#there’s some really interesting parallels happening here that I can’t quite put into worse

[shepscapades]

Your highness… I don’t feel so good

[makeste]

save no matter what.

so this is going to ultimately be a post about Deku. however, if you’ll be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to start things off by making a point about Bakugou. specifically, I’d like to point out that back in the day before this kid got Character Development no Jutsu’d, people weren’t always so inclined to view his attitude towards winning in the best light. which is a nice way of saying that he came off as unhealthily obsessed, not to mention more than a little unhinged.

sorry for the image spam btw, I just think they’re funny. he’s so demented lmao. KILL DIE CRUSH.

anyway so we’re gonna do the rest of this below a cut before it gets long. but I promise it really is a Deku post lol. don’t let the pre-readmore stuff fool you. I PROMISE THERE IS A POINT, AND WE WILL GET TO IT.

anyway! so yeah, we really didn’t have the best impression of Bakugou’s whole winning fixation at the beginning there. and I mean, it’s not like we had the best impression of Bakugou himself at the start of things either. we were already primed from the very first chapter to see this kid as an adversary to Izuku. the story goes out of its way to paint him in pretty much the worst light possible. which is why what happens next is so interesting.

because one might see all this and think, “holy heck, this kid is off the shits, somebody needs to set him straight pronto and get it into his head that winning isn’t everything.” because that’s almost the natural conclusion to draw. “look at this kid, he doesn’t care about helping other people at all, all he cares about is winning, someone needs to come along and show him that he’s got it backwards.”

except that’s not what happens, is it? because this is where, much to my delight, Horikoshi came along and started subverting expectations. because not only is Katsuki not rebuked for being so obsessed with winning -- it’s pretty much the exact opposite.

the one and only time Deku ever straight up hands Katsuki’s ass to him is when he says he doesn’t want to win. Deku is IMMEDIATELY all, “THE FUCK KIND OF BULLSHIT DID I JUST HEAR OUT OF YOUR TRASH MOUTH,” and that’s when he sets him straight.

the important people in Katsuki’s life never tell him, “hey you need to cool it with the whole winning thing.” All Might and Aizawa never scold him for it, or tell him that he shouldn’t try with everything he has to win, or that wanting to win is a bad thing. on the contrary, they both commend him for it. and ultimately, he’s told by All Might that this desire is actually one of the two fundamental qualities that every great hero needs.

he completely turns the whole thing on its head. not only is it not a bad thing, it’s actually crucial. essential. because what the desire to win really is, at its core, is tenacity. it’s the fiercest kind of determination. it’s not something he should be ashamed of; it’s something that sets him apart, something that makes him worthy. he is someone who refuses to back down no matter what. refuses to give up, no matter what. and this quality, which is initially misunderstood by some to the point where even the villains mistakenly take him for one of their own in the making, is eventually validated to the fullest degree by the person that Katsuki looks up to the most. his desire to win goes from being this awkward “son wtf are you doing” thing to being one of the core philosophies of the series. and ever since then, we pretty much don’t question it.

so why do I bring this up now? well, the answer to that can basically be summed up in one word.

“parallels.”

so here’s the thing. there’s been a lot of talk lately about Deku’s ridiculous, reckless, and absurdly self-destructive desire to save others while having little to no regard for himself. currently he’s lying in a hospital bed, having broken approximately 218 out of the 206 bones in his little hero body (yes, somewhere along the way he found an additional dozen bones to break). it is worrying. it is Concerning. and it’s raised a lot of questions, such as “???” and “wtf is this idiot doing.”

and a lot of people have been pretty critical of him! this is, of course, an ongoing thing with this child, and people have been giving him grief over it going as far back as chapter 6.

while others have been bothered by it going even further back than that.

and I’ve seen these sentiments being echoed pretty frequently in the fandom as well. and there are basically two talking points that I want to address here. the first is the idea that Deku’s aggressive brand of selflessness stems from an inherent lack of self-worth. in other words, because he prioritizes other people’s safety and well-being above his own, and is willing to go to such drastic lengths to save them, there’s this feeling that he doesn’t value himself enough, that he must not care about himself.

but I don’t think that’s quite it. let’s go back to those parallels first, though. let’s take another look at Kacchan.

what I mainly want to call attention to is the intensity here. again, it’s something that at first strikes most readers as being absurdly over the top. the truth is, I think a lot of people simply can’t relate to it. Katsuki cares about winning with a ferocity and a fervor that most people, for better or worse, simply don’t have. I certainly don’t, lol.

but he does. to him it’s not a shallow, superficial thing at all. it’s important to him, perhaps the most important thing. I think we often talk about it in terms of it being a desire, but imo a more accurate way to define it is not as a want, but as a need. in other words, it’s the opposite of the question “what is it this character wants” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live without”)? instead, it’s a question of “what is it they don’t want” (i.e. “what is it they can’t live with”)?

and in Katsuki’s case, the thing he can’t live with is feeling like he hasn’t tried his absolute best. he needs to give his all in everything he does. he wants to win, but winning just on its own is not enough.

it has to be earned. he has to prove to himself and to everyone else that he deserves it. anything less than that is unacceptable. anything less than that, and he can’t be at ease. he can’t be settled. he can’t rest. and so he puts everything he has into winning, even if it means going to extremes. because it’s that important to him.

it’s something that’s at times alarming and even disturbing for others to witness. but nonetheless, it’s a part of who he is, and at the end of the day his teachers accept that, and the story acknowledges that it’s his greatest strength.

so now, to finally bring this back around to Deku, this is what I keep seeing in his character as well. only in his case, the thing he can’t live with is knowing that he didn’t do everything he possibly could to save someone. or to put it another way, Deku, at his core, is someone who cannot rest until he knows that everyone is safe. simple as that. it’s not just a desire to protect people; it’s a need. he needs to know that everyone is safe and protected. otherwise he can’t be at ease. it’s no different from how normal, everyday people aren’t able to feel at ease unless they know that they are safe and that their loved ones are safe. it’s just that in Deku’s case, this same fundamental need extends to everyone, not just himself and his friends and family. everyone. he can’t live with himself knowing that someone was in trouble, and he had the ability to do something to help, but didn’t. and so, if you literally can’t live with not doing something, you basically have no choice but to do it.

and this is what in my opinion defines Deku’s character. Kacchan, in trying to understand it, noted that Deku doesn’t seem to take himself into account. but I think OFA Prime summed it up a little more accurately. “he rages for the sake of others. for them, he does his best until he can do no more. this young man is possessed by a drive to save others that eclipses all common understanding.”

so yeah. it’s not that he doesn’t care about himself at all, it’s that he cares about others even more. he has that same intensity and ferocity towards saving people that Katsuki has towards winning. and just as it was difficult at first for fans to understand Katsuki’s feelings, it’s hard to fathom the sheer depth of that “save everyone” feeling that compels Deku to break his own body in that pursuit. it’s scary, not to mention extremely destructive and dangerous. and so really, it was almost inevitable that there would be some backlash.

but just like Katsuki’s desire to win was ultimately validated in the end, I think Deku’s desire to save others will be as well. in fact it already is being validated, for starters by the other denizens of OFA, led by Lil Bro as mentioned above. let’s go back for a moment to that same scene.

here we get a huge hint that “Deku gets taken down a notch and chewed out and scolded for his recklessness” is not, in fact, the direction that the story is going in. because in general, when the main villain starts mocking the hero and saying that they’ve done something wrong, that’s a very good sign that said hero is actually on the exact right track. like, no offense, but as far as character critiques go, AFO is probably the least qualified person in the entire manga to start offering those up lol. so yeah. if AFO is denouncing Deku for something, and OFA Prime is praising him for that exact same thing, I think it’s safe to say that means he is in fact doing something very, very right.

“okay but makeste, he nearly got himself killed and broke all of his arms AND legs and is now lying in a fucking coma,” you say, gesturing emphatically to the last page of chapter 298. “so I mean, that’s all well and good that Wonder Boy has the best of intentions and all that, but at the end of the day he’s only one kid. he literally can’t save everyone, and if he pulls one or two more stunts like this, he’s going to get himself killed.”

and okay, but this here is the other talking point that I wanted to address. because it’s true, Deku does need to learn a specific lesson here. but that lesson is NOT that he can’t save everyone. this is a superhero story, guys -- “you can’t save everyone” is never going to be the underlying message, ever. it’s the OPPOSITE of the message. Deku is the hero because he tries to save everyone. because he doesn’t give up on saving people no matter what. that is literally the core of the story. it has been since the very first chapter.

so then what is it that Deku actually needs to learn here? well, once again, it all comes back to those parallels.

btw, I really just love how he’s carrying Katsuki there lol. he’s just so done with him.

but anyway. so, the final exam arc. Katsuki initially wants to win at all costs -- but there’s a hitch. because even though he wants to win, he refuses to do so while working with Deku. enter Deku’s left hook, and one impromptu Rival Encouragement Speech later, our boy has thankfully come to his senses.

but here’s the point -- the lesson here wasn’t “you can’t always win.” rather, the lesson that Katsuki needed to learn was that you can’t always win alone.

yeah. so now you can see what I’m getting at here.

“...on your own.”

that’s the key. this is the one and only thing that Deku actually needs to get into his head. wanting to save everyone is fine! his will to save others has never been a weakness -- it’s been the most admirable thing about him from day one. it’s what makes him strong. it’s why All Might chose him. it’s why OFA has chosen him. it’s what sets him apart, and I firmly believe it’s what will ultimately help him save the day and defeat AFO as well. because what other character would look at Shigaraki Tomura, the person who just impaled his friend and destroyed an entire city, and instinctively reach out a hand to try and save him? and if you don’t think that’s going to wind up being key to the final battle, you and I have very different ideas about this series’ endgame.

Deku’s determination to save everyone isn’t arrogance or futility. it is and always has been his greatest strength. but what he’s missing now, what he needs to learn, is simply to trust. y’all might have seen that theory about the Fourth’s quirk, and why All Might was so hesitant to tell Deku about it. basically, the theory (which is based on an attempted translation of the crossed-out parts of All Might’s OFA notebook) goes that the Spidey Sense was so overwhelming that the Fourth -- whose cause of death was one of the things crossed out -- eventually couldn’t bear it, and went to live alone in the middle of the woods somewhere. and possibly wound up killing himself?? all of which is just speculation right now of course. but it makes sense. and it would certainly explain why All Might, being all too aware of Deku’s self-destructive tendencies, would keep that from him.

but if this is the case, that means it’s clear that the Fourth’s solution didn’t work. “give up and accept that you can’t save everyone” clearly is NOT the answer to be had here.

the answer is trust. trust that his fellow heroes have his back. trust that they’ll be able to help him reach the people he’s not able to reach on his own. trust that they can work together to save everyone. that he doesn’t have to rest the entire world on his shoulders alone.

it’s the one lesson that All Might, his predecessor and his teacher, never learned himself until it was too late. but of course, All Might never had a prickly and determined rival who was ready to step in and deal out some tough love if need be. a rival who, perhaps, just might soon get a chance to repay an old favor.

“I don’t wanna hear you say you can’t save someone.”

I’m just saying. just as Deku has been watching Katsuki all this time, and admiring his determination to win, and emulating it himself, so has Katsuki recently begun to emulate Deku’s determination to save others. we’ve seen it not just in his recent act of self-sacrifice, but even in little things like his habits and tricks of speech. just like Katsuki is Deku’s image of victory, Deku is becoming Katsuki’s image of saving others.

and so I’ll bet you anything that if Deku ever starts to doubt himself, or starts feeling like his dream and desires are futile, Kacchan will be there to set him straight with a good old fashioned Rival Encouragement Speech of his own. possibly with his own left hook to match, though his left shoulder is currently out of sorts atm so he might need to modify that approach a little bit. but the point is, he’ll be there. and he will not allow Deku to give up on himself. he will be there to remind him that he doesn’t have to face this alone.

so yeah! finally managed to wrap up my giant Deku meta which I’ve been working on for ages and rewritten like fifteen times lmao. just in time for this to be relevant for all of a day, probably, depending on what happens once chapter 279 drops lol. but yeah. tl;dr, local boy tries to do too much, but his heart is in the right place, and hopefully all he really needs is a good pep talk from his tsundere bff to set him to rights again. r.i.p. to the Fourth, but he’s different.

[intyalote]

What are your thoughts of Helian Yi? I just feel so bad for him in Qiye and I think that it was unfair for ppl to hate him for actions that an alt!version of him did.

Oh boy, I hope you’re ready anon, because I have SO MANY thoughts. Sorry for the essay - I couldn’t help myself.

I already wrote a bit about him here (from the perspective of power and the loneliness of being Emperor), and I’ll point you to hunxi-after-hours’s Qi Ye summary post as well, which makes a couple points about him that I completely agree with. 

My biased take is that Helian Yi deserved better - I even had a few moments of regret while reading that he and Jing Beiyuan weren’t the endgame couple. I love Xiyuan and Wuxi, and Helian Yi/Jing Beiyuan would necessitate a very different novel, but I think that dynamic would be so interesting. Anyway, shipping aside, I was quite surprised to go on tumblr after finishing Qi Ye and find that some people really hated him, because when I was reading I mostly just saw him as a tragic parallel to Jing Beiyuan.

I do understand why some people are put off by him considering that, though it doesn’t happen in this lifetime, he does kill the protagonist of the novel. It’s just that I saw that as part of the tragedy of his “7-lifetime fate” with Jing Beiyuan. In the first lifetime, Jing Beiyuan pines for him and he doesn’t realize until it’s too late that he loves him back. In the seventh life, Helian Yi becomes aware of his own love much earlier - but ironically, it’s only because Jing Beiyuan doesn’t love him this time around and so he can’t take that devotion for granted anymore. I think he’s drawn so strongly to Jing Beiyuan in the seventh life because Jing Beiyuan has this freedom (which in itself comes from not loving Helian Yi anymore!) that he himself will never be able to achieve, and that’s what makes it all so tragic. The circumstances are such that they literally cannot both be in love with each other at the same time. That’s part of what I was trying to get at with my earlier meta.

The other thing I wanted to say in that post is - yes, he’s not a great person. But no one in Qi Ye is, and I never got the impression while reading that, in terms of morals or lack thereof, Helian Yi is any worse than Jing Beiyuan or Zhou Zishu. All three of them parallel each other in such interesting ways, and it’s a little weird to me that one gets singled out as worse than the others. This TYK meta argues that what makes all these terrible people sympathetic is that they choose to love - well, Helian Yi doesn’t get to make that choice. Partly because Jing Beiyuan makes it for him, and partly because he’s the Emperor, and can’t afford to put personal attachments above his duty. If you think of Qi Ye/TYK as novels about escaping court, the end message is basically that the degree to which you can do so is determined by your proximity to the throne. Zhou Zishu, as a jianghu man, can just leave entirely, Jing Beiyuan can sort of leave but can’t completely let go of politics, and Helian Yi can’t get out at all, ever. 

All this to say that, while I have nothing against his haters, to each their own and all that, I personally find him to be a deeply sympathetic character. I haven’t even touched on some of the other things I love about him, like how his father’s coldness and brothers’ scheming fucks him up, or how we suddenly get to see his core of steel during the invasion, but I do want to talk a little bit about how his Qi Ye self is different from his first life self, because it does feel a bit unfair that he has to suffer for something he doesn’t even remember doing. 

I’ve already gone into why Helian Yi realizes that he’s in love a lot sooner, but the other thing is - he lets Jing Beiyuan go. Yes, in the end he thinks Jing Beiyuan is dead, but before that he flat-out tells him to leave with Wuxi and is surprised when he doesn’t. From that, and from reading the Helian Yi extra (which is super depressing by the way, highly recommend), what I gather is that Qi Ye Helian Yi is a lot more self-aware. He knows that he loves Jing Beiyuan, and he knows that he can’t love Jing Beiyuan, and he knows that trying to keep Jing Beiyuan will result in destroying everything he loves about him. And though he chooses to let go - in those circumstances, isn’t that also a form of love? It’s just such a terrible situation to be in, and, all other things aside, that’s why he’s so compelling to me. 

[vidavalor]

Bucky flirting with Sam as part of the changing times theme in Ep 5...

This is on the long side. Contains brief mention of the show basically canonizing Bucky as a sexual assault survivor. It’s meta on Bucky and Sam’s identity themes and how the show is shifting into a theme of changing times with the latest episodes-- mostly about how Bucky’s journey is paralleling Sam’s, even while being a different kind of journey.

One of the more interesting subtle themes of Ep 5 is that while we have had a lot of emphasis in the earlier episodes on how much horror still exists in America-- and a very right, necessary emphasis-- as the show begins to pivot towards the part of Sam’s journey that involves him deciding to become Captain America, they are pivoting a bit to illustrate that as much as many things have, unfortunately, not changed the way they should have over time, a lot really has. (Also, the Sam-as-Captain-America thing isn’t meant to be a spoiler as I don’t really totally know if that’s the ending, it just seems um... really the only place this story is going...) They have been using Isaiah to illustrate this point for Sam quite a bit in Ep 5, especially. The core conflict comes from Isaiah believing that a self-respecting Black man wouldn’t want to fight for America after the horrors that have been done to Black people in its history, which is not something that Sam ultimately feels is true. He definitely feels the pain of Black history in America but he still believes *in* America and views it as his country and is accepting that everyone in it really has a role to play in making it live up to the ideals it espouses but has still yet to achieve. In deciding to appreciate Isaiah choosing to open up to him and share his story but respectfully disagree with him on what to do next-- and to have his ability to make this choice reinforced by Sarah supporting him by saying she knows he will choose to fight in the fights he believes in and she has his back-- Sam is choosing to become a symbol of something, even if he’s just a man, and he’s affirming to himself that it is okay for him to believe in this thing he believes in. It’s okay for him to believe in America and love America and what it stands for, even in all its extremely imperfect glory, because he can be the change he wants to see in the world. He knows there are many people who will support him in that and that it only happens if we make it happen and that America, in all its imperfection, has made a lot of positive change happen throughout its short history. 

You know who else is enjoying similar truths in the same episode? Bucky. 

Bucky arrives in Delacroix all “Hello, 21st Century! I’ve always wanted to flirt with a man in public! I will be over here, lifting heavy stuff and getting in the personal space of your next Captain America, Good People of Delacroix, Louisiana!” What’s so endearing about this is not even just that this is clearly the first time that Bucky has felt like he has some control over his own mind, after proving he can manage The Winter Soldier in him a bit in the last few episodes, but that he’s working towards this kind of peace in a time where he really no longer has to hide any part of himself. Long before The Winter Soldier, Bucky was so the guy with a girl on each arm and a guy in the dark of the back alley. He has never, in his entire century-plus of living, been able to really be who he is without fear. It’s not as if there is not any fear left for LGBTQIA people in the world because, sadly, of course there is but loving Sam would have gotten Bucky arrested twice over in the 1940s. Interracial marriage was illegal until the Loving Act of 1967-- and that was still just for heterosexual couples. Obviously, same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized in the U.S. until 2015. If Bucky had been caught with a man in his youth, let alone a Black man, they both would have been arrested. Even if they were let go (and Bucky would have been more likely to suffer less, on account of being white), their reputations and ability to work and serve in the military could have been impacted. 

The show toys with this with Bucky’s interest in exploring it, even through the haze of a lot of severe trauma, back in Episode 1. While he’s mainly eating at the sushi bar because he’s befriended Yori on account of his amends project, he is living in a very modern existence by regularly conversing with these two. Consider that the show chose to make both of them Japanese, basically to illustrate that Bucky, in a sense, was always progressive for his time period. Bucky *could* have been the kind of WW2 soldier who forever saw people of the countries the Allies fought against as an enemy-- your grandfathers and great-grandfathers who never stopped hating the Japanese. But he’s not. He actually comes off as someone whose inability to fit the mode of the heterosexual white American guy in his own time period lent him a lot of empathy towards others and I might be wrong about this because I can’t quite recall at the moment but wasn’t he drafted, as opposed to enlisted? It’s doubtful he even really wanted to fight, although he’s always up for a fight against a bully and clearly hated the Nazis (but wanting to fight fascism makes you far from intolerant.) My point is that Bucky, back in Ep 1, is already experimenting with how living in the 21st century could be a positive thing for him in a life he might want to make for himself, if he can get through his trauma enough to do so.

He eats lunch on the regular with a man who is, in all likelihood, descended somewhere from at least one person who fought on the enemy side to Bucky in WW2. He regularly chats with Leah, who is completely unlike anyone he would have been able to talk to in the 1940s and seems almost designed to be *exactly* that intentionally-- she is a woman with a job that wasn’t like a nurse or a teacher or Peggy Carter lol. She tends bar, a job that was virtually exclusively male in the ‘40s. She has open visible tattoos and is probably putting herself through college-- something that women were just being able to attend, usually in female-only settings. She makes her own money and lives as a single woman, likely without the express intention on getting married and having a family relatively soon. (There’s nothing wrong with any of that. It’s more just that it would have been the exception, rather than the norm, in Bucky’s youth.) Atop that, she is Asian and works in a Japanese restaurant-- the ultimate business that would have suffered during the ‘40s as America didn’t exactly do right by its Japanese-Americans during the war and if Bucky, a white soldier, had been seen with a Japanese girl, it would have been bad for him but worse for her. 

So the reason why Yori has noticed that Bucky always looks at Leah when they eat lunch is probably less about the attraction Yori assumed Bucky had for her and more that Leah is this personal fascination for Bucky-- a human being who is basically the total embodiment of everything that has changed in the world since Bucky was last freely a part of it. Yori assumes Bucky wants a date but Bucky really wants what he ultimately got out of it, which is more just to talk to her a bit. 

They also play Battleship, which is kind of darkly funny. The game originated after WW1 and used to be played on paper. It soared into popularity in the 1930s and has never stopped being popular ever since-- so, in essence, the game they play is the one part of this that, like Bucky, has been in existence the whole time. It has taken on different forms, though. It became a plastic board game in the ‘60s and has been modernized a few times but it’s still here. (It’s also funny that Bucky is kind of losing the game with her, symbolizing that he’s not entirely figured out this whole modern world yet, even if he’s very interested by it.)

But the big thing is that Bucky is beginning to edge away from just observing this new world and trying to decide how he wants to participate in it. He’s basically decided that he might like to and while his heart is completely with Sam, he’s also afraid of himself and his ability to potentially destroy that one really strong wish he has to be with him, so he’s pushing him away by not answering his texts. He’s likely also, atop insecurity in himself, literally terrified at the idea of hurting Sam not just physically-- through some nightmare or some untapped Winter Soldier potential or failing to protect him-- but through the fact that he’s a guy from the 1940s who has literally never openly dated a man, had Black friends during the war but that was decades ago and is not really sure how to do this. 

Forced into a date with Leah, he experiments with the modern world in a way because he’s here because sure, he likes her and all but he was more just interested in her world than her personally and he just didn’t want to disappoint either her or Yori, so he showed up. She seems fairly trustworthy (and he trusts no one but Sam and Yori, so that’s a start) but what he wants really is to say aloud to someone for the first time that he likes men. To see how that goes in this modern era. (Depending on how you take Bucky and Steve, he could have put this into words to Steve at one point, likely way back when, but it’s also possible that they both just knew and didn’t talk about it. Either way, you didn’t go around telling people you didn’t trust in the ‘40s and it’s doubtful that he’s ever just said it to anyone and for sure not on a regular basis.) 

He even knows that this wouldn’t be a deal breaker for a woman, necessarily, in the modern era, which is probably blowing his mind a bit because you would have been hard-pressed to find a woman who would admit to someone she didn’t implicitly trust that back in the ‘40s and it wouldn’t have been so open and accepted. What he really wants in Leah is a new friend and she seems to sense that-- she likes this weird guy with the circulation problem that is nice enough to lunch with the old man at her restaurant, he seems okay enough, if broody and sad, so why not talk to him for a bit? She totally thinks he’s just a closet case (she’s not wrong lol) and won’t really be crushed by him rushing out of the date beyond like “too bad, he was pretty hot” but for Bucky, this is the likely the first time he’s ever casually chatted with another human being about his attempt at finding a guy he likes. 

It’s actually really sweet in that he’s still sort of coding it a bit, if not that much. He’s still a bit nervous about this so he’s saying tiger pictures to reference men so he can say it without saying it. Leah gets it and just kind of rolls with it and probably has zero idea how big a deal it was for the century-old guy sitting at the bar. 

He might have been intentionally dramatic a bit about how it was all “a lot” but he was also telling her the truth-- he did a little exploring online. Found some men. It looked like a lot of work to stroke all these egos. Bucky’s for the modern world but he’s kind of into more old-fashioned guys. He’s got a warm-hearted soldier kink. Family man kind of guys with generous spirits. He’s considering online stuff because he’s also a guy who has been through an absurd amount of trauma-- some of which the show will just come out and say involves sexual assault, off that Selby scene-- and he’s probably considering trying to get beyond some of it by just having sex with somebody. It’s not at all an uncommon response for people who have been raped to try to get beyond it by just having sex again and you know this is yet another level of anxiety for him when it comes to the idea of having another chance at life. He’s nervous around himself at this point and doesn’t fully trust himself, so he’s not sure how he can trust other people and the one guy he *does* trust and *does* want? Bucky has that whole ‘don’t want to burden him with my own issues’ thing happening. (That’s not a bad thing when it’s a situation of expecting your partner to be your therapist, which shouldn’t happen but Bucky would and should have expectations that someone he’d have as a romantic partner can be someone he can trust to care about him and be sensitive to how his past plays into his present needs, in and out of bed.) He’d trust Sam with this but he also wants to be like... he basically feels like he met the potential love of his life while trying to kill him and just got his mind back and the timing is all wrong. It’s a lot of ‘too broken for Sam’ self-narrative. 

Whether or not Bucky actually went beyond scrolling and being astounded at the unattractive insecurity of tiger pictures or whether he hooked up a time or two, it’s clear he didn’t get what he needed out of it and he gave up on it, admitting to himself that he’s really basically a tired old romantic who wants love and trust and the whole dance of things and that kind of intimacy more than the back alley casualness of online dating. This is about as far as Bucky has gotten while trying to deal with his trauma while having a truly terrible therapist: he likes sushi now and would like to have his life’s first real chance at an open, mutual, loving, romantic relationship. He just didn’t know how to get himself there. 

John Walker and the shield issues actually, ironically, gave him scenarios where he could, through actions that suited him better than those his therapist had assigned. He needed to learn not to not hurt anyone but how to manage it when he did. He needed to learn how to be a soldier that protects people again, not the Winter Soldier, and that he can control that part of himself. He needed the opportunity to show Sam that he really does care, he’s just a grieving mess of a man working through being so out of time and secretly scared that he might like this time better, might have a chance at being who he is for the first time, and he doesn’t know quite what to do with that. He lets Sam in enough that they can show one another that they understand each other’s traumas. He tosses himself out of a plane for Sam in the first episode to prove he’ll follow him anywhere, that he’s strong and will survive and come back, knowing about Riley not being alive when he hit that ground. Sam responds by seeing Bucky essentially frozen in a PTSD moment of the train car on the side of that truck and grabs him out of danger. They snark and bicker but the actions speak louder than the words-- there’s caring there and want and a sense that they’re a bit gone on the other. 

Sam’s trust in Bucky-- even as Bucky is still learning how to trust himself with himself-- gives Bucky a confidence boost that he was missing when he pulled away from Sam out of fear of hurting him. The whole White Panther/White Wolf scene? Sam expected Bucky to grumble or blush, he was for sure flirting with him but didn’t expect quite that amount of flirt back. Without realizing it, he had hit on the exact part of Bucky’s identity that was giving him the biggest boost, that he understood the best at that time-- the White Wolf. The White Wolf is the freed Winter Soldier, a peaceful tender of goats, a wounded warrior beloved by a community who rescued him. He represents Bucky’s recent past into his present-- being able to work for the chance to shake loose the Winter Soldier and evolve into a different version of himself. He wanted to impress Sam with that-- he saw Sam’s flirting and parried back, which he didn’t always do, because he knew it would be impressive that the Wakandans had given him a (pretty sexy actually) nickname. He’s boosted by Sam still flirting, Sam still caring, still seeing something in him he’s working on seeing himself. He has some hope, even as they fight, because his attempts at getting closer to Sam are not being rejected wholesale and Sam keeps reaching out to him, often literally. After Madripoor and after Bucky going after and finding Zemo, he feels more ready. He’s more in control of himself. He thinks he has a path to getting beyond the worst of this stuff and he might not have worked out all the details yet or figured out what it looks like but he finally feels ready to try and since Sam hasn’t rejected him, he’s going to take Yori’s advice, just with the right person and stop waiting around, stop just looking and make a move. 

In a way, Sam is introduced to 1940s Bucky for the first time in Delacroix-- this is the guy he saw glimpses of but was pretty deeply buried. He’s not reverted back to the Bucky of old as how could he, after all he’s been through? But this is the flirt, the natural charmer and he’s been set free for real for the first time, without worry or fear that he can’t live a life he wants and be the person he truly is without fear of rejection of who he loves, his family and the community at large. He likes this place that is the exact opposite of everything he’s suffered-- it’s so warm, he’ll never feel frozen again, physically or emotionally. The people here don’t care about his arm or who he loves, Sam’s family has Sam’s big, warm heart and Sam? Well, Bucky’s enjoying making him a little flustered. You like that stealthy White Wolf, Sam? Well, he’s got his eyes on you. ;)

Maybe the best part of this being the parallel to Sam’s decisions about how he wants to identify when it comes to him deciding to take up the shield is that it relates to a sense of freedom that is at the core of both of Sam and Bucky’s stories and is the whole point of Captain America and how it is supposed to symbolize a fight against fascism. Bucky has been told twice in the series that he’s “free” and each were, in a sense, a bit true. Ayo tells him this when he’s free from mind control and that is a major move forward for him-- life-altering-- but he’s not free from the trauma of it. Dr. Raynor tells Bucky that he’s free now and can build whatever life he wants but we see on Bucky’s face how those statements for him, in those early episodes in New York, really are conflicting ones-- he is free from mind control but still imprisoned in his trauma and that is what is keeping him from making the life he wants. Over the course of TFATWS, alongside Sam’s journey to decide how he wants to feel about America as a Black man and what he feels he owes to the country and the country owes to him, is the story of Bucky having to build his own identity as well. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is ultimately what these guys were-- the identities they still have at the beginning of the show. They’re going to end it Sam and Bucky, Captain America and the White Wolf. Bucky’s real sense of freedom only came when he realized he could trust himself to decide how he wanted to live, when he proved that to himself and took control over it. He’s still not completely fine-- no one really is, ever-- but he has a path now. Sam and Bucky have different identity conflicts but ultimately, at the core, their struggles with them and with what their country has asked of them and with how they want to live and what they want for themselves, is very similar and the core of a lot of why they understand one another well. 

It wouldn’t surprise me if we find out that Bucky stopped answering Sam’s texts when Sam suggested he come to Delacroix. Bucky knew about the boat when he got there, the same way that Sam knew about Bucky’s nightmares, so these two were talking a lot, they were friends on a verge of more but both knowing they each had too many struggles to overcome first and I think that Sam had to have been trying to reach out and accidentally went too far. It’s kind of like in the therapy session-- most of the time, Sam is amazing at dealing with people who have been through trauma but he sometimes falls off his game with Bucky. The whole “this is what you wanted, right?” in the therapy session is frustration, it’s pushing a little too hard, it’s snarking over feeling like Bucky rejected him romantically, even if Sam understands why and probably wasn’t convinced they were ready for it anyway. It’s possible that Sam thought inviting Bucky home with him would be good for him-- and the sun and the Wilsons would have been-- but, at the time, it just made Bucky panic, which is then also why Sam just rolls over the fact that Bucky hadn’t been returning his texts when they see one another again. Sam kept reaching out to check on him but accepted the non-response because he felt like he might have kind of pushed Bucky too fast. They both know they both have feelings for one another but are scared by how much the other has to get through to get to that point and feel ill-equipped to really help one another, often blunder in their attempts to (and other times, get it just right.) 

So, yeah. There’s still no shortage of conflicts to be dealt with but alongside Sam finding his path to living his truth in this modern world has been Bucky’s arc from daring to whisper about tiger photos to showing up to show off his prowess with heavy stuff and tools to win over his boyfriend in front of his family and hometown. It’s not subtext. It’s literally Bucky’s identity-themed character arc, existing in parallel to Sam’s. Just because they aren’t giving it a ton of labels does not mean that it isn’t the intent of the story. 

[seerofmike]

The Writing In Apex Kinda Sucks And Also They Use Ship Bait As A Plot Device I Hate It Here

a stupid essay/rant encouraged by @zombiegloss that originally started as a youtube video script so if its like. weird at points. this was intended to be a verbal rant SNZISKSIA

basically i'm gonna talk abt the caustic-wattson-crypto relationship drama and how i think it was mishandled and how much the writers kind of Suck because i Can

you are free to disagree with me on any of my points and think that this aspect of the story was handled well, this is just my opinion, and i'd love to hear your thoughts and counterpoints !

first, addressing some things:

i know this is a battle royale and not necessarily a story-based game, so i can’t expect it to have masterful witcher-style writing.

but with the direction the game seems to be going; putting quests, evolving interactions, and comics in the game, plus coming out with a lore book and hinting at something bigger in the future, i think it’s fair to criticize it for lackluster writing, especially since what i’m criticizing has been something present since Apex’s story technically began.

secondly, i am not a professional writer. i’m a high schooler who writes as a hobby. i don’t have the decades of experience that some of the apex writers do, and i can’t claim to be a better writer than they are--but i also don’t have to be a five-star chef to realize that something tastes bad. when i critique something and give suggestions, i am not saying i could’ve done it better. i’m just bringing up what i think could have worked.

third, before i upset anyone , when i say a relationship is badly written, i’m not telling you that you can’t ship it or that your ship sucks. i’ll briefly touch on the shipping aspect of this and how it’s a detriment to the story but Ye

okay, so with that out of the way, let us Begin

relationships are often the emotional core of a story, and how strong your reaction is to conflict in these relationships depends on how the story sets them up. if you want the audience to care about these characters and what they go through, you need to develop them and establish the type of relationship they have well. it’s why so many people cried in the last episode of telltale’s the walking dead. you’ve spent roughly 12 hours bonding with clementine and protecting her, and your relationship with her is part of several story beats as well as character beats for lee. 

when these two characters’ relationship reaches its peak at the end of the game, it’s powerful, and it’s emotional. you care. you feel something, and the fact that you have to choose what to do to lee only makes it more gut-wrenching. 

now, the walking dead is entirely story-based and especially character-driven, so it may be unfair to compare it to apex, but i just wanted to lay the groundwork down for what i think is a strong relationship that makes you feel something when conflict arrives, in this case the conflict being lee getting bit and clementine having to decide his fate.

the broken ghost in general is kind of not-good sometimes, tom casiello previously wrote for soap operas and you can really, REALLY tell sometimes.

this story feels like it should’ve taken place a little later, and that we should’ve had a season to actually set up the characters and their relationships, but that’s a story for another day.

to put it bluntly, the set-up for the crypto, wattson, and caustic conflict is done poorly. for caustic and wattson's relationship it’s a little better, but not by much. 

wattson and caustic having a relationship was hinted at in season 2, when her lore indicated that caustic was among one of the Legends who comforted her after her father died. In season four lore materials posted on Twitter, an email from Jacob Young states that Caustic is acting paternal towards Wattson. In season five, interactions get added to the Game, and this is the first time we actually see their relationship in action, as they have unique revive voice lines for each other. in the quests, when wattson is injured, caustic lashes out at loba and attacks her out of what seems to be anger at wattson’s current state.

Side Note this plot point was really stupid and done for cheap drama because she literally wakes up like two chapters later and they don’t even give her anything to say it’s just suddenly oh yeah crypto and wattson are working together. the same exact injury thing happens to octane later but nobody gIVES A SHIT because again, it’s just cheap soap opera drama.

their relationship might seem a little bit sudden for anyone who wasn’t on top of twitter lore drops, but like, it’s okay, i guess. i’ll give it the slightest credit for at least establishing something between the two in terms of voice lines and stuff, even if for some it might seem like it came out of nowhere.

what did come out of nowhere, though, was crypto and wattson’s friendship. in the quests, crypto and wattson are tasked with rebuilding the broken ghost because of their respective skills, and they’re seen talking in chapter six while they work on it. we’re not really given a clear timeline on how long the story in the broken ghost is, but i think it takes about a week, maybe.

unlike wattson and caustic, their relationship has been given absolutely zero material to work with before now, not even a passing glance in the trailers--which is a little weird considering crypto took down the repulsor tower and destroyed wattson’s home, but. Whatever.

tl dr of the chapter: crypto and wattson talk to each other while doing nerd shit, crypto laughs at wattson’s bad pun, and then suddenly they’re BESTIEEEES, until a couple dozen lines later in the same chapter. then they’re Not.

crypto’s drone gets hacked by revenant while everyone was kind of on edge after the reveal of a spy in their midst, he gets framed as the spy by caustic, anddddd wattson gets upset.

before i get into how dumb this storyline is, i’m gonna talk about the set-up to this conflict.

we have been given no reason to believe that these characters have ever talked to each other, and quite frankly, their friendship doesn’t really make sense.

ignoring the fact that crypto destroyed wattson’s home--which she probably doesn’t know about, so that’s forgiven for now--crypto is a paranoid guy. in the lore book he makes people stand on fucking footprints in his house so he can scan them for weapons and listening devices, and he apparently doesn’t stick around much after the games and nobody knows anything about him because he doesn’t talk to them.

a key part of crypto’s story is the fact that he is undercover and afraid of anyone finding out anything about him ever. him becoming friends with wattson kind of comes out of the blue, and we’re not even given a reason as to why they supposedly became close in the first place. i would kind of understand if like, maybe he draws parallels with her and mila in his mind and it makes him open up a little more, but that doesn’t happen. he just laughs at her joke and suddenly they’re friends.

maybe they’re trying to go for this ‘wattson can become friends with anybody’ angle, kind of hinted at with caustic but not really we’ll get into that, but that also? kind of doesn’t make sense since so many of her voice lines straight-up say she doesn’t understand people and electricity is more her thing, but honestly, she also does have those really friendly elements in her voice lines too, so its not as egregious as what they did with crypto.

their sudden out-of-the-blue friendship would’ve been fine if they spent a little more time fleshing it out, and giving us something to work with, but instead, the story immediately tries to rip it apart and frame it as this grand conflict where crypto is framed as the mole, crypto then accuses caustic, and wattson feels betrayed.

except it doesn’t really work, because we don’t give a shit. for several reasons. 

one: crypto and wattson became friends and then ended their friendship in the same exact chapter. they did not speak to each other onscreen until this chapter began, you can read the entire quest on the wiki and see for yourself that their interactions up until that point were nonexistent aside from mentions in the narration that they were building something together.

the reason wattson feels betrayed is kind of stupid too. why does she really care that much if one of them betrayed loba? nobody else really cared about the fact that one of them was a spy, in fact, nobody even seems to like loba that much, and they just found out that loba’s been lying to them this whole time, and wattson was conscious for that conversation and had a speaking line, so she’s fully aware of the situation. 

maybe it’s just like, the idea that one of them lied, but that’s still kind of a weak reason. 

this entire betrayal thing is just dumb, and it gets even worse when you realize that there could have been an actual legitimate reason for wattson to feel betrayed by crypto--even if it still would’ve come across as weak conflict because of their newly established friendship, it would’ve made more sense than this. 

Crypto destroyed Wattson’s home. He took down the tower and then all the flyers and stuff invaded Kings Canyon and made it their bitch. Not only that, but Wattson considers the Syndicate her family. The Syndicate are the very people who framed Crypto for murder and he’s trying to take them down. 

They could’ve set up actual conflict with these things, and it almost seemed like they would, because Caustic briefly brings up that Crypto could be working with Revenant because he has something against the Syndicate but then that doesn’t really go anywhere and we’re just back to Wattson feeling betrayed because either Crypto or Caustic was a spy and she doesn’t know who.

Weak conflict could’ve been made better by a strong relationship and a weak relationship could’ve still been interesting with strong conflict, but both the relationship between Crypto and Wattson and the conflict that drives them splitting up as friends were really weak and didn’t make much sense. 

It would’ve been ten times more interesting if Wattson found out Crypto ruined her home, the arena she grew up in, and was now participating in the Games to take out the people she regards as her family. That’s where her distrust could’ve manifested and conflict could’ve began, but instead it was the stupid betraying loba thing. why do you care. you just started talking to this guy like 2 hours ago.

also caustic’s whole reason for framing crypto feels stupid as fuck. he didn’t just frame crypto randomly, he framed him specifically because he doesn't want him to influence wattsob because he likes her Big Brain, but this is the FIRST time we have seen those two interact. 

what influence is he talking about? wraith and wattson have been shown to be friendly with each other in the trailers, according to tom’s tweets, and in the story too so why doesn’t he frame her? at this point the audience had slightly more build-up for those two’s relationship than crypto and wattson and a betrayal storyline would’ve felt a little more deserved if still weak.

this is the point where i briefly want to touch upon shipping, and the fact that part of this conflict feels driven by shipbait. 

aside from their relationship coming out of nowhere and the writers trying to make the stakes seem high and deeply emotional to the characters involved (despite this essentially being the first time they’ve ever interacted) tom casiello literally addresses shippers in a tweet regarding chapter seven, and as the story between these characters progresses, it becomes clear to me, at least that the crypto-wattson thing is just bait for shippers, and it’s lazy. 

it’s easy to get away with giving your characters little to no relationship development if you’re just counting on shippers to do the heavy mental lifting for you

why should i put any effort into making this relationship seem believable? people are going to see a young guy and a young girl having bare minimum interaction and assume there’s romantic interest! then i don’t have to do any work, see look, it’s a ready-made relationship wrapped in a bow for me! all that’s left for me to do is give them conflict so i can keep teasing shippers with lines like ‘you never deserved her’!

i think it’s reasonable for me to suspect shipbait, since tom casiello likes doing darksparks shipbait on twitter, and i’m like, eighty percent sure mirage and bloodhound suddenly being childhood friends in the book is shipbait too, because these characters were the number one ship in apex for a long time despite little to no interaction, and then all of a sudden in the lore book they’re childhood friends despite this literally never being mentioned before?

like bloodhound is set up to be mysterious and nobody knows what they look like, or where they’re from, or who their family is--except for mirage Apparently, who played with them when he was a kid on their home planet, and has seen them with their mask off, because bloodhound did not wear a mask when their parents were still alive.

its weird.

i’m pretty sure they’ve said somewhere they were working on this book before apex even came out, so i could just be completely wrong and they always planned for mirage and bloodhound to know each other, but if that’s the case, why did they never mention it like they did octane and lifeline?

i refuse to believe MIRAGE never brought it up either like ‘heeeeyy bloodhound remember when we used to throw eggs at our parents lab haha wanna go do to that to bangalore’s room’ 

[silence]

‘good talk buddy’

ANYWAYS I GOT OFF TOPIC. POINT IS, shipping is a detriment to the story because the writers don’t feel like they actually have to put any work into establishing or developing the relationship between characters when they know the community’s just going to do it for them anyways, and that they can put in shipbait and it’s fine and it makes sense when it really doesn’t.

imagine watching captain america civil war after not seeing a single other marvel movie.

why would you care about the avengers splitting up or tony and steve butting heads or steve’s commitment to bucky? you wouldn’t care, at least not as much as someone who’s seen all the movies and knows the relationship between the characters and why the sokovia accords exist in the first place. you don’t have context and you don’t have any reason to be emotionally invested in these characters’ relationship.

 this feels like that. the writers tried to squeeze this relationship and stuff into a single chapter and we don’t fucking care unless we were already invested in the idea of their relationship (shippers) because we barely spent any time with it.

so to summarize this little section, the set-up of this storyline Kinda Sucks! crypto and wattson barely seem to know each other, because we the audience barely saw them together and the writers are relying on shipbait in place of a relationship.

wattson and caustic are a little better but not great, but the conflict is stupid and it only gets stupider.

moving onto summarizing the rest of the broken ghost, gibraltar and caustic talk, caustic LITERALLY confesses to being the mole and says he framed crypto so he couldn’t corrupt wattson and to appear innocent because his identity was suspected, then that wraps up the season storyline.

season six begins with new voice lines, where wattson has had enough of crypto and caustic’s shit and is all passive-aggressive and going ‘this doesn’t change anything’. she has to decide who to trust, and how to figure out The Truth for herself because she’s not a little girl anymore. crypto and caustic are both trying to convince her they’re innocent and it creates some interesting conflict.

just kidding. it’s terrible conflict. you want to know why?

BECAUSE GIBRALTAR TRIED TO TELL HER THE TRUTH, RIGHT AFTER THE SEASON 5 QUEST HAPPENED, AND SHE LITERALLY REFUSED TO HEAR IT.

LIKE THERE’S A SEASON 6 LOADING SCREEN WHERE HE’S TELLING EVERYONE THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED, AND WHEN HE GETS TO WATTSON AND IS LIKE HEY I KNOW WHO THE MOLE WAS AND WHY THEY DID IT, SHE JUST GOES i dont wanna hear it. i need to think

IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH WHY ARE YOU REFUSING TO HEAR IT

SHE SPENDS ALMOST TWO ENTIRE SEASONS MAD AT CRYPTO FOR SOMETHING HE DIDN’T DO BECAUSE SHE TOLD GIBRALTAR TO FUCK OFF WHEN HE TRIED TO TELL HER WHAT HAPPENED

ITS SO DUMB

i think it was towards the end of season 6 or the beginning of season 7 where apex posted this picture of wattson asleep at her desk where she has a letter from gibraltar on it that looks like it tells her the truth, so she knows now, she knows what happened, but NOW her issue is the fact that she doesn’t know anything about crypto.

WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT IS YOUR GODDAMN DAMAGE. YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT BLOODHOUND EITHER ARE YOU THIS UPSET WITH BLOODHOUND TOO?? HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO PATHFINDER. DO YOU HATE PATHFINDER TOO

oh but she was friends with crypto and now she’s mad that he lied to her EXCEPT THEIR RELATIONSHIP WASN’T BUILT UP WELL SO IT JUST FEELS STUPID. THEY SPENT LONGER BEING NOT-FRIENDS THAN THEY SPENT BEING FRIENDS. THEY BECAME FRIENDS IN ONE CHAPTER AND THEN IMMEDIATELY AT THE END OF THAT CHAPTER THEIR FRIENDSHIP ENDED AND THEN WATTSON SPENT LIKE 2 SEASONS MAD AT HIM FOR SOMETHING HE DIDN’T DO . 

AND THE WRITERS TRIED TO RECTIFY THIS BY SAYING OH SHE’S NOT MAD ABOUT THE TRAITOR THING SHE’S MAD BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIM AND IT’S LIKE WHY THE FUCK DID YOU NOT MAKE THAT CLEAR WHY DOES SHE SAY ‘IT DOESN’T CHANGE WHAT YOU DID’ IN HER VOICE LINES WHY DOES SHE CALL HIM A TRAITOR IF HER CONFLICT WAS HER NOT KNOWING MUCH ABOUT HIM . WHAT DID HE DO. 

HE JUST STOOD THERE AND LAUGHED AT HER JOKE AND THEN HE GOT FRAMED AND THEN THAT WAS THE END OF THE CHAPTER AND NOW SHES SUDDENLY LIKE IM ACTUALLY MAD BECAUSE YOURE A LIAR AND I CANT TRUST YOU EVEN THOUGH I NOW KNOW YOU WERE FRAMED I STILL DO NOT LIKE YOU AND HES LIKE YEAH THATS MY FAULT

The Caustic voicelines are stupid too, again his reason for framing Crypto was stupid and a lot of his voicelines just seem to be that shipbait thing again but like from the angle of overprotective dad who doesn’t like the new boyfriend. it’s stupid but not as egeregious as this next part which is

crypto telling wattson his identity.

CRYPTO was framed for MURDER and is paranoid and can’t trust anyone and doesn’t talk to anyone and the last time he did talk to someone he got framed for Another thing and the person he was talking to turned her back on him and actively refused to know the truth for like 2 seasons and then he went This Is Fine I Can Tell Her My Identity

the stupidest update to this storyline was crypto telling wattson the truth

why did they do it on the dropship where there are presumably syndicate members and other legends around.

why didn’t he scan wattson for listening devices like he did for pathfinder in the book.

why is he telling her his identity when he knows she has very close ties to the people that FRAMED HIM for MURDER. Does he trust her that much? WHY? They spoke to each other in a chapter and then spent two seasons not talking to each other beyond passive-aggressive BS. why are you so fucking stupid taejoon

their relationship was so poorly set-up that even if the writers maybe intended for them to come across as close friends who had spent weeks bonding, it really feels like they became friends in a single conversation, had a falling out, and now crypto suddenly trusts her with his identity after an undetermined amount of time because he wants to be friends again. 

that does not make SENSE this conflict feels contrived AS FUCK and the resolution feels even worse and unearned UGGGHHHH

it honestly comes across as crypto feeling desperate for friendship, and maybe this would’ve worked better if that’s the angle they played it as.

he’s been alone for roughly two years, and just wants a friend, and he’s honestly so lonely he just breaks down to the first person who’s really talked to him. it could’ve been an interesting little part of his character, and they could've gone into depth about how much this situation has affected him, but that’s not what they’re doing. he’s still paranoid and anxious and doesn’t trust anyone, except for wattson, because the plot needs him to or else there won’t be any stupid soap opera drama.

and to rub salt in the wound, wattson’s new voice lines with caustic have him telling her that she forgave crypto.

WHAT ARE YOU FORGIVING HIM FOR. ARE YOU FORGIVING HIM FOR BEING FRAMED? WHY DID HE HAVE TO APOLOGIZE TO YOU WHEN YOU WERE THE ONE WHO REFUSED TO HEAR THE TRUTH?

 did the conversation just go hey my real name is taejoon park and something bad happened to me and she went aight i forgive you WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT

Caustic’s new voice lines to Crypto where he’s like ‘what did you tell her’--YOU TOLD GIBRALTAR STRAIGHT-UP YOUR EVIL MASTER PLAN LIKE A SUPERVILLAIN AND NOW YOU’RE SURPRISED WATTSON AND CRYPTO ARE ON GOOD TERMS NOW?!

THAT’S LIKE TELLING SOMEONE YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER AND THEN BEING SURPRISED WHEN YOU BECOME THE VICTIM OF IDENTITY FRAUD. YOU SET YOURSELF UP FOR THIS WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE CRYPTO DID SOMETHING SINISTER OR LIED OR WHATEVER. WHAT THE FUCK. WHY DO YOU HAVE LIKE 3 BRAINCELLS

this is at like ten pages already so i’m going to just try and wrap this up quickly. 

it’s frustrating seeing this storyline play out when there are actually good relationships and storylines written into apex. i’m kind of getting tired of the loba and revenant conflict, but we at least had set-up to it in the form of a few animated shorts and it doesn’t play out as stupidly as this story does. bangalore and loba’s friendship is actually developed well, even if the point between the end of season 5 and season 6 where they suddenly talk like each other feels like it could’ve used a little more. 

where crypto and wattson having an established friendship in the broken ghost failed, lifeline and octane’s established friendship works because we’ve been told since octane’s release they were childhood friends and given lore materials that indicate they’ve known each other for a very long time.

apex wants this storyline between crypto and wattson and caustic to feel dramatic and tense and ultimately rewarding when crypto and wattson did become friends for real and stuff, but instead it just comes across as hollow and empty. 

there’s nothing there. it’s a case of tell, don’t show, and it looks like this stupid conflict is gonna keep going for another couple of seasons at this rate. 

side note: this entire script was written before the new twitter comics

please tell me ur thoughts and feel free to respond with ur own lil essay

also believe it or not this is not the "shipping is a detriment to apex's story" essay i was gonna write this is a completely different essay that has some overlap SKXISOSOW

[fantasticallyfoolishidea]

So, bath scenes. Amirite?

The Witcher fandom is quite blessed. Over the course one season, the showrunners decided to gift us with not one but two scenes of Henry Cavill, naked in a bathtub, two episodes in a ro-

Wait a minute.

Two back-to-back episodes featuring drawn out bath scenes that go on for 2-3 minutes each. That's a lot of time to dedicate to fanservice when you only have 8 episodes to get your point across. Unless, of course… No. They wouldn't. Or would they?

I re-watched these scenes more times than I care to admit. For science. They’re interesting for numerous of reasons (Henry Cavills’ pecs being only two of them). But you know what’s even more interesting? Some sexy, sexy cinematic and narrative parallels and contrasts.

(Obligatory linebreak for your protection. You thought I went overboard analysing Her Sweet Kiss? This is worse. If you’re on mobile – I apologise. Now’s the time to scroll fast. It’ll take longer than you’re expecting, trust me. I’m sorry.)

Bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Bath in “Bottled Appetites” Please excuse the terrible of the second clip. It’s the only one I could find that had the whole scene in it.

First things first,

the setting

The scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” takes place in an inn. The room is dark. Throughout the scene you can hear chatter from the bar. Candles are the only visible light source, although, at the beginning of the scene you can see more light coming in through what’s presumably a window outside the shot. Due to the lighting, the majority of the room has a noticeably blue tint, except for the cabinets on each side of the room where most of the candles are placed. Apart from the cabinets, the bathtub Geralt is sitting in is the only area that’s properly illuminated.

The room itself seems big enough, although we only get to see the bathing area which is separated from the rest of the room by blue curtains, but due the way the scene is shot – frequent close ups of the actors, wider shots frequently partially blocked by the curtains – it appears smaller than it actually is. Geralt stands out against the background due to his skin appearing orange in the candle light; in wider shots he usually appears centred.

In contrast, Jaskier moves from one side of the room to the other a lot and doesn’t remain in either light source for long. Unlike Geralt’s skin, the colour of his clothes matches the background. This is somewhat unusual because in many of his scenes Jaskier and his colourful outfits tend to stick out like a sore thumb – the red outfit in “Rare Species” probably the most visually distracting out of the bunch – but in this scene, the exact opposite happens. Whenever Jaskier’s not the focus of the shot he frequently fades into the background or even gets obstructed by the curtains.

(While I’d love to add visual references for every single point I touch upon, honestly, the amount of editing that’d require is astronomical. Jokes on me though, because it already is. Watching the scenes should give you a better idea of what I’m talking about, though. Also, full disclosure, screenshots and gifs had their brightness an colours altered slightly for better visibility.)

Now, on the other hand, we have the room inside the mayor’s house, which – while also dimly lit by candlelight – appears open and spacious. Due to the candles, the room appears tinged only in colours on the orange/yellow spectrum. No curtains to obstruct parts of the shot, and unlike the inn, this room has got visible windows one of which sits behind Geralt. That window in particular lets in a stream of blue light that, in wider shots, often appears to frame either Geralt alone or both, Geralt and Yennefer. However, the blue light remains behind the characters, neither Geralt nor Yennefer are ever directly illuminated by it.

Why is she going on and on about the lighting you might ask? It’s because there’s basically a whole science to colour theory, colour grading, and the ways they’re used in visual media. It’s one of the reasons why, for example, Guillermo del Toro movies are always such goddamn feasts for the eyes. TV Tropes also has a page dedicated to it, if you wanna get a rough idea of what’s going on here.

Both bath scenes in the Witcher (2019) are gorgeous examples of colour grading and set design. You can tell that a whole lot of thought went into it. “Bottled Appetites” even takes it a step further, carrying the orange/blue colour scheme over into the next scene and directly contrasting the bed frame that’s bathed in amber light with the blue windows it’s framed by.

Fun fact, while colour grading can be used to give colours that certain “pop”, you can also achieve the exact opposite effect. See how washed out and grey Jaskier and his blue clothes appear on the orange bedding in this shot? It becomes even more apparent later on in the scene.

He might as well be one of the pillows for the way his clothes make your eyes just kinda slip over him. Honestly, I wanna marry whoever was in charge of doing colour correction on the Witcher. That person is a fucking artist. I’ll get back to the matter of colours and backgrounds in a minute. For now, let’s talk about

body positioning

Or in other words, yet another reason I’d sell my immortal soul to directors Alex Garcia Lopez and Charlotte Brändström.

One thing the scenes have in common (apart from the copious amounts of eye candy) is that Geralt remains mostly stationary at the centre throughout the scene. Jaskier moves around a lot. He dries his hands behind Geralt, moves in front of him to fiddle with the bath salts, sits down next to Geralt, sets Geralt’s mug down on the cabinet behind him and only stops his continuous back and forth motion when the conversation takes a turn for the serious and he settles down in front of Geralt.

Yennefer, on the other hand, starts off at Geralt’s right hand side, slightly to the back of him. She briefly lies down, stands up, and moves to Geralt’s left while taking off her gown. Same as the other scene, Yennefer settles down as the conversation is about to grow more serious. However, unlike Jaskier, Yennefer is far less restless, once she’s moved to Geralt’s left she settled down and doesn’t get up again.

What’s really interesting about this scene is that throughout the entirety of their interaction, Yennefer and Geralt never look at each other at the same time. They both alternate between staring off into the distance with varying degrees of wistfulness and/or melancholia and turning to look at the other. But their eyes never quite meet, not even when Geralt turns around in surprise after Yennefer says she won’t be taking any payment. The conversation ends with Geralt abruptly getting up and out of the tub and Yennefer turning around to watch him leave (dry up? get dressed? who knows what he’s getting up to in that moment). Notably, when the shot focuses on Yennefer alone in the tub, a significant portion of the room that previously appeared mostly orange suddenly is tinted almost all blue.

However, where eye contact is conspicuously absent in the scene in “Bottled Appetites”, it’s a vital component of the scene in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials”. Eye contact is a significant part of Geralt and Jaskiers communication. Mainly because Geralt spends a significant amount time sending glares Jaskier’s way with Jaskier paying him varying amounts of mind, even poking fun at his “scary face” when the opportunity presents itself. Jaskier is all over the place in every sense of the word. His attention is divided between Geralt, the bath, the banquet, etc. before it eventually turns back to Geralt and the whole cycle begins anew. The shift in conversation, from the banquet to Geralt, coincides with a shift in Jaskier’s behaviour. He stops moving around the room and his attention settles on Geralt. He then kneels down and holds Geralt’s gaze until Geralt abruptly switches the subject.

Look at the screencaps above. See how, even in a screencap, the lighting is capable of creating an entire visual narrative all by itself? Yennefer and Geralt are sitting in the water together with their backs to each other in a room full of orange light but their immediate surroundings are tinted blue. Jaskier and Geralt are facing each other directly but despite the orange light surrounding him Jaskier appears shadowed as he kneels in front of the tub while Geralt who is sitting inside the tub glows orange against a blue background.

There’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in that juxtaposition but I can’t quite put my finger on it yet.

edit 12/01/20: I actually got a submission from odense who elaborated on the blocking of the scenes from a theatrical perspective. Go read it for even more meta on the bath scenes.

Anyway, moving on. Next on my list is

the matter of service

What, no more Film Studies for Fandom 101, I hear you ask? Well. Originally, I wanted this part to be about the conversation as a whole but that would’ve gone on for too long (ha! too long, she says like that means anything) so I divided it.

Both scenes deal with the performance of service in one way or another. Jaskier is trying to convince Geralt to act as his bodyguard for a night, while Geralt asked Yennefer to break the djinn’s curse and they’re still settling the matter of payment.

In a way, you could look at both scenes as very, very unusual forms of negotiation. Jaskier may spend a lot of time talking about himself but his actions are almost all focused on Geralt. He douses him with water, “rubbed chamomile onto his lovely bottom” at some point (decide for yourself what you wanna make of that statement), prepares the bath salts for Geralt’s bath, and – also at some point – arranged for Geralt’s clothes to be washed. All throughout the scene, he’s performing a variety of services. He’s taking care of Geralt, whether Geralt likes it or not, and does so like it’s the most natural thing in the world, to the point where it just kinda comes across like more of Jaskier’s usual antics and theatrics.

Geralt may claim he needs no one and doesn’t want anyone needing him but there is some form of reciprocity in their relationship – big things like the shared adventures and the ballads about which made both of them famous in their own right, but then there are the little things like drawing your friend a bath, or watching his back at a banquet so he doesn’t get stabbed by a jealous husband, which Geralt eventually agrees to do despite all of his grumbling and glaring protests.

Which is one of the reasons “And yet... here we are.” is such a brilliant line. Just from this context, you could read it in a number of ways. Jaskier could be calling Geralt out on his bullshit like, e.g. “You might not like it, but yeah, you do need me and I need you.” or he could be asking him to make a decision, e.g. “I know you don’t like it but I really do need your help. What will you do?” or it could be an affirmation, e.g. “I know you didn’t want it but somehow we still ended up here.” etc., etc. And you might have guessed, there’s still more to come regarding this line. Later.

So while Jaskier’s scene is about getting Geralt to perform a service, Yennefer’s scene is about figuring out the cost of the service Geralt asked of her in the previous scenes. Where the first bath scene was about persuasion, this one is about payment. The initial negotiation has already happened, the service been rendered, what’s left to do is figure out the price. And Geralt already offered to pay whatever the price.

Since Geralt seems intent on honouring his promise, that creates a bit of a power imbalance between Yennefer and Geralt at the start of the scene because Yennefer could ask for whatever she wanted, Geralt even brings up that he’s worried about “having agreed to indentured servitude”. (That being said, he does not seem too bothered by current the situation or Yennefer’s company. Quite the opposite, he actually seems quite comfortable talking to her.)

Aside from the payment they haven’t agreed on yet, Geralt’s also got a second promise to make good on since he initially offered Yennefer to “indulge her curiosities” (take that however you will). It’s quite apparent that Geralt is a lot more forthcoming with his thoughts and emotions (actually, his words in general) with Yennefer than he is with Jaskier. In Yennefer’s scene, she and Geralt talk about equal amounts whereas in the other scene Jaskier mostly carries the conversation by himself while Geralt reacts.

However, Jaskier also reaches out where Yennefer keeps to herself. She occasionally teasingly bumps her back against Geralt’s as she’s washing herself but other than that she makes an effort to keep out of sight, even magically turning away a mirror to hide herself, whereas Jaskier touches, quite literally gets all up in Geralt’s “scary face” and just generally repeatedly puts himself in Geralt’s line of sight going so far as to kneel down until they’re at eye level.

Despite the matter of coin coming up repeatedly (mostly in the form of harmless teasing about brothels and prostitution, but also on a more serious way when Geralt accuses her of making a profit off the townspeople), Yennefer eventually decides not to ask Geralt for anything in return for saving Jaskier’s life, determining his “company and conversation payment enough”.

Interestingly, in the scene preceding the bath in “Of Banquets, Bastards and Burials” Jaskier also broaches the topic of coin as he’s setting up to ask Geralt for help. In a sense, Jaskier initially attempts to use that thing about reciprocity I brought up earlier to convince Geralt to do him a favour. He lectures Geralt on his role in making him famous and that he should be making money off their arrangement in an attempt to make the favour he’s about to ask off Geralt seem irrelevant in comparison, like “Look at everything I’ve done for you. Please do this tiny little thing for me.” Obviously, that approach doesn’t work. The (un)holy trinity of “food, women and wine, Geralt”, on the other hand, seems to do the trick. Or maybe it’s the bath and a heart-to-heart. Kind of like Geralt’s company and conversation were payment enough for Yennefer?

While we’re still on the matter of conversation, let’s talk about one of the components that make up part of the emotional core of the scenes. Let’s talk about

the matter of past and future

Geralt has lived a long, long life and its history is written on his body in a web of scars. What struck me is how differently the bath scenes deal with those scars.

With Yennefer, the scars are on full display. She notices and scrutinises them as someone seeing Geralt naked for the first time can be expected to. The scars on his shoulders and back are placed front and centre of the shot several times.

In contrast, with Jaskier, you, as a viewer, barely notice the scars. Most of the time they’re simply not visible to the camera. They’re never in the foreground of the shot and you never even get to see Geralt’s back. The scar on Geralt’s shoulder that Yennefer noticed could easily be mistaken for remnants of dead selkiemore. There’s only one moment that draws attention to the scarred shoulder and that’s when Jaskier pats it as he’s getting up to put away Geralt’s mug of ale.

Again, I feel like there’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in there but what do I know?

Back to the point. While Geralt and Yennefer are talking in the bathtub it immediately becomes obvious that they have a connection. They’ve both had unhappy childhoods, lived long lives and as Yennefer points out Geralt was “created by magic. Our magic.” They have an understanding that quickly let’s you forget that they’re virtual strangers at this point in the Witcher canon.

In the other scene, Jaskier and Geralt have known each other for quite a while already, yet the conversation seems to be restricted to superficial topics at first, mainly Jaskier’s prowess as bard and lover. However, Jaskier unwittingly steers the conversation in a more serious direction when he asks Geralt about retirement, what he wants to do when “all this... monster hunting nonsense” is over and done with.

So far, there’s a pattern in the show that when Jaskier talks to Geralt about serious matters, he starts making plans for the future. After the incident with the elves in Posada he promises to work hard to change Geralt’s reputation. In the infamous scene in “Rare Species” he’s trying to figure out what to do with his own future and offers Geralt to go to the coast with him. Here, in this scene, he’s trying to work out what Geralt wants from his future. Even if Geralt claims to want nothing.

At that point, Jaskier’s already made good on his promise to change the public tune about Geralt. The people in the beginning of the episode are talking about the White Wolf, not the Butcher of Blaviken, which makes for such an interesting parallel when paired with Yennefer’s comment about “Our magic”.

Yennefer’s magic created the Witcher; Jaskier’s song created the White Wolf.

Which, in all frankness, would be a good point to end this post but what’s the point of doing anything if you’re not gonna overdo it? I said the matter of past and future makes up part of the emotional core of the bath scenes. So there must be other parts of that supposed emotional core, right? Of course, there’s still

the matter of want and need

While discussing Geralt’s lack of retirement plan, Jaskier and Geralt keep tossing the word “want” back and forth. Jaskier tries to find out what Geralt wants; Geralt rebuffs him, he wants nothing; Jaskier turns it around on him by saying, well, maybe someone will want you. You could, of course, read that as your run-of-the-mill “just wait, the right person will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – if you’re wearing shipping goggles)” shtick but the thing is, that’s the kind of reply you usually offer someone who’s bemoaning the fact that they’re single, the exact opposite of what Geralt is doing, and Jaskier strikes me as someone who’s emotionally intelligent enough to know that wouldn’t work on Geralt. I think Jaskier might be very literal when he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” As in, “even if you want nothing, maybe someone who wants you will come along (and that person might just so happen to be me – again, if you’re wearing shipping goggle).” But Geralt changes strategies and rebuffs him again, he needs no one. And the last thing he wants is someone needing him.

What’s interesting about this bit is the body language. I mentioned Jaskier and Geralt communicating a lot via eye contact. And Geralt is looking at Jaskier quite intently right up until Jaskier kneels down in front of him as he’s saying “Maybe someone out there will want you.” The camera cuts to Geralt and he’s looking off to the side while he says “I want no one.” Then, a pronounced pause follows before he turns to look Jaskier directly in the eye as he finishes, “And the last thing I want is someone needing me.” (I really want to say that this looks so much like he’s warning Jaskier to reconsider whatever he’s building up to say. But alas, that’s just fantasy.) The camera cuts away again and we see that Jaskier’s now looking down behind his clasped hands before looking up and answering “And yet... here we are.” Geralt acknowledges his answer with one of his famed “Hm”s. Then, he immediately changes the subject to the whereabouts of his clothes which Jaskier sent away to be washed.

In the other scene, Geralt and Yennefer breach the topic of “want” and “need” while talking about coin. Geralt claims she’s profiting off the political situation, whereas Yennefer claims she’s working in the interest of the people, “filling a need. Ever heard of it?” Which, yes, Geralt has, literally one episode ago, and he pulls a face that’s simply beyond words. (btw, kudos to Henry Cavill for cramming like five different emotions into one expression.)

Geralt and Jaskier had an entire conversation about how Geralt wants nothing and needs nobody. Jaskier even references that conversation when he yells at Geralt while they’re arguing over the djinn. “You always say you want nothing from life, so how was I supposed to know you wanted three wishes all to yourself!” he screams.

(Also, upon rewatching that scene, I literally just realised that Jaskier was drinking at the beginning of the scene. Combine that with the fact that he repeatedly brings up the Countess de Stael, and flat out states he’s currently heartbroken, and yeah, that explains a lot about his comparatively sour mood and short temper; also, why his speech comes across as much more chaotic than usual. Seriously, compare it to the way he speaks to Geralt after he’s gutted the selkiemore. He talks a lot in both – ok, Jaskier always does – but in the selkiemore scene, or basically any scene that isn’t the djinn scene, his diction is eloquent, artistic, florid; in the djinn scene, it’s all over the place, repetitive, and often bordering on the nonsensical. Frankly, you could probably make a whole post about that scene by itself. I’ll get back to that some other day.)

(Also, am I implying that Jaskier seems bitter over the fact that Geralt apparently keeps telling him he wants nothin from life? ...Yesn’t. Hard to pretend I’m not wearing shipping goggles when I’m literally almost 4000 words deep into a meta post. But remember, nothing but speculation!)

Anyway, and now there’s Yennefer broaching the subject, asking him if he’s ever heard of “filling a need”.

The conversation carries on until Geralt is blindsided by Yennefer telling him that his company and conversation are payment enough. He whirls around but Yennefer isn’t looking at him so he hurriedly gets out of the bath. In the next scene, he emerges with a new set of clothes he doesn’t like, which his companion from the previous scene procured for him. Now why does that feel familiar?

In conclusion...

honestly, I don’t even know where I was going with this originally. This started off as a joke but then things inevitably escalated and now I’m really tired and I wanna go to sleep. (Also, the whole djinn thing is giving me feels now which kinda puts a dampener on the humour in the episode. Jaskier’d already been having a bad day and things just. Keep. Getting. Worse. Ugh, my heart.) But I feel like this post needs a proper conclusion.

I feel like, in the context of these scenes Jaskier and Yennefer could be seen as foils to each other? They’re two of the few people Geralt lets close, very close, actually, since getting naked in front of someone is frequently equated with showing vulnerability to someone. In a lot of ways, Jaskier and Yennefer’s roles work in ways that are the exact opposite of that of the other. Jaskier tries to be seen where Yennefer wants to remain hidden, yet Jaskier gets obscured by the environment while Yennefer is exposed. Jaskier is asking Geralt for a favour, Yennefer did Geralt a favour; Jaskier insists on taking care of Geralt where Yennefer gives him space. Yennefer sees Geralt’s past, Jaskier his future. Jaskier touches the scar but doesn’t look, Yennefer looks but doesn’t touch. But both find a way to scratch at the emotional walls that Geralt’s put up and both times Geralt reacts by immediately trying to escape the situation. Both times, he ends up wearing clothes he doesn’t like in the following scene.

Speaking about nudity and emotional vulnerability, maybe that’s kind of part of the conclusion as well? Sorta? Especially, since Geralt seems to start looking for his clothes or for a way out of the tub the moment someone gets too close. Furthermore, afterwards, he never seems comfortable in the clothes he’s been given, which you could read as a metaphor of sorts, I guess? Like something inside Geralt getting knocked loose in the conversation with his companion and Geralt consequently having to arrange himself with an uncomfortable truth in the aftermath? Does that make sense? Have we finally reached the point where I’m getting too cerebral? Or did we sail past that point like 4000 words ago? God, my brain hurts.

[fangirlandiknowit101]

12, 14 and 18☺️

Thanks for asking <333

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

There's lots to be honest, but something I still can't believe I haven't written is a horse riding au. Like, that's half a lie bc I have a few thousand words written for a Simon/Baz horse rider au that I might never finish, but I'd really like to write one for Naruto. But I always decide not to because I don't know all the words and I hate googling stuff while I write. But one day! Surely!

14. If you were stuck on a desert island with only two characters, which would you pick?

Honestly? Kirk and Spock. They'd find a way to get us out of there. And if not, it would at least be cool to meet them.

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

You really had to pick such a difficult question... I can never decide on any particular line/scene. So I opened up The sun within me and looked at the chapters and thought I'd pick something that could be interesting to comment on. And in this case, it's a bit about how Naruto, Sasuke, and Charasuke have changed and their different relationships with each other. So! Here's a bit of commentary for a scene in chapter 40 (under the cut bc it's fairly long lol):

[For clarification, this is right after Naruto and Sasuke come back home from Sasuke's mission where he fought Menma and Menma then disappeared. I'm skipping ahead to the part where they arrive at the orphanage and Charasuke is waiting in their room (Naruto's POV). My comments will be written in bold text.]

The clone’s memories dropped into his head like a puff of smoke, and he groaned out loud, making a face. Sasuke gave him a concerned look, but Naruto sighed and shook his head.

“Let’s go,” he said, feeling very reluctant as he grabbed Sasuke’s arm.

He supposed he could have teleported them somewhere else, but Charasuke had seemed prepared to wait until they returned. Maybe Sasuke could deal with him while Naruto sort of… drifted away and hid in the kitchen.

Naruto is acting very childishly in this scene, mostly because he's still wary of Charasuke, and also because he's just spent two days in Sasuke's company but pretending to be Menma, which means no cuddles/kisses or anything. He's kind of clingy, isn't he? Haha. And also, he doesn't really want to admit to himself that Menma disappearing for Charasuke is the parallel to his worst fear, that Sasuke will disappear.

“Where is he?” Charasuke demanded the second they arrived in the bedroom.

“Ah, Sasuke, maybe you can explain?” he suggested, inching towards the door, but Sasuke nailed him to the floor with a single glare.

“He could be anywhere,” Sasuke said, continuing to glare until he was sure that Naruto wouldn’t escape. “I didn’t manage to get a good look through the portal.”

“The portal?” Charasuke seemed to waver, arms wrapped around himself as he looked between them. “Tell me what happened.”

You can tell that Sasuke has really started to care about Charasuke here. He's not entirely open with him yet, but he recognizes a lot of himself in Charasuke and he puts himself in Menma's position, thinking about when he left the village and Naruto was left behind. He doesn't want Charasuke to hurt the way he knows Naruto was hurting back then.

While Sasuke described the mission, including what he called ‘Naruto’s dumb interference’, Naruto dug through his closet for the shirt he would make Sasuke wear. He was absolutely sure that Sasuke would argue about it – especially since he’d sent a clone to Akatsuki and not himself – but if he talked fast enough and relented that it would be enough if Sasuke slept in it for one night…

“He really is gone, then,” Charasuke said, his voice toneless. “I’ll never see him again.”

“I’m sure you’ll see him again,” Naruto said, contemplating the pros and cons of a t-shirt versus long sleeves. “Whoever grabbed him and hauled him off probably just wanted to keep him out of Sasuke’s reach. He gets awfully strong when he’s irritated.”

Naruto is definitely acting a bit heartless here, again, because he doesn't want to think about his own feelings or feel forced to recognize that Charasuke is a person Sasuke cares about, that he should also care about. I think he can get a bit closed off when there's too much going on in his own life, and that makes it hard to focus on other people, especially since he still wants to leave the other dimension and doesn't want to think about Sasuke caring about his family here - meaning Sasuke might want to stay.

When he turned back from the closet, he found Sasuke giving him a disappointed look.

“What?”

“You’re taking this lightly,” he said, glancing at the shirt in Naruto’s hand and apparently deciding to ignore it.

“Well, unless we figure out how to dimension-hop after him, I don’t think there’s a lot we can do.”

Now that he was back to being himself, all Naruto really wanted was to curl up in bed with Sasuke and not think about the outside world at all. Charasuke, on the other hand, seemed on the verge of tears.

“And what would you have done if I was the one who disappeared?” Sasuke asked, an icy note to the question.

“How would I know? It hasn’t happened yet.”

A bit of foreshadowing lol. Except Sasuke is the one left reacting when Naruto leaves, but Naruto really is trying to keep a tight grip in his emotions here and absolutely not think about the fact that Sasuke could have disappeared with Menma, and he wouldn't have known what happened to him.

“You could have let me follow after him and we’d know where he went.”

Naruto straightened up, face hardening.

“No, you might have known where he went, but the rest of us wouldn’t. Besides, he was trying to kill you. I went through too much trouble to keep you alive to just let you jump into some unknown enemy territory.”

As you can see, putting a lot of emphasis on Naruto's fear of losing Sasuke again.

Silent tears now streaming down his cheeks, Charasuke sat down on the bed and clenched his fists over his lap. It was obvious that he didn’t like what they were saying, but Naruto pushed his feelings of sympathy aside. Sasuke was his top priority, and that hadn’t changed simply because there was another one of him now.

“I told him I never want to see him again,” Charasuke sniffled, and it was really disturbing to watch someone with Sasuke’s face – well, a version of Sasuke, really – crying out in heartache.

Meanwhile poor Charasuke is having a background breakdown. To Naruto, it's hard to see a version of Sasuke like this. Charasuke is coming face to face with the realization that he's A: definitely not over Menma, B: he really handled things badly and never even stopped to think about why Menma was doing things.

“If he survives, you can apologize,” Naruto told him, trying to sound comforting. “Hell knows Sasuke said a lot worse stuff to me.”

To his great surprise, Sasuke went over to sit beside Charasuke, frowning as his hand twitched to reach out to him.

“This isn’t about you and me, Naruto,” he said, settling for an awkward hand on Charasuke’s shoulder. “And it could be our fault, anyway.”

“You know, Sasuke,” Naruto said as the initial shock wore off, “that sounds scarily like you’ve started caring about other people.”

Naruto and Sasuke having a small fight about Charasuke... Naruto knew Sasuke cared about Charasuke, but this is when he realizes that Charasuke is becoming a person that Sasuke wants to protect. And for Sasuke it's a small step towards opening his heart for more people than just Naruto. Sasuke is honestly mad at Naruto for taking things so lightly, for treating this other dimension as something that doesn't affect them. Besides, I really wanted Charasuke to be comforted by Sasuke haha.

Charasuke kept crying, and the look Sasuke directed at him clearly said what he thought of Naruto right then.

“Moron. I care about other people, just not anyone in our own dimension.”

Naruto knew that to be a lie, but decided not to say anything. Having Sasuke admitting to something like having feelings was a huge enough step on its own. Instead he sighed, grabbed something to sleep in, and headed for the door.

“I’ll just sleep on a couch,” he mumbled.

Does Sasuke care about anyone back in their own dimension? Maybe, but you wouldn't really see him act like this with canon Sakura, not before they left for the RTN dimension at least. It's a big thing that Sasuke is starting to voice his feelings out loud, and acknowledge them more. Naruto is feeling jealous actually, because he wanted to finally have Sasuke to himself, and also he feels guilty for being jealous, and also he's hoping that if he pouts enough Sasuke will comfort him instead of Charasuke lol. Not always the most mature person, but who is?

Coward, Kurama accused as he headed towards the living room, but Naruto was too tired to argue with him. Something about Charasuke always rubbed him wrong, and maybe it had to do with how he displayed his emotions openly and so obviously thought of himself as weak. If Sasuke wanted to handle it, fine. Naruto didn’t have the patience for people who sat around crying, and a small part of him didn’t like that he had such problems with caring about Menma, either. Menma had everything, a loving family, a Sasuke who cared about him, but he was still feared and treated differently. Even in this world people treated the bijuu as something dangerous, and he wondered how much of the whole story of them losing consciousness and turning into beasts was true, and how much was justification to treat them badly.

It's a bit of 'my problems are worse than yours so you shouldn't be so upset'. In the movie, we really got to see how much it hurt Naruto to see this other world where he had everything he wanted, and then acknowledge that it wasn't real. Even if he can recognize that the bijuu were still treated badly here, he can't quite make peace with the way Charasuke and Menma can't appreciate what they have. It makes it really hard for him to sympathize with them.

Am I supposed to feel touched? Kurama snorted as Naruto rearranged pillows into an acceptable bed on one couch. You didn’t care much for us either before you figured out the truth.

No, but everything was supposed to be the opposite here, right? Well, this part isn’t the opposite, it’s the same.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Naruto blinked his eyes open in front of Kurama’s open cage. There was water sloshing around his ankles, and everything was clouded in some sort of yellowish haze.

“Oh, come on,” he complained, but Kurama tsk’ed at him with his head supported by one giant paw.

“I hate to admit it, but you might be onto something, kid.”

“Uh-huh, well I don’t know about you but I want to sleep.”

Kurama reached out and poked him in the stomach with a sharp claw, eyes narrowing to slits. Even if they were friends, Naruto didn’t feel like testing the limits of that friendship with those claws so close to him.

“Sometimes you say things in such a stupid voice that I miss how important it might be. Now shut up and listen,” Kurama growled, three of his tails swishing angrily behind him. “This world is supposed to be opposite, right?”

“I don’t know, but everything seems opposite.”

“Let’s pretend we know it’s true. So, everything and everybody is the opposite more or less. But, the prejudice against the bijuu is still there. And we were told that it was only recently that they became unable to control. So, where does that leave us?”

Naruto pouted, not bothering to answer. Obviously Kurama already knew what he wanted to say.

“I think it means that anything that is the same, is something that somebody has tampered with.”

I was going to do more with this, but it was also a bit of 'what sort of theories would they have for what was really going on?' and this one is accurate in a way, because Hagoromo did tamper with the bijuu which in turn made them become feared and badly treated. So it's definitely hinting at there being someone behind the scenes manipulating the bijuu.

“Huh?”

Kurama rolled his eyes, sighing so deeply that Naruto felt the wind from it tear at his clothes.

“Think, boy! If this is a mirror-world or whatever, people shouldn’t be afraid of me and my siblings. But they are, and it only started a while ago. Obviously someone made us go crazy. And Menma has me inside him, but a crazy version of me, so wouldn’t it be logical that whoever did something to the me inside Menma, could also do something to Menma?”

He thought about it, hard enough that his head started hurting. Sasuke would probably know, but he was busy with Charasuke.

“I guess,” he said eventually, huffing a little. “But even if you’re right, it doesn’t help us figuring out who’s behind it all.”

“Does it matter?” Kurama scoffed, and then his lips spread in a terribly evil grin. “We’re going to kill them anyway, aren’t we?”

“This is why you have such a bad reputation,” Naruto sighed.

Kurama only laughed.

I really love Kurama... His and Naruto's weird friendship gives me life. His solutions to problems are always very straightforward heh.

Well, that's that :3

[warrioreowynofrohan]

The Leithian Reread - Canto X (The Attack by Celegorm and Curufin)

This canto splits into two stories: Lúthien and Beren having a rather circular argument about what to do next, and Celegorm and Curufin facing the fallout from their actions in Nargothrond.

Beren and Lúthien bury Finrod before departing from the isle of Tol Sirion. [Very slightly edited by me to update names.]

The isle in Sirion they left behind

but there on hill-top one might find

a green grave, and a stone set,

and there there lie the white bones yet

of Felagund, Finarfin’s son -

unless that land is changed and gone,

or foundered in unfathomed seas,

while Felagund laughs beneath the trees

in Valinor, and comes no more

to this grey world of tears and war.

Many of Sauron’s captives from Tol-in-Gaurhoth return to Nargothrond, as does Huan (Huan most likely with them and looking after them, as post-Bragollach Beleriand is a dangerous place and I can’t imagine they’re in very good shape).

The reaction in Nargothrond stands out because nothing has fundamentally changed about Celegorm and Curufin’s actions. It was obvious before (Canto VIII) that Celegorm and Curufin were deliberately abandoning Finrod to die, and it’s still obvious now. Finrod’s death is an entirely foreseeable action of the Nargothrondrim’s choices. The main point that’s new is the realization that defeating Sauron was possible - possible for one elf-maid and a dog, no less. They really are, as the narrative itself calls them, fickle. It’s even more striking in the Silmarillion, where no one will go with Celegorm and Curufin, not even their own people (for all perceived that the curse lay heavily upon the brothers, and that evil followed them) in contrast with the Leithian ([they] took their horses and such folk as still them followed). The Silmarillion version works better in terms of narrative consistency, as no one else is with the brothers when they attack Beren and Lúthien.

I’m very interested in what’s going on in the heads of Celegorm and Curufin’s followers - the ones who stay in Nargothrond - at this point. They’ve backed the brothers all through their coup, all through the brothers threatening the Nargothrondim with a second Kinslaying, all through the imprisonment and attempted rape of Lúthien, and done nothing to impede these profoundly un-Elvish actions. And now, suddenly, they all turn away and decide that they’d rather stay with a group of Nargothrondim who are probably more than a little angry and hostile to them. Is it repentance? A belated attack of conscience? Pure self-interest - Nargothrond’s one of the most secure places in Beleriand at the moment, and in that respect preferable to the northeastern front of the war?

Orodreth, in pretty much the only documented moment where he takes a stand and sticks to it, forbids the killing of Celegorm and Curufin, and exiles them instead. I think he’s a fundamentally good person, just one without any strong leadership qualities who’s been placed in a position for which he is fundamentally unsuited.

They’ve accomplished nothing with all their treachery except alienating the two largest elf-kingdoms in Beleriand. They are entirely unrepentant, and are instead furious (went away in anger dire) despite, or pethaps because of, being treated more mercifully than they deserve. This is the state of mind they will remain in through the rest of their lives, from the attack on Beren and Lúthien through to the Second Kinslaying: a determined and ever-worsening hatred towards, and need for vengeance against, anyone they have wronged. Mercy is the worst offense to pride, as in Saruman’s words to Frodo at the end of the Scouring of the Shire (You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to you mercy. I hate it and you!) It is, in fact, hard not to draw parallels between the scenes: Saruman attempts and fails to kill Frodo in reaction to being offered mercy, even as Celegorm (in the Leithian) or Curufin (in the Silm) attempts to kill Lúthien for the same reason.

Perhaps, on some entirely unacknowledged level, they realize what they’ve become - but rather then recognizing it as a vonsequence of their own actions, they blame the people they have harmed for being the cause of their fall.

Beren and Lúthien, in the meantime, are arguing on the borders of Doriath: Beren wants to go alone on a hopeless quest to Angband, while Lúthien is all for either ignoring the Quest altogether and eloping (perfectly legit, albeit rude, by elven standards) or going with Beren if he insists on going to Angband, whether he likes it or not: And if she may not by thee go, against thy will they desperate feet she will pursue, until they meet, Beren and Lúthien, love once more, on earth or on the shadowy shore.

At this moment Celegorm and Curufin attack. It’s entirely unprovoked, and driven by nothing but hate and - given the attempt to kidnap Lúthien - lust. One of the clear patterns of the Leithian is that Lúthien, formidable against supernatural threats, is less successful against mundane ones; in tbis sequence it is Beren who rescues her, twice. I’m sure there is deliberate symbolism in this, but I’m having trouble putting my finger on it. It’s as though the purpose of her powers is to stand agai st the forces of darkness, not to fight other elves, even ones who are behaving evilly. And having lived all her life in Doriath, she has no experience with elves acting in that way; she is fundamentally a good and compassionate person (see her sparing of Curufin, and later how she deals with Carcharoth), and this sort of evil is alien to her.

It’s worth pointing out how impressive Beren’s accomplishment here is. Unarmed and on foot, he defeats a mounted Calaquendi who is armed with one of the most dangerous knives ever to exist. He jumps full onto Curufin’s horse, tackles him off it, and then strangles him before Curufin can get to any weapon. This is also another instance of evil deeds resulting in good by accident: without Angrist, Beren and Lúthien would never have bern able to retrieve the Silmaril,from the Iron Crown, so the attack by Celegorm and Curufin becomes essential to the Quest’s success.

As the brothers ride away, they shot twice at Lúthien, not at Beren, in what is thus quite clearly deliberate revenge for her showing mercy. Huan brings an herb that is likely athelas, and Lúthien heals Beren, building a fire and caring for him through the night. Beren, very frustratingly, immediately upon waking returns to his original theme of telling Lúthien to wait in Doriath while he goes to Angband, as if mortal peril was just an inconvenient distraction. She is still having none of it: Why turn we not from fear and woe, beneath the trees to walk and roam, roofless, with all the world as home, over mountains, beside the seas, in the sunlight, in the breeze? It’s interesting to entertain the idea of what would have happened if they had simply set aside the Quest. They ultimately go to live in Ossiriand after returning from death, and there’s nothing stopping them from doing so now. In the long run, Beleriand would have been worse off for it - there would be no Voyage of Eärendil and no War of Wrath - making their quest no less important to the First Age than Frodo’s was to the Third.

Beren remains obdurate, and after they reach the borders of Doriath and have been there some days, he leaves her sleeping and sets off for Angband.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Strings”

Happy Saturday, RWBY friends! I am, quite obviously, going to dive into the recap in just a moment, but first I wanted to take a short detour to discuss the elephant in the tumblr room. Namely, Supernatural.

For those of you out of the loop, the tl;dr is that a fifteen year, beloved show ended with a truly horrendous finale. Specifically, the finale rejected everything that the show had been building towards: the logical conclusion to character arcs, the theme that “family don’t end in blood,” the potential for a queer romantic relationship… I could go on. The point I want to make is that the fandom had every reason to believe we’d be getting these things. This isn’t a case of fans upset that the finale didn’t go the way they wanted as an individual viewer, but rather that the finale didn’t go the way the show clearly and explicitly said it would. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in many respects, viewers were straight up lied to.

(I recommend reading the reviews.) 

What does this all have to do with RWBY? Well, I can’t help but think that history is repeating itself. Certainly there are some notable similarities between the two series. Both have long, meandering plotlines with no clear end in sight (though I hope RWBY doesn’t reach the 15 Volume mark…). Both began with a small, core cast, but quickly expanded—generating the expectation that these now equally important characters will be given their due. Both have moved from the small conflict of fighting everyday monsters to a god-based mythology. Both have a popular queer relationship dangled in front of the viewers, featuring scenes where they’re “obviously” in love… but will it ever be confirmed? Both have a fanbase that says loudly and confidently that the writers know what they’re doing. Just wait! It’s all been planned! We’ll be rewarded for our patience and soon all the naysayers will be proven wrong.

Thing is, the Supernatural fandom wasn’t rewarded. Right up until a week ago those fans—myself included—had faith that the writers knew what they were doing because they can’t really be that out of touch with their own story...right? It’s not possible. Yet they were, it was, and now that I’ve gotten solid proof of precisely how far a show can go to reject its own logic, themes, and premise, that just makes me more wary of RWBY’s mistakes. Before I had a solid faith that things couldn’t possibly get that bad, that no matter how much RWBY might be messing up in the short term, it will undoubtedly pull it together overall, because what show wouldn’t? Especially a show with such promise and, at times, wonderful storytelling. Well, Supernatural didn’t manage it and frankly I’m not sure what to do with that information.

Seriously. I don’t have any grand conclusion here. It’s not my intention to suggest that anyone should stop watching RWBY, or to claim that it will absolutely fail because Supernatural did. Obviously, we don’t know what will happen until we get to see it in the show. I only want to acknowledge these parallels and the similar journey I see both fanbases on. I can’t help but wonder if, a couple years from now, RWBY fans will be making incredibly optimistic posts about how it’s all coming together, just have some faith, everyone who says that the group won’t get a satisfying ending, or Blake and Yang won’t be confirmed are just mean trolls… only to wake up that Saturday morning and get another metaphorical slap in the face.

It’s something to think about.

But here I’ve spent a page talking about the wrong show. Let’s get into the episode!

We open on a black screen with lots of ambiguous noises. At first I thought this was Oscar struggling in the Hound’s grip or something, but then I remembered that RWBY likes to insert an episode between cliffhangers. I watched Ironwood (presumably) shoot a guy and he only came back this week (though that question still isn’t answered. At this point I kind of wonder if it will be). Oscar was kidnapped last week, which means we won’t get to see him until next week. Or… two weeks from now? RT skips the week of Thanksgiving, don’t they? Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Something horrible happens to Oscar and we need to wait two weeks to find out how it’s resolved. 

Watch him escape the Hound off screen and return to the group with a new outfit 😂

So it’s not Oscar we hear, but Ruby, the last one coming out of the tube. Weiss is in the process of pulling Nora’s ear for that stunt… with a frankly strange looking hand. What’s up with RWBY animating weird hands lately? I’m pretty sure that’s not how anatomy works.

Anyway, Nora counters that this was a “Once in a lifetime experience,” but they were all going to go through the tubes regardless. Weiss isn’t pissed that you sent her through, she’s pissed that you did it unexpectedly when she was alone, heading into enemy territory. But of course, there’s no one in the room to hinder them, so the mistake is meaningless.

We’re setting the tone again though. For the first half of this episode everything is sunshine and giddy adventure, which doesn’t fit the situation at all. It also creates emotional whiplash when I’m suddenly supposed to be super worried about things later on. This sort of about-face works once in a blue moon, as an emotional punch, like we see in Mulan: 

But RWBY does it every other episode, which makes the overall tone of the series confusing instead. Half the time RWBY feels like two different stories—the cartoony tale of girls going on fun adventures, and the traumatic tale of a fantasy war—that have been badly spliced together.

“Alight, Robo-Girl, which way?” May asks and Penny demonstrates why she’s the best for sneaking into a facility. She’s able to map out the whole place, including seeing where everyone is so they can avoid detection. Kudos to RT for going this route. I was worried that they would have Ruby and the others straight up attacking Atlas grunts, knocking them out/potentially even killing them because who cares, right? They’re the bad guys! So I’m glad they’re working to get in and out undetected. Granted, we see in some places that they’re clearly willing to fight the soldiers if it comes to that—they’re reaching for their weapons when Penny opens the final door, expecting the room to be full of people. They were going to attack—but at least they’re trying to lessen that conflict as much as possible. That’s the sort of choice I expect to see from heroes and I’m glad we got it here. 

After scouting the area Penny corrects May: “And my name is Penny,” to which Ruby gives a satisfied “Heh.” I’ve got no problem with Penny rejecting nicknames, even potentially well-meaning ones, because she’s always struggled with her status as a real girl and her name is her own. She gets to decide what others call her. I do, however, have a problem with making the presumed trans character the one who is corrected. Granted yes, we haven’t gotten confirmation in the show that May is trans, but RT doesn’t get to cash in on that rep without likewise suffering the consequences for how the character is treated. You’re telling me that a trans woman is going to roll her eyes when someone asks her to use a specific name? Please give May flaws, yes, she’s a person, but out of all the millions of flaws across the human spectrum, this is the one we’re shown? 

Not to mention Ruby’s continued attitude. It’s like, ‘Yeah, May. Stop being a horrible person who draws attention to the fact that Penny is a robot. I never did that.’ Except when Ruby first met her she didn’t know Penny was a robot. Just like she didn’t know Blake was a faunus—something we’re reminded of this episode. We might assume Ruby wouldn’t have ever made any missteps at the beginning of these relationships, but the fact remains that she got to know both girls before their minority status was ever revealed. Ruby loved them before she ever had to grapple with their differences. 

Put in her place, May then demonstrates that she can make lots of people invisible, not just herself. That’s handy. She creates an invisibility bubble that reminds me of Harry’s invisibility cloak. In the sense that others might not be able to see you, but they can still hear and touch you, which makes sneaking around still pretty challenging.

No sooner have I thought that then two guards get into the elevator with them. The group keeps quiet as the duo discusses how no one can get close to Salem’s storm without “getting shocked right out of the air.” Interesting. And frankly one hell of a roadblock if the Hound escapes into the clouds. Oscar may be gone for a while if he doesn’t escape on his own... The woman also comments about how creepy it is that all the grimm are just hanging out, waiting. It’s “worse than if they’d attacked.”

No it’s not! RT, stop trying to implement the idea that Salem withholding her forces is some epically cool choice. She should have decimated everyone by now and the fact that she hasn’t just shows how transparent the problem is: you’ve created a villain that’s too powerful and now you don’t know what to do with her.

As the group sneaks out of the elevator Nora grins and presses all the buttons, which is, as expected, a dumb move. They’re supposed to be sneaking into this base. If they’re caught they’re going to be thrown in jail at best, killed at worst, but Nora wants to risk that for a practical joke? Again and again we see this insistence on incorporating comedy where it’s not only unnecessary, but actively interferes with other aspects of the scene.

Reaching a terminal, Penny inserts her finger and gains access via Pietro’s credentials. She’s really demonstrating this episode why she’s… pretty terrifying? I mean, Penny is an incredibly powerful fighter with a computer’s view of the world, access to everything in the most powerful Kingdom alongside its information, and she now has Maiden powers to boot. Which, I should add, it took her one fight to master (because remember, the heroes are now always as strong as they need to be to win…). Now that Watts is planning to hack her, I expect her to be an incredibly formidable enemy, just given the amount she could potentially do. I think Penny herself is too kind to exploit all that potential and as we’ll see via Pietro briefly taking control, she doesn’t always have the knowledge to use the tools at her disposal. But in the hands of someone like Watts? He’ll turn Penny into the ultimate weapon.

Access granted, they learn that they have to go “Right through central command!” Of course, Penny makes it sound like a fun game and the spy-movie music/cartoon lecture doesn’t help. Again, tone. It’s adorable! It just doesn’t fit sneaking into a military base with your lives on the line while Salem waits outside. That was a RWBY Chibi moment. 

Penny explains—twice—that Ruby can use her semblance to fly them all through central command and it’s treated like a revelation. At first, I was pretty confused because Ruby has been dong this for ages? She carried Weiss in “Argus Limited” and Nora during the Geist fight. But upon close inspection, what Penny seems to have “figured out” is that Ruby can carry multiple people at once because the “mass doesn’t matter.” Okay. Not a contradiction then, though I think RT could have made it a little more clear that Ruby was shocked at the idea of carrying multiple people, not carrying someone at all.

What I do take issue with though is Ruby mastering this skill instantaneously. I mean, why is Ruby being forced to try this on the fly (pun not intended)—Penny has known the layout of the building since they made this plan. She knew they had to get past central control and that it would be packed with people. She’s obviously thought about Ruby’s semblance a great deal—and why is she succeeding? Give me a Volume 7 where Ruby actually trains in this technique, set up via Harriet’s comment early on about her semblance, and then she’s victorious here when it finally matters. Or give me Ruby assuming she can pull off this incredibly difficult skill only to fall out of her semblance halfway through, a roomful of Atlas personnel staring at them. Then what? 

Not this.

This is a character who does everything perfectly on the first try without ever having to fail. Ruby is boring like this.

Crisis averted, we transfer to Ironwood who is… working with Watts.

What else is there to say? I’ve already laid out all the reasons why this is stupid and makes no sense. Others keep coming onto my posts to explain to me how Ironwood’s awful deeds up until now fully show his decent into villainy, conveniently ignoring the numerous limitations he was under and his choice to do what he thought was best for the world using inaccurate information. Ironwood was always a divisive character and many are happy to ignore the years’ worth of deconstruction done—a man who looks like the Evil Military General but actually isn’t—because they never liked him to begin with. Not liking him is fine, no one has to like any character, but I’m honestly shocked by the number of viewers who refuse to acknowledge how bad the writing is, even if it means defending a character they hate a teensy tiny bit (#SupernaturalVibes). As a friend put it, Ironwood now feels like a caricature of his former self, a Pure Evil Ironwood who appeared out of nowhere and is now here to stay. He shoots kids. He shoots unarmed civilians. He teams up with Salem’s men and tries to hack Penny. These are undeniably horrible acts, they’ve just been given to a character who never would have done them until RT randomly flipped the Evil switch.

The “RWBY” tag, alongside all the fluff moments of this episode, is now filled with posts encouraging Marrow to turn, yelling at the Ace Ops for being “bootlickers,” and capslock screaming at anyone who dared to speak up for Ironwood. It still sucks to have bad writing twisted into an attack on the fans and it’s going to continue to suck until at least the rest of Volume 8. I’d like to again remind everyone that Qrow teamed up with Tyrian a few episodes, yet because he’s again in Ruby’s graces, that was twisted into a ‘not that bad’ situation. The issue isn’t really that Ironwood is teaming up with one of Salem’s subordinates, but that he’s doing it to go against RWBYJNOR… the second a character teams up with Salem to get what Ruby wants (to not have her team in jail) then that’s totally fine… but that’s a wrinkle a lot of people are happy to ignore. 

So yeah, Ironwood is an idiot now too. Like Qrow also was last Volume. He really thinks Watts isn’t going to betray him somehow? Although, I do wonder if the chance to ruin Pietro’s creation outweighs his loyalty to Salem, but the point is that Ironwood can’t be sure of that either. At least he’s smart enough to keep Watts under continuous guard. He puts his hand on Watts’ shoulders and goes, “I’d hate for us to have to try motivating you. Again.”

So he tortures people too now? Like I said, caricature. This was Ironwood and we were given no clear idea of where he disappeared to.

RIP a great character.

Watts notices though that Pietro has apparently accessed a secure area and alerts Ironwood to it. I laugh that the information is just ¡EMERGENCY! In large, red letters. Ironwood immediately makes an announcement for everyone to be on guard. It’s a level 3 lockdown — that won’t impede the group leaving via airship! — and they’re to use “lethal force” if necessary. Weiss is disgusted.

As much as I disagree with making Ironwood into a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy  — he’s definitely wrong to be doing this — I also find myself rolling my eyes at reactions like that. Yes, Weiss. You attacked four operatives until they were knocked unconscious. Prevented an entire city from escaping Salem’s wrath, endangering them all. Now you’re breaking into the most classified room in the Kingdom to steal an equally qualified project and use it for your own means. There’s no reason why Ironwood would level his might against you. Is death still an extreme response? Yes. Should Weiss be acting like Ironwood is crazy for responding to them in an extreme manner? No. Her remark makes it sound like Ironwood is attacking her poor, innocent, defenseless team… not the team that’s been lying to him, betraying him, attacking him, and stealing from him. Not the team carrying deadly weapons into a facility to take what they want at any cost. 

With their presence known, May wants to go grab an airship. That’s the series now.

Meanwhile, Penny insists that they can still complete their mission and we see Nora come up with some sort of plan. 

Except, what plan was this?? What did she say to the group? ‘Hey, let’s wait around until some guy conveniently walks by with a full cup of coffee. Then we can trip him and the mug will fly alllll the way across this gap to land on a terminal, startling at least two workers. Except this guy will be hated by the whole room because he’s always messing things up—his coffee mug has been changed from #1 Dad to #1 Dud—so that this little mishap will create a ruckus that gets everyone involved, giving us the opportunity to slip by them all.’

Seriously, what? This kind of “plan” only works with someone like Clover, where we know he has a good luck semblance and thus all these unlikely pieces fall into place. I could absolutely buy Clover smiling smugly, working under the knowledge that he just has to wait around a few minutes and something will come along that works entirely in his favor. But Nora? How did she know any of this would happen? Obviously she couldn’t have, so what exactly was their intention if this coffee carrying, hated guy didn’t show up? RWBY, your contrived plots are showing.

I do, however, love the grimm Jaws poster. Jaws is an absolute favorite of mine, so seeing a reference to it in RWBY? A funny one at that? It almost makes up for how bad this episode is lol.

Because frankly I’m bored. The group sneaks around, criticizes May and Ironwood, briefly confuses me about Ruby’s semblance knowledge, and gets through tons of Atlas personnel in the stupidest way possible. I have to watch this guy running out of the room with coffee on his pants screaming, “WHHHYYY???” and he doesn’t notice the five girls standing right next to him. It’s silly. It’s boring. Luckily for RWBY, things are about to pick up in the second half.

After Ruby gets them upstairs and the final room is also conveniently devoid of people, Pietro takes control of Penny—including yellow possession eyes like Oscar has with Ozpin—and he...gets Amity started. That’s it. After a whole volume of ‘It’s not finished yet’ and ‘We barely have the resources’ and ‘Robyn stole what we were using to do idek what with’ he presses buttons for a while and they’re in. How good for them!

I do love that Penny calls Pietro “Dad” though. I’m here for the android-father relationship.

While Pietro works we turn to Blake, Weiss, and Nora. Blake tries to convince the audience that Ruby and Yang had an actual fight with, “I’ve never seen Yang and Ruby fight like this.” Yeah, because no one in this group has ever said the sliiiiightest thing against Ruby, so you all read the tinniest disagreement as a “fight” to be worried about. I mean, doesn’t RT have friends to draw inspiration from? They’ve never disagreed about Huge and Complex Questions before? Never gotten pissed and then shrugged it off the next time you want to text? RWBY’s idea of a diverse friend group feels like many other writers’ idea of a sibling relationship: anyone with an actual sibling goes, “What is this?” Speaking of, Weiss explains that sisters often have “very different ideas about what’s right” as if, again, people don’t have different ideas? Just in general? Why is this suddenly a sister thing? She’s clearly thinking about Winter, but doesn’t actually bring it up, so all we’re left with is the same situation we had last Volume. Weiss thinks she’s right, Winter is wrong, and they’re just going down their separate roads because there’s definitely no reason to re-examine any choices here. It’s all static. 

Until Winter betrays Ironwood, of course. 

Nora tries to reassure Blake that the group will be fine (ha) even though they’ve split, the irony being that we, the audience, know they just got wrecked by the Hound. Jaune is a great leader though, Oscar has grown so much, Yang could defend them all in a fight, and Ren… well, she can’t think of anything to say about Ren. I hate the Nora is acting like Ren has drawn away from her for no reason, after she chose to kiss him—without consent—rather than listening to what was bothering him, then proceeded to pretend that this mystery problem never existed. What does she expect? I do, however, like the general acknowledgement that she doesn’t know who she is without Ren. Who is Nora? Someone who is “strong and hit[s] stuff?”

See, this feels like RT writing self-consciously because Nora doesn’t have much of a personality. Oh, on a surface level she’s bursting with it, but past the bubbly exterior? That single layer? We can add maybe one thing to this “Likes Ren, is strong, hits stuff” list: she’s funny. That’s it. Anything else we might add like “she’s loyal” or “she’s kind” is just a generic characteristic of this entire team. They’re all meant to be crazy talented good guys and even the “is strong” aspect is suspect when others frequently pull off attacks as showy as Nora’s hammer hits. So who is she? What are Nora’s dreams? What are her hobbies? Her fears? Her history? We’ve seen a single flashback of her on the streets and one scene back at Beacon where she listens to music and reads a magazine. Seven years worth of material and that’s it. There’s a reason why the go-to, non-combat action for Nora in fics is “makes pancakes.” We know so little about her still. 

So I was excited for a brief, shining moment. Yes! Explore who Nora is outside of being strong and hitting stuff! … and then her big action this episode is, as she says, being strong and hitting something. Don’t get me wrong, outside of that setup it’s pretty epic. I like Nora going to those lengths to save Penny and I absolutely love the repercussions of the choice: a broken aura, passing out, and badass lightning scars all over her arms and neck (especially when women often aren’t allowed to accumulate scars in visual media). That’s pretty damn awesome. It’s just that it comes on the heels of the story insisting that Nora is more than this, that we’ll learn something new about her… and we haven’t. This is indeed cool, but we already knew that Nora was willing to crazy lengths by hitting things really hard. That’s already her established norm.

At least this moment has some really nice characterization alongside the stupidity. The conversation between Ruby and Penny is just plain stupid. Penny wants to stay to help with the evacuations, but Pietro says she should come with him in Amity. Why? As Ruby says, because then she’ll be up in the sky and Salem won’t be able to access the relic.

That’s what Ironwood wanted to do! We could have had this conflict episodes ago with you all working with him! I really can’t with this cast. Also, the rest of this is still confusing. I thought pretty much everyone was in the slums by now, so what evacuation are they talking about? Do they plan to evacuate everyone in Mantle out of the kingdom somehow… like Ironwood wanted to do with Atlas? And why are they acting like Amity is evacuating some people too? I thought they were just using it as a communication device? To add insult to injury, Ruby then contradicts herself a minute later when she tells Harriet that Ironwood can’t have the relic because “Salem will find her way to the relic no matter where you go.” Ruby, if Salem can access the relic high in the sky she can also access Penny in the sky. If you believe that literally nowhere is safe then why are you sending Penny away under the claim that she—and via her the Relic—will be safer? If you want Penny in Amity to lessen the chance of Salem getting the Relic, why can’t Penny be in Atlas while simultaneously (hopefully) getting a whole slew of people to safety? 

I’m continually confused by this “plan” of theirs. Their claims just flip-flop according to what (supposedly) contrasts them with Ironwood. Even though that’s not actually the case.

Penny is me, sad while watching this train wreck of a scene. 

So yeah, the Ace Ops are here. I’ve wondered since the trailer why Weiss looked smug while everyone else was startled. Turns out it’s because of her line, “So, your first time losing to us wasn’t enough?” I can’t express how much I dislike all the girls’ personalities now. I want to shake some compassion and humility into them. Plus, they never should have won that fight in the first place. Marrow yells, “We were holding back!” but coming from the team’s weakest member it reads as defensive. Like we’re supposed to go, ‘Lol yeah right, Marrow. Just admit you got your ass kicked,’ even tough the Ace Ops should have wiped the floor with them, holding back or not. That’s my biggest takeaway from this fight: it’s the reverse of what we should have gotten. The Ace Ops should have beaten Team RWBY with ease and struggled greatly against an android Maiden, not falling before a bunch of teens and succeeding against Penny if not for Nora’s timely breakthrough. Your half-trained cast of growing heroes should not come across as more powerful than an intelligently designed weapon now wielding magic.  

Before the fight starts we get a whole lot of lines that are, frankly, frustrating. Vine tells Penny, “I thought you were supposed to protect the people, not hurt them” which is true enough. Penny is taking action that is putting a lot of people in danger, regardless of the fact that Ruby is at the helm. Problem is, the Ace Ops then blame her for Winter’s injuries and “stealing” the power? That’s not the issue here. The issue is Penny’s blind loyalty to Ruby, but by having the Ace Ops back a stance that is clearly inaccurate—Penny didn’t cause Winter’s injuries, Cinder did; Penny didn’t steal the powers, she was encouraged to take them—it makes them come across as Very Evil people who will twist things to make poor Penny look like the villain. Even if this is a case of Ace Ops having bad intel (which seems unlikely. Wouldn’t Winter have told them what happened?) RT has avoided letting the Ace Ops take a justified stance here because that would make them look too sympathetic… even though they do have multiple justified stances to take. Like, ‘Hey, stop keeping half a kingdom here where Salem can easily kill them all’ or, ‘Hey, why did you spend months betraying Ironwood and then turn on us instead of trying to find a compromise?’ Even, ‘Why did your uncle help kill our leader?’ There’s plenty that the Ace Ops should be rightfully pissed about, so choosing Penny and Winter out of everything feels like RT is firmly backing them into Ironwood’s corner: you’re just bad now and bad people blame innocent girls, rather than acknowledging the actual wrongs done against them. 

So we have Ruby contradicting herself and the Ace Ops backing warped ideas that make them look worse than they actually are. Adding to the stupidity is the fact that Elm mentions that Winter is in “critical condition” and Weiss… doesn’t care. Harriet then tells Ruby that she’s “throwing [her] in jail right next to your uncle, runt” and... Ruby doesn’t care. Qrow is missing and Ruby just found out he’s been captured by Ironwood, yet there’s no reaction whatsoever. This show continues to go hard on the ‘screw adults’ mentality, huh? Ozpin needs to keep quiet and is horrible for coming back. Ironwood is now a cartoon villain. Winter made the wrong choice so no one cares about her anymore, not even her sister. The Ace Ops remain enemies despite trying to talk things out. Qrow? Barely know him. Who’s he? This is a Ruby loves Penny episode. There isn’t enough emotional nuance for her to care about him too.

The sad thing is I adore Nuts&Dolts. In a different context these moments would be a goldmine for me. 

If anything, this episode feels worse than the majority of last week’s because there are good things here that have been thrown into a bad setup. I can’t get excited for the group’s battles when I see who they’re attacking. It’s hard to squee over Ruby hugging Penny when she doesn’t react to Qrow. Watching Nora go all Thor feels like it only has half its potential when it’s coming out of a very messing, ‘I’m more than just being strong and hitting things… which is why I’ll continue being strong and hitting things.’ RWBY has excellent moments set into a terrible story.

The fight, at least, is exciting. The Ace Ops goad Penny into stepping away so they can trap the rest of Ruby’s team—smart—and she’s forced to hold her own while Weiss tries to break through with her knight, then Nora overloads the system. To be frank, I’m not great at analyzing combat. Not unless I’m looking for something specific like whether a win is justified. I’ve already mentioned above the broad issue of the Ace Ops very nearly beating the most powerful fighter next to Salem herself, yet failing so spectacularly against Team RWBY. Outside of that context though? I really enjoyed this. Lots of tight action, creative attacks, teamwork, some emotional pauses throughout… it feels like a pretty solid battle. Put it on Youtube as a clip, outside of the rest of the story’s messiness, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic watch. 

We can’t stay in the combat forever though. During all this Weiss calls the Ace Ops “cowards” for making it four vs. one. You know, RWBY should really just do away with dialogue and make the show purely action because the cast frequently sounds so stupid when they speak. Like her comment about Ironwood’s lockdown… really Weiss? ‘Yes, we might be wanted criminals who betrayed this group in the worst possible way, but how dare they not do the honorable thing and have three of their teammates sit out while trying to capture us? Even though the girl they’re trying to capture has magic. I mean, the nerve of them!’

Weiss, at this point I’m not sure how to explain to you that the people you’ve made into your enemies do not owe you a fair fight. 

Another detail: we get to see Ruby fall off the edge of the walkway and this time she remembers she can fly! A definite improvement from Volume 6.

Finally: by the time Penny’s eyes go full Maiden in Elm’s grip, I think we’ve seen everything from our trailer. Episode 4 will truly be a mystery.

Ironwood has, of course, been watching the fight this whole time. When it looks like the Ace Ops will lose against the team he means to send in reinforcements, but Watts says he has “a message for your operatives.” Instead of capturing Penny they steal one of her swords instead, ending with a shot on Marrow looking conflicted.

Because remember, there’s no actual moral grayness in this story. The protagonists are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s (supposedly) black and white. Which means that if the Ace Ops have any hope of surviving this Volume and being seen as anything other than evil bootlickers, they have to join with Ruby. Marrow seems primed to do that.

Am I surprised? No. Disappointed? Always lol.

May has the airship ready to go and they fly off… despite the shields. And the lockdown. Consistency? Who’s she? Nora is said to be “in bad shape” and after another hug Penny leaves to hide in Amity, even though Ruby thinks that hiding is a useless, cowardly choice. Just not when she and her allies choose to do it.

We end the episode with Watts receiving Penny’s sword and making the statement, “If you can’t beat them… then make them join you.” I have to say, his cheesy villainy is something I continue to enjoy, even if it’s heavy handed at times. Watts is just fun. I do have to say though: if Penny is hacked, what does that say about her agency? We double-downed on the ‘real girl’ narrative by giving her the Maiden powers, but she’s simultaneously synthetic enough that a single piece of her can remove all autonomy? It once again feels like RT isn’t sure what point they’re trying to make, they’re just chucking a lot of themes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Still, we’ll have to let it all play out before making any judgements.

And that’s it for this week. It seems like this is a slightly shorter recap than normal, though that may be because I struggle with discussing pure action sequences, which made up a decent chunk of this episode. I’ll no doubt return to the Ace Ops vs. Penny fight when I’m not on a self-imposed, one day deadline for posting. The only thing left is to update the Bingo Card, but I don’t think we made any headway this week. So... good job, RWBY? 

I’m still going to hold off on the civilian’s square until Salem’s army actually attacks, as well as the two day timeline square.

No Winter this episode

Watts is teaming up with Ironwood which is… so much worse than him teaming up with Jacques again. Does a square get an X if the canon is even worse than what you assumed it would be??

Maria was mentioned this episode. Jury’s out on whether she’ll actually do anything.

Atlas is still standing, we knew Penny was heading towards a hack so it’s not much of a cliffhanger, no Qrow, no Ozpin, no Neo or Cinder.

It certainly looks like we can check off “The team gets Amity up and running,” but let’s just see if there are any problems next episode. If the problem is only ‘We would have launched it if not for Salem’s attack’ or something, I’m checking it off. The point is it would have worked.

I’m also leaning towards “More obvious Blake/Yang implications without confirming a relationship” given Blake’s heart-to-heart with Nora… but let’s see if the Volume does anything more egregious.

All in all (and perhaps despite what I’ve written above), I don’t think it’s fair to totally drag this episode. As said, this feels like a strong episode in a bad story, something that I would have LOVED if a) Salem weren’t here and b) the ‘ethical dilemma’ wasn’t boiled down to a ‘Team Ruby is good’ and ‘Ironwood and everyone associated with him is evil’ situation. It’s an episode whose tone and character action belong in a different version of RWBY. If you gave us this fun episode in an earlier Volume against a Pure Evil antagonist? It would have been great. 

Ah well. It is what it is. Expect more emotional whiplash when we come back and everyone learns that Oscar has been kidnapped by Salem’s talking pooch 🙃

See you then! 💜

[hahanoiwont]

@bluerose2017 replied to this post: I feel that Frisk would get along so well with the more murder type sanses. Like Dust Sans from Dusttale, Nightmare, Killer, and Error. Frisk would understand their motives for being the bad guys.

Yes!!! oh boy, yes. ok ok let's go down a really self-indulgent path with this, alright? we're about to have good fun. which i will put under a cut bc it may get long. (EDIT: haha yeah it got long. multiverse shenanigans ahoy)

so let's say Frisk follows the path from Fall Into Grace. They go straight to Horrortale, and they stay there for a bit--sure, Ht!Sans starts out hostile, but the both of them slowly learn to trust each other. By inches, they try to come to understand each other. They both have in common that they were lurched from a deeply violent society into Regular Undertale (but spooky); they both clearly broadcast their trust issues, and therefore can work on them together. At the end of Horrortale, they're planning on sticking it out together on the Surface.

Then Frisk disappears. In Horrortale, their disappearance is while Sans is looking elsewhere--it's just like HT!Frisk's disappearance originally, except this time, they got everyone to the Surface first.

So now, Horror is having his triggers stomped on. Not a fan. He wonders at first if this is just what happens--maybe Frisk is meant to disappear, and HT!Frisk didn't mean to abandon the Underground to its fate. Maybe Frisk isn't a human at all, but some sort of apparition that appears periodically and vanishes just as quick. Maybe he's still starving and it's all a delusion his mind made for him as he's dying.

Or maybe Red crashes through, absolutely ready to shoot first and ask questions later. And suddenly Horror has his answers. Alternate universes. Obviously. Very stabby alternate universes.

Frisk, meanwhile, lands in Dusttale.

Dusttale, to my knowledge, is the AU where the human (whether it's Frisk, Chara, or the player is unclear to me) does genocide after genocide, resetting dozens or hundreds of times until not only does Sans remember, he also goes insane. Given the inevitability of all his friends dying, and how his low stats prevent him from fighting the human until they've killed enough people that his karma effect becomes useful, he decides he's going to kill everyone, gain the LV for it, and then kill the human as soon as they come around.

This is not a great situation for Frisk to be wandering into. Given that they're nearly identical (clothing aside) to their Dusttale counterpart, and Sans is insane anyway, they're not likely to see mercy in this world. Frisk walks in, sees that Sans is crazy, dies, walks in, sees that Sans is crazy, dies, walks in...

Eventually, a la WT!Swapfell, Frisk figures out the right ways to dodge as much as possible of the initial ambush; but they can survive for minutes at a time, if that. This Sans's stats are hopelessly inflated, and he doesn't play fair. It comes down to their DETERMINATION versus his, in a mirror of the same struggle that drove him crazy in the first place. This time, Sans is inevitably killing every monster, and Frisk is the one who can't save them. But, in a conflict of interests like this, Frisk is always going to win--they have an unfair advantage, straight out. They're simply more DETERMINED.

Eventually, Sans is stumbling bleakly through his genocide, disassociated to the point of hardly understanding what he's doing and why. He kills people because he kills people. He has a vague certainty that he's keeping them safe, but he doesn't understand how. He knows that he used to be different. He knows this is somehow Frisk's fault. But his ability to remember across RESETs is being buried under his inability to think straight under the massive trauma. He doesn't understand why he's killing his brother. He knows he doesn't want to. He knows that Frisk can probably tell him, but he also needs to kill Frisk very quickly, before they can gain EXP from...the piles of dust?...because there are no surviving monsters to kill.

He finally stops before killing Frisk and asks them why. Why are they making him do this over and over again? Why are they looking at him like that? Why is everyone dead? Why, when he's felt so numb for so long, does it still feel like it hurts?

Frisk has no idea why this Sans has killed everyone. Months have passed in increments of a day or less, as Sans swiftly and efficiently executes all of his neighbors. He's learned every place that people will go, and he shows up where the most people are congregated at a given point in time, leaving nothing but dust by the time Frisk gets through the Ruins. They've never gotten out in time to save a single monster. They're pretty sure Sans is possessed, or something, because this isn't something he would ever do (insert irony with Red's desire to kill literally everyone in Underfell).

When Sans doesn't kill them right out the gate, as it were, they begin to hope that whatever has been forcing him to do this has let go, or at least worn out enough that he's beginning to fight through it. They're not totally wrong--whatever is left of Sans is waking up, a little bit, as he leaves behind his scripted execution.

Frisk goes to Dust and tries to hold him, rocking back and forth like Red would do for them when they woke up out of a nightmare. He almost kills them for it, but what's the point? They'd just come back, and Dust would have to kill everyone one more time. He's tired. He lets them do what they want. It mostly makes him feel worse, but he doesn't stop them.

There's a strong parallel here to Going Big; Going Home. In that story, Red went into a deep depression spiral for months following his realization that he couldn't bring himself to kill every monster in existence even if it would save his brother; in this story, Dust has killed everyone already and no longer sees any point in much of anything, struggling to understand what has happened to him and why he did what he did. He wants to Fall Down quietly, but his newfound stats and his desire to survive until he's sure Frisk is dead won't let him. Also, Frisk is standing in his way.

Seeing as Dust is apparently going to be docile and passive for the time being, Frisk takes his hand and walks him through Snowdin.

They see a vision of a massacre.

Piles of dust, items lying around as if people just dropped dead in the middle of whatever they were doing. Doors are hanging open from where people went to greet their friendly neighborhood skeleton and ask what he was knocking for, only to die in seconds. The Underground was only somewhat prepared for a human to go through and get violent, and they weren't prepared at all for one of their own to kill them. Frisk sees every evidence of a very efficient, merciless slaughter. Dust is looking blankly at it all, like he can't quite put together what it means.

Frisk gets a strong feeling that they shouldn't visit their brothers' home.

Instead, they bring him to a cabin far removed from town, visible only from Glyde's ledge, and push him to sit in a wooden armchair. They pat his hand to tell him to stay there while they look through the cabin for dust. They don't find any. Dust could have told them they wouldn't, except that he's having trouble finding his voice right now. He waits where they put him until they give him the all clear.

He's supposed to watch the human. They're supposed to be doing something for him to watch them for. But the kid in front of him seems mostly interested in holding his hand and trying to smile for him. He sits in stasis, with his drive all run out but without anything else to turn to.

The first week is mostly silent. Frisk doesn't speak, and doesn't really communicate anything that Dust would need a response for. Dust chats with his hallucination of Papyrus sometimes, but since Frisk can't see him, the conversations end there.

On a given day, Frisk will set Dust up in the chair with a book that they've decided he'd like, sometimes with a blanket or a glass of milk to go with it, and they'll venture out to the Underground. Dust will shadow them from a distance as they investigate for survivors. There aren't any. They'll come home with some supplies and fill up the cupboards. Dust will already be there, right where they left him, with the book opened up to a random different page than before. If it's towards the end of the book, Frisk will decide that he liked it and try to find more books of that kind.

They'll go to the kitchen and try to put something together for dinner, and Dust will take all the cooking implements from them and actually make the thing they're trying at. He silently revokes their cooking privileges when they try to shatter a bottle of vinegar into a salad. Papyrus says he should have just eaten it. He also says that Dust is infecting Frisk with his horrible tastes in food, just like he's probably infecting them with the dust on his hands. How long until they're a killer like him? Dust tries to argue that they were the killer in the first place, but the words ironically die in his mouth. The truth is bitter, and he's not even sure what it is anymore.

After that, Frisk is allowed to taste test and get ingredients, and otherwise they're watching with their eyes and not their hands.

Once the food is eaten and cleaned up, Frisk will bring out something for the two of them to do together. Board games, card games, hangman, puzzles. Frisk always deals for two. Dust doesn't see a point in fighting them on it, which Frisk decides is a very hopeful sign. Sometimes he breaks the rules and just sort of moves one thing to another spot blindly, but he is moving!

Frisk usually wins these games on account of being the only one paying attention, but since they let him keep his illegal moves, he wins Sorry by sorta pushing his pawns into his safety zone on the fourth turn. After the game, Frisk always decides it's bedtime, gives Dust another book, and leads him to a bedroom, where they leave him to take it from there. Rinse and repeat the next morning.

The second week, Dust starts glancing at the titles of the books he's given, and maybe the summary if it seems interesting. He tells them not to bring him encyclopedias anymore. They bring him a dictionary instead. It takes him four minutes to decide whether killing them is an appropriate response.

(Verdict: no. It wouldn't make a difference, anyway.)

The third week, he walks with them on an outing. Frisk steers away from population centers and takes a back way through Waterfall to look at the lights. They sit there in silence--even Papyrus is quiet. The echo flowers have each had their messages replaced with a single, loud clap. Nobody says, "Why are you doing this? What--Sans, wait, wait--!"

The fourth week, Dust starts reading the books he's supposedly been reading all day during the night. It's weird to feel bored in the ashes of civilization. He tells Frisk short, single-sentence descriptions of the more interesting ones. They seem happy. Dust is pretty sure there's some sort of Stockholm syndrome going on here, but he's not sure which way it goes.

One universe over, Red and Horror are searching through a universe that seems like it's had some extradimensional interference, but it can't possibly be the one Frisk is in, because it's a dead Underground. As far as they can tell, there are no survivors. Still, they keep coming back to it--it's the only potential positive they've found. And even though the universe seems to be a dead end, things keep moving in it--a book vanished here, a cupboard rearranged there. It's like someone is very stealthily looting the place.

After seven weeks of quiet, routine days with quiet, routine ups and downs, Dust is taking charge of a few things. He tells Frisk what groceries to get, and decides what to make for meals. He's attempting his first joke in a long time when he dryly bans Monopoly forever, but somewhat to his surprise, Frisk listens. The Monopoly board doesn't come out again. He's not sure what to make of this--that the person who drove him crazy is the person who's trying to make him sane. Most of the time, he chooses to forget that there's anything but this. Two people exist in the world, and one of them is an unstoppable killer and the other is a patient, even-tempered pacifist. He can't even tell which one is which anymore. It's whatever.

Left to his own devices, Dust may have spent years or longer like that. The Underground may not have the resources to sustain all of its inhabitants without things like farmers or energy, but it's got plenty for two people. But Frisk writes a very short letter for him, saying, can we try again? Can you not kill Papyrus? I miss him and I want him to be alive.

Well, with an argument like that.

Dust doesn't really want to see a RESET. It feels like it isn't worth it, having everyone alive again just to watch them die. Even if Frisk doesn't kill them, who's to say Dust won't? Even if he doesn't kill them, who's to say that Frisk won't, either? Maybe the Underground will just cave in. Dust is sure he can't have that life again, surrounded by living people when even Frisk and his hallucinations seem like a crowd sometimes. He's pretty sure his LV stopped going down a few RESETs ago. He doesn't think he can be Sans again.

Eventually, he decides it doesn't really matter what he wants. Frisk will do whatever they want and there's nothing he can do to stop them.

After the RESET, Dust wakes up to his brother's voice, telling him it's time to start the day, and also his brother's ghost, already with him as always. He goes to the square just to see if he's gonna lose it and kill everyone, and now that he's looking, he notices the split-second flinches when people recognize him. Most of them don't even notice it in themselves, but they know he's something dangerous. He heads to the Ruins door and waits.

It's easier once Frisk comes out. No one in the Ruins is dead. Dust and Frisk both didn't kill them, this time around. If he sticks really close to Frisk, he can pretend everyone's apprehension is just for the human in their midst. After all, Frisk is just as much a killer as he is. It's not his fault his LV's stuck at 20.

Frisk has a tough time making friends. The people of the Underground seem to expect them to be some terrifying killer, and everyone seems to want to protect each other by killing Frisk. It doesn't help that Dust doesn't like people in his space much, and flashes his spooky-eye look at anyone who gets within about three feet of the two of them. They're not quite sure who he thinks he's protecting, but they trust him to have good reasons to do what he does.

The only time Dust leaves their side for any significant period is when they're with the real, alive Papyrus, who frets about his brother. Sans has gone missing, he explains, but no one will believe him because they've all seen him around. But he hasn't come home. People who don't come home are missing. So Sans is missing. He's certainly missing dinner, and Papyrus needs to get him to come home before he eats nothing but ketchup and grease for his meals. Frisk knows their own Papyrus well enough to see what he isn't saying--that Papyrus needs to get him to come home before anything bad can happen to him. That Sans disappearing when he seems so listless and blank can't be a good thing. That Papyrus is scared for his brother.

Dust can't stand to see his living brother. The idea puts him in a cold sweat. If Papyrus is living, then Papyrus can die. He prefers the phantom--cruel as he is, at least he'll never leave Dust alone. Dust can never hurt him and never kill him. Frisk can't even see him. As long as Dust is alive to see him, Papyrus's ghost is safe.

When Frisk breaks the Barrier, Dust disappears quickly afterwards. They find him standing alone a little farther down the cliffside, isolating himself; and they grab his hand again like they always do, to bring him back home. They're surprised when they fall out of the world--they almost forgot. They'd almost hoped it wouldn't happen.

Dust doesn't try to stop them. Just like always, he follows them through. He kind of hopes for oblivion, for an end to choices that he always makes into mistakes, but he's not so lucky. He wakes up to Frisk's frantic shaking in a patch of flowers far Underground. This is Underswap, and Dust is about to have a horrible day.

I think in this AU, I'm going to leave Killer's story--mostly because I don't know his backstory very well, just that he's Nightmare's right hand man and assorted other factoids. And since Nightmare isn't technically a Sans, just the embodiment of negative emotions, his universe wouldn't even be in the running for Frisk to land in--similarly, I am too charmed by Error's story to change it. So here's where I think this goes from here.

Nightmare arrives in Horrortale, intending to recruit Horror. The guy's life is miserable, there's no reason for him not to hop out of his universe to cause mayhem as long as it's better than starving. But the universe isn't the same anymore. Nightmare considers wrecking stuff in order to snack off of negative emotions, but Horror and Red are scanning the hell out of the universe, so Horror is able to pick up on a hole being punched in it and appear in a matter of minutes. He asks why Nightmare is here, and Nightmare says honestly that he was here to recruit him as part of a small team to complete certain missions, embodiment of negativity, eternal struggle in the multiverse between Nightmare and Dream, food and five-star lodging provided, etc. But it seems like he's got something going here, so...?

Nightmare is honestly fairly impressed that someone noticed him entering the universe so quickly, and he's hoping Horror may still be interested. It's too bad that Nightmare can't get Horror's lifelong trust and allegiance by rescuing him from a bad situation, but he's certain he can make it work. He only has one minion as of right now, that being Killer, and he'd like to have at least one more (if only so Killer will stop bothering him when he's trying to Plot Evilly. Also, Dream has two friends to Nightmare's one minion, and Nightmare can't be lagging behind, that's just unacceptable).

Horror may not need immediate rescue himself, but he sure knows someone who does. He asks a few careful questions about the multiverse--would i be able to visit other universes on my own? Yes. am i allowed to interfere with other universes? Encouraged, even. Especially where spreading misery is concerned. can i take someone out of a universe if they don't belong in it? What an oddly specific question. Nightmare is beginning to think he'll have a way to endear himself to Horror, after all.

Horror dismisses his questions as mostly being about the job he'll be doing--after all, if he's fighting people who travel between universes, of course he'd want to know if there are ways to track people across universes, or to tell if there's someone in a universe that doesn't belong there. Nightmare lets it pass without comment for the time being, but decides to keep an eye on the situation, to try to figure out what exactly Horror is looking for. If he's willing to leave his whole life behind and set himself up for a lifetime of fighting just for a chance to find it, then Nightmare has an easy way to earn his eternal loyalty. Muahaha.

Now of course, this is all for Evil reasons and not because Nightmare isn't sure how to make people like him if he doesn't provide some service or do some great favor for them. He certainly hasn't seen people love his brother for the happiness he provides, and said "I could do that >:( I could do Good Things for people and then they would Like Me and not hate me >:( and in fact I would do it while being Very Evil so I know they'll like me for me and not just because I'm, for example, a paragon of light and hope in the multiverse >>:( and then I would have better friends than Dream. and he will be super jealous. because i will have friends who like me. so there >>>:( this is what WINNING looks like, brother >:("

Now this would leave Red in the awkward position of being in the wrong universe and also missing in his own universe. I am not sure what I want to do with him here--he could come with Horror, and just sorta hang out as a Bad Sans. I know he's not normally one, but he comes from Edgy Universe so I could see it? But also, I know canonically Error steals from Red's chocolate supply, so I think it would be kind of hilarious if Error's been pissed bc his stock isn't being replenished, being as Red isn't around to buy more. And Nightmare could just. dump Red back in Underfell. Both as a favor to Error, to try to secure his loyalties at least a little, and as a show of how Powerful and Evil he is for his brand new recruit. Both options are tempting...I am undecided. But uh, something happens with Red. He is somewhere. Horror probably wouldn't just ditch him in Horrortale on his lonesome.

Now, Horror and Killer get along alright. Killer's got the sarcastic fast-talker charm, and Horror is getting used to being able to hold conversations at a normal speed again. And both of them get along with Nightmare. Killer is witty and challenging, and Horror is loyal and hardworking and (VERY important) knows how to cook great meals. No more mediocre fried rice. Scrambled eggs are no longer mysteriously watery. It is shocking how much home life improves with good food, and Horror is a big fan of having a seemingly endless pantry. His stipulation that a portion of everything gets sent home to Papyrus is a pain at first, but it's not so bad once it gets ingrained as a normal part of mealtimes. Sometimes his Papyrus visits, and that goes about as well as meeting family members of a dear friend for the first time can go. A bit awkward, but it settles into something positive.

The only weird thing is, with every new universe, Horror insists on making sure there's no one there who isn't native to that universe before havoc can begin. It's not a huge pain or anything, and it is a good move strategically, but it's a very specific request. Once it happens enough for Killer to get curious, it isn't long until the cat's out of the bag--a story of a sibling accidentally cast aside, a world that was cruel and unfair to them, a misunderstanding that made their brother think they were horrible and abandoned him to an awful fate when actually they'd done nothing wrong, and an endless journey that never seems to point home. And Horror was willing to put aside everything to try to bring them back--if not home, then at least to somewhere safe. To build new common ground together, after the old grounds went up in flames. To understand their side of it and see that they weren't wrong even if things looked kinda bad on their end, actually everything they did was completely justified, Dream--

Suffice to say that Nightmare is sympathetic. That is, he can see the strategic advantage to helping Horror find this sibling of his, and reunite them. Because then he'll have an endlessly loyal minion, and probably also an endlessly loyal minion-in-training. Obviously. He doesn't even believe in brotherly love, so obviously it's not out of some imagined desire to see his friend family underling scrape a happy ending out of what seems like an unrecoverable falling-out (complete with literal falling, in this case) with his sibling. It's just a matter of spending a tiny amount of effort searching for a months-old trace of a magical trail that's interrupted by not existing in some parts on account of time travel.

Killer iirc can't feel much of anything but hate, but he doesn't hate Horror, and it's not like he's forgotten what emotions are entirely. He does want the guy to be happy. They're kinda buds and Horror watches obscure competition shows at 3am with him when they both can't sleep. It'd be a little awkward to have a Frisk around, but at least it's not Chara. Most people he meets on a day-to-day basis are technically versions of him, anyway, and it's not like he can't differentiate them. He'd put up with it for Horror's sake. He'll only stab them if they're possessed, probably.

Thing is, when they do find Frisk (eventually Nightmare thinks to call in a favor from Error), Frisk is traveling universe to universe with some apathetic LV 20 Sans who is still trying to figure out when murder is and isn't the way he wants to solve his problems. Namely with other Sanses, since he has enough self-hatred that he can't imagine it's much of a loss. Thing is, he fcking hates it when Frisk time-travels, and it makes Frisk miserable, too, so he can't just murder every Sans who annoys him even slightly...but most Sanses don't take kindly to some LV 20 stranger wandering through...which means everything would just be easier if they were to go missing...not like more dust on his hands is gonna make a difference, right?

But no, Frisk always insists on going back to when the local Sans was alive, and it's just a waste of time and energy. So Dust mostly doesn't kill anyone who isn't a real jerk first. Mostly.

This is the scene that Nightmare & Co come upon when they finally catch up. They have to take a moment to regroup, because who even is this guy? He never leaves Frisk's side for long (local Sanses have a tendency to ambush and kill him for being a violent lunatic if they can get him alone, and then at least one party dies, and then time travel, etc.), he talks to thin air, he's generally Kinda Creepy.

Their initial thought is to try to get Frisk alone, but Dust in this time has noticed that they're being followed by a group of very suspicious characters, and tells Frisk to go on ahead while he lurks. It comes to a pretty devastating battle, between Dust's combat prowess and the gang's equally impressive abilities (Killer having done his own geno run, Nightmare having an impressive body count and also massive raw power on account of being kind of a demigod, and Horror himself being no slouch in combat). Frisk sits over in the next room like they're in the waiting room for a dentist's office, poking at echo flowers and waiting for their brother to be done with Mysterious Errands while ignoring three separate variations of Megalovania in the background.

Then Frisk figures, wait, there are a maximum of two Sanses...but three Megalovanias...that ain't right. Also, Dust said he wasn't gonna kill the local Sans this time. He didn't promise, but he said he would try, so he really shouldn't be sneaking off to pick fights. This is the conclusion Frisk comes to about six seconds before the wall is destroyed by stray blaster fire.

What they see through the wall is Dust, teleporting right out of combat to make sure they didn't get hurt or vaporized, and out of the rubble they can make out a goopy octopus Sans, a Target Sans (which makes other Sanses...walmart brand? food for thought), and a Sans that takes a second to place, because they really weren't expecting to see Horror here. And fighting Dust. Frisk is disappointed in him.

When the dust (magical and otherwise) settles, everyone ends up having a civilized conversation by the combined forces of Frisk and Nightmare. Killer and Dust were having fun, but not much was getting accomplished with massive property damage. It comes out that Nightmare's crew was coming by to get Frisk and rescue them from their endless tumble through the multiverse (which Error claims is giving him a headache anyway), and Frisk is very happy to agree to that part, and also to go live in a cool castle "for the time being." Allegedly, they will find somewhere else to stay soon, because Nightmare is not running a daycare for wayward interdimensional youth.

Frisk's condition is that Dust has to come with them, since he's been hopping through dimensions following them for so long now that they don't know what they'd do without him. Literally, every time the Barrier comes down, he waits for the hole in the world to open, takes a couple warm-up steps, and dives through after Frisk--he hasn't found a universe he could stand to stay in, yet. He hates the idea of living among people he remembers killing over and over again. At least if he follows Frisk around, he's with someone who seems to care about him for mystery reasons, and he might some day find an AU he'd be okay with. Maybe whichever one they settle with, if they find a way to stop falling. Which, it seems like they've got an opportunity here.

Nightmare is a-okay with gathering another unhinged duckling to take under his wing and occasionally let loose on unsuspecting universes (it's enrichment!!). He's seen that Dust is a great fighter, not too broken up about collateral, and having him around will make Frisk happy and therefore Horror will also be happy, therefore eternal loyalty, profit, etc.

(It has been a long time since Nightmare has been able to make someone he loves happy. It's been even longer since it's been so easy--what's one more mouth to feed? What's one more person who thinks Nightmare is capable of good without changing who he is?)

So Dust and Frisk end up moving in and Dust takes his place with the Bad Sanses.

Now there are a million things that could happen from here--well-meaning intervention from someone who discovers these psychopaths have kidnapped an innocent person for Clearly Nefarious Reasons, an intro scene between Frisk and Error (Error mentions that he's stolen their SOUL in uncountable universes and Frisk has no notable reaction to this, which really sucks the fun out of it for Error, so they end up watching trash TV together until Horror comes in to get Frisk for supper), Red's reunion with Frisk is gonna be great in any WT spinoff and especially in this, and general family sitcom shenanigans would be fantastic (can. can Dream babysit Frisk while everyone else is out. Nightmare absolutely forbids it bc Dream is a bad influence he doesn't like his people meeting Dream bc what if they like Dream more than they like Nightmare but what if it happens anyway. Ink wanders through while Error is babysitting and decides to Help, leading to an awkward day out with the Star Sanses, most of whom do not know Frisk at all. Ink forgets exactly who he's babysitting for and assumes they'll just come by and pick Frisk up eventually, which does happen, but there are a lot more accusations of kidnapping going around than is really necessary. Frisk and Blue are happy to see each other again at least).

Anyway this is,, a fantastic idea. rife with opportunity. I love it so much thank you for proposing it. wow,,

[brave-clarice]

“Clarice” Liveblog: Episodes 5 & 6

Since these are extraordinarily late, I tried to keep them more concise/focused than before. I’m sorry for how long it’s taken me to (almost) catch up. And to the handful of you who’ve enjoyed these and encouraged me to do them: thank you!

Episode 5, “Get Right With God”

the music at the beginning of this episode might just be in the maintenance guy’s headphones(!) but it was still a…Choice.

there’s something so tragic about watching Clarice be unable to use her legs… :’(

this whole scenario feels like a twisted parallel universe version of the end of Hannibal.

glad to see Ardelia finally has her priorities straight and is going to fight for her best friend! let’s forget her Episode 4 subplot ever happened.

good: the warrior finding a weapon even in the direst of circumstances!

bad: those damn moths are back. at least this time they might be drug-induced.

“she worked Bill alone” no, she didn’t. not really. (Hannibal: I’m right here.)

stop trying to make Likable Paul happen, it’s never going to happen!!!

I HATE the “Reesey” nickname, y’all. HATE. IT.

plus, we know that her dad called her “Baby”?

her father’s appearance doubles down on the end-of-Hannibal vibes...Not Sure If Want.

wow, Clarice is being literally tortured? thanks, I hate it!!!

really doubt that Clarice’s Pinto used to belong to her father (who drives a truck in the books??)... weird flex.

and how would she even have gotten it? her mother would either have driven that car into the ground out of necessity or else have sold it for the money the Starlings needed so desperately.

Pintos also weren’t super high-quality cars and were definitely not built to last ~20 years.

Clarice already being able to chat with her father whenever she needs to really undermines the therapy Hannibal will eventually give her, but…I guess they’ve already accepted they’ll never make it that far?

“you’re trying to get in my head” yeah, and she’s doing it, too–’cause she learned from the best!

“you get an answer, I get an answer, Felker.” she’s Hannibal’s girl all right.

this episode’s had flashes of brilliance before diving back into…whatever tf watching one of your favorite characters of all time being tortured is.

I really wanted Ardelia to say that no, but Clarice was like a sister to her.

it took FIVE episodes to get some lamb imagery, but we’ve been looking at moths for the entire season?!

oof, Clarice voicing her own insecurities about her childhood abandonment and using them to twist Felker’s arm...painful but smart.

HANNAH!!!

I would die 4 baby Clarice

after all that, Clarice is going to apologize to Ardelia about last week? this episode SUCKS.

Good: Clarice playing mind games with Felker like Hannibal did to her; Ardelia going to bat for her bestie, lamb flashbacks, baby Clarice, and HANNAH!

Bad: So much. Clarice being medically tortured multiple times, moth hallucinations, the several-years-premature (imo) Daddy-as-Guardian-Angel plot device, “Reesey”...did I mention Clarice getting repeatedly tortured?!

Ugly: Krendler backstory + making out with his wife. Ew.

Wow, this episode was a hot mess, and I kind of hated it. I loved Clarice’s really Hannibalesque approach to Felker, and I’m so thrilled that Hannah got mentioned at all (tho...did they need to be so heavy-handed with the helmet and gun and everything?) Also nice to see Ardelia behaving much more in-character. That said, it was sickening and imo totally unnecessary to further traumatize Clarice the way they did. To make her almost helpless.

Clarice, and by extension Rebecca Breeds (who is fantastic and deserves better), has been given very little range so far. She’s frequently been shown as miserable, afraid, desperate, traumatized, angry, resentful, but I also want to see her joyful, laughing, silly, relaxed...something else that will give her depth. Her life wasn’t miserable 24/7, 365. It was just unfulfilling. We got glimpses of this in the first two episodes. PLEASE bring it back!

And rn I’m questioning how Clarice’s career can possibly drag on for another six years after this. Her apparent PTSD is already interfering with her job performance as it is--this experience is only going to make it worse. Her “body count” in Hannibal was around five, iirc, and that was enough to slap her with the “Death Angel” moniker. In the show at least four people have died in close proximity to Clarice in the space of like...a week. How does she come back from that, even as the savior of Catherine Martin? It’s a PR nightmare for obth Clarice and the FBI.

They’ve also sort of forgotten that the Martins existed while continuing to flesh out Krendler’s (?!) character? It’s weird.

I almost don’t even want to watch Episode 6 after that. But here goes...

Episode 6, “How Does It Feel to Be So Beautiful?”

the freaking MOTHS again, I hate them!

frankly, yeah, Clarice should be on leave.

Clarice’s nondescript monochrome suits and constant ponytail are just so boring. in the book she’s described as never having to put effort into making her hair look good--so why is it always pulled back in this show?

I’m not sure it’s very in-character for Clarice, at this point in her career, to go over her boss’s head to get out of admin leave (one she really needs to take tbh) even for the sake of solving a case

lol what the actual hell @ AG Martin guilt-tripping Clarice, who was very recently tortured and almost died, for not calling Catherine back? Clarice is not Catherine’s therapist!

THIS is what my Vogue-reading heroine with burgeoning great taste wears for a night out? so disappointing.

never in my life did I think I’d be sitting through Krendler’s personal drama in a show ABOUT CLARICE STARLING.

her costume sucks and her hairstyle’s from years in the future, but dang does Clarice look gorgeous.

and I love thinking of her getting a taste of the luxury she’ll enjoy with Hannibal. :)

you know what? I think I was actually fine with them forgetting that the Martins were in this show.

whyyy is Krendler being made so sympathetic?!

now Catherine Martin “loved to sew” just like Frederica Bimmel? hmm. (tbf, maybe this is in the novel, and I’ve just forgotten.)

her gift for Clarice is sweet, though.

so beautiful, indeed

Christ on a cracker, that confrontation between the Martins was painful to watch (not a criticism). this show’s AG and her daughter are very much two of a kind in terms of emotional manipulation.

I stan one (1) doofus

now either Catherine’s gaslighting Clarice...or Clarice’s trauma (over BILL! again with this!) is so pervasive that it’s twisted her memories. either way, I hate it.

so Krendler’s lawyer is dirty and that’s why he’ll (probably) turn against Clarice? but WHY? why can’t Krendler just suck?

Good: Clarice looking gorgeous, Ardelia continuing to fight for Clarice, female characters in positions of authority everywhere

Bad: Clarice’s underwhelming costumes, Clarice’s primary/worst trauma apparently STILL being Buffalo Bill & having Clarice break down crying again (and NOT over what happened last week, which would tbh make a lot more sense).

Sad: Shaan’s backstory about his wife, everything involving Catherine

Ugly: Krendler subplot. Ugh.

I just don’t know how I feel about this installment. Wish I cared more about the overarching conspiracy plot, but I’m really only here for Clarice and Ardelia. And while no show can stand on the shoulders of a single character, for a show about Clarice, there seems to be quite a bit of screentime devoted to her bosses, Martin and Krendler, and even to her team members. And all without Clarice herself getting much character development. They don’t seem to be exploring much of her character other than her traumatic backstories, and I’m no longer very hopeful that she’ll be much more fleshed out in the last four episodes, either. It’s a bummer. I really think Rebecca could shine like Jodie did if she were given a chance.

Most of the scenes with the Martins were visceral and felt so real that it was hard to watch. That said...the AG Martin/Catherine content all strikes me as being somewhat detached from the rest of the show, as if the writers are making it up as they go along with no real end goal in mind.

Man...these two were rough going. Very little humor or warmth and absolutely no joy. Of course the source material is dark, so a somewhat dark crime drama is to be expected, but I really think the show needs a slightly less intense, bleak and (dare I say it?) unpleasant episode. But they writers have really dug themselves into a hole by zeroing in on Clarice’s PTSD. And unlike in Hannibal, there’s no love interest with whom she (and by extension, the audience) can flee her misery and pain. 

I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the season. A lot of the ingredients are there, and despite my many criticisms, it’s been great to spend time with a character I love. Fingers crossed that they finish strong!

[pluviophile-bookworm]

AWAE 2x5 rewatch: thoughts and reactions

Look, I’m glad the girls were having fun, but I hate that this is yet another way for Anne to undermine her own looks. Why can’t she just accept and love herself for who she is? I feel like this cold open is important. 

Gosh, with the way Anne talks about Diana’s lips, I can totally see why people ship them. I for one don’t, at least not romantically, but the signs are definitely there, and in a more modern setting, they might have been written ending up together. 

You know, I love how confident Ruby is in her preferences. Yes, she thinks of nothing but beaus. Yes, that’s ok. Well, maybe not perfectly ok, but no one can make he change what she thinks about, and I’m really glad she knows it. I love that girl and that’s that. 

Come on, Diana, there’s no should and must when it comes to kissing! That’s what I’ve heard anyway. I’ve never been  kissed and with how touch-averse I am, I’d much like it to stay that way. But speaking of Diana and kissing, fast-forward to season 3, I believe Jerry was the one who forgot what he should or shouldn’t do when being kissed. And Diana... she had forgotten it long before the kiss happened. 

I said already I don’t ship DiAnne romantically, but I like how whenever they role-play, Anne always wants Diana to play the love interest, and Diana always steps right into character. 

“Why must the girl wait for the boy?” Well, once again, season 3. I like to think Diana remembered this moment then and just decided it was not quite necessary to wait. 

I love how Marilla isn’t bothered by the noise coming from Anne’s room where the girls are chatting, but instead smiles knowingly at it. She’s becoming a true mother, that one, as if she was a couple of years younger and Anne was her own child. Well, I guess she is now.

That was a long cold open. And a beautiful one, as they often are. A gold open, one might say. 

Bash seems just as excited about seeing Canada as Gilbert was to explore Trinidad. Their brotherhood is beautiful.

Boys being boys? No, Diana, allowing them to do that can only lead to... what Billy did to Josie in season 3. They should be told this is wrong, and I see Anne is going to do just that. “A skirt is not an invitation.” How iconic that line is.

Ooh, the grapes are sour, aren’t they, Josie? Mentioning her a minute ago, I couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t there when the girls were at Green Gables. 

And I see Billy and Josie’s fatal courting has begun. And Prissy and Phillips’ is just growing bigger. 

I see Josie is willing to “educate” her classmates in a proper “mature” game of spin the bottle. And of course, Billy has to be an even bigger... uh, no swearing on main... you know what I mean - about it than she is. If I didn’t think nobody deserves Billy, I’d have said they deserve each other. But even Josie doesn’t deserve that dirt-bag. “Where does that leave Cole?”, seriously? With the real men, of course. Where does that leave you?

I can’t help but root for Josie here, telling Cole she’s glad he’s there. She redeemed herself with that one. 

Sorry, Charlie, but who are you to speak for Diana? She can do that perfectly well on her own, thank you.

Diana and Moody? I see where their - if that can even be called courtship - in 3x1 came from. But I like him better with Ruby. 

Ok, that kiss was even more awkward than “Your dress is very... blue.” Poor dear Moody. He’ll get better.

Poor Anne... her trauma seems to never let her go. And what is Josie suggesting with “you’re of unfortunate circumstances, this can’t be your first kiss”. That was awful.

And speaking of everyone wanting to kiss Diana, as Anne was, there’s Jerry greeting her for the first time by name (because I count the “Hello, ladies” to her and Ruby in season 1 as a greeting to Diana). “I understand you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” Oh, Jerry!... Well, as I’ve said about the movie Titanic, how blissful it is to smile at the beginning as if you don’t know how it’s going to end... that definitely goes for these two. 

“You’e very bold.” Come season 3, we’ll see who the bold one really is. Also, I love that Jerry’s smile is back. 

“I’d rather be smart.” Yes, Diana, that’s the way to go. And judging by the end of season 3, you’re definitely both smart and beautiful. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.

Anne talking about kissing to Matthew and Marilla, neither of whom ever married or had anything more than an utterly tragical romance is... well, awkward. I mean, well, it renders Matthew unable to sentence, if I may put this in a more modern way of speaking than my usual style.

“If you had red hair, you’d want to cover it too.” Well, is this the one where Anne dyes her hair? It has to be. It’s mid-season. 

Oh, I don’t know about dyeing, but this is the one where Cole braids Anne’s hair, and it’s moments like this that make me feel extra bad that she had to lose all of her beautiful hair to vanity. No doubt she came to appreciate it when it had to come off. 

I love how different and yet similar Anne and Cole are. I just love everything about their friendship. The world needs more of those. 

“feminine proclivities”? What on Earth? Also, I remember reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and learning for the first time how great of a humiliation it used to be for a boy to sit with the girls. I mean, I believe Cole would much rather sit with the girls in a world where that didn’t have any bad connotations - not because he’s effeminate or something, but just because they, for one, treat him nicely.

I mean, I get Marilla. One minute she is a new mother, the other her child is asking about kissing. Adopting a teenager is like that sometimes, but I bet she sees it for how rewarding it is in the end. 

“Rachel does have the effect of making you want to do the complete opposite of what she suggests.” Well, yes, but that still leads to good advice somehow, doesn’t it? i mean, it doesn’t make her any less annoying to me right now, but it is what it is. 

“I’d rather be ordinary.” Well, sometimes I think like that, too, but no, Cole, you don’t. Anyone could force themselves to be ordinary, but not everyone can be extraordinary. You’re given this unique chance. Don’t let it go because of some stupid dirt-bag teacher drowning in his own internalised homophobia. 

Gilbert “it’s not a love letter” Blythe and Anne “there’s nothing romantical about this letter” Shirley-Cuthbert. What a match made in heaven. 

“Maybe he wants to be pen-pals” Well, yes he does. Why else would he suggest it in season 3? 

Cole said about recitations that they make him feel too tall. Well, sometimes it’s nice to be tall, isn’t it? Not that I would know, in all of my 5′ glory. 

Gosh, I don’t know what’s worse about Prissy and Phillips’ kiss. That he can barely bring himself to do it, or that their entire teacher-student romance is sickening to me. And then he takes it out on Cole. Internalised homophobia is a drag. 

There’s the fox again... maybe its beauty can teach Anne how wonderful her red hair really is. See, she perceives that the fox is beautiful, but doesn’t see the connection. 

See? Marilla recalled things said earlier by both Cole (”Too tall, too weird”; ”without calling too much attention to yourself”) and Diana (”I’d rather be smart.”; “if you’re beautiful, you get stuck on one path”). Too bad it’s just further confirmation to Anne that she is, indeed, plain - which she is not.

That was beautiful in a sort of blunt, savage way. “I don’t like you.” I mean, sure she was nice to him once, but asking him like that if he doesn’t like girls... too personal. Too rude.

I don’t really know what to say here, but this kiss was beautiful. It was a way to show their friendship to each other and the world, and to stand up for each other while being called freaks. Beautiful.

So this is when Anne gets the hair dye. But why do I think that with raven-black hair, she’d look a lot like Wednesday Addams? 

And... Gilbert is back. What a nice surprise that will be thanks to letters arriving quite a bit later than they’re written.

Marilla is so caught up in rehearsing her speech on kissing  that she doesn’t even notice the remains of Anne’s hair-dyeing. Not until she sees her actual hair, now a horrible greyish green. Poor Anne. 

I love the parallel with Josie’s own hair troubles, though. And I love how this same scene evolves into something more in season 3. A statement on beauty and feminism. But now let’s just focus on 2x5 and not think so far ahead. 

I said focus, but I don’t even know what to say about Anne’s hair being cut. Hair cutting is traumatic for me, but never like this. Let’s be over with it now. 

Let’s sum up this episode: girl talk in Anne’s room; reflections on beauty and courtship; a skirt is not an invitation; different and weird is not bad; spin the bottle and all the awkwardness bound to surround it; Jerry is very bold with Diana; internalised homophobia is a drag; Anne and Cole’s friendship is pretty much the most beautiful thing in this episode focused on beauty; the Shirbert correspondence continues; Gilbert and Bash arrive in Avonlea; hair dye shenanigans and the painful consequences thereof.

[firstdegreefangirl]

I’m a Funky Fried Piece of Man Meat

Word Count: 2470

Original Pub Date: 26 June 2020

Relationships: Eddie Diaz/Evan Buckley

Author’s Note: Based on this song here, which I sent to @dramamineontopofme and then after we screamed about it for a while, I turned that into this.

Also @hearteyesforbuck briefly thought this would be smut, so she’s gonna hate me now. But she loves me more, so I’m OK with it. 

Read on ao3 here

Eddie drains the last sip from his beer bottle and stands up, running his hands down the thighs of his jeans.  

“Be right back, man. Gotta take a leak. I’ll get the next round?”  

“Sounds good.” Buck sets his own empty bottle on the bar beside Eddie’s. “You can buy, but I’ve got to pee too.”  

It would be weird, Eddie thinks, if it were anyone other than Buck. If he were out for drinks with Chim, or Bobby or anyone else, it would be weird to walk to the bathroom together, to stand side by side at the only two urinals, sidestep to the sink in almost perfect unison.

But it’s Buck. He can’t think of a single thing that could make things weird between the two of them, even as he wracks his brain while he watches Buck in the mirror as they wash their hands.  

Except the secret he’s keeping.

Buck looks up then, catches him watching and pulls a face. He crosses his eyes and sticks his tongue out, and Eddie can’t help but flick water at him as he laughs.  

“Hey,” He keeps looking at Buck’s reflection, turning the mood back to something serious. “Can I ask you something?”  

His timing couldn’t be worse; they’re standing in the bathroom at a bar, the kind of place where every surface is just a little bit sticky no matter how many times you wipe it down. He’s not even sure he wants to say anything, thinks he might want to keep his secret to himself. But before he can backtrack, Buck is meeting his gaze in the mirror and he looks so earnest that Eddie can’t bring himself to skirt away from at least part of the truth.

“Of course, Eddie. Anything.” And he can tell that Buck means it, can tell that there’s nothing he could say that would make Buck regard him any differently right now. At least, nothing that Buck can think of. But Eddie’s pretty sure that what he’s about to say could ruin everything.

“You’ve like … you ask people out, right?” The question sounds awkward as it tumbles out of his mouth. It’s not quite what Eddie meant to ask, not likely to get him the answers he’s looking for, but he didn’t give too much away, so he supposes it’s better than if he’d shown Buck his entire hand.  

“Yeah,” Buck’s reflection stares at his, and his brow furrows as he tries to figure out why Eddie might be so antsy about his question. “Why?”

“Like … guys?” Eddie bites his tongue, tries not to eye Buck warily while he waits for a reaction. This is the closest he’s come to telling anyone that he’s maybe interested in dating men, short of saying it to his own reflection in the bathroom mirror at home.

(Hindsight, he hadn’t planned this moment to be such a parallel to that one, but the similarities are sort of comforting. It’s always easy to talk to Buck, but talking to mirror-Buck is even lower stakes, like he can pretend he’s leaning against his own counter, not the cold porcelain of the bar sinks while he talks to himself in the third-person.)

“Sometimes.” Buck’s eyes narrow, and Eddie might be imagining it, but he’s pretty sure Buck’s fingers tighten where he’s holding himself up against the edge of the counter. “That’s not a … problem, is it?”  

“No! No, of course not.” Eddie stumbles over himself to reassure Buck. He hadn’t been planning to do this tonight, hadn’t even considered that Buck might find his questions offensive. And he doesn’t want to offend Buck. Not ever, but especially not now, when he’s so close to putting everything on the line. “I just need some advice.”  

They’ve been in here too long, have spent too many moments standing in front of sinks that aren’t even turned on. Their hands are hardly wet anymore, even though neither of them have reached for a paper towel. If anyone has noticed, there’s really only one conclusion they can come to, one reason two men would walk into a slimy bar bathroom at the same time and overstay their welcome there.

But Buck doesn’t move, so neither does Eddie. Instead, he tries to look like he’s not holding his breath, like he’s not waiting for Buck to shove him across the room and storm out, or – worse yet – give him friendly advice as nothing more than a friend.

Which, really, is looking like the more likely path, given that Eddie asked him for advice on picking up guys, without managing to mention that Buck is really the only guy he’s interested in picking up.

“OK …" Buck trails off and motions with one hand for Eddie to continue.

“How do you do it? I mean, how do you just … ask a guy out?”

“Same way I’d ask anyone else out,” Buck shrugs. “Be straightforward and prepared to handle the rejection.”  

Right, of course. Eddie knows that’s Buck’s standard. They’ve spent enough nights sitting together at the bar for him to know that Buck likes to walk up to a woman and ask if she’s interested in joining him for a drink. He’s explained it before, that it means he gets turned down pretty often, but also that everyone’s expectations are clear right out of the gate.

“No, not … I can do that part, the-the actual asking.” Eddie shakes his head and tries again. “How’d you … your first time, how’d you get the balls to just walk up and ask him?”  

Buck hasn’t said anything about Eddie needing advice talking to men, and Eddie is pretty sure that it’s a good sign. After all, he’d also quietly confirmed that he’s interested in men, at least occasionally. He hasn’t said anything about being interested in Eddie, but Eddie hasn’t said anything about being interested in him either.  

And Eddie is *very interested* in Buck.

“Oh, that?” It can’t have been more than a couple of seconds, but Buck’s response pulls Eddie back to the present. “Easy. I get funky fried.”  

“Excuse me?” Eddie blinks his eyes, tries to school his features. He’s been doing some … independent research, late at night, under the cover of darkness and a private browser. And it’s not like he knows everything – not even close, if he can’t even ask a guy out – but he’s pretty sure he knows what he’s into, and he doesn’t remember seeing anything about “funky fried” in the search results.

“Funky fried.” Eddie keeps watching him in the mirror, and he can see the moment when Buck realizes that he may as well be speaking gibberish. “It’s this thing Maddie taught me in high school. I was nervous, a lot, and she was like the only person I could talk to about … everything.” There’s something in the way he says ‘everything; that makes Eddie want to know more, but he knows that this isn’t the time.  

After all, if he plays this right, he’ll have plenty of chances down the road to learn everything about Buck.

“But anyway,” Buck continues. “She told me that it would help me to say something really ridiculous before I had to do something that scared me. That way, whatever happened, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’d say all day. Pretty sure there’s exactly no evidence to back it up,” he chuckles. “But it helped. Helps, if I’m being honest. I, uh, I still do it.”

“You … get funky fried?” He knows it’s what Buck had said, but Eddie still isn’t sure exactly what it means.

“Yeah. You just look at yourself in the mirror and say it.”  

“Say what?”

“’I’m a funky fried piece of man meat who gets the loving every time.’” Buck at least has the decency to look embarrassed when he says it, his face flushing red in a way that gives Eddie some very indecent thoughts to contend with as he watches his friend in the mirror.

“What?” He tries to hide the crack in his voice, but there’s no mistaking the alarm and confusion on his face.  

Hell, he can see it on his own face, looking back at him in the mirror. But who can blame him? He just asked his best friend to help him ask a guy out, and all he got as an answer is to “get funky fried.” It’s not the worst advice he’s ever been given, but Eddie has a feeling that it’s in the top five for least helpful. There’s no way that he’s going to be able to ask Buck out just because he said something weird to himself first.

It’s almost like Buck can read the panic in his eyes, though, because he sidesteps just a little bit closer, close enough that Eddie thinks he can feel the heat off of Buck’s body.  

They're not actually standing that close, but Eddie will take anything he can get, especially because he’s still half-terrified that Buck is making this whole thing up, just trying to get a laugh out of Eddie saying something stupid. Which wouldn’t bother him ordinarily, but tonight  the stakes are high enough that he doesn't think he could handle that from Buck. Any other reaction, he can work with. But laughter?

Well he might just die on the spot.

“C’mon, just try it. It’s not like you’ll be less confident after.”

And then Buck is standing right behind him, fingers wrapped around his biceps, and Eddie swears that the walls start closing in until all he can focus on is how that Buck’s touch burns his skin in the best way. He’s turning Eddie just slightly, just enough that he’s looking at himself in the mirror, not the space beside him where Buck had been standing.  

But he doesn’t let go, leaves his hands searing Eddie’s arms, and he’s sure that everyone will be able to tell exactly where Buck had touched him.  

Eddie’s weak in the face of this, can’t resist the one thing Buck has asked him to do tonight.  

So he says it, opens his mouth and lets the words fall out.

Or, tries to anyway.

“I’m a fried piece of funky meat man-”

Buck cuts him off. He’s smiling, but he doesn’t laugh and for that, Eddie is grateful.  

“Hang on, dude. Try it again. ‘I’m a funky fried piece of man meat who gets the loving every time.’”

“I’m a freaky fried-”

“Funky fried.”

“Man meat?” Eddie gives up on the repetition, because he knows what comes next, and he’s so very confused. It’s supposed to be nonsense, sure, but he just can’t picture Maddie talking to her little brother about his ‘man meat’ when he was in high school.

“Not that kind of man meat, don’t be disgusting.” Buck lets go of one arm just long enough to swat Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie feels his face start to burn. The heat is less than it is where Buck’s fingers are still  pressing against his skin, but not nearly as comfortable. “Now try again.”  

Right, right. He’s supposed to be making a fool of himself by saying something stupid, not by falling even more in love with Buck than he already is.

He takes a deep breath and focuses on his own eyes in their shared reflection.

“I’m a funky fried piece of man meat who gets the loving every time.” His voice is stronger this time, and he has to hide the way his body tries to shiver when Buck’s fingers flex on his arms.

“Better.” Buck is close enough behind him that Eddie can feel his breath on the back of his throat. “But you’ve gotta really believe it. You are the funkiest piece of man meat to ever be fried!”  

Well, when you put it like that …

Eddie takes a deep breath and decides that he doesn’t have much more to lose. Maybe Buck is right; maybe screwing up the phrase three times cut through enough of the tension that he doesn’t have to worry about Buck’s reaction to what he’s about to say.

Or maybe it’s just Buck, the way he’s always made Eddie feel like he can say anything, how he’s never judged him or held a grudge for anything. They’ve been through way worse together, so why would Buck draw the line here?

Eddie knows what he has to do, flexes his fingers at his side and steels himself.

“I’m a funky fried piece of man meat who gets the loving every time!” He doesn’t flinch as he turns around to face Buck and finishes, with the same breath. “Go out with me.”

The light in Buck’s eyes has to be enough to illuminate the entire city, Eddie thinks. He’s grinning ear to ear, this huge, natural smile that Eddie can’t help but return, and shaking gently where he’s holding Eddie by the shoulders.

“There you go! That’s perfect! See, you’re already more confident! Just, uh,” Buck exaggerates a wince, and Eddie chuckles before he realizes that the sound is coming from his own chest. “Next time, maybe hype up in the bathroom, and then wait until you’re actually in front of the guy to do the asking.”  

Wait until he’s …

Eddie shakes his head and breathes out a laugh when he realizes what conclusion Buck has reached. He reaches up and grasps Buck’s forearm with one hand, running his thumb in gentle strokes across the smooth skin.  

“No, Buck, go out with me.” Eddie tightens his hold and watches the realization dawn across Buck’s face. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just stares at Eddie and smiles. If it were anyone other than Buck, if the circumstances were any different, Eddie is pretty sure he’d be uncomfortable under the intensity of Buck’s stare. And if that didn’t do it, the way he’s just smiling, not saying or doing anything else? That would probably make his skin crawl.  

But here and now? Here and now, he’s happy to give Buck all the time he needs to process Eddie’s declaration.  

He’s also very glad that it doesn’t take long, because the next thing he knows, Buck is breaking eye contact to stare at himself in the mirror over Eddie’s shoulder.  

Eddie knows Buck isn’t talking to him, almost feels like he’s intruding on a private moment, even though Buck is still holding onto him. But he’s still drawn to him, unable to stop himself from watching the way Buck’s lips move with the quiet conviction of his whisper.

“I’m a funky friend piece of man meat who gets the loving every time.”

Then he fixes his stare back on Eddie and everything goes right with the world when he nods.

“Yes.”  

[oofjaemin]

⌠ NAM JOO-HYUK, 25, CISMALE, HE/HIM ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, JAEMIN ‘ JAE ’ WOO! according to their records, they’re a SECOND year, specializing in DRIVER’S ED + COVERT OPS; and they DID go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( lipstick stains on shirt collars, sweaty sprints at dawn to start the day, being shirtless for no apparent reason, soft smirks when he’s up to no good ). when it’s the ( cancer )’s birthday on 7/17/1995, they always request their HAEJANGGUK from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

i’ll do a proper graphic / maybe add to this when it’s not 7am buuuut.... here’s jae — i just wanna say i now have four muses on the torres floor so that’s automatically the best floor x

some of his character parallels: 

stirling archer | archer - 96 %

samantha jones | sex and the city - 96 %

lucifer morningstar | lucifer - 95 %

barney stinson | how i met your mother - 95 %

maeby funke | arrested development - 93 %

chuck bass | gossip girl - 92 %

EL PINTERESTO

anyways. he a massive Hoe. i feel it had to be done after 3 of my muses coupled up 

his fam are part of The Spy Life, actually used to be very good friends with a certain mr steven park’s family until jae kinda... was jae and they split the bond, rip xx

he didn’t do anything major but the parks really didn’t want him around their sons, but jae doesn’t listen to rules or authority and said fuck that, i do what i want ?? plus he was hella close to both steve n andrew so he legit didn’t care what their parent’s wishes were and that kinda forced their hand to put a stop to it

he’s just very very impulsive, chooses fun and pleasure above all else and isn’t the most mature, a chaotic neutral.... jeez wonder why the parks wanted better for their kids JHSBJHBS

anywhoooo he actually gets on well with his own family !! has a sister who is very obedient, hard working and polite ( maybe i’ll do a wc ?? ) and while his parents do want him to succeed and focus in life.... they’ve known jae all his life and frankly they’re tired of repeating themselves and have found it’s better to just let him be as he’s much worse when he rebels

you’d think a twenty five year old would be less childish but ???? fuck age norms

he is actually very intelligent ?? sometimes 

his family have a tradition of attending university before a spy academy, to sort of prove your worth, intelligence, hard work, determination etc and it’s a bit of security to fall back on if anything were to happen to the family, their ties in the spy world, or themselves as individuals — plus it can be used as a something of a cover too ! plus... if you don’t do this step, the family consider you inadequate and you won’t get any money !!! 

it was a big incentive for jae who likes expensive cars and jetting round the world without a care so he studied law at cambridge and part of him thinks about ditching the spy world all together and becoming a lawyer but he’s dissuaded by the difference in potential money jhbjshbjs

his dad wanted him in weapons training but he said ‘ no x ’ and chose driver’s ed instead bc he likes to skrr skrrrrrr but don’t let him in ur car bc he might wreck it... not bc he can’t drive but he’s just a bloody idiot and will try and see if he can flip it or something

he’s a massive dick to his hook ups, tho not so much intentionally, but defo the type to be less than interested in you as soon as he’s finished jsbjhbjhbthe classic ‘ you’re still here ? ’ if he’s woken up and you’re beside him — but he can be quite a gentleman beforehand to ensure he sleeps with you, so i’ll apologise now for him xxx

has a lot of ‘ friends ’ but probs only a small few of people he’d actually put before himself ( imma say steve exclusively ) 

he’s just a bit of a mess about, likes to play and doesn’t really care who’s expense it comes at as long as it’s not his but he’s not like a full on dick or outwardly mean for the sake of it, he just does what he wants and what he wants can change quite quickly so he’s not one to be sentimental or put the effort in to ensure you’re not offended or hurt

drinks a lot, smokes a bit, other drugs occasionally 

pansexual but defo Het Energy bc he’s probs only slept w girls im p sure

was in the chess club at cambridge like a loser

he 6′2 : ) 

brain kinda empty but i think i covered everything ??? 

some connections i’d love 

defo hook ups plssssssssss, even if it’s ex ones or a one night stand kind of thing, i feel if he continuously hooks up w someone they defo know he’s not keeping up the act of being polite n courteous so ??? can either be mutual or a thing they clash on — i’d say he probs has a preference for feminine peeps but only bc he’s never explored the other side of things but he’d be down to, for sure, i just do not think he’s a bottom so JHBHSJHB

some fitness friends, he really loves going for runs and jogs and wouldn’t mind a buddy to do it alongside him, same with just general gym buds or sparring partners !! 

family friends / enemies / neutral ? the woos are fairly known in korea, obvs they’ve cut ties w the parks so it could have some collateral w other families !!

someone he annoys the hell out of, bickering 24/7 ???? sign me tf up !! maybe they’re just as immature as he is or literally can’t stand him at all !! 

ok i think thats it but may add to when i wake up : ) pls either like dis, react when i post it in discord, or simply message me for plots n ideas !!! i will probs post an open tho if u wud rather see the vibe n chemistry !!! 

@gallagherintro

[partnersatfazbear]

I’m... salty? Fazbear Frights: The Cliffs anaylsis

My initial thoughts about The Cliffs under the cut (contains spoilers):

The Cliffs - My favorite story of the bunch, but mostly because I really liked the main character. Not TOO much to write home about, but I will pick apart a few lines from this one. In my first set of similarities, the wife dies in childbirth. Not only is this a huge fear of mine (for my wife, in the future), but I wrote this happening in William’s backstory in RS. I generally loved the protagonist here, except when he didn’t realize the obvious: the Freddy was telling him not to kill himself, but where is son was. That doll got burned (yes, burned!), run over, and tossed off a cliff for nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that thing came back to kill them :V

Only thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted on a female co worker, because for some reason that was relevant. (No really, it wasn’t.) Why does this series insist on writing PAGES about useless love interests that do nothing for the plot, nothing for the MC, AGH. I know it’s a kids book series but Christ it’s annoying and I’ve been skipping this sort of stuff and the long action sequences.

The Breaking Wheel - This was the story I liked the least, but honestly, the one I’ll be writing the most about. I think it parallels William and Henry a little and I was a little irked how similar a specific part was to my Springtrap-springlock chapter in Resurrection Seeker.

So first, the story focuses mostly around two kids and they are rivals in a robotics class. One kid a huge douche (Julius) but competent and the other is struggling to put his ideas on paper (Reed). Then there’s Reed’s friend, Pickle, who is a genius.

I’m just gonna bullet point stuff I thought was relevant:

- Reed describes his relationship towards Pickle as: “He was so used to Pickle out performing everyone around him that praising him for doing something well was like praising him for breathing.” (This really reminded me of William’s admiration for Henry, although there isn’t any jealousy here.)

- Reed is described as having a “monkey face”. This reminded me of William, mostly because of the criticism from the fandom towards The Silver Eyes GN’s design. It could be a jab or coincidence.

- Julius’ robot is an exoskeleton (like the power loader from Aliens). When showing off, he becomes trapped in it:

- Reed leaves Julius to be trapped in the exo all night, including locking him in place so he can’t move. This is initially to get back at Julius for being a dick, but then the guilt starts eating away at Reed. Also, Julius getting locked in: “Julius jerked his arms, yanking to free them from the restrains of his skeletal suit....” Julius says: “Unlock me!” and “Do what I tell you! Unlock me!”

Reed tells him, “I’m going to leave you here in your suit overnight... so you can get an idea of what it feels like to... [be treated the way you treat others]. Maybe your robot can teach you a thing or two.”

Julius says, “Get back here you stupid ape! Do you know what you’ve done? I’m going to kill you! ... I’m going to tear you apart, limb from limb. Get back in here and unlock this! ... You can’t leave me in here like this!”

So, yeah. It reminds me a lot of Springtrap. As for the actual story... I was disappointed. The story starts off good (albiet with that poor kid trope this series LOVES) and reminded me early on of The Tell-Tale Heart. Then it defies stated logic to make a real, edgy ending that I didn’t care for. If the entire thing had been in Reed’s head it would’ve been better (more akin to Blackbird, which did the “in your head” trope poorly. If these stories were switched around, I think they’d work better.) So this story was meh. Such a promising start.

Another thing that annoyed me was a few paragraphs wasted describing Orey (fml I don’t care if I spell it wrong. Who the hell comes up with these names). He barely shows up in the story and is just a background character... story could’ve worked without him.

He Told Me Everything - If you love Goosebumps style stories, this ones for you. I really enjoyed it, but it had almost nothing to do with FNAF. The Chris name is obviously a giant troll (and to make matters worse his father’s name is Dave). The sister and wife don’t have any name parallels, although the wife reminded me a lot of my design for Mrs. Afton. The backstory of Chris’ family reminds me a lot of Afton’s backstory for Resurrection Seeker. Like. A lot. It’s spooky how close it is.

“The houses were small, identical little boxes, which had originally been built for workers at the steel mill...” “His dad... ...had gone on to vocational school to learn how to work on cars.”

Another thing to note about the Dad is his weight is specifically touched on several times. Seemed like a callback to the novels’ mention of an earlier version of William.

All in all, a solid entry into the books and some weird coincidences I can’t overlook.

The story did drag a little, but honestly, not nearly as bad as the others. It was good.

Now, for the epilogue.

I don’t know if I wanna fume or not. I’m DISAPPOINTED. Afton essentially dies in the end of it, only to have a piece of his soul in a female endoskeleton escape into the factory. Also, the fucking... the fucking PUPPET shows up (and is actually why Afton dies). [Note: I didn’t realize that Left-E isn’t shown burning in the FNAF 6 ending, which many people are using to justify this. Read below for how I feel about that.] I just. I don’t know. I mean, William always comes back, but... I don’t know how I feel about this. I have a HUGE suspicion that the female endoskeleton is what becomes Vanny. I definetly still see this sort of leading into Security Breach EXCEPT for the fact: The Puppet is still alive.

Okay, so those were my initial thoughts. Upon looking around / rereading people say the female endo is Eleanor (Baby). My wife pointed out I missed the long necked detail. Woops. I wonder if Eleanor/Baby MIGHT be our Vanny stand in in this universe, though. And yeah, still not happy.

Afton is pretty much dead outside of a small part of his soul existing in the endo that escaped (this is an assumption on my part, I don’t think it’s stated, so essentially he’s dead, dead). There are parts of this I liked (and William only had ONE line: “I am Agony.”) Like, no shit? I couldn’t tell! SMH

However, despite some of the parts I thought were interesting (we get a thorough description of AlmagAfton and when he dies its pretty pathetic and I had all the FEELS), I think overall I’m disappointed because we may be at the end of Afton’s story. I have a suspicion that Vanny will be replacing him and possibly even betraying him in Security Breach, if this is anything to go by. Another odd duck is that Jake, in the remnants of the Stichwraith (that everyone insists is the GF parallel) is still wandering around too. I’m assuming Puppet went down with the ship, quite literally, since he [William] falls apart into a lake. Thanks, Charlie. You continue to ruin my day.

My wife pointed out the lake reminded her of OMC’s lake and I’m like... Why are we backpeddling?! This entire epilogue is a fucking mess. Another thing that irritates me (and apparently quite a few people) is if this IS the way the story is heading, then it makes FFPS pretty much USELESS to the story, nullifies Henry’s sacrifice / wishes... and that sucks! ESPECIALLY the fact that the Puppet SURVIVED the FNAF 6 fire! I get she just wants William to pay for what he’s done to her and her father, but... Henry wanted her to rest. To move on. She didn’t do that. That’s shitty to me.

Also, apparently souls have a smell. So that’s canon now.

[rhydium]

Info dumbo about the StarFinite story?

aright u asked for it anon GET READY [cracks knuckles] this is gonna be long so obligatory cut in 3, 2........

...1!

so the uh, the au! the story!! w/e yall wanna call it! full disclaimer, i only began working on this whole thing a while ago, but it's totally taken over my fukn brain. like, we're talking big hyperfixation hrs. am i cringe for being this invested in my own content? yes? cool i do not Care >:3€

i should also throw it out there real quick that i am kin w/ infinite, n this is actually one of my two canons (both of which are my own aus lmfao wow). i didn't go into it expecting it to be but sfsfsgdfs here we are ig!! for that reason it's got extra importance to me n this definitely contributes to the euphoria i get from it!! it's a lil odd writing ur own canon,,? but i kinda just go w/ the flow!

the au n, the story that i will start Eventually, revolves around infinite n starline (obvi) n it's honestly just ... the tl;dr is big healing momence n, what's this? uh oh sisters !!! they are falling in love 😳😳😳

uhhhh so infinite is an android, made by eggman. that's like, the most notable canon divergence here! super important context to have. i've got a whole big theory on the possibility of sega originally intending infinite to be an artificial being (which i explored in the works for my Other canon too), stemming from not only the scene in forces wherein infinite comments on sonic's "data", but a line of dialogue from tails in one of the last stages of the game where he Literally Says "so this is where eggman built infinite". that ... i mean. that contrasts w/ episode shadow pretty hard don't it?? would explain why that dlc was so rushed, n the comic too. ANYWAY adsfsfs um that's a seperate ramblepost. yeah!!!

they are also agender n use they/them (primarily) as well as he/him!! so i'll be refering to them w/ those pronouns!

after the war, infinite is taken in by the resistance n, instead of being dismantled, they're basically given a chance to rehabilitate themselves. it's agreed that they won't be reprogrammed, as despite the potential risks, it feels wrong to do so; like a violation of their free will, individuality n thinking. if infinite is to be a good person, it's not gonna be bc other ppl recreated their entire personality, it's gonna be bc it's what they themselves truly want. robot ethics idk man!! u can't tell me that sonic n co wouldn't offer this to infinite if they offered it to metal in IDW,,,, i am Standing By This!!!

it's, yknow, a bit rocky, at first. infinite has to really fight the urge to return to eggman (something they already tried once, before the resistance found them; they were cast out). it's a struggle against what they were built to do, against giving into unhealthy familiarity over facing a, while healthier, unfamiliarity. new faces, a new life, turning their back on their mission n creator, it's like, a lot.

they work for/with the sonic crew, rebuilding the world they tore down as deemed fitting justice, being closely monitored for a bit as a natural precaution. as it becomes apparent infinite truly no longer has any ambition to harm others (they don't have much ambition for anything, really), they're then granted more freedom, n start taking on more important missions!! it at least gives them something to do, keeps them occupied. they have issues with dissociation, unreality, whether they're truly a real person bc, well, android. feeling purposeless, n a lack of worth, especially. a need to prove themselves. heavy stuff. i'll kinda go into that a bit more in a sec. their work grounds them, if only temporarily.

n soooooo... IDW comic stuff happens. metal virus time. starline gets kicked out of the empire.

now, as the comics are ongoing, n as this is already an au, there's gonna be divergence, n i must admit i haven't planned out all that yet. there's a lot i have to consider!! infinite being w the resistance/restoration is a big game changer ... tho i Do believe that they were absent, likely on a far out mission during most of the chaos. eggman doesn't know abt them, nor does starline or anyone else other than the sonic crew; n some civilians that recognise them.

i'm not 100% sure of Exactly when it happens, but i think it's just after bad guys, that infinite is sent to locate n bring in starline. it doesn't prove too difficult. there's a whole, starline realising "oh fuck it's you???", some bickering n, the two don't hit it off right away. they're both kinda like. not mentally stable ddgddgdds,,,

so uh. starline ends up essentially going thru the same sorta shit as infinite. careful watch, rebuilding, all that jazz, making sure he can be trusted. he's like... very very lost, quite like infinite is. the world has kinda calmed down, in the meanwhile.

it's at this point i'm gonna go ahead n drop a bit of a ramble i subjected my friends to a while ago, to articulate the way i see the two, n their dynamic together!! i was considering making this it's own post a while ago!

analysing their characters a bit... let's look at starline. Like. so we have this, in bad guys, which SENT ME tbfh;

i feel like it's the moment that triggers starline onto the path he is rn canonically,,, he's clearly like. rly mad n bitter. the core of this?? he wants his work n his efforts to be acknowledged.

he's big angry. still kind of in denial at this stage. he has himself obsessed w/ the idea of making eggman see him as Worthy, that if he just tries hard enough, that'll happen. he's dependent on eggman's validation, n i mean, it's no surprise; he's followed him a Long Time by the sounds of it.

then in the recent issue, hold the fuck up, bc we got, This;

god. my god it's all comin together now homies. this???? this right here??? it is the CLASSIC "i have to do this to prove i'm strong n powerful n smart n worthy n should be respected please Give Me Acknowledgement" ..... n who else is Like That? can u see where im going w/ this?

i think most ppl are aware of infinite's character being extremely indicative of self worth/esteem issues n the need to prove themself, right?? the extreme adversity, repulsion, perhaps even fear toward the idea of being weak. the compulsion to prove otherwise, to show their strength, to become powerful, to conquer to make a point. their theme exudes this same energy as their behaviour in-game; an aggressive attitude, trying to assert themself, while if u rly listen...? the lyrics are actually really sad in places. it reeks of cover up, although composition wise, a v interesting thing to note is a lot of the more telling lyrics are prominent while some of the affirming ones are in the background. indicative of a desire to have their true feelings be heard but caught in a vicious loop?

okay okay that's yet Another different analysis. AHEM.

not to get deep on main (oh who the hell am i kidding that's the point of this entire thing) but i think starline has issues w/ his worth in a similar way to infinite. they both seem to have this need to Prove something, whether it's to others or themselves, n get caught in a toxic spiral of doing worse n worse things for Some kind of validation or acknowledgement. they'll go to really big lengths chasing that, n both of them ultimately sought validation in the wrong place n wrong way.

this is a big part of my starfinite dynamic,, n so, what happens, as they get closer n open up??? we have them BOTH realising together that they don't have to do fuck all to prove anything to anyone. they don't need to do all this to show they're strong n smart n worth something, not to anyone else OR themselves. they're enough as they are. they bond over that shared feeling that they have to do xyz, to prove themselves, n that desire to just finally be acknowledged n appreciated n help each other thru it. to help each other understand that other ppls approval, or lack thereof, doesn't define them, their strength, intelligence, and worthiness.

i feel like they have an interesting parallel between them in like... the above could be taken as a general analysis, but to go more in depth on this au specifically?? ...

starline followed eggman for presumably a long time n it no doubt left him feeling a heavy and deep regret for all that time wasted n spent on an unhealthy path. infinite kinda teaches him that what matters is what he's doing Now n also reminds him that if none of it happened, starline wouldn't have learnt a lot of the serious skills he has. n while starline still feels bad, he also realises himself that, he likely never would have crossed infinite's path if none of it happened. for that reason, he wouldn't take it back.

infinite has only been recently made, on the other hand. they haven't really existed long, yet, but so far their experiences haven't been very positive n it can be .... discouraging. starline sorta, shows infinite their limited experiences w/ the world are a very tiny fraction of what's out there, n things can absolutely change, yes, including for the better; that's the essence of life, a neverending, constant flow of change.

it's a big tale of moving on n letting go, honestly; made easier as they're doing it together. n as they heal n grow, well... these bitches gay. sfshshdgds like, ig that's putting it p bluntly but!! they start to trust each other, understand each other more. as they get to truly know who the other is, they both start developing The Feelings. they're both pretty oblivious n the reveal is totally unknown so far!! yeah, i know, bummer. i suck. boo. adafsfsds however i can say there will be lots of content in the making!! if that soothes the soul! i've got of ideas i hope to bring to life.

ofc there's still a lot of more specific things i haven't covered here so! if y'all want more juice hmu w/ more focused questions but !! this is the overview n i hope it was a decent read now that gave some uhhh! Cool Insight! yea!!! ✌