#and i've always sort of thought along the same lines in a way? that the way michael brought up lucifer being freed while adam sat in hell | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

little-hermit-crab56 · 6 months

Text

I've been writing for a while so I thought I'd share some writing tips I've learned along the way.

1. Never sacrifice the flow for a quirky line.

That bit of dialogue or flowery paragraph you really like but it kinda disrupts the flow? Scrap it. I know it hurts, but you need to. If you really want to keep it, find somewhere else to put it where it actually fits in.

2. Dialogue is a dance.

Dialogue should go at the pace of an actual conversation, back and forth with little breaks and pauses. Add as little dialogue tags as possible while still making it clear who is speaking. You can also describe what is happening during a pause in the conversation rather than saying they paused, unless the pause is important.

3. Show don't tell is a guideline, not a rule.

Show don't tell is a very useful guideline, but if you're ALWAYS showing it can get exhausting to read. Skip the boring bits and just tell us what happened, then we can get to the good stuff.

4. If it's boring to write, it's probably boring to read.

If you can cut out a whole scene with little consequence to the story, you probably should. As I said before, you don't always have to show us, you can always tell us.

5. Everything needs to have a purpose.

I know there are probably lots of interesting or cute scenes where your characters are just fucking around, but if it doesn't develop character, relations, conflict, or plot, why should we care? Definitely still write them if they make you happy, but if you're gonna add it to your final draft, make sure it matters.

6. You don't need to explain everything all at once.

I know it feels tempting to put all the lore, and all the character's intentions, and reasonings into the first few chapters, but please refrain, you can reserve that for your character and worldbuilding sheets. Instead, take the time to let us get to know the characters, and the world, in the same way we'd get to know a real person. Make your exposition as seamless and natural as possible. It will take practice to know when to reveal information and when to let us wonder, but you'll get there.

7. Write in a way that comes naturally.

I know you probably have an author you wanna write just like, but that is unlikely to happen. Embrace your natural writing style and perfect it, rather than trying to be something you're not. Writing is an art, you need to find your own style and polish it as best you can.

8. Try to make us feel connected by cutting out certain words like "felt".

"Chad felt like a glass of water." Can be replaced with, "Chad was thirsty, so he reached for a glass of water." Both sentences tell us Chad wants a glass of water, but one makes us feel more connected to Chad than the other. Though both sentences have their time and place, you want to make your audience feel as close to their protagonist as possible. Make them feel like they're there, rather than just an onlooker.

9. We don't need to know every physical detail of your character.

I know you probably spent ages creating the perfect characters and you want to give us the perfect image of what they look like, but it can get monotonous and boring, why do we care that your character has brown eyes unless the colour has some sort of significance? Try to list off only the most notable features of your character and put focus only on the relevant details. Sometimes you can even not describe them at all and throw in little bits of information about their appearance for the audience to put together. We read to imagine, not to have a perfect image painted for us when we could be getting to the plot.

10. You're allowed to be vague.

Allow your audience to assume things, with some things you can just be lazy and let your audience's imagination do the work for you. Of course, don't do this with important things, but you can save so much time you might've spent researching an irrelevant topic when you can just be vague about it. You don't have to know everything you're writing about, so long as you know the bits that matter.

11. Writing is a skill that takes practice.

Don't be so hard on yourself if your writing is a bit cringe, we've all been there. The important part is that you research how to get better and keep writing those super cringe chapters. One day you'll reread something from a while ago and realize you're actually not as bad as you thought.

12. Leave your work to rest.

I know you wanna start editing right away, but once you've finished, leave it for at least a month. The longer you leave it the better, but that depends on your attention span. A month to six months is good if you're really impatient but want a good result. If you keep writing in that time your skills will continue to improve, then you'll be editing that draft with fresh eyes and fresh skills.

And if you're a fanfic author, I usually leave my chapters for a week before editing and posting.

Hope this helps anyone struggling, I thought this might be especially relevant now with nanowrimo.

I recently realized how much knowledge I've been accumulating over the years, I definitely have more but this is all I can think of for now.

I'm no writing guru, but if anyone has anything they're struggling with, I can do my best to help you out, so dont hesitate to ask questions.

#writing tips #nanowrimo #story writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writerscommunity #writing #writer

2K notes · View notes

jewelleria · 1 month

Text

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be.

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate.

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified.

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map.

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle.

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more.

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop.

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments.

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on.

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not.

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways.

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine.

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war.

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this:

I am a Jew.

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love.

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners.

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee!

Then they sent me this:

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die.

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind.

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake.

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired.

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people?

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews.

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like.

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for.

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war.

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why.

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be.

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

511 notes · View notes

nocturnowlette · 5 months

Text

The Dragon

The dragon walks up behind me. I'm in a nondescript white room. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all the same material: something ethereal, almost seeming to glow but only when I'm not directly looking. The light emanating from seemingly nowhere seems to infinitely reflect off every surface, making it sometimes hard to tell if the walls are even there, or how big this space really is. Though I haven't turned around, I know it's the dragon. I've seen him before, but I forget where. More importantly, I've felt him before. It feels like it's something I've always known, some part of my DNA, maybe my entire lineage. This dragon's presence is known more to my instincts than my mind. His name is - translated to something I can understand - is Sunny. Though, honestly, I don't think there is a name that can accurately represent a creature like this. He's right behind me now.

I haven't turned around, in a way it doesn't feel necessary. I've known his ears, half cones tapering off to a point at the back. I know his horns, between the two ears, bowed outwards and bending in 90 degree angles. They rise until they're just above the ear, tilting gently forward just past the ears before sharply bending straight backwards, then bending one more time downwards, ending in a sharp point. I know his tail, seemingly large and yet ever-changing in its largeness. Dulled fins, equally spaced, line the top; the bottom half, a lighter pink than his short-furred purple everywhere else, runs with slight waves along its surface. They feel like waves frozen in time. I sense waves of something wash over me. Energy? Pressure? Like a dull droning hum without any sound. It's surrounding me.

As he kneels down behind me, the presence seems to double, then triple in intensity; the air feels tough to move through, and so I don't. Cutting through the invisible waves assaulting my mind, thoughts come flooding to me; Where am I? What is this? What's going to happen to me? A sense of danger starts to creep over me, the hair standing on my back, heart rate increasing- The dragon puts his arms over my shoulders, gently, and places his head over his arm on my left. He seems almost impossibly peaceful. A moving statue. The presence seems to have disappeared entirely, giving me room to think. And yet, I'm paralyzed. All I can really do is stare.

The dragon, whose gaze was near immobile and dull moments before, seems to have the shine of the room gently reflect in his eye. He takes a deep breath in, holding for a short moment, before breathing slowly, slowly out. His breath is a light purple. Due to his snout and head position, the breath is missing me entirely: likely a good thing, perhaps he's purposefully avoiding my nose? We sit there for a while. A few minutes, maybe. He breathes in, slowly, holding it for a moment, then out, slower. I find myself starting to sync with his breaths, so steady that it feels like a gentle rhythm. As much as I don't want to admit it, it's giving some comforting solace in the middle of the confusion. That, and the slight smell of lavender.

The contrast of the artificial coldness of the room and the smell of pure nature is dizzying. Or, something is dizzying. I close my eyes, trying to take in fewer senses and get my mind sorted. He starts to purr. Can dragons purr? Apparently, they can. The rumble has a strong feeling to it, like snoring, but I adjust quickly to it. It reminds me of game controllers and earthquakes and dryers. Definitely dryers. It has that slight rumble to it, like something light is tumbling, and the warmth. I'm surrounded by warmth, like a dense blanket.

The arms around my shoulders are like a scarf, the dragon seeming to be ever closer than before. When did he move? Wait, where am I? Why am I thinking about all of this? I open my eyes. The room looks different. I swear, it does. The color is slightly different, but only in the corners of my vision. A light purple? It smells like lavender. I look to my left again, the breath still steadily pumping out. Is there no ventilation? It feels harder to breathe, like the air is dense. I need to breathe in more, but I'm only getting dizzier. I need to find a way out-

"Breathe in, deeply."

I feel my lungs work on their own, taking a breath that feels impossibly large.

"Breathe out, slowly."

My lungs empty as if there was nothing there in the first place.

My brain feels heavy, exhausted.

"I'm sure it does."

What?

"Don't think too hard."

My thoughts are like molasses.

"Isn't that such a nice feeling?"

It's hard to disagree. It's actually very, very hard.

It feels like I've always loved this feeling.

"You have."

I have?

"Yes. You ask a lot of questions for a pet."

I'm a pet?

The dragon chuckles.

"Of course. Why do you think you're here?"

Why am I here?

"To meet me, officially. You've always known me."

I have?

"You have."

I have.

"There we are. Don't you feel lovely?"

I do.

"Isn't that all that matters?"

It is.

"Good pet. Let's go home, now."

Anything you wish.

#fanfiction #furry #hypnosis #for patricia taxxon

212 notes · View notes

hellcat8908 · 5 months

Note

Hello. Hope your doing well. I have had this idea in my head for a while know. And it can go 3 ways. It involves reader and rhysand

So the reader is pregnant. U know that rhys was under the mountain. So... The reader is mated to rhys. She either goes utm pregnant. She can be trapped and lose the child because of a tourture method, or she can give birth secretly and hide the child utm Or she never went and rhys meets his child after 50 years. U can decide this. Thank you! Have an amazing day.

Returning Home Rhysand x Female Reader

"You are staying in Velaris, I will not risk you traveling in your condition. I want you to stay here and just focus on taking care of yourself and our child." Were Rhys's final words to you before he went under the mountain and became trapped. You were 6 months pregnant when he had left. Once you received word of what happened, you were devastated. You almost lost the babe from the stress and heartbreak. Thankfully, you had the inner circle to help you.

It wasn't always easy, and you're not sure how you managed some days, but you had raised your son. Of course, Azriel and Cassian helped you keep him in line when you needed them to. You were grateful for their support along with Mors. You were finishing setting the table when Rhys walked in. You dropped the plate you were holding, and before it shattered on the floor, you were in Rhys's arms.

Cassian, Azriel, and Mor all came to see what the commotion was. You reluctantly let go of your mate, allowing Azriel and Cassian a chance to welcome him home. You notice Ryker come in and take in the scene in front of him. His family gathered around his father. His same violet eyes stared back at him as Rhys saw him for the first time. You hold your breath as you worry about Ryker's reaction.

Just as Rhys takes a step towards him, he turns and runs out. Rhys politely excuses himself and follows Rykers exit. He quickly finds his son leaning against the railing over looking velaris. Rhys cleared his throat as he approached and joined him. "I know this awkward for both of us, but I would like for it to become less awkward with time." Rhys says. "Where do we even start? What are we even supposed to say?" Ryker asks as he runs his fingers nervously through his hair.

"Why did you go? Why did you leave us behind?" Ryker asks in sudden frustration. "Neither were easy decisions to make, I regret leaving every day. I don't regret not taking the two of you with me, though. Once I'd learned what had happened, I knew I had made the best decision in ordering your mom to stay in Velaris. I knew the two of you would be safe, and I shielded the bond from her to protect her from my agony and the things I witnessed."

Ryker remains silent as he takes in what Rhys said. "I want us to get to know each other and become a family, I don't expect it overnight, but I'll continue to keep reaching." Rhys says before turning and heading back inside to the rest of his family. Ryker remains still as he tries to sort through his feelings and thoughts.

You excuse yourself to check on your son. "It's a beautiful sight, the city." You say as you stand beside him. "I've waited my whole life for him to come home and had dreamt of it so often." He says. "It's nothing like you dreamt it would be, is it?" You ask. "I'm so confused. When he came home, I expected to feel happy and have some sort of connection, but when he does I'm angry and full of questions. "Why now? Why after so long? Am I what he was expecting or hoping for?" He rubs his face. "I need to go."

In an instant, you're left standing alone before you can offer any words of comfort. You let out a sigh and return inside for dinner. Cassian and Azriel are questioning Rhys while Mor just smiles and listens. You take a seat next to Rhys and feel him tugging at your mind. "Later." You convey to him. He relents and continues answering all of their endless questions.

After dinner, you retreat to your bedroom where Rhys joins you a few minutes later, looking upset. "You need to give him time. He'll come around." You tell him softly before helping him undress and get ready for bed. You get yourself ready for bed and cuddle up next to him for the first time in 50 years. "I'm sorry." Rhys says softly. "For what?" You ask, enjoying his warmth. "For leaving you alone to raise him on your own through it all." He says barely loud enough for you to hear.

You reach up and tilt his head so he's looking at you, "You have nothing to apologize for. You had no way of knowing what would happen. Besides, I didn't do it alone. Our family helped, and I always made sure he knew about you." You say before kissing him softly. "I can't help but feel like I failed you both." He admits. "We were safe because of you. You did everything you could, and there is nothing wrong with that. Please don't punish yourself for this." He lets out a sigh and gives you a nod.

Eventually, you drift asleep together. Rhys becomes restless, so he changes into training leathers and heads outside. He makes his way towards the training ground when he hears someone already out there. He assumes it's Azriel since he struggles to sleep some nights. When he rounds the corner, he's surprised to see Ryker. He observes as he notes how well Cassian and Azriel have been training him. His heart hurts that it wasn't him teaching him all these years.

"You look like you could use a sparring partner." Rhys says as he steps closer. "You sure you're up to it, old man?" Ryker retorts. "You could still learn a thing or two." Rhys says confidently. "Let's find out." Ryker says while taking his stance as Rhys follows suit. "Let's see how easy your uncles have been taking it on you." Rhys taunts him.

Ryker lunges for Rhys but is easily blocked as Rhys land a hit to his side. "Someone is impatient." Rhys comments before trying to they continue each one blocking most of the others' attacks but still landing some lucky ones. They seem to be fairly even matched as they wear each other down. Finally, Rhys sees his opening and brings down Ryker after he leaves his left side exposed.

"Looks like this old man has still got it." Rhys says, extending a hand to help Ryker up. "Only one thing you forgot." Ryker tells him. "What's that?" Rhys asks. "Expect the unexpected." Ryker says before sweeping Rhys's legs out from under him, sending him to the ground beside him. "I see Cassian training ideas haven't changed." Rhys says laughing. Ryker joins him, "No fighting dirty is one of the first things you learn with him."

"Come on, let's get some ice for that eye." Rhys says before standing and starting towards the house. "You got lucky on that one." Ryker says as he follows. "Luck had nothing to do with it, son." Rhys says arrogantly. "Whatever you say, old man." Ryker says as he falls in step beside him.

#acotar #sarah j maas #acotar fanfic #rhysand x reader #rhysand #rhys acotar #batboys

230 notes · View notes

linkspooky · 8 months

Note

what are your thoughts on yuji and where do you think he ends up as a character in/after the current arc? i really wish we get more focus on him and his rs with kenjaku after this fight is over cause yuji has felt very underwhelming ever since mahito left him

I think your frustration at the lack of focus on Yuji is understandable anon, but I think Yuji being out of focus is sort of the point. I've always seen Yuji as a "Decoy Protagonist", because he's what the audience would expect the protagonist to be due to all of his typical shonen protagonist traits. Whereas, the real protagonist of the story is Megumi. In the story itself Kenjaku says something along the same lines, that Yuji eating Sukuna's finger was the initiating event of the story, but he's no longer the center of Kenjakiu's schemes. He's more of a trigger than a driver of the plot.

To me this is part of the appeal of Yuji himself. He's a well-intentioned kid who may be a heart of the friend group he's a part of, but he's never given any special treatment by the story. He doesn't have protagonist privilegeTM so-to-speak.

Usually the main character of the story because they're the central focus are given a lot of leeway to make mistakes. It's their story, the story is focused around their growth and development so it makes sense the world and character sin the story are going to center around them to an extent. They have plot armor because of course they do, there's no story without the main character. If they're losing a fight they'll get a convenient power up in time. If they're cornered one of their allies will show up to save them.

By doing away with a lot of the convenience that happens to a lot of main characters in Shonen manga, Yuji becomes a very atypical main character.

The story does not treat Yuji any different from the rest of its characters. Especially during and after Shibuya where Jujutsu Kaisen shifts to more of an ensemble piece than just following Yuji's story and development into a sorcerer.

Mahito lampshades this very fact in Shibuya. That Yuji up until this point viewed himself as the protagonist of a typical shonen jump exorcism manga. He assumes that things will work out because he's the good guy, here fighting evil curses and good always triumphs over evil or whatever the line is. However, Mahito points out that they're just members of opposite factions fighting in the streets of Shibuya. Mahito wants to usher in an age of curses and Yuji wants to kill curses for the sake of humans. Considering curses don't really follow human morality and rules it's not a good vs. evil conflict, it's ust both of them fighting for which side is going to dominate.

"You came to Shibuya with half-assed determination, didn't ya!? How naive, you stupid brat! This is war! Not a battle to fix what's wrong! But a clash of truths you and your fragile justice! You are me, Yuji Itdaori! I kill without a second thought... just like how you save people without a second thought! The instincts of a curse... against the so called dignity obtained by human reason! It's a battle to determine who will be left standing in 100 years!"

One of the biggest mistakes Yuji makes in Shibuya, letting Sukuna take control of his body leading to the massacre of thousands of people is I think a great example of the way the story treats Yuji differently. There are a lot of protaognists who have demon sides that occasionally go berserk. Often giving them a mid-fight power up when their own skill isn't enough to beat the enemy.

Naruto has the nine-tailed fox. Ichigo has Zangetsu his inner hollow / zanpakuto who occasionally tries to usurp control of his body and fight for him. In both cases however, there usually isn't any real consequences for the protagonist losing control. The worst time Naruto rampaged with the nine tails against Pain the village was already destroyed. When Ichigo loses control in the fight against Ulquiorra, he stabs Uryu but the wound heals and no one holds it against him.

Compare this to Itadori who has the deaths of thousands of people on his conscience because of his inability to control Sukuna and is then made an enemy of Jujutsu Society.

Yuji never benefits from plot conveience, in fact assuming things are going to go his way because the world will follow storybook logic is exactly what leads Yuji to making some major mistakes. There's always hard hitting conesequences to Yuji's actions because he's not special, he's just one character among many who are all fighting to survive in this world.

The one thing that gave him a claim to be the main character, being Sukuna's vessel even gets taken away from him. The whole premise of the story is that Yuji is supposed to consume all twenty of sukuna's fingers and then be executed in order to permanently seal him away.

Only for us to learn that the one thing we thought made Yuji special wasn't unique to Yuji. Megumi also had the potential to be a vessel to Sukuna. Sukuna never planned on staying in Yuji's body from almost the start of the manga he was hatching a long scheme to leave Yuji's body and take Megumi's instead.

The quest given to him by Gojo and Megumi. The thing that only he was capable of doing is gone and Yuji is left with nothing.

So what is Yuji's role in the story then, if he's not a main character? A friend of mine pointed this out recently and it helped me understand a lot about Yuji's character: he's sort of a mirror. The story describes Mahito who's set up as Yuji's foil this way as well.

Yuji is for the most part a normal kid (except for the part where he's a science fair project made by Kenjaku) who doesn't have any strong idea motivating him. Which is why it's very easy for him to adopt the motivations of the people surrounding him instead. He starts out repeating his grandfather's words of helping people. The more he interacts with people, the more his motivations become like theirs as well.

He starts out with the vague goal of helping people. When he is given the role of eating Sukuna's fingers he jumps at the chance because it gives him something that he can only do. Even if he dies at the end of his quest he'll die satisfied and on his own terms because he went out helping people. He realizes how poorly thought out his motivation is when confronting Megumi and starts admiring Megumi instead.

When he fails to stop Junpei's death, which is really failing at his goal to save people from "unnatural deaths" as Junpei is twisted into a horrid form by Mahito, Yuji becomes obsessed with killing Mahito instead. In a way he's reflecting Mahito here because violent mahito with no regards for life at all brings out the killer in Yuji. He almost shifts again away from just helping save people from unnatural deaths to becoming someone strong enough to exterminate Mahito.

Towards the end of shibuya, Yuji finally seems to reflect on the emptiness of his own goal. As someone devoid of a purpose he instead just takes whatever purpose someone else around him offers him. Once again playing his role as a mirror, Yuji himself as a character offers nothing but he is someone who reflects and contrasts the people around him.

Yuji doesn't need a purpose for himself, but by being a cog he's still a part of the grander scheme of things. Yuji himself says that he's insignificant but honestly I think it's the same symptom of before Yuji wanting to have a place in the world and a task given to him, but not wanting to contemplate what his own motivations are or what he wants. He wants these things to be given to him instead because he's a mirror, he reflects other people he doesn't not reflect upon himself.

Even thinking of himself as a cog fails because the one role he was given to play, to eat the rest of the fingers and die as Sukuna is now given to someone else because he no longer contains Sukuna in his body. I think Yuji's arc will continue however when he chooses to act selfishly for the first time.

By that I mean he can adopt Megumi's philosophy of "choosing to save people selfishly." Yuji is right now the only person interested in actually saving Megumi from Sukuna's possession and finding some way to do so, while everyone else sees him as a target to be defeated. Which is understandable because by utilitarian logic "the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, or the needs of the one."

The choice to deliberately try to save Megumi and prioritize his life over the lives of thousands of people that might be killed if they don't put down Sukuna permanently and pioritize that is a selfish one.

However, there's already foreshadowing for Yuji making that choice. There's also a circular storytelling sort of logic to it. The story begins by Megumi making the selfish choice to spare Yuji's life even though he's dangerous to others because of Sukuna inside of him. Therefore Yuji making the same choice to save Megumi even though the less risky thing to do is just kill both Megumi and Sukuna together is Megumi's choice from the beginning of the series coming full circle.

It's also an answer to the question Megumi posed to him in their first contronation. "What if the person you save goes on to kill someone else?" Yuji acknowledging that possibility and going on to save Megumi anyway has a lot of weight to it.

The covers of the key animation books released so far also seem to foreshadow the ending fights of the series. We're already in the middle of a Gojo and Megumi confrontation which is the cover of Key Animation Vol. 2.

Considering both Yuji's own nature as a mirror and the way the story itself started with Yuji eating Sukuna's finger I think it makes far more sense for Yuji's last battle to be against Sukuna. Especially since Sukuna now considers Yuji as someone far beneath him even abandoning him as a vessel. The best battle for a character to function as a mirror is to fight their mirror image, and he already did the same with Mahito which was Yuji's most significant fight so far.

As for Kenjaku, we may get some revelations about Yuji's creation but honestly I don't think there's going to be any confrontation between the two of them. There's far more setup for a final confrontation between Kenjaku and Yuta. Number one, Kenjaku is in Yuta's body and that's always been Yuta's rival.

When Kenaku appears and seals Gojo he states he's not worried about Yuta because he doesn't have the potential to surpass Gojo.

Yuta also states his direct goal is to kill Kenjaku by himself so Gojo won't have to kill his best friend a second time.

That's pretty direct foreshadowing in favor of Yuta, and also I think fits with the theme of Yuji not really being the main character of the piece. Kenjaku is pretty much the main villain and the orchestrator behind the plot so him being taken out by another character pushes Yuji away from the center of things. Kenjaku himself even says that he's washed his hands of Yuji, Yuji's no longer the center of his schemes he's moved onto other things.

#jjk meta #yuji itadori #kenjaku #yuta okkotsu #ryomen sukuna

189 notes · View notes

scekrex · 2 months

Note

HIII🫶🫶🫶🫶💍💍💍

I had an idea for a adam xm!reader and its like reader became in a way a sort of friends with the main cast of the demons (Charlie, Vaggie angel ect.) and adam finds out about it when he finds reader with fat nuggets in hel for funzies idk im not so great at English its absolutely not my first language nor the second so if its a complicated idea you can just scrap it dww!!

Furthermore i hope you have a great rest of you’re day 🫶🫶

Sup hun, I simply assumed you mean angel!reader bc it makes the most sense (and it's what I've written) hope ya like it xoxo/p

Forbidden fruits cause damage

pairing: Adam x male!reader

warnings: language

note: not beta read bc fuck you I don't have beta readers

You knew you weren't allowed to, you knew that if Sera or the other seraphims were to find out, they wouldn't let you come back, that you would only see Adam once a year during extermination day and it really messed with your head to be constantly reminded of how tight heaven's rules were.

And yet you came back over and over again.

At first it had been to visit Charlie's hotel, to make sure she wasn't violating any rules heaven had made - that had been an order from Sera. But when Charlie had greeted you so warmly as if she was one of your closest friends and Niffty had dubbed you 'totally hot not-badboy' you couldn't resist when it came to visiting these shitheads.

At first your visits had been rare, they had been a once every couple month kinda deal, you needed to be careful not to draw any attention to you after all. But soon every couple months turned into once a month, once a month became once every two weeks and every two weeks quickly switched to every week.

And while heaven seemed to either not notice or not care enough - maybe they thought you were doing business with Lucifer, who knew - Adam noticed. Of course your boyfriend would notice that every week you'd suddenly disappear for an entire day. You always made sure to leave early in the morning to be back for dinner. However, whenever you left during the early morning hours Adam woke up due to the lack of warmth that you took with you when you left. He was a cuddly guy, even if he would never admit it so of course he would notice his beloved boyfriend’s absence.

Today was yet another day to visit hell. So you went down to hell early, you had left Adam a note that stated something along the lines of 'visiting Ma & Pa, see ya tonight, big guy'. He however wasn't buying any of it. You had once lied to him by telling him you were hanging out with a friend of yours and when Adam had left the apartment for a walk he had seen said friend alone. The same thing happened a couple weeks later again.

He crumbled the little note in his hand and threw it onto the bed. He trusted you, he really did, but then there were his insecurities. His first and second wife had both decided to cheat on him and leave him. What prevented you from doing so too? He didn't know and the thoughts of you fucking another guy were eating him alive.

What if you disappeared once a week to enjoy time with someone who was more charming and loving than him? With someone who'd constantly tell you how much he loves you instead of jokingly insulting you? He couldn't stand his mind for fucking him up so badly, he wanted to crash his head against a wall until it would split open, but he didn't.

Instead he snapped his fingers to let a small orb appear in front of him. The scene the orb showed him was fogged up at first but the picture got clearer only seconds later. He felt disgusting for spying on you, wanted to scratch the skin off of his bones and claw out his eyes but it was the only thing that quieted down his mind at least a little bit.

The orb showed you a bright smile on your face as you held a little pig, petting the small animal lovingly. Next to you stood Angel Dust.

Angel Dust?

“Fat Nuggets really loves you, y’know, poor baby always gets sad when you have to leave,” the pornstar explained with an arm wrapped around your shoulder. Adam couldn't believe what he was seeing. You were in hell, even worse: you were in hell to hang out with the demon scum like it was the most normal thing to do for an angel as pure as you were. The brunette was so overwhelmed by his feelings that he didn't even recognize it when the orb disappeared again, the only thing that was on his mind was why you didn't tell him.

You were apparently regularly hanging out in hell and instead of telling him you always made up some sad excuses why you were gone for the day. Did you not feel comfortable sharing such a big secret? Adam's mind went crazy, the wildest trains of thoughts were running through his head and there was not a single thing the first man was able to do about it, the only thing that was possible in a situation such as his was to take it.

When you got home that evening Adam was walking up and down in the living room. “You okay, babes?” you casually asked, your voice didn't indicate that you had been lying to him for months, it didn't indicate that you had just gotten back to heaven after spending the entire day with some demon fuck-ups. “You wanna explain me where the fuck you were?” Adam asked instead of answering your question and crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes gave away that he was pissed about something yet they were glued onto your body leaning against the door frame. “I wrote you a note, I was-” you were about to explain but the first man to ever be created didn't let you finish, “Fuck you and fuck your lies. You weren't visiting your parents bitch, you were in hell visiting the demon fuck-ups who think redemption is possible.”

You frowned at his words - yes that was true but how the fuck did Adam know about that? “What? So you were spying on me?” you questioned his behavior and stepped towards Adam. The brunette seemed to be close to crying yet his body was ready for a fist fight. “After I figured out you lied to me twice about hanging out with friends? Duh,” he made a hand movement that was supposed to symbolize something along the lines ‘obviously I did’.

You let out a deep sigh. He was right. And that was way too fucking hard to actually admit. But you swallowed your pride and gave in. You walked past him, your hand reached out for him but he flinched away from your touch which resulted in you sitting on the couch alone. He didn't move an inch from the spot he was standing on, the only thing he did was to turn around in order to look at you. “I’m sorry.” A look of surprise washed over the brunette's face and his body language visibly softened. He had expected many things but an apology without a fight hadn't been one of them. “What?” he dumbly asked as he blinked at you in confusion. His wings, which had been fluffed up to make him seem bigger than he already was, dropped until they were pressed against his sides again. His beautiful golden eyes which had been full of anger only moments ago had softened too, they reflected empathy.

You couldn't bring yourself to look him in the eyes as you continued to speak so you stared at the floor instead, “I’m sorry that I lied to you, that I visited hell without telling you, I know I should have but -” you shook your head as you paused for a moment. “No. No excuses. I was afraid of your reaction to it, I know you hate them, I know you hate their project but they're actually so sweet and caring and- and I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about all of it. I should have shared this with you.”

Now it was Adam who sighed as he flopped down onto the couch next to you, he kept his distance though, “I don't fucking like that you're visiting them, what if one day you'll get locked out of heaven? The fuck am I supposed to do without you?” You glanced at him from the corner of your eyes. “I honestly don't fucking care who you're friends with and what they are. That's your fucking life, I won't control that shit, that's yours to decide. Just promise me to be fucking careful ‘n’ stop fucking lying to me about it.” You nodded silently, it was the only response that felt right in that moment.

“N remember, if I have to go to fucking hell just to fuck your juicy little ass, I fucking will. You're not safe from me, not even down there,” the grin in Adam's voice was audible and you peeked up a little only to see the taller man grinning down at you. That made you smile a little.

It was the next day that you called Charlie to inform her that you wouldn't be able to visit as regularly anymore. You weren't willing to risk everything, especially Adam. She being the supportive girl she was obviously understood. “Who are we talking to?” Adam asked sleepily as he entered the kitchen, the poor man had just woken up and followed your voice immediately. “Charlie,” you cheered at him, “You wanna say hi?” You held your phone in front of his face, his mimic was a mix between annoyance and sleepiness as he spoke, “Sup, bitch.” Then he went to make himself a coffee. “You want one too, babes?” he offered to you and you nodded before giving him a quick ‘thank you’ kiss. “Was that Adam?” Charlie asked in surprise over the phone. “Yeah, y’know how I told ya that we're dating?” Your words made pride bloom in Adam's chest, you had been talking to your new friends about him and you weren't hiding that he was your boyfriend even though Charlie and Adam weren't exactly on good terms. “Well yeah you mentioned that but I didn't think- nevermind. I hope you two have a wonderful morning, I assume we'll see each other in two months?” Lucifer's daughter seemed eager to get off the phone now that she knew that Adam was with you. You chuckled at that, “Yeah, sure, see ya then.”

Once the call ended Adam turned around with a sharp grin on his lips, “So, how's hell reacting to a pure babes like you dating me?”

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel adam #adam x male reader #male reader #adam x y/n #adam x reader #adam x you

76 notes · View notes

to-thelakes · 3 months

Text

I'm watching Moon Knight (again) to help me go to sleep and I've rewatched episode 1 so so many times on nights like tonight but I still absolutely adore all the little details.

Like, okay so when Steven wakes up in the Alps (I think that's where it is), Khonshu says "go to sleep, worm" and okay, first watch and without knowing the context of Jake existing, that makes sense. Khonshu doesn't like Steven which we learn more and more as the series goes on but then he says a few lines later "the idiot's in control" in that same scene in the Alps.

There is such a clear shift in attitude between 'go to sleep, worm' and 'The idiot's in control' and it's so obvious on a rewatch that Khonshu is talking to two different people with each line.

He's referring to Jake as 'worm' and he thinks that telling him to simply 'go back to sleep' would work because Jake is aware of the alters and their situation. Although from the brief glimpses we get of Jake, we know that he is an... interesting guy yet we can gather that he at least has some sort of alliance/respect/something going on with Khonshu. However, when he realises it's Steven, it's not hostility in the same way. It's more exasperated frustration. He's mad at Marc for letting Steven suddenly appear rather than being annoyed at Jake for making a random appearance. The way that the dialogue is written just exposes so much on a rewatch.

But going back to Jake/Khonshu even if they do have some respect, it's also pretty obvious that Khonshu does not want Jake around. I'd speculate that that's probably because if Marc loses time when he knows that he's not in London as Steven, that would create suspicion. Suspicion that Khonshu wouldn't want because that would put their avatar/God relationship at risk.

Though, I also suspect that Khonshu and Jake probably were working together but Marc never became aware because Jake worked at nights (maybe why Steven is so goddamn tired) or simply took over while Marc thought that Steven was in control.

I know that the Moon Knight portrayal is not the most accurate DiD portrayal but from my research, there's this whole idea of like different levels of awareness. Like the blackouts for Steven are because he initially has no awareness of the other alters. Then when Steven and Marc black-out, it's because neither of them are aware that there is a third alter aka Jake. Which means that Jake can do things for Khonshu while Marc believes that he is in London and neither Marc nor Steven would be aware.

I'm kind of just rambling about the show at this point but also, what I find really interesting every time I rewatch is the date thing. So, right, if Marc was the one that set-up the date why would he let Steven stand her up without saying anything to her? Marc isn't exactly the best guy when it comes to romance but he is incredibly protective over Steven because he wants to protect him from Khonshu. So, why in the world would he let the whole date rejection thing happen?

Because it wasn't Marc. It was Jake. Jake asked out Steven's colleague and that also makes sense why they went to a steak place. Jake doesn't give a f*ck about Steven's veganism while Marc absolutely would. Marc wants to protect Steven so he wouldn't make such a silly mistake.

But Jake would. Honestly, at this point, convinced that Jake just wanted to fuck with the Moonboys and Khonshu just played along.

I don't know.

I always find the dynamics of the Moonboys so interesting and I love how even when you rewatch it, there are new little discoveries that you can make. Like there was so much love, thought and attention put into this show?? It makes me SO SO happy.

This show honestly means the world to me and excuse the ramble/rant but I just love talking about my Moonboys and I never really get to speculate or discuss the show. I talk about it with my dad but being at uni means that I do not get to ramble at him as often. So, tumblr gets it instead.

But yeah, they're my (not very) astute observations about my beloved Moon Knight

#moon knight #marc spector #moonknight #moon boys #steven grant #jake lockley #ruby rambles #moon knight system #ramble post #moonknight is my comfort show <3 #i miss my moon boys #sleepless night with ruby <3

78 notes · View notes

bookishdaze · 26 days

Text

My too long theory post about Mae as Reverse Caesar? This is multiple theories, really...

My theories on Mae's origins have ranged from her just being a lone smart girl among feral humans, to her coming from an underground civilization living in a bunker (My personal favorite. I like Fallout, lol).

Here's one that came to mind recently. It's not my main theory for her, (I still think she's just from some colony of smart humans) but it's my most "creative" and "crazy" one, but if people are allowed their crazy astronaut theories, THEN I'M ALLOWED THIS ONE 🤪

I'm gonna be calling her Mae/Nova for this.

Feel free to poke holes in this theory by the way, hehe.

This theory came to me after watching the new trailer, where we hear her being called "Nova," and we also get a shot of her riding on horseback with Raka. It reminded me a lot of Nova from War riding with Maurice.

So I thought, 'Huh, we're getting another blonde girl named Nova riding on horseback with an orangutan in the exact same way. It almost looks like the characters and plot for KOTPOTA could be a reworked version of what a plot could look like for a direct War sequel following a grown up Cornelius with Nova and Maurice and ohhhhhh-'

*puts on tinfoil hat* So my weird train of thought led me to this wacky theory: Mae/Nova is a human that was taken in by Raka as a child, and he has been raising and taking care of her. Just like Maurice did for Nova. She's kinda like Tarzan.

At first I had thought Raka met Mae/Nova because she was separated from her human colony and he was helping her get back home before they ran into Noa.

I also thought that maybe they come from a place where humans and apes already coexist, and I honestly still think either of these is the case tbh, but this part of a recent article made me think otherwise.

The "rabbit-in-headlights" bit makes me doubt she comes from a place where there are intelligent humans. (It's still possible she could be. I'll get to that later). To me this sounds like she's smarter, but still has some "animal" behaviors.

As for why Raka took her in, it can totally just be coincidence that we have another friendly orangutan who adopted a young girl.

Or maybe it became some sort of, ehh, tradition? Him wearing a necklace with Caesar's symbol and talking about how apes and humans used to live side by side makes him sound like a religious person. Maybe somewhere along the line, it became custom for those who follow his faith to "adopt a Nova" to raise and take care of, like Maurice did.

There is a difference, though. Raka could have been taking care of Mae/Nova, but he still sees her as an...well, an animal. A very smart animal that he feels a responsibility towards. I know him viewing her as an animal sounds pretty harsh, but keep in mind that humans have regressed to be like animals at this point.

And there's also this scene where he just....tosses her some food. It's no different from the way humans toss a friendly animal some food, really.

"But why does she seem frightened by the apes at the fireplace if she's been raised by Raka?"

I think she's scared of Noa here.

Orangutans are actually solitary creatures (I googled, lol), so it's very possible that it's just been her and Raka, and any newcomer makes her nervous.

Ok ok ok, so he's a guy who has taken in an animal that shows signs of intelligence and has taken it upon himself to nurture and care for this animal because his personal beliefs tell him that in doing so, he could potentially make the world a better place.

Like Will did with Caesar.

"So she's reverse Caesar." Yeah. That's pretty much what I've been trying to get at with all my rambling. Yay, parallels!

And we know Will cared for Caesar, but he always saw him as an animal. A very smart animal, but an animal nonetheless. He had him on a leash, and as much as he didn't want to, he still took him to the primate shelter. It wasn't Will being cruel, he just treated Caesar the way any human would have treated an animal, no matter how close they are.

Of course, like Caesar, Mae/Nova is gonna go through some changes. She's a young girl growing into adulthood. She'll have "needs and wants," as this article states.

Those needs and wants could be many things. To be regarded as equal. No longer wanting to feel inferior. And if she truly is some lone smart girl among a world of feral humans, she's also gonna feel really really lonely. (Think about it. If she does not come from a colony of smart humans and she truly is the only one, that's tragic. I'd be depressed, man).

So she'll also want friendship and companionship. To have a friend or anyone she can relate with. She'll most likely find this with Noa, since the article says, "...there are far more parallels and commonalities between the two of them than they might have originally imagined."

Okay, one question came to mind when coming up with this theory.

Why is she smarter than other humans? I got a few theories.

Theory 1. She could still be someone who grew up in a colony of intelligent humans, whether it be a colony in an underground bunker or anywhere else. It doesn't matter. But something terrible may have happened, like her colony was killed off, or she was separated from them as a little girl. Then Raka found her and took her in. Like Tarzan!

Theory 2. This one and the third one won't be as satisfying to fans, I assume. But maybe Raka noticed a lone child that was smarter than most, and he decided to take her in and help her intelligence grow.

Theory 3. She started off as an unintelligent feral girl, but being raised by an ape allowed her to slowly gain her intelligence back. I actually like this one. For starters, it's similar to the Planet of the Apes novel from 1963, where one of the astronauts became feral and unintelligent because of spending too much time in a cage with feral humans at a zoo, and Nova actually gained the ability to speak and became intelligent after spending a year or two in space with Ulysse, the protagonist.

Theory 4. She's like Megamind where she was launched into space from an alien planet as a baby while her homeworld burned all around her and she crash landed onto Earth. THERE'S YOUR ASTRONAUT THEORY.

I'm kidding. That was a joke. I know April Fool's was two days ago.

As for her name, we've gotten three so far. Mae, Nova, and Echo. I like to think of her name as a sort of symbol or indicator of her character growth, where I assume she'll gain the ability to speak at the end, or will have grown into herself as a person.

She'll start off as Nova. A common generic name given to all humans, given to her by Raka.

Then Echo. A more unique name given to her by Noa, but still not her own.

Then, finally, Mae. Her true unique name that she was either born with, or she picks out for herself.

Aaaaand I think that's it. I'm done. I know that was long, but I wanted to gather all of my thoughts and theories on Mae/Nova somewhere before I watch the movie in a month. Whatever her story is, I cannot wait to see it unfold. Now it's time for me to SLEEP.

#planet of the apes #kingdom of the planet of the apes #pota #kotpota #planetoftheapes #kingdomoftheplanetoftheapes #please feel free to pick this theory apart #thats the best way to test if something works #trying to break it as much as you can to expose where the holes are

32 notes · View notes

littlexscarletxwitch · 1 year

Note

omg!! i have a request! i loveeee mutual pining. so is there anyway you could do something along the lines of the whole “have you seen the way she looks at you? you’d think you’re the one who put the stars in the sky with how much love she has for you” and a jealous love confession from r??

── ༊*·˚⋆ 𝗷𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀𝘆

paring: florence pugh x fem!reader

tag(s): fluff, mutual pining, sexual tension (?), kinda friends to lovers, allusions to sex but sfw

warning(s): mentions of consuming alcohol, smoking (?), grammatical errors, not proofread.

word count: 1.7k

note: I'm back bitchez. Sorry I haven't been posting, I've been lacking inspiration. I apologise in advance if this isn't the good. I hope you like it, nonnie. Let me know if you want a part 2 for what happened next. I'm not a native english speaker, so please let me know about any sort of mistake. Hope you enjoy! <3

requests are open! + check my rules here <3

part 1 | part 2

Your eye twitched as you watched him pull Florence closer to his body.

She looked so comfortable in his arms, as if she was meant to be there. You felt sick at the sight, wanting more than anything for her to be in your arms, you breathing in her scent, her hand on your thigh trailing small circles, and her burning touch against your skin.

“Y/n, are you listening?”

Toby snapped you out of your thoughts, forcing you to look away from them.

“I’m sorry, I was just–”

“Drooling at my sister? Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“Shut up,” you smacked his arm, afraid Florence would hear the two of you talking.

But it was almost impossible for you to hear Toby through the loud music, so you figured it would be even harder for her to hear you two. Not that it mattered anyway, she was too engrossed by that idiot.

“Why don’t you tell her?” Toby took a sip from his cup.

“Tell her what?” you tried to play dumb, but he knew you pretty well, you couldn’t fool him.

“Tell her that you are madly in love with her.”

“I’m not,” you scoffed.

“Oh, come on. I’ve seen the way you look at her. The eyes, chico. They never lie.”

“Don’t give me that Scarface shit, you twat.”

“Who is a twat?” Raffie’s voice made you jump.

“Toby.”

“Y/n.”

The both of you replied at the same time, causing Raffie to chuckled and rolled her eyes at the both of you.

“Yeah, you both are.”

“This twat here,” Toby pointed at you, “doesn't want to tell Florence how she feels.”

“Oh, yeah. She is a twat.”

“Raffie,” you knitted your brows.

“He’s right, you know. Why can’t you just tell her?”

“Just look at her,” you nodded in Florence's direction. She was laughing at whatever that idiot had said. “She clearly likes him. Plus, we’ve been friends forever. I can’t just ruin our friendship. I won’t. I would rather have her as a friend than not have her at all in my life.”

Raffie looked at his brother. The both of them were so done with you and Florence’s bullshit. You two were so dense, always going to either Toby or Raffie to mumble nonstop about each other: “Florence is just so breathtaking,” you would say. “Y/n, she’s mesmerising. She makes my knees go weak, Raffie,” Florence would tell her. “Her laugh is just like a melody to my ears,” Toby would roll his eyes at you. “She makes me so nervous, but I also feel so at ease next to her,” Florence would tell her brother.

They could see the whole thing crystal clear. She liked you, you liked her, simple as that. They never understood how you missed Florence’s hints towards you, or the way she would touch you, or how her eyes would lit up the second you came into the room. But then again, Florence never noticed how you would laugh at her lame dad jokes, or how you would always need to be close to her, or the fact that you would always come up with stupid excuses just to be with her.

Florence felt your burning gaze on her frame, finding your eyes in an instant. She smiled at you, as she would always do just to see your cheeks turning red. But all she received was a tight smile and next thing she knew you were walking away from Raffie and Toby. She could tell something was bothering you. Of course she could tell, she spent every minute of her day watching over your every movement and reaction. She knew when you were sad, angry, happy, scared, worried. And she could tell something was upsetting you.

“Hey, where are you going?” Chad, the dude she met just minutes ago, asked.

Chad wasn’t bad, he was just a little too drunk. Florence was too kind to turn him away, but she really had no interest in him.

“Listen, Chad. I had a good time,” he was so boring, “but I have to go, yeah?”

“Oh.”

“You know, that brunette over there has been looking at you the entire night. Why don’t you go and say hi?”

“Really?” Chad looked confused.

“Yeah, just go, buddy. Have fun and don’t do anything you shouldn't be doing,” Florence said before getting closer to where her siblings were.

“It’s just, you know how dense they–”

“Hey, you!” Raffie cut Toby off.

“Hey, what happened to Y/n?” she ignored what the two of them were talking about earlier. Right now, she was more interested in knowing what had happened to you.

“Oh, you know, she just…” Raffie trailed off, looking at her brother for help.

Toby could almost see Raffie’s brain trying to find the right words to say. If he had been a little more sober, his brain would probably be doing the same. But he was a little tipsy, and his brain wasn’t working properly.

“You know what, fuck it. Florence,” he grabbed her sister by her shoulder, “you need to go find Y/n, and tell her how you feel.”

“You know I can’t do that, she would–”

“No, just listen to me. I’m done with this bullshit. She loves you, okay?”

“Toby,” she tried to say but Toby once again cut her off.

“No, hear me out. Have you seen the way she looks at you? No, of course not, you’re clueless, for god’s sake,” he answered himself. “They way she looks at you, she just,” his intoxicated brain was struggling to find the right words. “This girl is utterly in love with you. You’d think you’re the one who put the stars in the sky with how much love she has for you, Flo.”

Florence didn’t know what to say.

“She’s been watching you the whole night with that dude. She thought you liked him, and she just couldn't take any longer watching you with him. So, you go after her and tell her how you feel, okay?”

Florence could only nod at them, still too stunned to actually speak. Her brain was going so fast thinking the right words to confess her feelings to you. But first she needed to find you.

She knew you were upset, upset because of her but that didn’t matter right now. And when you would get upset you would always go out to have a smoke. She walked out of the pub, looked to her right then to her left. And that was when she saw you. Leaning against the wall, eyes closed breathing out the smoke.

She carefully approached you, as if she were to be too loud you would run away from her.

“Mind sharing?”

Your eyes opened at the sound of her voice, your heart rate increasing. You passed the cigarette to her, your fingertips brushing against her skin. You watched as she breathed in, her chest puffing up causing butterflies in your stomach.

“What happened to the guy you were talking to?” you suddenly remembered why you were upset.

Florence noticed the slight anger in your voice. Was it also jealousy maybe?

“What about him?” she was now messing with you, wanting to see if you were actually jealous.

“I just thought you two were getting along,” you shrugged.

“We were,” your heart shrunk at her words. “Why did you walk out, Y/n?” you noticed she got closer to you, which made you more nervous.

Florence was also nervous, about you being that close to her, about her heart beating so fast, but she couldn’t let you see that. Not if she wanted to tease you a little bit.

You grabbed the cigarette and brought it up to your lips.

“I just needed some space,” you breathed out the smoke.

“Bullshit.”

She took a step closer to you, her feet touching yours.

“I just…”

“It’s okay, you can tell me,” she whispered.

You could feel her hot breath on your lips.

“I didn’t want to watch.”

“Watch what exactly?” she knew what you were talking about, but she wanted to hear you say it.

Your eyes moved down to her lips and quickly moved up to find her eyes.

“I didn’t want to watch you with him. I didn’t want to watch him touching you, is that what you wanna hear? That I couldn’t even watch him looking at you. That you made me go fucking crazy,”

“And what are you going to do about it?” her lips were so close to yours. If you were to move you would be kissing her.

You brought the cigarette to your lips one more time, breathing in and then breathing out the smoke on her parted lips. You watched as she breathed in and then out the smoke. Even though your brain was clouded with a bit of alcohol and her intoxicating scent, you then realised that she was teasing you. That she wanted you to react like this. So you did what you hoped she wanted you to do.

Your lips found hers, putting the both of you out of your misery. You could taste the cigarette in her mouth and the vodka she had earlier. A moan escaped from your lips when you felt her teeth biting into your bottom lip. Your hand went to find her hair, slightly pulling it, causing a whimper to fall out of her mouth, but was muffled by your lips. You were so lost on her lips, and her body against yours that you didn’t notice two figures coming your way.

“Fucking finally!” Toby shouted, causing the two of you to pull back from each other.

“Get a room, you two!” Raffie joked.

“Shut up,” Florence and you said at the same time, which made the four of you chuckle.

“Are you guys ready to go home?” Toby asked.

Florence pecked your lips one more time and said, “Hell yeah!” a grin was plastered on her face.

“Oh, gross. I know that look,” Raffie complained.

“What look?” Florence played dumb, she knew exactly what her sister was talking about.

“Just don’t be too loud, okay? I have to wake up early tomorrow.”

“I can’t make any promises,” she said, making her way to the car, pulling you inside with her.

“We should drop them in a hotel or something,” Toby mumbled.

Likes, comments and reblogs are appreciated! <3

-M

#florence pugh #florence pugh x reader #florence pugh x you #florence pugh x y/n #florence pugh imagine #littlexscarletxwitch's fic #requests by lovely anons ‘๑’#your fav florence pugh blog <3

236 notes · View notes

ghostofbambifanfiction · 25 days

Note

That was so beautifully written! I thought the line 'He wants to talk to his friends so desperately until conversation starts, then conversation exhausts him, and each kind word or piece of advice peels all of his raw wounds open and rubs them down with salt' so perfectly captured that feeling of feeling so sad, stuck and heartbroken that I think so many people can relate to (particularly as somebody who has struggled with depression for most of their life).

I can't wait to see their next interaction! Curious to know why James hasn't seemed to have acknowledged Lily's Frasier post, the fact he didn't mention it makes me very intrigued!

I was wondering what he meant when he said "he doesn't like Skylar all that much.", did he mean in a attraction sort of way or more generally? I really like the way you have written her as a character but have always felt that James has never been actually that invested in the friendship but let himself get carried along with it as he was too polite to say otherwise.

Thank you so very much you wonderful person! It's really nice to know that my perspective on heartbreak is relatable to others including yourself (although I am truly sorry for the reason why and wish you all of the love and healing that you deserve) as I was worried that I'd get "it's overdramatic" as feedback. I've only had my heart broken once before, but that was how I felt at the time, so I put it into words as best I could. It made me feel really good to read your words and I hope it makes you feel good to know how appreciated they are, and how validating it was to read them.

I have some answers for you! Re: the Frasier post, James didn't acknowledge it for the same reason that Lily didn't acknowledge his, because he couldn't satisfy himself 100% that it was meant for him. He also has a habit of being quite passive in general, a habit that the last act of this story (aka the act we're now in, now that it's "tomorrow") is going to see him working to change.

Re: Skylar, if James is honest with himself, the best thing he can say about Skylar is that he doesn't dislike her. She's a very forceful person who thinks she knows what everyone wants and needs and she assumed, without seeking confirmation, that he enjoyed her company so much purely because she enjoyed his. I remember reading an interview with Daniel Radcliffe where he said he worried a bit about Rupert Grint because if some random person asked Rupert to go to their house, he'd probably just agree to it, and that's James exactly. James has been agreeable and polite and, again, passive! His passivity affected his relationship with his mum because when he tired of her controlling behaviour he vanished on her rather than confront her, and his passivity led to Skylar snatching a much bigger role in his life than he ever would have chosen. But thanks to her he's becoming aware of it now, which is ultimately going to be great for him. She taught him a very valuable lesson, but that still doesn't mean he'd be overly psyched to spend time with her in future. He doesn't find her particularly fun.

(Remember in my opening author's note where I said that this fic was going to be short, quick and fluffy? Clearly I was setting myself up for embarrassment because I cannot stop myself from overthinking these crazy kids and their motivations. Oops?)

#sarah's choose your own adventure fanfic

33 notes · View notes

cipheramnesia · 4 months

Text

Today I am asking myself why do I like Terrifier and Terrifier 2. There doesn't have to be a reason for it, and I struggle to find any merit to them other than the dubious quality, inventiveness, and excess of the gore and violence. Maybe that's it, and probably that is literally all there is to the movies - fans all say as much. And if your only thoughts on Terrifier are "I hate that shitty movie," honestly that's fair, more than reasonable, but this post isn't for you so kindly skip along by.

But also the movies don't hit for me in the same way as a bloody rollercoaster ride movie does. For some reason I am unable to comprehend, my mind is insisting the movies are good on an artistic level - my brain insists there is artistic merit, although it steadfastly refuses to disclose what that might be. This isn't an endorsement, by the by, the Terrifier movies are extreme in a way apart from even the French Extremity movement or the whole torture trap Saw era from the USA.

Although in some ways that may be a part of what makes the movies something more than graphic violence alone. They are unpleasant in a way that is malicious - a naked cruelty which in a perverse way is a form of open honesty speaking to truth. There is no detachment from the violence, no easy way to disconnect from it as some sort of mechanical function or take it in as a part of a story. Art the Clown embodies such a totality of unrelenting and unchecked cruelty that it comes around as confusingly refreshing, because it is so rare for any media to be so graphically violent without attempting some framing of the harm - even if only as a plot point. It's masochistic to watch but in a more literal kink way. The Terrifier movies are a safe space to engage with senseless violence and cruelty, to experience the emotional impact of the idea of an uncaring world design only to cause pain, and then to be able to safely leave this mental space physically intact, better equipped for the real world which by nature is not nearly so malicious as Terrifier. Cathartic in the same way as it can be to get whipped or beaten, followed by care and caressing. Maybe.

All that under consideration, a throwaway line from a review has raised a second consideration for me: Are these movies camp? They are wildly exaggerated performances which incorporate large amounts of generally discarded pop culture on purpose. They deliberately incorporate the cheap aesthetics of low budget video nasties, grindhouse movies, and direct to video 80s horror. Everything about Art the Clown and his violent acts is severely over the top from his facial features to his makeup to his mannerisms which are those of a mime rather than a clown. I think it's arguable that the Terrifier movies go beyond simply utilizing a retro aesthetic into performing a kind of horror drag - dressing up in the clothes of the 70s-80s but elevating the content into a hyper-grotesque persona that's almost like everything the film censors and critics from that era thought such movies actually were. It's a movie that purposefully becomes the kind of monster conservatives always imagine about horror, just to throw that right in their face. It is, I think, very arguably camp in how much it is purposefully over the top and self-indulgent about what the vast majority of people would (often rightly) dismiss as artless trash.

Which leads me back around to asking myself if I truly believe what I've written, or if I'm merely trying to find an internal and artistic justification for liking violent and misogynistic horror flicks with nothing of else of substance.

#terrifier #art the clown #damien leone #horror movies #long post

36 notes · View notes

mooonjin · 1 year

Text

His Nature

Notes: this was so rushed! i had an idea nd really had to jot it down. sorry if itsd not the best aaaaack but pls enjoy!

Pairing: Crosshair x gn!reader

Summary: A clone bred for battle eventually harbours feelings for you and someone who's been a soldier his whole life, has to find a way to confess. Unfortunately, his personality is his only obstacle.

Warnings/Tags: one or two curse words, Crosshair being Crosshair, jealousy, minor yelling (if you squint), mild kissing, fluff tehe — tell me if I've missed anything!

For once, the Batchers didn't have some absurd mission to go on. They didn't have any yapping from Cid and rarely had to go out for supplies. Not even the Marauder was damaged.

They were all free to basically do whatever they wanted to do; on their own or with the others if they desired. Earlier, some of them suggested that they should just sleep the day away, get some rest in. Others wanted to get training in to 'improve'.’ Any civvie would object and say that they didn't need to improve on anything.

It wasn't much of surprise when Tech suggested the whole Batch do spring cleaning and reorganise their stuff in the Marauder. The entire group groaned and walked off when the words left the clone's mouth.

He merely shook his head and tended to his mini projects. It put a sort of disappointed expression on your face when Tech used free time to tinker with mechanics. You always encouraged him to go out and have fun but you would always be met with his index finger in the air, followed by something along the lines of 'this device requires my undivided attention' or 'time isn't a luxury to be wasted, this is crucial to be worked on.’

Wrecker opted to sleep and eat. Mainly eat and sit around with Echo though. He considered him his 'chillaxing buddy.’ You thought it was pretty cute how the two of them would laugh at each other. You always caught Wrecker punching Echo's chest and him having to suffer in silence from the relatively harsh contact. He'd forget it eventually and brush it off. You love it when you see such war-intelligent soldiers have a laugh.

Hunter kept himself occupied with his vibro-knife and the stray lothcat by his ankles. Ord Mantell wasn't super luxurious; it was definitely habitable and had hidden gems placed around the town so it wasn't much of a surprise when you would be able to spot stray animals. The broody clone had a soft spot and this lothcat basically won his heart. The soft creature was very fond of his long hair. It's like they were twinning.

And now for the man who always seems to never be in your vision when everybody is out of the shuttle.

Crosshair.

A grump in the corner.

It's his nature. He can't change that. You can't change that.

And what was Crosshair doing?

Go on, give a good guess.

That's right, he was cleaning his rifle! The clone had probably brushed the surface of that weapon too many times to count. Honestly, it was slowly becoming a mirror. He was leaning against a large rock, one leg limp on top of a smaller rock resting under his knee. The other leg supporting his rifle while his nifty, slim fingers clutched a cloth to get right into the rifles' crevices.

You observed the clones. Despite being created from the same Fett, they all had a personality of their own and it warmed your heart when you saw them outside of the battle field. What didn't warm Crosshair's heart was your personality.

It was too bright for him. Too joyful. Too energetic. Too... you.

Yet he liked it.

Sure, he might have a some drops of feelings for you but that didn't matter. That thought was too busy becoming clouded by the intense "hatred" he had for you. But would you consider it hatred?

"Whatcha doin'?" you took a snoop into the cockpit of the Marauder. It wasn't much of a shock to find Tech perched on the pilot's seat with wires and boards on his lap. There were several tools on the floor as well as being scattered across the control panels. Some were organised in his tool belt — by the Maker it was a mess.

A zap of sparks erupted quickly and faded shortly after. It repeated this pattern until Tech placed down his previous tool to pick up another. With a gentle push of his goggles using the pad of his index finger, he replied, "Repairing," it was dry and fast. He seemed busy. The clinking of the tools filled the silent void as you watched him carefully.

Tech liked that about you. His brothers weren't big fans of his rambles or his projects — unless it was mission related — but you always found time to open your ears to listen. Even with his lack of showing emotion, you read him easily. His body spoke more than he did.

And Crosshair hated that about you.

Crosshair could be the quietest, most invisible person in the group yet you could still understand what was bothering him. It annoyed him how you always came up to him when he was by himself, minding his own business.

Yet there was still that flutter of appreciation whenever you approached him.

"And what is it you're repairing?" you leaned against the panel, gently pushing his tools so you could make some room to comfortably rest against. Tech noticed this, quickly discarding the project for a bit to sort the tools you pushed aside. You muttered an apology under your breath before Tech sat back down and glued his eyes onto the contraption on his lap.

"Our chip scanner. Due to the crash we sustained previously and fortunately recovered from, the scanner was not able to avoid damage. We still haven't surgically removed Hunter's chip yet so that is what I'm working towards with the time I have, currently." a grin appeared on your face. Tech was super caring about his brothers and the fact that he used his own time for somebody else showed that.

"You're cute, I'll be outside if y'need me." you patted his shoulder before walking off to exit the shuttle. A small blush creeped onto Tech's face but he shook it off and continued his work on the apparatus.

As you stepped outside the ship, you inhaled the air of Ord Mantell. The smell wasn't as grim as you expected since the town always looked like it marinates in rust, dirt, and grease. They always parked the shuttle near the heart of the food corner. Every building had at least one canteen for alcohol and a couple of food stalls out in the front.

Mantell mix was the most popular selling street food. Wrecker made it seem a lot more delicious than it sounded. He had already finished the two bags when you offered to go pay for it. That's where most of the credits disappeared to.

You walked over to Hunter who was being smothered by the stray lothcat. It chirped and squeaked as it attacked his neck and long hair. His laughs were muffled and tried to roll over to get the cat off of him. You laughed as you approached him, gaining enough of the cats attention to hop off of Hunter. A sigh left his lips, a little worn out from the play-fight he faced.

"It likes you," you gently ran the pads of your fingers along its head, calming down the creature before it ran off at the sight of a trash panda.

"It likes everyone," Hunter sat up to brush off the excess fur the cat managed to shed onto him. It almost looked like Hunter had extensions due to the hair that clung on him.

You dusted your hands off, bits of fur flying everywhere, "I kinda need your help," Hunter's eyes peeked through his hair. He brushed it back to pay attention to what you had to say next. "I know it's probably not my problem, but Cross's been a little... grumpy? Not!—in a bad way just, yeah. Y'know?"

"Well, that's Crosshair alright." Hunter lowly chuckled.

You sighed in defeat. You didn't exactly know how to word your situation. You wanted to hang out with him, make amends for whatever he held a grudge on you for, and just overall be good friends with him. He cares deeply about his brothers but is always so distant. That was his way of bonding.

You've liked Crosshair for a while now. He might not be a conversationalist or a particularly extroverted person, but you liked him. He was content and mostly kept to himself. He was caring and showed that by reassuring gestures; like he did on Skako Minor when you went to rescue Echo.

Hunter cheered you up a bit, letting you sit with him for a bit to ease any pressure off your chest. He was like this father figure; his leadership skills poking through every now and then. The both of you joked around, laughing and elbowing each other playfully as you found a rhythm to keep each other productive and happy.

In the distance, Crosshair's eyes were very piercing, similar to how he'd peer through his rifle lens. It's like he was about to fire a blaster shot at your direction with his stare. The toothpick in between his teeth felt like it was going to snap due to how hard his teeth were gritting. It was his pet peeve, seeing you pounce on his brothers to get laughs out of them or just to hang out with in general.

Dare say... jealousy?

"Relax, they're not gonna do anything." Echo left Wrecker to sleep off his food coma. Everybody could no doubt hear his snores ring through the alleyways. Echo noticed how hard Crosshair was staring at Hunter. But it was you who really had his attention.

"I know." his response came out snappier and coarse than he anticipated. Although, he didn't care.

You finally left Hunter to tend to his own time, standing up to supposedly find Wrecker. A chuckle was emitted when you found him asleep, mouth open, releasing snores after snores. Your eyes scanned the area to look for the other Batchers when you made eye contact with Echo.

Then Crosshair.

A smile grew on your lips, waving gently before jogging over the brothers. A scoff left Crosshair's mouth as you sat down in front of the sniper but deep down, his heart was fluttering, "Whatcha doin?" Echo smiled, patting his brother on the back before leaving the both of you to chat.

Curse Echo, Crosshair thought.

"Guess." Crosshair mumbled, butterflies quickly filling his stomach as you spoke to him.

"Target practice?"

"Hm," you could hardly tell if the answer was a yes or a no. He couldn't handle it — he couldn't handle you, your sweet scent and aura. It drove him crazy. He stood up, grabbing his rifle and made his way to the Marauder. You managed to catch up to him seeing as he looked to be in a hurry.

"Cross, slow down!" you chuckled playfully. He did not slow down but instead kept walking.

You were annoying sometimes to him. Ever since you joined their Batch, he had to resist from reporting you straight away, simply because you were too good for them. He just wanted you to shut up; it's clear as day that he wasn't used to such a bright atmosphere. Especially being around soldiers of war.

He was a patient man but his thoughts were almost so unreadable, you couldn't get the hint. Crosshair is very durable and can endure circumstances normal folk wouldn't be able to handle. It was derived from his nature as well as his enhancements.

"Cross? Hellooo?" you hummed out.

He finally turned around to acknowledge you but not in a good way. His eyes felt sharper than ever, staring down your figure. He swiftly checked his surroundings before hauling you into the Marauder. You let out a surprise yelp from the sheer force he used to get you inside. The doors shut with a quiet hiss.

It felt like no one was here, only yours and Crosshairs' clanking footsteps against the metal were to be heard throughout the shuttle, "Woah, s'everything alright?—"

"—Get your fucking act together." he snapped, the roughness in his voice was harsher than you've ever heard.

Your personal bubble was popped and he way was too close to your face. A couple more inches forward and you'd practically be kissing. Not that you'd complain but given the situation, those thoughts depleted.

"What?" you muttered, timid and weakly. You genuinely had no idea what you were doing to Crosshair and it sort of pained you. If only you knew what you did to him.

"Did I stutter?" his words were laced with venom. It felt hot, his fiery attitude being poured all over you like lava. "Do you always have to be so... so..." his voice faded out, the end of his sentence replaced with a low, frustrated groan. You stood there in shock. Where did this Crosshair come from? Did you do this? "...So happy all the time?"

Crosshair's fists clenched at his sides. You could see them shake from how hard he was clutching, "There's no point living without it so... yeah."

"The whole batch has to live with it and act like we enjoy it," he poked a finger at your shoulder, pushing it so you stumbled a bit. He did this until you were backed up against the cool metal of the shuttle. His words pained you like he shot a blaster through your heart. An odd shiver rushed to your face. It felt hot like tears were about to spill.

All your feelings towards him were now second thoughts.

"We would all appreciate it if you..." he waved his hand in exaggerated thought, "...weren't so you." the point stung. Crosshair has always been this honest and straight-forward person, no matter what effect it would do to others around him. He turned around, not facing you to rub his forehead.

He was more than annoyed now, but it was his attempt to gain attention from you. Truthfully, he had no idea how to talk to you without sounding like such a dick. Honestly, he was more nervous than he was annoyed.

Suddenly, a jolt of confidence washed over you, causing you grab Crosshair's shoulder to spin him around so he could make proper eye contact with you, "Who are you to tell me how to live my life?" a small smirk grew on his lips, obviously enjoying how you've managed to lose all composure with just his words. It was also slightly attractive seeing you angry from his point of view.

"How sensitive," you grumbled in fury at his one-liner. It took all of your strength not to pounce on this 6ft clone and slap that stupid smirk off his face as well as shoving his toothpick where the Mantell sun doesn't shine.

"That happiness, this... joy. It's all for a list to tick off," you were more than confused at what he was rambling about.

"Because you're so desperate for somebody to like you,"

"Because you seek validation,"

"Because—"

Enough!

You sent a slap to his face, knocking the toothpick out of his mouth. You were breathing heavily and all Crosshair did was lowly chuckle at your miserable state of mixed emotions. Your lip began to quiver as his words repeated in your head, tauntingly. Salty tears began collecting at the bottom of your eye, blurring your vision briefly.

Crosshair watched your composure unfold, crumbling before him, "Go on, cry it all out." his hand reached to the back of his armor for a new toothpick. He sat back down on a swivel chair to clean his rifle for the hundredth time as if he didn't just yell at you.

You couldn't believe it.

Short intakes of breaths ensued. You inhaled and exhaled, trying not to let yourself fully sob in front of Crosshair. But as tears began to take their full form in your eyes, they threatened to fall.

"Maybe liking you was a mistake."

His eyes widened for a second at your confession.

"Wai—"

You slammed the key panel door open and ran out of the Marauder, holding your eyes to prevent the tears from flowing. Your heart felt like shattering at that moment. Every time your foot hit the ground as you ran, your knees were on the verge of giving up.

Maker, you were so sensitive. It infuriated you. You felt helpless as you continued to run. At this point, your hands were stained with a thin layer of your tears. Small drops escaping and running down your arm, falling off your elbows.

The abrupt noise of the Marauders door opening caught the attention of Hunter who saw you run off into town. He glanced back at the open shuttle, assuming something had happened in there.

Tech, who was quiet as a mouse, had listened to the whole ordeal unravel. His brothers words were harsh and cruel and the fact it was enough to send you in a crying fit, he had to do something about it.

The cockpit doors swung open, Tech holding his holopad in one hand as he walked to where Crosshair sat. He appeared unfazed like he didn't yell at you, cleaning his rifle like it was any normal day, "Care to explain what you did?"

The sniper moved his toothpick to the other side of his mouth, the sound of his rifle parts clicking back together filling in the silence, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, apart from what I overheard, there is something to be talked about—"

"—Crosshair, what did you do this time?" Hunter practically burst through the Marauder door, panting and demanding that his brother gives him the answer he's looking for. Tech clicked a couple of buttons on his datapad, also awaiting some sort of answer.

Crosshair sent a careless look to Hunter and that was enough to send him through the roof. He snatched the rifle out of his hands, tossing it to the side to get Crosshair's full attention. He stood up, looking Hunter dead in the eye. The two clones had a stare-off. It was really a sight to look at; a 6ft and almost 6ft soldier one upping each other. They exchanged glares, eyes becoming narrow as the time passed.

"Guys, come on." Tech waved his hand to the side. He knew better to sort this problem when calmer minds prevailed.

"Apologise or something worse will happen." Crosshair shoved Hunter to the side. He'd rather get this stupid apology over and done with so he didn't have yapping next to his ear. He scoffed, spitting out his toothpick, essentially littering but did he care? Not one bit.

As he walked down the pathways of Ord Mantell, he avoided eye contact with everybody, shoving off marketeers who attempted to convince him to purchase something. His hand snaked to the back of his neck, scratching gently at the hairs that faded down to his neck.

Had he been too harsh to tell you that? Yes, it might've been out of jealousy but in all honesty, Crosshair was oblivious when it came to showing affection. Not that it justified his big fit.

He liked you. He really did, but there was no one to help him with these unfamiliar feelings as a clone. From a young age, all he ever received was nasty insults from regs and the puny support of his brothers. They tried their best so Crosshair always acted like it helped him.

It didn't.

You were sat on a bench, staring off into the distance. Your eyes followed the dusty mountain range of Ord Mantell. There was nothing much to look at, it looked the same along the horizon. The skies made up for it; cotton candy-like clouds gently travelling across the sky and occasionally hitting the tops of the mountains.

Your tears managed to dry up, though your face was still warm and flushed. Crosshair's words kept ringing through your head. Did he really think of you that way? Did all of them think of you that way? Absurd scenarios circled your mind. A pit of guilt dropped onto you; if they had felt that way about you, wouldn't they have told you?

The questions you asked yourself didn't help the situation.

Would they care if you left their group?

Who hates you the most?

Have they considered decommissioning you?

You picked at the dried mud on your armor, slowly tracing the Batcher's signature skull. Just as you were about to call the group about your consideration of leaving, crunching footsteps approached you. It was soft and didn't seem hostile. Out of your peripheral, you could see a tall, head down, Crosshair. Huh, rare.

"Are you here t'tell me I'm 'too sad' for your liking now?" you let out a sarcastic chuckle. His words still pained you and the audacity for him to come looking for you was really insulting.

"Came to apologise." your eyes went a little wide. You never thought those simple words would leave his mouth. You had to admit, he sounded genuine. You stood up to face him to find that he was already looking straight at you. His eyes rested, the generation wrinkles on his forehead weren't visible.

"I'm... sorry for talking to you that way." he muttered. He squinted his eyes, cringing at his apology.

He was about to walk back to the shuttle until you spoke up.

"Crosshair," you began, softly. "wait, please." your words were lightweight as they reached Crosshair, in hopes to make him feel a little better.

This time, he stopped, though he couldn't bare to look into your eyes. Even if it was the shortest moment of gazing into your delicate irises, his chest would clench and butterflies would spawn again.

Your words affected him so much, a simple 'hello' would send him into a blushing fit. He was lucky enough to have his helmet hiding it for him.

"I'm sorry," you sighed. "if I made you feel like I was being too happy." your eyes dropped to the ground, not daring to make eye contact either.

Crosshair was in disbelief. How could you be the one apologising when he initiated this? It took him a lot of strength so he wouldn't start protesting and objecting your apology. It gained him enough confidence to make another attempt at making eye contact without looking like he was about to shoot a battle droid.

The atmosphere shifted, making you feel his stare smoother than before. It wasn't piercing this time. It had the intention of care and forgiveness in it — a second chance.

Like a wary animal, he inched towards you, trying not to seem too forward. You followed his eyes as he slowly closed the gap between the two of you. He got closer and closer until it was just your chest plates touching. The small 'clink' alerting the both of you.

Admittedly, it was difficult to avoid staring at his facial features. You always took the chance to admire how his cheek bones were so defined, it could cut you if you went too close. The soft skin above is eyebrows when he rested his eyes. His peach pink lips that are just... so kissable.

Not even Crosshair could hold back with his stares. Just like yours, his eyes wandered, admiring your facial features so close.

His impaulsive thoughts won him over, he shoved off his helmet, his hand quickly taking its place against the side of your torso to pull you in as close as he could get you — curse this armour.

You let out a squeal, your lips captured in his, but the warmth you were just getting use to was lost in the next second. Judging by your shocked expression, Crosshair took it as a sign. It was stupid and he should've asked you first.

"Forgiv—"

You cut his words off with your lips capturing his this time. He let out a low grunt as your lips began to dance. It was slow and gentle, showing more affection than hatred towards one another. Crosshair sighed into the kiss, you could tell how touch-starved this man was and you weren't surprised.

Sometimes war prevents stuff like this from happening. His eyebrows furrowed, trying to ravish the feel of your lips against his. His hands rested under your jawline, cradling your face and holding you closer than ever.

Despite having the toughest demeanour out of his brothers, his touch didn't go unnoticed. Surprisingly, it was gentle and caring. You could feel his hands roam your body on the thinnest parts of your armour until they rested behind your neck.

With a small 'pop,’ you both pulled away. You couldn't help the smile that grew when you saw Crosshair's eyes. They remained shut like he was dreaming, trying to keep that kiss as a memory. Slowly, they fluttered open and blush creeped up on him.

"What was all this for?"

"What?" he mumbled, his lips still wet from the kiss.

"This—to get me to forgive you?" you crossed your arms.

"No, maker," he sighed, angrily. "I like you."

Your arms fell to your sides, almost going limp. Your heart was thumping, "Then why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I hated you. I didn't know how." he went back to his squinting expression.

You cracked a sympathetic smile, pulling Crosshair into a hug. Initially, he didn't hug back. The sudden action sent shockwaves of butterflies throughout his body. There it is again. He would be crashing down on his knees if you weren't holding him right now. Such a small gesture could make a broody man shrink.

"I'll take the reigns then, if you'll let me?" you held out your hand, implying he should take it in his if he wanted to. And he did just that. His hand — a lot larger than yours — rested against your palm, interlocking his fingers. You shot him a caring grin. You didn't expect him to do anything back, not wanting to push him into the deep end just yet.

"Yeah, sure, whatever." he didn't have his helmet this time to cover up the blush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

The two of you walked back into town. An impatient and slightly irritated Hunter was rapidly tapping his foot on the ground. His façade seemed to diminish when he heard your footsteps approaching, his broody expression being replaced to a more happy state.

You and Crosshair reached the door of the Marauder, "I see the both o'you made up—“

"Stow it, Sergeant." Crosshair snapped. You patted Hunter's shoulder, reassuringly.

"Please don't tell me they're gonna do something..." Echo chimed in from behind, worried for his life.

Tech shrugged. Who knows what you'll do with Crosshair.

Maybe teach him some manners first.

Post-Notes: huhu... oops this is a bit longer than my other ones but i hope you liked it :D

my stuff is still open!! and if you wanna be apart of my taglist or wanna be removed, heres the liink

~ ~ ~

@elsastoes @nekotaetae

#crosshair the bad batch #star wars #ct-9904 #the bad batch #the bad batch x reader #crosshair x reader #clone trooper x reader #mooonjin #have a nice read :D #THE BAD BATCH ARE ALMOST HERE!!!

280 notes · View notes

xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 2 years

Note

would you maybe please consider doing something along the lines of sugar baby jason with a sugar momma reader??

Jason laid his jacket on the back of the chair and accepted a cup of tea from your maid before helping himself to a chair.

"Miss Y/N will be here shortly," Anna told him, "Her meeting ran over- I've been told to tell you to make yourself comfortable."

"Thank you," he said, swallowing down the nerves with a sip of tea.

"If you need anything-"

"I'll call, thank you," he said rubbing the back of his neck, feeling awkward. Your penthouse was a long way from a busted futon and a run down apartment. Elegant and expensive without being... ostentatious. The kind of place he thought you lived when you'd dropped some money in the tip jar on his piano and bought him a drink.

The artwork on the walls was worth more than his life and the view- He looked down at the sprawl of the city. The lights twinkled in the pale orange twilight. It was enough, for a minute, to make him believe he wasn't afraid of heights.

"I'm sorry I'm late-"

He jumps, startled and fumbles to hold his cup. Cheeks coloring when tea spattered the white rug, "I'm sorry I-"

"It's alright," you tell him, brushing his concern away with a laugh that made his heart race.

"Ma'am I-"

"Y/N," you correct, pouring yourself a cup of tea and offering him a seat, "I don't think I'm old enough for anyone to call me 'ma'am', handsome."

Jason took a seat and flushed scarlet. "I'm not sure I know why I'm here."

"Let's say," you hum, taking a sip of your tea, "that I'd like to offer you a... scholarship opportunity of sorts."

"Um- I-" he breaks off, afraid to ask what you meant. But when you give him a meaningful look heat pools in his belly and he fights a smile, "Oh-"

"If you'd like, of course. I'm not-"

"What would I have to do?"

"Be arm candy, mostly," you answer, "At least until we get to know each other. I'd pay your tuition, of course. And your rent- there would be an allowance for incidentals-"

"I- um-"

"You don't need to decide today," you assure him, "But I do have some things-"

"Y/N I-"

"No expectations," you tell him, standing and going to a side table, sliding open a drawer. "I just noticed last night that your watch-"

Jason looked down at his wrist. The face was scratched and the cheap pleather band was holding on with superglue and hope. It made him flush. Made him suddenly worried about leaving a dirt smear on your white sofa where he sat. "You didn't have to do anything."

"I wanted to," you tell him, smiling. The same smile that made him miss a key the night before when he noticed it. "I've always had a soft spot for musicians." You offer him the box gently, giving him space to refuse if he wants to walk away. And Jason can't. Taking it from you and opening it.

Hell if he knows anything about watches. But he knows this one is expensive. Genuinely expensive. Not gem encrusted and tacky but- "May I?" you break in, eyes glowing.

"Sure," he mumbles. Not sure if he should thank you or not. Too tongue-tied to think.

And when your delicate hands fasten the band around his wrist as you make a soft pleased noise, he knows that if you call him again he won't turn you down.

#Jason Todd #Jason Todd x reader #sugarbaby!jason #ask answered #minors dni

358 notes · View notes

kitkatopinions · 7 months

Text

Okay, so I just watched a Miles Luna cameo video talking about the chant Pyrrha does to unlock Jaune's aura, link here to the reddit post of it. And it's a very interesting video for a number of reasons. Please note that while talking about this, I wanna be aware that my interpretations of what he's saying may not be definitively true. Miles Luna is someone I don't know and I'm unable to ask for clarification on anything he says. I'm simply talking about what this video made me think and how it came across, not trying to say like "this thing he said definitely means blah blah blah." This was just very interesting and I wanted to talk about what I found interesting and what I got out of it.

So he was answering the question "what's the deal with Pyrrha's aura unlocking chant thing in volume one? Was it like a standarized thing, or was the mantra unique to a person's beliefs?"

I'm going to be putting things that Miles said in indented and then talk about the things I think are worth talking about.

"I've always been in the camp that it's the latter, that that's like a Pyrrha Nikos thing."

So this'll happen again, but it's just interesting that Miles' answer comes in the form of 'this is how I saw it' rather than 'this is how we saw it,' which makes it seem like there wasn't an agreed upon conclusion or even an agreed on supposition on what this moment even was.

"The story behind that is a wild one, it takes us back to volume one. Back when me, Monty, and Kerry were... Learning how to tell stories." *Laughs* "Stories that lasted more than like - you know - five minutes, and build worlds and stuff. And back then, you know, so much stuff was rough around the edges. And it was a lot of experimentation, and just trying things, and having to just like, throw ideas out there and commit to them because we just had to work really quickly and..."

Miles talking about how rushed they were, how they didn't know how to tell a real story yet and were just 'throwing out ideas and committing to them' is just... To me, it really seems like it indicates what I already thought, that things weren't 'planned from the beginning' because they were just writing, and writing on a deadline, so they were putting things into the story without fully thinking them through and committing to them because it was all they could do.

"I remember we were trying to establish, you know, we need to teach the audience how aura works. First off-" *Laughing* "I don't think we did a super good job with that. The same with semblances, and a bunch of things."

It's so funny to me that if rwde posters and rwby critics said something along those lines, like 'they weren't good at telling us how aura worked' or 'they really just didn't establish a lot of things very well,' many anti-rwde posters would just hate us. XD And this is what I mean when I talk about how overly defensive some people in the fandom are, because one of the main writers and creators can look back and laugh about the ways they went wrong in the early volumes and recognize that they weren't the best at storytelling, and meanwhile there are fans that would be like 'ummm why do you need your handheld? Obviously aura works like *insert headcanon here* and you should've gotten that through the brilliant scene, you fucking idiot." Like, it's so much easier for me to fondly smile and shake my head at the sort of charming follies of early-RWBY. Random tangent, but it reminds me of watching a movie with my ex-boyfriend where he got angry that I said a character who was getting in a physical fight was aggressive and he rewound the movie several times and made me watch the character start a physical fight repeatedly to 'prove to me' that the character wasn't being aggressive, and I was just sitting there thinking 'I would like this movie a lot more if you weren't so defensive over it.' But anyway, back to the video.

"But I remember we were like 'okay, well Jaune's kind of our like - our big dummy who needs to be taught everything so the audience can learn a lot through Jaune. So Jaune doesn't - It makes sense that Jaune doesn't have an aura, and maybe he like um, unlocks it at some point like during the - the Emerald Forest trials, but like how?' And we were trying to figure stuff out, and Monty goes like-" *Shrugs* "'What if we just have Pyrrha unlock it for him?' And we were like 'how would that work?' And he was like 'I don't know, man, Pyrrha's supposed to be the best. Maybe she's really in tune with her aura. And so like, you know, maybe if like, people are really in tune with themselves and - and in sync with their aura, they can give people with more potential - they can just give them a little nudge.' And we went 'yeah, sure! Why not?'"

So if you applied the ideas of the two criteria here to world building, you have 'People who are really in tune with themselves and in sync with their aura can unlock other auras' and 'People who have potential can get their auras unlocked.' Which means potentially characters who are shown to be confident, self-assured and who know who and what they are - like Glynda, Robin, Maria, maybe WBY now that they had their 'I am a Huntress' moments - could hypothetically have this power if it hadn't been dropped. And who has potential is a bit trickier, but civilians who can or want to fight, maybe? So, would Whitley count as being able to unlock an aura? See, the interesting thing is that I wouldn't consider Pyrrha to be particularly self-assured emotionally. Physically, yes, but emotionally I think she suffers from some insecurities that might give her blind spots. So maybe unlocking aura requires someone to be physically in tune with their body.

"I remember Monty wanted to write uh, Pyrrha's monologue and - and it's so Monty. Um, but it's one of the few things where he was like 'Hey, can I take a stab at that? I think it would be fun.' And he did, and I think it's really great."

Him saying 'one of the few things' is also interesting to me. But I do tend to have the opinion that from what I've heard, Monty would have ideas and Kerry and Miles are the ones that did most of the writing and like, turning the ideas into a firm thing. That's just the vibes I've gotten from the way that they've talked, and this just kind of makes me think that more.

"And it's very - It comes across as very, like, mystical. And like, ooh, exciting, mysterious. Because that was - that was kind of what we wanted the vibe to be about like aura. Like it's this spiritual thing that like, we understand how we can kind of use it um, practically, in combat. But like, emotionally and spiritually, there's so much more depth there. It has room to grow, there's things about it we don't understand. And um, we felt that what Monty wrote kind of encapsulated that sort of mysterious, spiritual um, like, side of it. And also for Pyrrha too. Like it made her seem like she was just levels upon levels higher than where Jaune was at the time. And we also felt - I mean I definitely feel as though, that it's something that like, she likes to think about and something that she says to herself to give her courage. Because if she's gonna fall in battle, then so be it. But she believes that her spirit - that there's a part of her that will live on, long after her body falls, and will go to some other plane on some grand adventure."

A part of me wishes that this had been so much more explained, but also I feel like the spiritual part of things isn't something that I want heavy emphasis in when it comes to the characters that seem to disregard their lives a bit, if that makes sense? Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of the people who think that Pyrrha going to fight Cinder is some indication of fault with her or Ozpin or something, I think it's perfectly logical that she went up to fight Cinder. I just also think that adding in that Pyrrha thinks 'if she falls then so be it,' before having her actually die. RWBY has a very dicey at best track record when it comes to suicide (Penny, Ruby in V8) and I think adding in these elements for Pyrrha would just have made it even worse.

"And I think that gives her the courage to... Be Pyrrha Nikos, out on the battlefield, fighting for the lives of others. That's kind of always been my take on it. But yeah, the short behind the scenes answer is um, Monty thought it would be a cool thing to do. Um, that was the answer to a lot of things from back then."

More 'not everything was well planned' indications here.

"Um, and I - and I like it a lot too, because we were really trying to explain to the audience that the creatures of Grimm don't have souls. There should be no moral quandaries about slaughtering hordes and hordes of these scary looking creatures."

Okay, so... I'm going to get into some controversial stuff here, because if they wanted to ensure that there were no moral quandaries about fighting the Grimm in the early seasons, why were they comfortable having the White Fang being such prominent enemies who Team RWBY would throw off of train cars that were blowing up in a tunnel soon to be overrun by Grimm? To me, if I was concerned that people would take issue with the main protagonist mowing down animal-like creatures that acted mindless and therefore had to establish that they don't have souls, I would be five times more concerned with making sure my main protagonist wasn't just tossing aside talking sentient humans especially if I had made them part of an in-universe marginalized minority group. Just a thought.

"And then, you know, on the opposite side of that, if the things that all of our protagonists fight are soulless, then we should make something that makes huntsman and huntresses really strong, it's the fact that they do have a soul that can manifest itself in ways that can protect the user - like the body of the person. Uh - uh, it's just something that, I don't know. It's like warm, fuzzy like faith and belief. And just, it felt like the nice counterbalance to the like, hollow, cold, violent Grimm."

What's interesting to me about this statement is that they wanted Huntsman and Huntresses specifically to counterbalance the Grimm by having proof of their humanity in their souls being so blatantly represented. If it were me, I would have humanity in general separated from the Grimm through their souls. But it's almost like the only people they care about and the only people they want the audience to care about are the hunters and huntresses, and not the civilian figures and random people just living their lives. I think that does sort of come across in the writing with things like Cinder killing people on the bridge in volume eight and knocking them down but then later on Yang saying in volume nine that they saved everyone, and Weiss throwing the guards into the ocean never to be seen again, and no one really bringing up or caring about how Mistral is pretty much defenseless, and so on and so forth. I think this also comes across in the fandom, where I've seen people talk about 'why would we care about the NPCs' and things like that. This just makes it seem to me that the writers don't really care about civilians.

"So yeah, that's kind of my all over the place answer, I hope you like it. Because that's how I always felt about it. We kind of just rolled with it back then, because we had to, because we had to work so fast, with so many constraints working against us."

The fact that even the main writers and creators seemed to be on time crunches where they couldn't take the time to really figure things out speaks volumes I think about how Rooster Teeth does business. Also, more little reasons here to not believe everything was planned from the beginning. Miles Luna says they just rolled with things not even because they wanted to but because they had to, because they didn't have time to put more thought into what they'd do before they did it.

"And we were super inexperienced. Um, if I were to do it all again, I would wanna - I would wanna dig into that more. I think there's some cool, untapped potential there. And in a million other places in the show."

This is so true that there is so much untapped potential in RWBY. But I just think it's really funny that once again, this is something rwde posters and rwby critics would get blasted for saying. XD Like I remember one time posting like 'there's so much I would change and explore more in RWBY if I could reboot it' and someone in the comment section was like 'I bet your writing sucks, idk why you think you could improve anything about RWBY.' If I said RWBY was full of untapped potential and I wish it was dug into more, I might get accused of being a know-nothing idiot or an obnoxious entitled brat, lol. XD

"Um, but, you know, those rough edges and that sort of like - amateur is too strong a word - but the - the over ambition of RWBY, I think has always been one of its greatest strengths and also greatest weaknesses."

For once, I completely agree with Miles Luna. One reason why RWBY is something I keep coming back to is that there's just so much there to work with, so much that could be really good. But it's also one of the biggest flaws of RWBY that it always packs so much in that it just doesn't seem to have any interest in properly exploring or following through on, and I do think it would be a much better written show if the writers would just stop and take a breath and scale back and edit to what they can handle. It's like filling your fridge with a ton of perishable food in the hopes of cooking amazing meals, but then not taking the time to ever really cook or do anything good with the ingredients and then throwing together a hodgepodge sandwich before (or even after) things start spoiling in the fridge. It's great for creativity and it makes me want to actually cook something good with all those ingredients, but you still think they shouldn't have been that ambitious and you're like 'next time you go shopping just buy stuff for a regular old sandwich because apparently you can't handle it, and this sandwich has moldy cheese, too many vegetables, balsamic vinegar, mustard seeds, uncooked lobster, and a twinkie. What were you thinking?' Anyway, long spiel short, RWBY has great potential, endless heaps of good ideas that are inspiring and that's one of the best things about the show! But it's also way too ambitious and it leaves the show in a mess. I don't even have a good solution that would keep the scope of the show and how it gets the creative juices flowing without being too much for the writers who can't seem to do any real depth or follow through, I'm just talking. XD

"Uh, but it has a lot of charm, and we had a lot of heart back then. And i'm glad that people still think about volume one to this day. It's just cool."

It's interesting to me that Miles Luna says 'we had a lot of heart back then.' Now again, I'm not trying to say 'Miles Luna definitely meant that they don't have heart now,' because I don't know him and I don't know what he meant, but just the nostalgia in his tone and the way he talked, it made me think about how RWBY used to feel like this loved thing that people really wanted to do, whereas now sometimes RWBY feels like the thing that people don't want to do that they're just plugging away at, and like skipping past loads of exposition and having their characters act exasperated and tired out by everything. I've gotten to that state where I was really excited about writing something, and then when I got out of the mood to write it and was just forcing myself too, it would leak into skipping over important things and just writing the characters to go through the motions in like vague annoyance because I was vaguely annoyed. It's a sign that I need to grow as a writer, but it also makes me go 'do I really want to even be writing this, does this even spark joy' and sometimes the answer is no. And it just kind of feels like sometimes that's what RWBY is now, a project people don't want to do anymore that no longer sparks that same joy that it used to.

But on a better, lighter note, I'm glad too that people are still thinking about volume one, because it often feels like the RWBY fandom on the general whole just doesn't even like the early volumes and wants to forget them, or even forget seasons 4-6 sometimes. Some people will act like the only thing that matters is the present, and looking at the setup or the early established things is just stupid when it's like... No, that's the whole thing that RWBY was built on. Volumes 7-9 alone don't tell a complete story. It's a hodgepodge sandwich full of a bunch of mismatched stuff maybe, but I really feel like the people that eat the whole thing and might complain about the bad parts actually like the sandwich way more than the people who take the top piece of bread and then tell you that all that other stuff doesn't matter anymore. XD But yeah, that's just the things that I was thinking about when I saw that cameo video.

#rwde

52 notes · View notes

overlord-of-chaos · 7 months

Text

Thoughts on the end of Good Omens 2, as an aroace

So, I'm going to preface this with a few things, since I would very much like anyone who does choose to read this to do in good faith, and I would like to establish my own. Firstly, this is absolutely not a criticism of anybody's headcanons. Crowley and Aziraphale, of all characters, have incredible potential for headcanoning, and I love seeing the fandom's wide and varying interpretations. Secondly, what you see here is not a complete and entire reflection of my opinions of the characters mentioned or the show. It is very specifically me airing my grievances and concerns and venting because I cannot cope with not saying anything at all. I love Good Omens, but I am not going to add caveats to my every sentence to make sure that you, the reader, are certain I'm not just bashing one of the most fantastically queer shows I know. Thirdly, if you vehemently disagree with everything I'm saying here, you're free to ignore it. This is not for you. You're also free to ignore it if you do agree, but at this point I'm going on the assumption that that'll be a smaller portion of whatever audience this reaches anyway. Fourthly, if you are in a similar position to me and sort of spiralling at the prospect of your comfort QPR not being a QPR anymore, then maybe you should read the bullet points at the end. I've sort of got my shit together by then.

So, that said, I would like to take this post as an opportunity to say that I worry about where Good Omens is going. Not in a plot-related sort of way as such, we all know it'll all be alright in the end, more in terms of representation - specifically, whether, by the end of the show, I'll be able to see myself in the characters anymore.

Now, why is this? Well, as you may have guessed from the title, I'm aroace. And when I first saw the Good Omens show, I hadn't really been involved in the fandom at all. This is due to a variety of reasons, including that I wasn't on any of the platforms that enable me to engage in fandom now, and because I'd only read the book a couple of months prior. I didn't know, as I do more now, that one of the main interpretations of the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale before the show came out was romantic, and I wasn't expecting to see that in the show. I don't tend to expect romance in most circumstances. I more end up picking up on the common tropes used to develop romantic relationships in fiction and observe with little enthusiasm as a character dynamic 'blossoms' into something I cannot comprehend. (This is not to say I dislike romance in everything. I simply dislike it being the one and only significant dynamic in pretty much everything all the time.)

I was well aware that the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale in the show had been expanded and developed along the lines of a romantic relationship, and I really liked the way it was handled. But at no point did I think this meant that their relationship had to be read as romantic. I thought I could see something of myself in them, and see a relationship that was something other than romantic. At the risk of sounding insulting, I did not feel like their relationship could be anything as simple as a romance. I saw two beings who very deeply loved each other in a nonromantic way, and thought hey, maybe this is a dynamic I could see myself in at last. Maybe this isn't the same old kind of love story.

I thought, perhaps naively, that no matter the hinting from the cast and the way that season 1 was set up, there would always be the room to interpret Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship as platonic (or queerplatonic, specifically, as I read it). And then...well, I imagine you all know what happened then.

From a more objective (probably not quite the right word, but can't think of a better one) analytical perspective, the kiss was one of the hardest-hitting moments in any story I've ever watched, or read. The setup was amazing, the acting was impeccable, and I could not imagine anything else having the same impact. As Neil Gaiman himself has said, no one could deny that it happened. I think it was categorically the right narrative choice. That's not what I'm debating here.

What hurts, what really fucking hurts, is that a lot of the time, I don't feel like there's space for my aroace/queerplatonic reading of their relationship anymore. Some of that's on me, because headcanon is headcanon and there's no reason why I should assume my reading of the relationship is wrong, or canonically impossible. (I mean, Ineffable Bureaucracy is canon. Anything is possible in this fandom.) However, it does mean that I do not quite have the same ability to bury my head in the sand and say that Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is not set up to be read specifically as a romance.

What worries me is that I am very well aware that I am in a disappointed minority when thinking that their relationship will continue to unfold by hitting key romantic plot points until the door for an aroace interpretation isn't even left ajar. I am in a minority that the writers of Good Omens will likely never hear, and even if they do, I certainly wouldn't expect them to change the coming plot for me.

Most people take the kiss as explicit confirmation that the love between Crowley and Aziraphale is romantic. There's the occasional 'it's okay, they can still be ace!' post dotted around, but no one seems to be talking about the possibility of them being aromantic anymore. They weren't doing that much previously, admittedly, but all I seem to see, from other aro people included, is discussion around how they're feeling about the romance between them being made canon, while I'm sitting here thinking is that the only thing that kiss is allowed to mean? It means that I find myself wondering whether I should give up on seeing the relationship as nonromantic, if only so that I am not as disappointed when season 3 rolls around. (There had better fucking be a season 3. Amazon better fucking pay the writers, pay the actors and renew shit instead of just cancelling it.)

I think one of the main things that makes me uncomfortable is the assumption that the next logical step in Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is sexual. Because that's how these things normally go, right? You have an ostensibly platonic relationship with romantic undertones, then it becomes explicitly romantic, and then the next 'natural' progression is sexual. It's the same thing every single time. I think it's been vaguely mentioned that they're asexual by virtue of not being human (almost all ace rep being in nonhuman characters is a whole other essay and not something I'm going to get into here), by Neil a few times and in the book, but since I wasn't expecting there to be so little space to read their relationship as nonromantic, I don't know that I can continue to expect it to seem nonsexual too.

And even if that's not the route they take, I don't know that I can trust them not to play up a romantic dynamic, particularly when I think a lot of people would be disappointed if the relationship is 'just' platonic, or platonic-leaning. And I get that, I do. We've been queerbaited enough, but that doesn't mean that something not being romantically queer means it isn't queer at all. I have no idea how one would manage to frame a relationship as explicitly and specifically queerplatonic; there isn't really a template for it (though my god would I love for Good Omens to be the show that makes one). I imagine it would be much more realistic to perhaps hope for something that isn't exclusively and explicitly romantic.

One of my concerns, of course, with a queerplatonic route is that it would be upsetting to people who do see them as a romantic couple to have that door be closed to them (I really don't wish an experience like that on anyone), and that it would leave more space for queerphobic assholes to claim that they're 'just friends'. But I've spent my life hoping for a story that doesn't push platonic love to the wayside when there's the potential for romance, especially when the relationship starts out as something brilliantly compelling and nonromantic. I've spent my life trying not to internalise the idea that the way I love, the only way I can love, isn't enough, even when it seems to be the message that's being shouted with almost every story I ever encounter. A lot of the time, it doesn't bother me anymore. I'm used to it by now. But most of the stories I know haven't meant as much to me as Good Omens. I didn't see the same space to read a relationship in a nonromantic way as I did in Good Omens.

Anyway. I figure either I post this, two people read it and then it disappears into the aether, or I wake up tomorrow morning and find I have made enemies of over half the GO fandom. It doesn't really matter. I think I have accomplished what I wanted to do when I started writing, which was to lay everything out logically for myself so that the mounting evidence not in my favour did not seem quite so insurmountable. And honestly? It doesn't anymore. My brain is very often my own worst enemy, and articulating my emotions somewhere means that I can look at all of this and conclude the following:

Most of the reason why I do not think I can view Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship as nonromantic anymore is because everyone else thinks the ending confirms their hopes of it definitely being romantic. If nothing else, I'm genuinely delighted that it's bringing so many people that joy. We all deserve that kind of joy, and all the canonically queer relationships media has to offer. If nothing else, there is so much joy to take in other people's wholehearted adoration of what season 2 meant to them.

Most of my concerns about how season 3 will go are largely unfounded and entirely hypothetical. Most of it hasn't even been written yet, and can't be until the WGA strike is over anyway, so no one can even hint at how it'll go because it is not, in fact, going.

People will read what they will into Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship dynamic, and so can I! Such are the joys of varying interpretation and headcanon and all that jazz.

One kiss does not close any queerplatonic (or aroace) doors. Nor would a hundred. One of the many joys of queerplatonic relationships is that they can be whatever the fuck you want them to be, including a dynamic that would typically be read as romantic, but isn't.

A romantic relationship is not inherently superior to a platonic one. A romantic relationship is not inherently superior to a platonic one. A romantic relationship is not inherently superior to a platonic one, and nothing in the canon of Good Omens has ever stated this not to be true.

No one who is involved in Good Omens has ever at any point, to my knowledge, said that Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship has to be romantic, or even implied that one must see it that way, or that seeing it otherwise means seeing it as lesser. I am reading this into things because I expect it of the world. I should probably stop.

Short of some truly spectacular feats that may or may not be illegal, there is absolutely nothing I can do to influence the people creating the show, so what I get is what I get. If I can't change it, I might as well enjoy it. There's so much to enjoy, after all. No point stressing over maybes.

If you got this far, I am impressed, I'm not sure I'd have read this much. I hope that this post perhaps gives you a little to think about, preferably a positive something. I also hope that you bear in mind that this is a rather venty braindump and should not be taken as a damning indictment of anything or anyone. I'll probably delete this sometime soon, but I was seized by an urge to say something, and so say something I have, even if I probably forgot at least half my original points.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens spoilers #go2 spoilers #ace #asexual #aro #aromantic #aroace #long post #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #here goes nothing i guess

40 notes · View notes