#u know when the character is a 'master manipulator' or something so its not really surprising that they suck

[burning-sol]

me typing a post abt gaslighting and then deleting it because i think "surely no one wants to hear this" but also of course no one wants to hear it, nobody REALISES they need to hear it. here's a quick and informal PSA.

I'm telling you, if your perception of gaslighting is that of exaggerated arguments where one person is clearly wrong and where all context has been stripped away, that is not what it's like from my experience. We really need to talk about gaslighting as more than just a joke, because once I saw what was most likely a REAL case of gaslighting being downplayed by people who didn't realise they were using the EXACT language that's symptomatic of a real story and also that PERPETUATES the abuse.

The biggest thing people tend to leave out is context. Gaslighting happens between the victim and a person who they hold in regard, someone they've known for a while and love. By the time gaslighting starts to occur or is noticed, you're likely in a position where you're trying to take the other in good faith and characterise their behaviour as honest mistakes. Victims don't necessarily BELIEVE the lies are reality, in fact, it's more likely you tend to just shrug it off and drop it because you value the person above disagreements.

And next is the scaling. By the time you get to any disagreements where someone is outright saying that you're crazy or denying that abusive events happen, you are deep in the process of being gaslit. But how it starts out is that you'll have disagreements recalling smaller things whether it be what your favourite flavour of icecream is, whether they had already told you something you're sure you've heard before, slightly altering history in ways that aren't that far off but still feel wrong, explaining your feelings of uncertainty back to you in ways that COULD be plausible... When you try to explain these disagreements, it can feel humiliating or like the longer you talk about it the more wrong you start to feel and that you're sure that you're just being overly critical...

This ties back into what I said about the language that is symptomatic of real gaslighting stories. The story I read had people say the person wasn't being gaslit because, "it was just over video games?" "your friend sounds like they're just misremembering" "you seem kind of petty"... While yes, it is normal for disagreements and mistakes to happen, they shouldn't be happening to the extent that you're noticing a pattern. If it's a persistent issue in which you're starting to feel insecure and like an unreliable narrator, that is a BAD sign. It also shouldn't be entirely one sided - if you find you're the one consistently having to compromise their reality to satisfy the other, that is ALSO a bad sign.

And it's really important that, again, this is how it may just start. All these smaller things wear you down until you either start to believe the other or you're too demoralised to argue anymore, and the other may continue to escalate UNTIL the arguments become more stereotypical portrayals of gaslighting - and the person may even start to introduce other forms of abuse into the relationship. The period of "trivial" disagreements isolate the victim, especially when they go to their friends for support and their friends downplay the emotions they're feeling, resulting in the victim pulling away when they start to think their issues aren't worth bringing up.

You really just have to experience it for yourself to have tried to communicate you were being gaslit and had your issues shrugged off, to know how awful it feels when you finally get out of that abusive relationship and the people around you will say they, "didn't even know that was happening".

Like, I admit, I do find gaslighting jokes funny. They make me go heehee. But it is very very bad that we aren't actually teaching people what gaslighting realistically looks like, because you're usually only seeing the later stages of gaslighting and not all the smaller things that built up to that! You're not actually catching the signs when it's most critical to be getting out of the relationship.

But yeah. There's my rant.

[theoldoor]

“fenrir are you FUCKING STUPID”

“MAGAWWUFHUHUHGU YYOU…DID YOU SAY YES!!?!? ..ghguughhghg.h.uuhuhgh.h.g.h. ”

“YES????”

(more doodles below jus bear w the ramblings pls)

This is when Fenrir asked for Aventurine to teach him avgin-sigonian for his Masters in linguistics - it took him a lot of courage to do it because Aventurine has a 50/50 chance when it comes to asking about his Avgin heritage, he either feels like 10 bajillions daggers and his ancestors coming to beat his ass or he feels appreciated and seen for his dead culture and this gambler is the only man fenrir couldn’t read fully.

fenrir is not the type to gamble, so of course he came up with a plan

They started out normally but fenrir keeps beating around the bush to kind of get aventurine pissed off so that he couldn’t feel sad, like too focused on being angry to hate himself type shit. As they are, they’d probably end up in a fist fight cuz yk, if you got recycled, youll still get the marks of what you once were (talia lore) the question dropped in the middle of the fight and aventurine just said yes on a whim- fenrir broke down and just be liek ‘HELL YEAH VASHA YOURE THE GOAT’

— THEYRE MY EVERYTHING IM GOING TO DIEEE (colored + full + no beating each others up version) - lil writing below too :3

i know i talk a lot about how caring fenrir is towards aventurine most of the time but that isn’t really how they act “canonically” UHGF

Theyre bicker, pester and shit. theyre the only one who can get under each other’s skin and sometimes their little momentarily bantering do distract their self esteem bc they lowk find the other person more annoying (when the suicide hotline hung up on u and ure too confused/pissed to kys typa dynamic). they act petty and would often annoy the other but would never say a bad word and would still do anything to save them. because in the end, fenrir and aventurine still considered each other family (old married couple with early love beef) considering their journey through talia together.

they still know that the reason why they found comfort in each other so easily despite all the tension is because, really, they are the same side of two coin. They are each other’s foil, they emphasize each other’s character - which is something both fenrir and aventurine HATE (self-loathe hell yeah jigsaw) but also they found that there are also others with the same wound.

They bite each other, but its their teeth that stopped the bleeding.

(or more like they bite each other’s open wound in hope to hurt the other, but actually found that the scars are from the same pair of teeth and found comfort that they don’t have to bite themselves to stop the bleeding anymore)

(do u get it pls cuz aventurine has the same pair of teeth as his masters because he probably learn more from his old master than his parents cuz he spent more time with the masters than his family haha - applies to fenrir too ahahahahaha)

i feel aventurine is charming and he compliments everyone bc thats gonna get them to grow on him - yk ppl likes compliments. if theyre not affected by compliments? money. if theyre one of those “i dont like compliments and money” he’ll just act crazy, putting himself on the line and bending them to his will by other forms of manipulation. i don’t feel like aventurine values relationship because he doesn’t even value himself, which is an important factor in a healthy relationship (regardless of romance or not). Most of his connections would mostly be transactional and he does have very few people he kept by - Dr Ratio, Trailblazer, etc.

Fenrir? he hates himself too much for compliments to work. he’s too talented to need money and he’s also a master when it comes to manipulation. As they are, same sides of two coins. fenrir has the same issue with aventurine, none of his tactics worked, he couldn’t bend aventurine to his needs so easily. so with the forced proximity, stranded in the desert with no one else but each other, they learn to co operate rather than to use one another. Both Fenrir and Aventurine would be forced to not see their relationship as transactional - and thus create a foundation for a more genuine relationship.

The only way they can break out of their habits of seeing everything being out of obligations is when they’re forced to turn their head a different way. if they were given the permission to stay, they will stay in the hellhole that they found comfort in rather than the ground where they can walk freely because they never learned to walk without the weights - they will fall because they can’t balance themselves.

—

“only a madman can beat a master.” what if theyre both madmen?

“genius on the left, lunatic on the right?” what if they’re a genius because they’re a lunatic who manage to prove the crazy theories and the other is a lunatic because they’re a genius who can come up with the crazy theories without answers?

what if theyre the death of me

[prisonicmorality]

ok i finished watching my silley little youtube video w my partner so now i can type out more inbox essays. ahem. i saw volo on my dash first but i can and will b sending u Full Essays on most if not all of ur other muses either thru ur askbox or on discord after i take my meds

im soooooooooo picky w volo portrayals truly but i love yours a BUNCH. it feels like such an obvious Thing to make now but i genuinely hadnt considered immortal volo before ur blog and i love the concept very much and your take especially!! ur volo feels like a natural progression of canon pla volo. like he's not the same character but that's sort of the point! does that make sense? i've seen redemption arc volo and i've seen nah fuck it we ballin lets keep tryin 2 end the world volo but i like yours better than both of those. its so hard to really nail ''neutral'' characters but you do such a good job with him. he's still a manipulative and charming little piece of shit (/positive) but like holy shit the Regret and self hatred brings so so so so much to him i literally cant even explain it??? HES JUST SO?????? god... like when volo finally dropped in pokemon masters for a hot sec reading his story stuff i was genuinely like "ummm not MY volo???" your volo is just so ingrained in my head that pokemon masters volo feels ooc to me.

i like him sooooo much. so much!!! love seeing him be a smarmy little flirt in general because like thats SO HIM but we obv dont get to see that in canon but i am 1000% sure that off screen volo was flashing his pretty boy eyelashes at everyone for sure.

thank u for understanding THE trainwreck dynamic too bc thats something i am also INSANELY picky with. no one gets them like we get them. love it for us!

MORTONNNNNNNNNN

im crying this is so good im so happy

i just hopped into call on discord and saw this ask and immediately started bawling because of how happy this made me feel. i dont even have words to describe how happy i am to know how much you like my volo and my take on him

honestly i feel similarly about your emmet hes so. i dont have nearly enough words im overwhelmed

all i can do is shake you and cry bc this makes me really happy and feel really proud of myself. everyone here just boosting my fragile ego about this guy

[hellonerf]

5 + 22 for ame!!!! :3

5 : first song in mind : depending on my mood really and how honed in i am the general themes i associate him with (how personal/human focused im imagining his issues to be in that moment) 🤤 but im gna be cringe and free rn and just say kirai kirai jiga hidai by kuragep is like easily fitting to me most of the time

22 : thing i like in fics with him vs thing i dont like : for something i like, i like when its an outside pov to him and hes like fucking weird in that specific way that really hits my marks 🤤🤤🤤 honestly its hard to explain for me... im pretty open to how his personality can be but 🤤 i like when he's not well adjusted but kind of persistently indestructible in how he behaves? like immovable object/unstoppable force lol...

as for something i don't like, thinking hard on this 🤔 i think. (trying not to come off as annoyingly prissy about his characterization...) ok putting it under in case i do just start to ramble

i don't like when people play into his hero thing with it being seen as a sincerely good honest untroubled thing like i read fics of other characters doing shit and hes something of a cop there and i start passing out really hard. i don't know i think he's generally disinterested in other people most of the time it's hard to put that with a Sincere hero talk without him just seeming like a hypocrite. obviously you could just make him not disinterested in people in ur fic for that but in my preference i'd just sacrifice his sincerity 🤤 also u make him a "cop hero" and i really just pass out so hard. getting up and leaving. sorry i can't do this shit...

well, i obviously like an ame thats ill in some ways, but i don't like when he feels too fragile personally(emphasis on personally)... this feels obvious with what i put for something i like lol. but i mean i like when something does totally destroy him but i need it to make sense in my head 🤤 though i don't mind it too hard since people do whatever mental stuff in their fics it just doesn't do it for me Personally...

this is just a lame and gay one but when he is too smooth suave whatever flirt 🙁 just total personal thing because i hate male characters who are not only handsome but like smooth and loveinterest-like and AME is my FAVORITE so he CAN'T be a CHARACTER TYPE i HATE!!!! (loud banging head on wall)

now i might make it seem like i would dislike a puppylike good honest ame. thats not true i like him like that too sometimes (when i wanna go aw... aw... aw.....)(then i start wanting to trap him in a cage) but i also want his flaws to be pulled to the front sometimes and maybe he can be forced to confront with his honest to god insufferableness or maybe other people have to. it relly depends 🤤 i like all kinds of ame it rly matters on execution i spose...

oh also i don't like when they overdo the deception thing i definitely talked about this before lol but when its master manipulator shit like 😕(BORED AS FUCK) idk. i just don't believe it. other people aren't that dumb. everypony knows you bucking lied. and if he's lying about something i'd like it if it's copium to himself too like im not a bad guy its just like this..!!! this is how it is!!! if ur gonna make him fucked up i'd like it if it's in a miserable world and no human has been or is sane bcz its miserable out here and everyone knows he lies nobody does anything about it cz argh whaetver... people have their own business all the time... i like lived in worlds and whenever everyone is caricatures while one guy is ReallySmart and pulling the strings it just doesn't feel grounded and i fall asleep

[phoenixfangs]

Your turn for Positive O’Pinions game :3c

‘03 vs fmab Deadly Sins Homunculi

aa6

Annnnnnnnnd Annabelle Lee

DAMN asking for my pinions and i didnt even reblog the ask game prompt!! pepper is a real one

03 homunculi vs fmab homunculi: i LOOOOOOOVE the homunculi in 03. lust and sloth and wrath are such faves, there is just something so tasty about them being created the way they are and the characters having to confront their decisions and the Results of those decisions in a sort of monkeys paw kind of way. envy is Also a fave but he is sort of separate from the other 3 since from my recollection (i will have to rewatch both anime again soon) hes pretty similar in both, whereas the other three are Entirely or Almost Basically different characters altogether

which also ill say something nice about fmab homunculi, it made me enjoy some Other homunculi more than i did in 03. pride and greed are very fun and interesting in fmab, pride especially because i love fucked up and evil children :)

aa6: everyone was right that the last case of aa6 spanks hard. i wasnt expecting to give much of a shit about dhurke or his relationship with apollo for apollos 2849572nd backstory, BUT i was pleasantly surprised by how much i liked dhurke, and how much i liked seeing him and apollo get lost in a cave!! everything else was good too i just particularly liked the cave bit, and the extra CG that came with it hehe

annabelle lee: firstly READ NEVERMORE ON WEBTOON IF U WANT EDGAR ALLEN POE LESBIANS AND TOXIC YURI okay anyway

(theres more than just that its sort of a boarding school mystery, investigating/discovering things about the afterlife, the boarding school, and how the characters died, with a gothic lens—to me the setup is pretty pedestrian BUT annabelle lee and lenore are what u stay for)

ANYWAY. i loooooooove annabelle lee how do i even get into it ☺️ i love that shes not a perfect kind person, like shes a manipulator and a fraud and i think she has a bit of a mean and sadistic streak, but its like. when ur a woman in her position during her time period, how else do u get by? can u really blame her? i mean probably but i wont. leave my girl alone she did all that but shes sooooo cute so i forgive her. and i love that she shares that sort of rebellious quality with lenore, they really are so similar but like. Not. lmao. and im glad that we get to see her flaws and watch every time lenore calls her on her bullshit, and we see that shes just as much a terrified girl as she is the master manipulator queen. when the blonde woman portrays herself/is perceived as cold and ruthless but is actually very sensitive on the inside 👌👌👌👌 u all know how i feel about this

[sutzrainbow]

I posted 720 times in 2022

34 posts created (5%)

686 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@zephra85

@cipheramnesia

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I tagged 683 of my posts in 2022

Only 5% of my posts had no tags

#oddworld - 118 posts

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Longest Tag: 139 characters

#also got a ton of cannula marks from that time i was in hospital with dka and had half a dozen bags of medication and fluid hooked up to me

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

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15 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

#4

I saw Sonic 2!

I LOVED IT!! IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!

While I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one, I still really enjoyed myself! I still think this movie was made by people who genuinely love Sonic, loved hiding little details and references for us fans to find, and tried to make this crackerjack franchise work while still embracing its silliness. Here are my thoughts! (Spoilers under the cut)

I LOVED HOW KNUCKLES WAS WRITTEN. Gullible and not the brightest, but still super-intimidating and powerful. 

Idris Elba as Knuckles was utterly perfect. I am so pleased at long last he has a black voice actor (for those who don’t know, Knuckles was originally meant to be Jamaican. Yes, really.) Hope the guy comes back.

“Oh. They are stairs.” “I have honorably beaten you at this base of ball!” Fucking hilarious. I <3 you, Knuckles.

I love how dirty Sonic and co. get when they’re hurt. The game characters don’t do that, but it’s a fun realistic touch.

I like Tom and Maddie and was glad to see them again. They blow characters like Chris out of the water.

“Let’s go get our kid.” Thank you, Maddie.

Jim Carrey was having the time of his life and I loved it.

They leaned HARD into the shipping with Stone and I loved that too. But Stone doesn’t do very much, which is a shame.

I also love this movie thing where they make the Chaos Animals’ eyes light up and then it spreads to the rest of them when they use their powers. I’m glad it’s something they all do, it’s a fun little characteristic.

The idea of the Chaos Emeralds being fused into the Master Emerald was a neat take on it. In the games and most continuity, the Master Emerald is separate from the Chaos Emeralds. Like, it can control them, but it’s its own unique entity as well.

They played around with the Chaos Emeralds turning thoughts into reality instead of just energy, which was neat. Bit like Green Lantern. Given how things played out in the last movie, I thought that an Emerald was going to turn out to be hidden inside Sonic, or that he was going to turn out to be a living Chaos Emerald, but that wasn’t what happened.

The idea of a human being able to manipulate Chaos power is incredibly unsettling. In a lot of continuities they either are not affected at all, or it kills them. I liked the vocal effect they used with Robotnik absorbing the Emerald’s power.

Sonic and Tails’ bond, as always, is super sweet. I love how they set up the team and basically the rest of the series by the end of the movie.

They address Sonic’s inability to swim, referenced the whole air bubbles thing - but I don’t think I heard the drowning music. Maybe an orchestral version of that would be too close to Jaws.

They worked Longclaw back into the plot (though she doesn’t actually show up, it’s a recorded message) in what I thought was a very clever way. Back before they redesigned Sonic for the first movie, he and Longclaw originally got attacked by lizards instead of echidnas like Knuckles. I imagine they just replaced the lizard people in the continuity with the echidnas, but it was still neat to see.

Sonic and co go running around in temples just like in the old games!

They somehow worked the Olive Garden guy back into the plot!? Like, it wasn’t just a blatant product placement??

When they mentioned Guardian Unit of Nations I think my head popped.

Sonic goes Super and they left it out of the trailers, and it was exactly like it plays out in Sonic X. I think I regressed down to 11 years old again, that was so good. Also, his Super form got triggered by him saying ‘I love you guys’. Chills.

Also, the Emeralds in this continuity are TINY. The Master Emerald is about the size of a basket ball, and the Chaos Emeralds about the size of a golf ball.

And yes, the mid-credits sequence. I screamed, legit screamed. “SHADOW IS COMING HELL YEAH.” Like, we see him and he looks amazing. He doesn’t say anything though, so I wonder who they’ll cast to voice him? I liked Jason Griffith’s gruff Shadow OK, but vastly preferred David Humphrey’s almost-gentle tone with a hint of menace, so I hope they go with that.

I didn’t want them to introduce Shadow right away - Tails and Knuckles are the OGs and they must come first - but I always wanted them to tackle Sonic Adventure 2′s story at some point, because it’s so cinematic. It would make a great movie; the plot almost writes itself, especially without having to justify levels or something. I hope they cast a really good, soulful kid to play Maria.

All of that said, I didn’t think it was as good as the first one. It’s only been two years since the first Sonic movie and I think it shows. This one maybe could have done with some more cuts and fine-tuning.

This movie repeats way too much that was done in the first movie - and I’m not talking flashbacks, they’re actually fine. I just mean straight plot beats. We get Sonic messing around at the house, and a sequence in a bar/tavern. This tavern is in Siberia, and there’s no Tom, but that’s all that’s different. I liked watching Sonic and Tails dancing, but it’d been done before. I just wish we’d got right to the temple.

Sonic and Tails crashing Maddie’s sister Rachel’s wedding is really funny, and I loved watching Rachel and Maddie kick butt in all their finery. BUT - then they focus too much on Rachel having some drama with her fiance Randall, who also is an undercover agent, for some reason? There was no need for that. The crashing wedding scene was fine. I was legit looking at my watch and saying, “I didn’t come here to watch wedding drama. I came here to watch Chaos Animals having adventures.” Once that was over, they never showed up again, but jeez. Most of that belonged on the cutting room floor. Randall didn’t even have to be an agent. Just set up GUN and have the girls kicking ass with Tails’ inventions and you’re golden.

I really hope this movie does well, even though it’s not as good as the first, because if it does, we’ll get a part three. And that part three will be Shadow’s movie. And I would love to see Shadow in a movie. Yes please. Yes yes please.

20 notes - Posted April 5, 2022

#3

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#2

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My #1 post of 2022

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91 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

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[captainreverie]

ok I'm obsessed with ur au drop the word doc and I WILL cry about link and the fact that hes scared to reclaim the master sword 🥺🥺 also curious about the inktober thing u just posted with link in chains?? I think it was 10? what did the poor man do....

💕 I’m so humbled by your interest like seriously, blown away!💕

I have some things in my Master Doc that i should update but ill see what i can do over the next few days between inktober work.

In regards to Picture 10 - Wrong Side in A Strangers War - i was just going to post the 6 dot points from the Master Doc but naturally i went off on a tangent so i’m sorry for the 1.2k and if this makes no sense. Also there is a hint of this plot line in Inktober 08 - Rauru's viewing glass, Since the Temple of Light exists in the Magical plane and is therefore not subject to the laws of time.

I will also say it’s the darkest part of this AU and is more background history and happens before the start of the story proper. I’m not really knowledgeable on tag etiquette in 2021 so I’ll just say mentions of violence, war, bloodshed, character death.

It's dark but i swear this AU has a happy ending!

First thing to understand about this is that it’s got no roots in canon and i have been avoiding naming the billion OCs and Kingdom creation it required so bare with me as I use default descriptions. (I hate naming things)

Between Majora’s Mask and The start of The AU when Link returns to Hyrule (10 year span approx) he has been wandering throughout other Kingdoms, getting pulled into things because he is a good bean who can’t ignore people in need.

for 2 years he is caught up in a foreign Civil War (when he is about 19/20). The Kingdom is ruled by a Tyrant King who treats his people like absolute shit. A Resistance forms amongst the common people and Link joins it. Their goal is to depose the King and put someone else on the Throne. The King of course tries to wipe out the Resistance and crack down on any civilians that support it. He destroys entire villages, hangs people for treason and levies increased taxes to bully everyone into submission.

Link plays a mainly defensive role because a lot of the people of course have no idea who he is and still see him as very young. However he does prove himself and becomes a high ranked member of the resistance. He leads raids on supply caravans and rescue missions, proving himself a master strategist. Also while he tries to downplay his magic and the Ocarina, he over time reveals his overture of musical magic.

The Songs don’t function as teleportation anymore:

Minuet of the Forest = plant growth (Link used razor leaf its super effective)

Bolero of Fire = Fire creation and manipulation

Serenade of Water = Water manip

Nocturne of Shadow = Darkness and mirage

Requiem of Spirit = Aura cleanse

Prelude of Light = Glowing/ blinding light

Song of Storms = Storm creation, a bit OP but unpredictable

Suns Song = Breaks storm

Song of Soaring = Wings spring from back and can fly for awhile

Song of Healing = Sends souls to peaceful rest as per MM

His Brothers and Sisters in arms stop perceiving him by his age and see him as a powerful warrior for Justice. This of course makes him a target as a key member of the Resistance. He’s also the only Hylian so he’s recognisable (i want to portray this as Hylians ears are longer or something to make them seperate people. Like half-elves vs full elves ect)

One of his close friend turns out to be a double-agent working for the King who naturally betrays them all at a key moment. A lot of the Resistance are imprisoned or executed. Their supporters punished. Link is imprisoned and beaten/tortured for information because the Betrayer knows he has information also maybe he can claim this kid's power somehow..

This is basically what the drawing is about, the title of ‘The Wrong Side in a Stranger’s war, is in reference to dialogue the Betrayer says to Link in Prison. When he is reiterating, you had no part in this land and no reason to get involved but you are a foolish boy who got involved and you picked the losing side.

inevitably, having watched a lot of his friends suffer or killed and blaming himself for not stopping it he snaps. (hero label is a curse, he is expected to save people but he only seems to fail these days). The Trifroce of Courage activates and since he is beyond caring if he survives and is just 100% righteous fury at this point he destroys the dungeon and palace single handedly, freeing his comrades who are unable to process the god-like power their friend is wielding. He looks terrifying, He slays the King and the Betrayer.

In the end he stands in a shattered kingdom leaving the remains to the last surviving members of the resistance to try and put it back together and disappears in the night. They don’t know how to treat him after this incredible show of power. Spirit broken from failing the people and losing the war, he wanders down a road without direction and finds the road has led him back into Hyrule.

**

The main sort of idea I wanted with this plot history is that you don’t win in war. And in stories you obvious have heroes who fix everything or save the day but it’s doesn’t really fall in with reality. In OoT, it is implied that a lot of people were killed but with the reset of the timeline they are all alive again. Sure he experienced destruction while a child but in the end everyone survives and the day is saved as you would expect in the tales (Zelda’s perspective is obviously different).

With his experiences in MM and Termina he learnt that he can’t save everyone, if you decide to help one person, someone else will suffer from that decision. There must be balance. This of course is upsetting for him as a child whose idea of what it means to be a hero, his fairytale perception of it is being shattered with ever time reset. He only makes it out of the Termina when he accepts the truth that he can never save everyone. a choice must be made. Then you have the Rebellion and he witnesses the loss of a lot of dear friends and innocents. He views this as a total failure, that he has no grounds upon which to wield the mantle of a hero. Technically the Rebellion wins the war but it depends on whether you view victory in regard to power won or lives saved. Link’s beliefs all circle around the protection of life. He will always do what he believes his right but as time passes he is loosing confidence and begins second-guessing himself.

Of course those in Hyrule who know the legends and remember the Forgotten War (High Fae, Sages, aka those with strong connection to the magical plane) still see him as a hero. Even after hearing this story Zelda still views him as one because of course he has always fought on the side of good / light. So a big part of this whole AU in regards to Link’s arc is him coming to terms with what it actually means to be a hero of the world, and that the truth does not always match the fairytales that are told to children.

In regards to the Master Sword, after his return to Hyrule and his sort of rock bottom confidence i see him as no longer believing himself worthy of the Mantle of Hero of Time. Part of him doesn’t actually believe he could pull it from the pedestal, that the sword would probably act negatively to the darkness that’s grown in him. Zelda believes he could still draw it but she knows that this internal battle can only be fought by him, she can only support him in the healing process.

Big part of this AU is Recovery and Moving Forward despite your past so know it's angsty as hell in places but i swear it's got a happy ending!

[shoezuki]

Tommy's prison/revival arc isnt well written actually

Anyways ive been wanting to talk on it a while for a bit here but havent had the Time or like. The thought to. But im gonna go off now.

First off im gonna say im ASSUMING this stream and plot of tommy being in the prison with dream is written entirely by tommy and dream. Wilbur May be involved in the latest stream but im not sure.

Bringing tommy back to life after only three days of him being dead did practically nothing to progress plot, the characters, or audience's understanding. In fact i feel that it damaged Other characters' potential and plot and already established plotlines.

The 'development' aspect

A really, really easy way to see if anything has changed or developed through an arc or plotline is to straightup just compare the 'beginning' to the 'end' in terms of the barebones situation. So;

Beginning: tommy is trapped in an isolated prison cell with dream, his own abuser who has hurt him in the past, for an unknown amount of time. He's terrified of dream and being stuck there with him.

End: tommy is trapped in an isolated prison cell with dream after being killed then revived by him, his own abuser whos hurt him in the past, for an unknown amount of time. Hes terrified of dream and being stuck there with him.

Okay. This is simplified obvious. But the point stands. ALTHOUGH the troupe of 'going back to the beginning' is common in the heroes journey its. It doesnt work here. Has tommy learned anything? Has he changed as a character? Is the severity of their situation any different? Have we, as the audience, learned anything new?

Im going to expand on that last point because i think it has the strongest potential argument. Technically for progression in literature and development of plot/characters, things can Change without them being Aware as characters. It can change just by the audience's perception changing or being challenge.

Slight example: i've been reading a webcomic called Your Throne. Its a fantasy/political drama about a noble lady who entered a competition with another noble lady to become the empress. The main lady lost despite her being a better fit, and the comic starts with the main lady trying to assassinate the empress. Its assumed and stated by the main lady that she 'ruined her life' and so thats all the readers know. However, later in the novel we see flashbacks to the competition itself and find that the two ladies were extremely close friends, neither wanting anything bad for the other, but it was the emperor himself who manipulated both of them for his own agenda. Those flashbacks gave us an entirely different idea of who the real antagonist is and completely changed the two main ladies' relationship. THAT is how the audience's understanding of the plot and novel can be used to change the entire story. We dont get such here though

Some things that were brought to light during tommy being dead/revived:

Dream is capable of reviving people infinitely

This was already implicated and assumed. The book dream has being a means of reviving people has been around Technically since schlatt's death. This just 'confirmed' what was known

Time works differently/feels longer in the afterlife

This doesnt really impact much beyond emotions and implications. If we had more insight into what the 'afterlife' is like beyond nothingness perhaps so. But really it just makes it so wilbur being dead for what feels like 9 years and tommy having been dead for 2 months appeal to emotions.

Wilbur is evil

This one fuckin sucks i cant lie HSKSHSISSGEGDV. Like i was gon go on bout it and i will but it jus sucks. We have nothing to go on besides tommy's word, no examlles of what Horrible things wilbur said could make tommy assume this, etcetc. Ill most likely make a seperate post on how this feels like we're just going to get 'wilbur is a horrible villain' type with him. But still. I feel wilbur Not Being Good isnt a new development.

Dream is going to revive wilbur

This doesnt feel new either, part because phil had wanted to revive wilbur before (ill get to that more later) and that tommy had kept dream alive/initially imprisoned him with the idea of him reviving wilbur.

Dream believes wilbur will break him out of prison

Okau this makes no sense to me actually. I cwnt understand How exactly wilbur would be able to do this? Or why dream believes he even Could? Mans been dead for like 9 years and all we Know of the afterlife is that its black... nothingness. How would 9 years of that make wilbur capable of busting the prison open?

So. Yeah. All in all this plotline hasnt done anything new, developed things, or altered people's perceptions. We just ended up back at square one. Back to tommy being traumatized, dream being 'evil' and horrible and doing villain monologues, and them being stuck together.

Other characters and plotlines

Im pretty damn sure tommy's revival fucked up a LOT of other characters' plotlines and potential development. Honestly i feel this has a lot to do with the writers not communicating with other ccs well enough. But Ill talk about specific characters from least to most fucked over in my opinion:

Sam

He's the best off. He hqd been there during tommy's death, had been close to tommy, had majorly blamed himself and his own mistakes for tommy's death. His grief and self hatred was actually really heartbreaking and well done. The attached character of Sam Nook being unaware of tommy's death and simply waiting for tommy to return was a really good parallel to sam's own grief and anger. like it really snapped sam the guy who cares for tommy and wants to do Right by him back together with him as the Warden of the prison. Mixed personal life with 'just business'.

I feel it wouldve been nice to have him like. Have more time to grieve properly and come to terms eith tommy's death and his own involvement/influence over the events. Him finding tommy alive again Could be a means of him like. Facing his own grief head on if done well.

Ranboo

Mostly in the context of him and sam's argument do i feel it got screwed over. The weight of them yelling at each other and trying to find who to blame and the implications that Maybe ranboo was the one who caused the security breach that closed down the prison on tommy just.... doesnt hit so hard anymore. Because how can there be blame and arguments and a 'who done it' mystery when tommy popped up all fine again?

Puffy

I dony know much of her involvement or how she found out tommy died (besides metagaming shhhhh) but i saw her monologuing of how they 'failed' tommy and like. Her whole 'he was so young we the Adults failed him' spiel is like........... inconsequential? Now??? Like no dont worry he died but hes alright now.

Philza

BET YOU DIDNY EXPECT TO SEE THIS FUCKER!!!!!! But actually though i want to talk bout how this ties into phil. A LOT. for Zalbr ❤. But also because i see ppl tying phil to tommy's death n like nah shutup u doin it wrong. Ill go off more in a Wilbur Post. But essentially: i dont like that dream is now going to revive wilbur. I feel they arent going to tie philza into this Despite phil having originally been trying to revive his son and studying on it and Attempting and Failing. But now suddenly dream can just. Say some magic words and Poof wilbur lives? So we're just going to Kill philza's revival attempts plotline and leave that hanging? This made his efforts seem pointless and Wack like oh why didnt you just Say The Magic Words phil????

Niki

I feel really bad for niki. She hasnt been able to do a lore stream during tommy's 'death' (she tweeted she wanted to but her computer wasnt working) and considering her entire character.... that shit is important. We seen it with Jack Manifold how tommy's death impacted Him considering he literally wanted tommy dead. And since niki is in a similar boat to jack of trying to kill tommy and it being her Only goal...... thats extremely important.

BUT. i feel there wasnt any communication. Did she or anyone even know tommy would be revived? Did no one consider they could At Least let her do a single stream on it? Like jack manifold????

We couldve gotten a Really good niki lore stream. I genuinely was so excited for it and i dont regularly watch her. But we seen it with jack manifold which is why i dont feel he got screwed because mans genuinely did So Good he could pop off with anything n i think it works in His favour. But now........ for niki. Canonically she never even knew tommy was Dead. So its like nothing even happened for her. Is she just supposed to continue on trying to kill tommy with no progression?

What i think would work

This is more me being like 'hey @ the dsmp writers let me in' type speculation sbosegussgs. But i was thinkin on a Really easy way to 'fix' this without rewriting lore and the streams.

Dream should kill tommy again now that he's been revived and Leave Him Dead.

More development for the characters who are affected by his death Especially niki. More time for grief and self reflection and development

A chance for the audience to figure out what the 'afterlife' really is.

Dream is supposed to be smart and a master manipulator or something right? Why doesnt he use being able to revive tommy as a bargaining chip with sam for his own freedom?

The audience would now Know dream's intentions with tommy better, that this death isnt 'final', but we could still see other characters' grief and reactions and coping without it feeling cheap. Ive seen some 'but people dont know tommy is alive so hes still dead in their mind' but that sucks imo.

We'd know more on dream's ability to revive people and that he can just Do It on a whim (which i think sucks but hey im trying) but no one else would know this canonically

Okay. Im done. If you read this. Thankyou. I love you. Hmu.

[pastelwitchwritesstuff]

for the character ask: Gray Lyon Ultear and Ur ice family let's gooooooo (ik it's a lot so u could combine them into a family unit or do any one character whatever floats ur boat) thanks sm ily ❤️❤️❤️

Ok so lets start with the woman who single handedly raised these ice blocks.

Ur

First thoughts, oh wow she's cool( you can hate me its fine) she's really strong!

This woman is powerful. She is a master ice maker mage and an excellent teacher.

She is kind and compassionate. 

She was patient with Gray, because she understood his pain. 

Ur out of everyone in the series was someone who had the biggest impact on Lyon, Gray and Ultear.

She had her flaws yes she could at times be abrasive,but ultimately that is what made her such a relatable character.

When she discovered that Gray was going after Deliora, she went after him without any hesitation. She fought against the demon and willingly gave her life, she wasn't angry at Gray when she died. She was glad that she was able to seal away his darkness.

Now everyone knows Ur was strong later we hear Jellal say she was on wizard saint level.

One of the things I really wanted to see more of was her ice maker magic. We only really saw Rosen Krone, and a few training spells she taught Gray and Lyon.

Personally I think she could utilize both Dynamic and Static Ice make magic given the fact that she could create the roses(dynamic) and shields(static). But this is my opinion..

Honestly if Ur and Ultear had reunited it would have been a very emotional reunion.

Seeing her again and watching her fight against Lyon and Gray just wow. But it also showed us how far the boys had come from when they were just children.

Ultear.

First thoughts: oh she's pretty, wait she's the villain!!?? But she's still pretty

WE STAN THIS QUEEN!!

Ok but out of all the series villains she was my absolute favorite.

She was driven and ambitious,and went through great lengths to get what she wanted.

Yes her actions were wrong in many cases. But there was still some light in her.

She took Meredy and cared for her as her own.

And after learning that her mother truly loved her, she helped Gray and the other.

And then again when she broke Jellal out of prison, and formed a guild dedicated to bringing down dark guilds and Zeref. She was prepared to spend the rest of her life repenting for her wrong doings. 

She died trying to ensure a future for everyone. That was pretty damn selfless of her. In that moment when she cast that spell, it reflected exactly what Ur did, willingly giving their life's for a better future for those they cared about.

Seeing her as an old woman honestly broke my heart. But seeing her finally at peace for the first time in years also made me happy.

When he appeared again in the battle against Dimaria, I was shook. She looks self assured more than any other time before.

She is still willing to do whatever it takes to help Wendy and Chelia. But again that softness that is so uniquely Ultear shown through. She warned them of the danger when you unlock your third origin,but respected Chelia's wish.

Ultear was a wonderful and complex character. Who truly grew in wonderful ways.

Lyon 

What the hell was his Idea with the weird cold emperor mask thing? JK

Lyon was a decent antagonist, he was cool and calculated. Also prepared to do anything it took to reach his goals.

I'm glad he decided to join a guild. It was a good way for him to open up more and be less emotionally distant.

I got a bit pissed when Mashima tried to pull a love triangle between Lyon ,Juvia and Gray.

It took away the emotional maturity that Lyon had. And just made me dislike the Neo oracion seis arc whenever he was shown.

During the gmg we can see how much he has improved, and how strong he really became during those seven years.

Something that I loved was how he had taken a parental attitude towards Wendy and Chelia; he was kind and patient with them both.

Encouraging whenever one of them was sad or discouraged.

I'm glad that he had made peace with what happened to Ur. He was finally able to start putting the past behind him.

Lyon is driven, and very Intelligent. I just wish we could have seen more of his leader skills because he really is a good leader.

GRAY the sinnamon child.

First thoughts, dude NO no stripping.

His calm and composed attitude was refreshing.( when he was)

Gray is one of the characters that I'm most fond of.

He knows he has flaws and actively tries to better himself. 

He worries about his teammates, and tries to help them whenever he can.

He is very empathetic towards others. And would go against orders to ensure that his guild is kept safe.

Something I hate again the whole Juvia thing is how if he was uncomfortable it was used as a joke.

I love how he has so many good connections with people. And how he,has a way of calming others. 

The thing that had me hooked was despite his magic and how strong he became,there was still this humane part of him that was always shown through.

Despite all the pain and sorrow he went through he still fought for good.

The interactions he has had with people, how he is willing to give those who deserve it a second chance shows how caring he really is.

He has his flaws wanting to give his life so willingly,being one of them. But he learns and grows.

He gives his all,he is loyal and kind and smart.

HEADCANONS 

Ur left her husband because he was abusive,and she wanted a happy home for Ultear to grow up in.

Ur and Ultear loved making snowmen and snow angles together,before Ultear became ill.

After losing her daughter Ur thought she would never be able to love again. But over time two young boys had brought warmth back into her heart.

Rosen Krone was the very first spell that Ultear wanted to learn because she loved roses.

After being taken in by Hades, Ultear would spend hours researching time and how to manipulate it. 

Deep down Ultear knew what she was doing was wrong,but she wanted to see her mother so badly that she pushed away her feelings of guilt.

Despite the fact that she only helped Lyon because of personal gain, she actually took a liking to him. His magic reminded her of her mother.

When Gray had helped her see the truth. And after she and Meredy left the island Ultear broke down and cried for the first time in years.

During the seven year gap, she tried to find ways to find Gray and the rest of fairy tail.

And she also kept an eye on Lyon.

Lyon knew that he was being watched,but he never felt in danger.

When Lyon found out that Ultear was Ur's daughter he had pulled her for a hug.

Gray Lyon and Ultear wanted to spend more time with each other, but they never had the chance.

@izukillme

Thanks for the ask

Remember to send a character and I'll tell you my thoughts on them,and do a few headcanons

[faelapis]

I think the Cartoon Youtubers, or the ones I'm thinking of, aren't trying to erase SU's redeeming nature, just trying to make a useful distinction in SU's version of redemption, which isn't really redemption in the traditional, real-world sense of the word. It's a marker of a character not being a formal enemy, or whatever the SU equivalent, not a sign of total and complete forgiveness. I know you don't want to get into the semantics of the word redemption, I just love their and your content

look, clearly you met different people. i’m not here to rag on individuals.

the people *i’ve* met have been smugly using a liked-then-unliked tweet to “prove” that steven isn’t forgiving and that’s their gotcha card against crits. because instead of challenging them (crits) on their conception that it’s bad for steven to forgive, they’ve bought into the “sometiems u cant help everyone!1!!” narrative hook, line and sinker and are desperate to prove that steven isn’t Actually forgiving or redeeming.

SU doesn’t operate on a distinction between being “really” forgiven or not. it never has. steven making a :/ face at peridot’s ignorant comments and helping her change those doesn’t mean he doesn’t forgive her. it doesn’t mean she didn’t change. the only thing you accomplish by insisting steven doesn’t ~really forgive is this cynical anti-redemption crap that 99% of all media already pushes. you don’t need steven to push that. steven doesn’t want to push that.

also, not only is he cheering for the diamonds, but he didn’t “manipulate” them. white DIDN’T want to talk to him, so this idea that he lied and told them that he’d hang out just so they’d heal the corrupted gems is false. white wasn’t interested. blue & yellow were already on board at the point where steven suggested hanging out more - heck, they’d already tried healing the corrupted gems! 

and steven just… isn’t some master manipulator who secretly hates those he tries to help. that’s not him. he was 100% upfront from Day One that he wasn’t pink. he told them, to their face, that they caused this & have to fix it. none of that means he hates them, even if he doesn’t want to live with them.

he’s slightly exasperated in this scene, but not.. bitter. he just wants a break.

and frankly, i don’t buy that this is just semantics.  these people - or at least, the general environment i’ve encountered, maybe you haven’t - have been trying to look for a “real villain” to hate, an exception to people being saved, an irredeemable bad guy for Years. they’ve never accepted the show’s themes. so i don’t buy that they’re not trying to make a substantial, thematic distinction here.

some are trying to claim SU is saying something it absolutely isn’t, and honestly? they’re failing. it doesn’t defend the show. it certainly does nothing to dissuade the crits. 

frankly, they make SU look pathetic. by insisting the show isn’t “really” forgiving, they make it sound like it doesn’t even believe in its own principles. it makes it look like a failure, if they’re trying to push that the show’s “real” message is just to compromise when it’s useful. that’s not SU’s conveyed message. you know that. it’s much more structurally-aware, much more invested in helping everyone grow.

it wants you to make your own mind up about each character, and steven can get frustrated, yes... but it’s never been shy about believing in everyone.

that’s why i like it. i’d much rather SU successfully be something not everyone likes, than unsuccessfully try to blend in to the media landscape by creating bs technicalities that supposedly disprove its themes.

also, anyone who says even the “they haven’t really changed” stuff still carry the burden of proof to show characters 1)  literally dismantling their empire, 2) healing all corrupted gems, 3) listening to those they hurt, and 4) making every effort to keep changing for the better, doesn’t count as “real change” or “redemption” because white occasionally makes a snarky haha funny comment.

like… okay, she’s not perfect. she can still keep growing, maybe she’ll have more of an arc in “future”... so what? steven is still supporting them. the show still believes in them. wasn’t the halo of perfection something the show wanted to disprove, that it’s okay to be flawed and a work in progress?

that’s something steven says about himself as well. not just the diamonds.

btw, i’m not talking about anyone in particular here. i’m really not. i’m talking about an amalgam of attitudes i’ve seen spread around both on youtube on tumblr, but particularly on youtube, where people Proudly make claims like “the diamonds haven’t changed” or “stop saying the diamonds are redeemed / in the process of being redeemed”.

my response is, i’m gonna say the diamonds are in the obvious process of redemption even louder. and that’s a good thing. i love SU as it is.

[a-deadly-serenade]

i hAVE to get something off my chest. YES its about robin hood to i’ll put it below the cut so i dont look insane

listen. i love guy, he’s been one of my comfort characters for over 10 years now, but if i see one more take on marian for the way she treated guy.... like. u dont need to TELL me guy is damaged honey, i know, i’ve been known. but you really have to take things into perspective here. 

marian is unwed and lives with her father, the same man who’s very job and position were robbed by the sheriff. now, we all know vasey is a cruel man, so it wouldnt be too farfetched to think that he would not tolerate any opposition to his sudden instatement. edward was stripped of his dignity, his power, & the only way he can ensure not only his safety, but his daughter’s as well, is to play along with the sheriff’s schemes. and on marian’s part, that entails her being polite to guy. she’s not stupid, she knows who he is--he’s the sheriff’s right-hand man, she, more than anyone, knows what he’s capable of. even from the beginning, there was no way they could have worked. unfortunately for guy, he’d already established a reputation in her eyes w/out so much as having to speak to her. 

yes we can talk till the sun comes up on how guy only exudes this facade of domineering control because that’s what he was taught shows strength (along with things like money & being able to provide) but how is marian supposed to know that that’s not really who he is at the core of his being if that’s all she’s seen? 

and i dunno, cant you tell how uncomfortable marian is in every scene guy interacts with her?? richard has explicitly said he did that on purpose, so your skin would crawl & it’s like no shit. guy practically forces himself upon her Multiple times in the series. even just taking in the first season, she is SOOoOO uncomfy in almost all their meetings; rolling her eyes half the time, trying to politely brush him off when she clearly wants him to leave; “no father, sir guy was just leaving.” 

do you not think she would fall to being nice? to being his friend? he is a man of position, the sheriff’s lieutenant; one wrong word and both she and her father could be sent to the dungeons or worse. did you not think she would take advantage of the fact that he believed her to be so unthreatening that he’d freely speak of plans to her? gloat about his deeds? she had been the nightwatchman for YEARS, she’d already made up her mind on how she felt the state of england was fairing so... yeah, of course she would help robin in getting rid of the sheriff.

guy isn’t any less guilty either. s1ep13 ring any bells? oh that’s not really king richard, we’re just using it as a way to kill the rest of his supporters, including ur father. anyway, let’s get married honey the king is Totally on his way :) like. when much tries to break it up even threatens her again! “think of your father” AAAAAA!!!!! BOY if you DONT STOP

they were never meant to work. guy had marian on a pedestal, he goes so far as to self-sabotaging their whole relationship by giving her the madonna treatment; she is a pure, saintly, someone that will wash away his sins. if that doesnt make ur skin crawl idk what will. marian cannot be a person, she cannot be someone with faults and decisions of her own, for guy has an idealized image of her in his head. do you know how dangerous that is? im sure this is what ultimately led to him killing her if im being honest. she reveals to him her true self and it’s someone that he’d rather kill than even think could be conceivable. 

anyways. you can have your opinions on marian but like... it drives me insane when i see posts about her being some master manipulator that had 0 empathy i just. are we Watching the same show???

[theholycovenantrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, MIMZ! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF RAPHAEL.

Admin Rosey: I never really thought that Raphael’s application would be so f u n to read. Macabre? Absolutely. Impassioned? Of course. But hilarious to the point where I was giggling? Definitely unexpected but that is what made this so enjoyable and it is ultimately why this application received a r e s o u n d i n g yes from each of us. There was a perspective that I always envisioned for Raphael but was never able to articulate it myself until you laid it out, word by word, with this application, Mimz. Raphael is such a multi-faceted and character that holds so much potential, and the way that you wove it into every aspect of the application made this so fun to read. Thank you so much for taking the time to produce such a wonderful application! Your faceclaim change to Kendrick Sampson has been approved. Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias 

mimz

Age

21

Personal Pronouns

she/her

Activity Level

i’ll typically check the dash every day, and i try not to keep replies stewing for longer than a couple of days! that said i can be a little slow, especially around exam seasons.

Timezone

pst

Triggers

REMOVED

How did you find the group?

miss minnie bleubeard’s blog

IN CHARACTER

Character

raphael, with a fc change to kendrick sampson

What drew you to this character? 

short answer: divine amorality sexy HAHAHAHA

long answer: there was something i read a little while ago about some of the best surgeons being able to dehumanize their patients to a rather frightening degree. there’s a level of abstraction that you need in order to not let your empathy get in the way of the practice of medicine; ultimately, a body is a body is a body, right? and then there’s the moral quandary of healing - it is a doctor’s duty to heal, but what does that actually mean? to what extent is a doctor’s duty to relieve suffering? to obstinately prolong life? if the body heals but the mind still ails, is a person healed? what i’m getting at, here, is that in some ways the healer is the most dangerous character of all. 

when i read raphael’s bio, there was a quote in that article from a surgeon named david cheever that came to mind: “as a result of anaesthetics, the surgeon ‘need not hurry; he need not sympathise; he need not worry; he can calmly dissect, as on a dead body.’” to me, raphael is an explosion and expansion of this concept. raphael is, quite literally, a medical ethicist’s worst nightmare, and to me, that’s absolutely fascinating. without sympathy, what separates a healer from an educated control freak with a god complex? with raphael, we can extend this concept to its furthest extreme. raphael isn’t even human - how could he even begin to sympathize with an experience so foreign to him? why would he worry about something trivial as human suffering when it essentially exists as a theoretical concept to him? divine beings have no reason to play by human rules, and as a creature raised by god’s side raphael was so far removed from the concept of human suffering that it’s sort of a no-brainer that he developed a sick fascination with it, like a child who managed to con their parent into buying a grand theft auto game and is obsessed with running over pedestrians because the stakes never quite feel real. it’s a perspective i’d absolutely love to explore in a group rp setting because the nature of rp means that it’s kind of...completely unsustainable? like as writers we’re shoving these characters together, which means that raphael will have to be exposed to mortals. there’s room for a lot of character development there, and it seems like something extremely interesting to explore.

BUT HERE’S THE THING⁠—and this is where the character gets really fun, in my opinion. i’ve talked a fair bit about god complexes already, but when applied to raphael an interesting question is raised: how much is a complex, and how much of it is actually being divine? what really made me want to get my grubby little hands on the reins of raphael’s story was seeing the disconnect between the way his connections are written from raphael’s perspective versus the other character’s perspective. it’s a fun little hubristic shade that makes him an unreliable narrator and infinitely more interesting than a simple morality thought experiment. i think it’s easy to see raphael as this super cool, all-powerful master manipulator (i think that’s a pretty accurate take on his self-image, in fact), but he’s not the only player in this game. for every pawn he’s trying to move, there is someone else trying to use him in a similar way, and i don’t know that he truly understands the ramifications of that. see, i think it’s easy to reduce raphael to the points i discuss in the previous paragraphs because that’s what he wants you to think of him. but this is a world of gods and superpowers and magical political intrigue and game of thrones doesn’t exist so nobody can tell him that he’s on the path to becoming a cersei lannister (admittedly i haven’t watched got so this reference might not be right but i feel like it’s right so uh. yeah!). maybe i just like to see arrogant men getting knocked down a peg? this might be a projection of that. i dunno. i just know that there are quite a few mind games and mental gymnastics to untangle with raphael and that’s fun. he’s fun.

also. i would like to once again reiterate: divine amorality sexy. it’s not good, to be clear, and i don’t condone it, but i’m just saying.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character?

WHEN  THE  CITY  CRUMBLES  AROUND  YOU  AND  YOU  HOLD  ITS VESTIGES  IN  YOUR  HANDS,  WHOM  DO  YOU  BLAME?

i think Raphael’s big character arc revolves around a simple question: how far are you willing to go to achieve what you want? 

ostensibly, it’s an easy answer: very far. but when your desire is antithetical to your very purpose, when chasing it puts you at odds with the thing you’ve worked to build, do the goalposts move?

(the correct answer is that raphael did not build caelum. he simply destroyed god.)

let’s say, hypothetically, that raphael gets what he wants. the world is thrown into war and chaos and destruction, yadda yadda, raphael gets his blood and his suffering, great. he’s lived through this before (a couple times, actually), so you think he’d realize by now—eventually, the dust will settle. people will tire of suffering. and where will that leave raphael? how many times will you remake the world to watch it burn? can you ever be fulfilled chasing a temporary high? 

(the correct answer is no, but raphael is an immortal being. more importantly, he is a patient one. he will wait a million days for rome to be built, if only to witness the single day in which it will burn.)

i think raphael needs to reckon with these questions. i think he’s lived far too long with his mentality unquestioned and that has made him both insufferable and a major threat to society. this is a long and pretentious way to say that raphael honestly kind of needs a hobby whatever the thc-verse equivalent of therapy is, but i think any sort of positive character development is contingent upon a recontextualization of suffering and chaos and raphael’s masks.

of course, this isn’t to say that introspection will only lead to positive character development. perhaps a raphael who looks deeper into his psyche will come to understand that his desires outweigh his role; perhaps such thoughts will push raphael over the edge of propriety and into something more outwardly despicable. no matter what, though, i think that the direction of raphael’s character development will be largely shaped on how he decides to prioritize his⁠ roles and goals. 

FOR  WHOM  DO  THESE  HANDS  HEAL?

let’s discuss the archangels, shall we? despite it all, raphael genuinely loves his brothers. i would argue, even, that raphael believes that his scheming is in service to the other archangels; he’s not blind to the way complacency has softened the angels. at this point, the only true threat to the angels is themselves—if michael wants to to unlock a state of sanctifying grace, it will happen at the hand of one of his kin. 

i spoke earlier about raphael’s goals ultimately being futile. this is largely because they are diametrically opposed to michael and gabriel’s goals, and while raphael knows this intellectually, i don’t think he’s quite thought about what the long-term implications of that conflict entails. he’s so caught up in the conflict between michael and gabriel that he’s neglected to consider how he factors into the dynamic. could he be the common ground that brings michael and gabriel together? could he be the final straw that breaks them apart? he is excited for the fighting, the fallout; but has he stopped to consider what the long-reaching effects of such a rift may be?

raphael is breaking his family apart because he loves them. will that be enough, when he is sent to pick up the pieces? whose side will he fall on, if he is to pick a side at all? 

DID  PYGMALION  FALL  IN  LOVE  WITH  THE  BEAUTY  OF  HIS  CREATION,  OR  THE  BEAUTY  HE  CREATED?

i said this in the previous section but i’d like to reiterate it: i think a big reason raphael is Like That is because the stakes have never quite felt real to him. raphael’s a pot stirrer, but he’s not a creature of action. to this, i say give him real stakes. to be honest, i don’t know exactly what that entails, because i could see a number of ways in which tangible pressure manifests itself for raphael. perhaps his meddling with michael and gabriel steps too far, and his brothers  perhaps the angels become suspicious of his maneuvering, in which the spider is drawn into his own web of intrigue. maybe we apply positive pressure, where the ails of the world require a healer and raphael is tapped to higher purpose⁠—and higher power. maybe raphael will find himself tempted by the very demons he holds in contempt. 

the point is that raphael has largely been a character who acts through others. even now, we see this through his grooming of romilda, with his subtle manipulation of michael and gabriel. i want him to become a more active character, either by his own volition or by his hand being forced. 

similarly, i’m extremely interested in seeing how raphael navigates the political elements of this verse. i expect it stings a bit to be the only archangel not given a position of leadership; perhaps he holds lingering resentment toward zadkiel for being given a role raphael had expected to receive. does he subtly undermine zadkiel’s leadership? i want to watch him play up tensions with the vices, to hide a vicious war-hawk perspective under the guise of a concerned healer. i want him to smile in abaddon and samael’s faces and plot their suffering in his mind. i want to see the snake slither in the grass, to return to his original form as a spider spinning a web of intrigue across his court. yes, i want a more active raphael, but i think the political drama is ripe for development, as well.

WHEN  I  SPIT  UP  MY  SINS  AND  BEG  FOR  REPENTANCE,  WHAT  WILL COME  UP?

this one’s a long shot, but i could maybe...see...raphael……..falling. i can guarantee you that the idea has never even crossed raphael’s mind, and that he would literally rather be smited than be cast out of caelum, but i can see it. i think he might be happier, actually; if he fell, he could really lean into the chaos and suffering thing without any compunction.

of course, this is something infinitely easier said than done. were raphael to be cast out of caelum, he would have nowhere to go. infernum would never take him⁠—he’s made far too many enemies among their ranks. he could wander the holy land, but he’s far too proud to bind himself to its existing social systems. (he wouldn’t be able to look gabriel in the eye.)

raphael would have absolutely nothing. 

but he would also be free.

that’s right, i think that a horsemen-style liberation arc would be an absolute banger for raphael. again, i don’t think it’s feasible unless a very specific set of circumstances happen, but just imagine a raphael with nothing to lose, free to go absolutely apeshit. his only prerogative is to make sure you have a bad day. he is free to sow whatever chaos, whatever suffering he so wishes across the land. WHEW.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character?

yes, but i don’t see him going down easily.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation

entomological curiosity, in short. consider: why did god leave the apple in the garden of eden? why do humans keep animals in glass cases? why do children burn ants with magnifying glasses?

raphael wants to observe the world. a good healer must understand his patients at a fundamental level, and such truths are only revealed when the subject is broken down to its basest parts. you see, raphael was weaned on temperance and virtue; there is a lush decadence to emotional extremes that he finds most fascinating. they are debased. they are crass. they are wantonly sentimental, in a garishly beautiful way.

but this is not all. he wants to stave off boredom, and these are the tools he has to play with. for all of his machinations, raphael is a simple being. raphael has no grand ambitions, no lofty ideals, and that is what makes him so dangerous. he wants to be amused. he wants to be stimulated. he wants to observe a world in which things happen.

ostensibly, this is not as selfish a motivation as it may seem. as a healer, raphael knows something that many do not: serenity cannot exist in perpetuity. it is impossible for the world to remain unchanged⁠—even if the change is not evident, it is happening. an eternal peace is all but a stagnation of the kingdom; the only thing stagnation breeds is degradation. the angels are weakening because they are not being challenged. michael and the virtues may be doing extensive research to find an alternate explanation, but raphael knows this to be the truth. 

of course, the irony underlying the selfless explanation of raphael’s motivations reveals the truth of the matter: it is a farce. perhaps it is a lie that raphael has even convinced himself he believes, but it is farcical nonetheless. raphael claims he wants to invoke change because stagnation is dangerous, but riddle me this⁠—if this is true, why has raphael never changed? centuries upon centuries have passed, and the world has changed around him, but raphael himself has remained largely unchanged. he is the orchestrator of change, not its agent nor its subject, and that is just the way he would like things to stay.

Character Traits

CHARISMATIC - there’s a reason very few have cottoned on to raphael’s true nature, and it’s not (just) his pretty face and magical girl-esque aura. there’s something effortlessly captivating about raphael, a pace to his cadence that has you hanging on to his every word, a lightness to his smile that makes you want to coax it out whenever and however you can. everything about raphael puts people at ease, except for his eyes, which tend to put people on edge if he’s not careful. he’s not gregarious or the outgoing sort of charismatic by any means, but he does manage to exude an overwhelming charisma.

PATIENT - it’s important to remember that before raphael turned on god, he waited for him. raphael performed healings for centuries and never raised a hand against his father in that time. think of all the angels that fell, that rebelled; raphael was not among them. no, raphael played the dutiful son, allowing his resentment to fester and boil deep underneath his skin, but never to surface. for centuries he served loyally, biding his time. remember: lucifer fell. raphael did not. which one killed god? as i mentioned in the plot section, raphael will wait a million days for rome to be built to witness the single day it burns. prolonged suffering is perhaps the most beautiful of all. fortitude goes hand-and-hand with patience.

INTELLIGENT - in a few ways. raphael is well-studied, with extensive knowledge of biology and chemistry and history and politics. raphael is emotionally intelligent; he hides his true nature behind a veneer constructed to meet expectations. he may not be as talented as gabriel in this regard, but it is a skillful construction nonetheless.

MANIPULATIVE - i mean. yeah.

ARROGANT - he thinks he’s smarter than god???????????????? tbf god was a bit of a headass in this universe but we’ve all read enough tragedies to know where this kind of hubris ends up going.

CRUEL - there’s a bit to unpack here. i’d argue that there are two types of cruelty: malicious cruelty and callous cruelty. raphael is certainly capable of both, but i think he embodies the latter. with certain notable exceptions, raphael’s cruelty is rarely personal; it is a thoughtless sort of cruelty, the type inflicted upon beings considered expendable. raphael is selfish and petty and powerful, and these traits coalesce into a casual cruelty. 

In-Character Para Sample cw: light gore

Look at how they look at him. God’s good little lambs, lined up all in a row, passive and pliant and patiently awaiting benediction. Patiently waiting for Raphael. 

Raphael hates them.

No. This is false. It is difficult for Raphael to muster up stronger feelings toward mortals than a vague sort of amusement, the sort of affinity one might have for a particularly stupid kit when it does something surprisingly clever. In this regard, he understands that he differs from his kin. Gabriel, in particular, has developed a particular fondness for the mortals. Why anyone would wish to strip mortals of their most fascinating behavior⁠—to the point of openly defying their Father⁠—is beyond Raphael. He has given up on trying to reason with his brother on the matter. 

The first supplicant is beckoned forward. They pray to the Lord and Raphael touches their forehead with one palm, cups their chin with the other. His fingers splay carelessly around a throat all but bared to him and the ceremony is so mechanical Raphael allows his thoughts to wander⁠. 

How easy it would be to tighten his grip. How beautiful it would be, to watch the lamb’s naive adoration flash into fear, to watch fear darken into betrayal and resentment and the most beautiful emotion of all: despair. He can feel the pulse at his fingertips. It would quicken in a stress response, he knows. It would quicken, then it would pound, and then maybe it would stop.  It all falls to Raphael’s whim. In this moment, Raphael holds their life in his hands. They have all but laid on his sword for the promise of absolution and when they look up at Raphael with their dumb, trusting eyes he can see the sparkling tracks where tears once fell, down the hollow of a cheek into the pool of a collarbone. He finds himself overcome with the desire to trace the fall with his tongue. “Give me your pain,” he murmurs. Let me taste it. Let me understand. 

He takes it. He does not taste it. He does not understand.

He releases the mortal. Those beautiful tear tracks are already fading. “The Lord be with you,” he says, and perhaps he even means it. His Father’s gaze burns into his back, even from a world away. He’d laugh at the irony, were he free to. Is this the weight you so desire? he wants to ask the devotee. No, Raphael knows the truth: God’s love is a shackle. God’s love is a leash and it is holding Raphael back from his fullest potential.

“And also with you,” the lamb responds. Their head is bowed obediently in prayer and they shuffle away, appropriately awed. The next supplicant is beckoned forward.

The light of Raphael’s presence obfuscates the darkness in his eyes.

— 

Later, much later, Raphael finds himself studying his hands. He flexes them, balls them into fists, stretches his fingers as far as they will spread. 

How easy it would be to tighten his grip.

The hand is at once an individual unit and a summation of individual parts. The hand contains twenty-seven bones and thirty-four muscles connected by over a hundred ligaments and tendons. Wrists connect to metacarpals, which connect to carpals, which taper off into delicate phalanges. Individually, each of these parts are largely useless; were Raphael to take a scalpel and drag it through a tendon, across the joints, the strings would be cut and the puppetry would cease to dance. You would be left with a small pile of carpals and metacarpals and phalanges, loose strings of muscle and tendon. At times, it is difficult to fathom how such mundane component parts are the instruments of extraordinary acts.

Raphael flexes his hand, watches bone shift under skin. If he remembers correctly, mortals have an idiom about knowing your hands, or something along those lines. He will not pretend to be familiar with mortal culture. Did you know that, wings aside, mortals and angels all have the same bone structure? 

Of course you did. It is common knowledge that God made all beings in His image, or so the story goes. 

This is an easy answer, but one with interesting implications. Let us extrapolate. If mortals and angels are essentially biological mirrors, and each are made in the image of God, does that mean that God will bleed like His creations? Slide a scalpel across God’s knuckles—will His puppets cease to dance?

Raphael could find out. It would take only a single blade, sliced through a single tendon. 

Now, Raphael is not so arrogant to believe himself the blade. He would not even consider himself the hand. Such a role requires a particular kind of conviction—

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in bitter disillusionment⁠—the sort inflicted upon Michael. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s capriciousness and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in righteous anger⁠—the sort inflicted upon Gabriel. How easy it would be to find himself in his brother’s ear, whispering of their Father’s neglect and the unnecessary cruelty that resulted for the poor, poor humans— )

( —and that sort of conviction is made manifest in a whetted hunger⁠—the sort God gifted to each of His angels. Hunger breeds hunters and heaven is full— )

—that Raphael simply cannot embody. Rage has never been his forte. 

Consider, however, that the hand is controlled by nerve impulses. A spark is all the hand needs to transform from a collection of bone to an agent of action. Yes. He clenches his fists. Here are the bones, the veins, the tendons, the muscle. Angels and mortals all share the same bone structure.

Does God?

Extras

pinterest.

raphael has classically beautiful wings. i’m talking TEXTBOOK cherubic angel wings, with the sweeping white feathers and all. raphael kind of hates them, though he takes a great deal of pride in them.

raphael doesn’t have a signature weapon. he’s proficient with blades, yes, and fights with a surgeon’s precision, not the strongest nor the fastest but eerily efficient in his blows. but he is a healer—at the end of the day, his empty hands are all he needs. (his empty hands are what you should fear.)

raphael hates the heretics pro forma but. but. he cannot deny a certain...fondness for them. the heretics exhibited such dedication to a futile cause; they believed their suffering to be something noble. it’s a laughable notion, certainly, but a sentiment so distinctly human it’s almost charming. should they wish to return, to throw themselves on the knife over and over and over, well. raphael shall not complain. he shall smile beatifically, perhaps abate their suffering, even⁠—and watch them do it again. 

in a modern au, raphael is a reality tv producer. ok actually he’s probably a surgeon but i think he’d make a very good reality tv producer. alternately, there is a universe out there where raph fixated on like...baking, or k-pop, instead of suffering. those are good timelines, i think. maybe not the k-pop stan timeline.

raphael is the living embodiment of that dwight schrute “we need a new plague” meme.

[mejomonster]

maybe i love angst but ep 32 was one of my favorites. (i think its been like ep 22, 27-8? and 32? basically big zhou zishu or big gu xiang scenes). 

like i loved that wen kexing was facing both his past legacy and future hopes, and current consequences, and ZHANG CHENGLING is there. i love that zhou zishu came and crashed the whole thing because of course he did. and of course he says to zhang chengling “do you trust me” then even though he doesn’t get an answer, goes down to choose wen kexing’s side. oh my god my heart. he really has no idea what’s going on but he’ll pick killing all these people to save wen kexing any day. ;-; and the entire wanderers family is going THROUGH it because gu xiang just ran away as a fugitive, is trying to keep wen kexing’s secret plan secret but she also has little idea wtf is going on and is STRESSED, cao weining’s own master meanwhile is a shady ass power hungry traitor so his world just TOTALLY upside down. u got cao weining actually probably picking wen kexing to trust cause the man never lied to HIM, meanwhile you got Zhang Chengling’s entire recent life upside down because the Scorpion KIDNAPPED and tortured him but he’s at his ‘uncle’ Zhao Jing’s side, meanwhile his adopted dad Wen Kexing is THE bad guy ‘who killed his whole sect’ and is now yelling to kill all these ‘righteous men’ and his other adopted dad who he trusts More even trusts as an assassin spy ;-; shows up and instead of calming zhang chengling down with some explanation, the last time zhang chengling saw him he had to KNOW zhou zishu was lying to comfort him.

and zhang chengling meanwhile worried wen kexing would die just RECENTLY. worried zhou zishu was dead like his dad! now zhou zishu’s back, but he goes and sides with wen kexing! and zhang chengling - i highly suspect from that big toast at the feast after the death - he KNOWS some manipulations are going on. he can’t possibly still be this naive. yes he was played at that big fight

yes his emotions got the better of him, and he trusted wen kexing and hey wen kexing SAID it was his fault about zhang chengling’s dead family, he SAID kill him. and while zhang chengling was likely suspicious of Zhao Jing and most people’s motives, hell probably even wen kexing’s for SURE in that moment. he also has been trusting wen kexing for ???? the entire recent past. and he came to find out if wen kexing was really the ghost master, if he really killed his parents. and wen kexing SAYS he did. so of course zhang chengling is predisposed to believe him. if no one else there, zhang chengling is probably bafflingly most likely to believe the ghost valley lord. especially when he says something confirming what everyone else said and zhang chengling was already afraid it was true. 

so zhang chengling attacking wen kexing is the only thing he’d really BE able to do. zcl doesn’t care about the glazed armor though! and i feel like he knows all these bullshit sects are up to something. 

anyway. back to the part where zhou zishu says “do you trust me?” then gets no response and jumps down with wen kexing to fight. shut up. Also is there a line “you’re my person” or is that from another episode? Because i did NOT see/hear that line at all during the episode, but based on gifs i expected it when he jumped down to join wen kexing.

everything zhou zishu does after? painful as all hell. but so well acted. and very in character. for show him anyway. ep 1 we know how intense he will get if a loved one dies. if he realizes his hopes have been destroyed (in ep 1 case over the course of 10 years). whereas this is his gut reaction after all his hopes shatter in a MINUTE. and his most loved one, the person who REALLY understood him, is gone. (not to mention he thinks he’s failed gu xiang and zhang chengling right now). the dude’s been extreme, it just leaps out now. also i have no idea what he plans? but im guessing he took out the nails so he’d have his full martial arts abilities?? and hes just like ‘well if they shatter from the strain, at least i’ll kill some motherfuckers in revenge on my way out.’ right? that’s what i’m guessing his ass is planning. 

[mingjue]

MY THOUGHTS ON FATAL JOURNEY-- this will obviously contain spoilers for the entire thing bc it’s. ALL my thoughts. 

FIRST OFF AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

MINGJUE CRIES. ALMOST 3 SEPARATE TIMES.

also mingjue with his hair down :)

BABY BROTHERS NIE MNIGJUE AND NIE HUAISANG TOO!!!!! MINGJUE GAVE HUAISANG THE BRUSH HE USED :((

these bitches can also teleport short distances now??? like mingjue teleported. he can teleport. 

AND THEY HAVE GIANT SPIRIT THINGIES??? LIKE AT THE END MINGJUE FUCKING FOUGHT ONE OF HIS ANCESTORS W A GIANT SPIRIT THAT CAME FROM HIM

he had a red one that was buff and showed some boobie but the spirit wasnt the hottest, i can make it hot though.

the ancestor had a light blue one that was basically a skeleton w hair with a floaty piece behind him. i can also make that sexy

i really want to see the concept art for these spirits though they were NOT standing still or anything and i cant w the CGI used for them

the dragon only appeared briefly after huaisang big brained and reset coffins, and it was all spinny n stuff and huaisang was SMUG......he reset the tomb before him bubba did.

^ that said there was two tombs, the white(?) tiger and the green dragon, they had to balance out those tombs or whatever before going into the main tomb, which i think is where the first master of the nie clan is held?? which is why he had that spirit thing and was able to posses someone.

so they cross the bridge into the main tomb, and that’s where huaisang falls off and mingjue calls after him. mingjue dives down to save him, and uses baxia to fly about and catch him. and she leaves a deep fucking cut into the wall bc they slide down some before finally stopping. 

so mingjue is holding huaisang nd all that. and he manages to 1. throw huaisang above him (w magic usage). 2. pull baxia up and throw her to huaisang, and baxia pulls huaisang up the rest of the way and he lands on the other side of the bridge, BUT, mingjue falls AND I CANT HANDLE IT.

LIKE HE’S UNDER THE IMPRESSION HE’S GOING TO DIE SO HE’S LIKE.......SMILING BC HE TRUSTED HUAISANG I GUESS

BUT HUAISANG WAS LIKE IM GOING TO THROW MYSELF BACK DOWN THERE AND GET MY BROTHER.

so he does and he goes through this maze that always lead him to the same spot, until hes chased a bit and knocked the fuck out-- then he wakes up in nmjs lap

AND THIS IS WHEN NMJ FIRST ACTUALLY CRIES-- like i THINK he teared up a bit beforehand, like when nhs calls him out for what they’re doing and he prolly got overwhelmed by 1. realizing what they’re doing. 2. his little brother is mad at him + accusing him of doing evil shit. 3. ALSO HUAISANG SAYS BASICALLY “WHO ARE YOU TO DECIDE THEIR FATE?” after it was pointed out only Evil men were sacrificed. and nmj later says something similar to this to jgy before he dies.

but he actually cries when they’re both in this. whatever part of the temple bc he thinks the both of them are going to die down there and it’s pretty much his fault they’re both there.

IT FUCKS ME UP!!!! IT FUCKS ME UP!! Oh my god.

anyways huaisang big brains again and gets them out right. they go back and find everyone. and nmj is like “just me and nhs will be going ok” but his men r like “WE’RE WILLING TO GO W U!!!” and nmj tears up again.

HES GENUINELY JUST BIG INTIMIDATING MAN WITH SOFT HEART I CANT DO THIS!!!!!!!DHFKJDH

then the whole thing starts with the spirits fighting, nmj fighting the ancestor to seal the sword spirit, all that

NOW TO TALK ABOUT HUAISANG AND HIS FLUTE: jgy used huaisang as another way to aggravate mingjues qi. he taught huaisang the version of clarity that he manipulated, and that’s what leads mingjue to killing three of the men that came with them while enraged by his qi. huaisang didn’t realize this at the time bc at first clarity was working! but i think he saw it as the sword spirit overpowering clarity and killing those men

either that, or huaisang only said that as to not distress mingjue further, bc when mingjue realizes all of them are dead, he cries hard, like really really hard. 

they do their bows for those who died (bc when they arrived they had like. 20 men. and pretty much all of them got fucking killed) and there’s a scene after they’re out of them looking over the land similar to when they were younger, and mingjue says “Huaisang, no matter what you want to do, Da-ge will protect you” and bitch i CRIED

there were also several scenes of baby mingjue and huaisang i couldnt handle it they’re so fucking cute pleading emoji pleading emoji pleading em

then i THINK. ok so after that there’s text, and i BELIEVE it’s going over how mingjue qi deviated a little after everything happened. huaisang and him were able to reconcile in the movie, but im not sure how soon the movie was set before mingjue qi deviated.

so basically after this, it’s showing mingjues funeral. huaisang is in his bedroom grieving, when one of his books go wacky, and shows the error in the song of clarity that guangyao taught him. So huaisang figured out first, WAY before wwx did, what guangyao was doing, and that’s why his brother lashed out and killed the remaining men at the temple the way he did.

then guangyao walks in like “stop grieving bitch”(????) and huaisang stands up, and THAT’S the scene where huaisang is like “thank you, san-ge” and does the bow-- which i believe then goes into like, how everything unfolded in the untamed. That’s when he began planning everything and he knew his target immediately.

its just. 

this whole movie is STUPID good and im not over it

yes the cgi was wonky sometimes but also its the untamed. 

and im thinking like. bc unironically, i think this movie was done better than Living Dead, and i think it’s purely because they didnt have to introduce new characters and the like, + it was easier to stay IC vs how wen ning became OOC w LD

should they have had more screentime to make LD, I think it would’ve been a pretty great concept-- and if they had a better budget, bc with.........new, main-ish, antagonist characters, the plain clothing was >:(

but with FJ, even with the shitty cgi at times, they had enough budget to get a shit ton of horses, so like,

i dont know i cant stop thinking about emotional nmj. he SOBS dude. he straight up CRIES. it makes ME emotional bc he’s genuinely a really soft guy at heart and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH :((((((((((

he just wanted huaisang and his men to be safe :((

AND I FORGOT TO MENTION: NMJ NOT ATTACKING NHS BC EVEN BLIND W QI HE RECOGNIZED HIS LITTLE BROTHER. SHUT UP

oh my god ok. 

thats it for right now.

[korejinnie]

The 7 Jungian Archetypes of BTS’ Consciousness

BTS has been hitting the idea of Archetypes and personalities since Fake Love era. And now, after MOTS: Persona, we can finally confirm that each member, along with the unique masks projected onto each member during the 2018 Japan MAMA Fake Love Intro, that each of the members represents a different archetype and character. 

There are a total of 12 Jungian Archetypes:

Ruler

Creator/Artist

Sage

Innocent

Explorer

Rebel

Hero

Wizard

Jester

Everyman

Lover

Caregiver

And these 12 archetypes are separated into 4 different categories:

And so from the 12 Jungian Character Archetypes, I found the 7 archetypes that best represents the 7 members of BTS and created the 7 Archetypes of BTS’ Consciousness. (*Note that I incorporated 2 other similar archetypes into 2 of the 7 archetypes because Yoongi and Taehyung are a bit more complicated).

So let’s begin with Hoseok.

- The Jester

This is the Jester/Clown:

"They are the masters who have no emotional connections or family but who cause a spark of interest in us and can have a deep impact on us if we meet one. Humour and wit equate power and with this archetype, looks can be deceiving."

This actually represents Hoseok quite well, as we know he has Munchausen's Syndrome. This is a psychiatric disorder where someone will make up events or illnesses to draw attention/sympathy to himself. All the pills Hoseok took and all the things he said about his illnesses, they’re not real. So in a sense, he lies and manipulates others to gain attention and sympathy from others.

He also has no family because as we know, his mom left him at the amusement park with a bar of snickers when he was really young. Hoseok copes with his illnesses by laughing it off. He is the sunshine, and he makes everyone happy, but that at the same time, drains him on the inside.

- The Innocent/Orphan

This is the Innocent/Orphan:

“The Orphan is the lost child, without a solid identity they have the opportunity to feel deep suffering yet see life for what it is without attachment. Its shadow is its likelihood of becoming the victim, consumed in its loss, much like the Magical child it will assume it will be ‘saved’ and that fate has more strength than its own actions.”

Though Taehyung isn’t actually an orphan, his mother died when he was young and his father was very abusive, which led him to become a lost child. Taehyung accidentally killed his father with an alcohol glass bottle when he saw that his father was abusing his sister and he wanted to protect his sister. Ever since then, he has become a victim of that incident. Taehyung has also been protected by his sister ever since his mother’s death. His sister acted as the mother figure, so for the most part, Taehyung had not much idea what his father was doing to his sister when he was young, nor did he know how to stop it.

This incident, along with his past of fatherly abusement, very soon became his shadow, as he sings about this in the WINGS short film “Stigma”. He gets caught by the police for vandalizing a garage door and every question the police asks him and every answer he replies with hits him like a punch in the face. He’s a lost puppy, and he has no idea what to do. In truth, he just wants to be happy. Taehyung, like a puppy, is innocent and all he wants is to be happy, however, the shadow of his abusive father and his murder incident makes him a victim. 

As we saw in the highlight reel, he actually has a kind heart and is good-natured. He wants to do things right. He attacked his father to protect his sister during “I NEED U”, and he caught the girl who was stealing the backpack in the convenience store and offered to pay for the things she stole for her instead of turning her in for what she did.

- The Explorer

This is the Explorer:

"The explorer leaves home to find themselves, battles monsters and then returns home to slay their own demons. As with all journeys, we travel far from home only to discover that what we were looking for was on our doorstep the whole time.” 

Namjoon, as we know Namjoon lives in poverty as a homeless person. The rest of the boys see Namjoon as a responsible adult that they admire, but Namjoon believes that he does not deserve to be perceived in such a way. Namjoon eventually moves away for a period of time, which is during the same time Taehyung got in trouble and tried calling Namjoon for help.

Namjoon’s fear is being lost in life, yet his greatest weakness is aimless wandering. Homeless people are usually seen as the “misfits” of society, and we see his weakness through this aspect of him as a person. Namjoon wants to experience a better, more authentic, and more fulfilling life. He has bigger dreams for his future... but he decides to forget about his dreams because they seem impossible to him. He has to work at a gas station to make ends meet... so how could he? In “I NEED U” we also see him get in trouble with Taehyung a lot, and this was how it was in HYYH. Taehyung looked up to Namjoon and they were very close together. They were happy together as the misfits of society.

- The Everyman

This is the Everyman:

As we know from The Notes and “SAVE ME” Webtoons comic, when Jimin was young, he witnessed the murder of one of his classmates by a group of gangsters at an arboretum. He then also suffers from a crippling illness that causes him to have seizures. It is unknown if this illness developed after the incident at the arboretum or previous to the incident, but either way, this crippling illness causes him to transfer schools a lot due to his long and regular hospital visits. After he met the rest of the boys, his mood and illness were stable again for a while, but this happiness didn’t last long and he eventually was sent to the hospital again and spiraled back into depression.

Jimin has a fear of being left out and not being loved for his true self. When he was a child his parents were never there for or with him, and he had no friends because of his illness and constant hospital visits. Especially since after the arboretum incident, he was pretty much scarred for life and because he was so terrified, ever since then he never told anyone about the incident nor and tried to forget what he saw.

All Jimin ever wanted was to belong, to feel normal, to be a part of a group. But the downside to that was he would lie in order to seem “normal”. He would lie so he could be liked, and so he could be accepted. This is evident throughout the highlight reels and Jimin’s WINGS short film “Lie”.

When Hoseok and the girl he liked was dancing together, Jimin secretly filmed them dancing. As soon as the girl realized that Jimin was filming them, she told Jimin to come and join their dance practice, but Jimin felt shy and embarrassed and instead refused the girl’s invitation. In “Lie”, Jimin knew about the aboretum incident, and he knew a lot more than he was telling the hospital, or whichever facility he was being put in. But when the camera pointed to him and the robot hand showed him a card, seemingly asking him if he knew something, he lied by smiling.

- The Caregiver

This is the Caregiver:

“The caregiver feels stronger than other people. They want to protect people from harm and try to prevent any danger or risk from threatening other people’s happiness.”

Jungkook, as the youngest boy out of the friend group, looks up to his hyungs a lot. As we know, Jungkook’s mother and stepfather ignore him when his stepbrothers beat him up, which leads him to have suicidal thoughts. But he soon found happiness after meeting the 6 other boys and he becomes very close with Yoongi. However, this happiness didn’t last long, because one day, after a teacher hit Jungkook for misbehaving, Yoongi stood up for Jungkook but unfortunately got expelled from school. Ever since then, Jungkook felt guilty for getting Yoongi expelled. 

Jungkook has a fear of letting his hyungs down and he hates to see his hyungs unhappy. He wants the best for his hyungs, but oftentimes he would end up sacrificing himself in order to make up for his hyungs’ happiness. Jungkook always wants to protect and care for his hyungs, and he is very compassionate and generous when it comes to the people he loves and cares about.

And we definitely see this in Fake Love and Euphoria. In Fake Love, everyone else traded an item that represented each of their fears for a positive attitude, except Jungkook. Jungkook recieved a key that would open the door to the Singularity room. Many Armys have theorized that this key would open a room that’s similar to Pandora’s Box, but in our case, Jungkook traded himself instead, for his Hyung’s happiness. We see later on, after he traded himself for the key, that he ran around the fake love house and had to experience every single one of his hyungs’ deepest fears in order to understand how they truly felt. At the beginning of “Euphoria” and in “I NEED U”, Yoongi tried to commit suicide by lighting his room on fire in hopes of dying in the fire. In “SAVE ME” Webtoons comics, we see that Yoongi almost always seems to end up either dying or getting injured in the fire that he caused within his apartment room. In Euphoria and SAVE ME, Jungkook was the one who runs into the room to help pull Yoongi out of the fire and save him. 

He tries to sacrifice himself and his happiness in exchange for his Hyungs’ happiness.

- The Rebel/Destroyer

“The rebel is a transgressor. They provoke people and don’t care at all about other people’s opinions. As a result, they like going against the grain and thinking for themselves. The negative side of the rebel archetype is that they can become self-destructive.”

Yoongi, as we know, used to love playing the piano because his mother taught him how to play. However, after his mother died in a fire, Yoongi was traumatized by that incident and ever since then, Yoongi blamed himself for his mother’s death and became suicidal and depressed. He would frequently smoke and drink as ways to help cope with his depression and PTSD.

And it’s because of this traumatic experience, that he started to become careless of those around him and how they felt. He would use self-destructing methods to harm himself because he feels guilty for his mother’s death. In the SAVE ME webtoons, during one of Jin’s time-traveling sequence, Yoongi tried to commit suicide. After Jin pulled Yoongi out of the burning apartment and called the ambulance to help rescue Yoongi from the fire, he blamed Jin because Jin was the reason why he was still alive and he asked them why Jin couldn’t just let him die in the fire.

- The Sage

“The Sage archetype seeks the truths that will set us free. Especially if the Sage overcomes the temptation of dogma, it can help us become wise, to see the world and ourselves objectively, and to course-correct based on objective analyses of the results of our actions and choices. The Sage is a seeker after truth and enlightenment and journeys far in search of the next golden nugget of knowledge. The danger for the sage and their deep fear is that their hard-won wisdom is built on the sand of falsehood.”

I’ve previously explained in my “BU Storyline Summary” why Jin is the only real character throughout the entire BU storyline and how the BU storyline is about his journey to finding his soul and learning to truly love himself, eventually reaching enlightenment.

Now, Jin has a fear of knowing the truth, but deep down inside, he has a strong desire to understand the truth (it’s kind of confusing but just think of it in this way: After taking a test, you have a strong desire to know what grade you got, yet simultaneously you also don’t want to know what grade you got because you fear you got a bad grade). This entire journey throughout the BU timeline consists of Jin, through his mental illnesses and obstacles, trying to break down the barriers and defeat his inner dragon (AKA his mental challenges). 

In a way, Jin represents all the boys, and all the boys represent Jin. The aspects of the Sage can be found in nearly all 6 other archetypes, and all 6 other archetypes can be related in some way or another to The Sage.

So, this theory took me a good 5 hours to make, and I have no idea why. This took way longer than it should have, but I hope it makes sense and also helps to clear up some questions you previously had regarding the BU timeline/storyline and theories uwu.

[rhyaxxyn]

WIP Intro: CROSSWATER

You can argue that your home is the W O R S T, the most P E C U L I A R, the C R U E L E S T in the whole of A N D R A S T E, but I know the truth, and the truth is that C R O S S W A T E R is the worst place I’ve ever had the misfortune of living in... 

But it is H O M E.

⇒TITLE: Crosswater

⇒THEMES: Coming of age |  Power and corruption |  Prejudice | War | Self-Reliance | Oppression | Religion | Self Empowerment

⇒RATING: Teen and Up

⇒GENRE: High Fantasy

⇒SUB-GENRE: Dark Fantasy | Romance | Religion | Politics

⇒POV: Third person limited

⇒STATUS: Plotting/Outlining

In the peculiar city of Crosswater strangeness is nothing unusual. But no one mentions the thieves at the edge of town, the quiet Captain of the Guard with a hoard of secrets, the Lord and his wife with ambitious affairs, and the too smart, too good singer. After all, it has always been ordinary to them. 

Then a woman arrives in the city with a wild power no one could’ve predicted. She brings with her soldiers sworn to her name and a sigil of the distant Hell witch empire, Darah. A proposal she hopes they will not ignore. Her name is Nemesis Lorelai Macaria, and she is the last princess of the remaining witches of Hell.

She will have to befriend the master thief with a silver tongue, the siren-like woman who fears nothing and no one, the Captain who will provoke her until she snaps, the rebellious Lady of Crosswater with a quick wit, and the orphan girl from a distant land if she is to succeed in her plan. But first, she must convince them to accept her as who she is. A witch--and a servant of Hell.

It should be easy enough.

Nemesis Macaria: The hero. Crude, abrupt sense of humor. Broken childhood. Unable to empathize with many people. Usually very independent in her adventures. Seems like shes killed a lot of people but no one really knows. Talented in dark witch-craft and necromancy. Eighteen: too young for this but having fun anyway. Keeps her composure no matter what.

Cassius Verlander: The unlikely friend. Loud. Loves challenging authority. Only steals from the rich people of Crosswater because “fuck the bourgeoisie.” Mean but cannot kill anyone. A secret cinnamon roll. Angry. Greatest thief in the Andraste. Loves the black market. Knows the price of everything in your house and everything in your body.

Corvina Naida: An actual goddess. Really sweet and lets it show. Still doesn’t let herself get taken advantage of. That one friend everyone loves. Knows how to manipulate people when she wants to. Unbelievably talented. So much so that Nemesis is thinking that maybe she might just be an actual goddess. Gets ahead of herself. Too confident at times. Will love you unconditionally.

Soter Adrestia: Dick to prick to a genuinely nice guy. Very closed off. Thousands of secrets and not enough time to tell them all. Kills people but always feels guilty about. Likes insulting criminals and strangers who he doesn’t trust even though he’s probably the most untrustworthy person alive. You know the phrase skeletons in the closet? Yeah. He most likely has like fifty tucked away in his. Real ones too.

Orlaith Clearwater: Victim of whoever the fuck thought the patriarchy was a good idea. Hates her husband because she didn’t have a choice. Her life has always been trade agreements. Sick of this bullshittm. Definitely a huge lesbian. Sometimes has more affairs with women than her husband. Will do anything to destroy him. Is going to kill the next person who calls her exotic.

Eris Lada: Loyal as all hell. Would happily kill anyone for Nemesis and not feel an ounce of regret. Seems a lot older than they let on. Totally shocked by the way equality and respect isn’t common in other places. Like, wot? Secretly trying her best but failing. Will not ask for help. Everything she does is reverse psychology.

Apate Gianna: Quiet. Lowkey a huge bitch. Acts tough but really isn’t. Gives off a weird vibe. Orphaned when she was young. Grew up alone. Social queues? What are those? Has she looked at you lately? If so, she probably hates you.

Fervain Clearwater: NO REDEEMING QUALITIES. Probably the worst person alive. Misogynist, racist, homophobic, #godlover. Not even worthy of the title antagonist. Nemesis would have just killed him if not for this damn agreement. Redeeming quality? Killable.

The story of Crosswater takes place in the kingdom of Andraste. It is split in two by the Lethe mountain range. Crosswater lies along the northern coast of Andraste’s western island where the forests are abundant and the temperatures are commonly frigid. Although it is small, it holds an abundance of power over the neighboring kingdoms of Tarasi, Elpys, and Isoldé. Although the western island is the weaker of the two it still holds much political prominence, especially in Crosswater where Fervain has been lord for more than two centuries.

In Crosswater, there are two rivers--one flowing north to south and the other flowing east to west. These rivers are believed to be a center of religious power which allows a greater connection between the citizens of Andraste and The One True. Many will frequently go on a pilgrimage to this location for enlightenment. 

Humans: Within Andraste’s borders humans are the most common. The majority of them lack power and live to 75 on average. Though through rigorous studying beginning at a young age humans can hone an element. Those of which being ice, lightning, wind, earth, nature, mind, space, blood, water, and fire. It can take anywhere from ten to twenty-five years to master an element.

Witches: Witches are creatures belonging either to the Aether or Hell. Andraste and it’s neighboring kingdoms had outlawed witches of Hell after the events of the Holy War. Most witches of Hell were killed off in the drownings, though some do remain hidden in Andraste and outside its circle of power. Those witches of Hell reside in either Kenna or Dhara, of which Andraste has been at a stalemate with for the past six centuries. Witches of the Aether can live up to 2,000 years, and it is rumored that when they pass they are resurrected as angels. No one knows how long witches of Hell live for, due to the fact that they have always been hunted and prosecuted except in Kenna and Dhara where their secrets are well hidden, but many believe that when they do die they come back as demons.

Witches are born with abilities. Witches of hell are more prone to do unnatural magic, while Aether witches do natural magic in order to keep The One True’s order. Though, in cases of great strife, a witch may utilize an opposite power. Even if they are born with abilities witches can work to hone one single ability.

Angels: Rare. Sovereigns among the other species. Frequently in roles of great power. Although none have died natural deaths yet it is shown that they do age slowly and that they can be killed, making them slightly vulnerable. Angels possess the ability to contact The One True, manipulate light, and take possession of other beings, though some do have immunity to their mind control. 

Demons: Despite the fear many feel towards demons very few have met them, and most who did have lived to tell about it. They, unlike Angels, can maintain a deep connection with the Fallen One. Most demons possess the ability to use magic as well as manipulate darkness. Not only that, but they can take possession of beings as well with seemingly no limit to this power.

Dragons: Beings with the ability to shapeshift and manipulate flames, ice, clouds, or water. After many years of interbreeding, bloodlines became diluted, leading to pure bloodlines to quickly take power throughout the four kingdoms.

Nymphs: Guardians of different areas of nature. They serve the world--not Aether or Hell. Sought out in times of confusion because of their natural desire to search for balance.

Ghosts: Creatures that had once served witches during the Holy War. They have the ability to shapeshift into any animal form as well as into apparitions. When their service became unneeded they turned to work in an array of dangerous fields because of their power to shift through solid matter and remain invisible to. 

⇒

this wip is not something I planned to get so into but now that I’ve brainstormed all of this I may begin writing it while I’m editing TNO!!! I do plan on posting OC intros and more on Crosswater though probably not until I’ve finished outlining. Please ask me questions about this so I can keep brainstorming and developing my characters and the plot. 

Let me know if you would like to be tagged in Crosswater content from now on!