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#and romantic is for the relationships that overhaul all else

cinnbar-bun · 2 months

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first off— I LOVE UR WORK!! i think i just went thru and read everything you have for one piece LOL. second!!! i saw hc / drabble request open !! i have a silly idea that i feel like you can make come into reality.

recently i’ve been watching isekai’s so…imagine. reader getting isekai-d into the one piece world!!! (more specifically, interactions with the cross guild!!!)

A/n: Thank you very much nonnie!! I really appreciate you taking the time to read my stuff. Please enjoy this <3

Getting Isekai'd Into Cross Guild!

Rating: SFW

Relationship: Cross Guild x Reader

Notes: GN!Reader, a bit crack, short and sweet. No relationship is defined so you can assume it to be platonic or romantic <3.

The wonderful Truck-kun granted your wish of getting isekai’d by sending you straight to the One Piece world! How wonderful!

Except, you quite literally fell on top of Buggy just as he was trying to argue his case to Crocodile and Mihawk.

Now, they have no clue what the hell just happened but Mihawk already agrees with whatever that just was.

Buggy is about to scream over the fact you just fell on top of him and Crocodile is wondering how you managed to get here.

Crocodile assumes a Devil Fruit, Mihawk assumes you snuck in, and Buggy assumes you’re the devil.

It takes a moment for things to settle down as they demand you tell them what you’re doing here. You explain that well… uh… you’re not really from here.

Crocodile almost plans to kill you right away because he doesn’t have time for stupidity like that, but you show whatever you have on hand to prove otherwise.

They’re all immediately entranced by your phone, but they have something they’re also interested in too.

Crocodile: Your credit cards and money. When you explain how a credit/debit card functions he’s amazed. Tempted to start a bank and overhaul the current financial system. Also loves the excel spreadsheets. The fact this “machine” will calculate all of this for you and put it in a neat list… well… mark him down as interested.

Buggy: The shiny games on your phone that are colorful and fun. The fact he can “Google” anything and look up new material.

Mihawk: EReaders and, this will sound hilarious, but text messaging. He doesn’t care to talk, but he thinks that sending texts would be so much more effective and efficient than having to haul himself around the sea or, god forbid, answer a phone call.

Okay so you did manage to prove you’re not from this world (or that perhaps you were an alien freak but that’s okay) and Crocodile and Mihawk are pretty much entertained. That’s it. You can go. Bother someone else.

Buggy however, holds you close and pouts. “Can we keep them? Can we keep them pleeeeeeeease???” He begs as if you’re a little puppy.

Crocodile is against this but Mihawk shrugs and agrees. Whatever. This could be interesting.

Buggy still doesn’t understand you’re not some circus animal and rambles about what he should have you wear and perform for his show while Crocodile cuts him off.

Frankly, if you’re telling the truth and have nowhere else to go, you gotta earn your keep. Crocodile just makes a new position for you that shouldn’t be too hard after you said you have 0 combat skills or training.

You’re basically just their assistant and do menial work that no one else really wants to do. For now at least.

Buggy is actually… kinda happy you’re so nice to him? He’s used to either worship from his crewmates or abuse from Mihawk and Crocodile, so you quickly become his new favorite person. He’s pretty shocked you’re as nice as you are considering how crappy this situation is, but he’s grateful. Softens up to you right away and loves having your attention.

Buggy likes to do silly tricks to make you laugh whenever he can, mostly as a way to be the “flashiest” guy in your eyes. He really doesn’t like when others try to take you or away or interrupt his time with you, since he’s a brat and finds you entertaining.

Crocodile and Mihawk are tougher nuts to crack. Neither of them trust people, but they find you interesting, even though you are incredibly weak compared to others.

Crocodile always tries to see what you may/may not know about him since you made a few offhand comments that were a bit too… knowledgeable… so he often tries to get you to slip up more or confess to something. He hopes to see if you know something useful that can be used (but also deep down is afraid you know too much).

Mihawk on the other hand finds you amusing. Plenty of things are similar to your world, but it’s quite clear you’re not used to many aspects of this one. He forms a habit of just watching you or actively messing with you to see your reaction. It’s a bit funny to him, admittedly.

Of the two, Mihawk is the first to somewhat let his guard down and be a bit protective of you. He figures even if you were hypothetically “dangerous”, he could easily kill you so what does he care? You do your job, you’re entertaining, and you don’t give him a headache.

Crocodile only lets up when you “prove” time and time again that you are reliable and not trying to go after them or sabotage them. He does think it’s a bit weird you’re eager to help them, considering what they do and what you know, but hey, who is he to complain?

To sum it up: Crocodile cares the most about you being isekai’d, Buggy cares the least (except when it comes to his perception. He wonders if he’s also got a following there).

Buggy likes showing off his new tricks or discussing silly hypotheticals with you.

Crocodile likes when your eyes grow wide whenever he drops an expensive item on your desk as a token of his appreciation to you.

Mihawk likes when you talk him to normally and share deep discussions with him.

It is a bit strange that there’s some “normal” person with these three villains, but you’ve become important to them. You’re unique and special, practically one of a kind in this zany world. They show their feelings towards you in different ways, but the way they’ve grown attached to you and try to protect you show that you’re valued in their life.

#one piece #one piece x reader #x reader #reader insert #sir crocodile #one piece hcs #sir crocodile x reader #crocodile x reader #crocodile one piece #dracule mihawk #dracule mihawk x reader #mihawk x reader #mihawk #buggy x reader #buggy the clown #cross guild #cross guild x reader

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kingofbodyrolls · 11 months

Text

BTS fic recs: May 2023

I want to thank each and every writer on this list for creating such wonderful stories and art - you are truly amazing ✨ Well, this is apparently a shrine to @jimilter, because I didn’t read anything else in May 🫢💎

Also, most of these fics are smutty as hell, so minors dni.

If you read anything on this list and you like it, please leave a comment to the writer or reblog the original fics post ♥

BTS fic rec index → 💜| Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep (jjk)(knj) | Oct (pjm) | Nov (*) | Dec (ksj)(kth) |

Emoji meaning → angst = 🌩️, smut = 🥵, fluff = 🥰, comedy = 😂, personal favorites = 💯.

Jimin

⭐Ain’t Real Cherry💯 by @jimilter // pjm x reader (ft. Taehyung) // college!au, roommate!au // 🌩️🥵🥰😂

📝 Not to be too sickeningly romantic, but his wank bank needed a desperate overhaul if he was ever going to stop being pathetic. He was done envisioning his roommate in positions he would never actually get to see her in. And maybe, just maybe, this exercise would get him back in the game and he would actually be able to fuck people without your face in his head to push him over the edge, every single time.

🗨️ I seriously don’t know why I haven’t found this freaking gem earlier! It is one of the very best reads I’ve had, EVER 🥰 Go read it, it you haven’t already!

⭐Relax for Me💯 by @jimilter // pjm x reader // established relationship, masseuse!jimin // 🥵🥰😂🌩️

📝 You came home from a tiring workday and your boyfriend offered to give you a massage to relax – which you didn’t think much of because Park Jimin is known to be selflessly kind while also being a pervert, the exact two behaviors a massage would exemplify. But maybe you should think more about how skilled his hands felt… almost extraordinarily skilled. Is your boyfriend hiding something from you?

🗨️ This is one of the very best written Jimins out there! I loved the smut so, so much and the surprise drama at the end (which I didn’t expect at all 😳). Just a really good and lovely read! Will read it again sometime 🥰

AN: I am posting this in August 2023, but dating the post back to May 😆

If you want to dive into more fic recs you can check out my tag → BTSFicRecs.

Borahae 💜

#bts fic recs #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts scenarios #jimin fanfic #park jimin x reader #jungkook x reader #bts smut

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alcalexandria · 1 year

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The Case for Dani X Grace.

This is a post to lay out the reasons viewers might have to think that, at some point in the development of Terminator: Dark Fate, Dani & Grace were actually meant to be a romantic couple.

Or else, at the very least, that a decision was made to rework the movie specifically to prevent that reading.

We know it was reworked, because we know a lot about the minor tweaks after initial test screenings; in itself that’s not uncommon. But we're specifically looking at how these two and their dynamic changed in the process, and whether that was the whole intention.

Only the purpose of the changes is up for debate - and we'll get to that - but the main effect was definitely to change how Dani & Grace’s relationship can be interpreted.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of Dani & Grace related cuts/changes we’re aware of here, but we'll talk about the key ones below. A bunch of these minor cuts, shot swaps and reshoots add up to take them from a dynamic that might be interpreted as romantic, to something familial; sealing the deal with the last-minute addition of a single scene and line inserted to retcon Dani into a parent figure.

We’ll probably never know the whole story for sure one way or the other, but I think we know enough to speculate that I think would be of interest to franchise fans from a Behind-The-Scenes perspective as well as to would-be shippers.

So I’ll try to go through what we actually know for sure as much as possible first, and how we know it, before getting into my own theories about the whys, so hopefully even if you don’t agree with my conclusions you might find it a worthwhile read.

We'll look at three questions -

i) First, whether Dani & Grace could reasonably be interpreted as a romance in at least one version of the movie, regardless of whether they were meant to be or not,

ii) Whether the late-stage overhaul was done specifically to block that possible reading, regardless of whether it had been an intentional or reasonable one, and lastly,

iii) Whether it was actually initially intended to have a lesbian romantic subtext – and subtext at least - rather than simply an accident of some clueless Action Movie Dudes who didn’t know how it would read, before they panicked and rowed back as seen in ii)

Much of it won't be new to anyone likely to care, but maybe some of it is, and I figure it doesn’t hurt to compile it all in one place for my own purposes as much as anything. There will be some necessary duplication of older posts that I hope you’ll forgive.

Also, I guess some of us didn’t get enough of Book Reports as kids.

Come join the nerd party under the cut.

i) Could Dani & Grace reasonably be interpreted as a romantic couple in at least one version of the movie?

So firstly, let’s think about whether Dani & Grace could reasonably be interpreted as a romantic couple even if only by happy accident, rather than solely imagined in feverish f/f shipper brains like mine.

Well, a good litmus test for that question is always “How would we read these characters if we were looking at a man and a woman?” Regardless of where we’re all coming from, we all learn to view media through the heteronormative lens. We may learn it as a second language, but we learn it.

So the question is just as much “How would we be expected to read these characters, if we were looking at a man and a woman?

Usually, that’s kind of an abstract thought experiment - you have to find other kinda similar stories to try to compare, but they’re never quite exact, so there’s always a level of subjectivity and plausible deniability.

That’s not the case here though, because we have a direct, like-for-like comparison; Grace & Dani are very explicitly and purposefully cast in roles to mirror a man & woman in a preceding movie, and I’ve gone into lots more detail about that here.

Not just any preceding movie, neither - the first one, and the foundation of all the lore after.

The fact Kyle & Sarah were lovers isn’t simply incidental to Terminator, it is the basis of the whole mythology – if they weren’t in love and didn’t have sex, their son would never have been conceived or raised by Sarah to be the lynchpin of that first loop.

In other words - the central pillar of the whole franchise very much depends on the fact those two boned down.

So, we know that if they were a guy + girl, we would be meant to see them as romantic - because when they were, we had to. This whole storytelling universe depends on it.

And pretty much all of the same cues used to tell us Kyle & Sarah were in love are used to tell us what Grace & Dani are to each other too. Most obviously, that Kyle and Grace both came across time for this bodyguard job, and we're told for sure why Kyle did it for Sarah at least - because, he simply says, he is in love with her, and has always been.

We know how we’re meant to read Sarah’s plea not to confront the cops, too – she doesn’t want to see him get killed. Just as Dani, fully aware that capture is likely a death sentence for both her and the human race in turn, surrenders to the CBP sooner than watch Grace die fighting them.

We may not get the same explanatory statements in each of the parallel incidents with Grace & Dani, but it seems pretty natural to infer them. And ultimately, Sarah summarises her relationship with Kyle by saying that, in the even shorter time they spent together, they “loved a lifetime’s worth”.

Almost the only major divergence is that Grace & Dani never have sex - but even then, one of their earliest scenes involves Dani watching over the crashed-out Grace in a motel room, a motel room that’s deliberately identical to the one where Sarah and Kyle did. So we’re still asked to see them in that parallel anyway.

And we could interpret them the same way even if we’d never seen T1 at all, because the same language of action movie romance is applied to both cases. Not only can you interpret Grace’s protectiveness towards Dani (and Dani’s tenderness towards her in return) as an intentional reference to that famous, previous love affair, it also comes across as romantic in itself, because that's just the established vocabulary of this kind of movie.

There are plenty of other parallels in the post linked above if you want them. But the point is – if all the stuff T1 used to tell us that Kyle & Sarah are in love is also used to tell us what's going on with Grace & Dani, then it’s both reasonable and predictable that people will interpret them the same way.

And they go further than the stuff in common. Think of Grace dropping to her knees to beg that she be let go back to her death, and Dani openly weeping over the prospect - I think we can take it for granted this is not how John and Kyle’s corresponding interaction played out, even offscreen or in some deleted sequence somewhere.

Think of Dani tearfully apologizing to Grace as she cuts into her. Think of her setting out to change the whole future just to save her. Think of Grace choosing to die with her eyes on Dani, too, something Kyle didn’t get to do with Sarah.

In fact, just think of this scene –

Now, how would you interpret this scene if this was a male and female duo?

More importantly, how would you think you were expected to interpret their relationship, if you saw this play out onscreen?

Over to you, Nick from The New Girl –

"Anytime a man shows a woman how to do something from behind, it's just an excuse for him to get really close and breathe on her neck. Watch any sports movie."

And you, Bridgerton –

In fact, this is such well-established shorthand, it’s got a TV Tropes page.

There is of course a big complication here - the maternal framing they’re given in the last act. But as noted above, we already know this was only inserted after the test screening stage, and at the expense of a very particular deleted scene (more on that below).

We happen to know for a fact it's a reshoot now from Director’s Commentary and such, but the scene in question was so out of synch with the movie as it is that plenty of folks had already taken it for granted before it was confirmed anyway - not only does that future flashback look and feel entirely different to the rest of the movie, it's seated in a scene riddled with weird giveaway continuity issues.

So it just plain feels like it was plugged in at the last minute, as indeed we now know it was. And in that basis, I do think folks can feel justified in simply disregarding it as a “no homo” disclaimer.

It’s not hard then to imagine how differently this movie would play without that line, and to read their dynamic accordingly.

Grace would be a character that we only ever see interact with Dani as an adult, one who devotes both her life and death to her, because…

Because they’re friends? Because Dani’s her heroine?

Because she saved her?

In what way?

I mean, “You saved me” is a pretty powerful figurative line to just toss out there, as the million romance novels with that title can attest. But in the original cut of the movie, without the reshoot, we would never have seen any literal Dani-saving-Grace at all.

So, yeah. In sub-conclusion, I believe it is completely reasonable for a viewer to interpret Dani & Grace's dynamic as romantic.

To do so does require consciously rejecting the idea there’s a foster relationship in play, but the fact that’s so easily done – by mentally nixing one jarringly ADR’d line and scene retcon - kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

ii) Was it specifically changed to stop people interpreting them as romantic?

The next question is whether some or all the changes we know of were specifically to try to head off shippy interpretations – regardless of whether they were an accident – rather than for any other reason we’ve been given.

I’m going to save you scrolling and say I think yes.

I absolutely think this movie was re-edited because somebody panicked that it was going to be interpreted as orbiting an opti-tragic lesbian love story spanning time and space.

The main reason I believe this is that the rationale given for the anti-“tactile” edit pass and cuts makes no fucking sense, so quite frankly I think it’s a lie, and I’ll explain why.

In the commentary, Director and Editor tell us they did an entire editing pass - essentially revising the movie from top to bottom, no small task - relatively late in production, to make cuts and swap takes, purely so that Dani & Grace would look less "tactile", less physically close. They say these changes were important to prevent the audience working out that Grace knows Dani, at all. That surprise was apparently so important it was worth the considerable extra time and money it would take to rearrange and recut scenes that had already cost time and money to film. This in a movie that was already going way over budget, due to flood-damaged sets, a production shift from Mexico to Spain/ Hungary, multiple forced location changes mid shoot, and asbestos being discovered in a studio (!).

And yet, in the flashback - we are straight up shown Dani on the rescue stretcher, after very pointedly seeing Grace personally attend to her, the VIP, during the rescue flight, even though this adds nothing to the reveal we’ve been told was all-important to preserve.

How is this less of a giveaway than Grace & Dani standing too close sometimes or whatever?

And we would also have been shown “The Commander” again, in the alternate version of the volunteering scene –

The sight of her is what directly prompts Grace to volunteer for surgery - this shot is literally her POV, looking at Dani, and it makes her insist on the surgery to her reluctant medic. If we're supposed to think the Commander is just some rando, this scene would have a really strange emphasis.

And if we're not supposed to know or guess it's Dani, why risk this at all?

We know from Miller that the Future War battle was cut short; the longer original version showed us Hadrell/Quinn having a glorious last stand against the Rev-7s until they killed him. This presumably influences Grace’s decision to be Augmented, because she wants to be able to do what she saw Hadrell do, for Dani. And according to confirmed test screening reviews on Reddit, the scene was still intact by the time they saw it.

These Future War scenes all need a ton of VFX, bespoke sets, props and wardrobe that can’t be bought off the rack or recycled anywhere else in the movie’s main storyline, so they’re very expensive. Whatever else you might do as a just-in-case, you would not shoot more of this than you had to.

Given she’s bundled up on a stretcher, it would have been trivial to conceal the identity of the injured VIP completely – simply by not shooting her clearly or covering her head. Natalia Reyes wouldn’t even need to be on set.

But she was - they went to the lengths of having her, having her face visible, putting her in injury makeup, and showing us Grace is uniquely, personally affected by her condition.

Why bother with any of that if were never meant to be able to infer that it’s her? If it was in fact important for us not to know that it’s her? Considering how innocuous some of the scenes they supposedly cut for that reason, isn’t this a pretty glaring contradiction?

I don’t believe these scenes are shot as if it’s a secret Grace knows Dani, or that Dani is the Commander. But I do believe they’re edited to try to make it a secret Grace knows Dani.

I think it was shot as if we could take it for granted Dani’s the Commander, and then after the fact, someone chose to cut it down as much as they could afford to. The fact Dani’s face is plainly visible is because there was only so much they could cut without losing coherence completely.

But let’s take them at their word for now to have a look at another scene change.

There’s a notable swap from the version of this sequence we see in early trailers –

Source: Booasaur

- to what we actually see in the movie:

In the commentary, the guys explain this scene (what’s left of it) and Sarah’s reaction is intended to show us she knows that, quote, "Grace is not telling the whole truth, there's something more to their relationship that Grace is not telling her".

But… hold on.

That makes no sense at all in light of their explanation for the rest of the cuts, which were supposedly to prevent us inferring precisely that. And if this is the moment we are supposed to be clued in after all, then why is even this swapped out for a less touchy shot?

Why spend money recutting the whole movie, and even reshooting some of it so that we won’t speculate Grace might know her, while also incorporating this scene to… tell us Grace might know her?

And why change the shot used in all the initial trailers to the one we see above if this scene is meant to flag they’re close anyway?

For this to be true would mean they’re both doing an entire editing pass to prevent the audience knowing Grace knows Dani more than she’s letting on, but also including this scene with the specific intention of suggesting Grace knows Dani more than she’s letting on… but still also making them less tactile... even though we’re now allowed to suspect they’re close anyway?

Which is it?

I think there’s a fib somewhere.

Some of the “anti-tactile” cuts harm the movie in general, too. Cuts around the motel, border wall and cockpit in particular create significant continuity errors, and a huge amount of the movie’s exposition has to come from what are clearly late overdubs pasted onto generic reaction shots.

The cuts in the motel and the CBP centre make the scenes they’re in choppy as hell. The cuts when Dani sees Grace alive again after the drone attack actively hurt the coherence of the scene, and even the story as a whole, IMHO. What made it worthwhile to do that?

Now, to be fair - some of the cuts to the motel room bit were apparently because the audience didn’t respond well to seeing Dani crying again. That makes sense.

But it doesn’t really explain this -

Source: Booasaur

This picture from the tie in card game's "FIRST AID KIT" card shows Dani caring for Grace when she’s unconscious, in a motel room that – as noted – is a recreation of the one where Kyle & Sarah slept together.

Images for the card game are promotional shots that would have been approved for release by the studio, but the manufacturer would have needed to have them as early as possible to design and produce their material in time.

This card's image – and only this one – has no corresponding scene in the movie we see. Dani never gets anywhere near this close to Grace here. And that’s not in itself strange for press shots, okay, but what stands out is that I have searched all over, and nothing like it appears in any of the subsequent press material either, while all the other card images, or at least some from the same scenes, do.

That includes this promo shot, which was widely circulated even though it also comes from a cut scene, and one I'll discuss at length later -

From this we can draw two conclusions.

Firstly, that a scene existed where Dani physically tended to Grace like that while she was out, in a room that Terminator fans will know was the backdrop to Sarah & Kyle’s romance - and that it was cut.

Secondly, that at the relatively early stage in production, when the cards were being designed, the image was approved for promotional use - but that at a later one, when the time came to release promo material to the general press, no longer was - and that it was, curiously, the only such image that happened to.

Once we were all good with it, now we’re not. The scene was important enough to shoot, and the image was approved at one point in the early stages – but then suddenly then it wasn’t.

Then there’s the drone attack itself. Like the truck, this is another change that was made in between the early trailers and the movie itself, and it’s another one that damages the editing and story for no clear reason.

In the movie, Dani, knowing that Grace will be killed fighting the CBP, gives herself up rather than see her die. The Rev-9 then uses the chance to drop a drone on them.

Grace realizes what’s happening, easily breaks her restraints, and then takes the brunt of the blast to save Dani from it.

In other words, having just surrendered to save Grace’s life, Dani has to see her being – for all she knows - killed after all, and we see her look on at Grace’s lifeless body in despair.

Incidentally, doesn’t this echo the shot of Grace seeing the Commander in the stretcher after the Rev 7 attack?

This pays off – or would have – later, in a shot seen in the trailers when Grace finds Dani again, and we see Dani’s clear relief that she’s alive.

YMMV, but to me it also looks like she’s showing concern for Grace’s very conspicuous burns, too.

A subsequent trailer shot, also cut, has Grace & Dani fleeing the Rev-9 hand in hand, in dreamy blockbuster slow motion -

All of these moments are gone from the movie.

From what I’m pretty sure was a rehearsal – but again, check out Dani’s expression.

Leaving aside for a moment the obvious recurring question of how this stuff would be interpreted if they were a straight pairing - it’s still very hard to explain cutting it.

In its place, we get this absolute... mess of cuts, ADR, cuts, Davis barely being in frame, more cuts, and… at any point in this how confident are you of what direction anyone’s facing?

I haven’t recut this, to be clear - this is exactly how this sequence plays out onscreen. It’s a salad of jumbled editing and weird shot choices that make the CBP centre seem about the size of a bus stop, has dialogue dubbed in where people clearly aren’t speaking, suggests a floor plan that somehow overlaps, and struggles to keep the 5’11 Davis in frame with the 5’2 Reyes for more than a second at a time.

Scroll up again to those deleted shots, and compare how much clearer and better composed they are than any of this.

In fact, this is so disjointed you’d be forgiven for thinking Dani & Grace are in an identical but totally separate building from Rev here, because there’s no sense of where he is in relation to them or how far away. It’s not even implausible this is another (very expensive!) reshoot, at least in part.

And in the middle of all this, that’s Dani’s cousin getting killed. Did you even notice that when you saw it first? I don’t blame you if you didn’t – our heroines aren’t framed, lit or seen clearly enough to know if Dani herself even knows he’s dead.

Let’s look the effect of these cuts solely from a storytelling perspective though.

The original sequence would have been -

Dani is terrified she’ll get Grace killed so surrenders for that specific reason.

Is devastated to see Grace apparently killed anyway.

Is more relieved to see that Grace is alive than she cares about the attack.

Dramatic slo-mo escape to the chopper

Grace’s deferred freak out that Dani would risk her life like that for her or Sarah.

Besides being shot noticeably better, these little moments also make for a much more coherent little A-to-B journey that shades both characters in significantly.

With the cuts, and Dani's new non-reaction, the drone stuff is just a very dramatic splash of fireworks – narratively, it might as well not have happened. And Grace’s tantrum in the chopper, about Dani’s life being the only one that matters, comes from almost nowhere without that full mini-arc of Dani having endangered herself sooner than put Grace in danger, Grace being an apparent casualty anyway, and how glad Dani is to see she’s alive after all.

These bits seem to me then to have been very deliberately filmed – and then even more deliberately, cut.

But that’s not nearly as dramatic a change as cutting the absurdly angstoromantic “Send Me Back” scene.

And for real, do stop and watch this before carrying on -

youtube

This moment explains just about everything you need to know about Grace and her motivations, absolves Dani of sending her back to her doom, and ties directly into a climactic exchange of dialogue later on - the Theatrical cut still even has that now orphaned follow up line, when Grace repeats her plea to "our" Dani, to let her save her, before she dies. Commander Dani is shown shedding a tear when Grace asks to save her here, presumably because she remembers they will be some of Grace’s last words to her own younger self, later/before.

All that, and that clever little internal loop, is totally lost without this pivotal little scene. We even lose the visual parallel of Grace on her knees to Dani in the present day cockpit, just as she is in her memory from the future here, just as the two versions of Dani converge.

The suggestion Dani raised Grace from childhood is solely from cutting this scene and overwriting it - at the cost of all that continuity and connective tissue mentioned above - with another that looks aesthetically out of whack with the rest of the movie, feels cheap, and was written by monkeys.

Without the swap, without any suggestion of Grace ever meeting Dani as a child, and with this scene back in place as in the original cut, I’m not sure how else could you possibly interpret Grace’s devotion to Dani instead.

But it’s important even regardless of that - it’s laying down all the emotional groundwork for Grace’s death, and the underlying Bootstrap cycle's structure. Cutting it robs Grace and Dani of big chunks of their characterisation and personal arcs, undermining Grace’s dying dialogue and Dani’s vengeful fury after it, and it can’t be explained by saying some subtle reveal needed to be preserved, since both scenes make it apparent Dani’s the Commander even if it isn’t already.

And it's worth highlighting too - @beneaththethunders confirms that the English subtitling of Dani's screams after Grace's death is wrong. She doesn't say he "took everything she had", she says "Mataste todo lo que quería, cabrón!" - "You killed everything I loved". Big difference!

Which all feels a little... coincidental, one might think. Check out how differently it plays out with the corrected translation here.

So it's safe to say that firstly, you would need an excellent reason to shell out for a replacement scene for this one at the last minute, and secondly, that the only explanation we've been offered to date is nonsense.

That's compounded by the fact the reshot and rearranged bits of the movie are almost objectively weaker than the original ones, the deleted scenes were still in place as late as the advance screenings, and even the existing cut of the movie calls back to parts that are now missing as if they’re still there.

And... say, how did those screenings go?

Well -

What the totality of all this suggests to me, and very strongly, is that there is in fact no good “internal” reason for a particular thought-line of these cuts.

They don’t make the story better. They don’t make the movie look better. They damage continuity, they cost a bunch of extra money, and nobody had a problem with them until the public started providing feedback.

To me that means the only reason can be external to the movie – for some reason apart from the good of the plotting, the continuity, the aesthetics or the budget, these changes were applied to the story, and they were applied after the public gave their takes.

In other words, that the point of the changes weren’t to help tell the story better, but to change the story being told.

So my conclusion, in the end, is yes.

Yes, I think the cuts were made because test audiences reported that these bitches looked gay. No other reason I can think of would explain all of these decisions.

That brings us to the last question.

iii) Was it initially intended to have a lesbian romantic subtext?

So this is the big one. At some point in the production of this movie, did somebody want us to see Grace & Dani as a love story?

I’ve talked about making weird cuts to make them less “tactile” and why the supposed reasoning for that doesn’t hold up. I’ve also talked about the allusions to another, canonical love affair in stuff like the truck scene, and I want to come back to that.

Source: Scumlow

In the commentary, Miller mentions this was actually unscripted – it was simply something he realised he could easily do once he got to the location for Dani’s uncle’s place. Unlike the Future War stuff, they already had the truck, the cast and the location ready to shoot with, so it was only an extension of what they were already doing.

If that makes it sound thoughtless, it’s not.

The commentary also makes it clear that Miller has a real fluency with Terminator lore; he even talks about some very longstanding Terminator geek debates like the age old “terminator bomb” argument, stuff that makes it obvious he knows both his canon and fandom discourse inside out.

He absolutely knows what this scene means, and we’re meant to too. We’re meant to recognise it, and I’ll bet a thousand dollars that we’re being shown that Sarah does too.

Miller isn’t the only one aware of the parallel neither –

Source: Youtube, around :045

Mackenzie Davis herself is also very much aware of her character’s relationship to Kyle Reese, and his role in the franchise, and acknowledges and goofs around with the implication.

So the above scene may be unscripted, but there is absolutely no way it’s an accidental echo of T1’s own – there is no way Miller just “accidentally” had Dani & Grace re-enact a moment from Sarah and Kyle’s romance, when the fact they became lovers is the single most important event of the whole franchise. He knows it. The cast knows it.

T1 is often described as a love story first and a scifi/ horror second because of scenes like above, but even aside from Kyle, we get details about Sarah’s love life as an aspect of her characterisation. At one point we even hear a boyfriend – voiced by James Cameron, incidentally – leave her a message to cancel their upcoming date.

Curiously, there’s nothing at all like that in T:DF as we see it. There’s never any suggestion of either Dani or Grace’s romantic inclinations, in any direction, at all. Which may not seem unusual for a modern action movie, to be sexless and romance free, but the complete lack of that element in the story is glaring when we’re being asked to directly compare it to T1 in so many ways otherwise.

It will be no secret to Tumblr that Grace is quite the lesbian thirst icon, and much has been made of her being lesbian – sorry for the discourse word – “coded” in her character design and demeanour.

But… let’s talk about Dani here too, while we’re at it.

Are we supposed to take it for granted she’s to be read as straight?

I’m not actually so sure.

(Natalia Reyes doesn’t seem to mind us wondering either, incidentally)

As the eagle eyed @yorkieeightyseven copped, for some reason wardrobe went to the rounds of customising her shoes with rainbow laces for the scene we're first introduced to her, which is a minor but eye catching choice to make -

Source: Prop Auction Store

A far more more interesting one though was made for her introduction to Sarah. If you wondered why this guy in the Pharmacy got so much focus, only to disappear -

It’s because, per Miller, he originally asks Dani out in the midst of all this and gets instantly rebuffed.

I mean, sure, she wouldn’t be looking for a date just now - but why even write and shoot this? Why was it worth making time and space to ever show us Dani dismissing him while she’s attending to Grace?

And then why was it cut, along with all the other stuff we know about?

The only potentially romantic context we know we might ever have been given for either Grace or Dani is to have Dani reject this man. Otherwise, they never show anything you can even infer as interest in any characters. Well... apart from each other, at least.

This is even starker in light of the audition script used for would-be Danis, but before we get into that, again, I want to be really clear what this is.

An audition “side” is a very rough placeholder script used to test chemistry and emotion. A side’s dialogue will tend from rough to terrible, and sometimes the scene is deliberately misleading, as sides regularly leak via actors who don’t get the part (that’s why we have this one).

The general mood of a side though, is key. It's usually right on the money, because that’s what you’re trying to test your actor for. The side is designed to showcase the particular vibe the Director needs most – so however clumsy or misleading the dialogue is, it represents something that matters so much for a character that they’ll be cast solely on the basis of it.

This side was used to audition actresses for Dani. It takes place on the train to the border, with a Grace who does not know, or claims not to know, Dani or what’s so important about her.

It’s a tentative bonding moment between the two, where Dani shows concern for a shoulder wound Grace is tending to –

(Dani scoots closer, eyes the wound critically.)

DANI (CONT'D)

That scar's gonna be sick. But I got it beat.

(She pulls up her sleeve to reveal a scar of her own on her shoulder.)

DANI (CONT'D)

Like it? Bus accident. The big one in Puebla. I was fourteen when they pulled me out from under. It made the news, even in the States. They gave me obleas to calm me. Like candy can make you forget the pain. The bodies. The weight of twisted steel bearing down—

(She touches [her own] scar, gently with her fingers.)

DANI (CONT'D)

I'll never eat obleas again.

(Grace studies Dani as she traces the line of the scar with her finger.)

GRACE

You wanted to understand where I come from? You already do.

(Dani's eyes meet Grace's for a moment.)

DANI

My mother told me scars make the skin stronger.

(Dani covers her scar with her shirt, then looks out again as the train slows, approaching Nogales.)

Now uh… I don’t think I even have to ask the fanfictionally inclined, but please picture this scene actually playing out on screen, actors and all.

Bearing in mind that the point of a side is the mood - what is the mood you imagine as described here? Because it was so important for Dani’s actress to play that she was to be cast based on it alone. Not her bravery, her sensitivity, her comedy, her action chops, or anything else - but the mood when she and Grace bond over the marks on their bodies.

Sure, we can just about imagine cuts to make them less close were down to some Action Movie Bros suddenly realising they'd accidentally made the gayest ass Terminator imaginable. But it is greatly straining credulity to suggest they were oblivious to the implications of a directions like “Grace studies Dani as she traces the line of the scar with her finger” or “Dani’s eyes meet Grace’s for a moment”.

Let's be real - this scene here reads like Dani is hitting on Grace with a two by four.

And how well this particular scene was performed was the one that decided who got the job.

It’s classic action movie romance stuff. And again, if there could be any question what you were being told if you'd been presented with a guy & girl playing it out, have no fear - Kyle & Sarah are here to clarify, because their corresponding scene in T1 was straight up foreplay. Their scar examination is used to allow for a closer level of intimacy with Kyle, a slightly awkward virgin who thinks entirely in Military radio protocol. Stuff like "affirmative", and "standard operating procedure". And yes, it is immediately followed by sex in a motel room, and yes, the very one they painstakingly replicated for that lost scene of Dani watching over Grace in the bed. I don't really feel like we're having to work too hard for inferences here.

It's just not plausible that someone with Tim Miller’s fluency in Terminator-ese doesn’t know what he’s asking us to think of when we see that motel room or that scene in the pickup. To Terminator nerds, those Sarah/Kyle scenes are so iconic it’s the equivalent of having them mime out the “I’m flying” scene from Titanic, there's not a whole lot of room to miss the implication.

Similarly, it’s not plausible to think that stuff like the “teaching Dani to shoot” scene was done in blissful ignorance. It’s such a well-known visual shorthand it’s its own sitcom punchline by now, and Miller is as well versed in action movie tropes as he is in geek lore – several Love, Death + Robots eps he wrote for are explicit genre spoofs.

The train scene we see in the movie is, of course, very different to the side above. Sarah doesn’t even seem to be in that scene at all, whereas she’s the central speaker in the final version. The one we do see is odd for a whole other reason of its own though - it’s actually pretty much the only scene which really engages with the idea we’re supposed to expect Dani to be the mother of the Commander, rather than she, herself, the Commander.

Isn’t that a little strange?

Given that’s key to what's supposed to be the big reveal?

Shouldn’t that be a much bigger deal for her, too, given there isn’t a single surviving human male in her orbit? And that our Kyle proxy here is very much a woman? And she’s got to have a kid in the next like… 24 months for them to be an adult in time for any of this to work? And even that’s a stretch given Grace says she’s from 2042?

But it’s never mentioned again; not until the reveal it won’t be her hypothetical kid after all. Nobody, Dani included, even seems to think idly about her impending destiny-altering-messiah-pregnancy after this, not until the very heavily ADR’d and continuity-messy cockpit scene, when, incidentally, the foster mom stuff is also introduced, for the first and only time.

Keep that in mind, because I don’t think the weirdness of both plot strands is unrelated.

Recasting Dani as Grace’s parent is a weird choice that doesn’t really serve any purpose except to create an alternate explanation for their bond. But it doesn’t even do that very well, even if we take it as a given they’re not in love, because nothing at all about their relationship otherwise reads as maternal.

Let's, for the sake of argument, accept their dynamic was never supposed to be romantic, and try to imagine how else we were supposed to understand them originally, ie before the maternal stuff was introduced either.

Think about the deleted border gunfight - Grace takes orders from Dani about wounding the Federales and surrendering to the CBP, yes, but not without friction. Okay, they are technically Officer/Subordinate - but evidently they have a personal working relationship that puts them on more equal terms than that suggests, if Grace is openly contesting orders from someone about two dozen ranks over her. This happens again at Carl’s place, when she point blank rejects the killbox plan. And even in 2042, it is Grace, not Dani, who outlines what’s going to be done about the TDE.

Ultimately she does almost always defer to Dani, yes - but not without making her own case first. She sure as hell does not simply accept what Dani says as the kind of sacred, inviolable Commandment set down by a mother figure, but forgetting that for now; it’s not how a suicidally loyal footsoldier would behave, either.

So how were we supposed to think of this?

As somebody (I'm incredibly sorry I've forgetten who) once very neatly put it, the movie finds itself in the bizarre position of having to convince us its two leads are not in love despite itself - even though the implication of their alternatives create a bunch of other weird problems.

Primarily, that without the scene which tells us that Grace, with full agency, actively opted into this suicide mission, and with one that instead casts her as her kid, the movie is asking us to root for a leader who ordered her own child to die for her. She found and raised her, just to sacrifice her to save... herself, apparently? And we’re not given any mitigation like Grace having plead with her to do it, or the tears Dani sheds in response.

You might think that’s a weird choice to make for a heroine - and Tim Miller agrees.

In a panel discussion with about directing in 2022, he says this -

"We shot a scene on 'Terminator' that I didn't believe in, but I had to shoot it. I got up in front of the crew, and I said, 'So I hate this scene. I don't believe in it. I don't think it's going to work and I don't think it'll ever be in the movie, but I'm going to do the best I can to shoot it.' [M]y rationale there was I've been working with these people and if they know it's s*** too, and if I don't say it's s***, then they question my judgment. They don't believe in you. You got to say it. You got to be honest."

He doesn’t specify which scene he means here, but I think we can safely guess it’s the one that looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the movie, was shot after everything else, blows a hole in a dialogue callback later on, and creates a plot element he had a “problem” with. From another interview with io9 -

“I always have a little bit of a problem with Dani sending Grace to die,”[Miller] said. “We set up this whole [story] where Grace is kind of Dani’s surrogate child and a mother sending her child to die for her is just...yeah, I had a different scene in mind.”

I think the scenes he means here are one and the same.

So… if the Director of the damn movie didn’t like the scene's implication, why is it there…? If the original "Send me Back" scene was his preference, which seems to be the case, where is it gone?

In the commentary, he mentions that his idea of Dani’s Resistance depends on the fact a time traveller died for her; it is foundational to her gospel as a leader, because the fact that somebody came back for her proved that the past can be changed, and thus the war avoided. And separately, Davis has let slip that she would have been back for sequels, implying that Dani would/will successfully rewrite the immediate future, and generate a new iteration of Future Grace in the process.

That makes the cut “Send Me Back” scene seem integral, I think, to Miller’s concept of the whole story, and I think there are hints of how he communicated that to the folks he worked on it with.

Here, for example, is how legendary make up and prosthetic artist Bill Corso contextualizes his work for the scene –

“In which Grace tells her beloved Commander” that she wants to go back.

Not her like… mighty, respected, esteemed or adored Commander. Not her beloved foster mom, parent, or mentor either. Her beloved Commander.

Huh.

The core tragedy of Miller’s story then is that Dani & Grace are locked into a cycle of heroism and sacrifice that fate keeps demanding of them. But without that key scene you’ve lost the axis of that, and again, you'd need a really compelling reason to replace it with one that both costs more money to reshoot but looks cheaper, doesn’t cohere with the rest of the movie, and weakens the emotional punch of a character’s upcoming death.

And since we know Miller didn’t want it, it has to be worth overruling him as Director to do it, by someone with the authority to do so.

Miller has repeatedly said there were serious conflicts with Cameron during post-production – describing debates over the final cut as leaving “blood on the walls” of the edit suite - but he’s fairly vague about what the major arguments were about (worth noting - Mackenzie Davis mentioned she had a beefy NDA when backing off a question about the by-then already scrubbed sequels).

Miller has mentioned one scene - Sarah confronting Carl in the cabin – in passing, where there was a disagreement over the tone. He handled that by shooting everything Cameron wanted to keep him happy, plus what he wanted, with a view to editing it down to only the stuff he hoped to keep.

In that case, he mostly won out, and the comedy elements JC wanted were scaled back.

But he didn’t win them all – he also mentions he very strongly wanted to suggest the humans are losing the Future War this time, where Cameron insisted the opposite. Here, the compromise was not to make it clear either way, so we’re left to guess (though I still think it hints more towards Miller’s version than Cameron’s).

The “Send me back/You raised me” swap though is much bigger than either of those. The Future War winning/losing stuff is just background lore geek wrestling; the comedy stuff in the cabin is a drag but not a gamechanger.

But framing Grace and Dani as a love story vs a half assed familial thing changes the whole timbre of the story. It changes the movie’s genre even, from a straightforward actioner to a romantic tragedy in an action costume, something far more in the vein of T1 than what we saw.

So… is that what Miller was alluding to?

Was Miller’s frustration that he made a movie about two lovers trying to save each other across time, and then watched it get retconned into a much more confused story about, I dunno, really intense work colleagues?

My conclusion, in the end, is yes.

I’m 90% sure that at some point Dani and Grace were intended to be interpreted romantically. Not 100% - but 90%. More sure it was than it wasn’t.

Here’s an oversimplified summary -

Deliberate, overt parallels to iconic scenes from mythology’s core romance, by a Director who is extremely well versed in both the movies and fandom, with a cast who are well aware of same.

How physically close Dani & Grace are, to such an extent they couldn’t hide all of it even with an entire extra edit pass.

Innocuous justification for those cuts is a blatant fib.

The one single No-Homo disclaimer having to be imposed against the Director’s wishes, and at the cost of continuity and storytelling issues.

Swoony romantic clichés like tending to wounds, teaching to shoot, courtly kneeling.

Odd little details like Dani’s costuming.

Just how much more sense their dynamic, and indeed the plot, makes if they’re in love.

Dani losing her shit at Rev 9 for killing what she querías in response to Grace’s death, and the strange subtitling discrepancy around this.

So what to make of that?

Well, here's my working theory of what might have happened to explain it all.

Let’s imagine that Tim Miller, fresh off directing Deadpool 2 ft Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and knowing his Terminator lore like gospel, wants to push the franchise forward a bit with DF. He wants to make a movie structured around an operatic love-and-sacrifice-and-love bootstrap tragedy where, instead of creating the next warrior-messiah by fathering him, Grace drives Dani to create that person from herself; Dani, in turn, creates the Grace we know.

This idea both honors the original lore and puts a fresh and maybe genuinely surprising twist on it (and incidentally, is very much in the LD+R flavor of scifi)

Miller still has to answer though to James Cameron, Producer and IP stakeholder, who we know was vetoing some of his ideas, like the losing war, and adding some of his own, like the plane crash sequence.

No worries. As Director, it’s him, Tim Miller, who’s going on set every day, and that means he can do stuff like guerrilla shoot the truckbed scene or collect alternate takes to have options later on. There’s nobody on the set to stop him, at least.

But we know Cameron reared his head later, in the editing stage. Miller describes serious conflict with him in this phase, while skirting around the main bone of contention.

I say - what if it’s this?

What if the question of whether Dani & Grace can be a romance was the problem, the big conflict between Miller and Cameron?

I suggest it is plausible that Miller intended and shot Grace & Dani as a love story on set (and sometimes off-script) where he could. I think he got it past Cameron & Co in the initial test screenings, either without them picking up on it or simply not caring enough to intervene yet - but then when they started getting notes like… well, “lesbian” from the audience, or saw the backlash to the early promo images of THREE WHOLE WOMEN, panic kicked in among higher ups.

It's now, at this point, in the editing and reshoots, that the romance stuff gets nuked, at a considerable expense.

But it's not that easy, because doing that creates a big new storytelling problem - by neutralizing the whole tragic cycle drama and its climax, it’s pulling the structure out of the story as Miller had built it.

Realizing this, that now the third act has just lost its bones, Cameron, or the studio, try to have the movie restructured around an improvised new twist, the “reveal” that Dani herself is the Commander.

It has to be done by cutting, overdubbing, and reshooting chunks of what they've got, sometimes resorting to sub optimal alternate takes, and even then there are still awkward artifacts that can’t be avoided, like Dani in the stretcher.

The train scene, which was already being totally reworked, was further repurposed to plant setup for the new twist too - but since the rest of the movie still proceeds as if we all already know it’s her anyway, it feels very much like the afterthought it is. The efforts can only be a limited success, simply because Miller did the shooting taking it as a matter of fact that Dani was Grace's Commander.

That’s also, ultimately, why the twist surprised literally no one – because the movie wasn’t shot for it to be surprising.

The real surprise, the point, the heart of the whole thing, was supposed to be that this, too, is a lover's loop just as T1 was – that while Dani may not be the mother of the next messiah, both she and Grace are the Resistance’s parents, albeit in a new and unconventional way.

And that Grace came across time for just the same reason Kyle did.

...Now all that's just a theory. But it’s my theory, and it's the only way I can make sense of the whole picture we've got. I’m all ears for any better ones, or elaborations or corrections, but by now I'd need convincing it is not what happened.

But don’t get me wrong - oddities and all, I really do love this freaking movie.

I'd just love to see the one hidden under it too, wouldn’t you?

***

Hopefully, you found something of interest in there. And if you’ve made it this far, holy shit, well done and thank you for joining me on this protracted Crazy Wall of a post.

Please go check out Station Eleven, it's gorgeous, and write more fanfic everyone, the T:DF Ao3 tag is starving out here.

Shout out to @booasaur, @evocatiio and @scumlow, I hope they don't mind me using their gifsets and posts as I have above, @yorkieeightyseven for catching that little detail about Dani's shoes, and @beneaththethunders for the legit translation of that line the subtitles LIED to me about.

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drowninginredink · 2 months

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Any aro/aro-spec hcs for asoue? :)

Yes! Absolutely! Let's go in order from most to least canon!

Lemony Snicket is the most demiromantic and demisexual character to have ever existed and I don't need to say anything else about that.

Montgomery Montgomery literally said "I always meant to find a wife and start a family, but it just keep slipping my mind." That is the single most aro thing I have ever heard.

Similarly, I do not remember what the exact quote is for this one, but Justice Strauss has never married because her one true love is the law. I hate Justice Strauss but that is pretty solid proof that she's aro.

Bertrand Baudelaire. I love aro Bertrand so much. I've got a post about a particular way aroace Bertrand could play out, but like, even if we aren't going with that version of events, I still love aro Bertrand. Aroallo, aroace, just aro, whatever. I love the idea that he was Beatrice's aro best friend that she ended up marrying when romance proved to be too risky in their field.

I really love the idea of Kit as aro (allo) and Dewey was the one relationship she was really able to feel comfortable in. I mean she's probably more aro-spec than aro, but I don't feel like she's a microlabel person. Her and Dewey's relationship is officially romantic, but there's something of a QPR-esque understanding between them. Also they are the most bi4bi couple I have ever seen. Kit is polyamorous and Dewey is monogamous but is totally fine with her having relationships outside of theirs. Look, I know no one ever likes the canon ships in anything, but I really love Kit and Dewey and have spent a lot of time thinking about them and have written almost 4k words of a Kit/Dewey fic I'll probably never finish but do really like.

I have no actual reason that Fernald is aroallo except that I say so and one day I want to write a fic about him and Kit in a situationship. But. He is. He is alloaro and that's the truth.

As for the Baudelaires, I don't have any solid orientation headcanons for them. The answer is usually "I don't care" unless I'm writing a fic where being queer makes them more interesting (shout-out to that lesbian Violet fic I wrote that's on FFN and one day I'll completely overhaul and put on AO3). That said, I do absolutely see Violet and Klaus as not getting into romantic relationships at the very least until after Beatrice and Sunny are adults, because they'd rather stay together as their own family unit, if they ever get into them at all. I see Violet and Klaus staying together even after Sunny and Bea move out and have their own lives. I think they would just rather have each other around than anyone else. Does that make them aro? Not necessarily. Plenty of alloromantic people never get married/have long-term partners, and plenty of aromantics do. But I still think it bears mentioning here. (Sorry to everyone who thinks they'll join back up and get together with the Quagmire they prefer to ship them with, but uh... yeah no, I don't think they see the Quagmires ever again)

#a series of unfortunate events #asoue #snicketverse #montegomery montegomery #justice strauss #bertrand baudelaire #kit snicket #fernald asoue #the baudelaire children #the baudelaires #aro headcanon #aro headcanons

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shelli-gator · 1 year

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what ttte ships do you have besides 2x5, if any?💙❤️

I do I do! 🥺❤️ thank you for asking anon! It makes my day!

🖤💚 I loooove Donald and Duck. I love their playful back and forth, and I think for all his teasing, Donald is quite enamored with Duck's fussiness and practicality. It makes him an easy target for his teasing, but really it comes from him being in love and dumb about it. Duck is also the only one who can reign in Donald's temper, and get the two brothers to stop arguing. Mostly because Donald won't listen to anyone else.

My partner and I have a human au and in it Duck is the manager of a quaint little general store (the kind that sells organic and fancy stuff, some luxury goods and fresh produce marked up really high, that sort of thing), and next door is a hardware store manned by Donald and Douglas. They share a breakroom. Donald's favorite pass time is taking drinks and snacks from the general store without asking, and playing with rubber ducks and putting them around the store for Duck to find. Sometimes Duck will hear incessant quaking coming from the break room, and he'll charge in to yell at him only to stop short because Donald is smiling HUGE at him, turning to his brother to be like "See I tol' yoo Douggie I speak 'is language! That's 'is matin' call, that is." And Duck's shoots back with a "YOU OWE ME M O N E Y!" Don't worry. Duck will just go take it from the cash register in the hardware store later. With a little note detailing all the things he knows he took.

(You know Donald would call him is quackeroo)

For all his teasing, Donald really loves him, and that scares him. Duck aspires to what he believes to be bigger and better things with his life, dreams he won't stop chasing. And that makes Donald scared he'll leave him behind. What's wrong with what they have now? Some would argue it's pretty good...

💚💙 This leads into my next ship, but it's really just an unrequited, quite surface-level thing; Duck and Edward. I won't say too much since it's in my fic, but Duck rather likes his old friend. And it makes him and James scowl at each other all the more. But of course, it's not to be. Edward cares for him, but not in the way Duck might want (or at least, THINKS he wants, or really DOESN'T). It's all very confusing when you don't even believe engines should or CAN love and what purpose does love have when you're MADE to work. There's the right way of doing things, and the wrong way...

💙💚 Another ship I dabble in is Gordon and Henry, though I'm not as mentally ill about them as I am with James and Edward. I like the complexity that comes with Henry having been designed as a bootleg Gresly to start, only to be totally overhauled, and WOW that must have been well and truly fucked. You would think there would be some mockery or resentment there, but Gordon doesn't hold it to him. Deep down, I think he had compassion for him that he couldn't really express because he's so fucking emotionally stunted and you gotta keep up appearances. And we see that compassion in It's Good to Be Gordon. He felt so awful to have made Henry feel worse that nothing else mattered.

I've been reading A New Way of Life, and I adore how the author characterizes their relationship. Being there for an anxious, panicky partner doesn't always have to be gentle and saccharine. Gordon grounds Henry in a way only HE can, not through words and coddling, but with a big, firm hand to squeeze and hold him. And that tells Henry he isn't alone. That he's got him. It pulls him back, and I really like that for them. Gordon is an anchor, and Henry needs a pretty big anchor.

So yeah, I like that for them! And I'm just as susceptible to big men being dumb and in love and finding solace where they might not find it anywhere else because big men have big problems or whatever.

💚🩵 this next ship is like, I mean, okay. It comes with a disclaimer. I really like Thomas and Percy, but NOT in the traditional romantic sense. I mean there's really not much romantic to me about it, but that's also why I think it's as sweet and funny as it is. They're best friends that trip each other up and fight over the Xbox, and they really wouldn't want to be with anyone else. Thomas can't even think of girls (who terrify him anyway) because he just wants to go hang out with Percy. I guess I see it as kind of crack ship, and that's why I love it. As humans they would hold hands and get so red and spooked over it that they never really do anything else WHEEZE. And as engines well, they spend all their time together, that's enough for them.

Most of what I like about them is in our human au, and it's insane. They're the worst. Percy waking up Thomas in the middle of the night because he doesn't sleep and he's looking for his vape. "Where's my vape Thomas, have you seen it, come on I think you're lying on it roll over. Sorry! Thomas. Thomas where's your vape can I use your vape what flavour is it. Thomas-" (my partner is so fucking smart and funny for this)

I'm sure I'll come up with more as I go along. Like I really want to find someone for Emily, I like her as a headstrong Scot so very impatient and so very very right about everything bossing people around WHEEZE. She's the worst ❤️🥺🤩 but also really kind, and the only one practical enough to actually go talk to Toby when everyone was very happy to just believe he was being scrapped (even Edward which is SO funny and cute to me it kills me). I think she'd make someone very happy. I'm open to suggestions! Very susceptible to good marketing if you know what I mean 😏

(I see Caitlin back there hmmm I've heard good things 👀❤🧡🩶🩷💜 🤔👭)

I still need to watch Emily in the middle but I also think it would be so funny Donald and Douglas vying for her attention when it's really only Douglas that fancies her and Donald is just fucking stupid and getting in the way because he can and Douglas wants to throw him off the rails in frustration because why can't he just have this WHEEZE.

Anyway thanks for reading sorry it's long!

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dainesanddaffodils · 1 year

Text

Friends, Romans, Countrymen. I did it.

I rewatched Strange Magic late last night on a whim.

It’s been, as far as I can determine, at least four years since I had last seen this movie. Probably closer to five. It’s been. A Minute. And I was so horribly worried that I would find all of its faults far more glaring than I had when it first consumed my life back in 2015. That I wouldn’t find the magic in it the way I did before.

I was both right and wrong.

I did, indeed, find some things more flawed, to the point of genuinely cringing in a couple places. However, I also came out remembering exactly why this movie captivated me for as long as it did.

I’m going to ramble in more detail about both things, if you’re so inclined to read more.

Things I found as bad or worse this time around:

The pacing. Dear lord, the pacing of this movie is a fucking trainwreck. I knew it the first time I watched it and it was the one critique I would always agree with. It’s just, it’s so bad. I can’t even tell you how I’d fix it but it just. It needs an overhaul please.

Like, in my memory it was just the first half that was paced poorly. Once you got into the second half, things improved.

My memory was wrong. It’s a mess the whole way through.

Tragically, Griselda. I always found her character a little grating but at least sort of endearing... but it has. gotten worse. The matchmaking was only good in providing the backdrop for Bog and Marianne to rant about how much they hate romance but every other scene with it made me feel like Bog must. I lowkey wanted to put my head through a wall.

Plum, too, was a little more annoying than I remembered. In general the whole “Love is Strange” scene is probably the one I struggled with the most on this rewatch.

The kaleidoscope bit at the end. Which again, I was always kinda... unsure about but like, everything else about the ending is so good and then that just really. throws the whole groove off and it’s sad.

Also, I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad but like, all of Bog’s scenes in the first half of the movie are so melodramatic and I know that’s the point but I was still like ‘christ my dude we get it you’re ~evil~ now please chill for five seconds’

- and that’s really it. All told, while these were definitely more noticeable faults upon watching this movie again, I don’t think they were enough to truly hamper my enjoyment of the rest of it.

Speaking of...

Things I found as good or better this time around:

Marianne. My beloved punk rock fairy princess. I absolutely adore how three-dimensional she is as a character. They give her the whole badass makeover training sequence and then spend the rest of the movie showing you its cracks. Showing you that she never fully outgrew the romantic she was at heart. She was just scared of letting people see that side of her after being hurt. She’s bitter and angry and touch-starved and sympathetic and caring and she’s allowed to be all of these things and none of them contradict each other.

Marianne and Dawn’s relationship. Holy shit I forgot how good that was. We see only glimpses of it but every single one of them is perfection and so realistic. This is how sisters behave. They drive each other crazy and point out each other’s faults and make each other want to tear their hair out and if anyone hurt them there would be hell to pay. All of their conversations feel so... grounded in reality for a fairy rock opera musical.

On that note, a lot of the dialogue is just, well delivered and sounds incredibly natural. It took me by surprise.

Sunny! Sunny also surprised me with how much I liked him. His humor is one of the things that has aged the best in this movie and I really enjoyed his character. You can really see how he is a good guy who was just, very easily manipulated and spends the rest of the movie trying to fix his fuck-up.

The singing. Similar to my point about line delivery, the... way the characters sing in this movie is really well done. I don’t know how to explain it but the way they use songs in this movie really feels like they’re using it as dialogue. Like, there’s plenty of meta jokes about people breaking into song but it also feels like it’s a natural part of this world. People just sing their feelings here, and it feels believable. It’s fascinating.

The animation - specifically the character animation. (Like, the movie has gorgeous background shots, we all know this.) I won’t deny that the detail in the faces gets uncanny valley in places but it’s worth it for the expressiveness that it allows. There are so many incredible face journeys, so many subtle shifts in body language, so much that gets to be said without words - either spoken or sung - and it’s just as good as I remember it.

Speaking of things that are just as good as I remember. Yeah, you guessed it.

Bog and Marianne’s relationship is still just, top fucking tier.

Like, it goes back to what I said about expressiveness in the animation. I remembered the big things about these two. I remembered the sword fight flirting; I remembered the ranting about hating love together; I remembered the declaration of love at the end set to “Wild Thing” which perfectly encapsulated their personalities.

I had forgotten how much of their relationship is progressed through small gestures and lingering looks. Things like Bog leaving his staff behind after their fight, and later returning her sword to her - both shows of trust and respect that Marianne is clearly unused to. Things like the way he looks at her throughout the entire “Strange Magic” sequence as he shows her his home and hopes she’ll find beauty in it. Things like the whole face journey she goes through when it’s revealed he survived his castle collapsing, realizing that she loves him. Things like how you can see on their faces that they’re constantly torn between hope and absolute terror at their growing feelings for each other.

All of these things are done wordlessly and it’s very well done.

(also man, having re-read a bunch of my fics ahead of this I was kind of like ‘wow a through-line throughout all of this is Bog being just, like, absolutely whipped by Marianne from the start’ and friends, upon rewatch it hit me that that was not just some romance novel tropes sneaking into fic - I took that shit straight from the source. My goblin man really was enamored with her INSTANTLY. It was fucking hilarious.)

Anyway, thanks for coming along with me for this journey. I came out of it just kind of accepting, yeah, this is not what I would call a Good Movie. But it gave me so many things that I loved, and still love, and really, that’s what matters.

Also now I wanna fucking draw fanart again. That’s wild.

#strange magic #that fairytale rock opera #George Lucas’s jukebox rom com

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pikahlua · 1 year

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I have a question

But I really want to ask just from a writing standpoint, no ships or anything

Do you like Izuku and Ochaco's development as possible (or probable? idk where Hori wanna go with that) romance?

Cause I appreciated it (even tho it felt like the usual shonen romance) till the return of Izuku to UA, which made me see them more as platonic (and made me appreciate their bond way more tbh)

So from a writing standpoint, I'm not exactly a romance aficionado. It can really only come down to my preferences in what I like in a romance, but there are just some cheesy romance tropes I'm not into. I do think it's perfectly viable to analyze any relationship in any property, MHA included, for whatever dynamic you want. If you ask me to take a look at the potential romance in Izuku and Ochako's relationship, I can do that.

That said, this is a warning to hard-line IzuOcha shippers: I can't guarantee you'll enjoy everything I write about in this post.

To me, there are five major "sagas" in their relationship. Some of these I like, some of these I don't.

Saga 1: Beginning through the Internships Saga 2: Final Exams through Kamino Saga 3: Provisional License Exam through School Cultural Festival Saga 4: Joint Training Arc through Paranormal Liberation War Saga 5: Deku Retrieval Arc through to the present

Saga 1 was my favorite. This was when they were still getting to know each other and becoming friends. I like this part best because Ochako has the most characterization in the show. Her personality shines through and she's very entertaining. I also thought the stuff that happened between them in the Sports Festival was some of the most refreshing writing of opposite-sex characters I've seen in a while, platonic or romantic. Ochako has personal motivations that can be in conflict or in harmony with her relationship with Izuku, and the manner in which they interacted showed a special type of relationship for Izuku that he didn't have with any other character. It was nice variety in the context of everything else the show was giving us at the time. I wasn't necessarily dying for romance, because I do love a good platonic opposite-sex friendship too. But if it did take a romantic direction, I was excited to see how it went at the time.

Saga 2 just felt like it shoehorned the crush thing in there. It didn't really come from anything that came before it. I thought it was gonna be a good opportunity for some romantic humor, but it just turned out to be a bunch of embarrassed blushing and not much else. Wasn't really my thing.

Saga 3 tried to add something interesting to the mix with Ochako's jealousy which she tries to deny and squash, but...it doesn't come across as particularly deep or well-developed. Horikoshi kinda just throws it out there and then immediately ditches it. I wouldn't have been so annoyed if it didn't encompass all of Ochako's character for this saga. She didn't really do much of anything else at all. Even in the Overhaul arc, she didn't get any meaningful spotlight, and I mean this from an action perspective. After the awesome action she got in the Sports Festival, Horikoshi really pulled back on her and it felt like he was too afraid to make her get dirty and fight again, save for a brief moment when she pinned Toga in the woods at summer camp. I liked it better when Izuku was pining a bit after Ochako than the other way around.

Saga 4 was a bit better. There was finally some meaningful development between them with Ochako getting inspired to update her costume, saving Izuku as a development of her new character question of "who saves the heroes?", and--my favorite part--when she decides to trust Izuku when he says he can take Shinso on alone and she goes to take care of business elsewhere. But I notice these developments I like also happen to have non-romantic elements to them. It's really just when things are one-dimensionally romantic that I'm super disinterested. I like the complexity of other feelings even in their easy friendship. Platonic friendship that leads into budding romance brings at least a bit more flavor in the writing. That said, it's not a whole ton of flavor. I can see why other people would like it, but it's not the MOST exciting for me personally.

Saga 5 is again more exciting to me because of the non-romantic elements, kind of like you say. It's not that it's necessarily platonic, but it's just more interesting that Ochako's feelings seem more complicated now, and Toga has been added to the mix too. What we get in this saga especially puts me in a weird position where I'm rooting for Izuku and Ochako NOT to get together in the end, not because I don't like them or have a problem with the ship, but because it makes the overall story about their relationship since the beginning..."make sense" isn't the right phrase. It's just an interesting take on the trope in this genre. I really like the message it could potentially deliver on. I'm just not a big romance person in the first place, so the whole "there are even deeper things happening between people than just high school crushes" angle that doesn't necessarily mean romance speaks more to me. I don't really know what we get out of them getting together if that happens. But, as I said, I'm not big on romance to begin with, so I'm not the best judge of this. It could be we get a great message out of it and I'm just really bad at being able to see that at this stage. I will still be forced to lament what was lost in that case, though--because we would lose the far more interesting take on the trope if they were not to get together.

And that's why I say I'm not anti-IzuOcha, just anti-IzuOcha in canon. I think they're cute together and I really love their earlier dynamic. I think the fanart of them is cute. I love when they get along doing things. I love when people create excellent fan content for their favorite pairings. I just most like the idea of an ending where they don't end up together for the purposes of my own intrigue.

#my hero academia manga spoilers #final showdown spoilers #anon ask #ask pika #izuku midoriya #ochako uraraka #meta #that weird paradox where i like izuocha in specific circumstances lol #so if you're a big shipper of them you may not be into this post and this is your warning

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rokkenjimaisland · 1 year

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Ren's "similar to Umineko" list! (now overhauled)(You're welcome)

Stuff on here reminds me of Umineko for a variety of reasons. If I add to it, I'll just edit this post and add the date I added it to this list. Separated by genre this time.

Under the read-more, with the "why it reminds me of Umineko" blurb after the title rather than a whole plot synopsis like I had done in the previous list

Feel free to rec stuff in tags or in comments etc. if I haven't read/played/watched it it might be hard for me to add it but I'll definitely add it to my own list of things to check out!

VIDEO GAMES The House In Fata Morgana - Visual novel, Unreliable narration, witch haunting an illusory mansion for thousands of years, cycles of abuse and trauma, Gothic setting, romance 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors - Visual novel, "The killer is among us" (lol), murder mystery scoping out paranormal/metaphysical elements and twisting them into its own crazy logic, romance NieR Replicant - It's up to you to find your own happiness whatever that means to you despite the circumstances of the world you're living in or your own birth Alan Wake - Author creates and infers reality around him, horror setting, unreliable narration, creations rallying against their creator Alan Wake 2 - see the above, it's the sequel, except Alan Wake 2 is an actual survival horror. I didn't like Alan Wake 1 much but I'm LOVING 2 so far. The Forgotten City - I haven't played this just saw someone on Twitter say to play it if you like Umineko so I'm trusting their recommendation Pathologic Classic HD - Questions of morality, wishy-washiness on the reality of the fantastical elements of the town's culture, meta universe shenanigans forcing you to contend with "none of this matters, so why do/should I care?" Patho 2 can probably go here too but I am playing that at the moment.

ANIMANGA Naoki Urasawa's Monster - "Why did the culprit do this?" over "Who is the culprit?", murder mystery, cycles of abuse, questions of character identity, the ultimate "victim of circumstances has created the monster" situation Shiki - Sleepy town being annihilated by an unknown threat, humans doing unspeakable things in the name of justice, the question of the antagonist's morality/justice is brought to the forefront and maybe they were right all along...? Princess Tutu - Characters who have been created for a story and are living out a narrative sort of against their will, the narrative as a framing device and also a prison, love love love lots of love, the death of the author and what this means for a tale and the characters within it too--if you can only call them characters I Want To Hold Aono-kun so Badly I Could Die - romantic relationships as a way to combat your personal loneliness, horror and romance and how they intersect...kind of hard to explain this one unless you've finished Umineko but this manga really reads like AU Bato[redacted] to me so far, lots of supernatural elements, learning how to find happiness

TV Succession - Rich people dealing with their abusive and unpredictable father deciding who will be the successor for the family business and dragging everyone else into it, cycles of literally every sort

MOVIES Knives Out (2019) - Rich family called to a house to discuss the ailing patriarch's will only for him to be murdered, murder mystery Haven't seen Glass Onion yet but that too. Decision To Leave (2022) - Confessions of the unspeakable as acts of love, Another time another place maybe it could have worked, I created myself to love you, tragic romance, the sea as a motif representing character worlds Memento (2000) - it's up to the watcher to interpret events as they happen and piece them together, the most unreliable narrator of narrators, just go in blind The Prestige (2006) - Magicians get into a big dick competition and destroy their relationships for the sake of greatness, branches into metaphysical territory for the sake of pursuing magic House (1977) - Group of girls visit an ancient family home, horror setting, love is always enduring for better or for worse, witches, using other bodies to fulfill your own wish

BOOKS The Locked Tomb Quartet - Cites Umineko (and 999!) as an inspiration and Muir is a very very referential reader so it's kind of hard to say stuff without spoiling TLT also so honestly just go read it. Magpie Murders - Murder within a murder And Then There Were None (duh) - Directly inspired Umineko and the murders within Umineko The Last Unicorn - Characters acknowledge they are living in a fairy tale, the unicorn is often called the only 'real' one in the group due to her immortality, dream-like narration and fantastical whimsy, ocean representing character strife House Of Leaves - The metaphysical book of metaphysical books with stories within stories within stories and extremely unconventional formatting, house as a vehicle to tell a horror story IT - Two stories in different times existing side by side to inform the reader how to read it. I never finished reading this either though sorry </3 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - metafiction play about characters and the absurdity of their existence, repeating stories, tragedy is only a story and the characters within only exist to tell that story regardless of their own individuality Wuthering Heights - toxic romance the novel, idk why I didn't have this here yet. Honestly I'm not super big on this book but it's a classic for a reason. Dread, isolated spaces, fucked up romance, ghosts, etc.

#similar to umineko list #red truth

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charcubed · 8 months

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Hey so honest question. Do you think they will actually make Lokius canon? Or do you think they will stick with Sylki? Idk I want to believe that lokius will be canon but idk I feel like there’s not a chance.

Check back with me when we're at least halfway into season 2 👁

Lmao I'm kidding. But also I'm not!

Honest answer is that I don't know. There's no real way to know – anyone who says otherwise is lying to you – but certainly not before we see what season 2 is doing and if it continues all the things that season 1 seemingly laid down.

Here is some of what I know about what the story has given us so far:

When it comes to "love is a dagger"... Loki always had 2 daggers. (Which we see Mobius hand him at one point.)

Loki's already explicitly canonically bisexual.

Loki wants a "real" love / relationship at the end of his "crusade." As of right now, a relationship with Sylvie has been defined as being "fiction" in so many words, and we've also seen her represent "love is an imaginary dagger" specifically because she played him and hurt him.

Loki needed to learn to trust others and how to be trustworthy. The only person he had that mutual trust with was Mobius.

Loki no longer thinks he "deserves to be alone." If they follow that through, then he can't/shouldn't end the show by being alone. Now, who will he be with in the end, romantically or otherwise? Who is to say! Not me! But it's much to think about!

Can any of this change? Sure. It's not out of the realm of possibility that they could try to turn Sylvie into the "real" love for Loki now, as he's probably going to have to teach her how to trust while proving to her that he can be trusted. He is now clearly the superior Loki, and he will likely now be her mentor instead as the example for her to follow (if she's receptive).

I just think them trying to create a romance between them now is... the least likely case? I've endlessly said this before at length in other places when I've written meta, so forgive me for repeating myself, but the 2 themes of this story have always been self-love and love/trust for others. Narratively speaking, Sylvie represented the former and Mobius represented the latter. And I simply think it would be truly bizarre for them to try to overhaul that now. They could! I'm sure they could. But I'd be surprised by it!

(And I'm also the rare deranged lunatic on the internet who thinks Sylki was never actually framed as a romance, misleading kiss of betrayal notwithstanding, and that people have misread everything going on with them. But I digress.)

Does any of the above guarantee canon Lokius? No lol. Secret third thing is also always possible, aka classic Disney no homo move. I'm not an idiot on that front. But the low bar I'm setting for myself and my hopes is Loki and Mobius doing a (perhaps literal, on a jet ski) ride off into the sunset together ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That's all I want and all I expect realistically speaking.

Anything else (👀) will be a bonus.

#asks #foreverdeadforyou #lokius #all that being said: they're going to kiss actually. on international television.

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number1villainstan · 1 year

Note

Overhaul for the character ask!

How I feel about this character:

Blorbo of all time. He is sooooo me. On a more serious note, there was so much possible characterization that BnHA dropped into him--so much juicy potential--and it was all wasted. Pair that up with him being an antagonist who did horrible things and it was like a perfect storm to get me way too invested in him lmao. Also, I recently had a pretty unwelcome revelation about myself about how I usually find the major antagonists/villains of a show that unwittingly self-sabotage through social incompetence/bluntness/lack of empathy relatable which does not bode well for my social life hahaha but that's oversharing so I'm just gonna--

All the people I ship "romantically" with this character:

Disclaimer: I actually usually headcanon him as aro, so often the "romantic" shipping I have for him isn't actually romantic but sexual and/or queerplatonic, because I'm taking this as a question for 'who do I ship him with in a way that isn't just conventional friendship or in a familial/family-esque relationship'.

Kurono Hari: My main partner for the guy, and any OT3s I form for Kai are pretty much always going to have Hari as the second member, with the third varying. I have seen and do enjoy outright romantic Chronohaul, but when I write it I'll usually make an effort to make it either explicitly queerplatonic or Definitely A Relationship but not really a romantic relationship, ykno? Usually I like to think that they've been together for a while even before the show starts, in a solid years-long committed relationship that probably started (if not in its current form) when they were teenagers. I really like the idea of two similar people having found each other and finding strength and understanding in each other even as they're so different from everyone else around them, even if they end up reinforcing each other's destructive tendencies. Also, it's T4T. That part's very important.

Dabi: Funny story, I ended up watching BnHA because some of my online friends were huge DabiHaul shippers, so that was the ship I was primed for. And then I got attached to Chisaki and every other named character in the Hassaikai and ended up primarily shipping Chronohaul, and Dabi ended up usually being their third and shipped with both. I imagine that this ship (Chronodabihaul) is purely a sexual one, a fuckbuddy type thing for stress relief. It may or may not develop some stronger commitments/feelings later on, if and when the League and the Hassaikai stop virulently hating each other (and if/when Dabi stops being so obsessed with revenge), but that's not really a given.

Aizawa Shouta: This is definitely not a ship that's on the forefront of my mind, but it still has a soft spot in my void of a heart. Just like Dabi, I can very much see him in an OT3 with Chronohaul, although I feel like Aizawa would be in a much more long-term relationship with them. I can also see he and just Kai having an emotional short-term fling, but that would either cool down into just-friends or Hari would end up with them after a while, making it the OT3. Also, I have an angsty soulmate AU oneshot WIP that focuses on Overzawa, so.

Nemoto Shin: I don't actually really ship this character with Chisaki (I hc Chisaki as romance repulsed aroallo and Nemoto as sex-repulsed alloace), but I have an priest/demon AU in my WIPs that's got some heavy Nemotohaul implications, so I think I'd be remiss not to mention him here.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

I have several, actually:

Lady Nagant, aka Tsutsumi Kaina, of course. I know a lot of people on Tumblr like to ship Sniperhaul, but it just doesn't interest me. Seems kind of shallow, honestly (apologies to any Sniperhaul shippers reading this). I see them better as bickering sibling types after Chisaki heals at least a little bit from solitary confinement. And also as mlm/wlw solidarity.

I really like the idea of Chisaki taking Yaoyorozu Momo under his wing, teaching her chemical formulas for poisons and tips and tricks for combating performance anxiety. (I also really like the idea that they're genetically related...and don't find out until well after they've established their mentor/mentee relationship lmao.)

Nemoto Shin again, since I usually like him and Chisaki as close friends. Chisaki goes to him for questions like "what the fuck am I feeling and how do I make it stop" or "how the hell do emotions work".

Also, weirdly enough, when I'm imagining the sort of AU where he gets thrown in some labyrinth and has to figure out how to survive/get out with a bunch of other characters it's unlikely he'd interact with otherwise, I think Midnight might actually like him. She'd think he's cute. He wouldn't like Midnight back though.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Do you mean unpopular for the wider fandom, or just among people that like this specific character? Because if it's the first, then all of my opinions for this character are unpopular, but if it's the second, then I'm not sure I have unpopular opinions/headcanons on him so much as opinions/headcanons that aren't widely held and/or thought about. I'm gonna list some that might be considered 'unpopular' among Chisaki/Hassaikai fans, although I'm not actually sure they are:

Pops wasn't a good parent. I imagine him something like the (fanon) Fenton parents from Danny Phantom; affectionate and kind, but only when he a) remembers to pay attention and b) Kai isn't in trouble. Unfortunately, these times are few and far between. Kai ends up as the 'weird kid' a lot during his childhood/teenage years and becomes the automatic scapegoat, and Pops doesn't even question any accusations brought against his kid, which doesn't help the fact that Kai has been conditioned not to speak up for his own innocence by teachers and other authority figures punishing him for 'talking back.' So it ends up with most of Kai's memories being of Pops punishing him for things he never did, being part of The System that hurt him so bad, and with Pops having this concept of Kai as a Bad Kid(TM) that's mostly unearned, and it escalates to the point where Chisaki feels safer with Pops in a coma than with Pops talking and walking around even as he craves Pops' affection.

Objectively speaking, at least from a utilitarian/obligation perspective, Chisaki is morally better than Enji. I'm so sorry for this proxissima, but Kai only hurt one kid that wasn't his actual kid--it was a child that someone else gave to him with vague instructions to 'figure out her Quirk' and he didn't feel like he could refuse, whereas Enji had four children for the purpose of surpassing All Might and traumatized them all with his lack of care for their wellbeing, albeit in different ways. Obviously, Kai had an obligation to not be shitty to a kid, but Enji had extra obligations because those were his actual kids that he had on purpose. Also, Kai grew up in the probably highly toxic and violent yakuza, whereas Enji went into law enforcement and therefore should have more regard for the fact that, at least, child abuse is fucking illegal.

Chisaki legitimately cares about the Expendables/Bullets/Precepts of Death, and considers himself an Expendable. I'm not sure entirely how to explain this one, but I greatly prefer the idea that Chisaki took in many of the Expendables (minus Rappa, who followed him home) because he understood the kind of shit they were going through over what was implied in canon (that he manipulated them into being super loyal to him so that he could throw them away).

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

MORE CHARACTERIZATION! ANY CHARACTERIZATION! Especially characterization that showed actual positive traits! Yes, the remorse he showed for putting Pops in a coma after the prison break was arguably a step in the right direction, but it was also tied up in some really weird ableist/sanist connotations about how "this was his punishment" or something, and Deku (obligatory fucking Deku) still demanded that he feel more remorse about what he did to Eri even though he wasn't mentally all there, and also demanding that people feel certain emotions in general is entitled and shitty. Even though the narration of BnHA clearly makes out Deku to be the ultimate moral authority in the story.

Like--it's just so fucking obvious that Chisaki was made just to be a generic evil villain for Deku to beat up without the audience questioning why he's so blatantly betraying his professed ideal of "save everyone" and for Shigaraki to play off against to make him look better. And it wasn't even done well. This man is clearly mentally ill from like the first time we see him, and solitary confinement only exacerbated it. One thing I would have loved to see in canon, instead of All Of That, was if Deku guessed that Eri was being abused and ended up blatantly wrong, taking away a child from a loving home after she's already had trauma from accidentally Rewinding her father out of existence and her mother treating her as a monster and abandoning her. Hell, you could still have the Quirk-erasing bullets in play--just have Chisaki take and start cloning a red bone marrow sample from Eri so that he has enough blood without harming her more than a single surgery.

Yea, that was definitely way longer than you probably wanted, and it took longer than I wanted, but I have a Lot of thoughts on this guy. I'll answer the other two requests at a later date, because I need to study for and take at least one final today.

Send me a character and I'll break them down

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cherrysnaps · 2 years

Text

CUT TO THE CHASE // OVERHAUL X READER

» pairing: overhaul x reader

» word count: 2,693

» summary: Chisaki has his whole proposal planned out, too bad things don’t go according to plan.

» side note: this fic is dedicated to @serostuffsmh! I’m sorry it took so long, I had to post this already or else I would literally never stop trying to edit this to perfection.

Chisaki had never been one to enjoy long drives; he found them incredibly dull and knew he could have been getting his work done if he were home instead. He’d planned this trip for a very specific reason though and it had everything to do with you, so you’d never catch him saying so out loud.

He had suggested vacationing in the next town over from the one you’d grown up in, a popular location among couples who sought a romantic getaway. He’d rented one of the lavish cabins on the outskirts of town and made a mental note of all the activities in the area he knew you would enjoy. It was a well thought out, meticulous plan, one that he’d been working on for the last month. He would have preferred something more... fancy, but the location gave him a solid excuse to drop by your parent’s place for dinner along the way.

What was he planning? Well over the past month, he’d been thinking about marriage and wondering whether it would be a worthwhile investment for your relationship. It wasn’t exactly a hard decision to make seeing as you were so important to him. He loved you so much it worried him at times, he feared for your safety, having even gone as far as to debate leaving you for your own sake. He could never bring himself to do it though, the thought alone would leave a dull ache in his chest. Maybe it was selfish of him but he needed you in his life. Besides, you had once told him he was the only one for you and the feeling was mutual. Who else would readily accept him as he was—flaws and all—even after finding out he was the leader of the Shie Hassaikai? Even as he weighed the pros and the cons, his mind was made up. He immediately got to work on a proposal plan and the first step?

Getting your father’s blessing.

“I think that’s the last one,” you wheezed, shoving the last bag into the trunk.

You followed Chisaki to the car’s right side, where he opened the backseat door for you. You slid into the seat, the door closing behind you as he joined Kurono to the opposite side. The latter had clearly been convinced to play chauffeur and he wasn’t very pleased about it. He opened and closed the door after his boss, then got into the driver’s seat with a quiet huff. In the hopes of lightening up his mood, you gave him a grateful smile, “thanks for driving us.”

It didn’t seem to help his mood much though. The only response you got was a “no problem” and a shrug as he met your eye in the rear view mirror.

There was an unpleasant air after that. Aside from Kurono’s obvious reluctance to be there, the radio was turned off, thus leaving you in near complete silence. Chisaki was quiet too, most likely deep in thought as he watched the city pass him by. You dared not bother him, instead turning to look out the window as you immersed yourself in your own thoughts. You allowed your mind to wander back to family memories, such as past get-togethers or game nights, anything that brought you a sense of nostalgia. Your favourite memory of all though, carried with it the smell of juniper. It took place during your first year of college when you’d been struggling to find your groove. It was there that you met Chisaki. He helped you settle in and you slowly developed a friendship as you got to know him, which eventually blossomed into something more. You would never forget the day he formally asked you to be his partner, when he gifted you a bouquet of juniper berries one day and asked you out for dinner. You don’t know why (or where) he got juniper berries, it was an unusual bouquet to say the least but one that became meaningful to you and your relationship anyways. You smiled at the thought, chuckling quietly to yourself as you remembered how puzzled you had been at first.

“Why are you laughing?” Chisaki asked, suddenly turning to face you. His brows knitted together as you gave him a dismissive smile.

“Nothing important, I’m just reminiscing.”

Your answer must’ve been satisfactory, or maybe his thoughts were just of great importance today because he simply hummed and went right back to gazing out the window.

“(Y/n)!” You hadn’t even gotten a chance to knock upon your arrival, nearly jumping out of your skin when the door swung wide open and your mother greeted you with an enthusiastic hug. “You never visit or call anymore! I thought you had died,” she chastised as she pulled away, a firm grip on your shoulders. When she noticed the men behind you however, her whole tune changed. She bowed in greeting, addressing them as though she hadn’t just embarrassed you a moment earlier, “come in, dinner’s almost ready.”

You rolled your eyes but followed her in, Chisaki and Kurono at your heels, and gave your father a hug when he came over to greet you. Your mom squeezed past, though she stopped just short of the kitchen and turned around.

“Come help me with dinner would you, (Y/n)?”

You hesitated, taking a glance at Chisaki, Kurono and your father. You’d much rather stay with them than listen to your mother’s lectures and it felt wrong to abandon them when they weren’t very well acquainted with one-another. Before you had a chance to decline however, Chisaki gave you a solid, reassuring nod. You gave in, “okay.”

She didn’t know it yet, but your mother had given Chisaki the privacy he needed to speak with your father. He followed the older man as he led them to the living room, where they were invited to sit. While Kurono quietly took a seat on the far end of the couch, your father sat in his recliner, punching up the foot rest. Chisaki ignored the offer, instead watching your father with a calculating gaze as he spoke, “I was actually hoping we could speak.”

There was an audible groan from the recliner as the man turned, eyebrows raised quizzically. He ventured a look at Kurono but the latter didn’t pay either of them any mind, seemingly enthralled by the baseball game on tv. “What about?”

Chisaki did not beat around the bush. “I’m going to ask (Y/n) to marry me,” He said in a matter-of-fact way. He didn’t seem concerned at all by the possibility that he might get shot down.

To say your father was at a loss for words would be an understatement. Sure, he had a suspicion that this could be about an engagement, he just hadn’t expected such a direct approach. Not to mention that this man was far from the kind he would have wanted you to bring home. He was dodgy and secretive and your family had no idea what kind of job he had or what he was really like.

“Are you, uh... asking for my blessing?”

“No, I’m letting you know as a courtesy.”

No one spoke for a good minute, your father left speechless yet again. Chisaki still waited for an answer, patient as the old man tried to string together the words to express his disapproval.

“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” he said finally, “we don’t know anything about you, surely you realise how this looks?”

All pretenses were now dropped as tensions began to rise. Kurono had long since turned his attention to them, quietly observing from his seat, should he intervene. But there would be no need. Chisaki decided to end the conversation before it could escalate into an argument.

“It’ll be their decision at the end of the day,” he rightly pointed out. “I would appreciate it if you could keep this between us...” he then added, sensing this wasn’t the end. “At least for now.”

Your father really wanted to push on the matter but he found himself reluctantly agreeing. Not for his son-in-law to be’s sake but yours. At the end of the day you were an adult. Questionable taste or not, he had no say in who you chose to marry.

Thankfully the conversation had come to an end at the perfect time. You poked your head into the living room and announced that dinner was ready.

The cool evening air was a welcome change after the warmth inside the house. You walked out with Kurono and Chisaki, waving a final goodbye to your parents.

“I shouldn’t have eaten so much,” you moaned as you made your way to the car. Chisaki wrapped a loose arm around your waist to guide you, a faint smile on his face as he opened the door for you and gently pushed you into your seat.

As he usually did, Kurono opened the other door for him, allowing him to smoothly slide in his seat. You let your head fall against the headrest as he buckled his seatbelt. A thought popped into your head as you watched him. Was it just me or was dinner kinda... tense? It was a question that had been lingering in the back of your mind for a while now, and you weren’t sure whether to bring it up or not. Then, it clicked—the tension had obviously started after you had left Chisaki and Kurono with your father. You began to worry, wondering if he’d berated them. He’d always been overprotective as a father, always joking about fighting anyone who so much as looked at you. You’d always assumed they were just jokes but... oh God, were they?

You were so preoccupied with your thoughts that you failed to notice Chisaki looking right at you. It wasn’t unusual for him to be able to read you like an open book and judging by the look on his face, he could see right through you.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his head tilting as you startled out of your daze.

No point in trying to hide it now, you sighed.

“It’s just... I noticed things were a bit tense during dinner,” you told him, “my father didn’t give you any trouble did he?”

“Just a minor disagreement over sports, Juniper,” he shook his head, “nothing worth worrying over.”

You rose a brow. In all the years you’d known him, you’d never seen him watch sports. You weren’t buying it. “When have you ever been passionate about sports?” you retorted with a snort, masking your skepticism with humour.

“I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he quipped, straight-faced.

“Come on, don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

You narrowed your eyes, searching for a sign that he was lying. He didn’t seem stressed and he held your gaze with so much confidence you were left second-guessing. Maybe he was telling the truth. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, you hoped to catch Kurono’s eye. He knew the truth, he’d been there. Unfortunately for you though, he was doing everything in his power to avoid looking your way. You deflated, deciding to quit probing for answers you clearly weren’t going to get. You figured you’d just have to call your father later.

The silence going forward was strained and petty on your part. Frustrated as you were though, you were also tired. So when Chisaki’s hand came to rest on your thigh, giving it a reassuring squeeze, you didn’t fight it. You relented with a sigh, laying your hand on top of his and tracing soothing circles over his knuckles. He turned his hand over, allowing your fingers to slip through his own and returned the gesture by tracing the webbed skin between your thumb and index. You didn’t have it in you to stay mad, especially when you were on your way to spend a romantic weekend together.

Overhead, daylight was beginning to fade. Kurono turned on the high beams as the car veered into a forested area, up a smaller gravel path. At it’s end, a small, wooded cabin sat waiting for your arrival. If you looked carefully, you could even see steam rising from the hot spring behind it. Eager to settle yourselves in and take a dip already, you jumped out of the car without waiting for Chisaki.

He wasn’t far behind of course, digging his phone out of his pocket to call the owner. Only problem? It wouldn’t power on. Dead of course, he groaned.

“Where’s your phone?” he asked, turning to you.

Perhaps still influenced by pettiness, you grabbed your phone and (because Chisaki had (thankfully) sent you the number in advance were something like this to happen) dialled the number. “I got it!”

He tried to snatch the phone straight out of your hand but you swiftly jumped back, shooting him a weird look. “Let me handle it,” he tried again, his hand held out. He received a playful swat instead.

“I told you, I can handle it.” You’d have thought he wouldn’t mind leaving the talking to you, after all, did he not always complain about having to deal with mundane tasks off his work hours? Strange.

He was about to make another attempt to snatch your phone when a lady with a raspy voice spoke up on the other side of the line. “Hello?”

You looked him dead in the eye as you answered, “hi, it’s (y/n). I’m calling on the behalf of Chisaki for the entry code for the cabin?”

He stopped, watching with a certain intensity that you couldn’t decipher.

“Oh yes, give me a second.” You jogged up to the porch while the owner audibly fumbled in search of the code she’d written down. “I found it,” while she began reciting the code, a little too quickly for your liking, you hurried to punch in the numbers.

A soft beep was heard and the door swung open. You thanked the lady on the phone, thinking that was it when she said something that caught you completely off guard. “You’re welcome—and oh! Congratulations on your engagement!”

“My what?” It took a moment for everything to click into place but when it did, you spun on your heels to look at Chisaki. The secretive and evasive behaviour, why he wanted to meet your family for dinner, the tension...

“My engagement?!” you repeated. The lady had already hung up but it wasn’t her you were talking to anyways.

Chisaki let out an irritated sigh, his hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. This had not been part of the plan. With your incessant stare glued to him, he had no choice but to come clean.

Defeated, he stuffed his hands in his pockets as he approached you slowly. He thought it must’ve looked pathetic from the outside perspective, like a teenage boy trying to steel his nerves and work up the courage to ask his crush on a date. It was such an outrageous thought that it almost made his ears burn and his face flush. Once face to face with you, he awkwardly cleared his throat.

“Will you marry me?” His voice was quiet and surprisingly soft, only yours to hear.

You couldn’t think of anything to say, staring with a gobsmacked look as your brain took it’s sweet time trying to register what was happening. You gaped like a fish, desperately trying to formulate your thoughts. In the end, you threw yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck as you burst into tears. He wrapped his arms around you, albeit a little unceremoniously, awkwardly patting your back. Finally, he felt you nod weakly against his chest, a soft sob escaping you as you finally gave him a coherent answer. “Yes!”

You curled your fingers into his collar, tugging him down to your level and then poured your heart out to him with a kiss.

In the midst of your celebration you had forgotten you weren’t alone, there was a loud thud behind you as Kurono dropped your luggage by the door.

“Congrats.”

#overhaul x reader #kai chisaki x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #overhaul #kai chisaki #bnha reader insert #mha reader insert #boku no hero academia #my hero acedamia #chisaki x reader #kurono makes an appearance #overhaul calling you “juniper” as a pet name #bc plague mask stuff

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juantheashura · 1 year

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Hey there! I've finally played chapter 5 of your game and well... It also happens this was my first replay after whatever overhaul happened in the prologue. I guess after all of this, I have a few questions, if you don't mind. I'm sorry, it's a bit of a long ask.

I never really thought of that in my prior replays, but this time around I started wondering if Lat always has a crush on the MC? As in, no matter if she's romanced or not, AND even if the MC is on a romantic path with someone else (since I know she confesses in Japan if that's not the case). I know depending on the author, some prefer to make these things established truths (in which case she'd simply not say anything if she sees the MC likes someone else, basically), and others prefer "conditional truths" that depend on a specific "world state" in any given playthrough. Another one is about the whole Ignis and Seeker thing. I've seen so many asks about how things pan out for Ignis romancing MCs and possible reactions to the break up etc. But I'm curious about the very opposite actually. For a MC who isn't at all interested in Ignis that way, is it possible to actively "support" them? Like, not exactly matchmaking cause that would be overstepping and weird. But being supportive in regards to that relationship or possible related issues, if the opportunity presents itself, as a friend? For either one of them, obviously. I really liked how Ignis tentatively opened up a bit to the MC in the hot springs, and now I'm craving more haha. Also well… I guess that as much as I love Mars, my heart will still go to Forlorn, forever. I guess I'll never let go of the hope of him becoming a possible RO in the far future, no matter if I'm delusional (I'm not trying to pressure you into that! Just coping here haha). But well, the actual question is: will we actually get the opportunity to have the MC crush on him, even if he never gets added as a RO? I guess the question could apply to Seeker too, now that I think of it. My reasoning is that Ignis is literally a RO despite the fact a romance with her will always be cut short as she'll choose someone else. Since such a thing is possible, I'm curious about the possibility of an unrequited crush on one of the guys, basically. And last, a bit of an unrelated question (or well, not really, since it's romance related), but the Other calling some of the members of the teams as its "dregs" in one of the dreams made me wonder… Does that entity care about the MC getting really close to someone else? Be it romantically or a very deep friendship. And if they do, would they be critical of said person being one of the "dregs"? I'm curious cause well, with Mars being my chosen RO… The entity seems "obsessed" with the MC getting stronger and all, and I'm wondering if it would consider the MC getting close to one of them "drags them down". Okay, I'm sorry for the amount of questions! I took a huge break from a lot of things online and now I have to make up for it! Questions aside, I must say I loved chapter 5! It was so tense and amazing, and I was so so proud of Lat for how well she did during it! I love seeing my MC getting stronger, but I also love to see how Lat progresses! She may not be a character I'm interested in in terms of romance, but damn I love her so much! Aaand I feel so bad for Mars because of the shit that went down during the closing scenes of the chapter. Poor guy can't take a break with the super senses... I hope an opportunity will present itself for the MC to bring him some comfort after all of that...

Hello! Sorry it took me so long to answer, I've been... occupied, to say the least, this past month. And don't ever apologize about long asks! Those are my favorites, I love both talking about the cast/setting and that anyone might be so interested in them to dedicate their time to sending them in. :')

1st: Yes, Lat always has a crush on the MC. This is canon. It's not crazy "I've been in love with you forever, MC" tier or anything, but she is pining for them. I had plans for her to act on it if you're romancing Ignis, since, as you can see in her confession scene, she can tell Ignis isn't good for the MC, but it's been... a little tiring trying to get through that convo. That said, if the MC gets involved with anyone else, she's willing to take the loss. The MC's happy, and she does think the rest of the cast would be good for them.

One thing I am considering is adding a poly route for Aki x Lat x MC in Book 2 (or at the end of Book 1), but I haven't decided on it yet. It would be pretty cute though, the three of them are tied very closely together.

2nd: I've always had plans for a non-Ignismancer to have at least some choices to prod Ignis and Seeker about their obvious relationship. You kind of get this already with Chapter 4, as you've mentioned, where you can ask what's going on with them. The biggest point where you'll get to do something like that is Chapter 8, which is about Ignis's birthday party. Seeker organizes it basically on his own, and the MC will definitely be allowed to have thoughts™️ on that!

3rd: I've not worked out the very specifics of the MC and Forlorn's relationship in Book 2 (and beyond) yet, so I can't confirm one way or the other whether I'll have a crush happen. That said, Book 2 is going to have a lot more Forlorn content, and a lot of it will give the MC the chance to be the very obvious support pillar that the PTSD-riddled, half broken man needs. So even if you don't get to smooch (or think about smooching!) him, your relationship will definitely offer a chance to become much deeper, deeper than any he has at this moment.

4th: No, you don't have to worry about Other MC's thoughts on the League's strength tiers to matter in your relationships. As far as they're concerned, "salvation is individual", so Mars's (or Nova, or Aki's, or anyone's) personal strength doesn't matter to them- their only concern is your own. They may do some one snarky one liners once or twice, but if anything, the fact that the MC also has a personal reason to listen to them to get strong is something they're happy about.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the compliments! I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed Chapter 5- it was honestly one I was very worried about since I have littme experience writing combat. I'm happy you enjoyed Lat's parts (and felt for poor Mars!) as well.

#a tale of heroes #ask me anything #anon ask #wip ask #long asks are cool with me!!#ro asks

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gswsihyun · 2 years

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✿ — Hey there!! Yeonhee perished so Sihyun could live. This is a bit of a revamp on my last muse. Her personality is practically identical, her backstory has just gone over a major overhaul. Meet LEE SIHYUN, formerly Moon Sihyun, 31 YRS OLD & eldest daughter of Moon Boram and granddaugher of Mayor Moon. She is an ACTRESS who has been in Seoul for the past 11 years but has recently returned after a scandal drove her into hiding and she’s been here ever since. Learn more about her under the cut as well as her profile page and there will be plot ideas as well!! Just drop a ♡ if you’re down. 〉

ABOUT HER !!

Born February 13th, 1991.

Born and raised in Dangam, Gwasuwon-do.

Perfectly followed in the steps her mother laid out for her and became an actress as per her mother’s dream.

Initially, she wanted to become a stylist or fashion designer but that fell through.

A makjang (soap opera/melodrama/think kimchi slap and Penthouse) actress, started acting when she was 20 where she mostly had small roles, b movies, etc. Only in the past few years began acting in bigger roles.

Notably acted in shows like Lady in Dignity and Love (ft. Marriage and Divorce).

Has a 3 year old child (Jisung) from a marriage that ended in divorce (husband was a con artist who claimed he was a wealthy and famous shaman when he was not) and their marriage only lasted for about 3 years.

During their marriage, she became more obsessed with the idea of shamanism due to his influence and became increasingly superstitious. YES, she does keep charms around and prays when she’s scared and will go to the shaman to get exorcised and what about it? ( She might have gone a little off mentally during that time tbh. )

In early 2022, a scandal involving her was released that she was having an affair with a married co-star for years and that it was the reason for her own divorce. The outlet report read that she was spotted at night getting tiramisu with married actor Shin Muyeol (46) and the two emerged from the restaurant smiling and laughing.

Turns out she was not a mistress and they were just discussing the show they were in. Because of her being typecast in “mistress” roles in dramas constantly, the image must have projected to her.

To get reprieve from the media, she moved back to Gwasuwon and has been there ever since!

Has the tendency to name drop and claim she knows big stars. ( Sure, Jan. ) She is still coming down from her celebrity and socialite disease, please bear with her.

Has horrible judgement when it comes to relationships and is quite gullible.

Aquarius ☼, Pisces ☽, Gemini ↑ ... girl is something else.

Notoriously dramatic and a bit all over the place. Tends to exaggerate and get emotional but... that seems to run in the family.

Would she die for her son? Yes.

Could she be keeping secrets that her mother is confiding in her about? Also, yes.

CONNECTIONS ??

Socialite friends or anyone that she happened to know from Seoul or from her travels for acting gigs, etc.! There’s a huge gap of her being in Seoul mostly so there’s lots to explore there. ( So basically, from 2012 to 2021 is when those interactions happened. )

She lived in Gwasuwon until she was 21 years old. There’s bound to be quite a few people around her age who knew her since childhood, in high school, etc. or even because of her status as the mayor’s granddaughter since that’s pretty lucrative.

Her marriage lasted from 2018 to 2021. It is possible that she dated around here and there before and after because she’s a romantic at heart but it’s probable that most of them were a bit overblown by her because she really has that “fairytale romance” mindset which can be off-putting for some, for sure, especially if during the teenage and early adulthood years. ( * Any past r/s plots would need to be extensively plotted bc... Sihyun is Complicated. )

People she talks up about her “connections” to as a “celebrity” and claims she will always put them in contact but calls her out on some of her bullshit. Sure, she might know some but we are doubting you’re bffs with IU and Park Seojoon, ma’am.

In reality, she’s a B-tier celebrity but it’s possible you’ve seen some of her crazy melodrama appearances and b-movie roles that she took out of desperation. Maybe someone who constantly references it and she is kind of embarrassed. ( We thought you liked the star treatment, Sihyun?? )

Someone who could possibly have hooked her up in the past with a place ( as in giving her a deal on an apartment ) since she was absolutely not going to move back in with her mom.

Any daycare workers or potential tutors for her son. He is only 3 years old so what could you possibly need all that for, Sihyun? Well, you can never start too early, of course!

Someone who is trying to help her quit smoking. She picked up the habit in Seoul out of stress and has been wanting to stop because she doesn’t want her son around that but... Look at what is happening right now.

Someone who just does not find the Moon family to be reputable or trustworthy in any way ( and they just might not be ) and sort of makes it known. Expect her to get upset about that since she is very protective of her family as the oldest.

Someone who she actually expresses that she’s terrified about what’s going on on the island about and tries to convince them that this is some horrible cosmic sign and they need to cleanse things asap!!!!!

There are so many more ideas and thank you for reading this much! Just contact me if you have any ideas or maybe are interested in one of these~

#gsw:intro #she is joining us on my birthday! big ups #but that means i will be unavailable for the rest of the night!! talk to ya soon!

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pixilator · 1 year

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Update, Late March 2023 [ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 27 2023]

This is the latest major update for the comic of Amaranth.

Crossposted to r/amaranth_comic and amaranth-comic.deviantart.com.

❦

Welcome to the fifth update! Sorry I didn’t post in a while…

–

>worldbuilding

-The military schooling system has been fleshed out somewhat. It’s still sort of iffy, but for now it works.

-The basic world history has been written, and the same goes for the history of the primary nation! Granted it’s all sort of skeletal, but all the big important stuff is in there, like the industrial revolution [known as the Golden Era in the story]

-Ok, now for the secret worldbuilding stuff or whatever I called it. #1 has been written down and I’ve got a few documents dedicated to it now. Right now I’m sort of at a wall with it, so I’ve expanded #3. #3’s previous overhaul was pretty extensive, and #2’s sort of like a parallel to it – again, I’ve expanded #2.

–

>characters

-Changed Elwood’s name to Adrian! He’s no longer English, so I had to find a good Latin name for him.

–

>MAYHEM:

Her backstory is generally finished.

Her personality is generally finished.

Her design is generally finished.

Relationships are very basic right now.

–

>HESTIA

Her backstory is generally finished.

Her personality is… half finished? I suppose. I’d like to work on it more though.

Working on her new design now. It’s not as memorable as I’d like though, so I’m not satisfied yet. I’ll continue to work on it until I’m happy.

Relationships are very basic right now.

–

>FLAVIUS

His design is generally finished.

I’ve got a skeleton backstory that I’ll be fleshing out soon.

His personality is there but still needs more work. I’m satisfied with the base version.

Relationships are very basic right now.

–

>PEPPER

His backstory is generally finished.

His personality is half-finished.

Working on his new design now. Like Hestia, his design isn’t very memorable, so I’m still not satisfied.

Relationships are very basic right now.

I was thinking if I mess with his health it’d be interesting, but I’ve decided against it.

–

>ADRIAN

Needs a design.

Currently no backstory as of yet.

I have an idea for a personality… but I’m still playing with it.

Need to create relationships.

–

>DRAGON

I said I’d put him on the backburner… well, I’ve decided to bring him back! Yes, Dragon is back in business. He’ll be for cute or comedic relief, I guess.

–

>spreadsheets

-Mayhem’s spreadsheet is generally finished.

-Hestia’s spreadsheet is generally finished, but I still have to figure out the details of her personality.

-Flavius’ spreadsheet exists in a skeletal format.

-Pepper’s spreadsheet is generally finished, but I still have to figure out the details of his personality.

-Adrian’s spreadsheet… still doesn’t exist.

-Dragon doesn’t really need a spreadsheet. He’s already perfect.

-Worldbuilding spreadsheets! I’ve got one on the history of the world, the military, and all three secret stuff. Gonna see what else I can do… –

>main plot

-Mayhem’s now got a new introduction. I think it’s pretty cool, so I’m going to keep it for now.

-Figured out when and how to introduce each character. Flavius will be introduced at the same time as Hestia. Adrian finally has an introduction too.

>side plot

-There’s a side plot for each character, though I don’t know if they’ll change later. I also want to have character arcs for all of them – it’d be so much work, but I think it’d be so fun!

>subplot

-Ok, so I’ve found some willing guinea pigs for the romantic subplot! No, Mayhem isn’t one of them! Thank me later. -I’ll be playing around with the idea of a romance between the two characters and see if I like the dynamic. With how a romance can completely hijack a story, I’ll keep it playing, I don’t know, 7th oboe to literally everything else. I’ll try to keep it realistic and not quite romance-novel-y. It’s not set in stone, so I might just throw it away later.

-One thing I’ve noticed is that the genre of romance I’ve chosen is usually very violent – slow burn/UST/will-they-won’t-they – so I’ve decided to make it fluffy and wholesome instead. But, of course, there will obviously be an inability to spit it out!

–

>actual work

-I’ve been looking at paper for comic stuff, and I don’t have any paper thick enough for my taste. So I’ll get some and practice!

-The 80’s style is still the main idea here. I’ve decided that for the more serious parts of the story it’ll be drawn realistically.

-Paint is cool and all, but I’ve got a whole bunch of coloured pencils. I’m going to try with that instead and ink over them.

❦

Blergh. I’m sorry there’s not much to report this time.

Pixilator

#amaranth comic #amaranth update #amaranth update march '23 #pixilator

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thequietmanno1 · 8 months

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TheLreads, Vigilantes ch 88, Replies Part 1

1) “Last time knuckles… What was Knuckles doing again… Being a bad father? No wait that he always is- Ah, right, the cage fight against Rappa. “- Knuckles was getting some life advise from Rappa that’d take some time to sink in.

2) “That’s how you know this is a responsible doctor, he didn’t tried to bullshit you. “Yeah, it is pretty much that. So, you want the drug or not dude?””- An honest criminal, a rarity in this profession.

3) “Oh no I think you misunderstood him dude, he’ll take the drug, as him, he’ll be taking it back to the police station.”- He’ll also be taking some souvenirs, as in, the organiser and his staff members for interrogation.

4) “Oh there we go, now that’s the knuckles we know, all powered-up

See guys, this is what happens when you bring pepper spray to a murder fight, so to speak”- They brought the seasoning for their Knuckle sandwitches.

5) “But I mean, technically speaking, it is not much of an infiltration when you’re brought here willingly by the owners.”-Though since he now has to actually sneak out with the goods, should we consider this an exfiltration stealth mission then?

6) “Do you even need that Knuckles? The whole police department is outside, you just need to give a sign and they’ll break in and arrest everyone.

I remember that the heroes did need evidence before when dealing with overhaul… but they had to get it so they could justify going in and ruining his day, something you’re already doing here.”- Presumably Knuckles is taking precautions against somebody setting some inconvenient fires and/or explosions to cover their tracks when the rest of the squad breaks in to subdued everybody else in the building. It’d be awkward if in the aftermath they had no proof that there was illegal operations going on besides “I totally saw it”.

(Vigilantes ch 87)

7) “Oh he absolutely is knuckles, shame that his time here is short, he`s too cool to have around the story anymore than this, time for you to take the hit and fuck off “-Rappa decided to stick around a little longer than his cameo contract stipulated, now that he’s found a fun guy to brawl with.

8) “Now it would be a shame if someone showed up to ruing that plan, right Knuckles? (: “- Well, Rappa’s not exactly here to ruin the plan. He just wants to bug Knuckles on his way out so they can arrange the next Deathmatch.

9) “Oh my god Rappa, did you came here to check on him like you did for Kirishima later on?”- And also to give him his fair dues for the fight even if they both didn’t die. Rappa’s an honourable sort, when you get down to it. Also, surprisingly caring, despite wanting a violent bloodbath of a deathmatch.

10) “Oh my fucking god Rappa- Have I told you that you’re, like, one of my favorites? Because you definitely are.”- I honestly wish we’d found some way for him to stick around after the Overhaul arc. Certainly would have been interesting seeing him interacting more with others and encouraging them in his own violence-obsessed way.

11) “Poor Rappa, all he wants is someone he can give his best with and will give their best with him, he’s such a romantic soul looking for that special someone… Don’t worry buddy, I trust you’ll find that person, and not some asshole who’ll use you like knuckles did, you deserve better”- It’s almost like Rappa has his own heroic code of conduct, just altered more to suit his inner needs of violence in honourable combat. Heck, I don’t even think he’s ever attacked a civilian that we’ve seen, so if he wasn’t a villain obsessed with a Deathmatch, he could very nearly be a hero in his own right.

12) "Rappa please, you have to move on, this relationship will go nowhere, he’s not into this as you are, he’s just using your love for fighting for his own benefit, you deserve someone that will match your energy and wish to kill/get killed on a ring

Someone like muscular would fit nicely with you. "- Hmmm, nah, I think Muscular isn’t interested in a fair fight, he just likes the killing part, whereas Rappa is more obsessed with an even and fair fight that has you use everything you’ve got to overwhelm the other in a pitched close battle. Remember, Muscular was A-Okay with crushing and killing both Kota and Izuku, even unaware that Izuku could fighting back agasitn his strength. All that guy wants is to skip the meal and head straight to the bloody climax each time, whereas Rappa wants to gradually approach that ending one bite at a time.

13) “A far cry from the knuckles we know back in the future. But then again, you probably do enjoy the thrill fighting already, but since your quirk is not useful you’d rather focus on what is the more pragmatic option

It would still be some time until you started thinking outside the box and inside the trashcan”- Knuckles’ Quirk deprives him of the same equal rush that Rappa’s talking about here, letting him analyse attacks to dodge them minutely or one-sidedly pummel the enemy before they can properly react. Losing it reduced him to a level playing field and let him experience the joy of fighting that Rappa’s obsessed with

@thelreads

#my hero academia #bnha #chapter replies #thelreads #bnha vigilantes #vigilantes 88

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