#get back in the antagonist bin
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I keep seeing the idea that Jiang Cheng is disliked or hated for his actions because "Jiang Cheng Antis” refuse to acknowledge ugly reactions to trauma, or victims who aren’t perfect, basically citing that he should be forgiven more than we do because not everyone is going to react the same to pain and trauma and just because his reactions aren’t perfect doesn’t mean that he should be held accountable for his actions, any of them, and us calling his actions wrong or abuse is us in fact being terrible.
I want to refute this idea for a few reasons:
First off, while I can’t speak for everyone, I know that I and my friends don’t think that his initial reactions being kinda bad are necessarily damning. Nobody is going to be perfect, sometimes when we are stuck in the worst parts of our lives, we do things that we will later regret in the process of surviving those times. It doesn’t really make it okay and we should understand if the people who are around us in those times don’t want to be around us anymore after that, but it isn’t a death knell that he reacts really poorly after the initial fall of Lotus Pier and the death of his parents and everyone he’s grown up with. I have forgiven characters for doing worse, but proving that it was their worst and turning around after that.
The problem with that part is that he doesn’t turn anything around. He never apologizes for strangling Wei Wuxian, he continues to turn the blame for what happened on people who weren’t involved even after getting to kill Wen Zhuliu and torture Wen Chao to death, holding Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji and, for a time, Jin Zixuan as also being responsible even though none of them were, even though he knows this and adjusts his opinion later to drop Jin Zixuan out of the blame, even though he later adds Wen Ning to his list of those to blame despite Wen Ning rescuing him from Lotus Pier and sheltering him. It isn’t a worst moment of his life, brought on by trauma and pain, it’s just the start of his sliding slope downward.
Second off is the idea that this should exonerate him of all of his actions. Look at him! He lost his parents and his clan to war by the Wens! He has suffered so much, becoming a clan leader so young in the fires of war!!!
Except... he’s not the only one, not by a long shot. Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang all have their fathers killed and their homes attacked by the Wens as well. Both Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen also ascend at very young ages, no one was over twenty when they took up their positions, and at the end of the novel, Jin Ling is even younger when he takes on his own clan leader position. Also he isn’t the only one to go into war so young, Wei Wuxian is a whole five days older than he is, and the whole jianghu falls into war against the Wens, no doubt with other fighters who also lost their homes and families in the process.
It isn’t that it isn’t impressive that he manages to pull it together in the face of all that’s happening, it’s that he’s not the only person by any means to suffer this trauma. Wei Wuxian goes through the exact same journey that he does, but when this argument comes up, it’s always just for why Jiang Cheng shouldn’t be blamed, not about how their whole generation lost so much to a war that their parents left to them by refusing to do anything before even when they all saw the signs of what Wen Ruohan was doing.
The third part is that there’s apparently no limit or expiration date on how long people have to forgive him for doing whatever he wants to do. His trauma is a reason for him to treat people however he wants for as long as he wants, and they should just put up with it because he’s suffering and not all pain is beautiful.
But by the time Wei Wuxian comes back to life, it’s been almost twenty years. A whole generation, long enough for Jiang Cheng to watch his nephew grow to almost adulthood. The world as a whole is changed, he himself has transformed Lotus Pier into a whole new place; and it wasn’t because the Wens had destroyed everything, Wei Wuxian no longer recognizes it, meaning that this happened after he died. The general attitude that JC stans have towards Wei Wuxian is that he shouldn’t hold Jiang Cheng leading a siege against him because it’s been long enough, he should get over it by now. But Jiang Cheng apparently should still get to act without hesitation or consideration of others and their own pain because he is suffering, he is an imperfect victim. It doesn’t matter what else anyone else has gone through and it is unreasonable to hold him to task because he lost his family.
The whole point of poor trauma reactions is that they are moments, responses in time to events. It is one thing for Jiang Cheng to react poorly right after his family is killed and his home invaded. But he gets worse over the course of the story. The day of the attack, he strangles Wei Wuxian. That’s one thing. But three years later he turns on Wei Wuxian, declares him an enemy of the world, tells him to let the Wens be slaughtered even though they are no longer at war, later declares war on Wei Wuxian and personally leads a siege to kill him. In the interim, a time of peace in which supposedly all of his enemies are dead, he hunts down people who he claims to be demonic cultivators and people that Wei Wuxian is possessing and tortures them to death, all the while doing very little to help his people as he will only intervene once someone has already died to the problem. When Wei Wuxian returns to life thirteen years after he died, seventeen years after the war, when Jiang Cheng is literally double the age that this began, despite him deliberately trying to avoid Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng seeks him out multiple times specifically to hurt him, first trying to kill him with a whip that can destroy spirits possessing bodies, then tying him up and torturing him with a dog. Later he leads a second siege upon Wei Wuxian, who still has done nothing to him aside from try to avoid him before later attacking him and Lan Wangji by first demanding that they leave, then refusing to let them do so, driving Wei Wuxian to a qi deviation (which can be fatal, that’s how Nie Mingjue died) and attacking Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian with Zidian while Wei Wuxian is unconcious before Wen Ning stops him. Even in the temple, he’s still demanding that Wei Wuxian play by his rules of debts, he’s upset because he knows that he has gone so much farther than anyone has any right to and he has nothing to hold over Wei Wuxian’s head anymore.
Fifteen years of hurting everyone around him isn’t a poor trauma response. That’s deliberate and chosen. That is what he wants to do. It is a clear line of events where in the end, the trauma is an excuse over anything else.
If it had ended at the beginning of this list, Jiang Cheng would be a very different character and Modaozushi would be a very different novel. If it were just a trauma reaction and he didn’t want to hurt anyone in the long run, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But you cannot exonerate everything with the fact that his parents died when he was seventeen. Especially not when we have so many other people who react in so many other ways to the same pain. It is frankly ridiculous that people think he is the only one to suffer in the story, even though it is clear that no one escapes the novel unscathed and a hell of a lot of people die. Sometimes even at his hands or by his orders.
Jiang Cheng is not unsympathetic. I can understand what hurts he feels, at least to an extent. But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and he just keeps doing it. And then his stans show up and claim that it’s fine for him to want to kill everyone who he hates (not necessarily everyone who’s even done him wrong, and they certainly like to ignore everything he does to them) because he’s an ugly trauma victim.
He may be that, at the start. But twenty years down the line, when he gets excited at the thought of getting to torture people, that isn’t a trauma reaction anymore.
That’s a choice.
#mdzs#canon jiang cheng#wei wuxian#get back in the antagonist bin#another day another jc stan#long post
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Man, the AU you mentioned about LTC possessing LG and causing damage with his voice and hands that he'll wake up to has not left my brain. I do have some questions, if you would maybe expand on it a bit!
Do you think this is a bit of a role swap, in a way? Of LG being the one possessed instead of QL after what happens with Liu Min and Emma? In that case, what could happen? LTC would have access to his memories, to CXS's vulnerabilities and fears that LG is well aware of, and coming back right after Emma's death might have CXS in a position where only words could do immense damage, without even mentioning the knife he might or might not have access to.
I feel CXS might recognize it's not LG even if LTC tried to act like him, right? But it would not make what he says sting any less, or would not make a sudden stab any less surprising as he comes back from a dive with his guard down, I guess. Ah!!
He might be possessing LG in a completely different context, too, I guess! Although he would need LTX to be around for it to be done remotely, right?
Please forgive my rambling, even just as a concept, I'm very very curious to know what you considered for that idea. Thank you for your time!
Thank you for giving me an excuse to expound on an indulgent au that I dream of whenever I have trouble staying awake during my jet lag aksjsksksk.
I admit that when I have my sleep-affected stories in my head, it is effectively Whump Without Plot so I didn't really have a logical reason of why Lu Guang would be possessed. However, if we were to make a rhyme or reason for it, it would likely be to make Qian Jin's capturing of Cheng Xiaoshi quicker. Since CXS was targeted by the antagonists because they wanted to take advantage of his abilities, after all.
(Which of course is what happens vaguely in the canon, but shhh)
But in an AU where CXS doesn't recognize LG is being possessed (or, even if he does find something odd, isn't in a position to question it), he would easily follow Lu Guang anywhere no question. So he would be an easy mark as long as the baddies can use LG to take him somewhere else.
As for my indulgent AU in which it's a completely different context, maybe baddies want to separate CXS from LG for whatever reason, make him run away from LG and make him more vulnerable to the baddies' attacks, whether to capture him or something else. In which case, they can use LG and force him to push CXS away even if it's just for one vulnerable night. And since LTX's abilities are such that she can see all the memories of a person, it would be at least enough to glean what LG's usual personality and talking style is like to make his possession seem at least believable. And as you say, if it's on such a night that CXS is perhaps already vulnerable--maybe a bad dive, or a hard reminder about his parents--really, it's about saying something hurtful to CXS that he already kind of believes about himself that would make him less likely to question whether or not LG actually means it.
Like, if a possessed LG were to say that CXS is cruel and dishonest, I think CXS would be a bit ? about that. But if LG were to call CXS, idk, clingy and burdensome, which arguably (at least in my headcanon) CXS has wrestled with in his own self-image already, that would make him a bit more likely to believe those are LG's words. Because CXS is already struggling with those worries that he is so, and hearing it from his best friend who knows him most deeply would feel like confirmation ...
(and if he doesn't believe it's LG, then possessed!LG would just knife him and drag him to the baddies we get the best of both worlds lol)
Of course, in the way that Chen Bin was able to sort of gain some sense of self when he was possessed because he was being forced to walk off the edge of a building but the love for his unborn daughter gave him some consciousness to, while unable to resist, have sentience, I can imagine that Lu Guang's love and care for his best friend and seeing the way that he was being used to hurt him would give him some ability to try to resist, or at least be conscious about what he was being forced to do...which is perhaps even worse....
Witnessing his own body and mouth hurting his best friend but unable to stop it...
#ask#link click#shiguang dailiren#cheng xiaoshi#lu guang#i'm deranged i'm unhinged i'm using jetlag as an excuse
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hats off to the nameless damsels of Arthuriana
I may have gone off the deep end with these ladies. At first I was offended on their behalf — why in heck does she not get a name, when she substantially drives narrative and shows up several times, but her brother, who pops up, does nothing, and immediately dies, does get a name? Then I was offended on my own behalf — as I trawled back five hundred pages to figure out who in heck this damsel is who’s guiding this knight on a quest. Then I started to get intrigued. I started labeling each nameless damsel alphabetically as they came up. I wrote them down, tried to make sure I wasn’t missing anybody or duplicating anybody. Then I sorted them into categories based on what their role in the narrative was — I wanted to establish for myself, are they as passive as their transient and nameless existence might suggest? Are they the damsels in distress that the intervening thousand years have reduced them to, pretty faces at the end of a quest? What does the author think about them? What do they think about themselves? What do they want? What do they get? I’m making a cut here so as not to clog up peoples’ dashes, but read on for speculation and spreadsheets.
At this point, I’ve got 87 minor damsels, of whom 14 have names, pulled from Chrétien de Troyes Yvain and Perceval, Le Morte d’Artur, and the Lancelot bits of the Vulgate. For no more sophisticated reason than these are the texts I happen to have read and have notes on and have a relatively large number of minor damsel characters. The whole list is here. By “damsel” I’m largely talking about young, unmarried women, although there are several I’m not quite sure about, and some who get married along the way. And I’m also not talking about well-known, prominent characters: you won’t find Guenevere, or Isolde, or Morgan le Fay on this list. They’ve got enough attention. I’ve binned these ladies roughly into ten categories. First, the ones you’ll most likely find in modern adaptations:
1. Quest object. These are damsels who knights set out after to rescue, damsels who ask for help, damsels who are offered by other people as the prize for a knight accomplishing a quest.
2. Rom-com best friend. These are damsels, usually in the service of a more powerful lady, whose entire purpose in the narrative is to help the lady fulfill her romantic storyline.
3. Antagonist. These are damsels who are out for the protagonist’s blood: usually sorceresses, occasionally queens, they are an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome.
And now on to the more interesting ones:
4. Lover. These are ladies whose main role in the narrative is romance, but I want to be extremely clear: this category is for ladies who are going AFTER romance, or even just a one-night stand. They see a hot knight, they pursue a hot knight. These are not ladies who are being pursued without interest or without enthusiastic, give-me-a-piece-of-that-ass, hold-my-beer-while-I-throw-things-at-my-meddling-relatives consent.
5. Love (dis)interest: these are ladies who the protagonist wants, and who does not want them back.
6. Revenge damsels: these are ladies who are out for blood, but not the protagonist’s blood. They have been wronged, and they want heads, and I do mean that incredibly literally.
7. Disinherited damsels: some thematic overlap with both revenge damsels and quest objects, there are enough of them and they have enough distinct agency that it seemed fair to give them their own category. These are damsels whose lands have been taken, by a sibling, an in-law, meddling relatives, an encroaching neighbor, and they want what’s theirs. The knight’s role in this narrative is to fight on her behalf and restore her ownership over her lands.
8. Lady’s damsels. These are damsels who work for a more powerful lady — the Lady of the Lake, Morgan le Fay, some other miscellaneous queens etc — and her role is as the agent of these ladies in the narrative.
9. Quest guide. These are damsels who, for a variety of reasons, help knights along on their quest. Sometimes they’re just hanging out in the woods and meet a knight at the opportune time; sometimes they come after knights on purpose. They are always instrumental in driving the narrative forward.
10. Rescue damsels. By this I mean damsels who rescue knights: the knight is in prison, or wounded, or about to be killed, and she intervenes to get him out of prison, or heal him, or prevent murder. Sometimes for revenge, sometimes for love, sometimes to further her own ends.
I do find these categories quite fascinating on their own, for the sheer diversity, but don’t get it twisted: they are not in order of prominence. I did a quick count for how many damsels across all texts fall into each category and came out with:
Each dot is an individual damsel. Way more than half of them are doing stuff, taking knights places, getting laid, getting their lady what she wants, getting what’s hers. Only six of them are passively waiting for a quest to happen to them. And while the Lancelot-grail is DEFINITELY overrepresented in this list, I do want to emphasize that it’s not just the Vulgate: here are the ladies broken down by what text they appear in:
Yes, the love-disinterest category is 100% occupied by women telling Guerrehet to fuck off and/or joining convents to avoid him, but otherwise, I think the overarching pattern, especially of the most-represented categories, repeats itself quite often.
Anyway, that’s a very long and probably over-involved way of saying I love these ladies, I wish they got more attention, and until I resurrect their authors from hell and force them to provide names, I’ll content myself with giving them all the unhinged attention they deserve.
#damsels#coming for your head#and lands#and maybe pretty face if you're lucky#arthuriana#the lancelot-grail#le morte d'arthur
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Post 8 edit: This has nothing to do with EP8, but I still stand by it.
I was kinda frustrated at first with how little actual plot information we've been getting each episode, but then I realized that if we got any semblance of a plan from Lu Guang, that would mean that Xiao Li would also probably get that information, and then he'd fuck up everything with sheer incompetence.
I mean... it's pretty much his fault that both of his partners are dead, and if it weren't for Qiao Ling reigning him in, he'd have done a lot more damage already. But she's reigning everyone in this season. Post 8 edit: I stand by this QL statement even more now. Although, because of the shitty subtitles, I'm not 100% sure if Wang Juan is actually dead yet.
Love that for Qiao Ling. But back to Xiao Li:
I have very little sympathy for him.
As a boss, he never gave his subordinate a day off. Not even to have a proper wedding. Or to care for his pregnant wife and unborn child. And after working Chen Bin several days in a row without even letting the man go home to sleep, XL was too caught up in getting some civilians to do his job that he didn't even notice CB leave the room during a time that he said himself everyone was to be on high alert. And we all know what happened after that.
And then after seeing his dead partner fall from the sky, XL was knocked out by random extras he knew would probably be afoot, rendering him incapable of doing anything while those civilians and some old people safely (?) apprehended the suspects.
(Okay, that one isn't fair. He was definitely in shock. But still.)
And then once he was conscious and back to work, he demanded the civilians continue to do his job for him, even though one was literally hooked into a hospital bed, because he's not even competent enough to look into cases that his former colleague-turned-evil and current antagonist was involved with during his downward spiral.
And then, he doesn't even wonder why some random unidentifiable witness only wants to talk to this civilian that shouldn't isn't publicly on the case but is essentially running it. XL just gives said civilian, who minutes before exited the scene of a double homicide while experiencing not only his own emotions but those of the child watching her mother (and almost brother) be beaten to death, a crash course on police interrogation and says, "Go get 'em, Tiger!"
And then, after losing his first trusted partner to a person who has proved capable of possessing anyone to do anything including kill themself and kill their friends, he established a whole buddy system to avoid people getting possessed and hurt but said his currently assigned partner was fine to go alone because he trusted her and she's "strong." Isn't that even more reason to not want her to potentially get possessed? It literally just happened to a cop you trusted, so it's not like the law makes them immune.
And then when his new partner, this civilian he can't stop traumatizing, and the person that has admitted on mic to be the one possessing people went missing after acting suspicious on camera AND MICROPHONE, he didn't even bother to call and notify the guard posted at the exit, who was also not part of this buddy system apparently. Like... Where did you think they were escaping from, the air vents?! This isn't a spy novel. And you left the one guy who's in charge of people coming in and out of the premise alone and totally out of the loop?? When one of the people involved is a former cop that people around here seem to kinda trust a bit?!
AND THEN he couldn't even catch the kid he put a tracker on, but this time he didn't even have to ask the civilians to do his job for him. They just heard that CaPtaIn XiAo was on the case and immediately jumped into action--evading police and hijacking vehicles to triangulate their partner's location by land and sea to prevent his capture
(at least for now... things can go south pretty quick and I'm just being dramatic while I wait for this episode to drop) Post 8 edit: Obviously things were going to get worse first. Would love some understandable subtitles to really know how much worse, though.
Or.
He's actually the bad guy and all of this was on purpose. I think I'd be okay with that.
#link click#Wrote this last night waiting for EP8 but I got distracted trying to load literally any version with decent subtitles and didn't post it#Probably just have to get a VPN again so I can watch it on Bilibili#I kinda hate Xiao Li's character if you couldn't tell and will be pretty disappointed if he gets out of all this unscathed#He's so stupid that it's actually suspicious. I don't trust him at all. Even if he's a good guy I don't trust him to not fuck up#But if he's evil I'm all for it because he's been fucking things up since the Dou Dou case and masking it as incompetence#Also thanks to everyone who makes GIFS for sgdlr 🤍🖤🩷 I would never finish posting anything if I had to make all of them myself
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Under the Queen's Umbrella: Midseason, spoiler-free review
*Warning: This is a long post that no one asked for.
If you're still on the fence about starting this show, then let this be a sign for you to give it a shot. It's a real shame that people seem to be sleeping on this series just because it's not driven by romance and cookie-cutter characters from other popular historical dramas.
It's a refreshing take on the genre, and if you're willing to suspend your disbelief even a little bit regarding certain historical inaccuracies (it is totally fiction / AU after all), then this show will be worth your while.
The Premise (if you don't already know): Queen Im Hwaryeong, played by the majestic Kim Hye-soo, is the wife of King Yi Ho (Choi Won-young), with whom she has five sons. The Crown Prince is picture perfect, but the other four have been branded as underachieving troublemakers by palace gossip. The Queen has to run around to keep them all in check, manage the ambitious concubines, and go toe-to-toe with the Dowager to protect her children. Further intrigue ensues, and the fight to restore honor turns into a war to stay alive.
Cast / Acting: This is yet another vehicle for Kim Hye-soo, who has been so amazing in choosing roles and stories since her small screen return in Signal (2016). Queen Hwaryeong is commanding, ruthless, and witty, but also loving, warm, and vulnerable. I live for the sarcastic bows she makes towards the Dowager, her eyebrows (!), and the physical comedy especially in the first two episodes. Just as the queen can move in any direction, KHS once again proves that she can do it all.
The small but terrible Dowager is so masterfully played by Kim Hae-sook (Start Up, Tomorrow). She knows just what to say and how to say it to get under your skin. I don't know how they do it, but between her acting and the editing / lighting, the Dowager's beady eyes have this dark vibe and you know that she's up to something lethal but in the blooper reel the actress' eyes sparkle with joy (?!) Talk about attention to detail. The scenes where the two women standoff are definitely the acting highlights of the series so far.
The casting is pretty solid for the rest of the supporting characters as well. Choi Won-young plays a wise king in a real bind. He's empathetic and insightful, and has a calming presence I rarely feel in the portrayals of kings in the sageuk genre.
The Grand Princes, princes, concubines, court ladies, and ministers all gel together quite well, but if we're talking Baeksang Awards, Kim Hye-soo has a real shot for Best Actress next year along with Park Eun-bin. (If one of them gets Best Actress, then the other should get Daesang, I don't care which, just let both of them be recognized.)
Writing / Characterization: I'm limited by my desire to keep this review spoiler-free, but it really is a refreshing take on the sageuk, and oddly enough, of the family/political drama genre in general.
The motivations are easy to follow but the alliances aren't always clear cut. Among the antagonists, you just know they're going to stab each other in the back and that no one's putting all their eggs in one basket. And based on the ep 9 preview, even the Queen seems to initiate an alliance with one of her biggest foes.
The Queen may have some plot armor but no one seems to benefit from deus ex machina (yet?). The twists and turns have happened within reason so far, though there are a few flashbacks that have yet to be explained in the latter half of the show, particularly regarding Grand Prince Seongnam's childhood and the Queen's early days as the Crown Princess.
I don't know if writer Park Ba-ra was actively aiming for a feminist show but she's done a splendid job so far. The women definitely run the show, and are far more nuanced than just "strong", but that doesn't mean the men have to be useless either. The King actually has something to do beyond believing the first piece of fake news that he gets?! And the princes have different goals, motivations and, methods to get what they want (Ep 8 is quite the masterpiece).
Ultimately, the central theme is motherhood, with the show being both an homage and a critique of maternal love. The Queen's relationships with her sons are used to represent the ideal in the modern sense (she's literally a working mom who needs to drag her kids to school). She nags a lot because she's worried but is affectionate and loves them unconditionally.
But through the King and the Dowager, the other princes and concubines, we get a kaleidoscope of how the same maternal love can yield vastly different results. It can even be harmful for both the children and their mothers.
There are some questionable points in the scenario. There aren't any princesses and the previous queen also had exactly five sons which is odd considering the infant mortality rate of the period. But it's forgivable once you give the plot a chance to unravel. I did have a hard time keeping track of all the princes' names at first but that, too, falls into place right away.
Direction / Visuals: Gorgeous. The cinematography is really something to behold. I especially love the overhead shots, wide shots, and the use of light and rain in general. They also like making the two women look bigger than everyone else because they literally have the most power. Episode 1 has my favorite shot when the first tragedy strikes, and episode 3 has the best painting at the end before the title card. (Can't put them here or I might spoil it for you, sorry.)
I did have a few qualms with episode 2 since they tried something a little too modern and unnecessary, making a family discussion look like a video call / chat room. It also had a running/crying scene with less than perfect backgrounds that were so obviously green screen. It distracted from KHS's acting, unfortunately. But quality has been uphill since then by allowing the stellar cast and intrigue to take center stage.
Midseason verdict: 9 / 10
TLDR: Watch it without expecting a documentary and you should be ok.
P.S.: None of the beautiful gifs are mine.
#under the queen's umbrella#kdrama#kim hye soo#kim hae sook#choi won young#moon sang min#bae in hyuk#midseason review#omo it was so hard to keep it spoiler free
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After reading the Chronicles Of The Avatar books, I have come to one conclusion: F.C. Yee deserves all of the praise. Like, his books are so good. I mean, focusing on the stories of the previous avatars was just genius, but Yee did an amazing job. His writing style is so easy to get into and he balances the different tones in his books seamlessly.
The Dawn Of Yangchen is slower than The Rise Of Kyoshi and The Shadow Of Kyoshi, which normally I would complain about, but the pacing fits with the stories he's telling. The Kyoshi novels were more fast paced because Kyoshi herself is engaging in more adventure and throughout the novels, there's an underlying sense of urgency. In Yangchen's novel, the story is slower cause it's more about politics and espionage, but it never feels like the story is dragging.
The action scenes are just as engaging as the scenes where characters are just having conversations with each other. Besides everything that Yee does amazingly at-exposition, setting, detail, humor, foreshadowing, personal stakes, differentiating multiple point-of-views, character development-, my favorite thing that he writes are the characters themselves.
In the past, I've read books by the same authors who continually make their characters feel like the exact same person, but F.C. Yee makes all the characters in Chronicles Of The Avatar so uniquely different in their personalities, their mindsets, their motivations, just everything.
Yangchen is distinct from Kuruk who's distinct from Kyoshi who's distinct from Aang. They're all the same and opposites of each other, and Yee makes us root for all of them. Yangchen is a compassionate women worn-out from the cruelties of the people. We want to see her unveil the corrup politicians and make Bin-Er a better place. Kyoshi is a strong women born from tragedy and heartbreak. We want to see Kyoshi bring justice down upon Jianzhu and get her best friend back. We want to see them be the people that we know them as. But we see them be young and make mistakes and the complexities of human nature.
But it's not just the Avatars.
The companions are just as memorable. Proud, confident Kirima; brave, perfectionist Wong; brash, loyal Lek; patient, caring Jinpa; and fierce, loving Rangi. Tayagum and Akuudan being the loyal warriors, Jujinta being the unexpected fearsome ally, and Kavik being the conflicted friend turned betrayer. They all have their places where they fit and not one person feels unnecessary.
The familial units are also very interesting. Kyoshi's parents leaving her and Kelsaang picking up the slack and being her new father. Yun having Jianzhu be the one there for him to succeed (and then to die). Rangi's conflicted relationship with her mother and how her legacy affects her. Kavik's distance from his parents, and his conflict between his brother and Yangchen. Yangchen's relationship with her sister and how that affects her relationship with spirits (and everyone else).
The camaraderie and relationship growth and joy and relationship deterioration and bittersweetness and tragedy of them all.
Even the antagonists and villains feel more than one-dimensional. We see Jianzhu cause tragedy in his righteous mindset. We watch Yun turn from a hero to a villain. We witness the Shangs and Zongdus and every other corrupt person in power.
They all feel like people and not cardboard cutouts, and I applaud F.C. Yee for all that he's done.
#also can we just talk about the casual queer representation#Kyoshi being bisexual and in love with Rangi#Tayagum and Akuudan being husbands#and Yangchen being aroace (although I think Yee left it up to interpretation IDK)#these books made me feel alive and made me remember why I love to read#chronicles of the avatar#the rise of kyoshi#the shadow of kyoshi#the dawn of yangchen#f.c. yee#atla#avatar the last airbender#my post
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Hopclair Across the Seasons
Official hopclair breakdown is here!! Since we’re returning to S1 dynamics for the final season and Lucas and El’s relationship played a big-ish role in S1, I assume we’re gonna see them play an important role in each other’s stories and the plot as a whole so I wanted to dive into their growth over the seasons so we can really see what direction they’re heading in for the final season. Also I love them so bad which means this one got kinda long lmao. Hopclair fans I hope you enjoy!!
Season 1
For starters, what’s the basis of El and Lucas’ relationship? What are the building blocks?
The first real idea we get for how either of them feel about each other is Lucas’ reaction when Mike brings all of them back to his house after their search for Will;
“There’s something seriously wrong with her. Like, wrong in the head.”
Lucas immediately takes the perspective of the negative thinker here. Though realistic, considering she was someone they found in the woods who doesn’t seem to understand basic life concepts like privacy, he does say they he wanted to leave her out in the rain and continue the search for Will.
When Lucas has a goal, he gets very stubborn and refuses to let anything get in his way. His number one priority was finding Will, similar to Mike, so he didn’t want to side track away from that for some random girl who may have come from the asylum. The very start of Lucas’ relationship with El is a negative one because Lucas views her as someone halting their progress in finding Will — someone doing damage to the party.
The next day, more frustration builds on Lucas’ end after Mike doesn’t show up to school. Both he and Dustin assume it’s because he got caught, but Dustin treats the situation much more light heartedly than Lucas. During that scene we learn two things:
1. Lucas and Mike are really established as closer friends in this scene. The situation is stressing Lucas out much more than it is Dustin, and he gets defensive of Mike when Dustin suggests that he’d get them in trouble too;
“No way, Mike would never rat us out!”
He’s worried about Mike, and that worry is stemming from thinking El is causing more problems.
2. His highest priority is still finding Will and he’s created a very specific image of El in his head;
“All that matters is, after school, the freak will be back in the loony bin and we can focus on what really matters, finding Will.”
Lucas very much so views El as a problem and that feeling only grows after she had not only interrupted their search for Will but also gotten Mike in trouble. That comes back to his protective nature, the way he prioritizes his friends in the same way Mike does. He cares about Will in a similar fashion, too.
Obviously, El mostly goes unaware of most of this. The only perception she has of Lucas right now is that he thinks she’s messed up in the head and that she’s dangerous. It’s not a great start on her end either, though it doesn’t seem like it bothers her too much in the beginning.
When Lucas finds out that Mike had decided to keep El around because she might know about Will, he tries to consider that possibility. He challenges the things Mike is saying because all it’s doing is reaffirming that El is untrustworthy. If El supposedly knows about Will, why wasn’t she telling them? He grabs her, demanding to know if she knows because that’s one of his best friends and all he wants right now is for Will to come home.
As for El, this is where she really sees Lucas for the first time. She’s scared, but she’s also a little pissed at the way Lucas is treating her. When she shuts the door on Lucas, she scares him right back.
Lucas and El are both scared of each other and they’re established as antagonists in each other’s stories. For Lucas, El is stopping him from finding his best friend. For El, Lucas is trying to take away her safety. You can see the fear and the anger in their expressions during this scene;
In the bottom left photo, it’s a little hard to see but the camera is focused on Lucas. His reaction to El slamming the door is the most important one, just as El is focused in while glaring at Lucas.
The thing is, though, that even though this conflict is set up, Lucas and El don’t naturally have an antagonistic dynamic. Later that night, when things have settled down, we see Lucas try to be understanding and explain himself to El. Lucas, by nature, isn’t mean spirited like that; he’s typically a very warm and understanding person. He still doesn’t really like her, but he tries to extend an olive branch after she asks what a friend is, but gets interrupted by Mike.
Without having gotten to connect with her, Lucas keeps his distance still and calls her ‘the weirdo’ rather than her name. He tends not to take her very seriously until Will comes up.
I know I’m focusing heavily on Lucas’ perspective, but that’s because El only seems to be giving her attention to Mike at this point. El’s perspective comes into more focus later on.
This skepticism and protectiveness we see with Lucas continues to be emphasized, but he ends up following El’s guide anyway. Why? Well, Mike is following El and Lucas has a lot of faith in Mike. He’ll challenge him but if Mike really believes in El and really believes he’ll be able to find Will, then Lucas trusts that.
Alright, I think that establishes the building blocks of Hopclair. Lucas wants to find Will, El wants to be safe, and their actions often work in opposition. They have a bit of an antagonistic dynamic, but neither Lucas nor El are acting like that because it’s their nature; they both have very strong motivators that dictate their actions. Lucas is still a kind and understanding person, but he’s loyal to his friends so his priority is finding Will above all else. El is caring and determined, but she doesn’t have the knowledge of relationships to understand his frustration yet.
Where do they go from here? I do think Lucas’ feelings towards El get more complex from here. We see Lucas poke fun at Mike and joke about him marrying her but we also see him scoff at Mike and El talking about the bullying later on. When Dustin said that Lucas was jealous, he was sort of right. It wasn’t just a matter of feeling replaced, though.
Lucas and Mike have a lot of aligning values and although they argue, they seem like they normally understand each other pretty well and get along which is what we see in S3. In the beginning, both Lucas and Mike were dead set on finding Will no matter what — they were on the same page. Lucas expects Mike to understand that they can’t afford to get side-tracked (in his eyes), but instead Mike is sticking with El. I think it felt a bit like a betrayal for Lucas, like Mike really was choosing El over him and Will even if that was far from the truth.
The real turning point is when Lucas realizes El was leading them away from the gate. He doesn’t know the El was genuinely protecting them from something awful, all he knew was that she’d led them away from Will.
“Because she’s a traitor!”
“We’re looking for some stupid monster but did you ever stop to think that maybe she’s the monster?”
That line right there is the start of something for El. That line changed her perception of herself dramatically, and although it’s never directly acknowledged, this absolutely impacted El’s relationship with Lucas.
Lucas and El have a barrier between them. Lucas’ barrier was built from the very start, but this is where El’s barrier comes up. El wants to be the good person we know she is, but she’s just been associated with the monster that she’s terrified of. Even when she saves people over and over, it takes a long time for her to finally realize that she isn’t a monster.
When Lucas finally apologizes, he says he’s sorry for calling her a traitor, that he was wrong for that. What he doesn’t apologize for is calling her a monster. I honestly think he would’ve if he’d known that comment hurt El, but he was saying that to Mike. Regardless, Lucas doesn’t apologize for calling her a monster. Her response?
“Friends don’t lie.”
El has ingested the idea that she’s a monster. At this point, she considers Lucas to be a friend and one of the very first things she learned about the world is that friends don’t lie. Even though Mike tried to tell her she wasn’t a monster, she doesn’t really believe him. This isn’t something Mike is able to solve, as it originates with Lucas and El’s internal turmoil.
By the end of the season, it’s clear that Lucas doesn’t think of El as a monster. She saves him and his friends, even Will, and we know how important that is to him. El has established Lucas as her friend. Yet, those barriers between them aren’t fully broken down. They may be unconscious, but this season has made it hard for them to be as close as the others.
Season 2
For these next three seasons, there’s not nearly as much to talk about. In S2, Lucas and El get three solid moments where their relationship is brought to light.
1. Max brings up El
I think this is a pretty solid representation of where Lucas is at with El right now. Unlike Mike, he’s not aggressively protective over her which is a bit of a contrast to his protectiveness over Will in S1. What’s different from before, though, is the way he describes her. He’s gone from addressing El as the weirdo and thinking of her as a wackjob to using her actual name and using the word different. We see it a little bit at the end of S1, but this shows where he stands after that last day he spent with her.
He definitely comes across as more neutral, and we don’t get to hear how he describes her to Max when he tells the story.
2. El thinking of her friends when she wants to go home
When El finally leaves Chicago, she does so thinking of saving her friends. She says she considers Lucas as a friend in S1, but we don’t really see him or Dustin come into play when she’s thinking this way. Although I’m sure she thought of them, we only specifically see El worrying for her father figures (Hopper and Mike).
El simply hasn’t struck a cord with anyone else to have that deep connection like she has with Hopper and Mike. This contributes to her not really understanding the difference between family and friends yet, which is a major part of her S3 arc.
3. El’s return
What’s interesting about El’s return at the end of the season is that she gets a solo moment with almost every character except Lucas. Obviously there’s Hopper and Mike, but she also points out Dustin’s teeth, ignores Max, hugs Joyce, and goes to see Will.
That barrier that was built in S1 is part of why Lucas and El still aren’t given much depth and it’s definitely intentional. There was a lot of emphasis put on their S1 conflict only to have almost all attention removed from them. They haven’t grown yet, so we’re not really being shown any change.
Lucas and El only exchange one notion and it’s that they missed each other. They don’t really show it much, but I’m sure they missed each other a little bit. It feels a little bit like a casual thing rather than anything full of emotion, but we Lucas smiling at seeing her again too. He definitely experienced at least some grief over her, especially knowing that he was so harsh to her even though she ended up saving the Party. They’re both relieved that the other is okay, y’know?
Season 3
For S3, we get pretty much no interactions between Lucas and El. Lucas tries to help Mike through his break up with her, but that’s much more of Wheelclair than anything regarding how Lucas feels about El personally.
There’s something very important established in S3 for the two of them, though; Max is the person they’re both closest to. Lucas and El hardly know anything about each other if we’re being honest, but for the first time they have a connection. Neither of them are aware of it, but Max is the one thing they have in common, and she’s someone they both love.
Season 4
S4… oh man. This is another season where we don’t get any directly substantial interactions between Lucas and El but this season is the one that sets a bonding arc in motion for them.
Their mutual grief over Max is very explicitly shown even if they haven’t talked to each other about it yet. They were both there when she died. They’re both the reason she’s alive right now, too. Max hid in a happy memory of Lucas long enough for El to get there and El resumed Max’s heartbeat.
Although we don’t see much from them in S4, we have been given a fantastic set up for S5. All the way back in S1, Lucas was never able to make a connection with El because he got interrupted the one time he tried. Now, Lucas and El are connected to Max and both of them love her so, so deeply. We also see El overcome her problem with feeling like a monster because she’s finally learned that that isn’t true. That conflict was never really about Lucas, but it did start with him and it did contribute to that barrier. The things that have kept them distant for so long are starting to crumble, opening an opportunity for them to finally grow.
I would like to note that both Lucas and El spent this season going through solo arcs of self acceptance. Lucas came to learn that he would much rather be a freak than someone like Jason and, at the end of the day, Lucas is a freak just like his friends. He enjoys DND and science and history, but now he seems like he’s willing to embrace that again.
El spent the season learning that she isn’t a monster nor a superhero. One of those barriers I mentioned was El feeling like a monster, but she’s proven to herself that she’s anything but.
Both of these situations are likely gonna overlap in their respective arcs with Mike regarding his sexuality, so he may end up functioning as a connection between them too. Lucas and El both care about Mike a lot, though that definitely isn’t the focus of their S5 arc.
Season 5
Thanks to S4 giving us a beautiful set up and the fact that we’ll be returning to S1 dynamics, I think S5 is really gonna be Lucas and El’s season. In many ways, S5 is being set up in in contrast to S1 with a lot of potential role reversals. We also see this with Lucas and El!
In S1, the Hopclair conflict originates with El and Lucas having different goals that worked against each other. Now, however, they’ve been given the same goal of saving Max. Max is gonna be the force that drives them to work together and finally become real friends.
I think we may see Lucas be the one to reach out to El and build that connection by asking for her help in saving Max once they realize it’s possible. Rather than getting interrupted like he did in S1, Lucas is actually able to connect with El this time. He’s able to offer friendship.
For El, building a deep friendship with Lucas is something I think will be very valuable to her story. El spends every season learning about different types of love, but she’s still yet to have a relationship with a man that isn’t familial. El has learned how to have a real father and real brothers, she’s learned how to embrace herself as a girl and enjoy things like long hair and dresses with Max and in California, and she’s also learned how to love herself.
One of the big things I hope El gets to learn is that you can be close with a boy without him being family or your boyfriend. I think building a proper friendship with Lucas, one without heteronormative pressures, is something that would be great for her character. Being friends with a boy can be just that; friends. That goes back to her relationship with Mike, because what they need to be to each other is friends. Also, El should have close friends outside of Max, no matter how great Max is!!
In opposition to S1, where Lucas and El didn’t understand each other at all, we’re going to finally watch them grow and learn about each other. We haven’t gotten to see them make real progress from their S1 dynamic, so we’ll likely be seeing them do everything they couldn’t before. It’s a perfect set up for them to share memories and bond, work together, become proper friends, and for them to get to save Max.
Basically, Hopclair is gonna get a beautiful arc in S5 where they finally, finally get to overcome their rough history and Lucas will finally get to learn who El truly is, as he still hasn’t even gotten a chance to have a conversation with her and El will get to know the ways in which you can have a deep emotional connection and supportive relationship with a guy without it having to be romantic or paternal. They’ll have each other to confide in, lean on, and learn from in S5. I cannot fucking wait to see it happen.
#i love hopclair so bad#i hope this is a good breakdown of them#they are so 🫶🫶🫶#hopclair#as always i didn’t backread this so if you see a mistake. no you didn’t ❤️
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What do you think about some of Asoiaf antagonists like Euron , Littlefinger , Varys , bloodraven Tywin , Roose?
some controversial opinions!
i like a lot of these antagonists actually! euron is one of my faves, absolutely unhinged and genuinely scary? one of the few undeniably evil characters george included in the books, like, i don't think euron has one redeeming quality to his name. but he's sort of mesmerizing? his actions make me sick but also leave me wanting more?? also he can be really funny and full of shit, which makes characters more enjoyable for me. love euron!!! hope lord leyton whoops his arse!!!! (fervently praying to the seven) euron is The One villain i couldn't possibly woobify even if i tried, so props to him he truly is *the one by shakira starts playing*
littlefinger & varys i can't really stand. i appreciate them for comic relief (always down for a good joke) but their meddling in westerosi affairs i find very exhausting & pugnacious. like, i realise everyone is out here for themselves, so, in that sense, them being self-serving shouldn't bother me the way it does, but i can't with these two. littlefinger is a naked opportunist and, while i can admire that trait in other characters, his sleaziness and lack of charisma put me off, so into the trash bin he goes.
varys i have an even bigger problem with. generally-speaking sanctimoniousness and moral righteousness are triggers for me and i can't really stand characters that are Like That. i legit fight with people who exhibit those traits in real life, like, i am an aries so i do not back down lol you'll die with me around your neck. there has to be something else in that character to balance out these things that annoy me, i guess, but varys didn't manage to make the cut, bc that is the entirety of his personality, i'm afraid. this may ruffle some feathers but i think that his scheme with young griff, real or not, is essentially morally bankrupt, in that he's out there role-playing the head of a research institute sending out his agents into the world to carry out this political experiment that may or may not work, but will have a huge body count regardless. it's very callously cynical to me, but he expects to be congratulated on how ideologically pure and morally unsullied he is - i think that's what drives me up the wall.
i know that people really want young griff to be real but varys' grand master plan is to destabilize a country, intentionally plunge it into a civil war that'll get a lot of people killed, in order to facilitate what would be another war of conquest undertaken under aegon vi's banners. instead of trying to actively improve the lives of the common people, since he's on the small council. he's still focusing on power plays and on plots with this brainwashed belief that he's doing it for the good of the people. but is he? he doesn't even know young griff. what if he turns out to be some bad apple; how is varys to know? idk i just cannot get behind it. and i don't think the author will eventually condone this message or plot as righteous either bc i don't see how aegon's reign will last. i think varys is the type of person dead-set in their belief that their actions are for The Greater Good in a the-ends-justify-the-means kind of way, but, ultimately what he truly cares more about is being Right TM - i.e. having his hypothesis proven to be true. clinical, cold researcher/mad scientist vibes.
for roose bolton i couldn't possibly mount a defense even if i were so inclined, but i do enjoy him as a character. i think he's very funny? lmao this sounds very obnoxious after i just tore varys a new arsehole but roose is unquestionably a villain, so there's no need to pretend like he's contributing to the good of society or anything. whereas with varys there is that element to him, perhaps why i find him annoying and roose i do not. roose has some great one-liners - he was funny in the show and he's funny on the page. absolutely awful but enjoyable for what he is.
for tywin i will not be writing any significant meta until i wrap up my last phd chapter and do a proper re-read bc i do not have energy to get into that disk horse right now. i know people hate him but yes he is one of my faves. with tywin i find that he generates three types of commentaries - either people hate his guts and see everything he does in a villainous lens or he attracts the sort of dudebro fan who idolizes the ground he walks on in a v silly way. the third way is the few people who might want to attempt to see him as more three-dimensional, but, because they don't want to get attacked, they preface their commentaries with disclaimers and apologies and messages that they absolutely do not condone his actions, so much so that the observations kind of get lost along the way. i'm neither. i want enlightened centrist meta on tywin lannister. i'm a chill tywin enjoyer, an aficionado of Machiavelli deconstructions. i'd lighten up the mood a little with my quirky takes. but anyway i don't really have time for that kind of fight and tywin himself would tell me to stop procrastinating and get my work done so i'll have to listen to Daddy i guess!!!
EDIT: oohhh i forgot about bloodraven. i'm gonna be contrarian about this one bc i really don't like it when george shoves his fave characters down my throat. i can FEEL that he really wants me to like bloodraven and the blackwoods, just like he wants me to like daemon the rogue prince. and it's annoying sorry old man. i don't think bloodraven is supposed to be written as 100% evil (george wouldn't do that to one of his faves) so his human life is supposed to be guided by some moral principles - i believe that he believed he was servicing the realm with his anti-blackfyre stance and surveillance regime and i believe that even the author intends that to be true to some extent. however, i can't say the same thing about his time as a magical tree. that's just some creepy AF shit. his luring of bran, i see that as magical corruption. bran is mostly a victim in all of this, but he is kind of tainted for me as a character now, bc i don't see how anyone could be 'redeemed' after dabbling in dark magicks like that, willingly or unwillingly. it would feel like a betrayal to how magic has been approached in the books so far - like a force you have to pay a high price for if you want to access it & not necessarily a bringer of peace and harmony either. that being said!!! if we ever got a blackfyre timeline show & bloodraven was played by this dark, sylphidine, mysterious, brooding albino twink......................i am not immune!
#ask#anon#what a question that was#euron greyjoy#petyr baelish#varys#roose bolton#tywin lannister#anon is currently off while i make my way through my backlog#bloodraven
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My (very personal) thoughts on Emily:
I’m officially back from vacation! This opinion has been sitting in my drafts for a good while now.
I remember someone, but I forgot who, was asking for an Emily-based opinion piece so here it is. This is my first time writing something like this, so here goes:
She's a meh character for me. Like, I really don't care much for her. I mean, she's there. She exists as a minor antagonist turned unlikely ally who somehow changes morals in a relatively short time span.
To me she's like a minor starter antagonist because, well, like a game, the protagonist has a starter villain, who is usually not the powerful, to practice moves and tactics for higher ranking villains. Emily is the first antagonist Siyeon faces literally from the moment she wakes up. Plus, the maid character is usually one of the first allies MC gets because of the proximity to the household, influencing them though her maid (See: The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass, a pretty good example of it)
Anyways, for the changing morals part, I have two theories. A. doesn't hold that deep of a personal grudge towards Penny because of herd mentality or B. had an epiphany while in jail for that short time.
A. Not that Deep of a Grudge
To me, her initial grudge rate towards og!Penelope before Cha Siyeon was around 60% for all the tantrums and stuff. It's more than half but it's not by that much since she had a form of getting her resentment out, which unfortunately is through the rotten food, needles and the cold water. Personally, I think the needle marks were supposed to make them think Penny was on drugs to emphasize her madness??? (that goes into the semi-crack theory bin)
I'm guessing she's roughly around the same age as Penny considering her looks and demeanor. She's childishly stupid in a way, since she is pretty obvious in her antagonism towards Penny (needle marks, seriously?! Almost all of Penny’s outfits are short-sleeved and the rest are ¾ sleeves, making them very obvious, since they’re concentrated on the forearm but makeup exists) and didn't really care for the possible consequences of her actions (so did the rest of the household).
B. Epiphany while in Jail
Emily pretty much had a reality check when Penelope stood up for herself. In the manhwa, Emily realizes it when she comes back after jail but in this theory, it's during jail. So it could very well be possible that Emily had an epiphany. She probably realized something has changed within Penelope and she’s terrified of it. Emily realizes that it’s better to stay close to Penelope as an ally rather than an enemy since this new Penelope could ruin her and her career as a maid at an instant.
Basically, it means that Emily recognizes Siyeon as Penelope now has leverage against her and can use it at any moment.
In most households there is a hierarchy and when there's a hierarchy there is leverage against a lower rank like position and money. In this case, Penelope can use the incident as her leverage against Emily thus making her subservient through fear. That is kinda mean of her but the author makes everyone morally ambiguous so it’s up to the reader’s discretion.
In conclusion, I believe that both of the theories I’ve presented work out in both ways, but I’m leaning more towards the second one. Gwon Gyeoul presented almost all of the characters as morally ambiguous (except maybe Cedric and Marianne) and their alignments are up to the reader’s discretion and I decide that Emily is still meh but she still had her reasons in both ways.
Reblogs are appreciated especially if you’ve got thoughts on this.
#im back#villains are destined to die#manhwa#vadd#otome isekai#death is the only ending for a villainess#emily vadd#manhwa opinions#the villains are destined to die#death is the only end for the villainess#penelope eckart#death is the only ending for the villainess#penelope eckhart#marie's posts
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I just saw a post where someone called JC integral to the plotline of MDZS and I just ... what? I mean… assuming WWX is still a Jiang disciple just no JC all it means is that WWX doesn’t go to Gusu to meet LWJ as a kid. That's kind of it. Everything else would have still happened one way or another. The only thing I can think of is without JC, WWX and LWJ have to kill the turtle while trying not to trip over everyone else still stuck in the cave with them.
Oh anon, I'm sorry but the person calling Jiang Cheng integral to the plot of Modaozushi is actually right. After all, a plot like this needs its personal antagonist and so many events do have him at or near the heart of it.
Yes you are right that without Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian never goes to the Cloud Recesses. He also never loses his core, he never has a sect leader who refuses to defend him when Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao are turning people against him and proceed to bury him worse, you never have Wei Wuxian die because he still let Jiang Cheng through the barrier around the Burial Mounds despite knowing that Jiang Cheng was at Nightless City. In short, he is prevalent and integral to so many parts of the backstory that it is a whole different story if he doesn't exist, to say nothing of the fact that his continued antagonism in the present continues to hurt Wei Wuxian in ways that almost no one else can.
I understand that it's frustrating to hear people artificially inflate his importance to other people, it is pretty clear that in present day the only person who actually cares about him is poor Jin Ling. But he is important to the story. Without him, it is a fully different story. His perceived closeness and subsequent betrayal of Wei Wuxian are what allow the utter failings of the past to hit so hard.
Jin Guangyao may be the largest antagonist of the story, but Jiang Cheng is the personal antagonist. He is the one who strikes at Wei Wuxian's heart, where he is vulnerable. Antagonists like that are needed. They remind us how our heroes can bleed.
Don't sell him too short, anon. He does hold an important key of the story in his hands. It's just not a heroic one.
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Find the Word Tag!
I was tagged by some absolutely amazing people so thank you @fearofahumanplanet, @aohendo, @dogmomwrites, and @inkspellangel!! Thanks so much <3
So since I was tagged by 4 people, that means 20 words so expect a long post (:
Jane's words: Jump, Trust, Gift, Session, Bin
Hendo's words: Risk, Reward, Rush, Rule, Rampant
Yav's words: Pass, Back, Learn, Help, End
Koumori's words: Bold, Small, Careful, Throw, Fear
I was actually able to use quite a few from Nite & Daye so enjoy some free snippets from that??
cw: small mention of blood and a little bit of violence
As always, everything is under the cut <3
Jump
(Nite & Daye - Free Write)
“Not going to follow me?
“No, I’ve got all I would’ve needed anyways. And some more. I also have my own things to attend to.” Nite chuckled.
“It seems we both have secrets to keep from Daye.” Soz shook his head and Nite gave a small look of surprise.
“What I’m doing, Daye would’ve asked of me anyways. I’m just jumping the gun.” Nite gave a small nod and a sigh.
Trust
(A past NaNo Project)
Allieret blew into his cup, water sloshing over the sides, feeling like a slight pressure had been lifted from his chest. He knew he could trust Ledri and that trust alone seemed to cure any concerns that ailed him. He set the cup down just as Ledri walked into the room, taking a seat across from him.
Gift
(Freewrite)
“Fucking pudding-head thinking I’d let him go after he begged. You should just be glad that I’m in a pretty good mood. My dearly beloved should be returning any moment so before then, why don’t I craft him a welcoming gift? Which part should I take, hm?” Il circled around him, spinning the knife between bloodied fingers.
Session
Fun Fact:
There was actually a different ending to Nite & Daye's story that basically involved Aleah causing the apocalypse and pretty much everyone dying because of it. Also involved the God of the End. Which is where I got the name of the city haha
Bin
(Nite & Daye)
He finally crossed the final road and walked into the corner store. The soft dinging of the door alerted the person behind the counter of his presence and they pointed next to the door to let him know where to put his umbrella. He shook off the excess rain before tossing it in the bin.
Risk
Fun Fact:
Speaking of Nite & Daye, there was even a version of the story where Eero was able to time travel thanks to Vell and from seeing the future, comes back to save Daye so they can fix the future together. And then later there was a version where Eero, Vasin, and Daye all had to time travel. Yeah... for someone who does not like reading/writing time traveling, I was leaning into it hard with this one.
Reward
Fun Fact:
Apparently, I'm dedicating these fun facts to talking about the different evolutions of Nite & Daye's story?? I mean, I could talk about it all day but anyways
Silver actually used to be a kind of antagonistic character with a COMPLETELY different role. Although I'm a very big fan of their current rendition, I also really loved the personality they used to have. Probably because it's my favorite to write haha
Rush
(Nite & Daye)
Daye knew exactly what was going to come next and went to rush past them.
"No," was all he could get out when he moved past them, throwing the few items he had in his hands at some random shelf, not bothering to look if they made it.
Rule
(Freewrite)
It hadn’t been long since those of their kind had moved to this new world, one few of those without their innate abilities knew about but Soleil found it much more restricting than the previous one. There, in the other world, the rules were simple: don’t do magic in front of anyone who could not use it, and do not use it recklessly. Now there were so many more tacked on. Don’t use it to gain an upper hand amongst your peers. Do not make riches out of thin air. Do not use it to cause harm to anyone.
How. Dreadfully. Boring.
Rampant
Fun Fact:
Keeping on theme with Nite & Daye evolutions, the very first version of Soz was a female demon who used to nanny for Aleah and Maverick's kiddos 💀 Then was potentially another romantic interest for Aleah, and then someone who was jealous of Aleah and would become a traitor...
Yeah I could probably sit here and talk about Soz's past versions for hours haha
Pass
(Nite & Daye)
Daye walked down a familiar path as he made his way to his favorite convenience store. As walked, he noticed there were a few more cars driving on the streets than normal. Not there were many cars in general but the slight influx of them didn't pass Daye's eyes. There could be a few reasons for it, although that feeling in Daye's gut told him he probably already knew the cause.
Back
(Nite & Daye)
It was in turning around that Daye realized that the cashier had left the back and was now standing in the aisle with him. He opened his mouth to make a comment about how he was probably to grab one more thing and check out when the cashier spoke before him.
Learn
(Freewrite)
“You’re mad.” He said after catching up to Caeles.
“Of course I am. I finally get you to agree to be my teacher only to find out you won’t teach me magic until I learn Latin.”
“I would first like to point out that I only agreed after you tormented me for days on end. Any sane man would give in after dealing with so much,” Nox then paused and looked down at Caeles.
Help
(Freewrite - Continuation from "Rule")
Soleil couldn’t help but roll their eyes at the thought of it. All this new world was anymore was playing nice with others and making magic a small, “wholesome” thing. It could be, of course. However, there was so much more it could do.
End
(Nite & Daye)
"No, thanks. There's really no point to having one now, just keep it." The man shook his head and handed it over to him, making sure Daye had a grip on it before letting go.
"My destination is right around here. I'll be fine without it for a moment. Take it with you so you don't end up any more soaked than you are."
"Why? It's not like I'll catch a cold."
"No, but it can't be comfortable." Daye just stared at him after his statement.
Bold
Fun Fact:
LAST FUN FACT!!!
Leaving this off with a lowkey banger: I think I can say that Nite & Daye's story might be longer than I intentionally planned. Which was only one book but we'll seeeee
Small
(Nite & Daye)
"Daye, listen to me," they said as they reached forward and grabbed ahold of Daye's forearm. Daye stood there staring at them before realizing what they had said.
"How the fuck do you know my name?" Daye tried to pull his arm away and the other gave it a small tug.
Careful
(Freewrite)
Tears streamed down the boy’s stained cheeks. Il took a step forward, placing his foot on the kid’s dislocated shoulder. He stared at the knife in his hand and after a moment of careful consideration, gave the shoulder a rough kick, relishing in the screams that came out of him.
Throw
(Nite & Daye)
With the money he got from Aleah, he could just buy a new umbrella but the sentimental value greatly outweighed the monetary value so he couldn't bring himself to throw it away.
Fear
(Freewrite - CRASH)
He stared back up at those black glasses that reflected the fear plastered on his muddied and rain-streaked face. The familiarity of those dark depths was slowly becoming comforting, easing Crash as he swallowed, letting out a shaky breath.
Leaving this an open tag but if you do this your words will be: hope, pair, flame, address, and forget
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Aight now Elsa’s fuckin gone and Belle basically gave Rumple the ultimate restraining order, and now we finally get Black people(person) in a TRUELY PROMINENT reoccurring role lmao but none of these new antagonists are serving cunt like Rumple and Regina and hell even Zelena. The mf unholy trinity of giving the people what they want while being a menace. Cruella I guess is a bit interesting but only bc she calls Rumple a manlet at every opportunity. I like Ursula bc she called his ass a bum after they met (fucker literally walked into her apt used her shit and ate her food like fight back????) (also she’s someone other than a Milk Marauder) I keep thinking Maleficent is the Angelina Jolie version and I keep getting disappointed when she’s not there so idk abt Maleficent, shes also not serving at alllllll (so far) so idc. Also free Ursula from that fuckass wig bc where were the wig installers on set? Who bought that party city ass wig and slapped it on her??? That’s how you know there was a negative amount of black people on set bc how you gonna make Cruella’s shit look at least passable and in the same vein throw a dusty balayage bargain bin wig on Ursula and call it a day???? Especially for her true form look?????
#ouat#what the fuck are y’all villains on rn#you really gonna let this broke bitch take you to fight Michael Mouse????
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OC talk: Old OCs
Hello all! Just popping on here to talk about some of my (dramatic music) OLD OCS!
Let me tell you, I could not make human OCs for the longest time. I struggled once. Gave up. I struggled again. Gave up so much I don’t even remember what I wrote. I struggled again. Decided “screw it! I’m going back to wolves!” Then disappeared back into the world of animals. Humans should be easier to write… in theory. But apparently I can’t even write my own bloody species!
Anyway, I was finally able to write some humans in Monsters Within Us. And now I can’t stop. So great! I went from being unable to even make up a name to being unable to stop making up names.
So I decided to look back on my failed attempts. And ohhhhh boy, were they failed attempts.
First we have a not even close to flushed out world with a whole lot of not even close to flushed out characters. I was going for a hero vs villain plot line but it kinda all dissolved.
Here, I’ll share with you a portion of my writing as I was brainstorming the villains personality:
Now the antagonist. (Shut up about the fact that I still need a personality for the protagonist.) uhh, mean?
Yep. The antagonist is mean. News flash!
Anyway, the only characters I had who actually had names were two people named Ian and Roger. Ian was a genius who worked as an emergency specialist and Roger was an idiot who worked at a fast food joint. Great concept for a sitcom but not the best for what I was aiming for.
And then comes the personalities. And the names. Ohhhh, the names. Ian’s name was apparently “Ian… something” and Roger’s name was “Roger Rogers”… great right?
And that is literally as far as I got before giving up.
Then I returned to the wolf world for a few months before diving headfirst in the world of Tumblr. Before this I hadn’t been on any websites like it. And the moment I found the prompts section of Tumblr I realized that most of the prompts were for people so my wolves wouldn’t work. Instead of being creative I tried once again to make humans.
It did not work.
It did not work so much that I gave up and never even wrote anything down so I have no idea what my ideas were.
Cut to a few more months and I realized that maybe if i based my characters off of prompts I may finally succeed.
Let’s just say I did not.
I decided to set it in a high school. The characters I created were Will, Noah, Ethan, Layla, and Alex. And, I mean, they weren’t horrible. But the plot idea was. Ethan wanted to kill our protagonists because he wanted to figure out who his parents were. THEY HAD NO REASON TO KNOW WHO IS PARENTS WERE! But it just gets worse from there. I wanted them to have superpowers so I decided that they MUST be the children of my existing OCs, the Elementals. Basically, a group of godly wolves. So now we have four super-powered kids prancing around a high school with an evil villain prancing after them. AND NO ONE KNEW!
In short, I may have been able to fix it if I tried hard enough, but I just got bored. The characters were flat with no realistic goal and the plot was a disaster.
Then I gave up for the third time.
But, when it comes to writing, I am crazy determined to get done what I want done.
So I tried again. For the fourth time.
And I guess my brain finally decided to let me have my human OCs! Because before I knew it I had a freaking world in front of me.
So, in short, short, genius Ian Something, idiot Roger Rogers, Will, Noah, Ethan, Layla, and Alex were scrapped, recycled for names, and discarded into the deep, dark abyss of “the OC trash bin”.
#OC talks#Darthhope talks#oc#ocs#oc problems#my oc problems#today on:#darthhope’s oc problems#old ocs#human ocs#oc creation#defender tales#monsters within us#humans
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Foreign Policy Situation Report: The “why can’t Xi be friends” edition
By Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Jack and Robbie here, starting off our Thursday by wishing you all a belated happy National Coloring Day, which the Defense Intelligence Agency kindly reminded us was yesterday.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Putin and Xi meet, Biden to pick a new ambassador to Russia, and a look ahead at the U.N. General Assembly.
Xi Gets What Xi Wants
The long-anticipated meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in Uzbekistan on Thursday started with a bang—but maybe not in the way that most people expected. In his opening statement, Putin told Xi that he understands his “questions and concerns” about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, not long after Ukrainian forces reclaimed more than 3,000 square kilometers of occupied territory in a little over a week. He did not elaborate on what those questions and concerns were.
Analysts pricked up their ears at the comments, suggesting that all is not so well between the two longtime rivals of the United States. “Questions and concerns about having somehow awkwardly and belatedly realising that it’s been on the wrong side of history, and now also looked upon as a strategic accomplice of a dastardly war that meaninglessly snuffs out lives?” Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, opined on Twitter.
Something is rotten. Xi’s response to Putin seemed to indicate more than a little bit of unease in Beijing about the way Russia’s war in Ukraine is playing out. At the opening of Thursday’s summit, Xi called on Putin to “assume the role of great powers and play a guiding role to inject stability and positive energy into a world rocked by social turmoil.”
But if anything, instability appeared to be on the rise this week. Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, conceded that Ukrainian forces were advancing on the separatist regions, recognized and backed by the Kremlin, but insisted there was “no need for panic.” And Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday said that if the United States decided to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles, it would cross a “red line” and become a “party to the conflict,” threatening more nuclear saber-rattling.
Bargain bin. But even if Xi is unhappy with Russia’s handling of the nearly seven-month war, China is reaping some big rewards: Beijing is buying cheaper energy from Russia as European purchases have cratered since the invasion, with Chinese purchases of crude oil up 17 percent over the summer and gas, coal, and electricity sales also booming. That trend could continue if Russia uses energy cuts over the winter to try to sap Western enthusiasm for backing Ukraine.
Loyal soldier. And for whatever it’s worth, Putin tried to make a show of the fact that he’s fully in Xi’s corner. Putin told the Chinese leader that he opposed so-called U.S. “provocations” in the Taiwan Strait and backed the “One China” policy, after Beijing launched wide-ranging military exercises last month in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in a move that Chinese officials worried was geared toward changing the half-century-old status quo in the region.
New world order. Both China and Russia are looking to expand their club of Western antagonists, despite some animosity between the two. Russia has already accepted drones from Iran and North Korea to push forward in Ukraine, and on Thursday, Tehran’s top diplomat announced that his country had signed a memorandum of obligation to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a move that could draw the three countries closer together. Iran has sought to try to draw on the help of Russia and China to avert pressure from Western sanctions since then-U.S. President Donald Trump exited the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
At the summit on Thursday, Putin seemed to indicate that Russia and China were still intent on creating an alternative to the U.S.-led rules-based international order that has stood since the end of World War II. “We jointly stand for the formation of a just, democratic, and multipolar world order based on international law and the central role of the United Nations and not on some rules someone has come up with and is trying to impose on others,” Putin said on Thursday. Good luck with that.
Let’s Get Personnel
Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, is expected to be President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to Russia, pending standard diplomatic agreement from the Kremlin, SitRep has confirmed with two people familiar with the matter. (CNN first reported the news.) Tracy would replace John Sullivan, who left his post this month after the death of his wife.
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who led NATO and U.S. forces in Europe, has joined the board of trustees of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
On the Button
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Offensive realism. Ukraine’s massive offensive in the country’s east has sent Russian forces scrambling back to regroup, marking one of the most significant battlefield victories for Kyiv since Russia first invaded back in February.
The takeaways from this offensive, according to Western officials we’ve spoken to this week, are (1) that Ukraine could possibly achieve a real strategic victory over Russia and recapture all of its occupied territory; (2) Russian forces are down but not necessarily out and could regroup in the Donetsk region; and (3) even by the low standards in which they have already been held, Russian forces performed much more dismally than most Western analysts expected. The war is far from over, but this latest offensive could prove to be a decisive turning point in Ukraine’s favor.
Auth the hook. Diplo-nerds rejoice. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has passed a State Department authorization bill to provide authorities over management and oversight of U.S. foreign policy.
It sounds like something too obscure and wonky to be excited about, but the last time a standalone State Department authorization bill was signed into law was 2002. It looks as if the Senate is starting to work out some atrophied muscles on basic governance over the State Department and foreign aid agencies. The committee’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Bob Menendez, outlines what he sees as policy wins in the bill here.
UNimpressed. With world leaders convening at the U.N. General Assembly this week and next, Foreign Policy caught up with Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, on top U.S. priorities for the frenzy of summitry and bilateral meetings.
Among the top agenda items, she said, are tackling food insecurity, global health issues, and reforming the U.N. Security Council. Then, of course, there’s the ongoing war in Ukraine. “I can tell you with total confidence that the Russians are feeling the pressure of the isolation that has been imposed on them since they started this war,” she said.
Quote of the Week
“We want to defeat the Ukrainian army? It seems like it’s practically impossible.”
—Former Russian parliamentarian Boris Nadezhdin tells the BBC that Russia should push for peace talks with Ukraine after Kyiv’s lightning counteroffensive retook most of the Kharkiv region. Nadezhdin also called out the Kremlin on Russian TV.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
School’s out. Hey, kids, why don’t you cut class? That’s the message from U.S. Army brass to rank-and-file soldiers this week. Senior leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston, are calling on commanders to stop emphasizing online military training that is taking time away from practice for actual combat and fitness exams—but that online training also happens to be mandatory.
“What we have to do for junior subordinates is give them our priorities and make sure they have the time,” McConville said. “Are you doing [physical training]? Are you making sure your squads can do a night live fire?”
Passing of the crown. Via My London, a Queen Elizabeth II impersonator is hanging up her crown after 34 years on the impersonator circuit, out of respect for the late monarch. Time for all those Charles lookalikes to have their day in the spotlight.
That’s it for this week.
For more from Foreign Policy, subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters. You can find older editions of Situation Report here.
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WILL DUBAI BE THE NEXT CRYPTO CAPITAL
The Start of Everything:
“The country that accepts challenges will get opportunities & benefits!”
Walking beforehand of each country, Dubai certainly changed into now no longer trailing in the back of within side the globe of growing cryptocurrency. Dubai aspires to be the global subsequent crypto capital. It’s rarely unexpected, for the reason that it’s come to be a center for technical improvements. To inspire cryptocurrency, the metropolis these days authorized law and installed a regulating agency.
In the autumn of 2016, the authorities of Dubai introduced a formidable plan to apply blockchain for all authorities files so as to create the globe’s first absolutely digitized authorities via means of 2021.
The identical year, it shaped the Global Blockchain Council, a frame comprising authorities, agencies, banks, and era corporations, with the aim of enforcing and scaling an era that, at the time, changed into nonetheless very embryonic.
In the 2 years since, the metropolis has piloted some groundbreaking blockchain projects, exploring progressive use instances throughout a variety of disparate sectors, from transportation and health to municipal offerings and education.
Will Dubai really be the next crypto-center of the world?
Dubai has been fostering the growth of the crypto enterprise by means of constructing a regulatory framework to trap crypto organizations and information to the metropolis as local financial competition heats up.
Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, stated in advance this month that the emirate exceeded its first regulation governing digital assets. It installed an impartial regulator to supervise the cryptocurrency commercial enterprise.
The Dubai Virtual Asset Regulation Law changed into a way to sell Dubai and the UAE as local and international crypto marketplace destinations. VARA, a regulatory agency, holds the supervisory authority. The regulation, licensing, and governance of the digital asset commercial enterprise surroundings could fall below it. It’s critical to check each issue earlier than pronouncing Dubai to be the crypto capital of the world.
The emirate these days granted digital asset licenses to Binance, the globe’s biggest crypto exchange, and FTX Europe, the European association of the Bahamas-primarily based totally cryptocurrency exchange. The license permits the groups to legally function in Dubai. On March 15, FTX Europe introduced the whole of its local headquarters in Dubai.
Rich Tech Are Rolling In Dubai
Dubai needs to create commercial enterprise-pleasant weather with rigorous regulations to recruit, retain, and help high-increase corporations as a way to live on the pinnacle of this extraordinarily brief marketplace. The cryptocurrency exchanges are the latest additions to a developing listing of crypto-associated groups increasing their operations in Dubai.
This Emirate has been dating cryptocurrency exchanges as rules in different international locations continue to be antagonistic or unclear. Instead, Dubai has opened its doors to prosperous Russian investors. Given the war-torn circumstances, western international locations have imposed an embargo on them. Basically, Dubai is doing the entirety of its energy to slowly move to the spot of turning into the Crypto Capital of the world.
Dubai is the best and most well-known city among all cities in UAE, the city of dreams and wealth. SilverLineSwap is said to be the next best cryptocurrency among all the other altcoins. Invest in Silverline to make your dreams come true financially in Dubai. Dubai is a city where there is rapid growth by all economic means, when we name it they already have it or else they’ll build it, likewise, Silverline already has its aspects and features one needed for trading and if we still don’t have it, we will still build it to make your dreams come true.
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#India accept crypto#best dex platform in India#accept crypto payment#WILL DUBAI BE THE NEXT CRYPTO CAPITAL#silverlineswap
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I’m obsessed with the jekyll and hyde tropes—the fight of a good man against literal inner demons, the desire to give in, fighting it for someone else, giving in for a moment because it’s a necessary sacrifice… all of it. I’d love to see your take on this sort of story if you’re up to it.
I'mma do the story...but also...the song 'Confrontation' from the Jekyll and Hyde musical...if you haven't listened to it yet I think you'll love it! (Featuring S.K Michel's cool redraw!): https://youtu.be/HEOrWTb2ikw
"Did you think you'd run far enough away?" That voice, that familiar voice that had haunted them for so long, hissed through the protagonist's mind.
If they opened their eyes, so to speak, they knew what they would see.
"Did you really think that was possible?" the antagonist continued, with a touch of laughter in the words. "Baby. I know I'm the clever one, but-"
"You're not." It came out through gritted teeth. The protagonist's eyes snapped open to glare. "You're not the clever one. We're the-"
"The same?"
The protagonist swallowed. They studied the monstrosity, so like them, and so very much not. For all of the laughter in the antagonist's voice, there was none of it reflected on their features.
No, no. Their monster didn't find this all that funny at all, did they?
The thought have the protagonist some strength, and they squared their shoulders.
"I'm not getting into that argument with you," the protagonist said. "Why are you here?"
It was rare, given their condition, that they got to see each other face to face to hold a conversation. It was only ever in dreams, in the desperate fizz of synapses and connections both broken and never-possibly broken because there was no running, no escaping it.
The rest of the time...
The rest of the time was blackouts, and the carnage left behind in the moments that the protagonist couldn't see. The antagonist often cleaned, leaving the world so pristine and bright and lovely on the surface that it took the protagonist a few dizzy days to wake up and smell the horror.
Some times, the antagonist left notes.
Mocking, faux conciliatory, not quite helpful things.
I got us more milk! Which always made the protagonist flinch, because neither of them drank milk, so milk was for visitors and needing more milk meant they'd had visitors.
Remember to take the bin out! As if the bin didn't have something awful hidden inside it.
Oh, darling. I took us to work today. Miss another day and I'm going to get angry :)
The antagonist took a few sauntering steps closer, out of shadow, into the blinding light of the protagonist's mental landscape that echoed the white walls of the rehabilitation centre that they both now found themselves in. The antagonist clicked their tongue, maybe pitying or maybe chiding, and the protagonist wasn't sure which option was worse. They watched, frozen, as the antagonist came closer still, before crouching down in front of them.
The protagonist wanted to look away. Looking away felt too much like weakness, especially now. They knew how they appeared.
"Poor baby," the antagonist said, softly. "Did you think the drinking and the drugs were working to stop me?"
The protagonist said nothing, because they had, and the antagonist already knew that. For a while it had felt they could maybe even drown the antagonist entirely and for good, like getting rid of a persistent wasp hissing and buzzing in their brain. No.
There was always a come down. There was always a bad dream waiting at the end of it. There was always, always, the two of them.
"You're making such a mess," the antagonist sighed. They reached out, stroking the protagonist's lank hair back from their forehead. "I thought that was my job, huh?"
"Can't let you have all the fun."
The antagonist laughed, though their eyes were still cold. Always so, so cold.
"I would have thought," it was the protagonist's turn to press on, "that you would have enjoyed seeing me wreck us. You like destruction."
But, instead, the monster had made arrangements and checked them in and apparently spoken earnestly with the relevant persons about addiction and getting back on track. Maybe that meant it had all been working.
The antagonist clicked their tongue again, at that thought as if they could hear it, and straightened back to stand.
"I've never destroyed us," the antagonist said. "You're the only one with that maddening proclivity. Not that it's a surprise, you know, but..." the antagonist sighed, like the protagonist was a sad case of an unruly child. "Honestly, some times it's like I have to do everything around here."
The antagonist had first come about from the experiments, intended to make the protagonist better, able to help more people with their telepathy. And, for a while, they had. But every time they had used their newfound powers the antagonist had grown stronger, more present, more distinct.
Some times, the protagonist wasn't entirely sure which of them was the shadow anymore, and which the real thing.
"At some point," the antagonist said. "You're just going to have to learn to live with me. Because, baby, if it's not astoundingly obvious - you're mine. And I'm not going anywhere."
#writing#stories#original stories#villains#story#creative writing#fiction#writeblr#jekyll and hyde#possession#maybe#we all have complicated relationships with the different sides of us I think
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