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miraculouscontent · 3 years ago

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Didn’t Need Burrow (August 7th-September 13th)

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Ladybug and Chat Noir will be asked to participate in judging a competition that Marinette and Adrien are both a part of. Ladybug will want to vote for herself as Marinette, but Tikki will tell her(once detransformed and while she is snacking) that she can’t because then people will know that Marinette is Ladybug. Chat Noir, meanwhile, will freely vote for Adrien with no repercussions or drawbacks, and Adrien will end up winning the competition. Marinette will admit that she was “so silly” to even think of voting for herself, especially since “Adrien needs the award more so that I do” despite being rich, white, male, and “perfect”(oh, I’m sorry, “purrfect”!), since all of Marinette’s legitimate problems of anxiety, dyspraxia, and the like get thrown out the window because the writers’ perfect sunshine boy incel stand-in has a “saaad home life!”, and Marinette needs to give him pity and put his feelings above his rather than wish for her own success. Cuz Girl Power.

tbh, given the leaks script, I’d reverse that and saying that Adrien voted for LadyNoir as Couple of the Year.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Marinette and Adrien will reveal their identities, and Marinette actually WILL be disappointed that the boy who goofed off in fights and didn’t take no for an answer is none other than her perfect modeling celebrity crush. However, rather than this being a point towards Adrien needing to learn how to improve himself and accept Marinette’s feelings, this scene is used to make HER look bad(because of course it is) and she is blamed for expecting Adrien to be perfect(despite being encouraged and told to see him as such), and told that she should be happy that Chat was hitting on her even when she didn’t like it or it got in the way of battle plans, likely by Alya, because it was her true love under the mask all along. Eventually she “learns her lesson”(ick) and comes to accept Adrichat for who he is, warts and all. Bonus if she has a flashback to when Chat said “if you saw me without my mask you wouldn’t be able to resist me” as she realizes that he was right.

Didn’t Need Burrow? More like “Didn’t Need to Think About This”

i hate it

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Luka will be Chat Blanc "2.0"

But Luka doesn’t have Chat-level favoritism going so Bunnyx won’t be there to defend him from consequences.

Anonymous asked:

We will have Ladybug!Alya in Marinette's akumatization episode. Obviously everyone would think that she is "better" than "old" Ladybug. (Bonus points if Ladybug!Alya don't "alienate" Chat Noir, mostly by catering to his whims)

Oh, of course! No one will miss the “old” Ladybug.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Bob Roth is akumatized into Rip Off, a supervillain with power to copy anything he sees (including powers of heroes)

Okay but that’s genius.

(I know we already had it in “Miraculer” but I like this more.)

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Now that Luka knows their identities, he will push the Love Square in a romantic manner. Stans would be totally fine with this because it doesn't interfere with their endgame :)

Well, obviously!

I’m just waiting for them to basically say that the secret identities don’t matter and, because they like one side, also means they like the other side.

Because forget nuance, am I right?

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: In the end, (after Adrienette gets together) Narrator reveals himself (herself?) as Alya with words "that's how I helped my bestie [Marinette] get a relationship with love of her life [Adrien]" or something similar.

wait, Alya, are you filming a Ladybug biography

why did you include all the humilation

why

That explains her making herself look good though.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Luka will finally reveal that he knows Heroes' secret identities... to Alya, who obviously decide to hide from Marinette that Luka knows her identity (Bonus Points if reason provided by Alya why she is doing this is utterly ridiculous)

AAAAAAAAAAAA

I guess Luka would have to realize that Alya knows. Bonus if he tells her Chat’s identity too so love square shipping can commence.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: "Knitting Fairy" will be name of Marinette's akumatized form.

Can you say “reused design”? I certainly can, we’re used to it.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow:

Luka keeping his knowledge about the identities (esp. Ladybug’s) will somehow blow up in a way for the writers to paint him in a bad light, probably ending with Marinette not trusting him. (As well as no hint of irony that Adrien did the same thing for completely selfish reasons in Chat Blanc).

MiraculousMX: Platonic soulmates!

us: Source??

Anonymous asked:

DNB: If LS gets reversed, Adrien complains about Marinette having other friends. Not just being friends with Luka or any other guys, but friends PERIOD, showing the same jealousy/desire for his 'love interest' to be isolated as Chat Noir. These MASSIVE RED FLAGS are treated as Just More Innocent Sadrien Things, because he's sOoOoOo Sad and SoOoOoO Lonely~

Oh god, now I had an awful thought that this is where Adrien getting jealous of Luka, and Luka feels bad/”knows what’s best” so he either ditches Marinette/finds an excuse to leave or makes sure that Adrien gets his time with her.

Because it’s the love square so it’s “important” that Marinette spend time with Adrien.

Anonymous asked:

Dnb: assuming the Senti-Adrien theory is true, in the season finale, Viperion joins the fight, stops SM from using the ladybug an cat miraculi by going back in time only to use them by himself, wishing for Adrien to be a real boy (and love Marinette). Of course Luka needs to give something in exchange, worst case scenario, his life.

That got really dark.

Though tbh with how much they push Luka and Marinette around, one of them will probably have to give up something huge for Adrien (they both already sacrificed their relationship, so--).

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: If Chat Noir joins Shadow Moth then he is treated by both Gabriel and Heroes as his greatest asset, even through he is still complete joke that is defeated by rest of Heroes faster than Mr Pigeon in "Timetagger". (Bonus points if Heroes defeat him by "Backhand Offhand", Offscreen or he is defeated by "Friendly Fire" from Akuma of the Week due to his own stupidity)

tbh I could probably do more sad math with “how often Chat Noir/Cataclysm is useless,” bonus if it’s put up against characters/Ladybug stroking his ego.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien's fears concerning Ladybug are made more explicit through a nightmare/vision (possibly akuma-induced) of Ladybug calling him unreliable/saying she doesn't need him anymore because she has partners she can actually COUNT on. Naturally, this is treated as Pure Sadrien Hours rather than a fair critique. Bonus if he ditches/forces her to beg for his assistance AGAIN to soothe his poor bruised baby ego.

*“Malediktator” flashbacks, but Adrien instead of Chloe*

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: Adrien/Chat Noir skips out on a fight/akuma attack for some spiteful, selfish reason or another. Ladybug handles it without him, either completely through her own skill or with help from Rena/other heroes. Adrien then angsts about 'not being needed', with Marinette's 'Mistake of the Day' being that she didn't cater to his pity party due to being too busy DOING HER DAMNED JOB.

me seeing that one leaked script where they talk about how Chat/Cataclysm would make things easier: *sigh*

Anonymous asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: Plagg will encourage Adrien to act even more selfishly, skipping more battles and being even brattier. This is so his stans can blame Plagg for being 'a bad influence' on their perfect angel, even when it's clear the two of them are on the same wavelength. Oooh, he's twisting his rubber arm; how AWFUL--! Adrien would NEVER do all these Awful Things he's already done if he didn't have Plagg~! What a bad kitty~!

“rubber arm” jdfkgjndfjgfg

tbh Plagg already is super laidback and doesn’t really like transforming/complains about going into battle, so this isn’t much of a stretch.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: "Gabriel Agreste" or other episodes will reveal that Gabriel flew many, if not ALL of the same Red Flags his son displays on a regular basis. The narrative treats this as though this makes Gabriel more 'sweet, sad and sympathetic' rather than illustrating that both of them are dangerously entitled and generally awful.

This sounded really intriguing as a sort of “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” thing until that last sentence kicked in.

That’s damn accurate to what they’d do too, ugh.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Plagg is the one that discovers that Gabriel is Hawk/Shadowmoth, but is forcibly sworn to silence by Adrien. Bonus if Adrien somehow gives this command without learning what Plagg is trying to tell him -- i.e. he get irritated and orders Plagg to shut up in a way that bars him from EVER saying what he was attempting to say -- so that Adrien's stans can claim it was all a big misunderstanding and blame Plagg entirely for it. Or Marinette. Somehow.

Oh oh oh!

Alternatively, Adrien silences Plagg without realizing that he has that kind of power (like saying, “you can’t tell anyone!” and we see the magic hit Plagg’s mouth), so the fandom can say, “HE DOESN’T KNOOOW THAT HE DID IT.”

Anonymous asked:

dntb: Luka is gonna be villianised in some way for not telling Marinette he knows the identities of both of them

Meanwhile, Alya, slipping the bouncer her free pass.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: After one of the kwamis makes one snickering comment too many, Marinette snaps and tells them all to shut up (with obvious outcome). Narrative obviously equals it to scene between Gabriel and Noroo from "Sandboy" (Bonus Points if Narrative deems Marinette worse than Gabriel, because "Gabriel forbid Noroo from talking as joke")

oh my goooooood

Marinette: *snaps because she’s stressed out*

the fandom: SHE SO MEAN!!! ;o;

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Adrien's reveal as Sentimonster just for additional souce of "sad points" for him

this DNB: i am inevitable

mystic-lionroar asked:

Didn't Need Burrow: The writers' Status-Quo allergy kicks in when someone very pointedly implies Chloe, Lila and/or Gabriel work for Hawk Moth with how many Akumas they tend to cause... only to get reminded point blank that "Hawk Moth is the sole one responsible for this mess, no one else". Cue two episodes later, both the characters and the writers' memories of this scene are erased. What erased it? ╰( ･ ᗜ ･ )╯Why, Marinette can be held responsible for this one, of course! (Me: (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻)

╰（‵□′）╯

OH MY GOOOOD

“Crocoduel” also basically already blamed Marinette for two akumatizations so at this point we’re just waiting.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: To further cement the whole 'destined to be' shlock, after the shock of the eventual reveal wears off, we get a call back to how frequently Chat Noir told Ladybug that they were meant for each other and that she 'was the only one who didn't see it'. Marinette agrees that she was silly and foolish for not recognizing it sooner, parroting Adrien's bullshit in order to further cement the notion that she's HAPPILY accepting her 'fate' to be nothing more than his personal prize.

You can’t see it but I have my head in my hands in grief.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien's gross sense of entitlement towards Ladybug will become even more explicit, with him angrily ranting about how he DESERVES to 'get the girl'. No matter how awful and nasty he gets, the narrative continues to treat him as though he's 100% right to be pissed off at her for DARING to have agency or thinking she has a say in things. As clearly, the biggest mistake Marinette has ever made is thinking she gets to have Opinions or make her own decisions. G-girl power...?

Marinette needing to be constantly told what’s best for her by other people and it’s okay because she needs to accept+follow all opinions.

end me

Anonymous asked:

DNB: The double standard between Adrien and other characters will be more noticeable. Adrien will still be put on a pedestal.

Because no one will notice Adrien if they didn’t put him on a metaphorical and physical pedastal.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Foxy Cat and CaraBug

omg Fox Adrien.is one of the worst hero choices I’ve ever heard fjdgjfjdglfkdg

I could at least see why Marinette thought that Adrien fit the snake since the narrative gushes for him so hard.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: As a result of being written by a straight white male writing team, the show starts to use Marinette’s girliness against her. From her love of pink being mocked to the kwamis admitting(in the spirit of another DNB) that they don’t respect Marinette because she’s “too girly”, to her fashion designing being treated as a cutesy but ultimately fickle pastime(in the spirit that all teenage girls’ interests are treated), the show absolutely throws Girl Power out the window in favor of giving Marinette absolute hell for daring to present herself in a traditionally feminine way, treating her femininity as the butt of a joke that no one is laughing at. Bonus points of someone says(or even outright tells her to her face) that she’s “such a girl”, as if that’s supposed to be an insult. Alternatively, this happens to Rose instead of Marinette, as she’s just as girly if not more so than her, or it happens to both of them(regardless of whether or not it’s at the same time).

WOOOOW

I mean, honestly, yeah.

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Things other characters did that were bad will be retconned into things that Marinette did instead, or will otherwise be retconned into being her fault, no matter how improbable or contradictory. Meanwhile, bad things characters did to Marinette or good things characters did FOR Marinette will be retconned into nonexistence.

I MEAN THEY BLAMED MARINETTE FOR “SILENCER” SO--

MATTER OF TIME.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Simultaneous Akumatization of Manon, Chris, Ella and Etta, obviously when they are babysat by Marinette, because otherwise ML Writers wouldn't be able to paint it as Marinette's fault

oh god

please no

I mean, not even just to blame Marinette for it, but I can’t even stand these kids when they’re on their own, MUCH LESS TOGETHER.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: If Adrien gets akumatized, then it would be just Chat Blanc with shoulder pads and crown

Is this a reference to my Miracle Queen post?

Because yes.

Anonymous asked:

Didn't need burrow: In Hack-San Chat Noir will pull a Sentibubler and refuse to listen to Alya with the Ladybug Miraculous as he doesn't have a brain unless he can progress the not so progressive four-sided Hellfire, which is actually still the best-case-scenario. I mean he could just not come at all, since he's only there to flirt with and seduce Ladybug with unfunny jokes.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Adrien causes problems because of Alyabug.

ugggggh

Anonymous asked:

DNB: Alya will immediately have access to things like the creation of charms despite how long it took for Marinette to be able to do that.

Wait--

If she doesn’t, did they literally just give Alya the ladybug miraculous because they knew that Markov wouldn’t have a way of hiding the amulet on him and they didn’t feel like putting it on his model???

Anonymous asked:

Didn’t Need Burrow: Alya’s Ladybug name is “Coccinelle” aka “Ladybug” in French. Or something equally lazy such as The Red Spotted One or the Scarlett Beetle. Even if it sounds cool at first glance, it will ultimately boil down to a plain and obvious name, because apparently EVERY superhero’s name has to so blatantly relate to the animal their Miraculous is based off of. For some reason. Somehow. -_-

fhkgjfdkgdfg okay but “The Red Spotted One” made me laugh.

Anonymous asked:

Hack-San DNB’s:

• Chat Noir will be upset that Ladybug trusted her miraculous to someone else.

• There will be a comment on how Alya was a just as good, if not better Ladybug than Marinette.

• Alya’s performance as LB will be used as another instance to show Marinette made the ‘right choice’ telling her her identity.

• Using the Horse to teleport back instead giving the earrings to Alya will not be mentioned as an option.

• Scene of Adrichat being sad about ‘feeling replaced’.

Especially on that “comment that Alya is just as good, if not better,” one, it probably won’t even be used as a reassurance for Marinette like, “oh, that’s good to know that I’m not the only one who can be Ladybug,” it’ll just be praise for Alya.

Anonymous asked:

Hack-San DNB: Chat Noir gets angry with LB for not telling him she was leaving & she has to apologize for it.

(Despite making sure there was a backup Ladybug to protect Paris, unlike Chat in the NY special who left the city completely unprotected).

Convenient.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: "Dearest Family" (episode where both of Marinette's parents are akumatized) will be about Marinette learning "true value" of Chat Noir

Either that or incorporating Adrien into the family.

Anonymous asked:

Don't Need a Burrow: Psycomedian will be blatant Joker rip-off

You can just say “all akuma in the season will either be rip-offs of themselves or past akuma,” it’s okay. :P

Anonymous asked:

Another DNB for Hack-San, since we see Jagged Stone in the trailer, so if they show it..:

The “most precious possession” of Jagged’s will be Fang and not, y’know, either of his children.

I missed that trailer.

Honestly there could be some funny moments with the concept, but if Jagged is the only joke made about it then yes, I will be very bitter.

Alternatively, Jagged picks his guitar instead.

Anonymous asked:

DNB: In the Alyabug episode, Alya will either be Practically Perfect In Every Way™, or will royally screw up in a way that will somehow lead to Marinette. Either way, Cat Noir will flirt with the new Ladybug, or pull a Sentibubbler. Or both. There may or may not be a comment about how Alyabug's costume is so much better than Marinette's despite being a fashion designer.

dkfgkjdfgjf I adore how this whole thing is just, “there’s so many ways it could go wrong!”

#category: salt #Didn't Need Burrow #other: ask and answer

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plutoswrath · 3 years ago

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i’m jealous of your big heart when it comes to animals lmao. i’m arachnophobic and it can be so annoying to have sometimes. i haven’t been able to tie it back to astrology, as much as i would like to. i asked because i was wondering if there was a clear indicator based off certain placements like how 6th house rules animals, 6th is ruled by mercury so i jumbled them even though i probs shouldn’t have lol. and with venus it ties to personal taste so i wondered if it could indicate a liking towards a certain animal. i have sag and sag venus in 6th and embarrassingly enough, i was obsessed with horses. like i came out of the womb adoring them. as soon as i learned to talk i was a walking horse encyclopedia. my obsession died down. i’m not a horse girl, i swear on my life.

i agree with you about the cancer loving animals. animals are babies and momma cancer loves to nurture the babies. i feel like cancers are the most likely to hate the “are you a dog or cat person” question. they’d get offended because how dare someone assume their heart isn’t big enough for both. more than both, really. throw a turtle in there. a rabbit even. cancer asc peeps usually have a shit ton of animals. it’s probably the sag/abundance in the 6th. or they either own a horse or Great Dane. but this is off topic because i forgot i had a follow up question.

if you could tie an animal or a couple animals to each sign that you think best represents that sign? or just seems like one they’d like? some are so easy and others just leave me blank. my arachnophobia thinks scorpio’s deserve better than scorpions but my terror blinds me. but i was looking up the symbolism behind animals and tying them to signs. so far, i’ve concluded that while horses should go with sag, their highly intuitive and empathetic animals. their behavior is like a mirror so if you’re nervous, they are too. so pisces or cancer actually seems to be a better fit. and to stay on topic of cancer with animals, i always tie wolves and dogs in general to cancer. the wolves are tied to the moon and familial dynamics and also i think they’re a great symbolic opposition to leo and how leos tend to resemble cats. sun and moon, dog and cat, night and day, that sort of thing. i realized i’ve rambled but i’m looking forward to your opinion because i’m so lost on what other signs would have. it’s been a year old question in my brain and it’s time for help from the master.

I'm sorry to hear that, I'm had a friend once who was arachnophobic and having phobias like these is really no fun, I can't imagine what it feels like really having them. And omg don't feel bad for liking horses when you were a child, literally so many children, especially young girls, like horses simply because people decided horses where a 'teenage girls only' thing somehow?? (and I will have to dig deeper into this at a point because here where I come from the horse girl thing is soooo painfully real and I want to understand the phenomena). And if I'm not mistake, arachnophobia (like most types of phobias), stem from some kind of trauma right? I absolutely don't try to get to personal but if we look at phobias in that way, maybe it's good to also include looking at planets/asteroids that point to trauma or aspects that can represent/indicate traumatic experiences in that sense! And I agree wholeheartedly to the 'dog or cat' question, I don't get offended by it but I hate this question in general because every animal deserves my love and empathy adfghj and yes, mother feelings definitely play into this haha! I think cancers enjoy (to an extent) having that occasional (or constant) outlet for their nurturing side and the bound you have to animals is also very intuitive and requires a lot of patience and getting educated as well as being observant and reading between the lines somehow and all that dedication paired with emotional knowledge just really speaks to water signs in general (and animals don't judge openly with words, just your energy asdfgh) Uhh, I like the question regarding the animals and I agree with your takes on it so far!! I think one animal can not represent all the core traits of a sign alltogether, but I'll try my best here! and psdfghj no need to call me master because I'm literally so far from anything close to that but thank you so much still, I feel honored really!!

The Signs as Animals:

Disclaimer: some of them are inspired by my ‘the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit’ tarot deck.

Aries: House cat. I know, I always thought cats actually link pretty well to Aries! Cats are just the perfect mixture of intelligen and curious, reserved, stubborn, aggressive, senstive as well as playful/impulsive! They are quick to learn and not afraid to face off against any other, bigger animals, but also can live pretty well together with other pets in the house, as long as they don‘t bother them too much. Especially when it comes to intimacy/pda they are very picky, but forceful when demand it. Seem flexible and unbothered at first but actually have the firmest boundaries when it comes to their personal freedom. Will let you believe they need you but give it a few weeks and the neighbor has better treats than you and gone they are asdfgh, but it's actually a harmful stereotype to believe that cats don't need you because they can become extremely fond of you and grow very attached.

Taurus: Elk. Based on the interpretation of my tarot deck. The elk represents earth energy, it is grounded, is established in itself and knows their core values and acts according to them. They show consistency, coherence and care. Dedicated to who they love and what they care for. Can become narrow minded due to knowing what's best, based on their perception of what's right and necessary, which can effect their ego negatively. Very Taurus for me. Gemini: Dragonfly. I refer to the interpretation of the Dragonfly based on my tarot deck. The dragonfly represents the mind: everchanging, quick, fascinating, a reflection of the world inside us and aroudn us. As the dragonfly is very quick (refering to Mercury's fast and nervous energy) the dragonfly also calles for paying attention to what quality our mind has and to become mindful, because on first glance things always appear different tahn on first glance (Mercury floats between detail-oriented and paying attenetion and being too fast, impatient). The dragonfly is joy and magic, as well as impatience, restlessness and being unable to concentrate. Cancer: Killer Whales (but also whales in general)! I thought especially about Killer Whales, because I once watched a documentary on them and they went in depth about how they have different cultures and different languages even (if I remember correctly) in their familys. Cancer often gets associated with the home life, but I think I wanted to look at it from another perspective, as in how does family 'become' family and how do those family roots develope, what do they consist of, how do we define family and what holds it together (and especially: how do our roots shape our own emotional patterns and nature in life?). I think the mystery of the Killer Whales but the whole complexity that lies behind the fascination of how these animals function and also how deeply affected Killer Whales are by their emotions/when they are absent from their kin, just opens up another big question of family dynamics and how we relate to one another and how principles we always condoned to human beings now apply to animals too. I think the whole part about the Killer Whales relation to emotions and their family's cultures just really made me link them to Cancer. Leo: Otter. I refer o the meaning of teh Otter based on my tarot deck. The Otter resembles the energy of the inner child: it's pure bliss, playfulness, they love to live and live for life itself, and out of this eagerness to enjoy life comes also a contentment and completeness towards life itself. To reconnect with otter energy, it is advised to step into settings of celebration, or total creative self expression and from the outside looking 'unproductive/selfish' indulgence. But actually, this energy is what makes life so enjoyable in the first place.

Virgo: Octopus. Highly intelligent beings that can quickly adapt and take the initiative. Self sufficient by nature, they aren't aggressive unless provoked, they like to mind their business unless they get curious (then they cling heavy onto you because you are their new object of interest). They can change color if it's needed (Virgo is a mutuable sign and can blend in perfectly in social occasions/new situations) and tbh the inking part about octopus just reminds me of the fact that most Virgos have a really quirky side to them you only get to see when you annoy them long enough (aka you are a long term friend). Libra: Gazelle. I refer to the meaning of ten Gazelle based on my tarot deck. The gazelle combines the creation of beauty and harmony, creativity and hyper awareness of it's surroundings, very affected of the imbalances in it's environment, but in it's try to remain this beauty around them, they tend to forget their achievments and stay in the present with their thoughts, as they constantly wheigh out the 'what if's'. A very perceptive animal in the tarot deck and this attribute is equally it's strong suit and downfall. Scorpio: Tiger. I refer here to the meaning of the Tiger based on my tarot deck. Waits in stillness and darkness to reconnect to their own inner power. Healing in isolation with the help of the lunar forces, waiting to regenerate. The Tiger energy shows itself in being passionate, sensual and stepping into ones own power, recognizing ones strength. For me, this is very Scorpio (Moon) for me. When the Tiger in unbalanced, it becomes overstimulated and acts according to this hyperawareness. Sagittarius: Zebra. I refer here to the meaning of the Zebra based on my tarot deck. The Zebra stands for an open mind, visionary and eccentric, new thinking, as well as being young at heart and expansion. I personally connect horses with passion and drive, because they are truly powerhouses. Based on the meaning of my tarit deck, the Zebra also is sociable, at least people find themselves drawn to the energy of the Zebra because it triggers their desire to learn, and I think this is something very beautiful Sagittarius symbolizes when they come into your life: be prepared to broaden your horizon for more.

Capricorn: Camel. I refer to the meaning of the Camel based on my tarot deck. Camels here represent absolute dependence on self and being able to find the answer to problems in oneself. This self reliance and capability reminds me of capricorns, the camel is finding the 'cool' aka water inside of them and Capricorn is traditionally also symbolized as the sea-goat (which I seriously think should really be considered when anaylzing this archetype) and Capricorns have (imo at least) a rich emotional life, but it's just deeply locked within. The Camel represents showing responsibility for their own actions, regulating the self and circumstances around them as best as they can, which makes sense for Capricorns, ruled by Saturn they usually are confronted with task in their life. If the Camel energy is out of balance, it shows a lack of vitality, with Capricorn representing the senior age in life makes sense, especially since Capricorns can tend to feel very old (exhausted)- Aquarius: Platypus- and no, I’m not using the Platypus because ‚wow all Aquarius are so weird like straight up aliens 🤪🤪’ I think the platypus is a good representation because it makes us question what we’ve known so far about animals and Aquarius too is a sign that introduces us to new ideas and perspectives all in the favor of progress and considering alternatives, leaving the status quo. Pisces: Raven/Crow. I name these two in particular because as far as I know it’s only the ravens that have been documented intimating people’s voices and tones, but crows are definitely more known for their bright mind. For me people often forget Pisces mutable nature and how quick witted they actually are. These birds are hyper intelligent and their observational skills are truly amazing. In my Wild Uknown Animal Spirit deck, the crow is an animal carrying 3rd eye energy. Here, the view is clear, the crow is moving through different dimensions and sees what other’s cant. For and the emotional depth (void) Pisces is conencted to it just seem to make sense.

#i swear i will be more active the next days #replies #anonymous #astrology #zodiac #the signs as #the signs as animals

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dillydedalus · 4 years ago

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april reading

oh yeah this is a thing. anyway in april i read about uhhh.... first contact (twice), murderers on skis & victorian church politics

the yield, tara june winch a novel about indigenous australian identity and history (now and throughout the 20th century) in three narrative strands. imo the narrative strand that consists of a grandfather writing a dictionary of his language (wiradjuri) in order to prove a claim to some land is by far the strongest, but overall i liked this quite a lot. 3/5

land of big numbers, te-ping chen a solid short story collection focused on modern china and young(ish) chinese people, both in china and the diaspora. i particularly liked the stories that had some slighty surreal or speculative elements, such as one about fruit that strongly evoke emotions when eaten and a group of people stuck in a train station for months as the train is delayed, which imo use their speculative aspects in effective (if not super subtle) ways to talk about society. 3/5

the pear field, nana ekvtimishvili (tr. from georgian by elizabeth heighway) international booker prize longlist! a short, fairly depressing read about a 18-year-old girl at a post-soviet school for developmentally disabled childred (but also orphans, abandoned children & other random kids) who is trying to get a younger boy adopted by an american couple. there seem to be a lot of novels set at post-soviet orphanages etc & imo this is a well-executed example of the microgenre, with the pear field full of pears that are never picked bc they don’t taste right as a strong central image. 3/5

the warden, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #1) ah yes, a 6-part victorian series about church politics in an english town, exactly the kind of thing i’m interested in. not sure why i committed to at least the first two entries of the series but here we are. despite this lack of interest (and disagreement with most of the politics on display here) i found this quite charming; trollope has a gift for an amusing turn of phrase & making fun of his characters in benevolent ways. 3/5

the lesson, cadwell turnbull first contact scifi novel set on the virgin islands, where an alien ship arrives one day. the aliens seem benevolent & share helpful technology, but also react with extreme violence to any aggression. they claim to be on earth to study.... something, but it’s never entirely clear what. the book makes some interesting choices (like immediately skipping over the actual first contact to a few years in the future, when the aliens are already established on the islands) but i thought much of it was kinda disjointed and confusing. 2/5

the heart is a lonely hunter, carson mccullers look, i get it, it’s all about the isolation & alienation (& dare i say loneliness) of 4 miserable characters projecting their issues on the central character singer, who is kind and patient and also deaf and mute, thus making him the perfect receptacle for their issues without really having to connect with him as a person and how that isolation hinders them socially, artistically, emotionally, politically, but like... i didn’t really like it. i didn’t hate it but i just felt very meh about it all. 2.5/5

acht tage im mai: die letzte woche des dritten reiches, volker ulrich fascinating history book about the last week(ish) of the third reich, starting with the day of hitler’s suicide and ending with the total surrender (but with plenty of flashbacks and forwards), and looking at military&political leadership (german and allied) as well as prisoners of war, forced laborers, concentration camp prisoners, and everyone else. very interesting look at what kästner described as the “gap between the not-anymore and the not-yet.” 3.5/5

firekeeper’s daughter, angeline boulley) i’ve been mostly off the YA train for the last few years, but this was a really good example of contemporary YA with a focus on ~social issues. ANYWAY. this is YA crime novel about daunis, a mixed-race unenrolled ojibwe girl close to finishing high school who is struggling with family problems, university plans, and feeling caught between her white and her native familiy when her best friend is shot in front of her and she decides to become a CI for an fbi investigation into meth production in the community. i really appreciated how hard this went both with the broader social issues (racism, addiction) and daunis’ personal struggles. there are a few bits that felt a bit didactic & on the nose (and the romance... oh well), but overall the themes of community, family, and the value of living indigenous culture are really well done & i teared up several times. 4/5

the magic toyshop, angela carter i love carter’s short stories but struggle with (while still liking) her novels so far. this one, a tale of melanie, suddenly orphaned after trying on her mother’s wedding dress in the garden, coming of age and awakening to womanhood or whatever. carter’s really into that. it’s well-written, sensual as carter always is, and the family melanie and her siblings are sent to, her tyrannical puppet-maker uncle, his mute wife and the wife’s two brothers, both fascinating and offputting (& dirty) make for an interesting cast of characters, but overall i just wish i was reading the bloody chamber again. 3/5

barchester towers, anthony trollope (chronicles of barsetshire #2) (audio) lol tbh i still don’t know why i am committing to this series about, again, church politics in 19th century rural england, but it’s just so chill & warm & funny (we love gently or not so gently - but always politely - mocking our characters) that i’m enjoying it as a nice little trip where people do some #crazyschemes to gain church positions or fight over whether there should be songs in church or whatever it is people in the 19th century fought about. it’s very relaxing. there also is a lot of love quadrangleyness going on and that’s also fun. trollope has weird ideas about women but like whatever, i for one wish mrs proudie much joy of her position as defacto bishop of barchester, she really girlbossed her way to the top. 3.5/5

semiosis, sue burke (semiosis #1) i love spinning the wheel on the “first contact with X weird alien species” & i guess this time we landed on plants! plant intelligence is interesting and the idea of plant warfare is really cool. i do like the structure, with different generations of human settlers on the planet pax providing a long-term view but this allows the author to skip over a lot of the development of the relationship between the settlers and the plant and locating the plot elsewhere, which i think is ultimately a mistake. i might continue w/ the series tho, depending on library availability. 2.5/5

one by one, ruth ware a bunch of start-up people go on a corporate retreat to a ski chalet in the alps, avalanche warning goes up, one of them disappears, presumably on a black piste, the rest get snowed in & completely cut off when the avalanche hits and then they get picked off *title drop* (altho really not that many of them). nice fluff when i had a miserable cold (not covid) but fails when it tries to go for deeper themes... like an attempt to address classism and entitlement sure... was made. also like what kind of luxury skiing chalet does not have emergency communication devices in case internet/phone lines are down... i’d have sued just for that. 2/5

fake accounts, lauren oyler the microgenre of ‘alienated intellectual(ish) probably anglophone person has some sort of crisis, goes to berlin about it’ is my ultimate literary weakness - i almost never really like them, they mostly irritate me & yet i can never resist their siren call. this one is p strong on the irritation, altho at least the narrator does not ascribe much meaning to her decision to go to berlin after she a) discovers her boyf is an online conspiracy theorist (probably not sincerely) and b) gets a call that said boyf has died, it’s really just something to do to avoid doing anything else. but other than that it’s so BerlinExpat by the numbers, like she lives in kreuzkölln! put her somewhere else at least! there is one scene that elevates the BerlinExpat-ness of it all (narrator asks expatfriend for advice on visa applications, expatfriend assures her that it’s really easy for americans to get visa, adds “especially now” while literally, as the narrator remarks, gesturing at the falafel she’s eating) other than that, the novel is.... fine. it’s smart, but not really as smart as it thinks it is, which is a problem bc it thinks it’s just sooo incisive. whatever. 2/5

the tenant of wildfell hall, anne bronte this is reductive but: jane eyre: i could fix him // wuthering heights: i could make him worse // wildfell hall: lmao i’m gonna leave his ass anyway i enjoyed the part that is actually narrated by the titular tenant of wildfell hall, helen (which thankfully, i think, is most of it) because the perspective of a woman who runs away from her abusive alcoholic of a husband is genuinely interesting and engaging, while gilbert, the frame story narrator who falls in love with helen, is.... the worst. i mean he’s not the worst bc the abusive husband arthur is there and hard to beat in terms of worseness, but he’s pretty fucking bad. imagine if helen had found out that gilbert attacked her secret brother over a misunderstanding, severely injured him & LEFT HIM TO DIE & then (when dude survived & the misunderstanding got cleared up) apologised like well i guess i didn’t treat you quite right! she’d have to run away from her second husband as well! poor girl. 3/5

#the books i read #long post #lol i keep forgetting to finish & post these #anyway gilbert fucking sucks! like his name is gilbert you can do better helen

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stilitana · 5 years ago

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so i listened to this embarassingly quickly but let’s chalk that up to the self-isolation/working from home and leave it at that

wolf 359 reactions under the cut (spoilers):

firstly, that soundtrack was so good and i’ll be listening to those piano pieces forever

this show demonstrated the eternal power of the agatha christie principle: gather a ragtag cast of characters who’ve all got beef with each other, and trap them in a small space together. cue the instant tension and inevitable weighty revelations.

i adore that amid all the drama/action, there were so many moments when the writers let the narrative breathe a little and just allowed the characters to talk to each other, and play games with one another. the word games were delicious. these were often moments of levity and good character building, but they also all moved relationships forward or revealed something new, so don’t ever let anybody say that having chill little funny moments is useless narrative fluff. these were the best moments.

empty man cometh might be my favorite. am i alone now? and memoria were also just...so good. a lot of the mini-episodes were excellent as well, especially all the character ones. variations on a theme might be my favorite of the shorts.

normally i’m impatient and skip anything i perceive as extraneous to the central narrative, and come back to it later--im so glad i didn’t, the live episode was hilarious. ashamed that i even tried to skip change of mind because i was so impatient to see what was happening, but i felt too bad so not even five minutes into the next ep, i went back and listened to it, and that was the right move...it was so good.

every single character was fantastic. every single one. they were all complex--even the less central characters had at least a moment or two where they struck a different note, showed another side of themselves. kepler was the stand out on this front for me. i didn’t care at all about the si-5 crew when they first came in--i was actually annoyed and expected to hate them all, which is a risk you run when you introduce a bunch of new, influential characters so late in a story. they made it work so well. first i came around to maxwell, then jacobi, and finally (tbh it was his swan song) i was like, okay, kepler was a great character. they made him sympathetic without trying to retcon anything to force me to pity him or think he’d been good all along or anything. cutter and pryce were less human, so their redeeming qualities came more from being interesting. i think the voice acting plays a lot into this--cutter just on paper wouldn’t be half as fun

really impressed with how this same thing played out with lovelace--she went from this sort of mythic, predeceased character, to an antagonist, and finally to being such a central character to the crew that you could hardly imagine them without her. poor writing could have easily made her kind of character unlikable. i think characters like her often get short-changed and written as one-note action hero types who crash in and upend the narrative just to give the plot steam and provide friction. instead, she’s as fully fleshed out as the main characters, and seamlessly becomes one of them.

rip plant monster...i loved you :,(

so, the antagonists were multifaceted, and so were the protags. this could have also easily been sloppy. with eiffel especially, lazy writing would have made the reveal of his backstory super cheap, out of left field, and made you feel like you never knew him at all and leave you unable to reconnect. instead of going the route where the writer for some reason thinks they have to make their plucky protag gritty, the reveal of eiffel’s backstory doesn’t change him at all--and why should it? it’s his backstory--it already happened. instead, it only forces him and minkowski to have conversations they probably needed to have anyway, and fleshes out the reason he’s even there in the first place. on this note, it’s not ultimately his backstory that eiffel has to confront within the story as a major flaw--the backstory was a mistake in the past he’s been dealing with for years by the time we meet him. i love what they chose to do instead so much more: what he had to deal with was his current, present day behavior--how he effortlessly disrespects and belittles the people closest to him without even trying. the key there is, without trying--he has to make a decision to start. (”that’s the thing about you, eiffel--you try. you try really, really hard, and then--you stop trying” that was such a good interaction...god.) i could go on and on about how this was such a satisfying tack to take but i’m trying to cut it down. glib bastards like eiffel are so often a sort of male wish-fulfillment character where they get to say whatever the fuck they want without consequence, be lazy, be careless, and still come out on top, and still seem lovable, because hey, he’s funny. eiffel doesn’t get off that easily, and he’s a much better character for it, and so are all the others, for actually demanding better for themselves, because they know they deserve it, and because they all actually care about each other, so when they confront him, he doesn’t just shrug it off--he tries. (it takes him a minute. but he tries.)

hera broke my heart a million times i love her so much. she had so many complex inner conflicts that weren’t just boiled down to some dumbass bs like “boo hoo am i human.” her personhood is a given for the sorts of conflicts she has, as far as feeling inadequate, feeling unappreciated, like an imposter or a less-valued member of the crew. her and minkowski arguing was excellent and allowed them both a chance to be childish because hey, eiffel shouldn’t have the monopoly on that.

death was a serious thing. human life was highly valued, and its loss was never made light of. not even for antagonists (kepler, hilbert) or, in the most extreme case, pryce, who eiffel chose to make a sacrifice to defeat rather than just kill her, the one principle aside from doing as little work as possible he stood his ground on the entire story. team what’s wrong with handcuffs indeed...i just really loved that the main lead was a pacifist and that this line of thinking held sway in the narrative. it was really refreshing (i don’t think it should be--there’s just a lot of bad writing out there especially when things edge into the action genre) to see this stance on nonviolent conflict resolution wherever possible, because yeah, most people have a really hard time ending another person’s life...no shit. minkowski makes that call and deals with the fallout for the rest of the show--she’s not done dealing with it by the end, it’s going to be something she takes with her. sometimes eiffel’s passivity was depicted as a weakness, but he ultimately did diffuse a lot of situations and gave other characters the space to consider their options. i do think that sometimes the narrative’s insistence on eiffel’s dual pacifism/incompetence shifted the burden of action onto minkowski and lovelace and i’m not sure how i feel about that. i think where i’d have to look is comparing how pryce and cutter are dealt with--yeah, im willing to buy that minkowski wasn’t willing to trade all of her memories so that she wouldn’t have to kill cutter. but was she the one who had to have a body count as a conscious narrative choice, or were we just determined to maintain eiffel’s status as the sort of goofy, “innocent” one? or was that something minkowski was determined to preserve--because that’d be really sad and complicated and say way more about her than it would about him.

dear listeners. i loved everything about the dear listeners. it was everything i ever wanted from aliens trope-wise.

didn’t really get the total significance of surrogates or decima virus. those were the only two things that felt sort of hasty because the stakes suddenly went from “the lives on this space station” to “life on earth as we know it.” but apocalypse averted so whatever, the aliens just want music

i am conflicted about the fucking. amnesia. memory was SO important throughout, and questions of identity and personhood, and this is the only reason that amnesia ending didn’t enrage me. if i think about it more i’m sure there will be a lot to unpack with what’s being implied here

this has gotten REALLY long so im going to stop now and finish mindlessly entering data into excel. in short: i loved it

#wolf 359

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europescleverest · 4 years ago

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* 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐓

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟷 : 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝚄𝚃𝚂𝙸𝙳𝙴 .

NAME : lady marguerite violette blakeney, née st. just EYE COLOUR : blue HAIR STYLE / COLOUR : a dark auburn, curly. usually worn up in the most fashionable styles HEIGHT : 5′4″ CLOTHING STYLE : like her husband, she is considered one of the most fashionable people in london society and she’s often a bit ahead of the curve in terms of what the latest styles are. her taste is expensive but not over-the-top. classy and tasteful. she grew up an orphan and spent most of her formative years in a convent, so when she became an actress, she finally had the means to dress how she pleased and leaned in hard so -- eat your hearts out! PHYSICAL FEATURES : considered incredibly beautiful, which, combined with her stage career, has drawn many admirers from about the age of nineteen. slim, fine-boned, and vivacious. gives the impression of total openness even if it’s not entirely true. at the point of the first book, she’s 25 and in Peak Hot Form. and okay in the books she’s constantly described with words like ‘dainty’ and ‘childlike’ and ‘girlish’ to degree that is, frankly, kind of hilariously annoying. so we’re not fucking with all of that... she’s a grown woman, emma, ffs....

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟸 : 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝚂𝙸𝙳𝙴 .

FEARS : abandonment, loneliness, isolation, loss of the people she loves -- especially armand (her only family since she was a young child) and later percy, fears about being used, collecting too many regrets in life, and never being able to atone for her mistakes (especially the betrayal of the marquis d st. cyr and his family). GUILTY PLEASURE : she doesn’t put much stock in the idea -- she’s about grabbing what enjoyment she can out of life. she’ll tease about indulging too much in this or that, but in reality, she doesn’t feel much guilt about doing what she enjoys. AMBITIONS FOR THE FUTURE : once she discovers her husband’s true identity, her ambitions are basically ‘make sure he doesn’t like....die horribly at the guillotine.’ a family of her own, one day, as well.

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟹 : 𝚃𝙷𝙾𝚄𝙶𝙷𝚃𝚂 .

FIRST THOUGHTS WAKING UP : she’s a deep sleeper, so it takes a couple minutes to rejoin the world of the living lol -- and from there, it really depends. if percy is in france, her first thoughts are about what he’s doing and if he’s alright. if not, it’s about what’s in store for the day and whether or not she can put it off with another hour of sleep... WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT MOST : depends on where in her timeline. once she’s a part of the league, that takes up most of her thoughts -- as well as having to balance the social expectations of someone of her status in order to maintain appearances. and also?? being married to a vigilante with a secret identity is stressful as hell okay??? WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT BEFORE BED : she’s usually exhausted, so it’s not too complicated. but did i mention the stress???? usually can fall asleep, but sometimes it will keep her awake with worry. WHAT THEY THINK THEIR BEST QUALITY IS : a romantic, uncynical heart. there are ways this has led her astray -- made her too trusting or too careless. but she wouldn’t trade it for anything. she’s learned that you can’t take anything (or any person!) for granted, so she would rather feel things and be hurt later than add to her list of old regrets.

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟺 : 𝚆𝙷𝙰𝚃’𝚂 𝙱𝙴𝚃𝚃𝙴𝚁 ?

SINGLE OR GROUP DATES : oh single. it’s so rare that she gets any time with percy so sorry not sorry. TO BE LOVED OR RESPECTED : to be loved. absolutely. having grown up with so little and so few people in her corner, she wants to grab onto any love she can. being a famous actress and socialite has taught her how many people’s attentions can be hollow or insincere -- what she craves is the real thing above all else. BEAUTY OR BRAINS : she values both, honestly. she’s been called ‘the cleverest woman in europe’ but she also knows how much her looks have been a means of survival and leverage for her. when it comes down to it, she’d certainly pick brains but... she’d rather not have to give up the other one either lol DOGS OR CATS : dogs. they’re warmer and friendlier. but i wouldn’t call her a dog person or a cat person tbh.

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟻 : 𝙳𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚈 …

LIE : oh sure. lies of omission, lies to help the league, etc. even a nice healthy dose of lying to herself about things she doesn’t want to admit to! BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES : in her career? in her role as a social butterfly? yes. in personal matters? it’s gone one a roller coaster of doubts over the years... BELIEVE IN LOVE : god yes. she’s a big old mess of hopeless romanticism and tries to pretend she isn’t... but love is probably the thing she believes in most of all. WANT SOMEONE : ' hey remember the time percy & marguerite got married & still thought their crush didn’t like them ’ (this was knight’s answer and i’m leaving it here bc.... yep.)

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟼 : 𝙷𝙰𝚅𝙴 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚈 𝙴𝚅𝙴𝚁 …

BEEN ON STAGE : countless times at the comedie francais and elsewhere in france. while she wouldn’t trade her current life for that one, she does miss it sometimes. DONE DRUGS : not really no. unless occasionally going too hard on the champagne counts... CHANGED WHO THEY WERE TO FIT IN : not really changed who she was -- rather just hid parts of herself while projecting others. playing up a carefree attitude in her public life as an actress and socialite is a means of survival and protection.

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟽 : 𝙵𝙰𝚅𝙾𝚄𝚁𝙸𝚃𝙴𝚂 .

FAVOURITE COLOUR : blues, golds, rose FAVOURITE ANIMAL : she’s kind to animals and enjoys riding, but she doesn’t really have a favorite. FAVOURITE BOOK : she’s not voracious reader, but she does enjoy reading novels and plays and has generally read whatever is new and popular at the moment. in her paris days, she kept abreast of the political and philosophical papers surrounding the revolution that were being published. FAVOURITE GAME : making fun of her husband in public? lbr teasing each other in front of people is foreplay

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟾 : 𝙰𝙶𝙴 .

DAY THEIR NEXT BIRTHDAY WILL BE : august 17.... so in terms of canon, that’d make her next birthday... a saturday ;D HOW OLD WILL THEY BE : 26

𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐑 𝟶𝟶𝟿 : 𝙵𝙸𝙽𝙸𝚂𝙷 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙴 .

I LOVE : my life and my family I FEEL : compelled to live fully in each moment and atone for what’s past I HIDE : more than i show, but only -- perhaps -- three people would know it I MISS : an uncomplicated life I WISH : that i no longer had to be afraid for the people i love

tagged by : @arvnsis tagging : YOU !

#⚜ i. ｢ about. ｣#long post cw

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common-blackbird · 4 years ago

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I’m not good with gaming and i never really imagined myself finishing any game, so this was a whole new experience for me... I really sucked. At one point i remember even crying when i just couldn’t fight smth. I hate asking for help (i’m infinitely grateful for it), or even looking “how to do this” bc i feel like i cheat, while when i just can’t beat smth in the game it makes me feel dumb. But i learned that usually happens bc i’ve been playing for too long.

So where to start.... The thing i liked most is the lore. Not just the content of it (which is very entertaining) but also the way it’s portrayed: through conversations, through various notes you find around, and it’s not just “well this is how it is” but rather sometimes contradictory claims that reflect different cultures. I love how you only ever see one country, but hear a lot about the others (well mostly Orlais, but there are tidbits from other countries as well), but also various cultures. I also love how the complex situation is in the game. The question of mages, the repression of elves, the dwarves and their culture, the question of religion.

The game is really good at setting the moral ambiguity and make you have hard choices. Once you realise there’s a pattern it does get easier, but some just make you wonder a lot what is the better choice.

While we’re at it let me talk some quests and decicions.

Free the elves?

So the easiest choice (though i don’t really think there was much of choosing) is the elves-slavery in denerim. Free elves, free citizens, i don’t even understand how did they get to be second-class citizens (or maybe i just forgot, i’ look it up), but they literally did nothing wrong, aren’t dangerous and frankly, there’s so much wilds in ferelden, i don’t see what’s the problem. However, though i don’t know if that was implied, if you go strictly against slavery, but this was a deal made between ferelden and tevinter, you risk a decline in diplomatic relationship as well as economy i assume, so it could be a setback. But again, if you have free citizens elves that are not just piled in one place, you can freshen up your own economy with capable workers. Like, even if you regret breaking a relationship with tevinter (that doesn’t even happen but i was thinking about it at the time), and the elves riot and go against you once you do give them freedom bc lot of bad history between ferelden and elves i guess, it’s still a morally & practically easy choice.

Free the mages?

This was... hmm... mage rights... I LOVE how they went about this problem. So the mages are problematic bc doing magic also means you can get posessed by a demon which results in a catstrophe (like that kid that demolished redcliffe). So they’re locked into a circle tower where they are trained and have a rigorous discipline and are under the watch of templars who might kill them if they try to escape? Mages who actually do escape the tower get hunted down and are forced back, or they get killed, especially if they attempt the bloodmagic (immoral dangerous magic practice?).

It’s kind of obvious that the game leans more to the mage rights (i mean, i wish there was a more memorable templar who isn’t like “mages are bad” by default, but they are kinda trained that way. tbh i just wish we had more templars...). At first, the only mage (other than that one in ostagar) you acutally meet is morrigan, who... who is not a very good example of “why people think mages are bad”. She’s cool, she handles magic really good, yeah she seems to be against the world, but what can you exepect when templars would kill her on sight? Even when alistair is constantly suspecting her, he’s basing that on her being a mage, and not on her saying really creepy immoral stuff. So initially i was all for mage rights. Then things didn’t really help much in the circle tower bc all templars were for just killing all the mages bc things got out of hands. Retrospectively i get where they’re coming from, but still, they seemed really incapable at the time. But then i met wynne, and she told me her backstory. And what really stuck with me is that

1) they find out she’s a mage bc she set someone on fire = mages are dangerous

2) while one templar ignored her completely, the other templar that brought her to the tower was nice to her and carried her on his shoulder (which is very cute) = templars don’t have to be so antagonistic towards mages and

3) the circle tower does not only protect the people from mages, but also the mages from people, bc people are bigoted and scared and will kill a mage = a social/cultural problem.

In any case, i feel like simply freeing mages just like that would turn out to be a terrible mistake bc they are kinda walking time-bombs and they’d be ostracized from society which would make them turn desperate bc no protection, then you get easily corruptible, and so it brings lot of trouble. That being said, obviously, it’s bad to keep people locked up in a tower for life. So i guess i’m more for reforming the circle with mages being treated as humans and not walking time-bombs, templars not being taught to be antagonistic towards mages, but rather their partners(?) bodyguards(?), mages having right to employment once they prove they’re capable of handling magic well, and if needed take one templar with them so people can feel safe. The Circle is already institution made for the rights for the mages, it just needs a lot of work on it. Idk. there wasn’t much of the ~what’s it like to live in the circle~ since you walk into a disaster, so i don’t want to be all in for the mages or all against the mages. I’m a dwarf. Magic is domain i don’t bother to understand.

Orzammar social problems

Tradition vs. reform, at the cost of a monarch or a dictator. That was actually a really easy choice if you’re playing a dwarf. If i played a noble dwarf, i’d defintely choose Harrowmont bc he’s 1) nicer, 2) looks more capable, 3) doesn’t seem that powerhungry. But this also means that current system based on castes. Equality is not even a myth there, it’s an apocalyptic outlook. Which takes another form of a bad side when you have the ostracized casteless dwarves, stripped of all rights and treated like dirt (and that was my warden). So, harrowmont is the safe choice for a current state. Nobody really cares who’s on the throne bc nobody expects the system to change. But if you choose Behlen for a king (who’s accused of murdering his father), you get a reformist who is open to including the casteless in some form into the system. As canon fodder. Despite the grim outlook of being used as a canon fodder, it does open a possibility of upping your status based on the merits. The paragon system is already such a leeway to better your status (bc if you do something outstanding that the drawves, you are revered as a god), but it’s virtually impossible to do something of that scale as a casteless (unless you.. finish the game). On the other hand if you choose Behlen, it’s pretty obvious he’s powerhungry dictator. But i chose behlen bc my sister was his concubine and prospect of including casteless in any form would be a good offer for a casteless dwarf.

Kill/let the mother kill the child or do this bloodmagic-not-so-bloodmagic(?) ritual to save him?

Ah, my disaster. So, of course, i wanted to help the kid, and when the bloodmage said there’s a ritual that can be performed, i just needed to get other mages there, i chose that, i went to the circle tower, i did the whole damn mission there, got back to the kid and, like the fool i am, went straight to the boy instead of talking first to mages, which resulted in me alone dealing with him, which resulted in me making his mother kill him, get yelled on by alistair and there’s no option “it was on accident” to say to him (which frankly would be a terrible thing to say), and then he starts putting himself down bc now my warden is trying to justify herself, which is another level of misery bc i’m fighting a really nice guy who hates children being killed and feels bad that he’s angry about that. anyways, that was a mess from start to finish.

speaking of other messes,

Haven village mission

well, there’s no hard choice in this mission, it’s “side with fanatics who worship a dragon or be reasonable and find the urn”. (i do wonder what do you get from siding with fanatics now). but this mission was such a rollercoaster for me. I did everything backwards. You come into this creepy little isolated village where nobody likes you and they are some kind of fanatics of older gods. So it turns out that first you’re supposed to walk into one house and find a corpse there, which i totally overlooked so instead i killed the merchant in the village, went to the church, killed everyone there, then went out and killed everyone in the village, i found genitivi (a researcher who got captured there), but i still couldn’t finish the mission until i got into that villagers house and saw the corpse that was supposed to be my first inkling of supicion for the village. So the whole storyline didn’t make any sense. And later, when i was supposed to walk humbly to the urn, i was supposed to first leave all my belongings on an oltair, so i did, but didn’t realise i was actually supposed to do that so i took them back and then i couldn’t put them back again on the altair, so i had to fight that guard there and died lol. I hated every part of that mission. it was creepy, hard and i’m lucky i didn’t smash the urn in the end.

The werewolf problem

That one was easy, like, the whole problem of werewolves is bc the head elf lives for too long and there’s nothing so fitting as holding grudges for eternity which endangers the whole clan. I have only one complaint and that is my god the forest is confusing. Each time i go into the forest i get lost.

The golem quest was fun bc that end with Shale randomly killing a chicken always gets me. I love it. Return to ostagar was on the other hand very uneventful for me, but i did see a video with what banter you have if you have wynne and loghain in your party and it’s really intense how wynne keeps attacking him.

Random thought, but today i watched this video about dragon age origins and the guy said that mages are best for combats bc they can do most damage in range, which is probably true, but tbh most of the time for me it was usually the mage who dies in the battle. Morrigan is super useful for attacks, and Wynne for defense, but they’re both as frail as daisies and i’m left with low-stamina melee fighters. And that happens when you’re fighting an archdemon. You’re crying as you drink your last health poultice. You wish you brought wynne. But wynne had been dying just as often, which renders her power of revival pretty useless.

And now, the characters. Lets start humbly with my own.

This game made me realise i’m bad at roleplaying. I scroll through tumblr and see how people just love the character they’ve created and they are so cool and seem so interesting. Me? let me show how i create my character: i don’t like using magic bc magic is often complicated so mage is out of the question. warriors are usually strong so i can’t relate, so i’ll be a rouge and talk people into doing the dirty work for me. i loved elves so fiercly as a kid i got fed up with them and can’t stand them so i’ll not be an elf, but humans seem boring so i’ll be a dwarf. After all i’m short, i can relate. Bonus points, they are imune to magic. Since i’m casteless, i decided to look ugly (i’ve been told my warden looks like the crying cat meme). In the end, compared to the rest of my warden’s family, she looked like an adopted child. At the beginning i had the idea that i would make this character grow from “in it for herself” to “a hero” bc it’s a typical hero story anyway, but in the end it was just a self insert with really dumb mistakes who doesn’t get what she’s signed up to. I guess it’s easier to actually make interesting characters once you already know the stories and the choices so it’s easier to choose according to the characterisation you make and not “what if i screw up?”.

Alistair

So after you get chosen by Duncan (a cool honorable guywho gives you chance to make something of your casteless self and then makes you drink poison), the first guy you meet is alistair - a fellow grey warden who used to train to be a templar (which is as far as we go in meeting templars) and happens to be a king’s bastard son. He is dorky, funny, a genuinely nice person and on level of insecurity that even surpasses mine. He’s impossible to dislike. What i really like about the characters is that they’re super simple, which makes them both their charm and their annoying trait. for example, he often puts himself down, which i relate and am symphatetic and am all “nah you’re really nice”, but the next time he does that i’m “mate, you gotta stop doing that”. But it’s still kinda cute.

What did irk me throughout the game is him being my senior, but making me the leader. I literally pass the test 1 day before everybody gets killed and he is the only grey warden who knows what grey wardens do. Not only that, he’s like the only guy with me at the beginning who knows where’s what and knows the culture. I’m a friggin dwarf who is afraid that i’ll fall into the sky, have no interest to get myself killed, but now i’m a leader. But that’s not even the issue, bc i am already the main character. The problem is when every character in the game acts as if i’m the only surviving grey warden when alistair is right there. “Only you can do that, oh you’re a grey warden”. Alistair knows more about grey wardens than i ever will. I wish they just mention “can either of you two”. It’s like he doesn’t exist lol. I didn’t take him often to missions and pretended he’s doing some grey warden business i know nothing about. The only character who makes sense to completely ignore alistair as a grey warden is anora. But whatever, he doesn’t want any spotlight, so i guess he’s happy being considered “that sidekick grey warden”. Even as frustrating as it was, i really liked his avoiding of responsibility whatsoever and his low confidence, it really makes room for character growth.

Dog

the best character in da:o.

Morrigan

She’s obviously a polar opposite to alistair - overconfident, kind of mean, kind of selfish, her jokes are mean. I mean, when i imagine alistair i imagine a dog, when i imagine morrigan, that’s a cat. And while as a person i don’t really like her that much, but her dynamics with other characters are really fun. What really made me love her is that mystery “is she evil or not”, ( which I guess she’s not considering she’s still a buddy in later games(?)), but combined with her relationship with flemeth who also might or might not be evil. she keeps opposing her mother while being compliant to her. She does what flemeth asks bc she knows that flemeth is more powerful. It makes you wonder how terrible her upbringing was if you’re certain your mom has some fishy plans in which you might get killed in the process. But instead of just running away and doing exactly the opposite of what flemeth commands, even after hearing she’s dead, she still goes on with flemeth’s idea, so i’m guessing she just wants the demon baby for herself(?). In any case, her (justified?) paranoia with flemeth makes her really compelling.

SPEAKING OF DEMON BABY, turns out the reason flemeth saved the warden and alistair was so that the warden could convince alistair to have sex with morrigan. which means that if the warden is a guy, and let us assume a straight guy, she’s counting on at least 50% chance of the male straight guy hating morrigan so much he would sooner convince the other guy who definitely hates morrigan to have sex with her than doing it himself. Yikes.

Sten

Sten is a character you respect. Some things he said really resonated with me and it made me think a lot. His regret over killing that family totally flew over me at that time (bc zevran was talking his head off how he killed this guy and that guy so who cares about sten killing some family, i’m already going to hell for tolerating assassins and making a mother kill her child), but later it was quite peculiar that he’s so ready to kill me and he’s pretty ruthless at everything he does, so you’d think this big guy has no problem getting over this. His regret made me more interested in his culture and his rigorous honour-code. I’d really love to see Par Vollen. At the end i even told him i was going to be joining him on his way back to Par Vollen (i wanted a new character for awakening), but that didn’t work out sadly :(

Leliana

I think most endearing part of Leliana is that she truly seems to believe all the right things, even though you’re made suspicious considering she was (or is?) a spy. That woman talks so much. And she’s always in the right. Always. Making a spy become a hardcore believer in god is cool, bc i always doubt her. She knows her way with words, she always says what you want/need to hear. Of course she would be playing a religious girl if that meant she could convince me that she’s harmless. But it’s also fun that she truly believes it and has a hard time convincing you that considering you keep doubting everything she says. I really like her.

Zevran

I was really surprised when i saw that Zevran is a fan-favourite. I guess it’s that he has a tragic-slave-turned-assassin backstory. I... am completely indifferent towards him. I’m sorry. He was just that one bisexual hedonist assassin who happens to have been a slave long time ago. I guess, by the time i got his backstory, i was already immune to angst... But thinking back, i really like that he’s the bad guy in his backstory, he’s the one doing betraying, while leliana for example got betrayed. And i’m a little bit sad that all he learned from that episode was that assassins are expandable, while, when you look at it, he fails to realise everybody in antiva is expendable. That’s a really crazy country right there. I mean, he’s killing people right and left, and never really thinks back about them. Even if he doesn’t like to do it (which he never really said he does, but it’s not like he had a choice so let’s give a benefit of the doubt), he never really thinks about his victims. The only thing that made him realise that he was expandable was his killing of his partner/lover. (or if he figured that out, i didn’t notice it). But yeah, bragging about sex and death doesn’t do it for me i guess. I did love his banters with Wynne. You can see how she’s trying to get him to open up, to see that there’s more to him than a hedonist, and she just giving up every time when he makes it about sex.

Wynne

Wynne is my top 3 faves. She’s also the reason i’m not against the Circle. Before i met her, i was all “yeah mages should be free and don’t need any control” bc there’s just morrigan and a bad case of not-taking-care-of-your-child-mage posession thing. But then Wynne starts talking about her life in the circle and you see that it’s not just “we hate mages so we keep them imprisoned”. You see that learning magic is hard (morrigan makes it look easy, ok?) and disaster can happen in a blink of an eye. And you find out how flawed she was, and it feels like she really learned from her experiences. And she’s so openminded and genuinely nice, typical granma-mentor-character. Best human in the camp.

Shale

Another one of my top 3 faves. Shale won me over the moment they murdered that poor chicken. I love having shale in my missions, they’re useful, they’re snappy, they’re perfect. And finding out that shale used to be shayle, a dwarf noble who willingly became a golem was one of my fave missions. I was so focused on the myth & legend of branka, that shale took me by surprise. And imagining a dwarf lady with shale’s personality makes me want to go back in time and meet shayle ;__;

Oghren

He’s pretty much like zevran: i like him, but too many alcoholic-jokes. Out of all characters, he looks like the biggest comic-relief. I like how insanely loyal he is. And I liked being his wingman x)

Loghain

I really like him. I shouldn’t like him as much as i do. i wish he could have been in a party earlier or without alistair-walking-out consequences. You start seeing that he’s not just a bad guy when you see that he’s always sad there when anora is scolding him. And I really loved that anecdote with him ruining every rose he touches so he found a rose and brought it home himself. Awww. If he didn’t order me executed at sight, i’d be his best friend. His paranoia (or justified fear?) of orlesian invasion made him do lot of political mistakes, but you can see he has good intentions. He’s not a bad guy. And he’s really clever. But also i will never understand how he didn’t get rid of Rendon Howe.

I’m so conflicted over him abandoning Cailan. I hated cailan, but to him, cailan was almost flesh and blood(?) I mean, he’s everything that’s left of two people he loved so abandoning him must have been terrible. I’m still trying to wrap my head around why he would go to that length to betray cailan rather than forcefully take him back by the means of drugging him and carrying him back to denerim. Maybe cailan was so problematic with his ideals before and this was just one decision too much. But then again, loghain was dealing with idealistic maric since forever. I don’t know. He’s just such a compelling character to me. I wouldn’t recruit him storywise bc i feel like his time was over. He had to die there. you know how in stories, the hero can’t live too long, bc there is no being the hero the second time. They’re always tragic. And since he attempted to be the hero again, he had to pay the price and become a villain. And he needs to tragically die. Which makes him more memorable than saint marric.

Also i watched a video with what happens if you go back to ostagar with loghain and wynne and it’s whoa... wynne is merciless with her attacks on loghain.

Anora

MY QUEEN. I was debating a lot whether alistair should be a king or not and then anora showed up and everything became clear. She’s such an amazing person. You can see her as righteous, as powerhungry, as manipulator, as terrible or wonderful and all of that would be true. She’s ready to do everything to keep that throne. You can see she loves her father, but she is going against him and is relying on your mercy for his life, and accepts his death so quickly. She implies that, while she did love cailan, her marriage was arranged and her husband an idealistic fool and she’s not surprised how he ended up. And sure, she’s telling you all you want to hear: that she loved him, that she was warning him about what his idealism will get him to, but can you really trust her? Especially with cailan’s correspondence between arl eamon, where eamon is trying to get rid of anora, and empress celene, who’s suspicious to say the least. I could easily imagine she did not warn, but support cailan in his idealistic views bc he hinders her rule with his blind idealism. I could just as easily accept that she truly did love him, and she did warn him, but alas, her husband is a fool. Everyone is against her in the game, and if i didn’t get her to win that throne after everything she’s done to get it, it would just be sad to watch. which brings me to the mission:

Choosing a ruler

Anora proved more than anyone that she’s the best candidate. Setting alistair on that throne would feel so ungrateful, he had no agency whatsoever in becoming a king and if i married him to anora, then i’d just get another pawn in her - or eamon’s - hands bc it’s obvious who’s playing the game here. I’d feel bad for alistair. He should get his own development based by his own merits rather than ~king’s blood~. Also with setting him on the throne you change nothing bc he can’t have kids anyway (unless you count the demon baby which would get this to another level of really messed up succession stories), and anora (according to eamon) seems to not be able to have kids(?) so they’re basically the same. Also, anora has unlimited time to rule, while alistair will die in what like, 10 years? and what then? Morrigan becomes queen regent bc she’s the baby-demon’s mother? That’s a disaster. And anora is right when she says that setting up a grey warden after they’ve been proclaimed enemies of the state only makes it look bad. I have learned that grey wardens, it turns out, are very political, but i just didn’t want to be. Also, alistair devotion was literally never towards marric and only for duncan. He even kills Loghain for duncan, and not for cailan. I really like anora being a queen. I know i can’t count on her bc she is ruthless like loghain, but also loyal only to the kingdom. It feels like, that’s the only thing she got to choose in her life and she’s willing to sacrifice everything for it. And that makes her a good ruler.

the ritual

oh man. that was... awkward. I knew it was gonna happen but... you know what i think? Sure, flemeth told morrigan what she’s gotta do, but, i doubt morrigan really knew what she’s getting into. I know the kid is a normal kid in the end, but i like to think that at the time, morrigan had no idea whatsoever what is this ritual going to turn up with. First, this this ritual feels like a fanservice. Second, on the matter of dub-con, i’ve seen a lot of people saying that alistair was non-con and morrigan is... a bitch? i thought about it and all i saw was this: your mom, whom you hate and are convinced she’s going to kill you one day, tells you you’re going to have a sex with a guy you don’t know, who hates you, and have his child, and you probably don’t want children, who will definitely be possessed with a god-spirit-thing. So, you got two choices, while you’re traveling with your merry band: you won’t do it or you do it for yourself. So i guess morrigan saw an opportunity and decided to go along with it, but use it against flemeth. Which is a really sad thing bc the moment she decides to have the baby for the power for whatever reason, she is basically becoming flemeth herself (or at least her idea of flemeth: someone who uses children for her own gains instead of loving them). So knowing that, i can’t see morrigan being a bitch either way for deciding to take the ritual. She definitely doesn’t like alistair after all, and she’s becoming the person she hates the most + she acts like she doesn’t care about anything, but she also wants to save the warden. So yeah, i definitely went overboard with this, but i don’t see morrigan enjoying the ritual.

I do wonder what she’s planning to do with the demon baby tho. or how terrible is she at raising a baby. I mean, her tolerance and patience levels are really low. I also wonder whether she’s right to be wary of flemeth or is she only paranoid. Flemeth seems like much wiser and sees morrigan as a kid with her paranoia. She pretty much dominates. I would love both morrigan being totally off the track with her suspicious about flemeth and her being right to be wary of flemeth.

So yeah, that was a huge ramble. If you made it this far then i bow to you. Idk where i was going with this... i just wanted to get out my thoughts and have it in one place. I probably said bunch of things wrong and misinterpreted the characters, made typos, forgot to say bunch of other things so, sorry for that. i’m a newb. But i loved it! It made me go into fantasy mood.

#i'm just rambling about dragon age #and it's really long and i don't say anything interesting

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englacial · 5 years ago

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ok this will probably be the only time i post about this but i just really wanted to make a post apologizing for my unreliability in activity here & the fact that i basically ghosted some very good friends who absolutely didn’t deserve that with no explanation -- nothing prompted this & things seem to be all good but i don’t want anyone thinking i just dropped off the map for no reason so im gonna give just a little insight to everything that’s been going on ! (long post ahead) <3

as a lot of my friends here know, in february of 2017 i got married (i was 19 and can say with certainty now it was a huge mistake & i made a hasty and immature decision but really could not see that at the time), i was super excited, felt like i was in a good relationship & was finally able to live my life, all that good sappy stuff -- so i literally moved across the country into a totally new state away from my friends & family with a fresh start with this person thinking that this was a great way to get out of my abusive living situation (as some of you who have been w me a long time may recall i got kicked out, was briefly homeless, and my life fell to literal shit) and also have someone who cared about me. but as some people suspected (and im really sorry for not taking your concerns for me more seriously, i know now that i shouldn’t have treated it so flippantly, i was just really blinded by my love for this person and i don’t think anyone could’ve gotten through) it was just... not all i made it out to be. he was really abusive and controlling and i made excuses for him and defended him, i let myself excuse a lot of things, wrote off any and all red flags, and ended up alienating a lot of friends (and family) who were just worried about me.

there were several moments later in my relationship that i started to realize what was happening, but i tried really hard to fix it within our relationship. i literally convinced myself i could change him. i pushed for counseling, group therapy, self help books, literally ANYTHING i could in an attempt to get him to see what he did. at one point i even sat down in the car with him to discuss things that needed fixing and he told me to my face that he didn’t think i deserved things. like direct quote “i just don’t feel like you deserve things”.

it was bad, but i was still making excuses and still convinced he was a good person with good intentions just misdirected. (i was way off).

it wasn’t until january of this year that i kind of had the biggest wake up call as to the things he was putting me through and that he just... wasn’t a good person, and it took him divorcing me for it to really hit me everything that happened.

in january, he announced out of the blue that he was divorcing me but that he still wanted a relationship with me but that he felt we needed to “work on ourselves separately” to do better in our relationship. i ignorantly believed him at first and for a few months post-divorce we had an “open relationship” (really just his way of having his cake and eating it to, he wanted all the benefits of a relationship with me without the work and i didn’t realize that initially), however i pretty quickly found out this was him wanting to control me and still have the romantic/sexual benefit he got from our relationship without the burden of having to actually communicate and work on himself the way he claimed. he watched me get a job, get my own car, and do everything i was supposed to without him ever lifting a finger to do hard work on himself & eventually i got fed up. over the few months of getting divorced i found out that he stole over $500 from me to buy my plane ticket home + a ticket for himself (the money was from savings i had for a camera so i could start doing photography, i thought he had ordered the camera but he actually used all of the money for the plane ticket which i only discovered later when .. lol, my camera never showed up and i confronted him), he gave me only 20 days to collect my things and arrange a new living situation (which put me back in the home of my abusive mom whom i still have to live with), made numerous threatening and scary posts about me on his social media accounts, i discovered he’d been cheating with potentially multiple women (when he shipped back some of the remainder of my possessions, there were clothes and beauty products that didn’t belong to me among them), i found transphobic posts he’d written about me being nonbinary & literally just SO MUCH other stuff that was absolutely unacceptable.

there’s way to much that happened post-divorce to even go into and this isn’t even including the things that occurred WHILE we were married. it just wasn’t a good thing at all.

in the midst of all of this, very recently, he alerted me no more than 6 months AFTER our alleged divorce at the beginning of july to tell me that the paperwork got kicked back to him and we were never actually divorced and that he had known SINCE BEFORE I HAD GOTTEN HOME that we weren’t officially divorced. it’s been a struggle getting things sorted, he’s committed all sorts of fraud, tricked me into sending nudes to him (yikes), and a whole number of things that have made me really begin to unpack how unhealthy and abusive our relationship was from the start.

he isolated me from all of me friends, regularly would encourage me to cut ties with people i cared about, and even limited my time online which cut into hobbies like this that i really enjoy. additionally, when we would visit my hometown, he would primarily want to spend time with his own family & wouldn’t give me much time to see mine. there were some other abusive things that happened within the relationship prior to him announcing he was divorcing me, but they’re personal so i won’t go into a lot of detail but it was just very, very bad.

all of this are literal classic warning signs of abuse and i just... really fell for it. it makes me really ashamed to admit that, as someone who has been abused my whole life, i basically fell right into this trap all over again.

on top of all of this and the legal battles resulting, i have been dealing with a medical crisis linked back to a car accident in september of 2017. ive had a lot of bad stuff happen with my health that were tied to the misalignment of my neck and back that i DID NOT EVEN KNOW were related until only a few months ago when i got a second opinion from a much more experienced and adept doctor. ive had multiple surgeries from complications related to injuries i had initially been told didn’t exist, i’ve literally spent thousands of dollars for things that actually could’ve very simply been avoided had my spine been treated properly after my accident.

all of this has just... really taken me out of the rp scene but also made me a really shitty and unreliable friend. being in a controlling relationship isolated me from a lot. ive lost a lot of friends because i was in survival mode even after the relationship ended. i regret that a lot and i understand that it’s hard to be friends with someone when they are not present so ive been working a lot on myself nd how i communicate with the people i love when i feel unable to be in their lives for periods of time for one reason or another.

so now im 22 and divorced with the back problems of a 83 year old who’s three times divorced lmao it’s literally like... i sometimes feel a lot of shame for what i let myself go through but i know it’s not my fault that the person i thought i loved and thought loved me ended up not being who he said he was.

it sucked. there was a lot that happened that i can’t begin to even summarize. i still have some sleepless nights where i wonder why i wasn’t able to see it then when it was literally blatantly obvious what was happening, but hindsight is 20/20.

now, i can pretty happily say i am in a MUCH better situation. things are not perfect (im literally living with an abusive parent again and yikes but it is not near as bad as when i was a teenager), but i am no longer in a relationship that was about the convenience of using me more than it was caring about me, and alllllll of my medical stuff has an active treatment plan that has been working wonders for me!!! (yay!)

so i just wanted to firstly apologize for my inability to be in people’s lives the way ive wanted to. i know that this is hurtful and not ok. it was wrong of me to ghost and leave people wondering where i was or what i was doing and there’s no excuse for that tbh. im actively working to be more present in the lives of people i care about as well as communicate more when i am not able to be that present. it’s taken a lot to get to that point, and i want to secondly affirm that my inability to be consistent and reliable with this hobby as well as consistent and reliable as a friend has nothing to do with any kind of personal slight i had with anyone or anything else. it’s been a rough few years, it took me a long time to see that i was in a situation that was harming me, and there was a lot of fallout as a result.

rest assured, i intend to do a lot better about being here now that i feel like im properly adjusted. you can expect me to be a lot more communicative if i take time away and a lot more attentive to the things and relationships that i want in my life. ive taken way too much shit and let myself sacrifice too many people and situations for ONE person whose end goal was nothing more than using me to his convenience. i am not going to lose that again.

im in a much healthier relationship, taking care of the responsibilities i have as an adult, and have an active treatment plan for my various health needs that has improved my condition significantly. like, ya’ll.... life may not be perfect right now but it’s pretty damn good from where it was nd im excited to continue to grow and do better (for real this time) especially now that i feel like i can do the things i love again (like writing here with all of you lovely people).

thanks for reading!! sorry things have been sporadic, unreliable, confusing, and that i haven’t been a very good friend. i recognize these things & want to prove that i can do better now that i have a handle on things.

#* here for a good time not a long time / ooc #anyway... i didn't just want to show up out of the blue (AGAIN) and offer no explanation #i know that a lot of my friends are kind of fed up and if not fed up are just confused and worried and hurt #just want to offer some insight into... everything #i love the people ive met here very much #i love this hobby very much it has genuinely gotten me through a lot!#so i owe it to the community and the people here to explain what the fuck has been going on & yeah it's a lot #im not going to push this further tbh i just want my actions to speak for themselves as to how i intend to do better #i know telling people what im gonna do only does so much lmao i have to actually ACT on that and do it #but anyway!! here's this. thanks for reading ! triggers are tagged #abuse tw #car accident tw #long post //#(if you notice anything else that needs to be tagged let me know!)

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unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years ago

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everything in deh is so entirely from evan’s fairly closed-off perspective and everything jared does is entirely focused on evan b/c he’s in love with him but it’s wild to think about jared just separately from evan and by wild i mean “makes it clear how depressing it is”

like, ugh all the seniors really are That similar…jared only has one friend and they’re not that close atm apparently, yeah jared denies that they’re Real friends to get out of having to dare to be the first to sign evan’s cast, but also they might not have interacted at all if jared hadn’t been the one to initiate it. and then immediately you see how jared’s approach totally fails when he’s dealing with some other person……not that every other random student is gonna react like connor but yknow. jared doesn’t have any friends and he’s the same as evan and connor in that he really just sees interactions as risky / threatening more than he expects them to be rewarding in any way, and the way he’s also closed off in general and the way he’s trying to deal with his own first day is just as much of a defensive maneuver as evan’s approach of trying to withdraw and avoid all (negative) attention and connor responding aggressively to what he perceives as negative attention

anyways like, all the times he’s not with evan, he’s also out there having zero friends. and he probably doesn’t like it much more than evan does. i mean, it’s like it is when he offers right away to help evan with his wild email situation…it’s really not that appealing an opportunity in terms of “develop your relationship with your one friend,” but jared’s wanting this chance to connect and feel important and cared about and just get to enjoy some socializing. he’s that desperate for all those factors that he’s immediately latching on to this weird way to spend time for evan. it’s pretty depressing lol. and like, he probably does also wish he had other friends, or A Real Friend….we know he doesn’t really have camp friends, which is also just depressing, because again, he probably wishes he does. like, what was that whole situation like, how was jared’s summer? because maybe he didn’t try to kill himself as far as we know, but if for some period of time he was in this place with these other people and evan wasn’t there so he had zero friends and in the end he came away with zero friends and no remarkable experiences to speak of? it sounds pretty lonely and sad tbh. kinda wanna imagine that fic. i already get carried away sometimes imagining jared has his gay awakening there. i mean, what else is summer camp for

and just, whenever he’s not with evan during the course of the musical, we can presume he’s on his own. and the thing he says about “literally nothing i tell my parents is true and they have no idea” is fairly sad, like. there’s got to be a motivation for that and the possibilities are all depressing. and it just further means he’s isolated and maybe nobody knows him and he’s not gonna turn to them for support at any point

which is relevant because jared ends up heartbroken and friendless and left to deal with that entirely on his own, when earlier he was already doing so crappily that he jumped at the chance to write fake correspondence as an opportunity to feel validated and then continued to chase that up until it reached a breaking point when evan turned down his invitation and turned on jared and jared got additionally upset at having to actually see evan with his gf, no hetero. anyways jared also was not thriving and then That happens and he doesn’t tell his parents anything true about himself and evan was his only friend and we don’t know that he like, has anything else. plus he probably reads evan’s letter, and he’d also know that it was evan who wrote it, and that would just be even more depressing to say the least. and he wouldn’t know why it was posted or what was going on b/c like, he’s also having to trust evan not to tell anyone about what they did, same as evan has to trust that jared won’t tell anyone (and jared doesn’t)

just like, that all sucks, enjoy being heartbroken and friendless for the rest of your senior year. and the thing is that like, also jared’s out there hating himself all the time, so he’s also being left alone with that. and even if the whole experience lets him realize that the persona he used only ended up sabotaging him, then at best he’d be dropping his main defense while still being left with that self-loathing. but he could easily interpret his “mistake” to have been letting that defensive persona slip in the first place, because originally he was acting like he Wasn’t totally yearning for evan or really all that affected one way or another, but he went and got more attached and had his #1 motivation be trying to spend more quality time with evan, and even at the last minute he was just actually trying to put himself out there and just invite him over which like, for him just clearly shows how important it was to him, but he just ended up getting burned. and maybe it would only make him want to double down on maintaining a distance from people. that would be sad

like, it’d be nice to think in college he got to have a different Social Experience b/c college is like that….he’d be away from the same people he’d gone to school with for years, (away from evan), away from his parents who he apparently also always kept up this facade around, given this entirely new environment and situation and independence……it could be good but it could also just be even more depressing for him if he feels like he’s got this chance for a fresh start / chance to Reinvent himself (jared came up with that line!!) and he still just isn’t exactly thriving and still doesn’t know how to make friends….it’s not like it’s easy to just Decide to be different all at once, especially with jared being as scared and repressed as he is. but it’s nice to think he could like, learn to come out of that shell and learn that people can like him and he can like them

it’s also a chance to figure out you’re super Not Straight. like, let him end up joining whatever group/organization is on campus and be taken in by other gays. it really would be wild if jared hadn’t realized he was actually in love with evan and has to realize after the fact that he experienced heartbreak without knowing it was heartbreak, and only just now understanding why he couldn’t even stand to see his friend’s gf politely kiss him, or understanding why he was wanting to pretend to be said friend’s secret lover while also talking about how some would say there’s something quite beautiful about the love that one man feels for another

it’d be great if jared gets the chance to figure himself out and not hate himself anymore and realize that not everyone is gonna hurt him and he can put himself out there without being burned, and let him have a boyfriend yknow. imagine going the other route and it’s some un-evanlike guy who maybe isn’t Opposite him in the anxiety way and all super outgoing or anything but rather just finds it fairly easy to say whatever’s on his mind at any particular moment, whether it’s about Real Feelings or just some mundane observation or passing thought. the important part is that jared deserves a sweet boyfriendship

that’s a non-sad note to leave off on when the tldr is that it’s extra sad to think about jared just on his own Removed from evan. like, anyone would struggle with heartbreak, much less heartbreak plus losing a friend, plus that having been your only friend, plus how much he was already just overall struggling and desperate and really had no Good way of coping and couldn’t really reach out, just like the other seniors, classic. he just got to feel like his friendship hadn’t mattered and was gone and there was really no silver lining to it for him…i guess him or evan or alana could take solace in the fact that maybe tcp really does some concrete good but like, from jared’s perspective that’s so tied up in evan and his own heartbreak so, yknow. ugh. god

#kleinsen #deh

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lizziebennet · 6 years ago

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AURORA. Very important question for you on this Tuesday night - what is your opinion on the HP scores and could you order them from fav to least fav?

what an excellent and essential question. i admit that it’s hard for me to approach this matter from an objective point of view as obviously my opinions of these scores are very intensely affected by nostalgia and my experience w the film itself, but i shall try my hardest to just evaluate the scores on their own merit.

RANKING OF THE HARRY POTTER FILM SCORES, FROM WORST TO BEST:

7. deathly hallows part 1&2 by alexandre desplat

i remember when it was announced desplat was going to be doing the last 2 films and it was so exciting to have such a Hot Composer taking on the final two films… but i gotta say he severely disappointed me and i haven’t forgiven desplat since. these films–especially part 2–were the culmination of the entire franchise, and should’ve been fucking epic masterpieces that evoked the previous films’ score. instead, desplat largely ignored the iconic potter themes that williams and others created and went in his own direction which like… isn’t really the right move for the last 2 films of a franchise imo.

and im just not super a fan of what he came up with?? like ‘lily’s theme’ is good, but im not sure it really fits potter?? and i just feel like a lot of the final battle stuff could’ve been so much more epic and emotional like. it doesn’t take a lot for a bitch to cry in a harry potter movie but desplat wasn’t helping me out u know. anyway i honestly like the score he did for fucking new moon better than for potter which …….is not great.

6. order of the phoenix by nicholas hooper

i am trying not to let my hatred of this movie cloud my judgement here but like even so i think this is one of the weaker scores. there are just so many annoying tracks lmaooo that like they blast at the wizarding world parks u know. like umbridge’s theme… i get its SUPPOSED to be annoying but still its not a fave. and like i think again the stuff in the ministry of magic during the fight scenes couldve been better. its just not a fave tbh but i do like a few themes like particularly the track ‘a journey to hogwarts’ is very sweet and sirius’s death moment was well done. but overall there are more tracks on this one i skip than play.

5. chamber of secrets by john williams

this is where things get rly tricky bc i legit love the rest of these scores. but i have to put chamber here because i feel like a lot of its greatness piggybacks off the genius of the score of sorcerer’s stone... which isn’t a bad thing at all but. it doesn’t bring a ton of new stuff to the table. however i do love the ‘fawkes the phoenix’ theme!!! so!! much!!! and lockhart’s theme is very funny and cute. we do edge into a saccharine territory a bit when it comes to tracks like ‘reunion of friends’ but like i cry every time so who fucking cares.

4. half-blood prince by nicholas hooper

i really really love this score as a stand alone score, and i almost put it higher on this list but i feel like this score totally abandons all the potter scores that have come before it and does its totally own new thing. this isn’t really the scores fault, as im sure like david yates told hooper to do this you know, but it deviates so far from the original themes instead of just adding onto them, so much so that if you just heard it without watching the movie you might not even associate it with the potter movies at all. again, this probably isn’t hooper’s fault but i think this was a big mistake for the sonic evolution of the movies. the potter movies failed to create a cohesive sound across all the films, and i think it is worse for it. can u imagine if the harry potter movies were like the lord of the rings movies, where they bring back themes from the first movie in the final one and the audience recognizes them subconsciously and the moment is all the more emotional because of it? tbh just a missed opportunity imo.

but anyway just about this score on its own, it has some of the best standalone tracks in the entire movies tbh. the one that stands out the most to me is of course ‘dumbledore’s farewell.’ such a hauntingly beautiful song--i remember seeing this movie for the first time and this track pierced me to my core. i also love how this score uses harp like in ‘when ginny kissed harry,’ and how it uses choral arrangements?? like in ‘in noctem.’ honestly i adore this score so much but i have to rank it lower because i doesn’t feel like it serves its purpose in the potter movies as a whole well :(

3. goblet of fire by patrick doyle

idk why patrick doyle only did the 1 movie because i really like this score. i know its super hard to follow up john fucking williams lmaooo but i feel like he did a pretty good job of drawing from the original williams themes but also incorporating some new stuff to fit the darker tone of the movie. there are some of my favorite potter tracks of all time on this score like ‘death of cedric’ which is so haunting and perfect and ‘harry in winter’ which is so beautiful and potter-esque. he also did a really good job with the action scenes in the graveyard which is v important to me. and the diegetic music in the yule ball stuff is so funny and lovely at the same time.

2. sorcerer’s stone by john williams

the fucking classic. the og. like, what is there to say?? talented brilliant incredible amazing showstopping never the same totally unique. like only john williams could create such an iconic theme. it’s hard for me to be objective here because i was young enough when the first movie came out that ‘hedwig’s theme’ /is/ harry potter to me, they are one in the same, you cannot separate them in my mind. but truly williams captured the magic of the harry potter world in music and enchanted everyone with this score.

i also love the little medieval-y influences in this score that were dropped by chamber of secrets. like with the harp moments and in ‘diagon alley and the gringotts vault’ and ‘in ‘hogwarts forever!’ there’s just a very majestic and antique vibe that i really dig that didn’t really carry over to the other movies.

i will say sometime williams gets very... williams-y in his very uhh loud?? and kinda frantic composing u can hear in like ‘the quidditch match’ which isn’t my favorite way to do action scenes, but like who the fuck cares u know the pros of this score far outweigh it.

like. just. so manyyy iconic themes that have so much EMOTIONAL WEIGHT!!! like the moment u see hogwarts for the first time and the choral vocals... and the bells in ‘christmas at hogwarts.’ and who can keep a dry eye during ‘leaving hogwarts’??? NOT I!!!!!!!!!!! such a gentle theme of longing and home and yearning and family and bittersweet loss. it starts so small and intimate but then swELLS to this grand and sweeping tune. it’s stunning.

1. prisoner of azkaban by john williams

this is PEAK!!! potter for me. again, hard to be objective because this is the best my favorite harry potter movie, but i also truly think this is the best score because it carries over the iconic themes of the first two movies but adds a quirky and dramatic flair that fits the tone of the movie cuaron was trying to make u know? i think u can really tell that cuaron had a lot of imput on the score and didn’t just let williams do whatever he wanted, because we get a really interesting, stylized sound that is really different from williams usual fare in such a great way. but, it still is a williams score and because of that it shines and also weaves in the past movies’ themes to give us an outstanding amalgamation of sound and melody.

like we start with ‘lumos!’ which gets us right back into the potter universe but then we get a series of quirky new themes, like the waltz for aunt marge, the jazzy knight bus theme, and the medieval choral rendition of ‘double trouble’... iconic. and we get the dark and disturbing dementors theme (’apparition on the train’) which is very understated for a williams score and extremely effective.

however ,,,, we do not abandon the themes from prior movies!!!!! a great illustration of how williams takes those old potter themes and adapts them for this movie can be seen in ‘secrets of the castle.’ this minimalist take on hedwigs theme is a completely different tone from the original, but still establishes that we are in the same sonic world as that film. you can also see this in ‘the portrait gallery’ where an old potter theme is played on some kind of woodwind (idk sorry) and a harpsichord, giving the odd, quirky, vintage feel of the movie but still keeping with the established potter musical world.

i really love the ~medieval vibes~ that this score gives me and i wish this was something later scores went back to (instead of going in a jazz direction..looking at you hooper). theres a lot of traditional sounding instruments used that give it a real rustic, celtic feel rather than the grand classicism of a full orchestral sound that the first 2 movies use. a lot of harps, strings, and woodwinds!!!!

some of my favorite tracks of all time are on this score. ‘window to the past’ is just... a triumph of emotion. its absolutely stunning in its simplicity in the beginning, and how it builds toward the end. the return of that theme in ‘finale’ when sirius is saying goodbye to harry...i truly sob every time. the isolated vocals in ‘the patronus light’ truly embody the purity of that awe and joy when the patronus is cast. and of course, of course, ‘buckbeak’s flight’ is an absolute magical joy ride captured in sound. williams refrains from using a full orchestra for most of the score, so when everyone plays together in moments like this you get the full grandeur of the scene just... bAM! it’s so fucking well done and just... perfect.

#anonymous #aurora got an ask #sorry this took a literally age to finish.... but as u can see #i had a lot to say #would love to hear other ppls thoughts!!!!#hp #harry potter #john williams #scores #aurora RANTS

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cassercole · 5 years ago

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Give me the director’s commentary on Q and Nat’s Wanda visions and on the part where Q and Steve have dinner with her family! And also star emoji for whatever u want to share!

Oh my god this got so long, I’m so sorry.

ask me for the “director’s commentary” on a certain scene of one of my stories!

Q AND NAT’S WANDA VISIONS:

So as for Q and Nat’s Wanda visions, I really wanted to dig into their pasts and their biggest fears. For Q’s specifically, I was heavily inspired by an episode of Nikita (s1ep16) where one of the main characters has some similar hallucinations but then adjusted it for Q’s arc!

Since we haven’t gotten a real good look at her past -- just vague mentions here and there, I was trying to show how she’s both grown from it but also how it still has quite a grip on her. It’s still a big fear of hers that she’s still seen as that fucked up girl who continually makes mistakes and can’t be trusted. You see her now, in the present, as this poised and professional woman who supposedly cares about Steve/others around her, but dig a little deeper and go into that vision and you’ll find...well a monster really. Someone who only cares about herself and her own self-preservation and who is willing to do whatever is necessary to save herself. And it kinda starts to make sense as to why she left Steve the way she did and did what she did. Because yes, she believes she doesn’t deserve him/good things, and in leaving, she’s keeping in tune with that self-preservation that you see in the vision -- no matter how hard she tries to grow from it.

And one of her biggest fears begins to stem from that: losing Steve and being at fault for it. For a long time, it was only about her. Never was she forced to take into consideration the others she was hurting. So in seeing Steve die over and over and over again, she’s forced to face the music and see how her actions killed the one person she loved. She’s not necessarily a bad person, but just has made a ton of bad decisions. Maybe one day I’ll do a ~prequel~ snippet or oneshot or something to that degree to show more of that past she’s tried so hard to run/grow from.

Her vision was really about putting her mistakes and the consequences that come from it in focus. She was forced to see that she was acting like that girl strapped to the bed in the isolation room, and because of it, she was losing the one man who loved her despite it all.

As for Nat’s vision, I wanted to build off of what we were already shown in AoU, but make it less about her not being able to have kids (cause.....okay Joss.... that’s not what makes her a monster). Really dig into the Red Room and some of the key players there, like Yelena. I already got into her training a few chapters prior to the vision one, so it was about honing in on that and reiterating some key things. Like the ballet sequence and how it’s used to be successful in missions or whatever. Again, like with Q, I tried to show how she had changed and grew from their pasts.

As for the fear I wanted to bring to light, I thought it would be completely plausible for one of her fears to be that the man she loved wasn’t really the man she thought he was. To put herself out there and love Dawson how she did was something that made her so vulnerable. Like this whole time she was thinking she had escaped the Red Room and the KGB and found a man who didn’t give a shit about her past so much so that she let the walls around her drop, only for it to be revealed that he was working for the same organization she tried so hard to escape from?? GAH!

And listen, we haven’t gotten a chance to really dive into their relationship as much as I wanted (not everyone seemed to be into it when there were mentions so I kinda put it to the side), but they have such a...dynamic that it made total sense to me to have her fear be what it was. Plus it’s always fun to write Dark!Dawson lol

Both of these gals are so oddly similar in that they have pasts that really did define them as well as fears revolving around the people they didn’t mean to fall in love with, that it just made sense to me have their visions be somewhat the same as well.

THE FAMILY DINNER:

Oh I loved this chapter for a multitude of reasons. Right off the bat, it was a chance for me to continue to lay down the track that connected Q to Bucky (i.e. Steve noticing the similar blue eyes), then really revealing it with the box of stuff in the basement. We finally get a chance to see her family dynamic because up until then her family was rarely mentioned (sans the Frankie chapter, but that’s different). She’s kept her familial relationships so close to her chest that literally in the beginning, I had an idea to just never mention her family ever, ever until the Bucky reveal. But with the dinner, you get a chance to see where she comes from and see how her upbringing molded her.

I wanted to show her family dynamics and where she fits into it all. She doesn’t have the best family, clearly. You get a chance to see what her parents think of her and her previous role as an agent for one of the governments most powerful branches (clearly unimpressed by it lol) She’s clearly the black sheep of the family and takes a lot of hits because of her past choices. There’s a lot of emotional abuse there tbh. And it was another way to kind of bring in her past without really diving too deep into it.

I liked getting a chance to write semi-domestic Queve with this and I think two of my favorite moments were the ones where it was just them in the house. The moment with them on the couch and her being Soft with him, then again in her bedroom with him getting a chance to see the younger!Q. This was huge relationship step for Steve and Q which makes what happens later so much more heartbreaking (to me at least).

Also this was a great opportunity for me to have a backdoor introduction to Molly and set up her relationship with her sister -- which will be later examined more during the Civil War portion of RiM and Molly’s standalone story as well!

⭐: BROOKLYN

For the star emoji one, I’m choosing my two favorite chapters aka the Brooklyn trip because fuck I love these chapters so much. In a way, it’s kinda the beginning of the end for them tbh haha it was a chance to push these two characters together even more so and use that thread that connected them (Brooklyn) as a way to bring them even closer. Show how much they had grown over the months together and how comfortable they had gotten with each other. (You could even say it was when they began to push themselves out of the “friendzone” without even realizing it)

I really loved the almost mirror lives they lived in Brooklyn too like when they passed by the alleyway and Steve mentioned he got beat up there, only to have Q tell him she had beat someone up there. From chapter one alone, they’ve always had that tie to Brooklyn connecting them so it was so nice to be able to explore the separate lives they lived, at different times, but still having some similarities to them.

Not to mention, it was a great way to get into Steve’s past more and learn about the things that were more for Steve not for Captain America. Like Coney Island or the pizza shop.

God there were so many great moments in these chapters that I loved writing like the dance club part and the photo booth at Coney Island and the curbside tacos, MATCHING FLUFFY ROBES.....It was just such a cutesy coupla chapters and I like to think they go back to that hotel in Brooklyn for their anniversary each year okay??

And OF COURSE THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!!!!!!!!! AND THEY HAD TO SHARE ITTTTTTTT

#answered #pixie tag #reality in motion #THANK YOUUUUUU #daaeleira

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deadrosencrantz · 6 years ago

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doctor who actually making the 19 year old companions act like 19 year olds has been an extremely good move. as a current 19 year old in the U.K., i feel like i'm at least a decent judge of this?

i mostly wanna talk about ryan because i think he's more the type of person I am, yaz also feels real to me but i guess i'll leave that to someone else

so! things about ryan that make me believe he's a dorky loser of my age despite tosin cole being a Real grown-up

he makes vlogs nobody watches

re-friends yaz, gently bullies her ("you just went way down in my opinion, he was punching above his weight")

WHERES THE RELOAD WHEREDS THE RELOAD AAAAAAAAAAA

(but negative points for making him reference call of duty when any REAL 19 year old boy would have referenced halo, ffs the weapons looked straight out of the covenant armoury)

(i assume he was simplifying himself for the benefit of graham who is only capable of remembering 1 (one) video game)

"did you just accidentally pay me a compliment?" "................whatever"

quiet frustration with a baby boomer for trying to force a connection, obvious differences in the way they communicate driving a wedge between them

uses social media and the internet and cares about his phone and nobody around him is a bitch about it because of course he does (i mention this because there's so much TV out there that can't resist taking a cheap shot at "tech-obsessed" youths whenever possible)

emotionally affected by tragedy, desire to respect the dead ("he knew he could die but he still did it anyway" about rahul in e1). that felt like an appeal to milennial/gen z sensibilities imo, like of course compassion is not exclusive to my generation but i feel like there's a lot of young people like me really craving the kind of like, acknowledgement of the human costs of things? i think this is kind of related to

ryan being like, not Socially Conscious, but having absorbed enough life to be Socially Conscious? like big mood, is there anything more late-teens than having some great social and moral ideas but not being exactly sure how to apply them or of relevant historical contexts

he wants fairness but isn't always conscious of how the world works ("tell me you don't get hassle")

also a special shout out for ryan not remembering who rosa parks was but it's not because he's totally ignorant, he just got confused on the details and did still have a good basis of knowledge on the civil rights movement, i love that we aren't going for absolutes

well thought out deadpan humour in front of others ("good, cause i don't eat them"), dorky talking to himself when alone. ("nice one ryan! THANKS RYAN!")

relationship-guruing total strangers (kerblam!) and the specific way he tells graham to shut up when he mentions ryan's similar issue

he doesn't mind when people are different! that's a big deal for the kind of teen i think ryan is being written as, which is to say, not a douchebag. he's grown up knowing human diversity and i think he's felt isolated enough he doesn't ever want to judge others? he accepts flirting from a gay man without being a lil bitch about it (i hate that i have to specify that as a positive but ykno toxic masculinity) and a man giving birth essentially without issue.

idk i just think it's nice that ryan seems to be written for open-minded nerdy kids and young people, and as a good role model of acceptance?

(semi related: i want ryan to be gay or bi more and more with every passing ep but he's likeable as a Woke Straight too)

doesn't hate his disability but has some level of frustration with it that imo is portrayed with enough nuance even in its brief appearances? and because diagnosis is easier these days i think that's a big thing for my gen, having a name for your problem for most of your life and being mostly at peace with it but like, god whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

"SILLY" PLANS THAT WORK!! being playfully judgemental of ppl for not knowing music, hello arachnids in the u.k.

what was it he said, "you have no idea how uncool you sound right now"? that was A+

his sometimes slightly awkward way of speaking, like, speaks to me, as a 19 year old with a developmental disability, and the balance of growing up/finding your feet with being different to your peers

he's used to graham being kind of mean about his dyspraxia but doesn't even really make a big deal of it bc old people just be like that ig

willing to admit mistakes but not to be teased for them by adults (woman who fell to earth, ghost monument, rosa, kerblam)

i know a lot of this is kind of projecty but like, that's what's so good about it!! ryan is close enough to me and my peers that it's possible to read him as one of us!! which is not true of a lot of media youth rep!

i CAN project onto ryan, more easily than with any other character in media

and i didn't know how much i needed that until chibz like, descended upon this show with divine providence

to be clear i'm not saying those traits are exclusive to my generation, just that i see a lot of our generalised attitude to life in ryan and that makes me happy. i see a lot of my life!! shit boi!! also i'm on the bus to uni and very tired so sorry if like literally none of this made sense, tbh this post barely even has a thesis i just wanted to write things i like about ryan

#doctor who #dw spoilers #ryan sinclair #chibnall era #max.txt

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foxydivaxx · 5 years ago

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Bad Apple Chapter 2

“Why did you bother to save me?”

Amon simply smiles at the girl as they float through the air. “Because I realized you and I are the same. We both went through hell and made mistakes and are being judged heavily for said mistakes.”

She stares at him in awe. This same boy that she chastised and bashed earlier for mistakenly murdering someone is now on her side for doing something similar even though she did it in the past when she was much younger.

“T-Thanks..”

Dick huffs as he walks up the stairs. He had not spoken to Babs in months ever since she found out about his past one night stand with Cassie and also his past relationship with Helena Bertinelli.

At first, he was saddened by it but as time went on, resentment began to grow within him as he began to realize that Jason was right. Babs was taking things out of context. Besides, why judge him on his past relationships when she has dated a couple guys as well?

Need to settle this once and for all.

He stops at the door and knocks on it. He does not hear a response.

He knocks the second time still no response.

He knocks a third time. Yet still no response.

He raises an eyebrow. Making things sketchier is the fact that Babs did not respond at all. Usually if he knocks, she would at least say something or he would hear some shuffling in the background. But there was so sound.

Did she head out? He places a hand on the door knob and turns it and is shocked to find it open. He walks in and discovers clothes all over the place and recognises some menswear nearby.

Suspicious, he heads into the room and finds the door slightly open and his jaw drops as he discovers Babs in bed with another man. It all began to make sense to him. Babs never loved or cared for him because if she did, she would not cheat on him like that. She would not be treating him like that and abuse him for months.

Once he gets over his shock, he bursts into the room, pulls the guy off Babs and punches him hard in the face. “Dick !! Dick!! Stop!!” Barbara yells. Dick growls and pushes her down onto the bed. “SO THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING WHILST I WAS AWAY HUH?! SO YOU’VE BEEN CREPEING BEHIND MY BACK YET YOU HAVE THE FUCKING AUDACITY TO CHASTISE ME FOR HAVING FEMALE FRIENDS?! OR EVEN HAVE PAST ROMATIC RELATIONSHIPS? YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO ISOLATE ME FROM EVERYONE I LOVE?!!”

Barbara has a fake sad look on her face. “Please...I..I can explain..” It was then that she does something very unexpected, something many warned Dick about and that was to stand upright as opposed to being an actual cripple.

Dick just explodes right there and lets her have it. “EXPLAIN WHAT?! EXPLAIN YOUR LIES ABOUT THE OTHER GIRLS ESPECIALLY KORI AND CASSIE?!! LISTEN HERE AND LISTEN GOOD!! I HAVE HAD IT WITH YOU AND YOUR BULLSHIT!! YOU NEVER FUCKING CARED OR LOVED ME!! AS I CAN CLEARLY SEE, YOU GOT YOUR LEGS FIXED, YET YOU FUCKING PRETENDED TO BE CRIPPLED TO GAIN CHEAP SYMPATHY AND TRAP ME HUH?!”

He then smirks. “Well guess what? Your evil ends here Babs. It’s over.” With that, he walks out leaving a stunned Barbara behind.

Meanwhile, Adrianna and Adam wait outside for Amon to arrive. They saw the news about Cassie and were just as worried about the girl’s sanity. Sure she did some questionable things but who else hasn’t?

“I expected a lot from Diana not this.” says Adrianna. Adam sighed. “Communication is key in every single relationship. If one fails to communicate, it naturally leads to unnecessary drama. I have been watching the Team and I have been noticing the hypocrisy that they and the Justice League have been encouraging. Case in point, Rose Wilson. We are meant to trust her. I get that Cassie can be very fiesty and hotblooded but Rose herself has said some nasty things. Yet people excuse her.” says Adam.

Before Adrianna could say anything more, a gush of wind announces Osiris’ arrival as he lands in front of them with Cassie in his arms. “Cassie!!” says Adrianna as she rushes over to the girl and pulls her into a hug. Cassie at first is takena aback by this but soon settles into her embrace and hugs the woman back.

“You ok Cassandra?” Adam asked. The girl looked down. “No. Besides I have no powers whatsoever but it’s ok.“

Adam then turns to Amon. “You should have shared your powers with her.” he says. Amon panics. “I do not want to endanger her.”

Adrianna interrupts them. “Now is not the time to discuss this. Let Cassie heal first before we do that.” she says. Cassie was internally grateful for Adrianna for that as they head into the Palace.

There was a feast laid out for her. Realizing how hungry she was, she begins to eat like a lion. The Adam family chuckles with amusement. “It seems all those strong emotions hungered her.”

“It sure did.” Cassie says between mouthfuls. Once she is done, they lead up to one of the guestrooms where she would be staying.

The following morning, Cassie wakes up and at first panics when she realizes that she does not have extra clothing until she spots what looks like a couple of her clothes.

Did Tatiana send these somehow?

Before she could ponder some more, Tatiana pops in the room. “Hi twinnie!!” Cassie jumps out of her bed and rushes towards her sister and scoops her itno a big hug.

“You idiot!! How could you be so selfish?!” Tatiana chastises her. Cassie sighs. “My bad my bad!!‘ They both laughed.

“Good to see you twins are here.” says Adrianna as she pops her head through the door. “Hey sis, go take a shower. I am thinking that some sight seeing here would do us some good.‘ says Tatiana. Cassie nods. “Ok gimme a minute.“

A couple miles away back in the US, everyone had gotten wind of the Dickbabs breakup. “About time tbh. Babs is a bad influence.” says Raven. “Babs started out nice then she just went bonkers.” says Zatanna.

“Thought it was her PTSD acting up but after what Dick told us about her deceit, I am starting to think otherwise.” says Rocket. “How long has she been acting that way?” Kori asked. “Even I don’t know.” says Helena as she sips some coffee.

All of Dick’s exes plus the other girls on the Team minus Cassie were all seated at Rocket’s house discussing the latest gossip. “Does that girl even have any friends?’ Donna asked.

“Not on this Team or the Superhero community that’s for sure.” says Artemis.”Didn’t realize she was that nasty till Dick told us everything she did to him, more or less confirming everything Cassie said about her.” says M’Gann. “Meaning that Babs manipulated and caused most of the drama with her gossip just so she could keep Dick all to herself.” says Stephanie.

“Disgusting. Totally disgusting.“ says Helena. “But Dick is not trophy. He is his own person and deserves a lot of love and respect. Just like Cassie.“ says Kori. They all nodded. “Well she is in Kahndaq right now and I bet Amon will treat her right. Better than both Conner and Tim ever did.“ says Artemis.

“Considering the fact that he stopped her from killing herself, makes perfect sense.“ says M’Gann. Donna smiles. “I am glad that he saved her. That alone proves that he is not half as bad as people made him out to be. He made a little mistake and has been trying to control himself.“ she says. “Besides we have all lost control of our emotions now that I think about it.“ says Kara, getting a harsh reminder of that time she served as a Red Lantern.

Vanessa hadn’t said anything because her guilt was eating her up inside. “W-Why did I allow Babs to get to me? I have destroyed Cassie’s life.” Donna pats her shoulder. “You have to apologise to Cassie but not now. She needs to calm down.” Vanessa nods.

Tim was in his lab, going through some files he managed to recover from Barabara’s system. The more he looks through things, the more disgusted he gets with Barbara. He looked up to this girl yet he allowed her to stir shit up, to manipulate him into hating both Cassie and Amon.

She had broken security protocol by hacking into toher people’s personal laptops and whatnot and uncovering all sorts of private personal information to use as blackmail. Thank goodness Amon saved Cassie from committing suicide otherwise, he would have laid the smackdown on Babs.

And to think that she lied about her paralysis.

He even found evidence to prove that Babs actually secretly did some surgery without anyone’s knowledge. He is sure that Babs would become Batgirl once again and if she ever does, the entire Batclan will come from her in droves.

Bruce slams his fists onto the table in anger. He cannot believe he allowed Barbara to play all of them like this. He is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective yet he got outsmarted by a devious person like Barbara.

The fact that she used to be Batgirl does not help matters either. He bets that now that Dick has cut her off, she would become Batgirl. He has already told the rest of the Bat clan to be on the lookout for Barbara and also re-welcomed those he had exiled from the family like Helena and Jason back into the fold.

“It just like the saying goes, the worst pain comes from the family.” says Alfred as he comes down into the Cave holding a tray of hot chocolate with Damian right behind him.

“Is it true what I heard about Gordon?” Damian asked. Bruce does not say anything but simply nods. “That evil tramp. She better go hide because if I find her, I shall tear her to shreds!!” says Damian.

“Language Master Damian!!” Alfred chastises her.

Speaking of Barbara, she decided to leave Gotham for a while so that the uproar would die down. She had done some really terrible things indeed and it is best she leaves and then comes back.

Commissioner Gordon was already informed and he has basically disowned his daughter because as far as he was concerned, he never raised his daughter to be like this meaning that she was no different from her psychotic brother James Gordon Jr.

My God what have I done?

Still it was too late, the damage has been done. No one would ever forgive her. She almost ruined a young girl’s life with her actions afterall, it was she that told Vanessa and manipulated her into exposing Cassie’s big secret. Anyway, she is leaving town but not for good.

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spideyxchelle · 7 years ago

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What if Peter is setup on a blind date but he doesn't want to go alone so he talks MJ into finding a date so they can double. It's a mess. The worst double date ever. MJ orders for Peter, Peter eats off MJ's plate, they tell inside jokes. People mistake who's dating who.

okay, so this headcanon REALLY speaks to me on a personal level because I am watching The Office right now with my roommate and I am growing increasingly fascinated with Mindy Kahling and BJ Novak. they’re soup snakes (look it up) and this headcanon feels like that. with a dash of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively (apparently they were friends 5ever and went on a double date together with different people and just IGNORED their dates)

[part 2]

Peter and MJ are best friends. or that is their official statement. and they both almost believe it.

their friends are less convinced, tbh. because friends don’t sit in each other’s laps and cuddle or wear each other’s clothes or talk all day EVERY DAY. huh. or maybe they do. BUT ITS NOT WHAT THEY DO, OKAY?! its HOW they do it. Peter and MJ are everything to each other. they aren’t Peter or MJ. they’re Peter AND MJ. so there isn’t really room for romance in their lives because how could anyone compete with that friendship level? it all feels very How Harry Met Sally.

or, um, IT WOULD FEEL LIKE THAT BUT THEY AREN’T GOING TO END UP WITH EACH OTHER. again, official statement.

when they go away to college (Peter at MIT and MJ at Harvard) they spend loads of time together because their schools aren’t that far away. but because they aren’t in actual classes together not everyone who knows Peter and MJ know about the weird friendship soul mate thing they have going on.

which is why Harry Osborn thinks its a great idea to ask MJ out. she’s smart, funny and beautiful and because he’s never met Peter, doesn’t even know who he is or who he is to MJ, it’s a no brainer. and MJ figures why not??? Harry’s smart, nice and she wouldn’t mind making out with his face.

once they’ve made a date, she immediately texts Peter and he’s REALLY excited!! because get it MJ.

and when Ned comes to visit from Stanford for the weekend and MJ isn’t around Peter brows at Ned and tells him that MJ has a hot date. Ned nearly chokes and Peter is slapping his back, BREATHE friend, “Ned are you okay?” Ned sputters, “you’re cool with MJ going on a date?” Peter shrugs, “sure, why wouldn’t I be?” Ned rubs his temples, “I don’t understand you two.”

after Ned leaves, MJ texts Peter about her date. he wants all the details, so he makes her drag her ass to his dorm so they can talk in person. they both get under his blankets when she arrives and MJ unloads all the deets. while snuggling.

official statement. HELLO.

mid-cuddle is when MJ asks, “I want him to meet you. double date?” peter shrugs, “sure. there’s this cute girl in my biochem class I could ask.” MJ reaches over his body and swipes some of the cookies on his bedside table. Peter’s dormmate absolutely hates whenever MJ sleeps over. weirdos.

Peter asks Kitty Pryde out and she seems really excited that he asked. apparently he’s always so nose-deep in his phone that she was afraid to make a move. in case he was texting his girlfriend. Peter laughs a little too hard and tells her that he’s texting his best friend MJ, not his girlfriend. that’s ridiculous.

they go on a few dates themselves, making sure that everyone is comfortable (Harry and MJ, Peter and Kitty) before they decide to ask their significant others to meet their best friend. not that Harry doesn’t know about Peter or Kitty about MJ. the two are ALWAYS talking about each other. and its weird the way they talk. its too close for comfort. but whenever Harry and Kitty try and ask they’re brushed off because LOL OFFICIAL STATEMENT. peter is used to saying, “i know how it sounds but we’re really just best friends. its insanely platonic.”

they decide that the double date is gonna be dinner and then a walk around town. Cambridge is a beautiful city in the fall.

when they arrive at dinner, Peter and MJ hug really tight and immediately start talking. totally forgetting to do formal introductions. so Harry and Kitty stand there awkwardly until Harry touches MJ’s back and says gently, “babe, wanna introduce us?”

Peter flushes, “sorry man,” he extends his hand and shakes Harry’s, “I’m Peter. this is my girlfriend, Kitty.” Kitty waves. Harry smiles, tight, “I’m Harry.” MJ smirks at Kitty and points to herself, “MJ. great. intros done. dinner?”

Peter lets out a belly laugh and guides MJ into the restaurant. leaving both Harry and Kitty in the dust. the two share a look like what have I gotten myself into??

when they sit down, Peter sits next to Kitty and MJ next to Harry. but Peter and MJ are across from each other. so they dominate the conversation. and half of the conversation is barely understandable because they have YEARS of inside jokes between them. and its not quite a romantic relationship but its closer than best friends should be. they tunnel vision when they’re together.

and that tunnel vision is isolating to their dates.

when the waiter arrives, Kitty exhales like maybe now they will have caught up enough to let the rest of the table in on their conversation. instead, MJ orders Peter’s very specific order, ”steak, well done, like he wants it hockey puck hard and tasteless….and broc…no asparagus and mashed potatoes”. Peter grins and shrugs when the waiter looks to him to correct her, “nah, she’s right.”

once the ordering is done, Harry speaks up, trying to get the table to talk TOGETHER, not just in pairs that are not their dates. it works slightly but, um, Peter and MJ still throw out inside jokes.

when the food arrives Peter starts to steal some of MJ’s french fries and she swats at his hands. “you got mashed potatoes, loser.” “c’mon MJ,” he whines, “just one.” “it’s NEVER just one with you.” this conversation goes back and forth way too long to be comfortable.

and when the check arrives after the WORST DATE IN HISTORY, the waiter rubs salt in the wound by telling Peter and MJ, “you two are really cute, by the way.”

Harry slams his hands on the table and stands up, “that’s it,” all three sets of eyes snap to him, “I’m not gonna play second fiddle to your best friend, MJ. i’m out.” MJ blinks, confused, “excuse me?” “i’m not gonna try and compete with Peter,” he tosses some cash on the table, “thanks for the worst date ever.”

Kitty slowly takes her wallet out and pushes some money toward Peter, “um, I’m going to have to go, too. I’d say this was fun but it really wasn’t.”

and suddenly both Kitty and Harry are gone. Peter and MJ gawk at each other. because OFFICIAL STATEMENT. “what was that about??” MJ says bluntly. Peter shrugs, “no idea.”

they pay the bill in silence and when they go outside, Peter offers MJ his jacket. she’s shivering. its a friendly friendship thing. hello.

two months later, when Ned visits again he asks about her HOT DATE and MJ just shrugs and plops in Peter’s lap, “they got weird about Peter. no idea why.” Peter starts to run his fingers through the ends of her hair, “it was really dramatic on their end.”

Ned deadpans, “oh yea. I bet.”

he doesn’t even try to broach the topic with them because HE KNOWS THE OFFICIAL STATEMENT. whatever. they can be weird all on their own. he’s not gonna get involved.

#headcanon ask

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andryuska · 7 years ago

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🔥 + the fandom's interpretation of andrei

send 🔥 + a topic for an unpopular opinion ( accepting )

where do i even fucking begin? okay, there are a lot of not so good interpretations of andrei through the great comet fandom ( which is what i’m gonna focus on, the war and peace book fandom is pretty good ) and so i think my unpopular opinion on them is that they just… exist at all, tbh. like, the source material ( literally just one song ) is not exactly great at portraying the depths of andrei, i get that, but there are some ways that it’s taken that are totally off the mark and it really bothers me. i’m gonna put the general things here and you can read more if you want to, because i have a lot to say about a few particular things: first, andrei is not a villain, second, andrei had every right to refuse to forgive natasha and this should not be seen as a malicious action on his part ( because it fucking isn’t ), and third, ( in a bit of a different direction ) andrei and natasha would not have had a good marriage. explanations under the cut.

andrei is not a villain. he’s not. it’s just not a thing, he’s not a villainous character and when he’s malicious it’s because he’s trying to contain a very deep grief through repression, and because he grew up in a household where expressing emotions was not okay ( especially for andrei, who was being molded by his father into a very traditional and unhealthy image of masculinity ), he ‘s trying to suppress those emotions. the way he knows how to do that? by being cold and very standoffish, and then by just completely refusing to talk about it.

when pierre comes to see andrei, andrei refused to see him at first, and is engaged in a debate about politics. while he and pierre talk, andrei is reserved and pretty much just pushes away every emotional question. he says he can’t forgive her, and that’s it, that’s the end of the story, he doesn’t want to talk about it, and the way he expresses it is almost forceful because that’s the person he’s been told to be by traditional russian society ( via his father ). when he tells pierre to go and to never speak to him of the matter again, it’s about avoiding questions. and after that, you’ll note, he and pierre relationship as friends is essentially over, because andrei has just buried himself so deep in repression and this desire for revenge against anatole ( to defend honor and because he’s understandably upset ) that friendship won’t do anything. andrei self isolates, but it is NOT out of a desire to be malicious or evil. it’s just a thing that he does, that is unhealthy and comes off kind of badly when you don’t have the whole context of the rest of his reaction.

further, and there’s a post out there somewhere about this but i’m not going to dig it up, when he “ smiles coldly [and] maliciously ” it’s not because he’s happy about hearing natasha’s in bad shape - he most certainly is not. rather, he’s trying to push thing away, and again it comes off as kind of horrible, even if that is in no way his intention. you gotta remember, andrei is not very adequate socially, he’s not good at these emotional cues, and so sometimes the right expression just won’t translate. expressing grief with a sort of pained smile is one such miscalculation, in my opinion, and it shouldn’t be taken as an expression of actual and intentional malice toward natasha.

andrei had every right to refuse to forgive natasha and this should not be seen as a malicious action on his part. my mom kind of put this in perspective for me when i told her about great comet, and it basically goes like this: andrei doesn’t have to forgive natasha, because even though it’s sad, and even though we sympathize with natasha and know she made a mistake and was definitely manipulated in some degree by anatole, she still fucking cheated on him. as far as andrei knows, she had every intention of going through with her elopement and she refused him very much on her own volition. the complexities of those actions are known to us, but they are not known to andrei, and again. she cheated on him, no matter the motivation behind it, and so he has every right not to forgive her because of that.

also important is that in refusing her, andrei is not acting maliciously ( imagine me, having to clarify this again and again ) against natasha, but acting in accordance with his own grief, and with the sense of betrayal that’s come with her refusing him. no matter the circumstances of their relation from his perspective, which i will get in to in the next section, what she did hurt him a lot, and he has every right to respond to that pain with not wanting to forgive her immediately and reconcile their relationship. take what happened and put it in another story, and we’d all be agreeing with andrei, not having this discussion about the ethics of refusing to reconcile your betrothal with someone who very much intended to refuse you for another man despite having already promised marriage.

( all of you who made it this far: thanks for putting up with me, and be warned that this next one is the unpopular opinion that is probably the most controversial. )

andrei and natasha would not have had a good marriage. listen, i know it’s nice to think about them living in a happy marriage with each other and all of their problems being solved, but it wouldn’t work out. whether you count in the anatole drama or not, they just wouldn’t have been able to sustain happiness together. there are reasons on both sides for this, but this unpopular opinion is about andrei, so i’m going to focus on why he wouldn’t have been happy marrying natasha. that’s not to say they did not love each other: andrei loves natasha lot, even after she refuses him, and he is indeed very invested in her happiness and would do a lot of things for her. he loves her unquestionably, but that does not necessarily make up the basis of a happy marriage when there are other factors at play. so here we go;

exhibit a: before he leaves, when he asks for her hand and when she says yes, he already suddenly loses a lot of the hope that he has. like, she says yes, and he suddenly clues into her faults and starts to forget that very temporary bout of happiness he has after otradnoe. it’s not natasha’s fault, it’s just who andrei is: he has a disillusionment deeply ingrained in him, and the moment he gets too close, the moment he can lift the veil of ignorance, he’s going to find faults and its going to make him unhappy, and it’s a pervasive problem: much earlier on, he says to pierre that he can’t sleep because he has all these intellectual burdens, and that applies just as much to marriage.

this is because andrei is not so cool with the idea of marriage itself. there are some sexist reasons ( which i do not condone and completely downplay here, because tolstoy was a dick and i’m not making that a part of my portrayal ) and more importantly here, there are some objections to the “ consequences ” of marriage that andrei has. namely, a life that is heavily focused on inaction and society, one wherein people talk about political affairs and military operations as though they’re games, when it fact they’re something he sees as an enormous tragedy and failing of mankind, that should not be taken likely. he feels useless when he’s married ( see: his very bad marriage to lise ) and marrying natasha, regardless of love, wouldn’t change that.

exhibit b: andrei and natasha are fundamentally different people that, though in the early stages of their relationship, might be okay, would not have led to a long term happiness between them. andrei has a very cynical view of the world and of other people, he does not enjoy things in society, and he is intensely intellectual and judgmental and harsh to those who cannot necessarily keep up with that intellect. natasha is wonderful, and i love her, but she and andrei couldn’t have kept their happiness up for long because andrei would inevitable become disillusioned with her, and then likely get bored and end up miserable again. not because he would fall out of love, but just because they’re not exactly that compatible. andrei needs someone in the long term who can not only offset his cynicism, but can also fight against it, and who also has at least enough similar interests that they’ll never lack for intellectual conversation. because, after all, andrei does not do talk about emotions and other people very well, he needs that political and intellectual side as well, and for all the things she does have, natasha doesn’t really have that.

there’s also the thing about natasha being very young and still quite inexperienced whereas andrei has had a lot of very terrible experiences and some difficult trauma from them, and the fact that they cannot seem to keep up their relationship with separation, which is something that would have happened a lot in their marriage - whether he wanted it or not, andrei would have been going away frequently. so, while there’s a lot of points for their relationship, like that love and affection, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to something long term and sustainable.

tl:dr: their marriage would have been a bit of a mess, and probably would have caused them both unhappiness even if they continued to love each other.

anyway, i guess i should conclude that long, completely unedited rant with a saying that if you have a different opinion, that’s fine, this is just the interpretation that i take from having read the book. if you want to hear more anger ranting about andrei, i actually do have more opinions, so send me that ask with the same topic and i will continue, i promise. otherwise, um, thanks for putting up with me and my bitterness.

#answered #headcanon #about #¯\_(ツ)_/¯#i have opinions and im not sorry about it #moscowsdragon

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