#she tried to escape the narrative and was punished for it SO BADLY she is literally now trapped in the narrative for eternity | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yanderecandystore · 4 years ago

Note

Can I request a soulmate thingy with the bullies and delinquents?

Hi! Well, I got a little confused about your request but I think I got it, although I normally do one pair of ocs per post (or all ocs at once-) I guess I could do about both delinquents and bullies-

Especially since soulmate conundrums can be such a complex thing that it would take a long time to write one single post with every single OC lol-

Thank you for requesting!

TW/Tags: angst here and there // long as fuck // Soulmate shenanigans // not so great relationships (bullying) // cursing // delusional expectations/ideas // gender neutral reader

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Soulmate issues lol [Yandere!Bully OC/Yandere! Delinquent OC x Soulmate!Reader - Scenario]:

🎇 Let me set the stage for a quick sec!🎇

In this timeline, let us just say that something very specific happens to make it possible for two or more people to realize that they may be soulmates (cause I don't know how else I could create this universe boo XD). I think that two people that are soulmates would not be aware of it until they would be able to see each other's birthmarks, kinda like a magical symbol that is stuck on your skin ever since you were born.

In a reality where you are aware that you have a destined loved one possibly waiting for you and that it would be treason of you to not search for them, you could imagine how high your expectations were.

Well, not only your expectations but also the expectations of the entire society surrounding you, expecting you to simply accept whoever carries the same exact birth symbol as you.

Even if having a birthmark that dictates your future love interest is a common thing in your society, it doesn't mean that people just go around showing each other's birthmarks. It's believed that there is no need to rush things and that if you did find the love of your life, it's not because of the birthmark itself, but rather the spiritual connection between you two that brought you together unconsciously.

As I said before, your expectations were just as high as your hopes, as you wished to be able to meet the person who would "complete" you, the person carrying the soul of someone that had loved you through life and death, carrying the soul of the person YOU loved through life and death!

Now, how badly can this beautiful idealized narrative go?- I mean, consider your soulmates that is.

🍒Bullies🍭:

→ Alexandra Coldwell:

Alexandra is not exactly a patient person, you can imagine that the idea of having someone that would instantly fall in love with her was a really interesting idea, almost too good to be true.

Don't get me wrong, she believed this whole shenanigan to be unnecessary and dictating. She thought it was stupid to just start loving someone she doesn't know, and it's not like she is going to kiss some stranger's ass just because they have the same birthmark as her.

Ugh, that thing almost felt like some sort of bad tattoo she should have thought twice about having. It was a beautiful symbol, an elegant C' on emblem surrounded by thorns. Doctors believed that Alexandra could possibly be the reincarnation of one of her ancestors, since her birthmark is coincidentally similar to the old Coldwell family symbol used in the middle ages.

Although there isn't any evidence left of who was the "original owner" of the birthmark, neither of the people who they were destined to be with, which doesn't really matter to her at all, since she still thinks this "tattoo" was only a reminder of something stupid that she did that she doesn't want to be a part of it anymore.

Even after knowing that the possibility of seeing her "sOuLmATe" walking around town was possible, Alexandra never really cared about finding them. She preferred to have fun with as many people as she could instead of following her heart or whatever, she doesn't need anyone after all.

That's what she thought before noticing your birthmark. That symbol, that same exact symbol was placed on your skin, on YOU of all people. She has been bullying you ever since you entered the university but she had never EVER considered the possibility of you being her soulmate.

Even so, it does make a lot of sense! Ever since you entered the institution, you two had a weird connection that kept bringing each other closer although unconsciously. It felt like somehow she couldn't stop picking on you, and to you, it felt like there was no escape from her.

And it seems that your interpretation of your situation was correct, considering that now you are apparently bound to her with the same stupid destiny tattoo or whatever-

The fact that you are the one person she is bound to eternity is extremely humorous to her at first. It's both insulting and ironic that a nerd like you got the chance in a lifetime to be her soulmate, don't you feel lucky?

She will continue her bullying because obviously this is a great opportunity to show you your place, which is by her side no matter what you say or do. Alexandra believed that this was either a well crafted joke by the universe or just a cruel punishment to her, having someone like you be tied to her by love sounds so absurd…

And pretty fitting, in a way.

As time passed Alexandra started to grow closer to you, her bullying and general mean attitude had seemed to tone down as long as it was towards you. She seemed to have found a soft spot for you in her heart, but sadly, things don't always work like we plan them to.

You were disgusted by the fact ever since you realized it, how can you be stuck with her, of all people in the entire world? The soft feeling you get when you stand next to her doesn't help your case at all!-

Why of all people here, your bully has to be your soulmate? Maybe it was foolish of you to believe that when you finally found the one and only you would feel happy, maybe it was foolish for you to believe that the person you had fallen for once would be a actually gentle and caring person.

While Alexandra tried to get closer to you, you made your best efforts to get away from her as fast as you could. You didn't want to be near your bully specially when you just discovered that the reason you have continued to endure it for so long was because of the entire soulmate thing! Curse the stupid feelings that she gives you every time she is playful or soft towards you.

If you two had known each other in different conditions, this could all be a lot easier to deal with.

→ Adrien Coldwell:

Adrien may look pretty unbothered on the outside, yet that is nothing but a facade to keep his reputation from instantly falling as he squeals in excitement. This is perfect for him.

Differently from his sister, who has a symbol that is almost reminiscent of the old Coldwell brand mark and that has granted her the "special sibling of the dual" statues, Adrien has a somewhat weird birthmark. Is quite simply a shield with cherry on top. Is simple, pretty basic even.

There were no data associating his birthmark to anyone in his family, so presumably he isn't a possible reincarnation as his sister is, which lead the family to favor her over him since his birthmark has no resemblance of anything related to the family's history or is it intriguing or fun to look at.

It's a simple mark. What's so good about it?

And that's exactly what they got wrong, it was the exact opposite of a simple mark. It had a great meaning to Adrien, it meant something so important to him that he has sworn to search for his soulmate because of it. Because no one seemed to take his birthmark seriously he felt compelled to actually understand what it could mean, and how could he use it to get closer to his special someone.

His sister seemed to be the only one who noticed how the neglect affected Adrien to the point he decided to put up a mask and hide his need for even a little bit of attention.

I wouldn't bat an eye if he was the one to actually find out about you two sharing the same birthmark first. He has been stalking you and harassing you for so long, it would make sense as to why he feels so good when he is in your presence or interacting with you.

Granted that your earlier encounters were just him being an ass and being pretty rude to you in class, but now it's different you know??

He is so glad to have found you, finally- He got too excited to even show you that you two had the same symbol glued in your skins, he just started acting differently one day.

One day, while you were at the university he literally just gave you a small gift and called you out on a date. It was pretty frightening seeing someone who doesn't smile a lot trying to express fondness through their menacing looking grin, you had instantly thought it was some sort of elaborate prank yet you couldn't stop yourself from simply following with his plan.

You just felt compelled to go with him, despite the fact he has been nothing but a childish bully towards you. You can imagine the surprise on your face when he actually came to pick you up and have a great time chatting over a simple meal at a expensive ass restaurant you could never afford-

While you were being paranoid and trying to see where the "punchline", the "climax" of his prank was, he was enjoying his time with you not even noticing the fact you looked at him with suspicion written in your face.

You ended up spelling out your confusion and distrust of his person, claiming that you didn't know what he had in-store for you, but if this was some sort of prank he should just get it done with because you needed to be back home soon.

He was so shocked at your statement that he almost felt his heart breaking at your words, the sudden realization that he hasn't shown you why he was acting so kindly towards you in the first place.

And that's when the whole night went from confusing to horrible. You felt genuinely bad that the truth about his kindness wasn't because of a genuine change of heart, but rather because of your soul connection.

But that revelation wasn't as bad as when you actually notice you catching feelings for him throughout this time he has been a douche with you. You realized the exact reason why you came here, HE had realized the exact reason you came here.

You felt yourself panicking, leaving the restaurant immediately, how can you be his soulmate even if he is such a jerk with you??

How can you tell if these feelings are due to a genuine interest or just the connection through souls?

Why does it hurt to think he is only being kind because of the effects the birthmark has on him?

Even if the birthmark represents a strong bond that can't even be broken by death itself, you felt genuinely concerned for this being a disingenuous love. Yet that brings the question: Why do you care so much? Isn't he just an asshole you met in your class?

While you left crying confused of the sudden wave of questions clouding your mind, Adrien was feeling that our void consumed him.

Apparently he was wrong about his expectations, he shouldn't have thrown a bomb at you so suddenly. Or maybe, you don't really love him at all, and don't want anything to do with him.

There is nothing left but a poor foolish man crying while making no sound in his fancy table.

🍋Delinquents🐛:

→ Jackson Macnee:

Not exactly the most obvious romantic lover in the world, Jack can be pretty "whatever" when it comes to these things. He didn't really believed in the idea of love at first sight, although he is the type to get instant crushes really fast-

Jack's birthmark it's surprisingly cool looking, a snake coiling itself on a branch. It's so funny how it looks like a natural tattoo, he even decided to not hide it at all since he liked the look of it. It's not uncommon for people to leave their birthmarks visible, but in the case of Jack he used to wear it in public as a real tattoo rather than a soulmate birthmark.

Whenever someone asked about it, he would lie saying it wasn't the real deal, and when it came to people asking "which one is it then?" he would tell them to fuck off. It's none of their fucking business, it's supposed to be a intimate thing, isn't it?

Jack believed that the symbol was something way too important to be shared out as a talking subject, so much so that he has considered many times covering his birthmark in public due to the prying eyes looking at it. Yet he wore it as a tattoo so he could find someone who would recognize it as their own symbol, and whoever didn't recognize it, didn't deserve to hear the truth.

Yeah, maybe he did take this a little too seriously. I mean how couldn't he? It's something that dictates whoever the fuck he is supposed to be with, yeah people can go around and sleep with or date whoever they want, yet he felt compelled to wait and see what would happen.

To see if someone in the crowd would recognize it and talk with him, so he could see how this whole shenanigan works. And of course, his plan did work out eventually, as he caught you staring at him for way too long.

He thought you were confusing him with someone else, but having someone like you stare at him for so long was starting to annoy him- So of course, he rudely asked you what the hell did you want.

You were surprised by the harsh tone, yet not completely taken back by it. You seemed confident that his "tattoo" was clearly the same birthmark that you had.

You… Surprised him. You were so confident and comfortable with telling a total strangeville that you two were destined to be together or whatever. It's not everyday that you see someone so straightforward, so he decided to see how far this would go- He asked:

"- And…?"

"- I don't know- I haven't thought about it to be honest-" You said looking at him deadpanned. You were telling the truth though, you didn't really expect to find not only a person with a similar birthmark to you but to legit be right about them being your soulmate. You had met so many people with the "snake coiled in a branch" tattoo that you almost thought it was some sort of joke from the universe (it shouldn't even be possible for so many people to have the same coincidental tattoo!).

You started to introduce yourself and ask for his name and where he was going- It felt weird to be receiving so much attention out of nowhere by someone he doesn't know- Well, more accurately someone he had just met but still feels like he knows for years.

If you're so interested to know him and… I don't know, do whatever soulmates are supposed to do- He can totally do that right about now-

I mean, he doesn't have anything to do right now, and although he may not show it he is kinda interested to see how this will work out. It's clear that there is something that connects you two yet he would prefer to get to know what type of person you are. Even if he is low-key already digging this nonchalant attitude from you, he is a little worried that you may be a little gremlin in disguise.

Jack acts so careful around you that sometimes it's hard to tell if he is enjoying himself or if he just genuinely doesn't trust you for some reason. Even if he is loving every second of getting to know you, the lack of affection being expressed from his part makes you question if this is really what destiny has instore for you.

Hopefully he'll be able to open himself up before you think this won't work out at all.

→ Janette Sartorius:

Janette is a hopeless romantic woman. It doesn't help that her whole entire life she grew up dreaming about this moment.

Her birthmark is simplistic yet it meant the entire world to her-. A sword stuck on a rock as the laces that decorate the sword fly in the wind. It really did look like a tattoo, some people had even questioned her if that was her real birthmark or just a tattoo she made to look cool.

To some it may seem like a cool little symbol to have on her skin, yet to her it feels like there is something more to it. A meaning, a dream, a memory perhaps?

Ever since she was young she loved the stories of knights and princesses, she started to associate that image of the sword with that dream of being someone else's knight. It was charming to her and it seemed like she hasn't grown out of that phase ever since.

The first impression is the one that lasts, right? So the only way to meet her darling is to have a big entrance. It's not like she isn't ready at any time, it's just that she hoped that for all the good luck in world to not make her look stupid infront of whoever had the same birthmark as her.

Fortunately for her, her wishes were granted as in a brilliant moment of pure fucking convinient plot coincidence as she not only managed to impress you, but to also feel like the knight she so badly wanted to be.

She got her glorious moment after defending you from another classmate that was harassing you, to which she only got to enjoy after she looked over at you and not only instantly thought you looked pretty hot in her eyes and also saw that familiar image on the back of your hand.

It was pretty much love at first sight, which was literally bound by the universe to happen. I mean, can't you see this?? This perfect scene, the fact that she didn't need to look at your birthmark to see how gorgeous you were and to even be able to help you get up-

It was perfect! It felt perfect, it was even better than what she had dreamed of. The only thing to spoil this sweet moment between soon to be lovers was the bell ringing and you turning your back and running to class after whispering a shy "thank you bye". She couldn't even say her name, or ask your name, or even show you her own birthmark!

The only thing you left was a tiny notepad you forgot to pick up. There were scribbles here and there talking about some class assignments and source material for your studies.

It felt like you were Cinderella running away and leaving the crystal heel so she could pick it up and find you later on. It made her heart flustered at the comparison, it was all coming along so well.

She recognized which was the subject that your notepad was referring to, and soon went to find your class where she could hopefully find you and give it back.

But when she reached your class at lunchtime she didn't find you anywhere inside, only a couple of your classmates were there. She asked everyone she could to see where you were, like she was interrogating them over a crime scene because of how desperate she looked.

It felt like an endless chase to find you, people had given her vague or useless information over and over again. Some were playing a prank on Janette and others genuinely didn't know enough about you to know where you could be.

From the information she gathered around, you were a silent study all day type of person. She heard that you didn't enjoy it at all but you felt the need to try your hardest to be able to pass in your exams. Janette heard that you were shy and tended to keep yourself away from genuinely getting involved with people, which led to people considering you a weirdo and to bullying you over this.

It was a terrible reason to treat someone so loveable so badly yet it didn't surprise her since the institution was an absolute mess, if delinquents like her can go around and burn shit down, then clearly that was something wrong with the educational system.

Yet she didn't give up even for a second, she needed to find you, she needed to talk with you and tell you about your destiny together (and trying not to sound so desperate as she was-). Her efforts were compensated by finally finding you and being able to give you the notepad back.

It was so heartwarming to hear you say thank you again and being able to introduce herself properly, yet there was something different about this conversation. You seemed… worried of her presence, disturbed by it, concerned of her being so close and breathless next to you.

She thought you were startled by the sudden approach, after all you were a shy ball, right? That's why- That's why you got so shocked when she said you two were meant for each other, right? That's why you seemed so surprised after she showed you her birthmark.

O-Of course you weren't distancing yourself out of fear, right? Even if your eyes look so freaked out, it was probably because of how sudden the situation was right?

You didn't actually fear her, right? She knows she can be a bit intimidating, but-

But there is no way you're afraid of your own soulmate, right? There is no way she is scaring her own darling away, that was impossible…

You didn't mean it when you said you were "too busy with studying to think about getting a relationship", did you? She- She must had heard it wrong-

What type of fuckin excuse is that?? What moron says that to a person who they're literally bonded with forever?!

Janette was visibly shaking, her expression was of pure anger which didn't really surprise you as you expected her to get mad at such a terrible excuse. You didn't lie about being busy studying, you lied about not wanting to date her because of it. You were afraid of her because of her reputation, you didn't want anything to do with a delinquent, or a leader of a biker gang, or anyone so hot headed for that matter! It was ironic how your soulmate was literally the one person you wanted to be away from, even if you did feel a little more protected in her presence.

Actually, you would be lying if that encounter wasn't so… Romantic, in a way.

Yet it doesn't help that just the idea of getting rejected is making her look so violent, she hasn't even spoken anything or even raised her hand, yet there is a clear "nope" flag hanging over her head- You didn't say no! You just- You just don't know how you feel about this, is too sudden-

You fail to find the right words to tell her and hopefully calm her down, instead you just cowardly distance yourself and slowly slipping your back against the wall so you can make yourself seem smaller, unconsciously trying to showcase how terrified you were and how you you literally regretted every word that had ever come on out of your mouth.

Of course she was mad, but more because of the situation than of you actually- I mean, she has been waiting for this moment her whole life! How… How can anyone say something like that to their own soulmate for fucks sake?! How can you not feel the same spark that she feels by just talking with you? Is she in the wrong for wanting to jump straight to the "Happy ever after" of your story together? Maybe she is coming off way too strong about this, is this why you're being so stubborn?

When she manages to calm herself before saying something she would regret it, the look that you give her tells her that she really, really messed up this introduction part.

It hurts her to think you're scared of her, yet what hurts more is the fact she almost screwed this whole up for you two, you just need… some time to know her, right? To understand her, and so she can understand you.

She'll try to comfort you, yet is clear that she isn't the best at comforting people, but- But please! Please let her try!!

Let her try to be your knight in shining armour, dearest.

Even if you don't like the idea of spending time with her, I think you don't have a say in the matter. You'll stay by her side and you will see how you two were made for each other, you'll see.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

#yandere #sheep stuff #yandere oc #sheep's stuff #yandere x reader #yandere bully #yandere twins #yandere oc headcanon #yandere delinquent #yandere bully x reader #yandere delinquent x reader #yandere soulmate au #special delivery headcanons #special delivery request #yandere scenario #yandere ocs scenarios #yandere scenarios

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bestworstcase · 4 years ago

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honestly like. the appeal of cassunzel for me is that it isn’t meant to be; here’s cassandra, the servant, mired in self-hatred and trauma she can’t even articulate because she buried most of it so deep she can’t even remember it, and there’s rapunzel, the princess, mired in trauma and hopelessly inexperienced as she meets the world for the first time… and cassandra builds her walls high but rapunzel tears them down faster than cass can build them back up and it hurts but it feels good, too, because cassandra isn’t used to being wanted. she’s never been chosen for anything before, she’s never had someone so intent on peeling back the layers of what she can do to find out who she is. my gooodness of course cassandra falls head over heels: who wouldn’t, in her situation? lonely and craving respect, craving trust, craving admiration, craving love, and never getting it until rapunzel claws her way past cassandra’s caution to give it to her whether she likes it or not.

but… that cuts both ways, doesn’t it? their whole friendship is built upon transgression of cassandra’s boundaries, upon rapunzel taking what she wants because she wants it and because cass will relent in the end; she always does. rapunzel loves cass so fiercely and so selfishly that she erodes away every line cassandra tries to draw until there’s nothing left but i am going to be queen someday and i am going to make decisions and i need you to be okay with that. until it’s cass sitting on a boulder apologizing while rapunzel holds the hand that she mutilated and makes cass responsible for swallowing any anger, any hurt she feels about that, because she is rapunzel’s servant first, and her friend second, and rapunzel always gets what she wants.

and still! still, beneath all the resentment and rage and pain, cassandra loves her so much. so she takes the moonstone and she listens to zhan tiri but still, she wavers again and again and she wants so badly to believe that she’s wrong about rapunzel that in her mother’s house she lets her guard down again and in corona while the rest of the kingdom screams and attacks her, she listens when rapunzel asks her to stand down. she loves rapunzel, and when she’s stripped of her power and her anger and reduced to nothing again that love flows to the surface again. she gives the shard of the moonstone to rapunzel. she surrenders. she concedes. she DIES to help fix the mess she made in the depths of her anger and pain…

…and then she leaves.

she can’t stay in corona—not as punishment for her wrong doing, but because letting go of violence and vengeance doesn’t mean the anger or the resentment or the hurt is gone, it doesn’t mean it’s all better, it doesn’t mean that corona isn’t a cage where she will never, ever be allowed to exist as herself; as cassandra, just cassandra, not rapunzel’s servant or friend.

rapunzel wants her to stay but it finally isn’t rapunzel’s decision. cassandra is leaving with her blessing or without it, because cassandra deserves to escape the toxic spiral of their friendship. (and rapunzel lets her go, in the end, which perhaps opens the door to a recovery in the future, but… that is a long ways out, i think.)

i just !!! for all its flaws and for all that it failed to portray rapunzel deeply reckoning with her treatment of cass, tts as a narrative nonetheless sympathizes with cassandra’s anger and validates her pain, and when she lets go of vengeance and moves to simply remove herself from an untenable, broken friendship, she is rewarded for that with the autonomy she needed all along. the cure for what ails cassandra isn’t love, romantic or otherwise. she can’t love rapunzel enough to make the way rapunzel treats her okay. her feelings for rapunzel were and are real and true and deep and lasting, but they don’t stop her from leaving, from putting herself first and doing what’s right for her in the end. no more self-sacrifice. no more accepting not being allowed boundaries as the price she pays to be loved. no more servitude to the woman she loves.

like… i was never especially invested in cassunzel as a requited relationship. but an important relationship for cass, one that changes her life multiple times over, one that nearly destroys her because she tries so HARD to make it work even as it becomes increasingly dysfunctional and toxic, one she drags herself out of and learns from, one that she leaves behind in order to live for herself instead of for someone else? one she can, perhaps, revisit years down the line after she’s healed, if and only if she wants to? oh yes. that is a narrative i can get behind.

#rta #*chefs kiss* it’s about the CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

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ignitification · 3 years ago

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is it that * account? Their takes are terrible😐 i read before that they said that young toya used his trauma as a psychological weapon against natsuo and i was like WHAT and also shit like dku's bullying wasn't a societal issue actually which uh again,What and this lady nagant bashing? It's almost misogynistic. like I get she wasn't referenced before and treated badly by/for the narrative but she absolutely was nuanced and nagant's takes on society weren't perfect but came from a jaded perspective of being used to brutally keep up the system. Which in the same vein, when was hawks referenced in the story before his intro? what has he really provided to the narrative other than being a cog in the system who upholds the system, pushes for the hero ranking system of having a symbol - and this one being a egoistic abuser - and kills for the system and doesn't have any particular remorse for it and believes the perpetrators of the system over its victims?

Hi, anon! To confirm your suspicions, yes. I do find some of their takes problematic and uncomfortable to read but I also used to like some of their stuff and sometimes I did agree with different statement they made. However, this said, the fact that a lot of people have been reducing the character of Lady Nagant to an appearance of nothing, with no personality and just a rebooted female version of Hawks, does not sit right with me. I honestly don’t remember anything about what they said about Touya/Natsuo (I don’t follow, and I just happen to see some posts when they get rbed in the feed or in the tags) nor about Izuku’s bullying so I’d have to take your word for it (I’m sorry, I really do not care enough to go look for any of these takes, I don’t think it’s worth my time). But as for the Lady Nagant thing, yeah I thoroughly agree with you. I think that the entire existence of her character is to give another dimension to the narrative (which other character couldn’t, so the argument of her being shallow really does not stand on its feet) and to have a positive (or negative, for that matter) impact on Izuku’s development as someone who tries to change the tide of things. I have talked in length about how I think Izuku will become the Greatest Hero exactly because of all he has been through and because he did not stop at the surface of the things (however faulty this statement might be, because while I do think Izuku is still far away from the character I’d like him to be, he still is trying to understand, giving a chance to himself to ask whether there is someone more to what his eyes can see, and that’s far more than any of other heroes have ever done). Lady Nagant therefore serves as both a confirmation and another perspective in the story that Izuku is trying to address/correct/understand - which has literally so little to do with Hawks, that I think the comparison is futile. She is a supernova, and she has been shining for a very short time - but brightly enough to actually pull at some strings for Mido. Which is, again, more than every other hero has ever done. No one actually stopped to tell him their story, and the fact that Izuku values heroes so much is only one of the factors why Lady Nagant’s story will have a huge influence on him and will resonate with Izuku. I really like her character, because she is blunt and honest, and to be honest she has (exactly as the other villains) more values than everyone else in the narrative. She has done bad things - and she has been punished for it. She recognised the need that maybe talking to the kid, instead of shooting him dead (like people are trying to assume, putting forward the argument of her career at the HPSC) or trying to weasel or lure him in, would probably be more effective. Also yeah, her view on society might not be perfect and her methods did not work, and she used to kill terrorists-to-be and all that yada yada, but she also wanted desperately out. She was smart enough to know that killing the President of the HPSC meant that her life was over and that anyways that would have not changed anything in terms of cogs of society, but she did something. She did not stand for the status quo anymore, and that’s where the beauty of her character comes in. Like Hawks, she was held in a cage where she could not refuse to be fed and she just went along with it, until she couldn’t and then she entirely decided to throw herself and everything she had worked for hard at the wind, to end up in Tartarus - but free of the Damocle sword that the HPSC and society norms held above her head. This is entirely opposite of how we are introduced to Hawks’ character, Just because he has been longer in the narrative, as you said, it does not hold true that his introduction was not out of nowhere. I was so confused when we hear Tokoyami having his internship with him and it is only then we discover who he is. Is it nowhere better than Lady Nagant, who is instead at least seen once before (chapter 296/297) with the Tartarus escape. I already however talked about all the faults that Hawks has, and the values he upholds (and the abuse he justifies) so I won’t be repeating myself, but that’s the downline of it. He had no active role in the down bringing of the HPSC (for reason I stated here, confuting once again of the posts of this same account, funnily enough), and he is still supportive of Endeavour, notwithstanding his own past and the detailed account of Dabi’s story (on here I also wrote so much lately, just scroll to see), which is still a memento that Hawks is part of the system, and he does not see himself capable of living without that same system (the system being society - and the comfort that the familiarity of Endeavour brings him). It is really pointless to compare the two character, who stand diametrically opposite on one another in the narrative. I also dislike the choice of Horikoshi that lets Hawks have his moments of saving Lady N’s fall, because it once again, shows how Hawks’ double standard heavily influence his own standard of life (which is worth for his identity of hero and spy, his relationship with Endeavour and Dabi, and him killing Twice and looking down on the League, while still talking affectionately about Lady N), and that is exactly why Hawks’ character fails to acknowledge his fault as his own. Since he is part of the system, his actions are part of the system too, no matter whether wrong or right. If the show (system) must go on, then he will make sure it will.

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ziracona · 4 years ago

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Who of the DBD original killers do you think would be cool to see in horror movies? What characters do you think have the most potential for a film and what do you think it should/could be like?

Interesting question! Let’s see: Lisa, Sally, Philip, Max, Evan, Herman, Anna, Kenneth, Rin, Frank/Julie/Susie/Joey, Adiris, Danny (kind of), Kazan, Caleb, Talbot, and the Deshayes.

Hmmmm. Danny would work the least well as an original product, because he’s also a Scream expy thing. And then I also don’t think Talbot would work well outside a very DbD like in-universe heavy story, because he just has so much realm context backstory.

Out of the others, they all have potential. Basically none of the sympathetic ones would work as standalone horror characters, because they just didn’t like, /do/ murders before in-realm or live horror lives. The exceptions being Charlotte, Legion, Anna, Max, and Lisa. A lot of the others are definitely interesting enough to be really cool to watch their backstory lives, just, it wouldn’t be traditional horror. Charlotte and Lisa wouldn’t be the antagonists, but they /did/ both live complex horror lives before the realm, and there’s a lot of tragic potential there. Anna, Max, and Legion are all fairly sympathetic killers, but they /did/ live horror experiences before their time in-realm, so they have potential too. Out of them, I think Anna would be the strangest to adapt as traditional horror, since so much of her genre is tragedy and drama, and a narrative from her pov doesn’t play her as living a horror story, while Max and Legion’s do. It /could/ be crazy sad and work though, especially if you say, started the film from the pov of a kid who is kidnapped by her and the family who loses the child, and then only slowly as Anna goes from this horrific thing that kills people and steals children and eats human, to a weird kidnapper mother-wannabe, does she become less a monster and more complex. Maybe then you get flashbacks. It’d be dark, though, because even if you learned her past and understood what she’s been through and why she did what she did, and she and the child form any kind of bond, and she’s temporarily happy with a daughter and full of affection, you know none of her kids ever lived, so it would have to end with the child she’s had a few slow heartwarming moments with falling ill and her working hard to make her better, keep her warm, only to return from a hunt or panicked mission to collect herbs, relieved to have found what she needs, only to find a cold lifeless body waiting. Which she cradles for hours weeping, and then goes to bury finally behind the house, and only then does the audience realize this is one more joining fourteen graves that have come before it. And god, that’s just...so dismal. Chilling.

Uhhh, Max could be really good, but I would be so afraid people would adapt him badly because mentally ill and disabled antagonists in horror like, almost without fail are disgustingly treated. So, this one gives me fear. It could be a really nice character study, slow understanding movie though, where you go from identifying with him and him being the character in a horror situation, to the monster at the end of the film killing anything who comes near him in a frenzied need to be left alone. Also a very tragic and dark film.

The Legion would be a top pick, because it’s less dark and more like, unique? As far as horror goes. You get these kids, kind of a Gingersnaps, The Craft feel horror, with character-driven and a slow build into the actual horror of it all. Things only spiral slowly, and you like and sympathize with at least to some degree the stupid shit teens by the time things fall apart and their is blood on their hands. And there’s just--so much in the air. One murder. Unplanned. Punk troublemakers that just went off the edge into something darker on accident, and never really have time to choose what this means for them as people or if they’ll come back, because they are still in the immediate turmoil of processing that first kill when the Entity grabs them all. Could be really sick. Also there’s so much sweet-tragedy to work with here, I die for it. Ahhh, and baby Jeff Johansen! --Side note: while I think a lot of these would be cool horror films, honestly, I wouldn’t make horror flicks out of any of them. The reason isn’t that they would be bad films, but that I think the ideal way to adapt dbd killers cinematically would be in like, a DbD tie-in miniseries that’s a collection of stories that gives you backstories like archives does, but does it /way/ better. Like how Overwatch does character short films periodically for lore, except longer and probably live action. Or like the Coming To America segments in American Gods before episodes/chapters that introduce characters or backstory. I fkn love that concept in media when it’s done well. I think it would be super sick, and it would be a great way to tie things into dbd while letting different killers have unique flavors and storytelling styles to their shortfilms. (Honestly, DbD as a concept could make for some /fantastic/ tv show material. I’d /love/ to adapt it. And if there /was/ a show, it would be really cool to periodically have episodes that are just character backstories before you go back to the like, over-arching realtime plot).

Uhhhh, Lisa’s would be tragic, and it would /have/ to go full story. Poor kid just living her life, to kidnapped and struggling to survive. Trying to escape. Canibalized and tortured horribly. Eventually dying and vowing revenge. All the way to twisted and abused by the Entity, doing things she never ever would have chosen for herself, for just the...the fucking wholesale tragedy of her. Honestly, if DbD had a show, she’d be a /fantastic/ choice for first or second killer to get a backstory segment or episode, because like, people new to the media would understandably be like ‘yo these monsters are all 100% evil’ but then you get Lisa and you’re like ‘Oh fuck. That was one of the creepiest, and really she’s some poor young woman who needs rescuing as much as the survivors,’ and then there’s just so much left up in the air to question--who else is like her? And who is like Danny, or Freddy? Who is somewhere in between? Great for storytelling.

Uhhh, it’d take a long time to break down how I’d adapt all of these even with me doing shortform like this so I’ll try to be brief. Let me see. Charlotte would be great horror, back to the original question, not my miniseries fantasy, because her whole life is a horror film she’s the victim in, but her situation is complex and fascinating, and she’s a kid, and it’s so tragic, but not in a pointless way. Her life was full of love and pain, but it mattered, to her, to her mom who loved her and died for her, and to the baby brother whose corpse she couldn’t stop cradling and literally carrying not just with but in her. I think you’d have to finish that heartbroken for the girl, and hoping somehow she is able to find healing in whatever time she has left.

Sally and Philip both went through awful stuff, but Philip’s is not really a subject for just a horror film--although his time in Autohaven could be. Sally also had horrific experiences at her job, but again, like Max, less excited about this one because I don’t trust many people to do a good job with an asylum story. If done well, could be really tragic. Watching her fall apart trying to care about the people who just deserve help, and falling apart being abused by the criminals kept right in the next room over. The horrific ‘treatments’, the slow influence of the Entity whispering in her head, her finally fracturing and believing so completely she is saving people by purifying them and setting them free while she smothers a young boy who trusted her to death. Devastating. And Philip’s life overall and his time in autohaven lend themselves very well to horror, and he’d be a magnificent protagonist, I just don’t think if it was mostly the stuff in America, that that’s a full-length movie. Could be a really great like 45 minute short film. God, poor Philip. He deserved /none/ of this. Uhhh, Rin’s is horrific, with her as the victim, but like Philip, there’s not a /ton/ of buildup, so short film, not feature? Also God, poor Rin. She was just a kid. Doing her best. Please, Entity, fucking stop this.

This leaves Evan, Herman, Kenneth, Adiris, Kazan, and Caleb. Out of these, Caleb would make for a really good movie, but I don’t think it would be a horror film? It’d be a drama, or action-adventure. I mean don’t get me wrong--dark drama--his life was fucked--but like, it isn’t very horror-genre. Kenneth would be super gross but he fits classic horror well so if you want a killer clown, let’s goooo, but like? It’d just be two hours of him drugging, torturing and assaulting and then killing kids, teens, young adults, adults, and old people? And like, almost getting caught but not, and then being recruited by the Entity? And there’s just...not a story in there I see very worth telling? So I’d hard pass. Gross.

Uhhhh, Herman is boring if he’s rewrite. Torture bastard but like with mad scientist vibes is more interesting, and I could dig a CIA is evil film. Only, since he canonically kills /everybody/ in the building, you’d either have to retcon, or have a very disappointing film. Because Herman can’t be the pov character if he’s mad scientist Herman--you kinda need to see that from the outside at least as like, a deuteragonist. Not that horror is always disappointing if the cast all dies--sometimes that works--but like. Given the plotline I know Herman’s life takes, I can’t see your protag being slowly mind control tortured and then eventually experimented on and ripped apart until they die Herman’s last day being a very worthwhile storyline. If you retcon the complete losses though, and have maybe a spy who is the pov character, experimented on a lot, tries to escape and is punished, maybe tries to help a friend, tries to kill Herman in retribution for what he does to a colleague, and last day, somehow finds a way to survive whatever is done to them/not end up vegetative for the rest of their life or dead? Maybe puts a plan into action and messes up a machine and gets hit with a much lower than it looks like dosage of electricity and fakes vegetative, and survives, and witnesses the Entity come and take Herman even, and the Entity notices them and is like “Okay...more free food” so you have a last minute terrified beat to shit spy trying to break free of arm restraints and escape the place before the Entity gets them. Maybe rescues someone else too? Then baybeee we got a story with a great antag! Throw in a new protag to spice it up and u got something I’d like to see. If it’s just torture man lover Herman -the mad scientist aspect, I am not super interested but it’s not a /hard/ pass. I keep this pitch, it just becomes a less interesting film.

Adiris baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t do you with the sympathetic killers you know I love you your name was just late in my list because of how I typed it. Uhhh, her life doesn’t lend well to horror, although she’s a fantastic drama or epic. I’d love to see a major focus on her in-relam in a show, but as far as this question goes, I just don’t think that’s her genre.

This leaves Kazan and Evan. Guess I lied before about not going into any detail TuT but I’ll try. Uhhh. Kazan I am just not that interested in the story of? Man goes around killing farmers brutally for no reason. It’s less horror, more historical drama, unless you take the pov of a victim who seeks revenge or something. So, like Herman, he’d need a pov character fix to make it work. But the end result I find much less compelling. I’d probably pass. It’s just not that interesting to me.

Evan. Well, he’d be a good film I think. Classic horror. Rich, privileged, conceited bastard. Even worse father. Dead mom, drama as a young man. Becomes a horrific monster and loves it, cooks workers to death in his foundry furnace for no reason except sadism, lots of kidnapping workers and forcing them into slavery for him and then horrific murder. Kinda a torture-porn leaning here if you’re not careful, but it could be a really solid flick. I don’t think any of his victims survive though, so without a retcon, it’d be a pretty damn dark one. You could have any number of pov characters that just end up burned to death, or beaten to death, or buried alive and suffocated or starved, crushed to death. You could follow Evan and just be overwhelmed with horror and disgust for the person he becomes. But it works better than some of the other dark horror options, so I’d say it has potential. Especially as a lead-in to DbD, because then it works better as a storyline, because it isn’t totally over.

Hope you enjoyed this! Again though, a lot of these could make nice movies, but I think like 45 minute episode TV show for DbD would be ideal, and they’d all make /phenomenal/ backstory short films. Even the ones that really don’t lend to standalone feature.

#ask #Anonymous #dead by daylight #dbd #long post

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kitkatopinions · 2 years ago

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Okay, so I’m sure plenty of people have already talked about a lot of the problems in RWBY, so I’m not gonna go into a lot of details, but I just want to list a couple of things.

1. It’s treated as anti-Faunus and obviously bad for Faunus to be treated like animals, and yet when Ruby says ‘she does like tuna a lot’ and tries to endear Blake to a bigot by saying she has ‘kitty ears’ that are ‘actually pretty cute,’ Yang leads Blake around with a laser pointer,’ and Robyn calls Marrow ‘Wags,’ we’re supposed to think it’s cute and quirky and doesn’t reflect badly on those characters. It’s gross.

2. Weiss’s journey of deconstructing her own rampant bigotry and anti-Faunus ideals is non-existent. She treats herself like the victim in her fight with Blake and treats Blake like a former criminal she graciously decided to give another chance to, after wanting to call the cops on Blake, and then despite the fact that we never saw her even make an effort to learn, she randomly started being a savior who would throw anti-faunus people in dumpsters whether Blake wanted her to or not. Audiences have ‘filled in the gaps’ so to speak, but the fact remains that the writers clearly considered it unimportant to show that one of their main title characters wasn’t a raging bigot anymore. Speaking of Weiss’s bigotry, the writers made her apologize for her ancestors actions despite never having her apologize for her own actions. A bit suspicious to say the least.

3. Speaking of the Anti-Faunus storyline in RWBY in general, the only bit of actual protesting the system or fighting for Faunus rights we ever really see is a three second shot of a young Blake during a rally. The rest of the storyline revolves around taking out the people protesting systemic bigotry in bad ways. Some of our main characters have never said a word in support of the Faunus (I believe even including Ruby) but the narrative is focused on taking out the White Fang. Jacques Schnee who has a history of mistreating Faunus is brushed aside like an unimportant joke, while we spent seasons with the mains fighting the White Fang and Adam and other Faunus. When Cardin is an open bigot, Jaune gets the same punishment as him for not paying attention in class. When Cardin is harassing Velvet, not one of our many non-Faunus mains do anything to help her. It takes seasons for any of them to so much as stand up for someone, and it takes until volume eight for any of them to stand up for someone who isn’t Blake.

4. Jaune gets buffer as time wears on, but this isn’t true for powerhouses Yang or Nora. This is just one example of the differences between how male and female characters are designed, but the clothes are a factor too. The male teachers are all in long pants and sleeves down to the wrists and collars up to their necks, while Glynda is in high heels with a short skirt and a boob window cut-out in her shirt. Jaune and Ren and Oscar are all in long pants with functional shoes, and most of the girl characters either have short skirts, thigh-cut outs, high heels, and other things like that. Blake’s volume 7-8 look is so skintight she can’t properly zip it up. Pyrrha’s armor is wildly impractical. Roman, Mercury, Watts, and Adam are all in long pants with more practical shoes and almost every inch of skin covered, but Emerald? Cinder? Neo? Even the characters like Sun, Tyrian, and Hazel in volume 8 are the outliers instead of the rule, and even that is just to show off muscles and scars. Characters like Ruby and Penny mostly escape being sexualized (I say mostly because that volume six design of a then-sixteen year old Ruby that emphasizes cleavage is a yikes,) probably because they’re portrayed as more innocent and childlike, while meanwhile Weiss trades her own short skirt and boob window for her impractically long skirt in volume 7-8, and it’s princess inspired. Idk, there’s just something to be said about the differences in the way people’s outfits are designed. But also worth noting is their tendency to make the majority of their female characters look like teenagers. Age is always a little hard for them to portray, but with the female characters, it’s incredibly hard to tell who is and isn’t a teenager just by looking at their faces.

5. Team RWBY and co are badge carrying law enforcement officers in volume seven and eight, and A. they’re still glorified as paragons of virtue while the system of being Hunters is uplifted as good and worthy (despite the pretty clear hints towards corruption within the Hunter ranks,) B. the story frames accountability and rules like a bad thing, when people have been begging for more accountability and regulation of officers in the irl police force for awhile now. C. As a law enforcement officer, Weiss stuck what was essentially a loaded gun in the face of unarmed teenage civilian because he didn’t immediately let her into his house upon seeing her in his doorway without a single question or protest despite the fact that Weiss hadn’t even said a word yet. D. Characters like Ironwood were treated like the only problem with an otherwise fine system, all the problems were hung on his neck alone so that Jaune can still proudly flash his badge to make civilians do what he wants and Ruby can still proudly proclaim herself a Huntress in a message to the people of the world, so that none of them have to take a look at the system or their part in it and RWBY fans will still proudly support the badge carrying law enforcement officers like Ruby and Jaune because well, Ironwood was the only bad guy (despite everyone going along everything he did until the end of volume seven and despite Winter drawing the line at ‘I’m gonna bomb civilians’ but going along with ‘anyone who gets in my way gets shot down.’) At the very least, this is pretty problematic actually.

6. For a ‘progressive’ show, the amount of villains that are cishet white able bodied neurotypical men that aren’t also in-universe minorities is incredibly low. Most of the villains are either disabled, women, people of color, Faunus, or some combination of the above, and the first queer character introduced in the entire show was a native american lesbian Faunus who needed her white presumably at the time cishet friend to save her from herself (Blake was described as straight by Arryn Zech in 2019.)

Which is at the very least problematic, and once she ‘turned good,’ she was quickly written out of the show and has only appeared in a brief appearance in volume six looking clearly uncomfortable while a cishet man who has a history of making inappropriate advances towards uncomfortable women (team NDGO) went to flirt with her (Sun telling Blake that ‘he’ll figure it out’ and leaving her to deal with it for some reason,) and one minor appearance in volume eight that lasted like two seconds. But it’s bigger than Ilia, because it’s a really big problem with their villains versus heroes. Counting only the main characters versus the villains, there’s one Faunus in the heroes group (Blake) and two Faunus among the main villains with six counting Ilia, Lionheart, Fennec, and Corsac,) one disabled character in the heroes group (Yang) and a whopping six characters in the main villains (Mercury, Cinder, Tyrian, Neo, Adam - blind in one eye - and Ironwood,) two confirmed people of color in the heroes group (Oscar, Ren,) and three in the main villains category with Emerald, Hazel, and Watts but seven if you count Lionheart, Ilia, Fennec, and Corsac (and that’s not counting the Ace Ops!)

The cishet able-bodied white men in the cast of villains who aren’t also Faunus are Roman (who has been gone since season three,) and Jacques (who was sidelined hard and turned into an inconsequential joke.) So... What’s going on here? It’s a pattern, that’s what I’m saying.

7. Salem is an entire vat of bad and misogyny as far as I’m concerned. She’s an example of an evil obsessive ex-girlfriend who got so mad at her husband for leaving her that she murdered him and her children and has spent the last few thousand years as a bitter and manipulative evil witch trying to destroy the whole world but don’t worry men she’s still sexy and she once was a sad eyed blonde damsel in a tower who really just couldn’t continue on without the love of a man and the mean Grimm pools are what turned her into such a monster. And she got sidelined in her very first time taking action personally in eight seasons of the show so that a man could be the real threat for the volume.

Those are just a couple quick notes. There’s a load of bad in RWBY, but I don’t have time to get into all of it today. XD

I wanna ask, what’s some problematic or discriminatory things you find in rwby? Because I want to make sure I’m not the only one who feels this about some stuff in rwby

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cat-the-lurker-blog · 7 years ago

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Non-prophetic dreams in A Song of Ice and Fire

The amount of attention George RR Martin has devoted to dreams in A Song of Ice and Fire is remarkable. In A Game of Thrones alone, nineteen dreams are described in various amounts of detail, with all point-of-view characters except Catelyn (no dreams) and Arya (one dream) having at least two dreams in the course of the novel. These dreams serve many narrative purposes, from delivering exposition to foreshadowing future events.

In this post, I won't be looking at the often-analyzed dreams with obvious supernatural or prophetic elements - like wolf dreams, dragon dreams, green dreams or dreams influenced by glass candles and shadowbinders. Instead, I'll try to examine dreams that reveal aspects of the dreamers' subconscious minds - like their deepest desires and worst fears, memories that shaped them, and their impulses and repressed emotions. I think the latter kind of dreams are equally important, since they establish characters' motivations, and provide setup for their actions, growth, or internal conflicts.

I. HOPES AND DESIRES

As she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling. (Chapter 22, A Clash of Kings)

This dream reminds the reader of Catelyn's priorities: she values her family more than anything, more than Northern independence and more than Robb's campaigns. Robb's appearance, crownless with a wooden sword, recalls Catelyn's final chapter in A Game of Thrones, in which her advice - to build a peace, as revenge will not bring back their dead - goes unheeded. Instead, Robb swears bloody vengeance against the Lannisters with a steel sword, and is crowned king - making it more difficult than ever for Catelyn to retrieve her daughters. Catelyn's desire to see her family reunited in this dream sets up and explains her actions later in the novel - having heard news of Bran and Rickon's "deaths", she will betray the Northern cause to free Jaime in exchange for Arya and Sansa.

He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss... (Chapter 42, A Game of Thrones)

Tyrion dreams of punishing his father after he recounts Tywin's horrific abuse of Tysha to Bronn, reversing Tywin's role as his gaoler of sorts. Tywin has always demeaned and despised Tyrion, and only in Tyrion's dreams can he wield power over his father and presumably win his respect, through fear - something Tywin often does. But Tyrion's feelings towards his father are complicated, and he also desires recognition from Tywin (and society as a whole):

This time he dreamed he was at a feast, a victory feast in some great hall. He had a high seat on the dais, and men were lifting their goblets and hailing him as hero... Even his father was smiling with approval. (Chapter 67, A Clash of Kings)

In A Clash of Kings, Tyrion proves himself a competent ruler by masterminding the Lannister-Tyrell alliance and defending King's Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater. Rather than give him the credit and respect he deserves, as in the dream, Tywin dismisses his skills as "low cunning" and continues to loathe Tyrion for his mother's death and dwarfism, reasons beyond his control (You, who killed your mother to come into the world? You are an ill-made, devious, disobedient, spiteful little creature.) The stark contrast between Tyrion's hopes in the dream, and reality, helps build the emotional foundation for his growing bitterness towards and eventual killing of Tywin.

She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they’d had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders. (Chapter 20, A Feast for Crows)

In Brienne's dreams, Jaime gives her a cloak - but it remains ambiguous whether she wants recognition as a knight, marriage, or both from him. That he has replaced Renly, the object of Brienne's affections, in her dream, shows the reader her growing feelings for him (that she won't admit in an internal monologue), and adds tension to her later conflict with Lady Stoneheart (who has forced her into seemingly agreeing to kill him).

In her dream they [Daenerys and Daario] had been man and wife, simple folk who lived a simple life in a tall stone house with a red door. (Chapter 11, A Dance with Dragons)

This is one of very few of the non-prophetic, non-supernatural dreams Daenerys has, and it shows her desire for peace and a home. She hopes that Westeros will fill the void left by her idealized childhood home with a red door. (It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.) This sets up an internal conflict: that she is bringing war, fire, and blood to Westeros to make "dreams of home and love" come true.

II. FEARS

She dreamt of home; not Riverrun, but Winterfell. It was not a good dream, though. She was alone outside the castle, up to her knees in mud. She could see the grey walls ahead of her, but when she tried to reach the gates every step seemed harder than the one before, and the castle faded before her, until it looked more like smoke than granite. (Chapter 17, A Storm of Swords)

Following the burning of Winterfell (referenced in the smoke castle), Arya becomes increasingly despondent, fearing that she will never make it home to her family - and after the Red Wedding, she believes she is the last Stark left. Going home to Winterfell or Jon on the Wall has become so unattainable that Arya is willing to stay at the House of Black and White even at the cost of her identity. (I have a hole where my heart should be, she thought, and nowhere else to go.)

Tyrion only leered at her. He was naked too, covered with coarse hair that made him look more like a monkey than a man. “You shall see them crowned,” he said, “and you shall see them die.” (Chapter 39, A Feast for Crows)

Cersei dreams of Tyrion brutally torturing her (in a manner that mirrors her own torture of the Blue Bard), as he threatens the lives of her children. This dream escalates her paranoia about Tyrion and her descent into madness, and presents how Cersei interprets the prophecy, "Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds" to mean that her children will be crowned and predecease her.

“Sister, why has Father brought us here?” “Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness.” Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go. “Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.” But they were leaving. “Don’t leave me in the dark!” (Chapter 44, A Storm of Swords)

Although Jaime's dream after escaping Harrenhal seems to have been supernaturally influenced by a weirwood stump, his subconscious reactions during the dream reveal his fear that Cersei and Tywin will reject him (as he lost his hand, and is of no more use to them (I am worth less than a girl now, he thought.)) Besides introducing many prophetic elements that I won't discuss, this dream foreshadows Jaime's growing split with Cersei once he returns to King's Landing.

III. MEMORIES

She had dreamt that she was little, still sharing a bedchamber with her sister Arya. (Chapter 80, A Storm of Swords)

Having lost all her family, Sansa misses them more than ever and clings to her precious childhood memories. Unlike this, very few of the memories appearing in characters' dreams are pleasant - most of them are traumatic memories that had a deep impact on the characters. Like Sansa's recurring dream of her father's execution:

Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw the moment... (Chapter 67, A Game of Thrones)

More than any other point-of-view characters, Ned Stark has plenty of memory-related dreams:

Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar’s children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy... the boy (Chapter 45, A Game of Thrones)

After discovering the Lannister incest, Ned delays taking any kind of action because he knows Robert will have the "Baratheon" children killed. (This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. He will kill them all, Ned realized.) Ned's memory of the murdered Targaryen children explains why he feels so strongly about preserving the lives of innocents. His determination to spare Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen leads him to tell all to Cersei, warning her to flee with her children - a mistake that will cost him dearly.

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood. (Chapter 39, A Game of Thrones)

The memory came creeping upon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. (Chapter 58, A Game of Thrones)

Ned's other dreams, memories of his sister and the mysterious promise he made her, hint at Jon's parentage without providing details necessitated by an internal monologue.

She dreamt an old dream, of three girls in brown cloaks, a wattled crone, and a tent that smelled of death... Cersei watched the girls huddling, whispering to one another. Go back, she tried to tell them. Turn away...

The girl with the golden curls put her hands upon her hips. “Give us our foretelling, or I’ll go to my lord father and have you whipped for insolence.” (Chapter 36, A Feast for Crows)

Cersei's encounter with Maggy the Frog explains aspects of her personality and relationships (especially with Tyrion), her descent into madness after Joffrey's death, and reveals Maggy's prophecy to the reader. Cersei relives her memory as if dissociated from her younger self and watching from afar, and reflects on her rash actions with dread and regret.

IV. REFLECTION

Some characters’ dreams also reveal subconscious or suppressed feelings and thoughts.

The night before, it had been the miller’s wife... Last night in his dream he had been in bed with her once again, but this time she had teeth above and below, and she tore out his throat even as she was gnawing off his manhood. (Chapter 56, A Clash of Kings)

Although he won't admit his guilt to himself, Theon is haunted by his murder of the miller's boys, the sons of a woman he slept with. It seems that Theon subconsciously fears that the boys were his own son(s), and dreads receiving a supernatural punishment for kinslaying (that foreshadows his torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton). In the same chapter, Theon also dreams of being chased through a forest by wolves with children's heads (evoking Bran and Rickon, who escaped Theon's clutches), and a feast of dead Starks (which may be prophetic, hinting at Robb's death, but is also a manifestation of Theon's guilt over betraying House Stark.)

Last night he had dreamed of Sam drowning, of Ygritte dying with his arrow in her (it had not been his arrow, but in his dreams it always was), of Gilly weeping tears of blood. (Chapter 10, A Dance with Dragons)

Jon feels guilty for causing Ygritte's death (though indirectly, only by warning the Watch about the wildlings' assault from the south), and personally responsible for the fates of Sam and Gilly, having sent them on a perilous voyage and forcibly separated Gilly from her son.

Apart from all these dreams of responsibility, guilt and regret - Sansa has a reflective dream containing a sexual awakening:

And she dreamed of her wedding night too, of Tyrion’s eyes devouring her as she undressed. Only then he was bigger than Tyrion had any right to be, and when he climbed into the bed his face was scarred only on one side. “I’ll have a song from you,” he rasped. (Chapter 68, A Storm of Swords)

During Lysa Arryn's wedding, Sansa realizes the erotic connotation of songs and singing, when Marillion propositions her with an "I’ll have you singing louder than the Lady Lysa.” She subconsciously relates this to her past encounters with Sandor Clegane, who made her sing for him (I’ll have that song. Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life.) Although the Hound wanted literally a song from her, Sansa sees their interactions in a new light, dreaming of him in the erotic context of her wedding night - hinting at an attraction to him.

V. WORST IMPULSES

“I am the Lord of Winterfell,” Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. (Chapter 58, A Dance with Dragons)

This dream recalls Jon's childhood duel with Robb :

Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes.

That morning he called it first. “I’m Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.” (Chapter 79, A Storm of Swords)

For years, Jon has repressed his jealousy towards Robb, and his guilt-ridden desire for Winterfell, which could be manifesting itself in his recurring dream of the Winterfell crypts, where the stone kings reject him as a Stark : "You do not belong here. This is not your place." But these emotions return to the fore when Stannis offers to make him Lord of Winterfell in A Storm of Swords (He wanted it, Jon knew then. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me.) Jon sees accepting Winterfell as betraying his family (What kind of man stole his own brother’s birthright?), but he fears even that will not stop him from claiming his heart's desire - hence he beheads Robb in his dream, just as he lays claim to Winterfell. In the future books, I expect Jon's internal crisis will be temporarily resolved when he discovers Robb has legitimized him, but it will return in full force once he learns of his real identity.

Last night he dreamed he’d found her fucking Moon Boy. He’d killed the fool and smashed his sister’s teeth to splinters with his golden hand, just as Gregor Clegane had done to poor Pia. (Chapter 30, A Feast for Crows)

Jaime spends much of A Feast for Crows obsessively thinking about Cersei's infidelity, repeating Tyrion's accusation of "She's been fucking Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know" in his head. His dream is likely borne out of barely-repressed anger towards his sister and the fear that his jealousy will make a monster out of him (dream-Jaime's violence mirrors Gregor Clegane's). After this dream, Jaime appears to be trying to overcome his jealous feelings, since his catchphrase of "Lancel, Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy" does not reappear in A Feast for Crows.

Then he killed his brother, Jaime, hacking at his face until it was a red ruin, laughing every time he struck a blow. Only when the fight was finished did he realize that his second head was weeping. (Chapter 5, A Dance with Dragons)

Tyrion desires bloody revenge on Jaime for participating in Tywin's horrific scheme against him, and lying to him about Tysha - as he tells Illyrio in a previous chapter, "Yet I am still my father’s son, and Jaime and Cersei are mine to kill.” However, Tyrion's outward certainty that he wants to kill and punish his brother is belied by this dream, where part of him (the second, weeping head) still loves Jaime and cannot bear the thought of killing him.

THE END

If you've made it all the way here, thank you very much for reading! This is my first time writing a meta post, I hope it was worth your while.

#asoiaf meta #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Boys Season 2 Ending Explained

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The following contains spoilers for The boys season 2 finale.

The Boys’ second season has featured everything from some long-awaited superhero faceoffs and multiple exploding heads to literal Nazis and almost everything in between. The season 2 finale “What I Know” wraps up a surprising amount of plot in a single installment, as Stormfront finally gets her comeuppance, Butcher and Becca attempt to rescue a kidnapped Ryan, and Starlight finally gets the evidence that could bring down Vought. That none of these plots turn out the way most of us expected shouldn’t be surprising at this point, and yet…

Here’s a rundown of how everything wrapped up – or didn’t – and what we think it all might mean for The Boys season 3.

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Stormfront’s Past is Exposed

The finale is another great example of the deft way The Boys has used Stormfront’s character to illustrate the insidious nature of white supremacy all season long – her explanation of the false idea of “white genocide” is particularly chilling – culminating in her declaration that a lot of people actually like what she has to say, and what they’re really afraid of is the word “Nazi”.

However, thanks to some sleuthing by Hughie and Starlight – with an important assist from A-Train – Stormfront is finally publicly exposed as the monster we’ve known her to be since Season 2’s second episode. Photos of Stormfront’s wedding to original founder Frederick Vought are leaked to the press, complete with giant swastika and photos with notorious figures from Hitler’s regime like Henrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.

The fact that the same kind of memes and social videos that facilitated her rise are precisely what help bring her down is just the icing on the cake of her comeuppance. Yet, “What I Know” doesn’t really do much in the way of interrogating Homelander’s apparent support of her ideals and/or plans for a superior race of supes, instead choosing to make his motivation primarily about the gaping emotional void inside himself rather than his thoughts on race. Maybe that’s for the best, in the end, but it’s a plot point that would be worth revisiting in season 3.

A-Train Teams Up with Starlight

After eavesdropping on Stan Edgar and Alastair Adana, A-Train learns that the reason he’s been pushed out of the Seven is because Stormfront is a Nazi and virulent racist. Despite his previous beef with Starlight and Hughie (and, you know, the fact that he killed Hughie’s girlfriend in season 1), A-Train deliberately seeks the duo out to pass along a folder of information he’s stolen from the Church of the Collective’s apparently very extensive secret document database.

The Boys Season 2: What Is The Church of the Collective?

By Jamie Andrew

The Boys Season 2: Who Is Making Everyone’s Head Explode?

By Kirsten Howard

Though A-Train insists no one can know he played a part in leaking this material that will drive his rival out of his former superhero team, his willingness to work with someone he vowed to kill just a few short episodes to go certainly seems to indicate that he and Starlight could be uneasy allies going forward.

Butcher Makes a Deal

Billy Butcher’s goal for most of The Boys has been fairly straightforward – find out what happened to his wife. After discovering she was still alive that goal shifted to reuniting with her. But no matter what, Becca was always the foremost thing in Butcher’s mind. This is why it isn’t surprising that Billy both vows to help Becca rescue her son from Homelander’s clutches and immediately promises to turn Ryan over to Vought as long as they separate him from his mother. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to ensure that he can “get Becca back” without also having to be involved in her son’s life (see also: “Nothing Like It In the World”). But it is the first time he apparently realizes that what he’s been doing is wrong.

In the end, Butcher changes his mind, luring Vought to Homelander’s cabin to give Becca and Ryan time to escape and insisting that he can’t come with them because he can’t be trusted around the boy. It’s perhaps the first selfless decision we’ve ever actually seen Butcher make, and it’s unexpectedly moving, as is his decision to confess his deal in an attempt to get Becca to leave without him.

The Girls Get It Done

Though Maeve initially rebuffs Starlight’s request to turn on – and testify against – Homelander, the warrior queen still shows up when it counts, appearing out of nowhere to deck Stormfront, rescue Starlight and her friends, and ultimately blackmail Homelander into leaving them all alone.

The “Girls Get It Done” marketing ploy that has infused much of The Boys season 2 has meant a lot of lip service to the idea of female empowerment, but not much backing it up with action. (Though Starlight’s arc has seen her reclaiming her own voice and working against Vought from within.) In the finale, we finally get to see the series’ women come together in a meaningful way – and beat the crap out of a Nazi at the same time.

The sequence in which Maeve, Starlight, and Kimiko team up to beat down Stormfront is both immensely fun and intensely satisfying, and a sign that Maeve definitely isn’t the lost cause that some of her Seven teammates might be.

Ryan Accidentally Kills Becca

Unfortunately, Becca Butcher is the sort of female character who generally exists in the world of The Boys to provide narrative and emotional motivation for the men around her. The show spends comparatively little time exploring how she felt about either being violated by Homelander or faking her own death, ultimately using her as an emotional lodestone for both her husband and her son.

Desperate to save his mother from Stormfront’s clutches, Ryan’s Homelander-esque super abilities finally activate and he blasts both women with his laser eyes. Stormfront is badly injured, but Becca’s wounds are fatal because there was probably never any future for this character that didn’t include a tragic death. She spends her final moments begging Butcher to protect Ryan and insisting that it’s not his fault she’s dying. In short: That kid is going to need so much therapy.

Homelander Chooses Himself

After Becca’s death, Butcher and Homelander face off over the child. But before Homelander can kill Billy, Maeve arrives and threatens her Seven colleague with the video footage of him leaving a plane full of people to die last season.

Maeve’s terms are: Let Ryan go, stop hunting Starlight, and leave Maeve and Elena alone, or she’ll release the footage to the press. Homelander, predictably, threatens to destroy everything she cares about, but Maeve says that’s fine, as long as she gets to watch the entire world realize he’s a monster first. (Which honestly, would be pretty fun.) It’s the threat of the public condemnation – and the loss of the cult-like worship he currently enjoys – that finally makes Homelander stand down. This isn’t much of a surprise – the giant emotional void in his soul was never going to be filled by a single child that he never actually wanted that much in the first place.

Victoria Neuman’s Secret

The final moments of “What I Know” contain one last surprise – Congresswoman Victoria Neuman, a vocal opponent of Vought and a blood-smeared bystander in the supervillain attack on Congress, is actually a supe herself. And, since her ability allows her to make people’s heads explode, she’s apparently behind the attack on her own hearing.

The episode doesn’t reveal much about her motivation – except power, and more of it – but her decision to murder Chruch of the Collective leader Adana rather than owe him a favor for the information he provided doesn’t bode well for anyone. Especially poor do-gooder Hughie, who’s decided to take a job with her campaign.

What Now?

The season 2 finale actually manages to tie up quite a few loose story ends, so much so that it’s hard to predict exactly what might happen when The Boys returns for a third season.

Though Stormfront is left badly burned and missing multiple limbs, she’s somehow still alive enough to be blamed for the attack on Congress and used as a scapegoat for all the problems at Vought and with Compound V. Homelander vows she’ll be punished and welcomes Starlight back to The Seven, clearing her name and restoring her original superhero costume in the process. (Thank goodness.)

Starlight and Hughie finally admit what we all knew – that they’re both crazy about each other – and get back together officially. After a season’s worth of the two of them struggling to trust one another again, it’s nice to get to see someone on The Boys get what feels like a legitimate happy ending and these two deserve it more than most. If Vought doesn’t put some Starlight + Hughie forever merch on the market, they’re really missing a trick.

After almost sacrificing himself for Ryan, Butcher turns the boy over to Malory and her CIA team, despite his concerns over whether it’s possible for him to grow up to be better than his father. (“Becca thought so,” he says, and leaves it at that.) With Ryan in what appears to be child superhero witness protection, it’s unclear where Butcher’s story goes from here. And with Mother’s Milk finally returning to his family, Frenchie and Kimiko heading off to do some dancing on their own, and Hughie turning to politics as a legitimate way to fight Vought, it seems as though The Boys are going to spend some time apart. But with Malory’s declaration that she has some off the books cash to fund a group meant to help keep an eye on the supes…it seems unlikely they’ll stay away from each other for long.

The post The Boys Season 2 Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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clockworkopera · 7 years ago

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Happy Haline Day...

This is a smaller scene with Helen and Aline that I took from my larger work, Rise From the Ashes on AO3. The full piece can be found here.

Helen took Aline’s hands in hers and studied the long fingers, the callouses and the scars. Artists hands.

Aline had taken up ice sculpting as a hobby during the long lonely hours on Wrangel Island. She did not like idle time and filled it with things she’d always wanted to learn. Aline called it a blessing to have the time and freedom to pursue these sorts of passions, without constantly being called away to put out the continuous fires of politics the way her mother had. Aline had been groomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps, prepared to run an Institute, be a Council member or maybe even Consul herself one day.

Choosing Helen meant giving up all those ambitions and aspirations. She thanked Helen every day for it, for Aline hadn’t known the relief she would feel at escaping that predestined life. And Helen believed her.

There had been a time when Aline was carving a gorgeous life size statue of Helen. She was a sight to watch as she wielded the white Seraph blade, a gorgeous warrior in a battle to create something beautiful from raw ice. Aline’s face was fierce in her concentration, belying her delicate features as she bent to work cutting and scraping away pieces of ice.

The ice block had been over seven feet tall, and she worked with focused precision. Ice, like stone was unforgiving and if one took too much off, or in the wrong place, it couldn’t be added back. It was a harsh lesson as Aline worked with bigger and bigger blocks that got whittled down to fractions of the original size. It had taught her wife patience and planning.

They thought the block was a solid, but there had been a slight fault, a crack along the interior. Aline hit it at just the right angle and the entire piece unexpectedly shattered. It reminded Helen of the Mortal Sword. Ice detonated in an explosion and a wickedly sharp shrapnel. A highspeed projectile landed through Aline’s shoulder. The blast and the bleeding knocked her unconscious and if Helen hadn’t been there to apply an iratze and blood replacement runes, she might have died.

Exile took away a lot of her abilities of being a Shadowhunter. She was only one step above being a mundane, but at least she’d retained her ability to draw runes.

The cavern they’d been working in was well below freezing, so the only ice that melted was what Aline’s warm blood melted. Chipped fragments and shards of ice littered everywhere—Helen didn’t understand how she’d remained unscathed with only a few scratches and cuts.

The block was solid, but for that one unseen and devastating fault line. Helen looked at her family now. Livvy’s death was their fault line, especially for Julian. Her earlier conversation with Julian had not been reassuring at all.

“Did you see him fight, Aline? He could have killed Alec,” Helen needed to remind herself of patience when what she really wanted to do was strangle Julian. They’d just returned to their rooms after another excruciating long day. “I think he could have gone against Jace and bested him too, he is that good.”

“No matter how hard the Dearborns malign Emma, I think she has fairly earned her reputation. I saw her fight Annabel. She might be better than Jace, and your baby brother had to keep up—of course he’s good. Don’t sound so surprised.”

“We need to talk about the Dearborns, the Cohort. We’ve been trying to avoid it, but I don’t think we can any longer. What does your mother say?” Helen finally asked.

Jia Penhallow was at times a difficult topic between Helen and Aline. Helen liked Jia well enough, respected her—but she was in the unenviable position of being in a powerful political situation where Helen was a constant thorn in her side. Helen considered her an ally and was thankful for it, yet she was never entirely certain of Jia’s position. Did she truly believe in the righteousness of defending Helen or merely did it for Aline’s sake? Even so, as Consul, Jia couldn’t show too much favoritism and there were times Helen thought she was overly harsh in her position. How she questioned Annabel was a good example—a Consul wasn’t allowed compassion and that, Helen thought, was a badly needed quality Shadowhunters were in short supply of.

Jia had presided over their marriage and that had been a blessing to have Aline’s parents publicly support their union, but it was because of Helen that Jia had lost Aline. Sometimes Helen wondered if the price of loving her was worth all the hell she was putting her wife through.

Of late, she’d been falling deeper toward the edge of sorrow. Perhaps it was the Faerie in her blood, the seclusion away from anyone else, the prison of the cold and artic life that at times made Helen feel as if she were fading. She didn’t know as much as she would have liked about Faeries and knew it was possible for them on occasion to die of grief, and she’d thought without Aline, a shining light to warm her. If not for her wife, she might have died alone on Wrangel Island.

If that had happened she didn’t even know how long her body would have wasted away before someone bothered to check. She tried to snap herself back from the morbidity of her thoughts, but it wasn’t working. She didn’t think she could take being sent back, not when her family was in this much turmoil. She was glad they performed Livia’s funeral so quickly, or else she probably would have been forbidden from that, too. Her life had become a constant wait for the guillotine to drop.

“She’s very worried,” Aline said. “She practically ordered the Silent Brothers to take us, it was the only way the Council was going to release us. There’s going to be a lot of questions, especially for Julian and Emma. From what she said we should be prepared for Clave blaming Julian for Annabel’s actions and Emma for destroying the Mortal Sword. She said that the Dearborns are floating rumors that Julian has met with the Unseelie King—that Mark helped him, and that he brought Annabel as a secret weapon right into the heart of the Council. And then there is Emma. Do you have any idea how she did it?”

“Cortana is a legendary sword, but the Mortal Sword is supposed to be indestructible,” Helen said. “She wanted to go sooner into the fray, and I held her back. I urged her to wait— “

Aline stopped her with a brief kiss on her mouth. “Don’t do that to yourself, please, Helen.”

“Did you see how the Iron Sisters stared at Emma?” Helen shivered. “This reminds me in the days after the Dark War. I knew there would be prejudices for I am part fey, but it was Mark that sent the message to the Clave warning them of the Faerie involvement with Sebastian. The only reason we were prepared, or that Idris was fortified against the Fae was because of him. He proved his loyalty with that message, still a child—and the Clave abandoned him! I will gladly take on any punishment the Clave wishes to visit upon my family, if only they will leave the others alone. And for me, I fought at the Burrens and next to Jia and you in the Dark War. My greatest crime was surviving those battles. The Inquisitor never allowed me to testify under the Mortal Sword, to affirm my loyalty of the Nephilim, even when I asked. They have no care for the truth, they only care to further their own narrative. And I will not have Julian, Mark, or Emma pay for that.” She was regal and angry and frustrated.

Aline agreed with all these things, but when Helen was in a mood like this she was incredibly hot. Aline threw herself into Helen’s surprised arms, kissing her soft lips. I love you, and will fight for you, and we may only have moments, and we will use those moments to the fullest—her kiss said it all. “No more talk.”

#halineday2017 #Rise from the Ashes #Dark Artifices Fanfic #original post

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dilkirani · 8 years ago

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Could you write a fic where their still in the framework and Simmons is captured, and she tells evil!fitz she's pregnant, when he goes to torture her or Aida is going to torture her and that's how he remembers.

Hi, thanks for sending a prompt! I’m afraid I cheated a bit…I just couldn’t handle writing it exactly like this especially after last week’s ep. :/ But there is a pregnancy, haha. I have seen some other fics more in line with your request floating around, and of course anyone else is welcome to write this. Anyway, with that disclaimer, here we go:

She sits in the cell, defiant. Like Skye—or Daisy, he supposes—she hasn’t changed her story and she hasn’t flinched from the punishment. Her attitude towards him changes, though. Sometimes she seems truly heartbroken, eyes shimmering with tears she doesn’t even attempt to stop. Sometimes she is angry—at him, at herself, at the world. Sometimes she loses herself and begs, although not for her freedom. For him to remember her, of all things.

The thing is, he does remember her, in a way. Fragments of another life push through whenever he’s in the same room with her, and it inevitably frightens him. Ophelia had warned of fabricated memories implanted from the other world, and prior to this they had all felt false. Hollow, sepia-tinged, like someone has inserted pieces of another life into his brain but not bothered to fill them out with any real detail or emotion. He sees himself doing things that he’s never done, but he can’t feel any of it and that’s how he knows Ophelia is speaking the truth.

But the longer he spends with Jemma, the more these memories take root and refuse to be shaken. He finds that nothing in his life has scared him this much, because if she’s telling the truth (and she’s not, she can’t be), then he is losing control over the narrative. And nothing is guaranteed to destroy a life faster than losing control.

He knows if Ophelia were not bedridden, she would demand he stop visiting Jemma. He’s perfected the Looking Glass; there’s no need to bother with one subversive, even if she is the most dangerous subversive they’ve ever encountered.

But Ophelia is not here, and his father is not here, and some part of him needs to puzzle this woman apart before he can allow himself to escape.

“I know that you’re not my Fitz,” she says when he has come back one evening. He has a glass of water in his hand which he offers to her without thinking. He immediately hates himself for the sentiment. He should knock it out of her hand. He should. He will, later, when the jumbled noise in his head dissipates.

“I know that you’re not my Fitz,” she repeats, after greedily gulping the entire glass in one go. “But I can’t help loving you anyway.”

She says this oddly, as if speaking a truth but expecting nothing in return. It’s different, he thinks, from how Ophelia expresses her love, and he tightens his expression in response to the traitorous thought.

“I always thought you would come back to me, no matter what.”

Come back to me. That is why he hates her and yet is drawn to her—these mind games she somehow plays, these loaded phrases that should mean nothing yet pull at his heart in the strangest way.

His visits lately have been spent just like this—him sitting in a chair while she sags against the back wall. He doesn’t touch her; he hardly even speaks. She says whatever comes to her mind and he tries not to let the effect her words have show on his face.

Today, she stands up suddenly and he immediately stands as well. He should stop her. He should tell her to sit back down, but for some reason he can’t.

“I know you’re not him,” she says, tears hanging on her lashes, “and so I didn’t want to tell you this. It’s not for you to know when he doesn’t. But I need your help, Fitz, please.” Her hand drifts down until it rests against her flat stomach and she shudders through a sob.

“It’s nothing here. I’m just an avatar, and AIDA wouldn’t have known anyway. But in the real world, in our world, we’re going to have a baby. And if something happens to us, Fitz will never forgive himself.”

He doesn’t move for a moment. He wants to scoff. He wants to walk out of the room and leave her here forever. But he doesn’t—he can’t. She walks forward until she’s centimeters from him, and she doesn’t look afraid at all.

“I—” he starts, but his throat is dry and the words catch and crumble. She smiles at him sadly, and there’s something so familiar about it all. Was there a plane once? Another leap of faith?

“…Jemma?” he asks, and he’s not fully aware of what he’s saying, just that there’s something in her eyes that pushes against his heart in a way he’s never felt before.

She smiles again, a real smile this time, and steps even closer. His entire body stills and his lungs struggle for air. He thinks she might kiss him and suddenly everything in him remembers the press of her lips against his and he’s never wanted anything more badly in his life.

He closes his eyes and there’s a buzzing of electricity in the room. He can feel it—he’s right on the precipice of the only revelation that will ever matter. Her lips brush his and he wants to cry, overwhelmed by the intensity of it all. And then her hands are around his neck and when he opens his eyes there’s nothing but hatred in her returning glare.

He should be able to fight her; she’s so weak and he’s so strong, but he can’t. He grabs at her hands, but her grip is a vice and he can’t get traction. Is he drowning? Has he already drowned?

“Jemma,” he gasps. Her fingers beneath his are ice cold and he can’t help the shiver that reverberates through him. “Jemma, please.”

“Did you really think I’d trust you?” she laughs, and there’s something so dark behind her eyes he finds he doesn’t recognize her at all. “Did you really think I’d trust you with a baby? With my child? I know exactly what kind of father you would be, Doctor, and I’d rather die than have you in our lives.”

“No,” he pleads, shaking his head against the sudden onslaught of memories. “No, Jemma, please, this isn’t me. This isn’t me. I’ll protect you. I can save you, please. Jemma, don’t—”

She pushes him, hard, until his back hits the wall, and then she squeezes so tightly he can’t speak at all.

“It’s too late,” she hisses. “I know your heart now.”

Everything goes fuzzy, black blurring at the edge of his vision. He’s about to pass out, and right before he does he hears her laughing, or crying. “Fitz, Fitz, Fitz,” she is saying, and he doesn’t know whether it’s a taunt or a prayer.

He comes to with a gasp, drenched in sweat and choking on his inhalations. Jemma wraps her arms around him in a sob, cradling him gently and placing open-mouthed kisses to his face.

“Fitz, Fitz,” she is saying in between kisses, “it’s just a dream. Fitz, please wake up. It’s just a dream.”

He jerks back from her and buries his head in his hands. He can still feel the pressure of her fingers around his neck and despite his dream-pleas, he thinks he deserves it.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, even though she can’t know what he’s apologizing for.

“What was it about this time?” she asks. He looks up at her and he doesn’t have to say anything; he can tell by the devastation on her face that she knows. They have shared a bed for years, and by now they’ve come to recognize that certain traumas have certain looks. He knows the evidence of a Framework-related nightmare is all over his face.

She sits up carefully, breathing through the exertion of maneuvering while this heavily pregnant.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She leans against his shoulder and the reality of her obvious love and trust eases some of the tightness in his chest.

“No…” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, but not just yet.” He reaches a hand towards her rounded stomach hesitantly, as if he hasn’t done this a thousand times. As if she’s ever reacted with anything but a smile.

Sitting here in the stillness, hip-to-hip with his wife and feeling their child somersault, he breathes carefully and tries to ignore the images his brain has chosen to force onto him. He and Jemma had made the choice to have a child; they had talked about the possibility excitedly, they had cried when she found out she was pregnant. He is not the Doctor, and Jemma doesn’t think so, or she never would have agreed to this. Still, he feels slightly queasy. He remembers her words in his dream, and he also remembers knowing he deserved them.

“I know sometimes it’s overwhelming and maybe you won’t believe me right now,” Jemma whispers, placing a hand on top of his, “but I have never once regretted befriending you or marrying you or choosing to raise a child with you. Motherhood is a bit terrifying to me…there are all these variables I can’t control. And as much as I want to be a mother, I also know without a doubt that I would never do this without you.”

Fitz smiles and rests his head on top of hers. “You could, though,” he says. “You’ll be the most amazing mother.”

Jemma shrugs lightly. “I don’t know. Maybe I could, but I wouldn’t want to. I mean it, Fitz. I could never imagine my life without you, even when I was sixteen years old and didn’t realize everything that could mean. I certainly can’t imagine doing this without you.”

Fitz sighs, not saying anything for a moment. Jemma squirms a bit and he places a kiss to her temple. “Your back?”

“Yeah,” she answers. “Sometimes I’m quite ready for this part to be over with.”

He laughs and draws his knees up, and Jemma moves to settle between his legs. She leans forward and he gently massages up and down her spine, carefully working through the built-up tension. His fingers press against her back methodically, guided by her soft sighs.

“There’s so much I wish I could forget,” he whispers, feeling braver now that he can’t meet her eyes. “There’s so much I wish I hadn’t done.”

Jemma wraps a hand around his ankle and squeezes lightly. It’s funny, he thinks, how all these years later her touch is still the most grounding thing in the universe.

“Me too,” she answers, and he unconsciously pulls up the Venn diagram of their traumas, the places where they overlap and the wide expanses where they’ve suffered alone.

“I worry about our baby,” he confesses. “Other parents worry about their children being sick or bullied or only getting one Ph.D., but we know there’s so much worse. I worry that we were selfish to want this.”

Jemma sighs, leaning back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her like a blanket. “I know, but other parents haven’t had the practice we’ve had. If anyone can protect this child, it’s us.”

“Do you really believe that?” he asks. He palms her stomach and wonders if their baby can sense how much safer she’ll be if she just stays there forever.

“I don’t know, I think so,” Jemma replies. He can tell by the way her words are starting to slur that she’s nearing sleep again. “Maybe it was selfish, but I think we deserve this. We deserve to be happy, Fitz. And despite everything, I’m so happy with you. No one will love her more than us, and I hope that’s enough.”

He nods and rests his cheek to the crown of her head. Already he can feel the slight twitching as she settles into sleep and he smiles. Somehow, she is comfortable in this position and he feels infinitely grateful that he can do this for her.

He doesn’t sleep, not really, and his legs eventually go numb, but he’s holding the whole universe in his arms and his heart can barely contain the fullness of it. He remembers his dream, already fraying at the edges, closes his eyes, and lets it go.

#Fitzsimmons #fsfic #fstag #leopold fitz #jemma simmons #post-framework #everyone's going be fine #reply #Tumblr prompts #rani writes things #Anonymous #also hugs to #itsavolcano #for you-know-what

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soviet-lovers · 8 years ago

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Wrote this last night right when I saw this nasty ill written crap, but got too tired to post my response. I'm not usually one to go off like this, especially on such a badly written post that has no logic in it but it's getting ridiculous as predictable with this particular part of the fandom, and I'm ANNOYED, so humor me I guess😂 “Bucky has only shown love to one person in the mcu world and that is his husband steve ( they married in my head okay ?” -First off "married in your head" ok wow you literally have to imagine it in your head.... Ok already off to a bad start on why nothing you said made any sense, yeah I don't think that means st*cky is or will ever be canon😂 “you could at least recognize me.” "i personally think she meant the times the soldier tried to kill her??" -Marvel leaves Easter eggs for each film that will lead to future events. The tiny reveal from Zola in TWS of the winter soldier possibly killing the Starks is a brief scene in that film that most forgot and it turned out to a HUGE turning point in CW. Don't think russos would leave the line "you could at least recognize me" from Nat to Bucky if it meant nothing, when it could easily allude to their comic canon past. The russos have said it numerous times, they are huge geeks when it comes to comics and grew up reading them( I can completely relate😊) so the possibility of comic book references and relationships being valid & made canon (see staron&scarletvision) being in their films is endless! " if she was as memorable to him as you shippers think then how come he didn’t recognize her in the winter soldier and in civil war?" -CW was packed with scenes, and the only scene (shown to us) of him not in winter soldier mode when he's around her is when she helps him and Steve escape. And the scene is brief. Had it shown him look directly at her and nothing then maybe he didn't recognize her. But the camera didn't focus on either of them seeing each other. So it is still open for a moment in the next film for him to see her. "now their relationship in the comics ( only place where it’s canon ) is toxic , he trained her from childhood to adulthood" -We can't stress this enough to you antis at this point y'all are actively choosing to ignore facts or just don't actually do research, NAT MET AND WAS TRAINED BY BUCKY IN COMICS AS AN ADULT!!!!! She was around the age of 29 I believe?... Either way, full grown ADULT this false narrative of her being a child was MADE UP and probably taken from someone's fanfic or fan art, who knows. "seb doesn’t ship it" -we can assume Seb does ship it, or at least wants it to happen. Cause he said so in interviews he would like for it to happen..... So idk why y'all are lying about that. A lot of people say it's only cause of scarjo, and while yes she's gorgeous and that's probably a bonus, Sebastian is a fantastic actor who HAS READ COMICS AS RESEARCH and understands the bond his character Bucky and the character Natasha have, as they come from the same place and have similar experiences. Both forced to kill. Both punished for loving eachother. They're partnership in the modern era is built off of trust and they treat each other equally. What's abusive about that...... "Bucky and her have no chemistry whatsoever ever" -we are waiting for them to have a scene where they actually TALK... So how can you even make that assumption ?? Ever heard of development?? Writers and directors tend give characters development as each film goes along. People praise the chemistry between Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, but not until TWS film, even though they had some scenes in the avengers prior to that film. Those characters were given development, like all characters do. So if they plan on doing Buckynat, we will obviously be waiting and be excited for SOME development. " nat doesn’t deserve being made to hop on one WHITE male’s cock to another every movie." -Wow y'all know she has only been with Bruce and it didn't really work out. She has had been FRIENDS with other males, independent strong women are aloud to have friends or be in a relationship. Quit acting like you care about her when all you're doing is trying to get her away from half of your ship. The vulgar wording y'all use really seems like you're just slut shaming her. All in all, I'm fine with different opinions, but not from people ( all from a particular fandom most often) who ignore facts and well given clues, and then turn around and tell off people who acknowledge and choose to enjoy what is given and possibly will be given to them. If Buckynat happens, IT HAPPENS, all of the antis coming out to bash this ship this week seems in time with that photo of Scarlett and Sebastian. YOU GUYS are the ones making a bigger deal out of it then the shippers. A lot of us were happy because it goes with a previous rumor that they may begin filming at the same time, so they could have scenes, THATS IT!! The antis are the ones who seem very confident it will happen because of how much time they've spent the last few days trying to debunk the possibility of it happening . If one photo is enough to get you to spew so much hate into the Buckynat tag on tumblr/twitter and even Instagram and tag Sebastian in it (I've seen this), maybe your ship is not as great as you think it is. Ok rant over

#i'm surrounded by idiots #if Buckynat happens #it happens #nothing your lies can do about it #i normally don't do this #it was so stupid I couldn't resist

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socialpants · 6 years ago

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Infinity War is not a good movie

The action scenes are really good. Well done. Inventive. Good pace.

(gonna go into why the rest is not good under the cut and everything will be SPOILED)

The movie does zero to try and piece itself together as a narrative whole. It’s not meant as a standalone movie. It’s meant as the 1st half of a whole movie. And while the action scenes are good and the plot sort of starts to stick together coherently in the latter third of it, it still wont get there by the end credits.

Don’t get me wrong, by the time Thor was out there making his new hammer, I wasn’t spending as much time getting distracted by the internet but actually wanted to know how the movie was progressing, but the first 2/3 are completely wasted.

From the top:

- the opening scene is bad. Thanos intersects Thor and friends on their way to find a New Asgard and just off screen kills everyone. Everyone except Thor, Loki and Hulk. It feels like the script thought the Asgardians were inconvenient, so yeah, let’s just kill them all. Off screen. Then Loki acts badly, with poor dialogue and no one in their right mind for a moment believes anything he says or that the scene would have any canonical weight. Puff, he’s “dead” too. Heimdall is killed with a poke in the gut. Valkyrie is just killed off screen I guess. No one in the writing team cared about the previous Thor movie (or about anything much as I was about to find out).

- Banner is sent to Earth where he can’t hulk out anymore. Cue erectile dysfunction jokes. Because Hulk is his penis. Hulk is his sentient, completely separate entity penis. So that’s thing.

- Stark and Pepper are in the park arguing about wedding plans. They’re together now? Didn’t she leave him before? I don’t care. It’s Downey and Gwynnie. They’re having rich couple non-problems about getting married. Not for a moment are they anything relateable or other than Downey and Gwynnie. I’m flipping through the internet while they and Dr Strange get attacked. Spidey is there. Spidey is good. He gets well established through his dialogue within his 5 or so minutes on the screen.

- Wanda and Vision are doing couples things in Scotland (?). They’re the only couple that it’s created to be a real couple and who come off as Wanda and Vision. Good solid acting. you care for them as characters and believe them as people.

- Chris Pratt is in space. Dear god I hope the real Pratt is nothing like Starlord because Starlord is an insecure infantile douchebag. I guess he’s dating Gamora? they’re not a couple. Chris Pratt is annoying. I don’t care about their relationship or their bad dialogue. Mantis and Drax are relatable with solid communication. Everyone else suffers from Can’t Tell You Vital Shit Because It Would Ruin The Movie -itis.

- There’s loads of really clunky dialogue going on. Everyone speaks in very bad exposition and forced tension. When exposition isn’t happening, Benny Cucumberman is a good Dr Strange, Benedict Wong is good as Wong though completely underused. Because the script just wants to stuff everything and their cat into 2+ hours, it fails at giving most characters proper screen time. Instead it just focuses on fights.

- There’s fight fight fight. Vision is moved to Wakanda so we get Black Panther and Bucky involved. Fight fight fight. If you haven’t seen Black Panther, you will have zero investment on any of this as no characterization is given. Okoye is the only person given a personality with her body language. More fighting.

- The infinity stones exist, but what do they actually do? No one knows! Mostly they just go pew pew pew. Everything about them is very disappointing. To be a god, you really only need a bunch of different colored laser pointers.

- Thanos goes around being a cartoon villain just missing his fedora. By the third act, they’ve decided to give him a personality, but his motivation isn’t stuffed in until the last 20 minutes and even then it’s hugely at odds with what they want you to believe his personality to be; He just wants to save the universe from overpopulation by killing half the population very violently and causing massive amount of ecological damage everywhere he goes. Like... he also employs people who clearly just get their kicks from murder and torture, he totally wrecks the planets’ environment whenever he lands on one and aren’t the people he doesn’t kill just going to pretty quickly repopulate to the same level as before? THIS IS ALL VERY POORLY THOUGHT OUT!

- Oh hai Hugo Weaving! Why are you here? No reason. We just needed to get everyone who’s ever been in a Marvel movie to make an appearance. So Hugo Weaving is a ghost thingy that just kinda hangs around the Soul Stone. Why? There was a map to the place and once you get there there’s really only one place to go, with a single path to walk and it’s two gant stone pillars that you can probably seen from space so fairly hard to miss. So . uh.. I guess it’s a cosmic punishment to be the most pointless ghost ever?

- the Soul Stone demands you sacrifice what you most love to handle it. Which is dumb and pointless. Who made up this rule? The stone? The person who hid it? If you get a regular person wanting the stone, they’d never sacrifice a beloved person to fiddle with a stone, so you’ll only end up getting handled by murderous lunatics and the story ends up legitimizing their obsessive controlling needs as genuine love? That’s bad writing. Oh and of course Gamora is “the only thing Thanos loves” and she just happens to be there. What a coinkydink! thanos promptly throws her off the cliff. Sure didn’t see that coming! *groan* And by this point we don’t know enough about Thanos to care about any of this. We still don’t know his motivation. Or why he’d totally torture his other adopted daughter but man look at this little Gamora kid I took as a souvenir from one of those planets where I slaughtered everyone, I sure do love her more than anything! Because the plot says I do! (To Josh Brolin’s credit, I think he does a decent job with a piss poor script)

- Thor is off on his own little adventure trying to get a new hammer made. Only there’s just a single person left to operate the cosmic blacksmith’s shop where galactic weapons are made and their forge has gone out. It doesn’t matter. We still get the forge going. And it doesn’t seem to take that much effort. Even though “it’s suicidal to try to keep the thingymagic manually open” and Thor ”will definitely die if he tries”.Thor keeps it manually open for a wee bit and doesn’t die or even get maimed. Yay we got a new hammer! This sweltery is also the same place where Thanos’s little glitter glove was made. Which is funny that he managed to kill everyone there for no apparent reason but to be a dick, yet he left the very legendary and actual pre-existing mold of the weapon that can kill him totally alone. Thanos, wyd baby, no.

- Nebula escapes, which apparently was just a question of getting into a touching distance of a single guard. This also seems like really bad writing.

- Fight fight fight. Everyone acts kind of out of character, but it could just be that the dialogue is mostly very bad. Vision is killed, twice. Both times are very sad. Possibly the best moment in the movie. Good job actors. Then Thor hammers Thanos who dies and doesn’t and kills “half the population of the universe”, I guess? Wibbly wobbly timey wimey and he’s back to some sort of a farm house-meadow thing in the end credits. I dunno. Insert dust effects. There’s really no dramatic tension here aside from Peter and Wanda’s deaths. Everyone else just looks kinda like, welp, this sure was a movie we were in. Okoye is, again, the lone person reacting accordingly to their loved one turning to dust.

- End credits state that thanos will be back. Just so you know, in case you had invested even an ounce of emotion into these people “dying”, here’s how we make sure that you shouldn’t have to worry, because we’re basically only halfway through the movie. But you’ll have to wait at least a year to watch the second half. We just have to design new suits for everyone we bring back from “the dead”.

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wwlangel-blog · 7 years ago

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SM2288 FYP 2

13 Sep 2017

Future space

Immersive game! become a pet and experience life

Many players sent into a virtual world, just like an immersive mass multiplayer role playing online game.

Each player is randomly chosen a kind of animal, dog, cat, hamster, pig and so on.

They are kept in a cage at first and then some will fine a time to open the cage and then escape. Besides, they have their own choice to stay or leave, or other actions, that will affect their final life path.

Some scenes can be seen, lazy, weak or unlucky players, with a bad end like being killed, being eaten, being bought to do labor work, being tortured, become stray and being abandoned. Some players then can experience to find food in rubbish bin, act cute to beg food, having different kinds of feeders or masters. However, some dark or some illegal abuse, killing or trade happens around too. For example, kids, angry man, dog food stall owners. Or even pet masters doing what they do not know is abuse.

On the other hand, maybe some players’ road is lucky, being adopted by a very kind master, then they will have a relaxing life style, or even some can become a pet star of advertisement, drama, police force, etc.

Luckily, this is possible to help each player in the game, therefore, group strength is important to save their own lives.

Welcome to “Pet’s life”! In this world, you become an animal. <……>

Please enjoy your journey.

Fade from black, dizzy, look ground turn around, find camera angle short, look at myself, pick up my hand, fold. Touch my ears, my head has ears.

I am in a <huge paper box / kennel / room / pet store>, inside <the few boxes on the ground>, there are a lot of newborn pets, such as dog, cat, hamsters, bird (parrot), little pig, snake, <or aquarium fish>… About 50 of them. I am a newborn pale-yellow cat.

Animals talk to each other, interestingly, with a bubble on top of their heads, but I can hear animals’ voice?) like dog barks, cat meows, snake hisses. As a result, I (and audience) know this is not real world.

From the animals’ chat, I know that we are players in this realistic virtual reality game. We are going to experience pet’s life. It is funny to see other’s animal form, such as Corgi, teddy dog, and snake. We learn to walk, we have to eat food only for pets.

A dog says that there are 2 people coming. I see some animals jump out of the box before people come. A young couple comes. A cat and a dog are couple, they want to be adopted. The girl firstly wants the cat. The dog acts cute for wanting to be adopted together. Finally, the boy says for only adopting the dog. The separation is sad, but in fact people in pet store will not care about pet’s wills.

Walking on the street, I become a stray cat. I find food in rubbish bin. I see a dog eating meat in front of dog house in the yard. Bubble saying that he has to add more meat to his dog’s meal, because that is pretty yummy. I see a pet master yelling at her cat, her cat’s ears show it is sad, but it still rubs her like to please her. The bubble on top says she finally understand how the pet feels when she vents anger on them, why they show scared. She wants to apologies.

(From this point, audience can guess: how the person is, the pet life of is like repeating the experience of what have done to the pet.)

At the climax, I am caught by a kid. He is a primary school student, bad kid with anger. He abuses animals to achieve happiness.

Cut hair, cut tail, glass bottle, fire, knife, BB gun, dog food?

I feel hopeless. Fading black, I remember a scene of me abusing a cat like the same.

Then I realized everything.

The reason of why I play this game is because I hit a cat by car at night, but then I escaped after kicking the bleeding cat body. When I go back home, my phone lights up with a webpage with some words such as …

Thesis development: Learn to respect animals, take good care to pet, they will have a better life. All things have souls or spirits. Have a better / kind attitude towards lives. What if next your life become a pig?

Apart from the story itself, after that, I found that from previous experiences, just like from the selected animations of previous FYP, there are very few characters, which is about 1 to 2 human kind with a special object; limited variable of venues, one playground or one street only. I reflected that my story now is really too long and too many characters that is like a whole movie! Therefore, to keep the project simple and affordable, I had better to cut one scene with one to two characters and a special object then this will be fine. However, there are many messages that can be found in the above story in order to reflects what is good and what is bad when feeding pet.

16 Sep 2017

Story

Cut the climax only to be the final story. So how to present it right away at the beginning? How about start from the end – after the pet cat is dead due to abuse, its master finds it dead body and becomes hopeless. After that, he cursed the world with his negative power. Then another scene, the screen fades from black, changes to first person narrative camera of a cat, which is the scene of the previous settings. This cat is exactly that abuser who killed that cat at the beginning. He remembers everything about he killed the cat, but he does not know why now he becomes a cat. Then his nightmare begins.

This nightmare is to punish abuser by experiencing the same abuse content with himself turning into a cat. As a result, audience can foresee that he will die very badly. However, here, storyteller should put in a twist, a surprise. So… How about, when he is hopeless and being abused which is too painful, he tried to pray, to admit and repentance his sins. At the most climax part, his master arrives! He finds the cat in this life! He kicks off the abuser’s knife and successfully ties him up, then calls the police. In the meantime, the cat is in very bad condition, hair is cut, tail is cut, dummy is cut, and blood all around. However, he feels relieved. He feels like the master is like an angel – with the scene of lighting shining at the back.

“This is true, this is a life of a cat.” He experiences a part of the sorrowful cat’s life. Therefore, he feels a lot regret for him abusing animals in the past.

In the surprising ending, I will put it like this. Another black scene. This time here is an electronic voice. “System starting. Binding to host… Binding successful. Greetings. My host, to reduce/atone your sins, you are going to travel to different world in order to educate people the respect of lives…” Yes, this is then a travel-spaces with system type story. He is going to atone his sins by doing missions like a game. This will be the end of this short animation, with an open-minded ending.

Settings

As it is cut to only showing the abusing actions at the middle of the previous story, the total duration should be 6 ~ 8 minutes.

The exposition is dying cat (repeats the middle), maybe one to two shots of the abuser, then the master comes after the abuser leaves, the cat is dead already. Crying, yelling scenes. Here is a scene of the master hugging the cat and crying, then the camera focusing on the necklace of the dead cat in blood. Cursing. So, around 2 minutes.

The rising action is the cat wakes up, (remember things with the camera angle of abuser’s), not familiar with its new angle and body. It finds that it is caught by the abuser, shocked, escapes and is caught. Then the abuse process. (OMG I don’t know if it can be broadcasted!! ^Broadcasting concern) Knife cut dummy, ear, tail, and cut off tail. This will take shorter than 3 minutes.

Crisis that going to climax, cat feelings (cold due to loss of blood, regretful, sorrowful, …), considering to add flashback of him being the abuser, his face, his laugh, his satisfying from hurting other lives…) that can emphasis his sorrowful and hopeless now. Cat prays for something like “If I have another life, I will not do it anymore, I will be a good man…”. Around 1 minute of time.

Climax: When the abuser going to give the cat the final (cut? move? kill?), the door of the warehouse is opened forcedly by cat’s master. The camera focus on the master. Shocked, unbelievable bloody scene. Kick die the abuser and hit him forcedly. Tie him up. 1.5 ~ 2 minutes.

Falling action: changes back to cat’s angle. Sees hope as seeing an angel, focus on the master’s smiling and kind action (that is to calm cat down, ease, relax, telling the cat has passed the darkest situation already). “This is good for the cat…” – the cat having a kind and nice master is lucky, happy that the cat is saved by his master in this life, but at the same time feels regret towards killing the cat before. Maybe the cat feels tried and closed his eyes slowly, and his eyes become “dead”, finally dropped a teardrop. The cat is dead.

So that’s why the ending is going to become another opening very quickly. Fades to black, after a few seconds, the electronic voice is heard. Falling action till end is about 1.5 ~ 2 minutes.

Broadcasting concern:

Recently, there are more bloody and violence Japanese anime broadcasted. For example, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World, Attack on Titan include many killing, red blood and violence scenes, also exaggerating scare. All from the anime, manga, text and pictures on social media show the spread of these contents showing the trend of interests of people.

Explanation of system

It is a AI robot inserted in human mind. It communicates with the ‘host’ by electronic mind waves. It is considered to be a future technology, appears in the aspect of novel. This is a stream of theme.

百度：系統文

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aion-rsa · 8 years ago

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Watchmen: 15 Most Shocking Moments

Geoff Johns brought in 2017 with a bang after tweeting his intention to write a “Rebirth” follow-up utilizing characters from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ “Watchmen.” Though this wasn’t a complete surprise, given the shocking finale of “DC: Rebirth” #1, which hinted Dr. Manhattan was somehow responsible for constructing the New 52, some fans feel another “Watchmen” revival is tactless, citing Moore’s ongoing battles with DC. Then again, when has Johns ever been afraid of controversy?

RELATED: The 15 Best Hidden Treasures in Watchmen

Love him or hate him, it’s fair to say Johns faces a formidable challenge taking on the “Watchmen” mantle. It’s cram-packed with shocks, thrills and complex characters that blur the lines between hero and villain. To celebrate all that’s great about “Watchmen,” CBR has compiled a list of the most shocking moments from the series. But be warned: if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you…

WHO’S YOUR DADDY

When Laurie Juspeczyk is transported to Mars by Dr. Manhattan to save her from impending nuclear war in “Watchmen” #9, she tries to convince her super-powered ex to return to Earth and save humankind instead. Against all odds, she manages this incredible feat, but only after reaching a shocking self-realization: her father is not the Hooded Justice as she always believed, but The Comedian, the despicable anti-hero who once attacked her mother (more on that later).

Understandably, this shocking revelation rocks Laurie to the core, as it did the comic book community upon release. The Comedian has few redeeming features and Laurie never saw him as anything other than a villain; however, once she’s forced to accept she would not exist without him, she realizes how much she has distorted her memories to suppress the truth of who she really is.

Though it’s highly controversial to make Laurie the product of such a dysfunctional relationship, Dr. Manhattan’s decision to help mankind becomes all the more poignant for it. It’s not only a pivotal moment in the narrative, but one of the most beautiful and moving sequences Moore and Gibbons ever put together.

THE COMEDIAN’S ASSAULT

Of all the shocking moments in this series, the flashback of Edward Blake’s violent assault of Sally Jupiter in “Watchmen” #2 is perhaps the most widely recognized. After trying to kiss Sally and receiving a “no thanks” in the form of a sharp right hook to the jaw, Blake persists trying to force himself on his teammate, striking her repeatedly as she tries to resist. Although Hooded Justice steps in at the last minute to save Sally, Blake makes it clear he feels no remorse. Ever the Comedian, he tries to turn the whole thing into a joke about Hooded Justice getting off on violence.

What makes this sequence so disturbing is not simply that a supposed hero could do something so vile — although that’s a big part of it — but the fact that Blake escapes punishment, as Sally decides not to press charges in case it damages the Minutemen’s credibility. It’s through moments like these that Moore and Gibbons really get under the skin of readers: between The Comedian’s moral bankruptcy and the Minutemen’s inability to exact justice, you can’t help but wonder… what’s the point of being a superhero if you can’t even stop your own team from becoming monsters?

THE MELTDOWN OF DR. MANHATTAN

When Jon Osterman appears on a live TV Q&A session in “Watchmen” #3, he doesn’t anticipate questions about whether being nuclear-powered isn’t such a good thing. When a reporter queries whether Dr. Manhattan caused people close to him (including his ex-girlfriend Janey Slater, his “buddy” Wally Weaver and the once-villainous Moloch) to develop cancer… well, let’s just say he reacts badly. And by badly, we mean he teleports all the people in the studio to a nearby parking lot in a hissy-fit before vanishing off to Mars to sulk.

This sequence is shocking for a number of reasons, not least because Manhattan’s extraordinary powers are supposed to be balanced by his cold and calculating intelligence. Through this emotional outburst, Moore and Gibbons remind the reader that Osterman is still human and therefore fallible, raising difficult questions about how much power man can safely possess — a politically significant point, given the origin of Manhattan’s abilities.

Oh, and did we mention his tantrum also heats up the Cold War? Just in case you missed that last political statement about the dangers of nuclear power, Moore and Gibbons really drive it home as Manhattan’s departure prompts the Russian invasion of Afghanistan… and all because someone asked an uncomfortable question.

THE BREAKDOWN OF THE COMEDIAN

“Watchmen” #2 reflects on various events during The Comedian’s life, but arguably one of the most unnerving is also one of few that gives Edward Blake some semblance of humanity. As he sits at the bedside of his former nemesis, Moloch, pouring out his heart and soul to a man who was once his enemy, he pleads for “somebody [to] please explain it.”

Of course, it’s really Blake who is explaining to the reader what is to come: his drunken monologue and theories about a conspiracy to incite the wrath of God (read: Dr. Manhattan) foreshadow nearly every element and theme of the greater plot of the “Watchmen” series, making it one of those scenes that demands to be revisited.

None of that makes feeling sorry for a scumbag like Blake any less uncomfortable… but that’s the beauty of it. By juxtaposing Blake’s emotional vulnerability with his many acts of brutality and violence, Moore and Gibbons give us an unflinching portrayal of an extremely complex character who is at once heroic, villainous and incapable of saving himself. If that’s not a shocking subversion of the superhero genre, we don’t know what is!

RORSCHACH OILS UP A PRISON INMATE

If Walter Kovacs’ time in prison taught us one thing, it’s that he isn’t great at making new friends. Pretty much everyone else Rorschach meets within the prison’s walls threatens to kill him — he was once a superhero, after all, and is directly responsible for putting some of them away! Luckily, Rorschach finds a rather unique way of warming up this frosty reception in “Watchmen” #6.

After fellow inmate Otis holds a shiv (a makeshift knife, to those not fluent in prison lingo) to his back, Kovacs retaliates by throwing a canister of boiling oil in his enemy’s face, leaving him with extensive third-degree burns. As he’s dragged off to solitary confinement, Rorschach screams a warning to anyone else thinking of trying to take him out: “I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me!”

This sequence is a chilling reminder that while Rorschach may be one of the good guys, he’s not necessarily a good guy… meaning he’s not bound by the same moral code as the average superhero. He can fight just as dirty as his opponents and isn’t afraid to take out the trash.

DR. MANHATTAN TRADES UP FOR A YOUNGER MODEL

After Jon Osterman is transformed into Dr. Manhattan, he grows increasingly distanced from his humanity and plays the role of cold and detached demigod, keeping the world in balance from on high. So much so, in fact, that Sally Jupiter compares him to an H-Bomb, with one vital difference: the American government “didn’t have to get the H-bomb laid every once in a while.”

Yup, that’s right, ol’ Manhattan’s got a wandering eye… and as it turns out, his tastes aren’t all that different from your average red-blooded heterosexual male. Perhaps the most shocking demonstration of this is when Osterman decides to pursue Laurie Juspeczyk, despite her only being 16-years-old when they first meet in “Watchmen” #4 and him having a long-term partner at the time.

By pairing Manhattan with a girl that is barely of legal age in much of the West and making him a cheat, Moore and Gibbons manage to morally compromise their hero and make a cutting observation of modern sexuality in one fell swoop. This is one of those truths that cuts a little too close to the bone, but that’s part of what makes this series so special.

RORSCHACH’S REVENGE, PRISON-STYLE

You know you’ve got good friends when they’re willing to break you out of prison — but as noted earlier, Rorschach doesn’t really have much use for friends. After Nite Owl and Silk Spectre scale the walls of the prison intent on pulling off a daring escape in “Watchmen” #8, they find that the man they’ve come to save has already freed himself from his cell with a very different goal in mind… the killing of the villain, Big Figure.

What’s so scary about this sequence isn’t that a hero would be prepared to kill his nemesis (we’ve seen heroes kill before), but Rorschach’s nonchalant attitude towards the murder. Coolly informing his teammates that he needs to “visit the men’s room,” Rorschach follows Big Figure inside as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. When he emerges a few moments later accompanied by a trickle of blood on the floor, and is scolded by Laurie for “div[ing] headfirst into things,” he retorts that he’s sure many would agree with her… implying Big Figure just took a dive in the nearest toilet bowl. Again, Moore and Gibbons skilfully subvert readers’ expectations regarding how a hero should think, act and fight.

NITE OWL’S UNUSUAL APHRODISIAC

One of the most interesting — and controversial — questions that Moore and Gibbons pose in this series is why people with no superpowers to speak of would feel compelled to go out night after night, fighting crime, kitted out in lurid-colored spandex, face masks and utility belts. The answer offered in “Watchmen” #7 is a real eye-opener for anyone who assumes superheroes are doing it for the greater good.

After his bedroom antics with Laurie are a flop (and, yes, that pun is very much intended), a mortified Dan Drieberg flees to the one place that doesn’t make him feel inadequate — his Nite Owl workshop — and impulsively decides to get his mojo back by coming out of crime-fighting retirement. Saving a few civilians from a burning building finally seems to do the trick for Nite Owl, who manages to heat things up with Silk Spectre in his aircraft. Who knew being a superhero would be so sleazy.

All jokes aside, this sequence is a masterstroke by Moore and Gibbons, despite being supremely icky (or perhaps because of it): Nite Owl’s sexual impotence and self-loathing form a stark and shocking contrast against traditional depictions of Alpha Male heroes whose self-assured masculinity is routinely enforced.

RORSCHACH ROASTS A COP

As part of his investigation into who killed The Comedian and why, Rorschach reaches out to some rather unexpected sources and is quick to respond when he receives word that the former villain Moloch has information that might be helpful. However, it soon becomes clear in “Watchmen” #5 that Rorschach has walked directly into a trap: Moloch is dead and someone’s already called the cops.

To say Rorschach fights dirty in his attempt to escape this carefully calculated frame-up is an understatement. In one of the most shocking sequences ever seen in Moore and Gibbons’ series, he goes so far as to douse one officer in Veidt hairspray before setting him (along with most of the stairwell they’re in) alight. Fighting villains using underhanded tactics is one thing, but a cop?! That’s a whole other ball game.

This is another great example of how Moore and Gibbons have totally torn up the superhero rulebook, showing how vigilantes like Rorschach don’t only operate outside the law — they treat it (and, by extension, the people enforcing it) like the enemy. They don’t answer to anybody, and anyone unfortunate to get in their way is toast… or, rather, flambé!

THE BIRTH OF DR. MANHATTAN

There’s no doubt that Dr. Manhattan is an imposing and rather unsettling figure, given his baffling array of quantum-based powers and his godlike relationship with the rest of humankind. But it’s not until “Watchmen” #4 that the full, terrifying extent of his transformation is revealed.

In an origin story echoing that of other nuclear-themed characters such as Captain Atom, Firestorm and the Hulk, Jon Osterman finds himself trapped in an experimental device that quite literally strips him down to the bone… and waaaay beyond. In the jaw-dropping visuals that follow, readers are given a front-row seat to his dematerialization and gradual reassembly, ending with him fully-formed, bright blue, butt-naked and floating unsupported in the air.

It’s a frightening and bizarre sequence, not lessened by the ghostliness of his initial appearances around the army base, but perhaps what’s most shocking about Osterman’s transformation is how the immensity of his powers profoundly alters his psyche. Moore and Gibbons manage to demonstrate the mental and emotional dissonance wrought by the change as effectively as they depict his physical alterations, to the extent that Manhattan feels as detached from his human past as it’s possible to be.

RORSCHACH GOES TO THE DOGS

The story of how Kovacs became Rorschach is not easy to stomach, as his clinical psychologist Malcom Long learns the hard way — as have countless readers of Moore and Gibbons’ ground-breaking series over the years. In “Watchmen” #6, aptly titled “The Abyss Gazes Also” in a nod to Nietzsche’s infamous warning, Kovacs spills the beans about what set him on his current path… and it’s enough to drive any man mad.

It’s hard not to sympathize with Rorschach as he shares memories of his failed attempt to save a young girl from being butchered and fed to dogs, and when he coldly explains how he killed the dogs and chained the kidnapper up before burning his house to the ground, most readers cheer his rough justice. But the sort of man who stands outside a burning building making sure no one survives is not a hero: he’s a dark, uncompromising vigilante who believes the world has no meaning. He’s the sort of guy that, when you scream for him to save you, will say “NO.”

DR. MANHATTAN CHANGES HISTORY

Okay, so there’s been discussion in this list already about the extent of Dr. Manhattan’s powers, but we here at CBR wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t point out the most impressive (and kind of terrifying) feat that Manhattan accomplishes: he significantly changes the course of history.

The “Watchmen” series takes place in an alternate 1985, in which the U.S. has become the supreme and dominant power in the world after a number of decisive victories, including the Vietnam War. This is thanks to the awe-inspiring power of Dr. Manhattan, who many view as a supreme deity who cannot — and should not — be resisted. In “Watchmen” #4, readers get a glimpse of his domination firsthand as people literally fall over themselves to surrender to him personally.

Ever the political critics, Moore and Gibbons show readers that a world with Dr. Manhattan in it isn’t necessarily better or safer — the Vietnamese people’s unconditional surrender is directly compared to the fall of the Japanese after Hiroshima. If that’s not controversial enough, Nixon’s continuing stint in office is bound to ring alarm bells. The message is clear: peace is too fragile a thing to be sustained by a single man, superhuman or not.

THE COMEDIAN MURDERS HIS LOVER AND CHILD

It’s fair to say The Comedian likes war a little too much. He is, as Manhattan asserts after meeting him, “deliberately amoral” and seems to take divine pleasure in the killing of his enemies. But his bloodlust and adeptness for battle pales in comparison to the most despicable deed Blake ever commits in the “Watchmen” series: the murder of a young Vietnamese girl who claims to be carrying his child.

This shocking sequence occurs in “Watchmen” #2, after the pregnant woman confronts Blake in an emotional state, fearing that he plans to leave the country with the remainder of U.S. forces and leave her child without financial support or a strong father figure to look up to. She breaks a bottle and slashes his face, and in a moment of furious retaliation, The Comedian turns a gun on her and shoots her down… all while Dr. Manhattan looks on.

It’s a harrowing turn of events that completely stains The Comedian’s character, but it also serves to reinforce Moore and Gibbons’ political commentary on the real casualties of war. It’s not a moment the CBR team will forget in a hurry, that’s for damn sure.

DR. MANHATTAN MURDERS RORSCHACH

There aren’t many writers who could make readers not only sympathize with, but also actively root for, a character as deranged and anti-social as Rorschach, but it’s something Moore and Gibbons pull off without a hitch. And while that makes for an excellent comic series, it only makes the death of such a complex and beloved character all the harder to handle.

In the climactic scenes of “Watchmen” #12, after Rorschach comes to blows with Dr. Manhattan over what should be done to put an end to Ozymandias’ siege of terror on Manhattan (don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a moment), readers see Kovacs unmasked and reduced to tears, but still willing to die rather than compromise in the face of evil. His unflinching commitment to his own ideal and desperation in these final moments is enough to affect the hardest soul, but that’s not the only reason Rorschach’s death places so highly on this list. The most shocking thing about this whole sequence is that the justice he was willing to die for will probably never be enacted: Ozymandias’ unspeakable crimes against humanity will likely go unanswered for, as Dr. Manhattan decides to step aside and let the worst happen. In the end, his death doesn’t change a thing.

OZYMANDIAS WINS

As ever, CBR has saved the best — or more accurately, the most shocking — until last. In “Watchmen” #11, the Minutemen finally learn that Adrian Veidt, otherwise known as Ozymandias, is the one behind The Comedian’s murder and, worse still, a plan to unleash hell on the city of Manhattan in the form of a Cthulhu-esque, pseudo space-monster.

Just when you think Moore and Gibbons are about to confirm to the supervillain trope and have the criminal mastermind spell out exactly what it’s going to take to stop him, they drop the most shocking bombshell of the series: that Ozymandias began the attack 35 minutes ago, and that there’s nothing the Minutemen can do to prevent it. The resulting carnage, laid out in detail in “Watchmen” #12, is about as gratuitous as it gets.

As shocking as this sequence is, it’s arguable that Ozymandias’ staging of a horrific alien attack on Manhattan was the best-case scenario for a world teetering on the brink of nuclear war. That, perhaps, is the most controversial element of Moore and Gibbons’ series, when you get down to it. When tentacular genocide is the best you can hope for, you know you’ve got problems.

Are there any other moments from the original 1986 series you reckon deserve a place on this list? Let us know in the comments!

The post Watchmen: 15 Most Shocking Moments appeared first on CBR.com.

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