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pinkeoni · 10 months

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I dont want to milk the discussion to death but i am writing this after reading the post and comments under that post on reddit. You dont have to answer i am just writing it as an observation.

Its understandable why people do not see Will's importance or role. What the writers did with him wasnt just holding the spoiler for the finale. After all you can still pull a plot twist while revealing some of the stuff or putting more setup. But theu revealed basically nothing with litte to no setup. In Will's case it doesnt help bc they also sidelined him way too much and separated him from the main plotline. That is just a writing mistake and admitting its not hating on the writers.

I dont want to sound rude. And Whenever i have this discussion with people i tend to keep an open mind to the both sides. Overall though i tend to agree that if your writing is pretty much alien to most of your audience then it is bad writing. This show isnt written for a selective part of the audience. I wish people would realize that. If i go to twitter, reddit, insta, tiktok or other sites that make posts and analyses about ST and i see the majority of people call Will unimportant then the writers failed at even hinting at his importance. People shouldnt be saying he is an irrelevant or unimportant character that doesnt do anything. It is not just El fans who say this, its the majority of the audience. It was the writers job to stop this accusation by putting more setup and adding more screentime for him before the finale season rolls, even if they want to pull a plot twist in St5.

People also dont like plot twists that has little to no actual setup. That is why plot twists are tricky. Also keep in mind that the same thing applies to byler going canon... i dont want to sound like i dislike the show because i dont. But i have to admit that they flopped the writing. I genuienly think that once St5 rolls people will realize this more. Heck even some Will fans themselves think he is not that important and what happened to him were all coincidental. Can we blame the overall audience for thinking that way?

My problem isnt that i think Will is unimportant but rather how the writers approached it. It is full of bad decisions and lack of good writing. And whatever plot twist that they may pull might not even have a positive pay off at the end due to how they have been writing things. In that case is it even worth to pull a plot twist if the pay off also flops? Imho the Duffers dont realize that their setup for a potential pay off is built on a weak construction site but they like the element of twists so they dont care about the coherent build up and progression.

Will the audience's response to what happens in St5 be "Wow this is so true how didnt i see it coming" or will it be majorly a reaction like "This is bullshit there was almost nothing that suggested this"? Because the latter one seems more likely to happen, unfortunately.

Anyways this was all over the place but admittedly i wrote it after reading the comments on reddit as an overall afterthought. I respect your opinion but in think there is a major disconnect btw the writers and its audience here in terms of writing imho.

Hello anon,

Decided to go to sleep before answering. No, I don't think you're being rude, and to be honest I agree with a lot of what you said. I think that the points we disagree on we may just continue to disagree on 😂🤝

I don't think you are hating the show for pointing out flaws in the writing, and in the post I just made about this I do at least try to acknowledge some of their shortcomings such as— shafting Will's presence and not balancing the supporting casts' storylines. I do agree that, like you said, that Will's role in the story could have been emphasized more.

The thing that I do disagree with, and maybe we just won't ever see eye to eye on this anon, is that there wasn't any setup at all, especially concerning his role in the supernatural plot. I listed off the evidence and gave my reasoning in my post, so I won't repeat here as to not sound like a broken record.

I also agree that no, the show isn't written just for the over-analytical people like me, but I think surveying reddit isn't an accurate depiction of the general audience. Granted I don't see much of sttwt, tiktok and insta so I'll just trust your word for it. But in that specific reddit thread, it seemed like fans who were adamantly trying to deny Will's importance, using faulty evidence as proof. It's interesting because these aren't really fans who watch from a surface level, they actively participate in fandom and willfully skew their perception of the text in order to fit their vision of things.

I think when it comes to revealing Will's importance and having it not come out of nowhere, it will all come down to execution in this final season. If the show reminds the audience of some of the hints leading up to it, then maybe they won't feel so vexed when the reveal happens. If they throw us in the deep end and start pulling out new details then it would definitely feel out of nowhere. It'll be a fine line for them to walk for sure.

But anyway that's where I'll leave it anon. I appreciate you sharing your opinion, although I still maintain some of my thoughts on this and I think you will too and that's okay 🤝

#anon #asks #stranger things

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6blackfilin9 · 3 years

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I love your Anko fanart! Tell me, what are your views/headcannons on Anko X Kazuku?

hThank you so much for the ask, finally I can answer it

here is my big thank you for the waitng

In a nutshell, the shipp was created by accident while me and my buddy were working on our first Naruto AU in 2019, where Kakuzu and Deidara survived their shitty plotholes end eventually ended up in Konoha

Yeah

so, the shipp’s birth date is july the 1, 2019

anything like classy, aristocracy kind of tension-filled passionate gothic romance with playful, psychological games & hurt/comfort vibes with slight scent of rivalry is KakuAnko

Basically, they are: a very, very old man with absolutely horrendous background who’s trying to finally have his mother*cking 10 or 30 years of peace, and a rather young lady with a rocky youth who’s being good & noble yet has very strong antihero tendencies

You know, I think they do have potential, since, in fact, they seem to be very similar, at the core

They are both very pragmatic realists, the people of logic and reason, yet if Kakuzu’s irritability doesn’t affect him a tiny bit due to his ideal self-control, Anko’s can lead her to quite bad places, sometimes. They put their interests in the first place, and even though she tries to attach them to Konoha’s, she still has ‘personal’ things (I’ll write ‘bout it lower*). Their mindsets are so complicatedly organized that, at some point & way, it prevents them from having many close people, and makes them very hard to see through and predict

Both of them are very flexible & adaptive, independent individuals with similar outlooks on plenty of things and high intellectual level. They clearly can find plenty of traits that they would highly respect and adore in each other

Here I will speak mostly for “why and how” kind of things, bc both of them are terribly tricky to accurately figure out. But there will be some headcanons too

So, there are still some odds about them, due to the strong difference in their occupation, like, in plenty of cases they are really tricky to be brought together, because:

- Of the job

In original, Anko is a Konoha’s special jounin, and she is very dedicated to serving the country. Independently of whether she likes her job or not (depends on the plot), she orienteers at the people, at society’s gain from her work. So, accordingly, in any other AU her job is somehow connected to civil service, whether it’s something police-like, connected to science, or something like CCG in Tokyo Ghoul

Kakuzu, on the other hand, is a hitman and a persona non grata in literally all the five big countries, Konoha too (which makes it barely possible to bring them together in the original universe without hard complications or heavy drama. But still possible). He orienteers on his own gain alone, but, depending on the job, it can include others’ gain, too.

This detail makes him a saint once he holds supervising position in some company or any high position in the government (the better the working conditions of the staff now- the more money in the prospective), and the sheer nightmare once he has it on the opposite side of the law. Him as a mob boss is a complete different topic for discussion, but to get the point, in this case, the trouble isn’t him increasing the level of criminality (its rather vice-versa), but taking hold of too much control in the high and underground structures. Even as an ordinary hitman he’s rather tricky, since everything depends on the case

In most of the stories, they come to some sort of compromise, and how hard it is to reach it depends on how shitty his job is and how attached they are to each other at the moment

Like, in the above mentioned Shippuden AU and Harry Potter AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) everything went like clockwork, because there they are both more or less on this side of the law, in Tokyo Ghoul AU (which I also wrote with my buddy) it is a bit more complicated, with her being in-law and him being very much outlaw, in the Avatar AU (which I also figured out with my buddy, but we never happened to write it) it is also pretty smooth, with both of them being outlaws and then jumping out to the glory after all the shit is done, but in another Shippuden AU of mine, this all would be just a motherfucking bloody disaster

- Kakuzu is actually a hard nut to get attached to anyone

He lived too long to be truly afraid of anything, though. Its mostly because he doesn’t really need to get attached to or become close with someone to satisfy his need for communication. The man can get along with anyone once he wishes to, he can have countless acquaintances and plenty of buddies, but he doesn’t have many comrades and barely can call anyone a friend. Because he is used to lose everything and everyone he ever had or happened to have, because of his inhumanly lengthened lifespan.

It requires time for him to get used to the person, and then, eventually, in some cases, spend plenty of it to get attached

Plus, for him, due to his profession, each close connection is a really great responsibility for him. In most cases, he’d think twice of weather he is ready to take it or not

Though it of course has the personal factor, too

In Anko’s case, she has a grand privilege by being a very intelligent and keen woman, not just in cognitive plane, but in emotional, too. High emotional intellect is actually a rare trait, so she automatically stands out of the crowd for him. Even though it won’t guarantee his alliance, it will grant her his high respect and some sort of sympathy

- Kakuzu is, technically, an asshole

He does have his moral compass, which includes a great amount of common social morality, but he also has that “I am working” state

Even though Kakusu has a set of professional principles, and he still acts accordingly to what he thinks is right, one and the very same situation can be solved diametrically different once the context changes from working to casual and vice versa

This, and him being very independent and quite antisocial, makes the degree of assholeness depend on various factors

This can lead to major conflicts of interests, and if they are possible to have any compromise or not is strongly attached to the circumstances. After all, both are very, very prideful and dignified people

- In other words, the only major issue for them would be morality questions. It’s possible to make the case acceptable for Anko, since both of them ain’t truly squeaky clean, along with Kakuzu being willing enough to watch his borders

- She is provident and doesn’t really need a lot of money on a daily basis, which is much of a joy to him lol

- *they both seek for the stable ground, first of all

Taking in consideration the life conditions Kakuzu had in his youth (despite war state, he still stably had family, friends, grand respect from everyone, home, warmth and food) and how terribly he was torn out of his secured social environment, I believe what he seeks through all his bounty hunt and other money-connected manipulations is stability. Sustainability he had back then. The only way to have it in the conditions of our existent world order is to have money (and a very good mind and luck)

Anko has indeed much more altruistic motives, yet it’s still not that simple. It seems to be, on the first sight, yet considering the “Orochimaru related cases” and her very wayward behavior toward them, it’s clear she keeps her own motives and needs in mind oh so well. The service she has is very well payed, it allows her to do what she likes or believes is right, and to have the living conditions she finds comfortable. And only here, relying on the made sustainable basis, she does what she does

- Thus, they both illustrate the principle “first help yourself, next help the other” just right

- She knows she can keep an eye on him, yet it’s clear for her that her influence isn’t borderless, as well as telling him off some stuff is kind of a not wise thing to do. So in the majority of cases, she never interferes

- This is not common, yet he can actually change some plans if the situation is serious and the compromise can’t be found. He is that kind of person who works on a further prospective, and in this context, this would be the relationship with his loved one

- While Kakuzu is quite conflicted and has very reserved controversial persona, Anko is both controversial, conflicted, and sort of two-faced, on top of that

She is a very sincere, cheerful and humbly honest human being, yet she has some darker natural traits of her character that became rather strong with age and traumatic experience. Cunningness, guile, ways-depend-on-the-case and a bit of ruthlessness, that is. Moreover, she has some unsolved personal issues, which makes her even more twisted.

Like, remember the time when she confronted Orochimaru during the exam? And Kabuto, on the war? Getting rid of them is indeed beneficial for Konoha, but it’s clear that for her it is personal vendetta in the first place. She wouldn’t have tried to do this alone, otherwise, because these two are rather dangerous ones, to say the least.

She uses greater good to cover her real motives (even though it is not truly complete bullshit), and seems to have a terrible habit to keep silence about really important things, which makes her quite prone to lying, in some cases

And sometimes it very badly pisses Kakuzu off, since it makes her prone to doing useless but dangerous shit too

Yet this not any kind of separate hidden side, it is integrated into her personality, and coexists with her bright one. That’s where her violent humour comes from, for example.

But Kakuzu, on the other side, is completely monolith individual, yet sometimes his mindset can create contradictions when it comes to something important to him. but it's another topic

And seeing these layered constructions, and motives, they can pretty finely predict each other’s behavior. Not super-neatly, but they for sure see the basis. This is what helps Kakuzu to prevent Anko from doing some stupid shit, sometimes

- Anko has a role of an indicator for the people who don’t understand and see the changes in Kakuzu’s mood sometimes, since she usually reacts quite openly. Yet, when she has the same unreadable mask of cold, or one of guile, it’s a nightmare for them

- They prefer the non-verbal way to show their feelings, even though Anko is obviously the more chatty one

- They don’t say things such as “I love you”, or other sensual stuff like that really often, believing it to be some sort of cherished words that shall not be spelled mindlessly

- Anko isn’t majorly into PDA, but she fancies it much more than Kakuzu does. She has her whole moments of studying something with her hands, whether it’s a hand, scar or face. He’s more into passive display of affection, like wrapping an arm over her waist or leaning to her or something of this kind; they can allow themselves to (not sexually) kiss in public though

- She knows he doesn’t like to walk hand in hand due to considering it a youthful thing, so there are times when she intentionally walks holding on to his sleeve; generally they walk separately in order not to bother each other, but sometimes they walk arm in arm (like an old Victorian couple lol)

- Being older and wiser, Kakuzu eventually upholds some kind of mentoring position, yet he never considers himself any kind of a teacher or master to Anko, believing her to have a good head of her own. He is just insightful enough to break something through to her or give a word of advise

- This, combined with his highly powerful demeanor, also makes him have the leading position in their relationship

- Anko respects him much enough to fortify this, entrusting with plenty of life questions (like organizing the family budget), even though they make the majority of decisions together. Mostly because he is truly wise and highly experienced individual.

- This makes him one of the very few people Anko would actually listen to and take their opinion in consideration

- So basically they have equal relationship with some tendency to patriarchal order

- And it is, really, mostly economically-based disbalance, with him earning much more than she does

- Yet they never have any financial-based issues, since both of them keep in mind and respect the contributions of each

- There is major power play here, too. He has the absolute might, she has seduction. Anko loves how he makes her want to submit to him, let him have all the power, so she likes provoking him. And she knows he adores it, loves the subtle control she has over him

- They don’t have conflicts in their everyday life. Each knows how to avoid pissing one another off

- He cherishes her playful demeanor, her intellect. Combined with her cunningness, it allows her to rival him, in social sphere. The way she constructs her phrases, the way she speaks, mimics, moves, how bewitchingly it suits her feminine snaky features makes his blood boil and heart melt

- Both of them, actually, have rather specific kind of dry, dark humour. Kakuzu’s is very cynical, satirical, quite often menacing and subtly demeaning; Anko’s is very sarcastic and quite dirty, even gruesome and rather violent

- Sometimes they “fight” verbally as a form of a play. In some circumstances they may sound pretty vile, so some unobservant people mistake this for display of hate

- In general, Anko is the one to heat things up with her playful demeanor, which can include provocation and rivalry, and Kakuzu is the one to keep this energy in borders, accumulating it up to much more intense states

- They both put the comfort in the first place when it comes to household. Everything must be cozy, useful, silent and super clean

- Yet they are both very unpretentious and modest, really

- She absolutely adores when he is showing his serious, severe side, or powerful demeanor. She finds it incredibly suitable for him. She also likes how his real age is sliding out in this or that way. Like, even though he has rather young face (that of 37-40 y.o.), his eyes give away that he’ve seen oh so much more than it seems; the grumpy noises and grunts he makes, the lazy attitude in movements and the way how rapidly he finds a comfy pose once he has a chance to take a seat

- They are both rather patriotic, yet while in the most stories Anko’s feelings mostly lay towards the country she lives in, Kakuzu’s more often lay towards some places, so called small motherland.

- Kakuzu actually could be a source of deep, strong admiration and delight for her, despite all of his bullshit. The unbreakable will he has, mighty burning heart, all the wisdom, talents and mind. Being sent to fight god damn Hashirama, clearly a genius of his times, financial & management genius at the least. And, still, after all the hard times he’ve been through, he maintained the very strong sense of dignity and nobility, even though slightly twisted due to the profession and abnormal lifespan

- And the very same things can serve as the source for her chagrin: with all those traits, he could have been so much more rather than a criminal. With all the gifts he’ve got, he could have been of great use to society. He’s much easier about this, since his prospective is much wider and embraces decades (and in some universes even centuries) instead of months & years, and he knows that he’d be switching sides throughout his life, being on this and that side of the law, yet he still is a bit uncomfortable once it’s brought up

- They are deeply into science, which makes them atheists. He’s into medicine and human biology, she’s into chemistry and reptilian biology; both of them are nuts for physics, history and psychology

- They solve complicated physical and mathematical problems together time to time. She is the first one to have tea-breaks due to losing her temper over it, he tries to figure things out right until you can sense the smoke coming off his head

- Actually, they do have a stumbling stone aside from job & morality complications. And this is Anko’s attitude towards Orochimaru

What she does is basically ruins her life very-very slowly, maintaining the issues she has and planning to make him pay for all he’s done

Kakuzu knows exactly what is really going on with this attitude and why, but he can’t really do anything about it. Like, he knows he can’t make her change her mind or put something into her head

All he can do is really nothing but try to explain how those things are working, and even this option is basically a landmine field for him. At some level she does understand that he could probably be right, yet she just refuses to go back on her mind. And this is actually really dangerous, so at some moments they can fight quite badly about it

- He’s scared shitless to lose her, though; especially like that, even though he knows clearly that he will, anyway, sooner or later

- he knows that losing loved ones ends up with sheer disaster for him, yet he isn’t afraid to pay such a high price for those six, five or four decades of being with her. Because these decades are that of a paradise ones for him. Wife and family, as well as stable job, incomes and life conditions, are some sort of physical definitions of sustainability he craves. Especially family, yet it’s far ahead to plan

- The fact that he will have to bury her one day makes her rather depressed, as well as the knowledge that the only thing she can really do about it is to try to bring him as much happiness and comfort as possible before she dies

thank you, i'd say more, but it's too much already

#my art #naruto #naruto shipuden #akatsuki #naruto akatsuki #akatsuki kakuzu #kakuzu #naruto anko #mitarashi anko #kakuanko #they are very entertaining disaster

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zhuhongs · 3 years

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Since rewatching the guardian drama after reading the novel has made me mad about how bad and good both of them are I am Obligated to write out a list of what I think the perfect merger btw both versions of canon are. This will be in list format otherwise I’ll end up writing like 6k words again.

TLDR: the genre stays as supernatural from the novel and not Sci fi, bc that was rlly not fleshed out well. Shen Wei is a ghost king, and all the dixingren are ghosts or demons like originally intended. The ghost race naturally exists and wasn't born from kunluns shoulder fire or anything. They just exist separate from humans. Not all ghosts are former humans, some people are just born as ghosts, like Shen Wei. Zhao Yunlan has the guardian whip and all the cool stuff that comes with the Guardian order. Overall, i’d keep the novel’s plot and relationship progression and ending without the backstory. Instead the backstory is a merger of both canons. From the drama I’d keep the characterization and themes as well as like half the extra cases and omit the other half.

I’ll be elaborating much further on my ideal backstory and other stuff under the cut bc the rest is 1.5k and I don’t wanna clog the dash

Okay SO In my ideal backstory there are two timelines just like the drama but the mythology of the book. The god Kunlun is actually zyl that went back in time and became a god. But the one that went back isn’t the current Zhao Yunlan. There has to be an original timeline where the god Kunlun never existed. Thus the great seal nor the separation of the three realms don’t exist either. Zhao Yunlan must go back in time to become a god, meet Shen Wei in the past, and create the current timeline where the separation exists but isn’t perfect. The current timeline is the one that the majority of the series takes place in.

In the original timeline, Zhao Yunlan is just some dude living in a world where ghosts, fairies, and all other beings just live in a giant free for all and it's kinda just a mess.

Like there’s government in modern context and all and all races live with each other but there's constant tension. ZYL works at some equivalent of the SID (same staff and side characters, but novel vers. Lin Jing is a monk, CSZ a zombie, etc) to protect people and all that and their job is rather hard. One day encounters the thousands year old ghost king Wei (who isnt shen wei yet bc zyl gave him that name in the future) who works alone as like a rouge cultivator of sorts. He lives on the surface undercover as a professor still bc he’s trying to not catch Yezun’s attention but does all the stuff he normally does as Heipaoshi. The two ally together for a case and bc they both have the same goals of getting all races to live in peace. At current, there are forces working together to decimate the human race, all lead by Yezun

As they work together they become closer and all that. Shen Wei tells him about how he was unable to prevent the great war 5 thousand years ago and neither could the gods so he’s spent the past 5 thousand years trying to make up for it. As they search for ways to stop Yezun, they gather the 4 hallows and learn how to use them to manipulate time so ZYL can go into the past and stop the great war and separate the three realms (living, dead, ghost). Shen Wei wants to go back with him but he can’t because he was alive all those years ago so if he goes back it will create a paradox. ZYL promises he’ll find Shen Wei in the past and create a timeline where they could be together in peace (that is the current timeline)

When goes back he becomes the god kunlun because there needed to be a new god born at the time to prevent the war. Also this time traveller looked promising to Nuwa, Fuxi, and Shennong. And I know in the guardian universe gods are usually born and ppl don’t become gods. EXCEPT this can happen when a god passes on smth from their body onto them bc that did happen in the novel with Kunlun making shen wei a demigod. And since fu you and ma gui are supposed to be gods Nu Wa and Fuxi I think that when they die, they should make ZYL a god and that's how this stuff happens.

So like ZYL explains to the gods the time he came from and how he wants to save everything and they make him a god and he works to save everything just like he did in the drama but this time with the novel plotline. During this time he meets young Shen Wei (he’s still like a hundred or so years old) and they get close and all the stuff from the backstory happens. He gives him his name, all that good stuff. The entire time doesn’t let him know that he’s from the future or that his real name is ZYL. He just poses as kunlun.

The two of them alongside the other gods (who still die at the times they do in the novel) work together to end the war and establish the great seal and set up the cycle of reincarnation, per the current timeline. Although the seal and cycle of reincarnation aren’t perfect. Gods can’t reincarnate, and ghosts still don’t have souls. And just like the novel, doing all of this kills ZYL bc it takes a lot of energy to create the seal even though it isn’t perfect.

Shen Wei of course doesn’t want ZYL to die and zyl says it's alright because he fixed the timeline so there must One day they will meet again and ZYL reveals the truth about the timeline to shen wei before he dies. This becomes the promise that Shen Wei mentions to meet again. Before he dies, ZYL gives him the shoulder fire as a memento ( i still like the candy wrapper necklace deal but i’ll take this too. Maybe both.. The pendant is still just rlly cool.. Gay ppl)

Shen Wei knows gods can’t enter the cycle of reincarnation and still makes the deal with Shennong to strip Kunlun of his godhood and let him reincarnate. This sets us into the novel timeline where isn’t allowed to meet any of zyl’s reincarnations before he becomes zyl otherwise he will die and also fuck up the timeline. The same 5 thousand years of pining still ensue bc Gay Ppl and i love making Shen Wei suffer but he doesn’t have the shrine room thing bc i think thats weird and yea.. Bad.

In the meantime Shen Wei does a lot of things mostly just protecting the great seal and working for Hell to keep the peace but still does other stuff. He still watches out for ZYL’s reincarnations but doesn’t do much besides make sure they don’t die a premature death. They meet again finally at the beginning of the series and the timeline resumes like canon. And that's my master plan that merges both drama logic and novel logic while making a much better timeline. (I hope that makes some sense)

Da Qing is still Kunlun’s pet cat and important. Novel backstory applies to him. And I already mentioned him kinda but as for Yezun (Gui Mian in the novel) his deal is similar as in the drama but just a ghost. And he is a big player in the great war, he thought Shen Wei abandoned him as a kid but they were just separated. Shen Wei doesn’t know it's him till the end of the war and couldn’t stop him in the OG timeline and vows to bring him to justice and make amends. Shen Wei continuously tries to explain things to him but he just won’t listen and is imprisoned in hell bc yk… war criminal stuff and yeah he’s the main antagonist trying to break the great seal bc he’s still made about the past. Idk. Yezun wasn’t well written in the novel OR the drama so like… honestly he just needs to be completely rewritten and I don’t care enough about that. He can just be a weak villain idk

the drama characterization stays the same for everyone else bc found family go brr. However for Lao Chu i… hmm… i think he should still be a zombie but the reason he killed someone should be related to his brother. I like that addition and then shen wei realized his sentence was unjust and exempted him. i like that storyline merger. bc the brother thing and him admiring Heipaoshi was drama only. in the novel lao chu just murdered some kid for a rlly whatever reason.

uhhh in terms of the cases… id make adjustments to most of them. i think the li qian case should be like the drama bc the novel just had her as a murderer and it was boring.

For the mountain river awl one was fine… novel version was funnier and more interesting action wise tbh… rip zyl and his exorbitant flirting. uhhh the whole reveal that shen wei was the soul reaper thing was kinda… ehh in the novel but i did love the comedy of afterwards Shen Wei pretending he went into cardiac arrest when he actually just… has no pulse bc he's a ghost.

ID KEEP THE WORTH IT SCENE AND RAIN SCENE… THOSE FUCK SO HARD… I love the drama for adding those every damn day. the novel version of zyl losing his sight sucked and was sooo boring. Keep the drama version on that.

also id keep dr. cheng. i'm very pro dr. cheng and her friendship with shen wei it adds so much to his character imo. keep the fruit seller man and his wife for the merit brush..omg it adds SO MUCH the way the drama did it.. like the drams build up with the novels pace of that arc.. mwah. it felt like it dragged a bit in the drama but if it went faster and without the hospital ep and with sha ya (sorry sha ya) that would've been so good. tho keep novel version of da qings memory loss and lao li. that was rlly impactful.

id say keep some of the cases like the mirror one, the eyes doctor one, etc. just to like.. yk have more to fill in general.. novel pacing but drama characterization without the bs that wasn't fully realized. and novel ending ofc. And that’s it!!

I hope most of this makes some amount of sense but it probably doesn’t. In my head it all tracks but like ik most of u don’t know anything about the novel so this sounds like gibberish. Also I know this would literally never happen but this is MY ideal merger of the two canons that I feel compelled to expand on for some reason. Anyways, as io said,, we need to rebuild guardian. Like literally let me and the mutuals write Guardian and it will be 500 times better.

#🐌.txt #镇魂 guardian #as always... if anyone wants to ask me any questions abt this or guardian in general... pls do.. my mind goes brrrrrr #guardian meta

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pekorosu · 4 years

Text

just a lil “if ash lived” headcanon that i need to unload somewhere bc i've been holding it in for a long time

- set within the manga ‘verse

- takes place when ash and eiji are in their early 30s... so around the mid 1990s?

- i don’t get the weird animanga trope where older = longer hair, so they’re gonna look the same... maybe with slightly shorter hair bc they get regular haircuts now

- (note: i've always interpreted long-haired eiji as symbolic of the fact that he couldn't move on from ash’s death)

- ash and eiji will continue living in the states, idk if still in NYC or somewhere else. they’ll move around a lot though.

- ash will mostly remain underground as he had to fake his death after lao’s stab, but he does it in a "hiding in plain sight" kind of way. only a handful of people know he’s still alive.

- ash spends most of his time on the computer, mostly coding, hacking, being a nerd, among other fun stuff.

- he also takes on “jobs” anonymously, and occasionally from max (who’s still into investigative journalism) when he needs info that can only be obtained through Dubious Means.

- i also like to think that ash's a bit of a hacker robin hood lol. but he isn’t doing it purely out of the goodness of his heart, as part of it is a subconscious need to atone for his “sins” and cleanse the gnawing and persistent feeling of shame that gets amplified when he’s around eiji.

- also whatever he’s up to these days would ofc still be Highly Dangerous and Illegal, but it keeps him busy and would sate the part of him that’s still hungry for adrenaline without him having to engage in stuff like active bloodshed or substance abuse. basically that’s how i imagine he’d try to cope with life the only way he knows.

- eiji continues to do photography and other part time gigs bc he does not like the idea of mooching off ash forever, and he slowly makes a name for himself.

- ash and eiji live together but they are NOT together in a romantic sense... not yet >:)

- therefore eiji will probably date other people in the meantime, which gets a little troublesome bc it's not like he can bring them home to where his secret Very Important Friend is secretly hiding.

- ash will maybe have one-night stands every now and then. or not. idk. this isn’t a very important detail.

- anyway there will be lots of clueless but mutual pining :)

- ash especially, is of the opinion that they should start living separately bc someone will eventually track him down, maybe someone who has a past or present grudge on him. combined with his current activities, it’s only a matter of time before eiji would unwittingly get dragged into his problems again.

- eiji is v adamantly against that plan bc he's sorta developed a debilitating sense of paranoia that ash might just get killed somewhere while he’s not looking. not that ash isn’t paranoid either, but his insecurities often tip the scale over to “eiji is safer away from me” than “with me”.

- basically they’re doing their whole “stay. no, leave. no, stay” dance all over again, but like, dragged out over MANY YEARS.

- you thought eiji’s letter would’ve cleared up any crossed wires?

- HELL NO

- like yea, there was probably a beautiful honeymoon period of about a year or two after they reunited, before their respective trauma and issues started creeping in and fucking things up again.

- esp on ash’s end, i think he’d engage in a lot of self-sabotage. and eiji is only human, he has his own limits and baggage too.

- there will be a government conspiracy plotline but on a smaller scale compared to canon that i am unfortunately not knowledgeable enough to worldbuild on, but it will probably have something to do with cybercrime/cyberterrorism/stuff like that bc it needs to tie in with ash's hacking shenanigans.

- i've heard that sing ends up becoming some sorta political big shot in yasha? idk, i haven't read it myself, but since china’s rising status was mentioned in GoL i imagine the plot should relate to that somehow.

- therefore sing would also get to be in this story!

- i guess this means yut-lung would come into the picture at some point as well, and it would be a good opportunity for a redemption arc but i haven’t given it much of a thought bc i’m indifferent to his character orz SORRY.

- look i can’t do plot, but i am basically envisioning a political thriller with a side of slow burn romance (wait, you mean like a rehash of canon?)

- i’m thinking max is the one who kicks off the story by bringing something fishy to ash, and they just end up uncovering more and more and MORE stuff as they keep going.

- so for like 80% of the story, ash and eiji will be separated bc ash will be busy spying or infiltrating something... and being at the center of Plot Things, while max and eiji will be more on the outside dealing with the journalist side of things. i’m fond of max-ash interactions but i’m also REALLY CURIOUS about max-eiji’s dynamic :D

- meanwhile sing will be like, half in and half out i imagine. he's versatile like that lol

- ...i did NOT mean that in a dirty way

- anyway, this will provide ash and eiji ample space to work out their issues separately, as i think living in close quarters for so many years has actually been aggravating them. ofc those issues don’t get 100% resolved by the end, but some time apart from each other to cool off and spend with other people should provide a bit of perspective.

- i want ash to make some NEW FRIENDS (!!!) that are on the same wavelength as him bc there’s only so much that he can tell eiji and i’m sure he gets rather lonely, so there will be OCs that he will meet in the middle of Plot Things.

- ash will get trapped at some point. preferably with sing so they can have a much needed heart-to-heart talk. they’ll have a lot to hash out, ranging from the events in BF, shorter’s and lao’s death, all the way to ash’s love life.

- btw i like the idea of eiji and sing being close drinking buddies who confide in one another but ash is kinda, justalittle, not very happy about that LOL

- i mean, it's not like eiji can confide in ash when ash is the topic at hand, ya get me? as for sing, he’s similar to ash in the sense that they live dangerous lives, so i imagine he just finds it nice to be able to hang out with someone mundane like eiji every now and then.

- not to say that ash and sing aren’t talking to each other at all, but i think they’d have a bit of a rift between them. sing probably does feel some resentment, both at ash for killing lao AND at himself bc he knows deep down that given a choice, he would’ve saved ash over his own brother. ash can sense that tortured vibe, so eiji’s like their middle man. AND THAT’S WHY THEY NEED A HEART-TO-HEART TALK

- (SIDE NOTE: i want akira to have a role in this too. i actually have a separate headcanon that happens prior to this story... kinda like an alternate GoL?

akira goes to the states to visit eiji, but ash is also there, yeah? akira and ash start out sorta prickly with each other bc ash is all weird and standoffish and always cooped up in his room. she probably mistook him as a jobless model mooching off eiji at first since 1) eiji and ibe have never spoken about him back in japan (cuz he’s supposed to be dead), 2) why would eiji be living with some random hot guy? unless they met during one of his photography gigs? right???

and then she ends up witnessing them in the middle of a tiff, which makes her not like ash even more bc HOW DARE HE YELL AT POOR OKUMURA-SAN??? UNGRATEFUL JERK!!!

but over the course of her visit, she snoops around learns a bit about their history and gathers hints as to why their r’ship is kinda strained. also ash and akira somehow end up bonding (reluctantly) over their emotional insecurities and part on a friendly rivalry to win over eiji’s affections (which eiji is completely oblivious to. also akira may have been 100% serious but ash was just jokingly playing along with her (OR WAS HE???)). anyway long story short, ash teaches akira some cool tech/IT stuff along the way so that leads to her gaining an interest in the field.

she won’t be able to do much in this story, but a minor role would be cool :)

^ a lighthearted gyoza-making scene amid all the angst)

- (SIDE NOTE #2: i ALSO want cain to feature in this, but bc canon provided very little bg info on him it’s hard for me to figure out where he’d fit. but i suppose that’s precisely why it would be great to include him, since i can just make up my own backstory! lol. for now, i think he should be connected to one of the new OCs to make him more central to the plot. or heck, he can be involved himself! ...yeah, i’m just salty about how cain was treated more like a convenient plot device compared to the other major side characters. we barely know anything about him even though he was one of ash’s most trusted allies. #caindeservedbetter2k20)

- anyway, back to the main story. ash (and his new "friends") barely escape where they’re held hostage. ash would be rusty with combat now as he’s spent the past few years doing only stealth work and being rather sedentary.

- so there’ll be lotsa old man!ash jokes like them poking fun at him whenever he complains about his back hehe

- when they finally emerge outside they find themselves in the middle of nowhere! they then hijack a passing pickup truck and do a roadtrip back to civilisation. ROAD TRIP FTW

- at this point, quite some time has already passed and ash even has a fuzzy beard and mane and all. he’s standing at the back of the truck with a small smile on his face and the wind blowing in his hair, thinking GONNA GO BACK AND SEE EIJI, MISS HIM LOADS, HELL YEA

- (bonus: this song and this scene is the catalyst for this entire headcanon btw)

(drew this about a year ago. i was trying to imitate the manga’s art style... and the ash i had in my mind was a little different. i’m too lazy to redraw, but he’s fuzzier now okay! MORE FUZZ! like an actual freakin LION!)

- meanwhile, eiji and max will get into some deep shit around this point?

- eiji in the pic above was me imagining that the Bad Guys had tossed some damning evidence (eg. severed body part?) on the ground like “ash’s dead/ash’s in a lot of danger now so hand over all the info u have”

- and eiji and max are like. SHOOKETH

- this would be the 3rd time ash has “died” after all, and as they say... 3rd time's the charm...

- eiji almost gives in, but then max spits in their face like fuck no and then... yeah. they get beat up and taken away or something lol

- EDIT: hmm... what if the Bad Guy is someone IN the government, and he uses his power to get eiji and max arrested for aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive (ash). and then ash has to rescue them... JAILBREAK STYLE

- also it might be cool to introduce ash's mom somewhere in this story... maybe SHE'S the villain! mwahaha *drama intensifies*

- anyways they will get saved by ash and gang bc that’s just the way things go, BUT! only on the condition they already made it out at least 80% of the way bc GODDAMN IT👏LET👏EIJI👏BE👏BADASS👏FOR👏ONCE👏

- (that is, after he overcomes the initial shock of ash possibly being dead again... again...... again............)

- there will ofc be moments of “oh my god, you’re okay” "i thought i lost you...!"

- something like this, because one can never have enough cheesy reunion scenes

- this will eventually lead to REVELATIONS (of the romantic kind, yes)

- buuuut they will never say "i love you" directly to each other bc ash is too emotionally constipated and eiji is too japanese. it's okay, they will communicate it through heated stares 👀

- i would love for there to be a scene where they have to be separated again for Plot Reasons and ash sorta hesitantly goes all "...will you wait for me?" as a direct parallel to canon!eiji's "i'll be waiting" and it’s like,

- FINALLY!

- FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! ash has finally allowed himself to ask for this, to let himself want it!

- and eiji would be like OF COURSE I WILL YOU BIG DUMMY, ALWAYS AND FOREVER

- but i think it'd be hilarious if eiji pops up while ash's in the middle of the final showdown and ash's like WTF I TOLD YOU TO WAIT FOR ME and eiji's like I WAS WORRIED OKAY YOU WERE TAKING SO LONG

- idk how this is supposed to end...

- oh wait! since the plot is government-related, maybe Someone will be able to pull strings to wipe out ash’s criminal record (past and present) and give him a brand new 100% legal identity, as thanks for his efforts? or maybe ash (or sing) just does it himself somewhere along the way LOL. anyway, he’ll be able to start over with a fresh clean slate and finally work on recovery FOR REAL NOW. yes this is a happy ending AND it didn’t require him to go to japan /flips off canon

- ...i realise it’s never going to be that simple but W H A T E V E R

- (also they probably will visit japan in the future with that shiny new passport... gotta meet the in-laws and all y’know)

- who do i gotta pay to write this cheesy self-indulgent fic for me

#since tumblr is for talking to myself that is exactly what im gonna do now #a very long self-indulgent post //#banana fish

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agent-cupcake · 4 years

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So, what do you think the femblem cast would do for jobs irl? Appreciate your stories by the way, beasty and the bard is my favorite so far

I’m trying to work through older asks more like I used to with HxH, shorter form stuff, you know? Anyway, this is silly so a good starting point (also thank you! I love writing that story and going through my inbox I saw so many kind messages. I didn’t reply to them, but know that everyone’s words mean more than I can say)

Dimitri - There’s fanart of him as a firefighter and I like that. However, I guess it’d make more sense if he had a net worth we could only dream of and inherited a company of some sort from his father so that’s what I’m going with. Aside from running that, I think Dimitri would be someone who uses his fortune to engage in a lot of philanthropic work. Also, bless modern mental health care.

Dedue - If we’re going aesthetics, Dedue would also be a Firefighter. Or a famous chef, famous for his intimidating appearance contrasted with his world-famous dishes. Although, hear me out. Dedue was someone whose city or w/e was destroyed by negligence or conflict of some kind and he works with Dimitri to protect his people and built his home back up.

Felix - Raised in a wealthy military family, Felix enlisted and served in the Army as soon as he was able but became disillusioned with the military after the death of his brother and returned home. After that, he became super involved with martial arts and wound up opening a gym, inadvertently taking in other young and disillusioned kids and giving them a healthy method of self-expression.

Sylvain - Rich boy. Bad reputation. E-Celeb. He lends his skills to the social media inept Dimitri to promote and help with all of his philanthropic work. He does a lot of good things but keeps it under wraps to maintain his superficial image.

Ingrid - She runs Dimitri’s personal security force with a side gig of anonymous restaurant reviewing.

Annette - Chemistry professor at a university and rabid overachiever who makes consistent strides in the science world and inspires her students. She knows the Faerghus crew because she’s gone to them to make a case for funding scholarship programs.

Mercedes - Mercedes went to school to became a nurse, which is where she met Annette, and then she met Felix through Annette. Since many of the kids at his gym aren’t likely to go to get actual medical help, he calls her if there are any incidents. At the same time, she is an active participant in her local church and charity drives.

Ashe - Okay I think he’d have a really idealistic sense of justice as a kid, but that slowly became warped as he grew up. He met Ingrid through Felix’s gym and wound up getting a position on Dimitri’s security team, seeing the work that Dimitri does as a sort of justice.

Edelgard - I wanna say like a politician or lawyer, but the fictional kind where they have solid values and beliefs and do good things in the name of justice. Edelgard would be more vocal about her desire to change things entirely rather than follow the system as it is.

Hubert - Obviously he works with Edelgard. Sharing her ideals of justice, he acts as a behind the scenes confidant of sorts. Irl he’d be a bit less simp-y, working with her because he believes in her ability to make a change rather than some blood-intrinsic duty.

Ferdinand - Similar to Edeglard, but more invested in the idea of working within the system to make a change. Despite that conflict, they do work together quite often, respecting the ideals of the other and acknowledging that ultimately they do want the same thing.

Dorothea - Musical theater STAR who is very passionate about social issues, namely the treatment of younger and less famous people in the industry. She uses her platform to promote up and coming actors and all of the backstage production crews that are so often ignored and abused.

Caspar - Head of Edelgard’s security for sure. Grew up a rich kid but separated from his family pretty much completely, deciding to make his own way in the world.

Linhardt - Tech guy. Cybersecurity maybe? At some point, he got hired by Edelgard and works with Caspar bc ofc he does. He makes it clear that it’s not an issue of morality that makes him loyal, but because it’s a fun challenge.

Petra - An ambassador from a smaller country trying to establish more friendly relations for her people. People underestimate her because of her language skills, which actually works out for her sometimes because they don’t expect her political maneuvering.

Bernadetta - An extreme introvert who inherited her father’s company but manages most of it remotely, also focusing on her artistic endeavors. Probably has a super popular webcomic appealing to comically exaggerated introverts everywhere.

Claude - He attended a prestigious university and quickly fell into a career in journalism. Not like, trashy tabloid style, but actual journalism that is well researched and meant to hold people in power accountable. His background and source of wealth are mysterious, leading people to spend an inordinate amount of time speculating about his race online. Claude also uses memes and snappy editing as misdirection.

Hilda - She’s famous for being famous and rich. However, in the midst of all of that fame, she befriended Claude and actually came to stand for a cause. But on the lowest of keys, most of what she posts is makeup reviews and glamorous photos. Gamer girl.

Lorenz - His father's Thomas Wayne, but like... The bad Thomas Wayne from Joker. Weapon production and everything. Lorenz changes that, though, focusing more on those Bruce Wayne endeavors. Except he’s not Batman, but Batman’s flamboyant, eggplant-headed brother. I love Lorenz I’m sorry boo

Ignatz - An artist, of course. Works in animation, maybe? He’s drawn all of Hilda’s graphics and sprites and stuff. She even paid him!

Raphael - He does a lot of manual labor, taking on odd jobs or anything in the name of supporting his sister.

Lysithea - After graduating top of her class, she began working in the medical field, researching cures and other helpful medicine. Claude keeps her discoveries from going unacknowledged, and Edelgard has actually had a donation drive to fund Lysithea’s work.

Marianne - She owns and runs an organization that focuses on taking on animal cruelty and taking care of mistreated animals. She’s incredibly organized and efficient in the way she handles things and sees results through her various charities and request for funding.

Leonie - She works in a private security organization once run by Jeralt, taking on whatever job she gets hired for. Leonie is more interested in the work than the jobs. Drinking, too.

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mint-yooxgi · 3 years

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heya so I has lots of questions about vampire jaehyun’s yandere au that I write out here but you don’t have to answer!! please don’t feel obligated to do so and don’t feel guilty to deny answering my questions!! If you want me to send these questions in singular asks, you might have to post a thing asking me to do so, I’m sorry for the long ask!!

Would Jaehyun ever use his compulsion on the OC? Like if they are refusing to do anything with him or just fucking hates him and won’t have anything to do with him? Is that like the only moral he’s got? That he won’t ever use compulsion on the reader?

If the OC asked him to stop his sadistic tendencies, would he actually stop? Or would he continue to do it even though he promised the reader he wouldn’t?

Would Jaehyun want the reader to remain human or turn them into a vampire? What if the reader doesn’t want to be a vampire and wants to remain human? Would Jaehyun force the reader to turn?

Can the vampires in Jaehyun’s au bring back the dead or something? (was just a random thought if potentially the little sister could be brought back so reader wouldn’t hate him for the rest of his life)

Is there anything special about the vampires of Jaehyun’s au? Like do they have to be invited in? If that’s true, could the reader potential run to a home and make sure he can’t get in?

What if the reader tries to kill themself to join little sis? Would he turn the OC to keep them alive?

Can compulsion be used on other vampires? (So if reader turned they can run away and actually stay away bc their strength matched Jaehyun’s?)

Okay I’m done pls let me know if you want me to send these questions separately or if someone of them you don’t want to answer!! I will respect your choice bc ily!!

Wow! OMG, this makes me so happy that you have all these questions about the AU and I will be happy to answer all of them!! Gonna put a read more since this got super long and this will contain spoilers (I guess) and also TRIGGER WARNING for mentions of suicide!!

Okay okay, I'll number them to make them easier to follow!

1. So he would never use compulsion on the OC to make them love him, or do anything that would cross a line like force the OC to kiss him or something like that. However, he’s not above compelling the OC to make sure she’s taking care of herself if the servants cannot do their jobs properly. So like, compelling the OC to eat when she’s hungry and make sure she’s drinking water, stuff like that, is all on the table. Besides, he doesn’t really need to use compulsion all that much cause he pulls the “if you don’t do this, I will kill this person while you watch and it’ll be your fault” card.

2. Hmm, that would be like asking him to change his personality and who he is, so it’s possible, and he could become nicer towards some, but it would take a long time for there to be any substantial difference as his behaviour has been ingrained into him for hundreds of years. So, probably not, though the OC can try. Jaehyun is the type to be like, “well, now you know all sides of me so you better accept them all cause this is who I am.”

3. It was always in his plans to turn the OC, and he can and will do it against their will if he so chooses, though he’d rather they wanted him to turn them so it’d be their own decision. That being said, the OC could remain a human for quite a while, but after a certain age, Jaehyun would just turn them if he so chooses.

4. No, unfortunately in this universe, what’s dead should stay dead. However, it is possible if one knows a powerful spell. The type of death is crucial though for the spell to work, the body has to be intact, so unfortunately Lori with her decapitated head would not qualify for the spell.

5. Oh, there’s plenty!! So Jaehyun is a pure vampire which means he was born as what he is, instead of made, meaning he is one of the most powerful vampires in existence. There are others like him, but because he comes from the royal bloodline, he’s more powerful, hence his heightened senses of smell, hearing, etc. over others of his species. He’s also one of the fastest and strongest of his kind because of this. They do have to be invited in, as well as they have the power of compulsion (if that wasn’t clear from previous answers lol). As to the OC running away, it would be kind of difficult even with the invitation requirement as everyone in the kingdom knows who he is and who the OC is, so she would be risking the lives of whatever person or persons they ran to since the whole kingdom thinks the OC and Jaehyun are in a loving relationship. Besides, he’s the Prince and ofc he’d be automatically invited into a person’s home if he showed up on their front door.

6. So this relates to question one, and yes this would be an instant he would use compulsion to stop the OC from taking their own life. If it got to the point where the OC managed to do something and the only choice was to turn them, he would.

7. Most definitely, compulsion can be used on other vampires, and seeing how Jaehyun is literally the strongest vampire in existence right now, they would have no choice regarding the matter. Though, people tend to listen to him when he orders them to do something without needing to be compelled. Even if he turned the OC, yes they would be strong but since they are a turned vampire, still not as strong as Jaehyun. (Unless you’re talking about blood sharing which in that case, OC could get close to Jaehyun’s strength, but still wouldn’t be the same, and even then it would take years).

#ask #About: Vampire Jaehyun #tw: suicide

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slipperyskell · 4 years

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If you could ask Cicero for advice during most of the Dark Brotherhood quests, what kind of advice do you think he'd give??

ho man oh man oh man

Things’ll prolly be p long too so I’ll likely be putting this under a Keep Reading type deal.

MAIN QUESTLINE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mourning Never Comes: Since this quest starts right when he first gets to the sanctuary, I can imagine him being very busy getting Mother settled in her new home, as he does mention in-game. While he likely doesn’t sit and chat for too long (as much as he’d like to, I’m sure), he still gives a few good bits of advice, especially since it’s your first bigger job.

A lot of his advice, since it is your first official big contract, consists of how to present yourself while out in the field. One thing that comes to mind is him having to explain the second Tenet to you because you likely don’t know the Tenets are even a thing, and you can just see the concern on his face as he slowly tells you it, half hoping, half expecting you to slowly say it with him as though you’d forgotten. You didn’t, and that worries him a lot more than you realize.

Seeing as he’s pretty much wholly unfamiliar with most of Skyrim at this time I can’t imagine him being able to give a lot of advice on how to go about killing a target aside from the obvious “stick to the shadows, be aware of your environment” type stuff.

Honestly, I could also see him making an off-handed comment about him wishing he could join you to make sure you do alright, kinda hinting at him wanting to make sure you become one of the “good” assassins in his book before you become the Listener. Also maybe kinda sorta him being desperate to make a friend after all the bullshit he’s been through. Desperate to attach himself to someone, anyone. He’s hoping the hesitance the rest of the Family gives him is just because he’s new.

He knows it’s not, but a fool can dream, can’t he?

~~~~~

Whispers In The Dark: This is where things start to get a little interesting, seeing as things could definitely diverge from canon in this situation depending on how things are dealt with.

Consider with me, if you will, that instead of simply following Astrid’s orders, you tell Cicero that she thinks he’s plotting something. At first he’s just annoyed, because of course she’d think he’s plotting something. But then he starts feeling a little hurt. A little stung by the fact that, yes, they were staying their distance from him because they thought he was up to something by bringing Mother here.

There’s something in this little train of thought that makes something else click - he knew that Astrid tried to make herself the authority of this Family. She’d made that exceptionally clear when he’d first gotten there, and he realizes she’d probably done the same when you’d gotten there, too.

It’s at this point, in this little alternate scenario, that I think Cicero realizes that his new Family doesn’t believe in the Old Ways much at all. Not that he hadn’t suspected beforehand, but this little situation settles it for him.

But there’s still one person that he can’t quite get a read on - you. You’ve been here a little longer than he had, but you were far newer. You telling him what Astrid said could be you simply telling him and not knowing better (though technically this would be, in his eyes, the correct thing to do as Astrid is not the leader by the Old Ways’ rules), or you recognizing that he would technically be the authority figure in this situation until the Listener was found.

And there’s some strange little stirring of optimism at that thought. He’d already come to the conclusion that he wasn’t and never will be the Listener, and he’d certainly hoped that the rest of this Family - or Sithis forbid, Astrid - was it, either.

And once again, that leaves you. Had anyone else been Listener, Mother would have spoken by now. She had to have. But you’d been out and about lately. You had promise....

He thanks you for letting him know before turning and leaving, saying he needs to head out and gather some ingredients for Mother’s oils.

You wait, standing before the great stone sarcophagus, marveling at the stonework, before an icy cold voice seeps into your head and consumes you.

When he comes back, he’s beyond ecstatic (as he is in-game) and after the little interaction with Astrid ends and she leaves, he does a lot of explaining for how being the Listener works (as he does in-game, too). He also does make a comment about how p much whatever the fuck Astrid says - to an extent, he is aware and does likely acknowledge that it’ll take the whole Family to organize this contract - is null.

Though he definitely tells you to not just wait around for Astrid to decide whether to do the contract, and to go to this Volunruud place as soon as you possibly can, which is pretty much the entirety of The Silence Has Been Broken (so I won’t cover that one separately).

~~~~~

Bound Until Death: I don’t really have a lot on this one other than his advice getting into his own character a bit (or more my own depiction of who he is outside of the Fool of Hearts, and an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood).

His advice for this one is really him listing off a few good ways to go about dealing with things. Using the environment to make it look like an accident, like Babette says, or using a bow to shoot the bride from afar, like Gabriella wants you to do. He is aware that the Civil War is playing a substantial role in this series of killings before the big contract, and would likely tell you to make it look like something a Stormcloak would do (without getting into racial stereotypes bc that’s not cool, even as a joke). Your best bet would be something archery related.

He makes a comment about how he wished he could’ve come with, saying something along the lines of how he’d always been such a hopeless romantic and actually quite enjoyed weddings.

Whether this is jokingly or not is up for you to decide.

~~~~~

Breaching Security: I don’t think he’d have a lot to say on this one either without getting overly repetitive, though I could definitely see him issuing a bit of caution when dealing with the guard. Killing off the commander’s son would put more eyes on the Brotherhood than I think he’d be comfortable with, and seeing Vittoria had been killed not too long before...

He knows it’d be incredibly risky, but I think he’d tell you to hold off and try to go for the Emperor himself once he arrives rather than risking alerting the guards to the Brotherhood’s presence. They’re expecting opposition from the Stormcloaks ideally, not the Brotherhood.

~~~~~

Cure For Madness: Quite simply: Astrid can go fuck herself. That and that stupid lapdog of hers. I don’t think he’d have much to say other than to maybe try and get Mother out of there as soon as possible, before you and he try to work things out from there. He doesn’t think Astrid would go as far as to harm her, but... he doesn’t want to risk that. He can’t afford to, not after everything he’d gone through to get his Family this far.

(this is another one of those alternate scenario things that I could get into but I think I’m gonna hold off for the time being since that is a very large can of worms.”

~~~~~

This is where I’m gonna leave it for now. I could see, if that alternate situation happened, you and Cicero meeting up and trying to work this shit out without everything falling apart, but like I said before, I’m gonna hold off since that’s a fuck ton of stuff to get into and talk about and I’ve already spent a good part of my afternoon thinking and writing this stuff up lmfao.

#cicero headcanon time #cicero #skyrim #skyrim cicero #cicero skyrim #the elder scrolls #tes #tesv #tesblr

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kunstpause-archive · 4 years

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From the scrap pile

Thanks to @elveny and @kittimau for tagging me ❤

This was surprisingly hard bc even though I scrapped easily over 100k words over the course of our big DA2 fic alone I keep reusing small bits and pieces in odd places and the stuff I totally throw out I don’t like enough to show to anyone really

But I did find something. This is from 2018, it was set pretty early on in our story Precipice of Change and was the original first meeting between Cullen and Cassia, before we heavily reworked the story.

I don’t know who did this already so feel free to ignore me but tagging @captainderyn @tishinada @curiousthimble @cornfedcryptid @faerieavalon @sharkapologists @fandomn00blr @serial-chillr @wardenari @ranawaytothedas @midnightprelude @charlatron @anchanted-one

Under a cut for length-reasons. :D

Cassia had underestimated the way towards the Gallows, it seemed. ‘They are really serious about this whole separation thing’ she mused while waiting for her boat to cross over. She had never been even near this place before and for good reason. The closer she got the more daunting the huge statues looked. All of a sudden, she could understand Adriene’s refusal to take any work that would require going here a little bit more. But on the other hand… they needed the money and the pay just seemed too good to not at least try. She only hoped she would get anywhere after her sister had already turned down the offer. Rather colourfully apparently, or so Cassia had heard.

When she stepped into the courtyard for the first time, she couldn’t suppress a small shiver. There were tranquil around, selling wares. Some mages walked briskly, not looking around much. And templars. So many templars… She wasn’t sure she had ever seen so many templars in one spot before, and there was an eerie feeling in the air for some reason.

Cassia was used to hiding among regular people. Non-mages. Even hiding in front of templars at the chantry. It usually involved looking either as unassuming or as disarmingly open as possible for her. Light clothes that made it obvious she wasn’t hiding anything underneath, a bright smile and most importantly: no staff. For the first time, the absence of the most trusted weapon was something she could almost physically feel, though, before she shook her head. It wasn’t as if it would do her any good even if she had her staff with her. Under this amount of vigilance and raw power, she wouldn’t even get one spell off before they took her down. She shook off the sense of doom that seemed to permeate the very air in this place, put on her brightest smile and went up to the next patrol, asking for the Knight-Captain who had made her sister the oh-so-well-paid offer earlier.

Cullen had been deeply immersed in the report on his desk when a knock on his door pulled him out of his concentration. “Yes?” he called out, trying not to lose track of where he was on the document.

“There is a Serah Hawke here to speak to you, Knight-Captain,” came the muffled voice of one of the recruits on guard duty from the outside. Irritation went through him at the reason for the disturbance.

“Tell her I don’t have time,” he called out again. He didn’t know what it had been exactly but something about her had made him slightly uneasy, even though she had been a great help at the coast.

“She is standing right next to me and insists,” the recruit called through the door again, and Cullen felt the irritation grow even stronger.

“Fine, send her in then.” What in the world did she want? She had made her disdain of templars in general quite clear only a few hours ago, and he had no desire for a repeat performance.

“What do you want?” he sighed impatiently. “Because if I remember correctly, you said something about never wanting to set foot in the Gallows ever again rather loudly not that long ago.” With an impatient glare, he looked up from his documents at the intruder in his office only to be met with a pair of raised eyebrows that definitely did not belong to the woman he had met earlier that day.

“I get the feeling I have to apologise on behalf of my sister, Knight-Captain,” the woman standing in his office said in a light and slightly amused voice. “I am Cassia Hawke, and I am here about a job you offered her.”

Sister? His first thought was that he had probably never seen siblings look less alike than the two of them. They looked like complete opposites of each other. And from his first impression, they sounded like it, too. The woman in front of him was nothing short of charming, not a trace of the hostility her sister had shown him.

“Knight-Captain Cullen,” he introduced himself even though he was certain she already knew that. “Forgive my reaction, but I am somewhat confused, Serah Hawke.”

The information she had gotten from Fenris had not been much. Adriene hadn’t been willing to listen for very long, it seemed, but she was certain he had said Knight-Captain Cullen had been the one offering said job. She gave him a careful once-over. He looked… younger than she had anticipated. In her head, the Knight-Captain of a city as big as Kirkwall had been someone more seasoned. More looking at home behind a desk. Knight-Captain Cullen looked like he was around her age, maybe even the slightest bit younger. Like he should be out there, on the frontlines instead of in here, doing paperwork. He must have had a steep career to end in such a prestigious position at this part of his life already.

“Confused about me asking for a job?” Cassia had put on her best, most pleasant smile for the occasion.

“Yes, given that not long ago your sister told me, rather colourfully, her stance on working for us or even considering it,” he said drily.

Cassia nodded in understanding. “Adriene has very strong opinions on several subjects,” she said, sounding as diplomatically as she could.

The way she phrased it made Cullen think that their differences definitely went beyond the physical appearance.

“And you don’t?” he asked skeptically. She laughed softly, and he was surprised at the thought that it was a rather pleasant sound.

“Oh, I do! They do not always coincide, however. Which is why I am here.”

“So you decided you want to help us, despite your sister feeling so strongly about the templars?” Cullen was still not quite convinced, too strong had the reaction of her sister been when he offered her the job.

“To be quite honest, Knight-Captain, helping you is more of a side benefit,” Cassia shrugged. “I heard the pay is good and that working with the templars is quite reliable here.”

When Cullen didn’t immediately say anything, she went on.

“You don’t believe me? Maker, what did Adriene say? No, don’t tell me, I can guess. But no matter.” She sighed. “Look, we came here from Ferelden, fleeing from the Blight. We had to leave behind everything, start over completely here. If we ever want to get somewhere, hard work is the only way. So, there you have my motivation.”

Cullen gave her a speculative look. She sounded honest, surprisingly open in her explanation. Another complete opposite from her very guarded sister it seemed. Her sister who seemed to have been in a constant state of battle ready. Cassia Hawke meanwhile looked… soft. Her braids had flowers in it and she was wearing a simple, but very becoming dress. At first glance, he could not imagine her taking on fights in back alleys if it came to it.

“I’m not sure this job is right for you, Serah,” he started carefully. “You look… Not like a mercenary if I have to be honest.”

Cassia smiled brightly. “I dress for the occasion,” she said with a hint of mischief in her voice. “I am here to get a job, not to pick fights with people after all.”

“A fair point,” Cullen relented. It wasn’t like everyone who could carry a weapon did so all the time after all. “I apologise for the assumption.”

“Oh I’m not offended, don’t worry,” she said almost immediately before she gave him a calculating look. A hint of playfulness appeared on her face. “On second thought, maybe I am,” she said slowly. “Terribly offended actually!”

Cullen raised his eyebrows. “Terribly offended?”

“Yes. It’s awful, really.” Cassia did her best, putting on her most practiced fake upset look. But she couldn’t quite quell her own amusement as she spoke. “I fear, only a job offer might be able to smooth this over…”

Her gamble seemed to pay off, the Knight-Captain definitely looked amused by now. “Would it now? And if I were to leave you in this offended state?”

“Then I would have to storm out of here in a huff and never talk to you again.” Cassia was delighted about his willingness to play along. She had expected someone stuffy. Someone she’d have to formally apologize to and who would probably give her a dry talk about appropriate behaviour towards authority in regards to her family. This was the opposite. This was something so much easier to work with. She gave him a coy look. “That would be such a shame really, you seem so fun to talk to.”

“I seem fun to talk to?” He gave her another skeptical look. It seemed he was almost thrown off by her more direct approach.

“Don’t let it flatter you too much,” Cassia assured him, “The last person I worked for was so incredibly drunk he could barely even sit upright. Second time I met him, he fell asleep while paying me.” She gave him a playful wink. “The bar for decent conversation is remarkably low these days.”

Cullen couldn’t help himself but laugh quietly. This conversation had been something he never would have expected. But to his surprise, he found it utterly delightful. “Glad to see I place above the inebriated and the unconscious,” he said dryly but not bothering to hide his amusement anymore. “But what would I lose out on really?”

There was a glint in her eyes that made them almost sparkle. “Why, my remarkable problem-solving skills of course. There is a reason there is much less work in Lowtown since I got here after all. And I’ll have you know that I am also fun to talk to.”

She was definitely right about that, but nonetheless, he gave her a most skeptical look, enjoying her small huff in obviously fake indignation.

“I am a delightful conversationalist!” she insisted. “And you have been smiling for the past few minutes when earlier you looked like you ate a shipload of citrus just before I got here.”

This time he had to laugh out loud. “Indeed you are,” he agreed. Cullen wasn’t sure when the last time he had had this much fun talking to someone even was. “Alright, we can give this a try.” He took a small pile of papers and letters he had put together for this job and handed it over to her. “Here is all the information you need, I expect you can find your way around the notes.” She was already flipping through the letters he gave her, looking a bit more serious. “There is a certain level of discretion advised,” Cullen added almost as an afterthought.

“I see, of course,” Cassia murmured as she went over the names and dates, starting to see why they would hire a mercenary for this. “None of these people would talk to a templar.”

“Or any authority even,” the Knight-Captain added. “That’s why we need outside help for this.”

Cassia folded the papers carefully, putting them away into her pockets. “Luckily I am as far away from being an authority as you can probably find in this city,” she gave him another bright smile. “I am definitely the woman you need. For this job, I mean. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

And with a good-natured but polite good-bye, she left the Gallows behind again, feeling considerably less anxious about the place than she had when first coming here. It still was a place she wouldn’t want to set foot in voluntarily, but she had gotten what she came for, and it had been easier and far more pleasant than anticipated. Now, she only had to get this thing done as quietly and as quickly as possible. And who knew, perhaps this could open a door for more well-paid work in the future.

The task was surprisingly simple for her. Cassia could see why a templar would have not gotten most of the relevant information from any of the people she talked to. After a while, she was almost glad that Adriene had turned the offer down. As much as she loved her sister, she could imagine that Adriene’s approach to this would have had the potential for more than one altercation. Cassia had always preferred to talk herself out of any situation if needed, and she knew she was good at getting people to see things her way, even the ones that needed a bit more convincing. ‘Why pull out a weapon when a well-placed compliment or a vague hint of a promise could do the trick’ had always been more her style.

Normally, she and Adriene complemented each other perfectly in that regard. Cassia managed to avoid them some fights while Adriene was always ready and never missed a beat in situations where that simply wasn’t possible. It felt almost wrong now for Cassia to do this on her own, fully aware that she didn’t have a very well thought-through backup plan if things didn’t work out the way she wanted them to. But it seemed she was lucky this day, managing to get everything she needed without any major incidents. Well, almost without.

It was dark already but still busy on the streets when she was done and made her way back to the Gallows, this time finding her way to the Knight-Captain’s office almost directly.

“Good evening, Knight-Captain,” she greeted politely after knocking. He seemed surprised to see her again.

“Serah Hawke, back already?” Cullen had not expected her back this day. Not even the next one if he was honest, not with the amount of information he had sent her out to find, yet here she was, in his office again.

“Please, call me Cassia,” she smiled. “Otherwise I’ll always think you’re talking to my mother. But yes, here is all the information I could find.” She handed him a staple of notes and he gave it a quick once over.

“Impressive. And you did all this in a day?” He flipped through the pages after pages she had filled with all the things she had found out. On first glance, it looked like she had done a very thorough job. He couldn’t help being impressed.

“One of the notes sounded rather urgent,” she said with a shrug.

“It was, I thank you,” Cullen agreed, putting the papers aside to work through their content later. He took in her appearance. She looked different. Her hair was in a bun, and while she was still wearing a dress, it seemed to be a different one than before. “And I see you even had time to dress for the occasion again.”

Cassia looked down, for a moment looking confused before she smiled at him. “Naturally.” She shrugged. “But that was more of a necessity this time. Two hours of walking around town and my clothes still hadn’t dried.”

Cullen felt his own eyebrows run up. “Dried? What happened?”

She held up a hand as she assured him, “Nothing relevant to the investigation, don’t worry.”

Cullen couldn’t help giving her a skeptical look. A look that sent her into a small bout of laughter.

“I’m telling the truth,” she said between laughs. “It’s… you’re gonna laugh, but there were some very angry ducks. And a pond.” He felt his eyes widen. “And perhaps a person you may or may not have hired for her skills who had a slight issue of paying attention.” She shook her head, giving him a pointed look. “It was not a very graceful event, let’s just keep it like that.”

Cullen hadn’t been certain what to expect from any of this, but her little story definitely hadn’t been it. He tried his best to not laugh out too loudly, but his efforts were in vain.

“And now you are laughing at me!” Cassia sighed. “I should have left it at the change of clothes. Kept some of the mystery.”

Cullen shook his head, forcing the laughter to calm down. “I have the feeling there is plenty of mystery left with you, Serah… Cassia,” he corrected himself.

“I have to disappoint you,” Cassia grinned, feeling pleased at his use of her first name. This was only their second time meeting, but she had a good feeling about this already. If she played her cards right, she might be well on her way to find an in with the templars here. Adriene would probably throw a fit if she heard about any of this, but Cassia could try to deal with that later, make her see the advantages. “No mystery at all,” she said, giving him her best ‘I have nothing to hide’ look. “I am an open book.”

Cullen still seemed amused, but there was a hint of something she couldn’t place in his voice as he answered. “In my experience people who say this usually aren’t. Not really.”

The conversation was still light-hearted, but there was something underneath that was almost intriguing to Cassia as she smiled. “I see I have to change tactics then.”

Cullen didn’t answer immediately, giving her a strange look. Was there tension in the air or was she imagining it? She was still deliberating when he broke the silence.

“I may have a follow-up job for you, depending on where this leads. Maybe come back in a couple of days?” he said, sounding a bit more formal again. His voice had lost some of the lightness from earlier but his eyes… His eyes seemed to look almost right through her. ‘Be careful Cassia’, her inner voice that sounded, not surprisingly, a lot like her sister said. ‘Don’t underestimate this one just because he has a nice smile.’

“I will. Thank you Knight-Captain,” she said simply.

He nodded, and it seemed like they were done when he suddenly added. “If you insist on me calling you by your name it is only fair I insist on you doing the same.”

“You want me to call you by my name?” The words had left Cassia’s mouth before she had even thought to think about how wise it would be to crack jokes right now.

Cullen gave her an almost unreadable look and Cassia grinned at him apologetically.

”I’m sorry. I have a sister who never stops joking around - it leaves a mark on you sometimes,” she explained before smiling again, making her way to the door. “But I appreciate the offer, Cullen. And I’ll see you in a few days then. Have a good night.”

#From the scrap pile #Da2 #Dragon Age 2 #Precipice of Change #cullen rutherford

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idontwanttowhy · 3 years

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Review: Holiday Love ホリデイラブ (2018)

A frustrating Fatal-Attraction-esque jdrama

Synopsis

Takamori Azu (Riisa Naka) has been leading a seemingly perfect life with her husband, Takamori Junpei (Takashi Tsukamoto) and their daughter Nanaka. However, her world crumbles when she is told that Junpei has been cheating on her with a part-time co-worker, Izutsu Rina (Matsumoto Marika)--by Rina's husband, Izutsu Wataru (Nakamura Tomoya) no less. To make matters worse, she discovers that Rina won't let go of Junpei and is doing everything in her power to destroy their relationship. A rollercoaster of betrayal, mistakes, and obsession ensues.

AC Overall: 8/10, be prepared to be mad

So this drama is about people being unfaithful in their marriages and the tolls that takes on themselves, their relationships, and their families--and ultimately how they dealt with it all. I was very frustrated throughout the drama, partially because of the cheating and partially because of how everything panned out. But what kept me watching was the mistress, Rina's, plans to be with Junpei, despite both his wife's efforts and her husband's efforts to separate them. Be prepared for Fatal Attraction-level obsession. Matsumoto Marika did a great job playing the obsessed, unstable mistress. Give it a watch for the mess of it all, from will-they-won't-they get back together drama and possible revenge cheating, to unhealthy obsessions and extreme ~moves~ because of it. Some of it was predictable, but the execution was creative at times. And it's pretty short, good for a binge.

AC Review (Spoilers, and very long)

Ngl, this drama had me Fuh-RUS-TRA-TED practically the whole time. Bc I 1) could not understand Junpei for cheating and 2) tbh still don't understand how and why Junpei had two women who wanted to be with him. But I digress. Actually no, this whole review is going to be a digression. First ep we see Junpei fucking some other woman and they talking about "I wish I had married you" and love and blah blah blah. Which makes it decidedly not an "I fucked up and my dick slipped" situation. Not that the latter is better bc they're both shit. Idk if it's better if someone "slips up" because of a lack of control, or a strong love towards someone else. Jury's still out. But Junpei whispered sweet-apparently-nothings into this woman's ear for a YEAR, and dead acted like nothing was going on at home. And then had Rina assed out in front of his wife and her husband talking about "I didn't say all that" like suuure want receipts? So ultimately everything was his damn fault. Anyway. My girl Azu, blessherheart, was completely blindsided when Rina's (very attractive though also very abusive but very attractive and why would you want Junpei over him but yeah he's abusive so I get it but if he wasn't then...) husband showed up with a beat-up Junpei talking 'bout "he's fucking my wife, what are we going to do?". And poor Nanaka! The children in both marriages suffered the most bc they really were just innocent bystanders who got caught up in the bull and will probably have some trauma because of it. Like Nanaka was such a happy spirit but got depressed when she lost all her friends! My heart really went out to her.

Anyway anyway. So my girl Azu did the right thing at first--had Junpei's ass sleeping in the car and everything, which I loved, and was determined to divorce him. But then she got tricked into (almost) sleeping with a Japanese Micheal Cera (simultaneously old- and young-looking somehow) by a client-like gurl. I was proud that she stopped it (and he didn't continue without consent) but like, her sister and best friend's response was like "how could you (almost) fuck a stranger" and I'm sitting here like "she was drunk? he was blackmailed into this? she thought she knew him at least a little? and she realized she didn't want to and didn't actually have sex with him? and where was this energy when they found out about Junpei??". And then the best friend proceeded to give shit advice, talking about "don't tell Junpei, it'll ruin his ego" when realistically, she shoulda just told him the minute she decided she wanted to be with him still (which I'll discuss later) bc they were split up at the time, and he did (arguably, though maybe not, still depends on the person's pov) worse. But no, he found out through the mistress (of course!) and thus put Azu in purgatory. Her flip in the decision to be with him again was because he had always been there...which I get (prob bc of my scorpio sun) but ughhh I wish she hadn't welcomed him back so easily. Like yeah, say you still want to be with him, sure, but make him sweat at least a little more? Make him beg? act different? idk. She made him feel too comfortable too quick, which made him feel more entitled to being upset about her and JMichael Cera talking about "I know I shouldn't be mad, kedo..." and making my girl Azu sad, which leads me to...

THE MISTRESS. with her baby voice. wtf. And Junpei couldn't keep his dick in his pants even after all the shit. I mean, they didn't fuck but dude was acting sus again around her, which was just more fodder for her in the end. (His only other female co-worker watching and knowing everything was me the whole time. Like, you dumb, dumb man). He was waaay too nice after all the shit, letting her into his dorm and letting her do him favors so he felt guilty and letting her try to talk him into leaving his wife. I was sooo mad that after all the mess, Junpei still didn't grow any balls to say to her, point-blank, "I'm not leaving my wife, please leave" until way too late for me. And she really, and i mean REALLY, went out of her way to get Azu to cheat and molded him like putty. I had no faith in Junpei. Throughout the whole thing. Dude is spineless. And...so was Wataru, but in the macho-man kind of way. Controlling to hide his insecurities. Violent for no reason (did we need the r. scene? fuck) But in the end, he was the one that caved the least when it came to the cheating, trying to figure out what happened, and taking concrete steps rather than the wishy-washy moves Azu and Junpei were making. And then he grew as a father after kicking Rina out, because then he spent time with the kids (after his mom said she had a life lol) and they ultimately chose him in Tokyo which was super interesting and redeeming...wait wait wait but he was still very abusive and there is no excuse for that. I really had to stop myself--whenever he wasn't yelling at grown ass adults and breaking shit--from thinking that he was a good person. The struggle. But this man really said everyone's dumb, and I low-key agree. I could understand him the most (though it doesn't excuse anything, ik ik). But I would've changed the locks too.

We gotta talk about the best friend too. I watched on viki with the comments, so throughout the show people were like "oh they should be together" and shit, which had me kinda tight because I really appreciate when shows allow for platonic friendship between a cishet- man and woman? Esp without one professing their ever-present love to the other. Dude gave shit advice but ultimately was the only one thinking straight and suspecting Rina was behind it all. And then actually doing the groundwork to prove it. And he sent her new clients when the news of the affair broke and everything. And and he had Nanaka's approval. Honestly there wasn't anything to dislike (except the shit advice...).

The ending tho, was the kicker. Homegirl put on a whole play for the company and really sought to end his life. I expected something, bc how could someone as obsessed as she was just back off? (and he deserved it bc Junpei didn't sacrifice enough for me, got around everyone knowing about his affair but had his wife's business out on the street, didn't have to lose his job like he was supposed to, etc...) but I didn't expect a performance. The flair. A1.

This show didn't necessarily have me gasping (except for that scene)--more like "wow I saw that coming but wow they really did that". Good stuff. And I learned that in Japan if a spouse cheats or otherwise does something that's cause for divorce, they have to pay a compensation fee! Wild.

If you made it to the end of this rant, I appreciate you ;

#holidaylove #ホリデイラブ #japanese drama #jdrama review

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alias-levi · 4 years

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Novel Prep Tag

Big thanks go out to @keen2meecha for the tag! This one took me for ever to fill out but I eventually managed. Also, to save you from scrolling for 30 minutes, I set the cut. I warned you.

First Look

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences

Two hitmen, who learned to keep business and private life separate, happen to meet each other more often than not. Jumping over their own shadows, they get used to each other and things seem to get less work-related.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be?

That’s hard bc I have no plan right now. I’m trying to push myself to a chapter length of, like, 3k-5k; and aim for a number of 20 chapters maybe. So we’ll end up somewhere between 60k and 100k.

3. What’s your novel’s aesthetic?

A rainy night in a big city. The asphalt is illuminated by traffic lights and neon signs. The air is filled with the sounds of traffic and cars.

But also a quiet house in the middle of nowhere. Two people co-existing, not talking much rather speaking through the music that fills the house.

Additionally, killing. Throwing hands until an arm is wrapped around the target’s neck to suffocate them. Or exhaling, calming the heartbeat as much as possible before gently pulling the trigger. Splattering blood over the walls.

4. What other stories have inspired your novel?

Definitely the John Wick Universe and the Hitman Universe (which I initially got the idea from). My WIP currently takes place in the John Wick Universe but I try to distance it through the second draft/editing phase.

5. Three images that get the feel of your novel

Main Characters

6. Who is your protagonist?

Yrsa Agnarsdóttir. She is from Iceland and in her mid-twenties. Also she works as hitwoman. (For more info check out her OC Intro.)

Alexej Kznetsov. He is from Poland and in his late-twenties. He also works as a hitman. (For more info check out his OC Intro.)

7. Who is their closest ally?

There isn’t really a space for allies in their lives, since both, Yrsa and Alexej, spend most of their time travelling and working (alone).

However, for Yrsa there is still her family and her best friend who have her back. Though, they don’t know about her real profession. In later chapters Alexej joins this list.

Alexej, on the other hand, can’t relie on his (biological) family. Also friends are not really his cup of tea. So, there’s way to go for him.

8. Who is their enemy?

Enemies aren’t really a thing in this story but much rather I’d call it competition/rivals.

If the job offer for a hitman is not exclusive but public, it’s first come forst serve. The first person to show up and get the job done is the one who gets paid. Everyone else to show up after that gets left out in the cold.

9. What do they want more than anything?

Alexej? Probably just for Yrsa to shut up and calm down for once.

Yrsa? I have no idea yet. Maybe Alexej to loosen up a bit.

10. Why can’t they have it?

She doesn’t care. As simple as that. Yrsa doesn’t care about what people (other than her really close friends and family) think about her. But for Alexej? Maybe. Some day.

Alexej is way too reserved. He needs his time to get used to Yrsa, and her lively nature, before he can shake off the stiffness.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Alexej feels guilty for his younger brother’s death. He had promised him that he would always protect him. Realizing that he should have been there and save him from the fire, had broken something deep within Alexej.

12. Draw your character

I’m sorry, I won’t make you suffer like that.

13. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

For Yrsa it would be a family member dying (natural cause) or getting hurt (due to her job). She keeps them very close and loves them dearly. Also a friend, like Einar, dying because of whatever reason would really throw her off the track.

Alexej is less easy thrown off the track. He is quick to close his heart and shut down feelings. Something as shallow as a friend getting hurt or dying wouldn’t be that much of a deal. Also “friends” is a term that he doesn’t usually use to describe anybody.

Therefore, it must be something that hit really close to home for Alexej. Maybe visiting his parents and realizing that they didn’t change at all in all those years he had been gone. Bonus points if they also blame him for his brother’s death, like he himself already does.

Yes, yes I’m hinting at a chapter throughout the book here. Thanks for noticing lmao

Plot Points

14. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

Uhh... None, actually? This story is just about watching two people get used to the presence of someone else for the first time in a while. Also about seeing them become closer and, uh, dip into a romantic relationship.

15. Do you know how it ends?

Yes, and I plan on making a second part.

16. What is the theme?

The working title is a quote I read online and I think it’s from the Hitman video games or one of the movies.

“We determine who we are by what we do” obviously states that our destiny is in our own hands. What we do, how we act, is how we are. Everything we do has an impact on our future, and it’s up to us to control this.

But this story is also about the things we are forced to do to survive. Sometimes we can’t chose “what we do” and therefore it has less of an impact on us.

17. What is a recurring symbol?

Fighting, I guess. But also relaxing and coming down from the highs in very particular and private places.

18. Where is the story set?

As for the time We determine […] takes place in the modern world, like ours. Regarding a place it’s set all over the world, since both characters travel a lot. Though, there are recurring locations, like Yrsa’s house in Iceland.

19. Do you have images and scenes in mind already?

I’m still plotting and outlining but also started the first draft and make a lot of things up as I go. But I do have the major/key events, drafted and designed to the last detail, in my head already.

20. What excited you about this story?

I guess it was attempting to write something slow, where the characters need to grow before they’re ready to get involved in the relationship. I have never written something like that before so I see this as a bit of a challenge.

Also I haven’t really written anything for a long while. Especially anything longer. That also made me decide to officially pick up on this.

21. What is your usual writing method?

After vaguely making things up in my head while watching movies or series, I write that down slightly more detailed in an app where I can already structure everything and easily change stuff. Then, when I actually start typing things out, the real creative flow starts and I feed everything into a Google Doc or Word Doc.

Uh, I’m just gonna tag a bunch of people. I don’t know whether all of you have a WIP you work on but if you feel like doing it, here you go!

@liz-pooh @yogurt-writing @anxious-bean-writing @aelenko (but I think you got tagged already)

#community gathering #we determine who we are by what we do #novel prep tag #wip: wwa

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thezolblade · 5 years

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Jon: “I wish I could talk it through with Martin, or Tim, or Sasha…But we never really did that, did we?”

I’ve been meaning to pull together some meta ever since hearing that line. As understandable as it is that Jon would regret the times he failed to communicate, as true as it is that he’s often fallen down there (and it’s fun seeing the fandom screaming over that on an ongoing basis)... I’d say he was too hard on himself by saying ‘never’, since there were times when he tried to communicate to the best of his ability. More than that, there are lines that give me the impression he’s always highly valued shared knowledge - that as well as being driven by a deep desire to know, he also wants to help other people know more, and gets frustrated when they don’t want to share knowledge with him or others.

Some quotes here, and interpretation below, of times when he tried to go beyond the ‘archive the closed cases’ job description that was supposedly expected of him, pursuing his priorities in the expectation that people would help - when he still expected that other people would help as a common sense assumption - or discussed events with the assistants beyond the bounds of what he was officially asking them to do for the job, etc. (Mostly s1 bc this is taking more evenings than i expected just from looking through the transcripts and a lot of episodes don’t have them yet):

MAG 001 - Anglerfish

ARCHIVIST: When an investigation has gone as far as it can, it is transferred to the Archives. [...] it seems as though little of the actual investigations have been stored in the Archives, so the only thing in most of the files are the statements themselves. [...] I plan to digitise the files as much as possible and record audio versions, though some will have to be on tape recorder as my attempts to get them on my laptop have met with... significant audio distortions. Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.

MAG 002 - Do Not Open

ARCHIVIST: When the Institute first investigated, it doesn’t look like they were able to find a single piece of evidence to support the existence of this scratched coffin, and to be honest I didn’t think it was worth wasting anyone’s time over now, nearly twenty years later. That said, I did mention it to Tim yesterday, and apparently he did some digging of his own.

MAG 004 - Pageturner

ARCHIVIST: So it doesn’t appear that we have any concrete leads to go on. Still, I will be bringing this up with Elias and recommending that the search for any other missed books from the Leitner library be made this Institute’s highest priority. Jurgen Leitner has done the world enough harm and we must pursue all available avenues to ensure that he does no more.

MAG 006 - Squirm

ARCHIVIST: I can’t find any evidence that my predecessor took follow-up action on this statement, so I’ve taken the step of reporting Mr Hodge’s to the ECDC. We were unable to locate him to request a follow-up interview and if he has had intercourse with one of Prentiss’ victims, then they’ll need to deal with him sooner rather than later. I just hope it’s not too late already.

MAG 011 - Dreamer

ARCHIVIST: I’m not... entirely sure whether to bring this up with Elias or not. When he hired me, he was vague on the point of what happened to my predecessor, Gertrude Robinson. [...] I had Tim look into it, as I don’t entirely trust the others not to have written it as a practical joke and slipped it into the archives. [...] Still, I might have a word with Rosie, to make sure I get a copy of any new statements as soon as they’re made, not just once the researchers are done with them. She seemed very open to idea of recording them, so I’m hopeful she’ll be willing to do this too.

MAG 017- The Boneturner’s Tale

ARCHIVIST: I've barely scratched the surface of the archives and have already uncovered evidence of two separate surviving books from Jurgen Leitner's library. Until he mentioned that, I was tempted to dismiss much of it out of hand, but as it stands now I believe every word. I've seen what Leitner's work can do, and this news, even 17 years out of date, is still very concerning to me. I'm going to have a discussion with Elias as to what we can do to address the issue. I know he'll just give me the old “record and study, not interfere or contain” speech again, but I at least need to make him aware of it.

MAG 020 - Desecrated Host

ARCHIVIST: This all leads me to believe that there may have been a second person there that night, although from talking with the police, I get the impression that there is little appetite for re-opening the case, considering how successful the initial prosecution was.

MAG 022 - Colony

ARCHIVIST: In which case there's a room in the Archives I use to sleep when working late. I suggest you stay there for now. I'll talk to Elias about whether we can get extra security, but the Archives have enough locks for now. [...] Well, in that time I have received several text messages from your phone, saying you were ill with stomach problems. The last one said that you thought it “might be a parasite”, though my calls trying to follow up were never answered. [...] I just received another text message. From you. “Keep him. We have had our fun. He will want to see it when the Archivist’s crimson fate arrives.”

MARTIN: What does that mean?

ARCHIVIST: It means I ask Elias to hire some extra security. I should probably warn Sasha and Tim as well.

MAG 024 - Strange Music

When discussing this case, Tim said it reminded him of some articles he'd read on travelling circuses in Russia and Poland during the early 20th century. On a whim, I hunted down a few of the volumes he mentioned in the Institute's library, and sure enough on page 43 of Gregory Petry's Freaks and Followers: Circuses in the 1940s, I found a reproduction of an old black-and-white photograph.

MAG 026 - A Distortion

SASHA: Well, I’m sure you know I was sceptical about how dangerous this Jane Prentiss was when you first suggested Martin stay in the archive. [...] You were having some argument with Tim about... um, oh, who’s that architect he’s obsessed with?

ARCHIVIST: Robert Smirke. [...] ARCHIVIST: Sasha has taken a few days off to recuperate, and I’m having a word with Elias about getting some extra CO2 fire extinguishers for the Archive.

MAG 033 - Boatswain’s Call

TIM: Um, look I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure... it’s not a big deal, I just think it might be worth re-recording these statements.

ARCHIVIST: No. I don’t have time. I still have a mountain of haphazard statements to get through, not to mention that I need to keep this wretched tape recorder on hand just in case I encounter one of the files too stubborn to work on anything else. And when I do, I have to actually read the damn thing, which is...

TIM (BACKGROUND): Oh, woah, woah... woah!

ARCHIVIST: Fine. It’s fine. I just haven’t been sleeping much these last few months, what with all this... worm business. Which reminds me, if you do see Elias, tell him thanks for the extra extinguishers. [...] ARCHIVIST: In addition to such business ventures, the Lukas family also provides funding to several academic and research organisations, including the Magnus Institute. Much as I want to dig further into this, especially given certain parallels with case 0161301, Elias gets very twitchy when we look into anything that might conceivably have funding repercussions. [...] Maybe I’ll mention it to Elias. Just in case.

MAG 035 - Old Passages

ARCHIVIST: You should have seen Tim’s face when I told him. Architecture is one of his specialist areas, and he has always talked of Smirke as one that fascinates him. How did he phrase it? “A master of subtle stability.” From a professional standpoint, it also interests him that Smirke’s buildings have higher percentages of reported paranormal sightings than any other architect of similar profile.

MAG 036 - Taken Ill

TIM: Er, what is it?

ARCHIVIST: A lighter. An old Zippo.

TIM: You smoke?

ARCHIVIST: No. And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!

TIM: Okay. Is there anything unusual about it?

ARCHIVIST: Not really. Just a sort of spider web design on the front. Doesn’t mean anything to me. You?

TIM: Ah no. No.

ARCHIVIST: Well... show it to the others, see what they think.

MAG 039 - Infestation

ARCHIVIST: I got it!

[PULLS TAPE RECORDER FROM THE MORASS OF WORMS] [...]

SASHA: Why record it?

ARCHIVIST: What?

SASHA: Before, in the office. It, it was stupid going for the tape recorder like that, and then when you dropped it out there— [...]

ARCHIVIST: I just... I don’t want to become a mystery. I refuse to become another goddamn mystery. [...] Every real statement just leads... deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet. And to top it all, I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude. Officially she’s still missing, but Elias is no help and the police were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality. If I die, wormfood or... something else, whatever, I’m going to make damn sure the same doesn’t happen to me. Whoever takes over from me is going to know exactly what happened. [...]

ARCHIVIST: Of course, I believe. Of course I do. Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact storage? That’s enough to convince anyone. But, but even before that... Why do you think I started working here? It’s not exactly glamorous. I have... I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Within reason. I mean. I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe... thirty, forty that are... that go on tape. Now those, I believe, at least for the most part.

MARTIN: Then why do you—

ARCHIVIST: Because I’m scared, Martin! Because when I record these statements it feels... it feels like I’m being watched. I... I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like... like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will... know somehow. The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer.

MARTIN: Well... It wasn’t.

ARCHIVIST: No. No, it wasn’t.

[...]

ARCHIVIST: I mean at the Archive in general. Why haven’t you quit?

MARTIN: Are you giving me my review now?

ARCHIVIST: No... We’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing and, truth be told, the question’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of... this. Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew. Even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job? Why are you still here?

MARTIN: [Considering] Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t... move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.

Martin...You’re not, uh... You didn’t die here, did you?

MARTIN: What? What? N-No... what?!

ARCHIVIST: No, I just... No, just the way you phrased that...

MARTIN: Made you think I was a ghost?

ARCHIVIST: No... it’s—

MARTIN: No, no... it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think.

MAG041 - Too Deep

Why do I still feel like I’m being watched? I’d just about convinced myself it was Prentiss, watching me in secret while she filled the walls with her writhing hordes, but no. She is dead and gone, and still whenever I talk into this... damn thing, I feel this... I’m being watched. I know I am. [...] my primary focus must be on who killed Gertrude Robinson, and I do not believe for a moment that it was a wall-moving spectre from the depths of the earth. No, far more likely it’s one of my colleagues. Elias is a prime suspect, but it could have been any of them. [...] I can make two tapes from each recording. One containing the main statement and notes, which will be stored in the archive, and the other containing the statement, notes, and... this supplement, which will chronicle my own investigations. These tapes will be hidden. If you’re hearing this, I assume you’re my replacement, following my death or disappearance, and have received instructions on where to find them. [...] This level of paranoia is new to me, but I’m learning fast. Trust can get you killed.

...So, reading back over season 1 was interesting. Jon was asked to organise an archive of statements that were no longer under investigation by the institute. (Leading a team of four ex-researchers, himself included, who were used to working on open investigations. He was told that the institute’s mission statement was to study but not to ‘interfere or contain’, to the point where he got sick of Elias giving him that speech.)

He believed every statement that we heard him record, and he had all 3 assistants take part in re-opening an investigation into each of them through all available lines of enquiry (instead of devoting more resource to getting the existing material filed in a sensible system asap).

Wherever there was a chance it would do some good, he reported his findings to the authorities, and pushed to see if the Institute or the police would go further on the basis of his information.

He discussed the cases with his assistants thoroughly enough to know their areas of personal interest in the supernatural, and when they got into trouble, he immediately offered them as much protection as he could and went to Elias for help, prompting some of the others to express skepticism about the threats that he was clearly taking seriously, maybe excessively so...?

And yet because he felt watched by something supernatural, and convinced himself that it was Jane Prentiss somehow, he lied constantly by feigning skepticism even while following every lead and pushing everyone else to do the same. It’s a wonder anyone was fooled tbh, and it backfired by discouraging Martin and Sasha from confiding in him until they were in deep trouble. It also made his complaint about lack of sleep look relatively grumpy/petty to Tim, since he didn’t quite admit the full scale of the problem with nightmares and the exhaustion that the statements magically caused.

When Elias was feigning a normal level of ignorance in ep 39 he told Sasha: “You know how those two are... John puts on a good show, but sometimes I swear he’s worse than Martin.” And in ep 40 he told Jon: “I... know I have often seemed dismissive of your concerns before, and in fact I was getting ready to raise the issue of Martin’s continuing to live in the Institute’s basement”. If Elias was faking something like the rest of the Institute staff’s attitude (to things he wouldn’t admit to knowing all about)... then people really did doubt Jon’s skeptic act, feeling that he was always complaining about supernatural threats and going overboard in trying to protect people.

That changed in season 2, when he came to believe that one of his colleagues had murdered Gertrude, and stopped trusting all of them. When he was worried that his own death might be imminent, in the midst of Prentiss’ attack and in the paranoid aftermath, one of his main concerns was communicating with his successor through the tapes.

He doesn’t want his fate to be a mystery to those he leaves behind. Considering how much danger he puts himself in, diving into a pile of worms for the recorder, and later stating that he’d rather die exploring the tunnels than leave the Institute’s secrets buried, he’s more interested in getting information out to other people than in surviving.

Mid-season 2, when he gets scared, he talks about taking a break from his investigations until he can get more help from the police, especially as he thinks he’s trying to track down a human murderer. That remaining trust in authority doesn’t lead him to him collaborating with Basira to the extent he’d hoped, since she eventually makes it clear she wants nothing more to do with him, and he discovers that not!Sasha is a supernatural threat that the police couldn’t help with anyway.

The start of season 3 sees him reflecting that he didn’t turn to his assistants for help because he didn’t want to get them killed, and once he makes it back to the archives, he tries to overcome his recent trust issues and more long-standing hero complex by involving the others in his plans again - though they take care not to let those plans show up on tape, since they’re plotting against Elias by that point. When Jon asks everyone to record their thoughts before the unknowing in Testament, he’s trying to get them all communicating - with themselves, each other, and anyone who follows in their footsteps.

So far in season 4, he’s been more ready than ever to collaborate, but the others are mostly refusing to talk to him. His first instinct when he uncovers immediately relevant information is to go tell Basira, and he heeds her advice when he asks whether they can tell Melanie. (Which was unfair on Melanie, but at least you can see why he’d fear for his life after she threatened to attack him on sight if he ever tried to talk to her again.) He tried to tell Martin what had been going on instead of trying to compel information from him, and apparently hasn’t had much chance to speak to anyone else, or to leave the building.

He has the power to compel other people to see truths that they wouldn’t have recognised on their own; he only had to ask Tim what he was holding for Tim to see the detonator. And he may compare himself to Gertrude for losing assistants, but he talked to Sasha and Tim about the threats they were facing at the time, to the best of his knowledge. If Gertrude seems to have fought her battles by deliberately misleading people so that she could sacrifice them, and by taking out ‘loose ends’ to keep herself from being incriminated...

Well, I think Jon’s on his way to distinguishing himself from his predecessor through good communication, despite the massive stumbling blocks of his paranoid phase and isolation. (And through his extreme protectiveness towards individual people, compared to her way of prioritising the big picture.) He’s always wanted to get the truth out in the open, despite sometimes holding back out of fear that he won’t be believed, or he’ll get himself or others killed. Some of his most uncharismatic moments have been his attempts to tell people the truth when his knowledge was too patchy to convince them, and he wasn’t tactful enough to try to bring them on-side with diplomacy instead of facts and theories. As his powers grow, one of his most effective abilities might be to help his allies see the truth, so that they can join forces by choice.

E.g. maybe he’ll eventually find out what Peter’s up to from Martin - or maybe he’ll ask about something that he didn’t even realise was part of the plan, granting Martin an insight into something that neither of them knew beforehand.

[Edit: Wrote the above post in the mid-s4 hiatus and, uh. He sure did try to collaborate on a lot of stuff, but. Also fucked up pretty thoroughly, so. The s4 thoughts feel a bit over-optimistic in retrospect. Leaving it strikethrough rather than deleted though.]

#the magnus archives #tma thoughts

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prorevenge · 5 years

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Psycho Ex gets my egoless revenge with a side of heavy-duty karma.

The following story occurred over the course of 13-8 years ago, and I apologize preemptively for the length, because it is a bit involved.

I was in a relationship for 9 years with a girl I met in college. We broke up on the cusp of my 29th birthday. While breakups and divorce are never trauma-free, this one was as close to that as I believe is humanly possible to get, there were no fights and minimal drama, and I moved to a new city to get a fresh start and be nearer my dad/stepmom/half sisters, as I'm close to them and it was nice to have family during this. Get an apartment, start over, everything's good. Then I meet "her."

Things with her seemed good at first. She was the polar opposite of my ex. She's quiet yet nice, had her life relatively together (my first wife was very unfocused and horrible with money), physically a complete contrast, wild in the bedroom--I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Anyhoo, I fall for her hard. We have a whirlwind romance, move in shortly, and we have this glamorous life where we make good money (she was a corporate accountant, I had a decent small business, we're pulling in 150K+ combined), renting a luxury apartment, one car paid and the other brand new, no kids. Things are great, except that we drink too much together and some other underlying issues I'm blind to at the time. We get soused one night and drive to Vegas, and get married on the strip after 6 months of dating and 9 of knowing each other. The ink is barely dry on my divorce papers from version 1.0, but no matter, I'm in love. My family likes her overall. Her family loves me. We adopt cats. We talk about trying to have a kid.

We upgrade our life and take on more debt, just as the housing bubble bursts and the economy tanks, she loses a couple jobs due to her inability to show up on Mondays, and I start losing clients as the ones I have start cutting their advertising budget (my field). Things start to get pinched, and she first starts complaining, then gets petulant, because now we can't spend the way we used to, the quarterly mini-vacations dry up, plus we're cooking at home instead of going out to eat 4x a week. We basically stop having sex a little more than a year into the relationship (didn't realize it then, because I was dumb and love-blind, but she cheated on me during this period).seRealizing what we're up against with our normal bills plus our credit cards, I go out and get a job bartending at a posh resort, the only other real skill I have at the time that's marketable. I get two other part time gigs to help make ends meet. She still complains, and throws me an ultimatum before I even start getting paychecks, laying the blame at my feet. I say fine, screw this then. Had we stuck it out even a few more months, things would have started to turn a financial corner. Instead, she goes full two-faced, mean-spirited bitch on me. The night we first fight, she "attempts suicide" by scratching her wrist with a leatherman, then calls 911, gets admitted to the hospital (I arrive home to cops telling me this), and has the security guard toss me when I show up to see if she's okay because she doesn't want to talk to me. I use the quotes because there was a small collection of firearms nearby I bought for her target shooting hobby which were untouched, so it was obviously just a ploy for attention.

We basically fight for the next week, I give her everything she wants, which includes leaving the house, signing over my new truck to her, and only taking stuff I brought into the relationship, basically enough to fill a small storage space. She's financially pinched so I sell my office furniture for cash and don't even touch the bank account, just take my biz money and one CC I got separate from her. I go to the Bay Area for a few months, financially struggle, don't get the job I was sure was on lock. During this time, I have this revelation one evening--I drink too much and that it's caused a load of problems in my life, so I quit, and I haven't touched a drop since.

Broke and realizing nothing I try is working, I come back to town, live with my dad for a month, find a roommate, then a shit retail job (my business has dropped from 7-8K per month at its height to now around 500/mo), I bike everywhere bc I can't afford a car, and my credit is toast partially due to her love of spending on plastic, so I'm facing bankruptcy. I'm 31, and this is really humbling, but whatever, I'm alive, have dealt with hardship before, this won't last forever. She has kept her house, declared personal BK on her debts, keeps her car, and has been dating a series of men starting a couple weeks after we split. While I never asked the details, apparently she's also reached out to a few of my friends and badmouthed me a bit. This would be mildly annoying, but add in two factors--she's dragging her feet on the divorce due to not having money to file, keeps up contact on the pretense of us needing to talk, but plays emotionally manipulative head games during the whole sequence ("I've realized I still love you, that's why you can make me cry so easily," and other bullshit Hallmark movie lines like this). Also, we live in a suburb that's smaller and tightly knit, so multiple places I go to like my church, the bookstore I frequent, and the coffee shop right by my place, she talks endless shit to people. Says I was a cheater and physically/emotionally abusive (complete crap, but whatever), I'm stalking her, I supposedly stole tens of thousands of dollars from her, the whole nine. Some people actually believe her, I even get threatened by a wannabe biker one night that's literally twice my age with violence, itself a funny story but not the point.

Finally, after some more bullshit and back and forth, she leaves town (more falsehoods around this, including her borrowing a bit of money she didn't end up paying back, and sticking me with a massive overage on our cell bill right before we split the account). My dumb, trusting heart hurts but I'm mostly relieved to see the last of her, realizing she's only nice to me when she wants something. She goes to NY to shack up with another guy, gets pregnant 15 minutes later. Finally sends me divorce paperwork. I sign it and send back quickly, all notarized docs, everything organized and flagged. She attempts to be "friends" and I want no part of this BS. I'm businesslike, she gets upset. She screws up filing, blames me. I say "whatever," straighten out the court issues. One week after the divorce is finalized, the kid is born. No word from her after that for two years, thank god. I get a new career, start advancing in it, and start dating a new woman that I'm still with 10 years later. Weirdly enough, they knew each other, and she didn't like her, partially because one of my ex's infidelity partners was her ex-husband, during a time they were exploring patching things up for the kids' sake (though there were multiple reasons for her distrust, apparently she always gave my wife an icky intuitive feeling).

So flash forward two years. I get a call from my current squeeze. She's just talked to a friend who was also a very brief roomie of "her" after our split. She's breaking up with the baby daddy. There's a custody fight. He's saying he doesn't know if it's his. Will I help her? Well, it's the right thing to do, so even though I don't trust or particularly like her, I say yes. I get the call, and a sob story. Most of it doesn't add up--he took the kid, but thinks it's actually mine, to prove paternity I'd need to come to NY and take a paternity test at one of their facilities, also he hit her, put a GPS tracker on her car, brother is a Russian mobster who threatened her, all very far-fetched. Needless to say, even without this fanciful tale, I generally assume if this woman is talking, it's a lie, so I'm suspicious. Her lawyer calls me, and seems like a clueless shmuck. I get a letter from him, very unprofessional and not even on a letterhead (every other legal doc I've seen has "from the law offices of blah blah" on it, but this is literally just off a laser printer), and says, verbatim "I, M___ K___, am the ex-husband of J___ K___, and was married to her from 6/07-8/09. I have no legal interest in the child." Super shady.

Not wanting to end up in a situation where I've allowed myself to be legally fucked over, I make my own lawyer consultation appointment. Before I can even go, the baby daddy finds me on Facebook and sends me a message. Between calls with him, his lawyer, and the impartial lawyer NY state appoints for the child's welfare, I get a very different story. He knows it's his, he had a paternity test done on the sly at birth because she had been promiscuous before they got together, and she was pregnant so quickly he was concerned. They broke up because she was drinking too much, he busted her with a bottle of vodka as she was driving with the kid in the car. She stood up in court, claimed I was actually the father, and she had no idea where to find me (he found me in 10 seconds online, I'm a tech guy with massive social media presence, a tech blog, multiple writing credits on publications, my frigging name as a domain, plus I've had the same cell phone number for 14 years). Also the other BS was just that, he's an IT guy for a university and his brother works for a carpet cleaning chain, plus just like in our relationship, he never hit or stalked her, etc.

So she, not knowing what I know, starts sending me text messages. I say "Filled out and on its way back to your lawyer," and toss it in the trash. I'm so tempted to send her some poetic message about how the truth is coming back to haunt her, but I resist, because I'm not doing this for her, but rather for the sake of their son and his father, so let's keep my ego out of it. I provide legal statements to all in the court. Tell them I know it's not possibly mine because I hadn't been with her since April 15 of '08, kid's birthday is in Sept of '09 (I remember the date because, due to taxes, I got fucked twice that day). Explain when she was in NY, which is the likely dates of conception, prove I was thousands of miles away on the west coast. Tell them to look through her social media, where she meticulously tagged herself and took tons of pictures of even their mundane locations. Provide a blood sample to a local lab. Tell them salacious details about her drinking and occasional drug use, including her abused prescriptions and a previous hospitalization where she was held for psych eval due to taking way too many pills.

Court comes, and she gets blindsided. Stack of depositions and a collection of statements from me were what sealed the deal, apparently, and the incredibly stupid game she was running is fully exposed. Gets no custody, no support, supervised visitation once a week. I run into her ex-roomie, upset, but instead of giving her attitude, I just calmly tell her the scam J__ was running, then let her "pull out of me" the truth about our split. She's flabbergasted, but also a horrible gossip, so it gets around town like wildfire. People I barely know, including the aforementioned biker, all come up to me and apologize for misjudging me. I'm years past the stage of having any morbid curiosity to check her social media, but every few months she pops up as a "suggested friend," and I notice bemusedly the number of mutual friends plummets from triple digits to eventually 3. Baby's father sends me a massive Amex gift card for Christmas, as much as I make in a week at the time. I call and tell him I don't know if I can accept it, I don't want him or anyone to think I did this for a reward. He virtually begs, saying "you helped save my family. This is nothing in comparison. Thank you." We break down crying on the phone, and eventually form an odd, distant friendship based on mutual respect for each other. I even had dinner with him a couple times when I had to go to NY for biz over the years, and I always buy, because the poor guy has done enough and gone through enough having to coparent with this train wreck.

To this day, she's apparently struggling to stay sober (alcohol and other substances), and has minimal involvement in her child's life due to her inability to show up when expected. Baby daddy tells me she's been in legal trouble, financial issues up the ass, and a string of boyfriends that never last more than a few months. I'm doing well, got married again three years ago, raised step-children, am reasonably financially successful, and rather like my life. Granted, a large part of this story is just karma in action, but I feel like I did the right thing, wasn't petty, and what I did do hit her where it hurts.

TL;DR: Ex-wife fucks my life, destroys me financially, tries to trash my reputation, then tries to use me as a scheme in her custody battle years later. I talk to the court directly, work with the baby daddy's lawyers, and get her exposed for the psycho, lying wench she is. She loses custody, struggles, and the good people live mostly happily ever after.

(source) (story by heymomo7)

#prorevenge #by heymomo7 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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cosmicmoved · 5 years

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NEW MUSE ADDITION! this shouldn’t be much of a surprise bc i’ve been talking about this for a bit but i’ve decided it’s time to add my scammer/swindler muse back to the blog. let me introduce you all to JUN, a professional pain in the neck! (: i haven’t written up his proper backstory yet but this is a revamp of an old oc that i totally scrapped. they have similar names and certain backstory points are similar but i’d much prefer to think of him as a brand new character. read on under the cut for more about him! i haven’t added him to the muse page yet but i’ll do that later! (side note that this will probs be the last male oc i’ll add for a while, unless i end up dropping somebody else for some reason, bc i don’t like that there’s such an imbalance on the blog rn)

hi, first i just wanna say...you won’t be able to tell from all of the shit i’ve written under here bc these are mostly just quick and basic facts but jun is generally better suited to like...heavier plots, i guess?? on account of him being a criminal? i DO DEFINITELY wanna write casual stuff for him too but my point is that i really don’t want him to be treated like a dumb haha comedy muse just because he’s annoying. i’ve had issues with ppl reducing muses of mine to dumb comic relief-type characters without my permission in the past and i want to be clear that, even though i write this guy with a sense of humour, that doesn’t mean i also don’t take him seriously as a character either. i WOULD like to write proper plots for him and i want him to be an interesting & hopefully complex character so please try to keep from flanderising him. i don’t think that comedy & drama need to be kept separate. i think you can absolutely write serious plotlines and drama and all that shit while keeping a sense of humour about a character (’: basically, i want to make jokes about him and that’s okay to do but please don’t turn him INTO a joke. he’s still a criminal and good at scamming people! anyw....onto the trivia!

he was born as jun shinozuka on the twenty-eighth of november, 1996 (i.e; he’s twenty-three next month) and in yokohama, japan. he moved to the US with his brother when he was like eight. he moved with his older brother, mamoru, to go live with his aunt and uncle after his mother died. he never knew his dad.

he doesn’t tell people his surname, preferring to go by a mononym for the sake of seeming mysterious. his real name is actually pretty easy to find out. he still keeps in contact with his brother so you’d really just have to find him and you’d have your answers. but he doesn’t appreciate people referring to him by his full name because it ruins the fun /:

jun wasn’t an especially well-behaved kid and he had trouble sitting still & focusing in class while his brother got good grades and was generally very well-liked by his teachers. growing up, he had an awful habit of just bullshitting all the time but he got really good at it after a while. since he kind of concluded lying was the thing he was good at it, he decided that he might as well find a way to make a career of it. this lead to his career in the scamming business. the irony is that his brother, always the exact opposite to jun, is a police detective. he knows jun’s up to shady shit but he doesn’t know all the details.

his habit of lying, again, started when he was a kid because he thought it’d be a good way to get people to like him better. people would pay more attention to him and think he was cool & interesting on his own, rather than him having to live in his brother’s shadow all the fuckin time.

that isn’t to say jun hasn’t been arrested bc he has. just not for the conman stuff. he usually gets arrested when things go wrong, e.g; he once got arrested for ‘destruction of public property’ bc he broke the sign of a streetsign pole when trying to hide from a bunch of guy he’d pissed off and tried to throw it at them. yeah. anyway, his brother HAS bailed him out before because he’s a warm-hearted guy and he loves his lil bro, even if jun only ever thanks him by insulting the police and trying to leave by way of climbing out windows.

he comes off as kind of an idiot most of the time but he’s actually very good at his job. his #1 mode of operation is selling junk to people while claiming that they’re something much more valuable but he is not beyond selling shitty or unreliable information to people either. in his defence, he’s not forcing anybody to listen. it’s their issue if they want to believe him. he’s also willing to work on bigger scams with people for a higher profit but he tends to stick to smaller schemes because he’s mostly a one-man deal.

although he’s undeniably a criminal, he tries to avoid taking advantage of people TOO much.....like he doesn’t target vulnerable people or anything because he’d just feel super guilty about it and that’d force him to rethink his whole life trajectory and he’s not about to unload all that on himself. thinking is for losers. no thanks.

100% the kind of guy who thinks kids' breakfast cereal is an any time meal

he’s really annoying! it’s okay if your muse wants to kick his ass! because he’s annoying!

he’s kind of a shameless flirt, esp w/women.

jun is basically incapable of holding a serious conversation about feelings and shit like that. he’ll just make lame jokes to steer you elsewhere.

it’s ok to bully him.

#« 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐑 (ᴊᴜɴ) » / 「 headcanon. 」#i changed the og version of this muse's fc so much that i don't give a SHIT anymore #i'm NOT CHANGING HIS FC AGAIN #i originally used THIS fc for a canon muse i won't mention in some closed groups but #i'm gonna use him for jun bc i think he could pull of the lil shit vibes i want (: while still looking respectable enough for ppl to believe #all of his bs i guess ???#i don't plan on writing him asap bc i need to make a new icon psd for him that's just his own i guess?? and i need to get caps of his fc #but i DO wanna write him !! (:#sorry abt the note at the beginning but i've had trouble w/that in the past #i've had too many ppl use me making jokes about my muses as an excuse to take the piss #& use them as a comic relief character to make their muse seem...idek???#it's really rude lmao #anyw !! i hope he's at least a little interesting and ppl will like him! (':#i'm gonna work on replies and stuff now asdfghgf i always get so nervous when i add new muses but uhhh skull emoji

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langernameohnebedeutung · 5 years

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Would you have any recommendations on where one could hear/learn a German accent? I'm learning the language but my most recent teacher said that my accent/pronunciation is not very good despite being at a B1 level. I think this is probably due to I have not one, not two, but THREE separate American accents already because of how many times we moved when I was younger, so adding another accent is hell my mouth cannot keep up. Thanks for your time.

Hey sorry that I took my time answering this.Okay, first of, Josie’s personal opinion time (feel free to skip this lmao): It’s not bad to have an accent. Everyone has an accent - not just because of your native tongue but also because of the people around you, your class, family, friends or whoever you practice with. I have a German accent and probably always will have, because I learnt English from teachers with German accents, with partners and fellow pupils who had a German accent and now I study English at a German university and people around me still speak with the same accent. 90% of the conversations I hold in English are German-accented English. But at this point, I refuse to consider my accent “inferior” to...a Yorkshire accent or a New York accent just because those are “native” accents. Of course, it’s also not bad or anything to want to sound like a native speaker and I’m not going to tell you that if you truly want to speak like a native-speaker you shouldn’t pursue that interest - but it’s something few people really 100% accomplish, so pls make sure you’re not putting the actually important things like vocab, grammar and you know - enjoyment - on hold to pursue something really elusive that your teacher thinks is important. It is very hard to accomplish especially for someone not living in Germany and Germany is a country with a lot of different regional and foreign accents, so most of us have some experience with different pronunciations - so you will most likely be understood.

Now, the my actual answer to your question:

Listening to people always helps, so does talking. I noticed it when I was still in school. I started watching American shows and it strongly affected my vocabulary and pronunciation - mind you, we were taught to speak strictly British English, American English was an evil taboo - but later I discovered my love for British films and tv shows and I reverted to the English I learnt at school, for the most part (not regarding the language level but the variety). So I definitely recommend exposing yourself to native German-speakers bc otherwise, your main influence will be your fellow students.

There are a lot of German shows on Netflix - you can check if some of them have English subtitles, I know “Dark” for example does. (I’m not sure about Vorstadtweiber, but if you want to get a taste of a Viennese accent, this might also be fun to check out. “Extra3″ is a German satire show that puts all its episodes on Youtube and with a VPN you can also access the ZDF Mediathek and RTL-Now, two very big German tv channels).

It’s especially helpful to watch out for words you’ve so far only seen in their written form so that you know you struggle with. If you hear them, maybe stop the video and try to repeat it. If you’re interested in specific accents from specific regions (which might be a bit hard, mind you) you can also look for some source material from different regions. For example the German audio of “My Fair Lady” has her speaking with a very thick Berliner accent instead of Cockney, so that’s something you might find interesting bc it’s a film you might already be familiar with. Another tip: I noticed about myself that I easily start thinking in another language, even if I’m really far from fluent and miss words. And doing that I noticed that my inner monologue still has a German accent but it’s much weaker than when you know. my actual physical mouth is involved, for some reason. I can also imitate different English accents in my head much better than I can when I speak - you might try that and even talk to yourself. If there’s no one to tell you you are doing it wrong, it becomes much easier to experiment and have fun with language.

In my experience, it also helps to imitate the accent the speakers of your target language have while speaking your language: I noticed that when I was practising Russian on duolingo: Now, duolingo makes you repeat sentences to practice your pronunciation and my Russian pronunciation was horrible - until I purposefully tried to sound “Russian” - suddenly Duo understood what I was saying. So you might try to speak German with what feels like an exaggerated German accent to you, even if it feels weird at first. (I do the same when I want to sound British)Another thing that helped me (much more than teachers ever did) is to watch English people contemplate and imitate and play with German accents - because even if it’s something I made fun of a lot these last days, it’s interesting and helpful, because if done for comedic or storytelling purposes (I’m going to give an example of that later on), it often highlights the aspects that make it sound different from a native pronunciation and help you localise these aspects in your own language use. That said - the reason I make fun especially of British people playing Germans is that their accents are often based on other British people pretending to be German, not actual Germans so it sounds...very different from the way we speak English. So keep in mind that it’s not always authentic. (Personally, I still think I learnt how not to pronounce the word “convenience” from an episode of Blackadder but that’s another story)

Okay I threatened that I would add an example on how accents in media might help you understand your own accent better:

There are many examples of English-speakers pretending to speak German, but since you are already at B1 and probably speak better German than most of them (many just say stuff without knowing the words or even...just make up sounds that they think sound German), so I picked a film scene that I mentioned in a post a few days ago: the pub scene from Inglorious Basterds (which I saw on youtube is apparently popular for language teaching purposes).

It’s interesting because Michael Fassbender is half-German and knows the language somewhat so he at least knows what the words he’s saying mean. Also, he’s surrounded by native speakers which make for good comparison material. (mind you, Inglorious Basterds is obv. a film about the NS-era so while the German they speak sounds rather modern, I can understand if you would like to avoid that content. Especially since the second video ends in a shooting.) I couldn’t find the whole scene online but if you have the DVD, you might want to look into it, because it’s much longer than the excerpts I found online and maybe you can spot more of the language patterns I will point. (It also has Christoph Waltz in it and his Austrian dialect which might also be interesting to you)

Now, what you need to know is that Fassbender plays an English spy pretending to be a German officer - but when someone points out his accent, he tries to pretend to be Swiss. He does a pretty good job speaking German actually and a German would understand every word he is saying (unlike we do with some other actors pretending to speak German) - but it’s also very obvious with every word that he’s not a native speaker (and no one would actually mistake him for Swiss.) (btw if you want to check out what an actual Swiss dialect sounds like: (x) (I could imagine it’s very difficult for English speakers, because it has a lot of “ch” sounds and is very guttural.

Now, back to Inglorious Basterds:

The first thing that’s very interesting to look at is the first 30 seconds of the first video because it’s clear that they made Fassbender exaggerate his accent because in that scene it leads to a German soldier he’s talking to noticing and pointing out his strange pronunciation. At 0:35 in the first video it’s very, very obvious when he yells the word “zurückkehren” (which finally makes the soldier address the issue)- because he pronounces it “zurück-kerr-än” - a very typical pronunciation with an English accent. Whereas a German would usually say: zurück-kehr’n” (You can compare it to one of the Germans saying “zurückkehren” at minute 2:30) It is also interesting to compare how Fassbender pronounces an “r” vs. how the Germans do it - because he pronounces it like you would in English, while the German “r” sound is a bit harsher and produced a little bit further back in the throat. (Tip: If You can feel it vibrate in your mouth, you’re doing it rrrright).

When he says “rrrrrüpelhaft” it seems as if he’s trying to pronounce the “r” like a native speaker there - but overdoes it. (Fassbender does the same exaggerated “r” sound at 2:56 with the word “Regisseur” and at 2:33 with “Riefenstahl”) - which just sounds a bit off. Compare it to Til Schweiger at 1:00 saying “betrunken (oder völlig) verrückt”. btw If you compare the way Schweiger says “sprechen” in that sentence with Michael Fassbender saying “sprechen” at 2:35 you will also notice the difference in the way they pronounce the “ch”.In that sequence at 2:30, Fassbender also says “gesehen” a lot - and always pronounces it G-esehen, while a German would probably pronounce it ge-seh-’n

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Something that many German learners struggle with - that you can observe in these videos as well - is the pronunciation of infinitive verbs. German verbs, as you know, usually end in “-en” (gehen, sagen, sprechen, hoffen. etc). Now, German speakers usually barely utter the second “e” at all, it’s often: geh’n, sag’n, sprech’n - it*s something that sounds a little off sometimes when Fassbender speaks, because he often puts more emphasis on it than a German would for example when he asks “Haben Sie den Riefenstahl Film gesehen?” or at 3:24 in the second video when he says “aufsteh.en.”You can also observe the impact of the native English - at 2:50 when he says “Brüder” it comes out as “Brüddr” which sounds a lot like “brother” - while in German, the “ü” is stressed and the “r” is almost inaudible.I think the biggest challenge for English-speakers is the “ch” (which unexperienced speakers often turn into a “k” sound - for example turning “Nacht” into “nackt”, always fun). You can see Fassbender struggle a little with that a few times as well (it’s particularly important to keep in mind that there are two “ch” sounds - the one produced in the front of your mouth like in “ich” or “frech” or the one produced farther back in your mouth like in “Nacht” or “Bach” - so if you encounter a word with a “ch”, it’s best to check out which one it is.You can also see him struggle with the long words in German - he basically forces “tausendjähriges” out very quickly which sounds very strange and mechanical and at 3:20 in the second video he has a different strategy and stresses EVERY part of the world Hauptsturmbannführer: “Haupt. Sturm. Bann. Führer.” which sounds ... strange even when done for dramatic purposes. You can compare that to the way the German actor says the same word at 3:31. (especially if you pay attention to how they pronounce “Führer” you will notice the proximity issue. “Führer” is a word that many English-speakers find difficult to pronounce and I think it’s a) because many English-speakers are familiar with the word “Führer” but never heard a German pronounce it b) because of the close proximity of an “ü” and two “r” sounds. When Fassbender pronounces “Führer” it sounds very much like an English person would pronounce the world in an English context while the German guy pronounces it like a German does - that’s something else to keep in mind, that words you might be familiar with like “Volkswagen” or “Weltschmerz” or any of the others are usually pronounced with an accent when English-speakers use them (The same is, of course, true for any other loan words)

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There*s a similar scene in First Class also with Michael Fassbender sitting in a pub with Nazis (seriously that’s... a huge part of his repertoire it seems) which you might want to check out bc again, he speaks German and the other guys are native speakers so if you want to keep looking for different pronunciations and accents, it might be interesting.

(Also “Auslautverhärtung” is a big issue with English-speakers and German-speakers. The reason why German speakers tend to say things like “sayin-k” and “goin-k” and “leavin-k” is because the last sound of a word is usually spoken harsher in German than it is English. English-speakers often have the opposite problem and swallow the last sound a little. I didn’t notice particularly jarring examples of that in these scenes, but it’s still something to keep in mind)

All of that said and done and dissected, I think natural development and interacting with native speakers is much more effective and fun than just trying to avoid certain pronunciations or imitate how other people sound, especially bc I don’t want to bore you with technicalities or even worse, make you nervous about speaking because honestly? Accents are fun and everyone has them. Don’t worry too much about it

If you speak slowly, people will understand you and if you spend some time around native speakers, it will help a lot, it has a strong impact on the way you speak (so obviously i recommend listening to a lot of spoken German, watch films, shows, youtube etc.) And yes, pronunciation is important - you need to be understood after all - but having an accent is natural. Everyone has at least a regional accent and I don’t understand why foreign accents are automatically considered a flaw or a sign that someone isn’t able to communicate fully in that language they learnt.

I recommend you focus on words and grammar and listening and reading comprehension and let things grow naturally and don’t actually enjoy having an accent. There’s nothing wrong with it.

#nonfandom #languages #Anonymous

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sebongie-loves · 6 years

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dog cafe!wonwoo

enjoy! <3

everybody knows wonwoo is a cat person

everybody knows wonwoo enjoys to play more with cats rather than dogs

everybody also knows how wonwoo probably used to be scared of dogs and super awkward around them

there are times where the boys doubting wonwoo

especially seungcheol

one time they’d be like, “wonwoo why you even work here when you don’t even love dogs”

“WHO SAYS I DON’T LIKE DOGS”

yelled wonwoo as he holds one of the dogs awkwardly

the dog is probably dying inside

and the strangest part is wonwoo actually work as a dog care-taker

no one knows why except jeonghan

he was a freshly graduate back then when he first joined the cafe

probably just looking for jobs for some experiences

and he found out about the cafe

wonwoo thought he’d be like the server or something

however when he was waiting for the interview, wonwoo saw a white puppy

whimpering, trying to jump to wonwoo’s lap and being super needy with its big puppy eyes

no matter how awkward wonwoo’s around dogs he cANNOT REFUSE THAT

so he hugged the dog and the dog stopped whining

jeonghan witnessed the whole accident and just

“you’re hired as a dog care taker, please follow me and let’s talk about the pay”

wonwoo almost lost his shit

so jeonghan explained how the dog wonwoo held is the most needy and whining 24/7 with everyone but the fact wonwoo was able to calm it down was magic

“bUT I AM AWKWARD WITH DOGS”

“our payment is generous”

wonwoo started coming during the first week and fell in love with that dog

the only dog that makes him feel capable of taking care of dogs

the dog’s name is taro

wonwoo’s job is quite easy yet extremely hard

enough to make the dude’s sweating before everyone comes to work

he needs to walk the dogs in the mornings and nights

feed the dogs

refills the dogs’ drinks

taking care of the ill one

stopping them from fighting even though wonwoo’s scared of dogs

the salary is pretty good for wonwoo so everything is worth of his time

especially when mingyu is around the job is 1832988298x easier

wonwoo would make mingyu walks the dogs

separated the one that’s fighting

because every dogs like mingyu and mingyu loves dog so he couldn’t refuse

everytime it’s bath time for the dogs, wonwoo will make everyone helps him with whatever it takes

and ended up bathing only one dog out of 15 something, which is taro

taro’s behaviour is very much like a cat when she’s around wonwoo

maybe that’s why wonwoo actually enjoys taro’s company

the dogs in the cafe usually are the stray dogs the staffs found. they’d bring them to the cafe and usually, if the owner really cares and looking for the dog, they are allowed to take it back

lots of missing dogs poster in the bulletin board

at first you have no idea about the cafe until one day your dog decided to run away

your dog is pretty old and somehow it’s impossible to lose her but she did under your nose

you were bawling and a mess. you don’t know what to do so you called one of your friends

“have you tried going to the dog cafe near your place?”

“there’s a dog cafe near my place???”

so with a random sweatshirt and any random bottom you can find, you go to the dog cafe thingy

“excuse me i lost my dog and i might found them here can i talk to your manager pls”

you’re in panic mode and almost yelled at the handsome waiter that is now looking at you in fear. he asked you to wait while he brought the food to the customer

the waiter brought you to another room where all you can hear is barking noises and a deep ass dude voice yelling ‘sTAPh’

“wonwoo, someone needs to talk to you”

said the waiter before smiling at you and leaving you to go back to his job

you met this handsome creature o m g your jaw almost dropped and you almost regretted going to the dog cafe being a mess

BUT THE DUDE IS NOT THE POINT NOW YOUR DOG IS IMPORTANT

“hello, i’m wonwoo. how can i help you?”

okay the dude with a beautiful smile is important and you almost got a nosebleed with how handsome he is bUT YOUR DOG

“UGH I LOST MY DOG IT’S A SHE AND SHE’S BROWN AND PRETTY OLD”

wonwoo realize your dog is awfully similar to the dog that he found in the morning and being fond with taro when they met for the first time

he then goes back to the room and takes a dog awkwardly and show it to you

“YOU BAD GIRL HOW COME YOU RAN AWAY?!?!?!?” you yelled at the dog that is clearly looking guilty and took her from wonwoo

“thank you so much thank you!”

but despite you being a mess, wonwoo actually attracted to you just like you did with him like ‘wow this person is a hot mess and i strangely like it’

so before you go he asked things like, “can you come again? taro seems to like your dog so much. and btw taro is this fur ball” he says holding taro in his arms

you find him really cute like how he can hold that one dog comfortably when he awkwardly hold yours

so you just nod and smile at him and your smile makes his heart races and actually makes his day like

when it’s the meeting time, seungcheol asked like “how’s the dog?”

wonwoo just smiled like a crazy person which makes seungcheol backed off bc he is scared and leave wonwoo alone

and you? you started to come as a regular

you let your dog plays with taro

while you’re talking with wonwoo : )

wonwoo is highkey crushing on you and he does realize it

especially when he found out about you reading his favourite book he almost cry but he didn’t because the dude is tough

he loves spending time with you

he tries to makes a move but you seems oblivious about the whole situation

wonwoo always asked for free drinks from mingyu and mingyu be like “yah i can’t keep doing this i hAVE CUSTOMER FOR FUCK SAKE”

but mingyu still does it anyway bc he loves wonwoo

wonwoo actually is just trying to get more time with you so he asks those kind of things to mingyu

not only mingyu, sometimes he asked jisoo for his cake but he rarely does it because he is scared since jisoo is older

when seungcheol found out about this he’d like

“JUST CONFESS, STOP TAKING STUFFS IT COST MONEY YOU HBDEJKSJ”

so wonwoo is going to confesses to you with all of his courage

when you sat on the chair, he comes and you’re like ssup bro but he doesn’t reply you. you notice his ears are red and he looks nervous

“why?”

“i need to tell you something”

he comes closer to your ear and whispers

“don’t scream or react anything. i like you”

that’s the first day of you two dating and wonwoo couldn’t be more happy that this

mingyu’s life becomes easier as you helping wonwoo to walk the dogs which makes the whole thing more enjoyable for wonwoo

wonwoo is the cutest thing ever like he wants to keep the whole dating thing lowkey but also highkey loves skinship

he’s super soft and loves to cuddle after getting closer with your dog

nothing can ever be better than you being an awkward and lovely wonwoo’s patner

other members: seungcheol - mingyu - jisoo - minghao - hansol

thank you for reading! < 3

tell me which member should i do next? i mean………. if u really want to : )))

and remember you’re loved. ♡

#wonwoo #seventeen #seventeen wonwoo #wonwoo scenario #wonwoo imagines #seventeen scenarios #svt scenarios #svt imagines #seventeen imagines #seventeen headcanon #wonwoo headcanon #wonwoo au #au!wonwoo #au!seventeen #jeon wonwoo

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