Both Pride & Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing work so well as enemies to lovers because despite surface animosity, it's clear that both end couples really respect each other and for good reasons. I think you could even argue that with Beatrice, she spars with Benedick because she considers him a worthy opponent.

When Hero and Ursuala plot to make Beatrice fall in love, Hero instructs her to speak of Benedick and "praise him more than ever man did merit" and yet when Beatrice finally speaks, she doesn't disagree with their high praise, she says of Benedick:

For others say thou dost deserve, and I Believe it better than reportingly.

Benedick likewise after his eavesdropping on Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio's praise Beatrice says:

They say the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; 'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her.

Similarly in Pride & Prejudice, once the misunderstanding about Wickham is cleared away, Elizabeth is able to acknowledge to herself how much she respects and likes Darcy:

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.

Darcy also finds that he admires Elizabeth, after initially dismissing her:

But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.

All of these characters also hear and accept criticism of themselves. Both Benedick and Beatrice hear they are too proud to accept love, which they both overcome. Elizabeth learns that she judged Darcy without sufficient information and Darcy that his behaviour was not that of a gentleman. Their mutual acceptance of this criticism and their growth as people leads to their ultimate happiness.

Unfortunately, those who reproduce this trope often forget to build this foundation of respect and the acknowledgement, either personally or publically, that the characters have been wrong. Instead we get characters who mid argument begin ripping each other's clothes off. No growth, no understanding how they have been wrong, it just becomes "thin line between hatred and love" instead of "we grew towards each other".

There’s something horrifyingly beautiful about Tess’s final moments. In the midst of the most dire chaos, as she waits for her death to come rushing past so she can blow it sky high and give cordyceps a big fuck you one last time, one of the infected stops. It looks at her, really looks. Her own mortality is personified in this infected. It’s death that’s looking at her, and it sees her. She looks her own death in the eye, and the suspense is so high as it approaches. But then, it doesn’t bite her throat out like we all expect it to.

It kisses her. What’s more, it kisses her gently. And I think it was a brilliant choice on the writers part, because it reminded me that the infected aren’t supposed to be evil. Sure, they’re scary as hell, but really, they’re just trying to survive. They’re connected to one another, they can feel each other from miles away. They seek out and want to be close to their own kind, just like the human survivors do. And when they do find each other, they kiss hello.

And after so long apart from a loved one, someone you know and trust with every instinct in your body, wouldn’t you want to kiss them too?

fuck it *ff8s ur jd*

listen. i like a good “hualian adopts wwx” au as much as the next guy. but do y’all ever think abt the fact that appearance wise. xie lian and hua cheng are supposedly like. 17-19

i forget about it until i’m consciously reminded of it but there’s comedic potential in there somewhere

like i imagine they could probably get away with it when wwx was a young child but it’s all fun and games until visibly 34 year old wei wuxian is still calling apparently 17 year old xie lian dad

I feel like we as a fandom had a lot of this conversation during Campaign 2 but redemption, however you may interpret it, is a process. It is not a binary of redeemed and not redeemed. And in the world of a D&D actual play, a lot of the hard decisions really come down to "is the harm this person did actively ongoing, or is it a past action with ongoing ramifications" and "will they stop doing this continued harm quickly enough for it to matter." It sounds cold to say that it's a risk-benefit analysis, but on some level, it has to be be. I think Bor'Dor was likely redeemable in some abstract sense, but could Team Issylra do it with the time and resources they had without risking their own lives? Probably not. I think the same is true with Liliana: if they had months in which to do this - and they have been contacting her on and off for a couple months, and every effort failed - maybe, but the clock's run out.

the simple pleasure of drawing a fave in the outfit of another character you love

individual stills of miguel Scampering on all fours and showing off his more distinct individual movement style (that he has because of his spider-man's Similar-but-still-distinctly-Weird-and-unique powers as compared to the more-graceful Others) so that i don't have 2 keep rewinding the clip(s) to see it. im REALLY excited to see him scuttling and skittering all over the place in the film just like he does in the comics-- and, like, seriously, Miguel Specifically being just. made Massive for some reason in his atsv design will never NOT be funny to me hes SO freakin Bouncy why did they Do That.

don't be Weird on my post or i'll kill you for real

finally posting my piece for @sheikzine ⭐️ i drew sheik from retro studios canceled sheik game!

I know it's late to say, but I hope that Hbomb's video will encourage people to not only cite their sources but also have a good source to begin with. Don't tell me Snow White is 14 years old and then show a screenshot of a featured snippet from Google that leads back to Screenrant.com. Don't tell me Judy Garland was forced to take drugs and smoke 80 cigarettes a day by MGM and have your source be social osmosis or "Hundreds of other videos say so!" Where's that info from? Does it's source truly make sense as a source? Are there more reliable routes for sources to take outside of looking online, like reading books about the subject from people involved or seasoned/trusted in the topic? I know "Google is free", but that doesn't mean it's always good for research. Try Google Scholar at least...

death says hello

✧ written for 'charm' ✧ word count: 548 ✧ rated: T ✧ cw: major character death (temporary) ✧ tags: supernatural vibes ✧ @steddiemicrofic (• ▽ •; )⁠✧

With a sigh, Death glides through the veils to meet their latest soul, gasping when they see -

“Steven! You keep coming by like this and a girl’s gonna get ideas.”

“And I thought you’d be happy to see me.” Steve bows with a smile.

Death sniffs, breaking out into a grin when Steve looks back up. “That charm of yours is going to get you in trouble someday.”

Steve sobers up at that. "Think we’re in trouble now," he rubs the back of his neck. "I don’t think I can keep them away from you this time.”

Death stills. Oh, the poor thing. “There is something impeding on the horizon,” they say, as kindly as they can. “This trouble seems to be the closest way to me than what you’ve all faced before.”

“Please,” Steve begs, eyes sunken in, skin pale, already becoming the apparition Death has allowed him to walk away from being so many times already. “Can’t you help us?”

“I’m afraid not,” says Death, stroking a hand through Steve’s hair. “You know I’ve been breaking the rules for you enough as is. That uniform of yours was far too convincing the last time.”

“The one thing Scoops was good for,” Steve grins, his eyes going soft. “Well, other than Robin of course.”

“Oh yes, you mentioned her before! How is she?”

“She’s good! She’s – she was scared. I didn’t – ha.” Steve shakes his head. “I was asleep this time, wasn’t I? The bat bites.”

“The venom went unchecked,” they pet his shoulder apologetically. “Too long, too much stress. I am sorry to always have to meet you in such painful circumstances.”

“What – what about Eddie?” Steve asks, out of nowhere. Death blinks, in as much as they can. “Have you – met him yet?”

“Eddie? I’m afraid I haven’t found anyone recently by that name.”

“You – you haven’t?!” And Steve’s eyes light up and his soul glows and oh, Death just knows they’ll let him out of their grasp once more. “How - that means – he’s still alive! We have to – we have to go back and save him!

“Please,” Steve begs them once again. “Let me go back and save them.”

“Steven,” Death sighs with a smile. “You know you never remember our little conversations when you go back.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” he pleads with his righteous eyes. “I have to – Eddie might get to meet you later instead. Maybe – maybe this time we’ll make it.”

Death takes Steve’s hand, cold as their own. They stare into his eyes and he looks back unwaveringly. With another sigh, they say, “You won’t remember this. But you’ll have a feeling. You’ll be desperate to save him, with no good reason why.”

“Never needed a good reason before,” he jokes and Death laughs. They press a kiss, in as much as they can, to his forehead, a little piece of themselves to keep an eye on him. His eyes flutter shut and he smiles. “Thank you.”

“You better be grey the next time, you hear?” Death glides him over back to the Life he had. They pat his back cheekily. “And bring this boyfriend of yours over.”

“I promise.” Steve says and breathes Life again.

⁠✧ dedicated to @unamusing-s because we were crying about this one together also thank you so much mickala for double checking this one for me⁠ ✧

IDK if you've ever said anything about it, but in the Lights Out AU, what was Wally's first reaction on realizing that Frank was alive and he wasn't alone anymore? I imagine it was...quite emotional

i Haven't talked about their Initial Reunion yet, no! but yes, it was very emotional! there were certainly many emotions!

namely: fear, confusion, shock, and nearly killing your friend with an oversized baseball bat <3

listen it's very. even when playing gale's romance I am guaranteed several solid cutscenes of Astarion talking about his life, his perceptions of things, his ideas; the bite scene, the after that, the talking about your companions blood, the proposition, all the little conversations about being a vampire + how to become a vampire + what life was like that have several dialogue options. whereas these same "stock" conversations with the other companions tend to have ONE, maybe two dialogues with choices following if that much (for example, with Karlach it tends to be 1. ask question 2. she answers and it ends). there's a solid foundation of pacing and work put into astarion's storyline that even without his romance, his presence WILL be felt unless you just straight up never speak to him. which is to say, that THAT writing is really good! but if they couldn't uphold that same standard of effort and time across the board and ensure all the companions have some measure of equality, theeeeeen... something shouldve been done there to make sure it was at least somewhat equal. it also sucks that gale/wyll/lae'zel/shadowheart were all received ""poorly"" in contrast to astarion during EA (or received harsher critique anyways). I still believe there was a lot of solid character work and richness to their EA personalities that I dont know totally carried over in rewrites--decreasing the amount of conflict, lessening the "flaws" of these characters--contrary to what larian says about staying true to their core ideas in some places. so it sucks that you can see how with that effort and focus, astarion's storyline really is really well done for the kind of game that it is, and no one is saying bg3 is wanting for stuff to do, but there is a clear gap in effort and time put into the other companions when they absolutely deserved just as much time and effort as astarion, and the thing is. the writer confirmed it! confirmed that more time was put into him. like cmon man

Soo there's a possibility my brain just made this up,(been a while since I read dotc anyways) but, I feel like I remember a whole thing with Clearsky where one of his cats, I don't remember the name, ends up with an awful festering wound and Clearsky pointedly does nothing about it and even like exiles that guy? Just in case you needed more fuel for the very deserved Clearsky hate pile. If I did completely mind fabricate it sorry-- I remember it really standing out as just cruel and awful as a younger person reading the book

Yeah that's Frost, this is in Book 2: Thunder Rising. Clear Sky also shoves his son's face in that reeking, festering wound and tells him to lick it if he cares so much.

But it's actually worse than just that lmao.

Frost is notably loyal in Thunder Rising, even shouting out how amazing Clear Sky is when he weeps his crocodile tears in front of a crowd early on. Everything that follows is his reward for that support.

Clear Sky beats Bumble to death and one part of his incredibly obvious lie is that he left her a second time, after she had been mauled by a fox AFTER he lightly tapped her and she passed out, to go get "help." But Frost has gone completely untreated for weeks because proto-SkyClan doesn't have a medic. So there's no way he could have gone to get help.

The Infected Wound Face Shoving Scene is actually part of Clear Sky playing an abuse game with his son because he's pissed off that Thunder questioned him.

He's in an especially bad mood because he'd just beaten Bumble to death and only Gray Wing believed his bafflingly stupid lie, and this is 3 days after he slaughtered Misty for her land and tried to kill her children too. Thunder set him off by saying "dad can we kill less natives maybe?"

Frost is also publicly humiliated before the exile, Clear Sky commands him to flash his weeping wound at a crowd as he bellows out a speech about filth, weakness, and spreading disease.

He DIRECTLY commands Thunder to be the one to "LEAVE HIM WHERE THE MAGGOTS WILL FIND HIM" (verbatim quote) because. Again. It's an abusive game. He wants to feel like he's in control of his son.

Frost's life was just a piece in a game for Clear Sky. A pawn, discarded when no longer useful.

And then Frost dies in that big battle Clear Sky causes and started, and is buried in a mass grave along with all the other victims. Probably because if more of Clear Sky's victims survived, they would have to lobotomize MORE characters for his exoneration arc. Absolutely fucking miserable story.

I need to watch Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure to reach my final conclusion on if she's even attracted to men

See? We aren’t so different 🖤🖤🖤

So we know Alastor and Lilith disappeared at the same time 7 years ago. And we know that Lucifer had a meeting with Heaven which began the exterminations. We don't know when that happened though. Either they're not mentioning when the exterminations started because they've always happened or because revealing when they started would give too much away and make it too easy to guess things. All Charlie knows is that Lucifer went to the meeting and she assumes he gave the go ahead for exterminations. But the exterminations haven't always happened. They only started after the angels, or specifically Sera I think considering no other angels knew about it, became afraid of the power and influence Lilith had over the demons.

My current theory is that that meeting was called between Sera, Adam, and Lucifer because Alastor and Lilith were planning on working together with him broadcasting her voice on his radio station to inspire the other demons to rise to war against the angels. I think Sera demanded that Lilith and Alastor be separated with Lilith making a deal with Adam to stay in heaven where she can't empower any other demons with her voice or even contact anyone in hell and that Sera demanded the exterminations happen as well in order to not only lessen the demons' power but also instill fear in them in an attempt to prevent future uprisings. I think Alastor was given the options of either be killed or sign a contract limiting his power and requiring him to stay away for a while so that their little idea of rebellion is forgotten amongst the masses. I especially think that because of Zestial's comment about folks thinking Alastor had fallen to holy arms. Maybe Sera is his contract holder. That or they tried to straight up kill him and he somehow escaped barely alive and it's taken this long for him to heal and regain enough power for him to feel comfortable revealing himself to society. But trying to kill him wouldn't explain the contact or his need to 'unclip his wings'.