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ca-suffit · 3 months

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So, I'm the anon that asked the "how do you rationalize the violence?" question, btw. Thank you for your answer. I personally believe 2x07's version of the events is closer to the truth (I don't think there's a POV that 100% accurate, but I think that's as accurate as it gets about it), but that doesn't excuse Lestat's violence. Louis might have provoked him, but he had just seen Claudia being chocked and stepped in to defend her. I don't blame him for lack of a better word, 'exploding'. I think I would've done worse if I saw my niece, that isn't even my own child, in that situation. And yes, Lestat has gone through a lot of trauma in the books and the show, and people can argue how that and being turned into a vampire shaped his mind and have this aggressive side he might not be proud of, but it doesn't excuse anything. Because Lestat himself caused a lot of trauma in both Claudia's and Louis' lives. I do hope if the show is going with a loustat endgame (haven't read the books, but from what I've heard, they're canon), they're gonna have Lestat using his infinite lifetime to reflect on that, really earn Louis' forgiveness, be the kind of companion he deserves and never even consider doing it again. If it's possible to redeem him. I don't know if it is, but at least they have the "they have all the time in the world to do that" card. I do hope they try it, though, because making this behavior normalized and recurring would be terrible. I just don't know if it will be convincing and satisfying, but I'll wait I guess. I hope the same for Armand too and that they give him and Assad the grace of flashing out the character instead of demonizing him to make Lestat look better. I hope they also know he'll need and deserve more from the narrative than a half-assed apology, because there will definitely be some double standards about Lestat and Armand. There already are. But I struggle with some other stuff too. Because I love Louis, but he's not innocent either. I also don't believe in punitivism and I don't want to be reducing him and feeding into people that want to stereotype and demonize him, but... Claudia really is the only character that has always been inferior in terms of power imbalances in the dynamics of the show. At least among the main characters. If we consider killing people to feed then it's basically useless because they're vampires and not even the human is innocent because Daniel didn't worry about Malik being lunch. I do think it's a good thing for Louis' accountability that he feels regret and remorse for his worst actions, but I don't believe the fandom does the best job at discussing that. Many times it feels like babying the white character, reducing the characters of color into racial stereotypes of abusive, comparing them, ignoring what's convenient to prop their favorite etc. Like one is always traumatized, misunderstood, trustworthy, ashamed, trying to be better and the other is always wrong, unreliable, overdramatic etc. There doesn't seem to be a lot of nuance on people's interpretations and a safe space to discuss the differences of each moment and dynamic without accidentally feeding characters you love to the lions... Anyway, I'm rambling at this point, I don't even know what I was trying to ask lmao. But thanks for the attention and the previous answer.

(context) u can ramble all u want here tbh.

there *are* a lot of questions to explore and this fandom makes it v hard to do it. despite what the racist side would have u believe, ur not going to get attacked for exploring questions. ppl know whether someone's being intentionally racist or not when trying to talk about these characters.

the thing that the fandom isn't understanding (on purpose) is that having black and brown characters have these complex personalities u can explore is a rly good thing?! racists want u to believe that there's topics we can't talk about bcuz of stuff like saying ppl "need" louis to be "a victim," but all that rly says is "I don't want to have empathy for black ppl but I'm gonna say it another way and blame others for it." nobody here is saying louis, claudia, or armand is off limits to exploring, just don't be fucking racist about it! ppl would rather run off and say the fandom is full of bullies who will call u racist instead of...looking at their own biases? half the time nobody is even saying the word "racist," these ppl apply that shit to themselves in a panic. it'd be funny if it wasn't so harmful.

things to ask urself here are....what is ur definition of "redeemable"? where does that belief come from in the first place? a religion? society? both? what is ur own relationship with abuse and trauma? have u explored what codependency looks like in real relationships? do u understand all the emotions behind these things the characters are doing? why is louis feeling regret and remorse important to u?

I think a lot of confusion and anger over the DV is that ppl only know of one response to it and that's to leave forever. a lot of society is built on v black and white thinking with no emphasis on forgiveness or growth. ofc nobody has to interact with anyone they don't want to or "owes" anyone forgiveness or help to rehabilitate and all that, but it doesn't change that the person themselves is capable of growing and changing. we tend to have strict ideas of what "abuser" and "victim" look like and don't realize how quickly those identities can switch on the same people. a lot of abusive behavior is learned from trauma and traumatized ppl tend to form relationships with each other and act just like these vampires do. it's hard to place anyone in single categories bcuz it's a spectrum. this is humanity reflected at us thru vampires.

all of these vampires carry their specific trauma and triggers and are living in ages where none of this even has been put into words yet, plus they're vampires on top of it. their rules *are* different from ours to an extent and a lot of it is bcuz they're also a v small group who is immortal. imagine someone u rly hate for having harmed u badly in some way (mentally and/or physically) and then imagine u knowing ur gonna run into them or hear their thoughts for the rest of eternity. are u supposed to kill them? could u live with that for eternity too? what if they're stronger than u? what if they read ur mind first and kill u instead? it's a lot to forever think about. idk what the show is going to do, but I have faith it'll be satisfying bcuz of knowing AMC's history with writing about traumatized ppl. Television has gotten rly good at writing about abuse and trauma in v nuanced ways. ppl tend to shy away from it tho bcuz they're not ready to confront these things in their own life and so they find an excuse to say it's bad. the racist side cannot get over calling it "shock value" even tho all the violence (physical, emotional, sexual) has been treated with great respect to the audience and characters. u see the violence move thru the characters, affect them for years, and nothing shown of the violence itself is meant to feel cheap and "shocking." these ppl simply do not want to engage so they find a reason to justify why and this story will never make sense to them bcuz of it.

#asks #interview with the vampire #amc interview with the vampire #interview with the vampire amc #iwtv amc #amc iwtv #iwtv 2022 #fandom racism #abuse #trauma

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timdrake-yumm · 2 years

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I’ve come to realize that there are several different types of Tim Drake fans, that can all be sorted different ways, but I’m going to sort them this way:

Hate/Dislike Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Damian Wayne: idk if this is a result of cancel culture or what, but the fact that they’ve all wronged him at least once is apparently the worst thing in the universe, as though not everyone has done something that could be perceived as wronging Tim at some point in comic history. I hate to break it to you guys, but y’all are extremely biased, and Tim isn’t so innocent either

Hate/Dislike Jason Todd and Damian Wayne: This is because they both tried to kill Tim at one point and you haven’t been able to let it go. While this is more valid than the last one, I still think you need to chill with the character hate, they’ve both been through some pretty traumatic stuff and we’re mostly not in their right minds when they did that. I mean, I’m not saying it’s okay that they tried to kill Tim, but they’re also fictional representations of what might occur if you came back to life after having died only to see all your insecurities thrown at your face, or if you were raised by a murder cult.

Hate/Dislike Damian Wayne: Now this group of people likely fall into the mentality that because at one point Tim hero-worshipped Jason, he must not have hard feelings for him, and therefore neither should you. But also you can’t forgive the 10-year-old for acting on his traumatized, raised-by-a-murder cult mentalities, like any 10-year-old has the ability to think outside their biases born from the childhood they were provided.

Love/Like ALL the robins: You either believe that Tim wouldn’t hold hard feelings, so neither should you, or you realize they’re all fictional characters who hold the fatal flaw of having flaws and not being perfect individuals.

I’m not saying that any of this is 100% accurate or anything, and you could probably throw some variations of adding Bruce, Stephanie, or even Alfred into the mix, but these are the thoughts that I had while taking a shower yesterday and have only just now put into typing.

Anywho, basically, there are people who don’t like Dick Grayson because of what happened when Dick gave Damian Robin, and while I see your perspective, and I don’t agree with his actions at the time, Dick was a desperate, young adult who just lost his second father and was thrust into a role and burden he never wanted. Of course he made mistakes, anyone would! I don’t believe he was ever trying to alienate Tim the way it ended up being. (Side note: the wanting to put Tim in Arkham is fanon, and should not be used as a reason for disliking Dick. I believe there was mention of therapy, but that’s it, and while it’s extremely hypocritical of Dick to suggest therapy while not being willing to go himself, it’s not like he was exactly wrong. They all need therapy; even before everyone he loved was dying around him Tim needed therapy. You probably need therapy too.)

For everyone who dislikes Jason Todd, I see your reasoning, I really do. He took his hurt and pain out at being replaced and unavenged out on Tim and likely did some pretty heavy psychological damage whilst doing so. It’s a bit hypocritical of him to be so upset about being replaced when he 1. Doesn’t know the full story and/or 2. Was a “replacement” himself. But you have to remember that none of this is really about Tim. Maybe that makes it worst, maybe that makes it better, but it’s the truth. Jason literally died and came back to life, and the minute he gains complete thought he realizes he’s been in the hands of the League of Assassins, and that his torturer and murderer is still out there causing harm to everyone he can. Was he wrong to take all of this out on Tim? Yes, obviously, Tim was just trying to help and honor Jason’s legacy. Does he deserve a chance to make it up to Tim and be better? Also yes. Batman preaches about second chances, which is part of the reason why he doesn’t kill, but to me that’s like being someone who’s never been a victim of rape or abuse, and telling someone who has been a victim of rape or abuse that they’re wrong for being traumatized and that they should forgive their rapist or abuser and just get over it. That’s not how trauma works, and even if you’re against killing someone yourself, you don’t get to tell a victim how to protect themselves from those who harmed them. Locking him up didn’t and doesn’t work, and all he’s doing is creating more victims without any inclination towards change or remorse.

Sorry, that went into a bit of a rant that nobody asked for. Not that anybody asked for any of this, of course. Anywho, the point of all that was to say that Jason Todd is a victim. I’m not saying that Tim isn’t a victim, and that he shouldn’t also get the same allowances as Jason of course. Tim also went through a very traumatizing experience, he should get to do what makes him feel safe. (Another side note: forgiving someone and putting yourself back into a harmful situation are two different things. You can forgive someone and also want to never have to see them again. That’s valid, and even if that person isn’t actively trying to harm you anymore, their presence in and of itself can still be harmful.)

This all leads into Damian Wayne. I mentioned before that Damian showed up as a traumatized 10-year-old straight out of being raised by a murder-cult. Damian, like Jason, is a victim and deserves the chance to grow and change. Tim is also a victim, and deserves not to constantly be in a state of Danger. So what does this mean? I’ve seen some people mention that Damian is never actually punished for any of his harmful actions. And I’ve seen other people wonder how you plan on punishing the traumatized 10-year-old. I’m not a parent, but I am currently studying psychology, and I believe some of the same stuff applies. You can’t just throw Damian in jail or ground him or something, that’s never going to work, and will only alienate him further— reducing his likelihood of listening and being open to change. Damian needs to be shown that his actions have consequences though (Look at me acting like he’s a real person). You can’t just hear/see him actively trying to harm someone and be like :( bad Damian. That just tells him that he’s never going to be punished for his actions, and can therefore get away with it. You need a balance, and to also recognize that Tim is allowed to be defensive and not want to be in the same room as Damian. You see Damian do something wrong? He’s benched from being Robin, and you explain that this is not what Robin represents and that Robin doesn’t bring harm to innocents. However, when you see him do something good? You reward him. Now you have positive reinforcement showing that certain actions have benefits. Damian is a victim of his past, but he’s also a child emulating what he knows. There’s a difference between not punishing him for being a victim, and teaching him to not create his own victims.

And that has been my unwanted and unasked for rant about the robins. Another side note, but if you create media that depicts any of the robins or Bruce, or any DC character in a negative light, I’m not telling you to stop. I can think that they don’t accurately depict who the characters are suppose to be and still love reading the angst.

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 3 years

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The Adventures of Big Dog the Clown, 11th February 2022

I want you all to know that I’ve buried my inbox. I’ve buried it. I held funeral rites. I gave a speech, in Welsh and English. I sang songs. I gave a beautiful eulogy. It is dead. It is gone. It has been buried, but not in dirt - it has been buried under the weight of the 657 unread messages held within.

Anyway, WELCOME BACK TO THE CIRCUS! This is the longest update I’ve yet written, because I am busy and important and haven’t had chance AND YET the clown show has been trundling on in the meantime so the tricks have piled up, lads. As ever, don’t @ me if the dates aren’t 100% accurate, I am not a trained professional and also don’t care.

So! Where did we leave off! If you’re just catching up, the original saga is here, and the last update is here. Also, @welpnotagain made a primer here for anyone confused by all the names which I hope will help, although Tumblr is a broken and barren place for coding and working links and it suddenly won’t let me go there on this laptop so soz if that doesn’t work. And, here is an extremely brief description of the political parties, if you aren’t British and don’t know what a Tory is.

ON WITH THE SHOW!

Monday 31st Jan

Let’s begin with some fun whimsy! Remember the m a s s i v e lorry convoy at Dover thanks to Brexit? And how lorry drivers are being forced to wait like... 14 hours in their lorries? Which has obvious enormous welfare issues because food and toilet facilities don’t exist on lorries?

Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport, Huw Merriman MP, goes to Dover and steps in human poo.

MEANWHILE, the major milestone arrives - Sue Gray finally finishes her report, and regains her work-life balance, unlike me. This is a mixed bag, actually, because we had been waiting for it with baited breath after the Met Police refused to investigate so it was going to be the only actual investigation we got; but, then the Met changed their minds when it became clear that people were starting to view them as being about as powerful as one of those paper chains of people holding hands draped in front of a charging bull, and THEN they said Sue was only allowed to make “minimal reference” to stuff they were investigating. So the report is published and you can read it yourself! But it’s diluted, and now we’re waiting for the official legal investigation.

But it did still come with Consequences. Pippa Crerar, still doing the Lord’s work, announces that Sue Gray has revealed a “gathering” (lol) in BJ and Carrie’s Downing Street flat on Nov 13th 2020 is being investigated by police. And then Scotland Yard, who should probably put our Sue on the payroll at this point, reveal they’ve received more than 300 photos as part of Partygate. More than 300! What a party! Boris going to regret his cute idea of putting disposable cameras on the tables.

So, shit’s heating up! How does Big Dog respond?! How will he handle the reveals?? What will the leader of the country do to salvage his rapidly tarnishing reputation? Let’s check what he does in the House of Commons!

Boris accuses former lawyer Keir Starmer of letting notorious paedophile Jimmy Saville avoid justice.

This classy and dignified response is obviously an interesting tack to take, for multiple reasons; chief among them, of course, being the two pronged rejoinder that it was Margaret Thatcher, former Tory leader, who knighted Saville in spite of knowing about the paedophilia, but also, crucially one might say, that Keir Starmer had literally no power or say in the Jimmy Saville case and it therefore isn’t true. But ah, Big Dog has long been undaunted by concepts such as truth or integrity.

People are not happy though, Tumblrs.

Ian Blackford is so incensed by this and also... you know, everything else... that he actually accuses BJ of lying, which is bigger than it sounds because you are absolutely Not Allowed to accuse people of intentional lying in Parliament. The Speaker asks him if he wants to correct himself to say the PM is mistaken. “Nah,” says Blackford, “fucker lied,” and promptly gets thrown out. I presume if asked, his stance is “Lol worth it.”

Meanwhile, journalists are suddenly inundated with messages from multiple Number 10 staffers saying “We told him not to say the Jimmy Saville thing”, because it turns out that it wasn’t a panicky off-the-cuff remark. BJ thought of it as a zippy little zinger, suggested it to advisors, and every single one of them unilaterally told him it was a very bad idea. And then he did it anyway. “He doesn’t listen to advice,” said one insider, presumably through tears.

Over on Twitter, Nazir Afzal (former Chief Crown Prosecutor who worked with Keir Starmer) strongly refutes the Jimmy Saville thing, and confirms that Starmer had nothing to do with the decisions taken; on the contrary, he “supported in bringing 100s of child sex abusers to justice”. And thus begins a weird path in which, by referencing a far-right conspiracy in a bid to smear his opponent, Boris has now caused Keir to be painted as the singular enemy of paedophilia in this country, lionising him to the nation. This is a spectacular mis-fire and also very strange for everyone who understands that Keir Starmer is, in fact, A Bit Wet.

Anyway, between the Gray Report and the Starmer Smear, Tory MPs and ministers have a big emergency meeting in Portcullis House, described as ‘packed’. Liz Truss attends without a mask, and promptly tests positive for covid.

To round off, the Daily Mail (the only paper still blindly supporting Boris Johnson apparently, although they did support Hitler back in the day so not a shock) puts a picture of Keir Starmer having a beer through a window on their front page for the third time in the past two years, trying to get it to gain traction and take the heat off Boris. Because, you know. A man drinking a beer alone in a house is the same as a man having about six hundred orgies in his own flat during a pandemic. Obviously.

WHAT A DAY let’s move on!

Thursday 3rd February

Woo, look at that! We’ve jumped so many days! MAGIC, there’s a MAGICIAN in this circus, it’s not at all that I didn’t keep track properly because I was writing up a research report on badgers, don’t @ me.

The Secret Barrister (fantastic Twitter account, if you Want In to the politics fandom I recommend you follow them) tells us that the Met suppressing the Gray report is actually the first thing they’ve done right, possibly ever but certainly during this whole debacle. This is because the Report being published in detail could actually help the Tories corroborate their stories and make it easier for them to lie their way out of the whole thing when it comes to the police investigation. Unfortunately, because the Met is, y’know, a bunch of bumbling hypercorrupt slug-like fascists, everyone has assumed this is just the Met being the Met lol. So the dancing pigs continue.

Anyway WHO WANTS TO SEE HOW THE KEIR STARMER/JIMMY SAVILLE THING IS PLAYING

Elena Narozanski, Education Policy Specialist, resigns.

Martin Reynolds, principle private secretary to the PM (he sent out the BYOB invites), resigns.

Dan Rosenfield, chief of staff at Number 10, resigns.

Munira Mirza, Head of Policy, resigns.

Jack Doyle, director of comms, resigns.

OH THE HUMANITY

Five resignations! In one day! Munira Mirza is especially punishing because she’s an utter dickblistering mouldy turd who has proudly worked with BlowJo for 14 years, and she actually published her resignation letter for all to see.

Still. Never mind! Thursday was a bad day, but hopefully Friday will be better.

Friday 4th February

Sensing that things are Bad, and that the mass exodus of staff members as a direct result of his smear campaign is maybe something that needs halting, BJ holds meeting that he calls a “half-time pep talk”. Oh boy! It must have been so stirring and motivational! How did he do?

Well, here’s a literal quote from him: “As Rafiki in the Lion King says, ‘Change is good, and change is necessary even though it’s tough’.”

Lion King quotes, cool cool.

Then he goes to the press and claims the resignations were actually him firing people as a result of the Gray Report.

WHAAAAAAAATTTT

YEAH THAT’S RIGHT

WE HAVE MUNIRA MIRZA’S RESIGNATION LETTER, BUT NO, BORIS CLAIMS HE FIRED HER, TOTALLY BELIEVABLE, ALL GOOD

So how are senior Tories handling this? Well, let’s ask the Chancellor! Rishi Sunak, a man who is super careful at all times to never criticise the PM, distances himself from the Saville thing and directly tells journalists “Being honest, I wouldn’t have said it.”

Holy shit! What will he say when asked if BJ should apologise?

“That’s for the PM to decide,” says Sunak, proving that he didn’t grow a whole spine after all; more just two and a half vertebrae.

He then looks journalists in the eye and claims we’re only struggling with heating bills because it’s a colder winter than normal (it’s not) and we’ve used up more of our gas stores (the Tories shut down three quarters of the UK’s gas storage in 2017) so Sunak be Sunak-ing I guess.

Meanwhile, former Labour leader Ed Miliband calls Boris Johnson “a stain on our politics.” It’s such a fabulous quote, isn’t it? Don’t look up him saying it, though, Ed Miliband has the whiniest voice you’ve ever heard and it will definitely detract from the incredible savagery. But WHAT a line.

SO, remember how the BBC had found a definite 7 MPs who had sent a letter of no confidence in Boris? We just need 54, remember! Anyway now they reveal they are aware of 17. The numbers climb...

But, of course, this whole thing has been dragging on for a while, and is really starting to overspill into reveals of other scandals! This is exciting because everyone has been just hand waving awful Tory acts! Like that time Boris Johnson prioritised evacuating animals from Afghanistan over people! But now everyone is starting to care about things like Boris Johnson prioritising evacuating animals from Afghanistan over people! Let’s see what else has come up.

First, the government is forced to release private messages sent between Matt Hancock and Owen Paterson about Randox (the firm that Paterson worked for that won £600m+ in covid contracts). Sorry - I haven’t mentioned Owen Paterson before. He used to be Minister for the Environment and doesn’t believe in Climate Change. That’s not relevant here, but Provides Colour. You’re welcome.

Second, Private Eye publishes a story revealing that the government gave out £600m to private company Unispace Global Ltd for PPE from April-June 2020. That money is now just… missing. No PPE. No trace of where it went. This, by the way, is a Sunak Thing.

Thirdly, Boris is revealed to have flown to the north west of England in a private jet, and everyone is furious because Environment. Also Liz Truss was found to have done the same thing in Australia, so everyone now thinks this is a new Thing Tories Do.

Fourthly, Jacob Rees-Mogg claims the morning after pill is an abortion (not sure Jacob Rees-Mogg knows what century he’s in, he’s very confused).

Fifthly, UK Statistics Authority chair Sir David Norgrove rebukes BJ, Priti Patel and the Home Office for misusing crime figures by claiming offences have fallen when they actually increased.

And then SIXTHLY haha okay I love this one

Comedian John Finnemore posts quotes on Twitter from an article about Tony Blair in 2006, when the country was baying for his blood and he was refusing to go. The excerpts:

It is a wonderful and necessary fact of political biology that we never know when our time is up. Long after it is obvious to everyone that we are goners, we continue to believe in our “duty” to hang on, with cuticle-wrenching tenacity, to the perks and privileges of our posts.

We kid ourselves that we must stay because we would be “letting people down” or that there is a “job to be finished”. In reality, we are just terrified of the come-down.

No more outriders, no more adrenaline, no more do-or-die Dispatch Box jousts; no more staring soulfully into the camera, with the little red light on to tell him that he is now going live to every house in the country; no more feeling out pain, no more watching us watching him feel our pain.

Oh no, he thinks: he can’t face that loss. He can’t face that endocrinal cold turkey, and so he postpones...

All politicians are masters of procrastination, but there is no day they find easier or more natural to postpone than the day of their own resignation.

Stirring stuff, eh? Almost poignant. And you can really see why it’s being shared now, for all that it was actually about Tony Blair, except no, Tumblrs, no, you aren’t seeing why it’s being shared now, because the real reason is IT WAS BORIS JOHNSON WHO WROTE THOSE WORDS.

Quoth my husband on that day, sending me all this info: “Trying to find details about specific Tory scandals is like trying to eat a GBK burger.”

Seven Days Ago

Michael Fabricant in da house! That’s right, BlowJo’s stunt double is back to Help. He agrees that all those resignations - including Munira Mirza with her resignation letter - are actually BJ firing people and taking action to remedy the problems flagged up in the Gray report. It’s at this point, actually, you need to start asking yourself - when Boris started Operation Save Big Dog, because he didn’t understand that people were angry with him specifically, who exactly was he intending to fire to save his own skin? And if those people found out that they were considered expendable, would they hang about? And if they then all quit anyway, how likely would Big Dog be to claim it was intentional after all...?

Meanwhile, remember the plan to put the army in the Channel and send refugees back to France?

The Ministry Of Defence tell Priti Patel they will NOT be policing the Channel and sending refugees back to France when they take over crossings next month. So, uh. Sucks to be you, Priti.

And then CRERAR’S BACK and OH MY GOD okay okay

The Mirror reports that Sue Gray has handed to the police a picture of Boris “I was ambushed by a cake that didn’t exist for a mere 10 minutes before returning to work” Johnson holding a can of beer at his lockdown birthday party.

Beside him stands Rishi “I was not at the PM’s illegal birthday party because I am deeply unpopular and wasn’t invited” Sunak, holding a soft drink.

And the photo was taken by the official state photographer.

FUN FACT! That means it’s subject to freedom of information legislation, which means anyone can ask to see it and the request must legally be honoured. Perhaps you’d like to ask for your own copy?

Six Days Ago

I swear I am not making this up. Mohammed Amersi, major Tory donor, demands his £200K back because he wasn’t invited to all the illegal parties.

Rich people.

Nursingnotes.co.uk reports that the money wasted on unusable PPE would have been enough to double the salary of every NHS nurse, so the scandal dominoes yet continue to fall.

Then Rory Stewart, remember him? Fella who ran against Big Dog for Tory party leadership and left politics (but not spiritually). He pops back up again and dunks on Fabricant and his stupid “they didn’t resign, they were fired” claim.

Meanwhile, the Met are having a bad day. No one likes them anymore, and also, a watchdog has been conducting an investigation against them, unrelated to this particular circus. Today, the investigation concludes! And finds “a culture of disgraceful misogyny, discrimination and sex harassment.”

Ruh roh, Raggy.

And then, more clowns!

An unnamed cabinet minister (it is clearly Nadine Dorries let’s not piss about), FURIOUS at the lack of blind simpering sycophancy for the mighty Big Dog, accuses Rishi Sunak as being “on manoeuvres” for criticising the PM’s attack on Keir Starmer about Jimmy Saville. The unnamed cabinet member (you will never convince me it is not Nadine Dorries) calls on BJ to sack Sunak.

WHICH IS THE DUMBEST FUCKING SUGGESTION IMAGINABLE (IT IS CLEARLY NADINE DORRIES) because Sunak is literally the biggest contender for Boris Johnson’s role. He’s the favourite. It’s going to be him. If fired, he’d be ruthless, with nothing to lose. He could openly gun for the position. He would wipe the floor with Johnson. It would be a bloodbath. There would be a final party on the Ides of March, BYO knife. Sales of ear poison would soar. Red Wedding, Welsh-history-then-used-by-George-R-R-Martin style.

Then Nadine Dorries does the dumbest fucking interview anyone has ever seen that makes it look like she’s fucking Big Dog. (That is the link to the Michael Spicer coverage, who is of course an excellent journalist of true integrity, it’s a treat.)

And then she suggests new laws to prosecute streaming sites for airing programmes like the Jimmy Carr one in the most cynical attempts to cash in on unrelated outrage to make yourself look good I’ve ever seen.

Two round off, a seven year old girl (not Josephine, a new one called Isobel) asks BJ for an apology after her own birthday parties were cancelled. I feel you, Isobel. March baby, me. No birthdays for two years. Fuming.

Five Days Ago

Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert founder, reads Rishi Sunak to fuck over his proposed solution to the energy cost crisis, continuing the trend of Sunak not... quite... entirely getting away with all this.

Meanwhile, Lord Ashcroft is currently writing a book! And he reveals some extracts. For example:

A Downing Street aide turned down a major new role because they didn’t trust Carrie Antoinette. BJ’s response? Verbatim?

“Fuck Carrie.”

Apparently, he would regularly make excuses to avoid heading back to the flat he shares with her. He said to one colleague, “You don’t understand what it’s like upstairs.”

Which is interesting, isn’t it??? Because another story is resurrected that BJ went to a dinner party in a gentlemen’s club with journalists for the Telegraph and other right-wing papers in 2021 (he left COP26 to go to it! In a private jet! So serious about the environment!) where he willingly and without prompting told them all that he had “BUYER’S REMORSE” over Carrie and the new baby, and the bloodthirsty right wing journalists were embarrassed. When they ran the story in the New European, BJ tried to sue them.

Filed under: people I have no sympathy for whatsoever.

Four Days Ago

Remember Sunak and the energy cost crisis? It’s revealed that Britain’s two biggest energy companies make £4.5 million of profit per hour. Fun fact! That’s also how often a person in the UK dies of living in a cold home.

Dominic Grieve! Of all people! defends Keir Starmer over the Saville thing, and affirms he wasn’t responsible, AND that it’s a fascist conspiracy theory anyway, which is just INCREDIBLE.

And also timely, because then, Keir Starmer has to be rushed into a police car as a mob of protestors swarm him outside Parliament over the Saville thing. Piers Corbyn is among them! Jeremy Corbyn’s brother! Christ. What an experience. Man’s a lunatic.

Yvette Cooper joins in over the whole “Boris lies and claims the crime stats have fallen when they have literally risen thing” and demands the PM correct the record. Astonishingly, he does not.

And then remember the picture of Keir Starmer drinking a beer through a window? That the Daily Mail were desperately trying to turn into a Thing?

The Met Police reveal that they have determined that no laws were broken over the picture of Keir Starmer having a beer. Trololol. Swing and a miss, son.

Meanwhile! Remember how one of the resignations was Jack Doyle? Director of Communications?

We have a replacement! It’s Guto Harri, a man who has spent most of his time making an appalling tit of himself in Welsh politics so I am very excited to see the rest of the UK discover how a large potato could do a better job while also mispronouncing his name, probably, I foresee a lot of “Gooto” being said.

But also this happened:

Oh also Dominic Cummings called BoJo a clown. Bit rich.

Three Days Ago

Downing Street finally break their silence over the constant requests for a comment on the Saville thing. Excellent! It was a bald lie, and Keir Starmer has now been attacked by right wing nutjobs over it! Let’s see their official stance!

They will not be apologising for the Saville thing. “He has got other stuff to get on with today,” says the official spokesperson.

(The polls reveal, meanwhile, that 69% of the country believe that BJ is responsible for Starmer being harassed by right wing nutjobs over the Saville thing. Just looking at the opinions of 2019 Tory voters, 54% believe it. This has not gone over well as an assertion.)

But let’s see what other stuff Boris Johnson has to get on with today!

Well, now that we have the Gray Report, and Sue Gray can finally get back to her actual job and enjoying things like wine and sunsets and the laughter of babies again, obviously the Tories now solemnly understand that Changes Must Be Made. They fired/accepted the resignations of five people, of course. Totally intentional. Definitely planned. But what else? Surely there are some Big Name Resignations coming?

Step forward: the Cabinet Re-shuffle! Ministers get shunted about like a particularly determined juggler auditioning for a new circus, except the circus in question is the UK Government and the juggler is a clown, so there are only two balls and both get dropped and one turns out to be a custard pie which gives an audience member anaphylaxis and the children cry.

No one is actually sacked. Only two women get new roles, a move that even, of all fucking people, THE DAILY MAIL are pissed off by, triggering them to coin the term the “he-shuffle”, which is a really shit pun that took me half an hour to work out but JEEsus when even the Mail turns on you...

Fun fact! The new minister for housing is a landlord who once defeated a law to make homes “fit for human habitation”.

Even more fun fact! Jacob Rees-Mogg gets a demotion to Brexit Opportunities Minister that somehow gives him an extra £35K a year for less work. In the words of John Elledge, major UK journalist, it’s a bit like trying to keep a small child occupied, so you put them in charge of keeping the garden free of goblins or something.

The funnest fact! He may actually have a serious conflict of interest according to anti-corruption experts (he’s a major shareholder in a multi billion pound fund specialising in emerging markets.) Tories be Torying. Here’s a fun cartoon.

Two Days Ago

The Mirror reveals photo from the Number 10 Christmas quiz showing BJ with an open bottle of bubbly. Pippa Crerar, a one-woman government killing machine at this point, tweets it during PMQs, meaning Boris has zero time to prepare.

So he’s asked about it there and then by Labour MP Fabian Hamilton, who describes him in the photo as “surrounded by alcohol, food and people wearing tinsel”. Oh no! What a disaster! But it’s irrefutable! How could you get around this? It’s a photograph! The camera cannot lie!

Boris’ response: “It’s not true.”

IT’S A PHOTOGRAPH YOU UNGODLY SHITKNUCKLED BLIMP

Then the Education Secretary says pupils shouldn’t be allowed to criticise BJ in class, and tries to get some teachers fired for allowing it. This is because the teachers were doing a civics and politics exercise with year six pupils, where they teach them about British political systems and due process, and then tell them about current political events. They then got the children to write letters to the Prime Minister.

The children were not kind. The grown-ass Tories are Very Hurt about it. So, let’s end freedom of speech I guess.

And then, Scotland Yard announce that they are reviewing their previous assessment that the Christmas Quiz did not meet the threshold for an investigation (remember that? When they said they don’t investigate past crimes?)

The Met begin contacting over 50 Downing St party attendees, including Big Dog.

Yesterday

John Major returns to the public consciousness, like getting an abnormal result on a smear test.

Yes, I know, sorry to remind you all of John Major. But! He, too, is here for his pound of flesh! He tells the BBC that Borry J broke the law over the parties! No word on whether Nadine Dorries tried to demand his sacking too, she’s dumb enough to try.

Martin Lewis pops back up to stick the boot in again over Sunak’s stupid fuel bill loan scheme, because a YouGov poll shows most people want to opt out. It seems the golden touch is a little less golden, Chancellor?

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Secretary met with Liz Truss, a woman with all the talent and charisma of an old and faded hot water bottle who is the second favourite to take over from Boris Johnson. He described the meeting as “like talking to a deaf person”, by which I presume he means ‘intentionally not listening’, because the Deaf folks I’ve known have always been very attentive, I thought (except Amy Jenkins in Sixth Form who was quite honestly a massive dickhead, but that was unrelated to her hearing status. This is again not really relevant, but if you’re reading this, Amy, fuck you and give me my pencil sharpener back.)

BUT THEN THE BIG NEWS!!! :D :D :D

Remember that watchdog investigation into the Met that found it was a gross nest of misogyny and discrimination?

Cressida Dick tells the BBC she is “seething angry” about the findings of all the misogyny and that, and that she has no intention of quitting.

Immediately after, she meets with Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, who tells her he has no faith in her leadership.

Two hours post-interview, CRESSIDA DICK MYSTERIOUSLY RESIGNS!!!! :D :D :D

What the fuck did Sadiq say to her???

Anyway this is actually fantastic news. The sordid tale of why Cressida Dickhead belongs in jail being spat on by inmates and passersby alike would take a much longer post and this one is already 8.5 fucking metres, but if you’re feeling brave, here is a Twitter thread by Simon Edge that explains it. Warning: it’s extremely upsetting, and covers police corruption around the murder of a man of colour in good detail. But DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD, crack open the good cheese, lads.

Sadiq Khan publicly says he will now work closely with the Home Secretary to replace her with the aim of restoring trust. This is very funny because the Home Secretary is Priti Patel, who will be furious about this, and I dearly wish I could be a fly on the wall.

Then the leader of Lib Dems (it’s Ed Davey, it’s okay, no one knows who it is, you aren’t alone) says Boris should have no influence over Cressie D’s replacement. Well, it’s nice for the Lib Dems to get a line.

And then Nadine Dorries decides to do some politics! Now, back in 1981, Margaret Thatcher allowed Rupert Murdoch to buy The Times and the Sunday Times. Previously, monopoly regulators wouldn't have allowed it. She managed this with one compromise: legally, Murdoch wouldn't be allowed to interfere with the Times' editorial independence.

Yesterday, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries removed this restriction. The Times is now free to do Murdoch propaganda just like the Sun does, and, crucially, to publish Boris support pieces. Nadine Has Helped!

Even Tories are furious about this, interestingly. Including Tory voters. They quite liked the Times, and it’s about to become swamp water.

Meanwhile, Hailsham South holds a by-election. The Tories lose another seat to the Lib Dems.

And then international experts say Britain is edging closer to a Flawed Democracy so that’s Super Fun.

Today

John Major is back, and calls for the gift of the head of Boris Johnson on a silver platter.

In fact, cannibalising his own party is not exactly a new move from Major, so no surprises here.

Then, a “senior ally” of the Prime Minister warns Scotland Yard to be “very certain” that he breached lockdown rules. “There is inevitably a degree of discretion here,” they tell the Times. “Do you want the Met deciding who the Prime Minister is? They have to be very certain [before issuing a fine].”

Cool cool! Message received, if you come at the king you’d best not miss, a totally normal and completely legal and acceptable thing to say to the police from the government, totally fine.

Fun times!

Meanwhile, let’s see how Jacob Rees-Mogg is getting on as Brexit Opportunities Minister.

He has asked people to tell him what possible benefits they can think of from Brexit, because he cannot think of any. Fantastic. What a politician.

We get a gift, from r/ukpolitics! A tracker, to see which Tory MPs have sent letters of No Confidence. Fun!

I write my notes for this update. They are five pages, and over one and a half thousand words. They are 42% as long as the Sue Gray report.

Pls buy me a Ko-fi, this took seven hours to write up and I'm a shadow of my former self.

#the adventures of Big Dog the Clown #politik #long post

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unseelie-robynx · 2 years

Text

Cult AU Outline

Ok, so this is the premise of an AU that I have had bouncing around in my head for forever and finally got written down somewhat. It is long, but i’m not apologizing, much, so here’s a

TLDR: Qi Xiaotian ran away from home as a kid. He was raised by a Monk in a cult that worships Monkey King but the old Monkey King, the one who was willing to rip apart heaven. They want to bring that version back and usher in the ‘Golden Age’ under the Great King, Uniting Heaven and Earth. Xiaotian is super indoctrinated, but then gets an assignment that lands him at Pigsy’s where he starts to break free and he decides to just be ‘MK’ and pretend ‘Qi Xiaotian’ never existed. Until the Cult shows back up in his life, he finds out that he had become deified b/c Monkey Kid, and the Monk shows back up directly to start pulling him back into the fold.

Full outline(or as much as I have written out currently) under read more because I wrote it out bullet point style in the words doc and she is long

Enjoy!!

PAST:

Qi Xiaotian ran away at like… 4/5ish?

Maybe 6 for maturity or something?

Abusive/ neglectful parents

He is found/’rescued’ by a monk, appears in 30s

Takes him back to a monastery where there are lots of other people

Qi Xiaotian makes friends, does the ‘homeschooling’ and basically thrives

Homeschooling involves a LOT of indoctrination

Lots of stuff about Monkey King and how the Heavens trapped him

Qi Xiaotian already had Monkey King as his hero and escape from abusive home life

Got courage to run b/c of Monkey King stories.

This comes out, MK is praised and accepted.

Leads to him being slowly brought more and more into the cult circles

It’s been a few years and Mk is one of the smartest and brightest and most devoted to the cause

He can recite any and all stories from memory, can identify all differences between the “truth” and what has been edited by the celestials for people to hear about.

Brought fully in on the Cults goal and purpose, is 100% on board and a believer

Highly favored by the Monk, trains with and learns from him one-on-one

One of the only few allowed to call him Shifu.

Qi Xiaotian is 15/16ish and is given an extremely special mission

Monk has found one of the other pilgrims, Sha Wujing

Need to assess if he is a victim(unlikely) or part of the oppression.

Also (more importantly) need to see if he might be a link to finding Sun Wukong

They can’t approach him directly, so they’re going to go through a friend.

Pigsy

Mk is chosen because he is one of the best/most devoted and because Pigsy has a soft spot for kids and strays.

Qi Xiaotian travels to city, lives on the streets for a little while (to make story accurate/ avoid discrepancies that could blow his cover) and makes sure to run into Pigsy

Gets himself hired/ adopted.

Indoctrination starts to break

Pigsy is a GOOD person

The idea of making this whole persona and identity only to use him starts to grate on Qi Xiaotian

Tang is a scholar and tells him all the Monkey King stories

They match, but not really and Tangs version is so much… happier, more kind

Mei forcibly befriends him

The world is so much happier, with so many amazing things.

Monk said everything was broken/ thrown out of balance b/c of what the celestials did to Monkey King, but what MK sees is amazing and full of so much life and wonder, that doesn’t seem right.

MK decides to break away.

Comes to realization that it might have been a cult

Not a conscious thing, and he won’t verbally or actively acknowledge it

Drops all contact.

Stops check ins

Doesn’t send any new info

Decided to become MK

Take this as his identity and pretends his old one never existed

MAIN TIMELINE

This is probably all after the events of the show?

Just because I’m not sure how to tie it in properly

But there’s a big demon fight, and MK is there

Takes care of everything, no problems

Saves some civilians

One of them is acting strange

MK realizes he knows them

After fight Mk darts with them into back ally

They kowtow and praise the “chosen heir”

Beg forgiveness for getting in the way/ risking his great mission by being there

MK desperately tries to get them up

“are you crazy? Someone might see you?

“stop that, I don’t want that!”

He short circuits slightly upon registering what he was told/called

Terrified the cult is here

Terrified of his past catching up to him

Wants answers

Old friend/classmate asks to be forgiven for informality

MK imidiatly agrees

If he can ask some questions

Cultists just wanted to see if it was true

If Mk had truly been chosen by the great sage

The bhikkhu (lama?) had told them of his calling

Of how he had been chosen and claimed by the great one

How Mk was going to free the Monkey King from the enchantments the celestials had placed on him

MK is really freaking out now

Gets information about how the cult has relocated to city as main center

How they were told they were laying the foundations of the reclaimed age

How they couldn’t interact with MK, because the celestials were watching

They couldn’t blow his cover and let them find out the ‘plan’

Mk’s been propped up as this holly, divine figure

The son and chosen heir of the great king

The one to break the heavens oppression

He who will usher in a new age

Cultist leaves after MK makes him swear not to speak a word of this to anyone

Cultist agrees.

He’ll get in trouble if anyone found out

Not supposed to be around MK

Not supposed to be so familiar with the Prince

Mk tries to forget about it/ cover up why he vanished for a little bit after the fight

He can’t

Anxiety kicks up

Constantly watching for people, he might recognize

Looks for signs of the cult everywhere

Demons are on more friendly terms now

So, they talk and have meetings?

Or at least casual conversations

Information is shared more freely

Gets brought up that “the crazy monk and his cult have moved in”

Mk learns that the demon community is aware of the cult

Just not what exactly they want

Think it’s something about demons taking over

Overthrowing the heavens

And that they think there’s this “great king” who will rule all the demons

Most don’t like that part

Down for the other parts

Mixed feelings about them in demon community

MK try’s his hardest to make this all go away

Ignore it, don’t acknowledge any of it’s happening

Scared the truth will come out

Scared he’ll lose the family he’s made

MK keeps running into cultists at battles

Has to save them

They wait afterward to talk/worship him

All old classmates/friends

Mk starts to get confused

Things the cultists say bring up old indoctrination

He never really stopped believing some of the things/ some of them were technically true/ some of them match the things he’s seen

Also, some of the things about Sun Wukong, are spot on, in a way that you would have needed to be intimately familiar with a person to know

Turning point

Cult had gotten more present

MK sees more and more of them

Then there’s a big demon fight

MK takes a hard hit

Gets thrown

Is dizzy and hurt

Someone is helping them, but he can’t tell who

Hears a voice as he blacks out

“Shh Xiaotian, it’s alright, I’ve got you”

MK wakes up on a simple palate, with his injuries bandaged.

Super on edge

Still figuring out where he is

Then someone comes in

It’s the Monk

Mk freaks out

Pulls out staff

Makes Monk drop the tray with a basin of water and bandages he had

Hands up, trying to calm MK down

MK is darting around, trying not to listen but also wanting to listen

Gets desperate to find an exit

Golden Eyes of Truth activate on accident

MK end up frozen

There are brightly glowing insectoid wings curling up from the Monk

Everything is tinged gold like this

But he knows that these would still be a bright gold even without that

The Monk gives him a soft smile

“You probably have so many question Xiaotian, please, let me at least try to answer them”

Which is about the point that Qi Xiaotian starts backsliding hard into his cult upbringing.

#LMK #Lego Monkie Kid #Monkie Kid #Qi Xiaotian #lmk mk #cult au #cult brainwashing

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dreamwritesimagines · 4 years

Text

Burn The Witch 5 - Cross Your Heart [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful support and feedback my loves ! ❤ Here’s the next chapter, I hope you like it as well and please let me know what you think! ❤ Thank you! ❤❤❤

Warnings: Enemies to lovers, fake dating, mentions of blood, sex, violence, death, manipulation, language, guns, knives.

Summary: Lying is supposed to be easy for spies.

Series Masterlist

You were beginning to think undercover operations were some sort of punishments given to agents, because lying was one thing, but creating a whole life around that lie was another.

Not only were your knives replaced by a bunch of paintings on the wall, you now had some photos in frames; old photos of people you didn’t know, people who were supposed to be your “cover” family.

You’d still prefer to have your knives on the walls though.

“You’re my best friend, you’re supposed to be on my side!” you pressed the phone between your shoulder and your ear, and heard Chloe’s laugh.

“I am on your side, I just can’t do anything about your uniform.”

You plopped down on the couch, setting your heels down on the floor.

“Bucky might be from 1940s, but he knows that it’s the 21st century now,” you said, putting the heels on, “No reason to make me dress like a….weird pin up waitress.”

“It’s a part of your mission,” she reminded you, “What, you can kill a target with a wine glass but a pin up costume is where you draw the line?”

You clicked your tongue, “Anyone can kill someone with a wine glass. It’s not that hard.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Babe it’s not rocket science, you just break the bowl part, then use the stem to stab them in the—“ you got distracted when you opened the kitchen cabinet, “I’m sorry, why do I have so many kitchen supplies?”

She held her breath in excitement, “Do you like them?”

“I don’t know what to do with most of them.”

“Cover Y/N likes cooking!”

“And the real Y/N can’t stand her,” you deadpanned, making her stifle a laugh.

“So he hasn’t texted you yet?”

“Barnes?” you asked, “Not yet. Why?”

“Well, I took the liberty of taking a look at his messages the other day.”

“Oh God, don’t tell me,” you said, “He’s seeing someone else?”

“No no, not at all,” she said, “He’s totally single, and probably ready to mingle. With you, that is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He and Wilson were talking about you the other day. Well, more like Wilson was telling him to get his shit together and ask you out.”

“I don’t think he’s the type to ask someone out via text,” you said, “I think he will come to the shop one of these days.”

“Why?”

“He looked sort of….” You searched for the word in your mind, “Uh-clueless?”

“Clueless?”

“Yeah, you know how assassins usually flirt,” you ignored her noise of disagreement, “He wasn’t like that.”

“You really need to focus on the personal details of his file.”

You scowled, “What is that supposed to mean?” you asked, “I know his favorite weapons, what knives he—”

“Personal file,” she repeated, “You know there’s more to people than their weapons of choice right?”

“I might have to engage in combat if I’m ever compromised, and do you know how many people walked away alive after engaging in combat with the Winter Soldier in all these decades?” you asked, “Three. Three people; Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, and they are legends. I might be good, but I’m not that good.”

“Just memorizing his arsenal can’t help you in this mission,” she said, “Did you know that he hasn’t exactly dated since becoming the Winter Soldier? His ex Connie ended up having 3 kids and a long career at the post office—“

“What am I supposed to do Chloe, stalk grandma’s Instagram?”

“No, she passed away 5 years ago.”

“Of course she did,” you mumbled, “Listen, I don’t have time for this. I’m already knee deep in my own cover, I can’t get into Barnes’s past when it’ll give me no advantage in the mission.”

“Y/N-“

“Trust me,” you cut her off, looking in the mirror to fix your uniform, “I have everything under control.”

***

You had maybe like one thing under control and that was the milkshake you were currently pouring into a mason jar. After a crash course in different recipes yesterday, you barely needed any help from your coworkers and seeing that the shop wasn’t very crowded, you didn’t have to rush.

And now you knew how to make three things; pasta, eggs and milkshakes.

If Keith were here, he would’ve said those were 3 main food groups.

“Tara, we’re running low on maraschino cherries,” you said as you shook the can and your new coworker turned to you.

“Oh that’s okay, there’s another jar are under the counter.”

You put the cherry over the whipped cream, and handed the jar to her. “There you go.”

“Another week of working here and you will come up with your own recipes,” she said, “Tell me the truth, are you like a spy sent by a rival company?”

You stared at her, then forced a laugh.

“I wish,” you said, “Maybe I’d be paid more.”

“Good point,” she said and walked to give the milkshake to the customer while you put the empty jar aside, then went under the counter to search for a new jar.

“Strawberries….” You read the labels out loud as you heard the wind bells chime by the door, “Figs, berries—cherries!”

You reached out to grab the jar and stood up but as soon as you did, you caught the sight of the figure by the door and held your breath, the jar slipping from your grip before you caught it mid-air.

“Bucky.” You breathed out, before you remembered to plaster a smile on your face.

Naïve, soft hearted civilian.

He stole a look around as if he expected someone to attack him at any seconds in a milkshake shop before he stepped closer to the counter you were standing behind.

“Hi.”

“Hi-hi there!” you said, putting the jar down, “You came!”

“You sound surprised,” he smiled and you shrugged your shoulders, shooting him a mischievous look,

“Better late than never, I suppose.”

He hissed in a breath, “Ouch, was it that late?”

“Just a little,” you said “So what can I get you?”

He looked up at the board over the wall, “What are my options?”

“Well, we have Unicorn Cotton Candy, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Candy Cane Passion, Lavender Macaron—“ you stopped talking when you saw the clueless look on his face and cleared your throat, “Or hey, maybe chocolate? We have chocolate milkshake.”

“Chocolate sounds good.”

“Coming right up.” You took a mason jar from the shelf to get to it and he grabbed his wallet, making you raise your brows.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Oh come on—”

“I’m going to make you an overly complicated milkshake if you try to pay for this,” you warned him, shaking the can before putting whipped cream on top of the milkshake, “It’s on the house, I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said quickly, making you point at him with the straw.

“Either way, I’m warning you. I’m armed and dangerous.”

“Consider me intimidated,” he said with a grin as he put the cash into the tip jar and you narrowed your eyes.

“Bucky.”

“Well technically, tip doesn’t count.”

“I wonder where I heard that before,” you muttered under your breath while he walked to pull himself a seat.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” you said, reminding yourself that your cover probably wouldn’t make dirty jokes and went to place the milkshake in front of him.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” You waved a dismissive hand and rested your elbows on the counter, leaning in slightly.

He was gentleman enough to not check out your cleavage, instead kept his gaze on your face, making you suppress a smile.

“You were right,” Bucky said, his eyes darting around the café after a couple of seconds, “About how this place looked. It is creepily accurate.”

“Really?”

“I mean we didn’t have a neon flowers corner, but…” he trailed off, “Yeah. Yeah, I would say so.”

“Is that why you look like you expect someone to jump out of shadows and attack you?” you asked and his head shot up before he scrunched up his face.

“That obvious?”

“Not that I have lots of experience but so far none of the customers looked this uncomfortable while drinking a milkshake,” you said, “Is it because deep down you actually wanted to try Unicorn Cotton Candy?”

“Oh no, I’m good with classics,” He held up his milkshake, “No I just think that I’m a bit….uh, rusty.”

“Rusty,” you repeated, “On what?”

“On this.”

You batted your lashes, looking up at him and you could almost feel him being lured in.

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow,” you said softly after a beat and he gulped, taking a deep breath.

“It’s just that you’re—“ he cleared his throat, “You’re very beautiful and it’s been decades since I last asked someone out for a date.”

Winter Soldier, credited with over 100 assassinations, you reminded yourself Don’t lower your guard, it’s just a cover.

Don’t believe in your own cover.

You bit down a smile, tilting your head.

“Well, I didn’t think you were rusty,” you said and he raised his brows.

“You didn’t?”

“Not at all,” you said, “For the record, I’m definitely going to say yes.”

“Are you?”

“Absolutely,” you grinned, “Once you actually ask me, that is. With words, not an implication.”

His smile was almost playful, “With words, huh?”

“I’m old fashioned like that,” you taunted him, “Let’s see how we can make it less awkward for you though. Would you feel more comfortable to ask me out if you knew some weird stuff about me?”

“You know, that would help a lot actually.”

You tapped your fingernails on the counter, looking up at the ceiling, pretending to be in deep thought. Your superiors had always said the best cover stories were somehow based on real life without revealing your identity, so you figured telling him random things about you wouldn’t hurt or put the mission in danger.

“Well, I really like grapes but I don’t like the skin, so I end up peeling every grape I eat, one by one,” you counted with your fingers, “I watched a documentary once and now I can’t swim in any lakes because I keep thinking I’ll get attacked by that weird flesh eating bacteria. When I was sixteen, I was the president of the chess club but I had a boyfriend who didn’t believe in the moon landing—”

“I heard about the moon landing!” he said quickly, “I didn’t get around to watch it yet though.”

“Oh my God, you should.”

“What else?”

“I’m scared of peacocks,” you confessed, “I know everyone says they’re beautiful but they look like they’re waiting for the right time to attack you.”

He looked like he was fighting with himself not to laugh and he pressed his metal fist on his lips, his whole attention on you.

“You can’t laugh!” you exclaimed and he shook his head, trying to look as serious as possible.

“I’m not!” he managed to hide his chuckle with a cough, “Keep going, this is very helpful.”

You heaved a sigh. “Well, do you want to hear the most embarrassing one?”

“Absolutely.”

“I normally keep my phone on mute 24/7 but since last week it’s been on full volume because I was terrified I’d miss something important.”

The amused light in his eyes got softer and he lowered his hand, a smile warming his face.

Hook, line…

“I was um— I was hoping for you to call, you see.” you said, averting your gaze from him to look down for a second, biting on your lip.

His voice was raspy; “Were you?”

You shrugged your shoulders, mumbling an inaudible maybe, and his eyes trailed down to your lips before snapping up to lock your gaze in his.

“What time do you get off work today?”

And sinker.

Time to pull back.

You sucked in a breath through your teeth, “I work at the soup kitchen tonight.”

“Oh –I thought you said it was on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“I did, I’m just covering for a friend tonight. Family emergency, she says.” you said and pushed your hair behind your ear, shifting your weight, “But my shift is over at 6 tomorrow and I can be ready around 7, I live really close by. If you’re- if you’re free, that is.”

“I am.”

“It’s a date, then.”

“It’s a date,” he repeated and stood up, “See you tomorrow, Y/N.”

“See you tomorrow Bucky.” You smiled as he walked out of the shop and Tara came closer to you.

“Wow, you’ve been here a month and you met someone that hot?” she said and winked at you, “Good job there.”

Right.

Good job.

***

“So, wait—“ Chloe came closer to sit between you and Keith, holding a huge bowl of popcorn, “He just showed up?”

“Mm hm.”

“And you have a date tomorrow?”

Keith uncapped your beer and handed you the bottle as you rested your feet on the coffee table.

“You’re being careful, aren’t you?” he asked you and you nodded.

“Sure.”

“He doesn’t suspect anything?”

“No, he’s buying this whole naïve soft hearted civilian thing,” you said while Chloe snatched the remote from Keith’s hand, ignoring protests.

“And are you?”

You dragged your eyes from the list of movies on the screen. “I want a horror movie.”

“Well too bad, I want an action movie.”

“We’re watching a rom-com and that’s final!” Chloe pointed at both of you, making you groan.

“Why does this keep happening?” Keith asked to no one in particular and she snapped her fingers.

“It’s my turn and my place so I pick the movie,” she said and shot you a look, “I’m still waiting for an answer, by the way. You don’t….you don’t have feelings for Barnes, right?”

Keith stole a look at you before turning to Chloe,

“I don’t think our dear friend here wants a relationship beautiful,” he told her, “Not after what happened the last time.”

You could feel the goosebumps rising on your arms as a shiver ran down your spine.

“I don’t even know Barnes all that well yet, but I can assure you he’s not the type to—“ you paused, “Do something that cowardly.”

Keith gritted his teeth. “Where is that asshole anyway?”

“Hungary,” Chloe said and you raised your brows.

“Undercover?”

“Yeah. I hope he gets compromised and dies there.”

“Very unlikely,” you murmured, “Anyways, what brought this on? My feelings for Barnes?”

“It’s just that I recently read Vincent Smith’s file,” she said, “You guys remember Vincent?”

“Who?”

“His code name was Marco.”

“Oh, I remember Marco!” Keith said, “That guy took down a whole unit by himself. What happened to him?”

“He is missing.” Chloe said and you pulled your brows together.

“Since when do agents go missing and we don’t know where they are?”

“Since they fall for the target.”

“No way,” Keith chuckled, “Badass spy Marco fell in love? Poor idiot.”

“You’re a terrible person, Keith.”

You sat up straighter, “Wait, did you say he fell for the target?”

“Yeah, I saw the reports from his handler. And now he’s missing, and I don’t want you to run away with Barnes like Marco did with his target.”

You and Keith exchanged glances and you clicked your tongue.

“Chloe babe, he’s not missing.” you said “He’s dead.”

She pulled back slightly, “You don’t know-“

“Yes I do. You don’t fall for the target and compromise the whole mission, not unless you want to end up dead.”

“There’s no report of that,” she insisted and Keith sipped his beer.

“What did his report say, sweetheart?”

“That he was removed from his mission before going missing.”

Keith scoffed, “Rest in peace Marco, you won’t be missed.”

“How do you know—“

“Because that’s the code,” you said, “If the report says he was removed from his mission and went missing, it means he was killed by an agent on our side.”

“We killed our own agent?” she exclaimed and you turned the beer bottle in your hand,

“He stopped being our agent the moment he fell for the target.”

Chloe covered her mouth with her hands, worry etched into her expression, “Y/N, please, please promise me you won’t somehow get too involved in this mission and fall for Barnes and put yourself in danger.”

You let out a small laugh, grabbing a handful of popcorn.

“It’s the Winter Soldier we’re talking about,” you reminded her and chewed on the popcorn, “Trust me, that would never happen.”

“Cross your heart?”

You heaved a sigh and clinked your beer bottle with hers.

“Cross my heart honey,” you assured her, “There’s no way I’d sign my own death warrant by doing something that stupid.”

Chapter 6

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes imagines #marvel #bucky barnes x you

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maleyanderecafe · 3 years

Note

Hey there was a mobile game I wanted to recommend you check out! It’s called MazM: The Phantom of the Opera. Obviously the phantom himself is a well-known character and prime example of a yandere, and this version’s Raoul also takes on that trait a little (although it’s mostly because Christine is in a life or death situation and this he’s protective over her), he’s very sweet and doesn’t wait a moment to shower her with praise. Anyway it’s a pretty faithful retelling of the original book and was extra fun for me as a yandere-lover as you play as Christine caught in between the yandere and the actual boyfriend. I think it’s coming to the switch soon as well if you want to wait for that.

...Are you sure that Raoul just takes on this trait a bit...?

Joking aside, sorry it took me so long to answer this ask. I was originally going to watch a walkthrough on youtube, but then I realized that you said it would be on switch and since I just got my switch emulator, I ended up playing with a friend. I will say that there is a lot for me to say about this game, so this will be a long read.

First things first, I'll admit that I've never actually read or watched the Phantom of the Opera before, so I genuinely have no idea what happens in the story. This is where my friend who I was streaming for comes in because she has read the story so she helped fill me in on what happens (she's also making a yandere vn in the future which I will be spamming the heck out of because yandere vn). I think from what she told me, most of the story is relatively accurate, though some parts are changed for one reason or another (for instance, The Persian has a name in this game, but in the original, he doesn't), which has some pros and cons for some characters. Overall though, the story was pretty good for a first timer like me since it really let me experience what the Phantom of the Opera is truly about. I think the creator Mazm did a good job for historical detail, which makes sense considering their platform is about creating games that reinterpret famous stories (they've also done one for Wizard of Oz and Jekyll and Hyde which I sort of want to play), and there are a lot of different notes the player can collect in the game that give more historical insight into what is going on.

The story for the most part is pretty linear. There are some choices you can choose, but except for two, they don't really affect the story. For the most part, the game plays as a visual novel, though you do have to walk around to talk or interact with things to proceed the story. There are cats and notes that lie around the game too, with the notes giving more historical insight and the cats being used as hints in case you don't know where to go. The story is about a detective trying to find out the truth of the Phantom of the Opera at a request of a client whos husband was a victim of him, but most of the story is played through a flashback.

There are also small minigames as well that aren't too difficult, though I honestly felt like some of the minigames got to be tedious at times, specifically the one minigame where you have to press the order of the mirror combo which I found really annoying because besides the fact that I'm bad at those games, you had to do it every time you wanted to enter under the Opera house, which was just... ugh. The game itself seems much more optimized for mobile than it was for switch considering how slow the characters move (and its really slow walking to different places sometimes) as well as the fact that it takes forever to load between different scenes and there's no touch screen option for switch (that I know of). Plus the buttons for moving and pressing hints were annoying to deal with (though this could just be because I'm using an emulator). I also kept getting confused when I was playing, since sometimes I would walk around the entire opera house trying to figure out what to do next, only to learn that I was suppose to talk to someone that was literally five steps from where I spawned. The last thing I found annoying was the fact that there's no option to skip dialogue which is really annoying when I wanted to replay a specific part of the story to take some screenshots. If you play this game, it's probably better to play it on mobile than on switch.

In terms of artwork, Mazm's Phantom of the Opera is really gorgeous, from the overworld sprites to the dialogue sprites to the background and CGs. I love how cute the overworld sprites are (I think Jammes and Raoul's are my favorite, they're both so cute) and every background is really nice to walk through and gives a good atmosphere of what it's trying to show. The character sprites for each characters are nice and varied. I can always appreciate characters that have recognizable faces and shapes, since a lot of times I have face blindness when it comes to characters that look way too similar. The CGs of course are super well done and I love all of them. Overall, the artstyle of this game is very solid and I love the way it looks.

The main character of the story was Christine, who looks really good ( I really love her hair), was for the most part alright initially. While I found her to be a bit naive (because she believed that there was an actual Angel of Music when it was just... the Phantom), she was for the most part alright, and even ended up saving another character from the phantom. However, I found her actions annoying after she met the phantom, specifically the part where she agreed to stay underground with the phantom for two days and would be released as long as she didn't touch his mask, and guess what. Right as she was literally about to leave, SHE TAKES OFF HIS MASK, AND FOR WHAT? YOU WERE JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE?? The other thing that bothered me was the after being trapped with the Phantom for about a month, she is given free reign to go back above ground, under the conditions that she only goes to the opera house and at home. During this time, she's expected to break it off with Raoul, so she fakes a honeymoon with him before he leaves for the artic. However, during this time, she doesn't tell anyone, not even Raoul about what the Phantom is up to. She has an entire month, an ENTIRE MONTH to tell someone that the Phantom is likely to hurt people (as previously he had dropped a chandelier on top of the audience) and she just... didn't. Understandably, she might have been afraid that the Phantom might have heard her, but still, what is he going to do to the possible 100 people that Christine could have told about him. She could have saved people from death if something like that were to happen. Near the end, she does get proper character development and learns to choose things for her sake and not others, which was pretty nice and does stand up to the Phantom after all the trauma (and doesn't get stockholm sydrome, thank goodness), but I still think that a lot of her actions could have probably been written better to make her less naive (since apparently in the original she was about 16ish while in this remake she's about 20 so it's less awkward between her and the phantom).

Raoul is the next character I'll be talking about, because even though he is very adorable, he also has one braincell and talks about Christine way too much. My friend and I actually decided to make a counter on how many times Erik and Raoul say "Christine." Erik says Christines name 128 times and Raoul... says it 340 times. This isn't even counting his introduction and only starts up to when Erik is introduced as a formal character and also doesn't count any time he says it in the overworld. 340! My friend kept on joking around that because Raoul says Christine so much, his brother Phillipe became an alcoholic because he's so tired of Raoul talking about Christine. Raoul only really has like three things going for him: the fact that he was in the military, the fact that he's part of the Chagny household and Christine, and that's it. Throughout the story, his goals are pretty much always related to Christine, whether it be to give gifts to Christine, being worried about her or trying to protect Christine from the Phantom. When the chandelier drops on half the crowd during one of the performances, instead of being worried for them or trying to get out of the Opera House, he instead looks for Christine, who is on stage and quite literally in the safest location within the theater. I would consider him a redeemed/protective yandere though, considering his priority is always Christine (he even gives up his own family name to be with her) and he's always trying to protect her. There's a part of the story where Raoul becomes really unhinged when it comes to protecting Christine, lashing out her her friends and other members of the Opera house. He does some really dumb stuff because of the Phantom, specifically throwing away Christine's ring that she got from the Phantom (that she also literally told him before that as long as she's wearing the ring she wouldn't be harmed by the phantom and he just...?? okay??). When he's tortured in the mirror room, he hallucinates Christine blaming him for her capture, and he even cries while hallucinating that Christine friendzones him (which I though was actually really funny, even if it was a tad bit stupid). His redemption comes near the end of the story where he apologizes for being so emotional and realizing that he was a bit of an obsessive beast, and in one ending he lets Christine go to travel the world. To be honest, I don't know if Raoul would continue to be as protective and obsessed with her even after the Phantom's death, but I guess there's not really any way to know.

The Phantom, or Erik (which I know is his cannon name but it makes me laugh because he really doesn't look like an Erik) is the main villain of the story. Unfortunately, in this version, I don't think I can call him a yandere, for one simple character: Melek. Melek, as far as I know isn't in the original story, is a prisoner that Erik has after she refused to marry her. As a character, I do actually like Melek since she's the one of the more sensible characters in the story and she's the more rational one between her and Christine, but her role in the story basically deconfirms Erik as a yandere, at least in this version. For one, Melek is a blind maid of Erik that he did fall in love with and trap, similar to how Christine was, which kind of comes off as Erik being the kind of person who would trap any girl that he likes. Even if this is the case, I don't understand why Erik would keep her alive even after she fell for Christine. Supposedly the reason is that Erik wanted to make Christine feel despair and he did attempt to kill her, but Melek survives and he just... doesn't do anything with her. Honestly, if Melek were straight up not in the story, I would have put him as a yandere because pretty much all of his other actions point to a more possessive/worship type of yandere, but because of Melek it's just not possible in my eyes. Besides that Erik sort of reminds me of a chunni in this version (he's like this absolute darkness is my curse! Like people with 7th grade syndrom seem to have), it was kind of hard for me to take him seriously in certain times. He is very intimidating when he threatens Christine, but his overdramatic nature (which I know is something he's always known for, just this version is uh...) really makes him seem like a child. Erik is for sure suppose to be more antagonistic in this version, considering the addition of Melek and his general actions of possession towards Christine and his disdain for Raoul, but near the end we do see more of his story and we see just how devastating his life is from the moment of birth. I did feel really bad for him when Hatim/The Persian keeps on mentioning the prince he used to work with because its really obvious that he still has trauma from it (and he keeps begging him to not talk about his past and the Persian just... keeps traumatizing him I guess) and the fact that he was treated so badly because of his appearance, but this doesn't excuse his actions in the story. Christine does try to sympathize with him using her own tragic backstory, which Erik kind of pushes away (like bro, we're not trying to see whose parents are worse, she's just trying to sympathize with you, dang) as not being tragic. I think that Mazm did present him pretty well in this story, not showing just his antagonistic side but also his more tragic side. Sadly, like I said, I can't consider him a yandere because of the addition of Melek, at least not in this version.

In terms of other characters, I really like the trio of Meg Giry, Sorelli and Jammes- the friends of Christine. From what I can tell, they're all a bit more aged up in this version, with Sorelli being the oldest and Jammes being the youngest and I feel like they gave more character to them than in the original version. Sorelli is the head of the dancers and the dating partner of Phillip de Chagny, Raoul's older brother and she's the mature and strong willed one of the group, wielding a blade that she uses to protect her friends. I like the fact that they made her a bit more protective and in one of the overworld sprites its mentioned via rumor that Phillip fell in love with her after he saw Sorelli swing her dagger, which I thought was pretty cute. At the end though, after Phillips death, she realizes that she was struggling too hard to climb up the social ladder and decides to forge her own path. In the beginning she attempts to protect her and her friends from the Phantom, declaring that she'll stab him if she sees him. Next is Meg Giry, and from what my friend told me, she was very young in the original books and kind of scardy cat. In this version, she's a bit older but maintains the scardy cat position, and is very terrified of the Phantom. She does gain more character development during the story, standing up to her mother and the managers and overall being a more assertive and confident person, which I thought was a nice touch. Last but certainly not least is my best girl Jammes. In the original story, she barely makes an appearance, but in Mazm they made her quite literally the best character. For one, the canonical reason why there are so many cats hanging out in the opera house is that Jammes keeps on feeding them and letting them in and she has named all of them after the Opera House staff. Jammes loves to spin and has a cute animation and while she can be loud and a bit strange sometimes, she can be smart and assertive when she needs to. Jammes always pushes the other three into being better and protects them when needed (for instance, when Phillip lashes out at Sorelli, she steps in and demands that he apologize for his actions) and can be really smart at times (she's the only character that attempts to at least cover her mouth when the Phantom's fragrance, a hallucinogenic gas, starts to fill up the box seat, despite others who have been in there not even trying) and is the one who stands up for Christine's abuse as well as for the dancers at the opera house being treated unfairly by the manager as she organizes a strike against them. She also becomes part of the women's suffrage after the events of the story. I could go on and on about Jammes, but instead I'll leave a cute picture of her at the end of this entire analysis. Besides those three, I did like Carlotta, the original singing lead of the opera house. Originally, she became an antagonist towards Christine after she became the lead singer, however, she did apologize to her afterwards and befriended her once more before traveling the world. I love her interactions with Raoul because she basically said that Raoul only has Christine and military training and when he gets angry and lashes out, Carlotta glares and him, causing him to cower (this actually does happen multiple times), and I just found that really, really funny. Mifoid, though useless in the story is actually pretty cute as well, I love his bouncing animation. The last character I'll talk about is Phillip because he became meme material for me and my friend considering he probably is so tired of Raoul talking about Christine (we joked that the reason he was sent to military was so that he didn't have to hear her name again) and while he is mostly a decent but strict character in the story, his last appearance really makes him out as a jerk. I did think it was kind of weird that Phillip was so willing to let Raoul go to the Artic mission considering nobody that has gone there has ever returned, and he was rather elitest towards him, not letting him marry Christine because she's of lower

class but during his last chapter before he dies, he goes on a frenzy after he and Raoul have a fight, revealing to Sorelli that he only dated her for fun and not to actually settle down with her, which is just horrible. It's a bit sad though that Raoul only saw him as someone who tried to get rid of him considering that Phillip did raise Raoul and that his last actions were an attempt to save Phillip from the phantom, and yet Raoul barely has a reaction after seeing his body and doesn't even go to his funeral. It's really sad that Raoul didn't even really cry after seeing Phillip's body, considering that he was basically his father figure.

Overall, it's a good game to play and a good retelling of the Phantom of the Opera. I wouldn't consider the Phantom to be a yandere in this game, but I do think that Raoul is one. Thank you for this recommendation!

#asks #male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #recommendation

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niall-is-my-dream · 3 years

Text

Addicted to You - Part Fourteen

So here's the next part. Catch up below! Emily x

https://niall-is-my-dream.tumblr.com/post/666267291647950848/addicted-to-you-masterlist

Your insecurities about your flat being broken into by Calvin while you were away proved to be ridiculous when you arrived home and the place was exactly as you left it. But this was what he was trying to do wasn't it? The following you from outside your flat was just to play mind games with you wasn't it?

There was no way in hell that he was going to make you feel like that again.

You arrived in your office on Monday morning at 8:30, Niall was going to call the Police Case Officer that was assigned to you all. He had the piece of paper with your scribbled notes on in his pocket.

Niall came by your office just after 10am with the news of how it went.

"So, they're not surprised he did what he did." Niall said as he made you both a coffee from your machine.

"They weren't?"

"Nope, he's still acting like he's innocent and that what I found he had being doing and the allegations from both You and Natalie are made up."

"He's such a twat."

"Yeah he is, but we can't let on when in court that we think like that. He needs to be given a fair trial and we need to be seen as credible witnesses. The truth will all come out in the end."

"Jack said similar to me last week actually. He's furious and was worried that Calvin might have tried to implicate him and others from the Accounts team."

"Their work was 100% accurate and they shouldn't be worried. He can try and intimidate us and lie about us but it's our word against just his. The only person who's in his corner is his solicitor."

"I know, I just hate the thought of his solicitor asking me questions when I don't know what they will be. I hate being unprepared."

"It'll be fine. Please don't let it worry you. We've got takeout at Ben and Rachel's tonight to look forward to."

"I know I know." You mumbled "Well, I need to get on so I can leave on time tonight, so you need to get your gorgeous self out of my office. You're distracting me!"

"Distracting you?!" He smirked.

"Yep, so bugger off!" You smirked back.

"Ok I'll go, I've got stuff to do anyway." He said as he placed your coffee down on your desk. "I'll see you later, I love you."

"I love you more." You replied, as you pulled him towards you by his tie.

"That's impossible petal." He smiled as he kissed you.

He left your office carrying his coffee and swaying his bum from side to side, laughter filling your office.

-----------------

"So, how was seeing the in-laws again?" Rachel asked Niall.

"Was a great weekend. I've always got on well with Jessie's family."

"Oh Niall you charmed them again didn't you?!" She laughed.

"Well........" He said smiling.

"Actually it was my nieces and nephews who were charmed the most!"

"Ah Uncle Niall is the favourite now is he?!" Rachel said.

"Isla actually asked me if she could call him that." You replied.

"Ah that's sweet! Did your Mum ask you when you were both having some?" Rachel said and you heard Niall choke on his drink.

"Oh she hinted ALOT but jeez that woman's got 5 already to keep her busy." You laughed as you patted Niall's back. "Told her she's greedy!"

"You ok there Niall?!" Ben asked laughing along with you and Rachel.

"Did she hint, I didn't hear her?!" Niall said.

"Oh she didn't say it near you. Wouldn't want to scare you away!" You laughed.

"Jesus! She could at least wait for us to be engaged!"

"Oh yeah and when's that going to be?!" Rachel said smirking.

"Literally just got back together guys!" You said shushing them.

"Well that biological clock is ticking Jessie!"

"Rach, we're the same age!"

"I know and we're trying!"

"Are you?" Niall asked looking between them both.

"Yeah we are." Ben admitted.

"Oh wow that's so exciting!" You said smiling.

"So happy for you both." Niall added.

Niall drove you both back to your flat just after 10:30pm. It had been a nice change to a normal quiet Monday night to be able to catch up with Rachel and Ben. You'd had a couple of glasses of wine with your take away, but Niall hadn't as he was driving.

"I'm going to take a shower." You said as you walked into your bedroom. Making your way across the room you closed the curtains, not before taking a quick glance up and down the street.

"Yeah, I need one to."

"Is that you inviting yourself to join me?!" You replied cheekily.

"It wasn't but ......... I'm not going to say no." He smirked.

Moving across the room you made your way to him. Reaching across you found the waistband of his suit trousers and pulled him towards you. His hands came up to cup your face and he didn't hesitate to lean in and kiss you.

"Do you even have a clue how difficult it is to keep my hands off you at work?!" He mumbled against your lips.

"Yeah I do actually, because I'm the same about you. I have to stop myself from bending over your desk everytime I'm in your office." You managed to whisper back as you undid his belt and trousers.

"Don't tell me that...." He sighed but then gasped as you dipped your hand beneath the fabric teasing him over his boxers.

"Do you think about me when you're alone in your office?" You said leaning in, grazing your lips with his and feeling him harden under your touch.

"You know I do. I would've had you the other day if you'd let me. Sitting on my lap, your legs spread like that, I would've touched you until you came all over my fingers."

"I wanted you to. But we said we'd be good at work."

"That was a stupid rule. Spent the afternoon with a massive hard on." He admitted.

"A massive one?!" You giggled.

"Ooohhh you cheeky ......... " He said as he kissed you.

You undid the buttons on his shirt as his hands continued to cup your face. His fingers caressed your cheeks before gliding up through your hair.

"Bathroom." He whispered inbetween kisses.

The water was hot and the shower filled with steam within minutes of you both being in there. You wrapped your arms around his shoulders as his hands wandered up and down your body.

"I'm so addicted to you, you know that?" He said as his lips explored your neck. "Just want you all the time."

His words hit you hard and you couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else other than with him. Reaching across to the shelf, he took the purple bottle of body wash and poured some in his hand. His hands continued to explore your body, the body wash foaming up and bubbles appearing across your skin.

Your body was tingling with anticipation of what he was going to do. He was teasing you right now, his fingers caressing your body, this thumb flicking across your nipple.

"Turn around." He managed to mumble, his voice showing you how turned on he was right now.

The water splashed across your chest washing the bubbles away as you stood under the spray. Niall moved his lips gently across your shoulders, up your neck until they were right by your ear.

"Do you remember that first shower we took together?" He said and your body shivered as you took in his words.

"Y..e..s...sss." You panted out.

"Water pressure is much better here than it was then." He said and you heard the smirk in his voice. "Do you want to test it out?"

Managing a small nod, you began thinking about exactly what he had done to you back then on that cold and snowy February night in your shower in halls.

"Need more than a nod darlin'." He said as his hands continued to roam your body and your mind was drifting to how good he was making you feel.

"Please..... " You almost begged.

Niall's hand reached up and unhooked the shower head from its holder. You looked down and watched him adjusted the setting before turning it over.

"Spread those legs a little bit." He whispered in your ear.

You did as he said and he moved the spray of water towards your centre. The jet buzzed against your clit and you moved your hand to sit over his making sure to control the angle of the pressure.

"Fuck...." You mewled out as you steadied yourself with your free hand flat against the shower wall.

He allowed you to guide the shower to where you needed it. His other hand caressed up and down your torso, pausing to cup your breast and pinch your nipple.

"You ok there darlin'." He panted clearly enjoying himself behind you.

"Mmmmm." You mumbled as you managed to nod your head. Your body jolted as the spray of water hit a particularly sensitive spot and you felt Niall's rock hard cock against your bum.

"Feel how hard you make me?" He said as he moved closer to you, his cock rubbing against you more.

He began to move his hips gently against you, making sure not to stop the water pressure from hitting that spot that was currently sending you crazy.

"I love you so much, you know that? So fucking much. " He whispered. "Always have and always will."

"Oh....ju.....yes...." You moaned as the heat that had been building up inside you began to unravel.

Pushing the shower head away from his hand, it swung and tapped against the tiles as you moved his thick fingers to your heat. He knew what you wanted and as you began to come undone it was his fingers that did the final work.

With your head thrown back against his shoulder, he kissed along your neck and whispered in your ear, "That good baby girl?" as your orgasm pulsed through you.

Your pants echoed around the shower as you struggled to come around. Niall held you tight as your legs began to wobble. "I got you."

He must have held you like that for a few minutes before you opened your eyes and saw the white bathroom tiles in front of you. Gentle kisses across your cheek and neck before making his way across your shoulder.

You reached down and picked up the hanging shower, placing it on its holder before turning around to find Niall looking thoroughly fucked. Glancing down you could see his cock, thick and hard. His head exposed, the tip bright red, you knew he was close. You began to kneel but he pulled you back up. Your confused eyes met his as he shook his head. When you ran your fingers gently across his tip, gliding the precum across it you could tell he was closer than you thought.

Leaning in you kissed him softly before holding his cock firmly in your hand. A few moves of your wrist and he was coming. You wanked him fast and hard as he came all over you, his mouth open against yours, so overwhelmed with his orgasm that he couldn't even kiss you. He panted against your lips as you whispered words of encouragement.

You were exhausted as you got into bed a little while later. Slipping in between the covers you knew sleep would come easily tonight. Niall followed you to bed a few minutes later, he had been checking the doors were locked and the lights were off.

He had fitted into your flat with ease and you wondered how to broaden the subject of moving in together permanently. It was too much of a conversation for now. You were exhausted and embraced Niall as he got into bed next to you. Pulling you close he kissed you gently as you both whispered I love you's before falling asleep in each others arms.

-------------

By the time you'd crawled into bed last night it was nearing midnight. Your alarm ringing at 6:30am woke you up with a start, you had been in such a deep sleep. Niall grumbled beside you as you reached over to turn it off.

"How is it only Tuesday?" You heard him say, his gruff Irish accent barely coherent.

"Someone can't handle a late night eating Chinese take away and then some sexy shower time can they Horan?" You smiled.

"Oh I handled that perfectly well thankyou." He said lifting his head off his pillow. "Just desperately need some time off if I'm honest. More than just a weekend."

"Talk to Michael and Gerry today then, I'm sure they'll allow it. You've been working flat out for months on the company merger."

"Yeah I might."

"I'll get some coffee started." You said as you leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Don't go back to sleep."

You made your way to the kitchen and got some coffee started. Hearing Niall head to the bathroom you smiled. You loved having him here, it was his birthday in just over a weeks time and you had no idea what to get him. Checking the calendar you realised his birthday fell on a Sunday.

"Hey, do you want to see if you can take a few days either side of your birthday?" You asked him as he appeared by your side wearing just his boxers.

"Yeah, you got something planned?!" He smiled as he squeezed your hip.

"No , I haven't actually." You admitted and he faked a look of sadness. "I just thought we could do a last-minute get away or something. Not sure if it's a bit late notice for work though."

"I'll speak to Michael and Gerry today. I know you've got a couple of projects going at work but that's why you've got a team working with you isn't it?"

"Yeah I suppose." You said as you handed him his coffee.

"Any place in particular you were thinking about going?" He asked.

"No idea. Where do you want to go?"

"Don't mind darlin'. Anywhere we can be alone, relax and be naked a lot of the time." He replied with a smirk.

"Should've known you'd say that." You smiled.

#Niall #Emily writes #Addicted to You #Niall fan fic #Niall Horan #Niall fluff #Niall smut

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thechekhov · 4 years

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Hello, I’m a big fan of your brain and I just need some advice. I started working on this big project earlier this year and it’s gotten very popular, even people I admire have praised it. I have no plans on abandoning this project but the growing popularity has made me anxious, like I might mess up and disappoint everyone. This anxiety is preventing me from working on said project. What should I do? :(

Hey there, sorry for the late reply.

My advice might befuddle you a little bit, so I’ll explain first, and advise second.

#1. What IS ‘being disappointed’?

We all try to see the future. Even if we don’t mean to, we do our best to predict how things will turn out. How we WANT them to turn out... or how we fear they MAY turn out. Our expectations are unstoppable, an inevitable byproduct of us being thinking, emotional beings that have desires and worries. It is not something we can stop. Engaging with any form of media or content already guarantees that we will start making predictions about how things MIGHT unravel. We will do this without realizing it.

BUT.

#2: Not everyone is the same.

(I think that much is obvious.)

What does it mean? It means our expectations, fears, and worries and hopes... are all going to be going off in different directions. YOU, as the author who is in charge of the story, can actually control where it goes (to an extent. Of course, in a way, the story kind of unravels on its own, and it’s all you can do to keep up with it.)

However, your readers lack this control. And their conflicting expectations?

They’re guaranteed to be ruined.

I need to stress this the most, because it matters the most - and it’s something you need to come to terms with as an author creating ANYTHING:

You. Will. Disappoint. People.

Maybe a few people. Maybe more. Maybe hundreds.

Why? Because your story is bad? No.

Why? Because you didn’t choose the ‘right’ plotline? No.

Why? Because you failed to depict a character in a 100% accurate way? No.

Why?

Because ‘correctness’ doesn’t exist in storytelling. Storytelling just IS. It’s not a Google Map Route that has a singular goal. It’s an open world where you draw your own squiggly lines.

And you, a single person, physically cannot satisfy the exact and personal expectations of hundreds of different people!!

Thinking you may be able to somehow please everyone is not just naive. It’s self-destructive. It’s a sure-fire way to burn out and crawl under a rock and stop creating because you’re terrified that a few people didn’t completely love your work.

The truth is, the bigger your story, the more people will hate it.

The more plot points you create, the more people will disagree with you.

The more character development you have, the more often you will get messages from people who were deeply offended that you didn’t read THEIR mind and do things THEIR way.

And my advice? ...is to learn to stop caring about what people you never met think.

And instead tailor your caring to a few select people you admire and respect.

Your story isn’t ever going to be perfect.

And that’s fine.

It doesn’t mean it’s going to be immune to criticism. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever get advice on how to develop things a little more efficiently, or be a little more consistent with character choices, or explore the lore a bit deeper. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever make mistakes, or include something offensive, or forget a detail. That stuff is natural, and should be kept in mind and those mistakes can and should be learned from.

But that kind of advice won’t come from randos on the internet who don’t know you, your motivations, and what story you’re trying to tell.

They’re going to come from your peers, your friends, and other people you trust to brainstorm with you and give you ACTUAL advice, IF and WHEN you need it.

When you create content, you don’t go into the art-store and sweep the entire inventory into your shopping cart and then go draw a picture using each and every random crayon that happened to be in reach. You will use a few carefully selected tools you KNOW are going to work for you, which you trust.

Treat your readers the same way. It’s great that they’re there - but whether you decide to listen to them is YOUR choice.

#chekhov answers #the CRITS I've gotten on my story will make your eyes roll back into your head #ill post a few faves if yall are ever interested #Anonymous

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sweetcloverheart · 2 years

Text

Unpopular Opinion Time

The Abyss/Ashen Wolves DLC : *Has books stating that Rhea engaged in some shady stuff (like limiting technological advancements) among other things, with several NPCs corroborating this*

Fandom: “Hey, this info is clearly out of context/biased. There could be plenty of reasons why Rhea did this/might not have done this at all. Let’s not assume the worst and actually think about what this might mean so we can figure out what actually happened.”

Thales: *Claims the Tragedy of Duscur was done for “Edelgard’s benefit” despite all three routes showing him to be a conniving bastard who barely cares for her outside of her role as the Argathian’s personal cudgel to destroy Rhea and the remaining Nabataens and is likely just saying this to be a conniving bastard and hurt Dimitri (Not to mention Edelgard being 12 and likely unconscious from being experimented on in the dungeons when the event happened and ignoring all the power hungry and racist Faerghus nobles who jumped on the chance to get rid of Lambert and colonize a completely innocent country for the crime of not being under their boot yet under the guise of “avenging the royal family”)*

Fandom: “This information is 100% accurate. Thales is clearly telling the truth and is in no way obviously twisting anything in any way out-of-context for his personal benefit. Edelgard personally went down to Duscur and murdered all those families and then made a fur coat of their puppies.”

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chemicalpink · 4 years

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Hii I think it would be really interesting if you could tell about Jungkook soulmate. Like why are they so popular aside from being his soulmate, what makes them special spiritual wise. Because a lot of ppl say this person is super strong and have a pure type of energy. Please share more on that.

Okay, so I actually did more research for this than my actual undergrad thesis.

So first off I wanna say, this is the way * I * see it, from my 15 years of spiritual experience, there is obviously much more to it since astrological aspects and divination in no way defines a multidimensional human being and their connections to people, if you’d like to know something else feel free to ask, I’ll do my best to answer (with my own ethical limits and respectful of the privacy from the ones involved)

OKAY so, a crash course on soulmates, there are a lot of types and they may not present themselves as romantic partners, most of them, especially if karmic, will leave your side once they’ve helped you through something.

It’s kinda tricky to know if someone is your soulmate unless you can do an in-depth synastry analysis, which means knowing exactly the two charts, of course, on a personal level, if you are in tune with your own energy, you can come across people and tell they’re part of your soul family.

So really, what has surprised me the most about the whole “JK’s soulmate” is just exactly *how* it came to be, did someone did a synastry with their own chart, saw karmic aspects and was like yeah I’m his soulmate, then transformed it into an oh he has a soulmate, or are we starting from this man having no filter and saying that he’s waiting for *the one*?

I really REALLY wanted to trace back to the first-ever post of him having a soulmate, couldn’t find it so all we can go from are tarot readings and really him saying he knows there’s someone out there for him.

Astrologically speaking many people analyze his Juno, but I’d say it’s in general… what he likes in a partner in terms of marriage.

Apart from that, as I’ve said before, all the info on his soulmate derives from tarot readings/predictions and some people that say they channel his higher self.

From my experience, yes, Jeon Jungkook is sure that he has a soulmate, that they are somewhere out there and that he’ll meet them sometime, he’s a big softie (we’ve talked about how he likes to always remind me in my readings that there’s a past-life partner, his true love, his soulmate)

Now, I hate to bring up couple’s therapy but a relationship is between two people, which means that as much as he is longing for this soulmate, this other person is on their own life path, we don’t have a chart for them obviously, so all we got left are general divinations, asking questions, getting answers from either tarot, charms, rods, pendulum, whatever, it is always us asking questions, plus, divination does not provide an accurate answer, they just read between the lines of present energy and provide a most likely outcome to situations.

As I said before, there’s a lot of *in between* information, like, do they know who their soulmate is, are they looking for each other, how is it likely to play out and out there, many people seem to talk about it, especially about this person being a ‘runner’ in the connection, saying that they will make Jungkook wait and a lot of stuff that to me, sounds like they are antagonizing this potential soulmate because let’s get real, Jungkook is a very sought after celebrity, so of course it makes sense to antagonize a potential partner of his.

The thing is, this man has no filter whatsoever, whatever awakening he’s through, he now knows that voicing his opinions on *finding the one* have come to bite him in the ass because there’s a lot of energy shifts, people manifesting him, self inserting themselves on the narrative that they are potential soulmates for whatever reason. I think there’s a blurred line between you know, doing a synastry reading with a celebrity and actually acting upon the astrological aspects, astrology is contextual, a big *most of the time* that is not a rule, so having karmic aspects with someone might mean you’ll get to know them, or it could simply mean that you came across them on their path as artists and they helped a lot through their art. Who knows. The universe knows, so if it’s meant to be, it will be.

Now, my take on the whole info that’s out there on Jungkook’s soulmate, (if they are the one appearing on the readings and not another partner) from my experience reading for him.

People saying that they are older, mmmm yeah I kinda get where they’re coming from, if you are an intuitive reader, you get the ‘old soul’ vibe from reaching out to the connection, but as always, the universe doesn’t provide the ultimate truth, so I’d stick with *old soul* not older, they could be more mature, could be older, can even go as far as to say they’re more traditional. We don’t have a way to accurately tell.

People saying that they are a foreigner, I honestly- don’t know where this comes from, as I’ve said before, we don’t have an accurate way to confirm, just short term divination which means that whatever outcome people see is most likely from his soon to be partner or current partner, if his soulmate is indeed a soon-to-be partner and foreigner shows up, I mean yeah, could be, he’s an international artist, would make sense for him to fall for a foreigner as much as it makes sense for us foreigners to find him cute (?

That they see each other in astral/ through dreams. Well, I don’t know, I guess they could if they have the right mental space and a lot of spiritual work (? Soulmates are usually hard to reach honestly, cause what’s the point of getting to know them before they can be able to fulfil their earthly deed with you. I’d say that it’s more like the universe giving hints to the connection and not a one-on-one type of thing. Then again, why would you even go as far as to invade their astral privacy and get an answer about it (? Also, I need receipts on how exactly people got this info.

That his soulmate is a runner. Okay first off, don’t go and rummage into other people’s trauma and present it on the internet. A runner is supposed to be one part of the soulmate that is running away from the connection, while fully aware of it for whatever reason. Then again, how could someone possibly reach for some specific higher self if you don’t know who they are (? Entities are tricky, could be some other energy saying they are JK’s soulmate or another person that is manifesting them. There’s no clear way to know that any type of personal/spiritual info is 100% true.

His soulmate is someone spiritual. Probably, soulmates tend to have similar timings to their spiritual journeys, and while we don’t know who they are, we can see Jungkook being attracted to the spiritual so it’s only fair to asume they are too. I’d like to add on a personal note that I would say yeah, they are, and a strong one at that. Not because of any type of divination but because whenever I try to get info on them (by supposing they are a soon-to-be partner, reaching via Jungkook) it is very VERY hard to get an answer.

So in conclusion, please don’t forget that just as there is much more to Jeon Jungkook other than him being part of BTS, there is so much more to him than what the tarot or his chart says about him. It’s always fun to spill some tea on him and any other celebrity, but please remember that neither of those spiritual tools resonate fully with who he is, his preferences, his interpersonal connections or any other matter. They just see what’s there and are the *most likely to be true* answer, no one knows better than ourselves when it comes to personal info. Aside from that sure, perhaps there are ways to tell some deep deep answers about him and his soulmate via very hard concentration and connection processes but really- in this economy (? Why would you do that to yourself, we’re in the middle of a panini why would you sacrifice your mental health like that. Jungkook and his soulmate that he is so much as longing for is a personal connection between the two and sooner or later (ahem I’d say later) they’ll find each other.

With that being said and back on my silly self, all of this doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing love readings for him, I love roasting Jeon Jungkook (within boundaries) because he likes to piss me off constantly reminding me that I’m a lonely potato that has had (and lost) three soulmates.

#bts astrology #bts tarot #jungkook soulmate

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majaloveschris · 2 years

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I agree that there is nothing between them anymore, but 100% that they met and fucked.///

This is what has irked me during this entire mess. BOTH sides sound crazy and delusional yet don’t realize it. People on one end ran with the pics and other “evidence” and started filling in the blanks with whatever they thought of, then people on the other end with “they probably never met” went with the thoughts that since they weren’t pictured together they must not know each other and then there’s the above that are worse than the previous mentioned because you simply go with the false narrative that oh something surely happened (there’s no proof it did) to the extreme of it’s over but they met and fucked….umm we’re you there what’s your evidence? I’m not saying it might not have happened I’m saying we don’t know anything to say 100% something is accurate.

People fail to see how they are projecting their own shit in these scenarios. “Omg I can’t imagine someone just being friends with Chris”. “ omg if I met Chris I’d fuck him so she probably did” , “ omg Chris is a virgin who would never date a 24 year old” “omg Chris is 40, that seems old so of course he’d screw a young woman, cause he’s a old man having a mid life crisis”….SMH and yes these have been the topic of many arguments online…..everyone sound nuts defending a situation no one knows NOTHING about expect the people who were there. All things are not as they appear, I can see things from both and numerous sides, but it doesn’t make it true, truth is WE DON’T KNOW, every is pure SPECULATION, that has indeed gone too far.

Imagine having a photo of you posted online and random strangers making up scenarios based on the photo and then people who know you but are not close to you starts going online adding to the bs narratives for attention, you’d be pissed that people jumped to conclusions over a picture…..yet you do the same to random strangers. Alba and crew are trolls we can say that’s a fact, they could be friends with Scott, Steve and Chris and then took advantage of the fans being nosey and trolled the fandom. Something could’ve happened and then ended, Chris could have been fucking everyone or just been a nice guy who invited people to a free trip to Vegas….I could go on and on, but honestly we’ll never know….whatever happened is over so drop it, unless she pops up with him in a pap pic or red carpet, drop it. Some of us are just tired of this convo.

Also let me clarify I don’t mean drop it as you all stop discussing it, you guys are doing great debunking stuff, the drop it is for the people who like to pop up and say they fucked or, they are still “dating”. Love this blog! 😊

Thanks for sharing! I just don't want people to come after Chris because they still take advantage of the situation.

#ab dating bullshit #cevans-love

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thekrawratalksbnha · 4 years

Text

let’s talk unreliability real quick: bnha 291

so in light of recent bnha events, i wanted to write up a real quick thing on unreliable narrators based on some things i’ve seen going around and some stuff from my own experience based on my work with unreliability.

just because someone says something in canon story, doesn’t actual mean that’s exactly how things are. there’s some important factors that play into how much you can trust information from a character.

some of the main ones being:

how old were they?

what circumstances were they in?

could they be reliably asked to remember this event?

how much information were they privy too and how much are they assuming?

do they have a reason to lie?

let’s look at shouto for example:

shouto is the youngest of four. he is probably about 9 or so years younger than his eldest sibling. that means there was a lot of time before him for family relationships to strengthen or in this case deteriorate.

additionally shouto went through some pretty severe trauma when he was very young. reliably we know he was trained to the point of throwing up at five years old, witnessed his mother’s mental state deteriorate and be abused by his father, walked in on his mother having a severe mental breakdown overhearing her talking about his left side being unsightly and proceeding to pour boiling water on it, and was kept separated from his siblings with little social contact.

FURTHER, we’ve only ever seen shouto actively place blame on two people. himself and his father. even though it is for very valid reason, we know that at least to start he was more than willing to assume the worst of endeavour.

we also have canonical proof that shouto had suppressed/forgotten important memories of his childhood. so we know his memory might not be the most reliable.

what does all this mean?

shouto is in no way the most reliable narrator to discuss about the todoroki family. while he doesn’t really have any reason to lie about what happened, he was in a position to misinterpret or remember things.

this doesn’t mean he’s wrong. it just means there’s too many blank spots in shouto’s memory and understanding and too much bias for him to be an actively reliable perspective into his family’s situation as a whole.

he can probably pretty accurately speak about his experience, but anything he’s said about his family before he was born can pretty reasonable be called into question.

and you can run down the list of todoroki’s and see that well…none of them are necessarily reliable.

natsuo:

second youngest, most of his memories are from a time that we know was definitively bad

closest with some of the family members who suffered the most

neglected by endeavour, shaping his opinion of endeavour but also not leaving him privy to much info

fuyumi:

her biggest issue is the information she is privy to.

has expressed a very clear desire to mend the family, and does have reason to downplay certain events or moments

she was still a kid when things happened and most of her memories are probably largely tainted by emotion

in general i’d say fuyumi is probably the one of the most reliable of the todoroki’s though.

rei:

suffered severe mental distress

we don’t know much about rei and her experience before shouto which makes it hard to judge how reliable of a narrator she is

enji:

went through at least some period of time where he was a shit father

did have strong emotions and ambition that could have blinded him — but since his atonement arc has started, has very little reason to deviate from the truth

in general though, hate me for saying it, at this point in the story he is probably the most reliable narrator in the todoroki family.

and then of course there’s dabi, which brings us to the whole point of this post.

dabi is probably the most unreliable of all the todoroki’s as a speaker. not only was he a kid when shit went down, he also is the only todoroki who has motive to lie or over-exaggerate events.

dabi’s play right now is to ruin endeavour. and yes, most of what he says probably has some truth involved. but keep in mind dabi is a very biased perspective and is gunning for maximum damage. he wants to destroy endeavour’s legacy (and probably shouto’s by extension). he wants to hit them where it hurts.

which means that any new information dabi gives isn’t automatically what happened. we already know in his grand reveal video he’s willing to bend the truth, remove context and leave out important details (exhibit a — hawks). we should expect that he is doing the same in regards to his story about endeavour. he’s trying to cast endeavour in the worst light possible so he is not revealing anything potentially redeeming about the man.

compare dabi’s story to the flashbacks endeavour has. they are full of contradictions.

so which one do we trust?

if endeavour says one thing and dabi says another — quite frankly, it’s probably more likely that endeavour is telling the truth. even if its not an intentional lie on dabi’s part. dabi’s experience was when he was younger, very emotional charged and in a very negative place. that has probably coloured his perspective of everything.

and as mentioned before, he has very clear reason to not tell the whole truth if it might be able to help endeavour’s case.

on the other hand, especially internally, endeavour has no reason to lie or hide the truth. his whole atonement is about him acknowledging that what he did was wrong. and he has — internally at least. he has acknowledged his faults. and really there’s no motive for him to lie to himself. he was old enough to understand and process his actions. and it wasn’t quite as emotional for him as the kids (who were developing at that time and emotion often would take precedent over fact).

so just keep that in mind as official translations come out and future chapters and more information gets exposed.

dabi wants to paint endeavour in the worst possible light. some of what we know about the todoroki’s come from shouto, who could very well be a very unreliable narrator in that regard. all of what we know about the todoroki’s could be very biased and influenced by their collective awful experiences.

(the follow up to this is that when somebody has an interpretation you don’t entirely agree with — they might not be wrong. there is a lot we don’t know. and a lot that we assume to be true but could very easily be proven false. both dabi and endeavour have done wrong and the story we get might not be 100% accurate. so whether you are pro or anti endeavour — keep unreliability in mind. you can’t necessarily take every character at their word)

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relaxxattack · 3 years

Note

ayo! (wait this might be a bit of a jumpscare dishdks i apologize) i’m op of That Post and was wondering what your opinions were on the whole woobification thing? /gen

because it’s a Tiny Bit widespread within the dream apologists to sort of,, overdramatize stuff like l’manberg hurting him. like they’re not a 100% wrong but if you look at it subjectively you can see some sort of bias going into that sort of thing that makes the character’s mistreatment a bit more blatant and intentional which,, it really wasn’t? and there wasn’t That Much of it either. especially on twitter (tumblr is much better about it) people just jump to conclusions it seems and yeah. since you brought it up i was wondering if you wanted to write a bit about it from your perspective!

we’re kinda from different corners of the fandom but i still notice that once you are too attached to a character you start taking certain evidence and giving it more weight than it actually has. there’s a blurry line between “taking away a character’s humanity” and woobification and it’s extremely difficult to find a balance when said character shows pretty much nothing of his emotional life (e. g. putting up the intimidating villain act in front of only c!tommy, pretty much everything he does making rational sense with no emotional subtext) and a lot of the fandom instantly jumps to one side or the other while it’s like.

we don’t know by far enough to say “he’s traumatized” or “he isn’t traumatized” or “he was villainized and it hurt him” or “l’manberg didn’t affect him at all”

as a very analytical person people constantly jumping to conclusions grinds my gears, but that’s about it for my own view of the situation - sorry for the rambling.

in general i agree with you that both dehumanization and woobification is Bad and i really hope getting Actual Context sorts this out (e. g. him saying he was betrayed by his friends doesn’t mean it wasn’t partially his fault or that they were allowed to leave him, but it also shows that he did care about that happening. mentioning the cat doesn’t mean anything about what happened to c!tommy but it also shows that he did care about what happened to it. it’s just always interesting to get more information about the way he feels because he usually does a very good job at hiding it.) because man.

it’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if you also are attached to the character and are expected to automatically agree with everything the people on “your side” say. it just ends up with everyone being mad and the character being mischaracterised overall.

oh wow hello! i didnt expect the op of the post to find me you’re right lol

and yes i agree! you seem to have a lot of very good thoughts tbh.

and by woobification, i mean exactly what you’ve already pointed out— the people who will say l’manberg purposely villainized dream, the people who will say wilbur faked his mental illness to manipulate dream, the people who are pretty much always talking about how badly dream was treated by people who were acting only fairly for themselves, usually.

for example people who act like dream was a perfect peacemaker before tommy showed up, or that tommy started most conflict. these are just actual lies that are told by c!dream himself to justify his abuse of tommy, and people fall for them incredibly easily because not a lot of people watched early dsmp and know that truthfully it was chaotic even then, and that dream was chaotic too. not to mention wilbur soot tried very hard to secede peacefully with l’manberg and dream jumped directly into war with no warning. and then people say he was forced into their war when, no, he started it.

theres also people who will say like, dream and sapnap for example are such good friends. i’m sure they cared for each other, but dream on multiple occasions has done horrible things to sapnap with no regard for his feelings (like leading fundy to sapnaps pets during the petwar, leading tommy to sapnaps pets during the other petwar and encouraging him to kill them, handing mars over to tommy to use as leverage against sapnap, etc). george he’s been less awful too but he certainly spoke over him and ignored his feelings enough that george felt hurt. he had places in his hall of attachments for beckerson and mars. george and sapnap were right to walk away from being treated like that.

there’s also what you just said here — “dream puts on a villain persona for tommy”— but honestly he acts like that around quite a few people (example: eret) and it’s usually when he’s revealing crucial info, which leads me and many others to believe that ‘persona’ is actually a more truthful version of him.

there’s the fact that he really isn’t safe for people to be around (or at least he wasn't before the prison) because he was planning to come up with ways to control every single person by stealing and threatening their attachments (some of which were not items but were living animals, or a real breathing person).

and then people will say dream was doing exile to enforce rules, or to keep the peace— when it’s very clear in canon it was a deliberate plan to get tommy on his own and into the prison. (from the way he was framing tommy for multiple crimes, and having sam set up the prison, and kidnapping tommy instead of correctly exiling him, all at the same time).

not even going into how he wants to kill and revive people for fun or make tommy immortal.

it’s just— ignoring all these actual facts and saying “oh he misses his friends, let’s get him some friends now” reminds me of like. when people would put flower crowns on pictures of serial killers. and then, there’s hardly anyone on the server who wasn’t subject to dream’s plans, so there’s absolutely no one i would be okay with him interacting with.

just remembered about the torture thing, and wow i still hate it so much. it’s someone’s sick revenge fantasy twisted into a way to get a manipulative villain sympathy, and it’s just gross to me on every account. i do think dream is traumatized-- just not by l’manberg, which was a conflict he started on his own terms. i would think l’manberg did affect him, because he was scared of losing control.

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again— my ideal ending for dream would be for him to be sent far away from dsmp to an island full of therapy animals and super strong therapists who have never met him before. and for him to get a shit ton of therapy until he becomes a halfway normal person. and then eventually he could get integrated into society again; but a different one with new people. (although maybe dteam + bbh + puffy can visit him, they might still like him.)

none of the people on the server (who have all been affected by dream) should be burdened with befriending him or rehabilitating him— look how that turned out with sam! sam had a personal grudge towards dream and it ended with the poor dude being tortured every day; and sam himself falling into corruption and literally cutting off his boyfriends arm. like we can all see thats fucking awful right?

no one who was affected by dream should have to deal with him ever again. and contrary to popular belief, that includes a LOT more people then just tommy. dream isn’t just tommy’s antagonist, hes almost everybody’s.

the only person on the server who might also be able to stand to help dream is techno, and that’s from sheer lack of ability to give a shit. but techno is probably THE furthest thing from a good therapist there is lol, and dream needs better then that.

this kind of just ended up being a rant about my thoughts on c!dream, so im so sorry op. especially since it was probably negative for you. i hope you’re doing very well.

i guess in the end it’s true what you said— people will highlight or ignore things based on what characters they like, and it’s especially easy to do in this fandom, where half the content doesn’t even get watched and then we become a big echo chamber of half-truths.

considering dream has hurt so many of the characters i care about, i almost can’t understand how he could be someone’s favorite or comfort character— but he is nonetheless, and it would be unfair of me to be rude about that.

essentially it just bothers me to see someone who was a perpetrator of accurately portrayed abuse and manipulation (using both those words in their actual definitions, not just as random buzzwords lol) being given the flower crown edit effect. especially since he’s hurt the characters i care about a lot.

ANYWAY all of that being said (this got LONG im so sorry op) i am so so excited to get dream’s pov, because although i disagree with his actions strongly i actually find dream’s character very interesting and cool, and watching his POV is going to insanely fun. i cannot wait to see what theories get confirmed or denied

ALSO incase it wasn’t clear this is all /nm at you! you seem lovely and smart, and neither of us can help what characters we get attached to :]

#c!dream critical #dream meta #og post #hey guys i would actually like some feedback on this one since i worked hard on it #rbs are okay and encouraged :]#my meta

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lepertamar · 3 years

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i’m willing to be convinced at least some of my great uncharitability and suspicion for Helper personalities comes from experiencing sanism and psych abuse etc, but like......ok so

i would believe that lucifer does care about everyone, as they say. but, this fucking, it’s taken me this long to even go back to the page to quote it because it’s so awful but:

They sit down next to her, definitely smiling now. “You’re really caring about this. Figuring yourself out, that’s what you’re doing, right?” “Yes.” “Which is really all I ever wanted of you. Not sure if you’ve noticed exactly, but that’s why I made the deal with you. Because you clearly had no idea about yourself, and I wanted to help.”

[..........]

But Elīya wants clarity, and there’s something she has to know. “Why do you care?” Lucifer turns their head to her, gives her a particularly unreadable smile that lasts multiple seconds before they finally speak. They’re mostly in shadow, their eyes somehow lit by the stars. “’S really a simple answer. I care about everyone.”

Elīya blinks. “But Yenatru—”

“I care about him more, of course. But you’re someone, Elīya, everyone is, and you didn’t seem to have the slightest idea about whatever particular joy being you might bring. And there was a chance, right there, right in front of me, to help you find out. No way in fuck I wasn’t going to take that.” They pause, smiling.

the author sooooooo clearly thinks this is Good and Heroic and Poignant and Wonderful but it is perhaps the most unlikable shit anyone has done in these books, in my eyes — even though it did in fact help eliya! (stark contrast: i didn’t play you, stark contrast: yenatru’s kiss.) plus the, therapisty dishonest refusal to admit power differentials in this relationship between unequals simply becuz lucifer doesn’t want to be in a position of power, so they say they’re not while 100% being in power, using their advantage (finding tamar) to make eliya fix herself (actually worse: do the thing that lucifer didactically believes Will be the Answer that Will fix people, it cannot be Not The Answer, in their mind. (stark contrast: i want to see You.)

which like. don’t get me wrong. IS the kind of #problematicness in interpersonal damage i really like (see eliya and tamar!!) narratively i AM glad it happened. it should absolutely not have been changed or taken out. but it is NOT framed or intended that way — if it actually was intended to be ambiguously unlikable and messy, then what actually appears on paper would be a failure of craft that is nowhere to be found in the chapter immediately following it, which features the deeply un-pushy and raw sincere harshness of eliya and tamar’s interaction and self-explanations. if the author wanted this to actually be a harsh ambiguous scene about people’s strange deep complexities, it would have been successfully written so. bc they write such interactions in other contexts so successfully. so i doubt this is intended as anything but what it looks like — the author mooning over how Good and Right lucifer is.

LUcifer noticed eliya Is Miserable (which is accurate, because eliya IS miserable) and they rope themself into this whole situation of helping her and coercing her into Being Helped (without saying why until much later) by insisting eliya do theurgy in exchange for finding tamar, and insisting on not going back on their deal while long-sufferingly acting as if they are the one who was forced into it. AND acting like what they say is just Neutral Truth, not a (valid but) wildly subjective and warped by deliberate incompleteness and eliding due to trauma and....Christian, mystically so but like think william blake maybe idea of what aspects of the world Are Fake and about what The Answer To Be Found is and what People Need

.......and like. lucifer DID happen to help eliya (though not nearly as much as yenatru and tamar did) becuz the stuff they were able to give her just so happened to be a thing that eliya really needed. BUT but. but but but. BUT.

but. just fucking imagine Lucifer roping someone who didn’t need that sort of help/whose problems were nothing like eliya’s, into accepting their help lol. like imagine how much damage their imposition of Their Idea About The World and Selves would do to someone who WASN’T anything like eliya.

imagine if they Got to someone like yenatru before he started theurgy, imagine if they got to Eshva or Tamar early. they’d have ruined (or tried, under the impression they were helping) those people’s lives lmao.

and if they hadn’t tried to help eliya but just towed tamar to her and let them hash it out? that would have also been good FOR ELIYA.

Now OF COURSE that would be a boring story. i much prefer the problematic and deeply iffy and counterproductive helping in terms of narrative!! in terms of revealing things to the reader! again my problem is not remotely ‘this shouldn’t have happened’ it’s almost the opposite -- ‘this should have happened more and gone even farther and what happened should have had more scrutiny and ripple effects’/’lucifer should have been even Worse and more interfering! it would have made the hints of story in here Really good’). but in canon, eliya DID get as much out of tamar’s Proof Of Being And Having Done Who She Is (as per the first line of the book), eliya got as much out of contemplating and struggling with the mystery of tamar -- what what what could a soul possibly be that this is a way it could be — as she did out of being kissed by Yenatru, and being kissed by Yenatru made a bigger difference to eliya’s understanding of theurgy than all of lucifer’s teaching put together. acknowledging this hypothetical + this comparative impact would work narratively with lucifer’s Messing Around even better, it wouldn’t have made it extraneous at all in terms of narrative! and also narratively.....not being messed-with by Lucifer wouldn’t have helped eliya as quickly, linearly, or revealingly as everything put together for sure. it probably would have taken her a long time (less narratively good) without lucifer’s help — but that would be just by chance, because it was her and not someone else. that’s the part that needed elucidating.

#the stars that rise at dawn #honestly eliya/lucifer friendship would have made so much more sense than lucifer/yenatru lol #these two get each other! can be fair in outcome by each others’ standards #lu #EDIT: ELIYA <3< LUCIFER ELIYA <3< LUCIFER #coal sings

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