#since I was like why did the pre-existing song they choose have so little to do with that scene it BOTHERED me/lh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thedeathdeelers · 3 years

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Racing Hearts

[a companion piece to this gorgeous piece of Luke art brought to you by the ever talented @mamirugbee]

It‘s a warm and quiet night as Julie lies comfortably on a sleeping Luke, the sound of his strong heartbeat thudding steadily against her ear.

Her finger lazily traces patterns on his chest as her eyes roam the dark room, taking in the familiar surroundings of yet another hotel room. Julie had come to learn that no matter what country they were in, the hotel rooms were always the same.

Her eyes brush over his discarded navy and black suit along with his black band tee draped over the sofa across the room, landing on the shiny helmet propped on top of the coffee table, the gloss glittering with the light of the moon shining through the slanted shutters of the window. Her gaze lingers on the various logos littered across the top of it, each one of them so familiar to her now. As her eyes take in the shape of the Sunset Curve Racing logo, her heart warms once more at the memory of Luke pulling it off earlier that day, as he swiped his sweaty hair away from his face, listening intently to the scores. She also distinctly remembers the brightness of his smile that had been visible from miles away as his name echoed through the circuit, the announcers praising him as the youngest driver to ever win the Mexican Grand Prix.

Her eyes flick away from the helmet to rest on the trophy standing tall on the centre of the dining table tucked away in the corner of their room, the silver glint of it guiding her gaze down towards the name engraved on the plaque at its base.

She had watched him from the base of the podium as his competitors sprayed him with champagne, his smile not waning for a second as his hat, his favourite Screams from the Attic band tee and his suit tied at his waist got drenched. The multicoloured flags behind him had flapped in the wind as he turned his gaze, searching for her in the gathering crowd. She had backed away the second his eyes landed on her, the growing mischievous smile on his face a warning sign as he started towards her, the sticky nature of dried champagne pushing her to move even further away from his approaching hands.

She had lost of course, a smile now making its way on her lips as she remembers his arms snaking their way around her waist from the back, lifting her up until her feet were helplessly kicking the air in front of her, her squeals louder than the cheering crowd.

Julie pulls her attention away from the day’s events and back to the quiet room she finds herself in, her eyes coming back to trace the features of the sleeping driver beneath her.

Her heart grows tenfold as she takes in the peaceful almost boyish look on his face, sleep taking away any edge it might carry during the day. Without her permission, her fingers skim the lines of his chest, dipping past his collarbone and up his neck as they settle at the base of his jawline.

She thanks whatever greater power brought him safely back to her after yet another successful race.

Because truth be told, even though she had gotten better at controlling the anxiety that riddled her whenever he walked away from her and towards his car, Julie still worried about him and struggled to sit still while she watched him race to the finish line.

Just like she was now, she often found herself wondering how Luke kept his pre-race nerves at bay as he got ready to risk his life again and again for his job - his passion. She admired for him, even if it scared the living daylights out of her.

She always watched him as he got ready while the team, including Alex and Reggie, prepped him before he slid into his seat behind the wheel, glimpsing a look of peace settling on his features as he closed his eyes for a few seconds, shutting out the flurry of activity happening around him.

Julie had always assumed it was due to the music pulsing through his headphones, the loud beating of the drums and heavy guitar riffs blocking out the world for just those few seconds. It was a ritual she’d seen time and time again, even before he knew she existed - but during his last few races, she’d been seeing less and less of that. The headphones themselves would be left dangling in her hands as he walked away - no music in his ears, his eyes never leaving hers.

Maybe whatever brought on that peaceful expression to his face could help her, too.

Her fingers move upwards once more, her thumb gently swiping against his cheek and grazing the day old stubble. Her index finger glides down the length of his nose, her hand hovering just above his mouth when she feels lips pressing into her palm.

A giggle slips out of her before she can stop herself.

“Did I wake you?”

Her whispered question is met with a soft grunt, followed by a hand tightening its hold on her hip.

“Yes. No. Maybe?” His sleepy answer brings out more laughter to bubble out, her hand retracting itself from his face to slap across her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” comes her muffled apology.

“No you’re not.”

A beat of silence follows before she slips her hand off her face and settles it back on his chest.

“No I’m not.”

He grins at her reply, his eyes still closed.

“How come you’re up?” His brow furrows before he cracks an eye open to peek at her. “Wait — what time is it?”

Julie shrugs, answering both of his questions in one swift motion.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“No, I’m fine I just...” She tries to think of a reason, but all she can think about is that peaceful look on his face before a race, and she suddenly finds herself itching to ask him.

“I- I was just thinking about today, and your races in general and I...” she trails off, not entirely sure how to phrase this.

She feels the hand on her hip give her one quick squeeze, and realises her eyes had drifted away from his gaze.

She looks back up at him to find him looking at her with both eyes open, a curious and slightly concerned, gleam to them.

Right. This was Luke — she could do this.

“It’s just that I know the anxiety that comes along with having a loved one getting into a race car will never fade, especially not after...” she trails off, taking in a deep breath before continuing. “But I- I always see you do this thing before you race. Like suddenly all of the anxiety that was there just kind of...melts away?” Julie registers her words and hurries to explain herself. “I don’t mean you’re not anxious anymore! Or that you’re completely relaxed or— I don’t know how to explain this. It’s like you’re just suddenly okay? Ugh, I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m saying.” She drags her hand towards her face as she hides behind it, hoping she can blame her lack of sleep on whatever the hell that was.

Anxiety about maybe dying just casually melting away?? Where did that come from?

The silence that follows only causes her to worry even more, until she feels a hand rest against hers, only to then gently pull it away from her face.

He holds onto it as she looks up at him again, his thumbs softly tracing her knuckles.

“I know what you mean, Jules.” He tilts one side of his mouth up into a half smile before he continues. “I’ve always had this habit of losing myself to music right before the race starts — ever since I was a kid music just kind of...I don’t know, had this calming effect on me? Or no, wait.” She watches him as he screws his mouth up, his eyes looking up towards the ceiling as he tries to come up with the right words. “Okay so maybe not calm exactly, but music has always been able to help me sort out how I feel, right? And just like it can help me understand how angry or sad or happy I am, I find that if I choose the right song, the right melody or just the right guitar riff, I can almost will myself to just — feel the way I want to feel? If that makes sense?”

His eyes come back down in search of hers as he struggles to explain himself, but just like she always does, Julie knows exactly what he means.

“Yeah, it does. Music is magic like that,” she tells him, a little smile sneaking its way onto her lips.

“Exactly!” The hand holding hers squeezes once before his thumb goes back to its soothing motion. He grins down at her, a smile just as bright as the one she saw on the podium earlier today, except this one was just for her to see.

Her gaze shifts down to his nose, her next question on the tip on her tongue struggling to make its way out. Was this maybe a little too personal? They’ve been together for a few months now but there were times where it still felt so new — she’d get shy or flustered like a school girl, getting tongue tied just at the sight of his brilliant smile. She had a feeling it would always be that way with Luke.

She hoped it would be.

“Jules?”

His voice interrupts her thoughts, bringing her back to the conversation as her eyes reflexively find their way back up to his.

Before she can overthink it, the words spill out of her.

”I um- It’s just that I noticed in the last few races you’ve stopped doing that — listening to music right up until the race starts, I mean. And yet even then you still get that look on your face so I just....wanted to know why - or how - I guess.”

His expression grows soft at her words, his eyes roaming her face once, twice, three times.

“Hmm, something more magical than music came into my life.”

She waits for him to continue, to elaborate and make sense. Instead he just stares at her, as if his vague statement was all the answer she needed.

“Um..what?”

He laughs quietly at her confusion, the vibrations of his laughter reaching the ear still pressed against his chest.

Not known to be patient, Julie jokingly scowls at him, attempting to look unimpressed as he laughs at her.

“What?” She doesn’t mean to, but a slight whine slips into her tone, followed by a pout settling on her lips. This only makes him laugh even harder, her head shaking with the movement of his chest.

“Nothing, nothing.” He chuckles some more while she half-heartedly glares at him, before continuing. “I thought I was being obvious but I guess Alex was right.”

“Alex? What about Alex?”

He shakes his head at her. “Nah, never mind. He just likes to tell me how wrong I am sometimes, that’s all.”

A snort makes its way out of her before she can stop herself. “When doesn’t he...”

He chuckles once more at her words, before quieting down as his eyes flicker down to her lips.

“Luke?”

His eyes tick back up at her questioningly, a smile curling her lips at his short attention span.

Or maybe he just got distracted by her? Huh.

“You were saying about something else taking over music...?”

“Oh! Oh right, yeah sorry. Uh, I mean it hasn’t taken over music exactly — it’s more like I’ve found something else that just kind of,” he lets go of her hand as he reaches over to trace a finger down her cheek. “Better embodies the magic of music for me? Kind of like the living embodiment of it, you could say.”

Her heart starts beating a little faster at his words even as her brain struggles to comprehend his words. Was he-

“Do you get what I’m trying to say, Julie?”

Unable to speak, Julie slowly shakes her head.

The hand on her face cradles her cheek, his fingers weaving their way into her hair.

“You, Jules. You calm my nerves before a race better than any song I’ve ever added to my playlist. I-” A chuckle escapes him before he continues, “Just the thought of you brings me this sense of peace, and it just kind of settles in, pushing away at any jitters that try to shake me before a race. I don’t know how to explain it, even if it’s pretty simple to me.” He stops to stare into her eyes for a second, Julie fully unable to articulate any word or thought.

“I just close my eyes for a few seconds, and picture you. Your voice, your eyes, your smile. I picture you running towards me after a race like you did that first time, and suddenly I’m just excited to race and get to the other side so I can hold you again.”

She feels his thumb gently swipe across her cheek; up and down, up and down.

“I guess what I’m trying to say — what I thought was obvious but maybe Alex was right — is that you’re the reason I’ve been getting better in all my races, the reason I even won today. You make me a better driver, make me want to be a better person.” He tries to draw her closer, his head tilting down towards hers, lifting it off his pillow as he whispers against the crown of her head,

“I love you Jules.”

Still taken by the confession that has left her a little dizzy, Julie pulls herself closer to Luke, wrapping her arms around him as she tightens her hold on him, her face snuggling into his chest. They had already said those three words to each other numerous times before, neither one of them shy about letting the other know the true depth of their feelings.

But somehow, this felt different.

“I love you,” she mouths into the space right above his heart, pressing a kiss into his skin. She feels his fingers twitch in her hair, letting her know that he heard her, felt her, too.

Silence settles in the dark room, neither one of them moving, too happy and comfortable to ruin the moment. They both eventually fall asleep in each other’s arms, ready to conquer whatever the world threw their way - one race at a time.

fin

#jatp #juke #julie and the phantoms #otp: you’re music to me #luke patterson #julie molina #my fics #thedeathdeelers fics #jatp fics #luke day #juke day

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thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness · 3 years

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Kaoru & Toshiya Rolling Stone Japan 18th May 2021

DIR EN GREY talks about the current unique expression method and fun.

DIR EN GREY has postponed their concert scheduled to be held at Tokyo Garden Theater on May 6th. However, if you read this interview that took place two days before the decision to postpone the live, it's easy to imagine that the band will continue to move forward no matter what.

Using the single "Oboro" released on April 28 as the reason for this interview , we asked leader Kaoru (Gt) and Toshiya (Ba),who makes his first appearance in Rolling Stone Japan, about the current state of the band.

Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistakes or any confusing parts. Links or credits to this post when the content is reposted or captured in other SNS is appreciated : ------------- Original interview: Rolling Stone Japan (includes pictures)

Text: Joe Yokomizo -First of all, please tell us the details of releasing this single at this timing. Kaoru: We've been talking about releasing a single around this time for a long time. But, we were asked by the company to release it sooner (laughs). They told us “Can’t you release it around February?”. But we said we couldn’t record it in such a hurry and pushed the release back (laughs). So, the release was decided at the time it was originally scheduled.

-Is it a song you wrote recently?

Kaoru: We chose it from the ones we had in stock.

-How do you choose a song? Like, is there a discussion among the members? Kaoru: We had a talk about if it’d be good to release a ballad or a melodious song this time. Then, we chose it from the songs we had at that time. Toshiya: That's right. We thought a melodious song or a mellow song would be good, so we chose it from the songs we had in stock. As a result of the discussions we had, we came to the conclusion that “Oboro” was the best choice. I personally thought this song might be able to become a single, but I also thought that it could be a good idea to save it for the album. I thought it could become a song that would be the core of the album even if it was just included in the album. Kaoru: We haven’t released any ballad as a single recently. We did it quite a while ago so we felt like it would be good if we tried it.

-It's true that a ballad as a single is quite fresh for DIR EN GREY, and the arrangements are ... Kaoru: Simple. Pretty simple, but it took us a while to get there. -Do you want to increase the number of notes that are being played at the same time? Kaoru: No. Rather than messing with that, it felt like the notes were gradually confronting each other. There wasn’t a big change, but it took us some time to decide the overall flow, how to do it and the final result. -DIR EN GREY has a strong image as a band that is playing lives often. Until now, you released something and toured, released something, and toured. All over again. The releases haven’t stopped yet but the tours and therefore the lives themselves have stopped because of Corona. How do you feel about the state of the band? Toshiya: Since we couldn’t play lives, I think the part of exploring as a band is big. But personally, at some point, I got over that. The band wants to move, but it’s hard to do it. Even if we think about it, we can’t do anything about the situation so, we haven’t stopped thinking about it, but I think we got over it at some point. Rather, we had no choice but to get over it. -Even if you keep thinking about it, nothing will happen.

Toshiya: That’s right. Even if we just write songs and do the pre-production all the time, if that’s all we are doing, it feels like a pie in the sky all the time. It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it? We didn’t get another answer before but, the process of getting that answer has changed. There was a series of routines like making an album, playing lives, making an album, and doing live performances after that but wasn’t that cut off entirely? Then, we are doing it as usual, but something has changed at some point. And it may just be that kind of era from now on. I think we have no choice but to adapt to this. However, even I think about how it was before, I’m starting to think that it won’t be like that again, and we may just get over it. -Did the production itself change due to the lack of lives? It is often said that a song evolves when it is being playing live, but if you make a song in a situation where it is difficult to imagine playing it live, will the image of the song, how to make it, and the depth of making it change? Kaoru: Even if we are making songs, it feels different from usual. To put it the other way around, as the situation is unique now, maybe it’s a song that can only be done at this moment. But it’s like…. wouldn't it be nice if we could create something interesting? I don't know if we are even thinking about it. I think that the fact that there was always a tour up until now had a big influence. As we always had a tour, until then we’ve limited production time. That's why there was a switch, because now we have infinite time. To be honest, if you take it easy, you’ll space out. After all, it was great to be pushed, force myself into doing it and work hard (laughs). -About making it “the right time” by themselves -Regarding the unlimited production time, how was it for you, Toshiya? Toshiya: I think I'm grateful. However, I want to use it as much as I have. As there were moments I got distracted/ was being lazy, I feel that there are good points and bad points, to be honest. -What's the good thing about this recording? Have you tried something new? Toshiya: After all, in the end time is chasing me (laughs). But this time, I felt that I had a little leeway in my heart. That's why I thought about the single in various ways.Then I wondered if I could release this or that and people would listen to it. It’s common to say this but, when you start thinking about figures, I've even thought about if it's good or bad to release something at this timing. I wondered if it’d be better when this corona situation has settled down a bit more. But well, even if you wait for that time to come, then I would wonder about when that time would come, so in the end, I thought it was unavoidable to think about it. If the right time doesn't come, I think we should make it become the “right time”. Rather than worrying about it, I thought that if such a song was completed and it felt good, we should release it. -It's certainly important to create the right timing. Toshiya: People all over the world are dealing with it now, or more like, we are waiting forever, aren’t we? Personally, I don’t think the situation will return to normal even if we wait. I think it’s more useful to think about how to proceed in a situation like this. I personally came this conclusion, or at least, I’m trying to. -Listening to what you are saying, I remembered Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot." The two main characters are waiting for Godot, but in fact, no one knows who Mr. Godot is, and I don't know if Godot actually exists. But they are waiting, believing that he will eventually come. Toshiya: Everyone, including myself, is waiting now. But what on earth are you waiting for? If you think about it, it’s like we're just waiting for "that moment”, right? But honestly, I don't think “that” will be back. I think it has changed. Then we have to move towards it. I'm a bit scared to stop waiting any longer, but I think we have to take a step forward. Kaoru: I agree with you. -DIR EN GREY Unique ideas -By the way, the new song "Oboro" is said to be a sequel to a previous song. The lyrics are done by vocalist Kyo but for you two, is it a sequel? Kaoru: I was told that but I wasn’t particularly drawn (by that song). The beats and tempo of the original song of "Oboro" are similar to that song. So maybe he was drawn by that and made the lyrics like this. After hearing that the lyrics would be like that, I've never been aware of it. Toshiya: I wasn't even aware of it at all either. I thought “is this it?”.

-By the way, in Toshiya's words, "Oboro" is a song that can be the core of the next album ... Toshiya: It’s just a song. The talks about the album are making rapid progress but now there are endless possibilities, including how to play the songs live. So, I think it's okay if there are songs that exist just as part of the album, and conversely, there may be songs that are only for playing them live. In other words, from here on, how to add value will become even more important than ever. Kaoru: It's nice to have songs that you can only play live. Toshiya: About that, if you might do that at that time, you might want to play it live? I’m thinking about how to add that value to the song. I want to do a live concert, but we can't, moreover if you even do a concert normally, I’m sure it won’t be interesting. -It looks like broadcasting a regular live is difficult, right? Kaoru: A live that it’s going to be only broadcasted is a bit tough. In that sense, hearing what Toshiya said about songs that only can be played at lives are, in other words, songs that won’t become part of an album are really interesting. Toshiya: I don’t know. I was thinking it to myself and I just said it (laughs). Kaoru: There may be quite a few….songs that are like, “Which one is this?". Moreover, no one mentions those songs in an interview (laughs). Toshiya: Ahahaha. Kaoru: Even among the fans, sometimes it’s like “which song is that one?”, and don’t even know the title. The set list doesn't even have the title of the song. Toshiya: I think it doesn't have to be just the song , but the production. I recently thought about it. In the past there used to be a lot of imaginativeness/ playfulness on the DIR EN GREY’s cds. Recently, I remembered that was pretty normal. But from now on, if we are going to put out the record ourselves, I want to make something that can be enjoyable. On the old DIR EN GREY cds, I remember I was asked to find out where the lyrics were written. When I think about it now, it's quite a prank, but that prank was surprisingly interesting. -How about the leader (laughs)? Kaoru: I put a lot of things into the sound (laughs). -The particularity/commitment in “Oboro” -The “mischievous and eccentric” idea that Toshiya mentioned is swallowed normally before one knows. I think expression itself is a struggle, but in the age of the Internet, the speed at which it is swallowed is accelerating. That’s why, even if that happens, I think it is important to keep fighting, recognizing that "I am not just like this". Kaoru: That's exactly what I do. Because I never thought I have a good taste. Even though I can’t make a song, it feels like I'm doing it just because I have a competitive spirit. -Like you don’t want to be taken into ordinary things, or do you want to do something that has never been seen before? Kaoru: I want to do that, but it takes time. Speaking of gimmicks, in “Oboro” there are a lot of them. -What kind of “gimmicks” are there? Please tell me some. Kaoru: It's not interesting if I told them (laughs). There are many sounds that you can't hear. There are lots of sounds that you can feel. I thought it would be great if you could feel it. And I'm thinking about putting a lot of that into the next album. -There is something I would like to ask about lives. I think we are in a situation where values are conflicting. If you play a live, even among fans there’ll be the conflict of the “Don’t play a live in these circumstances” versus the “Thank you for playing a concert in these circumstances” position. Kaoru: It's difficult, isn't it? Neither of these positions are wrong. However, as a band, we won’t stop. So, if the conditions allow it, the live will go on. I think there are a lot of people who says “"Oh, I'm going to live at a time like this. These people’s views have changed”. But well, I think this is happening in other bands as well. -That’s right. In any band, there is a faction that says to play lives and a faction that wants to stop. How should they come to terms with each other? Kaoru: I don’t think normal life will be back for a while here. If someone says “Yes, it’s nothing in the end”, it may change, but it’s that going to happen? The point is, I think it will be difficult unless the number of infected people goes down. Because Taiwan, where the number of infected people has decreased, there are even festivals taking place. Toshiya: We are choosing a method (against Corona virus) that doesn't work right now, but as it is the government who is doing it, isn’t the situation delicate? I think so. When it comes to what is driving people, I think it’s the number of people getting infected, as Kaoru said. The only way to reduce that number may simply cause damage. If you lock down hard like in the UK, you will suffer tremendous financial damage. I think that's why everyone can get lost on the way. However, although it is extreme, unless you have such a strong will, you will continue to do it subtlety and the number will drop again, “Oh, now it’s ok because the numbers have dropped a little” and then after a while they will surely increase again, won’t them? And then repeat the same process. If that happens, I’m worried the same process will be repeated again and again if you don’t cut it off at some point. Kaoru: Tokyo is under the state of emergency for the third time, but I would like them to stop doing lockdown so suddenly. It’s so hard if there is no warm-up/grace period.

Toshiya: Regarding this state of emergency, I will obey what they say, because I have to obey. But in order to do it, I want something that gives me hope. I feel like suddenly, time was taken from me. -Before the light can be seen, “Oboro” -I want hope. That being said, DIR EN GREY's music always sees light at the end. But in the current situation, we can't see that light. I don't think you can understand the meaning of the lyrics unless you're Kyo, but I'm wondering what "Oboro" means. Like, in this era everything is obscure in an ambiguous sense? Or is it a night with a hazy moon but, you can see the light even faintly because it’s hazy? How do you two interpret it?

*Joe is making a reference to the song title, 朧 (Oboro) means hazy,dim,faint.* Toshiya: If possible, I think I want it to be hazy before you are able to see the light. Before people lose the courage to do their best, being surrounded by fog all the time. - It's true that humans aren't that strong. If there is hope, what is it? What kind of hope are you seeing now? Toshiya: That would be ……the best would be that the Corona situation comes to an end. But before that, I'd like "Oboro" to be released properly. Some CD shops are closed due to a state of emergency, so even if you made a reservation, some people may not be able to get it on the release date. So, I hope that "Oboro" will reach everyone who made a reservation. -Which is Kaoru’s Oboro? Kaoru: I think either of them are interesting. In any situation as well, it’s something that it’s only now. It’s also an expression method that can only be done now. Of course, the band will continue, and I will be writing songs, but I think it would be great if we could express something that can only be done now, or something that is interesting. -Anyway, "Oboro" is an excellent title. Toshiya: When you think about it now, that’s right. It can be interpreted as this uncertain situation, and it can also be interpreted as a situation where a faint light is visible. Kaoru: I want you to listen to it and feel it.

#dir en grey #kaoru #toshiya #translation #toshiyatranslations

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junnie133 · 4 years

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Linked Universe Pokémon AU

Bc i’m a damn nerd. These are just my headcanons, feel free of using the images and the clean template in the end. I’d love to hear suggestions about changes on their teams since I filled some of them rather forcefully to get a full 6 Pokémon team.

{+}{+}{+}

A mostly Flying/Water based team for our little Sailor! I got some of the basic Water Pokémon we usually see in the games and the anime, mixed up with some Ghost types (bc Phantom Hourglass).

Gyarados (★): Water/Flying. I wanted to reference the King of Red Lions with this one. His main transport while traveling through the big Great Sea.

Mantine: Water/Flying. Maybe captured when it was only a Mantyke, a fun pokémon very common on the seaside. I bet Wind would like it.

Lapras: Water/Ice. Another common chose for traveling, a very kind pokémon easy to train for its calm behaviour.

Dhelmise: Ghost/Grass. A badass pirate-based pokémon for a badass pirate boy. Maybe a gift from Tetra after they set sail?

Drifblim: Ghost/Flying. Captured as a Drifloon, a cute little guy.

Wingull: Water/Flying. Aryll’s pokémon, she lent it to her big brother and it often delivers letters between both siblings.

Warriors’ team was pretty easy for me, there’s a lot of pokémon that fit him very well (unlike with some of the others *sigh*). I focused on some of his personality traits and the knight trope.

Aegislash: Steel/Ghost. Captured as a Honedge and evolved to this point, a very loyal pokémon who hates traitors almost as much as War does. His best pal.

Gallade: Psychic/Fighting. Abandoned as a Kirlia, War took him on his team. A complete gentleman, almost as flirty and skilled in combat as his owner.

Bisharp: Dark/Steel. Captured as a Pawniard, a very serious fella. Likes to act like the leader of War’s other pokémon.

Silvally: Normal. War rescued him from the enemy’s lines, it was very wary of everyone but got a confidence booster when evolved. Loves War and gets somehow overprotective with him.

Corviknight: Flying/Steel. Every Captain of the Royal Guard owns one. He’s a wise, old bird who has seen lots of trainers go down in combat. It became attached of War.

Rapidash: Psychic/Fairy. Honestly, I was very unsure to give him a Galar version, however, I think it’s kind of fitting with his flamboyant attitude. She gets jealous when War flirts with someone.

Ah, my favorite team. It has a lot of Eevees, that’s all I need in life. This one was the easiest of all for obvious reasons. Also, Four is tiny, Eevee is tiny, and they both can easily adapt to any circumstance. Soulmates.

Leafeon: Grass. Green’s Eevee, the other eevelutions (except Umbreon) follow him like a leader. He has an easy going nature and takes care his fellow eeveelutions. They’re all siblings.

Vaporeon: Water. Blue’s Eevee. A little shit. Likes to bother Blue and the other Colors, but it gets soft with Red. She’s jealous of Flareon.

Flareon: Fire. Red’s Eevee. Always sleeping, likes to rest on Red’s lap after tough battles. Completely oblivious of her surroundings most of the time. She’s Red’s spoiled little girl.

Espeon: Psychic. Vio’s Eevee. A very capricious boy. Likes to be Vio’s center of attention and likes to hang out with Umbreon. Can’t stand Vaporeon but gets along very well with the others.

Umbreon: Dark. Shadow’s Eevee. Depressed girl. Misses her owner, although he likes Four and the colors just fine, sleeps with Flareon very often and likes Espeon’s company.

Eevee: Normal. Came out from Espeon’s and Umbreon’s egg. It refuses to evolve.

I had some trouble choosing for Wild. I wanted to add a poké for each region on BotW and Champion, but decided against it. He had a team pre-calamity, but only a few pokémon manage to live 100+ years. Like Golurk.

Decidueye: Grass/Ghost. Captured as a Rowlet. Evolved quickly to his final form after lots of dangerous battles, he and Wild have the same fashion style, and have archery contests rather often. They’re close.

Sawsbuck: Normal. One day Wild decided he was tired of walking and mounted her in the wild. She didn’t take it kindly so they kind of got into a fight. Later that day Wild fought her with Decidueye and won, adding her to his team.

Mudsdale: Ground. Wild heard of the existence of a gigant Mudsdale somewhere near the Faron Grasslands and went to capture it. She’s very gentle for her size, but can and will protect Wild and the others.

Heracross: Bug/Fighting. They fought over a honeycomb they found at the same time. Wild won, and since then he has never stopped following him. Beedle has tried exchanging him for any pokémon he has with no avail. Wild always cooks things with honey for him.

Ursaring: Normal. Same story as Sawsbuck, but in Tabantha. Wild feeded her with berries and got along since then. They often fight as practice, but Ursaring always wins.

Golurk: Ground/Ghost. Before the calamity Wild and Flora found a Golett on the Sheikah ruins they explored. He doesn’t exactly remembers it, but Golurk is happy by just watching over him like he did for it 100 years ago. It keeps its trainer at bay when trying to do something reckless.

For my boy Hyrule I choose to make his team based on the spells he uses in his second adventure. They’re all mostly babies, like him.

Cleffa: Fairy. For the ‘Fairy spell’. Baby, often gets into trouble without meaning it, and Hyrule swore to protect him no mater what. He found his egg abandoned somewhere and took care of it until it hatched. Cleffa thinks he is his mother.

Magby: Fire. For the ‘Fire Spell’. Another baby. The only one who likes his cooking. Also they look alike a lot, I couldn’t not add him on ‘Rule’s team if I had to choose a fire type.

Ampharos: Electric. For the ‘Thunder Spell’ A good girl, lights up the caverns Hyrule explores with flash and it’s his strongest pokémon. He found her full evolved and injured. She has saved his ass more than once.

Wobbuffet: Psychic. For the ‘Relflect spell’ An asshole. Not really, but Hyrule has never been able to tame him. He does whatever he wants, and ‘Rule only uses him for battle as a last resort. He loves him anyway.

Audino: Normal. For the ‘heal spell’ The softest girl ever. Always heals his and the team’s injuries, eats his food even if she hates it and gets along with everyone. An angel.

Bunnelby: Normal. For the ‘Jump Spell’. Tiny, chill boy. Tagged along with ‘Rule after he gave him an apple, now he follows him everywhere.

Sky pokes for a Sky, bird lover boi. Honestly that was my only standard while doing this one. Also Sky is the best trainer among them all, don’t ask why it just seems like it. (he actually went to school so...)

Talonflame: Fire/Flying. Crimson in this AU, has trained him since he was a baby Fletching. They’re best buddies, he hates Groose and loves Sun.

Sirfetch’d: Fighting. I wasn’t sure if I should have give this one to Warriors, but then I realized Sky is a trained knight too, so he may have trained this boy in the Academy. He gets along with Warriors pretty well tho.

Pidgeot: Normal/Flying. Captured as a Pidgey. Skyloft is a town in the sky, what did you expect.

Honedge: Steel/Ghost. A poke the Academy provided. Jealous of Fi. Admires Sky.

Braviary: Normal/Flying. He actually caught him once he got off from Skyloft. A very prideful bird, confident and smug. Likes to prove himself in front of Sky.

Altaria: Dragon/Flying. She was Sun’s, but when Sky began his adventure she accompained him to search for her owner. She stills consideres Sun her trainer, but wants to protect Sky since he’s so important for Sun. Also, he’s nice.

ughhh i’m not really happy with this one. I think Legend is the kind of trainer who only has like, two pokémons for all his life, but I wanted to add some ideas too.

Lopunny(★): Normal. Captured as a Bunneary when he was a kid. He lived with Legend and his Uncle until That Day™. Legend had no idea he was a shiny until he met some other Bunneary on his adventures. Can and will murder you if you do something to his trainer.

Wingull (★): Water/Flying. Got her after Koholint. Her name is Marin and will get defensive if someone asks why. He cheerish her, and doesn’t make her fight, but can’t stand watching her a lot.

Primarina: Water/Fairy. A gentle girl. Marin’s. Legend’s not sure how she made it out of Koholint.

Togekiss: Fairy/Flying. His name is Moosh.

Kangaskhan: Normal. Her name is Ricky.

Ryhorn: Ground/Rock. His name is Dimitri.

As I said, I’m not sure about it, since I haven’t even played the Oracle games.

Another hard onnnneeeeeeee. Is the same as Legend, I think Time is the kind of guy who it’s fine by having one or two (or no) pokémon. I wanted to add a wolf poké but I didn’t :C

Phanthump: Ghost/Grass. The Lost Woods are filled with those little guys, Time never knew where they came from until he was older and no longer a Kokiri. He knows how to comfort them from his eternal sadness, so when he founds one as an adult near Lon Lon Ranch he lets him stay with them. Talon is scared of him.

Miltank: Normal. Malon’s, a very sturdy lady who sometimes overprotects him. She gives nice milk.

Yamask: Ghost. Do I have to explain it? it tagged along after Termina.

Noctowl: Normal/Flying. He’s a very annoying Old Man who helped him on his adventure with his Fly move. He can call him with his Ocarina with a song.

Impidimp: Dark/Fairy. A goddamn gremlin. She appeared making trouble at the Ranch one day, pranking Talon and their animals mercilessly, until Time outpranked her and gained her respect. She likes Malon a lot. (it also reflects Time’s inner gremlin).

Mimikyu: Ghost/Fairy. A shy boy. Was abandoned in the Ranch by some asshole and scared Malon the first time she saw him. It remained hidden in the barn for weeks until Time could get him out. He was as alone and desoriented as he was on his first adventure, so he may have a soft spot for him.

Goat boy. If he could be would have a team full of goats. not really happy either but it’s better than Time’s and Legend’s.

Mightyena: Dark. Captured as a Poochyena in the Twili Real By Midna. He hated her at first, and she hated him back, but after their adventure she got stuck with Twi. The both of them were sad because Midna’s departure and became friends soon.

Absol: Dark. Honestly, I only thought it fitted him. She always appeared before something bad happened on his adventure, and at first he was wary of her, but Midna explained him Absols only appeared as a warning for future disasters. She accompained them on their adventure after some point.

Lycanroc: Rock. Captured as a Rockruff near Ordon Village. A good boy. Twilight loves him. He loves him back. Twi spoils him rotten.

Mudsdale: Ground. I though of her as a replacement for Epona, but I’m not sure about it. Still, Twi would absolutely have a horse on his team.

Dubwool: Normal. A grumpy girl, also a goat, also another spoiled poké. She’s old and strong, has been part of his life since he has memory. Only lets Twilight to brush her wool and trim it when necessary.

Gogoat: Grass. An old guy. Pretty chill and patient, also had been with Twilight since before his adventure. Big boy too, he lets Twi and the other Links mount him.

aaannnnd we’re done! here’s the template i made for this occasion. Feel free to use it. If you have any more suggestions or you own headcanons you can tell me! I’d like to get some feedback about this. Sorry about the quality of the images but my pc is shit. If you want them in better conditions you can PM me.

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wickedobsessed101 · 3 years

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Fanfic Writer Asks

[SOURCE: criminal-minds-fanfiction: Most of the writer ask posts I come across are only like ten or so questions long so I thought I’d try to make a longer one because we like talking about our writing! Feel free to reblog!]

I’m answering all of these b/c I love Q & A’s about my writing, both for my fics and other things.

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction? It was 2013, so I was 14 years old. I’m now almost 23.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one? I’m mostly in the Wicked Musical fandom, but I like to read for other fandoms, like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Chronicles of Narnia, ect.

3) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer. OCs, but I’m more than willing to create an OC for someone based on characteristics they give me.

4) What is your favourite genre to write for? I love me some fluffy romance and hurt/comfort, but I also love some angsty drama.

5) If you had to choose a favourite out of all of your multi-chaptered stories, which would it be and why? OMG, don’t make me choose! They’re all my babies! I love all my children equally! They all hold special places in my heart.

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why? Goodness, most of my stories prior to 2017, because I was in high school and had no idea what I was doing because I was just getting my feet wet with writing.

7) When is your preferred time to write? Anytime really. The latest I’ve stayed up writing a fic was 4AM. *Glares at ‘Threads of Truth’*

8) Where do you take your inspiration from? Where ever it happens to come up. I’m not picky. Movies, music, people I’ve seen on the street, random thoughts that enter my head, anything.

9) In your xxx fic, what’s your favourite scene that you wrote? In ‘Threads of Truth’, it’s a tie between Villy’s first date, and an argument that happens in an upcoming chapter. And that’s all I’m saying about that.

10) In your xxx fic, why did you decide to end it like that? Did you have an alternative ending in mind? In ‘Play The Game’, I liked the epilogue ending that I gave Elphaba with her family, even without Fiyero. I like writing her with kids. Another ending would be with the Fiyeraba still together, but I’m satisfied with the ending it has.

11) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it? I’ll go back and fix typos that are pointed out, but I don’t change plot stuff. Like, I wrote what I wrote and I will amend my technique in future stories.

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why? Other than my OCs, because I get to fully create them and my lowkey babies, I’d have to say G(a)linda. She has so much potential and she’s so much fun.

13) Who is your least favourite character to write for? Why? Boq. Not because I hate him (I don’t!), but because I don’t normally know what to do with him. If he’s not with Nessa, he’s literally just standing there like a brick wall. No offence, Boq!

14) How did you come up with the title for the xxx? - You can ask about multiple stories. [Ask me about a specific story(ies)]

15) If you write OC’s, how do you decide on their names? I usually change consonants and vowels to already existing names, or add unnecessary letters because... reasons.

16) How did you come up with the idea for xxx? [Ask me about a specific story]

17) Post a line from a WIP that you’re working on. “Hopefully, this will soak up any more leaks.” (Upcoming Wicked fanfic)

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them? Yes, 2. Both of them are a few years old and I’ve grown as a writer since then. Maybe one day, I’ll edit them and repost, but not anytime soon.

19) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to? Not everything can have a sequel, y’all! XD

20) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently? Yes! Around 60% of them.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire? @vinkunwildflowerqueen @raven-curls @mylittleelphie @weaselspeedfanfic Ultimate Queen of Cliffies

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it? This goes back to Question #6; most of what I posted prior to 2017.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence? Silence. I need to focus.

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes? I can’t write it. They’ll make out, and then be pregnant in the next chapter. Y’all can do the math for yourselves.

25) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story? YES! Yes, I have! Both sad tears and tears of joy. I’ve also cringed from second-hand embarrassment at the things the characters do and say. I’m not in control of their actions all the time. Sometimes they tell me what they’re gonna do, and I’m like, “Well, alright, then.”

26) Which part of your xxx fic was the hardest to write? [Ask me about a specific story]

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow? I write bullet points of things I want to happen in a chapter on the Word Doc, or in the story as a whole, and I try to keep those bullet points in order. And the Notes App on my phone holds a lot of my ideas, and sometimes full scenes.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction? That I’d become obsessed with writing and continue doing it for almost ten years, as well as expanding to writing plays and musicals.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like? Yeah. I’m not gonna say which one, but just know there’s one... or a few.

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at? Yes, and I’m still not gonna say which one(s). I want all the love!

31) Send me a fic recommendation and I’ll post it for my followers to see! (The asker is to send the rec, not the answerer) Yeah, sure!

32) Are any of your characters based on real people? Yes. Villy Doiir from ‘Threads of Truth’ is based on 4 people I know in real life, all mixed together into one wholesome, mother figure/ mentor. Perhaps that’s why I like writing her so much.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten? All reviews keep me going, no matter the length. But I love it when people review saying that they picked up on little references that were really just for me. It makes me feel like we’ve shared a moment.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten? A guest reviewer once said, “You tend to write Fiyero as an abusive person”. It wasn’t harsh, just... NOT TRUE. Especially for the story they were reviewing.

35) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest? Close to my chest. I’ll share it with the world when I’m ready.

36) Can you give us a spoiler for one of your WIP’s? NOPE! You’ll just have to wait and see! LOL!

37) What’s the funniest story you’ve written? I... really don’t know. My stories all have their funny moments.

38) If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? (Perhaps this question will inspire some collabs!) If you’re shy, don’t tag the blog, just name it. I’m very busy, and collabs aren’t really my thing, but I’m always willing to lend an extra pair of eyes pre-posting.

39) Do you prefer first, second or third person? I’ve written one story in the first person and it was fun to get into the character’s head, but I love third person, cause I like knowing what everyone is thinking. Second person makes me feel a certain way and that don’t really like.

40) Do people know you write fanfiction? IRL, no. It’s not something I bring up over dinner. I’ll talk about my plays and musicals, but not fanfiction. I like keeping my fics for the online peeps and my more personal writings for the RL peeps.

41) What’s you favourite minor character you’ve written? My OC, Princess Hannalyn, from ‘A Royal Romance’. She was so much fun!

42) Song fic - What made you decide to use the song xxx for xxx. I haven’t done a song fic.

43) Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it? Not fully, but they’ve had little inklings, but certain details were still a surprise. And I’m not mad about it.

44) What is the last line you wrote? “I don’t want this to be the last time we see each other.”

45) What spurs you on during the writing process? When I’ll have one idea, and it spirals into many others, and when the characters write themselves. It makes it so much easier for me. Sometimes they tell me that they’re about to make a bad decision, and I just go along with it. They need to learn and grow somehow.

46) I really loved your xxx fic. If you were ever to do a sequel, what do you think might happen in it? [Ask me for a specific story]

47) Here’s a fic title - insert a made up title. What would this story be about? [Ask me]

48) What’s your favourite trope to write? I love a good Royalty AU (not fully AU ‘cause of our princey-prince, but still) and Holiday AUs. And I’ve never written a Coffeeshop AU, but I LOVE reading them. I’ll read anything. I’m not picky, and I love to see what ideas others have.

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about? Yes, and both of them were Gelphies: 1 - “Easier Said Than Done” by mecelphie - It’s part of a long, wonderful series of Elphaba and Glinda together at Shiz and how their lives evolve together and has many lovable OCs. 2 - “The Thropp Diaries” by denpa wave chick saki - It’s first-person Elphaba POV of the book. It expands on lots of mentioned moments and we get to journey through Elphaba’s thoughts.

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why? I’d have to say fluff, so I can get my escape from reality. But it’s hard to write pure fluff without a little bit of conflict.

If you wanna read my stories, they’re all right here: Fae’sFlower

#wicked the musical #wicked #wicked fanfiction #fiyeraba fanfic #faesflower #Q & A #Fiyeraba #gelphie #Elphaba #Fiyero #Glinda #Galinda #fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction.net #let me tell you about my writing and my stories #writer #Q & A with Nia

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wildwoodmage · 3 years

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CROSSROADS

@boundforfreedomsonsal SonSal Week Year 3 Day 3

Second day in a row I'm cheating by repurposing fic I already had mostly written, but actually it's sonsal mod's fault for making prompts that suited my pre-existing drafts! This one is a continuation of Starlight Symphony, an AU featuring Sally as the Goddess of Order and Sonic as... well, why don't you read it for yourself? ;3 High fantasy with a touch of philosophy. Does it count as major character death if the scene takes place in the afterlife? Anyway...

Despite what humans and lesser gods might believe, Sally, Queen of the Gods, was not omniscient. Her knowledge was vast, unmatched by any who had not personally woven shapeless matter into planets and stars. She heard the song of every newborn soul, and remembered all who had come before. Human history was a tome she returned to time and time again, spending centuries pondering the stories of the strange creatures she and her husband had created. The future, however, remained behind a veil. Scourge had a unique talent for bucking her predictions, bending fate to his ever-shifting whims. Every once in a while, a human was born with a similar talent. These humans drew power from their defiance, their ability to stare fate in the eye and not blink. Sally soon realized that humans with this ability often became heroes, healers, leaders, or destroyers. They changed fate and the fate of all who followed in their wake. When Sally peered into a human’s future and realized that it was shrouded in chaos, she knew that they were one to pay close attention to.

When the triplets were born, fate ceased to be predictable. Infinite possibilities clouded Sally’s vision, and as much as the mystery vexed her, she found that she could not tear her eyes away. A lesser mind, studying them, would find them unremarkable; three children without wealth or protection, likely to die in obscurity. But they survived, and as they reached adulthood, Sally began to see the signs of three uniquely powerful souls, shining with defiance and infinite potential. Sonic, the eldest, was courageous and kind. He was a shield between his family and the myriad of dangers that threatened them. Sonia was a firebrand, with ambition that would never be satisfied with a life of poverty and fear. Manic was clever, and although his wit was often used for petty tricks, he could not fully conceal a profound love of justice. All three were dishonest, as humans often were; they pretended not to care about a world that did not care for them, but Sally could see that they ached for any innocent who suffered, and they yearned for a kinder future.

For two decades, a blink in the lifespan of a god, Sally watched them from afar. And when one reached the Isle of Souls, she approached him. Sonic lay on his back, cushioned by ivory sand, while rhythmic waves lapped at his feet. He stared up at a blue-gray sky, eyes tracing subtle shifts in the clouds. In all the years Sally had watched him, she had never seen him lie so still. On Earth, he had been eternally restless, his body overflowing with more energy than a single human could possibly contain. Here, however, he enjoyed a moment of perfect peace, untroubled by want or memory or anything that was not the rolling waves. He deserved it. Sally felt a twinge of pity that it may not last.

The Queen didn’t speak as she approached, not wishing to disturb him until he was ready. Her preferred form when speaking to humans was a lady, small and unassuming at a glance, with sensibly cropped hair and clothes of sturdy, deep blue linen. Unlike her husband, she cared little for striking awe and fear into the hearts of men. She found it was far more satisfying to reveal her true nature piece by piece, beguiling her followers not with power, but mystery. Her blessing was reserved for those who sought the truth beneath the surface. When she sat beside Sonic, legs folded demurely beneath her, only the vivid color of her eyes and clothes indicated that she was anything more than another ghost.

With uncharacteristic slowness, Sonic turned blank white eyes on her. He smiled, friendly but not familiar. “Howdy, stranger,” he said. “I didn’t know there was anyone here but me.”

“It’s best to give new arrivals space to adjust,” Sally said. “I hope I didn’t interrupt.”

“Nah, it’s alright. I was just enjoyin’ the atmosphere.” Sonic looked back up at the sky. His face was smooth and slack, untouched by worry. Although he had worn a carefree mask on Earth, there had always been fury and tension seeping through the cracks. Now, he couldn’t even remember what had troubled him so. Sally was almost jealous. Almost.

“I love to come here,” she said. “There’s not a place in the universe that’s more peaceful.”

“I believe it,” Sonic said. “But I haven’t seen much beyond earth and the night sky. How much of the universe have you seen?”

“All of it and more,” Sally said. Sonic snorted as if she had cracked a joke, although her tone was entirely sincere.

“All of it, huh? And here I thought I was well traveled. What’s your name, stranger?”

Sally introduced herself, and was momentarily taken aback when Sonic extended a hand for her to shake. His smile was effortless, and Sally had seen shades of it in the years before. To Sonic, everyone was a friend until they proved otherwise, even someone like her. She gave his hand a polite shake.

“I’m Sonic,” he said.

“I know.”

“Of course you do.” Sonic’s tone was mirthful, unafraid. Perhaps it was the soothing balm of his surroundings that kept him from worrying, but Sally suspected that she would not intimidate him even if they were still on Earth. Even if any sensible human would be afraid of her. “You know everything, right? Can you tell me where we are?”

“This is the Isle of Souls, a waypoint between Earth and infinity. Ghosts rest here until they are ready to move on.”

Sonic was quiet for a moment, his smile softening into something more subdued. “I’m dead.”

It wasn’t a question, so Sally didn’t answer. “What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Sonic said. “Faces. Family. I’m missing a lot of details, and the actual dying part is a big ol’ blank.”

“That’s normal. Those who die tragically rarely remember right away. The memories will return as you make peace with your fate.”

“And my family?”

“Grieving, but safe. I cannot predict their futures, but I suspect that they will not join you here anytime soon.”

“Good.” A pang of sadness crossed Sonic’s expression, the first since his arrival on the Island. “Sort of. I guess it’s normal to miss them. I want them to be safe, but I think they’d like it here.”

“Most souls wait here until their loved ones arrive. You are welcome to do so. However…” Sally chose her next words carefully. It was exhilarating, speaking with someone whose actions she could not predict, but the uncertainty was unfamiliar and vexing. “I would like to make you an offer.”

At that, Sonic propped himself up, turning away from the blue-gray waves to look Sally in the eye. “Do you always sound this spooky, or do you crank it up a notch for the recently-dead?”

“Words have consequences, especially when they are misunderstood. Especially words from a goddess to a human. I want to be sure you understand the gravity of your decision.”

Sonic breathed out a sigh, casting a longing glance back at the endless ocean. But he sat up, facing Sally, as tension crept back into his posture. “Alright, Your Majesty. I’m listening.”

“You have two paths forward,” Sally said. “You may remain on the Isle of Souls like multitudes before you, and those that will come after. Ghosts are welcome to stay as long as they like. When you are ready for eternal rest, you will sail across the ocean. The horizon is beyond the reach of even the gods, and on the other side you will be truly at peace. No matter what path you choose now, that horizon is your final destination.

“You died sooner than I expected. You are not the first human to do so, and you will not be the last. But I believe that you still have a story left to write. If you accept my offer, I will grant you a portion of my power, and you will be my agent in the realm of the gods. The reaper who brought you to the Isle is one such agent, though you would have different responsibilities. You would be not unlike an angel from human stories, a messenger and a warrior, defying those who would disrupt the balance between the gods.”

Sally couldn’t predict the future, but she knew with complete certainty what Sonic’s first question would be. “Would I be able to go back to Earth?”

“No,” she said. “If I were to bend the laws of life and death, even for my own champion, my own power—and every universal law I uphold—would erode. Any time you cross into the mortal plane, your power and ability to communicate with the living will be severely restricted. You are dead, and you will remain dead. Should you accept, your service will be temporary, and when it ends you will return to the Isle of Souls.”

A wiser man would ask for time to think. Sonic merely looked at the starless sky, then the horizon. The energy that flowed through him in life and death alike had him fidgeting, sweeping his fingers through the soft sand. Sally couldn’t predict him, couldn’t see into his racing thoughts, but she had crafted his beating heart and recognized her husband’s gift, the restless defiant that flowed through his veins.

She was not surprised by his answer. She couldn’t wait to be surprised by what was to come.

#sonic the hedgehog #sally acorn #sonally #sonsal week #deity au #sonic gijinka #wildwood glyphs #death ///#death tw

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smallheathgangsters · 4 years

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A/N: Thank you to everyone who participated in my celebration! I love you all so much and I can’t wrap my head around how amazing you all are! ❤️

“I would sell my soul for a bit more time.” (11 Minutes, Halsey & Yungblud) – @amysteryspot (Thomas Shelby)

everybody knows Tommy is not my favourite character. BUT pre-war Tommy has a very special place in my heart. so does this piece of amazing writing. a sad, but beautiful tale about Tommy saying good-bye to his dearest, not knowing if they will ever see each other again. one that will definitely make you sob at least a little bit.💔

“I probably tore her heart out right now.” (Cassie, Chase Atlantic) – @bohemianpages (Thomas Shelby)

this one really hurt. oh my god. but i gladly accept the pain when it’s so beautifully and captivatingly written. i adore the fact that it’s nothing like the typical heart-break story. it’s more than just heart-breaking. and a story that NEEDS to be read, because i never expected this prompt to end up in a story like that.

“There’s not much that we agree on.” (not ur friend, Jeremy Zucker) – @sophieshelby (Michael Gray)

angst. this fic is full of angst. heartbreaking and soul-crushing angst. and i love it. at first, it seems like a typical Michael-being-a-dickhead-story, but the ending will give you a glimpse into the life of a struggling young man. a perspective that i enjoyed so very much and made me miss Michael a lot.

“Last night was an eye opener.” (Eye Opener, Slaves) – @imaginesbymk (Luca Changretta, based on chapter four of PINK + WHITE)

okay, so, i am quite the simp for Luca (i know i shouldn’t be since he had my baby John killed). that’s why i HAD to check out the series the drabble was based on. and let me tell you, it is fantastic! i still have a lot of chapters to catch up on (please forgive me, mk), but i truly encourage you to check out the fanfic. it is nothing like anything you’ve ever read and the fact that Luca is the main love interest makes it even more special!

“You got bored, then you walked away.” (Faster Ride, Cartel) – @chlnymphadora (Shelby Sister)

lottie wrote this in like ten minutes while eating lunch?? can you imagine?? as you all know, lottie is one of my favourite authors on tumblr and i adore everything she writes. including this piece. a heart-break story with the sweetest comfort scene between Arthur and his sister. if you’re not here for the shelby!sister part, you’re definitely here for soft Arthur.

“I couldn’t save you.” (Godless, BANKS) – @murswrites (Thomas Shelby)

okay this is a masterpiece. amirah is such a gifted writer and this story really shows the talent. very angsty and i love it. so much. also, please listen to the song it is based on, because the fic captures it so so beautifully. and the choice of words is simply immaculate. ✨

“I feel like it’s killing me.” (Comatose, Too Close To Touch) – @chlnymphadora (Shelby Sister)

the angel of a human being lottie did not choose one, but two prompts. and i can’t decide which writing i love more. this one captures the pain of the shelby family in the most beautiful way, making your heart ache. if this isn’t a sign to read the rest of lottie’s masterlist, then i don’t know what is. (thank you for writing two prompts, I really appreciate it ❤️)

“There’s no place for us to sleep at night.” (No Place Like Home, Valiant Hearts) – @writingwithacupoftea (Shelby Sister)

for anyone who is excited for the cold(er) season, this is exactly what you need to be reading. because this writing is emotional and sad, but – just as stated in the title – a warm blanket of comfort. it has to be the most adorable idea wrapped into a fic and i absolutely adore it. the dynamic and the undying love between Tommy and his sister is everything and i cannot get enough. (p.s. this song is very dear to me, so thank you for turning it into such a gem ❤️)

“I guess now I really want to know the truth.” (Burning Memories, Machine Gun Kelly) – @caelys (Thomas Shelby)

this is perhaps the most unique peaky blinders fic you’ll ever read; because it’s a soft horrer/thriller/mystery story and guess what? it cannot be more fitting now that it’s spooky season! this is a must-read, please don’t miss out!

"I can feel the distance in your touch." (Match In The Rain, Alec Benjamin) – @peakyswritings

there is not enough Arthur content on tumblr. that’s why i’m so thankful this lovely writing exists. written in a way that immediately captivates you and makes you feel all the emotions. you’ll probably cry. thought i’d warn you beforehand.

#fic rec #fanfic recommendations #fic recommendation #peaky blinders #smallheathgangsters1kcelebration

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z-007 · 3 years

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A Journey of Sadism (mental and physical)

I was born in the 21st of April 1992, in Jableh-Latakia. But, since my father was an employee for Total French company in Syria, I grew up in Damascus. At the age of 4, I was diagnosed with Diabetes type 1. It was very hard for me at the beginning when I was a child, and my mother suffered a lot, giving me insulin injections, which I found painful at that time, and analyzing my blood sugar to inspect what did I eat if the result was soaring sky high. I hated her at the beginning, simply because as a child, I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. At 8 years old I went to a school that is Sunni Islamic Pre-Historic School in Dummar called -Young Scientists- something that I discovered later on to be ironic. In Syria, If you weren’t good at school, you were cursed, you became like a Boxing Heavybag. They also used Falakas, the art of whipping feet. It didn’t stop at that, simply because parents became part of this process too, using any tool at their disposal in beating their child, chair, water hose, hammer, clothes hanger, electric cables, let alone being slapped on the face in a way that I started feeling my bones were shaking, and my eyes will throw fire, or kicked in your head and started bleeding. All of this, was because my marks in Arabic, mathematics, history and geography were not good except in English. It was the best language to understand for me, and the subject in which I saw myself to be a good student. As a consequence of that, I started losing control and cause trouble to my so-called teachers at that time. Luckily in 2001, I found my sanctuary that took to a completely different world. It was the first time I saw James Bond in GoldenEye. I was so thrilled by the action sequence, the theme of betrayal and everything about it was cool. This was a turning point in my life to become a Bond fan. I also learnt how to sing rap songs like Faint for Linkin Park, and Bleed It Out. And all of my father’s friends who were French, British and Americans were impressed. It was something that I remember with a loving memory to those people. Later I watched the rest of the Bond films and the happiest moment in my life was when I found the complete DVD set in Tartus. Simply because no DVD store in Damascus had the complete set except one who was also our neighbor. The curse of buying films in Syria was that they were badly used CDs at the bloody beginning. It was very rare to have a CD converted from an original DVD. This greatest franchise in the whole world has sealed my internal wounds for not being a good student. Ironically, the mental case of mine came back to me when I was at High School, especially it was a time that determined who I am, luckily it passed with no harm to me, because a single mark changed future to some students .I forgot to mention, that the school principle when I was at the ninth grade, didn’t stop calling my parents and telling them not to spend a single penny on me, because he thought I will never be successful. But I brought a mark that was better than his children’s. In 2010, I became a student of English Literature in Damascus University, I remembered that I was not a bad student at that time with an average of 80 percent. But the Syrian Crisis began in 2011, the press was already screaming for blood and the political unrest escalated to the extent that we had to change residence. This was the bane of my existence to open my eyes and find myself in Latakia. I was simply cursed and hostile, because I didn’t speak like Alawaits, their accent felt like starving dogs, in other words, they bark. They are trivial, shallow minded wankers who had nothing inside their heads except clothes, mobile phones and narrating a fairytale about themselves having sex with girls and a horny 40-year-old women they come across and imagining penetrating their vaginas and sucking their nipples. I registered in Tishreen University at third year, I managed to transfer my documents to that platonic place. The professors didn’t like me, simply for participating in their lectures, and the fact that I spoke French, Spanish and a little bit Russian. As a consequence, I kept failing at University over and over. Moreover, I had different ideas, and University Professors are bigots and snobbish. Their opinion was the only one that matters. The impact of the mentioned earlier, had made my pain started with breakdowns, screaming my head off and security gathering around me like” what happened to you?”. Added to that, emotionally speaking, I had a horse sex drive in that Mohammadian society. Girls dressed in a way that said to male students, “come to me.”. The majority of women at that city showed their breasts, waist, legs, and what attracts me most their feet, especially, high heels, that gave them a very elegant look. For my good fortune, all I had in front of me was Pornographic DVDs and websites, so I kept masturbating from 11:30 pm until 10:00 am from night to daylight. Still wondering, how men attracted them, I didn’t have any idea, and the question kept circulating. I also hated the idea of marriage, especially that I always loved to live my life the way I fathomed. I didn’t like the idea of getting buried alive by being a bloody father and spend the rest of my life with only one Angry Factory, aka, one woman. The psychological problem kept increasing and started with depression; taking anti-depressants for a while and go back to my normal life when soothed down. I kept taking them every now and then. Students were not allowed to know about their mistakes at any cost, this was a University rule. Self-doubt has caused me to go to a neurologist who started doing me brain scans, simply, I just wanted to know why am I that stupid, for failing continuously and still I didn’t get an answer. I was always deprived of sleep, studying my arse off and my professors didn’t care seeing their students DIE and SUFFER in front of them. Everybody panicked from me, always avoided seeing me, treated as unusual man. At that time, due to the fact that I kept taking anti-depressants, they became ineffective and stopped giving me relief. Part of what killed me thousands of time when I’m still alive was realizing that I cannot become an MI6 agent at any cost. I simply wanted to do 1 % of what James Bond did, take notice, that I was not pursuing women, I was looking for action and suspense. I wanted to be stationed in the heart of ISIS or Spectre and operate in the shadows to protect Queen and Country. I didn’t like Hasan Nasrullah, Vladimir Putin who looked like a Bond villain or Ayatollah bloody Khomeini, even Ali Bin Abi Talib himself, and that’s why I was also crucified for being a James Bond fan. Family and friends made a laughing stock out of me. I started dinking excessively, and suicidal thoughts kept recurring to me. They didn’t stop driving me to bring a razor and wound myself to death, it wasn’t the MI6 job that destroyed me the most. It was self-doubt. Doubting my brain efficiency and abilities, and especially that I saw students whom I thought less capable to express themselves in English than I am. My family tried to see the professors in Tishreen University-Latakia, unsuccessfully. I simply couldn’t have any idea what is the main reason I kept failing over and over. How could I develop myself without knowing my mistakes?!!, I later told some people that I wanted to be an MI6 operative, I thought that might sooth my tension, however, it got things worse. I started attacking the professors while giving their lectures orally and physically. I also broke the classroom washbasin, and the entire classroom windows, then security staff gathered around me after 3 minutes, they were about to send me to an unknown destiny, later, everything stopped after the head of the English department told them not to take any action. The last problem I did was with World Literature professor, whose name is Noor AL Araby, she was a real bitch, I remembered studying her syllabus for a month, she told us that Virginia is not required for the exam, and she brought it. As a result of that, I wrote her three pornographic stories on the exam paper. Stories people see in Brazzers and Naughty America (Porn films companies). Everybody got pissed off, the story was about to be dragged from my house to a security branch for torture. Luckily, my uncle who was a Colonel in the Republican Guard he had connection to the President of the University, told the professor to drop out the case, but she was persistent to have my balls for Christmas decoration. She spread what I wrote her on the internet and about to send them to newspapers. My parents begged her not to and we had medical reports that proved that I had neurological and mental case. Then I was suspended from the University for years, from 2016, till now. She did all she could to destroy me to the utmost level. I was happy when I realized she got very agitated. Especially, there were students confirming that exam questions were paradoxical to the things she lectures about.

Suspension Time

At the time I was suspended it was a slow killer for me. Literary, I realized that I was the worst student in the history of the planet. I decided to follow Boxing, I remembered that I was fit enough for the game. I found out that I did well at round bouts on the ring. I could do sparring sessions, shadowboxing…etc. I was able to run at least 10kms per day, 300 sit-ups, 80 press ups and 20 pull-ups. I tried to be a champion but every time I kept persevering, in addition to that my left palm was broken and my right eye was wounded. I got cold and sick, and I realized that I had to spend at least 2 months with vaporizers, fertilizers and strong meds. I kept striving in Boxing with no success. I lost confidence in myself and felt humiliated. I said to myself, why didn’t I choose to work for the Syrian Secret Service, I went to the branches, and when they saw that I was discharged from the military because of diabetes type 1, they asked me to get lost. I was surprised when I found out that my dentist was an officer in the Ariel Intelligence in Syria, I told him the story, he said “this is not your fight, you might think that you can do well in the field, but your enemies are smarter than you, they know how they can take you down and destroy you once and for all. Second, we had people who kill targets, who can do silent killings, detonate and sabotage, whether male, or female, but they have nothing to lose, their parents are killed and very poor, working to make money, and you are a discharged, rich bastard and you want to join us. I’m surprised when you told me that. I was a James Bond fan like you, but believe me my friend, that the real intelligence work will never come up to your expectations. Once the film you watch finishes and the novel ends, go back to reality, what you look for does not exist. I realized that I couldn’t become an asset for MI6, or any spy agency in this world, I felt that I was under surveillance by my country. I knew that they could look at my messages, trace my location any time they wanted. That was not the real problem, suicidal thoughts and self-punishment ideas didn’t leave me. So, I talked to my uncle to send me to the Special Forces, or any Military Barracks to become a martyr, to take the bullets to my chest. I remembered when I drank wine bottle on my own, I told my parents that I wanted to wear a C4 charge belt and blow myself up inside ISIS. They were horrified, then I was unconscious and within minutes, I found myself inside the clinic, after I told my problem to the psychiatrist, about MI6 dream and the doubt that I’m under surveillance. He told my mother that I’m a Psychotic. I was injected with needles and medications that made me feel like cutting my head off. He also sent me to Damascus for electro-therapy (to take electricity directly to my brain). I also became a field of therapy by my Doctor, he was testing medications on me like Invega that made me shake while standing up. Hence, he decided to give me Zeldox 60 mg, second generation anti-psychotic. My only comfort was when I slept. Waking up to life while taking those meds was a curse. I lost my sexual drive (libido), I remember feeling dizzy all the time, I remember calling the doctor every time when I tell him about the side-effects concerning dizziness and loss of sexual drive, he kept telling me that what you say is incorrect and that it didn’t have any symptoms. By miracle, my father brought me lower dosage medication, life changed for me. I knew cat-houses in my city, every money woman I went to for an intercourse, they took a lot of money. They were abusing me. The sluts didn’t make me enjoy the intercourse the way I wanted. They were controlling me as well, and this is why I left them. After I told my psychiatrist that I reduced the dosage, he said that my condition will deteriorate. He confirmed to me that Chemistry in my brain was not right, then I told him to screw himself. Reducing the dosage had an effect as well. I remembered at a certain time that painkillers were like a bag of peanuts for me. And when night came I felt incredible fever in my head. I felt like being boiled alive. And I kept seeing nightmare afterwards, voices telling me that I will pay the price of reducing the medication dosage. Complete terror and horror kept chasing me for a very long time. After recovery, I logged into the James Bond groups on Facebook, they made me trivia to answer, did me a test about the James Bond 24 films from Dr.No 1962 to Spectre 2015. After I answered them all correctly, they called me Agent 00Zein. Made me an admin, and I had many friends from all around the world. In the 5th of October the global James Bond day , I celebrated with millions of the franchise fans. My great father, brought me a modern computer and IPhone X to follow up with these groups.

Nowadays, I’m not looking for immigration, nor women or anything else in this world. I have chosen to help my parents when they grow old, and help them. This is the best way I can pay them back. I decided to watch films about espionage world, read books, imagining the events and enjoy it fully and get my arse back to reality.

This is the only way; I cannot be punished.

I can imagine myself a soldier of 30 Assault Unit in Ian Fleming’s room 39 in WW2, or talking with Sir Alex Younger about my mission in VX or Whitehall. If not Sir Alex Younger, it could be Admiral Miles Messervy, Admiral Hargreaves, Madame Olivia Mansfield, or Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Mallory. And realize that” It was a matter of pride that the 00 Section has been chosen for this test. This painful experience kept coming back sometimes, notwithstanding, I have chosen to take with a pinch of salt, lol.

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 2

Continuing on with the midseason finale of season two.

Part 1 is here https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/628826170657570816/tangled-salt-marathon-rapunzel-and-the-great

Summary: After Adira saves Rapunzel and the group from the hurt incarnation, Cassandra makes her suspicions of Adira known which causes a falling out between her and Rapunzel. Meanwhile Hector uses the dormant power of the tree to try and attack everyone.

Cassandra’s Motivation Doesn’t Aline With Her Later Actions

If you’re going to have a character do a complete 180 from her original goal, than you need a better reason than just mommy issues; or validation issues, or career problems, or just simply having a falling out, or jealousy, or a ghost girl whispering in your ear, or whatever the fuck they’re trying to do with Cassandra.

Going from ‘protect’ to ‘murder’ is a huge moral alignment shift that needed clear and reasonable justification. Cassandra is never given that. Instead they just throw everything at the wall that they can think of in the hope that something sticks.

Only it never does because her original story was re-written at the last minute.

Well That Was Pointless

Max and Pascal wind up saving Eugene and Lance from the man eating plant. Which adds nothing to the story. It happens and is then never brought up again. It’s just an excuse to write Eugene out of the Cass and Raps conflict and not an extension of either his or Lance’s own narratives.

That’s a problem, because Eugene should be a main character and Lance an important supporting side character. Instead Eugene is regulated to side character status while Lance is unimportant comic relief. Not only does this ignore that fact that Eugene was the protagonist of the movie same as Rapunzel, but it also ignores the basic writing rule of ‘don’t add in characters who don’t serve a purpose in the story’.

Adira Just Saved All of Your Asses, Cass

Boy does Adira put up with a lot of bullshit in this show, and 90% of it comes from Cass being a little bitch.

She has no biases for this argument. Adira hasn’t done anything to warrant this accusation. In fact she’s proven herself time and time again only for Cass to lash out like a spoilt teenager with an inferiority complex.

And Cassandra is 23!!!

The young adults on this show are constantly written like pre-teens while the only actual teenager is constantly forced to be the most mature person in the show.

It’s mind boggling.

Rapunzel is In the Right Here, But the Show Wants Us to Sympathize with Cass Instead?

Oh No! Raps raised her voice at Cassandra and made her feel bad, you guys. Feel sorry for the poor paranoid baby who who’s acting like a jealous brat for no reason.

Bull Shit.

Cassandra not only has nothing to back up her accusation but the narrative never goes on to prove her right either. Adria is on the up and up, and always had been according to Destinies Collide. For all the show’s efforts to make Cass seem reasonable by having Adira mysteriously pop in and out, it all falls flat once you know where everything is heading.

Plus, even if she were magically right about Adira that wouldn’t excuse her bossing Rapunzel around and insulting her intelligence. Had she done that to me I’d be telling her something a lot harsher than just to knock it off.

Oh, But I Thought You Said Flashbacks to Corona Would Be Too Confusing?

So one of the writers, Ricky, has gone on record stating that they did originally have plans to show flashbacks to Corona to show what was going on with Rapunzel’s parents, Varian, and the Saporians. He then said they dropped them because they feared that it would be too confusing for the audience.

Yet we get this pointless scene thrown into the middle of the mid-season finale.

And by the looks of it it’s before even Beginnings, or maybe after Beginnings, who knows; so it’s not just a change of scene, it’s also a change in time as well. A point in the timeline that’s not been firmly established enough. So it not only has less reasons to exist then a Varian flashback would, but it’s also potentially more confusing than what a simple single episode set in Corona would have been.

I don’t know who to blame for this poor decision making, if it’s just Chris, Chris and Ben, or a shared blame with all of the writers, but while the buck does stop with Chris, much of what Ricky has said online doesn’t reflect very well on his writing skills. Cause that’s a huge and utter bullshit excuse.

So What Does This Add, Exactly?

Cass gives Rapunzel this purse as a gift. A purse that’s not been shown to be all that important before and isn’t made significant again. Then Raps launches into this speech about how good a friend Cass is and how lost she’d be without her.

I understand what the thought process for this was; it’s to show how far Raps and Cass have grown apart recently and what Cassandra herself liked about being friends with Rapunzel to being with, which was the validation boost of being useful and needed; but there’s a lot of problems with including it here.

For starters, lack of validation isn’t enough to suddenly switch into ‘kill mode’ which is where all of this is eventually leading.

Validation shouldn’t be the foundation of any long term relationship and so rather than proving how good of a friend they are to each other, you’ve only given futher reason for why they’re toxic together.

You needed to be building them up all throughout season one before launching into this break up plot. This scene is too little too late because we’ve spent too many episodes tearing Raps and Cass down for this plot to have the effect that they wanted it to.

Cassandra is just doing her job. She’s suppose to show Rapunzel around and help her with shit, that’s what a lady in waiting does. Cassandra’s friendship with Rapunzel shouldn’t be so tied to her career trajectory to begin with. Not only is it unhealthy but it then is used to victim-blame Rapunzel for all of Cassandra’s problems. Even though the only thing actually holding Cass back is herself, as proven in season three.

Timeline Confirmed

So it is indeed six months since Secret of the Sun Drop, give or take a few days to organize stuff before the trip. Meaning we’re now a year out from Before Happily Ever After. I point this out now, in order to prove something later on.

This Logically Should Have Been the End of the Argument, But the Writers are Dragging Things Out Needlessly

You know what I hate more than a ‘lack of communication causes drama' trope? Characters taking the time to communicate and still missing the bloody point and not resolving anything.

Technically, Rapunzel is still in the right. She is an autonomous person capable of making decisions for herself, and Cass does need to get over herself and treat Rapunzel as such and stop getting butt hurt over not being the one in charge.

But then we have to ruin that message by throwing in this line.

Like, yes you’re technically in charge here Raps, but making decisions shouldn’t mean walking all over someone's feelings either. Being a leader is just as much about listening as it is about taking charge and neither of these characters understand that yet.

And they never will, cause the writing for them is shit.

When I first saw season two I honestly believe that this would tie into Rapunzel’s previous conflicts regarding responsibility and hypocrisy. I thought they had an arc here about learning to balance assertiveness and personal boundaries, with genuine compassion and respect for others. Had they went through with that then this could have been something truly special, but they go and throw it all away come season three. Now its just heartbreak and frustrating to watch.

Also Stupid ‘Sisters’ Plot Foreshadowing

More on this later, but just know if you hate the idea of calling Raps and Cass sisters then blame Chris.

This Song Underlines The Core Problem With Cassandra's Arc

There’s no stakes.

I’ve already discussed at length now about how Cassandra’s goals and motivations are inconsistent, and how her actions don’t line up. But the reason the writers are struggling so hard to find something that fits her, is because the story has grown past her.

We’ve already seen characters who struggle with poverty, homelessness, neglect/abuse, and oppression. There are now tons of people in the story who are fighting just for survival, and they’re all regulated to either supporting roles, one off appearances, or are background characters.

So with that in mind what is there to justify Cassandra getting focus over them? What is she struggling with here that deserves more screen time and attention than, Eugene, Varian, Lady Caine, or even Adira?

Cassandra isn’t poor. She lives well off in the castle and has high ranking connections. She’s not even struggling with a job she hates anymore because we’ve already seen her promoted to the one she wanted by this point.

Cassandra isn’t homeless, she once again lives in the castle and if she chooses to leave she has plenty of opportunities waiting for her, as evidenced by Goodbye and Goodwill and Beginnings. Plus she’s shown to be capable of supporting herself both in this season and the next.

Cassandra isn’t oppressed. She can leave anytime she wants to. She can defy the king's orders in SotSD because she’s the princesses’s bestie. She doesn’t face jail or hanging just because she and Raps has a fight now and then.

The only thing going for her is possibly neglect/abuse, but that’s not been introduced into the story yet and isn’t what she’s discussing here. It also contradicts what was previously established between her and Cap in season one when it does come into play.

Validation Alone is Not Enough to Connect With Most of the Audience

Even the stanchest of Cassandra supporter often has to heavily project onto her in order to connect with her. Which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. Everyone projects to some degree or other when exploring media, that’s part of being human. But the problem is that because she’s so thinly written you’re left with little else but projection. And so you’ll hear excuses like, well she’s fighting the class system, she’s an abuse survivor, or she deserves to lash out over not getting what she wants when she’s worked so hard for it. But none of those excuses are actually presented on screen.

Cassandra doesn’t fight against the class system. If she did she would be fighting for everyone. She’d be singing about everyone’s problems not just her own.

Cassandra’s past abuse is just slapped on at the last minute and then disregarded when convenient. It doesn’t actually factor into the decisions she makes later on.

Also, you don’t deserve anything just because you ‘work hard’ nor because you just really, really want it.

It’s that point that I really take issue with.

On the surface Cassandra should be the most relatable person in the show. I mean what young adult or teen living in this post apocalyptic nightmare of a capitalist dystopia not ever felt disappointed over not getting the job they wanted or not being given enough positive validation while crushed underneath mounting unrealistic expectations. It’s the main reason why so many of her supporters are teenagers and LGBT+.

But all of those worries stem from something deeper than just a lack of positive reinforcement.

You know why I had to give up on my career as an animator?

It didn’t pay benefits.

I had medical issues and needed health insurance, but since most animation is commissioned and/or contract based, particularly if you live/work on the east coast, then you’re not going to get that most of the time. And this is after spending the majority of my time in college homeless, living out of my car, crashing on friends and families couches. I did this for three fucking years because I didn’t want to wind up in a textile mill or a carpet factory like everyone I else knew growing up, and I was told my whole life that if I went to school and worked hard enough I could have a well paying job that I enjoyed and got me away from my abusive home life.

People like me, we’re bitter over not getting the jobs we wanted or the support we needed, not because we believe we’re special and therefore deserve it or some such bullshit, but because our very lives are dependent upon it! We’re victims of a class system that lets you starve if you don't find work. Where you’ll be trapped in abusive situations cause you can’t afford a home on your own. Where simply being yourself can be dangerous as there are people who vocally want to deny us rights and even kill us.

Cass is an entitled whiny brat in canon because she doesn’t have any of those underlying issues. She doesn’t face real discrimination, oppression, poverty, or the looming threat of death hanging over her. She’s just throwing a temper tantrum.

Once Again Adira is Saving Your Butt Cass

Adira is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in the marathon. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate her more when I first watched the show.

Also, I’m Sorry I Didn’t Recognize the Awesomeness That Is Hector Until Now Either.

Like this is a good conflict. They both have legitimate reasons for what they do. They’re both in the right here. That’s what makes them interesting.

They’re both fighting for something. They’re home and the belief that they can fix things, vs the fate of the world and their loyalty to both the cause and their family. All on top of having their own relationship issues.

Hector so should have been the main villain of season two, because he just has the most reason to be opposed to the mains’ goal.

That’s more than whatever Cass and Raps are fighting about. The only thing at stake there is their friendship, which isn’t that big of deal when you compare it to the lives and safety of billions of people.

Plus Hector’s just flat out entertaining.

Why is Everybody Just Standing Around Doing Nothing Here?

Fucking do something you lugnuts!!!

You’re all capable fighters. You’ve all taken down much harder enemies than one lone guy and two bearcats. Why aren’t you helping Cass fight back? Or heck, if you wanted Cass to face Hector alone then have her be a distraction so that the others can escape. Anything but having them just stand there and be useless!

Yet Again I Have to Ask Why Should Cass Care?

Or rather why should the audience care?

Cass isn’t a lady in waiting just because some random jerk who's already taunting her and trying to kick her ass calls her such. Hector’s not from Corona and has no knowledge of Cassandra’s life beyond what he may have heard repeated by Adiria (who is also not from Corona) or what Cass herself said in her very metaphorical song. Nor does either them have a say in how Cass’s career goes.

If you want to push the narrative that Cass is still a lady-in-waiting and a maid, despite having earned Cap’s approval and being appointed by the king to guard Rapunzel, then you damn well need to establish that among the mains.

Or you know, stop trying to go back on what you’ve set up in season one.

So How Is This Suppose To Work?

So from the backstory that we get on both the Tree and Zhan Tiri herself, this shouldn’t happen. Like Zhan Tiri is currently trapped in another dimension and according to season three she has no possession powers herself.

Now the tree itself is said to be sentient and that Zhan Tiri took control of it, but how? How is a tree sentient? Why is it sentient? How did Zhan Tiri bend it to her will? Why is it still under her control while she’s been trapped in another dimension for hundreds of years? Why and how does the spear keep it dormant? Why does the tree itself have possession powers when Zhan Tiri has none? Is there any connection between this Great Tree and the cursed tree that was suppose to free Zhan Tiri back in Painter’s Block? If so then why are these things never brought back into play during season three?

Give me answers damn it!

Now This is a Good Conflit, Shame It’s Never Resolved

Both have valid reasons to do what they do. Both are neither right nor wrong. Both however wind up getting in the way of each other because neither will listen or trust the other.

Rapunzel thinks that this will stop Hector, and she is right it does, but more importantly she chooses this route because it gives everyone else a chance to run away. The problem is that she can’t control it, but from her point of view that’ll only put her and Hector at risk if everyone else will just do as she says and leaves.

Cassandra thinks the spear will stop it because it’s done so before, and that’s a logical assumption. It also means that Rapunzel herself won’t be in any danger, though the others might. Cass can’t free everyone at once like Rapunzel can. It’ll also be a threat to herself, and there’s the risk that tree will stop her before she can deal the final blow.

So what’s happening on a personal level is that Rapunzel thinks taking charge means that everyone needs to follow her say without question. Cassandra thinks Rapunzel should listen to her more, not because Rapunzel needs to listen better in general, but because she doesn’t feel Rapunzel is mature enough to make big decisions and that she herself should be in charge of the group. Both girls feel superior to the other and above other people as well, because they’re convinced they’re always right.

Had this been the actual conflict that they went with in season three, had they actually had both characters held accountable for their actions and learn something, and hadn’t dragged innocent people into their bullshit with so much as a ‘by your leave’ or ‘I’m sorry’; then this might have been a decent story. Perhaps not as impactful as Varian’s, but still meaningful, thoughtful, and well, coherent.

But that’s not what they did, and we’ll see no real resolution to this disagreement.

So Why Is No One Affected By the Hurt Incantation This Time?

Eugene here was injured by the tree earlier, that’s why he’s past out, but everyone else remains unharmed by Rapunzel’s singing. Even though just last episode everyone around her were dying from it, and again in the season finale everyone dies from said incantation. But here and in Rapunzel’s Return, Rapunzel can use the incantation without harming anyone nearby so, how does that work?

Some people have suggested that when Rapunzel focuses her hair on a target like the tree here or the amber later, that it doesn’t spread to other people, but that’s never stated on screen so it’s still a flaw.

Well This Goes Nowhere

I think the writers just like throwing in shocking ‘twists’ and moments like this just for the sake of looking edgy and ‘deep’ but then they never actually follow through on the impact of such moments on the characters nor consider the more troubling implications of including them.

I grew up on Gargoyles, Batman the Animated Series, the 90s X-Men Cartoon, and The Pirates of Dark Water. I’ve seen far more shocking and edgy stuff than this when I was six years old. In many ways the american animated tv landscape has regressed since the early 2000s when it comes to more mature cartoons, and no that’s not a complaint about modern cartoons being bad; some are good some are bad, just like its always been; but that culturally we’ve shied away more from darker moments like this and we’ve having to push for them all over again in media.

But the difference between Tangled and those 90s cartoons I’ve mentioned is that Tangled’s darker moments are misplaced. It clashes horribly with the more comedic route that the series usually takes and as such they don’t get the focus that they need too.

After season two is done, Cass’s hand will never be mentioned again. It does not tie into her later motivations at all nor influences her actions. Throughout the series she’ll be able to use it easily without consequence. We don't even get any on screen confirmation if it’s healed by grabbing the moonstone, by the sundrop incarnation in the finale, or if she just forever has a burnt arm. That’s how little importance it is to the story.

This Also Goes Nowhere

Hector calls out this warning but it’s then never followed up on. Adira is proven not to be a liar at all and nobody in the group is actually doomed. Yes the wider world is put in jeopardy, but that’s Cass’s fault not Adira’s.

The writers were too focused on making Adira the red herring for Cassandra that they forgot to make her an actual person, with wants, feelings, desires, goals, and a life beyond her mission. She’s never shown helping her family and barely interacts with them, she’s never given a reason for why she keeps disappearing, and the idea that she’s doing this to save her home is just supposition on my part because otherwise she has no reason. The series never gives us one.

And ‘Destiny’ Is Not A Fucking Reason!!!

Oh, So Adira Will Help Hector But Not Quirin or Varian?

If Hector and Adira consider each other siblings because they’re both in the Brotherhood, than logically Adira would consider Quirin her brother as well, and Varian would be her nephew.

She was around long enough to see the final battle in SotSD. That’s why she appears at the end of that episode, how she knows Rapunzel is the sundrop and has ‘seen her power’, and how she knows that the group has met both Quirin and Varian before now.

She knows that Quirin is trapped in amber. She knows her nephew has been arrested by a kingdom with a poor track record of punishing orphaned teens and poor people with overly harsh sentences. So why didn't she do anything there?

We find out during season three that the black rocks can cut through the amber, and its established that Adira’s sword can cut through the rocks, so clearly she didn’t even try to save Quirin has just given him up for dead. But there’s no reason why she couldn’t have broken Varian out of the prison and taken her with him.

In fact Adira hiding Varian from the rest of the group during season two would have been an actual reason for her disappearance and an actual reason not to trust her. That would have upped the stakes and given Cass reasons for what she does. Plus more time for Varian’s redemption, more chances to call out Rapunzel and Fredric on their BS, and ties seasons one and two together better.

Seriously leaving Varian out of season two was the dumbest decision in television. Putting Varian back in actually fixes everything in the show.

The Real Reason for the Burnt Hand is a Costume Change for Cass

I don’t know if she even got merchandise for this costume.

Conclusion

Much like season one’s arc episodes, The Great Tree held a lot of promise that was then completely wasted by season three. It’s also one of the very few episodes in the season to have actual stakes and conflict so it easily jumps to the top of the pile. But what it sets up is then never resolved or expounded upon, making it a waste.

Next up we’ll have the mid season recap.

#tangled #anti-tangled #anti-cassandra #anti-rapunzel #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #adira #hector #the brotherhood

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wardens-stew · 3 years

Text

The Mask Falling Hints MASTERPOST

Clearly I have wayyy too much time on my hands!

I have compiled a list of information Samantha Shannon has divulged on social media about The Mask Falling, mostly paraphrased from her Tumblr and Twitter. Some of it dates back as far as 2016, so it’s not certain that all of it will happen - I’ve included an asterisk for the tidbits in which Samantha explicitly mentioned that it was pre-editing. I didn’t include a link to the original source because that would be too much work, but if anyone has questions I can probably find it pretty easily! The recent ARC reviews also include some hints, but I haven’t included them because that would be a crap-ton of text. Feel free to add anything I missed! Anyway enjoy the fruits of my obsession!

Hints:

We will find out how badly Warden was affected by Paige’s torture - there’s a lot about the effects of her torture in the book

The non-binary character is a free-world spy, pretending to be French

Paige has issues with drinking water and showering

Paige will make another valiant effort to get Warden to talk about his feelings

Paige’s demisexuality is clarified - she reflects on the way she wants in comparison to the way the allosexual Nick and Eliza do

Paige gets slammed into the wall by someone, but not Terebell (also not Warden, because then she would be very dead)

The grey market storyline continues

Etymological connection of Arcturus meaning bear-guard and Mahoney meaning descendant of the bear is worked into the books

Paige cries

Paige’s PTSD is a thread throughout the book

Paige has mental and physical difficulties following her torture

“The scope of everything gets bigger, there's more focus on the free world and how it interacts with Scion, and you'll find out more about Rephaite history and the origin of clairvoyance.”

You may figure out what happened to Procyon

Warden’s aura type is mentioned*

Paige starts calling Warden Arcturus. They have a discussion about it. But she keeps calling him Warden in front of other people.

The prologue begins about an hour after The Song Rising

Warden asks Paige to teach him Irish

Contains clues as to the big secret at the heart of the series

Warden does a few very sweet things

We’ll find out a reason why Nashira considers Warden a possession rather than a partner*

Paige is at her most fragile

One of the characters eats an orange

There is a distinct Priory parallel in one section of the story

Paige asks Warden if Rephaim can get drunk

We will find out if Rephaim can get physically ill

We’ll get a piece of information that may help us understand the Rephaite logic behind Warden feeding on Paige’s aura

More about the golden cord

Paige’s feelings with her father will be explored

We will find out why it was common knowledge amongst Rephaim that Terebell and Warden were once mated

Warden might tell us what would happen if he tried to eat

More about voyant-amaurotic sex will be explained

We will learn more about the Rephaim’s internal politics and conflicts

We get to see Paige’s birthday

We we’ll find out how Warden knows how to develop Paige’s gift*

Paige and Warden butt heads over right and wrong

We’ll find out why Warden said that Sargas are the only Rephs who choose their mates

We’ll find out more about the half-urge

We’ll find out more about the complicated history between Warden and Terebell

Warden is planning to learn Gaelic (pre-editing)

We’ll find out two of the reasons why Warden hates Nashira so much*

We’ll find out about the promise Warden made to Nashira that she alludes to before the Bicentary

Warden says something with an exclamation mark

Warden will tell us more about the memory of Terebell, and how it was a prelude to one of the defining moments of his existence

Paige visits Warden’s dreamscape a few times, but we only see it once

Paige addresses the author directly

Nick isn’t in the book at all

The plot takes place only in Paris

Paige dies her hair red

A character Samantha did not originally plan to be in TBS4 now is

There’s a big scene in the Sainte-Chapellle in Paris

The book is shaping up to be the darkest book in the series, but also contains the most jokes

Paige feels really ill for most of the book

Samantha starts hinting at the Grand Backstory of the series

Paige is under strict orders to stay inside for a month, but she breaks the rules to explore Paris

The main antagonist was born in “the burning summer of 2019”

We’ll find out about two of Warden’s past relationships

Paige and Warden have to get food deliveries from a guy called Albéric because they’re not allowed to go outside

There’s espionage

Warden uses the super unnecessary word “sennight”

A lot of the book takes place underground

We learn if a non-polyglot could ever learn Gloss

There is a Very Awkward Conversation*

There is a time skip between the fourth and fifth books

Warden smiles a lot… with his eyes

The ending will change everything

Scion must change its public face due to an event that happens at the end

People who liked The Mime Order will love it

TBS4 picks up when Paige is resting.

It will go into more detail about how Rephaim emerge

It marks the beginning of Beautiful Dresses in The Bone Season

It introduces a Rephaite character Samantha absolutely loves, with her favorite Rephaite name

There’s a scene Samantha has wanted to write for years

The ending is very dark

There’s a cute priory reference

There’s a character Samantha loves - “she’s so cool that I don’t know how a nerd like me invented her”

“The relationship between Warden and Paige gets deeper and more complicated in this one, and you get to know Warden a little better.”

“[Paige and Warden] are together a lot in this book, as they’re sharing a safe house in Paris. It’s the first time they’ve spent a significant amount of time with one another since they escaped Sheol I. You’ll actually glimpse the ways they both react to being stuck inside in The Mask Falling, as they’re meant to stay hidden in a safe house for a month so Paige can start to recover from her ordeal.”

“It’s a love song to Paris in the way The Mime Order was a love song to London.”

“[Paige and Warden do have some happy calm moments.] Although there’s a lot of action in the book, there’s also quite a lot of downtime. Paige is still recovering from her ordeal in the Archon, so she can’t always be out in the world kicking ass. She’s resting as well, trying to get her strength back.”

“I won’t lie, The Mask Falling is a book to fear . . . but there are some nice bits. Including some coffee-drinking.”

“[Paige and Warden] do so much in this book. So much.”

“Most of the characters who didn’t go to Paris are absent from TBS4.”

“Paige and Warden do so much in this book, I just couldn’t cram any other storylines in. However, several old friends do turn up in it, as well as a bunch of new characters I hope you’ll love as much as I do.”

“Paige [experiences the messiest-most-intense emotion in TBS4]. She goes through the emotional wringer in this one.”

“The second ‘arc’ has the same main characters and the same antagonist. The difference has more to do with the setting, the scope of the narrative, and the type of battle being fought against Scion. You’ll have a better idea of what I mean when you read the end of TBS4.”

“This book puts both [Paige and Warden] through the emotional wringer, but there are lighter parts as well.” “Nick meets an old friend while he’s in Sweden and Paige and Warden will be staying in central Paris, on Rue Gît-le-Cœur. You can see some of the locations from Book 4 here: [x]”

“TBS4 is basically just a long Hurt/Comfort piece with occasional and reluctant splashes of Action/Adventure”

“THE MASK FALLING leans a little more Adult than the other BONE SEASON books. The whole series is officially classified as Adult, but the first three aren't far off YA in terms of sexual content, violence etc. THE MASK FALLING is . . . maybe a tiny bit sexier.”

“Doing my final reread of THE MASK FALLING and naturally I've noticed a recurring phrase that I have used no less than thirty times in the manuscript.”

“It blows the world of The Bone Season right open. It’s where everything changes. It takes place in a brand-new setting and forms the bridge between the two ‘arcs’ of the series. I hope the ending will show readers get why I really do need seven instalments to tell this story.”

“Books 1-4 is what I call the “Scion arc”, but Scion is still a threat in Books 5-7. Book 4 is kind of in the middle, with more of a focus on Rephaim than there currently is in Book 3.”

“He’s in Book 4, he’s French, he’s voyant, and I’m writing his introduction scene now. I think I love him?”

“The draft is about 140 000 words long – a little shorter than The Mime Order – with a veritable tonne of action, espionage, international politics, eerie catacombs, old enemies, new friends, and messy, intense emotions packed into that word count.”

“This one combines my favourite elements of The Bone Season (Warden and Paige chats), The Mime Order (syndicate weirdness) and The Song Rising (heists and angst)”

“The fourth Bone Season book is well underway, and things are about to take a very dark turn for Paige.”

“It’s mostly focused on Paris, but you’ll find out bits and pieces about what’s happening in both England and Europe.”

“She’s suffering from PTSD and aquaphobia following her water torture in The Song Rising, so she’s pretty much in the ringer for the whole book. There are a few light moments, but she’s under a lot of stress from the start.”

“While I wouldn't call it spy fiction, TBS4 is delving into espionage territory as Warden and Paige, still exhausted from their tremendous efforts against Scion in The Song Rising, attempt to navigate the convoluted political and criminal networks of Scion Paris.”

“Book 4 is a touch more political, laced with subterfuge”

Lists:

Things you’ll see:

The carrières of Paris

A masquerade (ofc)

A mysterious character you haven’t seen in a long while

Arcturus Mesarthim saying ‘hm’ about 18 times

Five words:

Revelations

Politics

Water

Heartache

War

Three adjectives:

Macabre

Emotional

Seismic

There is a lot of:

Warden and Paige

Rain

Classy interior decor

Angst

New characters include:

A spy so fashionable and icy cool I’m unsure of how a nerd like me created her

A tall, irritable Frenchman with a bit of a God complex

A terrifying new Rephaite with an uncomfortably sexy voice

It has:

A Parisian underworld

A demisexual MC

A masquerade ball

Catacombs

Forbidden, angst-stricken desire

Verbal consent

Acknowledgement of periods

I can promise:

Parisian buildings TOURISTS LOVE. Notre-Dame? It's there, there's a masquerade INSIDE IT. Sainte-Chapelle? Oui. Versailles? Naturally. The Eiffel Tower? Oh, we're climbing it

Getting DOWN and DIRTY. (By which I mean literally, down, into the catacombs.)

People who arrive in Paris SPEAKING FRENCH because they have been given a job for which they have the correct SKILLSET *bangs table*

No crêpes (#OhCrepe), but CHAUSSONS AUX POMMES

ROOFTOP PICNIC

Not everyone is STRAIGHT

Chic OUTFITS, all quite filthy by the end

Locations:

The beautiful Sainte-Chapelle, my favourite place on Earth.

Rue Gît-le-Cœur, a major location in the book and previously home to the Beat Hotel.

The famous doorway in the Paris Catacombs. The inscription translates to 'Stop! This is the Empire of Death.'

Rue Montmartre, where we may or may not encounter an old face.

Preview in gifs:

Originally posted by cinemagraphs

Originally posted by queeniegoldtsein

Originally posted by cumlelerinruhu

Snippets:

Out-of-context chapter title: Chapter 3: Gloomy Coffee

Part names*:

1. To Pay Thee Free

2. Turn the Anchor

3. Eurydice

Quotes:

“What the fuck is that?” she whispered to me. “Looks like a frozen rainbow.”

“The horizon was as red as if the fire still burned. I watched the sunrise from the roof. Fog breathed into every nook and alcove of Paris, laced over the dark crests of the river, blanched the skin to the pink of salmon. I was sure the air was still spiced with the tang of smoke.”

“So,” he said, “we are choosing larceny.” “Always so surprised when his criminal friend commits crimes.”

“I wouldn’t usually care who you’re riding at any given time”

“I sensed all of this was very important, but I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about”

“I picked up the floundering ribbons of my dignity and started over”

“His home was in decay, and mine lay in the shadow of the anchor. Scion had made wanderers of us.”

Current opening line (circa Dec 18, 2018): “The sun had been climbing over the cliffs when our ship had pared away from Dover.”

“Someone who had heard of me and whose first response had not been to try to kill me. What a treat.”

“A hollow ache stretched out within me. It started in the chambers of my heart, in a place that reached eternally for Ireland.”

“‘I promised you we would stay together,’ he said. ‘In the absence of other options, I will follow your lead on this matter.’”

“‘I’m fine.’ ‘Your attempt to mask the darkness under your eyes serves as compelling evidence of that. As does the full bowl of coffee.’ I cocked my head. ‘Did you just master sarcasm?’ ‘Paige.’ ‘It’s a cup of coffee. With… no handle.’”

“‘There’s no fireplace,’ I stated. ‘No.’ ‘But how are you-‘ A wild laugh was bubbling up. ‘How are you going to cope without one?’ ‘Cope,’ Warden repeated. ‘You need one. To stare into, pensively. Did you know,’ I said to him, ‘that you do that a lot?’ He tilted his head, which only set off a fit of silent laughter. My ribs ached in protest.”

‘I mustered all the breath I had left and screamed, until I folded on myself and my voice burned to nothing.’

‘Who can break you now, Black Moth, now there is nothing left to break?’

#the mask falling #the bone season #masterpost #hints

33 notes · View notes

peppusae · 3 years

Text

[kth] lavender honey ch. 8

note: this fanfic has multiple chapters, so please look forward to more!

lavender honey: kim taehyung x reader

genre: crack, fluff, college au, smut

word count: 3.6k words

lavender honey

ch 8: in which taehyung makes minji choose voilence, while jungkook makes her strip for him.

“My… my chances are rare, hyung. I might want to hold tight, the person I like, but... I can’t. Not when things are going well for her with the person she likes. I don’t want to be the person that ruins things for the one person I have the hardest time staying away from, you know?”

The person Taehyung likes?

You suddenly think about the time when you had come home and Namjoon was doing some revisions on a song Taehyung had written, about a girl. Back then, you thought he might have had too much strawberry milk and gotten emo enough to write some good shit for his assignment.

But hearing his words, you realize that he was genuine about what he was saying back then, and it makes your heart hurt a bit.

Who did Taehyung like?

Your heart hurts more as you listen to your brother’s sad little ‘oh’ in response.

Clearly, Namjoon isn’t the one you should be going to for advice.

Taehyung, for one, doesn’t seem to care.

“Like, what if Jin-hyung started dating a friend of yours? You would be sad, right, Hyung?”

“Well…. Yes, I would.”

“And if you find out that it’s someone close to you, that’s going to be even sadder, right?”

There is a moment of silence and you start to feel guilty about eavesdropping, so you decide to go downstairs to create some kind of ruckus so the two would know you were home and close the door, at the very least.

Before you’re able to go downstairs, you can hear Namjoon asking the very question bubbling in your head.

“The person you like is dating someone close to you?”

You’re not sure why, but you’re glad you didn’t wait to hear what he had to say.

---

“So. I need to survive another day with you, huh?”

Taehyung greets you the next day, and his words and actions don’t match at all, because he's holding out a cup of iced coffee for you as he takes his seat behind the library counter.

“I’m trying to finish the assignment we have due on Friday.”

“Oh? You still have a whole week for it, though.”

You open up a new tab on Google, trying to find more sites for citing purposes. “If it’s okay with you, I want to go collect the books on Friday after classes. We finish early on Fridays, remember?”

Taehyung raises an eyebrow, and it’s probably the gray shirt he has on that makes him look really, really attractively confused.

What in heckles is that even.

How does someone look attractive while they’re confused?

Library duty is kinda scary, it makes you find out more stuff about the male that you need to make points for the essay you’ll be collaborating with Seokjin; about all the other-worldly features of Kim Taehyung.

It’s either the shirt, or Minji is just extra horny today.

You decide that the former is a better option, so you go back to your laptop.

“We can go on Friday. We have to go to Daegu, Gwangju, and Busan too, right? We obviously can’t finish the entire trip in a day, so we have to stay the night-”

“Daegu.”

“Huh?”

“We’ll stay at Daegu. At my house.”

That’s kinda weird of him to say that out of nowhere, but you decide that he might just want the excuse to hang out with his family.

You give him an ok sign, and you find yourself smiling a little when you find him pulling out the same assignment sheet you’re working on, from his backpack, and then starting his own work as well.

A little before the borrowing time ends, students line up to take the books they are interested in, so you and Taehyung get a little busy. When the announcement for the end of the borrowing time is announced (in Taehyung’s ridiculously deep voice), you two decide to stay back at the library to finish your assignment before going home.

In fact, you are actually so immersed in finishing your task, that you don’t notice the time until someone taps your shoulder and you find Namjoon, a smiling Jungkook standing beside him.

“Hi, Noonim!”

Jungkook actually does try hard not to call you that when the others are around, but habits are habits, and you’re glad Namjoon and Taehyung don’t make a big deal out of it anymore.

“We’re all going out to eat, Hoseokie-hyung is giving a treat because it’s his birthday! We gotta eat as much meat as we can!” Jungkook announces happily, looking at you with a big grin. You give him a smile, glancing at Taehyung who has closed the lid of his laptop as soon as the two arrived.

“I think we’ve done a lot of work for one day, right? Let’s go?”

“What do you mean, for one day? I’ve finished my assignment.”

You stare at Taehyung in disbelief.

“The fuck?”

“Oh shit.” Namjoon says, making you glare at him. Only when you see Jungkook’s slightly bewildered face, do you realise you’ve probably cursed for the first time in front of the younger boy, and it makes your face heat up while you turn back to face Taehyung.

“How did you finish it so fast? And why are you staying here if you’re already done?”

“I’m an amazing guy, [Name]-ah. You need to give me a fuckton more of credit.” He has to say, cooly picking up his belongings and throwing them all into one big salad bowl (aka his hugeass backpack). “You weren’t done, so I was waiting for you.”

What?

While Namjoon and Jungkook head outside and Taehyung follows you after you pack your belongings, you ask him how long it has been since he’s finished his work.

“I think, 2 hours, maybe?”

“Why the fuck,” you hiss, “Did you not go home?!”

Taehyung looks a bit annoyed right about now, and you want to yell because how dare he have the audacity to look annoyed?!!!

“Like I said, I was waiting for you!” He yells, this time making Namjoon and Jungkook who are walking ahead of you also, to turn around to look at Taehyung. When he sees the two looking at him, Taehyung takes a deep breath and glances at you.

“Leave me alone and go with your little boyfriend.”

Then, he storms off, and Jungkook looks as blank as you feel like, and you don’t know how long you’d have stayed, watching Taehyung walk through the length of the hallway and disappear if Namjoon did not snap you out of your trance and asked you to hurry up.

Who pulled Kim Taehyung’s panties into a wad today?

---

Taehyung colors his hair black for the next day.

It’s so out of the blue, and the incessant way everyone makes a big deal out of it seems a bit understandable.

It really isn’t fair, how good the guy looks.

Yoongi hasn’t even finished that song he says he’s writing about a really stupidly attractive man, yet, and it isn’t fair because you really could use a listen to that song right about now.

Even while Jungkook - a really hot kid - sits right beside you, you can’t help but just stare in awe because honestly, there is nothing - human or extra-terrestrial creature included - that could beat the beauty and attractiveness that is Kim Taehyung.

Minji is shaking her head because a) How dare you say two words like ‘hot kid’ that should never be even put together in the first place, b) Because Jungkook and you are dating, right? Or is it pre-dating? Does that exist? Wait a second-

“Noonim, I’m going with Jimin-hyung and Taetae-hyung to the arcade after classes are over,” he says, “Can we go on that date I mentioned tomorrow, instead?”

“What date?” Seokjin butts in out of nowhere, in the middle of taking a bite out of his grapefruit tart. “Is this why you asked me to stay out of the house until late at night tomorrow?!”

Seokjin, obviously, is a meathead, and a really dumb one, at that.

Multiple things happen at once.

The first one is Jungkook standing up from his seat so fast that he almost spills the bean sprout broth bowl on his tray.

The second one is all eyes turning to Seokjin, which in turn, makes the elder male’s ears turn bright red and him starting to mumble nonsense to himself like a lunatic.

The third one is Jungkook getting off from the bench and dragging Seokjin away from the lunch table, all while Hoseok, Hani, and Hyojin seem to be enjoying the entire ruckus.

Only when you glance at Namjoon do you remember that Jungkook had mentioned he has a roommate… and that roommate was Seokjin, himself.

“You’ve started doing what with Jungkookie now?”

“Shut up! He just asked me to go see his animations and paintings, what are you talking about, Namjoonie?!” You protest, eyes turning to Taehyung, who runs a hand through his hair, takes a final sip of his cola, and then heads out of the cafeteria - a pastel pink-haired Jimin running after him.

Namjoon blinks, and then continues to eat his food, much like Yoongi who sees and hears nothing because of the radio show he’s busily listening to while he gobbles up his lunch.

If only everyone was like Min Yoongi.

It’s ten minutes later when both Seokjin and Jungkook return, the younger one apologizing to you like crazy, even when Jimin comes back a while later, saying Taehyung had some assignment to complete beforehand.

“I don’t know about you guys, but didn’t I bet these two will get it on within a month?”

Apparently, Seokjin doesn’t know when to shut up, and you’re very glad Namjoon has already left by then and that Hoseok does the honor of punching the elder male in the back for spewing nonsense - which he claims is the truth.

This is going to be a long day.

---

You’re driving to college the next day with Namjoon only, for the first time in what feels like ages.

You’d been dreading questions about Jungkook that he might have, but it isn’t about the date you’ll be going on after classes today that worries Namjoon, but something else, entirely.

“My precious sister. We did promise that we would share our secrets with each other, did we not?”

“We did, my precious brother.” You play along, watching the little koala keychain hanging from the mirror inside the car.

“I am not going to question you about why or what you’re going to do with Jungkookie, that’s none of my business,” he starts. You shake your head, mouthing ‘It is, Namjoonie’, which makes your brother smile a little.

“Thank you. I’m not going to question it, because I know my sister well and I trust my little sister. What I’m only going to question is one thing. Are you sure of the choices you’ve made, till now?”

“What do you mean, Joonie?”

You watch as he scratches his head a little, not saying anything for a while as he steers along a few curves and stops at a red light.

“I’ve noticed that your thoughts have been wandering a lot recently.” He points out.

��I don’t get what you mean.”

“What I mean is, your mind seems like it’s always somewhere else, and that has not been the case when you first started going out with Jungkook.”

Has Namjoon been watching over you enough to notice that your mind always wanders all around the place, eventually landing on some stupid thought of Taehyung, in the end?

“It seems to me like you’re not really in love with Jungkookie, but someone else.”

You could swear you felt chills run down your spine because of the absolute bingo he had managed to make; Namjoon had a high IQ for a reason, that you realize then.

You manage to chuckle, shaking your head and waving it off. “That’s ridiculous, Joon-ah, I had a crush on Jungkook ever since we got introduced to each other by Jiminie.”

Namjoon doesn’t say anything, as if he doesn’t believe you - but this was the truth, even if your fraying thoughts only began much much later after that.

Perhaps it’s because you’ve arrived at the parking lot at college, that Namjoon decides to drop the subject, giving you a nod in response.

“Well. It turns out Kookie also liked you since back then. You’re my sister and I just want you to be happy, with whoever.”

It moves you, hearing that. You know that it must have been hard on Namjoon who not only finds out things easily, but over analyzes things he finds as well. It makes you smile, going around to Namjoon’s side of the car when he gets out after parking, and then giving him a big hug, right in the middle of the parking lot.

“Yah, Kim [Name]-ah, what are you doing?!”

“You don’t have to worry about Jinnie wondering if there’s something between us, he knows we’re siblings now!” You say, giving him a wave and running inside the campus before he can say anything else.

---

“And that’s the project I’m working on right now, Noonim!”

You can’t help but to give a big grin to the boy who looks very pleased with your positive reaction after he showed his animation work. Jungkook really wasn’t called the Golden Maknae for no reason, his animations were realistic and flawless, at least from your - a complete amateur’s - point of view. After you say this, Jungkook laughs, thanking you and saying that that is a very lovely compliment to receive considering most of the people who would consume whatever he produces would also be amateurs too, in the end.

His literal statement makes you laugh, and you enjoy the time with the male, your mind definitely not wandering as much as it did on your previous date. You’re glad it doesn’t, and you enjoy eating chocolate pudding and having the banana milk Jungkook prepared for you, while you go through all the lovely paintings and digital art the male had created.

“By the way, Noonim, can you take a seat over there?” He asks, pointing at the center of his bed. Minji has started to strip out of nowhere, and when you glance at Jungkook with wide eyes, you’re very surprised to see that he has taken a digital camera.

So he wants to take a picture of me sitting on the bed, not to start-

Okay, Minji, you need to get a toy or something because you’re being way too horny and there’s no other way we can calm you down.

You find yourself awkwardly waddling and taking a seat at the center of Jungkook’s bed - and gosh does it smell like a very boyish citrus over here - allowing the male to take a few pictures of you which he wanted.

“Okay, I got them. I can’t wait to start drawing you!!” He says, much like a little kid, and it makes your heart swell, holding your hand out towards him and watching him raise a surprised eyebrow, doe eyes wide while he slowly walks up to you. You can tell he is nervous by the way his ears have become a little red, and the fact that he had dimmed the lights and turned on a warm light for your picture does not help.

“Y-Yes?”

You give a smile, watching him place his camera on the side table carefully before he walks back, slowly intertwining your fingers. His nervousness shows in the way he looks down at your hands every three seconds, unable to keep eye contact for long. It’s so adorable that your heart becomes warm, mumbling a little ‘Jungoo?’ barely enough for him to hear.

“Yes, N-Noona?”

“Why did you ask Seokjinnie to not come for a while?”

Now, Jungkook refuses to look you in the eyes even for a second, his cheeks turning beet red.

“Jungoo?”

“I… I never get to hold your hand like this unless we’re on a date…”

You can’t help but to smile up at him, tugging at his hand so that he bends down a little, coming to face-level with you. Even before you put a hand on his face, you could tell that his cheeks were burning, and it makes your heart race because you simply can’t get over how adorable he is.

Jungkook closes his eyes and you kiss him on the nose, gently, and that makes him open his eyes a little startled.

When you end up bursting into a smile, despite the serious look on Jungkook’s face, it seems to make the boy less nervous, chuckling a little before he sits down beside you on the bed.

“What did you expect, Jungoo?”

“You enjoy teasing me a lot, don’t you, Noonim?”

“That’s what you get for calling me Noona.”

Jungkook bursts out laughing, shaking his head. “I shall not make that kind of mistake again.”

You find yourself smiling, and your heart has stopped racing, now feeling more comfortable around Jungkook. Even when he smiles and leans in to kiss you, you close your eyes, kissing him back, so, so comfortable that you don’t even notice until Jungkook leans away, that one of your legs have gone over his thigh and he is looking at you with wide eyes.

Holy shit . You’d always know Jungkook was a muscle-y kid because his jeans always fit him in all the right places, but it’s a different thing when you can actually physically feel that under your own thigh-

“You did lock the door, right?”

Jungkook looks baffled at your question, his jaw dropping open, but he still nods in response.

“No one else will come, right?”

The male closes his mouth, still very startled but nods again.

“Then we could do this a bit more, right?” You ask, and his response is faster this time, nodding once again, a hand going behind your neck and pulling your face to his. You can feel his tongue on your lips, and you part and let him in, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable sitting with one leg over his. It felt like Jungkook felt the same way - and this is where you learn about the mighty strength he has - when he wraps an arm around your waist, completely pulling you onto his lap.

Not only has Minji finished stripping by now, but she has also put on her finest lingerie now.

You’re actually very, VERY startled by this action, so much that you break away from the kiss, looking at Jungkook with wide eyes.

Suddenly feeling embarrassed, you look away from his eyes, a down at his neck. There is a sheen of sweat forming on his neck, and his white shirt has stuck to his skin a little by now.

Oh God save me.

“Noonim…”

“Mmm?”

“Should I let you go?”

The way he says that, the way he words it, sounds so, so sad and you wonder how you can tell him that you were simply embarrassed, nothing else.

And you can’t think of anything to say, so you close your eyes, grabbing his face and kissing him on the lips, heart racing at how brave you were feeling out of nowhere. Was it because this was Jungkook’s room, because you knew no one else would be around?

Or is it because it was Jungkook, both his hands hugging your back, pulling your body so close to his that it’s almost too embarrassing to bear, kissing you like this might be his last chance to do so?

Whatever it is, you find yourself opening your eyes, slowly pushing him back and watching the way his eyes go wide when he falls back down on his bed, pulling you along with him.

For a minute, neither of you do anything, and it looks like Jungkook took a minute to get over his initial surprise, because he wraps his arms - which are already around you - much tightly, rolling over so that he’s the one looking down at you while you look up at him.

And this is so much more embarrassing, because now you don’t even have anywhere else to look, because Jungkook is just so, so, so damn close, and you find yourself closing your eyes, not knowing what else to do.

“Noonim.”

“Mmhmm?”

“Look at me for a bit.” Jungkook whispers softly, and you open your eyes, to see his face a little further away, eyes closed while he takes in deep breaths.

“Noonim. I like you so, so much.”

#lavender honey #bts #taehyung #bts taehyung #taehyung fanfic #taehyung smut #taehyung college au #bts college au #bts fanfic #language major vs music major

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vannahfanfics · 4 years

Text

Melody of Souls

Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Fandom: Soul Eater

Characters: Soul Eater Evans, Maka Albarn

Requested By: Anonymous

Additional Tags: Soulmate AU

“You know, they say that you and your soulmate are born with the same song in your hearts. It’s unique to every destined pair, and when you find that person singing or humming the song, you know that you’re meant to be.”

Maka raised an eyebrow as the pair of girls rummaging through the lockers to her left giggled excitedly between their whispers of fate and romance. One of them, a bright-eyed, brunette young lady, covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers as she chuckled mirthfully. “I’ve memorized every verse of my song. It’s quite a beautiful melody! I can only imagine my soulmate is as elegant and charming as the tune!” Her friend frowned jealously.

“Really? The only way I can describe mine is… a screaming guitar riff.” The other girl snickered hysterically and patted her begrudged friend on the shoulder. The girl then leaned in to whisper enticingly into her ear.

“Oh, but you know, that could mean that your soulmate is a tough bad boy! I know someone who fits that description…” At her teasing, the girl with the rock ‘n’ roll soulmate song squeaked and slapped her hands to her reddening face. Her friend laughed playfully at her expense amidst her pleas to stop jesting. Maka clucked her tongue distastefully and shut her locker with a little more than necessary force, making the metallic clang ring through the hallway. Clutching her schoolbooks to her chest, she strode away haughtily, leaving the gossiping girls to their wishful thinking and crushing on a “bad boy.”

“Someone who fits that description…” Who else could they be talking about except Soul?

Soul Eater Evans undoubtedly embodied the “bad boy” persona to the unknowing bystander. Perpetually scowling and slouching with his hands buried in the pockets of his baggy pants, thundering into the school parking lot on a rumbling motorcycle, and more often passed out drooling in class than actually paying attention- that was Soul. Maka had to smile wryly at the utterly ridiculous notion of him being a tough bad boy. Those little first-years might dream up such ludicrous fantasies, but Maka knew better, so much better.

He was rude and uncouth, sure, but Soul had a heart of the purest gold.

Maka had known Soul since middle school. They had been paired up for a class project. Maka had wanted to rip every one of those silver hairs out of his head for the first few meetings; he was lazy and undriven, which infuriated her to no end. She presumed early on that she would shoulder the entire burden of the project upon her shoulders. However, he had surprised her. Near the end of their working period, Soul had stumbled up to her front door after spending all night slaving over an essay that was so eloquent and sophisticated that Maka wanted to weep. Yes, he had surprised her, and now six years later, in their third year of high school, they were the best of friends.

She smirked at the silver-haired boy when she slid into her desk beside him.

“What’s that grin for? Did you kick Sideburns’ ass in an exam or something?” he drawled as he rubbed his eyes, drifting into the twilight of half-sleep, though the class hadn’t even begun. “Sideburns” referred to one Ox Ford, the current leader in class rankings, and Maka’s insufferable rival. Though she had smoked him in the midterms last week, much to the prideful boy’s chagrin, that was not what had her spirits so high.

“No. I overheard some first-year girls chattering about their crushes on a bad boy third-year,” she remarked nonchalantly as she flipped her notebook open. Soul snorted with laughter and laid his head on his arm, watching her write the date in the corner of the notepaper.

“‘Bad boy.’ What a crock. I have some standards.”

“Hehe, I know. They can’t help it, though. They’re just doe-eyed girls enamored with the idea of finding their soulmates in high school.”

“Oh, Maka,” Liz chimed from the seat catty-cornered to her, leaning over the enameled chair to smirk knowingly at the bookish girl. “Don’t pretend that you’re not infatuated with the soulmate stuff too. Just yesterday, I overheard you whining to Kim and Jackie that you would love to find your soulmate before you graduate.” Maka’s face turned beet red, and she didn’t even have to look at Soul to know he was wearing that stupid grin that made her want to slap him silly.

“Liz, huuuush!” Maka hissed and swatted at the air, as if she could reach her to bop her on the head. Groaning, she buried her burning red face into her hands.

Of course she would love to find her soulmate! Even she had her romantic tendencies! Late at night, when there was nothing more to study or learn, she would lie in her bed with a piano melody tinkling in her heart and would try to envision the person to whom it must belong. Maka knew the statistics (she had quite obsessed over them), so she recognized that the chances of discovering her soulmate in high school were extraordinarily slim. Yet, yet, she harbored just the tiniest shred of hope that somewhere in her school, her classroom, even, sat the pre-ordained love of her life.

“Bah,” Soul suddenly grunted, and she looked at him in shock. His lips were drawn into a babyish pout. “Who cares about all that soulmate bull? Why should I have to let some dumb song tell me who to love, anyway?” Sniffing haughtily, he buried his face into his forearm and pulled his hoodie up over his fluffy silver hair. A few of the girls berated him for his indecency and ignorance, but Maka didn’t. It was truthfully a sobering thought that a song in one’s soul made one of the most significant decisions of one’s life without any consent or choosing at all.

Maka placed a hand over her heart, recalling the sweet thrumming of piano keys that had existed within her subconscious for as long as she could recognize it as music. Soft and sweet, full of high notes, but in the background of those blissful keys hummed deeper tones of suppressed power and emotion.

Maybe… I don’t want to know who that song belongs to.

~~~~~~~~~~

After class, Soul did something he had never done before- he stormed right out of the room as soon as the bell rang, abandoning Maka to her own devices. He melted into the crowd like a wisp, while Maka struggled to breach the writhing wave of bodies and catch up.

“Soul? Soul!” He disappeared into the mass of students, and Maka ceased her struggles to follow after a few meaningless seconds. Liz clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tossed her jacket over her shoulder.

“What’s his deal?” she huffed with a raised eyebrow. Maka pouted unsurely, but she had a hunch as to what had ruffled Soul so. He was so angry about all the talk of soulmates… He feels trapped, having to conform to a pre-ordained love. She smirked slightly. That was certainly like Soul, to rebel against such notions. Now that Maka considered it, having to search for a single person in such a vast sea of billions was frightening, and what if, what if, it was impossible to love them? “Yo. Earth to Maka,” Liz said while knocking on the side of her head. Maka frowned deeply and curled her hand over her chest.

“Liz… What if you fall in love with someone who isn’t your soulmate?” The blonde girl blinked puzzledly at her, then scratched her chin.

“I mean… Well… You’re just setting yourself up for heartbreak, I guess. What? Do you have a crush on someone, Maka?” the girl sneered teasingly, leaning in to whisper breathily into her ear. For once, Liz’s mocking failed to fluster Maka; she was much too lost in thought. Could Soul be in love with someone and afraid to find that it isn’t his soulmate? Who, though? There were several girls within their circle of friends, but Soul had never given any indication that he possessed a romantic interest for any of them. He was skilled at concealing his crush if he had one.

The hallways had emptied, as all the students had funneled into the cafeteria.

“I’m going after Soul!” Maka announced and began stalking in the direction he had vanished. She heard Liz shouting protests after her, but the pigtailed girl ignored them. Her mind was far too bent on the present conundrum: the riddle of soulmate songs and an apparent flaw in the fabric of fate.

The hallways echoed with her footsteps. The rhythmic strikes bounced off the painted brick walls and metal lockers, filling her already disordered mind with noise. Maka had always dreamed of finding her soulmate, but… It was frightening, the idea that your love was destined for a complete and utter stranger. What if they were repulsive? Maka would die if her soulmate were someone like Ox Ford- conceited, prideful, arrogant. How could she spend the rest of her life swallowing those flaws, all for the sake of some “destiny”? Maka swallowed thickly and paused in the hallway to stare down at her feet. It had only been a little thinking, but she understood why Soul hated the concept so much. The pressure was immense, the uncertainty astronomical.

The piano melody floated in her ears, bubbling up from the depths of her soul. Its tune tinkled like morning bells in the breeze, soft and sweet, with that booming undertone of raw, unbridled emotion. She never could place what kind of feeling it was. Lament? Frustration? Longing? It seemed to be all of them and none. She had always found comfort in that melody of her soul, a promise to a love to come. Now it seemed like thousands of chains shackling her to a future she may not want. Whimpering, she pawed her hands over her ears and attempted to drive the thrumming of the piano keys from her subconscious.

The melody dimmed, but not due to her internal efforts. Maka cracked an eye open when she realized the music was not in her head, but in the hallway. When she lowered her palms from her ears, the tune blazed back into its sweet fervor. Someone is… Playing my soulmate song. The epiphany rang hollowly in her chest. Just hours ago, she would have been ecstatic to know her soulmate was within these walls. Now, it filled her belly with the burdensome weight of dread. The music drifted out of the ajar door of the music club’s classroom, which was not three yards before her. In just a few steps, she could scamper over, and she would know who her heart was destined for. Or, she could turn around and run in the other direction, perhaps doomed never to know her predestined partner.

Her feet moved of their own accord, drawing her to the door. All she need do is look. She could make a decision then. Right? She was in the threshold before she made a concrete decision. With a small gulp, she peeked through the small gap and prayed, though she knew not for what.

His hands glided over the piano keys, striking them with practiced precision. Back straight, shoulders squared, he looked the epitome of a professional musician. His eyes were closed, and his head swayed to the wave of the music; he was completely immersed in the dream of love that his hands were weaving- sweet high notes, powerful low notes, all colliding together in a beautiful symphony.

Maka had never seen Soul so… liberated.

The door made no sound as she pushed it open, or perhaps its creaking was swallowed by the music swirling around the small classroom. She approached the piano from the side, watching with fascinated eyes as Soul played the instrument like an extension of himself, but he was still too absorbed in the effort to notice her. She had not even the wherewithal to recognize that this meant Soul was her soulmate. The music was just so enchanting, so mesmerizing, that she existed in a reality of only she and it.

Maka jumped when the song abruptly ended. Her eyes fluttered rapidly as she came down from the foggy high, and after a few seconds, she realized he had taken notice of her presence. He had lowered the key cover and was leaning on its black polished surface, regarding her miserably.

“I’ve known that song for as long as I can remember,” he exhaled and began drawing abstract patterns on the enameled exterior, smudging it with his fingerprints. “It’s been in my heart and soul for every day of my life… and I really didn’t care much. I figured it would become relevant when it needed to, but then… Then I met you, Maka.” With a small gasp, the girl straightened up, her cheeks brightening at the insinuations. He smiled self-loathingly. “Then my dumb ass went and fell in love with you knowing that the chances we actually belonged together were one in a trillion. Stupid, right?” He drew his hand over his face with an agonized scowl. “If we were soulmates, we’d’ve figured it out by now, right? Just… just get the painful part over with and tell me you don’t love me, or that you want to wait for your soulmate, and let me get on with my life, okay?”

“Soul.” He didn’t look at her, just kept his eyes hidden with his slightly shaking fingers. Maka closed the small distance between them to pry his fingers from his face, revealing watery red eyes. “Soul, I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Don’t pity me, Maka,” he snarled and went to shove her away. She caught him by the upper arm, squeezing the flesh there hard.

“I’m not! I’m not, because I… I know that song.” His eyes widened, and he stared at her incredulously. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she wrung the fabric of his school uniform coat nervously. “I’ve known it… for as long as I can remember, too. What you just played is my soulmate song.” He slowly lowered his arm with her hands still clinging to it. He swallowed thickly, looking down at the covered piano, then back at her.

“Maka… Do you love me?”

Her cheeks reddened, and she looked away.

“Well, you’re apparently my soulmate, so- Ah!” She yelped when he suddenly jumped up to grab her by her upper arms. His face loomed over hers, intense and adamant.

“I don’t care about that. That’s not the point. If you don’t love me, then it doesn’t change anything. Not for me. You be honest, and if you don’t love me, you turn around and walk out that door right now.” Maka’s bottom lip wobbled and her eyes flooded with tears, but not because she was scared or heartbroken. She was just so utterly relieved. The very fact that he cared more about her feelings than some pre-ordained will of the deities meant more to her than anything ever could. She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes, searching the depths of her soul for the truth- and she found it.

“Of course I do. Of course I love you. You’re my very best friend and so much more. I can’t imagine my life without you, Soul, whether we’re soulmates or not. I want to be with you forever.” His grip on her arms relaxed, and he brought a hand up to cup her cheek. His fingers pushed her hands away from her eyes, and then he swept his thumb over her cheeks to catch her falling tears. His hands were so soft and warm that she could not help but weakly smile.

“Well, that’s a relief. I didn’t want to imagine my life without you, either, Maka.” She chuckled softly. I’m glad. I’m so glad. His red eyes studied her face, like he was memorizing it though he had seen it nearly every day for the last six years. His fingertips lightly traveled her cheekbone, leaving a trail of tingling pink in their wake. “You’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met,” he breathed. His gaze dropped to her slightly parted lips, and it didn’t take an Ox Ford to determine his next move. Maka’s eyes fluttered shut just as his face leaned in, and when his mouth met hers, she melted into him.

The only way Maka could describe the kiss later was… like she was coming home after a long time away. His lips melded into hers so perfectly, and the sensation was like fireworks exploding over the soft flesh as her nerves rejoiced. She missed him immediately when he pulled away, but in the next instant, the bell signaling the end of the lunch period blared shrilly overhead.

“Better get to class, Smarty-pants,” he smirked. Maka grinned slyly and tugged on his arm, pulling him out of the music room and into the hallway. He groaned and shoved a hand in his pocket, but obediently allowed her to tug him along. When they had rejoined the throng of students, she looped her arm with his and grinned broadly. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking about how disappointed those first-year girls will be to learn their ‘bad boy’ has been claimed by bookish little me.” Their laughter rang through the crowd, causing quite a few confused glances. Maka giggled and propped her head on his shoulder, jumping a little as it shook with his laughs. In the back of her mind, a piano melody played, blissful but humming with the undertones of a love powerful and pure.

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @deliathedork

#soul eater #soma #soulma #soul x maka #maka x soul #maka albarn #soul eater evans #soulmate au #soulmates #soul eater fanfiction #soul eater fanfic

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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The Three Caballeros Movie Review: Rejoice Now Donald’s Been Laid (Commission)

It’s time at long last we talked about those three happy chappies in snappy serapes. Who say so? @weirdkev27 say so! He’s planning on funding an ENTIRE retrospective on the boys, so in addition to my Tom Lucitor Retrospective (Expect that to return very soon as one of the episodes in it is time sensitive), Road to Just Us Justice Ducks, and look at “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”. I’m proud to announce a new recurring feature on this blog “The Ride of the Three Caballeros!”, a look back at these birds of a feather who flock together and their wild and wonderful history cumulating in “The Legend of The Three Caballeros”. Honestly I thank Kev for the idea as it’s a damn good one. Ever since seeing them on House of Mouse, which I both really need to cover and Disney needs to add already as we’re a year into Disney plus already, I’ve loved Jose and Panchito, and reading barks story years ago, and again recently, gave me a lasting love of these goofs. They have great snappy designs are the rare pre-ducktales 2017 non duck bird character, and have wonderful personalities. There’s nothing not to love and thus nothing not to love about covering their adventures. So i’m excited for this and not just for the much needed christmas money. Naturally we’re starting the adventure here with the founding of the trio, though Kev, for now he could change his mind, choose to start with this movie instead of it’s predecessor Saludos Amigos, on this date for two reasons. The first is it’s Friday the 13th, which besides being the basis for an utter classic of a Hey Arnold episode

Which yes for those unfamiliar with Hey Arnold features Arnold dealing with a spell of bad luck, some bullies and his grandmother dressing up wlike a black cat to rescue black cats, which is sweet.. and training them into her horrifying army of the damned, which is somehow still sweet as it is awesome. It’s also the day this guy barges into my house thinking it’s camp crystal lake

I swear to gods Jason GET A FUCKING PHONE WITH GPS. We are not clearly not teenagers. And he’s always so embarrassed and the stab wounds always take so long at the hospital to treat. It’s just a mess. But it’s also, according to this film Donald’s BIrthday! This was during an earlier point in his career, that will be important in a bit, so Disney hadn’t yet settled on their tradition of having their characters birthday’s being the same date as their first appearance. For the record that would make Donald and Della’s current birthday June 7th. I did a special on Donald Duck shorts for it this year. Not sure what i’ll do the next. We will see. And for fun and my own curiosity I looked up the birthdates of some of the other Ducktales castmembers as well as my boys here They are:

Jose: August 24th (World Premier of Saludos Amigos) Panchito: December 21st (The Mexico City Premiere Date for this very movie) Scrooge: November 14th (Thank you INducks seriously it’s a massive help with this. Daisy: June 7th (Debut of Mr. Duck Steps out) Huey, Dewey and Louie: October 17th (First appearance in Donald’s Newspaper Strip) Webby, Beakley and Launchpad: September 18th, thanks to launchpad’s driver’s license as well as all three characters debuting in the opening arc. Though to separate them i’d likely try to find different dates for both. For now i’m going with October 12th for Mrs. Beakly (The airing date for the Ducktales 87 ep maid of myth) and October 29th for Webby (the airing date for another 87 episode, this one about webby and a horse). Gladstone: August 15th, as while it was released in january there is no firm release date for it. Plus a summer birthday fits him better anyways. Thank you Inducks for that. Magica: September 28th, finally a firm publication date. While there’s a creation date unlike Gladstone I see no need to use it. Darkwing Duck/Drake Mallard: September 6th GLOMGOLD: July 26th Was that entirely necessary? No Would I do it again.. absolutely. It also means I really need to do something for Scrooge’s Birthday in two days. But that’s future me’s problem. Current day me has his own problems specifically a movie review to continue. The films genesis was a in a good will tour Disney did in South America, as part of America’s Good Neighbor Policy. FDR started it in order to try and strengthen ties between Latin America and North America, to prevent any sort of war with our close neighbors and to foster good economic ties between both as well as integrate Latin culture into americans lives to make them care about those countries more. And given it was started as HItler’s rise to power grew, and America knew they’d inevitably be dragged into World War II, and thus wanted to put the kibosh on several Latin American’s Nazi Ties. So in exchange for Money, since Disney was struggling due to overextending itself and the big animator’s strike at the time, The US sent Walt and some of his animatiors to South America, where MIckey Donald and Goofy were big and to make a film based there. Hence we got Saludos Amigos which is .. kind of forgettable to be honest, though the Gaucho Goofy segment is fantastic as the “How to” shorts with goofy around the time usually were. But the film gave us Jose, hence why Donald and him are familiar with each other here, and was a moderate success. This lead to the Goverment, who’d already contracted a bunch of propaganda, one of which I covered in my Donald Duck Shorts Birthday Marathon because it contained prototypes for Gladstone and Scrooge, so another feature for South America was a win win: The US got another way to strengthen ties between the Americas, and Disney got a film they could put out during said war to lift spirits, as well as on that would likely be a hit in South America due to them not being under wartime money crunch or the misery of having a war looming overhead. As a side note. I found out after looking at the wikpiedia article on The Good Neighbor Program.. it eventually and sadly collapsed as the US post WWII shifted to the Cold War and thus threw away non interference if it meant beating the Russians. Classy. So yeah.. this film and i’ts predecessor are technically propaganda pictures. There was also another disney full length propoganda picture about fighter jets, I only learned about this thanks to the slashfilm article I found on the movie that told me a lot of this in the first place. It’s not avaliable but it should be.. though at the very least unlike say House of Mouse, Wander Over Yonder, Penn Zero: Part Time Hero, American Dragon Jake Long, The Weekenders, Pepper Anne and MANY more, it’s absence from Disney + makes sense. And I will continue to bitch about this till Disney actually starts adding more legacy animated shows, or at least makes a few of it’s own, though I will concede reviving the Mickey Mouse shorts that Disney Channel started up is a VERY good first step and i’m sure What If and Proud Family: Louder and Prouder will be fine. I just want more animation content on the streaming platform of one of the biggest animation studios in the world with one of the most storied histories. I’m REALLY not asking a lot.

That bit of bitching aside I will give Disney+ credit where it’s due. The service offers MOST of the Disney vault for a very reasonable price a month, in crisp HD, and thus allows someone like me, who hasn’t really dived into the disney vault and slept on watching three cabs despite borrowing it from some friends, to dive into beautiful animation like this any time. It also allows me to explore disney’s older films, the ones I want to anyway, at my leisure and it’s a REALLY nice feeling. It’s also nice to have all the various animated shows in nice clean copies. So while there are sizeable gaps in the library, many of which as highlighted above have no reason for not being there and some like Song of the South have DAMN GOOD reason for never being there, I still apricate the service for being a vast, glorious digital library of Disney content as well as stuff they’ve acquired like the marvel show library, and this review would not have been as easy to do without it. So with my opinions on D+ and the exposition for WHY this exists out of the way, as I couldn’t find much else on this flim’s background, join me after the read more for a full review of the film! Who says so? I says so!

We open with.. the Disney+ content warning again. In my review of the last part of “Catch as Cash Can” I went on about how much I apricated it and it stands: while i’m not blind that it’s a blanket statement to cover disney’s rears, it’s still apricated for them to care enough to force the content warning on the viewer. Given how bad they usually are at falling on the right side of history, this is very admirable. Though thankfully this film isn’t as offensive as the last content warning I got for the last part of “Catch as Cash can” aka “Watch registered White Guy Hamilton Camp play a bad indian sterotype for 22 minutes while my soul slowly dies”. Here there are bits, which i’ll get to now to save me the trouble later: The Littlest Gaucho’s side characters are all drawn pretty carcturish and a bit cringe inducing. The other is of course Panchito our Mexican representative.. who wears a sombrero and shoots two pistols around. And there’s just a tinge of white man going ot another country to get laid with the way Donald behaves throughout the picture. Basically little touches here and there but nothing that spoils the picture overall or makes whole scenes unwatchable. Still worth having the warning up, but not worth getting too worked up over. So onto the film itself and as mentioned i’ts Donald’s birthday! And I will say the film has lots of great little gags here and there.. I won’t be pointing all of them out because this film was 70 minutes long but their very charming. HIs first gift is a projector and screen.. which he naturally has to fight to get working and which first projects on his ass, already a good start. And a general thought I like is how receptive Donald is to soaking in another culture. He just seems joyusly enthralled by the various films, gifts and places his friends bring him..

But again we’ll get to that. Point is it’s very nice to see Disney portay learning about another culture so positively and with such a hot head as donald. Even if i’ts in part to appease the US Goverment, ther’es a genuine feeling that they truly fell in love with these countries and aren’t JUST shilling them because it’s in their contract, but because they genuinelly liked it there. So with that we get to our first segment. See the film is one of Disney’s Package films, anthology films taking a bunch of short segments and pasting them together, but here it’s framed through the narrative of DOnald’s birthday, so there is KIND of a plot.. but it’s mostly an excuse for musical numbers, short films, and more musical numbers.

Dammit Elmo, we will get to it! So naturally i’l lbe dividing up this review into various pieces. First up...

1. The Cold Blooded Penguin: Life of Pablo, The Good Version This is a brief but endearing short about a Penguin named Pablo who dosen’t like cold weather, can relate, and wants to move to some tropical paradise, again can relate. It’s BARELY related to the theme of hte movie, celebrating Central and South America, but it’s so damn charming I can’t help but love it. And Pablo is so damn adorable, as are his friends. I mean look at him.

He’s just so precious and you just want him to finally get to his paradise with the help of his friend, his boiler there smokey joe, and root for him as his farewell party dwindles from a bunch of penguins to just bob and gary here.

I may love Gary, the tall one, more than I love Pablo honestly> His sad eyes or the way he’s the ONLY one who sticks it out to the end, seeing Pablo off at last. Pablo’s first attempts, going without his boiler, which just ends iwth him freezing and attempting to carry smokey joe on his back both fail, he eventually decides to go with a boat and cleverly simply saws the ice berg he’s on so it’ll drift with his house and possessions, and has Gary hit it with a bottle both to christen it and to send it flying. Plus having bags on the bags on my eyes myself, I can relate to their tired expressions. As can we all after this year. Just a month and a half and it’s finally blessedly over.

Pablo makes his way through, finally finding his island only to nearly have his iceberg melt before he gets there. But he persevers and gets his paradise, even adorably eating a banana> Though it ends on a mealoncholy yet still funny note of Pablo missing home even though he has a pet turtle/butler now. Man I want one of those. One final note is that the short is narrated greatly by Sterling Holloway.. aka the future WInnie The Pooh using that exact voice which while a little weird in hindsight, just makes the short that more adorable if you imagine Pooh is reading a story to you. Just a really damn cute short with some good and intentive gags, and penguins. I mean i’ll be honest I have a soft spot in my hart for those tudeoxed boys thanks to the comic strip BLoom County and it’s lead character Opus taking up a LOT of real estate in my heart and brain. Here’s a few samples of him just so you get why.

Just a sweetheart. Though his honker would grow exponenitally with time. And once get grabbed by a card carrying MAGA asshole. But I can talk about my boy here and this strip again another day. Point is I may love pengies but even that aside this is a good short and a good way to start things off. Sadlly the pacing then lops out a bit as the next two bits aren’t QUITE as entertaining.

2. Birds Birds Birds: Of Arcuan BIrds and Toucan Sex Donald then watches a film on birds, and i’ts basically just a bunch of short funny gags with various tropical birds. There are a FEW notable bit sin the short, and I will get to them now, but otherwise it’s just okay.. not great but not exactly memorable. I honestly forgot there was anything BUT the Arcuan bird in this bit. Speaking of which A) The Arcuan Bird, a hyperactive pink little guy who makes a little “yatatata” noise, and boops donald a bit and later shows up in the film to steal Jose’s Cigar. Easily the most entertaining part of this section and there’s a reason why he became a massive fan faviorite, as well as got a more expanded roll in Legend of the Three Cablleros. He’d also apparently later return for another Package Film. What a bird. B) There’s a bit with Toucans, which I remember because I freaking love Toucans, the big colorful beaks look neat contrasted with their black and white bodies and they seem friendly and the one fictional one besides Toucan Sam I can rmemeber is Tuca of Tuca and Bertie. Nuff said. And because they mention the Tucan’s making love. First off this is how a Tucan makes love.

And secondly, clealry the term has evolved considerably, but it’s still chuckle inducing to have that term in a disney movie, especially since it makes me think of a number of things most notably this.

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Which, fun fact, is the song that will likely be sung when Donald and Daisy finally have sex in the Ducktales Reboot. Della didn’t buy those choir robes for nothing. Though the joke here is simply that they can’t kiss because they have big noses. GET IT. Though I have seen incompatable noses end marriages.

See I told you his honker got bigger. Okay onto the 3rd thing from this bit.

C) The Flamingos, who retract into themselves while Donald adorably copies. What a boy. With that I can move on from this segement thankfully and onto... an even worse one!.. wait...

3. The Littlest Gaucho: The Boring One This one’s a leftover from Saludos Amigos, likely because that one already had a Gaucho Bit with goofy and because it’s not very good. But Disney was strapped for cash so use everything you got. And yes I advocated for using everything in my review of life and times part 1.. but that’s more for a shared universe and left “Oh hey I found this short in our garbage let’s put it in another movie to save money” way. I appreciate being cheap, I myself am unemployed and right now these reviews are my source of income, but you could’ve just you know.. let the film be shorter? You didn’t have to waste animation leading inito this bit. This one is the story of a young boy, as narrated by his older self who can somehow see through the veil of time and yell at his younger self. How?

But it dosen’t really help the story as i’ve seen far better interactive narrators and ones clearly editing history. Especially since, despite ending on a VERY sour note, How I Met Your Mother was a pro at this. It’s not the film’s fault, but even back int he 40′s I swear they could do this better.

It’s the simple story of the little Gaucho finding a flying Donkey, befriending him, and then entering him in a jockey race which they win. There’s one or two good gags here, but it dosen’t have the cutness of the previous segments and only one or two good gags. It just feels like filler and if I watch the film again, which I probably will, I will fast forward past this. Thankfully after this we finally get a break.

4. A Song For Bahia: They call him JOSEEEEEEEEE.. and he’s Donald

Jose enters! Donald’s next gift is a book from Brazil that’s smoking..mostly because so’s Jose. The two friends reunite, with Jose in a story book asking Donald about , what I assume is Jose’s home state of Bahia, one of Brazil’s 20 states and spelled Baia in this movie for some reason. We then get an absolutely beautiful sequence of Jose’s voice actor singing about Bahia and showing off how beautiful the country is through gorgeous animation. It’s a really marvelous segment and really pretty to look at. And once that segment’s done the film starts to pick up in energy, though unlike the Gaucho segment, the Bahia song is actually good.

5. Os Quindins de Yayá: The Sleeper Has Awakened.. and by the sleeper I mean Donald’s Penis. There’s a few bits here. We start with the wonderful song, “Have You Ever Been to Bahia?”.. which is almost entirely Jose asking that to donald who says no, with some fun mindscrewy animation.. the film has not BEGUN to mindscrew, but we’ll get to that.

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Also for this segment Jose apparently has Jamie Madrox powers.. or he’s from Cragg.. either way, Donald hasn’t been to Baia so let’s go. The boys take a train, the Arucan messes things up again, etc etc and soon their in Baia where two major aspects of the film show up: Blending Live action with animation, and Donald being really horny. It’s not to a creepy degree outside of one segment, we’ll get there, but Donald being really into live action women is a major part of three segments of this film. If your wondering while Daisy had debuted, she wasn’t the ETCHED IN STONE, presence she’d become for Donald. Which I don’t have a problem with, I love them in Ducktales 2017, their one of the few tolerable aspects of the quack pack’s i’ve watched, and they were great in House of Mouse. I”m just saying some works don’t really have her around in them (Donald’s spy and papernik adventures), while other more charming and eligible women are, while others have her as outright abusive (Legend of the Three Caballeros). I’m not against Donsy when done properly, again huge fan of the Ducktales 2017 version of the couple, I just dont’ think it has to be mandatory. The fact the Italian comics made Donald a fairly likeable alien queen as a love interest proves it.

But yeah here Donald’s thirsty as fuck, can relate, and thus we get our next musical number.. and that blend of live action and animation. I will admit, especially on second viewing.. it’s pretty obvious their mostly using a green screened animated backdrop with the charcters on it. The other segments are much more integrated. That being said.. i’m perfectly fine with it, as Disney was on a really low budget, only able to get financing for package films like this since their main financer wouldn’t given them money for anything but shorts, so it was a workaround, not to mention having a mass talent exodus over the strike and World Fucking War II to contend with. So cheeping out on ONE segment in a large film, and STILL having it come out good is fine just fine. And it truly does, the segment centers around Yaya, a cookie seller and the object of Donald’s affections, though he gets mad when a guitar man slips in and woos her instead for a bit before eventually leaving her alone, with Donald getting a kiss. But while parts of that clearly haven’t aged well, it’s an utterly joyous and fun musical number in an already fun musical, and Aurora Miranda who plays Yaya, and is sister of Carmen Miranda something Disney actually put in promotional materials.... come to think of it I didn’t watch the trailer.. I’ll get to it in a moment. Point is, Miranda is very talented and it’s VERY fun number. Have a listen since the sequence itself is WAY to long to put video of up on youtube.

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And having watched the trailer during that music break, it’s not bad, I expected more cringe. The most I got was them calling the women “latin american lovlies” which.. seems.. wrong. But with the romance of Bahia setting and Donald dragged out by Jose, we can get into our next segement as, over halfway in, we finally get our third Cabllero

6. The Three Cablleros: Who Say So? We Say So!

HERE COMES THE PANCHITO Ladies and Gentleman and Others! HERE COMES THE PANCHITO! the moment you’ve been waiting for! HERE COMES THE PANCHITO! the pride of Mexico! HERE COMES PANCHITO! Panchito Pistoles!

When then meet Panchito who joyfully shoots guns around, because stereotype but thankfully he’s also joyful, jubilant and likeable much like his pal Jose. Panchito’s just a thoughtly likeable character and next to his smooth talking pal, it’s easy to see why the two became huge fan favorites. And thus we get our title track.

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IT’s a beautiful, fun segment, that while some portions, such as Panchito’s yelling or “some Latin baby’ haven’t aged particularly well, is still a fun colorful number with amazing music and great gags, that utterly sells our boys camaraderie. I have no notes, ten out of ten flawless classic number. Who Say So? I SAY SO! Also given both boys kiss Donald at some point.. yeah these boys are bi as fuck and damn i’ts awesome.

7. Mexico: Bored Again, Naturally. Donald then gets a pinata and we get a short story about a bunch of kids going around to places only to be told “no shelter no posada”. Like the Gauchito bit.. it’s pretty boring and nonconesquential and only gets a leg up due to being far shorter and a little adorable versus not really as adorable as the segement thinks it is. The kids end up at a party with a pinata. We do get a fun sequence after this nothing of a story of Donald batting a pinata around while the boys mess with him a bit. It’s fun stuff. Out of the PInata we get another storybook, and another slow segement of Panchito singing about mexico which is a less fluidly animated, and thus far less entertaining, version of the Bahia song.. diffrent song, same premise of a bird melodically and beautifully singing about his home land, but less engaging because it’s just still images. I get they were low on budget but while I can forigve that for the Yaya sequence.. this one.. I just can’t as they not only already did this, but did it less good the second time around. The song is lovely though, and I do miss a time in our culture when we looked at Mexico with fondness and didn’t have a FAR too large portion of our population think anyone from there should go back where they came when they come to our brave country to find shelter, aslym and opportunity just because they didn’t go through “proper channels’ even though that’s difficult. WHat i’m saying is fuck our immigration policy for the last 4 years, and bless the president-elect for planning to fix that ASAP. I felt it was worth mentioning in a review ABOUT a Mexican character who, in the reboot, is an immigrant to America.

8. Everybody Dance: Another fun number.

We’re onto Mexico and it’s time for another musical number

So our heroes dance, Donald hits on some more women.. stuff we’ve seen before but it’s still a fun beautiful song and unlike the last bit while the animation has clearly aged enough to be more obvious, it still looks great next to the various live action dancers and blends real well. A fun time that gives us more great music and another reminder from donald that...

I mean I get being thirsty as shit, again can relate.. but the next segment takes it from Donald and the Boys being kinda horny to.

9. The Beach: Donald Gets Creeptacular

Yeah this bit is .. less endearing. The boys fly the serape over to a beach, and divebomb the girls, which isn’t a sex act.. that i’m aware of. But yeah chasing around several women, and donald leaving the Serape to chase them around old beach movie/benie hill/trying my patience style. It’s cringe is what i’m saying as a man literally chasing a woman around is considered flirtitng here and that’s all kinds of EUGGGGHHHH. The previous segments had Donald be kind of respectful in his woman chasing: while he was pretty horny, he also tipped his hat, flirted a bit, asked to dance you know, normal shit.. not decided “let’s chase them with a serape that will turn them on!’ jesus.. yeah not much to say here either just.. really creepy. But we have not reached peak horny donald yet.. oh no.

10. Donald’s Surreal Revere: WHAT EXACTLY THE FUCK.

Dora Luz appears in the sky of Mexico after the boys exit the book and flip to Mexico’s night life... just go with hit and Donald swoons over her before joining her int he book and after getting a kiss from her and swooning over her.. has an acid trip. I .. I don’t know how else to describe Donald’s surreal reverie. It’s clear Walt just told the animators do whatever. I will TRY to describe this sequence as best I can, but I make no promises except what I describe is exactly what happened, see for yourself.

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Okay so after Dora’s magical floating kisses, just go with it, kiss donald he explodes, in a rocket blast clearly symbolizing his errection, then becomes a neon sign and a hummingbird, just go with it, tries to kiss Dora’s image appearing on a flower, then Jose and Panchito BURST out of the flower with tiny chipmunk voices and gun violence, a SCREAMING TECHNICOLOR TRANSTION, dora singing the song in the middle of a flower again , donald making out with the flower but it turning out ot be panchito with a giraffe neck saying “Some fun eh kid?”, donald falling through a sea of ladies, donald chasing the ladies on a serape. Donald’s disembodied head looking at the ladies before bursting out of the picture to chase them GOOD GOD DID WE NEED MORE OF THAT?! The boys ending up on female bodies and them some sort of horse abomination. Then we get into what must of inspiried a young david Lynch as donald kisses the flower agian, then ends up in one as they replay a creepy whispery recording of either Jose or Panchito saying pretty girls while we see still images of the girls from the beach. Hummingbird Flower Donald then has a romantic duet with a lady because WHY NOT at this point, then multiple donalds before he spins away. We get one last number with donald dancing with living cacti that turn into mini donald’s that’s slightly more sane and finally this bit is done. IN conclusion.

I just.. I have no words. The giant mess of text up there should explain it and I purposfully didn’t divy it up as i’ve been trying to do more often, as it deserves to be one long string of nonsense. I just.. it’s beautiful to look at but what the hell was that. Is this going to happen every time Donald and Daisy have sex? Is this what Donald’s brain is like all the time? Did Panchito inject him with pure liquid acid?

So yeah we thankfully conclude the film after that with

14. The Wrap UP The boys horse around with a bull and then heartwarmingly watch fireworks together.. there isn’t much to add it’s jsut fun to watch and a nice pallete cleanser after loosing my sanity. Isn’t that right keith david?

You always say that! So...

Final Thoughts: I’ve made my thoughts on the various segments clear, but what of the film as a whole? As a whole.. it’s pretty fun. Is it the best film Disney’s Produced? probably not. But it’s a fun, brisk 70 minutes, hampered by a few slow spots and some weird horny bits, and various segments feel like an acid trip despite having never taken acid. But our boys easlly anchor the surreality and thirst and all three have great chemistry both comedically, friendship wise and romantically. It’s also very easy to see why this film and it’s cablleros got big in Mexico and Brazil as the film seems like a love letter to both, and is fairly respectful. WHich for the time, sex tourism aside, is pretty damn inspried. So yeah in conclusion, this is a really fun memorable film, it was even better on a second watch and it’s an enjoyable colorful reminder of Disney’s package film era, which I might dig into a bit.. I just may have to borrow a copy of make mine music.. guess what just got added to my list of “why the fuck isn’t this on disney plussss?”

Regardless this was a fun review and auspcious start to the ride of the Cablleros. if you’d like to comission your own movie or tv review, hit up my ask box or submit box or shoot me an ask to get my discord. You can also join my patreon, patreon.com/popculturebuffet, Until then you can check this space for the various ongoing series mentioned and regular Ducktales coverage every monday. Until then, Adios, with a christmas message from my personal fourth Cabllero

#the three caballeros #donald duck #panchito pistoles #jose carioca #bahia #mexico #donsy #opus the penguin #bloom county #ducktales #aurora miranda #disney #disney plus #disney +#disney+#comissions #ride of the three cablleros

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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 3.1: Valar Dohaeris

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Scene 1

Summary: show!Dany and show!Jorah are on a ship. The two discuss a) the dragons' growth, b) whether it's worth being complicit in the slave trade or not and c) the Dothraki's seasickness.

We begin the episode with this conversation about the dragons:

JORAH: They're growing fast.

DAENERYS: Not fast enough. I can't wait that long. I need an army.

Is it true that Dany needs the dragons to conquer Westeros and wishes they were bigger than they are at this point in the books? It is:

Another year, or perhaps two, and he may be large enough to ride. Then I shall have no need of ships to cross the great salt sea.

But that time was not yet come. Rhaegal and Viserion were the size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have outweighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked. And so Daenerys Targaryen must rely on wood and wind and canvas to bear her home. (ASOS Daenerys I)

However, that's not all there is to their relationship. Dany loves them as she would love her own human children:

They are my children, she told herself, and if the maegi spoke truly, they are the only children I am ever like to have. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Because she loves them like a mother would, she pays attention to how they grow and develop and act like a mother would:

Dragons always preferred to attack from above, Dany had learned. Should either get between the other and the sun, he would fold his wings and dive screaming, and they would tumble from the sky locked together in a tangled scaly ball, jaws snapping and tails lashing. The first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each other, but it was only sport. No sooner would they splash into the sea than they would break apart and rise again, shrieking and hissing, the salt water steaming off them as their wings clawed at the air. (ASOS Daenerys I)

That level of care and attention (and her own cleverness in the choice of the word "dracarys") is what allows her to figure out how to order them to breathe fire on her own:

She took a chunk of salt pork out of the bowl in her lap and held it up for her dragons to see. All three of them eyed it hungrily. Rhaegal spread green wings and stirred the air, and Viserion’s neck swayed back and forth like a long pale snake’s as he followed the movement of her hand. “Drogon,” Dany said softly, “dracarys.” And she tossed the pork in the air.

Drogon moved quicker than a striking cobra. Flame roared from his mouth, orange and scarlet and black, searing the meat before it began to fall. As his sharp black teeth snapped shut around it, Rhaegal’s head darted close, as if to steal the prize from his brother’s jaws, but Drogon swallowed and screamed, and the smaller green dragon could only hiss in frustration.

“Stop that, Rhaegal,” Dany said in annoyance, giving his head a swat.

“You had the last one. I’ll have no greedy dragons.” She smiled at Ser Jorah. “I won’t need to char their meat over a brazier any longer.”

“So I see. Dracarys?”

All three dragons turned their heads at the sound of that word, and Viserion let loose with a blast of pale gold flame that made Ser Jorah take a hasty step backward. Dany giggled. “Be careful with that word, ser, or they’re like to singe your beard off. It means ‘dragonfire’ in High Valyrian. I wanted to choose a command that no one was like to utter by chance.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

She feels a lot of pride for them and knows how to distinguish each of them:

Every man of them, from captain to cook’s boy, loved to watch the three fly … though none so much as Dany.

[...] Viserion’s scales were the color of fresh cream, his horns, wing bones, and spinal crest a dark gold that flashed bright as metal in the sun. Rhaegal was made of the green of summer and the bronze of fall. They soared above the ships in wide circles, higher and higher, each trying to climb above the other.

[...] Drogon was aloft as well, though not in sight; he would be miles ahead, or miles behind, hunting.

He was always hungry, her Drogon. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Now, does this scene prevent any of these aspects from being true for show!Dany as well? No. That being said, not only these aspects don't come across as strongly in this scene (aside from how proud she is of them), it's also important to notice the show's priorities: they would rather focus on how show!Dany is dissatisfied with their slow growth because of her need to wage war and take back the Iron Throne (which, as I said in this post, is only a means to an end rather than the end that Dany really wants). Benioff describes Dany as "fiercely ambitious" and says in this video that "what she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright". I can't agree with these descriptions, so I need to call out this scene's priorities.

Related to how Benioff feels about Dany, we also have show!Dany saying this:

DAENERYS: Not fast enough. I can't wait that long. I need an army.

At this point in the books, Dany isn't even thinking of that, she is thinking that she will go to Pentos and meet Illyrio.

“From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve him.”

The fat man with sweet stink in his hair ... “Illyrio?” she said. “You were sent by Magister Illyrio?”

“We were, Your Grace,” old Whitebeard replied. (ACOK Daenerys V)

(Now, it could be argued, like @rainhadaenerys did in this meta, that show!Dany has more agency than Dany when she realizes, on her own, that she needs an army. It's a valid perspective that can coexist with what I'm saying here.)

This change doesn't bode well with the fact that they are choosing to portray the Iron Throne as show!Dany's most important goal when, like I just said, this is not what primarily motivates Dany. They are making show!Dany more ambitious (which, again, is not a bad thing in and of itself) than in canon and will have her pay the price for that later on.

JORAH: We'll be in Astapor by nightfall. Some say the Unsullied are the greatest soldiers in the world.

DAENERYS: The greatest slave-soldiers in the world. The distinction means a good deal to some people.

If D&D were following Dany's characterization, she wouldn't be aware of how deplorable and unacceptable slavery is at this point:

“...In Astapor you can buy Unsullied.”

“The slaves in the spiked bronze hats?” Dany had seen Unsullied guards in the Free Cities, posted at the gates of magisters, archons, and dynasts. “Why should I want Unsullied? They don’t even ride horses, and most of them are fat.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

Some people could argue that show!Dany's awareness of these issues from the get-go is a good change. However, I think it detracts from Dany's character development quite a bit. As @khaleesirin says here:

Dany’s supposed arbitrariness and hypocrisy ranging from “why wasn’t she against slavery earlier?” to “why did she leave Astapor?” stem from the fact that her beliefs, her core principles, were “anti-foundational”; they didn’t come from some pre-existing knowledge she adapted as a priori truth. They were all a result of her actual experiences. (x)

With this change, show!Dany misses out on the chance to receive this sort of growth; it detracts from her arc being of someone who develops her political goals and moral values along the way and may actually later validate claims that Dany is too self-righteous (she never was). Now, to be fair to the show writers (and I know this can be hard), particularly to Weiss (who, at least back in 2013, seemed to be much more sympathetic towards Dany than Benioff), he knows that Dany was a slave herself and that that informs her feelings and eventual actions against the masters (And so does Emilia Clarke). Even so, I have to say: I don't think Dany would have gone to Astapor if she were fully aware of the implications of being complicit in the slave trade.

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

“I want to sail now, not on the tide, I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t, can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

In these passages, we find out that witnessing the Unsullied's training is so hard for Dany that it makes her cry. It makes her question Jorah's honor as a knight for having thought that it was okay to bring her there. It makes her want to leave Astapor and never look back. I would say that Dany is an accidental queen (in the sense that she only became one for very specific circumstances, namely that all the men around her died) and, similarly, an accidental revolutionary - not in the sense that her haters argue (i.e. she just wanted an army and it became convenient to free the slaves), but rather because she only ended up in Astapor for very specific reasons: a) she didn't know how wrong slavery was and thought that slaves were treated like normal servants and b) she needed an army (not because of her "ambition", but because she realized that she shouldn't depend entirely on Illyrio and remain a beggar queen).

Show!Dany, on the other hand, knows that slavery is unacceptable and still sails to Astapor. Some things remain like they are in the books despite that change: like Dany, show!Dany still feels empathy for the slaves and risks a dragon solely because she wanted to free them. However, on a superficial read, it gives a bit of weight to the notion that she is too ambitious or that freeing the slaves was only a secondary goal to that of getting an army. Even if show canon can still disprove these claims, it's frustrating because they would be even easier to debunk if the show writers had been more faithful to the books.

JORAH: Do those people have any better ideas about how to put you on the Iron Throne?

DAENERYS: It's too beautiful a day to argue.

One of Dany's core traits is that she is open-minded and accepting of feedback, both positive and negative.

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe. (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Your Grace, I did not mean to give offense.”

“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

This characteristic, however, doesn't come across in this scene, in which show!Dany is brushing off any discussion and trying to retain her own opinion on the matter.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't moments in which we see show!Dany listening to her advisors and following their counsel (there are many) - heck, even now, she is following show!Jorah's advice since she is still going to Astapor despite her misgivings.

However, considering that:

a) the show is, in this episode, adapting parts of ACOK Daenerys V and ASOS Daenerys I and II (all of which contain explicit moments of Dany asking for advice and feedback and truth from her advisors, even if they disagree with her),

b) the show will later try to paint show!Dany as reckless or dangerous when she doesn't listen to her advisors and

c) there's a widespread misconception that Dany (especially the show version) is unable to consider other people's perspectives... I end up looking askance at this scene.

They could have written many others (such as any of the three examples from the books that I showed above) that would have left us with a different impression of Dany. Worse scenes will come, of course, but I'm taking note of every single thing that may have helped to mischaracterize Dany in the eyes of the general audience.

Also, unlike show!Dany (who isn't shown onscreen offering either counterarguments or "better ideas" than show!Jorah's advice to turn Astapor), Dany is shown onpage making lots of questions to Jorah's counsel before deciding to follow it:

“How am I to buy a thousand slave soldiers? All I have of value is the crown the Tourmaline Brotherhood gave me.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

“Those are Illyrio’s tiger skins,” she objected. “And Illyrio is a friend to House Targaryen.”  (ASOS Daenerys I)

“There will be dangers on such a long march ...” (ASOS Daenerys I)

“What if Captain Groleo refuses to change course, though? And Arstan, Strong Belwas, what will they do?” (ASOS Daenerys I)

While it could be argued that Dany is not offering "better ideas" here either, that's not my point: my point is that Dany is being shown here as an active player who takes part in discussions of which course of action to take, which is not what we tend to see in the show. Indeed, there are plenty of moments in which the series has show!Dany follow her advisors' counsel with no objections or complements of her own at all. That's why there are lots of different flavors of misconceptions about Dany: when it comes to whether she listens to people's advice or not, some argue that she can't think on her own and depends too much on them, some argue that she is too self-absorbed and never listens. In D&D's case, they have said that show!Dany has only relied on the men around her for the first two seasons, which is blatantly untrue in the books - see examples of Dany making her own decisions in both AGOT and ACOK here and here. Their misunderstanding of Dany is what makes me wary of this scene (for it is informed by said misunderstanding), so it's necessary to point out that what it intends to convey about show!Dany isn't what the books intend to convey about Dany.

Then, we have this:

DAENERYS: It's too beautiful a day to argue.

(Dothraki man vomiting)

JORAH: You're right. Another lovely day on the high seas.

DAENERYS: Don't mock them. They're the first Dothraki who have ever been on a ship. They followed me across the poison water. If they'll do it, others will. And with a true khalasar ...

JORAH: The Dothraki follow strength above all, khaleesi. You'll have a true khalasar when you prove yourself strong. And not before.

This exchange may be brief, but it is wrong and offensive on so many levels.

First, show!Dany seems to suggest that she is interested in expanding her khalasar when she says that "if they'll [follow her across the poison water], others will", which is something Dany never expressed any desire to do in the books.

Second, both show!Dany and show!Jorah think that the former doesn't really have "a true khalasar". Why doesn't she have a "true khalasar"? Is it because they are too few? Is it because show!Dany hasn't proven herself strong (as show!Jorah puts it)? In any case, both suggestions are bullshit. Dany does consider her "meager" group (as she puts it) a khalasar:

“We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. (ACOK Daenerys I)

Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died. (ACOK Daenerys I)

Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Also, while I've criticized the underdevelopment of Dany's khalasar before, each of them have different reactions to traveling at sea, so the show's portrayal manages to make their lack of characterization even worse:

Her brave young bloodriders had stared off at the dwindling coastline with huge white eyes, each of the three determined to show no fear before the other two, while her handmaids Irri and Jhiqui clutched the rail desperately and retched over the side at every little swell. The rest of Dany’s tiny khalasar remained below decks, preferring the company of their nervous horses to the terrifying landless world about the ships. When a sudden squall had enveloped them six days into the voyage, she heard them through the hatches; the horses kicking and screaming, the riders praying in thin quavery voices each time Balerion heaved or swayed. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Perhaps more importantly, unlike what show!Jorah says, Dany's khalasar is already devoted and faithful to Dany ever since she walked out of the pyre unscathed with three dragons. They already think that she is strong:

She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away ... yet she was unhurt.

[...] The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s. (AGOT Daenerys X)

“We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law. (ACOK Daenerys I)

Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki-fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. “I have won no victories,” she tried telling her handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.

Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

At this point, Dany doesn't have to prove herself as a leader to anyone because she has already done so. However, D&D seem to think that show!Dany still has to. What's even worse is that this plot point will be forgotten; show!Dany's khalasar will only make a brief appearance in season four and then disappear until she's captured and later unites all the khalasars to her cause. Then, when show!Dany crosses the narrow sea in season six, the Dothraki's fear of the "poison water" will no longer be an inconvenience (even though she is carrying thousands of them). It's lazy writing that, nonetheless, undermines Dany's character.

Finally, while at least they have show!Dany empathizing with the Dothraki the way Dany also does in the book, I wish the writers had made show!Dany empathize with the Dothraki based on her experiences like Dany does, because it highlights that Dany is humble and views herself as an equal to them:

The Dothraki distrusted the sea and all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine. (ACOK Daenerys V)

This scene may last for less than two minutes, but, as you can see, there's still a lot of wrong (or at least questionable) to dissect in it.

Scene 2

Summary: show!Dany is given a tour of the Unsullied barracks by Kraznys while show!Missandei translates his Valyrian into the Common Tongue. Show!Dany is outraged by their training, but show!Jorah still urges her to purchase them. On the way to the ship, show!Dany is distracted by a child who turns out to be an assassin sent to deliver a deadly manticore to kill her. Show!Barristan impales the manticore with his dagger and the child leaves. Then, show!Barristan introduces himself to show!Dany and offers her his service.

Considering how other aspects were poorly handled, I think Dany’s discomfort with the Unsullied’s training was translated relatively well from the books to the show. Even so, I wish they had added more of Dany's emotional reactions:

“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as the blood ran down the man’s chest. (ASOS Daenerys II)

“How can that be?” she demanded through the scribe. (ASOS Daenerys II)

“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe. “Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no names?” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”

“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”

Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap. Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at Kraznys any longer. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Even the part where show!Dany is horrified by the discovery that the Unsullied are forced to kill a baby while its mother watches (which at least the show writers rightly focused on) doesn't convey a lot of emotion like in the books... It doesn't seem like show!Dany is struggling to hide her revulsion or that her blood pressure is lowering because of her anxiety in the moment. I understand, however, that the directors never allowed Emilia Clarke to express too many feelings in her portrayal of show!Dany, so I don't tend to blame her.

I also want to take note of what is in line with the Unsullied's training in the books:

The Unsullied are forced to stand for a day with no food or water to prove their discipline and strength.

The beginning of their training, the drilling from dawn to dusk and the mastering of the weapons.

The Unsullied not being considered men.

The Unsullied not moving even after their nipples are cut off.

The Unsullied needing to go to the slave marts to kill a baby before its mother’s eyes.

There are some things that were changed or omitted, however:

Even more Unsullied die during their training: only one boy in four survives rather than one boy in three. (Which makes it even more disgusting that they will try to frame "conciliation" with and "mercy" towards the slavers as the better path in the later seasons)

No mention of the “wine of courage”, which the Unsullied drink in the books to feel less pain and endure any torture.

No mention of the puppies that the Unsullied are given only to be forced to kill a year later (and, if they don’t, they are fed to the surviving dogs).

No mention that their names are changed every day so that they lose their sense of individuality. This will be included on episode 3.5, however.

Kraznys is not shown whipping Missandei and other slaves.

Overall, the show gave us enough reasons to understand why show!Dany's rebellion against the slave masters is righteous.

The biggest problem of the scene was replacing Barristan for Jorah as the advisor who is with Dany when she meets the Unsullied: it gives room to the perspective of a slaver, who attempts to normalize the masters' treatment of the Unsullied. This undermines how abhorrent and unjust their training is. Right off the bat, we have our first sign that the show will turn into slavery apologia (to the point of later comparing Dany to the Nazis and the Ghiscari slavers to the Jews via subtext).

In the books, there is a Doylist reason as to why Barristan is with Dany when she meets the Unsullied for the first time: his presence and opinions emphasize how wrong and unacceptable the training of the Unsullied is.

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. (ASOS Daenerys II)

“You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you have seen them, what do you say?”

“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at once.  (ASOS Daenerys II)

Arstan Whitebeard’s face was still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. (ASOS Daenerys II)

“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her people.”

“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.

“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them.”

“I can well believe that,” said Dany.

“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

That's not to say, of course, that he was the one who motivated Dany to begin her abolitionist campaign (that's her decision and only hers), only that his appearance influences the framing of the scene (just like show!Jorah's appearance does). It also has negative implications for show!Dany's characterization, since, as @yendany said here, Dany may have unconsciously desired to have someone with an anti-slavery stance (like hers) by her side when she chose to have Barristan accompany her to meet the Unsullied.

Also, having show!Jorah be with show!Dany when she sees the training of the Unsullied means erasing the fact that, in the books, Dany left Jorah on the ship because he forced a kiss on her and she no longer trusted him enough to be alone with him. Erasing this event from the books means that Jorah's creepy and disrespectful behaviors toward Dany are, in the show writers' opinion, irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, which is horrible. I will talk more about this issue in the post discussing the things from the books that the show completely left out, but I still felt the need to briefly address this here.

Replacing Barristan for Jorah also led to one of Dany's best assertions to be cut:

“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said.

“There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I ... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?” (ASOS Daenerys II)

In the books, this scene highlights a few things:

Dany is not looking for an army because she is "fiercely ambitious", but because she lived in poverty for years and saw her brother not getting the help he needed (something she also experienced in Qarth, despite having dragons). She knows it's not a good idea to rely entirely on others, which is why she went to Astapor. (besides her ignorance, which I already explained above and in this post)

Despite empathizing with the slaves' plight, Barristan did not go through what they went through (he is a well-intentioned ally, as you will). Dany, on the other hand, did. She was a sex slave once and does not need to be reminded that being complicit in the slave trade is morally wrong. She still remembers "how it felt to be afraid".

Show!Jorah would never say that it's "better to come a beggar than a slaver" because he is okay with slavery, making it harder for this assertion to be added. It wasn't impossible for the show writers to have added it, however - they could have simply had show!Dany be less confrontational and say, by her own initiative, that she knows what it is like to be sold and that she hasn't forgotten how it felt to be afraid. To be fair, as I already said, Weiss shows awareness that Dany's empathy is informed by the fact that she was a slave before, but there isn't any scene in the show explicitly making that point, which is quite a shame. Instead, most of the scenes seem to communicate Benioff's reading of the events:

Benioff: Idealism is wonderful, but it's not gonna happen if you're idealistic, you gotta be a realist. She feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it. (x)

Benioff: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso. (x)

This idea that show!Dany needs to be a "realist" makes it very likely that Benioff (and who knows which other writers) sides with show!Jorah on this discussion. This also explains why his perspective is being favored to the detriment of show!Dany's and show!Barristan's.

Also, I've already written an entire post about how Dany is not primarily driven by prophecies or destiny or, as Benioff puts it, a "divine mission".

Also, he misses out on the fact that Dany's idealism in the books (and even in the show) actually pays off. As I said here:

Like with Viserys and Drogo, Dany is influenced by both of their [Jorah's and Barristan's] recommendations and apply them in different ways while forging her own path: she will not help to maintain the oppression of the slaves like Barristan advised her, but she won’t play by the rules (because they view human beings as objects to be sold and invalidate her moral values, so they shouldn’t be acknowledged as such to begin with) like Jorah advised her: she will break the rules because of her moral duty (as she sees it) to free the slaves.

And yes, this act of rebellion will have negative (and unintended) consequences later in ASOS and ADWD, but it was still righteous and necessary for it to have happened for the reasons expressed in these links. To summarize them, ending the supremacy of the masters will always be a good thing, and this wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Dany's idealism. The books validate her idealism instead of belittling it.

DAENERYS: How many do you have to sell?

MISSANDEI: She asks how many Unsullied are for sale. (Kraznys points eight fingers) 8,000.

KRAZNYS: Tell the Westerosi whore she has until tomorrow.

MISSANDEI: Master Kraznys asks that you please hurry. Many other buyers are interested.

I'm singling out this part of show!Dany's talk with Kraznys and show!Missandei because I don't think the show writers really understood why Dany asked "how many do you have to sell?" in the books. First, let's see the context in which she made that question:

“Tell her it is well she came to Astapor, then. Ask her how large an army she wishes to buy.”

“How many Unsullied do you have to sell?”

“Eight thousand fully trained and available at present.[”] (ASOS Daenerys II)

As I said in this post, Dany doesn’t ask how large an army she wants (though she admits she needs soldiers), but rather how many Unsullied he has to sell. This is one of the several hints that she wants to rescue them all (not her interest to buy an army), even she must go to extreme lengths to do so. See also this passage:

She doesn't have to find a way to buy eight thousand of them. Jorah himself had only advised her to buy a thousand. But then, again, it's because she wants to free them all.

In the show, this doesn't come across. Aside from her uneasiness about the training, the show cuts all of the other moments hinting that Dany will do against the slave trade rather than be complicit in it.

“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me …” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at all. (ASOS Daenerys II)

It wouldn’t have been hard to have her say it out loud that she will take “more than a hundred, if any at all” or that she can’t leave the city now. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to ask Kraznys about what would happen if a hypothetical enemy offered freedom to the Unsullied.

To be fair, we also see show!Dany saying this to show!Jorah while they are going back to the ship:

DAENERYS: 8,000 dead babies.

Like the Dany of the books, show!Dany is also distressed at the systematic killings that allowed for the Unsullied to become who they are, so I can't say that they are only making her motivations be about the need to get an army (though, as I showed above, they overfocused on that need too). Anyway, this brings me to this part:

DAENERYS: 8,000 dead babies.

JORAH: The Unsullied are a means to an end.

DAENERYS: Once I own them, these men ...

JORAH: They're not men. Not anymore.

Unlike in the show, Dany is the one who reminds Jorah that the Unsullied are no longer men. However, the reason why she does so is completely different from show!Jorah's:

“How many men do they have for sale?”

“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

I will quote myself on the significance of this scene:

Here, Dany recognizes that no human being should ever have to undergo the sort of systematic abuse and torture that the Unsullied were forced to experience in order to become as subservient as they are. Dany recognizes how dehumanizing and unacceptable that sort of treatment was for making them “like one man” meant for sale (or “not men” at all) - that’s why she tells Jorah to not call them men: she asks that he doesn’t erase their suffering and talk as if the way they were treated was, in any way, acceptable.

Jorah doesn’t understand any of this, though. While his advice for Dany to go to Astapor ultimately paid off because of Dany’s actions, we should remind ourselves that he did her no favor. I’ve already shown in another post how he still has no problem with slavery even after being exiled, and you can see that in the next passage below: he can’t understand why would Dany be angry at him for advising her to go to Astapor to buy them nor why would she be appalled by how they are treated, so he tries to normalize the situation by focusing on how effective as a force they can be (“the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained…”). That’s enough for Dany, who rightfully slaps him in the face.

She makes it clear here: if he were her true knight, he wouldn’t have brought her to Astapor. (And that he forced a kiss on her and looked at her breasts without her consent makes her anger even more pronounced, rightfully so.) Thankfully, Dany is a true queen, but not because of him.

Does any of this come across in the show? No. For one, as I said above, show!Dany is given less agency because she needs to be reminded that the Unsullied are no longer men and her righteous anger toward Jorah is erased. For two, show!Jorah's perspective is again prioritized and never called out as immoral like in the books. (Again, the show writers' bias in his favor is showing).

Their dialogue goes on like this:

DAENERYS: Once I own an army of slaves, what will I be?

JORAH: Do you think these slaves will have better lives serving Kraznys and men like him or serving you? You'll be fair to them. You won't mutilate them to make a point. You won't order them to murder babies. You'll see they're properly fed and sheltered. A great injustice has been done to them. Closing your eyes will not undo it.

While it's true that Jorah also gives arguments as to why Dany should buy the Unsullied, they are different ones:

“I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I recall.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

We'll see some of these arguments from ASOS Daenerys II being expressed in episode 3.3, but that's not my point: my point is that the show writers prioritized show!Jorah's point of view so much that they created new arguments for him to make show!Jorah seem, as Benioff puts it, "realist". In the books, for instance, Jorah never acknowledges that “a great injustice has been done to them” - he only focuses on how they'll be useful to Dany and how they'll cause less collateral damage (which is what Dany wants). So, again, we had foreshadowing for the show's turn into slavery apologia right from the beginning of show!Dany's storyline, especially when one compares it to the books (which are far from perfect; I've already criticized, for instance, the books' lack of attention to the freedmen's perspectives. Even then, however, I doubt they'll be justifying slavery any time soon).

Then we get to the scene in the docks. Honestly, I don't understand why they changed it so much. I’m not even referring to the fact that it takes place in Astapor rather than Qarth, but rather to other two major divergences.

First, in the books, Jorah notices that he and Dany are being followed:

As they made their way toward the next quay, Ser Jorah laid a hand against the small of her back. “Your Grace. You are being followed. No, do not turn.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

Dany makes plenty of questions and observations about the followers as she observes them:

Dany let her glance sweep over the strangers. The brown man was near as wide as he’d looked in the platter, with a gleaming bald head and the smooth cheeks of a eunuch. A long curving arakh was thrust through the sweat-stained yellow silk of his bellyband. Above the silk, he was naked but for an absurdly tiny iron-studded vest. Old scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive belly, pale against his nut-brown skin.

The other man wore a traveler’s cloak of undyed wool, the hood thrown back. Long white hair fell to his shoulders, and a silky white beard covered the lower half of his face. He leaned his weight on a hardwood staff as tall as he was. Only fools would stare so openly if they meant me harm. All the same, it might be prudent to head back toward Jhogo and Aggo. “The old man does not wear a sword,” she said to Jorah in the Common Tongue as she drew him away. (ACOK Daenerys V)

She also has a very funny scene with a merchant; he wants to sell a platter for an expensive price and she keeps asking for it to go down, but she is actually only using the platter to pay attention to how the two men following her look like and what they will do. It’s a scene showcasing both her cleverness and her sense of humor:

“A most excellent brass, great lady,” the merchant exclaimed. “Bright as the sun! And for the Mother of Dragons, only thirty honors.”

The platter was worth no more than three. “Where are my guards?” Dany declared. “This man is trying to rob me!” For Jorah, she lowered her voice and spoke in the Common Tongue. “They may not mean me ill. Men have looked at women since time began, perhaps it is no more than that.”

The brass-seller ignored their whispers. “Thirty? Did I say thirty? Such a fool I am. The price is twenty honors.”

“All the brass in this booth is not worth twenty honors,” Dany told him as she studied the reflections. The old man had the look of Westeros about him, and the brown-skinned one must weigh twenty stone. The Usurper offered a lordship to the man who kills me, and these two are far from home. Or could they be creatures of the warlocks, meant to take me unawares? (ACOK Daenerys V)

Second, in the books, a Qartheen offers Dany a jewel box:

A Qartheen stepped into her path. “Mother of Dragons, for you.” He knelt and thrust a jewel box into her face.

Dany took it almost by reflex. The box was carved wood, its mother-of-pearl lid inlaid with jasper and chalcedony. “You are too generous.” She opened it. Within was a glittering green scarab carved from onyx and emerald. Beautiful, she thought. This will help pay for our passage. (ACOK Daenerys V)

It makes sense for Dany to fall into this person's trap because she was receiving gifts from the Qartheen and people from other regions all the time during her stay simply for being the Mother of Dragons. (Which is not to say that they ultimately helped her; they did not)

In the show, a random child somehow captures show!Dany’s attention enough so that show!Dany follows her for no reason and then gets fooled. It doesn’t make much sense and actually portrays show!Dany as someone who is easily distracted by things. The only detail that is salvageable is that show!Dany is able to guess that the assassin was sent by the warlocks, just like Dany applies the knowledge she had previously received of the Sorrowful Men to correctly identify the person who tried to kill her as one.

Finally, we get to show!Barristan's introduction.

DAENERYS: You know this man?

JORAH: I know him as one of the greatest fighters the Seven Kingdoms has ever seen and as the Lord Commander of Robert Baratheon's Kingsguard.

BARRISTAN: King Robert is dead. I have been searching for you, Daenerys Stormborn, to ask your forgiveness. I was sworn to protect your family. I failed them. I am Barristan Selmy, Kingsguard to your father. Allow me to join your Queensguard and I will not fail you again.

First, as I said above, the show erases most (if not all) the moments in which Jorah attempts to isolate Dany from other men and make her distrust them. This moment is one of those:

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

“I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

Jorah's description of Barristan in the books is much less flattering than the one from the show because Jorah is hellbent on isolating Dany from other men.

Second, I know most fans think that having Barristan reveal his identity right away was ultimately a good choice for practical reasons (i.e., it would be too easy for the fans to remember Barristan's actor and figure out his identity), but I think this change ultimately did far more harm than good.

How did show!Barristan track show!Dany? Why would he think she was going to Astapor? How could he have known if he didn't have Illyrio's (or anyone's) support?

How was he aware that the warlocks sent an assassin after Dany? In the books, he saves her on a rush, after the manticore left the jewel box. In the show, he drops the ball before the manticore leaves it. For some unknown reason, he already knew that it had the intent to kill her.

In the books, Barristan is supposed to serve as a positive contrast to Jorah's negative behaviors when they are both put on trial for betraying Dany's trust. Because show!Barristan reveals his identity early on, the contrast is lost.

Barristan is the one who tells Dany about Jorah's betrayal in the books. Since it wouldn't make sense for show!Barristan to only tell show!Dany about this later on, the show writers had the Lannisters randomly think that Dany is a threat, that Dany and Jorah are a good duo that must be separated and that sending a letter pardoning Jorah would necessarily do the deed. Not only that's stupid (Jorah received and sent letters without Dany's knowledge in both mediums), it also validates the idea that show!Jorah is good to show!Dany (something that the showrunners think is the case). These are all unfortunate consequences that arose from the early reveal of show!Barristan's identity.

By revealing himself earlier, show!Barristan loses his arc from the books, which was partly about finding a liege who was morally worthy of being served after he spent years in the service of bad kings. (He might say later in episode 3.5 that he's looking for the right person to follow, but his actions don't show it in any way.) That Barristan hid his identity and only pledged his sword to Dany because he realized that she was more than Rhaegar's sister, but also a queen in her own right, speaks volumes to his character development and to how we're supposed to see Dany in a sympathetic manner. Unfortunately, the show writers (especially Benioff) don't like Dany very much. As this review hopefully shows (and others will make it even clearer), they go out of their way to undermine her intelligence and empathy and humbleness and all of the other traits that make Dany who she is, while GRRM goes out of his way to portray Dany in a sympathetic light, with this chapter review from @turtle-paced showing a perfect example of how he does so.

Third, I don't understand why the show made the question of whether show!Dany would accept show!Barristan's service as the episode's cliffhanger. First, book readers would already know that she would. Second, show!Barristan won't be treated any differently in the next episodes than he would be if they had met earlier (aside from show!Jorah's distrustful remarks). Third, I don't like how leaving this scene as the episode's cliffhanger makes us wonder if show!Dany will be merciful or not. We can point to her later actions and realize that she will be, but this shouldn't have been a question in the first place. It helps to mischaracterize Dany in the eyes of the public audience and doesn't convey that some of Dany's core traits are being open-minded and forgiving.

In the books, Dany doesn't really feel angry with Barristan. It's more that he becomes collateral damage after she finds out that Jorah, the person she trusted the most at that point in time, was lying to her from the very beginning:

“...And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”

“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”

Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”

“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth. “The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever, both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though. They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You go ...” My bear, my fierce strong bear, what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s friend. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Before she knew about Jorah's deception, Dany is more puzzled and surprised about Barristan's identity reveal than anything else:

She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.

Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar ...”

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood aside ... “I want the whole truth now, on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or mine?”

“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him out.”

In this sense, I think Emilia Clarke's expression manages to capture how the Dany of the books must have felt when Barristan's identity was revealed; perplexed, but also grateful that he saved her life.

Also, they have show!Dany ask show!Jorah if he knows show!Barristan without the proper context: in the books, she only makes that question because he made an unpleasant comment about Barristan. In the show, she asks if he knows who he is in a way that makes her seem more dependent on him than it would have been if they had been faithful to the books.

My comments on the Inside the Episode 3.1

Benioff: For a great leader who is doing something unpopular for a certain segment, whether it's the Warlocks or the slave masters or whatnot, she's creating a lot of enemies, and powerful enemies, and those people are going to try to stop her regardless of how powerful she becomes, and it's something she's actually, in a weird way, used to, because she grew up running from assassins with her brother, you know, from the time, from the earliest time she can remember, she was being spirited from one city to another one step ahead of Robert Baratheon and the assassins, because there were so many people who wanted to destroy the Targaryen family and make King Robert happy and now there are thousands out there for all sorts of different reasons because she's made even more enemies, but, I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her.

Benioff is not entirely inaccurate when it comes to Dany feeling that she's always been on the run:

It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But it was run or die. (ACOK Daenerys V)

ASOS Daenerys V is particularly heartbreaking in that sense when she decides to leave her tent and interact with her people only to almost be killed by Mero:

She had no enemies among her children.

“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man, and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair.”

“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere.

However, Benioff forgets Dany's very first chapter:

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one. (AGOT Daenerys I)

I've already written an entire meta on how Dany's PoV is not entirely reliable and this is one of the instances. I imagine her thoughts on the matter changed because of this:

“A letter to Viserys, from Magister Illyrio. Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death, or your brother’s.”

“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself protectively. “And me, you said. Only me?”

“You and the child,” Ser Jorah said, grim.

“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself ... (AGOT Daenerys VI)

It seems that Dany unconsciously and retroactively changed history in her mind after Robert tried to have her and her child assassinated (something that I forgot to talk about in my meta), which is quite interesting. I guess it's a detail that is easy to miss, so that's forgivable.

What's less excusable is the way that Benioff talks about Dany's mindset.

Benioff: I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her. (x)

It's true that Dany is aware that she is the last of her family:

With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

However, I look askance at the possible interpretation behind this statement. One could switch "Daenerys" for "Viserys" and it would be just as fitting. It's left ambiguous on its own, but, considering how he overfocuses on how "ambitious" she is or how she wants "more than anything" to "reclaim her birthright" or how "the only threat she poses is her name" until she frees the slaves in Astapor... I have to assume that he wants us to think that show!Dany is both arrogant and entitled for being a Targaryen. All of these mischaracterizations have been exhaustively refuted by @rainhadaenerys in this meta.

My comments on Anatomy of a Scene: Daenerys Meets the Unsullied

Weiss: Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men - her brother, Drogo, Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos. She came out of season two realizing that the only person that she can completely trust is herself.

Benioff: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious. What she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright.

Clarke: She needs the manpower to go back and conquer the Iron Throne and to be able to right the wrongs that she sees going on around her.

Minahan: She's been brought to Astapor, where she's reluctantly going to meet with slave traders. Her quest in this is to build an army without taking slaves.

Comments from Charlie Somers (location manager) and Christina Moore (supervising art director) that don't have anything to do with the storyline.

Benioff: The Unsullied were kidnapped as babies from their home countries and brought to Astapor and trained in the ways of the spear and castrated.

Emmanuel: They won't do anything without the command to do so first.

Comment from Tommy Dunne (weapons master) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline.

Clarke: She's being introduced to the Unsullied by Kraznys, the slave master in control of them.

Emmanuel: Kraznys is being quite insulting to Daenerys. And Missandei very cleverly smoothes out her translation, just her initiative doing that shows her intelligence.

Clarke: Dany sees a lot of herself in her and can kind of see that it's a young girl who's capable of much more than the position she's in. She's his No 1 slave. If you were in the UN, she would be the translator for everyone.

Weiss: Kraznys speaks a version of Valyrian that's been bastardized and mixed with other local languages.

Comment from Majella Hurley (dialect coach) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline.

Clarke: She's struggling with the moral aspect of the way that these cities are run. And it's something she's been grappling with because they are an army of slaves, which she fundamentally has moral issues with due to the fact that she herself was a slave.

Weiss: The only way she can make the world a better place is to become the biggest slaveowner in the world.

Benioff: She's put into a difficult position, and she's got her advisors whispering in her ears.

Glen: Jorah encourages her to get over her moral scrupules, with taking an army that were duty-bound to follow whatever leader it was, and that could change in an instant.

Weiss: What she wants to do isn't just conquest for the sake of conquest, but it's really conquest for the sake of making the world a better place, and she's a revolutionary in that sense.

Benioff: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso.

My comments about their statements:

Clarke: She definitely understands Dany better than Benioff and maybe even Weiss. My only nitpick is that there's no No 1 slave for Kraznys ... In the books, he repeatedly whips Missandei and has no problem giving her away to Dany as a gift. Even in the show, he still constantly disrespects show!Missandei.

Weiss: I've already said this above and will repeat: Weiss is wrong when he says that "Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men". Or at least that's certainly not what the Dany of the books (i.e. the character show!Dany's should ideally be based on) does, as my posts here and here showcase how competent a leader she's becoming and how much agency GRRM gives her. His comment about how Dany wants to "become the biggest slaveowner in the world" to make it a better place is also distasteful (though I don't think he meant it as negatively as, say, Finn Jones), so here goes @rainhadaenerys's meta disproving the claim that Dany is a slaver. As for "conquest for the sake of making the world a better place", I kind of agree with this, but I've already showed above how it does a disservice to show!Dany's character development to paint it as if she's always been aware of these injustices, because the Dany of the books was not. In hindsight, that change makes me wary because I know they will later try to sell show!Dany as someone who is morally inflexible, which she never was in the books.

Benioff: I've already criticized his claims that Dany is "fiercely ambitious" and wants "more than anything" "to reclaim her birthright" in many moments of this meta. I also condemned his opinion that Dany needs to be a "realist" when I explained how the show overfocused on Jorah's point of view. As for his point that "she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso" to win... Considering how they made her choose the more ruthless option in the end only to punish her in the most traumatizing manner for that very choice (which made no sense and was completely OOC, no less) ... Fuck him, seriously. It's clear how the show made it impossible for show!Dany to win based on contradictory standards that only viewed her unfavorably. If she is merciful, she is stupid. If she is ruthless, she is a danger that needs to be stopped to save humanity.

Show!Dany's clothes

This episode adapts events from three chapters (ACOK Daenerys V, ASOS Daenerys I, ASOS Daenerys II). The first is the only one with a detailed description of her clothes:

If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki-fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. (ACOK Daenerys V)

In ASOS Daenerys I, Dany is only described using a coverlet to hide her nudity when Jorah comes to talk to her.

In ASOS Daenerys II, we don't know how Dany dressed when she went to meet with Kraznys, only that her garment had a sleeve.

In the series, we see show!Dany wearing this blue dress:

It's meant to pay homage to the Dothraki, so it's at least spiritually faithful to how Dany looks in the scene on the docks ... Well, more or less. Not only blue isn't a special color for the Dothraki despite what Michele Clapton might say, look at how Barristan reacts to seeing Dany for the first time:

“I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told, we were not certain, we expected someone more ... more ...”

“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her, and her raiment was hardly queenly. (ACOK Daenerys V)

This little scene displays both Dany's frugalness and how she doesn't take herself that seriously, for she doesn't mind if her subjects see her looking less than regal. That doesn't come across at all in the show, to the point of some people thinking that show!Dany never allows herself to look anything but perfect, which is certainly not true of the character she is based on.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #a storm of swords #a clash of kings #asoiaf vs got #asos vs got #barristan selmy #jorah mormont #s3

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thompsborn · 3 years

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Can I get 👉👈 a Flash centric one shot 👉👈 for the song shuffle thing 👉👈

you were good to me by jeremy zucker, chelsea cutler

leavin' isn't better than tryin'

growin', but i'm just growin' tired

now i'm worried for my soul

and i'm still scared of growin' old

you were good to me

and i'm so used to letting go

but i don't wanna be alone

you were good to me

god only knows where our fears go

hearts i've broke, now my tears flow

you'll see that i'm sorry

'cause you were good to me

you were good to me

[send me a character/ship/dynamic/etc. and i’ll put my music on shuffle and write a drabble/one shot based on the first song that plays!]

actually i’m gonna wait to take more shuffle song requests until after i finish the ones i still have in my drafts!!

i was debating how i wanted to approach this and then earlier today @peachy-keener sent me messages about flash x harley which i already lowkey shipped before but now,,,,,,,, But Now,,,,,, they live rent free in my brain. but this is flash centric!! this is less harleyflash and more PRE-harleyflash. also post endgame.

the ending is abrupt and not good but i genuinely cannot figure out how i want to move forward so that’s the end! that’s it!

(it isn’t stated explicitly, but peterxnedxmj)

tw: rough childhood implications for harley, descriptions of neglectful parenting and verbal abuse, cycle of abuse, getting kicked out of the house, loneliness. it’s a hopeful ending though!! even if it is abrupt and not very good!!

Flash meets Harley Keener after the worst morning of his entire fucking life.

They’re going back to school, because of fucking course they are—barely two weeks have passed since Flash reappeared on the steps leading up to MoMA, tripped over his own two feet in his haste to get a grip on his bearings, and prompty slips on a step and lands nose first into the concrete, a crunch filling his ears. The public hasn’t even gotten a full release about what the hell happened—just a basic press conference, where Steve Rogers, clad in stained sweatpants and with bags under his eyes, a side of him that the public has never seen, handed his shield over to a teary eyed Sam Wilson and promised transparency and honesty, the entire story from start to finish with nothing held back, as soon as they recovered enough to give it all.

Flash doesn’t want to go back to school, except for the fact that he definitely does, if only for the chance of semblance of normalcy.

Everything is different now, after the snap. Or, the re-snap—second snap, the return, the blip, whatever the hell people are calling it. He doesn’t care about what it ends up being called. He just knows that nothing is the same, now.

His sister wasn’t one of the ones who lived those five years, crumbled to ash (dust?)just like Flash did, and he despises the meer idea of Jesse staring down at her hands in terror while watching them disappear and him not being there to at least offer comfort, or something, but he’s selfishly grateful, as well. He didn’t miss a second of her growing up. She’s only thirteen to his sixteen, after all—had she lived, he would have come back to his baby sister being a year older than him, likely a completely different person, like all the shells of people he’s seen on the streets, shells that only ignite with life when they find the person they lost. Christ, Jesse could have been one of those shells.

Thinking about it makes shivers run down his spine, his stomach churn.. He hates it. He hates how close he was to losing that.

God, he hates them—his parents, or the sorry excuse of parents that they are. He hates that he’s coming back from being dead for five years to a step-mom and a step-dad, both of whom clearly despise the fact that they’re expected to help raise these two kids who are just lost and terrified and trying to adjust. They both moved to bigger houses—that are, at the very least, still in the same neighborhood and no more than a ten minute walk apart, making it a bit easier to handle when, inevitably, Flash gets shoved into his father’s care while Jesse is lovingly enveloped into their mother’s arms.

Their mother, who seemed to care at least a little bit beforehand—always kept bandaids and juice boxes in stock, just because he had a tendency of scraping his knee in elementary school and always wanted a juice box when he got home. Sometimes, she would brush fingers through his hair and promise that she loved him, even if she knew she was awful as showing it—even if she, willingly or not, would always love her daughter more. She had not loved him like a mother, no, but like someone who at least gave a shit about his general well being.

Something—well, again, everything—has changed since before, because his mom never even looks at him anymore, barely manages a glance in his general direction whenever he happens to be nearby, which has been a lot, because the custody battle—which, of course, his father paid great money to make a priority in the courts, and then blamed Flash for because of how far he had to dip into his wallet to make it happen—has taken most of the two weeks, even though it was that first day he was shoved into his father’s house, like they knew what they wanted, like it wasn’t going to be a battle until Flash and Jesse themselves spoke up about how much they didn’t want to be separated.

Of course. More things to blame Flash about.

Which his father—and his wife, Trudy—both do. Something they like to flaunt in his face at every hour of the day, like it isn’t bad enough that he put up a fight and still ended up separated from Jesse, like he isn’t about to go back to school with a still-healing broken nose and living in a house he doesn’t know in a room that was clearly never supposed to be his and—

He wakes up the day he’s supposed to go back to school and stares at an unfamiliar ceiling and none of the posters that he had up before he disappeared, an alarm clock that must have been invented while he was gone blaring obnoxiously in his ear. It immediately sets his teeth on edge, makes his shoulders tense.

Maybe, he hopes, school will be familiar.

But everything has changed.

The school, itself, isn’t completely different, of course—classes are where they’ve always been, even if the names on the desks have changed; bathrooms are still pretty gross and have that high school bathroom smell that, for the first time in existence, he’s kind of glad to come across, if only because it makes him feel like it’s still 2018 and he’s going to walk out the door and see faces that he actually know.

He opens the door and a tall blonde guy walks into it—nose first, of course, whips his head back with a yelp and brings a hand up to poke at his nostrils, looks down a moment later and frowns at the crimson shining on the tips of his fingers, and then looks up at Flash.

Instead of anger, he grins, all crooked and boyish, and says, “Hey, we match!”

“We...” Flash trails off, confused; this guy doesn’t even sound like a New Yorker. Has the normal New York accent changed, too? The dude sound souther, for fucks sake. “What?”

Bloody fingers point at Flash’s face—actually, really, at his nose, still bandaged. “That. Noses, y’know? Pretty sure that just broke mine, so—”

“Oh, god,” Flash groans, head dropping to his hands. “Please tell me you’re joking, man.”

Stupidly, the guy pokes at his nose again—this time, at the slightly noticable crook towards the end. He sucks in a sharp breath, winces, and says, “Well, it ain’t feelin’ all that great...”

Flash groans again. “Of fucking course I just broke someone’s fucking nose. Of course.”

“Uh...” The guy frowns, glancing down as a drop of blood falls on the tip of his shoe. “S’alright. You didn’t do it on purpose, so—”

Instantly, Flash chokes on a stupidly bitter laugh. “Not like that’ll matter,” he murmurs.

“So,” the guy goes on, either not hearing Flash’s interjection or choosing not to react to it, “I don’t see what the problem is, here.”

“Of course you don’t,” Flash says, laughing again. “No one—” he stops, brows furrowing as he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, shouldering his backpack with a sigh. “C’mon.”

The guy doesn’t follow when Flash starts walking. When he looks back, the guy is visibly confused. “Why am I following you to a random place, and why are you looking at me like I’m the one who’s being weird right now?”

“The office,” Flash says, instead of providing, like, a real answer. The guy looks even more lost, even looks over his shoulder like Flash is talking to someone else entirely. Flash sighs. “I just broke your nose, man. We have to go to the office so you can get it checked out and tell them what happened. Call home, too, probably, since you’re pretty sure it’s actually broken.”

The guy tilts his head. “We?”

Flash’s frown deepens into a grimace. “Yeah.”

“I think I’m a bit confused, here...”

Groaning once again, Flash gestures down the hallway, in the direction he had been trying to walk, and says, “We need to tell them—”

“That I walked into a door?”

“That I broke your nose!” Flash exclaims.

The guy crinkles his nose before immediately flinching and smoothening it out. “You opened a door. The door that broke my nose because I walked into it. That’s not your fault.”

Flash stares at him, beyond confused and borderline incredulous, but he’s also tired and he doesn’t know this guy or most of the people currently attending this school and his dad married a woman who hates him and his mom also apparently hates him now, too, and he’s living in a guest room that he knows was made specifically for Trudy’s parents to visit them and Jesse doesn’t like mom’s new husband (Flash doesn’t know his name; he wasn’t introduced to the guy and was always lost in his head whenever the judge occasionally brought it up during the custody ordeal) and she misses living together but she’s becoming less and less bitter every day, gushes about how much mom spoils her and peppers her face with kisses and cries while blubbering over how much she missed her and, Christ, no one missed him!

No one. No one wanted him to come back.

“Whatever,” he tells this stranger, no longer seeing the guy, no longer caring.

He doesn’t look back when he walks away.

Harley Keener—as Flash later learns, since he apparently has fifth period with the guy—is, of course, friends with Parker.

Parker, who Flash will never admit to admiring, will never vocalize how jealous he is of everything that Peter has, greets Harley with a small smile, and maybe, if Flash hadn’t instantly scoffed and looked away, he could have noticed the look of understanding and grief that the both of them wore.

Though, he can’t deny, seeing someone he actually knows makes things easier. Or, at least, it does for a few seconds, until he sees the way that Leeds is quiet, staring down at his hands a lot, looking at Parker like he’s looking at a gravestone, glancing at Jones, who is damn near stoic, with pain in his features. Until he notices all the ways that they’re different, too.

He sinks his teeth into his lower lip, tastes copper, and doesn’t pay attention to the teacher—who he doesn’t fucking know.

Nothing is the same, he thinks.

Not a single god damn thing.

Flash finishes his junior year with no friends, bimonthly weekend visits with his sister, and so much anger burning in his veins that he spits insults at anyone who crosses his path, people who don’t get it, who will never understand.

“You’re a fucking hick that’s probably here on scholarship,” Flash snarls when Harley tries to interfere a verbal beating of a random kid who looks like he isn’t old enough to drive just yet.

Harley’s eyes harden, and his nose—not as straight, now, as it once was, a constant reminder of the break that healed just a little bit wrong—crinkles. He looks conflicted about the situation, and Flash knows that Harley has, for the past few months, been nothing but a kind stranger that tries to talk to Flash in the halls, who always asks how he is and how his day is going and doesn’t even deflate when Flash acts like it’s a hinderance, because Flash doesn’t know how to accept kindness, to react when someone seems to give a shit about him.

Jesse cares—loves him, of course. But Jesse is making friends at her school, and she’s adapting in a way that Flash can’t seem to do.

Harley is a person, a random person, who shows interest whenever he has the opportunity to talk to Flash. Who acts like, maybe, he might kind of care, too.

“Do you think anyone gives a shit about you?” Flash asks—seeing Harley’s face in front of him, sure, but his words are directed at only himself, unable to accept the idea of a stranger caring about him. “You’re nothing,” he says. “You don’t fucking matter, alright? No one fucking cares!”

And then, Parker—in a blur of motion, something awful and protective battling on his face—is standing between them. His teeth are bared like an animal, eyes burning, as he spits out, “Do not talk to him like that.”

“Peter,” Harley tries, voice weak.

Having none of it, apparently, Parker ignores his protest, tells Flash, who is shellshocked by seeing Peter genuinely furious for the first time since tripping him in the halls as freshman, “I don’t give a shit what you say to me, Flash, I’ve put up with it for years, but you do not talk like that to—to anyone else, but especially not to one of the only family members I have left!”

A wounded noise rumbles from Harley’s throat, but Flash—Flash is furious. Because, really, at least Parker has people—he has an aunt who is a better parent than either of his have ever been, friends who are so loving and protective that it feels like they’re in love with the guy ninety-nine percent of the time, and Harley, too? Harley, who has tears in his eyes and Flash doesn’t know if it’s because of his words or Peter’s, who reaches forward and yanks Peter back towards him. “Peter,” he says again, more forcefully now. “It’s fine, dude. Let’s just go.”

Parker sets his jaw and glares at Flash like his life depends on it. Flash, of course, decides to open his fucking mouth and says, “Sure, just go back to people who probably hate you—”

He doesn’t know where he’s going with that, but he doesn’t get the chance to before Ned fucking Leeds steps in front of him and swings.

He starts summer with another broken nose.

Sure, he deserves it—but it sucks, nonetheless.

At the start of senior year, Harley approaches him and, for some reason, apoligizes

“What?” Flash says—the only that that comes to mind, sometimes standalone, sometimes followed by an even more incredulous the fuck?

“M’sorry,” Harley repeats. “Pete shouldn’t’ve yelled at you like that, and Ned—Christ Almighty, he’s a sweetheart, but him and Michelle would do anything for Pete, and when they thought you were sayin’ that shit to him, there wasn’t nothin’ that could’ve stopped ‘em.”

Flash frowns. “Dude... what the fuck?”

Harley mirrors his frown, tilts his head to the side. “What? Am I not makin’ sense?”

“You’re apologizing,” Flash says. “To me.”

Slowly, Harley nods. “Yeah, I am.”

Flash shakes his head. “Why?”

“‘Cause you weren’t sayin’ that shit to me and Pete, that’s why,” Harley answers, almost matter of fact and simple. “I know it.” All Flash can manage to do is shake his head again, not understanding what the hell Harley is talking about, until Harley glances away, brings a hand up to scratch nervously at the back of his neck, and murmurs, “I mean... I get what it’s like, saying somethin’ about someone else that you really mean about yourself... y’know?”

He doesn’t have any semblance of control when his features go blank, when his shoulders are drawn up, defensive, disbelieveing. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Harley smiles. He smiles. “Yeah, I know what it’s like to play stupid, too. Seriously—I get it.”

No one gets it, Flash thinks.

He doesn’t say it. Or anything, really.

All he does is walk away.

He walks away later that day, when Harley tries to approach him. He turns tail and bolts the second he sees blond hair in the distance, whether it’s Harley or not—does this for days, and then weeks, and then—

And then Harley stops trying to approach him.

Flash doesn’t get why that fact makes him heavy, his brain a taunting repetition of knew that no one cared, knew it, knew it, knew it.

Oddly enough, it hurts more than usual.

He graduates.

No one is in the crowd for him—his mother planned a vacation with her husband (still nameless, since Flash doesn’t care enough to learn it anyway) and Jesse that just so happened to line up with graduation. Trudy and Harrison stopped acknoledging him entirely a few months after he came back, unless out of absolute necessity and usually with scathing commentary that burn every single time.

A few people clap for him—and he knows, once he sees that it’s Harley and Peter and Ned and Michelle, that he doesn’t deserve it.

Too nice, all of them. Acting like they give a shit.

Always too damn nice.

It hits him, after he gets kicked out.

Hits him, suddenly, how badly he fucked it all up. How he took an opportunity that he didn’t deserve and pushed it away. Harley had wanted to be friends, had cared, whether Flash understood why or not, and Flash had been awkward and unsure and ruined everything.

He sits on the curb with a suitcase. Only one, because it’s all he had time to pack before being shoved harshly onto the streets.

Though he wants to, he doesn’t cry.

It’s a miracle that the number hasn’t changed.

It’s an even bigger miracle that Harley, apparently, never deleted his number after what happened, after obtaining it only because he had prompted Flash about wanting to join the Decathlon team and asked if he could text him questions about it later that day, before—

Well. Before, but after. Before Flash destroyed what he didn’t even gave, but after everything shifted, changed, began to hurt.

Miraculous doesn’t even begin to describe the slightly hopeful tone when Harley answers and, without hesitating, asks, “Flash? You there?”

Doesn’t deserve it—god, Flash should be getting spat on right now—but he needs it, now more than ever. Holding his phone tighter, he stammers out a shaky, “Y-Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

Maybe his voice gave it away. Maybe the fact that he’s reaching out at all. Maybe Harley just knows. Flash isn’t sure the how about it, only able to focus on making his tongue cooperate with him as he breathes out a broken kind of, “I’m sorry, I—about everything, but I—I have no one else to call and you were—the only one, y’know, who was—who was nice to me—”

There’s a faint jingle. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” Flash whispers, trying to blink through the tears that suddenly fill his eyes, swallowing roughly. “I just—I started walking, once it hit that I didn’t know where I should go, and I—fuck, I shouldn’t have called.”

“‘ey,” Harley says, tone—firm, angry. “I dunno what you’re thinkin’, but I’m the best person you could have called. I’m on my way, okay?”

Flash closes his eyes. “You shouldn’t.”

“Well,” Harley says, “I’m not turnin’ around.”

He doesn’t cry.

He doesn’t, untill Harley steps out of a car wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt that’s inside out. Then, of course, he sobs.

Then, of course, Harley cares, like he never should have, and hugs Flash.

Jesse is the only person who has ever hugged him. His mother, almost, when he was really young, but—but no one else. No one.

In Harley’s arms, he melts.

#my writing #still dont know the ship name for peternedmj bc im idiot (:#harleyflash #peternedmj #idfk

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