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inukag · 1 year

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Speaking of filler episodes/arcs making Inuyasha (mostly him) ooc, there's one arc that makes Kagome (not only wildly OOC, but also makes her kind of dense/dumb): the kenkon halberd arc with Akitoki Hojo. - I hope you don't mind I lay off this rant (been bottling that up for MONTHS now). I just HATE the disservice to Kagome's character

(I'm not listing them in order, btw)

First sign where she's made sort of dumb (which she is in reality NOT throughout the series): Hojo shows up with that scroll to show his ancestor KAgome Hojo (🙄🙄 dude, we see what you're trying, you are DENSE), and she has that INCREDIBLY OOC moment where she wonders, and almost with certainty --after they run into A. Hojo-- that she will stay in the past and marry him... Like WTAF? That's just SO OOC because at point in the story, she admitted to naraku's evil baby that she's in love with Inuyasha; it also portrays her as stupid as if she doesn't even consider that there may be other girls/women name Kagome.

Then there's guilt tripping Inu to help akitoki, telling him "don't you feel guilty?" which he rightly replies with "why? Naraku destroyed Mount Hakurei (?)".

When Inuyasha is saying that humans shouldn't mess with yokai weapons, that is not their business, her thoughts keep going into tangents (several times during the three episodes), and reading "humans should not mess with yokai weapons" somehow equals "yokai/hanyo shouldn't get involved romantically")

When she and dense ancestors are separated from the rest of the gang, she remains quiet when Akitoki makes a veiled racist remark regarding inuyasha when she mentions she doesn't have a boyfriend (WHICH ISN'T TRUE, SHE'S WITH INU AT THAT POINT) and he goes all "I understand you travel with half demon and a monk who aren't appropriate husband material" and on top of that he goes "i'm sure under this sky is a young man destined for you" (jesus, this guy is like koga, if not worse (stealing a kiss, hello?) and she again pretty much accepts those words.

In than same scene, she quickly dismisses the thought of Inuyasha potentially becoming her hubby with a shake off her head that would have been IC for the first 5 episodes of the series, NOT this far into the story.

Then when the dude falls asleep SHE PUTS HIS HEAD ON HER LAP - that shit is ooc af and a slap to the face to the first new moon with Inu.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some more OOC Kagome moments.

And ofc, Inuyasha is bit OOC in this arc because this akitoki asshole keep acting like he's Kagome's intended husband, keeps shouting his love for her (despite knowing her for one hot minute), and Inuyasha says NOTHING (I'm sure he would have ripped his arms if he knew this fucker tried to kiss her while she slept).

Sorry that was long. ❤

(Sorry for answering this a month later than I said I would, last time I watched these episodes was YEARS ago so I wanted to rewatch them before I answered this ask!)

First of all, I have to disagree a bit about this idea that these episodes made Kagome look completely dumb. At least in terms of action/battle, they made her use her arrows numerous times (people always complain about her not doing anything) and she was smart enough to 1- Test the sword on her friends’ lookalikes to see if they are yokai 2- Question them when they used her and Akitoki’s names 3- Rightly guessing that the girls are actually puppets and that’s why they weren’t affected by the blade

That was quick thinking of her and showed that she’s resourceful too, which is great! This is a lot like early-manga Kagome, like when she burned the toad demon or when she attached a yokai leg to her arrow.

Now her assuming that a “Kagome Hojo” existing in the past must mean that she stayed behind and married Akitoki was pretty... weird. Unless Kagome is a rare name in Japan? I don’t know about that.

But YES what bothered me the most in those episodes is how Kagome barely acknowledges her relationship with Inuyasha?? Like you said she completely shakes off the idea that Inuyasha is her boyfriend and that he could potentially end up with him???

GIRL WHAT you literally screamed that you love Inuyasha and cuddled him like 10 episodes ago??? 😭 Although this was in response to Akitoki telling her that the person who will eat her cooking everyday is very lucky, so maybe this was Kagome saying “well Inuyasha wouldn’t enjoy my cooking” because this episode has another instance of Inuyasha saying he enjoys instant ramen more than home-made cooking....

Sunrise PLEASE shut up..... Inuyasha isn’t Naruto! Loving ramen is not one of his core personality traits! There’s nothing in the manga that indicates it’s the only food he enjoys...

Anyway, Kagome not mentioning her relationship with Inuyasha is still wildly OOC when you consider how she reacted to Koga flirting with her and mocking Inuyasha...

The whole theme of this arc was the differences between yokai and human and whether or not they are compatible... so I think what Sunrise tried to do is to set back Inuyasha and Kagome’s relationship so they can then re-confirm their chemistry at the end to prove that yokai/human relationships are indeed possible...

It’s just very weird to do this that far in the series (this arc spans episodes 137-140). The plot with Hoshiyomi and Tsukiyomi was also just a repeat of Inuyasha and Kikyo, with the whole “they thought they betrayed each other but they actually didn’t” so it wasn’t particularly original.

It really was such a weird tangent, Inuyasha saying “humans shouldn’t mess with yokai weapons” and Kagome ending up with “maybe my relationship with Inuyasha won’t work after all”... It would have been an interesting idea to explore if Kagome actually brought up significant differences between them that could lead to problems (like the anime-only idea that Inuyasha is 200 years old, or their children having yokai features, human villagers not accepting them, etc.) but none of that was addressed so it felt very shallow.

I think it’s kind of funny that Akitoki declaring his feelings for Kagome was just ignored by pretty much everyone except Shippo essentially calling him cringy and Kagome questioning her future for a few minutes. I kinda hated that Kagome put his head on her lap when he was sleeping but it’s almost like she wanted to see if she would get butterflies in her stomach like the first time she did that with Inuyasha, but she clearly didn’t feel anything so she realized it wasn’t going to happen 😭

All in all I don’t think these fillers are bad. There’s some annoying set backs and OOCness but it ends with some wholesome Inukag moments too. It’s not like some of the filler episodes that makes Inukag look toxic (except maybe that line at the end of episode 140 where Inuyasha says Kagome is not kind...) or skews the love triangle. Also these episodes highlight a major problem I have with the anime, and that is the animation quality and style changing every episode. Episode 138 & 140 have amazing animation directors (Shouko Ikeda and Kumiko Takahashi) but the other 2 are mediocre imo and it’s very jarring. At least in the manga Rumiko Takahashi’s art is consistent.

ALSO if you think Akitoki deserves to get beat up by Inuyasha for trying to kiss Kagome without her consent you should read A Rude Awakening by @born-for-eachother! Kat went HARD on Akitoki in her fanfic, Inuyasha was ready for murder LMAO.

#ask #deanscarlett #sunrise-critical #also i didn't know where to put this in the answer but #i think it's a bit too much to say that kagome ''guilt tripped'' inuyasha into helping hojo lol

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aqueeracademic · 1 year

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morse being queer (and other commentary) pt 15:

season 4, episode 3, “Lazaretto”:

- my expectations are really low for this episode

- the last episode was so aggressively gay i’m just assuming this one won’t be

- unfortunate but here we are!

- ew i hate hospitals

- i love old nurse uniforms though

- elite fashion tbh

- morse in a wife beater agenda ‼️

- of fucking course joan called him from a goddam pay phone

- i’m IRRITATED 🗣️

- my tv is glitching the fuck out

- fixed it!

- anyways

- the head nurse reminds me of the sister in fleabag and i always think it’s her but it’s not

- and that’s my story

- morse uses the same body language with debryn that he uses with women he’s attracted to

- i’m just saying 🤷‍♀️

- the way everyone looks at the parrot is so fucking funny

- we are barely ten minutes into this episode and we’re already headed to the armory

- NO BRIGHT NO

- anyone but bright.

- you can kill ANY CHARACTER

- bright killed a tiger tho i’m pretty sure he’s immortal at this point

- no because listen

- debryn is perfect for morse

- IM SERIOUS

- he comes to the hospital immediately out of loyalty to the precinct and also because he knows morse is there alone

- he immediately tells morse who is in the operating room and that the surgeon is talented and morse doesn’t have to worry

- and then promises to go see what’s what for morse so he doesn’t have to wear himself out

- and THEN he brings morse’s mind back to the case hes working on because he knows morse copes by working and wants to take his mind off bright

- debryn knows all the ins and outs of morse’s brain and respects every facet of him and works in favor of him every time without fail

- hes fucking perfect

- i love him

- everyone loves bright so much i’m sick

- the head nurse reminds me of the evil lady from chicken run

- i hate this lady caroline

- she didn’t really do anything wrong in this moment with morse but like

- you are the mother of the woman who broke morse as a human being and forever scarred his perception of love

- and then ur gonna brag about what her new man is doing? just to rub it in that he “wasn’t good enough” for her and still isn’t?

- despicable.

- i don’t even wanna promote the queer aspects of that even tho it would be easy to

- because that was just fucking cruel

- and morse deserved better

- it cannot be comfortable for bakewell to have his arm cuffed up like that for that long

- they should do it lower for sure

- justice for winnie ‼️‼️‼️

- i love her i just want her to be happy

- trewlove is so worried about bright

- bright and trewlove 🤞🤞 i love them

- “We were engaged to be married. And then we weren’t.”

- THIS is why morse is the most relateable fictional character ever to me personally

- because he SIMPLIFIES this sort of stuff

- he could tell the whole story

- say what transpired and why she left and what he did wrong or didn’t do wrong and who she’s with now and why he became a cop instead of pushing himself and being happy

- but he says this.

- we were and then we weren’t.

- because all human experience can be taken as that.

- we are and then we aren’t

- and it’s all very simple

- and despite all the pain he feels and all the ways it’s affected his life

- he knows it’s as simple as that

- THIS FUCKING SHOW RAHHHSHEKFOSK 🦅🦅🦅

- the way that nurse mills keeps side eyeing morse

- girl calm down

- the way morse runs 💀

- go morse go! 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

- thursday should not have left bakewell and i stand by that

- even though nothing happens someone should have stayed with him to keep him safe

- but noooo 🙄🙄🙄 thursday has to care about morse and make sure he’s okay

- morse just visiting debryn for fun at this point

- monica 🥺🥺

- JESUS THURSDAY

- slamming his head against the brick wall is so wild

- unnecessary some might say!

- perhaps even… police brutality!

- which you’ve been suspended for!!

- every time i start to like him 🙄🙄

- oh my GOD monica is so beautiful

- “treat the next one better.”

- GET HIM MONICA

- both of them avoiding the question “are you happy?”

- final straw

- the way thursday just hates having brights job

- it’s so funny

- thursday loves winnie so much i’m SICK

- i’ll prolly never get married but if i do i want it to be like them

- the way this show handles mental health issues is like

- actually not that bad

- like 8/10 times they do a really good job

- especially given the time period

- he’s a murderer and all but bakewell is funny as fuck

- “i get the uncontrollable urge to murder nosy parkers 😡. ta for the grapes 🥰🥰!”

- like ok??!

- funny as fuck

- that picture of joan is absolutely foul

- just throwing it out there

- “i had a reverse charges call from leamington.” “wasnt me.”

- i hate her right now

- i know i said i loved her like two posts ago but i fucking hate her

- like she’s intentionally hurting these people and doesn’t care

- like how does she just not care how much what she’s doing is affecting the people in her life?

- i know she’s traumatized

- but ONE phone call to ur parents wouldn’t kill you 🙄

- i have 0 understanding of how she’s blaming herself for the death at the bank

- they didn’t know who she was until he was already dead

- like girl get it together

- “i don’t care.” “i do.” “you shouldn’t.”

- GIRL SHUT UP ‼️‼️

- pissing me tf off

- anyways 😐

- bright is so 🥺🥺

- just a little guy tbh

- GIVE BRIGHT CHILDREN🗣️🗣️🗣️ (he’s like 80 years old do not give him kids)

- what is this trend of bringing grapes to people in the hospital? is that something i should be aware of?

- goddam morse’s ex is RICH

- the way that people don’t like dr. powell because they think he’s a ladies man but he literally just wants to be a doctor 😭

- let my man breathe!

- the way susan was sick TWO YEARS AGO and morse looks worried like it’s happening right now

- “have you spoken to susan?” “yes. i haven’t mentioned you.”

- girl shut your bitchass up

- sick and tired of your classist bullshit

- this guy talking to corpses is so 🤨🤨

- NO BAKEWELL‼️

- what the fuck.

- how on earth is dr. powell working from 7:30 in the morning until after 3 in the morning the next day

- how does he function

- stop 🥺 the way morse turns his back before strange opens the trunk and then just peeks over his shoulder to look

- he’s a fucking pussy 😐

- KIDDING

- i’m obsessed w him and i truly believe his inability to look at the deceased is his most endearing quality

- thursday cares about morse sm i’m SICK

- NAUR THEYRE PUTTING BRIGHT IN BED TEN

- morse talking to the parrot is funny as fuck tbh

- morse is obsessed w debryn

- how the fuck did debryn notice a microscopic wound on someone’s ass

- he’d have to be STUDYING that ass

- wild!

- anywho

- i love the way morse talks to debryn and debryn talks to morse

- just two geniuses bouncing off each other 🥰🥰

- trewlove OUT OF UNIFORM coming to visit bright is so sweet

- it’s like he has a daughter

- i’m obsessed ✋🙄

- okay i was wrong. powell is a terrible person!

- the nurses are dramatic asf tbh

- i cannot imagine real nurses behaving this way

- oh my god susan’s dad died

- this could be my breaking point!

- i also would love to point out the fact that morse insists on formalities in most if not all situations, meaning he refers to people as “Ms./Mrs./Mr. ____”

- but he calls susan’s mom “Caroline”

- just her first name and nothing else

- like he and susan were engaged to be married

- like he really loved her and she maybe really loved him

- like at some point her parents loved morse and took him in

- like they treated him like family

- like they were excited for him to marry their daughter and therefore let him call them by their first names

- like they were close

- like a family

- everything about what happened between him and susan HURTS and idk how to handle it

- also i FUCKING HATE CAROLINE

- “I’m so sorry.” “Are you?” “Yes, of course. Edgar was always very decent to me.” “Well, he always had a weakness for failures.”

- like YOUR DAUGHTER LEFT MORSE

- not the other way around

- i fucking hate classism

- there’s a whole other analysis i could do of this whole situation that would be about his queerness and how it could play into all this but i’m like

- i fucking hate caroline

- she sucks so bad

- like the way she tells him the CHIEF CONSTABLE RUPERT STANDISH said he would never amount to much

- which already is bullshit because of his involvement with landesman and wintergreen, meaning that he was involved with the group who intentionally sabotaged morse and are still attempting to now (he died in the neverland episode so it’s not him directly anymore but still)

- and then says “You didn’t even pass your sergeants exam!”

- which is bullshit because she doesn’t know what happened and he can’t defend himself because it’ll make it sound like he’s making excuses for what she’s interpreting as failures

- “You see, I was right about you, even then.” “When you speak to Susan please give her my condolences.” “And your love.” “No. No. Look, whatever you may think of me, I am truly sorry he’s dead.”

- the DISGUST on his face when she says “and your love”

- i fucking hate her

- and morse deserved better

- it’s obvious that what happened is still tearing him up even now

- and that’s why he’s so sensitive about people leaving him (jakes, joan)

- and why he will always assume people he’s in love with or carries any love for are going to leave

- i fucking hate this show ‼️‼️

- two female murderer episodes in a row i am running my hands together like a little mouse

- this girl is wild for killing that many people tbh

- morse hugging her instead of dragging her away ☹️

- he’s so gentle i HATE IT HERE

- thank fuck bright lived

- idk how i would have reacted if something happened tbh

- i cannot believe the only shot we get of susan is from the back 😐

- okay for you tarot kids!

- intersecting the tower card with the death card usually has a lot of negative meanings. it represents suffering, typically by means of illness or pain of some kind

- the death card is a typically pretty happy card despite the connotation, but when combined with the tower card it’s p shit

- the tower card usually represents suffering or destruction

- combing the two cards doesn’t bode well for morse and it’s our first intersection in the reading we’re getting at the end of these episodes!

- so far we have sacrifice, union, and now a traumatizing ending of something resulting in suffering

- things are not boding well for our boy!

#it is four in the morning #i have to be up at 8 #oh well #for the people! i shout #no one is listening #endeavour #endeavour itv #endeavour morse #morse #itv endeavour

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ambiguouspuzuma · 10 months

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This is a Let People Write What They Want blog, but I really am personally tired of certain tropes. I remember when I started writing over a decade ago, in the aftermath of Twilight and its partners in crime, when writing spaces were saturated with romances (under the cover of all other genres) in which the perfect, beautiful-but-doesn't-know-it female main character meets two unrealistically sexy men who both fall for her and her main focus is then the torment of having to choose between them. You know, the classic hetero FMM love triangle formula.

I was tired of it then, enough that one of my earliest planned works was a satire where the two guys go off together and leave the shallow protagonist behind, but I still come across it too often ten years on! I find it nauseating, not just because of the oversaturation, but because of the way so many of them are written. Part of it is that the protagonist usually feels like a stand-in, like we're party to the author's personal idyllic fantasy, which I'm fine with them having but don't really want to be a part of.

I'm assuming the idea is that the reader shares this dream of being fought over/having to choose between perfect love interests, or finds that sort of conflict particularly hot, although I'm not sure how ubiquitous that fantasy actually is. But if the protagonist is a stand-in, their behaviour is a bit questionable: the male characters are not only held to ridiculous beauty standards but seem to have no personality other than being a love interest for her, and she is able to lead both of them on or discard them without having to worry about their feelings whilst still being described as a sweet and lovely girl.

On its own this is all well and tolerable - after all, every other action film still has a male lead working through a cycle of beautiful but hollow and disposable women - but with the stand-in element I do sometimes struggle to disconnect the art from the author. For example, I struggle to read thrillers like the Jack Reacher series because it's clear that the chauvinistic author is just living out his own macho fantasy where everybody respects him and all women throw themselves at him, and as a reader it feels like you're encouraged to join in, which makes me feel icky and uncomfortable.

In one book the hero goes to his friend's funeral and hooks up with his daughter, whom he has apparently admired since she was a teenager. That grooming is justified in-text by presenting them as soulmates, but she is immediately discarded in the next book when Reacher visits his brother's widow and hooks up with her instead whilst wearing his brother's clothes. It's clearly some weird power fantasy that the author's inviting us to share his thrill in, and I can't stomach it at all.

I think the root of it is that the female characters aren't given agency. They exist just to fawn over the hero, and are just as easily discarded once their usefulness to him is served. It's degrading and dehumanising, because they aren't treated as people in their own right, just objects for the main character to interact with. They don't have their own existence beyond him.

As a counter-example of a male author writing an excellent female character, Terry Pratchett once wrote Granny Weatherwax as saying "sin, young man, is when you treat people like things". I think that applies to writing too. You can write antagonists who are unlikeable and evil and designed for your readers to hate, but at least do them the decency of viewing them as people - and you'll also find you write them better in the process.

Many genres are male-hero, male-author, and male-reader dominated, and feature chauvinism like the Reacher books due to a failure to respect women as individuals, but the same goes for any out-group being portrayed by an in-group. If you don't respect X as people, you're at risk of writing horribly strawmanned and objectified X characters just for the purposes of projecting whatever issues you're going through onto them, and it can make your writing unreadable by anyone who sees that.

Other genres (especially those concerning romance) can be predominantly female in both their authors and readership, allowing similar attitudes to cultivate in another direction. There are many such novels written by women who do not have healthy relationships with men in their lives, as demonstrated by the way they write these two-dimensional, stereotyped, idealised men who exist purely to throw themselves at their stand-in characters and who have no inner life and don't need to be respected as human beings in turn.

It's not just bad characterisation, which I can live with, but being able to tell that this leads back to somebody's actual fantasising - that this is actually how somebody thinks about men, which as a reader you feel you are tacitly endorsing. That's the issue. You can write whatever you like - personally, I do prefer writing female protagonists, and I've written more than my fair share of femme fatales who straight up murder the men in their lives. There's nothing wrong with writing that, if it makes for a fun story. But you should write it for the right reasons.

However I mistreat them as characters, I understand that people of all genders, at least on the individual level, are rounded human beings capable of having any type of personality, and that their gender is just one of the many features we use to describe the person underneath. This is instead of applying a blanket stereotype to one group or another as some inherently untrustworthy, or treating them as incomprehensible aliens from Mars or Venus as appropriate. If I actually wanted the men in my life to die, those stories would become uncomfortable and I wouldn't expect readers to want to be involved in that fantasy.

I'm worried that a lot of these two-dimensional portrayals have less wholesome worldviews underneath. I was recently recommended a book with a love triangle in which I see reviews have raised concerns about the way the strong female character has insta-lust for the male characters, who are all tall, muscle-bound, sub-human monsters, but praised the way that she isn't afraid to discard a lover or give them the comeuppance they deserve. All fine, on its own. There's nothing wrong if that's your character. But then I looked up the author, and saw that this was literally the way she saw men in real life.

She is on record making comments like "I don't understand men, and the more I see of them the more I'm certain I don't actually want to", or "I am attracted to men, I just can't see myself dating one", or "I am an equal opportunity misandrist, there is plenty of hatred in my heart to go around", or "you do not owe men any entry into your life", or "I wish life could be a women's only event". She says that she hates damsel in distress tropes, not because of the female vulnerability, but because "I don't trust men to be saviours", again lumping them all together as some lesser beasts. All of a sudden, that story becomes a political manifesto.

In this context, the depiction of male characters as this inherently evil race of human-like monsters, who exist only to be muscular sex objects to be fucked and thrown away, takes on a toxic new light. The author is projecting a bitter and unhealthy worldview into her work, and encouraging us to endorse it in enjoying what we think is a fictional ride where this just happens to be the case. But it's hardly a coincidence, as I see she also mentions she is next working on a "a grimdark world based on misandry" and has committed after this project to never again make a female character love a man.

I think that's probably for the best - in general, I would say that people should not be depicting stereotyped characters of a demographic they have no interaction with in real life and seem to actually view as subhuman. Funnily enough, some of the reviewers who didn't have this background information still picked up on the toxic vibes in the characterisation, although they misdiagnosed them as racism instead:

Yes, she's dehumanising and objectifying them, but that's just because they're men. She sees all men as subhuman monsters, and so she creates them as such. Of course our female protagonist uses them both, or seizes the feminist victory in spurning them. On its own, that could be a perfectly enjoyable narrative about a strong, well-developed female character blazing her own path through the world. But I find it hard to cheer for her, knowing the type of person she's standing in for.

We're back to trying to separate the art from the artist, but I don't know how you can enjoy the book knowing her worldview - how you can celebrate that victory over the monstrous men, knowing you are being encouraged by somebody who has stacked the deck that way on purpose, just to play out and validate her own real-life hatred - especially as it has clearly bled enough into the art that people are finding it icky without even knowing the real reason why.

Write what you want, if it helps you work through the issues, but don't then promote that manifesto to other people. In general, I think people with outdated, gender essentialist views shouldn't really be writing unhealthy romances for mass consumption, whether their avatar is the tough action hero or the radiant princess. If you can't write a character respectfully, find one that you can. If you hate other genders, write a beautiful same-gender romance instead, and then it won't be actively uncomfortable to read. Write out of love, not resentment. I guess that's a compromise: Let People Write What They Want, but discourage them from Writing What They Don't Want.

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justyouraverage-simp · 2 years

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team work// sebastian stan

pairing: sebastian stan x reader (romantic), anthony mackie x reader (platonic)

warnings: sebastian stan being bullied, anthony, y/n and seb being a chaotic trio

summary: you, seb and anthony were at a panel for falcon and the winter soldier and a fan asks what it's like working with each other

"I have a question for Sebastian, what was it like working with your girlfriend and best friend" One fan asked Seb.

"Well unfortunately Chris Evans isn't in the show so I can't answer that" Sebastian said jokingly earning laughs from most of the fans and me and Anthony, him and Anthony had a love hate relationship. They would always act as if they couldn't stand being in each others company but they also couldn't spend five minutes from each other.

"That's cold Seabass, that's cold" Anthony said shaking his head at Seb.

"In all seriousness though it's been really nice I get to see Y/N a lot more now and we get to have loads of fun on set. Although sometimes I forget if it's me and Y/N dating or if it's all three of us"

"Your not wrong, he spent more time in mine and Seb's trailer than his own and then he would just randomly turn up at our house and make himself at home" I said laughing.

"In my defence you said I was welcome whenever" Mackie said pointing a finger at both of us.

"Your supposed to call first though not just show up and nearly break the door down" Seb said.

"Yeah but you love me so it's okay"

"Sure whatever helps you sleep at night Mack"

"You can't comment Sebastian" I said then looking in the direction of the fans "There was a break in filming half way through the serious for a round a week or so and me and Seb were just laying on the sofa and he was pouting so I asked of he was okay, he obviously wasn't but he told me he was. Eventually he goes to me can we go see Anthony, normally I would say yeah but he had gone back home to see his family then this man goes to me that's fine we can drive. Now bare in mind we live in New York, that's nearly a 20 hour drive or a near 3 hour flight. After I told him this he moped for the rest of the day. This was after them being apart for one day" I said as the fans laughed but Seb began to go a little bit red and Anthony was laughing at him.

"Did you miss me that much Seabass?" Anthony said mockingly wrapping his arms

"No, you need to stop lying to these poor people. They paid money to be here to listen to truth not these lies you are telling women" Seb said as he pointed his finger at me and pushing Mackie's arms off him.

After a few more questions from fans one asked, "this question is for all of you, um, was there ever any prank wars on set and who was against who?"

"I like that question and the answer is absolutely" I said "It was more of a free for all, I don't think were any teams really"

"Again with the lies Y/N honestly I can see your nose growing from here" Seb said shaking his head at me. "I can tell you now that these two are evil, she acts all innocent but she is fair from it trust me and this man is just as bad. Me and Y/N shared a trailer so I managed to escape being pranked there but that didn't mean I was untouchable did it?" Seb said as he looked at me and who were giggling to each other knowing where this was going.

"Obviously I don't have a metal arm, wish I did but I'm just not that cool so to create the look of the black and gold arm I wore a rubber sleeve that would go over my real one. I went to put it on one day and it was heavier than usual but I just assumed it was just the material they had used because one of the special effects creators had told me they had made a newer one to see if it would look better, but when I put my hand in the fingers and pulling it on my arm it was ridiculously cold and there was a strange liquid, I pulled my arm back out and there was pink putty in my sleeve. I had tried to pull it off my skin but it was the cheaper version that's really sticky and just doesn't come off. So my arm was bright pink until I went back to the trailer and washed it off and don't worry I got them back. Y/N is 100% always the distraction and Mack is the executor because she exploits the fact that I love hearing her talk about her day"

"That my dear Seabass is called teamwork" Me and Anthony said as we high-fived and the fans laughed.

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan x you #sebastian x reader #sebastian stan x actress!reader #anthony mackie #falcon and the winter soldier #anthony mackie and sebastian stan #anthony mackie x reader #fatws fic

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your-daily-biaswrecking · 3 years

Note

I wanna say that namjoons dad bestfriend drabble was so freaking hot….🥵🥵🥵 maybe part 2? 🙏 when they make out in family house of yn? And her dad is next room 👀 i am so dirty pls forgive me😂

can't believe it took me so long to answer this... okay, so, my requests are not open but i decided to clear up my inbox a bit, starting with this one. as for this part 2... i know it could have been just a short scene with pure smut, but i wanted the drama of the plot, okay? also i'm not doing another psa: this is wrong and pls don't do this, it's just fiction

part 1

Namjoon knew he had to stop this. This... Whatever it was the two of you had. He had found excuses to come see you multiple times throughout the winter, always missing you too much and being unable to stay away for too long. But when you surprised him, secretly coming back to your hometown to be with just him for a week, he wasn't as happy. It was the first reminder of how different your worlds were; he was a grown man minding his career, at an age where he should be seeking marriage and kids. And you? You were skipping school to see your crush.

"I think my daughter has a boyfriend," his best friend casually told him one day soon after that. Namjoon froze, his heart the only thing reacting to those words. But his friend went on nonchalantly, pointing to his ignorance. "I don't mind, of course. I've only told her one thing, and it's not to get pregnant. I don't want her to go through what her mother and I went through, you know? She's at this age... you know? She needs to enjoy her age."

Namjoon... The grown man who should be seeking marriage and kids was fucking this girl. All those times he came inside you, filling you up a little too aggressively– as if deep down he wished he'd knock you up and keep you to himself forever.

He had to end this.

When he told you those same words –you need to enjoy your age, you need to be with a peer– you seemed more mad than hurt. But perhaps you understood. You weren't stupid, you too knew this was wrong. Perhaps you were just waiting for it to happen, waiting for the excitement of doing something against the rules to die out and the realization of the responsibility to hit him. You didn't blame him. But you were still annoyed. Stopped talking altogether, the only news he got from you now came from your father. You did get a boyfriend, or so he was told. And you were doing well with your studies and you were generally living a great student's life.

Summertime and you were here again. Along with your so-called boyfriend. Namjoon was so pissed off when he saw the skinny, mussy, sweaty boy that seemed to either be very slow or high off his ass all the time. And you seemed pleased with yourself.

"You really had to bring him here?"

You chuckled– an evil laugh, he thought. "I thought you'd be happy to see me dating someone my age." When your eyes met his, you made him feel like your positions were switched. So confident while he was almost throwing a tantrum. "What about you?" you asked. "Dating anyone your age?"

On that topic, Namjoon had more than enough women showing interest. And your father, for some reason, was dead set on finding him a wife. All those blind dates he had to escape from! He was simply not interested. He didn't want to admit it was because he was still thinking about you; that no one else would ever be a good replacement for you. He didn't want to because he didn't plan on coming back to you; he had to be the adult, the mature one, and stay away. It was the logical and the right thing to do. He didn't want to admit that, despite all of his intelligence and reason, he still thought about you... Because if he did this would no longer be just some attraction, just some fucking around. If he admitted it was more, what would happen then?

No... this was good. You had already moved on. Enjoying your life the way you were supposed to, a life he had no room to be in. All he had to do now was follow your example.

"Namjoon..."

That text was sent past 2 am on a rainy night in October. The only text he had gotten from you in months. That was all it said yet it made his stomach tight as if you had moaned his name in his ear. As if he knew exactly why you had texted him; needy in the middle of the night, that measly boy surely unable to satisfy you, knowing exactly who could help you at that moment. Fuck... Perhaps if he replied right then things would go back to how they were a year ago. He didn't. And you didn't text him again.

"Joon! You are staying for the holidays, right? You should spend Christmas with us." Your father was more than happy to share that day meant to be with family, with his best friend. Namjoon was like family anyway, wasn't he? When he tried to come up with an excuse, the other insisted. "See? If you were married now you would have someone to spend Christmas with, but you're not, so you'll come to spend it with our family. My daughter's coming home tomorrow, too. Ah. Could you pick her up 'cause–"

"No. I can't. Too busy."

The man laughed. "It's okay. But I am expecting you for dinner on Christmas!" he said with a pointing finger. "I'm not taking no for an answer."

And so there he was. Sitting right across from you at the table. In the months that had passed, you had gained some weight and he thought you had never looked better. Your face a little fuller, your jeans straining against your round thighs and hips, your breasts fitting your curves just right. The body of a grown woman. All Namjoon could think about was feeling you against him again. And he was mad again... Did your stupid boyfriend have the chance to fuck you like that? He didn't deserve you.

"You didn't bring that boy with you this time..." he commented.

"What, Eric?" your mother answered for you. "They broke up."

Namjoon raised an eyebrow, eyes never leaving yours. "Really? How come?"

The corner of your lips turned upwards. "He was just... Too much of a kid."

He hated the way he sighed in relief, the way excitement bubbled in his stomach. He shouldn't be as happy to hear that as he was... He glanced at you again, your hair that had grown longer pushed back to expose your neck. It was getting harder and harder for Namjoon to keep his mind from wandering off to inappropriate things. Along with other parts getting hard.

And then your father spoke. "Joon. You know she's graduating next month, right?" His eyebrows shot up high on his forehead because no– no, he didn't know that. "She's looking for an internship and I thought–"

"Dad..."

"–you could help her get in your company? Maybe you could put in a good word for her?"

"Dad!" Your tone and the way your eyes widened towards your father's way betrayed the fact that the topic hadn't been new, and that you were clearly against the idea.

He looked at you until you finally turned back to face him. And surprising both himself and you, he said: "Yes, of course."

"I'm going to sleep," you announced after the dinner was over and you had helped clean up the table. You gave Namjoon a long glance before you disappeared down the hallway. Your parents had moved to the couch, TV on for some music and a game of cards keeping them busy when their friend asked to go to the bathroom. And you heard a soft knock on your door. "I'm assuming you know that's the wrong door you're knocking at," you spoke before you opened. Already in your sleeping outfit that consisted of an oversized t-shirt and just your panties.

"You knew it was me?" Namjoon whispered, eyes still stuck on your thighs.

"My parents don't knock."

You let him in, closing the door behind you and leaning on it as you looked up at him through your lashes. You both stayed silent for a moment, your breaths the only thing filling the empty, badly lit room. You noticed how he wet his plump lips and bit them while he was examining your face. So close you could smell his aroma, the one you never forgot.

“You don’t have to… you know,” you spoke, referring to your father’s idea. “I know you want to avoid me.”

Namjoon exhaled from his nose as if he was annoyed. “I- It’s not that I want to…”

“I know.” You gulped, finding your mouth wetting too much at the wish of kissing him, along with other parts getting wet. “You don’t want to— you have to.” You dared place your hands on his chest, and instead of pulling away, he leaned into your touch. Feeling his heart beat fast under your fingertips like the way he was breathing. He was slowly losing his mind but he knew he wasn’t the only one. “You don’t have to push me away,” you continued in a low tone. “I know what I’m doing. I’m the one coming to you.”

“Little one…” he rasped, and it had you catching a moan in the back of your throat. Oh, how you longed for his pet names, his voice calling to you lovingly. He stepped even closer. He knew he shouldn’t be there, he shouldn’t be doing this right now… But how could he stop? He wanted you so bad. His hands cupped your cheeks, lips just a breath away from yours, brushing against you as he whispered: “Come work with me… I wanna see you every day.”

The fabric of his shirt pooled in your palms as you grabbed him, closing the tiny gap between you. Both of you sighing in a mixture of relief and impatience as your lips crushed together. The softness only lasted a few seconds before you were moaning and Namjoon was pinning you on the door, deepening the kiss by slipping his tongue in like he was trying to devour you. Your arms wrapped around him while his hands traveled down your body, groping you like you were his stress relief toy. Your hips, your ass… He broke the kiss and buried his face in your neck.

“Ah- daddy,” you whined, grinding on him.

Namjoon felt like he was about to cry. “I missed you so much!” he choked out right before latching his teeth on your skin. Your naughty fingers were struggling to unzip his pants quickly and it made him chuckle instead of sob. “Fuck—” he growled. And he pulled back to stare at you with dark eyes. “Such a little slut, so desperate for my cock.” There he was; the Namjoon you knew so well. His words made you shiver.

“Please, daddy. I need you right now.”

He placed a hand on the door right next to your head, while he freed his dick with the other. “Your parents are right outside.”

Ignoring his words, you discarded your panties and took him in your hand, biting your lip. “I can’t wait any longer, need you to fuck me right now, plea-ase!” you whined a little too loud and Namjoon growled, grabbing your legs and lifting you until you straddled his waist, back on the door.

“Gosh, you’ll get daddy in big trouble, baby.” Tip of his cock brushing your wet folds, making your mouth drop. “They might come looking for me.”

“Quick,” you sobbed. “Be quick, please, just— ah!”

He slipped inside and you both gasped. Your legs were shaking at the feeling, eyes rolling back and a moan as quiet as you could manage rumbled through your neck. He got as deep as he could, face scrunching as if he was in pain. You kissed him.

“I’ve missed you, daddy. I’ve missed this so much.”

His head was spinning as he was trying to find the right words, the words that could describe exactly how he felt about you. “I- I-”

Laughter echoed through the house— your mother. You both froze. Namjoon glanced at the doorknob, and then he grabbed it; your parents could walk in at any moment. He didn’t stop though, nothing could stop him now. He angled his hips and started thrusting into you; fast and sloppy because the clock was ticking.

“Daddy…” you mewled, unable to do or say anything else.

Namjoon clasped a hand over your mouth. “Shh,” he demanded. “You better not start screaming like the little whore you are, or they’ll hear us.”

His words had the opposite effect of what he wanted; making you moan harder. And the fact that he had his big hand over your mouth made you not care to keep quiet. Your choked whines along with the wet sounds of his dick slipping in and out of you could definitely be heard from the other side of the door, perhaps even from that couch your father was on had it not been for the music.

“Shit, you—” he growled. He finally dropped his hand from your mouth, wanting to grab your ass to lift you higher, fuck you better.

Your head fell on his shoulder before you decided to bite down on it to stop yourself from screaming as Namjoon’s thick dick drilled into you with no mercy. “So-o good…”

“Yeah?” He sounded out of breath already, yet cocky. “Did you forget what it’s like to have a real man fuck your pussy, baby? That little boy didn’t do shit, did he? He can’t fuck you as good as daddy, right?”

Your nails dug in his back and you felt your brain so rotten like he was about to fuck you to sleep. “I… don’t know…” you mumbled.

Namjoon stopped. He pulled his head slightly back but he couldn’t see your face. “What?” Your body squirmed, trying to chase that high he had just denied you. “What do you mean—”

“I don’t know what he was like,” you whined. “I only thought of you.”

Another laughter, loud voices coming from that couch. It didn’t scare him that much this time, his heart was already racing and he only gave that direction a glance before he was pulling your head back to look into your eyes. Only then did he notice the tear stains on your cheeks, and you sobbed, choked as he thrust into you again.

“I only thought of you, daddy…” you repeated with a whimper. And it had his eyes rolling to the back of his head, pumping into you a couple more times, hard, before he spilled his seed deep inside.

A whisper. “Fuck…” Panting and groaning as he was trying to come to, and you watching his glistening face as he grimaced and bit his lip. He let you down, resting his forehead on the door while he still struggled to collect himself, and you basked in the pride it gave you. You tucked him back in his underwear and zipped him up with a smirk on your lips, seeing how he finally started to be able to focus his eyes on you.

You opened the door slightly and peeked out; your parents were still playing cards on the couch, they didn’t notice you just like they probably hadn’t noticed how long Namjoon was gone for.

“You should go back,” you whispered as you came back into the room. Namjoon kissed you quickly like he was trying to catch you off guard. And then he grabbed your chin, staring down at you, breaths still coming out too hard.

“Don’t fall asleep, baby. I’ll come back to finish what I started when your father goes to bed.”

You smiled, pushing him slightly back yet he wasn’t budging. “Go…” you prompted as you started feeling his cum sipping out of your cunt and slowly running down your thighs.

Namjoon smiled too. “Really. I’ll eat you out till you pass out, baby, I promise.”

In the dark of the room and the rush of the moment, you decided you had no reason not to let your thoughts slip out. “I wish you could just come to sleep in my arms.”

He got a little serious. And he kissed you again, slower than before. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He left through that door, meeting your parents that were happy to see him yet didn’t even bother to point out his long absence. Sitting next to his best friend while his breathing was still shaky from fucking his daughter.

Shit… That girl will get him in so much trouble…

Masterlist

#bts #bangtan #namjoon #rm #kim namjoon #request #drabble #fanfic #oneshot #smut #dilf namjoon #bts drabble #bts smut #namjoon drabble #namjoon smut #namjoon one shot #namjoon x you #namjoon x reader #kkklaudiaaa17

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devilsskettle · 3 years

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oh man i have a Lot of thoughts about the autopsy of jane doe, both positive and critical For Sure, i'd be SO excited to see your analysis of it! definitely keeping an eye out for that 👀

thanks! i'm working on something article-like to talk about the film and i don't know what i want to do with it yet lol but if i don't post it on here i'll definitely link it. it's mainly a discussion of gender in possession/occult films in the same way that carol clover describes in men, women, and chainsaws - that there are dual plot lines in occult films, usually gendered masculine and feminine respectively, where the "main" feminine plot (the actual possession) is actually a way to explore the "real" masculine plot (the emotional conflict of the "man in crisis" protagonist). typically the man in crisis is too masculine, or "closed" emotionally, where the woman is too "open," which is why she acts as the vehicle for the supernatural occurrence as well as the core emotions of the film. the man has to learn how to become more open (though if he becomes too open, like father karras in the exorcist, he has to die by the end - he has to find a happy medium, where he doesn't actually transgress gender expectations too much. clover calls this state the "new masculine," and we might apply the term "toxic masculinity" to the "closed" emotional state). part of the "opening up" feature of the story is that it allows men to be highly emotionally expressive in situations where they otherwise might not be allowed to, which is cathartic for the assumed primary audience of these films (young men). another feature of the genre is white science vs black magic (once you exhaust the scientific "rational" explanations, you have to accept that something magic is happening). the autopsy of jane doe does this even more than the films she discusses when she published the book in 1992 (the exorcist, poltergeist, christine, etc) because the supernaturally influenced young woman who becomes this kind of vehicle is more of an object than a character. she doesn't have a single line of dialogue or even blink for the entire runtime of the movie. the camerawork often pans to her as if to show her reactions to the events of the movie, which seems kind of pointless because it's the same reaction the whole time (none) but it allows the viewer to project anything they want onto her - from personal suffering to cunning and spite.

compare again to the exorcist: is the story actually about regan mcneil? no. but do we care about her? sure (clover says no, but i think we at least feel for her situation lol). and do we get an idea of what she's like as a person? yes. even though her pain and her body are used narratively as a framework for karras' emotional/religious crisis, we at least see her as a person. both she and her mother are expendable to the "real" plot but they're very active in their roles in the "main" plot - our "jane doe" isn't afforded even that level of agency or identity. so. is that inherently sexist? well, no - if there were other women in the film who were part of the "real" plot, i would say that the presence of women with agency and identity demonstrate enough regard for the personhood of women to make the gender of the subject of the autopsy irrelevant. but there are none. of the three important women in the film, we have 1) an almost corpse, 2) an absent (dead) mother, and 3) a one dimensional girlfriend who is killed off for a man's character development/cathartic expression of emotions. all three are just platforms for the men in crisis of this narrative.

and, to my surprise, much of the reception to the film is to embrace it as a feminist story because the witch is misconstrued as a badass, powerful, Strong Female Character girl boss type for getting revenge on the men who wronged her, with absolutely no consideration given to what the movie actually ends up saying about women. and the director has said that he embraces this interpretation, but never intended it. so like. of course you're going to embrace the interpretation that gives you critical acclaim and the moral high ground. but it's so fucking clear that it was never his intention to say anything about feminism, or women in general, or gender at all. so i find it very frustrating that people read the film that way because it's just. objectively wrong.

there's also things i want to say about this idea that clover talks about in a different chapter of the book when she discusses the country/city divide in a lot of horror (especially rape-revenge films) in which the writer intends the audience to identify with the city characters and be against the country characters (think of, like, house of 1000 corpses - there's pretty explicit socioeconomic regional tension between the evil country residents and the travelers from the city) but first, they have to address the real harm that the City (as a whole) has inflicted upon the Country (usually in the forms of environmental and economic destruction) so in order to justify the antagonization the country people are characterized by, their "retaliation" for these wrongs has to be so extreme and misdirected that we identify with the city people by default (if country men feel victimized by the City and react by attacking a city woman who isn't complicit in the crimes of the City in any of the violent, heinous ways horror movies employ, of course we won't sympathize with them). why am i bringing this up? well, clover says this idea is actually borrowed from the western genre, where native americans are the Villains even as white settlers commit genocide - so they characterize them as extremely savage and violent in order to justify violence against them (in fiction and in real life). the idea is to address the suffering of the Other and delegitimize it through extreme negative characterization (often, with both the people from the country and native americans, through negative stereotyping as well as their actions). so i think that shows how this idea is transferred between different genres and whatever group of people the writers want the viewers to be against, and in this movie it’s happening on the axis of gender instead of race, region, or class. obviously the victims of the salem witch trials suffered extreme injustice and physical violence (especially in the film as victim of the ritual the body clearly underwent) BUT by retaliating for the wrongs done to her, apparently (according to the main characters) at random, she's characterized as monstrous and dangerous and spiteful. her revenge is unjustified because it’s not targeted at the people who actually committed violence against her. they say that the ritual created the very thing it was trying to destroy - i.e. an evil witch. she becomes the thing we're supposed to be afraid of, not someone we’re supposed to sympathize with. she’s othered by this framework, not supported by it, so even if she’s afforded some power through her posthumous magical abilities, we the viewer are not supposed to root for her. if the viewer does sympathize with her, it’s in spite of the writing, not because of it. the main characters who we are intended to identify with feel only shallow sympathy for her, if any - even when they realize they’ve been cutting open a living person, they express shock and revulsion, but not regret. in fact, they go back and scalp her and take out her brain. after realizing that she’s alive! we’re intended to see this as an acceptable retaliation against the witch, not an act of extreme cruelty or at the very least a stupid idea lol.

(also - i hate how much of a buzzword salem is in movies like this lol, nothing about her injuries or the story they “read” on her is even remotely similar to what happened in salem, except for the time period. i know they don’t explicitly say oh yeah, she was definitely from salem, but her injuries really aren’t characteristic of american executions of witches at all so i wish they hadn’t muddied the water by trying to point to an actual historical event. especially since i think the connotation of “witch” and the victims of witch trials has taken on a modern projection of feminism that doesn’t really make sense under any scrutiny. anyway)

not to mention the ending: what was the writer intending the audience to get from the ending? that the cycle of violence continues, and the witch’s revenge will move on and repeat the same violence in the next place, wherever she ends up. we’re supposed to feel bad for whoever her next victims will be. but what about her? i think the movie figures her maybe as triumphant, but she’s going to keep being passed around from morgue to morgue, and she’s going to be vivisected again and again, with no way to communicate her pain or her story. the framework of the story doesn’t allow for this ending to be tragic for her, though - clearly the tragedy lies with the father and son, finally having opened up to one another, unfortunately too late, and dying early, unjust deaths at the hands of this unknowable malignant entity. it doesn’t do justice to her (or the girlfriend, who seems to be nothing but collateral damage in all of this - in the ending sequence, when the police finds the carnage, it only shows them finding the bodies of the men. the girlfriend is as irrelevant to the conclusion as she is to the rest of the plot).

but does this mean the autopsy of jane doe is a “bad” movie? i guess it depends on your perspective. ultimately, it’s one of those questions that i find myself asking when faced with certain kinds of stories that inevitably crop up often in our media: how much can we excuse a story for upholding regressive social norms (even unintentionally) before we have to discount the whole work? i don’t think the autopsy of jane doe warrants complete rejection for being “problematic” but i think the critical acclaim based on the idea that it’s a feminist film should be rejected. i still consider it a very interesting concept with strong acting and a lot of visual appeal, and it’s a very good piece of atmospheric horror. it’s does get a bit boring at certain points, but the core of the film is solid. it’s also not trying to be sexist, arguably it’s not overtly sexist at all, it’s just very very androcentric at the expense of its female characters, and i’m genuinely shocked that anyone would call it feminist. so sure, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, but let’s also be critical about how it’s using women as the stage for men’s emotional conflict

also re: my description of this little project as “a film isn’t feminist just because there’s a woman’s name in the title” - i actually don’t want to skim over the fact that “jane doe” isn’t a real name. of the three women in the film, only one has a real name; the other two are referred to by names given to them by men. i’ll conclude on this note because i want to emphasize the lack of even very basic ways of recognizing individual identity afforded to women in this film. so yeah! the end! thanks for your consideration if you read this far!

#the autopsy of jane doe #men women and chainsaws #horror #also to be clear i'm not saying that the exorcist is somehow more feminist because. it's not. i'm just using it as a frame of reference #you'd think a film from 2016 would escape the ways gender is constructed in one from 1973 but that's not really the case #i actually rewatched the end of the movie to make sure that what i said about the girlfriend's body not being found at the end was accurate #and yeah! it is! the intended audience-identified character shifts to the sheriff who - that's right! - is also a man #the camerawork is: shot of the dead son / shot of the sheriff looking sad / shot of the dead father / shot of the sheriff looking sad /#shot of jane doe / shot of the sheriff looking upset angry and suspicious #which is how we're supposed to feel about the conclusion for each character #the girlfriend is notably absent in this sequence #anyway! this is less about me condemning this movie as sexist and more about looking at how women in occult horror #continue to be relegated to secondary plot lines at best or to set dressing for the primary plot line at worst #and what that says about identification of viewers with certain characters and why writers have written the story that way #i think the reception of the film as Feminist might actually point to a shift in identification - but to still be able to enjoy the movie #while identifying with a female character you need to change the narrative that's actually presented to you #hence the rampant impulse to misinterpret the intention of the filmmakers #we do want it to be feminist! the audience doesn't identify with the 'default' anymore automatically #i think that's actually a pretty positive development at least in viewership - if only filmmakers would catch up lol #oh and i only very briefly touched on this here but the white science vs black magic theme is pretty clearly reflected in this film also

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reinvent-and-believe · 3 years

Text

saying your names

Prompt: hallucination Relationships: Geralt & Visenna Rating: T Content Warnings: unintentional but constant misgendering by a parent; depiction of gender dysphoria in a small child; reference to child self-injury (scratching); abandonment issues; minor book spoilers Summary: Visenna's child is claimed by a witcher through the Law of Surprise. When she bears a daughter instead of the promised son, she thinks she's cheated Destiny. But Destiny rarely accepts such defeat. (Or - the trans Geralt mommy issues fic)

@witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

i. The Brave Knight

There’s an old fairy tale from far-away Toussaint, one Visenna remembers her grandmother telling her when she was little more than a babe, of a cohort of the bravest knights who gathered at the behest of the first duke to slay monsters and defeat villains and protect the land from all manner of evil. They were five in total, but none rivalled the gallant Sir Geralt, who defended the innocent and the weak, who perfectly embodied the Virtues, who fearlessly and faithfully loved the beautiful maiden Liliana. It’s a story like no other, full of heroics and chivalry, grand quests and epic romance. Visenna remembers sighing as a little girl, of braiding flowers into her shining copper hair and pretending to be Lady Liliana, rescued by that most puissant and most chivalrous of knights.

She hopes that her own daughter will love the tales as much as she did, so she recounts them while Greta lies in bed, wide dark eyes barely blinking as she soaks in every detail. She’s two now and obsessed with stories, any silly rambling thing Visenna remembers from childhood or improvises about the forest creatures near the village, but none have captivated her quite like this tale.

The next day, Visenna hears her daughter whacking at the swaying cattails at the bank of the river with a stick. “I defeat you!” comes the tremulous cry. “I Sir Geralt! I brave knight!”

It’s a small thing, and silly, yet Visenna goes cold.

ii. The Babe

When she realizes she’s with child, Visenna knows it will be a boy, feels it as sure as she feels the wind on her face, the blood pounding in her veins. She’s happy for a time. She knows the horrors women face, has seen, has felt firsthand the cruelties the world inflicts on beautiful little girls. Better a boy, then. Better a boy with a chance at a good life, a boy she can teach and train, a boy who won’t beat or violate or torment.

A mere month before the babe is due, the man returns, and finds her with child, and tells her what he’s done. He blames Destiny and the Law of Surprise and Tradition as Visenna learns a new type of cruelty men can inflict.

And so she hardens herself, tells herself that she will not become attached to what’s growing within her, this life promised to pay a life debt. “Don’t be absurd,” her friends tell her, through nervous glances. “You always assume the worst. It may well be a girl. The witcher won’t have need of a girl.”

But Visenna knows it, feels it with every spark of chaos within her and every pulse she sends out. The babe will be a boy, and she will have to give him up to the witchers, to be trained and transmuted into something other, something more and something less than the child she’ll birth.

And so Visenna grows cold.

When the midwife puts the squalling red girl with dark hair and wide dark eyes in Visenna’s arms, she sobs for days, sobs until she has no tears left and her eyes are raw and swollen. She won’t let the tiny thing out of her sight, barely lets others hold the babe, even in her utter exhaustion. Destiny may have promised her child to the witchers, but Destiny made the folly of giving her a daughter instead of the promised son.

iii. Greta

Greta will not wear her clothes.

At first, it’s almost a game. Visenna dresses her in a frock while the three-year-old protests then glares in turn when she’s overridden. She moves stiffly in the garment, pulling at the sleeves and tugging at the skirt, but she complies. But the minute she’s out of her mother’s sight, the dress comes off, and Visenna finds her naked, regardless of the weather. And the process repeats.

The struggle over clothing is only the beginning. Generally obedient, respectful, intelligent, Greta is nonetheless not an easy child, prone to inconsolable fits of panic and distress, prone to disappearing if not constantly monitored. It’s as though Visenna has birthed two different children. There’s the sullen, timid girl who hates wearing clothing, who barely speaks, who flinches at the sound of her own name, who stiffens in panic sometimes when she’s called, who cries at the slightest provocation, who goes missing only to be found after a frantic hour of searching lying on the floor in the narrow space between her bed and the wall, staring blankly, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Then there’s the other child, the one who cuts dark curls short with the pruning shears from the shed, who runs fearlessly through the woods, slaying invisible monsters all around, yelling and laughing and breathless.

When a young couple with a son not much older than Greta moves into a nearby cottage, Visenna hopes that companionship will stabilize her daughter’s volatile, inexplicable moods. Instead, it leads to an immediate altercation: on the first day Greta and the boy Marek play together, the boy’s father shows up on Visenna’s doorstep, furious, with a wide, bleeding gash in his hand. He’d found them wearing each other’s clothes, he tells her. Greta had refused to surrender Marek’s clothes, and when he moved to force her out of them, she’d bitten his hand. “Like a rabid beast,” he spits out as Visenna runs past him to the small shack where Greta makes herself as small as possible, shaking all over.

Visenna shoves a few coins at the man with a glare. “Buy your son another outfit,” she snaps, and when she kneels down to Greta’s level the terrified child’s arms wrap immediately around her neck. She takes her child home in the roughspun tunic and trousers.

(Maybe she should punish the child for biting, but Visenna knows the ways men can be cruel, had seen the terror in her child’s huge brown eyes. Even if he meant no harm in trying to retrieve his son’s clothes, she can’t help being glad the child bit him rather than permit his touch.)

Visenna has never listened to Greta’s thoughts before, rarely listens to anyone’s on purpose, hates the uneasy sense of violation the act stirs up in her. But as she carries the silent, shaking child home, the thoughts ring so loudly she can’t keep them out.

Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl. Not an idiot girl.

Then:

Not a girl.

iv. The Child

The morning after the incident with the neighbor, Visenna lays two outfits side by side on the bed: the tunic and trousers nicked from the neighbor boy, or the dress most frequently tolerated, a plain shift of soft linen, comfortable and loose.

"Which would you rather wear today?" Visenna asks, making the beds as usual. She hears the sharp intake of breath, sees out of the corner of her eye the hesitation, and then the child grabs the boy's clothes and cradles them in trembling arms.

Visenna visits a tailor and trades in little frocks for breeches and shirts. She watches her child’s face light up when she presents them, watches the child run reverent fingers over each garment, little hands doing their best to neatly fold each piece.

She stops calling the child Greta; stops calling the child anything but child. The child doesn’t seem to mind this namelessness; on the contrary, the child thrives. The too-thin frame rounds out with healthy, nearly chubby development as the child begins to eat more than a few bites at each meal; weak, skinny arms and legs grow strong with constant running and playing in the woods near the house. Banished is the pale, terrified little girl; only the rambunctious, talkative, joyful child remains.

"When I'm a knight," the child tells her one day, coming in from the yard wearing a bucket as a helmet, "I'm going to ride a big horse."

"Oh, a big horse," Visenna echoes, ladling the soup into a wooden bowl and blowing gently to cool it. "What will you name the horse?"

The child considers this. "Does it have to have a name?"

"All creatures need a name."

The child doesn't speak for a long while. Then that piping, gentle voice rings out. "What if the horse hates its name? It won’t be able to tell me."

Visenna sets the bowl down on the table. She doesn't ask any of the questions pounding through her head as she looks at her nameless child, lost in thought. She doesn’t think about Destiny, how a witcher may well show up at her door at any moment looking for their payment, doesn’t think about taking the child there herself. "Helmet off," she says instead, running a hand through dark curls when the child obeys. "Come, eat your soup."

v. The Butcher

She first hears whispers of the Butcher of Blaviken when she’s traveling through Poviss, brought north by an outbreak of smallpox needing healers. She hears of the vile, deranged, white-haired witcher who slaughtered nearly an entire village unprovoked, even women and children. She thinks little of it. The child she left with the witchers over half a century ago had brown hair, and the years would not have turned it so quickly, not on a witcher.

If he’s even still alive.

She puts the thought away, carefully, as she has for decades.

She thinks of it a little more in Kovir. “You’re one of them!” shrieks a woman in the tavern, pointing at a bulky man sitting in the corner. “One of them witchers like that Butcher! I seen your wolf necklace!”

All eyes train onto this disfigured witcher who is not Visenna’s child. (Does her child bear scars like this? Do his shoulders stoop in such defeat?) He scrubs a square hand over his face, looking almost pained, before he shoves away from the table in silence and leaves.

School of the Wolf, then, just like the witcher she’d surrendered her child to with naught but a letter left at the inn where he was staying. Your Child Surprise will be at the crossroads by the river at midday. A few brief, stilted sentences explaining that the child was different from other boys but Destiny had chosen him nonetheless. A terse plea that the witcher treat the child with kindness, to protect him if he could. A postscript, written in a shakier hand than the rest of the letter. My son’s name is Geralt.

Vesemir. The child’s father had called him old, grey-haired even then. Is Vesemir this Butcher, the ruthless, barbarous old witcher who leaves a trail of fresh corpses in his wake? Had she entrusted the helpless child to a merciless brute all these years ago?

It’s not until the notice board outside of Tridam that she understands. It’s a fairly standard notice concerning some vague, nondescript monster that’s caused disappearances, pleading for help from any witcher, excepting the butcher Geralt. Show your face in Tridam and we’ll finish you off like they should have done in Blaviken.

Her child, the Butcher of Blaviken.

She doesn’t know what happened in Blaviken, can’t find a clear telling. Killed a woman, some say, killed an army, killed all but three people, killed everyone down to the dogs and cows and sheep in his rage. Tales grow in the telling, she knows, but she can’t dispute it. Perhaps he is evil incarnate, perhaps by sending him to the witchers she doomed the continent to bloodshed, perhaps he is the monster in these furious whispers.

But she can’t help remembering the tiny, terrified body, rocking in the corner of a shack, those wide eyes staring up at her in panic. “Like a rabid beast,” the man had said, but Visenna found only a petrified child shaking in the corner.

vi. The White Wolf

The young man swaggers towards Visenna. Between the bright turquoise doublet, the enormous feather swooping dramatically through the air on his jauntily tilted hat, and the self-assurance of his stride, he looks like a veritable peacock.

It’s her own fault. She knows she’d been staring, but the sound of that name on his lips…

“Lovely evening, isn’t it?” His smile is bright and surprisingly genuine, reaching all the way up to his eager blue eyes. He’s younger up close than she’d imagined from across the tavern, barely more than a boy. “Though not half so lovely as you, I daresay. Might I interest you in a drink?”

She nods, silent. Watches him charm a passing barmaid who blushes and quickly returns with the desired ale. He slips into the chair across from Visenna, resting his elbows on the table and lacing his long fingers together beneath his chin, fixing her with a wide-eyed, adoring smile.

Before he can speak, she asks, “Your song. About the witcher.” She pauses, unsure what she means to ask. “Did you write it?”

Somehow the boy looks even more delighted. “Indeed I did! By the gods, it’s wonderful to chat with a fan. It’s one of my most recent compositions. How did you like it?”

“Hmm.” The boy’s song had been so jarringly different from any reference to the child she bore than she’s ever heard. In the bard’s honeyed voice, he sounded almost heroic. She hesitates. “Do you know him?”

“Only a little,” he admits, but there’s a slight flush on his childish face that he attempts to cover with bravado. “The song is the true telling of our grand adventure. I accompanied the White Wolf on his quest to defeat the Devil of Posada, the most terrifying monster to ever...well, terrorize the good people of the Valley of the Flowers.”

“And he’s...he’s not what people say?” Those huge brown eyes staring up at her, tiny body trembling. “Not a butcher?”

“Oh my good lady, not at all!” The bard’s expression of dismay is guileless, earnest. “He saved me, put himself between me and harm’s way when we were captured by the elves, offered his own life for mine.”

A life debt. Just as the child’s father had promised the Law of Surprise to the old witcher, the vow that had set the course of Geralt’s life before he was even born. And now this strange boy owes Geralt a life debt of his own.

“So that’s why,” she confirms cautiously. “Why you write songs for him. Make him the hero when men would be more than happy to remember him as a monster.”

The boy hesitates, his charismatic blustering slipping as he bites at his bottom lip. He reaches distractedly into his pocket, finding some trinket he rolls about in his palm to occupy his busy, nervous hand before he slowly answers. “Even if he hadn’t saved my life I would have written about him. Well, not if I hadn’t survived that particular encounter, of course. But if I’d gotten away myself, or if I hadn’t followed him into the wild in the first place, I would still have written about him.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I…I don’t think he’s known very much kindness.” The bard doesn’t look at her, quite, as he speaks, slower and softer than before. “You ought to see the way he responds to a simple compliment, you’d think his head might explode, he twitches and looks bewildered and grunts angrily. It’d be amusing if it weren’t so very sad.” He’s quiet for a moment, tracing the wood grain in the table with his eyes as he gathers his thoughts. “But he’s kind, even if the world isn’t. He gave his reward for the contract to the…well, to someone who needed it more. And before that, he…” He glances down at the dull gold coin between his fingers, rubbing absently at worn, beveled edges, his face flushing prettily. “He liked my singing.”

She watches the bard, lost in thought and fiddling with a lone coin, for a long while.

vii. Geralt

A slip of a thing running through the woods. Frightened. Alone.

A fight. Gruesome, brutal, fast.

The stench of decay.

“And me? What did I do? I bandaged a wounded man who’d fainted away and put him on my cart and didn’t leave him to expire. It’s an ordinary matter.”

“It’s not so ordinary. I’ve been left...in similar situations...like a dog.”

Blood. Not running, red and healthy and clean; slow. Thick. Dark. Foul.

Infection.

Youths dancing in lusty delight on a warm spring night. A woman with raven curls, naked and wistful in his arms, the warmth of a bonfire lighting her face a beautiful gold. Children screaming, playing in a dried moat. A queen, formidable and sneering, full of contempt.

Hideous wounds, threatening the leg. Amputation may be necessary, without immediate intervention.

Resin in the air.

Ashen hair matted over the clumped, drying cake of blood deforming half of a pale face.

Black potion with a green seal. And then darkness.

Visenna awakes with a start.

The druids’ campsite is still, the last embers of the fire the only light in the darkness of the forest. She pulls the woolen cloak around her thin shoulders, grabs her medical bag, and goes to find the witcher that was once her child.

She finds him a pale and bloody mess on the back of a cart, eyes open and unseeing. He’s racked with feverish chills as his body desperately attempts to fight the infection poisoning him.

She helps the merchant move Geralt carefully onto blankets on the ground. She tends to him, as she’s tended to thousands of others. She cleans his wounds, scraping destroyed, decaying flesh away from healthy tissue, pulling the gentle pulses of chaos from the earth to purify his blood, draining infection and necrosis and narcotic alike from him.

She’d cleaned blood and dirt and debris from scraped knees, once, the too-fast beating of a little, huge heart pounding so loudly she could feel it. The wounds of childhood.

His pulse is slow, the drumbeat of a dirge.

She’s warm all over, suddenly, then cold. Her vision swims before her eyes.

A little more. The pulsing wanes, wavers as she begins to join him in the dark void beyond consciousness.

No.

She breathes, her eyes closed, then returns to her work.

She feels him stirring before he makes a movement, senses him swimming to the surface, coming to. He’s quiet, still, blank. When his eyes open, he’s staring at the treetops above them. His face is impassive. Lifeless.

The way she would find him, sometimes, after he went missing as a child. Staring at nothing. Trying not to be.

She can hear it in his voice. He knows.

His leg will heal, now. She’s done all she can.

She moves on to the bedsores, massaging ointment carefully into the open wounds. His body is stiff and unyielding beneath her touch.

She gives him what she can. “It’s my profession,” she says. Her voice is steady, cool. It’s no excuse, no answer, but it’s what she has. “The only thing I’ve ever been good at.” This much at least is true. This much she can give him.

She’s always known she would meet him again. She never sought him out, never avoided him. “People linked by destiny will always find each other.” She hears it, as though it’s someone else’s voice.

“I want you to look at me.” It’s a snarl. Not a sound she’s heard from those lips before. “How do you like my eyes? Do you know, Visenna, what they do to a witcher to improve his eyes?”

She knows enough. She meets his gaze.

Those eyes, the greatest marker of his difference, his inhumanity. They’re golden, now, instead of brown. His pupils are wide, round, black, pained. They aren’t so different. So monstrous.

Just the eyes of a terrified child lashing out in desperation.

“Do you know it doesn’t always work?” he demands.

“Stop it, Geralt.”

And something breaks.

“You don’t get to use that name!” There’s a frantic rage dripping off every syllable, hatred and agony, like a festering wound ripped open and left to bleed. He glares at her with a wild fury. “Vesemir gave me that name.”

And he’s a child, he’s three years old and screaming like he’s being tortured when she calls his given name. He’s five and distraught over the thought of a horse who hates its name and can’t tell anyone. He’s four and he’s a trembling mess with blood beneath his fingernails, shaking and unable to stop ripping at his own flesh.

“You trusted Destiny rather than trying to find me yourself,” he begs.

A child with nothing in the world running through the forest and into the arms of a witcher.

There’s a tear running down her face. It’s the only thing she can feel. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” Visenna says softly.

“Why?”

She’d known since before he was born that she wasn’t to keep him. That Destiny had other plans.

When she thought she had a daughter, there was hope.

“The answers will only hurt us both.” Carefully, Visenna presses him back into the makeshift sickbed.

“Yen was right.” His voice is low, barely audible, a broken murmur. “It’s not enough to be destined for each other.”

A child runs through the woods and finds a witcher waiting.

Brown curls become ashen locks. Eyes swirling brown and gold and green.

“Something more is needed.” He’s not speaking to her anymore. He’s staring up, at the treetops and through them to the stars above, his eyes losing and regaining focus. “I...I want…”

“No.” Her voice is soft, and she sees him relax into the smooth cadence in spite of himself. “Go to sleep, Geralt.” She hesitates as his eyes grow heavy, begin to drift shut, and she can’t help leaning toward him to gently whisper, “And just between us, Vesemir didn’t give you that name.” She lets herself reach out, carefully brushing white hair off his sweating brow. “It doesn’t change anything, but I’d like you to know that.”

“Visenna…”

“Sleep. I was just a dream.” She hesitates, watching silently as he fights the exhaustion, like a child fighting to stay awake past his bedtime, begging for one more story. “Sleep, Sir Geralt.”

He does.

viii. Sir Geralt

She does not see him again.

She travels to Sodden and heals the injured, soldier and mage alike.

She hears tales, as she has for years.

Geralt’s kidnapped a young Cintran princess for unspeakable, nefarious purposes.

Geralt died on Thanedd, caught up by chance in the mages’ bloody revolt.

Geralt led the forces of Lyria and Rivia against Nilfgaard, earning himself a knighthood and a position in Queen Meve’s army.

(She doesn’t believe any of them, doesn’t let herself care either way, but she hopes the latter is true. Hopes he lives out the rest of his days a brave knight, as he always dreamed of becoming.)

Visenna works. Cleans and stitches and bandages wounds, wanders from battleground to battleground. There’s no shortage of work for a healer.

So many tales of Geralt the witcher, Geralt the traitor, Geralt the butcher, the knight, the outlaw, the hero, the father. Of his victories and defeats, his loves and enemies, his transcendence, his demise.

Visenna listens to them all. Collects the stories, the lies, the praises, the calumnies. She draws them carefully within her. Carries them with her as she continues on the path.

For all the rumors and speculation and ballads, of all things, for all the different Geralts, there’s one that’s hers and hers alone. A skinny, adventurous child with brown curls and a bucket-helmet falling into his eyes who swings a gnarled oak stick as a sword. He’s ever vigilant, ever ready to defend the weak against the unrelenting onslaught of monsters only he can see.

#the witcher fic #the witcher #geralt of rivia #visenna #trans geralt #my fic #still don't really know how i feel about this but here it is #witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo

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couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name · 4 years

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Ya know, I truly hope Miss Renesmee Carlie Cullen fully dedicates herself to just....being as out there and iconic as possible

first things first- ANYTHING with the loch ness monster on it, she owns. Posters, shirts, jackets, shoes, folders, buttons, iron-ons, there is always at least 5 pieces of Nessie merch on her at all times

once she gets old enough to start high school, the cover story is her and Edward are siblings that Carlisle and Esme took in, and sometimes her classmates will ask her what her biological parents were like and she will flat out be like 'oh, they're vampires' and Edward and Bella are like. 5 feet away trying not to scream

every Halloween she'll show up to school in an elaborate Nosferatu costume

goes out of her way to photobomb people in increasingly ridiculous ways so there will Always be a photographic record of her and in like 100 years she can get a huge kick out of teens on the internet trying to make a conspiracy about her

joins as many school clubs as she can, even if she has no interest in them- she just Really wants a concrete record of herself to exist lmao

ICONIC at school theater though. One of those demon theater kids that come to rehearsal purely to cause chaos and nothing else, but her voice is incredible so she secures every lead. One time she somehow managed to star in a show while also playing in the school band for it- her classmates still have no idea how she pulled it off

Always brings blood out in public in a CLEAR THERMOS and it stresses her family out so much but everyone else thinks she's just like, weirdly into tomato juice so the Cullens can't stop her

to everyone's surprise...her biggest chaos enabler is Jasper lmao. everyone thought he'd be a logical, responsible uncle but they're just. A Problem together. He'll 100% assist her in any prank she wants to pull, he gets her fake id's when she wants to sneak into a club with friends, he bails her out of jail without telling her parents, they figured out if she gets high and he reads her feelings he'll get high too and it's. So fucking funny.

she's always carrying some random instrument around school- like for a while it's a guitar or a harmonica, fine, but then she'll start lugging a cello around, a tuba (she doesn't even play, she stole it off a guy who was annoying her) and it escalates until one day she's wheeling a piano around the building. no one's even sure how she got in in the doors of the school. She keeps running kids over in the hallway with it

You know the Catherine Tate Lauren Cooper skit with David Tennant? Where she's being a terrible student and then perfectly recites Shakespeare? 100% Nessie

when she starts getting dates Jacob keeps trying to wing man and be over supportive and give her a ton of girl advice and it's embarrassing as hell so one day when he was on a spiel about How To Woo A Lady she looks him in the eyes and goes 'oh really? did that work on my mom?' and the Cullens fucking LOSE IT. Jacob had to go live in the woods for a few days because he couldn't cope

Emmet and Jasper: arrive to school in their jeep. Rose and Alice: arrive in a convertible. Edward: arrives in his dumb volvo. Bella and Jake: arrive to school on motorcycles. Nessie: arrives to school on a unicycle while juggling

one year she ended up getting nominated for prom queen and Edward read the minds of the teachers tallying the votes so he knew she won and he and Bella were so excited!! they're like we're gonna take so many pictures of our baby looking like a princess! And then she emerges from her room, actually drenched in pigs blood. Like she just did it to herself and went to the dance and accepted her crown like that

she regularly commits crimes against fashion. If she comes out of her room and sees Alice contemplating turning herself over to the Volturi, she KNOWS she's picked a great look

somehow gets ahold of Aro's cell number and sends him selfies of her blatantly breaking vampire laws captioned 'whatcha gonna do'. he keeps blocking her but she keeps managing to get through to him somehow

she illegally sells soda out of her locker and does people's homework for cash, while also paying other people to do her homework for her. she organizes every single senior prank. she's never gotten a detention in her whole immortal life because every teacher just Adores her for some reason

had 100% used her powers for deserved evil before. Like, if someone's being a dick at school, she'll sneak into their room at night and give them nightmarea threatening them to be a better person lol

sometimes she'll show up at the hospital unannounced and ask Carlisle, in front of his coworkers, 'yo can I raid the blood bank?'

her bedroom looks like a library. every wall, floor to ceiling books.

she's been publishing trashy romance novels under a fake name for almost 40 years now and no one in her family knows

one birthday Jacob takes her on a trip to vegas and they get wasted, at some point they were laughing about how ridiculous their lives are and they're like 'wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if we had a baby'. they then black out, hangover style, and wake up like a week later with a payment on her card to a fertility clinic. Jacob's like 😱 and Ness is just like 'you get to be the one to explain this to my parents'

Their kid is absolutely hilarious, they were correct, and at some point they realized 'wait...drinks blood..doesn't sparkle...can shape shift...we've somehow created a classic pop culture vampire' lmao

Edward had to threaten them to get them to not name the kid Vladimir

Also to be clear: Nessie and Jacob have the EXACT same dynamic as Will and Grace. that's canon.

says its her goal to star in a live action all female production of mamma mia and Carlisle is like 'honey you know you can't do anything on broadway or in hollywood' and she's like, 'no, in real life. I'm gonna go to greece and attract a bunch of women with abba songs' and he's like,,,,,ah

she loves all music but she goes out of her way to Only play stuff she knows Edward hates lmao

one day she remembers she doesn't need to breathe and can see under water and just. books herself a ticket to scotland and Finds The Loch Ness Monster

she actually personally finds a lot of monsters and cryptids like her hybrid aura just attracts all kind of weird shit and she LOVES it. She stops writing trashy romance novels and starts writing autobiographies of her traveling and hanging out with paranormal beings and everyone just assumes its fiction so she becomes a best selling fantasy author lmao

100% she's very into witchy stuff and only like...half in a trendy way. She's like what if on top of everything I've got going on I can cast spells? Think I deserve that power

when she's a couple decades old she catches Edward looking grossed out one day and she asks him what's up and he's like 'I really dont need to hear what creepy teachers think about my daughter' and she's like. oh. Dad we are gonna get SO MANY pedophiles arrested shdndjdn she gets him to expose teachers and she baits them then calls the police. queen.

She finds out she can get tattoos but they fade completely out of her skin within 5 years so she's always getting crazy tats

posts selfies on social media of her just like. hanging out with mountain lions or chilling on top of the space needle. her classmates think they're all photoshopped obvi but it drives her family insane

imagine you're 15 and you're on a nice hike in the woods and you come across your one classmate half naked, sacrificing a bear in some ritual, blood dripping down her face, bigfoot chilling on the rocks behind her filming the ritual on her phone...like on one hand, what would you do, but on the other hand. you've known this girl for a bit and you aren't surprised at all

anyway. stan Nessie Cullen.

#twilight saga #renesmee cullen #nessie cullen #breaking dawn #twilight #molly mumbles

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 3 years

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His Dark Materials - Season 2 Episode 5 (rambles)

I only realized last week, there’s only 7 episodes this series because the eighth would have been the Asriel centric one. So only two left now after tonight! :(

Also I finished the book during the last week so I am so READY

Ahh gotta love that London traffic!

I don’t know why but the Golden Monkey wearing a seatbelt SENT ME

Mrs Coulter is watching the mother and baby :(

Boreal saying that our world is barbaric and our world is corrupt is so accurate tbh I’m not even mad

Will literally just threw the knife into the wall omfg watch it!

Red PAN-da is becoming a permanent fixture in this show apparently

Lyra’s hair was so pretty this episode? Her costume too obviously but her hair had me in awe

The theme music to this show gives me literal chills

Boreal is evil but his house is A-fucking-plus

Okay but how does Ruth Wilson always look so gorgeous and fluid in this show?!?

Her faking nearly dropping one of Boreal’s precious collection pieces and him panicking 😅

Mrs Coulter’s little “hmm” and smile... we love a Queen

“Why are we whispering?” “I don’t know” - LMFAO

“Will, you left the window open” - LMAO and also please don’t do that, that’s like one of the BIG rules about the knife!

“He’s getting good at this” “he is” - we love a supportive feral wild girl and her dæmon

Mrs Coulter looking bored as fuck as Boreal plays his music is such a damn mood

“You’d like it here too” - Umm NO STOP PLEASE SHE DOESNT WANT IT

“Carlo, can you make that stop?” - OMG 🤣

“You’re far too conspicuous like that” - but she’s not??? She just looks like a posh well dressed woman, maybe that’s not common in this world but she looks fine??

Boreal picking out clothes he’s obviously got just for her is... eww. Just ewww.

Her reaction to the jeans/clothes though XD

“Would you mind?” - YEAH BOREAL STOP CREEPING AND FUCK OFF PLEASE

“Maybe it’s time we issue a firm denial of the tear in the sky” BRO IT’S LITERALLY HUGE AND RIGHT THERE YOU CAN’T PRETEND IT AIN’T

Oh shit the Magisterium know about that witches going to the new world + the massacre

MacPhail literally imprisoned Father Graves and for WHAT?! I think the power’s getting to him (which I know it the point but still!)

MRS COULTER SHUT THE DOOR ON HER DÆMON I’M-

Okay so I know it’s been implied/said that Mrs Coulter can go far away from the monkey already, and that they maybe have been through some kind of process that’s made that a thing, but like DAMN.

“I’m sure you’ve encountered witches in your travels” - if I hadn’t already read the books, I would be asking if she IS a witch tbh like omg

This is probably one of the few times I’ll say this but... I feel so sorry for the monkey?? Just him watching her as she leaves from the window... like that’s so sad. I get why she couldn’t exactly walk around with a monkey but urgh

“I apologize if she was a nuisance” “She wasn’t a nuisance!” - Oof you tell her, Mary

“You must be so proud.” “... I am.” - OOF

Mary showing that she’s better fit to be a parent to Lyra than Lyra’s real mother tbh

Damn Marisa disappeared FAST

Mary really googled Mrs Coulter I’m-

“You must play the serpent” “hornbeam” “save the girl and the boy” - IT’S HAPPENING IM GOING TO CRY IM SO EXCITED

The computer turning completely off and the room going dark before going red OH MY GOD

“Oh shut it, Pan” - LMAO

OH NO OH NO ANGELICA FOUND TULLIO AND SHE IS PISSED D:

A+ acting from Bella Ramsay by the way

“We WILL get you” - OH SHIT

The fact that Will feels guilty over fighting and inadvertently getting Tullio attacked by spectres because he has the knife :’(

It’s so sweet to see Lyra and Pan comforting him though

“I’m not judging” - Mary’s sister says while totally judging her for reading the Holy Bible. She probably thinks she’s about to rejoin the convent!

I find the relationship between Marisa and the monkey so interesting?? I’m so intrigued by it

“Do they drink in this world?” “That, they do well.” - LMFAO ACCURATE THOUGH

“I found her arrogant, like many women in this world.” - umm, FUCK you, Boreal you misogynistic sexist piece of shit

So Mrs Coulter was denied a doctorate despite being the best in her class because she’s a woman, and they would only have published her papers if they were by a man. I’m starting to see why she got upset when she met Mary, who’s got her own office and a doctorate and is head of the department/project

“Who I could have been in this world” - oh shIT

The way she started talking about how she felt after the whole affair/baby ordeal, followed by “we’re not talking about Asriel, we’re talking about ME” - FUCK. I love Ruth Wilson’s portrayal, I love it

“You’ve spent your time trading trinkets” - lmfao you tell him ma’am

“Were you hoping to add me to your little collection?” “I was hoping this would be a life for you here” - oh god I hate it, fuck right off Carlo

“If you got me, you wouldn’t even begin to know what to do with me” - oh SHIT :O

Lyra turning up to distract them so Will could have the chance to cut a window and steal the Alethiometer had me on the edge of my seat

Let’s be real right now, the whole last 15 minutes? THE MOST TENSE AND INCREDIBLE PIECE OF TELEVISION ASDFGHJKL

Mrs Coulter’s face when she saw Lyra at the door :’(

Also she nearly saw Will and I was sitting there praying she wouldn’t find him, I was so worried even though I’ve literally just reread the book

So um THE FUCKING MONKEY BASTARD JUMPSCARED ME AND I AUDIBLY YELLED SO LOUDLY HOLY HECK

The way that Lyra saw her mum and immediately tried to run away though, she just keeps trying to yeet herself away from her parents and I honestly don’t blame her at all

Boreal was being truly extra in the way he dropped his snake dæmon out of his sleeve like that whilst advancing on Will

“Why would I trust you?” TRUTH

Coulter saying for Lyra to stay away from Will and getting super teary eyed makes me think she’s worried Lyra will suffer like she did? Like she’s worried that Lyra will suffer at the hands of men and be in the same situation she was I think? And that’s so sad but nuanced

“I am NOTHING like you.”

So Lyra did this little head move like Marisa did in 1x02, when she made the monkey attack Pan to subdue Lyra - AND THEN PAN ATTACKED THE MONKEY JUST LIKE THAT, LITERALLY EXACTLY THE SAME, AND MRS COULTER FALLING TO THE FLOOR AND CLUTCHING THE SOFA LIKE LYRA DID?? AND LYRA WATCHING WITH THIS COLD LOOK ON HER FACE?!

SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE A COMPARISON GIFSET BECAUSE IM CRYING

I love Will getting mad at Boreal taunting him over his mum, and immediately starting to punch him

HE SMASHED THAT COLLECTION PIECE ON BOREAL’S HEAD FUCK YEAH WILL 👏🏻

That was a DAMN close escape, holy fuck, but she’s got the Alethiometer back!

“The man who hurt you, I wanted to kill him” - same Lyra

I was so emotional when she was talking about how Marisa used her dæmon to hurt her and Pan, and Will saying that he’s never worried about his mum hurting him... the comparison is so sad

“I hope I’m not like either of my parents” - I mean I don’t blame her tbh

SHE CONSIDERED MA COSTA AND LEE SCORESBY TO BE BETTER PARENT FIGURES TO BE LIKE I’M CRYING

So Mrs Coulter is definitely planning some shit, like she didn’t seem that concerned when Boreal was talking about the Spectres, and like obviously I know what happens but I’ve always been intrigued as to why the Spectres listen to her instead of just attacking her. Also is it something to do with her dæmon? Like if they ARE separated in some way, maybe the Spectres don’t feed on her because it’s Dust or something? (Idk if that makes any sense)

“Deceive the guardian... okay... okay...” honestly same XD

Mary pretending to be Mrs Coulter to get past the guard is such a brilliant idea, like she just ran with it immediately, we have to stan a Queen who keeps a calm head

SHE WENT THROUGH THE WINDOW AND INTO THE CITY AAAAHHHH

The angels said they’d protect her, right? So she doesn’t need to fear the Spectres I’m assuming (I need to assume or I’ll worry)

The promo for next week was literally half what we saw THIS week and half Lee/John Parry footage I’m assuming is next week... ?

The fact there’s only two episodes left makes me so sad :( I have no idea what I’ll do waiting for the final series - and I’m assuming it’ll be delayed maybe because of Covid. Plus I’m hoping we get the extra episode NEXT series, the one that was Asriel-centred and supposed to be in this one but wasn’t filmed because of Coronavirus, so fingers crossed! 🤞

#his dark materials #hdm #lyra belacqua #marisa coulter #will parry #pantalaimon #lord boreal #charles latrom #the golden monkey #golden monkey #philip pullman #the subtle knife #dafne keen #ruth wilson #amir wilson

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an-unseemly-gentleman · 3 years

Text

So, while chilling I, naturally, started thinking about breath of the wild and a thought occurred to me... ‘Why have I never seen anyone talk about how the depiction of the hero in the cut seen that plays during Kass’ recount of the battle 10,000 years ago has red hair?’.

[ID: screen shot from the cut seen, zoomed in on the hero. The stylised illustration depicts a person dresses in blue and red, holding the master sword and has flowing red hair. End ID]

Now, this could just be stylisation, but Link has always been some kind of blond.

[ID: A page from the Hyrule Historia showing the dates and various designs of Link through the different games. In each he is wearing some variation of his green tunic, shield and sword, and he is blond, or has very light brown hair in each. End ID]

Furthermore, the illustration that depicts the princess has blond hair.

[ID: screen shot from the same cut seen, zoomed in on the princess. The stylised illustration depicts Zelda wearing a white dress with flowing blond hair. Her arms are outstretched shooting out gold light. The complete triforce is to the right of her. End ID]

So, why is there this sudden deviation from Links design in this cut scene? This isn't something that Link or Kass is looking at, I don't think it appears anywhere in the actual game itself. Only the audience is shown this.

But... do you know who does have red flowing hair just like the illustration of the hero?

[ID: A screenshot from the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer. Zoomed in to focus on the emaciated corpse of who is suspected to be an incarnation of Ganon. He has very long, matted red hair that has faded in colour and is wearing a red or orange robe around his waist, gold arm bands and a headpiece with a glowing yellow jewel in the forehead part. His body is arched backwards, and his face contorted in pain as a blue disembodied hand adorned in geometric gold jewellery grasps the centre of his chest, the red-black energy of calamity pours out from under the hand. The grey-green tone of the scene washes out the true colours. End ID]

Yeah, dehydrated Ganon. So basically, what I’m saying is is that maybe the hero depicted in the cut scene isn't a reincarnation of Link, but rather Ganon, or, at least a Gerudo king. In addition to this, the illustration of the hero depicts him with green eyes,

[ID: screenshot of the hero in the cut seen zoomed in on his eye. End ID]

And who else has eyes that colour?

[ID: Left Image is a zoomed in cropped screen shot of Riju, she is resting her head on her right fist and is looking out towards the viewer. She has green eyes, red hair, blue lipstick and is wearing ornate gold jewellery and head piece. Right image is a zoomed in cropped screenshot of Urbosa facing the left of the image, she also has red hair, green eyes and blue lipstick. End ID]

So, not only does the depiction of the Hero have red hair but he has the green eyes of the Gerudo chieftains. Green eyes too is something that Link has never had, as he usually has blue, brown or black eyes depending on the style and design of the game/official artwork. Furthermore, this also contrasts to the black used for Zelda’s eye in the illustration,

[ID: Image 1: zoomed in and cropped image of Zelda’s eye in the cut seen. Image 2: the same image of the Hero’s eye from before. End ID]

The difference is subtle, but obvious side by side. Depicting his eye as green was undeniably purposeful. The evidence that this is a Gerudo man and not a Hylian man is building up...

From the time line, we know that Link isn’t always successful, or even exists at the same time as something catastrophic happening in Hyrule, so perhaps 10,000 years ago the reincarnation of Link failed to manifest, but a reincarnation of Ganon did. And, with Demise being a separate entity in the form of the Calamity, it didn’t poses him and so was spared from the curse that binds Gerudo kings to evil. Therefore, he would have every opportunity to be a hero, and take the place that Link failed to fill. Or, alternatively, the reincarnation of Link and Ganon became one.

We know that Gerudo women have to find men from other places to have children with, so a Gerudo chief and a Hylian man having a child together is most certainly a common occurrence seeing how close the two peoples are to one another both geographically and socially. So, perhaps 10,000 years ago a male child was born to the Gerudo chief and her Hylian partner, and this child was the reincarnation of both Link and Ganon as per the parameters of Malice’s curse.

In the Hyrule Historia, it is stated that Demise’s flaming red hair is a call back to his eventual connection to Ganon as his ‘”incarnation of hatred”, and the reincarnations of Link and Zelda are a result of blood relation to the first hero and princess that defeated him.

So, going forward, lets assume that the hero depicted is a reincarnation of both Link and Ganon simultaneously. Ultimate good and ultimate hate fused into one person that is capable of both the greatest good and evil. Furthermore, someone who posses both the triforce of courage and power. Since we don't know where BOTW falls in the time line, it can be assumed from the presence of the Arbiter’s Ground’s from Twilight Princess in the desert of BOTW that BOTW follows the timeline where the triforce is not re-fused as it is in Wind Waker. However, looking back to the image of Zelda in the cut seen, a complete triforce is before her at her feet.

With two of the triforce pieces being possessed by someone with courage and power that choose to be good, it would make sense for the princess then to have the opportunity to reform the triforce and use all its power to repel and seal the calamity.

Okay, so that’s all very well and good but... how does that make dehydrated Ganon the hero from 10,000 years ago? Well, perhaps there was still malice inside the hero, perhaps the Zonai wanted to make sure that Demise, malice and Ganon stayed gone... And this is where I would like to turn this theory over to everyone else.

Please feel free to rip this apart or add your own ideas onto this theory. I honestly don’t know if anyone else has this theory because I really haven't seen it talked about before on like the Zelda theory channels I watch on youtube or anywhere else online.

#botw #breath of the wild #botw theory #legend of zelda #long post #image description

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

Conversation

RP meme from Werewolf: The Apocalypse "Black Furies" Tribebook (Revised Version) Ch 2 "Pegasus’ Flight"

"But how can you be here?"

"I’m sorry. I’m easily sidetracked. Where was I?"

"Every day the possibility exists that you will find some great treasure — a companion, a fetish, riches, secrets or whatever is important to you."

"Divine justice is not something that can be safely left in the hands of mortal men and women — or even certain sky goddesses, as Athena’s blindness showed."

"While limits and strictures are frightening to many, I take peace knowing that purposes exist for all things."

"The problem comes when limits become absolute."

"It’s a human mind-twister — and I love mind-twisters — that the only rule to which there is no exception is that there’s an exception to every rule."

"I said before I love mind-twisters, but it’s good to know when to stop twisting your mind."

"Change hurts."

"The questions do not always need to be answered, often just asking them is enough."

"If they lead only to more questions or to simple answers (I remember well learning the answer to “What do bees smell like?”), then that also is learning and therefore good."

"Laughter doesn’t have to be mirthful; it can be bitter or rueful as well."

"How many of these stories actually happened?"

"Take from a story the wisdom that is in it; one of humanity’s biggest problems, I think, is that many of them take their legends too seriously."

"Contemplation is good, but too much of it causes the topic to become irrelevant."

"Beautiful, isn’t it?"

"The average first-time mother can expect an ordeal of fourteen hours."

"Everyone agrees that breast milk is best for babies; doctors, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and parenting gurus."

"I am sorry for your discomfort, but you can just suffer through it a bit longer."

"A woman’s sexuality is hers, and can be a closely guarded secret or a gift to the world, as she chooses."

"Only the weak deserve pity."

"And yet we’re still spit on as often as not. Unfair, isn’t it?"

"Sex and childbearing is all about responsibility."

"There is no honor in blood for blood’s sake."

"These assaults take place far from the eyes of humanity, and the large-scale ones are most frequently mistaken for natural disasters."

"First, while faith might be eternal, religion must evolve."

"The world is often random, and believing it to be loving and fair is just as false as believing it to be cruel."

"They aren’t thieves, mind you; they just seem to know where to find things."

"I’m quite sure you’ve heard it all. Stay awake and listen again. This is important stuff, you know."

"That kind of cruelty doesn’t really help anyone, does it?"

"Note that there’s a big difference between “breeding” and “having sex.”

"My opinion has always been that announcing one’s presence and intentions when entering another’s territory is polite and proper behavior."

"A predator sees any encroachment on her territory as a threat. If the intruder nears her den, expect her to become very violent."

"If you enter another’s territory and announce yourself, that doesn’t mean you can stay. The one who lives there can still tell you to leave, and you should respect her wishes."

"Be careful when traveling."

"Look, we’ve all got anger control problems. It’s part of who we are."

"If you’re hurt, quit."

"Die to be a hero if you want, but don’t die to prove you were right."

"When the challenge is over, when the winner is declared, accept the ruling and live with it."

"Challenges are serious business — never initiate one without good cause."

"Do not look away. I hardly need to explain what that will lead to."

"We all know why it isn’t good to eat humans; for one thing, their flesh is fouled by the chemicals they eat, and for another, we’re meant to protect and avenge them, not prey upon them."

"If it becomes necessary to kill humans, do so, but remember that you are what you eat."

"From the face you’re making, I can assume you find the notion of cannibalism to be truly repulsive."

"Find other ways to hide your action."

"The problem is that humans are resilient and tenacious, especially in fear or hatred."

"Sometimes, however, we must let go."

"When the time comes for me to die, assuming, of course, that I do not die in battle, I shall walk into the sea and let the waves take me on my last journey."

"They can’t be challenged if no one can find them."

"I’m not saying that the system is corrupt, only that it could be."

"Such a small place, yet so many differing cultures!"

"Any biologist will tell you that you may measure how well an area thrives by the diversity of life it supports."

"Women are, on average, not as physically strong as men. This means that they sometimes need protection. I hardly need to tell you who should provide it."

"Unless I missed a major theological event, there haven’t been any immaculate conceptions recently."

"No matter your personal feelings on men, they are and always have been one half of the equation."

"A man is not evil simply by dint of his sex; to believe so is no better than calling women “the weaker sex.”

"Weak people produce more weak people, and since humans have virtually no method of natural selection, it is up to us to try to correct their weaknesses as best we can."

"Something is urging the citizens towards these evils, for I cannot believe that they did this themselves."

"The idiot humans continue to think that if they could just clear away the trees, they’d have wonderful land for agriculture, never once realizing that it’s the forest itself that preserves the land."

"Tell me why you think you could do better."

"So many believe the courts will do nothing — and if their attackers are rich and privileged enough, that is sadly true."

"Celebrities and advertisements show thin and unhealthy looking women being adored and generally enjoying life. So, young girls are made to feel abnormal and loathe their bodies."

"The Church decries sexuality for any reason but procreation — and women learn to fear their sexual power."

"Time may dull the memory, but we still have blood on our claws."

"It’s harsh, but good exercise."

"Don’t let their foul behavior and mannerisms fool you. These bumpkins and slum-dwellers have contacts all over the city. I avoid them when possible, but when I am left with no other choice and need information in the city, I go to them. Of course, that information does not come cheaply."

"Some of them can get a little corny at times, I admit, but I’d rather have them with us than against us."

"A more serious bunch of assholes was never born."

"They are reprehensible dogs."

"They have money, they have places to stay, they know good places to party, and they have access to guns, and explosives, and body armor, and — well, you get the idea."

"They have a lot of hate, and the near-extinction of their species isn’t something that one just gets over."

"No one ever identifies herself as “evil.”

"You will get far more than you bargained for."

"Most national leaders are ridiculed without mercy, because every mistake they’ve ever made is on display for the world to see."

"Too much time spent mucking with forces beyond their control taints these people, if you ask me."

"Bloody opportunists."

"I’m not going to say they planned it that way, but they sure didn’t stop it either."

"Sure, they got fucked, but they’re still assholes."

"A quaint story, I thought, no more than a sort of urban legend."

"However, they do learn many secrets that we miss. Getting them to give up these secrets, however, is usually more trouble than it’s worth."

"Maybe they aren’t all dead?"

"Greek myths are replete with dragons; Ladon, Typhon, Python, Hydra, and so forth. They are never cast in favorable roles; most of them only exist for a hero to kill."

"I’ve never liked practical jokes, and I don’t like the notion of pushing someone’s buttons just to teach them not to respond. You can lose your head doing that to the wrong person."

"Other creatures share the unseen world with us, and it would behoove you to know something about them."

"The spirits of the dead do not always rest easily."

"The dead aren’t staying in the ground."

"Some of them are complete pigs, so I’m told, but even so, they can be quite seductive."

#rp meme #rp memes #rp starters #roleplay starters #roleplay meme #roleplay memes #black furies #Werewolf the Apocalypse #wta #owod #World Of Darkness

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villainousshakespeare · 3 years

Text

Learning a Lesson Chapter 9

iLearning a Lesson Chapter 8

Part 1 Here, Part 2 Here, Part 3 Here, Part 4 Here, Part 5 Here, Part 6 Here, Part 7 Here, Part 8 Here

Young Actor Tom Hiddleston/OFC

Rated E -Smut, Angst, Complicated Relationship - Teacher/Actor Posing as Student, Feels, Flirting, Fluff, Oral Sex, Sex, Shower Sex, Threats, Breakups, Angst…

ANGST IN THIS CHAPTER! (but don’t worry… I’m a hopeless romantic)

Summary: It’s your first day as a teacher and things are going well. That is, until a tall, gorgeous boy with blond curls and dramatic ways saunters into your last class. When he ignores all the swooning girls to flirt outrageously with you, it is secretly thrilling. Even more so is when he tries to steal a kiss after class ends. How long will you be able to keep your defenses up?

Up and Coming actor Tom is under cover in high school for research for a movie, but the pretty drama teacher is making the long assignment so much more enjoyable

@arch-venus25, @caffiend-queen @ciaodarknessmyheart @frostbitten-written @just-the-hiddles @kellatron55 @myoxisbroken @nonsensicalobsessions @poetic-fiasco @shiningloki @shae-annelore @thecutestlittlebunbunfairy @hiddlesholic @yespolkadotkitty @vodka-and-some-sass @wolfsmom1 @tom-hlover @toozmanykids @delightfulheartdream @whyispistashanuttaken @hopelessromanticspoonie; @loki-yoursaviourishere @is-it-madness

The Monday morning walk to school was the longest of Emily's life. With every step she took she was tempted to turn around and run the other way, hiding under her blankets and weeping rather than going on. Only a deep seated stubborn streak kept her from giving in to her fears and doing just that.

She needn't have worried. Tom was true to his word. There was no sign of him to be found in school. No infectious laugh ringing through the hallway, no tousled halo of blond hair floating above the shorter students amidst a throng of admirers, and no ice blue eyes seeking hers for a secret wink or speaking glance.

Emily told herself it was for the best. She hoped she would eventually believe it.

The other god-send was that Jim Howard seemed to have called in sick. A substitute was in his classroom when she got there, and never had she been so glad to see the old woman than she was that day. She assumed that it was his pride that kept him from walking into the building with a black eye and a swollen jaw, and took evil delight in the fact that Tom had so thoroughly trounced him.

Tom. There he was again. She could not go five minutes without calling him to mind. It was going to be a long day. Hell, it was going to be a long forever as far as she knew. How long would it take to get over the golden boy who had so completely won her heart?

Half a day was how long it took for the news of his exit to hit the school grapevine. Emily began hearing his name whispered during her fourth period class. By the time that class ended and she made her way to the staff lounge it was all anyone was talking about. Ada, Janis, and Mike were gossiping about it when she came in, a pathetic lunch of coffee and a banana in her hand.

"Well, anyone with eyes could have seen that that boy should be a movie star," Janis was opining. "It doesn't surprise me one bit."

"Oh, come on Janis," Mike laughed, skepticism showing, "he was handsome, sure, but there's no way you saw this coming!"

"I'm not saying that," Janis sniffed. "Obviously I didn't know he was an actor. But if anyone in this school was destined for greatness it was Martinsson."

"Hiddleston," Mike corrected her. "Apparently that's his real name. You're awfully quiet, Emily. You were close with the boy, weren't you? Tutoring him after hours and all?"

"Not that close," she said with a half shrug. "He claimed to want help with an audition monologue, but that was obviously for show. We never actually worked on it. Just class."

The words were true enough as far they went, even if the meaning behind them was an all out lie.

"Still, he clearly preferred you," Ada said, giving her a probing look. "I heard all sorts of chatter about how he always flirted with you, volunteering to read romantic scenes with you. I was a little jealous, to tell the truth. I mean, and I can say it now that I know he's a genuine adult - what I wouldn't have given for a chance to sculpt a nude of that boy!"

"No wonder Howard hated him so much," Mike laughed good naturedly. "It seems it's not just the high school girls who had a thing for him."

Emily did her best to tune them out after that, and took to eating in her classroom. The days blended into each other, with no end of the day secret to make them stand out as special.

The kids in her drama class were all excited of course. The thought that they had read scenes with an honest to goodness actor, one who was going to be starring in a movie, made them practically giddy. Kate began recirculating the lie that the two of them had been involved, and no one dared to correct her. Emily was angry on his behalf, offended that anyone would believe he would fool around with a student, until she realized the implications of that thought.

It was that guilt that was the worst. Well, along with the loneliness. Even if he had been an adult, she hadn't known that. She had thought him no different than Kate or Zack or Jamie, and she had slept with him anyway. She deserved all the pain she was feeling. Deserved more than that; to loose her job and never be hired again, even. More and more she slipped into a depression.

It was nine days after she had thrown him out of her apartment and her life that the first letter arrived. She grabbed her mail from the small slot inside the door and rifled through it on the way up the stairs as she always did, expecting nothing more than bills and solicitations. When she turned over an envelope addressed in an instantly recognizable hand, she felt as though she had been punched in the gut. Hands shaking, she opened the seal, afraid that if she didn't do it at once she would never find the courage, and unfolded a letter.

"My Darling Emily," it began in Tom's loopy mess of long hand, "I know I have no right to write to you, having broken your trust in the most caddish way possible. I only hope that you will allow me the opportunity to once more take advantage of your goodness of heart and kindness of disposition, that I may try to explain why I orchestrated such a hurtful charade.

"As you are patently aware now, I am an actor of both stage and screen. I take my profession very seriously, perhaps more so than it deserves, though I like to believe that you among all women will understand why. If I can peel away the layers of a character enough to expose the beating heart within, allowing my audience to sees even a piece of the truth of humanity in my portrayal, then I truly believe that I am contributing something to this shared experience we all are living. Pretentious as that sounds, it is my goal every time I assume a role, be it Iago or a soldier, or even Mr. Toad.

"When I was cast as a student from the States, I knew I had my work cut out for me. I was educated, I blush to say my love, in the best schools in England: Eton, Cambridge, and RADA. My good fortune has been quite excessive, I know, though no teacher I encountered in all of my tutelage could hold a candle to you, my darling. In any case, I was woefully unprepared to know the struggle such a young man was going through. My director came up with the idea to have me pose in a small town school, and I admit I leapt at the chance.

"Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would meet the woman of my dreams in such a situation.

"I confess that in the beginning I flirted with you to amuse myself. You are quite breathtakingly beautiful, my sweet, and I was bored beyond belief. As the days went on, however, I began to uncover the woman underneath the starched blouses and pencil skirts. A woman with a mind that soared and a soul that sung. One who shared my passion for stage poetry, and did not back down from a challenge.

"In short, my darling Emily, I fell in love with you.

"I should have told you the moment our relation crossed over the line. Alas my love, I fear that it is a coward who worships you. I was afraid that if you learned the truth you would be angry, and I wanted to collect as many precious moments with you as I could before your warm eyes turned cold. My sin is great, I know. I do not deserve to be forgiven. Nonetheless, I place my heart at your feet in hope that you will take it up, take pity on me, and not stomp it beneath your shoe.

"The film I am working on seized the opportunity afforded by my early matriculation to begin shooting. I am relocated to New York City to start principal photography. I know it is a mere two hours from you, and yet it feels the length of the world. Knowing I will not see you each day, hold you at night, is a weight on my soul that I know I have only myself to blame for.

"I ask nothing of you, my dearest Emily, but that you allow me to write to you. I do not expect you to write back, although I live in hope that one day you will. The distance keeps us apart, but perhaps that need not be all bad. Perhaps it can give you time to heal and to trust me once more. Let me write to you, to tell you about myself - my real self - and try to win your friendship back if nothing else. It has been the most important of my life.

"I do not flatter myself that I will ever hold you again, kiss your soft lips, feel you beneath me as you gasp in passion. I have too great a mark against me to hope for such grace. I would die to have it, but will not impose it on you. Just let me try to heal the hurt I have done, and I will be content.

"If you cannot find it within you to accept my offer of friendship in the form of epistles, simply write me with one word. 'Stop' and I will cease. You are in control, my heart. I will bow to your wishes.

"Please take good care of yourself, my Emily. I wish I could be their to tend to you myself. Be warry of the dread maths teacher. I know it is no longer my place, but I would ask you to not be alone around him.

"Enough of that. I will end for now. Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

"My heart is yours.

All my love,

Tom."

Emily read the letter through, barley able to make out the words through the tears welling in her eyes. When she had finished, she collapsed onto the bed and read it through again, openly weeping this time. All of the pain and guilt she had been holding in came flooding out. In the end, she had to put the letter aside so that the deluge of her tears didn't permanently mar the ink composing the lines. By then she knew it by heart, but she still loved to see his strong hand scrawled out over the page.

She did not for a moment consider writing him to stop. Perhaps she should have. There was no future she could see for the two of them. Her trust had been shattered, along with her mental image of herself, by the situation. On top of that, he was away, filming a movie in the big city that she rarely went to. When this movie was ended, who knew where he would be? Jetting off to exotic countries? Treading the boards in London? His life was exciting and adventurous, and she was a little mouse of a school teacher from a small town. How could they hope to make a relationship work, even without their drama?

The letters came far more frequently than she had expected. While it was not every day, Tom was clearly grasping every spare moment he had to pour out his heart to her. He told her all about the filming process. She felt as though she knew his costars, so vividly did he depict them. Against her will, Emily would find herself laughing at ridiculous anecdotes, or groaning in commiseration at delays in the shooting.

In the midst of all of these tales of misadventures and productivity, Tom made clear to he still hoped to win Emily back. He never missed an opportunity to praise her, calling her darling, his sweet, his dear, his love. He mentioned how he had suggested that one of the teachers should be young, smart, and sexy as an homage to her, though no one could possibly do her justice. He let slip that he had been making his costars groan with his continual referencing her, to the point where they teased him any time her name arose.

At the end of each letter he dropped all pretense, stating plainly that he loved her and would do anything to win her back. He insisted that he would wait, that the decision was entirely hers, but that he lived in hope that one day she would write him back, telling him she forgave him. Until that day, he would soldier on and try to deserve her.

Several times Emily found herself sitting down, trying to pen a reply to him. She wanted, desperately wanted, to do so. But each time, the fear would come crashing down and she would end up tearing the letter to shreds.

About two months after the letters started, there was a longer than usual gap between arrivals. Emily began to think that he had given up on her, and a panic she had never felt gripped her. She had not realized the extent to which she had been living for his words.

When an envelope finally arrived, it was in an international envelope, and the return address was London, England. That was it, then. He was out of the country. All of the stories of his homecoming, complete with welcoming family, were a dagger to her. He still professed his love, but now an actual ocean separated them along with the sea of emotion.

Their were two more letters, spread over a month and a half, and then nothing for three weeks. Depression returned. She had all but given up when a card shaped envelope, gilded on the edges, arrived in her box.

***

"Alright, out with it!"

Emily looked up from the pile of papers she was grading to see Ada standing in her classroom door, arms crossed over her paint splattered apron and a determined look on her face.

"Out with what?" Emily asked, confusion genuine.

"It's been four months, Emily," the older woman said, shutting the door behind her as she walked in and sat at one of the student desks. The same desk, Emily couldn't help but note, that had once been Tom's.

"Sorry?"

"Four months that you have been moping around! Barely showing your face in the teacher's lounge, looking like someone stole your dog and kicked your kitten. This, from the girl who was such a spark of joy when she was hired that she even ignited passion for teaching in an old war horse like me!"

"I'm sorry," Emily mumbled.

"Don't be sorry, girl! Tell me what's wrong!"

"It's nothing."

"Emily, do you think I'm blind?" Ada asked with a sigh.

"No..."

"Or that I'm stupid?"

"Of course not!"

"Good," Ada snorted. "As I am neither. Four months ago, a certain long-legged boy with more looks than are good for anyone swaggered out of this school, and you have been a ghost ever since. It's not hard to put the pieces together."

Emily gaped at her, all color draining from her face. If Ada knew, or strongly suspected, was it then general knowledge? Was her shame a joke amongst the faculty, or a cause of scorn?

"Don't worry, hun," Ada said, as though reading her mind. "Most of the people around here are blind and stupid. No one else has any idea. Well, maybe Jim, but that's a whole other can of worms that I am not too keen on digging around in. So, you fell for the boy, huh?"

"You must despise me," Emily said, voice hardly above a whisper.

"So you're failing is that you're deaf," Ada shook her head. "How many times did you hear me rhapsodize about him? Hell, I was undressing him with my eyes every damn day!"

"But you never took it farther than that."

"No, I didn't. But then I am decades older than either one of you and was not given the opportunity. Who knows what I might have done if he had batted those long golden lashes at me and flashed a dimple."

"You wouldn't have slept with a student," Emily said doggedly.

"Is that what this is? That you feel guilty? Tell me something, Emily: would you ever even consider anything inappropriate with say... Jack Simmons, or Zach Lewis, or Dan Fielding? Would it even occur to you?"

"No," Emily said at once, repulsed by the very idea.

"Of course not. Because they are children. The Simmons boy is a hulking child, true, but even though he is big, he is still an adolescent. You can easily tell in a moment he is not an adult. Now, compare that to Tom. He has a baby face, and is all gangly, but there was something about him that flatly identified him as a man. You knew that, instinctively. That is why you let things play out the way you did."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I know you," Ada said simply. "You are a good person, with a moral compass. Was it a stupid thing to do? Of course! It could have ended horribly for you, and thank god it didn't! But don't beat yourself up for listening to your intuition when it turned out to be right! Even if the boy did end up being a snake."

"What if he wasn't?" Emily asked carefully.

"I just assumed... he left, and you didn't seem happy about it... Emily, what did happen?"

Emily looked at her friend, chewing on her lip as she decided what to say. Ada already knew the worst; what harm could it do to let her in on the rest? In a rush it all came out. The clandestine affair, the trouble with Mr. Howard, seeing Tom on Nicholas Nickleby, their disastrous fallout, all of it. Ada sat there rapt as Emily spilled the whole sordid story.

"He really punched Jim?" Ada asked when she had finished, a huge grin spread over her face.

"Twice," Emily confirmed, answering smile on her own mouth. "Hard. Knocked him flat onto the ground."

"Oh, would I have loved to have seen that."

"I could have lived without it, honestly."

"Oh, hun, I don't know what to tell you," Ada shook her head. "I don't even know whether to feel jealous of you sorry for you. Both, I suppose. Ah, to be young again."

"He's been writing me letters," Emily confessed, face reddening. "Ever since he left."

"What does he say?" Ada's eyes were huge.

"Different things. How his day is going. About the filming. That he loves me and wants to be with me."

"Well what the hell are you doing here then?" Ada stood from the desk to stare at her.

"Ada..."

"Girl, if that young man wanted me, you can bet that nothing would keep me away!"

"He's in London," she muttered.

"Did something happen to all the airplanes?"

"No... In fact..."

"In fact what, Emily? Spill it? Give a woman something to live vicariously through!"

With a sigh, Emily dug through her bag and pulled out the card she had received the day before. It was an invitation to a movie premiere in New York City. Folded along with that was a train ticket, prepaid first class, and a small note:

"I would not wish Any companion in the world but you, Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of.

Tom (with all thanks to Miranda in The Tempest)"

"Well," Ada smiled at her, "when shall we go shopping? You, my dear, are going to need a dress!"

#Tom Hiddleston #tom hiddleston rpf #Tom Hiddleston/OFC #fic #fanfic #love #angst #pining #letters #love letters #smut (in other chapters)#teacher/student relationship #BUT NOT REALLY #he is undercover for a role #I am a sucker for a happy ending I promise!

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Episode 31 of Word of Honor, and in many ways OH MY GOD YES, but also, no, show, wtf?

As in, wt actual f is going on? Literally, what is happening?

(Spoilers, so scroll away and come back later, if you need to.)

So, first thing’s first: I feel like this one may end up a bit short, because a lot of it is likely to be just a bunch of keysmash flailing? (EDIT: No, I just came back up here to the top from the bottom, because this is NOT AT ALL any shorter than usual.) I’ll attempt a bit more than exclamation points and worry over whether my poor heart is able to take this, but we’ll see how it goes, because the first thing I’m going to do is say I knew it! and I told you so! I knew you weren’t planning to die, Zhou Zishu. I did call you a liar after Ep 30, and I was right. I mean, what’s the point of having the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley as your boyfriend husband if he’s not going to rescue you after you’ve been kidnapped for attempted ravishment by the evil prince? And get you the best wedding present ever, i.e., a bunch of new disciples? Omg, Zhou Zishu’s face when Wen Kexing finally calls himself a disciple of Four Seasons Manor! (I think he’s so overwhelmed, he doesn’t even realize when WKX calls him “shixiong” a minute before that!) Wen Kexing’s tiny pained smile that he just can’t seem to help when ZZS lays his hand on WKX’s head! That long shuddering breath ZZS lets out, and the way his shoulders just drop, like he’s finally let go of a huge weight! (The worry this brings me, because there are five and a half episodes left, my dude, and your husband is a troublemaker, and I would not be getting complacent, if I was you.) The fact that WKX has knelt to ZZS and called him zongzhu in front of the Ghost Valley contingent – there’s gotta be some political implications to that. Horseback riding! The way WKX keeps holding (up) ZZS! Lol at WKX being all, you all can leave now, we can take our honeymoon alone from here! ZZS knew he would come (I told you so)! Their smiles! Their soft little faces! (Merciless killers! How so fucking adorable?) The hairpin! MARRIED, Y’ALL. Censorship? I don’t know her. ANYWAY, that’s all just a bunch of flailing reaction to the first almost 20 minutes of emoporn. Also, Zhang Zhehan, you should not do suffering so pretty. It makes me feel like a bad person for still enjoying your face so much when your character is in so much physical and emotional distress.

Secondly, show. We need to talk. You should not be this opaque. I’m trying to piece together everything that’s happened in (vaguely) chronological order:

Sometime before dying (before breaking his heart meridians?), Han Ying tells Wen Kexing about the Four Seasons Remnants back with Prince Jin. All of Ep 30 happens, with Zhou Zishu and Xie Wang both making a mess of Awful Prince’s/Yifu’s plans. Xie Wang, the rest of the Scorpions, and the Ghost Valley team retreat back to a lair. Which lair? Who knows, at this point. Cao Weining talks to Fan Shishu. (He explicitly tells this to A-Xiang.) But does he also confront Mo Huaiyang? Because I feel like it must be significant that we get the same turn of phrase to describe Zhao Jing’s relationship with Xie Wang – asking a tiger for its skin – from Mo Huaiyang to Fan Shishu, and then attributed to Cao Weining when A-Xiang quotes it to WKX in the same ep. The show even emphasizes this for us to catch by drawing attention to A-Xiang’s use of it via her struggle to remember the idiom properly. (A. This episode’s convo between Mo Huaiyang and Fan Shishu, which is when we see Mo Huaiyang actually use the idiom, happens AFTER Cao Weining and Gu Xiang leave Gentle Wind Sword Sect. I went back and checked, and it is Mo Huaiyang who uses it, not Fan Shishu. B. In this same convo, Fan Shishu says he still needs to explain all this to the disciples somehow, so C. Was there a prior, unseen convo between just Cao Weining and Mo Huaiyang in which Mo Huaiyang practiced his excuses on poor, hapless Cao Weining first?)

Anyway, Cao Weining then goes to A-Xiang, who’s lit. and fig. in the dark at this point, in her rustic cabin outside the gated community. I notice Cinnamon Roll already has his bag packed. He is done. He lays out the current political web, and A-Xiang seems pretty sure of Liu Qianqiao’s ultimate loyalty to WKX. This is probably important in what happens next. Gu Xiang and Cao Weining decide to run away and elope but then … get captured and taken to the lair. On purpose? A-Xiang did see Liu Qianqiao with Xie Wang in the Secret Cave, standing shoulder to shoulder with Du Pusa as an apparent top-tier henchwoman, and she probably expects to be protected, but this seems like a pretty big gamble. I suppose you don’t survive the Ghost Valley without learning to take some risks. A-Xiang then leads Xie Wang and the Ghost Valley contingent to WKX (at burned-down Four Seasons Manor?) to, she says, let WKX take down Xie Wang. She notes Xie Wang’s use of some potion to control everyone – I assume the Drug Man potion, and I assume the monthly antidote is what’s keeping everyone in the Ghost Valley from going full Drug Man?

WKX and Xie Wang confer in secret. Probably about how much they both hate Awful Yifu. I mean, I assume Xie’er still hates Awful Yifu at this point, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? Probably a key point here: WKX is hiding whatever this was about from his husband. My dude, why are you still like this? I guess that explains the pained cast to that tiny little smile earlier. WKX then takes some of the Ghost Valley contingent and coordinates with the Four Seasons Remnants back in Prince Jin’s territory to rescue ZZS. Husband safely rescued, WKX now heads back to Ghost Valley, to … abdicate? He promises A-Xiang he’s going to come back safely, and my dude, I’m trying to believe you. I really am. I’m trying to have as much faith in you planning to be back all along as I had in ZZS not planning to die in Jin Palace all along, but here’s a key difference: HE LET YOU IN ON HIS PLAN. Which you were a key part of. I find your secrecy, by contrast, concerning.

Other things:

Love the little moment between Gu Xiang and Liu Qianqiao and Luo Fumeng when Beauty Ghost and Tragicomic Ghost turn to Xie Wang in righteous indignation and want to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing to their little girl. Compare the reaction of these two moms to Happy Ghost being all, “Nope, this is a complete and total in with Wen Kexing right here in a pretty pink dress.” The show continues to draw a fairly bright line between the characterization of the women in the Department of the Unfaithful - who are terrorizing certain people, true, but also watching out for each other after ending up down on their luck – and the general run of men in Ghost Valley, who are basically rotten sociopaths straight out of Batman’s rogues gallery and will sell you out in a minute for their own gain. Yes, this has been made fairly explicit in Wen Kexing’s and A-Xiang’s commentary in past eps and later in this ep about trying to get the Department of the Unfaithful out of the line of fire while not caring if the jianghu burns down the rest of Ghost Valley, but this isn’t just favoritism or a whim, just some fond memories of Luo Fumeng being kind to them a couple of times in the past. I think there’s some commentary here on the kind of men who are so far gone they find themselves outside the bounds of “civilized” society and the kind of women who do – how much easier and quicker it is for a woman, that it could be any woman in the wrong circumstances, and how much further gone a man has to be than a woman to be considered a “devil.” We’ve seen these supportive interpersonal relationships among the women since Gu Xiang “adopted” her two girls in the first handful of episodes and told off Lovelace with the threat of Tragicomic Ghost – and the show is continuing to show it, not just tell it. It’s one of the things I’ve found frustrating about Wen Kexing a couple of times in past eps, when he’s trying to get A-Xiang’s two girls, or other women from the Department, to just leave and go do something else – I feel like even though WKX realizes their circumstances and their personalities are different from the rest of his Top Ten Devils, he’s not fully comprehending that they literally have nowhere else to go, that if they had any other options, they wouldn’t have ended up there in the first place. He called the two girls “puppies” when he talked about A-Xiang having to take care of them, but as Ghost Valley master, who’s enforced the independence of and protections for the Department of the Unfaithful, he’s walking away from his own basketful of puppies. Not to mention, this is one of the vanishingly small places in this particular version of the jianghu that we’ve seen women have any autonomy and power. I … think there may have been a few young female cultivators in Yueyang Sect, but while I’d have to go back and watch to be sure, I remember the Hero’s Conference being a whole bunch of men throwing their … weight around. Anyway, I also love that it looks like A-Xiang tries to kick Happy Ghost in the shin, because of course she does.

Visually, they had a cool thing going on there with the Tian Chuang behind WKX falling in concert with WKX lowering his fan, but they didn’t quite coordinate it enough, and then they cut away too soon. Bah. It was set up to be a very cool visual, if only they had committed to it. Meanwhile Duan Pengju, this asshole, omg. He’s trying to pull off the Collar of Evil and is not succeeding. Srsly, his Collar of Evil is droopy. It doesn’t stop him from monologuing like he’s the actual villain and not some sad-sack lackey. You showed the correct amount of amused disdain during your interaction, but I can’t believe you left him alive at the end of it, Wen Kexing.

I wasn’t really feeling Jing Beiyuan and Wu Xi up until this ep when Jing Beiyuan was teasing A-Xiang about her lack of shame over running away with her lover. OK, fine, you can stay, Qi Ye. Also, wow. Speaking of lack of shame, I can’t believe you just accused your husband of bride kidnapping right in front of everyone’s salads, because that is totally what just happened there.

So the band is (almost all) back together, minus Chengling, who has definitely found out in the worst possible way that one of his dads is the terrifying master of the Ghost Valley that massacred his family and sect. So, this should go well.

Lol at Xie’er lounging in Wen Kexing’s Ghost Valley master seat like some kind of consort. He’s already got a husband, Xie’er. One that would not be happy with a concubine running around, I think. I do wonder what the full scope of their plan/understanding is, bubbling away under this stare-down.

A note – WKX’s hair is styled differently in this ep in the Ghost Valley master scenes than it has been before. Previously, those side bangs were further forward and a little bit chunkier, which, I think, narrowed his face and also helped emphasize the wild-eyed look. They’re wispier and back further, now, which I think softens his face, even when he’s trying to look imposing. Makes him look more, dare I say, human.

And now, I’m going to go have a few Han Ying/Bi Xingming thoughts, actually. God, those months after ZZS left, can you imagine what that was like for them? Han Ying having watched those nails placed in Bi Xingming’s shifu in the first ep, and then having to turn around and go to Bi Xingming and tell him that ZZS was gone, with the seven nails in him? Both of them trying to hold the Four Seasons Remnants together – and then Ying-ge comes back one day and says he’s found ZZS? Mutual aid and comfort, my dudes. Also some projection. I’m just sayin’. Meet me, I guess - this kind of sideline action and extremely rare pair thing is how I tend to roll.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #gu xiang #cao weining #liu qianqiao #luo fumeng #xie wang #jing beiyuan #wu xi #zhang chengling #han ying #bi xingming #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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