#of course after like a few episodes into Season 1 of either one really drawing while watching will help | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune · 1 year ago

Text

Bee From Season 1 Episode 8 Helluva Boss Is Awesome (Queens Rule And Ozzie & Mammon Drools)

[Notes: A bit Of Spoilers ahead, if your a fan of Helluva Boss and have been watching the episodes, watch Season 1 Episode 8 first before reading this. also, reading this post is Optional and it does get a bit off topic. also, please don’t reblog this without my permission, as only some of my posts can have that rule not in there, but there is reasons why I put it in there for some of the posts.]

even if it took a while to have Season 1 Episode 8 air, and some of the new episodes of Season 2 came first before the Season 1 Episode 8, which is the part 2 of the final the first season.

I love the Bee character, yeah she is Beelzebub, but she seems like a really caring and empathic character, if she ever finds out what happen over at Ozzie’s....I hope she kicks Ozzie’s fluffybuns for what happen to Blitz.

also, I’m pretty sure the Satan that Bee was talking about in that episode, wasn’t Lucifer, cause once again, those two are confused with each other, but they ain’t the same....I’m still gonna keep Samael on that list I made, and Mammon is still going to be at the top of the list...

along with the three angels that had emotionally harmed Lilith and only caused more harm than good, in trying to make her return to Adam.

so yeah, even if Samael is Cain’s bio-dad or whatever, he ain’t the boss of me and he is still staying on that wishful list, that has to do with me wanting to punch some jerks who cross the line, in the groin.

Cain might be my and a few others own Ancestor, but Samael isn’t the boss of me....

who knows how the Eden Family will be like in the show, like maybe in Hazbin Hotel, not sure if they would end up appearing in Helluva Boss.

also I wouldn’t be surprised if it is only the Queens, that have that side to them that don’t act like a Mr. Think With Your Lustful Hormones...

which might be the case for the actual Ozzie, yeah maybe I should add him to the list as well....I already added the four horsemen, might as well add the embodiment of lust, of course Mammon will still be at the top of the list, cause of the toxic-greed that has been going on.

even if it can be normal to be a little greedy, but there is some lines you do NOT cross when it comes to it, where it becomes a toxic-greed.

it be like how some charity can have it’s good side but also it’s bad side.

I know that when I had that depression in 2015, because of some stuff that was going on around me at home and my personal space wasn’t being respected and I had to freaking lock the door to keep the house guests from going into that room where I was, trying to work on fan fic or drawings in peace...

I ended up not feeling so great after the whole move thing, and yeah during that same year, I had that type of panic attack in the car and I ended up hitting my head while in the car, I know I’m doing a bit better than what happen, but I still don’t like being alone outside in the car, even if I don’t feel like going into a place to shop, and I guess I should try to go in the places that sells food or other items, but I just don’t feel like it....

and it might of been either this month or last month, when I started to feel a little not great, when waiting outside alone in the car, for family to get back....

it felt like they were taking too long, and I started to get this feeling and well when I did talk about it with my family, they think it is anxiety, but I’m still not sure that is the case.

I know I have a small bit of androphobia, which I think is part of the reason for that panic attack I had in the car, it isn’t as bad as it was during that time.

I think that even if you do have some guys you can trust to be around, there are some that you can’t....even if you might have either a small or full androphobia. and well, there is the whole other phobia, which also involve the car.

and one of the reasons why I wear gem bracelets, even though I didn’t originally do that or wear them all the time, is to protect me from Incubus, cause I’m pretty sure while living in the house we live at now, I had a Incubus encounter....

I was asleep when it happen, it was dark and I might of been between awake and asleep or like self-aware, and what happen for a split second or minute, while I was on my back and it was all dark....

had caused me to be scared awake...

also have to use gems to protect myself from humans who give off too much lustful energy and might cause me to dream-walk, because of a possible issue with the dream-catcher I got to help protect me from dream-walking, I had to try to use a substitute, and maybe I can try to use another gem as a substitute as well.

I might need have to use the food salt and hold both the salt and the gem and pray both the Heavenly Father and Earthly Mother to have the gem protect me from dream-walking and keep my dream self from falling under a trance.

so far there hasn’t been any problems or like what happen last time when I became self-aware that I had dreamed walk, and didn’t want to go back to sleep and kept myself awake, because I didn’t want to be asleep while they were awake.

and I would of at some point thought it would be just a coincidence, that is if my Mom didn’t end up finding those naughty mature books or dvds in the said person’s room, I haven’t seen them, but I was told about it....

and well, that confirmed that I might of dream walked and the whole my gem bracelets might of helped me become self-aware and was able to go back to just having a random dream when I was out in a hallway in the dream.

in theory, maybe the hallway was a place that is in between all dreams of every person, and I was able to return to my dream space thanks to becoming self-aware.

not everyone has to believe that, but I’m always going to keep my gem bracelets on, to protect me and to act as sealing charms and limiters...

some people can still pick up different energies, like how Bee is able to pick up energies and feelings of others, and seems to not want anyone to gluttony for the wrong reasons, because it could be harmful to them.

well, even if doctors don’t know anything about energy seizures, I know that when I had my first one when I was a baby, it might of been because of some bad energy from either the place or some of the people around me.

like even if a person or people might end up not being bad, but the energy they give off can be harmful, and even dangerous to babies that are born as a type of empath.

and even a place with some supernatural and really bad negative energy, can be dangerous for a baby and child that can end up having a seizure because of those energies.

I know it is possible that my family wont take me fully seriously about my discovery, thinking that I still need that medicine, but I never really needed it in the first place....what I needed, was to be moved to a place with less dangerous energies that wouldn’t cause me to end up having a seizure, that was caused by both people and a place.

and when you have a lot of people in one room, their energies could end up flying around until they are absorbed into your body, this will cause your body to go through a overload and the only way it can get out, is the form of a seizure.

another thing, would be that it could be possible that all those energies, can cause you to feel sleepy all the time, and of course doctors could possibly get it wrong on why your little kid self was always tired...

and even if it wouldn’t be canon, but in a type of Fanon Timeline and Au...

I wouldn’t be surprised if Bee, ended up having seizures as a little kid, because of the really bad energies that were high enough to cause them.

but when she got older, she found a way to keep them from happening and found a way to protect herself.

not sure if it can happen to all energy empaths, but it can be possible it happens to some, and when they are babies, they are super sensitive to it.

babies, even when they haven’t been born yet, can sense the supernatural.

so some who are mother’s to be, and are pregnant, shouldn’t try to visit certain places that has really bad negative and supernatural energies.

and even if they don’t seem that close right now, but I hope they become close friends in the future, my thoughts about Bee and Loona is “I Sib It.”

it be cute and awesome if Loona, Octavia and Bee formed a sibling type bond.

Bee acting like the elder sister, could be interesting, even if it might be in fanon.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s only the Embodiment Queens, have more sense than the Embodiment Kings....I mean, there is that whole toxic-masculine energy that goes around, and it possibly being part of the reason why some humans believe that there is only male angels, and there is no female angels.

which I’m glad that the video I had watched, had pointed out there are Female Angels and had debunked about it....not everyone has to check that out, but I’m still glad I had found that video.

still can’t leave some Angel Boys alone for a few minutes, without them either causing a rebellion for the wrong reasons, or them not bothering to fix the imbalance energy between the masculine and feminine energies.

even if there are some Male Angels, that can be trusted, I’m still not going to fully trust all of them, and I ain’t just talking about the Fallen Angel Boys...

yeah, like I had pointed out before, this Earth Angel has some trust issues with some of the Masculine Angels, even if I know there are some I can trust, but I still want to keep my guard up.

and yeah as weird as it might sound, in my afterlife in the far future, I think I want to just sleep in a tree like a Nymph, I’m weird...

and even if by some possibility, Phenex is technically my Dad because of the whole my being a fusion of different soul fragments.

which as weird as my voice is, it would explain a lot....

and I did use to sing a lot while I was little, and even later on....

of course at some point I stop when some stuff was going on, and I don’t think I can sing as well as I use to, but I can still try to do so once in a while, but I don’t think I sound that great anymore, if the walls were a bit more sound proof, I could of practice a bit more even when I had got better from that depression I had during 2015.

but yeah, even if my pendulum isn’t pulling one of it’s pranks and it does turn out that it is true, that Phenex is technically my Dad....

they would technically not be the boss of me, I can view Holy Amethyst as technically being the boss of me, well her, and possibly Zadkiel...

if my ethereal wings are a violet color, then those two would technically be the boss of me...

and I guess it could still be true, that my soul name could be Small Lilith Amethyst Phenex.....which once again, the funny thing about that oddly long name for a soul name....is that it spells out the word SLAP.

I know that sometimes, my pendulum can pull pranks on me when not being fully truthful, but there is still a chance it could be telling the truth about Phenex and well, the whole having a soul name that spells out SLAP.

also there is a chance not all Eon-Boomers, will listen to those who were born centuries later after the whole mess that some of them had made.

Bee from Helluva Boss, doesn’t seem like a Eon-Boomer, she seems more like, the later generation that will still have “Eon” in there.

Charlie’s Dad, a Eon-Boomer, and even Satan that Bee had mentioned, is a Eon-Boomer.

nickname for him, would be Stan, if Charlie’s Dad can be called Luci and Asmodeus, can be called Ozzie....then the embodiment of wrath who hasn’t appeared yet but is mentioned in Helluva Boss, can be nicknamed Stan.

do the Stan is wrong song and dance! (reference Gravity Falls.)

well it is better for me to be weird, than falling into a Melancholy Embodiment, which might not really be a evil sin, but needs some form of emotional understanding and not being made to feel any worse.

like even if you do get better from some depressions you had, you might still end up having days where you end up feeling a bit melancholy.

feeling not so great, and might just want to just lay in bed all day and just either sleep or just watch tv and if you fall asleep during the whole watching tv, that might be okay....

I don’t think the 8th embodiment would end up appearing in the canon of both Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, and they might only appear in Fanon Timelines only, and that is okay.

and it might be possible ending up falling into a second depression that will last a bit more longer than the first one, and happening way too soon after getting over that first one....

might also cause a type of Melancholy Embodiment type influence, but not everyone has to agree about that.

like even if you have some stuff and even people that make you feel a little happy, but the not so great feeling would still be inside of you, still making you feel not as happy and it takes time for it to fully heal.

what happen at Ozzie’s, that whole thing that happen with Blitz and Stolas, that takes time to heal, and depending on how bad the feelings are, it could take much longer to fully heal but the wounds can still be there, even if you are doing better.

ya know, if Asmodeus and Mammon ever cross lines they shouldn’t, Bee should kick their butts.

well the Queens should kick the butts of the Kings when they end up crossing lines.

Ozzie and Fizz might be adorkable goobers, who are super adorable together, but they should get their butts kicked by the other power couple that is Bee and Vortex.

maybe Bee should punch Ozzie and Fizz in the groin, they were half the reason why Blitz ended up giving off that bad energy at the party...

so, if Bee finds out why Blitz was the way he was, and it was caused by Ozzie and Fizz, she could have a right to punch those two in the groin.

and yeah, as jerky as a move that was, that was pulled by those two (along with Verosika Mayday.) but those two are lucky they are cute and are adorkable goobers.

and well if the sneak peaks are anything to go by, those two adorkable goobers that make up both Ozzie and Fizz, will get their karma in a future episode.

should be fun....*smirks mischievously* yeah, can’t really see that smirk, but ya get what it means, right...?

also as weird as I am, I’m still gonna call dibs on Mammon’s butt, but like in a different reasons than Millie’s dibs on Moxxie’s butt, which is one of the best scenes in that episode in Season 2, cause it is both true that Moxxie’s butt is Millie’s and it was a bit funny. XD

Mammon’s little greed embodiment had crossed lines, and NO one and I mean NO ONE, messes with the fair prices on some pop that is either Pepsi or Coca-Cola.....and yeah, the price for the Coca-Cola seems to be back to normal, as far as I know of....and yeah, because of the whole raised price thing that happen for the coca-cola, I had the thought of wanting to punch Mammon in the groin, and he being the first guy ever that I had those kind of thoughts I think.

some of us need some energy and need a bit of that drink sometimes to get through the day, or the night.

can still drink some water, but sometimes need that drink...

of course, because of certain reasons, I had to stop drinking so much coca-cola and had to take a break from it, I might start to drink it again another time, but I will just stick with the other soda type drinks...

it kind of has to do with figuring out it was causing me some problems, which the problems only stop when I had decided to stop drinking so much of the coca-cola, which the problem had finally stop, I can explain a bit more about what it is another time, but not now, I might of brought it up before, but if I haven’t, I can talk about it in a future post...

also, besides wanting to punch Mammon in the groin, and he is still gonna stay at the top of that list I made, even if it is more of a wishful type list and I know it ain’t possible to actually do it, and I had added the four horsemen to that list, as well as Cain and Abel, oh and Cain’s Bio-Dad....

oh yeah, almost forget, I also added Lucifer to that list, of course he was just added today some hours ago...King David is also on that list, because he didn’t punish that sicko of a son of his, and his sicko son is also on that list along with his cousin who is also his best friend....

doesn’t matter if King David is my ancestor, the reason why he is on that list, has to do with Tamar, and how he didn’t bother to punish that disgusting sicko of a son of his.

the list is more of a way to get some feelings out, and I know it is impossible to actually do them, but it is like wishful thing that you wish ya could but know you might not be able to actually do it.

also is it weird I want to call that hellhound that flirted with Loona, Eclipse.

like after watching that episode, I can’t help but want to view him as “Eclipse” and don’t know if we will find out his real name soon or not if he appears again in the future, he just seems like a Eclipse.

he sure had “eclipse” Loona’s heart, some might not get that, and that’s okay.

also, we can’t really assume that Loona’s Bisexual from what she says in one of the parts of that episode of Season 1 Episode 8.

I mean, even though Loona said Bee is hot, she might not be attracted to her in the same way as she is with two certain male hellhounds. who she had formed a crush on and who are Vortex and that hellhound that I’m still gonna call Eclipse.

who she is attracted to, and so far, there hasn’t been any female characters in the canon that Loona has shown signs of forming a crush on.

and the scene with Loona and Octavia, might make a lot more sense now.

Loona might of been thinking about the events that happen during the party at the gluttony ring and how her Dad was a bit of a mess and needed to be taken home, and the whole him needing to throw-up...

also, it might be possible that maybe the sneak peaks that showed the news paper that talks about Ozzie being a hypocrite, could be a form of karma for those two adorkable goobers Ozzie and Fizz, and it be interesting if Bee had a hand in it, and seeing as the karma those two need.

I think I want to view the two Egg-Himbos, Doctor Eggman from Sonic Boom and Doctor Deep from Sonic Prime, as adorkable goobers as well. XD

they might be geniuses, but I can’t help but view them as being Egg-Himbos.

I hope that Bee shows up in another future episode, it be cute in fanon, if she and Loona are hanging out, Loona accidentally calls her “sis”, yeah might not happen in the canon, but that idea happening in fanon would be interesting.

just a few more days until July, and then the long waited FNAF Ruin DLC.

my plan is that, even when I do download it, I wont play it right away, but can start out as just watching a walkthrough of others playing it first, then once I do that, I can try to play it myself.

at least that download is free, I was so excited about it, that I had forgot that June comes first before July. XD

I don’t know which day on July that the game’s DLC is suppose to be finally open to everyone to download freely, and we can’t just assume it be on the first of July, I don’t know when it is suppose to be on July.

and yeah, with the bull slag that has to do with some toxic-humans, we need a bit of some good stuff to make us a bit more happy and take our minds off of those jerks...I don’t want to hear every freaking time of their bull slag complaining about Nightshade from EarthSpark, being Nonbinary...and they need to learn that they are doing what they are claiming the show is doing....

plus if I’m not the only one who has realize this, then it might be possible other fans of Transformers and who actually like EarthSpark, will figure this out as well.

just have to try do stuff that makes me happy and get my mind off of those dirty shisno jerks...like playing video games, or watching a movie or show I like, or even reading, and listening to some music.

and like I had brought up in the last post before this one, if changing the rating of EarthSpark to TV-14 stops them from their bad mouthing Nightshade, then hopefully it can help and it does stop them from that stuff...cause getting tired of it....maybe taking my mind off of it, might be a good idea.

I can check out some stuff on here, and then go and do some reading, and maybe I can watch a movie later.

anyway, Bee seems like a really awesome and interesting character, even if she does have a bit of a temper, but she has a good heart.

and yeah in theory, it might still be the Embodiment Queens that have more sense than the Embodiment Kings...

maybe in the next post, I can talk about FNAF, maybe a bit of Mimictrap.

also even if my pendulum isn’t pulling a prank and is being truthful about Phenex, doesn’t mean we would be 100% alike....

like even if some info about them, says that he hopes to return to heaven someday, but for me, with how I feel, my thoughts are even if I do end up going to heaven, I have thoughts of wanting to find the edge of it and try to jump off of it.....but it might be possible I might end up freezing up like a deer caught in the headlights....I have frozen up before when I was up in a really high place, and that was because of certain reasons...

and I don’t want to be told to fully trust all male angels, I can still trust some of them, but I’m not going to fully trust all of them, and that includes the fallen ones.

and it is lucky the toxic-feminine energy isn’t as high as the toxic-masculine energy.

also I don’t want to be called a “blue blood” and rather be called a “purple blood” cause some of my ancestors had sense to marry outside of the family...

also I’m just guessing by a theory, that the Ars Goetia in Helluva Boss, might turn out to be like all family, like it turning out that Stella and her brother Andrea, are distant cousins of Stolas, not 100% sure if that will turn out to be canon, but I’m going to view it being possible and could be used in the fanon.

also not all fan theories have to be correct and it’s okay that some theories end up being debunked.

if it turns out that Arackniss is that crush of Sir Pentious, it could be one of the reasons for some fans of that ship, to yell out in joy that “the ship is canon!”

well semi-canon, if it is just Pentious who has those feelings, and Arackniss hasn’t showed the signs yet....but those two are gonna be most fans, own OTP.

also if Arackniss and Pentious were allowed to go to the gluttony ring to go to one of Queen Bee’s parties....that could be interesting.

though they can’t, because of that rule that sinners aren’t allowed to go to the other rings and must stay in the pride ring.

Charlie’s Dad is the one that is causing that overpopulation, and some of the sinners need to be moved to the other rings, to make it less overpopulated.

the idea of Charlie wanting to help some of the sinners get redeemed is still a awesome idea, but it might be possible she might learn that there is some that can’t truly change and are far worse than Vox, Valentino and Alastor.

and yeah, there are some toxic-humans in the world, that are far worse than those three were in their life as humans.

those three are possibly “angels” in comparison to some humans in real life.

I think it could be possible that some Toxic-Nuns and Toxic-Priests/Pastors/Preachers who crossed lines they shouldn’t of, will not be going to Heaven.

even if some toxic-nuns and toxic-priests, pastors and preachers do end up showing up in a future episode of Hazbin Hotel, they are possibly are gonna be a lost cause and can’t be helped or even redeemed, if they hadn’t done some pretty messed up stuff, then yeah they could be redeemed, but they can’t be redeem and should wait for the exterminators...

don’t know what month Hazbin Hotel’s episode 1 is suppose to be, can still watch the pilot as well as the pilot for Helluva Boss and the other episodes of Helluva Boss until then.

it be interesting if there was a crossover episode between the two shows, but it only showing in either the Helluva Boss or Hazbin Hotel, and it could end up showing that Bee is supportive of Charlie’s plans, not sure if she would be in the canon, but in a fanon, maybe she could be.

it be interesting if there was a canon crossover between Transformers and Steven Universe, but it’s okay if there is only fanon crossovers for right now.

also I still plan to draw Mammon from Helluva Boss in that whole “this dork for rent” shirt again, once his canon appearance in Helluva Boss fully shows.

and once again, I know my whole calling dibs on Mammon’s butt is weird, which it is because his little greed energy has crossed lines, and if anyone should kick his bubble butt, and if he gets me mad enough, it’s gonna be this Earth Angel.....even if I am Defective and don’t work 100% like other Earth Angels.

even if it is just wishful thinking, and the whole wishing I could punch him in the groin, and him being possibly the first guy I ever thought about doing that to, because of the whole coca-cola thing that went down before, but the price for them seems to be back to normal now.

anyway it was awesome that episode 8 of season 1 of Helluva Boss, had finally was able to shown, and didn’t just end up as a flashback that would be shown in season 2, and it was a great episode and even the song was awesome.

I do hope that Bee appears again in a future episode, and I’m still going to guess that it is only the Embodiment Queens that have more sense than most of the Embodiment Kings, not sure if it will be proven to be true, but it depends on how the others act and how they behave.

it be a dream come true if Charlie’s Dad was voiced by Weird Al, even if I had found out we are distant cousins and it’s fine he doesn’t know about it, and some people need to know I don’t have the power to contact him or any other famous person that I find out I’m family to....that is rude to assume that.

but anyway, one of the things I love the thought of, is of Charlie’s Dad being voiced by Weird Al, and maybe in a fanon comic, fans of Weird Al in Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss, want Lucifer to sing the song “polka face” and will even chant it, much to the confusion of other sinners, hellborns and even Lucifer himself. XD

if he can voice Cheese Sandwich from MLPFIM and Wreck-Gar from TFA, then one can view him being the voice of Charlie’s Dad, even if it will just be fanon and might not happen in the canon.

and I guess I am a bit weird in thinking it be awesome if Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel ended up being voiced by Weird Al.

but I know that might not happen, so can just view Lucifer’s voice being like Weird Al in the fanon.

anyway besides the off topic stuff, I still love how the episode 8 of season 1 had went, and how Bee was in it, I don’t think she is a bad person and she really does seem like she has a good heart, and it be interesting if she had a hand in Ozzie and Fizz getting their karma for what they did to Blitz.

as well as how they treated Moxxie when trying to sing his song for Millie.

don’t know which episode that whole news paper that is suppose to say that Ozzie is being a hypocrite is suppose to show up in...

but when it does show up, it could still be viewed as Ozzie and Fizz getting their karma, and even if it might turn out that Bee didn’t have a hand in it, it is still a interesting thought if she had a hand in giving those two some much needed karma. I don’t think I have much to say about Bee from that episode that she shows up in, but maybe I can some other time....

anyway I’m going to check out some stuff on here, then I will sign off in a little....and maybe in my next post, I can talk about a FNAF theory, or maybe a Transformers theory, yeah, I think I will start with the Transformers theory first and talk about FNAF theory another time....

and maybe when I can, I can draw a fan art of Bee from Helluva Boss.

#beelzebub helluva boss #queen bee #awesome #best character #girls rule #asmodeus helluva boss #mammon #groin punch #vortex helluva boss #loona helluva boss #my thoughts #talking about feelings #june 2023 #do not reblog without permission

0 notes

cannibalmetaphor · 3 years ago

Text

Will’s character development through the motif of his clothing.

I’m not sure if this has already been talked about, but I’m going to talk about it. nbc hannibal is genius in how it uses will’s clothes to visually show the different stages of his transformation. his appearance reveals a lot about his mental state.

during the first season, we see him wear a lot of professional outfits for his work. I see these outfits as a sort of “person suit” he adopts to fit into the world, a way of blending into the crowd. the colors are always dark shades. this is the will we see in public. if you notice, his hair is also quite tame, especially during the first few episodes

something else I noticed was the amount of layers. now of course it’s cold and will is dressing for that sort of weather, but at home he wears hardly anything, so we can say that the layers are a form of protection against the outside world (like how his glasses help him avoid eye contact).

as I alluded to before, at home will’s attire is completely different. he wears the bare minimum. on the occasion he’s caught like this at home, we don’t see him cover himself up either. it’s like as soon as he’s alone and home, he feels free to strip himself of his persona. the scenes where he is at home usually show his mental state crumbling (eg nightmares etc).

as the season progresses and will becomes more physically and mentally ill, his physical appearance also shifts. his hair becomes long and unkempt. he is more frequently seen at home.

he reaches his worst point when he throws up abigails ear. when hannibal finds him, will is shivering because he’s cold, and hannibal puts a blanket over him, restoring the protective layers that will often adopts in an attempt to comfort himself.

in prison, will wears a jumpsuit that is bright orange. it’s startling because we’ve never seen him wear such vibrant colours - it draws attention to him, and his position as a prisoner. it represents his guilt. everyone thinks he is the copycat killer. even will does

when he arrives at hannibal’s office, he’s wearing it. at this point he still doesn’t want to suspect hannibal, and wears the guilt. but as the realisation begins to dawn, he changes into normal clothes, because he is shedding his role as the prisoner.

when returned to prison, he still wears a jumpsuit, but it’s a darker shade. he no longer feels like the centre of attention - he has purpose, and he knows he didn’t kill abigail. when at court, his outfit is an exaggeration of his person suit, as he tries to make everyone remember who he really is. I believe he’s 100% playing a part here. when trying to prove his innocence, he becomes very manipulative.

so to summarise. season 1 will uses his clothes as a means of protecting himself and playing the part of the functional professional helping the FBI. alone, however, his lack of clothing represents his vulnerability that he dislikes displaying to others. clothes will take on a completely different meaning to him in season 2.

the first time will confronts hannibal after prison, he’s wearing his usual clothes. he’s unsure how he wants to proceed with the situation, but after the interaction with hannibal he realises something: he can’t continue to play his usual role. to catch hannibal he has to adopt a new one.

when he comes to see hannibal for the second time after prison, however, his attire is completely different. he’s bought expensive, tight fitting clothes. he’s had a haircut. he is pretending to be the person hannibal wants him to be - he makes himself more refined and thus more appealing to (and similar to) hannibal. his body language reflects this new persona too

I think that for will, playing this part is refreshing, because he now has power. he has found a way to take back his dignity through his outward appearance. this part of will’s character development is obvious on purpose - we are meant to look at him and think wow, is this the same guy we saw a few minutes ago? I’m sure hannibal went through a similar moment of surprise.

the layers are gone now. mostly. but in the scene where will tells jack he’s a good fisherman, he’s completely covered from head to toe. to me this feels like he is trying to be the person jack thinks he is. guilt for enjoying being that person he is with hannibal makes him return to the safety of his layers.

something else that’s important we always see him dressed from now on (apart from when he has sex with margot). season 2 will is very much in control. he has learned he can only rely on himself, and so his vulnerability is not even displayed to the audience. we only get glimpses now of what he might be thinking. we are only exposed to the outward, not the inward.

I’ve seen people refer to will’s scheme as a seduction, which I definitely agree with. there’s no way that changing his appearance to appeal to hannibal isn’t an erotic decision. he thinks it will please hannibal for him to look a certain way. that isn’t platonic.

anyway, I also noticed that the way will wears clothes doesn’t really change. he’s wearing tight fitted shirts, but he keeps them unbuttoned, like he used to with his other clothes. this is his true self coming through. while he looks noticeably different, much of his style stays the same - the roles he plays are very much a part of him.

so far will has used clothing to manipulate hannibal. but then mizumono happens

will goes to hannibals place dressed in layers: he’s ready to go back to who he was before. but he finds alana bleeding outside. he takes off a layer, and covers her with his coat. when he enters the house, he is soaking wet. his shirt sticks to him. he’s vulnerable once again.

both hannibal and will are in a state of disarray in this scene. it’s alarming to see, because both of them have kept up appearances for so long. but this scene is one of the first where they are completely vulnerable with each other. they no longer have the comfort of their respective person suits.

and that’s where we end. this is where will’s pretence comes to a shocking conclusion. the only question is… what will he wear now?

are you ready to hear something heartbreaking?

when we first see will after mizumono, he is shirtless.

this is the peak of his vulnerability. his heart is broken. he has nothing: no abigail, no hannibal. he feels completely exposed. and the scar is part of that.

when will meets chiyoh, he lifts his shirt to show her the scar. and we are now faced with the fact that will knows no matter what he wears, the scar will always be underneath.

interestingly, will wears more layers in the first half of season 3, even more than he did in season 1. he’s usually wearing a coat or at least a thick jacket.

he covers himself from head to toe, seeking comfort in this period of heartbreak and uncertainty. this is especially visible in the scene where jack asks will to come back into the field after 3 years of peace. his clothes are a shield from the allure of seeing hannibal again.

also, will dresses this way in season 1 and 2 when he feels particularly vulnerable (for example, the scene where he tells jack hannibal was his friend and he wanted to run away with him). while yes, it’s cold, I still think there’s more to the style choices than just that.

when will returns to hunt francis, his style becomes distinctly hannibal-esque as he reassumes hannibal’s mindset. in therapy sessions with bedelia, he wears a shirt and suit jacket - shedding layers. and in conversations with hannibal, especially in the final scene of twotl, will wears only an unbuttoned shirt - he’s exposed.

upon killing francis with hannibal, the shirt is torn and bloodied. it becomes unimportant. will is not wearing a person suit - it doesn’t matter how he looks, or what he wears.

for season 3 will, clothing is both protection and a tool. it’s also an expression of self identity. he has a distinct style - it lingers no matter how many layers he wears.

if anyone can think of any other examples of this motif, I’d love to hear them <3

#hannibal #nbc hannibal #will graham #hannigram #hannibal meta #mine #otp: love is a god #hehehehe love this #gia hall of fame

1K notes · View notes

buffysummerslay · 3 years ago

Text

I have watched Lucifer series finale yesterday and I am still reeling from feelings, feelings I need to work through to be able to move on.

Unfortunately, I am late to the party and I have started watching Lucifer (despite the show being on my radar for a few years already) when season 6 came out, and this turned avoiding spoilers about the ending as well as the show itself into an extremely hard task. I have, of course, seen some reactions to the ending and it was obvious that the viewers were divided between "the ending was amazing, they really did the story and the characters justice" and "what the fuck was that". I always take these reactions, especially when they come instantly after the episode has ended, with a grain of salt because, realistically, I haven't been fully satisfied with the way a tv show has ended - any tv show - since, like, 2010. However, I also know that there is a difference between "okay, the ending was anticlimactic/disappointing/etc, however, it is the journey that matters and I am still pretty happy with the show" and HIMYM type of ending where you are like "I want this show wiped from my memory because the final hour has ruined the entire experience for me". So, I took some time to reflect on the events that took place, gather my thoughts, and make my peace with the ending. After doing that, I can comfortably say that I am not fully satisfied with the ending because of one very simple reason - I can make sense of the choices taken by the character at the very end of the show only if I use "Lucifer gave Rory his word" rationale, and not because I believe in the theory they provided or the choices they make. So here are some of my thoughts about the ending of this beloved show, including both the things I liked and disliked. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead so if you haven't seen the show, the final season or the series finale, please stop reading because you don't want to manifest spoilery energy into your life!

The main thing I have a problem with is the time loop. I will begin by saying that I really dislike time travel in general - I think that it is an overly used plot divice that more than often creates holes in the story instead of driving the narrative where it needs to go, unless the concept of time travel is integral to the show, like for example in Timeless and Fringe. However, in this case, I dislike that the major characters have made a major decision (a serious, impactful, life-altering decision) based on a flimsy theory. And since they have told us exactly what will happen in the end, we simply didn't know why and how, I have expected a more bulletproof reasoning instead of a rushed conversation wrapped up in five minutes and sealed by a promise. Lucifer leaves Chloe and Rory and goes back to hell, Rory grows up resenting him and she becomes so angry she travels through time to confront him only to end up being the reason for his departure, therefore creating an unbreakable time loop. She makes her parents give her their word that they won't change a thing in order to make sure that Lucifer discovers his true calling, which is helping souls in Hell break their hell loops and ascend to Heaven. And the reason I am so hesitant to accept this is because of two reasons:

1. Lucifer has made amazing progress through the show when it comes to his character development, finding his worth and making peace with his identity, and yet you are trying to tell me that this is the only way he would discover his true calling, especially now when he has a higher level of understanding himself than ever before? And especially since these thoughts and doubts have already been in his mind aka him postponing to become God long before Rory's arrival into their timeline!

2. The consequences of our actions are the results of the choices we make, not the other way around. And sometimes, different choices can lead to different outcomes and sometimes the array of choices we make lead to the same outcome. It is absolutely possible that if they broke the time loop and made different choices, that their actions would lead them to the same outcome aka Lucifer finding his calling while remaining in their lives. I think that it is fully possible for them to make a timeline B (the timeline that would have been created if they broke the time loop) based on the discoveries from the timeline A (their current timeline). There's no reason for me to believe otherwise.

Apart from the discovery of Lucifer's calling, the only thing that came out of the time loop was pain, suffering and probably a lot of loneliness. Even the good things that came out of the time loop (like Lucifer and Rory bonding) are a consequence of the pain that it caused. Of course, if they broke a time loop and created a completely new timeline, choices they would make there could theoretically end up having worse consequences on their lives. They could also be better, or they could be completely the same. The thing is, we don't know, we can only speculate and that is exactly what bothers me. The main characters made a major decision based on a speculation. I don't necessarily have a problem with the things that have happened, but rather with how they happened and how they were explained. Or better to say, how they weren't. I think that they should have completely dedicated the season to exploring this and reassuring us that this is the right choice to make and the right way to go.

Also, the concept of free will and making one's own choices has been pretty integral to the show. We have watched Lucifer struggle with the concept since the beginning of the show because he was convinced he is only a puppet in his father's grand plans. There were many events in the show reinforcing that belief, like Chloe being the gift from God. It took him seasons to accept that he chose to stay in her life, to be close to her, to be her partner in work as well as in life and in that acceptance he finally found the strength to tell her that he loves her. He chose her and she chose him. And while one can argue that leaving them and going back to hell was Lucifer's choice (since, technically, he could have chosen to break his word to his daughter and change things), it is one he didn't want to make. In the final episode he says that he desires to watch his daughter grow up and before he leaves for Hell he tells Chloe he doesn't want to leave her (she even responds that she doesn't want him to leave either, but that this is the choice that they are making for Rory's sake), making me feel like he is making this choice out of duty, out of fear and not because he wants to. He finally accepted that the choices he makes are his and his only, and the final choice in the show was made for him instead by him - I really don't think that the character deserved this. Lucifer gave Rory his word and we know he always goes by his word - they have turned one of the most essential qualities of his character into a plot device and an instrument that caused pain. Additionally, since Rory asked him not to change anything, it was implied that Lucifer can't come back to Earth in order not to risk changing anything even though it is completely possible for him to balance his work hours in Hell and his family time on Earth, like Amenadiel did. I also found this completely unfair and it felt like Lucifer was "banished" to Hell, not only missing out on being with Chloe and watching Rory grow up, but also staying away from his friends and the life he had built for himself. However, on the brighter side, Lucifer doing this - something he doesn't completely understand, something he doesn't want to do - is incredibly selfless of him and only shows how much he has grown. A character who has been described as selfish and self-serving from the very beginning does something so ultimately selfless, something that doesn't serve him in any way - quite the opposite, it pains him. As I said, I don't necessarily mind how things played out, I mind the lack of guarantee that they had to be this way. The only thing we don't know is if Lucifer and Chloe were in contact over the years since Chloe could have kept in touch with him behind Rory's back - maybe she sent him pictures of Rory, and maybe they exchanged letters. I am very doubtful because this would probably make the whole situation harder on them nor do I think that they would risk it because they wouldn't be able to know if their actions are breaking the time loop or if they are a part of the original timeline but hey, this is the stuff that fan fictions are made of!

And finally, I very much disliked the parallel between Lucifer and God - Lucifer abandoning his child for the sake of doing his job and that child growing up resenting him - if it was their intention to draw such a parallel. I think that God somewhat "redeemed" himself in Lucifer's eyes and that through accepting himself Lucifer also learned how to stop resenting his father for the things that transpired between them, and I don't necessarily believe that Lucifer had to walk in his father's shoes to understand him. So, in my opinion, this was completely unnecessary. Something I did like was Lucifer's calling - I think that it shows nicely the full circle he has made and that the souls he thought he is supposed to torture he is now helping heal. In a way, Hell is also the reflection of who Lucifer is - when he saw himself as broken, as evil, as unworthy and undeserving, Hell was also a place of torture - it was a reflection of him. And now that he accepted himself and that others have accepted him for who he is as well, it is a place of healing. In the end, Hell is his kingdom and he can choose to rule it the way he wants to. He broke his own hell loop and he truly became a lightbringer.

And, of course, Lucifer and Chloe (they are so soft and I am so soft for them). Taking into consideration my very bad OTP track reckord, I kinda expected a much, much worse ending for them - I mean, the Devil falling in love with a human, what could possibly go wrong, right? I knew from the very beginning that they aren't getting a pure, wholeseome, family-like ending. In order for that to happen, she would either have to become immortal (leaving Trixie, losing her detective identity), or he would have to become mortal - both of these scenarios feel cheap and I never would have wanted this for them or the show. Another option was to give them their happy life on Earth but then they would either have to leave a somewhat open ending or deal with the fact that ultimately, as a mortal, Chloe will die. And if they were given their happy ending on Earth, who knows if they would end up together in afterlife. Even if they did, it definitely wouldn't feel as emotional and as gratifying as it does now. The thing is, it is easy to give in to the pain of their separation when we measure it by the pivotal moments of happiness and loss that drive the lives of humans - him not being there when Rory was born or when she grew wings or when she started school - and it is even harder when you know how much she needed him and how much he wanted to be there for her. It is even more painful when you think about Chloe spending her entire lifetime without him, carrying all that pain inside of her, and him spending what had to be centuries alone in Hell. However, this is a fantasy show and many of our characters are immortal, celestial beings who have a different understanding of time, so maybe the idea of what a happy ending is and the rules for measuring happiness aren't the same as they would have been under other circumstances. Chloe became lieutenant and tried to make a difference, and she got to raise her daughters and see them grow up, and Lucifer helped so many souls heal, doing so much good. And now they get to spend the eternity together, solving crimes and kicking ass in the afterlife! Many of their friends and family are immortal, celestial beings too and (I am pretty sure) they can pay a visit to their human friends in Heaven... or see them in Hell, but let's hope not! In the end, what is one lifetime compared to eternity? Of course, none of this makes for the time they have lost, the momories they didn't get to make and the moments he wasn't there for, but now there are so many new memories they will get to make and so many moments to catch up on. It is bittersweet, but I think that's how it was supposed to be - in the end, pain is part of life.

I also have a few (dis)honourable mentions:

1. I am really sad and disappointed Lucifer didn't get to say goodbye to Trixie. She was gone for the majority of the season, but she was also a very important person in his life and he loved her. And we know how much she loved him.

2. I can't get over Rory travelling through time to kill her father because she is angry at him... sis, you kill him before he makes you, you wipe yourself out of existence.

3. I can't believe that they were surprised that Chloe got pregnant after having loads of superhuman sex (without any protection, apparently) after another human already got pregnant with an angel not that long ago.

4. Lucifer saying goodbye to Maze will forever remain one of the most beautiful scenes in the show.

5. The final major scene between Chloe and Lucifer, where they say goodbye before he leaves for hell, lives in my head rent free. I was choking on tears watching that scene, I literally had to pause and rewind three times. Such a beautiful(ly painful) scene. Also, when you have a ship and a person A says to the person B "close your eyes", pain is coming. I swear I travelled back to 1999 when Buffy said the same thing to Angel before sending him to a hell dimension.

6. When Chloe dies and goes to Heaven and Amenadiel greets her and asks her if she's ready to go home and then takes her to Lucifer was so pure. Her Heaven is being in Hell with Lucifer and there's something deeply poetic about that.

7. Hearing hello detective for the last time cleared my skin.

I have really and truly enjoyed the show, and the minor inconsistencies I see in its ending can't change that. I loved the show because it told stories about people and it allowed them to drive the narrative, and I can't say many shows these days do that.

#lucifer #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #deckerstar #trixie espinoza #rory morningstar #aurora morningstar #amenadiel #ella lopez #linda martin #mazikeen smith #text #rant #writing #reaction #review #tv review #lucifans #lucifer finale

82 notes · View notes

indecisive-behaviors · 3 years ago

Text

Originally I was just going to add this as a reblog to my previous post about the parking lot scene in KK2 but it’s almost 2k words so now it’s getting it’s own post. Be forewarned- this is fucking long.

TW for discussion of PTSD, child abuse, neglect, injury, and death, in relation to topics surrounding the show, under the cut-

Obviously, Cobra Kai is a show based around the premise of “what happened to that Lawrence kid after he got kicked in the face?”, which is honestly a pretty cool idea for a show. Johnny’s story is never explained past sitting on the sidewalk with his head in his hands at the tournament, and there are no real context clue’s to figure out what may or may not have happened.

In the show we get to learn early on that Johnny’s life spiraled after the tournament, going from bad to worse to “holy shit how are you still alive”-dropping out/never going to college, working jobs he seems to hate, becoming an alcoholic, presumably many dead end relationships, and not being there for his kid. And yeah, obviously, this would be a hard pill to swallow for anyone watching the show if Johnny had just lost the tournament. If we never got the scene in KK2, he would have just been some kid who lost a tournament- we see at the end of the first movie that(through tears holy shit Billy) that Johnny is the one who gives the trophy to Daniel with his famous line, “You’re alright, LaRusso.” There’s a level of grudging respect in that moment that isn’t lost on anyone who sees that movie- that Johnny, who throughout the movie only sees Daniel as some whimpy kid, gets proven wrong and respects that. If we didn’t have that scene, there’s reason to believe Johnny would have apologized, tried to make amends, Something, even if it was just being less of a dick at school.

But then, we get the parking lot. We get a far off shot, intended to distance you from the scene, framed over Daniel’s shoulder. This makes sense, Daniel is the main character, the protagonist, the underdog hero- why wouldn’t it be framed in his perspective? But the scene is about Johnny. We get the shouting match, the back and forth- “No, you’re the loser man.”- and again it’s fairly obvious how Johnny sees this situation. This is a man who we assume(and is later confirmed) to be a surrogate father figure, who set his friend up for failure, and then basically forced him to do the same by targeting an injured opponent, and forcing him to fight without honor. This same man presumably follows a teenager out to the parking lot, to harass him, to tell him he’s off the team, to tell him he’s a loser, that he’s nothing.

But at that point, Johnny knows the truth, even if subconsciously. At the end of the day Johnny knows that Daniel LaRusso was a worthy opponent, and that regardless of the cheating and manipulation, Daniel could have won anyway, and did win, despite of it.

And then Kreese grabs him, too fast to react to, Johnny too surprised even knowing that Kreese is the bad guy here, not believing that he would ever willingly hurt him- and Johnny isn’t strong enough to fight him off, none of the boys are, so Johnny is forced to suffocate for almost a full 30 seconds(which I double checked for the record- also as a reference, 30 seconds is about the average time it takes for a person voluntarily holding their breath to pass out- this does not account for the oxygen lost during a struggle, and the lack of preparation from both surprise and panic. The only silver lining here is the fact that Kreese was most likely compressing his windpipe, not his jugular, which would have made him pass out in about 5-10 seconds, and would have caused permanent brain damage or death in about 15).

Now, PTSD is a complex thing. I’m not a psychiatrist, and what small amount of information we have is all we have to work off of, but I feel fairly comfortable in saying Johnny mostly likely developed it after the incident. This not an uncommon take in the fandom as far as I’m aware either. But, if we assume this, we also have to assume that after the fact nothing would have been done about this. Not just in the sense that we still don’t really know everything that happened right after the tournament, but that in the early 80s, PTSD wasn’t really a thing yet.

Sure it was absolutely a condition that existed, but Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t even added to the DSM-III until 1980- and for a long time afterward, was only seen as a condition that affected primarily war vets. Even after an event as traumatic as having a man you considered a father trying to kill you, in public, without remorse, would not have been seen as something to warrant the diagnoses, let alone treatment.

Johnny Lawrence was 17 when Kreese tried to kill him, and this boy would have been offered no resources beyond filing charges with the police. And as we see in KK3, either this didn’t happen either, or someone(presumably Silver) got the charges dropped. So on top of almost being murdered, Johnny had to live with the fact that the man who did that to him was still out there, and to top it off, still ran a dojo at least for a few months after the event. The only relief he could have gotten is after Kreese faked his death.

And sure, Mr Miyagi may have gotten Kreese to let go eventually, but as several people have pointed out in comments and tags, left him and the other boys alone with Kreese still standing there in the parking lot and just... drove off. Kreese has already been established to be a psycho with no problem hurting children, a little bit of glass might not have prevented him from trying again.

So why did I talk about all of that? Because it all contributes to why Daniel LaRusso works as a credible antagonist in season 1 of Cobra Kai.

Think about this- Johnny blames losing everything on Daniel in season 1, but we specifically get a shot in KK1 and later KK2(”You’re alright, LaRusso” and “I did my best” come to mind) where he seems to be at least mostly accepting of the fact that he lost(with what was actually an illegal kick but that’s a rant for another time). So why does he blame him for everything 30 years later?

Because 30 years later, Johnny is forced to go outside, go to work, and pretend like he doesn’t see what feels like every street corner(including right outside his apartment mind you), a literal billboard sized reminder of what happened to him.

The rest of this is mostly speculation but it makes sense in my head so bear with me.

When we get introduced to Robby, it’s made pretty clear that Johnny has not been in his life for a bit. In season 2 we get Johnny’s heart to heart with Miguel, where he divulges that he missed the birth, because he spiraled after his mom’s death. This however doesn’t suggest that he stayed gone, especially knowing that it wasn’t long enough for Robby to not consider seeking out his dad. Because tacked up to the fridge, is a picture of Robby in his soccer uniform as a kid. It’s an early detail you can see in previous episodes, and says a lot about how Robby grew up. To be fair, this could have been given to him by Shannon, and not taken himself, but it’s the sport Robby’s playing that makes me question this. KK1 dedicates an entire scene to Johnny being on the soccer team in high school. Soccer, while maybe not as important to him as karate, is still part of his character. Robby does not know karate in season 1, Johnny obviously didn’t share it with him, but that doesn’t mean Johnny didn’t share anything with him.

So Johnny’s back in his kids life, maybe doing better for himself, maybe cutting back on the drinking. LaRusso Auto is already established to exist at this point but it’s in Encino, a place Johnny has no reason to go to, and probably doesn’t want to. He’s trying again and things are okay. But Robby knows enough about Daniel to know that going to him will piss off his dad. So Johnny had to have talked about him at some point. The billboards here are what’s important- they’re in the first episode, the first scene montage, Johnny draws a dick on one of them as some petty revenge.

The first billboard goes up in the late 2000s to mid 2010s. Johnny sees it, maybe he has Robby with him at the time, maybe he goes home and says something there, but he says something in a way that sticks with even a child as being important. More billboards go up. Dealerships starting popping up more and more. Daniel’s face, and by extension, the memories, the flashbacks, become inescapable. Johnny, for a third time, spirals again. Before he even knows what’s happening, he’s lost his relationship with his son. And it’s all Daniel’s fault. Of course Daniel doesn’t do it deliberately, but the constant reminders are enough to send him back into a tailspin and Johnny blames him for it.

Because it’s Daniel who is a constant reminder of his failures- it’s Daniel who caused him to lose the tournament and almost get killed, Daniel who put up the billboards that trigger his flashbacks, it’s always Daniel Daniel Daniel.

And then Johnny gets it in his head that he wants to be better. He opens a dojo, teaches Miguel and the other kids, wants to try again- and he almost succeeds.

Johnny up to this point has not deliberately antagonized Daniel in any way. Sure he named the dojo Cobra Kai, but Cobra Kai is all he knows. Besides Johnny doesn’t blame karate for his failures, his best memories are Cobra Kai and he’s trying to be better than Kreese. So what’s the harm in this really? His building is in Reseda, there’s no reason for Daniel to ever be there, he doesn’t do it out of spite, it’s because he lives there and rent is cheap. He doesn’t know about KK3, doesn’t know about Daniel’s own trauma. This isn’t an attack. Johnny sincerely just doesn’t know.

Enter Daniel, stage left. Daniel makes no attempt to talk to him- he simply makes demands and accusations, before he starts making active attempts to put him out of business.

Sure, we as the audience know Daniel has good reasons to not want Cobra Kai back. But Johnny doesn’t. All Johnny knows is that the kid he picked on in high school- who won, who got everything Johnny wanted, who grew up to be successful, has a wonderful wife, two kids who love him, a thriving business- is doing everything he can to make his life hell 30 years after the fact.

And this could only have happened because in 1986 John G. Avildsen decided to add in a scene meant for the original movie into the sequel, for absolutely no fucking reason.

#meta analysis #ranting about cobra kai cuz I can #johnny lawrence #daniel larusso #cobra kai #karate kid #I will never get over the fact that that was an actual scene that they filmed #and then got no resolution #FOR 30 YEARS #I apologize to everyone for this post #obviously I have a lot of feelings about this

78 notes · View notes

flamminghotweedos · 5 years ago

Note

could you please do prompts 74 & 75 with JJ from outer banks?! I LOVED your last one, you're such a talented writer ugh

A/N: thANK YOU that made me go WHEE :) I hope you liked this one!

Also! I thin I’m gonna start doing outer banks preferences so let me know if/what you’d like to see!

Word Count: 1599

Requested: yes. #74 “are you listening to me?” And #75 “no I was too busy watching you undress in my head,” (two of my faves)

Pairing: JJ x reader

Warnings: the usual swearing, and some flirty JJ x reader goin on

~Wipe Out~

(Set in Season 1 Episode 3) (btw I listened to Evan Finds The Third Room by Khruangbin from this episode ON LOOP and holy shit it adds so much I recommend it)

“I’m so proud of you right now, holy crap,” JJ said to the soaking wet Pope who got back on the boat. Pope has just taken the plug from Topper’s expensive boat, and his face fell serious.

“JJ?” He started,

“Yeah?”

“You can’t tell anybody,”

“Oh yeah no. Totally dude,”

“No. I’m serious, dude. Not Kie, not John B, especially not Y/N. Nobody,” JJ put his hands in up in defense, knowing you, his girlfriend, would kill both of them if you found out.

“Yup. My lips are sealed. Give me that,” JJ took the plug from Pope’s band and threw it over board.

Miles over on the beach, you sat in the sand with your surf board, rubbing on it trying to get some of the build up off of it. You looked up and at the sun setting over the water, John B. and Kiara conversing as they floated on their boards. You smiled and heard JJ’s familiar voice from behind you.

“Board works better if you get in the water, babe,” You stood up and turned around, giving both Pope and JJ that look you had. The, you guys spent way to long to have been working, plus word got out of some Pogues on the golf course today...you two did something, kind of look. It worked every time. JJ was the hardest, blondie had the thickest skull. But Pope? Man, Pope was blurting the truth out to you in seconds. Even spoiled three of your surprise parties the other Pogues had tried to throw you.

“Don’t submit, dude,” JJ grabbed Pope’s arm with his free hand.

“I took the plug out of Topper’s boat today-“

“What?!” You yelled, making the two boys shush you and take a step forward.

“Him and Rafe teamed up on him today when he was out delivering,” JJ argued for Pope and he nodded, moving his hat slightly to show you the scar.

“Oh my god, Pope why didn’t you tell me?” You grabbed the side of his neck and examined the gash. “Did you clean it? Are you hurt anywhere else? Did-“

“Y/N, chill. I’m alright,” Pope smiled and adjusted the board in his hand and ran towards the water.

“Hey! Save some waves for us!” JJ yelled and Kiara responded, but your hand on JJ’s bare chest stopped him.

“JJ,” you have him a warning look. The sudden authority you had in your voice sent a unexpected chill down his spine. “You realize how much Pope could lose if he get caught?”

“He’s not gonna get caught, baby,”

“JJ, you don’t know that,” and unexpected rant started from you, but JJ couldn’t pay attention. You just looked so fucking good in the sunlight right now. The way your hair feel naturally from the sea water, the way your bathing suit complemented every curve of your body. Not to mention, JJ’s eyes couldn’t help but wonder from yours, to your lips, to your breasts and down. An endless loop of him remembering what’s underneath the bathing suit. If he had the skill, he could probably draw every inch of you from memory with how many times he’s stared at you.

“Not to offend you JJ, but I don’t think you’d be the college type. You’ve told me yourself. Pope? Pope has a scholarship he’s gotta chase after. Baby, you gotta promise me you’ll watch after him if anything does happen. And if anything happens to him tell me. My dad’s got enough Kook cash that we could bail him or you out, okay?” You noticed the way his lip was stuck between his teeth. He only ever did that if he was focusing really hard on something. “JJ? Are you listening to me?” You asked and stepped forward, now only a few inches from you boyfriend.

“Huh?” His eyes finally met yours again, “no. No I was too busy watching you undress in my head,” you were taken back by his honesty. You blinked and few times and shook your head, leaning in for a kiss, your free hand cupping his cheek, patting it when he tried to deepen the kiss.

“Maybe later,” you pulled back and winked. You turned and walked off towards the water, feeling two familiar eyes stay on you. You weren’t worried about if JJ listened to that rant specifically. You knew he’d do the right thing in that situation.

“Hang on! Maybe?!” He called back and ran after you. You quickly straddled your board and started to paddle towards your other friends.

“If you wipe out less than five times, I guarantee you I’ll undress for you tonight,” you said once he caught up to you. He smirked and held his hand out, to close the deal. You took his hand and shook it, but as quickly pulled towards him, water splashing on both of you as he pressed him lips on yours. The salty sea water now on the taste on your tongue.

“Come on now! Remember the new rule!” John B. yelled as the other three paddled toward you two, pulling away from each other, you smiled to your friends. “If pogues are gonna Mack pogues, you either gotta not do it in front of the others or warn us,” you quickly took your hand, splashing water towards John B.

“Consider that your warning,” you all laughed, and Kie nodded and gestured for you all to start surfing.

And you kept count of JJ. The first wave he simply stood up and road out. Then the second wave, he did noting but stand up. You caught on to his tricks.

“Come on Jay! Not confident in your own skill?!” You yelled over as you road out a wave of your own, watching him smile and shake his head before paddling further out. The next wave, he did a few of his spins and turns. Next wave was bigger than he expected, catching him off guard and slipping into the water. The same on the next, yet he fell off when he tried to top the wave.

“That’s two, JJ!” You yelled and straddled your board. Kie floated over towards you, laughing.

“I’m afraid to ask,” you looked over at her, nothing the moon had started to come up.

“He wouldn’t pay attention when I was talking to him earlier,” you sighed as he skillfully spun and road the next wave out, sticking his tongue out at you as he passed. “So we made a bet, if he didn’t wipe out more than five times...I’d-“

“Got cha,” Kiara nodded with a giggle and watched Pope. surf through the tube.

“Ladies,” John B. said and floated over, you three catching some air. “What are we doin?” He asked as JJ raced Pope to a wave.

“Trying to get JJ to wipe out,” Kie said as you all kept their eyes on the two boys.

“Do I wanna know?”

“Just a bet we have,” you smirked and John B. nodded.

“How many times has he wiped out?” Just ask he asked, JJ got cocky, going for his normal rodeo turn at the peak, but his board got caught and flipped from underneath him.

“That’s five now, JJ! You sure you wanna try again?!” you yelled, teasing your boyfriend and he straddled his board and put his hands on his hips.

“JJ! Get some air on this one!” John B. yelled back. JJ looked at you, hopelessly tired, but his hard headedness made him turn his board and paddle out further. He started to effortlessly ride the wave out, it growing as it neared the shore. JJ gained some speed and looked for a water ramp. Once he found it, he maneuvered his board up the wave. The four of you, Pope floating towards you more, all yelled as JJ caught the air he was going for, but the cheers made him cocky. Turning his body to try and spin his board a little in air, he missed the flat of the wave, slipping from the board and flopping on the whitewater.

“Ooh,” you all winced, laughing slightly.

“I’ll go check on him, head to shore we’ll catch up,” you giggle as the other three started to paddle away, you laid on your stomach and paddle towards JJ. He was now laying on his back on his board, taking deep breaths.

“Don’t say a word,” he warned once you floated over. You grabbed on to his board in order to stay together in the moon lit water.

“That was actually pretty impressive,” he let out and laugh and he sat up on his board, smirking over to you.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah...but you lost so...I won’t be undressing for you tonight,” you shrugged, all ready with an idea in your head. JJ could tell, and played along.

“So you won...what’s your prize?” He asked as you two began to size up the next wave to ride to shore.

“You have to undress me tonight,” with that you shot a wink and paddled before standing up on your board and riding the wave to shore.

2K notes · View notes

emwritesfootball · 3 years ago

Text

I Want You | Dominic Calvert-Lewin

Word Count: 2,051

A/N: Yet another piece for @footballffbarbiex's On The Big Screen Challenge. Since I'm on the midseason finale of the episode of Grey's Anatomy that this is based off of, I figured I'd post this now. This is based off of Jackson and April, the scenes from the season 9 finale and season 10 episode 12, altered for the football world. I've had this sitting in my Docs since 1 January lmao. Enjoy xx

- - -

The gasp of the crowd of almost 40,000 at Goodison Park was simultaneous in the 38th minute when Dom was taken down by the opposition’s defense right as he was about to score. The tackle had been brutal and uncalled for, earning the centreback a straight red card from the referee while Dom stayed on the ground.

As if sensing catastrophe the medics and physio were on the pitch almost immediately. You held your breath, one hand clutching the fabric of the Everton jersey you wore while your other squeezed Lucas Digne’s hand. Your boyfriend tried to soothe you as best he could, but you were distraught. Dom was clearly in pain and clearly injured, and you couldn’t do a damn thing but watch him get carried off on a stretcher.

“I have to go to him,” you muttered, but Lucas stopped you.

“He’ll be fine, Chérie,” Lucas said, his voice low as his thumb rubbed circles over the back of your hand. “You know we’ve got the best medical team - they’re gonna take real good care of Dom, okay?”

“Mmhmm.” You nodded, biting down on your bottom lip to quell your unspoken fears.

Your mind was reeling as Richarlison took Dom’s place on the pitch, your stomach sick with nervousness for Dom. When you’d first started playing for the women’s team, Dominic had been your sidekick; he’d shown you around the stadium as well as the surrounding city. It hadn’t been long before you were falling for him, the two of you hooking up after an intense friendly between the men’s and women’s teams.

Over time, you’d started to fall for him, your friends-with-benefits relationship no longer enough for your heart. It had all gone wrong after a pregnancy scare - Dom telling you he was all in and saying he’d marry you and the two of you would raise the kid together. When you’d found out you weren’t pregnant and told him that he no longer had to worry about getting married, Dom had ended things then and there, both of you hurt for different reasons.

Soon after, he started “dating” (sleeping with) one of the physios. You hadn’t had any intention of getting involved with his teammate, but Lucas had come into your life as a friend while you’d been with Dom and things progressed after your break up. Now, you were engaged to Lucas, with a wedding coming up in less than six months - after an incredibly public proposal that you couldn’t say no to - but there was a part of your heart that still yearned for Dom.

The second Lucas let go of your hand, you were up out of your seat, flashing your pass as you raced through the tunnels at Goodison Park until you finally managed to locate Dom. The ambulance was silent while its lights flashed and you knew you didn’t have much time. Emergency personnel were loading him onto the ambulance and you were reacting within seconds.

“DOMINIC!” you shouted, panic racing through you. His name felt foreign on your tongue - you tried not to utter it if you could help it - but in that moment, it was all you had.

“Miss, you’re going to have to stand back,” one of the EMTs said, putting his hands on your shoulders.

The tears started to fall right then and you couldn’t stop them. “I...I need to see him. He’s my husband!” You stammered out the words in-between sobs, barely aware when the medic let you go and you rushed into the ambulance, the door slamming behind you as it lurched forward and started to race to the nearest hospital. You tried your best to stay out of the way while the medics worked, fighting back tears with every concerned look or sentence they shared with each other. Dom looked out of it and you hoped he’d been put on some painkillers, especially with the state of his arm. You hoped and prayed that his arm would be the worst of it, but you couldn’t be sure. You took his good hand in both of yours, pressing a kiss to the back of it as you whispered, “It’s okay, bubs. I’m here.”

***

People didn’t start arriving until almost two hours later, Dom’s girlfriend included. You didn’t know how many tears you’d cried in that timespan, your body physically exhausted from the day’s events. Lucas immediately found you in the waiting area, pulling you into a hug. “I was so worried about you, Chérie,” he mumbled, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

“S-Sorry,” you stuttered, feeling a new wave of tears coming on. “I just...I panicked and managed to convince them to let me ride in the ambulance with Dom and I…”

“It’s okay,” Lucas said, taking your face in his hands. “I’m glad Dom had you by his side.” Of course Lucas knew about your history with Dom but you’d always reassured him that he was the one you wanted and not Dom. Now, you weren’t so sure.

You snuck into Dom’s room right before visiting hours were set to end for the night. Lucas was waiting for you in the car park, warming up the car. A part of you felt guilty for what you were about to do, but after today you couldn’t stay silent.

Relief flooded you when you saw him sitting upright on the hospital bed, shirtless, his arm in a sling. The relief quickly faded, however, and all the other emotions you’d bottled up for the last six hours came bubbling up.

“What the hell, Dom?!” You screamed, rushing toward him. Tears were falling hard and fast as you shoved him, the nurse in the room who was checking his vitals came rushing over to stand between the two of you. “You could’ve died!” Sure, it was a little over-dramatic, but you had honestly thought you were going to lose him in the moment when he’d been down for over five minutes on the pitch.

The nurse calmed you down, not wanting to cause a scene. You didn’t either, but your emotions were so heightened it was almost like you were back in the ambulance scared out of your mind. “I’m fine, I swear,” you said, reassuring her when your breathing had slowed and you were starting to think properly.

“Okay,” she said, nodding and making her way towards the door. She turned to Dom, saying, “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

Dom gave her a grateful smile, turning his attention to you. “Don’t,” he said, his voice weary. “Whatever it is that’s buggin’ you, just keep it to yourself, alright?”

You froze, staring at him. Your mind was racing again and you were so consumed with flashbacks of him lying motionless on the pitch that you couldn't speak for a few moments. Dom stared back, lost. He vaguely remembered your presence in the back of the ambulance but up until this moment, he had been so sure that he’d just dreamed you up, the painkillers playing tricks on his mind.

You took a deep breath, needing all the air you could get in order to say what you wanted to say. “I want you...Dominic.” His name was barely a whisper on your lips, but Dom heard you as if you’d screamed it from the rooftops. You ran a hand through your hair, your voice breaking as you repeated the phrase. “I want you.” Your voice wavered on the last word and Dom wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

He said your name, disbelief colouring his tone, but you cut him off.

“I haven’t been fair to you, I know,” you began, stepping towards him until you were standing at the end of his hospital bed, “And I’ve-I’ve really hurt you-”

“You’re getting married,” Dominic said slowly, unsure if he was trying to convince you or himself of the reality the two of you were facing.

It was like you hadn’t heard him. “When I saw you lying there on the pitch after that collision and I thought you were gone, I-”

“You’re getting married.” He said it again, this time with more conviction.

You dried your tears, your resolve returning. When you spoke next, your words shocked both of you. “Unless you can give me a reason not to.”

Dom stared at you, unable to say anything. He internally weighed his options. A few months ago, getting married to you was all he could think about - now, he wasn’t so sure. The two of you had been through unbelievable hurdles in your relationship, but you were engaged to another man who also happened to be one of Dom’s teammates and Dom knew he couldn’t stand by and fuck up the team dynamic or your relationship with Lucas.

***

Ultimately, he’d said nothing that night and the two of you hadn’t spoken about it since. You continued planning your wedding to Lucas while maintaining a stilted version of a friendship with Dom, which was how Dom had ended up in the congregation at your wedding.

“Give them the strength to commit their love to one another. Unshakeable through any storm; unbreakable in the face of any stress; a promise we simply refuse to break.” The pastor spoke, but Dominic barely heard any of it, except when he said, “And you, YN and Lucas’s closest friends and family, are here today to bear witness to their union. Will you promise to love and support their marriage in all the days to come? If so, please respond ‘we will’.”

Everyone responded, a chorus of “We will,” filling the quaint chapel.

Dominic didn't know what to do. He was acutely aware of his physio girlfriend by his side, but even more so aware of the fact that if he didn’t do something right now, he would lose you to his teammate forever. In that moment, nothing else mattered but his love for you and the love that he knew that you had for him.

The pastor continued to speak, but Dom heard nothing. He leaned in to his girlfriend, unsure what to say. “I, uh-” he started, pausing.

“What?” She asked, looking at him with curiosity that quickly turned into understanding.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m happy to be here today to be able to do this for you. I-” The pastor paused mid-sentence as Dominic stood up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

You and Lucas were holding hands, your backs still to him. Finally, both of you turned to look at the commotion, shock written all over your face as your gaze connected with Dom’s. He flushed, giving the room a nervous smile before sitting back down.

The pastor chuckled nervously and for a brief moment, Dom wondered if he’d ever had anyone stop a wedding before. “YN and Lucas, I have known the two of you for quite some time and I’m happy to be here today-” he started again, and that’s when Dom knew he had to say something.

Dom took a deep breath, his mind made up.

“I love you,” he said, his voice deep and sure as he stood up for the second time. “I always have.”

You stared back at him, your eyes wide. If you were being honest, a part of you had dreamed about a moment like this - Dominic standing up and professing his love for you - but you hadn’t been prepared for it to actually happen.

Dom continued, “I love everything about you. Even the things I don’t like, I love.” You could feel Lucas fuming next to you. “And I want you with me.” Everyone was looking around in disbelief, but it was like nobody else existed but you and Dom in this moment. “I love you and I think that you love me, too.” He paused, his voice wavering. “Do you?”

You could feel Lucas’s eyes on you; your family’s, too, but there was only one person in the world you wanted right now and it wasn’t the man at the altar next to you.

“I do,” you said, your gaze fixed on Dom. “I do,” you repeated, stepping down off the altar and running towards the man who had been your whole world for longer than you cared to admit.

#my writing: dominic calvert lewin #dominic calvert lewin oneshot #dominic calvert lewin one shot #dominic calvert lewin imagine #dominic calvert lewin imagines #dominic calvert lewin x reader #dcl oneshot #dcl one shot #dcl imagine #dcl imagines #dcl x reader #amys2021challenge

39 notes · View notes

sailormoonandme · 4 years ago

Text

Why does Usagi think Mamoru might leave/cheat on her?

Occasionally during Sailor Moon R, S and SuperS Usagi seemed to have these moments of insecurity where she was concerned that Mamoru was either interested in other people or else other people might make a play for him.

The real life reason for this I suspect is simply because Sailor Moon has a lot of sitcom sensibilities alongside it’s romantic elements, so milking comedy from a romantic topic by having our lead act over the top or goofy is a logical writing tool to reach for. Especially when you have such a large quantity of episodes to produce.

However, I have a more in-universe explanation to propose.

In real life Usagi’s behaviour would most likely be connected to trust issues with her partner, with other people or else concerns about her own inadequacies. However, I don’t think that’s the case here.

Rather, I think it’s actually far more connected to the numerous times Usagi has loved and ‘lost’ Mamoru.

Back in the Silver Millennium days there was this low key implication that romantic mingling between the Moon Princess and Earth Prince was somehow forbidden. After all when Endymion came to the Moon and tried to warn Serenity about Metalia and Beryl the royal guards chased him away and he needed to disguise himself. So from Serenity’s POV the social system she was living in was limiting her ability to be with the man she loved and made their future together at best uncertain.

Now, I admit that’s perhaps a bit too big of an extrapolation to draw from, especially for the anime version of the characters where we got far less info about their past lives. However, the more significant part here is the fact that Endymion was taken from her when he was killed by the Dark Kingdom. Seeing her lover murdered in front of her whilst her home were also being destroyed (and her friends killed) would obviously be very traumatic, particularly if Serenity was mentally and physically the equivalent of a fourteen year old like Usagi.

In her next life she was crushing very hard on Tuxedo Mask who routinely showed up to aid her and then rarely lingered. That’s not exactly traumatic, but the early days of their relationship would’ve still been founded by Usagi seeing the person she wants to stick around and spend time with her leave her when she wouldn’t want him to.

She also feared Tuxedo Mask had died in episode 13 when Jadeite announced that he’d killed him. True, he was revealed as alive and well shortly afterwards, but the horror of that moment (however brief it may’ve been) could’ve stuck with Usagi.

Then, in the iconic 34th episode of the show, Mamoru was violently impaled right in front of her. We can debate if he died and was consequently revived by the Dark Kingdom or if he was merely close to death before his abduction. But either way that’d inevitably be an instance where Usagi once again traumatically lost the man she loved, or at least came extremely close to doing so if not for the emotion of the moment re-awaking her old memories.

Speaking of which, as episode 35-36 make clear, the mere act of abruptly regaining all her memories would be emotionally wrenching all on it’s own. When combined with the tragic and traumatic nature of those memories, it’s far from unbelievable that subconsciously this would further mark Usagi’s psyche.

The reveal that her lover is alive but no longer remembers her and is actively a threat to her now would obviously compound this. As would the fact that in episode 36 he uses a rose to hurt her. It’s not a serious wound at all, but he still hurt her and used an object that up until then he’d used explicitly to help and protect her. Within Usagi’s mind his roses would’ve likely been ‘coded’ with positive emotions, so seeing them used in that way would’ve been further upsetting for her, in essence a perversion of what they should mean to her mind. The roses now being black are an apt metaphor for this point.

Of course during the final stretch of episodes in season 1 Usagi almost restores Mamoru. But that’s the key here, she almost succeeds. First it the ski episode where he briefly seems to break out of his brainwashing and then again in the episode where Ryo (and the other Rainbow Crystal hosts) returns. In the latter she actually succeeds in restoring him to normal but he’s abducted immediately once again. Not only did Usagi lose Mamoru a few more times but her active efforts to bring him back to her failed.

We then come to the most traumatic events in Usagi’s second life (up to that point), episodes 44-46.

In episode 44, not only did she once again re-experience the tragic destruction of the Silver Millennium, but she got a ‘bird’s eye view’ of everything that happened, including the specific moments she, Endymion, her friends and even her mother died. True, her sadness or trauma over everyone else isn’t specific to her losing Endymion/Mamoru, however because these events happen so close together and are connected it’s not unbelievable that Usagi’s mind might’ve created an association. So her pain over seeing her mother die is associated also with her ‘losing’ Endymion as well. By that same token, the death of her beloved friends in episode 45 might’ve consequently become associated with what happened next.

In episode 46 Usagi is outright attacked by a brainwashed Endymion. First she sees him loyally serving her enemy who (by proxy) murdered her friends like an hour ago. Worse she might’ve picked up on the obvious romantic undertones between Beryl and Endymion, including him kissing her hand, and let’s not forget in the flashback from episode 44 Beryl clearly desired Endymion. Whilst intellectually Usagi might know he’s not in his right mind, emotionally seeing him like that with Beryl in that context could emotionally upset her, almost as though he was betraying their love in the worst possible way.

Endymion’s efforts against her are also significantly more violent and active than anything he did before since episode 36. Dashing a rose across the back of her hand pales in comparison to ensnaring her and shocking her with his roses. Not to mention trying to slice her up with the very same sword he would’ve used to defend her in the Silver Millennium. Even if you don’t buy into my point about perverting these symbols of their relationship, the mere act of him hurting her and trying to murder her like that is going to obviously be emotionally arresting.

In a sense in those horrible moments for Usagi Endymion/Mamoru really was ‘lost’ to her, he merely looked like her lover. This I think is why it was significant that she actually fought back against him with her tiara. But since he still looked like her lover and intellectually she knew he wasn’t to blame (and emotionally hoped he was still salvageable) her own act of self-defence horrified her.

Of course she does save him, but then he dies again. Depending on how you look at it, from Usagi’s POV this is at least the second time he’s really died and that number climbs higher if you include his presumed death in episode 13 and the number of times she had to re-experience his death in the Silver Millennium. And that isn’t even counting traumatic dreams about him dying in the aftermath of episodes 34-35. It doesn’t help that his mortal injuries in episode 46 are eerily similar to the ones he sustained in episode 34, namely a violent impalement.

We might even argue this is categorically the worst instance up until this point of Usagi watching her lover die or seemingly die. In the Silver Millennium she herself died seconds later. In episode 13 they weren’t nearly as close as they’d become by episode 46 and she at least had friends and family in her life she knew she could lean on. This equally applies to Mamoru seemingly dying in episode 34 and even his abduction in episode 35. In fact with Minako, Makoto and Artemis Usagi had an even larger support network than before. In episode 46 though her lover has died in her arms, she’s left to go on and the Inner Senshi are dead, Luna and Artemis aren’t around and the end of the world is imminent. She’s truly all alone in her grief and intellectually she knows that even if somehow she resolves the crisis her support network has been mostly gutted. THEN she herself dies to defeat Beryl/Metalia and save the world.

She gets her fondest wish, to go back to a normal life, but that’s also taken from her due to the arrival of Ail and An. Yay for Usagi, she gets to have ALL of those traumatic memories from the Silver Millennium rerun through her head AGAIN. And this time they’re complimented by the Hell she went through in losing her friends, her lover and dying herself in the Arctic.

But hey, at least now she and her lover can finally be together right? Nope. He literally doesn’t know her. He isn’t Endymion. He isn’t Tuxedo Mask. He isn’t the Mamoru she knew and doesn’t even want to know her. Meanwhile a prospective romantic rival is sniffing around him and for all she knows he may well be interested in her. She gets a tiny ray of hope when Moonlight Knight shows up but that’s abruptly squashed when she receives (seemingly) hard proof this guy who seems oh so similar to the man she loves definitely isn’t that man. So her tiny hope of maybe getting him back is taken from her almost as quickly as it came.

After Ail and An depart Earth Usagi finally has what she wants…until two episodes later. This time in the cruelest twist of fate for her, it isn’t external forces that tears Mamoru away from her. This time he takes himself from her. From a certain point of view this is sort of worse than him dying. Usagi knows death and reincarnation are a thing and that magic exists. She already knows that, as traumatic as it might’ve been, the pair have been given more chances than most people to get together. But how is that to happen when Mamoru, in his right mind and fully possessing all his memories, clearly conveys he doesn’t want her. In the same way Tuxedo Mask pulled a disappearing act early on, now Mamoru in normal life begins actively avoiding Usagi and even saying hurtful things to her.

It is in episode 61 (the break up episode itself) that we arguably first see this insecure side to Usagi where she questions if Mamoru prefers a child under 10 years old to her. From there we also see Mamoru try to hint to her that he’s seeing Unazuki.

Of course Usagi eventually learns that it WAS another external force pushing them apart again (well sort of but that’s for another day). However, to lose Mamoru again after all she’d already gone through to be with him was emotionally going to be a serious twisting of the knife for her, in addition to his efforts after episode 61 to push her away. The fact that his own desire to be with her caused him to still help and even hang out with her on occasion would’ve further confused her.

But even after this mess is cleared up, in Sailor Moon R The Movie: Promise of the Rose Usagi has to witness Mamoru nearly die for her again. And like on other occasions it comes via an impalement right in front of her and a consequent abduction to boot. And the abductee happens to be someone she and her friends suspect might harbor romantic feelings for Mamoru as well, someone who actively insulted her, actively tried to dissuade Mamoru from dating her and who literally pushed her away from him.

When taken collectively, I think all these traumas associated with Usagi ‘losing’ Mamoru or otherwise being prevented from being with him would make Usagi subconsciously on the alert for the next thing that might take him from her.

I propose that this is the actual reason for Usagi’s concerns that Mamoru might like Chibiusa more than her, for why she gets concerned when Ami and Mamoru chat together in S, for why she goes all ninja in SuperS, etc. Deep down she does trust him and deep down she trusts her friends and doesn’t actually feel threatened by anyone who might try to hit on Mamoru.

It’s in reality a case of her gripping too tight precisely because the object of her desire has slipped through her fingers far too many times in the past.* Or if you like, from Usagi’s POV destiny might’ve pre-ordained that she fall in love with Mamoru but she may well be concerned that it’s also pre-ordained that they be allowed to enjoy being in love, not for too long anyway.

However, I think this in turn set up a great example of character development for our heroine.

First of all, in episode 132 we have Chibiusa outright warning Usagi she has a romantic rival and that if she doesn’t shape up she will lose Mamoru to her, and yet Usagi shrugs this off.

Of course, we could argue that this is Usagi trying to simply one up Chibiusa in this moment, or else she is dismissive of the warning precisely because it comes from Chibiusa whom is both a child and someone who makes a point of trolling her. On the other hand we might view this as an example of how Usagi has in fact grown and is more at peace with the idea that she isn’t about to have Mamoru taken from her for the umpteenth time.

Granted her over reaction in episode 136, wherein she dresses as a ninja to ensure Rei and Mamoru don’t get up to anything, goes against that idea. However, we could just as easily argue that Usagi’s reactions in that episode were an example of her backsliding precisely because of Rei and Mamoru’s history. She might not worry about Rei and Mamoru deep down, but the idea of them living in the same place when they used to date and when she knows how active Rei was in pursuing him back in the day? It’s not beyond belief that in these specific circumstances Usagi’s resolve faltered whereas she’d have been less concerned if it’d been a stranger or someone with no romantic history with Mamoru.ffff

More significantly though is Sailor Stars. Once more Usagi ‘lost’/nearly lost Mamoru. This time this was due to Queen Nehelenia, whose efforts poisoned the Earth and by extension endangered the life of her lover. Then she did that AGAIN, this time outright brainwashing and abducting him.

Even if this didn’t remind Usagi of her horrible experiences with Evil Endymion and Beryl, it would’ve still been disturbing and upsetting, especially when Mamoru developed a mirror fetish. Usagi went through Hell and physical torture to try and save her lover and this time the stakes were even higher. Because this time losing him would also mean losing the other person she loved the most, (Chibiusa) a horrible event that she eventually witnessed happen.

Sure, she saved the day and got both her future husband and future daughter back, but she still had to live through those horrible experiences to get to that point.

And yet, despite these fresh traumas regarding losing her lover, in episode 173 Usagi handles Mamoru leaving for America surprisingly well.

It’s made clear she’s upset by his departure and doesn’t want him to go. But she comes mere inches from seeing him off with a smile as she intended, demonstrating her increased strength and maturity.

And despite her tears, despite her not wanting him to go, she still sees him off, she doesn’t try to dissuade him, she isn’t worried that he’ll meet other people or that their relationship will get torn asunder once more. She is sad because they are going to be physically separated by a long distance for a long time, but that’s the only thing that’s of concern to her. And her reaction even then is relatively reigned in (by her standards) even in the privacy of her own home.

And from a narrative/emotional POV it is almost like the universe rewards her for that growth via Mamoru giving her a promise/engagement ring, saying he loves her and kissing her in the airport.

Whilst the significance of the ring is obvious (albeit not to Usagi) we shouldn’t undersell Mamoru’s words or the kiss.

I’m willing to be corrected on this but I’m fairly certain that episode was the first time Mamoru (not Endymion, not Moonlight Knight talking about Mamoru, etc) had ever told Usagi he loved her. Of course, his actions spoke louder than words on this front. Even before Usagi knew Mamoru was Tuxedo Mask she suspected the latter rescued her because he was in love with her. Nevertheless, having your partner actually look you in the eye and say the words can be incredibly emotionally significant for a lot of people. In a sense it is the ultimate unambiguous proof of the other person’s feelings (in theory anyway). Even if Usagi hadn’t been waiting to hear him say the words (personally I think her expression implies she had been) it would’ve nevertheless been a significant development in their relationship all the same.

And as for the kiss, I admit I only vaguely know about Japanese cultural norms regarding PDA, but it is to my understanding that kissing in public is frowned upon. Even if I’m wrong about that, Mamoru (as evidenced by the R movie) certainly doesn’t like to kiss Usagi when anyone else is around. If you go back to check most of their kisses, either they are alone or else it’s obvious Mamoru doesn’t think anyone is observing them. The fact that he kisses Usagi not only in a public space, but an airport of all places (when there are crowds there for three big celebrities no less) is a huge deal for him. And in turn it’s a huge deal for Usagi because, whilst Mamoru might have more reservations, Usagi clearly cared a lot less about PDA, typically being the one to initiate their kisses.

Consequent episodes further demonstrate Usagi’s growth regarding her old insecurities with Mamoru. Putting aside how we never once see her worried about him seeing other girls, in episode 181 Seiya outright raises the idea of him seeing other people. Usagi casually, without a hint of aggression, dismisses the idea.

The irony is that it is Usagi who’s in the situation she so often worried about regarding Mamoru. She is the person being pursued by romantic rival to her lover, namely Seiya.

The cruel irony is that Usagi having matured enough to accept Mamoru leaving (despite being deeply upset and lonely about it) actually had lost him yet again.

She just didn’t know it.

*Not to mention…she is a teenager. Those people tend to be ever so slightly prone to emotional over reactions at the best of times.

#Sailor Moon #Tuxedo Mask #usagi tsukino #Usamamo #Mamoru Chiba #Chiba Mamoru #tsukino usagi #pretty soldier sailor moon #pretty guardian sailor moon #bishojo senshi sailor moon #Prince Endymion #Princess Serenity #My Essays

133 notes · View notes

thetrashsean · 4 years ago

Text

“Why wasn’t Life is Strange 2 as popular as the first game?”

A lot of people like myself have wondered what exactly made Life is Strange 2 go so relatively unnoticed compared its predecessor, Life is Strange 1. And when you think about it, you may come up with the few obvious generic answers, such as the lack of Max and Chloe and just the original cast in general. However, I think there was a lot more at play here that prevented Life is Strange 2 from reaching the amount of success/popularity the first game had. So I want to take the time and break down what exactly happened to Life is Strange 2 and the things that hurt the game’s ability to really connect with the audience of LiS1.

Disclaimer: We do NOT know how well Life is Strange 2 was for Dontnod and if it was a success or not. No sales numbers have been given out to the public so there’s no way of knowing for sure how well the game did. What we do know is that LiS2 did not receive the same amount of attention/popularity as the first game. That can’t be denied, it simply didn’t. However, based on the fact that Dontnod have recently announced they are working on six new games at the moment and are now expanding their studio, even if LiS2 was a “flop” it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on them (most likely due to the success of Vampyr). Dontnod is going to be fine either way. Another thing I want to mention is that this is not a anti-LiS2 post and that I am a fan of the game. I’d consider myself a pretty big fan actually. I have my problems with the game of course and don’t agree with a lot of the writing decisions but I enjoyed the game very much overall. But for the sake of this post I will try to be as unbiased as possible, giving out only what I’ve observed when it comes to reactions from the fandom on different websites and forums. So with that all being said, let’s dive in to this.

Here I will be listing the many different reasons as to why Life is Strange 2 failed to reach the same amount of popularity as LiS1 or even BtS managed to achieve. This list isn’t in any particular order but some reasons are bigger/more important than others.

For some background, there was a lot of hype going into Life is Strange 2. The teaser trailer for it with the cop car trended at #2 on YouTube, a huge feat for the series. It generated immense amount of views and comments in a short period in time, completely surpassing Before the Storm’s announcement trailer in just a few weeks. So what exactly happened to all that hype? Where did everybody go? Well, let’s break everything down.

1. The lack of Max and Chloe: Yes I said that this list wouldn’t be in any particular order in terms of importance but I think it’s obvious this one is one of, if not the biggest reason as to why LiS2 failed to match LiS1’s popularity. When the protagonists Sean and Daniel were first revealed, the reception was pretty divisive. Specifically, a very vocal part of the community were baffled and disappointed at the lack of Max and Chloe present within the trailer and subsequently the game itself. This instantly turned off a lot of people from the game, as they couldn’t connect with the new characters or simply didn’t want to. At that point in the franchise Max and Chloe as well as the original cast from the first game had been the face of the series for almost three years. It’s understandable why it was hard for people to just…move on. To this day people are still asking for Max and Chloe to return. The Life is Strange subreddit is still dominated with Max and Chloe fanart. Whenever the social media accounts for Life is Strange post anything Max and Chloe related it gets way more attention compared to a post about Sean and Daniel. Whenever a post online goes viral about Life is Strange you can bet it’s most likely about Max and Chloe. Hell the only reason why episode 5 of Life is Strange 2 trended on Tumblr was because of the fucking picture of Max and Chloe. On the releas day of episode 5 of LiS2 the top post on the subreddit was the Max and Chloe picture. It was almost as if that one photo of them completely overshadowed the entire episode. Point is, Life is Strange 2 lost a lot of momentum the moment it was revealed Max and Chloe would not be present. Case closed, let’s move on.

2. The release schedule: Words cannot describe how frustrating the release schedule was for LiS2 when it came to it’s episodes. For those reading this who didn’t follow LiS2 until the game was finished, each episode took around 3-4 months to be released. This was because Dontnod bit off a bit more than they could chew with the road trip story in having to create new locations and character models from scratch. The reason why this wasn’t a problem for LiS1 was because Max was for the most part always in the same locations around the same characters (I’m pretty sure you roam around Chloe’s house like 4 times throughout the season), which made development a lot easier since the devs could just reuse a lot of the assets. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for LiS2 due to the nature of it’s story. The wait times between each episode made a lot of people leave the fandom due to loosing interest or simply forgetting about the game altogether. This also impacted youtubers/streamers as many of them either stopped coming back to play the new episodes or they’d not be as connected as they were in the previous episode due to the amount of time that had passed. One of the reasons why LiS1 gained so much popularity was because of youtubers/streamers and how they would bring in their audience and would pretty much make them fans of the series. With quite a handful of youtubers/streamers quitting LiS2, the game was not able to draw in as much of an audience as previous games did. This is how detreminetal the release schedule was for LiS2.

3. The marketing (or lack thereof): Square Enix really fucked up on this aspect. Due to the ridiculous wait times you would think Square Enix would try and advertise the game heavily when a new episode was about to be released, right? Well they didn’t. Not at all actually. Throughout the games release schedule from September 2018 up to December 2019, I had not seen a single ad for the game. Nothing on YouTube, nothing on reddit or any other websites, it was like Square Enix had completely forgotten about the game’s existence. Now don’t get me wrong, SE did do a few things with LiS2 like starting up the community series on their YouTube channel and also the dev updates that came after episode 1 (that stopped after episode 2 for some reason) but these went relatively unnoticed to people outside of the fandom and did pretty much nothing. I believe SE was trying to wait until the game was fully complete with all of it’s episodes released before actually marketing the game (and they DID start advertising the game after episode 5 came out) but that’s just WAAAY too long to go without any type of advertisement. I understand marketing teams have budgets and what not, but you’re telling me there was no way for SE to market each episode in anyway as they were about to be released? Seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?

4. The road trip story: I completely understand why Dontnod wanted to branch out and do something different with the story of Life is Strange 2 and I respect them for stepping out of their comfort zones. However, it can’t be denied that the road trip story where characters are cycled in and out as Sean and Daniel make their way to Mexico was a very…questionable decision. Seeing as how LiS1 was loved for it’s world filled with a reoccurring cast of characters that developed as the story went on, it’s really easy to understand why LiS2 was so off-putting for a lot of fans. It was off-putting for me, even. It just…wasn’t fun having to leave these truly interesting characters behind because the plot demanded it. This left a lot of characters feeling underdeveloped to many people and by the time you meet new characters you already know they’re most likely gonna be gone soon anyways, so it made it even harder to connect with them. Couple this with the fact that LiS2 lacked any type of mystery unlike LiS1, speculation and discussion fizzled out a few weeks after each episode was released. LiS1 kept people speculating and wondering about what would happen next, while LiS2 left a lot of people struggling to care.

5. Politics: Yeeeeaaaaah I think I had to put this somewhere on the list. While many of the people who tease and mock how LiS2 handled its political topics were most likely not fans of the series anyway (the type of people who called LiS1 “Life is Tumblr” and hate Chloe), I do think it’s important to realize that some people just don’t want politics in their games, period. I’ve seen people online come out and say that while they agreed with what the writers were saying when it came to the political topics, it overall still came off very forced and one-sided to them, lacking any type of nuance or subtlety. I could write an entire essay discussing if the politics in LiS2 were handled well and whatnot but this is not that post so I’ll just leave it at that.

6: Lack of a prominent female cast/wlw: This is a bit more tricky to talk about (for the record the person writing this is a black gay guy) but I will try and write about this the best way I can. For many women, specifically queer women, Life is Strange was a series they could expect representation from. Max, Chloe, Rachel, and Steph are all popular characters amongst the fandom and even other wlw ships such as Marshfield, Chasefield, Chaseprice, etc are popular. So when LiS2 was revealed to be about two (hispanic) males, the queer women within the community were understandably upset. It felt like DN were simply throwing away the community that for the most part made up the entire fandom. At the time I simply found the situation ridiculous and overblown as many people were dismissing Sean and Daniel as “generic straight males” (even though it turned out Sean was bisexual in the end) before really getting to know them. However, looking back I totally get why people were upset. A lot of the fanart/fanfiction that was made for the LiS series was mostly created by queer women, so when the franchise pretty much stopped giving them representation, they left in search of other media (like She-Ra, which honestly has better wlw rep anyway). LiS2 is also mostly male dominated in terms of its cast, and features no queer women as well, which is really disappointing in my opinion.

7. Price: This one is pretty simple. When Life is Strange 2 was first released the full season costed $40. This was a pretty big jump in comparison to LiS1’s $20 price tag (original price was $25 however) and BtS’s $16. Obviously people would be more skeptical about buying a sequel that is pretty much double the price of its predecessor and has completely new characters. With the pretty mixed reception from gaming communities I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people saw the price and decided to either watch a playthrough or simply not check out the game at all. With the first episode now free the base price has been lowered to around $30-32 I believe so yeah.

8. Daniel Diaz: Some people just don’t like kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people grew easily frustrated with Daniel early on and once he got more irrational and bratty as the story progressed they just stopped playing altogether. Even if you do like kids, or at least don’t mind them like myself, Daniel can still be quite a pain.

9. Not having control of the powers: This one is honestly really disappointing and I know it was to a lot of other people as well. In LiS1 Max had the ability to rewind time and do certain scenarios and conversations over and that basically acted as the more interesting gameplay segments. In LiS2 Sean doesn’t have the power, his brother Daniel does. This leads to the gameplay feeling much more boring and mundane. There are also no interesting puzzles this time around, most likely because Dontnod didn’t know how to implement them without the rewind power so they just…didn’t even attempt to add any. The power itself, telekinesis, is also much less interesting compared to rewinding time, according to a lot of people.

SO YEAH that’s basically it for me. I know this probably came off a bit rambly/incoherent but I tried my best to be as clear as I possibly could. I don’t doubt there are other reasons at play as to why LiS2 failed to meet LiS1’s success (such as liscensed music not being quite as good as LiS1) but I think I hit the main points I believe were key reasons. And the thing is, there isn’t just one main reason why LiS2 didn’t do as well as LiS1. It’s overall very unfortunate so many things went wrong with it that ended up making people lose interest in it. I think the lack of Max and Chloe hurt the game the most right off the bat, but the other reasons just led it to do even worse. Oh well.

I hope any of the people who read this enjoyed it (it was a BITCH to write). I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down about this for SO long but just never had the motivation/time but I finally did it!

Again, thanks for reading! If you have any disagreements or just thoughts in general don’t be afraid to reply or dm me about it and I’ll be sure to reply! Now back to reblogging Marco posts….

#lis2 #lis #life is strange #life is strange 2 #max caulfield #chloe price #sean diaz #daniel diaz #lis2 spoilers #pricefield #amberprice

145 notes · View notes

grishaversecommunityyy · 4 years ago

Text

The Grishaverse Ship Survey Results

So! After all of that, we finally have the results! What is the general opinion on the ships in the Grishaverse? Well, that’s for you to read below! It’s actually pretty interesting and, while some parts make sense, there were definitely some parts which... surprised me... Anyway, onto the results!

Everything in this post can be split into:

The Grisha Trilogy

Six Of Crows Duology

The Nikolai Series

Shadow and Bone: TV Series

Most Enjoyed Ships

Least Enjoyed Ships

Crack Ships and Shipping Discourse

Notes from the Survey

(note from mod emily: i tried to bold all of fritz’ comments, but i might have missed a few! be aware there are two of us analysing here :))

The Grisha Trilogy

The first book series we asked about was, of course, the first chronologically: the Grisha Trilogy. The most popular ship, with 83% voters for this series selecting this, was Genya/David (Fritz was glad to hear that; Yes I am). This is likely due to the lack of alternate romantic interests in the series, which seems to be a major issue for Alina’s ships. It also seems to be one genuinely enjoyed by most fans, in contrast to Darkling/Alina and Mal/Alina (each around 30%) and Nikolai/Alina (just under 20%), for which I have definitely seen plenty of debate. The second and third most popular ships for this series were Tamar/Nadia (55%) and Nikolai/Zoya (47%). Interestingly, Genya/Alina (43%) and Zoya/Alina (30%) ranked surprisingly high, especially considering how few of my friends and associates I hear talking about them. Good for them!

Honourable mentions:

Alina/Sun (no doubt inspired by that crack fic I wrote a while back) (Still havent read that out of fear)

Alina alone (a common concept among those surveyed, though most mentioned it later)

Zoya/Genya or Alina/Zoya/Genya

Six Of Crows Duology

This series was a little less divided, I would say. Predictably, Kaz/Inej came out on top with a whopping 96% of voters (:relieved:), with Wylan/Jesper next (90%) and Nina/Matthias just after (83%). None of the others really came close, despite Nina/Inej gathering 35% of the votes and Colm/Aditi at 25% (yeah, I’m not sure why that was so popular on AO3 either, but nobody really has objections so I assume that’s why it amassed so many votes). As Six of Crows is decidedly less divisive about ships and doesn’t have such controversial ships (more on that later), it seems the fandom agrees with canon pairings and the votes are... pretty unanimous.

Honourable Mentions:

Jesper/Wylan/Kuwei

Polycrows (platonic or romantic)

Kaz/Inej/Nina

Whoever didn’t read the instruction about this being for only the book series and put Jesper/Milo. I will never escape.

The Nikolai Series

This one is a little harder for me because I actually haven’t read this... so over to Fritz for analysis! But first, the stats. At 85%, the most popular ship is Genya/David, followed by Zoya/Nikolai at 77%. Tamar/Nadia and Nina/Hanne draw at 61.5% and Nina/Matthias has 56% voters onboard. There’s no real honourable mentions for this one, sadly. Hello Fritz here! Read the books and very glad to see Genya/David as the top ship as it damn well should. Although still a bit surprising since its more of a side-arc of the two and only ties in with the importance of the story at a specific chapter that I feel like I don’t need to elaborate about, if you read Rule of Wolves. (I believe the popularity of the ship also sky-rocketed due to ROW) Following of course Zoya/Nikolai, the high ranking makes sense, it is the main ship and lets be honest they deserve it <3

I think the only really surprising thing about this is the high votes for Nina/Matthias since [SPOILERS CROOKED KINGDOM] he’s dead so I feel like people should move on from that. Nina/“Hanne” having not as high a ranking as I would’ve thought, but with Matthias still being in the frame I guess we shouldn’t be surprised either.

Shadow and Bone: TV Series

This one is really interesting, with the exclusive show watchers now taking part! We have 89% voting for Kaz/Inej, 76% for David/Genya, 71% for Matthias/Nina, 67% for Ivan/Fedyor (that’s a thing???-->Yeah they had a few somewhat sweet interactions in the background-->nvm i watched it you’re right fritz) and 62% for Mal/Alina. What’s really surprising is how high Malina is compared to Darklina, with Darkling/Alina at 36%. Who knows, maybe Fritz’ analysis can shed some light on this?

Yes yes Fritz to the rescue: First of all we have to see their interactions a little different from what we already knew of them by the end of episode 8. I still think it is a surprising number, since the Darkling in the show isn’t as nasty as he was in the books BUT over all his actions are now seen on TV. We all thought the deer antlers were a necklace amirite? Well no apparently not, the darkling used the worst kind of small science to fit Alinas collarbone to the bone and out comes a gruesome sight: a reason why many people might have started thinking: Wow what a disgusting person he is. And on the Malina “ship”: Mal finally has personality!! jkjk :eyes: Mals and Alinas friendship has been portrayed way better in the show and I believe that the people noticed more chemistry between them especially by the end of season 1. So I’m still a little surprised Darklina has such a low ranking (what with him being all sweet and cuddly in the middle of the show) but it makes sense and the Malina ship as well. Their vibes are just *chefs kiss* and thats coming from someone who didnt even like any of these “ships” <3

Loving the quotation marks for the word ‘ships’, Fritz. Over to the honourable mentions!

Honourable Mentions:

Jesper and Milo (isn’t milo a goat? guys, why?)

Nadia/Marie (huh that didn’t appear anywhere else)

One person had several - Kaz/Inej/Jesper, Dubrov/Mikhael, Dubrov/Mikhael/Mal - and yeah, you can really see the show differences in these mentions right? (whose dubrov...and whose mikhael...)

16% actually voted for Inej/Alina which is wild to me because of book context (they did have chemistry in the show tho :cowboi_smirk:)

Another person with several! We have Nina/Inej, Genya/Alina, Zoya/Alina, Zoya/Genya/Alina. Very sapphic. Good for you.

Kaz/Jesper and Nina/Inej all in one

That’s a lot of honour and mentions but it’s so interesting to me and I think you should see too

Most Enjoyed Ships

The most enjoyed ship was Kaz/Inej. This had unparalleled support, being at 35%. Jesper/Wylan, which was next on the list (23.5%) and Nina/Matthias (18%) were also pretty popular. Most of the others were quite low, though interestingly Mal/Alina only had 1 vote (plus one for the show version). Overall, the SoC ships were a lot more popular in this section, which makes sense - this part is really about your favourite ship, and those were more unanimous in the last sections.

Least Enjoyed Ships

Most people said Darkling/Alina, which got 47% of the NOTP votes. A lot more people disliked Darkling/Alina than liked Kaz/Inej. Make of that what you will, but I take it as a somewhat general agreement among many of you guys. Mal/Alina was also strongly disliked at 22%, but around a half or more of these were clarified to be about the book version of the ship specifically. They really must’ve upgraded in the show! Jesper/Kuwei and any other Darkling ships were also voted by a few, but all of these pale in comparison to the anti-Darklina votes. Shoutout to the person who said Apparat/Anyone. I agree, though it’s not something I thought of before seeing this response. Also one person said they didn’t like the poly ships, which I hope meant just the ones mentioned earlier and not all poly relationships in general... Another shoutout to whoever said Kaz/Heleen, because why did I have to read that. A fun question, all in all!

Crack Ships and Shipping Discourse

I love talking about crack ships, so let’s start with that! This time, I really don’t want to have to count and list because... well, let me show you:

I think that sums up the sheer variety, to be honest. Then again, it would be rude not to mention that the most popular were Jesper/Milo, Darkling/Nikolai and Alina/Sun. (If you’re still confused about that last one, I take full responsibility.)

YES KAZ/KRUGE I SUPPORT!!!

Honourable mention to this:

which was a lot to take in, and:

Now for the discourse. Yep, the part you probably came for.

Actually... maybe you didn’t? Looking at all of these responses, I see a lot of people genuinely don’t care about ship wars and so on, and often enjoyed the books regardless of the romances involved. Quite a few disapproved of the ongoing (though small) wars between Darklina and Malina, and others had a similar line of thinking, saying we should maybe stop focusing so much on it. You guys are right. I know this is a ship survey, and the conclusions should not include that shipping isn’t as important as we make it (Yes it should), but... that’s where it’s at.

And then again, a lot of you guys expressed disapproval for Darkling/Alina, discussing how it is often one-sided and manipulative and overall unhealthy, so I could be completely off with that last one. Some people mentioned that they ship this but as a slightly different version that the one given to us, recognising the flaws of the canon ship.

Someone said they headcanon Tolya as aroace (OMG YES!!). We need more aroace characters, so thank you for that headcanon :) We also have a few gay ships mentioned here, and one person telling us they love Malina. Yes, you’re right - it’s pretty unpopular, it turns out. Someone else said Alina should’ve been single, and I agree, actually!

One person rickrolled me here. Thankfully, Youtube’s ads saved me. *wipes forehead*

I leave you all with this, in the end:

Notes from the Survey

Statistics Stuff:

The top ships were taken from AO3, so some ships may be more focused on in other books and may not provide accurate statistics for an earlier series.

The main circles this was sent around may have had bias as most people are from the same discord server, which has debated these topics in the past. Hence certain ships may have lower-than-average results. In future, this could be improved upon by sending this to other servers and areas of the fandom.

Personal bias may be present in the analysis, though I have tried to minimise this in the more formal sections.

Observations and Notes from Me:

You guys really don’t like Darklina. Or you love it. Usually one or the other. Wow.

Be glad I didn’t talk about any of the cursed ships in this. The things I have seen... (:cowboi_eyes:)

I thought more people would rickroll me, ngl.

What Surprised You Guys:

Kaz/Inej/Jesper

A few of you guys saw some of those cursed ships, and that surprised you. Well, me too!

Nikolai ships being in the TV Show section at all, what with his character not being in the show (yeah what was up with that huh tztz)

Inej/Alina

The existence of The Severed Moon

Darkling/Nikolai(/Alina)

How fun the quiz was :D

Things You Sent Me:

Bee Movie copypasta

“Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition!”, except via an AO3 link

A fun fact about enzymes! I liked this one

Fic recs for Feriku and Sarai (esp for Wylan/Jesper shippers)

Another rickroll

Nice compliments :) aww you guys

I asked everyone for some kind of placeholder name and never used it. Sorry! But hey, anonymity, right?

Closing Statements

If you got this far (I feel like ive been sitting here for hours), thanks for reading! This was fun to do and I hope you enjoyed all of this too! The survey is still open for anyone who hasn’t done it but wants to. If I get a huge amount of new responses, I might update this post! But for now, adios!

-mod emily (and mod fritz)

#grishaverse #fandom #shipping #shadow and bone #six of crows #nikolai series #king of scars #the grisha trilogy

35 notes · View notes

steve0discusses · 4 years ago

Text

S5 Ep 3: Apdnarg is Really Hard to Spell

Yo guys, people are getting vaccinated, the sun is parting through the clouds, and I felt so nice that I even stopped listening to quite so many throwback 00′s BTS mashups (and yet I keep clicking on these dissonant catastrophes thinking “this time it’s got to be better. This time they’ll figure it out.” and like, no. Turns out you can’t match Brittany’s Toxic with BTS’ Black Swan. You can’t do that.)

This must be a sign that things are getting better. If anything, it means my personal tastes are improving. I mean I only clicked on like 3 “Dark Academia” Playlists where I could pretend I’m some sort of spooky witch in an abandoned library with a bad music player and basic taste in classical music (like can we ban Satie from Youtube for a little while?). Hell, I might even do a prompt update to this blog!

Yeah, you heard me, I’m actually going to stay ahead of the update schedule for Yugioh Abridged (maybe. I haven’t actually watched cuz of spoilers, I just noticed the thumbnail pop up on Youtube and was like “Damn it, they came out of hiatus??? I got hurry UP.”)

Anyway, speaking of the sky parting.

I’ll have you know my bro said this is actually more like a circumcision and it was one of the worst thing I have ever heard.

We get a chance to take in this lineup of confusing and varied character designs, and Joey. who is...still Joey.

The animators probably had to hold a strike in order for them to put Yugi in the audience, lets be real. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE in this shot and one is wearing a turban where you draw every single wrap. I hope those artists charged by the line.

Tea has a subplot where she’s just very frustrated with everyone she knows. They have been traveling together for like many weeks and got trapped in a foreign country so I get it. But at the same time, it’s kind of hard to picture Tea with female friends.

Because right now you got this 12 year old child, the other duelist who does not care about anything besides cards, and Kaiba’s 3 dragon cards that we’ve all collectively decided are female.

Hell it’s almost like the writers are asking themselves why Tea is here. Maybe they forgot. There’s no more ghosts to bus, no more people to knock out with her ass with random Olympic feats. Tea’s just sidelining.

(read more under the cut)

Mokuba is a itty bit bit taller this season, and so I guess that means he can legally climb on top of the cherry picker in order to give a riveting speech.

Really says a lot about Mokuba that he is so unphased about talking to, I dunno...an entire planet of people. Kind of a shame we never see this courage from Mokuba used for anything other than talking really, really big and giving everyone around him a really hard time.

Mokuba takes a moment to dunk on Yugi Muto, as is Kaiba tradition.

And then introduce the first pair of duelists, which obviously must be between the few people in this tournament that we actually know and care about.

Thankfully, in between last episode and this episode, Yugi has figured out who his own Grandpa is. This is a relief, because Yugi is such a mess, that I was fully convinced it would take over half a season for him to recognize it. I mean how long did it take him to figure out he shares a body with a ghost? Like half a season?

Instead Yugi recovered gracefully from not recognizing his grandpa, but it’s not like he bothered to tell anyone else, so the rest of our cast is just gonna be like “Is he my hairdresser? The guy who delivers my mail? Who is this guy who made absolutely no significant changes to his outfit or voice?”

Like sometimes this show goes full Spongebob silly kid’s show and you never know when to take it seriously or not. They might be sacrificing the entire cast next episode. I really don’t know. But for now their big concern is who is grandpa??? Like an innocent card version of “Are you my Mother?”

Faced with public speaking, Yugi decides to have a melt down.

We have seen him face monsters, we’ve seen him on TV dozens of times, he’s been in multiple competitions...but give a speech? Of course he can’t do that. The kid doesn’t attend enough school to know how to do that. Them’s learning skills.

And that was when a newly assembled wife-jet spliced through the sky like a souped up razer scooter and deposited 1 fully equipped Seto Kaiba in a Buzz Lightyear jetsuit.

THE RECOVERY.

Seto always watching over his Brother, ready to save this awkward party if it kills him (and it really should, that suit is held together by two seat-belts), making sure to get on that platform before Yugi starts going off about how he’s half an Ancient Egyptian. (Ah, life before social media. You could just be hella famous and also half a dead dude and people would just not know. I kinda miss the time before I knew literally everything about everyone.)

Please admire how close those flames are to setting Mokuba’s heavily hairsprayed mane completely alight. It would be an unforgettable spectacle.

These were absolutely just random ass jet packs that Gozaburo Kaiba made to kill hell tons of people, right? Like Seto found it in the family cabin, clutched to the heart of some crispy fried corpse and was like “neat! Mokuba! I found a cool toy!” and just plucked that thing out of that skeleton’s clutches and has been flying around for months?

Like this is Seto Kaiba’s Butter Glider, right?

Seriously what type of vehicle license do you need for one of these things? RIP My ‘Seto only has a scooter license’ headcanon.

Which I’m only even thinking about because I’ve had to try and make an appt with the DMV for days to get a freakin REAL ID. I went to sleep in 2019 and I could fly on a plane. I woke up in 2021 and it’s like “Want one last screw you?” and just...can 2020 please stop screwing me over? It’s March.

Anyway, the Jet is removed soon after, so no, this is not part of his new outfit. He goes right back to his Post-S4-Trauma-Normcore.

After wrestling this competition out of his brother’s hands and confusing everyone in the audience, Roland must have gotten the memo to cut the microphone before Seto got too excited and we were quickly ushered on to the next stage of the tournament.

One sec...the BTS Mashup playlist I just clicked on did a Black Swan X 7 rings mashup and it’s the worst thing my ears have ever heard.

Holy crap. I had to actually turn down my volume. Like...Ariana Grande already has music that has way too many overlapping singing parts on it--and then lets just stick a 52-person boy band on top? That’ll fix it. Yeah. Go ahead.

Wow. Even I had to change the song and you know how much I enjoy pop culture mistakes.

Spot the Mickey but like a million times easier because it’s a Massive Dick Shaped Dragon.

Yep. That’s my grocery shopping outfit. Except maybe not a lab coat and a duel disk. Wish I had a duel disk, that would make social distancing just a hell ton earlier. Just a “Yo, only one person in checkout, please” and then bap them on the head with a propelled discuss/hologram.

Anyway, Grocery shopping/Doctor man dueled the Purple Hair Boy, and considering that Purple Hair got screen time and shook Yugi’s hand once--I think that Doctor man doesn’t stand a freakin chance.

Good. I hate him.

Also, every time he breathes he’s gonna fog up his glasses. I have experience in this area. He can’t read his own cards in the same way I can’t read my phone if I’m in the refrigerated aisle.

So the way this tournament works, is everyone has to sit in the stadium to watch the show. Kinda like showing up to a football stadium just to watch a recorded TV monitor...but then again...that is how it feels to watch a football game at a football stadium when it’s live (at least with the tickets I usually get.)

And as we watch Grandpa waiting for his competitor, we find out that his competitor (Joey) is too busy eating snacks to give him the time of day.

Why do cartoon hot dogs always have lettuce? Is that seriously supposed to be relish? Or is there a place in the world where you put lettuce on your hot dog?

Sorry, bro has just informed of his favorite hot dog order, which is absolutely terrible so I will share it with you: a Five Guys hot dog with ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, onions, mushrooms, pickled peppers, and you guessed it--topped with freakin lettuce.

My own kin. How am I over 30 and just finding out that my baby brother thinks it’s normal to walk into a restaurant with normal god-fearing law-abiding people and order lettuce and mushrooms on a hot dog?

I have fully failed him.

The rest of this episode is watching both Joey Wheeler and Mokuba have a shared panic attack while Seto does freakin nothing.

Please remember that Seto has both a jetpack and a dragon wife plane and could have easily solved this problem. But nah.

Then again, Seto Kaiba has given this crew so MANY rides, that maybe he’s tired of being the Soccer Mom for the team?

Like they don’t actually say this episode, but Seto was the one in charge of like...this entire place, do you think he made the 2 for 1 special just to get Joey where it hurts the most? Or does it actually not take any subterfuge to screw Joey Wheeler because he’s just naturally this way?

Like Mokuba wasn’t there when Joey was told “stay right here, and then we will all go together to fight Dartz” and Joey was like “I’mma save Mai from herself although she told me not to!” and then he Hella Died. But, Mokuba did see the result, AKA, Joey’s dead body being carried on the back of Tristan. Maybe Mokuba never realized that Joey died because he went out of his way to be late?

Lets do a tally of every time I can recall with my dodgy memory that Joey was threatened to be DQ’d/pretty much was DQ’d either by his own fault or no fault of his own

-When he wasn’t allowed to go on the boat to Murder Island because he was a stupid nobody kid who did not have a dueling glove

-When he wasn’t actually supposed to be in Pegasus’ tourney and was, in fact, secretly using half of Yugi’s entrance ticket the entire time

-when Bandit Keith stole the ticket that Joey got from Yugi so then Joey had to borrow Mai’s ticket although she had just used it so it really shouldn't have counted. Because, really anyone could have just piggy backed off of each other’s ticket until the whole boat went through that castle.

-When his account was hacked to get entered into Kaiba’s tourney when Kaiba very clearly told him he could not apply solely because he was Joey Wheeler.

-When he was late to his sister’s eye surgery because he got mugged by Marik’s Rare Hunters, so she almost refused to do the surgery.

-When Joey got possessed by Marik, and as Marik, threatened to murder everyone else in the tournament including both of the Kaiba brother’s who’s tournament it was, and then chained himself to Yugi Muto to throw both of them to the bottom of the ocean.

-I think there was a point when he threatened to attack Kaiba in Kaiba’s own tourney while not possessed? Like several times?

-when he got struck by Lightning and almost did not stand up fast enough after being struck by lightning, which is apparently a type of DQ in Duel Monsters.

-When he tried to save Mai from getting hit by a fireball, but then Yugi did it instead, and then so many people were standing on the dueling platform that Kaiba couldn’t possibly DQ them all.

-When he entered the restricted area of the blimp in order to hassle Kaiba into landing the Blimp, which Kaiba did not do.

-When Marik killed Joey before Joey could press the “go” button on his duel disk to play the card that should have won Joey the match.

-When he was dueling a lawyer in a digital universe but then the dice was like...weighted? So Noah had to walk over and be like “The hell is this weighted dice? This is my perfect digital world? How did you even do that?” and then Joey won because the match was no longer legit.

-When Joey yelled at Noah too much and so Noah turned Joey to stone for being a rude ass spectator

-When Mai was like “Wheeler and Valon, listen closely: do NOT murder each other” and then Joey did a murder on Valon so she was like “I guess I have no choice, I was very clear” and killed Joey straight up.

-When Joey decided to block Seto’s fireballs while Joey Wheeler WAS a playing card, somehow disrespecting both Dartz and Seto Kaiba at the same time.

-When Joey was playing cards but then got absorbed into a giant Leviathan and basically couldn’t play anymore after that.

-There’s probably hell ton of S0 stuff I just haven’t seen yet.

-This episode

And Joey runs fast for a montage of wacky things that really have no business being in a theme park. Things like this:

(remember when Bakura almost died from a rock that ended up being a balloon? It comes full circle.)

The stuff that the Kaiba brother’s think is normal and fun.

Anyway Joey fights off a bunch of hologram snakes and bats and everyone is like “Should we tell him it’s just holograms???” And it’s like wow, guys, how many times have these ‘holograms’ straight up murdered Joey Wheeler and everyone else on this cast? Too many? Because I have a google doc with so many deaths on it. 7,805,844,048, to be exact.

Anyway, he gets there with five seconds to spare and Mokuba’s like “well at least you were still entertaining while we filmed you in front of a live audience being a total spaz for 15 minutes straight, so I’ll let you go.”

Grandpa and Joey start playing, Joey completely oblivious that this is just an older Muto, while Hawkins walks up awkwardly and is like “hey guys. I’m so sorry about this.”

(welcome to my font choices, for those new here, I have to make weird font color choices to make sure it’s legible for the colorblind and also for the non-colorblind. This one is not much contrast, so I may change it up in the future, but for now, this is Grandpa Muto’s new font. I apologize to every graphic designer reading this. Please don’t tell anyone who has ever hired me for graphic design about this blog.)

What’s funny about this exchange is that after they find out that Yugi’s Grandpa is Apdnarg (HOLY my brain cannot get around the spelling for that, and I will not change it in the caps. I cannot do a ‘pdn’ ever again), they don’t stand on his side of the field or anything. Hawkins is legit Solomon Muto’s only fan during this exchange and like...damn. Way not to back your Grandpa, Yugi.

Yugi immediately strides up to Mokuba to non-confrontation-ally inform him that he has stepped over a line and Mokuba is like “what are these things you say called ‘lines?’”

According to Mokuba, Solomon Muto begged him to be in the competition so he could relive his glory days (glory days making no sense here, because the game has only been released for the past 15 years, so glory days is like...the before times that can only be referring to disgraced archeologists and Pegasus ((who is, in his own way...a disgraced archeologist, too))) and Mokuba was like

“You trained Yugi Muto, right? Hey that’s good enough for me. This drama is gold. People will eat it up. Hell yes. Don’t be afraid to abduct him a little bit. Maybe trap a couple people in a digital hellscape for a little while? Now we go by Pegasus house rules here, so fire as many lasers as you want, but just make sure not to hit anyone in the face. Oh man, we are going to be swimming in cash. Love it, Muto Sr, love it.”

But I dunno, I feel like Grandpa won’t make it past next episode. It is Joey. We kinda need him to make it past Ep 4 of the arc. If Grandpa Muto becomes the new Joey Wheeler, that will be a weird transition for this show to make.

But that’s all for today, as always, here is the link to read these in chrono order becuase there’s SO MANY that you don’t need to read backwards--don’t do it--just use the chrono tag (and I don’t know if you can add compound tags, but I did separate the Season from the Episode, so if you write S4, it should only pop up stuff from S4. I didn't’ do that to seasons 1-3 though because I just...didn’t.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And because I brought it up: here it is, the best BTS Mashup that I found on my deep dive. Like legit--this one isn’t a mess:

youtube

Most of other ones are horrible in a fascinating way. Like I’m not even a BTS fan, I think I sort of age out of that metric, I’m just bored and quarantined. And lets be real, we all appreciate a good bop when we hear it.

#yugioh #ygo #yu gi oh #photo recap #recap #episode recap #yugi muto #seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #Joey Wheeler #Apdnarg #Grandpa muto #tea gardner #tristan taylor #professor hawkins #and then I ranted about BTS #but please don't quiz me about BTS I know nothing about them aside from the music #I actually thought there were over 12 of them because every time I see them perform it feels like an entire stageplay production of people #like a 101 dalmations situation where every time I saw BTS there were 3 new people #I assumed it was like the Gorrilaz where people just show up and then disappear in a rotation #but no. There's 7 BTS members #that can't be right #there has to be more than 7 #is this a berenstein bears situation?#how is there only 7?#I swear there used to be like 16 #and they would be introduced like here's jimin and Jungkook and red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and pea #like is google seriously telling me there's only 7 kids in this band?#this is the biggest scam google has ever played on me #this weird alternate timeline that not only has an epidemic but also only 7 members of BTS

48 notes · View notes

shiny-procrastinates · 3 years ago

Text

(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 1

Hello and welcome everyone to the first post on this watch-along commentary of the first season of Magia Record! Whether you are just now watching it for the first time, or are re-watching in preparation for the second season, or have only played the game and are curious about the anime (in which case I'd be surprised you even exist) I hope you can have some fun reading these ramblings as I try to put my thoughts into words (actually turned more into narrating the show) throughout all 12 13 episodes.

Before we can get to it, though, I have a few warnings to give:

1 - As much as I'd love to be able to memory swipe so I can watch this fresh all over again, such an ability is sadly still beyond my grasp. In other words, this isn't my first time watching (or second, for that matter; more like the sixth… or seventh…). That being the case I can't claim that these are my first impressions and it's very likely this commentary will be somewhat biased by my previous knowledge. However, I can guarantee one thing: I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free, so you don't have to worry if this is your first time watching.

(I will, however, be assuming that you have watched the OG series and Rebellion, so beware of that).

2 - Please don't come into this expecting it to be Madoka 2

Also no, this is not a continuation of the OG, it’s an alternate universe spin-off.

This one's for first-time viewers.

Well, ok, this sounds like vague tweeting and I'm kind of whining here, but I have seen a number of peeps on the internet saying that Magia Record is bad only for their argument to boil down to "because it isn't OG Madoka!"

Yeah it isn't. I'm pretty sure there's "Side Story" written somewhere in the title too.

Leaving aside the matter of nostalgia glasses and whether the original series was that much of a masterpiece or not (it's been over five years since I last watched it, so I can't say anything either way.) it seems kind of weird to me that someone would bash a spinoff on the grounds of how close it is to the original. Because here's the thing: to me, the whole point of spinoffs is taking an already existing scenario and putting a spin on it to make something new. That's exactly what makes them fun!

MagiReco didn't need to be a Madoka clone or to try hard and beat the original. That would probably have made it bad, actually. What it did need to do was to create an interesting story using the world set up by the OG Madoka and the other spinoffs, and that, in my opinion, it did, so I hope people can give it a chance and judge it on its own merits rather than only compared to the original. I'm not saying you can't hate it, either, I myself have my own problems with it, it's just that I want to see more reasonable reasons than "it's not the OG so it's bad".

3 - As you can probably already tell from these warnings, these posts are bound to get looong, so I'd recommend setting aside a fair amount of time and getting real comfy if you're gonna read it all. I also don't mind if you just skip ahead and only read the interesting parts, I'm not the internet police.

3.5 - I don't want to use it as an excuse, but I think I should make it clear that English is not my native language, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes and awkward/stilted text. It's hard to tell by myself, so feel free to correct me if you find something.

SO, with that out of the way let’s get down to what’s really important:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record Episode 1

Whew, now that’s a mouthful.

You know, in my mind I always thought a “side story” was something that happened alongside a “main story”, like another POV, so I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate title, but who am I to judge?

So here we go, we’re off with some beautiful futuristic scenery already, that’s the Madoka series I know.

As the classic Sis Puella Magi plays in the background, two unseen narrators tell us the tale of the so called “magical girls” as we are shown the reality of being one, meeting our first witch for this series.

Risking your life to save a cat doesn’t seem like the smartest of things. Rather, witches eat cats? That’s mean.

No, you really, really don’t. This narration definitely seems made to make everyone who saw the original say this, particularly with how silly are the wishes these girls suggest.

And hey, look, even this girl who supposedly had her wish granted doesn’t seem very happy.

Hang in there, this is only the first episode.

Man, this scenery really is pretty though.

After an exciting fight with a witch in the train, our girl here silently goes home to find

Whatever the heck this is.

So, our girl here seems to be having strange visions whenever she enters her room, that is very very suspiciously cut exactly in half. Protagonist, you sure have an unique sense of interior decoration.

She goes on with her day, makes two lunchboxes and… oh, it seems she’s all alone.

Is this something you should be telling your own daughter?

Long story short, Iroha’s parents are abroad right now (as is suspiciously the case with many a anime protagonist parents). I actually love the parallel this scene draws with OG Madoka: whereas Madoka’s parents seem responsible and Madoka even looks up to her mom and they’re a happy united family, Iroha comes off as being the responsible one in her family and her parents are gone from the get-go. This way, the lonely atmosphere of the previous scene also starts making sense.

So, it seems like there’s something Iroha wants to do here, and that’s why she decided to stay behind.

Perhaps. Did you wish to save a black cat?

Wow, this teacher is speaking fast. Calm down lady, we’re not here to speedrun the content, geez. Though I guess we should be happy she’s at least giving a proper class, unlike a certain other teacher…

Oh great, it's this guy.

Ok, Iroha doesn’t remember what she wished for and Kyuubei doesn’t know either, although he knows she used her wish for the sake of someone. Kyuubei theorizes that the reason she doesn’t remember might be that not remembering was part of her wish, but Iroha doesn’t think she’d wish for that. I don’t think you’d ever think to wish for something like that until you had to wish for something like that though.

She’s got a fair point. After all, wishing in this universe is basica— the heck is going on in the background there?! O-kaaay…

Iroha was having a weird think-spot mental conversation with Kyuubei there, and missed speedrun teacher’s lecture entirely. Being meguca is suffering.

We get some school motto propaganda, and now we’re on the roof. Oh? Where did all the friendship stuff from the propaganda go? Seems like Iroha’s not following the school spirit. Unless she considers the white weasel a friend, so that’s why she gave him her extra… wait, Kyuubei can EAT? I thought he was some alien machine-like being. H-Huh...

Classmate A: Tamaki-san, maji tenshi!

She’s probably just shy. According to her classmates, Iroha used to be busy doing something or the other, but no one can remember what that is.

Cute.

But maybe don’t do that somewhere someone could easily walk in on you, Iroha.

Iroha gets a call by the girl from the combat scene from before, whose name is Kuroe. I couldn’t tell from their conversation if they’ve known each other for a while or if they just met each other for the first time in the fight before.

On the train, although she’s the one who called her over, Kuroe remains silent. Iroha, clearly uncomfortable, tries her best to make conversation. Poor Iroha, I know the feeling.

We learn from her that the number of witches around has been decreasing. She comments that being unable to get Grief Seeds is troubling, but it’s better than having witches causing trouble. Poor girl has no way to know just how much of a bad news it is running out of Grief Seeds.

What’s with pink-haired girls and lacking self-esteem? Iroha, are you sure you didn’t wish to save a black and forget that you did? You did save a white one just before.

Kuroe finally decides to talk, and she tells us this:

If you go to Kamihama, you’ll be saved. To anyone that saw the OG, the first thought that comes to mind is that they’ll be saved from their destiny of turning into witches, but it seems Kuroe doesn’t know the truth yet. She just doesn’t want to fight witches anymore. I think.

The train lights up, and…

...this is extremely unsettling considering the truth about witches and the conversation they’re having right now. There’s a lot of this, but this just hits different having watched the original.

Iroha’s not inclined to believe what Kuroe’s saying. Of course, despite not remembering her wish, she’s the type that’s happy with fighting witches if she can save someone, and Kuroe’s not being very convincing either. The whole thing is apparently a rumor spread by some girls who saw a dream that told them that.

Except that Kuroe actually had the dream too.

Like most magical girls, Kuroe made a short-sighted wish, and regrets it. She now wants to be saved, so she’s going to Kamihama.

...or she was, but before that, they’ll have to defeat the witch they let escape the other day, ‘cos she’s back for more.

I actually have so many questions about this scene. Weren’t Labyrinths pocket dimensions? How come this one’s moving in physical space? We know witches themselves move and their Labyrinth goes with that, but I thought it was more, like, the entrance to the Labyrinth moves. Then how come witches can escape if magical girls get carried with their Labyrinth when they move…? Just... just... what?

The answer to all of that is probably “magic”.

Like that, Express Witch Labyrinth crashes right into what seems to be a train station. Labyrinths don’t have brakes, confirmed.

Brutal.

Looks like it’s not only magical girls who have territorial disputes going on. Although it’s nice that they won’t have to fight two witches at the same time, this is not exactly a relief when you consider these two were already struggling with the previous one, and this one just ripped it apart like crab.

As expected, Iroha’s arrows do no damage at all. When all seems lost…

A wild singing mini Kyuubei appears! Is this a shiny?

The singing Kyuubei distracts the witch and jumps towards Iroha, who uses her pro white cat catching skills to grab it, and… something happens. Whatever this Kyuubei did, Iroha’s having some flashbacks now. Sadly, the middle of a battle isn’t the best time to be having a BSOD and, despite Kuroe’s attempts to snap her out of it, they’re sitting ducks right now, a black and a white one.

Thankfully for them, though, they’re not alone in this barrier. This mystery blue haired girl spams flying spears and makes short work of the witch Iroha’s arrows didn’t even scratch earlier. She’s clearly at a whole ‘nother level.

Also, chibi Kyuubei’s gone. Totally not suspicious. Nope. Not at all.

So, from this OP miss get-the-heck-out-of-my-territory, who didn’t even bother saying her name, we learn that not only there is no salvation in Kamihama, there are more, stronger witches, and there are currently no Kyuubei. She gives them the Grief Seeds from the two witches before, and passes on a warning to them. Not the friendliest of magical girls. Though if you consider what happens when you run out of Grief Seeds, one could understand why it’d be undesirable having too many magical girls in the same place.

With this, Iroha and Kuroe take the train back to their town and things are totally awkward again.

Welp, seems like Kuroe doesn’t want to chat anymore, so we’ll have a dream sequence instead.

Forgive my lack of words, but this scene doesn’t need them. This is just… you couldn’t ask for a better representation of what being a magical girl wishing for salvation is like. Everyone has their own reasons, but in the end, having known despair, these girls are desperately clinging to this last hope called Kamihama. It’s almost a pilgrimage.

“Let’s go to Kamihama. We’ll be saved there”

And in the midst of all that is the mysterious girl from Iroha’s dreams.

(the track here, Paradero de Memoria, is also great btw)

Now, with various wishes written all over in the background, we get Kyuubei’s spiel about magical girls. I think this is word-by-word the same from the original too.

We now get to finally know what our protagonist’s wish was.

So Iroha wished to cure her younger sister’s illness, but the sister in question is now nowhere to be found. Worse: everything related to her is gone. Even Iroha, who made a wish for her sake, didn’t remember her existence until now. Oh man, that’s no normal disappearance. What happened? Guess that’s what Iroha will have to find out now.

With that, we conclude the first episode of Magia Record(’s s1)!

This is a really strong first episode in my opinion. It decently introduces our protagonist, sets up the mysteries we will be dealing with from here on and also manages to trace connections with the original, while using the viewer’s previous knowledge to give a whole different impression to some scenes. You wouldn’t be like “hell no” at the rumor there at the start if you didn’t know the truth about magical girls, and I doubt that final scene would hit that hard either. It’s just really good at this and it’ll continue doing that from now on. I love it.

Speaking of the final scene, me having watched the original over five years ago might also be part of it but that is really my favorite scene in Madoka overall. I just really really love that scene. (Seriously, I’ve watched this scene so many times I know it by heart now. Help.)

Alas, I lied, the episode’s not over yet, we still have our classic anime first episode ending-opening to watch. So let’s listen, to Gomakashi:

This logo’s real pretty.

So yeah, pretty standard anime opening. If you pay attention, there are some references to Connect too, what with the selfcest and whatnot. Although I managed to mistake this when I first watched, this one’s actually sung by the trio TrySail rather than ClariS. That’s the VAs for Iroha, Asakura Momo; Yachiyo (the get-out-of-my-territory girl), Amamiya Sora and Natsukawa Shiina, whose character we’ve yet to meet. TrySail has a lot of cool songs, so do check them out if you haven’t already. (free ad)

This time, in fact, the episode is over! Whew, I did say this was going to be long, but not even I thought it’d be this long. By the time this is posted I should have a backlog of these, so my plan is to post one everyday until we are done. I hope you had fun reading this here rant and I’ll be looking forward to meeting you guys again tomorrow, same place, maybe same hour, so we can go on and watch episode 2 together!

(P.S.: I am considering doing a series of posts at a later date comparing the anime to the game, but we’ll see. The first few chapters are fine, but the game is stupidly long, so I feel it’d take a lot of motivation and stamina I’m not sure I have at the moment. There’s also the possibility watching the first arc again would bring back my yt copy-apocalipse grief back and that’d suck, definitely don’t wanna go through that again.)

#magia record #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm magia record #this post apologizes for existing

9 notes · View notes

sssn-neptune-vasilias · 4 years ago

Text

RWBY vs Comic

Alright, I said I was gonna do this back when the comic first started getting published but I got so frustrated reading it that I couldn’t actually keep up with it enough go through with it. I think I stopped around issue 4 because that was when I just got angry and threw my comic back into the plastic. I figure now’s as good a time as any since I’m actually rereading it now. My whole issue with the RWBY DC comics is that they’re super canon divergent but somehow still canon material. It’s so frustrating that this is the case because we’re supposed to take into account things that happen in the comic as gospel- things like Adam revealing he’d always been genocidal, Bumbleby’s bottlecap, Weiss’ zoo animal arc, etc, but a lot of these different story arcs don’t make sense in our current canon. So I’m gonna talk about them because why not.

Issue #1:

The first issue actually isn’t that bad- mostly because it’s just an intro to the series- but there are still some huge inconsistencies between the comic and official canon.

These two panels are a fucking mess.

1) Ruby was passed out when she was delivered to Patch by Qrow. She’d just used her Silver Eyed Warrior powers for the first time, hurt Cinder, frozen the dragon, and passed out. We were literally forced to listen as Qrow carried Ruby out of the rubble and back home, because she was unconscious. But the comic has her just arriving back home all on her own. “I came back to my dad’s house.” No you didn’t, you literally woke up in your bed after what must’ve been days of being unconscious.

2) We know Blake didn’t get to Menagerie on a little wooden boat. We all watched the episode. It was a decent sized ship with multiple crew members, dozens of passengers, and literal armaments designed to destroy Grimm. Sun can’t hide in a robe for 3+ days on this boat. This boat wouldn’t have survived a Grimm attack in the first place. Idk why they decided to draw this boat instead of just drawing the Pride the way it was designed in the first place, but whatever I guess.

RNJR didn’t tell Taiyang they were leaving. Ruby and her team just left. There was a whole scene dedicated to showing the shock and horror on Tai’s face as he saw Ruby’s letter and ran out of the house hoping to catch up to his daughter before she left. Also not as important but still relevant, RNJR left during winter. There was snow on the ground. I don’t see no snow in this panel- that tree looks real green. That last issue is mostly a nitpick- who cares what season they left in tbh. But the fact that they just wrote this panel into the comic despite the fact canon shows Taiyang had no idea of Ruby’s departure- and the fact that Ruby’s departure is actually really important to a bunch of later scenes in this show is really fucking weird.

Issue #2:

I know we know next to nothing about Raven Branwen, but holy fucking shit do I wanna believe this is ridiculously out of character for her. You’re telling me that Raven actually did come visit Yang and Tai and Ruby, but the one time she ever made her presence known to any of them was to berate and terrify Ruby the one time she’d learned anything about Summer?! Like BRO. This is so fucked up! This is too fucked up! This is straight early 90′s level villainy right here. What was even the point behind this?! This scene tells us that she felt so negatively about Summer Rose that she was willing to break her silent cover just to disillusion Ruby for no other reason than to tell her she was weak. Which makes no fucking sense because when we finally meet her during season 5 Raven has nothing bad to say about Summer at all! What did Qrow say to her after they spoke? “Hey sis why the fuck are you flying around your ex’s home scaring his daughter who just lost her mother? You realize you’re talking shit about the woman who raised your child too right?” Like, this is so wildly terrible, that if we’re meant to take this into account, I don’t see how anyone who reads these comics could say anything positive about Raven ever again. This is strike one, two and three for her entire characterization.

Issue #4:

I’ve said it already but fuck this boat.

Not so much an issue with the comic as it is with RoosterTeeth’s sometimes sloppy storytelling, but we really need an exact age on Adam. Is this man a pedophile? We know Blake is about twelve here, meanwhile- besides looking maybe a little scrawnier- Adam looks the same as he did during the show. How old is this kid right here? Fifteen? Seventeen? Was he 20 during the events of volume 1? Was he 25? I really dislike this specific problem RT has created because at no point during canon were we led to believe that Adam was significantly older than Blake or our other characters, but here in the comic we’re getting huge pedo vibes. Idk if this was RoosterTeeth retroactively trying to throw Adam’s character even further into question but... Idk man, RT y’all need to hurry up and carbon date this kid because I’m really not liking this.

I’m not gonna harp on the whole “Adam as a revolutionary vs Adam as a genocidal maniac” issue again. Most of y’all already know where I stand on this and have either made up your minds that either, yes, Adam’s sudden change towards being genocidal after being forcibly conscripted by Cinder doesn’t make much sense, or, no, Adam’s behavior is entirely in line with what little we’d seen of him up to that point in the story. I’m not trying to change anyone’s opinions on this issue, I’ve got about a dozen other posts for that. My issue with these panels specifically is that this is the moment Blake discovers Adam is genocidal. This is the moment Blake realizes that Adam never wanted peace, never wanted coexistence, never wanted what the White Fang actually wanted in the first place. He wanted Faunus supremacy- a goal entirely removed from the White Fang’s goal of equality between Faunus and humans. This is the moment Blake realizes that his ideology is so far from what it is she herself wants. If this is correct, why does Blake never mention this AT ALL when she’s talking about Adam. When the conversation comes up during season 3, she specifically states that Adam’s change was gradual. Not that he’d been hiding who he really was from her but that he’d become a completely different person from the man she’d originally known. I recognize that a lot of people say that this could be explained away as evidence of Blake’s abuse- oftentimes abusers don’t even realize just how monstrous their abusers are, even after they’ve escaped from said abuse. But this is just such a monumentally larger issue than manipulation and abuse. Adam is outright saying that he wants genocide! He’s not trying to hide it, he’s not trying to lie, he’s not trying to manipulate her! He’s telling her explicitly that he wishes he could kill as many humans as possible. But during the Black Trailer she’s still asking Adam about the crew members as if they hadn’t had this conversation hours ago! During season 2 she’s drawing him in her notebook as if she misses him! During season 3 she’s explaining that he’s simply misguided! This is apologia of the umpteenth level that is absolutely inexcusable. If I’m honestly supposed to be made to believe that Blake knew Adam was genocidal from before the events of the Black trailer and season 1 but still had feelings for him... I’m sorry but I’ve lost any and all respect for her entire character. You can’t have feelings for someone who’s genocidal- who you know is genocidal- and expect sympathy. No amount of abuse would forgive someone for having feelings for Hitler.

I recognize the comics aren’t supposed to be a shot for shot recreation of the show, but what the fuck is this panel? The frame of Adam dismembering Yang was such a good, amazing, impactful frame. The black and red framing, the yellow of Yang’s hair and weapons, the red of Adam’s sword. Why would you not even try to recreate that?

Leaving nitpicks for the end, really wish they hadn’t used “sunflower” here. That’s Yang/Ren. But again, the comic is made by people who aren’t in the fndm and don’t interact with the RWBY community at large in the first place, so of course they wouldn’t know.

Issue #5:

Why does Blake seem so ooc here. Like, the fact that she’s trying to make Weiss feel guilty for “cheating” in a “win by any means necessary” free for all match is really??? Weird??? When we know Blake isn’t above using underhanded tricks herself considering what she did to Reese during the tournament and her Semblance in general??? But whatever, that’s mostly a nitpick as well.

Issue #7:

My issue with this story is that it ends with Yang like, wistfully thinking of spending more time with Blake. But this is before she even put the prosthetic on. This is before she even got to talk with Weiss after meeting up with Raven. This is so early on in her healing process that I find it extremely difficult to believe that Yang is fondly remembering any time she spent with Blake. When Ruby talks to her during 3.12, she was angry that Blake had left her! Abandoned her! And then in the conversation she has with Weiss that happens after this event in the comic she’s still frustrated with Blake for leaving. So like... did she suddenly forgive Blake just a few weeks into her recovery and then relapse back into feeling like she’d abandoned her? Wtf is this?

Issue #9:

I know she’s obviously supposed to be drunk here, and we barely got to know her during the short scenes she had, but like... she never struck me as this kind of person. To literally forget how old her daughter is? Like...???? The same woman who was so perceptive she was able to recognize that Whitley was acting out because he’d felt lonely and abandoned by his sisters? Doesn’t know how old one of her children is? This is silly.

This isn’t the same woman we met during season 7. This isn’t the same quick witted woman who immediately directed Weiss to the cameras she’d hidden around the house when it was time to spring the trap on Jacques. This isn’t the same woman who was so honest when she admitted to her own faults just a few short months after this scene supposedly took place. You could argue that the events of this comic are what led Willow to become the person we meet later on, but like... That’s an absolutely ridiculous amount of offscreen growth you’re expecting me to just assume has happened. These aren’t the same people. This is ridiculous.

Issue #12:

This seems so ooc for Sun. Why is he literally begging her to run away and not face a problem when his entire relationship with Blake up to and past this point is him teaching Blake to love herself enough to face her problems head-on in the first place? This is so weird and gross imo because it just feels like they’re warping Sun’s character to make it look like Yang is the only good influence in her life when that’s simply not the case. Every conversation Sun has with Blake from season 1 to season 6 is him telling her that she deserves happiness, love, and to forgive herself. There are multiple songs about this aspect of their relationship! Sun has helped Blake grow just as much as Yang has. Why is Sun taking this approach to manipulate Blake into staying silent about something that’s bothering her? On top of that, Sun’s never been the brightest banana of the bunch anyway, why the FUCK is he smart enough here to recognize that if Blake tells the truth and makes those people feel bad, that they’d draw more Grimm? He’s never been this intuitive before. It really feels like they made him smarter than he normally is just to make him scummier than he’s ever been so that we could feel that Blake’s relationship with Sun is less than her relationship with Yang. Awful writing and characterization from the RWBY DC team here

Issue #13:

This is so wrong and despicable and manipulative and terrible. Again, this isn’t the same woman we met in the show.

Willow never made excuses for herself or her actions like this. Not once during the entire time she was on screen did she do anything like this. She knew she wasn’t a great mother and she took full responsibility for her actions- and inaction- I don’t know WHY she’s trying to excuse herself here. This is more Cruella De Ville than it is Willow Schnee.

I’m not gonna explain how lumping this “prized menagerie” story with “Faunus slave labor” story together is godawful but just recognize that it’s Black History Month and this plot point they decided to write in is not MLK approved.

Anyway, that’s the whole RWBY DC run. All in all it wasn’t the worst adaptation of an established series, but goddamn. I’d rank this up there with Eragon or Percy Jackson or the end of the Soul Eater anime or something. This is such a slap in the face by people who obviously only ever skimmed through the show for the explicit purpose of writing this series that I’ve read fancomics and fanfiction that handle canon better than this. It’s really frustrating too because this comic run is like, beloved by certain people in the fndm who are only in this for the ships, and people who refuse to see anything wrong with this series ever. The healthy servings of Bumbleby and crumbs of Monochrome and White Rose are apparently enough to make people go “fuck all the inconsistencies, this comic is great.” Cannot express how much these people make me wanna slam my head into a wall.

I did this just to highlight all the issues I have with the run, but I’m sure other people have other issues with this comic than I do. Have fun in the comments I guess.

#RWBY #RWDE

31 notes · View notes

iffeelscouldkill · 4 years ago

Text

this is the place that they pull you to

A/N: I would say “my hand slipped” but this actually took me like a week to write xD

This is a post-season 2 episode 1 fic, so, here be spoilers! Basically I was talking to @dragonsthough101 about how I was expecting more emotional fallout on McCabe’s end from all of the conflict and tensions in episode 1 and the putdowns from Arkady, and while I’m sure we will get that in the podcast, it also occurred to me that I could... write that :D and thus *flourishes hands*

Title is taken from Wires by Savlonic, because I was listening to it and I realised it’s actually a very good song for RJ, both under the Regime and after. And now I earworm myself whenever I work on this fic xD

---

Once the door to RJ’s room on the Iris II has slid shut behind them and the red ‘lock’ light has engaged, they let out a shaky breath.

Then, only then, do they allow their lower lip to tremble.

RJ shuffles over to the bed – more like a cot really, but that’s long-haul space travel for you – and drops down onto it. Park’s words from earlier are looping inside their head. “I hope you’re right. But honestly, in this moment, McCabe? I’m glad we don’t have to find out.”

RJ lets out another shaky breath that’s closer to a sob, and blinks back the tears that are forming in their eyes. It doesn’t completely work, and a couple escape and track down their cheeks. RJ smears them away with the palm of their hand. “Get a grip, McCabe,” they mutter angrily to themself. Sure, they might be alone in their room right now, but they know better than to feel like it’s safe to relax or let go. Someone could be by any minute to check on them, or there might be a situation that requires all crew members to come to the mess hall, or the cockpit, and then how will RJ explain their red eyes and wrung-out demeanour?

It’s not safe to let their guard down. It hasn’t been for weeks. Even around Park, the one person on this vessel RJ knows they can trust, RJ feels – off-kilter, like they’re lagging a step behind everything. RJ is still trying to get used to not addressing him as “Agent”, to figure out what they can and can’t say now, to navigate their new relationship. As friends – but are they friends? Does Park even like RJ, outside of the context of them working together under the Republic?

It seems uncharitable to think, and RJ and Park had always had a good relationship as colleagues – they hadn’t been close, and Park had seemed pretty inscrutable to RJ at first, but then they’d got used to his way of working and communicating. Figured out how to make him crack a smile. Drawn some praise from him, even, and realised that underneath everything he was a caring person, and a good boss.

But RJ had also thought – been sure – that Park was loyal to the Republic, so how well did they really know him? Know this Park? And Park has been treating them… warily, especially these past few days. Not coldly or poorly, but a little bit at arm’s length. Like he isn’t sure what they might do. Like he doesn’t trust them, even though RJ trusts Park totally – to the point where they were willing to throw over their whole career, everything they’d worked so hard for, and follow him onto the Iris II.

Granted, they also hadn’t had a lot of other options at that time, but RJ still isn’t sure they would have made the same decision if Park hadn’t been there.

And yet here they both are, and Park is already a fixture in the cockpit, watching the controls when Tripat- when Sana or Krejjh needs a break, having apparently built up some experience as a co-pilot for long-haul transports after serving in the military (yet another thing that RJ didn’t know about him). And he’s comfortable enough with the crew to be on bantering terms with them, to suggest plans involving decommissioned government satellites. Whereas RJ…

“Cram it, McCabe!”

RJ’s lip trembles again, this time in earnest. And RJ would like to pretend that these are angry tears, or frustrated or indignant tears, but they’re really not. RJ wants to be angry, to stand their ground and fire back and give as good as they get and somehow manage to verbally earn the others’ respect; to be seen as a person instead of a suspect or a liability. But they’ve struck the wrong chord every time. RJ is sick of the awkward tension every time they’re in the room; sick of Arkady’s prickly snappishness and Sana’s increasingly weary peacemaking; sick of the unspoken communication between the crew that they can’t parse.

It doesn’t help to realise that the crew must have got practiced at that during the weeks they spent evading the IGR’s scrutiny before they made landing on New Jupiter. At least Park could say he hadn’t been there by that point. But McCabe had, headphones on, straining to parse something from every off-handed comment, every loaded silence.

Park wasn’t there because he was being tortured in Zone Z, McCabe thinks, and abruptly feels sick. Sick at the thought, and sick of themself for – not thinking, for even considering for a split second that Park might be somehow better off. After being imprisoned, cut off from his friends and family, tortured and maimed by a government he’d spent years of his life serving.

The same government that he believes RJ was thinking of selling them out to.

This realisation steals the breath from RJ’s lungs with a whoosh, and all of a sudden they don’t feel sick, or indignant, or hurt – they just feel cold.

RJ hadn’t been able to explain to Park in the moment exactly what they’d been thinking by withholding the information about the Fowleys being bugged and monitored (because of course they were). When the ‘offer’ from Jay Fowley had first come through, the crew hadn’t been desperate enough to seriously consider it, and by the time they were… well, they’d been on the verge of figuring things out anyway. And RJ had been feeling angry, and vindictive, and not in the mood to volunteer anything that would aid the crew; not when doing that had got them into this mess in the first place.

And maybe in the back of their mind, a voice had been whispering that they should keep their options open. It’s a voice that gets louder in the dark, when RJ is lying awake on their bunk, unable to sleep for replaying those moments in the corridor, the way that it felt like the ground was falling out from under them as Goodman denounced them and Park as defectors. It gets louder whenever RJ clashes with Arkady, whenever they catch uncertain glances from the other crew members, whenever RJ wanders the corridors of this godforsaken claustrophobic ship and realises that this is it now. This is their whole life.

But they never thought about how that might look to Park. It’s like in RJ’s head there are somehow two Republics: the one that would be capable of doing such horrible things to Park – to any person, much less one who hadn’t been demonstrably proven guilty – and the one that RJ had dedicated their career to serving, that they had believed was just and good and right.

RJ wants to find him and apologise, to try and explain, to share some of the fears and secret thoughts that have been curdling on the back of their tongue these past weeks.

But Park told them to get some rest, and RJ has enough awareness to realise that there’s a much higher chance of the conversation turning out well if they sleep a while first. So, reluctantly, RJ toes off their shoes and shrugs off their vest, and wriggles underneath the taut blanket attached to the bunk.

Either they’ve reached some kind of peace with themself or they’re more exhausted than they realised, because sleep overtakes them in minutes.

---

RJ is woken by a knocking at the door: light and tentative at first, and then firmer and louder. As always, it takes a moment for their brain to catch up with their surroundings: the hard bunk beneath them, followed by the bare walls of their room, still unadorned (RJ wasn’t exactly carrying any personal belongings when they fled CUI Headquarters, and the ship hadn’t made any stops since. Not that RJ knows what they would put in their room anyway. There hadn’t been much to leave behind on New Jupiter). RJ sits up and rubs an arm across their eyes, then goes to answer the door.

It’s Violet. RJ clamps down on the reflexive urge to say something like, ‘Did you draw the short straw?’, or maybe, ‘Did they send you to manage me?’ Violet doesn’t look like she’s here under duress, and to RJ’s memory, she’s not a particularly good actor.

“Hi,” they say instead.

“Hi,” Violet replies with a little smile. There’s always a weird dissonance – though RJ would never, ever bring this up – that comes from hearing the voices of the Rumor crew come out of the mouths of actual people instead of a recording. “How did you sleep?”

“Uh…” RJ thinks back, and is surprised to find that the answer is ‘well’. They actually feel… slightly refreshed. “Fine.” Belatedly, they tack on, “Thank you.”

“That’s good to hear.” Violet smiles again. She’s never been unfriendly to RJ, but these past several days, she’s seemed more on edge, more prone to sarcastic retorts, less willing to make peace between them and Patel- Arkady. RJ had believed that her patience was slowly fraying, that like the rest of the crew, she was only willing to put up with the new additions to the ship for a certain amount of time and that she’d stop pretending before long. But now, taking in Violet’s looser posture, the way some of the lines around her eyes and mouth have eased, RJ realises it had never had anything to do with them. Violet had been worried about the supplies. About her… medical emergency.

Speaking of supplies… “Did Park tell you what we wanted to add to the list?” RJ asks, figuring they’d better add a bit of verisimilitude to the excuse that Park had used to speak to RJ alone.

Violet’s smile widens. “He did. I definitely agree about replenishing our coffee supplies – though, I don’t know what kind of quality you’re used to, because I should warn you that the black market kind – the affordable black market kind, anyway – is pretty bad. We get non-freeze-dried coffee whenever we can, but out here…” Violet shrugs as if to say, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’.

RJ manages to suppress a wince at the term “black market”. This is your life, now, RJ, they remind themself for the thousandth time. “That’s okay. The stuff in the IGR breakrooms was basically dreck. I can drink pretty much anything.” RJ is no coffee lover, but they drink it for the caffeine. Pretty much everyone in the Republic has a caffeine addiction or develops one at some point – no way to get through eighteen-hour shifts without it.

Violet chuckles a little. “It was always the same at my lab internships. I guess bad breakroom coffee is pretty universal.”

RJ recognises that she’s trying to bond with them by referencing shared experiences of working for the Republic. It’s not the first time she’s done it. But RJ still has trouble seeing their circumstances as equivalent.

Violet is – had been – a scientist, not an Agent; not one of the IGR’s most loyal, tasked with the defence of the Republic. She’d never had access to classified briefings; hadn’t dedicated her life to tracking down and apprehending insurgent forces. And given that the Rumor crew had deceived her into entering the cryo chamber, she could argue that she’d been duped – and had only co-operated in order to save her own life. Well, the argument would hold water up until Elion, anyway.

It wasn’t the same.

The silence hangs for a few moments, before RJ prompts her, “Did you want to… ask me something?”

“Sorry, yes – I came to tell you that dinner’s ready and uh, we’re about to eat in the mess hall if you’d like to join us.” Violet smiles again, with a touch of nervousness this time. No doubt she’s expecting a caustic brush-off.

“Is it veggie stew?” RJ can’t help asking, with a slight nose wrinkle. They’re expecting a rebuke from Violet, some kind of warning about being grateful for what they have, but instead she laughs.

“Unfortunately. On the bright side, though, it’s only for a couple more days and then we’ll be able to have actual flavourings again.”

RJ almost smiles, and is surprised when they catch themself. And – they were going to decline, make an excuse about continuing their nap, because they’re still feeling off-kilter and they doubt that Arkady will be thrilled to be spending time in close quarters with them so soon, but – they think about Park’s talk with them in the hallway. About how they’ve spent the past few weeks dodging any kind of connection with the rest of the crew, anything that will put them past, in RJ’s mind, the point of no return – and where exactly that’s got them.

“Sure,” says RJ. “Just let me, uh…”

They put a hand up to their hair, realising that it must be sticking up in all directions after their nap. Short hair is gratifyingly easy to take care of, but it sure does have interesting ideas about gravity.

“I have a comb you can borrow, if you need it?” Violet offers.

“It’s fine,” RJ declines automatically. “Park-”

They catch themself, wondering why it feels like such a concession to accept even this tiny piece of help from someone other than Park. They think about their bare room, empty of any personal possessions.

“I’m okay right now,” they say slowly. “But… is it too late to add something to the shopping list?”

Violet blinks, clearly surprised, and then smiles brightly. “Not at all.”

---

Five minutes later, hair tamed and clothes straightened, RJ makes their way towards the mess hall, which adjoins the kitchen. They haven’t spent much time in here so far – there’d been a couple of communal dinners at first, which quickly gave way to the reality of shifts ending at disparate times and the need to simply grab food however and whenever people could, something RJ had been grateful for.

Once, on their way to the kitchen, they’d walked in on Violet and Arkady having what looked like a picnic at the table in the centre of the room, just the two of them. That had been awkward for everyone. Since then, RJ has taken to finding their food and snacks at times when they know most of the crew are otherwise occupied.

Everyone else is already there and making more noise than you would think a group of six people could generate. Brian is in the kitchen, ladling bland servings of stew into the uniform polypropylene bowls that they’d found stacked inside the cupboards. Krejjh stands next to him, loudly enthusing about the virtues of the stew to anyone within earshot. Violet and Sana are waiting to be served, while Arkady – who has just been handed a full bowl by Brian – rolls her eyes and makes sarcastic comments as she carries it through to the mess hall. There, Park is sitting in one of the bolted-down chairs, watching the whole scene with a slightly raised eyebrow and waiting, if RJ had to guess, for the general hubbub to die down before he goes to get his food.

RJ pads over and slides into the chair on the same side as Park’s good eye. Park turns his head slightly, giving them a quick once-over, almost too brief to catch. “Hi,” he says quietly. “How was your nap?”

RJ hesitates over what to say. “It helped,” they reply. “Park, can we… talk? After dinner?”

The tiniest of frowns creases Park’s forehead. “Sure,” he says. “Everything all right?”

RJ nods, drumming their fingers on the tabletop and meeting Violet’s gaze as she comes over to sit next to Arkady, giving RJ a friendly smile. They don’t quite return it, but… it’s not as unwelcome as it would have been, before.

“Yeah,” they say to Park. “It’s fine.”

#TSCOSI #The Strange Case of Starship Iris #TSCOSI spoilers #RJ McCabe #Jin Seon Park #Violet Liu #Starship Iris Season 2 #ficlet #did I write *another* fic about RJ adjusting to life on the Iris II without a hint of irony?#yes yes I did #but I swear I haven't forgotten about the original! Chapter 5 is coming!#I have not abandoned it even though I am apparently writing two coda ficlets for every episode that comes out #also I need to write fic for TSCOSI week *sweats*#and I just signed up for the Podcast Big Bang #this is fine #anyway it was interesting exploring the differences between this RJ and the RJ I characterise in Adjusting #because obviously they're very different and I hope that came across #but in both iterations I do think Violet would be the one to reach out first #because despite what McCabe thinks she *can* relate #I did ponder having Sana be the one to come to RJ's room and I think she would also do that #but I'm just here banging my little Violet & RJ friendship drum #I feel like Arkady came off a little badly in this but it's just RJ's perspective #they obviously don't get along right now but I am confident they will be best frenemies later #and have badass team-ups in the field

33 notes · View notes