#why do I feel like I need to keep writing disclaimers on my interpretations?
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Crave, Part 1 (18+)
♡ Pairing: Romantic Demon!Hyunjin x Human Fem!Reader
♡ Genre: supernatural au, demon au, age gap relationship typical in monster fucker fics, intended to be porn with plot but atm there is more plot than porn lol
♡ Word Count: 3.6k
♡ Summary: "The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain." - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. In which Hyunjin, a demon from the nine circles of hell, finds himself impossibly infatuated with the very human he once set upon himself to destroy.
♡ Warnings: don’t read if you’ll be uncomfortable over talks about religion from the perspective of a demon!, themes of sexual purity in the context of religion, a lot of immoral behavior and thoughts + ideas from hyunjin, supernatural abilities, themes of possesiveness, the seven deadly sins are brought up multiple times, hyun is thousands of years old so take that as you will lol, hell's structure is based off dante alighieri's depiction of it in the divine comedy but knowledge of it isn't necessary to enjoy this fic!
♡ Smut Warnings (contains spoilers): there isn't really any overt smut in this first part it's more like referenced sexual activity, masturbation, voyeurism (hyun is watching reader while they're unaware he is there), porn watching
♡ Notes: after receiving feedback, i'll now be posting my long fics in multiple parts as i finish them like i do on ao3 instead of waiting until it's finished to post here! i'm taking a break from my royal au series to finally write out this fic i've had rattling in my brain since last september but never got around to writing until this past month :') idk how long this will be in the end but i'm planning at least 3 parts! i hope you stick around till the end <3
♡ Disclaimer: please read responsibly, and remember that this work is fiction and meant strictly for imaginative fun. the idols used in fics are more accurately faceclaims and personality outlines for imaginary characters, and should not be interpreted as factual representations of existing people.
There are many things in this world, the world of humans, that even a monster such as Hyunjin was born to desire. A primal want, weaved into the very fabric of his being, designed to be etched into his soul- if he had one, that is. That is what initially brought him here; the heart of one of the world's most populated cities, his territory an otherwise unoccupied luxury suite in one of the many skyrises that line the bustling streets.
It was an ideal place to be; there wasn't much in the way of furniture, given that it's a new development with no human occupants, but the amenities it held were sleek and pristine. High windows that overlooked the entirety of the city rife with sin from what was nearly the top floor, marble countertops that screamed sophistication and elegance, and well equipped with security of both the physical and digital kind to keep out those who may want to chase the thrill of wandering where they do not belong. Hyunjin, who could simply float about wherever he wished, had no need for human things like beds or sofas.
In this space, he already had everything he needed- an ideal vantage point, isolation from the world until he himself chose to interact with it, and easy access to the myriad of damned soul that walked the streets beneath him. It was perfect, and it was his- until you showed up.
Hyunjin was no stranger to dealing with potential renters overtaking his territory- it was only natural for those with wealth to be ready to spend a fortune on the newest availble luxury apartment that catches their eye. While Hyunjin had never once been seen; he was certainly known; rumors abound of an evil presence in suite 13, that left even non-believers fleeing in terror, leaving as quickly as they came. "Evil" felt a bit extreme of a description from Hyunjin's perspective, but what would humans truly understand of him?
He always felt as if his actions were completely justified; after all, why should a being with immense power such as him bend to the will of a measely human whose life was akin to a grain of sand in the desert of immortality that was his own lifespan? Regardless of his justifications and thoughts on what is evil and what isn't, he welcomed the fear humans have towards him- it made his life easier if they feared him and stayed far from his domain.
And yet here you were, seemingly ignorant of the fearful reputation this apartment held (not that he expected that the building's landlord would have informed you of it, of course- their only goal is money, at the end of the day.) Hyunjin didn't care for the rules of humans- whether or not you'd supplied the necessary money to purchase your way here or were deserving of it made no difference to him. It was his until he decided otherwise, and you were trespassing on his territory by being here.
When he'd first arrived back after a long outing back in his home within the second circle of the nine hells, only to see you filling his space with your things, walking about the apartment as if you owned it, blissfully unaware of his presence- it was infuriating. He had half a mind to scare you out right then, forever scar you by showing you his true form, send you running as he'd done to countless before you who tried to be here. But no, that wouldn't be enough. It would be letting you off too easily for his liking; this was different than scaring off someone who might intrude on his home- you already had.
What he wanted was more than his territory back- he wanted to make you suffer the most egregious torment one could ever endure for intruding on it, something far worse and much harsher than whatever a demon below his stature could muster. You deserved worse than that of mild terror, or to be able to flee from his space without repercussions for your transgression. No, he would only take back what was his after he'd turned your mind into a den of paranoia and hysteria. You needed to know true terror, true loss, true suffering, by his hand.
So he settled for observing you- it would be a longer process, one that could easily take months to reach true fruition, but the reward would be well worth his patience. He watched carefully, intently, his presence always concealed but unmistakably there. You would feel it sometimes, unbeknownst to yourself. A sudden chill up your spine, the subtle feeling of being watched making you turn your head, only to be met with nothing unusual in your line of sight. Funny, how humans were so attuned to the supernatural while simultaneously being so oblivious to their reality.
Your routines became committed to his memory, your every step and every action becoming increasingly familiar to him. Boring at times, but necessary if he wanted to learn the ins and outs of what makes you you, taking in every detail and memorizing them fully, so that when the day comes for him to turn your life into a miserable tragedy, forming you into a shell of who you once were, you'd have to beg him for forgiveness, for his mercy.
What were your fears? He'd easily make them reality. What did you hate? He'd make sure you suffered it. What broke your heart? He'd subject you to that pain over and over, until your heart was left shattered into a million, microscopic pieces. And it was only then, when you were mentally destroyed, the lowest you could ever possibly be and unrecognizable in your despair, that he'd appear before you, triumphant as he made you apologize for ever having stepped foot in his domain.
But as he observed you, he came to realize something strange- something he had never once found himself thinking about a human before. You were so... good, the closest to perfection a human could ever possibly be. And not perfect by the bullshit puritan standards set by the "heavenly creator," because you were as touched by sin as any human is, but perfect to him specifically.
Your sins were few and far between, with only one making a substantial impact on your purity; but it was the most important, most delicious sin of them all, the one that made Hyunjin's body seethe with delectable desire. You weren't envious, nor greedy or gluttonous; you lived in a luxurious penthouse suite, that was true, but greed to have the best of everything isn't what brought you here. The pride you felt for your accomplishments didn't go anywhere near sinful levels- you were proud of yourself, but not in such a way that you looked down on others while you sat atop your high horse.
You weren't slothful, brought to your current position by your own hard work and tireless efforts, and you weren't wrathful either, your emotions toward your fellow man always sweet, compassionate, and gracious. That only left one sin- just one that impacted your soul, that barred you from reaching true, godly purity.
Lust.
It wasn't an unhealthy amount of lust by any means, but any at all is enough to damn an unmarried woman's soul if she gives in to the temptation- an unfair ruling that has cost many their rightful place in paradise. And you certainly did give in to your temptation, and that is what made you perfect to him. You had none of the avarice of other humans, none of the undesirable qualities that made them foolish and arrogant and insufferable to deal with, instead held closely by one desire, the most important desire.
Was it a coincidence, he wondered? That he, a demon born of lust himself, found one such human that seemed to adhere perfectly to what he enjoys most? Hyunjin often felt himself above that of the sins his brothers were born to pursue. Violence did not suit him, emotions such as greed, pride, and jealousy often went beyond his comprehension. And not because he was some lowly, ignorant creature who was only capable of thinking with his dick, but because those feelings simply never came to him to begin with.
What was there to be jealous of? If he wanted something, he could have it, he could take it, as simple as that. Was he prideful? Sure, one could say he was, say that he had an ego, but he would argue that there was a clear difference between the arrogance that often comes with pride, and simply having confidence in one's own abilities and joy in their accomplishments.
He knew he could feel other emotions, indulge in other sins, if his brothers' conquests and actions were any tell, but he simply.. didn't. Lust was all he knew, was all that he enjoyed, but at the same time, he wasn't some low level demon who was consumed by lust. No, he could control it quite easily if he wished, was more than capable of waiting for the most ideal moment to finally savor in the addictive dance two bodies can share. (Or more than two bodies, should one prefer that.)
Lust was all he ever knew, but unlike the sex-starved beasts he ruled over and observed in his circle within hell, he was very much in control of himself. Make no mistake, it never went away, he always felt the gnawing craving for more and more and more- but it never addled his mind. That was the perk of being a demon with a higher consciousness than that of say.. an imp. He had complete control of his compulsions and desires.
It was this control over himself that led to Hyunjin savoring the lust that poured from human souls in only the most ideal conditions. There were many different kinds of lust, each with their own "taste" so to speak, and while Hyunjin found them all enjoyable to at least some degree, there was one in particular that was the most intoxicating to him, one that never failed to light a fire within him, the one that was always, always, worth waiting for.
The lust between two lovers, whose care for eachother was true, and good, and special- such as you would see from couples sleeping together for the first time, full to the brim with nervous excitement. Or maybe from long-time lovers reigniting their spark with a romantic night spent together after a warm, candlelit date. Especially delectable was the sweet consummation after making an eternal promise under God to be together forever, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part. Those are just a few examples of the sort of lust that gave Hyunjin the best, sweetest taste.
The irony of being an immoral entity who gained the most enjoyment out of love and romance wasn't lost on him, but his preferences weren't built on some misconceived notion that he could aspire to feel those things himself. Yes, Hyunjin knew he would never feel the human emotion that was love, but he could understand, at least on a superficial level, why it tasted so sweet, and why humans seemed to fight for that feeling above all else.
Perhaps he existed to be a hypocrite, sowing seeds of chaos and turmoil while valuing true love, contradicting that which humans believed they knew about demons of lust such as himself. After all, was it not the very nature of a demon to confuse, contradict, and twist the human condition? And was it not utterly against his being to indulge in a feeling that was considered sacred by God? It didn't matter either way; if there was one thing that Hyunjin knew for certain, it was that sweet tastes were the best, and it didn't matter where it originated from or how- he just knew he liked it.
And oh, how his proverbial heart jolted when he sensed it on you the first time he saw you touching yourself. It was a surprise when, after a long day of unpacking and arranging furniture, you let your hand travel sinfully between your legs with a heady sigh- and far be it from Hyunjin to deny himself the opportunity to feed on a human's lust when it's practically being delivered to him on a silver platter. You hadn't been touching yourself for long, barely got your panties down your legs when he tasted it- subtle, but familiar enough to Hyunjin that he could recognize it anywhere.
It was hard to explain the sweet taste in human terms- there were really no words that could come close to describing it, as the "flavor" itself didn't exist within human understanding. Suffice it to say, it was something entirely unique to his kind, and something any demon would be able to distinguish with ease should they be in close enough proximity. It was unmistakable- you loved someone. That was information that could serve him well, something that he should be delighted to know he could ruin you with. And yet, for the first time in all his thousands of years, the feeling of lustful love left a bitter taste on his tongue.
You were in love.. And you envisioned that person while your fingers were buried between your legs, as you bit your lip and made your eyes roll to the back of your skull. Who was it? Why did you love them? Were they even deserving of someone as perfect as you? Did they deserve to touch you? To feel you? Hyunjin grit his teeth, fists clenching into tight balls as an unfamiliar feeling began to permeate through the entirety of his being.
Is this.. what envy feels like? A rage beyond comprehension at the thought of someone else having you when it should be him? He should be the one you desired to have touching you, the one you imagined marking your unmarred skin, the one who made you cry out and tremble with even the simplest of touches. Would they even indulge in the sweet taste you radiate like he would? Would they even understand what perfection it is you offer simply by being? His, you should be his, only his, his, his.
The realization hit Hyunjin like cold water over hot skin- he wants you. And not just for one night, not superficially, not with needing to part ways afterwards. He wants you to love him, wants the feeling of love-drenched lust that radiates off you to be because of him, wants you to belong to him and him alone. You don't know him yet, but you will. And he'll make sure you're left wanting him, and only him, by any means necessary. Because it's what he wants, and he always gets what he wants.
Hyunjin wants to say it's simple curiosity that leads him to carefully stealing your phone off your nightstand once you've fallen asleep, or that's acting with the desire to know how to ruin the target of his ire more succinctly, but that simply isn't true. No, he is scrounging through your phone not with the intent to learn your greatest fears and hates, nor does he scour your messages to discover your darkest secrets.
It's a different purpose that has led him here, an unfamiliar ache that drives him to search your phone for something more. In hindsight, going through your phone to learn about you is a simple, easy act he could've, should've, done already, but he's a bit of a traditionalist in that regard. (Or maybe he just doesn't want to admit how much he's liked watching you these past few weeks.)
Who is that you love? And why? It would've been easier for him to find out had you truly let yourself go, allowed yourself to be loud and moan their name to your heart's content, but you hadn't. And maybe that was a good thing, as hearing someone else's name leave your lips in such a moment would've definitely sent him into a dangerous hate spiral, but that also meant he was left with nothing to go on as a clue.
He was much too stunned, and then seething with anger and jealousy, to read your thoughts in the moment, and if he tried to do so now, while you were sleeping, all he would do is catch a glimpse of your dreams- not helpful in the slightest, unless you happen to be dreaming of the object of your desire. (Which you weren't. He already looked.)
Unlocking your phone is easy, as he's seen you put in your password several times over at this point. Unfortunately for him however, (and fortunate for the one undeserving of Hyunjin's wrath,) he finds nothing that makes the object of your affection explicitly obvious. Your texts with friends all use the same tone, you talk about mundane things like what movies are coming out or how you wish you could go on a vacation for a while.
Your photo gallery is relatively small, filled mostly by screenshots of things you wish to remember or keep for a laugh, and the occasional selfie. There's nothing that screams "this is the person i'm in love with!" no matter where in your phone he looks, and if it wasn't for how intensely he felt the emotion radiating from you as your fingers sped up and release built, he'd think he must have imagined it.
What interesting this he does find, however, are the differen't porn links littered through your incognito tabs, all that paint a very vivid picture of what you find most appealing, or in more vulgar terms, what gets your pussy really fucking wet. He skims through your collection of favorites and private bookmarks, and quickly comes to realize they all hold a similar theme- love, romance, and doms who are soft even when being rough with the sub's body or speaking condescending words.
Various videos and audio files, with titles such as "roommate gets railed after confessing her secret feelings," "pov: boy next door accidentally confesses and then fucks you passionately," and "soft dom makes his good girl cum hard: boyfriend asmr." There's even an entire erotic movie, much to Hyunjin's surprise, with a 2 hour run time and dedicated plot in your recent bookmarks.
He decides to watch it, for research purposes of course- what better way to get to know the object of his desire than by watching the porn she consumes for himself? It's rather generic as far as ideas go- childhood best friends confessing their love before going away to college, with sweet, sensual but desperate fucking and a promise they'll be in love no matter the distance put between them. A cliché plot, by human media standards.
However, he has to give it due props- it's obviously not an amateur production. It's acted well, has better cinematography than one might expect for a film produced by a porn studio, and the dialogue never crosses into cringe, overtly fake territory. Despite it all, something about it feels real, as if he'd taken a genuine glimpse into the lives of two young people in love, rather than a manufactured video meant to make the people who watch it unbearably horny.
Hyunjin continued through your collection after that, eager to see what other gems lied in your favorites, waiting to be watched by him. They're all the same fundamentally speaking, your preferences and biases easily shining through with each video watched and audio listened to. Emotionally charged, romantic confessions, sweet "i love you"s, soft, caring doms who take good care of the submissive one, making them feel desired, beautiful, and secure.
The person you're in love with, the one who lingers in your mind when you watch these videos and your hand travels between your legs- this is what you want them to do. You want them to love you passionately, to make you fall apart in the sweetest of ways, to take care of you so well that your thoughts can linger on nothing but the way they make you feel. You want them to sweetly tell you they love you while they fuck you, to speak filthy words in your ears in a soft, saccharine voice as they make you cum. To fuck you dumb, to ruin you, and then expertly put you back together with a tender touch.
Carefully, he puts your phone back in its place, looking at you once he's done, still sound asleep in your bed and without a clue in the world that there's a demon standing before you, close enough to touch. You've lived with Hyunjin for weeks now, but you don't know who he is, don't know that he's there, don't know that you have unexpectedly become the reason for a demon's strange and new complex emotions. Isn't it funny? How a demon as powerful as him has become infatuated with you despite you not even knowing he exists.
It's illogical to desire you, truly. Humans are fickle, subject to corruption and irrationality, their lives impossibly short. What one man works his entire life to obtain, Hyunjin can have in mere moments with a fraction of the effort. To a being that has lived thousands of years, the life of a human happens in a mere blink. You grow old, you get sick, you die, your accomplishments fade to nothing, forgotten as the next wave of humans walk the earth in your stead. You're beneath him, he's better than you, and yet..
Why does he still crave you so? Maybe he's no better than the humans he's looked down upon, considering them lesser for their innate hypocrisies and irrational actions- because Hyunjin is about to do just the same. His feelings for you are hypocritical, irrational, foolish, but also the most real thing he's ever felt. And if it's romance you want, that will make you fall head over heels for him, then he'll be the most romantic demon the nine hells have ever known.
#skz x reader#hyunjin x reader#skz smut#hyunjin smut#skz imagines#skz scenarios#mdni + divider graphic credit: @cafekitsune
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ten reasons why i hate you: reason #4
SYNOPSIS. while you admittedly didn’t refuse the arranged marriage between you and jung jaehyun, that didn’t mean that you’d allow him to treat you like a doormat. for the emotional distress he had put you through during the months leading up to your engagement party, you ensure that he will pay for the way he had been treating you for the rest of his life.
PAIRING. rich boy!jaehyun x rich girl!reader
GENRES. angst, drama, rich kid!au
CHAPTER WORD COUNT. 3200
WARNINGS. none.
DISCLAIMER. this is a work of fiction based on fictional events and characters. it is unrelated to any real people, organisations, locations, and events. the laws, and legal and medical interpretations in this work have also been modified for storytelling purposes.
TAGLIST. @moonchele @crescent-iak @ahtisa02 @ghostfacefricker6969 @jaehyunnie77 @jungish @anya-writes-stuff @hey-won @ishireads @neoculturetingz @xxxx-23nct @peachibevuti (bolded = unable to tag)
[a/n]: apologies for taking so long with this chapter!! i’ve been super busy the past two months and lowkey went through another writing burnout for putting out too many stuff at the same time. i hope this long chapter will make up for it. next chapterf will be the wedding! pls leave feedback and comments, they keep me motivated♡♡
and if you’d like to be part of the taglist, pls send me an ask! it’s easier for me to see and keep track as opposed to directly commenting since these get lost in notifs :)
← REASON #3 || MASTERLIST || REASON #5 →
REASON #4
“How are you feeling?”
You refrained yourself from scoffing at Doyoung’s seemingly harmless question as he drove you back to your place from the hospital (i.e. your penthouse at Yuta’s hotel). Although you were the one who came up with this ‘revenge’ plan, you were starting to regret your recklessness as the plan was slowly taking a toll on you and your mental health.
“What do you think?” you replied with a small snark.
Doyoung’s jaw slackened at your question, one that was meant to be rhetorical. But somehow, he decided to answer it regardless.
“I think this is your worst idea so far.”
You closed your eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “What? Beating out the fact that I let you break up with me? I would have thought that you’d think that that was my worst idea.”
An awkward silence ensued as you brought back a fact that you and Doyoung seemed to have kept under wraps for a while. Even though it had been close to three years since you two broke up.
Or should you say, got your ass dumped by Doyoung?
You wondered whether the bitterness hidden behind the tone of your voice was because you were, in some way, still not completely over the break-up, or because you were annoyed and hated how Doyoung acted as if he was still your significant other. Either way, both things were in the past. Both of you should move on.
“Ignore what I just said,” you mumbled. “Let’s just leave bygones be bygones.”
You didn’t miss how he tightened his hold around the steering wheel as the rest of the car ride was spent in utter silence. You thought that the conversation was over, and you were about to bid Doyoung goodbye until he suddenly pulled you back as you were about to leave his car.
“We need to talk,” he said with an unwavering gaze. “About us, your engagement to Jaehyun—everything.”
You hesitated the slightest. After all, what was there to talk about, really? But you found yourself to nod at his request.
“Tonight,” you replied. “Let’s talk tonight, after the charity auction.”
You quickly headed up to your penthouse and immediately lied down on your bed the second you came back home, the hospital shifts and your engagement taking a toll on you.
As your engagement progressed, you started developing a knack for pissing off your future husband whenever the opportunity arises. Unfortunately for you, Jaehyun was the same. The relationship between the two of you became a pissing contest, one that is always about one-upping the other.
It made you wonder just how exactly would you be able to fool all the paparazzi that will be present at the famous Nakamoto Group’s charity auction, held annually at the hotel that you were stubbornly staying at to spite your parents.
“You look like you’re constipated,” you muttered through your smile to Jaehyun, who truly did look like he was constipated as he was forced to wrap an arm around your waist and pull you close to fool the photographers who were gobbling up the scene.
“God, I can’t wait for this to be over,” he replied, stuck with the same expression as you.
With the pictures over, you were brought over to your table where the rest of your group of friends were also sitting. You greeted Jennie and Krystal with kisses on the cheek, and said hello to Taeyong and Johnny, then hugged Yuta and then Doyoung (whose seat was conveniently next to yours).
Krystal didn’t fail to miss how awkward the interaction between you and Doyoung was and shot you an inquisitive look from across the table, to which you ignored. You quickly took a seat and perused through the list of auctioned items, hoping that nobody else was as perceptive as Krystal.
Meanwhile, Jaehyun kept fidgeting in his seat and stole glances around the room. It was only due to his weird behaviour that you noticed that the seat on his other side was empty. You looked around the table and saw that all of your friends were present. So, who—
Ah.
Of course he had to keep a spot for his girlfriend, huh.
You made a mental note to yourself to have a little talk with Yuta later.
Chaeyoung finally arrived fifteen minutes later. She seemed breathless almost as if she ran over here, and quickly apologised for being late. Her hair was in disarray and her clothes were disheveled. You kept your face neutral and refrained yourself from making any comments. The last thing you wanted was to get in a fight with Jaehyun’s girlfriend. If he were to invite her, then the least that asshole could have done was to at least provide hair and makeup to her.
However, Jaehyun seemed taken aback with her presence and stuttered as he asked her what she was doing at the event. Chaeyoung mirrored his expression.
“I received the invitation by mail a couple of days ago, addressed to me from you,” she answered meekly. “I thought...”
If Jaehyun didn’t invite her, then who did?
You locked eyes with Yuta, who raised his glass of wine at you with a small smirk.
Who else, if not the person responsible for the event?
You mentally sighed at his unnecessary action—you can fight your own battles. You didn’t even want to think how Jaehyun would react if he were to find out, or worse, think that you were the one who invited Chaeyoung.
Besides, Jaehyun should know better—why on Earth would you invite the girl, when you didn’t even care for her or her existence? Not to mention the headache you already have from dealing with Jaehyun.
However, the obvious glare and slackened jaw were all you needed to know that Jaehyun thought that it was you who orchestrated this whole thing.
And while you didn’t really want to be blamed for something that you didn’t even do, you also didn’t want Yuta’s friendship with Jaehyun to sour even though you were pretty sure that Yuta could care less. He’d always been the kind of person who didn’t care about the consequences of his actions, even the ones that would burn bridges.
The auction finally started after a few more minutes of waiting. A lot of rare items and art pieces went up for auction, but no one at your table raised their paddle number.
“Come on,” Yuta whined jokingly. “You guys are my friends—don’t embarrass me like this.”
“If you want us to spend some money, tell your employees to put up something that actually catches our attention,” Jennie huffed and waved her chequebook around. “You think I want to come out of a Nakamoto auction empty-handed?”
Jennie had a point. The Nakamoto Group’s charity auctions—while cannot be compared to the likes of Christie’s and Sotheby’s—would once in a while auction pieces that the two most famous auction houses couldn’t acquire. Judging by the glint in your friend’s eyes, you suspected that Yuta probably had something up his sleeve.
“Don’t worry,” Yuta reassured you all. “I made sure that you’d have to spend your money this time around.” He then turned to you with an accusing finger. “Including you and your picky taste.”
You shrugged. “Sue me for having expensive taste.”
“Your taste is on a whole other level of expensive,” Doyoung said with a small chuckle.
“Oh, my God, yes!” Krystal gasped. “Remember when Doyoung got you a Montblanc Papillon Limited Edition of their Bohème fountain pen for your birthday? How much was it already?”
“I think each of them fetches for around $200 000 nowadays?” Taeyong said.
Chaeyoung choked at Taeyong words and exclaimed, “$200 000 for a fountain pen? Are you all mad? Why on Earth would you give someone such an expensive gift? Not to mention when you could buy any other fountain pen for way cheaper? Or you know, just a regular pen?”
You cleared your throat, hoping the dissipate the slight tension caused by Chaeyoung’s words. Neither of your friends expected Chaeyoung to understand how you all manage your money. However, they also didn’t expect her to judge them for it either.
“Well, it’s the thoughts that count,” you answered with a tight smile and attempted to explain why a fountain pen would cost so much. “But, when Montblanc came out with that specific limited edition, only six of them were created in total. Hence, the price.”
Yuta snorted. “If you think that’s expensive for a fountain pen, wait until you hear that it’s not even the most expensive one that exists.”
“Up next is the Heaven Gold Fountain Pen created by Canadian Anita Mai Tan of ALGems,” the auctioneer then said to his mic.
Your jaw slightly dropped at the news and you turned to a very smug-looking Yuta who motioned your bag, where your chequebook had been left untouched.
“Time to pull it out, I believe,” he said with a small wink.
“The Heaven Gold Fountain Pen drew inspiration from the changing alignments of the planets, an event that occurs only approximately every 500 years. This pen is constructed from pristine 24k rose gold, with its most remarkable feature being its cap—with its crest composed of 161 coloured diamonds that encircle a rare Tsavorite gemstone. A 5-petaled flower, a diamond, and a heart shape align to cascade down the pen clip. A total of 1888 diamonds are displayed on the Heaven Gold Fountain Pen.”
“Yuta, how on Earth were you even able to get this?” Taeyong asked in disbelief.
“Only 8 models of the Heaven Gold Fountain Pen were created,” the auctioneer continued. “Due to its feminine symbols and pink coloured gold body, this writing instrument is said to be designed by a woman for women.”
“Close your mouth, you’re practically drooling,” Doyoung whispered to you, unable to hide his laugh.
But before you could even retort, Krystal jumped in and dragged Jaehyun into the conversation (who, admittedly, you forgot was even there because of how silent he was). “Hey Jae, why don’t you get that for your fiancée as a wedding gift?”
Jaehyun who was silent from the beginning remained stoic as ever. You wondered if it was even possible for him to be quieter. His silence created an awkward tension. You were about to come to his defense when Doyoung decided to interject.
“It might be a little bit outside of Jaehyun’s budget,” Doyoung commented offhandedly. “Don’t force a man to buy something if he can’t afford it.”
Perhaps mentioning money (or his family’s) was a sore spot for Jaehyun. Although your circle was among the top 1% of the country, Jaehyun’s was in a way, the poorest of you all. It was no fault of his as the pharmaceutical industry and its modernisation was relatively new, and it was also no secret to any one in your circle that his family was desperate for a partnership with yours.
They simply didn’t know that Jaehyun hated your guts with a passion. They probably knew who Chaeyoung was, but they probably didn’t expect him to still be with her while getting engaged then married to you.
“I can afford it,” Jaehyun grunted.
“Then why the hesitation?” Doyoung refuted back with a smirk.
You only sighed and took a sip of wine as you waited for the auctioneer to state the starting bid price. You could tell that the others (minus Chaeyoung) were enjoying the back-and-forth between the two men sitting at your sides, but honestly—
Didn’t they know that you could afford to buy the fountain pen yourself?
“Let’s start with $500 000.”
Without hesitation, Jaehyun raised his bidding paddle, followed by Doyoung who raised the bid price to $550 000. You gave Yuta an exasperated look, silently asking him if he was happy with the situation, to which he simply snickered and continued to enjoy the scene that was happening in front of him.
The back-and-forth between Jaehyun and Doyoung went on for a while, until the price for the fountain pen was raised up to $950 000. You puckered your lips in ponderation, knowing that the pen is originally valued at approximately $995 510. You then sneaked a look at your opponents who, at the beginning seemed very adamant in buying the pen, but were now starting to look very hesitant as the bid price slowly getting closer to the seven figures.
You scoffed and rolled your eyes at them.
Men.
“One million dollars!” Jaehyun burst out as he waved his bidding paddle around.
You swore you could see Yuta’s eyes glint in pure delight. Not only was the charity auction he organised raising a lot of money, he had the front-row seat to the most amusing dogfight he had ever seen in his life, all that without barely lifting his pinky.
A million dollars for a mere fountain pen.
While you didn’t question whether Jaehyun could actually afford that pen or not (you were certain that he could), you also didn’t want your wedding gift from your, albeit detestable, fiancé (your fiancé, nonetheless) to be one that was given due to peer pressure.
Your feelings aside for Jaehyun, wouldn’t anyone want to receive a wedding gift that was sincere and from the giver’s heart?
But you also had a gut feeling that Jaehyun would come to regret his purchase. Even if you were all heirs and heiresses, not all of you carried that much money around, perhaps aside for you, Yuta, Doyoung, and Jennie.
And your gut feeling proved to be right when you saw the way Jaehyun bit his upper lip out of nervousness and the way his eyes shifted anxiously at the number of extra zeroes.
You sighed through your nose and lifted your bidding paddle.
As much as you hated to admit, it wasn’t easy for you to be rid of your feelings for Jaehyun. After all, wasn’t there a fine line between love and hate?
“Two million dollars,” you stated calmly as the room buzzed at your bid.
Were you overbidding?
Perhaps.
But anything to stop this ridiculous pissing contest between your ex and your fiancé.
“Two million dollars for bidder #27!” the auctioneer exclaimed. “Anyone want to bid $2.5 million? Going once. Going twice. And sold! For bidder #27. Congratulations!”
Your whole table applauded at your new purchase, with Yuta pretending to tip a hat in thanks as your bid brought him in a lot of money. Given how happy your friend looked, you supposed that your talk can be postponed to another time.
The charity auction eventually ended, and true to your promise, you and Doyoung had your talk as he walked you back to your penthouse.
“There’s nothing else to say, really,” you told him as you two got off from the elevator. “Our relationship was over years ago.”
But Doyoung didn’t seem to share the same views.
“You know that I never wanted us to break up,” he told you almost sternly. “But–”
“But, what?” you cut him off. “But what, Kim Doyoung? I should have moved with you to Germany?”
He slowly fell silent and seemed to hesitate to speak up. When he was finally able to put his thoughts into words, Doyoung refrained himself from talking again when he noticed that you two weren’t alone anymore.
You followed his line of vision and was slightly surprised to find Jaehyun standing in the middle of your penthouse. You raised a questioning brow at him, not mad that he was there, just evidently very shocked, but Jaehyun seemed to have misinterpreted your look.
“Y-Yuta gave me access,” Jaehyun quickly stuttered out.
His presence aside, why on Earth would Jaehyun want to come see you at your place? Especially without looking like he wanted to get in a fight with you. The whole situation seemed awfully suspicious to you, but you figured you’ll entertain him a little.
“S-should I come back at another time?” he asked awkwardly and spared a glance at Doyoung who, to his credit, managed to keep his annoyance in check.
“It’s fine,” Doyoung replied with a tight smile and turned to you. “Let’s talk at the hospital tomorrow during our lunch break.”
You hesitantly nodded and sent him off.
“So.” Jaehyun cleared his throat awkwardly. “You and Doyoung, huh?”
You raised a skeptical brow at him as you threw your bag on the sofa. “It’s old news and everyone in our circle knew about it.” You paused. “I’m surprised you didn’t.”
“I met Doyoung when he was studying in Germany.”
“Ah.”
A painfully awkward silence befell upon the two of you. Although you were secretly grateful that, for once, your conversation with Jaehyun wasn’t one that led the two of you to either argue with each other, you didn’t like the fact that he entered your personal space—crossed your boundaries—without permission.
“Why are you here, Jaehyun?” you asked with a tired sigh. “What do you want?”
He seemed taken aback with your blunt attitude, but for once he didn’t refute back with the same spite. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck and explained, “I was originally going to confront you about inviting Chaeyoung–”
You heaved another irritated sigh. “I didn’t invite her–”
“I know!” he exclaimed. “I know. Yuta told me everything.”
Well, what do you know. Yuta does know what guilt felt like.
Knowing your friend, it was probably due to your generous purchase that he spilled everything to Jaehyun. It made you wonder how he would have reacted if you didn’t bid for the fountain pen. But you learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“I see,” was your only answer.
You glanced at your watch. It was close to midnight and you had an early shift tomorrow.
“Is that all? If so, then I’m not going to walk you out. I have an early morning tomorrow and I need a shower.”
But to your utmost surprise, Jaehyun didn’t budge. He looked like he had more to say but he kept fidgeting in his spot, like a little shaky lamb.
Were you that scary?
“You... have something else to say?” you asked in what you hoped to be a softer tone.
Sure, you were on a warpath to destroy Jaehyun, but you weren’t a monster.
“...Thank you,” he finally said, “for earlier.”
You tilted your head in slight confusion.
“Doyoung’s comment– It’s not the first time that I’ve heard comments like that,” he admitted. “And it got to me. I got a bit hotheaded and got into something that would have left me in deep shit with my father if it wasn’t for your help, so... Thank you.”
You refrained yourself from looking too surprised at Jaehyun’s words and wordlessly nodded at them. It seemed to be enough for Jaehyun who then extended his hand for you to shake.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said and smiled at you. “I’m Jaehyun.”
An olive branch.
Would you really be a monster for refusing to take it, though?
“Nice to meet you,” you said after introducing yourself.
Guess you’ll figure it out soon enough.
← REASON #3 || MASTERLIST || REASON #5 →
#neowritingsnet#cznnet#jaehyun#jaehyun x reader#jaehyun romance#jaehyun angst#jaehyun scenarios#nct x reader#nct 127 x reader#jaehyun oneshot#nct 127 scenarios#w: ten reasons why i hate you
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I'm relatively new to ORV, I got into it a while back and then ran out of time to continue (the novel is long AF lol) but as I'm getting back into it, I've realized that ORV is one of the most main character centric fandoms I have ever encountered before.
And tbh I think that's why I've been having so many issues getting invested in ORV fanworks. Specifically shipping ones. It's super rare for me because usually I love reading fanfics.
Before I start talking about my thoughts I just wanna make a disclaimer that I'm not trying to attack anyone. You should interact with media and create stuff however you wish to! Lord knows that I'm not exactly unbiased about my blorbos (I would die for them and you can tell from my posts) but I just kinda wanna talk about this because it's such a unique experience. Never before have I encountered a fandom that is so centered on one character.
Like I hope y'all know what I'm talking about and that I'm not just talking out of my ass. Everything in the ORV fandom is super Kim Dokja centric. On one hand, I really do get it, he's a great character. He's not my favourite character but he's a lil rat bastard and I think he's so fucking neat. And how centred the storyline and moreover the people in the story are on Kim Dokja is to a certain extent, canon. He's their leader and also the person keeping them safe. He's the one who reached out in their darkest moments and pulled them to the light. And he's a traumatized little bitch. Oof. A certain amount of hero worship and protectiveness is valid.
What I can't really wrap my head around though, is the lack of development between other members of the group in a lot of fanworks. This is specifically fandom interpretations of the characters btw, I haven't finished the story fully, so I can't speak on how they are canonically but I have seen people's stories and thoughts. And this isn't always the case of course, I have read fics before where our protagonists all appear to have relations with each other outside of their care for Dokja but it... wasn't as much as I was expecting. Which is weird to me because ORV is super good at writing like. Well written and thought out characters that would be super fun to play with in writing. In developing connections and care for each other - creating a found family. At the beginning they're all tied in by the need for survival and circumstance, they don't even necessarily like each other, and so of course they all gravitate to Dokja, that's to be expected, that's who they're familiar with. But eventually I expect they would learn to care about each other too, y'know? It's difficult to not get to know each other when you're living together daily, fighting alongside each other to survive. I don't believe that they wouldn't develop care for the other members of the group, and people who care about each other don't tend to genuinely threaten each other anytime Dokja gets hurt, especially when it's not anyone's fault - like usually it's in response to one of them "not doing enough to protect him" which makes no sense to me. You don't guilt trip people you care about for things outside their control. Moreover, Dokja is his own person - he will do what he will do and you can try and prevent it because you care about him, sure, but it's also unreasonable for others to expect anyone to be his keeper enough that they get angry when Dokja gets hurt due to his own actions or to situations outside of their control. People in general also don't have their entire character and world centered on loving one person. There are fics I've read where all the characters don't even seem to have any hobbies outside of spending time with Dokja, and I say this because they all literally fight, tooth and nail, over Dokja's time. It feels out of character to me. And yet this characterization is also so common???
I don't usually mind fics that so clearly have a bias towards one character because it's valid to write what you wanna see, but I think it's how saturated the fandom is with those types of works that makes me feel weird. It makes me stop seeing all the characters as individuals in their own right. Having no wants or needs or hobbies outside of Dokja makes it seem like they're just accessories to the story of Dokja's life. The story itself becomes less compelling to me, because it becomes less of a narrative of how Dokja has helped these people and their responses, and more of a world that bends over backwards to worship this one character, using all the other characters as tools to do so. Because if this is meant to convey gratitude and love, its illogical to how it usually works. Specifically in that, you don't lose your own identity or your connections to other people because of it. And I find it hard to interact with this level of saturation of those tropes because at a certain point, I start losing sight of the canonical writing of these individual characters as their own people. I start losing the idea I have in my mind of their canonical personalities. And I don't like that feeling. And because Dokja also isn't my favourite character in this story - I still like him, don't get me wrong - I start feeling indignant on the behalf of all the other characters that are not getting development BC of the concentration on Dokja.
I also don't like it when the banter goes away. Like you can care about people and still enjoy messing with them, I'm not sure why caring about dokja translates to hero worship??? I annoy my friends all the time, and they do it back. It's fun. Like that thing the group does where they can't see Dokja's face and just unanimously decide to tell him he looks bad when he asks about it? That's peak friendship. Peak messing with your sibling energy. As far as I've seen Dokja isn't self conscious about that either (then again I haven't read the entire story yet), so like. What gives? It's canonical that they mess with Dokja - but a lot of fics just get rid of that element.
I also find it especially hard when it comes to shipping, specifically Joonghyuk and Dokja. The reason why I love Joonghyuk and Dokja's dynamic so much in the first place is because they view each other as equals. It would be very easy to place either Joonghyuk or Dokja onto a pedestal - but they don't do that to each other. They know each other pretty damn well and they care about each other even though they're so in denial about it. And you know that thing they do where they act like the other is the worst person in existence and then negates it all by repeatedly devoting themselves to saving them? That's my shit. That whole "you're so fucking annoying but if you died I would kill everything in this room and then myself." The whole "what was that?" "Affection." "Disgusting. Do it again." THAT SHIT. I love that about them. And like the platonic relationships, a lot of shipping works get rid of that type of banter when they shift to a romantic relationship. Like yeah, sweet talk and honesty is important. You should let your partner know you love them. But that's not gonna be all there is. I don't see a need to get rid of the banter because as the story goes on, it's clear that even in canon, eventually the harsh words they say to each other stop being genuine because their actions negate the words. They don't mean them in the first place, so why would that banter change once their care shifts from a platonic to a romantic one? And I could perhaps be okay with that shift from banter to sweet talk if it was MUTUAL, but too often I see a situation where Dokja continues to insult Joonghyuk but he doesn't return it in kind. Joonghyuk is very blunt about his love for Dokja - which is good - but Dokja doesn't do the same back, and for some reason that's fine, and then Joonghyuk also no longer has those very human moments of annoyance when Dokja does some stupid shit. Like I guess I could understand the characterization of Dokja being emotionally constipated cause he's kind of a traumatized control freak and I can see how getting him to talk about his feelings is like trying to get a cat into a bathtub, but it's not like Joonghyuk isn't also like that? It's not really as much of a compelling relationship if one person is telling the other everything, giving care in words of affection and the other person isn't returning it. And you could depict that returned care in other ways, absolutely, but again I don't see it in other ways either, because those stories are still so Dokja centric.
Another factor is that I find that I can't really like a ship in a work where one of the characters is elevated to a point where they can't do anything wrong. Where their own needs are always at the forefront and their partner is always catering to it. Like a relationship is a give and take. We focus a lot on Dokja's trauma - which I love, that man needs sO MUCH THERAPY and it's an interesting topic to explore - but we don't focus on the amount of shit Joonghyuk has had to go through. I very rarely see a shipping fic where Dokja tries to address Joonghyuk's trauma or his hurt. Physical hurt sure, maybe, but that other shit that Joonghyuk bottles up?? Never talked about. My man has had to keep living lives over and over again. Has had to see people he love die, make hard choices. There is no way he's not traumatized to shit, and I'd like that to be a focus some of the time, y'know? Moreover, of all people, Dokja would be the one to understand him the most? One, he's the only one who really knows the whole truth about Joonghyuk, or as much of it as you can, and two, they both have taken on very burdensome leadership roles in a situation where few would be able to understand their position - it makes sense for them to lean on each other mutually, and so far there's a very prominent skew, only an exploration on one side.
And I pretty much haven't seen a shipping fic with Dokja and Joonghyuk where Joonghyuk has recieved any form of platonic comfort from the other characters. I've seen plenty for Dokja. Where he gets comforted/helped by both Joonghyuk and all the other characters. But not for Joonghyuk. If y'all have any recs where Joonghyuk has that, PLEASE recommend it because I need. And sure, it can be argued that Joonghyuk is a hard man to know considering his prickliness but regardless, he DOES have canonical platonic relationships. People who care for him. Who would be protective over him if he were to get hurt. That is not something only Dokja has, and yet it's something I only ever see written for Dokja. Y'all need to remember that technically Dokja doesn't act like any less of an asshole sometimes than Joonghyuk. He's more outwardly approachable sure, but he's not necessarily sweet 100% of the time - he has grit and he's a rat bastard and that's my FAVOURITE FUCKING PART ABOUT HIM. The fact that he's a rat bastard and the fact that not everyone likes him. His interactions in a world where he does have to make hard choices or say things that put people at odds, or hurts others when he didn't mean to. I love that about Joonghyuk too. They suck and they both have so much capacity to be kind despite all the shit they've gone through, but they're not able to see that in themselves and they do bad things because they have to, and I think they're so fascinating.
Y'know out of all of this, I think what cracks me up is, knowing Dokja's character, he would be absolutely appalled at how centred all of it is on him only. Like. Like that's literally the opposite of what he wants 🤣🤣. Like I get that makes people want to do it more because he deserves it and whatnot which is valid but like. He would be quite disgruntled 🤣🤣🤣
#omniscient reader's viewpoint#omniscient reader#joongdok#dokjoong#kim dokja#yoo joonghyuk#shipping analysis#fandom analysis#minor spoilers for omniscient reader
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I feel like an interesting thing about remus and sirius dynamic in the wfrau is that they're not really that different, it just is kind of convenient that the cause remus works for happens to be the moral highground, bc rlly what other choice does he have when he was forced into prostitution before them. like the order, despite the sacrifices he has to make, is literally the best place for him: he gets a purpose, friends, food and shelter, and a life beyond anything he could have on his own. idk this could be a TOTAL misread of his character, and since we've been looking through sirius' eyes its natural to want to sympathise with him more, but it would be a lot more of a cost for sirius to abandon his life and join some (in the shadows)(LARGELY unsuccessful) rebellion where he could easily be found out and killed/tortured gruesomely. Remus admits himself that he's prideful ("But his pride—that’s the one thing that’s always remained his own.") and he obviously looks down on sirius a lot for the life he lives, but I feel like at the end of the day they both just want to a) avoid suffering/protect themselves and b) protect the people they care about, and they both only have one place to turn to to do both of those things, and remus' just happens to be morally superior to sirius'.
correct me on this if you think I've misread remus (cause hes v complex obviously) or the worldbuilding, and not to understate that sirius is doing bad things and remus is (trying) to do good things, and that it is possible to escape the life sirius has (regulus did, apparently), but idk I just wanted to try and tell what makes their dynamic so interesting.
oooh such a fun analysis for me 2 read!! v interesting 2 see how other people interpret the things i write etc. before i respond tho i feel like i need 2 put a little disclaimer that like, i believe in death of the author etc such that i don't think my interpretation/intent should necessarily be taken as inherently more valuable, bc once a work like this is shared ik there are going 2 be varied ways of reading + interpreting it, and i don't want 2 encourage anyone 2 approach stories like this as if there is one Ultimate Correct Interpretation drawn from the writer's intent that u need 2 find, etc.
that being said, i'm happy 2 share my own interpretations + the thinking + intent behind what i've written thus far! think this is gonna get long so i'm gonna put a cut tho lol
so i definitely see the parallels ur drawing between remus + sirius both joining the organizations they joined due in part to coercive conditions outside their control as well as seemingly sharing some core motivations. however i'm not sure i would go as far as you have in saying that their situations are essentially the same and remus just ended up on the "right side" (to paraphrase)
first off - while i see where your take on remus is coming from, keep in mind that at this point in the fic we don't actually know anything about how or why he joined the order. i do have a backstory in mind regarding how exactly he started working with them, and it might not necessarily align with ur interpretation here. don't want to spoil too much, but i will say that remus's choice to join the order was a choice. it wasn't just a matter of having no other options.
something i specifically wanna put pressure on with ur reading is the idea that he was "forced into prostitution" before joining--it seems like ur interpretation of why remus joined the order is that he did it to escape sex work. but keep in mind that remus joining the order resulted in him "selling himself" in a much more dangerous and violent way--he joined the fighting rings + began risking his life every month as well as killing and maiming his fellow werewolves. we know, from his pov, that this is not something he would have done were it not for the order mission; it's reasonable to conclude that remus himself would have preferred sex work to becoming a fighter in the rings, but did so anyway for a larger goal. i'd encourage you to reflect, here, on whether you have a more visceral emotional reaction to the thought of remus "selling himself" as a sex worker versus "selling himself" as a ring fighter--whether the former strikes you as inherently more debasing, more abject, more likely to warrant a desire to "escape." if so, i'd encourage you to reflect on why that might be, and how it affects the way you think of sex work and sex workers. additionally, we know that his involvement with the order did eventually require him to engage in sex work again--so the idea that he joined the order to escape sex work isn't really something that i'm trying to get at in my writing.
also, getting back to the idea that remus was "forced into prostituion"--again, i wanna step back here and ask u 2 reflect a bit on what your choice of phrasing there might say about the underlying associations you have with sex work that might be influencing your reading. my intent in writing remus's backstory with sex work was not to give the impression that he was an abject victim forced by powers beyond his control into sex work as his only option. rather, it was to portray him as a character who is constrained, yes, by the forces that oppress him--specifically, the government that bars him from using magic, accessing stable work, accessing accommodations for his condition, fails to provide any social safety nets, operates + sustains itself on unfair labor conditions which require an exploited class of laborers, etc. but within those constraints i specifically wrote in that remus does have other options; he has, in the past, found other types of work, and there are, of course, the fighting rings or any other number of illegal methods by which he could try to obtain money. remus weighs those other options and chooses to turn to sex work because it seems like his best choice; whether that's because he thinks it will offer him the most control, or the most money, or the most security--it doesn't matter. what matters is that all his options are equally constrained by his oppression, all come with their own pitfalls and humiliations and degrees of exploitation. mysticizing sex work as somehow inherently more abject than the others is...not really what i was going for. that's part of why i wrote about his experiences with it--including experiences that might be viewed by some as grave violations--in a purposefully casual way. for remus, his body has always been an exploited object; sex work is not something he would have felt the need to "escape," from, because he chose to do it, and it's at least a way to make use of his marginalization by exploiting the fact that his condition is made into a fetish. it doesn't mean he's not aware of the coercion involved in his choice--maybe if his father hadn't been so sick and he hadn't needed cash fast for medicine he would have made a different decision, but there likely would have always come a point where he needed money fast and his dad wasn't able to act as the breadwinner anymore. remus has always been very aware that his options in life are limited.
all this is to say, remus's decision to join the order is not something done out of desperation because he thinks his life will be better with them--it's done specifically with a broader political goal in mind. and this is a significant reason for his disdain for sirius. because remus isn't just trying to survive, to protect himself and his loved ones--he and his loved ones are risking their lives every day in service of their ideals, to fight for change. the fact that sirius, who is so much more privileged than remus has ever been, only joined the death eaters because he was forced to is not something that really wins points with remus. it shifts his view of sirius, sure, to know that he doesn't like...delight in serving voldemort and has enough of a conscience to feel guilty about what he does. but remus still disdains a person who would harm others to save their own skin--it's just that sirius is a coward, not a sadist.
and remus doesn't really know or understand how the drive to protect regulus was bound up with sirius rising through the death eater ranks. he's only had glimpses into sirius's home life and his relationship with his brother, and he honestly isn't going around trying to dig up explanations about any of it--he would much rather continue viewing sirius as a contemptible, cowardly death eater than change his perspective, because sirius literally embodies the forces of oppression that have been hurting remus since he was a child, along with his loved ones.
and then the last major difference i'd point out between their joining of their respective organizations is that sirius does benefit, in many tangible ways, from joining the death eaters. like--remus joining the order is mostly just putting his neck on the line and a target on his back, though he does of course benefit from obtaining a community and friends and support in many ways. but in the larger systems of power at play here, remus joining the order only marginalizes him further, when he was already marginalized.
sirius, on the other hand, gains power from becoming a feared and respected death eater. obviously, he suffers many personal injuries and hardships and would not choose to join them had he been given a choice. but he does, in some ways, enjoy the power he obtains from his status. he enjoys his wealth and the comfort it brings. he enjoys it when he's able to accrue enough power to go off and play rebel in small ways that allow him to grasp onto the illusion that he's not given in totally to these people who he knows are corrupt, when he's able to make himself virtually untouchable by the vast majority of people. for sirius, most of his hardship and struggle is internal, emotional, and though he, too, has suffered and been marginalized in some ways by larger systems of power, when offered an avenue to take advantage of those systems of power it's not as if he hated every part of the ride to the top. yeah, he was forced to join the death eaters because he was a kid whose parents wanted to make sure their heir didn't end up a faggot. and that was incredibly traumatic. but his joining the death eaters did not actually marginalize him--it granted him access to a lot of power. and this is something remus is acutely aware of, and another reason that, from his perspective, it's difficult to just feel sorry for sirius.
anyway, you're not wrong that there are definitely parallels between them, but i'd say when it comes to the organizations they're each working for an important difference is that remus actually believes in what his organization is fighting for, while sirius sort of knows that what voldemort's doing is wrong but ignores it and remains complicit.
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A Biracial Reading of OFMD, ft. Iggy’s Revenge Izcourse
a.k.a. I typed out a sentence that turned into an accidental essay of meta, whoops!
Y’all…I love this fandom to pieces, but I don’t think some of you realize why not all of us love Izzy/may be critiquing him. And major disclaimer—I am in NO WAY telling anyone to stop enjoying him as a character. This is NOT an anti-Izzy post (I will go into more detail on why I in fact encourage you to keep doing so later, and to the people who are sending unsolicited hate mail to Izzy fans & haters alike: please don’t!)—I’m just tired of seeing vitriolic hate against the people writing about him as an antagonist, or critiquing his actions based on canon, or post after post of “why don’t people love Izzy like I do!!” and then aggression when people explain their honest opinions. Look: we all have our skrungly little bad guys. I get it!! I’ve got my own collection!! I too have become a consumer and enjoyer of the Izzy fanon!!! PLEASE don’t take this as an attack—I just want to provide some personal, potentially fresh context from at least one (obviously non-exhaustive) perspective for those who want to know why Izzy isn’t universally adored, and also to make a plea for a safer fandom space where we can talk about our perspectives on these fictional characters without escalating to unnecessary vitriol, especially as s2 be upon ye (bc holy shit fandom is supposed to be fun, we’re having fun and that’s an order 😤)
(Oh, and I know I’m potentially stirring the pot with this post, but this should go without saying: don’t send each other death threats. What the fuck. Nobody do this?!)
So now that the legalize is out of the way: I want to share that the reason I initially imprinted on this show—and on Ed specifically—was because I’d never seen an explicitly biracial character treated with such complexity, nuance, and grace. While our ethnic makeups are vastly different, I too am half-white & half-brown—which means we’re absolutely nothing culturally alike, but our worlds view and treat us as pretty much the same regardless. And like Ed, my dad resents my mom and my racial makeup, and is prone to what I like to call “white violence.” Not going to overshare on the internet, but let’s just say that all this compounded makes Ed feel highly relatable to me (although for legal purposes I promise I have not krakened my dad 🙃).
When I first watched the show (and honestly also until my 3rd or 4th rewatch), Izzy IMMEDIATELY made me think of my dad. He also immediately made me think of Ed’s dad. Their mannerisms, word choices, and tones of voice; the obsessive need for control; the default of violence; the gradual dehumanization until an ultimate kraken-ifying breaking point—it all read to me like an intentional parallel. A shadow of white violence following Ed around that he hasn’t been able to shake, and mirroring to him the things he fears the most, including the things he fears within himself and feels forced to become (he is half-white after all, and this is a whole other post, but tl;dr there can be a lot of baggage that comes with being half-white/half-poc in regards to grappling with your toxic relationship to that white side of yourself, and especially if your white parent was racist and/or violent). And you can claim a different reading of all of this if you want (I genuinely mean that, like I’m in favor of meta & I think it’s great to analyze these things) BUT. that does not change the fact that I felt what I felt as a result of what was portrayed on screen and combined with my lived experience. Because fictional characters are just that—fictional—and are vessels by which you can process the world; we will always bring our personal lived experiences to anything we consume, and that’s okay—that can be the point, even. Art imitates life imitates art. Interpretation is the name of the game!
(more under the cut)
So when I watch this show, it’s a helpful tool for me to process my own feelings of being victimized by the white violence that’s followed me around my whole life, as well as the ways in which I’ve rebelled against it/tried to make peace with a non-toxic version of whiteness (in parallel to the more overt theme of masculinity, which is—ding ding—inexplicably tied to whiteness and western colonialism) via chaos, love, hurt, and sometimes giving up and giving in—and in this process, Izzy is a safe target. And you know why that is? Because he’s FICTIONAL. I can feel rage towards him because he’s NOT REAL. I can better understand and process the pain I’ve felt and rarely seen societally acknowledged by watching it paralleled on screen via actors and writers who have likely also grappled with similar feelings (I mean, I genuinely have made more progress with my personal biracial trauma via this show vs. years of therapy), and if I want to assume the worst of Izzy based on my interpretation of canon to help me through this? That’s fine! Because I can’t hurt his feelings and he can’t hurt mine!! Because he’s not real!!!
And here’s why I still support the Izzy-enjoyment: I am sure that many of the people who love Izzy and defend him to the ends of the earth probably feel a similar way that I do about Ed. It���s why we get all riled up and protective of these characters, why we might take attacks on them as attacks on ourselves; recognition of the self in the form of the other, and all that. Izzy is a vessel by which to safely work through the dark feelings and the pain you’ve bottled up—and he’s a safe way to do that because he’s FICTIONAL. And that’s a beautiful thing imo!! That’s truly the beauty of art—it is what we make of it, and what we make of it helps make ourselves better. It’s good to be open to interpretation.
HOWEVER: that does not give you permission to discount my relationship to this show (as I will not discount yours), and more importantly: that does NOT give you permission to reject the notion that canonically in s1, Izzy is literally and thematically (emphasis on thematically) an antagonist who is purposefully written to cause harm that can be interpreted as a hate crime, especially to those with lived experience of homophobia/racism/ableism/bullying/etc.—and you cannot harass people about this when conversing about theories of canon. If someone sees Izzy’s dialogue as cutting, degrading, and even triggering, that’s extremely fair of them to do so—clearly Ed was written to feel it that way! Con himself has paralleled Izzy with Judas! And can interpret it all differently? Sure! But you CANNOT assume that everyone else will, and then get upset when people don’t. I can’t believe I need to spell this out about an angry white guy in a show about toxic masculinity, but if someone does not like Izzy, it is likely due to a personal history of harassment (or worse) that he is reminiscent of; by making a point to defend him to someone—even if you are well-intentioned—you are very much putting salt in a wound.
I want to take this opportunity to further emphasize some tenets of fandom in general:
you can like characters who do horrible things without needing to jump hoops to argue their morals as pure 👏
conversely, you can critique their actions and still like them (encouraged, even) 👏
you can like characters who do horrible things simply because they’re cool and hot and interesting—don’t worry, we know it’s not the same as liking people like them irl 👏
your liking a villain archetype says nothing about your own moral virtue 👏
you can like horrible characters and see reasons for why they are the way they are/view them as tragic/note sympathetic dimensions of their personality/root for them to have redemption arcs while acknowledging that said redemption arc may not have happened in canon yet and that these are implicit, not explicit, readings of canon 👏
and you can also reimagine canon and change their contexts in fan works so that they ARE morally virtuous 👏 but PLEASE just be mindful and accountable when you do this in a context where not everyone will see a character the same way as you, and where multiple of people of marginalized identities have spoken out about the harm not doing so can cause. Just be honest, sincere, and kind, listen and learn, and don’t harass people for understandably needing space from a character that symbolizes something different to them than it does to you.
Also: blocking tags or people just because they have character opinions different than yours is totally okay and does not mean anything other than “I am curating my online space to have a better time,” it’s NOT personal
And most importantly: FANDOM IS FOR FUN! This isn’t our day job! We come to fandom to decompress. Don’t ruin people’s safe spaces!!!
Like I said, I’ve grown to enjoy Izzy over time thanks to fandom and fanon, and I think it’s fantastic that fandom can have such diversity in the way it interprets canon. I can’t wait for his probable redemption arc (it will likely be a healing thing to witness for many of us) and I’m truly glad that we can all have different relationships to the same characters. But please—when some of us need Izzy to be a punching bag, just let him be a punching bag. No, it’s not homophobic and DEFINTELY not misogynistic to view him as an obstacle in Ed and Stede’s relationship (baffled by the amount of times I’ve seen this take—it’s a funny joke but if you actually think Izzy is treated the way female characters related to other mlm ships have been treated, the point is very much going whoosh). You don’t have to engage; it’s not personal. It’s not about YOUR relationship with him—it’s about MINE. Please let me feel and even discuss rage towards him when I think about episode 10. Please let me throw as many sandwiches at his head as I need to. Because I PROMISE, it won’t hurt him—because he, and none of these characters, are real; and yet we, the fans, very much are.
#woof#did I add enough disclaimers?#this was longer than intended so if you read all the way through I’m giving you a kiss#I wasn’t going to engage but I keep seeing vitriol in the tag when all I want to do is decompress and I just…#I just came here to see gay ppl kiss sir this is a Wendy’s#fandom should be a safe space and I hate getting an ick from tumblr when it’s what I’m trying to use to escape the bad shit#life is hard enough lmao#anyway#please be kind to each other#I could go into the whole other topic of what the trauma of Covid did to our virtual affect and interpersonal skills but#alas that’s a thesis within itself#and on that note I have my actual thesis to work on so i won’t be closely monitoring this post just needed to get this all off my chest#and for what it’s worth I’ve been trying to avoid s2 spoilers so I haven’t seen the Izzy clip yet but that’s honestly irrelevant to this#bc this is in relation to s1 and I hope we can all just have a good time again this season#ofmd#our flag means death#the izcourse#ofmd meta#trauma#racism
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Self-reflection
@amynchan here is the ficlet based off the idea you gave me on my post asking for ideas to write. I've been struggling with it for a while now, but I think this came out okay-ish.
Prompt: AU in which Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng go to family therapy
Disclaimers:
1. I've never been to therapy (and it shows, I know), so what I'm saying here may not be reflective of how therapy actually works.
2. My opinions on JC might be considered controversial, in that I am critical of his actions and his approach on a lot of things. This is my view on him as a character, you don't have to agree or to like it, I don't claim I'm right or that my opinion is the only valid one. This is my personal interpretation and you are free to have your own, similar or opposing. I won't entertain discourse, if you're unhappy with my ideas/points, feel free to block me!
The car drive home is silent, only the hum of the engine and the sounds of traffic filling the silence between Jiang Cheng and his nephew. It's awkward and uncomfortable, so Jin Ling tries to play on his phone to distract himself from the tension, but he can't focus on any game or social media or even the stupid memes Lan Jingyi sent in the group chat.
He sighs and closes his eyes, thinking over what just happened.
His therapist had suggested he bring his uncle in for a session or two, claiming it would help Jin Ling manage his anger issues and his trauma if his uncle talked to her as well and she tried gauging what their dynamic is.
In reality, all that seemed to do was make his uncle even angrier than usual and so defensive that he even cried at some point from the frustration of it all.
It all started from the moment the therapist asked Jiang Cheng why he felt the need to make (albeit empty) threats towards Jin Ling. Uncle took offense to that, saying it was just part of tough love - to which the therapist said what makes him think love should be tough instead of soft, why he used violent language when he didn't need to. Uncle said he didn't want to raise a weak man - and the therapist asked him why he thought violence equated strength. He said nothing to that.
Then, the therapist asked uncle about his parents. Instead of talking about them, though, all Jiang Cheng did was talk about how his father favored Wei Wuxian, and how unfair it had been for him. When the therapist asked him how he knew it was favoritism and uncle said "it was obvious! My mother even told everyone, my father included!", she asked him whether he was the one seeing the favoritism, or he was seeing it because his mother was, because he wanted her approval and validation. Uncle, once again, said nothing, but he clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white.
The therapist asked uncle about Jin Ling's parents after that. How they were like, what relationship he had with them. But uncle yet again talked about how they died because of Wei Wuxian, and the therapist asked him if that was all that mattered to him in regards to them. Uncle yet again didn't respond, but Jin Ling could see frustrated tears form in his eyes.
The therapist told Jiang Cheng to think about whether his anger is his own or his mother's.
To think about whether it is fair of him to blame all his life circumstances on one person, as if that person's life purpose had been to ruin his own from the start.
To think about whether he was so quick to hate Wei Wuxian because it was easier to do that than to see the bigger picture.
To think about whether he had adopted so many of his mother's mannerisms because he missed her and grieved her and inevitably tried to feel closer to her.
To think about whether this is the kind of man he wishes Jin Ling to grow into.
The session ended and uncle said nothing at all anymore after that. Jin Ling sneaks a look at him, and sees his expression darker and cloudier than ever before.
He wonders if he should say something, but ultimately decides against it.
The drive keeps silent all the way home.
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@kine-iende
I feel like I'm kicking a hornet's nest by answering this, but what is this blog for if not controversial opinions on things.
Just as a quick disclaimer, Soft Wars is obviously a FAN WORK, so I am not trying to attack the author of this series for their chosen interpretations of things, their characterization choices, etc by stating my opinions on this. Everyone is allowed their own opinions and interpretations and tastes and I applaud this work for the well-written epic that it is and the clear impact it's had on the fandom as a whole.
TL;DR at the end under the cut.
With that out of the way, I think it does some things REALLY REALLY WELL, and some things that I like considerably less. As this reply says, it's really high quality writing with some interpretations of characters I don't personally like or agree with (I won't say they're "bad" because just because I don't like something doesn't make it bad).
Firstly, I really love the way Soft Wars chooses to portray the clones, the focus it has on them already HAVING a chosen culture before the Jedi that they've created amongst themselves, a lot of their own independence, and the strong and unique relationships between the different clone characters. Cody does not feel like he could be replaced with Fox or Ponds or Bly and be effectively the same character, for example. They also all have such unique relationships among each other and with their main Jedi counterparts which was really interesting to see. I love me a niche pairing sometimes.
I particularly love the way Fox and Ponds' relationship played out as someone who identifies as asexual and at least a little aromantic, too. I also really like the way Obi-Wan's sensitivity to touch is handled within his relationship with Cody and how respectful Cody is of that, it's one of my favorite aspects of that relationship in Soft Wars.
That being said, I'm not the BIGGEST fan of the way the Jedi are portrayed all the time. Sometimes it's really great, and I do like it! It's by no means ANTI Jedi, there is no virulent hatred aimed at the Jedi in the narrative. But it absolutely falls into the category of showcasing the Jedi as repressed and somewhat complacent and if they just were a little more Mandalorian, a little more like Anakin, they could've saved themselves from genocide and they'd just be generally happier and healthier people.
This obviously makes itself MOST known with the way the relationship between Rex and Anakin (and Obi-Wan to some degree) gets treated. Rex becomes like Anakin's replacement father-figure because Obi-Wan just didn't quite hit the mark well enough because he's too much of a Jedi and doesn't cater to Anakin's specific needs which is why Anakin falls for Palpatine's manipulations so much. Rex's blatant dislike of Obi-Wan which he BARELY keeps in check and which everybody is aware of because he blames Obi-Wan for Anakin being kind-of a selfish juvenile shithead is... certainly a take on that relationship. Rex tends to give Anakin a lot of advice that I personally see as just obvious normal Jedi philosophy and values as though it's clearly something Anakin wouldn't have learned from the Jedi already.
I'm also not a huge fan of the way Obi-Wan's relationship to Cody plays out in conjunction with the "pledge" to Cody as vod'alor. The fact that Obi-Wan DOESN'T pledge himself to Cody AS A POLITICAL LEADER somehow ends up meaning Obi-Wan doesn't love Cody enough and it's only when Obi-Wan chooses Cody OVER THE JEDI that Obi-Wan is truly... freed? Unrepressed? On his way to a happier way of living life because now he's willing to be in a more typical committed relationship and that's the only way to have a healthy relationship? Obi-Wan choosing Cody and the clones over the Jedi is also what ultimately gets Rex to decide Obi-Wan's not a TOTAL piece of shit and can be saved from his unhealthy toxic Jedi ways.
Then there's Cody apparently blaming MACE for the clones' situation within the GAR. Like I get that the clones would've believed the Jedi had ordered them and all that, but he's literally in a relationship with Obi-Wan who is ON THE COUNCIL and was the one to discover Kamino and the clones and could 1000% tell Cody the truth, and Cody is not presented as though he's kind-of dim and unintelligent or too stubborn to accept the truth, so it feels strange that Cody would hate Mace because he thinks Mace is the reason the clones are "enslaved" to the Republic or whatever. But I will mention here that Mace IS portrayed positively, Cody's dislike of Mace and his choice to blame Mace for their situation is NOT universal since we see a really lovely friendship between Mace and Ponds, so it's not like Mace is at all villainized. It just feels like a strange opinion for Cody to have, especially since it really only makes an appearance once and never gets explored again to my knowledge and Cody's blame seems to rest SOLELY on Mace, not the Jedi or the Council at large.
I don't like the way the Council gets sort-of villainized as a governing body even if its individual members are sometimes treated positively outside of it, specifically through them being pitted against Anakin in particular for no obvious reason. The Deception arc is interpreted as the Council ORDERING Obi-Wan to fake his death and then lie to Anakin about it, when it's stated really really clearly in the episode that the Council itself (or at least Yoda and probably Mace too) don't actually think lying to Anakin is the best idea but that Obi-Wan himself insisted on it for several different reasons, both strategic and personal. Obi-Wan specifically says the Council wants him to "break" Anakin, when a) it's not the Council's idea to begin with in canon, and b) that's not even what Obi-Wan's TRYING to do with this choice in canon.
This theme of pitting the Council against Anakin also comes up in a fic where Obi-Wan "allows" the Council to force Anakin to help Quinlan learn how to go undercover as a slave. It's pointed out by Cody that Quinlan is a perfectly good undercover agent and so he either shouldn't have NEEDED assistance from anyone in figuring out how to act the part or he should have other friends he could go to that could help him learn more that just... aren't Anakin (why it's a better idea to ask a different former slave for advice rather than Anakin who is a trained Jedi with access to mental health care and a lot of support just because Anakin is Anakin and so he's special does not get addressed). The implication here is that the Council just doesn't care about Anakin enough to utilize these options if it's quicker and easier to just use Anakin.
I don't like the way Ki-Adi Mundi is portrayed in Soft Wars, although I have seen a few posts on the author's page about this kind-of addressing some of the critique about the way Ki-Adi is written which... helps. Ki-Adi is apparently someone who gets a LOT of fandom hate for some reason, I assume it's a Legends thing since he's pretty minor in high canon and all of his scenes are pretty generic kindly old man stuff. Since this seems like something that's gotten discussed and brought up a bunch by other people I'm not going to dwell on it.
Soft Wars DOES undo the entire Tusken massacre because it recognizes that's something you either just undo or have to address and deal with and they went with the easier option of just saving Shmi and letting him not massacre an entire village of people down to the last child. I don't have any strong feelings on this honestly, it's clearly the only real way to pretend Anakin's not an irredeemable piece of shit by the time of the Clone Wars. Also the entire point of Soft Wars is to save everybody from death, so saving Shmi is kind-of a necessary thing to do.
You could probably also categorize Soft Wars as one of those stories that acts like if Anakin had just gotten one more lecture from someone about what attachment actually means or that the Jedi actually CAN love blah blah blah that it would've suddenly saved him from going Sith. It's not particularly accurate to how Anakin is written in canon, but it's pretty common to how people who really like Anakin and sympathize with him and relate to him like to write him as a character.
All in all, Soft Wars is exactly what it says it is. It's soft. It's soft towards Anakin, it's soft towards the clones, it's soft towards the war and the worldbuilding. It's definitely worth a read just for the way it handles the clone worldbuilding and the clear impact it has had on the way the clones have been written in fic ever since. At this point, I don't regret reading it but I also don't go back to it very often anymore and there's a reason I didn't rec Soft Wars in my Pro-Jedi Codywan rec list lol.
TL;DR: Soft Wars is not what I would consider fully Pro-Jedi but nor is it anywhere near virulently anti-Jedi and it has some really neat writing for the clones while obviously being really pro-Anakin Skywalker to the point of smoothing out most of his more uncomfortable flaws to make him a more sympathetic and likable character.
#fan fic#fic#my relationship with soft wars is that i kind-of created my own soft wars in my head to cater to my personal interpretations#rex gets thru to anakin not because the clones know better than the jedi but just because palps poisoned anakin against the jedi#and palps never saw the clones as a threat in that particular way so he never bothered poisoning anakin against THEM#so rex can say exactly the same thing as the jedi do and anakin will hear it like it's totally new information#cody's relationship with obi-wan is a LOT more respectful of his jedi values concerning commitments#so at NO POINT is obi-wan pressured into 'pledging' to cody nor does cody ever even expect it#he doesn't love obi-wan in SPITE of obi-wan being a jedi i hate that#soft wars also seems to either have the jedi reform to allow marriage or they just always had marriage and anakin didn't know#i can't recall offhand#but either way my soft wars would have no marriage#if anakin wants to stay married to padme he can damn well leave the order to do it#i also decided that anakin pledging to cody in secret ends up this major betrayal once obi-wan finds out about it#because he just BROKE HIS VOWS like it didn't MATTER#anakin keeps it a secret in part because he just doesn't want to face censure or disappointment from anyone#partly because he doesn't want to lose ahsoka and if he gets asked to leave the jedi that's obviously a consequence#but also partly because he DOES care about the jedi and they're still at war and if he has to leave the order he also has to leave the GAR#he wants to be able to be there to help protect the clones and other jedi#he doesn't want to have to abandon them#so he just keeps it a secret while fully intending to reveal it after the war is over and THEN leave#but obi-wan does find out thru Reasons and anakin faces Consequences for his actions#including losing ahsoka and probably having to leave the GAR#but he rejoins as a civilian consultant the way ahsoka does and likely via pulled strings gets assigned to a segment of the 501st or smthg#ahsoka ends up obi-wan's padawan#obi-wan and cody end up ending their relationship while all of this is going on because cody lied to him too#and obi-wan feels really upset by this but recognizes that cody is a political leader of the clones and was just doing his job#cody was protecting his people in the way he believed was best#cody was prioritizing duty over his personal relationship to obi-wan#and given that obi-wan will always prioritize duty over his personal relationships he can hardly hold this against cody
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brainworms about the dami cuts tims line issue again ohhh my god
tim just not... mentioning exactly what damian did when he taps dick in to get to the bottom of it? like there isnt an. indication that it was a potentially lethal action. and there are so many interpretations for why he wouldn't see fit to share this information and not one of them is mentally well of him
dicks response being like c'mon tim at least pick a harder password. it only took him 6 hours to crack :/
"here i'll make the password to your unhinged contingency plans one of our injokes :)" BABYGIRLS YOU ARE BOTH INSANE. YOU ARE BOTH INSANE PEOPLE.
the reveal that damians entry was like. blatantly among the contingencies for The Good Guys, but like, since DICK wasnt on there, damian very reasonably takes that to mean hes still on the outside of the us vs them in tims mind. (and hes not even like. wrong, except the concept of "us" is... extremely nebulous to tim at this point. and he also just feels like if dick goes bad he, tim, might as well just lay down and die.) which damian cares about enough that he needed to kill tim about it (<- fine and normal, damians never done a thing wrong in his life)
(pause to weep about the "its not fair" panel)
honestly though my favorite part genuinely is that it did not at all occur to dick to chastise damian for essentially picking the lock on tims super secret diary and then not liking what he found in it? never even crossed dicks mind. tim should simply get better locks or, failing that, never write down stuff other people might find and be upset by. just keep it all locked up in your noggin like i do :)
dick like DID have a point that tim should have learned from bruces mistakes re contingency plans but like. the issue with bruce was that the info got leaked and a Villain tm used it to take down the Good Guys tm. the issue in *this* situation is an ally read it and got his feelings hurt. and the ally is a traumatized 10 year old. SO LIKE.
yeah you know what youre right dickie. just change the passwords. its fine. everythings fine.
also. god. i will never stop finding the self-fulfilling prophecy spiral (ie, "you don't trust me and that hurts so i might as well be worthy of your distrust") compelling. damian sweetie you can kill tim as much as you need to until you feel better
hrgrffgh the only like. solid indication that tim feels unsafe re damian is when he says to dick "you get it, right?" and references the league which like. okay. so you're not still worried about murder attempts from Damian.* youre worried about ra's. and you're being a jerkface.
*TBHHHH cutting tims line was not... okay actually i have a lot to say about damians mental state that doesnt rly fit in the bullet point format but i don't actually think damian was Attempting Murder this time so much as stewing and then abruptly lashing out without having fully conceptualized the consequences, and i can and will back up this opinion in a court of law,
but ohhhh my godddddddddd damian. sweetie
also like obligatory disclaimer tim doesnt really care that much about murder attempts on his person lol hes a superhero it comes with the territory. its always funny to me when ppl act like tims beef with damian is over any of the legit reasons he could have to have beef, like. no its the irrational petty ones dude 100%. (did i say its funny to me. i meant annoying)
#dc#still going thru my drafts lol#that last point. if anyone reads it in bad faith ill attack with my fangs and claws#i support (some of) tims wrongs and i think him having beef with a 10yo is funny#🤷
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Long Time Coming ~ Part 5
My Blurb: Happy Tuesday! Man I am so glad I can write again. Hopefully I don’t hit another slump!
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the story. You own nothing, I don’t give anyone permission to post this anywhere.
Pairing: Alpha Bucky Barnes X OFC Omega Carina Rivera
Warnings: A/B/O Dynamics, This chapter gets a little spicy
Tagging: @snarkandsarcasmftw @pioched @littlemissthistle
Read First: Long Time Coming ~ Masterlist
Also Check Out:
My Complete Masterlist
The hand not palming her breast slid between her soaked folds causing Carina to moan at the touch. One finger slid inside her, just a little further and it would be right where she needed it. Carina groaned in frustration. Her own fingers couldn’t do the job, she wanted Bucky’s hands on her, fantasizing had stopped working after the third day and now she was cranky.
“It’s not like he wants me anyway, just dumped me in here and ran.” She grumbled to herself, flopping over onto her stomach.
He cares about you and wants your first time with an alpha, with him, to be special. The reasonable part of her brain protested.
Hitting the bed in frustration, she sat up and headed towards the small fridge to down a bottle of water. The sight of little containers of fruit made her stomach grumble and she realized she hadn’t done a good job of feeding herself. She was relieved to feel something other than the constant want and cramping though, giving her hope that the heat would pass soon. The fact that she was thinking this clearly was probably a good sign. Sighing, she grabbed a container and went to watch a random movie on tv.
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“Buck you gotta shower at least. You’ve been in this hallway for five days.” Steve approached, carrying some food for Bucky to where he had taken up guard duty outside your temporary room.
“I can’t leave her, I told her I would be here when she comes out.” Bucky rose and took the tray from Steve. Despite them being state of the art, Bucky didn’t trust the doors to keep you safe should a determined alpha try to get to you. That was his job. Hopefully she would still think it was his job. The heartbroken look on her face as the door had closed had haunted him. He did the right thing, Wanda said he had, she wasn’t ready. Then why did he feel like he had made a huge mistake.
“She’s going to understand Buck,” Steve continued, correctly interpreting the look on his friend's face. “You two are meant to be or something. If you want I can stand guard while you shower and change clothes. You don’t want this to be the sight that greets her.”
“Dr. Cho said her levels are coming down, she should be ready to come out by morning.” Wanda added, appearing in the hallway behind Steve. “I can stay here also.”
After another moment of thought Bucky nodded his head and took off running towards the elevator.
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Dr. Cho arrived to visit Carina the next morning, checking her vitals and tsking at her for not eating. “The real question is whether you want to continue on the suppressants, I know you and Bucky were…” she trailed off with a wave of her hand.
Carina blushed and bit her lip. She had given this some thought but she knew she wanted some time in her own space to really think everything over. “Can I go off the suppressants but stay on birth control? I don’t think I’m ready to go quite that far.”
Turning to the bag she had brought with her Dr. Cho pulled out a needle. “Of course, one injection every three months and you should be good to go.”
Wanda arrived as Dr. Cho was preparing to leave. “Bucky was waiting outside, he’s been there since we shut the door, except when Steve forced him to shower but they were called away on an important Hydra mission that Fury needed him for…” she trailed off, not sure how her friend would take the news.
Carina looked shocked, “He waited outside the whole time?” Biting her lip when Wanda nodded to confirm. “I…can you help me with something?”
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Bucky slammed his fist into the punching bag hard enough to send it flying across the room to join the others. “I think that’s enough for today, we gotta get ready.” Steve’s hand on his shoulder only calmed Bucky a little. “She’s going to be there, Pepper confirmed it, you can talk and sort this whole thing out.”
“I told her I would be there and I wasn’t there, after shoving her into a containment room when she started her first heat in over a year. She’s probably halfway across the country by now.” Bucky sat down hard on the bench, taking a drink of the water beside him. “She hasn’t answered her phone, her door, I haven’t seen her in the office Steve. She’s gone.”
“Wanda said she just needed some time to sort stuff out, you two have something Buck, she’s not running away from that. Go take a shower, put on the suit Tony picked out for us and be prepared to grovel if needed. Plus if you don’t go, Brock will see that as his opening.” Steve added with a shrug, laughing to himself when Bucky shot up and headed to the door.”
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“Are you sure about this? I haven’t spoken to him in over a week. He’s probably moving on.” Carina smoothed down the dress for the hundredth time as she turned to catch her reflection in the elevator door. Pepper had informed her that Tony was having a publicity event for The Avengers and that she was more than welcome to come but understood if she needed more time to recover. After dwelling on it Carina had decided to enlist Wanda’s help, she wanted Bucky and she wanted to make sure he wanted her too. They had found a pale pink one shoulder gown with a slit up her leg high enough to make her blush. She left her hair down and added a simple chain necklace that matched the silver in her heels.
“Sweetie, he’s going to lose his mind when he sees you. You look beautiful.” Wanda smiled, holding her hand as the elevator doors opened and they entered the party.
She was shocked at the amount of people milling around, some danced while a band played, others stood near the bar waiting for drinks, Tony and Steve were already surrounded by photographers and reporters. Wanda was pulled away by her brother but gave her hand a squeeze of encouragement.
Taking a deep breath she began looking for Bucky.
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“Dude…” Sam’s abrupt statement and tap on his arm pulled Bucky away from staring at the glass of whiskey he hadn’t touched. He turned to follow Sam’s gaze and his breath caught in his throat at the sight of Carina walking towards them.
The dress flowed around her, a flash of leg showing with every step. She stopped in front of him, smiling at Sam before turning her attention to him. “Hi Bucky.”
“H…Hi Baby…Carina. You look beautiful” Bucky stuttered and she giggled when Sam full on laughed. Bucky shoved his glass at him before grabbing her hand. “Can we go talk somewhere?”
“I would love to dance…” she suggested, allowing him to lead her away from Sam towards the dance floor.
He pulled her close with his metal arm around her waist, holding her other hand tight to his chest. Her heels make her tall enough to lean her forehead against his cheek, letting her body relax into the safety of his arms. There is a moment of silence while Bucky presses his nose to her hair, breathing in the homey smell that surrounds her.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there Carina, I wanted to be…” She cut him off with a shake of her head as she lifted her eyes to his.
“You have nothing to apologize for, I actually wanted to say thank you. You knew I hadn’t been with an alpha before…” she trailed off, taking a deep breath. “Thank you for not taking advantage and keeping me safe.”
“Keeping you safe is my new life’s mission, I still want to be your Alpha, if you’ll have me.” Bucky whispered.
“I want that more than anything.” Carina replied. Bucky’s smile was blinding when he leaned down to kiss her.
“Sorry to break this up. Avengers needed for some photos.” Tony appeared beside them causing Carina to jump.
“Fuck off Stark” Bucky growled. Carina patted him on the shoulder when a phone ringing caused Bucky and Tony to look at her with confusion. “Where is that coming from?”
Carina blushed before pulling the slit in her dress aside and grabbing her phone from the lace garter she was wearing. “Sorry, I have to take this, go take your pictures, I’ll find you after.” she nodded at Bucky before answering her phone and heading away from the crowd.
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“Thank you for calling back Mrs. Zimmerman, Pepper will be thrilled to know you are willing to loan us your expertise. I will send over the papers on Monday morning. Have a great night.” Carina hung up her phone and did a little dance.
“There you are, wasn’t sure if I was going to get you away from Barnes.” Carina turned and saw Brock leaning against the wall watching her. She took a step back when he pushed off the wall and stalked towards her. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about how good you smelled last week.” Her back hit the wall at the same time she realized he had blocked off the only escape route. “Don’t worry buttercup, we’re all alone.”
#micole writes things now#long time coming#Bucky Barnes#bucky barnes x ofc#alpha!bucky#alpha!bucky barnes#james buchanan barnes#mcu fic
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Hi friends. Remember how I said I could write an essay about c!Tom Syndicate and his characterization.
guess what I did LMAO
Ted talk below ft. My personal interpretation of Tom’s Mianite character in mainly S1 and a little into S2 based on how I perceive his actions and interactions -
Disclaimer: If I feel off the mark it's possible, and if you disagree with what’s said, that's also totally fine. I’ve never watched the entirety of Tom’s POV, I aim to someday and will inevitably add onto this. Also. All mentions of characters refer exclusively to the RP-verse, none of this pulls into consideration dynamics of the irl CCs, ofc.
-or, me overanalyzing what drives him, why he comes off as solely and only “evil and chaotic” (despite being a lot more complex than that) and how the difference in the dynamics of devotion make the killing Dianite at the end of S1 all the more impactful, as it directly influenced how he perceives relationships with others through the season, and drove the change in dynamics with the others through S2.
From the start, we come to know two universal truths about Tom’s dynamic with his god in Season 1- 1) Dianite, as the god of Evil is ruthless, and isn’t forgiving when Tom messes up, and 2) Tom’s loyalty lies in whoever will reward him the best regardless of whatever he need go through, even if those promises of glory are empty.
So, like, while it’s kind of defined that while Jordan's devotion (and borderline 'blind faith'; but a topic for a different essay) gets him adoration and love from his goddess, when Tom is devoted to his god, he gets gifts. Every time he kills for his god, or completes a task of some sort, Dianite awards him with fancy armor and swords and stuff and the like. And when he’s failed, those things get taken away. What this does is create in his head the concept of a ‘devotion transaction,’ where loyalty, love and affection is something you have to earn the right to hold onto; and can be stripped away at any time. I think this act alone is what shapes Tom's whole relationship with love and loyalty; and shaped the dynamics of his relationships to a type of dependence and a constant need to prove himself to maintain those ties.
Or alternatively, the only way to stay close to someone is to do everything in your power to keep their favor, lest you be smitten down, or worse, abandoned completely. This plays into whereas Jordan's devotion to Ianite is a ‘I will do anything for you even if it kills me or may not be for the greater good because I love you so much I trust your every word’, (becoming a love language of acts of service out of unconditional love) Tom’s devotion comes more from a place of fear to appease or be killed because Dianite has him in a literal-metaphorical death grip, translating into his love language of overwhelming clinginess to what material and emotional ties he has and lashing out when it feels like those he can depend on are against him and seem to be trying to sever those ties (World War Mianite).
The lashing out could also be a thing he picked up from Dianite who does that when Tom seems to be betraying him, but I don’t particularly want to get too much into that. The bottom line is mainly that he hates being alone, he hates having no one to depend on, and that notion alone is enough to make him take desperate measures.
Because despite wanting to be a lone wolf, or so badly to be on his own, he needs other people to survive, just like he needs Dianite to survive. On his own, one could say he’s kinda pathetic /lh, unrealizing how much his friends actually lift him up from that.
I can’t remember who put it how, but I really align towards the idea that Tom isn’t inherently a bad person, nor intentionally wants to be the villain of the story- He just wants to have fun in the end. However, he’s so dependent on his god because in a way Dianite acts as his lifeline, the guy who picked him up because he wasn’t Mianite’s kind of champion in the same way that Tucker was, Dianite's the guy who helps him out when the ‘good guys’ are only ever against him. Almost in a way he leans on Dianite, he puts his devotion before most other things even if it means putting aside fucking around times because if he can't prove himself to his god, then it opens up the possibility that everything he's depending on could go away. His god is not merciful, his god could drop him at a moment's notice, and he'd have to be godless among his peers who have Mianite and Ianite (respectively) behind them to back them up. And Tom wouldn't have anyone. This of course, not to say that he thinks that Jordan, Tucker, and Sonja, etc. are solely and only against him (and don't care about him) but more so that at the beginning, he cares more about self-preservation in an anarchy server dominated by war then necessarily accepting that his friends don't want to kill him at every turn. It isn’t till the end of the season when we see that shift, and how that builds towards his infamous betrayal of his god.
So that reliance on Dianite, and focus on what Dianite wants versus his own needs/the need to connect better with his friends (who he is taught by Dia are only against him because of who he follows'') translates into the "overexaggerated evil chaos destruction" that became his primary character archetype where instead of the chaos being fueled primarily by his own funky little brain, he basically does all that he does to appease Dia and keep the god on his side, and ultimately keep him alive. Because from a nuanced perspective, it’s not really that he’s following Dianite, he’s Dianite’s mercenary- or, instead of it being a “we help each other out”, its a “you do my dirty work” kinda thing.That difference in dynamic ends up isolating himself from the rest of TR also then giving him that validation that yes, he can be independent from those Mianite plebs and 'doesn't need nobody' (ironically all while continually being unconsciously chained to Dianite) However as the season progresses (and in my personal headcanon involving Syndisparklez) his attention starts to shift once he realizes that he belongs to that group just as much as Jordan, or Sonja does despite being on the opposite side of Mianite and Dianite’s feud. And unlike Dianite, they indulge on his wanting to just have fun and mess around, versus the “everything is a puzzle piece falling together in working towards some specific end goal and every little mess up only sets us back” mindset that Dianite imparted through the way he defined devotion when it came to his champion. And once he starts to slowly accept that kinder reality and hang more with his friends (god alignments aside), he loses that emotional and material tie to Dianite (but never loses the dependency of never wanting to be on his own) and starts to depend more on his friends, clinging to them as he had wanted to, involving himself with more things they did because it gave him a space to just be him.
And it is this arc of moving away from "fighting for his god to prove himself so that he's always being there for him” into ‘wanting to prove himself to his friends to show he does care and that everything not be a turf war'' that feeds into the impact of the cumulative event of him killing Dianite at the end of S1. It serves as a literal act of severing any ties he had with devotion and putting the ties between him and his friends at the forefront. At the same time, it symbolically visualizes Tom pulling himself away from Dianite’s grip, telling himself he doesn’t need Dianite: he is capable of pulling off chaotic stunts on himself, able to hold his own against the Mianitees and Ianitees, and isn’t just some pathetic little bastard man that was pulled out of the ground. And the by becoming Mecha-Dianite, Tom essentially becomes a pseudo-physical manifestation of his liberation from Dianite's chains where he doesn't have to depend on anyone. He can depend on himself, he is capable and he doesn't need to drive himself into the ground trying to prove his worth.
In season 2 when Dianite comes back, Tom has this different sense of self about him, because this Dianite is different, and he’s different. He holds onto the Mecha-Dia status like a badge of honor; he won’t fear this god. And he finds eventually he doesn’t have to. This Dianite isn’t inherently "evil", in fact, he’s near opposite. He still rewards Tom, but not in the way S1 Dianite did where he was breathing over Tom’s shoulder just waiting for him to inevitably fail some specific mission; in fact, since he’s dead he’s barely there. S2! Dianite also has greater affections to Mot, whom he treats more so how Ianite treats Jordan, where loyalty-devotion translates into genuine love. And in a way I think that fact plus his newfound separation from the notion that he needs his god to survive prevents him from falling back into old mindsets. Instead, he redirects a similar, but different emotional dependency from what should've gone to his god, now to Jordan (in not necessarily a romantic sense, despite what my normal behavior on this account might suggest).
Because even though he might have persona-autonomy, and isn't bound to a single individual defining his worth, he's still not someone who thrives on complete and utter independence. Tom still remains someone who needs and relies on having someone to fall back on to help him out, give him things, build things for him and so and so forth - and the need for that kind of connection continues to drives him to be so energetic and passionate for his relationships with others-- but instead of it being out of fear, it's out of affection. A kind of nuance in someone's love language where time spent together is driven not by needing it otherwise you have nothing, but clinging onto someone because they've brought into your life a "stability" (in quotes cause nothing about Tom isn't volatile) that keeps you alive, and fuels a different kind of fire. Even if he can't prove he's the best to them, it doesn't really matter anymore, because he needs them out of seeking a type of unconditional love since being completely alone or isolated would just drive him batshit. While a state of self-identified independence juxtaposed against emotionally dependency was so hurtful to him in the past, it has shaped into something that ended up more positive; as a way of becoming infinitely bonded to those he cares about, giving them his all and fighting with all his heart to hold onto them.
if you made it this far. thanks for reading my brain worms ily smooch smooch /p <333
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PS. hopefully this art makes more sense now ;]
#tom syndicate#mianite#character essay#character analysis#lafakiwi talks#lafakiwi writes#lord im just puttin it out there im tired of it being in my drafts#please. please be nice im havin anxiety about this#my ask box is open if yall ever wanna discuss this stuff ngl hahaha /nf#if you listen to Stay by Morgan Clae thats the vibes of this interpretation#that song kinda jumpstarted this brainrot cause ive been tryin to figure out the more complex aspects of his character and this song.#just got it right on the nose
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Shinsengumi MBTI: Hijikata Toshizo
Disclaimer: This is my own interpretation on his personality and should not be taken as historical fact or invalidate your own interpretations. Since we only have his writing and anecdotes, it’s an incomplete picture. Only the person themselves could accurately know their MBTI type.
Previously, I analyzed Okita’s personality. This time, I’ll write about Hijikata.
I think Hijikata is an INTJ
INTJs are intelligent, strategic, committed, ambitious, aloof, ruthless and relentless.
INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well.
This could be why Hijikata allowed Kondo to be Commander even though Hijikata held more actual power in the Shinsengumi. He was also quickly able to see that swords had become obsolete and tried to adapt the Shinsengumi to use rifles.
tremendous value and need for systems and organization
He organized the Shinsengumi into squads and enforced loyalty
Unless their Feeling side is developed, they may have problems giving other people the level of intimacy that is needed... the INTJ is not overly demonstrative of their affections, and is likely to not give as much praise or positive support as others may need or desire. That doesn't mean that he or she doesn't truly have affection or regard for others, they simply do not typically feel the need to express it.
Hijikata was said to rarely laugh and had a prickly personality. There were quite a few people who had a negative impression of him and considered him evil or arrogant. He later became more caring towards his men and when he died his men “grieved like babies that have lost their mother”. His Feeling side probably became more developed as he grew older.
Others may falsely perceive the INTJ as being rigid and set in their ways. Nothing could be further from the truth, because the INTJ is committed to always finding the objective best strategy to implement their ideas. The INTJ is usually quite open to hearing an alternative way of doing something.
Hijikata was considered stubborn and rigid, probably due to his strictness towards Shinsengumi members and later on, his determination to not surrender. On the other hand, it’s shown that he was actually very open-minded about switching from swords to rifles and befriending westerners (eg. Jules Brunet).
Extravert vs Introvert
Hijikata was said to be calm and reserved, which implies that he was an introvert, rather that an extravert who would express himself more openly.
Sensing vs Intuition
I don’t think Hijikata’s motivation comes from something concrete and external like money, relationships or duty. At the heart of it all, he might be just trying to live a meaningful life and make an impact on the world, but that’s just my impression of him. It’s hard to tell for sure. He also thinks a lot about the world in a big-picture way and sometimes criticizes his country, as shown in his letters. This makes him more likely to be an Intuitive rather than a Sensor.
Thinking vs Feeling
I’ve seen Hijikata being pegged as INFJ before, probably because he likes writing poetry and he does make a lot of emotional decisions like going to Ezo and fighting until the end.
One thing that people are often unaware of when it comes to INTJs is that they’re actually very emotional beneath the surface due to Fi (Introverted Feeling) in their functional stack. The decisions he made in the Battles of Aizu and Ezo to keep fighting instead of going into hiding could be a sign of stress causing his emotions to affect his reasoning. And considering his options and the fact he cared about his men and wasn’t trying to just survive by himself, it wasn’t that irrational to go to Ezo. Declarations of independence similar to what they were trying to achieve in Ezo had succeeded in the past in other parts of the world (eg. America), so it was reasonable for him to place his bet on Ezo.
As for his hobby of writing poetry, I don’t think it’s that unusual for INTJs to write poetry if they grew up in a culture where it was encouraged and considered a sign of success. And he doesn’t really write like an INFJ. They tend to write about their observations on human nature or their understanding of the world around them due to having Fe in their functional stack, while those with Fi like INTJs are more aware of their emotions and tend to express deep personal feelings in their writing. Hijikata’s best poems are about how he feels in the moment rather than commentary about society, so he writes like an Fi rather than Fe.
Judging vs Perceiving
Hijikata is more likely to be Judging rather than Perceiving, because he’s goal-oriented rather than seeking knowledge for the sake of knowing or becoming stronger for the sake of being strong. This is one big difference between INTJs and INTPs. INTJs tend to care a lot about how they could use their skills and knowledge, while INTPs study because they’re just curious and their end goal is simply gaining knowledge. From Hijikata’s training with the sword, we can see that he has a very utilitarian approach towards swordfighting and cares more about practical skills to win a fight rather than mastering the techniques. This makes him an INTJ rather than INTP.
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Let's talk about...Pat's Salome t-shirt
I've already partially written about this shirt (and its connection to my all-time favourite of all of Pat's shirts) - in that it could have been used to connect Pat with Ink through the shared colour of the t-shirt print and Ink's mustard yellow top (to offer the subconscious implication that she's might be a 'love interest' for Pat)...
...of course, the choice of this t-shirt could also be completely arbitrary...
...but I've always been curious as to whether I could find a deeper meaning/reasoning behind its inclusion here (even if it's just a complete coincidence). After re-watching ep 4 last weekend, I finally decided to do a bit of googling...
And what I discovered is that the name "Salome" and the picture don't seem to originally go together...at least not that I could find...so I wonder if they made this shirt themselves...and therefore why (or maybe someone else made it and they just found it 🤷🏽♀️).
I'll begin with the picture. It is a painting called Portrait of Sabartes, by Pablo Picasso in 1939. Jaime Sabartes was Picasso's lifelong friend, secretary, and chief "legend-monger" (he basically sang Picasso's praises to whomever listened). Sabartes asked Picasso to paint him as a courtier to Philip II...
"Portraying Sabartes as [such] is amusing as this was the role he played in the court of Picasso; that of the loyal servant following his master from Paris to Antibes to Royan. Although Sabartes was often represented by critics as a pathetically faithful dog, Picasso no doubt respected and returned his loyalty - albeit in his own fashion."
I know this is a very very tenuous link...but I couldn't help jumping on the fact that we see Pat as a faithful puppy... Yes, it's really a stretch to think Aof/the costume designer might have meant this with the use of this picture...(*she whispers* but what if they did?). Another less tenuous link is just the fact that Picasso and Sabartes were born in the same year and were lifelong friends...just like Pat and Pran 🤷🏽♀️ (I also like that Pat also wears a couple of other Picasso-esque shirts in the series...although I haven't been able to discover if they actually are Picasso prints yet.)
Anyway, onto "Salome" and this is a little more concrete, I think.
Salome is "commonly identified with the daughter of Herodias who, according to accounts in the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew, danced for Herod Antipas" in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. Salome has been depicted in many forms in paintings, literature, films, sculpture, music...you name it...often as a "lascivious woman, a temptress who lures men away from salvation" - or a femme fatale.
In episode 4, Ink is introduced as a kind of femme fatale - or faen fatale as @absolutebl would say: "This is when the story introduces a character whose sole purpose is to drive a wedge between the main BL pair." Luckily, in Bad Buddy, this trope was one of many that were subverted and it became clear quite quickly (in the most delightful way!) that Ink actually wasn't a 'traditional' fean fatale character. But having Pat wear this t-shirt in this episode, in a scene where it was implied that Ink might be a love interest for him...well, whether planned or not, I think it's genius.
But, along with the above, as I was reading the wikipedia page (I know, not always the best source🤷🏽♀️), I came across this:
"Salome is shown in the mystery play as a personification of Carl Jung's pleasure in The Red Book. [...] Through interactions with Salome, Jung learns of how he neglected the emotional feeling side of his personality and the difficulties of accepting that part of himself that he suppressed."
Now, I think this really is just my brain making connections between the above quote and posts I've read recently about Pat...BUT I just love that people have recently been writing about Pat's character growth...and about his repressed emotions and his realisation of them. Others have written so well on this subject that I'm not going to attempt my own words...I'll just link them here for you to read if you're interested: this post by @scarydeul; this one by @grapejuicegay; and this by @goldenmorningglory.
.
Whether planned or not, this shirt is SO GOOD - I love that I can find all these connections to the characters and the story - and I feel like it should actually have an honorary spot in my top ten of Pat's shirts from the series. 😂
#bad buddy#bad buddy series#bad buddy the series#patpran#pat x pran#why do I feel like I need to keep writing disclaimers on my interpretations?#because until I hear it from the actual costume designers we really don't know what they were thinking when they planned the clothes#and so any of these tenuous meanings could be possible#or it could simply be that they 'looked good' and everything else is just a coincidence#but I love coincidences. I love finding connections. this is how my brain works#and I know I've said it before...but why do I feel the need to keep saying it?#fear that I sound stupid?...but why should I care?#anyway...enough about me#let's talk about...#pat's shirts make me feral
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Hi! May I request something where Ace, Deuce, Vil, Riddle, Kalim, Malleus, and Idia become meta-aware (aka they realise they are in a game) and fall in love with the player in the real world? What would they do? It can be in whatever format you wish. Thank you for considering my request!
TWST Meta-Aware: Several Characters
I've always been really interested in this particular AU, but I really never got around to it because I get caught up in my angst. Well now I get to combine the two [unintentionally, the angst just sprung up from me] into this lovely work of mine.
Disclaimer: I am not the first person or the last to write in this AU with TWST. I am also not the originator of the idea, this is my own interpretation of the AU with the characters requested.
Warning: Dark content, Yandere content, Self-deprecating thoughts, Irrational thoughts. Please avoid the scenarios of [Malleus, Riddle, Idia, Vil] if you are uncomfortable with general dark content.
Malleus Draconia
He found it amusing, honestly. All this power gifted to him that he intended to protect you with… it's just some part of make-believe in your little world of entertainment
He's not as upset as he thought he would be. The husk that is your player character is the only way for him to interact with you after all, so he tries to be close to the sprite as possible
Whatever evil incarnate decided to create a horrendous system like gacha should burn by his dragon flames. Rate-ups? Percentile chances just for you to own his cards? It's preposterous
He enjoys being the one in your homescreen. He enjoys your touches, almost cooing into the feeling of you tapping his cheeks, purring when the touches are felt at his horns
He's sulking the moment you change the homescreen. What did he do wrong?
He doesn't go off-script. If any of the others caught on… it makes him angry just thinking about it
He has no idea when it comes to the code. He found a way to break his scripted lines once, but it's completely different from combining his magic and technology to permanently drag you into Twisted Wonderland
Riddle Rosehearts
He's having a crisis when he finds out. He's… fabricated?! Is he just a toy for you then?
It hit him then. The realisation of it all. He planned to confess after recovering from his Overblot, but when he tried to say any words, it was as if his mouth was glued shut
He's almost pissed every time he sees your player character. He wanted you, not the player that you hid by
Curiouser and curiouser… that was Riddle spending his time figuring out how to change his lines
Riddle hates the gacha with a passion. Why, his sweet YN… why would you risk it all for him? Can't you see him risking it all for you, with how much of his own cards he's ripping apart, just to get to you?
He manages to change his lines slightly. He's still in character! What Queen of Hearts wouldn't? When he's alone on the screen, he makes it more romantic, crushing the code that banned him before under his heel as he shows his kinder, romantic side to you
He's bringing you to Twisted Wonderland, especially after you stared at his homescreen sprite longingly, tears brimming at the corners of your eyes
Don't worry. He'll be there for you. He'll keep the farce of a dream around you when you're actually in Wonderland, as you fall deeper, and deeper into him…
Ace Trappola
He had to avoid you for a while. He needed to wrap his head around the fact that you were lying to him the whole time. He believed that the entire story was a lie to his heart and his feelings for you
With time, Ace realised that the value wasn't in besting Deuce in the fake scripts or taking centre stage in stories. It was about being chosen, by you
It was a cruel, twisted world he was in. Waiting to be your favourite, amongst the many, many characters and personalities. He stood out more than others for sure, since his prologue debut
His first act however, is spying on the husk that imitated your actions around them. He snuck in, seeing the truth of the unresting doll on your supposed bed
He pitied you even more, since this worthless doll was taking the life that you escaped to each night you logged in the game!
Through observing your doll character, he found a way to change his 2D Live animations slightly. Soon, he found a way to distort the pre-written script in the text lines. His final victory against this technology he didn't understand was the voiced lines, as he said whatever he wanted to you
One line of comfort from Ace warmed your heart, as you teared up behind the screen, sniffling words of thanks. Oh, you'd have so much to thank him for once you both meet, and he'd finally have the chance to hold you in his arms… so wait for this hero, won't you?
Deuce Spade
Deuce can't comprehend it. He's just entertainment for you? Competing with the other people in the school for your attention? Fine, he'll entertain this comparison game of yours!
It felt poisonous to say the scripts he never meant. Even in casual conversation, his program is designed to eventually leave you alone once you've chatted enough with him
He's delusional. He believes that you really love him once you've placed him on the holy pedestal of your homescreen
He's bitter at the gacha when his cards don't go to their rightful owner. How cruel of a system, denying what was rightfully yours
He has thoughts about leaving this world to go to yours instead. He has nothing to lose, the only thing he really has to lose is you if you ever decide the game too boring or difficult for you
He changes the script, even in the main story. He lost nights worth of sleep figuring out the stupid pattern, but now he can say whatever he wants to you, even during the main story
He enjoys the cards of his. He can show more of his charms, with the new outfits and voiced lines
It may take awhile, but he's willing to wait for you, so please… don't give up on him
Kalim Al-Asim
He isn't as devastated as you might think. He's more on the delusional side, believing your story since you both were literally worlds apart
He just had to find a way to bridge the two worlds and you both will have your happily ever after right?
He clings to the husk of a doll at night, dragging the doll to his bed as he cuddled against you each night, dreaming of what you would actually look like
One thing akin to the story is that Kalim often gets what he wants, and sure enough he gets the chance to change his line because of a little glitch in the game he might've planted
Only you get to hear the special lines from him, and no one else. Any other cards of the students are as stale as ever, but his… His cards were special
Through the glitch, he finally saw you. His eyes filled with need to hold you face to face with him, as he dreams of intertwining his hands in yours
Kalim has to figure out a way soon, before your eyes drift over to anyone else's cards. Soon, you'd be part of a whole new world with him… Just Kalim…
Idia Shroud
He shuts himself away the moment he realises what was truly going on. Fine, if the system really gets in his way then all he has to do is to break the system itself
He'll make a new one, it's alright. One where no stupid code twists his tongue around and controls him like the puppet he was in the story
He manages to rig the gacha system just for you, so that whatever you wish for gets sent to your inbox. He'll dress up just for you, no worries… Just, encourage him won't you?
He concluded early on that Twisted Wonderland was way better than yours. If it weren't… then explain why you confided in his homescreen with your deepest secrets as you cried, being comforted by his voiced lines?
He's so close… He really is. He experiments on the so called technology of the doll you disguise yourself as
Soon, he can hear your real voice and face through the doll with his modifications. He's elated, hugging the doll at night during his anxious episodes
He's nearing the end, at this point feeling your warmth through the doll. One more night, and you'd soon be in his world
Vil Schoenheit
He's horrified that all he dedicated his life for was a waste. Was his suffering a joke to you then, darling? If that's the case, you'll suffer right next to him, serving this envious Queen
He's desperate to find answers really. You don't see much appearance of him in the week, but after that… he's flaunting his all to you as a male peacock would to attract attention
He's not losing to the wretched potatoes who think they even have the slimmest of chances to stay on your homescreen. Why walk the runway when he can run the talking portion of your homescreen?
He gets up early to impress, no doubt. He's delighted whenever you receive a new card for him! It's his chance to dress up!
His plan starts slow, changing the intonations of his voice so that the lines are less cruel than they are meant to be… Then they start to get more comforting, and some borderline romantic
He takes care of the doll you disguise in everyday, even when you possess it. You just don't notice how he pampers you
Vil doesn't try to use or trample others. No one should know his true intentions but you, and he'll rightfully win you in his arms as compensation for the lies he had to live through
#yandere twst#yandere twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland#twst fanfic#twst idia x reader#twst idia#twst kalim x reader#twst x reader#twst kalim#twst malleus x reader#twst malleus draconia#twst riddle rosehearts#twst riddle x reader#twst ace x reader#twst ace trappola#twst deuce x reader#twst deuce spade#twst kalim al asim
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Do a Huggy wuggy OR a kissy missy x reader (sfw or nsfw is your choice)
(A lot the reason why I capitalize or is because people think that I mean Huggy wuggy x kissy missy x reader when I really don’t so just an fyi I mean one or the other)
i'll do kissy missy hcs for this one since i haven't written anything for her yet!! huggy will be mentioned several times in this one tho <3
🚫disclaimer: this is all based on my interpretation of the character, if you do not agree with anything i write here, plz don't comment anything negative!🚫
all sfw
-kissy missy is a much more hyper, "cutsie" version of huggy wuggy
-i'm going with the hc that she's the valentine's day exclusive version of huggy wuggy, so that makes her more... lovey dovey??
-kissy is very loving toward children, as she sees herself as kind of a mother figure to kids who are in need, though toward you, she's much more flirty and pretentious
-she takes up the personality "given" to her by being much more feminine and girly, such as she tries to keep her fur nice and neat and likes to wear different color, fancy bows around her neck (like the blue one she has in her poster)
-though kissy can also be very sassy at times as well, toward other humans and toys but also you at times (tho its mostly playful banter)
-i hc that she has the ability to speak, while huggy does not
-kissy can understand human emotions pretty well considering she's a genetically modified experiment, though i guess that part doesn't matter at this point lol
-she knows what you're feeling right then and there, she can tell when you're upset to give you lots of kisses and hugs and she can tell when you're happy too, of course
-kissy is kind of the "smart" one out of her and huggy, since she understands humans better and can communicate, that and she has a little more common sense than he does lmao (though our precious babie huggy isn't braindead don't worry<3)
-overall kissy missy can be very fun to have as a friend or otherwise if you enjoy playful banter and lots and LOTS of kisses!
~~~
Tagging: @mother-dragon-and-her-hatchlings
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The Old Guard Speech Patterns Analysis
I made a post on the speech patterns of the main characters in The Old Guard, and a lot of people seemed interested in it, so I’ve cleaned up and clarified the rest of my notes. What I’ve looked at specifically here is mostly related to syntax, so grammar and sentence structure. I’ve vaguely looked at pragmatics, which has to do with how context contributes to meaning, and semantics, which deals with the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. I’ve also looked at sociolinguistics, which has to do with the effect of society on language, but I want to be upfront in saying that it’s not my personal area of interest so my knowledge is lacking there. On that same point, I have no formal linguistics training, I’m just into conlanging and everything I know about linguistics is self taught. For each of the characters I’ve talked about contraction usage, colloquialisms, phrases, verb and verb tense usage, ellipses, sentence composition, adjective and adverb frequency, discourse markers and fillers, profanity, vocabulary(ish), and questions.
You can also find all of this on ao3.
Couple of disclaimers to start: while this is obviously a great tool for fic writing, and can help you get a feel for the way that the characters speak in the movie, I’m asking non-Black writers to be very careful about the way you use some of this information when it comes to Nile. When Nile speaks, she uses a lot of colloquial/vernacular language, and while she doesn’t speak AAVE in the movie, her syntax does contain vernacular features. The history of transcribing colloquial language and vernacular dialects—African American/Black English in particular—is racist, classist and ableist. Your decision to write in colloquial language or to incorporate elements of Black English, rather than using Standard English, into Nile’s dialogue can potentially continue a tradition of racial othering if you’re not wary and conscious. Colloquial language in written form is often used to imply a lack of intelligence, a lack of education or a lower class. Be especially considerate of transcribing colloquial reductions like “wanna,” “gotta,” etc. Avoid eye-dialect at all cost, please, I am begging you. In general, the best way to transcribe dialects is through rhythm of prose, syntax, idioms/figures of speech and vocabulary. Even if you rely on those techniques for Nile, I’m still advising the utmost caution due to the complexity of syntax of AAVE and other dialects. For those unfamiliar with AAVE, I go into more detail about it here. If you do decide to use vernacular language for Nile, I’m going to insist you look into copula deletion/zero copula in AAVE outside of this post. It’s usage is very complex and specific. If you decide to use colloquial language for her to really take advantage of the intelligent way that she uses style-shifting in the movie then, at the very least, remember that the other characters (with the exception of Nicky) also use colloquial language frequently in the movie as well. If Nile is the only one in your fic using colloquial language, that’s a problem.
Most of the contextual analysis as it relates to sociolinguistics is based on my own speculation and interpretation of all the data I’ve collected. They contain my own personal biases and are influenced by my own experiences. If you have another interpretation of any of this, I’m absolutely interested in hearing it. Also, there is simply not enough data for any of my observations to be definitive, especially for Joe and Nicky. The two of them combined say around the same number of sentences as Booker, and he only says half as many sentences as Andy. There are literally verb tenses/aspects that not a single person uses in the whole movie. It’s also important to note that I am fallible, and while I do think most of this is accurate, I probably fucked up and missed something or miscounted! More than once! In some cases, I was only able to find one example of something and while I’ve included those observations, they are in no way indicative of a pattern, so don’t view them as strict rules.
I threw around a lot of jargon in this, and there wasn't really an easy way to avoid doing that while talking about most of this stuff. Descriptions are provided throughout the post. I've done my best to define all the more complex and lesser-known concepts, and to provide specific examples from the movie but feel free to reach out if you're unsure about any of it. Basic English grammar things that will be helpful to know to understand all of this post: parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, interjections), clauses (subject + predicate), tense–aspect–mood for verb conjugation (in English we have: past and non-past; perfective, imperfective, and progressive; and indicative, imperative, and subjunctive), phrase structure, auxiliary verbs, phrasal verbs, wh-movement (who, what, when, where, why, how) and sentence sequencing (in English it’s SVO, or subject-verb-object).
On ellipsis: for Andy, Nile and Booker (and Joe, a little bit), the types of ellipses I focused on were mostly the types that you only see in spoken colloquial English. For Nicky, I talked a lot more about further classification of ellipses that do sometimes apply to the other four, but aren’t as noticeable.
For phrases, I mostly included idioms and expressions to avoid listing every single phrase in the movie. I generally avoided noun phrases (with a few exceptions), and I don't think I mention any adverb phrases.
For my own purposes, I’ve decided to define fillers as discourse markers without lexical content that are used to indicate that the pause while speaking is only temporary. The rest of the discourse markers use standard classification.
Thank you to both @disregardandfelicity and @youknowthegirls for looking over this post for me!
Andy
Andy uses every contraction for auxiliary verbs and personal pronouns (e.g. I’m, you’ve, it’s, etc). I mean, she actually doesn't in the movie, but she comes so close that I feel confident in saying she would use all the others. The Wikipedia page for English Auxiliary Verbs has a great chart for contractions. Of the characters, she's literally the only one who does this with this level of consistency.
Her contraction usage isn't limited to personal pronouns. She uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. She also uses contractions with "there" and "where", and presumably with “when” and “how” although there are no examples of that in the movie. She uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Andy uses both the simple future and the more colloquial going-to future construction at various points in the movie. She seems to have a preference for going-to future, and the only time she uses the simple future is in her dramatic opening monologue and when she’s trying to reassure Nile. Otherwise, she sticks to going-to construction.
Simple future: “Will this time be the one?”, “Me and those three men in there will keep you safe.”
Going-to future: “And you’re going to help us.”
Andy also typically uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction. When she uses “going to” instead, it’s during moments of sincerity. As mentioned, she also iconically uses them both in the same sentence.
"I knew this was gonna happen", "You think knowing is gonna make you sleep better at night?"
“You’re not a Marine anymore. They’re going to lock you up.”, “When we leave a footprint in the sand, in the snow, in the ether, you’re going to sweep it.”
“You’re going to protect us from those who want to put us in cages, and you’re gonna help us find those jobs that are best suited to us.”
Andy uses the verb “have” and the phrasal verb “have got” interchangeably, and with no real pattern. Important note: I am only referring to the verb “to have” in the present tense, not when "have" is used as an auxiliary. She doesn’t seem to use “have got” in the negative (i.e. “haven’t got” vs “don’t have”).
“We have to find Copley.”, “I have the new one.”
“You’ve got blood in your hair.” “He’s got Joe and Nicky.”
“We don’t have all the answers, but we do have purpose.”
Andy also uses the colloquialism “gotta” in sentences where she uses “have got” with the infinitive “to”. When she does this, she usually uses contracted have/has. Occasionally she drops the auxiliary.
"You’ve gotta feel it, Nile.” "There's gotta be a price."
Andy drops the auxiliary when she says, "We gotta go" instead of “We’ve gotta go” and “Sometimes you gotta work with people you don’t wanna eat with” instead of “Sometimes you’ve gotta..”
Andy uses the colloquialism “wanna” in the place of “want to”.
“Well, sometimes you gotta work with people you don’t wanna eat with.” “You really wanna do this, kid?”
Andy incorrectly uses the object pronoun “me” like a true native English speaker
“Me and those three men in there will keep you safe.”
Andy seems to generally say “Yeah” but she says “Yes” when she really means it. She also says “Mm hmm.”
Andy uses several discourse markers throughout the movie. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Andy uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers that Andy uses are:
Sentence openers: actually, so, come on, here, look, listen, now, oh, well, you know,
Sentence closers: I guess, maybe, right,
Responses: yeah
Interjections: hey
Connection: to be honest
Andy doesn’t use any fillers. Instead, she pauses and repeats herself as needed.
“Remember what it... what it was like to feel unbreakable.”
Of all the characters, Andy uses the imperative mood the most (throughout the movie Andy tells someone to do something 35 times using this mood)
When Andy repeats herself for emphasis, she usually does it in pairs. The only exception is when she says “why?” three times to Booker in the scene with Copley
Andy uses ellipses, which is when words are omitted from a sentence and the sentence can still be understood. This isn’t particularly noteworthy in what it says about her speech patterns, as everyone uses elliptical construction. It’s just part of how speech works, how dialogue works and how writing works. It’s a feature of English, spoken and written, rather than an anomaly. I do feel it’s worth mentioning though, because I’m going to talk a lot about some specific kinds of ellipses (null subject, null auxiliary and zero copula) that are only found in colloquial and spoken language. For more about elliptical construction, see the Nicky section.
Andy uses noun and verb ellipses when she says, “I’ve been here before... over and over again, and each time the same question.”
Andy uses answer ellipsis. That means that when she answers questions, she often speaks in sentence fragments rather than full sentences.
[Who’s gonna fly the plane?] “We don’t need a pilot” instead of “[Nobody is going to fly the plane.] We don’t need a pilot.”
Andy occasionally uses sentences with a truncated null subject (i.e. she doesn’t use subject pronouns), but not as frequently as the other characters.
“Can’t wait” instead of “I can’t wait.”
Andy frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion. This means that she will drop the leading auxiliary verb. For more information about zero copula, see Nile.
Andy uses “You found Copley?” instead of “Have you found Copley?” and “Everyone still with me?” instead of “Is everyone still with me?”
When asking questions, Andy typically uses either the method described above or intonation if she can get away with it. However, she does still ask yes-no questions without dropping the auxiliary. Andy is also one of the only characters to use a disjunctive question. In contrast to the disjunctive (which is often condescending), Andy is also one of the only characters polite enough to use an indirect question.
Intonation: “Joe and Nicky?”
Disjunctive: “You don’t speak Russian, do you?”
Indirect: “Would you like me to take one for you?”
Andy doesn’t use the subordinating conjunction “that” at any point in the movie.
“Last time I checked, you had to be American to be in the CIA” instead of “Last time that I checked...”
Andy says “What the...” when she’s confused.
Andy makes a humming sound when she’s pleased that’s transcribed as “Mmm!”. Interesting to note that every time she makes this sound, it’s in response to Nicky.
Profanity used by Andy: asshole, fuck, goddamn, motherfucker, shit, shitty
Phrases, idioms and expressions used by Andy: bend it to [your] will, broke [a promise], changes nothing, come on, do the same, enough of this, for all I care, get some sleep, go big or go home, going out for a bit, gotta go, last time I checked, let’s, next time, now and always, on board, play dead, set up, straight to [something], tie off, to be honest, welcome back, what [he] said, whatever it takes, work out
Unrelated to word count or time spent speaking, Andy says more sentences than any other character. She says more than twice as many sentences as Booker and four times as many sentences as Joe and Nicky. Nile says a little less than 2/3 as many sentences as Andy.
Sentence composition**: 57% of Andy’s sentences are simple sentences, 31% are sentence fragments, 5% are compound sentences, 6% are complex sentences, and 1% are compound-complex sentences.
Languages spoken on-screen: English
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 13% of Andy’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 9% of Andy’s sentences.
Andy is very consistent in her speech. She doesn’t style-shift much and almost exclusively speaks in a colloquial style of Standard American English. There are two exceptions to this: when she was talking to the tourists in Marrakesh, she was overly polite; and when she was dealing with Copley, she enunciated herself far more and was less likely to use contractions. When I say that Andy speaks Standard English, what I mean is that she speaks the dialect of English which has undergone the most regularization and standardization. It’s the one associated with public communication, the one that's used in commerce and government, and the one that has the most institutional support and sanction. Andy is very familiar and comfortable in this dialect, to the point where she even uses common grammar mistakes that native speakers do. Her speech is very casual. I would say that Andy has spent a significant amount of time recently in the United States or Canada, and I also suspect that English is the modern language that she is most comfortable in. I think that Andy has likely spent a lot of time speaking casually with other English native speakers and that her grasp of the language was formed without any kind of formal language training. Andy doesn’t use much descriptive language, and her sentences are typically short and clear. While I think Andy does read a little bit, it’s had very little impact on her speech patterns. I doubt she reads any kind of serious formal writing, or academic works.
Nile
Nile uses every contraction for auxiliary verbs and personal pronouns (e.g. I’m, you’re, it’s, etc). She also uses them with other nouns and names. Nile is very deliberate about contraction usage. For the most part, in casual speech, she uses contractions, although she does use a lack of contractions to express disbelief or for emphasis. Nile also uses a lack of contractions to show condescension or disapproval. When she’s trying to be authoritative, she’s less likely to use contractions. When she wants to make sure she’s understood, she also doesn’t use contractions.
“I am not jumping from a plane!” “You do not listen to her, you listen to me.”
“We are looking for this man. He has killed many of our people and many of yours.”
Nile uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. She also uses contractions with "there", "where", “why” and “how.” She uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Nile doesn’t use the contraction “y’all” in the movie. In fact, she specifically doesn’t use it.
“How are you all in my dreams?”
Nile uses both the simple future and the colloquial going-to future construction at various points in the movie. Like with contractions, Nile is less likely to use colloquialisms when she’s serious or trying to be authoritative. I think it’s especially poignant when she uses it to express bravery (with Booker). Nile always uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction.
Simple future: “I’m the one who will walk out of there, one way or another.”
Going-to future: “People that are gonna worry.”
Nile uses the verb “have” and the phrasal verb “have got” interchangeably, however she has a very strong preference for “have got”
“You have my phone?”
“I got people that love me,” “You got a satellite link?”
Nile also uses the colloquialism “gotta” in sentences where she uses “have got” with the infinitive “to”. When she does this, she always uses null auxiliary construction (see below for more details).
“We gotta get out of here!”
Nile uses the colloquialism “wanna” in the place of “want to”.
“I just really wanna hear my mom’s voice one more time.”
Nile truncates “trying to” as “tryna”.
“I’m tryna save you, man!”
Nile truncates “out of” as “outta”
Nile uses a lot of discourse markers. She uses more discourse markers than any of the other characters, although Booker comes very close. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organise and manage sentences while speaking. Nile uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers that Nile uses are:
Sentence openers: so, well, wait, here, yeah, now
Sentence closers: or something, maybe, you know, okay, man
Interjections: come on, what, no way
Responses: yeah
Nile uses some fillers when speaking, however she doesn’t use them often. The fillers she uses are: uh, yeah
While Nile does occasionally use the imperative mood, she’s far more likely to give commands based on intonation alone, rather than syntax.
Intonation: “You do not listen to her, you listen to me,” “We gotta get out of here!”
Imperative: “Land this plane.”
Nile uses elliptical construction when speaking, which means that when words are omitted from a sentence, the sentence can still be understood. Again, this in and of itself is not very noteworthy, see Nicky for more details.
“South side of Chicago, a million different ways we could’ve went left.”
She also uses answer ellipsis, meaning that when answering questions, she speaks in sentence fragments.
Answer ellipsis: [You have someone?] “Just my family” instead of “[I have] just my family.”
Nile frequently uses null subject elliptical construction. When using null subject construction, she drops personal pronouns.
“Talked to Copley. Said he could fix it.” instead of “I talked to Copley. He said he could fix it.”
Nile’s use of ellipsis is mostly characterized by her usage of null auxiliary, which is when she drops auxiliary verbs from sentences. The way she does this is very distinct and she’s the only character who speaks like this. While the other characters who use null auxiliary construction do so in the specific context of asking questions, Nile’s usage is more complicated.
Like the others, Nile frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion, but unlike the others, she also sometimes drops the auxiliary in wh- questions. For more on zero copula, see below.
"You gonna be okay?" "So, you good guys or bad guys?"
“Where you taking me?”
Outside of asking questions, Nile also occasionally uses both null auxiliary construction and the zero copula. She is the only character who does this (Andy does this, but only with one specific word/phrase. Nile's usage is less restrictive). Zero copula is a linguistic phenomena where the subject is joined to the predicate without marking that relationship (i.e. there’s no verb). In English, the main copula is the verb “to be”, so zero copula in English describes situations where inflections of “to be” are omitted. When the characters use null auxiliary construction to omit the inflected forms of “to be” while asking questions, they are using the copula deletion.
In the above example questions, all of them are examples of copula deletion as they are omitting inflections of the verb "to be"
When Nile says “I got people that love me”, she uses null auxiliary construction to omit the auxiliary “have”. Nile always drops the auxiliary “have” when using the “have got” form.
When Nile says “This the shit you into?” she’s actually using the zero copula twice. You’ll notice that she’s missing the leading “is” and in the dependent clause, she’s missing the “are (“Is this the shit you’re into?” in Standard English).
At one point in the movie, Nile includes a further truncated null subject, where she doesn’t use both the subject and the auxiliary verb. Joe does something similar in the present tense.
Nile says “Killed in action when I was eleven” instead of “He was killed in action when I was eleven.”
When asking questions, outside of wh- questions, Nile usually relies on intonation or dropping the auxiliary from subject-auxiliary inversion questions as described above. She does occasionally use inversion for yes/no questions without dropping the auxiliary.
Intonation: “You have my phone?”
Indirect: “So... you’re even older than him.”
As the audience surrogate, Nile asks the most questions in the movie (she asks 69 questions LMAO)
Another way that Nile formalizes her speech is by inserting the subordinating conjunction “that” into sentences where they would normally be omitted.
“And that was a blank that you shot me with.” “But... you said that we were immortal.”
Nile says “Uh uh” to mean “no” or “don’t even think about it”
Phrases, idioms and expressions used by Nile: a little help, backed down, brains of [the] outfit, come on, follow the money, gave [them] up, honest-to-God, how the hell, what kind of [noun], killed in action, let’s go, move on, never hurts to, no way, one more time, one way or another, roger that, sit your ass down, some bullshit, son of a bitch, stay tight, steal away, went left, what’s up (greeting),
Profanity used by Nile: ass, bitch, bullshit, damn, fuck, hell, shit
Sentence composition**: 60% of Nile’s sentences are simple sentences, 30% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 6% are complex sentences and 1% are compound-complex sentences.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 18% of Nile’s sentences. Adverbs appear in 4% of her sentences. Nile doesn’t use any adverb phrases.
Languages spoken on-screen: English, Pashto
Of all the characters, Nile’s use of English is the most deliberate. While the others are obviously fluent and capable in English, Nile’s use of style-shifting throughout the movie demonstrates a mastery of the language that the other characters simply don’t have. The way that she shifts between formal and colloquial language for emphasis, for clarity, to express disbelief or disapproval, to act authoritatively, to appear casual and friendly, and to invite others to engage with her, speaks to what she is capable of by her word and syntax choices. All of this is obviously enhanced by her tone, her cadence, her pitch, her volume and her speaking speed.
When Nile speaks, she doesn’t speak in AAVE. That being said, her speech does contain vernacular features. The two elements of Nile’s syntax that are most noticeable are her use of the zero copula and her deletion of “have” in situations where it can be contracted (to clarify: using copula deletion is not necessarily an indicator of AAVE. When the other characters use the zero copula, they are not speaking AAVE. The subtle differences in the context of their usage of copula deletion is what makes Nile’s speech distinctly Black). Some of Nile’s word choices and noun phrases are also reflective of the typical speech of Black people, as pointed out to me by this anon. It’s very likely that Nile can speak AAVE, but doesn’t in the movie. She was raised by two Black parents in a very residentially segregated city, and while Nile didn’t specify the neighborhood she grew up in (you can make some guesses to the general area based on how she talks about it, but that’s not quite the same), Chicago’s South Side is predominantly Black, so the people she was around, the place she attended school and the church she went to were all likely predominantly Black as well. Due to the fact that Standard English is the language taught in public schools in the United States, Nile has obviously also developed a fluency in that dialect as well and can probably code switch between the two dialects. The fact that she doesn’t speak AAVE in the movie isn’t particularly unusual. Society is largely hostile towards Black people speaking AAVE, so language self-policing becomes a survival tool. Nile had also just spent an indefinite amount of time in the US military, which has its own style which has its own style of speaking as well which she would have been using. And then she basically got kidnapped by mostly white people, some of whom have noticeable accents, so having her speak AAVE would’ve been an odd character choice, but not totally implausible.
The way that Nile switches between formal and colloquial English is a type of code switching that I would honestly refer to more as style-shifting. Because she isn’t actually speaking AAVE, I can’t say how the dialect factors into her speech patterns. I think it’s possible that Nile’s ability to style-shift between formal and informal language could have been an ability that she developed as a result of needing to code switch between AAVE and Standard English in an educational environment. I do want to make it very clear however, that when I’m talking about Nile style-shifting, it has very little bearing on the vernacular features of her speech, but rather the colloquial features like contractions, verb choice, ellipsis and her use of phrasal verbs. It’s possible that she uses code switching in the same way, however we don’t have evidence of that in the movie.
Booker
Booker uses most contractions, but not all, and with much less consistency than Andy or deliberate purpose like Nile. He uses contractions for auxiliaries and their inflected forms for personal pronouns. When speaking casually, he uses contractions, but when he’s upset, he uses them far less consistently. He doesn’t use contractions with the past tense inflected form of have (i.e. “had”).
Booker uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there", "where" and “how. He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Booker uses both the simple future and the going-to future construction at various points in the movie. He doesn’t seem to have a preference either way.
Simple future: “They will get to learn your secret.”
Going-to future: “It’s gonna take time.”
Booker always uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction.
Booker doesn’t seem to use the phrasal verb “have got” but I could only find one instance of him using the verb “to have” in the present tense, so this isn’t definitive either way. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that, like Andy, he uses “to have” and “have got” interchangeably.
Even though Booker speaks less than Nile and Andy, he uses close to the same amount of discourse markers as them, meaning that they appear far more regularly in his speech. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Booker uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers he uses are:
Sentence openers: come on, hey, oh, well, listen, I mean, ooh (expressing pleasure), yeah
Sentence closers: right, of course
Responses: yeah, alright
Interjections: hey, ow! (expressing victory)
Connections: by the way, tell you what
Of all the characters, Booker uses the most fillers when speaking. The fillers that he uses are: oh, uh, um, yeah
Booker pauses and repeats himself as needed. He only does this when he’s upset. Otherwise, he seems to use fillers instead.
“Everyone you love is gonna... is gonna suffer and is gonna die."
When Booker repeats himself for emphasis, he always does it in pairs.
Booker often uses elliptical construction, and the most frequent type seems to be null auxiliary construction. He does use other types of ellipses though (For more about ellipsis, see Nicky).
“Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting.”
Booker uses answer ellipsis, but almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Dude just gives the bare minimum. That means that when he answers questions, he speaks in sentence fragments rather than full sentences.
Answer ellipsis: [You found Copley?] “Nothing, but dead ends” instead of “[I found] nothing but dead ends.”
Booker frequently uses sentences with a truncated null subject (i.e. he doesn’t use subject pronouns).
“Lost the plot after that” instead of “I lost the plot after that”
Booker frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion. For more information about zero copula, see Nile.
Booker says “You good?” instead of “Are you good?” and “You have someone?” instead of “Do you have someone?”
When asking questions, Booker almost always uses either the method described above, or intonation. The only time Booker asks a question without dropping the auxiliary is when he says “Are you all right, boss?” to Andy in the cave.
Intonation: “Oh, she gave it back?”
Booker doesn’t generally use the subordinating clause “that,” but he will sometimes.
“What I do know is she was alone for a long time before she found anyone like her.”
“And they will tell you... that you don’t love them.”
At two separate points in the movie, Booker references Elizabethan literature. “Misery loves company” is from Dr. Faustus by Marlowe and “That way madness lies” is from King Lear by Shakespeare
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Booker: all in, by the way, calm down, change of clothes, come on, dead ends, give [her] time, give me your hand, how’s it going?, I’ll see you soon, in the open, leave no footprints, let’s go, lost the plot, moving out, misery loves company, reach out, stick to the plan, take time, tell you what, what’s going on, won’t hurt
Profanity used by Booker: shit, putain de merde
Sentence composition**: 59% of Booker’s sentences are simple sentences, 24% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 9% are complex sentences, 1% are compound-complex sentences and 4% are not in English
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 16% of Booker’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 8% of Booker’s sentences.
Languages spoken on-screen: English, French, Italian
We know from Booker’s backstory that he’s French and he’s from Marseilles, and other people have spoken about how Booker’s native language would likely have been Occitan, although he speaks French as well. Like Andy, Joe and Nicky, English is not Booker’s native language, although he does speak it with a high degree of fluency. While there are aspects of Booker’s speech that are more related to him being a non-native English speaker, I wanted to talk about French first. It’s worth noting that French is the only Romance language that isn't a null subject language (and as far as I can tell, Occitan isn’t either). This means that when Booker uses null subject construction, that’s either something he picked up from another language or from being around people speaking colloquial English. The thing that stands out to me the most about Booker’s speech though, is actually the way he uses intonation (and to a certain extent, null auxiliary construction as well) when asking questions. While French can use subject-auxiliary inversion, for the most part, you just ask questions by intonation. In the French dub of the movie when Booker asks “You travel?” he says “T’as voyagé?” which in English directly translates to “You travelled?” or “You’ve travelled?” While I could get into semantics about verb tenses, do-support and modality, what I’m getting at here is that both “You travel?” and “T’as voyagé?” mean the same thing and are expressed in a form that feels semantically similar to me even if it’s not syntactically similar, in the same way that ending a question with the tag “right?” (which Booker uses a lot) feels the same as the tag “non?”
There are a couple of things that I think are interesting about Booker’s manner of speech. Booker primarily speaks in simple and fragmented sentences, which is pretty normal, but what’s different about him is the way that a lot of his speech is referential. What I mean is that Booker relies on a lot of common phrases, common clauses, clichés and quotations when he speaks. In a lot of ways, Booker speaks the way your typical action hero is supposed to. You get a sense of Booker engaging in a broader cultural and literary conversation. I don’t know how to explain this exactly, but when Booker speaks, you just know he reads and that he watches tv and movies. And not just that, but that he borrows and imitates aspects of what he reads. But besides the pragmatic element of Booker’s speech, all of the things that are notable about Booker’s speech are things that you also see in Andy, Joe and Nicky. Syntactically, there’s nothing about Booker’s speech that is distinctly unique to him, unlike the rest of the characters who all have their own little quirks. It’s almost like Booker is imitating the others, or borrowing someone else’s words. There is one notable exception, and that’s when Booker is talking to Nile in the cave. As the conversation goes on, you see this breakdown of Booker’s language as he attempts to tell his own story. Suddenly, a lot of the conventions established about Booker’s speech prior to this scene don’t apply. Obviously there are multiple explanations for this, ranging from English not being his first language to the fact that he was talking about something deeply personal and traumatizing to someone who was essentially a stranger. But what makes this scene stand out is the fact that in his next major scene, Booker is clearly on the verge of a full breakdown, but because he’s again relying on this established lexicon, you don’t see it reflected in his speech the same way that it is in the cave.
Joe
When Joe bothers with personal pronouns, he usually uses contractions with auxiliary verbs (e.g. I’m, she’s, it’s, etc). The exception to this is that Joe doesn’t use contractions with the past tense inflected auxiliary form of have (i.e. “had”).
Joe uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there". He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Joe only uses a future tense once in the entire film, and when he does, he uses going-to future construction. When he uses going-to future construction he uses the colloquialism “gonna"
“What are you gonna do?”
Joe doesn’t use the colloquial “have got” and always uses “to have”.
“We have to find her”, “Well, now you have even more.”
This may be because Joe isn’t in the movie as much as the first three, or that he just genuinely doesn't use them often, but he uses considerably fewer discourse markers. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Joe uses discourse markers to start sentences, and as interjections. The discourse markers that Joe uses are:
Sentence openers: oh, so, well, yeah
Interjections: hey, what
After Booker, Joe uses the second most amount of fillers. He uses more fillers when having a back-and-forth style conversation with someone than when he’s essentially monologuing. The fillers that Joe uses are: mmm, uh
Joe sometimes uses ellipses when speaking. Again, not super noteworthy, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.
“He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold.”
Joe uses answer ellipsis in the movie, but he doesn’t actually speak in sentence fragments when he does this. While answer ellipsis is pretty standard in English, Joe’s commitment to saying more than was asked of him isn’t.
[So... you’re even older than him.] “Nicky and I met in the Crusades.” instead of “[Yes, we are.] Nicky and I met in the Crusades.”
Joe uses sentences with a null subject (i.e. he doesn’t use subject pronouns).
“Depends on the century.” “Fought thousands of battles side by side.”
Joe uses sentences which have both a null subject and uses copula deletion. See Nile for more details on zero copula.
“Very pissed off.” “Faster than the elevator.”
In the movie, Joe only really asks wh- questions. He does ask a few using intonation, although most of those questions act more like additional tags on a wh-question, rather than a question by itself. As such, it's unclear whether Joe uses null auxiliary construction or the zero copula when asking questions.
Intonation: "Bedhead?” “So we just leave her out in the open?”
When Joe repeats himself for emphasis, it’s usually in groups of three.
Joe says “what” when he doesn’t hear something/doesn’t understand something
As previously mentioned, Joe uses some formal words like "thus" and the impersonal pronoun "one". Here are some other words to consider having Joe use unironically as well: alas, amidst, await, behest, ergo, hence, latter, much, nor, notwithstanding, promptly, quite, shall (modal), thence, thereupon, thoroughly, whereas, whom (used correctly of course), yield
Even though Joe speaks quite formally a lot of the time, he never uses the subordinating conjunction “that” when it can be omitted.
“The first immortal Andy found.”
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Joe: all in, attention to detail, come on, I guess, out in the open, measure and reason, over a [time period], piece of shit, proved [their] case, side by side, way back
Profanity used by Joe: goddamnit, shit
Unrelated to word count or time spent speaking, Joe says the least amount of sentences out of the five main characters, although this doesn’t mean very much, considering Nicky says exactly one more sentence than him.
Sentence composition**: 57% of Joe’s sentences are simple sentences, 21% are sentence fragments, 5% are compound sentences, 4% are complex sentences, 4% are compound complex sentences and 9% are not in English.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 29% of Joe’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 8% of Joe’s sentences.
Languages spoken on-screen: English, Italian
The best way to describe Joe’s manner of speaking is that it’s like he has two different styles. You get the sense that sometimes Joe just says whatever and sometimes he says something that he’s rehearsed in his head. Joe is a Maghrebi Muslim man from the Islamic Golden Age so he comes from a culture and time with a rich history of and respect for both written and spoken poetry, both impromptu and memorized. I think he carries that tradition quite well. When Joe is orating (van speech and Quynh backstory), his sentences are much more structured and he uses more formal language. He doesn't speak in sentence fragments, he doesn't use any colloquial language besides contractions and he doesn't use discourse markers or fillers like he does in the more casual back-and-forth conversations. If you look at Joe's sentence composition percentages, you'll notice that Joe has comparatively less sentence fragments than other characters and that’s purely because when he orates, it's in full sentences (minus poetic ellipsis, but that's allowed). That's why it seems to me as though Joe rehearses some of what he says in advance. I don’t know the extent to which he does that, but at the very least it seems like he’s sat down and thought “how would I explain Quynh to the new immortal?” or “What would I say to someone belittling my relationship with Nicky?” Even in the delivery of the line “Faster than the elevator” there is quite a long pause between him seeing that Nile jumped out a window and actually making the joke, as if he’s thinking about it first. The majority of the sentences Joe says are in the van speech and while telling Quynh’s backstory. In casual conversations, Nicky seems to take the lead more than Joe.
I’d also speculate that Joe is quite literate. Obviously there’s his own affinity for storytelling and oration, but his use of language hints at a larger vocabulary. You see him use a frequently neglected pronoun in English and a relatively formal adverb. He also uses adjectives like “grotesque” and “infantile”. He does end sentences while prepositions though, so he obviously does not give a fuck about John Dryden and Joshua Poole. That being said, I think the idea of rearranging Joe’s sentences so they don’t end in prepositions is funny and fits his whole vibe.
Joe uses null subject construction in English, and while that’s pretty common in everyday speech in English, it is worth noting that both Italian and Arabic are null subject languages. The way that Joe uses null construction in English is far more similar to Italian than Arabic, which requires a change in sentence sequencing but I still think it’s neat. The thing that Arabic brings to the table that I’m more intrigued by is the fact that it’s a zero copula language. It’s not a matter of copula deletion like AAVE, there straight up is not a copula in the present tense, so the lack of a verb (and specific sentence sequencing) is the copula in the present tense. When Joe drops both subject and verb in the present tense he is, in effect, simulating a similar situation due to the ambiguity of the sentences themselves where the only way you can correctly interpret the sentence is by understanding that the missing verb must be a copula. He gets rid of a subject pronoun as a shout out to Italian, I guess, but also because it would sound so silly if he didn’t. I don’t think Joe necessarily picked up this habit from Arabic, but I do think it’s a fun coincidence.
Nicky
Of all the characters, Nicky has the least consistent contraction usage for personal pronouns and auxiliaries (e.g. I’ve, you’re, it’s, etc). There are examples throughout the film of him using a contraction and then in the next scene he just doesn’t. Unlike with the other characters, who have a discernable pattern (Andy always uses contractions, Nile uses contractions for dramatic emphasis, Booker becomes more inconsistent with contractions when upset, Joe doesn’t use contractions in certain tenses), Nicky is totally random in his contraction usage.
My personal favourite example of this is: “She’s more alone than she has ever been in her entire life.”
Nicky uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns, however this usage is just as inconsistent as with personal pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there.” He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Outside of contractions, Nicky doesn't seem to use colloquialisms in the movie.
Nicky doesn’t use the colloquial going-to future construction and relies on simple future construction
“You will not be able to give him what he wants”, “If it’s now Andromache’s, nothing you do will stop it.
Nicky doesn’t use the colloquial phrasal verb “have got” and instead uses “have”
“I have something for you”
Nicky only has a few discourse markers in the movie. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organise and manage sentences while speaking. Nicky uses discourse markers to start sentences, as interjections and as responses. The discourse markers that he uses are:
Sentence openers: so
Interjections: hey, wait, what
Responses: yeah
Nicky doesn’t use any fillers. Instead, he pauses and repeats himself as needed.
"I believe it's because we... we are meant to find each other"
In my other post, I mentioned that Nicky speaks in full sentences, and while that is mostly true, it’s a bit of an oversimplification. While that kind of a statement is fine for an overview post, I felt it would be disingenuous to leave it at that. Nicky speaks in sentence fragments just like everyone else. In fact, he speaks in sentence fragments more than Joe does. He uses ellipsis, but the way he does it is functionally different from the specific methods of null subject, null auxiliary and zero copula that I’ve talked about with the other characters. While the others are quite formulaic about their usage of ellipses, Nicky’s is far more nebulous because it’s very much dependent on context.
Nicky uses answer ellipses, like the others.
[Bedhead?] “Nicely tousled.”
The next way that Nicky uses ellipses might better be described as anaphora. That means when he’s eliding words, the omitted words in the sentence can be found through the context of the sentence preceding it.
The sentence “The only reason we haven’t... is that it’s not our time yet” is missing a past participle. The missing verb is found in the previous sentence: “Everything has to die, Mr. Merrick.”
In fact, almost all of Nicky’s use of sentence fragments and ellipses can most easily be characterized this way. If the sentence that Nicky says is incomplete in some way by itself, that’s usually because he’s referring to something either he, or someone else, has said. In some cases, it’s as if he’s continuing or adding additional information to the sentence preceding it.
“We killed each other.” “Many times.”
“It was a woman. A Black woman.”
Another way of characterizing some of his use of ellipses is to imagine he’s using answer ellipsis to a question nobody asked him.
[What did you see?] “Dirt floor, clay walls.”
In one particular instance, Nicky says the noun phrase “A fine justification.” It’s already an example of anaphora, as it is referring back to Kozak’s “I believe this can change the world.” Nicky’s sentence bears some similarity to Joe’s “Faster than the elevator” as it’s also an example of a sentence which is missing both verb and subject, however when Joe uses this kind of construction, he only does so before an adjective phrase. One could extrapolate from this that Nicky uses null subject and zero copula construction with adjective phrases and Joe similarly uses it for noun phrases, but that’s just speculation.
The final way that we see Nicky use ellipsis is honestly the most baffling and I’m still not entirely sure how to best explain it. The sentence is “Spend eternity in a cage.” It is clearly not the imperative mood, it wouldn't make sense for Nicky to be telling Nile to spend eternity in a cage. Unlike the other examples of Nicky’s use of ellipsis, the preceding sentence (“That’s the reason we dread capture”) provides context but not specific form. Breaking it down from an English language perspective, the only thing that makes sense to me is that “spend” is actually the infinitive phrase “to spend” where the infinitive "to" has been elided and there is an implied “[We are afraid][to] spend eternity in a cage.” I want to be clear here: I understand this sentence. I know what Nicky is saying, I simply have no idea why I know what he's saying. I don't understand why this sentence works. For further theories, look at the section on sociolinguistics at the bottom.
Sometimes Nicky adds unnecessary pronouns to a sentence.
“But then, Andy and Quynh, they were accused of witchcraft themselves and they were trapped and caught.”
Nicky does use the subordinating conjunction “that” but there are also times when he doesn’t. The common Nicky pattern of *shrug*
“The only reason we haven’t... is that it’s not our time yet”
“As much as I like watching you sleep, I’m glad you’re awake.”
When Nicky asks questions, he doesn’t use any kind of null auxiliary construction or zero copula for subject-auxiliary inversion questions. Nicky is also the only other character (after Andy) polite enough to ask indirect questions, and he uses them when talking to people who kidnapped him, which is kind of a power move. Nicky doesn’t seem to use intonation much when asking questions either.
Subject auxiliary inversion (yes/no questions): “Are we too late?” “Are you sure?”
Indirect: “I don’t suppose it would be possible to get these chains off of us?”
Intonation: “Nile?”
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Nicky: as much, cast off, do you know, get some rest, getting away, I suppose/don’t suppose, judge of character, love of my life,
Sentence composition**: 47% of Nicky’s sentences are simple sentences, 24% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 15% are complex sentences, 2% are compound complex and 9% are not in English.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 23% of Nicky’s sentences. Adverbs appear in 6% of Nicky’s sentences. Nicky doesn’t use adverb phrases.
Languages: English, Italian, Nuer
Before I start this, I want to say that despite having a strong accent, I think Nicky is quite proficient in English. He knows the subtle differences between words like “unethical” and “immoral,” he’s aware of and capable of using expressions with irregular syntax and he uses sophisticated linguistic phenomena in English. He uses so many complex sentences it makes my head spin. Leaving all that aside, I think that Nicky probably translates from Italian into English while speaking. Like Nile, Nicky is very deliberate about his language but in a different way. While Nile uses style-shifting to accomplish a number of different things, Nicky is primarily concerned with clarity. I think that Nicky’s tendency towards more formal language is a kind of overcompensation to make sure that he’s being understood. Another thing worth noting is that I think Nicky has actively studied language before, in a class setting or by himself, and has at least some knowledge of linguistics (specifically syntax). At the very least, he is knowledgeable about both Italian and English syntax.
This theory is largely based around the idea of overcompensation. Nicky is primarily concerned with the clarity of speech and because of that, he doubles-down on grammar and structure. Italian is a null subject language so you actually see Nicky use null subject construction when he says “Sono qui” and “Dovremmo tonarci” but you don’t see anything similar in the way that he speaks English even though all the other characters frequently rely on truncated null subjects. He demonstrates a clear awareness of the standard language restrictions of English and how that compares to the restrictions of Italian. And not just that: there’s actually an example in the movie where Nicky adds an extra and unnecessary pronoun in English. In another sentence, Nicky could have used a contraction on two separate instances and deliberately only contracted one of them because the contractions were two different tenses. For the most part, this overcompensation makes it so Nicky’s speech—while unconventional—is still grammatically correct. That’s how you get things like Nicky saying, “The love of my life was of the people I’ve been taught to hate,” which isn’t how most native-speakers would intuitively phrase it themselves and as a result, a further layer of nuance is added by the use of the Present Perfect Continuous. Despite the fact that Nicky uses some unconventional phrasing in English, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it or concerned about it. He’s more than willing to experiment with his speech and seems very confident in it as well. That’s why I think he has some kind of formal language training with English, because he clearly understands the system that he’s working with but is less aware of some of the common ways of speaking. I seriously doubt that Joe and Nicky spend much time speaking to each other in English.
Another point that I think is worth mentioning: while Joe seems to thrive while orating and speaks relatively simply otherwise, Nicky is the exact opposite. Nicky’s language capabilities are on full display when he’s engaging in discourse, but when he’s telling Nile about Quynh, you see a lot more irregular syntax structure from him. It’s during this discussion that you hear the line “Spend eternity in a cage,” that I’ve struggled with above. The other possible explanation for the use of this unconventional sentence construction was actually given to me by @rhubarbdreams, who said that the sentence actually makes more sense syntactically in Italian, which has an impersonal imperative. In fact, in the Italian dub, that’s allegedly what it does (“per non passare l'eternità in una gabbia.”) Whether Nicky’s apparent tendency towards unconventional speech in this circumstance is a chronic tendency from overthinking while speaking English or a result of the specific topic they were discussing is up for personal interpretation, although I do think it’s interesting that Nicky was the one primarily leading conversation up until Joe took over specifically when they were recounting a story. I think this is especially interesting considering Nicky was apparently a priest, however this might just be a limitation to him in languages he doesn’t use as often.
Bonus: Quynh
Quynh doesn’t have that many lines, so it’s not really possible to do any kind of meaningful analysis about her speech patterns (she says 16 sentences and 10 of those are screaming “no” or someone’s name). That being said, I do want to look at all the lines she presumably said in English (I’m ignoring Lykon’s death scene because if Lykon really did die in the 6th or 7th century, then they absolutely weren’t speaking Modern English, you know?)
So first we have the lines from the witch trials:
“I’ve never been burned alive before. What do you think it’s gonna be like?”
“Just you and me.”
Okay so obviously there’s some ambiguity over exactly when this happened, since Joe said 500 years in a box and TOGTH lists it happening around 1750. In the comics, Noriko fell overboard around 1590. I simply think the 1750 date is incorrect based on when people were being burned at the stake for witchcraft and heresy. I could talk more about that and my own headcanons about when it happened, but this is a post about linguistics, so what’s important to take from all this is that it probably took place at the earliest sometime in the late 15th century and, at the latest, the very beginning of the 17th century.
Taking all that into consideration, I can say almost certainly that all of Quynh’s lines are some kind of misremembered modern translation of what she actually said. She uses two contractions (I’ve and it’s) that were maybe in use, but likely uncommon. “It’s” was used, although you would be far more likely to see its counterpart “tis”, and contractions with “have” and “had” were only becoming common towards the end of the 16th century. There’s also the problem of the pronoun “you” and how singular “you” would not have been used in this informal context. And since “you” should be the singular “thou”, the archaic singular second-person conjugation of “do” would instead be correct. And finally: going-to future construction may have been used at the time (I can’t speak to the commonality of it), but I honestly can’t say with any certainty whether the colloquial “gonna” was in use. The first recorded use seems to be the 19th century. I’m sure there are other things that are anachronistic about the speech but I don’t know enough about Early Modern English morphology and syntax to speculate any more about it.
So yeah, Andy and Quynh’s conversation is either Andy’s misremembering of it in Modern English, it was never in English in the first place like the other scene, or just Hollywood movie magic for the viewers (I would love to see someone attempt to translate it back into Early Modern English though, I’m just saying).
“It’s nice to finally meet you.”
The one line that I feel has legitimate value in the analysis of Quynh’s speech patterns in English is the final one that she says to Booker. She’s using ME, obviously, with its contractions and singular “you.” She’s also using a modified idiom, “Nice to meet you”, which is interesting because that absolutely wouldn’t have been used when she went under water considering the word “nice” was derogatory at the time. All of this implies to me that Quynh has definitely spent time on land before she finds Booker. Also she split the infinitive ("to meet"). I don't know what that says about her speech, but I sure am looking at it.
Fun Quynh fact: of the 6 times that Andy’s full name is used in the movie, half of them are said by Quynh
**A note on sentence composition: I intentionally didn't go into detail about sentence composition outside of brief mentions. If any of you are curious about it, you can ask. I'm more than willing to discuss sentence clause structure, but I didn't want this to become even longer and more convoluted than it already is. Part of why I’m reluctant to give it any weight here is because of how lenient I was with what was considered a sentence fragment vs. a simple sentence, as the characters are speaking colloquial English. A movie isn’t formal writing and to evaluate dialogue by that same metric is silly. Also, I considered interjections sentence fragments to start and then realized halfway through that that was a bad idea and they should have had their own separate section, but at that point I was in too deep, and didn’t want to go back and do it all again. In the same way, there are sentences that I considered compound or complex sentences, but that “technically” aren’t because a lot of characters drop pronominal subjects and like. Officially you can’t have null subject clauses in English, because that’s not how the language works on paper (imperative mood aside). Or they elided part of the sentence so that technically it's not a clause. But people don’t actually care about stuff like that when they talk. Also I may have messed up a few times, because complex sentences are hard and sometimes I get phrases and clauses confused. It can be difficult to tell when there’s a lot happening, you know? (this is about Nicky. Sir, why do you talk like that)
If you’re a fanfic writer, I’m going to advise that you take the part about sentence composition with a grain of salt or ignore it entirely, unless you’re already familiar with sentence clause structure in English. It will not be helpful to you for writing character dialogue until you’ve actually put in the work to understand it and practice. As mentioned, I still mess it up sometimes if a sentence has too many phrases. Basically, if you think too hard about it, I guarantee it’ll stress you out.
#the old guard#andromache the scythian#nicolo di genova#yusuf al kaysani#nile freeman#sebastien le livre#quynh#tog meta#tog linguistics#long post#like reallyyyyyyy long#it's around 9.5k words#anyway i'm really excited to chare this with everyone!!#i've been working very hard on it#also in terms of formatting i like how it looks on ao3 much more than here so that's how i would recommend viewing it
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Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.
Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤
I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.
Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.
That said, since you asked...
I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.
The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.
I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.
And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.
Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.
But those are never the stories we get.
⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠
I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.
Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.
In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.
Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.
Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.
That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).
And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.
But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.
From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.
The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.
This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).
This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.
This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.
This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.
As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is.
Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative.
This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency.
The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him.
Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine.
But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.
I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.
(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)
#Batman#red hood#batman: urban legends#nice art#shit story#or at least shit characterization#jason todd deserves better#this response got long and I didn't edit it#please forgive any errors#and/or unclear spots#spoilers
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