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chuchustraydog · 4 months ago

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I think i have a fnaf timeline.

DISCLAIMER: please dont create an angry mob of people trying to crucify a 16 year old for making a fun little Theory about fnaf , thank you. Another thing , i will be refferring to other theories that have been made in the fnaf fandom and will cite it accordingly. Also english isnt my first language and although i find myself proficient in it , i still sound like an idiot sometimes. Also i'll be mostly focussing on the first 6 games and ucn as everything after is way too confusing. I will be using references from the fazbear frights books and the security logbook. I will not be using the silver eyes trilogy as they arent canon to the main universe. The rant is over please hold the hate comments until after hearing me out , thank you very much.

SPOILER WARNING OBVIOUSLY.

Also a quick TW as i'll be talking about the general fnaf topics , Child murder , psychological abuse basically and lots of brianfuck.

With that out of the way , i would first like to show my timeline and then explains each part individually

Freadbears opens ca. 1970

The first ever Freddy's is opened after fredbears and before 1983.

MCI happens before bite of '83 (I told you please bear with me , no pun intended.) In the original freddy's.

Bite of '83 in 1983 (duh)

Charlotte's/Puppet's/Henry Daughter's death (seriously Scott just tell us her name is Charlie in the games too thx) after bite of '83.

Midnight Motorist, shortly after Charlie's death

Original Freddy's closes due to MCI.

Charlie/ Puppet gives gift , gives life.

William builds the funtimes to capture and kill kids (The spirits of the kids arent in the funtimes yet , bear with me please)

Elizabeth dies to Baby and posseses(i hate this fucking word) her. Circus Baby's closes and they get put underground.

Fnaf 2 happens in 1987 and the bite of '87.

Fnaf 1 happens in 1993

William notices the animatronics being possesed and salvages them. He uses the parts and puts them in the funtimes. This is shortly after fnaf 1.

The funtimes become hostile towards William. He figures out remnant and sends Michael down to free Elizabeth

He returns for whatever reasons(i have one) and gets springlocked.

Sister location happens and Michael gets scooped. He then sets out to find William. This is close to 1993 i believe.

After 30 years Fnaf 3 happens in 2023 and Michael burns down the place. This is also where he writes into the logbook (more on that later)

Pizzeria sim takes place only a bit after i think so around 2024 at the most. Everyone gets set free by henry by arson.

UCN happens in hell where William Afton is punished for his crimes by the vengeful spirit.

With this out of the way we can continue on with the explanation. Please dont lynch me before reading this , thank you.

Alright onto the first point that i believe needs explaining.

The MCI (Missing Children's Incident) happend before the bite. Aka: me offering myself up to get doxxed by angry fnaf fans.

My reasoning lies in the Help Wanted 2 princess quest minigame. In it , you have to light multiple graves to earn a bonnie mask. The graves each have a plushie of the core 4 animatronics, golden Freddy and the puppet. The order in which you light them starts with Chica and ends with the puppet. This is the order of which the kids died as evidenced by withered chica's voiceline in UCN.

"I was the first , i have seen everything" - withered chica in unc.

That means the puppet died last which makes sense considering all of the children are all desd when the puppet gives gifts gives life. However that's not where it ends. Considering all of the evidence we have gotten from the fazbear frights books , it is widely accepted that both the crying child and the vengeful spirit (I will not refer to them as Cassidy as the name is still debated about. I will also refer to them as C.C and V.S respectfully.) share golden Freddy and both possesses him. This makes sense as otherwise there wouldnt be any reason to show us the C.C's death , except for some Michael backstory angst , as the MCI happens before 1983. The reason being that if the grave represents golden freddy , the puppet must have died after the bite meaning either after 1983 or in 1983. If the puppet is the last kid to die , it means the MCI happend before the bite or maybe at the same time. We know that a freddy's is open at the same time as fredbears , considering all of the merch C.C and other kids have , and that the MCI didnt happen at any of the locations we see. It would also make sense why the security puppet exists in the first place , Henry was trying to protect Charlie because of the murders that happend at freddy's. (Why he lets her go there after the MCI is a mystery to me but maybe all happend in relative succession or with suspect supposedly being arrested and convicted , he felt safe to send her.) That would leave me to believe that what C.C. saw wasnt Elizabeth getting murked by Baby or Charlie getting killed by William , mostly out of timeline reasons , but the MCI. Maybe he saw springbonnie/William lead away Susie/Chica to her death and later on saw her on a missing poster. He does get scared in fnaf 4 when he sees a purple guy (probably william) help an employee put on the springbonnie suit. (This also confirms that William isnt the only one wearing springbonnie and that C.C wouldnt know who was in the suit or if anyone was in there at all.) Now some would argue that the whole reason William started killing was to put C.C together , but i dont think so. Here's where i do take a bit of Silver Eyes Trilogy lore in this but i can proof it otherwise too , bear with me. In the Silver Eyes trilogy, William Afton's main goal was to achieve immortality using remnant (everyone's favourite soul juice.) , as he was afraid of death. Considering the first ever namedrop of Afton was in the trilogy and the fact that the characters seem to align well in charactarisation, i fully believe this is what scott intended. Considering that the trilogy mirrors the original game story in aspects like Henry's daughter dying or the four missing kids names , it's not farfetched that William's motive are one of these similiarties. (Yes , i said i wouldnt use the trilogy as it isnt canon to the games. However it is clear that Scott made some ideas for the books that stuck for the games. I dont know why Afton's motive cant be one of them.) There is also the fact that the freddy's th MCI takes place at is never seen in one of the games and i doubt scott cawthon would create two freddy's that we've never seen just so that one of them is only there so we know freddy's existed in 83. No that was on purpose and im sure of it , otherwise it would just be bad writing.

Now we can move on to the second point that i feel needs explaining: Midnight motorist. Aka: drunk driving sim and every theorists biggest nightmar.

I believe midnight motorist to take place after Charlie's death and thus Afton's last murder (for now). I believe this is something the majority agress on. Now here is where we get into theory territory. I believe that the Juniors William Afton tries to get in (yes i believe its William even if he's a mustard man and not purple) can not be any freddy's location mostly because why would he drive away from killing Charlie only to go back to it. Some have speculated it to be the fnaf 2 location but that would mean that two freddy's would be open at the same time. Again, no sense there. Also we dont have a set dare where the fnaf 2 location opened but knowing these restaurant it cant have been long before its closing in 1987. And considering the MCI happend before the bite of 83 (that seems to take place in either spring or summer as we see in the minigames.) It would be a big time frame between the MCI and bite of 83 and Charlie's/the Puppet's death. Not impossible but unlikely. I believe the small pile of dirt in the woods to be C.C's grave and that "That place" mustard man/Afton refers to is exactly that. If we place Charlie's death after C.C , it means the only son Afton has left so when he says this line at the end of midnight motorist:

"Ran off to that place again. He'll be sorry when he gets back." - Mustard man /Afton in midnight motorist.

He means Michael. Now some will say: "But *Insert my name* the person infront of the TV has so many hints to being Michael". Bear with me please. The reason it cannot be C.C is because C.C is already dead. There isnt any logical explanation for there to be a pile of dirt in the forest otherwise. All of Afton's victims were stuffed into suits. It could be Elizabeth as we dont know exactly when Afton made the funtimes but i dont think so. Mostly because i doubt Elizabeth's body was able to be retrieved to be buried after getting clawed by Baby. Would it explain the grave being unmarked? yes. Does it fit in narratively? I dont think so. So yes i believe the person who ran away to be Michael. Maybe he saw a hallucination of Fredbear leading him to his brother's grave? After all the security logbook confirms that Michael knows about Nightmare Fredbear and i have an explanation. Michael , after the bite of 83 , became an experiment for William. I believe that William was already experimenting on C.C with the Fredbear plush trying to hone his son's fear of the animatronics. (This also backsup my theory that C.X saw the MCI. It would give William a reason to torment his kid , to keep him away from freddy's.) So when C.C died , he moved onto Michael who was probably fragile mentally from C.C's death already and thus easy to manipulate and experiment on. This is where Dittophobia comes in. Basically i believe the dreams in fnaf 4 to be Michael hallucinating being trapped in his brother's body fighting against nightmarish versions of the animatronics with the worst being fredbear as the one who killed his brother. This also where followvictim comes in , a theory that believes C.C' soul or atleast a part of it clinged to his brother Michael. If this were to be the case , it would make sense why Michael would go back to the grave and why William has the option to check there. Either before or after Midnight Motorist , William experimented on Michael, potenially to make the boy his accomplice or the one to do his dirty work. (Like Vanessa in the fnaf movie but i digress.) So who's the person infront of the TV? Mrs. Afton? A relative? Who knows? But i dont believe it to be Michael.

Next point: the building of the funtimes , the thing that keeps me up at night.

I hate this part the most. The entire time i was trying to figure out how the parts of the 5 animatronics could be put in the funtimes. See the problem is we see the salvage where afton takes down the animatronics in a minigame in fnaf 3. This has to happen after Charlie gives gifts and gives life as the animatronics are possessed. It has to happen after Fnaf 1 though as William was sealed behind a wall at the fnaf 1 location for 30 years. You'd think Michael would notice or hear his father's screams if he was working there but he didnt and we know freddy's closed soon after. So where to put the funtimes? I believe that after the original freddy's closed due to the MCI , Afton began building the funtimes. He might've noticed something off about Fredbear or the puppet or any of the animatronics after and wanted to recreate whatever he had made. A weird Frankenstein project basically and he was obssesed because now he didnt just want to be immortal , he wanted to bring his son back in any way necessary. Killing more kids in the name of science for it? A minor sacrifice in his mind. So he creates the funtimes with killing in mind. I believe the scooper to be an afterthought of after Circus baby's closed and only for the bunker underground. Elizabeth gets killed by Baby and in an attempt to cover it up , William pretends like there had been a gasleak and the animatronics all get put underground and potentially under Afton house. So William is left with one last kid , Michael. Who by this point is probably so traumtized that he'd follow his father's order to the death. So i believe that until the salvage, the funtimes didnt have the souls of the 5 MCI kids in them.

Fnaf 2: Who is Fritz Smith?

So as we know the first night guard jeremy Fitzgerald gets bitten by an animatronic after switching to dayshift. This is the bite of 87. Afterwards , we play as Fritz Smith who gets fired after one night for tempering with the animatronics and odor. Sounds familiar? Its the same reasons Michael Afton was fired as Mike schmidt in fnaf 1. Now does that prove its Michael? Maybe but lets look at our other canditate , William , first. William could have gone there simply to kill more kids or to watch what the animatronics became. Previous employees werent allowed into the fnaf 2 location and the owners were tried to be contacted. But no one has heard anything of the Afton's since Circus baby's and im sure that henry wasnt involved anymore either. Another Argument might be the puppet as the puppet shouldnt be able to be fooled just because Michael and William look alike. See in UCN the puppet says this:

"The others are like animals. But i am very aware." - puppet UCN

And she's right. The others would see someone who looks like William and immediatetly think its their murderer but the puppet knows better. Still that doesnt prove why she attacks jeremy then so i believe this to be debunked basically. Not impossible just unlikely.

Now onto why it could be Michael. Well after 4 years of pure psychological torture , Mike will probably do anything to please his father. If that includes going into the pizzeria where the animatr that he fears are inside , he has to pull through. He was a clean slate. After all , nobody has probably seen Michael Afton for 4 years. So him applying as Fritz Smith isnt unlikely. Couple that with the same reasons for being fired and we can be pretty sure its Mike again. But why would William send him here? Well...tempering with the animatronics ofcourse. Considering Mike's a technician in Sister location , its not far fetched he knows his way arouns Henry's and William's creations. I believe William wanted to have an update on the animatronics. And he gets it. They are erratic, attacking security guards no matter if they resemble William or not , they cause a ass bite again and seem set on getting revenge on the killer. I think this where William figures out that the possesions happend but he cant be sure. After all the toy animatronics are programed to apprehend criminals but the withered arent. So he knows something is going on. Mike gets fired though and William has to wait until the next location opens.

Fnaf 1: We are getting closer Baby!

Not much to say except a few points. Mike gets sent here by William to again , watch the animatronics. When golden freddy appears though , something happend. I think that V.S noticed that part of C.C's soul was with Mike and decided to cling a part of themselves onto Mike aswell. Maybe because V.S thought they could communicate with C.C through that. I mean how else is C.C and V.S supposed to communicate in the security logbook? How should they even get there? Well Mike ofcourse. So basically Mike gets fired for the same reasons and goes to tell his father about what he's seen. William is now sure that the animatronics are possessed and that he needs their parts for his funtimes. So as soon as Mike is fired , he salvages them and uses their metal infused remnant to put into his funtimes , ripping their souls away. He then realizes that the funtimes became violent against him and they seem alive and that his daughter possessed Baby. With that in mind , he's determined to salvage golden freddy too and maybe get his son back. So he returns and meanwhile sends Michael to free Elizabeth. Afterall the animatronics were hostile and William was afraid of dying and needed to bring his kids back. If Mike died along the way? Who cared? Not only was he a pawn for william , if this works he could just bring Mike back. So he goes back to salvage golden freddy however the other kids are pissed. Now i believe i need to address the elephant in the room. Who's the fifth kid? My best bet? V.S. After all , the other animatronics are also there despite their souls being in the funtimes. There is just one other elephant in the room. Where. Is. The. Golden. Freddy. Suit? If William salvaged it in the the restaurant , it would lay there broken right? Why else would he be there? See here's where i will slide in another theory. When Dual Process theory's Video came out , one thing stuck to me. The unexplainable springlock suit in Sister location. It cant be springbonnie , William's springlocked in there , and there arent any other known Springlock suits. Could it be that William took the Golden freddy suit with him to the underground? I mean th3 children's bodies would decomposed by now and after salvaging , William would remove the bones from there probably , making room for Michael to fit in there. Especially if William was planning to bring back C.C the bones would be really impractical. For the other theories in this timeline i will stick with the second theory as it makes more sense to me. Why William would return? Maybe to get his favourite fursona to turn immortal himself. Sure he'd test it on C.C and Michael first (his favourite guinea pigs) but then he'd be ready to be immortal. And what's bettered than to possesses the endo of your fursona huh? It seems wacky i know , but this the only explanation i can bring logically in my head. We know what happens after , William's plan fails, the kids fuck him over and he gets springlocked only to then be sealed behind a wall for 30 years.

The downfall of Afton's plan: Sister location Edition. Aka: the game that doesnt fit anywhere.

So mike being the ever obedient son and unknown bearer of his brother's and the V.S's souls , ventured down to safe his sister. The animatronics , angry and mistaking him for William , attack him every night. In night 4 he gets kidnapped basically and put in the springlock suit , yes the Golden freddy one. I believe this is where C.C's soul was able to fully latch onto Mike as the two parts were reunited as does V.S's soul. Afterwards he gets scooped and im about to explain how he surives it. When he is scooped and ennard takes ober his body , my boy is filled with remnant. (Although the scooper could have also been the reason but i want nice story ok?) After he turns purple and throws up ennard he technically has no more remnant except the bit of the scooper he may or may not have gotten. But i also believe he was being held alive by C.C and V.S with their souls latched onto him. If he died now , V.S could never communicate with C.C and V.S would lose half of their soul. Remember when UCN came out and the mediocore melodies had someone whisper through them? A lot of people first mistaked that voice as Baby but now we all believe it to be V.S. Now who's voice is heard telling Mike that he wont die? Baby's. But that makes no sense , ennard is out of his body and the voice sounds so internal. Also how would Baby/Elizabeth know that? She couldnt have. I believe this to be V.S telling Mike that he wont die and i also believe that this opened Mike's eyes. His father had done something awful and he needed to stop him , he needed to find him. And that's what he does for 30 years , searching and searching but never finding his father. Until fazbear frights.

Fnaf 3: the fuckery finally ends , or does it?

We nearly got it. Yay! Please bear with me. I know the last two parts were weird but im going somewhere. First lets start with the easy stuff. "Easy".

The security logbook. The security logbook implies to have been written in by Mike around fnaf 3. In it we have two spirits. Faded text and Altered Text. As you can imagine , faded text is faded text written in the logbook while the altered text is the spirit changing the already present text to communicate. This is where the name cassidy comes in. Who this name belongs to? No fucking idea. Lots of arguments for both spirits and im going to be honest, i cant solve it right now. Which infuriates me. But if i had to , i'd probably name C.C Cassidy as V.S getting a name would destroy the whole vengeful spirit that torments William without William knowing who they are except that he murdered them. Also it pisses off that C.C has no name , like how?!

Anyway the happiest day happens and the puppet is able set C.C free. That's because C.C is there with Michael the entire time. The reason there are only six people is because V.S refuses to let go and wants to get revenge. However all the other souls are split up in ennard and later on molten freddy. So C.C is free now as the only spirit. That still leaves V.S. and the 4 other kids and we know the rest , Mike burns down Fazbear frights in the hopes of ending his father. But he always comes back.

(Heh you see what i did there? Huh? Huh?- i hate myself for this joke really.)

Fnaf Pizza sim: Yay!!!! It makes sense again!

Okay speedrun of the Story. Mike builds up a freddy's and Henry uses it to lure the animatronics in. Those being scraptrap ( William after the fire) , scrapbaby (Baby with Elizabeth's soul) , Molten freddy ( all of the 4 children in one entity) and lefty (the puppet). V.S is still clinging onto Mike and so all the spirits are gathered. In the end , Henry burns everything down and everyone is laid to rest. Except for two people.

UCN: The end , Yay!

UCN is basically William's hell and the one keeping him there is V.S. How does V.S do it? By putting William in the same place his son was in. I believe V.S would have had access to Michael's soul and maybe also memories and be able to turn it against William. How else should the nightmare animatronics be there? Anyway V.S holds William there while old man consequences tries to tell her to let go. Could this be Mike? Henry? Someone else? Who knows? But V.S wont let go , even if William beats all the animatronics at the hardest difficulty , V.S stays there as golden freddy. Twitching , alive and ready to make William suffer for all he's done.

And we did it. Yay!!! This was written across two days by my heavily hyperfixated 16 year old sleep deprived brain , so if something doesnt make sense , sue me. Again this is just a theory , i didnt solve fnaf nor do i believe i did. This might be completely wrong but i had this timeline in my head and really wanted to share it. I didnt address the VR games or security breach as i frankly dont understand them much and wanted to focus on the main 7 games. Thank you for reading through all of this , criticism if polite and constructive is thanked for and even if you debunk my whole theory i will be happy.

Hope we all stay invested and i wont get doxxed. Thank you for reading♡♡♡

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plantcrazy · 10 months ago

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Update - THSC & FNAF - 11/01/23

'Ello guys, just a small update to keep everyone up to date on how stuff's going.

THSC - Lost Children

I've been feeling a little burnt out since my last chapter upload (I think I went a bit too hard on getting so many chapters out in such little time, lol), so I haven't been pushing myself. I've found for me, the best way to recover from burn out is to not force myself to do something, & let my mind wander back to it when it's ready.

I've been feeling better the last couple of days, and I've found myself daydreaming some cool alt versions of some upcoming chapters, so I've started work on refining the order & pacing of chapters for part 2.

Progress is looking like this (+ some on the side for part 3's start):

Part 2 is currently 22 chapters without Reginald's storyline, so likely high 20's to low 30's once I work his in. Pacing is feeling good, and I've got a few fun twists worked in >:)

For those who want to know when part 1 will be done, it's once I finish this for part 2, as this is the stage where I make sure foreshadowing is in & make any needed last minute adjustments. E.g. the ending chapter of part 1 is now moving to the start of part two, & I'm removing the character's knowledge of X happening, so instead, X happing will be the inciting incident for part 2.

Again, still feeling a little burnt out, so I'm working on it as I feel like it/ ideas come to me.

FNAF - Glitched Arcade

This is what I've mostly been working on while resting my burnt out thsc brain :P

Lots & lots of research (I've got like... 30 Reddit tabs open & my laptop ain't particularly please, lol). I've also been bushing up on the games. Yesterday I dived into FNAF AR, & learned the game none ever remembers has important lore to FNAF SB. Who would've guessed?

I also discovered I lost my original notes from 2021 for my version of Security Breach T T

I remember a little, enough to know what direction I wanted to take it & some of the MAJOR things I wanted to work in, like making it so non-book readers (, like myself), don't have to read X books & novels to understand the plot. (I'm looking at you, Ruin. I was so confused when that DLC came out, I had to watch like... 4 explanation/theory videos on the Mimic before it clicked).

I also want to bring back the classic '5 nights', give ALL the animatronics that happy save-everyone-ending we were all robbed of, use Vanny like the trailer said she was going to be & address 'The Arcade Conspiracy'. I know the arcade thing was big 'cause the story name I have down is 'Glitched Arcade', and I have some rough memories of it playing a major role.

Also do want to stress this, because I've been in this fandom 7 YEARS. I'm one of the OLD fans. I joined right after the release of FNAF 4, and with this said, I KNOW what some of you guys are like, & I don't want none of that arguing nor toxicity here.

Glitched Arcade is MY STORY, and I will NOT BE MAKING IT CANON TO THE GAMES OR BOOKS, NOR ATTEMPTING TO.

This is MY take on the story, basing it on my theories and those I love, correct or not. I'm here to tell my story & have fun, to write something which makes sense in its own continuity.

Glitched Arcade is MY re-write of FNAF Security Breach. It's my AU.

So, I'm sorry if I don't agree with your theories, timelines or what not, but this is my story & if it's not for you, that's fine. Please leave quietly & I hope you find something which is for you.

With that out the way, storywise, I've been working on the Daycare Attendants storyline. I have some pretty neat ideas for them, especially answering that big old question of: Why? Why are they- particularly Moon -so important? Also, I love this idea I have for HOW the virus works in them, & the mysteries behind them. Just all those question we want answered: Why is Sun scared of Moon? Is Moon evil? Is he doing this voluntarily, or just another virus victim? How did they go from theatre robots to daycare ones?

All that good stuff >:)

I don't have any finalised art YET, but I do have this cool concept I'll share as an early teaser.

Aside for Sun & Moon's designs (who I'm changing for a story reason), I am generally happy with the other animatronic designs. So, I might stylise the proportions a little & simplify their designs for easy comic-making, but otherwise I think I'll leave them alone (or maybe I'll make some small changes to show a visual 'this ain't fnaf sb' thing). *Shrugs* I'll think on it more :P

#thsc #lost children of the ccc #the henry stickmin collection #update #fnaf #fnaf security breach #fnaf au #glitched arcade #sun #moon #fnaf daycare attendant #concept art

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rivilu · 3 years ago

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OK so are all y'all exaggerating when you say the da:o and da2 graphics aged horribly or am I just incredibly graphics blind?

#dragon age #dragon age 2 #genuinely confused by this . And i see it everywhere #I mean it IS most likely graphics blindness since I still think wizard 101 looks decent in the year 2022 dkfgmdf #but Idk man I look at my entirely unmodded characters in those games and I'm like??? Where's the ugly??#Especially for the years the games came out (and how rushed the second one was)#Fun fact the way I was introduced to da was via an artist at a con who wa selling stickers #-for context cons here are relatively small and pretty chill so we had a little conversation about it-#I asked what it was about and also what the play order was (tried googling it but it was too confusing when I knew nothing I guess gfnhkh)#And they gave me a little summary about the setting and stuff right- im like YES Perfect - right up my alley - Which one is the first one?#and the next part is SO funny in retrospect but also a little tragic? lmao #they give me the timeline order (I was mostly confused by Origins and if the title implied a prequel) but then they go on like-#yeah the 1st and 2d one are really old now and look REALLY bad but like the stories and characters are really worth it though pls play them #and like. Im a stickler for playing/reading/etc stuff in order anyway there was no need for them to say that jnfkg #but it set my expectations really low like ok i'm going to open up this game and the models will look like cube lara croft #and I actually PLAY the thing and i'm #perplexed! Bamboozled if you will!#Origins still has my favorite character creator and no i'm not shitting you I've made my own direct comparisons ngfkjnhf #The tragic part I mentioned is just that man! Imagine if I WASNT a strickler for game order and played inq first #I bet I would've dropped it halfway not even bothering with the first two- and I'd have missed out on a duology that's now so dear to me #wonder how many people in my original position actually did do that #hmm #anyway ramblings over #shut up river #hopefully i get some art inspiration/stuff to draw soon fdgdfgfh #q

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floatingcatacombs · 3 years ago

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Why Is CLAMP Like This, Part IV

12 Days of Aniblogging 2021, Day 10

Yet again I am here to review each CLAMP manga in chronological order. We've finally reached the 2010s, and yet again I am not impressed.

In case you missed it, yesterday's post can be found here. It may be relevant for my thoughts on the sequels to xxxHolic and Tsubasa.

Gate 7

Gate 7 definitely puts its worst foot forwards. Our main character is, of all things, a Kyoto otaku, obsessed with the city’s history and everything in it. After a fate encounter with a Mysterious Yet Childish Girl Who Immediately Falls In Love With Him, he ends up joining the group house of some university students embroiled in a larger supernatural conflict. The manga routinely references Japanese history and mythology without much explanation, which can frequently leave readers confused if they aren’t already familiar. Bless the scanlators for trying their best to give context at the end of each chapter, though. Early chapters of the manga also feature jarring scanned photo backgrounds, which do not mesh at all with CLAMP’s artstyle.

But then things get better. The conflict is finally explained as “reincarnations of Japanese warlords settle feuds from the Warring States Period by duking it out with Stand-like oni”, which is way simpler then they make it out to be at first. The artwork is top-quality.. New characters are gradually introduced and their designs feel original and distinct, which is something CLAMP struggles with in many other series. Yukimura Sanada is really hot.

The sides of the conflict are established, the intrigue deepens, and what happens next? Four volumes in, CLAMP halts Gate 7 to make space for their sequels to xxxHolic and Tsubasa. Ugh.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 2/5

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Drug & Drop

CLAMP straight-up drew their characters in fetishwear for the magazine cover and I can't not include that here

This is a continuation of CLAMP’s earlier manga Legal Drug, and Floating Catacombs veterans will remember that I quite liked Legal Drug. Granted, I was mostly in it for the crossdressing, and Drug & Drop drops that narrative thread. Instead, it chooses to start poking away at the central mysteries of its setting, which is a little less exciting but still welcome. We start to learn about the blond bishie’s tragic backstory, and the motivations of the two owners of the Green Drugstore are revealed.

As it turns out, this is another stealth sequel to Wish! It’s so strange to me that this largely unmemorable late 90’s CLAMP manga ends up being the keystone to two separate series over a decade later. The owners of the Green Drugstore turn out to be the angel x devil couple from Wish in disguise, and I’m still chewing over the idea of the angel girl passing herself off as a feminine gay guy. Somehow Clamp’s shounen-ai routinely has their most intriguing gender moments.

The childhood trauma is established, the intrigue deepens, and what happens next? Two volumes in, CLAMP halts Drug & Drop to make space for their sequels to xxxHolic and Tsubasa. Not again.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 3/5

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

xxxHolic: Rei

While it sucks that Gate 7 and Drug & Drop had to get axed for rehashes of CLAMP’s more popular series, at least I already liked xxxHolic. Rei serves as a spinoff and a sequel to the original series, although it’s intentionally difficult to figure out how it slots in chronologically at first. Yuuko running the shop like nothing ever happened, and their adventures have the lighthearted tone of the earlier parts of the series. Clients come to Yuuko’s shop, and she and Watanuki investigate curses. This whole thing is drenched in deliberate deja vu, which Watanuki himself gradually realizes. It turns out the powerful shop-owner Watanuki we see at the end of xxxHolic had at some point yeeted himself into an alternate timeline in order to acquire some magical items that Syaoran would need for an upcoming adventure. He chooses to wake up from this dream, and from there the manga continues where original xxxHolic left off.

It’s a neat narrative trick and fits the supernatural mystery vibes that xxxHolic goes for, while giving us more time with Yuuko, a deservedly beloved character. While it fails to reach the heights of the original series, Rei is still a pretty good time while it lasts.

Watanuki snaps back to reality, the intrigue deepens, and what happens next? Three volumes in, CLAMP halts xxxHolic: Rei to make space for their sequel to Cardcaptor Sakura. God dammit, we were so close to a conclusion too.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 2/5

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

Tsubasa: World Chronicle

Another decade, another pair of Tsubasa and xxxHolic manga. Once again, Tsubasa is easily the weaker of the pair, although it does at least have the decency to limit itself to 3 volumes this time.

The villain’s scheme in the main series was to destroy the rules of reality itself in order to return his lover from the dead. World Chronicle further explores that idea of the boundaries between life and death, bringing Syaoran to a world where the usual cycle of reincarnation has been put on pause, leading to fears that the dead will vastly outnumber the living and eventually spill over, creating a hellworld. Syaoran, as someone who sort of died and came back in the finale of Tsubasa, is now uniquely capable of resolving this problem, because he’s already proven capable of crossing into limbo.

Running off of the tip that his clone was last seen here, Syaoran ventures off into the world of the dead with the help of those random magic items Watanuki spent a whole spinoff manga gathering. Once he reaches a sacred grove there, Syaoran has to choose whether to renew the cyclesof life and death or let it fade away to something different, which is pretty much the ending decision of any Dark Souls game.

Anyways, of course Syaoran chooses to reincarnate the dead, it’s just the nice thing to do. In order to prove his will, though, he has to fight to the death against the one who he least wants to fight, which is apparently his evil clone. So the two guys have to beat the shit out of each other at the end of the world. Once again, very soulsey.

With the manic pixie dream girl reappearing as a goddess in this world, Gate 7 is roped into Tsubasa’s endless shared universe. Considering that it was canceled to make room for more TsubasaHolic, this feels more insulting than anything.

After three volumes, Tsubasa World Chronicle manages to do the one thing no other 2010s CLAMP series could: reach a conclusion. I wish it had been literally any other one of them, but at least this decade wasn’t a total failure. World Chronicle is nothing special, but unlike its parent series, it’s at least possible to follow the story in the moment.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 3/5

OVERALL RATING: 2/5

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc

The harlot.

So that’s CLAMP’s last decade. Needless to say, it’s pretty muted compared to what came before it. Three consecutive series getting canceled for “safer” sequel projects just when they were getting somewhere. There’s an obvious level of disinterest in their own manga at this point, and that’s disappointing. You can fault 90’s and 2000’s CLAMP for a lot, but at the least they were always passionate about what they were putting out, even if it was incomprehensible to the rest of us. They’re getting older, and while I don’t think it’s wrong to put out increasingly formulaic works if that’s what pays the bills, it’s still sad to watch it happen in real time. Maybe I’ll have some kind words once Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc finishes so we don’t end on such a somber note, but considering what I’ve read thus far, I’m fully prepared to rip into it.

And with that, thanks for reading through my CLAMP retrospective! I crunched the numbers and CLAMP now accounts for one-third of all manga tankobans I’ve read. I don’t know how to feel about this.

Bonus: The Legend of Chun Hyang

I missed this manga when going through CLAMP's 90s works last year. The Legend of Chun Hyang is a 1992 epic mythological manga in the style of their debut work RG Veda. It adapts a Korean folktale, taking creative liberties by casting the titular Chun Hyang as a fiery martial artist with a strong spirit of justice.

It actually makes sense to cover The Legend of Chun Hyang in this section because it's ultimately another one of CLAMP's stray casualties, abandoned after just one volume and hastily reworked into a one-shot. This doesn't work too well, considering that most of the volume is setting up for a larger adventure that never happens. After the tragic death of her mother at the hands of a warlord, Chun Hyang vows to stop tyranny wherever she finds it with the help of her mysterious new traveling partner. Except, of course, we only get a few chapters of them.

To be fair, this was caused by its magazine getting discontinued, but it's a shame CLAMP never picked this series up again. The closest we see is a world in Tsubasa which features the same general premise. Chun Hyang is fine for what it is, but it's hard not to feel let down afterwards.

CLAMP BULLSHIT-O-METER: 1/5

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

#12 days of anime #clamp #gate 7 #xxxholic #tsubasa world chronicle #legal drug

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knickynoo · 3 years ago

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Idk if you'll answer but, what is the difference between doc and Marty through the trilogy, and in the timeline where biffs rich (1985A). I want to hear of your opinion! :D

Of course I'll answer! I love thinking about the Doc and Marty who live in 1985A. Idk if you've ever read the IDW BTTF comics, but the "Biff to the Future" collection actually tells a whole story in that timeline and we see a decent amount of Doc and Marty! My memory of it is a bit fuzzy, but I think a big difference for Doc is that he isn't so much of an outcast in the Biff timeline? He joins in the "resistance" group working to take Biff down and seems fairly respected. But I'm going to mostly ignore the comics and give you some other thoughts.

What gets me every time I think about that timeline is that Doc has the memories of 1955 and the week Marty spent with him, right? Because the fact that the Biff timeline even exists is due to Marty's initial trip + their second adventure to 2015 & Biff stealing the almanac. So, even though the DeLorean wasn't invented in 85A and none of the events of the first movie and a half technically happened...they did happen. And Doc would remember that, I think. Idk, time travel is nuts. My point is that it must cause Doc major stress as the years go by after 1955 and he sees things going wrong but feels helpless to stop it.

(I just sat here for 5 minutes in confusion, doubting everything I just wrote but then remembered that Doc from the comics does in fact remember Marty as being his friend even though they've "never met" in the Biff timeline) Ok, back on track.

I could see 85A Doc being a little...tougher? I guess? Closer to the version of him we see in the Old West, where he's full of confidence and charisma and is stoic in the face of death. Living in such a tumultuous and scary timeline would definitely shape him into being a little more street-smart. And sneakier. 85A Doc is very cunning and sneaky.

He's also very concerned about Marty and hates having to watch him (from a distance) grow up under such horrific circumstances. It's a source of great anxiety for him, and he hates even seeing Marty walk by in town because it just reminds him of how upside-down everything is.

As far as Marty goes, the one from the comic is pretty similar to the one we know from the trilogy. It was kind of disappointing actually, because I was hoping for a totally different Marty, so I'll ignore the comics again and give you my headcanons.

Obviously, "our" Marty and 85A Marty are very much alike in terms of how headstrong and protective they are. 85A Marty hates to see those around him being taken advantage of or hurt. Unfortunately, growing up with Biff for a stepdad means he sees a lot of manipulation and violence from a young age, and so he shoulders a lot of worry and responsibility even when he's very little.

He's nowhere near as emotional as original Marty is. His circumstances and the chaos around him forces him to sort of shut down in order to survive, so he doesn't express positive/happy emotions all that much, and he never cries. He is, however, still prone to intense bouts of anger. ("Always a little hothead," as Biff says)

He probably isn't interested in music as much, or at least doesn't have the time or attention to dedicate to it. How can he, when his entire family has fallen apart and he's living in such a nightmare? His primary goal is keeping his mom safe, even though it means he has to take a lot of beatings from Biff and his cronies. (Like, can we talk about how Biff just punches Marty right in front of Lorraine in part II? And how Lorraine says, "They must have hit you over the head hard this time." This time?? 85A Marty has grown up regularly abused and it makes me sad, y'all.) And he's gotten very good at causing trouble, which comes in handy every time Biff ships him off to another boarding school and he needs to quickly get kicked out so that he can come back home and be there for his mom.

I think at his core, Marty is still Marty in a lot of ways. It's just that he's had to form a hard, protective shell around himself so that he can be strong for his mother and so Biff doesn't emotionally break him. But I can imagine him as still being innately sweet and loving, even though he doesn't have many opportunities to express that side of himself.

Thanks for the ask!

#asks #back to the future #bttf #marty mcfly #doc brown

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dukeofonions · 4 years ago

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The Problem With Asides

Before I get into anything I want to clarify that this is not going to be a criticism of the two Asides episodes we’ve gotten so far. This is a critique of the concept of Sanders Asides as a separate series from the original Sanders Sides. A second note I want to make is that this is, just as all my other posts are, a personal opinion. This is not meant to be an attack on anyone, just a general criticism from a confused writer and viewer of the show.

And final disclaimer: A lot of what I’m going to say is based on information that I no longer have available. It’ll mostly be me recalling things I heard and if I at any point get something wrong please feel free to let me know.

That being said, let’s get into this, shall we?

(Fair warning this post is very long hence why I’ve divided it into parts so feel free to read then come back as you wish)

Part One: The Concept of Asides

Some time ago last year, I believe shortly after Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts came out, was when the idea for Sanders Asides was first announced. The basic concept of it being shorter, more lighthearted videos focusing on the Sides outside of the main storyline. This format would allow them to give us more Sides content in between the long waits for the main series since those episodes were beginning to take more time to produce.

Of course, everyone was eager for more Sides, so the majority of people were excited. Not only that but due to the main series tackling heavier themes, the episodes were becoming more angsty with less time for the characters to just relax and goof off with each other. The idea of having episodes reminiscent of the low stakes, sillier, happier content of season one was a welcome break from the more complex episodes and would be a nice return to form for the series.

We were also informed that these episodes would be much simpler than their main series counterparts and wouldn’t disrupt the work being done on Sanders Sides, which meant we didn’t have to worry about long gaps between the main story episodes, right?

(Another disclaimer: I am perfectly aware of the main reason why we were not given as much content last year and am not blaming Thomas or the team for doing what was necessary to keep themselves safe and hope they continue to do so as this continues into the new year)

Jump to November 22, 2019, where we got our first official episode of Sanders Asides, roughly five months after DWIT came out. Which, for this fandom, was record time to get more content and I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they were able to get this out. Though at the same time, I wondered why it took five months to make what was meant to be a short, simple episode.

So imagine my surprise when I went to watch the episode and saw it was nearly 20 minutes long. Which, okay, isn’t that bad when you compare it to the lengths of the more recent Sanders Sides episodes. But at the time, I was under the impression that the Asides would be, well, much shorter. The longest I expected would be maybe 15 minutes, but you know what? It’s the first episode and it has been a while since we’ve had Sides content, so maybe they wanted to give us a little extra due to the long wait.

I started the episode and at first, I was overjoyed when I saw the first shot of all the Sides sitting in the living room in their onesies about to have a movie night. This was exactly what I’d been hoping to see from this series! It’s pretty much a staple thing in the fandom for the Sides to have movie nights together, and now it was happening in canon!

At the moment, I had high hopes for this series and was filled with joy.

Then that hope and joy were immediately crushed when I realized this was yet just another Virgil-centric angst episode. In fact, this entire episode was, well, exactly like a regular Sanders Sides episode. Sure, there were some jokes here and there, but the tone of the episode was no lighter than the last Sanders Sides episode. If anything DWIT felt lighter in comparison to this one.

Which leads me to ask, what the heck happened?

Part Two: Literally the Same Show

At this point in time, we’ve only had two episodes of Asides. Usually, I try to hold off my judgment of a series until I’ve had at least one other episode to see if my original criticisms still stand.

To be fair, I did think Flirting With Social Anxiety was a step in the right direction. More comedy, a lighter tone, yes. Perfect. But again, just like with Are There Healthy Distractions? This episode quickly dove right back into the angst pool, and just like ATHD it was a pretty long episode, clocking in at almost 25 minutes.

Not only that but again, both FWSA and ATHD don’t feel any different from the episodes we’ve been getting in Sanders Sides.

1. They’re just as angsty.

2. Roughly the same length as Sanders Sides episodes.

3. Take about just as long to produce.

4. Contain a lesson to be learned.

Which, okay, you can have lessons in lighter shows too, but we’re already getting that in Sanders Sides and Sanders Asides was described as, well, being less plot heavy. Yet so far both episodes are still tied in with the main plot.

ATHD deals with the aftermath of DWIT, not directly but it’s pretty obvious that the whole thing with Virgil’s reveal at the end of that episode is being addressed in the background. Which, kind of takes away the impact of that ending, but I’ll get to that later.

Then FWSA takes place after Putting Others First and again, is dealing with things from that episode in the background. Again though, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes sense to see the characters dealing with things from past events.

So why is it a problem here? Because, again, Sanders Asides is meant to be a separate series, and all the subtext brought on from the episodes in Sanders Sides makes the plots in these two episodes confusing.

For example, I was perplexed during my first watch of FWSA because I couldn’t understand why the focus of the conflict was lying. I didn’t understand why Virgil and Roman came to the conclusion that Thomas’ reason for being unable to approach Nico was because he was lying to himself, when both the title of the episode and what we were shown points more to, well, social anxiety being the problem.

(Quick note: One could argue that this was done purposefully to have Virgil putting the blame on Janus since he doesn’t like him and wouldn’t want to admit that he was the one responsible, but this series has had a bad habit of favoring Virgil in the past so until we get more answers I’m gonna leave this on the backburner)

It didn’t help that I had no idea when this episode was meant to take place in the timeline, and I originally thought it could take place a bit after season two since Roman and Virgil seemed to be doing better, but more on them later.

All of this bugged me until I found out that FWSA takes place after POF, and after watching the live stream that followed and getting some more context, the lying thing made a bit more sense, but the fact that I was as confused as I was just caused more frustration to build up. And I wasn’t the only one who got thrown off by the “Lying is wrong” message of FWSA so I had to ask again, why was this episode a Sanders Asides when apparently, you need information from the last Sanders Sides episode in order to understand it?

So you’re telling me, that the second episode in what is supposed to be a separate series that isn’t meant to be a part of the main plot, is now integral to the plot of the main story you’re telling in what is, as you have said, a separate show? How does that make any sense?

Okay, one could argue that Thomas getting a love interest doesn’t really fit with the current storyline that’s going on in Sanders Sides, and that is a fair point. The problem with that is, FWSA takes place right after Putting Others First.

You all remember what happened at the end of that episode, right?

Part Three: Intrusive Plots

At this point we’ve all become rather accustomed to the long waits in between videos, it’s nothing new to us, and for the most part they haven’t done anything to harm the current plot of Sanders Sides. Sure, the length of time between videos can cause people to lose interest, but for the most part the tone of the last three episodes of Sanders Sides hasn’t differed much and the story flow is still going along smoothly.

Let’s start with Selfishness vs Selflessness, which is the episode that sets up the big climax for season two. It’s still got its jokes and funny moments, but the overall tone is far more serious than previous episodes have been. This carries on into DWIT where Thomas has been so stressed out lately that he’s begun to have trouble with his intrusive thoughts.

Virgil even gives a pretty good summary of Thomas’ current mental state: “He recently realized he’s a bigger liar than he thought he was, he doesn’t understand himself, he’s committed to skipping a big callback, and he’s sleep-deprived. So yeah, he feels like a piece of dirt who has no control over his life.”

And all that was a direct result of the ending of SVS, despite DWIT not being the direct follow up to that episode the two are still intertwined. Remember that for later.

DWIT ends with the long awaited reveal of Virgil having been a “Dark Side.” Even though the majority of the fandom had figured it out by as early as Can Lying Be Good? That didn’t take away from the emotional gut punch that this scene was and it’s one of my favorite moments from the series. I may have to make a whole post breaking that scene down but what matters is that this scene was a turning point for Virgil’s character.

We’ve seen him trying to hide the truth from Thomas ever since Janus and Remus started popping up, and there were close calls with both of them nearly revealing it themselves and continuously dropping hints to Thomas. Only for Virgil to admit it to Thomas himself, and leave before Thomas can even say a word.

We don’t know for sure how Thomas is feeling in this moment, but it’s clear he’s been shaken by this. He doesn’t really have a lot of time to process it before he remembers to acknowledge the audience and close out the video.

This comes up again once we finally get to the monster of an episode that is POF, the follow up to SVS that everyone had been waiting over a year for. Right away we see that Patton and Roman will be at the forefront of this discussion with Logan popping up every now and then, but who doesn’t show up in this episode despite having played a role in SVS?

Virgil.

He’s nowhere to be seen and his absence is definitely felt. Why wouldn’t he be part of this discussion? He was there in SVS and had a lot to say on the matter, he was even part of the decision to choose the wedding over the callback! So why wasn’t he there?

Well, just look at the ending of DWIT and there’s your answer. Of course he isn’t about to show his face after that. Not when Thomas is already under so much stress already and he isn’t sure how Thomas will react to seeing him-

*insert random voice whispering off to the side*

Wait, Virgil has seen Thomas since DWIT? When?

*whispers continue*

Oh, right, they interacted in Sanders Asides. How did that go again?

*whispers explain*

Huh? Thomas said he’s cool with Virgil despite revealing that he’s been hiding something from him this whole time? That “something” being the fact that Virgil was once considered part of the others that were currently making Thomas’ life miserable?

*whispers confirm*

Really? They’re both okay with each other now? Well, good for them.

So wait, then why didn’t Virgil show up in POF? He was there during the first discussion and honestly he’d have more of a reason to show up than Logan who wasn’t really present at all in SVS.

*whispers explain*

He just wasn’t need there? Hm, alright. Guess that makes sense…

Well okay, Virgil and Thomas are on good terms once POF rolls around, Virgil isn’t present during the conversation because he isn’t needed and I suppose his presence would make things worse. Especially once Janus revealed himself, he wouldn’t allow him to get a word in. Even though Janus could probably silence him but I digress.

Fast forward towards the ending of POF, remember when I said to remember how SVS and DWIT were connected? Well DWIT is just as important to POF, acting as a bit of bridge between to the two episodes.

Janus brings up Remus (both directly and indirectly) twice in this episode.

First here:

Notice how Roman’s breakdown is already being foreshadowed here, the camera focusing on him while “Logan” says this isn’t an accident.

The second time Remus is brought up is at the very end after Janus has revealed his name:

“Oh, Roman thank God you don’t have a mustache. Otherwise between you and Remus, I wouldn’t know who the evil twin is.”

(No I am not posting screenshots of this scene I already got emotional over the last one)

As we saw at the end of DWIT, Roman does not have a good relationship with is brother. So much so that when Thomas refers to Remus as such, Roman creates a different analogy that compares Remus to a mirror, reflecting everything Roman doesn’t want to be.

Roman desperately wants to distance himself from Remus, not wanting anything to do with him. We’ve only gotten a glimpse of just how far this loathing goes, and part of that comes from Roman finally breaking down after being told by Janus that if it wasn’t for a mustache there’d be no difference between him and Remus.

This shook Roman more than anything else in the show has so far, moreso than him being the one to decide that Thomas should give up the callback. He was the one that pushed Thomas to make that decision, believing it was the noble thing to do, only for it to only make Thomas feel worse and then be told by Janus that his “noble sacrifice” was all for nothing.

Janus, the one who had been supporting Roman throughout SVS, buttering him up and encouraging him to go after his dream, told him that his sacrifice was worthless. Then to top it all off Janus admits what he did and brushes it off as a joke. He doesn’t apologize to Roman, leaving him in the dust, then when Roman responds by laughing at his name he’s shot down even lower.

And when he looks to Thomas and Patton for help, for answers, anything.

They stay silent.

Patton tries to reassure him, telling Roman that they love him, but he doesn’t believe it. He sinks out, and that’s the last we see of him.

Selfishness vs Selflessness, Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts, and Putting Others First are three of the biggest (and dare I say most important) episodes in the series. The three almost act like a trilogy, with POF leading to something bigger, the season finale. Which will be culmination of all three of these episodes.

We’ll be seeing Virgil’s reaction to Janus having been accepted by Patton and facing his own past as a “Dark Side.” Then we’ll find out what has become of Roman after he disappeared at the end of POF, and how it now affects his relationship with Thomas.

*whispers return and begin to whisper*

I’m sorry what?

*whispers repeat*

Virgil already knows about Janus getting somewhat accepted? Well okay I guess he would, wish we could have seen his reaction to that but oh well, no big deal. At least we got the Roman and Thomas confrontation to look forward to.

*whispers whisper*

Roman has already interacted with Thomas since POF? When?!

*whisper*

In FWSA? Oh yeah, how did that go again? It was super awkward right? Since Roman doesn’t really trust that Thomas loves or values him?

*whisperly whisper*

They get along just fine as if nothing happened?

*whispersty*

It looks like he might still be upset with him since he’s being a bit passive aggressive?

*whisper*

Can’t really tell because the three are too busy trying to talk to a cute guy at the mall?

Okay, I guess that all makes sense…

Looks like Roman and Virgil still aren’t on the best terms with Thomas but are able to push that aside to help him talk to this handsome stranger, and hey, it worked! Thomas now has a boyfriend! Just look at Roman and Virgil at the end, they’re both so happy with Thomas!

Looks like now they can focus on this new chapter in their life and leave the events of POF behind them. I mean, now that Roman and Virgil seem pretty cool with Thomas it would just feel weird to suddenly have them angry with him again, wouldn’t it?

Part Four: The Problem

Sanders Asides was originally described as being a series separate from the main storyline of Sanders Sides. Promising us shorter, less complicated episodes to give us a little something in between the longer, heavier episodes in Sanders Sides. This was a great idea that ended up falling apart the moment it began.

When I was going through SVS, DWIT, and POF I mentioned that the three of them felt like a trilogy. All three of them link together to tell one bigger story, and on their own they get the job done. They set up the season finale perfectly to the point where you have an idea of what to expect and what to look forward to.

The main things being the aftermath of Virgil’s reveal and Roman’s breakdown, which would most likely cultivate in them teaming up against Janus. This would also involve Virgil coming to terms with his past and Roman having to face Remus.

Of course, none of this has been officially confirmed, but given everything we’ve seen up to this point it just makes sense.

The story for season two is nearly complete, all we’re missing is the conclusion.

Then Sanders Asides showed up and threw everything off course. What was supposed to be its own thing crept into a story that was already (for all we knew) set up and being put into place.

We were told that the Asides wouldn’t do anything to disrupt the flow of Sanders Sides, yet it’s been confirmed that there will be one or two more episodes of Asides before we get the season finale.

Why? Why are these episodes necessary when everything was set to move forward after POF? If these episodes are that important that they absolutely have to be made before the finale then why are they simply not part of the main series?

You could say “Well they’re not directly tied to the main plot, that’s why.” But need I remind you that Asides as a concept was just intriduced after DWIT came out? These episodes were written specifcally for Asides, which unless I’m wrong means that they were just added into the main story with no planning whatsoever.

FWSA honestly feels like it should have been the start of season three, something that should have waited to be introduced after season two wrapped up because it’s just too much.

We already have so much to unpack from SVS, DWIT, and POF now we also have a new love interest on top of that?

Virgil and Thomas’ resolution doesn’t even feel all that special because it wasn’t talked about directly between them. Thomas was indirectly letting Virgil know they were still okay, so what does that leave for us? All that build up about Virgil being a “Dark Side” only for it to be brushed over like it was nothing, and this happened in an Asides episode, not even in the main series.

It also makes Virgil’s absence in POF confusing when they had already set up the perfect reason for him to be absent in DWIT, but according to the first episode of ATHD Virgil and Thomas are okay with each other. Sure, Virgil being there might have made things worse but at that point everyone was making things worse.

We no longer have a confrontation between Thomas and Roman to look forward to because in FWSA we see them interacting as normal. Even the passive agressiveness isn’t anything new to Roman and really, it all just sounds super petty which he had been known to behave like that even when nothing is seriously wrong. Not only that Roman is overjoyed at the end, having finally gotten something he desperately wanted, the happy ending he deserved.

All that’s left for him is to fave his feelings towards Remus, but what would even happen there?

The problem with Asides isn’t the quality of the episodes, FWSA is actually one of my favorite episodes. The problem with Asides is that the team is taking what should have been something small and turning it into a far too elaborate for what its original purpose was: To give us more lighthearted content to enjoy in between the waits for the heavier episodes.

Instead it just feels like they’re adding onto something that really didn’t need adding on to, creating more work for themselves when it just isn’t necessary, and that worries me.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, it’s hard for me to make all these judgments when no one has any idea what the finale is going to be like. And usually, the team is able to excede my expectations and create something amazing.

But with all these new Asides episodes that feel like they’re just being crammed in at the last second, it makes me wonder how the rest of the series will go if they continue down this road.

Season two started September 1st, 2017, it is now January 3rd, 2021. Throughout season two the production of episodes became more elaborate, and there have been complications that arose from trying to make these videos as a result that sent production screeching to a halt. And on top of that, these Sanders Asides have been added to create even more work for Thomas and the team.

I don’t understand why they’d do this to themselves when it’s already become more difficult than ever to make videos in general, not just Sanders Sides.

We were offered something simple that would have satisfied everyone during the difficult times, only to be given something that honestly, wasn’t even needed. I do appreciate Thomas trying to get us more content, but I don’t think he or the team realizes just how content we’d all be with just a five minute video of the characters we love just doing something as simple as hanging out and having fun, especially with how dark things have become all around us.

We don’t always have to be watching these characters struggle, sometimes we just need to see them be genuinely happy.

(Thanks to everyone who took time to read this monster of a post, I did not mean for it to get this long but it’s been dwelling on my mind for a while and I wanted to make sure I got out everything I wanted to say. Again, this is all just a personal opinions and you are not obligated to agree with me. If you have an objecting opinion I would not mind hearing it but please keep any discussions civil.)

#dukeofcritical #sanders sides #ts criticism #sanders sides criticism #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #logan sanders #long post

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brightbeautifulthings · 2 years ago

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Hello, lovelies! Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme created by Rainy Day Ramblings and currently hosted by Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, That's What I'm Talking About, For What It's Worth, Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell and Offbeat YA. It provides weekly discussion prompts on various book and blogging topics with optional participation. You can sign up for prompts here.

This week’s prompt is: Do you read graphic novels? Why or why not?

I'm excited about this question because I've only recently started getting into graphic novels. If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you probably know how much I love superhero movies and shows (particularly the MCU and Arrowverse), but I've always been too intimidated to venture far into their source material. It's overwhelming and confusing with all the different timelines, universes, and character adaptations, so it can be difficult to know where to start or what to read if you're interested in a specific character. For this reason, I'll probably never be an avid comic collector. I don't like the single issues very much, since they're hard and expensive to track down in the right order, and I tend to favor more complete stories. Here’s my advice if you’re interested in diving in!

Collections: I absolutely love graphic novel collections, which offer more complete character arcs and storylines. For example, one of my favorite books so far this year is Captain America: Winter Soldier, Ultimate Collection by Ed Brubaker. There are plenty of things to love about this collection (the art, the way Brubaker writes Steve), but what I really love is that it's this (mostly) complete story between two of my favorite characters. Like everything, collections can be hit and miss, given that they're often written/illustrated by different people throughout the series, but overall, I find them a lot easier to manage than individual issues.

Research: The other half of this newfound love is research. If I'm interested in a specific character, like Oliver Queen, my first step is to search for lists of the best Green Arrow comics. I'll comb through a couple of those and pick out some titles that sound interesting to me, and Goodreads is a big help in figuring out where those series start and end. Then, it's a matter of narrowing it down to the ones I can find for a reasonable price (often on Ebay), since my Kindle doesn't have color--not ideal for graphic novels--and I prefer hard copies whenever possible anyway. Of course, things like Marvel and DC Unlimited can simplify this whole process for people who read a lot of comics, but then I couldn't admire them on my shelf.

Follow Your Heart: My last bit of advice is not to worry too much about starting at the beginning, assuming you can even find it, and go with what you’re interested in! Most collections will give you the background you need to understand what's going on, and you might not enjoy a previous writer's interpretation as much as whatever's caught your eye. I wasted a lot of time dragging my feet on reading the original Runaways series because I wanted to read Rainbow Rowell's new take on the characters, and it turns out there was no need. Rowell is a competent enough storyteller to fill me in what I need to know, and I was in love with her series within the first ten pages.

This new system is working so well for me, I had to move my graphic novel collection to its own shelf because it was getting out of hand. But now there’s room to expand, and they feel right at home with the shield and Team Cap. 🦾

#tell me something tuesday #discussion post #booklr #graphic novel #comics #yrstruly

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rachelbethhines · 4 years ago

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Tangled Salt Marathon - No Time Like the Past

While I wouldn’t call this the worst episode of the series, there are several others I dislike more, I would call this the most ill conceived story in the show.

All the other bad episodes have potential but are let down by poor presentation, boring predictability, or sloppy planning. This one however, is fundamentally flawed in it’s very basic premise and so ranks in the bottom of most fans lists. Even people who are far more forgiving of season three and than I am, and are hardcore New Dream stans, still dislike this episode. That’s how bad it is.

Summary: Rapunzel discovers Old Lady Crowley tossing out Cassandra's things. She is upset and demands that they be left alone. She then has Lance and Eugene help her save all of Cassandra's mementos and personal belongings, but she becomes saddened when Eugene reminds her that Cassandra turned her back on "her". Rapunzel takes a box of her things along with, unknowingly, a mysterious hourglass. As she examines it, she accidentally drops and smashes it and she and Pascal find themselves sent back into the past. They run into a teenage Eugene and Lance who keep calling Rapunzel "Sideburns". Rapunzel realizes that she and Pascal have inhabited the bodies of the Stabbington Brothers and decide to recruit the young thieves in getting the hourglass from the castle back.

Fun Fact! That Dummy is Rapunzel’s Doing

Minor nitpick here, but Cass had nothing to do with putting Eugene’s face on her sparring dummy. Rapunzel voluntarily did that back in Under Raps. Cas never requested it nor even expressed any joy over receiving said ‘gift’.

Basically the show is attributing one of Rapunzel’s mistakes/flaws to Cassandra in order to introduce a very nonsensical plot point later. So I need ya’ll to keep that in mind as we go along.

Lets Talk About the Episode’s Ordering

We don't have production codes for season three like we did for the previous two seasons. So we can’t know for sure what order everything was originally planned in, but I would argue that this episode should have came before Return of the King.

For starters this is a “bottle” episode; it takes place mostly in the past and the only present day characters who show up are Eugene, Raps, Lance, and Crowely. As such you could potentially slot this episode in anywhere before Cassandra’s Revenge. You can’t really do that with most of the other episodes so it could have been easily moved around when airing.

Therefore, I would argue that it should have been the first episode after Rapunzel’s Return for three key reasons.

It would have given Edmund time to travel to Corona and give Raps time to start up big building projects like fixing Old Corona. In fact she’s already approving building plans for the capitol city at the start of the episode. Which could even explain why she took so long getting to the castle repairs if she was taking care of the stuff that the Saporians messed up else where.

Rapunzel’s stance over wanting to keep Cassandra’s things makes more sense early on, both in universe and in a meta context. Raps would still have hope if Cass has only been gone for a month or two instead what would now be four or five months down the line. It also makes sense that Crowely wouldn’t wait around for that long. And from a meta standpoint, the audience would still be oblivious to what the heck Cass was up to and could theoretically side with Raps better; or at least empathize with her view point more, even while disagreeing with her.

Events in this episode better explains Eugene’s decisions in Return of the King and gives the audience more context for certain stuff.

So Why Is There a Random Magical Time Traveling Hourglass in the Storage Vault?

Slowly but surely the series has abandoned all pretense that there’s any logical world building in the show. Magical things just appear randomly now without any explanation whatsoever. Worse than that, things like the hourglass and map to the cursed tomb are treated as if they were always there, unlike the magical beings that they happened to run into in past seasons.

The problem with this is a lack of consistency. You can’t have sceptics like Eugene and Varian if magic is so common and wide spread that anyone can run into it at anytime. Not to mention it diminishes the specialness and importance of the sundrop and moonstone if powerful magical items can be so easily found and stirred, undermining important plot points and the tension surrounding them.

But most frustrating of all, is that this could have been easily fixed by just stating on screen at some point that magic attracts other magic. Meaning it’s only Rapunzel herself who routinely runs into these things and not just everybody and anybody.

None of This Stuff Holds Any Meaning

Show don’t tell!

At several points through out season three, both Raps and Cass morn over Cassandra’s left behind things. They tell us constantly that these objects hold significant meaning to them, but I, the viewer, have no damn clue as to why.

We were never shown on screen what was so special about these things other than the fact that it was junk Cass collected. There’s no story attacked to these assortment of objects nor any previous indication that Cassandra valued them beyond their usefulness. As such, any scenes involving her stuff fall emotionally flat.

Eugene is the One in the Right Here.

Eugene’s right.

Any well adjust and mature adult will tell you he’s right.

If someone doesn’t want a relationship with you, than that’s it. There is nothing you can do but to move on. It sucks, but its life. To ignore that is to ignore someone else’s boundaries and personal autonomy; while also devaluing yourself and you’re own needs.

In a competent show this would be a set up for Rapunzel to learn something about letting go and taking care of oneself emotionally.

But this isn’t a competent show.

But Lobster is for Poor Folk

Food history time!

Lobster, and shellfish in general, have been considered low class food for centuries. Especially around costal areas like Corona. It’s easy to attain, cheap, and not regulated like hunting was in much of Europe. In America, specifically, lobster was fed to prisoners and there’s historical accounts of riots being started over it.

Heck, less than forty years ago, no one lived on the coast but poor people. That’s why there’s historical communities of black people living on the southeastern islands in the US and why my father grew up in the swamps of Alabama during the 50s and 60s.

The gentrification of coastal property and seafood, like lobster, is a very recent phenomenon in human history, starting in the late 70s early 80s with the booming tourism industry and increasing globalization.

So while I understand that the joke here is meant to be reflective of our current understanding of lobster being a status symbol, in universe, it’s the equivalent of Eugene getting excited for chicken nuggets instead of his usual bowl of cereal because the story takes place before the 20th century.

This means that these kids are so poor that fucking mcdonald’s fast food would be considered a rare treat compared to the slop they usually eat. Yet again what is meant to be a lighthearted joke turns suddenly dark when you stop to think about it for all of two seconds all because the writers are so flippant about their world and characters.

This Wasn’t Planned Out, So the Timeline Doesn’t Add Up Anymore and Resources are Wasted

Remember the flashback in The Return of Strongbow?

Now I need you to remember that season three is two years later from season one and the movie. Eight years ago then, would be ten years ago now.

The Eugene and Lance in the bottom picture is suppose to be roughly the same age as the Eugene and Lance in the top picture; give or take a few months.

I know teenage boys can grow fast, but not that fast.

Eugene at 16 looks the same as he does at 26. All because the writers were too lazy to preplan things out ahead of time.

We should have seen the teen models with recasted voices back during that first flashback if they were going to tell this story later. Or the previous plot point should have been less than eight years ago.

In fact the first flashback no longer makes any sense being so many years ago given Eugene’s engagement and recent breakup with Stalyan, and the later reveal that he was working for the Baron during the original movie.

Sloppy planning like this not only makes for a confusing timeline but it also wastes limited resources. I like the new models, I like the actors cast for these younger roles, and I do like the concept of seeing more of Eugene’s past. But going through all of that trouble and money for what amounts to one throw away episode is mismanagement of the budget and work schedule.

Baby Varian Is the Episode’s Only Saving Grace

I know people are divided on the deign here. Some love it and some hate it, but that’s a personal taste thing. The actual scene itself is golden either way, because it’s such a funny eater egg. Fans on both sides made memes out of this for days. It’s legendary.

Personally I’m more in the ‘love it’ camp, though I can see the issues people have with the design. My main defense of it is more the fact that we got kid designs for the other OCs in the show and it’s only fair Varian got one as well. The fact that he’s in smaller versions of the S1 clothes doesn’t bother me anymore than when Lance ran around for two seasons in the same outfit, including when he was a kid.

So if I like it, then why am I talking about it a salt review?

Cause the most memorable part of an episode shouldn’t be a throw away gag!

People bring up baby Varian way more than they do about anything else in the episode, and no it’s not just because the character popular. It’s because most would like to forget what comes after this scene.

Where is Quirin, by the Way?

Why is your six year old son running around the big city unsupervised?

This wouldn’t get talk about as much it wasn’t for the fact that Quirin being neglectful in season one was a motivating factor in his conflict with Varian. A conflict that was suppose to be resolved back in Rapunzel’s Return but we the audience have yet to visually see any difference in behavior since then.

Quirin’s absence here in the past highlights his absence in the present day and reminds the audience aware that we’ve not been given a satisfying conclusion to one of the most important arcs in the series.

Lets Talk About Wasted Potential

Like I said, I like the idea of exploring Eugene’s past. But we should have gotten that back in season two when it was more relevant. Part of why this episode fails is because Eugene has reached the end of his original character development. He’s now on an identity crisis arc which has nothing to do with this episode.

But you know who still hasn’t finished developing? Rapunzel.

Rapunzel has lots to still learn and viewing her past through outside eyes could have turned this story into something really special. Especially with the ‘inhabiting another body’ plot point.

You have no end of options here,

Have Raps inhabit Cassandra’s body for a day and gain insight into what motivates her. It could have been either before or after they met, both offers up possibilities.

Have Raps inhabit Eugene’s body and experience what he had to deal with growing up and come to see his point of view. (This could have also worked with the Sabbingtons set up had the writers not been stupid.)

And my personal favorite, send her back to right after Queen for a Day and have her stuck in either Varian’s or Ruddiger’s bodies. Force her to see what she did to him and have her acknowledge she was wrong.

And those are just the most obvious choices, there’s other more out of left field things you can do that would still work with good writing. Like exploring Lady Caine’s past, inhabiting Arianna’s body and learning how to be a real queen, get dumped into actual young Gothel and lay out clues to the future Zhan Tiri plot, or possess one of the Brotherhood and experience the final days of the Dark Kingdom; the list just goes on and on and on.

But I Thought You Didn’t Put Kids in Jail Frederic?

Remember that Raps and Pascal are possessing the Stabbingtons who are still teenagers here. They can’t be much older than Varian.

This means that Varian isn’t some special case. Teens have received harsh and deadly punishments in the past for non-violent crimes like theft.

Also teens are called kids still by the majority of the cast. They’re aren’t considered adults with the same rights as someone in say their twenties, yet they can be punished the same as an adult would. Which is horrendous in any time period.

So in conclusion, Frederic is a fucking liar!

Tangled the Series can’t decide if it’s in the far past or a reflection of the modern day. As such it winds up supporting the worst of both worlds. Barbaric practices like hanging for minor crimes and prison slave labor are treated as the norm and never called out for the horrific things that they are; treated as a joke even, but we’re suppose to accept that this world also somehow views adolescence through the lens of late 20th century sensibilities even as it forces minors to go through such atrocities.

Like what are you trying to say show? What is your message on the transition of adolescence to adulthood regarding rights and responsibilities? And don’t tell me ‘it’s not that deep’ because this is suppose to be a coming of age show! That’s the entire premise of the series!

So How Old Are Stan and Pete Again?

I was always under the impression that Pete was a newbie guard, closer to Cass and Eugene’s age than say Cap or Frederic. That’s why he screws up so much because he’s inexperienced, why he seemed to be the closest thing to a equal colleague Cass had in the guard when she was also just starting out, and why I assumed those braided girls from the movie were his sisters.

I mean there was nothing on screen previously that would necessarily contradict this reveal, it just doesn’t feel right, that’s all. I guess he could be like 20 here and be 30 in the show. That would make him only a few years older than Eugene, but still doesn’t explain why he’s so useless a decade later.

I’m fine with Stan being here though. I always thought of him being the older of the two. In fact I headcannon Willow as his mysterious wife that he talked about back in Monty’s episode during season one. (She’s Stan and Pete’s beard, and they’re totally in a open poly relationship. That’s why they’re allowed to stay in the royal guard despite being so incompetent cause they’re technically Ferderic’s in-laws and Rapunzel’s uncles. Just no one ever talks about it cause it’s a minor sandal for a princess to marry lower class and Willow’s hardly ever there.)

And Why Does Xavier Have All Those Plot McGuffins?

I know we’ll never get an answer, but at this point Xavier’s exposition fairy powers border upon ridiculousness. It’s just lazy and a waste of character.

So How Does Time Travel Work In This?

There are three types of time travel stories in fiction.

First is the ‘Changeable Past, Changeable Future’. You see this in Back to the Future. What you do in the past will change the future, i.e. your present. You may or may not remember that you did it, but be warned you could change things too much and break stuff. Like erasing yourself from existence, or ruining your love life ect. The only way to fix it is to go back in time again and change stuff again. But beware of paradoxes or you may destroy the universe altogether.

The second is the ‘Alternate Timeline’, where changing things creates new realties and it’s a matter of finding the right reality again. The tv show Sliders is a great example of this. Each new timeline is a different dimension. What you do in one won’t effect your original point of origin, only that particular world. The challenge if often getting home again because the probable diverging timelines are infinite and the changes of getting back are a zillion to one.

Third is the ‘Closed Time Loop’. No matter what you do nothing will change. The future is inevitable and whatever you do in the past was always meant to happen anyways. Gargoyles handles this really well. You can also have ‘fix points’ where certain important things are set in stone but small things can be changed like in several Doctor Who episodes. Braking a fix point breaks the universe once again, while paradoxes are often the solution rather than the threat.

So which type of time travel is Tangled dealing with here?

Scenes like the conversation regarding Pete’s and Stan’s mustache or the ones involving Eugene working on his smolder suggest a closed time loop. Yet the ending to this episode reveals a changed future. Further still the grandfather paradox revolving around the hourglass would make you think an alternate timeline yet, we’ve no indication that anything else changed other then Eugene’s opinions on Cass, and Raps shows no concern about getting back to her original point in time indicating that it actually isn’t another dimension.... so what is it then?

You don’t have to have a tightly plotted time travel story to have an entertaining piece of media. Endgame is riddled with plot holes and contradicts itself constantly, but what it lacks in coherent plot it makes for with fun characters, emotional story beats, and good pacing that manages to balance the action with the drama while hiding the cracks just enough that you don’t lose immersion.

Tangled however fails at even this because it gets the character beats so fundamentally wrong. Like you may dislike where the characters ended up in Endgame, but can’t say that those developments didn’t match the characters’ previous storylines and logical trajectory. Tony finally becomes the selfless hero by committing the ultimate sacrifice, Steve learns self care as a mirror to Tony’s arc as they were always parallels to each other, Bruce learns to accept himself, Thor processes his grief and lets go of the role he was assigned at birth but never truly fit into, and Nat becomes the leader she was destined to be rather than the sidekick.

What happens to the characters in this episode however makes no sense.

This is Another Missed Opportunity to Explore Eugene’s Past

The other problem behind the episode is that we don’t actually learn anything new. If you’re going to promise a story focusing on Eugene’s past then I expect to actually glean some new insights.

We still don’t know why he’s working with Baron or how he fell in/fell out with him, what his relationship with Stalyan is like, how he became so cynical; not just the general basics, like the orphanage, but that point in his life where decided that survival meant giving up his morals and ethics; where did he first learn his better ethics that he originally suppressed (cause it sure as heck wasn’t Rapunzel), and when did he and Lance become separated?

This are questions that series decides to raise by making allusions to them and building conflicts off of them but never wants to explain the details of where they originated from. It’s super frustrating and wholly unnecessary. If you didn’t think the story of Eugene’s past worth telling then why did up repeatedly bring it up Chris?

Why Are You Surprised by This Rapunzel?

Rapunzel you know Eugene’s past. You know what he used to be like. You were literally there in the movie and saw him being an ass before this. You didn’t start to like him until he dropped his guard down in the flooded cave back when you both where about to die.

You fell in love with him when he showed you his real self and he fell in love with you when you proved that you were accepting of that. You earned each others’ trust. This here; angrily yelling at him and judging him, when you’re already hiding who you really are from him both literally and figuratively, is a breaking of that trust.

Who the fuck are you any more, Rapunzel?

Cause you’re not the same character from the movie. You’re not even the same character from season one. But whoever hell you are now, it’s not an improvement I can tell ya that.

So How Did The Hourglass Go From the Treasury to the Basement Storage, and How Would Raps Know It Was There At This Point and Time?

I’m guessing the implication here is that Crowley put Cass’s stuff in the vault, but like why the fuck would she do that? We’re not talking about a family attic here, but the royal safe. The most heavily guarded room in the castle with the kingdom’s most priceless treasures and antiques. Nothing Cass owned was that valuable.

Rapunzel Is Full of Shit

Oh let me count the numerous ways in which this whole lecture is stupid.

Rapunzel left Varian behind. Rapunzel left Varian behind multiple times, including that time he was thrown in jail. She was not a good friend, and no, this is not a case of her learning from her past because not once has she ever admitted that she was wrong to do that. So this scene just makes Raps look like a hypocrite.

Eugene does not need to relrean a lesson on being a better a person. He did that during the movie and has progressed beyond that point. This ‘lesson’ is a waste of time and a misuse of the characters.

This reframes Rapunzel as being in the right during her argument with older Eugene at the beginning of the episode, even though she’s not. In fact this is such a counterintuitive plot point that it boggles the mind. Who structures a narrative this way? Why so blatantly point out how the main character is wrong if not to have her learn something? Why frame the story to make the person who’s personal conflict isn’t even the episode’s focus, into the one who needs to learn something? Especially if that something is already a lesson that they’ve learned on screen beforehand.

And why, oh good heavens why, would you teach children such a toxic message? Like on the surface it sounds like something you’d hear in a children's show, but the context of it is justifying harmful behavior where you selfishly ignore other people’s wishes and boundaries just to satisfy you’re own personal desires.

And finally, Eugene and Lance do not work as a parallel to Raps and Cass. Cassandra is an adult who left of own free will. Lance is a teenager who was arrested due to Rapunzel’s own actions. Eugene isn’t the one who is responsible here, its Rapunzel. Who also left them both behind in her carelessness. Secondly, Eugene’s decisions are spurned by years of trauma and a healthy fear of dying, while Rapunzel’s is wrapped up in her own need to always be right and to keep her immature and fanciful outlook of the world intact. As harsh as it seems, what Eugene did was based off a predetermine agreement and presumably Lance would have acted the same way or been pressured to act the same way by Eugene. In short, Eugene’s cynical world view as a teen is not the source of his disagreement with Rapunzel but an adult perspective back by common sense and a respect of others choices. It makes no sense for present day Eugene to ‘learn’ anything from this misadventure that he didn’t already know and for Rapunzel to not learn anything that would actually tie the parallel together.

Locking Another Teen Inside a Jail Cell With Another Adult as a Joke, Does Not Erase the Inappropriateness of Varian’s Story

The episode tries to add another joke about Shorty sneaking into the prison without the guard knowing, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact someone had to have tossed Lance in there with him on purpose. Otherwise Lance wouldn’t have assumed Shorty was a fellow prisoner if he or the guard that locked him up saw Shorty sneak in before then.

Furthermore Lance’s nonchalant response suggests this is not an out of the ordinary occurrence. Nor do any of the other guard comment upon the irregularly of teens being jailed with an adult. Now add in the fact that the show fails to clarify that previous ‘cellmate’ line from Rapunzel’s Return and now gives us more confirmation that Varian was underfed and malnourished for a year with that gruel joke and you have a horrifying picture.

Shorty might be non-threating, but that doesn’t mean Andrew, a known attempted murderer and manipulator, is too. Nor any other adult who previously was housed with a teen before then. This is still very much not okay and no amount of ‘jokes’ will suddenly make it right.

Raps, Who is an Adult, Just Physically Threatened Two Teenaged Boys and It’s Played as a Joke....

How many times do I have to say it? Humor does not fix bad writing. I’m not laughing when a heroine at age 20, threatens a couple of kids for merely annoying her. Especially when said heroine has a history of abusing children; because let me repeat once again, neglect is abuse!

This is a Lie

No you wont.

Rapunzel never tells Eugene what happens on screen. I suspect that if she ever did, they would no longer be together, because what she wound up doing here was a violation of trust and boundaries in the worst possible way.

And This is Now a Time Paradox

A Grandfather Paradox to be specific. How can Rapunzel be here in the past to break the hourglass if the hourglass that sent her here is broken?

In a competent series this would be the point of a future conflict and not the actual resolution. It’s not a closed time loop because of the paradox and the changes we’ll see in the future.

So either she’s in an alternate timeline/dimension and just doesn’t gives a shit; leaving the real Eugene, Lance, Cass, ect. to go on without her; or she’s just broke the universe and everything is slowly unraveling around her; galaxies are dying as she whines about being dumped, people in the future are being eased from existence, and God is cursing her name for ruining his creation, all the while she carries on oblivious to the destruction in her wake, as usual.

That’s it. Those are you’re only two options now. Is everyone from here on a fake copy or is Rapunzel the damned destroyer of worlds? You decide.

So This Confirms That the Stabbingtons are Indeed “Family”

Another reason why I place this before Return of the King; it explains why Eugene considers the Stabbingtons ‘family’. Though if it was Rapunzel he actually bonded with and not the real Sideburns, then how much of his feelings are real and how much of them were fabricated by her? How much agency did this episode steal from him?

So What Exactly Did We All Change?

Well the dummy no longer has Eugene’s face, but Cass’s painting of the three of them still has him ripped out of the photo, soo... Keeping in mind that Raps painted the dummy anyways and considering that Moonandra tries to kill him later on; I’m going to guess that Cass’s feelings weren’t actually altered. If anything their relationship might actually be worse now, cause Cassandra keeps acting like she’s never had friends and Eugene has taken up Rapunzel’s blind devotion.

All that development in season one is just, poof, gone. Also it’s quite possible that the first movie as well has now it has been erased from existence as Eugene got his needed character development eight years too early. How the hell that’s suppose to work, I don’t know.

Outside of the that we get no confirmation how anybody else was effected, even though a more brainwashed Eugene running around would undoubtedly have caused a butterfly effect. Don’t expect that to be explored anytime soon.

Though, it would explain why he’s suddenly such a doormat in season three, if this was the second episode as theorized.

No! This is the Wrong Lesson!!!

Let me explain narrative promises.

Everyone, on some basic fundamental level, understands how stories work. We hear them recounted to us over and over again from the day we're born to the day we die. It’s integral to how we communicate as human beings. Everyone knows innately how to tell a story even if that person couldn’t tell you how stories or structured or what certain literary terms mean, but they do it every day just through speaking. And while most audiences can’t always pin point what upsets them about a story they can for sure notice when things are off and not satisfying to experience.

Now that doesn’t mean that everyone can write an awarding winning novel, that study of a craft isn’t important, nor that every amateurish critique thrown at any given media is valid. But it does mean that people have come to expect certain storytelling practices and can pick up on narrative cues. We’ve familiarized ourselves with the language of film, novels, comics, ect, into order to comprehend what’s going on.

Rules of writing are just following that established language so that the audience can keep up. You can break these rules, sure, but unless you know what you’re doing and have a good narrative reason to do so, then you can easily lose you’re audience. And if you’re making money off said audience that’s something you want to avoid.

A narrative promise is a cue; a set up that lets the audience know that ‘hey this is important, pay attention to this cause it’ll come back into play later’. Now that the audience has been alerted to the plot point they expect fulfillment of the promise. If you break that promise, either through poor set up, lack of follow through, or by breaking an established convention of writing for no other reason then because you just wanted to, your audience is going to walk away unsatisfied.

The argument at the beginning of the episode was a narrative promise. It was a cue that set up the interpersonal conflict of the main character. For add context, I know that this is a coming of age story. Convention would dictate that the protagonist would resolve this conflict by learning they were wrong.

That’s not what happened here.

Convention was subverted. It wasn’t the protagonist who grew and change, it was the person they were in conflict with who did. And it wasn’t subverted because of any greater narrative reason, or future pay off, or even as effort to be shallowly ‘clever’; it was subverted because the author just didn’t want to hold the main character accountable for anything. Because said character has now become his avatar for his wish fulfillment fantasy and having the main character admit fault would be to admit fault in ones own self. Rapunzel doesn’t feel like Rapunzel this season because she’s just Chris in a wig.

The episode broke a narrative promise to the audience; both within the episode and in the greater premise of the story, because of ego.

I don’t claim this episode is bad just because of personal taste nor because I find it morally repulsive (even though both those things are true), I call it bad because it exhibits bad writing. Plain and simple.

Way To Undermine The Entire Point of the Original Movie, Show

Speaking of breaking narrative promises....

TTS is suppose to be a squeal to the original movie. It’s even in the title of the show; both of them. In one fell swoop, the series has managed to sabotage it’s very reason for existing, as it erases Eugene’s motivation and the inciting incident that kick started the film.

Way to fucking go.

To further twist the knife, it diminishes the duel protagonist of said film in order to prop up a series original character, who isn't even present in the episode itself.

I don’t mind Cassandra’s existence. I don’t even mind her being the new deuteragonist and one of the main villains; even though she wouldn’t have been my first pick to fulfill those roles given her lack of set up. But I do fucking mind it if she upstages other characters and/or derails their character arcs in the process.

This is the Death of New Dream

I was still in denial when this episode first aired. I honestly believed that this and The Return of the King was build up to a third “betrayal” where Eugene finally became fed up with Rapunzel’s bullshit and joined forces with Zhan Tiri. I thought the end of the series would have Rapunzel apologize to everyone she did wrong, Varian, Cass, and Eugene, in order to break ZT’s hold on them, and that true love’s kiss would reunite the sundrop and the moonstone and that would just tie everything together into a neat little bow and give us a truly daring character study of a Disney hero.

Oh dear merciful heavens, was I ever wrong.

How did we go from season one’s challenging and mature storyline, complete with Disney’s first real anti-villian, to this?!

What the hell happened!?

Rapunzel not only disrespects Eugene’s opinions, violates his privacy and trust as she manipulates him as a teen, and then brainwashes him to think like her (even if accidentally), but doesn’t even have good grace to tell him. She instead has the audacity to look all happy and self congratulatory because she got want she wanted. She, and the show at large, doesn’t care what evil thing she does to get the desired outcome Rapunzel wants.

Rapunzel in this show is a spoiled brat. And the image of her and her now lobotomized boyfriend staring dead eyed at a picture of the creator’s previous waifu OC with plastic smiles on their faces, sums up this series perfectly.

Conclusion

This isn’t even the worst episode of the series guys. I don’t know if it would even make it onto a bottom five list. That’s how much crap I have to wade through when it comes to this show. This is however the most damaging episode to the franchise as a whole.

Not even the most hardcore of New Dream fans want to acknowledge the existence of that final scene, and Rapunzel stans won’t defend her beyond, ’well she didn’t mean too, it’s the writing that’s bad.’ Yeah, the writing is bad, that’s why the character can’t and shouldn’t be defended, not here and not in other badly written episodes where she also does bad things and never makes up for it.

Anyways I’m finally caught up to where I left off, before the move, though sadly I don't think I’ll get this series done by the end of the month like I had originally hoped. But if you would like to help out I have a ko-fi you can drop a tip into if ya want.

https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines

#tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #Eugene #anti-rapunzel #anti-tangled

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kurt-nightcrawler · 4 years ago

Text

And I figured out we’re dating in this Chili’s tonight

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐱 𝐌𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞! 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

Request: Mother Nature and warren have my whole ass HEART!!!!! I loved flower so much. I know you’re gonna write lil dates one day I wonder if you’ll write something of how they officially got together?? Like who asked who to be each other’s girlf/boyf . Would be so cute I know you’re busy but either way all your fics are *chefs kiss* —(I think this was from an anon!)

Blurb: Mother Nature and Warren are officially dating! They figured it out!

Warnings: some language and mentions of sex

Word Count: 7.6k

A/N: the timeline is kind of all over. This is set before Decay but I posted it way after! Anyway! Enjoy!

Warren was on Instagram as Scott explained the plot of Fast and The Furious 7 to Jean.

“It��s not good— but my dad loves them— mostly for the cars— but it’s supposed to be the last movie in the franchise. I think…”

Warren rarely posted— on his story and his main page— but he looked at what his friends were up to.

He tapped on (Y/N)’s profile icon to view her story— the highlight of his lunch period. She wasn’t around for the time being— she had mentioned a test she was retaking, which made Warren sad. He wouldn’t get to sit next to her and share whatever fruit she grew for lunch, but he also wanted her to do well and get good grades.

(Y/N) had posted a photo of a movie poster with the caption, “OHMYGOD!! ” followed by a blue and yellow shocked face emoji and a heart-eyed emoji. The movie poster in question was for the animated Addams Family movie.

“Is there a new Addams family movie coming out?” Warren asked.

“Yeah, (Y/N) watched the latest trailer during class. She’s really excited about it,” Jean told him.

Warren felt himself get shaky with nerves and excitement. He could ask her to go see it with him. Just him. Not with the whole group, or Jubilee third-wheeling, or Jean and Scott with them, making out in the seat next to them.

Wait.

Am I going to ask her on a date? Is that what this is? A date?

“You good?” Scott asked.

“What?” Warren glanced at him. “Oh, yeah… Yeah, I’m good.”

“Okay.”

Warren went back to his phone, pressing reply to (Y/N)’s story post about the Addams Family movie coming out.

He started to type out a message.

“Hey. Would you want to see this together when it comes out? We could also go out for dinner?” Warren then promptly deleted the entire message.

No, no. That makes me sound like a lonely middle-aged mom. He thought to himself.

“I think it was fine!”

“Ah!” Warren flinched. “Did you read my mind, Jean?”

“No…” Jean denied.

Warren frowned.

“I was curious as to what you were doing, and you were really nervous and your thoughts are loud anyway.”

“What?” Scott asked.

“Warren’s trying to ask (Y/N) out on a date to the movies,” Jean explained.

“It’s not a date!” Warren tried to defend.

“When is it ever going to be a date?” Scott asked. “It wasn’t a date when she slept over in your room and you watched Phineas and Ferb and ordered pizza. It wasn’t a date when you spent three hours at the library studying together. It wasn’t a date when you spent the afternoon together and she told you her secret brownie recipe! When is it ever going to be a date?”

“I… I don’t… Those were not dates...”

“They kind of were,” Jean admitted. “That’s what people do on dates. Scott and I do stuff like that all the time…”

Warren blinked.

“You’ve dated people before, right?” Scott asked him.

“I mean “date” is a loose term but, yeah…”

Scott decided he didn’t have time to unpack that sentence. “Okay. What did you do with them to like, spend time together, and stuff?”

“We mostly just got drunk and hooked up…”

Scott sighed, “You sound like my brother after he got out of jail.”

“Warren, have… you… never been on a real date before?” Jean asked.

“Well, um, I mean, my last “girlfriend” and I went to clubs and stuff in Germany, but we’d usually go with some friends…” He admitted.

“Oh my god…” Scott mumbled.

Warren panicked. “Wait, did— Did (Y/N) think we were dating this whole time?”

“I don’t know,” Jean shrugged.

“Everyone else thought you guys were,” Scott muttered.

“So we’ve been dating this whole time?”

“I mean, kind of…”

Warren paled. He had no idea what to do. Were they dating? Were they not dating? What was he supposed to do as a boyfriend? Or not a boyfriend?

“Just ask her, ‘what are we?’ That should clear things up.”

Warren gawked at Scott. “What are we? That’s the cliche that makes guys run for the hills! I can’t ask her that!”

“(Y/N)’s reasonable,” Jean reminded him. “If you ask her that, she won’t run away.”

Warren didn’t say anything back.

“Just ask her what you were originally going to say on Instagram.”

Warren whined.

“Do it now.” Jean advised. “Before Jubilee makes plans to see the movie with her.”

Warren paled at the possibility of (Y/N) not being available. He quickly typed out another message and sent it.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, I just did that! Hhhhh…” Warren quickly threw his phone on the table and refused to look at it.

Jean chuckled and rolled her eyes, taking his phone to see if (Y/N) replied.

—

(Y/N) finished her test early and decided to check up on some of the plants in the attic greenhouse before her next class.

She had been focusing on a baby caladium, making sure it had plenty of sun and water and was growing at a healthy pace.

(Y/N) named it, Warren Worthington IV, but she told no one and would take that piece of information to the grave.

As she was poking Warren the Fourth’s soil to see if it needed water for the day, she felt her phone vibrate against her thigh in her pocket.

She pulled it out to see that Warren— the Third— had replied to her Instagram story. Her eyes turned pink just by reading his name on her phone screen.

“Do you want to see this together Friday night? We could go to Chili’s before and get dinner?”

(Y/N) read the message over at least ten times. Dinner and a movie? Was Warren asking her on a date?

Her eyes were orange in confusion and purple due to nerves.

She took a few minutes but finally responded with, “Yeah! There’s a showing on Friday at 9 at the theatre by the mall. Does that work?”

Warren immediately hearted the message and said, “Yeah :)”

(Y/N) hearted his message. Excited and a bit nervous for Friday, she left the attic and headed to her next class.

—

(Y/N) ignored any work she had after class and immediately went through her closet, rummaging for clothes.

“Whatcha doing?” Ororo asked, setting her books on her bed.

“You’ve been on plenty of not date dates,” (Y/N) began. Ororo gave her a curious look. “What would you wear?”

“Are you going out on a date?” Ororo asked.

“Well, not exactly…” (Y/N) confessed.

Ororo smirked as she opened her notebook and started working on an assignment, “Is it with Warren?”

“Who else would it be?” (Y/N) asked.

“I don’t know… Dylan from math class? Ruby from my yoga class? The handful of people from Bayville you’ve kissed at house parties before you even knew Warren? There are options.”

(Y/N) was not amused.

“Are you and Warren going out on a date? Or is this a ‘we’re just hanging out… alone together… but just as friends! Because we are friends! Who like each other very romantically! But we refuse to do anything about it!’”

(Y/N) sighed. “Okay, so he didn’t explicitly say it was a date, but we’re seeing the new Addams Family movie and going to Chili’s.”

Ororo blinked in shock, Warren asked (Y/N) to see a movie about one of her favorite franchises and go to one of her favorite go-to restaurants, and he didn’t clarify if it was a date or not?

What a dumbass, Ororo mused, tearing herself away from her work to go on her phone.

Ororo

Are you and (Y/N) going on a date?

No response.

Ororo went back to her homework, glancing at (Y/N) every so often to give feedback on the numerous items she pulled out of her closet.

“Is a dress too much?”

“Definitely,” Ororo stated without looking up. “I’ve only worn a dress twice since I came here and one I borrowed from Jubilee.”

(Y/N) sighed and kept looking for options. Ororo’s phone screen lit up, and she quickly grabbed it, checking to see if Warren responded.

Warren

I think so???

Ororo

What do you mean? “i tHiNk So”

Warren

*not amused emoji*

I’m not sure if we’re dating or not. We were gonna talk about it at dinner.

“Are you and Warren dating?” Ororo asked.

(Y/N) froze at the question, unsure what to say. “I mean… no… but like, we like each other— or I like him. I think he likes me. Sometimes I’m not really sure—”

“—(Y/N),” Ororo interrupted. “He likes you a lot. Assume this is a date.”

“Assume— What?” (Y/N) gaped.

Ororo looked at her phone again, seeing five text messages from Warren in panic, asking why she didn’t respond.

Ororo

Calm down!

You should thank me

Warren

Ro…

What did you do?...

Ororo

You have to trust me… ;)

Warren

*Not amused emoji*

Ororo left Warren on read and continued her assignment. Until someone barged into the room, unexpected.

Jubilee came in, bubbling with enthusiasm. “I heard from Jean! Oh my god, I have to help you pick out an outfit! This is huge!”

“It’s not a date…” (Y/N) awkwardly tried to explain.

“Oh, no— it definitely is!”

Ororo and (Y/N) were both confused.

“We all know Warren is a little… emotionally hesitant…” Juilee carefully stated. “But like, if it was anyone else they would have literally said, “Wanna go on a date with me and see The Addams Family?” Warren’s just scared you’d say no— which you’d never do.”

“Is he— I thought he knew I liked him?”

“He’s a guy,” Jubilee explained as she looked in (Y/N)’s closet for something she could wear. “They never know what they’re doing.”

(Y/N) sat on the floor, with more questions than answers from everything Jubilee had said.

“This would be perfect!” It was a black skater skirt. “Skirts are your best friend in times like these.”

“Huh?”

“Incase anything happens… Duh!” Jubilee stated it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. (Y/N) didn’t respond, causing Jubilee to groan.

“From That 70s Show? Skirts are your best friend for sex. Zip, zip, bim, bam! You’re done, you’re dressed, you’re back to whatever you were doing. Nobody suspects a thing!”

“Jubilee, they’re seeing a kids movie, not having sex,” Ororo told her.

“Hmm…” Jubilee crossed her arms. “You should still wear the skirt. You look really pretty in it anyway.”

(Y/N) sat there, eyes wide and purple, mind reeling, trying to process what Jubilee said.

“We’re… We’re not going to have sex, are we? I’m not— I don’t think— I don’t even know if we’re dating or not!”

“Hey, hey— Jubilee’s just messing around.” Ororo moved from her bed to sit next to (Y/N) and rub her back. “She’s just used to Scott and Jean’s shenanigans. Plus, Warren’s a good guy! He won’t pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to and he’s too nervous to do anything like that anyway.”

“Warren’s like, obsessed with you, in a good way. And if he doesn’t respect your boundaries I can snap his neck for you.” Jubilee innocently smiled and batted her eyes.

“Thanks… Do you think my soft dark green sweater would look good with the skirt?”

“Oh my god yes!” Jubilee grabbed it out of the closet and set it on (Y/N)’s bed. “And with your Doc Martens? Goth little plant goddess vibes. I love it.”

“You think I’ll be warm enough? Should I bring a jacket?” (Y/N) checked the weather on her phone.

“You should be fine! Besides, if you’re cold…” Jubilee smirked. “You can always cuddle with Warren in the movie theatre.”

Ororo smiled and rolled her eyes, while (Y/N) decided to humor her, “I’ll keep it in mind.”

—

Friday couldn’t come soon enough— Warren kept thinking about how (Y/N) said, “Yes.” And about what might happen, how he would bring up the question that would change everything. He was distracted during training, nervous, and lost in thought. He constantly talked about his weekend plans with some of their friends.

Some found it annoying at first, but most had never seen Warren so passionate about something before. It was sweet.

“I dunno, I just want things to go well. But what if I make things awkward? I say or do something really stupid? What if I spill my drink all over my crotch and then it looks like I peed myself?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Ororo reassured him.

“What if our server flirts with her?”

“Just glare at them. You’re scary enough.”

Warren sighed, wishing time moved as fast for him as it did for Peter.

“Just be yourself and have a good time. Open doors for her, tell her she’s beautiful, if she’s cold give her your jacket, walk her back to her dorm room— things like that.” Ororo told him. “Those will make it obvious that it’s a date. Because you guys do date activities all the time, and you refuse to admit it’s a date.”

Warren huffed at her. Ororo stuck out her tongue.

—

It was Friday.

(Y/N) had been antsy in all of her classes, just wanting them to end so she could get ready for the night.

She had her outfit picked out and ready. (Y/N) planned on light makeup— a little eyeshadow and lipgloss— and she had a small little purse packed with a few things.

(Y/N) started to doubt herself. “Maybe a skirt is too much… It’s dinner and a movie… Maybe I should just wear jeans…”

She huffed as she held the skirt up to her waist. “But I wanna look cute… Screw it!”

(Y/N) slipped the skirt and sweater on, doing a french tuck, and then started to apply makeup. She was done in under thirty minutes, and then looked over her hair in the mirror, trying to hastily pluck out leaves and shove flowers into different areas of her head and strategically place them under specific sections.

Once (Y/N) was satisfied with how she looked, she checked the time. It was 5:30, and (Y/N) and Warren weren’t leaving until six. So she had time to just sit around and wait.

(Y/N) pulled her phone out and opened Snapchat, choosing to take at least a hundred selfies with different filters.

Holding her phone from different angles, making different faces, posing in slightly different positions, and choosing a new filter every five photos, almost like a mini-photoshoot in the palm of her hand. Some selfies got posted to her Snapchat story, others were sent to Jubilee and Ororo, and the remainder were saved but would probably never see the light of day. She huffed and tapped through people’s Snapchat stories to kill more time.

Warren asked Jubilee for help.

Well, he didn’t exactly ask, she just texted him, “I’m helping you get ready.” And he thanked her.

“One of the hottest things a guy can do is have good hygiene. You, surprisingly, already have accomplished that—”

“Hey!” Warren frowned as he pulled his leather jacket out from his closet. “Did you, like, think I didn’t?”

“No! I’m just surprised you know what exfoliate means… Do you have a different jacket? That one is cute and everything, but it’s a bit much.”

“It’s the easiest one I can get my wings out of,” Warren explained while slipping on a black shirt.

“Why? Also, do you only wear black?” Jubilee complained.

“In case (Y/N) gets cold…? Also, no, I have that one yellow sweater you made me get and some white shirts.” Warren defended.

Jubilee almost scoffed, “(Y/N)’s not going to get cold. You’re going out to eat and the movies.”

“Well, Ororo said I should give her my jacket in case she is cold.”

“Fair enough,” Jubilee mumbled. “I was supposed to hang out with Ororo tonight… We were going to make Tiktoks and watch Wonder Woman.”

“I thought she went stargazing with Kurt?” Warren asked as he laced up his boots.

“Yeah! And they didn’t invite me!” Jubilee flopped onto Kurt’s empty bed and huffed.

“Jubilee— I don’t think—”

“I’m a fucking delight to be around!”

Warren’s eyes widened, “I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“It sucks because Kurt’s got the accent, he can sword fight, he likes movies but hates Tarantino, he’s respectful, god and he’s just as hot as Ororo.”

“Um…” Warren furrowed his brows. “Do you think, maybe— maybe uh, Ororo thinks you like Kurt?”

Jubilee looked at him with a deadpan expression. Warren panicked, thinking he said the wrong thing.

“I like both of them, Bird brain! It’s the fact they haven’t expressed liking me at all and probably don’t want that. Also like half of the girls at Bayville think Kurt’s hot and try to kiss him at house parties.”

“Oh…” Warren hadn’t considered that. “Um… I uh, I had a threesome once—”

“Oh my god! Stop!” Jubilee cringed. “I don’t wanna hear about that right now! Go get your girlfriend, and like, yawn, and stretch your arm out over her while Gomez confesses his undying love for Morticia for the millionth time.”

“Okay, okay.” Warren grabbed his phone and wallet. “Don’t spend all night in here,” He advised, leaving Jubilee alone in his room.

—

Warren sent (Y/N) a text, asking if she was ready. She said yes, and asked him to meet her in the common room area.

Warren found her sitting in a lounge chair, talking to a student. (Y/N) turned her head and saw Warren. She got up and smiled, bid the other person goodbye, and then walked over to Warren.

“Hey!” She greeted him.

“Uh, hey.” Warren tried to discreetly check her out. She looked nice. “You look really nice.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.” (Y/N)’s pink eyes shifted to a slightly purple hue. “You do too.”

“Thanks… Are you ready to go?”

(Y/N) nodded, “Yeah. What car are we taking?”

“Um…” Warren realized he didn’t decide on which one of Xavier’s numerous cars he was taking out for the night. Not that it mattered, but he was a bit frustrated with himself on that one.

“I don’t know…”

(Y/N) snickered to herself. “That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Jubilee and I do have a rule though.”

“What is it?”

“Whatever car Scott and Jean took last, don’t even touch it.”

Warren blinked, “I don’t get it.”

(Y/N)’s eyes turned purple completely.

“Um, uh, it’s cause um— it’s not... clean...”

“Oh…” Suddenly, everything connected in Warren’s mind.

“Oh!”

(Y/N) nodded, “Yeah...”

“Scott likes the Oldsmobile rocket. Maybe we should avoid that one…”

“Yeah. Yeah…”

They picked a different car. Warren didn’t get a chance to open the door for (Y/N), but he told himself the night had only just begun, and he’d get another chance.

“Want me to play some music?” (Y/N) asked.

“Sure! Play whatever you want.”

“You don’t have a preference or anything…?” She questioned, while her thumb hovered over the play button of a playlist.

“Not really… Besides, I can pick next time.”

(Y/N)’s eyes flashed purple and she mumbled in agreement and started a playlist.

Warren cursed internally to himself. Why would I say that? Why did I say that!? As if I’d have the privilege of going out with her again after that dumbass sentence.

Warren made a lame attempt to change the subject. “Are you excited about the movie?”

“Yeah! They announced the cast like a year ago, and I thought it was going to be live-action, but animation is probably better for The Addams Family. It’s supposed to be really good! Oscar Isaac is voicing Gomez—”

“—Who?”

“Poe from Star Wars…”

“Finn’s boyfriend?” Warren asked.

(Y/N) smiled, “Yeah, yeah. Him.”

“I haven’t seen anything else he’s been in, but Kurt and Scott say he’s a really good actor.”

“Hmm…” I wonder if she thinks he’s hot… I mean Oscar is, but I doubt I can compete with that.

No, no, Worthington. Remember what Jean said, “No self-deprecating thoughts.”

“Pugsley’s voiced by Finn Wolfhard. He was in Stranger Things…”

Warren nodded, he knew what Stranger Things was. He watched it with Jubilee, Kurt, and Ororo over Labor Day weekend.

“He plays Will, right?”

“No. Finn has curly hair…” “Dustin?...” Warren was unsure about his answer, but he knew Dustin had curly hair.

“Mike. Eleven’s boyfriend? Black hair?”

“Oh… Okay… I feel really stupid. I should have known that.”

(Y/N) scoffed, “You’re fine. There’s like seven of them, and that’s not even including the adults and the characters our age.”

“Yeah, that’s true, I guess. I might rewatch it…”

An idea came to (Y/N), “We should have like, a marathon with our friends! We could also play D&D.”

“I never played before,” Warren admitted.

“I haven’t either really… but I kind of know how to play… Scott’s played before! He was really into D&D before he came to Xavier’s.”

Warren chuckled quietly, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a dork, but just because you play a board game doesn’t mean you’re lame.”

“Yeah— Do you see any parking spots?” Warren asked.

(Y/N) shifted in her seat, looking for an empty spot, “Yeah, right there.”

Warren slowed down and started to pull in. “God, I’m so bad at parking. Please don’t judge me.”

(Y/N) laughed, “You can’t be bad as Jubilee. She tried to park at the mall and ran over a curb. We thought the tired popped off!”

“No!” Warren gasped.

(Y/N) nodded, “The car was fine, but Jubilee had Jean drive home.”

Warren snickered as he put the car in park and then turned it off.

(Y/N) got out before Warren could open the door for her. He bit his lip in frustration.

“Oh, the sun is so pretty!” (Y/N) cooed. “I love golden hour sometimes.”

“I don’t… What?” Warren wasn’t too sure what golden hour was. Jubilee had mentioned it before, but he never asked what it meant.

“Come here—” (Y/N) pulled out her phone and held it horizontally. “Get in the frame and smile!”

Warren obliged, smiling and doing an awkward peace sign. (Y/N) grinned, also doing a peace sign, with her eyes closed and tongue poking out slightly.

“Let me see how it turned out— Oh my god! We look amazing.” She was practically gleaming as she angled the phone towards Warren so he could see the photo.

Warren smiled.

“Want me to send this to you?” (Y/N) asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“There!” (Y/N) smiled. “I sent it.” Warren thanked her and they headed into Chili’s.

He managed to open the door in time for (Y/N).

“Oh…” Her eyes shifted to a slight violet hue, the nerves of is this a date or not? Coming back to her. “Thanks…”

“You’re welcome.”

The hostess greeted them and asked how many were in their party.

“Two,” Warren responded.

“Alright, follow me.” She grabbed two menus and had them follow her to a booth.

“Here you guys are. Your server will be with you soon.”

“Oh my god, I’m really hungry…” (Y/N) unfolded her menu and buried her nose in it.

“Uh, me too…” Warren browsed his menu.

“Hi, I’m Ariana, I’ll be your server tonight! What can I get you guys started with to drink?”

“I’ll have a Coke Zero,” Warren told her.

“I’ll have a strawberry lemonade,” (Y/N) answered.

“I’ll get those right out for you.”

“Thanks!”

She walked off, leaving Warren and (Y/N) alone.

“Do you know what you’re gonna get?” (Y/N) asked. She was eyeing the nachos and the chicken crispers.

“Uh… Not really…” Warren awkwardly admitted. “The fajitas look good, but that’s a lot of food.”

“Yeah, they’re good though.”

Their server came back with their drinks asking if they needed more time to look at the menu. She smiled and said she’d be back.

“You’ve been here before, right?” (Y/N) asked Warren. She swore he had, but perhaps she was wrong.

“Once, with the guys. We were comforting Peter after another failed Tinder date. I think I got... nachos? I don’t remember.”

(Y/N) chuckled to herself. “Peter needs to try another dating app.”

“He’s got like three.”

“Oh, jeez— Jubilee almost downloaded tinder but she doesn’t need it.”

Warren furrowed his brows, “Huh? Isn’t she into that one dude from Bayville? And Ororo?”

(Y/N) nodded and took a sip of her lemonade.

Warren jokingly rolled his eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand her.”

Ariana came back, asking if they were ready to order.

“Yeah, um, I’ll have the nachos with chicken,” (Y/N) told her.

“Nachos with chicken,” Ariana repeated. “And you?” She asked Warren.

“I’ll have the Santa Fe chicken salad.”

She wrote it down on a little notepad, “Santa Fe chicken salad. Alrighty! Those will be right out.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you.”

(Y/N) took another sip of her lemonade, letting it fill the silence.

Warren was suddenly very nervous. “Um…” “You okay?... Is there something on my face? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?” (Y/N) started to worry.

“You don’t have any lipstick on…” Warren stated a bit dumbfounded.

“Oh…”

“Um, anyway, I um— I like— I want, no. Um, is this— Is this a date?”

“Um…” (Y/N) froze up for a moment. “You asked me out.”

“Um, yeah, if you don’t want this to be a date, it like, isn’t then, you know? I mean, I didn’t really specify.”

“I kind of thought this was a date,” (Y/N) admitted.

Kind of… That’s good— Wait. Does she not want this to be a date?

“Do you want this to be a date?” Warren asked.

“Uh, yeah. I wouldn’t mind if it was, but like, we’re just friends so if you didn’t mean for it to be a date then that’s cool. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

(Y/N) avoided eye contact as she drank more lemonade, her eyes fully purple.

“No, no! Um, I do want this to be a date. I um, I really, uh, I really like you.” Warren nervously confessed.

God, I hope I die here, right now, He silently pleaded.

“Uh, yeah… I like you too… That’s kind of why I’ve been like, hanging out with you, alone, um, a lot…”

“Me, um— me too.” Warren awkwardly took a sip of his soda.

“Great.”

“...”

“Are— are we... dating?” Warren asked.

“Uh… I guess so?” (Y/N) wasn’t too sure how to respond, but when she saw Warren’s face fall slightly she quickly changed her words.

“I mean, I think we are. I hope so. Um—”

“—We’re dating then?” Warren asked.

“We’re dating!”

“Great!”

Soon as they figured it out, Ariana came in with their food.

“Alright, I’ve got the Sante Fe chicken salad,” She set the plate in front of Warren. “And the nachos with chicken!” She set that plate in front of (Y/N).

“Do you guys need anything else?”

“I think we’re good for now,” Warren told her. “Thanks, though.”

“Let me know if you need anything!” Ariana left the couple to eat their food.

“Oh my gosh, yours looks really good,” (Y/N) commented.

“You can have some if you want,” Warren offered.

“Oh, thanks!”

“Yeah, of course.”

The conversation died down a bit as Warren and (Y/N) focused on their food, but Warren was internally stressing.

I have no idea what boyfriends do. Am I doing a good job right now? What if she tells Jubilee and then Jubilee murders me because so far I’m a shitty boyfriend?

Maybe I can hold her hand while we watch The Addams Family… How do I initiate that? What if she doesn’t want to hold my hand?

Why do I want to hold her hand?... Warren almost visibly shuddered at the feeling of love. Ew… feelings…

Warren snapped back into reality for a moment, watching (Y/N) spill a piece of chicken into her lap.

“Shoot!”

Warren didn’t need his eyes to turn pink to show he was awestruck by her. She’s adorable… I’m so lucky to be her boyfriend…

—

Once they had finished, their server Ariana came back asking if they needed to-go boxes and if they wanted the check.

“Do you want it separate or together?”

“Together,” Warren told her. (Y/N) furrowed her brows for a moment, eyes a bit orange, as Ariana left to go get the check.

“I’m paying,” Warren stated nonchalantly as he got his card out.

“Oh, okay.”

Ariana came back with two to-go boxes and the check.

Warren handed her his card and she walked away.

(Y/N) started to put her leftover nachos in her box. Warren scooped his leftover salad into his to-go box.

“Alright! Here’s your card and receipt,” Ariana handed those to Warren. “Do you guys need anything else?”

“I think we’re good.”

“Alright! Have a good night!”

“You too!”

Warren was figuring out how much to tip. “Is like, $10 good?”

“What?” (Y/N) asked.

“To tip…?” Warren awkwardly said.

“What’s the total?”

“Uh… $28.76.”

“Warren, that’s like a 35% tip, right?” (Y/N) asked.

Warren shrugged. “Look, servers don’t get paid enough.”

“You’re right.”

Warren finished filling out his receipt, then he looked at (Y/N). “Are you ready to go?”

“Yep! I’ll get the boxes.” (Y/N) picked hers up and reached over for Warren’s.

“No, I got it. I can carry them.”

“No, I can carry them,” (Y/N) insisted.

“I’m your boyfriend, let me carry them,” Warren insisted.

(Y/N)’s heart did a flip at the fact he said, boyfriend.

“... Fine…” She let Warren carry the to-go boxes.

He also managed to open the door for her when they left.

(Y/N) was still trying to process the fact they were dating.

What’s the date? I should write it down. So I can remember for our first anniversary!

Will we last that long?... I hope so… I really like Warren… Maybe I should tell him?

No… That’s kind of embarrassing…

“So…” (Y/N) trailed off.

“Yeah?” Warren asked, eyes on the road.

“I don’t know…” She admitted.

“Oh…” Things were starting to get awkward. Warren didn’t want things to be awkward. Awkwardness would ruin the relationship.

But Warren was bad at small talk. He was bad at socializing, period. And while he had improved, he still got nervous. He hated being nervous— scared. He didn’t want to come off as weak or vulnerable.

But he didn’t want to come off as scary or cold-hearted either.

It was a hard scale to balance.

“Okay, I don’t want to be rude, but who taught you how to drive?” (Y/N) asked.

“Sean…?” Warren stated.

(Y/N) face practically lit up in realization, “That explains a lot.”

”What do you mean?”

“You were taught how to drive by someone who originally learned how to drive on the other side of the road!”

“That— What does that have to do with my shitty parking?” Warren asked. “I drive on the “right side of the road”.

(Y/N) laughed.

“Look,” Warren explained. “If I’m bad at parking that’s on me. The lines caught me!”

“Haha! Yeah.” (Y/N) laughed. “At least you don’t hit curbs like Jubilee.”

Warren laughed, “Yeah!”

“Come on— I want to get good seats!” Warren put the car in park and turned it off. (Y/N) and he both got out and walked towards the theatre. Along the way she (not-so) discreetly slipped her hand into Warren’s. He blushed and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. (Y/N) did her best to not grin her face off.

Warren had to let go of (Y/N)’s hand momentarily, so he could open the door, causing her to frown a bit and her eyes to go a bit grey.

This is a crime! I don’t want to let go of his hand!

Warren slipped his hand back into (Y/N)’s once they were inside, and her eyes went back to their “normal” pink shade.

Warren paid for their tickets and they picked out seats in the back row. They weren’t in the center, but sitting in the back row was best due to Warren’s wings.

“Auditorium three is on your left!” The ticket ripper told them as she ripped their tickets in half and handed them back.

“Thanks!... Do you want any snacks?” Warren asked (Y/N) as they passed the concession stand to auditorium three.

“Nah, I’m not hungry,” (Y/N) said. “You?”

“No, not really.”

They walked into auditorium three and looked around for their seats.

“Wow, it’s really crowded,” Warren observed. He was a bit nervous, folding his wings back tightly as he could.

“Yeah, it’s opening night,” (Y/N) reminded him. “Row G is up this way.”

He was used to the stares for the most part, but he hadn’t been exposed to many kids and soccer moms outside the mansion— not that there exactly were any soccer moms at Xavier’s.

Luckily, Warren didn’t see anyone glare at him or (Y/N). They both got into their seats without any problem. Their seats were recliners, where if you moved the arm up, you could almost be on top of each other.

Warren thought this would be perfect for him to maybe wrap his arm around (Y/N), but he was far too nervous. Their hands were still intertwined, which was good enough for him, but Warren was trying with all his might to not have his hand get sweaty.

That would be so embarrassing…

Once they got situated, and the movie trailers began, (Y/N)’s eyes were focused on the screen. Warren glanced at her for a moment, once the lights dimmed, but his gaze quickly flickered to the screen as to not get caught.

“That movie looks good!” (Y/N) whispered into Warren’s ear. He nodded, not exactly sure what he should respond with.

Halfway through the film, while Gomez was saying something stupidly romantic to Morticia, Warren did something risky.

Well, not necessarily risky, but if Jubilee or Scott caught him doing it, they’d tease him relentlessly.

Warren yawned, not very loudly, and then stretched his arm out and over (Y/N)’s shoulders. He fiddled with a leave that dangled from her head.

His heart was racing. Oh my god, she’s going to think I’m a weirdo. Why did I do that? Who even does the yawn and stretch move anymore? Literally no one!

(Y/N)’s heart started racing when she realized what he had done, Oh my god! Oh my god… This is happening! Oh my god! Just relax, (Y/N), just relax. Be cool. Warren’s cool… he’s being effortless at this “dating” thing…

They were both too nervous to initiate any further and decided to get reabsorbed in the plot of the movie.

—

As the credits rolled and the lights came back on, Warren and (Y/N) gained space between them awkwardly pretending like nothing happened.

(Y/N) filled the awkward silence by raving about the film.

“I loved it! I thought it was so cool, you could see all the family members in the background and like, the backstory they gave them was really creative, and just oh my god the animation style was super neat too! I liked what they did with Ophelia’s design, even though she wasn’t in it very long.”

“Who’s Ophelia?” Warren asked.

“So she’s Morticia’s sister— they look almost the same, except Morticia is goth and Ophelia is more like me. She has flowers growing on her head and stuff— she was in the background, you probably missed her.”

“That’s cool,” Warren mused.

“Yeah, she was more in the TV show… What did you think of the movie?”

“Oh! I thought it was really good! I liked it. The story really, like, reaches out to modern issues and stuff…”

“Like how everyone was rude to the Addams family because they were gothic and a little different?” (Y/N) asked as she pushed open the door.

“Yeah. I think if the Addams were real, they’d be mutants,” Warren said as they walked out on to the parking lot.

“Oh definitely!” (Y/N) agreed.

Warren smiled as he fished the car keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the car.

(Y/N) and Warren both got in the car and put on their seat belts. Warren then backed out of the parking lot and made his way onto the main road to drive back to Xavier’s.

“So uh… Are we gonna, like, tell our friends we’re dating?” (Y/N) asked.

Warren blinked.

“Yeah? Did you— do you not want to?” Warren felt like he had just seen someone kick a puppy.

“No!— No, I do!” (Y/N) clarified.

Whew!

“I just— I don’t know how I guess? Jubilee walked in on Jean and Scott making out in her room and then she told everyone and then Scott was all, like, super awkward about it, but then they admitted they were dating.”

“Sounds stressful,” Warren decided. “We could just like, text the group chat?”

“Yeah,” (Y/N) shrugged. “That works.”

X-BABES

(Y/N)

So… Warren and I dating

Jubilee

Finally!

Scott

^^lol. Congrats.

Kurt

Weren’t you already dating?

(Y/N)

No?...

Kurt

…

……….

(Y/N) laughed quietly to herself.

“What’s up?” Warren asked.

“Kurt thought we were dating this whole time,” She explained.

“Oh… Oh?”

(Y/N) nodded, “Yeah.”

“I didn’t— I didn’t tell him anything— that like, wasn’t true. I don’t know why he thought that—”

(Y/N) giggled. “Ren, it’s fine. We’ve shared a bed before— in your guys’ room no less— he’s gonna assume stuff.”

“Still…”

“Well, we’re dating now… So, it doesn’t really matter,” (Y/N) pointed out.

Warren couldn’t hide the blush on his face at the fact they were finally dating. He hoped it was too dark for (Y/N) to see it.

“Do I turn left here?” He asked.

“Yeah, then you turn into the gates.”

Warren did so and drove around the X-Mansion, into the garage.

“I’ll grab the food and put it in the fridge,” (Y/N) told Warren as he turned the car off.

“Okay.”

They both got out of the car— (Y/N) opening the back door to grab the white to-go boxes.

Warren followed her into the mansion.

They stopped in the kitchen and (Y/N) set the boxes on the counter. “Do you see a sticky note or a pen or something? I need to mark these as ours.”

“Uh…” Warren looked around the room before spotting a marker. “Here,” He handed it to (Y/N). She scribbled their names down and shoved the leftovers into the fridge.

“Now what do you wanna do?” (Y/N) asked Warren.

“Uh… we could um… like, go upstairs maybe?”

“Do you want to?” She asked.

“I mean if you want to, yeah.”

“Oh, um, okay.”

Warren panicked a bit. “If you don’t we don’t have to. We can, like, just kind of chill and see what our friends are doing.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“Oh, okay.” Warren avoided awkward eye contact as they headed upstairs.

“We could, um, go to my room…?” (Y/N) offered up.

“Uh, yeah, that sounds good,” Warren was nervous. He wasn’t sure why— He had no reason to be. He’d been in (Y/N)’s room before. Alone. They’d also spent loads of time together alone doing “couple things” as Scott put it.

So why was he nervous?

Warren didn’t have time to linger on the thought as he walked into (Y/N)’s room.

It was a bit cluttered, but he wouldn’t consider it messy. With plants strewn everywhere— floor, walls, ceiling— and some books, posters, and other things you’d expect in (Y/N) and Ororo’s room.

Ororo wasn’t there though.

“Um, I had a really fun time tonight,” (Y/N) said. Her back was facing Warren for a moment as she doted on a small potted plant.

“Me too… um… what are you doing tomorrow?”

“Uh, nothing? I mean Jubilee mentioned going to the skate park tomorrow to take pictures… but she didn’t really say when…” (Y/N) trailed off and turned around to face Warren.

Their eyes met. (Y/N) stepped forward, towards him.

She glanced at his lips for a moment too long.

Warren gulped.

“Can I kiss you…?” (Y/N) murmured.

Warren’s mouth gaped. “Uh, yeah.”

(Y/N) leaned in to kiss him, her hands cupping his face. Their lips met. (Y/N) shifted her head a bit as her lips pressed onto his and kissed him. She hooked his bottom lip with her teeth, lightly biting it for a moment. Her hands grabbed the hair near the nape of his neck.

Warren’s arms were wrapped around her waist, his hands resting on the small of her back.

(Y/N)’s tongue snuck into his mouth, their lips still pressing together. Warren could feel her smiling. Warren had to break away, for a moment, and regain compulsion.

(Y/N)’s eyes flashed grey for a split second. She didn’t want to stop. She had become ravenous for Warren’s lips, his tongue… for him in general. It wasn’t exactly a new feeling, but it was foreign, and she liked it.

She blinked. “Sorry, um, I didn’t mean— um, never mind.”

Warren’s jaw was practically slack. He was speechless. He was not expecting that. At all.

“Warren?” (Y/N) asked. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine!”Warren tried to seem chill. “I’m fine.”

“Oh… Well, um, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything.” (Y/N) started to worry a bit, thinking maybe she went too far and he didn’t like it.

“I’m— I’m’ not uncomfortable— uh, far from it actually— um, it was, it was really nice, actually.” Warren hoped she wouldn’t look down.

“Oh, okay. Good.”

“Um, it’s kind of late—“

“—Yeah, definitely.” (Y/N) agreed.

“You said you were going to… Ulta?... With Jubilee tomorrow?” Warren awkwardly asked.

(Y/N) nodded.

“Um, I should probably go then… You don’t want to oversleep or anything…” Warren mentally scolded himself for being so awkward. He was usually better than that.

“Oh, yeah… I’ll see you tomorrow though…” (Y/N) reminded him. “We live here…”

“Right! Right…”

“...”

“I’m going to go to bed. Goodnight.” Warren quickly kissed (Y/N)’s cheek and headed out the door to his dorm.

(Y/N) stood there, still processing what just happened.

“Oh my god… Oh my god! OH MY GOD!” (Y/N) let out.

She buried her face in her hands. “HOLY SHIT! I like— Oh my god! I did that. I kissed Warren with force and passion and with tongue!” She exclaimed.

“I kissed my boyfriend with tongue. I cannot believe I did that! Oh my god!”

Unbeknownst to her, Warren had heard most of her excited screams as he left her room. He was ecstatic by her enthusiasm.

Warren went down the halls to the boys’ dormitory. Kurt wasn’t in their room, leaving Warren alone. He wanted to be alone. Alone with his thoughts for the first time in a long time. Warren wanted to lay in his bed and have the night’s events replay in his mind as he fell asleep.

Warren was officially dating (Y/N).

He didn’t have to assume things, dance on eggshells wondering if he was doing too much, he no longer had to wish he was her, and Warren didn’t have to admire her in secret.

Warren wanted to text her, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He sighed, and slipped into some pajamas, and brushed his teeth, leaving his phone open. Hoping by some miracle (Y/N) would text first and he could spend the whole night overthinking what to say back.

(Y/N) hadn’t texted him.

Warren got under his sheets and settled into bed, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling.

He grabbed his phone and decided to text her.

Warren looked at the last thing (Y/N) had sent him. It was the golden hour selfie they took together in the Chili’s parking lot.

Warren thought he looked rather silly, but he liked the photo nonetheless. He saved it to his camera roll and turned it into his lock screen background.

Warren couldn’t take it any longer, despite it only being a few minutes, he decided to text (Y/N).

Warren

(Y/N)

heyyy I thought u were going to bed *side eye emoji*

Warren

Couldn’t sleep

(Y/N)

ohhh

whatcha doing right now?

Warren

Laying in bed. not much really

(Y/N)

lol, me too. I just finished spraying the ivy hanging above my bed and my air plant, Clark

Warren’s heart swelled and he smiled at (Y/N) being so passionate about her plants.

Warren

Is that the one in the llama pot?

(Y/N)

Yea! he’s grown a lot since I got him *bug-eye emoji*

Warren

That’s good! :)

(Y/N)

Yeah!!!

I hate to do this but I’m really tired, so I’m going to go to sleep

Warren

That’s okay!! I’m going to watch some YouTube or something to fall asleep.

(Y/N)

Okay

Goodnight! *kissy-face emoji with closed eyes and blush* *smiling and blushing face with closed eyes with three hearts around it*

Warren

*bug-eyed emoji* night, flower

Warren set his phone off to the side and shifted to a more comfortable position before drifting off to sleep.

#warren worthington #warren worththington x mother nature #warren worthington x reader #warren worthington iii #warren worthington imagine #warren worthington iii x reader #warren worthington x you #warren worthington iii x mother nature #warren worthington x mother nature! reader #warren worthington iii x mother nature! reader #angel x reader #archangel x reader #x-men x reader #xmen x reader #x men x reader #x-men oneshot #xmen oneshot #ben hardy x reader #mother nature! reader

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abybweisse · 4 years ago

Text

Possible backstory for Bard, Part 3

⚠️ Long post.

⚠️ Some slightly graphic images (from the manga) and descriptions of warfare and death.

😅 There is a TL/DR at the end of this post for all three parts.

Here’s Part 1.

Here’s Part 2.

Bard’s uniform, hat, and other recruitment memory details

Bard mentions trenches (weird for the Apache Wars), but he also mentions Apache arrows. And poisonous snakes in Arizona. He might be mixing his various war experiences into his faked PTSD episode (the trenches might have been from a previous experience). But he must mean Terry was bitten in Arizona, during the Apache Wars, since he had much earlier told Snake he’d had a bad experience with snakes in Arizona.

The odd idea of a trench in the Apache Wars is one major detail that Yana-San seems to have overlooked. Or she has simply changed it on purpose, which is possible. I mean, it works really well for Bard’s “outbursts” to include the horror of hunkering down in trenches. And that detail could actually have come from previous experience, say during the Civil War. He just wanted to display classic symptoms of PTSD, so it doesn’t really matter if everything happened during the same battle or even the same war.

He meets Sebastian any time between later 1887 and early 1888, after Mey-Rin joins the Phantomhive household (She joined sometime in 1887) but before Chlaus’s visit in spring or summer of 1888. I’m basing the timing of Chlaus’s visit off the weather being warm enough for lemonade to be a good idea, the garden needing to be weeded, the roses already starting to have spent blooms, and Sebastian deciding to set up dinner outside in the garden.

So, here’s the scene where Bard is recruited by Sebastian.

There’s a LOT going on here.

From the spurs on their boots and the Hardee hat with the crossed swords ⚔️ on it, they are US Calvary. Like I said before, this might be the 4th US Calvary, which was one of the most decorated calvaries in US history. There would normally be a number just above where the swords cross, but this has been omitted... or there wasn’t enough room to show it. Yana-san can have them be from the “US Calvary”, in general, if she so chooses.

Bard is probably a high-ranking officer, but the rank itself is not clear. The three stars on his shoulders are for a lieutenant general.

The single stars on his coat lapels don’t make sense with the three on his shoulders, so 🤷🏻‍♀️. It’s not how you would designate a four star general. The leaf pin on his ascot is probably an oak leaf, which can mean a lieutenant colonel (silver) or an army major (gold).

I think it might be that Yana-san kept seeing “lieutenant” and got confused about the fact there are different rankings that include “lieutenant” in the name. And the star on the lapels probably just looked nice and gives the impression that he’s ranked pretty high.

Then we have this odd detail that I’m not sure anyone has mentioned before: his fallen comrade is only wearing one boot, while the unbooted foot (and leg) are mostly covered by a text bubble.

This dude was probably Terry, and that text bubble is probably covering up a swollen foot and/or leg with a gnarly snake bite wound.

The rest of the people there seem to be dead or dying. One guy looks like he might have even been partly scalped. It could also be a gunshot wound.

I looked it up, and turns out that even though the Apaches were not traditionally scalpers, they did sometimes resort to it. What’s worse is that various campaigns in the US involved rewards for the scalps of Native Americans. Some people tried so hard to make a buck this way that they would scalp Mexicans, too, and try to pass off their hair as that of a native. The tradition in Europe was to behead your enemy and bring back the entire head, but they were killing natives in such vast numbers that they switched to scalping because it was easier to carry back home to claim bigger rewards. A lot of them didn’t even kill their enemies first. They just removed part of the scalp and left them there. Yikes! Some US authorities created rules regarding how much scalp you had to cut off. The Native American tribes who engaged in this practice didn’t have the same monatary motivation, so they killed the enemy, took what they got and usually stretched it out over a hoop for decoration. If that guy in the upper right hand corner was scalped, then it was probably just a relatively small section removed, and this is likely not how he died.

Either he really is the last survivor of his troop, or they did sustain heavy casualties, though not everyone else is dead... but Terry might be the last one that Bard considered a “friend”. Then Sebastian shows up with a deal that Bard couldn’t possibly refuse. Since Sebastian can’t transport Bard to England too quickly without giving away the secret of his demonic nature, either Bard was given the money and information needed to make his own way to London (where Sebastian would take him to Phantomhive Manor), or Sebastian actually travelled the slow way, with Bard, all the way back. Makes me wonder whether our earl is also there to recruit him.

TL/DR:

Bard might have previously fought in the Civil War, when he was a teenager, and he might not originally be from Arizona. The Civil War might be where/when he first learned to make explosives.

By the time Sebastian finds him, Bard was an officer in the US Calvary: either the 4th US Calvary or some equivalent to that in the Kuroverse. The Hardee hat with the crossed swords means US Calvary, but there’s no number on this one. Because of his ranking as an officer, this is probably his hat. And that troop was probably his.

His real ranking is hard to determine because Yana-san has given him insignia that clash, but he could be (in the Kuroverse) simply a “lieutenant” of some kind, like lieutenant colonel. Honestly, Yana-san can give him any rank she wants to, since the ranking system doesn’t have to be the same in the Kuroverse.

Bard could be partly named and modeled after W. B. Royall, colonel of the 4th US Calvary from Nov. 1882 to Oct. 1887, when he retired. W. B. Royall —> B Roy —> Bardroy/Baldroy?

Bard wasn’t personally using the Gatling guns (Gatling, 1865) that were used during the later Apache Wars, since he was on horseback most of the time.

Bard would have had the use of small firearms, a sword, and various small explosives available at the time, like grenades (inventors: Adams, Ketchum, and GW Rains), land mines (GJ Rains), and dynamite (Nobel). All of those explosives were inventions of the 1860’s, too.

That far out west, and fighting enemies with way less advanced weapons, Bard and his comrades were relying on weapons technology a good twenty years old.

Trench warfare wasn’t really used in the Apache Wars because the US was the one with the more advanced weapons (and was largely on the offense), and the (mostly) defensive Apaches generally didn’t dig trenches as a war tactic. So, either Bard is jumbling various war experiences together for the grand effect of it, or Yana-san has decided to add trenches to the Apache Wars.

Sebastian finds Bard in Arizona during one of the Apache Wars. Should be one of the altercations after Geronimo was captured in 1886, but Yana-san might fudge the timeline in order to bring Geronimo into the story, since he’s so famous.

Terry was bitten by a snake in Arizona, even if that’s not really where the trenches were. And that’s probably when Sebastian found Bard, too. It best matches the timeline for the war, the uniforms, the location... and even the fallen comrade with one shoe removed and his leg hidden by a text bubble.

Bonus: Bard meets Hiram Maxim, originally a fellow American, probably after relocating to England. Maxim spent much time in England but made trips back to the US and would take various weapons and other inventions to England. The machine gun Bard uses in the circus arc is a Maxim original, invented ~1885. Even though it should have existed when Bard was fighting the Apaches, he wouldn’t have had access so far West to something this new made back East.

Edit: There is also now a Part 4/Update. And a Part 5/Addendum.

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breathings-of-the-heart · 5 years ago

Text

Imagine Levi Confessing his Love for You

A/N: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT PLEASE READ THE TEXT BELOW BEFORE PROCEEDING THANK YOU :))

HERE IS A TIMELINE / EXPLANATION / BACKGROUND INFORMATION BECAUSE CASE THE TIME SKIPS OF THIS STORY ARE CONFUSING: I’m sorry for that everyone, I know the dates are sloppy and as a whole this fic doesn’t make too much sense; I tried to edit this piece as best I could to make the story as easy to follow as possible, but seeing as I can’t unpublish part 1 or 2, the cleanup still leaves things bit unclear. These imagines were originally chapters of a longer Levi x Reader fic that I decided to discontinue, which is why there are so many loose ends. Here was my original intention for this story, broken down for the few who choose to read the Author’s Notes lol.

We are going to do this in the order of the 3 part fic (I also put attached all the links to the titles)

Part 1: Imagine Relating to Mikasa About Loving Someone in the Military

The scene is set during the events of SEASON 1 of Attack on Titan, BEFORE the Female Titan Arc. (Y/N) was also hand selected by Levi to be part of the original Special Operation Squad; she bit her hand at the dinner table along with Petra, Gunther, Eld, and Oluo to show their dedication and understanding towards Eren wayyy back in the beginning of the series. The Survey Corps is making preparations for their first attempt to go to Shiganshina since the Fall of Wall Maria and not only uncover the mole who killed captive titans Sonny and Bean, but also to get to Eren’s basement.

Part 2: To Love Another

The flashback and opening scene in the beginning of this writing piece (where (Y/N) and Hange are talking to each other) occurs shortly after (Y/N) wakes up in the infirmary room, before anyone breaks the news that she, aside from an injured Levi, is the last surviving member of Squad Levi after Annie killed the others in the Forest of Giant Trees in her female titan form. Hange’s intentions were to bring the (Y/N) and Levi together so they would be able to support each other during this mutual loss. But alas, (Y/N) accepts his rejection and the two suffer the aftermath of this tragic news alone. To read this arc for context/bonus content to get a better understanding of this mini series, see my posts (as a sort of prequel, if you will) Imagine Levi Finding you Injured on an Expedition and Imagine Being the Last Member of Squad Levi To Survive to fill that time gap :)

In real-time, all of Season 2 and Season 3 Part 1 have gone by with limited interaction between (Y/N) and Levi. This part of the story is occurring during Season 3 PART 2, (spoilers) after the Coup D'etat, and after Historia becomes Queen. (Y/N) is no longer an active soldier, having sustained injuries too severe to be reliable in combat. She remains useful to the Corps as a battle strategist, however, which allows her to stay. The Scouting Regiment is currently preparing to go to Eren’s basement in their second attempt, knowing Reiner and Berthold will be waiting for them there.

Part 3: Imagine Levi Confessing his Love for You (YOU ARE HERE)

This part takes place pretty much a week or so after the events of “To Love Another.” It is revealed how much (Y/N) has isolated herself in the months between Parts 1 and 2 from not only Levi, but Hange, the only one besides Mikasa who knew about her feelings for Levi prior to their falling out. (Y/N) confesses her feelings for Levi before the mission to Shiganshina in Season one, and the fic parallels itself and comes full circle once their final interaction occurs before the second and final mission to Shiganshina, for which, (Y/N) is unable to go for her death would be almost certain. She seen to be more valuable inside the walls, where she can carry on the duties of the Survey Corps should the entire regiment collapse during the mission. This is the final part :)

I HOPE THAT CLEARS THINGS UP!

requested by @a-single-uwo @dracq and @little-diva-gurl and a lovely anon who def isn’t the happiest that this took so long. Deepest apologies! Hope this was worth the wait. I also hope this post finds everyone safe and in good health during these crazy times <3

~~~~~

Dread bottled up in the bottom of your stomach, which threatened to fall down to your knees. Even Hange’s eyes brimmed with concern when she informed you that Levi requested your presence in his office; all of which was out of the blue, uncharacteristic, after months of him being accustomed to giving you your space.

Feigning annoyance, you stared at the soldier dummy two paces ahead, dented heavily with the marks of your punches. The sun was beating down on the early autumn day, and heat waves rose from the ground. It illuminated the glistening perspiration sliding down your figure, torso rising and falling in short breaths of exhaustion.

Hange watched you carefully from a distance. She noticed your tense muscles, clad in a sports bra and boxing shorts; the lack of attire made it impossible to hide the sudden tension and stiffness embedded in your lean muscles, a tell tale sign of distress. As a creature of observation and analytics, the Squad Leader could sense your discomfort as if it was written across your forehead.

The brunette watched you wipe the sweat off your forehead and yell in frustration, turning towards her direction and moving to land a kick at her head.

Unfazed and in possession of sharp reflexes, Hange took a step back, only to watch as you twisted mid-air and landed a 360 Crescent kick to the dummy-shaped bag, which broke open on impact under the force of the blow. Sand poured out of its opening and spilled onto the ground in a steady stream that grew less heavy as the seconds passed.

“I’ll have to admit, you are getting better, but (Y/N), don’t get your hopes up,” Hange cautioned. “The problem does not reside in your muscles. No matter how well you learn to fight like you used to, Annie crushed your ribs and threw you to the ground: it's your lungs that will never recover. You can’t come with us to Shiganshina tomorrow like this.”

Hunched over with hands on your knees, you regained a regular breathing pattern and began to feel the explosive pain in your chest. Airways blocked, you began coughing, willing the oxygen to enter your body.

“Let me humor myself, Hange-san. If I don’t try, I might go insane.”

It was almost tragic that such a young soldier was out of commission; you were full of promise, rivalling Mikasa in skill. Hange knew you were itching to do what you trained for your whole life: Coming to Shiganshina and putting it all on the line had always been your number one goal. You didn’t want to be left behind again, to die bitter and alone without the only people you cared about.

“Regardless, (Y/N), you’re stalling,” Hange smoothly shifted the topic of conversation back to what brought her to you in the first place. “He still has that power over you, huh?”

"It'll pass eventually," you sighed, hoping the words were true.

You bowed towards the tall female. She smiled in return, shaking her head softly.

Whilst pacing away, said person stopped you once more.

“(Y/N). For what it’s worth, I stand by what I said before. Don’t look so nervous, okay?”

Her words replayed in your head, a haunting ghost of the not-so-long ago past. Time was strange, that way. It seemed like everything happened yesterday yet in another lifetime, all at once. “He loves you, more than he’s ever loved anyone. Surely you know that.”

Stupid, you thought, how I might have believed it once.

As you made your way down the hall, numbness crept into your body once again. You were too proud to admit you were afraid, especially with the Section Commander’s radiating sympathy, but everyone knew the once friendly dynamic between you and the Captain transformed into one more distant and cold. With each step towards the door, you felt the icy chill grow and that fact alone shook you to the core.

But it didn’t matter, seeing as Levi was of superior authority. There was no way around it.

Your hand shook as it raised to knock.

~~~~~~

“Name and business,” Levi spoke, voice muffled by the closed door.

“It’s (Y/N), sir. I was hoping to speak with you.”

There was a pause, and in that time you considered the option of fleeing back to your room and retreating back to a life of emotional safety, normality. It wasn’t too late to forget.

It had been a week since you spoke to Mikasa on the rooftop, after realizing the deep shit your heart decided to put you in. You didn’t think Levi would notice the distracted nature of your behavior-- tried to make it as subtle as possible whilst you figured out what you felt for him.

But before you could explore other options, Levi muttered a stern “enter.” You knew with the first expedition back to Shiganshina tomorrow, and the prospect of death closer than it has ever been on a mission, it was now or never.

The room was dim, small, warm, and thick with building tension. Shadows danced across the Captain’s face, sharp features lit by an orange flame. Only candlelight, sourced at his desk, assisted your adjusting eyes.

Your nose was hit with the smell of tea and cleaning products upon entry. This fact made you smile despite your bundling nervous energy. It was a familiar place, filled with memories of late night conversations (granted, of mostly you speaking and him listening), witnessed only by the large piles of paperwork. It started here and resulted in a natural, growing fondness kept secret to all except you two and the moon looking in from the window.

This man was your squad leader, your commander, your trusted comrade. There was no need to be afraid-- Not unless of course, you held the potential to shatter such damn a delicate relationship.

And you did.

Was it worth it?

Your gaze gravitated towards the center of the room where the Lance Corporal sat. And in that instant, your smile evaporated instantly. He placed his pen down, gracefully resting his cheek on his fist and lazily tossing the raven locks out of his eyes-- they landed on you, piercing yet drowsy and indifferent upon first glance. He was beautiful, as always. The allure was nearly sickening; unfair to the rest of the world.

Looking closer, however, he was anything but relaxed. The observant eye could see his countenance stirred something different. He seemed sharp and focused, ready to dart out and wrap himself around your heart, squeezing tighter with every breath you took. And you felt it-- the heart palpitations, which got worse at the sight of him.

He seemed… different. Dangerous, like a storm stirring in the distance, and the inevitable downpour that comes with it. The dark circles under his eyes told tales about the insomnia; a fresh cup of caffeinated black tea even rested on his left, steam rising out of it. And whilst attraction was undeniable, your concern always came first.

Levi was never quite good at getting proper rest before a mission.

“(Y/N),” The word was breathy, yet his voice was rough.

You shuffled in your spot, your name on his tongue making your stomach churn with desire.

Levi seemed to pick up on your affliction, getting out of his chair and gliding towards you. Everything happened fast and slow all at once, starting off with a momentaneous rush of air and the collision of your back with the office wall. A small shriek filled the air, out of place against the silence; was that your voice? The pain should’ve been there, but it wasn’t.

Then the seconds dragged out. Levi was a new person, setting your skin aflame as he gripped your wrists and pinned them against the wall. His lips brushed your eartips, which turned red the instant the raven’s breath fanned over them. This normally reserved, disciplined man unleashed something you had never seen before.

“Finally ready to talk to me about why you’ve been acting so strange, brat?” he whispered.

This wasn’t supposed to be so dirty. He was angry, but the mood was established in layers: something more sinister existed beneath.

The scent of fresh pine filled your nostrils until your brain went foggy. Levi was close--so close, and with the fact that you’ve been avoiding him mixed in with the fact that you missed him for it, all bets were off: there was no stopping the words that came out of your mouth next.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” you whispered back, looking him dead in the eyes, no fear this time.

His grip on your wrist slackened.

“Hm?”

You took in a deep breath, ready to leave it all on the line, and spoke.

“I like you a lot, sir. And not in a comradery type of way. I-I just thought I’d tell you before, you know, we leave tomorrow.” Your gaze found the floor again, too timid for your own good. But the statement was said, and it was finite; there was no turning away from it.

The Captain’s eyes went wide and gleamed brightly at you. His chest felt lighter and as he looked down at you in speechless awe, staring at anything but his face in your adorable embarrassment, he realized exactly why your absent look irked him those days ago. Why your lack of enthusiasm and lighthearted-ness gave him a strange sense of frustration.

Levi never felt more awake, more hyper aware of his surroundings.

The feeling of your chest pressed against him, the heat of those rosy cheeks, the pounding within his ribcage, the moon hitting your pretty face. With your figure in his arms, after the blissful seconds passed, everything felt, for once, okay.

Until it wasn’t.

Gaining the courage to look back up at him, you all but tore apart at the scowl on his face as demons flitted through his beautiful brain and polluted the image of happiness. Levi grew more indignant by the second, all but throwing your arms he held back at your sides like they were poison to the touch.

Tears pooled in your eyes as the soft expression you didn’t get to see turned sour, disgusted-- the Captain’s lips curling into a snarl as he imagined what he could lose if he opened up his heart for this girl in front of him to take. The risk and pain of falling for someone, in the world the two of you lived in. And all the stoic man could think was how he allowed this charade to come so far.

No, he wouldn't allow it.

“Get out, (L/N)” he commanded, harsh and unforgiving.

You were trembling, body feeling detached from reality as it moved, convincing itself that it was simply a nightmare. Levi’s cruel demeanor all but shattered you as you looked wide-eyed and his anger grew, the short man pacing behind his desk and bringing a hand over his face. His free one crumpled into a fist, knuckles turning white as he slammed it on the wood, the loud bang making you jump; the fear, grief, confusion coming all at once until it choked you and your vision spotted black.

“I said GET OUT!”

The room stilled and Levi looked up to face you cowering near the door, a single tear rolling down your cheek. He stilled at the sight, the weight of his words dawning upon him.

“I-I’m sorry,” you gasped before racing out of the room.

Had you looked back, you would’ve seen Levi’s outstretched hand betraying his body, desperately reaching out for you, gray eyes filled with pain.

But you knew now you’d never be dumb enough to spare him that second glance-- and maybe that was the right call, seeing as his feet moved in the direction you left, only to shut the door left askew in your wake.

~~~

The Captain’s gaze was on you more than necessary, but it was clear the two of you had the same thought: You focused everything into this discussion, melting into the emotionally-detached soldier your duty commanded, just like Levi did. His words had no ulterior motive, no deeper meaning. They were monotonous and empty.

Or so you thought.

Levi stood up the second you came in, but your gaze fell to the ground in submission.

“Hange said you needed to see me, Captain?” your voice was small and weak; you kicked yourself for it. How pathetic.

“Damn you...”

The man said nothing more, brushing his fingers along your cheekbones and you everything hit you like whiplash, the memories. Levi ran them along your face, down to your chin to lift it gently, so that for once you’d let your eyes meet instead of looking at the ground like a coward.

When they did the man’s breath hitched in his throat, because although your (eye color) orbs were no longer as vibrant, they were still beautiful and entrancing; why hadn’t he ever appreciated them before?

"I missed you, brat," he spoke firmly.

You felt a churn in your abdomen as you watched his eyes study the details of your face and take in every feature, committing it to memory painfully slow. You were paralyzed, his face inches away from yours and forcing buried emotions to resurface as months of restraint came undone. He didn’t speak, holding you delicately after not being this close for far too long and discerning what he’s been missing.

“Um, Captain? What are you...?"

You bit your lip, feeling puzzled and confused as you remembered the hate in Levi's orbs the last time you saw him like this.

All you could see now was how quickly his emotions shifted from serenity to fury that fateful night, and as you recollected the way Levi lashed out, all chaos and fury, he retracted his hand.

And you flinched away.

The Captain froze.

“Don’t-- don’t fucking do that,” he growled, his urgency startling. “I would never hurt you, (Y/N).”

Your eyebrows furrowed, all inhibition thrown out the window the second Levi’s countenance flashed with hurt at your response to his touch. You let your fear go and emotions free at the irony of the raven’s statement. Your mind went into overdrive, recounting every instance you wanted to give up and leave, drown in yourself, give up on finding purpose in the aftermath of rejection and Squad Levi’s death and your permanent injury changing your way of life. Things you faced alone, because instead of rekindling any semblance of a relationship, Levi tossed everything away and berated you for feeling.

The man who resided here cut your heart expertisely like the countless swords he wielded then disposed. He did not have the right to look at you so kindly; did not have to right to fan the flames of false hope. But here he was, procrastinating until the very last day to take initiative regarding those actions.

“Why are you doing this?” you whispered, forgetting your composure.

“I’d advise you not to speak in riddles,” Levi spoke in a low and even voice, no real malice as he addressed you and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

You took a deep breath and fought to remain calm, grabbing Levi's wrist to keep him from touching you.

“Please don’t toy with me, or mock my feelings like this. Why did you call me here? You made it plenty clear how you feel about me, Levi. What else is there to say?" you begged, the lack of closure driving you insane.

This was the first time you used his name, an unprecedented amount of spite and pain expressed through it, because you wanted Levi to remember this moment. It was over: that time of feeling sorry and ashamed of yourself for being nothing other than human. The remorse was gone, and the heartache was fleeting.

“Tell me, dammit!”

His was overflowing.

“You want to know how I really feel about you, (Y/N)!?” the Captain shouted, voice rising because for a man who relied on impulse and action on the battlefield it was fucking frustrating, watching the woman in front of him live this way for the simple reason that he was not good with words. "The thoughts that go through my head when you can't even bear to look at me?!"

"No, that's not what I asked. I already know that you don't--"

"--Fuck this."

Relying on instinct to guide him, Levi leaned forward and kissed you.

The second his lips met yours, you melted on the spot, knees giving out beneath you. Tongue sliding into your mouth, Levi simultaneously lifted you into the air, feeling lightheaded as you moaned into him, eagerly returning the kiss. His hands were everywhere, grasping at your waist, clutching the back of your head, running down your thighs. You were in such a state of euphoria that nothing else existed.

Your own digits threaded through Levi’s raven locks and pulled needily, emitting a growl from his throat as he bit down on your lower lip. He reveled in the feeling of your legs around his waist as your soft lips worked against his own, hungry and relentless. The kiss was passionate and you’d imagined it a million times over, but this-- Levi successfully ruined you for any other man.

The need for oxygen pulled you apart, Levi’s strong arms keeping you in the air as his eyes remained shut; he pecked your lips once, then twice, savoring the moment until it mournfully passed.

He was hesitant to break the silence, but you deserved it. You waited long enough to hear the truth, and he knew his time was running out; you weren’t going to wait for him forever.

“(Y/N)...” he began to speak, forehead resting on yours as he panted softly to catch his breath. “I dreamt of you last night. I have been for days.”

“Levi--”

“--Just listen,” he interrupted, unable to stop himself from kissing you softly once more. “Neither of us are running away this time.”

You fell silent as the man let you down, pulling you into his solid chest as you buried your face in his shirt, patiently listening. His calm heartbeat thrummed soothingly in your ears like a metronome.

“Isabel, Farlan, Oluo, Petra, Gunther, Eld. They all knew that what they meant to me. And I them."

One of the only things that made it easier to say goodbye, you thought with a bittersweet pang in your chest.

"With us, it's different. I died in every dream, (Y/N). Every one. And in every single one, you lived on believing I never loved you. Call me selfish, but I...”

You pulled away from the stoic man, searching his gaze as he trailed off. Shyly, you interlaced your fingers, his larger hand enveloping yours and you prayed to whoever was listening upstairs that all of this was real.

“I just can't leave until you understand...”

He clutched you impossibly tighter, eyes squeezing shut.

"...that you, are everything."

~~~ Extended Ending ~~~

A soft hum filled the air, the tune dreamy and sweet as you repeated the melody once again. You smiled warmly as hands wound around your waist, pulling you closer to a toned and shirtless Captain Levi, silken sheets tossed haphazardly on top of the two of you. His breath sent goosebumps on your neck as he kissed your shoulder gently, warmth deliciously intoxicating.

Giggling now, you turned around to face him, the man’s onyx hair ticking you softly. You captured your lips in his with one smooth movement and snuggled closer, taking in the small slice of heaven that was home in his arms, legs tangled together. Feeling unbelievably content, like your heart might burst, you leaned forward and rubbed your nose against Levi's.

Although he wasn't smiling, the look he was giving you revealed his own sensation of happiness.

“I never thought you’d be the cuddling type,” you remarked devilishly, scrunching up your nose as you teased him.

Though your tone was lighthearted, you were painfully aware that the moment was ending. You internally cursed the sun as it started to set, orange light peeking in through the window shades to signal the coming of night. Levi said nothing, looking deeply into your eyes, and like always, it felt as if he could read the contents of your soul.

But it wasn’t vulnerability you felt: on the contrary, you knew you would never find as safe a place as here. With him. Finally.

“Levi...” you swallowed, humor all but gone. “Now you have to come home.”

To emphasize your point you sat up on the bed, legs tucked neatly underneath you as you stared imperatively at your lover.

“Mhm. We’ve wasted enough time,” he agreed, taking you by the wrist to pull you back on top of him, to bask in this personal paradise if only for another minute.

#levi ackerman x reader #lance corporal levi #LEVI ACKERMAN #snk #shingeki no kyojin #AoT #attack on titan #attack on titan imagines #attack on titan x reader #snk imagines #Captain Levi #snk season 3 #aot x reader #levi x reader #levi ackerman fanfiction #levi ackerman imagine

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lilatreus · 4 years ago

Note

im new to the ac fandom and i didnt know there were any books should i be reading them?? or are there certain ones that i absolutely need to read or would i be okay if i skip them?

Yeah it’s okay to skip them if you want! They’re mostly there to give some more insight on some of the characters. If you want to read them but you don’t have to money to buy the books, you can read them here. I actually have all the books already on paper copy so I would definitely recommend buying them if you really enjoy them.

There’s also some comics and graphic novels about them too which I have included in on the master list. They actually follow the modern storyline of you want to read up on that. If you want to read them just do readcomicsonline. They have them all, only watch out for ads.

Anyway here’s the master list, it’s pretty long won’t lie:

The books, in order of strictly historical events:

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey by Gordon Doherty (2018)

Basically this books gives the canonical story to assassin’s creed odyssey following Kassandra around Greece. If you had the “best” or good ending from the story then you’re probably going to be upset with the book. I actually liked it and if you were ever confused about the game then this is definitely for you to read.

Assassin’s Creed Origins: Desert Oath by Oliver Bowden (2017)

This book takes place years before Origins. It follows Bayek who a teenager at the time. We learn how Bayek and Aya start their relationship and it kind of explains some of the side missions that talk about Bayek’s past. If you love Bayek and Aya’s relationship you will love this book.

[ insert for whenever an ac valhalla book is written ]

Assassin’s Creed: The Secret Crusade by Oliver Bowden (2011)

This book is the one I’m currently rereading, so it takes place with the father of Marco Polo talking about Altaïr’s life. It talks about his—Altaïr’s—dad within the first few chapters, events that happened in the game, and then what happens after. It gives more insight on what happened between the events of ac one and the little bits of scenes we see in ac revelations of Altaïr in game. If you want to know how Maria and Altaïr got together you’ll like this book it’s very sweet and I love how smitten Altaïr was. If you love Atlmal (Altaïr and Malik) you’ll also like this book but it will crush you.

Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance by Oliver Bowden (2009)

This follows Ezio through assassin’s creed two. Literally just the book version of the game. Does talk about how Ezio and Cristina got together and a few of the memories you get to play in Brotherhood are in this book. I like it. It pretty much follows the game exactly so if you want to skip it, you can but still a really good book that I recommend reading.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden (2010)

Follows the plot of the game. It’s pretty similar to it as opposed to a few differences. While I like this book, I will always say the game is better than this book entirely. Still, it’s pretty good and explains a lot of plot.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations by Oliver Bowden (2011)

It explains why Ezio is doing what he does in the game. Why he’s there and what is reasoning is. You get a little small bit about Claudia but that’s it. Ezio does, in book, visit Leonardo on the last few days before the artist dies :( that’s pretty much it. Only some minor differences to the game. If you’re looking for something about Desmond, you won’t find it in this book.

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag by Oliver Bowden (2013)

I’ll be honest I only read this book once so my memory is pretty poor on it but from what I can remember it’s about Edward and Caroline and how they got together. And then there’s something about Anne Boney and Edward towards the end I believe. Kind of explains his backstory from the little scenes we’re shown in the game I think? (Correct me if I’m wrong on this one but I’m certain that’s the gist of it).

Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken by Oliver Bowden (2012)

This one was the first assassin’s creed book I read. Now fair warning: if you do not like Haytham Kenway, I strongly advise you to not read this book. It is all about Haytham until the final few chapters and then Connor takes over the book once you’ve killed him in game. This book explains how he (Haytham) came to be apart of the Templars and how Edward dies. It talks about his relationship with Ziio and how he built the Templar order up during the seven years war. I’ll be honest it was okay when I first read it because I was like 11 and the only other thing I had read was like just percy jackson. Looking back on this book though, it’s not that great. I do not like Haytham at all so I, personally, would not recommend this book. I went in reading it expecting for it to be about Connor and I was very disappointed and upset that it wasn’t. So you can skip this book if you like because the only thing it does is give insight to a lot of what Haytham does.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity by Oliver Bowden (2014)

This is my favorite book. This is about Arno reading Elise’s diary after she passed. There’s little bits where Arno writes in here and there throughout the novel. It’s pretty sad I won’t lie. Explains how Elise grew up, what she did during the parts where we didn’t see her in game, and talks about how she felt during the parts where we did see her in game. Basically at the end of the book it’s Elise asking Arno to please help seek unity and stop the war between the Templars and Assassins.

Assassin’s Creed: Underworld by Oliver Bowden (2015)

This book follows Jayadeep Mir, also known to us as Henry Green. There’s two parts to this book. The first part takes place six years before the events of syndicate and you get to really learn about the twin’s father and then the second part takes place during the events of the game. It talks about Evie and Henry’s relationship during the second part and it’s pretty good!

There are no books about assassin’s creed chronicles (ac China, India, and Russia) if you’re wondering why they’re missing :(

The comics:

*most of these take place during the modern storyline I’ll try my best to explain when they come in and how it adds up to the new our modern storyline at the end

Assassin’s Creed the Fall

There’s three issues with this it’s just a graphic novel honestly. Takes place with the main character from AC Chronicles: Russia

Assassin’s Creed the Chain

Graphic Novel sequel to the Fall

Assassin’s Creed Brahman

Written by the same people who wrote The Fall and The Chain, however this focuses on Arbaaz Mir who is the main character from Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India.

Now from what I’ve seen, correct me if I’m wrong, but the templar and assassin comics pretty much take place around the same time.

Assassin’s Creed: Trial by Fire

Assassin’s Creed issue #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

Assassin’s Creed Templars: Black Cross

Assassin’s Creed Templars issue #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

Assassin’s Creed: Setting Sun

Assassin’s Creed issue #6, #7, #8, #9, #10

Assassin’s Creed Templars: Cross of War

Assassin’s Creed Templars issue issue #6, #7, #8, #9

Assassin’s Creed: Homecoming

Assassin’s Creed issue #11, #12, #13, #14

Assassin’s Creed: Uprising

Common Ground Vol 1: issue #1, #2, #3, #4

Infection Point Vol 2: issue #5, #6, #7, #8

Finale vol 3: #9, #10, #11, #12

Assassin’s Creed Reflections (pretty much a stand alone I would say, focuses entirely on past assassins but canon to the templar comics).

Reflections 1: modern story focuses on Otso Berg historical story focuses on Ezio where we learn Ezio is implied to have hooked up with the woman who in the Mona Lisa painting.

Reflections 2: same thing for modern story but now Otso is looking into Altaïr’s story. We get to see Maria, Altaïr, and their son Darim.

Reflections 3: Otso is now looking into Edward Kenway.

Reflections 4: Otso looks into Connor and we see him with his daughter. It’s super cute this issue is my favorite.

Last Descendants

The Last Descendants (Novel)

Locus: issues 1 - 4

The Last Descendants: Tomb of the Khan (novel)

The Last Descendants: Fate of the Gods (novel)

Assassin’s Creed: the French Books (these have all been translated into english and theyre all graphic novels).

These books I would say to skip. If you want to read it you can, however the modern storyline has been said to no longer be canon anymore. The historical storyline however is still canon but not actually necessary to the plot of anything.

Cycle 1

Assassin’s Creed 1: Desmond

Assassin's Creed 2: Aquilus

Assassin's Creed 3: Accipiter

Assassin's Creed 4: Hawk

Assassin's Creed 5: El Cakr

Assassin's Creed 6: Leila

Cycle 2

Assassin’s Creed: Conspiracies

This takes place during WW2

Vol 1: Die Glocke

Vol 2: Project Rainbow

Cycle 3

Assassin’s Creed: Bloodstone

This takes place during the Vietnam War. A follow up on Conspiracies.

Vol 1: book one

Vol 2: book two

The last two I have listed (Conspiracies and Bloodstone) are canon to the comics’ modern storyline as well as the historical. Cycle one is not. They’re both graphic novels. Also I want to say that I have not read these two yet so idk if I’ll be allowed to recommend them but they’re there. I have no idea where they’re placed in terms of modern storyline bc these two are very confusing seeing as they originally were canon then told they weren’t and now they are again.

Other comics that I really have no idea where to place but they do exist if you want to read them:

Assassin’s Creed: Origins (mini series)

Four issues for this comic takes place following Aya and her journey. You get to see what happens with Cleopatra. I personally really like this comic you get some lore on the Brotherhood and Aya so it’s good. Read this after the video game. (Pretty positive it takes place after the game events but before the DLC: hidden ones)

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla: Song of Glory (mini series)

There are three issues in this. Haven’t read this one yet, however it focuses on Eivor. Read this alongside the video game.

Okay so for canon timeline purposes here is the exact order of everything I’ve listed and where they fall in for strictly the modern storyline:

1 The Fall and the Chain (also called subject four which is just the two of the books into one)

2 Desmond’s story

3 Brahman

4 Assassin’s Creed: Trial by Fire 1 - 5

5 Assassin’s Creed Templars: Black Cross 1 - 5

6 Assassin’s Creed: Setting Sun 6 - 10

6 Assassin’s Creed Templars: Cross of War 6 - 9

7 Assassin’s Creed: Homecoming 11 - 14

Assassin’s Creed Reflections (stand alone don’t have to read if you don’t want to but if you do, read along side the templar stories.)

8 Assassin’s Creed Syndicate modern storyline takes place here

9 Assassin’s Creed: Uprising

10 Origins modern storyline starts here and continues for assassin’s creed odyssey and valhalla*

*If you’re confused as to why Juno isn’t in the game plot anymore the comics explains it. Ubisoft has completely moved her story to the comics entirely and in doing so completely finished the story.

#assassin’s creed #Desmond miles #assassin’s creed comics #assassin’s Creed books #ac master post #assassin’s creed masterpost #I’m not tagging all these games I’m sorry #I didn’t include the movie bc a lot of fans will probably argue over that and I’m not dealing with it #if you catch a mistake please let me know!#also I hope this doesn’t look too messy bc I tried to organize and explain it best I could #asks #anon

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roseyful · 3 years ago

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Mars Red: Edge of the Nightmare - Review

Now, my Tumblr has been a bit quiet lately (been queuing a lot of things so then it wasn’t too quiet during my absence), but it has been for a good reason; last month I was approached [on my private twitter account] and asked if I would be able to playtest a game and write a review, and of course, being someone that enjoys games, especially those that follow an otome style, I had to say YES.

So its proud to say that after a while of playing the game, I finally get to write this review.

Now before I get into the game itself, I would like to take the moment to give appreciation to the team for being so helpful during my time of playtesting the game and before that, as not only would they let us know when there was an issue and the date had to be pushed back, they were so polite and helpful whenever I would run into a problem. That’s something you’d want to see in a gaming company and I’m so glad that my first experience with this company is one with positive results. I personally found no issues with the team themselves, and I do hope they keep this up after the release. Thank you favary for being so lovely and patient with me, and other beta testers.

Mars Red: Edge of The Nightmare was the game that they asked for me to play, however when I originally looked at their website, I couldn’t help but notice that the concept was originally one of a ‘Sound Theatre’, and while I couldn’t figure out what that was, I eventually was lead down a rabbit hole and ended up looking at the other things that Bun-O Fujisawa has worked in. Very interesting stuff, just like the game. However, it’s best to look at his other stuff in your own time.

Please note: I will be keeping this spoiler-free for the sake of letting people go in with no idea of what’s going on besides what I mention and on the website.

Story

The game is set in the early twentieth century in Japan, or better known as the Taisho, in which the website also says ‘[is] influenced by Romanticism’, in which vampires rule the night, as they could only feed off blood and those that stepped into the sun would surely die. Keen senses, incredible physical abilities, and yet they were still vulnerable. You see that very early on with the main character that we play as; Yutsufusa Yuki, a vampire whom became one against his will.

I will be honest, I did not like Yutsufusa when I first started playing, as I felt like he was a bit too willing to die, but that is something that you can overlook when you get further into the story. Yutsufusa is obviously one of the youngest in the group, due to the fact he wears the more ‘modern’ [at the time] clothing out of everyone, well, there is someone else who wears similar clothing but he’s human.

You control Yutsufusa throughout the game, influencing his voices and living his life through his eyes, him acting as the reader insert as you learn about the other characters and begin to grow a bond with them. While the story is a bit slow at first, it does start picking up around the middle-end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 2 after you play the prologue, as you begin to assist “Code Zero” in their work to rid the world of vampires that wish to feast on humans..

Be mindful that there is an anime, however, Yutsufusa does not appear in it, as it focuses on the other main characters, so if you have watched the anime already be sure to remember that they’re either two separate timelines or different points in time. I do not want to confuse anyone with this.

The main cast is quite an interesting bunch, as it covers a wide range of personalities, and sometimes even time periods as you play through the game and unlock things; you might say you might learn a bit of history from it if you end up looking up some of the references I’ve found in the game. This is a great reflection on the idea of ‘immortality, and even has moments where said immortality leans into a few jokes (such as knowledge of birds).

If you’ve played games such as ‘Ikemen Revolution’, you may be familiar with the ticket system. Every day you’re allowed a certain amount of tickets to progress through the story, however, if you run out of tickets and you must read more, then you’re able to progress the story via using ‘amber’, the game’s currency that you can use for different functions. However, this is not needed, as every day your tickets will be replenished. I personally found myself not even needing to use my amber, as I would always wait for the next day. There are mini-stories that you can get if you finish a chapter within a certain amount of time, but I personally don’t find them to progress the story a lot after I read the first one I got. Then again I had other things to occupy my time while I wanted as well. If you wish to reread chapters, you get a bonus third option of currency; coins. Coins can be used to reread chapters in the place of amber or tickets, which means that you can grind out coins via the exploration option in order to see more options (looked at a bit later).

I personally found the story to be engaging, between the use of minigames (or investigations, covered a bit later), it broke up the reading with fun activities that progressed the story.

Is the game an Otome?

No! I was shocked as well when I saw the all-male cast since I was wondering if I was playing a boys love game, but in the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this is actually a detective game. While it may carry the usual look of an otome, with the story and choices of how you speak influencing the endings of chapters, the game more feels like one of finding new friends and solving kick-ass investigations than finding romance. It’s refreshing.

This is especially true between the minigames in which helps influence the story that is all very unique in their own way and do not seem repetitive once you get into the flow of how they work.

Minigames

The minigames come forward in two forms; investigation, interrogation, and infer. Investigation sounds exactly how you’d expect, as you have to poke around and look at things, which you can review in a little notebook that sits in the top right of your screen in the case you need to review what you’ve looked at. When I was first launched into this section for the first time, I had a little trouble remembering exactly what I needed to look at (as I was given a set of things to tap), however, I do have to thank the team for thinking ahead and adding the option to be able to watch ads in order to see what you need to do. This was one of the two times I’d have to watch ads, as they don’t shove them in your face every few seconds like most mobile games do which is rather nice. Sometimes you gain information or items that you have to use later, so it’s a good idea to keep track of what you look at.

Interrogation acts as a question-based information gathering, in which you talk to NPCs in order to gather information to use in the investigation. Like Investigation, these points are put into your notebook for later.

Infer takes the first two investigation segments and combines the information, as you now get interrogated by one of the main characters, and you must respond back with the proper information in order to make sure that this segment is successful. You are able to read back on the notes from the other segments at this point by pressing the button with the book icon in the upper right corner, as this aids you in selecting the right answers. When I first came to this section, I did feel under pressure due to it, but it was interesting to see the negative answers from the character if I got it wrong.

Exploration is another part of the game, that while outside the story, there are parts that require a certain amount of story points in order to clear ‘point blocks’. This is where you get the coins from and frankly is good to use once you have finished using all your tickets for the day and want to use the rest of the time to grind coins. During the exploration, you set up 2 characters, a place, and a set [in real life] time of how long you want them to be out and about. Depending on the number of points earned, you may earn something called a ‘mummer’, which reveals more about the characters you chose to send out, and even get dialogue of the characters interactions (which can be pretty funny in itself) that shows the dynamic of the two characters- are they friends? Are things tense? You get to learn more by sending them out together.

Artstyle

As an artist, I was incredibly pleased with the art of the game, as the characters do not look the game, there are different body types and ages (from teen to elder), you never had to look at the same face twice for two characters. I will be honest, I do wish the characters were a bit more ‘animated’ with their expressions (such as body movement when they’re feeling certain emotions), however other than that, the sprites are magnificent.

The backgrounds are also really interesting to look at and even tell so much story before you even start investigating within the investigation sections. The design team also needs props, because while a few characters are wearing similar outfits, they’re all wearing them in different ways which shows their character and even the way they probably fight. Though I will say I am a bit biased towards Takeuchi, then again, I really enjoy fun and loud characters in general, and his hair is interesting in a sea of mostly black, purple, silver or blonde hair. Maybe will make a fanart of him in the future if I learn to draw his eyepiece. (on that note, please release the full sprites for us artists to reference, we’d love you eternally for it haha).

Oh no, it’s a-

Yes, its a bit of a gacha game, however, you do not need to actually play the gachas in order to progress through the game; it mostly just unlocks bits of story for those that want to have extra stories, or just want that extra dose of dopamine (haha, me). As someone who plays gacha games ever since they turned 13, I was glad that this game isn’t actually gacha centric, and thus is very free-to-play friendly due to this.

Who would I recommend this for and would I recommend it myself?

Personally, I think this is a game that suits the niche of those that enjoy a good mystery and even play those ‘find an item’ games, mixed in with those that enjoy reading otomes and history. Maybe even someone that enjoys theatre since there’s a character that does theatre. Would I personally recommend it? Yes, I would. The game is very interesting and engaging, the staff behind the game are so lovely.

Once more, here’s the game’s website link ❤️: https://marsred-game.net/en/

#Mars Red #Mars Red: Edge of The Nightmare #otome #game review #otome review #mobile game #mobile otome

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