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#i can talk forever about why oz means a lot to me but why would i do that actually thatd be terrible adslkjfahl
elegyofthemoon · 3 months
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tbh i think i just need to get into a media thatll shake me to my core the way me revisiting p//andora hearts at a crucial time shook me
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pinkandpurple360 · 4 months
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im not even a huge fizzarozzie stan, but why are you so obsessed with warping the ship into being this huge dumpsterfire of toxicity that fizz needs to leave in order to reunite with his “soulmate” blitzo?
“Ozzie doesn’t understand him” bruh Ozzie is literally the only person who understands him he said so himself. And even the person who you’re closest toowill be kinda perplexed if the guy you hated for 10+ years suddenly becomes your bestie.
“They’ll be taking some time apart and might take a look at this codependency issue.” - lol no way viv’s doing that lol shes going all in on them being a duo. Like dont get me wrong I think they’re a bit too uwu joined at the hip for me but it’s not this horrible ship where fizz is kept in a gilded birdcage forever.
“I think karma will hit him and he’ll get his own version of what he put Moxxie through. Specifically Asmodeus, Fizz to a lesser extent.” in a perfect world I’d actually hope this would happen but considering Viv portrayed all of Hell as fangirls for them, this is 1000% Not Happening.
”Fizz definitely isn’t his first ever love, if the demonology is anything to go by. The story of Sarah in the Book of Tobit is Asmodeus’ most famous story so to exclude that would be a disservice to the character.” Viv spoils her plot points through Twitter likes, she confirmed Tobit/all demonology stories aren’t canon to Helluva unless directly stated :/ and she’s liked many versions of tweets basically saying Ozzie has never had romantic feelings ever until Fizz and never will again after he dies.
and Blitzø is his own brand of fucked up, even more so than Fizz and Ozzie combined. No way in hell those two would work out without some SERIOUS therapy on Blitzø’s end.
I think you actually clearly are a big fizzarozzie fan? you’re blowing the one time someone criticises the ship out of proportion, getting defensive, and using dramatic words like “obsessed” “warping” and “soulmate” I’m literally the 1% here. There are lots of shipping spaces you can go instead. The way the fandom treats this ship like a fragile gem shows it could do with some looking at. When people refuse to let you critique something that’s how you know it’s hiding some problems.
Who is warping anything by just noticing the events that happen and interpreting them in a way you don’t agree with?
Oz misunderstands him more than he understands. They bicker, they miscommunicate, and in the end they try again. and it isn’t all about blitz, because Oz never understood why he needed to compete in the contest at the start of Oops, he doesn’t notice fizz hiding things from him, he doesn’t listen to fizz when he worries that eyes are around, and confesses his love without Fizz fully agreeing to it. Sure Fizz hugs him or laughs it off but can’t they have some agreement on when it’s a secret and when it isn’t? He doesn’t understand Fizzs identity crisis, his need for approval from mammon, his past, any of it.
Viv also likes Crimson x Chaz fanart, art of ValAngel and Vox being a couple, art of Fizz dying, art of him being immortal, art of characters dating ocs. Art of her own self inserts, art of Blitz shape shifting into a dragon, art of Blitz and Fizz having reciprocated love, art of Alessio being Moxxies stepdad, Etc etc. That’s not enough to go on.
“The first and last time he’ll ever experience love” that is just plain weird. And obsessive. Not to mention bad writing. I’ve never heard anyone talk like that. He’s way too possessive of Fizz. He has to live his entire life with Asmodeus and die in his arms in his tower where’s he’s all alone? I hope not. That’s almost worse than him being made an immortal imp.
“She’s going all in on them being a duo” what are you talking about. Like what does this mean. She also said a main character might die and some of them don’t get happy endings.
What do you mean it’s 1000% not happening? Denial much? It already did in S2E6, with the article, the way the staff negatively react, the fact mammon said he’ll regret revealing it? The people at the show are literally Fizzarolli’s fandom, safe to say they aren’t everyone.
All demonology is not canon is just a straight up not factual statement, she makes constant references to demonology. His design is inspired by it, his apparent disapproval of monogamy is inspired by it, why would his biggest story not be referenced whatsoever? Isn’t it possible that Ozzie had his heart broken before and that’s why he’s afraid? Dang. Chill out.
As for your last paragraph, I think you just hate Blitz, ignore the fact that he’s going through development, and need to chill out. Pump the breaks a lil. Soulmates don’t exist.
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coraniaid · 1 year
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🔥Scooby Gang
Unpopular opinion ask game
(Better two months late than never?)
So … my slightly flippant answer is that I think “the Scooby Gang” is honestly not the best of names for the group of Buffy’s friends who know about her being the Slayer and help her out sometimes.  Partly because I think it’s a bit clunky to actually say it, but also because, well, try googling it.  Any group name where you have to specify the name of the source material is just a bit rubbish, I think.  
Also the reference itself doesn’t really work, does it?  The original Scooby Gang travels around the country, proving that supposed supernatural hauntings are actually hoaxes being carried out by mundane criminals and property owners, and they don’t really have an obvious leader.  The Buffyverse Scooby Gang … are all stuck in one place, the monsters they investigate are real, and they do have an obvious leader.
They should’ve stuck with Willow’s original suggestion of the Slayerettes.
A bit less flippantly … uh. I don’t think I have an unpopular take on the Scoobies as a collective, actually.  I mean, I think people who complain about them being bad friends or not really caring about Buffy are wrong – or at least viewing their actions in a deliberately uncharitable light in a way I don’t agree with – but at the same time I don’t think this is actually a majority opinion.  Or at least I curate my dash well enough that I see people arguing against it more often than I actually see the take itself.
So quick fire unpopular opinions about each of them, in no particular order, below the cut:
Jenny: I like Jenny a lot, but I kind of hate the retcon that she was sent to Sunnydale to spy on Angel and make sure he didn’t get his soul back.  Partly because of the jarringly racist way this retcon is presented and handled, partly because it’s so obviously nonsense (Jenny mentions Angel all of … what, once, before this retcon?) and partly because it ruins the much more interesting version of Jenny Calendar the technopagan with a life of her own that the show had implied existed before this.  And for what?  To deliver some exposition that the show could have presented dozens of other ways?  So that Giles and Jenny can break up again and Giles can be sad when she dies? 
Oz: I was genuinely surprised to see how well Oz did in the recent character polls because he is just kind of flat and boring to me.  He’s one of the more laid back people in the show, sure, and if he was a real person I think he would be fun to hang out and exchange terse monosyllables with, but he doesn’t really have any character arc to speak of until … well, whatever off-screen stuff actually happened that ended up with him getting written out in Season 4.
(I think there is a potentially interesting character to be made out of the fragments of Oz we see, but I don't think the show ever puts them together in a way that means anything.  He’s just Willow’s Nice Quirky Boyfriend, then he decides he needs to leave town and he’s gone forever.)
Cordelia: I like Cordelia, both on Buffy and on Angel, but she’s often really genuinely unpleasant in the early seasons of the show and it’s kind of grating when people pretend she isn’t?
I mean, I think I get why people talk about her the way they do (it’s partly that people are instinctively prone to like the character because of what Charisma Carpenter went through because of Joss Whedon; it’s partly because Cordelia gets a lot of character development and emotional growth and does become one of the most well-realized and heroic characters in the setting; and it’s partly because as early as Season 1's Welcome To The Hellmouth we are primed to sympathize with Cordelia because of the way Jesse acts around her).  Cordelia is always somewhat likable.  But she’s not nice.
When Cordelia bullies Willow for dressing badly or not having any friends, or when she brings up Xander’s abusive family or poverty in order to humiliate him in front of his friends, or when she ostracizes and shames Buffy for being different from everyone else (“I have to call everyone I have ever met, right now”), it’s not because she’s just a pure-hearted innocent who isn’t afraid to tell the truth.  It’s because she’s trying her best to be hurtful and being good at it.  It feels like it’s belittling the actual character growth she goes through to pretend that this isn’t what’s happening.
Tara:  Uh.  I don’t think I have any unpopular opinions about Tara.  Honestly I’m not even sure what unpopular opinions about Tara a person could have.  Tara’s great.
Okay, not an opinion about Tara herself as such, but I get kind of irked when people try to talk up Buffy/Faith by talking down Willow/Tara.  I mean people who complain about the latter being boring or being censored by the network.  (The latter take especially is weird, because however sanitized one thinks Willow and Tara’s relationship is, it’s a lot more textual and explicit than whatever Buffy and Faith have going on.)  
I don’t actually know how common that is outside of my dash, but I’ve seen it a few times and it just feels kind of tacky to me.  Sure, Willow and Tara have a different dynamic than Buffy and Faith, and it’s not quite as compelling from a narrative perspective to many people – including me! –  but they are nice.
Anya: I like Anya; I think she’s often poorly served by the narrative and I think her death is really stupid and unsatisfying but … well, I guess those aren’t unpopular opinions. 
I do think the frequent jokes about Anya being an ardent capitalist are kind of grating and don’t really make sense.  Anya isn’t some time traveler from The World Before Shops: she’s centuries old and clearly spent a lot of her time as a vengeance demon blending in with ordinary humans, as we see in Season 3's The Wish and then again in various flashbacks.  She shouldn’t suddenly be surprised by how the 20th century works, because she lived through it.  If she’s weirdly obsessed by capitalism (or what the Buffy writers think capitalism is), that should be an interest going back centuries.  She can’t possibly just have noticed it after becoming human. Her very first scene in the show, while she's still a demon, establishes she knows things about fashion and buying clothes! Well enough to impress Cordelia!
(Yeah, a lot of this is just that the Anya from Season 4 onwards isn’t really the same character as Anya from Season 3, I know.)
Giles: So it annoys me a little to realize this about myself, but the truth is that Giles is one of two characters in the show I’ve accepted that I like quite a lot less because of how the fandom at large talks about them.  I don’t particularly like being a contrarian, and I do still like Giles as a character, but I don’t like either flavor of Fandom Giles (either Giles the Perfect Dad or the Giles Who Is Compelled To Do Bad Things But Is Just So Sad About Them).
Whenever I see posts that focus exclusively on how tragic it is for Giles that he just had to drug Buffy and lie to her about it and almost get her killed, or how awful he must have felt when he abandoned her in Season 6, or how Jenny’s murder was so sad because of how it made Giles feel  I just think … okay, you’re not exactly wrong, but you wouldn’t talk about a character who does half the things Giles does in this way if they were a middle-aged woman.  And I know that for a fact because I’ve seen the way the fandom talks about Joyce Summers. 
Xander: I think the idea of Xander as a (very) repressed bisexual teenager makes a lot of sense of what we see from the character: things like his constant interest in how attractive Buffy’s boyfriends are and his repeated attempts to prove how “manly” he is.   It is a reading I believe is at least somewhat intentional, it is a reading that I like, and it is one that (combined with the hints we get about what his family are like over the course of the show) makes some of the way he behaves in the early seasons a lot more sympathetic.
However. I simply don’t believe there was ever any chance of the show having Xander actually come out.  I know that the official line is that one of Willow and Xander was always going to be gay, and that the decision as to which of them it was was made very late on, but I think that’s just a (fairly obvious) self-serving lie.
Look at how the show treats Larry – literally the only out gay man on the show in its whole seven seasons (except, maybe, Scott Hope).  Comes out in season 2, dead by the end of season 3, never once seen dating or expressing romantic or sexual attraction to another man, never mourned.  There are several other characters (Ethan Rayne and Andrew Wells being the obvious two) who are strongly implied to be attracted to men, sure, but this is always, aways played for laughs.  (Even Larry coming out is treated like a punchline.)
I think the chance of the writers having Xander ever start seriously dating other men (or even talking about finding them attractive in ways that couldn't be played off as a joke) was always basically zero and honestly it’s a little disingenuous to pretend otherwise.  The show is simply too mired in the period-typical homophobia of late 90s network television for things to be otherwise.
Willow: Sort of an inverse of the Oz take earlier: I was surprised by how badly Willow did in the recent character contests.  I think she’s pretty clearly the second-best written character in the show (just after Buffy herself).
That said, I guess my most unpopular Willow take is I think it’s kind of sad that she doesn’t go to a better college than Sunnydale U?  I think it is entirely in character that she would go to the same college as Buffy, and even that she would try to convince herself this wasn’t just because she was trying to help Buffy, but I still think it’s a mistake that she comes to regret.  If I were Willow’s friend in Season 3 – or, perhaps more to the point, one of her teachers – I would have tried pretty hard to talk her out of it. 
The show tries to present Willow’s decision to stay in Sunnydale as being an unquestionable positive, at least in Season 3’s Choices – and not just an excuse for Alyson Hannigan to stay on the show – but I’m not really convinced.  Okay, Willow doesn’t just want to help Buffy, but wants to “fight evil, help people” and “what better place?” is there to learn magic.  Let’s pretend to believe this is why she's staying in town.
The thing is though – as Season 4 makes clear – Sunnydale U is actually a terrible place to learn magic.  It’s only by luck that Willow meets even a single other witch, while off in England there are whole covens who would be delighted to teach her.  And the idea that fighting evil means staying in Sunnydale is a bit hard to defend too, given that this is the season of the show that establishes that there are other Hellmouths (in The Wish) and given that the season ends with Angel leaving town for LA to … uh, fight the forces of evil.  Which it turns out you can do pretty much anywhere.  Including, presumably, in places like Harvard or Oxford (where, in reality, there’s quite a lot of evil to be fought).
I don’t think this is an intentional reading of the show, but I do think you can see this choice as a sign of how little positive adult guidance there is in Willow’s life.  (We see just enough of her parents to know how neglectful they are.)   The show tells us that Giles wants Buffy to be able to go to Northwestern and get out of Sunnydale, but he doesn’t bat an eye at Willow turning down the chance to leave?  Other than Buffy, does Willow have anybody to discuss her choice with, even if she wanted to?
Yes, sure, in real life you don’t have to go to the “best” colleges just because you can and academic prestige isn’t the most important thing in the world and blah blah blah.  I agree!  And I know some people think this choice the show makes is empowering or inspiring.  But I think Willow personally would be happier somewhere where she was actually academically challenged, or somewhere she could actually be taught magic properly rather than illicitly teaching herself against the advice and wishes of her girlfriend and her ex-librarian.)
Again, I’m not saying the show should have had Willow leave.  I understand why they didn’t (even though part of me loves the idea of a spin-off Willow series where Willow goes to Oxford and the Bullingdon Club play the role of Wolfram & Hart).  But I’m not really on board with the popular idea that Willow going to the same second-rate college that Buffy is forced to settle for (and that Buffy gets to be sad about having to go to!) is actually a good thing.
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theheroheart · 1 year
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Ted Lasso predictions
Ok so I was gonna write this before season 3 started, but then the internet lied to me about exactly WHEN that would be, so now episode 1 is out, and I haven't written it, so I am showing SOME INCREDIBLY RESTRAINT in writing this now, before I watch.
I have a bajillion thoughts, and I want to write them down so I can go either "I told you so" or "wow I was way off base", depending.
Okay let's go.
The biggest question I struggle the most with is whether Ted/Rebecca will be a thing.
The show has consistently built them up as soulmates, showing us the connection between the two. I could point to a million moments of foreshadowing. Jason has called them soulmates. But will that be romantic? I would honestly love it either way. I'd love to see the two of them romantically together, but I'd also love for some a big influential show to keep them platonic and show that that's how they are.
What I do know more or less for sure, is that come 1/3 into episode 11, there will be some big revelation between Rebecca and Ted, in Ted's office. This one has been foreshadowed SO heavily.
And it just seems like they both have had all of the character development to be ready to be together. Rebecca saying she needs to let herself be loved by someone wonderful - but she wasn't able to with Sam so now she's still trying to figure out why. And Ted of course dealing with his emotions and his problems, making him a much healthier partner to be with.
The main thing that stops me from thinking it'll be a thing is that I don't think Ted will stay in London. He needs to go back to Henry.
I already thought that, but couldn't necessarily point to something big, but then Brendan mentioned in an interview something about how Beard has immersed himself in local culture, while Ted hasn't. Which yeah - he's barely changed a single thing in his apartment, or his clothing style, while Beard clearly has. Ted isn't making a long-time home, it's like he's living in a motel.
Also references to Wizard of Oz and the red shoes. "There's no place like home." to mirror "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" in the pilot. (Rebecca is shown with the red shoes. Does that mean she'll come with Ted?)
Nate saying "back to Kansas, where you belong, with your son" and it clearly hits Ted. The phone call where Henry forgot his lunch, and Ted looked devastated to be ocean away. Whatever happens, Ted needs to be with his son, he needs to be a better dad than his own dad was.
I think/hope we'll see Ted's mom. There's only minor things that have told me that might be happening, but nonetheless. Ted making a point of "and my mom" whenever he talked about his dad's suicide. Ted saying "I love meeting people's moms." And there's some filming pics that shows an older lady with him, with a suitcase.
As for Roy/Keeley, I feel like they're gonna break up. There's a lot of build-up to it. The issues between them. Ms Bowen. Jamie still being in love with her. The question is whether it's gonna be forever or not. I have a vague feeling they're the kind of people who come into each other's lives to make each other better - that they're transitional. They both very much needed to date someone like the other one. But that doesn't mean they're destined to be together forever. Could go either way though. We'll see.
And it depends on what they decide to do with Jamie, which I actually don't necessarily have any predictions for. I've loved seeing his himbo development. And I find it deeply interesting how much Ted thinks about him, how he seems to feature in Ted's panic attacks.
And what are they gonna do about Nate? Well, obviously Ted isn't giving up on him. I've read a lovely post about how it's not going to be one big redemption, and I agree. I think Nate has to crawl himself out of the hole he's dug himself (emotionally), and I hope he does that. I hope it takes effort, but I hope he makes it. Whatever his flaws, he does deserve happiness, and deserves a chance to be a better person.
I also think the show is finally gonna dig into homophobia in football. AT LEAST I PRAY. I've been wanting this for so long, and obviously the show is pro-queerness.
So, how? Trent Crimm doing something more meaningful. He's heavily implied to be gay (based on that one pub scene), and he cares about sports, and he cares about major issues. (Everyone and their mum has predicted he'll write a book about the team or about Ted.)
There's also Colin, implied slightly subtler to be gay. ("Like Grindr.") Plus on red carpet a week ago, his actor implied love would be in his future, and he also said something about getting a storyline you can sink your teeth into, and about Colin living his best life. I already thought this might be a thing, but the interview kind of confirmed it.
What about Dr Sharon? Not sure what role she has to play, if it's important or not. Is she involved in the whole gay thing? Does she go work for Rupert? Who knows trtbh.
Also apparently we're getting a new player called Zava, who Dani adores. How will this play? No idea but I'm excited to see.
Sam? Well, he's got the restaurant plot. Making a safe space for his team, because that's what he needed when he got there. It kind of sounds like that's his main plot this season. (I don't think him and Rebecca are getting back together.) Is the restaurant called "Ola's"? That's supposedly the name of an episode, and it's a Nigerian name, so.
There's a new character named Jack. She's described as a charming venture capitalist, so I assume she wants to work with Keeley. The fact she's charming and played by a queer actress makes me think Keeley is gonna dip her toes back into the lady pool, or at least be tempted to.
OH!! And for the love of god, please give us a fucking musical episode. Almost everyone in this show can sing, for fuck's sake.
Uhhhh I think that's it. I can't think of anything more off the top of my head, or looking at the character list and such.
SO NOW I'M GONNA GO WATCH THE FUCKING EPISODE.
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silvanoir · 2 years
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Buffy rewatch (seasons 1-3)
Buffy was a show that was special to me because it was on when I was in highschool, She was Class of ‘99, I was Class of 2000.  There weren’t that many shows for teens, about teens then.  And everyone watched it (that I cared to talk to).  We’d have discussions the next day at lunch about the episodes.  Even when I changed friend groups.  It wasn’t on cable or streaming, everyone who had a tv could watch it and did.  Do kids even have that now?
(this is going to get long...)
And I overidentified with her and viewed all events through her eyes that first time around.  So now going back to rewatch as an adult, and having rewatched Angel, I can see her blindspots and things from other character’s points-of-view.  Also I don’t like Angel as much now that I’ve paid close attention to him.... I think the soul he was “cursed” with wasn’t his original soul.... because as a human and then an evil vamp he only cared about himself, it was only after a curse and a lot of pushing by others that he reluctantly agreed to help people (after many years of slouching about) (and still backslides into selfishness and vindictiveness and some really ableist comments/actions... I know Spike and Lindsay were not the greatest of guys but thinks he did / said to them when one was in a wheelchair and the other was without a hand... yeesh).  So my teenage self wondered “Why can’t Buffy and Angel be together forever???”  whereas now I’m fine with them having broken up.
I didn’t find Xander annoying as a teen I think because the teenage boys I went to school with said and did much worse but by gum, boy, SHUT UP.  No one wants to hear about you being horny!
Too much romance drama... everybody liking everybody else at some point.... especially since they would have Willow end up a lesbian they should’ve ditched a lot of that for her.  I liked her an OZ though, still do.  *shrug*  But the fact that you could sit all these characters in a room together and ask them “who at no point had kissed or had a thing for anyone else here, or anyone related to/ connected to anyone here, raise you hand?”  and no one could raise their hand is bad writing, sorry!
There were some real duds of episodes and everyone knows what ones they were, I think (Hyena, Mantiss, Computer Demon, etc).  “I’m jacked in, I’m jacked in!”  lol.
I had forgotten how frustrating it was that that disk fell between the 2 desks and stayed there for multiple episodes!!!!
Was annoyed as a teen that werewolves went from having wolf faces to looking like cheap gorilla suits, still miffed.  Have wolves be wolves!
Oz’s offhand comment about school shootings becoming downright trendy.... yikes.  I mean, stuff was happening in the 90s but other than during the pandemic lockdown.... it really did, didn’t it..
Someone else on tumblr said on their rewatch “what is the weather, why are they dressed like that?” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because aside from some girls in some mini dresses everyone is in layers, chilly fall clothes, all the time... when SunnyDale in in California with palm trees and gets to be 70 f  in winter.  I do love Willow’s fuzzy sweaters.  Every other girl was trying to dress too mature (I blame the costume department, watched the extras and they said they were putting them in prada, etc).  Willow was the only teen girl dressing as a teen girl.
Faith being a rowdy girl from South Boston with a neglectful alcoholic mother... realistically wouldn’t dress in tight leather like that all the time.  I know that girl.  Been to school and worked with girls like that.  They all end up having the same look at some point: dark hair up in a messy bun, grey patriots sweater a little too big so you see a bra strap, tight pants but not the sexy kind, beat-up sneakers, holding a medium dunkin’ donuts coffee.  50/50 chance of a cigarette hanging off their lip.
I feel bad for Joyce.  New boyfriend ends up being an abusive robot.  Gets a friend her own age, friend turns into a zombie.  She’s not allowed to have anything but Buffy and her art gallery job, that’s it.
The Banned Candy episode was hilarious to me as a teen.  All these adults acting like irresponsible kids, haha!  But as an adult.... having worked with men ages 40-60 who never mentally/emotionally matured, and the US and UK (and Italy a while back) having politicians who say and do whatever and party it up while the world burns.  No cursed candy involved.  Suddenly... not so funny.  When you go from a teen thinking “I don’t know if these adults in charge are to be trusted” to an adult who looks at other adults and goes “I don’t think these adults in charge are to be trusted!!!” its a lot scarier, actually.
I wish my town had something akin to the Bronze as a teen.  A coffee-shop/club where anyone goes to listen and dance to alt rock. 
I don’t want them to ever reboot Buffy (or Angel) but I think it would be interesting to have something set in the same universe, present day, new characters.  WITH A BIGGER BUDGET.  Some  of the original characters could make brief guest appearances, but not the ageless vampires (since the actual actors have aged).
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the-firebird69 · 1 year
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We know who this woman is and she's saying that she is Cher when it's not and she is Jenna and DJ is still out and she went on saying it and sent it to our son and her son says these things are going to happen and it's going to help him and she said why would it help him I said if you get them out he's going to have his brain back does it probably want to try him in court as himself and she said oh good and oh that isn't that bad and I think your brain might be in the tomb and she said boy that sucked so she went home and wept a little and said you're rubbing it in and said it's fascinating but I'm just saying it again and she says good so they're going off to try and do things now. And this match is not real it's fake wrestling but she's the champion cuz she has the power to state champion and our son if he wrestles we're probably not stay champion because he doesn't have control over the place and they would constantly make fun of him it'll be Non-Stop so you do that to everybody who can't win consistently and they did to Andre and beat him down but he's never going to really end up there he says and we agree and it's a stupid sport and they try and harm him the whole time and he didn't have harming someone really bad and that's true this guy admits it too he says I'm trying to hurt the guy and he hurt me and it's actually the guy is talking about this is it looks like you can hurt people she said yeah so don't look like it yet but if I get big and work out these guys will be sorry cuz really it makes so if you're strong and you want to win you will as well it's amazing and it's big and he's one of the world's leading powerlifters for a long time and real lifting so he stopped talking and said we know how it really is so yeah it's coming back unfortunately you guys are getting hit really bad if it's live you know what it is life it's really bad Jesus Christ it's Darth Vader I mean Darth Vader's house and I can't move I don't have any money so they're doing great they're saying terrific because he's in Darth Vader's grasp but they're having a hard time and they're not getting it still now the max are attacking and they're going to turn it up and they might they have the ability to wipe it all out but they're going to wait as well and it will demolish tons of them
Thor Freya
I don't want you to hurt and these people do that and they're cheap and the cheaters and they do things to people and it's a kind of a violent area and you're saying won't be big for a while by the time I hit you are it's going to be the Max and it's real wrestling and I do understand that too and they probably won't let me do it anyways and it's true too but really it would take me forever to get over this Prilosec permiated my body he says. He's got a lot in there still and there was a lot that came out it's probably about half a gallon of the poison that came out last year and slowly and through your pores and urine and other excretions and it was also negated by some chemicals and boy it was a lot half a gallon of liquid with it at about 30% concentration so we know it's a lot I mean that's a lot of drugs it's enough to hurt someone pretty good and this year it's about the same and there's tons of it in him. So I asked him what to do and they said we have to keep doing it to get it out and it's slowly coming out and pretty soon it'll be gone it's coming out of the bones it's coming out of the muscle it's coming out of the lipoma where lots of it is probably another 8 oz or 16 oz and that's about how much she was and it's not pure Prilosec but it is pretty dangerous that big bunch with really it's probably about two cups a year that's a lot it says I was a medicine I guess thinner and then heavy then thin then heavy and it goes out the whole time then it goes for the lipoma and then it goes out the other part and it's been a lot of work I could just take the antidote which they won't get to him and it is making his growth stop and it's done on purpose by us a little bit but not that much we knew it was way too much it was loaded way too much and it was really by biden, who wanted to take his son's skin and still does and other people too but it's really his museum
Hera
And so I understood that and I found it out and I know it's happening over there and your days are numbered Cruise and it's almost over and because he went nuts basically it's insanity and I understand why it looks like you don't have a chance and it feels like it and it might be true but there are other people in this planet and you could have made alliances and he chose not to out of arrogance about things that you're doing with the team but then again your team is not around and you don't want to work with these houses or other people and really have been devastating people who are worth stuff I kind of understand it, but it's my life that you're threatening and talking about. So now yours is going to be over. And being president doesn't appreciate you so you're smart but really there are a bunch of people who could have aligned and stay in this one and you're going to go against him and it's really stupid
Zues
All that's true and I can't stand it and you're right what can I do about nothing and your family couldn't either and I know that dumb s*** is it did the brain stuff is living next door and he did it to steal and did it to other people cuz he know they would be stealing and he's a freak I feel sorry for you but I have to try and do stuff North try and in order to survive
Biden
Like I said it's almost over and I don't need you threatening me like you're a little child that's what it sounds like to me and everyone it's dangerous and it's costing you everything
Zues Hera
It is costing you and many others everything biden
Olympus
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girl4music · 3 years
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BUFFY REWATCH - S04E22 - Restless
Tara: “I think it’s strange. I mean, I think I should worry that we haven’t found her name.”
Willow: “Who, Miss Kitty?”
*shot of their kitten, playing with a ball of red yarn in slow-motion*
Tara: “You’d think she’d let us know her name by now.”
Willow: “She will.
*looking down at Tara*
She’s not all grown yet.”
Tara: “You’re not worried?”
Willow: “I never worry here. I’m safe here.”
Tara: “You don’t know everything about me.”
Willow: “Have you told me your real name?”
Tara: “Oh, you know that.
*Willow smiles, reaches for something. Shot of a paintbrush dipping into ink jars*
They will find out, you know. About you.”
Willow: “Don’t have time to think about that. You know I have all this homework to finish.”
*the camera pulls back so we can see Tara is lying face-down on her bed, naked, and Willow is painting on her back*
Tara: “Are you gonna finish in time for class?”
Willow: “I can be late.”
Tara: “But you’ve never taken drama before.
*shot of Willow dipping the paintbrush again, moving it across to Tara’s back, which is covered with Greek symbols*
Might miss something important.”
Willow: “I don’t wanna leave here.”
*Tara twists back to look at her*
Tara: “Why not?”
*Willow stands up, looking down at Tara. She turns away toward a dark red curtain. Walks over to it*
Willow: “It’s so bright.
*pulls back the curtain to reveal a brightly sunlit desert. The light falls on Tara, who looks over. Looking back at Tara, still holding the curtain open*
And there’s something out there.”
*shot of the desert, straggly plants, rocks. We briefly see something (someone?) moving, then it’s gone. Shot of the kitten stalking forward toward the camera, in slow-motion*
I have been so anxious to get to this episode and write my meta. For all the time I’ve brought up Willow’s insecurities, this is the one and only episode that lays them all bare for everybody to see, if - and this is important -, you are clever enough to decipher the code of visual symbolism and possess the ability of interpretation. Pretty much all of the episode ‘Restless’ requires you to interpret what you see. You’re not told straight-forwardly what the dreams, each of the core 4 Scooby members have, are about and that’s precisely what I love about it and why it is probably my most favourite episode of the whole show.
Now, obviously, I’m only going to be talking about Willow’s dream in the episode because if I were to do an analysis of every character’s dream, I’d be here all day and this recap would be incredibly long. I would suggest watching YouTuber Passion Of The Nerd’s analysis for it to get the whole picture. Much of what I will write here will draw from that as I agree with quite a lot of it and think it makes a lot of sense in understanding each character. Every character has fears, worries and insecurities, and that’s what these dreams are specifically about, but Willow’s go much deeper than can be witnessed in all of the show due to her “hiding” them under a “thinly-veiled” persona of who she wants to be. For the most part, you only get to see who she wants you to see. It is not until this episode that all of Willow’s real thoughts and feelings take center-stage - quite literally. There’s a reason why both her dreams in ‘Nightmares’ and ‘Restless’ have her performing on stage. The former, being more about stage fright and about wanting to go unnoticed. The latter, about acting like something she’s not and “putting on a show” of confidence and security to the other characters, who she fears knows about “the real her”, and the audience watching her. Now, “the real her” is as ambiguous as this entire dream sequence is - meaning: it depends on your point of view who Willow is. And this is why I clash with @confusedguytoo about Willow often regarding my views and opinions on Willow. They see something different to me. However, I’ll let them better explain that if they so wish to. I’ll only explain what I see - in Willow - and in this episode.
I relate Willow’s insecurities to her accumulation of power and need for control. For me, much of what I interpret in ‘Restless’ ties in and very much foreshadows Willow’s magic addiction and ‘Dark Willow’ storyline in Season 6 because, to me, Dark Willow is less about the Magicks and more about power and rage, (Anya interjects here: “and vengeance, don’t forget vengeance”). So I will go through the meaning of Willow’s dream in ‘Restless’ from the way I interpret it and in my own words:
Starting off, we have Willow sat on Tara’s bed with Tara (well, actually Tara is laying down on it and Willow is sat on it.) Tara is turned away from Willow as Willow paints some writing on her bare back (see Passion Of The Nerd’s analysis to know what is being written because it’s very significant to the scene.) This part of Willow’s dream has more to do with Tara than Willow, but it’s important to remember that it’s all from Willow’s perspective. Willow worries that there’s something about Tara that Tara isn’t telling her. Something she’s not “facing her” with and letting her know bothers her. But other than that - she has no worries. She feels safest with Tara and, as I’ve previously mentioned in another recap, is much more invested in the relationship they share than Tara is at this point in it. And the scales don’t actually equal in that because Willow becomes uncomfortably and unhealthily invested in that she starts to abuse Tara in such a way where she wants to make sure Tara pays the most attention to her. And magic has always been the best way for Willow to have “her will be done” well before Tara entered the picture of her life. And so, she knows it’s her bread and butter to getting her way.
Moving on, we now see Willow walking the halls of Sunnydale high school and Xander and Oz are in the dream. No Tara. Meaning this part of the dream is something passed in her life but still very present in her mind. Although this is of the past, the dialogue between all 3 characters is about Willow’s then-future. There is mention of Tara and of the drama class they will take in college. I interpret this to mean that Willow can’t entirely let go of what was to focus on what is or what will be. Hence why Oz is in the scene and why he says “Oh, I’ve been here forever” when Willow asks him if he’s ever took the drama course - at which point we see Willow trying to take something out of her locker but can’t seem to get it open. I interpret this to mean she’s locked out and cannot access that part of her life anymore despite still thinking about it, and specifically Oz, in it. You see, Oz may have followed Willow to college, but he never stayed. Their relationship was only one that existed in high school and Willow has regretfully moved on from Oz and entered a new relationship that exists in college and will last beyond that. She cannot access her high school life anymore. She cannot access Oz anymore. Thus, their love affair was tied to their high school life and Willow no longer goes there.
At this point we see Willow walk out of the frame, leaving Xander and Oz behind, to stand backstage of a production in their drama class - of which Willow has never even rehearsed for and hasn’t even had her first drama class yet. And the characters of Harmony, Riley and Buffy are dressed up in costume ready to perform the play and tell Willow that she’s late but she’s “already” dressed in “costume” and “already” in “character”. Giles then enters the scene as the stage director and his dialogue in rallying his actors to get ready to perform reveals that this play is all about Willow. In fact - she’s the main character in it (go figure) and everybody in the audience, including the cast, is there to watch her perform.
“Acting is not about behaving, it’s about hiding. The audience wants to find you, strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide.” - Giles.
Next Willow goes behind the stage curtains (which are red to represent a vagina, apparently, according to Whedon in the commentary track for ‘Restless’) and finds Tara among them with her who tells her that things aren’t going very well. Willow says that drama class is not being done in the “proper” way, she doesn’t know what to do, and the play’s starting soon. Tara then tells her that the play’s already started and that’s not the point anyway. Willow doesn’t understand. As the play happens without Willow, Tara disappears, and what was following Willow attacks her.
Buffy saves her and we go back to Sunnydale high school. This time we’re in a classroom. It isn’t clear which class but it’s presumably English as Willow reads out a book report on ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. Before she does that though, Buffy tells Willow that the play is long over and asks her why she’s still in “costume”. Willow responds that it’s not a costume, she’s just in her outfit of the day. Buffy tells her that everybody already knows about her and to take her “costume” off, to which Willow panics and refuses. Buffy rips her “costume” off of her to reveal her wearing the clothes she was wearing on the very first episode of the show. Now, Willow stands in front of a full classroom of her peers (both from high school, college, and the Scooby Gang) mocking her for her appearance and her reaction to being totally exposed to what she believes everybody perceives of her as the truth of who she really is. Still a shy loser. The dream sequence ends with what was following Willow and attacked her throughout; the first Slayer sucking out her soul and leaving the real Willow paralyzed in her sleeping state. Unable to escape from her personal Hell.
So what does it all mean? Well, it really all depends on the way you interpret her dream. Some things about Willow and what she thinks and feels are clear, some are not. But how I’ve interpreted her dream in ‘Restless’ is that Willow, despite appearing a much more confident, secure and assertive person, doesn’t have any belief in herself when it comes to her value and requirement of her from her peers, friends and lovers… Or everyone that’s not her. Her need for validation in who she is and what she can do from everyone. Her worthiness in her work. Her ability and capacity to love. Her appearance to whoever perceives her. Especially the ones she loves. And her insecurities run so deep in this that even she doesn’t recognize them. She’s not aware to how much she’s acting like someone she’s not in order to please, in order to have attention, in order to feel of use to people. Now, it is not that she is still the loser. She’s definetly evolved into a much more worldly and well-rounded person since her high school days. Stronger, smarter, wiser, and more confident. It’s just she doesn’t believe in it and she absolutely fears no one else does either. In her mind she’s still the lonely nerd and she’s doing the most to make sure people don’t see that. Even though she has the belief that they do and always will. So her need for power and control all stems from these deep unconscious insecurities. Magic just happens to be the most effective tool for her to accumulate this. And she only becomes addicted to it in Season 6 because she relies on it to make her special. Even though she’s special as she is - with or without magic - to which Tara does her damnedest to make her aware of and believe. And she’s about the only person in the show that achieves it - until, of course, her death… Which, of course, triggers Dark Willow.
Willow's need for power and control as Dark Willow is channelled through rage and pain and so no amount of it is enough. Willow isn’t enough without Tara. None of these fears, worries and insecurities are the truth of Willow. But getting her to believe in and trust in that is next to impossible. Tara is only capable of it because she’s the one thing in the show that Willow truly loves. Is truly committed to. Is truly invested in. And she feels like she means and is nothing without her, without her love, without her attention, without her validation, without her light. She abuses her the most because she’s the one person in all of the show that she covets the most. That she doesn’t want to be without, that she feels the safest and is the happiest with. That she won’t let leave her life. Yes, it’s unhealthy. But true love can be when there’s so much inner turmoil. When there’s such a storm inside threatening to be unleashed with every bad day. Every screw up. Every "spaz" feeling. That's what it stems from. A loser mentality.
That is Willow’s entire predicament throughout the whole show and why her character representation, development and evolution is the greatest, the most profound, the most detailed, the most poignant. This is a character that you absolutely fall in love with very early on. To see them go from that gentle-natured, quirky, inspiring and endearing person to one of the most abusive, frustrating, corruptive and destructive people is hard. Fortunately, they’re given the endgame they deserve and become the hero. They learn to balance both sides to who they are - the dark and the light - and they become exactly who they want to be. Someone of great power and control. Someone that is valued and loved. Someone that matters. Whether she believes it or not is up to you. 😉
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honyakuninakunaru · 3 years
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A Spell For After We Say Goodbye // Mithra SSR Card Story
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CHAPTER 1
Arthur and I were walking around the town whose citywide wedding we were invited to attend.
Rutile: "Ah, it's Master Sage and Prince Arthur! Hello!"
Akira: "Hi, Rutile and Mithra. Were you going around the venue together?"
Mithra: "Yes, he forced me to come with him."
Rutile: "You should use the chance that you've been invited to a wedding to have some fun!"
Arthur: "You're right, and besides, doing so is thought to be a blessing to the bride and groom."
Mithra: "Is that so."
Rutile: "On the topic of weddings, do you happen to remember what mother and father's wedding was like, Mister Mithra?"
Mithra: ".....I wonder. I don't remember it too well."
Rutile: "A-Absolutely none of it?"
Mithra: "Not even one bit."
Akira: ("I'd say this is typical Mithra behaviour but at the same time...")
Mithra: "How did she end up marrying a human man in the first place? I feel like I've heard her say she wanted children with Oz in the past."
Rutile and Arthur: "What!?"
Mithra: "Oh, I remembered. She wanted to have kids with a powerful wizard, or something like that."
Arthur: "... I see. Truly, not only is Master Oz strong, but he's also good at cooking and cleaning. More than anything, he's a wonderful person who shows kindness to anyone. It's no surprise that he's someone others may think of when thinking about marriage."
Mithra: "... You seem to side with Oz an awful lot, Arthur. Has he taken a hold of your weakness or something?"
Arthur: "He's holding nothing of the sort - not mine, nor anyone else's. I'm sure you'll immediately come to understand that he would never do something like that, shall you deliberately talk with him. If you'd like, I can arrange for the two of you to have such conversation next time, Mithra."
Mithra: "No, thank you, I'll pass. So, in short, you've been brainwashed by that man."
Arthur: "No, I haven't...!"
Rutile: "Hehe, Master Oz is a lovely person. It'd be nice if we get to see the day he gets married, right, Master Sage?"
Akira: "R-Right. (Oz's wedding, huh... Honestly, I can't imagine that whatsoever...)"
Rutile: "By the way, do you have no interest in getting married, Mister Mithra?"
Mithra: "And do you?"
Rutile: "W-Well...! I, too, would like to pledge my everlasting love to someone special sooner or later..."
Mithra: "How utterly preposterous. Something like eternal love doesn't exist. After all, inevitably, there will come a day when you'll need to part."
CHAPTER 2
Rutile: "Mister Mithra..."
Arthur: "...You've lived for a long time, so you must be familiar with meetings and partings, and while it's true that I haven't experienced as many as you have, I do understand the feeling of loneliness that comes as soon as your loved one leaves you."
Mithra: "Loneliness...?"
Arthur: "Yes. Is that not why people vow their love to the one their heart chose?"
Mithra: "I'm not sure I understand the purpose of that."
Arthur: "Even if a day when you need to separate does come, that doesn't mean your vow will be lost as well. If you're able to recall the words 'I love you now and forever' even after your loved one has passed away, wouldn't that mean you still remember how it feels to be loved, to not be alone? Rather than everlasting love, I think of it as a precious vow."
Mithra: "....."
Arthur: "In other words, wedding vows are kind of like a spell."
Rutile: "A spell?"
Arthur: "Yes. So that the person you love may be able to smile even after you're no longer around."
Akira: "Your way of thinking is wonderful, Arthur..."
Mithra: "Yawn..."
Rutile: "Um, Mister Mithra, were you properly listening to what Prince Arthur just said?"
Mithra: "More importantly, that clod of meat over there looks quite delicious. An appetizing smell's been coming from it for a while now."
Arthur: "Ahaha, how very like you. Are you talking about the steak they brought in earlier? It does seem tasty."
Akira: "Then how about we go and get some?"
After we had our meal, we split up, and everyone went around the venue once again. Every corner of it is overflowing with joy, and before I knew it, time had long passed.
Akira: "Whew, I ended up eating quite a lot since everything is so yummy here... (Ah, isn't that...) Mithra! Are you done eating?"
Mithra: "I should be the one asking you that. It's rare to see you have such a big appetite."
Akira: "Ahaha. It was so delicious I got caught up in the moment... The food was great, but everyone's smiles are what truly made the ceremony spectacular. I'm glad to see how happy those two are; they'll always be with each other from now on."
Mithra: "..... What about you then?"
Akira: "Me...?"
Mithra: "You too will one day vow eternal love to someone, won't you?"
CHAPTER 3
Akira: "Will I...!? Well... Yes, maybe... someday..."
Mithra: "Hmm, and what type of person would they be?"
Akira: "What type... It's a bit difficult to answer when you ask so suddenly, but maybe someone kind and caring...?"
Mithra: "Really? Sounds like me."
Akira: "Wha...! Are you kind and caring, Mithra?"
Mithra: "But of course, you can tell just by looking."
Akira: ("I couldn't...")
Mithra: "But you don't have to swear eternal love to me or anything. Since someday, I will end up forgetting even your name."
Akira: "(...I didn't answer with Mithra in mind but hearing that makes me feel lonely...) How can you be so sure? For all you know, you might end up never forgetting me if I passed away..."
Mithra: "No, I will. I always do."
My chest tightens at the flat tone of his voice. The wind that danced atop the lake's surface felt like it blew right through me.
Akira: "..... Still, can l not hold at least a little bit of hope?"
Mithra: "....."
Akira: "Even a little is fine, really. In a lot of cases, you never know until you try, after all..."
Mithra: "What are you so desperate for?"
Akira: "Well, you know... It's because you said something so lonely..."
Mithra: "Did I?"
Akira: "Yes, you did... Like you'll immediately forget me and such..."
Mithra: "..... Ahaha."
Akira: "What?"
Mithra: "Then, please do your very best so that doesn’t happen. Prove that the spell thing he was talking about is true."
Akira: "..... Do you mean Arthur's? So you were listening, weren't you. (Though, that wouldn't work unless I swear my love to Mithra...)"
Mithra: "Ah, right. While you're still the Sage, how about you do something so astounding, it's bound to take a special place in my memory?"
Akira: "A special place in your memory, you say...?"
Mithra: "Yes. I feel like I'll remember it if it's truly mind-blowing. Like if you defeated Oz, for example."
Akira: "What!? Surely you don't think I can do that..."
Mithra: "Weren't you the one who said you wouldn't know until you try? I'll be looking forward to it, you know. To you taking down that brute and engraving it into my memory."
Huge thanks to @hanabananya_ for providing the raws for this card story!
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yandere-society · 4 years
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Sugar Rush
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Synopsis: You thought the breakup had gone well, but your ex-girlfriend Yoonji didn’t seem to get the message. When you go out with friends to party on Halloween night, you encounter Yoonji in an unexpected way – and you discover just how far she’ll go to get you back.  
Pairing: Min Yoonji x Reader
Word Count: 4.1k
Warnings: Yandere themes, blood/mentions of blood, stalking, restraints, safeword violation, torture, suicide mention, gore
Headline: Woman In Sumo Wrestler Suit Assaulted Ex-Girlfriend In Gay Pub After She Waved At Man Dressed As A Snickers Bar
Admin: @psycho-slytherin​
⊱ ────── {⋅. ✯ .⋅} ────── ⊰
“Ooh – gah!”
“Y/n?” Mia pokes her head into the kitchen. Her pupils are pure black, and she looks to be crying blood. “What happened?”
“Ugh, I think my mom sent me these roses and I pricked myself on a thorn,” you reply, sucking on your bleeding finger irritably. You lay down the card that came with the bouquet, which reads See you soon! “You look great.”
“Thanks! I’m a student.” Mia steps forward to reveal a school uniform shirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops. 
“Uh…”
“Cause I’m stu-dying, get it?”
You snort. “Very nice.”
“What are you? You haven’t changed!”
You sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to dress up.” You can’t shake Halloween’s association with her.
“What? But 66 Below has their ‘free drink for a costume’ thing going on. C’mon, why not?”
You shrug, looking at your bleeding finger. Roses always seem to have it out for you. “It was our anniversary.”
“Wait, is this about Yoonji? Y/n, you broke up with her! If you regret it so much, get back together. The girl was head over heels with you, I’m sure she’d be down.”
You shake your head. “I’m not getting back together with her. Definitely not.” You and Yoonji were together for three years, long enough that you had started wondering if it would turn into forever. As time went on, however, you began to notice unnerving little quirks in her behavior. She was scaring you, and you ended things soon after. “Besides, she was always so neurotic that I would cheat on her with a guy.”
Mia rolls her eyes. “Biphobia at its finest. Well, fuck Yoonji. It’s been months – now get dressed. It’s Halloween, and we’re going out! Besides, Aisha is meeting us there.”
You laugh. “I don’t have a costume.”
“I have an extra that I brought with me – it’s an unnecessarily sexy angel, it didn’t fit my sister. Try it!”
Angel. That was Yoonji’s name for you. You sigh, dragging yourself away from the traitorous roses and following Mia down the hall.
Soon enough, Mia is putting the final touches on your makeup. “Ooh, you’re glowing!”
“I don’t know why you sound surprised when it’s your fault,” you retort before catching a look at yourself in the mirror.
You’re wearing a white silky babydoll dress – the kind that you’d only wear in the bedroom. She’d love it. You’re sporting white fishnets and feathered wings, with a golden headband resembling a halo to complete the look. Mia has done your makeup expertly, with lots of rose and gold, so that you look perfectly angelic. You add your favorite rainbow earrings for some added pride. Still, the outfit…
“Isn’t this a little… risque?” Yoonji would never let you wear something like this out.
“I don’t want anyone else laying eyes on my angel,” she would croon in your ear. “You’re all mine. I’ll never let anyone else touch you.”
“It’s Halloween, Y/n, as long as the goods are covered you’re set.”
You peer out of the window. The sun has set, and groups of kids are out in spades for trick-or-treating. You used to love Halloween – it had always been your favorite holiday, long before you and Yoonji made it official four years ago.
“Will you be my girlfriend?”
She stared at you for a long time. “Do you promise never to cheat? You’ll be loyal to me alone?”
You laughed. “Of course! I like you, I want to date you!
“In that case…” She leaned forward and kissed you. Her vampire costume meant you got fake blood all over your lips. “Happy Halloween, angel.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Mia nods. Her black contact lenses are… well, they’re not unintimidating. You’re glad to be able to spend this Halloween with her, and not worry about your ex-girlfriend.
66 Below has long been your and Mia’s favorite LGBTQ bar. With its live music, pride flags, and vintage decor, you feel as though you’re stepping into an extra-queer period piece.Yoonji never liked it; she thought it was too crowded. Tonight, almost everyone is dressed up in costume, enjoying 66 Below’s 'first drink free’ policy.
“Mia! Y/n! Over here!” Mia’s girlfriend Aisha gets your attention, waving at you from a booth. You’ve never encountered a more loving couple, and you know Mia’s planning on proposing to her soon. Aisha is dressed as… “Wait, what is she wearing?” You ask as you and Mia join her. Aisha looks like she printed a graded school paper onto white clothing, complete with red marks and typos. Over her heart is a big red F. In response to your quizzical glance, Aisha points to the F.
“Geddit? I’m a failing grade! I specifically wanted to be a final exam, but…”
You laugh. Mia and Aisha must have coordinated that. You scan the bar and note you’re not the only angel. There’s also some devils, ghosts, animals, anime characters, Iron Man, a Snickers bar, two Harry Potters, and – of course – inappropriately sexy children’s cartoon characters. You love Halloween.
“Y/n, c’mon, let’s grab drinks,” Mia says, but her eyes seem unwilling to leave Aisha’s. Their love reminds you of yours… or, what you thought was love. Towards the end of your relationship, you began to realize Yoonji’s idea of love was very different from yours.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll get yours. What do you want?”
“You sure?” When you nod, Mia reels off her order. You approach the bar, smiling at your favorite bartender. “Hey, Jaewon!” 
“Do mine eyes deceive me, or is that Y/n beneath the halo?”
Jaewon pretends to be blinded. He’s dressed as what you can only assume is slutty Mario.
“Shush, you. I’ll have an IPA and a margarita, please.”
“Sure thing.”
As you’re waiting for your drinks, the person in the Snickers costume slides into the seat next to you. “Nice costume, angel.”
You stare at him, a brow raised. If you weren’t at a gay bar, you’d think he was flirting. “Thanks, Snickers.”
“Who are you here with?”
You nod at the booth, where Mia and Aisha are now kissing intensely.
“Y’all poly or are you third wheeling?”
You laugh. “The latter. I’m not the relationship type.” Not anymore. Not after you realized how you were so easily manipulated into thinking Yoonji’s behavior was love. But the way she would kiss you, and whisper sweet nothings in your ear, tangling her hand in your hair…
“Yeah, I get you. Couples’ costumes are scary by default to me,” the Snickers jokes. “Perfect for Halloween. I’m Namjoon, by the way.”
“Y/n. Are you here with anyone?”
Namjoon glances around. “I was here with my buddy, but I think he left to fuck one of the Harry Potters. Which is funny, now that I think about it, since he was dressed as Dumbledore.”
You snort. “Oh my god. Well, if you want a group to join, I’ll be third-wheeling over there.” Jaewon reappears with your drinks and a wink.
“I might just take you up on that, angel. Happy Halloween!”
“Hey!” Mia says, finally coming up for air. Miraculously, her bloody tears have stayed put. “Who was that guy you were talking to? He seemed cute!”
“He’s probably gay,” you remind your friend. “He was sweet, though, I invited him to come over if he wanted to – his friend left him. Is that okay?”
Mia and Aisha glance at each other. “Actually, we were wondering…”
You look at the two suspiciously. “Yes?”
“There’s this event happening at 4Sooth,” Aisha says, referencing another bar downtown, “Where the best couples’ costume gets a cash prize. We were thinking… well, zombie student, failing grade…”
Oh. Why did you come here in the first place, then?
“Yeah, you guys totally have a chance!” You offer with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. “Should we go there?”
“The thing is…” Aisha looks at Mia, who shows you the event announcement on her phone.
“Well, the other prize is a night in the ‘Halloween Suite’ at the hotel next door, y’know?” Mia says quickly, a note of pleading in her voice.
Ohhhh. “Right, okay. So… I’ll just stay here, then.”
“Are you sure?” Mia asks anxiously. You can see her on the fence between guilt and excitement.
“Yeah, it’s fine!” You insist. “I’m good at making friends. Have fun!” Just because you have to be alone on Halloween, doesn’t mean Mia and Aisha can’t have a good time.
“You’re the best, Y/n, I owe you!” Mia gives you a quick kiss on each cheek before she and Aisha head out. As soon as they’re out of sight, your smile slips from your face and you sigh, nursing your beer. It’s Halloween, what would have been your and Yoonji’s fourth anniversary, and you’re alone at a bar. Pathetic. You turn to costume-watching, admiring the Big Bird, Dorthy from The Wizard of Oz, a sumo wrestler, and several queer or genderbent characters from all sorts of media.
Namjoon, the Snickers, is looking at you from his seat at the bar. He raises a quizzical brow at the now-empty booth, and you roll your eyes and shake your head in response.
He purses his lips, tipping his glass in acknowledgement.
Wonderful. A bar of candy pities me. You wave, motioning for Namjoon to come join you. You were both alone – why not?
Almost as soon as you lower your hand, several things happen at once: a blur of tan crosses your vision; you hear a loud BANG, and feel a sudden, incomprehensible, searing pain shoot through the back of your head; something warm trickles down your face; there are lips against your ear, whispering words you can’t understand; far-off shouts and screams; and the world goes dark.
“Told you that you’d cheat… you’re just a whore for them… but now you’re all mine again.”
“Mmnn…” you groan, blinking hard. Your head hurts – everything hurts. You feel like you’ve been hit by a truck. You’re lying on something soft. Did you go to bed? You move to rub your temple, but your wrist is tugged back by… rope. Rope? Your eyes widen and you begin to struggle furiously against the restraints, yanking until you feel your hands are going to detach themselves. “What the fuck?” Your wrists are tied to bedposts. Shit. Were you drugged? Was it Jaewon the bartender? “HELP! Somebody! Help me!” Your shoes are gone, and – oh, no – your white dress is stained and splattered with blood. Yours? When you try to pull yourself up, your vision floats before you. You can feel warm blood trickling down your head, tickling your scalp. You fall back onto the pillow, trying to force your vision to focus. “Help me…”
Suddenly, you hear heavy footsteps, and a voice that makes you freeze.
“Looks like I nabbed myself a pretty little angel. Talk about fallen from grace, right?”
Your cries for help freeze in your throat. “Yoonji?”
And in walks your ex-girlfriend, the blow-up sumo wrestling suit deflating around her. That flash of tan… so she was there, at 66 Below. Her pristine black bob hasn’t changed in the last few months, and her makeup is perfectly done. As the suit empties, she steps out of it, wearing her favorite outfit of black tights and skirt with a cream blouse.
“Let me go,” you croak. Your heart feels like it’s being squeezed in her fist. Your fighting spirit seems to have evaporated in the face of the woman you once loved. It doesn’t make sense… or does it make too much sense? You knew she was possessive – it’s why you ended things. But this? “Yoonji… please. Please.”
Yoonji pretends not to hear you, instead walking around the bed to inspect your restraints. Of course, now that you’ve collected yourself, you recognize her bedroom. In fact, it’s not your first time being tied to these same bedposts.
“Red. Yoonji, please, red,” you try desperately, hoping the safeword might make her relent. For a moment, her cool expression falters. It’s quickly replaced with raw fury.
“You want to try calling red?” She snarls, looking right at you. “You cheated on me. You broke up with me!”
“I never cheated!” You cry, kicking out at her in vain. “You always thought I was cheating on you – I didn’t do anything!”
“I saw you,” she replies, raising a hand and bringing it down hard on your cheek. Your head jerks to the side and you can taste blood. Your face is on fire, it must be, how can it hurt so badly? “It’s our anniversary. I saw you wave at that candy bar.” Another slap leaves your jaw aching. “Fucking whore, do you flirt with every man you see? Girls like you can never be faithful.”
“We’re not together anymore!” You yell, pulling hard on the ropes. They’re much stronger and more coarse than any Yoonji has used with you before, and you bite back a yelp of pain at the rope burn. Your head hurts so much, and your chest is heaving with anxiety. Is she going to kill you? “You’re insane. Let me go – they’ll find out I’m gone. They’ll call the police.” After you and Yoonji broke up, you moved in with Mia. Surely she’ll be concerned when you don’t show up.
Yoonji laughs softly. It’s the way she would laugh when she had a secret. “Well… you did text your housemate to tell her you were going home with the Snickers bar. She’s not expecting you – and that contest is going to keep her at the hotel all night anyways.”
Your heart drops into your stomach. How does she know? “What text? Where’s my phone?”
Yoonji lazily fishes your phone from her pocket. “You really haven’t changed your password?”
“Give that back! Let me go!” You twist your hips and kick hard in her direction, scoring a tiny victory when your phone goes flying from Yoonji’s hand. In the split second that she’s leaned over to retrieve it, you try to see if you can feel any slack at all in the ropes binding your wrists. Yes! There’s something. Maybe your situation isn’t hopeless after all.
Your spirits fall by the wayside when you see Yoonji rise with a terrifying smile on her face. “What a frisky angel, you like to kick, don’t you? Maybe I should tie those lovely legs too.”
“No- don’t touch me! Yoonji, c’mon…” your voice breaks when you see her pull a length of rope from her closet. “W-what are you going to do with me?”
“What am I going to do with you? Exactly what I’ve always wanted to. I’m going to make sure no one else will ever touch you again. You’re mine, angel, you always have been.” Yoonji reaches for your legs and you kick wildly, desperate to escape. Your heart feels like a racehorse in your chest, and sheer adrenaline numbs the throbbing pain in your head.
“Stop… struggling!” Yoonji hisses furiously as she makes a grab for your foot. “Ungrateful bitch. Why are you always trying to get away from me? All I did was love you!”
Now. You slam your heel into her chin, and her head snaps upward with the force of your kick.
For a second you feel like she’s about to crumple to the ground, but instead she lowers her gaze to stare into your soul once more.
“That wasn’t very nice.” Yoonji massages her jaw, and when she speaks, blood drips from between her lips. She begins to pace around the bed, avoiding your kicks. “Bad angel… maybe you’re just a devil in disguise, huh? I always knew you were a dirty fucking liar. And you didn’t even say thank you for the roses.”
The roses? Your eyes widen. See you soon. They were from her? “Fuck you,” You say in response, surreptitiously tugging and relaxing the slack on your right hand’s rope. “I never cheated. You were just scared that I could love men and women. Well, guess what? I loved you! For years, until I realized you never loved me back.”
“What?” You see horror cloud Yoonji’s face. “You fucking bitch. ALL I did was love you!”
You shake your head, determined to keep her talking. She’s out of range of your kicks for now. If you could just get your hands free…
You feel suddenly woozy. Are there two… no, three Yoonjis? Shit. Now is not the time for a concussion.
“You never loved me. You were obsessed and insane. Don’t you hear yourself?” You say, your volume increasing. You know the walls are well-insulated, but she’s still in an apartment complex. Maybe the neighbors will hear? Another tug on the rope. You twist your wrist, and for a second you can feel it loosening. “You only wanted me so that no one else could have me!”
“You’re lying.” Maybe it’s a reflection of your bloody dress, or the blood dripping from her mouth, but for a second her eyes seem to shine red.
You shake your head. You’ve almost got a hand free. “You’re the one who’s lying, Yoonji. You’re lying to yourself.” Dizzy again. “You – ngh – you can just let me go. I won’t tell anyone.” Almost got a hand free. How long has it been?
Suddenly Yoonji is looming over you. “Ah, but you forgot.” She spits at you, and a mouthful of scarlet blood hits the white pillowcase. Some of it splatters on your cheek. You keep tugging at the tie around your left hand. It’s much tighter than your right. She’s rummaging in her bedside drawer, and that look in her eyes… you’re scared. “I might’ve let an angel go, but you decided you’re not an angel. You’re a devil. And where do devils belong?”
“Uh…”
“That’s right.” Yoonji shows you what she’s retrieved: a lighter. She walks around the bed to the bottom right corner of the duvet. “Devils like you should stay in hell.”
“Yoonji. Yoonji, what are you –” She lowers the lighter to the duvet, and you see the cloth begin to smoke before a small flame forms on the bed, flickering but gaining in strength. “YOONJI!”
“I told you, Y/n.” Her voice is lower than you’ve ever heard it as she wipes more blood from her chin. “I’ll never let anyone touch you again.”
“C’mon, please, this is too much,” you say, your voice bleeding into hysteria as you thrash around, trying to kick the burning blanket away from your body. The fire begins to grow, and in your frenzied movement you accidentally burn your foot. You jerk away, yanking at the ropes on your wrists. You’re wearing fishnet stockings – if those catch fire, it’ll travel all the way up your body in a flash. “Let me go! Let me go, you psycho!”
Yoonji makes a pouty face. “Poor baby. Let you go… or what?”
“Please!” You shriek as the fire grows, the smoke now visibly rising from the bed. “Yoonji, I’m sorry, please, please…”
“I missed hearing you beg, my love. What a delicious Halloween treat. And if you need to blame anyone…” Yoonji pauses and smiles. The blood has gotten between her teeth, giving her a terrifying undead look. “Blame that Snickers bar.”
With that, she leaves the room and closes the door behind her. Fuck. You tug furiously at your right hand, where the rope has significantly loosened. You can feel the heat from the flames, dangerously close to you. “C’mon, c’mon…” You’re not going to die here, what a terrible headline. Who would write your obituary? You fight through another wave of dizziness. “Fucking hell!” With effort that leaves your muscles trembling, you wriggle your right hand out of its ties, and it quickly flies to your other hand. Maybe you’ll survive.
Unless she locked the door. Yoonji is four floors up. From that height…
You quickly work through the knots on your left wrist, which Yoonji tied so tightly you can’t feel several of your fingers anymore. Faster. Your nails are broken from tearing at the rope, and at one point the nail on your middle finger catches and gets stuck fast in the rope. The fire has spread to the carpet, and thick, black smoke is billowing up. You take a deep breath and brace yourself for the pain – it’s nothing compared to burning alive – and yank your hand back.
“Gah!” It’s a furious pain, for so small a point. The fingernail is ripped off your finger and hangs there as your nail bed bleeds freely. You force yourself to keep moving, to undo the knot or rip the rope off completely but the pain makes it hard to breathe…  or is it the smoke quickly filling the air? With movements made jerky by panic, you at last find a loose end and pull it through the knot. The rope around your wrist loosens and you’re able to slip your hand out. You’re not going to think about the fact that you can’t feel three of your fingers or move them properly. You’re free. You look around wildly, rushing for the door. You rattle the handle, but it’s locked. You can try to kick through it? But what if Yoonji is on the other side of the door, and shoves you back into the flames? The window next to the bed is locked too. But… You bend down and, straining, lift her entire bedside nightstand up. As soon as you stand your legs wobble and threaten to collapse, and you feel blood continue to drip down your neck and back. You stumble, almost to the window, but–
“Ugh-” You lose your grip and the nightstand crashes to the floor, almost on your foot. At that moment, you’re tempted to break down completely. What if you just… gave up? If you go through the window, you’ll probably die in the fall. Through the door, if you can even kick it down, and Yoonji will surely be waiting for you. You could just stay here, where at least death is a merciful certainty.
No – what are you thinking? You have to live. If you die, Yoonji will be free, and you won’t be able to tell your story. If you die now… she wins.
You adjust your stance and, arms trembling, lift the nightstand once more. The air is getting harder to breathe, you don’t know how much longer you have. You heave the nightstand at the window and it crashes straight through the glass, smashing down onto the street four stories below. Wait – the street. It must only be a little past midnight, because you can see some teens and adults still walking the street in costume. Passersby!
“HELP!” You shriek, waving your hand. You’re cut and bleeding in several places from flying glass, and you surely look fit for Halloween.
Wait. Hang on. One of the adults laughs and points up at you. “Great costume!” he yells.
“No, no, no…” the smoke is getting thicker, the fire closer. “Please- please help!” What you need to be a strong yell comes out a broken sob. “There’s a fire! Please help me!”
Two groups seem to realize it’s not just a Halloween prank, and you see some people whip out their phones to call the police. Several more rush forward, but clearly have no plan other than to stand beneath the window.
The police will take too long. You blink through the smoke, which is now visible through the window. You will not burn alive. And you won’t let Yoonji walk free, not after this. You brush the broken glass away from the windowsill and carefully step onto the ledge, a bleeding angel in the night. Your wings and white dress glow in such contrast to the walls that it looks like you’re flying.
You hear gasps and screams, and a “Don’t jump!”
Idiot. As though you have a choice. No, you only have one choice left, and you’re making it count. “My name is Y/n L/n,” You yell, forcing down a smoky cough, “And the person who killed me is Min Yoonji!”
No time to think. You step forward off the ledge, closing your eyes. Forty feet isn’t that far to fall, maybe you’ll make it.
Fucking Snickers bar.
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lichfucker · 3 years
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do u have starkid recs for someone who obsessively watched and rewatched avpm/s in 2010 but then never pursued any other content? as a side note ive also seen&loved edgar allan poe's murder mystery/dinner party.
I mean. almost all of them are extremely good
if you like parodies, twisted is my absolute favorite of all of their shows. twisted is to aladdin what wicked is to the wizard of oz. will probably make you cry, if you're into that, which I am. holy musical batman is also very good and super underrated. if you like joe walker (voldemort/umbridge) you'll like hmb. trail to oregon is also very fun, though the potty humor can be a little much at times. most people don't like ani, their star wars parody, and I'll admit it took me a while to really Get ani as well-- it's less a musical and more like a movie with a live soundtrack. definitely the most niche in terms of the references (which is a WILD thing to say about star wars but it gets SO specific with the lore). I definitely would have liked ani more if I knew more about star wars. and obv there's also a very potter senior year, but the only thing I remember from it is the gilderoy lockhart mouse prince monologue, and I've never really felt a strong desire to rewatch it
if you're less invested in strictly parody, everything they've done post-twisted has been original stuff. (they did a couple originals before, too-- me and my dick, which really is not worth watching, and starship, which really IS worth watching. kick it up a notch makes me feel shrimp emotions.) firebringer is a fantastic lauren lopez vehicle (draco). work to do became sort of a meme a few years ago. if you've seen any clips/gifs of her rolling her eyes and going "I don't really wanna do the work today," that's firebringer. black friday is the only starkid show that's ever come close to dethroning twisted as my favorite. it is EXTREMELY different from their early stuff. it's a cosmic horror dark comedy about people shopping on black friday. the production value is. incredible. it is shot and edited like a feature film. if you're going to watch black friday you should PROBABLY watch the guy who didn't like musicals first. I didn't like tgwdlm very much, it just wasn't my cup of tea personally (most people I've encountered seem to really love it though). black friday isn't technically a direct sequel to tgwdlm, but they're set in the same place and have a lot of overlapping characters, and most of the "comedy" in black friday comes in the form of references to bits from tgwdlm. tgwdlm is a horror COMEDY; black friday is a HORROR comedy
this isn't technically starkid, it's tin can bros, which is a sort of sibling company to starkid started by joey richter (ron), brian rosenthal (quirrel), and corey lubowich (mostly behind-the-scenes stuff, idk if he was involved in avpm/s at all), but if I spend more than ten minutes at a time thinking about spies are forever I lose my fuckin marbles. spies are forever is about an american spy during the cold war getting back into the field for the first time after the tragic death of his partner. it is obscenely funny-- another treat for lovers of joe walker, joey richter, and lauren lopez-- and also devastatingly gut-wrenching. all the songs are certified jams. I can't say too much about why I love it without spoiling the two massive twists at the end. it's just! it's so! please watch spies are forever. please do it
(personally I haven’t seen edgar allan poe’s murder mystery dinner party yet, but there’s a fair bit of overlap in the cast w saf. I got through my whole spiel before I realized I didn’t actually have to explain tin can bros to you but I was too lazy to delete it lmao)
hopefully that helps! if you want to talk more about my specific opinions regarding each show feel free to message me off anon!
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ifeveristoday · 3 years
Text
I got out my DVDs for this rewatch (that’s not actually a big deal. I only have season 3 on DVD. 😂) so let’s get to it.
I forgot they did a cold open for this episode!
I know it’s for ambiance but man does Angel have a lot of candles displayed. Probably too ‘mainstream’ for his taste but the thought of Angel furtively going to a Bath and Bodyworks in the mall during their semi-annual sale and just buying out their whole candle selection gives me the purest joy. Let’s be real though, Angel would shop at some boutique/hole in the wall owned by a wizened old character with a twinkle in their eye and everything marked up 20%. Or it would be a steel and glass monstrosity with a collection labeled Candles for Men. That’s the range.
Back to the enormous fire hazard that this scene is -
Wait. Does fire burn on stone?
Shout out to the stunt doubles.
I think that Angel getting food for Buffy for a sort of alfresco picnic while training is really sweet, actually. Also, can't miss the opportunity for both carbs and phallic symbolism ala bread.
Everyone is so embarrassingly horny in this moment. I'd say get a room except they're in a whole giant mansion.
Always remember the bread! What did Angel do with the food after Buffy fled? Fed the no-doubt cursed pigeons that live in Sunnydale.
Thanks for the workout (insert stereotypical dirty laugh).
Oh yes, the awkward 'let's talk about your birthday without mentioning the last birthday you had at all because it's horrifying' chitchat. God, the anxiety Angel is radiating here and Buffy trying to smooth it over. You can't unfrost that trauma cake!
Angel, you utter dork. You're lucky Buffy finds you pretty. Very powerful himbo energy here. And it's nice to see some light-hearted flirting/banter between them.
How do you know when someone's aura's dirty? Buffy is only asking the reasonable questions everyone has.
Do you hear yourself, Giles. "I'm aware of your distaste in studying vibratory stones..." I can't imagine what that section of the Slayer handbook looks like. Are there pull-out charts?
Faith being conveniently gone for this episode. Boo, hiss.
That workout really did a number on Buffy. I see what you're doing with those crystals.
One of the sad parts of rewatching Buffy is that you just don't have the first time discovery feels of watching it - that magic is gone, but even though I know why Buffy's wobbling in her fight, the reveal is still upsetting. Thinking about how in Season 5, when she does get staked, just as she's questioning her powers - and here, where she's losing them.
Also, obvious observation is obvious - the sexual violence imagery is really, really blatant here - with the vampire crouched over her with the stake aimed toward her heart, just as she playfully staked Angel earlier in a more romantically set scene.
AND THEN THE THEME KICKS IN. Like, damn! Three minutes and you can pretty much tell what the plot is going to be - Buffy and Angel's UST is getting out of hand, Buffy's lone Rangering it, and something is wrong with her. And it's her birthday.
And Buffy's resourcefulness saves the day.
Perhaps you shouldn't be throwing knives in the library, Buffy.
Did they do a geography lesson on Cuernavaca? It's also just fun to say. Like La Cienega. Brief moment to ponder yet again about a show set in Southern California, actually shot in Southern California, with the huge Latine population we have and the Spanish-influenced names and culture and - getting sidetracked by all this casual 90s racism.
"We do it every year for my birthday," except your seventeenth, presumably because of the murderous ex-boyfriend stalking the town you live in and all your loved ones. [Or, he did take her and it was not shown on screen!] Sometimes I wonder if the continuity editors just go, you know, I'm going to let this one go for the 'emotion' and not just so years later, a Virgo with a deep-seated need to obsess over throwaway details will go into a thought spiral to make it make sense.
I think this is also the last time Hank Summers was spoken of with any real affection because then he was Deadbeat Dad for the remainder of the show. Oh, look. The Scoobies are surprised about the traditional birthday ice show that I'm going to nitpick about forever.
Oz is so supportive, and then the clunker of a 'deep' line of ice being cool because it's water then it's not. I do like the Whedonesque school of dialogue, but sometimes you gotta reel it back. I remember the dialogue on Dawson's Creek was getting pinged for the teenagers talking like grad students.
Quiet reflection. Oh you poor girl, you have no idea.
Quarterly projections - is a convincing filler phrase for when you don't need to know what the job is, because it's boring but sounds vaguely official. What does Hank actually do? Who cares! He's an asshole.
Sunnydale Arms, because of course, Sunnydale has a broken down abandoned murder hotel.
Quentin Travers. Boo. Hiss.
The scary music is very scary. Also one of the Council flunkies looks like a very young Vincent D'Onofrio.
This scene with them in the library is so bittersweet because Buffy is fishing for Giles's attention as a father figure substitute ("very sophisticated people go!" breaks my heart) and he pointedly is rejecting this for training talk.
Look for the flaw at its center. THE FLAW IS YOU GILES. YOU YOU YOU.
it's just so terrible, this scene because of how methodical and clinical it plays out. And Buffy is just not there, and then Giles smiles like nothing has happened.
Buffy makes it through another night - next day (another reason why this trial is so horrifying is that it takes place over several days - it's not on Buffy's birthday but leading up to it, so the idea of her getting weaker and weaker and unable to fight to make it to 18 in the first place) and it's time for the Cordelia has had enough of toxic masculinity scene!
Also, Willow blithely ignoring a person's feelings and treating Amy as just a rat is played for laughs and cuteness, but yeah...you can't treat people like puppets or rats [law and order sound]
I love Cordelia's coat. And also, while it does suck that she stood him up, he's not entitled to her time or attention and certainly not to threaten her. Go, Cordy! Fight like a girl! Yes! Pummel him into the hallway.
I also love Willow's outfit here because I think the colors are so complementary and warm and it's a cute outfit. Okay, the knit wooly hat is a bit too Blossom-esque, but whatever.
Buffy is tiny, we all know this, but I do think they purposefully dressed her in larger than her size coats in this episode to make her look even more tiny and vulnerable.
Giles is TOO BLASE for this scene also shut your mouth about throwing knives like a girl
"It's an archaic exercise in cruelty." SO WHY DID YOU GO ALONG WITH IT, BRAIN TRUST. (I am going to be very mean to Giles this whole rewatch, deal with it.)
"But I'm the one in the thick of it." No, you're not. You are going to be adjacent to it, at best.
Hey it's that guy!
Okay, in better lighting, flunkie does not look like Vincent D'Onofrio.
It's impossible to pin down one type of Vampire in the Whedonverse, except for the delineation between Grunt Bait Vampires, and Special Guest Star/Master vampires, but Kralik is the only other example of a vampire with mental illness besides Drusilla, yet he's medicated. Makes me wonder how exactly they got Kralik...he was a monster before he was a vampire, but who vamped him? I don't put it past the Watchers to have vampires created for this purpose.
Curse against lawyers!
Xander and Oz bonding over comic books is so fun. I regret they didn't really get closer until after Xander and Willow cheated because Oz was the one male friend Xander had.
They mentioned her birthday! Thinking about Buffy's love of poetry later on, this is a nice little detail, and it *is* a thoughtful, sweet gift. Also those poems: horny. Oh yes, maybe in a restrained way, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew what was up.
The Buffy and Angel relationship in season three is full of these starts and stops that I can see why and agree with others about how it's frustrating on a number of levels. They know why they can't be together, but they still try to find a common ground because they want to need the other one. They still have their identities to figure out - Buffy as the slayer and a young adult, Angel as a person, separate from Buffy and being Buffy's ex sort of maybe.
But this conversation in Helpless is genuinely sweet and a glimpse at what a normal couple at the crossroads would talk about - I think I'm also being soft on this because the other Important Male Figure in Buffy's life in this episode lets her down so spectacularly bad, that Angel being supportive and kind in his awkward way is a nice respite. It's good to be away from the angst and the horror that their relationship has had.
And the self-aware puncturing of the Moment between them is something Buffy does very well. "Taken literally, incredibly gross - I was just thinking that too". Look, it's cute and soft and I will allow it.
The horror of this episode (and there are so many) is that we have to watch Buffy become the helpless blonde in a slasher flick who is being chased by the monsters and she can't do anything about it - that she has to be rescued or die. That the real world with men catcalling and bystanders who ignore women's cries of distress is far scarier than the literal demons that inhabit the town - and Buffy brokenly saying she can't just be a person, she can't be helpless like that [like women are, still, today] is a gut punch. It's uncomfortable and unhappy because Buffy is supposed to be the hero, the [sigh] strong female lead who can kick ass and take names, and this episode is all about finding who Buffy is, separate from her super powers. Also an exercise in emotional torture, but must be Tuesday.
The physicality - the weakness that both Buffy and Giles display in this scene is so, so good. The way Buffy's hand trembles toward the needle in the case and the dawning realization of what Giles has done, has chosen to do - and he bloodlessly tells her what the Cruciamentum is.
Her tiny little "Liar."
GOD WHY DIDN'T SHE GET AN EMMY (rhetorical we all know genre tv only matters if it was Game of Rapey Thrones)
"You will be safe now, I promise you." LIAR.
Another puncturing a heavy moment - Cordelia as cavalry - I love it. Cordelia taking the most obvious approach to the situation - 'oh Buffy might have lost her memory, well he's Giles,'
I can't believe they robbed us of a conversation in the car scene with Cordy and Buffy.
Kralik had to have found a polaroid camera and a metallic sharpie for this whole scenario -- OH I KNOW WHO HE REMINDS ME OF. The Night Stalker and any number of serial killers that terrorized SoCal. Is the show being self-aware of the problem with mothers and parents in general?
Probably a glib accident.
I don't have much to say about the part where Buffy hunts Kralik because it's so masterfully done with the atmosphere and music.
Nice of Giles's backbone to enter the chat now.
This is not business. Ooo.
Buffy's "I thought I killed a man" emo overalls!
Like it's shadowy, but there's still enough light to see facial expressions. Lighting guy, I salute you.
Little red riding hood metaphor. Oh, that's so her stunt double.
CREEPY SEXUAL VIOLENCE REARS ITS DEFORMED HEAD AGAIN
Jump stair scare. I remember the first time I saw it, I jolted in the living room.
Serial Killer Shit. Why are vampires such drama queens?
THAT'S RIGHT, BUFFY DID THAT
The ending scene in the library is cathartic in that Buffy gets to stand up for herself finally, and recognizes what Giles gives up by helping her, delayed as it was, also there's the feeling of hate punching Quentin Travers via your eyes.
Still don't think she should have forgiven Giles so easily, but we don't get to see a lot of aftercare for Buffy when she gets hurt, and it is a very tender scene.
The Scoobies are being way too upbeat if they knew about the fact that Giles poisoned Buffy, which is why I'm assuming she told a very abbreviated version of events ending with Buffy killed the bad guy and Giles got fired, oops.
Xander's big strong man comment and then looking immediately to Willow to open the jar and not Oz...
I could watch this episode again with episode commentary from David Fury, but another day.
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Rwby in Wonderland Theory!
This is my super rough theory outline for the idea that team rwby will end up in a wonderland like world after they all fall.
A few things before I get started, I didn’t completely come up with this theory on my own as I was inspired by other people I’ve seen say the characters will either be transported to a wonderland world or will play out their very own fairy tales. But I’ve decided to go deeper into these theories as they interest me a lot and come up with my own theory.
As I said before this theory is a rough version as I don’t have much experience with the Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, I’ve never seen the animated Disney movie, never read the books. I’ve seen two different live action Alice in Wonderland movies, both when I was 9 so my memory of them could be hazy. I will also be mentioning The Wizard of Oz another story I am not completely well versed in story wise. I will be doing more research into these stories afterwards, if chapter 14 doesn’t completely destroy what I’m working towards.
Alice in Wonderland will be shortened to: AIW
Through the Looking Glass will be shortened to: TTLG
The Wizard of Oz will be shortened to: TWoO
Now onto the actual theory.
One of the fairy tales we haven’t seen many characters from is, AIW. As far as I know the only characters who have been references to any of the characters from AIW were tweedle dum and dee from Vol6. AIW is extremely popular and many animated shows are known to have entire episodes just dedicated to referencing AIW. So it’s amazing to that RT has gone so long without referencing any characters from these very popular books. That’s where my theory comes in. RT has left these books untouched because one of their most important characters is from the books. That would be Summer Rose.
As far as I know Summer doesn’t have a fairy tale connection yet, so I came up with two possible theories for who Summer could be associated with. The first one being Dorothy from TWoO, and the second being The White Queen from TTLG. Dorothy makes the most sense, but I think it’s both and I’ll go into why that is later. In TWoO the Wicked Witch of the West wanted the Ruby slippers and in turn have Dorothy, at least that’s how it is in the movie... I think. But I’m pretty sure the slippers were originally silver whether that be in the books or the movie’s original slippers I’m not so sure. So in RWBY, that translates to Salem wanted Summer to have the silver eyes. So pretty easy to connect Summer and Dorothy. Remember this part.
Okay, now we’re actually going to talk about AIW. The first reference we get to see of AIW in Vol8 is from the intro.
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Around the 1:20 mark we see our main characters falling into a dark green liquid, much like the skies of the dimension Ambrosias created. They’re surrounded by golden sand. I believe Ambrosias is supposed to be a reference to the Sandman. He creates things from sand, but his only limit is what the human mind can conjure up. So what does this mean for our main characters? They’re likely just sleeping. The wonderland sequence will only be within their minds, that’s why the characters won’t have their weapons with them, as we see in the opening. Their weapons are dropped.
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How do I know for sure this is dream sequence instead of the characters being transported to another dimension created by Ambrosias? Simple, Trust Love. The vol7 opening.
Trust Love is one of my favorite openings in the series, but is wildly out of place during Vol7. The lyrics hardly match up to themes of the Volume, the only one being “Trust love”. Though the volume it’s self is about questioning trust.
The lyrics themselves often allude or say that our characters aren’t in reality? This feels so out of place for vol7. But that wouldn’t be the case if this was a warning of what was to come. Let’s take a look at the lyrics and see what we find.
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This is one of the first lines at 0:20
This is Yang. She’s the first to fall and her romance with Blake has been built up for... forever now. (I demand a bmblb kiss when they reunite!) it’s also the first mention of waking and sleeping!
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These lines makes no sense in vol7. It makes perfect sense after vol8 though. The protagonists are about to suffer a huge loss, of course their hopes would be shattered.
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This line is a bit more more loaded and I’ll get into why that is later. But just know I believe there is a very sinister underside to the Wonderland scenario.
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Again this is trying to tell our protagonists to wake up from their dream.
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This is referencing the portals Ambrosias made so that everyone could get away from Atlas/Mantel, but it doesn’t work how our protagonists want it, and causes them to fall.
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This is what’s actually going to happen. Our characters will live out the prospective fairy tales and they won’t want to leave or they won’t remember who they are.
This is Part (1/5) of this theory as apparently there’s a ten picture limit????? I’m so mad. lyric vid
Parts  2    3    4 
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mst3kproject · 3 years
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Magic Christmas Tree
I thought I’d try something different this year and find a bad Hannukah movie, but everybody I asked had the same recommendation: Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights.  I know for a fact that is a prohibitively awful film, because I know people who’ve watched parts of it (I have not to date met anyone who could sit through the whole thing), but it just doesn’t feel like an MST3K feature to me.  Anyway, I have standards.  My conclusion is that people need to make more Hannukah movies… and until that happens, I’m watching Magic Christmas Tree, which comes specially recommended by RiffTrax.
This is the only Christmas movie I’ve ever seen which starts with cheerful holiday music over footage of… Hallowe’en decorations. Obnoxious bully Mark and his two pushover friends decide to go investigate a supposedly-haunted house. Naturally the old lady who lives there is a witch, and in exchange for Mark rescuing her cat, she gives him a seed for a magical tree that will grant him three wishes.  Two months later, with the tree fully grown, his first wish is to have magical powers for one hour – he uses them to torment unfortunate people who were already having to work on Christmas Eve.  His second wish is to kidnap Santa Claus and extort unlimited presents from him, but that attracts the attention of the spirit of Greed, who intends to keep Mark as a slave forever!  Good thing he’s still got that third wish.
God, I hate this movie.  I’d say it’s the worst Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, but Elves exists, so instead I have to say it’s the worst Christmas movie that didn’t have any Nazis in it.  It reminds me more than anything else of Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, in that it’s an absolute mess that seems to have been put together by people who have no idea what they’re doing.  It spends most of its time on boring, annoying irrelevant bullshit, and then when it gets to the plot, that’s boring and annoying, too!
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Magic Christmas Tree is only an hour long, but that’s twice as long as it needed to be.  A plot summary makes it sound like most of the film will be dealing with Mark’s three wishes and how he uses them, but it’s half-over before we even get to that point.  The time leading up to it is spent watching Mark follow the witch’s complicated instructions on how to grow and activate the tree, and his parents dealing with this unwanted thing appearing in the middle of their back yard.  All of this is presented in excruciating detail.  We watch Mark dig the entire hole to plant the seed in.  We see his Dad struggle with the lawnmower at unbelievable length, while the Mom yacks about nothing on the phone with her friend Betty.  The Dad tries to cut the tree down with no success.  Mark has to say a set of magic words over and over and over.
It goes on so long, it passes the are you fucking kidding me? point and wanders into territory where you wonder if there’s something wrong with the disk and you’re playing the scene over and over.  It actually starts to feel like it’s on purpose – especially when the slowness is repeatedly emphasized by shots of Mark’s pet tortoise, Ichabod, who seems to be eating his patch of clover far faster than anybody else is accomplishing anything.  You’ll swear the movie is making fun of you.
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The sound that accompanies all this is sometimes very peculiar.  The old lady has exactly the voice you’d expect from a witch in a cheap kid’s movie, but Mark’s Mom sounds like she’s being dubbed by a twelve-year-old boy, possibly the same one who provided the voice for Mark himself.  The tree speaks (oh, yes, it does) in the voice of a smarmy stereotypical gay man.  Santa Claus sounds like he’s half-senile and wondering what’s for lunch.
The lawnmower makes some very strange noises indeed. I guess they’re meant to be cartoonish and funny.  They’re definitely the former but they’re never the latter, possibly because they never sound remotely like a lawnmower.  When Mark’s Dad is trying to get it started it sounds like the ghost of a consumptive horse, and three hours later when it actually gets going, it makes noises like a traffic jam in Whoville.
Besides sounding weird, the actors are just plain bad.  The guy playing Santa Claus is half-asleep.  We’re told that the tree’s magic means he’s trapped in the chair he’s sitting in, and I honestly do believe that actor could not have gotten up if he tried, no wishes necessary.  The woman playing Mark’s Mom looks like she’s high as a kite and only barely keeping her grip on reality.  Maybe that’s why they had to dub her.  Mark’s Dad recites his lines like a guy on a game show reading his own life story off a teleprompter, and does his yard chores in a way that’s probably supposed to be pantomimey but is the opposite of entertaining.  The Dad gets an inordinate amount of screen time, which I can only chalk up to the fact that he’s played by director Dick Parish.
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The worst of the lot are, of course, the kids, who are predictably terrible 60’s child actors.  They yell all their lines, with the volume and exaggerated emphasis you expect from a school play.  It wears thin very, very quickly.  The kid playing Mark is the worst of the lot, although I might just think that because he’s the one we spend the most time with.  He’s a huge part of why this movie makes me so mad.
I think the best way to describe Mark as a character is to say that the first time I watched this movie I assumed his name was ‘Billy’, despite the fact that everybody kept calling him ‘Mark’. He just seems like the type of nasty little brat who’d be named ‘Billy’ in a bad 60’s Christmas movie.  We meet him having lunch with his two friends by the playground, and learn that he’s a greedy little shit when he drives a hard bargain in a sandwich trade.  Greedy-little-shit-itude continues to be his primary character trait and is, of course, the core of the movie’s lesson.  His attempt to monopolize Santa Claus makes him such a greedy little shit that Greed himself takes an interest in him.
Greed is a huge hairy man who takes delight in kidnapping little boys.  I think he’s supposed to look like a fairy tale giant.  Watching him manhandle a child is an intensely uncomfortable experience.
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I guess ‘don’t be greedy’ is a standard message for a children’s movie, and it seems like a particularly appropriate one for Christmas, which presents children with a great opportunity for avarice. What seems a little odd is that Mark never actually suffers any consequences for his selfishness, only the vague threat of them. There was a perfect opportunity for some of this when Mark kidnaps Santa Claus.  Santa, after all, brings toys to good girls and boys… surely by this point, after his brief reign of terror with his magical powers, Mark has been naughty enough to deserve only coal.  Apparently that’s not how it works, though.  Mark just wanders off into the woods in search of small animals to shoot with his new rifle, runs into the giant, and immediately repents even though Greed is offering him all the toys and candy he wants.
What supposedly prompts Mark to become a better person is seeing how the world has responded to Santa Claus going missing.  Curiously, there is very little emphasis on the children who are sad because they didn’t get any presents.  Maybe somebody thought that would have made them seem greedy? Instead, the vision Greed presents to Mark is of the United States military mobilizing to locate Santa and bring him home, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians-style!  So… I guess Mark becomes a better person because he’s afraid of what’s going to happen if the army finds Santa trapped in a chair in his house?  I guess that is pretty terrifying.
Another thing that blunts the lesson is the fact that Mark is given his three wishes as a reward for a good deed.  He got the witch’s cat down from the tree, so she offers him the magical seed and doesn’t let him refuse.  What then was he supposed to use his three wishes for, if not to get stuff for himself? Was this intentionally a poisoned gift, because you shouldn’t accept things from witches?  The witch insists that there are good witches as well as wicked ones, but she’s not exactly an unbiased source.  The movie never tries to blame her, though.  The situation is presented as Mark’s fault, and Mark’s alone.
Finally, at the end Mark wakes up and finds that of course the whole thing was a dream – there was no witch, no magic tree, and no Santa Claus.  This is less annoying than it could have been because at least it’s not a surprise. Mark did hit his head when he fell out of the tree the cat was in, and the movie changed from black and white to colour.  We’ve seen this before in The Wizard of Oz and we can guess where it’s going. The audience might assume that Mark will wake up and immediately take the opportunity to be generous instead of greedy, perhaps by giving his friend something to make up for the lunch trade. Instead, the woman who owns the cat (who is not actually a witch, but looks even more like one in this part of the film than she does wearing the Hallowe’en witch costume in Mark’s dream) offers him milk and cookies, and he delightedly accepts.  This just gives the impression that he’s learned nothing.
Is there anything in this movie I didn’t hate?  Well… among Mark’s school friends is a token black kid, who is not differentiated in any way from his peers.  He talks like them, he dresses like them, and the writers did not use either his lunch or his Hallowe’en plans as a way to demarcate a class difference between him and the others.  So yeah, the movie sucks, but the writers tried really hard not to be racist.
Happy fucking holidays.  I want to say hooray for surviving 2020, but we’ve still got a week to go.  That’s plenty of time for oh, I don’t know, an alien invasion, or a giant meteor, or the Yellowstone supervolcano, or zombies, or whatever.  At this point, if most of us aren’t dead by this time next year, I’ll count that as a win.
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marithlizard · 3 years
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First Impressions: RWBY v8c9, “Witch”
"Witch", huh?  Presumably Salem.  Are we going to get more backstory lore? Because YES PLEASE.
The Atlas army vs. the whale whose teeth loom like mountains on the horizon.  They look like toys. I can't help thinking these soldier mooks equal any Huntsman in courage, if not in skill.  And this is the first real large-scale action any of them have seen - that anyone in the world has seen in their lifetimes.
eyy Ren has gotten over the snappishness as well as the despairing angst.    Suddenly gaining control of his evolving Semblance must help a lot with the feelings of powerlessness.  (And though we haven't seen him use it on Jaune or Yang, I'm thinking being able to know for certain how much your friends care about you and have your back  is a source of power in itself.)
They're discussing fairy tales MY HEART
Ozpin continuing to confirm he has handed over the reins completely to Oscar.   I don't like this about the accelerating merge, though. It feels like we're going to lose Oz  very soon. And yet,  Jinn's vision definitely showed us Oz and host coexisting in middle age.  Did they not use magic in that lifetime?  Or is the merge somehow not about "losing" either one of them?
Team FNKI in a line of regular soldiers!  They've got to have mobilized all the students, but I wonder if we'll see any others besi-  Neon. Neon you are wearing rollerskates to the apocalypse.  
...well, why not?  
Marrow,  YOU'RE just a kid.  You can't be more than a few years older, and you're not that much more seasoned. Though I understand the feeling.
So, Hazel, you're ready to rejoin fact-based reality?  Or at least listen to someone who pretty much definitionally can't be lying?  
(Actually...the only information we have about Jinn comes from her, and it'd be a hell of an interesting twist if she was editing facts to fit her own agenda.  I don't think it's very likely for meta reasons, but it'd make a great fic premise, wouldn't it?)
Huh.  He sounds much much calmer, and like he's been thinking through everything for the last few hours.  
....what? He's not even going to ask???  THAT is a surprise.  The existence of Jinn and knowing Oscar  gave him the password in good faith  were enough to deradicalize a violent extremist. (Wish it was that easy in RL.)
Oscar's little wave
(You know, now that I think of it,  Ozpin has never interacted with Jinn himself.  She's greeted him twice and he hasn't answered.  Does he resent her for not answering his predecessor's questions more helpfully?  Mistrust her?  )
yes rescue Emerald good
"Just to be  clear" - oh god I thought that was Salem's voice and nearly jumped out of my seat.
"I'll come back for it"  crap crap crap  Hazel's redemption arc is going to be short, painful, and fatal.   And Salem will keep the lamp, if not have the password.
And we'll just all turn our backs on the divine artifact-entity and walk away.  I guess they don't think she's enough of a person to say goodbye to?  
And our eavesdropper is...the one person who CAN'T summon Jinn or ask her a question.  
Oh no. No.  Please don't have the fandom descend into "Jinn is ablist" discourse. (ETA: upon thinking further I take it back,  the gods suck and providing a Relic that not everyone can use is in its way a tiny symbol of their callous attitude to people. ) 
RJY working smoothly together, nice. 
Robyn said people are always suspicious of her, and her truthsense ability has a clearly visible limiting condition.    But Ren can apparently read the emotions of everyone around him all the time without them knowing.  Surely that would make a lot of people uncomfortable.  (Although I expect  the writers to ignore this, and will be pleasantly surprised if they explore it at all.)
That's always the way isn't it, you roll a 4 on your concentration check right when a demonic jellyfish is floating by.
Huh, they separated from Oscar?  And Hazel is worried about him? I'm still dizzy from the speed of this 180.  
uh...hi, Salem.  Nice...weather outside the whale today?  Seen any good dismemberments lately?
Hazel,  you are a terrible liar and you can't bluff.   Admittedly the stakes are a lot  higher here than in the weekly WTCH poker game.
Salem NYOOM
No one can accuse Yang of not understanding the core competencies.
"Juan"???  I did hear that correctly, yes?  Marrow not remembering Jaune's name is hilarious.  And I was about to say understandable, but no, they worked with the Ace Ops for weeks!  Did you just have him mentally filed as "the blond himbo tank"?
O-kayyyyyy.    I can't blame Emerald,  but this could go so horribly wrong so fast. 
Isn't Hazel-disguised-as-Oscar  way too heavy to pick up like tha-  OHHHHHHHHH.  Now things make much more sense.  Oscar was the one worried about Hazel earlier,  and failing utterly to bluff.  Infinitely more in character.
Awkward Semblance is also extremely convenient in short-cutting negotiations. Nice.
I do not, in fact, have any doubt that Winter would blow up her sister.   And in this situation  I can't say it's the wrong thing to do.  As far as they know their bomb is the only hope.
Wow. I really did not think we’d go to toe to toe with Salem herself at this point in the plot.  It's so traditional to save the final boss fight for, well, the final boss.  She's terrifying and unstoppable, but not actually more terrifying than the giant whale.    
Her regen is just like  the Hound's body morphing, but far smoother and faster with a thousand "deaths" of practice.
She sounds more normal right now, oddly.   Her voice is lacking both the measured slowness and the resonance it has when she's making speeches.  I like the idea of that falling away when she's surprised and exasperated.  
Our heroes are very very lucky that RWBY is not a darker show, or those Grimmhand  restraints would be doing a lot of gross agonizing damage with their nails.   There's no reason she'd want to be gentle at this point.
Yeah, there's the sonorous voice again. Although it wavers again with that "Why do you Keep. Coming. Back?"   Does she not know? How can she not know, Jinn's vision said Ozma told her everything.  Perhaps she means: why do you keep fighting  me instead of hiding like the hermit.
Yang, don't give her information,  gah!   "Her again."  She sounds pleased.  I think we are going to find out Summer's fate this volume after all.  Salem will reveal it to break Ruby’s spirit.  Prediction: it will work. 
(EDIT: I completely missed the significance of Yang calling Summer “my mom”.  Wow.)
She definitely intends to turn Emerald into something like the Hound.
"No more Gretchens."   Oh, of course that's what Oscar said he needed before they could leave, the cane.
Hazel's life expectancy is minutes long but at least it included a satisfying KAPOW.   And every single sparkly crystal he owns.  Somehow he seems smaller here, less bulky than he did at Haven.  Less a titan and more a man.
yigh he's pounding her into mush.  Which he has several times before, apparently.  This is all to buy you time, Emerald, why are you not running.   (I know, I know.   She's never had someone actually help her and care about her, only scraps of affection to establish control.    At this moment Cinder's hold on her is breaking forever.)
(Neo, on the other hand.  Will she bring the lamp to Cinder, who frankly has been a totally crap partner and deserves no loyalty?    Is she still after revenge?   My bet is still firmly on her planning to backstab Cinder as soon as Ruby is gone.  But beyond that, we don't know her thoughts at all.  She might join the heroes, or disappear like Raven to hide while the apocalypse works itself out.)
That's true, Oscar, but what can you do to stop her?  
Hah!  Clever,  Hazel.  And she's actually screaming in pain from the fire, whereas she didn't make a sound when being pulverized.
What does the cane DO?  It's impressive as heck, but I can't tell.  Channeling his magic, certainly.  Are we going to lose Oz  right now?  With no chance to talk to Ruby or Qrow or anyone, to reconcile?  It seems all too likely, and such a waste.
Which makes me think, in turn, that perhaps we will lose Oscar too in a way.  Unexpected - I have always thought the merge would end with Oscar holding all the memories.  But maybe he won't be quite either of them anymore, even if he remembers both and the others still call him Oscar.  And that thought also makes me sad.
Anyway,  good episode, though now the title doesn’t seem particularly relevant. Hazel was much more the focus. 
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valkyrieelysia18 · 3 years
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RWBY Rewrite: The Jaundice Arc
Hey there everybody! Sorry it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from me, but I’ve got a job now and less of writing drive than I had when I was high school/college. Doesn’t mean it’s completely gone though and now I’m going to tackle the point that people started to really have problems with RWBY: the Jaundice Arc.
I know, big guns, but frankly I wanted to get this one. Partially because I want to do Jaune’s post eventually and I feel like I need to do this one before I can do that one, and partially because like I said before: this point where people really started to have problems with the show. And more specifically, this when people REALLY start to dislike Jaune.
Now, I’ve touched on my feelings on him before, but let me get this all out and over with. I don’t hate Jaune and I don’t think he’s an inherently bad character. Almost everyone on this show has been written badly and I think the absolutely simmering undercurrents that some parts of the RWDE community have for him is perhaps a little over the top. Personally, I think the core idea of his character is pretty good and he’s at his best in my opinion when he’s playing support to the other characters.
That being said, I completely understand why people dislike him. He has been constantly given focus away from the main team, which started in Volume 1 which was already short as it was to devote about a quarter of your episodes to a non main character in your first season. He also doesn’t suffer nearly as much for the consequences of his actions while the female characters get constant crap for theirs. I’m not even going to go into the Miles Luna Author Self Insert thing.
After having read fan fiction and seen some rewrite scenarios on Youtube, I personally think that Jaune can be written well so long as he’s not being written by Miles and Kerry. With that, I’m ready to take my crack at it.
Setup
As I said, Jaune took massive screen time away from the main characters since early on in the series. There’s an easy way to fix this. As I stated in an earlier post, I was going to spend the first volume/season focusing on Team RWBY aside from a small potential team up with Team JNPR. Jaune, and his other teammates, would mainly be relegated to comedy and background support for the main four girls after the Initiation. I’d throw in a few hints of what’s to come with them, but that’s it. Thus, I’d actually put the Jaundice Arc in the second volume/season which would be significantly larger than the first.
Because we’d be doing it then, we’d have bit more buildup for this story. Cardin’s bullying and enmity towards Jaune would be set up in the prior volume/season’s class interactions. As I noted in my School Rewrite, Jaune’s strategic abilities would also be showcased early on as well as Cardin’s tendency to go head on and brutal without realizing potential problems with that approach. Jaune’s relationship with Pyrrha and the rest of his team would also be better set up.
Now that the board is set, let’s get to it.
Student Days
The first thing I would absolutely change is making it clear that Jaune is actually trying. That was the thing that really did irk me with how Miles and Kerry wrote this arc, despite having gone through the effort of cheating his way into a huntsman academy, he then proceeds to goof off and put absolutely no effort into it. So, before and during this arc, it’ll be clearly shown he’s been studying like crazy and putting in extra time into the fighting simulations that are available for students. He’s not failing in terms of his regular studies, but he’s not top of the class either. In terms of physical combat, he’s the worst in his year, but he’s exceptional in Strategy and Tactics. This I think would be a good and reasonable place for Jaune starting out given his character and background prior to the series.
Thing is, this pisses Cardin off. He sees how much of a weakling Jaune is as a fighter and can see that he is so out of place at Beacon. Despite this, he’s paired with arguably the strongest person in their class who hangs on his every word and has (unintentionally) been showing him up as a leader during Strategy and Tactics. He knows something is off with Jaune, leading him to spy on him to figure out what’s up.
I wouldn’t change that much with him and Pyrrha’s interaction on the roof, I already briefed the reason why Pyrrha trusts him as a leader in her rewrite post. Maybe throw in a hint that his father really didn’t want Jaune to become a huntsman, but I’ll get into that when I get into his backstory proper.
I also wouldn’t change that much revolving in his talk with Cardin straight after save for one thing. After Jaune is left alone with his thoughts on this situation his lies have gotten him into, the scene shifts to being shown on a screen, making it clear that this is being watched from a camera on the roof. A finger taps on the screen a few times and we hear a familiar pensive hum.
The fall out with his team and his one on one with Ruby isn’t really changed, aside from Ren and Nora being more vocally concerned about Jaune’s actions and Pyrrha’s frosty change in behavior which the latter shoots down the concerns sharply.
Forever Falls/Aftermath
I don’t think I’ll change that much regarding the trip itself. I was thinking of mentioning the reason the teams are there is because this is their group task for the month (gathering sap for Professor Peach, who would actually be here taking originally Glynda’s place) and that’s why it’s only these three teams here. Same overall events occur: CRDL tries to get Pyrrha, Jaune stands up to Cardin, Grimm take down with Pyrrha’s unknown aid.
Jaune does apologize to Pyrrha like in the original and ask to train him. Though I was thinking that he’d get something a bit more painful than just a hard shove. I was thinking she’d take his hand and tackle him to the ground hard while pointing out his weaknesses.
This will cut to Ozpin’s office, with Cardin finishing up with telling his version of events who is obviously very agitated from the day’s events. In this Rewrite, there is no reason why he wouldn’t just tell on Jaune. Ozpin merely takes it all in with pensive expression before asking about the light that seemed to protect Jaune. Cardin answers this with confusion and some surprise, Ozpin nodding with a “Good to know” before updating a file on his tablet. Cardin is even more confused and asks what the Headmaster is going to do about Jaune. His answer: Nothing.
Cardin is shocked and furious at the Headmaster, going into him a bit before threatening to go to the board with this. Ozpin responds that even if he did so, he wouldn’t have a case. Cardin is completely confused as Ozpin explains: When students apply for Beacon, their applications go through extensive background checks before there are selections for the second round (ie the Entrance Exam). Such fake transcripts would have been discovered around that time.....had they actually gone through the admissions board. As it was, Jaune’s was accepted through an alternative.
But honestly, that’s not to say the admissions board is completely infallible, Ozpin would muse. Some are very inclined to promote those connected to them, others are interested in advancing their career elsewhere,.....and some might be inclined to take money from very influential people, such as a well meaning Uncle whose Council seat is up for reelection soon. Cardin gets noticeably stiff at that last one. Then Ozpin bring up some videos to the screen, all of them showing Cardin and his team bullying others, particularly Faunus students. The headmaster then would muse aloud that he wonder how Councilman Winchester, or moreso his Faunus opponent, would react to such un-Huntsman like behavior getting out into the news. Cardin immediately gets what the headmaster wants and goes completely quiet. Ozpin would merely say that he is a big believer in second chances and that while he understands that shenanigans in such as a school as this is to expected, Cardin would do best to remember that even if he thinks no one is watching he should act like there is. This cuts the meeting to a close with Cardin leaving quietly and Oz going back to his tablet, clicking back to a file with Jaune’s symbol on in it amongst others files with symbols on them. Only Jaune’s is a different color than the others and a scroll up would show us only one other file with that same color: Ruby’s.
Okay, it feels like I spent a lot of this post musing on the Cardin and Ozpin scene (really I could have done a oneshot on it), but this really was an important scene to establish some very important things to this Rewrite.
1. Ozpin is not an idiot. Ozpin is shown to be very aware of what’s going on at his school. While he may not get directly involved with things, he is shown to be watching his students. And while he is shown to be merciful in giving Cardin a second chance after the crap he pulled, he is also shown to not be a pushover. With such vigilance showcased, it will the Fall of Beacon even more devastating in how Ozpin missed his enemies working under his nose.
2. Ozpin’s true nature and goals are thrown into question. This rewrite is going to be more morally gray, especially in regards to Ozpin. Not only has he blackmailed a student to keep it quiet about another student, he knowingly let someone into his school he knew wasn’t qualified. In this rewrite up until this point he would have been shown as a distant but well intentioned headmaster. Now, he’s just gotten plenty shady. It would also bring into question Ruby’s enrollment into Beacon given that she got in in the same way (also strengthening those two’s parallels, but I digress).
3. Makes us question why Ozpin let Jaune in and sets up that Jaune is important in some way. As noted in my musings in a previous post, it makes no sense for Jaune to have gotten into Beacon unless Ozpin saw his transcripts and accepted him on that alone. Since we are shown in this scene Ozpin is aware of the transcripts, it makes us question what did he accept Jaune for. This also sets up that he will be important to the story moving forward, and not just as the revenge driven not ex boyfriend of the girl who tragically died.
Now, why did Ozpin accept him? Well, that will be covered in his own character post. I think this is plenty long enough and I think I will do something different before I get back to these Rewrite post. I hope like this one more than the last.
See you all! And stay save in this Covid time!
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blkmxrvel · 4 years
Text
Haven’t Forgotten My Way Home [17] - (CONVERTED)
Pairing: Kara Zor-El x Female!Reader
Summary: In the D/s society of National City, men and women abandoned by their Dom/mes or otherwise deemed unfit for life “outside” end up at the Mount Overland House for Orphaned Submissives. It is here that Kara Zor-El finds Y/N Hastings, broken and fearful from mistreatment at the hands of her former Dom. Can Kara coax Y/N back into the world that once so terrified her, and show her the true meaning of care and submission?
Warnings: Domestic Violence (Flashbacks, Mentions and Descriptions), Misogyny, Domination/Submission.
A/N: hi, back from the dead just to finish uploading this story conversion bc I’ve gotten a lot of asks about it! Still not writing anything myself so 😗 yeah Hope you enjoy
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“Kara, is that a zip drive in your hand or are you just happy to see me?”
“… no?”
“I’m not watching any PowerPoints.”
“I brought cake?”
Lena sighed heavily and stepped aside to let Kara pass through the front door. “I regret ever telling you that cake is my weakness,” she pointed out. She closed the door and turned to Kara with a searching look. “And I imagine you’re here to talk to me about yours.”
“Am I that transparent?” Kara asked, sitting both the zip drive and the chocolate cake (extra icing) on the table. She sighed and sat down on the couch, then glanced up at the ceiling. “You don’t, er, have anyone tied up at the moment, do you?”
“No,” Lena smirked. “She’s gone to the pharmacy.”
“Oh,” Kara said as her friend sat next to her and crossed her legs. “I hope everything’s all right?”
“Everything’s just fine,” Lena said, and her smirk widened into a full-blown smile. “She’s gone for a pregnancy test.”
“Lena!” Kara gasped, launching herself at the woman and pulling her into a hug. “Lena, that’s amazing!”
Lena returned the hug, laughing. “We don’t know for sure yet, of course,” she cautioned. “But we’ve been trying for a little while and Sam's late, so…”
“This is the real deal, huh?” Kara said, pulling away and smiling with a wistful look. She’d known it was real when Lena had told her of her claim, but a baby… She couldn’t help but wonder what if-
“Kara?” Lena placed her hand on Kara’s knee, rubbing gently. Her voice was full of concern as she asked, “You’re not… jealous, are you?”
“What? No!” Kara said, shaking her head vigorously. She willed her smile to be a little less sad, realizing that Lena had completely misunderstood the emotion behind it. “You know I love you, Lena, but you also know I stopped caring for you like that a while ago.”
She hadn’t expected for their relationship to deepen the way it did. She was young and Lena was more experienced, both in their lifestyle and in life. Most people didn’t start relationships after their training was complete, but after Kara had spent her week on her knees learning from Lena, things had changed once she’d gotten back on her feet. In Lena she had found a caring Dominant, someone willing to take time for Kara, to teach her things that Kara couldn’t learn from books. And in Lena Kara had found an equal, someone who inspired her intellectually, met her attitude measure for measure, and had been responsible for more than just one awakening.
So it wasn’t any wonder Lena was concerned about residual feelings. Kara knew her feelings for the woman to whom she’d given her virginity wouldn’t just fade away, but she also knew that they could change. And, “It’s not really you I was thinking of,” Kara confessed, “It’s Y/N.”
“Y/N?” Lena said, seeming relieved.
“Just imagining what it would be like to know she was going out to buy a pregnancy test. For herself, or me.” Kara shrugged. “I guess I am quite transparent.”
“And a bit jumping the gun,” Lena said matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure either of you are ready for that leap yet. But you obviously didn’t make a PowerPoint to discuss what movies Y/N likes.”
“Wizard of Oz,” Kara muttered half to herself, and then sighed again. “I don’t suppose you really need to see the PowerPoint, though it’s a very good one, if I do say so myself.”
“And the subject?” Lena said, getting up to pour herself and Kara a drink and to cut the cake for them to share.
“Forty slides of reasons why I cannot fulfill Y/N’s request for me to dominate her.”
Lena’s hands stopped in mid-air, the knife hovering over the cake, and she gaped at Kara. “She asked you to dominate her?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m correct in assuming that you said no?”
“Would I be sitting in your living room, looking appropriately and movingly distressed if I had said yes?”
“Watch yourself, Kara,” Lena said sharply. “You know I will not accept disrespect, no matter how distressed you are, and even if you are not my submissive.”
Kara rolled her eyes, even as she winced. She well remembered the pain in her 17 year old bottom from every smack of Lena’s hand, and then the belt. But that didn’t compare to the humiliation of seeing Lena’s disappointed face beforehand as she gave Kara the lecture about respect, or being put over Lena’s lap with her skirt flipped up and her panties down.
“I’m sorry,” Kara said quietly. “I just…” She trailed off and accepted the drink and plate Lena handed her before sitting down next her again.
“You didn’t want to say no.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why did you?”
Kara shrugged again. “I don’t know. Because she isn’t ready. Because I’m not ready. Because she has nightmares every night of him. Because she flinches whenever I raise my voice? Because if I even say the word ‘whipped’ or ‘paddled’ or ‘punished,’ she looks at me like she’s seeing him. Because—“
“You’re scared.”
“I really hate how you put words in my mouth.”
“You hate the fact that I’m right more.” Kara hmphed, and Lena chuckled a little. “You’re scared to dominate her, but you’re not happy with just casually dating either.”
Their society hadn’t really been built around casual dating, Kara knew. Back when her parents were young, when their parents were young, it was unspoken that when you found a Dominant, you were claimed by them before you even thought of doing anything with them. It was to be forever, a bond that was never to be broken. Kara had to admit that she preferred the way things were done now. If she had been born decades ago she would have never even thought about giving herself sexually first to Lena, instead of to her intended. But she was grateful for the experience, and even more glad that Dominants and submissives had the freedom to choose who they wanted to be with, and were allowed to have the sort of “trial and error” relationships that wouldn’t have been possible in the past. No longer did submissives feel as if they had to submit themselves to the first Dominant they came across, and no longer did Dominants feel as if they had to make a claim as soon as they reached a certain age.
And dating Y/N was nice… for the little time they had done it. Kara felt a particular twist in her stomach as she wondered if she’d ever be able to feel that way again, to be excited waking up the morning of a date. The rush of kissing in the moonlight before Y/N went inside Nia’s house. Sitting across from Y/N in a crowded coffee shop and knowing that Y/N only had eyes for her.
But Lena was right. For Kara, that wasn’t enough. She’d always pictured herself as meeting The One – the submissive with whom she’d share that unbreakable connection. She was probably too melodramatic for her own good, she’d been raised on musicals after all; but Kara had always imagined it would be the meeting of eyes across a crowded room. Two people gravitating towards each other, reaching out to grasp hands and… that would be it. Lover and friend, Dominant and submissive, together forever.
It was a child’s dream, and she was no longer a child. But that didn’t stop her from wishing.
“What exactly is it that you think I’m afraid of?”
“Why are you afraid of going to New York?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?!” Kara snapped, slamming her drink down on the table in front of the couch. She saw Lena’s lips tighten, and Kara took a deep breath. “Y/N seems to think I’m terrified of that as well.”
“And let me guess, you shut her down.”
“I didn’t shut her down; I merely told her the conversation was closed.”
“Refresh my memory on how that is different.” Kara didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms over her chest and glared down at the carpet. Lena sighed. “Do you remember when I was training you, and you sassed off at me so I whipped you?”
“How could I forget? I felt it for a week afterward.”
“And what’s part of the reason?”
Kara refused to look at Lena. “You accidentally wrapped the belt over my hip.” Lena had taken the utmost care with her, but she knew from her classes at the Academy that sometimes accidents happen. And that the most important thing was to tell your Dominant. But Kara had wanted to make Lena proud, hadn’t wanted the woman to see her as weak when Kara was working so hard to be good. A good submissive-in-training, a good Dominant. So she had kept quiet, even through the pain.
“And you didn’t tell me until I saw you looking at the mark in the mirror later that night.”
“No, Miss Lena.”
It felt weird, saying that, because she wasn’t a submissive and Lena wasn’t her Dominant, but Kara hadn’t spoken to Y/N for the last three days – she hadn’t called – and Kara had been struggling to maintain control of a life that she felt was spiraling out of her reach. Lena had always, ever since Kara was seventeen, been able to pull Kara out of herself and take that control, even for just a little while. Enough for Kara to clear her head and start thinking rationally again. Sometimes it was just nice to have Lena wrap her arms around Kara and pull her close, for Kara not to have to think about being strong and brave and dominant.
“What did I tell you that night, once I’d made sure you were all right and after I’d apologized for being careless?”
Kara nuzzled herself deeper into Lena’s arms, taking a deep breath and letting the worries that had overwhelmed her slip away a little. “That communication was important. That you can’t have a true relationship between a Dominant and a submissive unless both parties know they can talk freely, about anything and everything. But this is different,” she protested.
“No, it’s not,” Lena said firmly. “You’re afraid to go to New York, and you’re afraid to dominate Y/N just as much as she’s afraid to be dominated by you. You have a right to talk to Y/N about being afraid to dominate her, and she has a right to ask you why you’re so scared about that, and why you’re so scared to go to New York. And if neither of you talk about either of those things, then every fear you have right now of being like him is going to come true.”
“She’s not ready,” Kara said, sitting up. “She tells me that she doesn’t want to have to choose all the time, but how can she say that when she’s never even had choices?”
“You know,” Lena mused, smiling a little at Kara, “As much as I like wolves, you and the council did rather just toss Y/N out to them.” Seeing Kara’s look of confusion, she continued, “Think about it. Y/N’s life, although harsh, was all she’s ever known. And though she left on her own, she was still ripped away from it. And now you, and the council, and everyone involved is telling Y/N that she has to do it all herself, that she can’t have any support system. No wonder she’s terrified.”
“Having a support system is a lot different from being dominated, though,” Kara said, standing up and beginning to pace around Lena’s living room floor. “It isn’t as if she’s completely alone. She has Alex, and Maggie. Nia and her physical therapist and Miss Holliday. She doesn’t need to be dominated; she needs to learn what it’s like to have friends. She needs to learn it’s okay to have her own needs and desires and to have all of them met. She can’t do that if someone starts dominating her just months after she got away from that… that asshole. I can still be supportive of Y/N while not being her Dominant.”
“And you can dominate her without being her Dominant, and without taking away her choices.”
Kara didn’t see how that was possible. As much as just casually dating Y/N wasn’t enough, she didn’t think she could dominate her, either, not without the intent to claim her. And Y/N was nowhere near ready for that. Kara didn’t know if she’d ever be ready. No, the important thing was that Y/N knew she had choices, and that she learned how to make them. Maybe then, after a few years, they’d both be ready to try.
“Plus I could get in trouble with the council,” Kara offered, but knew by the way Lena rolled her eyes that she’d seen past the feeble excuse. She was good at that.
“The council,” Lena scoffed, shaking her head and moving to refill her drink. “The council, my darling Kara, is nothing but a group of old men sitting around thinking that they know what’s best for the Dominants and submissives of our society. And frankly I don’t think they should be telling me or you a damn thing about how to live our lives when they probably can’t even dominate their own penises into doing what they want.”
Kara choked on her drink and tapped her chest, spluttering. She stared at Lena in shock; her former lover simply smirked at her. “So you’re telling me to go against the council? Against what I think is the right thing?”
“I’m telling you to stop being so scared.” Kara sat back down on the couch and Lena once again patted her knee. “Tell me, when she asked you to dominate you, what terrified you?”
Kara thought for a moment. “How much she wanted me to punish her. I didn’t think, after all that she’s been through… I thought that would be the last thing she’d ask for.”
Lena nodded. “She probably wanted you to physically punish her too.”
“I’ll never,” Kara said vehemently. “I’ll never do that to her. Ever.”
“Notice that you just said you will never, not that you would never.”
“I hate you and your word-twisting ways,” Kara muttered, and Lena laughed. “I just don’t understand why she would want that. After everything he’s done to her, why would she want me to punish her? To spank her?”
“She obviously did something that made her think she needed to be punished.”
“She was being a grumpy brat.”
“Oh dear, you have met your match, then,” Lena said, sounding more than a little gleeful. “I can’t wait to see how this plays out.” Seeing Kara’s glare, she cleared her throat and continued. “So she did something that upset you, and she wanted to rectify the situation. In Y/N’s mind, wrongdoing equals punishment. Punishment results in forgiveness, forgiveness means moving forward with a clean slate. So that sounds remarkably—“
“Submissive,” Kara finished for her, sighing. “So it’s the not the punishment she wants, it’s something normal. Something she knows. Even if it means I’d punish her physically, she’d try to take it just so she could have that little piece of her life back. But isn’t that proof that she isn’t ready?”
“No. It’s proof that she’s trying to take control of her own life.”
Kara blinked. “I don’t follow.”
“A Dominant doesn’t need a submissive, but you can’t dominate anyone until you have a submissive. And you can’t have a submissive until one chooses to be yours. Until someone chooses to give you that control, you don’t have it. And Y/N made her choice. She took control of her own choices, her own wants, and tried to give you her submission. Everything you would be in that relationship is because she has made the choice to give it to you.”
“I don’t know if it’s me she wants, or just… someone to be nice to her.”
“No one’s saying for you to claim her.”
“Then what are you saying?” When Lena was silent, Kara pressed harder. “Lena, you know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t value your opinion more than most, probably even more than my daddies’. You’re the one that taught me, and if I’m going to be a good Dominant it’s partly because of what I learned from you. Please.”
“Do you think you’re going to be a good Dominant?” Lena met Kara’s eyes, challenging her. “Isn’t that what’s really holding you back, both from dominating Y/N and going to New York? You don’t think you’re good enough for either.”
Kara felt the chill run from the base of her neck down her spine, and she struggled to maintain her control over the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her at Lena’s words. How many nights had she lain in bed since she was 18 years old, dreaming of New York, of Broadway, of the school where people would appreciate her, where she would feel home? It had been a long time since she felt the excitement of new possibilities, of new discovery. She’d gotten used to getting up every day, the three cups of coffee before 9 a.m. that would barely sustain her for the rest of the day. Gotten used to meeting life’s broken, the castoffs, the unwanted, and feeling powerless to fix any of it. But gradually thoughts of New York had been replaced by helping who she could; dreams of Broadway had been pushed aside in favor of being the leading actress in a play of saving the world. Or at least the Lima part of it.
And then she’d met Y/N Hastings.
Now things were different. Now Kara got up every day not just thinking of the wounded submissives, but thinking of one. And lately the thoughts of one were overriding the thoughts of many. Y/N made her feel… awake, for the first time in a long time. Things that Kara hadn’t felt since she was on her knees for Lena, in Lena’s arms, in Lena’s bed came rushing back to her with a force that she hadn’t known even with her former lover. And there it was, the desire to care for one, the desire to control one, the desire to bring one to her knees and then lift her back up.
The one that felt like home.
But it scared Kara to death.
Because when she thought of Y/N on her knees, it wasn’t Kara herself she saw behind the other woman. It was him, with his harsh words and brutal hand. But the words were in her voice, the hand attached to her arm, and Kara knew she would rather die than be to Y/N what James had been. She tried to tell herself that there was no possible way she could be like him, that the very fact she’d rather die than treat Y/N badly would be the prevention of it, but Kara knew, again, that even experienced Dominants like Lena sometimes messed up. What if she destroyed Y/N even further than she had already been? What if she punished her the wrong way, said the wrong thing, was the wrong Dominant for the girl and neither of them realized it until it was too late? What if, just like in her dreams for Broadway, Kara suddenly found herself lacking?
What if she wasn’t good enough?
“You’re getting too far inside your own head,” Lena said quietly, a hand on Kara’s shoulder pulling her out of her thoughts. She smiled fondly, wrapping her arm around Kara and hugging her close again. “That’s why I almost never put you in the corner that week. I don’t know if you noticed that. But I could see that you liked to think about things far too much, and you’d end up beating yourself far more than I ever would.”
“What if I’m not good enough?” Kara asked bluntly. “What if I do this and I’m not what she needs, what if I’m the worst possible person for her and I end up hurting her worse than even he did?”
“Again, no one’s asking you to claim her. You just need to find a good balance, something that works for both of you.”
“How do I find that balance?”
Lena smiled and squeezed Kara. “By listening to your nature. To what’s in your heart. Kara, you’re more than good enough. For Y/N, and for New York. You’ve been wonderful, taking care of your father and doing your job. But maybe now it’s time for you to focus on yourself, and on Y/N too. You’ll never know, you might find out you’re exactly what she needs. And she might be exactly who you need. But you never know until you try. Oh, and Kara?”
“Yes?”
Lena hugged Kara close to her, pulling the girl’s head onto her chest. “I am so proud of you.”
Lena’s words echoed in Kara’s head hours after, when she lay in her bed in the darkness, idly petting Arnie and staring at the phone resting on her chest. People had told her before that they were proud of her, her fathers mostly, but somehow it was different, coming from Lena. It was almost like vindication, reassurance that the path she was on was the right one. Even if she wasn’t sure of it.
She glanced at the clock. Two twenty-three a.m. She glanced down at the phone again.
What would it take, Kara wondered. What would it take for her to stop being scared? What would it take for her and Y/N to throw caution to the wind and trust each other? What would it take for her to find that balance, the mix of dominance and freedom that Y/N not only craved, but needed? What would it take for Kara to be who she was born to be, and to maybe find the person she was born to be with?
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Kara picked up the phone and took a deep breath, pressing a button. The speed dial kicked in instantly.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Then, just as she was about to hang up, a sleepy but panicked voice. “A-are you all right? Do you n-need anything?”
Kara smiled a little to herself, reaching up a hand to wipe at the tears that had begun to fall.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, Y/N, I do need something.
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