#which means we're all dying because there's absolutely no way he's coming out of this alive and well

[shblackwoodart]

idk why he's dying in a swamp don't ask me

[mysteryanimator]

Breaking down Castlevania Nocturne Season 02 - Episode 08 “The Devil is Easy to Cheat” Almost Shot-By-Shot

Previous shot analyses: S01E04 - Bedroom scene / S01E06 - Gulity Men to be Judged / S01 E08 -Breakup

Word count: 8.2k (I'm sorry it keeps getting longer)

We have returned once again to “mystery uses their media production and analysis skills, along with their hyperfixation on storyboards to talk about gay vampires, their other hyperfixation”.

For people new to my breakdowns:

If I skip any shots, its because I'm limited to a 30-image limit and some parts just won't have images BUT I will try my best!

I highly advise you to rewatch Nocturne after reading this and make your own thoughts because while this is an analysis, it also comes through my own lens. How you engage with media will be very different to me, however, there are principles that are followed to elicit certain types of emotions from an overall perspective. I'm here to break down those film codes and artistic principles :D I will be drawing over some of them, while others will be moving.

These are just observations based on my background in media production and analysis (I’ve been out of the field for a bit but trying to strengthen it back since it is important for storyboarding). Despite all of that, this is for fun, which is why I will be writing a lot more casually (which therefore specific interpretations may bleed through), so please don't take this too seriously! This not only helps me out as a student to become aware of how stories are put together and, in turn, how to apply them and make my own. It also allows me to impart that excitement to you and helps everyone to understand why they might be so drawn to a particular scenes (me included)! Shot choices matter, especially when you have only 12 episodes, a deadline, a budget, asset restrictions, and so on. It all has to count. Everything matters.

Passionate creatives care and there is more than "the curtain is blue just because." The times when things slip under the radar and are put there just because are mostly due to executive decisions, budget restrictions, deadlines and a lot more that we don't get to see from an audience perspective. I think in this day and age, people do forget about how intentional the media they consume is and Castlevania is choked full of carefully curated scenes.

With that out of the way, let's talk about gay vampires !!!

[Can't believe we're starting with no image. I can't show it due to image limits, I'm saving them for other scenes. Feel free to follow along on Netflix!]

After Edouard and Annette's conversation, we have shots of buildings. This is to establish a jump in time and a new scene occurring! Showcasing this large building is important because we cut to Olrox carrying Mizrak after this, and once you mentally pair that with this large building, it'll sink in that Olrox has been walking with Mizrak in his arms for a while now. We do not know what happened from the time we saw Mizrak walking side by side with Olrox to now, but we know he's getting worse for wear.

Then we get a close-up of a window!! Mizrak and Olrox scenes in season 01 were either introduced through pulled-out establishing shots that contained a lot of greenery (the courtyard in ep 03 / the breakup hill in ep 08) OR via windows of the inn. This gets continued here.

We get candles too and fire symbolizes life and we've already had Olrox state how his previous lover "burned with such passion". These candles supernaturally light up, which builds to foreshadow the transformation Mizrak will have as he goes from dying to being "alive" through supernatural means.

The following midshot purposefully cuts off their faces to continue to build suspense. Having a lack of face means we're unable to connect to them which is intentional. It makes us yearn to connect deeper because we can clearly see something is absolutely wrong. Mizrak isn't walking. This is super uncharacteristic of Mizrak and doesn't align with what we saw last.

[omg yay an image]

This is a midshot in which the camera moves from top to bottom/bottom to top. This type of camera movement is called a pedestal, though I have seen it be called a boom/jib. For any general camera movements, whether that be the aforementioned pedestal or a pan, the camera has to be motivated by something in the scene to move in that direction. So what is the motivator for this specific camera movement in this shot? The order of who we see in the shot.

It begins with Mizrak because now we finally have a clear view of him and he practically encompasses most of the screen because he's horizontal and how we view shows is with a landscape screen. Immediately the first half of this shot tells us two things. It's Mizrak and Mizrak is dying. It's something we need to immediately pick up on because the camera begins to move up. After all, a particular face is cut off. It's Olrox's. The second part of this shot has us reveal it is Olrox who is carrying Mizrak and what expression he's making. Dividing up our focus and moving the camera makes it less overwhelming to us as an audience to engage with this scene because it lets us focus on one thing at a time and builds up a shock factor. This is helped by the fact that the first focus point is horizontal, then when the camera moves up to shift focus, Olrox is dead center vertical.

This also feels like a reference to La Pietà. It is a sculpture of Jesus and Mary depicting the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. La Pietà depicts the sixth, John 19:39-40. Jesus is being taken down from the cross and put into Mary's arms. While the death is over, Mary still grieves the loss of her son. What follows after this is the seventh sorrow as she watches Christ's burial waiting for his resurrection which feels very in line with what's happening right now.

[no image my bad sorry for the long wall of text]

Next, we have an extreme close-up of Olrox's eyes.

Eyes are a massive thing within this scene alone, and this shot here helps to establish his current thoughts and feelings because they take Olrox's eyes away after this. We no longer become privy to his inner world. Eyes are by far one of the easiest tells of a character and their current thoughts. Eyes are the window to the soul. Mizrak also in previous scenes has a ton of focus and close-ups of his eyes because he is such a guarded character but his eyes do tend to betray him. The exact same thing can be said for Olrox (his eyes betray him with Drolta when he lies about not seeing Belmont and co, won't lie, it's really funny).

One thing to note is the asymmetry of his hair, which never usually falls in front of his face. This is where I bring your attention in season 02, Drolta and Ezerbet questioned what Olrox has sacrificed. What or who he would die for. His hair has fallen in front of his face VERY MESSYILY in that instance as he looks down in deep thought. While there are other instances of his hair in front of his face, the example I brought up is personally the strongest call back (however I can be totally wrong and there can be more!)

Not only big wide expansive shots are used to establish new locations, close-ups do! They're usually always followed up by much wider shots, however. The purpose here is to show Olrox entering a new location, and moving from the hallway to the bedroom. This is super important to establish because this is the final leg of the journey they both have to traverse. We need to see them get from point A to point B or else it does not feel as impactful. The silent moments matter heavily for this type of scene because they say a lot.

Also, I'm a sucker for these types of compositions/lighting, it's actually one of my favorite shots in this scene. The doorway literally frames Olrox into a box and it keeps him centered in the shot. As he walks through, it is purposefully dark around him and the only light that peeks through is from behind. Backlighting a character not only helps to distinctly separate the character from the background, it often gives a halo effect which is associated with the divine and otherworldly. It can establish how powerful a character is. HOWEVER, Olrox is walking Mizrak away from the light, which can further strengthen Mizrak's descent into vampirism as it can be considered turning away from God due to the inability to accept human ailments and death.

This is a wide shot to establish the interior we're in. It's absolutely used to contrast the much smaller inn room in season 01 episode 03. The beginning of their relationship versus the end. The camera here uses a truck movement (the camera moving side to side, in this case, left to right). Its intention is to follow Olrox and draw our eye towards the bed in this scene, as this is where the rest of the scene will take place.

Now, if you’ve read my previous analyses, you will know how much talk about Olrox holding Mizrak from behind. It’s a key characteristic, it is so important to see their mental states as characters.

Olrox right now is holding Mizrak from behind. Except this time, Mizrak is accepting it.

The first time Olrox holds Mizrak from behind is he tries to persuade him out of death. The second (and third) time Olrox holds Mizrak from behind is to forcibly tear him away from death. This is the last time Olrox holds him from behind because he’s actively dying. though in this instance, instead of persuading or forcibly trying to pull him away from death- it’s him ending up gently carrying him away from death. Or one could even argue, that Olrox is actually gently taking Mizrak towards his death instead of preventing it. Death to his human self and his man-made chains.

While Mizrak never explicitly states “yes bite me turn me into a vampire”, and the room for ambiguity is there, there is an acceptance from Mizrak that begins the moment we see him in Olrox’s arms. Time and time again, we have seen Mizrak constantly fighting against Olrox, either by physically pulling away or saying the most horrific things known to man. This is entirely different. He’s being carried the ENTIRE WAY to the bed without fighting Olrox. His posture is a lot more open and exposed towards Olrox. He in this moment is giving himself up to him.

Why another wide shot? For the boxes lets gooo, Myst loves boxes and frames.

This shot uses the setting to frame Olrox and Mizrak. The bedframe acts to box them in and create a small space just for the two of them outside the view of anyone else. The background behind them showcases the hallway Olrox traversed and its length emphasizes the distance Olrox has been walking just for Mizrak to lay and rest.

By the way, why I'm wording what Mizrak tells Olrox as a confession later in this analysis is because of this shot. This deeply reminds me of the Anglo-Catholic practice of private confessionals. It feels like Olrox is here as a higher judgment, sitting and listening to Mizrak's confession of penitent. The boxing-in of the shots and how private it is begins to deeply feel like a confessional.

A close-up! While an extreme close-up is where the creative behind the shot forces you to focus on one thing, a normal close-up is usually aimed at the face and intended to communicate what the character is feeling or their current headspace with a whole facial performance. So, as you could probably surmise from this shot, what the artist intends to communicate a few things:

Olrox putting him down (neck area)

Mizrak breathing raggedly (mouth)

Mizrak opened his eyes to look at Olrox (top of face)

Mizrak is SO GREY, he lacks proper colour (overall face)

So for all of that to be seen, a close-up is needed.

Ok, why punch into an extreme close-up here if we already have a close-up of Mizrak in the exact same pose? This one solely focuses on his eyes. As I stated with Olrox's eye close-up, eyes are a massive thing in this wholeee section, so now it's Mizrak's turn for a eye close-up. Especially since for the remainder for this, Olrox does not show his face and Mizrak basically communicates for the both of them. The way Mizrak talks and looks at Olrox is an indication of how Olrox could be feeling.

Also, how can you not have an eye shot paired with the line "You've seen the devil, then, waiting for me." This falls into place really well.

This midshot does a lot of things, more importantly, it establishes where characters are in the scene because, for the rest of this entire section, it is basically all close-ups. This helps to ground where everything is because later on, Mizrak gets panicked. In turn, the camera and timing match that, therefore we can begin to lose our sense of where we are WHICH is a good thing to sell that idea, however, we need to establish where everything is before that is done.

This also establishes Olrox is just never going to be showing his face until the very end because now the camera has locked itself to this side of the characters.

Another thing is also how Mizrak's wound is practically in the middle of the shot. It is more clearly obvious that the wound is straight in the middle of where the cross is on his uniform. Mizrak in a funny not so funny way, is being martyred. He is dying refusing to give up his faith or beliefs. While he is defined by his religion because that's a core aspect of his character, he actually mostly believes in the people. He believes and cares strongly for characters like Maria who neither of them politically align together, but he makes sure she gets to her house. He wants her safe.

This midshot is very important because while Olrox's face is purposefully obscured, Mizrak's face never does. What's interesting is that Mizrak is looking directly at Olrox as he braves his confession of weakness. Not only is Mizrak's eyeline just up toward him, but Olrox's body is just purposefully included in this shot. When Mizrak continues to confess his fears further into this scene, in the back of our minds we have the fact Olrox is intently listening the entire time even though he is shunning himself away from the audience. For the next three shots, he literally disappears from the audience's perspective, but not from Mizrak's eye line. His current expression when listening to him is literally just for Mizrak to know.

These are all extreme close-ups! The purpose of this is to directly have you focused a very specific reaction and emotion! The main focus of the first shot is to solely focus on Mizrak's eyes looking directly at Olrox, then him looking down and away from his face before getting scared literally the moment his eyes move off him and he looks back up at him. Multiple different reads of the situation can be applied here since why Mizrak looks down is not exactly stated to us. One thing I will say is that what motivates a character to move their eyes down another character's body is to literally check their body, either for attraction or concern.

Mizrak is dying here though. Why does his eyes drop? It can be for a multitude of different reason but the most likely is the self-actualisation of the eternity of torment.

What's important too is that in the second shot, Mizrak's hand shakes before stopping. We need to see that. Especially paired with that specific line because his shakes stop after saying "no release", which is basically a visual contradiction. Having something visually stop while having a dialogue about unending pain and suffering. To me personally, this hand movement can read as two things, though there are definitely more interpretations, these are my two takes based on different focuses.

Tremors are caused by fear, but he however can control them which is why it stops. This is his last attempt to feel like he has control over his situation. This is based off the fact the line contradicts the action taking place.

This isn't him shaking, this is him fighting himself to reach out to Olrox physically. His hands can be read as clenching and unclenching rather than tremors. This is based off the idea of how visually Mizrak is alone in these shots and Olrox's presence in a is absent (but can be sensed he is outside of our line of sight).

Hey so, fun fact, this has happened before. Extreme close up of hands/eyes whilst they talk about demons/hell. BOTH SIDE PROFILE TOO.

Again, hands and eyes are key indicators of how characters can feel in the moment, and the character Mizrak uses this to great effect since it pairs very well with his guarded persona.

Also oh my god look at him being so full of colour compared to now.

A close-up! It is probably one of the most vital shots in this entire sequence (alongside Olrox's iconic line). Mizrak cries A LOT in this season, but here, he purposefully doesn't try to hide or turn away- he admits this while staring directly at him.

An important detail is that his dialogue of torture and agony are all solo shots. Alone. This is on purpose. This confession of fear is also visually alone, but he calls out to Olrox by name in this solo shot. What this does is that it gives permission for Olrox to re-enter the scene, hell, you could argue Mizrak is begging Olrox to re-enter the scene. Technically, Olrox has not left the scene because Mizrak stares at him the entire time during his confession, but Olrox has left the audience's line of sight, which makes Mizrak's shots feel that much more isolated and alone.

This is a personal take, but it also has evidence. This is one of the bravest things Mizrak has said thus far in the entire series. His bravery and strength should not be measured by running into battle to protect the ones who cannot protect themselves- his measure of courage and strength lies in being vulnerable and admitting weakness. I actually discussed it in my season 01 - episode 04 analysis, so the groundwork for shielding vulnerability only for it to be opened up has been there from the very beginning. There is build-up and now it's being released all in one go, which is really interesting considering the fact Mizrak talks about agony upon agony with no release, but here, he's releasing all of his emotions.

Mizrak has also said Olrox’s name about three times now. That is the exact amount Olrox said Mizrak’s name in the last season. Funnily enough if you squint hard enough they can be call and responses to each other.

S01E03 - “Has the world abandoned you, Mizrak?”

S02E04 - “I’ve seen enough too, Olrox.” (girl what have you seen please tell us)

S01E06 - “Of course not Mizrak, I’m not in love with you.”

S02E05 - “If you do have soul Olrox, and maybe you do. I hope it finds peace.”

S01E08 - “I don’t want you to die, Mizrak.”

S02E08 - “I’m afraid, Olrox.”

In any visual entertainment medium, repetition comes in threes so something has to happen after this, which we'll get to very shortly (it's the "my love" part).

This close-up of Olrox is used to slow down the scene and break the tension caused by Mizrak's scenes. It's utterly silent, a complete contrast to the panic and the wordy confession by Mizrak.

What this shot does is help build anticipation for him to share the screen space with Mizrak as he lowers himself in this shot. We're also not privy to his face. This also builds up the anticipation of seeing his face later on and really hammers that impact.

This shot is very important as it reintroduces Olrox to be in the same visual space as Mizrak and this is the very first thing he does.

When reintroducing Olrox back in, two new things are introduced. Well more so not new things, two pre-existing motifs/concepts get elevated.

Hands. This is not new, hell, Olrox holding Mizrak is by far not a new thing and it is one of the key visual characteristics of their dynamic, hand-holding however, is definitely new.

"My love", is absolutely very new, but of course it is a replacement for Mizrak. Mizrak's name gets elevated to my love.

What's also very interesting is how pulled out this shot is. This is important however as two different elements are here to strengthen this shot.

Mizrak's entire dagger is in this shot. A weapon of violence is here to contrast the gentle nature of Olrox reaching for Mizrak's hand. The matter of fact that the dagger is placed in this shot BUT lacks any very heavy visual weight implies how any agony, torture, or violence is currently being subsided as Olrox's hand is in front of it.

The bed sheet takes up a major part of the lower thirds of this shot. Take notice of it's colour and pattern. I do go over it in my mindless talks about the Nocturne eye colour analysis, but I'll reword it to fit the context of this scene in particular.

Olrox is coded purple and green. Not only in his character design, but in the locations he's often put in. If you think back to every single space Olrox has shared with Mizrak they are all green. Mostly grassy outdoor environments, however, if they are not outside, the inn is very naturalistic in colour and framing like nature itself. This showcases where Olrox is compared to Mizrak in a power dynamic. Mizrak just does not have any strong vibrant colours to define him that aren't monochromatic or brown, but that's kind of the whole point of his character. This just easily allows for when he shares a space with Olrox, the green and any other vibrant colour to overwhelm Mizrak, and in a funny way, make Mizrak stand out very oddly because Mizrak isn't visually a vibrant character.

So this one shot, it basically informs us how Olrox is wrapped around Mizrak and is not willing to let go.

This is shot is so impactfullllllll, the build up to this is soooo good.

This is a close-up shot, what's important though is how much Olrox visually takes up screen space-wise, completely contrasting the previous shot. Especially since this is the first time we haven't seen his face in a while. This shot chooses to specifically focus on Olrox's eyes and mouth. This builds to anticipate what is to come and have us on the edge of our seats, questioning if Olrox is going to actually bite Mizrak. The closeness of the shot too makes this scene very intimate to continue this more romantic, yet still dark atmosphere going on.

Also what's important to mention again is Olrox's hair strands, which is used to block and frame this shot. In a sense, it makes the shot that much more suffocating and close in. While Olrox does not show any panic or fear emotionally, simply because Olrox is trying to comfort Mizrak, this feels like Olrox is in fear. By having this line paired with a close-up of Olrox only, it makes it feel like Olrox is locked to the one sole option. His sole decision. He's currently not going to be taking any other suggestions because how can he? Mizrak admitted his fear of death/hell, and by no means Olrox is giving into Mephistopheles/Old Man Coyote.

What choice does he have? He has no other choice... right?

The theme of choices is a massive thing in Nocturne Season 01. Olrox's first appearance in the show is with him says "don't listen to her, there is always a choice". Olrox is the one to introduce this theme of choices, but here now, Olrox is backed into a corner with no other choice.

[No image sorry]

Next we have a close-up of Mizrak's eyes.

While this will not be the last we ever see of Mizrak's eyes since we have another shot, his eyes are important. This reaction is important. We need the pause for the gasp and his shock. What's important is that his eyes do all the talking which in my mind is much more powerful as it communicates ten different billion things and leaves it up to the audience's interpretation of how to engage with this scene.

However, the most important takeaway for everyone is that we have to see Mizrak be shocked.

This is important because of course, a close-up of the mouth is there to state how Olrox is going to bite him, therefore you need to put a lot of emphasis on that to really hammer it in, but the focus of the mouth moves. It does not move with Olrox however, Olrox moves himself and out of the camera. This puts emphasis on his descent, really building for that anticipation of the bite but it gives us one last tiny glance at Olrox's mental headspace before the bite.

It is so brief, but we see his eye and that's important. You don't include anything that isn't important because this is a serialised animated series, you're not going to spend additional time on something that lacks importance (I think, this is me guessing I can be so wrong here). Also, his eyes are green they're going to stand out against black and brown. His eyebrow is upturned and his eye, from what i can personally read, is far more gentler than his previous shot.

(i won't lie, seeing this loop is very funny to me)

Another close up and this is the final time we see Mizrak's very brown human irises. This is the last thing we see of his humanity. This is animation, so it's important to capture Mizrak's face before the bite, Mizrak's initial shock of pain and some sort of acceptance as his irises settle back to normal size before closing them with tears. Honestly, it's better to just click through it on Netflix frame by frame if you really want to see the arcs Mizrak goes through in this one shot, its very cool to see him go through all these phases in a short amount of time. While nothing is stated outright for the morally grey area which is on purpose. It builds off the whole conversation from the season 01 episode 06.

Mizrak: And you did that to him? Did you even ask for permission?

Olrox: I was in love with him, I wanted him to be with me forever.

Mizrak: And is that what you have planned for me?

Olrox: Of course not, Mizrak. I'm not in love with you.

This leads to one of two outcomes for the future. Either Olrox repeating a cycle beat for beat, or Olrox trying to fix previous mistakes in a "what would I do differently if I went through this again." Both come from his survivor's guilt. This will be explored further in season 03 (please I need it so bad) in a much more complicated nuanced way because this is Mizrak we're talking about. Despite him having overlapping traits with Olrox's previous lover, he is also the very opposite of him (that we know of since we can gather Mizrak is so self-loathing, while Olrox's previous lover embraced his connection to the land and fought for the rights of his people, so we can make the assumption that he embraced his whole identity).

This mid-shot paired with another pedestal camera move! The camera is motivated to move up so it can showcase the new character positions in the location, Mizrak's hand placement, Olrox's arm and of course the biteeee, followed by Mizrak's expression. It's staggered one after the other.

One thing you must notice is Mizrak putting a hand on Olrox's elbow (this gif makes it so hard to see, this is me asking you to rewatch it on Netflix for a better view) which can imply acceptance of vampirism. It's animated intentionally. Again, nothing is stated outright, but also media is kind of boring to engage in if you spell it out verbally. What's the point of a visual medium without using visuals to a storyyyy. It also just gives autonomy to the audience to come to their own conclusions which is also more fun. The lack of a spelled-out answer makes us more engaged as an audience.

Then we get a fade to blackkkkkkk~

While this is mostly just to symbolize the end of a scene, in a lot of other media, fade to black is used to cut away from sexually intimate scenes which is funny knowing that context.

What's fun is that this scene is supposed to run parallel with Richter and Annette's scene kissing (I'm not sure, there could been a stronger scene to parallel this, I just know in my soul of them is supposed to go in line with a Richter/Annette scene). One character takes care of their partner's aliments and sharing an intimate moment together. Whilst they are definitely not one-for-one, these two couples are supposed to show different aspects of love as this entire series, both the original and Nocturne, have very strong themes of love in it. This also just allows for whatever they have planned for season 03 to make them still feel closely tied even if they're literally doing completely different things.

Ok we are done with this sequence, time to jump to the spicy one!

This is our establishing shot for the scene. Curtains. A window. Through both season 01 and season 02, we’ve been getting so many cues about Olrox and Mizrak’s association with windows and curtains. Also, the last time we saw curtains as an establishing shot for Mizrak/Olrox, they were naked. This builds off our previous expectations.

Also, this is super vertical and red. This will be VERY IMPORTANT LATER. Greenish yellow curtains were used to represent Olrox, but this is red.

We jump to pedestal midshot, which just gives us a lot of questions. Where's Mizrak? WHY IS HIS SHIRT OPEN? WHY IS HE LAYING LIKE THAT? NEW CLOTHES??? WHAT'S GOING ON??? That's all intentional because we don't have any setting establishing shots and therefore it feels disorientating on purpose. It forces us into questioning mode. We can only presume we're in the same location due to the bed and camera angle feeling the exact same as where we left off in their previous scene together, but that's all we get.

Pedestal camera movements also just happen a ton in this sequence simply because Mizrak's reveal is all ton in pedestals and it complements nicely with the fabric falling down, so setting up the movement early helps ease it in.

This shot can also totally parallel season 01 episode 04 where Olrox turns to look at Mizrak leaving the bed since both of those shots are framed above Olrox. This can also totally parallel Olrox killing Julia as his hair is in a circular motion in a similar shape to the blood.

@ifishouldvanish did an amazing breakdown of this and for the life of me I cannot find it, but once that's found I'll link it here, in a sense it's basically offering his blood up to Mizrak here.

EDIT: Thank you Vanish for sharing it! This comments the Olrox/Julia parallel along with discussing the Quetzalcoatl and how they overlap with what's occurring in this scene! You can read it here!

We cut into this close-up! The main thing here is directing our eye-line to stay on the left of the screen and build anticipation for Mizrak's face. Every single shot's aim is mostly for that build-up for that pay off.

Close-ups, as I've stated before, are used mainly to see an emotional performance from the character and therefore personally connect to their feelings. This however, which I will be personally honest, is so hard to read but I feel that's on purpose to give into the ambiguity aspect of not only the scene but also of Olrox as a character. Both Olrox and Mizrak are expressive and extremely very guarded, so it definitely leans into that. It also gives the audience the autonomy to come to their own conclusions. Like this can read as a very gentle smile, it can read as a subdued concerned look- it's your interpretation and how you personally engage with this entire sequence. It allows the ending to be a lot more open-ended.

This longshot! It gives more of the background to establish where characters are in the scene but do notice how things seem different now. Notice the colours in this shot. We're introducing Mizrak's new colour motif. It practically dominates the entire scene, even if Olrox's eyes glow bright green. Not only this, this shot builds up for the anticipation of Mizrak's vampire transformation reveal as all the red fabric drapes down in an almost waterfall/dripping way akin to blood.

We also begin to have the fabric move down, bleeding into other shots to stitch them cohesively together (that pun was intended).

Also, this is super intentional again, but Olrox is boxed/framed by the bed with very harsh lines and rectangles. This deeply contrasts Mizrak's shots because Mizrak doesn't visually get confined by the background due to all the drapery and the blurred background. He is also associated with vertical organic lines. This creates a deep separation between these two characters, giving us suspense and tension because there's a clear disparity between them.

Woo! A midshot! This shot feels so long and so short in timing.

This is super vertical. This shot is 90% made of vertical lines, which brings a ton of focus toward Mizrak's back and the drapery because they're the only two things that are not vertical.

The drapery here is basically a curtain unveiling the main piece. This is Mizrak's rebirth, he has transformed. This is coupled with artistic nudity as nudity isn't inherently sexual and represents the form in its barest sense. You could even say it's religiously coded.

Also in general, if you put anything on the very edge of your shot visually, it creates unease so if you put something as bright as light on the very edge, it makes your shot unbalanced. This is done on purpose. The dark aspect of this shot is literally all-consuming and makes the left heavy focus feel more menacing because there's so much empty dark space.

This mid-shot is paired with a pedestal camera move! The camera is motivated to move in an up/down position due to the last shot having the robe fabric around him move down as a reveal, therefore continuing that movement here to continue the reveal of Mizrak’s transformation. While yes "teehee look at his chest awooga", rightfully so, me too, you notice the blood and wound are absent. Mizrak looks strong and healthy. The pedestal camera movement is used to great effect again because the first thing you're focused on is his chest, then it moves up and you see the bite marks and the ear. Information is slowly given to us.

I'm putting my case down that this shot is a callback to Season 01 Episode 03, in which Olrox peers outside the window of his inn room. They both have this same forlorn look as they look out.

This cut to a close-up and having Mizrak switch up is fucking terrifying. This is because the background is completely blurred to give Mizrak the center stage. The background is completely separate to him, he doesn't feel grounded to it as if he's popping out of the screen. His eyeline is directly at US, the audience.

When Mizrak turns, his eyes glow bright red. We've seen this before where someone turns their head and their eyes shift from their natural colour to bright red. In-fact, Mizrak has seen this before.

Tera does this BEFORE with Emmanuel too when he insinuates on Tera's vampirism affecting her love for Maria. Another example, while not as strong (simply because the freshly turned vampire comparison) is Ezerbet demanding Emmanuel to bring back Drolta but all of these points of contention surround love and so-called monsters having souls.

Side note, it's very interesting that she yells at Emmanuel, but cries over Mizrak's comment and her red eyes disappear. Obviously, the stark difference is that Emmanuel literally sacrificed her, but it showcases that Tera and Mizrak probably were close friends since he makes sure to actively protect her daughter and he knows his way to their house. Just something to think about with these newly turned vampires and how their lives will come to overlap eventually.

While this trait may just be an Ezerbet thing, we don't know, notice how the glowing eyes occur in highly intense emotions surrounding people they love deeply. The Tera example just being stronger to back up this case since she is a recently turned vampire. Eyes are super important in Nocturne for both vampires and humans. Alucard's eyes go bloodshot red like Dracula's when he fully powers up. Maria's eyes go pitch black as she initially summons Seiryuu. Olrox's eyes glow bright green as he spies from Mizrak from his inn room window. Richter's eyes glow icy blue as he fights Drolta and eventually confronts Olrox.

So what does this mean for Mizrak? Again, this will begin to pull into interpretation based on other scenes in the show and how I viewed those. One thing I can say is that Mizrak still "has a mind that can think and a heart that can love" - Olrox S02E01. We need to pull that context from Olrox/Tera's conversation, Tera/Emmanuel's conversation, Ezerbet's demands from Emmanuel, Drolta's night creature transformation, and Alucard's conversation with Maria about Dracula. While there definitely are more conversations that can further strengthen the point I'm making, no matter who you are, monster, vampire, or human, they all have a soul, you are innately the same even after transformation. It is however your choice to indulge in the powers of vampirism and abuse it or stand against its tide. This includes Mizrak now. The choices he makes now are still him. Which why it makes it all the more shocking because the last time we saw him, he was having a crying session, pouring out his heart and soul to Olrox but suddenly now he's quiet and fucking terrifying. We as an audience mentally have to determine which choices he has made. Did he cry after feeding, sobbing over the violence like countless times before or did he indulge in the powers he manifested? Or a third other more complicated idea? I'm not going to say my personal opinion outright to avoid swaying your own because the intention of this shot is to make you question and really dig deep about it.

Also if you're still interested in my personal opinion I feel like it really seeps through in all my fan art and just this informal essay in general. Even then I do have a ton of thoughts about it that are not perceivable in the public eye because, in my brain, their dynamic is so convoluted as individuals LET ALONE THEM PAIRED TOGETHER. The thing is too, multiple different ideas and interpretations co-exist in my brain at the same time so it's really hard to get a proper personal opinion without me just saying "me like Castlevania : Nocturne more than a normal amount."

This is a long shot, it establishes the room they’re in, where the characters are placed and the location. While it is always important, the is colour, character placement and framing is something I’m specifically calling out here.

This is an extremely red room. The colour red is now heavily associated with Mizrak. The only thing that isn’t red is the bed, aka where Olrox is placed. It is green, a colour often associated with him. Often then not, Olrox and Mizrak’s private scenes usually tend to be placed in green environments, giving the sense to the audience of who is higher in the power dynamic. Not only here, that has been changed but with the way the bed frame is placed, it literally boxes Olrox into this section. It makes him appear a lot smaller and appears to take up less space. The roles are swapping. We've already seen this by Olrox joining the fight, and now we have Mizrak accepting vampirism.

This midshot is used to communicate him getting up from the bed and giving Mizrak the same dark stare. It also just gives a reason to see Olrox's torso LOL.

This shot is super vertical which challenges every other shot Olrox has been in because he's been horizontal or laying down the entire time. This and the previous shot is now on par with Mizrak who has been associated with vertical organic lines.

This shot is laced with so much mystery and lack of any conformation because you can also again, interpret as you wish with this shot. That's the allure of it though, that's why people love this shot.

[no image here sorry, curse you 30 image limits]

The next shot I wanted to talk about was the transitional curtain/drapery which is super fun as a way to go between shots. It's a super reminiscence of curtains unveiling a performance on stage or a magician trick behind the curtain to reveal a transformation or something disappearing. What the drapery reveals for the first one is two close ups of Mizrak's new form. His teeth and his dagger-like nails. These are vital to showcase the violent potential of his body. His new weapons.

What's interesting is that Mizrak is growling. Mizrak throughout the entire show harks on about animals, yet he himself has become the thing he's sworn to hate- hell, before his transformation, he literally barks and growled at other people, this is just manifesting it in physical form.

Animals to him (from what I've gathered) are free to follow their heart’s content (which is something Mizrak is yearning, desiring and longing to be like if you think about it), which are not bound by the rules made by mankind. The church's rules appear they are given by God, and the Abbott fights for Him in His name, but these teachings are reinforced by infallible men despite taking vows of obedience, stability and conversatio morum (fidelity to monastic life, which vows of poverty and chastity go under these). Mizrak is blind to the fact he is serving men's idea of God rather than God Himself, but it all begins to unfurl at the seams during season 01 and Mizrak finds himself trying to still cling to it in season 02, but it's just himself now. It is literally just faith as his companion at this point.

Ok Mystery, tell me how this shot of Mizrak’s ass is important. Why incorporeal voice, I’d love to tell you. So I'm not joking when I say this is Mizrak liberating himself from his man-made chains. Nudity, as I stated before, can mean rebirth but it can also represent vulnerability. This literally bares out Mizrak in his entirety, unbound by his uniform, and by his ties to his religion. Vamprisim in a way has led him to accept his other parts of his identity (not fully though because this is Mizrak).

Going off into another media, but it reminds me of Louis from Interview With the Vampire (2022). He comes to terms with his queer identity through being turned into a vampire and if he never got turned, he probably would have died never accepting that part of himself. Honestly, I think that show is very good to overlap its theme with Mizrak and Olrox, and also in general a very visually/narratively-driven strong show, I would highly recommend it.

Okay, let's get back on topic!

They're posed specifically like that to make the silhouette distinctly clear of where they are, but Mizrak and Olrox's poses intrigue me. The way Mizrak's legs wrap around Olrox's thigh and how very intentionally his hand goes to the side of Olrox, especially since we have jumped from two shots of his dagger-like fangs and nails, which appears very violent, yet this is very intimate. Then we have Olrox, whose pose is also very open. It's accepting whatever onslaught hunger Mizrak has. This is strengthened by the contrasting vertical and horizontal lines in this shot as now Olrox is horizontal. He lasted about 5 seconds before being back on the bed.

Another thing is that compositionally, Mizrak is above Olrox and takes up a lot more visual space then him, which places him higher in the power dynamic. Mizrak has never been in that position until now. Olrox is much lower in the composition and most of it is covered up by Mizrak, being placed lower in the power dynamic, which is also a very new thing. This further pushes the new roles they have in this dynamic.

The sound effect for Mizrak landing on the bed isn’t as harsh or violent as I expected despite the appearance of the velocity he was going at in the previous shots. I'm going to take that as intentional because Mizrak looming over Olrox is a parallel to season 01 episode 03. While the sounds are not the same they're way similar. In turn, almost every single shot in this sequence can be tied back to a previous shot in season 01 I'm not kidding. This is why this works so well, everything is coming back.

All those visual parallels can be seen here on my Bluesky!

This one shot is both fucking absolutely terrifying but it also communicates "woah hot" which is great, we need more of that in media. Give me more horror mixed with sexuality in a vampiric context thank youuuu.

This shot moves from a midshot to a close up because Mizrak moves himself. The camera isn’t motivated to move, he is, exactly like Olrox's bite shot. We’re also placed in the position of Olrox. The shot just LINGERS on Mizrak just staring at the camera and it’s just slightly longer then the norm. To me, this reads as if Mizrak is literally eyeing up prey. Terrifying.

The presumption can be made that Mizrak, being newly turned (evidenced by the still-fresh bite marks) needs to feed. Much like how Tera needed to feed off Ezerbet. However, instead of forcing blood into his mouth much like how Ezerbet dribbled blood into Tera, Olrox just lets Mizrak come to him animalistically. This does not strike any fear into him, hell his expression is so muted. Though we never get any close-ups of Olrox's facial expression when Mizrak goes to look at him which is very intentional, we don't get to have a proper read of Olrox's expression and continues to steep this further into mystery, yearning for more information on this scene. This also just ends in another fade to black, Olrox bit Mizrak in the last sequence analyzed, now we can again presume Mizrak is biting him due to this.

This is our last shot of Olrox and Mizrak. It leaves us to question what happened and what will occur in the future. It doesn’t even give us any answers but it lays the foundation for theories and the potential for season 03.

Another thing to note is that Olrox, originally known as Count Olrox/Count Orlok in Castlevania : Symphony of the Night was based on Count Orlok from the gothic film Nosfertau (1992). There's a whole thing where Count Orlok's shadowy hand clasps over Ellen's heart/chest and she reacts quite 'suggestively' to it. This scene is used to comment on the societal taboo of sexuality and indulging in it. This basically kind of happens in this entire sequence, but instead, it's Mizrak's shadow looming over Olrox and it's Mizrak initiating the act. If you apply that lens here, you can engage with the scene as Mizrak letting himself come to terms with his sexuality, a thing he considers taboo and forbidden through vamprisim.

A section of Nosferatu I'm talking about can be viewed here.

And we're done! Apologies for skipped shots and if any of it got really clunky or had any odd grammar. I hope you enjoyed this informal essay discussing episode 08 and I hope you got something out of it! I'm stopping this now before this consumes my brain because I need to hop onto graded studies. This was a very fun study and I hope to do more in the future!

[meanbossart]

Omg omg Meanboss i saw ur Patreon Post rn aaaaand now i can't stop thinking about how Astarion and Drow would react and grieve, if one of them died. Do u have any thoughts to that?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy. I'm almost reluctant to answer this because I feel like this is absolutely DU drow's ugliest side, LOL.

So let me put off the inevitable and start with Astarion: the unlikely more well-adjusted half when it comes to this - if you can call total desensitization being "well adjusted", at least.

Astarion has led hundreds of people to their deaths after supposedly earning their trust, care and attention - I'm not saying every single one of his outings ended in heart-break, in fact the vast majority were probably completely impersonal one-night stands, but at SOME POINT in Astarion's life he must have held some care for people or at least an aversion to the idea of manipulating them into death's maw - until he had to do it over, and over, and over, and over again.

It's very clear to me that Astarion managed to completely shut his empathy out, as well as his sense of attachment especially in the short-term. Those things still exist within him but are like a weak flame he has to keep feeding with kindling if he wants it to stick around; and it would be far easier to just extinguish it at once. If someone close to him were to die, especially unexpectedly, he'd just stomp it out for good and move on as if nothing had happened, probably unable to form another relationship like it for at the very least a couple of years but otherwise remain perfectly functional, and, by all intends and purposes, have gotten over the loss exceptionally quickly.

Obviously, if we're talking about DU drow's death, this would change over time and depend on how long they remained together for. I can't tell you how 500-year-old Astarion would react to the loss of his loved one (too many variables to consider) but one can expect the concept to become harder to accept the more used he grows to someone's permanence.

Now, the drow. He does not deal well with losing, and that applies to people just as well as it applies to concepts and objects. I think he can wrap his mind around the idea of someone dying of old-age, but anything short of that is akin to being stolen from.

Which brings us to Astarion's immortality, and the false sense of security that that brings DU drow. In his mind, if he is immortal, that simply means he won't ever die. This is, to him, is a certain fact the vast majority of the time,save for the rare and brief occasion where he has to face a different reality. This also means that if Astarion ever dies, that is obviously due to a tremendous failure in DU drow's part.

I simply do not think he would get over it. Much like the scenario with Villain DU drow where Orin's death basically begins the countdown for his own, his ambitions from that point forward would cap at revenge, and done that, he would either become something profoundly ugly or just let himself rot. I think this is just... Something inherit to him and the way he functions, making the former memory loss a blessing in even more ways than it already is.

He'd probably also try to resurrect him, but for all his desperation I can at least tell you that he wouldn't fall for/settle for anything lesser than his beloved with their cognizance fully intact, nor do anything that could destroy their corpse. He, uh, Is gonna need that.

[starberry-cupcake]

Welcome back!! I hope you're doing well and, if not, I hope my silly ramblings can make your day somewhat better, like the wildcats used to say: we're all in this together ♥

previously, in harrowcita del 9:

this happened

for those of you recently tuning in, this is the tag of all the ramblings

also, I'm officially in the sixth house now, palmolive can't stop me

CHAPTER 46

we're back inside the emperor's bolthole, which is infested

this is what happens when you have a lyctor orgy without the proper protection

gideon is doing her very best to fight the infestation of herald bees swarming and attacking her

she's in harrow's feeble small kitten baby body, so she's dying a lot

I'm gonna try to represent this visually

gideon keeps apologizing to harrow for getting her bits chewed off and her insides pouring out

and puts emphasis on things she wants harrow to remember

"I saw it eat your thumb—these details are important, so keep up with me—and your thumb was back in the next half minute"

"Child, that bee smashed you"

"I touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date"

me:

so, gideon takes off harrow's excess bones, which are no use to her, and goes further into the emperor's infested bolthole, where she finds mercygirl

mercygirl thinks gideon is harrow at first and, turns out, she was the one who stabbed her

these lyctors istg

can't trust any of them

mercygirl thinks harrow should be grateful that she stabbed her

and she was aware that harrow had "stuffed the soul of the cavalier in the back of her brain"

NOW WE'RE GONNA GET INTO SOME TERRITORY THAT MAKES ME GO ABSOLUTELY BERSERK, SO BEAR WITH ME

I NEED TO GET MY NOTES BACK FROM MY PREVIOUS RECAPS FOR THIS

she asks what happened with gideon's eyes and, as we have seen in the previous gideon-centric chapter, gideon's eyes are in harrow's face atm, if memory serves

"You're not her—she isn't driving you—but you have her eyes. Why? When they showed me your corpse I didn't think to check the eyes"

"I thought I knew what you were, though I didn't want to believe it..."

now listen, we're starting to tie some loose ends and some of those loose ends are linked very closely to my previous theories

I have been considering the Commander Wake is Gideon's Mom and Has a Personal Connection To Gideon The First and Is The One Connected With The Harrow Notes In Canaan AU for a while now

I need to link the specific recaps where I said this because I need to be transparent about where my brain was at

Evidence A, Evidence B, Evidence C, Evidence D

there's probably more but those are pretty clear

I swear to god if I was right about this I'm gonna screencap my own recap and put it here when the time comes

I've been marinating this one for months

I actually forgot how much of that I had written down in the recaps until I re-read them

mercygirl says that she thought the commander was a bad girl workaholic who put business before family, that she made her "the dolls" and she must have "played silly buggers with the emission" and that "gideon was on her tail"

"And then Gideon ruined everything. Then the commander ruined everything. Then you ruined everything. This could have been over eighteen years ago"

apparently gideon the first was "obsessed" with the commander, which accounts for some of the notes harrow read

I'LL GET BACK TO THAT WHEN WE GET TO THE SLEEPER, MY THEORIES CONTINUE

mercygirl starts calling gideon all sorts of names, including mutant, and keeps being bothered about her eyes

"Lipochrome. Recessive. You are the evidence. He lied to us...and you are all the proof I needed" "Cytherea would have known as soon as she looked at you"

is gideon the first gideon's dad??????? I mean, I always though he might have Something with the mom but my money was on gideon being made through science rather than Traditional Means

I mean, having lyctor genes in some way would account for gideon being a demigod, something I said with those words when I was reading gideon

also, remember when not!dulcinea told gideon she was prettier than the other gideon?? because I've never forgotten

mercygirl confirms that gideon the first was sent to kill gideon's mom

who, according to mercygirl, would have hated to be called a mom

mamá luchona intensifies

all of which aligns with my theory very nicely so far

she calls gideon more names, including "abomination, you heresy, you failed ambition nineteen years too late"

gideon reacts not wanting mercygirl to touch her instinctively

man, my theories are RIGHT THERE to be fully connected I'm BITING THE DESK

but there's no time for any more talk because mercygirl is trying to kill gideon in harrow's body

but she is stopped

she is shot

by not!dulcinea

but I don't think this is not!dulcinea, I previously mentioned her maybe being used by someone, not sure if it's possession or being used or what's going on but I don't think this is her

I thought about gideon the first being the one to do it but if he wanted harrow dead, I'm not sure he'd save gideon now

not!dulcinea says "with a tone that wasn't" hers: "goodbye"

gideon ends the chapter with "what the fuck is going on?"

CHAPTER 47

we're back at canaan au and it's time to perform an exorcism

harrow has a new note

I've been connecting those notes to gideon's mom possibly commander wake (as linked above)

the latest note continues to add to my theory

"end of the line. falling. oxygen can't last the distance and won't redirect power from the payload. instead I will make you watch every moment as I get the last privilege you cannot enjoy you bygone son of a bitch. I hope you're both as sorry as I am."

I still think this is gideon's mom because that's how she died, I mean, she got to the ninth in a suit without air and gideon still had some, allegedly

I've been thinking that one of the two people involved in the situationship triangle described in the notes was gideon the first, and that maybe the other was dr reverend emperor john

he's the most likely to be a bygone son of a bitch, so maybe I'm right

so, if harrow connects the notes with the spirit that's haunting her

and I'm connecting them to gideon's mom....

what if it's her that's haunting harrow?????

I mean, Waker

I NEED TO STOP GETTING INTO THEORY TANGENTS

anyway, all of the ghoulie ghostie friends are getting together for a sleepover exorcism

I didn't use this when I should have, back when the different aus were going by, but here it is

real!dulcinea says "Pal always said I'd be the death of him. And I was..."

he died being a weenie but he's not all the way dead, so it's fine

harrow questions why everyone wants to help her but everyone's totally fine with all this, for different reasons

real!dulcinea is "horny for revenge" (that's a tshirt for the seventh girlies right there)

protozoa is there because duty is his full personality

abby is really grateful to be asked to help (she also really likes tombs, very lara croft of her)

magnus loves his wife

ortus wants a redemption arc and now has a polycule

martita is behaving better than judith

abby asks harrow if there's anything she can remember from the slasher waker sleeper to try to pinpoint who tf it is

there's a suit, blood, a gun and gideon's sword, which is the only thing harrowcita recognizes and doesn't know where it comes from

my money is on gideon's mom, commander wake, probably also the woman in the shuttle poster that harrow saw but didn't recognize back when she met camilla

I'M PUTTING MORE CHIPS IN MY BETS EVEN IF I GET NO MORE INFO RN

harrow is very interested in how abby and magnus make it work as a married couple who are also a necro and a cav

I wonder why she's so interested

anyway, everything goes to shit on the exorcism

like, it goes really, really badly

group project off the rails bad

I mean, they didn't even have blood

apparently the spirit is also tethered to an object out there (the sword??????? possibly?????)

and she (she's a SHE) is pretty much invincible and shooting everyone and performing parkour while she's at it

harrow says camilla would be impressed, which is the highest praise

the sleeper waker slasher potentially gideon's mom (but not sure because it hasn't been confirmed yet) calls harrow by her name, but in a way that sounds like she's never said it before

she says it like a curse, which maybe means she knows, to some degree, how harrow was made????

she's basically doing whatever she wants over here, shooting ghosts, punching ghosts, throwing them around, regenerating, not bleeding, pulling guns out of thin air

I mean, ok, we got it, calm down lady

where was this energy when it was time to kill the emperor

she says there's "no magic" there and that "she's been doing this for years"

she wants harrow, so she can kill her and use her body to "finish it"

WHICH MAYBE MEANS KILLING THE EMPEROR???

OH MAN I DO WANT THAT TO HAPPEN

BUT NOT AT THE COST OF HARROW

also, mrs potentially gideon's mom, even if harrow dies, there's also gideon in the body right now so, it's a bit crowded atm

maybe find another way to kill the emperor

use not!dulcinea instead, if you can get the current tenant to leave

the chapter ends with: "ortus cleared his throat"

MAN, I HOPE HE DROPS SOME POETRY LINES, WE SURELY NEED THAT

and that's it for today!!!!!things are certainly heating up in the emperor's bolthole!!!! see you soon for the next installment, fingers crossed for my theories!!!

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Re-skimmed through a bunch of Dune Messiah last night because why not and now I am having thoughts:

The thing that sticks with me most is the tone. It's melancholy, it's eerie, it's unsettled and weird. Cannot think of a more pitch-perfect director for it than Denis Villeneuve. He's gonna nail it.

There is...not that much...actual story? Denis has referred to it in interviews as "a small book" and I'm like my guy it is 350 pages. But there are actually not that many plot beats. It's just that every. single. scene. is WILDLY overwritten. The real challenge of adapting Dune is not the giant worms or the dense complicated worldbuilding or the fact that actors have to say the name "Duncan Idaho" repeatedly with a straight face. It's that there are pages and pages and PAGES of internal monologue that have to be externalized somehow for film.

After a re-skim my gut instinct for "how much story goes in a feature film" is that if you just wrote out the dialogue and action that happens in every scene in the book in screenplay format you'd end up with...maybe about an hour of material? Which is great, actually, because it means there is room to add stuff. Like a whole new independent plotline for Chani if they decide to do that.

It may seem insane to add things to an adaptation of what's notoriously one of the wordiest series in classic sci-fi but it's worth remembering that they added quite a bit to Dune Part Two. Most of the first hour of the movie--almost everything before the worm ride except for Jessica drinking the Water of Life--is stuff that isn't in the book. And it's the best part of the movie essential to making the movie work as well as it does. Yes, they also cut elements from both parts (the dinner scene, the whole plotline where Gurney thinks Jessica is a Harkonnen spy, Thufir Hawat's fate, Leto II the Elder, murder toddler Alia) but I understand why each of those elements was cut or changed in the service of cinematic storytelling.

There's an interview (can't remember which one) with Jon Spaihts, the other co-writer of the scripts along with Denis, where he talks about how Dune is like a stage play, with so many of what would be the big action set pieces happening off-page. I kept thinking about that comparison while reviewing Dune Messiah because in addition to the scenes that do exist being wordy and internal as fuck, an absolutely insane list of major events/reveals/emotionally significant moments happen off-page. The list of things that we don't actually see in the main action of the story, that we're only told about after they happen, includes:

Chani finding out Irulan has been secretly dosing her with birth control for YEARS

People trying to capture a sandworm and take it off planet

Chani and Paul finding out Chani is pregnant after 12 years of trying to conceive

Paul flying an ornithopter carrying his extremely-about-to-go-into-labor partner while blind

CHANI DYING (first time reading I did NOT know this was coming and damn near threw my Kindle across the room at the way the information was delivered)

Alia executing a bunch of people including a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother

Paul walking into the desert at the end

You could add all these moments into a scene-for-scene film adaptation of the book and probably still have room to add more material.

The other thing that jumps out is that Paul doesn't really...govern...much. Like there's this whole subgenre of post-Dune/Dune Messiah-era fic that's just some combination of Paul, Chani, Irulan and sometimes Feyd traipsing around the palace having feelings while vague politics happens in the background, but I forgot that Dune Messiah is actually kinda like that??

There is a whole thread of Paul feeling kind of abstractly bad about being Space Hitler but he does not, in fact, actually do anything about it. And like yes both bureaucracies and religious movements can grow to have a life of their own that seems beyond the control of any one person. But also my dude you are the Emperor of the Known Universe. Someone is signing those space checks for the Endless War budget. You are not powerless here.

The one thing that really, clearly drives Paul to actively do things in the plot is not feeling guilty about having unleashed catastrophic religious war on the universe. It is protecting his family. Chani, Alia, his unborn children, and you could probably throw in Duncan by the end. That is what motivates him to act at key moments, and to want to hold on to power. And hey, y'know, if I'd experienced almost everyone I'd ever known getting murdered in a single night, I would probably get a bit intense about that too! It makes sense from a character point of view!

I'm very curious to see how these threads interweave with each other in the film, because the Villeneuve films put a lot of emphasis on Paul's agency and the fact that he may be constrained by shitty circumstances thousands of years in the making, but he still makes choices within that context. I can't see the narrative allowing film!Paul to get away with the same Poor Little Dictator routine as in the book. There are a few ways they could play this but I think the most interesting one is kinda the way they started going at the end of Part Two. Which is that as soon as you start reaching for that kind of power, then power becomes its own end and you will end up doing increasingly horrific things to maintain it. I think it would be quite interesting if the film shows us Paul not just being like "woe is me" but actively choosing to make the world worse because his trauma-driven fear of losing the people he loves makes him cling ever more desperately to power for its own sake.

If they went this route I think it would make Paul's decision at the end hit even harder. FWIW I actually really like Paul walking off into the desert at the end of the book. I think it brings things full circle with his relationship to the Fremen and creates this beautiful arc going back to the duel with Jamis. He first won a place among the Fremen through respecting their customs even though he really did not want to fight and kill someone he had no beef with. And by respecting the Fremen custom of the blind walking off into the desert, he proves himself to be fully Fremen and protects his children not by making them heirs to the throne but by making them Fremen.

And yeah, to a modern audience here on Earth it can look like "Paul conveniently fucks off and doesn't have to raise his newly-motherless children." And we can have a whole discussion about the unexamined ableism of the idea of someone who's gone blind voluntarily choosing death so as to "not be a burden" on their community. But neither of those readings is really the point here. Within the logic of Fremen cultural values, where the survival of the group as a whole is more important than the life of any one individual ("your water belongs to the tribe" etc.) Paul's choice is a willing and intentional self-sacrifice (see also: fedaykin) that wins him huge respect. There's a line in the book about Paul that's like "He would be one of them forever now" and damn if that didn't give me shivers. Like!! The political-symbolic implications!!! Which maybe I'm particularly attuned to because I just wrote a whole fic about what does it mean for an outsider to become Fremen but hmm something something Paul's final* act not being an exercise of Imperial power but an expression of kinship with an oppressed group and that being the thing that's needed to keep his family safe even if he is not physically present with them...IT IS RICH SYMBOLIC TERRITORY.

(*Yes yes I know about events in the next book. Shush.)

This kind of stuff is why I tend to think Chani may start out in a very different place in the story but the end will still be pretty close to what's in the book. It's too thematically powerful and tragic to go any other way.

But also...if they change things around enough that she is still alive at the end of the movie...I won't be sad about it.

[nevertheless-moving]

Stormlight AU 27B: Elhokar time travel

From Death to Way of Kings. Tries to get help, but unfortunately Elhokar is alone here.

Alternate version of this meeting, in which Elhokar uses his elementary light weaving skills to sneak into Sadeas bridgeman barracks, absolutely scaring the shit out of them.

Dark amorphous blob with glowing red eyes entering the barracks [it is his first time trying to be invisible. He is bad at it]: hello stormbles — do you all just sleep on the floor? And what is that smell? Heralds, this is depressing.

Bridge Four: WHAT THE — VOIDBRINGER! VOID —

Dark amorphous blob with glowing red eyes: wha — I am not a voidbringer! Stormblessed, tell them! I don't look anything like a voidbringer!

Kaladin: what? What are you? how do you know me? what do you want from us?

Dark amorphous blob with glowing red eyes: i — i thought —

Kaladin: Bissig, your knife, quick —

Dark amorphous blob with glowing red eyes: ah! keleks breath! Knife is not necessary, i, look — look — you remember, right? You saved me from assassins? We flew from Urithiru to Alethkar? Rescuing — well, attempting to rescue the queen? Come on hero, your kind of my last hope here, you have to remember —

[Dark amorphous blob with glowing red eyes turns into pretty light eyed woman]: tada! I - I swore my first oath! Just before I….you were there!

Teft: damnation! You're one too, aren't you!

Moash: uh, kal? It… might be a good time to talk about your past now?

Lopen: gancho, does this have something to do with your, you know, thing.

Skar: thing? what thing?

Rock: captain, i believe this woman too has god with her

Drehy: god?

Kaladin: i … have no idea what's going on. Who — what are you?

Brightlady [starting to tear up]: i — i thought for sure you would…you're the hero, not…oh stormfather, what am i supposed to do now?

Lopen: gancho! Very rude question! If you can't remember a woman's name you're supposed to fake it eh?

Moash: yeah kaladin, don't you know anything about women? Also, seriously? a lighteyes?

Kaladin:

Kaladin: i'm sorry ma'am, i don't — i have no idea what you're talking about

Brightlady [sniffling]: okay…alright…you don't remember, but you can still fix this— you can fly right? You could take an army to the voidbringers before they bring the desolation —

Hobber: you can fly??

Moash: don't be stupid, she's clearly insane — that black smoke must have been some kind of trick — listen lady —

Teft: lad…

Kaladin: i can't —

Syl: actually i just remembered! I think you might be able to — well not fly like me, but uh, fall? Upwards?

Kaladin:

Kaladin: I — I don't know how to fly! I'm not who you think i am!

Drehy: did anyone notice he didn't say he couldn't fly. because he definitely changed what he was going to say just now. Like i don't know how to use a bow, but i probably could, if someone taught me

Moash: Kal, just say you can't fly and end this conversation already

Kaladin: ...I have never flown before in my life

Bissig: i KNEW there was something about you — you're a herald in disguise, right?

Kaladin: what?! No! I — I might be a surgebinder, but seriously, I have no idea what's going on, alright?

Moash: what in the name of jezrians balls is a surgebinder?

Brightlady: i can't free you yet — dalinar will die…

Kaladin: wait, you can free us?

Brightlady: i mean i could probably buy you from Sadeas…but dalinar won't listen to me, he thinks i'm being paranoid — he would die — the entire kholin house would fall…

Kaladin: i don't give a cremling's leg about the kholin house! My men are dying! The bridgecrews are a death sentence and we're making runs every day now! If you want me to be some big voidbringer slaying hero then free us first!

Brightlady: oh? And the thousands of dark eyed soldiers under his command? You don't care about them?

Kaladin: what are we supposed to do as slaves that —

Voice from outside: hey! Bridge Four! What's that racket?

Moash: chull dung

Skar: Captain —

Kaladin: ah! Quick, change back to the voidbringer!

Brightlady: I'm not a —

Kaladin: if they find a brightlady in here we'll all be strung up! Hurry!

Brightlady: who would dare — oh, right right, uh —

[Brightlady transforms into nondescript herdassian man]: how — 'ows that?

Lopen: cousin!

Anyway after Elhokar leaves bridge four is left with the distinct impression that Kaladin is a herald who lost his memory.

Kaladin: i haven't lost my memory! I remember my whole life! I just don't like talking about it! None of us like talking about our pasts! Teft tell them what you told me —

Teft: …i mean i thought you were a surgebinder, but…

Moash: seriously what in damnation is surgebinding

Teft: it's people with the same powers as knights radiant. People who can breathe in stormlight and do things with it. After he survived the highstorm i brought him diamond chips…it's how he healed

Kaladin: which you didn't actually tell me right away

Skar: why didn't you tell us?

Moash: yeah. I thought we were in this together

Kaladin: i – i didn't know what to think. I still don't. For all i know I'm cursed, like the Knight's radiant were.

Lopen: you ain't cursed gancho! What kind of curse let's you stick rocks together?

Rock: stick rocks together?

Moash: alright, i can see why you wouldn't share a storming useless power

Teft: i thought you were a radiant but… most people say that the heralds come first, warning the world and then training the radiants. In some ways it makes more sense to be a herald alone than a single radiant without a herald…

Drehy: oh! Which herald do you think he is!

Kaladin: i am not a herald!

Sigzil: i believe that woman would have been Shalash — i have seen her depicted as a many faced woman capable of soul casting

Moash: huh i have heard that soulcasters are actually something unnatural under those hoods

Kaladin: seriously moash? You believe this?

Moash: i mean i already knew no one was answering prayers. If you're a herald that just means that the gods are fumbling around confused and screwing up, which would storming explain a lot about the world

Skar: oh that's a good point

Kaladin: no it's not!

Hobber: its alright sir! Er, my lord!

Kaladin: do NOT call me —

Eth: when i asked him about washing hands before and after touching wounds he just said 'wisdom of the heralds'

General bridgemen: oooh

Kaladin: my father taught me that! He's a surgeon! I grew up in a rural farming village in Sadeas! Enlisted in the army when i was 15 – i can remember my whole life, alright? Every miserable detail! I was 11 when King Gavilar died! I — and I can't believe i have to convince people of this — am not a Herald!

Bridge Four:

Rock: have heard of men whose minds make up stories after hitting head

Lopen: oh! oh! or, maybe its like, a past life thing

Sigzil: some religions do tell of mythical figures being reborn in times of need

General bridge four: ooh

Kaladin: YOU THREE AREN'T EVEN VORIN

Lopen: exactly!

Sigzil: reluctant as i am to be on the same side of an argument as lopen, it is not really heresy for us

Teft: i think jezrian and nale were the ones who could walk on walls and whatnot

Jaks: Jezrian sort of rhymes with kaladin!

Kaladin:

Kaladin: I'm going back to sleep.

[pragnificent]

One of the things that I find fascinating about genre horror is this phenomenon which I call "protagonist creep."

Protagonist creep is how, in a long-lived series with a lot of sequels or adaptions, the villain eventually becomes the protagonist character because he's typically the only character to carry over from film to film (or whatever type of media we're talking about). I like the term because it's got this neat double meaning: It's both the gradual process through which the antagonist creeps towards becoming protagonist, and also the end result is that you've got a creep for a protagonist.

And one of the main tactics writers use to engage in protagonist creep is by removing agency from the villain. When you have a character like Leatherface or Jason Voorhees, this is a pretty simple project because 1.) They have from the start been canonically intellectually disabled, which implies limited agency to begin with, and 2.) They tend to be acting on the behest of family members (Leatherface is terrified of his abusive family; Jason is driven - so much as he can say to be driven by anything - by his mother's need for revenge). These characters don't really need to be rehabilitated because they were never truly "bad," but rather are incapable of navigating their way out of bed situations. (This is all much truer of Leatherface than Jason, as the causality in Jason's case is incoherent).

When you have characters who are self-motivated and competent at what they choose to do, however, it gets a lot more complicated. Everyone here is probably familiar with the efforts that were made, both in the novels and NBC adaption, to make Hannibal... "more sympathetic" might not necessarily be the correct term, but it's all that's coming to me at the moment. More approachable. More comprehensible, more human. Tragic backstory that at least to some extent explains why he does what he does, heavily implied PTSD, growing focus around his desire towards a love interest, etc.

The Nightmare on Elm Street reboot played with the idea of rehabilitating Freddy Krueger, before yanking that back to say, "Nah, we made you think that he was unjustly accused and therefore became a vengeance ghost, but actually he did do all that shit. He absolutely did do that shit and we are going to tell you exactly what he did in way more detail than the original series ever did."

And then there's Mick Taylor, from the bizarrely extensive WOLF CREEK series. Who is a very strange example of the phenomenon because of the extent to which the writers, seemingly deliberately, refuse to let this particular creep become the protagonist.

Which, villain stan though I may be, I very much appreciate, because he is AWFUL. Like, he is absolutely The Worst that anyone can be in all The Worst Ways.

With one exception, the story never removes agency from Mick. They present a Mysterious Dead Little Sister, similar to Hannibal, but when the veil is finally pulled back we find that, rather than being a helpless child victim, Mick was responsible for what happened, causing that only the death of his sister but that of an innocent man.

The two season show goes in a very... unexpected direction, in that it seems to increasingly hint that Mick is supernatural in some way, and incapable of dying. This is the closest to removal of agency that we see in Mick, and it comes not only from him surviving unsurvivable wounds but also some of the things he says.

I'm paraphrasing, but particularly in season 2 he starts to say these morose things that imply that he's trapped. "We are the white men that were sent here for our crimes, and we don't get to leave until we've been punished." "I don't control what happens. Things just happen." And, above all, his framing of non-Indigenous people as an invasive species that needs to be eradicated. We also see Indigenous characters expressing the belief that he is some kind of bad spirit rather than a man.

None of this, I'll add, before I wander off, is logically consistent - either within the universe of the films or outside of it. There are two - no, three - things that are particularly fucking frustrating about framing Mick as someone forced to atone for the sins of colonialism by acting out violence against (primarily but not exclusively) other white people.

1.) He's primarily targeting tourists, rather than other Australians. Tourists, by definition, are not colonizers (although of course they can be part of the process of colonization). They are leaving - or rather, they would have left, had Mick not killed them.

2.) Women bear the brunt of Mick's violence, which is often sexual in nature. None of the people he targets deserve it, but there's something particularly galling about framing raping and torturing women for extended periods of time as some type of universe ordained balancing of the scales? Or something?

3.) He enjoys this shit. This is fun for him. He's having the time of his life.

I'm aware that the writers are aware of the tension between the story as it has progressed vs the implications of reimagining the character as some kind of ghost of colonialism, and I'm not accusing them of doing something wrong in trying to find a more complex motivation/explanation for the character's actions.

Again, I'm interested in that phenomenon of protagonist creep, and how writers might either lean into it or seek to subvert it. And Mick stays stuck in my head because the writers are definitely Doing Something here, but I struggle to parse it in a coherent way.

[sourbinnie]

☆ overcome.mp3 ☆

/ happy ending /

♡ genre ¿? ♡ -> angst with a hopeful ending ♡ pair ¿? ♡ -> ot8!skz x gn!reader ♡ plot ¿? ♡ -> forgiveness doesn't come easy but they already knew that. ♡ warnings ¿? ♡ -> cursing ♡ request ¿? ♡ -> yes!

first part -> hyung line | maknae line

a/n: here's the happy ending that i promised and we're done with the series ¡! you can choose which ending you prefer to read.

chan ✉

staying all alone that night made you process a whole lot of things. mostly how much you loved chan and how much he meant to you for you to give up. but that didn't mean that what he said didn't hurt you and affect you in a way. second chances are not given, they're earned and you wanted for him to prove that. for him to show you that he really wanted this and he wanted it as much as you did.

when he opened the door in the morning to check on you, he didn't expect to still find you in your shared bedroom. even after crying all your tears out, you didn't have the strength to face him because you didn't wanna give in too easily. you were determined to try and make him understand what you felt.

"hey babe. i called but you did not answer." he said simply and you just looked at him taking in his appearance. the bags under his eyes, the clothes that he wore yesterday and the regret in his voice. "i don't even know where to start, i just don't know why i said that and i'm sorry."

"i know. i just needed some time chris, it's okay. well i mean what you said it's not okay but i don't wanna lose what we have." you said as you grabbed his hand, intertwining your fingers with his and holding onto them. "but i need you that if something like this happens again, i won't hesitate to walk out the door." 

"i won't take you for granted. i just need one more chance and i'll show you what you truly are worth. i just can't believe i said those things and-." he tried to explain again but you stopped him

"chris. i know and let's try not to repeat that mistake, okay? i'd rather not talk about it because i don't wanna remember but just please know that i'll stay." you said and he sighed as he nodded. he felt like a weight was off his chest but at the same time he knew he had to be better and do better. it hurt to know that he hurt you but this was his chance to fix it.

minho ✉

you knew how he was. he was 100% gonna chase after you left even if you insisted that you wanted to be alone tonight. you still hoped he would come after you anyways, even if it still hurt. even if he found the worst words possible to express his anger, you wanted to see him. it might've been delusional or stupid but you needed to hear him say sorry a few more times.

and there he was, absolutely exhausted from running. leaving his work scene even after winning another show but caring a bit more about saving his relationship than celebrating with his bandmates. you looked at him right in the eye and you could sense regret but you needed to hear from him first.

"baby, love, jagi i'm so fucking sorry." lee minho was on his knees in a public scenery begging for forgiveness. you would've never painted this picture in your mind but here it was right in front of you. "i would do anything for you if i have to. i know i look like a fool and you're probably dying of embarrassment but if you decide to end things, i don't think i'm gonna be able to take it."

"just like i'm not taking what just happened. listen minho and please get up." like he was in your command, he got up immediately. "i don't know what your ex boyfriends/girlfriends were like but i'm not gonna stand the hurtful comments you make. however i'm not gonna let you go but i need some time yeah?" 

"how much time?" you've never seen him so determined yet so desperate at the same time. he really wanted to be with you and it showed but it wasn't enough. actions spoke louder than words and you hoped he would demonstrate that.

"i'll let you know, for now just let me be." you said walking away not before he hugged you tightly and did not let go for a solid minute. you ruffled his hair as you pressed a kiss to his forehead. maybe time would heal the open wounds after all.

changbin ✉

"did you truly feel that way?" you asked when he arrived home from the studio. you were so ready to leave but you needed to know before you did if this was anger speaking or if he truly felt what he said. you were a firm believer that words were spoken for a reason. he sighed and left his things before looking at you, trying to take in the scene that you might just leave him if you didn't say the right things.

"no. i could never feel that way about you even if i wanted to. i was angry and that's not an excuse but i need you to know that the truth is that. take me or leave me, i would rather you be with someone who didn't provoke as much damage as i did tonight." he said and you could see the tears coming out like a cascade. it hurt to see him this way and you didn't know what to do. "love i'm sorry, i know i don't deserve it but would you please stay tonight?" 

"why? what's gonna change?" you asked, crossing your arms as you looked at him. he looked so fragile and broken at the same time. he expected for you to be mad but you just looked disappointed and that hurt even more. "binnie please say anything just to make me wanna stay."

"i love you. i want to be with you so badly even if all my insecurities are telling me no right now, i need you so bad. i know i'm not enough, i know i shouldn't have said any of those words, fuck them, i always wanted you and that's never gonna change." he said wiping his tears away and getting close to you. you didn't take a step back this time as you took in your arms and cried with him. "i won't ever make you feel like that ever again (y/n), please stay."

"okay. i'll stay for tonight but we'll talk in the morning clearly yeah?" you said as he nodded. he needed to make things right this time and not let you down.

hyunjin ✉

you could hear a lot of movement coming from the other side of the door. you thought hyunjin left but it looked like he didn't as you headed towards your kitchen where the noise was coming. he was there doing the dishes, he had done every task that was left unattended before. if that made him think that he was gonna forgive you, then he didn't know you.

"yes i know. it's not enough but i was complaining like an idiot and not doing anything." he said as he sighed looking at you. you were still mad at his comments and it looked like it wasn't gonna be easy for him but then again that's what he loved about you, you stood there proud like you were. "i'm sorry. i shouldn't have said anything and i don't know what it was that put me in a mood to say that shit to you. it doesn't matter, what matters is you and i hope you know that i will change if i have to because i can't be creating drama like this anymore."

"it's not that jinnie. i usually don't mind putting up with it but today it was too much. your words just hurt me in a way, made me feel like i was worth less than you and them for that matter." you explained and he nodded. he felt like crying but he didn't want to in front of you. he felt hopeless and so fucking sad that he made you feel like this. 

"i know. i'm sorry, you're worth more than i could ever ask for and i don't want you to feel any different. i know it's not easy what you do and i'm gonna help around more because we're a team right? we both need to put in the effort." he said as he got close to you, carefully planting a kiss on your forehead. 

"a team, i like that." you muttered as you gave in to his arms and rested your head on his chest.

jisung ✉

being without jisung was hell but you needed time. even if he tried to contact you in every way that he could, it went ignored for now. it was probably painting the worst image on his mind but one day you showed up back to the apartment you shared together. it surprised you to see him there, sleeping on the couch, you would've thought he was staying at the dorms.

"baby? you're here?" he asked as he opened his eyes and tried to compose himself in front of you. he got up so fast, he almost fell but he tried to put on his best look as he didn't know why you were here. well it was your house but after what happened, he lived there thinking the worst. "babe can we talk?"

"yeah that's why i came here. to give you a chance to explain yourself." you said firmly and it took him by surprise just like your arrival. he wanted a second chance so badly so he decided to look for the best words and to tell you the absolute truth of it all.

"okay. i'm gonna start by saying i'm sorry and letting you know that even if i did fuck up real bad, i still want you and only you more than anyone or anything. i don't think you're difficult and i definitely don't think you're bad. i just said the worst words at the worst time didn't i? now that i'm saying it out loud i don't think i even deserve a second chance. but i'm gonna fight for you every day because i truly believe you're the one (y/n)." he said and he expected not to cry but he still felt the sobs leaving his body anyways.

you welcomed him in your arms as he couldn't stop crying and sighed. jisung wasn't truly mean spirited, he wouldn't say words like that because he meant them you thought. it would take long to heal but you were willing to give him another chance.

"it's okay. we're okay but we still need to talk about it whenever we can yeah?" you said as he responded "yesyesyes" which made you laugh. you wiped his tears away and hoped that things like these wouldn't happen again.

felix ✉

i waited an entire day to text felix again. as much as i was doubting myself, thinking that maybe i am too clingy, there was a part of me hoping he didn't mean it at all. expecting that the worst was just out of anger or fear and not a pure emotion he was feeling so hurtful and devastating. i got an immediate response saying he would come over and before i could respond, he was already at the door.

opening up the door to see a distraught and tired felix was a surprise. it was a competition through your mind telling you that you shouldn't care about what he did but in the end your tender side always won as you took in his appearance. 

"love i'm sorry. i'm so fucking sorry." he repeated over and over as he came in but he didn't just pass through, he fell right into my arms as i held him. "i'm the fucking clingy one, i'm the one who can't be without you and you're not a bother at all. i invited you and every frustration got the best of me and i took it out on the person i love the most and i-."

"i know." i didn't exactly know because there was still this side of me that was deeply hurt by his words. but i was willing to understand where he was coming from and what was happening that led him to get so angry.

"i don't deserve your forgiveness. i don't even deserve to be standing here in front of you or you holding me but please know that i will always be sorry about this." he said looking me in the eye. bloodshot eyes suddenly closing as i leaned in and met him for a kiss. it was a painful one because it felt like a last one but i savoured every moment that i could get with felix. 

"i still want you felix." i said and he closed the gap again as he met me for another kiss. he wanted me as much as i did and sometimes doing something about it spoke louder than a million words.

seungmin ✉

as you unlocked the door of your unshared bedroom, you didn't expect seungmin to be sleeping on the floor on the other side. you crouched down as you slowly poked him to wake him up and that's when he opened his eyes, they were reddish and his hair was a mess. 

"i didn't even notice i fell asleep at the door." he said as you both got up and the tension was still there. you didn't know how to feel and he didn't know what to say exactly. he was convinced you were mad at him but you just looked so sad that it broke him. even when you closed the door and he pretended to walk away, he stayed. he wanted to see you so bad yet every part of him knew that you needed to be alone.

"minnie do you actually want to break up with me?" you asked and you never saw him shake his head so fast. he didn't cry very often but he was willing to cry in front of you if it meant that you would see how sorry he was.

"never in a million years. i know what i said is not okay and that i should've never mentioned it in the first place." he said as he took your hands and looked at you again. "i'm sorry love, i'm sorry for making you feel unappreciated and unloved because that's the thing i want you to feel the least."

"i just thought you were going to leave me when you said that." you sincerely said and if his heart didn't break before, the sight and the words before him were killing his heart slowly.

"no, never. you can't get rid of me that easily baby. i will always stay and tell you the truth." he said as he kissed your cheek and as soon as he placed it, you gave him a little smile that warmed his heart back again. maybe you wouldn't get over this quickly but then again he did not expect that to happen, he would be there in the healing process.

jeongin ✉

he did let you go that night but he insisted that he wanted to talk every minute of the day after it. as much as you thought that you needed time, you needed to see him again before it all crumbled apart. he was there waiting for you in your apartment as you got back from work. who knows how long he had been standing there, looking a mess and hoping for the best.

"(y/n), god i missed you." it filled your heart with so many feelings that you could not express the way he said those words. you were so hurt and you could tell by just looking at him that he wasn't doing well either. he wanted to lean in for a kiss or just have you in his arms again but he contained himself from doing so.

"i missed you too innie. i think we need to talk before... we do anything." you said and he nodded as he stood there awkwardly but he knew it was his turn to talk, to mend things and to make it right this time like he didn't do it that night.

"i'm sorry, i know that it wasn't an okay thing to say. i know exactly why i'm with you and i wouldn't want to be with anyone else in any other way. i want you because you've taught me so much, showed me so much of myself and loved me unconditionally from the start." he was in the verge of tears but he swallowed and continued talking. "i don't think i'm able to be without you, just right now it's been hell."

"i feel the same way, i don't like being apart from you even if i'm mad." you said honestly and he nodded 'cause he felt the same way. "i would like to take things slow, i don't forgive you fully but you're there innie. i wish i could erase the pain but i can't."

"i know, i'll show that i mean it baby. i'll show you how i actually feel." he said and you believed him. you truly did want him to show you what needed to be shown. before he could leave, you hugged him so tight and that's when he let the tears actually go.

[cringecompanionapologist]

I Found a Doctor Who RPG Sourcebook and I'm Making It Your Problem

Actually, I found several. It seems that there is a sort of Doctor Who tabletop RPG with sourcebooks for each Doctor that include ready-made character sheets for the Doctors, companions, and major players in each televised story.

I could look into all of them, if I really wanted to, but the thing is, my computer is nearly a decade old, slowly dying on me, and hates screenshots, so taking and storing a fuckton of screenshots of absolutely everything isn't something I can do. So, I'm just pulling a few interesting bits from the Second and Fifth Doctor Sourcebooks. There's no structure to this beyond me thinking "I wonder what their character sheet looks like".

So, the Second Doctor stuff is not much at all. I got the Doctor himself.

I should probably note that I don't have much experience with tabletop RPGs, and none with this one in particular, so I only half know how to read these. This screenshot isn't even very good. I'm working off a free site with a terrible zoom function and I couldn't get the whole thing. The basics are that characters have a set of six Stats, a bunch of Skills, some traits that give them special strengths and weaknesses, and some basic character information. The Second Doctor's got a lot of stuff, some of which even gets explained.

I've deduced that there's probably a separate manual for the basics of how the game works, what the Stats mean, what the Skills do, etc. So a lot of Why These Numbers Are What They Are questions go unanswered.

Any way, this screenshot sucks so much that I can't bare the sight of it any longer, so we're moving on to the next one. Here's Jamie:

Wow! You can actually see things this time.

Most of the stat numbers don't go above 5, from what I can tell. So we can assume that Jamie's strongest stats are Coordination, Presence, and Strength, without any stat being too weak.

The skills are more mixed.

Athletics most likely refers to physical skills, Convince is persuasion, Craft is making stuff, I think, Fighting needs no explanation, Knowledge is...well...knowing stuff, Marksman is shooting/throwing accuracy, Medicine is obviously medical knowledge, Science is...look a lot of these seem like special subcategories of knowledge that are self-explainatory, Subterfuge I think covers "rogue skills" like spying and lock-picking, Survival is the sort of things Boy Scouts learn probably, Technology is computers and technobabble, Transport is driving and the like.

So, when it comes to strengths, Jamie is physically fit, but can't swim. He is very good at fighting because he's a male companion in the 60s that that was like at least 75% of their job. Marksman is apparently based in knife-throwing ability. Subterfuge...well, if you've seen The Enemy of the World, Jamie is actually a pretty good spy.

As for weaknesses, Jamie knows nothing about any STEM field.

There's also a little number for Technology Level. I've seen this number go as high as 7, but the 18th and 19th century characters seem to be placed at a 4. I didn't get a screenshot but Victoria is the same, despite the whole Industrial Revolution thing.

Then we've got some personality traits and such that effect things. Jamie apparently gets points for being attractive and brave, as well as for being accepted anywhere in time and space no matter what he's wearing. There's really not a whole lot to analyze here.

Now, the entire reason I did Second Doctor stuff was because the villains get character sheets and I wanted to see Salamander's. I added the Doctor and Jamie to pretend I had any other reason to be there.

I took this screenshot without using the zoom and it looks pretty good actually.

It turns out that those skill numbers can go above 5 as Salamander scores a 6 in Ingenuity and Presence, as well as a 5 in Resolve. Almost all of his stats are pretty high. As an RPG villain, he's a boss fight.

Instead of a full chart of skills, which only Doctors and Companions get, Salamander just gets a list. His higher points here are Convince at 5, Knowledge at 4, Subterfuge at 5, and Technology at 5. Convince and Subterfuge are his more manipulative skills as a politician, while Knowledge and Technology are because he did, in fact, invent the technology he got popular for inventing. His Tech Level, at a 5, is somewhere between Jamie and Victoria, and some of the more futuristic aliens. That does make sense for the early 21st century, even a slightly more high-tech 21st century than the one that actually happened.

As for Traits, a lot of them give him bonus skills that are actually explained, such as the ability to invent gadgets, resist mind control, menace people into doing what he wants and get even bigger bonuses in Technology and Convince situations, being a tech genius for his time period and a respected authority figure.

So, cool stuff.

The Fifth Doctor stuff I got is a bit more extensive. We'll start with the Doctor himself.

The good news is that it's a full screenshot. The bad news is that it's very hard to read. We can see a very high Ingenuity stat, because he's the Doctor. There's a Tech Level 10, because I'm guessing that's Level Time Lord.

I do have enough info to compare his Skill number to the Second Doctors.

Athletics has risen from 1 to 4 because of all the cricket. Convince drops from a 5 to a 3, because nobody listens to Five while Two was fairly good at getting people to listen to him. Fighting has risen from absolute 0 to 2, which isn't much but it's literally something. You can see a lot of numbers improve slightly as the Doctor has learned more things over time, like Medicine going from 1 to 3.

I actually looked over four different companions this time. We'll go in order of introduction. Here's Adric.

His Tech Level is confusing in the blurry screenshot. But, as for other stuff, his fast healing and ability to control the TARDIS a little are noted, though the reality warping of Block Transfer Computation isn't because it's too damn complicated and has it's own system.

Adric's skills in general are pretty low, but they don't seem to be too unfair. These sourcebooks started coming out around 2013, when the fandom's aggressive Adric hatred had started to wind down, possibly as people realized that all the season 19 companions had writing problems and the confused performances you often get with confused writing, but Tegan and Nyssa stuck around longer so improvements could be made, and Big Finish started doing damage control with them earlier on, especially in Nyssa's case.

I'm actually surprised Adric's Athletics score is as high as it is. His Science score being only a 3 and Knowledge 2 confused me at first, but when I thought about it, it a makes sense. Adric knew a lot about mathematics but basically nothing anything else, even other STEM fields. Nyssa had to tell him what photosynthesis is, which I learned in elementary school science classes. Between this extreme focus on a single subject, lack of socials skills, and somewhat stilted speech and movement, I think I like Adric as much as I do because all this stuff feels like autism and I was an autistic teenager when I first saw him.

He also gets good Subterfuge skills because he can pick locks, do sleight of hand tricks, and overall has a good skill set that was rarely put to use.

And now, Nyssa:

Tech Level 7 explains where Traken is. We'll get to compare several different planets I guess.

Nyssa gets a higher science stat, with an emphasis on biochemistry. She has a more diverse STEM skill set than Adric. Other than that, I don't have much to report here. The fact that she's upper class seems to affect her ability to interact with people who aren't. As you will see, Turlough somehow isn't given this problem despite it being more obvious with him than with Nyssa.

But before that, there's Tegan.

Technology level 5 for the 1980s. These tech levels seem to cover a lot of historical ground. 1746 and 1866 are both in 4 and 1980 and 2018(futuristic version) are both in 5. I wonder what separates these levels from one another.

Tegan is considered fairly ordinary, not a fighter like Jamie nor a scientist like Nyssa, so her stats are kinda bad. Looking at her traits, her skills seem to include running and screaming, with points off for being impulsive, argumentative, and loud. I don't think the people who wrote this liked Tegan very much.

Anyway, of course there's Turlough.

Trion is apparently Tech Level 7, the same as Traken. So that turned out to not be very interesting.

His main strengths are in Convince and Technology. He can half-understand the TARDIS at times and appears to be good at lying to people. The fact that he doesn't get running and screaming in his traits and Tegan does is sexism. He also gets to be charming, though not attractive like Nyssa or Tegan. Men can get this trait, since Jamie did. I think he's commonly seen as average-looking.

Also the fact that he's seen as lucky with all the shit he went through is hilarious.

Finally, as a bit of a bonus, Captain Wrack from Enlightenment has a character sheet. How do you even make stats for an Eternal?

Many of her stats are surprisingly low for basically a low-level god. Though she's got a high Knowledge score and a Tech Level of 12, since Eternals go beyond Time Lords, though it's more power than technology with them, isn't it? Do we just not know how to factor this in?

So when it comes to these tech levels:

18th-19th century Earth = 4

20th-21st century Earth = 5

Traken and Trion = 7

Time Lords = 10

Eternals = 12

That's all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed this bit of fussing over meaningless numbers.

[turtlesocksv2]

4 Minutes ep 4

lol oh we're just jumping right in to Win finding out Tonkla's a murderer??? Ok! i like it! But anyway Win, you better answer that phone when your murder twink is calling, you promised! I really need clarification on where in the timeline the cold opens are, i know they're in a separate timeline but WHERE in the separate timeline.

"let's go to the hospital! Where hopefully i can talk to Tyme and ask him What The Fuck?!" LMAO Great you cannot interrupt a surgery just because you want to ask your situationship What The Fuck?!

These flash backwards are getting more and more intense for Great. Yeah, i'm thinking the theory that he's actively dying on the table are true, because it's taking more and more to restart his heart each time.

"i don't have any more family, I feel lost" "You still have me" my GUY, please! he's known you for like a week or two at most! Win is down baaaaaad. Tonkla has him completely dickmatized AND pussywhipped.

Sammon really does love the "let's move in together to protect each other from the shady guys trying to stop us from Investigating Crime" and you know what? Good for her. I respect it.

Oh shit, here comes Korn. Explosion commencing in 5...4...

Win;s little pantsless shuffle is so funny. If I was Tonkla I would not be letting Korn's trifling ass in my house.

Korn, Tonkla is CLEARLY not feeling it. Read the room. At least when Tonkla manages to tell Korn what happened, Korn does immediately stop and go into Rich Guy I Can Fix This mode. The absolute LEAST he can do after ghosting his sugarbaby for weeks.

Aww, poor Win is so upset about Korn. he really is the nicest character on this show, like, as a person. everyone else is kind of awful in different ways. And I mean, he IS a cop so he's not immune but. He really is a decent human being!

He can also pick Tonkla up and fuck him against a wall which is What Tonkla Deserves. get that Hot Cop Dick, Tonkla.

Ooooooh, Tonkla's cat is dead and that's why he looked so Shook ep 1 when that black cat showed up. and I see why Tonkla's been pining for senpai, Korn is very sweet with him here in the flashback.

Korn broke his promise to go public with their relationship. so disappointing but not surprising.

Glad we're all being validated about the 4 minutes brain death thing.

the time honored tradition of getting your mark drunk to get him to spill his secrets. good job remembering to delete the evidence that you sent it to yourself, Great!

But of course Great goes by himself. sheltered little rich boy doesn't realize the danger.

Adrenaline High Great is very cute, but it makes me worried that his heart is like, gonna explode. the man is Fragile. Bible and characters with heart problems 2/3

I really don't know what's going to happen once Korn wakes up, hungover, and gets told that Great took Nan. Or once Daddy Sriwatsombat gets told. Like, Great was not thinking ahead.

Fuaiz and Bible are playing two very different kinds of Babygirl . Tonkla is Femme Fatale version and Great is Girl Next Door. if Next Door is a Gated Community.

Oooooo, I love the reveal of Dome being Tonkla's brother and there being 2 timelines. Like, we all assumed it, but the way they did it with the blur and the text on tonkla's shirt and the camera work, the shadow reveal of the memorial tablet...I loved it.

this show is so fucking good you guys.

[veilody]

So, as some of y'all might know I LOVE the entire Yakuza/LAD/RGG (+Judgment my favourites of them all <3) series - but currently? The Pirates on Hawaii ain't it. While I love me some good Majima Shenanigans I - for the love of FUCK - cannot get myself to care ONE BIT about the Rich-Family.

Big critique with Spoilers below cut - I warned you <3

I absolutely hate how a CHILD is the core of this entire story and that it sticks to me WHEREVER I go. Like, I'm Majima, I talk about stabbing and killing people all the time and at least do the stabbing bit constantly. And the story wants to tell me this child is OKAY with this violence?

So far I am only in chapter 3 but everything about the Rich-Family (except Goro the Tiger-cub, because cute) icks me - though nothing is as bad as this stupid child.

Like I can overlook how the theme is handled - still feels like the pirate plot is really pulled by the hair, but I can roll with it. But this CHILD just doesn't feel like it belongs there.

First off: It got way too much to say in EVERY kind of situation.

So we waitin' for Saejima (my love) but NO this kid wants to go to some dangerous Island full of gutters and scammers and we okay with that. Then we finished the boat to take part on that tournament but BEFORE WE DO!!! We have to go back to Rich Island because KIDDO wants to show off to his big sister. Then, do we help that daughter of that dead guy with the revenge? KIDDO SAYS YES and everyone is listening and is touched by the bravery of this stupid kid. Like, cool to see adults not dismissing a childs opinion, but we're talking about revenge, blood and murder.

Second: The adults behave weirdly

So how can it be, that I cannot partake at adult entertainment - like the strip club we know exists in Honolulu - and that Majima gets a bit panicked when the kid is near the sex shop. But at the same time: Let's go take the child on to a murderfest! Or there's someone WOUNDED and DYING and NOBODY covers the kiddos eyes?! Like, honestly this feels very americanised. And the DAD, shit, why does he always leave HIS CHILD in MY care. I am playing an ex-Yakuza, who comes to know rather fastly that he's a LEGENDARY Yakuza. Someone who's willing to gut people and gets into ALL the fights.

The only one who behaved like he's got all his marbles together IS Saejima and I hope he keeps being my shining light in this whole situation. All the kisses for this one.

Third: The fits of the Kid is cued veeeeery weirdly.

I am not talking about the two times in chapter one that the kid was kept hostage and had a fit. No, this is A-Okay, it showed us that this child doesn't do well with troublesome situations and the reason why his father tried to keep him out of danger - like he should (it's just not cool that he never clearly communicated with his son before Majima came around).

What I am talking about is the situation in which he was held hostage by the "Palekana" and we had to bust him out. He was abducted, bound and gagged with nobody he trusts around him and clearly in life-threatening danger. We come to him and he seems... Peachy. His gag comes loose and the first thing he says: "I'm sorry Captain."

Not much later, AFTER MY SOLO FIGHT with Saejima (NOBODY ELSE GOT INVOLVED AND SAEJIMA WOULD NEVER HURT A KID - THIS MAN IS A BEAR AND A SAFE HAVEN) and we bound SAEJIMA down and explain that the kids got a sickness - kiddo has a little fit as if to show off what was just said. He was by NO MEANS in danger. And it was explicitly said, that air pollution and excitement (good or bad) are the triggers for that.

Honestly? To keep myself entertained while playing this game (the mechanics are at least really fun and addicting) I am constantly walking around in the Goromi-Style. It makes EVERY scene better.

And those scenes that don't get better because the child keeps on being in the spotlight? Well I skip it. And I have only ONCE (Y4, if you know, you know, and I do hope they find a better solution to show what they meant if they make a remake of Y4 because that tainted Saejima before we really got to know him - and I love him but gee, RGG do him justice) skipped scenes and dialogues during my first playthrough of ANY RGG-Game before. I feel bad for the hard working Developers and Voice Actors behind the game, but for fucks sake, this "Noah Rich" gives me THE ICK.

I know children are something that RGG always pushes as "You need to protect them", "They're the future", "You're a Yakuza and less important than these innocent kids" - and I felt that with Haruka because she never CHOSE to be the central role of these Yakuza-plots. Honeybaby was always roped into the shit because the adults didn't handle their shit without endangering her. (Looking at you, Kazama) or because some sleezy assholes used her as Kiryus weakness. She LITERALLY got out of Kiryus way, so he can handle the dangerous shit and reduce the chance of her being used to lure Kiryu into a trap. The poor man HAD to distance himself from his daughter because she was pulled in front of the guns all the time and IT KILLED HIM - quite literally his name.

And then there's Noah Rich.... Selfish, selfish Noah Rich. I get that being selfish is a trait of children. I have a little brother who's also turning 12 this year. But no matter how adventurous you are, there's gotta be a limit of accepting the bloodshed around you, as a child.

I'm only in chapter 3 and I am so sure that I have to save this shitty child more times than I want to. I do hope that Jason Rich, Noahs mom and the sisters find their marbles at some point to say "Hey, we can find a different solution, so that Noah doesn't feel as sheltered as he did on Rich Island" without him keep being a LEECH at my side.

So... I don't know how many chapters this game has. If I am still just starting or if it can be considered mid-game already. But so far a lot of things feel rushed and not well thought through. Personally, I didn't have these issues with LAD:IW despite many people criticising the story - but maybe I was too overwhelmed with crying for Kiryu idk, because I am definitely biased towards Kiryu and not Majima, despite liking the latter too.

Thank you for coming to my TED-Talk have a Potatsuyu

[folcanta]

With a sad smile, Folken admits that he doesn't have long to live anyway— the death which was originally staved off by Dornkirk has been catching up to him ever since. This is, definitively, a suicide mission.

i wrote this in my bigass episode by episode breakdown, but since no one's gonna read all that, i'll let it be unread in its own post lol, because i think this is the most articulate i've ever been about this topic. but to the one or two people who do read what i post: thank you. you Will be rewarded by the narrative.

Folken's black wings are a literal metaphor. It's an in-story sign that he's dying, and it's so we can remember "what you put out into the world is what you'll receive" by pinning it to something visual. Remember, Folken is the one who brought the golden rule into this. The zone of absolute fortune is simply a place where action/reaction, giving/getting (lol) is happening at an almost instantaneous clip. And the toll was acceptable to him because of the trust and love he put into Van and Hitomi.

Escaflowne tells us that violence begets violence. Live sword die sword. Violence isn't cool, it's not good, it eats at you, depletes you, sets the whole world back, war is barbarism we must move beyond, and love will help us do that. This is something that Folken and Van themselves talk about. But look: If that's the case, then Folken killing Dornkirk demonstrates one of the only truly righteous acts of violence portrayed in the series— an act of violence the show tells us is necessary in order to bring about much-needed change. If that's true, if what occurs must be done and ultimately (beyond Folken's death) yields a net positive, then he should be rewarded for it, not punished.

Unless... was killing Dornkirk... the wrong thing to do...? He was very much a villain, this paragon of Western thought trying to force his will onto an entire world by reviving a horrific machine which had previously caused an apocalypse, in a story that is essentially saved by more Buddhist thought. Folken was right, Dornkirk wouldn't listen, and he couldn't shut the machine down even if he wanted to, and he didn't want to. I don't thiiiiink we're supposed to believe Folken was wrong, only that it's all deeply unfortunate (har har.)

The series is blending the Newtonian idea of cause/effect (every action has an equal and opposite reaction) with the Hindu/Buddhist concept of karma— a moral framework. The story mentions karma by name. These basic concepts are the same in reality and in the show.

Right? So they're also being approached as the same/similar within the story (explored/critiqued.) Things might be somewhat random in appearance, but everything is bouncing off of one another. That's also why there are so many parallels, foils, cycles within the narrative. Within our scope, everything is affecting everything else. And that's really important for us to know, because we can track the characters' choices and ramifications of, or reactions to, those choices.

Maybe "punishment" is too strong a word. One of the strongest messages in this story is that rising to violence and war are wrong. That's a fact, pacifism being the ultimate goal. Which means, even if things are random and just/unjust doesn't quite work here, acts of violence are wrong. The dragons alone prove this. So...

What about Hitomi interfering with Van's death in the same way Dornkirk interfered with Folken's? Does that not push off Van's death for some later date, too? What about all of the senseless, "insignificant", gruesome deaths that Van and Allen have caused? Dilandau was just an identity grafted onto Celena, but if that's what nullifies consequence for him, that's an egregiously cheap way of avoiding the same implications. (And they knew that, too, which is why Celena is unwell even after she comes back.) What about the deaths Hitomi herself is blamed for causing? Van wields THE titular war machine, and in episode 23, we know he's doing it to impress a girl. Van has experienced trauma in this process, but so has Folken. They grew up under the same conditions, after all. Many things that were out of Van's control were also out of Folken's control. Folken did also try to keep Dilandau in line, to no avail.

If Folken had instead used violence in an effort to prevent Dilandau from causing further violence, maybe even dealing out the same fucked up corporal punishment Dilandau does, I think a lot of people would be pretty upset about that. Would they be upset because of the violence itself? Or would they be upset because Dilandau's the one on the receiving end? And... for all of his military strategising... do you think it's in Folken's nature to hit a kid?

A chance at forgiveness between the characters and between the viewer + characters is important in this story, no matter what you choose to do with it.

If death is the result of even a righteous action, a series of righteous actions intended to make up for harm done, how much did any of the story's previous points matter? If there is nothing one can do to make up for their wrongdoings, then what significance could there possibly be to Hitomi proclaiming that she doesn't believe in predetermined fate? Clearly that's supposed to be meaningful (since we ditch the pendant, tarot, and Escaflowne itself) to tell us that the course of fate can be changed at any time— except if Dornkirk's been manipulating you the whole time. The series asks you to consider what happens when the conditions in which your actions take place are ones you have no control over, like, the things that people do if everything has set them up to only be able to make one type of choice. That, the story says, is why a violent environment makes people choose violence. Hitomi is there to break everyone out of samsara, but Folken's own break from— and defining of— samsara and ignorance or whatever (and this can be heavily critiqued still) is what helps her do this. So I guess Folken's death proves

Nah actually fate is predetermined and you will have comeuppance even if you do the only thing you have control over: change your behaviour completely

And no, sometimes, or maybe just for you, Folken, even if you're at the mercy of a cruel environment/a manipulator, you should still be punished for what you did in that situation.

Which... okay? It's not very satisfying, but I guess I could accept it. Even still it wouldn't make sense for Folken to be the final picture/bearer of those concepts, even less when people like fucking... Adelphos and Dilandau make it out alive. And I like those guys, lol!

This is also what happens in the film, but it's far less complicated. (The drama CDs flesh everything out much more, and it's very sad.) In the same instant that Hitomi and Van finally understand Folken's motivations, everything he's done swings around to take his life. The film still wants to portray this as an unfortunate tragedy— it's a realisation come too late, bad behaviour has consequences even if he changed things around in that moment, but it gives you a fraction of a second to think something may change. The film strips away a lot of the explanations to hone in on a few core concepts of the series, and simply takes Folken's actions in a different direction, to a different conclusion— and by doing that, proves what he did in the series was, uh, better.

Nobuteru Yuki even said the film could've easily excluded all the other characters and only been about Hitomi, Van, and Folken. Because it basically is, lol. Aaaaand in the film, Dilandau doesn't have Celena to fall back on— he lives to commit more war crimes lmfao.

The more I think about this moment, the more it tears down the story's construction. It stands in direct contradiction of everything that's come before it, and unfortunately, being where it is, that's... the entire story. It's a domino effect of seeing other contradictions between aspects of the story. When a story is driven by characters and emotion, I am willing to forgive pretty much anything. But the things Escaflowne wants us to remember are repeated over and over. They're the rules it chose to play by. If anything, perhaps it explains too much, and not enough is allowed to fall away! That's why moments that don't make sense really don't make sense.

And you know, maybe that's why people think Folken didn't matter as a character: because if Van and Allen are miraculously spared (honestly? it's insane that Allen lives) then that means all the death and destruction they caused was actually morally right, because, well, they're rewarded, aren't they? And if Dilandau is effectively allowed to live, that means his actions weren't so bad either. So instead of ~interpreting~ Folken's death or its flatness as damning evidence of subpar writing, they see it as damning of his character.

The consequence of Folken's death is that it reaches back through the whole series and upends much of its message. I actually do understand the team's reasons for "why" it's there, I understand what it means, because this isn't the first time something like it has occurred in fiction lmao. But that's part of the problem. Its greatest crime might be that it's one of the most uncreative aspects of an overwhelmingly inventive story.

[cheshirewriter01]

Happy penguin huntings

Law x reader

Summary: you demand your first kiss with your grumpy boyfriend.

Down the halls of a quaint little submarine, a huffy woman stomps her way through.

'Three weeks, three weeks me and law have been dating and I haven't gotten a kiss yet... I don't think I approve... So then... where is he?' she thought with a frustrated eye twitch.

Patience was never y/n's virtue, especially when it came to having an ungodly sexy boyfriend with the most kissable lips... Or at least she thinks they are, she's about to find out because his ass is being too slow.

And law? Well, he's just a shy inexperienced bean, he doesn't mean any harm, but sometimes even beans need a little push.

Three mildly vicious knocks startled the captain from his load of paperwork he was absorbed in whilst he was settled in his desk located in the medical bay.

He quickly returned to his work after muttering a quick 'come in,' only mildly hearing the door open and shut.

Y/n wasn't having it though, she wanted his full attention, and she was going to get it.

Sauntering herself next to his old leather chair she lightly kicked the wheels of it to gain his attention. "Law, get your nose out of your work for five seconds and acknowledge me!" She finished with a huff to show her exasperation.

He slowly set down his pen, releasing an irritated huff himself as he turned his chair to look in her direction, an unamused expression adoring his handsome face.

"I'm clearly busy y/n-ya, unless it's important, then it can wait until later." he went to reposition his chair towards his desk again when her hand shot out and grabbed the arm rest of it, forcing him to continue looking at her. He now noticed her irritated face, although he found it more adorable than anything, like an angry chipmunk.

"This is important, and it can't wait til later, absolutely not!" her voice increased at the end, growing even more agitated with his uninterested behavior.

A glare was passed her way, both for interrupting his work this long and for raising her voice at her captain, 'only she could get away with such a thing' he mused.

"Is someone on the crew injured?" he asked.

"well no"

"dying?"

"also no!" her eyes were growing wider with frustration.

"Are we being attacked?"

"Seriously you jerk, does it sound like we're being attacked!?"

"Exactly so what the hell is so important then hmm?" he asked with a raised brow as he settled back in his chair, a stupid smirk on his face, suddenly enjoying this short game of pushing her buttons after working on papers for so long.

He can't be a romantic, but he sure knows all the right ways to piss someone off, then again she was quite short tempered.

"No one's hurt, no one's dying, we're not being attacked, everything's fine, I just need you to fricking kiss me already!"

And as quick as his smirk came, it also left, leaving him with a blank face and he processed what exactly she just said..

.

.

".. w-what did you just?!" a fervent blush came across the captain's gave that he attempted to hide to no avail, due to the sudden shock of what she just said to him.

"y/n-ya you can't just spout random shit like that out of nowhere, you damn brat!" he glared at her from underneath his hat, still not quite making eye contact with her anymore.

A poor attempt to cover embarrassment with anger really. The only time his personality does a 180 like this is when she's so bold towards him.

Ignoring what he said, she carried on, determined to get way. "Are you gonna do it or not, I want a kissss, lawww, kiss meee!"

"would you keep it down before someone hears you dammit! " he yelled in a hushed whisper, a crimson color quickly returning back to his cheeks.

This only egged her on more continuing to whine even louder.

"Okay! Okay, I'll k-kiss you, just shut the hell up!" he quickly stood up attempting to cover her mouth with his hand, which only resorted in it being licked, a cold glare was thrown her way for that, one which could cut down enemies itself, yet, she only giggled in response.

"Why do I date you again?" he mused in playful confusion.

Pretending to be hard in thought, she responded shortly after.

"Hmmmm, because I'm cute and I make your life interesting?" she spoke with a coy smile on her rosy lips, lips he suddenly couldn't look away from after she brought the topic up...he won't lie, he has thought about kissing her before, multiple times, he just hasn't figured out how to go about it...until now.

"you make my life something alright." he scoffed

"Ohhhh but you didn't deny thinking I was cute, oooh captain thinks I'm cuteee!" She tattled the confession to the almost empty room like a middle school girl teasing her crush.

He simply rolled his eyes in return, determined to make her shut up, which he succeeded in seconds later after he quickly took a large step towards her, bodies becoming mere inches apart.

She immediately shot her eyes up to his once again smirking face, words suddenly lost in her throat at the sudden close proximity.

A more shy smile crossed upon her face, regardless of all her teasing, he does still make her nervous, can you blame her?

"You finally gonna give me what I want cap?" She spoke in a whisper as his large tattooed hand slowly rose up to cup her delicate face, bodies once again moving closer, she could feel the heat from his chest radiating onto hers.

"I know it's a hard task but if you stop talking I will" his other hand grazed the middle of her back, pushing her completely into him now as his face grew ever closer, she wanted to be mad at his response, but how could she when the only thing she could focus on right now was his devilish lips mere millimeters apart from her own now?

'where the hell did all his shyness suddenly go?' she still managed half a thought, pouting slightly, only tempting him further more as her plump bottom lip stuck itself out slightly more.

He was definitely still nervous, never having been so close to someone to even consider having a romantic relationship... and he just had to find someone even more blunt then himself.. but right now, the opportunity to finally feel her lips against him, was making his head so fuzzy with desire that he couldn't think about much else, working completely on instinct at the moment.

Lips slowly and cautiously brushed against one another to test out the waters, breathes hitching at the first contact, before law delicately placed his lips upon her closed ones, letting out a soft sigh of success.

His lips were definitely kissable and much softer than she had ever thought, and she was loving it, never wanting this moment to end between them.

Her hands gripped onto the front of his yellow hoodie to keep herself grounded, as she carefully pressed her lips more firmly to his, wishing for deeper contact. He happily obliged and returned the favor, slowly deepening the kiss to both of their pleasure.

Time and time again they separated and repeated the action, soft sighs and grins coming from the both of them as they enjoyed this tender moment between them. The kisses stayed pure and sweet, simply enjoying the feel of the other so closely. More passionate kisses can come at a later time, for now this was more than enough for them.

Once they separated for the last time, they layed their foreheads upon one another, slight catching their breath. She could feel his increased heart rate under her palm located on his chest, making her smile softly.

Once they lifted their heads to look at one another, it was clear you could see the adoration they had for each other in their eyes, no matter how much they love to bicker, they loved the other more.

And of course her being the playful brat she is, she had to have the final say, so with a happy grin on her face, she patted him on the chest and gave him her best smile.

"Thanks for the kiss cap, you can get back to work now."

And she turned around and happily waddled out of the room, like a penguin who just succeeded in her hunt, a soft click of the door was left in her absense.

And an exasperated captain.

A small grin rose to his face as he plopped back in his chair, staring at the door she just left from.

"What am I going to do with you.. Y/n-ya."

[bitedownme]

Could you tell us more of your SK?

Eeeeey, random trivia about SK!

Ok so, he's a part of a major worldbuilding stuff I am working right at this moment (which is why I wasn't able to draw consistently over the last three days and probably next two as well, trust me, we're cooking) which means I am dying in the pile of ideas may or may not related to him in particular. Not exactly a trivia anyway, most of it was just language stuff.

Useless fact, but his claws are glowing from inside. Interesting bit is that the same was true for his horns as well in the past.

I have another favorite character completely unrelated to SCP in general. He was able to devour creatures and steal their life force and sometimes powers. I feel like this works the same for SK, but the way he "devours" other Gods is a bit less physical

This is kind of the reason why he's currently looks like this. In the past he would probably look more closer to the general aesthetic his claws possess. I actually intend to draw him like this for one of the asks I have!

The majority of entities I draw are a combination of parts of their stories I liked the most. While SK is indeed a powerful God born from the Abyss he's actually closer to Yaldabaoth in the way that he encompasses primal feelings. Not to the extent of being mindless beast, but to extent that he feels anger, lust, hunger and similar emotions to the MAX.

Actually the same is the reason why I draw his form a bit more comprehensible and physical??? that the others. HK has his body hidden, Ambassador is very weird actually, and you can see the hole in Jeser's chest, there's a fun fact about this too. SK so far the only one with the most tangible body. Well, apart from Moloch, but only because he's KIND OF the same?

He absolutely DESPISES when someone calls him by his actual name, which is ironic since he can't do anything about it when All-Death refuses to speak his title. Names don't matter for AD, they matter a lot for SK who changed them several times.

The brides are still a questionable aspect of his story. What I can say is that I toyed with idea of it being close to "Blue beard" fairytale. You know, THAT one? MC being a part of it :)

Design play - his throne is jagged and spiky, asymmetrical in every way with seven "spears" coming out from the back. Jeser's seat near him is much more elegant in comparison to this.

Another useless fact - SK hates most mirrors to the absolute core. There are only several mirrors he's fine with and that's only because of where they are positioned.

[hauntedwizardmoment]

PLEASE talk more about the clones' various genres and the points of friction and overlap with that, I'm so here for this (I famously can't hear the words "Shakespearean tragedy" without going absolutely nuts, so seeing that for j3.....ough)

!!! YAY there's SO much drama here

so like. with jace and j2, because jace is in a horror movie vs. j2 who is in a bodice ripper. jace is constantly saying creepy ominous shit about how porter doesnt really care about j2 and like, vaguely implying that porter's gonna kill him the same way he killed jace. and j2 is like. not heeding these warnings at all. j2 is able to put jace in the category of a bodice ripper heroine's well-meaning yet extremely wrong friend who is telling her to NOT follow her heart and instead settle for safety and comfort. and to jace, j2's unwavering, almost naive love of porter makes him read as the ditzy cheerleader who dies first in a slasher.

and j2 and j3 have a similar level of conflict bc j3 is like rosencrantz from rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead. he's a bit character who's become aware that he's a bit character and is trying to eke out any semblance of joy and meaning with his small role in life. and j2 is ophelia, and he can't save j2 from his tragic fate, he can't save anyone, not even himself. meanwhile to j2 (bodice ripper) j3 is literally a side character who's like, technically important, but come on. he's not worried about j3, why would he bother? j3 is like the legislative assembly in all of those romance novels about royalty. taxation rates? public infrastructure? foreign policy??? who fucking cares about all of that. porter got j2 flowers, thats whats REALLy important.

and jace and j3 are like. theyre both genre-aware. they both know how terrible things are. but jace is surviving the horror movie (or at least dying last) and j3's suffering and death is a foregone conclusion that gets ramped over on the way to the main storyline. and j3 is somehow both thankful he doesnt have that spotlight on him but also eternally vying for it and trying to prove himself worthy of it.

j4 and jace are in SEVERE conflict because j4 is like "you know the torment nexus wouldnt exist if it wasnt for you, right? you realize it's your fault we're all stuck like this?" because she's the audience in the horror movie thats like "why the fuck did you idiots go into the woods where the serial killer's cabin is??" and jace is like "yes but i'm winning the torment nexus, or if i don't win, at least all of you lose" which j4 views as so insanely petty and cruel that she honestly doesnt even want to waste her breath on it

but i think the worst conflict is j4 and j2 because j4 is like. j2. you do not need or want a booktok boyfriend. you DO NOT. that is BAD. porter is BAD. and j2 is like "you dont get him like i do" and is convinced j4 is just jealous or bitter that she can't get porter's attention like he can. j2 was written by a lonely, angry man whose wish fulfillment fantasy is that a guy like j2 might be charmed by him and date him (porter).

lastly j3 and j4... i cant even look directly at this. j4 sees how lovely and important j3 is when even the text itself doesnt. j3 is the only one able to break the fourth wall and see j4. despite everything, they found each other. oh god theyre in love...

[mermaidsirennikita]

Have you ever shared your thoughts on the romance in Killers of the Flower Moon?

There was a viral tweet a few days ago discussing how the emphasis on the marriage was borne out of Scorsese learning that Ernest insisted until his dying that that he really loved her, and Mollie’s real-life descendants also telling him they too believe that they were truly in love.

I went into a bit of a rabbit hole reading interviews with the cast and the IRL descendants and it was so disturbing and tragic (like Ernest really did learn to speak Osage, which was apparently highly unusual for white spouses). It’s also interesting to me that neither of Mollie’s sister had children with their white husbands, but she had three with Ernest. Like theirs was sincere relationship, and not one primarily because of mutual convenience. (Yet he also named his youngest daughter after her aunt, who he helped murder.)

I’ve seen pushback to the romantic relationship in the movie (“that’s not love,” “love isn’t abuse”), which is understandable, but also IMO a bit simple and naive/childish? I guess it kind of depends on whether one thinks love is inherently good, which I don’t think it is.

Anyway, I thought the film’s depiction of Mollie/Ernest was fascinating and devastating. I thought Lily and Leo had fantastic chemistry too.

I think Ernest did love her (or believed that he did), yet his love was worthless because it didn’t protect her or make him do the right thing. I thought Scorsese was basically asserting that love actually cannot “redeem” anyone or overcome evil/greed/bigotry.

I agree with your assessment on Scorsese's intent with that relationship, for sure, and I think that there is an understandable desire to categorize feelings and relationships into one thing or the other. When it comes from the Osage today (not that there's a universal "Osage take" on this movie, but I've seen a couple Osage critics go "that was not a relationship with any love in it"), I think that's a large part of healing, and I get where it comes from, and I respect it. I think that there is sometimes a need, not a universal need, when you have experienced trauma and abuse, to put certain feelings into boxes. It's self-protective. And I speak from experience, right? I've been processing emotional abuse from someone I loved for years, and it has only been fairly recently that I've been able to unravel the relationship in a way that isn't "this person must not have loved me because otherwise how could he treat me that way".

When it comes from random twitcrits, I think it's more indicative of not only that, but some larger issues that we're dealing with societally. I think we often try to "science-ify" or pathologize feelings in a way that we really can't. Because if we can say "this person did this thing, that means they're incapable of love", "abusive behavior of any kind means that person does not ever love you", "this disorder means this person can't love", it's easier to feel like we're capable of safeguarding ourselves from threats. If we can identify it, we can protect ourselves, and when someone does X, Y, and Z, we can identify them as a wholly malevolent force and predict their behavior and prescribe behaviors in terms of how to react to them.

Personally? I think it's a lot more complicated than that. In terms of Ernest and Mollie in particular, a lot of what people who have a more personal understanding of that situation seem to say, as you've pointed out, they appear to have been in love. Now, I don't think anyone can know what was going on for Mollie except Mollie, and Ernest obviously had reason to claim he was in love with her whether or not he was. Their descendants cannot look at it clear-eyed. All of his behavior could have many motivations.

The thing is, though, that it's absolutely possible to love someone be horrible to them. HORRIBLE. Because humans are capable of being many things at once, and compartmentalization is SO real. To me, it seems impossible to say that every abusive individual, even every monstrous individual, carried no love ever for people... even the people they hurt. And it also seems to assume a lot about what we can divine about people without living in their minds.

I also think that it challenges us on several fronts. First off--we can think someone is absolutely evil and that, in a world where the law can be trusted, would deserve a fate like death (to be clear: I'm anti-death penalty, but I understand the desire to punish certain people to that extent)... But how much does it shake our sense of morality and our justness when we admit that those people are capable of love? I mean, it doesn't for me, but I think it does for many. You want to be able to say "there is nothing good in this person" because it's just easier to accept. It is much, much more horrifying to think "this person is evil and also can love" versus "this person is evil". To be evil is human, but the way our societal morality is structured makes many feel otherwise; but nobody would argue that to love is human. So acknowledging that someone can love in any way humanizes these evil individuals in a way that is DEEPLY uncomfortable.

Because, as you said, it does separate this idea of love from goodness. Love is not inherently good, it's not inherently healthy, and it's not inherently ENOUGH. Someone can genuinely love you. But why does them loving you automatically mean that they love you MORE than their greed, MORE than their desire to destroy, MORE than their wrath? There's nothing in the bylaws of love that says so. That's just a romantic concept we've put onto all types of love, imo.

ALSO: perhaps scarier is the idea that someone can love and can also murder, and abuse, and do heinous things. So how can we identify a dangerous person? If someone like Ernest really loved Mollie, then someone like your dad could also be capable of murder. Someone like your husband could be capable of abuse. It's kind of a terrifying thing to think of, because I think that a lot of people like to live in this world of "Well, that would never happen to me/I would recognize the signs". Not always out of a sense of superiority, but because it feels SAFER and more comforting to think that you would pick up on these aberrant behaviors, desires, whatever.

I always think about what my mom used to say to me--"I am 99.9999999999% sure that X person would never do X thing, but you have to leave that sliver of space for them doing it". And you DO. Because if you don't, then if that thing happens, you may not catch it. That incredible, bulletproof confidence? Leads to scenarios in which you fail to recognize or even live in denial of what's going on around you.

So.... we're left to live with that sliver of ambiguity. And humans often do not like ambiguity. You live in the ambiguity that technically, someone can betray everything you think you know about them; and you live in the ambiguity that someone that hurt you horribly could also have had genuine love for you, and it wasn't healthy, and it wasn't good, and it wasn't ENOUGH, but it was there. I've lived in that second thing, and it is hard. And I've also been the person who would swear 100% that I could trust someone, only to be proven wrong.

This doesn't mean that you can't love and trust and believe in people. It just means that life is really about BELIEVING in people, and not ever knowing 100% where their mind is, what the future holds, what they'll do. I think that now more than ever, that makes people feel so unstable.

This is all very theoretical and long-winded, but yeah. I think that is what Scorsese was trying to get across. That love can exist in bad relationships and horrible people, and it's not always redemptive, and it's not always enough, and it cannot stand up to the kind of avarice and bigotry that we saw in Killers. And isn't that horrifying? Isn't it scary?