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clarks-letterman · 4 months

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Wally anon: Sorry. I try to limit some of my replies, but then just get caught up in it sometimes. 🤐

Yuppp, cause it's like they don't want to "ruin" the straight characters but does both them + the inserted queers for brownie points a disservice cause it ignores the ~vibes~ clearly present in the "straight" ones & uses the queer ones as a bandaid so that people will ignore the writing cowardice. Yup, exactly. Like, 5 doesn't want to actually. devote enough time to dancing around the issue with Sam leaving + them being at odds with each other. It's just instant. exposition dump + gratification with Sam revealing the shit in the hospital + Tara telling her to get out & then oops! the next hospital scene is Sam saving Tara, whereas think about howwww much beef Sidney & Gale have in the OG & the writing only letting them slightly. unite in the scene outside the school after. Sidney has already punched Gale in the face. But you can tell that Gale's comments about the ~killer still being at large~ rattles her cause she.knows.Gale.is.right. Nothinggg like that is put into Sam & Tara even though the potential is right.there. Oh, believe me, I've noticed. Big in more than one area too. 🤫 Throwing yourself to him so he stabs you with his extra knife, I see. That's another reason why I love Ends so much cause f i n a l l y seeing her have closure with "the morning after" at the end is 🙌🙌🙌 You prefer it raw, huh? 🤭

Ugh, it forever pains me that Andrew never got his 3rd movie. It let him have his story somewhat resolved in NWH, but having to sit with that lack of completion for yearsss was so 😫 No lies were spoken dvsjs. Yeah, he needs that ~thing~ that's gonna be apart of the cultural zeitgeist & not just come & go with little to no fanfare. I know it can't be predicted what audiences will respond to, just look @ Barbenheimer, but I feel a big swing that differed from what we're used to seeing from him would pay off. 👍 (I'd say he has a bit longer before it's gone, which makes sense cause he's always had that thing about him, but no complaints from me cause he's still very attractive) Yeahhh, like, I LOVED Willem in NWH, but I have the controversial opinion that Green Goblin is not all.that. even as a fan of the Raimi movies & NWH's weird ~multiverse~ situation just exacerbates that. Like w h y can't Tom have his own antagonist unique to him? Why is it SO difficult for them to do it? Oh the ideasss for this where he can.not. handle being around you without flooding. his underwear with pre-cum/possibly needing to wear more than one pair + a special blocker he made for himself so that you don't notice him leaking. But then one night, he forgets about all of his precautions while on patrol & ends up running into & cums allllll in his suit from how backed up he is. 😮‍💨 Oh 100% @ the bigger hammer (& Steve would've done more than just lift it 👀). (No, keep going 🤭 I guarantee he'd be similar to Wally in that he'd never. get tired of doing it, so that anybody not as equipped as him would have to tap out or just be fucked completely into submission, but I'd say the ~enhanced~ individuals would be able to last quite awhile) Because he loves the way it makes you sound 🫣 Ugh, yessss. He's just so open & free, even if you aren't & might even get a little 😳 from how willing he is to do any & everything & be completely comfortable in his skin to just start stroking during anything. 🤤

I really hope so cause even if I can't help but be mildly amused by the MCU making so many bad decisions just from there being that. many, I want them to like...get their shit together so that it doesn't implode on people like Tom who're still around. 💀 And what will you be doing if you get there first? 👀 He probably wouldn't let you cum either if it's all about punishment, just using your body for his own pleasure. Very true. No point to continue dwelling on his ass lollll (when we have other. asses to actually dwell on instead). Ah, I gotcha. I thought you were insinuating an actual kink. But that makes me wonder what their individual weird kinks would be. 🤔 Iknowwww. It makes no sense, especially when Days of Future Past had the scene it did to show us that yes! actually he should. be able to outrun stupid bullets dhsksj. (I can see it on both accs cause they're both kind of little shits who would gravitate toward each other since so much of the rest of the team is trying so hard to be serious lollll) Yessss, you get it. It's sort of a mutual hatefuck, but they can't run away from the natural feelings they have for each other, even if they're complicated & messy & they're being rough with each other, it just keeps bringing them back together. 👀👀👀 Yuppp. He's fr probably one of the only people who can help with Peter's sex drive cause he's soooo into how much he shoots. Well, yeah, but you're not that. far removed in height from him, so even if you're not getting the size difference you're still getting everything else (& it's a lot. of everything). 👍

I wonder if Wally in this scenario could & how an mpreg concept would turn out if he could?

Gotcha gotcha. That makes sense that the program would be structured like this. (Oh, yeah, that's pretty cool; really cuts down on transportation) Of course @ field experience. Glad that you have that to help set you up for later. 👍 (Well that. sucks @ no extra cred 💔)

A little late for that @ too crazy. But I'm getting the hint that you'd like to move past "anonymous," if I'm correct. 🫣

(shshsk no issues for me, you know I'm all about things getting a little unserious 🤭)

That's incrediblyyyy funny to hear as someone who never read the books, but has seen soooo much talk from fans over the years waiting for a ~accurate adaption~ cause you know it's gonna just get worse if the show gets multiple seasons. 💀

You're good! just... dropping hints about moving past the anon thing🫣

Exactly, the queer characters feel disrespectful to an extent because it kinda ignores that sexuality is fluid and changes. It can't be defined really, which is why having designated characters for it doesn't really work ykyk. IM SAYINNGGGG I hated the whole "my mom had a journal and it revealed this crucial piece of information and then this happened" speech she gave. At least tease it a little to make it some interesting exposition, because boring exposition will have me forgetting whatever information within seconds after the scene ends. And yeah, I hate that their next interaction is Tara almost dying, really resolves all the family issues fast! So crazy how that works! And yesss Gale being an unlikely helper in taking down Ghostface made her and Sidney's relationship a lot stronger. And then they have Gale do what she was known for in the first movie: profit off the tragedy, then they're back at square one with each other but with enough background to actually put their growth into motion in 2. Like I said, Sam just does it because she feels like she needs to, there is no individual motivation in what she does in 5 or 6 to justify her and Tara growing closer again. Yesss ugh I literally had a DBD match earlier with Myers and I stunned him and felt bad cause he was gonna spare me but wooof. I'd throw myself at him any time and feel that big knife against me skjddshk. So true, we get to see her date and be happy after being paranoid and closed off for years. Just wish the start was more realistic but the end is good enough to justify the rocky start. If his meat is good raw, I'll take it. Plus, I know that country boy hick doesn't believe in wrapping

Like?? We could have gotten venom but alsoooo I would have love to see them do sinister six in a better fashion than how they set it up. Also yesss I hated having no closure after TASM 2, especially with all the dropped threads (and the deleted scene of Peter's dad being alive god they were on something in those writes rooms.) It doesn't even need to be anything major or box-office-breaking, it can be good enough to be a cult classic later down the line. Exactly about the attractive, he's looked so good and I know he'll rock a dilf look when he gets there (... when he's 85 probably.) For realllll, I wish Tom had an original villain that was all his (and all his🤭). Exactly, he's like a leaky faucet and his jeans are drenched from your physical contact. And Thor would have insane stamina I just know it, cumming the most out of the whole team (He's gotta make it rain with the thunder somehow!!) and if he's feeling nice, he'd cockwarm instead, never losing his impressive hard-on as it stretches you out. Totally, it makes you make noises that are sooo good to his ears🫣 And yesss Wally is so comfortable with himself that he's usually never wearing anything to cover himself down there, only his jacket for style purposes. Stroking, fingering himself, you name it, he'll just start doing it in front of you sksjdk

Yeah I heard that, aside from dealing with bad scripts and poor reception on their movies, the actors arent treated the best by Marvel. One of the biggest things in the insane workout regimen that requires any and all heroes to be in peak physical shape, specifically the men. I know Benedict complained about it before and Im sure others took issue with it. They really push style over substance ( but cant even get the style right.) Letting my tongue become a world-class cave explorer, that's what I'm doing!! 😮‍💨 Exactly, it's about Steve's needs because you were deemed to be naughty, so he doesnt have to be nice. Definitely weird stuff, he's a nerd... nerds are 1000% the ones with the most wild imaginations. Crazy that that's how they wrote him off. I just can't get over it one bit. Mysterio and Peter complete each other, and they can't stand it but what can they do other than give into it? It's such a perfect dynamic. Yess Mysterio is the only one that get's him drained by drinking it and "testing" it (he's distrusting of Peter so he's gotta come up with some failsafes and all.) Yeah, he still is a bit taller sooo best of both worlds fr. (Just one night with him would probably leave you in shambles.)

People say mpreg is weird and "inherently homophobic" but idk, breeding's hot and that level of comitment is so hot in straight people that i think it allows it to be as hot in gay couples. If he's a ghost, he'd feel weird being a dad at 17/18, but also...

Yeah its good and bad lmao. The extra credit is me just being greedy for easier grades because STEM majors are crazyyyyyy.

you are absolutely correct😅

Trust me, I'm praying on the downfall of that show. I hope the ending sucks and everyones disappointed in it🥰

#wally anon

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shotorozu · 3 years

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relationship realizations

— ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦ 3k followers milestone

character(s) : multiple characters (bnha)

legend : [Y/N = your name] they/them pronouns used, quirk not mentioned

note(s) : happy 3k ‼️ thank you all for all the love, and most especially those that continue to send love, and indulge in my works. further context, this is what the bnha boys/men learned by being with you :))

»»————-　♡　————-««

midoriya izuku

↮ that his opinion does matter. okay— it’s not like you handed his confidence to him, no that’s different. but, you are a main contributor to the sudden increase of confidence in himself. before, he was just so used to be brushed aside, other people being told to ignore him whenever he does this, and for his rambles to be ignored like white noise— but after you showed up and spent some time with him, he realizes that it’s not the end of the world if he does ramble, and it’s not the end of the world to not be confident about your opinions 100% of the time, but what does matter is that his opinion was heard. which ultimately lead to him being more confident in expressing his own opinions, not caring if it’s apart of the vase majority, or the minority. he’ll forever love you for this.

todoroki shouto

↮ that taking your time isn’t abnormal. shouto, being someone that had little to no set example of what romance is, and being exposed to romance comedies, and tv shows— made him realize something. that people were already kissing on the first date, and he felt well,, under developed because of it. he was never the biggest fan of physical touch, it’s not to say that he never wanted to kiss you, he always does want to, but— he won’t just kiss you just because it’s the first date, or because the movies said so, even as much as he wanted to, no. that’s not what he wanted. he felt worried that he was moving too slowly, compared to the examples he’s seen online but— you say things differently. you allowed him to take his time, showing him patience as you peck him on his temples, and he couldn’t be more grateful to love someone like you.

bakugou katsuki

↮ that being vunerable isn’t a bad idea. you’re even aware of the many few boundaries katsuki has set up for himself— like no pda. which, you’re perfectly fine with, but katsuki hated the idea of being vunerable because well,, people shoved him onto this pedestal at a very young age, he’s thee bakugou katsuki, there’s no room for vulnerability (or so he thinks) besides all might and deku, you’re really the only one that has seen the vulnerable bakugou katsuki, not the loud and explosive one everyone is used to. he was repulsed by the idea, but after the first time he allowed himself to cry on your lap, shedding tears as he trembles in your caring embrace— he realized that he has someone, and that someone wouldn’t care for the world if he wasn’t this big and strong person 24/7. he won’t say it out loud, but he’s incredibly thankful

kaminari denki

↮ that people do take him seriously. nearly everyone sees this man as this.. class clown, goof ball, and that he’s ‘stupid’ or he’s ‘lacking braincells’ most of the time, and that’s all they make him out to be. denki doesn’t like drowning in self pity, but he can’t help it, why doesn’t anyone take him seriously? but wait, that’s when you come along. it was heartbreaking to say the least when you saw how shocked he was when you wanted to hear his plans and ideas. to anyone else, it might appear to be the bare minimum, but it’s everything to denki. to be taken seriously when the time says so, to be treated like the next person with ambitions. sure, he loves being a jokester, he loves making people laugh, but he can’t bite back the smile, when he sees you worry about him after every short circuit, and kiss him on the cheek whenever he comes back to his senses.

shinsou hitoshi

↮ that not everyone’s opinion is valid. okay hear me out, that might be considered a bad thing, but it’s really not. in fact, it’s a good thing. hitoshi’s just used to hearing sugar coated and backhanded compliments being thrown his way, people saying that “you’d be a good villain, at least!” but, he doesn’t want to be a villain. sometimes they’re not even backhanded, and he’s just used to accepting it as it is. because, everyone has been thinking that way, since well— he first manifested his quirk. but that’s when you come along, and blow away his expectations. you weren’t afraid to tell him the truth, that he shouldn’t have allowed all of them to insult him like that, since he deserved all of the good that was in the world. that wasn’t the part that stuck out the most, but it was the part where you told him that it’s the intent that mattered, and who cares if his quirk seems villainous, as long as he meant well? for once in his life, he stopped paying attention to the senseless comments, and focused on what really mattered— you.

kirishima eijirou

↮ that you don’t need a flashy quirk to be honorable. his quirk, while it took some time for it to be in the state that it is today, it has always been an insecurity of his, not that he’d admit that. that he can’t create big explosions or large glaciers of ice like bakugou or todoroki, or he can’t create whatever he desired like yaoyorozu, he just felt,, plain sometimes. which was something he never voiced out in such a blunt manner before, since he always presented himself as this cheery dude that’s always ready for the occasion. it might be easy, he probably curses at himself for being under your spell a little bit too easily, but he feels great whenever you praise him for his hard work, and especially his quirk. even when the insecurity slips out by accident, and when you’re questioned if you really meant that, you stay true to your statement, and that was an eye opener.

amajiki tamaki

↮ that there are other ways of being strong. look, it’s not like tamaki’s quirk is weak— in fact, it’s the very opposite, but his self esteem, and the absence of a sociable personality does take a toll on him sometimes. he feels like he can’t do anything right, especially when he mutters, messes up on what he wants to say, more importantly when he has an idea on what to say. he feels helpless, compared to the other two strong personalities of UA’s big three. and that’s why, you’ve showed him that shyness is completely normal and fine, and it’s not just him that struggles with socializing— and besides, tamaki does have other strong points, like his ability to be considerate with his actions, and his carefully selected words of affirmation whenever he sits next to you on a date. tamaki might be socially uh.. weak sometimes, but he’s come to realize that it’s fine, since he has other strong parts!

monoma neito

↮ that he won’t be forgotten, and also— that being nice to class 1-A doesn’t sound that bad. come to think of it, neito DOES have a nice side in him, but it’s just not exposed to class 1-A for several different reasons (that are layered) when he was younger, he was told that his quirk wasn’t that spectacular, people have underestimated his quirk a lot. not because it’s ‘boring’ but because it just ‘copies other quirks,’ and has no individual attributes. thus, lead neito to act out as an attempt to stand out and not be ‘boring.’ in reality, neito doesn’t realize that he’s anything close to that, and that he can be remembered in the best ways. like, when you first saw his room, and it was covered in pastels, and whenever he sees you, the first thing he says is a compliment. who would’ve guessed it from him? and most importantly, when he is nice to class 1-A, he finds himself laughing at amusement— and he thinks ‘hey! this,, isn’t bad.’ it’s a slowburn for him to finally act like how he is with his class but hey, process!

dabi todoroki touya

↮ that he needs someone. how ironic, a villain— needing someone, and all for what? just to be abandoned for someone better? no thanks. you didn’t actually shove it in his face for him to realize it but, you did contribute to it. his staples were starting to falling off again after another gruesome mission, dabi didn’t feel like plucking them out himself, but he knows that he has to— he went to go pick them off, until, you come in. a stapler in your hand, as you practically make him sit tightly as you replaced the staples. it stings, not that he’ll ever admit that, he’ll just stick to making fun at you in such dabi fashion. but ugh, there’s that warmth again everytime he looks at you. it’s not the cruel burn, similar to his quirk— but it’s,, gentle. it makes him want to disembowel himself, but he doesn’t mind it when you touch the cool metal. just,, get out of his face before he decides to flame you, all just because he learned that he needs someone (he won’t actually flame you but ugh, he’s still dealing with that kind of warmth you’re making him feel)

»»————-　♡　————-««

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i do not own bnha/mha and it’s characters. boku no hero academia/my hero academia belongs to horikoshi kohei, i only own the writing and i do not profit off of my hobby

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 3 years

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Sorry but what exactly is up with the bad batch arc? I've heard people talk about the issues with echo's white skin but I haven't heard that many bad things about the arc itself? (ik you said you don't want to be negative on your blog so I would absolutely understand if you didn't answer this ask)

Oooooooooooh boy. Well I just had a long, long, LONG rant about it with someone, but I guess I’ve got an excuse to put all of my points onto a post and talk about it publicly now that I got an ask x) I’ll keep it under the cut so I don’t throw my salt in people’s face. I really don’t want to upset people who love that arc - it has redeeming qualities, but overall it pisses me off so much for so many reasons. So here:

The first issue is obviously two members of the Bad Batch (minus Echo) being being just about the furthest thing from maori no matter how much you're willing to stretch it.

Like... yeah, nah. I wouldn’t even accept Crosshair and Tech (grey haired guy and goggles guy) as Jango’s natural biological sons, nevermind as his clones.

The problem is that their different appearances are justified by them being described simply as clones with desirable mutations (i.e superpowers). But why the hell did the creators have to change their appearances for that to be a thing? How does that correlate? Sure, the concept of clones with different faces is interesting, except... no, no it’s not, and I’m gonna rant about it in a few secs. But basically it's like they thought giving them different faces would be a good substitute for having different personalities (another thing I’ll come back to). If they really wanted to have buff clones with super eyesight or whatnot they could have just done that, without making them lose what little melanin the lighting of the show had allowed the other Clones to keep.

But the gigantic problem is... showing that the "regular" clones have VERY distinct identities despite their identical faces has been one of the themes of the show from episode 1. Literally, the first episode of TCW has Yoda taking time out of a mission with galactic stakes to tell the three clones he’s with (who tell him they’re all the same because they have the same faces) that they’re wrong, and that they’re very different in the Force, that their appearance doesn’t matter, that they’re all equally unique and important, and he lists all of their individual skills, strengths and weaknesses.

And it’s not just me being bothered by that, here’s a post by @cacodaemonia saying the same thing.

Introducing the Bad Batch as "unique" clones who are "different" and "not like their brothers" because they have different faces and skills completely breaks that theme of the show!! Because the entire point of the Clones in TCW is that their faces don't matter, they ARE unique!

(Plus the Bad Batch’s character designs are so cliche and uninspired it’s just laughable to try and justify bleaching their freaking skin for the sake of visual diversity.

This took like 10 seconds. I found the first guy by literally googling “soldier movies,” and the other two are Team Fortress characters that look a LOT like Wrecker and Crosshair. One is “Heavy” and one is “Sniper” lmao.

And behold:

The above picture is a Team Fortress reference that I found just by looking up “bad batch clone wars,” so I’m not the only person who sees it.)

And the batchers don't even have personalities to justify calling them unique! They have no character traits beyond the most cliché american soldier tropes ever. We have a token loner sniper, a token "smart tech guy" who knows everything from xenoanthropology to biology to Separatist computers to sound waves to encryption, a token Badass Brooding Leader and a token “dumb muscle guy.”

I dare anyone to find more about their personalities than this: - Crosshair is the perpetually grumpy sniper who looks down on "regs,” - Wrecker likes to blow up stuff and doesn't like heights, - Hunter is the leader and is friends with Cody, - Tech is smart doesn't trust Echo.

That’s it, that’s literally it. Four episodes about them and that's all we get. These character tropes are literally the least inventive ever. FFS, Hunter even has a freaking KNIFE! Not a vibroblade, mind you, like in kriffing Star Wars. A knife. Against metal droids. Why. They couldn’t make this more of an american-war-movies cliché fest if they tried. (And sure, he can feel electromagnetic waves so maybe it does make sense for him not to carry a vibroblade and maybe this is nitpicking, but he looks like a ripoff of a Predator character and it pisses me off).

Another thing is that when you introduce characters you have to make them likable - and them despising the normal Clones is a terrible way to do that! And they don't even grow from that because at the end of the 4 episodes arc they just see Rex as not bad "for a reg" and they see Echo as no longer a reg, and both of these things are infuriating!

The worst thing imo is that Echo then becomes part of them (and irreparably loses his melanin in the process, uuuuuuuuugh) when there is nothing to justify this.

The dialogue goes like this:

ECHO: You coming? TECH: Not really our thing. CROSSHAIR: Accolades. WRECKER: Yeah, we're just in it for the thrill. Yo! HUNTER: You sure it's your thing? ECHO: What do you mean? HUNTER: Your path is different. Like ours. If you ever feel like you don't fit in with them, well, find us. (they leave) REX: Those are some of the finest troopers I've ever fought alongside. Echo. You and I go way back. If that's where you feel your place is, then that's where you belong.

Echo doesn't feel like he belongs anymore, okay, but why would he feel like he belongs with the assholes who up to the last five minutes of the mission thought he was probably a traitor, and also verbally expressed that he was not worth saving?? In all of the arc, Echo himself never voices that he feels he’s not ‘like the other Clones’ anymore and that he feels it’s a problem. His relationship with Rex immediately picks up where they left things off - the first thing he does upon being lucid again for the first in over a year is cracking a joke for Rex’s benefit.

Why would Echo feel like he doesn’t belong in the 501st anymore, when we don't even see him interacting with anyone from his past life except for Rex and Anakin (who are both extremely very supportive of him)?? If there had been one scene of a “regular” Clone (ugh) looking at him with horror and disgust or something, or just Kix and Jesse cracking jokes with Echo awkwardly standing by the side not getting it, I could forgive the show trying to make it feel like he has an identity crisis, but this was so shallow!

The only thing that makes Echo and the Bad Batch’s experiences similar is that they *look* different. It’s so against the themes of the Clones I’m seething just from thinking about it. And what the hell? Echo ALREADY didn’t fit in. That was the WHOLE POINT of Domino Squad. They didn’t fit in because they thought they were better than anyone else because they had trouble getting along with their brothers, so obviously it had to be their brothers’ fault (ahem, Bad Batch?). And you know what happened? Domino Squad OVERCAME that. And Echo and Fives still didn’t “fit in” because their personalities were unique and creative, and they became ARC Troopers because Cody, Rex and the Jedi VALUED THEM FOR PRECISELY THAT. Echo having new and unique skills and a modified appearance is the most bs justification for him feeling like he doesn’t belong!!

And that brings me to my biggest issue: Rex telling Echo the bad batch are some of the best troopers he's ever met. I'm sorry, based on WHAT? What Rex values above everything is loyalty and brotherhood, and the Bad Batch DOESN'T DISPLAY ANY OF THAT. We never see them even expressing concern for each other! Wrecker treats saving Cody’s life like a trivial issue, because it’s just ‘sO eAsY’ for him, and beyond that we never see them supporting each other or genuinely expressing affection for each other beyond boasting about each other’s skills...

Sure they can destroy a lot of droids, but they're dismissive of Rex's brothers, and the entire Umbara arc and this arc showed what he thought of that. They keep saying things like "not bad for a reg,” don't show any trust in Rex's skills or experience (even though they can't have been fighting in the war for more than a year and a half when he’s been there from the beginning, and he outranks all of them), they are essentially guerilla fighters which has only minimal value in a galactic war, and they never grow beyond their views of what regs are, and can and can’t do.

None of that should make them good troopers in Rex's book. Going back to Echo not fitting in, remember who taught the Domino Squad the importance of seeing all of your brothers as important and equally valuable? Shaak Ti, true, but more importantly? 99! The guy the Bad Batch are named after. He did have value and was important and was no less of a trooper than his brothers, even though his mutations made him LESS powerful, not more. (And btw, just from a writing standpoint, the batchers don’t have any weaknesses, which is shit.) Cody and Rex mourned 99 as a true soldier even though it wasn’t his sacrifice that brought them victory (which would have implied that he had value as a soldier and a brother because he saved them, as opposed to him having that value intrinsically), because that’s what a fine trooper is to them. A BROTHER first a foremost, someone altruistic, brave and loyal. The Bad Batch distort the meaning of 99's character with their behavior. They’re not altruistic, their bravery is mitigated by the fact that they’re freaking invincible, so of course they take risks (again, see Wrecker saving Cody without a care because it’s easy to him, as opposed to Rex being ready to run into a burning ship about to explode because his brother is in there, and having to be physically dragged away). The Bad Batch denigrate their brothers for being less skilled, thinking their own abilities make them unique somehow, when 99 could barely fight and was still the one who taught Hevy about being a good soldier.

And again the batchers don't grow from that. Which is all the more frustrating because the original ending didn’t have Echo joining them, from what I remember of the unfinished episodes, and the arc actually ended with them receiving their medals in front of regular troopers who cheer for them, as opposed to them smugly ostracizing themselves and dismissing the ceremony as trivial and meaningless. (original ending vs s7 ending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab1eCfzKamw)

It’s so annoying. Do you know what characters never had an entire arc dedicated to them and still have far more personality and more interesting designs and more symbolic weight??

Jesse, for starters. Kix. Dogma. Cut. Slick. Keeli. Ponds. Rys, Jek and Thire. Commander Doom. Commander Fox. Wolffe. Hevy. Hardcase.

Cody was a more interesting character just in his RotS appearances.

Waxer and Boil had one episode about them and then only two cameos plus Waxer’s death, and they’re still some of the most memorable, beloved Clones of the whole show. And Boil was grouchy and prejudiced like Crosshair, but he has so much growth that we could make a whole thread about it.

I'd say the last problem with the Bad Batch is that it has cash grabbing money hungry vibes. Different faces are more marketable, cliché personalities are more toy-friendly, and it's basically a big ad for the Bad Batch series. And they throw Echo in the Batch at the end for bs reasons (again, it wasn’t in the original ep from what I remember) and they tease Cody in the show to make sure fans will still watch even if they notice the lack of soul. And less melanin sells more at Disney apparently.

So that’s my whole pissed rant.

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avengerscompound · 3 years

Text

Small Gods: Lazy Mornings - 7

Lazy Mornings: A Captain America Fanfic

Lazy Mornings Masterlist | More Small Gods PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing: Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count: 1764

Warnings: mentions of drug use

Synopsis: Steve Rogers has trouble taking time for himself. When his friends set him up with a person with a very unusual skill, perhaps he can learn that the quiet moments are just as important as everything else.

Chapter 7

On the day of the dinner party, Steve was nervous. The feeling seemed misplaced for a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason was that most of the group had already met you. Thor had even been the one to introduce you to Steve, so it wasn’t like he didn’t already know that at least half of the team would like you. He knew for a fact that they did. So there was no need to worry about them telling him that you weren’t good enough for him or of him having to decide if he was going to spend time with you or them because they refused to spend any time with you. In that respect it was fine.

The other reason he was anxious was that it felt like he was bringing his girlfriend home to meet his parents. It was a feeling that was absurd for many reasons, not least of which he was over a hundred years old and well past the ‘bringing home the prospective partner to meet the folks’ stage of his life. Not to mention that the Avengers weren’t his parents anyway - they were all young enough to be his grandchildren.

There was something of an official feeling about the dinner. Whether that was just in Steve’s head or not, it felt like he was choosing you. This was his way of saying ‘this is the person I want in my life and I hope you can all welcome her into your lives because she’s part of mine’.

So he worried that you wouldn’t like them, or they wouldn’t like you. Or that something disastrous would happen. Or that it would go perfectly and everyone would love you and you would love them and a good time would be had, and soon Natasha and Wanda would be taking you out shopping or Clint and Tony would be meeting you out for brunch or Bruce and Sam would be inviting you around for movie night, and then Steve would realize that you and he were too different and you’d end up breaking up and then he’d take you away from people who cared about you.

He dressed up - well at least for him. It wasn’t a tux or anything so grand but he did go for a nice button-up shirt in a soft blue that shimmered slightly in the light, and a pair of charcoal trousers. He went downstairs to wait for you in the lobby and when he saw you, it felt like the air had been pulled from his lungs.

Breathtaking barely even covered how you looked to him.

You were wearing a floor-length gown in a floaty chiffon that was such a pale blue it was almost white. It tapered in at the waist where a satin ribbon acted as a kind of belt, separating the loose chiffon skirt from the bunched chiffon bodice that was clipped together on your shoulders with what almost looked like silver buckles. Each step you took made the skirts billow out like mist around your legs - legs which were clearly visible through the almost translucent fabric.

You looked ethereal. Like something plucked straight from a dream. Yet here you were, real and with a smile on your face that told him exactly how happy you were to see him.

“Steve,” you said, kissing his cheek as he curled his arm around your waist. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

Already he was starting to get that soft, relaxed feeling he got when he was around you. He knew by the end of the night he’d be in a deep soporific state and he’d end up sleeping the good restful sleep that used to elude him.

“I wanted to,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t want you to have to walk into that group alone.”

You laughed and let him lead you toward the elevators. “That bad, huh?”

Steve’s laughter joined yours and he shook his head. “No. Well… I’m not sure. I think Tony plans to interrogate you.”

“For them, I am an open book,” you assured him.

When you were both inside the elevator car, you leaned in against him and he pulled your body flush to his. You leaned in, bringing your lips to his, and for the remainder of the ride up, the two of you kissed, slowly and deeply, pressed up against the elevator wall.

When the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, it took a moment for Steve to realize. It wasn’t until a loud ‘woo’ and Clint yelling ‘get it, cap’ that startled him out of the moment. He pulled back from you and looked around at the group of his friends who were all staring in at the two of you.

“So,” Tony teased, breaking the silence. “Who’s your friend?”

Heat crept into Steve’s cheeks and he shook his head to clear it before introducing you to the others and stepping out of the elevator. Just before Tony dragged you away from him, you leaned in, bringing your lips to Steve’s ear. “I think that was my fault,” you whispered, before being whisked off to the bar.

Thor approached Steve as most of the others all seemed to surround you and start the interrogation. The god clapped Steve on the shoulder as he stepped up beside him. “I’m glad to see you so happy,” he said.

“I wasn’t unhappy,” Steve said.

“That’s not what I said,” Thor said. “Do you think she might be the one?”

Steve took a moment to watch you with her friends. He could already see the effect you had on people working on Wanda and Bruce who were both the most willing to allow it to happen. “I love her,” he said, making Thor break out into a large smile.

“That is wonderful!” Thor boomed. “Have you told her as such?”

Steve shook his head. “You know me,” he said. “The king of waiting.”

“What is holding you back?” Thor asked. “Life is fleeting, you should take your moments when you can. Trust me.”

“I know,” Steve sighed, shaking his head. “Trust me, I know that from experience. It’s just… I love being with her, and I love how I feel when I am with her. I guess I worry that when the novelty of that calm feeling wears off, there might not be anything else. And, I worry that I’m using her for a feeling I get rather than who she is. And… I guess I worry about how this works long-term. She’s a god. I don’t know what it means to marry a god.”

Thor laughed loudly and squeezed Steve’s shoulder. “The gods can marry and have happy lives. As for the rest, you’re overthinking, she’s been around for a long time, do you think she can’t recognize when the connection isn’t true?”

Steve smiled. “You’re right. I need to trust my feelings - and hers.”

“I’m always right,” Thor joked.

“Alright everyone,” Tony announced. “I paid a lot of money for caterers, and they said the food is ready so let's not let it go cold.”

Everyone took their seats, Steve making sure he was sitting next to you. You pressed your leg against him and skimmed the back of your fingers up the outside of his leg. The conversation at the table moved easily and Steve was happy that everyone was getting along with you so well.

When the soup was served (a cream of wild mushroom served with goat cheese crostini), Steve was beginning to see the soporific effects of being around you take effect on everyone. Bruce had that same blissed-out look on his face that he was wearing the day Steve had first met you. Clint looked slightly high, and Wanda was smiling and quietly watching everyone as she carefully ate her soup. Everyone else was starting to slow down a little and the conversation had gone from loud and quick moving to slower and quieter.

When the main course came out (individual pot pies served with herb-roasted vegetables), Tony slowly shook his head. “Does anyone else feel like they’ve been drugged?”

You and Steve laughed.

“That’s me,” you said. “I’m sorry.”

“You drugged me?” Tony asked, narrowing his eyes at you.

Steve laughed harder as you shook your head. “No. You know what I am though, correct?”

“We warned you,” Clint teased. “She makes you all soft and sleepy.”

Tony looked at Steve dumbfounded. “You’re okay with just feeling like this? You?”

Steve laughed. “When you get used to it, you can fight it more, and it doesn’t work quite as easily. But it’s nice to give over to the feeling sometimes.”

Tony shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Ugh, I hate it. I feel like I need to drink eight cups of coffee.”

“Can’t you just relax for a change?” Pepper teased. “Maybe you’ll like not being a bundle of nervous energy.”

“You know I can’t,” he said and waved over one of the wait staff. “Coffee, please. Lots of it.”

Everyone laughed. “You’re hopeless, you know?” Pepper teased.

“Maybe so,” Tony said. “So, you’re both serious about each other? I’ll be expecting you here at the Tower more often.”

Both you and Steve looked at each other, scared about saying something that would scare the other off. Steve was the one that spoke first. “I certainly hope so.”

“I’d love that,” you said, and in a move that was completely out of character for Steve, he leaned in and kissed you.

It wasn’t lewd or graphic - just a gentle and chaste brush of his lips over yours. It still made the whole group make a mixture of oohs, ahhs and, whoops in an attempt to make Steve blush. You laughed softly and brushed your thumb over his cheek.

“You make a cute couple, Cap,” Sam said.

“Speed is still illegal right?” Tony asked as the waiter came back with a pot of coffee. “I think I’m going to have to start taking speed if you’re going to be coming around regularly.”

Pepper shook her head in resignation. “You are ridiculous, you know that?”

Steve smiled as the conversation returned to the room a little more energetically than before, as people began to push through the effect you had on them. It strangely made him relax a little more - if that was possible. He needed to tell you how he really felt, and now he felt ready. He loved you and he wanted you to be a more permanent feature in his life.

// NEXT

#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #captain america #captain america fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #small gods #lazy mornings

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nctsjiho · 3 years

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Comfortable

warnings: none

❀ Lucas being clingy and wanting JiHo’s comfort

It was exactly 11 o’clock at night on a Friday. JiHo had made herself comfortable in bed, a multitude of pillows cascaded on and next to her bed. With no schedules or practises planned for the weekend, she finally had some time to indulge in her guilty pleasure: internet mysteries. She had a full library of YouTube videos she had yet to watch about all sorts of internet mysteries. Whether it was simply about an unexplained, weird social media account or a possible cult running an online organisation or maybe even an arg (alternate reality game, if you don’t know what that is I highly recommend looking it up but you may go down a rabbit hole if you do. You have been warned), JiHo could watch it for hours on end.

Just as she pressed play on her second video and brought a potato snack up to her lips, her door opened with a slam. “Excuse you-” She started, looking at a dishevelled-looking Lucas walk into her room. “Ugh!” He groaned dramatically as he flailed his long limbs around. JiHo decided not to say anything quite yet, maybe the man would explain himself soon enough. He came to a halt right in front of her bed. It made for an amusing image because from JiHo’s angle Lucas looked even taller than he already was.

The two made eye contact for a split second before Lucas fell to his knees next to JiHo with another dramatic groan. He slightly pushed away the laptop that was resting on the girl’s lap and replaced it with his head. The position must have been extremely uncomfortable, but yet again JiHo didn’t comment on that.

When Lucas didn’t get his expected reaction from JiHo - well, he didn’t get a reaction at all - he opened his eyes to find her already looking at him. “Hi.” He pouted at her before letting out a deep sigh. JiHo’s hands automatically reach for the pouty boy’s hair. He closed his eyes once again. “You know, it’s a bit uncalled for to just slam my door open. You could’ve dented the wall.” Her voice sounded rather monotone, but Lucas knew she was just messing with him. Kinda, he still shouldn’t have slammed open the door. He’ll remember that for next time. At this moment, JiHo knew exactly what Lucas wanted, but decided not to give it to him.

After a few more moments of JiHo gently massaging Lucas’ scalp and playing with his hair, the boy opened his eyes once again. “JiHo~” He whined and now sat up, trying to make himself comfortable on the bed. The girl let out a small giggle at the boy’s struggle before she scoots over a bit to give him more space.

Lucas finally settled by laying down next to the girl and resting his head on her stomach. He intertwined their legs and put as much of his weight on the girl to feel as close to her as possible. “You don’t love me anymore.” He mumbled in her sweatshirt and though the comment was meant as a joke, JiHo could feel her stomach drop the tiniest bit. Her hands had found their way back to his hair and she let the strands flow between her dainty fingers.

“What’s wrong? Did Ten scold you again?” It was almost a whisper, but her words were loud enough in the calm atmosphere. Lucas couldn’t help but chuckle and JiHo could feel the vibrations of his vocal cords against her torso. “No...” Lucas trailed off. His hands circled around the girl’s waist now so he’d be able to hold her closer. At the look of the usually loud giant being so calm and soft, JiHo’s heart melted. “What’s wrong then?” JiHo knew Lucas’ problem wasn’t going to be a serious one, but she still felt a bit of worry clouding her mind.

“I just had a bad day with practise and so many shoots this week.” Lucas lifted his head up to glance at the girl for a second but she wasn’t looking at him. Her head was leaned against the wall and her eyes were closed. He knew she was trying to listen intently to what he was telling her. Lucas laid back down and ended his short story. “I’m just so tired.”

JiHo hummed in understanding. One of her hands falling down to rest on Lucas’ shoulder, the other remaining in his hair. “I’m sorry you have to work so hard. I wish I could do something to lighten the load.” Now it was Lucas’ turn to feel bad.

He - and some of the other boys who experienced this before - hated how JiHo always put the members before herself like that. Lucas found it careless of her, because she never considered how overworked she was as well. The whole of NCT was always working hard, there’s never anyone who’s actually free of work because even without a schedule planned, they still practised individually or worked out to maintain their looks. Idol life wasn’t easy, and that counted for JiHo as well. The problem with the girl was that she never notices she is overworking herself until she is bedridden (luckily the members and managers always catch her before it’s too late).

Caught up in his annoyed thoughts Lucas didn’t notice he still hadn’t replied. “If you want I can come practise with you tomorrow.” She bent her head to meet Lucas’ eyes and sent him a questioning look. “I’ve been there during your practises so I kinda know some of the choreography.” Her smile annoyed Lucas even more, it was so genuine. He felt bad how selfless she was being, this weekend was the first in a while that she was completely free and now she wanted to sacrifice it because he came barging in her room to complain.

He didn’t come over for help, he came over to cuddle and just whine about little things. The plan was that he could just hang out with the girl for a bit until he forgot about his tiring day and then go home happily so he could get a good night of sleep.

“JiHo.” The boy sat up not able to look at her. “What’s wrong? Is it really that bad? I’m sorry I didn’t know-” “No! Just stop it okay?” Lucas shook his head aggressively. JiHo looked confused at his sudden outburst. “Stop being so selfless, it gets so burdensome.” He didn’t realise his words could possibly hurt the girl who was just trying to help him until he saw her bite her bottom lip and avoid his eye contact. “I- I didn’t mean it like that.” Lucas quickly grabbed her shoulders and shook her a little. “I’m thankful you care so much for other people, but you need to think of yourself too.” He pulled her in a tight embrace mumbling a few sorry’s until he felt her hand push herself away by his chest.

He didn’t expect her to smile at him. Hadn’t he just hurt her feelings? “I’m sorry, I guess I just do still love you... a lot.” She made a call back to his mumbled comment from a few minutes prior. The sudden display of affection startled Lucas, it wasn’t really like JiHo, but it also made him feel fuzzy on the inside.

JiHo positioned herself so she sat next to Lucas with her back against the wall at the head of the bed. She pulled the blanket over both their legs and grabbed her laptop again. “Since you’re here, do you want to watch a movie or something?” She asked absentmindedly, grabbing the snacks from next to her and already putting on in her mouth.

Lucas smiled, he knew what she was trying to do. She was going to act like nothing just happened and offered to hang out and chill just as Lucas actually wanted in the first place. “Yeah I would love that.” He made himself more comfortable next to the girl, slinging an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to his side.

In the end they didn’t really end up watching the show they took way too long choosing, the pair just talked about random moments of their trainee days while JiHo went back to playing with Lucas’ hair (at his request). They laughed the whole night long, teasing each other and gossiping about their colleagues. In the morning Taeyong found them sprawled out on JiHo’s bed, as if they had been out partying the night before and were going to wake up with a serious hangover.

#jiho.writings #nct 24th member #nct addition #nct fluff #nct lucas fluff #wayv fluff #wayv imagines #nct imagines #nct scenarios #wayv scenarios #nct female member #nct extra member #nct additional member #kpop!addition #kpop!oc

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thebindingofpillo · 2 years

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As promised, it’s Judas time. My favorite boy. I’ve loved him since I saw his little funny fez in the vanilla version, so this is probably gonna be very long and all over the place. I’m also ditching the four headcanons format, because i have a LOT to say about him and I can’t fit it into four little neat categories.

Okay, so. Judas is an asshole. Definetly was the kind of person to “well acshually” every single conversation, the type of guy you’d find ranting about how schewpid humanity is, and who berates you for being religious because “hurr durr you’re too old to have imaginary friends”. A real little shit. No wonder he didn’t have a single friend all throughout elementary and middle school (ugh, of course they don’t wanna be my friends, they can’t handle me, i’m too smart for them yada yada we all knew a guy like this). In high school he finally met Maggy and Isaac, who just moved from the country and actually tried to reach out to him. Isaac was the first to approach him because, well… he actually remembered Judas. From another lifetime. From several lifetimes in fact, and he knew already they were bound to meet eachother someway or another. Obviously Judas started his usual asshole spiel, but Maggy was ready to call him out on his bullshit. Something something enemies to friends, and the three became inseparable. Anyway yeah, Judas managed to grow out of his fedora-adjacent phase and become a somewhat okay individual. He’s not abrasive like he was in highschool, but still suffers from resting bitch face, and if you don’t know him well he’ll probably speak to you in a condescending tone while looking down on you. Literally. The guy is tall.

His interest in the occult started around his teenage years, both as a way to shock his grandmother by doing a “bad” thing right under her nose, and because it’s a really sophisticated matter, you wouldn’t get it. But really, he probably watched a horror movie with Maggy and got hooked up on the spooky stuff. From his humble beginnings on creepypasta wikis to actually browsing antique bookstores in search of the perfect grimoire. He may or may not have studied Latin at this point. This is also the time he found the Book of Belial. It wasn’t the first time in his many reincarnations, but he had never been so young while holding the book. I honestly don’t know exactly how he acquired the book. Maybe it really was in an antique bookstore, or at the back of the public library, or gathering dust on a display in a museum, waiting for him to fall into it’s trap. Maybe it was a gift, a parting one given by a friend never seen again, or an unusual birthday present given by a relative never seen before. Judas too, isn’t so sure. Did he buy it, did he steal it? Did he find it by pure chance? Maybe he always had it. Maybe the book has always had him. Anyway, his interest in the occult actually evolved into a love for anything ancient, which eventually got him his degree in Archaeology (maybe at the time of the story he’s working on his PhD? Would that be interesting? idk). His other great academic achievement was dating Maggy during the last year of highschool and moving in together during college.

Moving on, did I mention his grandma? It’s time to talk about his grandma. This part of his story actually got a bit shuffled around, because at first I imagined he grew up in the foster care (where he maybe met Isaac for the first time?), never getting adopted until one day he simply aged out of the system and was left to fend on his own. But I eventually scrapped it because it sounded a bit too cliché. What didn’t change is that his parents are both very dead. They perished in a car accident while he was still a baby, and he grew up with his grandmother, a… weird woman to say the least, and not in a good way. Extremely petty, selfish and self.centered and only warm when Judas was an agreeable young boy and let her do what she wanted. Judas’s grandma wasn’t really keen on caring for children (her own son, Judas’s father, had very few fond memories of her), so it’s really no wonder he turned out the way he did. When he was old enough, our boy just got out of the door and never came back. He’s still in touch with her (lest she thinks he died, and who would take his inheritance then?) but their encounters are always somewhat formal and tense.

To end on a funny note, this is his voice claim. No i will NOT take criticism

#this might not even be all but i'm too tired to elaborate further #if you want to know more just ask i'll answer in the morning #FUCK it's almost midnight #reincarnation AU (working title)#tboi judas

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mmprviolet · 3 years

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If you ships these then dni (joke) no srs if you prefer these ships I don't care 😆 just wanna have a fun roasting my notps

Salt undercut

Batcat: Every time DC&stans push them as One True Love I just shake my head. It annoys me how Bruce's other love interests get put down to prop Selina on a pedestal; at the same time reducing Selina to be just his 'savior' or therapist. She's a compelling character in her own right! This why I don't want her part of the Batfam. Plus Bruce wouldn't do good with an active criminal for a permanent love/spouse even if it is Selina.

Bal: I feel nothing for this ship, Bevie has more chemistry than this. Plus I feel like others have doen a better job explaining why this ship is so bad better than me

Lance simped for Our Queen the whole show when it was made quite clear she wasn't interested in him like that. You'd think he would learn personal boundaries 😒 Here's the weird part she ended up using him as a rebound after her brief fling with Lotor failed!! And the rest of the season is spent with how he's such a perfect boyfriend for her while ignoring his individual growth.

Do I even NEED to say it?

Harumi manipulated Lloyd that whole season and desecrated his father's grave for revenge. She gave him a slew of trust issues. Even if she was alive and redeemed there's just be too much bad blood to ever be actual friends, much less a couple

They bring out the worst in each other yet OV can't help but push how they're fated to be together. If Kai has to be called out call out Ben too for knocking doen her interests in Fight At The Museum!

Ah yes nothing like ruining the point of the first movie by creating one of the most blandest heroines in Disney and pairing her with Quasi simply to appease complaints about him not getting the girl! So much emphasis on 'true beauty' and showing how much they have in common when she had no personality. It's basically "give the bachelor a consolation prize/Sequel Movie Love Story" cliche.

I don't mind Catra and Adora making up I just didn't want them together romantically. But you know everything's gotta be a damn romance

You can make as many petitions as you want two rivals aren't going to comply to your wishes! Plus it's really shallow: they both have ice powers and that's about it!

Once Archie stopped with that obnoxious 'opposites attract' soap opera shit Sonally became much more bearable. Their personalities clashed too much for any stability

Imma get so much hate but I say it: Pixane is only a thing because they needed to give Zane a love interest who just so happens to be a robot because pairing him with a human is too complicated the same with Kailor she has like the same personality traits as him it doesn't leave very interesting points to explore (not helped by her not appearing in the show much already)

The implication that you have to apologize to your abuser for rightfully getting mad at them, getting back together and then getting engaged *barf* all it does is show that even if they hurt you in such a way you HAVE to get back together. This why I call M'gann a creator's pet

I don't get romance vibes from Jasonnie but other than that i just don't see them as a thing. O ship Jason with my si/oc Vanessa and I ship Connie with an OC (or Jeff, Mitch can go)

Amethyst Ocean has an insane popularity and half the time I see it leech traits exclusive to the Grey Ghost Ship/Valerie. The show tried so hard to push this ship without addressing any of its faults and the stans ate it right up. Otherwise Danny&Sam is a bad example of the "male lead x female lead" trope

Nothing bad to say about it - well except for the extremists ofc - but I prefer Sonamy to just be ship tease/friendship. Trying to turn it into a serious romance kinda ruins the point plus I hate seeing Amy regulated to just Girlfriend when she's so much more than that

Reylo Reylo REYLO ugh I'm not wasting any more words on this heinous crime against manatees!

#Notp #i don't ship it #meme #gonna post on da #salt post #shipping

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egn2103 · 2 years

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The Movie I Could Not Forget.

A Silent Voice is a charming coming-of-age story, full of redemption and romance. Based on a manga series by 27-year-old Yoshitoki Ōima. This movie contained plethora of emotions and portrayed a psychological disorder which is depression. Oh, for those who don’t know what the definition of depression is, depression means the feeling of sadness and loss of interest that can interfere with your daily functioning. The story is about Shoya, a boy who keeps on bullying a hearing-impaired girl, Shoko, when he was young until he was caught and was ostracised by his classmates EVENTHOUGH the other classmates literally bullied Shoko as well but yeah only Shoya received the cold shoulder. Well, he kind of pushes it further than his other classmates and did many heinous things to Shoko. For example, psychological torture and physical abuse. He grows up feeling unwanted and constantly wanting to end his life. But in high school, he met Shoko again and had to postpone his death that he already set on calendar because before he leaves the world, he needs to make things right. He then attempted to befriend Shoko. Many things happened and they fall in love.

This movie is really, really beautiful. The camerawork, animation, the characters, scenery, everything is beautifully beautiful. Its atmospheric. Its powerful. All the characters are very humans, and you get to feel the emotions the director/ author trying to convey. Shoya’s bullying is a method to make and keep friends. Its really complicated because he did that to Shoko because he wanted to put someone else down so his friends can have a good laugh. Of course, it backfired. Not only did he hurt Shoko, but he also hurts himself too. Well, because his classmates and schoolmates decided to stay away from him because he is bad news. Of course, this happened because if this situation happens in my class, I will also do the same as his schoolmates.

Shoya is… is so alone. And he is in a lot of pain. The clever hattrick of this film is that you sympathise not just with the bullied but also with the bully. The purpose of this film is that the author wants you to feel the uncomfortable feeling in your own flesh for an extended period of time. Feeling unwelcome, being criticised, and having the impression that everything you do just makes matters worse. The film's aim, in my opinion, is to spark empathy. Like, we do have empathy for the bullied, but not for the bullies… In our mind they are the awful people, they don’t deserve any empathy for what they have done, and they just deserve everything that comes after them. This movie wants us, the viewer to see humanity in everyone. The route to atonement is to be willing to suffer discomfort and pain in order to do the right thing.

There is a scene where Shoya met his old classmates and they, well, arguing about the past. Shoya is actually the scapegoat of this bullying incident. Shoya has taken the burden of everything. And that’s how he got the blame at his old school. His classmates throwing him under the bus and said its not them who bullied Shoko. Saying they did try to stop Shoya for keep bullying Shoko when the truth is they were the one who encourage Shoya to that. Ugh, the hypocrisy. And in this scene, he called everyone out for their horrible deeds back in high school. Before this scene happened, Shoya actually wanted to gather all of his old classmates to own up to their mistakes. But of course, it turned sour. His old classmates throwing the blames to each other and ended up making poor, sweet girl, Shoko taking all blames by herself. Thinking that they were all friends and then I came and ruined it.

This movie is, again, really beautiful. It taught that depression does not go away or lift for the majority of individuals. It's something you have to fight with because it's still there. However, there is a capability to feel anew, a capability to experience happiness once again. Although depression and having done bad things are not the same thing, they are intertwined in this film. But connection is the remedy for so many problems. We may believe that no one wants to connect with us, yet all we need to do is discover the right people. Most people who hurt others are hurting themselves. They just want to be loved.

#movie #anime #koe no katachi

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Hello, everyone! Can you believe this is the third time I've started the recap for this chapter? Between a dying computer and a mass edit during my monthly state of, "Oh my god get rid of everything we can't let people know that we wRITE!" this project is cursed. This is the version though, I can feel it. Be positive!

Now, where were we? It's been some months (RIP) since I last posted, so I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's forgotten what's going on in this insane novel. A quick recap before the recap then: new teams have formed, no one is happy about it, Sun and Velvet went off to a shady club run by The Crown and — shock shock, surprise surprise — got themselves into a heap of trouble. That's the long and the short of it. We have to wait a while to find out what happens to them though because this chapter is focused on Coco.

We learn that Professor Rumpole has sent Coco and her new team — Team ROSC — out into the desert to take care of the grimm around the city's borders. To say that Coco is disappointed in this assignment is an understatement. We learn that they've been at this for a week straight and have gone without showering or a change of clothes that entire time (no one packed a bag?), so for a second I was hugely sympathetic. You know this vine?

youtube

I feel this vine in my soul. Give me hot water and hot coco or give me death. Besides, work is work and dangerous, physical work without a break or basic comforts is incredibly taxing. Toss in the extreme heat of a desert and I'd be pissed at everything too, no matter how important my work was. That's human.

Yet instead of humanizing Coco like this, it turns out she doesn't care at all about the hardship involved. It's fighting grimm that she's annoyed by. She thinks that "Searching for the person or persons kidnapping innocent people for some unknown but dark purpose was way more useful than fighting Grimm far from the city" and I'm just like, Coco, honey...

Do you know what your career path is?

IT'S TO KILL GRIMM.

Okay, there's admittedly a justification here, but it's a stupid one. Coco goes on to say that "This area was called the Wastelands for a reason." She's snarky about it, saying that it wastes “her time, her talent, and her patience," but the real takeaway is that it's, you know, a wasteland. Deserted of grimm and of people. What's the point of defending an area that doesn't need defending? A huntress' job might normally be to fight grimm, but when those grimm aren't around and kidnappers are, that's a whole new set of priorities.

The problem with all this is that the Wastelands is definitely not deserted and it's definitely not as far from the city as Coco would like to imply. In just a few paragraphs an alarm is going to trip and Coco will find six grimm roaming in a pack. Then she finds a person. Then that person says she needs to get back to see someone in the city within half an hour. So there are grimm, there are people about, and this area is apparently close enough to the border that you can get back to the city proper, on foot, and then get wherever it is you’re going in a bustling metropolis... all within half an hour. By that logic these grimm aren't out in the boonies, they're right outside everyone's door.

Yet Coco isn't convinced, saying that "Post Beacon [killing grimm] had been for a noble cause, but this just felt like … busywork." I cannot possibly emphasize enough that this is the job she signed up for. Not to be a detective specializing in missing people, not a war hero always on the front lines of a battle, but one of many huntsmen who perform the daily, routine, very necessary task of protecting the people from grimm. With "protecting" covering both immediate threats and preparatory work that ensures more threats don't come about — like taking care of grimm outside before they become a larger threat. You know what would have happened if Beacon had a daily chore of students killing grimm within a few miles radius of the school? There would have been far less grimm charging a mass of unprotected students when negativity unexpectedly skyrocketed.

And, as always, I am aware that Rumpole is the likely villain here. From a writing perspective, this is very much presented as her getting Coco out of the way so that she can go about her nefarious deeds in peace... but that doesn't erase the fact that the task itself is a sound one. Rumpole's motivations don't matter here, only Coco's annoyance that she... has to do her job?

I mean yeah, everyone complains about their job to one extent or another, but can you imagine if you stumbled across a firefighter complaining about all the kitchen fires they've had to put out lately? "It's so boring! There are much better things I could be spending my time and talent on. I mean, that inferno that took out a city block last year? Putting that out was noble. But routine fires? House fires? Giving lectures on how to prevent fires in the future? Ugh, I can't believe the department expects me to do this grunt work." Meanwhile, you're sneaking off, hoping that this firefighter is never called to your house, nursing mild worries about how much they're romanticizing the recent tragedy that took so many lives...

Complaints about the job turn into complaints about the teams, which makes far more sense for Coco's character. Anyone's, really. Despite my insistence that it's a good thing they're learning to fight with people other than their three besties, that was absolutely a sudden and rather traumatizing change, just given how attached the teams already are. I'm not at all surprised that Coco is struggling to cope.

She says she misses her friends, obviously, but also "surprisingly, Coco missed being in charge."

...That's supposed to be surprising? Coco, you love being in charge! How is this in any way a revelation?

Apparently it is though, stemming from how bad Reese is as their leader. As with so many things in RWBY, I find myself disagreeing with a perspective that's presented as a fact: "She liked to lead by group vote, which wasn’t leading at all." Yes... it is? We could go down a rabbit hole of literal definitions — to lead is to direct, to direct is to regulate, to regulate is to direct again — but ultimately our understanding of a word does not adhere to the dictionary alone. It's a knowledge built on experience and I would hope that everyone's experience with the term "leader" includes that person considering multiple perspectives before making a decision. A leader doesn't impose their view on a group without due consideration of their preferences and needs — that's a dictator — a leader guides the group based on feedback and their personal knowledge. If that feedback and knowledge results in a standstill, or if their knowledge outweighs preferences, they are the deciding vote because the people have previously said, "We trust your decisions" through the act of making them leader in the first place.

Asking for a group vote isn't avoiding leadership, it's an act of leadership. Reese decided that these situations warranted a majority rule. She further decided that whatever they settled on was indeed an appropriate course of action. Leadership skills are required to assess a situation and determine whether it's appropriate to vote on in the first place. If I announce to a group that we're voting on whether we go to the movies or the museum, I've done the work to determine that both of these choices are of roughly equal value and roughly equal availability. I haven't hit on any snags like, "The only movies playing are mindless blockbusters and I want this to be an educational outing" or "The museum is too far away. We'll never make it to dinner on time." Figuring out that a group can vote is its own kind of work. This avenue is particularly useful when the group is of roughly equal standing. With a few exceptions (like Ruby and Jaune) huntsmen classmates are all the same age, underwent the same training, and have had the same combat experiences. This isn't a case of one elite huntsmen lending their knowledge to an otherwise green party, it's a school randomly pointing at a somewhat outgoing individual during orientation and saying, "You. You're leader material, I guess, even though you've done little differently than the person standing beside you." Someone has to lead and Vacuo's switcheroo proves that anyone can be the leader if they're just put in that position. Coco claims a group vote is just "passing the responsibility off to your team" and yes! You want to share the responsibility because you are a team. They are a group of four equals working together with one person to guide them, they are not a boss with three subordinates. Why wouldn't Reese utilize the skills and ideas of those teammates? When making a decision, why wouldn't she see if everyone believes it's a good idea to do Thing A as opposed to Thing B? Unless Reese is outright ignoring her own ideas, beliefs, or gut feelings to cater to the others — which there's no reference of — this is good leadership. She's assisting her team in making decisions as a whole, rather than arbitrarily imposing her view on three others of similar skill and experience.

Yet Coco acts like because Reese doesn't go, "We're doing Thing A! End of discussion!" it's not leadership. Which, frankly, says a lot about how the RWBY-verse sees leadership as a whole.

I realize I'm rambling a great deal, so let me quickly provide a different media example. I'm currently immersed in Star Trek: Voyager and in season two, episode 14 "Alliances," Captain Janeway is faced with a difficult choice: align herself with a violent and so far untrustworthy species, or risk traveling through this quadrant of space without any allies. At first she's entirely against the idea of an alliance, going so far as to say that this isn't a democracy. She's the captain, dammit, she makes the decisions! But her first officer begs her to reconsider. Then the crew express disappointment — even disgust — that she won't consider this alternative. Then her chief of security, being a Vulcan, provides a persuasively logical argument for why an alliance is worth the risk... Long story short, Janeway finds herself in the minority and changes her decision accordingly. She attempts to garner an alliance and the fact that she was right — the species wasn't trustworthy and the alliance fails — is entirely beside the point. She realized that the majority voice matters. As far as we know, Reese is already practicing what Janeway learned.

ANYWAY the point is none of it matters because these characterizations are a mess. Coco also throws out that Reese "dressed like she was a twelve-year-old hanging out at the mall" and supposedly acts like one too. We're not given any examples of what that behavior looks like and, sorry, but I'm not personally inclined to judge someone based on their fashion sense. It would be great if this story actually engaged with some of the flaws the characters demonstrated, rather than just throwing them out to exist in this unacknowledged void.

Not that Coco's fashion-focused personality is really that important. Truly, the best thing about all this is how contradictory Coco's own thoughts are. She also listens to her teammates... except when she doesn't. She know when to go with their ideas and when to dismiss them for her own... except when she gets it totally wrong. As with so much in RWBY, this doesn't feel like the author giving Coco deliberate flaws that the story will grapple with down the line, it just comes across as a nonsense philosophy about leadership we're not meant to examine too closely. Coco gets to make references to the fact that her own, supposedly superior leadership is filled with holes, but heaven forbid she engage with that.

She ends all this with the thought that no matter what she might decide, she trusted her team to "do what she demanded of them” and is now extending that courtesy to Reese. This I'm inclined to praise Coco for. No matter what she might be thinking, it doesn't appear as if she's tried to undermine Reese (well, not yet. More on that at the chapter’s end), and she doesn’t appear to be refusing to listen to that leadership, even if she doesn't like how it comes about. As we're about to see, Coco has her team's best interests at heart, no matter the challenges they're facing.

Her thoughts turn back to her old team and we get... this.

Velvet was with a team that didn’t recognize her awesome capabilities. Fox was withdrawing, having lost his family for the second time. Yatsuhashi was going mad with worry about Velvet and his teammates, knowing that he couldn’t be there to protect them, and worrying he would accidentally hurt someone on his new team.

This is so unnecessarily dramatic. First, how does Coco even know any of this? Because it's been heavily implied that the old teams are barely in contact with one another. See: Velvet refusing to loop anyone in about the club and Coco stuck in the desert for a week. Second, why aren't they in contact, at least those who aren't on away missions? The entire group is acting as if changing teams means they're no longer allowed to be friends — family, as Coco puts it — when the relationship between Team RWBY and Team JNPR creates the opposite expectation right at the start of the series. Clearly, people from different teams can be close. Yatsu's worry that he might stumble using his semblance with new people is the only conflict that holds up here. Everything else has fairly straightforward solutions. Velvet needs to prove herself to new people. Yatsu needs to text Velvet if he's that worried about her. And Fox "having lost his family for a second time" is a pretty ridiculous exaggeration. You're attending the same school! Your family is still living down the hall if Vacuo has dorms like Beacon! In what world are these students unable to interact largely as they did before? They're acting as if the school has outright barred them from hanging out, rather than doing what will no doubt occur the moment they graduate: force them to work with different people. Just catch up with Fox over dinner!

Honestly, this chapter is pretty short, I'm just continually bewildered by this story.

To get back to the actual plot, something trips a sensor the group has set up and Coco responds to the situation in what I think is both a smart and empathetic manner. Previous experience has taught her that it's likely just a lizard, so she doesn't want to wake up her team for no reason. Disagreements aside, she cares enough to let them rest — "They’d probably appreciate the extra sleep." However, if it's a "rare case of something she couldn’t handle alone" she'd immediately call for help. Great plan! It's not often in this novel that I feel like I enjoy the characters, but this little moment actually had me liking Coco. Which, yes, I realize is a complicated claim. Characters should test the reader to a certain degree, mirroring all the personalities we see in real life, including biased, mean, or contradictory people. It's often a good thing to write a character that your reader is frustrated with. That can be the point! The problem with Myers' writing is that it isn't the point. Coco, as the former leader of our heroes in this tale, should be someone we enjoy spending time with and her flaws should be the basis for growth, or an acknowledgement that she is an imperfect, but well-rounded person. As it stands, flaws in this novel just sort of... exist? They bop around in the RWBY universe with almost no acknowledgement from the narrative or other characters, leaving the reader with little to nothing to take away from the text. Is Coco correct in her judgement? Is this a bias she needs to work on? Is she putting on a facade and her natural instinct to care for her team is the real Coco hidden underneath? Who knows! She’s just frustrating to read about most of the time and nothing comes of that.

Regardless, she heads out into the desert, using the night vision glasses Velvet made her.

Now see, this would have been the perfect thing to introduce before Velvet was fixing relay towers after the expert was injured. Remember how I said the novel didn't do enough to establish Velvet's own expertise? Not that a pair of goggles is really comparable to fixing a communications issue, but it still would have gone some way towards convincing me that Velvet is this super impressive tech gal, capable of handling any and all situations that might come her way.

But no, we get this impressive display of skill after Velvet's knowledge was needed in a pinch.

The glasses help Coco navigate the terrain, allowing her to both see in the dark and zoom in on things in the distance. This allows her to spot the six jackalopes that tripped the sensor, as well as the woman currently fighting them: Carmine, a villain from After the Fall that I know nothing about. Ah well. Note though what I said at the start, that Coco's dismissal of this assignment is based entirely in its supposed uselessness. Yet now here we have a pack of dangerous grimm and an enemy to content with.

Also, this is where Coco moves from kindly teammate to overconfident fool. She said she'd call for backup if she needed it... and she clearly needs it! From what I can gather, all of Team CFVY lost to Carmine last time they met up. But now she wants to risk fighting Carmine alone? Go get the others!

She doesn't, of course. Carmine doesn't notice Coco at first. She's talking about how she has to get back into the city. "He’s going to kill me if I’m not back to the Mirage in thirty."

As said, this also implies that Coco isn't nearly as far out as she initially suggested. If Carmine can feasibly finish this fight, cross the desert, navigate who knows how much of the city, and meet up with the mysterious "he" all in under half an hour, then Coco is patrolling pretty much right at the walls. AKA, the area that absolutely needs to be grimm free.

Luckily for those of us who are reading the books out of order, Myers gives a quick recap of Carmine's significance. Last book she had kidnapped Gus and "held off the combined might of Team CFVY in the desert” (oh hey, I was right), presumably escaping afterwards. Now here she is again, likely up to some new, nefarious deed.

Our of curiosity, I googled to see what she looks like and...

WHAT IS THAT OUTFIT?

Coco watches as she works to keep on top of the six grimm, debating whether she should help or walk away, but when Carmine is taken unawares, Coco acts without thinking, throwing herself into the fray.

Sometimes decisions were like that—your body already knew what to do while your brain was still processing the situation. Only in this case, Coco’s body wasn’t necessarily the clearest judge of character. Her brain would have said that Carmine didn’t deserve her help.

Now see, this is a scene I can get behind. The entire RWBY-verse is based around a type of superheroism: people with unnatural abilities, fantasy weapons, and extensive training devote themselves to protecting the people from various threats. Yet too often RWBY fails to convince me that these people are actually heroic, taking the standard flaws of a character and unknowingly exacerbating them to the point where I think, "Is this meant to be a commentary on the anti-hero? Or a critical look at these fantasy formulas? Because we've got the elements of that here, but no indication that the authors realize they're writing something other than that standard story." But this? This works for me. Coco, as a huntress, is so conditioned to help others that her body responds instinctively to someone being in danger, regardless of who that someone is. She outright admits that if she'd had the chance to think about it she would have decided against helping Carmine. The fact that she recognizes this and move anyway says a lot of good about her. Well done, Coco!

We see later that Carmine probably didn't need the help, but between the two of them the grimm really don't stand a chance. What's interesting though is how chummy the two are while defending themselves. Coco comments on Carmine's tendency to talk to grimm (like she does) and Carmine freely offers information about her movements, the fact that she lost her other sword, and that her partner, Bertilak, needs to "recharge a little" before getting back in the game. Carmine asks Coco if she'd like to team up with her instead (she does not) and the two have a number of flirty exchanges to top things off:

“I’ve been dreaming of a rematch with you,” Coco said.

“You’ve been dreaming about me? I’m flattered.” Carmine winked.

***

“Hot date with the Crown?” Coco asked.

“Don’t be jealous, darling.”

I bring all this up not as a criticism of the buddy-enemy dynamic (it's a favorite of mine), but simply because of something that happens next. Before we get to that though, I admit that I am on the fence about the flirting. Given that I haven't read After the Fall (assuming this characterization exists there), I know that Coco is a lesbian mostly via RWBY cultural osmosis, rather than through the text. This is one of the few (the only?) times that I've gotten a hint at her sexuality, yet it's associated with predatory behavior. Carmine, her enemy, is the one who turns an angry dream into a flattering one, the hot date with the bad guy into something to be jealous of. I'm honestly struggling to remember what, if anything, Coco has had to say about women in this book — this is what comes of such slow recapping and I acknowledge that this is entirely my fault — but I'm nevertheless discomforted by knowing Coco's canonical status, knowing RWBY's struggles with queer rep, and then reading a scene where the most overt representation thus far is the bad guy twisting Coco's words into something sexual.

I'm no purist. Give me a good enemies-to-lovers fic any day of the week, but that doesn't mean that kind of dynamic is the best to pull from in a franchise already facing heavy criticism for its queer rep.

Especially since the moment the grimm are gone Carmine turns her sai on Coco.

This is the "something that happens next" that I referenced above. It's weird to have them attacking one another after a whole scene of pretty genuine companionship. Coco doesn't help Carmine as a consequence of defending herself, she willingly gets involved. They tease one another. Carmine appears to answer her questions honestly. There's both implied and overt references to how well they work as a team. Then, suddenly, Carmine is outright trying to kill Coco, not just with her sai but by burying her alive. It's not the sort of banter that Ruby and Roman used to engage in, trading fake compliments and, in Roman's case before his death, legitimate feelings while attacking one another. Nor is Coco prepared for an attack the moment the grimm are gone, and she's not surprised by it. It’s just this sudden change that feels rather jarring.

Though it's far from the first time BTD has failed to convey the emotion of a scene. Here's another example rnow. As said, Carmine is attempting to bury Coco alive by moving the sand with her semblance. That's horrifying enough on its own, but remember that Coco is claustrophobic. Yet none of that panic shines through here. She comes across as indifferent throughout the attack, thinking back to summers when her brother tried to bury her while she sunbathed, amazed that she could ever consider this fun. You know who Coco sounds like in this scene?

At no point during this attack did I get the sense that Coco believes she’s in serious danger, let alone that she's struggling against a long-term phobia. The only time I even remembered that claustrophobia is meant to be a challenge for her is when she throws out the oh-so casual line, "One of her worst nightmares was being buried alive." Oh really? Because it doesn't seem like it! Coco is calm enough to remember that she used to be able to hold her breath for exactly three minutes and forty-two seconds. That doesn't feel like a character fighting against her worst nightmare.

So this scene isn't exactly compelling. Which is too bad because, as said, Coco as some other nice moments in this chapter.

However, during all this we do learn a little more about Carmine. Prior to getting trapped in the sand, Coco comments on how shockingly strong she is. "Carmine should have been at least a little bit worn down from fighting Grimm," but she's not, "She seemed nearly unstoppable now." Coco hits her full in the face, but she doesn't seem fazed. Earlier in the chapter there was that comment about how she previously took on Team CFVY alone and at the end of the battle Coco observes that Carmine "still seemed as fresh as she had at the beginning of the fight. How was she even doing that?" My basic reading comprehension skills tell me that this is setup for something, likely some change enacted by the Crown. Surely the text wouldn't put so much emphasis on Carmine's strength — have Coco questioning it to this extent, framing it as unnatural — unless we were going to get an answer, right?

But this is RWBY, so I'm not inclined to count my chickens before they hatch.

The rest of Coco's team arrives and it's then that she decides to pull the super dangerous stunt to free herself. Yeah, yeah, I get that she's suffocating and needs to do something now, can't wait to be dug out I suppose, but the timing is pretty ridiculous. The cavalry has arrived, yay! Time to blow myself up.

Seriously. She blows herself up. Using her own semblance, Coco focuses on one of her gravity dust bullets and detonates it, causing all the others in her arsenal to detonate too. It gets her out of the hole and "knocked her Aura down to a dangerously low level."

So... let’s see. Coco can literally detonate a bunch of explosives on her person, after suffocating under stand, after fighting Carmine, after fighting grimm, after a week long mission, and her aura doesn't break... but Yang's does from a single Neo slash?

Okay, RWBY.

Reese and Olive try to attack Carmine together, but end up eliminating one another's attacks. I like that a team actually has some realistic difficulties for once. Coco, however, is internally an asshole, calling them "idiots" and saying that they need to learn to coordinate their attacks. Thing is, she apparently hasn't done anything over the last week to help with that. She's been too busy complaining about Reese's clothes.

Carmine runs off as more grimm show up, drawn by Coco's non-existent panic. To her credit she does thank the others for saving her... but then immediately tries to downplay that. “It wasn’t a fair fight,” Coco spat when Reese (correctly) points out that she's the one who was ambushed. She also starts giving orders and when Reese (again, correctly!) goes to point out that she's the leader, Coco talks over her, saying they can't waste any more time out here because she has reason to believe that Shade has been compromised. She needs them only because she's out of bullets and low on aura, but they definitely need her because "let’s face it, I’m the best strategist around for miles."

Coco's a strategist?

And why does she sound like a villain trying to convince the heroes to work with her? She’s already part of the team!

Putting all that aside for the moment, we're back to this prideful characterization. I liked the well-rounded Coco from a few pages ago who balanced caring for her team with the likelihood of needing backup. Now she's flinching from the idea that she'd ever need help (hello, Sun characterization too) and snatching Reese's role the moment she's given the chance. So much for respecting her position. If the book wants me to believe that Reese is unfit to be leader and this is a golden opportunity for Coco to right a wrong... how about we actually show Reese being a bad leader?

Regardless, yay working together? The chapter ends with them presumably taking out the grimm before heading back to Shade, along with an important revelation. Prior to leaving, Carmine asked Coco why Yatsuhashi and Fox weren't rushing to her aid. It's only now that Coco realizes she didn't mention Velvet. Why? Perhaps because Carmine already knows where Velvet is, which obviously doesn't imply anything good.

And that's the end of Chapter Ten! Can you tell I never know how to finish these recaps? Describing cliffhangers doesn't have quite the same punch as, you know, actual cliffhangers. You all just have to suffer through my mediocre endings with me.

But would you look at that! Turns out the third attempt at writing this was the charm! :D

See you for Chapter Eleven! 💜

#rwby #BTD #Before the Dawn #BTD Recaps #mymetas

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goosebytrade · 2 years

Note

24, 28, 37, 74!

24) Do you have a collection of anything?

I have in the past, but I don't think I currently collect anything. I used to collect stuffed bunnies in sweaters! I would like to collect hair sticks and hair forks, but I haven't started yet

28) What’s your biggest “what if”?

I'm not sure if the question is past or future tense, so I'll do both!

For the past tense, I wonder where I would be if I had sought out help when I needed it. My gut instinct when I'm struggling, historically, is "Noone can ever know that I need help/that something bad happened" and while I have (somewhat) grown from that, I have had to collect interest on things that may have been easier if I dealt with them as they happened.

For the future tense, my biggest ones are currently related to the move. People who aren't the Captain or my partner might not know this, but I am currently moving! As a person who can be prone to complacency, I'm actually really excited because I feel like this could be a new beginning! I have a better idea of who I am as an adult person and who I want to grow to be since the last time I moved. And it is easiest to make changes and build new habits when you are already going through a major shift! What if it is easier to exercise there? What if I can stay more organized because I'm setting my home up with a better understanding of my needs? What if I make new friends? I feel like there are a lot of 'What ifs?" And many of them are happy!

37) Do you believe in luck?

Haha... I don't know. Logically, no I don't. I think most outcomes are based on either preparation (or lack thereof), hard earned skill (or lack thereof), or the influence (positive or negative) of others. You can take precautions to protect your home, but nothing is guaranteed safe from storms or vandals. And some things are truly random, either in whether they happen at all or who they effect. I don't think individual human behavior has any influence on which ticket holder wins the lottery or which baseball team wins a game being played hundreds of miles away. Bad luck is often a self fulfilling prophecy: people who genuinely believe in Friday the 13th psych themselves out and cause people who don't buy into it to genuinely have a bad day.

That being said, the human brain is often wired to notice patterns and trends. I know I do, and it can influence my thinking I'm sure. And there is something to be said for the power of the placebo affect (I love the episode of Adam Ruins Everything on this topic!). Sometimes you can feel power and safety from taking control of a situation, even if it isn't really a situation that you can take control of. A little harmless wood knocking hurts Noone.

74) What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

This is SO hard! If I'm home alone I'm always listening to something. Ugh. "No Matter What" from the Steven Universe movie. "Gourmet Race" from Kirby. The Fairy Fountain music from Zelda (walked down the aisle to this!!!). "Anything for You" by Ludo because my partner chose that to be our song, and also played it right before our wedding.

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pleasancies · 3 years

Text

Deep In Delirium

wordcount : 1.1k+

content : lady whump, fever, hallucination, vomiting, worried caretaker

Tagging @summer-of-whump

***

She should really go to the hospital.

The apparition smiled, his teeth one too many. She should be fearing this man, tackling his body on the floor and punching everything she could reach. The fear part she'd done perfectly, but the tackling less so. It was more of a paralyzing fear. Her skin crawled. His hands weren't supposed to feel so real. It was pressing, looming over her forehead like the headache she had been putting up with.

"You have a fever," no shit. How many times does he have to say it?

He looks so concerned. She didn't know his face is capable to look that tender. Or that her brain could conjure the image. It was strange. She almost killed him twice. But again, fevers are weird. There's shadowy outlines dashing just around the corner of her eyes. Trippy. If blue lights doesn't make her brain feels like it's set inside a washing machine then she'd try watching some movies.

That said, she have to call for help. Her phone were sitting nicely in her bag. Rarely used. It was supposed to be easy. Walk a few dozen steps, open her closet, and reached inside the bag. But whatever her illness was, it was cruel. It hit her hard, sudden when she least expect it. Walking to bathroom almost made her faint.

She let out a whimper. Nausea pooled at the base of her throat. Everything she had inside of her were already splattered among the blankets and the edge of the couch. Her teeth chattered. A cold ache settling in her bones, ice growing underneath the skin. But her skin were practically radiating with heat. She could smell the sickening warmth hugging her body. It was suffocating, everything just a little too close to handle. The individual threads of her shirt rubbing against skin. The blood rushing in her ear like a beating drum. She wrapped the soiled blankets closer to herself. The hallucination was still there, frowning as she coughed.

Where were her teammates? She was waiting for them to notice she's missing. Isn't two days of silence concerning enough?

She closed her eyes, turning her head away from him. Another dream. Maybe something involving her friends and please make it nice this time. She's thirsty. Her throat dry and the heat smothering her. She can't get her arms to pull away the sheets. Not paralyzed. Tired. Drained. Just doesn't have the strength anymore. She spent the earlier parts of the day shaking as her fevered brain simulated the sound of her dearest friends shouting abuse and banging at her door.

Her temperature is rising. Comprehending the contents of her room gets a little harder each time. The apparition gone. She'd sorely miss him. It all blurred together. Her head lolled to the side and the growing panic in her gut manifested as a slurry of bile on the floor.

She should really go to the hospital.

***

He finally shows up at her doorstep. It's been a while since they last meet. She missed the biweekly meetings, and although it is common for them not to talk with each other for days, it's strange for her to miss a meeting without telling them. Maybe playing hooky for the first time, their less-disciplined friends rubbing off on her. Something about it nags at his mind.

So here he is, after three missed calls and ten unread messages. He knocked the door. No answer. Her apartment neighbors said they didn't see her leave the house. Or if she was truly there inside.

Fuck, he thought. Something bad might have happened. He fished something out of his pocket. Luckily no one was there to see him pried the locks open. She taught that skill.

He was glad when he saw her sleeping on the couch. Yet his eyes land to the dried vomit on the sheets and all of that relief vanished as quickly as it came. Alarmed, he strides to the couch to feel her forehead and neck with the palm of his hands.

Fire. She looks like death had warmed over. Beads of sweat ran down her pained face. Her body slightly shivered despite the blankets around her.

"Hey, wake up." He gently shook her shoulders. How long since she get sick? A fever this high could genuinely hurt her. Every second she spent in deep sleep stabs his heart with worry.

"Huh, at least this one's nice," she weakly waves her hand at him, her speech slurred and her movements sluggish.

"I'm taking you to the hospital." He tries lifting her by the arm, but it's a wasted effort. She pushed him away, spending her last bits of energy to resist.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Stop trying, okay? You're a nice dream but I can't sit up by myself. It just hurts."

"You're going to get hurt even more if you fight me like this."

"Then leave. You can't carry me. You're just another hallucination."

She was crying before, her face puffy and dark circles under her eyes. He brushed back the stray hairs on her forehead. "Don't be stupid, I'm not a hallucination."

She scoffed, a weak smile forming on their lips, "You're really one of the nice ones. My real friends wouldn't find me until I'm rotting for three days."

His heart sanked. Shame warmed his cheeks. It took a full minute to gather his scattered focus. He swallowed a growing lump inside his throat.

"I'm sorry," He cupped her face, mustering up the gentlest stare he could manage. He was never a caretaker. Treating his friends softly was never a thing he had to learn. He was very aware of how odd he might look.

"This is nice," she leaned heavily into his palm, "Can you do this to my head? It feels really heavy."

"You're... such a pain in the ass sometimes." But he complied, his head gently grasping her forehead. "I'm going to carry you to the hospital, okay?"

"Ugh, fine. Try with all your hearts' content. Did say I told you so. Just don't leave, okay?"

He noted the pleading tone resting at the end of her sentences. He wants to say sorry again but he feared she might not even remember it later. This might not even end with her fully recovered. A fever this high could have given her brain damage. He remembered when she first joined the team. She never said it but it was apparent how much she needed someone and something to do. He'd seen her grow, from a lonely adrift woman to a competent and gregarious team member. Theyre friends, arent they? She used to ask, so many times. He should have check up on her more, talk to her outside of meetings and patrols like a proper friend even after whatever's plaguing her in the past is gone.

And it hurts even more to see her so resigned to it, so nonchalant on the fact that her supposed friend is going to leave her to die alone out negligence.

"Yeah, don't worry. I'm not leaving. I'll do better this time."

#summer of whump #summerofwhump25 #hallucination #fever whump #delirious #lady whump #emeto cw

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freedom-shamrock · 4 years

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Speaking on My Behalf

Also over on AO3

<<< Go back to Chapter One

@saijspellhart allowed me to take this delightful idea and run with it, so here we are. Go team!

Chapter Two

Had Plagg been anyone else, Marinette would have laughed off his words, probably turned the shade of a Braeburn and moved on. She was used to being teased about Adrien and her completely hopeless attraction to him. Their friends were terribly mean about it, to be honest.

But Plagg, for all his shenanigans, didn't tease her this way. He was a painfully direct and honest individual, always keen to cut to the point of a matter so he could move on to something more interesting, usually involving cheese or snuggles. She could also see the exact moment Adrien's brain went all blue screen of death on him, cutting out the barely audible squeal of protest that his vocal cords managed to create. And then it was clear his brain had rebooted as his face that went the color of her supersuit and his eyes goggled in horror. Frankly it was quite the look. Not something you'd see in one of his photo shoots, to be sure, but he somehow managed to not look any less attractive. Ugh. Stupid adorable boys. Still, she felt a little bad for him. She knew that feeling all too well.

She sniffed and tossed her head, channeling her best Chloe impersonation to send her hair flying. "Tsk." She spun, playing with how the skirting whirled to show off one leg after the other. "Put your eyeballs back in your head, Kitty," she said airily. "It's not like you haven't seen sexy dresses."

Plagg circled back to land on Adrien's head, fluffing his hair nest further. "Pfft, yeah," Plagg agreed. "We've seen more than a few." He smirked. "But none were on you… Buggaboo," he drawled

Adrien slapped his hand down on Plagg, pressing the being of destruction to his scalp, until said being decided to phase through his holder's hand.

"He doesn't like it when I use his nicknames, even if I'm speaking for him," Plagg noted with a shrug. "It's a territorial cat thing. Just don't mind our little hissy fits."

She shook her head at their antics. "My supersuit is like a second skin and I run around in just that all the time." Fortunately she'd already been comfortable with the suit by the time she realized how little it concealed despite its full coverage. "You know what I look like."

"Eh, there's something very different about seeing your actual skin," Plagg pointed out, earning another swat from Adrien. "I gotta say, I don't get it, but I know that's a thing. A very human… thing." He smirked in a way no real cat ever had.

"All right," Marinette said. It was time to let up on her partner. "I'm going to go change and then I'll get dinner started." She reached out and tapped Adrien's nose. "And no you may not help, I'm taking care of you, remember? But you can pick a movie for us."

"Already got one in mind," Plagg assured her, and Adrien's expression backed that statement up.

"Got any requests for the menu tonight?" she asked as she turned toward her room.

"Four cheese ravioli with a parmesan cream sauce," Plagg suggested.

There was no way Adrien wanted that. He liked cheese a normal amount, unlike his kwami.

"Oooh!" Plagg cried. "Do you think you could make broccoli cheese soup with limberger?"

⁂

Adrien felt absolutely spoiled. He'd managed to shove aside the earlier embarrassment over Plagg's entirely too honest commentary; his father had taught him how to compartmentalize like it was an olympic sport. It was probably not healthy, but it was definitely helpful in this situation. Regardless, he managed to pretend it hadn't happened while Marinette made dinner, setting things up so he could stay on the couch rather than eating at the table. She wouldn't even let him help set up the living room, adjusting the furniture while he was in the loo.

Fortunately she'd caved to Plagg's suggestion that they sit together on the couch. Nothing made him feel better than having her nearby. Ladybug and Chat Noir were pretty tactile, it came from the need to toss and catch each other off and over the tallest buildings and bizarre monsters of Paris. It also gave them that little reassurance that they weren't alone when things got really ugly. Outside of the suits they were close friends, often mistaken for a couple, and in the privacy of their apartment they could ignore the social rules that said they had to behave a certain way. Around age sixteen he'd learned that he had classic symptoms, and the perfect home set up, for being touch starved. His friends had been happy to help with that, and no one snuggled quite like Marinette. Except Ladybug, of course, who was still Marinette even if he was the only one who knew that.

After dinner, he put his plate on the side table and slouched down, leaning against his best friend's shoulder. It wasn't too much longer before she set aside her dishes and wrapped her arm around him. Her fingers slipped into his hair, gliding over his scalp in that way they'd both learned he loved. He smiled, utterly content as he felt his body relax fully against her. He didn't even pretend to fight the low rumble in his chest. His purr was barely audible with his laryngitis, but he knew she could feel the vibration when she gave him a little extra squeeze. She loved his purr, and had been quick to squash any embarrassment it caused him. Plagg seemed to think she went out of her way to make him feel comfortable and appreciated for who he was, but Adrien suspected she'd do the same for anyone. She was just that sweet.

Slowly, to avoid disrupting her fingers, he rubbed his face against her shoulder in exactly the way a cat would nuzzle up against someone they liked. He felt her giggle more than he heard it, and it only encouraged him. He scootched a little closer, burrowing his face into her neck and embracing the emotional warmth elicited by the touch of her skin on his.

"Does my kitty need cuddles?" she asked, her low soft voice inspiring goosebumps down his back and arms.

Regular hugs and cuddles, whenever he needed them, were one of his favorite parts of living with Marinette. She was willing to set aside anything to give him a hug, even if it was quick with a more enduring follow up when she was done with whatever he'd interrupted. And she seemed to know when he needed the physical contact almost better than he did. He slipped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck again.

She let out a happy sounding hum. "I know it's been a rough day for you Adrien." The hand that wasn't in his hair gathered him closer, overlapping her body with his. "But now that my dress for La Fleur is done, I'm totally free tomorrow. We can have a little home spa treatment, play some video games together, and if you're feeling up to it we can go out for a run. Sound good?"

"That sounds perfect," Plagg replied from his perch on the back of the couch.

Adrien couldn't possibly agree more. Spending the whole day with her, just relaxing and having fun, it was his favorite way to spend time. She'd given him so many happy moments and memories to counter the unhappiness and loneliness his father had instilled in him. He gave her a gentle squeeze, loving the way it felt to hold her. In a moment of cat inspired insanity, he stretched up to rub his jaw against hers. His scent mingled with hers on her skin, and he had no idea why he loved that, but he really really did.

"Speaking for the Kid, here," Plagg said, calling Adrien back from his moment of bliss where he'd lost all awareness beyond Marinette. "So, can we make out now?"

#Miraculous Ladybug #fanfiction #my writing #saijspellhart #Post reveal #Pre Resationship #they were roommates #Adrien #Marinette #Plagg #Laryngitis #mutual pining #fluff #ML Plagg #post reveal pre relationship #Speaking on my behalf

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lucyreviewcy · 3 years

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The Three Three Musketeers (or Where The F*ck Did All The Stupid Hats Go)

I read The Three Musketeers and then I watched the 1973, 1993 and 2011 adaptations. Which one wins tho?

Adaptation is a fascinating concept, especially of texts which are frequently adapted or parodied. After I rewatched the 2005 Pride and Prejudice I was reminded how weirdly divisive the two dominant adaptations of that book are. A lot of people consider the 2005 to be an inferior betrayal of the 1990s BBC version. I actually prefer the 2005 because I think Matthew McFadyen’s Mr Darcy is a wonderfully complex character. McFadyen imbues Darcy with social awkwardness and anxiety, which Lizzie misinterprets as his pride. To overcome the “Lizzie doesn’t fancy him ‘til she sees his house” debate, director Joe Wright includes a moment where Lizzie glimpses Darcy alone with his sister. He’s comfortable, his body language is completely different, and he’s smiling broadly. That moment really sold me on the entire film because it made Darcy a full character and was a really simple addition that rounded out the story. I still like the 90s version but for me, it’s the 2005 that takes first place. (Although an honourable mention for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because it is an excellent romp.)

Look: adaptation is always a complicated topic. You can’t untangle one adaptation from another, because it’s pretty rare that somebody adapting a classic text like Pride and Prejudice or The Three Musketeers is not already familiar with existing adaptations. The most recent adaptation of any classic text is not simply an adaptation of that text, but the next step in a flow chart that includes all the previous adaptations and the cultural context of the newly created product. These three adaptations of Dumas’ 1844 novel are all texturally and stylistically very different, and two of them diverge significantly from the original text. What I found truly fascinating was what all of them had in common, and what each new era (these were made at around 20 year intervals) decides to add or remove. What do all these movies agree are the essential parts of the story, and what are some adaptations more squeamish about including from Dumas’ original narrative?

Before we dive in, no I have not seen every single adaptation of the story, that would be a dissertation level of research and I do actually have things to do right now (although, I will admit...not many.) I’m looking at these three Hollywood adaptations because they all had star studded casts (for the era they were made in), they’re all English language, and (crucially) they were all easily available on the internet for me to stream.

What are the essential ingredients of a Three Musketeers adaptation?

Firstly, there should be at least three musketeers. Secondly, D’Artagnan (Michael York 1973, Chris O’Donnell 1993, Logan Lerman 2011) should be a young upstart who is introduced part way through a sword fight. He should also have silly hair. He is also consistently introduced to the musketeers in all three films by challenging them each individually to duels at noon, one o’clock and two o’clock.

The films all maintained some elements of the original “Queen’s Diamonds” storyline, and featured the Queen, Milady and Constance. The characterisation of these three varied a lot.

Our villains in each case are invariably the Cardinal, his pal Rochefort (who always has an eyepatch, although this trope is not in the book and is actually attributable to the way Christopher Lee is styled in the 1973 film), and Milady de Winter. Satisfyingly, at least two of the villains usually wear red because they’re bad. Red is for bad.

All three are very swashbuckling in tone, have elements of physical comedy, and two of them include one of the three valet characters Dumas wrote into the original story, Planchet (1973 Roy Kinnear, 2011 James “ugh why” Corden). They also all bear the generic markings of the movies made during the same era, our 70s D’Artagnan feels like a prototype Luke Skywalker. The 90s version features a random martial arts performer. The 2011 version has CGI and James Corden in equal measure (read: far too much of both.)

What are the big differences?

I’m going to divide this category into three main segments: character, story and style. My own three musketeers, the three musketeers of movie making.

Character

D’Artagnan

D’artagnan in the book comes across as a pretty comical figure. He’s nineteen and there’s something satisfying about how similar Dumas’ caricature of a nineteen year old is to a modern character of the same age. He’s overconfident, has a simplistic but concrete set of morals, and falls in love with every woman he sees. If D’Artagnan were a 2021 character, he’d really hate The Last Jedi, is what I’m saying. He’d definitely have a tumblr blog, probably a lot like this one, but perhaps a scooch more earnest. He really loved The Lighthouse but he can’t explain why. Isn’t it nice to know that awkward nineteen year olds have been pretty much the same for the last three hundred years at least?

In all three films he’s kind of irritating, but at least in the 1973 this feels deliberate. This version has a certain “Carry On Musketeering” quality to it and D’Artagnan is your pantomime principal, he’s extremely naïve and he takes himself very seriously. This is the closest D’Artagnan to the book, and the 1973 is, in general, the film which adheres most faithfully to that source material.

The 1993, which is (spoiler alert) my least favourite adaptation, has Chris O’Donnell as the least likeable D’Artagnan I’ve come across. I’ve only seen O’Donnell in one other thing, the Al Pacino movie Scent of a Woman. He’s bearable in that because he’s opposite Al Pacino, and so his wide-eyed innocence makes sense as a contrast to Pacino’s aged hoo-ah cynicism. Rather than being introduced in a practice sword fight with his father, as in the other two films, D’Artagnan is fighting the brother of an ex-lover. This captures the problem with the film in general: this adaptation wants D’Artagnan to be cool. He is not. The comedy of the 1973, and indeed the book, comes from D’Artagnan being deeply uncool, and from his blind idolisation of the deeply flawed Musketeers who actually are cool, but not necessarily heroic, or even good people. Their moral greyness contrasts with D’Artagnan’s defined sense of right and wrong, but he still considers them to be role models and heroes.

2011′s version also suffers from “Cool D’Artagnan” syndrome, with the added annoyance of that most Marvel of tropes: the quip. One of the real issues with this film is that the dialogue has a lot of forced quippery that doesn’t quite land, and the editing slows the pace of the entire film. D’Artagnan’s first interaction with Constance is a bad attempt at wit which Constance points out isn’t very funny. The problem is that Constance has no personality so there’s no real indication that she’s in any position to judge his level of wit. She’s just vague, blonde and there: three characteristics which describe an entire pantheon of badly written female characters throughout the ages. Cool D’Artagnan also means that Constance should be additionally cool, because in the book, Constance is older than, smarter than and over-all more in charge than D’Artagnan.

Female Characters

Let’s go into this with an open mind that understands all these films were made in the sociological context of their decade. The 1973 version would absolutely not be made in the same way now. Constance is a clumsy cartoon character who is forever falling over and accidentally sticking her breasts out. This is not the character from the books, but does at least leave an impression on the viewer one way or another.

In contrast, the 1993 has a Constance so forgettable I literally cannot picture her. I think she holds D’Artagnan’s hand at the end. That’s all I can say on the subject.

The 2011 has Gabriella Wilde in the role, and absolutely wastes her. Anyone who’s seen her in Poldark knows that she can do sharp-tongued beautiful wit-princess with ease. It’s the writing of this film that lets her down, in general, that’s the problem with it. The storyline and design are great, but the actual dialogue lacks the pace and bite that a quip-ridden star vehicle needs. This Constance is given simultaneously more and less to do than the Constance of the original book, who demonstrates at every turn the superiority of her intellect over D’Artagnan, but doesn’t get to pretend to be a Musketeer and whip her hat off to show her flowing golden hair like she does in the 2011.

The best character, for my money, in The Three Musketeers is Milady de Winter. Even Dumas got so obsessed with her that there are full chapters of the book written from pretty much her perspective. In the book, she’s described as a terrifying genius with powers of persuasion so potent that any jailor she speaks to must be instantly replaced. My favourite Milady is absolutely Faye Dunaway from 1973. She’s ferocious and beautiful and ruthless, but potentially looks even better because the portrayals in the other films are so very bad.

The 1993 version has your typical blonde 90s baddie woman (Rebecca De Mornay), she wouldn’t look out of place as a scary girlfriend in an episode of Friends or Frasier. 2011 boasts Milla Jovovich who presents us a much more physical version of the character, even doing an awkwardly shoe-horned anachronistic hall of lasers a la Entrapment except instead of lasers its really thin pieces of glass? The “yeah but it looks cool” attitude to anachronism in this film is what makes it fun, and Jovovich’s Milady isn’t awful, she’s just let down by a plot point that she shares with 1993 Milady. Both these adaptations get really hooked on the fact that Athos used to be married to Milady at one time (conveniently leaving out the less justifiable character point that Athos TRIED TO HANG HER when he found out she had been branded as a thief - doesn’t wash so well with the modern audiences, I think.) Rather than hating/fearing Milady, the two modern adaptations suggest that Athos is still in love with her and pines for her. This detracts from Athos’ character just as much as it detracts from Milady’s. Interestingly, and I don’t know where this came from (if it was in the book I definitely missed it), both films feature a confrontation between the two where Athos points a gun at Milady but she pre-empts him by throwing herself off a cliff (or in the 2011, an air-ship.) I think both these versions were concerned that Milady was an anti-feminist character because she’s so wantonly evil, but I disagree. Equality means it is absolutely possible for Milady to be thoroughly evil and hated by the musketeers just as much as they hate Rochefort and the Cardinal. If you want to sort out the gender issues with this story, round Constance out and give her proper dialogue, don’t make Milady go weak at the knees because of whiny Athos (both Athos characters are exceedingly whiny, 1973 Athos is just...mashed).

The Musketeers

These guys are pretty important to get right in a film called The Three Musketeers. They have to be flawed, funny but kind of cool. Richard Chamberlain is an absolute dish in the 1973 version, capturing all those qualities in one. Is it clear which version is my favourite yet?

Athos is played variously by a totally hammered Oliver Reed (1973), a ginger-bearded Kiefer Sutherland (1993) and a badly bewigged Matthew McFadyen (2011). They all have in common the role of being the most level-headed character, but the focus on the relationship between Athos and Milady in the 93 and 11 editions undermines this a lot. Athos should be cool and aloof, instead of mooning over Milady the entire time. The 2011 gives Athos some painfully “edgy” lines like “I believe in this (points at wine) this (flicks coin) and this (stabs coin with knife.)...” which McFadyen ( once oh so perfect as Mr Darcy) doesn’t quite pull off.

Porthos seems to be the musketeer who is the most different between interpretations. A foppish dandy in the 1973, a pirate (!?!) in the 1993, and then just...large in 2011. I think the mistake made in the 2011 is that large alone does not a personality make. There are hints at Porthos’ characterisation from the book: his dependence on rich women for money and his love of fine clothing, but these are only included as part of his introduction and never crop up again through the rest of the film. Pirate Porthos in 1993 is... you know what, fine, you guys were clearly throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck.

Aramis is our dishy Richard Chamberlain in 1973, followed by womanising Charlie Sheen in 1993 and then strikingly suave Luke Evans in 2011. I actually didn’t mind Luke Evans’ interpretation, his dialogue is forgettable but his sleek charm stuck in my head. For some reason, this version has Aramis working as a parking attendant for horses, it worked for me as a fun A Knight’s Tale-esque bit of anachronistic character development. Charlie Sheen has never managed to appear likable or attractive to me and so his role in the 1993 falls flat. In fact, in that edition there’s not much distinction between the musketeers as characters and they’re all just very 90s and American. As anyone who’s read this blog before will expect, I think Keanu Reeves as Aramis would have really upped this film’s game. In fact, Keanu Reeves as Aramis, Brad Pitt as Athos and Will Smith as Porthos could have been the ultimate 90s adaptation, throw in DiCaprio as D’Artagnan and Roger Allam as the Cardinal and I’m fully sold.

The King and Queen

All three films try and do the “Queen’s Diamonds” storyline, but only the 1973 actually includes the Queen’s affair with Buckingham. The queen, played by Geraldine Chaplin, is a tragic romantic figure (she doesn’t have a tonne to do besides being wistful and sighing over Lord Buckingham). The king is played as a frivolous idiot by Jean-Pierre Cassel (voice dubbed by Richard Briers). He doesn’t really think of the queen as a person, more as a possession that he doesn’t want Buckingham to have.

In the 1993 version, Buckingham doesn’t really feature, and it’s the queen’s refusal to get off with the Cardinal that prompts his fury at her. The book does touch on the Cardinal’s desire for the queen, but it’s placed front and centre in 1993. This is definitely the boobsiest version, with quite a lot of corsetry on show and a cardinal who hits on literally all the women. The king is shown as a stroppy teenage boy under the thumb of the cardinal, who just wants to ask the queen to the dance but doesn’t have the nerve. The king is, essentially, a Fall Out Boy lyric.

The 2011 also seems to be really squeamish about the idea of the queen having an extramarital affair. It paints Buckingham (played with excellent wig and aplomb by Orlando Bloom) as a stylish villain, who’s advances the queen has rejected. Like the 1993 version, the King is a feckless youth rendered speechless by the presence of his wife. Both these versions want the King and Queen to be happy together, while the 1973 doesn’t give a fuck.

The Cardinal and his Cronies

The cardinal is kind of universally an evil creepy guy. One of the characters from the 1973 version who actually left the least impression on me, played by Charlton Heston. I think he’s overshadowed in my recollection by cartoonishly evil Christopher Lee as Rochefort. Lee’s Rochefort is dark, mysterious and wonderfully bad, and so influential that all other incarnations’ design is based on him. The 1993 version had truly over the top Michael Wincott as a character I could honestly refer to as Darth Rochefort from the way he’s framed, while 2011 boasts a chronically underused Mads Mikkelsen in the role.

Cardinal-wise, 1993 was my favourite with Tim Curry in all his ecclesiastical splendour. It was disappointing that everything about this film, including the Cardinal’s sexual harassment of every single female character, really didn’t work for me. Tim Curry is a natural choice for this role and gives it his campy all.

2011 has not one but two trendy bond villain actors, with Mikkelsen working alongside Christoph Waltz who was...just kind of fine. I was really excited when he appeared but he didn’t really push the character far enough and left me cold.

Story

The story is where the different adaptations diverge most completely. 1973 follows the plot of the novel, D’Artagnan comes to Paris, befriends the Musketeers and becomes embroiled in a plot by the Cardinal to expose the Queen’s affair with Buckingham through the theft of two diamond studs. D’Artagnan, aided partially by the musketeers, must travel to London to retrieve the set of twelve studs gifted by the King to the Queen, and by the Queen to Buckingham. He does so, the plot is foiled, he’s made into a musketeer! Hurrah, tankards all round.

The 1993 version drops D’Artagnan into the story just as the Cardinal has disbanded the Musketeers. I found the plot of this one really hard to follow and I think at some point D’Artagnan ended up in the Bastille? There was this whole plot point about how Rochefort had killed D’Artagnan’s father. In the original, and in the 1973 version, D’Artagnan’s entire beef with Rochefort is rooted in a joke Rochefort makes about D’Artagnan’s horse. I guess for the producers of this one, a horse insult is not enough motivation for a lifelong grudge. That is really the problem with the entire film, it forgets that the story as told by Dumas is set in a world where men duel over such petty things as “criticising one’s horse”, “blocking one’s journey down a staircase” and “accusing one of having dropped a lady’s handkerchief.” The colour palette and styling are very 90s “fun fun fun”, but the portrayal of the cardinal and the endless angst about D’Artagnan’s father really dampen the mood.

The 2011 version, this is where the shit really hits the fan. We meet our musketeers as they collaborate with Milady to steal the blueprints for a flying ship (it’s like a piratecore zeppelin). Milady betrays them and gives the plans to Buckingham, they all become jaded and unemployed. D’Artagnan arrives on the scene (his American accent explained by the fact that he’s from a different part of France) and befriends the Musketeers. The cardinal tries to frame the queen for infidelity by having Milady steal her diamonds to hide them in Buckingham’s safe at the tower of London. Something something Constance, something something help me D’Artagnan you’re my only hope. MASSIVE AIRSHIP BATTLE. The king and queen have a dance. James Corden cracks wise.

It seems like as time has passed, producers, writers and directors have felt compelled to embellish the story. I think, specifically in the case of the two later versions, this is because they wanted the films to resemble the big successes of the period. Everybody knows no Disney hero can be in possession of both parents, so D’Artagnan is out to avenge his father like Simba or Luke Skywalker. In the 2011 version, the plot is overblown and overcomplicated in what seems like an attempt to replicate the success of both the Sherlock Holmes and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. Remember the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End? No, me neither.

Style

The style of these films grows increasingly wild along with the plots as time passes. The 1973 features a lot of slapstick comedy, some of which really made me cackle, and some of which was cringeworthily sexist (Constance’s boobs through the window of a litter.) That’s the 70s though! I love The Godfather but Diane Keaton’s character is unbelivably dull and annoying. Star Wars features a pretty good female character but she does end up in that bikini. The 70s seems to be a time of movies that were great except for their occasional headlong dive into misogyny. That doesn’t mean the entire movie is bad, it just means it’s suffering from the consequences of being made in the 70s. There were other consequences of this, I doubt many modern productions could get away with physically injuring so many of it’s cast members. From a glance down the IMDB trivia page, this film yielded a higher casualties to cast ratio than the My Chemical Romance Famous Last Words music video, and that’s a hard figure to top.

The 1993 version is a Disney feature and suffers from having a thin sheen (not Charlie in this instance) of “Disney Original Movie” pasted over every scene. It looks like The Parent Trap might be filming in the adjacent studio a lot of the time. The vibrancy of the colours makes the costumes look unrealistic, while the blandness of the female characters means this movie ends up a bit of a bland bro-fest. Also occasionally the sexual and violent moments really jar with the overall tone making it an uneven watch. One minute it’s Charlie Sheen cracking jokes about trying to get off with someone’s wife, the next minute you see Milady throw herself off a cliff and land on the rocks. Weird choices all round.

The 2011 version, as I’ve already mentioned, was trying to borrow its style from the success of Sherlock Holmes and Pirates of the Caribbean, with a little Ocean’s 11 thrown in. The soundtrack flips between not quite a Hans Zimmer score and not quite that other Hans Zimmer score, and after the success of Stardust it ends with a Take That song (for it to match up to the story it should have been Take That feat. Harry styles imho). Visually, there’s some fantastic travel by mapping going on, there’s far too much CGI (one of my friends pointed out that the canal in Venice seemed to be full of Flubber). Everyone is dressed in black leather, and there are not enough big hats at all. One of the best things about Musketeers films is that they’re an excuse for ridiculous hats, and in a film with a quite frankly insane visual style, I’m surprised the hats didn’t make it through. The cast, unfortunately, really lack chemistry which means the humorous dialogue is either stilted or James Corden, and the editing is just very strange. It’s one of those films that feels about as disjointed as an early morning dream, the one where you dream you’ve woken up, gotten dressed and fed the cat, but you actually are still in bed.

Conclusion

Adaptations focus on different things depending on the context they were created in. The 2005 Pride and Prejudice is deliberately “grittier” than its 1990s predecessor, at a stage when “grit” was everywhere (The Bourne Identity, Spooks, Constantine). The Musketeers adaptations demonstrate exactly the same thing: what people wanted in the 70s was bawdy comedy and slapstick with a likeable idiot hero, the 90s clearly called for... Charlie Sheen and bright colours, and the 2010s just want too much of everything and a soundtrack with lots of banging and crashing. The more modern adaptations simplified the female characters (although the 1973 version definitely is guilty of oversimplifying Constance) while over-complicating the plot. There’s a lot of embellishment going on in the 2011 version that suggests the film wasn’t very sure of itself, it pulls its plot punches while simultaneously blindly flailing its stylistic fists.

The film that works the best for me will always be the 1973 because it’s pretty straight down the line. Musketeers are good, Milady is evil, falling over is funny and the King’s an idiot. The later adaptations seem to be trying to fix problems with the story that the 1973 version just lets fly. The overcorrection of Milady and the under characterisation of Constance is the perfect example of this. If you want your Musketeers adaptation to be more feminist, don’t weaken Milady, strengthen Constance. Sometimes a competent female character is all that we need. A Constance who is like Florence Cassel from Death in Paradise or Ahn Young-yi from Misaeng could really pack a punch.

I adored the energy of the 2011 adaptation, I loved how madcap it was, I loved how it threw historical accuracy to the wind. I thought the king was adorable, and I really enjoyed seeing Orlando Bloom hamming it up as Buckingham. I was genuinely sad that the sequel the ending sets up for never came, because once they got out of the sticky dialogue and into the explosions, the film was great fun. It was a beautiful disaster that never quite came together, but I really enjoyed watching it. I love films that have a sense of wild chaos, some more successful examples are The Devil’s Advocate, Blow Dry and Lego Batman. I think the spirit of going all out on everything can sometimes result in the best cinematic experience, it’s just a shame the script wasn’t really up to muster for 2011 Musketeers.

I’m excited to see what the next big budget Musketeers adaptation brings, even if I’m going to have to wait another ten years to see it. I hope it’s directed by Chad Stahelski, that’d really float my boat (through the sky, like a zeppelin.)

#ThreeMusketeers #Three Musketeers #Adaptation #Movies #Film #The Three Musketeers

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onetrainscifi · 3 years

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Whoo. That pilot was--a lot to unpack. Parts of it were definitely 😬 *cringe* but I also find myself grateful that the network recognized its potential and liked the heart of it enough to bring on a new creative team.

Like, reading all the slides with Cleo I realized what I'd been missing in Zarah-this pilot really stressed the loving relationships of the murdered man's family and actually let Cleo react to his death while our Zarah told Layton a grand total of ONCE that Sean Wise was 'someone she loved' but then never mentioned/mourned him (or her other partners who just? disappeared?? They were led away in handcuffs, were they ever released? Were they drawered? Did they blame Zarah and therefore just never return to the home they'd shared? What side did they take in the rebellion? Like, what happened to these people?!) again. And from that moment on her character seemed so untethered--so unattached to the rest of what was taking place because she had no emotional center. This great, traumatic event that should have been both her character motivation and kept her tethered to the action/investigation was just kinda--swept to the side. Like, if we had gotten a Zarah who was more like Cleo, who pestered Layton, regardless of their thorny past, for updates on the investigation and had to be the rock for her mourning family and who stood solidly with Miss Audrey in righteous anger for the blue-eyed firstie who did this horrible thing--I would've enjoyed her so much more! And Ugh! Jinju and Till being supportive and cute From The Start(!) was 😍. Just--the fact that the focus on healthy love and affection happened to be centered on a polyamorous family and a lesbian couple was great.

But there were other things in the Pilot that seemed so-tonally different and just questionable. Like maayyybe making Layton a chronole 'stoner' was an indicator that parts of his character were drawn not just from the hero Curtis in the movie but also Namgoog, the security specialist. And mayyybe they weren't trying to be completely blind to the fact that their black protagonist deserves as much heart and conviction as his white counterpart in the movie, but. Yikes. Making him addicted to chronole and so...morose/spaced out all the time robs him of that drive and conviction that would make me believe any of the Tailies would rally behind him. Our Layton is a go-getter, a man of action and this guy in the pilot was...not. So...props to Graeme for making our Layton so much better!

But also--WHY would they choose to stress to us that Osweiller is a footballer JUST to freeze his foot off? In both the show and film the limb removal scenes really hammered home how cruel the HUMANS on the train chose to be to each other. And the freezing of the cattle car itself should've been enough to remind us the world outside is treacherous and inhospitable--they didn't have to try so hard to show us that any act of kindness or altruism on the train is futile. Like after seeing THAT, what the hell could possibly help move Till in the direction of choosing compassion and justice for the Tail?!

But I digress-I think the areas I'm most grateful for change were in regards to our season 1 powerhouses, Layton and Melanie. And some of it was so subtle but made SUCH a difference, like pilot Melanie's quirk was tapping her acrylic nails against her teeth--a sign that 1) she's perfectly happy reaping the benefits of 1st class life and 2) she's always thinking/conniving/SCHEMING. But OUR Melanie has a habit of rubbing her neck when she's stressed--as if THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD/HUMANITY IS ON HER SHOULDERS. Pilot Melanie is also uppity and shows up early to catch people off-guard. Our Melanie is quiet and studious when we first meet her-gauging the situation, letting Layton and others reveal their hand first-and she shows up late/after the main players are already gathered BECAUSE SHE HAS TO BE EVERYWHERE. But honestly I think the change I am absolutely most grateful for (aside from pretty much everything, lol. Like, I canNOT IMAGINE Alison Wright as Lilah instead of Ruth. And letting Miles actively seek the engineer apprenticeship to help the rebellion instead of having Layton(?) who is neither this child's father nor his active mentor (literally all they do is wrangle rats together in the pilot) make that choice for him WITHOUT his actual mother's consent was clearly a stroke of genius. As was just...not focusing so much on cow 18. Like. We get it. They're like animals crammed together in a cattle car. There is no reason to make so many Holocaust references in the first five pages of the script. There are other, far less jarring ways to convey human suffering and misery on this fictional show about a manmade Armageddon. -_-) is the ommission of the shady magistrate as part of the leadership/inner circle/cult.

Having him and that other guy making the decisions/embodying the ACTION of those decisions moving forward if this pilot had been their opener would've really detracted from the heft of Melanie's secret--like in the finished product, we have Melanie behind the curtain, an engineer by trade who clung to this cruel/unfair system all for the sake of keeping the train, the thing she built and the hope it represents, ALIVE and moving. It was a choice that didn't feel like a choice. A necessity. And yet she was changed by it. The mask of Wilford is harsh and she has to become harsh. She wears all these hats and leans on others when she has to (like Ben, Jinju, etc) or when a situation is truly dire, but there is no room for doubt that it is HER decision at the end of the day. She's the one who saves the train over and over when mechanics fail. And she's the one who decides to commute LJ's sentence. The Wilford mask/veil has allowed her the freedom to make these absolute decisions without oversight-so SHE alone bears the brunt of the consequences. There's no one else to blame, which made for some of the most delicious drama on the show when that secret was brought to light. How Melanie related to individuals (like Ruth, Layton, etc.) and how she related to the passengers as a whole was suddenly, VIOLENTLY, upended and allowed for really tense character moments.

And we wouldn't have gotten that if they had kept the shady magistrate stepping in to try to strong arm Jinju and others into doing the cult's will.

Like, maybe it could've panned out in a satisfying way but I will never forget how excited I was when we got the "I have the train" exchange in the first episode that revealed it was a WOMAN at the helm. A smart, cunning, hard to read but delightful to watch woman who'd been hiding in plain sight, in a uniform that screams 'subservient' and 'service' but had been popping up continually in places and spaces that seemed better suited to the men running the investigation and security/murder squad-this woman is shown to be in charge of it. ALL of it. The good (the beautiful aquarium, life in perfect balance, etc.) AND the bad (the Tail and it's horrors). THAT moment was really the one where I thought "I'm hooked. I wanna see where this goes." And so I'm so glad they cut the magistrate - and cult, honestly - out.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble! Thanks for sharing that pilot stuff! It has given me much to think about! :)

Breaking this down into parts again here we go!

1. Yes!! Exactly!! Cleo was given so much depth and room to grieve and have that actually be part of her storyline unlike Zarah. So I did really like that.

2. They made Layton SO much better good god. Like. Thankfully they improved his character.

3. I don't honestly know?? Like maybe to show what it does to humans?? No idea.

4. Y e a h exactly. We all love an unhinged woman but pilot Melanie was...yikes. Like...she genuinely seemed so happy to be in 1st class and have this power to be Wilford's chosen hospitality worker and scare people. And Alison Wright as Lilah would be so cute though, I wanna see it akdjsksi

5. YEAH THE MAGISTRATE GUY IS JUST REALLY NOT IT. He is not who we want he's just?? Seemingly one of the second in commands in Melanie's cult, which is odd but oh well.

#snowpiercer #snowpiercer tnt #asks #snowpiercer pilot

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kuronanox · 4 years

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Different views - Kensei Muguruma

"Stop being so shy and tell him!" Matsumoto encourages (Your Name) as she sighs and grabs a fistful of her hair. "I HATE MEN!" She screams as Kira nods in agreement and Shuhei sit across from them awkwardly.

"GO GO GO OR ELSE ILL TELL MUGURUMA TAICHO MYSELF!" Kira's flush face offers as he slams his hands on the table causing the sake to spill. "Oi! The drinks is expensive you know!" Shuhei lectures catching the small shot glasses in mid air. "WHAT ABOUT YOU KIRA?!" Matsumoto shouts grabbing his shirt and tugging him towards her. "Everyone knows how you feel about Hinamori!"

"Ya ya ya! NOO I don't want my death bed by Hitsugaya Taicho." He crosses his arms as Shuhei attempts to help a very drunk Kira sit up after. (Your Name) just watches the scene and sulks in the corner this night was suppose to be fun but the only ones having fun is Kira and Matsumoto. She sighs and thinks about how her and Kensei relationship turned to friends with benefit rather than a couple as she hoped for.

It was about a year and a half ago, it was the New Years Festival (Your Name) drank to much alcohol on a empty stomach not realizing how fast it was going to hit her. She was lit though, dancing with everyone and making new friends. She was so drunk she attempt to kiss Yumichika and he allowed his cheek since he was probably gay anyways. That's what her problem was, she was so open and lusty when she was drunk.

"Kiss?" She asks Matsumoto as she gave a kiss to her and Hinamori even snatching one from Renji. Of course his face got so red he had to walk away. "(Your Name) you can't go around and keep asking people for kisses." Kensei lectures her and sighs as she pouts and crossed her arms. "You are just upset that I didn't ask one from you." She jokes and he lightly hits her head. "No stupid, I'm not trying to catch anything."

"MY MOUTH IS CLEAN!" She shouted and joined Ikkaku in another round of a drinking game. By the end of the night everyone was pretty sauced and making their ways back to their barracks. (Your Name) saw that everyone was slowly going home and she decided that she needed to head back home or else she was going to black out.

"God damn I can barely stand." She whines using the wall for support looking around for help because everything was blurry. Kensei sets Shuhei and Mashiro in their rooms and goes back to the party to help other members of his squad just in case they were to drunk to get back. As he expected he catches (Your Name) trying to walk back home. "Come on." He offers his hand as she looks up at her captain and takes it. "Captain, I don't think I can walk." She slurs as he clicks his teeth and picks her up so she was on his back. "I guess this is how Yachiru feels everytime she's on Zaraki Taichos back." She half jokes and silently falls asleep on his back.

"Oi don't fall asleep, I don't know where you live." He says and looks to see she is fast asleep, he sighs and takes her back to his place. After placing her on a extra futon he had Kensei makes his own a little further from her.

After a few hours of deep slumber (Your Name) wakes up and looks at her surroundings, it was unfamiliar to her. She turns to her side and sees Kensei fast asleep. "Huh? I guess I blacked out. Awe Captain is going to kill me when I'm in better shape." She shrinks still kinda drunk from a couple hours ago.

'The moon is still high.'

Laying down she scoots closer to Kensei attempting to warm herself from the cold winter night. After a few attempts she couldn't get comfortable and sits up. Going through his cabinets she saw there was extra blankets. "How can Captain sleep in this cold weather!" She says and grabs two. One for her and one for Kensei.

Placing the heavy comforter on him he awakens by shifting around him and he grabs her arms rather roughly. "Ow!" She shouts as his eyes widen. "(Your Name)?" Kensei questions as she rubs her armed that was grabbed from him in his sleep. "Sorry Captain it was cold so I got more blankets."

"Are you still drunk?" He asks because her face was still red and her words still a bit slurred. "Yes, but I am able to function again." She admits, hugging herself from the cold breeze that flew in. Noticing her gesture for warmth he looks to see he only gave her a thin sheet to sleep in.

"Are you cold?"

"No shit Captain!" She rolls her eyes as he knits his brows and clicks his teeth. "Sassy." Kensei says while opening up his spot next to him. (Your Name) stares at it hesitantly before climbing in the cover with him. At first it was awkward because he wrapped his body around hers to warm them up. She was still wide awake and turned to face him.

They stared at each other for a fat minute till she leaned in and placed her lips onto Kensei's rough ones. It was a small kiss till he pulled in and kissed her back in a more aggressive and needy way. Flipping (Your Name) onto her back and climbing on top of her he caressed her sides as her breath hitched from his touch. "Mhn." She moaned into his mouth as he separates their lips and gave her neck some attention. Grabbing a fistful of his hair she moaned in pure bliss as Kensei bit onto her neck as she squirmed by the rough gesture but he held her in place as he sucks the rough patch he bit. "K-ken-Kensei." She moaned out as he groaned in her ear.

"I'm sorry (Your Name)." He says then letting her go as she felt rejected from his warmth and kisses. "Why did you stop?"

"I don't take advantage of drunk women." He says as she shakes her head. "I'm not that drunk."

Kensei looks at her she was beautifully flushed and he couldn't tell if she was lying or just embarrassed. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

(Your Name) cringed thinking about the first night they had sex, after that night they made it official that everything they did was just for their own benefit and they had no relationship status. The first year was fine, they act like nothing happen and it wasn't awkward or anything between them.

Slowly Kensei started opening up to her and even sleeping with her after those sessions they had instead of leaving like he usually did. On some occasion he would invite her over and they wouldn't have sex but just for some company. A few times they cooked together at his place and watched a few movies he really liked back when he was living in the human world.

It fell apart for (Your Name) when she realize that she was catching feelings for Kensei her captain and the worse part of it was that he didn't return them. He already made it known when they first started that this thing they were doing was for their own individual pleasure.

As time passed by they started learning what each individual liked in bed, luckily for her they both were into rough sex. But recently he was not as rough but more slow and passionate. It confused (Your Name).

"Ugh stop it!" She says walking back with Shuhei back to the barracks. She was on his back as he looked up and questioned what was wrong.

"Nothing! I'm fine!" She reassured as she looks up to see Kensei waiting outside infront of their barracks. "Taicho?" Shuhei says as Kensei sighs and shakes his head.

"(Your Name) how many times I told you to pace yourself when you drink?"

She looks down as Shuhei apologizes because he was also tipsy and not sober. Kensei walks them both home and drops off Shuhei first then (Your Name), she knew he was angry but tried not to show it. "Are you mad at me?" She asks him as he places her onto her bed. "It's fine (Your Name)." He says before leaving her. She sighs and falls down before sleeping.

The next week she didn't talk to Kensei much, he avoided her sometimes and didn't acknowledge her presence half the time. He only called her for training and paperwork but either then that they didn't speak. She was getting upset that he was acting the way he was to her. She wasn't dating him so why was he so upset?

"Can we talk?" She says to him as he went through papers on his office. "About?" Kensei asks raising a brow and crossing his arms now. "You are mad at me." She simply stated as he gave her a straight answer. "Yes I am."

"Well why are you mad at me?" She says staying the obvious slapping her hands into the air looking for answers.

"(Your Name) you realiz-" he started but was interrupted when a squad member barged into the room to say there is a emergency meeting for all captains and vice captains. He dismisses and tells (Your Name) to meet him at his place tonight.

"Ahh!" She moans as he roughly held onto her neck for support as he thrust into her. He came back stressed and upset but before she could ask what was wrong he slammed her against the wall and claimed her mouth with his. Now they were on the bed as he aggressively took out his anger into each thrust as she held on for dear life screaming his name. "Fuck." He says and flips her onto all fours.

"Ken-" (Your Name) says but he ignores her and places one arm around her neck to secure her from moving and pulls her hair with the other free hand he had so she was staring at him as he thrust into her. The sound of clapping turned him on each time their skin slapped as he groaned and she screamed. "Damn." He says as (Your Name) was left with her back arched all the way and her mouth was parted and she looked at him with lustful eyes. 'So fucking beautiful.' Kensei says in his thoughts and chokes her harder as she pleas under him.

"Ke-Kensei I can't." She says as a safe word and he realizes that he was choking her kinda hard as she holds her throat and coughs a little bit. "I'm sorry did I hurt you?" He worriedly asks as she faces him with tears in her eyes.

"You've never been this rough before, what's wrong?" She asks as he felt bad for making her tear up. "I don't know." He admits.

"I don't know if I can do this anymore?" (Your Name) tells him as he sits next to her and places a blanket around her naked body. "What's wrong? Am I being to rough?"

"It's not that, it just.... I've had feelings for you the last few months and I don't wanna keep sleeping with you knowing you don't return the feelings and me ending up with a cold bed every night." She shamelessly admits hugging her two legs towards her.

Kensei doesn't saw a word for a while and says "I was angry at you because you were drunk and Shuhei was tipsy."

(Your Name) looks up confused and tilts her head. "But I-"

"I know you tend to get really touchy with people when you are drunk and Shuhei was also not sober so the thought of you guys doing something made me angry because I also.... I also like you." Kensei admits as she widens her eyes and he looks away from her.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"Because I didn't know how, I thought you were in it for the sex only, but I started to open up to you and you genuinely were interested and was there for me. Even when I showed my hollow mask I thought you were going to run away from this monster I have in me but you didn't.... I realized then that this was the girl I wanted to be with."

She sighs and leans against Kensei, relief and a smile on her face. "You idiot."

Kensei hugs her bare body and smiles back. "Now that we know how we feel about each other you don't have to feel down anymore." He reassures and gives a small peck on the lips.

"I agree." (Your Name) says and straddles his hips. "So let's continue where we left off at."

"Oh?" Kensei smirks and holds her hips firmly, getting ready for a night filled with adventures.

#Bleach #bleachbravesouls #kensei #kensei muguruma #Shuhei Hisagi #kira izuru #Matsumoto Rangiku #anime #bleach oneshot #bleach oneshots #bleach x reader #bleach one shots

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