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honey-minded-hivemind · 2 years ago

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My Parent A/B/O AUs in X-Men Evolution sounds interesting to me, so I think I'm going to explore that for a minute:

• So, I have two different A/B/O Parent AUs, with everyone's two favorite ferals, Wolverine and Sabretooth. And honestly, X-Men Evolution seems like a good media to have the aus set in, due to having teens, friendship, less romance drama, compelling story arcs, and seeing these characters in a new light, exploring their potential in a more... kid-friendly way? Well, without too much romance, petty drama, and squabbling.

• I've explained in previous posts what any of my A/B/O AUs entail, not just the general one or the Parent ones. What they entail is this: Betas are more sturdy and hardy than either Alphas or Omegas, and can adapt easier than they can (they aren't side-lined) and can either have a baby or give someone a baby; Alphas tend to be fleet, fast and strong, but aren't as largely built as others, yet are incabale of having a baby (they don't have wombs); and Omegas aren't weak or meek, they're the strongest and most protective, but only have wombs. A/B/Os are one of the types of gender, male and female and nonbinary and trans and everything else still exist, too, but the mutants are the ones who tend to have the ABO traits highlighted and more influential in their lives.

• Other people (the humans) have A/B/O, but not as strong or prominent as mutants. The mutants tend to have more instincts, more urges, than a human would. And example: Human sees a cute animal, they find it cute or go meh. A mutant sees it, they like it/love it, they immediately want to hug it and adopt it. Mutants have powers, so imagine due to the mutations, it enhances any instincts or urges at least 10× more than a regular human (deeper emotions and feelings, basically)

• For the A/B/O Parent AUs in X-Men Evolution, I think I need to explore one at a time. Each person has their own history and personality, and since these aus are set entirely apart, it's best to explore them separately. With that tidbit said, let's try Logan first (favorite X-Men dad, who adopts every kid he sees)

• I headcanon that for X-Men Evo, he is an asexual. The reason he likely ever did the deed would be for one of two reasons: 1, he had a partner he loved, and wanted to meet their more private needs, and agreed to it, or 2, he wanted a baby, knew what was required, and did what he had to to get said baby. I wouldn't put either past him, since we do see him being empathetic and caring, even if he acts like he isn't, and would do what he thought was best.

• One way or another, he ends up pregnant (yes, he's an Omega, remember, strong and overprotective, fits), and he's rather pleased. The guy, no matter what X-Men media, adopts just about every child and teen he sees. So, yeah, I think this would make sense. During the pregnancy, he's protective, soft, and cuddly. Talks to the baby (reader), eats a lot to keep up with his metabolism and to keep his bby fed, and let's his friends (Charles Xavier and Ororo Munroe/Storm) dote on him.

• Then, when the time comes to have the bby... worse comes to worse. He's somehow in the hands of his enemies, he's on his own, and he can't stop what's already begun. By the end of it, he's exhausted, in pain, and barely coherent... but before he can even get more than a glimpse of his bby, they're taken away. No matter what he begs, no matter what he screams, he can't get free and he can't sense his child anywhere nearby.

• When he's rescued, it feels hollow. They search, tearing thoroughly through the building, looking high and low for any sign, anything, to hint to what happened to his child. But they find nothing... He doesn't give up, hunting through the halls to find what trace he can... Yet all he finds is the smallest cloth covered in blood, stained with his and his bby's scent... And he and his friends fear the worse had happened...

• He goes through a depression, trying to find anything left of his bby, and finding nothing. Charles does his best to help, offering aid and any resources he can to help his friend. Storm does her best to soothe him, sitting through the worst of it and consoling him, even sitting through the nights with him just so he won't be alone. And then Scott and Jean enter the three's lives... and then there's hope again, joy...

• And over the next few years, Logan slowly heals some of the pain. He has to help these two kids who need their help, his help, and he has to be there. It doesn't heal everything, but it numbs some of the grief, letting him feel some bit of happiness again. And as the other X-Men teens show up a few years later, he stays there for them. He isn't leaving these kids behind, not when they need him, need the pack he and the other adults provide. He wants to be there for them, to offer advice and soothe their fears and be everything he was denied to be with his own bby. He loves the teens, and would do whatever it took to keep them safe, the way he couldn't protect his own bby in the past or love on them...

• The teens do eventually find out that their resident Team Dad had a baby in the past, and feel a bit of heartbreak too. For Scott and Jean, they realize that would explain some of the sadness he had in the past when they first arrived, and why he was so careful with them, and then the others. For the other teens, they feel sympathy, and even empathy. For all the teens, they've dealt with their own losses, and they think they can understand their friend dad a little better...

• Yet the entire time... the reader wasn't dead. While they were taken away to be cleaned up and then taken to be experimented on, one of the nurses had a change of heart, realizing that the baby they were holding was just that, a baby. One they just took away from their parent, and planned to hurt. With that, when the other nurses leave, and they go to transfer the reader, they instead leave with them, taking them away from the labs and deciding to find someone to care for them...

• And the reader grows up, never knowing what transpired. Their life wasn't perfect, and they had their fair share of early traumas, but they did have at least one person in their life who loved them, and for them, that was enough. Yet over the years, that person's health worsens, to the point they are in the hospital. They know someone who can help the reader, or so they think, and decide to direct the reader to that area, which puts them in the same area as everyone else...

• The reader doesn't take their loved one's passing well, but soldiers on. They do their best to get along with their contact, only to find they're left on their own. They have enough money for necessities, and a place to live, but they don't have a way to stay in touch with their new guardian. Reader takes everything as best they can, and pushes down any discontent or pain that bubbles to the surface. They want to enjoy life, and plan to do just that, even if it takes awhile.

• They end up in the same school as the teens, and is a quiet, lone figure in and outside the classes. They don't talk to anyone unless they have to, keeping to their own devices and staying away from others their age, and a few people seem to think they'd make a good target for bullying. They try to push the reader around, only to be met with a vice-like grip that threatens to crush their arm, and warned in the coldest voice they heard to get lost. Thus leads to the reader now having a reputation as the mysterious lone wolf of the school.

• The X-Men and Brotherhood teens heard of the reader, but never put much thought into it... Uuuntil the adults of their groups inform them they sensed mutant activity, and it appears the reader is said new mutant. Which leads to the most awkward ways of getting to know someone. Each teen from each group has their own idea of how to approach the reader, and are doing their best to not be put off by the task at hand. But hearing that the quiet mystery kid at school is the newest possible recruit gives them a feeling of trepidation... They really don't want to end up with a broken hand, or worse...

• Yet somehow, someway, they do end up talking with the reader... And are relieved that they aren't too bad. A little gruff, and cutting to the point, but they aren't that bad (they haven't seen certain team members before their morning coffee). When they try to talk about being mutants, that's when the reader tries to back out. They don't want anything to do with that, or being around other people, especially teens. They've been hurt before, and aren't keen to relive those experiences... Well, the teens don't leave them alone. They pester the reader, asking what their power is and trying to figure it out on their own, and finally their troubles are rewarded...

• And then they realize that oh cr*p they have claws like Logan (the Brotherhood teens know who he is, they've heard Sabretooth/Victor talk about him, and they have actually met Logan. People get along better in the A/B/O AUs). Aaaand now they are all trying to figure out what to say. How do you you tell someone, "Hi, yeah, we know your dad/uncle, so can you please come with us so we can show you to them?" The teens all around are doing their best to figure out how to break the news, but now the reader makes more sense now, because oh, that's why they look a bit familiar, they're related to him. Cue the teens rushing off to call their pack parents to share the news...

• And when they do get the news... it's a lot to take in. How do they even begin to process it? And how do they break it to the reader, who they know doesn't know anything about their parentage or what finding them means? Breaking the news to Logan, he has to take a minute. And then, with every bit of urgency and seriousness, asks if it's true. When he's met with the answer, that it is, he's... he's elated. Warm. Feels like crying. Because his bby wasn't dead, and they were nearby, alive and well. And even though he wants to rush in, to see them immediately... he doesn't. For his bby's sake, and for his kids sake, he and the other adults shouldn't rush it. His bby knows nothing about him or the truth behind what happened, who they were, and if they tell them, they have to do so as carefully as possible. Thus begins the befriending of his bby by his kids, plus the Brotherhood teens.

• (Yes, Victor finds out, and for him, he's glad his brother's child isn't dead. But he does plan to have them on the Brotherhood's side, so they're close by and so his brother will actually visit him and join him )

• And the reader has no clue all of this is going on. They just know that the Xavier and Brotherhood teens are acting weirdly friendly and interested in them, and they have to try to not be panicked. Attention on them isn't something they like, and suddenly having a bunch of teenagers interested in you feels like too much for them. Reader does their best to stay polite, but keeps themself from connecting too much with them. Yeah, no one's having that. Everyone is trying to find out how to approach them, and how to try to get them to join their side, while doing their absolute best to curb their own instincts telling them they have a new friend/sibling that should be with them, not away from them, and should be in the pack nest, under a dozen blankets...

• Finally, they're able to get the reader to open up a bit, little by little. Finding someone caring and afraid underneath, who unconsciously has been denying and burying their instincts all their life, trying to be what they thought was normal. And the teens are quick to tell the adults, who are then quick to speed things up a little. Yet teens have a plan of their own: Invite the reader to their home, and get the adults to see for themselves they need them, need a proper pack and some proper TLC.

• Reader does eventually meet Logan, and he's doing his best to stay calm as his kids present his long lost bby to him, who's waving awkwardly and asking if he's okay, he looks a bit pale- And for the rest of the time reader is at the mansion, he's keeping an eye on the teens, noting how they and his bby are, glad to see them getting along and safe...

• And after a few months, the groups decide they should break the news to reader. The reader deserves the truth, and they're all friends now, so they hope for the best. The groups are careful, asking as gently as possible what the reader knows about their parent/s or guardians... and then tell them they know someone like them, who is just like they are, mutation and all... The reader doesn't need much to read into what they're saying, and feels a bit... scared. They have a feeling whatever the teens tell them, they expect a certain answer, and they won't take kindly to the wrong one. And when the news does break, the reader is quiet. Taking it in. And asks if that changes anything. The teens are quiet, studying the reader, and doing their best to stay calm... The reader asks to have some time on their own, leaving as quick as possible. They're overwhelmed, and they're pretty sure the odd behaviors of everyone isn't a sign of good for them, and realize that their gut feelings from before, that the groups had something dark, something off about them, were right...

• Over the next few weeks, the reader tries to avoid the teens, and tries to make a plan to find leave town for awhile. They want to run, to hide, to get away from it all. Something is telling them to run, to leave as fast as possible, that something isn't right, and this time, the reader wants to listen to it. But as they go to get some air, to calm down, they find someone they didn't expect to see. Logan. Who said the kids sent him to check up on them, since they haven't seen them for awhile. And the reader knows, somehow, that he and the others know what they planned to do, and feels fear flood them. Yet they stay still and do their best to brush off any concern, hoping against the odds to leave before anyone takes notice...

• Then Logan cuts to the chase, asks the reader why they want to run, why they're ignoring the others... and the reader bolts. They run, as fast as they can, sliding through the house and out the back door, trying to run from everything that's happening and the panic eating through them...

• And Logan follows. He isn't alone, but the others decided to stay in the van, to give the reader some space. Clearly that wasn't the answer. He knows they're being eaten up inside, that they're unsure what road to take next and overwhelmed, but frome everything Jean could read from their mind, they were in danger of running off, of hurting themself, and he can't let that happen. It's not hard to track his bby, or for him to approach them from the shadows. But he and his pack aren't losing them, and if that means they have to step in, so be it.

• And the reader knows the moment they catch a scent in the wind, a scent that's so similar to their's, that they've been found. They watch carefully as Logan approaches them, and has to fight down every urge to cry, to break down, to give in. Yet all he does is stay a few feet away, making gentle noises. And he talks, asking what's wrong and why they want to run so bad. Asking if that's what they really want. Telling them they won't be hurt, that they care, he cares, and he's there to keep them safe. Then just as carefully, he hugs them. And it feels so, so good...

• The reader shakes, trying not to let the fearful noises slip past them. The arms around them are firm, warm, promising nothing but gentleness and protection. And yet they still feel anxious. A hand rubs circles into their back, and they can hear the noises better now, soft chuffs, like an animal trying to calm its baby. And for a minute, they let it sink in, the comfort they've wanted, that they've needed, freely given and so, so warm... Yet they try to pull away. They can't have it, they can't put themslef through the pain of having it, that love and care, turn against them... But all the grip around them does is tighten, the noises growing louder and more determined... And just as softly... something sharp presses into their shoulder. And they suck in a sharp breath,, struggling as they realize what just happened.

• Tears sting their eyes as they become desperate, trying to tug themself away, only to be pulled back into the grip. The hand on their back keeps rubbing warm circles, and they feel their head tucked underneath their captor's chin. A sob escapes them, as a deep rumble comes from the one holding them. Whatever they were injected with, they can feel it slowly affecting them. A heaviness enters their thoughts, slowly spreading throughout their body. They try to pull back, but are only met with a deep purr. Everything is... starting to slip. Tiredness consumes them, slumping them into the hold around them. Warmth is over them, pressed into their back and limbs, only helping them drift off into a peaceful darkness. A gentle noise comes from whatever they're against, lulling them to the brink... It feels so good... So calm... The gentle rubbing agsint them continues, and a small hum escapes them... And then, with a small exhale, they slip completely under...

• As his bby passes out, a deep rumble escapes him. His bby is safe, and he can finally take them home, where he and the others can help them and nurture their instincts, right where they always belonged. With a quiet sigh, Logan picks them up, nuzzling his head against their's, then heads back to where the van is. He and the others will explain everything when his bby wakes up, and they'll make everything right again. Everything will be okay. His bby may have tried to run, but he understands that they were scared, anxious, afraid of kind touches and loving words. But he'll help them. They all will. Just a bit of time nurturing them and helping them adjust to the changes, and they can try to get them back in school with the others. They just have to get through the first few stages, starting with bringing them home...

(And that is what I have so far for this au. Things to expect include, but aren't limited to: group nesting, scenting, chuffs and purring between everyone, protective and possessive behavior, and many pack bonding moments. And yes, Laura shows up, and yes, she's added too. Victor makes an appearance, multiple times, to meet his nibblings and to try and get Logan to join him... The reader wakes up and kinda knees someone in the crotch. Then tries to act like nothing happened the night before. It's a trip for everyone, as they try to care for the reader, only to have to deal with them expecting every kind word and action to have a double meaning, a threat, behind it, a joke against them or a manipulation tactic to hurt them... And the platonic yans realize just how much TLC they need to put into their kid/sibling/friend.)

(P.S.: How the Platonic Yan Teens come to like Reader:

A bully, possibly Duncan or Riley or someone else, messing with one of the teens, acting like a jerk: Ha, what are you gonna do about it, loser?😈

Reader, stepping out from the shadows behind them and tightening a strong hand around the bully's shoulder: What are you gonna do if I break your arm right now?💀😇

Bully, now scared: Get off me, freak! Walks away before reader can follow up on their threat🏃💨

Reader, looking their way, then back at the Platonic Yan Teen: Well... that happened. Have a nice day Pats their shoulder, then walks off before anyone can say anything

Platonic Yan Teen, five seconds later: ... What. The h*ck. Just happened?? Well, looks like we're friends now🤔🤷😍

#honeycomb thoughts #platonic yandere marvel #yandere platonic marvel #platonic yandere marvel x reader #platonic yandere xmen #yandere x-men #platonic yandere #platonic yandere x reader #platonic yandere wolverine #platonic yandere xmen evolution #ABO Parent AU

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luckystarchild · 3 months ago

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"Lucky Child" Moodboard Housekeeping Project

After cleaning up the moodboard/chapter art for RIOT CHILD and Scribbled in Secret, I'm about to undertake a bigger and perhaps really silly project, but I don't think I can refrain now that I've noticed the need for it.

Hiding this under a "Read More" since this post + eventual reblogs will get pretty long, I think.

I began making moodboards for Lucky Child at chapter 54, and I made them (mostly) consistently for every chapter thereafter. Chapters 115, 92, 76, and 55 are missing moodboards, and another random smattering of chapters have moodboards with inconsistent shape/size/content. A few moodboards here and there also just look... bad. The vast majority of my moodboards are square and are made up of multiple images, but a few are rectangular, and a few more comprise just one image with some text (I think I was feeling lazy when I made those). I made a cover for the story, which you can see in chapter 1, but chapters 2-53 have no images at all.

The plan is to make moodboards for all the missing chapters and potentially fix some of the outliers for the sake of consistency. I'll probably stick with square format to keep everything looking coherent, though I actually like the rectangular boards I made in later chapters, so I'll keep those as-is.

I don't think having/not having moodboards makes or breaks the reading experience, but I find the inconsistency weird and a bit jarring when scrolling through chapters on AO3. The boards look nice on mobile, though less so on desktop.

I also noticed inconsistent moodboards in Children of Misfortune, so I'll also address that story's moodboard problem, too. Luckily most of my other collections are consistent already, even if in some cases "consistent" just means "no moodboards at all."

Am I wasting my time with this? Maybe. But I think it'll be cool to make everything consistent regardless! I don't think it will hurt anything to install images into earlier chapters, at least.

I'm going to start doing this slowly and not rush it. Maybe a handful of moodboards a week, whenever I have time. But I'll need to post them here so I can generate a link to use on AO3 (I don't want to make something like a Imgur account or similar just for this project). Sorry in advance for the amount of random moodboards you'll see. I'll keep them isolated in reblogs of this post to not spam people. This also gives me an excuse to go back and reread old chapters, which I consider a good thing since I've spent so long away from the story.

AND THAT'S MY RANT/PLAN! In the meantime...

(I enjoy polls. This was a fun excuse for one!)

#luckychildfanfic #moodboard #moodboards

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terraliensvent · 8 months ago

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Hey. I wanted to say a huge thank you for your work. I've been watching posts in here for… half a year now? And I've gone more and more into frustration with terralines.

Honestly, everything about the terraline community pisses me off right now. From the toxic-“friendly” community, to the complete inflation of the species characters, simply because one of the mods acted like a child, deciding to self-destruct the species in the form of “giving away limited myo slots”. Honestly, the best thing for terralines after that would have been to completely destroy them, lol. We'd at least have a more pleasant nostalgia for the killed specie Previously, when the specie was only open a month ago - I constantly praised the mods of terralines for the unique in my opinion concept and quite coherent work.

Right now though, I'm slowly starting to see more and more no point in being in the species. I've collected about 7 characters, but I can't even really trade one terraline for some other terraline I'd really like. And that's only part of the trouble - I can't even swap him for other species that I participate in events and am interested in! And it would seem like it - terraline is limited, has 2 limited good traits, has a quite good design. But because of the destroyed terraline economy - this terraline can be consigned to the trash if you want too (I'll still try to redesign them, lol).

So, thanks to your posts, I'm slowly starting to realize more and more the futility of wasting time on closed species (maybe because I work hard in real life, don't see the point of spending more than $300 for a branded character and am passionate about another fandoms?) and such and one good idea started to pop into my head - just void all my terralines to make them fan-off characters and redesign them however I want, add them new versions of the design that I personally want and such!

But I'm not sure that's rational. Personally, in terralines right now I'm looking at the economy. Because, alas - all the closed views, to me, are just a real “gucci” logo on sneakers from china that will cost $300 with the brand and $30 without it. All these branded characters - a great opportunity with them to get any other wants and also, as my personal experience has shown - advertising of your artworks. So on the other hand, I'm worried that if I now void characters - then in half a year, conditionally, the situation in the terralines will change and the economy in times will improve. But on the other hand - this taste of freedom characters… And no more stupid waits of 2 weeks or even a month for design verification…..

What do you personally think? Is it worth it? or better not to make hasty decisions and just “wait” (although why, if I want to use redesigns of their characters here and now, not waiting for 2 weeks for a response, only to get something from the category of “this terraline can not have a mouth on the visor and you can not do anything about it. But we will approve terralines of our mods in less than a day or two with a mouth trait, even though this limited terraline didn't originally have a mouth trait, lol. they just our friend) Well, or write me a motivating quote that will finally motivate me to void all my terralines :)

thanks for the kind words about the blog, im glad that things posted here have been spreading awareness

as for your actual question, i would say if youre this dissatisfied with the species its better to leave sooner than later. ask yourself how much of a connection you truly have to your Terra characters? do you have stories for them, do you draw them a lot? or do you just hold onto them for the possibility you can trade them for something higher value?

for terras that you genuinely love as characters, void them. you have a personal connection that would be there whether it was a terra or not

for those you only hold on to for the "value," trade them for something you will like more. you'll actually find a lot of success in trading terraliens for art, people offer really high quality work. if you find you arent getting as "high value" traits as you'd anticipated, maybe lower your standards. the point of the trade is to get out of terras after all

my main motivation for you is that if something isnt bringing you joy, leave. consider how much time and effort you've put into prompts lately, if you dont really care about the prompts or community, why else are you there?

good luck with breaking out of cs, its a neverending hold that so many (including myself) struggle to crawl out of

#closed species vent #closed species #terralien #terraliens #vent

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untiedshoelaces · 2 years ago

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Rant post I'll probably delete later. This contains multiple anxiety inducing parts of my life and will be all over the place because I can't form a coherent thought without everything overlapping.

My 30th birthday is less than a month away. I live with my parents, and I know that, in this economy, it shouldn't be something to be ashamed of. I'm not ashamed of it at all. But I am scared.

My dad is in his sixties now and he's noticeably slowing down. He's the only one who works because my mom is disabled and can't walk. I know I should have a job, but it's so fucking hard with everything going on with me mentally and physically. I've tried and tried and tried to work, but it never works. I'm scared that I'll be homeless.

Therapy is just out of reach for me. I have state insurance, but it just barely covers the bare minimum. I had a psychologist who I had 2 phone appointments with and then got kicked from the program for not going to an appointment I didn't even know I had.

I know I have friends, but it feels like I don't. Genuinely. I don't feel supported by anyone. Nobody listens when I talk. I get talked over constantly. So I end up not talking at all. And it has messed with me deeply. I can't have a proper conversation anymore. I'm silent 95% of the time. I know it's up to me to fix myself, but when you have no support, it's so fucking hard. I'm tired of people saying "I'm here for you" "you can talk to me about anything" and then just don't actually do any of that. They show each other the support that I don't receive. My messages go unread, unanswered.

I have nowhere to place my thoughts and the idea of posting anything other than "cute and quirky" or "funny" online is debilitating. I don't want to be seen as someone who is only so negative. I don't want pity. I just want to be heard. I'm just trying to be happy.

I feel shitty for not being able to lift myself out of whatever is going on with me. But I also know that I need support. I feel like everyone else has at least one person to confide in, to have them in their corner no matter what. But I'm just alone.

These days, I'm really trying to reach out more. Meet new people. Tell people when I feel uncomfortable or when they do things that upset me.

I know I'm not perfect. Everybody around me treats me like a child. I'm tired of all the eggshells.

#i hate the feeling of posting this #i hate putting thoughts like these out in the public #but honestly who's gonna read it #gotta get my thoughts out somehow #personal #i will be deleting this later

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tavina-writes · 1 year ago

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respectfully, I'm pretty sure the translator note mentioned here is wrong. The 'san' here has nothing to do with sect politics, it's a very typical way to refer to someone who's the third child of their natal family. (People in my Chinese American diaspora community, for example, very often refer to me as [last name]-er'guniang or simply 'Lao Er' when speaking to me or my family because I'm the second of a set of three sisters.)

the "san" or third appended to Yu-san'guniang/Yu-san'niang etc means she's either 1) the third of at least three sisters or 2) the third of at least three children (gender indiscriminate) of her immediate family.

What I wanted to say last night, perhaps more humorously and less coherently is this: 1) dropping the 'Yu' of 'Yu-san'guniang' implies a radical amount of forward closeness and friendliness that you Would Not Use if you were merely interacting with someone to be polite about it and 2) 'niangzi' itself is kind of a more cutesy term than lots of other terms for 'wife' in the chinese language, so JFM doesn't have to call her San-niangzi OR even niangzi post marriage. He could, in fact, use furen, or qizi, or 'mother of the children' and not this very radically A Term of Endearment.

(Dropping the last name in a "San-guniang/San-niang" context would've typically reserved been for either: the Yu family servants or like people who were close with the Yu family or specifically close with YZY herself, because historical society was a bit more formal about this sort of thing than modern society.)

'San-niangzi' both incredibly close and intimate in a way that both implies a closeness with her family *and* a familiarity with her as Yu-san'guniang/San-guniang that is to be quite frank, turning this household into a vaguely absurdist situation. JFM, your marriage is dead.

HOLD UP

What does he mean, "Third Wife"?

Have I missed something this whole time? Are/were there other wives? That seems... unlikely given that there are no other children and Yu Ziyuan has so much sect influence, but ???? Viki subtitles plz explain??

also:

this is why I'm on her side in the toxic failmarriage tbh

#sorry if I come off as snippy here #I'm just so incredibly tired of people positing what chinese words mean in a 'they could mean anything at all!' sort of way #no they don't really #they kind of #have definitions and such #anyway JFM and YZY's marriage is deader than dead #and if MY loser husband kept calling me babygirl I too would react like her #'babygirl sit down you're tired'#'eat my fist you bastard'

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jams-sims · 2 years ago

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'There is nothing inherently wrong with SS as a ship, it is the fans that make it unbearable to enjoy or consume.'

I wanted to make a more coherent and less mean (lol) post about SS. Because theres nothing I hate more then people putting words into my mouth. You can stop reading now, the first line sums up this whole post. If not you can continue to read, but be warned I am being critical of the fan base and ship of SS.

I mean Naruto just get announced to be reanimated so-

I do not follow Boruto and could not tell you what has been going on for the past couple of years with it. What I do have is having been with the OG series all the way up until its ending and the first few insane chapters of Boruto.

"Shipping one ship over the other does not make you better nor does it make your ship better. We are all in the trenches together. Just because yours has flowers in it does not mean we aren't all getting bombed together." part 1

It's clear the writing community for Naruto is way different than the one on tumblr. SS is a fascinating ship and one worth writing for. If you're willing to accept the actual canon of the ship is Toxic. (Put your pitchforks down, let me explain.)

Let me pose this* The only other shonen anime that has canon children is Bleach. Now let's say Bleach started a new manga focusing on the kids. And in the first chapter Ichigo kid looked Orihime in the face and accused her of not being his mother.

Let's take it a step forward, what if Ichigo wasn't even there for his child birth. What if while Orihime was pregnant she had to have Rukia help her try and find him. But oop, she goes into labor!

Oda would be hunted down for sport in the streets of Japan.

So why is it that the fan base for SS sees that and just nods their head and says that is normal and healthy. Even going as far as to say Sasuke does love Sakura. A few people would shake their head and say no but- but I don't even think that's a bad thing. A shonen relationship that isn't healthy in the slightest. Is new and fresh, and Naruto needs something going for it besides being formerly in the BIG 3. The least they could do for their female characters is make them actually interesting- I don't see the problem in stating facts of their relationship. When it comes down to the fact it's not a ship problem it's a fan problem. The equation doesn't even involve Sasuke, it's about Sakura.

Isn't it because people feel bad for Sakura and wants the best for her- that she should be happy like all her other shonen suppose to be love interest-

"Kishimito can't write female characters, can't write romance, he fucked everyone" part 2

The more interesting story to tell is that SS is a toxic relationship. All toxic relationships: have their ups and downs. Sakura is perpetually stuck in one because Kishimoto refuses to do anything with his female character. This doesn't just stop at Sakura, Hinata, Temari and so does Ino. Because of the new series we no longer have to worry about them. The lead is now Naruto's son. I don't even think Sasuke kid plays a big role (then again I don't follow it so I'm unsure.)

This causes the biggest problem and makes fans do what is called Fanon. Fanon is what fans do when you say fuck the canon. I originally assumed we all agreed with the 2 terms above and sat together and said fuck that. We could all live in harmony realizing that the writer doesn't understand his own fucking story-

Fanon makes everything better, but people tend to confuse it with canon.

Fanon Sakura has her being the next Tsunade, she the greatest medic nen user.

Fanon Sasuke is a dovoted husband and cares about his kid.

Fanon Naruto is not weirdly mean to his son who is a literal copy of him. And he started his relationship with Hinata better.

Fanon Hinata doesn't say fuck her clan and actually fixs it.

Canon Sakura isn't all that really active. She punched someone really hard to prove she was the mother of her own kid.

Canon Sasuke is not really all there, legit the mentor to his best friend's kid. I mean fuck his own kid and teaching her how to do cool shit. Shows up sometime to make Sakura happy and then leaves???! Been fighting a dinosaur for like a year now??

Canon Naruto, the fuck if I know, no one talks about him outside of ships anymore. Before Burato he was very active

Canon Hinata I mean come on- girl was shy and obsessed with naruto. Gets married to him and I haven't seen her do anything sense then.

If we know canon is trash even if it has improved sense then. No one is that invested anymore so why is it when I go into a ships tag the first thing I see is "x ship sucks and will never be canon" an it mainly coming from a SS shipper. Kishimoto donkey punched everyone in the back of the throat for a decade. At this point it doesn't matter what's canon. So if your interpretation is fanon and my interpetation fanon THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE AGRUING OVER????

WHOS MORE DELUSIONAL?!?!

THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE NARUSASU AND SASUSAKU BEEF IS IT 2001 AGAIN?! HATSUNE MIKU IS THAT YOU- part 3

The SS is fine its the fans that want to fight that make no one want to interact with it- I would love to write a fic that focuses on the inherently problematic relationship of Sakura and how living that life is unfulfilling- most likely make that shit gay but-.

I'm assuming It's a combination of bad faith actors and the literal canon of the show beating you at every turn that the outward friends have to be hostile to everyone because like I said before it's not about Sasuke it's about Sakura. Which means Narusasu and sasusaku should be able to coexist.

But somehow that's not the case Naruhina and Narusasu are the one that have this weird solidarity going on. I mentioned before that the fanfic community is way different than the one on Tumblr. The fanfic reflects some deep mental state of the fandom. An in recent fics that involve sasunaru, sasusaku and naruhina involving the next gen-

The common plot between naruto and Sasuke is 1 sasuke pls visit your family you have a daughter we can't be together- naruto. Hinata's role is supportive already knows her husband is in love with Sasuke. Usually ends up in a relationship that involves naruto and sasuke-

Sasuke doesn't involve sakura at all and one fic legit had him say he wasn't gonna tell her at all-

ITS THE SAME THING THO!? Sakura is obsessed with Sasuke, Hinata is obsessed with naruto. Hinata wants naruto to be happy, Sakura wants Sasuke to be happy expect-

One fan base acts out more than the other. One ship fan base only really cares about 1 character instead of both of them. And that's the biggest problem. Hinata seemingly has endless love to give and is willing to share. Sakura only thing is Sasuke- so the weird possessiveness fan feel is because of the canon. But it doesn't have to be, because we are all writing fanon. You don't have to stick with what's givin. If you aome how made it all the way here and still wrote something unhinged in the comments. I can't fucking help you, i've given you enough grace because like I said there is a small percent that just doesnt get it and is too- fandom pilled and doesnt realize you can have an opinon that isnt black or white. Also i was being mean before so im trying to be nicer .

#sasusaku #sasunaru #talking naruto ships #if you think this is rant you are wrong

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number5theboy · 5 years ago

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Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger, @waywardd1 and @margarita-umbrella also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

#thanks for the ask again #TUA #The Umbrella Academy #Five Hargreeves #tua s2 spoilers #my meta #i guess #Replies #Anonymous

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hexfloog · 4 years ago

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hex, my beloved, would you share your thoughts on the diplomat murder case with the class

Weeeelllll... if you insist, anon :3

Hex Goes Off(TM) again below the break, surpriiisssee

As it turns out, The Diplomat Murder Case is responsible for a lot of my current HCs about Shinichi/Conan. It's my favorite of the transformation arcs, it's the very first one-- and thus the hardest-hitting, at least when you get to experience it blind-- and also our introduction to transience as a theme, though admittedly I'm probably a bit biased here... Babby Hex has fond memories of sneaking out of bed to watch this one when it still had a slot on the early morning block, so I often come back to these two episodes wearing nostalgia glasses.

Branching off that, I should probably start by saying that for episodes 1-123, I am almost exclusively familiar with the Funimation dub only, which... as the fanbase knows... has its fair share of strange and silly localization choices. I personally find much of it charming and it has no effect on the story or its appeal for me... except when it does (more on that later).

So despite having lost track of how many times I've rewatched this case, my thoughts on it are actually quite scattered - it's the starting place for a lot of the DCMK ideas I currently subscribe to, but those ideas gained their traction in other places (cough, The Desperate Revival, cough), so I apologize beforehand if these aren't bookended well and also idk how to lead into them so IT'S LIST TIME

1) Vices and Expectations

At the time, the idea of Shinichi returning to normal-- let alone temporarily-- was likely one only being entertained by the audience as the setup for (if not the result of) the grand finale. I remember it surprising me, and it's a hell of a move to put forth such a scenario in the first place, only to take it back. Shinichi himself believes the transformation is permanent until it becomes... horribly apparent that it isn't. It's a nasty surprise for everyone, the nastiest of them all (being the very first in a long line of GOT 'EMs), and I think that as a result this is arguably the most powerless he's ever been in his own body, at least for a while. The depiction of the pain he endures is frightening (something I feel is lost in later transformations): freezing on the surface, but burning beneath the skin... like bones made of magma as they die within the flesh-- his heart beating out of his own chest, faster and faster, harder and harder as if to escape its own agony-- the world blurs, nausea takes hold, balance wavering-- 'This is no longer your fortress,' he hears it whisper in his ear... TBH how he can even think coherently at this stage is lost on me. It's shown to be a debilitating process of physical self-destruction and I don't believe for a second someone could acclimate to it, even after repeated transformations which is lowkey why it bothers me a bit that these feel less weighty as time goes on. Control is Shinichi's domain, and the uncertainty which plagues him as he painfully returns to Conan is a peek behind the curtain, a glimpse of the mortality he-- for all his bravado and cool, calm exterior-- is still very capable of realizing.

Although not nearly as dramatic as the next transformation, I personally find this to be a cruel little hint towards Shinichi's vices. Up til now we have not had many (any?) opportunities to explore what really-- and I mean really-- makes him tick. The recklessness he falls prey to when he thinks his old life is within reach again (see: literally every time he's tempted by The Antidote) is teased here-- not overtly, mind, but this first experience with temporary normalcy introduces the idea of hope to Shinichi's world, and the expectation that he can come back to it, actually, is suddenly set. Even if for a brief moment, we see the hands which have wound his potential to self-destruct...

2) Othering

I mentioned in a previous tirade post that the Funimation dub adds some interesting dialogue which is absent from the JP version:

"... From my own mouth, not his!"

...But is substantiated by dialogue which is present in the original:

"Am I turning back into that kid again?!"

"...With my real mouth... and my real voice..."

I find it so, so intriguing that this early on, it's already implied that Shinichi thinks of Conan as an entity separate from himself, despite that obviously not being the case and especially considering that-- here, at episode 49/50-- Conan hasn't really been present for long enough to establish himself as Conan (Ran sleuthing out his Real Identity is still a very real threat at this point, after all). Shinichi rarely mentions Conan by name throughout the case, in all other instances referring to him as something else-- "that kid with the glasses--" and... idk, to me that indicates shame, or fear, or resentment, and just reeks of plain animosity. I know for the sake of appearances he needed to Other Conan in front of Ran and Heiji, but when he's alone with his thoughts... it's not necessary to actively think of Conan like something to be hated unless he really feels that way, unless he really feels vexed by this child, this thing that is both him and not.

I dunno, I just find that fascinating. That one Funimation line is single-handedly responsible for this whole entire HC in my head ahahaaa

3) Heiji, and Hope

My angst-brain is constantly honing in on Shinichi, but The Diplomat Murder Case is pretty important for introducing Heiji, too!! Kaito won't see his DC debut for another twenty or so episodes, so imo it's Heiji, debuting as a rival detective, who first introduces the idea of a possible foil for Shinichi. This... obviously doesn't pan out this way-- quite the opposite-- and the entire premise of Heiji seeking out The Great Detective of the East as his "thousandth sword" only carries a lot more weight after the parallels to Benkei and Yoshitsune are made more plain in Crossroad in the Ancient Capital. So for all intents and purposes (especially since the Funimation dialogue was changed around quite a bit), Hattori's appearance here isn't particularly outstanding in itself aside from being his first, except...

...Except Heiji also introduces the baijiu here, the catalyst for this entire arc and my subsequent observations, the vehicle through which Shinichi becomes aware that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and the knowledge of which Conan repeatedly draws upon whenever the antidote comes up. Given that Heiji eventually discovers Shinichi's secret and, in their friendship, serves as one of his lifelines to his former self (as "companionship," in my head... more on that in another post, maybe), I find it... very striking that he would be the first one to deliver him hope. Good God.

Like Kaito, I want to think about Heiji more in-depth too, but there are better episodes for it... Murderer, Shinichi Kudo

eeeEEEEE okay i'm done tysm for letting me screm anon this case has a special place in my top ten aaAAAaaaahaha

#ask #anon #dcmk #detective conan #kudou shinichi #shinichi kudo #headcanon #internal screaming hours #text #the diplomat murder case #long post #hattori heiji

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scintillatingshortgirl19 · 4 years ago

Text

Episode 4 Rewatch Thoughts

So first of all, I would definitely say that I have...calmed down a considerable amount since my first watch, so to speak. @delyth88 said some things in her rewatch post about being able to adapt to things and enjoy the episode more the second time due to knowing what's coming rather than having to deal with the uncertainty - which I how I feel about it as well and is a trend I experienced with episodes 1-2 as well, and in some ways episode 3. Once I had a chance to recover a bit from the narcissist thing and the romance thing, it turned out there were a lot of things I really liked! The big issues I had haven’t gone away by any means, and honestly a couple of the biggest ones aren’t even things that specifically happened in this episode - the first is just the gradual realization I’m having that I don’t think they are ever going to properly address Loki’s past trauma, and all those plot points the MCU just dropped are probably forever going to stay that way. And that fucking sucks, there’s no reason it had to be like this, and I don’t see how I could ever not be upset about that or truly get over it. The other thing is that it’s just incredibly frustrating and sad to me that all those theories about Loki having some kind of other plan in episode 3 to explain the bizarre incompetence we saw, or payoff for the weirdness that was the TemPad breaking scene, literally just amounted to nothing. All these things I hoped were intentional subtext turned out to just be nothing more than...bad writing? So yeah, I’m pretty disappointed about that. But at this point I’m trying to enjoy the series for what it is as much as I can, and on the second watch I really did enjoy a lot about this episode. So yeah, long-ass intro aside, here are my (hopefully more coherent this time) thoughts about episode 4:

Damn, that scene with Sylvie as a child really highlights how inhumane and barbaric the TVA is. Seeing her in that little prison uniform was...oof. Not that we didn’t already know the TVA was terrible, but I appreciate that they’re making it unmistakably clear for the general audience.

It's genuinely a good thing that they're going into Sylvie's trauma, and it's important to the plot, but I can't even put into words how frustrating it is to see them do that while simultaneously refusing to address Loki's. (you know, the protagonist?)

"Kind of an asshole and a bad friend" LMAO Mobius the TVA was holding Loki captive and was eventually going to kill him, can you really blame the guy for trying to escape?? Also an additional episode establishing that friendship would have been good - as much as I'm glad they consider each other friends, it felt premature for either of them to use that word yet.

I have mixed feelings about the Sif scene - overall I like it, but I do have some issues:

Pros:

- Loki whump! Both physical and emotional! (I want to see Loki win but I also like whump. It's complicated. Also I'm confused about where exactly she kneed him? Everyone is saying crotch but the first time he's holding his inner thigh so I thought it was there? Anyway if it is the crotch I'm not a huge fan of that particular decision, but my general feelings about whump still stand.)

- Lots of sad Loki faces, talking about fear of being alone - good stuff!

Cons:

- The first of the dreaded "narcissist" mentions

- It’s kind of odd that he never even tried fighting back?

- This also could have been an opportunity to acknowledge Loki's trauma, and as usual, they did not take it. I would have maybe liked a scene where Odin was being a dick to Loki and we got an acknowledgement of some of the emotional abuse. They probably could've worked Loki's fear of being alone into just about any memory. Did it really have to be a scene about how Loki's in the wrong? And in itself I have no issue with Loki facing the mistakes he's made! But I've been waiting 10 goddamn years for just one character or even a single solitary line of dialogue to acknowledge that Loki was wronged too, and by all appearances it still isn't going to happen and I'm just fucking tired.

And about the narcissist thing - it's frustrating because if they would just do it right, it could actually be really good?? If an element of the story was Loki (and Mobius) thinking he was a narcissist and then realizing he actually isn't, that would be amazing. The problem is, I'm fairly certain they are not going to go that route. I feel like it'll be more along the lines of "yeah you're a narcissist but you can be Good!" instead of acknowledging that Loki was never a fucking narcissist in the first place. Tbh it makes sense that both Loki and Mobius might think Loki's a narcissist, or throw around the term without knowing what they’re talking about - there are great explanations and meta about that - the real problem for me is that, in the eyes of the general audience, it confirmed a harmful and unfortunately very popular misconception about Loki, and it also perpetuates an incorrect view of what a narcissist is. Those are the main reasons I'm mad about it; if they purposefully, explicitly contradict it later it'll probably be fine! I just really don't think they're going to.

Tbh, after the second watch I'm a lot less mad about the shitty things Mobius said while interrogating Loki - it still hurt to hear and I'd still love an apology, but from Mobius' perspective it honestly makes sense that he wouldn't pull any punches considering he thinks Loki is partially responsible for killing the minutemen and Hunter C-20, and is trying to bring down the TVA.

I do still think Mobius turning on the TVA felt rushed. I'm delighted he got there, and the way he realized things made sense - it just happened unrealistically fast. I felt like a lot of things were rushed, and honestly I think more things will probably feel rushed in these last two episodes as well. This is something I felt with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier too - like they needed at least eight if not more episodes to give proper space for the story and character arcs they were trying to squeeze in. Six episodes just isn't enough.

Although, that said, while I still think this episode had weird pacing it didn't really bother me that much on the second watch? Probably because I already knew what the sequence of events was going to be.

The scene when Mobius was pruned was amazing - I loved Loki's emotions, and the way he walks down the hallway still kind of crying but mostly just looking utterly dead inside? *chef's kiss*

The timekeepers scene still felt off to me, and I still can't really articulate why. It honestly doesn't matter that much to me so I don't want to waste time on it, but I guess it just felt...sort of low-budget? Like we already knew the timekeepers probably weren't real/weren't what they seemed, but did they have to look that obviously fake? Idk.

I'm going to make a separate post about the romance stuff, but basically where I’m at with it is: it's a terrible shame to see such beautiful platonic/sibling energy go to waste, I'm real annoyed about it but trying to make peace with it for my own sanity, and I think there are a million clues pointing to it not actually being romantic but I don't trust that any of those were intentional. So I guess we'll see?

I'm very intrigued by all the Loki variants. Also I'm curious if Mobius is there as well, or if each variant person has their own world? Either way I'll be shocked if Mobius is actually dead (there's a million reasons for that but the main ones are that it's likely pruning doesn't actually kill any of the variants (not just the Loki ones) and anyway he's supposed to be in 5 episodes). I'm really curious about the variant world in general though and I wonder what exactly the dangers are - why Loki "will be [dead]" if he doesn't come with the other Lokis.

#loki tv series #loki spoilers #the nexus event #loki series negativity #positivity as well but tagging anyway

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tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

Text

Title: Lovebug (8/12)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6��7

Notes: Feedback is very much appreciated :D

Levi put a hard deadline for Wednesday

“Wednesday” he said it again because he couldn’t be too certain how he said it the first time. He was conscious if he were too stiff, it might almost seem awkward. If he were too relaxed, maybe the urgency wouldn’t get across.

The challenge was finding the balance and when his team nodded, their faces unchanging, he realized it had been an easy task. They had gone through that same pattern before, especially before a large-scale quality assurance test, a recalibration of the application.

And the one on Monday was much larger, covering not just fifty volunteers, maybe even hundreds. When it was Zeke’s own connections that had managed to get that many volunteers, they couldn’t afford to delay it.

Levi cleared his throat and continued. “All fixes should be completed by Wednesday. All QA and regression tests by Friday,” Levi added. “The large scale QA test will be happening on Monday. No negotiations. No chances of rescheduling. ”

Aside from the number of volunteers, that QA test should not be anything different. Nothing much changed except perhaps the fact that Levi was in a constant state of compartmentalizing. He was working partly with outsourced labor to complete the code and to make sure someone was testing their new application. He was also working with his own team to make sure they were still addressing issues and realising fixes for the love alarm.

He liked the busy-ness, the need to be constantly thinking about work. Sometimes though, there were more distracting prospects that forced their way into his limited brainspace. And for some reason, his brain space was so willing to accommodate it.

More specifically, to accommodate her. Well, he had no choice anyway. After all, it was her application. It was his brain child but by extension, it was her and Zeke’s property.

He was constantly in a state of stress and Hange’s presence only made things more stressful. But somehow, his brain demanded he forced that extra piece of information, that piece of responsibility, that piece of Hange somewhere in his brain.

Just like he couldn’t say no to Zeke and Hange, he couldn’t say no to the manifestations of his own mind.

She never gave him a chance to say no. After all, she liked working in his office. She had made herself at home on the desk next to him and everyday he was reminded of that extra compartment his brain had created just for him.

All he had to do was enter the room and enjoy the view of her hunched over her laptop like she always was.

First thing in the morning, she was there. After meetings and standups with his team, he would go back to his office like always, and she was there.

That time, all test devices were lined on the desk, the whiteboard that only that morning had been covered with scribbles was replaced with something a little more coherent.

“You’re testing?” Levi sat next to her, counting ten devices before deciding it would be a waste of time to count further. He looked back up at her.

Hange nodded. “You updated the build last Friday right?”

“Just some fixes,” Levi said. The fixes came slowly, with more data being added, with the algorithm being tested here and there. It was still far from perfect though. He scanned the whiteboard just to get an inkling of her own progress. “How many pseudo emails do you have?” He could have counted it himself but once again, he gave up after ten.

“Enough to test on this many devices,” Hange said.

He read them out loud, taking note of the checkmarks..

Wingsoffreedom123

Wingsoffreedom213

Wingsoffreedom231

Wingsoffreedom321

Wingsoffreedom312

Wingsoffreedom132

“Creative,” Levi commented.

“Look, I just need a bunch of emails that are easy to remember so might as well stick to the same combination,” Hange said. “ You get it, Humanity’s strongest?”

Levi cringed inwardly. He should really go around changing that name. “Do you actually use those emails?” He asked.

“Sometimes, when applying for free trials, when making more than one account in websites.” Hange said. “I like keeping my own consumption patterns not connected to ‘Hange Zoe,’ if you know what I mean.”

“At least you’re able to make use of those emails for testing.” Levi pulled his chair a little closer to her and looked over her shoulder. “Is it working better?”

“It rings,” Hange said. “The last five times I tested, they said I was happy.” She chose that moment to click ‘activate’ on the next alarm. As expected, it rang again, the words ‘happy” flashed in the middle of the screen with an ugly smiley face in Arial font right under it.

It was a blatantly horrible sign that maybe they had spent a little too much time on the back end. Front end and user interface could be fixed a little later anyway, Levi reminded himself. He brought out his own test device and pressed the activate button.

The word ‘happy’ flashed across the screen. “Looks like they fixed a lot of the kinks,” Levi said.

“Are you happy?” Hange asked.

Those types of questions were the ones that had him a little more self aware. He didn’t answer immediately, instead, he left his natural instincts speak for themselves. A smile threatened to creep up his lips overwhelming the small part of him that wanted to push it down into something more subtle.

“Levi, are you happy?” Hange pressed, a hint of a laugh in her voice.

He was. He couldn't tell exactly why. Overall, it had seemed much easier, to just let the smile climb up his face so he gave it facility, freedom to move.

And soon, he didn’t regret it. Maybe because his own smile had been the reason Hange’s eyes got bigger before her features softened into something comfortable within a few seconds.

Before Levi could appreciate them a little more, her eyes suddenly narrowed, as if studying him. He noted all of it in her expression, the triumph, the victory lap in her expression, and the sneer particularly evident in her eyes.

He didn’t want her to win that little game they had for themselves. So he turned back, allowing time for the smile to fall into something less embarrassing. “Well, if the application says I’m happy, maybe I am.” He stood up again, holding his laptop to his side. “I’m going out for a break.”

***

Summer was ending soon.

And for Levi, the end was usually accompanied by the relief that he wouldn’t have to brave public transportation under the sweltering heat while dealing with an office dress code.

Strangely, he also found himself a little melancholic as he noted that red leaves were starting to sprout more frequently among the branches. He considered it almost an obligation to take a walk twice or thrice a week, especially during those last few weeks.

He would sit on one of the benches by the garden. To save time, he would bring his laptop every single time and he would always allow himself short in-betweens to enjoy his surroundings after long minutes of staring at the screen.

Like always, the trees were above him and the flowers were in front of him. When he looked down, he even enjoyed the grass and the cobblestone lined paths.

“You take the same route every time.”

Levi looked up, an instinctive reaction to that very familiar, almost intimate voice. “You followed me?”

“What if I wanted to take a walk too?” Hange asked.

“You're welcome to take a walk. I’m just gonna do some work here before going back inside,” Levi said. He looked back at the screen in front of him, trying to find something to make progress with as he monitored the workflow tracker.

Nothing much had changed or was expected to change, his own staff was probably on lunch break. He trusted them enough to be certain they would get most of their work done by Wednesday. And consequently, he was left with nothing much else to do but maybe take a lunch break too.

Hange sat right next to him on the bench and Levi pulled away, far enough to put a good few inches between them. “You’re going out more often now,” Hange said.

“I noticed I’ve been spending too much time indoors. I never really got to enjoy summer for what it was. We only get it three months a year.”

Hange gave him a knowing look. “And you only noticed it now? After living in this city your whole life?” She asked. “You’ve lived here your whole life right?”

“Yeah,” Levi said.

Hange shrugged. “You just never struck me as the type to enjoy weather, or nature in general. Back in the golf course, back in the ocean, you didn’t look like you wanted to be there,” she noted.

“Maybe it’s a recent thing,” Levi said. He kept it vague, not wanting to probe any complex topics when he was grappling with more important complex things.

Hange though, was a black hole of knowledge, a bundle overflowing with curiosity. “What makes it pretty? Why do you like taking walks?”

“Do we have to have a reason?”

“Well ever since I started to work closely with you, I started to notice something too,” Hange said. “You seem happier.”

“Maybe because Zeke is always busy.”

Hange snorted. “You really hate him don’t you?” She leaned a little closer. “And aren’t you at all nervous admitting it to me?” An overly playful demeanor accompanied such intimidating words. It was more laughable than terrifying.

Levi shook his head, unfazed. “I trust you wouldn’t tell him.”

“I wouldn’t,” she admitted. “I don’t blame you though.” She only had to give him an almost pitied look for him to read her mind.

He articulated it for her. “I never really recovered from those two all-nighters cramming an application.” That had been more than three months ago but the memory still burned as a faint memory of excruciating exhaustion and an unpleasant caffeine buzz that took weeks to brush off.

“You managed to impress the hospital admin at least. And we got the funds,” Hange said.

Does that make Zeke any more of an insufferable person? He had hoped to ask that with the face he gave Hange then, one eyebrow raised. If it didn’t send the message, he could easily say it out loud. That one pleasantry Zeke afforded him though that day in front of the convenience store echoed in his head. Even just coming up with an insult sent a wave of guilt through him.

A wave of guilt I don’t need to feel. Levi reminded himself, willing to recall the other instances the blond had been abrasive. Zeke was either a master manipulator or misunderstood. He was a billionaire though, so Levi decided to err on the side of ‘manipulator.’

“The funds go to the company, to the outsourcing activities and to server space,” Levi corrected.

“Don’t you have company shares?” Hange asked.

“A stock option,” Levi clarified. “Something I chose not to take. I’d rather get my money as is. I don’t trust myself to grow something of that much value.” He kept his answers vague, since he never did read the contract closely anyway, it was Erwin who went through the benefits with him.

“Well everyone else in the company who runs on stock options seems to trust you. Zeke’s own investment is riding on your own ability to make a good product...” My PhD dreams are riding on your product. Hange didn’t say that last part out loud but Levi heard it loud and clear.

“Well this pseudo love alarm project, it’s still far from perfect.” For emphasis, he opened up the new project entitled ‘emotion alarm project’ on his dashboard and slipped the laptop screen over to Hange. “Thirty percent done. We barely fixed the interface, just getting the required testing and data done is taking up a lot of resources.”

“I know that and I expected it,” Hange said. “You know, a PhD sometimes takes decades to complete and I’m ready to take that much time.”

“I just wanna manage your expectations. Besides, something about the testing still bothers me.”

“What about it?”

“Remember the first night I made the application?” He stifled a wince at the painful memory. “It didn’t ring… until you came in.”

“Maybe it was a bug?” Hange suggested. “It shouldn’t be too much of an issue right? Since you made a lot of improvements after.”

“I did,” Levi said.

“And it never happened again with the later builds.”

“It doesn’t but it works too much like the love alarm. Do you notice, it always rings when we’re nearby?”

“When we’ve already loaded millions worth of data points. When we’ve overseen that much testing with other people. I don’t think you have to think too hard about it. We just keep improving the application right? Same as the love alarm,” Hange explained.

“Maybe I’m just being cynical. It doesn’t work once and I can never trust it again,” Levi muttered as he scrolled through the tasks for the next release for the upteenth time since a while ago.

“I guess that’s what happens when you’re the one who came up with the project. You can never trust your own abilities to develop?"

"Or because I worked on it, at three in the morning, I tested it. I know how many shortcuts I took with it…" Levi trailed off as he started to focus a little more on the numbers, the titles on the task trackers.

"You know they did the research, the testing, if it works for them, if they have a good success rate, then maybe it works for us too? Maybe the app is right, we're happy when we’re next to each other. Sometimes we’re sad when we’re next to each other and sometimes we're angry. If this application is detecting moods like this… similarly to the love alarm, maybe it means we could--- "

"Get along?" Levi finished it for her. There were only so many things that code could mean anyway.

"Get along.... Or to get to know each other more." Hange said, her voice softer than a second ago. The smile took longer to leave her lips.

Hange though had always been good at composing herself but Levi had months to figure out patterns and trends in the way she navigated the more sensitive topics. He couldn't help but notice the heavy tension, even under the light summer breeze.

Those moments happened too often that Levi had prepared an escape route every time. Business talk. And they had a lot to talk about. "Hange, I wanna ask something about the front end," Levi scrolled back up, towards the top of the task trackers. Dealing with front end was a mammoth task, rifed with two many sub tasks but it was definitely one of the last priorities, if it was even a priority. Levi wasn’t the type to particularly mind releasing an application with a white background and an interface that used the very underwhelming Arial font.

But it was Hange and Zeke’s application.

"Ask away," Hange said.

It came easily after that. The ticket on his workflow tracker had an inkling of a script to follow. "What colors would you associate with emotions?" He asked.

"What?" Hange furrowed her brows.

Levi cleared his throat. Nevermind, it wasn't easy to come up with the question without a little more expounding. "Like would you say red is anger? Blue is sadness? Yellow is happiness?"

"Wait? Why?" Hange asked again. Her lips were curled up just a little higher.

"I'm thinking of the front end of the application. What colors do you see for each emotion?"

"Yellow for happiness," Hange answered easily.

"Not orange?" Levi challenged. He had opened up the task and started to take notes.

"Orange is way too angry for me."

"Red seems much angrier," Levi said

"Red is anger definitely but I'm not seeing bright red, I'm seeing something like orange."

Levi opened up a color wheel. " So this red?" Levi asked.

"No, bright reddish orange," Hange corrected. It may have been a coincidence or just a trick of convenience but a red leaf had fallen on her lap at that moment. Hange picked it up, and twirled it and held it in front of Levi like a token.

“So... autumn red?” Levi asked.

Hange dropped the leaf on his lap. “I guess.” She raised her eyebrow. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Was he giving her a strange look? His mind sometimes formed opinions as he spoke and Hange had always been receptive anyway so he verbalized it, just for her. “When I’m angry, I see red,” Levi admitted.

“I haven't felt really angry in a while, so I wouldn’t know,” Hange said. “Maybe it changed.”

“Sadness?” Levi asked.

Hange turned to him questioningly. “Tell me yours first.”

“Grey,” Levi said automatically.

“Blue,” Hange said, as if it were the truest fact in the world.

A fact Levi was compelled to question. “Why blue?”

“Why not blue?”

“Blue doesn’t seem sad….”

“Why not?” Hange pressed.

“It seems…” Levi started, only realizing seconds later, he was unable to come up with the right words.

“Too nice?” Hange suggested.

“It’s a nice color. It makes me feel good just looking at it.” It was a pathetic response. With such a complex thought, to even force out of his mouth, he had to channel his inner child, through the most child-like attempts at articulation.

“Okay, I know it doesn’t feel good to be sad but.. don’t you think sadness is a beautiful feeling?” Hange asked.

“No.” It should have been a natural answer. Somehow, Levi felt like there was something else worth listening to.

Hange saw reason to continue at least. “You wouldn’t be feeling sad, if you never felt happy in the first place, if you’ve never felt desire or love. There are feelings much worse than being sad for sure.”

“Like what?”

“Not feeling at all maybe?” Hange surmised. “So maybe the strongest feelings, whether good or bad, are still nice… maybe something worth indulging.”

And it was turning into a philosophy lesson. How many hours had he wasted listening to Hange prattle on about emotions and concepts of love? They weren’t hours wasted for sure, but they did leave him feeling just a little sad at times. Once again, he went back to business talk. Levi looked back at his workflow tracker. “So ‘blue sad, yellow happy, red angry…”

“Do you really think sadness is grey?” Hange asked.

Levi looked up from his laptop and straight towards Hange. "Look, I don't think much about what color my emotions are…” He trailed off. He could have said more maybe. Speaking while reflecting turned out to be a daunting task at that moment.

Maybe sadness was grey. That had seemed like the most natural conclusion at first. He focused for a little longer on the view in front of him, the view of Hange and behind her the open grounds that made way for blue sky and the blue burned into his eyes, enough to make him feel something in his chest then down to his stomach. Before he knew it, he started to entertain Hange’s own idea.

When Hange looked back at him, the open sky behind her, he felt stinging at the back of his eyes, he let his face fall.

The color overall had been burning at first. The more he stared, the more he noticed its more lasting qualities. It turned out blue wasn’t burning, it was subdued, mild. At the same time, the clear endless shade of blue in the sky behind her did wonders to accentuate her features. Enough of a reminder to leave another twinge in his chest, that time it was slightly painful.

A twinge of sadness. Emotions may be difficult to comprehend but whatever clarity that washed over him then had been enough of a motivator to speak up. “I think you’re right, sadness is blue,” he said. A beautiful blue.

He found himself searching for the prettiest shades on the color wheel, looking back up at the sky, then to the yellow streaks from the sun that hit the pavement. He then turned his head towards the garden where red roses grew. From a distance, from above, they were supposed to form a heart.

“Yeah, red and yellow too. Red hurts, it’s glaring, Sometimes yellow is too bright but all together, they make the garden beautiful. Like this courtyard,” Hange said. She stretched her legs out onto the stony path just in front of the bench and shifted her weight to the palms of her hands.

“Yeah, it is.” Levi nodded.

“It’s colorful,” Hange said. “Bright reds, bright greens, bright blues, bright yellows. They’ll all only be here together until the end of summer.” She wrapped her arms around herself, a wistful smile on her face.

“You like summer?” Levi asked. “It’s fucking hot.”

“I like summer and spring. What can I say? I like seasons with a lot more variety of color,” she answered. “ I always get a little sad when summer ends. Surprisingly though, I’m sadder than usual about this summer ending.”

“Why?”

Hange shrugged. “I can’t even explain it for myself. It’s ridiculous that I’m this sad about summer ending. I usually get like this when I’m out of the city but I haven’t even been out in the countryside in a while but somehow, I’m already imaging the larger, wider landscapes up north. I’m imagining how quickly the trees go bald… Green then red then blue. And how quickly skies turn from blue to just a constant gray and when the lakes just freeze over, turning from blue to a more of black… It’s sad to imagine.”

“I can imagine it,” Levi said. He didn’t leave the city often since there wasn’t much spare funds to work with. He was capable of empathizing though, after all the twinge of sadness remained and it had been surprisingly easy to channel it elsewhere.

“There are places up north that have the most beautiful springs and summers but when the leaves change… everything dies much more quickly.” Hange lowered her head.

“Maybe one day, I’ll check it out,” Levi said. He found himself picturing the logistics of a trip already. Having never used his leaves, having built up disposable income through a lack of drive to even form a life outside work, he realized he did have leeway to indulge just a bit. Somehow, Hange’s own thoughts were enough to inspire.

“You haven’t been up north?” Hange gaped.

“I didn’t have much money growing up and there’s no reason to.”

“I should take you up north. You know, the gardens up there, the rolling hillsides. They remind me of Pemberley,” Hange said.

“Pemberley?”

“Pemberley! Mister Darcy’s estate.”

Levi groaned inward. That book again.

“Elizabeth visited towards the end of the book and there are a bunch of old houses around there and when I would walk on the fields, I like to pretend I’m in the book.”

“Relive your rags to riches fantasy?” Levi asked bitterly.

Hange pouted. “It’s not just that. Besides, I wasn’t poor, you know. My parents managed to pay tuition to a good college with no debt.”

Not as rich as Zeke definitely. The banter might just get out of control so Levi went with a conservative digression. “Maybe I’ll go there one weekend, up north before summer really ends.”

“Maybe, I’ll take you there myself,” She said, an excited grin on her face. “Maybe after this weekend or next year if we’re too late. I told Zeke about how I was feeling lately, so for my birthday, he promised he’ll take me up north so we’re going this weekend.”

Levi choked. “Wait, birthday? When’s your birthday?” It turned out to be a burning question, a small fact Levi felt obligated to know. So the answer couldn’t have come any slower.

When Hange opened her mouth ready to speak, the universe decided for them that it definitely could come a little later. His phone rang, breaking that brief silence, prolonging the painful anticipation.

Petra Ral. For some reason, he expected the worst when any of his subordinates called. He answered the phone. “Petra, is everything okay?”

“Sorry about calling. I tried texting you but you weren’t replying.” Petra went straight to the point soon after that. “Some of the members of the other project offered to help out with testing. Do we have enough phones?”

They did have enough test devices, the pile on Hange’s desk was enough proof of that. “Yes we do,” Levi said. They were all in his office. He turned to Hange questioningly. It was her blank face that reminded him, they’d have to look through the phones themselves to see what devices they could wipe.

“I’ll meet you by the office,” Levi said. “Hange and I are going back now.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Hange. “Petra is gonna borrow some of the test devices. You’re okay with that?”

“Sure, I’ll help you wipe them,” Hange said. “Are we going back now?” She seemed hesitant, a closer look and Levi could see a hint of disappointment.

He closed his laptop. “We have to get back to work right?”

“You never even stopped working,” Hange accused.

“I stopped long enough to listen to you ramble on about that damned book and your nice vacations.”

Hange walked on, seeming deep in thought. “Hey Levi… What do you think of Petra?” It was an abrupt digression.

“What about Petra?”

“Have you ever considered dating her?”

Levi stifled a choke, letting it out as a peaceful clearing of the throat. “Why are you asking that?”

Hange shrugged, as she walked ahead. . “Nothing, she seems like a nice person and she seems to like you… Besides, she rings your alarm.” She looked back at him, a playful grin on her face.

Levi sighed. That wasn’t a question he would have liked to broach.

“Well?” Hange pressed.

But maybe he could give some vague answer in exchange for some information. “I’ll tell you. If you tell me something."

"Tell you what?"

"What are your plans for your birthday?”

***

Levi was tricked, treated, bamboozled. Hange had a way with words, a way of just pushing the right buttons. It could have been that or it could have been a series of convenient circumstances and conversation topics that had Levi there, at the front of the mall after work with Petra right next to him.

On the bright side, he had Hange’s birthdate, her plans for that Friday all the way until the weekend. That was enough to satisfy his own curiosity. Over time though he realized, that was all it did.

Was it worth it?

Back when he and Hange had been discussing it, it seemed like a good exchange, she satisfied his curiosity, he satisfied hers. Hange had given her due information. In exchange, she received information on Petra, the long QAs, her alarm ringing, the amount of effort Petra put into her job and just the occasional present that made their way to his desk.

While Hange’s own information went so far as to give the name of the restaurant, the time and the route of their roadtrip, Levi’s own information evolved into something else. Before he even knew it, Hange had created a new agenda of her own.

Your love alarm would ring with Petra right?

It did. Of course, in front of the mall, surrounded by other people wasn’t the best place to test it. There was no reason to either. Ever since Petra joined them more than a year back, the love alarm had always rang and Petra had enough professionalism, enough of a handle on her own feelings to mark it as ‘accurate.’

Admirable? Definitely. Date worthy? Did he ever consider dating her long enough to deem her date worthy? ‘Maybe not’ to both questions.

Have you ever considered dating Petra? Hange brought up that question during their conversation and Levi felt almost guilty for the straight up ‘no,’ and the shallow ‘she’s too young for my taste’ reason.

She could have been too young. Still, Hange seemed more like a counselor for that exchange and she made some good points.

Assuming the love alarm didn’t have a bug, and the reading was accurate… Hange first set her premise.

The premise could have been accurate. No, it definitely was. Petra’s own approach towards him only served to extinguish any doubts.

Levi and Petra settled for an early dinner at some restaurant towards the end of the mall. Not for the food, nor for the pricing but for the convenience of being able to sit down after the twenty minute walk and a long day up on their feet back in the office.

And Petra had been excited to sit down in front of him. She rushed ahead and slipped into the booth, even before Levi had slipped himself into the small gap between table and chair. He allowed himself enough focus to scan through the menu and digest the names of the dishes at least. He hadn't bothered to even spare a good look at the board outside nor what the hell the other customers were eating and thus, he was excruciatingly slow.

On top of that, he was exhausted from a day of work and most days, he wouldn’t have bothered to go on a date, not with a colleague at that.

It’s not a date. Levi reminded himself. He shouldn’t be dating subordinates. That was another source of stress at that moment.

A few times Levi looked up at the menu, making some ingenious excuse about how he couldn’t decide and how he needed some blank space to help clear his mind before he tried to decide again. Every single time he looked up, he had to internally make an excuse because Petra was staring right at him.

“Have you decided what you want to get?” Petra asked, her voice was a song. She propped her elbows on the table, a rude gesture in most places. She managed to subdue rudeness by propping her chin on top, a look of seemingly genuine interest in her face.

Seemingly. Who the hell was he kidding, she probably was genuine about it. If it wasn’t his own instinct that could be relied on, he could at least trust the love alarm that had rung with no fail since she joined the company in the first place.

“I’ll get the fried chicken meal.” Levi didn’t particularly like fried chicken. He had been a little too self conscious of how long he had stared at her and back at the menu, how long the awkward silence between them lasted and he soon realized, he had to order quickly, even if he didn’t know yet what else he was missing.

“You wanna get tea? We could share a pot,” Petra suggested as she put down her own menu.

Levi could have finished a pot on his own. He wasn’t telling her that though, especially not right after too many close encounters with what could have been inappropriate. “Sure.” Levi nodded a little faster, hoping that was enough to feign excitement.

The waiter came and went with the menus on hand and Petra started to ask questions, questions that were invasive enough that Levi had a hard time thinking two things at once.

They weren’t too personal. In fact, they weren’t about him anyway. Levi started to figure that for himself when he got his bearings. “What about Hange?” Levi asked. He was stalling, finding ways to untangle his hairball of thoughts.

“You were asking me right? About any advice on what to give Hange for her birthday?” Petra asked.

“Yes, I did.” Why did he forget?

Assuming the love alarm didn’t have a bug, and the reading was accurate, that means this ‘love’ between me and Zeke is one sided.

“Well, we could check out a few shops nearby. You could buy her something that could help her with organization. Diaries, bookmarks, pencil cases, wallets…” The list went on and the contents had started to become unbearably boring. Really, would Hange have enjoyed those?

But I don’t think it’s one sided. Love is a choice right? I can choose to love him. So if you and Petra---

Me and Petra. There were too many things wrong with it, a boss and a direct report, a conflict of interest.

But she seems genuine. She seems like a good person. And maybe she could be worth pursuing.

She’s my direct report. He argued then.

But if you decide to pursue a relationship, you can always just reshuffle, right?

Petra continued to talk. “Does she like tea? We could give her a tea bag. The one I bought you last Christmas… it took me months to find it…” She brought out her phone and started to scroll, seeming too deep in thought. She furrowed her brows and bit her lip, as if the extra effort hurt..

An unnecessarily vigorous effort over a simple request from him. Guilt was an unwelcome feeling but it was also incredibly tenacious, like a cockroach. His mind was becoming more receptive to painful speculation as he watched Petra grapple over her choices, and he wasn’t at all being helpful.

Guilt was the rising action. Then everything fell into place soon after, not into place, more like a chaotic order, like a ton of bricks.

And that order made his feelings more intelligible.

He didn’t want to be in a relationship with Petra. That was all there is to it.

Love is a choice right? A tiny glimmer of protest made itself known in the silence. Those were words from Hange, echoed multiple times before in an exact tone and manner only Hange could ever pull off.

Can I choose to love Petra? Levi asked himself then.

Petra was a nice girl. She was helpful. She worked hard. She was competent. More importantly, she was single and she wasn’t married to his very rich client.

Most importantly though, in the grand scheme of all his experiences and emotions, Levi had to point out to himself, she wasn’t Hange.

Why don’t you give her a chance? Hange had asked that then. She goaded him, nudged him and pushed him out of his own office, to follow after Petra had left the office with the devices.

It's frowned upon, boss colleague relationship. Levi had argued.

Something tells me she likes you. Hange continued, as if she never heard of the unspoken taboos of office relationships. Maybe she hadn’t.

Besides, I noticed… You know, you look a lot happier. How that had ended up the conclusion of their conversation, Levi couldn't exactly tell. He remembered looking up at Hange, to hell with how far down his jaw dropped or how wide his eyes were. There was just something special about Hange pointing out something and how quickly something could easily become a certain reality when someone just verbalized it.

Maybe he was happier, maybe he started to appreciate nature a lot more. Maybe he had started to see more color the past few months.

His own recall of Hange, his own thoughts that flew back to her had him perceptive of the variety on his plate, the decorations on the shop for just a split second and when he looked up to Petra, a part of him was at the least attempting to appreciate.

Petra was a redhead, her hair fell in a neat bob that barely brushed her shoulders. Red was a nice color on hair, and Levi only noticed it then. He stared for a while longer, trying to find something to feel, something to think beyond ‘nice.’

Petra’s eyes shot up and she met his gaze. “This is it!”

“What?” Levi asked, almost instinctively. He felt a tad self conscious analyzing the shade of someone’s hair.

“I found the tea, the one I gave you last Christmas. You really liked it right?” Petra asked.

“The Jasmine Pearls?” He did remember the tea then he remembered telling her he really did enjoy it. A part of him had maybe forgotten for a split second that it was Petra who gave it so the question had shaken him more than necessary.

“I was only able to get it from a shipment last time. I had to book three months to get it. But they’re on sale now and---”

“She might prefer coffee though...” Levi said. His own intention had been to find the perfect present, but he ended up feeling guilty as soon as he saw Petra’s reaction.

Her face fell. She turned back to her phone for just a second before fixing her eyes back to his. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for that, I can’t believe I got so excited.” A blush crept up her face.

“No. Don’t think about it like that.” Levi attempted to maintain at least a ghost of a laugh in his tone. The last thing he wanted to do was keep Petra unnecessarily uncomfortable, especially after everything that had happened until that moment.

The air was heavy and he wondered if she noticed it too. She was probably too preoccupied with her own self proclaimed mistakes, very evident by the beet red of her face.

“Let’s go around first. We might come up with something better if we ask around the shops,” Levi suggested. It had been more to comfort her than anything else. The suggestions of a while ago, the list of items had only served to make Levi think a little deeper about it, to the point of acceptance.

Even before they had finished their food, Levi had already concluded for himself, whatever he gave Hange, whether it be a wallet, tea, a small trinket, Zeke had probably come up with a more expensive version, something he probably would have never considered buying himself.

Levi didn’t leave though. Soon after they finished eating, he still accompanied Petra to every shop. He made a facade for himself, a window shopper buying a birthday gift for a good friend, he asked enough questions to engage Petra, everything ending with the conclusion, “I’ll think about it.”

Overtime, he realized he wasn’t thinking too much of what was in front of him. His mind was elsewhere.

Besides, I noticed… You know, you look a lot happier. Hange was smiling when she said it, but the smile didn’t curl the same way the others did. She crinkled her eyes as she spoke but Levi could almost point out the sadness in them.

And he saw it every time he recalled that. What does that have to do with dating Petra?

I like seeing you happy and I think if you found someone to love, maybe you’ll stay like this much longer.

Like what?

More pleasant? Smiling more often? Appreciating stuff outside work?

Hange talked for longer after that but that had worked to motivate him to invite Petra out to get to know her, to ask for advice for a gift for Hange. Somehow, a part of him wanted to take Hange’s advice, stay ‘happy’ so in his own way, he could prove her right and maybe by extension, make her happy too.

But was entertaining a relationship with Petra the right way?

The question burned for longer. Even after they exhausted all the shops and all the ideas that came with it. It was around eight in the evening when they stood by the train station under the mall, exchanging goodbyes. “Make sure to get home safe.” A part of him had considered taking her home. Their trains went in completely opposite directions though.

“Will do,” Petra said.

“We have a long day ahead tomorrow.” They always had a long day ahead but at that point, Levi was foraging for something a boss would say.

“Yeah, I'll make sure to get the testing done tomorrow," Petra said. "What happened today, it definitely gave me the motivation. I had a lot of fun.”

“Me too.” His response was automatic, something he didn’t want to think too much of.

They separated soon after and when Levi boarded the train home, he entertained the question again.

Was entertaining a relationship with Petra the right way to be happy?

I think entertaining love is an opportunity to be happy at least. Hange argued. You don’t have to jump into it but I think building a relationship with someone teaches you a lot and love, it makes life colorful.

Colorful? The trains were grey, the suits of all the passengers were shades of black, grey and the occasional blue. An almost alarming transformation from the gardens, after long days of working with Hange.

A copy of the emotions alarm was downloaded onto his phone and in the silence of the long ride home, he opened it again. He clicked ‘activate,’ the application loaded, no emotion was detected.

It was a fun night right? Levi concluded, there really was some more to improve on in the application. With the amount of testing done, and the amount of data loaded, he also had to entertain the idea that maybe it wasn’t an issue with the application.

Maybe it was his own issue with appreciating, with being open to love. “That’s what you were saying, right Hange?” He whispered to himself. A second later, he thought maybe he had said it loud enough to sound like an idiot.

Before nervousness and overthinking could take over again, he willed himself to mull over Hange’s words like always.

Love is a choice and just be open to it. Even if he didn’t believe it for himself.

***

It turned out, Erwin also knew about Hange’s birthday. And he suggested a basket of fruit as a gift.

Levi had been a little surprised. For one, maintaining partner and customer relations was never part of his job so how the hell was he to know that baskets of fruits and cakes were customary.

And secondly, he was just a little indignant. Erwin was his boss though so he couldn’t tell him that. He complied before going back to his office and booting up his laptop. It felt odd.

The laptop pinged with a characteristic echo and it was much louder in the silence, the almost deafening silence. After all, most days, Hange would have been there to chatter his ear off about her own experience testing.

That day, she had taken the day off. A birthday leave. Just for herself. She took September four and September five off. The fourth was to prepare for the long trip. Then on the fifth, she had dinner with Zeke, in an Italian restaurant on the first floor of a luxury hotel near the city center.

He knew the details, he knew the name. But it has nothing to do with you. He constantly reminded himself, it was only on a good to know basis. Still, he entertained the idea that maybe he could stop by the city center on the train on the way home, just for the modicum of a probability that he did run into them. It was not like he had anything else to do on a Friday night anyway.

But you can think about that tomorrow. Levi scolded himself. Somehow, Hange not being there was making it more difficult to focus. After all, she had been there, every single day before.

Also, how could he entertain multiple other ideas about Hange’s birthday when he didn’t even have a present for her? He had managed to put off Petra’s suggestions lightly, by some distraction from work. He had managed to make a good excuse of the fruit basket, saying that it was better to give a gift as a company.

Really, it had been his own insecurity stopping from putting any money into anything. Zeke could buy Hange a billion wallets, a billion tea bags, a billion fruits basket if it suited him. Then it begged the question for Levi, what could he give that Zeke couldn’t?

The emotion alarm. The answer didn’t come quickly. It came after staring at the desktop screen for long enough to lose grip on the time but after a long moment of doing nothing, Levi eventually brought out a test device and opened the server.

There were three basic emotions. Anger, Sadness and Happieness. Those were the three Hange put into her plan. They were to create the application, test it among patients and study it to see how it could help with more accurate prognosis.

And if he went the extra mile, maybe he could just give it as a late birthday surprise. Or maybe he might end up never finishing it. At least I’d try. That last thought lingered for a second longer and it did its part to send a burst of confidence through him.

He looked through his workflow tracker. No assigned bugs to look into. So he opened a new document, pulled out a paper.

“Hange Zoe, you wanted to test emotions right?” He asked no one in particular. When he was asking questions out loud, ideas ended up flowing much faster. He pulled out a small paper from the post-it stack at the corner of his desk.

“What if we connect it to the web, make a dashboard to display reports, so maybe psychologists have something to look at after testing?” He could have said it out loud. Maybe he didn’t. He had said it loud enough in his head at least to keep his gears moving. “What if we find a way to quantify it?” That last part was ambitious. It would need Hange’s input for sure so he grappled with two ideas, surprising Hange and just suggesting it like a developer.

His ideas were risks, born of long hours of googling enough to maybe bullshit years of studying psychology. Maybe Hange wouldn’t agree, maybe she would. He copied the necessary code from the alarm anyway and decided to just play around with it.

It was a birthday present only he could give anyway.

Another idea popped into his head after an hour more of googling, a much more doable idea. Even before he made sense of it, he pulled another post-it from the side and wrote out the three emotions. Underneath them, he wrote the colors. Red. Blue. Yellow.

Yellow and red became orange. Red and blue became purple. Yellow and blue became green.

He wasn’t a psychologist, he wasn’t a philosopher. He was merely a developer. He was an experienced one at that and with the right amount of free time and the right amount of motivation, he managed at least to pull out a framework and recall the color of the leaf on Hange’s lap.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Orange. Green. Purple. He had enough time to work on some front end tasks that day.

***

He finished it on Friday, the fifth of September, at around noon and maybe he had done a few hours of overtime to get it done, arriving home at midnight just the night before.

It wasn’t perfect but the colors showed up as a big dot under the emotion, and the application would flash in bright shades of red, yellow, blue, orange, green and purple, the latter three a mix of the basic emotions.

It had been a small act of just manipulating the data, loading Hange’s USB full of data to get it to work. Whether it would be accurate, he couldn’t tell but it would be something good to bring up on Monday maybe, a risky birthday present but still, a little risk seemed better than omission when it came to Hange.

The last few parts were a little tests on his end, while testing in between, while signing off necessary decisions for the testing on Monday.

The testing never worked, no emotions flashed onto the screen the few times he tested and every single time, he reminded himself, it wasn’t perfect but maybe Hange would still appreciate it.

By five, he was out, right on time and with his own personal project completed and downloaded into his phone, his workflow tracker empty, and everything ready for the large scale QA event on Monday and he thought himself a little deserving of a little stroll at the city center on a Friday night.

At around thirty minutes past five, he boarded the train, the same route home, stopping five stops shy of his usual stop.

The station at the city center on a Friday night was bustling. It had taken him a good one minute to even push himself out of the train. He only ever managed to get a glimpse of the shops, the city lights beyond the crowds not when he stepped out of the station, but a few blocks after that when for a good few minutes the crowds dissipated into something a little more breathable.

The luxury hotel Hange had mentioned was one, if not the best one in the city and Levi easily picked it out as he stood towards one of the less saturated parts of the crosswalk. It was a skyscraper, the windows were of the modern kind that reflected city lights in a unique way and they covered the building from top to bottom. And even from just his peripherals, he could pick the building out by the strange iridescent flashes of color.

The view was very much worth the price and Levi only had to walk ahead, catch it as a small glimmer behind buildings and crowds to know he was going the right direction, despite having to ride through the crowds.

He arrived at the block, the building only a few feet away, close enough that he had to strain his neck to get a glance of the skyscraper at the top. He looked back down at his phone.

6:30. Hange said they had a reservation for seven. He wondered why he was putting himself through that torture. Would he even get to talk to her? Eventually he realized, might as well make use of that information just to satisfy his curiosity again.

The restaurant was a small place, with glass windows, and if Levi stared long enough he could make out every single face there. For a Friday, it was still empty and he was able to conclude without much of a long glance that Hange wasn’t there.

So he took a good long stroll around the block. He entered leather shops, boutiques that sold branded clothing, staying long enough that the salesman had thought he would have bought.

Thirty minutes passed with a few bumps along the way. Sometimes minutes lasted years, sometimes they lasted split seconds but the bumpy wait was long enough for him to realize that he was doing something completely stupid.

It was Hange's birthday. That was Hange and Zeke's night. All he could give her that day was a greeting, and maybe a basket of fruits, care of Erwin.

So he planned a birthday message, saving it in the drafts. He didn’t have to give her the modified birthday application as a present. He could always prepare a script to pitch his suggested changes for the application on Monday. Disappointment and surrender had him lethargic and for a while after exiting the last store, Levi leaned back on some free brick wall where the space was for rent, a good distance away from the sea of people but still close enough that if he just stretched out his arm, he might just get dragged in.

He leaned back and stared, allowing himself that bout of reprieve as he watched the crowds go by. Crowds of people weren’t anything new, he dealt with those everyday trying to squeeze into the trains during rush hour every morning.

Crowds on a Friday, in the center of the city weren’t something he was completely used to though. He hated crowds and he always strategically timed his personal shopping trips to late afternoons on weekdays, particularly when it was much easier to maintain a comfortable distance from strangers.

When he was observing, time went by at a sluggish pace. For a while, Levi was hypnotized by the strange cadence that accompanied the view. The longer he stared, the more perceptive he became. There was a very big difference between crowds on a weekday during rush hour and crowds on a Friday night moving through a shopping district.

When he was close enough, he immediately picked it out, like a very small diamond in a sea of coal, invisible at first but from the right angle, it suddenly became crystal clear. Crowds in rush hour comprised hard, focused individuals. They were like streams: movements were loud, hard wired towards one direction.

Crowds on a Friday night were more like a river, they were moving but only barely, very subtly. Of course they would, the faces were relaxed, the people were rarely alone. Some clusters in the crowds came as one family, others came in groups of friends and others came in couples.

The more faces Levi scanned, the heavier he became. It dawned on him soon after he was alone in crowd of people and he was fucking lonely. For a second he considered testing his application, he decided soon after that he probably didn’t want a bunch of code rubbing his own loneliness and singleness in his face. For another second, he almost considered inviting Petra over.

Shaking both temporal thoughts away, Levi turned the corner and back to the main road, making some excuse that the main road which passed the five star hotel was the closest way back to the station. It was a valid conclusion at least, the main road was wide enough, and the shops were few and far in between that social distancing wasn’t too big of an issue.

There was another conclusion Levi liked to entertain though. He checked his watch. 7:30.

Hange had said before, the reservation was at seven. He dove into a crowd, while catching a glimpse of the restaurant to the window. Hange was surprisingly easy to spot, maybe because Levi had first swept through the seats on the corner with his vision. He spotted the brown hair, the glasses and a dark purple cocktail dress. Notably, there was no blond companion in front of her.

Zeke was in the toilet, his rational mind justified. “Have fun, Hange,” Levi said. At least he got to see her on her birthday, he allowed himself a passing thought on how well she had dressed up that night, similar to months ago when he had completed the test app. Then he brushed that thought away, looked straight ahead. He stayed with the sea of people, long enough to pass the hotel and as soon as he was a good distance away, he broke away, taking the underground path to the station.

It was still early and the station entrance was surprisingly more peaceful than above ground. He had enough space to open up his phone and check the birthday greeting in his drafts box.

Happy birthday Hange! Excited to continue working with you. See you on Monday for app testing. Btw, thanks for volunteering for the calibration on Monday.

He evaluated for himself that the text was a good balance between casual and professional. Satisfied, Levi clicked send and pocketed his phone as he made his way to the ticket gate.

The next time he opened his phone was in the train, three train stops in when he was lucky enough to catch an empty seat.

Thanks, Levi :)

It was too short of a message for Levi to read through and he was almost disappointed at such a turn out.

What did you expect, an ‘I love you?’ The tremble in his lips was enough evidence, that maybe a part of him did, as embarrassing, as ridiculous of a prospect as it was. He hovered his thumb over the keyboard, letting the weight of the incomprehensible emotions pass before he typed.

See you on Monday. That’s what he had wanted to type, just to keep the conversation going. Hange was still typing though.

Levi was staring at the bubbles above the message box for a good long few minutes. Minutes, it definitely took minutes. Hange was typing long enough for a station to announce a next stop, enough for the train to empty at that stop, enough for it to refill and enough for the conductor to announce the next stop,

The text eventually came. Where are you right now?

How the hell had that taken minutes to write, Levi didn’t know. He wasn’t eager to reciprocate though.

He replied within a few seconds. Why?

Hange took a little longer to reply. The bubble on the screen continued to bounce as Hange Zoe continued to type.

Nothing much. I was just curious. It had taken almost another train stop for Hange to type those six words.

A split second later, another message appeared underneath. Sorry for bothering you. So Hange wasn’t just a slow typer.

It was still eight in the evening, too early that for most, the night hadn’t even started. So Levi took a risk. He left the train at the next stop, boarded the other train that ran through that same line, the train that would bring him back to the city center.

Hange, you okay? He texted.

Hange didn’t reply. There was no bouncing of bubbles above the message box, but he continued to stare, just in case. And that little motion on the screen was a fickle thing.

Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it didn’t.

Hange Zoe is typing.... And sometimes, he stared at it for long enough that it seared into his vision even a minute after it was long gone from the screen.

She never did type anything and maybe he had waited too long for a response. By the time he arrived at the right station again, he tapped his card and exited the ticket gate and ran through the underground. When he reached above ground, he tried to maintain the same speed. That involved pushing through crowds and being a small man, he realized it wasn’t too much of a bother to anyone. After all, with the amount of people huddled in the crowds under the cool air of late summer, he wasn’t the only one pushing.

He didn’t have time to check his phone. And soon, he realized he didn’t need to. He arrived back at the hotel to find Hange hunched over, unmoving in the same seat she had been just a few hours back.

Zeke is in the toilet. Levi told himself. He waited a minute, then another. And when he looked closely, he realized, Hange was on her phone. He opened his phone to see the bubbles bounce again.

Hange Zoe is typing…

Levi was counting minutes, and the bubble never disappeared. He looked back up at the glass door to see Hange was still not moving, still slouched, her head bent over. To the phone on her lap maybe?

He looked back at his phone and concluded then, Hange had been typing for ten minutes.

Maybe Zeke is taking a shit. He set an alarm for ten minutes. The hotel and restaurant bathroom wouldn’t be too far. And no one took a shit for more than twenty minutes right? If Zeke didn’t come back in ten minutes, maybe that meant she was alone.

Ten minutes went by quickly. And a few times Hange had typed, a few times she had laid her phone on the table and leaned back on the chair. A waiter had offered wine once and Hange shook her head.

It would be rude to barge in but at the same time, there were answers he was desperate to get. He sent a message. Are you alone?

The typing stopped for a second. Then it continued for a minute. Then it stopped. Finally, like the sunshine after the rain, a chat bubble appeared and Levi savored the sound for a split second before he took in the contents.

Just one word. Yeah

Where’s Zeke?

He’s not coming tonight.

Levi leaned on the wall just next to the window and typed one message. You need someone there with you?

A few times he glanced back to see a waiter near her, handing Hange a small tray. The bill? He guessed. Hange should be going out soon but she continued to sit, for a few seconds longer.

Her reply came within those few seconds. I don’t wanna be alone tonight.

Levi leaned back on the wall and he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, grappling with the conflict. Should he be happy? Sad?

His phone continued to buzz. Hange had left messages in succession.

Can I stop by?

I know a lot of places won’t be open.

We can get fast food.

Somewhere near your place maybe?

Anywhere that would be convenient for you.

Only if you’re not busy though.

Don’t feel obliged.

A string of messages, longer than he expected.

Exit the shop. Turn right and follow the sidewalk. Don’t cross the street. He was shit at the directions, but he decided for himself, she would ask anyway if she got lost.

It turned out, at the least, the directions sufficed. Soon he was hearing the clack of leather shoes, the rustle of a light autumn coat and Hange’s voice.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was loud and clear even when it was competing with the sea of crowds, the other background conversations, the ads and the sound of traffic. Of course it would be, she was right next to him.

“Are you okay?” Levi asked. It wasn’t the best greeting but it felt like the most natural thing to say.

After all, Hange was smiling but it was an unusual smile. It was one of those smiles that seemed to be carrying a heavy weight. He figured it out after staring for a while longer. it was the weight of her cheeks, the prickling of her eyes. If she let the smile go, maybe everything would have fallen with it.

He gripped her by the hand. “You wanna go somewhere?”

“Let’s get out of here,” Hange said, a noticeable crack in her voice.

Maybe that had been enough to break the fragile smile on her face. In the crowds of people, in the middle of a busy street, there was no time for Levi to check. He thought it the best move to pull and maybe she thought it the best move to follow. She was obedient, predictable and light and he easily brought her farther from the center, towards the quieter parts of the city.

Five minutes of brisk walking, or maybe it was ten and soon, they reached an area with clusters of apartment buildings, residences. There were still small shops, a few restaurants and hole in the wall food stalls, some with lines spilling out all the way until the sidewalk.

At first, it seemed hopeless to find some place just for both of them. With time, Levi started to imagine one particular place that wouldn’t have so many people that late at night.

It should be bedtime for kids already anyway. He thought to himself. And when he articulated it, he was sure, there should be one. And there should be no people.

He just had to find one.

Five more minutes of following the winding roads between apartment buildings and he found one, a comfortable distance away from apartments. They could easily manage a soft conversation with no risk of being heard. He sat back on the swing, taking in the slide, the sandbox a few feet away, the monkey bars and high rise apartment buildings with most windows already illuminated just above them.

Hange had taken the seat beside him.

“Are you okay?” Levi asked again.

“I’m fine,” Hange spat out, only proving she was definitely not fine. There was enough light from the one street light on the corner, the shades of orange, red and white coming from the window and they had all worked together to show a glimmer of Hange’s face, even with her head bent down.

“Are you crying?”

The answer came in heaved breaths. The question must have made her more conscious. She bent down further on the swing. Her bangs covered her face and whatever glimmer he had seen a while ago was forgotten. Eventually, she gathered herself. “Levi, if you ask people why they’re crying, sometimes they just start crying.” She let out another breath.

That didn’t convince him to stop. “Why are you crying?”

“You don’t ask people that.” That time, the words came out a little more seamlessly.

“You asked me if I was crying back then… Back in the office.” Levi never forgot that harrowing experience and it was an easy memory to bring up.

There was silence for a second, save for a few more ragged breaths, the creak of the swing and maybe a few barking dogs from the distance.

Hange broke it herself, her voice much clearer than a while ago. “Sorry, I’m just tired,” she said. “Really tired.”

“Zeke ditched?” Maybe ditch wasn’t the right term. By the time he considered that, the words were long gone from his mouth.

“I knew he wasn’t coming,” Hange said. She pushed on the swing just a little bit, enough to have her swaying.

“Why did you wait?”

“We had a reservation.”

“But if he told you…”

“He told me to cancel it.”

“And your road trip?”

“He said not this weekend. He has a few more meetings and he couldn’t come home on time.” Hange’s voice was alarmingly serious, a sign of acceptance maybe?

Levi hoped not. In a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, he spoke up. “Happy Birthday.”

“I’d rather not think it’s my birthday.” Hange let out a pitiful excuse of a laugh. “How many birthdays do people even get, and here I am wasting one of them being sad.”

“I’m not the best company but I can try to do my part to help make it better,” Levi pulled out his phone and opened his email, opening the apk file he had been working on since that morning. He copied the download link and pasted it on Hange’s message box.

The message was sent quickly and the popping sound from Hange’s phone filled the silence of the empty playground.

“Happy birthday,” Levi said once again with a little more flourish.

“I told you, don’t remind me. Let’s just sit here and talk.” Hange gripped the chains of the swing and leaned back.

“Check your damn phone Hange.”

“Nah… My phone has been chocked full of disappointments since this morning.”

“I sent you your birthday gift through your phone.”

“It can wait until later,” Hange argued.

She was like a five year old child and Levi was starting to give up on even keeping the surprise.“I modified the app,” he said.

“What?” That had gotten Hange’s attention. She pulled out her phone.

“I created another copy of it, played around with the code.”

“Why?” She seemed curious more than anything. Curious was better than sad at least.

“As a birthday gift,” Levi said. “Just open the damn phone.”

Hange picked it up from her lap. A clicking sound as she unlocked the phone then silence and maybe a hint of humming as Hange fiddled with her phone. “I just download it right?”

“No shit Sherlock.” It was a stupid question. Hange had downloaded apk files more times than he could even count.

“Well, you said it’s a new app,” Hange said in defense.

“It is and it isn’t.” Levi moved his head, and it settled as a mix between a shake and a nod. “It’s not part of the original research plan… and I didn’t have much time to test it so it’s not perfect.” He unlocked his own phone and opened the emotions alarm. He stared at it for a second, hovering his thumb over the activate button then he looked over at Hange’s phone. “No need for an email. Just open it.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Hange said.

“Well, I added colors now,” Levi shrugged. “And I tried adding more emotions by playing around with the data, but who knows if they’ll show up.” At that point, he was self conscious enough that he saw it as an obligation enough to manage expectations.

He heard the familiar sound and he was sure Hange had activated it. He activated his own and leaned back on the swing and pushed just a little bit, enough to occupy himself while the alarm read them both.

Hange’s phone rang first.

“What did you get?”

“You added purple?” Hange asked. “What the hell does this mean?”

“Red and blue. So if red is anger and blue is sadness…” Levi started.

“Go on…” Hange said.

“I’m not a philosopher nor a psychologist. You say something.”

“Loathing?” She suggested. “A combination of anger and sadness… It sounds like loathing to me, or indignance.”

His own phone rang, he put the screen up. “I got green. Blue and yellow. Sad and happy. Can someone be sad and happy at the same time?”

“Acceptance,” Hange answered. “Or desire.”

“Those are opposites.” “Opposite sides of the spectrum but they’re the same feelings, they both involve happiness and sadness. Acceptance is sad happiness. Desire is happy sadness.”

He almost regretted asking for Hange’s feedback. He felt her speculation at the pit of his stomach and he only realized when his phone fell to the ground that he froze, lost his balance on the swing for a second. “This hasn’t been tested though so it’s all for fun.” A pathetic disclaimer but it didn’t seem to work. He looked up to see Hange was staring at him.

The tears had dried and her eyes were a bit brighter and she seemed more inquisitive than sad. “You know... " Hange started off slow, breathless from amazement maybe. She was still fiddling, staring at her own screen. "This might be a good idea for the app. Let's test this again on Monday. Maybe we could add this."

“Maybe. We’re gonna have to revise the plan if we do.”

“Or we can keep it just a personal project but let’s think about it Monday.” Hange stood up. It’s getting late.” She put her hands up and stretched, swaying from side to side.

“Yeah, it’s getting cold too,” Levi said. Summer was ending soon.

“Happy Birthday to me,” she added, the venom from a while ago apparent. She pocketed her phone then held her sweater close. “Zeke said to wait a few weeks. I guess I’m gonna have to wait until next year to enjoy summer up north again. Maybe we can go south instead.” She kept her voice cheery, an attempt to lighten the mood.

A seemingly unsuccessful attempt. “You still wanna see summer up north?” Levi asked.

“I wouldn’t mind waiting. I guess what hurts about it is, I’ve been psyching myself up for days. I bought new clothes. I’ve been packing and I’ve already created a route for us,” Hange said.

“Yeah, you were talking about it a few days back, about how this one garden reminds you of Pemberley.” Levi asked.

“Well, last time I went there was a few years ago… There’s an area that reminds me of Pemberley, another one that reminds me of the Rosing garden---” Hange trailed off.

“I wanna see them all,” Levi said. He never finished the book and he wondered if she noticed. Regardless, he wanted to see it anyway. If there was something Hange could talk about for hours, something that had left her a lump of disappointment, he wanted to see it for himself.

“Really?” She said. “But with testing on monday… And you don’t seem like the type to---” Even under the dark night, Hange looked flustered, the pink in her cheeks still apparent.

“As long as we’re back before Monday right?” He didn’t know if she would agree. He didn’t expect her to but when Hange was already hovering such a prospect up in the air. When she had misunderstood that last statement to have been an invite, he might as well just play along. And enjoy it. “I don’t see any problem going with you,” he added that last part just to make it a little clearer.

"Like this weekend?" Hange asked, a look of disbelief on her face.

"This weekend." Levi nodded.

“Then let’s go. When do you think you’ll be ready?”

“We could leave right now.”

#levihan #levihan fanfiction

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secret-engima · 4 years ago

Text

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret DoTF Characterization Rant

OKAY, ME RANT RAMBLING ON LUNA’S CHARACTERIZATION IN DAWN OF THE FUTURE IS A GO.

This is … likely going to get messy, but I’ll try to keep it at least moderately coherent. Lemme start by saying that- for the most part- I did actually enjoy Luna’s chap. I’ve been enjoying the book (kinda-sorta-mostly, I really liked Aranea’s chap at least) and I don’t think it’s like- a BAD book? Necessarily? But I feel like it is extremely telling in regards to how the characterization/lore is treated that my brain is automatically filing this thing under “fanfic that’s not my HC but is okay-ish” rather than “canon I will be gleefully tweaking as I please”. My brain is literally looking at this officially licensed book and equating it to fanfic. To fanfic that NEEDS EDITING.

With that out of the way, lemme attempt to summarize my (main) issues with Luna’s Characterization and then I’ll expand on them from there. Get ready for the salt.

1. Luna’s backstory is inconsistent. She herself states multiple times that Oracle training is grueling and involves both physical and mental trials as well as things like fasting for long periods of time WHILE doing said training, yet she is mostly treated like a well-meaning but overall pampered, naive princess who is only now being forced into hard circumstances and has to adapt accordingly. She is also treated like she doesn’t know “common people” that well and doesn’t know how to interact or pick up things like lies (????). A common example is how she treats Sol as trustworthy but reserved when according to Sol’s POV she is literally debating shooting Luna as a possible threat. And Luna supposedly doesn’t pick up on this danger. But we’ll get back to that.

2. Luna is characterized as being oblivious to how people outside Rich Oracle Circles live. That despite traveling all over the world she has never really seen it’s “ugly” sides because she’s always traveled in fancy guarded processions with the sick brought to her. Pretty sure the book specifically mentions at one point that she’s never “considered” what it would be like to be anything other than an Oracle. Admittedly this issue could go under number 1 or 3a but I’m putting it here because I’m salty.

3a. This and the next problem are heavily intertwined and, not going to lie, I could make an entire rant just about these two issues all by themselves, not just in Luna’s context. The first is that Luna is portrayed as not being able to make her own decisions, not even wanting to make her own decisions, until she is forced to or has her “eyes opened” by Sol, our jaded Long Night survivor character. The author treats Luna’s sense of duty as some form of social brainwashing she needs to “get over” and spoiler alert I hate it with every fiber of my being.

3b. Playing right off the whole “Luna is incapable of making her own decisions and that’s why she does her freaking job until someone ‘opens her eyes’” is the idea that Luna’s faith is a character flaw. Lemme reiterate. The story treats Luna’s faith. As a character flaw. Rather than the entire cornerstone to her character and one of the big reasons she’s as amazing as she is. Her faith is treated as foolish and shortsighted, something that has only survived for this long because it has never been challenged and, heads up, the rant I am going to go into on this one specific thing is going to be long and extremely salty.

Alright I think I’ve covered the basics. Starting from the top, BRING ON THE SALT.

…

1. Luna is pampered, well-meaning but naive and bad at reading ulterior motives of people.

….*slow, deep breath* Luna. The Oracle. Who became the youngest Oracle in history. Because her mother was murdered in front of her while her home was burned down and conquered by the people who then proceeded to rule her country, subvert her brother to their cause, and generally control and monitor every aspect of her life that they could. Luna, who was fully prepared to take a single suitcase and escape her own home and run off alone to get to Altissia and had to be stopped by her own brother (who you’ll note brought a bunch of soldiers with him, which indicates he did not expect a submissive response if he came alone).

This girl who was canonically physically abused as a child by a Niflheim officer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZHzBtIfpdg slow this down if you need to confirm, but she is grabbed and manhandled and hit by an adult man when she only looks to be twelve, around the age Tenebrae first fell), who has spent twelve years living under the rule of a nation that is not only aggressively atheist but has willfully attempted to kill one of the very beings she serves and openly plans to do so again. The woman who successfully survived the fall of Insomnia with only one magic-less glaive as her backup for most of the event, then evaded the search efforts of an entire empire with only her own wits, a dog, a Messenger who has only ever been shown to talk rather than fight, and the extremely grudging on-off help of her brother who works for said empire. All while waking up the Astrals and forging covenants that were slowly killing her from the strain, which is the exact thing the empire was trying to prevent her from doing. Then, when it became necessary to complete the last covenant, turned herself in to the very same empire that has imprisoned her since she was a child and has been actively hunting/trying to stop or kill her since Insomnia’s fall.

That girl. Is pampered. Is naive. Is bad at reading people and telling when they have ulterior motives or are lying.

Pull the other one. I’ll kick you.

But seriously, how are we supposed to believe this? Luna’s life post Tenebrae’s fall to Niflheim is only pampered in the sense that she was given fancy clothes and fed regularly (outside the grueling fasting periods mentioned in this same book). She had no freedom, no privacy, her guards were all either men who wore the same uniform as those who killed her mother or were monsters infected with the very scourge she is sworn to purify. The Oracle is famous, is revered by the people. To keep the people on their side, the Empire would have flaunted her, would have taken her to all the shiny events. Luna would have had to dine with, converse with, even dance with the very same people who ordered and condoned the murder of her mother, her own imprisonment, and the brainwashing of her own brother to the enemy side. She would have been the epitome of a bird in a gilded cage or a dog on a silk leash and humans are not meant to live like that.

Am I really expected to think she survived a situation that oppressive, that toxic, that actively hurtful, for years by being naive and bad at reading people? Am I really expected to believe that she cannot tell when people are out to use her or hurt her or are lying to her? Am I really expected to believe that she is pampered and doesn’t have, at the very least, PTSD from seeing her mother murdered and her brother join the very people who did it, let alone everything else that would have followed over those years?

Really?

Luna didn’t have a pampered life. She suffered abuse. Longterm emotional abuse, likely sporadic physical abuse until she learned to play along well enough to escape such punishments, and almost certainly gaslighting (again: religious leader being held captive by an aggressively atheist nation that wants to kill the pantheon this religious leader communes with).

Luna would have learned to navigate the canonically cutthroat politics of Niflheim while being at best an outsider and at worst a target because of her beliefs, her nationality, and her loyalties to the Lucians (nobody was surprised when Luna went on the run. Nobody. Her continued devotion and loyalty to the Lucians -Niflheim’s enemy- was absolutely a well known factor). She would have learned to pick truth from lie and when to pretend she hadn’t noticed in order to survive. She would have lived twelve years knowing that any mistakes or misplaced moments of trust would be paid for in either her suffering of the suffering of the people close to her like her servants, or just the citizens of Tenebrae in general.

And none of this is taking into account her Oracle training, which the book does not elaborate on but repeatedly states was hard and grueling and she completed it years earlier than any Oracle in history.

There are a lot of words I would use to describe Luna, but pampered and naive are not among them.

…

2. Luna is oblivious to how people outside her rich circles live and has never considered being anything else but an Oracle until Sol specifically points it out.

The book states that she mostly travels in procession (ie, with tons of servants to serve her every need and bodyguards to keep the masses at bay) so clearly she can’t go anywhere too dangerous, otherwise her servants wouldn’t be able to come. Right? Oh boy where do I start with this.

I know! Let’s start with the fact that Luna canonically maintains the blessings on Havens! You know those things. They’re your only safe place to camp at night and they can be found in all sorts of nifty locations like the middle of the wilderness where cars can’t go, chocobos won’t go, packs of wild animals will literally leap out of the bushes to eat you (Voretooth packs can get up to twelve or more members all trying to eat you at once, fun fact), and poor choice in clothes will lead to broken ankles at best? The ones that can be found in the depths of locations so dangerous that even the Hunters are leary of going inside and are actively forbidden from approaching unless they are a very high rank?

Off the top of my head some of the Havens that come to mind is the one in the middle of Malmalam thicket, the top of an active volcano, multiple spots in the middle of the voretooth and coeurl infested desert, two up in Vesperpool aka the home of all demon crocodiles and flocks of cockatrice that are bigger than the average car and can literally turn you into stone if you aren’t careful.

Yeah those places. She maintains those. Depending on how often Havens need to be maintained and if the weather/nature shortens that time then she might also have to periodically enter the dungeons Noctis explores in game that also have Havens hidden inside where it is always dark all the time and infested with daemons.

The book also states that the sick (who are highly infectious and not supposed to be touched by people who can’t heal the scourge and in the later stages of sickness become extremely violent and prone to biting in order to infect other people) are … brought to her…

By whom? Exactly?

Moving on from that giant and obvious plot hole to the “never seen or considered other lifestyles” bit: Luna has traveled literally all over the world. In her duties of healing the otherwise incurable she has gone all over Niflheim, Tenebrae, and Lucis. She has walked through the streets of cities filled with lights and glamor and stood on the dirt roads of towns so small they have to go to the next town an hour or more away to buy groceries or check their mailbox and who’s royal hotel suite is just a caravan with a new coat of paint and “welcome Oracle!” sign. Luna’s work is to cure the Starscourge, which is a disease that I can almost promise the rich don’t get. Because the rich and fancy do not risk their lives by going into daemon territory (Prompto, a middle class Insomnian, didn’t even know what wild animals would be like, you expect the rich and famous to be any better?).

The vast majority of Luna’s patients would be people like Dave the Hunter, or Sania the scientist who wades into the wilds. The truck drivers and the farmers and the electricians risking their lives to repair power lines in the middle of nowhere. She wouldn’t be going to cities except to talk to the refugees who fled there from the outside and thus picked up the Scourge. Her only two social circles would be Niflheim’s cutthroat nobility and the “unwashed masses” who come to her for healing. Guess which ones she’ll be more invested in getting to know on a personal/friendly basis and interacting with.

Of course Luna has interacted with and understands “common folk”. Luna is a caregiver, not just physically, but emotionally. She is beloved by the people because she is kind. That means she talks to them. More importantly, she listens. She has held the hands of the farmer as he begs her to heal him, because the harvest season is so close, and if he can’t work, if he dies, then what will become of his wife or the people his farm feeds? She has embraced the sobbing refugee mother as the other breaks down in gratitude for a child who’s skin is a healthy shade and who’s veins no longer bulge a sickly purple. She has met people who are not rich, but who are content. Who have lives that do not hinge on the razor thin dance of staying true to self and not exposing weakness to those who want to eat her alive. Who can laugh with their neighbors and kiss that nice boy down the street just for the fun of it, who can defy curfew to dance in the rain with the person they love and risk, at most, a lecture and a weekend grounding.

And no, they aren’t rich, no, they aren’t influential or powerful, but they are peaceful. They are happy.

Am I really expected to believe that Luna has not looked on these people’s lives from afar, listened to their rambles as they try to distract themselves from the sickness she is drawing from their veins, and not yearned to be the same? That she hasn’t thought over and over again about running away and being free from her gilded cage? That she doesn’t know anything about the lives of the people she heals even as she walks down their streets and steps into their houses so she can heal those who are too sick or too violent to be safely taken out of their room? That she has never thought about what life could be like if she wasn’t an Oracle as she watches the landscape roll by and walks through the wilderness to find the lonely farmsteads that the townsfolk tell her has sick children that cannot be let out of the shed for fear they will bite?

Setting all of that to one side, what human hasn’t thought of being someone else? What person on this planet, hasn’t looked at another person’s life that is so very different from their own and gone “huh, I wonder what that would be like” even if only for a moment before moving on and forgetting about it? Humans are creatures that dream by nature, that are curious by nature. To assume that Luna is not just because she gets to have the fancy dresses and servants is stupid.

…

3a: Luna is unable to make her own decisions and is only the dutiful Oracle because she doesn’t know any better and needs a “wiser” rebellious character to “open her eyes”.

Okay buckle up. I have tried to suppress the salt until now but over these last two points I don’t care. I will be salty. I will be sarcastic. I will be mean. I will reference Real World faiths (tho I’ll try to keep that to a minimum).

Both 3a and 3b are actually systemic issues in storytelling (particularly noticeable in movies/shows but maybe that’s because I’m pretty lucky with my book choices) that I despise with a passion. Specifically 3a relates to the chronic issue writers seem to have with characters not being allowed to be happy with their role in life. There’s this persistent thought, this narrative push, that if a character is following in the footsteps of their family, is entering the “traditional” profession that their parents (or grandparents, or entire generations of predecessors) have been in before them then they must be unhappy with their lot in life. That this is clearly the character being “repressed” and that if they are content then they are either a bad guy (see: every antagonist from a proud military family or every ruler who thinks they are better than everyone because of bloodline ever) or they are just blind to their own unhappiness.

Now, the basic idea of “character discovers they are unhappy in current role and seeks a new one” can actually be done really well. But those stories that do it well have a lot of internal conflict, a lot of self-reflection and searching and choosing to take a new path after really giving it some thought. Maybe they have help along the way, or encouragement, or another character to show that it’s possible by example and that’s okay.

What is not okay is infantilizing a strong, intelligent character by saying “oh it just never occurred to them until they are told that they are unhappy by this much more worldly wise character and then they went and did it”. That is not okay. It not only trivializes the efforts of every real person who has proudly followed in a parent’s footsteps to become something (a doctor, a missionary, a soldier, an actor, even an electrician, pick a life goal and I promise someone has been inspired to do that by their parent being one before them) but it also takes an otherwise strong, dedicated character and implies that they are too stupid to think for themselves or have any free will until the plot and a Shinier Character demands it.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is an Oracle, as her mother was before her, and her mother before her, and all the way back two thousand years to the very first Oracle we see in canon. Possibly back even farther, depending on if any of Aera’s ancestors were Oracles too. That isn’t a suffocating tradition, that is a heritage, that is a culture, that is a necessary, life-saving service that canon proves literally kept the world from falling into eternal darkness (Luna was the last Oracle, the day after she dies is literally the last time we players see sunlight until the end of the game when Noctis dies to restore it). Luna is not stupid or repressed for following in those footsteps, she is breathtakingly strong for shouldering her heritage as the Last Oracle with pride even when the forces controlling every other aspect of her life want her to be ashamed of it and give it up.

The empire that took over her home when she was twelve are actively anti-magic and anti-Astral. Luna is someone who speaks to the Astrals and is born with a magic that can heal the very sickness they want to weaponize. They couldn’t outright forbid her from training to be the next Oracle because that would cause the people to riot, but they could and absolutely would try to make her give up in any way they could. They would have insulted her, demeaned her, hurt her, and imprisoned her. They wouldn’t have wanted a “real” Oracle, they would have wanted a puppet who said pretty promises and then did nothing to stop them.

It would have been so easy for Luna to go down the same path her brother did. To give in to the empire and it’s propaganda that she would have been forced to listen to every single day of her life for twelve whole years. It would have made her life so much easier to be a puppet Oracle who didn’t have to walk miles through the wilderness to maintain Havens, or defy the empire by maintaining loyalty to Lucis, or leave her manor home to heal the sick that could not come to her themselves. As a puppet Oracle she could have stayed in the Manor and only treated cases that could reach her doors and were vetted by the empire. She could have eaten the finest foods and worn the best dresses and never had to worry about a pack of hungry Voretooths or a rogue Behemoth tearing her apart. Most of all, Niflheim wouldn’t have been nearly as oppressive or violent. They would have gladly given her the illusion of freedom and control as long as she played along rather than been fully willing and prepared to run into the jungle with a suitcase just to escape as seen in the movie.

Luna was not blindly fitting into a mold and she was not and has never been incapable of making a decision. The fact that she shows up in canon as a strong, dedicated woman who is in control of her emotions and not afraid to face down a giant sea monster with the power to summon tidal waves with just her words and a glorified pointy stick proves that. The idea that she needs a “wiser” character to come alongside her and “free her” from her own duties is not only stupid, it undermines one of the key things that makes Luna such a strong character despite her relative lack of screentime.

Furthermore, canonically, one of Luna’s main reasons for sticking with her duty as Oracle isn’t because it’s tradition, it’s because of what Niflheim did. In the Kingsglaive movie, when Nyx Ulric is getting angry at Luna for doing really reckless, life-threatening things, she tells him quote:

“I do not fear death. What I fear is doing nothing and losing everything.”

That’s not a woman who is blindly following a path laid out for her. That is a woman who is desperately, furiously fighting against the people who killed her mother in front of her the best way she can: by being the Oracle they cannot stand for her to be.

But sure. Luna is only the Oracle because she doesn’t know better and it never occurred to her to be anything else until some jaded kid with a shotgun made a snide comment about it.

3b: Luna’s faith is a character flaw that has only survived this long because it wasn’t challenged by a worldly wise character who knows better.

Not going to lie but words cannot express how much I hate this trope. This is another thing that shows up a lot in television/movies but also in books too, and that is that a character is not allowed to have a faith in something/religion unless they are 1. Foolish, 2. Brainwashed/tricked into it, 3. A crazy fanatic, or 4. It’s a character flaw they have to overcome by becoming more jaded and atheist and hateful.

Because … that’s not how it works. There are- millions (billions) of people all over the real world who are intelligent, well educated, thoughtful, kind, and religious. And no I’m not just talking about Christianity (tho I am Christian so you can see why this trope grinds my gears so hard). There’s Hinduism, there’s Islam, there’s Buddhism, there’s Judaism, there’s so many faiths and belief systems okay. And no we don’t tend to play well with each other or accept the validity of the others but that doesn’t mean we’re fanatics or brainwashed or stupid. And no we really don’t appreciate it when media introduces a character who follows a religion (even fictional ones!) only to make them an antagonist or rip it away from them in the name of “improving their character”. Just like every other cultural group ever who really doesn’t like their heritage and culture being used as a butt of jokes or is turned into a caricature or used as the basis for the antagonist being Evil™.

But no. We can’t possibly have a character who’s faith makes them strong or gives them comfort in times of hardship unless they are deluded. We can’t possibly have a character who is both intelligent and faithful. We can’t possibly show a character who is breathtakingly courageous and selfless as well as religious unless we point at their faith and go oh look a horrible character flaw to overcome by having non-believer characters open their eyes via sarcastic commentary.

And look. Look. I am well aware that the plot of Dawn of the Future has Bahamut as the Bad Guy™. I am fully aware of that. But if you want to be purely honest and technical, that doesn’t invalidate Luna’s faith because (spoilers) the other Astrals fight Bahamut to save the world. They hear her cries and the come to fight on behalf of Lucis and Noctis and all of Eos and they kill Bahamut even when that ensures their own destruction.

But we’re not actually here to talk about whether the Astrals deserve Luna’s faith in them, we’re here to talk about why insisting Luna’s faith is, by nature of being a faith, treated like a flaw and why it is treated like something so weak it only survived to this point because Luna didn’t face anything “bad” enough to “snap her out of it”.

Spoiler alert, it’s not a flaw and it’s not weak.

Going back to something I have mentioned several times already: Niflheim is an empire run by people who actively want to kill the very beings most of the planetary population worships. The very same people in charge of Luna’s life for twelve years, starting from when she was twelve and very emotionally vulnerable and traumatized, hate the Astrals. I repeat: They hate the Astrals. They have devised weapons to try (and spectacularly fail) to kill them. Half their continent is a winter nightmare-land because they tried to kill Shiva the Glacian and she went “haha, nice try, lemme leave a fake corpse here that constantly pumps out freezing temperatures and blizzards”.

Am I seriously, honestly, supposed to believe that these people didn’t try to tear down her faith at every single opportunity? That Ravus wouldn’t have tried to bully and cajole and harass her into abandoning her faith because he knew that her faith was what kept her walking her chosen path as Oracle and that said path was destined to kill her? Am I seriously supposed to believe that Luna didn’t spend those twelve years having to sit there and bite her tongue to keep from raging at these cutthroat nobles as they gloated and sneered and spat on the names of the Astrals who gave Luna the very magic she uses to heal those in need?

Luna never needed Sol to come along and say “what have the Astrals ever done for you?” because I promise that she’s heard some variation of that exact phrase from everyone in her life. From her own brother to the Emperor himself she has heard some form of this question, this taunt. In the Kingsglaive movie, General Glauca even says something to the order of, “To what god do you pray? The gods do not listen.” Right before he kidnaps her.

Luna’s faith isn’t something blind, and it is not a flaw. It is a cornerstone of her character. Luna’s faith is a bloody, stubborn, tenacious thing that she has nurtured and shored up and been steadied by through twelve years of emotional abuse and physical imprisonment. Luna’s faith is an unshakeable thing that can only come from long nights spent crying into the silent dark of the room and asking “is this real? Am I right? Should I give up? This hurts so much, what do I do?” and finding the answer to be “yes this is real. Yes I am right. No, I won’t give up even though it kills me. Yes it hurts, but what I believe in is stronger than this pain.”

Faith is not optimism and it is not fanaticism. Optimism can be broken by hardship and fanaticism has no room for selfless kindness or acceptance of other people not being as devoted as they are. Faith is personal. Faith is a bedrock, and maybe it’s a bedrock that makes no sense to people on the outside, but it is a bedrock and it can make mountains move.

Just as Luna proves when she runs rings around an Empire to win the respect and cooperation of Titan and of Ramuh, to stand amid the rain and tell an enraged TideMother that “it is in mercy that men offer praise, and in shedding grace that the gods solicit worship” and not flinch because she knows she is right.

Luna’s faith is a fierce, scarred thing that has taken every kind of suppression and propaganda and poison the empire could throw at it and kept on going.

Furthermore. Luna’s faith is treated by Sol as something empty. Because when did the Astrals ever help her or comfort her or save her?

I can answer that. They helped her when they gave her Umbra and Pryna, who kept her company through her life and gave her a way to talk to Noctis. A way to reach out to a person who was not either imperial, warped by imperial propaganda, or too afraid to speak out against the empire for fear of dying. They comforted her when Gentiana became a second mother for Luna after the death of Queen Sylva. A physical shoulder to cry on, a sounding board to bounce fears off of, a well of advice when it was asked of her, a rock to retreat to when Ravus turned away from her and the empire continued to control as much of her life as they could.

Gentiana, who is really Shiva in disguise, has been with Luna since she was a small child.

One of the Astrals themselves has been with Luna for almost her entire life. Has guided her, has comforted her, has led her to safety as she fled Insomnia’s ruins.

Shiva had no reason to do that. The Oracles have done their duty since the time of Aera without her help or company. Shiva didn’t have to stay. She didn’t have to linger and offer comfort and become Luna’s friend. She didn’t have to listen to the last words of a scared young woman who wanted only to see her fiancé one last time and promise to carry them to Noctis in the event of her death. Shiva didn’t have to cry on behalf of Luna. Shiva didn’t have to help Luna remember what it was like to be an ordinary woman (“Yet others need not hide their grief. Is she [Luna] so different from them?”), and in fact, if Shiva had played up to most of the stereotypes, she would have done the opposite and done her hardest to suppress any part of Luna’s personality that wasn’t her Oracle duties.

But she did. Shiva was there, and she remembered. Shiva loved and we as a fandom may yell at the Astrals a lot for not doing more to take care of the Starscourge, but of all of them Shiva gave the most because she came down and she lived, and walked, and loved this Oracle, this scared child, this frightened, weary woman who couldn’t even turn to her own family for comfort. Shiva’s husband Ifrit was betrayed by humankind and yet Shiva still defended them, she kills Ifrit to protect the man (the king) that Luna loved.

And at the end of the game, in those final moments outside the Citadel, when it’s just Noctis and his Retinue against all of Ardyn’s armies of daemons, when Luna calls out to these Astrals whom she has remained faithful to her entire life, even unto her death…

They answer.

Every. Last. Astral. Who is not corrupted like Ifrit, comes down at her prayer and fights. Even Leviathan who’s only voiced lines are screaming wrath against the humanity that forgot her, even Bahamut who otherwise remains aloof in his plane of magic beyond the concerns of the mortal world. Luna calls, and they answer her.

“What have the Astrals ever done for her” indeed.

Luna’s faith is a driving force of her character, it is irrevocably intertwined with her duty, with her choices, with her desire to help people and save the world even if it costs her own life, and in the end her faith is rewarded. Not in the way we want for her, because we love the ultimate happy endings where everyone lives and nobody dies. But Final Fantasy XV was never a story about happy endings. It was a story about coming of age, and tragedy, and sacrifice. Of holding onto hope against all opposition, and of having faith that someday the dawn will return, even if bringing about that dawn requires personal sacrifice.

…

Okay this is over 5k words, I’m tired, and I’m extremely salty so I can’t really figure out how to wrap this up but there we go, my salty personal rant about why I think Dawn of the Future messed up some really critical parts of Luna’s characterization and why it’s Really Bad that they messed up those specific things.

Also I kinda despise them making Bahamut the bad guy in DotF because yes he’s a jerk and yes he really could have done the whole Prophecy thing a ton better, but in the original FFXV one of the things that made the game so heartbreakingly tragic to me is that most of the characters involved weren’t pure evil. They could be greedy, and flawed, and crazy, but in the end the source of the problem was too big to pin on one character.

Do you pin the entire thing on the god of war for his mistakes in trying to bring about peace, or the god of fire for trying to destroy humanity and no longer being there to do his job and purify the plague? Do you blame the Astrals for their hubris or humanity for theirs, because Ifrit loved humanity until they betrayed him so deeply he went mad? Do you hate Ardyn for causing the Long Night or pity him for being a victim of Somnus’s greed? Can you blame Somnus for everything even though the Scourge was going on long before him and kept spreading long after he sealed Ardyn away? The whole thing is a tragedy because at this point it’s a problem too big to fix without someone paying a price too heavy and we hate that because the characters who pay that price are the ones we grow to love over the game.

But that is an entirely different rant for an entirely different day when I am not so tired and my hands no longer hurt from writing this much in one sitting. Thank you and good night.

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athena14044 · 4 years ago

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It just occurred to me that I could be posting about my attempt to read all of She-Hulk’s appearances so let me get caught up to where I am currently

Savage She-Hulk, 1st time with the Avengers, Contest of Champions, Secret Wars, Time with the Fantastic Four, Secret Wars II

Savage She-Hulk

Generally very nice

There was a letter on the letters page of #8 that was from a 7th grader who said that all of her friends and her history teacher (a nun) love it and I- 🥺 Please that’s so sweet.

I liked the secret identity angst with her father.

The weird love triangle (square?) between her, Richard Rory, and Zapper is very weird.

In the beginning they seemed to be going more for the “she’s one person not two separate personalities” but then they were like “actually Jen is in love with Richard Rory and She-Hulk is in love with Zapper” and I do not like it. Outside of that they weren’t really separate personalities? idk

Anyway, I liked Richard Rory, but not Zapper. They talked about how she was his babysitter?? Hi, what?

Then in the last issue she chooses Zapper over Richard Rory because she’s choosing to stay in her She-Hulk form but he is not mentioned again after that. (at least up until where I am but still)

Avengers (v1 #221-243)

I liked the earlier issues but about halfway through it started to feel like the Avengers lineup was changing every issue which is fine I guess but it felt less coherent and like they had less time to explore the characters’ relationships with each other.

Unrelated to Jen, but I liked the issue where Scott Lang and Hawkeye teamed up to stop Taskmaster from taking over the circus.

Starfox 👎

Contest of Champions

This was kind of bizarre. They clearly just wanted their superheroes to fight each other for no apparent reason, which. Valid I guess.

But it was a bizarre mix of famous heroes and completely random international heroes, and I’m kind of interested to know if the random international heroes were big at the time or if they were just putting them in to entice international readers.

Anyway, it has the distinction of being the first Marvel event.

How dare it spawn the curse that is Marvel events.

But also it was only 3 issues and had no tie-ins so it’s fine I guess.

Secret Wars

I liked it although I think it may have dragged on a bit too long.

I like Molecule Man

Wasp kissed Magneto that was weird

Idk I don’t have much to say

Fantastic Four (v1 #265-300)

This is a really bad time to jump into the middle of the Fantastic Four. Everything is happening.

Wyatt’s here though. That’s good. I like Wyatt.

Generally I like Byrne’s characterization and I think he’s very good at emotional drama.

But then all of a sudden you get an entire issue where Jen has to stop the skeeviest guy you can possibly imagine from publishing her nudes. Or SHIELD agents strip searching her while making racist comments towards Wyatt. (Technically this was in Marvel Graphic Novel #18 but it was during the time she was part of the F4 and Byrne wrote it so) Or the constant reminders that Byrne retconned the age gap between Reed and Sue. Or Sue being possessed by hate and Reed demeaning her and slapping her to snap her out of it. Or uh, just the Hatemonger thing in general.

In summary, mostly enjoyable but I occasionally had to chant “It was 1985″ while scrolling down the page in horror. (which does not excuse it but I’d like to think it couldn’t be published like that today)

Secret Wars II

The beginning of the tie-ins in other comics during events AKA the bane of my existence

Speaking of, I read the Daredevil tie-in bc it promised me the Beyonder badgering Matt for legal advice and then it did not deliver and instead gave me a tragic story where he had his sight restored so thanks for that

I did not need to spend 9 issues reading about the Beyonder’s existential crisis.

I wouldn’t mind reading about a character’s existential crisis, in fact I think comics need more of that and less of incomprehensible symbiotes take over the planet events, but the Beyonder. Why should I care. They did not give me a reason to care.

Can we talk about the two times he showed up in the Fantastic Four during this:

1. A very distressing issue where a small child idolizes Johnny and ends up setting himself on fire. He dies, Johnny considers giving up being the Human Torch. The Beyonder shows up and tells Johnny that he can’t do that. He does not attempt to revive the small child with his near limitless power. I don’t know, there was some crap about him truly living in the moment of his death bc he felt close to his hero.

2. To sum up a complicated mess: Dr Doom is in a random guy’s body because of reasons. He summons the Beyonder. The Beyonder attempts to vaporize him but ultimately gives Doom back his body also because of reasons and revives the consciousness of the man whose body Doom stole. I believe this is because they were trying to explain why Doom was in Secret Wars when he was supposed to be dead.

Why are we giving Doom back his body but drawing the line at resurrecting an 8 year old who set himself on fire.

There was some nice Molecule Man content. I did not realize how much I like Molecule Man but I guess I like Molecule Man. He just wants to play trivial pursuit and watch tv with his girlfriend which is Valid.

Enjoy this cursed lettering mistake if you made it this far (Incredible Hulk #278)

#she hulk #jennifer walters #savage she hulk #avengers #fantastic four #contest of champions #secret wars #secret wars ii #liz reads comics #liz's she hulk readthrough

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letterstomilen · 4 years ago

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i discuss the classification of igneous petrology as you fall asleep during my lecture (PART 1) (ASMR)

Childe/Zhongli, Alternate Universe (read part 2 here) When Childe's younger sister tells him about the volunteer at the library, he does not make the connection between that and his new favorite ASMR YouTuber, Rex Lapis.

Childe has a very effective method of getting through college. His little sister, who’s caught him making coffee at three in the morning on more than one occasion the past week alone, would beg to differ.

“You’re the best older brother,” she starts off, and he’s sure she’s trying to convince herself more than him at this point, “but you need to fix your sleeping habits.” Then, because she’s his little sister, she’d flash him a smile and pat his shoulder reassuringly.

(The comment is not lost on him though. He understands his sleeping situation will eventually wear him down if it hadn’t already, but he believes if he’ll drink a coffee every morning and a Monster every night, he’ll get through three days. By the third day, he’ll hardly be coherent but that doesn’t matter because he’ll conk out for the next twelve hours and then repeat.)

“Don’t worry, Tonia,” he says, trying to sound as reassuring as possible as he contemplates whether it’s worth it or not to swallow a pill of 5-hour energy with his morning coffee. “Once break ends, I’ll get back to normal.”

“You said that six seasons ago.”

Childe frowns, trying to remember if his sleeping schedule was this dysfunctional last year. “Huh?”

“The Walking Dead seasons,” Tonia clarifies, as if she’s not twelve years old and the show is for grown adults. He thinks. He hasn’t checked Commonsensemedia ever since La Signora labeled him as a “helicopter parent” and his Netflix tab has been playing How to Get Away with Murder as background noise for the past few weeks.

Isn’t it a show about zombies though? Tonia’s sheepish smile tells it all, because it’s the same exact guilty look he had when he got caught red-handed as a kid.

(Once he remembers later, Childe promises himself, he’ll check out The Walking Dead.)

“Oh. Well. I have a lot of shows to catch up on, you know. Not to mention a ton of my professors gave me reading for over the break.”

A half lie. They did give him a lot of reading because each professor assumed that their classes were his only one, and with seven days left, he still has a textbook worth of reading to go through. But there are no shows that Childe would sacrifice his precious sleep for. As a matter of fact, he would love to sleep. He’s spent the majority of his classes back in high school sleeping and faking attention, saving his grade at the last minute — it was quite the extreme sport really, if he says so himself.

Whenever he tries to sleep recently, his thoughts run at several hundred miles per hour, and he spends several hours staring at the ceiling before succumbing to the computer at his desk and watching trashy movies. At this point, he must have gone through the entire romance comedy list on Netflix. (Not a proud point in his life but if anybody ever wanted him to give a list of best to worst romance comedy movies, he now has one.)

Tonia, on the other hand, isn’t incredibly convinced.

Admittedly, the excuse was lame. Also, he can’t easily lie to his little sister, who’s far shrewder than he takes her for at times.

“You never start your reading in advance. You like to speed read it right before your class or watch a five-minute video on the chapters while your teachers take attendance. But that’s… uh, ‘a bad work ethic.’” Tonia looks immensely proud of herself as she says this, finishing it off with, “Zhongli told me that.”

“Zhongli?” he repeats, trying to remember if that’s one of her classmates or some stranger that’s hoping to kidnap his sister.

“The guy that volunteers at the library sometimes. He recommended me a loot of good books to read, but he talks like an old man.”

“How old?” Childe can tell she’s enjoying this — talking about her new friend at the library that he’ll probably have to run a background check on.

“Like he’s in his sixties or something. But he looks… actually, he looks your age! And he’s a student too. I told him all about you.”

Well, that doesn’t sound very reassuring coming from the mouth of a twelve-year-old. He’s not sure if that translates to his social security number, his current dilemma, or just that he’s her older brother.

“Like all of the stories you told me when I was a kid. And then when Lumine came to pick me up, she stayed to show him pictures of you too.”

“Of course she did,” he mumbles, ruffling her hair. One of these days he’s going to move without telling his classmates and the twins won’t enter his apartment unannounced. (But Tonia adores their company and the stories they tell her far too much for him to actually do it. But that doesn’t mean he’s above making threats when they tell his little sister about the bet he made about white-out and how it could dye hair. The jury is still out on this one.) “She’s just mad because I get away with it and she doesn’t. But don’t do it yourself. It’s a bad habit,” he adds, remembering that he should at least try to be a good influence on his younger sister when he can.

“Okaaay,” she says unconvincingly, before shaking her hair and running off to her room with lunch he prepared for her.

Watching her close the door and no doubt continue her binge of The Walking Dead, he takes out his phone and texts Lumine.

Childe