#tropes tropes everywhere

[short-king-enthusiast]

The most irritating thing, is that if you watch season one and then immediately watch season two, everything makes perfect sense. It's a great story. Characters that are vessels for very real emotional storylines and symbolism, but at their core, are silly pirates on a silly pirates show.

However if you watch season one, then spend a year obsessing over the characters, obsessing over characteristics, traits, relationships that are not actually canon but convincing yourself they are. Getting so wrapped up in fanon that your version of the characters and the actual written canon characters are two completely different things. Yeah of course you're gonna be pissed.

Most of the backlash from season two is because people have been reading fanfics for a year and had wildly unrealistic expectations. It's actually fucking fascinating and should be studied. It just keeps happening over and over again in every new fandom and nothing changes

[technoschnauzer]

I agree people seem to be getting too unrealistic with their ideas of “Curly could’ve done more” But I hate seeing “what was he supposed to do?” cause like- Stay with Anya(physically and metaphorically). Don’t run away from her and leave her alone to ‘fix’ things(she’s pregnant, she’s been raped there is no changing that) by talking with Jimmy.

Literally in my opinion all Curly really had to do to show he cared was stay there with her. Comfort her. Don’t say you can fix it, don’t say you can Fix Jimmy. Don’t say you can fix this situation and imply it can be made right, don’t imply you can make Jimmy better.

Of course there were other things he could do. He could apologize for not noticing sooner. He could give her something else to use as a weapon(hell a fucking PEN can be used as a weapon).

People saying there’s not much he could do are right, but Curly didn’t believe that. Even though he seemed to believe Anya he still tried to reconcile it with his view of Jimmy and believed he could do something.

If he’d stayed he could’ve calmed and comforted Anya, then talked with her. They could’ve made a plan together to try to avoid Jimmy finding out. Alllll he had to do was stay instead of running off to find his best friend.

[foreverunraveling]

Is it just me, or does Young Royals really love to scare us, lull us into a false sense of security, and then pull the rug out from underneath us (in a way that's much worse than the original threat)?

For example, you see August clocking Wille leaving the movie before Simon in episode 2.

You (if you weren't too distracted by the scene itself) might have worried that he might show up when they were having their first kiss there. But he didn't. The show consciously created that tension and then relieved it as a foreshadowing of the much worse version of that to come later.

That tension is recreated at the end of episode 4 when August is shown outside a window at Forest Ridge.

There's a brief moment of relief--he's at Alex's window, not Wille's. While you know deep down where this has to be going, you still have a kernel of hope. And then even when he does make it to Wille's room, you can't tell it's a boy (let alone Simon) for five full seconds. Hope tries to stay alive. We all know how it ends, though--that tension snaps right back into our faces when August spots Wille and Simon moments later.

This happens on a different scale with Wille and Simon's planned weekend together in episode 3. When Wilhelm tells Simon that August will be staying at Forest Ridge, that introduces a tension of "will they get their weekend together?"

That tension of "will they get their weekend together" is relieved when Wille asks if he can come to Simon's in Bjarstad, only to AGAIN snap right back into our faces when a much bigger problem surfaces--Erik dies. So, they don't get their weekend anyways.

Hell, there's even a hint of this in episode 2 when August walks in on Wilhelm looking at Simon's Instagram before rowing practice. He doesn't actually see what Wille was doing, though--so it's okay--and he ends up taking a call from Erik.

In another way, this happens with Wilhelm and Felice's relationship from season 1 to season 2. She initially kisses him in episode 3, and we worry that he might just go with it. He doesn't, though. What a relief. In the next episode, though, once he's crown prince, Wilhelm is publicly flirting with Felice (despite her relationship with August) over how "cute" she looks in a video. But our worries about this fade with the release of the video and Felice's support into season 2...

Until they actually almost hook up in the third episode, that is.

And it's definitely not limited to Simon and Wille and their relationships. It comes up with Sara and August too. When he initially kisses her in episode 4 of season 1, you might worry that maybe Sara will respond in a less-than-healthy manner, or that she'll keep what happened to herself instead of telling Felice. Sara rebuffs him, though, and tells Felice about what happened in the stables later that episode.

Tension introduced and relieved, so we move on. But then in the final episode of season 1, Sara goes to August's room to confront him about the video. And she ends up kissing him. In season 2, they end up being in AN ENTIRE SECRET RELATIONSHIP that Sara keeps from Felice. The original fear that you might have had about August twisting his way into Sara's heart was well-founded, it seems.

There are also smaller examples. Like when you see Erik driving incredibly fast in episode 1, or when you see Wilhelm riding on the scooters with Simon, Rosh, and Ayub in episode 2, some people worried there might be some kind of accident. (He was going hands-free, for fuck's sake.)

Well, in both of those instances, everything turned out okay, while Erik's actual offscreen accident in episode 3 obviously did not.

The anxiety about Marcus catching Wilhelm and Simon kissing at the Valentine's party is momentarily alleviated when it looks like him and Simon are going inside, but then Marcus turns around and sees Wille (not to mention he sees Simon eyeing Wille throughout the entire song and during the applause).

Let's not even get started on the drugs. We thought that storyline was resolved, gone, done away with after Alexander was seemingly expelled during season 1.

But then he's back in season 2, and the question of whether anyone will tell Alex that Wilhelm was the one to pin the blame on him arises. It seems a minor issue--given that Alexander wasn't actually expelled, and he seems to like Wille, we don't necessarily expect it to matter all too much. In episode 6, though, the "drug thing" is back at the top of our list of problems. We thought that this had been dealt with! That we'd gotten past it!

But it's worse than before--there's a pill bottle with Simon's father's name on it, and August has it! August has a potential witness behind him (Alex) and is threatening to tell not just the school, but the cops!

Don't worry, though, the tension is relieved when Simon tells Wille he's not going to report August to the police... for approximately six seconds until we see that Sara is reporting August instead.

Anyways, following this pattern, you can draw some really interesting potential conclusions about season 3 based on some of the big tension reliefs that have occurred over the past two seasons. Not saying that any of these will happen, but I'm preparing myself for anything:

Wilhelm has some sort of drug OD—like Simon (and some of the audience, probably) worried on the night of the Society party. This is one I'm really hoping doesn't come up.

Wilhelm actually kills August—when Wilhelm puts that gun down, it's a massive relief for most of us (also the characters present). This would just be... wild. And would explain Omar's tweets about how crazy the season is, I guess.

Sara outs Stella's crush on Fredricka, like she was threatening to do when Felice was moving out of their room at the Manor House. Istg if she does this I might lose it.

Wilhelm's mother dies. This was definitely one idea on some people's minds when Wilhelm takes that call that turns out to be about Erik in episode 3.

Wilhelm actually abdicates. This is definitely a threat made in season 2 that was later assuaged. I'm pulling for Wilhelm taking the throne only to abolish the monarchy. That might be a bit too optimistic on my part, though.

ALTERNATIVELY, August gets the throne. They teased us with this when Wilhelm almost didn't give the speech. August was literally walking up to the podium when Wille leapt up to take his place and momentarily rescued us from the notion that August was going to be ascending the throne.

Wilhelm and/or Simon and/or Sara get pulled from Hillerska. After the video, both Simon and Sara were potentially not going to return to the school. Simon was even late for the first day back, when he missed the choir performance. And Wille was almost physically removed from the school in episode 2 of season 2. Given the statement in the trailer about the school potentially shutting down... this one doesn't seem like too much of a long shot.

It's hard to say what any of this could mean for Simon/Wilhelm's relationship—I mean, in season 1, we had about six instances where we thought we'd get Simon and Wilhelm together and originally didn't (the first music room scene, the conversation after Erik's memorial, the second music room scene/drug situation, the video leak, Wilhelm LYING about the video leak).... the reasons kept getting worse and worse, until there's a release of tension when Wille says he won't deny the video—only for it to be far more crushing when he does deny it having promised otherwise. It seems like there's a new, bigger problem every time they turn around. So far, they've overcome all of the obstacles they've faced (honestly, I don't know how)... but I can't imagine that they're about to be facing an easy course based on that trailer.

Anyways, these are my meandering thoughts about some ways that we can try to guess at what we might have coming based on the show's patterns and its use of foreshadowing. Like I said, I'm just trying to mentally prepare myself for some of the wild-ass shit that might go down. So these are some crazy scenarios based on a few fake-outs that we've had so far. I'm still hoping that they don't take the smallest, most hopeful bits of seasons 1 and 2 and crush them in season 3....

[bl-bam-beyond]

THE ON1Y ONE (2024, TAIWAN)

Episode 2

Stepbrothers. Tension. Classmates. At a school basketball court, some students are playing truth or dare.

New student Sheng Wang (LIU DONG QIN) chooses dare. His dare: Kiss the first person that walks up. As luck would have it. Jiang Tian (BENJAMIN TSANG) his newly acquired stepbrother is the one.

The kiss happens and Jiang Tian let's it happen as the other students cheer, ooh and ahh.

Later Sheng Wang tries to talk or perhaps reason with his angry (?) stepbrother claiming it's no big deal. And this happens...

@pose4photoml @just-another-boyslove-blog @wanderlust-in-my-soul are you guys watching?

[hekateinhell]

achilles/patroclus (to me)

X

[mrghostrat]

apologies to all non-aussies but the way ur human!crowley professions list is screaming tradie au has me CACKLING

THATS MY GUY LMAOOO

listen crowley is either a platinum amex inside trader in designer clothes and a set dressed apartment, or a walking oil stain in hand me down overalls who steals supplies from his boss and sneaks an extra five on every smoko. there is no in between.

[gods-perfect-idiots]

❤️💛

[bigfan1811]

The trope that will never fail to break me is when they show you an alternate world where the main cast never really get together, or only meet later in life

[bougiebutchbinch]

"I'm not surprised; I'm just disappointed"

- all of us @ the OFMD writers right now

[finisnihil]

One of the reasons Everything Everywhere All At Once made multiverses work is that they understood the idea that multiverses are kinda intrinsically connected to nihilism as a concept. In a multiverse, it's either nothing matters or everything matters. The best multiverses i've seen have broached the idea with this in mind. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, the predominanting mindset of the movie is that, even in the joke universes, everything matters. Evelyn doesn't beat the characters she's fighting by extending kindness to them in only one universe, she does it in all of them. The universe we end in at the end of the movie doesn't matter because they all matter just as much as the one Evelyn started in.

I don't know enough about the Into the Spiderverse movies to commentate on that but the Honkai games can also be a good example. The whole reason why Otto doing the thing he did worked at all was because all the possibilities matter, even the one he sacrifices himself to make. If the ones with Kallen's death matter, so must the one with her survival. Acheron as a character is an Emanator of the Aeon of Nihility and it's hammered in that everything she does do has a purpose. We know what she did for Tiernan mattered because it helped save Penacony. Self-Annihilators exist to resist IX and part of doing that is rejecting the idea nothing matters because embracing it leads to you being devoured. She is aware of the concept of multiple worlds and versions of a person and acknowledges that, while she is not the same Raiden Mei HI3 players know and love, she is still a Raiden Mei and and if HI3's Raiden Mei matters, so does she.

It's all or nothing. If nothing matters, there's no reason to get invested. If everything matters, everything is something worth love and attention. A multiverse narrative cannot survive on the idea your actions don't matter when the whole idea of a multiverse is built on the premise that your actions have the power to split existence to accommodate their impact.

[ladystoneboobs]

on this tully tuesday, i'd like to complain about how much grrm ignores the other side of cat's family of birth, as in the late minisa tully née whent of harrenhal. her given name is used in the books so that's one step up from ned's mother, but otherwise she's almost as much a blank in the story. i don't just mean that catelyn can barely remember her, but how the connection between the tullys and whents is just never considered at all.

that recent marriage bond to their overlord should make the tullys' absence from the great tourney at harrenhal pretty glaring, and we know they were absent bc catelyn only hears second-or-thirdhand tales of ashara dayne and never recalls this historic event in her own pov, yet the absence is never addressed. we can say hoster stayed home in protest thinking jaime's white cloak investiture an insult like tywin did for how it ruined his plans for lysa, but why should fans have to come up with this explanation on our own? shouldn't a grand tourney which in hindsight could be seen as the seeds of the rebellion being hosted by one's own kin be worthy of some thought in-text? and when hoster joined the rebellion and started bringing fire and sword upon his royalist bannermen, what did it mean that his in-laws were so close to rhaegar targaryen? we'll never know.

fans enjoy the connection of sansa being rumored to turn into a bat to escape the red keep, or arya spending so much time in harrenhal, but idt grrm was thinking of the connection to their maternal grandmother's house at all. bran and jon can think of their great-grandmother being a flint, but there's no sign that any of cat's kids are aware or care about her mother coming from harrenhal. hell, not only does sansa fail to note a kindred connection when littlefinger says lady whent has supposedly died or think of her own claim/tie when telling him to give harrenhal to walder frey, not only does arya fail to realize that lady whent was her own mother's aunt/cousin/whatever when yoren first brings her up or even when considering revealing herself to lady whent to get help, but catelyn herself, in whose pov house whent is first mentioned, only notes lady shella whent as the last of the line and her father's leal vassal, not also his kin by marriage and her own kinswoman by blood.

source: asearchoficeandfire results for the name whent in the main tl. the late lady of riverrun is nowhere in those results bc her being a whent is only mentioned in the appendices. that's how much of an afterthought the last family to lawfully hold harrenhal and actually live there with their appropriately goth bats banners AND their blood ties to 4 of the original povs is to grrm.

[embryoed]

Same bitches different universe

[arspoeticamaia]

[ranticore]

in ur dragon fight drawing, one of the dragon has a hole torn in its wing, would that be a debilitating injury in this world? how are riders and dragons with disabilities treated?

i have to say the wing heals up easily enough (otherwise their dragon attrition rate would be terrible... that's one way they can't be like planes lol). i think a hit through the wing would be an 'i yield' moment in battle where the victim bows out of the fight. a skirmish is p.much guaranteed to result in injuries and potentially deaths, and some airbases might have a policy of not taking 'i yield' as sign to stop attacking. it's rare though, there's a kind of honour system in place in a skirmish because you might have to count on those other people as allies at some point, and the goal is to secure control in the airspace, not kill or rout the enemy.

each airbase is essentially its own little militia (i think of it like a huge warship with hundreds onboard) with its own culture. if you can recover from your wounds, great, you go back into the line of duty. if you're unable to do that then you retire. dragons are treated better than humans in general but that often extends a shield over the riders who are considered the public faces of their dragons. if the dragon is grounded they can still teach and still do radio work, and that means the human sticks around to facilitate this. if the human is injured and can no longer fly skirmishes then treatment depends on their rank & the rank of their dragon. at the lowest ranks, you might not get much by way of assistance or quality of life. in the airbase you can specialise into tasks which can be done as desk jobs - drawing charts, weather-fronts, managing the provisions, stuff like that. but it's entirely up to the dragon whether or not another rider replaces you in the saddle.

if you truly cannot work again it's also up to your dragon to advocate on your behalf. not every airbase culture facilitates this. as with many things in life, your continued survival may rely on being on good terms with the higher ups, winning a matriarch's favour, or being generally liked.

tangential but the overall culture i'm imagining is (barring the radio technology and somewhat early-1900s aesthetic) relatively feudal, a hundred small holders and lords with no central ruling structure. rank is usually determined by bloodline (imagine open candidacy to ride for small dragon classes, closed for the more "important" ones, etc. that way we can get some Controversy and Drama... court intrigue even...). so relating back to the ask, if you happen to be born important, you needn't ever worry about your future at the airbase, even if you are disabled in the line of duty.

[bl-bam-beyond]

THE ON1Y ONE (2024, TAIWAN)

Episode 4

Stepbrothers Jiang Tian (BENJAMIN TSANG) and Sheng Wang (LIU DONG QIN) finding common ground and getting ever so much closer.

Bonus: I mean the line of the year.

@pose4photoml @just-another-boyslove-blog @lutawolf @absolutebl

[kneelingshadowsalome]

speaking of sheep:

https://www.tumblr.com/bestiolin/734582117661556736

i think the dynamic of a wolf!könig and sheep!darling not only goes hard but also helps aid my love for forbidden romance tropes. because something as wrong as two complete opposites like predator and prey can be something so horrifyingly beautiful yet so doomed by the narrative.

because what makes you think könig would be in his right mind when he realize that not even his own kind could desire him, that he is no respectable beast if his only reason for hunting down and killing his own pack was because not only they betrayed his trust as a family but, most of all, they targeted the one thing that gave him the tiniest bit of attention and praise. his sheep darling, the one who was much too foolish to understand her own placement in the world, where she was destined to bleed for him but instead, she was no better than him.

könig and daring were just as much as one of the same when it came to their rejection of their kinds. everybody shunned them, they beat them down with words and high expectations, they didn’t belong because of their skewed perception of what it means to be a predator that provides and a prey that survives. but who’s to say, if everyone around them socially disposes them what’s wrong about abandoning those norms.

what’s so wrong about a measly little sheep aiding the slaughter of a beast who’s purpose is no longer just to provide but to protect the very thing that made him feel belonged?

despite the incompatibility of these two, they find solace in each other in their sadness and lust for love, no matter how twisted it is, no matter was illegal it should be, nothing could stop them now.

I love predator/prey dynamics because once the prey discovers her power over the predator… then who’s the one really being preyed upon here? Her purity transmutes to something darker (something that was always there), while he taps into his protective qualities and becomes, if not innocent again, at least something far more complex than a beastly, instinctual creature.

Instead of devouring her, he will cherish her; instead of using her as sustenance, he will sustain her. He learns that his deepest yearning is to chase, not kill, she learns that surrendering to getting caught is far better than surrendering to fear.

And it’s not about healing or changing anything or anyone anymore: it’s about becoming a force to be reckoned with…