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songmingisthighs · 3 years

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[4.11] mafia!wooyoung × reader

⇀ you thought he didn't care, he was sure he doesn't, he had said it so himself to you. that was, until he almost lost the chance of being able to care for you.

⇁ tw : running away, mafia life (criminal/illegal acts)

⇁ part 1 / 2 / 3

⇁ disclaimer : the author does not support any and all criminal/illegal acts. the narrative written in this story is purely fiction out of the author's imagination. the things written here does not portray real mafia life nor is the author aware of how the mafia life is like. the author is a hermit loser.

At first, Wooyoung thought you had really ran away from him. After the fight you had the previous night, how could he not ?

"All I ask is a little bit of attention! I know you could spare some for me," you exclaimed, following after Wooyoung into the home office in his mansion. Yes, his, he never once said it was yours too so you treat it as such.

Wooyoung rolled his eyes at you, "and I ask you shut that big trap you called your mouth before I shut it for you, but we can't all get what we wanted now, can we ?" He spat.

You're used to his aggressive words, it used to hurt but now the pain just comes and goes. But you're at your wit's end, he was distant when you both were first forced into engagement but he was still polite so you thought that was just the shock, but now that you're married, things got worse.

"Wooyoung," you called, leaning both of your hands on his desk aa he sit on his office chair, "it's been 8 months since we got married," he glared at you when you said that, so you sighed and change your choice of words, "since we were force into marriage... But I've been trying so hard to make this less of a chore for both of us, I don't know what else I could do! You're not even bothering to hide the fact that you hate my guts to your very core even though it wasn't my fault that we got into this! Heck, you don't even bother to acknowledge that I exist!"

Wooyoung slammed his hands down on the table, standing face to face with you, "that's right," he chuckled darkly, "I don't even bother, you know why? Because you're nothing in my life, I never ask for you, I never wanted you, you're still here because your dad's business fell through with my dad and he used you as mean of escaping because that's all you are, princess," he leaned closer to your face and spoke through gritted teeth, "a worthless burden that people toss around,"

It would've been a lie if you said that his words doesn't affect you whatsoever. Because it does.

Maybe deep down that was one of your biggest fear and having someone confirmed that made you feel sick to your stomach. You recoiled from the table, as if having been struck across your face.

Though Wooyoung had a satisfied smirk on his face, "you should know I've been planning your assasination ever since you said 'I do', I would've made it look like an accident so that my dad wouldn't be up in my ass talking about losing his insurance of control over your dad, maybe I should move the schedule up so I can get rid of you quicker,"

You stared at him for a while, not knowing that he actually hated you that much. All this time you thought it was just petty reluctance of being tied to you, but this just brought things to a whole new level.

"No..." you choked out, trying to hold back tears, "I'll take care of it myself," and with that, you ran out of his office to pack all your belongings with tears streaming down your face.

And that was the last time Wooyoung had seen you. He had heard from one of his butlers that he had seen you running around the house retrieving your things where it supposedly was earlier, you looked frantic and you hadn't even taken a second to take a break.

"And did she got out of the house today?" Wooyoung asked from his position on the couch, loosening all of the buttons on his shirt. "No, master, not that any of us know of," said butler then leaned close to Wooyoung's ears, "the cctv has been cut off, her bodyguards are dismissed, no one has tended to her nor got close to her, and I personally see to it that all windows and doors are unlocked just as you had requested,"

Wooyoung couldn't believe that he's probably a free man now, that YOU had left him so that he wouldn't be in hot water with his father.

With a glass of whiskey in his hand, he decided to look around to see whether or not you had really left while telling his maid to prepare dinner for him.

True to what he expected, he made two laps around the mansion but not once did he find you. Not even in his office with a divorce paper, as dramatic as it sound.

He finally step into his shared bedroom with you to make his final confirmation.

At first he knocked on the door, not really knowing why he did that, but when no sound came from the room he simply opened the door and walked in. He hadn't returned the night before, spending half of his night in his home office before going out with San to a bar, not realizing that it was his guilt that drove him out to drink his memory away.

Looking around the room, he couldn't really tell whether or not you had ran away. The room looked like it had been slept in the night before, he could see the spot where you laid in comparison to his side that's perfectly neat.

When he stepped into the walk-in closet, he was quite surprised at the sheer contrast to the bedroom. Your clothes thrown haphazardly, it seems like you were urgently looking for things to pack, and the more he analyze the items on the floor, the more he realized that you hadn't taken anything that was bought with his money.

But that wasn't the thing that got his attention.

It was your wedding dress that had been taken out of its garment bag, across from it, an empty bottle of wine and a box of tissues with crumpled tissues surrounding it. It looked straight out of a movie.

He walked closer to the dress and trailed a hand down it.

He remembered seeing you wear it on your wedding day. He remembered being too pissed at his father to be able to fully appreciate how ethereal you looked. He remembered how when you looked at him, he could see the redness in your eyes, indicating that you had been crying.

But over all, he remembered how his heart skipped a beat when he saw you walking closer to him. Of course, he would never admit it outwardly.

His train of thought was broken when his butler knocked on his bedroom door, "master, dinner is served," he said.

Wooyoung cleared his throat and straighten out his posture, "yes, of course, I'll be there soon," he called out.

As the footsteps of his butler fade, he carefully zip your wedding dress back into its garment bag, making sure that the dress is stored perfectly.

After that, he went to the dining room to have his dinner.

Usually, you'd be seated in your seat, across from him at the other end of the table that seats 10 people. He'd have to admit that it feels weird not seeing you smile at him after a long day of working, but he forced himself to believe that it was a good kind of weird.

Strangely, as he eat his food he felt that it doesn't match his palate, that something feels off. So he called for his head butler and asked him about it.

"Did we change cooks? Why does today's dinner taste so bland?"

His butler seemed hesitant to answer him, looking at the head maid for a bit. The middle-aged woman stepped forward from her spot, bowing slightly to avoid Wooyoung's eyes, "we did not have any change in staffs, sir, it's just that the mistress used to prepare all of your meals and considering... the circumstances, she had not prepared anything for you," she said, not even bothering to hide her bitterness that he had drove you away.

Considerably, he was shocked that you had never brought the fact up to him. But as usual, he masked his true feelings and just nod at her, continuing with his meal even though he can't seem to enjoy it.

The shock didn't stop there, though.

Over the course of the first 5 days of you leaving him, he began noticing the things that indicate your presence in his house. Or used to indicate your presence.

He never knew that you were the one who always put flowers around the mansion. He noticed this when he passed by a vase of wilting aconite. It almost broke him when he see the maids cleared all flowers, leaving an empty vase that he now associate with your absence.

He never knew that you kept tabs on food he likes and dislikes. After 3 days, he gave up on eating the food his cook made for him, firing the poor man on the spot and resorting to take outs.

He never knew that you were the one who personally arrange his wardrobe. Usually, every morning he'd find his favorite shirts or favorite sets of clothes on the front, ready for him to pick out and wear. Now that you're not here, he had to spend extra time deciding what to wear.

And lastly, he was surprised at the fact that you had never made it to your hometown.

"What do you mean she's not with her parents?" He growled at his henchmen, making them visibly scared. "W-we tried looking for her, even asking around, but no one had seen her," he explained.

All Wooyoung wanted was to hear about how you're happier without him, how you've settled back to your life without him, how he'd be assured with the fact that you leaving him was the best thing that could ever happen to you two.

Feeling that he owed this for the sake of his own closure, he ordered everyone under him to find out your whereabouts.

The desperation suffocated him, he hated the feeling.

So he ran out of his office to his garden, going to the furthest side where it is practically abandoned so that he'd be all alone to calm his mind.

What he hadn't expect to see though, was several pieces of clothes on the ground. At first he just thought that the laundry might have flown away due to the wind, but when he inspected them closer, he recognized them as yours.

"Why would these be here?" He muttered to himself as he began picking up the scattered pieces of clothes one by one. When he picked up the last piece, he noticed your suitcase by the corner of the tall wall that surround his house for protection.

The sight that made his stomach drop was a rather huge hole that could fit a person.

Wooyoung's brain put 2 and 2 together and the only reasonable conclusion made him feel like blowing up.

You had been kidnapped.

#ateez #ateez scenarios #ateez scenario #ateez imagine #ateez imagines #wooyoung #jung wooyoung #ateez wooyoung #ateez au #ateez story #kpop scenario #kpop imagine #kpop imagines #ateez x reader #timestamp #ateez timestamp #kpop timestamps #smt timestamp

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moonctzeny · 3 years

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Cygnus

pairing: royal!ten x fem!reader x villain!doyoung

genre: angst, smutty elements but not anything too much

word count: 4,8k

warnings: ‘forced’ marriage, mentions of death, blood, stabbing (not too descriptive I promise), manipulation

summary: “When your father, the king, gets brutally assasinated in his royal quarters, you realise how big of a threat the opposing Indigo kingdom really is. In order to further protect both your kingdoms, prince Ten proposes a unification by proposing to you. Amidst your duty as his queen and your inappropriate meetups with your royal advisor, Doyoung, you’re not sure where your heart really belongs”

a/n: This fic has a lot of referencing of the past. Just to clarify: if a part is written in the past tense and is inside the separators, it’s y/n recounting past events

requested by/written for my dear French Anon ❤️❤️ I hope you like it 🥰

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The starry night spreads like a veil over the kingdom. Your kingdom, ever since your head was adorned with a veil of your own. The moonlight, pale and bright, illuminates all the stories of the night. From the mothers that kiss their children goodnight, praying that the impending war doesn’t find them in their adolescence, to the whispering silhouettes of the King’s traitors, plotting with the opposing kingdom to overrule his reign.

Like the weeping willows of your royal garden, you sit alone in the dance hall’s balcony, gazing at the sky’s unknown that always felt so comfortable to you. How dull and drab you must look, even in the ornate gown you were in, amidst all the decorations and joyous music of your wedding’s one year anniversary. Maids, peasants, guards- they all congratulated you on your happy marriage, wishing the queen a long life of prosperity. Even Sirius, the prettiest diamond in the sky, seemed to shine like a spotlight for tonight’s celebration.

“y/n? It’s time for our royal dance.”

You recognized the silky voice to be that of the King’s, your longest companion other than the stars. In spite of all of your misery, Ten, the man you swore to hold in weakness and in health, till death do you part, was someone you valued deeply.

You first met the prince in your early teens, travelling to his neighboring kingdom with your father. He was still a young boy, bothered with the blemishes on his face and excited to play with the snow covering the windowsills of his room. The only person who could relate with the insecurities and troubles of an heir like yourself.

“Why are the peasants hungry while we throw away most of our food?”

"Why does the Indigo kingdom want to declare war on us when we both have enough wealth to live on?"

"Do you think that when we grow up, we will become just like our parents?"

The prince was thoughtful and gentle, a pacifist in the wrong position. Talented in the arts, in dance, in anything that is as beautiful as he is.

His beloved subjects do not know it, but the nickname Ten, was given to him by you.

It was probably the third time you met the prince, excited to spend time with your only friend just a day before your 15th birthday. He had been bugging you over what you wanted from him as a present, the beautiful jewelry and dresses his father gifted you seeming too impersonal to him. You shook off his offers, insisting that him being there with you, in your castle’s terrace, was more than enough.

You were gazing at your beloved stars and he was gazing at you, rambling on and on about the celestial objects in the sky.

“And what star is this?”, he asked curiously, eyes reflecting the constellations and sparkling in the night. Chittaphon, unlike the countless teachers insisting astronomy for a princess was useless, was endlessly entertained by your knowledge and always thirsty to learn more. His finger was pointing at Deneb, one of the brightest stars of the night sky.

“This star is part of a greater ten-star constellation, Cygnus”

“Cygnus?”

“It means swan in greek”, you explained and he squinted his eyes cutely, trying to find the resemblance to the bird.

“According to greek mythology, Phaethon, the son of Helios the sun god, demanded to ride his father’s sun chariot for a day. Unfortunately, he

was unable to control the reins, forcing Zeus to destroy the chariot with a thunderbolt, with Phaethon drowning in the river Eridanus where it fell. Phaethon's lover, Cygnus, dived into the river for days on end to collect Phaethon's bones, in order to give him a proper burial. The gods were so touched by Cygnus's devotion and deep grief, that they turned him into a swan and placed him among the stars.”

Chittaphon, intrigued by the story, stopped plucking out the roots of the grass you were sitting on, and decided to lay his head comfortably on your lap. His hair looked so pretty that you couldn’t help but run your fingers through its softness, the intimacy making your heart skip a beat.

“That is my greatest fear”

You were so lost in your contentment that you’d almost miss his whispered confession. Placing your hands on his cheeks carefully, you turn his face so that he looks at you, and it takes everything in you not to lean down and kiss his pout away.

“Hm?”

“What if, when I finally take the reins of my father’s kingdom, I end up ‘drowning’ as well? What if I’m too weak to control them and someone stronger than me decides to destroy me?”

With a sigh, you look back up to the sky. As an only child and therefore sole heiress, the worry of leading a kingdom was the main cause of your night scares as well. You were just teenagers, still figuring out yourselves, but Chittaphon wasn’t some ditzy child. He didn’t care about the lushes and gold, he wasn’t power hungry. His idealism and ethos were admirable, and you felt safe knowing that when the time comes, he would be your ally.

“You’ll make a great king one day”

He smiles up at you, his happiness lighting up the night sky. He always shone the brightest.

“You really mean that?”

“I do. And if you don’t, I promise to collect your bones and bury you properly”

He laughed heartily at your joke, and you continued to braid his locks, counting the freckles on his face until your heartbeats synced with the other.

You just laid there, thinking the prince had fallen asleep in your arms, when he spoke again.

“I don’t know how, but one day I’ll gift you those ten stars. And it will be the best birthday present you’ll ever receive”

That’s how you got through adolescence, holding on to Ten’s promise, and dreaming of whatever life might offer you. And life seemed to be gentle on you, up until a couple of years ago. Up until the incident.

Ten takes your hand in his, rubbing your knuckles tenderly with his thumb, and leads you to the dance hall. The skin is scabbed and rough from you compulsively scrubbing it every time you take a bath. You’d watch the water endlessly run through your fingers, yet no amount of soap could flush the memory of the deep red of your father’s blood staining them.

It was a Friday like any other, a walk in the royal gardens at 6 and then your waltz dance class at 7. You replayed the new choreography over and over in your head, drunk in your instructor’s praises and wanting to show off. Skipping the steps of the stairwell leading up to the king’s room, you wish you had taken a jacket with you. Goosebumps started appearing on your arms, both from the cool night breeze and something else you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

Your father was the reason you started waltz lessons. “One day you’re going to marry a man to queendom and you’ll better be able to keep up with me on our father-daughter dance”. You’d just giggle and tell him you had plenty of time till that day, you were just stepping on your twenties, no reason to step on a dancefloor too! But alas, one dance recital from Ten and your father was sold on the idea of getting you to take some lessons. You chuckled to yourself. Come to think of it, your father just really loved Ten.

You reach the heavy door of his suite, opened by just a slice. While there was light coming from the room, illuminating the hallway you were standing at, there was no one guarding it. You found it a little strange that the guard’s huge frame didn’t block your way from your father like he like always did, yet you were happy. Your father always acted colder to you around him.

“Dad, dad, look what I learned toda-“

The sight of his cold, lifeless body brought you to your knees. The cause of death was obvious, with the dagger shoved deep inside his guts, but if you asked anyone in the kingdom, they’d tell you he died from a bad heart. He loved heavy food, and alcohol, the meals suited to a king. No one other than a select few could know that the king was assassinated in his own bedroom.

But that was not your only secret.

You don’t know how, but Ten has managed to finally drag you in the middle of the dance hall. Your shoes clack against the marbled floors and the music brings you momentarily back to the now that you want to escape so badly. The music sounds familiar, you think, and you stay still for a second, trying to identify the song.

Your king brings you closer, one hand steady on your waist, the other keeping your fingers intertwined. He hums to the tune and looks at you with those eyes, those dark eyes that always hold a certain sadness in them. And when he starts to lead, it finally hits you that this is the song you got engaged to.

It was Ten’s idea, actually. With the rumours of a murder travelling to the neighboring kingdoms, including the Indigo kingdom making statements of invasive strategies against you, a form of alliance was clearly needed to be made.

He showed up to the royal conference room, all dressed up and holding a bouquet of red roses. You could hear his heart thumping as he approached you, his hands sweaty and clammy when he held yours.

“My queen, there is no denying our kingdoms are in a crisis”. His familiar voice was comforting to you, yet the words seemed too formal to be leaving Ten’s mouth. “The Indigo kingdom has indirectly declared war on you. They are powerful, especially with the weapons they possess. And their men are notorious to be ruthless and as cold as ice.”

You gulped visibly, your mouth getting dry at the thought of your people getting as violently killed as your father. Looking at any place possible other than his eyes, you wondered why he took the time to pay you a visit, just to point out the things that you were already more than worried about.

“My kingdom has great soldiers, skilled and apt in martial arts, yet they miss one thing, one thing that your peaceful kingdom can offer mine. Your servants love you, my queen, and they are willing to do anything for you”. He stops and takes a breath, handing you the bouquet he had been holding in his other hand. “I know I would”

The sweet scent that hits your nose matches his sentiment, yet the glossiness in his eyes -that you finally picked up the courage to face- told you things would get bitter soon.

“Are you suggesting we form an alliance for the war? Our kingdoms might be on good terms now, yet our predecessors used to be enemies for hundreds of years. There is still a lot of mistrust weaved in the hearts of the people.”

“I know”, he said, his voice breaking lightly. A thorn from the bouquet pricked your skin as you saw him fall down on one knee, a drop of blood falling from your finger as a teardrop stained your face. “That’s why I am asking for your hand in marriage. Let our kingdoms become one”

You were the one who said ‘I do’, yet the decision was already taken for you. Your whole life, in fact, was painted right in front of your eyes, hues of marsala reds and hunter greens. Hues like the ones Ten put on his palette almost every night before you go to sleep.

You and Ten had never slept together. He insisted that it was never his intention when marrying you, and he’d completely respect your boundaries. You’d be lying to yourself if you said you hadn’t had a thought of laying with him, as you helped him remove the drying paint off his fingers every night. You couldn’t ignore the twitch of your sensitivity as he saw you changing into your silk robe and nightgown, nor the heat of your face when he called you beautiful. His pretty voice was made for begging and teasing and singing out moans. With his flexibility and core strength, you could only imagine what he’d be like in the bedroom. Just the image of his feline eyes looking up at you from between your thighs sent chills down your spine.

That being said, you always felt a bit annoyed by his chivalry as he slipped through to the guest room to spend the night. Through his proposal, he had ridden you of the chance to choose your other half, doomed you to endless nights of loneliness and a cold half of the bed. He should’ve at least taken responsibility.

Not even the guards could know that the two of you didn’t share a bed, the alliance holding on the thin thread of facade you played out for everyone. Sweet kisses in the breakfast room, fake smiles and the silent mourning of your freedom. But that wasn’t your only secret.

You see a hand tapping lightly the velvet shoulderpads of the King’s suit, causing you to halt your dancing. A man, about half a head taller than Ten, successfully steals his attention from you.

“My king, may I steal the lovely queen for a dance?”

Kim Doyoung.

Tall, nice-mannered, lethally handsome. Your father’s trustiest advisor ever since he turned 18 and one of the most respected men in the castle. If the king is the jungle’s lion, then Doyoung surely is a jaguar, attacking his enemies unexpectedly, emerging from their blind spot. He is also your secret.

Kim was the one who found you crying over your fathers body, notifying the knights of the murder since you had no voice to scream for help. He offered you a shoulder to lean on during your grief, while helping you manage the kingdom in your inexperience. It was inevitable to come closer to the man you spent countless hours with at the royal meetings, who you wined and dined with daily, who led you through your duties and made everything make a little bit more sense.

The attraction you felt for him however, well, that was on you.

It started one night, warm like this one, when the diplomatic settlements with a new kingdom took way too long to figure out, and the pair of you were stuck in his personal office at the early hours of the morning.

Your hair was a frizzy mess, eyebags darkening the thin skin of your under eyes and all you could focus on was the ink slowly spilling from the metal tip of your pen. And Doyoung, though hardworking and diligent as always, showed the signs of exhaustion as well, stretching his neck from side to side to release the tension.

A crack from his joints grabbed your attention, or rather his skin that was glowing in the limelight.

He was wearing a beautiful silk shirt, the fabric matching his rich stature and highlighting the delicate lines of his body. His collarbones, sharp like him, peeked from the buttons he had been unfastening, one by one, all the while keeping his eyes on yours.

Your mind wandered under his stare that did nothing short of stealing all oxygen from your lungs. Every slither of your bare skin that landed on it was starting to burn up, and you assumed that’s what his touch must feel like as well. You imagined unbuttoning the rest of his shirt yourself, giving his shoulders a little massage to help him relax. You’d run your hands down this torso, marking it lightly with your fingernails, until you felt that little line of hair right over his pelvis.

The thought is too sinful, so you return to the document in front of you, yet all of your concentration dissolves when the advisor suddenly places the back of his hand against your forehead. His touch is cool and refreshing against your hot skin, yet the proximity only raised the temperature of your body more.

“My queen, you look exhausted. Have you been sleeping properly since the… incident?”

You wince at the memory and shove it down your subconscious again, shaking your head as if the dark thoughts would just brush off of you.

“Not really. I keep tossing and turning. I lay on my bed and I just feel so- so lonely.”

Immediately realising how suggestive your words sound you put your hand over your lips, but Doyoung removes them, taking your raised hand in his and kissing the top.

“My duty as your advisor is to rid you of your worries, my queen. Apparently, I’m not doing a good job, so tell me”. You let your eyes fall on his plush lips, holding your breath as his sweet talk leaves them. He mouths the next words against your wrist, and you can feel every movement of his mouth against your sensitive skin. “What can I do to relieve your stress?”

You can’t stop staring at the smoothness of the junction of his neck so you leave a light layer of your lipstick on it, the pink hue against his pale skin reeling you back to reality.

“Advisor, this is not right”, you try to excuse, “I cannot allow myself to take advantage of your duties like that”

Your eyes stay glued on his neck, and you watch as his Adam’s apple bobs in a chuckle. He guides your hand, that is still in his grasp, and boldy places it over his thigh, your pinky finger grazing against a hardness that is most definitely his-

“Can’t you see what you do to me? What does a man have to do to be yours for the night?”

And that’s how he ended up tangled in your sheets every night, sneaking in your room silently so that the guards don’t notice him.

“It’s been one year, huh?”

You smell the citrusy after notes of wine in his breath, his lips slightly stained by the liquid. He looks just as addictive as the alcohol he consumed tonight, covered in the silk fabric that he loves so much.

“Have you been drinking again?”

“What else am I supposed to do when I see my queen dancing with that bastard?”

“That bastard is your king, yet you talk so lowly of him”

“And that king is your husband, but you were moaning my name on your wedding night”

You had changed into a white nightgown, the ivory dress discarded on your bathroom’s floor. The beads that were delicately weaved into the wedding gown sure were heavy, but that was not the reason you felt so suffocated in it. You had to sit there for hours, resenting everyone who made a toast for the husband and wife. The celebrations seemed endless, the wine abundant, their laughs maniacal. Your wedding ceremony was the image of luxury and opulence, yet you felt so poor.

Your feet led you to his room on their own, swollen and cut from all the dancing in heels. When Doyoung saw you, angry and choked up with all the injustice you felt, he offered to do what he was the best at. Distract you with his touches, his wet kisses, his sweet nothings.

A pang of guilt ran through you the moment your back hit the wall, his body trapping you between the cold surface and the overwhelming heat of his body. You wondered if Ten was still sleeping in your newlyweds’ suite, if he was pretending that he dozed off, what he was thinking. You knew you were selfish for only thinking about your feelings, as if you were the only one forced into this marriage. But then Doyoung’s fingers danced on the hem of your dress, and your mind would go blank with lust.

“This is wrong”, you said out loud, a statement directed mostly at yourself rather than Doyoung.

“You coming here?”

“This. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to come this close to you”

“Divorce him”

You blinked back at him a couple times, trying to register what came so nonchalantly out of his mouth.

“Out of all people, advisor, you know exactly why I can’t”

His hand slid upwards, following the heat of your core, yet his fingers never touched where you needed him most. Small indentations were formed on the softness of your thighs, caused by his rings, and you wished the marks would stay forever. The shirt he wore as his sleepwear was oversized on his small frame, the iris tattooed on his shoulder peeking out from the fabric, as if it flowered on his skin.

“Out of all people, my queen, you know I can give you so much more than him”

As if knowing you’d argue with him, he started to nibble the skin on the middle of your neck, forcing your voice to bubble out muffled and weary.

“But advisor-“

“Say my name”

He let the pad of his finger fick your clit, and you moan “Doyoung” out, the name addictive on the tip of your tongue. So you say it again.

“Doyoung, I need you”

You felt his grin clearly against your skin, you wetness dripping on his fingers and covering his rings. His next words came out with a gravelly sound:

“I might hurt you, my queen”

Your whole life was laid out in front of you, from the wedding ring that weighted down your finger, to you laying on your royal deathbed, looking back at a lifetime that was never really yours. A linear progression to unhappiness, but you hated straight lines.

“I want it to hurt”

Doyoung brings your body closer to yours, perhaps way closer than the etiquette allows, his hand on your lower waist sliding as near to your ass so as not to raise suspicion. He dips his head forward in a way that makes you think he’d leave a tipsy and careless kiss on your lips, but he whispers in your ear instead.

“Why haven’t you left him already?” The question is bold, especially between all these people, especially in the celebration of the wedding he asks you to break off. “I thought you said you’re mine”

“I am, but-“, your head moves towards the king’s direction, whose eyes are boring holes through the pair of you. You feel so small under his stare, suddenly feeling dirty.

“He doesn’t even love you”

There is a weird feeling bubbling in your stomach when you finally make eye contact with Ten, all his forms in which you’ve seen him through the years running in your mind. The innocent boy who became your best friend, the uncertain teenager who became your first love. The empathetic king, the mourning friend. The dependable spouse.

“But you do”, Doyoung concludes incredulously, his right eyebrow raised. It’s as if he tied together the pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle, the disappointment and anger and determination all trying to fit in his handsome features.

A hand draws your body away from Doyoung quite aggressively, and you quickly realise it’s Ten who has caught up with you. He intertwines your fingers together, pulling you into your previous dancing position but something is different this time.

“Times up. My wife’s too precious of a gem to let go of for longer”

Doyoung scoffs lightly, but hides it with a small bow to his king, leaving the two of you alone like he was asked. The tension between you and Ten is so thick it felt like all the lies you’ve told your kingdoms liquified into a thick substance that’s suffocating you now. His fingers are digging in your hips, in a possessive manner that’s a first for him, and he takes a deep breath before speaking.

“Do you ever think of me when you’re having sex with him?”

The question catches you so off guard that you ungraciously step on his feet, wobbling on your heels until he helps you find your balance.

“Why would you ask that?”

Now, you weren’t trying to play clueless, you know Ten is smart. You see the way he studies you and Doyoung, how he catches your secret glances, the electric touches. He surely has figured out where you sneak off every night and whose cologne you reek off the next morning. What you don’t understand, is where all his dislike for your advisor stems from.

Ten just chuckles bitterly, letting a puff through his nose, with a face of almost disgust when he looks at you.

“I don’t understand why I feel this way. I don’t understand why I care about you when you’re plotting with him against me. Why I feel jealous every time I see his filthy hands on you, or why I still think you deserve better.”

Plotting against him?

You’re left with a mouth gaped open, his harsh words both hurting you and confusing you as his voice gets even more strict than before.

“I thought maybe if I asked you to marry me you’d slowly distance yourself from him. I thought that maybe, just maybe, you reciprocate a handful of all the things I feel for you. But you still stay by his side, hanging from his every word”, he says it all in one breath and his eyes are watery when he addresses you again. “How can you sleep soundly next to me when you’re fucking the man that killed your father?”

A buzzing sound rings in your ears and you realise that you’re one breath away from falling apart.

And just like that, everything makes sense.

Why Doyoung was the first to find your father’s body, why the assasination seemed like an inside job. His sudden romantic interest in you and his pleas to have him as your king instead.

The indigo flower that decorated his body.

Ten shakes you a little, worried now at your sudden stiffness and the loss of blood from your face. He didn’t expect this reaction from you, didn’t expect to see your body shake with anger like this. You seem even more shocked than he was when he found out about Doyoung’s true nature, but, aren’t you the advisor’s accomplice in the plot of his overruling?

“Wait, all this time- you didn’t know?”

Ten’s eyes widen as his body jerks forward, and you barely manage to catch him in your arms. A woman’s shriek resonates in the dance hall; the musicians halt their playing with a scratchy sound of the strings that stretch out of tune. And then you see the blood, staining the marble floor under Ten in small drops. You also see Doyoung emerging from behind him, with a maniacal look on his face, and a dagger in his hands.

All hell breaks loose. The unarmed guests scream in fear, urging outside the dance hall in flocks. Glasses of wine shatter on the floor, women leave their heels behind in their hastiness to save themselves. You see the knights running in your direction, creating a shield of protection for you and the king, yet you notice that not all of them have gathered around you. A good part of them stand next to Doyoung, his face distorted in a mischievous grin. The extent of the betrayal in your kingdom shocks you, but when the first knight launches forward with his sword, you know you need to get Ten out of there immediately.

Throwing Ten’s arm over your shoulder, you drag him with difficulty all the way to the balcony, desperately trying to mute out the shrill sound of swords clashing in the process. You manage to bring him to safety, laying him down carefully in the same spot he found you in before, his head on your lap. After unbuttoning his shirt, you inspect the stab under his ribcage, and you swallow a scream at the sight of the deep wound. The most you can do is rip a big piece of cloth from your skirt, tying it up tightly around his waist, and wait until the fight is over.

You see clear drops falling on his face that is turning sickly pale and you realise you’re crying. Holding his face between your hands, you get reminded of those days you went starseeing, of those moments of absolute peace with him that you wished would last forever. His body is cold and the cloth is turning burgundy, but he has the most tranquil smile on his face as he looks up at you.

“Stay with me, please”, you sob over his rigid body, hugging it tightly as if his existence will just slip right through your fingers. “Live with me, and I’ll gift you all the stars in the sky”

#neowritingsnet #nct angst #ten angst #doyoung angst #nct scenarios #ten fic #doyoung fic #ten smut #doyoung smut #ten scenarios #doyoung scenario #ten imagine #doyoung imagine #wayv angst #chittaphon #wayv #nct

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roach-works · 4 years

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so i rewatched the princess bride last weekend and i got an issue with it i never had before: vizzini’s a dumbass. we’re told he’s really smart-- he tells us he’s really smart-- but he doesn’t make one single smart decision in the entire movie. he doesn’t even make one sensible decision.

-he left some kind of token of a guilder officer on the horse, then let it loose to ‘go home’. horses on the loose don’t always make it back home. frequently they get lost, stolen, or die, because horses are both valuable and ridiculous. they should have killed the horse and left it on the path with some kind of manifesto attached, like ‘consider this official notice from guilder that we’re stealing your princess, fuck you’.

-he made absolutely absurd staffing decisions for a job that involved kidnapping an innocent women and then killing her to start a war. inigo’s a great duelist but his entire life is spent on a goddamn honor quest to avenge his unjustly murdered dad, and fezzik is huge and obedient but his background is being a show wrestler: neither of them are actually down with premediated murder. why the hell didn’t vizzini know this beforehand?

-when the man in black was climbing up the cliff face, they could have taken the rope, tied a large rock to the end, then just lowed the rope to be about level with the climbing man and bonked him with it until he fell off.

-leaving inigo and fezzik behind one by one was also overconfident and completely stupid considering, again, vizzini picked the wrong guys for the goddamn job. they should at least have ambushed the dude together while vizzini laid a false trail to somewhere dangerous (like the nearby fire swamp?) and then hid with buttercup somewhere else. a guy might be able to beat an honorable duelist or a giant wrestler, but if he can beat both at once, a ten or fifteen minute head start in a straight line towards guilder isn’t going to help anything.

-when the man in black catches up with vizzini, he’s holding buttercup at knifepoint. so like, what the fuck was his plan then? was he really going to walk backwards all the way to guilder with his knife on an angry, uncooperative girl’s throat and a man who can beat a duelist and a wrestler following along as closely as possible?

-the minute vizzini realized the man in black had defeated both his guys and was still intent on recovering the princess and was furthermore gaining on him, he should have stabbed the girl somewhere slowly and inconveniently fatal, like the thigh or stomach, then run like hell. the man in black would thus be diverted from going after vizzini, even if he’d wanted revenge, by having to stop and see if he could save the princess. which he could not have: stomach stabs can take a while to die from, but you do pretty much always die from them. so with buttercup dead in mysterious circumstances, even with the man in black somehow involved, guilder could still be blamed.

-anyway, prince humperdink, next time you wanna start a war with guilder, please DM me, im not going to fuck it up like this jackass

-hey come to think of it why the fuck didn’t humperdink just hire a guy to dress up in a guilder outfit and assasinate the king? he’d get his war and inherit early. humperdink DM me i wanna talk

#the princess bride #great movie #very dramatic #everyone in it is a Grade A dumbass

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flibbityflob · 5 years

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When the Last Sword is Drawn/Music Revolution!! (Yukigumi, 2019)

After 6 viewings and the shinko, I'd say I've seen this show a lot. I had high hopes going in, and for the most part, this show met them. The movie is stunning, and the story at its core is heartbreaking. The revue didn’t immediately stun me, but after watching it as many times as I have, it’s really grown on me. Beware for Many Many spoilers within. Also this thing is LONG, it’s a fairly detailed summary and i have a LOT of opinions about this show, this troupe, and the revue.

In brief. Or as brief as I can be with this confusing show. In a framing device, we see a ball at the Rokuemeikan in 1885, attended by a group of high ranking people; Matsumoto Ryoujun (Nagina Ruumi), his wife Toki (Chikaze Karen), and Nabeshima Nagako (Himehana Yukino). It's interrupted by a group of thugs who are swiftly defeated by Police Inspector Saitou Hajime (Asami Jun) and his deputy, Ikenami Rokusaburou (Agata Sen). The doctor and nurse of the Rokuemeikan, Oono Chiaki (Aya Ouka) and his wife, Mitsu (Asazuki Kiwa), come by, and it turns out there is some kind of history between Saitou and Mitsu's long dead father.

(For eases sake, I'll skip commenting on the rest of the transitions, just know they're there at fairly regular intervals. I'll get to my opinions on those soon).

We flash back around 40 years. Yoshimura Kanichirou (Nozomi Fuuto) proposes marriage to Shizu (Maaya Kiho), who, after some teasing, accepts him. They're poor, but happy with each other. She meets Yoshimura's best friend, Oono Jiroemon (Ayakaze Sakina), the lord of their domain, who at one point also wished to marry her. After a short scene with Oono's mother, we skip forward 20 years or so. Yoshimura's mother has just passed, and his son, Kaichirou (Ayami Sera), comes to tell him the news that Shizu has attempted to drown herself. After rushing home, he finds Shizu safe and alive. It comes out she tried to kill herself because she's pregnant again, a third child that they won't be able to feed, they're struggling as it is with the harvests as poor as they are. He'll have to find another way to provide for them, and he resolves to abandon his position as a samurai and join the Shinsengumi in Kyoto.

In Kyoto, we meet the Shinsengumi. The introduce themselves with their theme song (something I have not been able to stop singing). The three most important members are Saitou Hajime, only now with long hair, Hijikata Toshizou (Ayanagi Shou), and Okita Souji (Towaki Sea). They lead the rest of the group in a number excelling how good they are. After some conversation, the group has a photo taken of themselves, one ruined by Tani Sanjuurou (Souno Haruto), a man trying to push his brother to succeed Kondou Isami. He is not popular.

Yoshimura leaves his home, gifted a travel pass to allow him safe passage through the country by Oono. Yoshimura and Shizu sing a duet as they part in the snow, Yoshimura leaving his children and wife behind to ensure they survive another year. Yoshimura swears to return home no matter what and after a really fun song sung by Ai Sumire, he's officially part of the Shinsengumi.

This is one of my favourite scenes in the whole show, it's this chaotic mess of a scene where everyone is doing something fun. Tani is entertaining the crowd, whilst his brother Shuuhei (Manomiya Rui) looks on ashamed. Agachin and Nagakura Shinpachi (Machi Yuuka) are bickering in the background. Yoshimura is running around keeping the sake flowing, and soon sits next to Saitou, who he enthuses about his homeland of Morioka to. Saitou fucking hates him almost instantly. The next scene, Saitou tries to kill him for being a sappy, uneducated, family man from the country, before Yoshimura handily bests him.

The Shinsengumi too, do not approve of Yoshimura. He constantly asks after money, not caring much for propriety, and he doesn’t care much for the senseless violence that most of the Shinsengumi are rather famous for. Back home, we see how Yoshimura’s family is. Shizu, Kaichirou, Mitsu, and the baby have been left in the care of Otora (Satsuki Aina) and Okane (Anno Konnomi), who steal the money Yoshimura sends back. In essence, they’re unhappy, still poor, and often ill. Shizu has to sell a hairpin Yoshimura gave to her in order to pay for the medicine her youngest child needs. All in all, nobody is particularly happy.

Back in Kyoto, Ogawa Shintarou (Kujou Asu), has been accused of theft. Hijikata tries to make Souji, Harada Sanousuke (Tachibana Kou), and Nagakura all take on the role of his second (the person in a seppuku who beheads the one killing himself), but all resist his commands. Saitou argues the one who should act as second should be his division comander, Tani, and Hijikata agrees, but Yoshimura will also aid, given Tani’s reputation. During the seppuku, Ogawa fails to properly cut his stomach open and Tani fails to behead him. After a small scuffle, Yoshimura beheads him (in a truly fantastic bit of design, wherein Asu and Daimon head behind a screen, and by using lighting design, sihlouettes, and sound effects, it genuinely does look like a beheading). Many of the Shinsengumi call for Tani’s death, but as personal disputes are banned in the Shinsengumi, Kondou puts a stop to this. Saitou is not happy. Yoshimura begs Hijikata for more money, and after he leaves, Saitou comes onstage to tell Okita, Harada, and Nagakura his plan to eliminate the man they all hate. Some members of the Shinsengumi have defected, and during a fight they know will be happening soon, they can take advantage of the confusion to execute him and pass his death off as casualty in battle.

After a brief interlude in Morioka, where we hear that Oono is moving to Osaka with his family, and that by and by, Yoshimura’s family are doing well, we come to the Aburakouji incident. Kondou and the Shinsengumi ambush Itou Kashitarou (Kiraha Reo) and Toudou Heisuke (Suwa Saki), who are attempting to asssasinate Kondou. After a scuffle, Yoshimura excecutes both Itou and Toudou, and soon after Saitou assasinates Tani. This leads to my favourite encounter in the whole play, wherin Nagakura and Harada “discover” Tani’s body. They comically overact the whole thing, and Okita and Saitou make some snide comments about how bad of a pair of actors they are.

Following this, we’re introduced to Miyo (also Maaya Kiho), the daughter of the family hosting the Shinsengumi in Kyoto, who’s been in love with Yoshimura for years and wishes to marry him. She wants to convince Kondou and Hijikata to let Yoshimura leave the Shinsengumi and lead a peaceful life.

Saitou comes across Yoshimura investigating the body of Tani, and Yoshimura quite deftly points out that there’s no way Tani could have died in the brawl, and that the only person who could have assasinated him was Saitou (Saitou wields a sword with his left hand, and the wound was inflicted by a left hander). Yoshimura blackmails Saitou into paying him off, and walks away twenty ryou richer. Shuuhei comes on, desperately screaming at the murder four (Saitou, Okita, Nagakura, and Harada) to bring his brother back. Hijikata pays Saitou back the twenty ryou he paid to Yoshimura.

After another of the framing device sections, we come to the marriage interview between Yoshimura and Miyo, Yoshimura clearly completley distressed by the whole affair but too terrified of losing his position to say anything. Hijikata and Kondou speak of their plans to let Yoshimura divorce Shizu, and to leave the Shinsengumi. Yoshimura cannot find the words to reject them, but Ikenami steps in and tells them all how they don’t understand the pains of the common people. Yoshimura slaps him, hugs him, and then leaves, followed by Miyo, who he waxes lyrical to about his wife. This leads into a beautiful tanbata scene, where Yoshimura allows himself for just a second to indulge in hugging Miyo, before the guilt gets the better of him and he runs off.

The people of Kyoto and Oono’s forces in Osaka sing of the troubling times as the Shinsengumi begin their march to Osaka, ending as the curtain rises on the thoroughly beaten and bruised Shinsengumi. After some time, Hijikata orders a retreat which Yoshimura rejects, leading a suicide attack on the government’s forces, during which he is shot and stabbed. He makes his way to his clan’s storehouse, to get permission to return to Morioka to be with his family, and meets Oono there. Oono, bound by his duty, orders him instead to commit seppuku, which he does, after a truly heartwrenching sequence in which Yoshimura counts the money he was going to spend on things for his family. His sword and hair are brought back to his family, and his son resolves to fight alongside Oono in the upcoming conflict. Both die in battle, with Oono dying heartbreakingly so onstage.

We return to the framing device, where the Meiji players contemplate what kind of man Yoshimura was. Ryoujun leads a reprise of Yoshimura and Shizu’s duet, which they take over, as the whole troupe joins in and cherry blossoms finally bloom.

I loved this show a whole lot. A whole whole WHOLE lot. My tastes lie deep in “tragic nihonmono that don’t involve a lot of politics,” “Nozomi Fuuto as a dad,” and “Agata Sen having just The Best Time.” I got all three in SPADES. This show is a character driven one, in my eyes, with the core conflict being internal. Yoshimura does arguably terrible things to keep himself afloat, and to keep providing for his family, and all the while daimon ACHES with this need to return home. Whenever given the chance, he waxes lyrical about how much he loves his homeland, his family, and especially his wife. When dying, the last words he speaks are his wife’s name. Yoshimura loves his family more than anything else in the world and it comes through with literally everything Daimon does. The tragedy is clear from the start, and once the last 15 minuites or so start you know there’s only one ending. But there’s even more beautiful tragedy that I can’t bring myself to spoil that just makes everything worse, more painful.

My biggest issue with the show is the framing device. Whilst I don’t mind it too much, I know others hate it a LOT more than I do, and I get why. Every so often, the Rokumeikan crew will walk along the ginkyo or across the stage and exposit about where certain people were at certain points, and it did have the effect of completely breaking the flow of action and tension. Hime and Agachin stand out as the MVPs of those scenes, but Agachin was only in a few of them and Hime can only do so much alone. I didn’t hate them, but I do get why one might.

Nozomi Fuuto as Yoshimura Kanichirou was fucking fantastic, genuinely one of the best performances i’ve ever seen her bring. She has the unenviable task of delivering a really nuanced, sad character whilst also speaking perfectly in a very strong accent, and does it without breaking a sweat. I don’t have enough good things to say about her accent, by the way. I feel like it could be a touch controversial, and it does make her impossible to understand (my Japanese friends agreed, it’s a HARD one), but it adds so much to her character. Daimon’s face was designed to look good when sad, and this show is no exception, she has a kind of mastery over these faces that just ache lonliness like nobody else in the world does. Her voice as she’s dying is so broken, these little gasps of pain are just sublime and her voice as she’s counting out the coins she’s earned over her six years is so beautifully sad. Her performance is exceptional in how subtle it is. She doesn’t bring anything big or ballistic to the table, she just tries to create a picture of this man desperate to do what’s right for his loved ones and to his own code of honour to the table. His last moments are so desperaetly sad because you know full well he regrets everything he’s done to get there, and in the same breath knows it’s his supposed duty as a samurai to have done what he did. Yoshimura is a hard role and Daimon made him look easy, and carried off the accent too. I can’t imagine anyone else in this role.

Maaya Kiho played two roles in this, and I fucking loved them both. I will say, I wish her role as Shizu had been given a little more weight, but I loved Miyo enough that I can’t stay too angry. She plays Shizu at two points in her life, first young and giddy in love, and then older, married, a mother, and far far more tired. As that younger Shizu she plays her with such life, her Shizu is teasingly affectionate to Yoshimura, but clearly in love with him. On my last performance I noticed that during her first scene, before Yoshimura proposes to her, she’s fixing up her hair and kimono, making herself look as pretty as she can. It’s adorable. As the older Shizu she carries this utter grace with her, world weary and hard done by. Her and Daimon have amazing chemistry together, they play this old married couple so well, both softly amused by their children even when it’s their last moments together. Her maturity is so quiet, so calm, and it’s another half of these two incredibly subtle performances the top combi give. As Miyo she’s a bratty selfish teenager, and it’s her earlier maturity as Shizu that makes Miyo even more entertaining. She’s selfish in that way only spoiled kids are, saying she’s completely in love with Yoshimura when she’s barely shared a conversation with him, and acting as if he’d be perfectly willing to abandon his whole family to marry her. It’s not the biggest role but she imbues it with such grace and charm I can’t help but adore it.

Ayakaze Sakina was unfortunately typecast again as the best friend, and it’s absolutely detremential to her. Oono, in my eyes, is just straight up not an interesting character. His major role is acting as the exposition dumper, and his few scenes of humanising moments don’t work for me like they should because I don’t buy him as a character properly. I want Saki to get a good, interesting role that forces her out of her shell as just the best friend and I’m annoyed she didn’t get it here.

Asami Jun was the nibante, to be frank. Her Saitou was gruff and angry and simmering with barely restrained loathing for Yoshimura, and I fucking loved it. It didn’t blow me away like I think that role could have but Aasa I think tried her damn hardest, biting onto what she got given and trying with all her might. The relationship between Yoshimura and Saitou didn’t land quite as it could have, and I can’t blame all of that on the writing (only a decent chunk of it). Aasa’s Saitou hated Yoshimura too much, which I think made her sudden face turn at the end of the play towards sympathy to Yoshimura feel a little flat, but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really looking at her during that scene at all (and we’ll get to why soon).

Shou is still our sanbante but it’s entirely in name only at this point. Hijikata is a tiny role, she gets to sit and scowel, and grumble “Mendoksei, mendoksei” at the murder four, and it’s just. Not interesting. And I so wish it was, because I love Shou. She’s quietly endeared, to my eyes, by their nonsense, which I think was perhaps more of Shou than the role, but it was rather fun all the same.

Towaki Sea got a role on the smaller end too, but definitely one bigger than Shou. Okita Souji is a fun role, a violent shitty dude, but also a really fun genki one. Her and Aasa have a really fun dynamic together, really fed up with the bullshit of everyone around them, especially from Yoshimura and Tani, who they hate for very different reasons. Her adlibs with Aasa, Macchi, and Tachi were really fun, and she really played the heart of that group, if a very violent angry one. I don’t know what I CAN say about her Souji, though, because he wasn’t the biggest role in the world. What I can say is that Hitoko is putting her heart and soul into everything, even moreso than I think she was in mura, what with the looming transfer and all.

Aya Ouka was… I don’t think she’s tracked any more. On paper she has a role the same size as Agachin’s but whilst Agachin was taking what she was given and running with it, Ayana was projecting at a brick wall. Ayana played Chiaki, Oono’s son, who I think could have acted as another half of the emotional core of the story, but it would have required a damn sight more than what Ayana was giving. I don’t want to be too harsh on her, but she just wasn’t bringing anything at all to the show. The script wasn’t amazing towards her but I think she well could have made something of it. I know this, because…

Agata Sen fucking DID. I have fallen completely and utterly head over heels with Agata Sen and anyone who knows me knows that fact but I am writing this with as little bias as I can be (but I WAS watching her with opera glasses for literally every show so like. Only so much). Ikenami Rokusaburou also wasn’t a huge role on paper, and could well have been boring and forgettable but Agachin did SO MUCH for it. Ikenami is one of the only survivors of the Shinsengumi, and ends up a police inspector with Saitou. She’s present in the Shinsengumi scenes and ends up forming a very sweet bond with Yoshimura in the process, going from actively antagonising him (with the aim of sucking up to Kondou) to defending him in a really lovely scene, calling out the bullshit of Kondou and Hijikata, and how they just don’t get the struggles of common people. Her line delivery of her speech to Kondou and Hijikata told a story without saying any of it, and it’s absolutely fantastic. And she’s the fucking BEST in the background, I know full well the blu-ray won’t capture any of it but every single day she and Macchi were pulling out new types of bullshit and I think Macchi is going to kill her sometime soon. I love her so very much and she’s going to be Something very very soon. Just you wait.

Kacha was. There. Completely irrelevant and doing nothing for the plot, just awkwardly hanging around during the Rokumeikan scenes. I don’t think anyone enjoyed this role, she didn’t actually DO anything, and I took particular insult to her starting off the finale because there was no emotional reason for her to do so! I didn’t like this role and I can’t imagine her die hard fans did either.

Other people of note

Mana Harutou was a really fun Kondou, playing him as a rather useless leader, stuck in indecision and almost inept at points. It was a nice role, and I hope she keeps getting roles like this, not enormous, but still big. She’s one of my favourites.

Kiraha Reo is still playing two roles in a show (though only one of them matters) and I can’t help but laugh. Itou isn’t the biggest role either, but she gives him a decent amount of depth, clearly holding some resentment towards the Shinsengumi from the start, and dripping with loathing as they take him and his rebellion out.

Kujou Asu gets the worst role of the lot, a nothing samurai who has to commit seppuku and fails terribly at it, but she has a lot of fun running around with her hair loose, covered in blood.

Souno Haruto, our new Kumichou, also having the time of her life as the comedic side relief Tani Sanjuurou. Every day during one scene she’d force Manaharu into a love suicide and every day it had me quietly losing my SHIT. She’s the best.

I’ve wanted better things for Ai Sumire for the longest time and so hearing her get a solo in this? Thank the LORD. she’s a great singer and it’s great we’re using her more.

I just really like Manomiya Rui, y’all? She has the friendliest otome picture and her energy is so nice. She was fun as Shuuhei.

Tachibana Kou and Macchi Yuuka were my absolute favourite part of this show by a country MILE. Comedic side relief and vicious killers all at once. I can’t wait to see how absolutely awful their fake acting gets by raku.

Music Revolution grew on me. It’s a Nakamura revue and it is, to its core, a Nakamura revue, but in my eyes it’s one of his best. Not just because of copious amounts of Agachin but good GRIEF she is a spectacular dancer and this revue shows that off.

The theme song is a complete banger, black and dark grey outfits and some really genuinely tight choreography from Yukigumi. Daimon’s voice could fill the whole theatre without a microphone and so could Kiichan’s and they absolutely owned the show. Daimon seems absurdly full of energy, and it’s REALLY nice to see her leading the troupe having so much fun at the same time. Everyone on the track gets a little moment, even down to Agachin and Ayana, and I can’t help but feel an enormous amount of pride for the whole troupe. I love them, they feel like home so very much.

The revolution scene fucking OWNS. Daimon leads a group of argentinian revolutionaries against the forces of the British army and comes out on top. Everyone’s singing at 200%, especially Maaya motherfucking Kiho, and dancing in really tight formation. They look and sound amazing. Aasa and Hitoko lead the British forces and they also look DAMN good in those red uniforms, and dance REAL good too. I would say it’s my favourite number of the revue but practically every number is, so.

Then comes your standard Nakamura B jazz number, led by Saki with Agachin and Ayana behind her. It’s a really fun couple minutes, just the whole troupe leaping around and dancing, culminating in a fake music duel between Agachin on the trumpet and Ayana on the saxaphone, and it’s super fun! Agachin does this flying leap every day and it’s fucking fantastic, I love watching her dance. Aki and Hime get a duet (a reoccuring feature, and not one I’m mad about, they’re really fun together), and it’s just a really good time.

The chuuzume I couldnt love more. It goes on forever and yet every single kangeki I was sitting in my seat BEAMING when Aasa starts singing and neon lights blast, it was so fun. It goes from one extreme to another with lightining speed, and yukigumi moves in absolute harmony, and it’s just. Great. Every day Daimon, Kiichan, Kacha, Saki, Aasa, and Hitoko find new nonsense to do on the ginkyou as the rest of the troupe goes into the aisles and it’s just such a warm feelgood time I can’t help but be happy watching it.

Hitoko gets a really fun little number, to fucking Pachabel’s Canon, which I went in expecting to hate (as a musician i’ve heard that damn song too many times) but ended up loving (I’m a sucker for electric guitars). Following the transfer announcement the amount of applause Hitoko got for this scene skyrocketed and that’s something I can’t help but love. She’s an excellent dancer (not that i’d know it. Agachin was in that scene. I was looking at her literally every single time).

Inexplicably Nakamura decided to add in a taidan number for Daimon and Kiichan, though I suppose the real taidan is for Hitoko’s heart (poor dear is already starting to crack and will absolutely be a wreck by raku). It’s fun and catchy and it’s nice to see the remaining 89ths have fun together, and for Daimon and Kiichan to just be completely nerdy.

We finally, after two years, have a Daimongumi kuroenbi and it’s absolutely fantastic. Everyone looks stellar in tailcoats, we dance with precicion and order and Daimon sings like nobody’s business. They look good, they sound good, and it’s just. The best.

I adore the duet dance. Daimon and Kiichan gently dance whilst Ai Sumire sings and it’s just overall really really nice. It’s almost ethereal, purple outfits and a shit ton of smoke and Daimon and Kiichan clearly just. Adore each other. Their freindship is clearly so strong and sweet and they really suit each other.

I loved this whole show. Whilst I think I prefer Hikarifuru as a show, this takes the cake for my favourite pairing of shows. They’re both super strong and I can’t help but love the shit out of them. Daimon and Kiichan’s chemistry feels so easy and comfortable, two people who just Get Each Other, and it’s so nice to see them play off each other. I wish Kiichan had more to do, but like. She deserves everything. Fingers crossed our next revue does right by her (please give us an Uekumi revue i’m BEGGING you).

#takarazuka #yukigumi #nozomi fuuto #maaya kiho #ayakaze sakina #my reviews #this is long and not proofread and goes from highly analytical to me crushing on agata sen you cannot make me change or stop #also dont read if you dont want spoilers for this show ajdknjasd it is spoiler heavy

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kendrixtermina · 5 years

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You seem like pretty knowable about Edelgard lore and motivation, so I've been meaning to ask. What exactly was the catalyst that made Edelgard hate the Church of Seiros so much? I know they've done a ton of shitty stuff in general, but what made Edelgard dislike them personally? I looked on the wiki and it either wasn't on there yet or I just didn't understand it. (I want to be able to eventually explain it to my sister who so far thinks Edelgard is evil, she hasn't finished the AM route yet).

IDK if this is something one can be “knowledgeable” about I just played the same game everyone else did, I’m no authority I just like analyzing fictional works for fun.

And whoever added that recent lengthy edit to the wiki article… let’s just say their opinions are discernible. But they might say the same about me.

Good vs Sympathetic

First there are some interesting premises hidden in this question - why would a personal motivation be more convincing that a net negative impact on the world at large? It’s the latter a much better reason?

Like there’s a big difference between saying “they had legit reasons for their feelings/actions” (you could say this even about rhea) and saying that someone’s a force for good. Being understandable and consistent isn’t goodness; IT’s just good writing, and “they can’t help it, of course they acted like this, look at what happened to them” is more an argument for someone being sympathetic/understandable than good. Murder or manslaughter? How much can we blame them for their bad deeds.

You might have very good personal reasons to hate someone or something, and pursuing that hate at the expense of others could still be a very selfish thing. There are your feelings, and then there’s how you act on them. There are many ways to act on the same feeling.

Conversely, it is possible to be repulsed by evil or mismanagement just because of its own wrongness/stupidity. If you read about how some evil deed happened to total strangers in a foreign country, you would still be angry and you might even vote, sign petitions or attent protests so it doesn’t keep happening.

If the Church of Seiros is doing objectively bad stuff, is that not enough to oppose it? Not only does Seiros/Rhea rule everything from the shadows, she’s accountable to no one, and she’s doing a bad job at it. TWSITD are her enemies too but they’re running rampant under her nose and in the recent past, deposed the Emperor and assasinated the king of faerghus to install their own agents.

Rhea may not have intended to let xenophobia, inequality, corruption, obsession with crests and instability to fester but that’s still what happened - and people can’t file complaints because she’s ruling in secret and anyone who complaints in branded a heretic. Almost everyone in the cast has been affected by those issues - the “peace” at the start of the story is illusory. Also, this whole shadow war between Seiros and Agartha is being carried out on the backs of the ordinary people who have no say in anything. At least if you know who the king/lord is you know who to rebel against if there’s no bread.

It’s no good. And as the heir to the largest territory, Edelgard is one of the few people who have a chance to stop it. It’s not easy for her either, given that the empire is thoroughly infiltrated by TWSID agents who would never have let her butt touch the throne if she didn’t play ball, or at least not without a bloody fight that might well end with the empire in splinter factions, aafter all, her father had already been reduced to a puppet ruler (see what happens to Dimitri when he returns to faerghus - Arundel is said to mantain his own personal army)

And since it was one of her ancestors who sold out Fodlan to seiros for power, she might feel that it’s her responsibility to put it right.

The real power isn’t with the people or even the nobles and the rulers of the three factions - it’s with Rhea and TWSITD. They keep burning up people without end for their own causes that have nothing to do with the people themselves, they both see humans as “beasts”… Shouldn’t that be stopped?

To stop evil is a much better motivation than petty personal grudges.

Edelgard’s thinking

The first thing to understand with Edelgard is that she’s a big picture thinker through and through. For better or for worse she looks at and decides everything based on how it will look in a history book a few centuries down the line. (For prime examples of evidence look at the Dorothea support or some of her lines after fighting Dimitri)

This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have bias or personal influences like everyone else, but she values and strives for objectivity. That means questioning herself alot (something you wouldn’t see that much on routes other than her own as she keeps the tough leader face on in public), it means putting what yields the best results over what she wants or likes, and it means looking at the greater whole.

She doesn’t just want to get revenge on the specific people who wronged her; She wants to ensue that it never happens to anyone else. She wants to undo the whole situation that allowed for it to happen - even if that means postponing her own revenge and working with those she hates the most. This is very much her putting efficiency and the end result above her own feelings.

It may well have been Thales and his henchmen who cut her open, but they couldn’t have done it without the cooperation of the corrupt imperial nobles. (likewise, they worked with xenophobic kingdom nobles who didn’t like Dimitri’s dad making peace with the foreigners to orchestrate the Duscur nonsense)

Why were they in power? How were they convinced to allow for such a thing and give Thales the ressources he wanted/needed? Because of the social system that Seiros set up so that crests are equated with power.

There will always be assholes and evil people, but how much damage they cause depends on wether the system they operate in lets them get away with it.

Also, even when you look just at TWSITD’s involvement, Edelgard’s siblings were butchered to make her a mighty tool for the shadow conflict. Just as Rhea in turn did her own experiments to revive sothis and “regain all that she lost”

So even on the most direct level, what happened was a result of the shadow conflict.

And it is instrumental to keep in mind that Edelgard wants to remove both shadow factions.

Her beef’s strictly with them - she knew that the Kingdom and Alliance would probably fight her if she went against the church and was fully prepared to pay that price, but that’s a side effect of going where the enemy is - she handed out letters and pamphlets informing ppl of the church’s evils and asking them to choose sides.

TWSITD have fearsome power and have infiltrated the empire, but they’re few. The Church got its claws in most local governments. Why not throw the power of the former at the latter, to take down the stronger enemy, and then take out the Agarthans when your power’s consolidated? It’s a decision not about whom to fight, but about whom to fight first.

Also because of her big-picture thinking she looks at the absolute numbers. In her own words, she’s going for the path of least casualties.

PPl tend to judge harm caused by action stronger than harm caused by inaction but actually the harm is the same. Acting to remove the two shadow factions will have a cost (the war) but not acting also has a cost - that the dysfuction goes on and on forever.

She doesn’t particularly want power if it were up to her she’d have chosen a normal ordinary life and she says so on many occasions. But she can stop it, stop the endless sacrifice and dysfunction, so she can’t just let it continue and do nothing.

Of course with that sorta logic you always have to consider how each action impacts the end result so you don’t destroy all you want to protect because you tell yourself that it will pay off later, after all ‘the many’ are just an abstraction for a lot of individuals. But Edelgard’s not really losing sight of that, she keeps looking to minimize the casualties where she can, she offers people a chance to surrender, you get some lecture questions where she’s genuinely considering what do with rhea if she DOES surrender.

It’s worth noting that on her route, the war ends the quickest and only the Kingdom lands get significantly wrecked (and the Kingdom always gets wrecked even if it gets rebuild afterwards, it was already in a lot of chaos before the war even started). You have to fight the peeps you don’t recruit but that’s no different in the other routes. Claude manages to seize control of the Church without going through the knights so he manages to pull off an at least equivalent end result (both shadow factions removed, society permanently changed) while offing fewer of the named characters, and lets not fail to give him credit for that, but he might not have, if Edelgard hadn’t conveniently removed Rhea and just generally blazed a convenient trail for him to, in his own words, “finish the job for her”. Taking in the church with Rhea still in place didn’t work out too well for poor Dimitri, I seem to recall that she used the poor man as a meatshield and set his capital on fire - which is why Claude wisely didn’t touch that hot potato in any route where he doesn’t have Byleth as a bargaining chip.

Of course that said, going too hard on the comparison would seem to miss the point. While Claude’s and Edelgard’s routes are about their respective grand visions for the future and their badassery as great inspiring leaders, the Church and Kingdom routes are more about people coming together to weather difficult circumstances. Dimitri isn’t really cut out to be a good ruler; but the beauty of his story is how he eventually does his best to become one anyways through the aid of his loyal friends. It’s an underdog story.

If your sister prefers that sort of story (or just Dimitri himself, as a more emotional, relatable type of hero and a well-crafted, compelling and memorable character) that’s just her personal taste/ good right.

Edelgard’s personal biases

She surely has a bit of “broken pedestal syndrome” going on, the very human tendency to absolutely reject things you once idealized once they’re proven to be flawed, to assume that if you were lied to often enough, then everything must be a lie… she sure reads what she learns of Seiros’ past actions in a bad light and assumed that Seteth & the others are guiltier/ more complicit than they actually are.

The problem with Rhea is that she’s selfish, not that she’s a dragon. But if she were the only example you know for what a dragon is like? You might not be too fond of dragons. It’s not like she protests if Byleth spares Flayn and Seteth.

She doesn’t really know Rhea’s motivation so she has to judge her by her actions and the results of those, and her actions, for all that they come from fear and loneliness, are indistinguishable from power lust by the time that Rhea’s subjugated 30 generations of humans for something their remote ancestors did 1000 years ago. Would she ever have let them go?

So it doesn’t matter that she only got the partial story on the relics, it’s not the relics she took issue with, but the current state of the world. also Rhea is the one who erased the true records. So the 10 elites totally had it comming, fine - but Rhea’s the one who disseminated the myth that they were heroes in the first place.

Claude only gets the truth by squeezing it out of Rhea and even then only at the very end, ppl who say that Edelgard “acted on false information” act like Claude just stumbled across the truth with minimal effort. That’s actually more unfair to Claude than to Edelgard if you ask me.... he’s a man who has gathering info as his top priority 24/7

Edelgard’s certainly more steeped in the perspective of her home country where the church is awarded significance and if it turns out to not be good then it’s utterly vile. Claude has the sort of more detached perspective that he has because he happened to come from another country. Edelgard’s aiming for detachment but that’s only possible to a certain extent when something ruined the lives of nearly everyone you know

At the same time whatever her personal sentiments may be (and im not gonna deny that she does hate the Seiros religion), as far as her actions and decisions go, the engage conversation she has when you have her fight Rhea at the battle:

Rhea:

No matter your reasons, I cannot permit you to go on living any longer!

Edelgard:

The feeling is mutual. I must put a stop to your reign of tyranny!

Rhea:

You must know what a fool you are. The greatest of sins is to make an enemy of the goddess herself!

Edelgard:

I have only made an enemy of the church, not of the faith.

She says in several supports that she personally considers relying on the goddess to be an overly dependent attitude that doesn’t do people good, but that’s just her opinion, she’s not stopping anyone from praying in the privacy of their homes cause thats none of her business and she’s not a tyrant (see what happens if you recruit Marianne or Mercedes, her support with Manuela or the Marianne/Ferdinand support on the CF route, which reveals that he’s actually a believer.)

She just wants the Church, and Rhea specifically, out of politics… exactly what we have in any modern-day country that isn’t Saudi Arabia or the Vatican.

Megalomania seems the most likely or politically expedient thing to claim but in the end her beef’s not with Rhea’s reasons but the results of her actions which is stagnation, mismanagement and repression.

Your Actual Question/ Personal Reasons and Catalysts

Honestly? If we’re talking on a strictly emotional/personal level? (As much as that’s an incomplete picture with such a reason-driven character)

She probably bawled for the goddess to save her and her family down in the dungeons, again and again, and no one answered.

She spent much of her early life just being dragged around, first being kidnapped by Arundel and held captive in the kingdom, then she was thrown in a filthy dungeon where she endured relentless pain and could do nothing but watch as her siblings died one by one.

She was utterly helpless, a passive plaything of destiny - and then she decided she was done being passive and letting the universe kick her around. She was going to be proactive and do all she could to be in control of her own fate.

See also the inspiring speeches that she gives to Petra and Lysithea at various points - “Don’t surrender yourself to your fate!”

Blind reliance on the faith, to her, represents that very surrender, so she rejects it.

This fear and rejection of being helpless and having zero control is also one of the reasons why she consistently chooses death on her own terms over life on someone elses’.

That would still not be a valid justification if she wanted to, like, stop everyone from praying, but that’s not what she’s doing.

#fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses #edelgard von hresvelg

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tumblunni · 5 years

Text

I had a really weird dream involving Dr Maddiman. Its a shame i can barely remember any of it and also it seems i woke up before it ended? Like i just had this overwhelming sense that allll the plot threads were gonna be wrapped up any second now and then BOOM awake. So just a whole bunch of random stuff happened with no real explanation at all.

It was some sort of post apocolyptic setting i think? Humanity was in these small isolated cities fighting against some sort of invading army but we never actually saw the aliens themselves. And some part of my brain was like "it makes sense its the same rules as a hairdresser and the design takes cues from a pack of AAA batteries". I have NO idea what that means! So basically everythibg was super vague and undescribed and dream-me just had a sense of already being a long time fan of this series and knowing enough to fill in the gaps. Apparantoy this was some sort of adaptation of a thing id already seen, but id been told the ending was different and more accurate to the manga? Also i wasnt actually a person watching this show i was still the protagonist of the show yet i acted like i'd been reincarnated and relived this week a million times or something

ANYWAY the way dr maddiman comes in is that he was some sort of 'brilliant but dangerous' expert the government had hired to help our fight against the aliens. It wasnt really explained why he was.. yknow.. maddiman. Like is this meant to be that ghosts also exist in this sci fi universe? Was he a half alien hybrid instead of a yokai? Was it just human maddiman with the personality of yokai maddiman due to ptsd...? In any case he didnt seem entirely tethered to the laws of reality and nobody knew exactly how he pulled off all his scientific miracles. He was treated as the only guy who could understand the mindset of the aliens, but that also made him dangerous because he trapped in the delusion of everything being okay and fun and happy and he often did evil things by accident while having good intentions. But they didnt have anyone else who'd cracked the code of the alien weaponry so they had to put up with him. He was just sorta assigned a crack team of secret agents whose job was Be The Old Man's Friend So We Dont All Die. Dont let him realise how the world is all destroyed and such, just play along with his goofyness and try and remind him to do his important work while dancing around why its important. it was super creepy how he was locked up and gaslighted like this!! And he was all 'oh im sure when im done with my ultimate experiment i can go home to my wife and kids' and yeah it was implied here that the same backstory applied :( 'distract the old man and validate his false opinion that his family is still alive and waiting for him' :( poor sci fi madds :(

Oh also for some reason he seemed to be wearing elements of Adventure era Dr Eggman's outfit? But just the general style of the coat and the wearing goggles that he never actually uses. And he had a very warm and cuddly autumnal colourscheme

Anyway i was part of the Super Secret Grampa Cherishing Division whose job was to act as his assistant but also secretly be packing a bazillion weapons to neutralize him if he poses a danger to humanity. But i started to genuinely care for the guy and question the 'any atrocity is permitted for the sake of saving the world' philosophy of my bosses. Also it was just very weird how it was this post apocolypse alien fighting action thing yet i didnt see ANY OF IT cos this story was confined to this one laboratory. It was surreal hearing about all this stuff happening offscreen!

I think Maddiman's main project was some sort of dimensional transport thing using salvaged alien tech? It was just a door in his lab that usually led to a closet but if he got it working itd teleport us straight to the alien base and save the world. And a lot of it wasnt explained but i got this great sense that itd all come together with a great twist ending evebtually but then i woke up before i got that far. Same for the reveal of this maddiman's new sci fi backstory and soooo many other dropped plot threads. Alas!

So anyway: closet. Closet with one of those bead curtain things cos i was thinking about them when i fell asleep. It was supposed to be a teleport but when it malfunctioned it had really scary negative effects warping people's biology and stuff. I remember one of the test subjects was sent in for a five day trip to a specific alternate dimension but then when they came back itd been several years and theyd had to survive in a deadly wasteland and been mutated into a hellbeast. And maddiman had a huge breakdown because he felt like his recklessness and optimism towards this experiment had caused this mistake to happen, and he'd never realized just how awful the consequences could be. He was babbling motor mouth discussing theories for where it went wrong and there was something like 'we'd only tested it for one day trips and assumed that just programming two of them would equal two days but actually with each additional number on the screen it multiplies the days by 3" And there was something about like...the bead curtain was the machine rather than the door itself? Like trying it on a bunch of different doors around the lab to try and find a way to cure this person.

And there was some sort of artificial intelligence computer with the personality of an adorable lil girl, who helped maddiman do calculations and stuff. She missed the mistake in this calculation cos her concept of linear time and the limits of human organs was kinda undeveloped. She only existed within the realm of numbers after all, and didbt even have functionality to record footage of her human friends's faces. No idea wtf a human looks like! So maddiman was lost in his desperate grief of potentially accidebtally killing or at least mentally scarring a person and the government would probably kill them now if they saw they were a super mutant. And he was sobbing and begging this AI to help, his last resort was her maybe being able to see a brainwave that he'd missed. But she was freaking out cos she didnt even fully understand why maddiman was crying let alone what to do to fix it. Eventually she did manage to find a solution theough some simple different logic thing that she had from her perspective as a computer. And that person was saved but still traumatized and maddiman had a moment of realizing just how high stakes everything was and freaking out. He was like 'whats wrong with my head, why didnt i notice that, why was i so reckless, why cant i seem to grasp basic human logic that i need right now" Having a big existential crisis of 'wait how did i even get in this lab, where's my family and why do i seem to have superpowers'. Protagonist mission: hide all the goddamn mirrors to avoid this weird ghostgramp (...aliengramp??) from realizing he's dead (..or an alien??) and losing control of himself. And everyone was running around talking about 'containment procedures' and poor maddiman didnt know that if his panic attack continued he might just straight up be killed for outliving his usefulness. So the protagonist was desperate to help him calm down and it sucked SO MUCH cos they had to lie about his past and weave the web of deception around him again for his own safety. In the end they just hugged him close until he calmed down, and all the other employees were like GASP THEY ACTUALLY TOUCHED THE EVIL DANGEROUS SUPER EVIL MAN and protag was like 'i am 1% away from slapping the next bitch who insults this grandpa'. And it was super depressing cos once he'd calmed down he seemed to start forgetting that anything bad had ever happened?? And he was really panicking and scared cos he didnt understand why he was forgetting, and he knew he had to cling onto something important but he didnt know what. And then five minutes later he was back to haha cheerful nothing is wrong and i love doing my fun science in this room im never allowed to leave. And protagonist was crying the tears that this poor gramp wasnt allowed to cry :(

Also actually i think maybe he was a ghost AND an alien? Like he was a scientist who died in some sort of tragedy back when the aliens first invaded, but along the way he'd been infected so his body got back up as a twisted combination of human and inhuman. And this was something unique to him, like he just happened to have a genetic mutation in his blood that was totally undetectable in life but happened to mix unpredictably with this alien virus to turn him into a hybrid instead of just killing him. So the government was very interested in finding a way to replicate this and create new supersoldiers, as well as just taking advantage of this dude's confused mental state that granted him a unique understanding of alien tech that made him more effective than other scientists. And, of course, also made him easy to manipulate :(

And i also had a feeling that maybe his backstory was mixed up with Adventure dr eggman? Like here it seemed he had a daughter instead of a son, and she had a similar death to Maria Robotnik where she was assasinated by the government he worked for, and it tipped him over the edge. I think Maddiman-alien-scifi-dude originally died trying to save her from being used in some sort of experiment? Like she was already dying of a disease and thats why maddiman took this job to have access to powerful government technology to try and look for a cure. But when the whole alien apocolypse happened, the evil government decided to use her for experiments cos she was 'basically dead anyway'. Theyd just lie and tell maddiman she died of her illness. So this was how they found out that this particular family's bloodline had a mutation that let them form a viable hybrid with alien dna. They were turning this poor kid into a monster in the basement while lying to her dad about her being dead! And maddiman was about to commit suicide from having no reason to live anymore, with the hell of this apocolypse world and the false impression that his kid was already dead. But somehow monster-daughter sensed this or something and broke out of containment to try and save him, and when he saw her he was able to recognise her even in her twisted state. So when the soldiers gunned her down in front of him and fed him some lies about this not being his daughter, he just completely snapped. He tried in vain to fight back and take down as many of them as possible in revenge, but well he was just a simple round dad with no ability to fight a government. So he was unceremoniously executed along with his kid and they shoved the bodies back in the lab to continue testing. "Damn that overemotional science dad, he made us execute our most valable test subject! But at least this way we can analyze his corpse to see if the mutation is passed down on the patrilineal side." But at some point during the fight, monster-daughter's blood had splashed on her dad and gotten into his bloodstream. So the seemingly dead body suddenly got up out of the morgue and started sucking people's blood or something. And this led to the current situation where they have him locked up cos he's a valuable test subject but also hey he has 100% reason to kill all of us and we're screwed if he remembers his past. Also i think the computer AI thing was his subconcious attempt to recreate the personality of his daughter even if he couldnt remember she'd ever existed :(

Anyway at some point things escalated and there was this final showdown versus both the invading aliens and the evil governmebt guys. I think there was some corrupt greedy politician dude who stole maddiman's teleporter tech and sold us out to the aliens cos he wanted money and power or something. And probably predictably the aliens just threw him off a bridge after he gave them the thing, because seriously even this evil army thinks these government dudes are too evil!

So this big actiony event was happening and Maddiman was freaking out like 'no no no i cant leave the lab everyone wpuld be mad at me, i dont even know what its like outside this room' even when he was in the middle of being attacked by aliens. He was forced to face his repressed memories to survive, and he naturally had a massive fuckin freakout! And i think maybe when protagonist character was trying to protect him he accidentally lashed out with his powers and hurt them, and he was so horrified thinking another person he cared about was gonna die because of him. Protagonist was like 'dont worry gramps its just a scratch' but he'd already freaked out and run away into the battlefield to his heavily implied death.

BUT THEN at some sort of moment of dire need, he came back all powered up and re-memoried and was like 'i have every reason to despise humanity but im not gonna let more children die because of these damn corporate monsters (and also literal monsters which are infinately less scary)" And he did some sort of great sacrifice to save the protagonist at the cost of his own life, and it was super dramatic falling from a building into a lake of fire or something. While sobbing and smiling peacefully thinkibg "did i atone for my sins? Will i be able to see my family again?" As his smiling face sunk beneath the flames and the protagonist cried out into the abyss...

Aaaaand then i dont really know what happened in the big battle and i also never found out wtf the solution was to fixing the transporter thing or how the aliens invaded or any of the million plot points that were non gramp related.

I just remember that when we all saved the day and defeated the baddies we found that maddiman had actually survived and it was a big hugs reunion. He was like "OH YEAH i totally forgot i literally already died once and regenerated from it, and this was the entire start to my story. My bad!" *shrugs inexplicably not dead arms*

So yeah in summary im glad my brain summoned up a universe where my favourite sad granddad is literally immortal now, but also why did it torment him with an even sadder plot than his original one

#weird dream tag #the sequence with trying the teleporter curtain on different doors actually took up the majority of the dream #it was ridiculously long and i wish i could slap my brain and be like 'geez save some time for explaining gramp backstory more!'

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yyh-revival · 6 years

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Ok so about hxh I don't dislike the show it's a good show. But the reason I prefer yyh is the set up makes more sense. It makes sense for a place like the demon world to have a fucked up tournament like the black tournament. The stuff that Koenma's dad pulled to fuck over demons given the system and that kind of character. You know what doesn't make sense? Giving known assasins and psychopaths more access and power. In HxH becoming a hunter means you get access to all sorts of locations pt.1

That regular civilians dont have access to and a liscence to kill without getting into trouble and all sorts of other shit. And they give that power to Hisoka who never tries to hide the fact he just likes killing people and randomly killed one of the examiners last time. And Illumi a assasin who freely admits that he wanted the liscence for a job. He says this to the people in charge of the exam. And he still gets his liscence what the fuck. Not to mention his family the secret pt2

oldeck family who the public doesnt know their faces have a house so famous that tour guide point it out while going through the city. Like it might have unbelievable security but why would you risk people knowing? Not that it’s a bad show or I dont enjoy it. I’m not that far into the series. But things like that kinda take out of it. It kinda takes me out of it. Especially when this world isnt like this world of chaos its actually kinda like our world. Or supposed to be Pt.3

Yes, I have to confess the setting didn’t sit right with me, either. I typically enjoy fantasy (in fact it’s my #1 favorite genre, and my preferred to write in, whether that’s high fantasy like LOTR or something like Fullmetal Alchemist, or even modern fantasies like stories about vampires, etc. All of my childhood favorites have fallen into this category… aaaand still do haha)

But the setting always did feel strange to me. I never understood who or what was in control of this Hunter licence, and why they were giving them out to children, or what the point of them even was.

More under the cut. Long analysis of character, slightly more productive than what I wrote yesterday, and some more dissing of HxH (I’m sorry) and its poor management of plot, setting, and character. Also, from now on, tagging all discussions and comparisons of HxH and YYH as HHD (for hunter hunter discussion) to keep it out of the hxh tag.

Once again, this is all just my opinion, my personal feelings, and are not meant to grade the merit of the show or insult anyone who enjoyed it!

See, I typically also like “secret clubs.” But I like them being fleshed out. In Mass Effect, we know what a Specter is. They have almost unlimited power, but 1) they answer to a council which can strip them of this power, and 2) they have a clear goal – serving the council and the interest of the council races.

For YYH, we have the same thing. Yusuke has more power than the average human, having the authority to kill and having access to knowledge most humans do not have. But he 1) answers to Koenma, 2) has a clear goal of protecting the innocent from evil demons and other psychic phenomena.

And that stuff is outlined the MOMENT our protagonists enter the secret club, in clear words, and it doesn’t take, you know, forever… But HxH, I have no idea what the whole Hunter organization even is? I looked it up and turns out I saw the whole 1st season, 31 episodes… and I have no idea what this hunter thing is.

So yes, I totally agree. For comparison, in YYH, we go through a rather good introduction to Spirit World all before episode 5, an intro to what Spirit Detectives are without learning all the details, but enough to understand, by what, episode 8ish? We learn how Spirit World can bend rules with Kurama and Hiei within the first few episodes, too. We learn Spirit World is a bureaucracy, that it has rulers and managers (Enma and Koenma), that it is occupied by mostly two species (ogres and Spirit World citizens, who are like spirits, neither alive nor dead), that they have prisons, that they take interest in human lives and society, that they have the power to revive the dead but that there are clear rules and procedures. We learn Spirit World citizens can inhabit human bodies made specifically for them. We learn Spirit World can unlock human’s innate spiritual awareness. We learn the Spirit Detective job is sorta a new and untested thing (sending a kid to fight 3 demons… Koenma seriously didn’t think the job through yet). We learn Spirit World houses powerful treasures like the 3 artifacts. We learn they have a freakin’ treasure room to start with. We learn you can break into Spirit World and its vaults. We learn that living creatures, even demons, can enter it. We learn spirits and living creatures can interact with each other as if both were on the same plane, tangible and all, while in Spirit World. We learn Spirit World watches and records events of interest in the Human World, sometimes flat out spying on humans like when they watch Keiko being chased or when the little girl (the investigator) stalks Keiko along with Yusuke and Botan. We learn ghosts aren’t allowed to stay forever in the human world. We learn that the spirit and the body have separate energies that converge together. We learn Spirit World uses actual technology, not just magic, like VHS types and pocket watches. We learn Spirit World citizens can live incredibly long lives and look like babies while being a couple hundred years old or more.

^^ See all that? That’s what I know about Spirit World from watching the first EIGHT episodes. Episode 9 Yusuke enters Genkai’s tournament… How insanely concise is that? Episode 8, and we know so much about just one aspect of this world.

Whereas HxH? episode 31… and I still have zero clue what hunters are, what their purpose is, what they can do, who they work for if anyone, what the qualifications for them are (just being able to fight?) We know nothing. 31 episodes!!

For another comparison, by episode 31, Yusuke is in the Dark Tournament, fighting Chuu. By this point, we had all four main characters go through the first cycle of their character arcs, we were introduced to most of the supporting cast, we had relationships established, we got backstory on some characters, we learned how spirit energy and psychics work more, we saw Yusuke begin his second cycle, we saw the introduction of a major villain… we had a lot. Whereas with HxH, all I remember is the damn big boat in the storm thing.

Speaking of character arcs… I wrote this in a response to something else, but I think it also makes my point here. I am incredibly fascinated with character arcs and character in general, even more than plot or setting or anything else. To me, character is all. So here’s my breakdown of some character growth within the first 8 episodes.

YYH never really feels like it drags, maybe only in those moments I mentioned before. But it had an incredibly strong opening. Excluding Hiei, within the first 7-8 episodes, we have two characters (kurama and Yusuke) go through full character arcs that affect them all the way down the line of the show. The other two join after episode 25, though we also get to see glimpses of character background and some development even earlier (Kuwabara’s sensitive side is shown with the kitty, his devotion to friends, his honor code – all before episode 8 as well, but that’s not really an arc. He doesn’t have one till about the Yukina Rescue arc concludes. Though his is a bit weak, mostly because Kuwabara was… pretty alright to start with? It’s hard to develop when there isn’t many places you can go. And out of all the 4 boys, Kuwabara had the least amount of baggage.)

For Yusuke, we have the theme of “caring/not caring.” Yusuke stars off believing no one loves him and that he’s better off not being in anyone’s life. The wake proves him wrong enough that he makes an effort to come back. Then when he thinks he’s missed his chance by throwing the egg, and sees his friends and family happily talking about him returning, he mourns because he knows he’s not coming back. 180 from “meh, ima stay a ghost it’s better I’m not in their lives.” So, he goes through a complete cycle just in that moment, from I don’t care, to I do care and I’m happy, to I do care and I am sad. Not just a simple arc, from point A to point B, but A to B to C. It’s a very well constructed growth of a character. Full arch, full growth, and that’s why it tugs at the heartstrings. Because the moment he started to care… he thought lost his chance.

That arc he goes through all before episode 5 cycles throughout the show, and makes us care because such a strong arc, such an emotional one, too, grabs the viewer’s heart by the balls and refuses to let go.

It cycles in the Suzaku fight – he experiences horrible pain to save people, but in order to really motive himself, he must see Keiko in danger. He’s getting there, to the point of caring about humanity, but not quite. Then in the Dark Tournament, the lives of multiple people hang on his victory. But they’re still mostly people he cares about, though now that has extended beyond Keiko into Shizuru, Kuwabara, Kurama, Hiei, Yukina, etc., all of those people. He’s getting there, increasing the circle of people he cares for.

It keeps going up, challenging Yusuke to care more. The hospital had Keiko and shizuru in it. But also the new psychics. Then Sensui threatening all of humanity. Then the 3 kings arc threatening all of the realms. Yusuke progressively gives more of a shit about more people with time and new challenges and as he earns more friends.

And all of that is outlined in he first Fucking 4 episodes!! We know what hsi arc is, we know where he is going, we know what sort of character he is, and we get to see him become truly fleshed out in just 4 episodes.

That’s just Yusuke, too. Kurama also has a complete arc within the span of like two or three episodes, and those themes cycle throughout the show. (guilt, suicide and redemption – think Ura Urishima fight, when Kurama projects his want to sacrifice himself for Shiori to make up for his deception, where he tells the guy that suicide has no honor or redemption in it, even though the guy didn’t care for that, his lie was about getting out of having to hurt people without causing harm to his grandmother, not about redeeming himself – family, lies, the better of two evils – to lie to shiori and stay with her so she has a son, or stop lying to her and punish self for stealing her “real son” away)

It’s consistent, mostly concise, cyclical, and oh so fucking satisfying to my literature loving senses….

And then hxh… where apparently nothing of substance happens in the first Twenty Freakin Episodes. I legit cannot tell you about any character growth in that time. Or plot? They take a test. For who knows how long. Uh… kurapika starts to like leorio when before he didn’t? So he gets friendlier?? Maybe?? Killua begins a friendship with gon instead of getting himself that therapist… they play a ball game together. That gets them to like each other so much Gon goes chasing after Killua when he goes missing at the end of the season. Uh…. they are faced with the horror of fighting people they had to cooperate with before I guess. *shrugs*

If you put a gun against my head, the only character growth or arc I could maybe try to name for the first 30 episodes is that Kurapika started to like Leorio and starts to address him with a bit more respect, cause they worked together, so uh… nope, nope, that’s not an arc in the slightest. Kurapika can simply be a person who doesn’t like others until he gets to know them… So yes, I’d get a bullet in the head.

And the fact that you need to skip the whole beginning of the show to even enjoy it, as @perpetuallyfrowning suggested … I can’t do that. I cannot enjoy any change in Gon if I don’t know where he was before. But I hate where he was before, and we’re stuck with that for so long… Even if you didn’t like Yusuke’s personality at first, you only have to deal with it for a bit because he changes so much so quickly.

So there it is, my rather lazy analysis of the beginning of YYH and HxH, looking at setting and character.

- Mod Lola

#ask #anon #analysis #meta #character analysis #setting analysis #hhd #yusuke #character arc #mod talk

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