#this one is particularly beautiful IMO

[whatudowhennooneseesyou]

Could you Possibly do a Red and Green Flags or a NSFW analysis for Mingyu of SVT, Whichever you’d rather do if possible, Thank you

𝐊𝐢𝐦 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐲𝐮 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝟏𝟖+ (𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝)

Word Count: 2.5 K (circa)

Disclaimer: This analysis is for entertainment purposes only and should NOT be taken seriously or in a professional manner.

Methodology: Traditional astrology and Whole sign house analysis.

Placements:

Aries Sun (11th House)

Pisces Moon (10th House)

Gemini Rising (Mercury Ruled)

Taurus Mercury (12th House)

Aries Venus (11th House)

Virgo Mars (Retrograde 4th House)

Fuckboi Rating: 4/10

Mingyu's Aries stellium indicates he THINKS he can have sex w/o feelings and be okay with it but his Pisces Moon betrays him every time and this leads to things being MESSY!!!

His 12th House Mercury can inhibit his communication style and therefore he might be the type to keep avoiding the issue and procrastinating speaking about his feelings until he's too far into the connection.

So, his energy is not giving me fuckboi but definitely the type to pursue fwb's/situationships and then it goes horrifically wrong.

Red & Green Flags:

Red:

The 12th House Mercury is going to be a nightmare to work with as a partner because you know that scene in The Notebook where Noah is like 'what do you want? WANT DO YOU WANT?'

That's what it's going to be like with Mingyu- an indecisive mofo who cannot reveal his feelings until he's practically pushed into a corner and you're having to force it out of him.

Definitely embodies the 'one that got away' trope as he confesses his feelings when it's too late because he's too busy overthinking in his head.

An emotionally sensitive teddy bear who gets upset and dramatic over any minor issue (which is cute in my mind but I need help...).

Green:

I'm an Aries and I'm constantly defending Aries placements because we get such SHIT but he has an Aries Sun conjunct Venus which is a beautiful placement imo because his whole desire as a partner is for you to love yourself as much as he loves you.

Being in a relationship with him would be an especially healing one because he would encourage you to heal and nurture yourself with him as a supportive partner.

His Pisces Moon encourages him to be super empathetic and even have psychic abilities as a partner and he has high intuition- he would probably know what got you upset before you do.

Service oriented and a provider, I'll include this with every person who's a Virgo Mars but they truly enjoy pleasing their partner because that's what helps them feel fulfilled as a boyfriend.

Ideal Type...If He's Into Women:

Physical Traits:

Venus in Aries is interesting because they don't tend to have a specific 'physical' type but more so are drawn to energy/vibes so his type physically is all over the place.

This man is so wattpad coded omg it makes me cringe so hard but I've noticed men with an Aries Venus are attracted to girls who can rock the baggy clothing/messy bun duo- particularly with his known love for his height omg if you look hot with his clothes on!!! He'll have his hands all over you all the time.

The 4th House Mars indicates he would love a woman on the 'curvier' side and is a total peaches man for sure.

Honestly, if I'm to be blatant, I feel like Mingyu would love a short, curvy, plus-size, voluptuous whatever term you desire partner that can wear his clothes and be constantly excited whenever you see him.

The ultimate golden retriever x sunshine gf energy.

Personality Traits:

Aries Venus= humour and mischief! He wants a partner who's spontaneous, loud and sociable. The type to not take things too seriously.

Honestly, with that 5th house in Libra- he really would be attracted to the manic pixie energy type and be interested in someone who's 'quirky' and 'not like the other girls'.

The easiest way I can describe this energy is think of 2010-2018 Tumblr energy when John Green novels were at their peak in fame, the whimsical, adventurous, free-spirited type (I love and hate it at the same time).

Domestic, homely and orderly- he doesn't need a partner who's a neat freak but can clean up after themselves and doesn't need to be told or reminded constantly to do so.

Dom, Sub or Switch:

His Pisces Moon and Virgo Mars gives him a lot of flexibility with power dynamics and makes him a strong switch with dominant preference.

Mingyu is a gentle giant but he is a GIANT however and needs to feel like he is one to feel satisfied in his manhood, he doesn't care if you're the more decisive partner as long as he decides how to pleasure you in the bedroom.

He is an Aries stellium after all and the heavy Mars energy signifies he has a high drive and does still need to prove himself and show off just how hard he can have you trembling underneath him.

As a dominant, he's definitely more a pleasure-oriented soft dominant, he does love a challenge and to be teased but he's a service dom through and through.

Kinks...Just A Few Of Them:

Breeding/Pregnancy:

The 4th House is ruled by Cancer and represents domesticity and home life and I'm sure he's mentioned wanting children in the future because oh my lawdd- this is how he enjoys staking his claim.

He wants to see you full and swollen with his child, he wants to pump you full with his cum and see if it sticks because that's his way of gently claiming you and reminding you that you're his.

'My god you're a glowing sweetheart, you look so beautiful filled with me, I just want to lay you down and give you another baby'.

Nipple Play/Lactation/Anything Boobies

The 4th House influence means Mingyu is a peach and cherries man which does go hand in hand with his breeding/pregnancy kink because anything with your tatas would drive him crazy.

So yeah, I do think he would prefer someone with a big bosom that he can bury his face and leave little marks and kisses all over your chest.

If you were pregnant or breastfeeding, I'm sure he'd love to clean your milk off with his tongue and I think if he were to enter into a submissive state, he would be the type to just fall asleep and feel completely ease with your nipple in his mouth.

'You're so soft and you smell so nice, just let me keep my face here for awhile mmmh?? I'll be good, this is my comfort zone'.

Taglist: @scuzmunkie @marievllr-abg @umbralhelwolf @starsareseen @lino-jagiyaa @mischiefsmind @mrcarrots @junieshohoho @gyuhanniescarat @partywithgyu @whatsk-poppinhomies @hologramhoneymoon @staytinyinmybpack @necessiteez @wooyoungmybelovedhusband @berryberrytan @laylasbunbunny @bangchanbabygirlx @i-love-ateez @anyamaris @krishastumblernow @hexheathen @michel-angelhoe @northerngalxy @justaaveragereader @ja3hwa @silentreaderthings @daddysspecialdollyworld @abby-grace @wisejudgedragonhairdo @smilefordongil @writhingwrecked @hongthoven

[runningfrom2am]

requiem masterlist

“will you still love me when i’ve got nothing but my aching soul?

i know you will.”

summary:

according to coriolanus snow, his best friend had the most beautiful voice in all of panem. she had been training her whole life constantly to get where she was; being up for a residency at the most elite opera house in all of panem. singing was her passion. her true love; and when that got stripped from her in a second, his world became a whole lot quieter. he loathed every minute of it.

based on this request

tags/warnings:

opera singer!mentor!reader (blink and you'll miss it), she's kind of a prodigy!! p cool imo, mute!reader, bestfriend!coryo, friends to lovers trope ooo, mentions of graphic violence early on (particularly the prologue) but after that it's pretty safe, depictions of ptsd/trauma, mental illness and minor suicidal ideation but at least she's not entirely alone, descriptions of minor medical treatments and use of medication.

authors note: i can hear you already- “omg raye, another coryo series? are you crazy?” yes. yes i am. anyway welcome back! third times the charm (not that the first two aren’t a massive success for me) but now for REAL i’m completely departing from the plot of tbosas and doing something totally new. thank you so much to @puredreamagination for sending in the request that inspired this whole thing! i can’t wait to get into this one :). it won’t be as long as the last two probably, but still i think this will be fun as a kind of mini series!

important disclaimer!: okay so let me make something clear from the beginning bc the playlist for this is already flowing- in this au their idea of “opera” music is slightly skewed. the main idea is that it’s old, and takes a very powerful and talented singer to do it justice. aka, if you see adele or celine dion on the playlist or mentioned in the fic, don’t come at me hahaha i know that’s not technically “opera” music but i thought it would be so fun to include. those are just some songs that i think survived the test of time and r would absolutely eat up.

prologue

main series

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven

pinterest board // playlist // moodboards

all your thoughts // let’s talk ab it

masterlists // fic recs // nav (please read!)

follow my library and turn on notifs for updates when i post this!!

-> @runningfrom2am-library

tagging some of my faves!: @that-veela-girl @soulessjourney @keziahcore / @winterrrnight @becauseseaotters @fantasticchaosthing

[thefudge]

so, about nosferatu

....eh

this film felt like such a missed opportunity

it wasn't bad, it was just very underwhelming and disappointing, which i'd heard, but still. i was hoping for more juice, more substance

the cinematography is beautiful and atmospheric and the overall look of it is great....but it doesn't seem to say or do anything all that interesting

yes, we get it, we're dealing with ellen's exteriorized and embodied "appetite" and repressed sexuality, but i don't feel eggers did anything particularly salient with it

lily rose depp certainly gives it all in her physical performance...but the intensity becomes tedious because eggers doesn't seem to actually want to engage with ellen's desires; she's not really allowed to be devious or deviant, in spite of the great show she puts on. and i understand that it's part of the point; that society has taught her to be her own biggest censor. but still, there comes a point where it feels like the spectacle of her hysteria is more important than any more subtle shades of her loneliness/desire for connection.

ironically, her supposed abnormalcy becomes monotonous

and if you strip away her possession scenes...what do you have? who is this woman, really?

frankly, most of the characters felt like this - threadbare and rather empty

and this could be part of the fairy-tale effect of the movie (operating with types), but it's a very dissatisfying effect

you don't believe in the characters and their actions

the only one here who feels like a "flesh and blood" person is willem defoe, because he seems to realize he's starring in a dressed-up melodrama; his is the most enjoyable and palpable performance

honestly, i don't get why eggers felt the need to tell this story. what did he bring to it? a particular style? historical mise-en-scene?

speaking of history, that's one big thing he's known for; his almost obsessive adherence to authentic and accurate historical detail. well, this time i think it worked against him

so, the screening i attended was followed up by a discussion with florin lazarescu, the Romanian screenwriter whom eggers hired as consultant for this movie, and lazarescu basically explained the amount of research eggers' team did to try and get some details right

most of that research...ended up being either misused or simply wasted

for instance, eggers insisted on getting right certain Slavonic carvings on orlok's casket, or was obsessive about reconstructing parts of a Romanian monastery and the exact dress of an orthodox Mother Superior. and that's all very cool; i'm not saying i don't appreciate this level of dedication, but what was it in the service of, ultimately? yes, these details add atmosphere, but a lot of things he poured so much work into barely show up on screen (lazarescu said there's a much longer director's cut, tho) and when they do, they're frankly framed in a sketchy, amateurish way

take the scenes with the Romanian gypsies (i'm using the term with the 19th century connotation of it); lazarescu said eggers wanted this community to not seemed cliched, to feel authentic, but....literally, thomas is greeted by them singing and dancing in the most affected, cliched/stereotypical way. yes, i've seen much worse depictions of course, but all that historical research ultimately gave way to a watered down depiction. the dialogue in Romanian during those scenes is pretty funny/cringey, if you understand it; i realize most people won't. but as a Romanian, those scenes were ridiculous instead of atmospheric or spooky. and i know this won't affect most audiences' enjoyment, but eggers prides himself on historical verisimilitude, yet all of these "local color" scenes felt like one big, cliched spectacle (including the scene with the naked girl on the horse - none of these moments felt like they had actual depth. and imo, you need a bit of depth if you want to elicit a terrifying atmosphere)

and then there's the "Dacian" language orlok speaks....

lazarescu mentioned eggers insisted on this aspect and asked him to basically invent it because he wanted the count to go all the way back to the Dacians (our ancestors who were eventually conquered and colonized by the Romans)

and i get wanting to make the vampire even more alien, more remote, but this Dacian background adds nothing to the story of the character - literally nothing* is done with it in the film; it's just something you can look up, but you'd have to know that eggers intended for him to be Dacian/ to speak Dacian

so it's a pretty superficial easter egg

and the language orlok speaks is just a really garbled, phony-sounding Latin (because linguists believe that Dacian and Latin probably had a common ancestor); and this is just a personal complaint, but he never sounded genuine to me; i did not believe in this immortal count who goes all the way back to the Dacians

bill skarsgard does the best he can, but even his English lines (spoken with a heavy Russian accent) are pretty farcical

and this could have worked for me if the movie leaned into these farcical/melodramatic elements more, but it takes itself too seriously for that

there are some funny bits here and there, but it's obvious eggers wanted people to "think" about his movie

there are atmospheric moments i enjoyed, and i think the last frame/shot of the movie is really beautiful and evocative (and something tells me that this picturesque shot was the impetus for the whole movie - it feels like eggers made the whole thing just to get to it, and ...you know what, i can respect that)

but all of the historical authenticity he tried to insert into the film fell very flat for me and felt like pointless research, since very little of it was utilized in an interesting, meaningful way (or at all)

i mean for all the work he put into it, this movie felt so incomplete and fractured, so devoid of actual historical or fictional layers - it did not know whether it wanted to be a dreamlike folk tale or a historical gothic, and it did not much succeed at being either imo

the pacing also seemed sort of labored to me; there were some very predictable moments that were drawn out without much in the way of interesting effect/resolution

again, i enjoyed some aspects, but the whole of it felt like a hollow faberge egg

and i guess this adaptation reveals the pitfalls of the original - which is in itself a copy of dracula. because at every step of the way i wished i was watching dracula lol. even the bbc 2020 dracula!

to offer some compliments here at the end: i like that orlok is ugly and stays ugly and monstrous all throughout; i like that eggers seems to understand there is an appeal in that (especially for women) - but he doesn't go far enough with it. he is not bold enough to have ellen revel in that ugliness. there are some brief shots where orlok's ugliness/monstrosity verges on seductive/erotic, but the movie shies away from ellen's desire for that monstrosity. the film focuses more on her "monstrous" physical guilt for desiring him, but without really fleshing out her connection with orlok. again, i don't know who this woman is. (if she is meant to stand in for all repressed 19th century women at the time that's weak sauce to me)

i do think eggers is a v good director and i have enjoyed his other films; i just think he didn't have much to say in this one (he just wanted to get to that last cool shot)

(*to be fair and give the film credit, the myth of the Solomonari is invoked/referenced in order to connect orlok with Daco-Romanian folklore....but a) i don't think that this link was utilized in an interesting way; b) it's not fleshed out enough for us to understand orlok's powers as a Solomonar wizard or what the deal is with the Solomonar book....it feels like missing fragments from a larger story. and it makes me yearn for the film that could've been)

[letteredlettered]

Hello!! Firstly, I'd just like to say I've recently discovered your drarry work, and I have been reading your entire catalogue of it for the last week. Pulled all nighters can't stop reading it, reading it. I devoured The Boy Who Lived Twice in one sitting and I couldn't believe how well crafted it was. Blew my mind.

Now, all of this is to say, your prose has this elegant straightforwardness that is so succinct, so clear and so evocative. Your dialogue is absolute *perfection*. What are your influences? Books or authors you feel made an impression on you? I'd love to know what you read, because god I love what you write.

Thank you! I'm so glad you like my fics.

Jane Austen is a huge influence. Whenever my prose feels indistinct and overburdened, I return to her. She says things extremely sharply and cleanly.

Sarah Rees Brennan was a huge influence on me in terms of POV. I tend to write a very tight third person, so tight that the reader can generally see things the viewpoint character cannot. Check out the first book of The Demon's Lexicon series for one of the best examples of this I've read.

I spent a lot of time with Robin McKinley as a kid. I don't think that our styles match very well; she can do an ethereal, fairytale tone that I've kind of given up on. But what I loved best about her was that she could do that tone but then write something incredibly down to earth. I would check out Beauty or Deerskin for my favorite examples of this.

I actually also came into the style I write now writing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) fandom. While most of the stories I wrote in that fandom didn't have very sharp dialogue, I remember writing a story (a WIP still languishing on livejournal, sadly) where I realized I had "found" my voice and style. It was extremely dialogue-heavy. BtVS was famous at the time for its extremely fast-paced, idiosyncratic, snappy dialogue. The dialogue is now considered dated, and the creator is a douche, but imo it's still great writing, especially the early shows. I still go back to it sometimes to figure out a conversation with multiple people, or to work on my humor.

As for authors that have made an impression on me, I'd check out George Eliot. My favorite book is Daniel Deronda. It has wonderful dialogue, especially for an older book. Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Hugo all made pretty big impressions on me as well; I think these big, hefty books with really big ideas really influenced my language, even though I would by no means call my style 19th c.

I'd also check out Rainbow Rowell. I wouldn't say she influenced the style I write with now, because I had it before I read anything by her, but she's one of the few contemporary authors I read and think, "Yeah, I'd write it like that." I think anything by her is a great read that can give you a lot to think about in terms of style.

In my mind, Sally Rooney is a little like Rowell in terms of a cleans style that packs a sharp analysis. I'd call Rowell more comfortable, funny, and genuine, while Rooney is a bit aloof and literary. I actually don't like the stories in her books very much, but I found Conversations with Friends particularly refreshing in terms of writing style.

C.S. Pacat's Captive Prince series also left an impression on me. It has a clean, simple style, with a narrator who doesn't see everything the reader does. And I also did learn a lot from the use of the word "said," in those books--it was something I already knew! and yet.

I think some fanfic that made a big impression on me is The Paradox Series, by wordstrings (Sherlock/John, Sherlock BBC), Spice, by eimeo (Kirk/Spock, Star Trek TOS), Children, Wake Up by hollycomb (Kylo Ren/Hux, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Tarnished Gold, by prim_the_amazing (Shen Yuan/Luo Binghe, Scum Villain's Self-Saving System). The styles in these fics vary, but each bowled me over at different points with how beautifully something was articulated or how spectacularly a scene was crafted. I think about Spice all the time in particular.

I'd also say that if you're thinking about dialogue in particular, I also love both Oscar Wilde's and Tom Stoppard's plays.

If you are a writer, I did write a series on writing dialogue. Check out the tag "lettered writes dialogue". The first post is here.

[exitvelocities]

2023-2024 cdramas year in review

i'm borrowing this idea from thai bl tumblr, but with less fun categories because i'm tired. i'm including shows from this year and last year since i mainly watched a mixture of the two in 2024.

tagging whoever wants to do it!

overall favorite show (2024): fangs of fortune it's gorgeous, i love the characters, and it's got one of the most shippable poly casts i've seen in basically ever.

overall favorite show (2023): mysterious lotus casebook i actually did watch this one last year and i liked it, but it wasn't until i rewatched it again in 2024 that i lost my mind over it.

favorite character: di feisheng from mysterious lotus casebook my love my darling my heart. i adore him with every fiber of my being. i honestly never really noticed xiao shunyao too much before this but he's sure got my attention now.

favorite character runner up: pei sijing from fangs of fortune sorry, you can't give me a badass kuudere archer and expect me to NOT be absolutely nuts about her. cheng xiao has also improved SO much from her early days acting and i think it's super neat that they incorporated her dancing background into her fight scenes.

favorite ship: dihua from mysterious lotus casebook see above about losing my mind. it's got everything i love in a ship: history, tension, longing, being totally obsessed with one another. i've written so much this year and most of it is for them.

favorite ship runner up: jingxiao from fangs of fortune GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS i love them and they love each other. i love how flirty wx is with psj and how sincere and open psj is with wx.

favorite canon ship: song mo/dou zhao in blossom this is still airing so i hope they don't fuck it up, but it's such a refreshing dynamic. they're really partners, and he's so gone for her.

favorite canon ship runner up: gu jiusi/li yuru in destined i'm not really a fan of straight romance dramas but the strongest arc of this show is undoubtedly the first one, where they unwillingly get married and slowly fall in love. bjt is particularly charming in this role and song yi is lovely per usual.

favorite fl: dou zhao in blossom i love that she's careful and meticulous but not omnipotent. she's working at changing what she can but she's not a miracle worker. she feels warm and human and fallible in the best way. also mzy is gorgeous and i love her, fuck the haters.

favorite fl runner up: xue fangfei in the double she's batshit overpowered and it's still contrived in some instances but wu jinyan sells it enough that i just eat it up hahah.

favorite ml: li lianhua in mysterious lotus casebook his burnt out gifted kid ass is captivating. he has so many complex layers; it's a role that really gives cheng yi a chance to stretch his muscles and i think he did a great job.

favorite ml runner up: pu yiyong in oh no! here comes trouble he's a dumbass delinquent with a hereditary power to see spirits and release them, what's not to love.

favorite female supporting role: yang ying in a journey to love one of the best character arcs i've seen in a long, long time. i love her journey and where she ends up and i hope she gets everything she ever wants. iconic role for helan dou imo.

favorite female supporting role runner up: feng baobao in am nobody she doesn't understand human interaction and she loves knives and is good at them. she was made for me.

favorite male supporting role: yu shishan in journey to love breakout role for fang yilun, suave playboy with a heart of gold, faithful brother in arms. i adore him.

favorite male supporting role runner up: wang ye in i am nobody lazy, lowkey, and the best in the world. a good look for hmh also.

favorite antagonist: shen yurong from the double what a thoroughly unhinged man. i particularly loved the middle section of the show and the back and forth between him and xff. i wanted him to take a different path, but he couldn't.

favorite antagonist runner up: li lun from fangs of fortune oh my beautiful, bitter, lovelorn tree demon. he's like catnip for me.

favorite antagonist honorable mention: gong shangjue from my journey to you so intense, so brooding, so murderous.

bonus 2023 thai show section

favorite overall show: moonlight chicken i just really loved this show. i like both gemfourth and earthmix and while i did not enjoy the bit of firstkhao pandering at the end, i thought it was a generally thoughtful exploration of human foibles.

favorite cast: my school president they're adorable and i love them. this is overall such a fun, feel good show with great music. tinngun are wonderful and so are the secondary couples. special shoutout to babygirl por's outfits.

most ridiculous sex scene: bed friend you know the one.

biggest disappointment: only friends i still haven't finished it. i'm just not invested in anything or anyone. i think part of it is that i don't really love the cast, out side of neo and mark. i do like first and khao but not really together, sadly.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

This is gonna sound like a morality cop sentiment without the context that I am a person who is deeply enthusiastic about the aestheticized, eroticized violence of NBC Hannibal. But with that context in mind… I often find myself deeply put off by how violence is handled in fanfic, particularly post-canon fanfic.

Because Hannibal is a very dark show. It is thematically centered on the darkness that resides in all human beings, as embodied by the irresistible black hole that is Hannibal Lecter - a theme that most obviously manifests in Will Graham’s corruption arc, but also in subtler, more mundane ways with characters like Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford, who keep repeating their mistakes despite their self-awareness. And it’s a very nihilistic show, concerned not with ethics but aesthetics, with the pursuit of beauty in the absence of moral scruples.

And yet, violence and death always feel significant on this show. Despite (or perhaps because of) the frequent surrealism and black comedy in their presentation, they feel as if they have gravitas. And that’s precisely because of the show’s aestheticism. The corpses we see are so exquisitely mounted, and presented with such deliberation and intention, both in-universe and in the show’s cinematography. And thus these deaths feel as though they have weight, as though they mean something - even if the only meaning we derive from them is that they look beautiful, if ghastly, or that they convey cinematic symbolism.

But there is so much Hannibal fanfic where the violence feels so… disturbingly banal to me. Where the deaths don’t have any narrative weight and are completely trivial to our main characters. And this is imo completely out of keeping with even Hannibal Lecter’s own philosophy on the show, when he says that life is precious - not because he places particular value on life’s preservation for its own sake, but because he fully understands the gravity of what he is doing. His arrogance and sense of superiority is contingent on the understanding that the taking of a life is a serious thing, and a transcendent thing. Not flesh and blood, but light and air and colour. And I don’t see much light and air and colour in the kinds of fics that I’m talking about.

This is all very much entwined with the fact that a lot of these representations of violence seem to be bound up in the understanding that the show, and Will’s arc, is subtextually queer. And it absolutely is. But I often get the sense that these representations of violence, and the relationship between Will and Hannibal, are trying to overlay them with a very 2020s Positive Queer Representation approach, wherein Will and Hannibal’s love is misunderstood by the world, and thus their violence, as the symbol of their transgression, has to be portrayed and received by the audience an unalloyed good.

And this feels hard to explain, because of course this is a show that is very much about the pleasures of transgression. And it invites the viewer to share in that pleasure, in all the aforementioned ways. It’s drawing from a very 19th century Wildean mode in that regard - a sensibility that irreverently collapses all transgressions into one, and deliberately refuses to differentiate between the morally repugnant and the merely socially unacceptable. And that is very powerful as an engine for queer subtext, as it takes the very real feeling of being corrupt and tainted and wrong and leans into the seductive glamor of that corruption, rather than attempting to counteract that narrative (in ways that can feel, when in the throes of internalized homophobia, shallow and artificial).

But, within Hannibal, that thrill of transgression is inextricably bound up in horror. The pull of violence - and the bond it engenders between Will and Hannibal - is irresistible, but it is also a source of deep seated pain and terror. And those things are fundamentally not separable. There’s a sublimity to violence, and to desire, on this show - pleasure and pain, wonder and horror, are intertwined.

And a lot of the portrayals of violence-as-transgression as symbolic of queerness in fanfic just don’t grasp this. There’s an attempt to paper over the horror and the sublimity of the violence, and how it serves the queer symbolism. It always strikes me as though writers grasp that symbolism, but are trying to fit it into the mold of representation-as-a-means-of-social-advancement. It never lands for me and it leads to the aforementioned callous disregard for life that I just find distasteful. Which is not to say that I think portraying violence and murder in a manner that strikes a similar note to the show is an easy needle to thread - certainly not. (Not the least because it’s hard to translate the show’s visual language to writing.) But it is something I notice and that breaks immersion for me very quickly.

[meo-eiru]

MERU😭😭😭 i finally had a free moment to relax and the first thing i wanted to do was play hold your tongues and i've spent the last few hours pouring over how absolutely beautiful of a piece it is in storytelling and visuals. i genuinely have so much to gush over and idk where i should be doing it so into your inbox it goes. i apologise in advance, you also don't have to respond to this bc 1) i am aware it's gonna get vv long and 2) spoilers will definitely be mentioned

i hope sel knows what an absolute gem of a writer she is for executing all of this bc i am fucking gobsmacked by how well certain ideas and concepts were interwoven throughout the entire piece. maybe a lot of the things following are just my interpretations, but that's another thing i really really love — there's enough ambiguity in the prose to be able to infer it in so many different ways

first to the namesake of the game, ‘hold your tongues’ and the many connotations of tongues that are explored throughout; as symbols of liberation and entrapment that intermingle so so well. i feel like the game really delves into the struggles that women face in society, in relationships, just in general and i like how since it's done so through maelyn's own perspective, we're privy to a more complex and raw display of how deeply emotionally scarring it can be.

eric is a little bitch imo (i won't retract that statement ever) but the ever judgmental, taunting and superior tone he has as the ‘voice’ in maelyn's head speaks volumes of the character he possessed and the lasting impact it had on her. giving her dress to another man makes her ‘unfaithful’, the fact that it's emphasised that these are only ‘remains’ of a dress too — bc eric left her with shreds, physically, mentally. 

if we take the dress to act as a metaphor for maelyn herself, he left her in shreds.

in response to this, maelyn bites her tongue, so hard that it bleeds. it's restraint, quite literally biting back your anger and the feeling of being wronged. grounding yourself again to the harsh reality of it all, and it brings her back to the present moment when starling points it out.

we see a similar occurrence later on when maelyn relays her tongue ‘longing for a taste, was to be kept down.' so again, she stops herself (and i think the wording here is particularly interesting, that it was to be kept, so intrinsically this too may also link to how women are commonly taught to be submissive and forced to fit to certain standards). 

in both contexts, the act of biting the tongue can be taken as a suppression of some sort of desire — the first is the desire to be mad, and the second is the desire of lust. both which women have been criticised for through the ages.

i also like to think that the tongue is a representation of freedom. starling is very much making wings to fly out of them, and taking them away from ppl has ‘forever deprived of their ability to lie’ (in which case lying = freedom, i won't expand on this too much bc it'll be another whole essay😭) so going back to maelyn, her biting hers can also be seen as her freedom being hurt, prevented.

another thing is, the line just before ‘he never ran out of tongues’, we can take this as starling never having his freedom threatened. and it poses further questions. is this because of his strength? is it because he has the ocean ‘wholly’? is it because he's a ‘man’?

on my first run through, one of the most prominent questions i came away w/ was what was it that attracted maelyn to starling? to the concept of these monsters of the sea that had surpassed human constraints that had her waiting out all those hours to catch a glimpse of one to begin with. what was it that kept her coming back? time and time again, day after day when she could've not gone back to that shore after leaving.

the text narrates a couple of things that i think contributed, there's a sense of warring humanity and animosity in the repetitive motifs of dirt and uncleanliness, in her noting that starling looked ‘half a man’ and that one half could've ‘consumed’ the other. maelyn has an envy that's touched upon frequently. does maelyn want to be closer to a monster so that no one can hurt her? or does she feel like a monster is all she can be now?

then there's a dynamic with power that was honestly done so well. again, my praise to sel for how well thought out it all was. that part where she put her hand into his guts and he made sounds he was ‘unable to control’, another when she tells him ‘cut’ and he does so without question — she recognises she holds the reins in that moment, acknowledges, ‘in control, I breathed.’ 

starling listens to her for the most part, it's a reoccuring theme. even when making his wings, he's following her instructions although it's made clear that he learns quick and is capable. perhaps this gives her comfortability.

but we see this turn on its head when things start to go left, starling begins to do as he pleases and maelyn is taken back into her trauma, back to feeling ‘disgusting’ and ‘unclean’, she even apologises and promises to do better.

leashes are mentioned a few times, maelyn first describes them as a sort of ‘necklace’ — perhaps this is tribute to the way a woman's submission is often beautified and normalised. the ‘leash’ starling puts on her in one of the ends is made of pearls, he keeps it in his mouth before this. could this be a reference to eric's sweet words that bound maelyn before he revealed himself? starling ties it somewhat loosely ‘so she could breathe’ yet that doesn't take away the fact that it's still there. it has a sort of your cage is not small, but that doesn't mean you're not locked in it kinda feel.

there's so much more i could say but i think ive alr said too much😭 i didnt even get to touch on the cuddle ending which was my favourite, or the symbolism of losing fingers, the significance of the numbers two, three and four to the story. I DIDN'T EVEN TALK MUCH ABT THE ART😭😭 MERU SORRY I GOT DISTRACTED BUT THE ART WAS PHENOMENAL❗️❗️❗️❗️

maelyn is super pretty and i love how her and starling contrast each other in design so nicely. starling's expressions were stellar ++ the bgs and cgs were beautiful (you're right, if you didn't clarify it i would think you were behind the chest one haha). also the body horror aspect was really brought to life with the visuals and ik it definitely mustn't have been easy drawing all those organs, thank you for your service meruuuu

i'll shut up here before i write another 3k, but both you and sel did such a great job w/ this. the two of you deserve a nice break to rest so pls make sure to take things easy and take care of yourselves!! drink water and sleep when you can, and know that you've made a masterpiece♥️

OH MY GOD THIS ASK IS MAKING ME GO FERAL

It's so well written??? You did such a good job picking up the details hidden behind their lines??? I fish you continued writing because I for sure did not want to finish it and please do send the other thoughts you had if you can, I love this so much

I'm sure @celerifleuri will too so I'll tag her

You already mentioned the spoilers at the start but I'll also note it down here for people who haven't played the game yet. I'm sure sel will do a much better job answering your story analyses but I'll also say you're completely right with most things you've said.

The story takes place in 1800s with dated gender roles we unfortunately can still relate to. Maelyn is a curious woman who wants to study and experiment, but is being held back by society and even people who she thought she could trust, but again Sel will do a better job explaining those.

I'll talk about the art a bit. One thing I really enjoyed that was kinda unintentional on my part was the use of night and day.

The story starts at night time, the first ever cg we get of Maelyn is her jumping down the cliff, with the moon's reflection on her left and the waves giving an illusion of wings as she looks up, in that very moment she is free.

On the other hand the first ever cg of Starling is day time. The sun is shining brightly from his left, almost blindingly, as he looks down. His hair covering the screen like spider webs.

To contrast these, it's night time in the wood ending. Just like the first cg of Maelyn, we can see the soft moonight shining upon them but not quite reaching Starling's face. Maelyn is alive.

Meanwhile in the bone ending, even though they are underwater we can tell it's day time, just like the first Starling cg. We get to see a glimpse of them through the seaweeds covering our view, the sunlight showering them gently. Starling is alive.

For the character designs too, a bit of a reverse but I'd say Maelyn resembles the sun, meanwhile Starling is like the moon.

They both share green eyes, although quite different shades. Maelyn has bright red hair that contrasts Starling's red tongue tail.

I also like that Maelyn's hair, albeit a bit loosely, is braided and kept tidy. Meanwhile Starling's hair is usually all over the place and quite messy.

[wufflesvetinari]

ok fine, wyllstarion rec list

the demons bade me write this. i have a lot of Thoughts and Feelings and a fabulous bookmarks list. come with me....and you'll be.......in a world of pure wyllstarion nation

note that this is like. an intermediate/advanced, 201-level list. i am trusting you, and assume you've already read asidian's body of work. you've read nothing is safe. you're reading Nothing Like the Sun &etc. Really anything that appears on the first two pages when sorting by bookmarks/kudos is disqualified due to pre-recognized excellence. (you could, however, go read them again)

are you back? good. now read:

"We Happy Few" - @geometea. listen to me. listen. i am looking deeply into your eyes. read this fucking fic. it's hard to shill without spoiling anything, BUT: wyll is a still-pacted grand duke. he used to have a bunch of unresolved romantic tension with astarion and now hasn't spoken to him for 15 years. now take that premise and add body horror, beautiful ominous surreal images, and SURPRISE BIG EMOTIONS. just trust me on this one, guys

"Crossed Blades" - @rebelontherocks. this is a...i think i have to call this a cozy sex romp. wyll and astarion are married, wyll is a busy duke, astarion needs more enrichment, astarion invents a very silly sex game by roleplaying teenage-wyll's smut books. wyll is So Deeply Into It. i love this fic for its characterization, its banter, and its commitment to paralleling character psychology to what sounds like an absolutely wild in-universe smut series (that is sketched with an impressive amount of detail and care tbh??).

"Comfort" - @acephalouscreature. short and sweet. wyll is injured and everyone expects astarion to take care of him. luckily, astarion has a dastardly plan to fake feelings for wyll by thinking about his feelings for wyll. you sure fooled them, astarion!! also featuring: astarion trying to figure out how to comfort someone by thinking about horses

"False Compare" - @jellyfishline. i'd recommend checking out their work generally, but i fell in love with this one first. wyll writes a sonnet! astarion is mean about it until he isn't! deeply in-character with an emphasis on how each of them communicates affection. gorgeous prose

"how to escape the torment nexus" - @ushauz. this series is incredibly unique, set in a fucked-up bad end where wyll is a lemure, astarion is still on the run from cazador, and almost everyone else is dead. where this really shines imo is wyll's POV: he's been through literal hell, doesn't remember his life, and is wading through his unconscious attachment to astarion like a foreign language. (side note also read Heart of Stone for a great lae'zel character piece)

"An Acorn in the Moonlight" - @anonyhex. this is one of the first wyllstarion fics i ever read and it has a special place in my heart!! it's particularly cathartic to read for Wyll reasons, including him actually getting to Have Emotions about what Ulder put him through. and they are so sweet with each other!!

"temporal displacement" - @purplecatghostposts. ok this came out like. yesterday but listen, i LOVE outsider pov of an astarion who's learned to show affection somewhat, seen from the eyes of someone who doesn't know his history and has no reason to suspect All Of That. and when that "outsider" is a dying 20-year-old wyll who just saw astarion step out of a time portal. well.

"nothing to make a song about" - @grey-wardens. for when you want something meaty and casefic-adjacent, set in a post-canon where wyll is the blade and not the duke (for once). contains bonding on the road, getting romantically snowed in together, and Symbolic Fetch-Quests.

i am also watching closely: "One of Those Prince-Types" by @lesbianralzarek and "sigh no more" by @tomorrowsrain. both are one chapter in and promise to be meaty, with execution that already feels very very promising

SPECIAL MENTION TO "Like Death (or Birth)" by The_Dancing_Walrus, which has some fraught implied background wyllstarion and is just generally completely baller. astarion kind-of sort-of accidentally adopts yenna, who got fucked up by her time as a potential sacrifice to bhaal. it works! i promise it works

EDIT 1/12/25: now with part 2!

[gogandmagog]

Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

Anne of the Island, Chapter Six! 

Getting so very close to being finally caught up. 🫡 I’m still in the book clubs dust, but if I squint, I think I can almost see you guys! Apologies to anyone that might see this, that might’ve already previously (and punctually!) shared a sentiment that I spent any amount of time reinforcing in my own posts. I haven’t skimmed the book club’s tag so far, just because I have this brain impediment where if I see someone else has already mentioned something I think, “...oh excellent! Now I needn’t bother!”, only, that everyone is so thorough that if I did go ahead and look at them, and saw everyone’s thoughts, I’m sure I’d find I had nothing left to speak on. A serial liking of all book club posts, coming soon to a notif near you, honestly.  

Some weensy Phil bullets: mostly that well, I persist in representing Team Alec (only until a certain long-legged Minister appears, of course), because here is a fellow who would at least find the mix-up of Phil’s letter postscripts “funny.” This puts him eons and miles and worlds ahead of Alonzo imo... a sense of humour is so necessary!  

Speaking of Redmond football, an insignificant matter that is once again very much nonsense and not particularly worthy of spending any large amount of much time reflecting on, yet remains a great area of interest for me personally... guys, what do we reckon the Redmond Football mascot was? Team name? I know there’s future canon abbreviation of Redmond students as “Reds,” but a colour is hardly a sufficient team name, nor do I really think it’s meant to be taken as such, and listen, no one even think of mentioning the stinking Cleaveland Browns football team to me, lmao.  

“That Gilbert of yours.” + “outraged Anne” AIR KISS to these lines specifically.  

“But Sloane was blissfully ignorant; he thought he was quite a fine fellow to be walking with two such coeds, especially Philippa Gordon, the class beauty and belle. It must surely impress Anne. She would see that some people appreciated him at his real value.” Oh, Charlie. I constantly waffle between feeling pity for Charlie, the butt of many-a-joke, and then also feeling that wellllllll his ego is a little bit exaggerated perhaps - although I suppose we get a clearer sense of that later on. Since all of Avonlea knows that Gilbert’s dead-gone on Anne, to the point of pubic heckling in a Charlottetown newspaper, we must recognise that in Charlie’s mind, he’s in active competition with Gilbert, who has certainly loved Anne the longer. Not an ounce of discernable bro-code anywhere.   

Gilbert quoting some Bret Harte verses to Anne. This boy might not have a propensity for writing original poetry, but his memorisation and ability to drop a line or two so easily? He’s got a romantic soul, for sure. In a lot of ways, between him and Anne, it’s actually Gilbert that’s the romantic one (also see: keeping the rose that fell from her hair, back at the White Sands recital), and Anne the steady practical.  

“Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.” This is heavy. But more than anything, something I very much enjoy about Maud’s work is her ability to maintain core characterisation. I see this line, and I also think of how much it (later) casts light onto Gilbert’s struggle to really relate to some of Walter’s Anneishness. There’s a wonderful yin and yang balance between the slinky black cats and golden retrievers of the world, and often enough they are deeply attracted to each other, but there are some differences that can never been fully reconciled.  

The matter of Spofford Avenue! Again the scholars have already done a ton of the legwork, and lots of preliminary digging into Maud’s journals, picking out real-life links between between her time in Halifax and how it corresponds to Anne’s… and they’ve decided, very logically, that Spofford Avenue was based on Young Avenue.

At the time, Halifax was one of the richest cities in Canada and building on Young Avenue, definitely reserved for prominent families and the wealthiest, apparently came with enough beautification restrictions to satisfy even the choosiest A.V.I.S. member, only of a few of which I can easily remember… that power poles were banned on the basis of being “unsightly,” for starters. I know there’s a whole essay dedicated to the ‘real’ Kingsport somewhere, and if I can find it instead of just my jumbled notes & misc. folder on it, I’ll be sure to share it in case anyone’s interested. 🧐 I also recall that a very real tobacco king called Alexander Hobrecker (‘Hobrecker House’) did indeed make residence on Young Avenue, though whether or not he really had an affinity for well-made country quilts, is anyone’s guess.

[atoriv-art]

What are your thoughts on Sasuke x Gaara

beautiful showstopping saved my life we love you sasugaa <333

ok to actually answer: i think they have a very compelling dynamic! i really really like their chunin exams era with gaara being weirdly obsessed with sasuke because they're both "damaged" to put it in some way!

i wish we got to see sasuke's opinion about it a little more, especially since it comes at a time where he's starting to come around to the idea of using his power to protect and not just kill itachi, but this "i relate to your pain and i need to make sure my pain (and to gaara, therefore my power) is still bigger and more powerful" dynamic is soooo fun to me as an introduction point between them! i find it a lot more compelling than what it got interrupted by 😅

i understand the value of having gaara see someone who is Literally just like him (ie also a jinchuriki), but imo having him deal with someone who he perceives as Emotionally just like him (ie traumatized, angry and lonely) was already excellent...

also!!!!!!!!!! i'm not a fan of how sasuke is characterized in the five kage summit in general (or rather how he's demonized by the framing of it all. i love a good public meltdown. his evil laugh lives in my brain) BUT i looooooooove the scene with gaara confronting him i was NOT expecting it when i was watching it the first time and it was like an angel smiled down upon me.

and and and (guy who gets to bring up the naruto games again) they do a fun reversal of their original dynamic there it in the ninja storm games, with sasuke being the one to flaunt his pain and power against gaara

LIKE SORRY I JUST THINK IT'S FUNNN!!!! they have a lot in common and deal with it similarly but when gaara's at his lowest sasuke's starting to get better, and that gets flipped later on: when gaara's figured himself out it's sasuke who's completely spiraling... hehehehe!

ok ill put the rest in a read-more. jesus

i get why the pairing isn't very popular (sasuke has like, two of the biggest pairings soaking up all of the fandom attention span alkdsmak) but i cannot standddd the weird consensus that they don't like each other 😭 gaara showed in that scene that he does still hold some amount of respect and empathy for sasuke, enough to offer him a helping hand when he was at his lowest, and sasuke himself was engaging in the conversation much as he disagreed with gaara... it's gaara who starts the fighting back up, not sasuke!

imo gaara's words to naruto later on that get twisted into a "girl dump him" speech (😒.) are obviously meant to serve as a warning to manage expectations, because he Knows his friend is still not going to give up on sasuke and might not even particularly want him to, but he's speaking from the kage angle as opposed to what he personally would want

gaara CRIED for sasuke and stopped the fighting specifically to talk to him for fuck's sake he doesn't HATE him, his siblings have to convince him to give up on trying to talk to him and there's a distinction made of what should be done as a kage. and while i have a thousand things to say about how i don't love how the manga handles its kage characters wrt framing them as Generally Good, i do think it's notable that it's this that makes him give it up

"personal feelings" meaning, his siblings can recognize that gaara doesn't fucking want to fight him and would really prefer to talk this out. I think about this a lot sorry KSMDKSMDK so much of the consensus is that gaara, specifically, can't stand sasuke and for WHAT.

and as a sidebar i think their insistence on calling e/o by their full names/titles ("Uchiha Sasuke" / "Gaara Of The Sand") is so fucking funny.

i know what you are. also:

sasuke engaging in battle banter. OPEN YOUR EYES

ANYWAY!

i actually think that of my "quirky" pairings (the sasugaaneji triad that is.) it's the one with the most canon basis and it's not even close. however it's also the one that i notice people engaging the least with ASKJDNSAKD which is obviously fine it's just a little funny to me

[runningfrom2am]

requiem // part one

summary: according to coriolanus snow, his best friend had the most beautiful voice in all of panem. she had been training her whole life constantly to get where she was; being up for a residency at the most elite opera house in all of panem. singing was her passion. her true love; and when that got stripped from her in a second, his world became a whole lot quieter. he loathed every minute of it.

pairing: coriolanus snow x fem!reader

wc: 2.5k

masterlists / nav / requests

tags/warnings: opera singer!mentor!reader (blink and you'll miss it), she's kind of a prodigy!! p cool imo, mute!reader, bestfriend!coryo, friends to lovers trope ooo, mentions of graphic violence early on (particularly the prologue) but after that it's pretty safe, depictions of ptsd/trauma, mental illness and minor suicidal ideation but at least she's not entirely alone, descriptions of minor medical treatments and use of medication.

a/n: hi again! obligatory note to say sorry i didn't update a couple days ago i meant to but i got hit by a car and then i was working lmao (i'm fine but the ao3 curse did in fact find me)

my asks are also open to talk about this series! (i do have emoji anons open now too!)

send me any and all of your thoughts! here!

series masterlist // playlist // pinterest board

"Mister Snow." Coriolanus's head jerks up at his name from where it was resting against his palm, nearly having fallen asleep by the side of your bed. You were out cold and had been for close to a week now, but part of him hoped he would be there when you eventually stirred.

"We have to ask you to leave now, but you can come back tomorrow after seven," The nurse tells him, a sympathetic smile on her face. This was the sixth night in a row they'd had this exact conversation.

"Of course, thank you," he grumbles as he stands up, rubbing his eyes.

"How is your mentorship going?" she asks, just for the sake of making conversation. "It is very exciting. Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks..." he hums, hand sliding over his jaw in slight discomfort. He had little to no interest in his tribute. It was clear Lucy Gray had no shot at winning, and he had an even smaller shot at the Plinth Prize thanks to her. Now, he could hardly even stomach looking at her. "The Songbird," as everyone called her. 

In reality, his best friend had been forgotten the moment Lucy Gray Baird set foot on that stage in District Twelve and began to sing, and he loathed her for it. The way that all eyes turned to you next to him during the reaping as soon as his tribute's lips parted and began to sing made his stomach turn even now.

Coriolanus's eyes parted from the screen to look over at you, a small teasing smile on his face as he reached out to nudge you with his elbow when instead he was met with an expression of horror on your face. He could see the way your neck tensed as you swallowed hard, and he looks around to see almost everyone else's eyes on you as well for just a moment at a time, stealing glances in your direction.

Your jaw tightens while you grind your teeth together. She was good. But you were better at masking your discomfort with the whole situation, looking down to smooth out your black skirt where it lay across your lap and ignoring all the eyes that had fallen on you.

"It's going well," he lies in response.

"I'm glad to hear that. She's got a real talent, that girl," She smiles, and Coriolanus knows she's not trying to take a jab at the girl lying unconscious a few feet away, but he couldn't see it any other way. "Well, best of luck to her. And you, of course."

"Thanks. Have a good night," Coriolanus replies almost under his breath, taking a final glance at you fast asleep in the cold-looking hospital bed, neck bandaged down to your bruised shoulders before he leaves for the night.

It's sunny out when Coriolanus makes his daily trek to the Capitol Zoo to feed his tribute, and his academy uniform feels heavier on his shoulders than what he's used to.

His tribute smiles as she gets up and brushes off the front of her rainbow dress, making her way over to the bars to greet him. "Good afternoon, Coriolanus. Doin' well today?" she asks as he gets closer, already digging into his bag for the food he brought her.

"Fine," he mumbles in response, holding the folded napkin out to her that contains a cookie he took from the academy lunchroom.

"Thank you," Lucy Gray says as she takes it, unfolding the small cloth from around it and taking a bite. Chewing on it, she looks up at him again, taking note of the bags forming under his blue eyes. "I'm sorry about your friend."

His eyes flick from the cookie she was eating back up to hers, a slight glare behind them as he swallows stiffly. "Yes, well, she's alive," he tells her, looking back down as she breaks the cookie in half and holds it out to him.

"No, thank you," he shakes his head, pushing her hand away with his own.

"You should eat. You look like you need the energy," she says sympathetically.

He sighs because she's probably right. He takes it from her hand carefully, already breaking off a piece. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Lucy Gray knew their little routine by now. It was obvious when he brought her food the first time that he was going hungry. She had seen the signs enough back home to recognize it even here, hidden within what was supposed to be the endless opulence of the Capitol.

"Would you like to talk about it?" she asks as he begins to chew the tiny piece of the cookie, mindful of chewing and swallowing it slowly. He looks up at her again, confusion in his eyes. "Your friend, I mean." she explains.

"No." he answers quickly, shaking his head.

His semi-hostile response only leads Lucy Gray to believe that this girl she had seen get attacked meant something to him. Though, she already knew that when they walked into the zoo arm-in-arm like birds of a feather minutes before the girl was attacked, and her mentor had to be dragged away from her by Peacekeepers when a medical team finally arrived.

"Will you tell me about her?"

"About Y/N?" he asks, eyes softening just a bit.

Lucy Gray nods in confirmation, a small smile on her lips as she urges him on.

"She, uh..." Suddenly he doesn't know where to start with you. Your parents' names are what would traditionally come first in the Capitol, but he knew that would mean nothing to the girl in front of him. That you were his best and only real friend? That you were a singer, too, just like her, but you would likely never sing another note again? "She's a singer in training for the Opera House on Presidential Way. She is... she was very good."

Lucy Gray's eyes light up as he speaks. "She was a singer?"

Coriolanus nods, putting his focus back into eating.

"She must have been amazing," Lucy Gray says, trying to make comforting conversation.

"She is," he corrects her quickly, disguising it as agreement, despite having been the one to refer to your singing abilities in the past tense.

"Of course." She agrees, a sympathetic smile on her face. "I didn't mean..."

"They are making some changes to the Games." He cuts her off, wanting to move on to avoid having to think about the current state of his best friend. It makes his heart sink and the accompanying dread causes that awful burning sensation behind his eyes that makes him want to cry. "So... you need to sing again. Get people to like you. Then I'll be able to send you things in the arena to keep you alive."

Lucy Gray seems hesitant, letting out a huff with the slight shake of her head, looking around before locking her eyes back on him. "I don't sing when I'm told. I sing when I have something to say."

Coriolanus is jarred by her statement, tilting his head a bit and clenching his jaw at the notion and her ferocity behind it. He can't help it when the sudden, stark difference between Lucy Gray and his best friend hits him like a thunderstorm coming in quick on a sunny day. 

She sang when she had something to say, you sang because you had to. This fact would keep him up at night for weeks.

The games had come and gone, and there had been no winner this year. Your tribute was shot dead the day she attacked you, and Dr. Gaul saw it as some kind of justice that after your assault, the bombing, and the deaths of your other classmates, the death of all those District kids would keep their home districts from rebelling. From seeing the Capitol as vulnerable, or something like that. You really couldn't care less. At least Felix and the twins were lucky enough to have succumbed to their injuries.

The hospital was cold and dark at almost all hours of the day. You couldn't do a thing besides sit there and wait. For what, you weren't even sure.

"She's not having a good day today," The nurse informs Coryo as he checks in to visit you. He comes by every day, sometimes multiple times a day to see you, and you have your good and bad days. He's well used to that by now.

"Has she eaten?" he asks, and the nurse shakes her head.

"Refused to touch anything we brought her," She sighs, but she's fighting back a smile, which makes him raise an eyebrow at her. Why would she be smiling at that?

"She will be able to go home tomorrow," She smiles, hearing the question he never verbalized. "I thought you might like to tell her."

"Oh... I see," Coryo hums, looking down the hall toward the staircase he would soon take to get to you.

"You don't seem pleased," She states quizzically, her grin fading.

"Why is she going home?" He asks. "She still can't even speak."

The nurse looks down, pursing her lips. "As the doctor mentioned, there's no guarantee that she will ever get her voice back. I'm sorry, truly, but there's nothing more we can do for her here. It's better that she's home with her family recovering somewhere more comfortable."

"Right," He swallows, nodding curtly at her. "Thank you," He replies simply, brushing past the nurse's station to go down to your room. 

He can always hear it before he sees it, the echo of opera music cycling through your favorite records time and time again, filling the quiet hall with something pleasant as soon as he opens the door from the stairwell.

"Y/N," You look up from where you're sitting in the corner, tilting your head at him. Coryo smiles as he walks in, and you wish you were in a better mood, to be a better host; as good of one as you could be when you were in the hospital and couldn't speak a single word to him. "How are you feeling?" He asks, already knowing the answer.

You shake your head, a pout forming on your lips. The flowers people had brought you in your first couple of weeks were wilting, and then they stopped bringing them. Your whole life you had been praised for your voice; since you were six years old, the Capitol had seemingly been buzzing with hope for your future. You would be the most beautiful, accomplished singer Panem had ever seen - no one doubted it, but within weeks you had been completely forgotten. Replaced by the image of the girl who had sung at the reaping and once in an interview. Your room was quite a sad reflection of this, and you spent every minute of every day forced to wallow in it.

"Bad day?" Coryo asks anyway, but you just shrug, looking out the window at your sad view of the city that had abandoned you.

"Well, I've got some good news," He says, which draws your attention. You tilt your head at him, gesturing in a circular motion with your hand for him to go on.

He laughs, putting his bag down on your empty and perfectly made bed. "One second, here. In case you have questions." He pulls the small chalkboard out from the drawer next to your bed, holding it out to you with a piece of white chalk. You scrunch up your nose and wave rapidly for him to put it back. He knew it would bug you, that's why he did it, recalling the day he brought it for you and you almost threw it at him.

"I HATE writing with chalk," You scribbled quickly on a napkin with a pen you stole from his pocket, throwing the napkin at him and crossing your arms.

"What? Why?" Coryo laughed, dropping the crumpled piece of soft paper on the table next to your bed.

You shook your head, pursed your lips, and looked up, trying to find a way to explain the awful sensation without saying it. He watched you patiently as you thought, until you pretended to hold a piece of the white substance in between your thumb and forefinger, dragging it down the air slowly and pretending to gag. You shook your head again in disgust, waving your hand at him.

"Oh, I didn't know you felt so passionately about this," He drags the chalk down over the board, and you cringe, covering your ears. Coryo couldn't help but think that was just about the cutest thing he had ever seen.

That had been one of your good days, even though at the time your scar was still so fresh it was bandaged, and you were littered with bruises down to your ribs. The room was littered with fallen flower petals by now, yes, but also with what must be hundreds of notes you had shown to Coryo to express yourself in the only way you still could.

That memory still makes you smile, even if you do absolutely hate chalkboards. You walk past him and grab your notebook off the same table, picking it and the pen up as dramatically as you possibly can before sitting down on the bed and looking up at him.

"What?" He asks, just to tease you, and you roll your eyes.

'Get on with it. Also, you're not funny, and I hate you,' You write, turning the page to face him so he could read it.

"Oh, do you?" He chuckles, sitting down next to you.

You smack his arm with the book, motioning again that he should just spit it out.

"Okay! Okay, fine," He sighs emphatically, placing his hands on his thighs and looking down at the floor, just for a few moments to drive you more up the wall before turning his gaze to you. "They told me that you're going home tomorrow."

You open your mouth to speak, suddenly forgetting that you can't. You quickly shut your jaw, furrowing your brow and shaking your head. 'Why?' You mouth to him, neglecting the pad of paper in your lap.

He reads your lips, frowning at your lack of excitement. He was hoping you would be looking forward to it, but he knew you wouldn't be. Not really. "They said there isn't anything more they can do for you here, that you need to heal at home."

You stand up abruptly, throwing the paper down on the ground and clutching the pen so tight that Coryo fears it might shatter.

What do they mean "nothing they can do"? They could fix you, they could operate again, they could pump you so full of drugs that you could finally forget the hell that you're living in, that's what they could do. You couldn't even say that - or scream out your frustrations.

You turn back to Coryo, and the hurt look on your face crushes him. You want to speak to him so badly. Your lips fall open, and you try anyway. 'They're going to leave me like this?' You ask, but not a sound comes out. Not even so much as a whisper. Your throat burns regardless.

"I'm sorry," he says honestly, standing up and reaching out for you. You shake your head, forcing yourself to look anywhere but at him. "Come here..." he says softly, already wrapping his arms around you as the tears brimming in your eyes begin to fall. You can't even hug him back, hands clutched to your chest as you shake under his hold.

"If I could take this from you, I would," He mumbles, shaking his head and resting his chin on your head as he rubs your back. "I'm sorry, Y/N/N."

What he wouldn't give to be able to hear your voice again.

no taglist this time around!! my fics usually get over a hundred requests to be added to the taglist so instead i made a library! follow me over on @runningfrom2am-library and turn on notifs to get updates when i post new parts!!

[petr1kov]

i was asking myself how many movies does disney even have left that can be turned into nostalgia bait live-action remakes, at this point. i think they have exhausted all of their biggest hits already. this trend as we know it now pretty much started with tim burton's alice in wonderland, then maleficent, cinderella, and the jungle book. they have also already done or are doing nearly all of their 90s renaissance era movies, arguably their most beloved, like the little mermaid, beauty and the beast, aladdin, the lion king, mulan, and the upcoming hercules movie. they have also made earlier classics like pinocchio, dumbo, lady and the tramp, peter pan, and the upcoming snow white, bambi, aristocats, and robin hood movies. they are even doing movies of this century now, with lilo & stitch and moana remakes being in the works.

they honestly don't even seem to care if the movie is a well-regarded classic or not, anymore. in one front, they are going from their a-list to their b-list and are now scraping the bottom of the c-list of their catalog to see if anything sticks, while on the other front they are trying to make us nostalgic for movies that are barely a decade old (and considering how scarce their recent offerings of new animated classics have been, this well will dry up even sooner). so considering all of this, here are the only movies they have left to work with:

the sword in the stone (kind of obscure but could pass as nostalgic)

complete cgi animal extravaganza: the rescuers & rescuers down under, the fox and the hound, the great mouse detective, oliver & company (considering how they're doing robin hood and the aristocats, very likely to happen)

the black cauldron (will they dare to touch this flop again?)

the hunchback of notre dame (bad idea)

pocahontas (TERRIBLE idea)

tarzan (no phil collins soundtrack)

the emperor's new groove (impossible)

atlantis & treasure planet (probably a last resort for them imo)

brother bear (no phil collins soundtrack)

home on the range (home on the range)

bolt (why)

the princess and the frog (old enough to be nostalgic)

tangled (of course)

frozen (can't believe they haven't done it yet)

then there's the maybe pile, which is:

101 dalmatians (they did the 90s glenn close movies already so it's hard to sell it again, AND they also recently made the cruella movie, but they might make a remake-ception if they feel it's worth it. who knows)

sleeping beauty (they did maleficent, but that wasn't a true adaptation, was it? they might pull this excuse to make another movie)

i don't believe they'll dare to make another chicken little. even as a joke.

zootopia (if things go well with the robin hood remake)

big hero 6 (unlikely)

encanto (if they're feeling particularly desperate)

[alicedrawslesmis]

I know I just said I didn't want to just be complaining about everything so I'll try to word this in a more constructive way asdfghjkl

It's hard to be an Eponine fan in a world where the musical -and On My Own specifically- is sooooo mainstream. Because imo as much as On My Own itself is kind of a half-decent, if simplified, encapsulation of Eponine's struggle with her love for Marius if you analise the lyrics in isolation, the musical as a whole, her role in the narrative as the unrequited love diva (I'm also simplifying here. I don't think this is super fair to the anglo musical, but compared to the book there's no question of how they reworked her into a glamorous 80s diva contralto because musical theatre has usually very strict gender roles), did her so dirty. So dirty. And imo often her character is reduced to her pining in fandom as a result. And I don't like that, personally.

I love that girl so much. I love that she is just young enough to still be a child but adult enough to be aware of her social role. She has one foot in the gamin life and one foot in the adult world. I love the tragedy that is the fact that she likes the beauty and pomp of high society girls and wish she could have silk shoes but knowing she can't.

And also being super resigned to her class despite it, she doesn't believe she ever will have any of that. She resents that too, somewhat. The tragedy of her knowing that she couldn't be with Marius because of his social class and her accepting that (angrily? sadly?). I love her self-banishment as his guard dog because of this. I love her drunk sailor voice. I love how manipulative she is and that she isn't Marius's friend at all. He's just her one neighbor who wasn't a total asshole one time. He was, later. But not at first. And she can't be in his head and know he thinks she's kinda despicable because crime because Marius is a judgemental little shithead.

And Eponine isn't an idealist, she's resigned to her position. I understand why she gets paired with grantaire in fics but her canon narrative parallel is Javert, they both believe they are excluded from society from their outcast position and so become the watchdogs for it. Eponine a kind of guardian (in her own words a devil, not an angel) and Javert the same. That's why he's the one person who sees her in the barricade, he's the same as her. Marius saw her but that's only cause he had a use for her in that moment, as soon as she didn't he forgot all about it.

I think also Gavroche, with his ability to be kind of a figure above the narrative, with his gamin skills of being almost omnipresent is something Eponine used to have, but with her age she's starting to lose that. She's starting to grown old enough that she's required to be IN the world and not supercede it. Gavroche is also almost there, if he had been allowed to grow up he would've lost that ability too. They both inhabit this sort of magical surreal world superimposed on our own.

A lot of Les Mis and Notre Dame de Paris can be kinda described as magical realism, I would go so far as calling them urban fantasy. And characters like Babet, Thenardier sometimes, Gavroche, Eponine (and Javert sometimes as well) are inhabiting this magically charged layer. This reality that's imposed Over the real world.

Talking about that One Series Of Wizard Books is a bit passé rn so uh. Doctor Who. Particularly the initial New Who seasons before they got that huge budget. That's a good parallel to what I'm getting at. The real world is still the same but there are certain characters that inhabit this mystical overlayer and are able to transverse from one to the other (Javert can't really because he is stuck forever outside and the second he understands that you CAN'T be an unbiased outsider who only enforces the norm without participating he freaks out and literally dies about it). Eponine is right in the eye of the storm tho. She manipulates reality to get her way, to die with Marius, because that's as close as she can get to being with him. And she manipulates reality to protect him too. Contradictions be damned. She has many contradictory feelings that make her complex and cool and an awesome character whom I love and wish would stop being reduced to the glamurous mysical theatre role with a single black stain on her face and a beautiful actor and a big unrequited love song about a random boy (whose personality was also changed for the musical and I argue is probably the character that was most fucked up by it in the public perception because he's such an weird little self-insert of an even weirder guy. But I get it, the musical is long enough as it is).

Anyway, I wish eponine could be more of a mongrel, a little gremlin. A little rat child that's just beginning to grow into an adult and is self aware of her role in the narrative society. She's a teenage girl which already sucks to go through when you're not constantly starving and cold and being forced by your father to work and do con jobs. Marius is the object she attaches herself to, but it could've been literally anything. Javert did that with the social order, he protects and guards it. She just chose Some Guy instead. Which, we all have that one friend who does that too. Like girl you're too good for him. Come on let's get you sone ice cream. And clean clothes and a roof. Literally anything. Bread.

I think if Eponine had a roof over her head and like, food on the regular she would forget Marius exists. Same as Cosette if she had moved to England. Like he'd be that one intense crush they had as teenagers. Can't say the same for him tho. He would hold onto that for the rest of time.

[adracat]

Law of Casuality Write-Up (Pt.1?)

Warning!!: the following contains self-indulgence to the likes you’ve never seen before

Law of Causality: The proposition that everything in the universe has a cause and is thus an effect of that cause

Happy Sulemio week! Since it’s Fantasy Day, I decided to finally get cracking on this freeform analysis of my G-Witch series— Law of Causality. I’ve mentioned before this may be my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I was in a manic ADHD-fixation trance while writing this series. If you want the literary version of a triple-layer myth cake, this may be for you. I was considering an essay-style dissection but that’s taking too long. So here are my loose insights into this series as a whole!

Art by my friend Tay, or @TaruhtQarineXiV on Twitter

As Above, So Below: Where it all began. I’ve mentioned in the A/Ns that this was spawned from my deep looks into what the show was taking inspiration from (imo). It’s my little love letter to Sulemio and gwitch, which quickly grew into something more.

Queen in White/King in Red—Beyond the alchemy, I wanted titles that sounded fairytale-esque while also hinting toward another mythos. Hastur or the King in Yellow (Signalis and True Detective enjoyers know that name) The initial King in Yellow appears in Haïta the Shepherd as the benevolent god of shepherds; a domain Hastur shares with Mercury. The short story is about the impermanence of happiness and how it can only be found once you stop seeking it. It’s a theme I ran with for the entirety of LoC, particularly Elnora. The later incarnations of Hastur are malicious eldritch figures. Suletta vs Prospera 😊

On Faerytales: LoC is obsessed with cycles and the rhyming of history. To me, fairytales embody that perfectly. The oral traditions of them are never the exact same, flavored with variations throughout the years. It’s how we got mythology to local folklore to Brothers Grimm to Disney renditions. That’s why I used Eros and Psyche and Sleeping Beauty for Suletta and Miorine (I’m convinced the show does this too but ymmv)

The latter is inspired by the former with Psyche placed under a sleeping torpor Eros breaks. In Sleeping Beauty, the offending curse is a spindle and she’s barricaded by a witch in the form of a dragon. The Hawthorn serves as Mio’s ‘spindle’ as she suffers depression and isolation in the wake of her mother’s vanishing. Prospera (coded as witch Satan) is the dragon. Notrette is the fairies bearing gifts. In a twist, Suletta wakes her with Love as Anteros in the place of Eros. Yes I layered this cake excessively. It’s probably still confusing; I’m sorry.

Tldr; I used Sleeping Beauty alongside Greek myth.

Chaos and Night: Paradise Lost twisted into a toxic witch romance. One of the most insane ideas I’ve had, but I adore it to bits. Both Prospera and Notrette are vested to the teeth with mythology and theology.

Notrette: Besides Thelema’s Nuit/Babalon and cuing her as ‘God’, as a being of creation, opposed to the Devil, I fit so much into her character. She’s Lilith, Pandora, Circe, Ceres, Virgin Mary, the Morrigan, Ariadne, a deconstruction of the Mother Goddess from neopaganism, and the capricious Queen of Elphame from folklore.

Another figure I styled her after is White Boann, the Dagda’s mistress and wife to Nechtan (cognate with Nuada or the silver-hand) which is where you get the hazel tree link. Boann names her son Aengus because the Dagda was her ‘one desire’.

Circling back to Paradise Lost, she also plays the willing Eve who falls to Satan’s temptation in place of Miorine. There’s likely things I’m forgetting; I was so normal plotting her character.

Elnora: What can I say about this glorious wreck that wasn’t in the text? Venus, The red dragon Satan, the Beast from revelation, pagan Horned God, Neptune to Ceres, Theseus and Bacchus to Ariadne, Prometheus to Pandora, every Phosphoros, etc I’d be here all day. She’s coded as Orion the hunter who’s undone by Gaia and also the Teumessian fox to Suletta’s Laelaps. I mentioned she’s the riders of the apocalypse at the end too. White Rider is Suletta but her mom fulfills the rest; ‘Riding’ Vim as War, Riding Belmeria as Famine while wielding the ‘scales’ (Notrette as Libra) Finally, she wears the visage of death to bring Pestilence to the kingdom. I squeezed in the other omens of revelation with symbolism such as the crown of wormwood (Revelation 8:11)

When it comes to her role as Prometheus, I coded both Delling and Mio as birds of Venus (swallow and dove respectfully.) It’s meant to symbolize the ‘eagle’ devouring her was primarily herself all along. She was the architect of her ruin, lampshaded by Notrette from the beginning.

Remember Haïta the Shepherd? In the story, there is a maiden whom embodies the ephemeral nature of happiness. Notrette is Elnora’s transformative destruction into cathartic acceptance/happiness. In Paradise Lost, Satan succeeds at banishing Eve and Adam from the garden but similarly fails when he’s turned into a snake. She’s lucky I was more metaphorical.

I liberally used Revelation 12, the woman and the dragon, as well. Look at me shipping crackships from the Bible. This is mostly self-explanatory, ofc Christ is genderbent and a role shared by Sulemio. Mio’s allergy to iron doubles as a nod to this, since she doesn’t take her father’s kingdom in this universe.

There is more, such as Dionysis/Bacchus being a many-faced god with younger and older versions paralleling the Horned God’s dual aspects and the Dagda’s relationship to Aengus which led to me pitting Suletta as a lighter mirror of Elnora. But I’ll leave it here for now.

Writing this all out has me questioning what I was on, and how I can reproduce it. If you got this far, thank you for humoring my unabahed love for this world. Happy Fantasy Day, Sulemios! ❤️

[hamethyst]

Thoughts about FFXVI now that I’ve finally played it (was patiently waiting for that price to drop and my salt to dilute):

Pros:

- Pretty game. Big, pretty fights with attacks and cinema that made you feel like a god amongst men. Which you kind of were, at least by the end.

- The voice acting was top notch. Not a weak one to be found, imo, from major characters to minor. They all did a pretty phenomenal job.

- Music was also pretty darn good. Not my favorite soundtrack by any stretch, but it had some bangers, and the music contributed well to the overall mood of the world.

- There actually were brown people. Were any of them main characters? No, but they did exist, and some of them were even semi-important in side quests, which was a better state of the world than I thought. So a kudos there, I guess.

- The story on its own was decently satisfying, but the world-building was really where the game shined (along with the big, bombastic fights). You can tell they put a lot of time and care into developing the lore of Valisthea, from the monsters to the items to the politics of the involved nations. They had a couple characters that basically acted as encyclopedias for lore and in-depth details about characters, concepts, and events, and I genuinely enjoyed making use of them.

- I liked the older ages of the characters, pretty much everybody was in their 30s and older. Much as I love my FF teens and early twenty-something’s, it was very refreshing dealing with grown folks in a story about grown folks.

- From his hair to his face to his voice to his cleavage to his unnecessarily tight leather trousers to the cutscene of his bare naked ass literally chained to a jail cell wall, Clive was the eye candy of this game. He provided more smut material than the actual sex workers that existed in this world. Also his character was nice. He was a good FF protagonist. Also ridiculously gorgeous. God bless.

Cons:

- While there were brown characters, again none of them were main characters. At least give us our token darkie, Squeenix.

- The locations, while pretty cuz pretty graphics, were lackluster. There was one (1) notable exception, and that was (ironically) the place with all the brown folks lol. It was basically a desert oasis-turned-town, and it was legitimately beautiful to behold. But for the vast majority of traversable terrain, even for dark fantasy medieval Europe, it’s like there wasn’t even an attempt to try and create environs that were imaginative or particularly interesting to run/ride through (and it got worse when, about 75% into the story, literally everything became shrouded under dreary cloud cover). Like they could’ve given us a glowing forest or treetop town or something.

- Related to that point, exploration of said environs was equally uninspired. Not just because the locations quickly lost their hold on me, but because there were absolutely no worthwhile rewards for going out of my way to wander any given map area. Practically every chest or shiny bauble was a random assortment of a laughably low amount of gil or the same monster materials I absolutely did not need to go looking for as they were so abundant just throughout the course of the main story and a few side quests. And no secrets; there were no mysteries, no serendipitous little discoveries that would have added to the richness of the world. Halfway through the game, I’d already given up exploring any environment in full, and simply traversed from point A to B for the next cutscene (the only exceptions being populated towns and villages cuz at least there was ambient NPC dialogue), and that was so disappointing. I normally love exploration, even in non-open world games, but XVI simply didn’t incentivize me to pursue it, neither by way of rewards nor simple appreciation of the world.

- Not a big fan of the summon designs. Well, some of them. Phoenix was good, Garuda and Titan and Odin were good, and Ifrit was fine but also coulda been more than a burnt big-horned dog thing, but I was not a fan at all of Shiva and Bahamut. I talked about Shiva when the very first big trailer for XVI came out, and I stand by my statement then that she looks like a woman doing a pretty but boring cosplay. And Bahamut was just a big gray lizard with weird proportions. Not a fan.

- The main big bad was underwhelming and utterly unnecessary. We didn’t need to fight god (again). I’m tired of fighting god, I don’t care how classic a trope it is. All the political machinations the devs had going on (and clearly put so much time and effort into) were more than enough for a compelling, refreshingly grounded story. We didn’t need some random god creature to come in and pose a bigger, higher-than-the-sky threat. Also they were annoying.

- By god, why wasn’t there a fleshed-out party system. Not even necessarily for gameplay reasons, I was (mostly) fine with the action-based gameplay, I don’t necessarily need my FF’s to be strictly traditional turned-based RPGs. What had me wishing most for more RPG-“ness” was the lack of banter, the lack of character/relationship-building conversations out in the field. The only time you got those was at the homebase or during plot-heavy segments. Side quests and world exploration were the worst; even when another person was in your “party,” it was rare for Clive or even the game itself to acknowledge them or their presence (with the exception of Cid. And Torgal. You know, the dog). I missed banter, I missed commentary. I’m not saying I needed a 12-person ensemble cast, but wandering the pretty but repetitive wilderness would have been nicer if Clive had had someone to chat with. It would’ve made the journey a little less lonely, a little less monotonous, and a little less, frankly, immersion-breaking. And it also would’ve helped to flesh out the other, non-Clive main characters, given them the flavor text they needed to really come to life as believably human characters I could care about, rather than just vehicles for lore and story progression. For everyone except Clive and a couple others, that was sorely missing.

- Partially continuing from above: Jill was the greatest victim of this. She was criminally underutilized. She and Clive were cute (30+-year-old traumatized virgin battle couple locked in a decades-long slow burn, sign me up), but they - and, more importantly, she - could’ve been so much better. And one of the reasons they weren’t and she wasn’t was because they chose not to flesh Jill out despite all the ways they could’ve. The nuggets of gold were there; in the story, in the lore, and they did little to nothing with them, and essentially consigned her to the role of Clive’s favorite cheerleader (who gets left behind right before the climax and replaced with a character with less than half the screen time, sorry Dion). It’s especially frustrating seeing as she was the only female member of the main hero cast. Can you tell I’m mad about it. It might honestly be my biggest criticism of the game. She’s not the only victim, as I stated, but her treatment is the most egregious given that she should be, for all intents and purposes, the third most important character in the game. (Also, on a shallower note, her design could’ve been better, more striking. She seemed to literally kinda fade into the background, especially in direct comparison to other characters. I understand the ice theme they were going for, but she really could’ve benefited from some coloration outside of “pale” and “gray.” Lowkey bothered me to the point that I started redesigning (and just full-on reimagining) her as I played lol).

- Also related to the above points: despite XVI being categorized as an action RPG, the RPG elements were extremely barebones, so much they might as well not have bothered including them. And it’s even more glaring an issue because, in my humble opinion, the parts by which the game suffered most (lack of worthwhile exploration, lack of a stimulating party system, lack of quest variety, lack of significant supporting character development) wouldn’t have been issues if those RPG elements had been given more attention and care.

Idk it’s…frustrating, like Squeenix was so dead-set on making XVI so far removed from the traditional FF formula, that they forgot (or ignored) the roots that made their previous games so iconic. I’m all for innovation and experimentation, but it’s gotta be guided, and it’s gotta make sense. And XVI just felt aimless in that respect, like it didn’t know entirely what it wanted to be or what it wanted to do. Couldn’t fully commit to the bit of being a gameplay-focused action extravaganza, but lacked the development and depth to be a truly satisfying, story- and character-focused RPG. And, to me, it showed.

Overall, I’d rate the whole experience a 7/10. Passable, entertaining enough, but sorely lacking in too many other areas, and all areas that I’ve always personally loved in a Final Fantasy game or general RPG. It’s like using a ton of admittedly very pretty glitter to cover up a concrete slab. Fun and exciting at a glance (and again, very pretty), but ultimately little more than camouflage for a solid but shamefully underutilized foundation.

[yonderghostshistories]

3, 7, 12 & 17 for the end of the year ask game? 😊

Thank you so much for the lovely ask @thesuetyouforgot !! I deffo appreciate it fr!! I’ve highlighted the questions btw as I have ADHD and therefore have a bad memory lol 😂

3. “A new hobby or interest you picked up?”

Idk if it is kinda a hobby or not, buuuutttt in a way…..

ig my new(ish) kinda hobby is collecting/buying DVDs, particularly DVDs of my special interest/featuring and/or involving my special interests!! (for example; most of the DVDs that I’ve had my parents buy for me are mostly Monty Python and/or HFC-oriented, either (a) they star and/or feature some of the actual Pythons (whether in a big role, in a small role/a cameo, etc), (b) they star and/or feature the actors who starred as the Pythons in the BBC 4 MP tv biopic “Holy Flying Circus” (2011) (again, whether in a big role, a small role/a cameo, etc), and/or (c) in a rarest of ALL rare moment(s) where the stars align, *possibly* both an actual Python(s) AND a HFC Python(s) are in this show/movie together (whether they share a scene together or separately, etc))

Idk why, whether subconsciously or not, but I have and have had a special and new appreciation for DVDs when collecting/buying them. Idk whether it’s maybe a childhood thing or something (I used to have a few DVDs as a kid), but just the thought of just physically OWNING a piece of media in your hands and having it on my shelves makes me very happy fr 🥰. Whilst I do equally love appreciate streaming and its convenience, I do also love DVDs and I personally think both can co-exist together for everyone’s enjoyment!

Whilst I do literally sweat at the fearful thought of possibly accidentally breaking my DVD disk or possibly my DVD disk just annoyingly pausing at a random point in the film/episode of a tv show, I think my utter love of DVDs kinda far outweighs the bad imo. Again, this is just me personally!

7. “An obsession that disappeared as suddenly as it came?”

Suffice to say……no, not really.

My obsessions have mostly been intact and are never going to leave me nor disappear from me methinks.

That’s actually one of my personal fears tbh. That my obsession(s) WILL leave me and disappear if I suddenly don’t feel as interested in it/them anymore, that I’ll become an empty husk with no personality whatsoever. I know that sounds kind of silly, but it’s one of my genuine fears if it were to happen to me in the future. I do wish to make peace with that fact sooner, otherwise I might possibly feel broken and emotionally shattered from it all if it DOES happen to me.

BUT, also weirdly simultaneously, I am aware of the inevitability of it all, and that I’ll try to get through this fear of mine.

12. “Do you end this year with the same celebrity crushes & comfort characters that you started it with?”

Again, technically yes!!

Albeit if I’m very obsessed with a new movie/tv show (particularly a celebrity crush(es) and/or comfort character(s)), then I will ADD said new celebrity crush(es) and/or comfort character(s) to my ever growing list of existing celebrity crush(es) and comfort character(s)!

Examples of a new celebrity crush and comfort character, among others ofc but these 2 particularly, that I’ve gained this past year are these:

Celebrity Crush : Tom Fisher (his real surname is Browne, but his stage/professional surname is Fisher). I’ve first gained a crush on him from when he was in “Holy Flying Circus” (2011), when he was ALSO playing my OTHER existing celebrity crush, Graham Chapman! Everything from his FINE ASF beauty, his mannerisms and wiseness and quotes and gayness of Graham was just *mwah* PERFECT-O 😘👌!! and his voice in general is just….VERY VERY VERY sexy indeed!

After watching HFC, I just went down a bit of a rabbit hole (and still am in a bit of a continuing rabbit hole lol) of seeing all the other films and TV shows that he’s been involved in! There’s 2 films of his where he plays the main character, those being “Treacle Jr” (2010) and “The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz” (2000), where’s he absolutely great fr acting wise!! I’m still on the pilgrimage to watch EVERY single movie and tv show that he’s ever starred in (whether in a main role or a supporting role) and/or directed cuz HES THAT AWESOME AND SEXY AHHH!!! (also I literally have a sideblog dedicated to this beautiful asf man fr, that’s how much I’m in love with Tom Fisher frfr)

Comfort Character : Roddy (played by Graham Chapman) from “Doctor in Trouble” (1970)

I honestly only watched this otherwise…..ehh ok film for and only for Graham, and this did NOT disappoint fr!! Roddy is a CAMPY AS GAY FUCK 🏳️‍🌈💅✨ICON✨💅🏳️‍🌈 FR!! His (Roddy’s) camera is so cute and I love how he’s unapologetically and authentically his queer asf self on this cruise ship 🛳️ 🚢 full of (presumably) mostly straight people lol! Honestly SLAY QUEEN 💅💅 Fave comfort character of 2024 imo goes to…..Roddy the Campy Gay Photographer 🏳️‍🌈📸!!

17. “Wild card - Something else that you really want to mention/talk about?

Actually there IS smth I really wanna talk about!

Ok so, I mentioned my fave actor (that being British actor Rufus Jones, who also played Terry Jones in HFC) on a post/tweet I made on Bluesky (which from what I heard is basically a less toxic version of Twitter), and to my utter surprise, HE RESPONDED BY RETWEETING IT EARLIER TODAY AHHH!!!!

It honestly surprised me when I saw the retweet, like I couldn’t in a MILLION YEARS thought he’d retweet it!! It honestly made me very happy and I think it’ll serve as a very happy moment in the last day of 2024!! That one of my other fave actors (Rufus Jones) who played my other fave Python (Terry Jones) from my fave biopic responded to me!! Honestly an absolutely amazing surprise frfr!!!

Amyway, thank you so much for the ask @thesuetyouforgot , and I hope you have/have had a very good and wonderful New Year’s Eve/Day!!

See you in a few hours in 2025!!