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itsdappleagain · 10 months

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It's time for the end of season 2- The Deep Dive Caper!

What an absolutely showstopping finale!! I'm so thrilled to liveblog it. This episode gets serious like no other episode really does before or since. Lets get started!

Late, as usual. Buy a lottery ticket the day I do one of these on time. Notes under the cut as always!

right off the bat this episode is pretty much unlike any other. they try to have a caper setup- the vile drive- but it's not long before we realize that EVERYTHING is gone. even in the last finale the sort of "caper" of the episode was rescuing devineaux. this episode is all about answers.

"all on my own. the only sure way i know." hrnnrgh carmen

their boat is being so nice and stationary in the middle of a raging storm and waves taller than they are

"MY FIST IS GOING TO MAKE YOUR GUTS EXPLODE" ivy never change

its ALLL GONE

rip vile island we hardly knew ye

the cs team is just showing off their background artists 😌

ah would you like some mashed shadowsan with your steak

maelstrom your plan sucked babygirl sorry. should have sic'd brunt on her on the train like a rottweiler

interesting plan though. if shadowsan really had killed dexter, what would carmen have done? beat him up? sent him to acme? just thrown him out? she promises to hunt him down if he runs but like what were you going to do after that? murder for a murder?

malestrom: maybe she'll show up in botswana ✨ carmen who's been out for the count for half a year and has no reason to have even shown up in botswana as early as she did:

the teddy bear <3

in love with cleo's boob straps. that safety harness does not even clip in the front its like if a backpack was securing you to a car

that explosion animation is so good though its so impactful

its a damn good thing devineaux showed up when he did he could have been blown to the gates of hell in one second flat and no one would have been any the wiser

chase drinks so much disrespect women juice the first two seasons that he blames julia for an impression of her that his own mind dreamed up i love him for that

angry carmen is so babygirl to me. go bestie show emotion. get so mad about that shit

mmm and theres the shot i used for our title card! and what a fantastic one it is. shadowsan's motif playing in the background as carmen pauses at the oni, but the show itself telling us that he is still on her side with that gigantic, massive symbol of him framing carmen in a circle of red. if you pay attention and learn the colors the team likes, you don't even have to worry about this ep its all cool

you know what the dominant color in this entire scene of carmen trying to find out the truth is, though? blue. even when she's in the server room or staring at shadowsan's oni, the water isnt tinted green like they easily could have made it. its. all. blue.

obsessed with how zack wakes up he's being exorcised and the demon was the peppers and onions

agree it would have been hilarious if devineaux finally gets rescued and it turns out to be a really, really pissed off carmen sandiego

roundabout has the air of a theater kid who always got the leads but had to act surprised about it

evil ihop

i love how confused roundy looks its so funny

devineaux stabbing himself and the scream makes me cry laughing every single time

devineaux really goes ↘️↗️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️↘️

i would watch a series about devineaux being left to fend for himself on the island and slowly losing his mind

his supervisor was so excited about firing him

okay here we go it all gets real now

carmens realization going from my dad was a cop -> my dad was literally the exact opposite of a cop and neither of those things being things she is happy about

i love the realization hitting her face (even if it was animated. a touch blandly)

shadowsan's face s just animated fantastically here. his eyebrows are up- he realizes carmen is there, maybe confused about why she isnt saying anything. then his eyebrows drop, his face falls ever so slightly. he knows the jig is up

also. yes. "your silence is like thunder" is just. ough its such a good line

he isn't even surprised by the question he knew it was coming eventually

"if you run, I will find you." its not a threat its a damn promise. for older viewers its easy to draw the connection between the famous i will find you and i will kill you. it doesnt have to be said.

mm and carmen rejecting the offer to sit and be comfortable around him. she just can't

even in the flashbacks your can see so much of carmen in him its so great. its dishonorable, and everything carmen stands against, but she is undeniably her father's daughter

the plot for this flashback is so sophisticated its so so good. they treat the audience really well about it

also young faculty designs <3

the red on the inside of dexter's jacket to symbolize his secret with carmen im sobbing

also the decision to make carmen have his eyes is. hrngh.

already been pointed out but the way the music softens when shadowsan says "you" HURTS

THAT BABY IS A SNITCH. carmen. snitchdiego

the heartbreak when present carmen speaks again gfgrgh

i like the new mask he hangs behind him before carmen confronts him, by the way. its green and white- the shadow of vile and his past looming over his shoulder, maybe- but also the mask of vile he had to put on to lie about what really happened to wolfe

BABY CARMEN CRYING AS DEXTER TRIES TO HIDE HER :(((

the dolls rdhg im not crying you are

anyone have any thoughts on a dexter voice claim btw?

also also i sprang this on rueitae already but "dexter" while referring to dexterity and his skill as a thief can also mean "the one who dyes" which. jesus. it refers to dying cloth but the double meaning is ouchie

he locks her in gay baby jail!!!

i gotta stop making jokes about the most serious part of the entire series sorry

there's a little bit of a pink panther hint to his theme as he sneaks out the window which is interesting

rue's also already covered it but what WAS this man's plan for just leaving baby carm in there. like shadowsan says desperation i guess

god young chief shooting and killing an unarmed dexter wolfe and presumably orphaning her is the twist. of a fucking lifetime

the despair in the music cue when it reveals it was only his car keys

the matryoshka dolls getting burned in that fire ahrhgfrdshgsghds

love that shadowsan not only sets the house on fire while he and a baby are still in it but gives said baby an object that just got set on fire

also vile protocol dictating that he should have just burned a baby alive?? what the fuck!

bellum's apathy, mael's mild interest/concern, and cleo's disgust towards baby carm shdfjads

little tiny baby carmen shunting her butt at cleo is hilarious

faculty: omg she's a real natural thief she stole that thing without anyone noticing baby carmen in broad daylight five seconds earlier:

btw bb carm is so cute she's so round

carmen finally just sliding to the floor under the weight of all of that information. now that she has at least the idea that shadowsan was not the one who murdered her father, even if she still needs proof

"why would you make me find out on my own?" is one of the most heartbreaking lines in here. she had to go through this realization almost completely alone. her trust in the man she was coming to see as a father was shattered and he could have just told her. he could have just told her

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shadowsan crying theyre so family

you can just hear the regret and fear and sadness in his voice paul nakauchi is literally so good

REAL CHIEF!

COMMANDER!!!! oh shittt i missed the one and only canon commander caturday rip...

ivy violently hitting the cash register is a mood

the little reveal even in the music as it pans to ivy in the starbucks uniform

chief nailed the good natured but a little exasperated "hmm" when dealing with people who have no idea what they are doing

ivys little look as she sees carmen walk in. the smile drop off her face as she walks away

carmen's theme ahrugdhjdsg the music in this show is so good

what is her hand doing

oh chief no honey

the deadpan "i wouldnt drink it"

i love the little nod/head bow thing of acknowledgement of carmen's efforts

the sinister music as carmen ever so casually pulls off her little trick is GREAT

i didnt know chief could open doors 🤨

congrats on being gay agent argent you did it again

player hack chief so bad the logo goes off of the screen

"somethings wrong" yeah no shit julia

chiefs oh shit face is so funny shes like aohhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooo

little guy

im so mature

we love digging up graves

that dawning apprehension on carm's face as she realizes there's a chance she might be about to see the decayed corpse of her twenty-years-dead mom in there

carlotta being modelled after old carmen was a cool choice. lots of fan theories about old carm being her mom this day 🫡

"are you with me?" "to the end of the line." grgfhgjhsdhjsgds im shaking them violently in my teeth if i ever got a cs quote tattoo or something it would probably be that line

the only thing i dislike about this cliffhanger is that in s3 they kind of try to deliver on this big wide promise that this finale gave us and then give up until the last episode of the entire series. like. isk. i feel like they should have either gone harder on the carlotta mystery or left it alone although they did leave me the opportunity to write a 66 thousand word fic series on the concept so i guess i cant complain

half clean shaven half very unshaved chase is so funny its cursed. he shouldnt have no hair but he shouldnt have that much worst of both worlds

devineaux's theme mixing in with that iconic action/danger soundtrack as he grins devilishly is just fantastic shit

chief waiting for a response as chase just silently smirks into the mirror

anyway GOODNESS GRACIOUS i cannot believe we're already through season 2????? what???? tis the end of my favorite season :( but s3/4 are nothing to sneeze at, either!! im super excited to get into more. (plus tsonts? are we doing that?)

#cs weekly #csweekly #carmen sandiego #carmen sandiego 2019

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amphitritemists · 9 months

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Red, White, and Royal Blue movie review

I love this movie and the actors did a great job at bringing the romance in the book to the screen buuuuuut I also feel like the movie watered down and took away everything that made this book special just to make a safer film that would appeal more to straight girls that want to see two hot guys kiss rather than queer kids who want to see themselves represented.

They took away the Luna plotline and how corrupt the Republican party was in the book to... I guess make the film less politically controversial? The election itself held way less significance than it did in the original novel giving us no real reason to cheer madame president's re-election other than she's Uma Thurman and she's one of the main character's mom so yeah cool she wins.

They took away the divorce plotline and Alex struggling with sexuality. The divorce was huge because it meant that Henry's character had to bear the brunt of the emotional tones in this film, being the one who lost his father and having homophobic family members. It took away a way for these two to connect on a personal level because I never felt like Alex had much to open up about in the film as compared to Henry's struggles. Not to mention Alex coming to term with his sexuality at an older age was so validating for queer readers who didn't realize they were queer until they were adults. And it made him coming out to his mom make less sense cause he knew he was bi for so long and that his family were supportive of queer rights so why the hold up? (And why was there no "congrats your bi but does it have to be the prince" powerpoint)

Finally, they cut the white house trio and watered the friendships entirely. Too often we see gay couples on screen and it's them against the world but Red, White, and Royal Blue showed that wasn't the case. There will be people who hate us but there are also people who will love and accept us if we let them in. By becoming a couple, Henry and Alex each expanded their social circle and it was such a beautiful thing to see because this book wasn't just about romantic love. It's how that romantic love gave these two the courage to seek more love from family and friends and that's what really brought them happiness in the end. The movie just missed that.

Again, I love this film and this story but 4/5 stars because it had the potential to be so much better and I'm disappointed with how much of the heart was lost

#red white and royal blue #red white and royal blue movie #alex clairmont diaz #prince henry fox mountchristen windsor #lgbtq+#queer movies

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decepti-thots · 2 years

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☕️ the Optimus Prime ongoing?

look, i get why a lot of the fandom, even the part of the fandom that likes exRiD, often bounces off the OP ongoing to one extent or another. it's a book with a lot of caveats required when recommending it; both in that it has some pretty significant flaws narratively, and that what it's even trying to do in a lot of cases is simply not what a lot of people want out of their TF comics. but i really really like the OP ongoing. at its best it has some of the most interesting and subversive approaches to iconic parts of TF, especially Optimus himself, that we've seen in any major continuity; it pulls together Barber's concept for IDW Optimus more completely than anything else, and as someone who really respects what he went for with that character personally, that alone means I get a lot out of it.

its big flaws are pretty easy to nail down, tbh. it exists during the mandated hasbroverse stuff that forces a lot of chaff into the world and ongoing narrative of IDW1, and it's forced to bear the brunt of it among the three ongoings. it comes at a point where Barber is being stretched REAL thin by his writing and editorial responsibilities, and there is a very real dip in how tight the storytelling is that i have always assumed was in part related to what must have been just an overwhelming amount of work Barber had to do each and every month on these comics by that point. (the devil works hard. Barber, when running TF comics, worked harder.) at times, Barber gets extraordinarily excessive regarding his tendency for extremely deep cut referential lore-heavy stuff, which if nothing else makes the fact OP was supposed to be a new-reader-friendly soft relaunch HILARIOUS. and content wise, there are some swings and misses in there for sure.

but still. i do like it. i think it does such a good job at making Optimus a central character, as distinct from necessarily a protagonist, and showing through all these other characters around him the weight he exerts on his narrative and his world. it's a story interested in the consequences of a character like Optimus being able to exist, someone who is mythic walking around still alive and interacting with those around him, and the near impossibility of leveraging anything like that for actual good because it will always bite you in the ass.

and it has so many compelling characters! arcee gets her due here, following on from exRiD. some of the best soundwave content in the comics is found here, and i love barber's soundwave. aileron, jazz (GUYS, JAZZ IS IN THIS ONE, WILL THAT MAKE U READ IT), a resolution for sideswipe... and yeah, the series understandably has a reputation for being Barber at his most overly convoluted and plot-heavy and fanwanky, but it also has some truly compelling emotional threads because dammit Barber IS good at writing emotional arcs, and he deserves to be known for it too. the issue where Arcee says goodbye to a dying Sideswipe makes me cry. the Arcee/Aileron throughline is wonderful and a hugely important part of her arc. the stuff he does with Soundwave thematically slaaaaps.

...this is really long so i'll finish with a couple final points. one, i think basically any analysis of Prowl's character in IDW that skips OP entirely is just inherently incomplete. one day, i want to write about what Barber does with Prowl in the flashbacks re: looking back on and recontextualizing some elements of the character. and two, this run has two of my favourite single issues in the entirety of IDW; the annual, Starscream: The Movie, and #25. so yeah. it's flawed and not for everyone, but i think people should really give it a chance.

#ask meme

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storiesbydtcecil · 2 years

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Ginrei's Visit And Byakuya's Regret

By the time Byakuya made it to his office, he was seething inside. People stayed out of his way-literally- fleeing after sensing his low, menacing spiritual pressure before they'd caught a glimpse of him.

When the captain enters the barracks, subordinates line the walls in the corridors of Squad Six bowing their heads out of respect for his station as is proper. As Byakuya approaches, he registers numerous spiritual pressures just as they made themselves scarce to prevent an encounter with him like a school of fish darting away, sensing an unnatural disturbance.

He didn't blame them.

At this very moment, his control, his patience, and his emotional governance were in tatters. His knuckles were bleeding on his right hand, shame suffusing him at the thought of his actions just minutes before in the meeting hall.

Damn Kaito! Damn the lot of them for this!

For, as Byakuya suspected, the proposal for him to marry Rukia was a screen for the real plot.

Kaito and the elder council knew he would never, in three millennia, agree to marry his sister. Such a move like that would bring down a scandal, the likes of which would rock the Seireitei on its foundations, not to mention the nobility.

Dissolving Rukia's adoption, changing his role from guardian and brother to lover and husband, would bring shame down on his house. Everyone would immediately assume that he and Rukia have been entertaining secret liaisons or a sexual relationship under the fiction of brother and sister. Though a lie, it will be damaging to Rukia.

As a woman, with propriety at stake, as society insists upon, she will bear the brunt of the scorn, unfair as that is. Being the head of the household, Byakuya could, essentially, do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. In theory, if he were a rogue, the most he'd have gotten would be a token protest from the council elders; maybe not so much as that, given Rukia's origins.

Each member of the council is the leader of his or her cadet branch. Through a system of votes, decisions are made that affect the entire clan, with Byakuya's voice being the final say on any motion.

Today, he didn't use his voice to cast aside the elders 'council'. He would have lost the argument.

I lost my arguments either way.

Though it rubs Byakuya the wrong way to admit it, his actions up to this point drove the Elders to resort to 'necessary measures,' as they phrased it. He understands their misgivings and shoulders the responsibility for what pushed his kinsman into this corner.

He hasn't remarried. He hasn't sired any heirs, legitimately or not. Except for his wife for those brief years, in all his two hundred and fifty years, Byakuya Kuchiki has never entertained a lover in his bed. And when Hisanna left this world, he had no interest in anything along the lines of intimacy.

To their credit, the Elders had tried different avenues to see to their charge. They arranged balls, fêtes, tea parties, and tournaments, inviting the noble hierarchies and their eligible daughters in hopes that he would meet with a young woman of noble bearing. Byakuya would attend as a matter of showing his face, then leave once he's made enough of an appearance to spark gossip.

Like attires laid out by servants on his bed, the counsel had selected noblewomen out for him 'to get to know', two years after Hisanna died; their time measure for getting over the hurdle of grief. They had been lovely. One long, shallow parade of pompous powdered faces and rouge lips, self-important egos, and flattery competed for his attention and the chance to switch whatever their titles were, to the shiny new one of 'Lady Kuchiki.' But when they each met his sister, most of them had turned their noses up at Rukia, 'the gutter rat' he adopted into the noble house of Kuchiki. When they thought he was looking, they played nice with her, pretending to adore the girl, who was the last remnant of his late wife. When they thought he wasn't looking, the scene got disturbing. Byakuya's seen mangy dogs treated with more respect.

Now, he reflected on what would have happened had he considered their suitability a bit more. Vetted the young ladies enough to find one among them he could have entered into a political marriage with- loveless and for spectacle, as it would have been but with mutual benefits for both houses.

Three hells! He could have stomached the act long enough to implant his seed to impregnate his bride, couldn't he? Maybe acquire some aphrodisiacs from the World of the Living to help with his performance? He would have pictured Hisanna's face when he gazes down at the stranger in her place under him. If he could've predicted the council would have used a technicality in the Kuchiki laws against him. He didn't even know that such a thing could be done or in the Kuchiki customs. But that's no excuse.

'At the age of maturity, if there are no heirs sired by the current head of the clan, then the next in line from a cadet branch would legally be entitled to the position as head of the clan should he or she be of the same age, rank, or station.'

Byakuya knew of this custom of the Kuchiki laws. In the event of his death, then someone from the most influential cadet branch would be his successor if he didn't have one already named. He didn't. Not out of carelessness given his day job but out of lack.

Byakuya was yet to find someone from the Kuchiki cadet branches who wasn't bloated with self-important arrogance and hell-bent on sucking up as much power as they could get. Even the less influential cadet branches scheme and plot pettily against one another.

If Rukia had been his blood sibling, then the mantle as head of the clan would automatically pass down to her. Byakuya would have been grooming her with gruelling lessons on the clan's history daily, more so than what she'd gotten during her first year after she was adopted; and she hated those.

But Rukia, for all her wits and determination to her duties, traits he admires about her, shows no aspiration for being more involved with Kuchiki affairs than absolutely necessary. Byakuya didn't have that luxury.

With such a coveted position as head of the clan, Byakuya has to maintain a spy network dedicated to delivering important titbits and reporting to him daily. He has spies of spies that didn't even know that the information they garnered as they work under their different guises: servants, cooks, scullery maids, gardeners, etc gets fed back to the head of the very clan members they spied upon.

Byakuya couldn't claim to be a spymaster in all its methodical intrigues, which can get tedious, but he's adept enough to watch for assassination attempts, spies in his own house from other houses and his cadets' branches, sedition, sinister plots, coup d'etats, rapes, kidnappings, underhanded tactics, and the list continues. To top it off, he wasn't just watching for himself and his immediate household, he remains diligent for the weaker cadets branches with less influence that, if he wasn't careful, would have been absorbed by the other branches instead of maintaining their independence.

Watching Kaito's cadet household is like having his breakfast every day. Byakuya and his spies actively keep vigilant due to the cadet house's actions in the past and their history of starting sedition in the clans against the main branch household some nine centuries back. Ginrei and Byakuya's father had nearly annihilated that entire branch, those who were not exiled outright. Believing that the cadet household could be playing the long game, the main branch has kept watch constantly, keeping the power dynamics in check, weary of betrayal.

Since Kaito became the head of the branch, taking over when his aged father committed seppuku in penance for his family crimes against the main branch household, there's been no evidence of unsavory practices.

How could I have not seen this coming?

Anticipating the answer to their aggressive suggestion would be a hard 'NO', old snake face, and the rest of the council set up a counter-proposal, something Byakuya couldn't have predicted.

If Byakuya didn't dissolve her adoption and, marry Rukia with the Kuchiki council's backing now - which would go a long way to smoothing ruffled feathers among the nobles; not only from the other great houses but also with cadet branches- then by right of custom, Kaito's in position as the next in line, and from the first and, most influential cadet branches, to vote to install his son, Kalon Kuchiki, Byakuya's first cousin, as the next head of the clan by marrying off Rukia to him.

Byakuya would rather see his sister dead on the battlefield than give her over to that artifice!

They want to use my sister as a bargaining chip to sink their claws into the main household.

Or, by contrast, trail her name through the mud should Byakuya marry her so that they'll have their heir. Either way, the council gets what it wants, and Rukia's reputation (what she's worked so hard to build up) gets compromised.

Either by me or, by the council.

Entering his office and sliding the door shut, Byakuya took his seat in the uncomfortable wooden chair assigned to all with his rank and all lieutenants. It mimics the head captain's office chair. A sign of equality; through power scales widely differ among the white cloaks and the lieutenants of the Gotei Thirteen.

Resting both elbows on his desk, Byakuya pressed his face into his waiting palms, ignoring the protest of his right knuckles as flexing them sent pain signals through his arm. He inhales a deep breath, and holding it in his lungs, begins counting backward from twenty in his mind while slowly releasing the trapped air through his mouth. Byakuya continues this breathing technique until the need to yell and tear at his hair abated long enough. In the process of calming down, Byakuya senses movement resuming around the barracks. As if time thawed the silence, slowly the barracks came back to life. Feet shuffled over the wooden floorboards, uniform clothing rustles, curiosity inked through spiritual reiatsus, maybe wondering why their ever-collected stoic captain's spiritual pressure was mad as all nine hells. It's not normal to see the captain of Squad Six get emotional. Only one other can claim to wrile him so, to shatter his mask of calm, and he lives in the World of the Living.

But unlike that brat, Byakuya couldn't just whip out his sword, hack things to bits like a barbarian, then call it a day. In that, he envied the simpleton teenager; his problems were never beyond the point of his sword.

Keeping his eyes closed, Byakuya moves his fingers to his temples, massaging them slowly- continuing his deep inhalations- exhaling through his mouth.

"I thought I would find you here,"

Byakuya's eyes snap open, startled at the voice in his office. He dropped his hands immediately.

Ginrei was standing on the threshold of Byakuya's office, the door sliding wide enough to accommodate his slight build, now sunken with age. The man before him once towered over Byakuya. Ginrei was a powerful Shinigami to be reckoned with. Their roles were reversed now with the passage of time.

"Grandfather!" Byakuya stood instantly, causing the wooden chair to scrape against the floor protestingly at the sudden movement.

The thin old man slid the panel door shut behind him as he shuffled into his former office. Wrinkled hands clasped behind his slightly stooped back.

"Lord Kuchiki-Sama," Ginrei greeted his grandson by his title with differential respect, accompanied with a bow of his grey head.

Byakuya bowed in reply, showing his respect in return.

His grandfather is the reason he has his title and is his strongest supporter. He may be burdened with age, but the man is not to be underestimated.

Byakuya's desk is opposite the only door in his office to the far wall. When he's seated behind his desk, he faces the threshold and can usually tell when someone approaches from three corridors down in any direction, his spiritual awareness far-reaching. Yet Ginrei slid his door open, then stood before him without Byakuya picking up on his reiatsu? Yes, his eyes were closed, but that makes spiritual energies more perceivable without the hindrance of sight.

Breaking the posture as their greeting ended, Ginrei turned, then walked to the window in silence.

Suddenly, it's as if Byakuya was a fresh-face lieutenant again in service to his superior, Ginrei Kuchiki, the Captain of Squad Six.

Byakuya dreaded asking his grandfather why he was here? He's guessed the answer well enough.

"Grandfather," Byakuya begins, tentatively breaking the silence.

"I heard," Ginrei started, interrupting his grandson in his matter-of-fact gravelly voice, "that you punched Kaito in the face," the older man arched a salt and pepper brow as he turned his head in Byakuya's direction, "repeatedly."

Byakuya hides his wince before taking a deep breath and blowing it out in a soft sigh. The instant his fist met Kaito's wrinkled jaw, he calculated that this was coming.

Ginrei was still waiting for him to comment, Byakuya realized- to defend himself as a matter of fairness before the judgement- much to his disquiet.

Byakuya bit the inside of his left cheek, feeling like a boy of fifteen winters and not a man in his first quarter millennium. He clears his throat, "I lost my temper."

"Where?" Ginrei asked innocently.

The question took Byakuya by surprise, making his brows collide confusedly in the center of his forehead, "I don't follow," he admitted.

"Where did you lose your temper, exactly?" Ginrei repeated his question, "over a ravine? Down the open maw of a gully? In a deep trench at the bottom of the ocean somewhere in the World of the Living?"

Byakuya flushed with shame for his actions. How did he look before the elders pummelling into an old man's face? Thinking about someone doing the same thing to Ginrei and Byakuya wished he could sink into the floor like his Bankai.

"He insulted-" Byakuya started to explain through gritted teeth.

Ginrei unclasped his hands from behind his back to hold up a palm to stop him, "I am aware of what Kaito said. I heard every detail. Regardless of your reasons, and Kaito might have deserved the thrashing for his foolish words in your presence," Ginrei allowed, "it's reflecting poorly on you to behave like a tyrant to the people you are responsible for. It behooves the Kuchiki Clan's name to have its head knock the dentures out of a clan elder advisor."

Byakuya didn't bother to hide his wince this time. "I will make an effort to amend the main branch's relationship with Kaito and his household if he apologizes before the council for his insolence."

"Apologise for what he said about Rukia-Sama or Hisanna-Sama?" Ginrei gave Byakuya a quizzical look.

Byakuya gave him a deadpan look in return, "Both."

Ginrei's lips quirked slightly before turning back to whatever had his attention at the window.

Did grandfather just was smirked? What does that mean? Byakuya was puzzled for a second then he let the thought go.

In an effort to change the subject, Byakuya asked after another a few moments passed, "were you aware of the council's proposal?"

His grandfather was absent for the counsel's meeting this morning, citing his reasons for skipping as 'an unforeseen errand' for which he installed a trusted aid to act in his stead. When Ginrei says "unforeseen errand" that can mean anything from a hollow incursion, an internal dispute that required him to sit in as a mediator or he was attending to his gardening on his estate. Given the lack of reports on the first two, Byakuya suspected the latter.

Today must be an exercise of my patience.

"I did," The older man answers easily, "it was I who recommended that you marry Rukia."

Byakuya's witty retort to that?

"What?"

Byakuya's hand fumbles for the uncomfortable chair and sits down before the strength in his knees deserted him.

"This must come as a surprise, considering that I was against her adoption in the beginning," Ginrei said evenly, walking away from the window of his old office, both hands tied behind his back once again. "And I advised against marrying her sister," the old man's voice was reminiscent, "but you did what you wanted to, ignoring the council's advice and my own. Against all the odds, she is now a part of this family, and she has responsibilities."

Surprise? Byakuya felt like someone just throat punched him. He could barely breathe. When had his life become a game of 'Annoy Byakuya until he went Bankai?'

He was still recovering from what his grandfather just confessed, but maybe it was silly of him to feel this way. After all, Ginrei is a part of the Council of Elders. Why wouldn't he be a part of their discussions?

"Grandfather," Byakuya had to take a breath before continuing, "with all due respect, I've repudiated this...radical decision to alter mine and Rukia's life."

Ginrei remained silent, keeping a fixed grey gaze on his grandson's face.

"I understand," Byakuya continued, amazed that his tone was so steady given the tumult of emotions clashing through his spirit right now, "that the council wants self-preservation to maintain the purity of the Kuchiki bloodline. What I find pointless is the inclusion of Rukia in this decision? She doesn't carry the blood in her veins. Why then-?"

"Do I need to repeat myself?" Ginrei's tone was wheezy and rhetorical, "you made that decision for Rukia from the moment you adopted her into this family. Many on the council thought that you would repeat your earlier mistake."

Byakuya stiffened, "Mistake?"

"Yes," Ginrei replied calmly.

Byakuya knew his grandfather was only retelling what council members said in private away from the head's ears and eyes, and this is not something the man would divulge on a whim. His grandfather was only being honest with him, a rare quality among nobles. Byakuya bit his tongue and listened. After a moment, Ginrei continued.

"On the year after Hisanna's death, you found her sister."

Byakuya's chest heaved with a deep breath, reliving the day as if it was yesterday, the complexity of the feelings that roiled inside of him on seeing the girl's face for the first time. His mouth had gone dry, his heart drumming in his rib cage threateningly.

Hisanna!

Tears threatened to embarrass him in the company of the superintendent of Shinōreijutsuin Academy. But it was not his wife. The face was nearly identical, but that's where the similarities ended. Never had his late wife been so full of life.

Where Hisanna was frail and needed protection; as Byakuya watched this scrawny girl during a practice training session with wooden swords against their partners, from a window high up in the superintendent's office, he could perceive the fiery vigor emanating from her very pores as she attacked opponents larger, and stronger than her.

Jealousy had strangled him at that moment. Jealousy that Hisanna's younger sister got every ounce of life and health that she needed. He remembered thinking as he watched Rukia get knocked on her backside for the third time in less than two minutes by her red-headed taller partner, that it wasn't fair.

Then he resented that he was the one standing here and not Hisanna, who's searched every day for her younger sister.

"We, myself included," Ginrei's voice intruded on his reminiscence, "believed that you were going marry her, as you did her older sister, to cope with your grief. At least, those were the more savory arguments." the old man demurred.

Once again, the legs of the wooden chair scraped against the floorboards as Byakuya stood abruptly, palms balled into fists, "she was but a child," he hissed through gritted teeth.

Having a shouting match in his office with ears growing from the walls would only aid the art of gossip against the Kuchiki Clan.

Keep it together. Get yourself under control. Byakuya thought willing cooling reason to temper his anger.

"A girl that looks very much like your dearly departed wife. A girl with no family name. An urchin from the slums, no one would have batted an eye if your reasons for acquiring Rukia was for comfort and release." Ginrei's steady eyes met his grandson's glaring stormy gaze.

His grandfather's tone held no inflection of judgement or scorn. He was relating conversations, the discussions between him and the council members or members of other noble houses from years ago, yet the words still burned like a Hado spell.

"And when have I made a showing of being a scoundrel for them to assume that I would do such a thing?"

Ginrei shrugged nonchalantly, "people talk and make their assumptions. That's not something you can ever control. As they say in the World of the Living, 'when you're up on stage, be ready to accept both the roses and the rotten tomatoes."

"Then why suggest this now?" Byakuya asked after a stretch of silence, his eyes narrowing at his grandfather.

After all I've put her through? After she had to be rescued by a stranger from me. Blindly following the law, I nearly killed and threatened to kill the precious life, my wife, with her last breath entrusted me to find and protect.

Bile rose in his throat; his actions soured in his memories.

Ginrei strolled over to Byakuya's side and placed a hand on his shoulder. Looking up into his grandson's face, he told him,

"I raised a man of integrity,"

Byakuya knew that when Ginrei started this speech, it meant the subject matter was closed. Unfair of him because it didn't feel close to Byakuya.

"I took a boy and raised a leader of men,"

"Grandfather..." Byakuya swallowed, "I will not marry Rukia,"

"Then you're condemning her to a bitter, miserable life because Kaito will, on legal grounds, force the match between Kalon and Rukia. She's at the age of maturity, no longer, legally, in need of a guardian's guidance."

He turns to leave, hands clasped behind his back, striding to the door. A few paces away, he stopped. Looking over his shoulder, Ginrei remarked, "I know the man that I raised will do what's best for the collective whole regardless of the sacrifice."

Sliding the door open, Ginrei Kuchiki left. Leaving Byakuya in the hell of a situation he created.

Find the rest of the story here: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/245932377/write/973536871

#bleachfanfiction #bleachships #bleachanime #rukiaxbyakuya #romance

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vivacissimx · 2 years

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An interesting result of the Jon & Catelyn tension is the way that, once out of Winterfell, Jon confronts her influence on him. It would be wrong to say he didn't internalize any part of her, because he did: he got the hardest parts of her, so naturally she shows up in the most flawed parts of him. The parts of him he's forced to face in AGOT.

Many asoiaf characters re-enact their own trauma/abuse/humiliation (Theon with Beth Cassel, Cersei with Taena, Arya with Raff the Sweetling) and Jon is no different.

As he watched his uncle lead his horse into the tunnel, Jon had remembered the things that Tyrion Lannister told him on the kingsroad, and in his mind's eye he saw Ben Stark lying dead, his blood red on the snow. The thought made him sick. What was he becoming? Afterward he sought out Ghost in the loneliness of his cell, and buried his face in his thick white fur.

-AGOT, Jon III

Anyway, there are similarities btwn AGOT Jon and Catelyn turning their negative emotions out on others [first two quotes regarding their brothers, the last two when they feel hurt & lash out to make the hurt mutual]:

Jon noticed the shy looks [Myrcella] gave Robb as they passed between the tables and the timid way she smiled at him. He decided she was insipid. Robb didn't even have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning like a fool.

-AGOT, Jon I

"Cersei Lannister is comely," she said sharply. "You'd be wiser to pray that Roslin is strong and healthy, with a good head and a loyal heart." And with that she left them.

Edmure did not take that well. The next day he avoided her entirely on the march, preferring the company of Marq Piper, Lymond Goodbrook, Patrek Mallister, and the young Vances. They do not scold him, except in jest, Catelyn told herself when they raced by her that afternoon with nary a word. I have always been too hard with Edmure, and now grief sharpens my every word. She regretted her rebuke. There was rain enough falling from the sky without her making more. And was it really such a terrible thing, to want a pretty wife?

-ASOS, Catelyn V

Jon Snow stroked Ghost's thick white fur, smiling now. "Ask me nicely."

Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a will. It was not the first time in his life he had been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps he even deserved this. "I should be very grateful for your kind assistance, Jon," he said mildly.

-AGOT, Tyrion II

"No more than Theon Greyjoy would harm Bran or Rickon?"

Grey Wind leapt up atop King Tristifer's crypt, his teeth bared. Robb's own face was cold. "That is as cruel as it is unfair. Jon is no Theon."

-ASOS, Catelyn V

However, these sort of kneejerk responses don't become a habit for Jon. There is a learning curve, but when Jon's behavior is pointed out to him (you're a bastard and a bully) he makes different choices. Jon and Tyrion form a friendship. When his anger flares at not being named ranger, Sam makes him realize the folly of his own pride. Later on with Gilly, Jon gets upset at the unfairness of the situation but forces himself to accept a resolution he personally does not like.

This is dissimilar to Catelyn, as seen through her feelings towards Jon: Catelyn accepts that bastards exist, recognizes them in Ned/Edmure/Robert's case, however the Stark way of raising bastards in the home isn't something she can stomach. Catelyn finds Jon's presence likely as unjust as Jon finds his fellow Night's Watch recruits at first. Who bears the brunt of these dissatisfactions? In Catelyn's case it's Jon til the end; in Jon's case it's Grenn and Pyp and Halder, until he confronts his own privilege and befriends them instead.

Contrast how Jon opens himself to the wildlings, eventually coming to compromises with them, to how Catelyn approaches Tyrion during their time at the Eyrie. These are both situations in which Catelyn and Jon face their supposed enemies, even gain some respect and trust for them, but where Jon learns to be malleable, Catelyn purposely fortifies herself against that.

She believes she has to, in order to be strong.

She woke aching and alone and weary; weary of riding, weary of hurting, weary of duty. I want to weep, she thought. I want to be comforted. I'm so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once.

-ACOK, Catelyn II

And this is the tragedy of Catelyn, in my view. She is so smart. She is deft, patient, loyal, moral. Catelyn's worldview serves her well except that she can't see past it - in part because she doesn't allow herself to. At various points, she does express empathy and understanding, but it doesn't ever mark a true deviation from her original beliefs (family, duty, honor).

"Does Cersei pray to you too, my lady?" Catelyn asked the Mother. She could see the proud, cold, lovely features of the Lannister queen etched upon the wall. The crack was still there; even Cersei could weep for her children.

-ACOK, Catelyn IV

"And who would keep you safe, my lady?"

Her smile was wan and tired. "Why, the men of my House. Or so my lady mother taught me. My lord father, my brother, my uncle, my husband, they will keep me safe... but while they are away from me, I suppose you must fill their place, Brienne."

-ACOK, Catelyn VI

The next day, as she broke her fast, Catelyn asked for quill and paper and began a letter to her sister in the Vale of Arryn. She told Lysa of Bran and Rickon, struggling with the words, but mostly she wrote of their father. His thoughts are all of the wrong he did you, now that his time grows short. Maester Vyman says he dare not make the milk of the poppy any stronger. It is time for Father to lay down his sword and shield. It is time for him to rest. Yet he fights on grimly, will not yield. It is for your sake, I think. He needs your forgiveness. The war has made the road from the Eyrie to Riverrun dangerous to travel, I know, but surely a strong force of knights could see you safely through the Mountains of the Moon? A hundred men, or a thousand? And if you cannot come, will you not write him at least? A few words of love, so he might die in peace? Write what you will, and I shall read it to him, and ease his way.

-ASOS, Catelyn I

Last one is important because Catelyn has pieced together the abortion Hoster forced on Lysa, is deeply sympathetic, but what she expresses in words is concern for Hoster's relationship with Lysa that suffered as a result. Not for Lysa who lost a wanted child and wept buckets on her wedding day. Catelyn's letter, regardless of goodwill, guilts Lysa - it's phrased with compassion for the father they share but it isn't an affirmation of Lysa's pain, instead centering Hoster. That's part of a tendency, part of how she understands Cersei through the lens of motherhood, Brienne through the lens of temporary necessity. Sorting them back into place. Lysa as the benevolent daughter.

Compare these two scenarios where Jon and Catelyn are asked to confront their past biases:

Small wonder that the Seven Kingdoms thought the free folk scarcely human. They have no laws, no honor, not even simple decency. They steal endlessly from each other, breed like beasts, prefer rape to marriage

-ASOS, Jon II

"That Longspear stole me daughter. Munda, me little autumn apple.["] [...]

Jon had to laugh. Even now, even here. Ygritte had been fond of Longspear Ryk. He hoped he found some joy with Tormund's Munda. Someone needed to find some joy somewhere.

-ASOS, Jon X

"Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady," the girl said. It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the smile on her face. Stone was a bastard's name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no names of their own. Catelyn had nothing against this girl, but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned's bastard on the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty, both at once.

-AGOT, Catelyn VI

Angry and guilty. A combination Jon feels in one of his lowest moments as well, when he's ashamed of how he reacted to being (fairly!) rejected and dismissed.

Jon remembered the wish he'd wished in his anger, the vision of Benjen Stark dead in the snow, and he looked away quickly. The dwarf had a way of sensing things, and Jon did not want him to see the guilt in his eyes.

-AGOT, Jon III

It's fair to find these sort of parallels unsavory, but people are products of their environments, of the times they were loved and the times they were spurned. In Jon's case we can't really understand how anti-bastard sentiment affects him without looking at the human element of it, which necessitates discussing Catelyn in specific.

The chip on Jon's shoulder didn't magically disappear; it had to crumble slowly, bit by bit (and even then not entirely). In AGOT-ASOS Jon experimented with & rejected exclusionary ideals in exchange for a more expansive worldview that he could never quite have in Winterfell. Good for him, and a logical culmination of his emotional journey.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #jon snow #catelyn stark #text #long post #grateful to tumblr for axing posts cause idk where to put the read more #bookhousestark #canonjonsnow #q

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lucy90712 · 3 years

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cravings/mood swings (pregnancy series)

Series masterlist

George:

The hormones from pregnancy have made me an entirely different person at times which was a huge shock to both me and George when they first started to hit because I've always been pretty good with my emotions and hormones even when on my period. To me it isn't as bad because I only notice after my mood swings but poor George has to deal with me during.

George came down the stairs after filming a video and came to join me sat on the sofa. I was eating salty crisps (chips) some of which George stole as he sat down, this really set off my hormones for whatever reason and I looked at him with just pure anger that he would even dare to steal my food that I had been craving.

"George what the fuck I wanted those" I almost shouted

"I'm sorry love I didn't mean to I can get you more if you want them" he said panicked slightly

I gave no reaction to what George said as I came down from my rage because I realised I was being way too over the top. I always feel awful when I yell at George because he doesn't deserve it at all but he just happens to be around all the time so he's the one who bares the brunt of all my emotions. I apologised to George and gave him some of my crisps to make up for it and we cuddled on the sofa for a bit.

Later in the evening George was showing me cute videos he has of cat from when he was in his office which were just so adorable and made me so incredibly happy but then the sadness came over and tears started to fall down my face.

"Hey what's wrong?" George asked

"It's just so cute like how can one small animal be so cute" I sobbed

He comforted me and we spent the rest of the evening doing things that didn't provoke any emotions in me.

Dream:

My cravings have been very strong though my pregnancy so far which is a combination of normal things and weird concoctions just whatever I was feeling in that exact moment and I mean that exact moment. My cravings are things that have to be satisfied within the hour or else it's too late and I get over it.

It's about 10pm and I'm just chilling waiting for Clay to get out the shower so we can watch the office together. At that exact moment a craving for pickles came over me, its not a craving I've had before but its one that I know is kind of common. I checked all the cupboards and fridge to see if we had any but we didn't which made me quite sad.

Clay came down the stairs to see me staring at the empty cupboard with a few tears in my eyes. He came over to me looking at what I was before becoming very confused at what exactly was going through my mind clearly wondering if I was going a bit insane.

"Is everything alright?" He asked

"We don't have any pickles" I whined

"Do you want me to go and get you some?" He asked

I nodded my head and we went to the car to drive to the store to go buy pickles mainly because I didn't want to be left alone. Clay actually went into the store while I stayed in the car because he didn't want me getting cold but he soon came back with two jars of pickles just incase I wanted more another day.

Back at home I ate half the pickles in the jar and very much enjoyed it and so did baby which was the whole point of going to get them. I imagine just like every other craving I will get over it and move on to a new one.

Sapnap:

My mood swings have been insane so far during pregnancy like way morse than they would be before my period is due to arrive. I feel so awful that Sapnap has to deal with me because he used to hate it when I got so very emotional before my period and now its constant and like x1000.

I have been slightly more emotional than usual today which has just been ruining my day because I can't seem to get anything done without crying or raging at myself but I've yet to spend much time with Sapnap so he has been spared from my disastrous day so far. This soon changed when he came downstairs and sat with me on the sofa.

He attempted to cuddle with me but something in my brain told me that I didn't want that and I should be mad at him for even trying to be affectionate even though I love him so very much.

"No get off me" I said a bit too harshly

"Oh I'm sorry baby is there anything you want?" He asked trying to be accommodating

I shrugged him off still slightly angry but getting over it very quickly and feeling bad for half yelling at him. My anger soon completely dissolved and was replaced by sadness at the fact that I had yelled and now wanted to cuddle but he wasn't going to want to now right, I mean I've just yelled at him so why would he want to cuddle.

A few tears started to form in my eyes and soon spilled out onto my face wetting my cheeks which I tired to hide by facing away from Sapnap but of course he knows me and tried to see what I was hiding. As soon as he saw I was crying he put his hands on my face to wipe the tears and gave me a kiss.

"What's wrong babe? How can I fix it?" He asked

"I feel bad for yelling and I want cuddles but you don't want to give them to me because I was mean" I explained

"You are so silly of course I'll still give you cuddles if you want them" he said

He pulled me into a big bear hug where we stayed for the rest of the day and night.

Quackity:

I have been having a lot of odd cravings over the past few weeks most of which are completely unnatural and Alex thinks are gross but they actually taste really good. To me at least.

Tonight I was really feeling like eating chicken nuggets with honey, I really wanted to eat it but I was scared to ask Alex to come to the store with me because he would think it was weird and judge me which my fragile little heart couldn't take.

"Alex will you go to the store with me please?" I asked

"Of course love what do you want this time?" He asked

"Chicken nuggets and honey" I whispered

"What was that" he questioned

"Chicken nuggets and honey" I said a bit louder

"That sounds interesting lets go" he said

He grabbed my hand and pulled me up and to the car where we went to McDonald's for the chicken nuggets and then target for the honey before going back home. Alex was interested to try this combination too so the both of us sat down to try it. At first the flavour was really weird but once you got used to it it was really good actually and now I think I'm obsessed and by the looks of things so is Alex because his face looked like he had just had the best thing ever.

Karl:

Oh my has it been a rollercoaster so far, I've been so over emotional and have been craving so many different things it is so hard to keep up with for me let alone Karl.

This morning I was trying to make breakfast and I couldn't open the milk which upset me but then the bowls were up too high so I couldn't reach which made me even more upset but the last straw for this morning was when I had just sat down after struggling with everything and someone rang the doorbell just as I was about to eat the cereal I had really been wanting. I answered the door to collect the parcel the man had before going back to the living room with tears starting to slip down my face.

I'm not sure why I was so upset but I was which stopped me eating my cereal because I was crying which made me cry more because I really wanted the cereal, it was just an awful cycle. Karl walked in as I was staring at my full bowl of cereal sobbing which caused him to run over to see what was wrong.

"Hey hey whats wrong?" He asked

"Nothing is going right and all I want to do is eat my cereal but I can't because I'm crying which is making me more upset" I ranted

"Oh honey I'm sorry how about you follow my breathing to calm down and then eat your cereal ok?" He suggested

He helped me calm down enough to be able to eat my cereal which was kind of soggy by now but I still very much enjoyed it and soon got back to my normal self.

Wilbur:

My hormones are all over the place which normally I can handle but every now and then I get too overly emotional and just cry over random things, this usually happens when I'm alone so I just deal with it myself.

Today Wilbur took the day off from working so he's here to see the rollercoaster that is my day and believe me it can be a rollercoaster. I had a breakdown this morning when doing chores I was unloading the dishwasher and I kept almost dropping everything I touched which made me so mad at myself and really sad at the same time. I just left the room and sat down for a minute talking to myself to sort my brain out then went back to doing chores.

Later in the afternoon we were watching a nature documentary which we do a lot and there was this lizard and her babies that were being hunted by a large bird, I was willing them to get away but the bird caught the babies and the mother got away. This made me so sad that the lizard lost her babies while I was sat there carrying my baby. I started crying thinking about the fact that anything could happen to little bean once their here.

"It's ok love its just natures way" Wilbur said

"But what if bad things happen to bean when their here obviously not like that but anything could happen" I sniffled

"We will protect bean as best we can to stop anything bad happening but for now their safe where they are" Wilbur said

This made me feel better and luckily the rest of the documentary wasn't sad at all and there was some cute moments which made me forget about all my worries.

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melohax · 3 years

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I’ve seen some people who finished Omori talking about how they don’t understand the game’s plot, what happens in the good ending or why the protagonist even decided to change his ways. So then, here’s my thoughts on Omori’s story.

Warning: SPOILERS AHOY. Only read this if you’ve already finished the game and seen the good or true ending. Or if you don’t plan on playing the game at all but still want to know the whole story.

I’ve seen some people around the internet talk about how Sunny’s character isn’t clear to them or how they feel Sunny doesn’t deserve a good ending. Here’s some thoughts I have on why I think Sunny’s growth was well depicted.

There’s two main routes you can go through in the game: the “Reality” route and the “Hikikomori” route.

In the “Hikikomori” route, Sunny stays in Headspace forever and we get to learn many additional details about him. Sunny’s parents are implied to have known what Sunny did to Mari all along. It’s also implied that Sunny’s mother covered the whole thing up and chose to present it as a suicide as well cus, in her own words, she can’t bear the thought of losing both of her kids.

Sunny’s mother insinuates her son isn’t a “good boy” even though she begs him to be good but she still sees him as her little boy (as seen by the overly-sweet and positive messages she leaves around the house and her voice mails) and needs him alive so she can survive her own grief. Sunny’s father is shown cutting down the hanging tree and telling Sunny he isn’t his son, presumably disowning Sunny. The father keeps being absent forever afterwards.

Fast forward to the present and the “Reality” route, Sunny’s moving in 3 days. He knows his time is up in the real world and the biggest catalyst for his personal growth is that he’s finally seeing his old friends in the REAL world after 4 years of only seeing their loving, idealized child version in dreams. For the first time, he gets to witness the collateral consequences of what he did to Mari in his now teenaged friends: Aubrey spirals into delinquency after feeling like she was thrown aside by everyone she loved. Hero is guilt ridden, can’t even go near Mari’s grave and gives up on his dreams of being a chef. Kel wants to make things better but feels powerless, useless and like a screwup. Basil lives in a miserable state of almost constant fear and psychosis.

Sunny finally gets to see the huge toll his lie took on his friends’ entire lives as they keep blaming themselves for not knowing about Mari’s supposed suicidal ideations. He’s finally forced to face reality and he still tries to hide in dreamworld but he can’t. The inhabitants of Headspace are all people or fictional characters he knows or likes in real life (that he changed in his dreams, like how Kim’s brother is a sweet gentle giant and Sweetheart looks just like the candy shop owner at the supermarket) and their quests end up leading him to events where he’s reminded over and over again his dreams will end soon (the end of the underwater highway, the tree near the whale, the shadows of Mari and Basil) and that he needs to delve into Blackspace.

This shows how his own subconscious mind knows well what needs to be done; he’s putting the mental and emotional effort of making himself face what he’s done, shown through the contrast between the whimsical nature of Headspace and the dark surrealism of Blackspace.

As this happens in Sunny’s psyche, in the real world he can try to “atone” a bit by doing good things for his little community like completing requests people around him have. He still has a lot of trouble being near Basil in the real world but considering his entire subconscious mainly revolves around finding and rescuing Basil, he wants and needs to face Basil sincerely before he runs out of time.

We’re shown through memories that Sunny’s personality was always quiet, wary, a bit distant and very bad at dealing with pressure. Some people even describe him as cowardly or mediocre but he was just a small kid who’s entire world ended when he was 12. Since then, he never left his house, spending most of his days asleep rather than awake. It’s no wonder his personality isn’t as developed as his friends. His friends, although they were also in immense pain, at least still continued to live beyond Mari’s death. Sunny didn’t. He only lived through sleep.

Subconsciously, it’s shown Sunny both loves and hates Basil. This is seen in Blackspace with the dialogue he has with the “strangers” walking in the void. They talk about how Sunny (as Omori) does horrible things to Basil in the darkness of Blackspace because he struggles with facing the truth of his own actions. It’s also revealed through datamine of Blackspace’s metaphorical photo album that Basil, in his attempts to save Sunny from the judgement of others and to get him to come out of catatonia, was the one who come up with the plan to hang Mari.

Sunny describes Mari as looking as if calmly asleep when he drags her up the stairs. Her eyes remained peacefully closed until Sunny and Basil hung her. Then, Sunny turned back to look at Mari’s corpse, her previously closed eyes were wide open. She might have even been still alive, might have opened her eyes during or after the noose was tied to her neck. Or the belief he saw her eyes open could have been a manifestation of Sunny’s guilt, instead.

Either way, the horrifying possibilities surrounding Mari’s death lead to Sunny handling his emotional pain by subconsciously taking it out on Basil. It’s why Basil in Blackspace is shown constantly suffering and dying in many different ways. It’s the only way Sunny has been able to deal with himself; by forcing Basil into the darkest corners of his mind, his perfect colorful dreamworld can’t be ruined by the ugly reality Basil’s mere presence represents. It’s less painful to try to forget Basil and to forever blame him for both of their sins.

Still, even with all these conflicted feelings, Sunny’s tried to come to terms with love he still feels for Basil many times before. The shadows point out how this isn’t the first time he’s tried to save the Flower Boy; how all the previous times before ended in Sunny failing to find redemption and so his mind turns back to torturing the Basil of his dreams instead.

However, one of the Blackspace shadows also mentions a very important detail that changes almost everything this time around: his time is almost up in the real world. Whether this means he’ll commit suicide or move away, it’s almost time for him to leave the friends he’s always loved so much behind.

Sunny is forced to do a lot of internal work and self-reflection in what little time he has left. It’s shown through his dream actions, the surreal imagery surrounding him and the characters with all the sub plots his subconscious makes up.

In the route to the good ending, he traverses Blackspace and manages to listen to every harsh truth Basil’s shadow has to tell him. His attempts to save Basil mean he’s fighting his own mind, forcing himself to accept the truth.

To achieve redemption for his greatest mistake, Sunny needs to start with accepting Basil entirely; he has to stop making Basil take the brunt of their combined regrets. It means being willing to finally face the REAL Basil instead of permanently burying him in the most painful place within Sunny’s mind.

So basically, it’s obvious to me that Sunny is forced out of his “comfortable” hikikomori misery the moment he opens the door to meet the REAL Kel.

Sunny and Basil have a confrontation in the real world. When Sunny entera Basil’s room, we see poor Basil suicidal and at his limit. He’s clearly in the throes of a psychotic episode and at the mercy of hallucinations and delusions he can’t escape from (“There’s no way out of this is there, Sunny?”). Basil attacks you in an attempt to save you by killing the “thing behind you” but as we know, there isn’t actually something behind you.

There was never any monster to take the blame for Basil’s regrets, nor yours. It’s always been just you.

Meanwhile, Sunny is trying his best not to completely lose his shit so he can save Basil and stop him from potentially killing the both of them. Sunny likely loses an eye in the fight, shown by the blood coming from your socket and the bandage over it in the hospital.

Incidentally, the eye you lose is on the same side as the eye that can be seen peeking through the hair of Mari’s face as she’s hanging from the tree.

In the good ending, the song at the end talks about how even after confessing the truth, Sunny is alone once again, so it’s not actually clear if Aubrey, Kel and Hero actually forgave him. I feel like this is deliberately left up to interpretation by the writers. The lyrics then continue on to say Sunny still finds it hard to wake up, still finds himself plagued some days with lingering regret, but that he still tries to take it all one step at a time to carry on living.

With the song’s lyrics in mind, the end scene that shows Basil and Sunny smiling at each other while Mari’s shadow leaves them doesn’t mean they’re completely fine all of a sudden. Whether their friends forgave them or not, they at least finally have the relief of honesty. The burden of their unbearable shared secret is now off their shoulders. It’s finally out in the open, which means they both can now start healing and working to find the redemption Sunny was looking for in Blackspace. It also means they can go back to loving each other again without the crushing pain they both felt in each other’s presence.

I agree that Aubrey and the gang get pretty left out in the good ending, though. I wish there was more of them and their reactions to the truth BUT I think it’s sadly a deliberate choice by the writers to leave their reaction up to the player’s interpretation. This can feel extremely unfulfilling to many people (me included, I hate when authors do that tbh) but also to many others that’s a good thing cus they get to apply their own personal meaning and feelings.

I personally feel like the friends forgiving Sunny and Basil right off the bat would be incredibly unrealistic. I think they would need a lot of time (especially Aubrey) for them to forgive the lie that wrecked their lives for years. Forgiveness isn’t impossible but it would probably come in the form of a slow, difficult, heartbreaking process. Bittersweet.

Redemption isn’t just about forgiveness, anyway.

Even if a person is never forgiven by the people they’ve hurt, they can still find redemption for their actions through doing good for the people around them and the world at large. An example of this is shown through what Sunny can do on his last days in his neighborhood. The gratitude and additional flowers he receives in the hospital from each person he’s helped are proof he can still do good for others even after something as horrible and unforgivable as accidental murder. In a way, it’s proof that his life is still worth living.

But ultimately that’s just my own interpretation of the ending and I understand other people would interpret it all differently. Some see forgiveness as a given in the story while there’s also others who think Sunny doesn’t deserve forgiveness or those who think Sunny is a sociopath/psychopath or that Basil is the true villain of the game. I think this is why the ending was left so open, to favor all the different interpretations people have of it.

ETA: Here’s a different take on Sunny’s parents. This post argues that, despite the initial implications, they actually didn’t know about the attempted coverup. It’s a really good writeup explaining the whys and hows and has me reconsidering that part of the story!

https://www.reddit.com/r/OMORI/comments/kr9nvx/major_spoilers_regarding_sunny_his_parents_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

#omori #omori game #omori sunny #omori basil #omori spoilers #spoilers #i said id wait before doing a post like this lol #but here i am #omori meta

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meltingpotimagines · 3 years

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Boyfriend!Deku

this boy is such a loving, considerate cutie you cannot convince me he wouldn’t be the greatest boyfriend esp to ochaco

but i digress

stumbled over his words and rambled when he asked you out

“i- i know i’m not as c-cool as k-kacchan or as handsome as t-todorki but i th-think you’re reallycoolandi’dlovetotakeyououtonadate.”

poor boy was a nervous wreck

midoriya izuku i swear if you don’t finally realize how amazing you are-

his face nearly split in half with how big his grin was when you agreed to go out with him

pls he’s so cUTE i lov him

researched the best places to take someone on a date

it’s his first date he doesn’t know where to go or what to do

tried to get advice from all might but that proved to be... less than helpful

ended up going to momo bc she’s a girl she knows what girls like right?

thankfully the answer to that was yes

took you on a cute little picnic in a park

made all of the food himself

he may or may not have spent an entire day looking up recipes, trying to find the best ones

this date had to be perfect okay? he was not about to blow his possibly one and only shot bc of f o o d

luckily for him and you he may not be the world’s greatest cook but boy knows his way around the kitchen well enough

*cough*with some help from sato*cough*

scoped out the park beforehand to find the best spot

picked a magnolia tree by the pond

not too tall, provided plenty of shade, ground wasn’t too lumpy, you could even feed the ducks if you wanted

i mean who wouldn’t? their cuteness is only topped by puppies and kittens and deku

made sure to pack extra rice and grapes for the ducks bc he remembered koda ranting once about how bad bread is for them

tried to keep the conversation light and interesting by sticking to topics he’d read were good ice breakers and interesting to girls

was visibly relieved when you told him to relax and just talk about whatever he wanted

awkwardly reached for your hand walking you home

was a little stiff at the physical contact but the feeling of your hand in his brought a bright, little smile onto his face

his brain fried when you gave him a little goodnight kiss on the cheek

boy’s never blushed so hard in his l i f e

nearly imploded from all the teasing his dormmates gave him over his bright red face when he got home

he’s the type to make this elaborate plan for every special occasion

your birthday, anniversaries, valentine’s day

they’re called s p e c i a l occasions for a reason ofc he’s going to make sure they’re as special as he can possibly make them

somehow manages to top himself every year even tho the past year was so extravagant like izuku w h e r e are you getting the inspiration for all of this-

wants to know everything about you, down to the smallest detail

your favorite color? your favorite song? your favorite snack?

your childhood memories are his favorite bc he gets to see your smile and hear your laugh as you remembering all the good times and funny moments

subconsciously takes note of the expressions you make and the way speak for different emotions

bc of that he can always tell when you’re sad, even when you’re trying your best to hide it

always there when you need to talk

he’s a deep thinker and a great listener so he’s typically the best person to go to

the touchiest lil thing

was shy at first but now openly craves it 24/7

hugs, cuddles, kisses, he wants it all

blushes when anyone makes fun of him for the pda but that won’t stop him

he has really strong emotions okay? boy needs to express them

was terrified the first time he said i love you

what if he said it too early? what if you didn’t feel the same way? what if him saying it scares you off he couldn’t bear to lose you-

‘i love you too’

stood still for a moment as his brain processed those words before grinning like the love-struck dope he is and tackling you with a hug

and i mean literally tackled

made sure to roll as you fell so he took the brunt of the fall and you ended up on top of him

not that he noticed the compromising position in his joyful bliss

he was just so happy that you love him

the most amazing person he’s ever met loves him

wow

how’d he get so lucky?

makes sure to say it all the time from then on out

‘good morning Izuku’ “good morning i love you”

‘how do i look?’ “you look beautiful i love you”

‘what do you want for lunch?’ “i don’t care i love you”

he’s a dork but he’s your dork so how can you not love it?

lowkey overprotective of you

it’s not that he doesn’t think you can take care of yourself, he just worries a little too much and never wants you to get hurt from anything

manages to keep it under control, but if anyone ever threatened you oh boy they better run bc this precious boy w i l l show them why he’s destined to be the number one hero

he may be a lil cinnamon roll but he is d e a d l y and will not hesitate to take someone down if you’re in danger

they’ll get locked up faster than bakugo can say die

he cares so much about everyone and he feels that tenfold when it comes to you

he’ll never fail to make you feel like the most special and loved person on the planet

#deku #deku imagine #deku x reader #izuku #izuku imagine #izuku x reader #izuku midoriya #my hero academia #mha #mha imagine #boko no hero academia #bnha #bnha imagine

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imagine-loki · 3 years

Text

Hiding In Plain Sight

TITLE: Hiding in Plain Sight

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 10

AUTHOR: wolfpawn

ORIGINAL IMAGINE:Imagine coming from a line of nobility or royalty and being in an arranged marriage with Loki in an attempt to strengthen your kingdom / alliance with Asgard. You’re not entirely on board with the idea but figured that the best you could do was to get to know your fiancé. You form an agreement with Frigga for you to pose as Loki’s personal servant for a few months so you can get to know who Loki really is – beyond the veil of his responsibility to the Asgardian throne, behind all the masks he wears when facing the public, to really know who Loki is behind closed doors as you slowly fall for each other.How long will you keep up the ruse with the God of Lies? RATING: General Audience

NOTE - I finally got my ass in gear and finished something, thank Loki.

Raven gave him a withering look. “Again with the ‘she’ and ‘her’. You are going out of your way to be insulting at this stage.” “But you are Raven? Not ‘Breanna’?” Loki demanded.

“My grandmother called me Breanna. It’s one and the same.” She dismissed.

“You hid yourself as a maid?”

“I did.” “Why?” “I heard so many stories about you, so incredibly conflicting, I wanted to see for myself.” “So you pretended to be a maid? You…” Loki’s eyes widened. “You scrubbed my toilet.” He grimaced at that thought.

“In fairness, whatever else was ever said about you, your hygiene is impeccable.”

“Why?” “I told you.” “But why?”

“I learnt you are intelligent and can understand many languages and are very much able to comprehend the spoken word so I don’t think I need to repeat myself again. I know it is something you also dislike. You told me that the first day I spoke to you.” She walked around a little.

Loki studied her for a moment. Watching how she walked, so obviously well-bred and the manner in which she was speaking showing a significant education. He shook his head slightly as he spoke. “My brother said time and again that the Elven princess was raised in a manner that was meek and subservient. You have been insubordinate since the day you walked in here.”

“How can I be insubordinate to you, we are of equal standing. The extra children of the ruling monarch, merely existing in the slight offchance our older siblings do not make it to taking the throne.” She challenged.

“I think your father would rather a republic than have you on the throne.” Loki pointed out, his tone half of anger, half merely stating fact.

“I think he would too but the law is that I can take it regardless of my gender, I just need all four of my brothers to not get on it and have heirs.” She eyed him with intrigue, watching the glut of emotions swirling around in his face. Anger seemed to be winning as the most notable one. “I suggest airing your anger now. It will make this easier in the long run.”

“Was my mother in on this all along?” “Yes. I wrote to her to get her words on your character. Sadly, she gave the view of a biased and loving mother. So, convinced I would see your personality for myself in other ways by being your maid, she suggested I take Tatianna’s place for a few weeks. I can see you have a good rapport with her, so I can see why she would think that.”

Loki felt his anger rise at his mother’s involvement. “My brother, my father?”

“For the Allfather to know anything, he would have had to have come to your rooms whilst I was here, he never did, ergo, he never knew anything of it. Thor was not part of the plan. What I had not anticipated was that he recalled the few occasions that he met me in passing while talking to my brothers over the centuries, especially in Vanaheim. He confronted me, wanting to know why I was playing such games. He did not agree with it but the Allmother and I convinced him to remain silent.”

Loki’s lip curled in anger at his brother knowing such things but also knowing that he had the excuse of being told to say nothing. Not that it would save him from a few choice words and more than a few spells and hard blows when Loki would be able to inflict such on him again. “You spied on me, and you thought it wise?” He scoffed in disgust. “How did you envisage this little reveal going? Pray, do tell.” “I suppose it’s obvious that I had not thought through that fully. I was hoping the Aesir I was meeting was actually a nice being so I would at least feel guilty.”

Loki’s brow rose at that. “You have the audacity to say such things with all your deceit.”

“You literally are nicknamed the God of Lies, tricks and mischief, I would have thought you would have been impressed if nothing else.” “I am anything but.” He became irate at her answers. “You have no right to speak to me like this, you deceitful wench.” He walked to the bedroom door and opened it. “Get out.”

Raven felt hurt but understood fully and had expected him to react in such a manner, sighing, she walked to the door. “Well, it’s done now anyway.”

“What?” Loki had no inkling as to what she was referring to. “Getting this conflict out of the way. I was getting bothered waiting for it.” She spoke as she walked through the door.

“You anticipated this, really?” He did not believe her.

“I anticipated this, at best. I thought you would fly into a rage and throw me out at worst but then again, I thought you had not arrived for lunch because you had realised who I was and were giving me the very much expected silent treatment. Something I would wager all the ore on Alfheim I am going to be receiving from this point forth. I did not think it would last this long.” “What would last this long?” “This conversation. It lasted far longer than I had expected.” She shrugged as she walked to the door.

“Did you really learn to be a maid for this?” “I hardly knew how to be one before. I had to at least pretend to know what I was doing.” “You were so desperate to try and make a fool of me?” “It was never about making a fool of you, Loki. I told you, I wanted to know what to expect here. I tried to find out by other means but to no avail. Unlike you, I had to move to another realm and live with a man I had not met in almost seven hundred years outside of the briefest of moments.” “So you thought the way to get to know me was to scrub my toilet, that is your thinking of me? That is what you considered in getting to know me? I honestly expected you to have little self-respect with how you were raised, what with it being a misogynistic realm but you really do not have any self-worth with how you acted.” He walked over to the main door of his rooms to open it.

“Well, when your muscles ached and you wanted them relieved and when I neatened your belongings, you did not complain and don’t you ever look down at those who clean your toilet. You would not last five minutes in the real realm without your seidr, you pretentious prick.”

Irate at her venomous words, Loki walked forward towards her but stopped suddenly when she flinched as though expecting to be struck. As much as he wanted to say something as vitriolic back, he refrained. “Your little stunt was nothing more than pathetic and ridiculous and your name calling even more so, but it clearly was futile because if your observations were even the slightest bit accurate, you would know I would never lay a hand on you.”

“I knew that. If anyone will bear any physical brunt of this, it will be Thor.”

Loki had to admit, she did learn something in all of this with that comment. “Yet, you flinched as though expecting me to strike you?” “I am not a warrior, I have not learnt how to not flinch when someone rushes forward. But I know you would not. If you had been a risk to me, I would never have come here alone.” She ensured to look him in the eye as she spoke to show her sincerity.

Loki had to admit, that was a valid excuse and indeed statement regarding her safety. “Good, at least you grasped that much in this.” He opened the door fully and indicated outside.

“I guess the deceitful wench will leave the pretentious prick to his day, then.” She walked towards the door.

“Norns but you have to have the last word, don’t you?” Loki pushed the door shut again with some force. “You’re supposed to be silent.” “You literally said one of the things you were looking forward to least about being married to me was that you loathed the idea of a subservient and silent wife. My father should have had someone warn you, I tend to be too sarcastic for my own good, always have been, but you noticed that already too.” “If I had only known.” Sarcasm dripped heavily from every syllable he spoke. He looked at her for another moment. “How could you possibly have thought that we could even attempt to build anything on this?” “You never wanted to build anything, you spoke terribly of me the whole time I was here. You would not even use my name.” “What is with you and that particular issue? Why does it matter so greatly to you?” Loki snapped. “You are like a dog with a bone.”

“What is your obsession with not using it? You have nothing but contempt for me, both in your actions and your words, and have done so before you even realised it was me and do not think for one second I have forgotten your horrid words to your little friend about me, much less my realms’ people. Whatever damage I have done to the idea of creating a cordial relationship, you clean blasted it off the realm long before.” “I already told you, I do not think such, I was just venting.” “I told you in that very same conversation that I do not suffer fools. And if you think me to believe that statement, you are calling me one also.” “I bear no ill thoughts to the Ljósáfar. I would not have my seidr be so strong but for the ability to wield it perfected on Alfheim. I have nothing but respect for the race, you as an individual, on the other hand, not so much since you decided to try and trick me.” “There was no try, I succeeded in doing so.” There was some smugness to Raven’s smirk.

Loki’s lip curled in anger at that statement.

“I recall that day too that you wished to show me that you have no ill against my race, yet my parents and brothers did not deserve the respect required to welcome them, did they?” She shook her head. “You don’t respect us, you respect no one, not even yourself.” This time, she walked to the door and opened it, not wanting to speak to him any further.

“What comes of this?” Loki asked, not wanting to acknowledge her fairly accurate analysis.

“I do not know. You were adamant before, I am nothing but a duty. As a prince, you will be forced to do such duty. Our parents will not forfeit this agreement. My parents because it ensures I am no longer a burden, yours because, as you so crassly put it before, it solidifies my father’s alliance. So I guess we simply avoid one another outside of required interactions. I will not bother you, and you will ignore me. When this farce is done, I will stay in my rooms, you in yours and since I know Thor is being forced to court soon, we do some form of ritual dance that he has as many children as my father and we will not be required to do such things and you can have your conceited little harpy mistress and be happy.”

Loki was going to spit a comment back at her about the woman in reference but he noticed the genuine hurt and heartache in her features that startled him to silence on that matter. He quickly analysed her words again while she seemingly attempted to recompose herself. He did not know what in her statement caused her to react in such a way but it did startle him. “I am still trying to fathom the reasoning for all of this.”

“I wanted to know the true Loki, the one not putting on a facade for his father, or society, the being I would see every single evening after a long day.” “For what purpose?” “I spent my whole life having to be silent in public and mostly silent in private. I spent it being told how to act and who to speak to and how to speak to them. I wanted to know if I had to do that for the next few thousand years again or if it would be different. That is why I did it. I wanted to know if I could finally have someone to actually care for me as a being and not expect me to be what they want me to be, nothing more than a living doll. Norns, but you are right, had I but known.” And with that, she left the room.

#Loki #others #submission #Submitted fic #Hiding In Plain Sight #chapter 10 #wolfpawn

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dimigex · 3 years

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Beautiful, Perfect Disaster - KakaSaku

A03, FF

This is an old piece that has been waiting on me for too long. I've decided to start lightly editing the mostly finished pieces I have to clear out doc. Also, @birkastan2018 I believe we talked about this story once, and you wanted to see this whenever I finished it!

The sun sank beneath the horizon, gold and orange deepening to purple or blue as stars fought their way through dusk. Kakashi sat at his desk with a stack of paperwork beside him; the words had begun to blur together. He stubbornly refused to admit that his vision wasn't what it had been ten years ago. Thirty-three and already an old man, Kakashi thought. He blamed it on the stress of raising genin, then leading the village; it had nothing to do with age.

Truth be told, Kakashi should have gone home hours ago. The summer sun set well after the end of the day for most office jobs, but he wanted to try and get ahead of his workload. It kept his mind from wandering to all the things that he didn't have. There was no one for him to rush home to, no one who cared if he spent an extra three hours working on reports, or even stayed at the office all night.

Popping his neck, Kakashi rose and removed the Hokage's robes. The hat rested on an empty chair on the opposite side of his desk. He only wore them when necessary, but hadn't bothered to change back after his last meeting. Even the newly designed jonin armor felt more natural, though he wasn't wearing that beneath the robes today. The charcoal grey pants and undershirt were comfortable enough since he'd planned to be at his desk all evening. It wasn't as if half a dozen Anbu wouldn't appear at the first sign of danger, anyway.

With one glance at the work still piled on the desk, Kakashi turned toward the door. He started to open it, then stepped back in surprise at finding a figure in the shadowed hallway. Sakura glanced up at the sound, lip caught between her teeth and eyes puffy from crying. Kakashi did a double take, hating the way his chest tightened at the sight of her. When he said her name as a question, the girl forced a fragile smile onto her lips. Then, her facade crumbled, and a single tear slipped free of her left eye.

The protective barrier shattered, and Sakura threw herself forward with a sob. Kakashi managed to catch her awkwardly, if only to keep them from falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Her arms curled around his middle, body achingly warm in a way that had nothing to do with the summer heat outside. Belatedly, Kakashi realized that Sakura wore jonin blues and no armor over it. He struggled to suck a breath around the lump in his throat. "What happened?"

Tears spilled out of Sakura along with broken words. "Sasuke said I'm too clingy and needy, that he's already told me that we'll never work together. And he has, I shouldn't have tried to get him to spend time with me when he was back in the village. I shouldn't have-"

The next words were muffled when Sakura hid her face against Kakashi's chest. As the dampness of her tears bled through his shirt, hot anger stirred in his gut. Kakashi normally prided himself on his ability to divorce emotion from his life, but not this time. Sakura's hands tightened, and his heart hammered hard enough that he feared Sakura would be able to hear the sound. He struggled to draw breath through his constricted throat.

Thankfully, heartbreakingly, Sakura pulled away and wiped her eyes with trembling fingers. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm being terribly childish."

"Not at all," a voice that sounded very much like Kakashi's answered. Then, it continued. "I think he's a fool who never deserved you in the first place."

Sakura's green eyes widened. She pulled back until they stood half a dozen feet apart: Sakura shy and embarrassed and Kakashi conflicted by the truth he hadn't meant to say.

Her eyes searched his, looking for Kami only knew what, then she nodded. "Thank you for saying that."

"It's true." Kakashi had more control over his voice this time, but barely. "What you have with Sasuke isn't love; it's not supposed to hurt this way."

Heat flared between them, and Sakura closed the distance to glare up at Kakashi. "And you're an expert on it?"

Of course not, Kakashi thought. Look at how poorly I've handled this. For months, I've felt something, but I refused to admit it until it came spilling out like poison. Kakashi couldn't say that. Sakura's anger wasn't directed at him, anyway. He could bear the brunt of her fury if that's what she needed. He could bear a lot of things. "I know enough to see that this isn't it."

Kakashi knew that he'd made a mistake when Sakura looked at him with a mixture of pain and disbelief. The room spun, and he thought that he might be sick. He fought the nausea down and took a half step in her direction. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Sakura spat. Somehow, she drew herself up, towering over Kakashi in her fury. "For lecturing me about something you don't understand? For acting like you cared about me? For-"

"For falling in love with you." The words hung between them for a moment, louder than the echo of Sakura's anger.

Kakashi had never looked squarely at the thought, never viewed what was happening between them as more than general protectiveness. But now, he knew it for what it was. He let out a breath and closed the distance between himself and Sakura. "I'm sorry, but you deserve someone who won't put you second or third or fourth every time."

"And, that better is you?" Sakura's voice changed in a way that Kakashi couldn't quantify. It had a breathy quality, an uncertainty, but he couldn't read the tone over the buzzing in his ears. "Is that what you mean?"

Kakashi forced out a humorless laugh at the suggestion. "No."

"You're just like Sasuke," Sakura accused, stepping into Kakashi's space. "You throw that word around so easily that it doesn't mean anything."

"I am nothing like Sasuke," Kakashi ground out, biting off each word. Icy numbness and burning anger surging through him in turns.

Could Sakura honestly believe that Kakashi would say something like that to make her feel better if he didn't mean it? That he'd make up a lie to help her forget the stupid boy who had never loved her or protected her the way that she deserved? Sasuke had always been more empty words and broken promises than anything else. Kakashi had broken only one, one that he made to himself months ago.

It would be easy to cross the line now, everything was falling apart anyway. Kakashi could pull Sakura back against his chest and show her how inadequate words were. Except, he couldn't bring himself to do so. He's already said far more than he should have, more than he ever thought he'd have the opportunity to say.

Sakura looked up at Kakashi through teary lashes, eyes red and puffy. She didn't speak at first, didn't respond to the venom in his voice. Then, she challenged him with her stare. "Did you mean it?"

The hope in Sakura's voice made Kakashi ache and his lungs clench. "I can't-."

Before Kakashi could finish his thought, Sakura scoffed and turned away. HIs hand caught her wrist, gentle enough that she could pull free if she wanted to. Then, a voice that sounded so much like Kakashi's spoke without his permission. "You deserve more than I could ever give you."

Sakura exhaled and leaned in enough for Kakashi to feel the residual heat from her body against his. Her hands came up and brushed Kakashi's cheek, pulling a soft sigh from his throat. Emboldened, she hooked her fingers in the fabric of his mask. Sakura paused at the whispered warning of her name, fingertips slipping away from the fabric, then asked, "did you mean it?"

Kakashi couldn't deny the truth, not with those brilliant green eyes shining up at him. "Yes."

Rising on her tiptoes, Sakura pressed her lips to Kakashi's, the fabric of his mask between them. The tentative brush made his knees weak, especially when her hands slipped down to his shoulders. Closing his arms around her felt like the most natural thing in the world as the room tipped around him.

Kakashi waited for some sign that Sakura felt the same, some indication that everything had changed, but she didn't speak. He took courage from the fact that Sakura didn't pull away at least. Kakashi raised one hand to trace the delicate curve of her lips and felt the shiver that raced through her body. He couldn't breathe through the fabric of his mask, so he lowered it.

Sakura's eyes remained squeezed shut when Kakashi lightly kissed her forehead. He whispered against the skin, hardly recognizing his voice. "I didn't mean to make things more difficult. If you don't feel the same, we can pretend like this never happened."

"Can we," Sakura asked Kakashi's chest, head dropping forward to rest against him.

When Sakura's eyes didn't rise to meet his, a swirl of anxiety twisted through Kakashi. His heart pounded hard enough to break his ribs when he hummed in agreement. "If that's what you want."

The words came easily, but Kakashi didn't know if they were true. He had only recently started to realize that the anger and fury he felt when Sakura talked about Sasuke went beyond friendship. If she turned away from him now, he would accept it, but things would never be the same. He feared what the kiss had done to their relationship, even as he longed to pull her closer.

Kakashi didn't push Sakura for an answer. He waited without speaking until she lifted her gaze. Sakura paused, taking in both the familiarity and foreignness of the face that she'd seen through a mask for so many years. Kakashi forced himself to smile like his entire life wasn't hanging on her answer.

Sakura's hand came up a second time, tracing the bare skin. It took every ounce of self control that Kakashi possessed not to pull her tighter. Then, with aching slowness, she rose to kiss him. Colors exploded behind Kakashi's eyelids at the warmth of Sakura's lips against his. The curve of her body beneath his hands, the touch against skin so unused to it-everything left the room spinning.

They parted slowly, just enough to draw a breath but Kakashi couldn't stop the way his head tipped back toward Sakura's. He tasted her breath on his lips and almost crossed the line a third time. In that instant, he knew that he would never be able to go back to just friends. This moment, no matter what came from it, would be cemented in his memory forever. He would never be able to look at Sakura without remembering the soft curl of her hands in his shirt or the pattern of freckles he'd never noticed across the bridge of her nose.

After a moment, Sakura let out her breath in a whoosh that made Kakashi's knees weak. Then, she looked up and smiled so beautifully that it made his heart skip a beat. "I want to know if it's ever more than empty words."

A dozen flippant replies rose in Kakashi's throat, but he quieted them at the memory of what drove Sakura to his arms in the first place. None of his replies would have been enough to convey the depth of what he wanted to say. He raised one hand to brush her cheek, then slid down to tilt her chin. Sakura sighed when Kakashi met their lips together a third time, a breathy uncertain sound that knotted his stomach.

For a moment, Kakashi felt trapped on the edge of a precipice with logic and safety on one side, the unknown spanning below him. He tightened the arm around Sakura's waist, pulling her closer as he surrendered to the dizzying emotions spiraling through his chest. If Sakura needed something more than words, he could offer actions.

Kakashi poured every ounce of withheld longing into his touch, dropping his walls in a way that he'd never done for anyone else. Sakura melted against him, every perfect inch of her body pressed against his. Kakashi threw himself over the edge and plummeted through the heartstopping freefall.

It took Kakashi a moment to realize that his hands had drifted low enough to lift Sakura from the ground, and a longer second to realize her legs were wrapped around his waist. Electricity pulsed through his body as he stumbled back toward his office until she bumped into the edge of his desk. Sakura's fingers tangled in Kakashi's hair, inviting him to follow her backward.

Bracing his palms on either side of Sakura's hips, Kakashi pulled back to gasp in a desperate breath. The space gave him the clarity that he needed. He wanted Sakura more than he'd ever wanted anyone else, more than anything. And, he knew that was the exact reason to stop, before he didn't have the strength to do so.

Kakashi leaned his forehead against Sakura's, surprised when she didn't object to the sudden stop. He drew another shaky breath before attempting to speak. "I don't want this to be tangled up in your relationship with Sasuke. I don't want to be the one you run to when it's bad only to have you promise me that everything's better the next day. I don't want-"

Sakura pressed a finger against Kakashi's lips. "I know."

Darkness poured through the windows behind Sakura when Kakashi turned his gaze toward them. She drew him into a gentle kiss that held only a flicker of the earlier fire. "I don't know what to say," she confessed in a soft whisper that made bile rise in Kakashi's throat. "I never expected you to say these things, I never knew that I wanted you to say them."

The woman glanced away, a blush coloring her cheeks as she continued. "I just-can we take things slow? I don't want any of the things you mentioned either, but I know that I don't want to leave this room not knowing if I'll ever feel this way again."

"What are you saying," Kakashi questioned, leaning more weight on his hands. He would take whatever Sakura gave without a hint of disappointment, at least until she left. Only then would he allow himself to feel the pain. He braced for the truth, that she wasn't ready for more or that she'd just gotten caught up in the moment.

Sakura raised a hand to run her thumb along the scar that had taken Kakashi's original eye, tracing the path the mask normally hid. He fought the urge to pull away when she followed the curve of his cheek, and turned instead to lightly kiss her palm. The blush on her cheeks deepened. "I'm asking you to dinner later this week," Sakura finally answered.

Kakashi couldn't stop the chuckle that rose in his throat. None of her words even remotely suggested that, but he wanted it enough not to care. "Only if you'll allow me to walk you home tonight." The corners of Sakura's lips pulled down, but Kakashi quickly added, "just to the door, I promise."

Snorting softly, Sakura nodded and Kakashi offered a hand to help her jump down from his desk. Fire scorched through his entire body at the connection but he forced himself not to react, especially when her fingers threaded through his. By the time they'd reached the street, Sakura pulled away and walked beside Kakashi like she'd always done. But, he couldn't shake the thought that nothing would ever be the same again.

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devildamn · 3 years

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You plan on making poly headcanons? Id love to read them

Heck yee, I love poly ships >w< Tbh, the way I see it, even as a harem, there are some pretty distinct smaller groupings. A bunch of em…. Hmmm… I’ll make a list with my thoughts on each. Just plz keep in mind, for the MC ships, I’ll explain more the relationship between the named characters than with them because… MCS are just so varied, I cant account for everyone and how they’d be. And if I do bring em up, it’s based on what I like in my MCs lol <w< Or what I think would mesh the best.

- Diavolo/Lucifer/Barbaratos: Yee I ship these council goons. Their friendship is so cute, especially how both Lucifer and Barbaratos have a soft spot and give in to Diavolo’s antics uwu Like, I swear, anytime one of them tells Diavolo no to something, the other will help enable him anyways. I’m a sucker for ‘touch starved/needy Diavolo’ too, so I like to imagine the three’s relationship starting as professional with the occasional moments of showing they care, but once they get closer and Diavolo confesses (particularly to Lucifer) about his insecurity in feeling alone, their level of touchy-feely-ness will gradually increase… behind closed doors that is. Barbaratos has no shame in his affections being public, he likes making Diavolo happy, but Lucifer is hesitant to make their relationship known. He’d rather keep up appearances, and Diavolo doesn’t want to ask too much of him, so this is their compromise.

- Asmodeus/Solomon/MC: Ahahaha look v-v I am not much of an Asmo fan. But I can see his appeal, and I do like the Solomon/Asmodeus ship. That said, how their poly ship can work depends entirely on the MC (tho that’s a given with how different MCs can be lol). Asmodeus is sure to love having two powerful humans be in control of him, even flaunting it as a sort of status symbol. And he’d most definitely act like a brat. I don’t see Solomon as being one to give into Asmo as much as he’d want someone to, so I can imagine this scenario being common, lol:

Asmo going to Solomon for whatever reason. Solomon is busy/distracted and keeps brushing off Asmo’s attempts to get his attention. Asmo gets HUFFY and storms to MC to demand attention from them instead.

Basically, MC would have to bear the brunt of Asmo’s needs lol. Solomon won’t always be so obtuse, but he’s just not as inclined to emotional stuff.

- Solomon/Simeon/Luke: Love their dynamic. Just friends looking out for each other <3 I can especially imagine them in domestic situations. Their dissing Solomon’s cooking? Solomon’s and Simeon’s shared custody of keeping Luke from trouble? <3 <3 <3 Bonus, heres a scenario I like:

Luke being a ‘helicopter parent’ to Solomon’s annoyance when he gets super into a project. Bringing him snacks, tidying up his workspace, sending him texts to remind him of stuff he needs to do. All the while scolding him for not taking better care of himself, but secretly feeling happy that he is needed. Simeon helps take care of Solomon too, but not to the extent that Luke does. He’s better at watching from the sidelines, amused at Luke hauling a semi-conscious Solomon from bed to get a proper breakfast.

- Belphegor/Beelzebub/MC: >-> Here’s a bit of a rant. It’s no secret I hate Belphie. No hate to Belphie lovers, y’all are great and free to love who you love, my gripe is just with how little the story did to redeem him to us. Anyways, my hate for him extended so much that it affected my love for Beel too ;o; See, before his return, I LOVED Beel. He was cutting it close with Mammon in being my favorite. He’s such a wholesome boi full of love for his family <3 But with Belphie’s return… loving Beel and hating Belph is just not good for him.It’d never work. They are a package deal. The closest of the brothers. Of course all your time with Beel or Belph would be spent with the other as well. Even Belph tells you that in his dream scenario, he’d run away with you and Beel and live happily together. They are already set on loving one person together, that’s just how it is -w-“

- Lucifer/Mammon/MC: Mammon is Lucifer’s favorite brother. In particular, people note that he finds Mammon to be cute. Weeeeeellllllllllll, here’s a bit of tmi for my take on my MC, the reason they dislike Lucifer is because his personality is a bit like theirs too, with some key differences. And of course, that being the case…. Mammon is their favorite too. So, the way I see this is, both Lucifer and MC sharing Mammon. Lucifer scolds him, MC comforts and enables him, Lucifer tries but can’t stop MC, and the song and dance continues. <3

- Leviathan/MC/Mammon: Listen, the beef these two had is the first thing you’re thrown into and I find it hilarious in retrospect. Levi does not like you, and only approaches you to use you to get back at Mammon. This makes Mammon the first to form a contract with you, and later, become your first genuine friend out of the brothers. The first to care uwu Then, WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE and Levi has grown to like you, his dialogue about you preferring Mammon? “Is it because he was your first?” Motherfucker, you could’ve been the first if you weren’t so up your ass in calling me ‘Normie Trash’ X,D Jealous shit. But it’s cute in a way. His rivalry with Mammon, their bickering. Both vying for MC’s attention, calling out each other’s bs, later having moments of defending the other when shit gets too far or others attack em, it’s entertaining to me.

- Asmodeus/MC/Beelzebub: I’ll keep this one short. I can see this solely because Asmo has, on multiple occasions, spoken of his interest in Beel. To be FAIR, Asmo would form a polyship with ANY of his brothers, lol, just typing this one in particular for that reason.

- Beelzebub/MC/Luke: Absolutely wholesome. Adorable. I feel that out of all the brothers, Luke has the best relationship with Beel. I’d love to see them interact more -w- (I am on Lesson 29). As it stands, I’m jumping into headcannon territory straight up lol:

MC and Luke get close first. Luke is the first person to have reached out to MC with good intentions (which compared to the brother’s hostile initial meetings, is a HUGE relief), and since MC respects and does not tease Luke, he attaches to them like a puppy. Beel and them grow close too with the reveal of the family history, and Beel generally feeling at ease with both people. Can you picture Beel feeling drowsy, draped over Luke as he studies and finding the scent of baked goods and vanilla coming from him comforting? Cuz I can -/w/- Hella cute. Luke IS pushy, and Beel finds it annoying at times. They’d have arguments, and initially, Beel would subconsciously make Luke feel threatened with his size and temper, but with the help of MC interfering, he’d be more mindful of it in the future. With the curbing of Beel’s temper, Luke would also learn to feel more comfortable around him, and ALSO with MC’s interference, he’d be more mindful of his nagging nature. All in all, their arguments would lead to them feeling huffy the next day and giving the other the silent treatment… but then after a while, Luke would bake too much of something and aaah, he GUESSES Beel could have some since it just so happens to be his FAVORITE… and they’d be back to snuggling. Bleeh.

Aight, so that was the list <3 I’m open to others, and if you’d like any more specifics on any you are free to send me more asks! Just that these were the ones I could think of immediately and distinctly. To be fair, MC could be added to any of the ships I have without em, but as stated before, it’s hard to characterize MC as anything other than what I like uwu So I’ll refrain from doing so unless it’s specified as such. My MC, Boo <3 Thank you for the ask!

#obey me writing #obey me headcanons #Obey me #obey me mc #Obey me lucifer #Obey me diavolo #Obey me barbaratos #Obey me leviathan #Obey me mammon #Obey me beelzebub #Obey me belphagor #Obey me Asmodeus #Obey me satan #Ask #Om mc #Poly ships #Idk any ship names and if anyone can tell me em #ID APPRECIATE IT #Ty ty

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wangxiandecoded · 4 years

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Episode 12

Previous Episode | Next Episode

(Spoilers for the whole show ahead!)

Even when Wen Chao asks for their swords, Wei Ying is trying desperately to make Lan Zhan look him in the eye to telepathically understand what his soulmate is feeling. Lan Zhan hates it but he has no choice but to cooperate with the enemy. He has withdrawn to himself after the multiple losses he’s faced and being a puppet at the hands of the Wens must be rattling him some more. Even if he wanted to tell Wei Ying everything that’s on his mind, he wouldn’t have been able to find the words to.

Lucky for him, Wei Ying has an inkling that his Lan Zhan has faced an inexplicable disaster and that’s why he’s behaving this way with him. He knows it doesn’t mean he should stop reaching out. His concern for him leads him to repeatedly seek Lan Zhan’s face, looking for anything that might suggest how he can alleviate his plight.

One of the perks of having Wei Wuxian as your boyfriend is that he was born ready to make a clown out of the most dastardly villains.

Wei Ying Says “Fuck You” In The Name Of Love

Wei Ying has a brilliant idea to talk to Lan Zhan or at least let him know he is not alone.

There is something powerfully impressive and quietly romantic about Wei Ying insulting the Wen clan by reciting the Lan clan’s rules to Wen Chao’s face, on the heels of the former decimating and annexing the latter. Of course Wei Ying is the first one in a room to stand up to a bully and protect the others but Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan’s hands are tied right now, even if he doesn’t know what exactly happened. But that’s okay, because Wei Ying will defend his honor and become Lan Zhan’s hands, his mouth, his everything that delivers the unmistakable “fuck you” on behalf of his family. And he does it in an act of rebellion that originates in the sanctum of love. Understandably, Lan Zhan falls more in love with him.

Wei Ying’s Plan Misfires

His happiness is short-lived, but honestly who could predict his plan would go like this?

We see that Lan Zhan does want to confide in his soulmate the pain and pressure he’s been dealing with alone the whole time, but it’s too dangerous for them to talk right now.

Wen Chao carries the same kind of smugness as a prick who’s been waiting to out a gay couple. I mean how awful do you have to be to physically abuse Wangxian for.. being Wangxian? Blatant homophobia right there.

Wei Ying has had enough of Wen Chao’s bullshit and is unafraid to clap back with his signature cheekiness.

When Wei Ying is captured, Lan Zhan blocks the whip coming his way and ends up taking a hit to his injured leg. Wei Ying then wants Wen Chao to come for him instead of Lan Zhan, and we can honestly expect nothing less from Wangxian at this point.

Lan Zhan conquers his silent grieving and mute seething to stand in defiance against Wen Chao. It is worth mentioning that his patience and tolerance can even bear the brunt of a fallen world, but cease to exist the second someone mistreats Wei Ying before his eyes. You know what they say about love being a vicious motivator. His protective stance here screams..

Lan Zhan Holds On To Wei Ying For A Short Span Of Eternity

Wen Chao sure is very curious about the nature of their relationship and unable to fathom what Wei Ying could possibly want with Lan Zhan. He’s already safe and sound with him in Qishan, so if they’re not talking about the Yin Iron, what the hell is it? This inquisition is a bit ridiculous, as if the writer specifically gave him these lines to point out to the audience that Wangxian are being soulmates in love once again.

What Lan Zhan does not say, he makes up for with the million times he reaches for Wei Ying instinctively; spontaneous skinship is one of the ways through which his love for Wei Ying finds expression. It is phenomenal that He Who Does Not Touch People firmly holds on to his lover through this whole monologue that follows.

There are few things in the world that can inspire Lan Zhan’s wrath and protection right now, and Wei Ying commands both so effortlessly. Defeated as he is, for Wei Ying, Lan Zhan is always a man of action. And this action particularly proves his willingness to send packing to hell whoever dares to come close to his lover. I wonder what would’ve happened if Wei Ying hadn’t gone to the dungeon on his own volition.

Wangxian Are Once Again Ready To Risk It All For Each Other

It would’ve been nice to see them get their alone time, but what’s one more complication on the path of true love, right?

If you thought about it, Wangxian’s universe truly conspires to bring them together sometimes. Wen Ning tells Wei Ying everything Lan Zhan wasn’t able to, and Wen Qing does everything in her power to ensure they’re both out of harm’s way. Even when our heroes aren’t able to spend time together, they are being assisted by outside forces that work to ensure their love has a future. There are always people left in the world who are rooting for Wangxian because they’re the good gays guys!

We are well aware of how deeply and madly Wei Ying loves Lan Zhan, but it is startling all the same that even when he is in physical agony, what infuriates him to the point of madness is the news of Lan Zhan being hurt and his home being burnt down. Wei Ying is also more than willing to endure his pain a while longer if it means Lan Zhan has a shot at getting better.

Wangxian at any given point of time are ready to sacrifice themselves for the other and wage a war against the entire world for wronging the love of their life. That’s what makes these soulmates more unique than most, if not all lovers in fiction. Throughout the story, their romance is subjected to a billion tests and every choice they make is bound to make the viewers cry and highlight the unfairness of the impossible stakes they go through to be with each other. This is no ordinary romance, and that’s why it is all the more fantastic they are able to survive these unthinkable odds and come out shining in the end.

Lan Zhan’s concern and affection for Wei Ying is so open that it bleeds all over our screens. It’s like he looks at the rest of the world with aloof objectivity but the minute his lover comes into his sight, his eyes can bloom only warmth and emotion. Even the vision that touches Wei Ying from afar should be gentle and reverent, fit for holding in sight something precious beyond measure. This can be said about the both of them.

It is when NHS mentions their halcyon days at Cloud Recesses that we realize how their lives have changed irreversibly. Both Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are visibly sadder, like they’re wishing to return to simpler times when courting Lan Zhan was the biggest problem in Wei Ying’s life and fighting his feelings for Wei Ying was Lan Zhan’s. They’ve grown closer since then but the impediments on their road have also grown bigger.

Wei Ying Asks Jiang Cheng To Stay Out Of His Love Life

Lan Zhan keeps walking like #conceal don’t feel but the sad version of WuJi reveals all.

Wei Ying has been growing tired of Jiang Cheng trying to dictate what he should and should not feel or do about things that do not concern him and he rightfully puts him in his place in this scene. Jiang Cheng tells Wei Ying to not choose “someone else” as “we” already have a lot to deal with. He implies Wei Ying shouldn’t help Lan Zhan because he isn’t family and is clearly underplaying his injury despite Wei Ying emphasising its urgency. And Wei Ying is so done with putting up with that kind of negative energy in his love life.

He is quick to silence anyone who thinks they can hold him back from his heart or overstep the boundaries of his relationship with Lan Zhan. And his logic is very sound, for who on earth is capable of stopping Wei Ying from helping him? Not even Lan Zhan!

Wei Ying breaks free of Jiang Cheng's grip and leaves in Lan Zhan's direction after patronizingly patting his arm. And that is his answer. To him, Lan Zhan isn’t just another person and there is certainly no choice he has to make when it comes to him. It will always be Lan Zhan who is his foremost priority and the rest of the world has to simply get used to being left behind.

We see that he knows Lan Zhan would never ask for help but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it. His soulmate will hence always offer it, and if rejected, simply throw him on his back and continue while Lan Zhan informs him once again of how “boring” it is. He doesn’t get to do that, but his sentiment is romantic enough to stay in Lan Zhan’s memory for sixteen years and become an action he boldly reciprocates when Wei Ying comes back.

Wangxian’s Love Story is Truly “Epic”

Episodes 11 and 12 trace the beginnings of the turmoil that will forge Wangxian’s path (and make us weep). Every romance starts from the idyllic state of undisturbed happiness but it seldom remains there through the whole story. And let’s be honest, calamities bring emotional depth and complexity to a plot, exposing that our favorite characters are human, flawed and a lot closer to reality than we imagined. Both the heroes stay loyal to their core values, with the conviction to be fearless in the face of unforeseen adversities in life and love.

And we hope like the hopeless romantics who are in love with the greatest love story ever told, that maybe all the tragedies that are about to befall Wei Ying and Lan Zhan won’t matter one day because their happy ending will heal all wounds. Obstacles will continue to strew our heroes apart and push them towards the other on a loop, but Wangxian are like magnets destined to snap back together. They will ascend beyond the stratosphere of romance, straight to the heavens, because their love’s greatest virtue is that they have each other and know each other more than any two people ever did in all of history. They are devoted to the other unconditionally in soul, mind and body.

It’s just that our idiot-soulmates take the long way round to realize that their own joint force is capable of annihilating and birthing entire universes, and nothing that ever dared to stand on their path ever stood a chance. And when they do realize that their love is an infinite, impossible force that can bend the laws of nature and be a harbinger of greatness to a world that is doomed to fail, their story is exalted to an epic that doubles as a romance, effectively displacing all the bland, straight examples of love that have infiltrated our past and perpetuated heteronormativity. Because it boasts a love that all of humankind should vie to fashion their lives after and is a true sight to behold - a sight we will rewatch for as long as we live, and bequeath to posterity so they can grow up looking up to Wangxian. Because their love story is the big budget live action fantasy that queer people have been deprived of for so long and is now here to tell us : You should dare to love because it will become your greatest strength. Just like it became Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s.

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sometipsygnostalgic · 3 years

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Steven Universe - How the show fails to handle emotion, irrationality, and trauma

I have a better understanding of why SU is the way it is now. Why it is very dramatic, and why the characters often act in ways that are entirely out of proportion

When making a critical post about the handling of Flame Princess in Adventure Time, /u/samhadj01 attributed part of the problem to be that Rebecca Sugar was responsible for Flame Princess’s conceptualizing, and wrote her and Finn the same way that she writes SU characters - in a heightened emotional state, where they are feeling the EXTREMES of their emotions at all times, yelling at the top of their voice when angry, crying their eyes out when sad, and hurting each other. The reddit user said this made it difficult for the writers to figure out where to take Flame Princess next.

I challenged this reddit post’s claim that Rebecca writing FP’s first episodes meant that the crew didn’t know what to do with her. There is a lot of oversight in the AT crew, and Rebecca was just one cog in the wheel, even if she was full of ideas that ended up getting used. If she came up with a bad idea it would be the responsibility of her colleagues to put it back on track, and I don’t even think FP’s initial portrayal is the problem - the issue is she was completely marginalized after the fact, and bizarrely rewritten to lose her early immaturity without there being enough progression into that new stage. Following this she was basically written out of the show, with the exception of when she’d be useful to show off another character’s development (Finn, PB, even Cinnamon Bun).

WITH THAT BEING SAID, I thought Samhadj made a good point about SU.

Rebecca Sugar always loved writing music into her stories because it was the purest form of expression. You can hear how much love she puts into her music. She wanted to create a show where she could really sell emotions, where she could fill it up with songs that the characters would sing to express themselves and their troubled feelings. She wanted all the characters to be expressive, emotional, angry. She wanted Steven to be a character that helps everyone else learn to deal with their emotions, much like how her brother Steven helped her, as she’s said before.

The issue is that, in order to facilitate this, she would need to write characters who would BE in these conflicts, feel heightened emotions at all times.

So Rebecca conceptualized the gem species.

Even though they take the form of adults, the gems are incredibly stunted. They remain the same for thousands of years. They are not equipped to process emotional trauma, having lived in a society where you have to cover up all your flaws and feelings at the risk of being shattered. The show follows several Crystal Gems who rebelled against this system, but still haven’t figured out what it means to be free from this systematic oppression. They’re trying to live peacefully, but they’re prisoners still, in their hearts.

Steven is the catalyst for change that points out the things that upset them, and forces them to deal with their emotions. He acts as emotional support and encourages the crystal gems to grow. Steven also has much growing up to do himself. He has to confront the truth about what it means to BE a crystal gem, to have inherited the gem of the person who started the revolution, and Steven over time learns how messed up everything is. He is overcome with the desire to fix it, while still learning about himself.

Why is this sort of storytelling a problem?

For the characters to have heightened emotions all the time, it means they have to keep getting in conflicts that reveal these emotions. It is these conflicts that make the show feel overdramatic and edgy - how characters will lash out and hurt each other, all the time, because they had a bad day, or something reminded them of something that hurt them.

More urgently, who they are lashing out against. While the Crystal Gems hurting each other in season 1 makes sense, it is when they start taking things out on Steven himself that things become straight up toxic.

Steven has to bear the brunt of EVERYONE’s problems, AND his own. He chases after Pearl in “Rose’s Scabbard” and nearly falls to his death while she ignores him, he fights with Amethyst when she is insecure about Jasper, he has to deal with Ruby and Sapphire’s fighting. He has to deal with all the townies and their stupid conflicts as well, Lars and Sadie’s fighting, so on. And ON TOP OF ALL THIS, people are trying to kill him all the time!!!!! But he is getting absolutely no meaningful support, and this is obvious, because the show itself acknowledges this later on.

You start to ask the question, is this even worth doing? The characters around Steven display incredible immaturity, and after a certain point, they stop feeling like heroes. They feel like leeches who are taking advantage of a young boy.

Things get RIDICULOUS in the final season. Even after the episodes where Amethyst acknowledged the shitty status quo of everyone leaning on him, Steven then has to deal with the emotional problems of the Diamonds themselves, who it turns out lashed out the entire GALAXY because they didn’t know how to talk about their feelings?! For millions of years?!?! To be turned around by one teenage boy, even after a revolution where many of their gems expressed why they were wrong???!!!

I think it was these final episodes of Steven Universe that completely shattered any remaining suspension of disbelief about the diamonds.

I’m no alien to ancient, immortal characters in charge of millions demonstrating incredible immaturity. Look at Princess Bubblegum and Marceline. Marceline would lean closer to the Amethyst side of the spectrum where she lashes out against everyone, while PB would be on the Pearl or Diamonds side where she’d pretend to act all rational and coolheaded and then do something insanely bad like crash a wedding or manipulate children. Pretty yikes, even up to the finale. However, the difference is that AT is a more lighthearted wacky show where immaturity can slide for jokes, and most of the issues these characters have are inward facing. They identify and work on their problems themselves, with some support but not much interference from outside. They also do NOT act crazy all the damn time, and have plenty of moments before, during, and after their development where they are fully supportive friends. I enjoyed learning more about these characters and their pasts, because the immaturity never broke my suspension of disbelief.

The DIAMONDS, on the other hand, never get any sort of character development. I was excited to learn more about their creation, and how they came to be these insanely powerful beings that controlled a fascist society where emotion is not allowed. Why is it this way? Why do they want to keep it like this?

We never find out. We just see Steven embarrassing White Diamond after she attempts to murder him, and then she immediately goes full 180 redemption. It makes no damn sense!

Steven Universe Future attempts to address the issues with everyone Steven knows being emotionally dependent on him, but Future forgoes genuine themes about healing in favour of its edgy focus on how Steven has become “damaged”.

I was shocked watching SU Future’s first few episodes. I was astounded that the show would deconstruct itself so thoroughly, and have Steven address the exact things that were on MY mind. He realised that he’d been used.

How ballsy is that for the show to have the protagonist literally tear it to pieces in the final few episodes?

However, any hopes for Steven directly addressing these issues, communicating with his friends and HEALING were dashed about half way through, when he only kept escalating. Steven got so outraged that he shattered Jasper, and attempted to kill White Diamond while also injuring himself. He started to see himself as a monster. He becomes a murderer. He turns into a kaiju at the end since that’s how his perception of himself is different.

I was really disappointed that the show had wasted its entire runtime to build this up.

The emotion that Rebecca Sugar was trying to capture was Steven’s pain, anger, the disconnect he had with his friends.

Future did not spend ANY time in demonstrating that Steven’s friends were acknowledging his pain. In fact, quite the opposite - they kept dismissing all of his feelings about Ruby and Aquamarine, and Greg was revealed as The Literal Worst when he thought his perfectly normal conservative upbringing was way worse than Steven literally getting tortured by aliens every other day and having no friends or education. When Steven has his breakdown, they all cROWD him and start yelling at him. They have absolutely no regard for Steven’s boundaries at all. It’s almost like Steven’s friends are P-zombies at this stage.

I did not like how Steven was portrayed as a dangerous, out-of-control killer. It’s not just that he SAW himself as this - it’s literally what he was. You can do bad things because of your trauma, but it won’t turn you into a monster. If you act like a monster, that is your responsibility.

And then the series ends with the hug, but we do not see Steven’s actual healing process or reconnecting with his friends. We only get a brief goodbye episode.

After watching Obsidian, I cannot help but compare these scenarios. Obsidian was about Marceline healing from her emotional trauma. It was still very much a part of her, but she was learning to recognise when it was damaging her life, and communicate with others about it. It’s about learning to accept your cracks.

If SU Future had been about dealing with trauma properly and healing, it could have been the best series on Cartoon Network, and fully redeemed the weaknesses of the original show.

However, Rebecca and the SU crew decided to focus too much on Steven’s pain, and Future ended up exacerbating the issues of the show.

#steven universe #steven universe future #adventure time

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