#so as someone who has despised them to my core the entire time

[didnt-hear-idsb-live-again]

.

[northlt03]

Read The Secret History for the first time and I got obsessed with it so I wrote smth. Kind of want to write a whole fic but should I ??

Does such a thing as the “fatal flaw” so prominent in Ancient Greek myths and plays exist? And if so, what makes it fatal? What makes it have the power to unravel a person from the inside out? To be the very reason behind their downfall? To be the reason behind the madness they descend into.

My given, legal name is Bartemius Crouch Jr, after my rather self absorbed father. I am twenty three years old and this is my suicide letter.

I do believe such a thing exists. A fatal flaw. Something in the core of one’s soul, one’s psyche. Something fixed and immutable. A core part of one, around which the rest of their being is built.

Mine, I would like to think, would be something striking, perhaps climactic and dramatic. A morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

That sounds like something an old friend of mine might say. In a way, my writing of the events that follow, is a letter to him. To justify, perhaps, or to explain. I am not asking for forgiveness or understanding. This is simply a recount of what happened. 

As is the case, the search for “aesthetic” might not be my fatal flaw at all. It is pride, or perhaps hubris, as the Greeks called it. A call for attention. I did this! We did this! Oh we’re all sick bastards but how fucking glorious was it?

Perhaps a smarter man might analyze that, sit me down and ask me why I feel like announcing this to the world. Is it because of the lack of attention I had growing up from my father? Or the feeling of being absolutely inconsequential and meaningless? 

I grew up hearing, listening, reading, about old men and women who went on soliloquies, about the importance of family. Blood maketh family. Toujours puur, was the motto of my friend’s family. That is what all the adults believed around me, while I was young and even now.

Family above all else.

I feel as though they might have exaggerated the consequence of a family, making me believe I would never be greater than my father, that all my existence would be tainted by his. I would follow in his footsteps as a lawyer or perhaps a public servant and waste away like he did, with a wife and a child I never wanted.

Now, writing down my bitterness for my family, I may come across as a bit harsh. But that is the truth.

My father, a lawyer, who settled down in the south of England in a quiet sort of city, had never wanted to get married, nor to have a child. The fact was painfully established. Clear even to me as a child. I was unwanted. I was a hindrance, just another mouth to feed. Then as a teenager, a recalcitrant, rebellious waste of space.

I had a few friends growing up, none of them significant. I had always felt a shadow of dread, something rotten in my core, perhaps my fatal flaw. And it was this that other people, even children my age, could sense. I suppose that is why I was so swept up in the romance of it all at college. My first real friends, the ones who understood me, just as rotten and downright ugly on the inside.

It sounds shameless and repulsive on paper, but it is one thing to read about the events and another entirely to live through them, to live despite them, though I won’t much longer.

In my younger years, I did not have much of an affinity to the classics. I found them boring and incessant. It would be long until I grew to love everything I despised about them.

My father was a tall man, someone who, to me, had always seemed foreign and distant. We shared the same name (a bit egotistical in my opinion to name one’s son after oneself), and according to my mother, even shared the same features (a sharp nose, dark brown eyes, a distant stare, and a slim figure). I never accepted the comparison as a compliment. Even now, when it has been years since I’ve seen my parents, I detest even the mention of my father. 

It is one thing to not want children and another entirely to have one you feel nothing for and push him to fulfill your ambitions that you never achieved.

The trajectory of my life had been decided by him since before I could put one foot in front of the other.

I was to study law, like him, from a better university than him, then with my practices, I was to support my aging parents once my father retired. I have now a few hundred pounds to my name, and I leave it all to them. It is a bitter sort of ending. They will not know about my death until the papers tomorrow.

My mother, in contrast, is a meek woman. She had always been that way and will stay that way until she dies. Passive, docile, doing what my father requests because she is in love with a ghost of a man who aged and turned vile.

She used to tell me stories of their youth. How she had met my father at college, a smart, brilliant, animated young man with great ambitions. She had been charmed instantly. And that is perhaps her fatal flaw. To see someone or something and immediately assume the best of it. To ignore the abuse she endured, and to try and convince me, her son, to see her husband in the same light she saw him— a hard working family man who despite his aloofness and distance, ultimately wanted the best for me.

I don’t know what magical land my mother lived in, nor what rose tinted glasses she looked at my father with.

My only impetus through most of my life was the fact that I never wished to be like my father. I would rather die before I became that cold husk of a man. Rather funny how life works out.

Now I am sitting here in a rented apartment at midnight, scrawling desperately while the love of my life snores in the bed behind me. The only light is the candle burning, something that reminds us both of our old friend. Tomorrow, we will join him.

But for now, I am my past.

My father could have accepted the sciences as a career had I chosen them. If I wanted to be a doctor or perhaps a veterinarian even. He would have been displeased, but ultimately be persuaded. It was my attraction to the Arts and Humanities he despised.

Though my involvement with them was largely an accident.

I was rather lazy in my first two years of college, content to just drift through life (another thing my father disliked). It was in my first year I chose Greek simply because the classes were only twice a week and both times late in the afternoon. That should give you an idea that I truly did not intend for everything to play out the way it did.

A butterfly effect so aptly called.

Had I known I would change the trajectory of my life this way, would I still choose that Greek class in the afternoon? (Now, listening to the soft snores behind me, the answer is obvious. Yes. Of course).

I was nineteen when my life changed. A quite unruly teenager who dramatized his life because he was afraid it would amount to nothing. I wrote in my diary, similar to the one I am now writing in, about everything and nothing. 

I would write about the colors of the flowers in the spring, the first breath of fresh air after I had not left my house in some time, the vexatious and futile rituals of teenagehood the rest of my peers conducted, the loneliness I felt, trapped in that house, like my father’s hand constantly squeezing my throat, making it hard to breathe.

It was this diary my father had found, through my own fault. He was rarely, if ever home. He spent nights and days out, never informing my mother of his whereabouts. It left her wondering and fearing for his safety. Though a few days later he would come stumbling back with no explanations.

Sometimes I wanted to hold her by her shoulders and shake her. 

Look at him. I wanted to scream, but for fear of becoming a shadow of my father, I did not. Look at his pathetic state! At the secrecy he employs. Business retreats he calls them! And what about the lipstick stains on his blazer?

My mother was either blind in love or a fool.

I hate to think I am a son of those two. 

I hate to think I am no different from them.

I had always wanted to run away. Even as a child. I would dream about running into the woods, a mile out from the city. I had quite the imagination then. I would live in a tree, build my own house with my seven year old hands and live right there. I would never see my parents again. 

I had written about my urge to run away as well in my diary. 

My father found it tucked between the cushions of the sofa after I had fallen asleep the previous night writing in it and retired to bed, forgetting about the notebook. 

There was screaming, a few objects thrown. An anger at the way I had written about him and my mother. It was all truth, of course. I never knew why he had the audacity to treat us the way he did, but not enough courage to own up to it, denying it entirely and loathing the truth I wrote about him. He could not hope to face the man he had become and took it all out on me.

I slammed the door of my bedroom hard enough for the frames on the walls outside to rattle. No one could bring out my father’s worst traits in me better than the man himself.

The day was cold, my windows closed. I wanted a breath of fresh air, but with my bad luck that day, I probably would have lost my balance and fallen out of my window and broken my neck on the pavement below.

That’s when my eyes fell on the brochure, shoved carelessly in my closet somewhere when I had been looking for colleges. My father had insisted on some local college not far from the house to cut back on the cost of living had I gone somewhere across the country or continent. 

We weren’t poor, exactly. Not rich either. And the campus on the brochure made it clear Hogwarts University of Humanities and Arts was not for people like me. With its grand castle-like buildings, the rolling hills that surrounded it, blanketed by snow in the winter when the photo had been taken, and the classical medieval looking classrooms inside, I wanted it more than anything I had ever wanted.

Greed, I suppose, could also be a flaw of mine. I am chock full of flaws. All the sins rolled into one. Although I hope you wouldn’t hold that against me. It is so much more interesting to get swept up in the amorality of it all.

From the moment I had laid my eyes on the brochure, I knew I wouldn’t stop at anything. I wanted to be there and I would. Sometimes my ambition showed through. Greed, ambition, hubris, maybe not concerning on their own. 

I flipped through the brochure, eyes scanning the important parts of the text. Perhaps if I could get a scholarship, which was certainly possible with my above average grades and excellent record in my local university.

[solarbird]

The long arc of Boomer politics, of resistance, and what Millennials & Zoomers can win starting now

Yesterday, I wrote – mostly to GenX, but also to Millennials and Zoomers – about holding the line one more time. In that post, I talked a little about how some of us have been doing that job this long in order to keep some semblance of a Republic until the cavalry – in the form of a group larger than the Baby Boom – could show up, and still have the tools to take power peacefully, and in a timely fashion.

Today I’m writing for Millennials and for Zoomers. I’m going to expand on yesterday, talk about history, talk about why politics have been as they’ve been in ways you maybe haven’t heard before, and I’m going to talk about the massive opportunity you have now to change this fucking game.

But I have to talk about history first. There’s context, and you need it.

Most of you reading this have never seen actual Generation X politics. Unless you’re from Seattle, or the greater Seattle area, you definitely never have. You’ve only seen Baby Boom politics. What you’re seeing now is still Baby Boom politics, the underlying dynamic unchanging and now crystalised, ritualised, and radicalised over the decades since they took power.

That’s happened in part because the Baby Boom never wanted to talk to anyone else, and didn’t have to. They had a saying – “don’t trust anyone over 30” – that inverted and became “don’t trust anyone under 30″ the moment they hit their 30s. As a group, they’ve despised everyone younger than them my entire life, writing early on that GenX was either “a generation of Darwinesque hyper-predators” (fun stuff if you’re 12) or “useless lazy slackers incapable of achievement” from the very beginning. Most of the time it manifests as simply being locked out and ignored, but I’ve had that raw generational contempt thrown directly at me, more than once – even here in Seattle.

But the thing about Seattle is… we outnumber them here. It’s the only place in the US where we outnumber them. They’ve had to deal with other people, whether they liked it or not. Because of that, they couldn’t really lock into that inward-facing self-reinforcing spiral. They had reality checks and external feedback they had to grapple with, and so… their politics stayed way, way more normal.

So if you want to know what Generation X politics would’ve looked like in a more traditional American pattern, where each generation is larger than the previous – hi. It’s in Seattle, and to a lesser degree Washington State. We’re willing to elect socialists who call themselves socialists and actually have something like a centre-left, and it’s not just downtown.

I mean, there are reasons that Donald Trump didn’t win the white vote here, and this is a big part of it. According to exit polling at the time, he didn’t get the non-college-educated white male majority here in 2016. It was close! But even with the dry side of the state involved – a lot of which is rabidly christofascist – Donald Trump didn’t even win non-college-educated white men, his core, statewide in 2016.

(It’s also a factor in why the Battle of Seattle could happen, I am just saying. I was there.)

But outside Seattle, and outside Washington State, you’re generally looking at Boomer politics. And I think Generation X has always kinda known that was going to happen, in that we were never going to have a turn at power. Certainly not at the national scale.

Some of us, in fact, have not just known that but have also understood it, which is a different thing. I spent enough time east for school, I could see what was coming and how it was going to play out, and how it was going to be such a long, long war for the Republic – and largely, an effort just to hold. To be a backstop. A centre-left line to keep civil society and elections until someone bigger than them could finally come along.

The fact that we even managed to win on a few fronts – queers, I’m looking at us, but not just us – that was amazing. And also outliers, let’s not kid ourselves. But I’ll take those victories and celebrate them.

So when everything looks so rigid and hopeless and stale, and when you’re seeing “elections don’t fix it, everything just gets worse,” that’s why it looks that way, even when it isn’t actually like that.

Because thanks to their sheer size, their sheer numbers, the Boom just plain outmassed everyone else since like 1980 and everyone’s had to play by their rules all this time.

We could win a round here and there, and even make some real progress in narrow but important areas. But we couldn’t change the game. Hence our fight to keep a civil society not in the politeness sense but in the sense of functional institutions sense, and the fight to keep elections not in the “technically there are elections” sense but in the “elections that can have outcomes Republicans don’t like” sense.

We are at the very tail end of that war now. We have almost won a war most people haven’t even been aware that we’ve been fighting.

2024 is the last best shot they have. They want to keep power, because of course they do. They grabbed it early – skipping ahead of the Silent generation – and haven’t talked to anyone else about power since, just like so many of them never talked to anyone outside their cohort they didn’t have to. But this year is pretty much the end of their dominance unless they can rig everything to keep the appearance of power until they actually die, and they know it.

And by “they know it,” I mean, I actually heard Boomer rightists saying things to that effect in 2016, amongst themselves.

That’s why everything changes after this election, but not during this election. 2024 is the tipping point. Still the old rules, but hopefully the end of them.

If we win – and we will win if we fight – it’ll be because Millennials and Zoomers stepped in and said “that’s enough, grampa.” And everyone who actually works and understands politics will know it.

And since everyone will know it, everything – EVERYTHING – will start to re-orient itself around you. Around Millennials and around Zoomers. It won’t be all at once, but it will absolutely happen.

As long as you keep showing up, as long as you start doing the work, every mechanic of power, every political interest group, every big money, every piece of the machine will start to turn towards you. Because whatever else may be true, the professionals know where the power lies, and it’ll lie with you.

Not us, not GenX. We have a voice in Cascadia, and I love my country-not-a-country bioregion, but that’s the only place we get one. The power brokers will skip us, like they always have. They’ve never figured out how to market to GenX, they thought they were going to “own” Millennials (literal quote there on ‘own’ btw), and they have no idea at all what to do with Zoomers and I thank the gods for it.

It’ll be you, Millennials and Zoomers. You. You will be the ones everyone cares about, as the new power centre of politics. The Baby Boom will try to grab power back, but as long as you keep showing up, they won’t pull it off. In practical terms, it’ll be over.

If we win. Which we will, if we fight and fight together.

But for this election, we’re still under the old rules. The Baby Boom rules, the Baby Boom politics, the Baby Boom control. That’s why I’m praying this can be GenX’s last hurrah as a resistance force, and that’s why I write so much about holding the goddamn line once again, just like so many of us – not all of us, but so many – have done our entire lives.

One more time, no matter how much you hate having to pick between two doddering old monsters…

…we gotta hold the line. We gotta hold the line for your sake, and for our own. Just like we always have.

But after that?

After that, as long as you keep showing up…

…it’ll be all about you.

You’re so close to being able to start taking power and setting the agenda. After all these years, it’s finally the time when you can actually start to do it.

But you gotta help us hold the line in ’24, first. We gotta hold again one, last time, the old way.

And then it’ll be yours.

If you’re willing to take it.

Are you ready?

110 days remain.

-----

[extended commentary and a lot of replies at source]

[funkymbtifiction]

that 4 post was interesting to read! do 4s have a harder time becoming healthy (or maybe appearing healthy to outsiders even if they are healthy) than other types? or does it depend more on individual self awareness across the board?

also, do you think being upset that something you like has become popular and trendy (and growing to despise that very thing along with all the people who “ruined” it for you) is 4ish? what about the exact opposite - being happy/excited this thing you enjoy is now mainstream and not understanding why that would upset someone since it just means more available merch and more people to potentially bond with and share one of your favorite things with? would that be some sort of attachment core + maybe high soc? i witnessed a debate earlier and was wondering lol

I don’t think so, no. In part because for one thing, it’s hard for any Enneagram type to get healthier. It’s an uphill battle for all of them, because their defense mechanisms and thinking patterns are so entrenched. Is it easy for a 3 to give up being the center of attention, or a 2 to stop thinking in terms of “I am higher than you, because you need my help”? Anything image-type related is difficult to unpack and overcome, because it’s what you want other to see. 4s can get healthier, while still broadcasting “you don’t get me and you can’t fix me and my trauma is a huge part of myself.” There’s also the fact that “healthy” is often tinged with biases, the assumption that “healthy” means not-negative (positive triad bias), proper behavior (super-ego bias), etc. Healthy for a 4 means something entirely different than healthy for a 6 or a 9 or a 3. 4s don’t judge themselves for their negative thoughts and feelings and for drawing attention to negativity or broadcasting it, and even a healthy 4 will still do all of that.

The article comes across as harsh on purpose to distinguish 4s. The lovely girl who wrote it is actually not that harsh “in person.” I would say she is a moderately healthy 4 (in the same way I am a moderately healthy 6), but that doesn’t undermine her 4-ness.

Anyway… hating that it has become popular can be 4, but it can also be contrarian 6 (I used to like this, but now everyone likes it, and now I’m upset, because this used to be what set me apart; now that everyone loves it means people are not critical thinkers enough, so I have to hate on it!). Case in point, I enjoyed the first Twilight book, but once it became so mainstream that Edward was on shower curtains, I hated the entire franchise. And I’m not a 4. So it’s not a 4 trait, it’s a human being trait and a contrarian trait and a “people are so irritating in my fandom, especially if they blindly gush” 6 trait for me; someone else might hate it for a different reason.

I’d say “oh goodie, everyone is into this now!” is a positive triad reaction paired with social, since it’s instantly embracing the happy, good things related to your favorite thing being super common. lol

[pinkseas]

[parasocial bestie] boutta send another ask before you can answer the previous ones.... bro girl (gnc) do you ever think about xiao post-teyvat... after lumine leaves..... like ive took an entire night just hours laying on bed once just to rot my brain on what's gonna happen after all that stuff i told u abt his ideal endinfg and shit i dont remember hhUEHAHAHAHGH BUT LIKE, THE CORE OF IT ALL that he learns and remembers lumine's words to heart; and there's the extra bit i said perhaps, on that time he won't have someone who had made his life a little better, no longer by his side, he would try to delve in a curiosity he had thrown away before. the desire to seek something new, something he used to have, put aside in priority for duty, and that he's not meant to indulge things like other living things do.

i love the thought that xiao takes the step of being in lumine's shoes, not entirely, but the mere concept of being a traveler. a wanderer. someone who's simply curious, who wants to explore what they've never seen. this is a life lumine is at her finest, other than the responsibilities she's weighed to. xiao would just want to Try and feel her experience. he'd leave liyue if only for a few days, still clinging to the thought of,... home? liyue finally felt like home than a place he's obligated to protect. and that's thanks to lumine too. his travels progress with ease with his own form of teleportation through the permit of wind, and he settles to visit,.. places. landscapes, nature,- to meet the people can wait later. for now, he's only here to explore and just... be.

it latches at the very center of my brain for weeks about post-traveler concepts like this like i DONT dig and do not like just outright Despise a xiao that misses lumine to the Extreme, someone to cling onto, because it defeats the purpose of him who's meant to be free and being able to choose. it doesnt mean anything about him forming attachments and loyalty, although hes still loyal to lumine in regards he sees her as a dear friend who taught him so much about life, the life he has and that he should cherish it. and he does, and will try, with all these little steps of moving forward without the hand that pulls you along. the people who cared for him who had been the hand that pushes along, will still push, but now all of his actions are made on his own volition. i just love that. i love that after lumine, he starts to live again. he slowly, but surely, know how to live.

so first of all "bro girl (gnc)" fucking SENT me im gonna cry why is that so funny to me i love that so bad

and second of all okay ngl i dont think about it OFTEN but i do. think about it. i Absolutely Do Think About It. and the way you've described it is flawless i have nothing to expand upon nothing to add no little comment to make im just. speechless. delving into the curiosity he had thrown away before. becoming a traveler, a wanderer. meeting people coming later, for now focusing on exploring, on seeing all that the world has to offer. still regarding lumine as such a dear friend. his actions being his own. learning how to live again. im going to lose my MINDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

not getting too close to mortals at least for a while at first, too wary of the pain he's caused them before, too aware of the degree to which he will outlive them (those from the chasm are exceptions, and he'll remember them for centuries after they're gone, even if only in fleeting thoughts). but meeting some of the other archons. becoming closer with other adepti. a small circle, but a circle nonetheless. <- cannot stop thinking about xiao and nahida eventually becoming friends dorry i had to say SOMETHING. its hard to imagine him and the wanderer as Friend friends, but i can see them crossing paths sometimes if they hadn't already met through lumine, realizing fairly early on that neither of them are human, working together pretty well whether in fighting or simple exploration. sharing a sort of wonder at the world, a deep will to be better, knowing what its like to exist solely for one purpose and knowing more still of what it's like for that purpose to leave them, to be taught how to exist without it, to further learn themselves how to exist without it. idk. very different people but a solid few similarities in their lives. xiao albedo friendship i hope i pray at least eventually idk i think they'd just Vibe.

still thinking about xiao and nahida as friends. xiao knowing a lot about various plant life and taking care of it, nahida teaching him the rest and filling in the gaps when he asks. learning how to sew. learning how to best care for the wildlife. learning how to use his hands gently. they're rough and calloused and for so long they existed to wield his weapon, nothing more, but now they make messy stitches and pat down the dirt around freshly planted flowers and ever so carefully pet the stray cats he sees in different cities. xiao is not a weapon. maybe he never was.

idont even know where my train of thought is anymore im just. im just. im just. o(-(

[imperial-nuisance-rudje]

dawntrail spoilers up to just before final dungeon

mostly just getting overarching thoughts down

still not seeing where people are getting this being stb 2 from. it's... it's arr, made in a less awful environment with more experience under the team's belt. It's foundation-building for the future even as it's telling a complete story for itself. I fully expect the credits and 7.x to have a lot of story threads being produced to pick over, or for an innocuous detail from 7.0 to become important later. you don't plan for like a decade in the future (however vague those plans are, we know it's a goal of the current team) without leaving yourself room to work.

i can see why someone would dislike it but generally i... cannot see where the vitriol and claims that it's outright badly written are coming from. it's overall Fine at worst. thus far it's only got a few spots i would call poorly written (even as an avid g'raha hater who despises every time the game forces me to be around him, the scene with him wasn't *badly written*, i just hate him and don't think they're ever digging out of the characterization hole they dug for him across the shb patches and all of ew so i don't want to be near him), and the character writing would have to really crater right at the end to not be solid to excellent the whole way through. (I didn't find the "OH GOD I WAS RUDE KILL ME"/"i'm good now" joke terribly amusing but when it happened it at least got on with it, which is more than i can say of other unfunny recurring jokes in this game)

wuk lamat in particular is written wonderfully, she's a well-executed shounen protag meathead learning how to turn those qualities to her benefit as a leader using the WoL as an example. and erenville has been an utter delight the entire way through, i love the stuffy little bunbun.

(also can i say what a relief it was that the scions played second fiddle even after they showed? i was dreading them taking over the wuk lamat+krile+erenville show the entire time until they showed up and immediately stepped back, also i'm glad estinien is getting to enjoy his culinary tour of tural after a homoerotic duel with wuk lamat's dad)

maybe people are perceiving the deliberate tonal shift as being like the disjointed nature of the two 2-for-1 expacs? but no, this is a very deliberate tonal shift used to further the expac's themes and make the impact of the shift hit harder by having it be so sharp. it doesn't work near as well unless you've spent half the expac on vacation vibing with erenville and wuk lamat.

one crit i have currently is probably just that the music choices can sometimes be baffling to outright distracting, not sure why they used certain EW tracks the way they did (not bad, just. i associate these with armageddon.) and the poppy vocal track, uh. the core music isn't bad (it gets remixed elsewhere and i'm happy to listen to that) but that particular song. uh. is a ChoiceTM? (I also hate it, but my negative response for how it's being used comes more from it just feeling really weird where it's used than my general dislike of it, plenty of tracks i don't like as music where i think they were used appropriately, like What Angel Wakes Me.) the rest of the new tracks are used well, that one pop track though...

[quickdeaths]

The doctor's laugh didn't put Shinobu at ease. Quite the opposite, she tensed as he seemed to find amusement in her assessment, and although it had been a flippant thing to say, neither did it deserve being dismissed outright. Perhaps they should have been clearer. "I should be going eventually, yes," Shinobu agreed, even while making no moves to get out of her seat. "But I don't need ample time to consider the words you've spoken, and I imagine that sitting upon my thoughts would only lead to them becoming more muddied by the time we next speak, sensei."

Shinobu had moved their legs as well, sitting cross-legged in the booth, not entirely comfortable but unmotivated to change that for the moment. "That analogy falls apart upon close inspection, in my opinion. My perspective is that a first impression means little, and that those who desire one deserve a second chance and a closer look, but I'm no altruist. I don't surround myself with people whose company I despise." Her sharp tongue made sure of that, cutting people off swiftly and without any hesitation with her words. "But when talking about one's impression of themselves, first impressions don't factor into it."

After all, when one woke up in the same skin each day, occupying a position and living a consistent life, it was reasonable to suggest that one had an understanding of the self. Furthermore, Shinobu would argue that their understanding of themselves was particularly thorough, given the amount of self-examination that came with a transgender identity. "It's good practice to not judge a person by a first impression; if one refuses to judge even after a fiftieth, that's foolishness, not compassion."

But there was more to it than just that, and Shinobu frowned. "Ultimately, everyone has the same problem, sensei. When it comes to me, the reality is so unflattering and unpleasant that everyone chooses to see what they like." Mmm, that was it, wasn't it? Even those kinder people who Shinobu had some fondness for were the same. "Miss Kashima, Miss Taniguchi, and the rest see me as some handsome, brooding prince, some archetypal monster to be tamed through affection, or a skin-deep sadist to aid in living out masochist fantasies."

As they spoke, Shinobu's arms crossed over their chest, their body language tighter and tighter with every sentence. "Anzu sees me as her childhood friend, still naive and gentle, unburdened by anything at all. Miss Ji-yeon sees me as a different kind of love interest - as someone who could support her even when society opposes so much of who she is." Those were both preferable to the princely label, but neither truly cut to the core of who Shinobu Yaguchi was. "Whether wholly imaginary, or something that once existed but no longer does, anyone who desires my company is mistaken as to my character, and willfully blinds themselves in order to make me a more palatable person."

She knew this about herself, without reservation or doubt. People saw what they wanted to see, and once they had entrenched themselves, being near her was a kind of sunk cost fallacy. "For my achievements, I'm admirable and worthy of respect. For my personality qualities, I'm rather loathsome and cruel, lacking any redeemable aspects. I have enough impressions of myself to understand that, and that's why it's no hypocrisy to separate out my understanding of self from a simple, uncomplicated philosophy of social interaction."

While Shinobu conceded that there were outliers to her rule, she wasn't willing to dismiss its premise entirely. 'Exceptions provide context to a rule,' as she said. Briefly, she made mention of Kamoshida, the fact that few people spoke out against him at the time. However, Maruki himself would readily argue that the reason for doing so had little to do with the expectation of upholding societal expectations for kindness, and more to do with fear. Fear of retribution for many, and fear of a loss of reputation for a select few. Though he wasn't permitted to speak too much on the matter himself, unfortunately. He could only comfort those affected, and help them out as much as he could.

Despite her brief tangent, she did answer his question. For Ji-yeon, the answer was difficult to determine, but would likely pan out as he'd expected. For Anzu, alternatively, a denial of Shinobu's negative traits was, in itself, a red flag. He found himself amused by her blunt assessment of an old friend's judgments, a light chuckle leaving his lips. “That's quite an assessment of Tachibana-san!” Everyone had a friend like that, didn't they? One who didn't always make the best judgment calls, but who had a kind heart nonetheless. He hadn't met her himself, of course, but clearly this girl held a special place in his client's heart. Again, he was glad to know that she had people whom she cared about.

While he settled quickly, not wanting to give the impression that he wasn't taking their conversation seriously, he segued just as fast into his point. “What I've noticed is how quick you are to distance yourself from compliments, and those who espouse them. Tachibana-san has poor enough judgment that her opinions should be inverted. My assessment of you is incorrect, and you're ready to argue against me to prove that. Even when you think Iida-san might say something kind about you, you hesitate to speculate on what.” All simple observations from their conversations, but he felt they all connected together nicely, whether she'd realized this as she explained them or not.

Sitting back in his seat, he crossed his legs, as he would while sitting in his chair in his office. “It may be a difficult question to answer, so feel free to take this with you and think on it for next time.” What was a therapist, if not someone who offered a bit of homework? Not that he required an answer for her on this one, but it was something he hoped she might think about further. “You've explained your philosophy to me on giving those who ask you out a chance to prove themselves beyond first impressions, but you don't give yourself the same respect. You're cold on the surface, and you dismiss anyone who may attempt to see beyond that. Why don't you deserve the chance you give to others, Yaguchi-san?”

[tarmac-rat]

I like the fact that if you really look closely at the lifepath choices in Cyberpunk 2077, you can see that there's parts about all three of them that really allows V to diametrically oppose Johnny. Like I think some are more obvious than others, but each path, in my opinion, does have a core element that directly opposes who Johnny is and the things that he stands for:

Corpo is reflective of their differences on a background level. I think that this one is the most blatant: the man who despises the machine being forced to team up with a former cog in the machine. The corporate-raised wunderkind versus the man who dedicated his life to tearing down everything they stood for. Even if they aren't working for Arasaka anymore, that influence is still there. How many times does V rely on their counter-intelligence training as a merc? Or gain a valuable piece of knowledge thanks to their experience working with, or even against, cutthroat corporate types? A Corpo!V and Johnny would spend their entire time together walking that thin edge of trust. V has to wonder if Johnny intends to screw them over because of their past employment for Arasaka, because you can take a rat out of the corpo but you can never take the corpo out of the rat, while Johnny has to worry if V actually does still have some underlying loyalty to their old company, at least enough to sell him out if they're pushed far enough. You can't build trust when all you can think about is if the other person is hiding a knife behind their back.

Nomad is reflective of their differences on a value level. Nomads represent many of the things that Johnny aspires to have: freedom, camaraderie, and a no-exception hatred of corps. But nomad values differ so greatly from who Johnny is as a person. They're honest; they keep their promises; they hold each other accountable for their mistakes yet always welcome each other back with open arms and unconditional support. All of those things are core flaws of Johnny's character. Nomads are honest, and Johnny is a pathological liar. Nomads keep their promises, and Johnny does nothing but break his. Nomads have unshakable bonds, and Johnny has never had a relationship with someone that he hadn't completely fucked up in some way or another. A Nomad!V carries many of these qualities with them into a new city, and Johnny right off the bat proves that he doesn't possess any of values they're trying so hard to hold on to. What's the point in putting your faith in someone who has done nothing but prove that they don't even want it, never mind deserve it?

Streetkid is reflective of their differences on a societal level. Johnny, for all of his swagger and postering, is not a true man of the people. He might know and empathize with the struggles of Night City but he didn't grow up in those neighborhoods, and in the 2010s and 20s definitely enjoys a greater amount of wealth and security compared to the average person that lived there (which is more pronounced in the TTRPG I think). Streetkid!V has been searching for that happiness and security and comes crawling back to Night City at the start of the game with their tail between their legs. It had to have been difficult for someone who spent their whole life in squalor being told by some terrorist from who knows where and way gone by-- a terrorist who dropped a bomb on their home so many years ago-- that they're weak, they're worthless, they're wrong. Johnny Silverhand doesn't care about the people. Johnny Silverhand only cares about himself, and when you grow up in a community who endure those struggles with you, that's something V can't dare look past.

[oumaheroes]

do you have any soft fruk headcanons to share with a starving anon?

*Sob* Yes, yes I do thank you for asking

Other fruk headcanons can be found here, here, here, here, and basically this entire fic.

When together and alone, they spend a lot of time in silence.

One, because as soon as one of them starts talking they’ll inevitably end up saying something that will piss the other person off, but mostly because it’s rare. For the both of them.

France is a chatty, sociable person who goes out often and with a wide group of people. People he works with, other nations he’s friendly with, humans he’s got to know in his day-to-day life- he’s constantly moving and talking and he loves this. He lives off that feedback and that veneer of public acceptance and validation and fights to remain above it. Not trying to be perfect, but to be someone to look up to, to admire, to want to get to know because everybody who’s anybody knows that Francis is it. Whatever ‘it’ is for the different centuries.

But this is also, for me, who France projects himself to be. And it's exhausting.

He’s so caught up in appearances, in being an integral part of the social web that, when he’s with England, it’s nice to just not give a shit and shut up. England doesn’t care about, and actively despises, keeping up with trends or acting in particular ways to fit in with or please others. England does what he damn well pleases and the core of him hasn’t really changed all that much throughout the years. When they’re together there’s no point in France trying to impress him, or to manipulate himself or his environment to achieve something- it won’t work. England has seen France messy and sobbing in dirt, has seen him topple out of trees and into horse shit, has ran alongside him as they’ve pinched bread from bakeries to eat outside in a field instead of being in church. England is who France can truly be his (self-perceived) ugly self around and it’s something he needs.

To be able to sit in silence with someone who has known every part of you, who has seen every terrible and beautiful thing you have done and still choses to stay- it’s what keeps them both coming back to each other, despite everything they’ve gone through. For the good or bad the other person has been there to say ‘I see you. I know.’ And then come back regardless.

It terrifying but it’s a gift creatures of their age and ilk rarely see.

This is the same for England too, of course, which I’ve already mentioned in my other headcanons. England also cares deeply about how other people think of him as a person, as a man, but his way of dealing with it is to pretend that he doesn’t care about it in the first place. People can’t mock him for failing at something if he never tries, so he doesn’t. Doesn’t try to keep up with fashions, doesn’t try to say the right thing to the right person to gain their friendship or favour. Arthur knows how to manipulate to achieve an aim- a tax or a bill or a political decision. But he doesn’t do this for his own benefit, i.e., to get someone to love him. To get someone to stay, to make someone want to be with him.

That’s why he enjoys, secretly, France. Despite how churlish Arthur can be, despite how cruel and angry and hard, France sees through all of that to whatever it is he’s hiding underneath and he stays anyway. Sees the softness Arthur pretends not to have, understands his reasons for behaviours even he can’t explain. Will hate him fiercely but still want him to be around to see his own highs and lows.

Time together, when they’re in a good, healthier moment in their lives, is often spent inhabiting a space together. France reading or England sewing, France cooking or England in the garden. He’ll come in and France will have made him lunch, which he’ll take and eat without thanks. France will find his shirt mended and folded away which will never be mentioned and England will sit up all night with insomnia whilst France sleeps on the sofa.

They’re big on physical touch.

England changes how he acts depending on who he’s with. With his children he’s older, he’s always acted, has had to or feels as though he has to act, with a certain air of authority that, even today when he has none legally, cannot be undone. With his brothers England can be petty, will be more expressive and moodier and quick to bite- he’s the youngest. He still, quietly, wants to prove himself, wants to be noticed and respected by those whose respect he craved first.

Then his friends, he can be a bit sillier. Will act more of his physical age without the burdens of nationhood or family to hold him back. Will sling an arm around Prussia’s shoulders when they’re drunk singing on the way out of a pub somewhere, will laugh until he cries into Portugal’s shoulder because of an impression he did.

With France he’s all of the above, but also soft.

Intimate and physically open in ways he cannot be otherwise.

When they’re alone he’ll happily lay fully to rest on France where ever he is laying or reclining and stubbornly refuse to move. Will let France cut his hair whenever the timing is right and he deems him in need of a trim- tips his head back as France runs long fingers through his hair and massages the back of his neck. Will sit with France with their legs all tangled together or press a kiss to his temple when they wake up in the same bed, France is still soft and heavy with sleep.

For a man who does not initiate physical affection or even physical contact at all with many people, it is strange to see him so easy with France and it IS strange, especially for the younger members of England's family. I explored this slightly in Reflections but England and France do not show this side of themselves to anyone. It is behind closed doors, in private, and if you are to catch them being so touchy it makes you feel as though you're intruding on something deeply personal.

But they are also, carefully, touchy in public. A brush of a hand on the arm when France comes up behind England to let him know that he’s there, England stretching out his leg to feel for France’s foot under the table. A shared glass of water, a brush of a hand as they stand shoulder to shoulder. Smoking outside in winter with their faces close, a single breath of smoke between them.

It's obvious if you look for it.

They often bathe together.

Neither are self-conscious around each other; what on earth do they have to hide after all these years? It's easily one of their favourite shared times: hot water, nowhere to be, and meaningless conversation. They'll talk about everything and nothing, from the very important that France will have to tease out of England slowly- massaging the meat of his calf, purposely not looking directly at him as he silently listens and waits- all the way to the utterly trivial. The weather. A politician who made a fool of themselves. What so-and-so said, and to who.

Topics that are too heavy and political are left out of it, these talks in the bath are only ones they can have when they're not at true odds with each other otherwise it won't work. France won't listen and England won't talk and it won't be the experience they want or help them at all.

Will often go out together

If France is in the UK or England is in France for whatever reason, they’ll usually meet up. England will stay with France, or France will stay with England and of an evening they’ll go out for dinner. Pick a restaurant that’s new for at least one of them if possible to show off but then go to a play afterwards, or even to the cinema. They really do enjoy a good gossip and moan and adore critiquing actors or plays. The more they bitch, the more they actually enjoyed themselves.

---

I’m going to stop now as this is getting long, but I hope you enjoyed! I love them deeply ;u;

[thedarkmistress16]

TS4 Rewatch Rant Analysis

You don’t need to care about my opinion; I don’t want you to. But I want to explain why I’m frustrated about the final product in terms of both within the movie and extending to implications of the franchise. I also want to provide methods to improve or fix the building blocks of this movie as how I see the franchise and how these characters should be treated and developed as someone who’s grown along with these films and rewatched them more than I can ever hope to count. I’d figure I would post this here to get my ideas out there and clear my mind of these thoughts (also writing a fix-it fic is something too time consuming for me rn). I hope, at the very least, that my passionate word vomit is entertaining to someone.

Will be tagging spoilers since this film is still fairly new and I’m not a complete asshole. This will be a mix of analytical criticing and shitposty jokes for the purpose of harsh hyperbole and humor, so a complete mess all around. This is also stupidly long, been in my drafts for a long time so this timing may seem odd, and there is genuine introspection at the tail end of this. I don’t absolutely despise this film or want to run it into the ground, to preface.

I initially had very mixed feelings about Toy Story 4; I couldn’t tell if I liked or disliked it because the characters looked stunning, Bo Peep was different, there were references to previous films scattered throughout, and Woody’s choice had me still bawling a few weeks later when rewatching the scene. It was only after popping in the Blu-ray film in my newly-acquired collection set, understanding commentaries and deleted scenes, and watching other reviews I came to realize what worked and didn’t work for me in the context of the film’s franchise.

To put simply, the positives of this film are it’s attention to detail and overall animation quality (lighting and other effects) and that it’s funny. It seems these two things are unanimous and I do wholeheartedly agree with them. But it’s also why I believe this movie’s existence is to showcase quality with little to no substance. Which is pretty offensive considering the catalog of films that made a fourth one possible had care in tackling problems and characters in an intriguing and consistent way, and these are all stories about toys at their core, which still hold up today for human scenarios. But with Toy Story 4? Having complex and compelling characters with purpose and themes with development? Nah, animation preeettyyyyy and forky funnnyyy lol.

Expand What You Already Know. Or Don’t, I Guess.

This movie likes to forget the foundation it already has and decides to start from scratch, using valuable resources to create new character designs, motivations, backstories, and relationships when most of the work is already done for you. It’s majorly sitting in the RV, realistically doing nothing but taking up space (until the plot says so), yet systematically crippling this movie and the others before it by said existence. These additional toys that are background characters in this film should’ve either had development or a significant purpose in the film more than the ending or random RV shenanigans, or not been included at all because they clutter up the film (and I hate to talk about these characters like this as I do love them but that’s how it is).

In this case, less is more, especially if your main focus is on one to a few characters over the entire cast- being forky, woody, bo, and the new toys. This leads into a discussion of Bonnie having too many toys at this point which is one reason besides a child’s retention rate that results in the neglect of Woody, but the disregarding Woody after Andy’s speech about him meme isn’t the worst issue I’ve come across in this film (and I really don’t blame the girl).

Look How They Massacred My Boy. For Shame.

I didn’t need to rewatch this film again to realize that Buzz was done dirty in this movie. Going as far to say character assassination is amusing, but might not be as true in this sense. Buzz has no reason not to know what his inner voice/subconscious is and it’s occurrence here really undervalues the preceeding movies regarding the character and the thought behind his actions. There is no reason to have Buzz act deluded or ignorant to such common concepts in the world he inhabits as it insults the establishment and progression of his character up to and in Toy Story 4, and I will not blindly accept him as comic relief anymore (that’s what Rex is for and I love him for it).

I am well aware of the people in charge milking Buzz’s deluded state in every Toy Story movie (plus some Toy Story Treats) beacuse it’s funny. I laughed at it too as a dumb kid enthralled by these toys moving, talking, and have personalities. The schmoe and Hawayai jokes are still enjoyable to me, it’s cute. The problem here is there’s more to Buzz Lightyear than just ‘haha silly (deluded) space toy go brrrr,’ and not just in Toy Story 4 does this happen. Buzz Lightyear is tactical, (basically the whole TS2 rescue mission he started, using Rex’s tail to escape the garbage bag and coming up with the caterpiller room transom escape in TS3) intelligent (backed by academy training, shown in his fighting moves, instincts, jargon, etc. in TS1 and relates to last trait) a leader, (steps up into the leadership role in lieu of Woody in TS2  and TS3 or co-lead with him in the TS3 meeting), determined (to save his friends in TS2 and TS3), more emotionally mature than Woody (see all of Toy Story 1 and compare their arcs; Buzz’s turmoil is more self-contained/depricating than Woody’s, as the cowboy decides to take out his jealousy on others and Buzz, almost murdering the space ranger who only ever attacked Woody once and it wasn’t even during his existential crisis), discovering his worth as Andy’s toy and Woody’s friend (relaying Woody’s words back at him in TS2), embracing his role and family, having a crush on Jessie and supporting her through her trauma and fears, and I can go on.

If you want to make Buzz funny without taking away his personality and growth, have more shit like in the sequel, where a toy-savvy og Buzz plays off of those who think they are real like fake belt Buzz. I’m basically asking for the Bootleg Buzz deleted scene here not only because it is stupidly hilarious in concept, but it also lends additional world-building possibilities like a toy’s personal beliefs/perceptions and human/toy dynamics that hasn’t been explored further in this franchise’s film installments (See: Small Fry). Also, having Buzz saying space jargon in the context of his background knowledge always puts a smile on my face and you don’t have to dumb down this character to achieve that. :)

Is This What They Call... A Glowup? Cuz This Ain’t It, Chief.

My main gripe about Bo’s character is that she lost the personality she had in Andy’s house and her alterations go against the established canon of the shepherdess. More specifically, the strong, go-getter Bo Peep the creators are pushing for here doesn’t feel justified as an understandable change in universe because of the decision to portray her as a simpler or less-realized version of her future self in Molly’s room and extensively implies she’s always been or wanted to be a free spirit and leader when she’s never expressed this otherwise. Her new design isn’t as important to complain about in comparison here but I do find it odd and interesting how her eyes were made bigger in her redesign (like doe eyes) yet she’s rougher around the edges and serious personality-wise, whereas her initial design had sharp eyes similar to a human that enhanced her qualities like flirting and sassiness and the idea of porcelain that is smooth but sharp.

Woody’s surprise at seeing Bo all these years later would be much more believable if her personality initially reflected who she is in Toy Story 1 and 2 during the opening flashback; flirty, empathetic, gentle, and a general overseer of the room that watches others take charge to avoid chipping or shattering as she’s made of porcelain and has limited movement by design. Having so much agency and independence in TS4 may subvert expectations, but feels jarring after knowing this context in a back-to-back viewing of all four films. She’s comparatively more bitter, no-nonsense, and world-weary here, which I get because survival and harsh reality of the world, but she should have a lot more chipping than shown if she’s getting as much playtime as she’s boasting and desiring, especially the rough ones as the kids are random (unlike the deleted storyboard version of the playground). This really feels like a different character and I really don’t believe she and her sheep would’ve lasted this long or have this much fluidity, ingenuity, and agency as the movie claims. Some, possibly, but while humans can train and adapt their bodies for flexibility, strength, etc. to survive, toys cannot. They are stuck in their forms and Bo moves slow as per her build and material of which she was constructed, so she can only adapt so much to the rough lifestyle that is being a lost toy that wants to be played with from time to time.

The Lamp Life short tells me she wants more than, well, lamp life, with the intro concept to non-toys coming to life by a child’s imagination in TS4 support this and her possible in canon reason for existence since TS1. But the short is not Toy Story 4 and past Bo never expressed this in past films. She was really just there as a background character for Woody and never alluded to any dislike for her life or any existential crisis due to that initial purpose of being Woody’s girlfriend and nothing else (not even that initially because of Barbie and copyright so supportive side character to be generous). At the very least the creators of this movie could’ve respected Bo Peep in a way that did not completely rewrite her during a time in which the canonical characterization being shown of her is blatantly false (flashback opening scene).

Furthermore, a viewer shouldn’t feel the need to watch a short (Lamp Life) to get the full context behind Bo’s story after Andy because the movie glosses over those details and moves on like no long-time viewer of Toy Story is curious after her “return.” Details which could’ve helped Bo and Woody have a quiet moment to bond and connect over as they share experiences of being lost instead of being treated as an afterthought (Bo’s retelling of her “Lamp Life” to Woody took place after the conclusion of the fourth installment- Woody even says “Oh yeah, what happened after all that time?”- stating he didn’t even think to ask her about her past in detail during the movie at any point and Bo never explains it until someone else brings it up it in the short film- Giggles. This is something that should’ve been addressed way earlier if Bo is supposed to be one of the main characters in the film, hence, this is an afterthought to the creators and a wasted opportunity).

In addition, if they wanted to have Bo Peep undergo a character change that logically made sense, they could’ve lifted over traits from her original self to her lost toy character, such as her flirtiness for ex. Not only was it played for comedy in both the original Toy Story films (mainly concerning her reactions and interactions to/with the protagonists- moving buddy comment with Buzz and contact with and kisses for Woody in TS1 and TS2), it also showed how much she cared about Woody (wanting Woody to see how much Andy misses him in TS1). She was also a little sassy in her expressions and exchanges with Woody, too. Exploring how their relationship was established and/or moments they shared outside of what the audience had already seen for Toy Story 4 would help not only further develop both characters in a reasonable and new fashion, but aid the audience in getting attached to them on another level, thus rendering the couple’s reconnection years later all that more impactful and important. If Toy Story 4 was about the romance of Woody and Bo as old, lost loves reuniting, this movie could’ve really sold me on its existence, considering its content that was never fully realized even with Buzz and Jessie, who are in the awkward, blushing, early phases of dating (they might not even be officially together canonically at this point, and Woody and Bo’s relationship of comfortability would lend a great contrast to this).

It was hella cute to see the shepherdess and the sheriff together and having playful and sweet exchanges in the first two movies. While I understand that time can change a person and how they think of others, especially how memories can be associated with different emotions from introspection and how that person evolves and sees others in different lights, I find it hard to believe that Woody and Bo never once had a kiss on screen in Toy Story 4, nor had any substantial romantic chemistry from either side. It was my understanding in the original films that these two were established as a romantic couple (her existence is to solely be Woody’s girlfriend as said by the original Toy Story commentary) and it is fact that she has kissed him before (again, TS1 and intention to kiss in TS2) and can be seen approaching him to comfort him with words and touches (Woody’s favoritism issues in TS1 and his nerves about cowboy camp going bad in TS2- these moments are cut off by jokes like Potato Head’s comment or Rex’s tug of war with Bo’s sheep, but there’s enough time established with them to be treated as emotionally impactful moments, albeit small).

Woody and Bo being lost toy buddies doesn’t feel nearly as emotionally impactful as a romantic relationship would. Neither character said anything about their past regarding their past romance or even bring it up in Toy Story 4, just reminiscing like they’re old buddies. The most we get is Woody staring at her in two instances (top of the carnival and watching lights in the antique store), and even then it isn’t explicitly said if Woody still harbors romantic feelings or not. Bo commenting on loving Woody’s loyalty after their argument is said when he’s not present, and I don’t think she ever said it to him directly afterwards when they did meet up again, which further hinders their opportunities at expressing their feelings. It feels like one friend-zoned the other off-screen because of how awkward they are around each other and act nothing more than old friends tiptoeing around each other. Buzz and Bo meeting again are arguably more friendly in this way than Woody and Bo are.

The deleted scene of Woody finding Bo again after so long treats their originally established dynamic better than the scene in the film. In that storyboard, both characters have the time to take in and realize who they are seeing as they stare at one other, assess their emotions and memories, and fully act upon those raw feelings in real time as if they are their lost in their own world by embracing. This reunion is cut short but as stated earlier in examples, both characters are given time for this moment to occur organically (within the circumstances), and the insight into Woody’s memories helps visualize his feelings for her through the times spent together, enhancing the quality of the nonverbal aspect of storytelling... or storyboards, in this case.

In comparison to the final film reunion, Woody and Bo have to worry about other kids seeing them move and talk in the playground with their minds already preoccupied with the world around them and toy rules instead of meeting each other again after so long. By the time they get to a safe place to converse, it’s nowhere near as heartfelt and/or important as the encounter should have been and the action of Bo brushing off Woody’s shoulder feels like a visualization of earlier- sweeping a potentially emotional moment under the rug. Not to mention Woody and Bo are in toy mode when they see each other for the first time, preventing the audience from witnessing their first, raw reactions (I can’t explain how good this deleted scene is it has so much potential and I got emotional over pencil drawings of these toys and what it implies and leads to you if it was explored and developed more you don’t understand-). The lack of romance wouldn’t be as much of an issue if their relationship didn’t have an impact on the story’s conclusion and other characters by extension, namely Woody.

Was it Hoes before Bros or Self Before Bros?

I finally understand now why I don’t like the ending of Toy Story 4 and how it made me cry like a little bitch again like the third installment did. It’s upsetting to me because I don’t buy Woody’s decision to stay with Bo and leave his friends and his new kid behind.

I totally get that Woody may have chosen to be a lost toy because he feels no more purpose outside of Andy, and can’t let go of him, and maybe Bo symbolizes a connection to those early and simpler days (even though she’s entirely different now). With that in mind, I do like his self-appointed purpose of guiding forky as his development transitions from wanting to always be the favorite to using that knowledge and humility to help a new favorite toy adjust and understand its role for a kid and accepting that he is still loved regardless at the end of the day and has his family through infinity and beyond. But Woody abandons his new and old family for a new life, throwing out the whole loyalty to your kid aspect and not wanting to see Bonnie grow up. Woody’s decision in TS4 is basically if he stuck with the Tokyo choice in Toy Story 2. I like how TS4 wants to challenge the franchise’s conceptions on toys and their purpose, but it’s also insulting at the same time, attempting to demolish and reconstruct original elements. 

Alternate Routes.

After being tossed away by Hannah, either have Gabby Gabby a) realize she doesn’t want nor need a child to play with her to be happy and embrace the lost toy life, or b) double down on her insecurities and blame Woody forever getting her hopes up in the first place, challenging his ideals of a toy’s purpose and sense of loyalty toward a child, becoming an anguished, heartbroken, antagonist going after Woody in anger or stubbornly stewing away in the curio again.

Have Woody realize he doesn’t have to be the favorite or constantly played by his kid as proof he is loved and wanted by Bonnie, possibly overexaggerating his fear of abandonment earlier on. Have him rejoin the toys with a new sense of duty and belonging that is similar to his actions as a lost toy, but watching over forky’s adjustment and staying loyal to his family and friends with Bonnie picking him up and playing with him again similar to the alternate scrapped ending (possibly with his voicebox still removed because that was so heartwarming). This can also lend a nod to Woody’s struggle with being damaged and fixed by Andy in TS2. In TS4, this can be extended to Bonnie not only reassuring Woody she still loves and wants him despite being broken, but even if he’s unfixable.

Let Woody become a lost toy for his re-connection with Bo (emotionally and romantically stronger on both sides) for the “he’s not lost” line and the infinity and beyond line even separated, as let’s say that because he’s found someone he didn’t realize he’s missed so dearly due to fixating on Andy, he doesn’t want to leave her again not knowing if he’ll ever see her again and because he can’t let go of the past (my least fave solution but yes to toy romance and concept of lost toys having a purpose besides playtime meaning in each other awwe it’s too corny).

So... What’s the Point?

It doesn’t help that the movie gets confused about what message it’s really going for - toy independence but also stay loyal to your kid. In the deleted scene intro to “She’s the One” in Toy Story 4, Josh Cooley stated that he wanted to avoid Woody not changing as a character and essentially resetting the movie back to the beginning where Woody stays with Bonnie and the toys, despite him liking this ending which had come close to being very impactful and emotional. The more I think about this clip, the worse it sounds. Woody can absolutely be in the same place and change as a character at the same time, like overcoming his attachment to Andy by being there for his new kid who wrote her name on his boot like Buzz and Jessie, or wanting to continually guide and support forky as Bonnie’s favorite toy from his experience and knowing he is still loved and with the other toys. A movie can end with the characters physically in the same positions as the beginning, but with learned lessons and values that imply or confirm different actions in their future like bettering themselves aka staying true to Woody’s character and lending an interesting contrast to their earlier positions in the film, Josh Cooley. Similar visuals with different context behind them can be very powerful.

I really don’t understand why Josh Cooley and co. didn’t embrace their initial ideas because I would love to see them explored and he clearly wanted to include (at least some of them) in the final product. Editor Lee Unkrich of Toy Story 1 has said it is hard to cut things out in a film that you really love, worked hard on, and feel important to the story and characters. But you have to remove it or feel like you must in case the scene is affecting the film’s pacing/flow, etc. in referencing the Woody and Buzz bonding scene in Sid’s room, which Unkrich regrets shortening in hindsight.

But this also doesn’t mean you should throw every idea you have on the cutting room floor either, especially if it serves the story, characters, or plot in a beneficial way (hopefully all three). Josh Cooley’s Hungry Hippos idea and among other storyboard concepts I’ve expressed here are all really cool ideas and I wish they would’ve been explored as these are hinted at in previous films like Toy Story 3 and the vending machine scene, which can be developed further with the underworld of toys and gambling via board games concept. If you are passionate about what you’re making and have fun with it, the results will be great, something John Lasseter says at the end of the Toy Story 2 bonus features, and I fully believe that the things Cooley and others wanted to do could’ve worked out if they had that same drive to create and entertain while telling an engaging story that aligned with the characters and their journeys. 

Seeing the scarce amount of bonus features in the Toy Story 4 bonus disk genuinely broke my heart. I’m not sure if they used practically all their generated ideas in the final film or had close to none in the first place to expand the world and rules of toys compared to the last films, but it’s a damn shame regardless to see little to no creativity in this product that has so much more unexplored potential and creative ideas waiting to be immortalized with the ogs of animation in film besides visual quality. Of course I know that Toy Story as a franchise will come to an end eventually, as “toys don’t last forever,” and another franchise may develop these things better or more extensively with toys or otherwise, but I would’ve appreciated at the very least, to have a Toy Story series that either stopped while it was ahead, or be fully treated with all the passion, enjoyment, and respect it initially had as its creators did while enriching the world and lives of these toys to its full potential.

also,

How dare they break this duo up wtf. To infinity and Beyond? more like my waterhole has been poisoned, snakes are in all my boots, buzz lightyear is not coming to my rescue, and the mission is fucked. smh. truly the end of an era.

[cloud-ya]

Since you said you don't like Aponia disregarding consent (I fully agree, irked me to hell and back just like the writers intended I would say), what do you think about the whole Elysia and Mei dynamic? Originally, I liked Elysia quite a lot but the whole "forced horn touch" thing (it was dubious consent given how Mei only agreed because she had to) and how she went on telling everyone about it even if Mei was visibly uncomfortable really made me uneasy to the point where I now look at Elysia more negatively. I get she is flirticious and all but Mei tried to establish boundaries the entire time and then you have Ely literally forcing her to grant her that weird wish of hers.

oh god I could write whole essays about how I despise elysia and especially that horn scene

hard to believe but I tolerate otto more than her. the way she talks and generally interacts with people, especially mei, irks me to the very core. every time I play elysian realm I pray she doesn't appear and if she does I immediately skip the dialogue no matter how interesting it could be. she's double dead right now but I would take any opportunity to make her more dead

"but she doesn't mean harm!" okay. cool that you haven't got to experience such clingy (in annoying way) people or whatever this can be called in real life. due to experience with my own family I cannot handle anyone who thinks everything they say or do is just a harmless joke. fuck you grandma

I hate everything that happens in the dialogue with horn touching and the aftermath of it in next dialogues. people turning mei's groan into moaning and what not, while it clearly sounds like she's holding herself back from murdering that pink shit on sight because she has to agree on whatever she wants to get to the deep end. then raven joking about the whole thing in front of these two, asking if her claws would be enough for elysia to have fun touching as well. mei had to ask her twice not to bring it up, second time with more annoyed/harsher tone so raven would stop coming up with excuses. what pissed me off more is that mei ended up not reaching the deep end despite all those personal space sacrifices, even though it wasn't elysia's fault directly since it was kosma who didn't let them pass

how am I even supposed to react to elysia boasting to everyone about touching mei's horns? hey, you forced someone to agree on touching a part of their body they have always been refusing to let people touch due to normal human feeling of not wanting to be touched by strangers! bravo! people should be glad I'm not mihoyo's plot writer at this point

... but do you know what other dialogue could gain a second place or even share the first place of my most hated elysia dialogues? I can't recall it fully and I don't want to look for it, but basically there elysia was treating her beauty and ideal appearance as some sort of disadvantage. fucked up metabolism in a way of not gaining weight... really? this is seen as a flaw? this is shit you can hear only from people who tick all the boxes of society's beauty standards. no need to agree with this one, it's a personal feeling because of my body

remember that I don't aim my hate towards people liking elysia and neither I'd like to persuade them she's not worth liking. I'm not a little shit to cancel people over that, I just despise the character itself

[tetsuwhore]

𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 | 𝐤𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐨, 𝐤𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐲𝐚𝐦𝐚

Description: the boys dating a kinky S/o who everyone else thinks is innocent

Warning: explicit smut - dirty talk, risky sex, bondage, one use of the word ‘daddy’

Length: 1.2k words

Kuroo is so amused by the entire thing. you had managed to charm the whole student body into believing that you were the goddamn descendent of virgin mary

little did they know that he had Nekoma’s angel in his bed, moaning his name as he pounds into you and praises you for being his pretty little slut

it’s like his dirty little secret to relish in

don’t worry, Kuroo doesn’t kiss and tell. he knows you’d rather keep this aspect of yourself private, and he respects your wishes. even his teammates will be none the wiser to what goes on in your bedroom

still, he’s such a little shit. he’ll paint your skin with hickies and bruises, cleverly placing them so that they’re just barely out of visible regions that your clothing doesn’t usually cover 

then at school, while no one else is looking, he’ll send a pointed gaze at your thighs or chest and flash you smug smile. he’s the only one who knows about the splotches of red and purple beneath the fabric of your uniform, and he gets such a kick out of that knowledge

“oh, what a pity nobody else gets to see my artwork”

“Tetsurou, i will hit you”

“honestly, i’m pretty into that, and so are you”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆��. ───

“T-Tetsu, someone is- fuck! Someone is going to h-hear us,” you hiss.

Tilting his head up, Kuroo looks back at you from his position between your thighs. He’s wearing a lazy smirk, but your eyes remain fixated on the slickness coating his cheeks and skin. 

Ignoring your complaint, he goes back to work. Gripping your thighs tighter into the sides of his head, Kuroo pushes himself forward, tongue pressed up against your heated core. It’s dizzying - the way he’s lapping the wet little muscle up and down, swiping your clit over and over in repeated motions. 

The feeling is absolutely delicious, and for a moment, you forget that you’re currently pushed up against the wall of the gym storage closet. For a moment, you allow your sharp whimpers to sound through the room, ignoring your rational mind telling you that you could get caught at any minute.

For a moment, you’re so, so tempted to simply toss out all inhibitions and let him have his way. 

Mustering up your very last ounce of restraint, you start, “I-I’m serious! What if s-someone, uh, finds us and-”

“Why don’t we let them? Let ‘em know how pretty you sound when you’re moaning my name like a little whore,” he taunts, “Who would’ve guessed Nekoma’s little angel could make such lewd noises, hmm?”

You can only whine in response, a bright crimson flaring across your face as he continues. 

“So, want to stop then? Want me to leave you here all high and dry?” he asks, the smug expression still on his face. Kuroo already knows your answer. He already knows you’re only growing slicker at the thought of potentially getting caught. 

And he already knows that you’d let him do whatever he wanted so long as he granted you that sweet high. 

He flashes you a wicked grin when you silently shake your head, hands already weakly grasping for his dark locks in an effort to pull him back against your core.

“That’s what I thought. Now be a good girl and let daddy make you cum on his tongue.”

Kageyama did not see this coming. when he first got into a relationship with you, he expected you to be just as inexperienced as he was

even in his third year, his demeanour is still simply too intense for him to appear as approachable to girls. therefore, the first time he has sex will likely be with you

now Kageyama isn’t necessarily vanilla - he just lacks experience

the first couple of times, you - being the more experienced one - will have to guide him, showing him how you like being touched, as well as helping him explore what feels good for him

Kageyama’s nature makes him someone who prefers remaining in a position of control - and once you get him comfortable enough, you can coax him into bringing that side of himself to the bedroom too

he’ll be slightly relieved that you’re so unsuspecting when it comes to your... wilder side. Kageyama is a rather private person, so he’s more than happy to have whatever happens in his bedroom remain in his bedroom

though, it does make for some interesting conversation when he’s in the changing room before practice and the others catch a glimpse of the angry, red lines adorning the pale skin of his back

and, of course, no one suspects you of anything. instead, they tease Kageyama, calling him a neanderthal for going so rough on you

“Jesus Christ, you’re an animal, Kageyama.”

“(Y/n), that poor girl.”

and all he can do is flush red and grit his teeth, silently bearing all the teasing while trying not to picture your pretty voice sobbing for him to go “harder, rougher, deeper”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Kageyama had been in a shitty mood since he got back, slamming the door shut before finding you and practically dragging you to the bedroom. It had been another day spent dealing with Tsukishima’s and Hinata’s infuriating comments, this time concerning the purple hickies splotched across the expanse of his neck. 

You weren’t even entirely sure how you had managed to pull it off - getting Kageyama to let his guard down while he was so riled up. But you had done it, positioning him to rest his back against the headboard of the bed and restraining him before he could stop you. The soft, silk cloth was light enough that he didn’t even notice when you silently looped it around his wrists in a tight knot. 

The way his blue eyes darken - harsh and stormy as he locks them on yours in a hard glare - is enough to tell you that he was going to absolutely destroy you for this later. It’s nothing short of terrifying. And yet, the thought sends a rush of heat straight to your core. 

“Untie me. Now.”

Chuckling at the succinctness of his speech, your voice is mockingly saccharine as you coo, “Aw, but my Tobio looks so pretty like this. Completely and utterly helpless.” You tighten your grip on his broad shoulders as you position your dripping cunt directly above his hardened length, sinking down ever so slightly before pulling away. Again.

He despises this. There’s nothing he hates more than being in a position where he wasn’t in control. He knows you know this. And he knows you’re getting such a kick out of watching him grow more and more frustrated as you dangle the promise of pleasure in his face, only to yank it away every time he comes close to tasting it. 

Slyly, you taunt, “Is this getting you all hot and bothered? Don’t worry, baby, if you ask nicely enough, maybe-” 

You’re interrupted by the sharp sound of ripping fabric echoing through the room. 

You aren’t even granted a second to react before you’re flipped on to your back. Kageyama wastes no time, immediately pounding into your heat at a dizzying pace that has you keening for him. 

“You seem to have forgotten your place. Guess I’ll just have to fuck it into you so you don’t repeat that mistake again.”

[arielxlazarus]

I almost forgot about that fanfic appreciation week, but I wanted to at least do something for it! So here's a rec list for some of my favorite fics in the one piece fandom!

This list is not at all exhaustive btw (there's still loads of other fics in the fandom that I love), so please don't feel bad if you weren't included! Also if anyone wants more recommendations from me, you can check out my bookmarks on my ao3!

Who Knows (what could happen) by Chromi

Rating: T

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to set out to sea as an adventurer. His father, unfortunately, dictated that he was to follow the family tradition and become a doctor instead.

Following a lifetime of hurt and sorrow at the hands of his family, he eventually breaks free and takes to the sea alone - determined to keep it that way. Fate has other ideas in store for him; fate crosses his path with Portgas D. Ace's, a brand new pirate.

And what does he hate more than pirates?

Nothing.

Or: from Sixis to the Moby Dick - the lives of the Spade pirates.

First Time by Chromi

Rating: E

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: "Because it is Ace, and it will only ever be Ace, that he wants to see like this, and he wants to be responsible for unravelling him down to his core and loving him to his very center."

In which Ace and Deuce go all the way for the first time.

@chromiwrites

Seabound by AnkhPosts

Rating: T

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Ace is a selkie, making one of his periodic stops on land to catch a breather and get some ridiculously tasty human food, maybe see some sights if there are any. His pelt is safely hidden, he'll stay a day or two at most and be on his way.

Deuce is a mer, alone on the sea and traveling as he pleases for the first time in his life, and while he might not be terribly interested in actually interacting with humans it's hard not to see them as fascinating.

Ace meets Deuce. Deuce meets Ace. Neither knows the other isn't human.

@ankhposts

Death is only the beginning by Chizyk

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: “Ankhreshet?” he whipped his head round at the sound of a raspy voice so fast he almost got whiplash. He could feel his body going completely cold as he saw the mummy’s empty eye sockets staring right at him.

@chizyk

I'm Still Here (part of a series) by theprodigypenguin

Rating: M

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace (also Izou/Sabo later in the series)

Summary: "When I do die, don't bother burying me in that empty grave. Put my body in a boat and set me out to sea. Let me sleep eternal on the ocean that my father loved so much; because before everything else in this world, I am a child of the sea, and when I die, I want to return to it. Put me in a boat and set it aflame so I can go down in the same fire I lived."

Forget-Me-Not Fall by theprodigypenguin

Rating: M

Pairing: Izou/Sabo

Summary: “Most of the nobles I’ve met tonight look meticulously put together. They look like they were built to portray a certain image paralleled a hundred times over. People who were copied and pasted. Flawless clothes, flawless faces, flawless makeup, flawless hair.”

“Not me though,” Sabo stated, and Izou hummed.

“It’s comforting.”

“Huh?”

Izou met Sabo’s eye. “Everyone else in this place hides their worst attributes with a mask they modified to fit their faces. They don’t seem to comprehend that those perfect masks only make their worst characteristics more pronounced and defined.” His expression was terribly gentle as his eyes wandered across Sabo’s face. “It’s comforting to be approached by someone not trying to be something else.”

Sabo tilted his head. “How do you know I’m not manipulating you like some common Goa aristocrat?”

Izou smiled. “There are a few reasons.”

@theprodigypenguin

A Light To Guide You Home by TheSkyIsMyHome

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: In a world that despises mutants, Ace lives purely to protect his little brother.

Until the flames inside him find their perfect match and opposite, and he doesn't know what to feel anymore.

The Phoenix's Mate by TheSkyIsMyHome

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Marco is a handsome man. Ace really can't be blamed for being attracted to him. Nobody minds, either.

But Marco isn't always a man. Ace still loves him regardless, and his sexual urges are catching up to that fact.

Marco indulges him, but he might just find himself enjoying it more than he thought he would.

@evvazi

ASL in Red (series) by Kereea

Rating: G-T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law (both asexual), Koala/Sabo, Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Benn Beckman, Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante/Aokiji | Kuzan, Roronoa Zoro/Sanji, and several other minor ones

Summary: In an alternate universe, forces conspired to put Ace, Sabo, and Luffy in the care of the Red Hair pirates as children.

The Grand Line would never know what hit it.

Mates (part of a series) by Deubatty

Rating: E

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Deuce just wanted to go searching for plants! A nice walk in the woods. Except, he ends up becoming the mate to a very persistent naga

His First Mate The Mermaid (part of a series) by Deubatty

Rating: T

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Instead of finding another person on Sixis, Ace finds a mermaid

@masked-writer

Being Human by MaiKusakabe

Rating: E (no smut)

Pairing: None (heavy focus on the platonic relationships between Marco, Whitebeard, and the rest of the crew as they form)

Summary: The line that differentiates human from object appears to be clear, but sometimes it blurs to the point where it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The Unknown Devil by MaiKusakabe

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Ace hadn’t expected his last week of imprisonment before his execution to be any different from all the years preceding it. Then again, he hadn’t expected to have Marco the Phoenix as a cellmate for that week, or that Marco’s presence would shake his bleak world so much.

Ripple Effect by MaiKusakabe

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: After the incident with Shanks, Garp didn't take Luffy to Dadan's, unaware of how much that would change the life of his other grandson.

@maisstories

To Build a Home by endlessblankpages

Rating: G

Pairing: None (heavy focus on the platonic relationships between the ASL bros and the Whitebeard Pirates)

Summary: The ASL pirates are used to being accused of crimes they didn't commit. But when they're accused of destroying a small village in the New World, it sends them hurtling toward a deadly confrontation with the strongest man in the world, Whitebeard. The results are not what they were expecting.

Persistence & The Impossible (part of a series) by dragonsfall

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: In order to keep himself from losing his job, Ace takes on an impossible story. Get an interview with the ever-elusive Phoenix. Guess he might as well kiss his job goodbye.

Self Discovery (part of a series) by dragonsfall

Rating: E

Pairing: Izou/Sabo (sort of, it's technically masturbation)

Summary: Sabo has been waiting for a day like this for a while but it doesn’t go quite how he planned it.

@clockworkpanic

A Breach of Intention by Depths

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: It was unspoken, but some pirate crews and mermaids had an unspoken solidarity. Pirates throw their enemies overboard, and the merfolk will take care of them.

mer!ace au

@leviathiane

Running on All Sixes by lunarshores

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace, minor Izou/Thatch

Summary: The Whitebeard gang might be one of the most influential in the city, but to Marco they're just his family. Though he sometimes wishes they'd just leave him alone, especially when Izo's playing matchmaker, and Ace is his usual oblivious self. When a brother betrays them, they'll have to fight to show why no one ever messes with their family.

nothing is impossible with you by lunarshores

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Five times Ace and Marco accidentally mixed their flames on accident and one time that was entirely on purpose.

@lunarshores

I Want You to Look at Me by shockandlock

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: One night, Marco is missing from dinner, so Ace decides to bring dinner to him. He's surprised to see Marco wearing glasses and now he can't stop thinking about the way he looks. Now with additional chapter(s) including more miscellaneous MarcoAce PWP!

To My Dear Fire (part of a series) by shockandlock

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Living in the city is a new thing for Ace. After being raised near a cozy coastal mountain town through his childhood, it's definitely a change of pace, but it doesn't help when he loses his new job after an unfortunate encounter with actor Marco Newgate. He just wants to live-- and meet his long time pen pal, Phoenix.

Marco knows that being an actor is hard, so he takes the little things when he can: writing his pen pal (and honestly one of his best friends) Fire Fist, flirting with the cute new waiter at his favorite café-- not that he has a chance after a disaster on social media. But maybe fate really does give him a second chance when Ace shows up at Four Emperor Studios...

@shockandlock

Uncharted Territory by silverwolf_fox

Rating: E

Pairing: Masked Deuce/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: This was by far one of Ace's most ridiculous ideas.

When Deuce keeps getting flustered everytime he tries to dominate Ace, they created an opportunity where he didn't have to be afraid of messing up.

Now he's free to do and try whatever he wants...

...so long as Ace doesn't wake up.

Watching the Sunrise (part of a series) by silverwolf_fox

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Many years have passed since Rouge gave up her life for her son’s...except she didn’t die, but she thinks Ace did. Living her life on Baterilla, she’s mourned each and every day until the morning she receives his bounty poster. She sets off immediately to find him, but finds their meeting isn’t as easy as she’d imagined.

@the-devil-fruit-tree

never shall i forget, how you climbed out of a dream by siojo

Rating: T

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: “Kaido,” Ace smirks, flames burning around his feet as he shifts in preparation for Kaido’s next attack, already trying to decide what he’s going to do in response. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’ve seemed to have been enjoying yourself here.”

“I thought you would be smarter than this, Portgas. You’ve never tried to fight another Yonko before, your bounty won’t matter much when you lose.”

Ace barks a laugh, his teeth bared in a facsimile of a grin, “You must have missed out on the brawl I had with Big Mom after she sent two of her daughters and a son for me to consider marrying. This is a bit more personal than that.”

@wordsdrippinginink

Reborn in Fire by aerle

Rating: M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Fireman Marco has earned the nickname 'the Phoenix' by saving numerous people from a certain death. After an accident however, he has to relearn to walk and gets a new job as arson inspector at a different fire station. There he gets confronted with a boy from his past, now all grown up and gorgeous.

Three's a Crowd, Four's a Double Date by aerle

Rating: M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace (main), Izou/Thatch (secondary)

Summary: "We're not dating," Marco said definitively. "That we're sharing a bed tonight is a total coincidence."

@aerle

Universal Dive by EmpressKira

Rating: M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Ace had been making his way through the city to go to one of his favorite cafes. Well, that was until this hole ripped in the sky and some pirate fell out with the flaming bird guy following. Getting targeted, he is dragged into a different world with pirates and everything defying the reality he is used to. Will he make it home? Will he go back when the time comes?

@empresskira

Blue moon (series) by de_Winter

Rating: T-M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Urban fantasy AU, werewolf Marco and witch Ace

Red Velvet by de_Winter

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: Ace already knew their routine by heart, just from observing them for a couple of mornings when he had early delivery, and from Izou’s daily long winded—and probably sexually frustrated—rants. Big Blond would come out of the bakery wearing a shirt too tight for him and too thin for the weather as soon as he was done setting up the tables inside the storefront, holding a take out cup and a small box in his big hands. They looked really, pleasantly big from where Ace was standing, and he honestly wished he wasn't standing that far away.

@dee-de-winter

We'll Look Back and Laugh at Ourselves by JuHuaTai

Rating: M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace, minor Gol D. Roger/Portgas D. Rouge

Summary: Between his new boyfriend and his workaholic boss, Marco felt like he was surrounded by family issues of the father and son dispute variety. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Or maybe he should've listened to the office gossip more. Maybe then he'd figure it out sooner.

Gratitude of the Phoenix (part of a series) by JuHuaTai

Rating: M

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: [Based on 'The Crane Wife' Folklore]

One day, he saved a bird from freezing to death in a trap. Then, a stranger saved him from suffering the same fate, and a request to stay for one night turned into having someone to fill the void left in the small cottage and in his heart ever since his brothers left.

These two incident doesn’t seem to be related to one another, but they both changed Ace’s life in ways he could never have imagined.

Watashitachi wa Roger kaizoku desu (we still stand proud) by stereden

Rating: T

Pairing: None (heavy focus on Buggy, Shanks, and Crocus)

Summary: The Roger Pirates disappeared after their Captain's death, and were happy enough to let the Marines forget about them.

Until the Marines decide to execute their Captain's son, that is.

@stereden

This Bites! by Xomniac

Rating: M

Pairing: None (heavy focus on a main character oc and the strawhat pirates)

Summary: Sea Kings, sea-sickness, sunburns, a 95% genocidal Navy and more than a million and one other assorted ways to die. It's official: Being inserted into an anime sucks ass... Buuut I guess it could be worse. I mean, look on the bright side: At least I'm sailing with the future king of the pirates.

A Fortune that Never Grows Old by imperialmint

Rating: E

Pairing: Marco the Phoenix/Portgas D. Ace

Summary: It's one thing to get butterflies in your stomach when you seen an attractive person but it's another thing entirely for Marco to want to stomp out a courtship ritual and lay foundations for a nest when he meets the navy's new (hot) secret weapon.

@imperialmint

Most of the authors on this list have many other excellent one piece fics I'd definitely suggest checking out! Enjoy your reading and try to show them all some love if you can!

[ackerpreach]

This ending .... I can name 500 reasons and I will name them right now, because I don’t think I’m the only one who is upset with how things turned out. (Also, A positive message for all of you at the end)

MAJOR LEAKS SPOILERS/ READ WITH CAUTION

Update: after reading more theories from fellow RM bloggers, and sleeping over it one day, this entire chapter might be an april fools... Don't fully lose hope yet beautiful people. It's me just giving a review on a possible fake April fools chapter

After following this franchise since 2013, so nearly a DECADE. this ending is a pure disserve to the entire fandom. I feel like Yams has rushed it just for the sake of being done with the entire manga. So many things are left open, characters and their developemt are reverted back all the way to chapter 1 or are left even worse than that...

Mikasa’s worthless character development/ Aaronmika’s horrible toxic codependent relationship 

Oh honey... Let’s start with how horrible Isayama has treated her. We were all rooting for her, because we all felt like she was so misunderstood. She had a horrible childhood and imprinted on a guy who treated her like trash 99 percent of the story. And then, slowly but surely, she starts to realize she has to stop obsessing over him in the uprising arc with the help of a real man who treats her like a queen, more importantly, he treats her like a real human being. This man sees her for her abilities and that she has the power to be self dependent. She learned parts of herself, that she was able to work together with him like no one else could.  She learned parts of herself she was unable to do so if she kept obsessing about Aaron. All this love, care, mutual understanding and RESPECT these two shared. 

but...NAH FUCK THAT, right Yams?? Throw all this development away, all this bonding. Let’s make the main female lead even more yandere than she already was in the first season. Let her make out with his decapacitated head (like dude, this is also pure disrespect to Aaron’s dead body btw) and let her obsess even more about the guy who has treated her no better than a piece of toilet cloth 99 percent of the time. The guy who was never really appreciative in front of her for saving his ass billions of times, who always pushed her away, who yells at her and snaps at her whenever he can instead of reasoning and talking calmly with her in mature way. (EVEN PARODY YOUTUBE CHANNELS WHO DONT SHIP ANYTHING MAKE IT A TROPE WHERE AARON TELLS MIKASA HE HATES HER GUTS WHENEVER HE CAN) 

Then after all that, suddenly Yams tries to last minute persuade us Aaron’s always been head over heels for her???  He should have build their relationship better which he hasn’t even tried to do so... He must be thinking his fans are stupid for eating this from his hands.    

Like seriously??? What is this??? 

Isayama is just fully contradicting himself. It’s like someone tipped him off with a buttload of money for him to write Aaron like this to satisfy shipping needs and to cash in those extra money’s from it. Even if he tried to cater to Erem*ika, this is not how you write a loving and caring couple which people will root for. 

This next two panels just freaking infuriates me to the core of my soul. I can’t even describe how dissapointed I am with Mikasa. 

Why is she clutching that head so obsessively like that?  Why is she walking and turning her back away from her comrades? After everything they have done for her, after all they’ve been through?! After everything Armin has done? Standing up for Mikasa, beating up Aaron for hurting her. I feel like even Jean, Connie and Sasha have cared more for her in a healthy way.  Sure, Aaron cares for her romantically too apparently (What a twist Yams :)), but has he aided her to becoming a mentally healthier individual? Has he aided in her mental stability? The answer is a big fat NO!  All I see between these two after today’s raw Chapter’s are too Yandere obsessed individuals who have no clue on how to maintain a healthy relationship. 

Love should only go as far as the heart can endure and it seems like her character is not willing to be aware of that. Even Armin was able to let go of Aaron in those latest panels. Why does her entire character resolve around this guy??? I really do not understand. Her Ackerbond and her age is not an excuse for her to throw her life away like this. 

Shonen’s disgusting portrayal of women 

I’ve seen this countless of times in the many years I’ve watched anime. SasuS*ku from Naruto, Ichih*me from Bleach, Shinji and that oranged hair girl from Neon Evangelion.. Why do these women get decreased to simpletons with one single goal? And that is to obsess over a bland male lead who either treats them like trash or doesn’t notice them up until the last last chapter (LITERALLY WHAT YAMS HAS DONE). Some go even as far as the male leading wanting the kill the female love interest and yet the female lead is still in love with them???. It’s disgusting for him to write the MAIN female character this way. 

It’s dissapointing we believed in Isayama doing Mikasa’s character right. That she’s finally being able to let go of her codependency and to live for herself maybe live in Hizuru and find more about her roots???, but every single time she shows some improvement, it’s burried deep in the ground again by the Author. It almost seems like a lowkey kink of some of the male Mangaka’s to write about a girl obsessing over them no matter what. I see this so many times to the point that I truly stand behind it that some of them might have this fantasy. 

I wished he didn’t portray her last panels like this. Everyone else is living their lives while Mikasa is still grieving about him. I’m not saying she’s not allowed to grieve and everyone takes it at their own pace, but cmon... Show her living her life too. This is too much. Her being next to his grave and grieving him as her last panels just shoves it in our faces that YET AGAIN, BEING OBSESSED WITH AARON IS ALL HER CHARACTER STANDS FOR. 

I truly despise how Isayama handles her grieving, kissing his decapacitated head, carrying it around like some handbag, and her last panels being thissss.

The world leaving Paradis alone miraciously after all that??? 

It’s so weird and out of place with so many political feuds and disagreements between the world and Paradis, the entire Rumbling happening and we can see Mikasa just chilling outside in Paradis with no one bothering them. You can see the rings of the walls in the picture below.  I don’t know the exact reason behind as the manga is still in Korean, but from what I see, the story went the route of: throwing a happy ending without enough proper reason and  it was all fixed just like that in a snap! It doesn’t fit the entire narrative of attack on titan for things to be so peacful out of nowhere. When it comes to the narrative, how things work in that world, how hard it is to achieve peace, everything made somewhat sense up until chapter 138. 139 seems so so out of place...  It’s like I’m reading a chapter from a totally different manga. 

Aaron Yoghurt got defeated so easily/ Aaron’s character assassination

The build up on the first part of the rumbling was great, those kids carrying coins. You could feel humanity’s fear and Aaron’s hatred in those pages. As if he truly had a goal and he has turned away completely from his comrades and his closest friends with no return. The world seemed truly doomed, but he  got defeated just like that. He was in the nape all this time (because screw the warhammer power of hiding yourself elsewhere in his ginormous titan body). There is no master plan as we all expected, and in the end he just acts all yandere in the paths with Armin and that’s it... They massacared his entire character as well. Many fan theories created a better ending with his character. Him being reincarnated as Historia’s baby would be so much better. For him to still keep on seeking and to strive for power. It has always been his motive. It’s his personality from the start until chapter 138. Even if things are okay, to keep on going and to seek that adventure, but then.. He’s so weak and directionless suddenly.. It’s so weird... This is not Aaron at all???

Using Aaron for him this entire post, because I don’t want others to invade our tags... :)))

Historia’s baby 

The only panel we got from Historia’s child was this. Just a normal kid, normal life... Why did Isayama put so much effort in highlighting Historia’s pregnancy if it was nothing too spectacular anyway? It seemed he had major plans for this kid and for their development too??? It’s again, big plans, big developments, big relationship dynamic, but all  got thrown out of the window... 

Don’t read the next sentence if you are a minor :’) 

It’s like almost ejaculating, but stopping right before it and repeating that every single Arc.

My energy when writing about this chapter is the same as Nostalgia Critic and his hatred for atla the live action

In Conclusion...

I know us fans should not be deciding on how this story should end, because this is Isayama’s story after all, but I truly wished for him to wrap up things much more rounded. There are so many unanswered questions... Again, I think for the sake of being done with this manga, he rushed all of it. He’s become a millionaire from this story and now his pockets are jammed full, I guess he doesn’t need to put in any effort anymore, right? Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I really wished he cared for his fans a little bit more with this last chapter by giving some answers that make sense at least. It’s his fans who gave him this platform and the opportunity to tell his story and for him to at least give in a bit of effort especially in the last chapter is the least he can do. Rivamika being canon or not, he truly rushed it without thinking much about the entire story line. He expanded it so much, he didn’t know how to bind it all together.

Even after all this, I’ll still ship them in the headcanon type of way. I do give credit to Isayama for giving us a template for such a beautiful dynamic between Levi and Mikasa. He decides to waste it, but that doesn’t mean we have to.  I want to thank all the people with amazing writing skills, the ones who give us beautiful art like @carmenlee @phit chan @vialesana​ and many more. I want to remind all of you that we can create something beautiful of our own and we don’t neccesarily need canon lore for that. The art I’ve seen, the fanfictions I’ve read have touched me deeper than Isayama ever could at times.The Mikasa in our mind is appreciate of Levi, is mature, classy and has a strong will for herself. They spend their remaining days together peacefully. Keep writing, keep drawing, stay creative. 

I love you all so so much, I’ve only been publicly active since March, but thank you Rivamika fandom for giving me so much joy as a lurker these past 7 years <3

[showtoonzfan]

Encanto hot take (and rant)

BEFORE YOU READ: Hey guys, I know it’s been awhile, but I’m back! So....Encanto has become my current obsession. I may do a review on it, because there’s so much I want to say, but for now, here’s a hot take I wanted to share. Please let it be known that I already typed this whole thing out, so I DID trail a little at one point, and I end on another thought I had, but the hot take is about Bruno. When it comes to what I wrote about Peppa, Bruno, Isabela, and Alma, I’ll elaborate and go into more detail about them as characters some other time. I say this because I don’t want people to get caught off guard at what I say because it’s out of the blue I will admit lol. Anyway, there’s a LOT here, so if you feel like reading....a lot, feel free!

So for those who don’t know, there was a storyboarded deleted scene where Maribel is doing chores with Agustin and Felix, and at one point, Felix explains how Bruno (at that point named Oscar) left. In one of the old versions of the movie, Bruno had legit snapped at his mother, and said he couldn’t take in anymore and wanted to leave. (He was probably so over the edge and driven to that point, I doubt he did it out of nowhere). Alma responded with “If you leave this house, you are dead to me”, and he responded with “I WISH I was dead”. And yeah, holy shit that’s deep. Eventually the director/writer got asked about this, and he said that they felt Bruno being afraid to confront his mother about everything was a “stronger” arc for him and.......am I the only one who....disagrees with that? Wouldn’t it have been stronger if Bruno actually DID finally snap at his mother and THEN was afraid to confront her about it years later after leaving? It doesn’t even change his character either, he could have still been timid and shy, but he feels bad about what he did and regrets saying it. Then, in the end when they reunite, he sticks up for Maribel, but immediately tries to apologize to his mother, only for her to stop him and admit SHE was wrong the entire time, ya know....instead of HUGGING him and having everything magically fixed. 🙄

And it’s sad because I actually DID like that scene, where all it took was Maribel to give him the push he needed to confront his mother and say “I don’t care what you think of me, but you’re not going to blame her”. It was the first time we actually saw Bruno upset and ready to possibly yell at her for all she’s did, only to have her hug him, which....yeah, I guess is heartwarming because it reveals she truly missed her son, but still....with all the emotional core the movie built up, only to lead to.....THAT, it just doesn’t work in my opinion. I legit would have LOVED to see Bruno snap at his mother, and the fact that it looked like he was legit ABOUT to only for them to cue the happy forced ending is just...sad. Because yeah, let’s not teach kids that even though people can be soft and timid, they can still BREAK. Let’s not teach kids that even though you can love someone, that person can still be in the wrong, or needs to hear it. And most importantly let’s not teach kids that even though someone APOLOGIZES, the damage done can NOT magically go away. All they need to know that if someone apologizes, it’s OKAY. Just forgive that person, because forgiving someone is the most EASY thing in the world! 😀

And let me make something clear. I DON’T....HATE....ALMA. I don’t hate her, I really don’t. Do I despise what she did and how she treated her family for years? Yes. Do I get downright pissed whenever I talk about how she treated her family? Yes, but I don’t hate her. I don’t want people to think I’m trying to attack her and make her look like she’s in the wrong and that it’s all her fault, and that the lesson they shared with her wasn’t good, because it WAS. I’ll say right now, the main thing I absolutely LOVE that they did with her character is not make her a heartless villain. It’s clear that she cares about her family, she loves each and every one of them, but she was FLAWED. She cared about her family, but she treated them all in a way that wasn’t healthy, and the movie ACKNOWLEDGES that. It’s so good because there are people like that out there who exist. People who genuinely LOVE their family, but don’t treat them the right way. And I’ll say it again, I’m so glad she apologized and owned up to what she did. But you know what I DO hate? I hate how this fandom will whine, bitch, and attack someone for NOT liking a character. I shouldn’t even have to explain myself on how I feel about Alma, but I did anyway because I don’t want people to think I’m attacking her, even thought it’s pretty obvious why I get pissed when I see the ending of everyone easily forgiving her. Like, I’m sorry, but if I don’t like Alma, then I don’t like Alma. I UNDERSTAND WHERE SHE’S COMING FROM, but I’m allowed not to like the person she became after her husband died. Same with Isabella, because Jesus Christ, I have seen SO MANY fans upset at the mere THOUGHT of someone not liking her, and I’m over here like “Gee...I wonder why....😒”. She was a bitch throughout the entire movie, and then people get flabbergasted at why some don’t like her, and think that even though it sucked that she was being perfect her whole life, it doesn’t excuse how she treated Maribel, and the movie treats that scene as if it was MARIBEL who had to learn and come to grips with Isabela, instead of...maybe BOTH of them understanding where each came from? In the movie it was Maribel being like “oh okay NOW I SEE what happened, and what you went through you’ve changed my mind” like......?? Or how I see people surprised that no one likes Peppa. I LIKE Peppa as a character, but if I think her holding a grudge against her brother for YEARS and not even standing up for him when the town talked shit (before he left) makes her look a TAD unlikable, then I’m sorry, but that’s what I think. Before you get mad, yes I know about Peppa and her arc, I’ll elaborate more in another post. But yeah, fandom, you need to calm the fuck down.

And that my friends, is why Encanto is too complex to be a kids movie, let alone a DISNEY movie. If this movie was longer and aimed at mature audiences, or maybe for ALL audiences, it would have been SO SO MUCH BETTER. I don’t blame the writers for the ending or the nitpicks I had, I blame mostly Disney and the time they had. This movie is filled with complex family dynamics, REALLY COMPLEX, and to tell it as a kids movie wouldn’t have been my choice. I’m one of those people who thought this should have been a show instead so...yeah. Okay, I’m done wasting your time, I’ll make another post elaborating and explaining more about what I said above, so please don’t attack me, at least UNTIL I explain fully lol. Thank you for reading, and l’ll see you soon! 👋💕

[heartscfvalor]

Tiegan is one of my more active muses right now so here are some AUs I’ve whipped up for him.

Euphoria: Foster kid, new to East Highland. He has several gang tattoos, frequently skips class and is seen hanging around Fez’s corner shop to get drugs. Due to his grunge aesthetic, he’s seen to be a bit scary to some, but in reality he just wants to be left alone. Can be friendly when the situation calls for it, but he’s not afraid to cut a bitch with his switchblade if he has to. Always low key itching to beat someone’s ass.

Hogwarts: Slytherin student. Carries a nine inch cedar wood wand with a dragon heartstrings core, and his familiar is a pure black cat with orange eyes he names Duke. His best classes are Defense Against the Dark Arts, Divination and Ancient Runes; his bloodline is a mystery as he does not know who his father is, and his mother was nonmagical, to the best of his knowledge. He learns how to become an Animagus by fourth year, in which he turns into a raven a white chest, and he studies the Dark Arts in his spare time in order to learn how to recognize such magic when out in the real world. Unlike his peers, he’s also willing to use Dark Magic if pushed to the edge to destroy enemies. If attending Ilvermorny, he’s Sorted into Wampus.

PJO/Demigod: Son of Hades. He carries two Stygian Iron daggers, as his fighting style prefers to be as chaotic as possible. Like his half siblings before him, Tiegan has the abilities to shadow travel, sense and see other’s life forces, become invisible to the naked eye, control shadows and darkness, as well as the earth itself with all of it’s minerals and riches, communicate and control the dead, turn people into ghosts, and erase memories in others. His respect for the gods is minimal, but he toes the line and keeps to himself.

Dragon Age: Inquisition: Tiegan is a runaway apostate from a Circle in Ferelden after years of abuse; he and his sister Dorothea were kidnapped from their apostate mother after Catherine was discovered by Templars, and he was forced to watch them execute her for trying to keep her children protected. At the age of fifteen, Tiegan was able to destroy his phylactery before going on the run, and he manages six years living in the wilderness before he comes across more mages being chased down by Templars. After the Templars are killed, he’s told that the Mage-Templar War has already started, and so he is at the Conclave at the Temple of Sacred Ashes when it explodes, and he’s saved from the Fade by Justinia, given the Anchor in his hand as compensation. He’s extremely bitter that this responsibility has been thrust upon him, and he despises being called the Herald of Andraste, repeatedly committing blaspheme that Andraste and the Maker aren’t real, and if they are real, then they need to beg his forgiveness for the abuse he suffered in childhood. However, he agrees -- reluctantly -- to become the Inquisitor, if only because he’s promised immunity from the Circle if he helps fix the world.

Stranger Things: Tiegan is an escaped child experiment from Hawkins Lab. With the number “004″ tattooed on his left wrist, he was able to escape when he was just past the age of six, and was consequently discovered by Joyce Byers, who took the boy in without question, raising him as one of her own. As a result, Tiegan regards the Byers as his family, and would do anything for them. Like the other child experiments, Tiegan has supernatural abilities like telekinesis and telepathy; his special power is the ability to cause other’s to hallucinate when looking at him, so he appears as someone else entirely, or to be completely invisible to avoid detection. He helps to hide El when she escapes from the Lab when he’s seventeen, and he’s stunned to hear the other test subjects are all dead.