#instead of just. everything else wrong w him. <- this is a positive quality | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blu-joons · 3 years

Text

DATING STRAY KIDS HEADCANON A⇴Z ⇴ Han Jisung

A ⇴ AFFECTION

Han can be very affectionate; he loves to give you cuddles and be close to you when he hears your laughter. His arm can often be found around your waist to keep you close into your side, allowing his head to rest against your shoulder.

B ⇴ BEFORE DATING

The two of you met at an awards show where you worked, and his eyes had been on you all night long. Of course, the boys were quick to notice and tease him about it, giving him the encouragement, he needed to go over and talk to you. There was no way he was going to leave that night without at least getting your number and name.

C ⇴ CONFESSION

Once he’d endured a lengthy pep talk from Chan, Han found himself walking over to you whilst you took a quick break from work, grabbing yourself a drink. He was super nervous as soon as he got close to you, introducing himself quickly without a little joke, before asking you If you’d like to go on a date with him. He was very confident, a quality that you liked in him, so of course, you told him your name, and put your number into his phone.

D ⇴ DATES

There was never a boring date in a relationship with Han, he loved to try new things and go to new places to keep you happy. He’s not really the kind of guy into sitting around to a meal, he much prefers to do something fun and let go of some of his energy. When he’s on tour, he’ll save one evening a week for date night as well, usually you’ll end up playing a game over the phone, anything that will turn into a competition. As long as the two of you are laughing, it never really matters to Han what the two of you are doing.

E ⇴ EXPERIENCE

He’d never experienced a proper relationship before he met you, he got plenty of attention from fans, which he loved, but he’d never been in a position to reciprocate the feeling. To begin with, he was incredibly nervous about how he was going to manage his time, with the group and you, but he soon found a way to make it work. He knew as an idol, being in a relationship was a huge deal, so he made sure not to let the fans, and you, down by making sure everything balanced out well, and prove that he could make a relationship work.

F ⇴ FIGHTING

You usually spend too much time laughing to fight with Han, but when you do, it’s horrible. He’s not one for silence and tension, he much prefers humour and jokes. Whenever he shouts, he feels so guilty afterwards, he knows you always mean well. If the two of you start arguing, he’s usually the one to walk away as he can’t deal with it, and then once he feels calmer again, he’ll come back home and talk. Your arguments would never last long as neither of you could deal with the awkwardness or the silence for too long before you’d go back to joking around and laughing with each other, forgetting all about it.

G ⇴ GETTING TO KNOW HIS FAMILY

You very quickly bonded with his family, mainly because they were pleased Han had found someone who could deal with his constant jokes. He’d always told you about how close he was to his family, so you were determined to make a good first impression, and thankfully you were welcomed much better than you ever expected to be.

H ⇴ HOME

Even though he was young, it didn’t take Han long to want to find somewhere with you. He always felt guilty that he had to bring you back to the dorm where the boys were, at times it didn’t really feel like either of you got any privacy. You’d tell him you didn’t mind, but that would never stop him feeling bad for not being able to give you a space just for the two of you without someone interrupting.

I ⇴ “I LOVE YOU”

Han was the first to say, ‘I love you,’ one day as you erupted at one of his jokes. Earlier in the day he’d tried it on Changbin, who didn’t react, and even though he wasn’t sure if you were humouring him or not, he loved how you always made him feel special. It was only once you stopped laughing did you realise what he said, wrapping your arms tightly around his neck.

J ⇴ JEALOUSY

He tries to hide it well, but Han can often get jealous when other people are around you, especially when they make you laugh, because that’s his job. You could tell when he was feeling jealous as he’d always hover around you and try and move you away from the situation. He could also make you jealous from time to time, he was well known as a bit of a flirt, and despite knowing it was all innocent, you couldn’t help but stand back and pout sometimes, trying to bring his attention back over to you .

K ⇴ KIDS

The two of you both knew that kids were a long way into the future, but that didn’t stop you imagining Han as a dad in the future some nights. You’d both agreed that it was something you wanted in the long run, but with so much to do before you started to think about a family, you were both grown up enough not to let yourselves run too far ahead and worry about something that was still so far away in your lives.

L ⇴ LAUGHTER

Not a single soul in the world could make you laugh the way that Han could. Just the sound of his laugh was usually enough to bring a smile to your face, especially at the end of a long day. His quips, and sarcasm would have you in stitches for the most part of your days. Whenever he could tell you were down, one joke would be all that was needed in order to make you happy again. Hearing the sound of your laughter too, was always enough to make him laugh too, knowing he made you happy, made him his happiest too.

M ⇴ MISSING

Going away on tour was never easy for either of you, Han especially struggled with the distance and not being with you. He’d always be texting you whenever he had a minute just to make sure you were taking the best care of yourself. You’d do the same with him too, understanding that sometimes it did take a little while longer for him to reply. Whenever he went silent in the room, the boys all knew it was because he was missing you, so they’d try hard to pick his mood up and remind him that it wouldn’t be long before he saw you again. If you both had enough time, he’d always make sure to ring you and see your face too.

N ⇴ NICKNAMES

He’s not the most romantic when it comes to nicknames, he’ll tend to call you something like ‘squish,’ because he loves how you always curl up into him, or how cute and squishable your cheeks look whenever you’re laughing.

O ⇴ OBSESSION

Han is absolutely obsessed with your smile, it’s the brightest part of your day seeing you happy, if he could see nothing else but your happy face forever, it would make him a very happy man indeed.

P ⇴ PDA

Being affectionate with you in public isn’t always something Han does, he’s respectable of where the two of you are and where the limits are. He tends to keep his hand in yours quite a lot in public, and if he feels he can, he’ll exchange a kiss or two, but he’ll never go too crazy, unless he wants to wind up his other members.

Q ⇴ QUESTIONS

The majority of Han’s questions are along the lines of, “Y/N, do you want to hear a joke?” He’ll always be following you around or calling you up to tell you what he’s just come up with, and make sure that it makes you laugh.

R ⇴ RANDOM FACTS

Han loved to often swap out items of clothing in your wardrobe for items of his own. He’d always encourage you to wear his shirts and jumpers as he loved seeing you in them. You’d often go into your wardrobe to grab a jumper to find it no longer there and see one of Han’s hung up instead. When he goes on tour, he makes sure to wear a few of them first so you still have a part of him with you when he’s travelling around the world.

S ⇴ SEX

You can count on Han to still make you laugh, even at the most intimate moments, you’d begin being romantic, but it wouldn’t be long before he’d tickle you or tell you a joke. He is however, very handsy, he loves to explore your body, and with so much energy, he can spend a lot of time doing so. He very much follows your lead when it comes to intimacy, if you’re feeling it, so is he, but if you just want to cuddle, he’s down for that too.

T ⇴ TEXTS

Whenever he had a spare couple of minutes, he’d be texting you, or checking his phone to see if you had replied. He’s not too pushy, but if you don’t reply within a couple of hours, he’ll be ringing you to make sure you’re fine.

U ⇴ UNIVERSE

You were the person that gave Han the most attention, and the most love. He always liked to bring smiles to people’s faces, but no one’s opinion mattered more to him than yours, and making sure he made you happy was by far what was most important to him.

V ⇴ VACATION

It was rare for the two of you to find time in your schedules to go on holiday together, but when you did, Han loved adventuring. He could never just sit down and relax, he liked to find theme parks, water parks, zoos, anything that could get him up on his feet. It didn’t matter where the two of you were, so as long as you were making memories.

W ⇴ WHINING

If you don’t react to a joke quick enough, Han will get very pouty and wonder what he did so wrong to fail in sending you into a fit of giggles.

X ⇴ XXXXX

He’ll always kiss you when he wants your attention as he knows it’s such a weakness of yours. He’s very playful with his kisses, and certainly likes to tease you. He’ll usually kiss your cheeks or along your jaw as they’re the most accessible places for him to get to. His hands will often keep position so he can be in control and make sure he gives you enough attention, to leave you wanting just a little bit more.

Y ⇴ YOU

You were his biggest fan, and for that, he knew he had someone special in you

Z ⇴ ZZZ

He’ll always like to be nice and close to you when the two of you sleep, his hand will often be in yours or resting around your waist to keep you close to his side, as long as you’re there, he’ll definitely have a peaceful night sleep.

---

Masterlist

300 notes · View notes

fe-semi-decent-scenarios · 4 years

Note

Could I ask headcanons of Black Eagles flirting and crushing on Byleth (professor?)?

[Ask and you shall receive lol. Lately I’ve been busying myself with long reports, so I needed something cutsey to recharge.(Sorry if it’s complete rubbish lol) It’s not much but I hope you like it!]

Edelgard:

Ehh. She won’t be a student much longer anyways.

Byleth will always be her professor...but maybe another title can be ticked onto that list? She hopes so.

However, she doesn’t go too overboard. Just a few teasing gestures and quips every once in a while to sedate the budding sentiment in her heart

With more pressing issues over love, Edelgard can’t afford to play the role of lovesick schoolgirl

She sets side her personal feelings for the professor when around others. Instead they are treated as a good friend and adored instructor. Alongside the present given on Byleth’s birthday are a few other trinkets Edelgard picked up herself, you know, because she’s extra

When alone her thoughts often drift. There are many occasions where work ends up procrastinated

She keeps everything bottled up inside and doesn’t even hint at the idea of a crush to anyone. To love is to be compromised, to be compromised is to be weak, and to be weak is to fail

This is something she firmly believes until the support of her peers and affection from her professor begin to challenge it

Perhaps there is room for love in her future

“My teacher, you are an important companion to everyone here and to myself. You must never forget that”

Hubert:

Oh he is smooooth.

Yet subtle

He knows that he shouldn’t become too attached considering what’s to come in the future. His mind and body are her highness’ to command

....well, all good things come in moderation anyways. What’s a little meaningless flirting?

His flirting methods follow the ‘attack of opportunity’ plan. Meaning that he tosses in his quips when the time seems fitting

He knows what he is doing. Never assume otherwise

Obviously such conduct towards a teacher is unrefined. Does he care? The guy couldn’t give less of a sh*t

He has 100% commented on their dancing attire at least once

People should mind their own business lest they want to lose their tongue. Can’t gossip when you can’t speak, right?

If the professor doesn’t seem to mind then why should he stop? If they recuperate then that’s even better

It’s no fun when prey doesn’t fight back once in a while.

“Oh do go on. The droll behind your ever so taunting tone is intoxicating. It almost makes this insufferable lecture mildly entertaining” -shots fired. Professor or not, ‘love interest’ or enemy, Hubert does not tone down the sarcasm

No one even suspects that he has an interest in Byleth. He downright makes it appear that they are his sworn enemy (whether this is intentional or not? You decide)

Caspar:

‘Flirt’? ‘Caspar’? That’s funny

It’s not that he can’t do it. Caspar can be very charming when he wants to be, but why bother?

They’re his professor. If he starts kissing up to them then the others might start to think he’s pegging for special treatment

He also doesn’t want them to like a facade. He wants them to like him

Not that he would turn said special treatment down if offered. He d o e s want to get stronger, and the extra time with his “favorite”*wink* professor is a lucky bonus

He tends to have a ‘lingering eye’ that’s easy to pick up on if you catch my drift

he is not pure hearted, just a dunce. There is a difference

The boy blushes at every little action without even noticing

He loves to watch them train, both to better his own moves and to admire them without it seeming weird

Literally everyone knows that Caspar has a thing for Byleth before he knows it himself. He’s the kind that mistakes a crush for admiration

He’s also a big baby when it comes to them giving other people attention.

He justifies his interruptions as: “The professor doesn’t have time to do __ for __! They have enough to do as it is!”

Now what does that translate to in Caspar language?: “The time the professor spends doing __ is time they could spend with our class me”

Someone help him. He’s so thick headed it’s actually sad

Petra:

“My apologies. I will be returning after the clearing of my head”

She’s unfamiliar with the courting methods in Fodlan. Are they the same as in Bridgid?

Thoughts of the professor occasionally will interfere with her study time

Also her appetite. Normally she eats plenty at meals since she hates waste, but the professor makes her nervous about her etiquette

let’s just ignore that Byleth eats like a ravenous boar

She wants to take them to see Bridgid. It’s only natural to want to share the things you love with those you care about

She embraces the affection she feels. Byleth is a truly wonderful person and the royal family would gladly accept them if Petra expressed her feelings

When she returns she wants to ask them to accompany her

For now she will remain at their side both in battle, in leisure, and in spirit

Petra also isn’t one to approach with caution. The way she flirts is through honesty

If they do something she likes then she says so. If they look nice or are trying something new then she’ll comment on it. If she sees something in the shop that they might like, then she buys it

Petra is simple. She does for Byleth what she thinks will make them happy and doesn’t overthink it in the slightest

Dorothea:

The newfound feelings aren’t discouraged nor appreciated. It is a battle between practicality and love for her

Not because of them being a professor, but everything else

Mercenary, teacher, reincarnate, solider, tactician, etc.

Such a dangerous profession with so much blood on their hands. Are those the ones she wants to hold for the rest of their days?

Will they even live long enough to grow old with her?

She wants a reliable partner to take care of her and not give her a heart attack on a daily basis. So far only one box is checked

She will not be a widow at such a young age. She refuses

When these thoughts emerge Dorothea retracts from Byleth. There’s still the open friendliness that was there before, but now an extra barrier has been put up

She won’t go out of her way to give Byleth special treatment. Her search for a partner other than them will continue on

Maybe she’ll find someone else to smash these feelings so that there will be no need to confront them

Only after they ‘die’ will she stop suppressing them.

“To think that it took such a disaster for me to see the light. Why do people realize such things when it’s too late?” - she focuses on personal growth until the reunion. Relying on another person to prevent the past from reappearing is not what she wants.

Ferdinand:

The best way that Ferdinand can communicate his feelings is through words

He tries. He really tries to come across as a potential life partner for the professor. He can only be a student for so long, and they’re close in age. Logically there is nothing wrong with the possibility of a courtship

but because speaking ‘frilly’ is a normality the effect is not like how he hoped

When Ferdinand falls, he falls hard. Yes, he is a flirt. Yes, he stretches himself thin trying to please everyone. Yes, he has his quirks that make him extremely confrontational

So when he finds someone with the ability to make him both strengthen his morals, question the bigger picture, and grow as an individual (after the whole ‘noble’ mine-bomb) it’s a big deal

Therefore he will not relent in his pursuit of Byleth unless they explicitly tell him to stop. If words don’t work then he instantly pegs for quality time and acts of affirmation

Greets them every morning, carries their supplies, invites them to tea, delivers lost items, etc. People really do peg him as a kiss ass.

He doesn’t get the ‘heart flutters’ that people talk about. When he’s beside the professor he just feels energized. Like he could actually beat Edelgard ‘could’ is the key word in that scentence

“Good morning Professor! If your schedule allows it, would you care to join me for tea later this afternoon? Your company would make it the perfect level of sweetness”

Linhardt:

A firm believer of “age is but a number”

It’s more of his personal beliefs that tone down any pursuit of the professor. They are currently in a position of power over him that halts any relationship progression at a professional level.

So as any healthy person does: he vents any growing affection into his studies

He h a t e s how they make him restless.He’ll be feeling drowsy one moment but then their face will pop into his mind

He can’t even sleep through class. Not with them there

Actually works in the class’ favor since he starts contributing to the lectures. If you can’t beat them then might as well join them

This is how it is during pre-timeskip for the most part. Occasionally he will let his thoughts slip but never any action

He has crests to research and Byleth has students that seemingly want to die by the hour. There is literally no time to flirt

Now AFTER the timeskip, things are different. Linhardt is a blunt person which sometimes works in his favor. Just so happens that flirting comes naturally to him

most of the time it doesn’t though

“Could you refrain from doing that? It’s distracting” “Linhardt, i’m stretching. How is that distracting?” “You are an attractive individual. Need I say more?”

Life is short. He has no filter

Bernadetta:

“HI PROFESSOR!” “Afternoon Bernadetta. I see you’re out of your room today” “W-what? OH! Yes. Y-y-yEs i aM IM SORRY I’LL GO BACK PLEASE DON’T PATRONIZE MEEEEE”

She’s scared. What’s new?

The girl never expected to have these feelings. One night she was painting when what was supposed to be a cloud began to resemble her professor

It was downhill from there.

Her behavior is exactly the same as prior to her feelings. Being a naturally jittery person works to her advantage, no one suspects a thing!

Compared to simply being friends it will take longer for her to be comfortable

She will avoid Byleth at all times outside of lessons. It’s just too hard to communicate anymore

Eventually her outer shell will crack. The once new feelings will begin to feel normal and the old bernie will be back. Jittery, hyperactive, kind, lovable bernie

131 notes · View notes

kannra21 · 4 years

Text

Daisuzu shopping 💗

I thought about Daisuke's night at Kato's place and wondered if he'd ever consider repeating "the same mistake" again. Living a life of a commoner is strange for a millionaire, but he'll get the hang of it.

~o0o~

It was yet another busy day at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The crew managed to catch the criminals responsible for the robbery of the "Space Jewelry" shop in Ginza, the Tokyo's most famous upmarket shopping district. After he filled the report and got himself patched from a fight with one of the resisters, Daisuke returned to his mansion with bandages and sterile gauze wrapped around his upper arm. It wasn't that deep but the cut on his maroon dress shirt wouldn't be fixed so easily.

Suzue had enough of constantly throwing away beautiful garments of clothes and Daisuke's closet was becoming emptier by each day. Therefore, she decided to do him a favor and buy the suits by herself. She got dressed in her beige trenchcoat after their meal and before she left the residence, Daisuke stopped her and asked if he could join her in whatever she needed help with. This surprised Suzue because he was never interested in these kinds of things, she was usually in charge of the purchases. Daisuke insisted because, after he spent his time at Haru’s place, he realized just how important it was for him to get involved in the everyday life of a simple man and learn how things around him work. And Suzue was never happier to comply.

Daisuke felt a little odd that he had to blend in with the large crowd of simple commoners, the busy traffic, and the constant commotion. Does Suzue really have to deal with this every single day? He suddenly felt self-aware and didn't know where to put his hands. He saw a couple holding hands and felt a little awkward because he didn’t know how Suzue would react if he performed the same thing. Therefore he extended his elbow in a gentleman-like fashion and offered her to take it. She smiled the sweetest smile and accepted it, he didn't even know what he found so compelling in this situation but it made him content as well.

They arrived at Aoyama boutique in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods around. And although it has a great reputation in fashion industry, they offered casual designs with hight quality and inexpensive prices. The moment they walked in, Daisuke was instantly drawn to the expensive section of the shop but Suzue needed to drag him away to the part they were looking for.

"But Suzue, these suits aren't as good as the ones on display."

"That's because every store has a simple costumer tactic they're using for psychological reasons. For them, it is important that they have strong in-store visuals and display their best products in front of the complex. Our current task is to buy a bunch of suits with high quality and lower price. Remember, we're buying you work clothes which are easily expendable but made of quality materials to make them last longer. Besides, you already have suits for special occasions at home."

"I know but.." Daisuke felt discouraged.

Suzue could see his uneasiness and eyes averting in thought "What's wrong?"

"The day I bought Abura Emirate's seventh prince's car-"

"You did what?"

"It's true. We needed the car to catch two young people responsible for the robbery of the chocolate store."

Suzue laughed softly "This is silly."

"I know. And the prince was looking down on my clothes for some reason. I lost my nerve and made a quick purchase."

"You were rough again?"

"Yes I was."

Suzue approached him and put her hand on his cheek "Maybe the prince was boisterous but you are old money, Daisuke-sama, and a person like him won't survive long enough in the royal district. You're the real deal, so I advise you not to bother with such people if that's what you really want."

Daisuke looked surprised and somewhat flustered. Suzue panicked a little when she realized what she just did and nervously told them to continue looking for his clothes.

After they finished with the shopping, Suzue couldn't help it but to head towards the Aoyama Farmer's Market with fresh homemade products.

"I thought we were going home?"

"I know but these products are healthier than those from the supermarket. I'm only thinking about your health, you'll thank me later."

Daisuke just watched her walking enthusiastically towards one of the stands and he was shaking his head while smiling. He found it cute when she gets so carried away. Suzue spotted the jam of her choice stacked on a high shelf, she tried to reach it but even her high heels couldn't help her. In vain attempts to get it, she didn't notice Daisuke standing next to her and taking what she wanted. Their hands barely brushed against each other and they nervously looked at different directions. He handed it to her and she thanked him.

Noticing her tension, Daisuke wanted to relax her so they wouldn’t find themselves in similar situations and not to make her nervous anymore. He could only guess why this was happening but, being clumsy the way he was, he couldn't fully establish the reason of her behavior. However, he tried and proposed to take her to Cheery Blossoms at Aoyama Cemetery. Suzue instead, became so flustered upon hearing his suggestion that he got worried and asked her if he should take her somewhere else which she refused because she didn't want to disappoint him if he really wanted to go there.

And that's where they were, sitting on a bench and watching the peaceful sight of the beautiful cherry blossoms. Suzue was so thrilled to be there that she took pictures of the place and made selfies. She looked at them and commented how she couldn't wait to show them to Mrs. Kikuko. Now that she mentoned her, she wondered whether they should buy something for her as well and she went through all the possibilities of what they could bring her once they arrive home. Daisuke watched her with a soft smile on his face.

"Suzue is really amazing.. wait what am I thinking?"

Well, it's not true that Suzue wasn't amazing. of course she is. God she's incredible even, for the way she always took care of everything. Being surrounded by cherry trees just added to her unquestionable beauty. Her cheerful spirit and curious nature reminded him of someone close to his heart. Someone he loved dearly, a woman who left him a long time ago and not by her own fault. But looking at Suzue now, he realized that he wasn't unfortunate because he had her and that was everything he could ever ask for.

God was he in love with her? He couldn't tell. It's not that he didn't know, he was more worried about Suzue's reaction. How will she take it? Is it too risky to start off this soon? Is she still nervous being by his side? Why did she act this way? Why is she nervous when there's no reason for her to be nervous in the first place? They lived in the same mansion for so long. Why is he nervous upon thinking about her and her feelings? Oh. He thought he got his answers but he needed to check them first. He just hoped that he won't mess everything up.

While Suzue watched her photos and talked about plans for the dinner, Daisuke carefully tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her cheek. They looked at each other and what Daisuke wasn't expecting was Suzue taking his cheeks in both of her hands and locking his lips with hers. Daisuke was still somewhat hazy and Suzue smiled a little.

"Cherry flowers are really doing it for you, aren't they?"

"This doesn't minimize the fact that you’re beautiful the way you are."

Daisuke realized what he just said and he blushed. Suzue gave him a peck on the lips and stroked the back of his neck which sent shivers through his back. They looked at each other so lovingly that they didn't notice other people's presence until recently and not to attract too much attention, they decided to visit Pierre Herme's café where they shared ispahan- a delightful mélange of lychee, rose and raspberry. Daisuke insisted on feeding her with the excuse that she always spoiled him and that he needed to make up for it in a way, to which she let him. They had a great time together and they took a cake for grandma as well.

When they arrived home, Daisuke opened her the doors like a gentleman he was. Suzue took a couple of his bags to help him carrying them and grandma Kikuko saw them in the hallway.

"Hello children, how was your date?"

Suzue just blushed in embarrassment "W-what do you mean?"

"Haven't you spent half a day outside? Sounds like a date to me."

Suzue just took her things, excused herself and headed to the room to put Daisuke's suits in the closet.

Grandma smiled and Daisuke averted his eyes in amusement.

"How do you notice such this?"

"I had a hunch. So, how did it go?"

"It was fine. Without any complications or embarrassments for that matter. I.. needed some time to figure things out but in the end everything sat in its rightful place."

Grandma looked relieved and said "Sayuri was always shy about expressing her feelings but when she did, she showed it in the most genuine of ways. And every day you keep resembling her more. I'm glad you turned out the way you did, even if we have our own disagreements."

He smiled a little "Thank you, grandma."

And went upstairs to help Suzue with the stuff they bought. Maybe he couldn't see his mother again, but Suzue brought a positive change in his life. A change he'd always be grateful for and cherish.

@daisuzuship @innovativestruggles @narcopharmacist @unholysoggytea @riaymei @ieatcrumbs @cow-goes-oof @matchabucks @bluegleeful @levi-is-heicho @kakooshi @kokorokai @darknessrxse @fluffyyagiza @geniusmeemee @sungmnnnn @koalarin @alstroemerie @petiamaximoff38 @hellohellokookie @marialenikiforov

Here ya go, hope you like it! 💞 Like I mentioned before, if you don't want me to tag you in this post you can tell me and I'll remove the tag. 👍

#fugou keiji balance unlimited #millionaire detective balance unlimited #fkbu #millionaire detective #daisuke kambe #suzue kambe #daisuzu #daizue #daisuke x suzue #fanfic #one shot #ideas #hcs #scenarios

48 notes · View notes

fantasyinvader · 3 years

Text

Kamen Rider Saber: Finale and Series Review

Okay, before I start disemboweling this series I want to give the finale two points of props.

It was nice to see the main trio fight the big bad together rather than it just being the lead Rider.

The ending really feels nostalgic for me. It's like one of those old games or anime that tried to do something like Evangelion, mostly Star Ocean 3 comes to mind.

I was going to add another point: how the ending didn't have to rely on a cosmic retcon to turn things into a happy ending like Build or Zi-o did, leaving those who died dead and having some level of maturity. I was going to give the show that point, even if it felt like it was leading into Touma essentially becoming God, but then the show did it and...I'm going to be honest here, I was saying fuck you at the screen. Multiple times, kinda like when Doctor Who's 50th anniversary where it turns out Gallifrey wasn't destroyed, the Doctor sealed it away and just couldn't remember it. Like, that is the level of bullshit I was calling out, and with Doctor Who I only said it as an “oh fuck you” rather than just “fuck you fuck you fuck you” until I noticed I was doing this and stopped myself.

Got it? Good. Now let's put Kamen Rider Saber on the examination table, rip it open, and see what went wrong with it.

Oh my god, where to begin with this series?

You ever see a show or movie that tries to do too much for it's runtime? Maybe a book that has some ultimately good ideas, but it never fleshed them out properly? That's my biggest feeling with Saber. Individual parts of the story, some arcs and characters are good on paper. Not to mention, Touma has two incredibly sexy upgrades (the Ryuki-inspired Draconic Knight and the berserker Primitive Dragon). But there is just so much in here that, given the proper focus could have carried the show if properly developed. It's a case of quantity over quality.

But the main problem comes to it's central McGufffin, the Omniscient Tome. This book is supposed to have all knowledge and later on all stories contained within it. It's what powers Wonderworld and the Wonder Ridebooks that are the main collectable trinket of the season. But when you stop and think about it, Saber is a world where there is no free will and the antagonists are all rebelling against this in their own way. Kento's dad (former Kamen Rider Calibur) went rogue in the backstory because he was given a vision of the future through his sword, and it led to the former Saber taking up the role of Calibur and going rogue in order to learn the truth. When the other riders are turned against Touma, the argument is over how he's destined to become more powerful, making Touma seem like he's seeking power and could be a future threat. When Kento returns from the dead, he's haunted by visions of the world ending in multiple variations, leading to him trying to seal the Sacred Blades in order to stop it. But then Master Logos is revealed to be buttfucking insane, wanting to rebel against his position in the world. Then it turns out the monster faction's leader, was a former poet who lost hope when he learned that all his creations were already in the Omniscient Tome, so he decided he would end the world his way rather than the predetermined ending. And even then, the world still ended the way it was always fated to end, even with Touma disappearing to nu-Wonderworld if only for a year.

The world wasn't saved, it was destroyed and then rebuilt because Mei wrote an online post that encouraged people to share their stories, which they did in oblivion even though these guys shouldn't have seen the post at all and instead just heard her voice.

Like, maybe the nu-World has free will. I'd buy that. But when applied to the 47 episodes I've spent the last year watching (alongside the Zenkaiger crossover episode), it felt pointless because it ended the way it was foretold in the Omniscient Tome. It didn't matter that Storious was defeated, fate was not averted. It's like, the complaints people have about the MCU post-Loki. It doesn't matter that Tony decided to sacrifice himself, because he didn't have free will. He was always going to sacrifice himself. Thanos was always going to snap away half the universe, and it would always be undone because choices didn't matter before Loki's ending.

And that's not even going into how they final arc reveals that Touma can somehow create stories not present in the Omniscient Tome. That he can somehow, because the personification of Wonderworld choose him as a child, that for some reason he's the only writer in history that can do this. His catchphrase is about how he'll be the one who'll decide how the story ends, but with the idea that everything was set into stone? It's laughable.

Like, my problem with Zero One's ending was the last scene. Aruto had learned a lot about the Humagears and was an advocate for them finding their own dreams as they became self-aware AI. So him trying to treat a new humagear as just an amnesiac Is and try to help her “remember”? That felt like a betrayal of the character and what he stood for. But the post-series movie revealed that Is left a copy of herself in the Zero Two driver, and merged with the non-self aware nu-Is who the movie kept reminding us wasn't the Is we knew. Aruto even had a sobbing scene about what he was doing, lowkey acknowledging what he was doing but without overtly calling him out. It fixed Zero One for me after that last scene left me with a bad taste in my mouth that overshadowed an otherwise excellent show.

You can't fix Saber with a single movie, that's what I'm getting at here.

So, with that out of the way let's go into my thoughts on each character.

Touma: Is one of the blandest main riders in the franchise. His sense of style is probably one of the worst I've ever seen though. Like I know they like to try and give the main riders their own look rather than having them dress like normal people, like Aruto wearing a hoodie under his suit jacket alongside with his very bright shoes, but this wasn't a W or even something like Ghost (where honestly I really liked Takeru's robe-like shirts). What they eventually settled on with Touma was a stupid hat, really baggy pants, and shirts that look like they came out of a stern librarian's closest. You know, the type with her hair in a bun and their horned-framed glasses on a chain.

Rintaro:Is one of those cases where he's meant to be the secondary Rider of the series, but is overshadowed because the writer likes to use someone else more. The idea of him having to turn against the organization that raised him (like a child soldier) could have worked really well if the series had a more free will-direction. But alas.

Kento: Kento's the one character I found I could really like. His arc was more interesting during the first quarter, his return as Calibur, but then he returned to being Espada and, as much as I love that suit, he just became Touma's main cheerleader. Really, I felt like towards the end it was a waste of him, especially since he doesn't get any power ups like Rintaro did to solidify him as one of the main three. He definitely feels like a victim of rewrites or just the writer not knowing what he was doing.

Mei: The female lead. Honestly, I just found her annoying most of the time. A womanchild to match Touma's more manchild moments, with a potential romance with Rintaro thrown in to only be confirmed in a future movie. Really, she should have taken over as Espada after Kento disappeared early on (especially since she's one of the three in the Ending dance while Kento isn't).

Daishinji: I'd say best boy, but he became a background character pretty quick.

Ogami: An older Kamen Rider who is also a father to a young child? Cool, and could even have worked in contrast to Rintaro's raising as essentially a child soldier. But alas, it was not to be.

Ren: OMG. A somewhat psycho younger Rider, idolizing Kento, and his social Darwinist beliefs on strength leading to conflict as Touma gets more powerful, leading to him abandoning the team to train with an enemy monster? HOW DO YOU MAKE THAT NOT WORK! I swear, Ren should have been the secondary Rider of the series, with his changes in beliefs being used more effectively.

Yuri: One of the most competantly written characters in the entire show. One of the original swordsman who became his sword, returning after 2000 years and not only feeling the culture clash of then and now but even how the idea of what makes a hero has changed? Good boy. Also loved him using a shadow body early on during fights.

Sophia: Why are you even here?

Reika: Oh boy, the swordswoman who leads the rest to distrust Touma under the orders of Master Logos, and doesn't sway from this until he's proven to be batshit insane? And even then, reluctant to join the others? Could have been better, especially if her relationship with her brother didn't come across as incesty. Though, could we please return her to Magine in Zenkaiger? Reika hugging her was really cute, in a socially awkward type of way.

Ryoga: Reika's brother. With his powers being something out of Jojo, time manipulation powers which are a bit hard to explain. He starts them and to his opponents things seem like the fight is continuing as normal, but he really exists outside of that and then can attack from a blindspot? Could have been really good with if the series had gone Team Free Will is all I'm saying.

Master Logos: What I mentioned above, but his Rider suit is one I'm in lust with. Just laughs like a madman and you're wondering why Reika and Ryoga don't rebel against him earlier.

The Megid: Two are a waste who I never bothered to learn their names. Fall out of focus for a bit and only return to be beaten, with the sad fact that they were once human. Storious is the exception, but even then I felt he was a little too late to save the series.

Tassel: Bon Lecture! I still hate you you weirdo, even if your death scene made me feel a little sad. The fact that you treated the early parts of the show as a story you were reading? Have you seen my other complaints?

As for the message of what the show tried to say? I don't really mind it. It's encouraging people to love stories, even if they are copies (considering the controversy of Time Paradox Ghostwriter and Cheat Slayer within recent memory, I'm trying not to make jokes about Saber encouraging plagiarism). And I don't think that's a bad thing in itself. Hell, how many stories take stuff from older stories and just tweak elements to make them their own? I love the Elric saga, but that was based on old legends and meant to subvert the likes of Conan the Barbarian, and some other stories I've liked have borrowed elements from it as well. The idea that stories can be used to pass on our hopes, thoughts and dreams to others is pretty nice as well, rather than writing being a form of masturbation on the author's part.

But in the shadow of the Omniscient Tome and it's implications, I really feel the story should have taken another route.

A lot of Riders start of weak, having to introduce the plot as well as the main release of whatever trinket they want kids to gorge themselves on this year. But they usually start getting better towards the end of the first quarter, while maybe stalling a bit towards the end of the second/third. Saber was a series that I felt never really found it's legs. Too many bareboned plot threads on the go, dropping some for a while only to pick them up again after they've been forgotten about. This is not a good series, to be honest I think Zi-O and even Ghost were better, and really feel it would have been better handled in the hands of someone who could actually write.

Not to mention, this gave me flashbacks of Power Rangers Megaforce over how much this series relied on fight scenes. Throw in greenscreen everywhere, lack of civilians...oh god, it is Kamen Rider Megaforce. And it felt like Saber was trying to have a story, unlike Megaforce, but it has the same “it’s a kid’s show, we don’t have to try that hard” energy.

1 note · View note

gagmebucky · 5 years

Note

24, 28 & 32 with charles blackwood, pretty please? and i loooove your blog so much!! also, i tried really hard to try and find the “before you request” page/link on your blog and couldn’t find it at all. so so sorry if i did something wrong ahh! 😩💗

you are SO polite and adorable! dw about it ❤️🥰 I got you 🥰❤️

“Behave.” // “I don’t want to hear your excuses anymore.” // “If you interrupt me one more time, so help me god.” (includes bodyguard!charles blackwood x princess!you, royalty au, violence in your defense, spanking, fingering, d/s dynamics, light bondage.)

do not repost.

—

“If you think because you’ll be queen, you speak to me that way—” Duke Eldridge is snarling at you. (or is it Eileen? Alfred? You don’t know. All you know is his nation is much smaller than yours.) His mature features are screwed up in red-faced, raging embarrassment, and his finger jabs out with the intention of shoving you backward.

Who knew pointing out an elder royal’s causal, insecurity-based sexism then making a joke about his overcompensating demeanor would have him seconds away from throttling you? Well, you did—it wasn’t necessarily your intention, but it was always a possibility.

It’s always a possibility, because you’ve done this many times before. But it’s like, being the princess, future queen, to kingdom powerful as yours that means you can go against these assholes in the way their people dream to.

Before the Duke’s index touches your chiffon clad shoulder, it’s being twisted around his back. A sickening CRACK! preluding his wimpish cries before combat boots swipe underneath his ankle that sprawls him across the ballroom floor.

The expanse had already been quieting at the confrontation, but now is effectively silent, grandiose gowns and tuxedos locked tensely on your personal guard’s wrath. A usually charming man, six feet tall with an equally intimidating mass, shifting in the physical embodiment of a tornado wrecking whatever’s in your path—and right now, he’s intent of ripping Duke Oldboy out of your way.

Charles sets a heavy, leather clad boot against his throat, blackened blue eyes narrowing. “Didn’t anyone inform you disrespecting the princess is cause for death?”

The other guards are clamoring in to make good on his word, hauling the now blanched royalty to meet his deathly fate. And, you use to try and convince him that such consequences are far too extreme, but it’s never been successful. Instead, your personal blackguard has you escorted out before you can lament your dissent.

Muttering under your breath, you don’t bother revolting, allowing two armed wards to bring you back to your suite. Truth be told, you’ve always hated the whole ostentatious party scene, and Duke whatshisface might deserve what your lifetime protector is furied to give him.

When Charles is finished, he promptly locates you. Barging into your suite without knocking as you preen in your vanity mirror, he’s splashed in blood, bow tie loose, jacket off with his white long sleeve rolled to his forearms. The anger emitting from his tightly coiled form is almost suffocating, the majority directed at you, apparent as his icy blues pierce you.

“Cosa ti ho detto, principessa?” The slow drawl of baritone Italian cuts through the air, the switch in language a calm indication of true lividity, deadly as he repeats, “What did I tell you, princess?”

Your teeth gnaw on your bottom lip, dithering between snarking back—because might as well—and accepting your fate. A bead of silence, and he narrows on you in silent demand. “Behave,” you finally say with a mild hissed quality. “You told me, comportarsi.”

“So you did hear me.” With a sardonic smile, a juxtaposition to the fire beneath the storming waters of his eyes, he presses forward, plucking a cloth off your vanity to clean blood from his split knuckles. “A simple fucking order to follow, correct? And yet—”

“It wasn’t my fault!” you suddenly blurt in a belated realization the former of the previous choices is best. “You can’t blame me. He was a dick to me first! Was I not suppose to relatitate?!”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses!” he explodes, slamming his hand on the wooden desk, almost shattering your mirror. “You were suppose to get me so I could handle it. How many times do I have to tell you that?! Princess, you know I don’t like to repeat—”

You stomp your foot like a petulant child despite being a grown woman, insisting your shifty innocence: “All I did was make a joke—”

“If you interrupt me one more time, so help me god—” he snarls with another dangerous step toward you, fists flexing at his sides.

“Or what?” you challenge, an infuriating smirk tilting. You’re the motherfucking princess; your own father doesn’t speak to you like that. “What are you gong to do, Charles? Spank me?”

The mocking prompt strikes him, first nonplussed by your blatant disrespect, processing it with parted lips. It evaporates instantly, a wicked curl of his redden lips, a considering gleam like white tips on waves in his eyes. Your stomach dips with his delighted, determined, “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

His hand shoots out to yank you forward, stumbling you into his chest while he buries it in your hair. Ruining the updo, locks falling down your back, strands cupping your cheeks, he forces your gaze on his. “Take your gown off, princess,” he growls, watching defiance flicker in your expression. His grip tightens, a sting to your scalp that has you gasping. “Don’t make me rip it.”

Your hands are trembling underneath the heat rising in your center as you grasp his wrist. “You wouldn’t,” you whimper, but the look in his eyes tells you different. Now, you’re scrambling to peel it off, and he releases you to shakily unlace the tight then flowing fabric. It’s a gorgeous piece done by hand, a blended A-line with thin straps, tied at your waist.

Unknotted, it pools around your feet, leaving you indecent. In nothing but your undergarments, it’s most exposed a man has ever seen you—a fact attributed to him (not that you have a problem with).

Goosebumps arise in the wake of his lascivious orbs, a cold heat invoked solely by his gaze and not the low temperature of your bedroom. Your face flushed, his eyes roam covetously over your skin, pushed up cleavage to the line of your navel, down the tempting V of your thighs.

A soft sound erupts from the base of his throat as he nods to your covered flesh. “What’re you waiting for?” he growls. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“You only said the gown,” you simper despite better judgement to simply obey.

Once again, you’ve astounded him and pissed him off all in one go. “You know the things I’m capable of, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve killed, and you still test me?”

You don’t back down, you should, but you don’t. “As if you’d done any of it if weren’t to protect me,” you snark matter of factly.

You’re right, and his eye twitches. “Bend over.”

“Make me.” You fold your arms and turn your back to him.

You can’t help it, truthfully. There’s an addicting rush to provoking a man like him—testing his thin patience because you’re the only who can without having a death wish.

He chuckles, low and humorless, and a shiver slithers down your spine. His hand wraps around your arm tightly, bringing his face beside yours. “You have three seconds to lay across my lap, or, instead of spanking your ass, I’ll shove my cock in it,” he utters calmly in your ear, syllables slow so the commitment to his threat sinks in.

Lightning jolts through your veins; a spike of arousal so powerful, it’s dizzying. Your breathing catches as you twist around to face him. The tension fizzles between you two, the unflinching demeanor, and your desire because of it.

“You can’t - you aren’t allowed—” you mean to speak strongly, but your voice cracks, vaguely a whimper. “You’re not suppose to say things like that to the princess.”

The hand around your arm unfurls, and he perches himself expectantly on the edge of your bed. Remaining aplomb, he merely looks at you, legs spread wide in anticipation of you. “One, two—”

Your body springs into action before your mind thinks to, draping your abdomen across his muscular thighs. There’s an echo of humiliation in baring yourself like this for him, a perverse pleasure in knowing this is a disgraceful act of princess to do—much less with the man who’s grown up alongside you in purpose of your safety. An irony there, too.

You squirm. Not your fault with an uncomfortable sensation itching at your skin in being in a position so foreign, both dynamically and physically.

Half balancing in a plank, your hands are pawing for stability on his thighs, legs shifting between finding footing flat on the ground and straightening. It’s a flail, subconsciously trying to irritate him like he’s done with you.

“Be still,” he orders but it’s just so awk—“That’s it!” he suddenly growls. Then the sharp riiiiiiiiiip of your brasserie fills the air, roughly tearing the elastic down the middle of your back and off your chest. In a similar fashion, he’s grabbing your wrists and lace immobilizes your arms just above your ass.

“C - Charles!” you whine when your vehement wiggling does nothing to budge the knot. It straddles the edge of painful and lax; a slight strain in your shoulders as a reminder it’s there yet blends uniquely with everything else you’re feeling.

“Unless you want me to gag you, I suggest you keep your pretty mouth shut,” he warns, a husky chuckle when you do just that, teeth worrying your bottom lip in replacement. “Don’t think being good now is gonna get you outta this ‘cause it’s been a long time coming, princess.”

His hand caresses your behind lightly, palming each cheek through the thin fabric of your underwear. Little noises catch in your throat, almost gasping beneath his touch, pushing to your toes in an effort to receive more.

“You’ve just got the best ass I’ve ever seen.” There’s a guttural factor to his rough praise, emphasized with his fingers kneading into your skin. “Wearing those tight skirts and dress, you were just begging for me to get my hands on them. The amount of times I had to stop myself from bending you over my knee like this.”

It’s debauched, but you want it—whatever it is. An ache throbs below like never before, and you’re helpless to soothe it, completely dependent upon him, like so many times before.

Your pinned hands clench, and you shake your head. “Charles,” you moan, beginning to wiggle, “you’re not allowed - you’re not suppose to treat the princess like—”

“If you were acting like a princess, I wouldn’t have to instill this lesson into you,” he hisses before wrenching your panties down your thighs, and you don’t get to question lesson because his palm is cracking down.

Calloused flesh on soft rings deafeningly within your bedroom, your loud cry mixed in as burning blossoms through your bottom. The pain drips low between your thighs, a confusing flash of satisfaction before disappearing with the wined back of his arm.

“Oh, God,” you warble, and you’re wriggling again, your head heavy over his thigh. “C - Charles…”

“You can do whatever you want, princess, but make no mistake, when it comes down to it, you will listen to me.” Charles twists your hair around his arm, enforcing an arch in your back to offset the sting in your scalp. It effectively stops any residual writhing, and it allows him to brace your hips firmer under his knee. You know you’re going to get it, so why are flooded in scathing eagernesss?

In a false sense, he’s rubbing over each cheek gently, and you’re squeezing your eyes shut in preparation. “You can do whatever you want, princess, but make no mistake, when it comes down to it, you will listen to me.” His voice washes over you like gravel. “And I’m going to make sure you don’t forget it.”

The wind whistles as he draws back.

“When I say, don’t do something, you don’t fucking do it.” THWACK! “When I say behave, you will behave.” THWACK! “And if you don’t—” THWACK! “You won’t sit right for weeks.”

Each blow is centered between your respective asscheeks, an evenly toned bruise to span across in the morning. Your ass can light a candle with how hot it burns, sizzling with aftershocks as the cold air breezes past your aching flesh.

You jolted with every hit, whimpers escaping, but ultimately withstood the pain. Now, with the release of your hair, you’re panting incessantly, your cheek resting on his lap, lingering tremors down your back. To make matters worse, liquid lust is trickling down your thighs, tickling and uncomfortable.

“Do you understand me, princess?” Charles pauses then, THWACK! But this time, he’s angled lower, a smack on slick flesh. “Dimmi che mi capisci, principessa.”

“I - I understand,” you rasp.

He makes an approving hum. “Good.” His hand returns to you, massaging your stinging bottom, briefly rubbing his thumbs into the tender muscle. Then he moves lower, dipping his fingers over your folds teasingly. “Look what you’ve done,” he murmurs as his fingers move lower, brushing across your dripping folds. “You’re making a mess all over my pants. I have half a mind to make you lick it up.”

“S - sorry,” you immediately moan, careening back in hopes of relieving stimulation.

He chuckles. “S’okay,” he says. “The question is, should I oblige the princess? Already spoiled rotten. Giving in would only make it worse, right?”

As he speaks, you feel his eyes taking you in greedily: how unmistakably you glisten underneath the light, the darkened glow of your abused ass, the shake of your bound wrists. His fingertips are teasing, rough pads tracing your entrance then sinking down to encircle your engorged clit.

“Please, please.” You strain to look back at him, for him to see the sincere need in your eyes. “Charles, please. It hurts,” you whimper, and you aren’t referring to the spanking.

“Princesses aren’t suppose to beg,” he mocks. “But I do live to take care of you, so…”

His fingers finish the sentence, honing in on your nub, direct pressure beginning to swirl hot and steady circles.

“O - oh!” you gasp when the furnace in your belly suddenly roars to life.

Your tippy-toe footing fumbles, but he’s anachoring a hand curled around one of your thighs, fixing your stability while he plays.

Wrists tied, bent over his lap, all you can do is take it, moans and mewls, limited squirming. His touch is skilled, tactful compared to your otherwise virgin experience (again, his fault, although without complaints.)

Palming your sex, heel slotted between the heart shape of your ass, his arrowed fingertips are working with an ever increasing pace, sponsored by your excessive wetness.

“Prissy princess, I should’ve known you’d have the cutest little pussy. So soft, and wet for me,” he croons above you, not a slow in his ministrations, the pit in your stomach preparing to combust. “But I think it’d be even prettier after I’ve fucked it all abused.”

Your nails cut crescents into your palms, gasping as the dizzyingly sweet sensations swell. “Charles, oh, God,” you moan, eyes shutting while waves begin to crash.

“Is that what my filthy, little princess wants?” he continues, a ravenous note to the husky question. “Wanna match with this pretty spanked-red ass of yours? Fuck you so you’ll still feel the burn days later?”

“Charles—”

A cocoon of heat engulfs you snugly, blazing as convulsions involuntarily wrack your body, so strong you almost rip your ties off. For over several seconds, the most pleasurable sensation render you wild, only waning with the reluctant end of his caress.

Once he’s sure it’s died down, a few twitches as you go slack, you’re being maneuvered. A careful and gentle shift places you on your bed, laying you out in your belly because your ass still resounds with smarting pain. Your bra-turned-bind is pulled free, your arms instantly going underneath your face despite your wince at the sudden movement.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he says but you already know it. “I’m going to take care of you, princess.”

[masterlist / feedback]

#charles blackwood x you #charles blackwood x reader #sebastian stan characters #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan smut #WHEW this was long #but ykw would b cute? a companion piece where they’re trying to force you to marry someone who’s just downright awful #l and charles just ends him #completely going against the king who he’s *suppose* to be loyal to) then knocks up with his heir #so they have no choice but to stop w the arranged marriage #my writing

410 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 4 years

Text

Biden does not have the nomination yet. It is not yet a matter of “a vote for Biden is a vote against Trump, anything else is a vote for Trump.”

And until it is, until either Sanders or Biden has all the delegates they need, peoples’ criticisms of Biden are absolutely relevant. And even should Biden GET the nomination, c’mon guys, there is STILL room to be aware of everything Biden IS and everything about him that needs OPPOSING, even WHILE still opposing Trump. This is not counter-intuitive....if you are against most of what Trump has done, because it is WRONG rather than it is just Trump who did it, and did it in obvious ways, then this is vital, I’d argue, because Biden isn’t going to address a lot of it once in the White House unless people DO keep in mind what is and isn’t likely to still be an issue in a Biden presidency.

This isn’t divisive, this is NECESSARY. If you can’t find a way to hold both truths in your mind: “Trump absolutely needs to be ousted, and opposed, and his works undone,” as well as “Biden has a long history of doing harm in his various seats, and he is the lesser of two evils ONLY in some respects and its important to know what those are because evil is still evil”....that’s something to WORK on, not just “Biden or bust.”

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for “Bernie or bust” either. I’m simply saying: This is all more complicated than accusing people of having brain worms for thinking “Guy who won’t expand health care as much” is the same as “Guy who is killing people.”

Let me be perfectly, 100% clear: If Biden gets the nomination, if it comes down to him or Trump, I am voting for Biden, hands down. But I will be doing so not thinking that Biden is in any way a more moral choice, but because I think the true danger of Trump is in him serving these past years as a rallying point for all the most vocal white supremacist and homophobic and misogynistic elements within our society, allowing them to feel emboldened and having no shame about expressing their hate openly. I think the true danger of Trump’s presidency is how little of it is actually Trump doing anything other than acting as a magnet that draws all focus and trains all eyes on him, even as his cabinet stocked to over-flowing with white-supremacists, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic and eugenics-advocating assholes go about ACTIVELY advancing agendas of hate behind him while he serves as the catch-all for all opposition.

That absolutely needs to be opposed, and defeated, but fuck this self-defeating nonsense that this means the work will be OVER the second Trump is gone, whenever and however that happens. And I think for as much as people accuse some of us of doing the enemy’s work for them by sowing division and dividing our efforts and how this is doomed to be self-sabotaging and backfire on all of us, I think the same is true of saying things like the only real drawback to Biden is ‘doesn’t want to expand Health Care as much as Sanders whereas he’s otherwise not remotely comparable to Guy Who Is Killing People.”

Because BOTH ARE SELF-DEFEATING. Both set up only ONE THING as a goal or a focus that needs tackling and carries the implicit “and then we can rest” instead of holding up as a goal or focus that both need defeating or plenty of people are still going to die, as they’ve been dying all along.

If you’re going to go with the Devil You Know because he’s also the Lesser Evil of the two Devils You Know....

You still need to know who he is, and who he is is not just guy who won’t expand health care as much and claiming him to be such and nothing more is DANGEROUS.

Vote for Biden if it comes down to him and Trump, yes! But do so in a way that will let you get right back to work opposing all the shit HE prioritizes and stands for, every bit as much as you claim to oppose all the same with Trump!

Stop treating this as an impossible ask. It is not as simple as evil or not evil. It is as simple as making the choice that ensures most people survive....and then from there, actually ensuring that means that the most people survive.

Which can only happen when you keep in mind how Biden will still be dangerous even once Trump is gone, and who will still need protection from him and his administration and policies, even once Trump’s are gone....and especially because there are a number of those policies that Biden, based on his own policies of the past, is not likely to prioritize or even be helpful in getting dismantled.

Any posts responding to this with anything remotely on the lines of “you’re encouraging people not to vote for Biden and thus helping Trump win” will be ignored the same way they ignore that THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS, OR SAYS, OR WANTS. I am not responsible for your inability to read what this post actually says, or your unwillingness to hold two not actually opposing viewpoints and priorities in your head at the same time. I am being as clear as I possibly can be on what I will be doing if Biden is the nominee, and why, and how none of that makes Biden’s worst flaws or history irrelevant or a distraction from Trump.

First off:

“Won’t expand healthcare that much” IS actively letting people die. GoFundMe’s biggest usage is trying to raise money for people whose health care isn’t keeping them alive and most of those goals are never actually met, and that’s literally killing people.

Please be cognizant of what kind of people are most being killed this way. Ones who have the most trouble MEETING (often) impossible goals. The most marginalized members of society.

If anyone is still framing the health care issue in their own heads as a matter of whether or not they can always pay for their own medical expenses, or will always be able to, please understand this disregards the many people who flat out can’t, and die every day as a result. Homeless people, people kicked out of their homes for being gay or trans or neurodivergent, not having access to quality health care for those reasons or turned away by the specialists they desperately need because the specialists’ only concerns are they can’t afford to pay. Ex-cons who are largely barred access to jobs with good medical benefits, and are largely barred access to the goodwill of random internet strangers willing to shell out some money of their own for their gofundme campaigns. And so on, and so on.

Absolutely the camps and detention facilities are a huge ongoing issue, but its a huge ongoing issue MOST being talked about throughout these entire past four years by a lot of the exact same leftists being accused of taking focus away from the very issues they are doing the most to highlight.

Now onto Biden specifically:

Are Biden’s positions on everything identical to Trump? No, but for starters, Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, responsible for building more prisons, increasing prison sentences, deploying more cops, and increasing and furthering the exploitation of prison labor, etc.

He’s long been a major proponent of capital punishment, directly leading to the creation of over 60 new capital offenses including murder of federal law enforcement officers. And oh yeah, Biden also voted against limiting appeals and rejecting racial statistics in death penalty appeals.....which would be great if the vast majority of the new death penalty offenses he had a hand in creating - like the murder of police - haven’t been massively disproportionate in who they end up targeting and who ends up charged with and convicted of them:

Like carjackings, acts of terrorism (just hardly ever acts of domestic terrorism aka the mass shootings of white supremacists, antisemites and disgruntled white guys), and the many drug-related offenses that stem from him being known for decades as a ‘drug warrior’ behind many leading efforts in the war on drugs.

Such as how in the 80s he was the head of the Senate Committee responsible for passing most of the most punitive measures against drug users, during the crack epidemic that was largely created to target and make scapegoats of lower class drug users and PoC, whom were at the time denoted as statistically more likely to use crack cocaine than powder cocaine....

And given that Biden himself sponsored and co-wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which specifically and deliberately laid out hugely harsher penalties for crack cocaine use than were received for being convicted of using power cocaine.....aka a particular favorite past-time of rich white guys (including politicians and political staffers)....all during and throughout the crack epidemic Biden and his cohorts happily whipped up public moral outrage about....

This directly makes him and his political career an inciting element in the huge disparities in prison populations, all stemming from this drug warrior’s leading role in a war on drugs he helped get underway and become what it eventually became in the first place. (Please keep in mind he was famously critical of REAGAN for not being strongly enough anti-drug, as well as George H. W. Bush.)

Granted, Biden admitted his role in crafting and enforcing legislation that led to such huge disparities, at least by the time he was asked about such things in the debates of the 2007 Democratic primaries.

But to my knowledge, to this day he has yet to ever similarly walk back his role in things like oh, the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act in 1983. Which directly empowered and has steadily more and more further increased the power of drug enforcement agencies to seize assets of even just those charged with anything from drug possession to intent to distribute. Which in turn, almost always directly affects the ability of defendants to pay for their own defense instead of being limited to the representation of overworked and underpaid public defenders. Not to mention limits their ability to repeatedly avail themselves to the unlimited appeals Biden nominally has always been in favor for.

Or there’s the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Bill which was a bit of shady shitmanship that squeezed through thanks to being attached to an unvetted, unrelated and super fucking vague child protection bill that has often been criticized as overreaching in scope. And this IDAP Bill, despite its superficially stated intentions, has historically most often been used by DEA agents as an intimidation tactic wielded against drug-reform protestors at rallies and other such events.

Biden might never have openly had his support base chanting Build the Wall, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which partially funded the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border.

And his stance for over ten years about whether he’d allow sanctuary cities to ignore federal law has been a clear and concise NO, which y’know, given that’s kinda the whole point of sanctuary cities....and given that sanctuary cities have been absolutely CRUCIAL to even attempting to stave off the worst of Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, travel bans, etc.....this may not make him worse than Trump, but I fail to see that particular stance helping all that much even after Trump is gone.

Because Biden might not have put the same efforts into motion as Trump has, had he been the one in office, but I do not for a second believe he will in ANY way make reversing or undoing some of them his priority. All of that is just as likely to be an uphill battle in a Biden presidency. His track record speaks to itself as to how much he’s likely to make anything like abolishing ICE or getting rid of the detention facilities his first order of business - or even second, third, or even tenth....UNLESS PEOPLE FORCE HIM TO MAKE IT THAT, INSTEAD OF JUST TRUSTING THAT HE WILL BECAUSE HE’S NOT TRUMP.

The caveat I have here is that Biden and his inner circle and support base are unlikely to ever be that visibly resistant to repealing Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, or that visibly in favor of what’s happened there, and he isn’t going to campaign on a platform of overt racism.....but that’s kinda the point. He’s never needed to, in order to still do a huge amount of damage to an untold number of lives over the decades, all while being able to claim to be nominally or superficially progressive and use that to advance his own career.

Trump doesn’t care about hiding his racism....and Biden doesn’t try all that hard to either. But he’s always known he doesn’t really have to try all that hard....just to hide it just enough to claim it isn’t there and its nothing worth anyone worrying about or pushing back against. Plausible deniability - made all the easier and all the more plausible by having someone like Trump to point to and know just by doing so people will breathe a sigh of relief because whew, at least he’s not Trump. Not that this is likely a huge comfort to the people killed long before now, due to his prison policies, capital offense expansion, and war on drugs that happen to not be the right kind of drugs, or being snorted in the right form of those drugs, or snorted by the right people.

And putting a face and a claim to things that absolutely none of his actual efforts back up or are even aimed in the same direction as....this is something that extends to pretty much everything else about him.

Yeah, he reversed his stance on voting for DADT and DOMA in years prior, when as Vice President he said he was totally fine with the idea of men marrying men and women marrying women and each enjoying all the same benefits and civil rights and liberties as anyone else. Course, that doesn’t actually reverse how he voted, nor did he actually have anything to do with striking down the results of his and others’ votes as unconstitutional.

And yeah, Biden drafted the Violence Against Women Act, which he’s famously called the most significant piece of legislation he’s crafted throughout his political career and the one he’s most proud of, citing it as the beginning of a ‘historic commitment to women and children victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault.’ Not that it helped Anita Hill that much, nor that he ever seemed all that interested in helping, believing or supporting her, despite whatever he may have claimed a couple years ago at the start of the #MeToo movement or around the Kavanaugh proceedings, when he stated he’d always believed Anita Hill and voted against Clarence Thomas.

(With Thomas of course still a member of the Supreme Court, alongside Kavanaugh now, thanks to Trump. And Thomas still being famously considered one of its most conservative justices. And still someone whose appointment to the Court might not ever have happened had not Biden - the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing Thomas’ nomination to the court - made the choice to never call forward four female witnesses who’d been waiting in the wings the whole time to testify on Hill’s behalf and speak to her credibility. With this decision of Biden’s only ever being described as the result of a ‘private, compromise deal between Republicans and then-Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden,’ after which all four other women’s testimony was deemed irrelevant, and thus a waste of the court’s time.

And sure, Biden as of just last year supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, that he’s only supported since as far back as ‘76. The Hyde Amendment, of course, blocks federal funding from being used to pay for an abortion except in the specific provision of an abortion being needed to save the woman’s life, or when the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape. Of course, even through all those decades that Biden did support the Hyde Amendment, he pretty famously never felt it went far enough, and thought it shouldn’t include a provision allowing for federal funds to be used to pay for an abortion that stemmed from incest or rape. But that doesn’t speak to his personality or priorities either, obviously, since he took it back (while preparing to hopefully run against pussy-grabbing Trump).

And Biden’s not as interested in giving billionaires tax cuts as Trump is, for instance, since he was always against even George W. Bush’s tax cuts for Americans who made more than one million dollars a year. He was always of the belief that this money should then be put in a dedicated Homeland Security and Public Safety Trust Fund, to invest specifically in increased law enforcement. Joey does love him some cops.

And Biden’s not quite as likely to go to war compared to how often Trump seems to have us poised on the brink of it. Biden only favored sending American troops to Darfur, is a self-described Zionist who has defended various acts of aggression by the Israeli army against Palestinians, and was of the opinion that the biggest problem with our involvement in the Syrian Civil War was that Europe didn’t trust we had a plan there.

Of course, much like with numerous other stances, its not like there’s not plenty to point to as proof Biden’s invested in keeping us out of any international conflicts. For instance, he’s been a longterm advocate for ‘hard-headed diplomacy’ against Iran that included pushing for coordinated international sanctions against them...except then he voted against a measure to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, said war with Iran wouldn’t just be a mistake, it’d be a disaster, and threatened to personally begin impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush if he attempted to start a war with Iran. This was in December of 2007. Course, then in September 2008, he said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was a terrorist organization and that the Bush administration already had the power and right to declare them as such, soooo......hmm.

And Biden did vote against the first Gulf War in 1990. Then supported the use of force against Iraq in 1998 and expressed a commitment to taking down Hussein, even if it meant being in it for the long haul....which as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, he ratified by voting to authorize war against Iraq, going on record as firmly believing that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons.

Then again, in 2006, Biden did go on to say that the original authorization for going to war with Iraq had been a mistake that was due to Bush “using his congressional authority unwisely” (and that Biden had no role in unwisely helping him obtain), and that there were no stockpiled weapons in Iraq and likely never had been.

Which Biden then followed up in 2008 by saying in his opinion the real mistake had been in labeling Iraq the focus of the War on Terror, instead of Afghanistan, which he believed was really the focus all along, and that we should leave Iraq....and shift our focus fully back there. Because see, the problem was the war in Iraq was a war of choice, whereas the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity.

And he did have this to say in 2011 about getting involved in the conflict in Libya: "NATO got it right. In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

Course, five years later in 2016, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Biden stated he was "strongly against going to Libya" due to the instability it would cause within the country. He said, "My question was, 'OK, tell me what happens.' He's gone. What happens? Doesn't the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn't it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? And it has."

And then there’s his stances on North Korea...and Russia...and Central America....and Cuba.....all of which can be summed up as “that’s Joe Biden’s hot take on this issue, tune back in next week where he plays devil’s advocate with himself and argues the exact opposite.”

So yeah, all of that and more is who Biden is and always has been. Do not buy into him being someone who has grown and changed, because he’s more recently said the right things - especially as opposed to Trump. Biden has ALWAYS said the right things for the time he’s saying them at.....and history has always shown him willing to say the exact opposite, as soon as its more to his advantage to change his tune to that instead.

He is not the lesser of two evils, IMO, he is just the less overt of two evils. But make no mistake.....I can not tell anyone what to do, nor am I trying to, ultimately, beyond just asking people to BE AWARE of things like this. I can only really tell you what I’m going to do, and if Biden gets the nomination, I AM going to vote for him, not just to get rid of Trump....but everyone Trump brought with him, and the way Trump’s spent four years assuring every hateful piece of shit in America that they are not alone in their hate, and they have presidential approval.

I am simply ALSO saying, at the same time, that I do believe that even a Biden presidency can help push back against this, by virtue of at least being the American people saying We Do Not Support Trump or Want Him Back in enough quantities as to shame at least some of the more hateful and cowardly elements of our society back into silence.....

But that even while doing so, it IMO will remain MORE CRUCIAL THAN EVER to keep in mind.....none of those people or their hate simply sprang into being when Trump took office. They were here all along, and just because BEFORE Trump many of them weren’t brave enough to be seen out of the shadows, doesn’t mean that politicians like Joe Biden haven’t seen them and been fine with them and even agreeing with them and catering to them in various ways all along. Its just, unlike Trump, Biden cares too much about being seen as doing and saying the right things, the progressive things, to do any of those dealings openly, speak to any of those elements directly. But that’s never meant he’s above dealing with them, or profiting from their support.

So elect Biden if that’s what we have to do, even if only because his desire to be seen as progressive is at least a lever to ply between him and such elements of our society, where no such lever exists between Trump and them at all.

But it needs to be remembered that such a lever is only as effective as WE MAKE USE OF IT, AND FORCE HIM TO CATER MORE TO ACTUAL PROGRESSIVE PUBLIC OPINION RATHER THAN ALLOW HIM THE TIME AND ENERGY TO BE TWO-FACED THE MOMENTS OUR BACKS ARE TURNED.

And that if we do not keep this in mind, the latter is very much something Biden will do, just as he has done it countless times before.

AND ALSO PLEASE KEEP IN MIND:

HE STILL IS NOT THE NOMINEE YET, AND UNTIL HE IS STOP TAKING IT FOR GRANTED.

There is a marked difference between preparing for less than your preferred scenarios, and taking for granted that you might as well go ahead and settle for them already.

Too much of the latter has too much to do with the current state of our country, SO WHAT IF WE STOPPED DOING IT.

11 notes · View notes

bekahdoesnerdshit · 4 years

Note

Oh god bro we gonna get you some memes!!! 1, 14, 21, 30 for whoever you think is interesting!!!

Four questions......four characters in active campaigns.....we let the Fates Decide (except I rerolled the first one because I already did Raini for that one haha)

1. What position does your character sleep in? ( i.e; stomach, side, back, etc. ) Describe why they do this – optional. Brilliance: Brilliance is a side sleeper. In a perfect world? Soft mattress, queen sized bed, silk sheets, etc. etc. Her hair is fanned out Beautifully on the pillow beside her, flawless and completely tangle free. She wakes up and it’s just as gorgeous and wavy as it was when she went to sleep. How does she do it? We just don’t know. Her dad is a merchant who did pretty well for himself acting as the middle man between the “ruffians” of the lower districts and the bougie upper districts, so I feel like she definitely grew up sleeping on pretty good quality beds. She’s accustomed to a certain lifestyle! And she’s gay, so she deserves it. (But in a perfect perfect world? She sleeps on her side....because she is spooning her fiancee because they are cuddled up together for the night.....😭💖)

14. Are they a team player or do they prefer to be solo? Cog: Cog! Is! The! Definition! Of! A! Team! Player!!! She is 100% built as a support caster, with such spells as: Slow, Bless, Healing Word, Death Ward, and Wall of Stone. Her other spells are out of combat “Help my friends!!!” Spells such as: Guidance, Seeming, Telekinesis. She has one (1) attack spell that isn’t a cantrip: It is Scorching Ray, and she hasn’t cast it in weeks since she accidentally killed someone with it. Whoopso! (Not directly related to the question but I have more than Once said on Cog’s turn in combat that she brings her hands up like she’s about to punch out some Scorching Rays (because she copies Ace’s monk punches for the spell isn’t that cute as SHIT) but she catches herself at the last second, shakes out the fire, and goes for Toll the Dead or Frostbite instead and I am Waiting for someone to call her on it 👀) Even mechanics aside, she always puts the team’s wellbeing before her own. Everyone else gets patched up first after fights, she doesn’t like to let people go off on their own, she’s Big on holding hands as a sign of love and support, idk if she’d know what to do with herself if she got sent on a solo mission. She loves her friends! And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

21. Your character has been granted 3 wishes; what would they wish for and why? Ayen: Easy! Fucking! Peasy! We’ve never not gone with our gut before in our life let’s GO 1. I wish to get me and my friends the Fuck out of this weird ass demiplane thanks! It’s weird and bad and Sepia Man is kinda funny but you know what else is kinda funny? Like, normal shit on not evil planes. Thank you. Idk what he’s planning but it can’t be good, and I will feel a little bad if we like. Help him take over the world or w/e 2. I wish to find and be reunited with my family! That’s what she was working on checking off before some rude ass dude basically kidnapped her. She figures she can find them on her own.....eventually. But she doesn’t have much to go on besides “Hey, did you or any of your elf friends lose a baby mumble mumble years ago? Probably at night?” Which, while it’s not nothing, isn’t great. How much easier would it to be to just Wish herself back to her family! 3. Oh fuck, she forgot she has a third one. She uh...she kinda has everything she needs taken care of? Like, home, check. Family, check. Pretty good there.... Which means, there’s really only one thing left to wish for. I wish for Sarril to find his family alive, healthy, and safe the next time he goes home. Thanks for keeping me in one piece, Dad.

30. If your character was forced to eat one thing for the rest of their life, what would they choose and why? Raini: Apparently, fucking smushed granola bars from the bottom of Lent’s purse. Honest to god might have a snack buying montage before we head out again if I’m gonna keep having to stick my nose in the Abeast. Idk though! I feel like, Abeast feeding frenzies aside, she isn’t a super big eater. Like, she eats at meals and puts enough food in her body that she’s comfortable and healthy, but she’s a light eater. ....could be gay here though and say one specific roast her dads made when she was growing up, and with that realization that’s exactly what I’m gonna say. It was for Special Occasions Only, like a birthday or an important religious holiday or “Raini Did Very Well in Class Today” SO. You can imagine the decadence of having it every day. She’ll be spoiled rotten.

#answered #brilliance #cog #raini #ayen morwraek #thank! you! ask meme monday!!#goinggrimdork

1 note · View note

flamereign · 5 years

Text

so i’ve always sorta wanted to make a short (ish) overview of lea’s mental/emotional state during & post kh3, as the game in all it’s Disney Is For Kids!!! fashion glossed over a lot of the results, repercussions and consequences of going through the kind of trauma axelea went through. of course, this is based on my view of events ( i.e. lea did not relinquish his heart willingly and did not cope well at all to his heartless state as axel which does have repercussions on lea’s state of mind once he got his heart back ) and what i’d imagine that would do to a guy who spent about a decade in a really emotionally toxic environment basically suppressing his emotions / memories and even his past identity. as i just want to give an overview, i tried keeping it as short and to the point as possible, but it did still get a tad long thanks to my tendency to ramble so sorry in advance ...

in any case, thanks for reading! here goes

during and early post kh3 lea gets easily overwhelmed by emotions. as i stated earlier, he did spent about a decade believing he couldn’t feel, even resulting in him gaslighting himself whenever he did feel something. because he essentially lost his heart around age 15-16 you could say he’s basically still stuck in puberty, only with some added ptsd to the mix: lea literally has to relearn how to process and identify emotions within himself after a decade of suppressing them*. emotions, therefore, tend to hit him hard and fast, can take him utterly by surprise and he has difficult getting them back under control. this can lead to either an overreaction of a certain type of emotion ( for example laughter that turns to unstoppable giggles, tears that turn to uncontrollable sobbing, mild anxiety that can flip to a panic attack at even the smallest triggers ), contrary emotional reactions ( crying when happy, wanting to laugh when actually feeling angry or nervous, or even just a lack of emotional response when he's feeling sad ) loss of temper / anger due to embarrassment or even complete dissociation / a feeling of numbness. *see also point 3

this emotional overload leads to hypersensitivity especially if there are added outside stimuli; if it gets really bad even the touch of clothes against his skin feels like too much. in some cases, it can also result in a feeling of extreme depersonalization**, a feeling like he’s not part of his own body anymore, like his consciousness is torn in every which direction and he’s about to splinter apart. his usual reaction is to isolate himself to a contained space with little to no outside stimuli ( so a dark, quiet and small space ) until he can come back to himself. if for any reason he can’t, it will result in an anxiety attack or even him flipping to rage form and lashing out. **in this case, it actually helps him a lot of there is a weight placed on top of him to ground him back into the here and now: sometimes this means he’ll go sit in the shower under a really hard stream of water, or he’ll go huddle into a really tight space or, if there is someone around he trusts, he’ll even calm down if they lay down on top of him as it also reassures him they’re real and they’re there. anyone else touching him is a big no no in this situation, however.

lea has a mild case of alexithymia as a result of the decade long suppression of his own emotions and feelings. though this condition is defined as a personality trait, in lea’s case it’s more of a result of that very specific trauma ( see also the point 1 ), and will get less impacting as time goes on and lea learns to readjust to life with heart and emotions once more. alexithymia is mainly characterized by: a) difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings in the self and in others, b) difficulty describing feelings to others. point a) also results in point 1 and 2 while point b) results more in point 4 below and actually makes talking about his experiences and his feelings quite taxing for him.

as a result of all of the above, he still shows a lot of avoidance behaviors: deflecting ( mostly with humour or self depreciation ), distracting himself w/ something else instead of letting himself process ( like, throwing himself immediately into training to become a keyblade wielder and saving his friends rather than, yanno, give himself some fucking time to breathe ), becoming defensive or angry when people push ( exceptions here roxas / xion / isa / others, depending on plotted relationship, but even then it’s difficult for him to fully open up ) and he’ll rather avoid talking about the heavy stuff altogether for as long as possible, preferring to act like things are fine even if his body language and facial expressions clearly show things are, in fact, not fine.

to add to the above: unlike axel, who had a kick ass poker face, lea has a really hard time hiding what he feels, but that still doesn’t make it easier for him to express what he feels. he may be an open book to others, but it’s not as obvious to himself. of course contextually or depending on the situation he can infer whether his own state of mind is happy or sad or anxious and he does still have previous experience to draw on, but if the context or situation can’t help him it could be that he cries but will not be able to say if they’re happy tears or sad tears, if he feels unsettled he won’t be able to easily discern if it’s anger, if it’s frustration, anxiety or simply because there’s something physical going on ( lack of sleep / eating / oncoming illness etc etc ). as you can imagine this is very frustrating to him and does not help the bullet points i already expanded on above.

regardless of the motivations and traumas that guided axel’s behaviors and actions ( which i will make a separate post about ), getting his heart back has been a quite eye-opening experience to lea to the extent he’s willing to go to survive, to all of his worst qualities and sides and to the fact that he’s capable of doing the things he’s done: his past as axel and the things he’s done are causing a tremendous amount of guilt, identity issues*** and even self-loathing culmulating in mild depression. in short, the confidence he used to have as a kid and as a nobody have taken a big ass dent. despite the fact that the keyblade has chosen him, he often doubts and second guesses on whether he’s even worthy of it and had it not been for his determination to save his friends and fix past wrongs, he might’ve even renounced that power all together thinking he doesn’t truly deserve to be a wielder. this self-doubt and lack of confidence caused him a lot of issues in his training even getting the keyblade to appear and is, imo, one of the big reasons why he was overpowered so easily by xemnas in that final confrontation. ***in my opinion, the traits of the nobodies can be seen as that actual person’s worst traits magnified -- in a way, axel can be seen as lea’s inner darkness: the selfishness, the impulsiveness, the temper, that manipulative side, the ruthlessness and the dishonesty are all traits that were already there, but were always balanced out and trumped by his positive traits. lea post kh3 has gotten to know a lot more about himself and essentially does not like the things he found out: quite understandably he’s having a hard time accepting and reconciling axel with who he is as lea now and as a result he subconsciously tries to suppress the parts that are axel while consciously trying to accept them, which causes him to feel like he’s not sure anymore who he is and who he is supposed to be. this only adds to the guilt and self-doubts he already experiences. this is also why i thought that him letting other people use the name axel for him so easily was a really weird decision in the game.

with his tendency to doubt his own worth also comes paranoia. one big example is the automatic suspicion he feels at nice / friendly gestures, actions or words -- a suspicion mainly borne from the thought that he doesn’t really deserve those, or that it shouldn’t be as easy. especially during kh3 this will largely center around the other wielders of light or really anyone who’s known him as axel.

a large part of the paranoia is also linked to his ptsd; he is very hyper-aware: this can be hyper-awareness in specific situations -- for example he’ll feel uncomfortable in large crowds, or in spaces with low visibility, he’ll flinch at loud & sudden noises, will go from relaxed to ready to attack in the span of a second if someone or something startles him and he will shy away from touch from people he doesn’t know -- or even in a general sense meaning that in any given situation where things seem to be going well or he’s feeling happy he’s always in some part waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the situation to blow up in his face as some kind of karmic retribution. as a result, there’s part of him that has become very sensitive to change as any signs of abrupt and inexplicable change in his life will be interpreted as a sign of impending doom, to put it very dramatically. this in turn can feed into the emotional overload and bodily hypersensitivity i described further above.

for that latter part, the same can be said about his relationships with other people. i don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to know that with everything he’s gone through and the losses he’s faced as axel, his part of the blame in that aside for a moment, lea has some major abandonment issues. this also ties in with his low confidence, self-doubt and guilt complex: it’ll take a long time for him to trust that someone will actually want to stick around and part of him is also hypersensitive to signs of behavioral changes in others towards him -- in short, part of him is also always waiting for the people he cares about and who obviously also care about him to wise up about what a failure he is and consequentially leave him. if by any chance this does happen, even if it is through no fault of any party, he’ll always instinctively place the blame on himself, putting it down as something he’s said or done to make that person go. as a result, if that person returns lea will be both clingy as well a avoidant as he a) wants for them to stick around and b) doesn’t trust them not to leave again, so it’d be better to simply keep his distance.

the above also results in him not wanting to show his flaws, his doubts and weaknesses: he loathes failure, internalizes and bottles up a lot of his negative emotions towards himself and others and pushes himself beyond his boundaries often just to try and prove that he can ( despite not truly believing that he is ). he’s afraid that if the people he cares for and respect know about his doubts and fears, it’ll increase the risk of them leaving him behind. this is especially apparent in kh3 towards his fellow keyblade wielders: despite having his doubts about being worthy of the keyblade, it’s not something he would’ve ever said or shown, believing that if he showed any signs of not being able to handle the weight of the keyblade, they’d sideline him or boot him out completely. considering a big motivation for him joining the battle in the first place was to atone, to fix past mistakes by helping to save his friends, the idea of having that chance taken away caused a lot of fear and inner stress, resulting in frequent bouts of exhaustion and depression, more self-loathing, defensiveness and even anger if someone tried to critique his actions or question his motives.

due to the above described symptoms of his ptsd, depression and emotional instability, he has issues with insomnia. whenever he does manage to get sleep, he also frequently experiences very vivid nightmares and night terrors. whereas as axel he’d turn to sleep to pass the time, as lea he tends to avoid sleep altogether unless absolutely necessary.

obviously i realize that reading all of the above combined makes it sound as if lea’s struggling under huge emotional and mental strain every day ( and technically speaking he sorta is because this is not something that turns off from one day to the next ), but i also want to add that lea himself doesn’t particularly think of himself as unhappy or depressed 24/7 ( or even at all ) so it’ll not always be super apparent in his attitude or the way i write him in threads. imo, lea’s strength has always come from his empathy, his mental fortitude and his ability to adapt --- and i don’t want to forget that on top of all the negative, he’s finally experiencing all the positive sides of having his heart back as well. this, plus the fact that, unlike axel, he actually has a support system to fall back on, friends that support him and who he can support in return, definitely help him a lot in his day to day activities.

nevertheless the above are all factors i take into account to determine the way axelea thinks and chooses to react to certain situations and in his interpersonal relationships and are thus important to my portrayal of him. so to anyone who’s read this entire thing: i love you from the bottom of my heart.

#headcanon.#long post /#sorry mobile users sbhsbgdhg #if anyone wants me to tag this in some other way lemme know

24 notes · View notes

go-foxes · 4 years

Photo

01/BASICS

Full Name: Glory Abigail Hoskins Nickname: Possum (A nickname from her father); JD (Short for “Jane Doe,” when she was in the Louisville foster system) Birthday: May 17th Gender: Cis Female Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Astrological Sign: Taurus (The Week of the Natural). Capricorn Moon. Spoken Languages: English Birthplace: Owls Bend, Missouri Relationship Status: Single

TRIGGER WARNINGS: references to drug abuse, death, abuse, and animal cruelty

02/PHYSICAL TRAITS

Hair Color/Style: A natural redhead, she started bleaching her hair in Louisville, though her roots often show through. No matter how she wears her hair—down, in a ponytail, bun, or braids—it’s usually messy. Eye Color: Green Face Claim: Sophie Turner Height: 5′9″ Tattoos: She started giving herself stick and poke tattoos in Louisville, or letting a friend do them on her, a new habit to distract from ones she left behind in Owls Bend. The first was a minimalist pine tree, in the inside of her left forearm. Then came the initials “MW” on her left ring and middle fingers, easily disguised as nothing more than artistic zigzags. Then came the coordinates of Owls Bend over the inside of her left wrist. When she didn’t want to be limited to what she could do on herself with her right hand, she let a friend do a more artistic design than she could accomplish on her right shoulderblade: a stylized owl inside an acute angle. During the second week of summer practices, she gave herself a fox paw-print over her right hipbone. When she saves up enough money, she wants to get one professionally done, a half-sleeve with a floral/nature motif. Piercings: The two holes in each lobe were done in the bathroom of a group home, and it shows: they’re off-center, unevenly spaced. Her cartilage piercing, however, she paid to get done professionally. Unique Attributes: She has some scattered scars, a mix of a rough-and-tumble childhood and some of the more memorable of Justice’s punishments. Some of the most noteworthy are: a gash on her thigh from tripping into a barbed wire fence when she was young, which required stitches; a scar on the heel of her right palm from being held to a stove; and faint marks on the insides of her elbows.

03/PERSONALITY TRAITS/TYPES

Positive Traits: Brave, adventurous, independent, protective, loyal Negative Traits: Stubborn, rebellious, temperamental, reclusive, escapist Hobbies/Interests: Exy, of course, though she sometimes doesn’t feel like she has as much of a claim on it as everyone else, because she only picked it up in high school, and only vaguely knew what it was when she was growing up in Owls Bend. She also watches a lot of TV: they didn’t have a lot of channels growing up and, even then, some of the fiercest fights among her siblings were fights over the remote. Getting to watch whatever she wants, whenever she wants, has yet to get old. She also likes concerts, the kinds in small venues with big mosh pits, after tagging along to some in Louisville. Her oldest interest, though, is nature and the outdoors, but she doesn’t really think of it as much of a hobby—it was always just there. Major/Minor: Still undeclared Insecurities: Even after a year on the Foxes, Glory still feels like an impostor sometimes. She barely played Exy at all in high school. She doesn’t deserve this. Doesn’t deserve her new life, her fresh start, her second chance, when other people—(or, really, just one person)—won’t get that chance, because they’re dead. She feels extreme guilt for the part she played in her boyfriend’s overdose, for encouraging his partying and substance abuse and engaging in the same habits herself but not suffering the same consequence for them. It’s made her closed-off to the thought of romance, and even close friendships, as she worries that she might be, somehow, bad for the people she loves. Since leaving Owls Bend, she’s felt unrooted and adrift, and her guilt only exacerbates those feelings of solitude. Quirks/Eccentricities: She has a strong Missouri Ozarks accent that got her made fun of a lot in Louisville. She hasn’t lost the habit of liking to climb trees, but with Palmetto’s groomed campus lacking the big, old trees of her childhood, she also just settles for being up high and outside, and is the Fox Tower roof’s number one fan. And, though she doesn’t have a car, she has an old fixed-gear bicycle that she rides around campus that she might have liberated from a bike rack when it didn’t move for a couple weeks at the beginning of her freshman year. MBTI Type: ISTP, “The Virtuoso” (Friendly but very private, calm but suddenly spontaneous, extremely curious but unable to stay focused on formal studies, Virtuoso personalities can be a challenge to predict, even by their friends and loved ones. Virtuosos can seem very loyal and steady for a while, but they tend to build up a store of impulsive energy that explodes without warning, taking their interests in bold new directions.) Enneagram Type: Type Eight, “The Challenger” (Eights have enormous willpower and vitality, and they feel most alive when they are exercising these capacities in the world. They use their abundant energy to effect changes in their environment—to “leave their mark" on it—but also to keep the environment, and especially other people, from hurting them and those they care about. At an early age, Eights understand that this requires strength, will, persistence, and endurance—qualities that they develop in themselves and which they look for in others.) Moral Alignment: Chaotic Good Temperament: Choleric

04/FAMILY & HOME

Immediate Family:

Gideon Concord Hoskins (Father)

Miriam (Mother, last name unknown)

Justice Gideon Hoskins (27, b. 1991, sibling to Charity and Virtue)

Charity Joanna Hoskins (25, b. 1993, sibling to Justice and Virtue, ran away when she was 16 and Glory was 9)

Virtue Bethany Hoskins (24, b. 1994, sibling to Justice and Charity)

Honor Elijah Hoskins (20, b. 1998)

Prosper James Hoskins (16, b. 2002, sibling to Mercy)

Mercy Rachel Hoskins (13, b. 2005, sibling to Prosper)

Amity Susana Hoskins (8, b. 2010, sibling to Grace, left Owls Bend w/ her mother when she was 4 and Glory was 14)

Grace Tabitha Hoskins (6, b. 2012, sibling to Amity, left Owls Bend w/ her mother when she was 2 and Glory was 14)

How do they feel about their family?: She never knew her mother, doesn’t know much about her besides her name, Miriam. To listen to her father talk, she left Glory her red hair and her wild spirit, blowing through her father’s life like a summer storm, leaving him and leaving Glory with no full siblings among the Hoskins brood.

She can’t say she blames her mother, whoever or wherever she is. Glory’s watched many women come and go from her father’s life. She knows that her father’s a hard man to love—after all, she spent her entire childhood watching him leave. After Justice and Charity and Virtue’s mother left him for another man in a town over, the next woman he fell in love with, Honor’s mother, died in childbirth. And so by the time Glory’s mother came around he might have still felt infatuation, might have wanted someone at home to take care of his homestead while he was away, but he was done with love.

Justice she hates, a black and bitter hatred that spreads to everything he looks upon with kindness: her father, for giving him the authority he does, letting him lord it over the rest of them when he’s gone; any of her siblings who kowtow to him, even if it’s only out of self-preservation. She was never too fond of Charity when she was younger, she was too quiet, too soft, but Charity was the first Hoskins to run away, and in the years since Glory thought of her more than she ever did when she was still around. Justice told them all that she was “working” a truck stop in Lebanon, but Glory thought it was a lie, nothing more than a cautionary tale meant to scare them into obedience.

Virtue in particular she tormented, with small pranks like hiding frogs in her bed. She was more fun than Charity to bother, because she would actually get angry. And even when Glory grew out of some of those childhood pranks, they never stopped squabbling.

She used to be close with Honor and Prosper, who were closest to her in age, who climbed trees and scrapped in the mud with her when she was young. Honor she lost first, when he first decided he was too old for child’s games with her and Prosper, and then grew too close to Justice. Prosper she lost later—she took him to a party with her when he was a freshman in high school and she was a little older, got him drunk for the first time. When he got caught hungover the next morning by Justice, he sold her out to save himself, and she never forgave him.

For a long time, Mercy was the baby, trying to tag along after Glory and Prosper without much success. Glory didn’t have time for a sister five years younger than her who couldn’t keep up with her, no matter how much Mercy tried.

Amity and Grace she always resented: she was a teenager then, running away from chores and responsibilities to spend time with newfound friends and newfound bad habits, she didn’t want two younger siblings in the house to watch over. In the end, she doesn’t think it was her father who drove their mother away. It was Justice, fully grown into his adulthood, who didn’t see anything wrong with exercising his power over her they way he did over the rest of his siblings. Glory didn’t think she cared much for Amma and Baby Grace, until their mother left and took them with her, and all the new space in their home felt empty instead of letting her breathe. How does their family feel about them?: In her family, Glory was always the wild one. Always the troublemaker. Always shirking her share of chores, always nowhere to be found. Her father found her wildness charming, and gave her a lot of leeway, which was always an annoyance to her more responsible siblings. She was also the one who stood up to Justice the most, antagonized him and said no to him, and it earned her his enduring hatred and often the resentment of her siblings as well—it was easier to blame her for provoking him than it was to blame him, when everyone knew he wouldn’t ever change. So she was the black sheep, the rebellious one, the one that rocked the boat, and she never much cared when anyone tried to chide her for it.

She knew that, when she ran away, no one would look for her. The Hoskins kept their business to themselves, they weren’t going to go to the police. But it still feels strange to her to think that her home is still there, going on without her. Has Justice finally gotten married? Does he have kids of his own? (She hopes not.) Her father’s getting older, is he at home more? Has he met anyone else? Does she have more siblings? She took her name back when she came to Palmetto, but she doesn’t think that means that they’ll find her. They don’t pay attention to Exy in Owls Bend. But that doesn’t stop her from wondering if they miss her, now that she’s gone like Charity and Amma and Baby Grace. Pets: Growing up, they had a lot of land, and at different times they kept different animals, mostly treated as having a purpose, and sometimes shown 4-H and at state fairs, and not as pets: chickens, a couple goats, sometimes a cow or some pigs, a donkey to scare away the coyotes, cats that lived mostly outdoors, an old guard dog named Rufus who was too lazy to do much guarding anymore even when Glory was very young. Glory spent a lot of time with them, because she spent a lot of time outside. As a child, she grew incredibly fond of a pig she’d named Bubba, and while her father had done his best to gently prepare her for the fact that they were raising him for meat, Justice was not as kind about it, and it is one of his earliest torments that she can remember. Where do they live?: Only in Palmetto. She stayed with Abby over the summer. Description of their home: The Hoskins have made their home in Owls Bend for generations, held onto it through thick and thin. It used to be bigger, previous generations used to farm more, too, fighting to get money out of the rocky soil. But they sold off bits and pieces in parcels over the years when there wasn’t enough money to be found, sold most of the equipment, too, until they were mostly growing what could be used right there to feed themselves, sometimes selling the excess at farmers markets. Their house wasn’t grand, an old two-story farmhouse with an addition tacked on later that didn’t quite blend in, kept in enough repair that it wouldn’t fall down over their heads but not enough to make it something anyone who didn’t live there and love it would call beautiful: the paint was always peeling on the siding, the brick chimney crumbling; there were always too many shoes and jackets and books and toys and whatever else nine kids could come up with scattered around inside. No matter how certain she felt that she had to get away, there are always things that she’ll remember fondly: the porch swing she used to curl up on late at night; the makeshift fort she’d made for herself out in the woods, piled with blankets and pillows she took from the house; the treasure trove of thrift store clothes she’d hidden out there, too, in an old wooden trunk that used to hold their winter clothes, where Justice wouldn’t find them, changing in the dark and then walking to the end of their long dirt driveway for her friends to pick her up. Description of their bedroom: Her part of her room at Palmetto now is impersonal, without all the homey clutter that had made up their shared bedrooms at Owls Bend. She doesn’t have much: her clothes feet neatly in her dresser, her shoes under her bed, the beat-up backpack she takes with her to class is the same one that held what little she took with her from Owls Bend. Her desk is the messiest part of her room, strewn with printouts of readings and messy notes, because she isn’t much for studying. She has some cheap posters she’d gotten in an on-campus sale early in the semester, just to break up the whiteness of the walls, hung up haphazardly. Like her old bedrooms back home—(first shared with Mercy, and then with Virtue after Charity ran away)—she doesn’t spend much time there.

05/THIS OR THAT

Introvert or Extrovert? Introvert Optimist or Pessimist? Pessimist Leader or Follower? Not a follower, but more of a loner than a leader Confident or Self-Conscious? Confident Cautious or Careless? Careless Passionate or Apathetic? Passionate Book Smarts or Street Smarts? Street Smarts Compliments or Insults? Whichever one is most honest at the time

06/FAVORITES

Favorite Color: Black or green Favorite Clothing Style/Outfit: Glory’s everyday style could be described as thrift store grunge: ripped tights and distressed denim; vintage t-shirts with the collars and the sleeves cut off, the bottom cut off to her navel; black bras and see-through shirts; oversized flannel and black lace; short skirts and shorter shorts; combat boots and converse with holes in them; denim jackets covered in pins and patches; chipped black nail polish, chokers, and smudged eyeliner. The clothes she wears now are a far cry away from the sturdy jeans, sweaters, and t-shirts handed down to her by her older sisters—and sometimes brothers—or the faded florals of her Sunday best from back in Owls Bend, but she learned how to sew then to make her siblings’ castoffs fit her better, and she uses those skills to modify her clothing to her liking now. Favorite Bands/Songs/Type of Music: A lot of her heart is found in the music of her childhood: Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams, where she can close her eyes and imagine the voices of her siblings in the background, the rattle of her father’s pickup truck driving over dirt roads. But a lot of what she listens to these days is more punk and by-gone grunge, blasting it through her oversized headphones on long bus rides to games: Hole, Mudhoney, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden. Favorite Movies: She’s more likely to binge-watch TV than movies, and when it comes to movies she likes the classics, old musicals like The Wizard of Oz or Singing in the Rain; Disney movies she remembers watching with her younger siblings. And, of course, The Princess Bride. Favorite Books: She read more when she was younger than she does now, so her favorite books are all from the days when she read whatever she could get her hands on, usually while she was out hiding from Justice: The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Redwall, His Dark Materials, Dear America, The Book of Three. Favorite Foods/Drinks: She likes comfort foods: hearty stews, pie, fresh-baked bread. She’s also got a big weakness for fast food, remembers times in high school after a night of partying, when they’d pile as many of them into the back of a pickup truck as they could to go to the McDonalds drive-through a few towns over. Favorite Sports/Sports Teams: The Foxes. Exy wasn’t a part of Glory’s life until recently, so she has no particular allegiance to any professional team, nor a Class I team that she rooted for before joining the Foxes. Perhaps unsurprising for a Fox, she didn’t have any particular affinity for team sports until she found Exy—and even with Exy, the whole team thing isn’t its primary appeal. Favorite Time of Day: Golden Hour Favorite Weather/Season: Spring Favorite Animal: Even before becoming a Fox, she always had an affinity for Foxes. And for raccoons.

#GLORY.#GLORY: INSP

1 note · View note

arsyeong · 5 years

Text

[6] thief | ijb.

o n e / t w o / t h r e e / f o u r / f i v e / s e v e n / e i g h t

summary: it’s him who explains to you why bambam likes you. word count: 1,816

Things changed after that night with Bambam.

“It’s the reason why I was so worried about you, why I want to help you so much,” he had said, “because I like you, and I like you a lot.”

Since saying that, he had no longer been shy about his feelings. You first thought he was playing with you, then you thought he was confusing something else for a romantic type of love. As the days went on, however, you realized he meant it when he said you were more than just a friend to him.

“When did you first realize it?” you ask the man himself while you walk home, intertwined hands rocking back and forth slowly.

“When did I first realize I liked you?” Bambam tilts his head and looks up, lips pursed as he thinks. “During the drink shop encounter.”

“Oh, really?”

“You should know that I was torn between (Y/F/N) and you for about two years prior to that,” he pauses, taking in how your eyes widen in shock at the confession, making him smile a bit. “Anyway, I was spending all that alone time with her and, when I started yearning for you instead, I realized I’ve made a decision: I liked you. Only you.”

“Did you tell her?” you can’t help but ask.

“No,” he says, “but I felt like she knew it too.”

You nod and he continues, “When I came back and saw you frozen and all that, all I could feel was anger and annoyance. How dare that thief do that to you? And why did Vana and Ivan leave you alone? I was filled with the sudden urge to protect you, and I’ve never felt that strongly for anyone in the past.”

You knew it was true.

In his play boy days, he had usually filled you in on his escapades and whatnots with his various women. Never had he mentioned he’d grown attached to one of them, and that had resided in your mind as a ray of hope, a hope that maybe he would like you back one day.

And now he did.

You turn to him, grinning softly and holding both of his hands in yours. If you were to view it in a third person point-of-view, you would see yourself staring up at the man you loved. The moon, big and bright, would be illuminating the young couple. It was a perfect moment, one you would rather painted than captured without the two of you knowing. It was everything you’ve ever wanted.

However, you don’t miss the sudden movement beyond Bambam. The moment is broken as your eyebrows come together and you move your gaze from him to the scenery behind him. His eyebrows furrow as well, plans of confessing love to you forgotten as he’s filled with concern. He squeezes your hands slightly, enough to regain your attention and have you see his thick lips in a pout. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought I saw something.” When he looks back, you quickly add, “It was probably an animal.”

An awkward silence hangs over the two of you. “I guess I should get you home then,” he says, offering you a small smile and letting one of your hands go so he could walk beside you once more. You nod in defeat, internally cursing yourself for ruining such a moment. The next words you exchanged with him were farewells and well wishes.

You watch Bambam walk away, shoulders hunched and head down, and you could practically feel his disappointment. When he’s out of your sight, you sigh sadly and look up to the stars. “If only you could paint me a moment perfect as that again,” you whisper. You feel weird talking to the sky, talking to nothing as if it could hear you, much less help you.

Then, you set out to the spring.

As you expected, Jaebeom was waiting for you at your usual spot. You watch as he takes a small stone and throws it across the spring. Maybe he was waiting for it to touch the water multiple times, but it ends up just short of the other end before sinking.

“Sorry to ruin your moment with pretty boy over there,” he says. When you tear your gaze away from the small stone’s final destination, you see him with his legs curled to his chest and his head resting on his overlapped arms. He was looking at you.

“It wasn’t your fault,” you say, walking to him, “I could have just ignored you.”

He waits for you to take your seat next to him, and he continues to stare at you for a few seconds before saying, “I can see why he likes you.”

You immediately redden at the unexpected remark. Your eyes widen and you pull your head back a bit. Your eyes flit from object to object, avoiding his gaze but still hearing him laugh at your surprise. “And I thought you got over my smooth talking, (Y/N).”

“Anyone would be shocked if you told them something like that,” you defend, “but, now you’ve brought it up, please do elaborate.”

It takes him a moment – which he spends staring at you with narrowed eyes – before he speaks up again, “I can’t tell if you’re fishing for compliments or you’re genuinely curious.”

“Both,” you shrug, “but mostly because I’m looking for compliments from you.”

“Oh, I could compliment you.”

“Genuine ones.”

“Well, I do mean it when I call you ‘fair maiden.’”

“Qualities,” you say, “Characteristics, traits, habits of mine you think drew him to me. The things no one else sees until they look close enough.”

“You have a lot of hair strands?”

“Jaebeom.”

“Okay, okay,” he chuckles, hands raised in play surrender. He shifts to seat cross-legged, his entire body now facing in your direction, and you see in your peripheral vision how the moonlight made his eyes sparkle a bit. It took an effort not to turn to him as well, knowing you’d be blushing and looking down as soon as he gets started, and you don’t want him to get a proper view of that.

“Well, first is that you’re very beautiful,” he finally says, “Inside and out. That should be it, really, but I have a feeling it’s too general for you so I’ll go on.” You roll your eyes at his slight jab at you, feeling yourself grin a bit. “Second reason is because you’re hardworking, a trait I’ve observed he doesn’t have.”

“Wait, you’ve been observing him?”

“People are usually drawn to the opposites of themselves,” he goes on, ignoring you. You shoot him a quick glare and huff but he continues, “Third is because you’re his best friend. He knows a lot about you, you know a lot about him and you trust each other. It’s also the cliché of best friends falling in love with each other, realizing their feelings for each other are more than just friends then secretly pining for the other, hoping they’d realize it too.”

The memory of Bambam’s words flash through your mind and you feel your smile widen. “Fourth reason is that you’re selfless. Your job is to help around the town and, when someone needs more help, you give them that help. You want nothing but the best for every single person here, even if that means overworking yourself and getting sick.”

When he doesn’t say anything after that, you turn to him in confusion. He’s looking down and playing with the grass, only looking up at you when you clear your throat. “Ah,” he says quite softly, “I was just thinking about you the other night. Sick and obviously exhausted but still being there to catch me.”

There’s a brief silence, and you don’t know what to say. Should you make up some excuse? Or should you tell him the actual reason you were there? As he holds your gaze, you know he’s trying to decipher the debate in your eyes.

“Is there a fifth reason?” you mutter, lost in your thoughts and, somehow, lost in his gaze as well.

“You’re amazing.”

It was as if things were in slow-motion – two pairs of eyes gradually widening as the words sink in and stop brain function. You open your mouth to say something but nothing comes out. A silence takes over once more as you look at each other, stunned.

He’s the first to recover and says, “What did you expect me to say? I don’t have a list of your positive attributes at the ready. I could go make one, though, but that would be for another day of complimenting.”

“Jaebeom,” you breathe out.

“What? It’s the truth,” he says, “You are an amazing person, and that’s what drew him to you. That’s what’s drawing everyone to you.”

“You included?” The words are out before your mind could even process it. He looks at you in shock, as if he wasn’t expecting you to ask him something like that. Your mindless question is irreversible; now, you’re left to fearing whatever his answer may be.

You watch him closely as his features slowly soften, and you think he’s about to answer your question but he doesn’t. Jaebeom stands up, you following in suit of him, and says, “It’s getting late.”

“It’s already late,” you snap, “so answer my question.”

Your frustration builds with every step he takes, leaving you to watch him walk away from you. It was inevitable you would snap; he’s left you with too many questions already.

“Why do you keep confusing me like this?” you scream after him, “Why do you keep walking away?”

At the second question, he comes to a stop. The soft breeze is visible through the movements of his hair. Like you, it must think it could move a man with such broad shoulders, a man so firm, a man so solid.

You start running when he moves again. You should’ve known better.

You chase after him desperately, and you don’t let him get out of your sight. Just as he was to round a corner, you catch up and take him by the wrist. “Please,” you find yourself begging, “Answer me.”

It was suffocating you, the feeling of so many unanswered questions. You were breathless, both from the running and from the hope that at least one of those would be cleared. You definitely don’t need another sleepless night from trying to figure out any of those. All of those questions were like him – unrelenting, confusing and so frustratingly opaque.

He looks back at you, and you see his eyes soften. You’re sure he’s seen your thoughts perfectly, but, blinded by hope, you don’t realize the moment has passed. It breaks you when he removes you from him easily – you weren’t as steady as he was – and he walks away without turning back.

p r e v i o u s / n e x t

#jaebum #got7 jaebum #got7 jb #jaebum scenarios #jb scenarios #got7 jb scenarios #jaebum angst #jaebum fluff #jaebum thief au #harvest moon ds cute au #got7 jaebum angst #got7 jaebum fluff #got7 jb angst #got7 jb fluff #bambam fluff

26 notes · View notes

playerfolie · 5 years

Text

°✧。 [ MARGARET QUALLEY , CIS WOMAN , SHE/HER ] it’s been two years since FOLIE joined velia from NEW ORLEANS , LOUISIANA , USA . apparently their name is MAEVE FOURNIER and they’re a ROGUE . they have been fighting as a REVENANTS member for a while now . didn’t people say they were not a beta tester ? i heard they turned TWENTY - ONE this year . let’s hope they make it out alive .

hey there demons ! it’s me , ya boy ( aka spence / 20 / they/them ) . i was in velia very briefly a little while back but had to dip because of school ( + i am recycling this account so that’s why there may be old messages from me in ur dms asfvad ) , but i have now finished finals and i am back to introduce you to my new baby maeve / folie ! if you’d like to plot with her , feel free to drop a ♡ on this and i’ll shoot you a message ( or shoot me one yourself if you wanna ) ! this is probably gonna be the longest intro ever because i ramble , so sorry in advance , but here we go !

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒

♡ username : folie ♡ level : 64 ♡ class : rogue ♡ cursor : green ( has been orange in the past ) ♡ guild : revenants , previously knights of the blood oath. ♡ position : recruiter ♡ mount : n/a ♡ pet : rabbit named cecil ♡ mastered skills : stealth , communication , searching ♡ proficient skills : luck , appraisal ♡ languages spoken : english , french

𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀

♡ maeve fournier was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and ballet slippers on her feet. her mother was a lawyer, one of the best defense attorneys in the south. her father came from old money, took complete ownership of a number of oil rigs off the louisiana and mississippi coasts after her grandfather died. her early life came with privileges, more than one could count, but it had its share of burdens as well. from the time she was toddling, maeve was expected to live her life like a painting ─ something to be viewed, showed off, bragged about by her parents to their wealthy friends. she was to have her mother’s smarts and grace, and her father’s power and charisma ; anything else was failure. ♡ of the many things maeve had handed to her, video games was not one of them. her mother was convinced that they would ‘ rot her brain ’, take her time away from the things that mattered like school, dance, french lessons, her violin. the first time she played a game was when she was seven years old, sleeping over at a friends house ─ pokemon white on an old nintendo ds that belonged to her friend’s father. she fell in love. ♡ as she got older, video games became her best kept secret. weekly sleepovers at her friend’s house became a sneaky rendezvous to escape into a digital world for just a couple of days. one day a week to get away from the constant pressure, to be a person rather than a spectacle. ♡ when her and her best friend heard of velia, they knew they absolutely had to have it. the pair were freshman in college by then, and although maeve still lived very much under her parents’ thumb ( loyola university new orleans was close enough for them to keep close tabs on her ), it was much easier to get video games in her own hands now that she was living slightly more independently. the two bought the game the second they could, and were off to the races. until they got stuck.

𝐈𝐍 𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀

♡ when everyone first became trapped in the game, maeve and her best friend kept close to one another, but were hesitant to partner up with any other players or join a guild. the two had each others backs, and they were convinced that that was all they needed. that sentiment would later prove to be false. ( TW : ROBBERY, MUGGING, DEATH ). the pair were ambushed a few months into the game ; a party of five players threatening their lives if they failed to hand over their possessions. maeve, aware that the group was too big to be fought off by her and her friend alone, began to concede. instead of following suit, the other girl tried to take one of them on, and ended up catching quite the beating. maeve managed to get in a few good hits, finish the work that her friend had started on one of the group members, killing him. they dropped all they had for the remaining four and high-tailed it out before they got themselves killed. ♡ after that, maeve went near crazy. it was ironic, how much freedom she found in a digital prison, but living in velia was the first and closest thing to liberation that she had ever experienced. chaos was unfamiliar to her, fascinating, she even relished in it at times. but it also became to clear to her that in this world, you had to do what it took to survive, and doe eyes don’t last long. she never went out of her way to hurt other players if she didn’t have to, but strayed away from heroics. slowly, the reserved, polite, sweetheart that maeve was trained to be from birth slipped away. folie was unapologetic and fierce, and she’d steel you blind if you looked away for more than a second. two things mattered to her: surviving until the end of this, and her best friend. little did she know that she’d lose the latter. ♡ after getting robbed, and a couple of other close calls with less than savory players, folie admitted to her friend that she thought they should try to join a guild. there was safety in numbers and, with the right group, a significantly less amount of fear with going to sleep every night. her friend disagreed, thought that a group would only make you weak, that trusting other players was a huge mistake. the whole ordeal ended in an enormous fight, but no real answers. for the most part, folie got by through thievery, stealing everything she needed for herself and selling the excess. a week or so after her fight with her friend, folie was caught stealing from a couple of blood oath members, marking the beginning of a friendship that would later lead to her joining the guild. her friend stopped speaking to her after that. ♡ she was never a fan of blood oath’s heroics, but they were the biggest guild, the most powerful - her ticket home. so that day, when hercules stepped forward, announced the genesis of a new guild, rising from the ashes of the cardinals, it sounded awfully tempting. though folie had found a place in blood oath, gotten comfortable, she couldn’t help but feel disarmed by that same fact. she wasn’t supposed to be getting comfortable ; she was supposed to be beating this game. the revenants new found mission statement of getting out no matter the cost drew her in and captured her. it didn’t take much thought for her to step forward, abandoning her old guild for the revenants.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

♡ despite the fact that folie lost a lot of the qualities programed into her when she was younger, she’s not unnecessarily mean. that being said, if you’re expecting the saccharine-voiced angel from before you’re looking in the wrong place ( but she’ll sure as hell put on a good show if it’ll get her something she wants ). ♡ a little snarky, usually jokingly so, but if you make her mad she will turn into frozone’s wife from the incredibles and you will never see the end of it. ♡ not quick to trust. if you’ve earned it though, you’re likely to see some of the old maeve slip through the cracks. those who have had the privilege may have been on the receiving end of some misplaced altruism, maybe caught a shy smile or a soft moment, call backs to who she used to be and who she likely never completely be again. but she doesn’t talk about her life back home much either, aside from the arbitrary, another way of keeping that old version of herself, the one that couldn’t survive this, locked away. ♡ *mushu voice* a flirt ! she’ll flirt with your whole family ! she’ll flirt with you ! she’ll flirt with your cow ! i wish i could stop her but i can’t ! she’s never experienced this kind of freedom before, who could blame her for being a heaux ? ♡ still has sticky fingers, watch your shit around her if you want to keep it ! ♡ probably other things i’m forgetting but i am currently brain dead.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

♡ other revenants members › i mean duh,, gotta have those guild connections ! pals ? playful rivalry ? maybe even a little bit of mutual dislike ? gimme it all ! ♡ her old best friend › probably gonna put a wc on the main for this but PLEASE bring me her ex friend who stopped speaking to her when she joined the knights of the blood oath. i will SCREAM !! ♡ old folks from blood oath › people who she’s still friends with ? people she never got along with ? people angry that she left for the revenants ( esp if they were close before bc i love pain ) ? maybe even an ex ? *sharpay evans voice* i want it all ! ♡ flirtationships & fwb › like i said, she will flirt with a brick wall and she is living her best life as a heaux in velia asdadfvdf. let her be spici !!! ( lil notes : she’s bi + i’m chill w nsfw headcanons but i’m not super comfy writing smut in threads ) ♡ frenemies / enemies › let ! her ! be ! bitter ! that’s really it we can plot out why together i just love some good old fashioned hostility ( bonus points if there’s some underlying ~tension~ *eyebrow wiggle* ) ♡ an unlikely friendship › maybe someone who is more reserved who she can bring out a little chaos in or who can balance out the chaos in her ? maybe someone who has done something that she should hate them for, but instead they grew close ? a fun dynamic with characters who no one would ever guess would be as good of friends as they are ♡ anything else !! › if you have other ideas for fun connections please shoot them my way !! or we can brainstorm if ya want !!

#this is so long i'm so sorry afvsdf idk when to shut up #veliaintro

12 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 5 years

Note

E L S E W O R L D S ? ? ?

MY THOUGHTS ON THE WORLDS AND THEIR ELSE-ENING ARE MANY.

Gonna put most of this under a spoiler cut just in case, but right up front: I only regularly watch The Flash starting with Season 4 (along with seeing the first half-seasons of it and Supergirl, plus sporadic episodes of the other shows and Invasion!), and while there are absolutely standout episodes, it’s probably the most lukewarmly received piece of media I consume on a regular basis. So Elseworlds looked rad, and The Best Superman was coming back for it, but aside from hints that it was going all Final Crisis (which sadly weren’t realized) I was hardly outright ecstatic at the prospect of a Freaky Friday alone, even with Batwoman’s introduction in play. Basically I assumed it’d a bunch of fine stuff I’d get through so I could drink up the Superman content like a dying man in a desert.

This was my favorite live-action DC thing since The Dark Knight Rises if not in fact The Dark Knight itself, and in all honesty probably my favorite period of the non-Batman division. It was everything I want out of this sort of project and more.

I’mma break this down into a few categories: as a whole, Superman specifically because if you’re here you know what my deal is, THE ENDING, and a multitude of scattershot impressions and thoughts.

AS A WHOLE: Was this a masterwork of layered conceptual depth and calculated plotting tight as drum? Hardly - if nothing else, the sheer fact that the entire Superfamily is functionally and thematically superfluous precludes that upfront. But again, this is the perfect version of this kind of series, where clockwork precision is rarely the name of the game (aside from that dope episode of Flash with the bomb) so much as excitement and character-driven emotion, and in that regard this is the platonic ideal. Oliver and Barry hold the narrative together as Barry low-key relearns the value of his own kind of strength, and Oliver high-key learns to accept that he’s not living in a world defined by him anymore and he needs to be better, to the point where I may not even rag on him as Walmart Batman anymore every time I have cause to mention him, especially since that gets its own perfect sendoff. Batwoman functions as a perfect pilot capsule while still functioning as a chunk of a larger story, and Ruby Rose is on point. Supergirl gets some quality content even with her hands off the wheel (which is one of the lesser aspects given…well, given this is probably gonna be the last crossover like this and she really should have been the lead for one of them). It’s funny and thrilling and so damn weird, concerned above all else with making you giggle at doing stuff you’ve wanted to see for years and then making you give a shit about the emotional consequences of Barry Allen picking up some archery classes, and it earns what it reaches for.

Moreover, this episode represented a moment of maturation for me in terms of its status as a shared universe: Crisis on Earth-X was the culmination of what this world HAD been with its massive group shot aboard the Waverider, and that culmination was my going “wow, lookit that, they really did build something kinda functional out of what they had to work with”. It was a world that was comic book as all hell in the best way, but its own oddball strain made up of recognizable pieces broken off from a larger puzzle and rearranged into a new configuration. Here? From the moment the Monitor chases off 90s Flash on a desperate race from his dead world and the bodies of an army of superheroes to save all creation, into Superman taking his place as a central figure, Batman’s mythology unfurling out of nowhere at a beautifully shameless breakneck pace, the establishment of the Multiverse and Monitor mythology as the base level concept uniting the universe as a whole, and hotlinks to a half-dozen other major mythology elements I’d given up on ever seeing acknowledged, this really and profoundly feels like DC Comics.

SUPERMAN: Still so so good! I will say, this wasn’t nearly as much a breakthrough standout display for Hoechlin’s Clark as his prior Supergirl appearances, with a couple line readings where he’s maybe just a little too chill, and less opportunity to display range or depth given he’s in the back seat. And dude’s gotta practice pretending to be thrown back, however you do that, because that was pretty badly fakey-looking. If this had been his debut, I still would’ve loved him, but he’d be taking up third or fourth on my list of live-action Superman actors rather than sitting pretty at #1; I have to wonder if a lot of his energy simply went to his killer performance as Deegan, or if he’s still modulating his kinda-being-his-real-self-but-also-still-putting-on-the-Supermanness chunk of his performance given it’s with Kara and Lois that he really shines. If someone writes him off as a dime store Reeve though, they’re still wrong and also probably bad. Shoring up his cracks though is Elizabeth Tulloch, who’s already at least vying for a place on the Lois Lane Mount Rushmore. Reminded me heavily of the best of Erica Durance’s take, but with an additional straightforward bluntness that suits Lane incredibly well, and a talent for talking rings around Clark that does more than any other Lois to date to sell the idea that that’s a huge part of what he loves about her. Also she slaps around a mad god with the hammer for the cosmic anvil from All-Star Superman, because if there’s one thing Lois Lane steadfastly refuses to be in the business of, it’s in any way fucking around.

As for the big question: even aside from Tulloch making pretty clear in a recent interview that it’s something producers are talking about, yes, I absolutely think the Superman/Lois chunk of this was as fully intended to act as a backdoor pilot for them as the second act was for Batwoman. I know I’ve been certain on this in the past just as a matter of ‘they can use Superman so it would be foolish not to push that’, but then, well, nothing happened. But here, while the creators are clearly hedging their bets with providing them what could easily be a happily-ever-after, their appearance in this way in this context is bizarrely conspicuous and pointless if that wasn’t what was intended. They’re incidental to the plot (Deegan becoming Superman, while great fun that gives us an interesting new spin on the evil Superman concept, is basically just an aesthetic), the functionality of getting Clark away from National City had already been handled by the season premiere and never actually takes anything more than ‘he’s busy in space/plugging up a volcano/fighting Luthor’ as has already been done in the past, the guest spots and relevant emotional beats could have easily been contained to an episode of Supergirl rather than spilling out into an already stuffed three episodes, and if they could only be used in one crossover for some reason they’d obviously be saved for the next one. And they get a scene to themselves AFTER their role with our leads is wrapped up, with a moment that could have already come off-screen earlier but didn’t, purely to endear them to us in a way that would make us want to see more of them. I’m not saying a Superman show is now guaranteed, but unless there was some bizarre instruction that they suddenly once and for all needed to permanently get rid of him - yet permitted that to be accomplished via the delivery mechanism of more Superman, in a way that’s noted as impermanent in-universe and in a context that’s going to introduce him and Lois and push them as big deals to the maximum possible number of viewers - yeah, I think that’s what the people who made this must have been intending. And that the powers that be let them is incredibly encouraging. As Tulloch said, a lot of this is out of the hands of anyone but corporate, but Elseworlds got season highs so that’s a point in their favor; hopefully Cryer works out as Luthor, because I imagine that’s the other checkmark needing to be crossed off that comes down to the response of the viewership.

Also the proposal was perfect, and I am astonished that happening after the pregnancy was announced got to go through - ‘modern’ indeed, as Cat Grant would put it. I get it’s got precedent of a sort in Superman Returns, but on the other hand, that precedent was Superman Returns. I’m surprised I’m not already seeing thinkpieces on the degradation of American Values coming out of this.

FUCK:

FUCK.

I really thought there was gonna be one more crossover before they dove all the way in. But nope, nope nope nope, instead by this time next year for-real live action Crisis on Infinite Earths with Flash, Supergirl, Superman, the Monitor, shadow demons, the Psycho Pirate, and assuredly a comprehensive collection of carefully curated cameos from the ghosts of DC TV past will be a thing out there in the world. Marv Wolfman sure must be having a nice day.

And boy, they are not in ANY kind of position to half-ass it. The name value alone would be enough, but if that was it they could at least maybe get away with Dean Cain and Brandon Routh showing up in their old working clothes to help beat up the Anti-Monitor on a cordoned-off Vancouver street, maybe a couple of the Legends folks biting it. But they‘ve been explicitly acknowledging it as a thing they’d build up to for five years, since episode one of their most popular show, and if I’m right and the writing in the book of Destiny was supposed to be the same kind of text that Nora’s writing, they’ve been actively setting up Chekhov’s guns within the shows themselves for at minimum two years. AND they’ve already done three other world-threatening multiversal crossovers, including a classic JLA/JSA-model Crisis, so they’ve already established a threshold of crossover event that this needs to plainly mark itself as an entirely different order of magnitude from, AND they’ve had a threat to the multiverse before in Zoom so just saying that again without really showing it isn’t going to measure up. Hell, the idea of massive status quo changes is reinforced as being just the much of the mission statement of this as the original via Psycho Pirate. They’ve apparently quite knowingly backed themselves into a corner where they actually have to Wreck Shit. At minimum one of the three leads has to die for keeps, and all have the symbolic weight behind them - Oliver included after Elseworlds, and really in the first place as the founder of this DCU - and have obvious enough successor shows waiting in the wings to feel like they’re legitimately in the line of fire.

My hope? One that unlike usual I’m not gonna bolster by drawing on evidence at hand and logical assumptions, but the way I simply feel it Should Go and think at this point has a legitimate chance of being the case? Crisis is its own miniseries in the fall in place of the return of the other four shows, a massive high-budget ensemble piece with room to breathe…and at the end pretty much everyone dies. Most of the Legends, some supporting cast members, and above all Oliver, Barry, and Kara ALL die grandiosely and nobly to save all creation, hidden from the audience successfully by way of a miniseries ‘putting off’ the actually nonexistent renewals of the existing series. Earths 1 and 38 are merged (hopefully without discarding the multiverse as a whole, and with the heroes remembering their pasts), and in the wake of this massive conclusion, the entire DCTV lineup is effectively relaunched. Batwoman comes in here, taking Arrow’s place, while Superman emerges (likely with a psuedo-Rebirth setup since Jon’s on the way - they can figure out a way to get him to the appropriate age) with him dealing with his family and his initial grief, The Flash is relaunched with Wally and/or Nora assuming the mantle, and Legends reconstituting itself, whether by its original title or as Legion of Superheroes or Justice League, with a new lineup made up in large part of the castoffs from the cancelled series. Again, obviously there’s nothing definitely pointing towards this being the case, but somehow it just feels right, especially with Batwoman and Superman shows clearly being gestured towards when Arrow and Supergirl are the shows that would definitely have to end or at least change names with the death of their leads. The strongest evidence against all this, I think, is that Supergirl wouldn’t quite have hit a hundred episodes and syndication yet. Though there may still be that Supergirl movie too, so that’s a factor.

A couple incidental thoughts on that front:

* Interesting that Flash vanishes in 2024 and is still gone in 2049, but the first crossover - made when ‘Flash vanishes’ was already a keystone mythology element, and given its place at such an important moment you’d think the writers would remember - makes clear there’s an old Barry around in 2056. I could see that coming up.

* Thawne’s role in this season of Flash feels at this point like it has to dovetail into everything, and I could see him taking up Psycho Pirates’ role in the original story even if the genuine article’s around.

* I wonder if Jon Cryer’s gonna play Alexander Luthor.

* If Kara and Barry do die, and likely make some post-death appearances, I wouldn’t mind if they for the sake of novelty reverse things so that it’s Kara who comes back for real in Final Crisis, while Barry’s the one who comes from the past unknowingly and tear-inducingly ala Whatever Happened From The Man Of Tomorrow? (that could easily be set up via the “three hardest days of your life” thing Johns did in his Flash run).

* Incidentally, do Final Crisis as the ultimate event the next wave of shows build up to like this was built up to, and make that the end of everything.

* If I’m all wrong about Superman and he’s just being set up as a lamb to the slaughter for Crisis to fill the Supergirl role (which would still by no means require him appearing in Elseworlds, especially given it’s not like he develops a relationship with Barry or Oliver, so I’ll say my points all still stand), I get the impulse is to do him dying in Kara’s arms. But if they do wanna go this way and finish his story, I really, really hope that instead they let him deal at least part of the killing blow and then somehow vanish into ‘Heaven’ with Lois and Jon. If you’re gonna homage a Superman bit from there to close him out, that’s the one to go with.

* If Ezra Miller wasn’t bullshitting and would be willing to put in a little appearance, this is the place.

ASSORTED REACTIONS:

* “Oh Barry, what have you done this time?” Oliver’s wise to your shit, boy. He knows full well he’s pretty much in a ‘Barry fucks up with Flashpoint even further’ meme come to life.

* Barry freaking out that he knows kung fu is a delight, as is Oliver trying so dang hard to do this whole ‘Flash’ thing.

* Knocking out the pair of them is admittedly *a bit much*, but while some might correctly note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they should be able to accept this, I’d say it’d also be fair to note that they’ve seen so much weird shit they’re not wrong to think this is gonna snowball into some bullshit and it’d maybe be simplest to nip it in the bud and get things under control.

* Barry, I’m glad there are toilets in the Pipeline, but someday you’re going to think to ask ‘so Cisco, what are you feeding them down there?’, and then Vibe’s gonna go OH FRAK or some other nerd shit and they’re gonna find 5 seasons worth of corpses to clean up.

* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha they did fuckin’ KGBeast on Arrow. Was that who Dolph Lundgren played? Checking…no. Dang.

* I had heard there was gonna be a Remy Zero shout-out for Smallville, but I assumed someone would just ask for someone to save them or it would be playing on the radio, not that they’d hard swerve from vague orchestral stirrings to pseudo-Nickelback. Loved it.

* Clark’s doin’ Clark stuff and I love it, Lois is doin’ Lois stuff and I love it, she nearly kills the Flash and Green Arrow with a hammer (truly her weapon of choice!) and I love it.

* Oliver pathetically puffing out his chest, WHILE CLARK ISN’T EVEN BEING SUPERMAN, is as good as television gets.

* AMAZO. Aside from basic delight at his existence, I love that the ‘Mirakiru’ ties into the Ivo material I know was in early, pre-superhero Arrow. It’s as if when Smallville got to do Supergirl and Doomsday for real they went ahead and tied them back in to the weird proto versions of them they’d already set up not knowing what they’d be able to do later. Much as Mxyzptlk or Grodd or Muppet Legends (I also caught that shows’ midseason finale, it was delightful) are easy to point to as indicators of how far this universe has come, this underlined that in a very unique way.

* Harsh, Barry - and where did you get those crossbows? - but earned as the Superfamily probably put together when they heard Oliver yelling about how when HE shot Barry he totally had a good reason for it. And along with the sheer, savage power of “I don’t think you can go more than nine hours without some sappy motivational speech”, it sets up Barry’s more understated character arc relative to Oliver in questioning and then reaffirming that his brand of emotional strength is just as strong as what your cowled types draw on. And while Lois obviously had the killer moment, Clark’s little “well, you kinda had that coming” look when Barry floors Oliver is nicely done. Smart money says he was thinkin’ about Bruce.

* Continued into the porch conversation, where the show takes its first real step in rehabilitating CW Green Arrow into a character I may no longer refer to by default as Walmart Batman as the show continues to dunk on him but he begins to take it in stride and realize he’s gonna have to change things up a bit.

* “Cool. Who are you?” “A friend.” So choice. Is that very clearly Williams-evoking musical sting at the end there something that often shows up in Supergirl? And I can’t tell whether’s Clark’s grin is in response to what he’s about to do, or because he’s relishing the hilarity of meeting a normal dude for the first time in his adult life who doesn’t know who Superman is, but either way I love it. And since I found his previous introductory shirt-tear honestly a little sub-par, this was an appreciated moment of redemption.

* Amazo fight rules, obviously. I do like to imagine the headlines the next day mentioning “hey, another superhero teamup happened with Supergirl from that other Earth who helped out with those invasions, and this time a male partner of hers showed up, some kind of…Super-man?” as the one pubic mention of Superman in the history of what’s presented as a ‘main’ DC universe.

* Barry just casually addressing ‘Clark’ by his first name is the first moment where I really thought ‘oh wow, this IS the DC Universe now’. And that “You’re welcome” worked as a reminder where there otherwise wasn’t space that yeah, he’s a nice dude, but maybe don’t tug too hard on his cape.

* Even though it wasn’t overtly followed up on, Barry being reminded that following Oliver’s example as his source of strength isn’t what’s gonna win him the day in the long run in the way that matters is a pretty essential piece.

* Every moment of Total Bat-Bullshit in here was so cheap and I loved it all so much.

* Oliver-dunking takes on its glorious apotheosis here - you know the line I’m thinking of - but it’s a necessary aspect of his journey here.

* Ruby Rose is very good as the charismatic vaguely menacing but easily flirty businesswoman, and again later kicking ass and delivering the growl, which she honestly does better than any live action Batman to this point. Curious to have it elaborated what kind of role she had in Bruce’s operation, given she clearly knew and has her own friggin’ cave.

* And then Barry stands up to Oliver’s demons while Oliver realizes Barry’s.

* “You really do have a lot of tattoos.” Oh my, Kara.

* “You have real steel in you, my friend.” And there you go for Barry’s arc.

* Well, wow. Fan theory bullshit triumphs at last, and now I kind of have to imagine we’re gonna see some actual Lanterns down the line. Hope, likely in vain, we see Hal so he can pal around with them before Oliver and/or Barry bite it.

* Mar Novu, huh? Somea that Final Crisis bullshiiiiit, please do feel free to pursue that further. Mandrakk’s cousin or something I guess?

* That can’t really be the end of the 90s Flash, right? If nothing else, he needs to stick around so that if they decide not to disintegrate Grant Gustin after all he can be the one there to make the death run.

* Episode one: “The darkness…I feel it…it threatens…to…CONSUME me…” Episode three : “oh my GOD Oliver we broke a LAW I’m gonna THROW UP”

* Hoechlin plays the hell out of Scary Dickhead Superman, even if it’s odd that Deegan was defensive about making an arguably sexist choice of identity when he already openly fucking supports eugenics. But an anon asked me about this and suggested this is a top-tier evil Superman, and yeah, I’d agree with that. He’s not scary because’s a mad god, he’s scary because he’s a small, small man who’s lucked his way into being GTA mod Superman, all of the pluses with none of the minuses, all of the ego-assuaging praise and power without having to meaningfully hold up his end of the bargain. It’s an effective twist on Superman as a power fantasy, one that’s scary in a very different way than the idea of it going wrong usually is. Because instead of him letting us down, it’s one of us joining him in the sun and trying to kick him and the rest of us out because it’s all HIS now.

* Oh yeah, of course Superman totally knows about the Book of Destiny. All the REALLY cool superheroes got that that kind of experience in the bag.

* As I said, Supergirl takes a back seat, but Benoist really shines with swaying Alex Danvers - from the moment I saw she’d be in this from the trailer I thought “Kara swaying her can’t be done very believably, it would be convincing her of a whole other life instead of a minor alteration”, but damn if she didn’t sell it.

* I must admit, the Superman V Superman fight is Hoechlin’s low point; him losing the advantage because he’s saving people is perfect, but some of his good-Superman deliveries lack the necessary conviction, and whether due to the animation or his overexagerated tumbling, him getting knocked around the city looks notably fake in parts to an extent that breaks the immersion.

* I guess Superman fought Bizarro at some point, if that concept carried over (I know Supergirl fought a Bizarro too, but if Superman never fought one the average citizen wouldn’t make that comparison). I suppose it’s the Earth-1 Alex Danvers and James Olsen though?

* Similar note: Kara mentions that ‘maybe my pod didn’t make it here’, and given doppelgangers are a thing, it’s been noted there’s a Krypton in each universe, obviously at least one other major superhero carries over in Batman, and the degree of long-term planning clearly going on at this point with the multiverse stuff, I honestly wonder if they might be laying the seeds for something on why Superman and Supergirl never happened on Earth-1.

* I do like that Superman’s technically the one who beats the bad guy flat-out and saves the world from a broken history by sheer force of will, even if he’s not the one with the splashier more permanent win later (and even then he saves Lois).

* Fuck yes. Never liked Superman turning the world backwards, but now entirely worth it for how that shit comes back here in the most gleefully unhinged manner imaginable (even if Mach 7 wiping out Barry and Kara is absurd on the face of it).

* And Oliver comes full circle to realizing he’s no longer the center of his own universe, realizing he can be better while still proving he has it in him to make the hardest call. This dude still ain’t Ollie, but I guess I can acknowledge him as Green Arrow.

* And then it’s all Superman stuff and Crisis, which I discussed, though worth mentioning just how off-guard the Jon confirmation caught me. Thumbs up on that!

#Elseworlds #DCTV #Superman #Lois Lane #Crisis On Infinite Earths #Flash #Arrow #Supergirl #Analysis #Opinion

57 notes · View notes

paladin-andric · 5 years

Text

The Creation Legend: Pseudodragons

Welcome to The Creation Legend! This is a new series I’ve come up with that will tell short stories about the start of certain species in the world of Deaco! In the first of these tales, we explore the creation of the Pseudodragons, a miniature, artificial race of dragons created by a wizard of old!

“Just like that...YES!”

The wizard hung over the bench, caught up in a feverish mania. His eyes were wide as plates. Sweat poured down his forehead. A manic grin was plastered against it all.

Geomoray’s hair and goatee were wild and disheveled as he poured the last of the concoction into the vial, grabbing it and hurrying over to the summoning circle.

The man was about as wizardly as one could be. The facial hair, the robes, the pointy hat...the outfit, in this age, was a symbol of modern splendor. It would take centuries before it became considered tacky and childish. In these old times, shortly after the rise of magic, it was what many chose to wear.

Behind him, a great tower of stone rose into the sky. His tower.

Outside, the ritual was finally at the end, the years of work were finally about to come to fruition.

He reached the summoning circle and quickly leaned down, letting the contents of the vial run free. Into the indents the mix went, a complex pattern of rings and stars.

The carefully designed patterns acted as a gutter, the liquid quickly spreading out into the rest of the summoning circle. The bubbling, purple mix spread evenly throughout it. In no time at all, the summoning circle began to hum with energy.

He’d already infused it with magic. He’d already done the ritual. He’d already prepared everything else. Now, with the final part of the ritual complete, he had only to stand by and wait for it to finish.

The mix flashed, bright lights emanating from the lined patterns in the ground. They did not shine like natural light, instead simply rising straight up, keeping their pattern all the while.

His manic grin widened. This was it. All his years of hard work had finally come to this. His attempts, his research, his labor and studies...at last, his prize was coming.

He could see it now. Great, massive dragons, beasts of legend, the tyrants, those who subjugated and oppressed the other races...soon there would be dozens of them, and they would all be bowing to him and serving him faithfully...

At last, it was here. His landmark achievement as a master of magic. He would be remembered as the greatest wizard of all time, his tale lasting forever in the etchings of history.

It was a shame, then, when the lights gave off one last, blinding flash, and suddenly, before him...the dragons were there.

They had been summoned, woven into existence by his will alone. They were finally here, so many of them, only...

They were so much smaller than they should have been.

They were barely the size of the man. They were supposed to be towering, massive behemoths, the mightiest beasts in all the known world! How then, could they be the size of an ordinary human?!

The bodies were correct. They were all quadrupeds, they had their wings and horns and tails and claws...it was simply as if they had been shrunken down several times over.

Their scales were all different, every type of dragon was there. From bright reds to deep purples, from pure whites to dark black, each scale coloration was accounted for. He had intentionally done that. He wanted to jumpstart a new race of dragons, and account for each color of the old types.

For several long moments, there was silence. All the tiny dragons blinked, looking confused. The shock of suddenly being thrust into existence itself tended to throw those who hadn’t experienced it yet for a loop.

They stared and looked around in bewilderment for a bit longer. Suddenly, they all reached a consensus. Their heads snapped to the direction of Geomoray, and their eyes lit up.

Their ecstatic grins were unnerving, even as free of malice as they were. Geomoray had seen to that himself.

When creating something from nothing, you have the liberty of shaping the core of that creation utterly. The wizard had taken the time to implant several virtues deep into the very fiber of their beings. Things so completely intrinsic to them that not only they, but all their future descendants would exhibit these qualities naturally, never straying from them.

Kindness, humility, loyalty, selflessness, friendliness and optimism. The final touch to all of this was a deep desire to please others, humans in particular. This natural urge to help humans and make them happy, combined with being naturally humble and kind was very much intentional by the wizard. Seeing humans as equals, and wanting to be close and helpful to them would ensure they would never slip into tyranny like their natural cousins.

At first they would zealously serve their master Geomoray, of course, but their destiny lay in their fates after his death. They would stand as bulwarks, unwaveringly loyal servants of humanity, proudly protecting the weak and helpless from the naturally born dragons.

At least, that had been the plan. Much to his dismay, Geomoray realized he had woefully underestimated the amount of materials needed to make the dragons. If he had only summoned one or two, perhaps it would have worked out. With so little material spread out amongst so many creations however, it seemed they had been drained of their size and power to allow for the desired amount.

They looked so happy. Their eyes glimmered and their maws opened in delight as they rushed over to the wizard, nearly trampling him in a miniature stampede. They all crowded around him and bounced about, crying joyfully at the man.

“Master! Master!”

“I’m alive!”

“Thank you! Thank you, Sir Geomoray!”

“My creator! My real creator!”

“Thank you for making me, Master Geomoray!”

Their voices lacked the strength of true dragons as well. They were lighter, shriller even...though still carrying that melodious dignity true dragons were known for.

The distraught and reeling wizard stood in silent horror as the miniature dragons crowded around him and yelled praise at him.

“You’re the greatest, Geomoray!”

“I can’t wait to start assisting you!”

“What do you want me to do?! I want to help!”

“May I patrol your tower for you?! May I, PUH-LEEAASE?!”

“I could fly you to town, if you want!”

“Hey, master, are we-”

“ENOUGH!”

The cries ceased in an instant, everyone listening at the wizards order. He stumbled backwards, bumping past several of the dragons as he moved out of the circle and began to put some distance between them.

“I...I failed...”

A few of them tilted their heads at that.

“Failed? Failed what? Master, we’re right here! You did it! You really made us!”

There was a brief pause. Tensions were high as the confused dragons watched their creators despair and anger.

“Get...out...”

One of the green dragons frowned. “Huh?”

“Get out...I said...get out...”

“W-what...what do you mean, master...?”

He snapped.

“Get OUT of here!”

A sudden burst of chatter signified the drop into panic amongst the dragons.

“W-what are you talking about?!”

“Get out of what?!”

“What you mean, get out?!”

The wizard snarled. “I mean GO! AWAY! Get out of my home!”

Dread settled onto the crowd of miniature dragons.

“B-but master...where will we go?”

“I don’t care. Anywhere. Go anywhere...and never come back.”

“M-master?!”

He leaned against the alchemy bench, clutching at his head, sunken and distraught.

“I...I wanted dragons...and what I got...were a bunch of useless pseudodragons!”

Tears began to trickle down one of the dragon’s muzzles. “Useless...?”

“B-but we can still help...just because we’re a little smaller doesn’t mean-”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” the man screamed, “SCATTER!”

They obeyed. They were heartbroken, but they obeyed.

They took to the skies, soaring off into the horizon as the man wept over the wasted years, the great failure of his master plan.

Though he was gutted over his failings, the dragons were much more so. They were shattered utterly, finally stopping their flight to land in the middle of a great forest. In these untouched wilds, in a large clearing...they grieved.

They wept and cried out to the heavens. They stomped and thrashed. They mourned and complained.

They had failed their master by design. Without any input of their own, they had let him down before they even had a chance to prove themselves.

Their deep, instinctual desire to please others, along with Geomoray’s position as their creator, and in turn, sort of their father, only made it worse.

It hurt so deeply to be rejected by not only the one who gave them life, but who they saw as a parent.

All day, and long into the night, they cried. Those who were a little more strong of will managed to bottle their own sadness long enough to offer the others comfort and reassurance.

It wasn’t until they wept themselves into sleep that the mourning finally ended.

Upon daybreak, they continued their grieving. Stopping only to fetch food, they stayed sulking in the forest for the remaining day as well.

It wasn’t until a few days later, as they began to settle into life in the wild, that they started to feel it.

Something was...wrong.

This was supposed to be a sanctuary, a new home for them, but...it wasn’t.

It didn’t feel like home.

They discussed these feelings, so empathetic these creations were, and got to the bottom of the issue.

There was no one in need of their assistance.

They couldn’t explain it, but...they needed to be helpful. To be useful.

It didn’t matter if they performed labor or simply made another smile. They just had to be near others, so they could help them.

That was it!

“Master Geomoray’s wish was for us to be the helpers of humanity, to be their guardians,” one of the gold dragons explained, “Maybe we’re too...small, to protect the human race like that, but...surely this is his way of making sure we do that! If we’re so sad out here...we need to approach them!”

“B-but master hates us!” a black-scaled dragon cried, “We’re...we’re failures! Worthless! We’re nothing!”

“That’s not true,” the gold dragon countered, his voice becoming gentle, “We can’t help like he wanted us to, but...we can help in other ways! A-and if master doesn’t want us...than we need to find someone who does!”

“A new master...?” one of the crowd probed.

“Not a new master, no...new MASTERS! Master Geomoray, our creator...despite what he said...despite what he thinks of us...we’ll make him proud!”

The gold dragon rose his voice, his soft kindness turning into determined zeal as he too felt his emotions hitting a fever pitch, tears in his eyes.

“We WILL help humanity! We WILL fulfill our legacy! If we can’t fight the evil dragons...than we must adapt! Let us leave in pairs and foster families! Let us settle among human villages and towns! Let us lend our aid by helping them in their day to day work! Even if we can’t do what we were made for...we’ll still be the helpers master dreamed of! Brothers, sisters...we, the ‘pseudodragons’, will spread among the lands in the following years. Soon, very soon...master will see our achievements, and he will realize he was wrong! Now let’s go...and make him PROUD!”

The entire group burst into excited cheers, mad jubilee spreading among them and shattering the pain. They each picked a mate and wished each other well, fanning out in different directions, seeking humans to settle with.

...

A woman carried a large log on her shoulder, a weary look on her face. It had been hours, and all the hard work was getting to her. The sweat soaked her clothes, and she felt that if she fell, she wouldn’t get back up.

Several others were beside her, other villagers heaving massive piles of wood as well.

It was quite a shock, then, when a pair of large, flying reptiles descended from the skies. That was certainly a way to shake her out of her fatigue-induced trance.

They were...like tiny dragons. Were they children?

They landed right in front of the group of human villagers, causing a few cries and a few dropped items.

“W-what?! W-what do you want?!” one of them shouted.

The dragons smiled. The blue one took a step forward and spoke excitedly.

“My name’s Amelia, and this is Nello, and...we want to help!”

...

A year later, a miniature, blue dragon walked with the villagers, all of them hard at work. She carried a wooden pole carefully in her jaws, with large nets full of fish on both ends.

She gingerly placed it down as the rest of them put down their hauls as well, the group having completed their trip from the river back to town.

Elizabeth sighed and wiped her hands on her shirt. “Goodness, what would we do without you and Nello, Amelia?”

The pseudodragon grinned. “You’d manage...but I’m just glad I could help!”

This wasn’t exactly what she had envisioned. When they agreed to aid humanity, she thought she’d be doing bigger things, like saving people or fighting monsters or...goodness, even winning wars.

But this life, this gentle countryside life...it had grown on her. A bit of honest work, talking with all her new friends...and the eggs were going to hatch soon! She was going to be a mother! She was going to have a family!

Maybe this wasn’t what was intended of her species. Maybe her creator really was disappointed in her. Maybe her existence truly was just a mistake...

But this life, this joy she felt...it was anything but surface level. The deep affection for her love and soon to be sons and daughters. The kind and friendly villagers. The pride she felt at the end of each day...it was all genuine.

She had no regrets. If it came to it tomorrow, she could die happy.

In that sense, her life was no mistake. Maybe it was at first, but through sheer will, she and the others had taken those pieces and built them back into something with meaning.

In human history, there were many artistic works of brilliance that started off with an initial mistake or two...but the artist would keep working. They’d paint over the streaks or mend the cracks, work the ‘accident’ into the setpiece...and then, suddenly, it was a masterpiece.

Perhaps these undersized dragons were much the same.

In their own way, they too were masterpieces.

Tag list: @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad, @lady-redshield-writes, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @sheralynnramsey, @tawnywrites, @writer-on-time, @oceanwriter, @zwergis-spilledink, @fluffpiggy, @elliewritesfantasy, @homesteadhorner, @laurenwastestimewriting, @elaynab-writing, @the-ichor-of-ruination, @reya-writes, @bexminx

9 notes · View notes

icharchivist · 5 years

Note

Oh no I agree w/you on not being hard on fans who think differently. One of the reasons I like fan discussions is to read other people's thoughts and try to understand where the ones I disagree w/are coming from. That's just my personal view and reading of the character. I think lately the stress has been getting to Chaoji so he's extra harsh and that's going to be unattractive to Allen's friends. I also think he's wording things the wrong way. It'd be better if he said I'll fight the Noah -

2 instead of I'll fight Allen or telling Allen's friends to forget about him. In this way Chaoji is, whether he means to or not, making it sound like Allen is JUST a Noah. Which.... Is actually a interesting thought. What does the average person think how a Noah works? Does he think Allen is 100% gone now? *shrugs* Either way agree to disagree on some parts. I have no probs w/fans so forgive me if it sounded I was harsh to them. I was just naming of groups I saw and thought it was interesting.

Ahh alright, sorry then for the lecture! it’s fine, don’t worry now that it’s cleared up.

I think i’m getting a little paranoid of some fandom arguments? especially when it starts to involve how some fans react to some controversial events. Bigger fandoms have been so filled with dramas (there had been a lot of push back against people liking not pure uwu characters that i get defensive at the idea of judging how someone may approach a controversial character they may like) i tend to end up having red flags over silly things i would probably have used myself a few years back.

Your argument was fine, and honestly pretty mild in that term, i guess i’ve just had seen enough more virulent argument to be a little.. *alarms bells* upon reading some vague keywords.

So my point is, my bad, i’ve got a little defensive there and judged your ask too harshly. I apologize.

Now back to the topic, yeah agreed on Chaoji. I honestly think Chaoji doesn’t know what details makes a Noah? I mean, the Order didn’t know before Road made her introduction and the Bookmen had to explain to them a few things. No one knows what it is like to turn into a Noah, no one knows about the awakened memories, and hell, the 14th is already a specific sort of Noah (i say it with all the love, but Nea isn’t a Noah Memory like Joyd is, he’s a parasite inside Allen’s body: his own being, not a memory that awoke in Allen, so even that when you know Noah’s development logic, is weird)

Chaoji didn’t become an exorcist until after the Ark’s arc and no one had any reasons too explain to that random crew man who was just helping carrying Lenalee around what little secrets they had learn about the Noah. So I think Chaoji still sees them as “they control the Akuma, they are rotten to the core, and once they turn there’s no come back”, perhaps projecting what he knows of the Akuma (which in which case is true, once an akuma, the only thing you can do is kill them with innocence for salvation - no attempt to really save them. Which makes me think, Chaoji did know Chomesuke- i think he wasn’t developped enough to have a reaction to him, but the fact Chomesuke had to destroy himself bc he couldn’t resist to its nature anymore might have added to this argument that there is no salvation for Dark Matter).

For Chaoji I really don’t think he had the time to know about Noah stuff, and everything we know about how Noah comes to be come from Noah’s POV, so not something the Order may know, let alone a stubborn exorcist who hates them by principle. Allen tends to extend his compassion to non-humans because in a way... if he had seen Mana as non human the moment he would have turned him as an Akuma i think Allen couldn’t have stand it. (also i ended up mixing up with FMA but that reminded me of how Ed refused to kill the armor guys in the Lab 5 even when they kept saying they weren’t human anymore, because if he did so it would just imply that his brother isn’t human either and that it’s his fault that it is like that. I think the same reasoning can be applied to Allen @ the Akuma and extend to the Noah as long as the Noah are on the “side” of the Akuma. Ironically though considering “Mana” ended up becoming a Noah. Well. Always was, but you get my point)

Meanwhile the only strong feeling we’ve seen from an exorcist @ the Noah for being a Noah, was Kanda saying that since they are humans (which Skinn repeated) then they could be killed. Which i personally always took as a reassurance on Kanda’s part of reclaiming his own humanity and Alma’s, since they were denied it as kids and perhaps the only thing that, after all the horrors Alma had done, that made him human was that Kanda could kill him. Kanda asserting the Noah’s humanity in order to convince himself that death is part of humanity would, if i’m correct, be a sort of projection to protect that memory and identity, the same way Allen projects on others.

But for the others, Lenalee had never hesitated around the Noah, even upon meeting Road, she quickly fought back. Lavi has a bad experience with Noah but he’s neutral enough to care more about what Allen wants in the end (when Allen wants to rescue Tyki the whole thing is about “the guys at the Order will look badly at it but if you think it’s important...” and not “why you do want to rescue the guy i wanted to kill a few hours ago”)Then there’s mainly Krory with the twins (and Lenalee to an extend) and I think there was too much irritation going on about them being brats more than them being Noah that went on there.

But from Chaoji’s point of view who knew nothing about them, had spent his life hating the dark matter for taking what he loved, he saw.... Well Tyki playing with Lavi’s grief and threatening Lenalee, before trapping them in the Ark and trying to kill Allen, he’s seen Skinn attack everyone and they then left Kanda behind with him, he’s been here a huge chuck of the Jasdebi fight just to see the Twins being Absolute Disaster Making You Lose Faith In Anything They Ever Represent (And It Happens To Be The Noah This Time) (did i ever mention that i love those stupid twins? I love them. They’re so dumb.), Road destroying Lavi’s mind and torturing Allen into forcing him to destroy Lavi, and finally the Lullubel attack on the Order that killed a huge amount of people. And if we extend the timeline to when he could have caught up his next meeting with the Noah in the Alma arc made him KO, kidnapped Lavi and Bookman who are now thought dead, and Fiidora’s parasites tortured him when he was powerless to save Lavi and Bookman, which might add some feeling of guilt there by the by.

Without understanding of the Noah he just saw... the sheer destruction they brought along with them.

So Allen saying “I might become a Noah and you will have to kill me” - well I think seeing how horrible the Noah had been up to this point was enough for Chaoji to think that if Allen became one, it would override all of the good qualities Allen had. After all he has never seen the Noah before they became Noah.

Tbh It makes me even wonder if being introducted to Tyki in his human form (and Road to her human form as well but it’s more minor than how they befriended Tyki before that) may have made more possible for Allen to want to try to see that humanity. Because he saw this humanity with how Tyki behaved with his friends. More than just... hearing about “Oh apparently he has friends” that Chaoji would have heard from Allen, Lavi and Krory’s reaction upon meeting Tyki again.

In a way, the fact Krory also has this association adding to how much he cares for Allen to relativise the way “becoming a Noah” might affect Allen - in a way Chaoji cannot. Because Krory saw Tyki having seemingly meaningful friendships with humans so, becoming a Noah wouldn’t come out as completely monstruous for him a way someone who just know the Noah might. (that, and also how his love for Eliade was serious and might make him more willing to believe in that humanity, even if Eliade told him in the end that she was just using him. Krory didn’t know she was lying - but he might hold on to that feeling).

So adding to all of Chaoji’s unchecked prejudice, there is this complete unknown over people he had only known as cruel. He has never seen their humanity the way Lavi, Krory, Kanda and Allen has. Then again yeah it doesn’t excuse anything because Miranda and Lenalee for exemple are in the same situation having suffered first hand from tortures from, well, Road for exemple, but trusting Allen above all while just as much in the dark. Even if depending how much the infos Bookman gave came to Miranda and Lenalee before Chaoji joined the Exorcist Group.

So that ended up being a lot of rambling dkjhfd but my point is that therefore, Allen is the one to see the humanity of the Noah the most, Krory and Lavi has reason to at least know personally Tyki’s human side to doubt how the Noah’s cruelty works, Kanda had had how he met with Skinn to approach it, else every exorcists before Chaoji was recruited might have heard a bit from Bookman but that’s it. Any other sort of acknowledging this humanity would come with trusting Allen. Which Chaoji doesn’t.

And no one knows what “becoming a Noah” is like. And while Chaoji wasn’t there and i’m certain Lveille lied, but Allen did have a swift change of behavior and personality at least twice in the Alma’s arc for everyone to see (when talking to the Earl + when Kanda stabbed him). Even Johnny saw that. A second hand retelling could just convince Chaoji “well perhaps he had no control and it doesn’t matter what kind of person he was - once a Noah, you become a monster” and that could be enough.

That was a lot of ramble i’m so sorry dkjhfd but yeah. It’s a mess.

And it’s just... there’s no way Chaoji can know. All he could do would be to trust Allen. Even seeking for answers isn’t exactly a position Chaoji is in, even if it would be preferable if he did question what he thought so far (like the others do) rather than just thinking “yup, he’s a goner, i’ll fight him”

if that makes any sense kdjhfd

idk Chaoji’s perspective is kinda fascinating to me. I dislike that he has it and doesn’t question it, but it’s fascinating to see how being emotionally disconnected from every elements we have ended up caring about can make someone like this. It really shows the price of emotional investment for me to see how Chaoji behave. He’s kinda the Counter-audience in that regard. And that’s what makes him fascinating, for as much as i dislike him as a person ahah.

#ichafantalks dgm #Anonymous #ichareply

3 notes · View notes

anticipatingevaporation · 5 years

Text

Vice

Oh my gosh. Oh My gosh.

I like to think of myself as a fairly levelheaded person. If I don’t like a film, it will generally irk me a little, but I won’t be too annoyed about it.

But Oh my Gosh. Vice is something else.

Suffice to say, I really disliked this movie. For a number of reasons. Which makes this review rather difficult to write. But I’m gonna try.

So I honestly had no idea who Dick Cheney was before hearing about this movie and looking into it a little. A line in the film itself insinuates this; Cheney was one of the most powerful people on earth at a time, he was responsible for huge changes that impacted the world in a massive way, but lots of people probably don’t know who he is, and if they do, they probably don’t know much, because Cheney was notoriously secretive. That is a brilliant and interesting concept. I was pretty excited to get an in-depth look at this person who had such an impact on modern history.

But my goodness, was this film executed poorly and weirdly. I haven’t seen any of Adam McKay’s films before this one, (I’ve been meaning to get around to Anchorman but haven’t had the chance yet) but I know he comes from a comedy background with Vice being his second foray into dramatic filmmaking following The Big Short in 2015. I never got to watch that movie either but I had heard that it was a bit of a strange mish-mash between the serious issue of the financial crisis, and a more comedic tone used to make the topics discussed easier to understand and digest.

Now there’s nothing wrong with talent who are primarily known for comedy venturing into dramatic areas, look at Jordan Peele and John Krasinski recently. But McKay choses to bring across the elements of Comedy directing that do not gel with dramatic storytelling at all. The result is (in my opinion) a patronising, strange and frankly awful film that has zero subtlety.

McKay choses several techniques here that did not work for me at all. The film is full of moments that made me feel really patronised as an audience member. For example, when Amy Adams’ character talks about having a childhood where her mother was treated poorly by her father, the film decides to intercut with flashbacks of that. This undermined Adams’ great monologue and felt really unnecessary. Another example would be when the voice over narration (more on that later) would talk about some important point, like how a certain politician prized being loyal over everything else, and giant block letters saying BE LOYAL would appear on the screen. At one point, Cheney is compared to Galactus, and the film actually fades out of his face and into an image of Galactus. The comic book character. I’m not even kidding. When Cheney has a heart attack, we are treated to a visual of a heart pumping, when a Nixon’s trademark smirk is mentioned, a still image of him smirking appears. I mean I could go on and on, but this style of filmmaking insulted my intelligence and did not work for me in the slightest.

Another issue is that instead of focussing on a few key moments and expanding on them. McKay decides to cover pretty much everything that happens in Cheney’s life. Which leads to the film feeling like The Life of Dick Cheney, in dot points. Moments like the “hunting incident” which I would have loved to learn more about and witness, are given about 30 seconds of screen time, as well as numerous other important events. Now I’m not suggesting every single moment be covered in copious detail, but this film felt as if it lacked focus. Cheney never felt like a real character. We cut from him being a drunk loser, to working a nothing job in electrics, to suddenly being involved in politics. We never get a true understanding of who Cheney is or why he does what he does. The film likes to suggest it is the motivation of his wife, but I feel that wasn’t covered well enough.

A mid-credits scene cuts to characters in a focus group breaking the fourth wall and insinuating audiences will dislike this film because it has a liberal bias. I have no issue with films being executed with a bias, I mean it is the director’s film in the end, they have every right to present events how they wish to. However, in this case the bias has a clear negative impact on the quality of the film. The film uses a voice over narration, which I found to be unnecessary and preachy. But it is so clearly McKay himself implementing his views on the issues at hand. McKay likes to pinpoint Cheney as the reason behind a lot of the bad things that are happening today, from over-the-top right wing news stations to ISIS. While it’s clear that Cheney is in some ways involved with these things, to insinuate one person is solely responsible is pretty foolish if you ask me. And even if they were, the film reveals it with no subtlety whatsoever. Which kind of affects how impactful the point being made is.

All this being said, the acting in this film is simply phenomenal. It is an absolute shame these actors are so let down by such a strange and sloppy script, because Christian Bale is absolutely fantastic here. Weight gain aside, (which the Academy love to see and will probably earn Bale the gold this year) Bale simply disappears into this character. From the tilt of his head, to the way he speaks, (don’t forget- he is British!) watching Bale here is an absolute treat and he is so deserving of his nomination here. Same to be said for Amy Adams who does a brilliant job as Lynne Cheney. I would love to see her win because it’s long overdue and Adams never seems to get the credit she deserves. Sam Rockwell is also really fantastic as George W. Bush, he is able to embody the character without it seeming like a cheap imitation.

Furthermore there are a few instances of good visual storytelling to be found here, from a cut between Bush announcing the invasion of Iraq to some Iraqi civilians to an interesting hold on the image of Cheney’s transplanted heart that says quite a lot.

The way Cheney choses to become a Republican in this film is also nicely done, as well as when he asks his superior “What do we believe?”, only to get laughter as a response. There are a few interesting statements made about politics to be found here, and when you get down to it what was done during this period of American History is both shocking and truly interesting, so it’s clear to see why the filmmakers were drawn to it, it’s just such a shame it was so poorly put together.

In the end, the good acting and select few interesting moments in this film do not redeem it in my eyes. I’m frankly pretty shocked at the nominations for Directing and Best Picture here. Most of the time when I dislike an Oscar film, I can still see why it was nominated, but I’m really drawing a blank here.

At one point in this film Lynne Cheney says that Vice President is a job that involves “waiting around for the president to die”. So to see how someone in that position ended up wielding so much power and changing the world so significantly would have made for a brilliant film. In the hands of a better filmmaker.

#Vice #Oscars #My Review

1 note · View note