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#what really gets me about this issue (and I guess Soldier’s character in general) is how adamant he is about his willingness to die

stackthedeck · 1 year

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Who’s Gwenpool’s favorite superhero? Has it been said?

It hasn't been explicitly stated as far as I'm aware, she's supposed to be a general super fan kinda reader which gives her an advantage over all characters because she knows everything, but we can make a couple guesses about who her favorites are

For one, we know it's not Deadpool, she actually doesn't read any of his comics which I think is a hilarious little detail

This is her room in the real world and we can see she's got a thor plushie and poster as well as a spider-man plushie and poster. There's also iron man, wolverine, hulk, and captain America stuff. Fair to say she's problem more of an avengers fan than an x stan

and then this is her room in 616, still pretty avengers heavy, but it's got heroes that she's met already (except Captain Marvel and She-Hulk). Gwen was reading a Miles comic in her universe so obviously, she liked him before, but I do think she picks her favorite heroes currently by how willing they are to hang out with her

She also just is so dedicated to getting Miles to hang out with her. Peter Parker was in unbelievable Gwenpool for one issue and Gwen didn't even try anything. But with Miles, she really wants to be on a team with him, he's a major player in her first solo series because she's always seeking him out

If she's shown reading a comic, it's always a spider-man comic the one she's reading here is Spider-Man double trouble with Peter and venom

Given this evidence I think it's safe to say she's biased towards Spider-Man, valuing both Miles and Peter just in different ways. This makes sense with her first attempt to get superpowers being her trying to get Peter to bite her so she gets Spider powers.

That being said...there's your favorite hero and then there's the hero that's your favorite because you've got a crush on them. It's pretty obvious that Gwen has no romantic feelings toward Miles...but there are other heroes who she's kinda weird around

There's a theory that Gwen has a crush on Jane Foster because of the whole wall shoving thing and how flustered she was. I personally like this idea and you know she's got a picture of her in her room

She is, unfortunately, a stucky shipper which like...girl you're a comics fan get it together. She also mentions wanting to see the winter soldier movie when in the pocket dimension working at the movie theatre so I think it's fair to assume she thinks they're hot

now you might be saying what about Reed Richards, she's canonically kissed him and to that I say, it was literally just a scheme to stay relevant. Check out Gwenpool strikes back #2 if you don't believe me (also check it out because it implies that Johnny isn't into women at all which... okay)

but my final answer is

Kamala Khan! Gwen literally calls her best girl and you know what Kamala is one of the only heroes that is consistently kind and compassionate with Gwen, often being the only one to explain the rules of this world and recognize her as perhaps mentally ill. I don't think Kamala was Gwen's favorite before entering the superhero world, but I think just being around her and the other heroes has shifted her perspective

#asks #tl dr it's probably one of the spider-men but I think her best friend is kamala #she also wears a power pack t shirt #she does imply that she's willing to date America chavez but I don't think that's a crush so much as a ploy to get a love interest #long post

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girl4music · 2 years

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WILLOW: “Tomorrow night... we're bringing Buffy back.”

XANDER: “Tomorrow? I don't know.”

ANYA: “Um, Discovery Channel has monkeys. And our tape machine's all wonky.”

WILLOW: “Guys, I need you on board here.”

XANDER: “It's just... It feels wrong.”

TARA: “It is wrong. It's against all the laws of nature, and practically impossible to do, but it's what we agreed to. If you guys are changing your minds-”

WILLOW: “Nobody’s changing their minds. Period.”

XANDER: “Excuse me? Who made you the boss of the group?”

ANYA: “You did.”

TARA: “You said Willow should be boss.”

ANYA: “And then you said, “let’s vote,” and it was unanimous.”

TARA: “And then you made her this little plaque that said, “Boss of Us,” and you put little sparkles on it.”

XANDER: “Valid points, all. But we... I mean... We were just talking then.”

WILLOW: “Xander, I can do this, I promise. But not without you.”

ANYA: “Should we maybe tell Giles? You know, now that we're really ready? It's not like he's going anywhere. Ever.”

WILLOW: “No. No one else can know. Not Giles, not Spike, not Dawn. They might not understand.”

TARA: “What if something does go wrong?”

WILLOW: “I'm telling you it won't.”

XANDER: “Scenario - We raise Buffy from the grave, she tries to eat our brains. Do we, a. congratulate ourselves on a job well done-”

WILLOW: “Xander, this isn't zombies.”

ANYA: “Zombies don't eat brains anyway unless instructed to by their zombie masters. A lot of people get that wrong.”

WILLOW: “This isn't like Dawn trying to bring Mrs. Summers back, or anything we've dealt with before. Buffy didn't die a natural death. She was killed by mystical energy.”

TARA: “Which means we do have a shot.”

WILLOW: “It means more than that. It means we don't know... where she really is.”

XANDER: “We saw her body, Will. We buried it.”

WILLOW: “Her body, yeah. But her soul... her essence... I mean, that could be somewhere else. She could be trapped in some sort of hell dimension like Angel was. Suffering eternal torment just because she saved us, and I'm not gonna let... I'm not gonna leave her there. It's Buffy.”

In a military, it is said that a second-in-command can’t stand in as general when another general is on duty because the ranks of soldiers are only ever supposed to follow one voice or the system goes wrong. The procedure is to take the general out of commission before the second-in-command can stand in their place. That’s how the military authoritarian system works.

Someone tell me what did Willow even bother resurrecting Buffy for if, after all this time, she really just wanted to be the one in power and control? The one leading the army? The one in the highest authority? It scared her to be the “BIG GUN” - the secret weapon - and she refused to be just the sidekick. She got what she wanted in Season 6... but she chose to bring Buffy back from some place where she’d never need to lead again and Willow could be THE BOSS indefinitely. If I didn’t understand that this character’s issue was imposter syndrome, I’d think she had a split personality disorder because she couldn’t pick a fucking narrative. A part of her wanted to be THE BOSS, some other part settled with being the “BIG GUN”, and another part of her would have rather been nothing at all because that’s how she started and although she hated feeling that way, she was most comfortable and familiar with it. I guess it all depended on which character of the week she was wearing which she wanted to be on any given day. But identifying all these characters she wore and roles she assumed as a cohesive whole that makes Willow Rosenberg who she actually is - was really what she needed to do because all of it was who Willow was. Giles makes that pretty clear to her in Season 7. That the light, dark and all-that’s-in-between is who she truly is.

Personally I don’t think it was because she wanted Buffy out of the way why she got up in arms about her being the BOSS in the moments when they were in a conflict. I think it’s because she wanted Buffy under her. You can interpret that phrase any which way you want to but I genuinely think that’s why she wanted to bring her back from the dead deep down. She wanted that showdown. She wanted to prove that she could stand toe-to-toe with the Slayer in a fight to show that they were levelled in power and in control and that they were both BOSS. She didn’t want her dead. She didn’t want her AWOL, and she most certainly didn't want her doing it alone. She wanted to be with her, leading alongside her as equal partners and equal commanders. That they ended up equal rivals was down to the fact that she couldn’t get a handle on the responsibility herself. She knew she needed Buffy just as much as Buffy needed her. And the only way to prove it was to beat her down - whether that be verbally or physically. The surface excuse for Willow to bring Buffy back was because she thought she was in a hell dimension and that it was only her doing her diligence as a loyal loving friend to get her out of it. But the deep-seated truth was to have it off with her. She just didn’t plan for it to be so violently. But things happened the way they happened and it culminated in one of the greatest pay-offs in the show.

The question is, even with Buffy around taking as equal command and responsibility, would Willow lead well? I think so, just maybe a bit more aggressively than Buffy. She’s not an aggressive person but she's more strict. There wouldn’t be any leeway for disturbance or distraction in the ranks with her and when under pressure, she'd definitely be hardcore at laying down the law. It would have been interesting to see how she would have faired as general with Buffy also on duty. But any time when Willow felt like she could be leader she just clashed with Buffy instead of worked with her. So maybe there’s something to that military saying. Maybe one voice is the only voice that should be followed. In that case, she should have left her dead. I don’t know, maybe Riley and Sam could have showed them the ropes and they could have figured it out from there because I’m sure there is more benefit to having two leaders than just a solitary one. After all, isn’t that what Season 7 is about and what the ending episode ,‘Chosen’, subverted? Why only one girl in all the world at any one time? Why can’t there be hundreds? So I ask the same question to our beloved Scooby Gang, why only the one BOSS leading all the members in it? Subvert the stupid system. Find a way to work it!

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kyogre-blue · 3 months

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Finally went back and did Inazuma act 2 on my alt. I forgot how short it is. There's like... four conversations, two cutscenes, and that's it.

Although there are a lot of small issues with the logic and they fall down hard in terms of the pacing of the character arcs, I will stand by my opinion that Inazuma is still a far more interesting story than Sumeru.

Sumeru is just... some evil dudes, of whom we see only one, want to make a god, and for this they choose... Scaramouche? Who is a non-entity except when he vomits out his backstory. And Nahida is there, don't you feel sorry for her because uuh reasons. Don't even get me started on the pointless diversions of going to Ormos (why), the dream loop of time wasting (just tell me the answer up front), and the entire pointless whatever out in the desert (literally exists just to provide one lore cutscene and waste our time).

Inazuma at least has a potentially interesting conflict, characters who have their own varied stakes in it, and they even use NPCs better.

I didn't have any particularly notable observations on second pass, but I did find these points funny:

There's a bunch of small "???" moments if you use your brain while watching this, including the entire situation regarding Thoma being a public sacrifice (???) to mark the 100th vision taken. Like, why did they tie him up, did he resist? Why was he not using a fake vision, like it's implied Yoimiya did to get around the decree? What are the political implications of all this, because it's very interesting if you think about it? In general tho, it's just hilarious if you remember that Shinobu and Itto both did not have any reaction to losing their visions, so maybe Thoma isn't even slightly in danger here.

That said, the escalation is pretty good. I do like the concept.

Teppei is actually pretty cute. And I do think they tried to make you care about the war via both the civilians in act 1 and the soldiers in act 2.

I still find it hilarious that the culmination of act 2 is a "fight of honor" where both sides select "their finest warrior" for "single combat" and then Sara sends three different randos to fight us. I think during the third fight, the resistance troops start complaining that we're doing consecutive battles, but it's dialogue during the battle, so I'm not exactly going to be able to read it, you know? In general, it's worth noting that this duel of honor isn't meant to have any actual stakes. It's just for moral and intimidation, which is why they still have a big battle afterwards. This is in the text, but it's very counterintuitive, so it feels bizarre.

During the cutscene where Kokomi appears, Beidou says she hopes Kokomi can help pay for all these mercenaries she hired and Kazuha calls Gorou an old friend. This is uh sure some interesting implications, but it really does not do an adequate job explaining why the hell they're here. Kazuha's characterization and supposed arc are a shit show in general, of course.

I do recall that the writing quality, such as it is, plummets in act 3. They probably needed 4 acts, realistically, one for Watatsumi and Teppei, one more for returning to Narukami, but I guess at this point they wanted to have the same schedule as Liyue's release? It really did not work out.

#playing genshin

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seths-wife · 2 years

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How did Punishment let you down? Speaking as someone who had such high hopes for it and.. well at least it's not Crime?

Thank you for asking in a friendly manner.

For me, the critique to the "punishment" novel is a general complaint on how the story was written, having a lot of pages but feeling void of substantial content and feeling too synthethic at the same time.

Here I will outline the major issues I see, under a cut.

As far as akuno implies in the afterword of the "punishment" novel, the novel series regarding the "original sin story" is actually a depiction of the "court ending", having Gammon, the moonlit twins and Irina starting over from the (relative) "beginning" of the third period since the events in the "master of the heavenly yard novel".

I wrote this at the start, but this is a “sequel”…A sequel to what? ("punishment", afterward).

But...what about the original timeline of the arc? What does it look like?

One may say: "well, the songs are the original timeline". That doesn't explain anything for me.

In the "punishment" novel, we get a tiny snippet of the "original version" of an event: we know, for example, that without Gammon's interference, Kiril would have mass murdered the castle's guards in order to get to the remains of the "climb one".

“No matter what I could have done…you would have arrived here in the end. After killing countless soldiers with your knife. That’s what you’re fated to do.” ("punishment", chapter 6, scene 3).

So, how could the entire timeline change without Gammon and Nyoze in the game? We don't really know that and the songs are not sufficient in explaining that.

But first off...were Gammon and Nyoze featured in the "original timeline" as well, after which they then reincarnate towards the end of the third period? That's an important point to explain.

We know from the prologue of the "punishment" novel that Nyoze has become a "castaway of time" upon entering the merry-go-round dimension™.

As a consequence of that, after Nyoze comes out into the ground world once again, he gets the ability to reincarnate.

“If anyone can, it’s you…now that you were once a castaway of time…you’ve gained the power to reincarnate. You’ll lose your memories every time you’re reborn, but…a piece of your mission will remain in your heart in your next life.” ("punishment", epilogue, scene 3).

So, did that happen in the "original timeline" as well? Did Nyoze and Gammon become a "castaway of time" there, and because of that they got to be reincarnated in Gallerian's time?

It can be, but also might not be. We simply don't have a clear picture of the previous situation to this one.

A part of me wants to suspect that Gammon and Nyoze were part in the original timeline as well. I think so because the moonlits "re_birthday" doesn't really throw characters in a parallel world containing another timeline of the "third period" (that would be a "black box type s" job, rather).

The "re_birthday" seems to be restoring "things as they were", without much alteration. Otherwise you want to mean it as "restoring the timeline as it was, but with Gammon and Nyoze. I would go for the first interpretation, personally.

But, what about the "merry go round dimension"? Did "madam merry go round" always exist (I doubt that)? At which point was she formed?

You see? With the way things were handled by the author, we are left with more questions than answers, making the series confusing and making you enter in a mind rabbit hole with no clear end.

Ideally, we would have needed some novel installments for the original timeline and then see what happens in the "court ending".

I guess akuno had been having issues with his publisher, but...nevertheless, I didn't like how this arc was handled writing-wise.

I still don't like the fact Nyoze is there. I talked about this issue previously and later promised to reserve judgment until I read the novel.

Well, I have read the novel and still dislike it. I may get that akuno wanted to make a circular symbolism by having Gammon and Nyoze being together as brothers both in the start and ending of the timeline, but still, it wasn't properly foreshadowed. I can't stress enough how Nyoze wasn't even in the theatre in the "master of the heavenly yard" novel (he didn't show up in the latter at all, actually) and he was never mentioned to be part of the "court ending", not even in the general epilogue, introducing to it.

Moreover, Nyoze being there kind of breaks the previous hints about the nature and purpose of the "shadow parade", that's a major thing too, but I can't really go into that in this post for the sake of length here.

This one might be a sterile critique, given how the author acknowledges this point himself.

In the time between the last work and this current one I was sponsored to write a new “deadly sins of evil” song for a game and things like that, but in my head I viewed the series as finished with the publication of the “master of the heavenly yard” song and novel, so lately it’s been harder to remember my older story concepts…

[...]

Aside from that, I did debut figures who “shouldn’t exist”, and maybe there were a few blatant inconsistencies in it.

I’d be really happy if you could recognize these as just “being how it is”.

It’s not that I’m trying to gloss over my own mistakes (…okay, maybe that’s more or less what I’m doing). ("punishment", afterword).

There are indeed several inconsistencies with the rest of the series.

Here are a few examples:

Rahab losing her memories (contradicts the fact "she has always remembered everything" in the "seven crimes and punishments" short story),

Lich hating Seth from the start and not having memories (dismisses the "song of the blackbird" short story completely, making it incompatible with the series).

Lich being trapped in the "climb one" with Levia and Behemo (dismisses the "muzzle of Nemesis" novel).

Whatever is going on with Milky and Mikina (see post I made previously here).

It is clear that akuno didn't want to put so much effort in this arc (since for him the series was "done for" long with the "master of the heavenly yard" novel), to the extent he didn't want to put an effort in re-reading what he himself has written.

That is so unnerving to me. Logical coherence and continuity within installments are the very basics of writing. Why couldn't he put an effort in caring about the basics, even?

I understand that akuno didn't have a prepared plot from the start and used an approach consisting in "building the series as it went", but I can't help to think about the enormous gap of quality between the chad "pride arc", versus the virgin "original sin arc" in a lot of things.

On one side you have the in-depth, full of lore, variety, detailed and well-linear "pride arc". And then you have the "original sin arc" on the other, that is the opposite of all of those things.

I can't help but notice the gap in quality, and that saddens me.

As a last point, akuno tried to cramp up a huge part of the story in a single light novel, watering down all the plot in a general outline and a major lack in details. Reading through it, I felt like reading some sort of summary, than a full-fledged novel. Every plot point goes so fast, without a sufficient engagement in any of it. The novel felt so "empty" to me.

Now...for you who said: "hey, at least it's not crime", I don't agree.

Despite the underrated and discussed writing problems it has, the "crime" novel felt more like a novel than "punishment" was (at least for the events of the first project). I enjoyed the "crime" novel much more for the characterization and themes, than the latter. The "crime" novel has few nice stuff that are not noticed, and that's sad.

And with that, I end this post. I hope the answer satisfies you adequately.

#evillious chronicles #evillious #controversial #nyoze loop octopus #nyoze octo #gammon loop octopus #gammon octo

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sagethegremlin · 1 year

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Been going through and editing some earlier chapters of Forced Into the Wild for clarity and I'm a little divided on how I feel about it.

Cuz like on one hand, I am not proud of some of the stuff I put in there (namely the thing with silver killing all those gun soldiers, that didnt need to be so graphic), and having to deal with CPS against my dad definitely but me in a bad place for writing in general, with that "just write to get this chapter done" mindset not helping me in any way at all.

But on the other hand, me thinking about how bad some of the moments are blinded me to how good some of the stuff is. Sure, that conversation between Shadow and Knuckles is easily the most ooc thing I've ever written, but Tails' little anger moment in the very next chapter wasn't half bad.

I'm not quite sure why I'm making this post, to be honest. I've had people tell me before that they've started reading the fic and my first reaction was always this extreme fear that they'd judge me based on some of those lower earlier moments, and I'd tell them something along the lines of "hey just so you know it's a little rough and you have to give it some time," knowing full well that my standard of it being good doesn't even happen until chapter 21 (that was when I really tried to reconnect with what I loved about the fic and tried to make it more character-driven instead of plot-driven).

I'm sure I'm going to rewrite the story at some point. I feel the concept of Eggman creating a machine that reverts all the anthropomorphic animals back to just normal animals is so cool and holy shit what an idea to come up with in the shower while visiting my grandma in Louisiana!

This was my first Sonic fic, and my first big fic ever period. Of course it was going to be bumpy. Of course there was going to be some mischaracterization. Honestly it was the wonderful comments that people were leaving that gave me hope that it had something salvageable, and that maybe even though the early stuff was bumpy, people still found enjoyment in it (shoutout to my self proclaimed number one fan I love you so much).

I have a list of things I would fix if I ever were to rewrite it (make mom friend Rouge feel more organic, let silver have war crimes but not bloody ones, cut back on gore in general dear god Sage are you ok, better knuckles characterization, make the sonadow more obvious early on, give Blaze a more active role, etc), but despite all of its issues, it was a start. It’s commonly said that you need that one bad thing to make a good thing and this fic might’ve been it. I think it’s wonderful, it’s just not all there, and I’ve grown so much as a writer past those six months when I started it.

It might’ve been a rough start to my ao3, but it was a start. And soon it’ll be finished. I honestly can’t imagine being done with it, so much of my life happened while writing it, but I’m a little excited nonetheless.

This might be the first time I’m actively saying go read it. Go read it! It’s rough, it’s messy, and it doesn’t meet my standards until chapter 21, but it’s got heart! And humor? That fic dragged me out of a terrible time in my life (that I’m still not quite done with yet), and I can’t thank it enough. It was one hell of a learning experience, and I kinda inspire myself with it.

Again, I’m not quite sure what the point of this is, I guess I’m just growing a little more comfortable with something that I’ve not been so nice to for so long c:

#fic posting

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notashrew · 2 years

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Do you have any more funky facts about Herbert? 👀

Oh dear I was not expecting this much of actual interest over him 👀

Uh anyways Herbert is still rather underdeveloped character so i don't have much of anything interesting or grounded to give but uh

*slaps his tiny ass* this man can fit so many most obscure references nobody but I get and laugh at like he's 90% based of just random snippets of jokes inside my brain

One being he can't drive car for shit. You put him on a driver seat and the entire thing just Garry Mods itself across the air

Likes to collect all sorts of tiny stuff, mainly medical things and organs, vulture culture things perhaps? sussu dont make a character that hoards something challenge

Has/used to have bad scopophobia aka fear of being stared at

Dude had it so bad that when he noticed there's cameras around the bases or battlemaps, he would strategically avoid them and this often lead to him underworking or in general avoid his job as a field Medic, pissing of Administration real bad

I haven't really fully decided yet, but I'm leaning more towards he was born in Germany like every single medic ever and at some point of his life moved to England to study plastic surgery. Had a little bit hard time there as a german as this was at some point during/after WW2 and people looked down at him easily because of his national heritage

Avoids announcing his surname aloud because of this, and lets people pronounce his name in english way rather than german to avoid revealing his origins totally not me just avoiding revealing the other reference where his name comes from because it kills me

Specialized himself as plastic surgeon, more specifically facial and functional reconstruction, working on the soldiers returning from war and rehabilitating them

Had very hard time getting through his job as one in the rehabiliation hospital due to stressful nature of the job. He was already having some anxiety issues but kept them all hidden through his life

Used to visit a local butcher shop and watch people work there, perhaps even do some meat cuttings himself to relief with self-harming thoughts

I GUESS I HAVE TO MAKE THIS CANON NOW??? BECAUSE I DREW IT IN HIS REF SHEET BUT UH the stress eventually lead him to actually cutting himself on the arm with a bone saw, which got him kicked out "for weak nature", later leading him to get hired into BLU through some coincidenses. He carried the scar with him for a long time before getting himself together after beheading himself, and gave himself a skin transplant to cover old wound

I'm aiming to avoid drawing his old face and head as much as possible if there ever will be need for that, you watch me parkouring my way through never giving a face reveal

Has A LOT of freckles all over his upper body

Administration has tried to kick him out of the team TWICE but for once in his lifetime he grew up some spine to save himself a moment before beheading himself

The exposed bit of his neck is super sensitive and sometimes he [redacted but if you know me you know what this is about and answer is yes like 100% yes]

Uuhhh I'd have some more but it's mostly just some undecided stuff and here are probably the most grounded facts, sorry nothing funny and silly yet sadly.

#you know how you feel like youre full of ideas all the time but when youre supposed to actually them you remember NONE #thats me rn #my ocs #assbox

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chacusha · 2 years

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Picard season 2 review

I finished watching this a while ago, but just didn't have time to write up my thoughts in detail. Basically, the first half was promising; the second half was noticeably worse both in terms of general writing and how the things hinted at/established in the first half ended up paying off in the end. The writing, while probably better overall than Discovery season 4, nevertheless had a lot of the same issues. And then on top of that, I dislike every bit of worldbuilding Picard did and am going to consider this show non-canon. More thoughts, lots of Picard negativity:

Okay starting with the positives, I thought the episodes and pacing were quite good in Picard. I also think the writers did an impressive job of giving all the members of season 1's extremely motley cast something interesting to do this season, which I imagine was really hard because they all have such disparate jobs/life trajectories! There's also a lot of fanservice characters/cameos, which I appreciate.

By the end, though, the characters started having the Disco S4 problem of stating exactly what they're feeling in long speeches.

Also, another major issue with Picard S2 is that the plot is centered around a convoluted time travel plot. Time travel plots have to be handled very carefully because time travel mechanics tend to have weird consequences for both stakes and causality. The more seriously you take a time travel plot and the more drama you try to add, the more possibility for mismatch there is between characters' emotional reactions and the stakes of the show. For example, the show spends a lot of time on the characters grieving Elnor and being glad he gets to still live... but what about all the borgified soldiers from the 21st century who presumably were neither borgified nor killed in the original timeline where the Borg Queen WASN'T brought to Earth by Picard et al., but were killed in order to create a timeline that eventually leads to averting a disaster with a catastrophic death count? Do those soldiers and the Borg Queen's other casualties not deserve mourning? Is their sacrifice for the future not recognized? There is an odd mismatch in tone between the tenderness of Q orchestrating this elaborate series of events to give Picard closure (and also save all those future lives) and the way Elnor is mourned and ultimately revived vs. the way faceless and nameless people are literally used by Q as pawns and killed by the Borg Queen or Raffi et al. to create this future. The show just glosses over this entirely.

And then here are all the creative decisions / retcons / worldbuilding that I did not like:

So, at the time I watched Picard season 1, I hadn't actually seen Voyager so Seven was just, "like, some person I guess" to me when she appeared. Now that I have seen Voyager, though, I am retroactively pissed that they didn't make Seven Starfleet. And then season 2 makes it canon that she was rejected because of racism?! Do not want. Like, if they really wanted Seven to be a ranger living on the rough-and-tumble edge of society, they could have had it so that Seven applied for Starfleet just by default, but Janeway took her aside and said, "Look, you can already do any job on any ship in the Federation. But the thing the Federation can offer you is variety and choice. There are a whole lot of ways to live out there. Go out and try some. And if you decide Starfleet is what you want after all, then, fine, you'll always have a family here. But I want you to know you can do whatever you want." And if Seven then decided she liked being a ranger, cool! But no, this world has to be depressing and so Seven gets rejected from Starfleet because of anti-Borg racism. WTF? I mean, I guess they've already established that the Federation in this world is hella racist against Romulans and synthetics, so this isn't surprising worldbuilding but yeah, I do not approve.

Just... the whole thing with Picard's mother. I don't buy that the advanced Star Trek future wouldn't have better ways of treating mental illness and preventing suicides other than locking people in rooms.

Also, I especially don't like the implication that they kept hinting at, that the reason why Picard became a Starfleet captain and did a bunch of good deeds is to make up for the responsibility he feels for his mother's death. This SUCKS. This fundamentally Misses the Point of the Star Trek future. The point is, people in the Star Trek future are good by default -- either because human nature is good or because a good society is set up so that you get inculcated with the right values as a matter of course, and you're given the resources and support in order to be a good person. The notion that people need to experience personal tragedy in order to be accomplished and want to do good in the world (they didn't outright say this, but it seemed like that was what was going on with Picard at least) is just... bad, verging on tragedy porn or idolization of suffering.

Oh yeah, also, I did not like the implication that the reason why Picard never settles down with anyone is because he believes he is fundamentally unlovable. Bleh. Boring. Why can't it just be the case he is aromantic or just has other things going on in his life that he values? There is so much character development and establishing for Picard throughout TNG where he's presented with the choice of family life and his career and he picks his career every time, and is at peace with that choice. It's not like he doesn't value family but it just is never the number one thing for him. And that's a perfectly fine way of being. Maybe this wasn't the intention, but the idea that Picard's singleness was actually all along because he had Psychological Hangups that needed to be Fixed rather than he's just not that into romance feels like the show has difficulty imagining ways of life outside a conformist sort of pattern.

In general, I do not like the Borg Queen because it turns the Borg from "a very alien lifeform of collective consciousness with unclear/inscrutable purpose because it's just a bunch of people thinking together and who knows what that gets you," to, like, "one Very Evil Lady and her drone army, I guess." That ship has very much sailed at this point, though. Anyway, having the Very Evil Lady actually turn out to be a Very Lonely Lady who just wants Connection and is only doing bad stuff to fill a hole in her heart is... somehow even more underwhelming. And also indicative of the general issue with Discovery and Picard, which is that they do not actually do very well at portraying actual difference; everyone ultimately wants love, connection, etc. Rather than seeing new life and trying to understand it and learn to accept it despite differences, these shows instead settle for discovering how other life is just like us, actually, and ultimately everyone just wants the same things we want and that's what makes love and connection possible. (Contrast, for example, with the way TNG portrays Klingons (e.g. Riker's Klingon exchange program), who have a hot mess hierarchical society and practices that are intense and violent and really go against Human morality, and yet the Federation still manages to maintain friendly relations with them, or the way Voyager portrays Tuvok's really quite cold/distant and unemotional approach to parenting and how it still portrays him as a legitimately good parent.)

While I thought Rios's romantic plotline was cute, the idea that he doesn't fit in the future and has nothing to give up by living in the past kind of invalidates his whole plot arc from season 1... But yeah, I'll forgive this one since the writers seemed to be juggling a lot of balls with the main cast and this might be the most satisfying arc that could have been written for Rios.

(Also, maybe: "Picard's brother? Never heard of him." I guess? I can't tell if they removed him from existence or he just happened not to be relevant in any of this Picard family drama. 🤷‍♀️)

(I also couldn't tell if they were retconning Picard and Guinan's timelines. Shouldn't 21st century Guinan recognize Picard because she already met him in the 19th century? Are they removing that, or is her timeline nonlinear too? I don't get this. )

I just find the worldbuilding in Picard very unimaginative -- it cannot imagine a world where people are good and what the implications of such a world would be, and it can't imagine learning to love and accept people who are actually truly different rather than revealed to just secretly be an instance of what we already view to be relatable. As such, I would like to disregard all of this show's additions to the universe entirely.

#star trek #star trek: picard #st picard negativity

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bitimdrake · 3 years

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Bruce is, in canon, an abusive parent. I am not going to equivocate on that. It’s not some wild characterization thrown in one every million comics; it’s a consistent pattern. He periodically hits his kids. He far more regularly emotionally abuses them. He makes them responsible for managing his emotional state. He neglects them. He puts expectations and responsibilities on them that are wildly unfair to put on your child. (I'm in no way including the 'sidekicks are child soldiers' base argument here, because I am totally willing to accept kid sidekicks in general; I’m talking more about his interpersonal expectations, and his prioritizing of the kids as Soldiers For The Mission instead of as, you know, his kids. Other heroes with kid sidekicks manage to handle it perfectly fine.) Is he also sometimes nice and kind and caring to his kids? Absolutely. There are sweet moments. But if we're talking about a character who is kind and loving and good to his kids sometimes, and abusive to them at other times....what we're talking about is an abuser. That’s the description of an abusive parent. The comic book character of Bruce Wayne is abusive to his children, in canon, in main continuity, regularly. There is no single writer responsible for it. (No, Bruce was abusive long before Tom King.) There is not even a single era responsible for it. (No, Bruce was abusive long before the new 52.) It's been there for a long time. That’s point one.

It fucking sucks that Bruce is an abusive parent!! For a lot of people this sucks for the personal reason of not wanting a character they like to be abusive--maybe having gotten attached to a version of the character that is a much better parent before getting into comics. (I hear that the animated shows tend to have good dad Bruce, though I can't personally confirm that.) But discounting personal opinions, I think on principle it sucks for two reasons: 2a. Batman is DC's flagship character. He has four bazillion comics about him. He is arguably the most famous superhero in the world. And it really sucks that DC's most famous hero is an abuser! This dude is 100% supposed to be a hero on the side of good, however dark and gritty he may act, and it fuckin' sucks to have him be such a terrible parent at the same time. 2b. Most important to me, his abuse! is never! fucking! addressed! Sometimes Bruce is written abusing his kids with an awareness his actions are bad, but never with a real examination of how bad--and often glossing over that the people he's mistreating are his children. And sometimes it's just not acknowledged as bad at all! Batman writers vary between portraying him as abusive with zero awareness that's what they're doing (and often absolutely awful excuses like "well that's just how he communicates") and portraying him as a genuinely good dad while explicitly ignoring the previous abuse he has committed. But no comic ever actually...calls him out as abusive.

On the fan side, no one I know or have seen in this side of fandom is happy he's an abuser. Obviously out in the big, wide world, you have plenty of people who think those claims are exaggerated and Batman sometimes hitting his kids is...uh, idk, unimportant I guess? (see: dc comics official writers.) And probably there are a few outliers who think he is more cool for it. But by and large, in this tumblr/twitter, fan-content-creating, analysis-posting area of fandom, everyone hates that Batman is canonically abusive.

And as a result of all of that, you pretty much end up fractured into two groups here.

There are the people who simply refuse to acknowledge or deal with Bruce as an abuser. Comics with his more obviously heinous actions are ignored. Comics with more subtle abuse have the abuse blatantly glossed over for the sweet moments. Issues where he is a good parent are touted. This group makes headcanons and fic and art and discussion that simply rewrites Bruce's abuse until it doesn't exist, and treats him as if he is and always has been a good parent. Bruce being abusive is Bad, Bruce being a good parents is Good, and canon is optional.

And then there are the people who are all about acknowledging that Bruce is an abuser. Bruce being a canonical abuser is still bad, but Bruce being a canonical abuser and it never being addressed is far worse. So this group REFUSES to forget all those issues where Bruce hits his kids, and is far more interested in examining his emotional abuse than glossing over it. And this group makes headcanons and fic and art and discussion as well, but now versions that specifically call out Bruce's abusive behavior. Sometimes that's to force him to change, and sometimes it's to get his kids to a better place, and sometimes it's to deliver him karmatic punishment--and sometimes it doesn't change things at all, but just finds the catharsis in acknowledging them.

And both of these things are mostly fine, and valid ways for transformative fandom to deal with something shitty in canon. And when it comes to fanworks, both of these motivations lead to stories that I personally can enjoy a great deal.

BUT.

I say mostly fine, because pulling seemingly sweet moments from canon out of their toxic context and holding them up as great parenting just makes it sound like you didn’t recognize or care about the surrounding abuse. And insisting that Bruce actually totally is a good parent most of the time does the same.

Good Dad Bruce is a headcanon that’s directly opposed to canon. And you can absolutely stick with it anyway, because that’s what transformative fandom does! But arguing that canon Bruce isn't or couldn't be abusive makes you sound, at best, like you have not read a lot of comics (which is hardly a sin, but you probably shouldn’t be pretending you have an informed opinion on them), but at worst like you are actively dismissing abuse. And arguing that the people who do want to address that abuse are themselves somehow awful, mean, abuse-lovers just...makes you an asshole.

That’s it; that’s the post.

(@thatblondeperson you asked about this post like a week ago in replies after I briefly mentioned it, and I’ve finally remembered to pull it out, so giving a tag)

#i've had this in my drafts so long i can't even remember what specific annoyance triggered it #but it remains true #(additional thesis: the format of long form comics has accidentally made bruce a shockingly realistic abuser too.)#(but that could be it's own entire essay)#dc #*#*dc #dc meta #bruce wayne #batman #batfam #batman's c+ parenting #YES the silliness of that tag is tonally at odds here lmao #10to2

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sholiofic · 2 years

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I had several inbox prompts for de-aged versions of the characters, especially Zemo, but the one that really took off wasn’t actually one of the specific prompts, but rather, something that @scioscribe said, in what I think was a conversation about combining different prompts:

Also, this suggests a fic that I would totally read where de-aged Zemo gets hypothermia and also Evil Agencies want to put him back on the Raft even though he's, like, seven.

This is also influenced by some conversations about de-aged Zemo’s general personality on the Winterbaron discord. About 1400 wds.

Zemo was a tiny lump huddled under a sheet in a hospital bed. And Bucky, who up until a few minutes ago had been sitting in the chair beside the bed, was now on his feet and about to choke a bitch.

The bitch in question being Thaddeus Ross, and the six (!!) SHIELD agents he had showed up with to take a seven-year-old back to prison.

"Out," Bucky said between his teeth.

"He is a prisoner, and I have the paperwork here," Ross said, snapping his finger against it. "You've had him out for the allotted week—"

"Shut up before you wake him up." Bucky planted his mechanical hand on Ross's chest and shoved him into the two SHIELD agents behind him. They were all pushed out into the corridor, where the rest of them were milling awkwardly while nurses glared at them, trying and failing to look like they belonged in body armor on the pediatric floor of the hospital in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross had never been deterred by irrelevant issues like "frightening small children."

"There is no line on Raft paperwork for 'the prisoner was turned into a small child on work release.' We're here to take him, and we're not leaving without him."

Bucky leaned forward until he was in Ross's face.

"Let's just make something clear—"

"Whoa, what the hell is going on here?"

Sam had just showed up in the hallway, a cup of coffee in each hand and a bottle of orange juice clamped between two fingers of one hand. Bucky was conflicted: on the one hand, Sam not being there gave him more options for, say, choking a bitch, but on the other hand, Sam was a lot better at defusing potentially volatile situations.

"Wilson," Ross grated out.

"The duty nurse at the desk told me you were here," Sam said, raking him with a glance. He handed one of the cups of coffee to Bucky, a seemingly offhand gesture, but it was almost certainly aimed at stopping Bucky from punching anyone. Devious bastard. "I thought they must have misunderstood, because even you wouldn't stoop low enough to try to put a sick kid in prison, but I guess I was wrong. And with backup, even. It takes a lot of tough guys to subdue a seven-year-old."

Bucky managed to keep his mouth shut.

There was really no way to explain the child version of Zemo to anyone unless you had actually experienced the child version of Zemo. He was very quiet, very polite, incredibly focused, and had immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were kidnappers and devoted all his unbelievable (for a seven-year-old) focus on playing nice with the supposed kidnappers while plotting to escape. This was his second attempt and the one that had ended with Zemo almost drowning, and Sam and Bucky panicking while wrapping him in coats and rushing him to the hospital.

"Yeah, how did he end up in the hospital, exactly?" Ross asked, switching tactics. "Maybe the two of you aren't suited to taking care of a kid."

"As opposed to putting the kid in prison, a vast improvement," Bucky said. So much for keeping his mouth shut.

"Look," Sam said quietly. He stepped into Ross's space, too, and this actually made Ross fall back a little. Bucky decided to assume that it was Ross just not being able to take the two of them combined, rather than Sam being actually more intimidating than the Winter Soldier when he got pushed so far past the limits of his easygoing nature that he actually got mad. "You might have paperwork that says you can take Helmut Zemo, forty-two-year-old Sokovian terrorist, back to prison. But there is absolutely no way anyone is going to believe that little kid is him, because it's impossible. Things like this just don't happen. At which point we've got you on kidnapping charges, caught red-handed hauling a sick kid out of the hospital, and you really aren't going to enjoy what happens next. Sheriffs in these small Southern counties are really understanding about that sort of thing, a bunch of Yankees kidnapping a small cute white child, so while you're enjoying finding out about small-town jails, then I get the lawyers involved, and if you think your top-secret middle-of-the-ocean prison is going to stand up to that kind of scrutiny—"

"God, you're a pain in the ass," Ross said. But he was stepping away. He was backing down. Bucky was reluctantly impressed. "I'm going to go consult my lawyers. And you know the DOD retains some good ones."

"Yeah, and Captain America is on a friendly basis with all of them," Sam said blandly, at which point Bucky realized just how deeply he was bluffing. He nudged the door open with his elbow. "See you later."

They both ducked back into Zemo's room.

"You absolute liar," Bucky whispered, impressed.

"Well, what am I supposed to tell him?" Sam whispered back fiercely. "That we don't have any paperwork for the kid either, and the nurses think he's a foundling we picked up at the river and already are giving us the side-eye? They probably could walk out with him; they're more respectable-looking than we—" He finally noticed Bucky trying to shush him and turned around. They both regarded the sleep-tousled seven-year-old sitting up in bed and looking at them with feverish suspicion.

"Who's that?" Zemo asked tetchily in his very careful schoolbook English.

"Very bad people," Bucky said. "Hey, Sam brought you orange juice."

Sam took the chair by the bed, so Bucky sat on the end of it. "You thirsty, kid?" Sam asked, cracking the lid off the juice.

Zemo went on looking at them with one of his politely hard-to-read looks. He was unfairly adorable like this, with a mop of light-brown hair and enormous eyes. "I heard you talking," he whispered, and coughed a little. "That man—I don't like him."

"Well, we won't let him near you," Sam said. He waggled the juice. "Want a drink?"

Zemo hesitated, then took it in both hands and drank.

"He's right," Bucky said, feeling suddenly a lot more awkward than when he was getting up in Ross's face. "I know you don't entirely believe us about the, uh, the adult you, but we're supposed to protect the adult you, so we're going to protect the little-kid you just the same. Nobody bad is going to hurt you or come close to you while we're here."

Zemo looked up from his juice. "Why can't I go home?"

Bucky opened his mouth and complete ran out of inspiration.

"Because it's not safe," Sam said quietly. "Because of men like that. So you'll be with us until it is safe."

They had said more or less this to him before—it was the closest thing they had to an explanation for him—but he had responded with nothing but tiny frowns of obvious suspicion. This time, however, he looked at them with one of those thoughtful little frowns, and then he said suddenly, "I believe you."

And he crawled out of bed into Sam's lap.

"Uh, hey," Sam said, startled. "Uh, here, let me take that." He took the half-empty orange juice and put it by the bed. "Hey, Buck, could I get a blanket or something ..."

Bucky took pity on him, because it wasn't every day you got the seven-year-old version of a wanted international terrorist curling up peacefully and trustingly in your lap, looking like he was about to fall asleep there. He took one of the blankets off the bed and tucked it around Zemo in Sam's arms. Meanwhile Sam was lightly stroking the kid's hair. Zemo sagged into him and then, from all appearances, did actually fall asleep, sliding into a deeper and less twitchy sleep than anything Bucky had seen him achieve earlier in the evening.

"Naptime for me, then," Bucky said, and stretched out on the bed. As a pediatric bed, it wasn't long enough for him, but he was too tired to care.

"Hey!"

"Look, if I have to throw out Ross and his goons in the morning, I'll need the rest. Anyway, you're busy being a piece of furniture right now."

Sam snorted, but softly, and he reached over Zemo's curly little head, very carefully, to retrieve his coffee cup.

#tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier #bucky barnes #sam wilson #helmut zemo

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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NMJ is used to taking care of everyone else. He's not used to being taken care of. After getting injured or sick or a qi divination or something, his loved ones all come together to take care of him. He learns more people care deeply about him than he realized.

And if you can include a scene with someone bathing him or washing his hair, I would be ecstatic.

ao3

“- and no excuses!” Nie Huaisang’s voice was a little shrill, but under the circumstances, Nie Mingjue didn’t entirely feel like he could object.

After all, all the yelling, shrill or otherwise, was a sign that Nie Huaisang was sincerely worried about him, something Nie Mingjue usually did his best not to doubt. His little brother was self-absorbed and carefree, just the way he’d vowed he’d let him be years before when Nie Huaisang had been little more than a child. So even if Nie Huaisang’s behavior annoyed him or worried him, which it often did, even if it seized up his heart to think about what might happen when he was gone, when there would be no one to take care of his brother for him, it still pleased him beyond measure to see his brother grow up happy.

So what if it meant taking on some extra burdens, meant doing that little bit more to conceal his hardships and portray himself as the unshakable older brother Nie Huaisang saw him as? So what if his brother’s complaints sometimes acted as thorns hooked deep in his heart, itching under his skin, making him wonder does he really think of me that way and have I gone too far this time, maybe he hates me now and all that?

Nie Huaisang was yelling at him again, voice painfully shrill and piercing, but for Nie Mingjue, to hear his brother worried for him and not from him made for a nice change.

Anyway, he himself had probably been just as shrill, when it had been his father that –

It wasn’t that bad, he reminded himself. Baxia was as strong a presence in his mind as ever, their bond uninterrupted. It only looked bad from the outside.

It looked – pretty bad from the outside.

Nie Mingjue tried to smile at Nie Huaisang, but for some reason that just seemed to make things worse: Nie Huaisang’s eyes filled up with tears at once and the scowl on his face deepened. “I’m serious, da-ge! Really serious. I’ll take care of everything, you won’t need to worry about anything at all – for real, this time – and in return, you’re staying put until the doctors say you’re better.”

Nie Mingjue nodded obediently.

Nie Huaisang burst into tears and fled the room before Nie Mingjue could even offer him a hug.

Watching his little brother run, Nie Mingjue sighed and turned his gaze towards his (usually) reliable head disciple standing guard in the corner of the room, trying to ask with his gaze what in the world he was doing wrong, but Nie Zonghui’s eyes were red like a bad attack of spring fever and he wouldn’t even look at him.

It was not, in Nie Mingjue’s view, a very effective way to guard him. Not that he needed guarding – maybe if he’d had no choice but to return injured to Jinlin Tower, that pit of vipers and nest of foxes, but despite the gravity of his wounds they’d still managed to make it as far as this little outpost in disputed territory. Even if it was a stretch, they could put soldiers here and call it justified as being land under the command of Qinghe Nie…though possibly Jin Guangshan would try to find some way to use them doing that to his advantage.

And Nie Mingjue wasn’t exactly up for another war at the moment.

He wasn’t up for anything.

“Stop thinking of politics,” Nie Zonghui said, and his voice was hoarse as if he’d been swallowing sobs. Nie Mingjue wondered how he’d guessed. “I always can tell because your nose wrinkles whenever you think too hard about it…ah, A-Jue, you scared us.”

Scared his half-generation uncle enough to revert back to using childhood nicknames, apparently.

Nie Mingjue wished he could say something to comfort him.

Well, if he were wishing for things, forget wishing that he hadn’t been struck temporarily mute, he might as well go the full way and wish that the terrible creature he’d been fighting – a demon of especially vicious character, and so unexpectedly near to Lanling, too! – hadn’t taken advantage of the weakness he still suffered from, after the Nightless City, to attack his saber rather than himself.

Might as well wish, too, that he’d never been captured in Yangquan in the first place. That he’d never been beaten or tortured, that he’d never had a hundred Wen feet kicking at his saber in some pale shadow their sect leader, attempting to break him as their sect leader had broken his father.

How he had felt when the demon’s blow had fallen straight onto his blade and she had cracked –

Baxia was fine. He could feel her.

(He remembered his father shouting for someone to bring him his saber, long gone, and wondered –)

Baxia was fine.

He’d examined her a thousand times and couldn’t see any true damage – the physical damage was artificially induced, located at the far end; for a regular saber, it wouldn’t be anything to think twice about, a bit of hammering in the forge and it would be as if it had never happened, with no lingering weakness. It was only if her spirit had been harmed, or the bond between them, that his own spirit would be injured, his mind affected, and that hadn’t happened. He’d checked, was checking, time and time again. She was fine.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell anybody that.

When the blade had cracked, he’d reacted on instinct in a fit of panic, sending all of his qi immediately to his bond with Baxia, desperately and frantically trying to ensure that his soul wasn’t torn out of his hands the way his father’s had been, that gruesome descent into madness and frothing aimless rage. The demon had sensed his distraction and gone for his throat with its claws, and then the rest of the Nie sect that had come on the night-hunt with him had descended upon it like howling wolves, throwing everything they’d brought with them at it.

Not a good night-hunting strategy (what if the demon hadn’t been alone? what if it was huddled together with other creatures of resentful energy the way they usually were, and using up their arsenal on it left them vulnerable? what if they encountered something on the way back?), but admittedly very effective.

The demon had been utterly vanquished – and really, all the admonishments not to think of politics aside, it was very unusual for such a thing to be lurking around in the environs of another Great Sect like that, especially when that sect had invited its guests to casually night-hunt to entertain themselves – and now they were here.

Or rather, he was here, lying in bed with needles stuck in him like a porcupine, drinking bowl after bowl of medicine as his brother frantically hovered over him. And Nie Mingjue was yielding to it all without complaint even when it was really annoying (he’d never been a very good patient) because he understood, having once been there in Nie Huaisang’s place when his father had been in his, except all his complaisance seemed to be only making Nie Huaisang even more upset.

Baxia grumbled in his mind, having apparently realized that they weren’t going night-hunting again until she was fully repaired and all the worry-warts around him satisfied, and he comforted her with his own misery at the idea: stuck in bed, not allowed to train, not allowed to hunt –

He’d tried to mime the idea of doing some correspondence, since much of it was in fact urgent and he couldn’t even imagine how much of the endless work of being sect leader would pile up in the event of an elongated absence, and Nie Huaisang had thrown a fit, and also several teacups.

Apparently he wasn’t even allowed to do that.

Nie Mingjue sighed and sank back into the bed, briefly putting on an exaggerated pout that made Nie Zonghui laugh a little, the sound wet in his throat. But then, once he’d turned away and followed Nie Huaisang out the door, Nie Mingjue’s pout faded into a resigned sigh.

A little while later, he heard familiar voices at the door.

“ – came as soon as I could, of course,” Jin Guangyao was saying, sounding a little – amused? Long-suffering? What a strange emotion for him to openly display, given the circumstances. Even if he was enjoying someone’s misfortune, and Nie Mingjue knew that his sworn brother often did, he would normally be more tactful about expressing it. “Your missive wasn’t very clear about what the issue was, Huaisang.”

Well, that would explain it. If it was Nie Huaisang, being called to assist with a disaster might mean anything from the dramatic breaking of a fan to the even more dramatic prospect of being forced to actually do some work for once in his life. It very rarely referred to actual disaster.

There was the muffled sound of sobbing – it turned Nie Mingjue’s stomach to hear Nie Huaisang like that, but the last day or so had shown him that there was nothing he could do about it – and then some quiet discussion, too low to hear without trying, and Nie Mingjue had gotten some very stern lectures on how much he was not to try anything for a while.

The murmuring continued for a little, and then – “What?!”

A moment later, Jin Guangyao rushed into Nie Mingjue’s room, usual smile still frozen on his face and his eyes a little wider than usual. It was a refreshingly subdued reaction, Nie Mingjue thought: none of the wide-eyed teary eyes or drooped shoulders that usually accompanied Jin Guangyao’s demonstrations of upset feelings, the pity-me scenes that felt so staged now that Nie Mingjue knew what an able actor Jin Guangyao was.

This time, though, he seemed almost sincere.

Jin Guangyao stopped a few steps into the room, staring at where Nie Mingjue was lying, expression still frozen for a moment, and then the ice melted and the artifice returned, a look of sorrow and sympathy – look at how bad you’ve made me feel by being hurt like that – that made Nie Mingjue want to sigh. He’d been happier, their relationship better, before he’d gotten to peek under the mask Jin Guangyao wore, but it hadn’t been the truth, and he always preferred a hard truth over a soft lie.

“Oh, da-ge,” Jin Guangyao murmured. “Da-ge, poor da-ge…how are you feeling?”

Nie Mingjue said nothing, of course, and Jin Guangyao frowned.

“He can’t talk,” Nie Huaisang said, having followed him into the room. “His throat was nearly ripped out –”

For fuck’s sake, it was a scratch.

“– and he was almost entirely drained of his qi. I could barely feel his heartbeat when I arrived! And he hasn’t been acting like himself, either! I don’t know, I just – I don’t remember what it was like, la – last – last time –”

The tears were starting again, and Nie Mingjue tried to raise a hand to reach out to Nie Huaisang, wanting to comfort him, but something about the gesture made Nie Huaisang sob even harder and even Jin Guangyao looked a little taken aback, even a little stricken. Maybe it was the amount of effort it took for him to lift his hand, the way he had to stop and start the movement? The way his fingers trembled with the effort it took to keep it up in the air?

(His father hadn’t been like this at all. Maybe Nie Huaisang had been too young, Nie Zonghui too distant, but Nie Mingjue remembered it as if it were yesterday – there hadn’t been weakness, not like this. His father had been in a coma for three days and nights, and then he’d woken up. He’d seemed fine at first, not weak at all beyond the usual sluggishness that followed after a period of unconsciousness, and then he’d asked for his saber – and kept asking, no matter how many times they tried to explain –)

Baxia was fine.

The weakness was his own.

It wasn’t like that.

“How can I help?” Jin Guangyao asked. “Sect business –”

“I need someone to watch over him,” Nie Huaisang interrupted, wiping his eyes. “Someone who knows him well. He’s not…his reactions are all wrong. He goes into these dazes sometimes, doesn’t respond, and even when he seems present, he’s flinching at things that aren’t there or being nice and I just…I really can’t tell how much he’s really here or how much of it is reacting on, I don’t know, some sort of childhood instinct. So it has to be someone familiar with his habits, his likes and dislikes.”

Jin Guangyao was blinking rapidly. “And – me? You want me to...I was his deputy, yes, but – surely you or someone else in the Nie sect would be more appropriate?”

“Sect Leader Nie has always respected the differences between rank,” Nie Zonghui volunteered, voice low. “It would hurt his pride to be seen in such an undignified state by someone who wasn’t family.”

The blinking stopped, Jin Guangyao’s rapid thinking abruptly (and visibly) hitting a wall. “I’m – I’m not family.”

“You’re his sworn brother, aren’t you? That’s almost the same as being brothers, which makes you family,” Nie Huaisang said practically. “I’ve written to er-ge, too –”

He’d what?!

“Anyway, I know how good you are at managing things, but it wouldn’t really be appropriate for you to be involved in Nie sect business, would it? It might put you in an awkward situation, having to negotiate against your father.” Nie Huaisang gave Jin Guangyao another hug. “You just focus on taking care of da-ge, all right? I don’t want – if anyone found out, they could –”

He was going to start crying again, Nie Mingjue thought miserably, and wondered if people could die of dehydration by means of tears.

“Nothing will happen to your brother while he’s in my hands,” Jin Guangyao said, and Nie Mingjue even believed him. If there was one thing Jin Guangyao hated, it was being blamed for anything – even if he wanted Nie Mingjue dead, which Nie Mingjue was sure he did sometimes, he would never let it happen while he was the responsible party. Which was why it was something of a surprise that he was allowing himself to be made responsible. “It’ll be all right, Huaisang. You have to believe that.”

Nie Huaisang sniffed and finally wiped away his tears. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough,” he said ominously, and stalked out with Nie Zonghui a few steps behind, shooting Jin Guangyao an apologetic look as they left.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t tell if he agreed or disagreed with Nie Huaisang’s words.

“I hope da-ge doesn’t mind my forwardness in agreeing to help him,” Jin Guangyao said, coming closer to the bed to look down at him, his expression simpering and fake as it always was these days.

As much as that falsity annoyed him, how could Nie Mingjue mind? He knew, as Jin Guangyao did not, what his brother was afraid of; anything that could ease his brother’s mind, if only for a moment, was good.

(Why would Jin Guangyao agree to be the one responsible for him? A demon of such strength shouldn’t have been anywhere near Lanling. And this little outpost was nothing, unguarded, vulnerable; they didn’t have any defenses if Jin Guangshan decided to do something against them here, and yet Jin Guangyao willingly agreed –)

He couldn’t tell Jin Guangyao that he appreciated what he was doing and knew how hard it was, how much of a burden it was, so he reached out and caught his sleeve, tugging it lightly, and tried to smile at him.

It wasn’t any more successful than when he’d tried it on Nie Huaisang – less tears, but it made Jin Guangyao frown in a way that looked actually sincere, as if Nie Mingjue had done something incorrect – so he tugged on his sleeve again, like a child, until Jin Guangyao instinctively lifted his hand to stop him. Nie Mingjue exerted himself, caught it, and drew the words for an apology on his sworn brother’s palm.

My fault, he thought at Jin Guangyao, hoping that he’d understand. I’ve troubled you.

My fault.

It was his weakness. His family’s, his father’s, his own – why should others pay for it, the way he’d paid for his father’s? All he’d ever wanted was to keep them from having to go through that type of suffering.

Jin Guangyao’s hand was trembling, he suddenly noticed, and opened eyes that had slid shut with temporary exhaustion to look at Jin Guangyao again.

His sworn brother’s face had gone ashen, his lips pressed together tightly as if something was upsetting him.

“Da-ge?” he said, strangely hesitant, but Nie Mingjue didn’t understand what he was trying to ask him and was too tired to really try. He squeezed Jin Guangyao’s hand again and released him, letting his hand fall down to the bed.

He checked once again on Baxia.

She was fine. She was right there, their bond as strong as ever.

(“Where is my saber?” his father asked, rubbing his face. “Pass Jiwei to me, A-Jue, will you?”)

He shivered.

Opened his eyes.

The room had been reorganized, he noticed, and the light was different, although not too much – had he fallen asleep? He must have.

Well, he was still healing. It was normal.

“Da-ge!” Jin Guangyao was still there, too. “Can you hear me now?”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“Good,” Jin Guangyao said, and seemed to even mean it. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

My saber, Nie Mingjue thought, and started shivering again, the room suddenly gone terribly cold even though he was under two layers of blankets already.

Baxia was fine. She was only out of his sight because they were fixing her – it was a small thing, nothing to a normal saber, easily repaired. It was only taking so long because they would have to find a good forge and bring over a smith familiar with spiritual weapons.

Baxia was fine.

He wouldn’t ask for her. He wouldn’t.

“– leader Nie! Look at me – can you hear me? Sect Leader Nie, Meng Yao has a question for you –”

Nie Mingjue turned his head with some difficulty and blinked at Jin Guangyao, who looked relieved. He’d used his old name for some reason, maybe to get Nie Mingjue’s attention, and even that much was a bit of a surprise. Jin Guangyao hated his old name, would prefer to pretend it had never existed, and this was the first time Nie Mingjue had heard it from his lips since the ceremony in which he’d received the new one.

“Good,” Jin Guangyao murmured, seeing him. “Good – yes, da-ge. You’re back. Good. Look at me.”

Nie Mingjue tried to mouth the word ‘question’ at him, but it felt like it was impossible to communicate properly. The lack of language frustrated him immensely, even if the usual anger that was always so quick to leap to his side at the first instance of such frustration didn’t come, too buried beneath the fear.

Luckily, Jin Guangyao was quick and smart and after a few moments seemed to understand. “Oh, ah, the question? Yes. That. Ah...I wanted to know if there was something you wanted.”

My saber.

Nie Mingjue shivered.

Baxia was fine.

“I rearranged the room to your preferences –” He had, too. Even the light fell differently. “– but I’m not sure what else I can get for you that you might need or enjoy.”

Nie Mingjue considered trying to ask for correspondence again, something to do that would be useful, but quickly realized the futility of that. Still, he didn’t really do anything else, other than work; he’d long ago given up all his old hobbies in favor of his duties, being sect leader and training himself for war and eventually war itself, and even he didn’t remember what they were anymore.

“As da-ge knows, he has always been a mystery to me,” Jin Guangyao added, a little bit of self-depreciating humor in his words. That old joke between them (had it been a joke?), about how Meng Yao would constantly be trying to figure out what Nie Mingjue liked so that he could serve him better and Nie Mingjue constantly being disinterested in every vice he tried to present him with…after everything, Nie Mingjue had started to wonder if it hadn’t been a joke at all, if Meng Yao had been truly frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t find any chink in his armor, a weakness he could exploit to hold over his head.

He was so weak now, though, and yet Jin Guangyao made the same joke.

Was there anything, really, for him to do? Jin Guangyao must be terribly bored, forced to be a babysitter for a man who couldn’t even speak to convey his wishes, and wouldn’t –

Actually, now what he thought about it, there was something.

Nie Mingjue lifted his fingers and twisted them into the hand sign they’d used during the Sunshot Campaign to mean ‘break camp’.

Jin Guangyao stared at him blankly.

He made the sign again, hoping to convey meaning. There wasn’t anything in the room he could point to, and he’d never been especially talented at pantomime, yet surely Jin Guangyao with his quick mind would be able to puzzle it out – every time he made that sign, they would stop moving, set up the tents, and the first thing he’d want, every time it was possible, was –

“A bath?” Jin Guangyao asked, and Nie Mingjue nodded in relief. “I’ll order one set up right away. Anything else?”

Nie Mingjue pointed to the pile of his clothing that was now neatly folded up on a nearby table – and much reduced, by the look of it. Not a surprise. The always-efficient Jin Guangyao would have sent the worst pieces, the ones that had been cut off his body by the doctors, away to be retailored.

Jin Guangyao frowned at it. “You want to get dressed? No…to get ready to receive visitors?”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“Why? Who are you expecting?”

After some contemplation, Nie Mingjue held up two fingers.

Jin Guangyao blinked.

Sighing, Nie Mingjue pointed at himself – one finger – and at Jin Guangyao – three fingers – and then held up two again.

“…you want to get bathed and dressed before er-ge arrives?”

It was so good to have someone by his side that understood him. Losing his trust in Meng Yao’s character had always been the worst part of that entire experience, the realization that the person he’d thought was a friend had never existed but had instead been deliberately manufactured to match his tastes, but losing the help of such a competent deputy hadn’t been great, either.

“Da-ge, are you sure?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. He couldn’t let Lan Xichen see him like this – the Nie and Lan sects had always been closer allies than they’d been with the others, and they’d been friends since childhood. While not physically present, Lan Xichen had seen some glimpses of what Nie Mingjue had gone through when his father had been dying, and again right after he’d died.

He’d been the one to whom Nie Huaisang had revealed that one letter that Nie Mingjue had thought he’d burned, the one that he hadn’t actually intended on ever using, the one that laid out what he’d say if he were to say goodbye – it had only been theoretical, a way to get out frustration. He would never have been so selfish as to let the awful burden that had fallen on his shoulders fall in turn on Nie Huaisang.

But Lan Xichen hadn’t really believed him back then, when he’d explained that he didn’t mean it, that he didn’t have any plans to do anything that would make such a goodbye necessary. He’d worried himself sick over him back then.

He’d worry now.

Nie Mingjue knew Lan Xichen loved him, he did, even if sometimes recently he felt that Lan Xichen might take him a little for granted. Lan Xichen loved him, so Lan Xichen would worry about him, but Lan Xichen also expressed his worries through trying to fix things.

He didn’t want to have to deal with that right now. There was nothing that needed to be fixed – Baxia was fine, he was fine, it was just a matter of healing for him and a bit of reforging for her.

It was fine.

“Da-ge, the bath is ready.”

Nie Mingjue pulled himself back out of trying to check on his bond with Baxia again to find that it was, steaming and hot; the servants must have moved it in while he wasn’t paying attention and then departed again. He tried to pull himself up to sit, but Jin Guangyao pressed down on his shoulder with surprising strength.

“Let me help you, da-ge,” he said, and Nie Mingjue graciously didn’t call him out on how much he was clearly enjoying himself. It was nice to think that part of that enjoyment was in helping him, as opposed to merely being in a position of power, but it was so hard to tell with Jin Guangyao – he wasn’t even sure the man himself knew which it was.

Shakily, with Jin Guangyao’s assistance, he sat up, and put his feet on the ground, only to have to wait while Jin Guangyao fussed around removing the acupuncture needles that had been left behind, murmuring something about having gotten the doctors’ approval. After that was done, Jin Guangyao helped him painstakingly totter over to the bathtub – his sworn brother might have only mediocre cultivation, but he was still stronger than Nie Mingjue was now, with his qi depleted and his battered body little more than dead weight. Nie Mingjue was as dependent on him as a small child on their parent. Once there, he helped brace him against the wall, helped remove his inner robes, and finally, blissfully, helped him slide into the bathtub.

“Da-ge has so many scars,” Jin Guangyao said, and Nie Mingjue looked at him.

Jin Guangyao was studying him with a strange expression on his face. He hadn’t allowed him to assist him with bathing before, Nie Mingjue recalled; he had been trying to maintain a divide between personal servants and military hierarchy, and Jin Guangyao – Meng Yao, then – had been a guest disciple, not a servant. Even when there were no personal servants to be had and Jin Guangyao had offered, Nie Mingjue had refused, not wanting his deputy to feel as though he were being looked down upon.

Still, it wasn’t as though the man hadn’t seen his bare chest before – there had been times on campaign when a bath hadn’t been possible, only a quick dip in the river to wash off the blood, and Jin Guangyao had even helped stitch him up a few times when an enemy’s blade had struck true and the doctors were busy elsewhere – so Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure what was drawing his interest this time.

Normally, he would have asked.

Normally, he would have gotten angry at the presumption, less because of the violation of social norms than because he was embarrassed, and when he was embarrassed he got angry. That was his temperament, the way he’d been raised, always defaulting to anger instead of other, less comfortable emotions, and he’d tried very hard to avoid passing along those habits to Nie Huaisang. He hoped one day to see Nie Huaisang teaching children of his own with new habits, different habits – for his little brother to scold him for being a bad example to the younger generation, for him to have a reason to try harder to be better.

He couldn’t ask now, and there was no point in being angry. Or embarrassed, for that matter.

Jin Guangyao’s hand came to his shoulder, and then slid down to his chest, the pressure of his fingers light and barely present. There was nothing sexual or threatening in the gesture, simply curiosity.

“So many new scars,” Jin Guangyao murmured, and Nie Mingjue looked down at his chest: raised red lines all over, old injuries scabbed over and scarred and healing. His cultivation was at such a high level that even scars eventually faded away, but many of these were too new. The marks of a knife, a sword, a whip, the remnants of blunt weapons that hit so many times that they pierced skin, even the indentation of human nails driven in deep…

The worst of it was his left side, right above his ribs, where the knife marks were precise and orderly, triangles of flesh cut like fletching; he had made a habit of not looking at himself there, yet that was where Jin Guangyao’s fingers went.

“How did this happen, da-ge?” he asked, staring, his gaze unnervingly intent. “Who tried to skin you alive?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t understand the question. He pointed at Jin Guangyao.

“What?” Jin Guangyao asked, not understanding. “Do you want me to get you something?”

Nie Mingjue shook his head. He pointed again, this time at his side at the place he preferred not to think about, and then once again at Jin Guangyao himself.

Jin Guangyao stared back at him, blank for a moment until he understood, and then he visibly flinched. “Me?” he said, his voice rising an octave. “No, I didn’t –”

It hadn’t been him directly, no, but the person who had done it had been his student – had boasted about being trained by Wen Ruohan’s chief torturer, the inventor of all those terrible machines that they’d heard rumors of, some of which they’d brought out to show him through intimate demonstration – the sick feeling in Nie Mingjue’s stomach when he’d found Meng Yao standing above him, smiling, and realized that the person that had been spoken of was him…

It might as well have been him that did it.

“I hadn’t realized,” Jin Guangyao said. His fingers had fallen to the edge of the tub, holding on until his knuckles were white. Anger, Nie Mingjue thought with the experience of a connoisseur, but he didn’t understand why it would make Jin Guangyao angry. “They shouldn’t have touched you. They weren’t allowed –”

Nie Mingjue didn’t especially want to hear any more of Jin Guangyao’s excuses – there were always excuses, he’d found, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t forgiven him for it already, or did Jin Guangyao think that he’d sworn brotherhood for nothing? – so he closed his eyes and let himself sink down into the water until it was over his head.

It was peaceful under the water, disconnected from the rest of the world. He didn’t have to think about Jin Guangyao ordering his torture and then covering it up, or maybe even ordering them not to do it but not keeping close enough watch to prevent it; he didn’t have to think about all the people that Jin Guangyao couldn’t use, the ones that didn’t get the benefit of such an order.

He didn’t have to think about all those feet kicking his Baxia like she was a dog they wanted to put down, or Meng Yao holding her in his hands and asking him how many slaps he thought it would take until she shattered the way Jiwei had shattered, or the invitation to go night-hunting at Lanling that led him straight to a demon that knew exactly where to strike –

Baxia was fine, he reminded himself. Fine.

Hands abruptly appeared in front of his eyes, bursting into the underwater scene in a frenzy of bubbles, catching him around the shoulders and pulling him up into the air to see Jin Guangyao’s white face and hear him shouting, “Are you mad, staying under for so long?! You’re not a fish; you can’t breathe water!”

Nie Mingjue blinked at him.

“You’re no Jiang sect child of the river,” Jin Guangyao scolded. “What’s wrong with you? Do you not want to live anymore?”

(“Stop stalling and get me my saber!” his father roared, his hand lashing out too quick for Nie Mingjue to avoid, the full-force blow sending him staggering and breaking something inside of him in more ways than just the physical. “Do you not want to live anymore?”)

Nie Mingjue missed the water already.

Jin Guangyao’s fingers tightened on his shoulders. “You’re not allowed to go, da-ge,” he said. “Not when I just realized that I want to keep you around.”

Nie Mingjue shook his head, realizing that Jin Guangyao had misunderstood his silence. It wasn’t that he wanted to die, he wouldn’t do that to Nie Huaisang, but that sometimes he didn’t know if he would be able to stay.

Baxia was fine – wasn’t she?

“Just don’t move, all right?” Jin Guangyao huffed, and settled down behind him. He found some soap and began scrubbing at Nie Mingjue’s skin as if he were a piece of laundry, although he didn’t use enough pressure for it to actually hurt. The repetitive movements were soothing, lulling him to relax – especially when Jin Guangyao, grumbling something about stress, jabbed him repeatedly in certain acupoints to force his muscles to release stored-up tension – and after a little while Jin Guangyao stopped being so rough.

“Huaisang was right,” he said after a while, having shifted over to running his fingers through Nie Mingjue’s hair as if he were a child, carefully detangling each knot he encountered. “You really are acting far too nice. Shouldn’t you be scolding me for overstepping?”

Nie Mingjue shook his head lightly, careful not to jostle Jin Guangyao’s hand.

“No? Then something else, surely. Where’s your anger, da-ge?”

Nie Mingjue looked down at his hands, his saber hand instinctively curling up to grasp a hilt that was no longer there. It looked wrong to see them like this, empty.

(“Where is my saber?” his father cried out. “My saber – my saber!”)

He wasn’t his father.

That he would die of a qi deviation, die young, years before his time – this he had accepted. But he would not die the way his father died, angry, lashing out at all the ones he loved most, not if he could do anything about it.

Maybe in the future, when he lost himself fully, he would become a resentful ghost in human flesh, a raging monster fit only for slaughtering – if his thoughts themselves had already begun to lie to him, to drip poison into his ears and into his heart, if despite everything Baxia was actually gone and he was already dead and he just hadn’t realized it yet –

For as long as he could manage, Nie Mingjue wouldn’t let himself be angry.

Did he still doubt Jin Guangyao? Yes, of course. But what good would it do to suspect him now? If he tried to accuse him, even he wouldn’t believe his own testimony.

(“- they say your father died of rage –”)

“Come on, then,” Jin Guangyao said, coaxing him like a child, and his hands as he helped him out of the bath were almost gentle. “I’ve got you some new robes. I’ll help you into them.”

Nie Mingjue caught his hand.

“Da-ge? Do you want something?”

My saber. Where is my saber?

He shook his head and let Jin Guangyao help him back to the bed. He sat heavily there and stared at his hands as Jin Guangyao wrapped him in a new set of robes – his own, he thought, but he couldn’t tell if it was the extra set he’d brought with him to Lanling or if it’d been brought from the Unclean Realm.

Was there enough time for someone to come from the Unclean Realm? They had smiths there, and forges –

Where is my saber?

He stared at himself in the mirror, Jin Guangyao lingering behind him, and closed his eyes.

Like all cultivators, especially good cultivators, Nie Mingjue had a very good understanding of his spiritual energy, the way his qi moved through his meridians and settled in his dantian. He felt it every time he cultivated. His spiritual energy was drained dry right now, but if he really pushed and strained himself, he could squeeze up a small droplet of qi and guide it through the whole cultivation sequence. He could watch it carefully, wait for it to hit the place where he connected with Baxia – where he could feel her, echoing back at him. Intact.

She was fine.

She was.

She had to be.

Nie Mingjue felt someone start to braid his hair and frowned a little: perfect memory or not, he didn’t think Jin Guangyao knew the right braids. There were very subtle nuances to the ones he wore, significant ones; copying another version of his own hairstyle might be making a grievous error. He’d been wearing war-braids almost the entire time they’d known each other, after all…

He opened his eyes.

It wasn’t Jin Guangyao behind him.

“Welcome back, da-ge,” Lan Xichen said. His eyes were red around the edges, as if he’d been crying, or trying very hard to keep from doing so. “How are you feeling?”

Empty, lost, afraid – oh, Xichen, I’m so very afraid –

“Huaisang said to tell you that if you don’t stop doing whatever it is that’s keeping your qi drained, he’ll lock your spiritual energy away,” Lan Xichen said after a few moments, when it became clear that Nie Mingjue wasn’t going to respond. “And I have to say, I agree with him.”

Nie Mingjue lowered his head, feeling guilty. He shouldn’t be causing them any more worry than they already had – Nie Huaisang’s eyes were never empty of tears, and it was all his fault.

“You need your spiritual energy to recover if you want to heal,” Lan Xichen said. His hands did not falter as he made the braids – the right ones, too, a sect leader at peace who was in temporary retreat due to ill health. “And you will heal, da-ge. We’ll do everything that we can to help you.”

Nie Mingjue’s shoulders slumped. That was a familiar refrain by now, and his eyes drifted down in the mirror in front of him to look at Liebing, tucked away in Lan Xichen’s belt as always – Lan Xichen would want him to meditate while he played, no doubt. As far as Nie Mingjue knew, there was no guqin here for him to play Clarity, but there were other songs available.

“I’ve asked Wangji if he would play something calming for you, if you think it would help, but I won’t force you,” Lan Xichen said, and Nie Mingjue raised his eyes to meet his in the mirror, surprised. His old friend tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “I’m not entirely up to doing it myself, I’m afraid. Liebing requires perfect control of breath, and I’m…”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them once more.

“Do you know how much I’d miss you, da-ge?” he asked, voice low. “How much emptier my life would be without knowing that you were there? And not just me – all of us.”

Nie Mingjue didn’t know what to say.

“There’s Huaisang, of course, but you know that. Your sect, your family…even A-Yao has been unusually upset about the idea of something more happening to you, he was engaging Nie Zonghui in a conversation about the defenses in place here in the event someone tried something last I saw. Wangji dropped everything to come rushing here when I wrote to him, and – you’ll never believe this – Wei Wuxian himself followed him here, asking about your health.”

Wei Wuxian? Here, so close to Lanling? That was a terrible idea.

“He’s being careful,” Lan Xichen assured him. “He went with Wangji and Jiang Wanyin to examine the site of the night-hunt – they’re saying it’s suspicious that a demon of that power managed to end up this close to Lanling, especially undetected, with you going in without any warning and the demon targeting you in such a specific way.”

It was suspicious. Also, Jiang Wanyin was here?

“I don’t know how he found out, he just showed up here,” Lan Xichen said. “I think Nie Huaisang might have written to him? Either way, he wanted to help.”

Nie Mingjue’s brow wrinkled.

“If you’re wondering why, it’s because he respects and admires you,” Lan Xichen said. “You helped him so much during the war; he wants to repay you…everyone does. You’ve done so much for all of us.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. He really hadn’t – he’d only done what he’d need to, nothing more.

“You mean so much to all of us,” Lan Xichen murmured, finishing the braids and putting his hands on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders. “Oh, da-ge. Please hold on for us.”

(He thought of how his father looked at the end, gurgling on his own blood, red seeping out of his eyes and ears and nose as well and looking almost relieved to be going – relieved that his endless nightmare would finally come to an end, that he could rest at last in his grave…)

Nie Mingjue nodded and ducked his head to hide the tears brimming in his own eyes.

He’d stop checking, he promised silently. Baxia was fine, he thought, or maybe she wasn’t, but he hadn’t yet lost his mind, hadn’t yet started lashing out, and all those he loved were here by his side, ready to support him and help him however they could, if they could.

He would need to have faith.

He was still afraid, terribly afraid, but – he would, he could, rely on others to help support him, when he couldn’t support himself.

They wouldn’t let his anger eat him alive, and so he couldn’t let his fear do the same.

Nie Mingjue raised his hand and covered one of Lan Xichen’s with it.

He licked his lips, swallowed.

Forcing himself to speak felt like trying to break the Lan silencing spell, but he had to do it.

“Xichen,” he croaked, voice barely audible. “…Baxia?”

Where is my saber?

Lan Xichen’s hands tightened on his shoulders.

“Repaired,” his friend promised him. “Reforged by the finest spiritual smith in Qinghe. Huaisang is on his way to bring her to you now.”

Nie Mingue smiled.

A shichen later, Nie Huaisang pressed Baxia’s hilt into his hand, expression worried, all of them worried, all of them staring at him to see what would happen as he held his saber and carefully pressed some little, tiny part of the spiritual energy he’d been saving up into her.

Baxia sang out her song, bright and clear and unblemished, full of righteousness and rage.

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes and wept in relief.

She was fine.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #lan xichen #my fic #my fics #fine #ebonykain

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septembriseur · 3 years

Text

I want to come back to this article, which I reblogged a post from (after seeing it reblogged by loads of people on my dash). I recommend reading the article if you haven’t done so. Its central argument revolves around the idea that “modern liberal democracy presents itself as non-ideological beyond ideology,” and that ideology itself is always presented in literature/media as unacceptably violent— villainous. (I would argue that, in fact, any sort of cultural “accretion,” in the sense that culture is perceived as "on top of” and obscuring universalized western ideology, is tolerated only insofar as it is not really taken specifically or seriously. That’s why even characters who are presented as deeply religious (think of Matt Murdock or Rogue One’s Baze and Chirrut) are portrayed as religious in a way that is broad, universal, flexible, and vague.

One issue that the article doesn’t really delve into is that supposedly “ideologue” villains are actually profoundly anideological, except insofar as their ideology is, like, anti- modern liberal democracy’s lack of ideology. A really interesting example of this is in Iron Man: Tony Stark gets held hostage by a group of extremists whose extreme belief is... well... even the MCU wiki seems unable to provide any detail on this beyond “destroying world peace.” The film employs a weird move where it obviously relies on the Afghan setting of the villainous Ten Rings to suggest associations with radical Islamism, yet also provides evidence that the Ten Rings are not Islamists. On the one hand, it provides a sort of generic Western specter of radical Islamists— brown men speaking foreign languages and living in Afghan caves— and on the other hand it coyly removes all potential religious, political, or cultural motivation for their actions. These guys aren’t impoverished tribesmen who’ve been subject to tumultuous centuries of imperial warfare, and they’re not religious extremists living out masculine power fantasies. They’re just a group of dudes who kind of look vaguely Middle Eastern and kind of sound vaguely Middle Eastern (since Arabic and Persian are the languages we hear the most).

Of course, there’s a real-world explanation for this: Marvel wants to be able to tap into that specter of radical Islamism without offending Muslim consumers. But the textual effect is to create a picture of the world in which terrorism in Afghanistan is evacuated of all meaning. Don’t get me wrong: terrorism in Afghanistan is unbelievably destructive and to a large extent nihilistic, in that it benefits no one and spreads only despair and suffering. But at the same time, it arises out of a historical, political, economic, and religious-cultural context, and if you refuse to understand this context, then you will fail to understand why people make the choice to become terrorists (or how to stop them).

That’s the real problem here: the creation of a world in which the only rational choice is modern liberal democracy, and all other choices are nonsensical.

Marvel is a great site at which to explore this, simply because there’s so much of it. (You could also easily look at Star Wars, as MacQuarrie does in that article— why does the First Order want power? New extended universe writers have fleshed this out more in their web of liminally canonical texts, but on screen the answer seems to be, in the words of the also-manifestly-guilty-of-this-and-guilty-in-other-ways Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible: “the world is a mess, and I just need to rule it.”)

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a wildly characteristic example of this. It has the thankless task of trying to engage with the effects of the canonically almost effect-free (cf Spider-man: Far From Home) blip, and pieces together a weirdly nonsensical storyline in which the blip enable border-free mass migration, which was revoked when the other half of the world’s population reappeared. The plot revolves around a group of super soldier refugees/displaced persons who want to stop borders from being reimposed on the world. Sam Wilson refers to the refugees as “people who have been welcomed into countries that previously kept them out with barb wire,” and indeed it's hard to imagine any version of this narrative in which the “migration” we’re talking about is the migration of Global South nationals to the Global North. There’s a really plausible specter here: the Global North does source its manual and domestic labor from the Global South while, whenever possible, keeping Global South nationals out with barbed wire. It does make sense that the Global North would import laborers and then attempt to deport them when their presence was no longer convenient. That is, in fact, literally what has happened/is happening in the UK to foreign healthcare workers during the pandemic.

However, as in Iron Man, Marvel wants to mobilize a specter while also evacuating it of all meaning. None of the displaced people we see in TFATWS bear any resemblance to real-world displaced persons. In spite of their United Colors of Benetton racial diversity, they display no marks of culture, religion, nationality, or indeed poverty. They even have British and American accents. They are completely neutral in every way.

This matters for several reasons. First of all, it allows the viewer to differentiate between the migrants on-screen— Western-looking, English-speaking, non-religious— with migrants off-screen: [perceived to be] too religious, non-English-speaking, culturally and racially “other.” Secondly (again as with Iron Man), it removes all context from the act of migration. Why did these people become migrants? Uh... because of the blip, I guess? Beyond some vague references to suffering, it’s never addressed. This allows the viewer to completely detach the question of migrants/displacement from any of its structural context. Why do people migrate in the real world? Because their countries have been completely devastated by warfare, often proxy warfare carried out by imperial states. Because climate change has completely devastated the regions where they live, with or without triggering devastating warfare. Because they belong to ethnic, political, and/or religious groups that are being systematically destroyed by state governments. Because colonialism and neoliberal capitalism have completely devastated the economies of the regions where they live. This is why the stakes of migration are high.

If, as the show suggests, people just migrate for various personal reasons that really aren’t that important, then the stakes are not high, and we don’t have to feel bad about the behavior of our governments. This is a huge problem at a time when Denmark is shipping Syrian asylum-seekers back to Syria because it’s apparently fine now, Joe Biden is failing to make good on campaign promises about increasing refugee quotas, the UK is housing asylum seekers in situations that violate human rights law, migrant drownings in the Mediterranean Sea have become a regular feature, and the United States has systematically resisted fulfilling its promises to Iraqis and Afghans who risked their lives working for US forces in exchange for visas.

But, like, above and beyond the specific political issue of migration: what is the Flag Smasher ideology? “One world, one people.” I accept that there might be some viewers (mostly those with no knowledge or experience of immigration) who oppose this on principle, but it seems pretty obviously... good. So the bad part is... that they’re fighting for it? (According to people in my notes, this is Bad.) It’s possible to read this as another example of what the MacQuarrie article discusses: personal violence good, ideological violence bad. However, once again we have an example of an ideology that is not ideological, an ideology that is a specter cleaned out of any possible substance. The nonsensical choice here (the one beside which modern liberal democratic norms are obvious) is the choice to commit violence when there is no urgency that justifies this— none of the urgency that, in fact, exists in the real world, and explains why people regularly sacrifice their lives in desperate attempts to escape their homes.

This is a really good example of how capitalism— a force with no real agency or subject, no evil committee planning its deeds— ends up enacting a project that systematically enforces its ideology. Attempts to render narratives apolitical are themselves profoundly political, even when justified in terms of appeal to the consumer. This is one of the most dangerous aspects of media, IMHO.

#just me sayin stuff honestly #tv: tfatws

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hohoz · 3 years

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How RE Village (8) SOLVED almost every problem that I had with RE Series

Okay - a few weeks ago I made a post that was “The ones that suffer the most” where I showed and explained my main problems with Chris and Jill and the RE series in general

RE 1 is my fav game of this series and probably one of my all time favs, I player every RE there is to be played except 4 (because I dislike Leon, sry)

Recently, specially after 4, the franchise had a few problems, specially in writing/map design/lore

Resident evil 5 for example (I love this game) but it has it flaws, Chris there is only driven by anger and action - Sheva is used as a tool for lore exposition and to be Chris’s new partner

PLEASE: be aware that game at that generation didn’t have much lore - with some exceptions, like God of War 1 2 3 were a simply game with a simple lore, and the most recent GoW has evolved a little bit in the storytelling

Until we hit rock bottom in RE6 - I know a lot of people like this game, but this is only and action game, bad writing and generic stages.

Chris there is so mistreated that makes me mad (if you want to read more about this go to my other post “the ones that suffer the most”)

Until RE7 appeared, Capcom had a new engine and they wanted to do a game that was more horror like - since RE is know for being a Survival horror game.

I liked 7 - some people complained about Ethan being without emotion and others complained about the mold, a few didn’t like the FEAR vibes from Eveline.

I personally enjoyed the game, I thought RE series was going back on track, that game has it’s problems but it was really nice compared to what we had in 6.

After that game I had a conversation with my best friend and I said that I wanted a game that portrayed Umbrella’s fall since the only game that shows this is Umbrellas Chronicles (and that is most a resume of what happened)

And I said: “Bro, I wish that when they made that game, they could tie some mythological lore and human evolution before Umbrella - using Spencer, this would solve LOT OF STUFF and open new ways to handle this series”

and guess what - this happened in RE8 and kudos to the one writer that did that, i have my gratitude.

RESIDENT EVIL 8 is probably one of the BEST RE games that we had IN YEARS

And I want to address all thing that I loved in this game and do some predictions to what will happen in the next games.

“WELL WELL IF IT ISN’T ETHAN WINTERS” (The Father of the year)

My father was not a great guy... really, so I want to be the best dad ever, I really want be like Ethan - a guy who is ready to sacrifice and fight every monster in the way to save my family.

Ethan was a character that in RE7 was used to make us fell like that it was us in the Baker’s house, so that is why he didn’t had that much personality (in my opinion) but they changed that in RE8, here he has nice dialogues AND a diary

He has one of the best story line in the whole REverse, a guy that did EVERYTHING in his power to save his daughter - and you saw that playing the game, every sentence line that he delivered, he tried to save others too and even tho Chris said to him stay put ... but he couldn’t, he had to go to the altar, he had to help Chris, he had to go forward and keep going, specially after having the tools to face Heisenberg.

The plea from a father, that was his last wish, after he heard that Mia was alive he knew that someone had to stop that monster, he made a promise to his daughter “Daddy won’t let those weird fairy tale monsters get you” so he trusted Chris, to be the one that teaches his kid how to be brave and strong

I will not address Chris and Rose situation here because this is Ethans part and he deserves completely all the spotlight, his sacrifice was 100x times better than Steve (CV)/Piers(6)

My cheers to Ethan Winters - You have my respect !

Revelations -> RE8

So leaks from earlier times said that RE8 sucked and Revelations 3 was amazing

Revelations FYI is know for using old tales in RE stories

Revelations 1 - Dante’s Inferno

Revelations 2 - Frans Kafka

Revelations 3 - Dracula

But since RE8 sucked, Capcom said to the REV3 team that they could make REV3 become RE8 and they accepted

Revelations series is one of the best in the games, they handle Jill in a way that I love, Claire and even Barry - so they deserve all the spotlight for making this awesome game - you CLEARLY can see that they love this series and that they treat all the characters with the love that they deserve.

Keeping that in mind, they are the same team that made Rev 2 and in REV 2 we have this file here

So they had a plan for Jill and we can see that in RE8 - I will address that later but keep that in mind - this team cares for the old characters, they were the ones that brought Barry back to the games :V

Chris Redfield

This is a hard one, because he is my fav character and I usually have the most critics regard him, since I’ve expect a lot from Capcom

In the latest games they made him kind dumb, only muscles type of guy and an alcoholic that let all the people in his surroundings die (RE5,RE6,Vendetta)

RE6 treats him the WORST

But in RE8 he had an amazing part in the storyline, it was obvious that he wasn’t evil and they FIXED HIS EYE COLOR - FINALLY

I still don’t like the model face that much but it’s way better than 7 - so I believe Capcom, I still feel that he need more jawline

But let’s go to the most important thing - here he really feels like a squad leader and a veteran, he has his team but he is the one in the front line, he covers and ask for help when he needs, everything about his line delivery makes you feel like “Woah, this guy is a badass, he is not some stupid guy only driven by emotions”

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR FINALLY GETTING THIS RIGHT

If you remember my post about the ones that suffer the most / Jill is also in that list and I will talk about her a little bit later but if my guess is right RE8 saved her character aswell

Another thing that I enjoyed here is the fact that he is kind of a mercenary / Neo Umbrella kind of guy, even tho he is one of the founders of the BSAA

So I will give you all my score to this game:

9/10

I won’t give 10/10 because of some technical issues, the cursor lock didn’t work and mouse sensitivity was i dunno, not the best.

RE8 and the future (PREDICTIONS) - Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, BSAA, Neo Umbrella, Ada Wong and Rosemary

First let’s look Rose

The first time I saw Rose all grown up - I thought to myself : She has the same problem as Eveline (age a lot faster than normal)

But she also absorbed Miranda’s power since the metalicite (something like this) thought that she was a better host. - so maybe she will live longer or something because I doubt that they will do a 14 years time skip.

This is not the same as Terra Save logo (Claire’s job) but it kind reminds me of it - her shoes appeared at least 3 times in this cut scene so maybe they are trying to show some hints with this

She really reminds me of Jodie (Beyond two souls, a game where a girl has a lot of power and the gov uses her in missions and stuff, but she also is learning how to be her own person)

Another thing here is that they don’t have a logo in this car, it really reminds me the car that Chris as using in RE8

This supports the theory that Chris’s organization is dealing with her instead of the BSAA, the she is a hot headed girl and that she had a lot of powers.

So here you can say that she is just a kid because she is a teenager, but what if she actually grows older really fast (like Eveline) maybe this is just 1 year later / 2 yrs later. (after RE8)

So this is the tricky part, this is Chris’s guard/soldier, someone that Chris trust to stand by her side, in my mind I do believe that Chris is kind of a father figure to her, so when this guys says this he is thinking about hot head Chris but she replies “Yeah” thinking about Ethan - (she has the mold memories, so she can actually remember Ethan’s memories)

Now let’s look at this

BSAA

So in REV1 is hinted that BSAA is not the best organization in the world, but since our heroes work there we think that they are the good guys right ?

In REV 2 (it’s important to remember that the team that created RE8 is the same from the REVELATIONS and they had this file here in REV2)

This email is from Jill and what does Jill have ? T-Virus

Wesker is a different case since he was a project and she had the vaccine but this would make a lot of sense if they had this tests with Jill to get the T-Virus

If that is the case, they explained Jill’s absence in the main games, could even explain why Chris left BSAA and opened a new window to a lot of possibilities

My Predictions:

- Chris had trouble dealing with BSAA and Jill’s case, he wanted to get her out of there, maybe he removed her from there but that resulted in him being expelled from the force

-Jill may or may not know what they are doing with her blood, but she will have a huge part in the BOW used by BSAA

-Chris is married to Jill (sorry- I had to place this here, in a perfect world he has two kids with her and they all love aunt Rose)

-Chris will hopefully be a father figure to Rose and they will be in a game together since in the end they came to get her

-Rebecca is still involved in BSAA activities (leak from new REV3) if you consider Vendetta canon, she maybe the one that used Jill’s sample of blood to create the virus soldiers

-Barry maybe retired

-I don’t think Leon will be in this game, but he will get his RE4 Rmk

- I do believe RE9 will be release after Code veronica rmk and MAYBE they will do a game about Umbrella’s Fall (Chris and Jill in Europe against Red Queen and BOWs)

But that is it, you can see a lot of elements from old RE games in RE8, they tried to do something really smart and the game felt amazing to play, that was something else and it’s been a while since a player a RE game that made me feel that way <3

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womenofwonder · 3 years

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Option on RWBY ships:

Btw, I don’t usually ship characters. Romance is usually the least interesting part of the story for me so expect a lot of meh.

Arkos: obviously I love this, it’s perfect

Blacksun: ehh, it’s cute. I started out feeling kinda meh, it was sweet but not really interesting, but now it’s growing on me. Ironically the same thing is happening with Bumblebee, although I still like Blake and Yang better platonically

Bunanas: so this is a ship between Velvet and Sun, and it’s honestly really cute to imagine even if it is completely random. I like it better then Blacksun…I think?

Candy Cane: this is just weird. I can’t imagine Nora being anything but a older sister to Oscar. The age gap makes it creepy too, not the four years is much of a gap, but when your teenagers it’s a big gap.

Chocolate Arc: this is hilarious to imagine but obviously yeah, Coco isn’t going to fall for someone like Jaune

Cinnabun: I barely know anything about Yatsuhashi but he and Velvet are cute, I guess? Still like her better with Sun

ClockRose: heck no!

Coconuts: again, can’t see Sun doing anything but annoying Coco. I really don’t like the whole ‘badass jerk of a girl falls for goof ball trope.’ It always ends up feeling sexist in several ways

Combat Boots: honestly outside of an AU I can’t see Yang ever forgiving Mercury much less falling in love with him. Also Mercury just doesn’t deserve her

Combat goggles: I feel like Yang and Neptune would have fun causally dating each other and slowly realizing they actually like (Blake/Sun/Jaune/whoever) and become each other’s wingmen. That fanfic better be lying around somewhere

Crimson Lotus: okay, if I didn’t love Renora and Rosegarden so much I’d probably ship this. It’s really cute

Crimson Sun: this feels like an excuse to write lemons of the two hottest characters

Crimson wings: look I understand most of the shipping heroes with villains because they’re both hot and the villain/hero dynamic is always fun. But Cardin…he’s not even hot. He’s not even interesting. And yet people ship him with Ruby? Why?

Daddie Issues: you know I see where this is coming from but they would just end up murdering each other.

Dairy Farm: obviously this is downright creepy in cannon, but in an au where Neo isn’t evil and both are closer in age, this would be adorable. I feel like Neo’s main problem is she’s incredibly lonely—other then Roman no one bothers to understand or talk to her. If Oscar reached out to her, and she began to protect him…it would be perfect. In way even better then Rosegarden because I think Neo would still be a bit of pycho even when good, and it would be fun to see her lose it when Salem hurts him.

Ilia/Adam: I just want to say I am forever grateful the show went out of its way to avoid this obnoxious, cliche ship from being canon

Dragon slayer: I see why people ship Jaune and Yang, I really do. They’re both the team mom/dad of their team, they’ve got the whole goofball/badass thing going (which is a trope I do like when the badass isn’t a jerk), they both have a good sense of humor, etc. But I just can’t see them as romantic. It feels really weird. I can’t even explain why. I understand shipping them but I really can’t ship them myself.

Emercury: I really love this ship, but I also don’t mind at all if the show decides to make them platonic. I enjoy their relationship in general and it works either way.

Oscar/Emerald: again, feel creepy. I love the idea of a sibling relationship and can’t see them possibly being romantic even without the age gape.

Cinder/Qrow: yeah again. Both are sexy and good for angsty lemons. I’m not into that stuff so I don’t ship them

Fall Stinger: I just don’t know why anyone would ship Tyrian with anyone. Unless it was Salem and even that is super creepy

Firerobber: I like villain relationships but Roman already has Neo and Cinder is a hot mess. Literally

Firewall: I don’t know why anyone would ship Watts with anyone. He’s even worst less ship-able then Tyrian

Footloose: I don’t actually ship it but just imagine Mercury and Melanie bonding over weaponized feet.

Freckles: Yeah this is just painful. The two most adorable characters (Penny and Oscar), who go through the worst things imaginable. It’s endless fluff, angst, and whump, and I love cute romance and tragic romances, so this is definitely something I ship.

Frostbite: seriously, this is so weird and toxic. Having Adam fall for Weiss or vice versa. Maybe it would work in an AU or something but it’s just too creepy

Funky Beats: it’s cute, I ship it.

Gelato: yeah I love healthy villainous relationships! Neo and Roman are freaking adorable, and I’m sad that we didn’t see more of them together.

Grandmasters: I obviously don’t ship Salem and Ozpin because that’s just creepy, but I do like their romance. I like tragic romances, and this probably the most tragic one in existence

Greek Lotus: I don’t see the chemistry and crashes two of my favorite ships so…

Green Knight: well, she kinda helped kill his last girlfriend so…unless it’s AU this isn’t going to work. Even if it is an AU. This feels like another ship made solely for lemons

Velvet/Cardin: yeah, a bigot changing his mind when he falls in love with a minority isn’t cute. Isn’t sweet. It isn’t romantic. I don’t even excuse lemons that use this trope. Even porn ought to be above that

Weiss/Cardin: WOULD EVERYONE STOP SHIPPING CARDIN WITH PEOPLE

Hummingbird: it’s hard to ship something when you only know one character, but I was interested in the theory that Qrow was actually Ruby’s father. But then in season 7 Qrow’s description of Summer made me rethink it, and it didn’t sound anything like how you’d describe a romantic relationship. So I don’t really like that theory anymore

Iceberg: this is just cliche and boring. I get them dating but it wouldn’t last that long

Flynt/Weiss: I really love this one, it’s my favorite ship with Weiss. I don’t want it to actually happened in cannon because that would be random, but I feel like it would be fun for both their characters. And they both share an interest in music. I’m imagining an AU where he gets her into jazz and she starts singing it at all her concerts to the horror of Jaques.

Iron Maiden: honestly what. Why. Gross

Iron witch: well I definitely see why people like it. I actually wouldn’t mind it being cannon, It’d be a good combination of funny/tragic and I’d like to see Glynda mentoring Winter

Jailbirds: this just feels forced and also Qrow is probably too old for her. I like their relationship and don’t want it to be romantic

Knight fall: lemon ship. Moving on

Knight Life: I feel like Jaune just gets shipped with everyone but this is cute I guess

Lancaster: it’s cute, but I can’t ship it because it feels cliche. I was worried that Jaune was going to be her love interest when they first met and was relieved to see him with Pyrrha instead. It just feels forced and boring to have him end up with Ruby

Pyrrha/Mercury: this really popular for some unfathomable reason. I like Mercury but Pyrrha deserves better

Marrowgold (May/Marrow): I just don’t see it

Nikong: Pyrrha and Sun would be cute together, but I don’t really love this ship. It’s kinda meh.

Nora’s Arc: no. Just no. It technically would work but their platonic relationship is way too good to lose

Old Silver: this is Maria/Pietro, and I think it’s adorable. They both strike me as really flirty for their ages and both are very good mentors. They can be the crazy grandparents of the team

Ozglyn: just don’t see it

Phoenix: yeah Raven was a horrible girlfriend/wife. I don’t ship her Taiyang

QuickSilver: Ruby deserves better than Mercury.

Rehab (Qrow/Glynda): the fact that this is called rehab explains why I don’t ship it

ReNora: yeah, this is probably my favorite ship. I don’t think I have to explain why.

Robotic Knight: I briefly shipped this but now disagree

Rosegarden: I really love Rosegarden, they’re just too adorable together, though the whole Ozpin does make it a little awkward

Rosewick: I can’t see this happening, even in an AU

Coco/Fox: I don’t know enough about Fox to really ship them, but the fact that Coco canonically slaps his butt during battle definitely makes me want to

Mercury/Neo: I could see this working. It would be pretty cute

Silent Knight: again, it would have to be an AU and even then I don’t see it working

Snowbird: so at first I really liked the idea of Qrow and Winter being ex’s, but now that I think about it he has to be at least twenty years older then her. Also, I have to say that while they have chemistry I think they would just end up killing each other

Speakeasy (Flynt/Coco): I got to say I like this ship and could see them having a lot of chemistry together

Strawbanna: I just can’t see Ruby and Sun together. It feels weird

Sunflakes: Can’t see it working

Sunflowyr (Ren/Yang): don’t see any chemistry. Again this just seems random

Tauradonna: this is obviously as toxic as you get.

The Hunt (Cardin/Blake): stop shipping Cardin with anyone!

Mercury/Cinder: Mercury is way too young, and even if he wasn’t this would be really weird. Also Cinder makes him look like a stable, peaceful person, so also no.

Toxic Petals: I swear I’m done with this. No more Cardin, Tyrian, or Watts ships. They too gross

Velveteen Knight: Aw, they’d be cute together

White Knight: I really hate this ship. It’s so obnoxious and boring, and nearly falls into the jerky badass/goofball trope I hate

Winter Soldier: ew, no, Ironwood is like her dad

Wise Dragon: anyone care to explain why this is so popular? Sage barely has any character to him, I can’t ship him with anyone

Yellow rose: Yeah, I kinda ship this, but again, it’s difficult when you barely know one character

IronQrow: I understand why you would ship this but I just don’t see it. Guys can hug without being gay you know

Martial arts: why?

Noah’s Arc: why?

Sea Monkeys: again I understand why you could ship it but I don’t. They’re obviously just friends to me

Shovel Knight: like most Oscar ships it feels weird. Jaune is obviously a big brother to him

TaiQrow: As funny as it is for Tai to sleep with every member of his team, I don’t ship it.

Fair game: I really can’t stand Clover so again, don’t ship it

Achilles heel: Cinder literally kills Pyrrha, why would you ship them?

Baked Alaska: lemon ship

Black glass: annnd, another lemon ship.

Blood Mint: yeah I don’t see Emerald and Ruby ever being a couple

Catmelon: I found Ilia’s crush on Blake kinda cringy and I can’t see them being a couple

ColdMurder (Weiss/Cinder): even in an au I don’t see it working

Cold Steel (Penny/Winter) eeewww, they’re practically sisters

Cream Machine (Neo/Penny): I mean…if she wasn’t evil…and wasn’t so much older…it might work? Maybe?

Crosshares: cute but I feel like Velvet is too much of a doormat for Coco

Digital Clock: Ciel obviously didn’t care much for Penny, and she was barely a character at all. I don’t see it

Pyrrha/Nora: don’t see it, and also can’t stand the idea of breaking up the two best ships

Falling Petals: I get that Cinder is hot, but can we stop shipping her with the kids she’s trying to murder? Because I can see several things wrong with that

Freezerburn: again, for no reason that I can think of this ship just doesn’t work for me. Much like Dragonslayer it just feels weird

Gingersnaps (Penny/Nora): that would be chaotic. I can’t really see them romantically though like most Penny ships it would be cute

Guilty Conscience (Bree/Winter): oh please no. They really don’t have any reason to be together

Ladybug: I just can’t see Blake with Ruby at all. Blake feels way to old even though she’s only older by two years.

Milk and Cereal (Ruby and Pyrrha): I guess it would work but I just don’t any chemistry

Mint chocolate (Emerald/Coco): if Coco managed to forgive her for everything that happened at Beacon I could maybe see this happening. There is some chemistry

Mommy issues: Nah, can’t see this working out.

Monochrome: Blake and Weiss have never had any romance chemistry despite plenty of opportunity to have it, so again, I see them as strictly platonic and shipping them feels almost like incest. I know that doesn’t make sense

Nordic Winter: I can’t see Weiss handling Penny, but again, any Penny ship is pretty cute

Nuts and Dolts: I would ship, but I like them together platonically too well. Definitely understand the ship, though I find it funny that Ruby, who insist she likes weapons better then people, would fall in love with a personified weapon. I know that’s probably racist against robots

Overheating (Penny/Cinder): I take back what I said about every Penny ship being cute

PennyWeiss: but this one is pretty cute

Pink Lemonade: can you imagine the chaos of Yang and Nora dating each other? They both need someone with a cooler head to keep them in check

Scheenoks: with Weiss’s fangirling I can definitely see were this is coming from, but Weiss is too mean for Pyrrha

Steadfast: I really don’t ship any of the ace-ops with anyone. I found them all boring and annoying except for Marrow

Strawberry Shortcake (Neo/Ruby): not seeing it

Sugar Rush (Ruby/Nora): Again, too much chaos. They both need chill partners. And I love Rosegarden and ReNora too much

Thunder cat (Blake/Nora): don’t see any chemistry between them

WhiteRose: I can see why this is shipped and I don’t dislike WhiteRose shippers. I just prefer Rosegarden, and find Weiss and Ruby working better together romantically

Bumblebee: again, I see this working better platonically, not romantically. It kind of annoyed me at first, but it is growing on me, much like Blacksun. I still like Blacksun better though

Enabler: No.

#Rwby #rwby ships #bumblebee #blacksun #rosegarden #roman/neo #WhiteRose #Arkos #Renora #ruby rose #wiess Schnee #snowbird #qrow #winter Schnee #fairgame #blake bellodona #Yang Xiao Long #oscar pine

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bumblesimagines · 3 years

Text

Green Thumb

Part 18

Request: Yes or No

Also kind of short

You stared out at the river, fingers warm from the heat of the mug in your hands. You felt tired, empty, and disappointed. The roof was a nice place to sit and think. Your gaze dropped down to the ground below.

"I don't believe this is the safest way to test your abilities, (Y/N). Especially since Sam doesn't have on his wings." Vision said in concern, watching Sam hype himself up. You shook your head, laughing.

"It's definitely not safe." You grinned, watching Sam. He looked down from his spot on the roof, shaking off nerves.

"Run the idea by me again." Vision said as Wanda chuckled softly.

"Alright, Sam is gonna jump off the roof and I'm gonna use my powers to keep up in the air. If they don't work, Wanda will catch him."

"You're gonna allow this, Wanda?" Vision looked at the redhead. Wanda shrugged, sipping on her tea with a small smile.

"Ready?" Sam called, sliding down his googles. You nodded, backing up a bit, grinning widely. Sam backed up out of sight before running off the roof. You raised your hand, watching him suddenly fly up. He screamed, arms and legs flailing.

"You might gonna to catch him, Vis!" You called as Sam briefly disappeared past a cloud. Vision flew up, catching Sam and flying back to the ground. Sam raised a hand to his chest, feeling his heartbeat as he panted.

"Again?"

"Again."

"Kind of chilly out here, don't you think?" You turned your head, looking at Tony. He took a seat beside you, sighing.

"So, how'd it go?" Tony asked, turning to look at you. You licked your lips, lightly shrugging as you sipped on your hot chocolate.

"Good. I learned a lot about my family. It was confirmed that, uh, I was indeed abandoned by my mother. It's great." You told him, giving a small nod. Tony hummed.

"It builds character." Tony said. You snorted, looking down at the hot chocolate.

"Yeah, I guess so." You muttered.

"What'd you learn?" Tony asked, watching you. You sighed, head tilting up. You stared at the passing clouds.

"That my dad was killed here... By.. The Winter Soldier." You breathed out. Tony stayed silent, frowning as he nodded.

"I.. I can't blame him. He was brainwashed and not in control. How did you react when you found out about Bucky and your parents?" You asked, looking at him. Tony licked his lips, looking away from you. He seemed to think about his words, eyes squinting slightly.

"I.. I was more hurt by Rogers than by what Barnes did. Rogers kept it from me and he never planned on telling me. Even if we didn't consider each other friends.. We were teammates. How was I supposed to be okay with trusting him with my life when he was never gonna tell me about my parents?" Tony frowned, sighing heavily. You bit your bottom lip.

"I'm sorry Steve betrayed you like that." You said softly. You wouldn't want to work with someone who betrayed you either. You took in a small breath, looking at him curiously.

"Do you think Steve knows? About my dad?"

"Unless Barnes saw some similarities between you and your dad, probably not. Your dad covered his tracks. He made sure he wouldn't be connected to his family. Very smart of him." Tony offered a small smile. You reached into your back pocket, taking out a photo. It was of the whole family. Your grandparents, Florine, Michael, and even Gerdie as a pup. You turned it around to the back, looking at the phone number.

'Call when you need me, kid'

"People really need to stop calling me kid." You mumbled, huffing softly. Tony chuckled.

"You look like one."

"Oh, fuck off, old man." You gave Tony a playful glare. He scoffed, touching his chest dramatically.

"Are you really gonna retire? I mean, at this point, you're asking to be called an old man." You pointed out, grinning when Tony rolled his eyes.

"Pepper and Morgan need me. I don't want to be an absent father. I know how it feels to have one and.. I don't want to be like my father. I won't make the same mistakes."

"You'll make new mistakes." You shrugged lightly. Tony shot you a look. "But I'm sure you're a great father!"

"Right." Tony grunted, shaking his head. You chuckled softly, placing your cup beside you. You inhaled softly.

"When I was drunk.. I vividly remembering saying that you suck before passing out. What happened?"

"Oh, you were a goddamn mess. Definitely an emotional drunk." Tony replied, making you groan softly, cheeks flushing from embarrassment.

"You said I was a lucky bastard and you cried.. You also kissed me." Tony looked at you, gaze searching for a reaction. Your lips parted, brows raising.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Uhm.." You licked your lips, straightening up and clearing your throat. You stayed silent, thinking of what to say in response.

"Pepper doesn't have to know. It was a drunk kiss that nobody really saw, right? I mean, I already have enough on my plate. I don't need an angry wife on top of that." You blurted out, shrugging lightly. Tony cleared his throat, nodding.

"Yeah, of course. It barely lasted a second." Tony looked forward, scratching the side of his neck. Awkward silence took over, both you and Tony unsure on how to proceed without making things even more weird.

"How are you?" Tony suddenly asked, turning towards you. "Like, in general."

"Terrible."

"Yeah, I feel that. Wanna... Wanna talk about it?" Tony asked. You stared at him, brows furrowing.

"Are you practicing on me for when Morgan needs a talk with you?" You questioned, head tilting slightly. Tony shrugged.

"Yes and no."

"That's nice." You huffed softly, gaze drifting towards the setting sun. You watched him, shoulders slumping.

"I feel.. Incredibly alone. Yeah, Nat is here but I can't rely on her. She has her own issues to deal with. Bruce... Bruce is god fucking knows where and if I tried talking to him, he'd probably just stand there. Clint is also god fucking knows where. Thor fucked off the moment they came back from killing Thanos. The outerspace crew is kind of weird. Steve is... Steve. He'd just give me a speech and a pat on the shoulder. Carol barely comes to Earth and she's also pretty intimidating." You licked your lips, shaking your head as you brought your knees up to your chest.

"The people I used to talk to have either.. Died or chosen to leave. I have to take care of a big ass fucking farmhouse cause its goddamn owner left! My life is slowly falling apart and I have to comfort myself cause nobody seems to care enough! I am so fucking tired of feeling tired. I thought I had found a family but I guess I'm not good enough for those." You raised your voice, feeling the wind get harsh for a quick minute. You let out a deep breath, eyes shutting to keep the tears from falling. You felt an arm wrap around your shoulders, gently leaning you against a warm body. You sniffle, a shakey sigh leaving you.

"And I am so tired of crying." You whispered. Tony gently leaned his head against yours, hand squeezing your arm.

"I know.. I'm sorry." He said quietly. You relaxed against him, feeling numb and empty. You looked down at the photo. You wondered if this was the life Michael had wanted for you. To be a hero to a planet missing fifty percent of its inhabitants.

"You know what might make you feel better?" Tony asked.

"What?" You sat up, using the sleeve of your jacket to wipe your nose as you sniffled. Tony stood, motioning for you to follow. He offered his hand, watching you pick up the mug. You took his hand, holding it as Tony led you off the roof and down the stairs. You placed the mug on the nearest table, letting him guide you outside and onto the field. You stood in the middle, looking at him with furrowed brows.

"Letting it out." He finally answered, letting go of your hand and taking some steps back. He raised his arms.

"Let it out. Scream, kick, punch, curse. Let it all out." Tony said, smiling widely. You sniffled, still unsure.

"C'mon, I'll do it with you. On a count of three, okay? One... Two... Three!" You inhaled with Tony, eyes shutting as you screamed as loud as you could. You heard Tony chuckle in amazement, opening your eyes. You noticed he had been knocked down onto the grass, the trees nearby having been bent back by the wind. The grass around your feet were burned and gray clouds had formed in the sky. You noticed Tony looking up at something behind you so you turned, blinking and slowly looking up at the large ice spikes that almost reached the clouds.

"Holy shit." You whispered, taking a step back.

"You're still on the tip of the iceberg with your powers, Elsa." Tony said, getting up as it began to thunder. You felt some weight off your chest, turning to face you.

"You know.. That actually did help." You chuckled, smiling gently.

"Well, I am a genius." Tony replied, digging into his pocket and pulling out car keys.

"I should get going. Pepper's cooking dinner and I don't want to miss it." Tony said. You nodded, walking with him towards the road. A sports car drove out of the garage, stopping infront of Tony.

"All my things have already been sent home." Tony said, looking at you. You hummed, nodding.

"You can be an asshole sometimes but.. You'll be missed." You told him softly. Tony gave a genuine soft smile.

"You should visit, kid. You might like my new place." Tony said, opening the door and getting in.

"Give me a call and I'll visit when I can." You said, watching him buckle up. Tony nodded, sliding on sunglasses.

"I'll be seeing you."

"Not really looking forward to it." You replied, hearing a small snort before the car drove off. You watched it go, sighing softly. You looked over at the spikes, licking your lips.

"What more can I do?"

Tags: @geek-and-proud @wolfelocksley @babyvisionisamenace @jjk-is-my-shit

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cactus-joke · 3 years

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the thing i will never wrap my head around is introducing sylvie as a frankenloki & then giving her absolutely no depth despite her being the key protagonist of season 1... like mike must hate women for the fact that

1) all the tva women of color are sidelined immediately (at least the two w the most prominent & interesting roles/backgrounds) for a white ladies development

2) you can count all the tva lady agents we see onscreen w one hand

3) frankenloki aka sylvie has a bunch of gaps for a character like where’d she get blonde hair dye. if ure hellbent on revenge why are u making stops at wallmart 2 get a box of hair bleach. where’d she get asgardian leather but SPECIFICALLY for her top (she’s wearing baggy pants & combat boots w that ensemble??? which as i say it also sounds like those corny wattpad “put my hair in a messy bun, wore my combat boots” fanfic outfits 😭), why and how did she get the AoA loki horns, she didn’t have them when she was taken. if she hates the loki association why’s she wearing the horns & the color green which is... the biggest target to be perceived as loki

4) if she’s an important part of the self love metaphor romance why does she always make this face “😐🤨🤢😐🤨😐” when loki talks (berating him & betraying him in the end aside ofc!)

5) why do we not know her nexus event? why do we not know why she chose the name sylvie? why does she have no prominent character traits outside of having a vagina? why is she cis? why did she get taken at the tender age of an elementary schooler but not when she was born if her crime was being born a girl?

6) has mike waldron ever met, spoken to, or seen a woman? has he engaged in critical, intelligent conversation with anyone, really?

7) can i be emotionally compensated by disney for simultaneously the most BORING (how do you make.. the god of mischief & tricks... boring is beyond me) and convoluted overstuffed show for wasting my time?

I don't know that Mike hates women, but I do think, based on his interviews and the resulting product he made, that:

1) It was certainly a choice to make the two prominent black female characters slaves to a fascist organization and one essentially a leader of it. A choice I don't think anyone involved in creating this show spent a second to think about.

I don't think they were necessarily sidelined on purpose, however. I just think it's an inevitable by-product of the show's terrible pacing and even worse writing. That scene one between B-15 and Renslayer, a scene I think was ultimately a waste of time, made me think that they probably did want to highlight at least those two characters on their own merit. They failed, of course, in the end, and with the set-up I think the intention or lack of intention doesn't really matter since we get what we get, you know?

It's not really a shinning example of giving your characters of color time and care, either, but I do have to highlight B-15's moment of doubt, a scene I think Wunmi Mosaku absolutely killed (seriously, everyone needs to check out her other work, she is effort and talent personified.).

Besides that, if you ask me, no character in this show has any real development anyway, including Sylvie. It is an uneven display of screen-time because obviously she's a main over everyone else but, like, can it even be said that Sylvie particularly benefited from it? I don't really think so. As you said, she has no depth, she is just an empty girlboss fantasy, and the diversity in general in this show feels empty to me.

2) I didn't really even want more TVA foot soldiers to be women. It wouldn't be a diversity win so much as just more empty pandering and Marvel's typical (military) propaganda fuel.

Anyway, I'd like to highlight some youtube creators of color who make great in-depth videos on this issue:

Khadija Mbowe: Color-blind vs. Identity-conscious casting and examining Hamilton and Malcom & Marie

Town of Tawiah: Performative Diversity and Colorism in Film | Dear White People Review, My Wife & Kids,HTGAWM & More

Cheyenne Lin: GOOD Representation Matters | Colorism and Casting

There's obviously way more, but these videos are a good starting point to expand on this topic from people who know what they're talking about. I put a link to their videos while the link on their names will lead you to their respective channels.

3) Sylvie's whole appearance is bullshit from the get-go. They deliberately used comic book references on her to confuse us and make their dumbshit twist of: oh, see, she actually is a Loki variant!

I remember seeing a post essentially saying whoever thinks Sylvie is a Loki variant with 100% certainty is media illiterate lmao, so I guess it worked on some people.

So, you know, IMO, it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense for her to wear Loki's signature colors and the iconic AoA head-wear, she just does because fuck you.

Also, "if ure hellbent on revenge why are u making stops at wallmart 2 get a box of hair bleach." lmaooo - she just wanted to be her own person, you know, visually, but only with her hair and nothing else :)

4) Sylvie so very clearly doesn't even like Loki all that much, certainly not as much as he likes her (she is a girlboss after all, "she's got shit to do!"). It would be funny if it wasn't tragic. I do feel bad for Larry from accounting :(

5) I'm guessing we don't know her nexus event because they kinda never bothered to define what it was and they don't care. Maybe Renslayer saying she doesn't remember her nexus event was supposed to be this moment of like cold truth, or an attempt to hurt Sylvie because she knows but won't tell her, or, you know... actually, who cares.

6) I think Mike has spoken to women and I think he's had plenty of intelligent and critical conversations at his level. Which is a relative zero to a generous one. Perhaps two on a good day.

Idk though, jokes aside, his writing on this series is childish and lazy, his view of Loki is boring and reductive, his original script he used for this show is absolute shit, and that's all I can really say for sure.

7) I wish. The show really is boring when it isn't actively infuriating. It still boggles my mind how this mess even happened. Like, I knew the show would be bad, but this bad? Man oh man.

#reply #goddamn shitshow #loki series critical #loki series negativity #loki series criticism

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