#this confusion and resentment is what drives me to make a true story out of this world

[kopivie]

oh and for the record, i don't hate god. i just don't understand why christianity and catholicism seem to use fear and punishment as its way of keeping people in line.

growing up, what made me happiest was engaging in honors with my friends. (for context, pathfinders to adventists is what boy/girl scouts are to literally everyone else, but with added evangelism, camping, outreach, etc.) i loved attending youth congress every january, where i could be in a fancy hotel and learn how to become a leader in my adventist community. i love -- and still love -- teaching drilling and marching and drumming in a drum corps. hell, my favorite method of evangelism was standing in a subway station with my club and singing and praying for people who just needed some comfort for the day.

what bothered me to my core was the constant need for the adults to whip us into shape using religious threats. what would god say? don't use his name in vain (which, for the record, is completely different from what i was told growing up). god hates transgender people. we will never hold gay marriages. even if you are gay and a dedicated adventist, we can fix that. bad things happen to you because god said it was supposed to happen to you.

ooh, and my all-time favorite: if you're depressed, just give it all to god and he'll fix it.

but i thought this was part of his plan? oh, was me being suicidal a step too far?

i fully understand that human beings need to cling on to something higher than themselves. that's why we have astrology and several different religions (nontheistic religions included). the feeling that the universe has something planned for you, or that some higher power will comfort you when no one else will is... a nice thought. even though i avoid church like the plague, i still find myself relinquishing my troubles to god in a pinch. (hell, i'm listening to gospel right now to ease my anxiety so i can focus on studying.)

the thing that steers me away from religion, however, is the lack of agency that i apparently have. god's time isn't working for me. the rest of the world isn't like me, might not know god the way i know him. the world doesn't function on god's clock -- the world functions on a 24-hour or 12-hour clock, okay? i have deadlines, payments to make, things at risk. i can't wait around for god to help me. and oh no, god forbid i get mad with god in my impatience – there are several stories in which people are harshly punished for that. it's almost like being a human being with natural emotions is punishable by death in lots of scenarios.

or in my case, punishable by social exile. bc in the end, the issue will always be with the churchgoers and not the deity itself. (in my story it's the other way around, but we move.) the people who watched me grow up, even close family friends, all treated me like a pariah because i did things like cut and dye my hair and get piercings. i was a babysitter and role model for many kids -- suddenly, their parents are telling them to stay away from me and giving me dirty looks. god's not doing that – the people are.

but that's how you end up with people like me; people who don't know where to direct their frustrations and anger and resentment. do i blame the people? do i blame god? do i blame myself? and if i withdraw my faith in god, can i stop feeling this terrible? where does his plan end and mine begin?

idk, man. religion is weird. you can see why i want to explore this idea of humans relying on themselves instead of a higher power that quite frankly, can't be trusted.

[mclennonlgbt]

Combination of McLennon and Paul is dead

This is a post that I found on "Paul Is Dead: Examining The Life And Death of James Paul McCartney" FB group.

When this person writes "ShepLennon", they mean Billy Sheard (aka Faul) x Lennon.

They are confused but they've got a spirit lmao.

"*Bear with me a long post:

“McLennon” was not real. But SHEPLennon may well have been, and that solves a mystery…

Among Beatle fans there are some who believe that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were lovers from an early age. That they were soulmates, no one disputes, but there are many who disagree about John and Paul being the couple known as “McLennon”. Paul was extremely promiscuous with women, and seemed to put up with the fact that John seemed to be in love with him, or at least would get jealous. George Harrison famously told of a night in Hamburg where Paul was shagging some bird and John walked in, had a fit and cut up the girl’s clothes with scissors.

There are some pics of John and Paul gazing at each other with affection – as you’d expect from closely bound young men going through something unprecedented together. You can also find photos of J&P also looking with similar fondness at George and Ringo (they would practically sit on top of each other), all through 1963 and 1964, and part-ways through 1965.*** (More on this another time.)

Within the “McLennon” fandom, there is this great ‘mystery’. They all wonder why the breakup and the acrimony, etc, which makes no sense to them.

The thing is, the break up of the Beatles, the ugliness of it and the lingering distrust and resentment CAN’T make sense unless you understand that in September of 1966, Paul was assassinated and by November replaced by William Shepherd.

And that (because the Beatles initially believed that Paul had died in an accident, therefore having no reason to resent him, personally) the deeply grieving band initially had no personal issues re Billy, beyond wishing he’d not been ‘necessary’ (or ordered). It’s true that George, Paul’s OLDEST friend, never took to Billy, but John and Ringo go on fine with him.

Were Paul and John lovers? The man who sometimes comes into these forums and calls himself Liam Steen (who, like Billy and all of the MPL plants tells some truth mixed in with misinformation) said “No”. He emphatically and repeatedly said Paul McCartney was straight, and that he never did drop acid. Steen also said (emphatically) that JOHN and BILLY WERE attracted to each other, at least, and may have been lovers.

Photographs, videos, and gifs of John and Billy throughout 1967 and up through the recording of “Hey Bulldog” seem to bear this out. Lots of pictures of John and Billy walking through London with Martha the dog (likely Billy’s ‘familiar’) or driving together, and what seems to be some clear flirtatious ‘like lovers’ gazing, and touching.

Yoko told a story of Billy being called “John’s princess” by the staff at EMI, and also of hearing John calling out “for Paul” in a very needy, vulnerable way. Which sounds like she heard them having sex, but I digress.

All of that ENDS after the trip to India, where some sort of ritual was performed, connected to Paul (and using an artifact of Paul’s) that left the other three, most particularly John, completely traumatized, and for the rest of their lives.

The break was the beginning of Billy’s eventual ‘breakdown’ as the band no longer wanted to work with him (probably why he became so overcontrolling during the White Album) and John’s almost immediate attachment to Yoko. Both Linda and Yoko were alums of Sarah Lawrence College (a known ‘spook’-feeding school) and the men eventually married them within a week of each other… like lovers trying to piss each other off, or show that they were moving on. But John and Billy never did move on.

First they fought, and some of the legal wrangling that extended all of that had to do specifically with Billy being determined to continue using Paul’s name and identity (but that’s another story and “How do you sleep” was about exactly that).

But Billy and John were obsessed with each other and never stopped writing and talking about each other. There is a tape of John Lennon, at the piano, writing “Real Life” singing: “hold you in my arms/and now you’ve a baby, and another on the way…”

https://itspaulthewalrus.tumblr.com/post/651703402830708736/serenade-meow-amclennonblog-john-cries-while

And of course, now Billy won’t shut up about how much he loved John. When asked if John could return how he would spend the day with him, Billy answers, “IN BED.”

https://bewaremylove.tumblr.com/post/87659554397/q-if-john-lennon-could-come-back-for-a-day-how

The big “McLennon” mystery is not unsolvable if you begin from the premise that Paul McCartney was dead and John (for whatever reason) transferred his love to someone who was (at best) a facsimile of Paul, who made it feel like his Macca was still around, and who would both drop acid with him and be a lover.

And the break up after India makes perfect sense then, too. The McLennon people want to believe that the break up came because John wanted to be ‘out’ with “Paul” and Billy wouldn’t do it, wanted a family. And maybe that did happen. But Billy, by his own admission, is a witch and a magickian**** who tried to do something with Paul’s spirit while in India, through ritual that may well have included a blood element (ask me about Oblahdi, Obladah, sometime…) and that left John nearly psychotic".

[gingerylangylang1979]

Does Carmy die in the end? Don't hate me.

Ok @thoughtfulchaos773, here's the post.

I've been thinking for a while that Carmy may die in the finale. I may not be able to write this post as intelligently as it deserves but here it go.

You know how shows tend to end how they begin? The pilot begins with Carmy on a bridge with the bear in a cage. This is a dream and seems like a final showdown with his nemesis/alter ego. They are about to battle and then a car horn and swerving sound breaks the dream state and Carmy wakes up in his reality. We also get a scene of a body in a morgue. We assume it's Mikey but what if it's Carmy. We also hear voices from Micheal as if him and Carmy are in the same realm.

All throughout the show driving is a theme. It always seemed noteworthy to me because it's a show themed around cooking. Why is driving so important?

In "Hands" there is a lot of emphasis on who can drive and who can't. In "Dogs", there is confusion on where Cicero lives. Cicero later discusses a dream about Carmy's dad driving and what seems to imply Carmy is the little boy flying forever in the air. Sounds ominous. Syd names her catering company Sheridan Road. In season two Carmy and Claire make random trips out to the suburbs and needing a ride is central. Why do either of them really need a ride to do these errands? Donna crashes her car into the family home. Syd tells Richie to drive friends and family night.

Now back to it all coming full circle. There has been a lot of speculation of Carmy leaving for a different career or not. If we fully accept that he doesn't leave by choice, he could leave due to death. Why does everyone from the health inspector to Mr. Sirsky (sp?) confuse Carmy as the dead brother?

Carmy seems to be gradually handing the place over and disappearing but it doesn't seem to be conscious. That would make him seem suicidal like Mikey. But it's not that, he has no idea he's setting up his departure. He gives Tina the knife. His new whites have his initials in san serif white font, not the pronounced blue cursive, like he's a ghost. Syd's scenes parallel his as if she is meant to take over. He tells her it's her ship and I'll dial business you are everything else. Syd and Carmy are often shown in ethereal light, like Mikey looking back at Carmy in 1.8. Do they both pass on and Syd is the new hope/destiny?

And then, again there is the reference back to the pilot if this all comes true and full circle. Anybody who watched Six Feet Under gets it. I always found these two stories very similar. In the pilot Nate (Carmy) has an aneurysm. We kind of forget about it because the story shifts to him coming back home as the prodigal son and the whole family dealing with the death of the patriarch and the passing over of the family business. The brother who stayed (Richie) is resentful. He stayed. He didn't really want to be a mortician but it was how he stayed close to the family and tried to bond with the dad. The business is in shambles and they have to "change the chemistry" to make it work. A new talent (Sydney) comes in that makes it all better and offers a different perspective. I won't go into the entire plot but in the end what happens? Nate dies. Aneurysm. Full circle. This is often how shows end. There are often clues.

My theory is that somehow Cicero and his dad tie into some sort of trip to the suburbs. I honestly think Cicero is Carmy's real dad. I feel somehow this will come to light and he makes a trip to see one of them. Why was Carmy confused about where Cicero lives? I don't think that was a throwaway line.

Does Carmy die in a car accident in the suburbs?

I may have left out a few things but I dunno, thoughts?

[worth-this-and-more]

Sarah Griffiths: a character study because people aren't talking about her enough and im so disappointed yall pt.1

[spoilers for legendborn and bloodmarked, read at your own caution ;)]

first and foremost, Sarah Griffiths has been my fav character since like forever and I haven't been able to talk about her very much, sincerely sorry, but nvm this post is for her anyway

she is the third person from legendborn that bree met after nick and sel I hope this is some kind of foreshadowing because I want more sar content but okay I'm just grasping fallen marbles atp lool and I feel like a lot of people overlook her. which is understandable because she didn't have a lot of screentime but her time was really important too, so here's my rant about my fav sar moments + character study + fangirling

her introduction was quite normal and formal, and even i could not imagine her fighting the shadowborns, understandably so because this "pixie-like girl in a flowy dress" doesn't really seem fierce enough, or does she??

sar definitely surprised me specifically in this scene:

while everyone is heavily confused but still alert on their jobs, sar made sure to place bree to safety, without giving any unnecessary lecture about "oh page matthews tf were you thinking why arent you back to the lodge??" she really knows how to keep her cool, and her action and reaction are almost similar to what I expect wlliam or greer would do

next fav sar moment was when she defended bree from sel at the infirmary:

sel is right in his place to suspect bree, it's his job to see the safety of the order, and he is angry af. we all know our merlin boy is scary af when angry because as russ so eloquently stated "you're never sure if it's safe to talk shit about him behind his back" and that's true anyway, but like sar really defended bree even when she did not know her, because she trusted nick's judgment and has already accepted bree as their own.

i feel like this is a very important factor in all the characters, especially sar, as I'll discuss further

next, this one:

she noticed bree was shaken from this encounter, because for her bree is a onceborn who had the unfortunate luck of experiencing a shadowborn attack and see so many injuries real time, while being attacked by an uchel as well. she offered to drive her home and walked her to her dorm, a girl's girl through and through. ik it seems like the barest minimum but I will still appreciate it because let's be real, everybody was stressed, who else would've offered to take bree back to her dorm safely?? nick is injured, william is busy, sel is busy trynna kill her, evan is injured, and the others are still processing the day. this small gesture seems insignificant but really shows sar's mindfulness and makes me fall for her harder and harder each time

this car ride is where we find out that she is a victim of racism as well:

which creates multiple questions. she definitely knows tor is racist, and I wont be surprised if tor has herself made racist remarks on sar as well but just keeps it quiet in front of her?? sar must definitely hear tor's remarks about others, especially bree. she stays because she loves tor, as we've seen here:

but there's definitely some kind of resentment towards tor that develops further in the story. how did she end up with tor anyway?? like after tor's "rebellious phase", is she really just in love and trying desperately to ignore all the red flags or is there some other story??

also her devotion to the order?? i love it. the order ain't shit, we know that, but the definite loyalty that sar has towards the order, it doesn't seem like much but I admire that grit so much. she was raised for service, but she chose to stay and serve even knowing all the risks. bree is the first of her family, but sar definitely has her own stories to be known.

again, my fav sar moment:

no explanation needed lmaoo sel doubted his own demon side for a sec haha

sar keeps tor in check around bree, because she knows tor hates bree's guts, and as we see here:

sar definitely calls the shots. im pretty sure that everytime tor finds something to bitch about, sar gives her the deadliest side eye ever because the kindest ones are the deadliest ones always. and whenever bree calls tor out for her behavior tor goes crying to her gf because sar is the only one who tolerates her lool

and finally, the most precious sar moment in legendborn:

everyone is in love with sel because he was the first one to kneel for bree, but we are kinda forgetting that sar was the second one to kneel. she has already accepted bree as a part of legendborn, and did not hesitate to pledge her loyalty to bree. this is the most iconic sar moment I love because she is loyal to the order, to bree, and to her service.

this is what i mean when i say I love sar, there is so much story behind this one girl and I really really wanna know her. i hope she has more moments in oathbound because her loyalty is fierce and I'm pretty sure she will join alice and william too if this gang forms

bloodmarked will be discussed in pt.2 hehe I think this much is enough for today lool

[astrology-with-charu]

𝐆𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝟒º𝟓𝟏’ (𝟐𝟕 𝐍𝐨𝐯 - 𝟏𝟐 𝐃𝐞𝐜)

Gemini full moon at degree of “desire to reach beyond established forms” inflicted by Mars Saturn square is like driving a race car with breaks on. It’s frustrating & we resent the caution as we itch to move fast.

It doesn’t help that ruler of this full moon - Mercury is in a turkey stupor with a confused mind, low immunity & possibly a flu or stewing in self inflicted mental inferiority torture chamber. Neptune while helping us blur the boundaries so we can color outside the lines - is also making us procrastinate in vulnerability.

Gemini full moon aren’t known for explosions of emotional anger or repressed feelings - May be verbal diarrhoea to be entertaining but not compulsively contrarian. We seem to be compulsively contrarians right now & it’s not funny or entertaining or well contained!

Reminds me of slime - not the dirty kind, the play kind. It has no purpose but to probably let one know some things can exist outside a defined container. Looks yucky to observer but entertaining to owner

We explode into formlessness…

Playful slime as it tries to reflect a child’s brain evolution is surely reprimanded shortly by Saturn as it despises the glitter on the wooden floors which would probably never get out & makes once formally set house look like a semi playground of a creator with no clue of end result

“Rules control the Fun!” Saturn is the apex of this T-Squared full moon.

A t-squared full moon comes with conflicting choices - normally we duck to make the choice but Saturn leaves no room to duck out.

To avoid making this choice we could color our hair & join the revolution blowing up whole world into a goo of our colorful slime or repress telling anyone what we intend to do & withdraw totally where no one can question our playful slime.

Saturn would like us to get hold of this bipolar full moon & make it hunker down to have some good old slime making rules. No hardwood no upholstery for example (true story!) Yet some formally allocated time to color outside the lines & a tangible outcome ?

We would retrace these steps again as these are not final decisions as Mercury will walk these degrees again as it goes retrograde on 13 Dec. Rethinking, deciding again, making rules, resenting the boundaries, being compulsively contrarian again as Neptune makes the year end fog thicker as it dawns on us by going direct on 6th & strongly debilitating our ability to act & think decisively. Health and immunity also become a key topic.

Expect less of you, expect less of the moment, expect less of playtime as slime is not the outcome its the process.

It’s there to stimulate the senses we would normally suppress or ignore. It’s calming, it’s grounding, its formlessness surprisingly brings us back in current moment instead of future anxiety. It’s teaching us how some unlikely ingredients can come together to make a new thing that didn’t exist before.

Gemini slime is never made alone.

Social elements as much as conflicting, as messy, as seemingly a time waste or frivolous can come together & stimulate a part of us that we ignore or suppress making us alive to current moment. Just because you cannot name your madness, doesnt mean you have to live it alone. The thing you might judge in you - might be inspiring to another as you try to color outside the boundaries of sanity. And to those it doesn’t they would help create the friction which would help yield usefulness out of this process of self discovery…

Either ways there is no need to hide your colorfully frustrating formlessness as everyone is dying to experience something original. The something original you are probably calling your madness…

Much ❤️

#astrology #horoscope #fullmoon #geminimoon

[zivazivc]

Pinocchio AU

Okay people want the explanation for this comic so here it goes. It’s long and complicated and MESSED UP because of course it is, this is me. I’m going to write in points because my small tired brain can’t handle good english atm but basically to sum up the Adrien was a sentimonster theory or Pinocchio AU as I like to call it:

Young married Emilie and Gabriel can’t have kids. Gabriel reluctantly accepts this fate and even brings up adoption as a possibility once, but Emilie doesn’t want to hear any of that. She’s a bit of a Marinette in the sense that she pictures this romanticized ideal life for herself and a child—her flesh and blood—HAS to be in it.

They keep trying to get a baby while other young families Emilie knows keep growing. She feels left out and hurt and depressed, then her newlywed twin sister announces she’s expecting a baby too and something within Emilie just unhinges.

She eventually lies to some of her friends, who she was out for coffee with, that she’s pregnant too. She mostly does it just to see their reaction and feel what it would be like but it quickly spirals out of control where she just starts pretending she’s pregnant until you can’t even tell if she believes it herself.

Gabriel is confused at first because he hears the news second hand (a friend/family member congratulating him) so he’s apprehensive when he approaches his wife but she convinces him that they really are getting a baby and Gabriel is ecstatic.

It’s only later at a doctor’s check up that Gabriel learns that she indeed is not pregnant. The doctor even speaks to him alone explaining that his wife is in denial and that he should make sure she goes to see a psychiatrist, something she definitely wouldn’t do alone.

Gabriel is unsuccessful with that because he’s not entirely persistent, doesn’t want to be the guy with the crazy wife having to tell everyone she lied about being pregnant, and hopelessly believes she’ll just get over it eventually.

That is until her “pregnancy is near due”—her sister already had Félix in England a few months ago—and he stumbles on her transformed with her peacock miraculous (they already have both of them) creating a sentimonster newborn.

They have a huge fight about it but because Emilie refuses to destroy it, won’t tell Gabriel where the amok is, and Gabriel can’t just hurt the baby with his hands, Emilie just… wins. Fucked up, yeah?

Now she tried creating kids before this one, using her imagination to try and blend her and Gabriel’s looks but it just wasn’t working. So she decided to copy of photos of baby Félix because he already looked almost like a copy of his mother, and Amélie and Emilie already looked alike so it’s not so weird?—is what her mind was telling her.

She didn’t dare alter his looks but she decided to give the baby Gabriel’s eye color to include the “father” in some way. (Yes in that comic I made I gave Adrien a mix of green and gray but that was mainly to get the point across to the perceptive readers)

Now we got Adrien, a normal baby boy to the whole world except for Gabriel who’s forced into his wife’s fantasy through social expectations.

Why are we only at this point and this post is already so long AAAAAAAA!!!

Adrien physically basically grows in a way where Emilie just keeps changing his appearance to match what Félix looked like a few months prior.

Mentally he’s like a robot just taking in information without really needing to learn it. So Emilie decides when he says his first word, she decides when he learns to walk,… He knows how to walk, he just wasn’t given the command to do so yet.

But even so he does develop a personality over time, just slower, because unlike a normal child who’s always testing his boundaries, how far they’re allowed to go until they’re in real trouble, Adrien just can’t misbehave. At all.

But he does have his favorite foods and favorite toys, and jokes that make him laugh the most. The problem is just that Emilie could just decide that his favorite food is strawberries and he’d just start acting accordingly, rewiring his belief. 

He also isn’t allowed to argue or be mean to others which is why Félix thinks he’s a goody two-shoes weirdo while Chloé the brat adores him.

This behavior isn’t so hard to hide with a toddler who’s fickle but it’s harder and harder as the kid grows. Which is why the family becomes very secluded over time.

Gabriel always keeps distance with his “son”. He’s not Dad, he’s Father, he doesn’t do hugs and cuddles, he doesn’t say I love you. But Adrien knows he loves him because his mom told him so and he loves him back unconditionally because Mom said that’s what families do.

Now even though Gabriel is traumatized by this whole ordeal and knowing Adrien “isn’t real” freaks him out he does soften a bit over time. I’m going to give an awful example but like someone who hates cats softening for a cat that their partner/roommate decided to get/had from before. Continuing with this example: But still becoming appalled when the cat starts acting odd/unusually.

Okay I think you get the gist. Let’s move on…

Emilie loves her son more and more as he grows and his sentimonster behaviours start bothering her more and more too. She hates being reminded that he’s not a real boy by people mentioning he looks young for his age because Emilie forgot to make him grow for a while. She hates when he does everything like he’s told. She hates that he has no real friends because they’re afraid to expose him to the outside too much and without supervision. She hates to think about his future.

Her desire for him to be real keeps growing and is what drives her to search for a solution in the miraculous spellbook.

She cracks the script after years, when Adrien is nearly a teen, and finds a way to transfer the creators soul into a sentimonster.

It’s a long process that takes time and while she falls ill to everyone around her, Adrien becomes more real.

Gabriel starts realizing what’s happening when he notices Adrien hesitate for a second when he’s playing a video game and Gabriel wants him to do something, groan when he gets bothered watching TV, huff, complain, have slightly opposing opinions to his and Emilie’s, when he argues with his mother when she tells him she’s feeling fine; when he notices his son’s eyes are greener. Or is it all in his head?

He confronts his wife too late, when she’s extremely ill already, her normally vibrant eyes dulled match Adrien’s bluish gray, and he pieces together in his head what she’s doing.

Before Gabriel could properly think what to do to stop the love of his life from turning into a lifeless doll, in a fit of panic he tries to take her wedding band (where he knows Adrien’s amok is) to get rid of Adrien instead, but is unsuccessful in getting it off her so he snatches her peacock brooch instead (which she needs to complete the spell obvs) and breaks it. (Heyoo! broken peacock miraculous. things are coming together)

Because the spell was almost complete anyway it’s Emilie who falls unconscious. But she doesn’t disappear because she’s not a real sentimonster, she just becomes dormant like one.

This is the point in the story where Gabriel makes it seem like Emilie ran away or something like that—basically disappear. Now he’s living knowing he has an almost sentimonster wife in the basement, knowing he almost killed his son (or her), and having to care for a son that suddenly became much more alive, questioning, arguing, angry, screaming, not accepting, crying, grieving, staring at him with Emilie’s eyes.

Instead of becoming a real parent, Gabriel shuts him out.

Soon Adrien evolves desires for socializing, company, getting away from the suffocating home which eventually leads to him going to a public school.

He slowly starts to live life freely without the restrictions that were put around his thoughts.

Gabriel has an even stranger relationship with Adrien now because he still loves him in a way but also holds resentment toward him. But mostly he sees him as something valuable.

The show happens here…  And now finally we get to the comic…

Gabriel gets a hold of the ladybug and black cat miraculouses. (There’s no epic fight in his lair as you see there’s no Ladybug in the comic but that’s not really important)

What’s important is that Gabriel had deciphered the miraculous spellbook with the help of Emilie’s notes and had decided to use the unification’s “wish” power to awaken Emilie.

He’s aware he’ll need to sacrifice something for the wish to come true and he’s certain Adrien should be enough because the soul inside him is literally the one thing Emilie is missing.

✨Adrien (poor boy just lost his miraculous) is taken to Gabriel’s lair, where he finds out his father is Hawk Moth, sees his mother, learns he’s a sentimonster, and that he’s going to become a sacrifice ✨

Of course the last part is not what happens. It’s Gabriel who ends up being sacrificed.

I can’t decide if Gabriel ends up sacrificing himself because he changed his mind in the last moment while Adrien was screaming for him to stop, OR  because he didn’t love Adrien enough for him to be considered an equal exchange for his wife… O.O

But anyhow…

Emilie wakes up with Gabriel’s soul within her (hence the bluish gray eyes in the comic).

Adrien is traumatized for life.

This took me hours to write… I knew there was a reason why I didn’t want to do it. I hope I didn’t forget anything and my brain made sense of it all

Well there you have it, peeps. The Pinocchio AU. It’s as messed up as my sleep schedule. Good night. 

[venomous--fics]

Anon asked: maybe a continuation of the peter b parker kid thing where they finally confront the mom and get the readers things back 😩💞💞

a/n: ask and thou shall receive! this spent so long in the drafts bc i felt so insecure about it tbh, so any feedback is appreciated! I love seeing messages about what you guys think! really keeps me motivated! also, requests are open

Warnings: mentions of past abuse

Peter was sitting at the kitchen table, constantly looking at the clock. It was almost 5pm, you were supposed to be home an hour and a half ago. Yes, he keeps track of everyone's schedules, yes he knows the exact second you should be walking through the door. He's already texted you, but maybe you had detention. Nah, you were a good student, he highly doubted you'd have to stay after school.

His phone finally rang, and he was way too quick answering it.

"You okay?"

"I need some help."

"What is it?" he was already out the door.

You sighed, knowing he was probably going to give you an earful later.

"Well, it's a really long story, right.. But my mom showed up after school-"

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I think. Anyways, we got into it on the way home, which is no- Not normal." you adjusted how you were sitting, "And since she was dragging me back to the house, I figured I'd just get my crap and come home, right? Makes sense, saves us the tri-"

"She took you without permission?"

"Technically she is my m-...Parent. I guess, y'know, legally she can do whatever- But..Okay." you began to feel bubbles of anxiety and pain and even resentment form deep in your core, "She locked me out." You rubbed your neck.

"Are you," he paused, looking around at all the faces passing by him, "Still there?"

"Yeah. Unfortunately. I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry for? Don't apologize, you didn't do anything."

"I keep causing problems for everyone."

"Not for me. Or Mj."

It was quiet on your end.

"You still there?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be there in like ten minutes."

"You probably shouldn't."

"Nah, nah." He said, having a sudden wave of anger rush over him, "Let me take care of this."

And true to his word, Peter was there in ten minutes. You hopped up from your spot on the porch as he made his way up to the door and knocked on it as hard as he could. He gave you a reassuring pat on the back.

The door swung open, and your mother seemed awfully surprised and confused to see some random man just standing there. Peter held no emotion has he looked her dead in the eye, "Can we come in."

She opened the door wider so that way you two could step in.

"Go get your stuff." is all Peter said to you.

Wasting no time, and not wanting to be in the middle of a potential argument between the two, you skedaddled to your room. It almost felt like too much to be in there. It looked so empty and barren compared to your room at Peter and Mjs place. Seems really dull. Lifeless, almost. Dust covered every surface, which meant that nobody had ever even bothered to see if you were even still in there.

You heard their voices from the living room, but they seemed so distant, seeing as all you could focus on was every shitty thing that woman put you through.

You remember the day that you got bit. It made you deathly ill, and you just thought you were dying from some sort of allergic reaction to the spider bite. You tried to get her to take you to any doctor or anywhere that could help because all you could seem to see were stars.

Everything then was so loud. Everything was so bright. It was all too much, and you were certain that the reaper was waiting for you. What did she say?

"Suck it up and stop pretending. Everything has to be so dramatic with you."

Or that time you forgot a single item on the shopping list. You got this whole speech about how stupid you had to have been. To forget one item. It was the world's most useless item.

Everything else seemed to play all over again, all at once. Like a waterfall. It should've made you sad. It should've made you cry, or scream.

You recounted all the times you wanted to fight back, or just run away. Leave everything behind and just run until your legs gave out. But you never did. You always found some reason to linger.

The conversation was growing louder where Peter was.

"You aren't going to do this to them ever again. Sign the papers."

You nearly dropped your last belonging on the floor as you scrambled to your door. Papers? He wasn't serious. Well, obviously he was. He just said it.

"Fine. It's not like the-"

"Zip it. Sign the papers."

"Who are you anyways? The law? If so, whatever they've told you is a b-"

"Listen, lady. I didn't ask for any attitude. I told you to sign the papers." he seemed to huff in annoyance, "That doesn't require talking."

"I'm a good mother."

"And I'm the king of France."

"Really. I gave them a good home. I have fed them and kept them warm-"

"Really? You think you did all that? Or are you convincing yourself that you did all that?"

"I am-"

"Can I be honest with you?"

"Ye-"

"I've never said this about anyone, ever. I don't like speaking to or about anyone like this.. Ever, but, you? I think you're a piece of shit."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, look. You finished signing the papers. I'll take those. Thank you."

Realizing that it was your time to go, you stuffed your blanket into your duffel bag and rushed out the door and down the hall. Peter looked at you, expecting to see at least three bags. But he only saw the one.

"Where's the rest of your stuff."

"Uhm," you shuffled around, pretending as thought you dropped some, "This...This is all my stuff."

"That can't be ri-" He laughed a little, and noting the expression on his face, you saw that he was NOT happy. "That? That single duffle bag is all you have? That's it?"

"Yes..." you took a step back, "This is all.."

"I can't believe it." he said, "You're joking! One bag worth of stuff?"

He turned his attention back to your mother, who, for the first time in your life, actually looked like she got caught red handed, "You're pathetic. Absolutely pathetic."

"But they're so u-"

"No! No, you don't get to talk anymore. You've done enough."

You awkwardly shuffled behind him, in the event that you two had to make a mad dash out the door. That and you needed to not be seen as you tried to hide your almost evil grin.

"The hell is wrong with you? You have this amazing kid, and THAT'S all you've ever gotten for them? And you sit there and call yourself a mother? Absolutely, without a doubt, bullshit. I'd be ashamed of myself to call myself a father if that's all I've provided for my kid. Don't even get me started on you as a person, we made that clear."

It almost felt cursed to hear him swear, seeing as he made it a point to tell you to not swear. Every time you did, you have to give a quarter to the swear jar. Mj was always on your side, though. She'd say a swear that was much worse and have to pay a dollar. Each word had a value.

"Maybe we should just go." you suggested, tugging on the sleeve of his arm, "She's not worth it anymore."

"She was never worth it, it seems."

You finally made eye contact with her, and the look in her eye. It's like she understood, but was choosing to not do anything about the situation. She could look sorry all she wanted, but you knew she wasn't.

"I'm sorry, Y/n. You know that right."

"That means nothing to me."

"I can change."

"If you can change now, that means you could've changed then. You just chose not to."

"But I'm your mother, you should realize how I feel. You should want-"

"You're not my mom. You stopped being my mom the first time you-" You turned towards the door and started walking towards it, "Whatever. You mean nothing to me."

You practically kicked open teh door just to leave, and Peter was right behind you, shouting about how he'd make sure to egg her house everyday, just to piss her off.

"Do you really think I'm amazing?" you asked, the walk home feeling rather quiet.

"I think you're more than that. Just can't put it into words."

"Did you really mean it...That we could egg her house?"

"You want to? There's a store right on the way home."

"How about tomorrow."

"I'll have to clear up my busy schedule. See if I can work in a drive by egging. Well, swing by egging."

"You promise?"

"You kidding? I haven't egged anyone's house since college."

You had so much more you wanted to get off you chest, but you opted to just talk about it at home, with everyone present. You wanted to talk about how you felt about everything, and the papers. Whatever those were. But you were, for the moment, busy laughing about Peter's story about how he used to Egg this one reporters house. Someone named Jonah.

You wonder if Jonah ever put two and two together.

[mypoisonedvine]

Seeing Red | bodyguard!Bucky Barnes x actress!reader (part 1)

summary: bucky used to brag that he didn’t have a celebrity crush, or really care about famous people at all, which is what made him the perfect person to start working for a celebrity like yourself.  except, of course, it’s just his luck that he’d fall for you.  

word count: 2875

warnings: smut... sort of (oral f receiving), voyeurism/exhibitionism (kinda?), touch of angst, lots of pining and awkwardness, jealous bucky being jealous, alcohol use (reader gets drunk)

Nothing annoyed you like being surrounded by stylists and being primped and prodded for hours at a time.  It made you feel claustrophobic to be touched so much: makeup artists only inches from your face, tailors watching you change, hairstylists nearly spraying you in the eye or burning you on the forehead every few minutes.

Not to mention how uncomfortable it was to actually be in the whole get-up once they were done.

But, such was the nature of a red carpet event.  This one was going to be particularly bland because it wasn't even a premiere or awards event but a launch party for a perfume campaign.  How lame is that?  It's one of those things that really only exists so that there can be pictures of it to put in a magazine, because they're always running out of good pictures of celebrities to publish.

Finally all dolled up to the point that you didn't look even very much like yourself anymore, your assistant accompanied you downstairs and into your driveway where your car was waiting; and, more importantly, its driver and your driver, Bucky.

He was a gruff sort of guy; certainly a man of few words and many brooding glares.  Sometimes you thought he didn't like you— like maybe he resented your fame or something— but then he'd turn around and be so sweet all of a sudden and you didn't know what to think.  For one, he demanded to open the door for you every time you got out of the car.  Sometimes he even extended his hand for you to grab on to, which was especially useful for red carpet events when you were usually wearing skinny heels that were impossible to balance on.

Such was the case tonight as well, and you smiled up at him as he helped you out of the car and up towards the steps of the venue.

"Thank you," you smiled at him, and he barely smiled back.

"Have a good night, madam," he suggested, a formal stuffiness to the way he addressed you.

You nodded,  "You too!"  That made you pause, though, because you weren't sure what his night would entail at all.  "Say, what is it that you do when I'm at an event like this?"

He seemed confused by your question.  "Um, I sit in the car and wait until you're ready to leave."

Guilt seared in your chest and you frowned.  "That's it?  You don't, like, go out?  Catch a movie?"

"Nope.  That would prevent me from doing my other job, which is watching the points of entry to make sure there aren't any threats to security going in."

"Right…" you trailed off.  "You could always come in, you know, grab some free drinks and stuff."

"I thought you didn't want any of your team following you around at events."

"Yeah, don't follow me around, just mingle and kill some time!"

Bucky shook his head.  "If I'm not there as your driver or as your security, then I'm not there."

You shrugged.  "Suit yourself, but please feel free to, like, get some food or whatever you wanna do while I'm in there!  Don't just wait on me!"

He smiled, but it looked a little rehearsed. "Thank you, madam."

You realized he'd been holding your hand through the entire conversation, cause you'd asked him your question midway through getting out of the car.  Awkwardly, you finally dropped his hand and waved goodbye, escorting yourself up the last few steps and into the door.

God, he must think I'm such a freak.

//

God, she must think I'm such a freak.

Bucky munched on the sandwich he'd had delivered (yes, to the car, how else was he supposed to get it?) as he dutifully watched the entrance.  Against your advice, he had every intention of just sitting around and waiting for you, but he wasn't bored; he had a Mets game on the radio to keep him company.

"— top of the third, bases loaded, DeGrom is at the plate with one swing left aaaaaand… he strikes out!"

"Shit," Bucky grumbled to himself around a mouthful of pastrami.

Glancing up, he saw someone stumbling out of the party: squinting, he realized it was you.  He looked at the clock with a furrowed brow, noticing it was a little earlier than he'd thought you'd leave, but then he saw that there was someone with you… a guy.

Bucky set his sandwich down and turned the key in the ignition as he watched you pull your phone out of your clutch— ostensibly to text him to bring the car around, but he was already ahead of you, quickly exiting the parking lot and circling the building so he could pull up at the steps.  He was about to get out to open the door for you but this random guy did it instead, before tumbling in after you.

"That tickles!" you protested with a giggle as your new friend started to kiss your neck, his hands all over you before Bucky had even gotten the car moving.

You were too drunk and distracted to notice that the partition was still open.  Of course Bucky had considered closing it, in fact he wanted more than anything to close it so he wouldn't have to see this, but some sick part of his brain needed to see it.  How else could he know if something went wrong and he had to get back there and stop it?  How else would he keep you safe?

How else would he get to find out how you sound when you're being touched like this?

He couldn't see too well with it being the middle of the night and all, but every time he drove past a streetlamp or particularly bright neon sign, the colorful glow would shine in and cast light over your neck where your head had fallen back in pleasure; or your collarbones, exposed where your dress had been pulled down; or your chest, rising quickly with the speed of your panting breaths.

Ogling you in the rearview mirror made him feel like a total creep, but it satisfied a bit of the urge he'd been feeling ever since he started driving you.  He wasn't actually a driver, at least not usually; he was more or less your bodyguard at this point, but you were really adamant about having a small detail and so that was why he was working double-duty tonight… and why he'd been doing so for almost three months now.

"Baby," you gasped, and his eyes shot right back to your reflection; you were writhing against the seat, and he could just barely see the top of the guy's head where it was buried between your legs.  You took your bottom lip between your teeth, lips curling into a relaxed smile.  His cock was not only hard but throbbing at this point, as if that was going to do him any good.  He barely ever got to look at you, and he knew he would never, ever be able to touch you— beyond holding your hand as you stepped out of the car, at least.  Whenever he did that, he imagined for a moment that he wasn't your driver at all but your date, that he would get to keep your hand as he guided you down the red carpet with him.  Not that he wanted any of the attention that you got, of course, but at the same time he did like the idea of all those photographers snapping pictures of his arm around your waist, or you looking up at him with your hand on his chest.  They'd all run stories wondering what a beautiful, successful, massively talented woman like you was doing with a guy like him, but he wouldn't find the energy to care about crap like that if he had you all to himself.  

Another whimper from you pulled him out of his daydream, reminding him to focus on the road as best he could.  He knew you would hate him if you knew that he'd thought about you like that.  Or if you knew about all those times he'd checked in on you while you slept at night and lingered a bit too long.  Or if you knew that he had rewatched that one sex scene you'd done in your last movie about a thousand times.  It always broke his heart to see you underneath some other guy (his name was either Dermot Mulroney or Dylan McDermott or possibly Dermot McDermott?) and yet it turned him on like nothing else to watch you immersed in pleasure.  Similarly, now, he couldn't stand knowing it was someone else making you moan the way he was hearing, but it was the best he was ever gonna get.

"Oh god," you sighed, "fuck, yes, yes, oh my god yes—"

His grip tightened on the steering wheel and it must have been the noise of the leather stretching that made you notice him; as if every dream and nightmare of his was coming true at once, your gaze met his in the reflection of the rearview.

He was so screwed, and he was totally going to get fired tomorrow, but he couldn't look away.  Your eyes were like dark magic the way they pulled him in, kept him locked on you as his face started to burn so hot it could cook an egg.  

Staring you down, he saw your mouth fall slack as your hands reached down to grab your date's hair and tighten into fists.  Shivers shot down his spine as he imagined the way it would feel if you pulled his hair like that.  

The longer you kept looking at him, the more a very dangerous thought danced in the back of his mind…

What if she wants me to watch?

Which, even more concerningly, started to slowly morph into another idea…

What if she wants me?

He was sure you were coming.  It wasn't obvious; you didn't say anything, didn't moan too loud, didn't scream or sob or call out any names (which made it easier to pretend it was for him) but he could tell.  Your swollen lips were parted silently as he watched your breath catch in your chest, and your hands clenched around fistfuls of hair.  What he would give for you to pull his hair like that, and come for him like that— except he wouldn't have stopped there, unlike your current companion who was already moving back up your body to kiss you hungrily.  

He'd always thought you had really pretty hands, and they looked pretty good sliding over the back of this guy's suit jacket, but he liked them best when they gently pushed him off.  "We're almost there," you mumbled as Bucky turned the car into the driveway, using his fob to open the gate.  

Once he'd come to a stop outside your door and turned off the engine, the three of you exited and stood up as you yawned and stretched.

"You'll take Jack here home, right?" you asked Bucky quickly.

"It's Jake…" the man corrected with hesitance.

"Right, Jake," you smiled, "you'll take him to his place, right?"

Bucky gave the guy a smile dripping with gloating contempt, loving the disappointed look he was wearing as he realized he wasn't going to be spending the night in your bed.  "It'd be my pleasure," he announced coldly.

"Great, thanks," you sighed.  Standing on your tiptoes to give the guy a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the shoulder, you thanked him for a great night and made your way into the house.

Jake looked around in confusion for a moment before getting back in the car along with Bucky, sighing and running his fingers through his hair.

"What address am I going to?"

"Uh, 333 15th Street, in Brooklyn," the guy replied, pausing to let out a soft but incredulous laugh as the car began to move.  "Level with me, man: does she… do this kind of thing, a lot?  You know: bring guys over, make it seem like something's gonna… happen, but then just send ‘em back home and never call again?"

With a silent glare, Bucky rolled up the partition.

//

You heard the front door, even from your current location of the shower upstairs, and knew Bucky was home— okay, not exactly ‘home’ since he didn't leave here full-time, but home in the sense that he was in your home and in the place he would be staying tonight.  You just hoped he'd actually stopped the car before kicking Jake out; he never cared much for when you had guys over or really just interacted with guys at all, because of the "security risks" or whatever.

Next, you heard him coming up the stairs and passing by your door.  "Hey, Bucky, you out there?" you called to him.

"Yeah, what is it?" he answered through the door. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I just—" you stopped when you heard the crinkling of paper.  "What is that?  Do you have food?"

"Um, yeah," he answered.

Your stomach growled; the event had only had tiny hors d'oeuvres, and the alcohol in your system enhanced your desire for a midnight snack.  "What kinda food?"

"It's a sandwich— well, what's left of one: I was eating it while I waited for you."

"Are you gonna finish it?" you asked curiously.

"No, I was thinking I'd put it in the fridge for tomorrow."

You paused a bit before asking, "Can I have it?"

"Yeah, sure, you can get it in the morning—" he began.

"No, now!" you clarified.

There was a pause before he responded.  "Right now?  In the shower?"

"Yeah, just bring it in here!"

"I-I'll let you finish showering first—" he stammered.

"No, Bucky," you whined, "just come in here!  I'm hungry!"

Another pause before he finally opened the door, his blurry figure visible through the steam-covered frosted glass. 

"What's on it?" you asked as you washed the last of your shampoo out of your hair.

"It's pastrami on rye with jalapeños, fresh mozzarella, pesto and some sort of spicy aioli or something."

"Ooh, come to mama," you purred as you reached over the top of the door with opening-and-closing grabby hands, squeeing with glee when he placed the wax paper package in your grasp.

"Okay, enjoy your drunken shower sandwich," he congratulated grimly, about to turn and leave.

"No, wait, where'd you get this?" you asked as you leaned out of the stream of hot water to unwrap your bounty.

"Uh, you know the deli on 8th and Columbus?"

"You went all the way out there?"

"No, I had it delivered."

You snorted with laughter.  "Couldn't leave me alone for even a minute, huh?"

"Well, I fully intended on leaving you alone for this shower."

But you didn't really notice that comment because you'd just taken a bite and couldn't stop yourself from moaning loudly around it.  "Oh my god, Bucky, this is so good!"

He cleared his throat.  "Uh, glad you like it."

"You have good taste in sandwiches!"

"I think the word for 'taste in sandwiches' is just 'taste,’” he pointed out, his smirk audible in his voice.

"Can we go to this place tomorrow and you can order for me?"

"We can do whatever you want tomorrow," he relented.

"If you drive, I'll pay,” you offered.

"I always drive.  And you always pay,” he pointed out.

You frowned, not visible to him through the steamy glass.  "I do?"

"You pay my salary, so, yeah…"

You laughed, a little too hard. "You're so smart!"

"Sure,” he replied quickly.

“Okay, I’m almost done in here,” you informed him.

“With the sandwich or the shower?” 

You laughed with a little snort, which would’ve embarrassed sober you.  “Both!”

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it then,” he replied, starting to go back out the door.

“See you tomorrow, Bucky,” you waved even though he couldn’t see it.

“I don’t know that I will,” he admitted, “you’ll probably be hungover and lock yourself in your room all day.”

“Hmm, possibly,” you agreed as you pondered that.  “Then I guess just ‘goodnight,’ and I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Goodnight,” he replied and stepped out of the bathroom— you could hear him go downstairs and shut the door to his room, and you glanced down at the last bite of your/his sandwich with a smile.

You must have gotten in bed at some point, cause that was the last thing you could really remember before you woke up a bit before noon, bright orange sunlight shining directly on your face where it rested on the pillow.  You groaned and turned over, feeling like your brain was too big for your skull.  You sat up when you saw a menagerie of unfamiliar items on your nightstand.  A bottle of pedialyte, a bottle of Fiji water, a few aspirin, an orange and a banana waited for you in a pile, with a little piece of paper sitting in front which you read.

Hope you’re feeling alright, these might help in the meantime.  -B

You smiled, twisting open the Fiji and taking a sip.  Bucky always took such good care of you, even in ways he didn’t need to.  What would you do without him?

[shijiujun]

Ooooh yeah okay barely a day later and I’m back with a new rec, I just finished this yesterday (if y’all are wondering if I do anything else but read, I have my binge-reading periods not gonna lie, especially when China bookstores REFUSE to give me a break and keep coming up with new shit)

- Part of Min’s ‘Why You Should Read’ Series -

Summary:

Shen Qiao is the elusive sect leader of Xuandu Shan (Mt. Xuandu) who is known for his legendary sword skills, not that many have seen him before. He battles Kun Xie, the powerful leader of another sect one day, and is sent crashing down the mountain where they had their battle at. Against all odds, he lives, but is saved by leading demonic sect leader Yan Wushi, who happened to be passing by. 

Yan Wushi is the opposite of Shen Qiao - he does not believe that there are truly good people in the world and any individual, in the face of self-interest or fear, will turn selfish and resentful. To him, there are only two kinds of people in the world - worthy opponents, or scum not even worth looking at. He is arrogant, borders on the side of insanity, and cares for and trusts in no one.

Having heard of Shen Qiao’s personality, Yan Wushi first saves him out of fun and games. Shen Qiao has lost his memory, and Yan Wushi is curious to see how he will deal with hardship and challenges, including the loss of his martial arts skills, the loss of his sight, and faced with a shidi, shixiong and other elders in his sect who may have sabotaged his battle with Kun Xie, leading to his fall. Yan Wushi actively does things that drives Shen Qiao into despair, and one incident almost causes Shen Qiao’s death.

Shen Qiao treats every person he meets very well, even those who returned his kindness with cruelty, and even after being betrayed, the seeds of resentment do not emerge in him. No matter how Yan Wushi betrays him and dismisses his offer of friendship, Shen Qiao was still willing to go find him when he was in danger. In the end, Yan Wushi finally realizes that this is the one person who has exceeded all his expectations, who is truly good because he can be, and falls in love with him.

Cue Yan Wushi having to chase an oblivious Shen Qiao back who no longer believes in a single word Yan Wushi says.

This is a story of two people with entirely different and mutually exclusive world views that somehow come to understand and love each other, while still retain their own views. Yan Wushi thinks that Shen Qiao’s kindness is weakness and that he is gullible, but Shen Qiao is not so much as gullible as he is just willing to give someone else the benefit of the doubt first, and he does learn to look at things with a more critical eye after spending time with Yan Wushi. Is Shen Qiao still kind and gorgeous and everything? Hell yes. Does Yan Wushi still tease him for it? Of course. Similarly, Shen Qiao is unable and also unwilling to change how Yan Wushi approaches things and people, but for Shen Qiao, Yan Wushi is willing to make compromises in action, even if he doesn’t agree with what Shen Qiao thinks.

*Not as angsty as I made it out to be but the subtext is quite amazing - BUT!!!! You get like a lot of vague kissing for most of the novel. Shen Qiao remains firstly oblivious, then secondly goes straight into denial, while Yan Wushi looks on adoringly. The romance starts... for real... from the epilogues onwards HAHAHA I cannot even!!!!

Read:

Novel (Online) | Novel (Print) - Not Available Now | Novel Translations | Upcoming Donghua - 山河剑心 | Audio Drama - S1 & S2 

Characters:

1. 沈峤 Shen Qiao (Right) - He's described as one of the most beautiful/handsome men the wuxia world has ever seen, and is his deceased shifu’s second disciple. He was chosen as the successor to the sect leader position of Mt. Xuandu, which has stayed neutral for decades (in a world where sects can ally themselves with emperors/kingdoms etc.). He is poisoned on his fated battle day with Kun Xie by someone he trusted, falls off the mountain and is rescued by Yan Wushi. 

For the first part of the novel he’s visually impaired but this helps him to train his hearing. Wanted to be friends with Yan Wushi because he believed they could be, but is betrayed by him shortly after and loses all his power to fight his enemy. Instead of dying, he is saved by his to-be disciple Shi Wu and realizes the secret to cultivating his powers because of that.

He’s kind but not gullible, he gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, but he’s definitely not weak or soft. Despite losing his martial arts and skills twice, he comes back stronger than before. He doesn’t understand if Yan Wushi is toying with him or is being real especially after he loses trust in the man, but their fates are intertwined together (or Yan Wushi is actually that shameless and a stalker lmao).

He faints a lot, throws up blood a lot, is carried by Yan Wushi A LOT.

2. 晏无师 Yan Wushi (Left) - A little insane, a little sadistic, takes joy in seeing someone despair. He’s very good looking, has a streak of white in his hair and ranks second (or first) in terms of martial arts and skills. He also has an official role in the palace and is advisor to the Zhou emperor. Every other demonic and good sect in the world fears him. Is also kind of a hoe.

He told Shen Qiao once that he does not need friends, only worthy opponents, before he surrendered Shen Qiao to an enemy of his. He also plants a demon heart seed into Shen Qiao (so that he can go through demonic cultivation), much to Shen Qiao’s fury and devastation, but Shen Qiao manages to survive that. After he recovers, he hears of plans to get rid of Yan Wushi and goes to save him instead, not because he trusts/thinks of Yan Wushi as a friend at this point but wanting to prove to Yan Wushi that even though he pushed Shen Qiao to the brink of no return, Shen Qiao survived, under his own terms, and stayed true to himself.

Because of that, Yan Wushi does a 180 on Shen Qiao, starts believing in him, starts thinking he’s cute and everything. Starts shamelessly flirting (and getting rejected by Shen Qiao) and finally gets his man when he’s in utmost danger at the end.

Other Things I Like in the Novel:

Shen Qiao is so damn cute?!!! And so skilled?! Like because everyone looked down on him after he failed the battle with Kun Xie not knowing that he was poisoned and sabotaged, and the next moment he flashes his sword out in a fight and they’re all like damnnnnnn

Yan Wushi is hurt severely once and as he recovers, his consciousness is split into four parts, and two of those personalities come out to cling on to Shen Qiao, and Yan Wushi gets jealous of himself

Shen Qiao’s two disciples are super cute!!! And then he picks up another cute boy along the way closer to the end

He faints a lot and throws up blood A LOT if they were doing a live-action for this I’d vote for Zhu Yilong for the role, and he also keeps getting kidnapped?! It’s hilarious

Whenever Yan Wushi tries to be nice to him (feed him, kiss him) Shen Qiao will flush and tell him to please be respectful and then they’ll exchange parries and blows as Yan Wushi DOES NOT GIVE UP on feeding him and Shen Qiao is TRYING TO AVOID THE SPOON 

Yan Wushi knows that Shen Qiao has feelings for him in the end but is just too prideful and embarrassed to admit it, and so he pretends to be cold to him and Shen Qiao panics and is confused, then goes and asks random strangers on how to woo a “crazy, stubborn, more skilled” significant other - In the end he initiates his first kiss with Yan Wushi and Yan Wushi forgives him LOL

They go to an inn the first time they sleep with each other and then the help at the inn hears like noise coming from upstairs right, and asks the innkeeper “oh my god are they okay” and innkeeper says “they’re doing things that deities do” ????!!

Yan Wushi likes to squash Shen Qiao’s face when he’s not awake so that his lips form like an unglam pout, then he laughs at it - Ownself amuse ownself

[beepboop358]

A Prom in S4 Theory & Music Coding Predictions

Some leaked set pics indicate that there MAY BE a junior/senior prom at Hawkins High, which they are calling the "Lover's Ball". It's unclear if this prom will be included on screen, or if it will just be mentioned as an event coming up at Hawkins High because this flyer could just extra set decor. Regardless if the prom happens on screen or not, there will probably be some tension about 'who's asking who' to the prom that we will see in s4. Given that this picture was just leaked a few weeks ago, it probably falls closer to the end of the season sequentially.

Having a big school dance in s4 is suspiciously close to how they had the Snowball scene in s2. This would certainly follow the even/odd season patterns, (and actually add to the list of the patterns), which kind of makes me think we will see this prom on screen, or at the very least it will be mentioned in the course of the season.

The Duffer Brothers love Steven King and reference his work and especially 'IT' a lot in the show, but they haven't done anything with Carrie yet so maybe we will get a Carrie moment this season at the prom...

Carrie was on the video store fridays movie inspiration board for ST4.

At the "Lover's Ball", there will be definitely be some music coding relating to Byler. Since music coding is kind of a key thing in the show, I've been rifling through 80's songs to try and find some that may fit with s4's themes/character storylines (and I may do a seperate post about that later), but for this post I'm just gonna focus on what they might use at the prom for relating to Byler.

Since the season is most likely going to take place in 1986, I only selected songs that had a compatible release year so it would be historically accurate. (these songs would also be great for a byler playlist!)

Some strong contenders for the songs that might play at the prom to reference Mike and Will's relationship could be:

"True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986)

This song is honestly too good of an option for them not to use. I'm reallllyyy crossing my fingers for this one.

It's hard to take courage In a world full of people You can lose sight of it all And the darkness inside you Can make you feel so small

"And I see your true colors Shining through I see your true colors And that's why I love you So don't be afraid (don't be afraid) To let them show your true colors True colors are beautiful (you're beautiful, oh) Like a rainbow Oh oh oh oh oh like a rainbow"

If this world makes you crazy And you've taken all you can bear You call me up Because you know I'll be there

"Heaven" by Bryan Adams (1984)

This first verse is literally just the story of Byler... 😭 The rest of the song applies but that verse verse is just sooooo accurate. (I'm crossing my fingers for this one too)

"Oh thinkin' about all our younger years There was only you and me We were young and wild and free Now nothing can take you away from me We've been down that road before But that's over now You keep me comin' back for more

Baby you're all that I want When you're lyin' here in my arms I'm findin' it hard to believe We're in heaven And love is all that I need And I found it there in your heart Isn't too hard to see We're in heaven

Oh once in your life you find someone Who will turn your world around Bring you up when you're feelin' down Yeah nothin' can change what you mean to me Oh there's lots that I could say But just hold me now 'Cause our love will light the way"

"Take My Breath Away" by Berlin (1986)

This song is on Will's Spotify playlist, and I thought it could also be used at the prom since it's a romantic song. I see it as an 'entrance to the prom' moment song, almost like a 'first look' - like the Mike and El moment at the snowball when she first walks in, but with Mike and Will this time. I think the lyrics clearly hint to this kind of 'first look' moment as well.

"Watchin' every motion in my foolish lover's game On this endless ocean, finally lovers know no shame Turning and returning to some secret place inside Watchin' in slow motion as you turn around and say...take my breath away"

Watchin' every motion in this foolish lover's game Haunted by the notion, somewhere there's a love in flames Turning and returning to some secret place inside Watchin' in slow motion as you turn my way and say...take my breath away"

"In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins (1981)

This song was originally meant to be included in the snowball scene from s2, but it ultimately was not used and "Every Breath You Take" was used for this scene instead. Since it was intended to be a part of the s2 dance, that's why I think it may be used at the prom this season. (you can read the scripts on 8flix)

——— I forgot to include this explanation originally BUT, I think this song might be used to show some anger/resentment between the two, and to show a decent amount of tension, depending on their development this season. Like maybe Mike is kind of leading Will on in private by continuing to initiate intimate scenes between them, but in public Mike is still trying to put on his “straight boy act” and kind of being a jackass about it, and this song could be used to show the tension between them that has caused.

"And I've been waiting for this moment, for all my life, (Oh lord)

Well, I was there and I saw what you did I saw it with my own two eyes So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been It's all been a pack of lies.

Well I remember, I remember don't worry How could I ever forget It's the first time, the last time we ever met But I know the reason why you keep this silence up

No you don't fool me The hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows It's no stranger to you and me"

"In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel (1986)

Some of the lyrics in this song just SCREAMS byler, just look at the 1st, 2nd and 4th paragraphs. I would be suprised if they didn't use this song in either s4/s5.

Love, I get so lost sometimes Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart When I want to run away I drive off in my car But whichever way I go I come back to the place you are

All my instincts, they return The grand facade, so soon will burn Without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside

In your eyes The light, the heat (in your eyes) I am complete (in your eyes) I see the doorway (in your eyes) To a thousand churches (in your eyes) The resolution (in your eyes) Of all the fruitless searches (in your eyes)

Love, I don't like to see so much pain So much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away I get so tired working so hard for our survival I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

"Heroes" by David Bowie (1975)

David Bowie was bisexual. A cover of his song “Heroes” is used in the show twice already, sung by Peter Gabriel. The song plays when they pull Will's fake body out of the water in season one and Mike cries in his Mom's arms, with some very queer-coded lyrics in the background, and after Hopper's letter in s3 (which is very Byler-centric)

"I will be king. And you, you will be queen 'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact. Yes, we're lovers, and that is that. Though nothing will keep us together. We could steal time just for one day We can be heroes forever and ever. What d'you say? I, I wish I could swim, like dolphins, like dolphins could swim I, I can remember (I remember) Standing by the wall (By the wall) And the guns shot above our heads (Over our heads) And we kissed as though nothing could fall (Nothing could fall) And the shame was on the other side. Oh, we can beat them forever and ever. Then we could be heroes just for one day We're nothing, and nothing will help us Maybe we're lying, then you better not stay But we could be safer just for one day"

I just thought the above songs might be some highly likely possibilities given that they fit the year of the s4 and also make references to not only love, but the idea of hiding, pain, shame, longing, etc., and can make some (partially stretching here) references to other things in the show such as:

RAINBOWS and TRUE COLORS, SHINING THROUGH (rainbows imagery is always associated with Mike & Will in the show and a is symbol of lgbtq+ pride, True Colors shining through = who you really are on the inside finally coming out)

IF THIS WORLD MAKES YOU CRAZY ("crazy together", "only love makes you that crazy" and references the "world" motif in the show)

YOUNGER YEARS, ONLY YOU AND ME, YOUNG, WILD AND FREE (references "not wanting things to change" and wanting "to make things go how they were" part in Hopper's letter, and the "But we're not kids anymore" comment during the Byler fight)

ENDLESS OCEAN and SWIM, LIKE DOLPHINS (references water's significance in the show)

FLAMES (Will in front of the burning car in s4 teaser?)

LIES and LYING (Mike lying to El about how he feels)

INSTINCTS RETURNING, FACADES BURNING, WITHOUT MY PRIDE, I REACH OUT FROM THE INSIDE (Mike's feelings for Will are his instincts, the facade is the act he put on in s3 to seem straight, burning could reference Will & fire, and I think the last 2 lines of that 2nd verse reference vulnerability- perhaps in an apology/confession)

I GET SO LOST (confusion about his sexuality, feeling lost without the other) and SO MUCH WASTED TIME (known each other since kindergarten but were unaware the other felt the same way/was dealing with same things, they could have been even closer)

KINGS and QUEENS (the d&d game mike wrote where he has king Tristan give him a medal in s1)

STEALING TIME (references "turning back the clock, to make things go how they were" part in Hopper's letter and the time theme in s4 and time is central to the s4 plot)

AND WE KISS - AND THE SHAME (references the shame they both feel about being gay since it was so stigmatized in the 80's)

Byler @ Prom Possibilities:

If Mike and Will did dance together at the prom, they will probably get bullied because they live in a small conservative town. They will probably either run out, upset, or Eleven will step in to protect them which could lead to the Carrie moment.

Or Mike and Will will not dance together in the actual dance room, but instead sneak off to somewhere else in the school and have a private Byler dance moment where they can't be teased and it's just them together.

OR Mike and Will are still acting weird at this point in the season because neither of them is communicating what needs to be said out of fear, or one of them has confessed or done something to indicate how they feel, but the other hasn’t so everything is weird between them. There would be lots of tension from this and we would get lots of longing looks and adoring moments between the two of them from the sidelines. (I think this one is the most likely)

[narrativelysignificantturtleduck]

so a while ago @volkswagonblues left a reply on this post saying that jeong jeong was an example of "someone who is ideologically 'right' but whose character is absolutely not likeable, or at least not in the mainstream fandom-popular way". i started writing this response, but i totally forgot it was in my drafts until i wrote my iroh analysis. it doesn't seem right for me to have an iroh analysis post and not a jeong jeong one so here it is, the jeong jeong character analysis nobody asked for:

volkswagonblues's response hits on exactly why i find his character so fascinating - he's good, but he's absolutely not nice or well-adjusted about it. and he's definitely not mainstream-fandom "likable". it's rare that i see hate for one of my minor character faves (one of the benefits of having them), but i have actually seen people say they don't like jeong jeong. mostly, it centers around him being "wrong" about firebending, as opposed to the sun warriors. i can see where that comes from. jeong jeong has the noticable accent and proverb-y speeches of the ~mystical asian master~ trope, but his viewpoint comes off as pretty harsh and simplistic. this can confuse an audience expecting easy answers from a kids show - are you supposed to see him as wise or not? for me, i think asking "are jeong jeong's beliefs wrong?" is the wrong question. instead, you should ask: "why does jeong jeong have those beliefs?"

and the more you think about that, the more you see that he isn't actually wrong. firebending is the only type of bending where the bender produces the element from their own body rather than using their surroundings. it is someone imposing their will on the world, even more so than the other forms of bending. iroh sums this up nicely:

"Fire is the element of power. The people of the Fire Nation have desire and will, and the energy to drive and achieve what they want."

there's nothing wrong with that in theory, but in the show, this drive and power manifests as the fire nation's imperialist conquest, and the goal they're trying to achieve is world domination. as a former high-ranking military official, jeong jeong has seen firsthand the ways firebenders use their power to hurt people. the culmination of the fire nation's ideology is a plan to burn the entire earth kingdom to the ground - exactly the kind of wide-scale destruction he describes in his first cautionary speech:

"Without the bender, a rock will not throw itself! But fire will spread and destroy everything in its path if one does not have the will to control it!"

you could say that firebending is misused by the fire nation, but that feels like a No True Scotsman fallacy ("that's not true firebending!"). the fact is, firebending's unique qualities fall in line with the nation's imperialist ideology. jeong jeong hates his bending because it is inextricably tied to the war he hates.

like many, i once thought a trip to the sun warriors would be healing for jeong jeong, but i've since realized that's not what he needs. jeong jeong is perfectly aware that firebending isn't always destructive - he counsels restraint and control, not total suppression, and he even alludes to sun warrior beliefs:

"Feel the heat of the sun. It is the greatest source of fire. Yet, it is in complete balance with nature!"

going to see some dragons who tell him that firebending is about the sun and life won't change his mind. 'of course it's not inherently evil,' he'll say. 'but it has been used in terrible ways'. his feelings aren't about firebending in the abstract. they're about firebending as it is used. that it has the capacity to support an ideology of conquest, that he and others have given into its destructive side and committed such atrocities with it. he's right to hate that. (i also feel like he'd resent the sun warrior civilization for their isolationism. i mean, i would, if i'd put my life on the line to fight against my nation and it turned out there were a bunch of people who agreed with me but did nothing about it.)

so if jeong jeong and the sun warriors aren't philosophically opposed (except re: their involvement in the war), why does his view of firebending seem so much harsher? because - and here we come back to the original point - he's not likeable. he's a strict teacher and plenty of us (especially if we were kids when we watched the show) have a knee-jerk negative reaction to that. his speeches about the danger of fire are grandiose. but here's the thing: the speech where he says the most derogatory things about firebending is not one where he's teaching. it's one where he opens up to katara:

"I've always wished I were blessed like you - free from this burning curse."

this reveal that he wants to be a waterbender means that everything he says to her about his bending is less about what he believes about firebending in general and more about his own personal struggles. and in that context, it's heartbreaking:

"It forces those of us burdened with its care to walk a razor's edge between humanity and savagery. Eventually, we are torn apart."

this is the core of it all - jeong jeong doesn't just hate the fire nation and its war, he hates himself, hates that he holds that destructive power inside him. he doesn't seem to struggle with the act of bending (another reason why the sun warriors wouldn't necessarily be any help) but he clearly doesn't want to do it, probably because it reminds him of when he did terrible things with it. no wonder he calls it a curse.

and so here's what we're left with: jeong jeong leaves the fire nation military because he is right that the war is wrong, and he counsels control and restraint in opposition to the imperialist ideology of constant expansion and conquest. however, he is severely traumatized and full of guilt from his participation in said imperialist conquest, and that means he comes off as harsh and overly negative. right, but not likeable.

while i was writing this post, i was rewatching a lot of clips from the show, and i got curious about his voice actor, who i suspected was actually asian (unlike most of the voice actors). it turned out i was correct - his name is keone young, and he's had a very long career - but he's hawaiian and doesn't have the accent that probably made me guess that. he has this to say about how he portrays the one-dimensional accented characters he often plays:

“I want to portray that person with an accent who is real instead of a stereotyped version of it," he said. "I’ve always wanted to see myself as the one the story revolved around so that it was my story not your story. I always try to convey I have some kind of philosophy or point of view.”

(read the full interview here)

i bring this up because while i think jeong jeong's memorability can partially be attributed to the atla writers giving him a cool backstory and dramatic lines, what keone young says here about taking a character who's a bit of a stereotype and making them seem real, with their own philosophy and point of view...well, that's exactly jeong jeong. despite his limited screentime, we get a clear picture of who he is and what he believes. and who he is is someone who fully embodies his radically anti-imperialist politics, who has come to his beliefs from traumatic experience that's made him bitter. as the atla renaissance pushes us to reevaluate these children's cartoon characters with older eyes and modern-day politics, it's worth looking at a striking minor character like jeong jeong, who might not be fandom-likable but who has a lot of depth to offer and a perspective worth considering.

[squidproquoclarice]

What do you think of the missions for Beau and Penelope?

So if I remember right, this was an optional mission strand, and much like Rains Fall and Calderon’s later, something that initially could come across as just another Stranger for Arthur to help actually becomes very vulnerably illustrative of his inner self.  (Even if he isn’t making verbal confessions of things in this one like those other two.) The Penelope and Beau missions emotionally revolve around Arthur’s own confused, blighted romance with Mary Linton.  Forbidden “Romeo and Juliet” romance?  Check.  Opposite sides of some kind of social fence?  Check.  Overbearing, controlling, and disapproving families?  Check.  Longing to escape but fear of doing so?  Check.  The vibes and driving factors are so similar it’s pretty obvious that R* intended to evoke that aspect of Arthur’s life with these missions.  The fact he has no other in-game romance, and even his closest friendships don’t have this same vibe, makes it an even easier correlation to pick up on. We already know by the first mission point in Chapter 3 that Arthur had a youthful romance that didn’t work out, that he and Mary still feel some pull even fifteenish years later, that it’s still acutely painful for him, and that his “not measuring up” and family disapproval played a big part in it.  Then we get Beau and Penelope for a while, and then in Chapter 4, we get more of Arthur and Mary and find out more context there.  And Mary asks him to run away with her.  He’s tempted, but he declines.  Because there are people who still need him.  He can’t just leave.   Then in Chapter 6 we get the end of Beau and Penelope’s story.  They run away together to Boston, presumably to their happily-ever-after, and Arthur helps make it happen.  And I feel like as he watches them leave, he’s hoping that their love survives and they have a better ending than him and Mary.  Because he knows, even before that letter arrives, that they have no future.  Even without the TB, I think he’d know it by now.  He knows they could never run away together and have it work out, though you can’t just stop feelings on a dime so it still breaks his heart when she writes him to finally say that they can’t do this anymore, that it’s bad for both of them (and she’s right, and you can tell it’s breaking her heart to write that letter). Beau and Penelope do have a few things that are different from Arthur and Mary that mean they have a happy ending.  For one, they very clearly admire each other.  They praise each other as people openly to Arthur, and in ways that seem to prove true when we actually meet the other person.  That’s very much opposed to Mary and Arthur’s bickering and uncertainty and resentment of “You’re a snob who condescends to me”/”You just seem to revel in doing the wrong thing”.  Because admiration and even being in love isn’t enough.  You have to like and respect someone, to truly know them rather than a perfect image you’ve made of them, and trust them.  And both sides have to do so.  There has to be equality.  There can’t be one person who practically worships the other and one who sort of looks down on the other, or both people feeling an attraction but disliking each other as people so that there’s that conflict between that idealized romantic fantasy and the reality. And Arthur has a problem there, because we see with multiple people that he’s prone to idealize and put some people on a pedestal and think he’s not good enough for them, or else having to step up and be the reliable "big brother”/leader/mentor half of the equation.  It’s very, very notable that he doesn’t readily relate to people as equals.  It’s typically either a matter of how he needs to step up to protect and guide them, or else how he’s hopelessly too much beneath the image he has of them.    That’s part of why I really love R*’s writing on his friendship with Sadie, because that equality of seeing each other as flawed but fundamentally good is there, so he can have the humor and vulnerability and trust that he can’t with Mary and others, and he can accept Sadie’s praise of him as a good person like he can’t from others because he knows she truly knows him.  It’s a pretty glaring contrast in personality fit and that ability to be seen and be vulnerable that he’s laughing and joking with Sadie within thirty seconds of leaving camp as opposed to Mary criticizing with his dry sense of humor, or else being either super-serious-in-charge or put-you-in-your-place-snarky as he is with other people in the gang.  And it really makes you wish that he had that partnership and comfortable ease with more people, because he needs it.  It feels like he’s pretty much there with Javier pre-Guarma, which probably feeds into his Chapter 6 conflict with Javier.  Seeing someone he trusted that much wandering into Micah’s group has to hurt, and ergo the kind of angry, lousy comment about how they should have left Javier on Guarma.  He expected better from Javier, because if he’s seeing the truth about Dutch now, why doesn’t the equally loyal (but probably a little bit of “a better man than me” sentiment there) Javier?  He doesn’t see that his few solid allies at the time have much easier choices than Javier: John sees Dutch having left him to hang among other things and very reasonably doesn’t trust him, and Sadie and Charles both have a much easier decision because as relative newbies to the gang and being there out of pragmatic “I don’t have anywhere else to go so this will do for now” rather than being fanatically loyal to Dutch, they can walk away.  And Charles actually does that, quite rightly, by peacing out before the end to go with the Wapiti and be with a community we see he truly loves and belongs to, and bidding farewell to a whole bunch of bullshit that frankly isn’t his to handle.  Even if the Epilogue tries to walk that self-assertion back pretty hard, unfortunately.  The other big difference is that Beau and Penelope have absolutely nobody in their horrible families they care about anymore.  Thus they can easily leave them behind to run away together.  Mary may suggest running away on impulse, but we know she’s fiercely protective of her little brother Jamie.  From their very disparate ages (late teens/early twenties and early thirties), it’s quite likely that Mary was both sister and mother to him.  I doubt she could easily leave him to the bullying of their father, and especially after knowing how naive and vulnerable he is after the Chelonians.  Arthur, of course, has many people he loves and desperately wants to protect and get to safety.  Even by that point in Chapter 4, he may be seeing Dutch more clearly and starting to put a little distance there, but he can’t abandon the rest of his family. They may talk about running away together briefly, but like much of their relationship, it’s a romantic fantasy that can’t stand up to the reality of each other and their lives, and they both know it. And so Beau and Penelope also serve to show us, and Arthur, that it’s not a forbidden romance that’s the issue with him and Mary.  Those can work out, because this one does.  He can’t use the excuse that it’s them against the world any longer, try to apply Dutch’s, “It’s not my fault, it’s society” logic.  Which means he has to take a good look at himself and that relationship and admit that it can’t work because of who they are as people, and because of the people that they love and still need to protect.  At the end of the day, there’s just not enough there that’s true reality rather than delirious fantasy for them to possibly sacrifice almost everything to be together.  They couldn’t do it when they were kids, and they can’t do it now.  And that’s not wrong of either of them.

[x0401x]

Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #25

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Sri Lanka Nakata Diary

 Title: I got to make some time all of a sudden.

Hello, this is Iggy.

Just as the title says, I suddenly managed to make some time for myself here in Sri Lanka. The guest who was supposed to come over had to go on a last-minute trip, so I wound up with almost an entire day off.

My boss told me that I should take it easy while I was at it and that studying was forbidden, so if you’d like, please give me suggestions. I think there aren’t many people living in Sri Lanka among the ones who are seeing this, so anything goes. Like your favorite ways to spend your leisure time, for example.

By the way, I like cooking when a senior acquaintance of mine comes over, but I noticed lately that I don’t cook much when I’m alone. Eating out is best when it’s Sri Lankan curry.

 Ely_03

Hi, Iggy. I always have fun reading your blog. I live in Greece. I have interest in Japanese people because my daughter is studying abroad in Japan, so I’m happy to have found this blog.

 1975Halleluja

Do they not have night clubs there? How about you try going to one? I’m reading you all the way from Egypt.

 BB_Typhoon

How about trying to clean up your room? It might be surprisingly messy.

 Archangel

Hello, nice to meet you, Iggy-san. If you are in Sri Lanka, apparently, there is a Sri Lankan massage called Ayurveda. You are finally having a day off, so isn’t it a good idea to relax in a way you have never experienced before? Take care of your body. I found the spa below. Not so bad, is it?

(This URL is only visible to the administrator.)

   Title: I went to do Ayurveda!

Hello, Iggy here. Thank you for your previous comments to my blog.

I went to the spa that Archangel-san introduced to me, and it was a series of first experiences, so I was very excited. Back in my country, I kind of imagined that women were the ones who get this kind of massage, but if my tired body would get better, I could keep getting it in the future too.

The owner of the spa was a Tamil speaker. It would have been great if I were more able to talk to them. Thanks to them, I experienced enrichment in many aspects.

Iggy out.

 Archangel

Iggy-san, it seems you had a fulfilling day and nothing makes me happier. I think that the most efficient way to study about languages ​​and gemstones is to proceed with the two paralleling each other like wheels. I hope your training will be fun.

 Punk_Of_England

When I read a blog from someone who’s having fun, I have fun too! If there were a ‘like’ button, I might have pressed it nonstop. Take care of your health. Man, anonymous sections sure are convenient.

   Title: Three-Wheeler

Hello, Iggy here. I had a question in one of my updates.

Do you remember that, last time, I wrote an article about purchasing a three-wheel bike called Three-Wheeler? I’ve been addicted to riding it around lately.

I did have a driver’s license in my motherland, but I was the kind who didn’t have a car or bicycle, so maybe my eyes opened up to the fun of driving a car when I came here.

This thing is like a bike with a hood, so it feels good when the wind hits my face. Finding waterfowl when I’m running around the man-made areas in the evening makes me feel satisfied.

I’m going to study now. After I’m done, I’ll go ride on the Three-Wheeler again. Looking forward to it.

 Archangel

Iggy-san, hello. It seems that you are enjoying your new vehicle. Although this is excessive concern, but if I may share my worries about the Three-Wheeler, while it does have a casual ride quality to it, is not appropriate for crime prevention. For example, there is no wall to protect your body if a thug happens to attack from the side of the vehicle while it is temporarily stopped. Your senior and boss have probably already told you not to carry valuables with you when you are riding. Please be careful.

 Iggy

>Archangel-san, thank you for always leaving comments. Indeed, I do recall my boss telling me that. I never take valuables with me when I use the Three-Wheeler, but I’ll make sure to take it to heart once again. Thank you very much.

 ilovestones

I went back to read the article about the Three-Wheeler. So cute! I don’t see bikes like that in my country at all. Must be fun to drive around one of those. I think this would come in very handy if you ever feel like renewing all the strata within a 20km radius of your house. I’m jealous.

 Punk_Of_England

This might be the anonymous section and all, but I think people’s quirks show in their text, so it’s hard to tell if they haven’t yet been discovered or if they’re just being let through...

   Title: Men in Skirts

Iggy here. Just as the title says, I’ve passed by several men who were wearing skirts. I wonder if it was traditional wear. But it also had a colorful and casual feel to it, so I’m slightly confused about what it was. I’m not very confident as to whether or not I was making a rude face when I looked at them. My apologies to them.

 Archangel

>Iggy-sama.

That is called sarong, which is a traditional wear in Sri Lanka. Please refer to the URL below.

(This URL is only visible to the administrator.)

I believe you understood that it is used as formal wear. Perhaps the fact that there were so many men wearing colorful sarongs means it was a wedding ceremony? Do not be so discouraged.

   Title: I was given a sarong!

Iggy here. For now, please take a look at this photo.

(The image is displayed only to accounts authorized by the administrator.)

I got a red and blue gingham check sarong! It’s comfy! Since it’s the locals who wear it, as expected, there’s lots of pros to it – it’s breathable, doesn’t bleach in the sunlight, and it’s easier to walk in than I had imagined.

As you can see in the picture, the length is down to the ankles. It’s longer than a Scottish skirt and that helps. It seems people put this on to go to wedding ceremonies. So cool. Above all, it suits the climate of Sri Lanka, so I think that’s better to wear than Bermuda shorts if you want to spend time here.

I received this from my neighbor, but it’s extremely comfortable, so I’m planning to buy one or two more for myself. I wonder if this can’t be worn every day.

 Shinghalion

I am a local. It makes me happy that you like my homeland’s clothes. This sort of garment also seems to be trending amongst Sri Lanka’s elite college students in the recent years, so if there are any places near you where college students hang out, then the boutiques next to them are where you should aim to go. Please have a pleasant life. By the way, it seems to me that someone is leaving several comments. Are you okay? If they are being a nuisance, it seems that there is also a block function here. Just my excessive concerns.

 Archangel

>Shinghalion

Pleased to meet you (just for the sake of it). Please do not say such outrageous things to someone you have never even met.

   Title: I ended up accumulating sweets.

(The image is displayed only to accounts authorized by the administrator.)

I made too many...

The picture is of coconut rolls, pudding and caramelized date. As one would expect, I can’t eat them all on my own, but when I tried to share with my neighbors, they told me that it’s bad for children’s teeth and got a bit angry, so things are awkward. What should I do?

   Title: My boss came over!

The sweets that I made in big quantity didn’t go to waste. Lucky me.

Weird coincidences do happen. I’m truly glad for that.

I wonder what I should make next time he comes. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions. As for Sri Lankan sweets, I still only know about things like watalappan, and also the rolls, cream buns, and coconut dumplings sold at the station’s kiosk. But all of them are delicious, aren’t they? If you have any recommendations, please tell me.

 Archangel

>Iggy-sama, I saw your post with great interest. However, I do not think you should forget about the true feelings of the person in question. Please use every day to improve your own skills and promote your physical and mental health. In that respect, as expected, I think that the sweets you are supposed to make should have focus on your current specialties, but do you agree?

 Shinghalion

>Archangel, overprotection can be a bad habit if it goes too far. How about you realize that already?

 Archangel

>Shinghalion, Neither I nor you know each other at all. Please refrain from speculating and saying such things on your own accord.

 Punk_Of_England

Phew~! This is getting kinda interesting. I’ll be watching over the course of events.

 ilovestones

Hum, please leave it as that. This is Iggy-san’s blog. Aren’t you being a bother to him?

 Archangel

I resent my actions.

 Shinghalion

I apologize.

 Punk_Of_England

I’m sorry.

 Mura_Shimo

Heya, Iggy-san! It’s your well-acquainted H.S. I came to see your blog! It’s a fun one with lots of comments. Considering that you said you didn’t advertise it to anyone, that’s amazing! Natural virtues maybe?

I wanna see you again and talk! Do lots of updates~! I’ll do my best at guitar practice too~!

 Punk_Of_England

The possibility of toleration has disappeared, huh. A-san, you okay? Are you going to be silent for the rest of your life?

 Archangel

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but I am hesitating as well. Remaining silent might be the safest.

 Archangel_Of_Archangel

Hello, nice to meet you, Iggy-san.

I read your entire blog. You seem to be having lots of fun. That is a relief. I have experience with working in a country a bit farther to the southeast than Sri Lanka, so seeing you live a fun daily life reminds me of my youth, which makes me both cry and laugh. This is a very good blog where your daily life comes to mind in vivid colors.

Also, the way that so many people are looking after Iggy-san in the comment section made the corners of my eyes feel hot. Speaking of which, do the people who leave comments on this blog really have no relation to Iggy-san and just watch over him through this blog?

>Archangel-san, can we talk again?

   Mail account

 Sender: richard@xxx.uk

Destination: n_yasuhiro@xxx.jp

Message: I shall contact you through the usual phone number.

 Sender: n_yasuhiro@xxx.jp

Destination: richard@xxx.uk

Message: I will be waiting for it. Thank you for always taking care of my son.

   Title: The comments decreased?

Hello, Iggy here. Ever since the last update, I feel that the people who always send comments to the blog have gone quiet somehow. Have I written anything weird? It is weird for me to make such a request, but if there is no problem in particular, please be as dynamic as always. I mostly spend my time by myself, so I get encouragement when I read from you.

The city has become lively with the preparations for Perahera. It seems there will be many plans for the summer again, but will I be able to see it live? Iggy out!

 Archangel

>Iggy-sama, hello. I shall write a long comment in due time.

[olivish]

Okay so here are five Wilford headcanons/ficlets. A bit long, below the fold:

1. His “real” name isn’t Joseph Wilford. Wilford invented - or, perhaps, stole - this name, many years ago, to hide his true origins. If anybody ever asked him about his youth, he would invent some compelling tale, gradually adding details that were more and more outrageous, just to see how much the person listening was willing to believe. Soon he realized, the longer he could string someone along, the more useful they proved to be in the future. 

To this day, Ruth still believes that he was raised by penguins after his family died in a shipwreck off the Falkland Islands. “Little known fact,” Wilford told her, “Penguins are excellent parents. And they have better table manners than most people you’ll ever meet.” He nudged his head towards Melanie, who was eating sushi with her hands, wiping her fingers on her jumpsuit. Melanie: “Huh?” 

2. Wilford LOVES pierogis topped with butter, sauerkraut and pepper. Pierogis are his comfort food. His Ukrainian neighbor in Sheffield used to make them, and while she cooked, she’d regale him with stories about her absent husband, who, she confided, was KGB. Pre-Wilford Wilford sat transfixed as she told tales of statecraft and espionage with gusto, her wooden spoon zooming and stabbing with every robust gesticulation. It was only later, when crafting his own identity, that Wilford realized - of course - she’d made it all up. 

Decades later, “KGB” became a common bit of color he’d toss around in dinner party conversations, grinning ear-to-ear as the particularly stupid echelons of high society scooped it up, eyes wide as they gasped in scandal. 

3. Wilford HATES airplanes. He’s deathly afraid of heights, although he hides it well when necessary. He built a train empire specifically so that he’d never have to take a “projectile death tube” anywhere, ever again. And besides, aerospace guys are pricks and he enjoyed driving them out of business. 

On this subject, Melanie entirely agreed. “Fuck airplanes,” she’d say after a particularly good day, clinking her beer against his glass of scotch. “Fuck airplanes,” Wilford would echo in return. 

“We should put that below the logo, you know,” Melanie suggested. “Like a slogan. Wilford Industries--” 

“Fuck Airplanes,” Wilford finished the sentence, laughing, a hand on her shoulder. He gave an affectionate squeeze. “Bloody right.” 

4. Wilford’s favorite scientist is Nikola Tesla. He has a vast collection of Tesla memorabilia, and bought many of his original sketches and prototypes at auction. He built Wilford headquarters in Colorado Springs and Niagara Falls, as an homage to “the master.” For Halloween, Wilford consistently dressed as Tesla, complete with mustache and pigeon.  

When Elon Musk named his electric car after Nikola Tesla, Wilford had a meltdown and tried to sue. “For what?” Lilah Folger asked, confused. “How should I bloody know?” Wilford raged in reply. “You’re the lawyer! Figure it out! Slander! Indecency! Being a grimey little prick!” 

Lilah tried her best, but it was the only lawsuit Wilford ever lost.

5. Wilford would constantly go off about how much he hated children, didn’t see the point of them, was too busy/selfish/interesting to ever waste his time with procreation, but the truth is, he’s sterile and he hates it. Only Audrey knows the secret, because he let it slip one night while particularly inebriated. Everything he’s done in his life, from building a global empire to plastering his name all over the train, to building an engine that would literally *never* stop, was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to leave a lasting legacy.

When Melanie had Alex, Wilford found himself particularly bitter, and Melanie teased that he was jealous of the baby taking so much of her attention. What she didn’t realize was that Wilford’s jealousy was primarily directed towards her, not little Alex. 

“It must be intoxicating, having complete ownership over another human being,” Wilford mused. “I mean, she’s completely yours, isn’t she?”

“Parents don’t own their children, Joseph. You’re thinking of slavery.” 

“Legal definitions aside, that girl came from you. She’s helpless, utterly at your mercy, depends on you for everything. But, rather than resent the tyranny, the little thing loves you for it. Devotion without question. Without merit.”  

“I like to think I merit it.” 

“Doesn’t matter. That’s my point. You could be the worst parent in the world, and she’d love you anyway.” Wilford chuckled. “Evolution. What a trip.” 

“Speaking of trips.” Melanie frowned as he rolled a joint. Not his first of the day, she could tell.  

“Now, now. You’re not my mother.” 

“It’s making you melancholy. It’s not fun, Joseph.” 

“Oh, just let me wallow, will you? If you’re not going to join in...” 

With a sigh, Melanie left him alone, resigned to the fact that Alex was destined to become a permanent wedge. And she wasn’t wrong. Over the years, Wilford seemed intent on proving his point, spoiling the girl at every turn, showering her  with attention and gifts, deftly positioning Melanie as the bad guy who was always saying no. No, you can’t eat ice cream for every meal. No, you can’t keep a show pony in the backyard. No, you can’t stay up all night watching Duck Soup with uncle Joseph. 

“What are you so cross about?” Wilford would tease. “You’ll see. Come tomorrow, she’ll love you anyway.”

This lasted until one day, Melanie did something so awful, so unforgivable, so against nature and everything a mother should be, that Wilford was positive, the spell was finally broken...

[fireinmywoods]

the heart of the matter (is Leonard McCoy)

Followers...friends. I come to you today, hat in hand, to ask for your support in a certain fandom matter, a trifling concern of little real consequence which nevertheless has been driving me absolutely cross-eyed bonkers for some years now.

Simply put: can we please all agree that Bones is the heart of the Enterprise???

In AOS, I mean. I’m not aware of any debate over this when it comes to TOS, where the roles of the triumvirate have always been explicit, though there are a few different ways to identify them:

Spock = logos = superego = head

Bones = pathos = id = heart

Kirk = ethos = ego = soul

So clear! So clean! So universally accepted by Trek fandom at large!

Oh, but things get murkier in AOS, and there are plenty of posts floating around which suggest that it’s Kirk, not McCoy, who serves as the heart in the Kelvin timeline. Even the writers of the first two AOS films have outright stated that their interpretation of the triumvirate had the original roles switched, with Kirk as the highly emotional one and McCoy as the arbiter between Kirk’s passion and Spock’s logic. It’s true that this technically counts as a Word of God pronouncement by the actual creators of 2/3 of the series thus far, which some would argue renders it canon. However, it’s equally true that those same creators also felt that Kirk was a fuckboi and that Benedict Cumberbatch wonderfully embodied their vision for Khan Noonien Singh, so honestly, who gives a hot hollerin’ fuck what those dingdongs think. This seems as justified a time as any to invoke Death of the Author, and in fact, it’s my firm belief that despite the writers’ intentions, Star Trek and Into Darkness both support the original triumvirate breakdown.

Under the cut you’ll find a long-winded and self-indulgent ~*~character analysis~*~ of the Kelvin-timeline incarnations of Jim Kirk and Leonard “Bones” McCoy, reviewing why Leonard is still unmistakably the heart, unpacking what the hell Jim’s deal is, and finally taking a look at some key examples from canon, because ya girl believes in showing her work.

Let’s get down to business.

[A quick warning, as this is starting to spread beyond my own followers: if you don’t like McKirk as a romantic pairing, you ain’t gonna like part IV, so I’d bow out before then or just take your leave now.]

i. Leonard

Independent of Jim’s characterization, it should be blindingly obvious that Leonard is the heart. He’s by far the most nakedly emotional of our seven core crew members, a trait we see writ large and small throughout the films. He’s reactive; he’s passionate; he’s humane. He cares, first and foremost.

Not about Starfleet, of course. Leonard doesn’t give a damn about playing the game or advancing his career, or even really about the Enterprise’s mission - he has no desire to explore strange new worlds, he’ll pass on seeking out new life and new civilizations, and he spends half his time trying to convince everyone else that boldly going where no man has gone before is a great way to die horribly. Fuck exploration, fuck space, and fuck the Federation while we’re at it. Leonard is perhaps the most improbable of the Enterprise’s senior officers for the simple reason that he seems to resent everything about the job.

Well. Almost everything.

See, what Leonard cares about is people. He cares about their lives, about their stories, about their hopes and dreams, about their suffering. That’s why he entered and has stayed in an extremely taxing caring profession, and it’s why he’s still on the Enterprise despite his incessant bitching about everything they do. He wouldn’t trust anyone else to take care of the crew he’s become so attached to, and he finds fulfillment in helping the people they encounter out there in the nightmare of space.

In every timeline, Leonard McCoy defines himself by what he can do for others: the pain he can ameliorate, the wounds he can heal, the diseases he can cure, the small amounts of good he can bring to a galaxy filled with so much absolute horseshit. Unlike most of his colleagues, he’s not motivated by curiosity or an adventurer’s spirit or a burning desire to make sense of the universe. (Fuck the universe, too, as a matter of fact.) Instead, he’s driven by the incredible depths of his compassion and empathy and concern for the people he serves alongside and those they meet along the way.

Sure sounds like the heart to me.

ii. Jim

I actually totally get why some people characterize Kelvin-timeline Jim as the heart. He’s quite literally a different man than the original timeline’s Kirk, and he definitely has more of the pathos qualities to him. Early on, he’s a total spitfire, fierce and hot-blooded, quick to anger and other sharp-edged emotions we’re not used to associating with James T. Kirk. Even as he grows into himself and leaves some of those traits behind, he remains spontaneous, passionate, protective, and self-sacrificing - easy enough to mistake for the heart if you squint.

But let’s not confuse having a heart for being the heart. Sure, Jim is more openly emotional and reactive than his TOS counterpart, but there’s still a marked difference between the way he and Leonard express and act on their emotions.

AOS Jim definitely has a lot of feelings - big ones - but at the end of the day, he’s not driven by his heart. He’s driven by his gut.

Whenever there’s trouble, Jim makes a beeline right for the center of it. He’s impulsive as hell, rarely pausing to think past his first instinct, because he just wants to be doing something, no matter the odds, no matter what it costs him. He explicitly calls himself out on this in ST:ID when arguing with Spock: “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I only know what I can do.” He doesn’t have the patience or the constitution to sit and debate all the options, either internally or with his crew. If there’s a path forward from where he is, even a bad one, Jim’s gonna take it.

[Sidebar: One could make the case that the roots of Jim’s instinct to act reach back to his childhood traumas - canonically ignored abuse and neglect on the one hand, and the Tarsus IV famine and massacre on the other - but that’s a whole post on its own and we ain’t got all day here.]

Jim can’t not act, and while that gets him into a lot of trouble, it also saves lives. Sulu probably appreciated that Jim’s gut drove him to leap off Nero’s drilling platform without a moment’s hesitation after a man he’d only just met. He may have been a real shithead about it, but Jim’s impassioned insistence on going after the Narada and not wasting time on the possibility of a better option was key to saving Pike and Earth itself. And I don’t know why Spock was so surprised that Jim intervened to save him on Nibiru, considering that the reason they were there in the first place was because Jim couldn’t sit back and watch the Nibirans die when there was something his crew could do to help them, even if it meant risking a violation of the Prime Directive.

Jim is a good man with a big heart, and he cares about people, absolutely. But he cares most of all about Doing The Right Thing - which in the heat of the moment often translates to Doing Something, Anything, Hold My Beer.

iii. heart vs. gut (i.e., time for some receipts)

I think one of the main reasons Leonard and Jim’s characterizations get confused is because they both tend to act on instinct, only lightly informed by higher reasoning. However, I’d argue that their motivations and the nature of those actions are super distinct, and those distinctions remain relatively consistent throughout all three films. (And y’all know I really mean this shit if I’m out here calling ST:ID consistent.)

Jim is a big picture guy, figuratively and often literally heaving himself full-body into the mix of whatever problem the crew has encountered for lack of any better alternative. That energy propels the plots of all three films: the chaotic path he carves through the events of Star Trek and ST:ID, and the slightly calmer but still undeniably bananas course he charts for himself and his crew in the second half of Beyond.

As the heart, Leonard operates on a more micro level. His concern invariably lies with the individual people caught up in those grand events Captain Chaos is busy dragging them all through. While Jim’s zooming around flipping plot switches, Leonard can always be counted on to bring it back to the personal.

We frequently see this juxtaposed right there on film. Think of that slow pan through medbay in the first movie after the Narada’s ambush and the destruction of Vulcan: while Jim is stewing over what to do about the Big Bad, Leonard has stepped into the CMO role without fuss or fanfare to care for the wounded crew and traumatized survivors.

Or jump ahead to Beyond: during Krall’s attack on the Enterprise, there’s a gorgeous cinematic shot of Jim sprinting down the corridor with two crew members to take on the invaders - and then we cut to Leonard moving slowly through those same ghastly red-lit corridors, searching for casualties in need of help, visibly affected by what his scanner is telling him about the downed crewman he tries to save.

Actually, Beyond as a whole does terrific justice to each of their roles. (Perhaps because it was not written by dingdongs.) The first act finds Jim flailing around for a sense of purpose and forward momentum - an understandable consequence of a gut-driven character having stalled out for too long - and he ultimately gets his mojo back by spending the rest of the film careening through one insane seat-of-his-pants ploy after another. Meanwhile, in the quieter moments between all the mayhem, Leonard serves as the empathetic sounding board for both Jim and Spock as they struggle with deep emotionally charged secrets and Big Life Questions, helping them untangle their feelings and reminding them of the emotional attachments which are ultimately key to their respective decisions to stay on the Enterprise.

More examples, you say? Don’t mind if I do!

Star Trek

GUT: Jim hurtles around the Narada, improvising almost every step of the way and paying the price for his and Spock’s scheme in bodily harm, and ultimately succeeds in rescuing Pike. HEART: Leonard calls out for Jim as he runs into the transporter room, overwhelmed with relief that he’s made it back, and takes Chris Pike’s weight literally and figuratively onto his own shoulders to begin healing him while Jim runs back off to the center of the action.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

GUT: Jim argues with Leonard, Spock, and Scotty in quick succession as he’s preparing to drag them all off to Qo’noS, immune to their attempts to reason with him because, unraveled as he is by grief and pain, he can only focus on his visceral drive to Do Something. HEART: Unlike the others, Leonard is upset not about the larger moral questions of whether it’s right to go after John Harrison or bring torpedoes aboard the ship, but about the fact that Jim himself is hurt and hurting and won’t accept help.

GUT: Jim makes a snap decision to sacrifice himself by hurling his body against the warp core to realign it and save his crew. HEART: Shellshocked by the emotional grenade of his best friend’s death, Leonard suddenly realizes, through the haze of his own numbness and upswelling grief, that he might still be able to do something for this lonely radiation-ravaged body he’s been brought and the life it represents.

Star Trek Beyond

GUT: At the tail end of an improvised plan to out-maneuver Kalara, Jim quite literally shoots first and asks questions later, igniting a fuel tank and setting off an explosive series of events which he and Chekov just barely escape. HEART: The next time we see Leonard, Spock is opening up to him about Ambassador Spock’s death and his own plan to leave Starfleet for New Vulcan - and while he’s empathetic toward Spock (I can’t imagine what that must feel like), Leonard’s thoughts go immediately to the emotional impact of Spock’s plan on the other people he’s closest with. (I can see how that would upset [Nyota]. / I can tell you, [Jim]’s not gonna like that.)

GUT: Jim frantically strains to reach the final switch in the life support hub, believing that he’s going to die either way since the vent has already opened, but spurred on by the knowledge that his ability to move that switch is the only thing standing between Yorktown and annihilation. HEART: Knowing exactly what’s at stake, with the fate of the station and millions of lives hanging in the balance, Leonard’s greatest concern is that Jim won’t make it out in time.

iv. never bet against the heart

Let’s wrap this up with a deep dive on one of the absolute best examples of Leonard as the heart: his decision to sneak Jim onto the Enterprise in the first movie.

As relentlessly as I drag him for the, you know, poisoning and kidnapping aspects of that whole deal, there’s no denying that it is a god-tier heart move. Is it logical? Absolutely not. Is it really the right thing to do for either himself or Jim, as far as he knows at the time? Nope. It’s 100% the wrong choice for his own job security, reputation, and relationships with his fellow crew, and it’s almost guaranteed to get Jim into even worse trouble. Leonard is a smart dude who must understand that this course of action will likely end up coming back on them both in a real bad way. For someone who argues loudly and often in defense of self-preservation, this is a shockingly bad idea.

But none of that matters, because Jim shakes his hand and tells him to be safe with that horrible empty-eyed smile, and it gets him right in the heart, one-two-three.

One: sympathy, worry, and affection for Jim - his best friend, his wild and troublesome stray, his only family.

Two: guilt over adding onto Jim’s pain, and the instinctive urge to fix whatever‘s hurting him.

Three: fear of heading out into the unknown by himself, the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing what’s coming, craving for the security and reassurance Jim’s presence would give him.

“Dammit,” Leonard says, as his heart wins out over his brain. He knows this is a garbage plan, and he doesn’t care. His heart chooses Jim. That’s all that matters.

So he goes back for Jim, and to his own surprise it turns out that this Very Bad Idea was actually a Very Good Idea because Jim’s impulsive instincts end up saving Earth, and Leonard’s not in the habit of fixing what ain’t broke so he figures he may as well keep on chasing Jim’s crazy ass around the galaxy for a while, through jungles and off cliffs and into the goddamn afterlife when need be, until finally one day Jim’s gut drives him right into Leonard’s arms and he suddenly realizes that this is what his heart was choosing all those years ago: Jim’s wide terrified eyes, Jim’s voice breaking over his name, Jim’s hand pressing hard against his chest, reaching out for what’s his.

But that’s another story.

[lady-star-strings]

DNF/Georgebur PotO & LND AU

Okay, to begin with, thank you so so much for giving me the chance to blab about this @dtvibez because I’ve always wanted to work with this AU, but I’ve just never had the characters to do it with and my musical nerd heart is thriving right now. Alright, anywhodilydo, geek-out over, let’s get into it - just a warning kiddos, this is gonna be a long one so strap in and hold on...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Roles

To start off, let’s address the roles here for how I believe these plots would fit best with the characters involved - it’s purely up to individual interpretation, but these are my thoughts as an in-depth lover of these musicals.

Obviously, our dear George is the leading lady Christine Daae in this story, that was pretty much a given - let’s just be honest here guys, he’s the simp-bait through and through and if that wasn’t Christine, I don’t know what was. Meg - Christine’s friend - and her mother Madame Giry I’m going to combine and make Fundy for reasons I shall disclose later in this post, and Sapnap will have a role to discuss later down the line too, just lemme get there. Now as for the love interests, I can easily say that Eric/The Phantom is Dream and Raoul is Wilbur in this situation. Some of you might be questioning why it wouldn’t be switched because Raoul was her childhood friend and Eric was a gifted musician, but I have answers for you ahead on that, don’t you worry~ ;)

Phantom of the Opera Arc

After studying under Dream - or the Nightmare of the Opera as people prefer to call him - for years to be the star singer he was always destined to be, George is finally granted the chance to do so when some strings are pulled behind the scenes to give him a leading role in an opera. There isn’t anything George wouldn’t do for his Angel of Music after giving him such a chance at success, and Dream is practically preening with pride over how astounding his Georgie has turned out to be. Before Dream can whisk George away in triumph, however, his childhood friend Wilbur shows up out of the blue to shower him in praise and remind him of the puppy love they shared as children before George moved to the opera house. George is smitten with nostalgia, to say the least - it’s nice to put a face to the affection for once.

Needless to say, Dream is hardly pleased with this turn of events and actively tries to keep George not only away from Wilbur, but also to himself because George is quite literally all he has in the world - not even his music can compare to how much George means to him. Of course, the way he goes about this is hardly morally right and only serves to drive George further and further away from him and into Wilbur’s arms as a safe haven from all of the horrors. In the end, though, even after so much heartbreak and all the terrible things Dream’s done to keep him hostage as his muse and love, George finds it in his heart to forgive him for being how the world made him to be and genuinely offers to give up his freedom if it means he won’t be alone in that darkness anymore and Wilbur won’t die.

As expected, Dream realizes he really can’t do that George when it comes down to it - he simply loves him too much to force him to stay if it means he’d wind up hating him for it in the end. He’d rather let him be free and live the life he’s been dreaming of with Wilbur than have him stay and live the rest of his life resenting him. Even so, George is surprisingly hesitant to leave and can only offer to return the wedding ring Dream gifted him as a final goodbye and a silent show of his remaining love for him before he let’s him go in return and goes off with Wilbur. Following that night, Dream disappears from the opera house altogether, never to be heard from again...

Love Never Dies Arc - *SPOILERS*

...Or so the story goes in Paris 10 years ago. Little did anyone know, Fundy actually helped Dream steal away from the opera house when the mobs came searching for him and was unyieldingly by his side as they made their way to America for a fresh start. Once there, Dream - with a little seedy behind-the-scenes help from Fundy - founded a successful side show on Coney Island where he and others like him such as Sapnap and Punz - Miss Fleck and Dr. Gangle - are able to live freely and are treated with respect for their unique traits. Fundy has actually taken to training under Dream to be a successful singer in his own right with a well-known show in the attraction, his only goal to gain Dream’s favor and hopefully prove he’s able to replace George in his life. Dream unsurprisingly has no interest in anything of the sort and still actively mourns the loss of his muse - not even his music brings him joy anymore because it only reminds him of what could’ve been, and Fundy will never be his Georgie despite how much he insists otherwise.

But Dream is a clever thing, and he winds up securing a contract for George - who is now married to Wilbur and is raising a 10-year-old son with him - to come perform at the side show for one last performance. George takes the contract with little to no thought as to the odd pseudonym on the paperwork because Wilbur has lost himself to gambling and alcohol over the years, and they’re desperate for money to survive. At first, George is irate and somewhat heartbroken to learn that Dream’s been alive after all these years, especially after how their lives have turned out following the one night of passion they shared before he disappeared. He admits he still loved Dream when he left and would’ve gone with him, but because he thought they couldn’t be happy and left without him, that ship has long since sailed. They both wish things could have been different, but also accept that what happened happened and all they can do now is move forward with the choices they’ve made.

Much to everyone’s immense shock, though, George’s son is actually Dream’s and not Wilbur’s - a fact which Dream deduces on his own after connecting the dots between his age and musical prowess. Unfortunately, the child is terrified of Dream’s true face just as George once was and after getting the truth confirmed about the child’s real parentage, he begs for him to never know. George ultimately blames himself for what’s happened, and although he can’t take back not telling Dream of their child and the fear said child feels toward him, he swears to perform for him one last time to make up for it before they return to Paris to avoid hurting him further. Meanwhile, Dream vows everything he’s worth in the world to be the child’s once he’s gone even if he can’t be his father, and Fundy isn’t happy to hear that in the slightest because he will have nothing after all the sacrifice he’s made for Dream. All of the sleazy deals and late nights in his dressing room plying people for Dream’s success, and he will get nothing - his mind is just too fragile to face that reality at this point without doing something rash.

Naturally, Wilbur has no clue about any of this at first and makes a drunken deal with Dream regarding George - if George sings for him, he and the child will stay with Dream and Wilbur will leave. If George doesn’t sing, he and the child will leave with Wilbur with all of their debts wiped away as not to burden their family further with his problems. Wilbur then proceeds to try his best to convince George to stay with him by using nostalgia yet again since he now knows who the child belongs to as well, but in the end, George realizes that although he may have loved Wilbur at one time, his love for Dream transcends all that and has never once wavered despite everything they’ve been through. Throughout everything, Dream has always been there waiting for him and wants nothing more than for George and their child to have the life they deserve - Wilbur lost all of that a long time ago. George makes his choice, and Wilbur leaves as promised with the acceptance that he while no longer makes George happy, Dream does and he’ll take care of him - but the child, however, leaves with a distraught Fundy seeking to “right his problems.”

They manage to catch up to Fundy in time to avoid disaster, but not completely as he still views George as the reason he could never be happy with Dream and winds up fatally shooting him in the midst of a mental breakdown. Dream can do nothing but hold George - the man he loved and was finally loved by in return  - as it’s revealed to the child who his real father is, only for him to flee the scene in horror of the truth. For once, Dream is at a loss for what to do because there isn’t any more time for them to have their happy ending and he hasn’t any idea what to do about their child without George. In his dying moments, George soothingly reminds him of one simple fact: Love never dies, and the best thing he can do is just live and give everything he can for both himself and the child now as all they have is each other. With a final kiss, George slips away and a sobbing Dream is left cradling his body when the child and Wilbur - who he ran to find to help George after he was shot - arrive on the scene. 

Dream isn’t cruel. He understands how Wilbur must feel in the same situation, so he allows him to mourn the loss of George in his own way with the child as he contemplates whether or not he can continue on. While he debates what to do with himself, the child slowly comes to him unafraid and willing to face the man he now knows to be his father in a new light. In his eyes, Dream can see George, and that’s more than enough for him to stay just a little longer in the world.

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Sorry if that’s a lot to process and read through, but it was a lot to get out and I wanted to be crystal clear on things as not to confuse people. This is for the most part just hitting the main plot points of the musicals, however, tweaking and adjustments and further deep-dive analyses can be done now that I’ve gotten the main idea out of the way. I definitely don’t want to stick too strictly to it myself and want to tailor it more to the SMP events and characters, but I’ll save that for later since it’s already super late and I should be writing my fic instead.

Happy writing kiddos, thank you for letting me indulge myself with this concept and I hope you enjoyed it~ <3