#zero of what I’m telling you effects your or has an impact in your life….why you so mad bro??

[loisroo]

i don’t teach kids to be or think like me, i challenge kids to think and be like themselves.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 313: Deku VS Lady Nagant

Previously on BnHA: Hawks’s super-hot badass murder senpai Lady Nagant showed up to fire a cupid’s arrow into my heart, and a bunch of literal bullets into my son. Deku was all “oh shit it’s Hawks’s super-hot badass murder senpai, what do I do, let me think back to Hawks’s advice for a sec.” Flashback!Hawks was all “anyway Deku so if my super-hot badass murder senpai ever shows up you’re basically screwed so you’d better abscond the fuck out of there.” Present!Deku was all “lol idek why I flashed back to that conversation since I’m just going to do the exact opposite of what Hawks said” and charged directly toward Nagant because WHY NOT. Overhaul was all “waah I need to get back to my boss who I put in a coma out of love” and Nagant was all “jesus christ why did I even bring you here” and had a flashback to AFO who was all “ILU NAGANT IMMA GIVE YOU AN EXTRA QUIRK SO PLEASE CAPTURE DEKU FOR ME PLEASE AND THANKS” and yeah. Shit is all over the place right now and I love it.

Today on BnHA: All Might gets attacked by a pair of discount assassins and is all “Call an ambulance! ...BUT NOT FOR ME” and it’s really badass but also I really wish he would stop tempting fate like this. Lady Nagant is all “[casually flies around town shooting shit]” and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t read an entire chapter of just that. Deku is all, “[gets shot (≥_<)]” and releases a giant Smokescreen which prompts En to show up. En is all, “( •᷄⌓•᷅ ) (⌣̀ Δ⌣́) ( •̀_•́ )σ (¬､¬) (눈_눈)” which I consider to be a high point of both the chapter and of my life. The chapter ends with Deku using the Third’s quirk to launch a bunch of random objects at Nagant so that he can jump up and grab her arm all sneaky-like, and I’m sure this is going to prompt another week’s worth of discourse that I don’t care about at all, but fuck it, I’m having a good time.

OH WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO ALL MIGHT WELL THAT’S NICE I GUESS. CONGRATS ON NOT BEING DEAD

you named your car??

you named it Hercules??

I love you so much??

please marry me you giant fucking dork???

lmao speaking of huge fucking dorks

who the fuck are you clowns. la dee da we’re gonna murder All Might with our synchronized spear attack!! I mean... they’re clearly trying their best... maybe I should just be nice and politely hype them up like All Might is so clearly trying to do

like okay, but we all agree that this is actually the least intimidating attack any of us has ever seen, right?? these guys zipped up their hoodies all serious-like and are trying to attack All Might and Hercules with their Walmart tiki torches, but just, no?? right?? like the only way this could possibly be effective is if they were trying to kill All Might with secondhand embarrassment

“those are assassins” this is a VERY generous assessment, All Might

OH MY GOD THE TIKI TORCHES ACTUALLY KILLED THE FUCK OUT OF HERCULES

[slaps roof of car] this baby can fit so many weaponized festive backyard lighting solutions in it

and yet, even after watching this with my own two eyes, I still can’t take these dudes seriously. idek what it is. anyways r.i.p. Hercules, I loved you a lot but I guess you weren’t actually a very good armored car were you

omg they didn’t know it was All Might??

okay 1) for a moment there I was like “oh hey maybe they’re not so bad after all” but then a moment later it was like “ah nope, they are.” like, that was an interesting .06 second emotional journey there. anyways 2) All Might you have my permission to kick their asses for this disrespect, and 3) anyone else all of a sudden getting “wouldn’t this be an interesting time for Stain to suddenly show up” vibes?? no?? just me???

(ETA: hmm tbh I’ve still got those vibes and they haven’t gone away lol. Stain?? you out there buddy?? do you want to be cool for just once in your life. ball’s in your court pal.)

OH SNAP ALL MIGHT ARE YOU REALLY GONNA DO IT ARE YOU GONNA KICK THEIR ASSES

PROTECTIVE DAD MODE ACTIVATED?? BECAUSE YOU KNOW I’M HERE FOR THAT SHIT, SO YEAH, FEEL FREE

omg he’s shouting at them about how much Deku has suffered lmao and they’re just like falling over from being scolded

so they have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about though, right? “SIR THIS IS A WENDY’S” well whatever, you killed his pet car so he’s in a bad mood now

OH MY GOD

LIKE, JUST SO WE’RE ALL CLEAR, THESE FOUR PAGES SO FAR HAVE MADE ALMOST ZERO SENSE. LIKE MAYBE 2% SENSE TOPS. BUT ASK ME IF I CARE. GO AHEAD AND ASK. I SAID GO AHEAD, IT’S OKAY. ...NO I DON’T CARE AT ALL THANK YOU FOR ASKING

(ETA: also, the more I look at this panel, the more I’m just like, why the hell would you phrase it like that though, sob. way to doubly tempt fate?? are you trying to give Horikoshi a challenge??)

and now back to Deku who is randomly bouncing around the city and narrating it to himself just in case he was confused about why he was doing this

who are you talking to Deku. but thanks we appreciate it

man you gotta love that overconfidence. the smartest guy in the world warned you away from this lady, so SURE, LET’S RUN RIGHT UP TO HER. “I APPRECIATE YOUR INPUT, FLASHBACK!HAWKS, BUT I’LL TAKE IT FROM HERE” well okay then!!

I think it would be funny if RHA.com put little Buzzfeed-style polls in between the chapter pages so they could survey people at random intervals as they read their way through the chapter. like, you finish this page and then there’s a little poll there asking “do you think Deku’s plan of catching up to Lady Nagant and finding out where Shigaraki is will work?”, and you click “no” just like everyone else and then nod as the results show that 97% of your fellow readers also picked “no”, and you chuckle to yourself wondering how many of the 3% accidentally clicked on the wrong option by mistake, and then you keep on reading

ANYWAY, SO

HOW’S THAT PLAN WORKING OUT FOR YOU SO FAR DEKU. nice kick, though!!

omggggggg

ouch

update: Deku’s plan not really working out. sources tell me my boy has been fucking shot. this is an ongoing story and we will keep you posted with the latest developments as they come in

wait what

feel free to explain to the rest of us what all of this “UNLESS...” and “THAT POSSIBILITY...” shit means anytime, Deku

oh lol did he realize she could fly??

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE, CNN’s John King reports that Deku is still fucked. eyewitness reports now coming in that Nagant is doing no-look shots and basically not even giving a fuck. sources described her mannerisms and expression as “sexy, but in like an effortless sort of way.” we will continue to bring you the latest

so now there’s basically an entire page of Deku being all “ah fuck so she’s basically closing in and she could already hit me with impossible accuracy even from Far Away, so if that’s the case then her being Up Close is probably going to be even worse!” making good use of that Big Hero Brain there, Deku

so now what, you’re doing some kind of spiraling kick thing?? how is that going to help

oh lol he’s using Smokescreen to create some cover. aww, good for you Deku you named one of your Smokescreen attacks

OH NO LADY DON’T TELL ME AFO DIDN’T EVEN FILL YOU IN ON THE BASICS

seriously, AFO?? you basically told her what Deku’s exact strategy was going to be but then couldn’t be assed to drop that little, small, barely notable piece of knowledge that Deku is rocking multiple quirks?? is it supposed to be a secret or something?? you dropped the ball here man

damn this is getting intense now

(ETA: the way En is poking Deku’s head in that first panel is fucking sending me, I love this guy so much omg.)

well then what are you planning, Deku?? I’m actually really curious!! I am genuinely starting to be invested in this fight scene not only in the “wanting to see who wins and how that impacts the plot” sense, but also in the “wanting to see how it happens because the choreography and strategy is actually pretty cool” sense, which honestly hasn’t happened for quite a while now! this is fun

anyway so what’s up Deku, are you going to use another quirk?? I’ve been speculating that he hasn’t actually unlocked the last two yet (since Two and Three didn’t exactly seem convinced when we last saw them), but maybe I’m about to be proven wrong

(ETA: well he clearly has Three’s obviously, but Two’s is still MIA, and that’s the one I am of course the most curious about. that’s the one we’re all curious about, let’s be real.)

OH SNAP???

AHHHH I’M HYPED LOL. ANOTHER SHINY NEW QUIRK LOL SHOULD I PUT UP THE USUAL DISCOURSE DISCLAIMER

(ETA: so yeah, after thinking on it, I’m not gonna say “please no Deku discourse on my blog” this week, but I probably will ignore any discourse that does come my way though, just because I don’t have much interest in getting involved in what would probably be a pretty repetitive discussion. like, I can just sum up my opinions (which is what they are) here instead. in fact here they are lol:

1) I like the SIXQUIRKS and I like seeing Deku be a badass.

2) I also don’t think Deku is too OP. more like he’s exactly as OP as he needs to be at the moment, given that we’re approaching the end of the series. I expect the other kids will also be pretty damn OP when we see them fight again. we’re just at that point now where they’re all badasses (as well they should be; they’ve grown a lot and they deserve it). it’s just that Deku’s the one we’re getting to see right now.

3) of course I miss Kacchan and the others, but for me this vibes much closer to the MVA arc where even though I missed them, I was still having a blast (as opposed to the dark days of the Basement arc where I was pretty much losing it lol). like, even though Kacchan’s my favorite, I still love Deku a lot and this arc has been amazing for him getting to shine on his own (for like the first time, really).

4) y’all know I love the OFA plot and I’ve never been shy about that lol. I like all of the Vestiges a lot. Banjou and his over the top personality; En and his “guy you thought would be serious and :| all the time but is actually hyper-animated and ALL OVER THE PLACE” energy; Shiro who actually is a :| sort of guy lol; Three who I still expect will be fleshed out in a more detailed flashback at some point; and of course Two, who, well. you know what I think about him lol. Bakuverse is still on the table and I’m still hyped. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we still have yet to see Two actually talk to Deku (as opposed to talking to the other Vestiges while Deku is distracted). did he lend him his power yet?? or is he still holding out?? either way it’s definitely going to be a Big Thing when it finally happens and I can’t wait to see it.

5) Lady Nagant is Everything and just because Deku grabbed her arm doesn’t mean the fight is over yet lol. Overhaul hasn’t come into play yet either. not to mention that even if the fight is over, the “where do we go from here” part still has me excited either way. her connection to Hawks and the HPSC is very intriguing and we’ve barely touched on that as of yet; she definitely has more of a role to play in this.

6) last but not least, I feel like every week the discussion is all about how much focus Deku’s getting, and how OP he is or isn’t, and OFA this and OFA that, but meanwhile I’m actually so invested in the character development here though?? the way Deku has distanced himself from everyone (except for the Vestiges, because of course they’re already dead so it’s not like they can die again lol)?? the way he’s pushing himself far too hard and we can see the shadows in and under his eyes, and the fact that he never smiles, and even All Might has remarked on how he isn’t taking care of himself at all?? the fact that he’s so single-mindedly obsessed with focused on stopping AFO?? the fact that he’s still the same sweet old Deku despite everything and was so kind to that fox lady with the umbrella, but there was also something so sad about that scene because it felt like a reminder of the type of hero that he wants to be, but that he’s not allowed to be right now?? because the stakes are too high and the world is falling apart?? and he feels like he’s the only one who can do something about it?? and that he has to be?? and that he is putting so much pressure on himself right now, and it’s absolutely too much pressure for any one person to bear, and I feel like no one is fucking talking about this lol goddammit.

anyway so yeah. I have feels about this, and every week that slow-burn angst is getting more and more intense behind the scenes, and I feel like it’s all going to hit a breaking point eventually. sooner rather than later. it really feels like a mirror of Katsuki’s post-Kamino arc. where all that angst was just churning below the surface for like twenty chapters and then it finally was like “okay it’s time” and it all came bursting out and we got the best five chapters of the fucking series (in my admittedly biased estimation lol).

basically, I know that most of fandom is billing this as either the “villain hunt” arc or the “solo Deku SIXQUIRKS fighting arc” or whatever. but for me, it’s always been and still is the Deku Angst arc lol. the cool fights are a sexy bonus (the worldbuilding less so because even though it’s interesting to see society at such a low point, it’s also very depressing and gets old pretty fast), but for me the thing that’s really keeping me engaged chapter after chapter is seeing Deku like we’ve never seen him before. seeing him all quiet and withdrawn and brooding and focused on AFO, AFO, AFO, and seeing that “he just doesn’t take himself into account” mentality taken to extremes. I am invested in that. I’m soaking up that angst each and every week, and I’m invested in seeing what comes of it. it’s a big picture thing. week to week this arc might just seem like a bunch of villain fight scenes, sure. but Deku’s emotional journey is the thread that’s going to carry this arc through from beginning to end, and for that I’m willing to be patient.

anyway that turned into a BIG OL’ RANT there but yeah! so those are my thoughts on the disk horse as it currently stands. and like I said, I’m open to discussion, but tbh I will probably just wind up repeating these same talking points endlessly so just a fair warning lol.)

anyway so Three says Deku has yet to use his quirk at ALL but now he’s trying to combine it with another quirk?? damn. also please check out En’s face here you guys

En launching a sneak attack up my favorite character list by the sheer power of his expressions alone. he really knows how to make the most of his screentime

OH DAMN DEKU

at this point the 3% from that hypothetical poll earlier are starting to feel prettttty damn smug, I’ll bet. well shit

what in the fuck

?? so like releasing his chi or whatnot?? isn’t that basically just like base OFA all over again?? also Deku did you seriously just apologize to Gran’s cape

update: Nagant has turned her eyeball into a gun

hm. hmmmmmmm. ...okay yep, still somehow sexy

anyway so she’s just floating up there building suspense, as one does. lord I sure hope she has good reflexes because something tells me she’s going to need them

OH SNAP HE THREW GRAN’S CAPE AS A DECOY WHAAAAT OKAY THAT’S SOME SMART SHIT DEKU

LOL SHE’S MAD NOW

JESUS CHRIST SHE JUST NEVER TAKES A GODDAMN BREAK FROM BEING AWESOME HUH

DEKU ARE YOU JUST THROWING EVERY DAMN THING IN YOUR INVENTORY

but without the cape and the hood how will you continue to look like an enigmatic badass. you really can’t. which means we might finally be moving on from the wandering nomad part of this arc, stay tuned

LOL YOU MANIAC

I hope he went full Kacchan with the dialogue there. his face sure looks like it lol. popped out of a building all mad fdskljlkj omg

well this was fun, shit. I still have basically no idea what Three’s quirk does though lol. like, can he use it to charge up objects with kinetic energy or something?? but then what was all of that talk about combining it with one of the other quirks?? or was that just because he was using Smokescreen at the same time??

(ETA: having seen and read an additional half-dozen explanations of Three’s quirk, I can say with confidence that I still have basically no idea what it is or does.)

anyway so!! Deku is a badasssssss but something tells me not to count Nagant out just yet even so. also I really enjoy seeing Deku flip out on people like he doesn’t have a fucking hole in his torso because it reminds me of A CERTAIN SOMEONE and I always love to see him channeling that feral energy; I feel like it’s been a while

anyways good luck to you both!! I truly wish that both of you could win. but if not, then maybe you can at least become friends instead. you have so much in common, you both can fly and have multiple quirks and you’re both badasses, and plus it would just be really funny to see the look on Hawks’s face lmao

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

Alex Fierro's Introduction Full Breakdown

Okokok so. This is going to go full English-professor mode, where I'm drawing conclusions that are gonna seem a little far-fetched. That's what's fun about media analysis! I can say something is a symbol, and even if I don't have enough faith in RR's competency to know if he meant for it to be a symbol, it's still true! That being said, a lot of these choices I'm sure are intentional, either at a literal or subliminal level. Page numbers are going to be used not to assert a kind of authority or whatever— this is a Tumblr post, not an essay— but to help readers find the pages I'm referencing in case they'd like to do some digging of their own. Also, this is going to be really long. Really sorry to anyone with ADHD; I might make an audiofile of this so you can get the information without having to read the whole thing. With all that, let's get into it!

To kick off, let's talk about Alex being in the form of a cheetah when she first meets Magnus. Of course, there's the obvious impact of him seeing her but only so breifly, as well as introducing the conflict between her and the rest of Hall 19. But that could have easily been accomplished by almost any animal. The choice of a cheetah being implicated implies two qualities of Alex that will be recurrent throughout the two books she's in: 1. She has a tendency to run away, as we'll later learn when she describes how she became homeless, and 2. To Magnus, she's elusive. She can't be caught or held down. The event that shows this so transparently is how Alex refuses to define their relationship at the end of the series, despite it clearly surpassing the normal bounds of friendship.

But the cheetah isn't the animal Alex is in the form of when Magnus first gets a good look at her; she's a weasel. Weasel's bring up all kinds of connotations: ferocity, slickness, a lack of charm. When we want to describe someone as an untrustworthy person, we call them a weasel. RR had Alex take this form to play up her comrades' feeling of distrust towards her. She could be a double-crosser. But paradoxically, the up-front and vicious mannerisms of a weasel also have a transperency. She does not try appealing to her Hallmate's sense of goodwill because she doesn't have anything to gain from it. So even though there is the implication that she might be an antagonist, there's also evidence from her actions and mannerisms that she isn't. The weasel's long and skinny frame also allow for a smooth transition into Alex's actual body, which is convenient.

As Alex transforms into her usual human form, Magnus describes her as "a regular human teen, long and lanky, with a swirl of dyed green hair, black at the roots, like a plug of weeds pulled out of a lawn" (pg. 50). That simile at the end is of particular interest. Let's compare it to another time Magnus describes Alex's hair, in Ship of the Dead: "Her hair had started to grow out, the black roots making her look even more imposing, like a lion with a healthy mane" (pg. 136). By contrasting these two different examples, we can see the development of Magnus and Alex's relationship. The first time he sees her, he thinks of her hair as something nasty— note the word choice "weeds." Later on, though, he becomes more affectionate towards her, more complentary. The immedient negative reaction is less his actual impression, though, and more the reaction he expected to have based on everyone else's reaction to Alex.

Her clothes are equally as interesting; as Magnus describes it, Alex wears "battered rose high-tops, skinny lime green corduroy pants, a pink-and-green argyle sweater-vest over a white tee, and another pink cashmere sweather wrapped around the waist like a kilt" (pg. 50). Aside from the obvious fact that this outfit is a) bizzare, b) fire, and c) Alex's signature colors, which add a layer of style to what can otherwise be a somewhat boring series fashion-wise (excuse me, Blitz), the outfit reveals a crucial facet of Alex's backstory in a kind of subtle way. These are expensive clothes, like the Stella McCartney dress in Alex's room. Note the mention of fabrics (corduroy, cashmere) and patterns (argyle). These indicate wealth and status. Even the high-tops; shoes like that don't come cheap. But I'd like to return to the very first word of the section: "battered." Alex's wardrobe show-cases a proximity to wealth, but also shows that that proximity has been strained and lengthened, maybe for an extended period of time. Alex dresses like a rich person, but she isn't one. Least, not anymore.

The last word of that outfit-introduction is also of interest: "kilt." At the current moment, Magnus thinks that Alex is male. No one has indicated otherwise to him. Everyone has been referring to Alex with he/him pronouns. Samirah called Alex her "brother" (pg. 29). His first thought in seeing what he at first perceives as a guy with a jacket wrapped around the waist is That looks like a kilt. This thought tells us about Magnus: despite being open and accepting, he still has some lingering notions of gender conformity from his years in wider American society.

Magnus also indicates that the outfit "reminded me of a jester's motley, or the coloration of a venomous animal warning the whole world" (pg. 50). This is rather self-explanatory, but it's still worth noting that Magnus sees the outfit as something bizzare, strange, and even perhaps comical. This places Alex at odds with the other people Magnus has met. It also reveals that Magnus has zero fashion sense. But we already knew that.

After finishing up staring at the ensemble, Magnus finally gets around to actually looking Alex in the face. First Magnus says that he "forgot how to breathe" (pg. 50), which, yeah, relatable. This is justifed by saying that Alex has the same face as Loki, but the very same sentence that asserts that that's the case also suggests an alternative reason: Alex has "the same unearthly beauty" as her father. Here we can see the beginnings of Magnus's attraction to Alex, though at this point, he still has a lot of internalized homophobia. Though there's certainly some truth in that Magnus was unnerved by Alex's resemblance to Loki, the idea that Magnus pointed out that Alex was pretty without elaborating on that thought until about a chapter later— after he was informed that Alex was presently a girl— can tell us a lot about how Magnus perceives sex and beauty.

Of course, Alex's eyes are given special attention. She has cool eyes; what can I say? But I'd like to focus in on how Magnus here depicts Alex's heterochromia as "completely unnerving" (pg. 50). Again, let's contrast this with how he describes them after getting to know Alex a little better in Ship of the Dead. In Chapter 3, Magnus describes "[Alex's] dark brown eye and his amber eye like mismatched moons cresting the horizon" (pg. 25). Once again, this shows the development of their relationship— but this time, it's in a much more personal way. Eyes are the windows to the soul; they are culturally important and biologically important in inter-personal connections. In you look into someone's eyes, you're giving them your full attention, and you're implying a kind of closeness. The way that Magnus describes Alex's eyes in the second passage is downright intimate. At this point, he is in love with Alex, and it is clear when contrasting the two descriptions.

As my last point, I'd like to discuss Alex's first words on page: "'Point that rifle somewhere else, or I will wrap it around your neck like a bow tie'" (pg. 51). First of all, Alex saying this with a "perfect white smile" (pg. 51) on his face implies that she is used to being threatened. She is not afraid of being shot; she counters the promise of an attack with a promise of her own. This pleads the question: why is Alex accustomed to violence? What events of her past or qualities of her life have brought her to this point? The threat itself reveals Alex's trauma from being genderfluid in a society with rigid gender norms, as well as her antagonistic relationship with her father. Magnus makes a comment that Alex "might actually know how to tie a bow tie, which was kind scary arcane knowledge" (pg. 51). Like Alex's wardrobe, the idea that she may have experience in high-class fashion also implies her former status as a rich kid.

I could go on. I could break apart Alex saying "'Pleased to meet you all, I guess'" (pg. 51). There is a wealth of information in this short page span that tells us things about Alex Fierro in the present moment, quietly demonstrates things about her past, and characterizes the narrator Magnus Chase. This passage is also effective in hindsight in marking the progress of Magnus and Alex's relationship.

But I'd like to take a step back and look at not the pieces, but the whole picture. Alex Fierro gets a full page of pure description— her outfit, her face— and about a chapter of introduction. This comes after several chapters of build-up. Alex Fierro is an important character you need to keep your eyes on. Alex Fierro is emotionally significant to the main character, Magnus Chase. Alex Fierro is one of the most developed and well-rounded characters that Rick Riordan has ever written— heck, she's one of the best characters in middle-grade books period. The extended emphasis on her and her alone tells us exactly what role she's going to play in this story: she's the star.

[tiramisiyu]

Thoughts on Xia Yan’s Anniversary/Kiss Date

Not a translation, but rather an unleashing of the many thoughts I had for his date because it made me feel so many emotions and think so many things;;

Wordcount: 2.8k

Date Translation

Preamble

Tears of Themis’ 1st anniversary features one of the most significant in-story events you can view within an otome game - the confession event between MC and respective male leads. The gravity of this confession event, however, is intensified with respect to the ML Xia Yan, as their emotions towards each other is not the only focus of said confession - he must also reveal the heartbreaking truth that his life is likely to end in three years. 

In the below sections, I will discuss the significance of various components that comprise Xia Yan’s anniversary date. My primary focuses will be on Xia Yan’s internal struggles, his care for MC, and the nature of the confession, and I aim to ultimately express why this date had such a major effect on me and whoa if you’re still reading this rambling part, I applaud you. I’m really just doing a fancy thoughtdump here.

The Nature of the Confession Event

From the beginning, XY never intended for the confession to be full of pomp and circumstance - and this was out of concern for MC, fearing that she would be too swept up in emotion to make it. Based on how the other guys’ cards look (them being outside and MC’s all dressed up), I assume that there was some ceremony-like aspect to their respective confessions, and I think that this draws a stark contrast to XY’s (who staunchly refused Yang Xiao’s offer to help make his confession just as ceremonial). In XY’s, MC’s not dressed up the way she is for the others, and both have been drenched in rain and are dissolving into tears of sadness as they speak. In addition, their desires are conflicting (rather than a situation where both parties confess and get together, and thus have coinciding interests) - despite what XY has said before, he does not want MC to be with him, while MC wants the exact opposite. It’s not a beautiful or gorgeous scene by design - instead, it’s very raw, very 狼狈 as the two lay bare their own painful emotions, discuss/cry about heavy topics, and show very vulnerable sides to each other, trying to get through to the other person. 

Speaking of showing vulnerability, the fact that Xia Yan is so anguished by what he has to say that he has to sit down and cry hits particularly hard because he has always, always tried to put on a strong face in front of MC. Whenever his illness strikes and MC sees it, such as in aquarium date or Neruda poem date, he’ll smile and/or joke about it after. When the two were talking about his posthumous letters during the RRG date, he still had a calm smile on his face. Even when he talked about being shoved into a car trunk to be “disposed of”, he was still calmly smiling. As MC noted, his job has taught him to have extreme control over his emotions, so it’s almost overwhelming, trying to imagine how much sadness pushed him to that point.

Pathetic fallacy also plays a part in increasing the impact that the confession event had. In the days leading up to the last part of the date, storms keep striking suddenly, such that it’s even described as “strange”. Storms are, of course, generally associated with less-pleasant things, such as conflict, anger, depression, difficulty, and so on. The meaning behind why they appeared suddenly or frequently is a little harder to understand, but my assumption for the frequency of the storms (rather than an ongoing storm or gloom) reflects how things could not completely “clear up” (despite uplifts in emotion from time to time) until they confronted each other with their feelings. During the confrontation, not only is the storm still going on, but they’re also harshly drenched in the cold rainwater. It is only after the kiss, after their interests finally coincide, that the storm lifts and the beautiful starry sky casts its light on Xia Yan, who was holding the majority of the conflict/sadness/depression between the two of them. (This is also highlighted in how MC notes that Xia Yan feels slightly cold (during the kiss), and she tries to transfer her warmth over to him, trying to alleviate that heavy emotion that’s wrapped itself around him.) 

The Location

The attic of their old home remains an important location for these two, and I pretty much can’t think of a better choice to set the confession. It contains their childhood memories, and it also came into play during Xia Yan’s first birthday after his return (i.e. the idea of continuing to make memories there). It’s also interesting to note that Xia Yan, from his rational mindset, did not intend to see MC… yet he still came to this place - a place that was equally meaningful to both of them, and a place where he’s likely to get lost in emotion. He may be restraining his emotions for MC’s good, yet they still show in small places. (At least, there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for him to be there, since he wasn’t setting anything up there…)

The Humanizing and Internal Conflict of Xia Yan

I call it “humanizing” because I’ve done some commenting before on how Xia Yan has felt a little superhuman - so many skills everywhere, and rarely a moment of weakness. Now, this date really drives home that he is just human too, with the harsh reality of imminent death hanging over him (especially since we also learn a few more concrete details on exactly what his illness is). This point is brought into attention when he talks about how he’s neither able to be as brave as Schumann (who acted based on emotion) nor as silently strong as Brahms (who acted based on reason). He’s pulled in so many directions for all the things he wants - a desire to stay by MC’s side and do so much with her, whether as family or as something more, versus his rational mindset that tells him to not see her at all, to disappear from her life after, or to push her away even after her confession. There was also his “rationally” created plan in which he would give her the letter and let her decide, yet he still tries to convince her to not be with him. 

The Schumann/Brahms comparison shows how he keeps getting pulled back and forth between reason and emotion. He reveals his feelings to MC (Schumann), but wants her to make the optimal decision, which he believes is to not be with him (Brahms). He then kisses her after hearing her conviction (Schumann) and then gives her the gift that’s linked to Brahms. In realizing that he’s not able to stick to either path, he calls himself a coward - but he doesn’t need to be like either person. As MC says, his restraint is a part of his own background, and his emotional wavering is because of his care for MC - all in all, his motivations are because he is Xia Yan, not Schumann or Brahms. 

Personal Story Chapter 2 Parallels

In Xia Yan’s personal chapter 2, Yang Xiao sets up the story of 零/Zero and 玛丽薇莎/Marivisa to mirror MC and Xia Yan (respectively). The mention of what will bring Zero and MC happiness is starkly similar in these two situations:

⊳ Personal Ch.2-9

Xia Yan: 因为...这样，零会更幸福... 她不是在牺牲，她只是用自己的方式让零能幸福。Because this way, Zero would be happier… She wasn’t sacrificing herself. She was only using her own methods to make Zero happy.

MC: 但零的幸福就是她啊。But Zero’s happiness is her.

Xia Yan: 她已经无法给零幸福了。 It’s already impossible for her to give Zero happiness.

⊳ Date

Xia Yan: 如果你选择别的男人。。。只要他能给你幸福。我只会带给你不幸，我没有时间了。。。If you choose another man… As long as he can make you happy. All I can bring you is unhappiness. I don’t have much time left…

MC: 你怎么可能带给我不幸，你怎么可能做不到给我幸福。你在我身边，你的存在本身，就是我的幸福。How is it possible that you can only bring me unhappiness? How is it impossible for you to bring me happiness? You being by my side – your very existence – is my happiness. 

Yes, the Zero/Marivisa story was intentionally made to parallel these two, so it might feel moot to compare them like this. However, I still really appreciated that they brought this discussion of what brings MC/Zero happiness back, especially since XY’s chapter 2 was very major in developing his character. Back then, MC is vehement in that Zero would have been happier spending all the time he could with Marivisa, as well as even having the choice to spend that time with her. I think that this part was instrumental in Xia Yan eventually deciding to tell her the truth and letting her make her own decision (as he explicitly stated to Yang Xiao in part 1 of the date). However, he still wasn’t fully convinced by what MC said back in chapter 2, so we satisfyingly see this discussion of happiness come full circle by the end of this date, when Xia Yan finally trusts MC to make the best decision for herself. 

Xia Yan’s Considerateness

Xia Yan’s enduring consideration for MC displays itself in nearly every single action within this date. 

The flashback, when he thinks about MC potentially having to go through what the widow is now experiencing, and how his own happiness for three years isn’t worth that

His conviction to give her the right to decide in this matter that involves both of them, because he can’t be the one to decide everything

He insisted on not making it a romantic event, because he wants MC to make the best decision without having a mind clouded by emotion. He’s also made peace with the idea of not being with MC, for the sake of her long-term happiness. All he wants is for her to know the truth of his feelings and illness.

His decision to still make MC a gift to retain some aspect of the romance in the confession (but he only gives the gift after MC has made her decision, again to ensure that her mind isn’t clouded). I think the concept of the gift is particularly beautiful - the little, happy holograms of them inside the glass, as if ensuring that he will always be by her side in some way; the music that brings back their childhood memories and alludes to an enduring, quiet, and protecting love that puts the recipient first (i.e. Brahms to Clara); and the rainbow, which has its childhood memories and treasure implications that are already mentioned in the date, but it also reminded me of the miraculous double rainbow in his Lost Gold date. That double rainbow was the trigger for Xia Yan to proactively seek out a future with MC, when he took the initiative to ask MC if she could be with him to seek out more miracles. Overall, there are a lot of beautiful memories and implications wrapped up in that music box/snowglobe. 

The little comical segment where he worries about the optimal time to deliver the letter, worrying about MC’s sleep or if she’ll be able to eat well.

His stress over what he should’ve done after the letter was delivered, and how he immediately answered MC’s call out of pure worry, despite being so resolute about not answering her calls that he’d turned on airplane mode before. 

Their ensuing discussion in part 3 is just full of Xia Yan’s consideration for MC at its peak - 

Rather than being ecstatic about MC’s confession, his first instinct is to tell her to take a few days to think about it logically. (But really, emotions aren’t logical to begin with, so it’s not like MC would’ve stopped liking you after mulling it over for a few days, haha)

His immediate apology after yelling that he has to mention his death

His worry about how MC will cope after he’s gone, going so far as to saying that she would be better off with another man 

I think that this particular (above) line got a particularly visceral reaction from Xia Yan fans, including myself. Because like MC, our initial thoughts fell along the lines of “How could I ever choose someone else when the only person I like is you? There’s just no way someone else could make me happier…”. Another reaction that I’ve seen among Xia Yan fans (yep, including myself) is how we originally viewed the story in third-person, seeing “MC” in the story, but this date (and this particular scene, where MC says nearly everything that I myself would want to say) dragged us into a first-person position. 

The heartbreaking scene where Xia Yan cries from being unable to give MC the happiness that he wants to give her (or so he thinks). 

He’s just so painfully selfless. I also really like the line during the kiss where MC tries to transmit her warmth to him, trying to balance things out between them and have him feel better, when he had already written himself off by thinking that his happiness is better off sacrificed for hers. 

Jin Xian’s Voice Acting

Jin Xian’s voice acting deserves a whole section to itself, because I think that he did an amazing job of portraying the intense emotions Xia Yan feels during the date. Just going to list some lines that really hit hard - both because of the content, and because of the voice acting that really considered how Xia Yan would be feeling then. 

我可以去追她，我甚至可以和她结婚。我可以把最后的三年过得很好，过的毫无遗憾，但是然后呢？她一个人要怎么办。。。谁陪她走出来，谁来照顾她。。。(“I could pursue her. I could even marry her. I could live my last three years happily, without the slightest of regrets. But what about after? How will she cope on her own… Who will be with her as she handles this? Who will take care of her…”) The ups and downs of this section’s voicing really hit hard.

The gentleness with which he speaks about what he plans to tell MC, especially the line 她从来都是这样 (“She’s always been like that.”)

He’s so cute in Part 2!! The tone’s a lot happier and relaxed and it’s really nice to see and hear. 

In part 3, the vehemence with which he talks about how the risks of MC’s work aren’t comparable to his established time limit, which then softens into something sadder when he talks about how Yang Xiao’s efforts haven’t extended his time by much. 

The intensity when he says 我必须说 ! (“I have to say it!”) (when MC reacts to him using the word “death”), and how he immediately softens his tone after. But then his voice starts to rise again as he worries for how MC will bear his death… and then he takes a break to calm down, and then makes the suggestion of MC finding another man with a near-inflectionless tone that gradually slips into a whisper

His whispering voice makes the impact of 我在乎。。。！(I care…!) hit even harder because it’s suddenly loud, and you can clearly hear the tears in his voice. Once again, he takes a breath to calm himself down and quiet his voice. But even as he keeps talking in a voice that descends into a whisper again, you can tell that he’s still on the verge of crying…

Also the 我也。。。好喜欢，最喜欢你. (I also… like you. I like you the most) line left me screaming with how it was whispered but really strong and adamant-sounding aaaaa

Anyways I could list more but at that point I might as well list Jin Xian’s entire script lmao. He did such a good job!!!!!! 

Sound Effects 

I’m laughing at myself for including this section - if you turn off the music that accompanies Xia Yan’s card, you’ll… hear some very interesting sound effects [狗头]

They’ve got to make the most of their limited time together, after all, and this is the only date out of the set of four that’s indoors… it makes sense…

Other Thoughts 

Two kisses!!

What sort of treatment would leave Xia Yan infected with drugs with prohibited components? What were they even trying to do? 

The date was short relative to the other, super-long Themis dates, but I’m personally alright with that because it places focus on the confession itself. It hit all the points that I personally was expecting for Xia Yan’s confession, including his past struggles with the idea of staying with MC, his confession about both his feelings and his illness, and how resolute MC is about staying with him vs. how hard he tries to get her to understand the implications of being him, considering that he doesn’t have much time left. 

I think now’s a good time for the two of them to get married if they’re well aware that Xia Yan’s time is limited, so Xia Yan, where’s the ruby ring? 

I wonder what implications this will have on the main story - e.g. will the rest of NXX find out about Xia Yan’s illness in Chapter 7.2? Or will they never know? Actually, I wonder if they’ll have MC be aware of his illness in the main story because… that implies his confession happened, which might anger fans of the other boys. 

Conclusion

I love Xia Yan and I love this date. 

[felassan]

Zero To Play podcast episode: John Epler, Narrative Director at BioWare

In the most recent episode of Zero To Play podcast the guest was John Epler, Narrative Director on DA4. He talked about narrative games, how they fit inside an industry leaning towards games as a service, his experience being at BioWare for almost 14 years, and advice that he has for aspiring devs who want to create memorable, impactful and transformative moments in games.

The episode summary read as follows:

In this episode John brings his 13+ year experience being at BioWare and working on titles like Mass Effect & Dragon Age: Inquisition to explain how he believes storytelling will evolve and develop through the medium of games.

He shares some of his favorite moments and why he thinks games are the most powerful and interesting medium to be exploring in this generation.

It’s a good and interesting interview, so worth checking out if you can! You can listen to it here or on Spotify.

This post contains some notes on what was talked about in the episode, in case a text format is better for anyone (for example folks that can’t listen to it due to accessibility reasons). It’s under a cut due to length.

A bit of paraphrasing.

The average dev stays with a game company/studio for about 5 years. John joined BioWare right after the EA acquisition happened.

[on going into Trespasser] “Myself and the Lead Writer Patrick Weekes both knew that we needed to wrap up at least this part of the Inquisitor’s story, and set up where we want to go next with the franchise, with the IP. We learned a lot of lessons from DAI itself. DAI was a game with a lot of exploration and open-world content, and while we stand by that (I still think it was the right call for the game), one of the pieces of feedback we got from the fans was that they really wanted some more directed storytelling. Jaws of Hakkon was more of a continuation of open-world, more free-from exploration and free-form design. Trespasser was our opportunity to tell a story in a much more linear and focused way. [this way of telling stories] really does help to be able to create that sense of pacing and emotional escalation. It’s a lot harder to do that when you’re mixing up storybeats with big, wide open-worlds. Trespasser was a project where everyone was kind of in sync, we were all building [towards] the same thing.” 

-

“There were [story]beats [in Trespasser] that I don't think we would have been able to get away with in basegame DAI, one of those being the - quite frankly - incredibly lengthy conversation you have with Solas at the end. Because by this point we knew that if someone is playing this DLC then they are in it - they’ve been in it for the last two DLCs, they’ve played through the entire game, they want something incredibly story-focused. And we were able to really dive deep into that, some of the deep lore, some of the narrative. This was one of the only conversations that I’d worked on which, due to limitations of the engine, we actually had to break into two different conversation styles because it was so massive. We also got opportunities to do some fun callbacks. One of my favorite ones was one Patrick suggested which was, ‘What if I [didn’t like Solas much and] spent the entire basegame telling Solas I didn't want to hear anything he had to say?’ So we had the option that if you never chose ‘Investigate’ or a dialogue option that implied that you wanted to hear him blather on, there was one dialogue option that you could pick which was basically ‘Solas, when have I ever wanted to hear any of the shit you have to say?’ And it just kind of wrapped up the conversation super quickly, and Solas looked exasperated. It was fun because it’s not the kind of thing you can necessarily do in the main game, but in a DLC which is entirely for those core fans, you have a lot more options as to what you can do.”

John has an understanding of games as an interactive medium.

“Choice of combat, choice of mechanics, all of that does have an impact on the storytelling and on the narrative that you’re trying to put through. A lot of storytelling in games is trying to make sure that the - there’s a phrase, ludonarrative dissonance - [for example, say] I’m making a game where I’m trying to make the player feel powerful. How do you [do that?] [...] In games, this is kind of the challenge. Interactivity is so key to it. [...] It’s a lot harder [compared to characters in film] to put the player in a situation that they are going to lose, because as soon as you take away that autonomy, you’re taking away some of that interactivity. [...] If as a player I'm making you feel strong and powerful, and then I pull you into a cutscene and suddenly you’re losing the fight, you’re losing what’s going. That is a much different sensation, that is something movies can get away with that games can’t.”

-

“What are [players/our audience] actually meaning when they say that they ‘want choice’? I think that in a lot of cases we conflate that with ‘Oh, they want to make a big decision that changes the world’. But in a lot of cases what players want is the game to react to what they’re doing and the choices that they’re making in a way that feels organic and natural. I think this is something CD Projekt Red and the Telltale games did really well - of making it clear when the game is actually going to pay attention to what you said or did, so that when you see it later you’re like ‘Oh right yeah, I made that choice, the game said it was going to remember it, and it remembered, this is cool’.

And it doesn't always mean completely changing the course of events. The Telltale writers, as they got on through the games, they realized that the better way to address choice - and something we’ve done too - is, if we make the game have three endings, four or five - like DAO had an absolute massive amount of ways that it could turn out. How do you pay that off if you want to do a sequel? There's basically two choices. One is that you make an incredibly short game because you have to account for these very different branches, OR you collapse them and say ‘Sorry, this is what we’re going with’. And I don't think either of those are necessarily satisfying. For me it’s about making the players feel like their time and the choices they made have been respected. More than anything else that's the key, it comes down to understanding your fanbase, what it is they’re looking for, what it is they’re asking for, because there is that desire for choice, reactivity, consequences. And it’s something that BioWare, that we’re especially sensitive to because it’s always been a big pillar of the games we make. It’s just about understanding what this actually means from a practical standpoint and how you execute on that in a way that makes your fans feel satisfied, while still not writing yourself an impossible check to cash, because, you know, you can react to anything, but if you have a game that ends in three separate ways, you have to go with one of those two options and neither of them is going to be intensely satisfying to the player.”

-

“A phrase I’ve been using is, what I'm describing as - the half life of quantum. ‘Quantum’ is what we say when it could be like, one of six different things. The half life of this is how long before you actually resolve that down to a single point. Like, provide the player with that reactivity, but collapse those into a way that you can proceed forward. This is 100% a lesson learned from Dragon Age, for all the games. ‘Ok, what do we do with this? Holy shit, that is huge, how are we actually going to pay that off?’ Reactivity, but without putting yourself in an impossible-to-win situation [from a story/writing standpoint].”

-

“More than anything else, the advice I would give [to aspiring devs] is, come up with some fundamental pillars of your story and of your design. There's a misunderstanding that we plan out the exact story for years in advance. We know what we want to get to, we kinda know how we’re going to get there, and a lot of it is just making sure that you have those pillars and those razors. So as you go through development and find, ‘Oh this piece is not working, this piece is clunking’, you’ll always have principles that you can go back to. What is important about this story? Does the piece that isn't working satisfy any of those things? If no, then we have to change it or get rid of it.”

-

[more advice] “Don’t be afraid to fail (I say fail here as a good thing). Don't be afraid to put something out there and have it absolutely torn to shreds. Feedback is your best friend, having people that you trust to provide that feedback. If I were building a big epic narrative, a big epic franchise, [I’d advise that you] start with your principles and the core of what you want to do, and then just start putting out ideas. ‘Here’s my idea for this story’. It’s easier for me, I'm inheriting a lot of work that's already been done, a lot of ground that's already laid - I have a Lead Writer that has been doing this longer than I have, PW is fantastic. But for myself, it’s just been a lot of like, okay, taking this stuff that's already been built, and making sure that I know what we want to do with whatever the next project is. It sounds overly reductive and overly simplistic, but it really is about just having a really strong sense of what is important to your franchise, what’s important to your brand. If you’re coming up with a new IP, it’s a little trickier. You need to spend some time thinking: what’s the tone, what’s the setting, what kind of story do we want to tell.”

-

[more advice] Don’t be afraid to heavily reference existing media [as actual razors, internally]. But that's not something you ever want to have go out to the public, because people go like ‘Oh, you’re just being derivative’. It’s like no, we’re just leaning on cultural touchstones that people know, so that when you’re communicating with people outside your discipline, or with people above you like executives, they can at least get a sense like, ‘Oh I kinda get what you’re doing, okay that makes sense’, versus ‘Let me first of all explain the entire history of the world’. My experience with executives is that they don't have time for that and justifiably so. But if I tell them we’re doing X but with Y and Z it’s like, ‘Ok cool, we get that’. [...] It’s a tiered approach. You have levels of detail that you provide to different people based on what they need to know. You yourself may need to know the history of these characters and how they relate to each other and the thousands of years of history for that, but the person building combat probably doesn't need all that detail and just needs to know ‘What am I working with, how do these characters fight.”

-

“A razor is a statement that you use to slice away what doesn't fit. The narrative razor for Trespasser was, I can’t remember exactly, we were basically trying to go for the Avengers meets Indiana Jones, Winter Soldier. Avengers meets Winter Soldier. [a razor is] a statement that you take all the content [by], ‘Okay, does this actually fit this statement? No? Okay, get rid of it’. It’s about focusing your game. Cutting away the ideas that don't really fit is how you avoid scope-loading and people crunching, and how you keep your project focused.

Trespasser was an intensely-focused DLC, in that it focused on basically two main core things, Solas and the fate of the Inquisition. Everything kind of wrapped into those two razors. As we were going through content, we had stuff like - I said this at a GDC presentation in 2016 - the Qunari are farming lyrium to make Qunari templars. And then we looked at it like, how does that apply to either razor? It doesn't, it doesn't fit either one of them. So we simplified it to, ‘Okay, what actually makes this work in the context of what we’re building?’. [a razor is] a statement that you use to slice off what doesn't fit into the game that you’re building. It can be painful, but having strong razors means that it never comes across as a personal thing.”

Narrative does not mean story.

Two of his least favorite mechanics in games [not including Stalker and DayZ] are weight limits and weapon degradation.

On games as a service:

Interviewer/host: “Talking about games as a service, it’s definitely something that is talked about a lot in gaming in terms of the most successful games. With Dragon Age, putting DLCs out is kind of maybe that same influence, but games that are launched and then iterated on and updated and pushed with content every month, like Fortnite, Riot Games, League of Legends, Valorant etc, that's kind of I feel where the trend of games are trying to go and make the most of those interactions between other people, to make replayability possible and easier. How do you see narrative, do you see it being forgotten with this increase of games as a service? [...] Do you see that as a positive part of narrative in games or do you think there’s still work to be done in that space?”

John: “[...] The place we start to see some confusion, a lot of people think it’s one or the other, but to me, it’s another way, another option for telling stories that by their nature have to be different. I think that's where you need to be, again, very cognizant of what you’re building and of the genre you’re working in, because a story that works for a more traditional box product is not necessarily the kind of story that would work for a games as a service product. [...] Games as a service, understanding what the cadence is that you’re planning to deliver to and what kinds of stories best fit that cadence - some games are better at it than others.

One game that did a pretty decent job of it is Destiny 2, through patches. Final Fantasy 14 is another example, they do a lot of their storytelling between the big expansion releases as part of their free patches. They always know that they have - I think, five big patches? - between each expansion, and they’ve structured their stories to fit into that very specific five-act structure. If they tried to do it weekly or bi-weekly it would be a very different experience. I think there’s always room for narrative. It’s about knowing that there are different lessons to learn and not being afraid to learn those lessons, as opposed to trying to fit the traditional box product square-peg narrative into a live service round hole. And that’s why you need to have a strong vision and why you need to have somebody at the Director level who understands and plays the kinds of games that you’re building, so they kind of understand what works and what doesn't - ‘This type of story worked really well for this game, and I'm not saying you should copy it, but you should at least be willing to learn those lessons and not reinvent the wheel every time.’

We’ve been making games for a long time now, there’s lots of lessons to learn, we should be trying to learn from them and not trying to like, change everything every single time.”

-

[on length of narrative] “In a lot of cases you know how long your game should be and the hardest part is sticking to that. [...] There is always a worry that fans are going to see a number and be like ‘That’s not big enough or that’s not long enough.’ I do think that there is sometimes a lack of confidence in what you're building, and a desire to make it shorter or longer, but I think at the core, the people building [a] game know how long it’s going to take to tell this story that they want to tell. I say this specifically for narrative, but even stuff like progression, you know how long you want it to take. For myself, I will always take a short but well-executed game over a long game that feels that it has a lot of [useless/boring] padding. It’s about identifying the kind of game you’re building. Open-world games are always going to be bigger and longer than more linear games. Being confident in that number and recognizing when you’re adding time and space for no other purpose than just to make that number on the back of the box longer [is important]. Fans don’t love that, they can see right through that.”

-

“It was nice to see the amount of hard work that went into DAI rewarded by the press [with the Game of the Year award]. There are definitely parts of it that didn't land that we wish we could have done differently, but it was a project that felt like we were all pulling in the same direction and when we started getting that positive feedback, it was definitely a sense of relief. Especially because a lot of us had been on DA2, and while we were proud of that project, it obviously didn't get the reception that we wanted at that time.

[when they were watching DAI’s release and tracking its reception] We’re keeping a running tally, like ‘Okay, this is really looking like we did something special here’. I’m proud of every project that I’ve worked on but DAI is definitely one that I’m especially proud of.” 

-

“Part of the advantage to being at a company for as long as I have, I've worked with a lot of the other people [responsible for things in other departments like art, writing, audio etc], so while there is that anxiety like ‘I reeeally hope that this works out’, I know it’s going to, because I know that everyone who is doing these roles, like our Animation Director, our Audio Director, Levels, all those other people on the project know what they’re doing and they know their shit better than I could ever hope to. So I’m just kind of standing here like ‘Hey y’all this is what we need’, and it’s coming in. And when it does come in, when you see the pieces together - I think for myself, on DAI, the moment that I first finally started feeling like it was really all coming together was, one of our music designers, going into one of the moments at the end of Redcliffe, doing the music/audio pass, and me finally seeing this scene that I’d been staring at and banging my head against for months - turn into something that actually conveyed emotion, that actually was something that I was excited for our fans to get to see and get to experience. That’s always a special feeling.”

Cinematics is one of the last things to come in, which means that audio is always waiting for them to come in: “They always did an amazing job with very little time, I will never not praise our audio and music designers.”

“Patrick Weekes is the Lead Writer, which means ultimately PW is responsible for the writing side of the game. As Narrative Director, I’m there to offer, to basically take the vision of the project and interpret the part that focuses on narrative and then provide that to my team - because I work with writing, cinematics, level designers and everyone - I’m there to be like ‘Hey this is the narrative we want to achieve’, which sometimes involves getting involved in the story side of things. But a lot of that is PW’s job as Lead Writer, they’ve been doing it for a long time, they’ve been in the industry longer than I have. It’s a really good working relationship. We worked together when I was in cinematics and they were in writing, we worked together on the Iron Bull, then we were both leads on Trespasser, so we have a trust.

I think what’s been really helpful is that they know that if I tell them something’s not working, it’s not coming from ‘I wanna do it my way, you better just do it my way because I’m the boss’, it’s coming from ‘This is something I think we need to do for the project’. And vice versa, if they push back on me about something, I know it’s not coming from ‘Screw you I'm the Lead Writer, I make the decisions’, they’re saying it because this is an actual concern. I do writing, I’m a writer on the project too but I will fully admit PW is a way better writer than I am, so I'm comfortable leaning on them for that stuff, and then I’m the person who can provide that ‘Okay, we know that gameplay is providing this, we know levels is providing this, let’s shift the priorities'.

It’s also about knowing, being able to take that back from any one discipline and say ‘Okay, what is the right decision for the project as a whole’, and sometimes that means telling PW something that they may not think is their favorite thing to do, but they will listen because they trust me and I trust them. I don't know how it works at other studios, there are places where Narrative Director is also the Lead Writer, or where there is Narrative Director and Lead Writer is the highest authority on narrative that exists, but it’s worked for us again because we have that lengthy experience. It would be interesting to see how it would work if we didn’t know each other for a while before this. It’s largely a relationship of trusting each other to know our areas of expertise and also just understanding what’s important to the narrative vision of the project.”

When they did Tevinter Nights it was ‘extracurricular’ work: “It was fun, I got to do some writing, I got published, which was really fun”.

[source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[damn-stark]

La vie en rose pt.4

Pietro Maximoff x reader

A/N- 😏

Warning-Violence, talks of self hatred, talks of death, Angst.

———-

It had been a miracle. Some damn lucky miracle.

One because you happened to be close, and two, because in the chaos of the battle you caught the flash of blue zoom by below. You followed the effect with your eyes from the roof you were on, knowing who caused it and that’s when you caught on to Pietros heroic intentions.

At first you had no intention to stop him, after all he was fast and he had saved people several times already, you weren’t against that. But when you saw the problem why Clint Barton didn't have time to run off with the kid in his arms, your eyes widened and you didn’t hesitate a moment longer to fly off the roof to help Pietro.

And it had happened in the matter of seconds, with zero regard to what you were doing, or your own life. All you knew was that Pietro wasn’t going to be fast enough to get away, not with Ultron in that jet shooting like a maniac. So without a second thought you let your powers surround your hands, and the yellow hues ignite your eyes, so as you landed on the ground in front of Pietro, you threw your hands down and a yellow energy wave blasted out of you and turned the bullets into hundreds of beautiful butterflies. You proceeded to twist your hands around, and flick your fingers forward to throw out another powerful yellow wave from your hands that destroyed Ultron, and his jet into little pieces.

After the dust had settled, and once this current danger was dealt with, you let your hands drop to your side and you slowly turn around to flash Pietro a smug smirk, before shooting a cocky quip. “Did you see that coming, Pietro?”

Said man meets your gaze and an impressed smile slowly grows on his face. He doesn’t say anything, or seem to actually find words to say something, so he’s left watching as you approached Clint Barton and the kid—“Are you two okay?” You ask.

Clint nods as he lets the kid down, “no thanks to you and Pietro.” His eyes glance to a passing butterfly and then he looks at you with a perplexed expression. “How the hell did you do that? Bullets into butterflies?”

You shrug, “I don’t know, I just did.”

Before the starstruck kid could say anything, a woman you recognized from a couple nights ago, one Pietro had tried to flatter, came running towards the kid and wrapped him in an embrace. She said something to him before she turned to look at you with a grateful smile. “Thank you. Thank you”

You offer her a small nod and you watch her go off with the kid in arms. Once she disappeared into the crowd, you turn to Pietro and point your head in her direction to add a comment. “There goes conquest number, what was it? Ten? Twenty?”

Pietro smirks and shakes his head as he playfully remarks your comment. “So you are jealous.”

You scoff and roll your eyes before you walk off, seeing him quickly catch up at your side—“Why would I be jealous?” You remark.

Pietro shrugs, “because she got a pretty dress and you didn’t.”

“Oh, please.” You scoff.

“But you know, I can give you something better than a dress.”

You tilt your head his way and quirk a brow to question his comment. “And what is that?”

Pietros smirk widens and he licks his lips before answering. “A date with me.”

You stop and put your hands on your hips to look at him with a pointed glare, to then snap at his comment. “As if.”

Pietro jogs to your side and wraps his arm around your shoulders to continue walking with you down your path. “Oh, come on, just one, little witch. You’ve left me impressed with what you did, and I think that deserves a nice date. Just you and me.”

“Ha.” You snort whilst you push him away and try not to smile. “No.”

——

Your own thoughts, and panic cloud your mind and make you stiffen, and blind after what you did to Pietro out of frustration. You don’t even know if you’re breathing, all you know, all you’re aware of is the horror you felt. You see him on the ground trying to surpass the pain, with the mess his body made after your power impacted his body and threw him across the room, and you can’t help but hate yourself.

You couldn’t help but think to yourself; how did you let it come to this? Why did you get so mad? Control had come so easy, why was it so hard now? And the most important question of them all, who am I?

Tears stream down your face and the feeling of it rolling down your cheeks snaps you back to your senses. You hurry towards Pietro’s side and help him to his feet without even trying to make eye contact, you feel his eyes on you, but you keep your eyes downcasted and keep your hand light so you wouldn’t give into his touch. You hear his lips part, but you speak up first. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I lost control. I’m so sorry.”

Once again you try to look up at him, but as you tried, you only made it halfway up his body before you ripped them away and hurried out the house with your head hung low. You didn’t give Pietro time to talk, or give yourself time to hear if he was trying to stop you, all you do is leave the house and quickly walk out of the neighborhood. And you don’t slow down until you're far from home.

That’s where you feel the cold night breeze on your skin, and feel the thoughts slowly drift back to your mind; just like the guilt and remorse hit you too—how could you even face him again after you did that? You didn’t even deserve to be forgiven—even if you did want to. What were you going to do to control what was clearly getting out of hand?

You express a frustrated groan and rub the bridge of your nose. You’re in deep thought until someone interrupts you.

“Hey, honey, are you okay?!”

You stop in your tracks and lift your eyes before slowly turning your head to the side to see Agnes coming out of her car. You offer her a forced smile and answer her question with a lie. “I’m fine, thank you Agnes.”

Just as you think she’s going to take your excuse, she completely faces you and just as you should’ve figured, she doesn’t believe you—Agnes takes off her witch hat and puts her hands on her hips to pester you. “Oh I know a long face when I see one. And I can’t let you go without taking care of you. Come on in for a cup of tea.”

“I,” you instantly interject with the idea to leave. “Okay, but just one.”

Agnes flashes you a warm smile and waves you over to her house. And the only reason why you took the bait was because what else were you going to do? You couldn’t face Pietro yet. Not until you cleared your mind, or at least some of it.

“So tell me what’s got you so down?” Agnes quieres once you’re inside her house and she’s quickly setting water for tea.

You exhale deeply and take a seat on a couch, watching her sit across from you with regular clothes on now instead of her costume. You don’t really want to answer, but you do anyway. “Just trouble at home. With Pietro.”

“Oh, no what happened?”

You shrug and begin to twist your bracelet around your wrist. “I hurt him…” your words trail off and tears begin to sting your eyes again. “I lost control after I couldn't tell him the truth.”

“Lost control?” She asks. “Is this the first time?”

Your eyes drift to meet hers and your eyebrows knit together for a second but you don’t find it strange. “Yeah, it’s been building up for some time now. I thought I could keep it under wraps. I mean I've always had control, but after—” you pause and swallow thickly, feeling a single tear run down your cheek. You want to continue, but you find it hard to do so, something is just stuck in your throat and makes it difficult. Agnes notices and gets off her seat to get the tea, walking back not so much time after and setting it down so you could continue with more ease. “After something happened, I've been having trouble. And I don’t know what to do.”

There's a moment of silence where you just drink your tea and focus on your fingers as set the cup down. You don’t expect her to say much, maybe just some words of comfort, but nothing beyond that. Yet the words that came out of her mouth surprise you and leave you stunned for a few seconds.

“What if I can help you?” Agnes sets her cup down and stands up once again. “You shared something about yourself, now I’ll share something of myself with you.” She steps to the side and points her head out the living room. “Follow me.”

You hesitate for a moment, but you don’t find any harm in what she's attempting—you probably should have, but you don’t because you end up following her into her basement. One that sent chills down your spine as you saw the vines that traveled across the walls, as you saw how differently it was built and decorated compared to her house upstairs; it was almost like some ancient lair. Agnes had some type of workstation that had a glowing, and dark book on top, as if some type of shrine. You wanted to go near it, to touch it, but she stopped you before you could.

“I am in some ways like Wanda and you, in the way that I can also do magic.”

You turn to face her and watch her with a confused and narrowed gaze—isn’t she supposed to be like everyone else?

“What’s going on?” You ask out loud.

“I can help you y/n, I can make you fall in order again.”

You step back and watch her with caution now. You part your lips to ask a wary question. “You have powers too? How come you’re revealing this now? How did you break out of character?”

Agnes shakes her head disapprovingly and walks towards you. “So many questions and yet you don’t ask the right one. How can I help you.” Agnes stops before you and takes a single hair from you. The action makes you jump slightly and react even further by stepping back, but asking what she had said without need for more of an explanation.

“How can you help me?”

“Easy,” Agnes answers as purple hues begin to emit from her hands—but in a more calm way that differed from Wanda and you. “Tell me how you learned magic. Tell me who you are. Who taught you and how you became so powerful.”

You blink and further continue to narrow your gaze. “I,” you mouth, “I don’t know. I just got my powers. No one taught me.”

“You see I don’t believe that. For example, Sokovia, you turned simple flying bullets into butterflies. How? ” Agnes suddenly chuckles, only making you more confused. “I’ve seen and heard of the other things you’ve done. Your magic is not easy to learn, it takes practice, years of it. Your friend Wanda couldn’t possibly do it.”

Now you’re the one that expresses a fake laugh. “What do you mean, my magic?”

“Order magic.” She answers slowly.

You only stare at her blankly and she only gets frustrated, letting out a loud sigh before stopping what she was doing and beginning to explain deeper. “Do you ever wonder, why you and Wanda get along so well? Why you work so well with each other?”

You shrug, “because we both share similar trauma, because after Hydra we were all each other had. Because we went on the run together.”

“No,” Agnes scoffs, “because you’re like yin and yang. Chaos and Order magic couldn’t be the furthest apart, but also the closest. The two of you are interconnected, you compliment each other in so many ways. You’re each other’s greatest weakness and also each other’s greatest strengths.”

“What?” You probe with a nervous smile. “No, I.”

“It’s true, sweetheart, that’s why unlike Wanda, when you use your powers you aren’t as destructive...well not if you don’t want to. That’s also why when you lose control, it’s the most dangerous. After hers.”

You lift your hands from your sides and slowly examine them with a hint of fear in your eyes—“but I,” you mutter, “how?”

“No, how do you do it? All this in here.” Agnes says as she points to your chest. “How do you do your magic? Who teaches you.”

“No one.” You hiss. “No one taught me.”

“Then how—” Agnes stops and sighs, turning her frown into an assuring smile. “I can only help you if you tell me how you can do what you do, how you got so powerful. How it all started?”

“I don’t understand my powers.” You try to explain.

“I’ll help you.” Agnes uses her powers again, but this time throwing the hue to the wall and creating this door instead of webbing it, or doing whatever it was she was doing with her hands. “Let’s go.” She deadpanned, not letting you question her and grabbing your arm to pull you towards the door. Which once she opened it and you walked through it, you were welcomed into a familiar building, into a past memory of yours.

Where you were once in Agnes’s basement, now you were in your old apartment building that you lived in when you were a little girl. You weren’t in your house, but a floor below, outside the door of an older woman’s home. The day it all went wrong.

“Papa,” you muse as you see him standing outside the door, wearing a simple and comfortable outfit and with a tub of warm food in hand. The older woman who you had come to give the food to smiles and begins to thank your father.

“Thank so much Mr. Eisenhardt for this delicious food, you and your little girl are always so sweet.”

“Oh shouldn’t this get interesting,” Agnes interjects before she pushes you deeper into the memory, seeing your younger self appear next to your father as you remembered further.

“It’s no problem, really, hopefully when you’re feeling better you can join us at our house,” your father assured the woman. “We’d love to have you accompany us for dinner.”

“Oh well, that would be great, I’d love that.”

Your father places his hand on your back and looks down at you to give you a silent signal with a simple look—“thank you so much for taking care of my siblings and I! I hope you feel better.”

A small smile tugs onto the corner of your fathers lips and he returns his attention to the woman. “Well, again I hope you like the food, and if you need anything, you know where you can find us. And please call me, Max.”

The older Woman grins, and offers a last nod. “I will, thank you, enjoy the rest of the day.” She closes the door and your father guides you to the stairs, stopping you just before you can climb them to look down at you with a mischievous smirk, and happy gleaming blue eyes.

“You know your father is a sight for sore eyes,” Agnes comments making your face twist in disgust, “maybe we can get him out of jail.”

You ignore her and continue watching the memory.

“I’ll race you back home.”

You beam up at him and nod eagerly. “Okay! But don’t cheat, you always cheat.”

Your father shrugs and tilts his head, letting the light brighten his face and show the brown color of his hair. “Fine, but I can’t promise I’ll take it easy.”

“Fine,” you exclaim, “whoever gets inside the house first wins!”

“Oh, you are so on!��

In a matter of seconds you’re both off, running up the stairs wildly, and with a big beaming grins on your faces. The things going on outside were horrible; a war was dangerously close to home and there was nothing your family could do to get away from it. As much as they tried, getting away was too expensive, even more so with three young kids. The most they could do to keep you and your siblings from suffering was try their best to keep you happy in doing the smallest things like, watching movies, dancing in the living room and or doing races back home. It was simple, yet the best. You wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

But it was ripped away from you. As you reached your needed floor, after you had playfully pushed your father to get up before him. You raced down the hallway and made it to the door first. You had your hand on the knob and looked back at your father with a taunting grin. When you opened it and threw the door open, you took one step inside and tried to call out your win to your mother, who had your baby sister in arms in the kitchen.

“Mama! I beat daddy! I—”

Before you could finish your sentence, you were cut off as an explosion hit your house and sent you flying back out of the entrance of your house, making you hit a wall and making you go unconscious for a couple of minutes.

It all felt like some sick dream, but it wasn’t, as your eyes fluttered open all you saw was the open sky, and you heard pleading and crying by your ear “Come on, please baby girl, please, please.”

You shifted your eyes to the side and saw him sobbing beside you, saw and felt him cradling you. You could barely move and you felt pain all over your body, but you also felt comfort with your father beside you—“papa,” you whisper.

Said man opens his eyes and smiles, hugging you tighter and pressing multiple kisses on the side of your head. Yet he didn’t stop you from seeing the big rubble gap where your house once was. You want to ask about the rest of your family, but before you could, from the sky that you could clearly see because of the lack of walls and roofs, you spotted something big and dark flying your way.

Something suddenly sparked within you and you didn’t hesitate to stretch out your hand with the intention to stop it. Your father caught onto what you were doing and copied your action, albeit unlike you he did actually stop it in midair. You both waited for it to go off but it never did.

Suddenly you hear Agnes chuckle and appear beside you as you watched the memory play out. “Super powered, “papa” and his magic daughter.”

“No,” you dismiss, “I didn't have my powers yet. It was my father, he has the ability to— ”

“Yes! But he can’t stop it from going off,” Agnes cuts you off, “you used a probability hex. Which means this traumatic event triggered something within little you. You just didn’t know it yet. So again how did you get your magic?” Agnes shakes her head and suddenly you were pulled back somewhere else. Standing outside another door. Agnes tried nudging you through it, but you recognized it and didn’t want to go in. “I need to know, y/n. Go in.”

“Know what?” You snap back, “how I got my powers? Easy an infinity stone, I had nothing before it. And trust me I would’ve known, my father tried and nothing ever happened.”

Agnes hums and slowly walks around you, tapping her chin and staying quiet until a thought came to mind. “Okay then, but how do you do it? All this order, even when you don’t try, you just do everything right.” She comes to a stop before you and watches you with a narrowed gaze. You look away and as you do she goes to a wall and picks up a beatle, continuing to come near you and using her magic to turn the beatle into a bird as she said something in a language you didn’t understand. Before she could hand it to you, she got the bird's wing and snapped it, making you gasp and look at her in disbelief—“fix it,” she grumbled. “Before it dies.”

She hands it to you regardless and you look down at it for a moment without doing anything. Could you even do it? You have no control. But you had to try. So you cup your hands around the bird, and use your powers. You don’t say anything, just let the yellow hues flow out and surround the bird. Agnes watches you carefully and anxiously. However when you open your hands, the bird isn’t a bird, yet in a state between a beetle and the bird.

“What the hell?” You gasp.

“Hmm,” Agnes sighs, “so powerful yet so useless without control. I know the how, now I want you to regain control.” She mutters while she picks up the bird from your hands and throws it to her rabbit. “You need a teacher. I can help you, so you can become who you’re meant to be. I can help you gain control and help you even turn your husband into someone who doesn’t have to live in the hex. You just got to gain control.”

“What do you gain from helping me?” You ask seriously.

Agnes walks towards the door and stops before she can open it to look back at you with a hidden smirk. “just….the pleasure of helping someone in need.” She lies, unknowingly to you. “Come on.”

You should’ve hesitated, questioned why she was so eager to help, but you were eager to be helped, to gain control again. So that was your mistake against someone you hardly knew.

You followed her through the door and you were welcomed inside an abandoned studio room; you heard laughter and saw a light lit in the distance and you can’t help but walk towards it. Even if you already knew what was waiting.

“Fill it up again, Eisenhardt.” Sam exclaims as he raises his cup.

You do as he says and easily fill it up with a simple look at his cup.

“I will never get over how you can do that. You’re amazing.”

“As easy as blinking,” Agnes mumbles. You smile softly at the memory and take in the scene of Natasha, Steve, Sam, Pietro, Wanda and yourself sitting around just enjoying each other’s company. “So this is what brings you serenity. Them.”

“We had been on the run for a year and a half,” you muse as you watch the memory play out. “We were all each other had, all each other saw. We were a family. And now,” you trail off as you hear the music play in the room, as you see Pietro getting up to pull you to dance and have fun on a peaceful night. “Natasha is dead...Steve is well...he’s basically gone. Pietro is dead too, and I don’t talk to Sam...not like he’ll talk to me after this.”

“Once again you’ve lost everyone,” Agnes taunts you from behind, causing you to grow stiff and wide eyed. “So much agony in a happy memory.”

You drop your gaze and slowly try to turn and confront what she was trying to do, but she swiftly moved your head so you would continue watching the memory. You try to squirm away from her, but she grabs onto you tighter and turns you so you’re in a completely different environment. Suddenly instead of being in that abandoned studio, you’re in Wakanda. You want to turn away and avoid seeing what haunted your mind, soul and heart, but Agnes uses her power to restrain your hands and feet so you would keep watching. “No,” you shake your head, “stop what you’re doing. You were supposed to help.” You seeth as you squirm to try and get out. “Let me go!”

“Just watch,” Agnes grumbles as she clutches onto your jaw and forces you to watch as Thanos snaps Pietro's neck and leaves you paralyzed on the ground. You want to look away, you can’t relive the moment of pain, but you’re forced to and it hurts again—“this was the trigger to something bigger than yourself, y/n. You have to let go.” Agnes lets your head go and you tear your gaze away, feeling your tears stream down your face and anger boiling at the pit of your stomach. It’s quick to grow and has you looking up at Agnes with a death glare.

“I will,” you growl, “not lose control to you. I won’t let people control me either.” You feel your own power tear down this illusion and you’re brought back to the dark basement. You break through her magic restraints and your power engulfs your hands. You spin around to face her and she has a malicious look in her crazed gaze.

“That’s it, feel it, let it out, remember the pain you felt when Pietro died.”

“Stop,” you bellow.

Agnes walks towards you without regard to her safety and an evil look shines in her eyes. “Remember how it felt when Natasha died too. How it felt to slowly lose people one by one.”

The hues around your hands grow brighter and more dangerous, and you feel as if something is ticking in your head ready to go off at any minute. You try to not let her get to you, but her words were enraging you and tearing your walls down.

“Remember,” Agnes continues, “the sound of Pietros neck snapping, feel that same heartbreak.”

You ball your fist and let out a small growl, you dig your feet into the ground and before you could even attempt to do anything, before that bomb in your head could go off and make you lose control; you’re suddenly swooped off the ground, and in a matter of a second you’re out of Agne’s house and in the front of your own.

When you’re placed on the ground and you’re back to the normal speed of time, you lift your gaze to see Pietro looking at you with a smug smirk. “Did you see that coming?”

Slowly an emotional smile grows on your lips and you’re quick to throw your arms around Pietro. He hugs you back and gently strokes your back.

Before you could say anything in regards to what happened with him and you before, you bring something else up first. “We have to warn Wanda about Agnes.”

[vs-redemption]

Might I request hurt/comfort scenario for William comforting his female s/o that's trying to cope with a pain that doesn't seem to go away, not even with pain medication?

From Cindy: Hello Anon! Thank you for sending in this request. I really hope you aren’t experiencing awful pain like this, but if you are, I hope you can find a way to feel better soon. Have a safe and happy holiday, and please enjoy the story!

Aches and Pains (William Vangeance x Fem!Reader)

William Vangeance considered himself to be the luckiest and happiest man in all of Clover Kingdom, and it did not matter to him one bit if anyone else disagreed or thought he was exaggerating. They probably assumed his greatest accomplishment in life was befriending the wizard king or becoming the captain of the strongest Magic Knight squad. Those feats were indeed noteworthy, and he would never deny their positive impact, but they still didn’t even come close to the all-consuming joy he’d experienced since the moment you’d become a part of his life.

He still had a hard time believing that he even managed to catch your attention let alone convince you to go on a date with him. But after almost a year, you still stuck by his side and filled his days with more bliss and love than he could ever put into words. Your words of affirmation and constant support gave him a sense of pride and a level of confidence that he never would’ve thought possible. Those closest to him were astonished to see the changes you inspired in him as he opened up more in conversations and ignored the urges to cover up his face when attending small gatherings. He felt like a whole new man and it was all thanks to the patience, kindness, and love he’d received from you.

Your importance to William was immeasurable, and because of that, there was nothing he wanted more than for you to know the same feelings of contentment that he did both in the relationship and in life in general. He never wanted you to experience a moment of sadness or distress, so when you came to him one day complaining that you’d woken up with an uncomfortable pain, he was quick to forsake all plans and duties in order to focus on taking care of you.

“You must’ve been overworking yourself lately, my love.” William tucks you back into bed after making sure to contact everyone who’d been expecting you that day to let them know you would be resting instead. “Stay off your feet and allow your body to heal.”

Once he’s sure you’re nice and settled, he prepares a cold compress for you to use on the painful area to help dull the ache that had seemed to come from nowhere. He could see that you were still experiencing some discomfort after a while though, so he makes his way to the nearest apothecary to buy some medicine that would help alleviate some of your pain. He has the shop owner explain the directions for how to take the medicine multiple times before paying and heading back home. He urges you to stay in bed as he prepares a hearty lunch for you to take along with the medicine. After giving the first dose time to kick in, your pain still seems to persist. Each whimper that escapes your lips, and each grimace that contorts you features leaves William feeling more and more upset.

“Don’t worry,” he tries to console you. “I’m sure the medicine will help you feel better soon.”

William hoped that he was telling the truth. However, it was still a little too hard for him to sit by and do nothing while the love of his life suffered in such a state. He prepared a hot bath for you to try and subdue your aches and pains. When that proved to be just as ineffective as the medicine, your determined boyfriend decided to, quite literally, take things into his own hands. He helped you out of the bath and asked where the pain was worst before using his fingers to gently massage those areas to sooth them if even just for a little while.

“I’m sorry William,” you ask him to stop after a few minutes. “It’s not your fault, but the pain somehow feels like it has gotten worse.” The tiny tears that you were trying to suppress broke William’s heart, and he became more determined than ever to put an end to whatever was causing your discomfort. Even if he was unable to do anything to help you, surely there was someone else that could. He called for Mimosa, a member of his magic knight squad who was proficient in healing magic to enlist her help.

“Thank you for taking time out of your day,” William thanks the girl as she casts a spell from her open grimoire to cradle you in her magical healing vines and flowers.

“Don’t mention it,” Mimosa assures you both as she continues to concentrate on making you feel better. It didn’t take long for it to become apparent that the spell was having zero affect. William thanked his fellow magic knight before allowing her to get back to her duties.

“William, it hurts so much,” you say through clenched teeth as the throbbing pain continues relentlessly.

“I know,” he sits next to you and gently pulls you into his lap so he can stroke your hair and face lovingly. “I hate seeing you in so much pain. I love you and I promise I won’t give up looking for a way to make you feel better.”

“Thank you,” you reach up to put your hand over his. “I appreciate everything you’re doing.”

William continues to hold you, wracking his brain for ideas of what to do. After a while, he makes up his mind to call upon his friend Julius for aid. He hated to ask the wizard king for personal favors, but he wasn’t doing it for himself. He was doing it for you. It seemed to take no time at all for Julius to arrive, bringing with him his own personal magic healer.

“Why didn’t you contact me earlier, William?” The wizard king smiles kindly before patting the healer on the back. “I’m sure Owen here will have her fixed up in no time!” The confident words gave both you and William a spark of hope. William continued to hold you in his arms as the doctor opened his grimoire and started to work on making a diagnosis.

“Aha! I see what the problem is!” The healing mage nods his head victoriously. “The source of the pain is uncommon but can be treated fairly easily. The spell will take a few hours to take effect, but your discomfort should be completely gone by the time you wake up tomorrow!”

“That’s great news!” The wizard king claps his hands happily. Owen casts the proper spell before departing with Julius and leaving you to recover under the loving care of your boyfriend.

“It’s already starting to feel better,” you admit once you’re alone. A handsome smiles grows on William’s face at your words.

“I’m so glad to hear that, my love.” He gets you both ready for bed before crawling under the covers and wrapping you protectively in his arms once again. “You mean everything to me, and I never want you to hurt or feel bad.”

As your pain slowly dissipates, the stress of the day catches up and you are able to relax enough to slowly drift off to sleep, feeling safe and warm in William’s embrace. He continues to watch you for a while, looking for any signs that the discomfort was returning, but it truly seemed that it was going away for good. It put him at ease to know he’d been able to find a way so help you through such a difficult time, and he hoped you’d never have to feel that sort of pain ever again.

[iamanartichoke]

[please blacklist spoiler tags: #loki tv series spoilers, #loki series spoilers, #loki spoilers]

Yes, I did just watch episode 2 at 5:30 in the morning.

No, I am not sorry. Not at the moment, although when I inevitably crash later this afternoon, I will be.

Just some very, very quick - and scattered and messy - thoughts: That is a straight up lie; they’re definitely scattered and messy but not very quick at all.

Under the cut for spoilers and length.

I’m going to start with Loki’s characterization. My honest opinion is that Loki’s overall characterization feels like a fic characterization. He definitely is not Avengers Loki, like, at all. I don't know if Tom just, like, forgot how to play that Loki or ...?? That, or Loki was so much more mind-controlled than we realized and getting hulk-smashed just completely reset him back to zero but also fucked him up a little bit and affected his personality, kind of like how some people completely develop weird new personality quirks after a traumatic brain injury.

… yeah, I think that’s where I’m gonna land for now. TV series!Loki feels like a more-or-less canon version of Loki, but if that Loki got hit in the head really hard and now he’s just a little bit fucked up but overall no worse for the wear. Which - it may be that it’s so early in the morning, but that’s actually really fucking funny to me, lmao. God, I kill me. It’s not funny.

No, but, that’s pretty much how I feel. He’s ooc but he’s also ic, and the reason I’m not particularly bothered by the inconsistency, for lack of a better word, is because that’s what pretty much every fic Loki already feels like to me? (Including my own, so I’m not, like, saying that in a derogatory way.) Which is why I say Loki feels like a fic!Loki and to try to explain it better - there is always, for me, a little suspension of disbelief that I employ when I read fic. The reason for that is because the context, the plot, and the dynamics of the fic are usually pretty different than what we ever get in canon, so it becomes a matter of taking film!Loki and, like, bending him a bit in order to fit him into the perimeters of the fic.

The result ends up being that I don’t see the exact Avengers!Loki or TDW!Loki, and thus by definition the portrayal is ooc, but the version that I do see feels like a genuine extension of the canon version, possessing enough of Loki’s overall traits and characteristics that he feels authentic, albeit a bit pretzeled for the new context.

I honestly think that’s something that’s unavoidable, just due to the fact that in fic - and now, in this series - there are a lot more variables at play than there are in the films, wherein Loki is not just a supporting character but also the villain/antagonist and is therefore very limited in what he does/what the narrative allows him to do. When those limitations are taken away, what are we going to see? Probably a lot of different things, and yeah, a lot of them are going to feel a little ooc. And, like in fic, even if the characterization mostly lands, there are definitely bits and pieces (some fics more than others lean this way) where the author didn’t stick the landing or got carried away or otherwise probably forgot for a while that they were writing Loki, not their own OC.

That’s the point where it strays into cringe territory for me (and where the ‘heh, he’s Loki but with a brain injury’ aspect comes in), but while I had to consciously decide to just ignore those moments, overall the tone in this episode felt a bit more balanced between the new, the old, and the cringe, and less whiplash-y from the beginning of the episode to the end.

… I have no idea if that makes sense, but what I’m basically saying is that while I am enjoying this version of Loki, I do recognize all of the ways he’s ooc but, unlike how I feel about Ragnarok!Loki, the ooc-ness feels genuine and unavoidable rather than just a fundamental and careless misunderstanding of the character altogether. In other words, I feel like any ooc-ness here is happening despite the writers taking care to do their best, and isn’t just a result of Loki being lazily written by a person or persons who just doesn’t want to bother with him at all.

Again, I don’t know if that makes sense, but fuck it, there we are and I’m moving on.

I liked all of the little details, including again, things that felt straight out of fic, like Loki asking Mobius why he has the jetski magazine. (Also, if any of my thorki friends read this, was I the only one who noticed that when we see Loki reading the magazine, it just happens to be open to a page with a picture featuring a jet skier who looks like Thor? l.m.a.o.)

Loki interrupting things to explain the difference between illusions vs the other power (I can’t remember which one, off hand, and if I stop writing to go look it up I will lose my train of thought and not finish this) was great, but his overall input and contributions to the missions inspired very mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I loved that the narrative, via Loki, is reminding us of all these things that he’s capable of that the films generally left out or brushed aside or ignored - but, every time he spoke, he was met with eye rolls and sighs and just a general feeling of “someone please shut this guy up” and I didn’t like the narrative treating him that way.

But also, it’s understandable bc none of the people on his team are actually on his team. None of them want him there (story of Loki’s fucking life), none of them trust him, and none of them are particularly interested in hearing what he has to say. So it’s like, I understand why they reacted the way they did, and I don’t think their reactions are meant to support an overall narrative undermining of Loki’s skills and input - but, the tone is hard to read for me bc I am very defensive and protective of Loki. I can’t quite determine the line between the TVA agents being unreliable narrators (ie, they’re annoyed by Loki bc of who he is to them, but that doesn’t mean the audience is supposed to feel the same) and the TVA agents validating that Loki is just being a nuisance (and, thus, the audience is supposed to feel the same).

That is, I know how I am consuming the narrative (that they’re unreliable narrators), but I’m not sure if that’s how tptb are intending for me to consume the narrative - and I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s worth mentioning.

In general, I really liked, again, Loki existing in his own space and watching the way he carried himself. I especially found it interesting that his hands were almost always in his pockets - for one thing it's a stance I tend to imagine him taking often in fic, but also it’s kind of a weird choice bc pockets don’t seem to be a thing in Asgardian clothing. It makes me feel like Loki is the kind of person who never knows what to do with his hands but is always conscious of them, as is common among anxious and self-conscious people, and I just find that relatable on a weird level.

I am really kinda torn on Mobius in this episode; when not interrogating Loki, he’s much less antagonistic toward Loki and therefore I’m more inclined to take-him-or-leave-him but I’ll go ahead and take him I guess. Yet at the same time, bc he’s not interrogating Loki he’s also not trying to put on a show for Loki and when you take that away, he really doesn’t seem to like Loki at all. It supports that Mobius only wants what Loki can do for him and doesn’t actually particularly care about him as a person, which is fine and more or less what I figured, but it contributes to me not really being able to decide how I feel about him in general. Idk, though, I kinda like their dynamic? Like I want them to end up friends?

Regardless, Tom and Owen have amazing chemistry and it’s really funny to me bc (not to be a jerk) I honestly didn’t know Owen Wilson could act. Like, I’ve never seen him in a role where he wasn’t just playing Owen Wilson. So for him to not only be playing Mobius so well but also having such chemistry and a sense of holding-his-own against Tom Hiddleston is like, color me surprised but pleasantly so.

I like B-15 a lot, even though she obviously hates Loki, so idk why I like her but I do. I like Renslayer less, but meh. (Side note - when I was in undergrad in Syracuse, I took the Amtrak from Syracuse to Boston and back more than a few times, for reasons that aren’t relevant, and that route always had a layover at Albany-Rensselaer and every single time I see Renslayer’s name, I want to call her Rensselaer instead.) Shout out to the guest appearance by Casey, sorry Loki stole your juice lmfao.

The moments from the trailer that were very cringe were less so in context (though still kinda cringe, tbh). I think we’ve seen most of the content from the trailers in the first two episodes now, though, which means going forward, it’s going to be like 95% previously unseen material (aside from the brief apocalyptic shots and so forth).

One thing I fucking loved was how Loki, reading about Ragnarok, was visibly affected and even teared up a bit, and you could tell he was in his feels about it, but then later when Mobius expresses sympathy, Loki is just like, “Uh huh, very sad, but anyway.” It was a subtle (well maybe not that subtle) but effective way to remind us that what Loki presents to other people is more often than not a mask and he keeps his true feelings close to the chest. It makes last week’s breakdown have even more of an impact, I think, bc clearly Loki was at the end of his rope to allow himself to show that much raw emotion and vulnerability, but also - for me - there’s a niggling little doubt there that wasn’t there before, in that there was probably more performance in it than I thought.

By which I mean, I think his reaction to the film of his life when he was alone was genuine but, while I previously thought his admission to Mobius later was also genuine, I now think was probably half genuine and half performative. I know others already figured that out, but I’m a little slow and, also, I don’t mind changing my opinion and interpretation from week to week.

Along the same lines, I wasn’t exactly surprised to see that Loki is “undercover” in the TVA, but it was nice to see it acknowledged fairly quickly. Not sure I buy that Loki wants to overthrow and rule the TVA - it’s still a little too “Loki only wants a throne” for me, but again, just because that’s what he told the variant doesn’t mean that’s actually what he’s after.

And, finally, I like the variant, I love Loki’s reaction to seeing her, and while I realize that the show has acknowledged Loki’s gender fluidity and we’re meant to assume that Lady Loki (I guess? Not sure if we’re going with that or not here) is Loki, I saw a theory somewhere about how this is actually not Loki-Loki, but - I wanna say her name Sophie but that’s the actress, again I can’t go look it up bc I will lose my train of thought - but it’s a character who is similar to Amora and who was created by Loki and models herself as Loki but she’s actually someone else.

Ugh I can’t remember the details of the theory, but I am kinda going with it bc I don’t think that Loki would look so - not surprised but just kind of “oh, well, I wasn’t expecting that” if he were seeing the female version of himself. Like, he doesn’t seem to recognize her the way I assume he would recognize himself, male or female. Not only does that make me feel like she’s actually someone else, but also not recognizing her as the female version of himself doesn’t necessarily mean Loki doesn’t recognize her at all. He may very well recognize her as this other Amora-similar character and, if so, I really want to see how that character fits with MCU Loki (as I think she’s a comic book character but, again, I’d have to go back and find that theory).

Edit: I found a version of it here.

Overall score, B-. Mostly solid, but needs moar Loki breakdowns and tears. (That's just me, don't fucking judge me.) Also, I really hate that we have to wait a week between episodes. I wish they were following Netflix’s method of dropping the entire season at once but, then again, if they did that, I’m not sure any of us would survive.

I gotta get ready for work and I deleted and rewrote so much of this and it still seems nonsensical to me, lmfao fml. Anyway feel free to interact/send me asks/whatever, it’s going to be a long fucking day with all of this on my mind. I’ll be working my way through my dash as best as I can.

Oh, also! Loki is so fucking pretty in this episode! The TVA suit is ugly, but he makes it work, and his hair's combed nicely and he looks like he finally got an opportunity to sleep and shower and eat something and, yknow, it's working for him.

[mst3kproject]

Battle of the Worlds

Several times on this blog I've featured movies that have more than one title.  In almost every case, the new titles were better than the original one, and this is not an exception.  Battle of the Worlds is fairly bland, but it tells you that you're going to be seeing a movie about some kind of space-based conflict, without giving away the details.  The Italian title was Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti, which is a fucking spoiler.

An earlier draft of this review contained a couple of jokes about the classically phallic 60's spacecraft in the movie, but I went back and took those out.  Bezos has really set a whole new standard for Giant Dong Rockets and I can no longer accept anything less.

A group of astronomers have just discovered a rogue planet, which they have dubbed the Outsider, is entering our solar system. Everybody is worried about it hitting Earth except for nasty old misanthrope Professor Benson, who says it'll be a near miss.  As it turns out, nobody's exactly right – the Outsider doesn't hit us, but it doesn't just pass by, either.  Instead, it settles into orbit, and when humanity attempts to explore it, it responds by sending out squadrons of flying saucers to blow our rockets out of its sky!  After one of these crashes on Earth, Benson is able to learn how to deactivate the Outsider’s defences and land on it, where humanity can finally confront its inhabitants... or can we?

Well, if you speak Italian, you already know the answer, because this is The Planet of Extinguished Men. The aliens are all long dead and their spaceship has been following its programming for millions of years without them, including the part telling it to destroy the Earth.  Bummer.

I actually have quite a bit to say about this movie.  It centres around some interesting musings about human emotion and curiosity, though it never comes to any solid conclusions.  As a movie, unfortunately, it's not very well-made.  This is a story in which the world as we know it nearly comes to an end more than once, and yet very little seems to happen in it.

The opening sequence is terribly clumsy and does very little to place you within this world.  We start off with two characters kissing and being excited about starting a new life together, but we have no idea at this point who they are or why they want to leave this place. When the Outsider is discovered, the scientists beat around the bush and try to keep it a secret, even from the audience.  Only Benson is willing to be upfront about it.  This does establish him as a realist while making his colleagues seem spineless, which is what the movie wants, but it's also terribly frustrating for the viewer.

Later there's a sequence in which a craft attempting to land on Mars is nearly destroyed by the gravity of the Outsider, and some quick thinking saves the astronauts' lives, but this is directed like the battle sequences in Invasion of the Neptune Men. We have no idea where any of these craft or planets are in relation to one another, and have to rely on characters sitting at desks to tell us what's happening.  Even worse, we never see the chaos the looming end of the world wreaks on society.  Astronauts who have recently returned to Earth note that they've heard there have been suicides and riots as people fear the Outsider will impact our planet, but we never see any of this.

The movie does a little better later, when the Outsider's close approach causes disastrous tidal forces... these are represented by black and white footage of floods and volcanic eruptions tinted red to try to make it match the rest of the colour film.  As always, this fails, but at least they tried. Other special effects are equally pathetic.  There are the inevitable plastic model kit rockets with their flame exhaust that rises in what's supposed to be a zero-gravity vacuum.  The 'flying saucers' the Outsider launches to defend itself look like nothing so much as giant fried eggs.

The Outsider itself is particularly sad to look at.  They have a model they use for it in a few shots, but this is about on a par with the original MST3K spaghetti ball.  In other shots, the Outsider is represented by a photograph of the Moon.  Absolutely no attempt is made to disguise it, and so of course the effect is a dismal failure because everybody knows what the goddamn Moon looks like. They couldn't even, I don't know, turn it upside-down or something?

On the other hand, the inside of the Outsider is actually pretty cool.  The sets aren't exactly believable, but you can see what they were going for.  Upon entering the caverns, the explorers find themselves in a series of tunnels full of strange red tubes and textures that look more organic than geological. Entering the Outsider is like wandering around within a living organism.  My favourite part of this is that absolutely nothing we see here is comprehensible.  Professor Benson, the genius, claims to be able to figure out what's going on, but his declarations seem arbitrary and nothing we're looking at makes visual sense.  Even the aliens don't look like anything in particular.  Were it not for Benson, we would not recognize them as living (or dead) creatures.

Like First Spaceship on Venus, Battle of the Worlds is much more interested in its ideas than in anything else, including what is supposedly its plot.  The characters are important mostly as the embodiment of those ideas, rather than as people in themselves, and the ideas the movie wants to study are about logic and emotion and how they affect human priorities.

The character of Dr. Fred Steele finds himself facing the potential end of the world, and decides that the most important thing to him in this situation is the love between him and his fiancee, Eve Barnett. Professor Benson, on the other hand, thinks the most important thing is to understand the threat they're facing.  Partly this is so that humanity can save itself from destruction, but knowledge for its own sake is also important.  In between these two men is Eve herself, who thinks love and science are both important and tries to find some middle ground between the two.  This is difficult for her, because Benson wants her to stay at the observatory and assist him, while Fred wants her to leave with him so they can get married.  When Eve tries to convince Fred to stay with her, both men see this as her having chosen Benson, and it poisons the relationships between all three parties.  Only with Benson dead are Eve and Fred able to strike a balance again.

But the movie doesn't want us to think that there is no middle ground.  The movie's other romantic couple are the two scientists from the Mars Base, Bob and Cathy.  They got married because they were both lonely and a psychological evaluation suggested that they had compatible personalities.  As the story progresses, however, they find that they have indeed fallen in love and want a future together that would include things like children – but this is ultimately denied to them, as Cathy is crushed by falling debris while exploring the Outsider.

Benson dies when insists on staying aboard the Outsider to try to decode its computers despite the fact that the military is about to destroy the entire object.  As the others escape, Fred intones the movie's beauty killed the beast line: “poor Benson, if they opened his chest they'd find a formula where his heart should be.”  And yet Benson died happy – as the Outsider explodes he is triumphant in his ability to understand its secrets, and laughing at the foolishness and cowardice of his fellow man.  It is the survivors who are miserable, mourning the loss of Benson himself as well as of Cathy, whose death was entirely meaningless.

I'm not sure what the movie is trying to tell us about these different approaches to life.  It seems to present them as ultimately incompatible, that attempts to give logic and emotion equal weight can only end in tears.  Only Benson, who was unswerving in his devotion to science, is ultimately satisfied. Perhaps the take-home message is that whatever your principles are, happiness lies in following them to their conclusion.

There's a second message, too, in different approaches to science itself. Modern physicists will often describe themselves as either theoretical or experimental... the two fields do compliment each other, but they often take place in different rooms, and one will be seen as leading the way for the other.  The search for the Higgs Boson was theory-led: people were pretty sure it existed, they just had to find it.  A great deal of astrophysics, however, is result-led: what we see tells us that there are things going on, like dark matter and dark energy, that we know nothing about, and the theorists must do their best to figure it out.

For most of his life, Benson has been a theorist.  He sits in his greenhouse chalking on the floors, spinning theories out of other people's results or out of pure mathematics.  Until the arrival of the Outsider, he had no interest in going out and exploring or experimenting.  But it quickly becomes clear to him that he cannot understand the Outsider through pure theory, as his calculations cannot account for the decisions of its makers.  In order to know it, he must see it for himself, so he grandly announces his intention to leave his 'den'.  Nobody ever asks him if it was worth it, but his maniacal smile at the moment of his death suggests that it was.

Battle of the Worlds had potential to be a really interesting movie, but ultimate the way its shot and edited make it mainly a very dull one.  Like its own characters, it fails to find the balance it needed.

[amwritingmeta]

You don't think killing Dean the way they did was contradicting to his character arc and development?

Hello, lovely!

As the initial shock of watching Dean die is wearing off more with each passing day, I can tell you that no, I don’t think that killing Dean the way they did was contradicting to his character arc and development. 

Let me explain.

And let me be clear, I’m basing this on my hopes and wishes for the narrative, for Dean, and they, in turn, sprung up from my reading of the narrative. 

My reading has always, as all meta readings are, been wholly subjective, though I’ve striven to be objective, trying to base my reading in my understanding of narrative structure and possible production choices as much as possible. The initial shock after the finale came from how the delivery of Dean’s endgame stepped outside of what I wanted and had grown to expect in those weeks leading up to it, due to 15x18 and queer love suddenly being a stated part of the narrative. 

Letting go of the idea of a long and happy life for Dean with Cas as a human on Earth, because that was simply the framework my brain invented to give them a happily ever after, I’d like to take a look at some of the other hopes and wishes I’ve had for Dean, in no particular order:

Dismantling the toxic masculinity ideal

Non-performance

Open communication and honesty

Self-acceptance leading to self-worth leading to self-actualisation 

Integration

Clear sense of identity

Learning to let go of need for control

Learning to trust

Feeling deserving of happiness and embracing it

Ending the codependency 

Teamwork and sharing responsibility/not feeling it’s all on him

Admitting to himself that what he longs for is to love and be loved

Believing in deserving to have a future

The world balanced out (no more firewall)

Putting the past to rest

Letting go of Protect Sammy as predominant purpose

Letting go of fear

No more Butch and Sundance/blaze of glory ending

Now, the more I think about all of these things in relation to S15 in general and the final three episodes in particular, the more those finale three episodes make me feel nothing short of delight for our characters. (sorry but it’s true) (I feel the distress of our family and it’s just horrifying but oh I do feel we need to take a breath together and calm down)

Here’s what I see. And what I see may come off as dismissive of people’s frustration and anger and disgust with the finale, but it’s not meant to be. I’ve always read this narrative how I described above, knowing that it’s impossible not to be subjective, but striving for objectivity.

Striving for objectivity by looking at what’s come before, the threads I’ve seen them pulling on, the overarching themes that have been consistent for fifteen years, the character traits that have been explored and narratively stated over and over again, and basing my analysis in these narrative constants.

So first, let us ask ourselves: was Dean’s death foreshadowed in S15?

The simple answer is that yes, it was.

It was foreshadowed by Amara saying that she wanted to release Dean from his anger, it was foreshadowed by Billie asking if it wasn’t time for the sweet release of death, and it was foreshadowed by the heart symbology peppered throughout the entire season.

Had it been coming for a long time?

Well, yes, it had. There were only two ways that his arc could end: him living or him dying, right? He’s died a lot, which is why I thought it should end in him living, finally, but let’s look at what the narrative tells us living constitutes:

fear (of losing his brother and of what’s around the next bend), as Dean admits in 15x17: he’s always afraid

pain, because the pain of losing Cas will never go away

Has Dean decided to deal with that? Yes, he has. He’s decided, by 15x20, to accept the loss, to look to the future, to not give up, to keep on fighting. He’s not even self-destructively looking for a case to distract him: instead he brings Sam to a freaking pie festival. Yeah? Dean is living his life.

This means that we’re shown him as having let go of toxic masculinity because he’s wholly non-performing at the start of 15x20, he’s openly communicating and being honest about the pain he feels over losing Cas, but as opposed to Chuck’s version of the “perfect ending” which was always tragic, where Dean losing Cas meant that he saw no purpose to living or fighting anymore, Dean takes that pain and is able to handle it because?

Because of Cas. Because of Dean internalising Cas’ view of him. Because of Dean being shown in 15x19 to grieve Cas, to want Cas back, to go through the motions (getting drunk etc.), only for him to realise (and yes the execution is lacking but I’m going to go with the narrative we have for the sake of this reading) that Cas isn’t coming back. 

By the end of 15x19, Cas’ words have taken such hold that Dean not only eases up on control and is shown to confidently share the responsibility for de-powering Chuck by working as a well-oiled team machine with Jack and Sam - because he trusts them, he’s also symbolically allowed to fully integrate by refusing to kill Chuck, because his Shadow (toxic masculinity as passed along by John the Bad Father Figure) (John also has a good side but he had a very bad side, for sure) no longer holds any sway over Dean, and because of Cas’ words, because of Cas’ faith in him, through Cas’ love for all that Dean is, Dean is given the sense of self-worth needed to finally be able to move into self-acceptance, allowing him to self-actualise, to integrate.

Cas saved Dean’s life AND saved Dean from his crappy self-view. I mean. It’s kinda fucking remarkable that this reading is right there for the taking.

So here we have the narrative ticking boxes like JAYSUS, yeah?

Let’s look it:

Dismantling the toxic masculinity ideal

Non-performance

Open communication and honesty

Self-acceptance leading to self-worth leading to self-actualisation

Integration

Clear sense of identity

Learning to let go of need for control

Learning to trust

Feeling deserving of happiness and embracing it

Teamwork and sharing responsibility/not feeling it’s all on him

Believing in deserving to have a future

The world balanced out (no more firewall)

And this, all of it, is thanks to LOVE. 

Because this is a story about love and... love.

So Dean being able to integrate thanks to Cas’ love is, to me, all about Dean opening himself up to the fact that what he wants, truly wants, and has always wanted (and needed, for that matter) is to be loved for who he is, and to allow himself to feel that very same unconditional love for another.

In the act of letting go of needing Cas back to somehow validate that love or validate Dean actually truly being deserving of receiving and giving love, we get the unconditional aspect of it underlined. There’s no dependency anymore. No fear attached to the emotion. Just the love itself, untouched by death. The healthy side to that profound bond that’s always kind of tripped these two up before. I mean. I think it’s kind of breathtaking.

Also, I’ve been told there’s an application that we see on Dean’s desk for him to get a job as a mechanic, which seems to me an underlining that Dean is looking to the future and in so doing is shown to feel deserving of happiness and embracing it. Something that I feel is established at the beginning of the episode, even without this detail, but is brought into focus thanks to it.

Dean doesn’t want to die. He has no desire to die. The implication being that he’s trying to make the best of what he’s got and is completely honest with himself about what he wants. Not owning a bar, but working on cars. The good side of John getting a nod, or so I would say. Especially poignant in an episode so heavily focused on Good Father Figures. 

I haven’t seen the detail of this application for myself though, I just trust my sources. :)

Now we get to the meatier part of this reading: Dean and Sam.

What do we have left on the list of hopes and wishes of stuff to be addressed as pertaining to Dean?

We’ve got:

Ending the codependency 

Putting the past to rest

Letting go of Protect Sammy as predominant purpose

Letting go of fear

No more Butch and Sundance/blaze of glory ending

I wonder if you might already be seeing where I’m going with this, but for good measure, let’s discuss the death scene and what it narratively results in for Dean and for Sam.

Dean and Sam end up in that barn because they’re two men who will not stand for harm coming to innocent lives, especially when those innocent lives belong to two little kids. This is who they are at their core.

Dean is killed by a vampire wearing a mask. Yeah. Someday perhaps I’ll make proper sense of it. Point is: Dean is impaled on a rusty nail that imbeds itself in his heart and sort of holds him together until the moment of his passing, giving him time to ask his brother to stay (zero performance and only vulnerability) and tell Sam exactly what Sam has always meant to him.

Which, for Dean, is vulnerability on steroids. Honesty times one thousand. In your face true identity flares of beauty.

This scene is stunning. When I watched it the second time around last Saturday I was blown away. Jensen makes this scene what it is, because it is such an absolute mirror of Dean’s scene with Cas and the differences to Jensen’s acting choices are paramount to the emotional significance of either. (oh Misha was extremely paramount to the declaration of love, don’t get me wrong, but here we have Jensen pivotally impactful, since he’s in both)

And through this mirroring we have two major threads of this narrative on display and effectively highlighted and tied up: the familial vs the romantic.

Because this is a story about love and... love.

The thing that I’ve been turning over in my head a lot is the codependency aspect here. I’ve had issues with it. Could it only be broken by Dean’s death? 

And no, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here at all. 

This moment is absolutely about the codependency breaking. In part. But it’s also about Dean going out bittersweetly, suddenly, without any glory or blaze, and it’s a very human, very real, very grounding moment to me for his arc: he didn’t expect it to be today, but it is.

*i’m seriously cry*

And Sam’s grief is so raw. I wish Sam had gotten to break away on his own. I’ll always wish that for him. That he could’ve seen his worth as a leader and leaned on that and on his love for Eileen, but Sam’s arc was always, always dependent on Dean’s progression, and this is what Dean’s arc needed in his final moment: clarity, honesty, trust, faith, letting go. A voicing of the fear, of the past, of what got them here, of the dependency - it was always you... and me - and both of them choosing, in the moment, to recognise the finality of it.

The entire show has revolved around these two men’s absolute inability to let go of each other and the stupidity and recklessness this inability has resulted in. Choice after choice serving to bring about the near apocalypses they’ve kept finding themselves in.

And reflecting itself in that has been the dependency Dean has felt for Cas’ presence, his annoyance and worry and fear whenever Cas has disappeared, how Dean’s progression has stopped in its tracks whenever Cas has been removed from the narrative.

So for this scene of the familial love allowing a letting go of that dependency to reflect itself once more so beautifully in how the romantic love allowed for a letting go of that dependency is kind of. I don’t even know. Everything glitters?

Dean finding peace ultimately has everything to do with having met, known and fallen in love with and having been loved by this angel of his. 

But is that canon? 

I mean, it’s subtextual canon, which is good enough for me, because it was all I ever expected and it’s such a blatant statement through the couples in love losing each other leading into Dean and Cas losing each other that there’s just no doubt in my mind how we’re meant to be understanding what these two men mean to each other, and from that draw the conclusions of what it is that’s influencing Dean’s moment of integration.

Does Dean’s death make a statement that happiness and love can only be found in death?

No. It really does not. Because that’s not what the narrative message is. Because Sam finds love and happiness by living his life. And I sincerely disagree with Sam being depicted as being depressed his whole life (the way Dean was with Lisa) because he lost his brother. Sure, there could’ve been pictures of all the found family when Sam is on his death bed, but he’s also thinking about the brother he lost and that’s simply a visual establishing of this fact. Could there have been more? Sure! But that doesn’t mean that all Sam cares about was Dean for all his life, living it in grief and loss. 

Sam loves his son, helps his son, laughs with his son, is a good father figure to his son, and this thread is pulled on throughout the episode: the good father figure thread. 

Dean’s goodbye to Sam isn’t just a brother saying goodbye to a brother.

It’s a father bidding farewell to his child. It’s a father gently relieved to not have to watch his son die. To get to go first. And yes, sure, that’s sad, but it’s also very human and real and says so much about their relationship.

Dabb era has hit the father/parental thread so hard that the Good Father thread running through this episode makes perfect sense to me.

Dean goes to Heaven not to find Cas, not expecting Cas to be there, but finding Cas there all the same (reward for letting go and having faith that if he’s meant to, and why wouldn’t he be, then he’ll see Cas again *headcanon*), and more than that, learning that Cas has made Heaven what it is now, moved Heaven away from trapping souls in endless memory loops (which was benevolent enough, but completely missed the point of what it means to be human) and that now there’s discovery and exploration and more life to be lived, because Heaven is overflowing with free will, with choice, with all the possibility for longevity and happiness.

The eternity that Dean deserves. 

Created for him by Cas. 

Cas ensuring Dean’s death is not an ending, but a beginning. That it’s not a prison for Dean’s mind, but instead a homecoming, filled with the prospect of reconnecting with all the people Dean has ever cared about, ever loved.

I mean, the fact that Cas’ prevailing faith in Jack has enabled all this is like strobe lights for the fucking brain.

And the irony is that while I focused entirely on how Cas needed to be grounded and choose to live a human life on Earth, the narrative had other plans (okay yeah the writers) and instead brought Dean to Heaven, and immortality.

It takes away the final obstacles for giving these two a happily ever after.

It also reflects itself in how Mary, in Heaven, is “complete”. She’s with John. She’s at peace. She’s happy. And who have always been fairly strongly tied (through mixtapes and whatnot) to Mary and John Winchester? Yeah. 

Also, Cas the angel will never age and will never die, and him with human Dean, watching Dean grow old and die only to go visit Dean in his little Heaven always made me depressed. Human!Cas took care of that, but left the Heaven conundrum wide open. And now it’s just gloriously fixed. 

And, speaking of, Cas got to FIX HEAVEN. And he’s fixing it together with his son. All of that faith, all of that struggle, completely rewarded. And Cas building that Heaven in wait for Dean to arrive, because if Dean hadn’t died in that barn (take me back to the night we met...) Dean would’ve died at some point, and Cas can wait, he just wants to make sure there’s happiness waiting for Dean when he arrives. I’m sorry but OMFG. I’m just so happy for our Castiel!!

Could Dean not know happiness on Earth?

I think he was on his way. I think there would always be that pain and that fear, but he was ready to accept that and make the most of it and live his life. Only... his heart is missing, because his heart went away, and perhaps there’s this chance that he’ll find it again, because he always has before, but he doesn’t know, and he doesn't expect it, and that’s okay, he can wait, and then he’s brought to Heaven, and there it is, and he smiles that smile and Heaven is basically complete apart for one final piece.

Because of course Dean would wait for Sam. 

Now. I realise this is my reading of this narrative. No one needs to accept it as the begin all, end all reading. I’m only hoping that it will offer a counterweight to the absolute and utter negativity being bandied around as the only true begin all, end all, because I do not see it or believe that it’s all there is to this finale.

There’s beauty here. And discounting it, at least the possibility of it, even if it’s not exactly what I’ve laid out in this reply, because of frustration of not getting textual Destiel is not doing anyone any good. We got subtextual Destiel, we got subtextual bisexual Dean, and it’s confirmed. To my mind, it’s confirmed.

That’s everything I ever dared expect. And that expectation came solely from how clear the subtext has always been, how invested the writers have seemed in it, and the actors too. 

And Cas is canonically queer. 

Which is fucking amazing and truly enormous and I’ll talk very gently about why I don’t feel his death was a case of BYG in a separate post, but Cas is alive in the narrative as it’s been presented to us, and he’s in love with Dean and they get to be together in the Heaven Dean deserves, remodelled for Dean by Cas. If that’s not the beginning of a happily ever after, then I don’t know what is!

Thanks for asking, love. I’ve been meaning to write all this down and have spent the afternoon doing so. It’s quite cathartic!

xx

[fandomsilhouette]

they’ve got a bad reputation (they’ll get a standing ovation)

The spotlight clicks on, floods the stage until the shadows are sent scampering away, every flaw and every fear in sharp contrast for the audience to feast upon; but what horrors lurk where the darkness prowls, trapped at the edges of the script like handcuffs around the actor? May life mirror art at the best of times, the worst of times. 

Happy @felinettenovember, y’all! We’re back to terrible o’clock writing times with @musicfren, who is collaborating with me on this fic-turned-mechanism-through-which-to-preach-on-the-spot-Hamlet-analysis. He’ll be posting the second part on his account tomorrow, during which the bulk of my meta nonsense is going to come through. Are you following him yet? @emzurl spoiled this whole story with their art and @dumpsdoods simply spoils me with theirs. 

Part 1 below. Part 2 upcoming.

“Alright, take ten, my dudes! We’ll go from Act III, Scene 1 after you get some snacks and chill.” 

Marinette lets out an amused laugh as she thumbs through her copy of the script, ignoring the throng of hungry students pushing past her, desperate for this grueling 5 hour rehearsal to end. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but certainly not of this play. Nino makes a good director, she thinkst: loud, relentlessly positive, able to carry the sagging energy of an entire unwilling highschool production on his shoulders.

But alas, poor Nino is fighting a losing battle. Everyone knows that the point of this play is the obligatory report they will all have to write for their literature class at the end of the week. Almost no one here can act, and Marinette’s arms are beginning to grow tired from carrying up the entire play. With scarcely a week left it looks like most people are planning to coast the rest of the way to a clean C+. The part of Hamlet still has not been cast.

Akuma attacks have pushed back the discussions they were meant to have on the play, and Bustier couldn’t cancel the major assignment for the unit; instead, she had told them to analyze the play through the role of their choice after embodying it for the few weeks it took to rehearse and perform the production. Their in-class discussions have been condensed into a take-home paper on top of the already obligatory theatre performance and pretty much everyone knows that Bustier would be lenient on them just for that. And Nino knows they know, and Marinette is starting to suspect that he is itching to “chill” like he keeps telling them to. 

Marinette chews on the corner of her pencil, running a finger over the veritable bloodbath of neat pink notes she’s crammed into the margins of every page. She’s on in the next scene, and she wants to make sure she’s got all the nuances of the character, her character, exactly as she plans to bring her to life. Looking over the script, Marinette starts to regret not typing the notes to begin with: her entire essay is definitely already fully composed. Maybe Max will consider building her an application that can scan the document and transpose it to a word processor as editable text… 

“Give me your hand, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.” 

Marinette looks up to see Felix quoting Shakespeare, trying very hard to look inconspicuous in his black stage-hand clothes, wheeling a stand of fake swords almost as tall as he was. She watches with some amusement as he struggles to set it upright, and makes absolutely no move to help him. 

“I wasn’t expecting to see you on stage any time this week,” she says, sticking her tongue out and being far cuter than it had any right to be. Felix, sweating, scrambles for a riposte. 

“I hadn’t expected you out of the home ec room at all. Shouldn’t you be half-drowned in fabric or something?” 

She sends him a quizzical look. He wonders if the akuma attacks have scrambled her memory. “Because...you’ve got costumes to work on? As the play’s costume designer?” 

“Oh, I’m not doing costumes this year, actually.” Marinette laughs awkwardly. “I’m not even sure what I would write about if I were.” 

Felix stares at her. The sword he was carrying slid out of his grasp with a dull clang.

“...what are you writing about as a stagehand?” 

Felix decides to pretend the last few moments were a fever dream and focus on answering this one very reasonable question. “I’m looking at the blocking and the prop placement and the lighting and how it impacts the effect of the character portrayal on the audience and what information manages to get conveyed to the audience.” 

Marinette offers a suitably impressed ooh at this. “How far have you gotten with it?” 

“Darling, we don’t even have a Hamlet. The titular character. I’ve done nothing.” Felix offers the most deadpan look he can muster and startles at her giggle. “What, how far have you gotten?!”

Marinette flashes her script at him, more notes than dialogue at this point. 

“You are possibly the only person in the class thinking anything even remotely deep about this play. What is all that for?!” 

“Hopefully for a handwritten notes to editable text conversion app.” 

Felix only narrowly avoids gaping. What?! “...is that what’s scrawled on every corner of that script you’re clutching?” He grins crookedly at her, and her traitorous heart skips a beat. 

“...oh! no, um, those are my notes. For… my essay? I’ve written out the character analyses into where the text supports my arguments and… um… yeah.” She flushes with the realization that 1) that was completely out of context for him because 2) he cannot, in fact, read her mind. 

“...Marinette, for what do you possibly need notes?” 

“...to play my character?” 

“Oh, wow, are you playing a guy? Impressive, tiny girl.” He rakes his gaze down her body and Marinette is flushed for a whole new reason now. She pushes to her feet and doesn’t bother to care about the swords she knocks over. 

“I’m not, actually.” 

“Why?! Who is there to play among the female characters? Marinette, I took you as someone who plays characters of worth.”

She looks up at him, eyes wide with dangerous innocence “Are female characters not valuable?” 

“I-- no, that’s not what I meant and you know it! Shakespeare is historical, and male-centric, and writes women who do little more than parrot the views of the men around them if they get any dialogue at all. There’s no substance there! Who are you possibly going to play, Gertrude? Ophelia?!?” Felix’s tone makes it very clear what he thinks of the only two options she has available to her. 

Marinette sweeps past him coolly, her hair whipping against his cheek. “I am playing Ophelia, actually.”

Stumbling, Felix turns and gives her a wry grin. “Oh darn, I’m sorry for your loss.” He makes a valiant effort at replicating her stuck out tongue, not that Marinette is looking. It’s for the best: it’s not nearly as cute on him. 

“Excuse you?” Marinette halts in her tracks, shadowed amongst the heavy curtains of stageside. Her voice echoes hauntingly around the empty theatre. 

“...c’mon. Ophelia does less than Gertrude. She even has fewer lines!”

With great restraint, Marinette manages to do nothing more than turn to face Felix, trembling with repressed rage. “Does less? Ophelia is the only person in this play who does anything at all that isn’t driven by a madman’s plot! Ophelia is the only person in this play who can pull Hamlet out of insanity, even if for little more than a moment.” 

Frustrated, Felix tosses the nearest item at her and growls when she catches it neatly. It’s a victory when she stalks off across the stage to the opposite wing, gathering her notes and settling herself neatly in a prim fury. She’s wrong, she’s wrong, she’s wrong. He whirls around and starts rearranging everything she knocked over, grumbling under his breath. 

“Ophelia is the only character in that play who makes zero choices of her own. Even her death was a result of her tripping into a lake.”

There’s a crashing sound, and Felix spins back around to see Marinette bolt upright, tempestuous in her temper. Felix may have gotten a bit too loud with that last statement.

“How can you say that? That’s the most significant choice she makes in the whole play!”

Felix can feel the irritation rising, hot and ugly in his chest. Why is she being so stubborn? Marinette makes a gesture at him, quick and angry from the other side of the room. Felix squints and tilts his head, struggling to what she was doing from across the stage. Then all at once it hits him.

“Do… do you bite your thumb at me?!” He splutters in indignant incoherency, his grip tightening on whatever he’s holding until the plastic grooves bite into his skin. 

“I do bite my thumb at thee, sir.” 

Felix steps onto stage, glaring. Marinette matches him step for step, glare for angry glare. Nino gasps, cowers, and then grabs his camera.

The class, milling around aimlessly as their ten minutes ticked to an end, comes to a collective halt. Nino sheppards them out of the way of the camera’s shot. They flock without protest to the edges of the theatre, terrified to watch this trainwreck unfold, terrified they’ll miss even a second of it. The die has been cast. Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

Nino can only hope that the set backgrounds manage to come out of this intact.

[wheezy-kasp-brak]

Team Zero (Hargreeves Siblings x Sibling Reader)

Summary: After being sent back in time and finding their father, the eight academy kids have ‘A Light Supper’ with him.

A/N: This is a really gross, unedited page because I really wanted to write this scene. I wrote this in only a few hours and I think I could’ve done a crap ton better but I really wanted to post this so...

Warnings: season two spoilers, mild swearing

Word count 2589

gif credit to @tuagifs​

After the draining argument with their siblings, the last thing y/n expected to receive was a letter from their father. 

To my pursuers, 

I, Reginald Hargreeves, request the pleasure of your company for a light supper on the 20th of November, 1963, half past seven o’clock, 1624 Magnolia Street.

They had received the letter from a strange man in a black car. At first, y/n hesitated to believe it was really from their father but they knew their father better than anyone, even Luther despite what he thinks.

The level of extra Reginald went through to get this letter to them told them all they needed to know so, on the 20th of November, 1963, they arrived at 1624 Magnolia Street just before half past seven. 

The building was a tall hotel and the decor very much fit the era they were living in. They wandered towards the back where they slipped in an elevator next to their brother five. Not too soon after, their other siblings joined them in the small box. 

“Good, you’re all here” Five face sported his usual smirk and his body language screamed cocky arrogant asshole however, everyone remained quiet on the lift up to the highest floor. 

That was until a rather rancid smell reached their noses. “Ugh.. Luther!” 

“Sorry, I’m nervous.” The group covered their noses until the doors finally opened, allowing them to take a deep breath of fresh air. 

“Alright, when dad gets here, I’ll do the talking.” Fives natural attempt to assert himself failed quickly when Diego snapped back. 

“I got a few questions for him myself.” 

Y/n rolled their eyes. The seven of them never seemed to be able to enter a room without starting some kind of fight or argument. “Hey, we don’t wanna scare him off alright, he might be able to help us stop doomsday, get us home.”

“No Five, we need to figure out why he’s planning to kill the president.” It’s amazing how hung up on the presidents assassination Diego is, why can’t he just let this go? 

“This is a matter of life or death you imbecile.” Sensing that their other siblings were about to chime in, y/n zoned themselves out. Y/n isn’t exactly what you called a team player. They chose to stay quiet and disassociate themselves from their family. Sick of the overbearing weight of having to save the world when they could be doing other things, like being a normal person. 

Unfortunately for them, they were soon snapped out of their focused state by a loud crash. What appeared to be some kind of decoration was found shattered in small pieces on the other side of the room. 

“Classic.” Allison spit. They all turned their heads when they heard another noise. The doors to the ‘Tiki Lounge” swung open revealing a younger Hargreeves. His posture stood tall and didn’t give them a single glance until he sat at the table, adjusting his sleeves.

“Not only have you burglarized my lab, set my chimp loose, conned your way into the Mexican consulate, repeatedly stalked and attacked me, but you have on numerous occasions, called me...”

Klaus finally joined the table with what seemed like some alcoholic beverage. “Hey Pop. How’s it hangin’?

“...dad.” His voice was stern, slightly scary, but more just assertive. The seven children took a moment to all create eye contact before returning to their younger father. 

“My reconnaissance tells me you’re not CIA, not KGB, certainly not MI5, so...” he paused to slam his pen to the desk, “who are you?” Everyone stayed silent trying to find the right words before five cut in again. 

“We’re your children,” Reginald gave him a displeased look, “We’re from the future.” Dear old Reggie didn’t seem all too happy with the idea of having children, so when the group stayed silent once again y/n finally spoke up from their seat. 

“In 1989, you adopted us all and trained us to fight against the end of the world. You called us the umbrella academy.” The sudden joining of the conversation brought all the attention to them. It surprised the rest of their siblings, seeing as y/n normally just minded their own business. However, they supposed this was their business. 

“Why on earth would I adopt seven-”

“Eight. One of us isn’t here.” Allison corrected.

“Dead. One of us is dead.” Diego filled in the answer to what they assumed Reggie’s next question would be.

“Yeah, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Enough of that now.” Klaus spun in his seat, talking to what looked like an empty chair to the rest of them. 

Could he just be quiet for FIVE MINUTES.

When he spun back he noticeably shuddered and then it clicked in Klaus’s head. Ignoring the attention from everyone at the table he pushed his chair out and violently pointed his finger at y/n. 

“Hey! Get out of my head!” Everyone now turned their looks back to y/n. They had no response other than slouching down into their seat and turning their head to focus back onto the decor. 

Reginald took the silence as an invitation to begin speaking again, “Regardless, what would possess me to adopt eight ill-mannered malcontents?”

“We all have special abilities.” Five explained.

“Special?” Reginald Questioned, “In what sense?”

“In the super power sense.” Luther finally joined in on the conversation. 

“Call me old fashioned, but I’m a stickler for a pesky little thing called evidence. Show me.”

“Everybody wants to see powers all of a sudden.” Allison proceeded to scoff before she was cut off.

“We’re not circus animals, okay? We’re not gonna bounce balls on our noses and clap like seals for your amusement.” Luther attempted to accentuate his point  by literally clapping his hands together. That’s when Diego pulled out a knife and allowed it to slice through the air and around Reginald’s head, sinking into a support post behind him.

Reggie decided to pull out his pen and begin writing in one of those god-awful leather bound notebooks he constantly wrote in when they were younger. They all leaned in, upset that he was doing it again. 

“What’re you writing?” Diego asked.

“You are zero for two, young man.” At that statement Diego immediately pushed out of his chair, lunging towards their father. However, Five was much faster using his spatial jumps. He managed to flash in front of Diego, effectively preventing him from being shanked by their dad again. 

“Stop!” Fives voice was no louder than a whisper although they all still heard him. 

“Now that is interesting.” Reginald noted aloud. Once Diego was 'calm’ again. Five relaxed, walking back to his seat.

“All right, uh, quick rundown-” 

“Luther, super strength. Klaus can commune with the dead.” As they gestured to Klaus once more their siblings shocked glances paused them once more.  

They’re face scrunched up. “What? We all know Five’s definition of quick.” Their sass earned them chuckles from everyone at the table apart from their very loving brother, Five, and their very loving.... father. 

“Anyways,” They continued, “Allison can rumor anyone to do anything-”

“Yea, except she never uses it.” This time it was y/n who was cut off by Diego. That comment caused Allison to give him a pointed look.

“I heard a rumor, you punched yourself in the face.” Diego’s eyes turned white and his fist soar through the air and hit his nose straight on. His groan from the pain echoed through the room and Reginald adjusted himself in his seat, clearly unamused and slightly concerned.

This time, the academy kids held in their laughs worried Diego might be the one shanking them.

"And y/n has the power to read minds.” Five attempted to finish the conversation however they all forgot about the sibling who most recently discovered their powers. “And you?”

To this, Vanya lifted her head and everyone’s amused looks soon turned nervous. 

“Uh, maybe we don’t take Vanya for a test run.” Luther’s voice was laced with fear and the table tried to agree with him however Vanya seemed to think differently. 

“It’s fine. I can handle it.” She reached forward for a fork and glass. 

“Handle it?” Allison asked, “Last time you handled it, you definitely blew up the moon.” This time, the six siblings tried to stop her and braced themselves for the impact of what might be the end of the world... again.

Once the fork hit the glass she focused in on the ringing noise and allowed herself to blow up the fruity centerpiece, sending chunks of pineapple and mango flying everywhere. 

While they all tried to wipe away the fruit on their clothes Vanya just let out a small “oops.”

“Look, we know you’re involved in a plot to assassinate the president.” To that, Reggie quipped back at Diego.

“You were recently hospitalized, isn’t that correct?” Diego sputtered at the statement. “You still appear to be suffering from delusions of grandeur and acute paranoia.”

Diego, pissed off, pulled out a photo of him. “Am I?” He asked, standing up. The photo revealed to be-

“That’s you. That’s two days from now on the grassy knoll at the exact spot the presidents gonna get shot.” Reginald slowly picked up the photo, looking at it for a moment. 

“Well... I suppose you’ve solved it. You’ve single-handedly unearthed my nefarious plot.” Y/n was taking it in. They supposed that’s what Diego wanted but, there was sarcasm. A lot of it at that.

“Is that what you wanted to hear?” They knew it. “You fancy yourself a do-gooder? The last man who will save us from our descent into corruption and conspiracy? This is a fantastic delusion. The sad reality is that you’re a desperate man, tragically unaware of his own insignificance, desperately clinging to his own ineffectual reasoning. More succinctly, a man in over his head.” At this the table was stunned into silence. 

Diego allowed one tear to slip out. It rolled down his cheek in solidarity. “You’re wr-r-r-wrong.” He managed to finally stutter out. 

He’s right.

Diego’s body shivered. He quickly whipped out another knife and flung it across the table, stabbing y/n’s upper arm. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?” His voice was laced with venom and seemed to shut them out of his head. 

They pulled the knife out of their arm and pressed a thick napkin to the wound. The knife clattered back across the table. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to stab your sibling?”

The group stayed silent until Five spoke up. Shocker. “Look, forget about the president. We have a catastrophic war coming in five days. We need to figure out how to stop it.”

“Why? Men will always be at war with each other.” Reggie tried to reason.

“No, this isn’t just some war. I’m talking about a doomsday. The end of the world.” 

“Well.. You’re the special ones aren’t you?” The group proceeded to glare at him. “Why don’t you band together and do something about it?” 

Unbelievable. 

The siblings collective annoyed thoughts were soon cut off but their brother, Klaus. His body was suddenly jolted forward, shaking violently. His air way seemed to be cut. They all sat concerned and puzzled. 

“Y/n is that-”

“No, I don’t know what that is.” 

“Is he having a seizure?”

“Overdosing probably.” Diego muttered. All of sudden a voice and thoughts flooded Y/n’s mind. They were so loud. Y/n pushed their chair back, standing up. Their hands flew up to their ears, as if covering them would stop the words flowing through their head.

“Klaus, Y/n. Now is not the time. What’re you doing?”

The noises only got louder. “I’m...” His voice was strangled and chalky.

Reginald had quite enough of whatever was going on. “Well, out with it boy.”

Klaus took a deep breath and finally spit out, “...Ben!” He soon gasped and fell out of his chair. He continued to shake here and there and allowed a few groans to get out but none of the above concerned any of his siblings enough to do anything. 

“Well...” Reggie trailed off, “thank you for coming. I’ve seen about enough.” He stacked up his books and climbed over Klaus’s convulsing body. 

“No, I-” Luther tried to speak up, however Hargreeves kept walking. Luther, upset he didn’t get to say anything the whole time he was here, slammed his fists down onto the table. That certainly gained the room attention.

He ripped his shirt open revealing his ape like skin. “Look at what you did to me! Look at it!” Allison nearly spit out her drink and and Five let out an “oh, shit. Why?” with a solid eye roll and slouched into his chair. 

“Okay then. Anybody else wish to embarrass themselves this evening?” Nobody moved, obviously not wanting to embarrass themselves. “I guess I’ll-”

“No.” Y/n shook their head. “You don’t get to walk away after that. You don’t get to just leave after destroying our lives and blaming it on us. You forced us to dedicate everything to saving the stupid world and the stupid people who live on it. I never.. We never wanted to do that. We didn’t get a choice to be who we are, so, because you are the one who disfigured our existences, you are going to be the one who helps get everything back on track.” Out of breath, they finally looked up and locked gazes with their father

“If anyone disfigured your lives, it was yourselves.”

“Really? That’s all you have to say?” They paused before continuing the rant, “You know, Reginald, I don’t think I’m the one who forced myself to become afraid of people because their thoughts were so loud. Leading me to dissociating myself from my siblings and the people around me. In fact, I don’t think any of us would be this fucked up had you just allowed us to be our own people with a family and parents who actually loved us. Who wanted to dedicate their time to furthering us in life, not just using us for their own advantages.” 

“I’m sure whatever I did was to further you in life. I wouldn’t waste my time on something that I was sure to fail.” Hargreeves looked around the room, noticing the mess of a ‘family’ sitting in front of him. “Clearly, I had a miss in judgement.” 

At that he finally turned to leave the room. “You in the culottes?” He motioned to Five. “A word, in private?” Five followed suit leaving the six of them disheveled and wondering what to do next. 

The ring of the elevator doors sounded around them. “Well, that went as good as any Hargreeves family function.” At that Y/n zoned out again. Maybe they didn’t want to but that’s what they had practiced after so many years. Pretending like their siblings weren’t even in the room with them. 

“Where’d that whole speech come from, Y/n/n?” Allison added them into the ‘conversation.’ 

“Oh, um, I suppose I was just sick of allowing him to get away with whatever he wanted to.” 

“That’s one way to put it.” Diego harped on their response, clearly still upset about Y/n entering his head. 

The elevator doors finally opened once more, letting them escape the hellhole of a family meeting they just adjourned.  They all flooded into the hallway not making any eye contact. “Team Zero my ass.”

[kenrik]

Just wanted to share a word, about my writing. (ಽ ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉)ಽ

In particular, or as an example, I’ll use these two stories. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32282062

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32314180

You know, I can write these stories with more description. I can write how they feel, add what they're thinking. Every heartache, every inner dialogue, I can relay in detail.

This last scene, 

Gojo looks away. And he leans back with a smile lingering on his lips. "Then," He muses. "I guess we're still stuck with each other."

could have easily been written as, 

Gojo blushes as he looked away with a smile on his lips. He was relieved she was sticking around. He wanted her to stick around.  And he leans back with a smile lingering on his lips. "Then," He muses with a warm feeling in his chest. "I guess we're still stuck with each other."

or something to that effect.

I don't write it like that because of the tone, the atmosphere I want to build in the scene. I want the reader to be caught in the scene, in what happens. Not dictate even the most trivial feelings of the characters. That's why I limit my writing to the actions of the characters. That’s why I pace out the sentences. To make the scenes digestible. To make the flow lighter. 

Through these short, simple sentences, I leave it to the reader to decide what the characters feel, to look at the underlying emotions and dynamic. If I want to tell how the characters are feeling, I use the dialogue and their actions. And just hope it makes sense. Maybe, if I’m more patient, I’ll build the environment. I’ll add background noise. But that’s about it. 

I’m a GojoHime shipper. So, in all of my fan fictions, I always think that every scene they’re in together, even if it is the most platonic scene in the world - HAHA - is romantic, has deep meaning and impact to their relationship. How else could I ship GojoHime if not? The manga and anime have given us zero content. HAHA. Gojo saves her from a curse and yells first thing if she’s crying - and we think he’s a whipped kid who wants attention from his senpai. HAHA. 

So, I was surprised when comments came in about how I’ve used the wrong tags. Or how bad the heartbreak is, how one-sided. (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤ In the story, Utahime’s Boyfriend, although Utahime is with someone else, it’s clear to me how deep her relationship runs with Gojo. It’s clear to me that their relationship trumps a year-long relationship, even if it did end up with an engagement. If I get to writing the sequel, it will clearly show why. I could write Utahime as the most oblivious girl, laughing left and right at everything Gojo did. But I’ve never revealed her inner dialogue have I? Never relayed her thoughts and feelings. She could be laughing outside but dying inside. HAHAHA. Which, she is. Most of the time. As you may have read in my other story, No Love. 

This scene again, 

"What?" Gojo turns to his grandmother in surprise.

could have been written as, 

“What?” Gojo turns to his grandmother in surprise. Utahime’s getting married? Why? He thinks with a growing uneasiness building in his gut. Why so suddenly? Why Hideki-nii? 

or something to that effect.

But I didn’t. I didn’t write it that way because Gojo would look like a spaz. A ditz.  The first sentence was enough to convey that he was bothered, that he was surprised to learn Utahime was getting married. That’s it. Why he was surprised. Why he was taken aback. Why he cares, that’s up to the reader to fathom. 

The second sentence makes it seem like he’s in love with Utahime. When he’s not. Or, at least, he’s not aware of his own feelings. That’s how I see GojoHime in canon, friends with a funny relationship where they’re unaware of whatever underlying love they may have for each other. Gojo in canon is not in love with Utahime. But he is aware of her. He seeks her out, watches over her. He has fun with her. They’re friends. 

I have this headcanon where I think Utahime’s life span is actually prolonged by how Gojo always looks out for her and saves her. While she is experienced and capable, accidents and misclassifications happen all the time. The death toll for sorcerers is very high, more so for younger, inexperienced sorcerers. Attending school with Gojo, or being close to him in age, I believe, lengthened her life. As well as the other sorcerers. But, when you factor in how much weaker she is compared to her colleagues, and the fact that her cursed technique needs buffing time, you start wondering why she’s still alive. HAHA. It’s Gojo! I think it’s because of Gojo~! 

That’s why in The Hero, when Utahime tells Gojo never to save her again, I think that was crucial. Because he has a God Complex, he saves everyone. And telling Gojo never to save her is like a death sentence. That story to me is pretty cool. 

I honestly wonder how Utahime will fair in the Culling Game. If they introduce more characters, I think we’re f-ed. It will take away screen time from Utahime and her abilities. I feel like the most we’ll ever see of her is just really with regard to the school. I hope this is not the case. I’d rather see her heavily wounded or dead. I sorely want her to have badass moments like Maki, Nobara, Mai and Mei Mei. I hope she isn’t used as a comic relief like Miwa. It really hurt my head when that girl ran to Kenjaku with her sword. But then again, Miwa did get some romance. So... Hm...??

Anyway, going back to it, in the scenes I build, I want to show the characters in situations where the reader will think - wait a minute! There’s something more to your relationship than you think!! That’s why in Utahime’s Boyfriend, it’s so funny to me. Because Utahime’s Boyfriend is honestly just the reader. You see first hand how he learns about their relationship. And like the reader, he’s like - wft. These two are obviously in love. WTF?? 

So, I keep things simple when I write. I narrate what happens and hope the reader gets it. 

In Utahime’s Boyfriend, I don’t see the heartbreak because I always believe Gojo and Utahime will be together. HAHAHA. I can break them up a million times, and still in my head, they’ll still end up together. 

Seriously. 

I’ve played a number of HCs in my head. Legitimate ones where they fight and break-up. But they always find their way back to each other. 

I’m such a hopeless shipper. 

...That is the main take away. ಥ ‿ ಥ

[popculturebuffet]

Final Space Reviewcaps: The Hidden Light or Beelzbub’s Dad and Death Himself

Welcome back all you happy people! My regular coverage of final space continues as our Team Squad continues to be split up. Team Gary heads to the ruins of France and while HUE lives the dream, Gary finds the architect of his misery might also be the archtetcht of hope when he meets KVN’s creator.  Meanwhile Team Avacato find some friends of some friends... and an old enemy horrifically reborn and just as pants crappingly terrifying as before. Find out whose back, whose just been introduced, and whose resting under the cut!

So once again i’ts time for roll call, as our Team Squad has been split into three groups so Team Gary: Gary, Quinn, KVN, HUE Team Avacato: Avacato, Little Cato, Ash, Fox, Sheryl.  Team Bollo: Bollo, Mooncake

Same as last time and if your wondering why some names are missing from Avacato’s team, we will get to that. And since our three plots are entirely seperated from the start this time...

Team Gary: The Father of Beelzbub is A Moderaltey Tolerable Guy Picking up where we left off, Gary and Quinn gaze at earth though we do find out, naturally, the other half of the team is okay when Avacato buzzes in, confirming he’s alive at least. So with half the team stranded in the depths of final space, Gary’s next idea is naturally to plummet to earth and pick up a ship to pick them up. HUE has some flaws in the plan, i.e. the earth’s gravity field but KVN proves useful for once and helps carry them down to earth, our heroes ending up in Paris. 

We get a fun subplot of HUE thoroughly enjoying his dream of visiting Paris in a body.. even though Paris itself is pretty fucking horrific, littered with floating corpses and with a smokey, unnerving atmosphere. But the contrast works.. what dosen’t is the ships our heroes fine, which are junked, likely due to months of having no mainteince coupled with the destruction brought on by the titans. 

Gary does find something.. his worst nightmare.. a bunker FULL of KVN’s “I always thought i’d die like this”. They thankfully don’t want to kill him, and he finds a dwarf ventrixian whose a fan of his as are the KVN’s. As it turns out they somehow watched all his video logs to Quinn, and the little guy saying Quinn is even more beautful than he imagined lets him live when Quinn shows up. Gary is naturally puzzled why someone would create his worst nightmare, an army of kvns who know his personal details... until we find out who created the bunker: Kevin, the genius scientest who created the KVN’s. 

Naturally Gary has as mature, sensible and calm reaction as you’d expect and he goes to see Kevin’s dad without innocent....

Had you there for zero seconds. No he has a fairly fluid and incredibly well voiced freakout ending in him wanting to burn the place to the ground in cleansing fire. It’s.. actually a very good thing Quinn’s the one who went with him as everyone on the other team except MAYBE Avacato would’ve gone with operation BURN THEM, BURN ALLL OF THEM. 

So while Gary can’t burn them he does go to shoot Kevin’s creator in the head after finding out he’s alive and still in the bunker. And.. he actually is alive. It’s a nice change of pace as in most sci fi stories where we find the robot first the creator is long dead. But no Kevin.. is alive. It takes a bit for him to accept this is really happening due to a combination of Gary’s transmissions..and Nightfall having contacted him to make a ship. I’ts only when he tries throwing something at Quinn does he realize that nope these are real peoples and gladly welcome them for some rest so theyc an go find the ship he made for Nightfall. Relately the one major flaw I have with this episode.. is that it takes Gary and Quinn an embarassingly long time to put two and two together. Gary I get, he’s kind of distracted being caught in a waking nightmare and finding out he needs to rely on the man who ruined 5 years of his life. He’s also Gary. It’s okay. Quinn though, even with months of trauma stuck in a hell dimension.. is still the resonable one and still should’ve figured “Hey maybe the alternate future verison of me who was around back then did this”. The reveal is well done towards the end when it happens.. it’s just very weird it didn’t happen sooner. 

So the couple are FINALLY alone.. for about 5 seconds because Kevin gets into bed with them. And while part of his loopiness is probably the horrifying isolation for the last few months, after all Gary wasn’t exactly the most coherent after his stint in prison, I do feel that at least part of it is just him. It just makes the most sense: the infinity guard massed produced the guys and Kevin was one of their top scientests. He likely didn’t half ass a project of this size or importance.. so it’d make sense that instead the KVN’s suck at their job because the person who made them really dosen’t get humans, or personal space and the KVN’s are simply degraded copies of him. 

We do get a sweet moment with Quinn and Gary before Kevin decides they’ve rested enough time to go. They use the KVN’s to head to belgium, where the ship is, but have to fight Landfish, horrifying monsters that feast on the remains of dead worlds. So we get a fun and tense action sequence as our heroes sorta zipline through the monsters and KVN suprisingly turns out ot be useful twice in one episode. Our heroes make it to the ship, though HUE is down two arms and his self esteem, with Kevin asking why an AI would WANT to put themselves in a garbage bot. HUE admits he just wanted to experince life but it comes at a cost.. which granted the loss of arms seems rushed.. but it’s not like pre-AVA most of his life as a robot was that happy or fufilling so it dosen’t come out of nowhere and the person who MADE it better... is now dead and gone. He has no real reason to stay in the body anymore: He’s tasted life, he’s loved, and he’s lost. 

So naturally he goes back to being the AI on their new ship, which Quinn Dubs the Galaxy 2 because naturally Gary’s name tries too hard and Kevin’s is nonsensical.. though really Galaxy 2 itself just.. isn’t a great name. Seriously call it the purple rain or something. Still it’s a cool looking ship and while i’ll BADLY miss the crimson light as Olan designed a really fucking cool ship there, the Galaxy 2 is none too shabby. So our heroes have there ship, HUE has his old Job back, and we get a sobering scene as Quinn and Gary finallyg et the nightfall thing, and Kevin leaves to go get the portal up and running and he’ll call them.. they don’t have his number but he’ll be in england where the project is so it’s not like they can’t find the crazy man when the time comes. So we end with Team Gary heading off to a huge energy signture to hopefully find someone. Who it is, if it’s even one of our groups, is unknown.. but given the stinger it’s probably Bollo and Mooncake.. but we’llg et to that. First

Team Avacato: FUCK

So on their astroid Sheryl wonders if the plan is to just stand around and wait for Gary. Tribore however.. wants to leave again. Despite being in an edltrich space nightmare, he decides to take some paternety leave and cuts off part of the asteroid to go bond with his son leaving us with five heroes who all quickly get abducted by teleportation. 

Their abductors.. are Arachnitects, the last ones left in final space who intially confuse them as part of of Invictus unholy horde before Little Cato brings up Jeremy, and thus they free them and explain what’s up: as said their the last ones left in final space, the only ones who weren’t slaughtered or escape and try to offer our heroes hope and shelter.. before brutally being slaughtered by telekensisis... and it’s with that... HE has returned. While the trailers made no attempt to hide it and it was blatant from the start of last season he woudl return.. it dosent’ make his return any less chilling or impactful or David Tennant’s performance any less terrifying after being gone for a bit: Lord Commander HAS RETURNED

And make no mistake, hopefully, this is OUR Lord Commander, as he comments on the new additions.. and is GLEEFUL to have new toys to play with. Avacato is naturally horrifed he’s back and tries to just shoot him but that’s as effective as it’s always been, and he simply force lifts all of them, and naturally, being a sadsitic bastard, brings LIttle Cato forward as he wants to know where Mooncake is, though Little Cato makes a valid point: he dosen’t know where Mooncake is and even if he DID he wouldn’t tell him. And.. that’s where this part of the plot ends till next week. I”m fucking terrified. Nice to have David back though. Especially with Ducktales over. And as a side note... it’s notable Ash doesn’t try triggering her powers. Either she can’t and Lord Commander’s even stronger than her, or she just hasn’t yet. Or third horrifying option i’m going with thier powers come from the same source. 

Team Bollo:The Forge

So with Gary hopefully coming to the rescue and the rest of our heroes trapped by a sadistic bastard who will likely gleefully kill at least one of them.. we find out where Bolo went after getting his ass kicked. He surivived.. but clearly needs a leg up.. so naturally for a charcter voiced by Keith David he goes about it in the most badass way imaginable: he has mooncake do the thing on a dwarf star so he can FORGE IT INTO A FUCKING BADASS SPACE SWORD TO SLAY THE TITANS WITH. My.. my body is ready for next week. 

Final Thoughts:

This episode was excellent. The premire while not BAD had some issues with pacing and tone, where as this one found the perfect places to inject the series humor.. while keeping the stakes incredibly high and having the chilling return of it’s most terrifying antagonist. and yes tha’t swith the people posseing murder face out there. This episode returned Season 3 to the right track. It also continues to be seralized like season 1.. but I feel at least so far they’ve learned their lesson from Seasons 1 and 2 and combined the two better, having basically one big story, but having the pacing be more on par with Season 2 where things move along at a nice clip and we get more character stuff peppered in. It’s a nice combo. if it’ll hold out I do not know, especaillly with a longer runtime but we’ll see as we go won’t we. For now.. this episode was fucking awesome. 

If you liked this review join my patreon, my current stretch goal is for a darkwing duck episode a month and i’ll be putting up a patreon exclusive review soon for 5 dollar or more patreons so check that out, follow me for more and if there’s any episodes of the show from seasons 1 or 2 you’d like me to cover we can discuss that in my ask box and dm,s only 5 bucks an episode. See you at the next rainbow. 

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

pls scream about Leo a lil bit cause my love for that man is neverending and i live for you guys' blog,,, and ur comte love fuels me??? head empty except for those two pureblood clowns

HNGNGNG I hope that both you and everyone that reads my shenanigans knows how utterly understood I feel when I see anyone stan Comte, if not both of those idiot purebloods bc good lord...I live for two tired fossil men that just want DOMESTIC BLISS. Literally they have no brain cells beyond respect women and we love that for us, it’s spectacular!!

Under a cut bc I went off and is long:

That being said I’d be happy to yell abt Leo!! Where do I even begin, this man was the reason I got into Ikevamp in the first place, and I’ve read just about every single one of his events at this point. He just makes me so TENDER!!!!!! For whatever reason the first thing that came to mind was this one time he lies about being jealous and MC is lolol u a fool if you think I can’t tell when you lie to me. And he’s so fuckiNG SHOOK?????? It’s even funnier because she’s internally like [I’m not 100% sure but for a second there he almost looked mad...time to test this theory even if it’s just A GAME T H E O R Y] And he’s so fucking pikachu meme that shit sends me. I can’t handle the fact that he’s so used to people just assuming he’s fine, that he can handle himself. That he’s lived for so long without really anyone noticing at all. (Comte absolutely notices and will lightly roast him, but doesn’t really push him about it or wants to overstep). And so when MC just actively pays attention and is so gentle with him he’s just floored???

God I’m crying now, but I will just never forget the funeral scene in his fucking rt. This asshole, this absolute moron, straight up tries to come at us with “yOu GeT uSeD tO iT aFtEr HaLf A mIlLeNiUm, i’M nOt SaD”. Like are you serious. Come here and let me hold you before I throttle you. Absolute clown. He’s just always trying so hard to get by on his own and it breaks my heart. How long...how long has he lived just getting by, nursing his own wounds and dragging himself up all by himself. HE LEFT HOME AT LIKE 14 (whatever the fuCK SOME TOO YOUNG AGE) AND RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF PEOPLE THAT HATED HIM FOR HIS TALENT. HE REMEMBERS HIS MENTORS DESTROYING HIS UTENSILS WHILE TRYING TO ESCAPE PARENTS THAT WHOLEHEARTEDLY REJECTED ANY EXPRESSION OF LOVE OR COMPASSION FOR HUMANITY THAT HE CHERISHED SO DEEPLY. I DON’T NEED SLEEP I NEED TO HUG HIM IMMEDIATELY FUCKING HELL.

Like.........there’s just........I don’t know how to explain it, but I once saw it explained so well in a post. It was basically talking about Castlevania, and how in that show Dracula sees humanity’s folly and develops so much hatred he just goes straight to murder rage. And while in some ways I understand that, I understand even more deeply Trevor’s response to humanity’s fear and violence. He says that he knows they’re short-sighted, that maybe we all just don’t deserve saving...but that he’s going to do it anyway. Leonardo just so much gives me that energy of knowing there’s so much pain in the world, but all we can do is keep walking--keep trying, even if we have to claw our way forward. Because if you only see the awfulness in front of you, you forget the way that strangers make silly faces at babies to make them laugh on the train, how a friend will put everything down to race over to someone and comfort them with some ice cream--do anything they can to distract them from the hurt. How the sight of a child crying will prompt careful cooing from a stranger as to their bravery, an offering of cool water, the gentle placement of a bandaid. How a pair of teenagers will spot a lost child in milliseconds and help them seek out their parents protectively. There is so much wretchedness, but also so much beauty in it all, and the older I get the more I see myself wanting to believe in the latter. I want to be hopeful, and easily impressed, and full of love. To be bitter and jaded accomplishes nothing, and only becomes a worsening self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you seek negativity, the more you will find it; and worse, create it.

I also scream a little bit bc like. I’ve gone on and on about how Comte is very obviously in love with MC all the time, and sure that may be true. But...I really don’t think Leo is exempt from that either if I’m honest lmfao. Only because what does Leonardo do when it isn’t his route? He almost never shows up. Once in a while he might appear for a split second in a scene, but he almost never converses with MC beyond those short moments. While Comte is the one to pine openly, I’d wager Leo is the opposite. He pines in absolute silence, because he knows that if he gets any closer--he’s going to fall. He’s going to enjoy it too much, going to keep seeking out more before he can stop himself. And losing another person he loves...he just can’t do it anymore. In his first meeting story he talks about seeing MC’s eyes and feeling like he’d known them all his life, and even in his MS he speaks to just being completely fascinated by and enamored of her. She doesn’t hesitate, always does her best, meets people head-on and without much hesitation. After a lifetime of people that are probably just immediately interested in him for his talents, or always seeking out his company for the novelty, this is someone that doesn’t give a single fuck if he’s Leonardo da Vinci. Sure she’s aware, and sure she’s impressed to some extent, but her respect--her attraction and admiration--is something that has to be earned. 

There’s something so refreshing about how their love was written. Sure it’s the whole fake marriage to a real relationship, but it’s also a kind of subtle enemies to lovers pulled off masterfully. MC is 100% minding her own business, just wants to do what she must in order to get home, tries to focus on her work to keep from thinking about how much she misses her old life. She doesn’t rely on anyone, doesn’t talk about how hard it is or how scary it is or how confusing. And even Leonardo forgets in his curiosity, is just chillin and also just trying to do the bare minimum to keep from getting too attached--figures he can admire her from a distance. And then he sees her staring at the hourglass. And suddenly, he can’t just watch her do that herself. Just wait for the hard times to pass, just sit with her own loneliness--that hollowing silence. There’s something so moving about it because he reaches out precisely because he knows that feeling to his fucking marrow, and literally just cannot watch somebody else do that to themselves. Sure he’s been dealing with it for three hundred years, BUT THIS GOOD BABIE CHILD DOES NOT DESERVE THIS. SHE WORKS HARD AND DESERVES NICE THINGS!!!!!!!! And so he drives her crazy as he races ahead of her, intercepting any attempt for her to preserve that silence and hide. She doesn’t see any pattern to it, and that’s just how he likes it--he doesn’t want her to worry about the how or why. 

Like I fully remembering playing in Japanese and being like oh my fucking god this is hilarious, this man is just a wild fucker and I love this. I was enjoying myself, mostly laughing and shaking my head. But then it just gets so, so serious. I was having so much fun that I, like a fool, forgot the anime effect. If you’re having fun, it’s going to come crashing down without mercy soon enough. And it does. He helps a little girl without any hope play her violin again, and maybe I’m just too English major but I was fucking FLOORED when I realized I didn’t see that that was straight foreshadowing. That little girl without hope? That was MC (and by extension depending on how you play, us). Though the metaphor isn’t quite so easily mapped without a physical space, the connection is clear when you think about it. With his careful social awareness, he makes a place for MC to exist in the mansion so naturally--as though she was meant to be there from the start, crafts a positive impression of her presence with each of the residents. And he does it with zero expectation of anything in return; he’s just happy to see her not stressing herself out anymore or trying to do everything alone. MC doesn’t fall in love with him despite their differences, she falls in love with him because they are the same in a singular and all-encompassing way that matters; they both care about other people so deeply, to the point where they will forego any personal needs in order to make that person’s life easier. Whether it be muting their own hardship, or working to involve another person in a new space (or opening up to the point of self-destruction to keep a person from feeling alone), they go above and beyond what anybody asks of them--perhaps strong to the point of their own detriment, in some cases. 

It’s why I always laugh when he says to Sebastian “That cara mia, she has a good heart.” Of course she does, Leonardo; it certainly takes one to know one. 

And because I literally have no brain cells beyond being in fucking love with Leonardo THE LAKE SCENE IS AN AFFRONT TO MY DIGNITY AND SELF-CONTROL. HOW DARE YOU, SIGNORE. HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO SIT THERE AND WATCH YOU OPEN YOUR HEART TO ME AND NOT BAWL MY EYES OUT AND TRY TO KISS YOU ALL AT THE SAME TIME. SIGNORE “hAhA yOu’Re So SmAlL yOu LoOk LiKe YoU’rE DrOwNiNg In My CoAt.” I WOULD DROWN AND DIE HAPPY--BITCH I TELL YOU THAT.

Like. I can’t think of another route I’ve ever done where I spent a good amount of time like “lmfao this guy is so wild im gonna punch him” to just be in a whirlpool of my own tears, regretting my entire fucking LIFE days later. Like Leonardo’s cultural impact???? Fucking immeasurable, I wish every white man disaster I ever met had a hidden heart of gold in all of his boyish dumbassery, an ICONIC himbo of our time. 

Also because I remembered it before posting and I am Dying^TM. The event where MC was a pureblood and he was human. That entire fucking event. I literally can’t think about it without screaming and crying. Her just so flustered at his reaction to her like “oh look, free real estate” as he plops her in his lap, absolutely no fear, treating her like a princess because of her noble title despite NO NECESSITY BEYOND PLAYFULNESS BUT ALSO STILL MEANING IT IN AN EARNEST WAY, being charming to no END just to see her laugh or look away shyly. 

WHEN HE SAID. WHEN HE SAID “...Can’t leave you alone, or you might go off someplace I can’t follow.” I. CONGRATULATIONS, YOU STRIPPED DEVOTION DOWN TO ITS BARE ESSENTIALS!!!!!! GAH HOW MC HERSELF SAYS “I would tell him the truth but...he’s much too generous for a human. I know he would offer his life without a moment’s hesitation.” How Leo describes the aftermath of her biting him: “Lucky for you, I’m a true gentleman, Unlike my principessa, who took me like a storm” HELLO??????? H E L  L O ???????????????????????? ARE WE JUST GOING TO SLEEP ON THE FACT THAT HE LOST HIS ENTIRE SOUL WHEN SHE BIT HIM???? I--

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

(Also as much as I love him the cigarillos have got to go at some point, boy do you have any idea the shit secondhand smoke does good lordt)

[aaetherius]

A tiny update under the cut (one of the personal/mental health/medication variety - it’s not negative, or venting or anything like that)! This is primarily for those I speak to OOC (though can apply slightly to the dash as well)! 

I never know what I should share or not, but I do try to address things when it’s something that impacts things related to threads or ooc communication (plus I sometimes think it can be nice to hear about things sometimes). This isn’t anything bad, more so just a heads up! 

Most of you who I am in ooc communication with know I started medication for my ADHD. I am also on depression medication. The issue being that we’re having a bit of a difficult time getting things to work/work together (I’ve actually always been very resistant to medication for some reason so this isn’t too unusual for me). So tldr, I mostly just want to slide on to say that the medications do influence, greatly, how much social energy I have available. 

The ADHD medication tends to make me more talkative, less tired, and more active on the dash (via ooc posts or just interacting with the dash in general such as sending memes, liking ooc posts, and whatnot). So, when the effects of the ADHD medication are active I can be very social (this is especially true on Discord/if I’m comfortable with someone) - reaching out on Discord/responding to ooc messages/whatnot. Normally I’m pretty shy/reserved and rarely message first ooc because I have terrible social anxiety and don’t wish to be a bother and am usually extremely tired. So I do worry that when I’m in a better and more social mood I might come off as too much as I can type/talk a lot/can be excitable (and sometimes I send cheesy pictures that remind me of people or I think you might like/find funny haha) when I’m usually very mellow, and if I do you are free to tell me you’re not in the mood to talk or just ignore me until you are (you do not have to respond to ooc messages quickly by any means)! So, there are times when I reach out multiple times or days in a row when this is happening. 

And, then, the depression medication does the opposite (see where the issue is coming in hgdufgkf), but helps me with focus/stopping my brain from going 100 miles a minute. It utterly exhausts me to the point where I, someone who has never taken a nap in their life, fall asleep randomly and can stay asleep for hours (aka I can totally pass out mid-conversation, and have fallen asleep at work. Thankfully I am a super light sleeper and pretty functional after just waking up so the phone ringing in my ear is enough to save me hguidflghu). I tend to do more writing when the impacts of this one are stronger. However, I also tend to be very reserved. I may not like things on the dash, send in memes, or might be slow ooc, and I’m very unlikely to reach out ooc first, and may get tired and leave you hanging during a conversation (that said, you’re always free to message me ooc and I will do my best to respond just know if I don’t or if I’m slow or if I stop after a bit it’s not personal, my social energy just died rhgkdu). So, in short, when the depression medication is kicking in, I could go a few days or longer without reaching out to someone if you’re someone I usually speak to/reach out to or, if I seem to like your posts randomly and then there are other times when I do not like them, it’s the medications flip-flopping on me. 

So, we keep trying various things to kind of control it/adjust it as needed. There was a time when I just took the depression meds, and a time when I just took the adhd meds (if I talk to you enough you might be able to guess because I kind of vanished ooc for a bit and I am so sorry gffjgkdgvg). Now we’re trying them at once (in the morning and at night), but that’s making my insomnia flare up despite the depression one being the one at night and tldr there’s a lot going on with figuring out the best system for me and it effects my ooc communication a lot. So, when I’m super active ooc vs when I am not active ooc at all are very random at the moment. Some days I will be, some days I won’t be. I couldn’t tell you the when or the how, we’re trying to get all sorted out, but it’s obviously trial and error.   

So, in short, I just want to say that if I ever go quiet on anyone or I seem to be less active on the dash in terms of things that involve social energy, I’m not mad at anyone and it is very much not personal at all. And, if I’m ever super social and being a bother, I am also sorry, you can always stop responding (there’s never any pressure or even just tell me you’re tired!). I’m me regardless, of course, it doesn’t change anything other than the amount of social energy I have basically which is why sometimes I seem super active on the dash and other times you can message me and I seem dead to the world ghruidfglu. 

Hopefully this explains things well enough/makes sense, I have zero knowledge of how medication works I just know how it impacts me personally so I just tried my best to put words to that so those who speak to me ooc know why I seem to flip-flop between being social and not being social! 

Also not super related, but for some reason I make more typos when the adhd meds are active I have no idea why, you have my apologies for that as well. 

Thank you for understanding, as always! I love all of you very much, and I hope your week is a wonderful one!