a polaroid event

ODDTAXI hits the ground running introducing about a dozen major characters, zig-zagging perspectives between cab rides. Until Episode 4 — “Tanaka’s Revolution.” This anomaly in pacing throws a wrench into everything we assume we know. After giving a random, supposedly one-off character an episode about his moral crusade, nothing can be taken for granted. It’s a risky move, but it pays off.

When you accidentally turn on selfie mode

ODDTAXI’s “panoramic” pacing gets away with this by adding more pieces to an already incomplete puzzle. By introducing every character with the intent to break first impressions, we are forced to reconsider how ensemble casts make a mystery richer.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Odokawa is boring by design. He’s a 41-year-old with a laid-back attitude toward essentially everything, including gangster baboons pointing guns at his head. Odokawa says he’s like an authentic bartender: someone who knows keeping secrets is half the job. Keeping a missing high school girl in his apartment feels more like an aside than a plot twist — the first question asked in Episode 1 is answered before the credits roll.

Shirakawa rides with Odokawa

Odokawa’s private cab service is for everyone. His ability to make easy rapport might as well be a façade depending on who gets in. Alpaca nurse Shirakawa is stealing pharmaceutical medication, Odokawa assumes she’s just naive. We catch glimpses of a hopeless bachelor trying to find a girlfriend, a struggling idol group, gangsters, a student trying to go viral — what are they all hiding? There’s a niche for everyone in this tidy metropolitan ecosystem, even if it’s just “bachelor” or “idol fanboy.” First impressions lead us to assumptions any anonymous taxi driver would have. This is why introducing so many players at once works.

Odokawa recounts seeing Shirakawa meeting with notorious gangster, Dobu

Dominos begin falling when Shirakawa’s activity leads back to a violent gangster named Dobu. She’s played as a possible love interest to melt Odokawa’s old, icy heart. It’s not exactly a slow burn, but by the time Odokawa becomes suspicious of this innocent-looking nurse, ODDTAXI’s omniscient bird’s-eye view of the city makes everything situational irony. Text messages we aren’t supposed to see, shady yet familiar figures in alleys … even when we’re not behind the wheel, we know just enough to piece it together.

AGAINST TYPECASTING

Rui Nikaido behind the scenes at an idol Halloween event

Toy poodle Rui Nikaido leads the girl group trio Mystery Kiss. ODDTAXI feeds us snippets of Mystery Kiss on TV and the radio, but never the big picture. Unsurprisingly, the idol industry isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Mystery Kiss is presenting a face-façade. It’s not even subtle: Rui’s backup dancers are contractually obligated to wear masks so Rui stands out — quite literally making them “two-faced” with contempt. By Episode 5, Shiho suggests that Rui is so ambitious she might’ve already killed someone to get ahead. Mystery Kiss is a microcosm of ODDTAXI’s ensemble cast at large. Everyone wears masks even when they don’t want to.

Pretty in pink, better in leather.

Episode 2 shows Mystery Kiss fanboy Shun having a sincere heart-to-heart with Rui during an event. She tells him the business is hard and sales are underwhelming. Afterward, we see Rui and her manager behind the scenes: a jaded-looking Rui sports a punk leather jacket. Even the tell-all idol persona Shun saw earlier wasn’t the “real” Rui. In fact, Mystery Kiss’ manager, a bodyguard-sized fox, is withholding information from the girls. ODDTAXI doesn’t waste time putting its ensemble through the wringer of mask-breaking situations. First, come the disguises, then always harsh reality.

Shiho tells her manager what she really thinks of Rui

PROTAGONIST SYNDROME

Let’s come full circle. By the end of Episode 3, ODDTAXI gives us enough hints to realize Shirakawa and Mystery Kiss are perhaps part of something bigger. Not to mention the uncanny resemblance between an 18-year-old and Shiho partaking in dubious behavior on a dating app, or a possible gangster conspiracy against Odokawa. Unsuccessful manzai comedians confide to Odokawa about the competitive entertainment industry, while two policemen meerkat brothers play favorites with criminals. The world is an unfair anti-meritocracy, but no one’s insisting they’re the special hero who will fix it. Except for Tanaka.

Tanaka cries tears of joy when he finally pulls a dodo in the mobile game “Zooden”

This is why “Tanaka’s Revolution” is refreshing despite being so jarring. In Episode 3, Odokawa nearly has a hit-and-run with Tanaka, causing him to break his phone. A dodo flashing on his screen before it shatters: “The bird that went extinct without ever learning to fly,” Tanaka monologues. “Perhaps I was projecting myself onto it. It was just like me.”

"No, if I died here without achieving anything, I wouldn't even be Rare. I'd just be normal."

What happens next breaks convention by switching gears to the first-person. Tanaka’s childhood obsession with erasers mutates into a life-consuming compulsion to acquire a rare gacha character. ODDTAXI’s “panoramic” perspective is stretched to painful extremes by unexpectedly introducing a narrator so self-aware of his obsession with status it emotionally wrecks him.

Tanaka’s sacred dodo is deleted from his Zooden account after his phone is repaired

SHARE THE ROAD

Compared to Odokawa’s perpetual rotation of passengers, Tanaka’s voice is straightforward. He details his backstory until we know him better than Odokawa. Why frame an episode like this? Tanaka’s narcissism. It’s what makes him, and this episode, black sheep. In a world where everyone’s a main character, Tanaka suffers from toxic protagonist syndrome. His inability to accept reality for what it is leads him down a violent crusade. This episode doesn’t just serve to contextualize Tanaka in the ensemble itself but is also a warning against seeing only black and white.

Odokawa drives with Mystery Kiss’s manager

With clever delivery of characters being in the right time and place, ODDTAXI is a rare breed of drama that prioritizes nuance. It’s a true testament to how ensemble casts best reflect the messy, unpredictable aspects of life. Although Odakawa isn’t without his own biases — no one is a perfect judge of character — you couldn’t have a better guide for this gallery of oddballs. When we start thinking of everyone as an empathic eccentric starring in their own backseat confessional down a bumpy road, we learn to listen.

Which member of ODDTAXI's eccentric critter cast speaks to you? Let us know in the comments!

Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more. He stans Ichimura.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Blake Planty

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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x0401x · 5 years ago

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Why do you think the writers of the Tsurune anime decided to tone down masamina and outright cut out kaisei while pushing for sei/mina instead? It's just so baffling to me why they would alter the canon content from the novels so much. Like, what was even the point?

I’ve answered this question quite a few times before, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever made the point entirely clear, so here we go one last time. Sorry that it turned out so long.

So, in novels and manga or any written medium, creators normally have more freedom to do what they want, but when it comes to TV series, animators have been developing the habit of toning down whatever they can. Most of them have this conviction that the viewers only want to watch calm and relaxing stuff nowadays. Other than this, we get adaptations of popular works that basically exist to promote the source material, most of which rush up towards the end like crazy. It does seem like the Japanese audience has an obsession with comfort animes now, since life in Japan gets more and more stressful with each passing year, but it’s not like they’ve abandoned other genres. This general belief that creators should water down the contents however they can is pretty much destroying the industry, and it’s probably what the animators of Tsurune had in mind when changing the novel’s events into a much less dramatic versions or just cutting them off. That’s issue number 1 with the anime.

Issue number 2 is that animators of adaptations tend to ignore the reader demographic in favor of making the series neutral to please all audiences lately. But that’s only when the majority of the readers are women and girls. If it’s guys, you’d rarely see alterations. It feels like the general conception is that making the contents less “cringy” for men means more people will be watching it and having a positive opinion. It seems to completely slip the staff’s minds that the fans they disappoint mostly won’t feel willing to buy the DVDs or merchandise. This is where most of these adaptations fall flat, by the way. It’s kind of really obvious to me that these series are more prone to succeeding if the studios animate what the readers fell in love with, because the originals are popular for a reason, and it’s that people liked them the way they were. I think it’s only the expected when readers are disappointed not to see animes live up to the expectations, and that whoever picks the source material will feel the difference as well. Still, if the anime isn’t a BL, there’s this unsaid rule that you can’t show too much gay between male characters unless you have an excuse for it. Normally, nakama power and rivalry is what does the trick. I don’t think I need to mention that this is the standard in sports animes.

In the Tsurune novel, most of the gay doesn’t have an excuse. Of course, it’s not officially gay unless canon states it, but the books not only don’t give any justification for it, they get rid of possible justifications, so while you can’t say it’s not fanservice, you can’t label it as just fanservice, either. For a studio that banks off fanservice like KyoAni, that’s a problem, especially since the novel is packed with heavy scenes and even heavier quotes.

I mean, in Masaki and Minato’s case, they don’t have the nakama power or rivalry elements, so one possible excuse for them being so close would be that they’re master and disciple. But Minato makes it clear quite early in the story that Masaki doesn’t have to be his master because just having Masaki’s company is enough for him, and all in all, the two of them have a much more affectionate relationship than the other teacher-student ones from the books. Another excuse would be the found family dynamics, but Masaki already shares that with Kaito, who canonically sees Masaki as the older brother he never had, and their relationship is unlike Masaki and Minato’s as well. Kaito also has a monologue in volume 2 about Masaki treating Minato differently from everyone else in the club, and the way he describes it denotes that Minato is Masaki’s favorite, and that Masaki doesn’t bother hiding it. Just as a cherry on top, Minato often loses his rationality when it comes to Masaki despite being a serious kid, and he’s very verbal about wanting to monopolize Masaki. Add fate to the mix and you have the perfect recipe for anything except an ordinary mentor-pupil relationship.

As for Kaito and Seiya, there was a lot going on between them since the beginning, but the nakama power excuse only starts applying late in volume 1, because they didn’t get along very well at first. And even then the nakama stuff hardly applies to their interactions, where Seiya often acts like Kaito has a thing for him, for no reason other than Kaito’s reactions being amusing. Their relationship also does some big strides in the middle of volume 1, and Seiya literally migrates to Kaito’s side at some point. They don’t seem to have a friendship as strong as the one between Seiya, Minato and Ryouhei, but it’s Kaito who Seiya interacts with the most in volume 2 and he’s also the one that Seiya leans on whenever he needs any sort of assistance. There’s other unexplainable things here and there, such as Seiya taking a peek at Kaito’s sleeping face when it’s just the two of them in the room, or him implying that Kaito is jealous of the motherly attention he gives Minato. It goes on as far as the novel does. There’s literally no scene with the two of them that doesn’t make it look like Kaito is really into Seiya and that Seiya owns his ass but he’s the last one to know.

Back to the main point, it’s really hard to animate all of this without giving people “ideas”. For KyoAni, any gay exists ultimately for the sake of fetishization, and they often follow the “ship whatever you want, even yourself with the characters” model. If being gay is canonically a character trait in the original, it’s out (Violet Evergarden is probably the best example of that one), and if the gay can’t be interpreted as something else, it’s either out or downplayed. In Seiya and Minato’s case, that’s perfectly feasible. Not only are they best friends, they also have a familial relationship where Seiya treats Minato like a son. Minato has sworn eternal friendship to Seiya in the novel, and both he and Kaito describe Seiya as something like a helicopter parent. There’s more than enough counter-argument to remind the viewers that, whatever happens between Minato and Seiya, it’s all a product of their childhood friend bond. Anyone is free to interpret it differently in fanon, but the viewers (at least the Japanese ones) are ultimately aware that the anime is in its “safe zone”, portraying a friendship. Nobody on the Japanese side of the fandom actually believed that there was romance going on in it. On the other hand, if you search in Japanese for people’s impressions of MasaMina, you’ll notice people often saying that the novel makes you wonder if Minato and Masaki aren’t actually dating, or if Minato doesn’t have a puppy crush on Masaki, at the very least. Basically, everyone seems to agree that what goes on between those two is hard to define, but whatever it is, there’s this very particular, “special” air about them that differs from the rest of the characters, which normally manifests when they’re alone together.

As you can tell, this overall view is the opposite of the animators’ ideal. If the novel had been animated the way it is, it would’ve probably felt like a BL for the people watching. Not only does it come with practically set ships, it also doesn’t give much space for the proverbial “ship even yourself with the characters” option. To put it bluntly, the animation went through those changes so that it could fit the mold. It gave us SeiMina and even some NanaKai (the latter being honestly disturbing, since they’re cousins), while either toning down or erasing the rest of the duo and trio interactions. It made Minato’s accident with his mom actually seem like Seiya’s fault and didn’t really take the burden off his shoulders but instead swept it under the rug. It also made Masaki seem like a two-faced bastard who only became a coach for the sake of revenge, which means he was using his students (actual 15/16-year-olds) for his own personal gains. Shuu and Minato’s friendship went down the drain, Ryouhei was pushed aside as if Seiya was Minato’s only childhood friend, Nanao was never depicted as his own person, and the girls didn’t even exist 90% of the time. So yeah, none of the changes served any good purpose for the characters’ images. All it did was (try to) fill a quota.

Personally, this whole thing feels like we’re being told to the face, “we’ve given you what you want, now give us your money”. It brings me back to interviews I’ve read featuring Stars Align director Akane Kazuki and his statements about the anime industry being in a pinch, specifically because animators nowadays keep trying to make a fool out of the audience for monetary ends. Seems clear to me that the staff thought the female viewers would latch onto anything as long as it looked remotely gay, and that’s why I was so angry back then. Being looked down on like this by people who expect us to consume their media is pretty offensive, in my opinion. I’m glad there’s at least one creator speaking up about this matter and using the exact same arguments as I have been for more than two years now.

#tsurune #tsurune kazemai koukou kyuudoubu #narumiya minato #takigawa masaki #onogi kaito #takehaya seiya #wow i can't believe i'm getting asks about tsurune in 2020

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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Big Jason stans on twitter have been talking about a character named Eddie Bloomberg being Jason's friend, and since you know more about older comics than most I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it.

Eddie Bloomberg is a character known as Kid Devil, the sidekick of relatively low-profile mystical/supernatural hero known as Blue Devil. Though ironically, for a large part of both characters’ existence, their personas were only thematic and they had no actual mystical/supernatural powers or connection - those were added to both characters in later years. Originally, Blue Devil was a stuntman who just designed his own devil-themed costume to fight crime because like, why not, basically. LOL. And Eddie was basically a fanboy who snuck into his workshop and designed his own Red Devil/Kid Devil costume/armor along similar lines. Years later, long after Jason’s death and return and completely unrelated to it, Eddie made a literal deal with a devil, aka Neron, to get actual powers. And this resulted in him gaining a demonic appearance and related powers.....though later on it was also revealed that his powers weren’t actually given to him by Neron, rather he’d had a dormant metahuman gene all along that Neron just activated and kinda tweaked to make the resulting powers seem supernatural/occult related.

Eddie’s a fun character and there is actual canon basis for him and Jason being friends, going way back, and so I vastly prefer people going with him as Jason’s BFF over say, Roy......like, back in the day, Jason and Eddie were literal pen pals. And I do mean literal. Like we’re talking pre-email days, old school letter writing back and forth pen pals. We saw very little of their actual friendship, but like I’m always talking about with the relative lack of interactions between Dick and Jason back then....this isn’t truly indicative of anything other than a lack of places to SHOW these relationships.

There were waaaaay fewer titles back then, there was no solo Robin title to show what Jason was up to when he wasn’t with Bruce, and thus the only instance I can ever think of when we actually saw Jason and Eddie teaming up together, actually happened in one issue of the Blue Devil comic book from way back when. But again - purely logistical. Doesn’t mean they weren’t actually good friends, and there’s really nothing standing in the way of assuming they had a ton more interactions just like that but offscreen, as it were.

Also, this limited interaction took place BEFORE Jason was retconned to have his street kid origin, but that doesn’t actually mean Jason and Eddie’s friendship was ever retconned at all.

See, it was actually pretty confusing, but while post Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jason’s origin was definitively the one where he was jacking the Batmobile’s tires, and then after this point only spanned less than twenty issues before his death in ADITF......this doesn’t mean that Jason’s tenure as Robin was ever limited to JUST the events of those twenty or so issues. When they retconned his origin, they did it in such a way as to allow for pretty much every single story Jason had already been in PRIOR to that....to still have happened. Literally the only stories of his that were ever ACTUALLY retconned were the ones that pertained directly to his pre-Crisis origin as another circus kid like Dick.

Basically, the way they pulled this off was via the usage of one single caption box. At the start of the issue where Dick and Jason ‘meet for the first time,’ post-Crime Alley retcon. That issue, which is basically right at the start of Jason’s ‘new’ run as a street kid turned Robin, opens with the caption box “One year ago.” By doing this, they basically just inserted that new origin for Jason as one book-end to his time as Robin....with ADITF twenty or so issues later being the other book-end to his time as Robin obviously.

But IN BETWEEN those book-ends was contained not JUST the twenty issues between them.....but ALSO, every Jason-as-Robin story from pre-Crisis, except for his actual pre-Crisis origin story. The proof of this lies in the fact that even long after ADITF, hell, even after Jason’s return as the Red Hood.....canon kept citing specific stories of Jason’s from pre-Crisis. Like when he fought Tim at Titans’ Tower and he mentioned having briefly been a Titan...that was a definitive reference to the pre-Crisis stories where he teamed up with the Titans, once with the Fab Five in Dick’s place, and then again not longer after, to help the Titans rescue Dick and Raven from the Church of Blood. Those are the literal only two stories where Jason was ever a Titan or associated with them, and they’re squarely smack in the pre-Crisis era......but they remained canon even after Jason’s origin was retconned, because THEY weren’t retconned with that origin....they were just kinda...shuffled around a bit.

Same thing with Jason and Eddie. Even after Crisis and the Crime Alley retcon for Jason, they still were definitely friends during his time as Robin, though this never actually came up in any of the issues between Jason’s new origin and ADITF. But it was referenced once or twice since then, by Eddie I believe, so again, like the missions Jason made with the Titans and the times Dick and Jason did hang out and get along, etc, etc....these things were always definitively part of canon and were never once actually retconned before the New 52 Reboot as a whole.

So yeah, its true, Eddie was Jason’s friend and there’s canon basis for that. I’m gonna be totally honest here, my main gripe with the Jason and Eddie BFF connection is purely petty - it bugs me slightly, Jason stans’ awareness of it at all, because although it was there, we’re talking a time literally concurrent with the stories where, y’know, Dick fluffed Jason’s hair and told him if Bruce gives him any grief about sneaking out to go help the Titans rescue him, just ‘let the old man know it took you and all the Titans to pull my butt out of the fire,” and was happy to take the fall to keep Jason out of trouble. So the fact that people could remember all along something as obscure as a friendship with a character as low-profile as Kid Devil, that only appeared in all of four pages in all of comic-dom, but still loudly insisted not that they just preferred writing takes where Dick didn’t like Jason back then but rather that these were the only takes that existed in the comics.....it makes me go mmmm, shenanigans! And sadly sours me a little on the Jason - Eddie friendship just by extension. *Shrugs* Hey I’m not proud of it, lol, but ngl, that’s basically the big reason I don’t engage with it much.

I mean, the other reasons are simply that Eddie’s not super in my wheelhouse, y’know? The original Blue Devil comic was just never one I was really all that familiar with, I think I just read the one issue that Jason showed up in BECAUSE he showed up in it, lol, and although fun, Eddie never really grabbed me outside of that connection with Jason. Nothing wrong with him, just so many characters, so little time, kinda thing. And then he was in comic book Limbo unused for a loooong time, until brought back to prominence by Geoff Johns, who I’m just not really a big fan of. So he’s mostly just never really been present in the books I actually read and know really well, and so although I’m ALL for giving Jason his own friends and not just shoehorning him into his older brother’s dynamics with other characters more commonly associated with Dick.....I tend to default to doing that with characters who I’m already a fan of in their own right.

Like, my personal preferred BFF for Jason is Grant Emerson aka Damage. Because for a period in the nineties, Roy really took him under his wing and was a surrogate big brother and even guardian figure for Grant, and they had suuuuuch a great relationship, and in a lot of ways it mirrored the relationship I remembered seeing hints of between Dick and Jason and wanting more of for them, so it just makes a natural parallel. Roy and Dick as BFFs and then Grant and Jason as BFFs and with somewhat similar relationships with the older two. Plus, Grant has a lot in common with Jason, such as an abusive childhood and surprise revelations/upheavals regarding his parents that have massively affected his life. Grant is a big old softie, and not nearly as abrasive as Jason often is written as, but when paired with how much else they have in common, to me this creates a natural dynamic wherein Jason likely WOULDN’T be that abrasive with Grant, especially not when its just the two of them, because so much of that behavior for Jason is a defense mechanism and shield against being seen/viewed in ways Jason is not down with, but would never be an issue with Grant, because like....they’d both know where the other stood there and where they were coming from, and thus if Jason were going to just completely let his walls down with someone in just a totally casual way, IMO it’d be with someone like Grant. And Grant in turn I think could really benefit from having a friend he can relate to like Jason, who happens to be very confident about like....validating a lot of his own personal struggles which mirror a lot of Grant’s personal struggles where he really COULD use more validation, particularly of the external kind.

Course, I mean plus, Jason’s still Jason so also there’s the factor that Grant’s meta power is literally to blow things up with his brain, and I refuse to accept any characterization of Jason wherein he learns hey there’s this dude who can blow shit up with his brain and DOESN’T immediately follow that thought with “I must hunt him down and make him my best friend AT ONCE for clearly we are soulmates and this is DESTINY.”

(On a similar note, the other third of my preferred trio for Jason is Courtney Mason aka Anima. Like, if I were creating a Red Hood and the Outlaws style team/book from the ground up, I would hands down go with Jason, Grant and Courtney. A brief summation of Courtney from wikipedia:

“Rebellious teenage runaway Courtney Mason acquired her miraculous powers following an attack by parasitic aliens: one of many New Blood superbeings created in this way, as part of the Bloodlines crossover. Seven extraterrestrial predators had come to Earth and slaughtered thousands of humans by feeding on their spinal fluids. On the run in New Orleans, Courtney was kidnapped by a cult that sacrificed her to two of these insatiable parasites, knows as Pritor and Lissik. But Courtney did not die. Instead, the parasites' bites unleashed the Animus, a sentient-energy creature that can absorb the spirit essences of the living and the dead, which was now able to enter the world through Courtney. She became the embodiment of mankind's rage and masculine drive, and quickly developed awesome physical powers of her own. As Anima, Courtney sought revenge against the cult. She also met the Teen Titans and battled a variety of supernatural menaces. Anima remains a wanderer, traveling from place to place and helping those in need by calling upon the fearsome primal force inside her.”

Like, I’m just saying. The Jason and Courtney BFF show basically writes itself. Also, Courtney’s got her own share of sibling issues given that her little brother Jeremy eventually ends up becoming the host for the Animus entity’s ‘little sister’ Eris, the spirit of strife, so.....dot dot dot.)

But yeah, anyway, Eddie is still very much a fun character worth looking into, and his friendship with Jason pre-New 52, at least back during Jason’s Robin days, is very much a thing, even if we never got to see all that much of it.

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souvercine · 4 years ago

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hey y’all ! i’m jia and i’m super excited for opening; i have two super clingy cats in case any of you ever need a visual pick-me-up, i’m a uni student in canada and a big skincare and dark chocolate junkie, more than likely gonna be typing replies while indulging in either jsyk !

tried to keep it short since i’m a rambly bitch, but xan’s basic stats and a proper wc page will be up soon as i just got home from grocery shopping and we open in an hour as of typing this, the theme as a whole will get a refresh eventually and i’ll be posting a little tracklist for her playlist later ! and if tumblr ims are as much of a nuisance for you as they can be for me, you can add me on d*scord at genuinely sick of this shit#2030 if you’d like to plot ! anyways, without further ado:

( samantha logan , cis female , she/her, twenty-four ) omg ! i was walking yonge street downtown , and you’ll never guess who i saw . xanthe lowe ! i just saw a post about them on sixsecrets ! i think it said something like “ when they go high, she goes lowe ! xan spotted leaving a gala with her former friend’s ex, after last week’s reportedly tense exchange between the girls ” . isn’t that wild ? i guess it makes sense through , since they’re apparently merciless and imperious . but i’ve heard they’re also conspicuous and astute ! i’ll just stick to giving them the benefit of the doubt . i mean , it’s not like i know them personally — they’re a famous socialite ! you know , i’ve actually heard rumors that redacted , but they’re just rumors … i think . i dunno . if you happen to run into them , tell them i’m their biggest fan !

tw: drug mention

when i tell you that i have so many muse posts i’m holding back on for this bitch —

which, btw, will all slowly see the light of day soon enough bc god knows i can’t articulate my muses’ personalities as well as i’d like so that shit makes up for it fdgslk

her parents’ eldest child together, xanthe’s also the oldest out of her and her siblings

also, never call her xanthe. friend or otherwise, don’t take the risk dklgsjdlk

grew up with a silver spoon, her dad being a wall street giant and her mother being an entrepreneur with a love for art ( so much so that her two partners after separating from xan’s dad were artists themselves sdlkgj )

thus she split her time between toronto and manhattan even before her parents’ divorce, she merely spent more time jetting back and forth for special occasions and vacations compared to when her parents were still together

mind you, she was probably still in the single digits when that became a new normal for the brat

basically could’ve been a main character on gossip girl with her reckless antics and partying as a teenager…. and now, even sgdlkf

drk how to elaborate on that, aside from stressing that from her teen years onward she’s presented her own take of a rich bitch, and is a socialite/fashion week regular type if i were to describe where she stands rn

i think a good mix of references would be nicky hilton meets the delevingne sisters meets blair waldorf and sabrina pemberton’s lovechild

she attended an ivy league at the behest of her father so he had at least one child who could take a senior position in his company simply to keep it in the family

.. before he realized what a Mistake™ it would be to put that responsibility on xan and now has her slightly older cousin as a backup instead GDSLFJKS but nonetheless !

isn’t the most studious person, but she somehow wound up graduating with a major in communications and a marketing minor

she reasoned that, with her reputation in the gta and nyc, she’d need the bit of knowledge in how to clean up her messes. even if she wasn’t the one who had that responsibility

though.. the entire time has been spent sleeping with some of her rich friends, drinking and smoking pot, with the occasional hit of whatever clean enough drug that one of her friends had on them

as of now, she’s pissing off her neighbours with her house parties wherever she might be at a given time, staying in the good graces of the media as a budding, fun yet classy heiress — despite doing dumb shit the second she’s inside of a gala or club

uhhh ik i had something else to add but a quick break for dinner messed that up, rip LKGFSJD

personality and shit

her little blurb on my indie is: refined party girl still set in her ways with her future left uncompromised; detached and pretentious, she soaks up the attention that continues to roll in

which. we’ve basically been over already lkdfsg but still

if i were to use a label to describe her, she’d be the sovereign

she’s messy as hell, but puts on the façade of a poised woman who has some fun because she knows it bodes well

she’s not a complete dick per se, but she can be snide and boastful

big superiority complex, independent and lives lavishly with reckless abandon

probably jets back and forth between nyc and the gta as it’s her version of normal, so ig she hates the environment if it means not having things go her way !

non-committal as all hell and will abandon girl code if she drops you fgkljfs

.. fr, she’ll fuck an ex-friend’s ex if she technically saw them first, so being spiteful and resolving some past attraction ?? right up her alley !

hence the choice of headline gdfslkj

keeps her true inner circle small, but gets off on attention and likes to stay cordial with some people, so she’s got quite a few friends all the same

she’ll fight tooth and nail to protect her image and won’t hesitate to throw anyone under the bus to do so/in retaliation if they screw her over

which happens to mean that her family is to be protected as well. fuck with any of her sisters ?? you’re done ! try to call out one of her brothers on twitter ? she’ll quote it with a single clown emoji as a warning

there really isn’t much to expand on tbh, though i will say that her emboldened nature and need for a good time however she can get it comes out more than her uglier side ( except her vanity. that’ll never go away ksfdg )

some quick plot ideas

a childhood friend or two that she made in either of her main hubs or through events she attended when she was young, whether they’re still friends or not for x reasons can be discussed of course

could carry over into a trio type of thing depending on where she stands with either of them, or they’re a different couple of pals she’s made in the last few years

enemies are always fun ! probably rooted in a competitive streak more than anything else but i’m all ears for a more complex reason

ex-hookup(s), current hookup(s), throw it all at me klgfjd

a hateship/ewb would be fun with her too, oh my god sfdgklj

it should go without saying that they are all relatively wealthy or well-connected kids here, but that doesn’t mean that someone who’s using her for their fifteen seconds of fame, or just to get some perks out of their friendship, is necessarily a write-off — not that she cares too much about fake friends, face value hype and knowing they need her more than she needs them gives her too much satisfaction fkskgls

an ex-something, open to anyone. either someone her parents forced on her to straighten her out that she wound up liking…. after a good period of her telling them to fuck off sdglk or someone she’d been seeing for a while at her own accord. would’ve ended the same way: with her calling it off because she didn’t want to settle down, not even for a relationship ( and perhaps bc she’s scared of commitment with her cracked family dynamic that’s been a thing since age two, but that’s another story jsdfkg )

#╰ 💎 . ❪ 𝐖𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍' 𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐋𝐒 ↝ ooc #sixhqintro #me getting this done the second it hits 3pm pst ?? tragic when i've had ages to tuck this away in drafts LGDKS

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elliotfm · 4 years ago

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hey guys ! i’m jules and i’m super excited to open; i have two super clingy cats in case any of you ever need a visual pick-me-up, i’m a uni student in canada and a Big skincare and dark chocolate junkie, more than likely gonna be typing replies while indulging in either jsyk ! i tried to keep it short since i’m a rambly bitch, but links to elliot’s basic stats and her wc page will be up soon — though i have some under the read more — as well as a playlist whenever i find the energy to set it up here FLDKSJGSD also pardon the lack of theme, i forgot the url for the preview and code link for the one i wanted to use but i’ll have it figured out shortly ! anyways, without further ado:

◤ * kim doyeon ; twenty-one ; cis female ; she/her — is that who i think it is over there ? outer banks very own kook , elliot hong . makes sense ‘cause i can practically hear into it by chase atlantic blasting through their headphones . plus who else would you find out at the boneyard right now ? some say they're pretty astute , but it's the imperious reputation i'd watch out for . i wonder if they're still a student / heiress and obsessing about keeping up with their bongs, random shoes and empty bottles of dom on the living room floor & a bite as big as her bark vibe . [ ooc ; jules/21+/nt/she/her ]

tw: drug and alcohol mention

the middle child of her parents, elliot is the fourth of her father’s five children

her mother is his second ( now ex — ) wife, though they remain cordial and have since moved on

grew up with a silver spoon, her dad being a wall street giant who would split his time between nyc and, once upon a time, connecticut — though it ultimately became a back-and-forth from nyc and the outer banks when elle was about four

her mother was adopted into an old money family ( on the lower end of that group ) in charlotte when she was a baby and had become something of a socialite when young, but shifted to becoming an entrepreneur. of what ?? i still haven’t figured that out LFJDGS

has a half-sister and half-brother from her dad’s first marriage, tallulah ( aka tally, a pain in my ass over on my indie fdlkjgs ) and bennett, and is basically a mini tally as all she really had were brothers and was Attached to her big sis whenever she’d visit

and as for her older and younger brother..... they might be wcs soon enough so we’ll leave that be for now DFLSGKJ

now onto ELLE ! she was the princess of the younger three hong kids, like the apple of her mother’s eye and her father’s Biggest tormentor

aka would hog the phone whenever he couldn’t come home for the night to tell him good night, hounded him to read her bedtime stories, pretty much always got her way in the most wholesome way when she was a kid

like i said before, moved to the obx when she was four because her mom used to visit when she was a kid and loved it; it was also due to its convenience in seeing her maternal grandparents regularly, its quieter nature in comparison to the affluent hubs for businessmen outside of manhattan and just in general

her dad just went along because it’s what his wife wanted and fuck it, at least the kids wouldn’t hound them to take them to places beyond their urban surroundings as often DLSFJDS

growing up, she wasn’t Too much of a brat but liked having the spotlight on her — she’d accredit it to tally’s influence AND her parents caving to her whims more often than not — and was very sociable and respectful even back in primary school

LOVED to explore, and, while not a tomboy per se, would take part in some activities her brothers or other boys in her grade participated in; be it to bond, trail along her siblings’ every move because she didn’t wanna stray far from action, or to prove that she can hold her own, she’d do it

uhhh overall a cute, if not high-maintenance, kid, but her teen years ?? yikes, people would be in for a ride bc this is when she REALLY started to emulate tally and shift her boldness towards riskier shit

basically could’ve been a main character on outer banks itself with her reckless antics and partying as a teenager…. and now, even SGDLKF

could’ve been considered a typical kook, save for her wild streak; she could hang with the pogues and wouldn’t let her slight superiority complex come into play unless she was challenged or something, otherwise she’d chase the party and the fun wherever she could find it

loves fashion and being the hottest in the room, didn’t need to step on toes to get further but would do so at times Solely to make a point/to call someone out on their shit

is now attending columbia u, rather she’s taking a Break as she makes sure she’s content with the path she’s taking ( aka being the trashy 21 year old she wants to be, chilling at the family home with just her siblings and daddy’s money with no Major worries involving the near future )

isn’t the most studious person, but she’d gotten far enough to begin wrapping up her major whenever she decides to head back

though.. the entire time has been mostly spent sleeping with some of her rich friends, drinking and smoking pot, with the occasional hit of whatever clean enough drug that one of her friends had on them

also spent a lot of her time meeting up with her socialite big sis as a plus one to some cooler events, so while she’s not famous, her name has made the rounds where it matters given her surname’s already established relevance in nyc

when she’s not getting an education and is homebound instead, she’s pissing off her neighbours with her house parties at the family home on the beach, doing dumb shit the second she’s inside of a gala or club — albeit with partial discretion that’s completely ignored whenever around other young adults — and just chilling poolside and staying hydrated fgkldjsg

personality and shit

if i were to use a label to describe her, she'd be a mix between the princess/baby doll, the hedonist and the reveller i think ?? i don’t even know where to place her LKSDFGJLK

self-confidence is through the roof, KNOWS she’s pretty and doesn’t really let rumours or negativity get her down — aside from wanting to unleash hell if someone keeps irritating her for whatever reason

she’s messy as hell, but around the uptight, live-through-your-kids parents of kooklandia she puts on the façade of a poised young woman who has Some fun because she knows it bodes well.. only even then, she doesn’t maintain it bc honestly, who cares —

she’s not a complete dick per se, but she can be snide and boastful when provoked

has something of a superiority complex, independent and lives lavishly with reckless abandon

non-committal yet sensible when it comes to who she sleeps with; typically has a couple of stable fuck buddies but has had some one night stands if she’s feeling it

keeps her true inner circle small, but gets off on attention and likes to stay cordial with some people, so she’s got quite a few friends all the same

like i said earlier, will hang with the pogues and thinks the whole class rivalry thing is kind of stupid when it means sticking with her own would mean dealing with parent pleasers, polo shirt enthusiasts and either being too straight-laced or too destructive for her liking

.. so she’s a far cry from her sister in that regard, otherwise rip GLSKJ

though that doesn’t stop her from unleashing her pompous attitude onto a pogue when it seems appropriate, aka doing anything to piss her off

some quick plot ideas

a childhood friend or two, pretty standard idea there

could carry over into a trio type of thing depending on where she stands with either of them, or they’re a different couple of pals she’s made over the years

family friends, aka nyc kids or people who’ve rubbed elbows with either of elle’s parents, though they don’t Actually have to be friends of course JGDSFKL

her best friend and confidante, someone she can have cute moments with between the chaos and one of the few people that elle would probably accost someone for if they hurt the other in any way

enemies are always fun ! probably rooted in a competitive streak more than anything else but i’m all ears for a more complex reason

ex-hookup(s), current hookup(s), throw it all at me klgfjd

a hateship/ewb would be fun with her too, oh my god sfdgklj

FAKE FRIENDS !! either in the past or currently, probably stayed friends for the sake of their appearances but have a lot of quiet disdain for each other — though elliot wouldn’t be too bothered by that situation beyond being around someone she deems soul-sucking, face value hype and knowing they probably need her more than she needs them gives her too much satisfaction fkskgls

an ex-something, open to anyone. either someone her parents forced on her to straighten her out a tad that she wound up liking…. after a good period of her telling them to fuck off sdglk or someone she’d been seeing for a while at her own accord, likely someone her parents wouldn’t approve of so readily. would’ve ended the same way: with her calling it off because she didn’t want to settle down, not even for a relationship ( and perhaps bc she’s scared of commitment with her cracked family dynamic that’s been a thing since birth, but that’s another story jsdfkg )

or we can just as easily do high school exes who only really stayed together until graduation bc their parents were being Some level of overbearing with how they’d be such a good couple — not that there was nothing there, just nothing beyond sex and being some kind of status symbol to each other, idk lfkgsd

her designated event pals would be super fun ?? sdgkflj like they go to all of these big parties and galas with their families, break off to do their own thing bc those events are boring as fuck, and head back to her place before she throws an after-party of sorts. they’d be decent friends beyond this though, them being someone she trusts a good bit compared to others in her circle

#╰ 💎 . ❪ 𝐖𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍' 𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐋𝐒 ↝ jules talks ｡#outertmintro #tw drugs #tw alcohol #now that that's done i can get some water bc i'm Parched FGDSJKL

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mattyfm · 4 years ago

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new york’s very own matthew oliver was spotted on broadway street in converse . your resemblance to luke hemmings is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty-fourth birthday bash . while living in nyc , you’ve been labeled as being temperamental , but also benevolent . i guess being a gemini explains that . 3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be bubbly laughter, the smell of fresh coffee, & long drives to watch the sunset . ( cis male & he/him ) + ( monique , 20 , she/her , pst . )

my name is monique i’m both the baddest and saddest bitch you’ll ever meet and i have NEVER written a concise intro in my life, so be prepared for a lot of jumping around, incomplete thoughts, and information you didn’t ask for. without further ado let me introduce you to my angel boy matthew oliver.

𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐬

full name. samuel matthew oliver.

nicknames. sam, sammy, matt, & matty (preferred name and most commonly refereed to as).

age. twenty-four.

date of birth. june 17th.

occupation. actor. (i might give him another job eventually but don’t hold me to that)

sexual / romantic orientation. bisexual & biromantic.

birthplace. asbury park, new jersey.

zodiac. gemini.

spoken languages. english.

𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲

samuel mattew oliver was born to two extremely loving parents jeremy and elizabeth marie oliver, arguably one of the most influential celebrity couples known to man, at least that’s what it felt like growing up in the household, everyone was talking about the oliver’s and when they weren’t...well that never happened

as a middle child, preceded by his older brother mason, and succeeded by his younger sister cassandra, naturally he was born with a crave for validation, anything that separated him for his siblings

but naturally in his need to be different he found his closest allies, more so mason than cassie, but eventually she grew on him, and was most certainly not forced upon the dynamic duo of brother by their parents, but believe me he grew to adore her!

childhood was seemingly normal minus the bombarding questions from nosy students who wanted to know what it was like to have celebrity parents or be rich or live in a house with more bedrooms than necessary

unlike his siblings however matty reveled in the attention way more than he let on, it was nice to be noticed for something, even if it wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping to be noticed for

but by no means was he stupid! he wouldn’t allow anyone to take advantage of him and had an unusual talent for knowing when people only wanted to use his friendship as some sort of gain for himself, and extended this talent to his sister cass, because boy oh boy did she need it

their dad who i forgot to mention was a professor at juiliard, his alma matter, caused a constant bouncing back and forth between their coastal home in new jersey and their urban townhouse in new york

both places felt like home to the trio! they made so many good memories, however matty was extremely preferential to the coast, and to this day maintains a beach boy vibe, swears everything is just better by the beach

going back to his upbringing for a minute high school rolled around for him and mason and he just became even more extremely protective of cassie, he went through things extremely unknown to his family

on the outside he was the model person and student, honor roll, a long glowing list of extracurriculars including sports, even holding down a normal job like everyone else at his high school, and not a single blemish in his criminal record, the squeaky clean olivers remained squeaky cleans

HOWEVER there was some shady stuff going on behind the scenes my guy, nothing too terrible, just the usual teenager with loving parents who raise a troubled teen, not because of any past trauma but a need to feel seen

DRUGS & ALCOHOL TW got into a lot of fight but always told them they had to fight after school, he got into drugs, nothing too hardcore, just weed (is that a weed i’m calling the police vibes).....at first.....but that’s a different story so moving on! he of course drank with his buddies at high school parties, honestly just vibing my guys, just straight vibes always

secret!!!!

CAR ACCIDENT TW & ALCOHOL TW & DEATH TW one day he’s vibing, it’s the summer they’re celebrating another school year complete, and by the end of the night nearly black out drunk at this point, he knows he can’t go home so he decides to get a ride home with a buddy he worked with, tell his parents that said buddy took him home after work, they worked on homework and fell asleep. and honestly had he had a little less to drink, he would’ve realized that his friend was just as drunk as he was, but they drove anyways. this lead to a drunken car accident, that ended in the death of a pedestrian. thankfully his friend’s dad was a lawyer, and they covered that shit up immediately.

after this whole ordeal choose an accelerated course of study to pursue his acting career, finally something people would talk about that would be solely his, like not really, but let him have his moment alright, he was desperate

lowkey feels guilty about being a hypocrite towards cassie because he’s telling her not to do any of the thing

ADDICTION TW he almost kicked his habit but getting back into acting and the guilt of having blood on his hands, was too much for matty, and he developed a drug / alcohol dependency, which he recognized was extremely harmful! he went to rehab! and has been very vocal about his struggle with addiction ever since

had an on set romance with a costar that crashed and burned, quite publicly, and was just not good for his mental health one bit! def didn’t help with his constantly teetering sobriety but he managed to get through it with the help of his family and his friends

acting wise he’s starred in a bunch of movies but his baby is the netflix show that he’s been working on, i would like to think it’s kind of a sitcom esque show mixed with the same comedic timing of the office, parks n rec, those kinda self-aware humor vibes

ADDICTION TW he plays one of the main character, and his dipped his toes into directing and writing a couple of episodes, the show truly gives me one day at a time vibes, just brings light to mental health, addiction, important issues you don’t normally see portrayed on tv, and he def plays schneider, the bumbling rich boy who does and says what he’s told, struggles with addiction, has a super childish nature, and just a hint of self-awareness but just a hint as a little treat

this is so ooc but i’m realizing he’s quite literally schneider from one day at a time

MENTAL HEALTH TW & ANXIETY TW has receded from that cool kid persona he once held back in what i refer to as his ‘glory days’ and is now extremely vulnerable to everything and everyone, will literally cry if you even look at him the wrong way. struggles with really bad anxiety, among other mental health issues (which is why his netflix show and he advocate so heavily for mental health!) but is quite literally one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, softness runs in the oliver family ig.

IS LITERALLY SO CHILDISH....where was once extremely mature for his age....he now copes with his trauma by just acting like a toddler, literally mixes chocolate milk IN HIS MOUTH like a heathen, but that still doesn’t stop him from being fiercely protective of cassie, and will fight anyone for her

currently vibing! filming, being his best(?) self, and making trips to the nj coast

𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

positive traits. accommodating, adaptable, affable, affectionate, agreeable, altruistic, amiable, attentive, caring, cheerful, communicative, compassionate, considerate, courteous, creative, dependable, easy-going, empathetic, exuberant, friendly, fun-loving, generous, gentle, genuine, gregarious, helpful, honest, humane, humble, joyful, kind, lively, loyal, loving, optimistic, outgoing, passionate, playful, reliable, resilient, romantic, sincere, sociable, tender, trustworthy, thoughtful, understanding, and warm-hearted.

negative traits. anxious, amenable, avoidant, awkward, critical, defensive, disorganized, dogmatic, (over)emotional, evasive, foolish, forgetful, forgiving, gullible, headstrong, hopeless, idealistic, impatient, impulsive, irrational, messy, moody, oblivious, (over)protective, sensitive, shy, thoughtless, and weak-willed.

𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

here’s some basic plot ideas but we can always brainstorm smth! friends, frenemies, enemies, friends to lovers, childhood friends, ex best friend, costars, unrequited crush, bad influence, exes, one night stand, roommates! i have

#wealthyhq:intro #alcohol tw #drugs tw #mental health tw #anxiety tw #car accident tw #death tw #addiction tw #i hope lia still loves me after this #i might cry a little bit #please love me <3 #I AM NEEDY AND SO IS HE

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hillnerd · 6 years ago

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THE LEAD UP TO HARRY/GINNY

So, I see a lot of people saying Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley was ‘forced’ felt ‘rushed’ etc.

Hinny was lead up to for 5 books, son! :) In no way is that rushed.

Harry and Gin’s love story is basically one of bad timing, where themes, foreshadowing, language and characterization have been used to slowly establish Ginny as special in Harry’s life, and forge the foundation on which their relationship is built in book 6.

I have receipts. :D

LONG ‘ESSAY’ ABOUT H/G BUILDUP IN BOOKS 1-5:

Book 1 - first girl he meets

she’s the first weasley kid/first nice kid he even hears speak actually

And there’s this brief description of him watching her I find very poetic:

The train began to move. Harry saw the boys’ mother waving and their sister, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed; then she fell back and waved. Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner.

Book 2- giant book of foreshadowing

So, this book ties Ginny and Harry thematically, establishes certain patterns with them, ties Gin to the main themes of the books very inextricably, ties her to Harry in a way no other character is tied, and also establishes her as a future love interest for Harry.

In NO way am I saying Harry had romantic notions about her at this point in the series (heck no! He’s just 12!)- but rather from a writing perspective, things were put in place to establish future H/G goodness.

From the get go, she is described, again, in somewhat cute/‘poetic’ language

At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, red-headed figure in a long nightdress, who appeared in the kitchen, gave a small squeal, and ran out again.

Harry just caught sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring at him before it closed with a snap.

Ginny seemed very prone to knocking things over whenever Harry entered a room. She dived under the table to retrieve the bowl and emerged with her face glowing like the setting sun.

“Oh, are you starting at Hogwarts this year?” Harry asked Ginny. She nodded, blushing to the roots of her flaming hair, and put her elbow in the butter dish. Fortunately no one saw this except Harry’

So she’s this adorable little winsome gal who Harry (established as pretty effing rude about most girls/women he describe), is giving language I’d love to have written about me even now, as a full-grown married woman.

So, of course we start off book 2 with Ginny being a shy little sister, who has a crush on her brother best friend/is enamored with the boy hero. Even though she could have been written as burdensome or annoying to Harry- he never once feels that way about her (even when tackled by that cupid dwarf with her singing valentine.)

To the contrary, he’s always quite sweet with her, giving her his books, notices when she’s out of sorts, pulls out his wand to expelliarmus Draco when he’s taunting Ginny by holding her diary (which mirrors Ron’s going after Draco when Draco was calling Hermione mudblood), and then he freaking saves her.

Also, let’s point out a silly things: Draco calls Gin Harry’s girlfriend in book 2. ;) How’s THAT for romantic foreshadowing? :)

“Leave him alone, he didn’t want all that!” said Ginny. It was the first time she had spoken in front of Harry. She was glaring at Malfoy.“Potter, you’ve got yourself a girlfriend!” drawled Malfoy.

The language when he saves her, again, has emotional resonance than he had for almost anyone else in the series for the first few books- THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC- just establishes a theme of how Harry considers her and has a soft spot for her (seriously, read this, then go back and read his underwhelming reaction to Ron possibly being severely injured in PS/SS with the chess match… like… for reals):

He couldn’t not go, not now they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.

And between the feet [of the statue’s robes], facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.

“Ginny!” Harry muttered, sprinting to her and dropping to his knees. “Ginny — don’t be dead — please don’t be dead —” He flung his wand aside, grabbed Ginny’s shoulders, and turned her over. Her face was white as marble, and as cold, yet her eyes were closed, so she wasn’t Petrified. But then she must be —

“Ginny, please wake up,” Harry muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny’s head lolled hopelessly from side to side.’

Also, in this book, though it’s quick little bits here and there, they establish also how Harry and Gin instinctively ‘get’ one another, despite their lack of interaction- like when she defends Harry to Draco with ‘he didn’t want all that’- or when he keep Ron from prying after he saves Gin

“I’ll explain when we get out of here,” said Harry with a sideways glance at Ginny, who was crying harder than ever.

“But —”

“Later,” Harry said shortly. He didn’t think it was a good idea to tell Ron yet who’d been opening the Chamber, not in front of Ginny,

This is how their dynamic works later in the series- they just get each other’s motivations/needs. Even this early on, hints of their dynamic is established - as hey, some people just get one another- even when they are platonic childhood friends.

So on top of all the above, she’s connected to him in that she knows horcruxes and Tom Riddle basically better than anyone, really. (I was sort of bummed they didn’t use this more later, though DAMN is she doesn’t sass Harry out of yelling in book 5 over it :D). She introduces one of the most important things in the series- needing to know Voldemort, Voldemort’s soul imprints, and how to defeat horcuxes.

Only four characters have ever had the mental influence of a horcrux, that we know of- Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione. Of them all, only Harry and Ginny ever really got perspective on Riddle/Voldemort- vs Ron and Herm were influenced, not sharing back and forth. This makes Ginny stand out thematically from any other character in the series- that she shares this connection with Harry.

Harry saves her in probably the most traditionally romantic/fantasy driven/fairy tale way- literally the hero saves a damsel in distress from a giant reptile with a sword- but Rowling subverts this by having them literally have no romance build from there for another 4 books- because they are kids.

So yeah- she’s established early on, writing-wise, as a future flame for him, and tied them very closely.

Book 3 - briefest of shared moments

Ginny is barely present in this book, but despite her crush making her rather mute in front of him- they have a share moment of humor (which seems to be a big connection for the two of them- the two always catching each other’s eye and smirking at eachother later in the series.)

“Ah, there’s Penelope!” said Percy, smoothing his hair and going pink again. Ginny caught Harry’s eye, and they both turned away to hide their laughter as Percy strode over to a girl with long, curly hair, walking with his chest thrown out so that she couldn’t miss his shiny badge.

Both are deeply affected by dementors (along with Nev, though his is just mentioned as being pale along with Gin) on the train.

Ginny, who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry felt, gave a small sob; Hermione went over and put a comforting arm around her. “But didn’t any of you — fall off your seats?” said Harry awkwardly. “No,” said Ron, looking anxiously at Harry again. “Ginny was shaking like mad, though…”

And she gives him another card when he’s in the hospital (which he keeps, even though he hard to literally keep it under a fruit bowl so it won’t sing anymore- he’s dispassionately thrown out Hagrid’s rock cakes and Ron and Hermione’s gifts he actually enjoyed before- so here he is, still having a tender (but platonic) spot for Ginny.)

Book 4- character establishment and missed opportunities

So, again, Ginny isn’t around much in this book. She still blushes around him a little, but is able to smile and talk with him much more easily, especially about the twins’ joke shop endeavors, and definitely has a lot more of her sass come out (fleetingly saw a couple of times of it in book 3).

She’s still not included in any of the trio’s antics (not even being told about Sirius’s innocence)- and they mainly establish that she has a great sense of humor like her brothers, laughing a lot at things Harry and Ron do (while Hermione can’t bring herself to laugh, b/c it’s hermione), and being compassionate as per usual to people and animals alike (as in book 3).

Anyways, the main thing that stands out in this book- is the missed opportunity for all the main characters to go out with their future romantic partner/s.

Ron and Hermione don’t go to the ball.

Harry and Ginny don’t go to the ball.

Harry and Cho don’t go to the ball.

It’s a big missed moment for them all, really. :P

So yeah- we all are very aware of all that yule ball, who is going out with who drama-

Anyways, another moment I like is Weasleys are always his escape - and she’s a part of that. :

Fred, George, and Ginny came to sit next to [Ron and Harry] too, and Harry was having such a good time he felt almost as though he were back at the Burrow; he had forgotten to worry about that evening’s task, and not until Hermione turned up, halfway through lunch, did he remember that she had had a brainwave about Rita Skeeter.

Book 5 - Establishing the foundation through interactions, themes and language.

So, this is where we get to see full-out Ginny. No longer is it just hints at her sass, pieces of her compassion, tiny shared moments between her and Harry- oooh no. This book is where we finally have Ginny’s full glory out and about, and it’s awesome. She is ballsy, she is cool, and lord help me, I love her so much. JKR establishes a very very firm foundation for a romantic relationship between them to blossom in this book.

From the get go, Ginny is on point.

So a quick exploration of how awesome Ginny is:

The door opened and a long mane of red hair appeared. “Oh hello, Harry!” said Ron’s younger sister, Ginny, brightly. “I thought I heard your voice.”

This is after he was screaming, and had just been teased by the twins for it. Again that poetic language is used for her, and she’s now part of his gang- and intimate along with Ron and Hermione (or as close as anyone can get) with his plans and life.

Like, I could go on forever about how cool Gin in this book, but I’ve literally written pages at this point. Suffice it to say- she kicks arse - like, she’s hangin with the twin and being cool in Grimmauld place, she’s kicking butt at quidditch, she’s flying into Smith when he’s an arse, she’s known for her bat bogey hex.

“Yeah, size is no guarantee of power,” said George. “Look at Ginny.” “What d’you mean?” said Harry. “You’ve never been on the receiving end of one of her Bat-Bogey Hexes, have you?”

And she’s compassionate too, as she’s kind to Luna and Neville a whole bunch in this book

“I’m nobody,” said Neville hurriedly. “No you’re not,” said Ginny sharply. “Neville Longbottom — Luna Lovegood.”

She and Harry share grins and laughs throughout the book

Well, hello there!” [Lockhart] said. “I expect you’d like my autograph, would you?” “Hasn’t changed much, has he?” Harry muttered to Ginny, who grinned.

So yeah, Ginny is amazing, so it’s not really a surprise that the next book, when Harry is no longer crushing on Cho, he takes notice.

The main points of connection between Harry and Gin are that: a few times in this book he relies on her to help him emotionally, or she just steps up to do it- at times she does it better than any other pier of his, including Ron and Hermione.

The first moment where she really helps Harry out is on the Hogwarts Express:

The train was gathering still more speed, so that the houses outside the window flashed past and they swayed where they stood. “Shall we go and find a compartment, then?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione. Ron and Hermione exchanged looks.

“Er,” said Ron.

“We’re — well — Ron and I are supposed to go into the prefect carriage,” Hermione said awkwardly. Ron wasn’t looking at Harry; he seemed to have become intensely interested in the fingernails on his left hand.

“Oh,” said Harry. “Right. Fine.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to stay there all journey,” said Hermione quickly. “Our letters said we just get instructions from the Head Boy and Girl and then patrol the corridors from time to time.”

“Fine,” said Harry again. “Well, I-I might see you later, then.”

“Yeah, definitely,” said Ron, casting a shifty, anxious look at Harry. “It’s a pain having to go down there, I’d rather — but we have to — I mean, I’m not enjoying it, I’m not Percy,” he finished defiantly.

“I know you’re not,” said Harry and he grinned. But as Hermione and Ron dragged their trunks, Crookshanks, and a caged Pigwidgeon off toward the engine end of the train, Harry felt an odd sense of loss. He had never traveled on the Hogwarts Express without Ron.

“Come on,” Ginny told him, “if we get a move on we’ll be able to save them places.”

So back to school they go, and poor Harry is all alone and a bit lost as to what to do with himself when Ron and Hermione leave him for prefect stuff. Ginny immediately takes charge and is super sweet, finding him a compartment, hanging with him and Neville and Luna. I’d like to point out, she didn’t HAVE to help him out at all. She has her own friends in her year (who hail her over the second they’re in the great hall) and a boyfriend- she’s just being awesome.

She then comforts him about Cho for a sec (as she gets the whole trying to look cool

Harry slumped back in his seat and groaned. He would have liked Cho to discover him sitting with a group of very cool people laughing their heads off at a joke he had just told; he would not have chosen to be sitting with Neville and Loony Lovegood, clutching a toad and dripping in Stinksap.

“Never mind,” said Ginny bracingly. “Look, we can get rid of all this easily.” She pulled out her wand. “Scourgify!” The Stinksap vanished.

Ginny, unlike the other young ladies in Harry’s life, has the ability to bring calm to the storm at times with pointed humor. Like the first DA meeting, when Luna and Hermione break into a fight that derails the whole thing:

“Yes, he’s got an army of heliopaths,” said Luna solemnly.

“No, he hasn’t,” snapped Hermione.

“Yes, he has,” said Luna.

“What are heliopaths?” asked Neville, looking blank.

“They’re spirits of fire,” said Luna, her protuberant eyes widening so that she looked madder than ever. “Great tall flaming creatures that gallop across the ground burning everything in front of —”

“They don’t exist, Neville,” said Hermione tartly. “Oh yes they do!” said Luna angrily.

“I’m sorry, but where’s the proof of that?” snapped Hermione.

“There are plenty of eyewitness accounts, just because you’re so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you —”

“Hem, hem,” said Ginny in such a good imitation of Professor Umbridge that several people looked around in alarm and then laughed. “Weren’t we trying to decide how often we’re going to meet and get Defense lessons?”

Ginny is able to calm him where no one else can when he’s afraid after he’s had the dream with Mr Weasley- not only de-escalating him, but also cheering him up, while standing up to him full on and able to snap him out of it and make him listen:

[Hermione] sat down next to Ginny, and the two girls and Ron looked up at Harry. “How’re you feeling?” asked Hermione.

“Fine,” said Harry stiffly. “Oh, don’t lie, Harry,” she said impatiently.

“Ron and Ginny say you’ve been hiding from everyone since you got back from St. Mungo’s.”

“They do, do they?” said Harry, glaring at Ron and Ginny. Ron looked down at his feet but Ginny seemed quite unabashed. “Well, you have!” she said. “And you won’t look at any of us!”

“It’s you lot who won’t look at me!” said Harry angrily.

“Maybe you’re taking it in turns to look and keep missing each other,” suggested Hermione, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Very funny,” snapped Harry, turning away.

“Oh, stop feeling all misunderstood,” said Hermione sharply. “Look, the others have told me what you overheard last night on the Extendable Ears —”

“Yeah?” growled Harry, his hands deep in his pockets as he watched the snow now falling thickly outside. “All been talking about me, have you? Well, I’m getting used to it… .”

“We wanted to talk to you, Harry,” said Ginny, “but as you’ve been hiding ever since we got back —”

“I didn’t want anyone to talk to me,” said Harry, who was feeling more and more nettled.

“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” said Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-KnowWho, and I can tell you how it feels.” Harry remained quite still as the impact of these words hit him. Then he turned on the spot to face her.

“I forgot,” he said.

“Lucky you,” said Ginny coolly.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and he meant it.

“So … so do you think I’m being possessed, then?”

“Well, can you remember everything you’ve been doing?” Ginny asked. “Are there big blank periods where you don’t know what you’ve been up to?” Harry racked his brains. “No,” he said.

“Then You-Know-Who hasn’t ever possessed you,” said Ginny simply. “When he did it to me, I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing for hours at a time. I’d find myself somewhere and not know how I got there.”

Harry hardly dared believe her, yet his heart was lightening almost in spite of himself.

[Herm and Harry give input on how he was in bed the whole time and no one apparated into hogwarts]. I’m not the weapon after all, thought Harry. His heart swelled with happiness and relief, and he felt like joining in as they heard Sirius tramping past their door toward Buckbeak’s room, singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs” at the top of his voice.

So yeah- Ginny was able to bring him peace of mind in a way LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE COULD.

She goes on to bolster him about his quidditch ban (and is the only person to really do so, it seems) and then again shows her ability to ‘get’ him:

“Good catch,” Harry told Ginny back in the common room, where the atmosphere closely resembled that of a particularly dismal funeral.

“I was lucky,” she shrugged. “It wasn’t a very fast Snitch and Summerby’s got a cold, he sneezed and closed his eyes at exactly the wrong moment. Anyway, once you’re back on the team —”

“Ginny, I’ve got a lifelong ban.”

“You’re banned as long as Umbridge is in the school,” Ginny corrected him. “There’s a difference. Anyway, once you’re back, I think I’ll try out for Chaser. Angelina and Alicia are both leaving next year and I prefer goal-scoring to Seeking anyway.”

Harry looked over at Ron, who was hunched in a corner, staring at his knees, a bottle of butterbeer clutched in his hand. “Angelina still won’t let him resign,” Ginny said, as though reading Harry’s mind.

Then she inspires hope in him, yet again:

“It’s Easter eggs from Mum,” said Ginny. “There’s one for you… . There you go… .” She handed him a handsome chocolate egg decorated with small, iced Snitches and, according to the packaging, containing a bag of Fizzing Whizbees. Harry looked at it for a moment, then, to his horror, felt a hard lump rise in his throat.

“Are you okay, Harry?” asked Ginny quietly.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Harry gruffly. The lump in his throat was painful. He did not understand why an Easter egg should have made him feel like this.

“You seem really down lately,” Ginny persisted. “You know, I’m sure if you just talked to Cho …”

“It’s not Cho I want to talk to,” said Harry brusquely.

“Who is it, then?” asked Ginny.

“I …” He glanced around to make quite sure that nobody was listening; Madam Pince was several shelves away, stamping out a pile of books for a frantic-looking Hannah Abbott. “I wish I could talk to Sirius,” he muttered. “But I know I can’t.” More to give himself something to do than because he really wanted any, Harry unwrapped his Easter egg, broke off a large bit, and put it into his mouth.

“Well,” said Ginny slowly, helping herself to a bit of egg too, “if you really want to talk to Sirius, I expect we could think of a way to do it… .”

“Come on,” said Harry hopelessly. “With Umbridge policing the fires and reading all our mail?”

“The thing about growing up with Fred and George,” said Ginny thoughtfully, “is that you sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.” Harry looked at her.

Perhaps it was the effect of the chocolate — Lupin had always advised eating some after encounters with dementors — or simply because he had finally spoken aloud the wish that had been burning inside him for a week, but he felt a bit more hopeful… .

So on top of ALL THAT- there are literary themes tying Ginny and Cho together. His current flame is somehow always getting cocurrently talked about or written about with Ginny flitting around in there. Ginny and Cho’s lives mirror each other, or they are inexplicably linked in scenes. We see scenes where they intersect, Ginny and Cho are in competetition (note, Ginny always wins), and their love lives seem to twist into one another’s. Coincidence?! I think not! :D

“Ginny used to fancy Harry, but she gave up on him months ago. Not that she doesn’t like you, of course,” she added kindly to Harry while she examined a long black-and-gold quill. Harry, whose head was still full of Cho’s parting wave, did not find this subject quite as interesting as Ron, who was positively quivering with indignation, but it did bring something home to him that until now he had not really registered.

“So that’s why she talks now?” he asked Hermione. “She never used to talk in front of me.”

“Exactly,” said Hermione. [hermione shops]

Ron still breathing down her neck. “Ron,” she said severely as she turned and trod on his feet, “this is exactly why Ginny hasn’t told you she’s seeing Michael, she knew you’d take it badly. So don’t harp on about it, for heaven’s sake.”

“What d’you mean, who’s taking anything badly? I’m not going to harp on about anything …”

Ron continued to chunter under his breath all the way down the street. Hermione rolled her eyes at Harry and then said in an undertone, while Ron was muttering imprecations about Michael Corner, “And talking about Michael and Ginny … what about Cho and you?”

Somewhat to Harry’s disappointment, it was Ginny who managed to find Cho Chang and her friend first

“The Defense Association?” said Cho. “The D.A. for short, so nobody knows what we’re talking about?”

“Yeah, the D.A.’s good,” said Ginny. “Only let’s make it stand for Dumbledore’s Army because that’s the Ministry’s worst fear, isn’t it?” There was a good deal of appreciative murmuring and laughter at this.

“All in favor of the D.A.?” said Hermione bossily, kneeling up on her cushion to count. “That’s a majority — motion passed!”

Harry glimpsed Ron and Ginny skimming over the stands and felt a horrible pang that he was not up there with them… . “You really miss it, don’t you?” said Cho.

“Yeah,” said Ron slowly, savoring the words, “we won. Did you see the look on Chang’s face when Ginny got the Snitch right out from under her nose?”

“I suppose she cried, did she?” said Harry bitterly.

“Well, yeah — more out of temper than anything, though …”

Harry looked around. Cho was passing, accompanied by Marietta Edgecombe, who was wearing a balaclava. His and Cho’s eyes met for a moment. Cho blushed and kept walking. Harry looked back down at the chessboard just in time to see one of his pawns chased off its square by Ron’s knight.

“What’s — er — going on with you and her anyway?” Ron asked quietly.

“Nothing,” said Harry truthfully.

“I — er — heard she’s going out with someone else now,” said Hermione tentatively. Harry was surprised to find that this information did not hurt at all. Wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him. [paragraph about Sirius’s death]

“You’re well out of it, mate,” said Ron forcefully. “I mean, she’s quite good-looking and all that, but you want someone a bit more cheerful.”

“She’s probably cheerful enough with someone else,” said Harry, shrugging.

“Who’s she with now anyway?” Ron asked Hermione, but it was Ginny who answered.

“Michael Corner,” she said. “Michael — but —” said Ron, craning around in his seat to stare at her. “But you were going out with him!”

“Not anymore,” said Ginny resolutely. “He didn’t like Gryffindor beating Ravenclaw at Quidditch and got really sulky, so I ditched him and he ran off to comfort Cho instead.” […]

“Well, I always thought he was a bit of an idiot,” [Ron] said, prodding his queen forward toward Harry’s quivering castle. “Good for you. Just choose someone — better — next time.” He cast Harry an oddly furtive look as he said it.

“Well, I’ve chosen Dean Thomas, would you say he’s better?” asked Ginny vaguely. “WHAT?” shouted Ron,

SO THERE YA GO- ALL THAT BUILD UP- :) was it fast and out of nowhere? no way! Reread and see it right there in the books, mates!

Like, you can not like their ship- but there is no denying the buildup.

#hinny #harry/ginny #essay #shipping #REPOSTED from a reply

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mermaidsirennikita · 6 years ago

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February 2019 Book Roundup

February was the month that I decided to give the Shadow and Bone trilogy another shot. And it was mediocre, as were most of the books I read this month. The standout was probably Robinne Lee’s Harry Styles fanfic novel The Idea of You, but even that was a 3 star read. Wish me luck next month!

99% Mine by Sally Thorne. 2/5. Darcy has long been in love with Tom Valeska, her childhood friend. Unfortunately, Tom is equally close--if not closer--to Darcy’s twin brother, Jamie. Between her estrangement from Jamie, Tom’s engagement to another woman, and their unsaid fears of what getting together would mean for the trio as a whole, Tom and Darcy have never made it happen. But now that Tom is the contractor for the renovation project on Darcy’s grandmother’s house, they’ll have a whole summer together--without Jamie. And Darcy may just be able to make Tom entirely hers. I HATE giving this two stars. I loved Thorne’s debut, The Hating Game--and this should have been just as good. The fact is that Darcy kind of ruined it. I love an aggressive heroine, but she was... over the top. Fake. I didn’t get her damage, to be frank. And Darcy’s forwardness towards Tom, if you could call it that, not only seemed disingenuous--it also would have read VERY differently if their genders were flipped. Within seconds of finding out that she has a chance with Tom, Darcy is aggressive with him to the point of being outright pushy. It’s desperate at best and borderline predatory at worst. Never mind the issues later on, regarding the fact that these adults never acted like adults. There were some cute scenes and Thorne knows how to write sexual tension, but that couldn’t overcome the book’s problems. Still--I eagerly await her next novel. This could just be one misfire.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. 3/5. In the world of the Grisha (where the titular magic users are in a class above their powerless counterparts) Alina is a mapmaker. Traveling alongside the Ravkan army, she is attempting to chart the Shadow Fold, which splits the country in two and harbors horrible monsters. When an attempt to cross the Fold goes wrong, Alina unleashes a power that she never knew she had. This leads to her catching the attention of the Darkling, a grisha and arguably the most powerful man in the kingdom. Alina’s newly discovered power could save Ravka--but as she enters in the royal court, she realizes that there’s much more to the dealings of Ravka than what meets the eye. I read this about six-ish years ago and gave it two stars. I’m giving it one more because I do think I was a stick in the mud about some things back in the day, and this is a fun book. However, you can really, REALLY tell that Bardugo has grown. I kind of wish that she’d been able to write the Darkling-Alina dynamic in a post Kaz Brekker world, with a lot more nuance and a lot, LOT less Mal, who feels like that obligatory childhood friend love interest in the kind of triangle that was expected when this book came out in 2012. (Speaking of: this book came out in 2012, and rip-offs are VERY much still actively being published, so’s interested.) There’s so much cool shit in the Grisha universe. But though I’m more okay with Alina than I was in 2012, I still find her to be kind of dull in comparison to the other leads I’ve seen Bardugo produce since. But hey, the Darkling is indeed hot. So there’s that.

Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo. 3/5. The sequel to Shadow and Bone has much of the same issues as the first book--but I’d still say it’s more fun. Why? We aren’t pretending that the Darkling is convincingly non-suspicious, for one thing. For another, we get Nikolai! Everyone talked about Nikolai. He lived up to expectations, and I look forward to Bardugo writing about him again. I’m honestly not sure if she’s grown so much, as I really like the world of Ravka, just as I liked the world of Ketterdam in the much better “Six of Crows”. Maybe the issue is the characters? Because Alina and Mal really are so boring. Hey, though--the Darkling is still great. I tend to wonder what Bardugo would have done with him in a post-Reylo world.

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo. 3/5. I don’t think I really cared about this series enough to be as mad as people were when this book came out. Or maybe I just was bracing myself for total disappointment--and there were things I liked about the ending? Alina remains kinda lame. Mal remains a bit annoying. Love Nikolai and the Darkling. Wish that this premise was handled in a more adult way. The end. I’m still excited about the Netflix deal--I loved Six of Crows and frankly, in different hands and under a different lens I can see myself loving this series much more.

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. 3/5. Thirty-nine-year-old Solene is covering for her ex-husband when she takes their preteen daughter, Isabelle, to an August Moon concert. August Moon is the hottest boy band in the world, and Isabelle is smitten with the boys. What Solene doesn’t expect is her instant connection with one of the boys, twenty-year-old Hayes, during a meet and greet. What follows begins as a fling, but slowly develops into a real relationship as Hayes and Solene fall for each other. But can they overcome the age difference between them--not to mention the darker aspects of Hayes’s fame? This is, most definitely, a One Direction fanfiction turned into a novel. Hayes is Harry Styles, no doubt about it. There are the rumors about his sexuality, the crazy fans, the little catch phrases. But it’s deeper than most self-insert fanfic novels. I debated the rating on this one--the ending is abrupt, but bolder than I would have expected. The relationship is treated somewhat realistically, as unbelievable as that seems (to be honest, Harry Styles having a fling with a woman twice his age isn’t really so out of the question). But there were elements that just made me question Lee’s understanding of the issues surrounding relationships with such big age gaps. And while she seemed willing to depict the problems surrounding boy bands, the way she dealt with them was... not always the best. Still--a more nuanced romance that I expected.

The Chef’s Secret by Crystal King. 2/5. In late sixteenth century Rome, Bartolomeo Scappi is a legendary chef, serving as the pope’s personal cook. When he dies, he wills everything to his nephew, Giovanni--who also receives Bartolomeo’s secret journal. The journal reveals a long-hidden relationship between Bartolomeo and an unknown woman, leading Giovanni on a quest to uncover his uncle’s past. I really liked King’s Feast of Sorrow, another piece of historical fiction by way of crime and cooking. So why did this one suck so much? I’m really not sure. I do care more about Renaissance Italy than Ancient Rome--so maybe that biased me against it. But I also just think that every “twist” was predictable, every beat hollow. I still liked reading about the food, but this just wasn’t good. Furthermore, there’s a creepy thread to Bartolomeo’s relationship with his lost love that I really couldn’t get over. This was trying hard for an Immortal Beloved vibe, but it was a swing and a miss.

#book recs #book roundup #books

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the-kings-of-games · 3 years ago

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Kizune is really easy to ship from how much bonding and making right and rebonding there is between Jack, Crow, and Yusei in canon, I'm really surprised it 1, gets flack from other shippers (but I guess that's just how shipping be like?) and 2, isn't a larger ship (but I guess that's just how polyships go). Idk but, mostly just trying to say you're definitely not the only kizume shipper out there, so don't let the shipping bs get you down. Canon sets the trio up well and that's that

Strap in, long post because I got a chance to talk about Kizuna~!:

Kizuna is so easy to ship because it hits so many tropes (for me). Childhood friends and friends to lovers (which hits so close to soulmates for me), family/friendship dynamic, and I just love big and little sibling characters, aaaah. They’re so cute. QwQ

It honestly really doesn’t get a lot of flack because nobody really cares about it, but it’s just really discouraging because there’s not a lot of us—in my two years into the ship, I’ve met about two active shippers (one now) and a handful of people who think it’s cute and open to the ship—and I honestly put so much effort and time into this ship. I’m not asking people to ship it, but gods, it just makes me so envious when I see other ships just get more engagement from just being mentioned. Maybe people are indifferent about Kizuna, but in the same post that punches down Kizuna, it uplifts Faith/Scoop which brings a lot of people together. [Direct quote from the post that gave Kizuna flack: “Anyways there’s no need to ship Yusei, Jack, and Crow together bc / Yusei has Akiza and Jack has Carly :D”] It can get pretty isolating. (More to this later.)

Really, you can do the latter without needing to do the former because that’s how you start shipwars/hate, but a lot of people think that the punching down method is the part of the fandom experience. I shouldn’t take it to heart because a lot of people who say stuff like this aren’t people who actively contribute to the fandom—they’re a part of the fandom, yes, but what they essentially do is nothing but complain about not having a lot of content. (That being said, one in a while, they are active contributors, and I've had one such encounter.)

I should know what it’s like to have little to no content here. There’s about 170 fics tagged Kizuna on Ao3. Approximately 147 Kizuna tagged fics on Ao3, because of me and my four friends. We wrote 88% of the content on Ao3 in just the past two years. You don’t get to bitch about not having enough content when your ship gets dozens of contributors. Kizuna is just some guys in a trench coat writing for each other, and there’s only really two of us now. (This isn’t even considering the amount of fanartist shippers, but let me tell you, Kizuna has, like, three I can name from the top of my head and they’re not frequent or active now.)

Kizuna gets flack for being a brotherly ship. I get it—if it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing, but it doesn’t make it any less shipworthy, with or without canon. Shipping is for fun. I like Faith, Scoop, Trickstar, and so on because they make sense to me, but I write them in the context of Kizuna, which to me is queerplatonic so that they are open to other people while remaining strong in their trust and love for each other. ^3^ (I still gush over a lot of the development I made for this ship, guys. I love them so much. QWQ) Them being brothers is what really caught my attention because Crow is baby, Jack is nii-sama, and Yūsei is a middle child. Where else am I going to get a dynamic like this?? I was like, “They’re childhood friends, nice, nice. They’re close best friends, very nice. They’re brothe— They’re brothers.” (I can go into this a lot more why this matters to me, but that’ll have to be another post.)

As to why Kizuna isn’t a bigger ship, I think it’s a lot of factors. With more people getting into the series (due to COVID, nostalgia, etc.), there’s more people doubling down how different S1 and S2 are, often to the point of getting angry. That’s fine, really, but since 5D’s is a finished series, there’s no other option to vent about it so people get salty and just go blaming other things to explain discrepancies. There’s rumors about why the writers moved away from the Arcadia plotline to the Ylliaster, why Crow just showed up in the middle of S1 and gained a huge part that he was a part of the YGO trio in S2, etc. Like it really doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, or whatever the truth is, none of that is going to change how 5D’s went, and that’s a big source of bitterness for a lot of people.

But you just gotta build yourself different. Canon is nice, and I do my best to abide by it in my works (personal preference), but if I write what I like the way I like it and how I like it to be, that’s really all that matters. That’s actually how I got the few shipper friends I have now—I wrote a lot, I wrote well, and people liked that. My friends could really tell I love this ship even before talking to me. QwQ I am extremely aware how bad the writing, especially with female characters, in YGO can be because shōnen is one of my favorite genres and shōnen has a lot of issues. (I have so many gripes about how the fandom praises and criticizes YGO, but another post, smh.) You really need all of canon to ship characters—MCU had a huge ship between two characters who only interacted for, like, 40 seconds of screen time, and they weren’t even in the same room.

What holds Kizuna from being a big ship, or even a peripheral ship, is that there’s not a lot of engagement when it comes to the content imo. Personally, I think the YGO fandom has a very low engagement rate. (I can also talk about that, but another post!) It doesn’t matter how many people there are in a fandom when very few of them actually interact with others. I made a lot of small Kizuna incorrect posts, but I get maybe 1 reblog for every 20 likes? But also a lot of the posts don’t even get past 10 in general. I stopped posting Kizuna stuff on Tumblr because I get more engagement on Ao3 via kudos, and that’s saying something because I only get, like, an average of five kudos per fic. (But I could just be me too, I’m not the best at interacting, but I like to think I’m trying.) I mentioned isolation a bit early. I have a niche with my friends in which I’m encouraged and supported, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when someone else finally mentions Kizuna but it’s to bash on it. I’m always like, “New friends?? Wait— Oh. Nevermind.” I am in ship servers I feel safe in, but I’m the only one who wants to talk Kizuna. Any interaction, good or bad, matters because it’s something. That's why engagement is so important so I highly encourage it, not just for Kizuna but just everything you like.

Nonetheless, I am still very excited when I see a new name and face interact with any of my Kizuna stuff. I know you’re out there, I hope we can be friends one day. :) And no worries, posts like that get me down, but I’m also in the attitude of creating more out of spite. I was hurt so I had to cheer myself up.

And if there are other Kizuna shippers around, would any of you be interested in a ship event I’ve been thinking of? Kizuna is central, but it will encourage other ships too as the only real criteria to count is to have at least one of the boys involved. 👀👀👀 My friend is letting me use her art to promo it.

#kizunashipping #flames muses #flame replies #i love talking about kizuna #if you like kizuna i see you #i hope we get to talk one day qwq #thank you very much anon #i didnt expect this but what a wonderful surprise :D #yugioh 5ds

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armourheld · 7 years ago

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hc + mother

send me hc & a word to have me write a headcanon meta on it ! | forever accepting.

SMALL DISCLAIMER: this, unlike most of my other metas, may be seen as more canon divergent than not.i know reiners mum has a lot of mixed opinions, & even I liked her once ( when she first came out, especially !! ) you can choose to see her in your way if you’ll allow me to look at mine. but, anyways !! please heed these warnings: emotional / child abuse under the cut, which also references peoples own experiences fyi.

I think the main thing to point out here is that SNK has it’s fair share of good & bad parental relationships: you have eren who ended up fighting with his mum before he lost her, while ending up being pushed into his fathers beliefs / body double in a matter of circumstance, sasha who joined the military because she wanted to prove her fathers opinions wrong, jean who’s mother loved her to pieces, historia who’s mother loved & yet loathed her & whos father only cared about her when he needed to do stuff… connie & so on… Isayama has tried to make every characters backstory dynamic, & i think that’s something that well & truly sticks out in his writing, but reiner’s mum well, damn.

lets start of with what i am trying to imply here in my meta. to be honest, i’ve never truly looked at it this way until chapter 97 because i’ve always brought child trauma down to the day the wall broke. however, during the chapter when you do see the day as a whole, you realise his dissociation happens before that. the connotations of the tree scene itself hints towards him already forgetting what happened to marcel, & yet, at the beginning of chapter 94, he remarks how he’s forgotten how he got into this mess as a whole, Reiners mind had forgotten almost EVERYTHING about his childhood, weeded out the bad memories & most of them actually included his mother.

( reiner reminiscing as his memory finally returns to him - shouldn’t he remember all this super serious information / the stuff his mother repeated to him as a child ?? HM. )

Now dissociation is developed as a coping mechanism especially when contracted by a child, reiner himself USED it for this purpose. It’s all about the mind splitting it into new people that can cope with the situations that have been brought upon them, & surely his mother telling him stuff wouldn’t be seen as something that was scary or bad in a way that couldn’t cope, right? Personally, this is what got me thinking about their relationship as a whole, & I did come to one conclusion: emotional abuse.

Now, we all know reiners mother never physically abused him, like hitting him in a traumatic way because we would have seen it. I will never, ever suggest that she physically or sexually assaulted her boy, because Karina Braun never really did that to him. Yes, sure, in some ways she probably would have hit her son, but never was it to an extreme extent. Hitting in those times was probably common, & she did take on the fathers role as well, but still did she emotionally abuse her son in the way she spoke to him. One of the key signs of emotional abuse is conditional love…. & well, to me thats a key point of reiners childhood views as a whole, especially this:

Conditional positive regard is referred to as the type of love that is given when a person meets a certain type of criteria / has something etc, karina braun brings herself to show this with her belief that as eldians they are deplorable & disgusting, & the only way they can be loved is by being this “ honourary marleyan ” in place of who they are today. Her demeanour changes as a whole once Reiner gets the armoured titan, as well as convincing Reiner he was specifically born that way, just shows how easily she falls into this. One of the key forms of emotional abuse is a parent who constantly belittles their child, or a parents who refuses to love their child until they’ve done something, & this is Karina Braun in a nutshell.

Even if she doesn’t mean to, she expresses to her son, the one who basically depends on her opinion & actually grows up with the opinion with, is the opinion that they are disgusting, evil & near enough close to the paradis devils ( she refers to them as demons but, you know. ) Now this. THIS IS A FORM OF CHILD ABUSE. By sharing only the bad points of your child ( constantly criticising him, controlling his life ) is a sign that she has emotionally abused Reiner. It’s actually labelled as the first point on the NSPCC national page, as it is that distinguishable & a key sign of what it is.

Other symptoms of emotional abuse include: “ exposing a child to distressing events or interactions “, “ pushing a child too hard or not recognising their limitations ” & “ failing to promote a child's social development ” which is actually really key to mention. this is something that reiners mum herself does, but ALSO is represented by the marley regime. such as the image shown below & the attitudes that parents have. I will say that, according to this, all children in the Marley Military were emotionally abused to some extent, if we were to distinguish it.

Now, I suppose most people are thinking: well, is that the abuse that reiner suffered as a kid just on top of the day the wall fell? no. This actually raises more questions & SUPPORT for my theory. Of course, all of the kids were emotionally bullied in this way. But why, out of all of them, was Reiner the one to, well, canonly gain a mental illness? Zeke & Pieck & Porco didn’t really ( Well I haven’t analysed them as much ) & Marcel died before any permanent damage was seemingly caused by this. Sure enough, Bert had a god complex, & Annie had sociopathic tenancies: but Reiner was the only member of their trio that developed a full on MENTAL ILLNESS to that day the wall fell down.

Chapter 96 is the true chapter, that for me, really shows the key structures that caused Reiner to dissociate When speaking about his first ever “ death ”, he does suggest all the things he could live to forget. Reiners death wasn’t ever solely annies fault, reiners mum had a part in it, as well as his dad & as well as Marcels decision to use Reiner as a pawn to save his brother, his dissociation may have easily been avoided if one of those things had been stopped, however. As a kid, Reiners parents had such a huge influence upon him: his mother with this abuse, his father for refusing to show up, that as a kid, he was MORE vulnerable than Bertolt & Annie. I actually will be discussing this kind of stuff for my finished dissociation meta, because there’s a lot I want to talk about it. With the lack of a more “ masculine “ parental figure ( the one who would have been more about strength in those times ) would have made Reiner have a more “ feminine “ attitude. A lot of big brother reiner type stuff, to me, really does come from his mother - who was just that much of an influence on him.

Now, I’m not saying you have to believe me on this, & this is very much what I see from it, but I’m going to show you some of the signs that you were emotionally abused as a child, & well, explain myself.

1. I am in a constant state of blame no matter who is at fault. I hate going out in public or even going to work because I am afraid I am going to do something wrong and everyone will notice. I am afraid of making a mistake because I will beat myself up over it for the rest of the day.” Now, this one is more of a Clarrie interpretation than a canon one. But Reiner tends to blame himself a lot when things go wrong, within Chapter 44, Reiner talks a lot about how “ He wouldn’t have become a half assed piece of shit if he had known this from the beginning ” is very much more a self blame tactic, Bertolt himself kept true to his mission whereas Reiner went off topic for a wide variety of reasons, which I won’t get into.

2. I bully myself using the same words I used to hear. [It’s like] I removed the people from my life who used to abuse me, then picked up where they left off. This is based off of Chapter 94 itself, wherein he does reference his mums words to help him continue to fight & push on, now to me I wonder if this is a reference to her doing the same in a bad way. Reiner very much uses his words for Eldian devils when describing himself, a half Eldian, which to me always seems more interesting than not. When Reiner refers to himself does he use his mothers words? I think its more likely than not, especially the similarities between their language so far. Plus, this also links to the idea of: Even after leaving the one who abused me, their voice would ring loud in my head. I couldn’t make any decision on my own without their approval, even if that meant getting their disapproval. Their voice just wouldn’t leave. I still heard the criticism and nasty remarks to my body and life. It took years of fighting that voice to one day wake up and find my own. Sure, I still say sorry way too much, I don’t like being in situations I can’t control and I absolutely hate being restrained or backed away into a corner, [but] I can live with the things that cause me discomfort. But I couldn’t live with that voice. Which I find can be easily explained between chapter 94 - chapter 97.

3. [I find myself] always thinking people have an ulterior motive and [am] always second guessing whether someone deserves my loyalty or not in case I’m being manipulated again. [I] constantly try not to open up too much to someone because I think they will find me annoying and clingy or maybe just not good enough. & [I’m] paranoid about potentially being manipulated and [not knowing] ‘until it’s too late. Now, this one is actually the hardest to relate to Reiner, but I’ve chosen to mention it because ?? Warrior Reiner as a whole gives off this vibe. Chapter 77 shows this a lot in Reiners attitude to both Bertolt ( You’ve never been reliable ) & to Annie ( forcing her to take on the role of killing Marco to prove that she is, in fact, a true warrior. ) Reiner has always been an affectionate - ish child when he grew close to people, well from what I’ve seen with him & Bertolt, but in terms of new people / people he’s unsure about, he’s HARSH & to the point. His main warrior memories tend to be the flaws of the 104th: Connie not remembering why he went to the bathroom, Jeans self serving attitude, Marco’s completely opposite attitude, Eren’s rage & Sasha’s potato issue. Reiner, when infront of his mother IN PARTICULAR, shows his mistrust for them, & that’s a lot of what the warrior does. He’s always questioning, & he’s always pushing away. There could seriously be an underlying fear deep down, but it’s never been explored.

4. [My] memories had a lot of gaps or [were] different than [those of] my siblings. WELL. Well... Well... Well.... this can simply be explained by his dissociation, & also the thing that nobody else tends to pick up on Karinas attitude. If you take Bertolts memory of the day Marcel got eaten, there are slight differences between the two, as well as the fact that Annie & Bertolt never seem to mention Reiners mum. This bit is less about the abuse from his mother & more about the situation, but I think it could also be linked to this. Especially taking Gabi vs Reiners reactions to her words in chapter 94 !!

In conclusion, I do believe that Karina Braun was ABUSIVE towards her child, but this is only my own opinion. Personally you can actually believe what you want, & I’m happy to hear your story as long as you respect mine. He just... shows too much not to be ? I suppose. Reiner himself is a very complex character in terms of childhood, & this helped me divulge into more causes of dissociation. We’re just another step closer to the biggest meta ever !!

#Anonymous #✖ 「ANSWERED.」━ IM ALWAYS LOOKING / ALWAYS ASKING QUESTIONS #( SAVED TAG. )#✖ 「OOC.」━ HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND #META TAG #this is clarrie writing a big ass meta #PLEASE READ THIS !!!!!!#this was so fun to write #helps show what my reiner is like a little bit more.#And why hes like it.#SO EYYY

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midnightluck · 8 years ago

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id love to get more essays on mas or the asl. love your thoughts

I guess I haven’t really talked about Luffy, or how he fits into this. I mean, there’s a reason for that, and that reason is I suck at writing Luffy.

Still, as far as ASL goes, Luffy’s always been the excitable one who charges ahead, Ace is the one who chases after him to stop him from falling headfirst into anything too dangerous, and Sabo follows up behind them with the real plan but mostly pointing and laughing. (Funnily enough, it’s the same dynamic modified a bit for Ace, Sabo and Marco, respectively.)

Like, this goes back to some stuff I’ve mentioned before, about Sabo being the planner of the trio. He’s not the mastermind, though, and probably doesn’t even mostly tell them what to do. He’ll stop them from doing dumb shit they can’t get out of, but otherwise he’ll just sit back and let it happen. He wouldn’t tell them what to do unless it’s important, but they know that so when he does speak up, they listen.

tl;dr:

Luffy is the core of every group because he doesn’t try to be

They all eat a lot because childhood trauma

They all have the same temper with the same triggers

Sabo would kill for Luffy and Ace would die for luffy and that difference is huge

Ace and Sabo are basically an anger seesaw

Luffy is the heart of the group, because Luffy is always the heart. Luffy keeps the balance specifically because he doesn’t think about it. He’s got his goals and he pursues them and everyone else is left playing catch-up. How much of that is because of his brothers is up for debate though. I mean, he got used to being the weakest in the group and knowing that if he didn’t sprint full speed ahead, he’d never catch up. He doesn’t worry about his nakama or anyone now because he never learned how to. Why should he have? Everyone he’s ever met has been more than self-sufficient. And his nakama respond to that, as we see in the timeskip. They need to be strong enough to keep up with Luffy because Luffy never learned how to slow down.

Speaking of not slowing down, I bet one of the reasons ASL eat so much is because they grew up feral. Although they could always go to Dadan’s, that was probably a last resort. I bet they went hungry at least a few times. It’s honestly a wonder they don’t hoard food. Then again, I guess they do in their stomachs because who can even eat that much, really. Maybe D’s are related to Saiyans somehow? Still, I’d bet Sabo and Ace went hungry more before Luffy, though, because they’d swallow their pride to keep Luffy fed.

What they also share, besides appetite, is a temper. They all flare short and hot before settling into a long cold burn. If you think about it, they all react to betrayal pretty much the same. We see it in Luffy most often, when he gets truly angry. Someone has hurt his nakama, and he will make them pay, beyond logic or reason. He will fight people who outclass him and never ever give up until it’s corrected, and if it’ not corrected he will continue until it is.

Then we see Ace, with the Teach thing. And then we get Sabo, who’s got two main triggers that are very different than his brothers’. The first is the unfairness and corruption of the world, yadda yadda. The second is lesser, but actually would be himself? Like, this ties in to the first, of course, but also he forgot his brothers, and that guilt is fueled by the cold burn of his own temper. Again, this is a subjective interpretation, but it makes for a cool contrast because it’s about the only betrayal that can’t physically be fought.

Speaking of tempers, though, I have thoughts, let me tell you them. This is actually gonna be a big thing discussed in the next chapter of Wish by Spirit, but Sabo is generally the one to be calm in a situation, right? So when he loses it, Ace has to step in and be the calm one, because broken Sabo vs angry Ace is their actual worst nightmare.

So Ace is real careful. As long as Sabo's yelling and frowning and y'know, emoting, Ace can be as angry and biting and awful as he likes, but that second that the light goes out behind Sabo's eyes and his grin turns empty and happy and his voice becomes modulated and satiny as poison, that's when Ace knows he has to step back and be reasonable, be rational, not take anything personally--it's not really their Sabo at all.

Incidentally, the only thing capable of stopping a Sabo on the warpath is probably Luffy. No, not Ace, because only two things can set Sabo on that path and that's Ace and Luffy, and either way, Ace won't be stopping him.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Where Ace has a gaping chasm of insecurity, Sabo has a pit of guilt and rage, which is why Sabo reacts offensively and Ace defensively. It’s also why Marineford would’ve been different if it were Sabo up there; he’d’ve attacked to protect Luffy instead. He probably would’ve gotten in front of Luffy and charged and still probably died, but the thing is, when Luffy/someone they care about it hurt, Sabo’s default reaction is remove the threat while Ace’s is defend. I say a lot that Sabo’s willing to kill for his brothers while Ace is willing to die for them, and that’s why I think so.

All that being said, though, one thing I try to avoid writing is overprotective big brothers. Do they all love each other fiercely? Hell yeah they do. Do they all overreact to threats on each other? Well, probably, but they have reason to. But Ace and Sabo don’t call Luffy constantly or try to pull him out of fights or tell him to stay back.

They just show up to help when he’s in over his head. So brother complexes? Yeah, sure, it’s likely, but I personally try to not write overprotective big brothers.

But the dynamics between the ASL brothers is just so--I love how on the surface it’s strong and then you peel back layers and it just keeps getting stronger and deeper and it’s just so lovely. I love Luffy, I really do. I think he’s a great protagonist. He draws in characters and goes full speed ahead and the story just cannot possibly stagnate with a determinator like that at the helm.

I love Luffy; I just love his brothers more.

#one piece #character essays #portgas d. ace #sabo the revolutionary #monkey d. luffy #marco the phoenix #i need a better asks tag #these asks are so nice???#thank you thank you <3 #ml rambles #i will keep talking about this as long as you let me really i will

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